Do Xuan asked:

All the ancient oriental studies seem to find way to one highest level of understanding and mixing well
up with the universe. Is there a theory like that in western community?

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There are many theories like this in Western philosophy. You might even say that Plato advocates
this. But there are several questions I have about your question and your implicit position. First, you
say "highest level of understanding". I assume you mean something like enlightenment in Zen, the
removal from the wheel of karma in Hinduism, and so forth. That is, that there is a "highest" state of
being which enables one to transcend, in some manner, the world. You find this kind of thing mostly
in the writings of religious mystics in the West, and, inasmuch as I understand them, the same is true
in the Eastern traditions. So if you want to read this sort of thing in the Western tradition, take a look
at Jakob Boheme, the Jewish Kabbala, Kierkegaard, and so forth. That is, those "theories", as you
put it, are religiously motivated, in that they 1) involve some sort of transcendence of normal, "worldly"
existence, and 2) are taken as dogma.

And that last point is the sticking point for me. That is, as a philosopher, it is the point which I have
intense dislike for. Why? Because questioning, active investigation, stops with the dogma. Let's look
at this. Why, first, is there the assumption that the world can be transcended? Usually, those acts of
transcendence are specific to the religion. That is, in Zen there is one kind of enlightenment, in
Hinduism another, in Christian mysticism yet another, and so forth, and this great variety of religious
traditions argues against the actuality of any of these, since there are so many contradictory claims.
Second, recent work in neurophysiology has begun to uncover the neural basis of the feeling of
transcendence. Now, one can claim that there is a conscious state which corresponds to, or is
associated with "enlightenment". I have no quarrel with this. My quarrel is with the assumption that
because we are in some mental state, that state makes some coherent reference to actuality: that it
refers to something real. We have many examples of states which have no basis in or relation to
reality. So feelingas if we have special knowledge of, or have transcended reality, is just that: a
feeling. And, as I say, given that this feeling is, for the most part, connected to veryspecific dogmas
about the existence of some particular god, or about the structure of the universe; and given that
those dogmas are all contradictory,we are left with just the feeling.

The question to ask, I think, is, "what function, generally, does this feeling serve?" That is, why have
we evolved this feeling; what advantage does it confer on those who have it... is it a holdover from
times when man needed something like this to bond in groups, or merely to alleviate boredom?

These questions are, finally, starting to be asked. We are now in a culture where we can investigate
religious claims, and religious feelings, without being burned at the stake or imprisoned, like Galileo.
We are told, of course, that such investigations are "scientific", i.e., that they turn people into objects,
that they are blasphemous, or simply that scientists are sadly out of touch with "reality", meaning that
they do not hold the particular dogma they are investigating; that, since they are attempting to be
impartial, they are disqualified from their search. A very nice source for this kind of thing is Sagan's
book, The Demon-Haunted World.You might take a look at that. It's a kind of metaphysical cold
shower.

But I'm not saying that looking at all of this is meaningless or invalid. As cultural studies, as studies of
the human condition, of how we cope with reality, these are extremely valuable and important. I am,
however, advocating a rather unpopular position, that of taking a certain stance toward those
"theories", including those of your own culture, which entails a distancing, to prevent oneself from
making the assumption they are to anyextent correct. This is notthe same as assuming that they are
not useful,and certainly not the same as assuming that they do not play important parts in cultures.

Steven Ravett Brown