Four-Fold Cross of Reality of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

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Scott Preston:

"it bears repeating that the root of our words “subject” and “object” is Latin jacere — which means “to cast” or “to throw”. And what is being cast or thrown in this fashion is attention or consciousness, inwards or outwards. We direct our attention inwards, or we direct our attention outwards. Oddly enough, throughout much of the Modern Era, these were recognised as the only real dimensions of human experience. It was either “subjective” or “objective” demonstrating that the modern mind, befitting its perspectivist orientation, was completely space-obsessed and limited by that.

It was the innovation of the “speech thinker” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy to realise the deficient character of this space-obsession, and that was its omission of similar formal terms to characterise our attention to times – past and future were also directions in which we cast our throw our attention or consciousness, and so he coined terms for those orientations — “trajective” for the backwards and “prejective” for the forwards. Consciousness, thus, not only interfaces between the two spaces of inner and outer — subjective and objective — but also with the times — past and future. There are thus four modes of attention in which consciousness is cast — subjective, objective, trajective, prejective. This is what Rosenstock-Huessy represents as his “cross of reality”. And as you can see, it is a mandala.

”It is now generally recognised in neurology also, that the human brain and nervous system not only interfaces or mediates between the subjective and objective, but also between time past and time future, and is thus exactly as Blake describes it — fourfold.

Now, this just makes sense, doesn’t it? Yet, it was not acknowledged as such by the perspectival consciousness, and only became an issue with Einstein’s innovation — the spacetime unification which suddenly made time of as much interest and concern as space. And as you might surmise from the controversies about the actual nature of time, it remains for us something of a mystery and a riddle. But in any case, it cannot be denied in our own experience that we look backwards and forwards as much as inwards and outwards, and in so doing, form and shape a mandala or a “cross of reality”.

Even a purely neurological description of consciousness cannot avoid the conclusion that we actually bring four modes of attention to reality and our experience. For some obscure reason, this remains opaque to the Modern Mind.

So, what is our consciousness actually doing in casting its attention in these different directions of space and time if not attempting to integrate its entire experience through coordination of the spaces subjective and objective and synchronisation of the times trajective and prejective? This is exactly what it is doing — attempting to integrate its reality through the two processes of coordination and synchronisation and bringing together the four directions which are often quite contradictory because they are polarities of space and time.

So, we actually cast our consciousness in these four directions or domains, but then something quite paradoxical happens in doing so. We also bring those domains into presence. It is not only a reaching out into those dimensions but also a retrieving or bringing into presence of those dimensions or domains, and in every instance we are engaging the “divine Imagination”, as Blake put it. In the very act of casting our attention, we are also engaging what Phenomenologists call “intent” or “intentionality”. We are, in effect, also intending those domains or dimensions by imagination. So, the act of attention is also, perforce, a generative, constitutive and creative act.

“Presentiation” is the name that Gebser gave to this constitutive or integrative act of consciousness, the paradox that the deeper into the spaces and times that we cast our attention, the more those are also made present once again, and in that sense we can speak of a “convergence” of all times and spaces — past and future, inner and outer — in and on the Present. Our attention revives everything latent or potential and brings it once again into manifestation or actuality.

In those terms, I think we can conclude that Blake’s “fourfold vision” is actually McGilchrist’s “Master”, while Blake’s “Single Vision” is, indeed, McGilchrist’s “Emissary” mode of attention. But it must be noted, too, that “Single Vision” is still a component or aspect of the Fourfold.

Why should we conclude that the “Master’s” mode of attention is actually “fourfold”? Well, it follows pretty well from McGilchrist’s own insight that the Master’s mode of attention is pretty holistic while the Emissary’s is much more narrowly focussed, partial, partisan and “perspectival”. But we just described how our actual experience of our whole reality is as a fourfold structure, sometimes also reflected in the cardinal points North, South, East, and West. And if we look closely at Blake’s own illustration of “Fourfold Vision” these cardinal points are marked as being associated, too, with his four Zoas."

(https://longsworde.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/consciousness-and-the-cross-of-reality/)


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