thank you M....
i always feel nervous now since the new rules were enforced by the moderators
as to what was appropriate and what what was not for zen forum...
i nearly thought maybe not to post... feeling the "nervous nellie"
i have had private responses as well in support..
so thank you for your support M.
i would be interested in your feedback...
merle
The Book, The Withdrawal of Human Projection looks like one I would love to
read and add to my library.
Amazon has 7 copies left, just wanted to stop by and tell you that this was one
excellent Posting to the group.
M
On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 2:12 AM, Merle Lester <merlewiit...@yahoo.com> wrote:
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>for suresh...merle
>>
>>Having trouble viewing this email? click here
>>Return to Emptiness: free copy of The Withdrawal of Human Projection
>>COLLEGE INSTRUCTORS may receive a free copy for use in teaching and
>>research.Simply respond to this email indicating you will request that your
>>library order a copy.
>> Pages: 118 pages
>>Publisher:
>> Library of Social Science
>>Author:
>> M. D. Faber
>>Date of Publication:
>> June 1, 2013
>>Paperback:
>> List Price $34.95
>> ISBN: 091504207X
>>Hardcover:
>> List Price $39.95
>> ISBN: 0915042088
>> For information on ordering this book through Amazon, click here.
>>
>>Because we believe The Withdrawal of Human Projection is an important
>>book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we
>>are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>>
>> Professor emeritus of English at the University of Victoria, M. D. Faber is
>> a renowned authority on the psychology of religion and author of nine books,
>> including Culture and Consciousness, The Psychological Roots of Religious
>> Belief, and The Magic of Prayer: An Introduction to the Psychology of Faith.
>>
>>We are immersed within culture
>>like fish in the sea
>>We experience culture as if air that we breathe. Or one may say that human
>>beings are like fish within water—embraced, encompassed and incorporated by
>>“society.” In many post-modern theories, there is barely a concept of a self
>>prior to or separate from the symbolic order. Some theorists contend that our
>>psyche is constituted by nothing more or less than the “discourses that push
>>and pull us.”
>>Scholars focus on the inescapable power of discourse, yet rail against the
>>dominating, oppressive dimensions of society. The term “hegemony” conveys the
>>idea of culture and its ideologies as an omnipresent—and potentially
>>destructive—force.
>>But what is “culture?” Why is there such an intimate connection between our
>>minds and society? In The Withdrawal of Human Projection, M. D. Faber departs
>>from conventional approaches—providing a psychological analysis of our need
>>or desire for culture. What motivates us to bind ourselves to the symbolic
>>order?
>>How is it possible to separate
>>from beloved objects?
>>Faber begins with the child’s attachment to mother and family. We experience
>>a deep, profound tie to early love objects. Simultaneously, we are compelled
>>to separate from these objects and move into reality—a place that does not
>>contain the mother. How is it possible to achieve separation from that to
>>which we are so deeply attached? This is the subject of Faber’s book.
>>Separation from our mother and families, Faber says, generates a “life-long
>>mourning process,” triggering an endless “search for replacement, for someone
>>or something to fill the gap.” The child deals with separation by choosing
>>“transitional objects”—blankets, teddy bears, story books—that afford the
>>magical or illusory belief that one is “staying with the caretaker at the
>>same time he or she is moving away from her or giving her up.” We bind to
>>objects that “symbolize and evoke the comforting presence of the mother.”
>>Our relationship to culture, according to Faber, derives from our
>>relationship to transitional objects. Cultural objects are glorified,
>>puffed-up transitional objects. We bind ourselves tightly to the cultural
>>domain as part of a ceaseless struggle to come to terms with separation and
>>loss; to solidify and stabilize the self.
>>Ambivalence
>>Faber hypothesizes that we are tied to the institutions of society out of the
>>tie that binds us to parental figures within. Our struggle to establish “dual
>>unity” binds us to the objects of our inner world, and hence to an
>>overestimation or attachment to cultural objects that become “projective
>>exemplifications of either acceptance or rejection; in other words,
>>psychological symbols.”
>>At the same time that we seek to maintain the tie to mother, we struggle to
>>separate. Insofar as cultural objects symbolize mother, our relationship to
>>these objects is inherently ambivalent. We simultaneously seek to fuse with
>>these objects and to differentiate—separate—ourselves from them. We come feel
>>dominated and oppressed—tormented— by the very ideologies, ideals and
>>cultural objects to which we have become deeply attached.
>>Because we believe The Withdrawal of Human Projection is an important
>>book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we
>>are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>>Contemporary scholarship views the power of culture to shape the self as
>>inevitable and nearly inescapable. Lacanians state that “is no other but the
>>other.” Submitting to culture, we become “subjects of the symbolic order.”
>>However, there are other perspectives. Books like Freud’s Civilization and
>>Its Discontents suggest a clear distinction between society, on the one hand,
>>and the individual, on the other. The fact that human beings suffer from—and
>>can perform a critique of—civilization implies that there is a part of the
>>self that is not bound to civilization. Many social movements subsequent to
>>Freud’s book built on the assumption that liberation entails “throwing off”
>>the yoke of society.
>>Return to emptiness
>>Faber turns to Buddhism as a method for achieving a "break" from the symbolic
>>order. Whereas Descartes said, I think therefore I am, Buddhist tradition
>>embraces an idea that is precisely the opposite of this French conception.
>>Buddhism—Asian philosophy, generally—contends that thinking impedes discovery
>>and understanding of the self. One becomes who one is by abandoning
>>thoughts—returning to the space of emptiness.
>>Indian philosopher Rajneesh explains: “Thoughts are like clouds in the sky;
>>they have no roots in you. They come and go. You’re just a victim, and you
>>unnecessarily become identified with them.” The self, according to this view,
>>is not the thinker, but the being who experiences and observes thoughts.
>>Because we believe The Withdrawal of Human Projection is an important
>>book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we
>>are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>>Within the symbolic order, identity is achieved through “identification.” We
>>find it natural and normal to define our selves in terms of our relationship
>>to cultural ideas and objects. People identify with nations, with a political
>>position (“left” or “right”), with an ethnic group, a baseball team (becoming
>>a “Yankee fan” or a “Met fan”), religious belief systems, a musical performer
>>(becoming a Lady Gaga fan), with an actor or actress, or an ideology
>>(libertarianism or socialism).
>>Identifications are the foundation for what Faber calls “ordinary
>>consciousness.” We define ourselves by projecting existence into cultural
>>objects. Our attachment to these objects replicates attachment to infantile
>>love objects. Living through identification, human beings imagine that they
>>cannot do without—live without—these beloved cultural objects.
>>Buddhism seeks separation from the symbolic order: abandonment of cultural
>>objects: return to our “original nature.” The idea of “emptiness” lies at the
>>heart of Buddhism. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki explains that emptiness is not
>>merely a state of mind, but the “original essence of mind which Buddha
>>experienced.” Emptiness is the pure, inner space where language, discourse
>>and society cannot enter.
>>Liberation from the Symbolic Order
>>Buddhism—separation from the symbolic order—implies the possibility of
>>liberation from ideologies and hegemonic societal structures. Charlotte Joko
>>Beck states that the purpose of Buddhist practice is to “die slowly, step by
>>step, gradually disidentifying with wherever we’re caught in.” As we identify
>>ourselves with less and less, we can “include more and more in our lives.”
>>Disidentification means withdrawing psychic energy from cultural objects to
>>which we had been attached. Many of us are so deeply invested in culture that
>>we can hardly conceive or imagine such a state of being. We all are
>>“fans”—people who are fanatically committed or devoted to cultural objects.
>>We imagine that we benefit enormously by virtue of our relationship to
>>society. Yet, we often feel tormented. Culture (e. g., the mass-media)
>>presents an endless, eternal stream of gratification. We feel that we are
>>energized by this connection.
>>Perhaps, however, an image from The Matrix depicts the true state of affairs.
>>Human beings are batteries—perpetually feeding the symbolic order. We are
>>tied to society by an umbilical cord, precisely as an unborn child is tied to
>>its mother. We feel we are being nourished by the images that enter from the
>>Matrix. In reality, we are feeding the Matrix with the substance of our
>>bodies.
>>Because we believe The Withdrawal of Human Projection is an important
>>book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we
>>are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>>
>>EXCERPTS FROM THE WITHDRAWAL
>>OF HUMAN PROJECTION
>>
>>M. D. Faber on Money, Capitalism and Consumerism
>>The drive for wealth is closely bound up with the drive for omnipotence.
>>Money denies dependence. Because money functions as an agent of control at
>>the deep psychological level, providing the dependent personality with the
>>dream of unlimited power, wealth becomes in the transitional mode a means of
>>accomplishing one's total independence. Were one to possess the object
>>entirely one would not need the object any more.
>>The capitalist, in his insatiable greed, is willing to sacrifice human
>>beings, the very "flesh and blood, nerves and brains" of working people in
>>order to maximize his profit, which is derived from human labor. Like the
>>Aztecs of old, the owners of industries, of mines and factories, are
>>"prodigal with human lives," casual about "wasting" the men and women to whom
>>they believe they have some sort of natural right. "When profits are at
>>stake," writes Marx, "killing is no murder," just as in the religious
>>sacrifice of human beings killing is also no murder but a "religious" action.
>>Because interest leads to money after a period of waiting—and because money
>>is a symbol rooted in the drive to control and reunite with the internalized
>>object—interest becomes a psychological scheme to fill time with the magical
>>presence of the maternal figure. One is making money as time passes, and to
>>this extent the emptiness of time is denied, the absence of the object is
>>denied; indeed, the emptiness of time and the object's absence are only
>>illusions.
>>Time is not simply passing, it is breeding money, which makes one secure in
>>its passing. Thus the interest in interest attests to the individual's desire
>>to be imaging unconsciously the object of one's security all the time, just
>>as the child has the mother all the time at the level of his primary,
>>internalized holding. The feed of cash proceeds uninterruptedly at the level
>>of transitional need. One "goes through life" with his lips at the breast.
>>Our passionate chase after goods is, first. our attempt to discover new forms
>>of attachment" in our alienated, kin-less culture, our paradise lost. We
>>shop, buy, consume, feed ourselves "products," in a pathetic, obsessive
>>struggle to deny the absence of those flesh-and-blood contacts that formerly
>>tied people together and provided them with precious compensation for the
>>loss of the object. Second, we make our obsessive economic activity, our
>>endless oral frenzy, a part of the "national purpose," or indeed the national
>>purpose itself ("the richest country in the world!")—in an effort to convince
>>ourselves that we do in fact live in a genuine society, a truly cohesive
>>group, a shared community of emotion and purpose. We know deep down, however,
>>that loneliness and isolation are the rule.
>>
>>The Withdrawal of Human Projection:
>>Separating from the Symbolic Order
>>Table of Contents
>>Foreword by Richard A. Koenigsberg
>>
>>Acknowledgements
>>
>>Part One: The Transitional Nature of Ordinary Consciousness
>> 1. The Process of Mind-Body Conversion
>> 2. From the Cradle
>> 3. The Internalization of the World
>> 4. The Mirror
>> 5. The Dark Side of the Mirror: Splitting
>> 6. The Agony of Differentiation
>> 7. The Sands of Time and the Container of Space
>> 8. The Stimulus Itself
>> 9. The Ward
>> 10. The Tie to the Culture
>> 11. The Oedipus, and After
>> 12. Notes and References Part One
>>Part Two: The Cultural Sphere
>> 1. Some Background
>> 2. The Religio-Economic Realm
>> 3. Money and Magna Mater
>> 4. The Sacrificial Way to the Object
>> 5. Sacred Lucre
>> 6. Psychodynamic Extrapolations
>> 7. The Metaphors of Marx
>> 8. The Interest in Interest
>> 9. The Vicious Circle and the Bad Parent
>> 10. More Opiates, More Anxieties
>> 11. Lurking Ambivalence
>> 12. Goods and More Goods
>> 13. Notes and References Part Two
>>Part Three: Disrupting the Tie to the Inner World
>> 1. A Glance Backward, A Glance Forward
>> 2. The Meaning of Non-Ordinary Moments
>> 3. The Emergence of the Non-Ordinary World
>> 4. Solidifying One's Change
>> 5. Transforming the Past at the Mind-Body Level
>> 6. Notes and References Part Three
>>
>>Because we believe The Withdrawal of Human Projection is an important
>>book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we
>>are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>>This message was sent to bmles...@tpg.com.au by
>>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com
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