[written 1980 when I was 28 • please wait for translation]
(written approx. 15 Dec. 1980)
From the perception of thinking, thinking is thought to be experienced. Simple logic: perception exists.
Question: 'Does perception exist?'
Answer: From the experience of 'Does perception exist?', 'Does perception exist?' is thought to be experienced.
Simple logic: 'Does perception exist?' is experienced.
Simple logic: perception exists.
Simple logic: ERGO, perception is true.
Both times — whether we ask: 'Does thinking exist?' or 'Does perception exist?' — the answer is obtained: perception exists.
It is experienced that 'perception exists' or 'perception is true.'
Question: 'Is perception true?'
From the experience of 'Is perception true?' it is thought that 'Is perception true?' is experienced.
Simple logic: 'Is perception true?' is experienced.
Simple logic: perception exists.
Previously, by asking thinking two questions: 'Does thinking exist?' and 'Does perception exist?', both times thinking answered: perception exists.
Now we must ask: 'Is perception false?'
From the experience of 'Is perception false?' it is thought that 'Is perception false?' is experienced.
Simple logic: perception exists.
If we now instead thought like this:
From the experience of 'perception is false' it is thought that 'perception is false' is experienced.
Simple logic: perception exists.
Simple logic about the object of the experience, then a simple logical conclusion would be: 'Experience is false' ! ! !
Oh, now something must be wrong.
The point is that we cannot twice in a row WITH THE HELP OF simple logic conclude to a true result. Or: we cannot, after one simple logical conclusion, conclude to the truth about the object of the experience. The theoretical, thoughtful criterion of truth must be the paradoxical logical inference. Or: every time we conclude simple logically after a paradoxical logic, we must check the truth of the simple logic with paradoxical logic.
We cannot immediately from the 'experience of A' conclude the existence of or the truth 'in reality' of A. We must apparently conclude paradoxically in order to check the truth of the object of immediate perception.
We can conclude simple logically that 'perception is true' and 'perception is false' cannot both be true at the same time. By paradoxical logic, we have concluded by a single simple logical conclusion after the paradoxical conclusion that only perception exists. And that the object of immediate perception (A) cannot be true if we only use simple logic to check or verify it.
Furthermore, it seems that simple logical thinking or simple logic can be used at most once after the truth of a perception concluded from paradoxical logic. The object of perception is thinking. We found that perception exists. At first glance, it seems that thinking does not exist existentially, i.e. in the same way or on the same level as experience does, but is only the object of immediate perception (or of a possible 'experiencer').
Now we must find out whether immediate perception exists. From immediate perception of 'immediate perception exists' it is thought that 'immediate perception exists' is experienced immediately.
'Immediate perception exists' is experienced immediately.
But one cannot immediately experience 'immediate perception' itself. The object of experience cannot therefore be the experience itself. The object of immediate perception cannot be immediate perception itself, for only immediate perception exists, whether we use paradoxical logic alone or paradoxical logic once and then only a simple logical inference.
Thinking does not exist existentially, we have concluded, but only immediate perception. We have concluded that thinking is experienced, then the difference between thinking and perception must lie in the difference between immediate perception and the object of immediate perception. Or: immediate perception we normally call mere thinking. That must be wrong in one way, understood as an absolute separation between perception and thinking, for thinking does not exist separately from perception.
Then thinking must be immediate perception OF PREVIOUS immediate perceptions !!!
Our immediate perception is that thinking is immediate perceptions of 'previous immediate perceptions.' Or: thinking is immediate perception of 'repeated immediate perceptions.' From this it is immediately experienced:
that true thinking is paradoxical repetition of immediate perceptions in order to arrive at true thinking. But we must prove that. Let us now see.
Question: 'Is immediate perception true?'
Answer: from the immediate perception of 'immediate perception is true' it is thought, that 'immediate perception is true' is immediately experienced.
Conclusion: immediate perception exists.
(We cannot initially conclude anything about the object of immediate perception: 'immediate perception is true.') Now we ask, just to be on the safe side: 'Is immediate perception false?' and reaches the same conclusion that
immediate perception exists.
Ergo: Immediate perception exists AND
The object of immediate perception exists ONLY by checking with paradoxical logic, for 'perception is true' and 'perception is false' cannot both be true.
Ergo: only immediate perception exists and only immediate perception is therefore true.
By a constant paradoxical-logical return we can prove every time that only immediate perception is true and existential. Whether the thinking (the object of the immediate perception) is also true, we must check with paradoxical logic.
Paradoxical logic or thinking is:
From immediate perception of A it is concluded that A is experienced and ERGO: immediate perception exists. Whether A exists must be checked by paradoxical thinking about the experience of A.
Simple logic or thinking is:
From immediate perception of A it is concluded that A is experienced and then (erroneously!) that A also exists. Simple logic must control both A and not-A (immediate perception and immediate perception of 'immediate perception').
Paradoxical logic thinks thus:
From immediate perception of 'immediate perception of A', it is immediately experienced in the first instance that immediate perception of 'immediate perception of A' must have been (past) experienced immediately.
I must honestly admit that it is difficult, but I will try to help a little:
'immediate perception of A' = thinking, and
is experienced immediately in the first instance = concluded.
Thus, the original sentence: 'From the experience of thinking, it is concluded (or thought), that thinking is experienced', which has now become via several links: 'From the experience of thinking, it is concluded that thinking must have been experienced.'
Thinking is repeated perceptions in signs, symbols, concepts, etc. (Lorenzer is right on this aspect in his writings, especially in 'Zur Begründung einer materialistischen Sozialisationstheorie', which understandably not many have understood. I will try to return to this in the next volume, but will briefly say here that it is quite right for Lorenzer to see how learning historically takes place in 'interaction forms', at least a dialectical concept.)
And further we have 'reduced' thinking to perceptions of signs, symbols, concepts, words, etc. (actually a collective term for uniform immediate perceptions of A, e.g. perceptions of the biological, physical and psychological 'mother', which is given the designation or word 'mother' or 'mama', see also Lorenzer's descriptions here). Thinking is the repetition of these words (to make it easier, I will now collect 'signs', 'symbols', 'concepts', 'words', etc. under the general term 'words'). And it no longer necessarily refers to the original perceptions or immediate perceptions. Thinking has thus historically in the subject's life history become independent, which is why it is now possible to talk to each other without referring to previous concrete perceptions. One can thus communicate theoretically, in terms of thought in an infinity without actually experiencing each other (we all probably know what this can lead to in terms of waste of time and energy).
Let us return.
The question: Does 'immediate perception of A' exist?
Answer: From immediate perception of A, it is immediately experienced that A is immediately experienced.
Ergo: A exists, for we can conclude several times paradoxically logically, as previously shown and then we arrive by constant 'reductions' of everything to immediate perceptions as the only existentially existing thing (It should be remembered that we are constantly moving and have been moving on a transcendent plane, where we do not deal with physical-material reality.) Or: From immediate perception of not-A, it is immediately experienced that not-A is immediately experienced (has been experienced).
Ergo: not-A exists.
In this I actually introduced a premise about perception = the dialectical relationship between the 'experiencer' and 'the experienced' (in this case 'the experienced' = A) and concluded from the existence of 'perception' to the existence of both 'the experiencer' and 'the experienced', i.e. also A and non-A.
In other words:
If the questioner in 'reality' can immediately experience A or non-A, then A or non-A 'in reality' exists for the questioner. If the person G experiences it in 'reality', this is not existential proof for the person F. F must also experience it himself in order to be certain in 'reality'.
But this theory of mine developed proves that it must necessarily be as I have described, or rather, as paradoxical thinking has described. For the sake of theory, it is in this respect secondary whether I had experienced the meditative state, the spiritual light and God, for the theory says that it must be so. Let us now continue.
We now introduce, as before, 'the experiencer' and 'the experienced/object of the experience.'
Subject---Experience---Object
or
Witness---Experience---Thought
or
Experiencer---Experience---The experienced
The experience is identical with the sum of subject and object, or the sum of witness/experiencer and the experienced/thought. Said in academic language: Experience is constituted by the experiencer and the experienced. The experienced is at the beginning of the development and presentation of the theory the thinking, later thoughts, later words, later immediate perceptions, later images of physical-material objects (but we have not yet reached this physical, but I mention it to explain).
Thinking is thus repeated immediate perceptions 'put on concept' or 'geistige Übungen.' In Danish, complex thinking is also called 'brain gymnastics', even though it incorrectly refers to the physical plane.
True thinking is thus:
repetitions of immediate perceptions for the experiencer.
And in order to be able to experience it in 'reality' it must — as previously developed and proven — the experiencer 'puts' himself (i.e. his witness) in a meditative state, for only in such a state can the experiencer in practice/in existential reality experience and thus verify the existential truth of the true theory.
Simple logic is:
to conclude from the object of experience to the existence of this object in reality, if it can be verified in physical reality. Identification of the immediate perception with the object of experience or identification of the immediate perception with thinking (the example of the experience of the earth as flat).
Paradoxical logic is:
to reduce the object of experience to immediate perceptions and in this way verify the existence of the object of experience in the experience itself and not in thought.
True theory or thinking is:
paradoxical repetition of past immediate perceptions and their possible reduction to immediate perceptions through a meditative state, whereby the existential truth is also verified.
Can be described as:
From immediate perception of 'repetition of immediate perceptions' it is experienced immediately that 'repetition of immediate perceptions' must have been experienced immediately. From this follows the following:
TRUE THINKING IS PARADOXICAL THINKING.
TRUE EXPERIENCE IS MEDITATIVE EXPERIENCE.
Meditative perception of previous immediate perceptions (e.g. meditative state with closed eyes, where past perceptions are relived.
Meditative perception with open eyes.
1 presupposes 2. Ergo: paradoxical logical thinking presupposes meditative perceptions. Or:
TRUE THINKING PRESUMPTES MEDITATION