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QUESTION: On the entry page of this website is a door that I had to click on. The doorknob is located on the left. That would imply that I was leaving a room, not entering a room. Was this a mistake on your part or was it intentional?
ANSWER: The doorknob was drawn on the left because you are in the room known as "your world." In order to truly enter the room known as "philosophy," you must leave your world. If you do not do this, everything that you read and discover will merely get absorbed into your present mode of understanding, and you won't really see anything that lies outside your present mode of understanding.
QUESTION: How can I leave my world?
ANSWER: If you see your world, then you are no longer trapped in your world. Then you will be able to fully enter into the room known as "philosophy." But this is not easy, for here we have the paradox of the eye needing to see itself.
QUESTION: What is the background of your approach to philosophy?
ANSWER: Before Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason appeared, philosophers were propounding theories of reality. After Kant, they asked questions, not about reality, but about how we know reality. The mind had been looking outward, but now it turned to gaze upon itself. Philosophers went from being metaphysicians to being epistemologists.
Kant brings philosophy to the "critical level." After Kant, philosophy really becomes "meta-philosophy." This same moment was reached in Indian philosophy in the 7th Century AD. Nagarjuna was the Kant of Indian philosophy. But whereas Kant's criticism, and ensuing skepticism about being able to answer ultimate questions, led Kant to resort to religious faith, Nagarjuna realized that the limits of knowledge can bring the mind to a new level of knowing, to the mystical.
According to Kant, all philosophical positions are riddled with antinomy, with insuperable contradictions. (Existentialism is really the implications of Kant's epistemology for human existence.) The upshot of this is that we do not help you find a workable philosophy of life. Instead we help you see the world view that you hold, and how the negative dimension of your life is a manifestation of that world view. The result is light, Self-illumination.
QUESTION: I know quite a few people who have read, and even understood philosophy. Some are quite well-versed on Kant and have even read Nagarjuna. But their everyday life is just as paltry as the average human life. How come reading philosophy has not brought them spiritual illumination and liberation?
ANSWER: The fault is not with philosophy. The problem is that human reason does not operate only on a conceptual level. Our emotions, desires, conflicts and anxieties are reason operating on a symbolic level of awareness. We must clarify that level if we are to be free. Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, sought to understand the ontology of our everyday interests and desires. He called his approach, "existential psychoanalysis."
QUESTION: Is what you do existential psychoanalysis?
ANSWER: No. Existential psychoanalysis is brilliant, but it is laden with Sartre's own existential phenomenological way of seeing.
QUESTION:
What, then, is your approach called?
ANSWER:
Ontoanalysis. We are involved with uncovering your hidden ontology. Ontology comes from the root, "onto," meaning "to be," or "to be real." Ontoanalysis is, therefore, involved with having you see how you are attempting to be real, in all that you do -- in your job, your relationships, your food preferences, in everything about you. Ontoanalysis always starts with analyzing the everyday, with your own experience.
QUESTION: How do you know when you have really seen something about yourself rather than it merely being an interpretation?
ANSWER: When you really see something, you will know it. Bells and whistles go off. Insight has a force, a power. It is unmistakable. There are insights that are so powerful that they can knock you on your ass. A mere interpretation, on the other hand, leaves your emotions intact and is therefore worthless.
QUESTION: Is ontoanalysis like shamanism, zen, or yoga?
ANSWER: As a way of knowing, ontoanalysis shares elements with all mystical traditions. But ontoanalysis does not require esoteric practices. It only requires penetrating insight into your everyday experience. It requires thinking, but not the abstract, inauthentic thinking taught at the universities. It requires existential thinking -- thinking into the heart of your everyday interests, anxieties, desires and conflicts. The Buddhists call this type of existential thinking, "thinking with one's gut."
QUESTION: I notice that you offer a workshop on "laugh therapy." Does ontoanalysis have anything to do with laugh therapy?
ANSWER: Yes. Laugh therapy is a dimension of ontoanalysis. The illumination of your everyday life, the story of how you have been attempting to be, leads to wonder, awe, amazement and liberating cosmic laughter. The purpose is not to make you laugh, but to help you attain insights about yourself, the sign of which is laughter, just as a halo is a sign of divine blessedness.
QUESTION: You're critical of psychotherapy. Is there any virtues to traditional psychotherapy?
ANSWER: Yes there have been some brilliant and perceptive writers on the subject of psychotherapy, including Freud, and his followers -- C.G. Jung, Alfred Adler, Otto Rank and others. C.G. Jung's analytical psychology has been a particularly fertile area of psychological investigation, and has it has spawned some outstanding investigators and writers on the subject of depth psychology, including Erich Neuman, Maria Louis Van Franz, and James Hillman, to name just a few. The existentialist-phenomenological school of thought has produced Jean Paul Sartre, R.D. Laing, Rollo May, Menard Boss, and Binswanger. And, of course, William James is well worth reading. There are many other authors on the subject of depth psychology worth reading. Furthermore, there have certainly have been, and presently exist, many more outstanding psychotherapists who have never been famous. All the same, our criticisms of psychotherapy still holds.
If you have questions that have not been answered here, please feel free to send Mark an e-mail with your question.
E-mail: mdillof@aol.com
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