2 6 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 2 dicating, as do philosophical hermeneutics, is that human understanding is projective. That is, there are a series of concepts, which we hold in our mind prior to experiencing reality, which we project or throw onto what is perceived. These a priori concepts, of which we are usually unconscious, form something like a filter from which reality is perceived. As with any other filter, the image that is produced is not a true representation of what is being portrayed, but a distorted version of it (the same as with the filters that can be applied today on the social network Instagram). Hawkins (2007, 830) explains that this phenomenon occurs because “the mind translates phenomena in 1/10000th of a second; thus, the mind is like the playback monitor of a tape recorder. When that interface of mind between phenomena and experiencing dissolves, the difference is quite dramatic.” This key piece of information, that there is a fundamental and dramatic difference between what is real and what we perceive as such, provides us with essential information for understanding at least two aspects of human existence: that of communication and the meaning and scope of spiritual endeavor. In what follows we will briefly refer to these issues. It is not hard to realize that human communication is not an easy task. Games such as telephone, where a message sent by the first player usually gets distorted because the following players understands and communicates something different, clearly show this. The thematization of human understanding as interpretative and projective allow us to comprehend this matter with astounding clarity. In his Being and Time, Heidegger (2008, 205) states: the phenomenon of communication must be understood in a sense which is ontologically broad. ‘Communication’ in which one makes assertions – giving information, for instance – is a special case of that communication, which is grasped in principle existentially. In this more general kind of communication, the Articulation of Being with one another understandingly is constituted. Through it a costate-of-mind [note: Ger. Mitbefindlichkeit] gets ‘shared’, and so does the understanding of Being-with. Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another… In discourse Being-with becomes ‘explicitly’ shared; that is to say, it is already, but it is unshared as something that has not been taken hold of and appropriated. Though this reference gives way to many issues of major philosophical interest, what it tells us about the matter in question is more or less the following: when we communicate with another human being, we are not operating under an “output-input logic” where the sender issues certain information employing linguistic references that are known by the recipient, so that the latter receives them in an unpolluted manner. If that were the case, then most moral, political, and even family problems would be solved in the blink of an eye. Human communication, unfortunately, is a much more complex process through which we try to share our way of being-in-the-world with another entity. By this we mean that, as we already explained in section one, every human being (Ger. Dasein) possesses a series of concepts that allows him to elucidate what is presented to his senses, so that those same concepts set the limits from which said understanding operates. That is, with the concepts that we already possess in our mind (and that have been acquired and transmitted by humanity throughout history) we interpret the world and its phenomena. Communication, then, is an attempt to transmit to another human being the result of the interaction between what is presented to my senses and the horizon of meaning from which I appropriate said world. It is an effort of making common a personal and subjective experience with another being that has a different personal and subjective experience (and that is why it is so difficult!). Though the hermeneutical thematization of human understanding and communication does not necessarily imply epistemological relativism (truth and falsehood are relative to an individual or culture) [5], it does bring into light the drama of social life. To adequately relate to another human being means opening myself to another set of concepts and horizons from which the world is appropriated. Unfortunately, this attitude is not the norm. Since there is ignorance concerning the manner in which human understanding operates, what usually happens when people communicate is that two horizons of meaning (manners of relating to the world) collide with one another violently, that is, seeking to establish their own validity through the obliteration of the other. Gadamer (2013, 317), an intellectual disciple of Heidegger, recognizes this problem and affirms that “understanding is always the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves…The hermeneutic task consists not in covering up this tension by attempting a naïve assimilation of the two but in consciously bringing it out…To bring about this fusion in a regulated way is the task of what we called historically effected consciousness.” That is, he recognizes that understanding one another inevitably means tension between two different worldviews and claims that the task of hermeneutics is not the elimination of said tension, but the provision of manners through which it can emerge in a regulated manner. Hawkins, again aligned with existential hermeneutics, recognizes that intermundane phenomena can be appropriated
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