{"id":1233,"date":"2026-01-09T03:38:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T03:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/?p=1233"},"modified":"2026-10-03T18:33:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:33:53","slug":"noetic-insight-and-challenges-to-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/?p=1233","title":{"rendered":"Noetic Insight and Challenges to Language"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucca, Italy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Unless you are at home in the metaphor\u2026unless you have had your proper education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values: you don\u2019t know the metaphor in its strength and its weakness.<\/em> \u2013 Robert Frost<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is difficult to get the news from poems \/ yet men die miserably every day for lack \/ of what is found there. \u2013<\/em> William Carlos Williams<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know more than we can say.<\/em> \u2013 Michael Polanyi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should be aware that the supposed clash between rigorous science language and everyday metaphoric description may be less real than we may be led to believe by the priests of a particular craft or discipline. All things are forever open to interpretation and shifting meaning. \u2013<\/em> Marcus G. Raskin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

______________________________________________________________________<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If learners are to possess noetic literacy of rational and transrational cognitive slills, schools must offer pathways to direct, unmediated learning experiences that integrate polarized subject and object perspectives (Kirk J. Schneider, \u201cThe Polarized Mind,\u201d 2013). Noetic,<\/em> from the Greek, is used here to refer to forms of implicit knowing through direct experience. Noetic consciousness is rich in archetypal images carried into awareness by hunches, intuitions, visions, epiphanies, revelations, performances, and dreams. Whether we are engaging art or simply involved in our every life, learning and coming to know via noetic modalities \u2018feels\u2019 more like an unknowing<\/em> and unlearning<\/em>. Noetic awareness comes as if by ‘letting go’ of conventional structures and accepted definitions of orthodox knowledge, and a ‘letting come’ of emergent, implicit knowledge. Noetic knowledge is an apprehension of deep meaning of things that, while fraught with mystery and profundity, is indisputably true for the experiencer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because noetic literacy involves informal and states of non-dual consciousness that are ostensibly ineffable, educators encounter significant challenges to both their teaching and scholarship when using a \u201clinear, argumentative, and critical style\u201d (K.E. Lorena, Subjective & Aesthetic Interface, An Inquiry into Transformed Subjectivities,” Academia.edu<\/strong><\/a>, 2013).<\/strong> The challenge for scholars comes from the need to disclose the fluid, both\/and<\/em> nature of noetic consciousness when using academic prose and its exclusionary binary either\/or<\/em> logic. Noetic consciousness constitutes what Ken Wilber (\u201cSex, Ecology, and Spirituality\u201d 1995) refers to as \u201cvision logic,\u201d a form of cognition that \u201ccan hold in mind contradictions, it can unify opposites, it is dialectical and non-linear, and it weaves together what otherwise appears to be incompatible notions.\u201d Noetic understanding does not result from a ready-made science but from events that are \u2018strange\u2019 or anomalous, defying description by conventional discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A poetic language linking logos to eros and concept to image and capable of addressing the omnijective (i.e., hybrid objective and subjective) qualities of noetic understanding must ultimately be employed by artist-intellectuals when writing about cognitive diversity, epistemological pluralism, and ineffable phenomena of the psyche. Poetry is the true voice of thought and the \u2018topology of being\u2019 that directs us toward the whereabouts of Being (Heidegger, \u201cThe Poet As Thinker\u201d). Poetry is \u201cthe language thinking uses to say what it thinks.\u201d That is simply to say, authentic thinking is poetic. Poetic speech – whether in poetry or prose – is the vehicle for conveying a transrational and translinguistic meaning, rather than the any particular meaning itself. Poet and teacher Archibold MacLeish stated the matter precisely, \u201cA poem mustn\u2019t mean but be.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How might noetic learners embrace their perspicacious insights and artistic creations? Many schools, including fine arts academies and performing arts conservatories, engage education exclusively with the academic language of art criticism in hopes of understanding art. The unfortunate consequence is that authentic tacit experience of artistic discovery is missing from the learner’s experience and is instead subjected to critical judgement and evaluation, precisely in the form of an observer\u2019s discursive language. Schools encourage learners to master the m\u00e9tier, familiarize themselves with the cannon of great works, and develop a flawless virtuosity. It is the case, however, that learners are rarely expected to experiment, unlearn and surrender to what emerges in the learning matrix that leads to an ineffable wonder that is neither mediated by academic language nor justified by external verification. For schools to turn toward embracing noetic literacy, educators must alter the trajectory of education and expose its epistemic deformations rendered upon learners by failure to recognize noetic learning and knowledge as authentic. Breakthrough moments of noetic awareness provide learners freedom \u2013 freedom from failure phobia, freedom from a need to succeed, and cognitive freedom from exclusionary ideas about learning that conceal rather than discloses one\u2019s essential identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be understood that I do not present within my human completion project noetic principles as definitive rules or formulae. This is not possible, as the mythopoetic nature of noesis<\/em> defies separation through language-use into discrete constituent elements (i.e., ontic<\/em> knowledge) and cannot be fully disclosed as self-evident by logical exposition (i.e., apodictic<\/em>). Paradoxically, this essay, at least in very small part, is an ontic and discursive language-construct yearning to explore noetic, supra-rational knowing and the nature of consciousness transformation beyond self-actualization. Academic language is significantly different from and less accurate when describing the phenomenology of noetic consciousness. Here lies the issue of translatability. What do I mean by this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scholarly works are generated, contested, and disseminated within discursive disciplines and their technologically tacit knowledge. The academy\u2019s language of knowing originates and is negotiated within dominant academic models, which today means science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The expected language of academic knowing is considered \u201cdisinterested, objective, and value free\u201d and characteristic of number-based sciences. The position of \u2018semantic positivism\u2019 (Philip Wheelright, \u201cMetaphor and Reality,\u201d 1968) has it that all viable research inquiries must proceed in a scientific manner, using logico-scientific language. On the other hand, the natural \u2018language\u2019 of noesis<\/em> is \u2018poetry\u2019, and it addresses an omnijective<\/em> (i.e., hybridity of objectivity and subjectivity) reality that embraces supra-rational, numinous, spiritual, and ethical elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge to classroom teachers lies with how they are to guide learners to intimately embrace deeply personal and implicit intuitions that are not easily described or shared. When engaging art, we intuit that the tacit insights are conveyed through the objects created in the process of aesthetic response to the world. As such, art is akin to an ontological \u2018icon\u2019 (Margaret H. Freeman, \u201cThe Poem as Icon\u201d) or \u201caffecting presence\u2019 (R.P. Armstrong, \u201cThe Affecting Presence\u201d and \u201cThe Powers of Presence\u201d) imbued with the living consciousness of its makers and history of performers that invokes within participants an uncanny perspicacious certainty. That is why art is highly valued and often feared. In either case, the world recognizes art’s essential role as the link between noetic cognition and intrinsic identity of the learner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Children at play or art making demonstrate noetic knowledge naturally in the forms of an \u2018analogical correspondence\u201d where bodily movement, song, brush stroke, laughter, or swinging form an indivisible ecology of learning that \u201cunites the child\u2019s forms of understanding with forms of expression, and in so doing have an integrative effect on the child\u2019s personality as a whole\u201d (Bjorkvold, \u201cThe Muse Within,\u201d p.27). Poetic association and analogy are soon replaced by a prevailing language regarded as the definitive medium of conscious expression. We look to the words of renowned thinkers in ways that can be contested and defended; however, there is no such assurance of artistic appreciation. We appreciate art based on a combination of linguistic sanction (e.g., disciplines of history and religion). More importantly, we appreciate art due to direct aesthetic experience that discloses something of our intrinsic Being, an outcome not possible by non-poetic language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This essay considers whether logical discourse and procedures related to natural science prevalent in the Academy constitute the one and only valid language capable of effectively describing meaning-making structures and events of the human lifeworld. Are there not credible languages suited to immaterial spirit or the psychoid unconscious (C.G. Jung, The Red Book)? When addressing non-discursive, intuitive understandings, scholars have professional access to and training with only professional discursive language. What might be lost, missed, or otherwise modified when we exclusively utilize logico-scientific language for lived experience and phenomena ostensibly mythopoetic in nature? It is often the case that in the process of lectures, group activities, improvisations, or hands-on art exploration, learners have a direct intersensory apprehension of say, sound, or coldness, or color, or motion forming what G.E. More refers to as \u2018dispositional knowledge.\u2019 This noetic comprehension is stored in memory as an image. What is important here is knowing how that image is structured. If a noetic learner bears witness to their implicit insight in a classroom given to using conventional language based on a subject-object duality, it must necessarily prove feckless to disclose noetic realities. Consequently, the learner undergoes an \u2018epistemic harm\u2019 (Miranda Fricker). The image is thus shaped by crosscurrents of academic and mytho-poetic languages, as well as the assumptions, values, and rules embedded within their related inquiries. The dominant discourse of a classroom ultimately shapes the comprehension of the learner\u2019s sensation and image of their noetic intuition. Whereas the learner\u2019s noetic moment carries feelings of cognitive authority and truth, the official classroom rhetoric negates its credibility by reducing it to failure and unjustly marginalizes the learner.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary, the language of noesis<\/em> speaks of and to the direct perspicacious learning, as well as to the emotional effect of dreams, visions, revelations, intuitions, and altered states of consciousness. Noetic mythopoetic language is a strange wisdom of nothing less than everything – specters of high strangeness, deep obfuscation, argot of soul. In my conceptual framework on noetic learning experiences, the linking of ontic with poetic languages and concepts with images are intended to cooperate in mutual service of overcoming subject-object divisions. The language of academic apodictic knowing can touch the soul of mind; but it is the poetry of noesis<\/em> that touches the soul of soul. It is certainly the case that my present explorations of noesis only begins to address the issue of scholarship that synthesizes mythopoetic language (see my “Even God,” Academia.edu<\/strong><\/a>, 2025) and <\/em>academic parlance, something akin to Schoenberg\u2019s sprechstimme<\/em>, a voice between logos<\/em> and poesis<\/em>, image and concept, speech and song.concept, speech and song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD Lucca, Italy Unless you are at home in the metaphor\u2026unless you have had your proper education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values: you don\u2019t know the metaphor in its strength and its weakness. \u2013 Robert Frost It is difficult to … Continue reading Noetic Insight and Challenges to Language<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterrphd.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}