Why are we all so sensitive to judgment?
            An innocuous question, no doubt.
            Ah, the ten thousand ghostly elephants in the room. But I have a feeling this is the real elephant. Certainly, it is the elephant in the room in terms of philosophy. While both the great texts and the moderns may casually reference science as if it were an understood process, up to the present writer no one seems to have confronted the experiential issue of objectivity head on. And, of course, the experiential issue of objectivity is not only the real core of science and 'scientific method', it is also a radically new experience, in terms of the long view of history, and a definitive condition of 'the modern', culturally. But since no one hitherto has confronted the issue directly - in terms of science, philosophy or culture - no one has been able to make the connection between the experience of objectivity and this radically new cultural attitude toward judgment.
            The elephant in the room, of course, is almost invariably a creature of addiction, the overpowering presence that assumes a ghostly invisibility for the participants. The participants, of course, are the members of the dysfunctional system, who generally constitute anyone around the core addict. But in this case there is no necessity for the core addict, because we are all the addict. It used to be that only the intellectual elite suffered from this peculiar addiction to 'scientific objectivity'. But the spread of technology and the wonders of television and the internet have spread the disease worldwide. The peasant in his hovel in Afghanistan finds some base for watching world soccer matches, and catches this dangerous virus from the cultural matrix.
            He realizes he has a disease. And he realizes he caught it 'from the west'. But what he doesn't understand is that the 'disease' is not necessarily all that different from his own cultural base. So suddenly he starts to manifest the disease from his own cultural base, as if it were the antidote to the disease from the west.

            The seductive power of 'objectivity' is its intimacy as an experience of value or validity. Never before in history has the experience of value or validity been so generally available to the 'average person'.
            The experience of objectivity, itself, remains a fairly exclusive experience. But a technological society offers a matrix in which a taste of the experience is available to all. And the taste is sufficient to convince the individual that he or she now has a consciousness that functions in the pure realm of 'objective values'.
            The experience of objectivity is an experience of validity. But the validity only inheres in the moment of the experience and with respect to the 'object' of that experience. One's consciousness has not been 'converted' to objectivity.
            So we have the genuine experience of validity; and we have the addictive presumption that this validity now extends throughout one's consciousness, throughout one's perceptions and acts. And I would suggest that not only both compulsive atheism and contemporary fundamentalism are the products of this specific addictive disease; I would suggest that the obviously abusive use of this presumption of righteousness is one of the primary keys to interpersonal abuse at all levels and under all circumstances in the culture. It has become one of the key tools in the kit of arbitrary power.
            Hence, our fear of judgment - because we are all chronic victims of this peculiar contemporary abuse.

            Objectivity is a mystical experience. Nothing in science or philosophy can explain it. To experience validity in one's self is to experience the core of the self. The fact that the focus of the experience of validity is 'external' is neither here nor there. The validity is personal and intimate. That is, the validity itself, apart from whatever one is looking at or focused on, only appertains to one's self. The facts of thermodynamics or stellar behavior are not of themselves 'validity'. The validity is an experience that one has, and the validity itself is one's own.
            And to experience this pure validity is to experience one's self at the core. But the self at its core is a mystery. We only have 'the self' because we can somehow stand outside our 'self' and witness it as if it were an objective phenomenon. Now, how can we do that? Philosophy as logic tells us that it is impossible. But here we are, doing it.
            And if you were to turn around in the moment of objectivity, and stop paying attention to what you were looking at initially, and watch what is happening at 'the self' while this experience is taking place, you would notice that this experience of 'validity' is also an intimate explanation of the nature of the self.

            Traditionally, there are two kinds of mystical experience, the devotional and the gnostic. In the traditional literature, the devotional is relatively so common and the gnostic relatively so rare, that the gnostic is often hidden in the mystical clouds of the devotional. But it constitutes a distinct experience.
            The classical Indian model for the devotional is perhaps the purest. Out of the range of manifest names and forms for God, in the Sanskrit and other traditions of India, one discovers one's ishta deva, one's chosen form for God. For a true ishta deva, it is not necessarily clear precisely who does the choosing. One devotes one's self to the god to the point of merging. At that moment, one looks back and sees one's self both as merged in the god and separate from the god, and from that vantage one finally understands the nature of the self. But, in that 'exchange', the self dissolves in the god, and one is lost in the nature of the god, a momentary sense of limitless knowing lodged in an unknowing self. Hence, the consequent practice remains a constant devotional surrender into the immediacy of the moment, the momentary knowingness of the god revealed to the constantly unknowing self.
            The gnostic tradition is essentially the prophetic.
            Value is as inexplicable as the self. Value cannot enter from the outside or the external. That is, sense data cannot convey value. Sense data atomizes the external. Even the cogency on which 'objects' are founded in 'perception' cannot be ascribed to the external, and therefore much less the value behind the cogency. But are we to assume that we 'create' value, since the experience of value is precisely what convinces us that external objects are in fact external?
            Aristotle formalized the problem as teleology or the final cause, although he treated the problem largely in linear or abstract terms. That is, he did not consider it as specifically psychological. But, obviously, teleology is inherent in the perception of values, which is to say, in perception itself.
            When we can 'turn about in the deepest seat of consciousness' in the moment of the experience of objectivity, we will notice that we have 'solved' the problem of validity as well as the problem of the self, for, in fact, they are the same problem. The formal appearance of value and the ability to separate consciousness from consciousness in order to witness the self are intimately related. In a more extended exposition, we can discuss the structure and structural relationships in detail, although basic elements remain mysteries.
            But what concerns us here is the spontaneity of value. Value itself is finally 'causeless'. Time itself, in terms of our structures for its perception, emerges from the spontaneous experience of value. Therefore, it is as if value is prior to time: that is, it is prophetic.

            What we experience in the moment of objectivity is the key to this understanding. In other words, science, as the gnostic experience, is the equivalent of the prophetic in both the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions.
            We enter into value in a way that exposes the very sources of our experiential structures.
            But only those who have actually utilized the experience of objectivity to gain this 'gnosis' are on a path that leads to anything resembling 'objective consciousness'. And, in that frame, judgment itself - that is, one's own judgment - is understood as conditional.

            But the shallow gnosis - the 'taste' of validity inherent in technological culture - is radically addictive. The addiction has become universal. And the addiction itself is inherently abusive.