N3.1 The Goal in Architecture — Defining the profession's disjunction and a path forward in 5 PARTS.
G¡a N.3.1 Introduction — Structure
Structure
The first part of this Introduction defines the structure. The second part features definitions of some selected terms that are used in G¡a.
The structure is derived from an essential component of the investigation. G¡a is ordered in PARTS to move in on architecture’s essential purpose and practice as the organization of the overall programme. This is formed around Babuji Maharaj’s description in the chapter ‘The Goal’ in his book Reality at Dawn.[1] Five statements aspire to organize the PARTs of the dissertation. The quotes frame each PART so that G¡a is clipped to architecture’s essential purpose with its structure. Practice for personal spiritual approach is the aligning principle. Architecture is in support of human wellbeing and our goal.
PART.I. The Goal.
The aims and objects of life conceived in terms of worldly ends are almost meaningless.
PART.I describes how The Goal in Architecture based on the supposition of the goal of life. We look for it, and so we might find it. We suppose that the divine or cosmic or ultimate energy is there in each of us. Our individual ‘light’ is luminous within our being but beyond sight. It can be ‘seen’ if we ‘look’ for it with our feeling. This is can be done in meditation, but we live with it always. The aim to understand this, and to practice that is spirituality. Spirituality has a goal. Increased understanding in this is to evolve. The means is practice.
The supposition that architectural practice is Verknüpft with spirituality gives architecture and this project its movement and its life. The supposition of a goal that poses spirituality as practice does not need the as yet unknown to be known, only that there is a path on which to be able to get that knowledge. PART.I determines this goal of life, and the other four parts follow based on the capacity of humanity and the relationship of humanity to the world in dwelling. The components of this project interweave with this.
PART.II. The conflict in humanity through engaging a discussion between J. Krishnamurthi and Dr. David Bohm.
We forget that pains and miseries are only the symptoms of a disease but the disease lies elsewhere. ...
Questioning thought is thematic in PART.II. Thought is as directly causal to dwelling in conflict as it is in removing or ending conflict. The mind is our powerful tool, and knowing how to use it is essential. Generally, few of us learn how to use it without conflict. Life’s expressed form is developed from within through aspiration and thought, which are associated with all else in humanity and humanity’s role in the environment. PART.II turns the discussion of architecture and practice toward the Goal’s original relationship of our striving and our aspiration, and to connect architecture with the movement toward personal evolution and human evolution.
PART.III Technology is addressed directly.
The goal of life means nothing but the point we have finally to arrive at. It is in other words, the reminiscence of our homeland or the primeval state of our present solid existence, which we have finally to return to.
The approach to conflict within us and to its ending within anyone and among us and around us is advanced through a close reading of Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology, which opens the project to the issues of technology through phenomenology. In PART. III, PART.II is corroborated and harmonized with Heidegger’s terms, linking the need for an end to contemporary technology as architecture’s current means, with the inner attributes of human being and its goal and evolution. It aligns discussion of our current concept of technology in architectural practice with the essence of technology to evince the supposition in terms that correspond with spiritual practice.
PART.IV The relationship of the practice of spirituality to the practice of architecture is developed and critically examined.
It is only the idea of destination which we keep alive in our minds and for that we practice devotion only as duty. Duty for duty’s sake is without doubt nishkam karma (selfless action) and to realize our goal of life is our bounden duty. ...
Spirituality as rajayoga is brought near architecture as practice. PART.IV reorientates what happened in PART.II and PART.III in terms of rajayoga as practice and connecting it to the body of traditional knowledge that includes vāstu, which is the related architectural practice.
PART.IV.2. PART.II and PART.III repeat the same subject matter of conflict and technology and consciousness in three ways to express evolutionary change. What is in PART.II and PART.III the ‘ending of time’ and the ‘jäh’ that heralds ‘the turning’ respectively, is expressed as ‘self–eliminative’ property of thought, which rajayoga includes in practice, and it fills out purpose in the supposition of the Verknüpfung of architecture and spirituality in terms of the Goal. The role of architecture vs. the current profession of architectural practice gets differentiated in light of technology.
PART.IV develops the integral relationship of every individual’s evolution to the locus of architecture in our current stage, developing spirituality in terms that move adjacent current architectural practice and vice versa. For example, work of Christian Norberg-Schulz in genius loci and on Louis I. Kahn’s work present us with the symptomatic use of phenomenology in architecture. The Mānasāra is used to link traditional values, spirituality and Machine Ages technological value with the disjunction in practice.
PART.V Conclusion. Current profession and professional practice as a symptomatology demonstrated as disjunct with architecture’s superordinate program.
Now I come to the point what our real goal of life should be. It is generally admitted that the goal must be the highest possible limit of human approach. ...
The final point of approach is where every kind of force, power activity or even stimulus disappears and a man enters a state of complete negation, Nothingness or Zero.
The conclusion is based in a symptomatology of architectural professional practice in three stages as PART.V.1.3. Symptomatology, PART.V.2. Discrimination and PART.V.3.Verknüpfung. The supposition of the Verknüpfung of architecture and spirituality is verified through the Goal in architecture by correlation of spirituality as spiritual practice (rajayoga), through the medium of technology and the form of professional architectural practice through its symptomatology.
The goal of this project to unconceal support for the goal of life in architecture as its superordinate program, is carried along and delivered by understanding of the mutual claiming of one another of spirituality and architecture.
[1] Ram Chandra (of Shajahanpur), Reality at Dawn. Shri Ram Chandra Mission: 1954