Metamorphoses of the Spirit: Incarnating the Christ

[Apanthropinist]

I am not sure how many more different ways I can say this... but let me attempt another - the metamorphic view does not exclude any authentic Eastern spiritual traditions or downgrade their importance in the whole progression. There is both temporal and 'spatial' progression of Spirit in that sense. Eastern spirituality will have an even bigger resurgence than it already has in the last century. So if that is your biggest quarrel with my essays, then you should rest assured I am not at all promoting that view. I will quote Hegel again and say the different aspects of flowering plant can also be analogized 'spatially' to Eastern, Persian and Western.

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

But Ashvin what Hegel is talking about here is not only correct, it can be successfully argued because the flower is something that any dissociated alter can observe in the waking state, without any effort, throughout the progression of its continuous extantly dissociated whole. It can be demonstrably evidenced as a valid and sound argument by the evidence of the physically observed unfolding of its organic unity, by anyone, without any additional steps, just a pair of eyes.

In other words, the validity of the claim is supported and proven, by the philosophic method, because the organic unity is extant to everyone as it appears across a dissociated boundary.

We can't argue the same for the immanent or inner experiences, not by using the same methods and principals that brought us to the door, ie philosophical analytical idealism. What I am not doing is trying to introduce a Kantian dualism because there is no discontinuity as such in analytic idealism, just that we end up with explanations trying to explain explanations of the inherent experience. It is not to say that we can't experience beyond the boundary just that we can't use language to describe what experience 'looks like/is like' beyond the boundary, language fails at that point as it has reached its limit and cannot embrace or encompass (and delineate which is the purpose and function of words) that which we experience.

Much like you simply cannot describe a psychedelic experience to me as you experienced it, as McKenna said "You can't English it." I don't doubt that you had the experience and I can also take a psychedelic and perhaps experience a similar thing but I also 'can't English it'.

This is my whole point about where philosophy ends because linguistic capacity and competence ends. We can talk about the other side of the boundary, and personally this is far more interesting to me than what got us there, but we can't argue for it or about it in a way that could ever be settled on in the way a valid and sound argument fully and finally settles a debate.

This is where I am mulling over Schopenhauer and what Kastrup has to say about him but really philosophy ends at the boundary of the dissociated alter because we can say nothing, after the boundary, which could be validated by its methods and principles. It doesn't mean it can't be talked about simply that we cannot say, to quote The Mandalorian, "This is the way." or as the Daoist's encouraged to understand, 'The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao'.

In other words, what is beyond the boundary can only be beheld not explained. There is a fundamental difference in method between observing, describing, testing and verifying what appear across a dissociated boundary as they appear to a dissociated alter, which is science and whose method has a clear philosophical fundament, and what is on the other side of that dissociated boundary. We can describe and explain the dissociations as they appear across a boundary by one method and then behold what is on the other. We can have experiences of the whole continuity but we can only 'English' the ones on the dissociative side of the boundary. 'M@L doesn't need to speak but dissociated alters do.' at least if they have any hope of even existing in and navigating their way around their dissociated 'state' otherwise there would just be an entropic goo, in other words complete association rather than dissociation. Language (English or otherwise) is part of dissociation by definition, 'I' and 'Not I' which although an illusion is also what it 'looks like' not to be an entropic goo. This, so, not that.

That's what Kastrup's analytical idealism implies to me and I'll respond when I'm not trying to get my head around Python. However if you'd also like to continue by email then drop me a PM and I'll send you my address. It may be less discontinuous than my coming back and forth here to make replies a few days after you post. At least with email there is a common thread.

[Soul_of_Shu]

But Ashvin what Hegel is talking about here is not only correct, it can be successfully argued because the flower is something that any dissociated alter can observe in the waking state, without any effort, throughout the progression of its continuous extantly dissociated whole. It can be demonstrably evidenced as a valid and sound argument by the evidence of the physically observed unfolding of its organic unity, by anyone, without any additional steps, just a pair of eyes.

In other words, the validity of the claim is supported and proven, by the philosophic method, because the organic unity is extant to everyone as it appears across a dissociated boundary.

We can't argue the same for the immanent or inner experiences, not by using the same methods and principals that brought us to the door, ie philosophical analytical idealism. What I am not doing is trying to introduce a Kantian dualism because there is no discontinuity as such in analytic idealism, just that we end up with explanations trying to explain explanations of the inherent experience. It is not to say that we can't experience beyond the boundary just that we can't use language to describe what experience 'looks like/is like' beyond the boundary, language fails at that point as it has reached its limit and cannot embrace or encompass (and delineate which is the purpose and function of words) that which we experience.

Much like you simply cannot describe a psychedelic experience to me as you experienced it, as McKenna said "You can't English it." I don't doubt that you had the experience and I can also take a psychedelic and perhaps experience a similar thing but I also 'can't English it'.

This is my whole point about where philosophy ends because linguistic capacity and competence ends. We can talk about the other side of the boundary, and personally this is far more interesting to me than what got us there, but we can't argue for it or about it in a way that could ever be settled on in the way a valid and sound argument fully and finally settles a debate.

This is where I am mulling over Schopenhauer and what Kastrup has to say about him but really philosophy ends at the boundary of the dissociated alter because we can say nothing, after the boundary, which could be validated by its methods and principles. It doesn't mean it can't be talked about simply that we cannot say, to quote The Mandalorian, "This is the way." or as the Daoist's encouraged to understand, 'The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao'.

In other words, what is beyond the boundary can only be beheld not explained. There is a fundamental difference in method between observing, describing, testing and verifying what appear across a dissociated boundary as they appear to a dissociated alter, which is science and whose method has a clear philosophical fundament, and what is on the other side of that dissociated boundary. We can describe and explain the dissociations as they appear across a boundary by one method and then behold what is on the other. We can have experiences of the whole continuity but we can only 'English' the ones on the dissociative side of the boundary. 'M@L doesn't need to speak but dissociated alters do.' at least if they have any hope of even existing in and navigating their way around their dissociated 'state' otherwise there would just be an entropic goo, in other words complete association rather than dissociation. Language (English or otherwise) is part of dissociation by definition, 'I' and 'Not I' which although an illusion is also what it 'looks like' not to be an entropic goo. This, so, not that.

All well-englished ... Indeed, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao", reads the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching. However, clearly this does not preclude the relative Tao that can be told, since it goes on for 80 more chapters doing just that. The dilemma is that what can be told can only be told in finite alter-mode, absent which, even if it is being 'told', there's no-one else to hear it. And so, given the inherent limitations and inadequacy of alter-mode languaging of it, in this word-bound forum it's all we have, and therefore it behooves us to be mindfully careful and precise in one's use of the language, so as to at least mitigate the misinterpretations, which I do feel that Ashvin, and others here, are endeavouring to address, however challenging that may be. And thus, understanding the problematic nature of the challenge, I feel we can cut each other some slack when eventually, alas inevitably, the words fall short. Meanwhile, I do my bit to transform philosophy into poetry ~ albeit if what Rumi says is true, that "Silence is the language of God, and all else is a poor translation", then it may amount to listening to a babbling brook ... nonetheless

Is it possible that mere words,
but ideas that bestir the spirit,
can transcend inherent limits,
and somehow come to intend
the numinous wonder of nature —
despite what is said, or not said,
about the ineffability of the Tao.
Could it also be that perchance,
upon some mystical occasions,
a unexpected exception is made,
and out of some wordless depths
of fertile silence and stillness,
a wormlike sentence is born,
and crawls across the page,
voraciously devouring the leaf,
whereupon it spins a lyrical cocoon,
emerging after a cryptic spell,
as if by divine grace or magic,
as an intricately transfigured
metamorphosed metaphor ...
an utterance taking wing,
that in a flight of imagining,
like Eros bewitched by Logos,
sings words to awaken by.

[AshvinP]

I am not sure how many more different ways I can say this... but let me attempt another - the metamorphic view does not exclude any authentic Eastern spiritual traditions or downgrade their importance in the whole progression. There is both temporal and 'spatial' progression of Spirit in that sense. Eastern spirituality will have an even bigger resurgence than it already has in the last century. So if that is your biggest quarrel with my essays, then you should rest assured I am not at all promoting that view. I will quote Hegel again and say the different aspects of flowering plant can also be analogized 'spatially' to Eastern, Persian and Western.

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

But Ashvin what Hegel is talking about here is not only correct, it can be successfully argued because the flower is something that any dissociated alter can observe in the waking state, without any effort, throughout the progression of its continuous extantly dissociated whole. It can be demonstrably evidenced as a valid and sound argument by the evidence of the physically observed unfolding of its organic unity, by anyone, without any additional steps, just a pair of eyes.

In other words, the validity of the claim is supported and proven, by the philosophic method, because the organic unity is extant to everyone as it appears across a dissociated boundary.

We can't argue the same for the immanent or inner experiences, not by using the same methods and principals that brought us to the door, ie philosophical analytical idealism. What I am not doing is trying to introduce a Kantian dualism because there is no discontinuity as such in analytic idealism, just that we end up with explanations trying to explain explanations of the inherent experience. It is not to say that we can't experience beyond the boundary just that we can't use language to describe what experience 'looks like/is like' beyond the boundary, language fails at that point as it has reached its limit and cannot embrace or encompass (and delineate which is the purpose and function of words) that which we experience.

Much like you simply cannot describe a psychedelic experience to me as you experienced it, as McKenna said "You can't English it." I don't doubt that you had the experience and I can also take a psychedelic and perhaps experience a similar thing but I also 'can't English it'.

This is my whole point about where philosophy ends because linguistic capacity and competence ends. We can talk about the other side of the boundary, and personally this is far more interesting to me than what got us there, but we can't argue for it or about it in a way that could ever be settled on in the way a valid and sound argument fully and finally settles a debate.

This is where I am mulling over Schopenhauer and what Kastrup has to say about him but really philosophy ends at the boundary of the dissociated alter because we can say nothing, after the boundary, which could be validated by its methods and principles. It doesn't mean it can't be talked about simply that we cannot say, to quote The Mandalorian, "This is the way." or as the Daoist's encouraged to understand, 'The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao'.

In other words, what is beyond the boundary can only be beheld not explained. There is a fundamental difference in method between observing, describing, testing and verifying what appear across a dissociated boundary as they appear to a dissociated alter, which is science and whose method has a clear philosophical fundament, and what is on the other side of that dissociated boundary. We can describe and explain the dissociations as they appear across a boundary by one method and then behold what is on the other. We can have experiences of the whole continuity but we can only 'English' the ones on the dissociative side of the boundary. 'M@L doesn't need to speak but dissociated alters do.' at least if they have any hope of even existing in and navigating their way around their dissociated 'state' otherwise there would just be an entropic goo, in other words complete association rather than dissociation. Language (English or otherwise) is part of dissociation by definition, 'I' and 'Not I' which although an illusion is also what it 'looks like' not to be an entropic goo. This, so, not that.

That's what Kastrup's analytical idealism implies to me and I'll respond when I'm not trying to get my head around Python. However if you'd also like to continue by email then drop me a PM and I'll send you my address. It may be less discontinuous than my coming back and forth here to make replies a few days after you post. At least with email there is a common thread.

I would rather keep the discussion here because I think everyone can really benefit, especially since your responses are well thought-out and clear.

I am going to quote my response to Eugene on another thread:

That is the fundamental argument I have been making here - 1) Philosophical-scientific (outer) divide from mental-spiritual (inner) is artificial holdover of Cartesian-Kantian divides and 2) Humanity's mode of perceiving-thinking (activity of Spirit) has been qualitatively evolving, as demonstrated by both analogy and empirical data. We are now at the beginning stages of what Gebser called "aperspectival", Barfield called "final participation", Teilhard de Chardin called "Omega Point", and others called various other names. This stage involves the Spirit (thinking activity) becoming an organ of our perception of ideal relations just as our other five senses perceive their respective content.

Of course, none of that will make sense if you simply reject the metamorphic progression of Spirit, hence the essays. If you have philosophical-scientific reasons to reject the metamorphic argument, then I am all eyes to read them.

You are actually correct to say that we cannot fundamentally investigate beyond the "boundary" of the alter. The question is, what is that boundary? Does it remain static or does it expand? And are we, as alters, a microcosm of the MAL as a whole, or simply tiny fragments that make up the MAL when pieced together? I would submit the answers to these questions are rather obvious when we dispel the Cartesian-Kantian habits of mind and take the metamorphic view seriously. For the latter, as I said to Eugene, I am definitely willing to consider any arguments against it (which is not to say I won't consider arguments for Cartesian-Kantian divides, but I doubt anyone here wants to argue on their behalf).

Cleric also discussed much of this in his Deep M@L essay, which does not start with any philosophical assumptions except idealism. You stopped considering it for some reason, but I am still not sure why. I guess because you are ruling it out as "improper philosophical technique"? In which case, I would again claim it is the only proper technique to approach this specific issue in the 21st century, given the metamorphoses of the Spirit. I understand very well how it comes off to anyone who is still undecided on whether such a process occurred, hence the essays and the need for us to focus on the evidence of the process to see whether it holds up.

[Eugene I]

To approach Intuitive consciousness in fully conscious way we need to suppress all forms of soul life (thinking, feeling, willing) that we know from our intercourse with the sensory spectrum. If man without spiritual training would do this he would simply fall into complete unconsciousness or at most to the comatose state that you describe. Actually we find ourselves in this state every night in deep dreamless sleep but the soul experiences don't register as sensory-like perceptions and related concepts (thus they are not remembered), simply because these don't exist in that state. If we were to suddenly become conscious within this state we would experience an overwhelming terror. The reason is that we would find our "I"-being as dismembered and spread out into the Cosmos. We don't really appreciate how much in fact our unitary physical body plays out to support our coherent ego-sense. It's like our spirit being, for many years, is used to live in a very familiar house, where everything is known and predictable - we know where the bathroom, the kitchen is, we know where the salt is kept. As soon as the support of the body is lost, in the truest sense we find ourselves as spread out into the Cosmos, completely dismembered and unable to differentiate ourselves from the spiritual processes and beings there. This is a terrifying experience unless approached gradually and with the proper preparation. The only way we can counterbalance this fear is through Love. We need to completely consciously unite ourselves with the impulse of Love. Not in order to dissolve merrily in the whole but to find ourselves as an individual spiritual being in this completely spiritual state. In the incarnate state the support of the bodily spectrum gives us the kernel around which the "I" can find its stable reflection but in the spiritual world there are no such means. We find our reflection there everywhere and in every being and there are no means to differentiate what's really us. Only when we unite ourselves with the Spring of Love we are able to differentiate what we are. In this state we can gain self-consciousness only through the flow of Love that goes through us. We can't define ourselves by our possessions, body, thoughts, desires, etc. because all these are missing now. All that we thought is us and defines us is now spread out and belongs to the beings of the Cosmos. That's why we can't have self-consciousness in this world as long as we identify with the things that are granted to us in the incarnate state. The abstract idea that "it's all one" or "I'm not the body and the ego" don't help much. It's rarely realized that we support these ideas again with the help of the physical and etheric body. The fact that we have de-identified with our body and ego doesn't at all mean that we have found the spiritual substitute that will give us consciousness in the spiritual world. The only way we can gain self-consciousness as spiritual beings is through what is constantly being created anew through our activity. In the higher world we are not what we identify with but what we create out of ourselves. If in the bodily state the body is the well-formed and unitary lake which helps us to recognize ourselves, then in the spiritual world we recognize ourselves only through what constantly flows through us as fresh water and contributes to the whole Cosmos. This is the true impulse of Love. This is the basis of the new emerging consciousness and if these things are not understood, future man will fall more and more into decadence. Instead of rising in consciousness, becoming more lucid, he'll succumb more and more into the degenerating physical world and his consciousness will dim down together with it. When we discover within our innermost core the inexhaustible source of the water of Life, which is true Love, that only gives without worrying about how, when and what it will receive, we also discover the living and dynamic Spiritual Life which gives us our cognitive self-consciousness. We practically create our consciousness through the outflow of Love. The more we Love, the more our Love is replenished.

...But when we connect, in the described way, with the impulse of Love, then the comatose state is illuminated by our cognitive Love force. Then we find ourselves in the proper spiritual world, where we are spirit among spirits.

Great, Cleric, we are finding common ground. That's exactly how it works and why these meditation practices help. From that vegetable state you can go back to conscious activity and basically start fresh on the high-level intuitive consciousness (called "Sattva" in Vedic tradition)and from there see the reality directly as it is without distortions of the ego-mind, and the natural way such Sattvic level of consciousness function is Love and clarity, seeing the world in its primordial beauty without the distorting veil of the ego-mind. This is where spiritual science and non-dual path converge.

When feeling is divested of the feeler and the felt, it shines as love; when perceiving is divested of the perceiver and the perceived, it shines as beauty.
To be present in and as that is seen as to participate in life, not as a fragment amongst other fragments, but as Love, intimately one with all seeming objects and selves.
Rupert Spira

Such are the things revealed through our deeper penetration into the facts of reality. If at this point it's still said: "I don't care about these facts, why should everyone play by the same rules? The beauty of life is that there are infinite possibilities!" it's like saying "I don't care how the human body works. Why should I breath only air and eat nutritious food? What kind of dictatorship is that?!" Everyone is forced to admit that there are certain laws that the physical body must comply to in order to be healthy and able to unfold in the greatest freedom, yet it's outright dismissed that such a thing may be possible for our soul and spiritual organism. And the reason is simple - people simply don't see their soul and spirit. They use them all the time but they don't recognize then, they don't distinguish them. They are either projected onto and confused with the body or it's imagined that our spiritual nature is completely independent and free from its spiritual environment. It's the task of spiritual investigation to elucidate these soul and spiritual rules (which are subject to the evolving Cosmic context, they are not some immutable eternal laws, just as the rules of the physical body are specific to our particular biology). The task is to allow humans make informed decisions about how to conduct their lives such that the greatest physical, soul and spiritual prosperity - individual and collective - can be attained. If the reports of spiritual investigation are rejected, it's not because they have been thought through thoroughly or because the path for their verification was explored but simply because they clash with desires. It's simply preferred that the world should be constituted otherwise, that higher cognition must be wrong in some way. This pattern of behavior is well known from ordinary life, most commonly in adolescents. They don't reject the advices of adults because they have considered them deeply and thought them through but because they clash with their youthful and energetic desires to live their lives as they want. It's much better to think that adults are simply from a past generation, that they don't understand that the world has changed and so on. As any parent knows, nothing will prevent the child to go the way it wants - and this is how it should be! Yet the advice of the parent must be there - to act as health restoring counterbalance, even if it comes into play much later when the young person was already burnt in the fires of passion. The role of spiritual investigation and the Christ impulse as a whole is of a similar nature. It won't and it must not prevent souls to test the laws of the physical, soul and spiritual world on themselves, but the counterbalance must be there. Things like these must be uttered, even if the one speaking them forth is accused of being dyed-in-the-wool spiritual dictator.

I agree, of course we are constrained by the form of our physical and astral bodies and it is important to understand how they function and condition our cognition and perception in order to master them, and this is where the spiritual science helps.

On another note, whether we talk about natural or spiritual sciences, in both there might be an "overly-optimistic" attitude that the reality can be exhaustibly understood and encompassed by cognition and reduced to ideas about reality. On one hand, such "optimistic science" closes the Kantian gap - the "thing in itself" can in principle know itself completely by cognition, no gap is left. On another hand, such approach trashes any sense of mystery and sacredness. However, no matter how accurate our cognitive models and ideas about reality are, there is always some ineffable aspect to reality that cognition can never fully grasp, even though it can reflect on it. And this is because, as I said many times, Consciousness is NOT an idea, and therefore any idea can never encompass it exhaustively. But now, the objection may be that we are back to the Kantian divide, but it's not the case. Because of its ability of conscious experiencing in addition to the ability of cognition, Consciousness can experience itself directly exactly as it is, and such experience is what closes the Kantian gap. But because such experience is ineffable and can not be exhaustively encompassed by cognition, it leaves the Consciousness with a sense of awe and sacredness of ineffable mystery about itself. Consciousness experiences itself directly as it is, but can never fully comprehend it.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I'd suggest that, as with the poems one conceives, there always seems to be corrigendums, or someway it might have been better expressed, no matter how many times I revise them, and it seldom is the case that a poem feels beyond revision. So I suspect this is true of all these essays, however eloquent, insightful and meaningful they may be, as they can only ever be true enough under the circumstances. Beyond that, the question of whether or not someone else may feel any affinity or resonance with it, so as to be able to fine-tune into the 'signal', and not utterly misconstrue it such that the message is lost in translation, is pretty much beyond one's control.

[Apanthropinist]

You are actually correct to say that we cannot fundamentally investigate beyond the "boundary" of the alter. The question is, what is that boundary?

For me personally, being a relative newcomer to analytical idealism, this is the question and you've hit that nail on the head by asking it. From my perspective it is the first question that must be addressed and fleshed out before we can properly dive into anything else, everything hinges upon and revolves around it as it is one of the foundations of analytical idealism along with the prime of consciousness. There's little sense, to my mind, of getting ahead of myself (though the temptation is significant) unless and until I can orient myself towards an approach to answering this question. I do have an idea of how I may be able to approach this and I'm still contemplating it.

Does it remain static or does it expand?

Most certainly, inexorably and inevitably the latter I would say, death would be one expansion but there are I believe others and my answer would link to your first question in order to demonstrate why.

And are we, as alters, a microcosm of the MAL as a whole, or simply tiny fragments that make up the MAL when pieced together?

The former, it's implied in the whirlpool analogy, imperfect as that analogy may be. Again, your first question applies here and has a bearing. The latter option would be more pan-psychic-esque and would introduce a decomposition/composition/combination problem that isn't there in analytical idealism.

I would submit the answers to these questions are rather obvious when we dispel the Cartesian-Kantian habits of mind and take the metamorphic view seriously.

I appreciate that this is your position and for you it resolves the questions you asked. My focus is on that boundary because thresholds, for me, offer some of the deepest insights. The same as in mythology which is littered with guardians of the threshold or in anthropology with rites of passage/initiation. Transitional states/boundaries are liminal places where we experience the tension of two states/domains in a way we cannot otherwise experience. Then I can turn my gaze to the even more interesting domain beyond the boundary, once I have established the route and the topography of the territory to get there.

For the latter, as I said to Eugene, I am definitely willing to consider any arguments against it (which is not to say I won't consider arguments for Cartesian-Kantian divides, but I doubt anyone here wants to argue on their behalf).

How do you make your argument, in the sense you and I would both understand, yet at the same time acknowledge "You are actually correct to say that we cannot fundamentally investigate beyond the "boundary" of the alter."

I guess because you are ruling it out as "improper philosophical technique"? In which case, I would again claim it is the only proper technique to approach this specific issue in the 21st century, given the metamorphoses of the Spirit. I understand very well how it comes off to anyone who is still undecided on whether such a process occurred, hence the essays and the need for us to focus on the evidence of the process to see whether it holds up.

No, not because of an 'improper' philosophical technique but because there is no possibility of philosophical technique for the reasons I stated previously relating to language and logic and as you appear to acknowledge when you say "we cannot fundamentally investigate beyond the "boundary" of the alter. So whatever technique it could not be philosophical nor could it be scientific (falsifiable) without which you can only have anecdotal.

Which is fine, completely fine and I have no quarrel about that, just because we can't talk about a domain not amenable to language doesn't mean I don't want to explore it. Heck I drank Ayahuasca about 600 times in Peru over a 5 year period of living there. It's all I did for 5 years, working with Ayahuasca and the clients who came to the jungle to drink it. It's not like I am unfamiliar with what it may 'look like' across the boundary or perhaps in the liminal zone of its threshold.

[Lou Gold]

The role of natural science is not to say what is right and wrong but to reveal facts. It's a fact that that plant lives when watered with water and dies when watered with gasoline. The same holds true for spiritual science. It reveals facts attained through the higher spiritual forces. These facts can be understood through thinking even without developing the higher skills ourselves. Right and wrong is up to us.

I get your general drift that we should not dismiss or undervalue facts. However, your example really misses the reality that a great deal of the truly interesting stuff lies in the nuanced "in between" areas. How, for example, would you account for the reality that lies are often more curative and life sustaining than are facts?

It's this broad brush generalizing that makes "spiritual science" seem like proselytizing when compared against a range of approaches, each with strengths and weaknesses. Often, it's not as simple as pouring gasoline on a plant. Surely, facts work sometimes and sometimes they don't.

[AshvinP]

You are actually correct to say that we cannot fundamentally investigate beyond the "boundary" of the alter. The question is, what is that boundary?

For me personally, being a relative newcomer to analytical idealism, this is the question and you've hit that nail on the head by asking it. From my perspective it is the first question that must be addressed and fleshed out before we can properly dive into anything else, everything hinges upon and revolves around it as it is one of the foundations of analytical idealism along with the prime of consciousness. There's little sense, to my mind, of getting ahead of myself (though the temptation is significant) unless and until I can orient myself towards an approach to answering this question. I do have an idea of how I may be able to approach this and I'm still contemplating it.

I completely agree, the only difference being I believe others have found a satisfying answer which I am trying to also discover from within myself, as it can only remain abstract until then.

Does it remain static or does it expand?

Most certainly, inexorably and inevitably the latter I would say, death would be one expansion but there are I believe others and my answer would link to your first question in order to demonstrate why.

And are we, as alters, a microcosm of the MAL as a whole, or simply tiny fragments that make up the MAL when pieced together?

The former, it's implied in the whirlpool analogy, imperfect as that analogy may be. Again, your first question applies here and has a bearing. The latter option would be more pan-psychic-esque and would introduce a decomposition/composition/combination problem that isn't there in analytical idealism.

I would submit the answers to these questions are rather obvious when we dispel the Cartesian-Kantian habits of mind and take the metamorphic view seriously.

I appreciate that this is your position and for you it resolves the questions you asked. My focus is on that boundary because thresholds, for me, offer some of the deepest insights. The same as in mythology which is littered with guardians of the threshold or in anthropology with rites of passage/initiation. Transitional states/boundaries are liminal places where we experience the tension of two states/domains in a way we cannot otherwise experience. Then I can turn my gaze to the even more interesting domain beyond the boundary, once I have established the route and the topography of the territory to get there.

How do you make your argument, in the sense you and I would both understand, yet at the same time acknowledge "You are actually correct to say that we cannot fundamentally investigate beyond the "boundary" of the alter."

Completely agreed again. As to that last question, I am arguing that the metamorphic progression of Spirit has provided us the tools to expand that threshold to encompass increasingly more ideal relations in very fine detail. It is not much different from the common cultural view of science, except that the investigation must start from within because, as you also agreed, we are microcosm of the macrocosm and therefore our "boundary", in principle, is the same boundary as the macrocosm. With a slight shift in philosophical assumptions, a whole vista of potentially explorable territory is opened up to our Spiritual Imagination.

For the latter, as I said to Eugene, I am definitely willing to consider any arguments against it (which is not to say I won't consider arguments for Cartesian-Kantian divides, but I doubt anyone here wants to argue on their behalf).

I guess because you are ruling it out as "improper philosophical technique"? In which case, I would again claim it is the only proper technique to approach this specific issue in the 21st century, given the metamorphoses of the Spirit. I understand very well how it comes off to anyone who is still undecided on whether such a process occurred, hence the essays and the need for us to focus on the evidence of the process to see whether it holds up.

No, not because of an 'improper' philosophical technique but because there is no possibility of philosophical technique for the reasons I stated previously relating to language and logic and as you appear to acknowledge when you say "we cannot fundamentally investigate beyond the "boundary" of the alter. So whatever technique it could not be philosophical nor could it be scientific (falsifiable) without which you can only have anecdotal.

Which is fine, completely fine and I have no quarrel about that, just because we can't talk about a domain not amenable to language doesn't mean I don't want to explore it. Heck I drank Ayahuasca about 600 times in Peru over a 5 year period of living there. It's all I did for 5 years, working with Ayahuasca and the clients who came to the jungle to drink it. It's not like I am unfamiliar with what it may 'look like' across the boundary or perhaps in the liminal zone of its threshold.

I will leave this for Cleric to answer directly, as I am sure he will with stunning detail, but basically my answer is the same as the one above. The "boundary" of philosophical-scientific inquiry is not at all what modernity assumes it to be.

[ScottRoberts]

On another note, whether we talk about natural or spiritual sciences, in both there might be an "overly-optimistic" attitude that the reality can be exhaustibly understood and encompassed by cognition and reduced to ideas about reality. On one hand, such "optimistic science" closes the Kantian gap - the "thing in itself" can in principle know itself completely by cognition, no gap is left. On another hand, such approach trashes any sense of mystery and sacredness. However, no matter how accurate our cognitive models and ideas about reality are, there is always some ineffable aspect to reality that cognition can never fully grasp, even though it can reflect on it.

I think (Cleric might correct me) this view does not appreciate what higher cognition does. It does not "model" or "describe" or "reflect on". Rather it just is what it is. We have this in our "lower" cognition when we do mathematics. A mathematical thought does not refer beyond itself, as contrasted with, say, the thought "cows have four legs" which does. The fact that higher cognition of, say, plant growth provides us with knowledge of plants is because one is having the same thought that the plant has in growing, rather than a thought that refers to plant growth.

And this is because, as I said many times, Consciousness is NOT an idea, and therefore any idea can never encompass it exhaustively.

Let me once again drag out the Merrell-Wolff quote:

At the deepest level of discernible thought there is a thinking that flows of itself. In its purity it employs none of the concepts that could be captured in definable words. It is fluidic rather than granular. It never isolates a definitive divided part, but everlastingly interblends them all. Every thought includes the whole of Eternity, and yet there are distinguishable thoughts. The unbroken Eternal flows before the mind, yet is endlessly colored anew with unlimited possibility. There is no labor in this thought. It simply is. It is unrelated to all desiring, all images, and all symbols.

and say it makes more sense to me to say that Consciousness IS these ideas, and hence is encompassed by them.

[Eugene I]

and say it makes more sense to me to say that Consciousness IS these ideas, and hence is encompassed by them.

No way. Every idea is experienced. If experiencing is also an idea, how one idea can experience another? In such case one idea becomes "the experiencer" and the other becomes "the experienced", and this is duality. What happens in reality is that every idea/phenomenon/quale is consciously experienced without separation of the idea/quale from its experiencing, it's all one "thing" with just two aspects - the aspect of the idea as a form and the aspect of its experiencing. But the experiencing itself is not an idea, it is what make any idea real, known. Similarly, existence/being is not an idea, it is what allows the ideas to be. Of course we recognize those aspects only by reflecting them with ideas through thinking, but to think that the idea of experiencing is the same as experiencing itself is a serious cognitive mistake.

These are what John Vervaeke calls "adverbial qualia" - the qualia (beingness, experiencing, such-ness/here-ness, now-ness) that are prerequisites for the "adjectival qualia" (ideas and all other forms) to exist. Ignoring the adverbial qualia and reducing all reality to only adjectival qualia is a blind spot and spiritual and epistemological fallacy of the Western stream of philosophy/spirituality and the biggest discovery of the Eastern one. And that is why the Western stream is incomplete and can only find completeness by integrating with this spiritual discovery of the Eastern stream. Of course there were glimpses to these aspects in the west (Meister Eckhart, William James) and it was only recently when they became slowly recognized in the Western philosophy after the Chalmers insight into the irreducible nature of conscious experience. Notice that neither Chalmers nor Kastrup reduce consciousness to ideas. Chalmers always talks about conscious experience, similarly BK says "the whole world is all conscious experiences" (not conscious ideas). BK talks about ideations only when he explains how the MAL manifests the world of forms by its ideations which we alters experience as sense perceptions of the world across the dissociative boundary.

This is apparently quite difficult to grasp, no wonder Western philosophers and mystics (Merrell-Wolff included) missed it, and Eastern adepts had to spend years on meditation cushions to get it, but if missed, it leads to all sorts of cognitive distortions. This is exactly the Dennet's error when he reduces consciousness only to the content of it (perceptions, ideas, feelings) and is not even aware of the experiential nature of them, and then he dismisses that content as "illusory" because indeed all that content in theory could be explained and reduced as epiphenomena of mater (so he converts the "hard problem" to the "easy" one by ignoring the experiential aspect of consciousness). Amazingly, many idealists make the same mistake.

The bottom line is: the nature of reality is existential-experiential and irreducible to ideas only, but it is always expressed as ideal content inseparable from the beingness and experiencing of it.