Bernardo's latest essay

[Soul_of_Shu]

I think most contemporary people would think that some of the things Steiner wrote were racist. He indicts himself with his own words. This does not mean that in other respects he had a lot of wisdom, but his wisdom was not so great that he could rise above the prejudices of his day (much like Nietzsche).

The metaphysical relevance of this issue, and why it does not warrant being "cancelled" as you propose, is that of whether Steiner's racism can be extricated from the rest of his philosophy, or is irretrievably baked into his hierarchical view of spiritual development and evolution. Much of post-structuralist philosophy can be seen as a reaction against hierarchical and totalizing kinds of philosophizing.

The point about Steiner's views being racist has been discussed before here, and/or in the old MS forum, and clearly the point has had little or no impact on those who still hold his larger body of work in some significant esteem, despite any anachronisms. Likewise, anyone who can't get past Steiner's views on the origins of the races, for whom it overshadows or taints all the other ideas, rendering them moot, probably aren't going to be otherwise convinced. Nonetheless, whoever feels inclined to go round and round in this circle yet again, seemingly changing no-one's mind on the issue, bent on tit-for-tat provocations, then just keep in mind that if the discussion goes in a direction which I feel disrespects/abuses the main focus and intention of this forum, it will be dealt with accordingly.

[DandelionSoul]

although he says that it must be "in a sense" something other than nothing, that "in a sense" is an important qualifier: it's his admission that it also is nothing. Indeed, he goes so far as to say that M@L is nothing but its experiences.

I find it helpful to think in terms of his usual metaphor: the lake, or the ocean. All forms are merely ripples on the lake, arranged in coherent patterns (shaped by archetypes). Then it is easier to grasp, because a lake is not nothing. I've also heard BK refer to the old 'fish don't know that they're in water' idea.

Right. But it's a metaphor precisely because the "medium of mind" is simply not an actual medium -- even the language of "medium" is metaphorical here. It's not a substantive substrate. Kastrup is pretty clear about that:

You may like to hear Bernardo's view expressed at the 2hr 13 minute mark in his latest interview:

Thank you for sharing this. I mostly agree with his view in Baloney, which is more nuanced in the ways I outlined, but I do not agree with this, for the reasons I stated before. Just to recap them:

1. I do not see a meaningful difference between "no-thing" and "nothing." The difference is said to lie in the fact that M@L-At-Rest has potential, which has some kind of real existence, but
2. "Potential" seems to be an empty signifier here, which is not a good look for a load-bearing concept in an argument.

I just haven't seen an argument establishing how M@L-At-Rest is actually distinguishable from M@L-nonexistent. I haven't seen a solid argument against the identity of indiscernibles, so if M@LAR is indiscernible from M@LNE, my conclusion is that they are the same.

[DandelionSoul]

All that to say, I think all the "potential" and "no-thing" talk are just ways to obscure the fundamental paradox intrinsic to positing a Ground of all relational content that itself is neither relational nor content. I would accept a straightforward admission of the paradox like "Its being is nonbeing" or something like that -- at that point, it's posited as non-rational and simply not amenable to the sort of rational investigation Kastrup purports to be undertaking, such that all reason can do is gesture at its own horizon, beyond which is the Whereof We Cannot Speak. I have no problem with a straightforwardly mystical heart of rational discourse, but what I've gotten so far seem to be no more than rhetorical tricks employed to mask the fact that it is paradoxical, non-rational, mystical.

[AshvinP]

I think most contemporary people would think that some of the things Steiner wrote were racist. He indicts himself with his own words. This does not mean that in other respects he had a lot of wisdom, but his wisdom was not so great that he could rise above the prejudices of his day (much like Nietzsche).

The metaphysical relevance of this issue, and why it does not warrant being "cancelled" as you propose, is that of whether Steiner's racism can be extricated from the rest of his philosophy, or is irretrievably baked into his hierarchical view of spiritual development and evolution. Much of post-structuralist philosophy can be seen as a reaction against hierarchical and totalizing kinds of philosophizing.

You are not making any argument for how such "racism" is relevant to his philosophical position as laid out in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity - speaking of which, let's look again at Chapter 14:

A part of a whole, in its characteristics and functions, is determined by the whole. An ethnic group is a whole, and everyone belonging to it bears the characteristic traits that are determined by the nature of the group. How the single person is constituted and how he acts is determined by the character of the group. Through this the physiognomy and behavior of the individual person takes on something of a generic quality. If we ask for the reason why this or that about a person is this or that way, then we are directed away form the individual person and toward his genus. The genus explains to us why something about him appears in the form in which we observe it.

The human being frees himself, however, from these generic qualities. For man's generic qualities, when rightly experienced by him, are not something which restrict his freedom, and should also not be made to do so by artificial means. The human being develops traits and functions for himself whose determining factors can only be sought within man himself. His generic qualities serve him thereby only as a medium through which to express his particular being. He uses the characteristic traits given by nature as a basis and gives to what is generic a form in accordance with his own being. Now we would seek in vain the reason for an action of this being within the laws of the genus. We have to do with an individual who can be explained only through himself. If a person has won his way through to this detachment from the generic, and if, even then, we still want to explain everything about him by the characteristics of the genus, then we have no organ for what is individual.

It is impossible to understand a person entirely, if one bases one's judgment upon a generic concept. One persists the most in judging according to the genus where it is a matter of gender. A man sees in a woman, a woman in a man, almost always too much of the general characteristics of the opposite sex and too little of what is individual. In practical life this does less harm to men than to women...

Whoever judges people according to generic characteristics gets only as far, in fact, as the boundary line beyond which people start to become beings whose activity is based upon free self-determination. What lies below this boundary can, of course, be the object of scientific study. The characteristic traits of races, ancestral lines, peoples, and sexes are the content of particular sciences. Only people who wanted to live solely as examples of genus could make themselves coincide with the general image which arises out of the observations of such sciences. All these sciences, however, cannot penetrate through to the particular content of the individual. Where the realm of freedom (of thinking and doing) begins, the determining of the individual by generic laws ends. The conceptual content which man, through his thinking, must bring into connection with perception in order to take hold of full reality (see page 77ff.), this no one can establish once and for all and leave behind for mankind in a finished form...

Only to the extent that a person has made himself free of generic qualities in the way indicated does he come into consideration as a free spirit within a human community. No man is entirely genus; none is all individuality. But every person gradually frees a greater or lesser sphere of his being, both from the generic qualities of animal life and from the commandments, ruling him, of human authorities.

In that part of his being in which he cannot attain such inner freedom, however, man is incorporated into the organism of nature and of the spirit. He lives in this respect as he sees other live, or as they command. Only that part of his actions which springs from his intuitions has an ethical value in the true sense. And whatever he has about him in the way of moral instincts, inherited from social instincts, becomes something ethical through his taking it up into his intuitions. All moral activity of mankind springs from individual ethical intuitions and from their being taken up into human communities. One can also say that the moral life of mankind is the sum total of the creations of the moral imagination of free human individuals. These are the findings of monism.

And that's my last post on this non-issue.

[Cleric K]

And suddenly the thread exploded in all directions away from the central question European fear, colonialism, racism, missing historical records ... Anything but the event horizon of Thinking.

I'm sorry if I have offended someone with the word 'savage'. I accept proposals for politically correct term that refers to a human being at instinctive stage of development.

I would be glad to agree with you, but I studied and practiced Western traditions, and found only one clear reference to formless (its knowing-2 aspect), which is
...
But if you can give me more quotes referring to the formless aspects of Conscious activity, I will be glad to agree with you.
So I would rather put aside any superiority claims ...

What I've wrote in the previous post doesn't depend on documental support. We're speaking about the very spiritual core of the human being. All that is required is living Experience of Thinking (knowing-2) - of the Conscious Spiritual Activity. I'll be very sad if by any chance you 'agree' just because you are presented with more quotes. This simply completely misses the point of everything we're doing here.

I don't have wide knowledge of philosophy and spiritual heritage of the West so I can't be of much use with quotes. But even if I had, I still think there wouldn't be much of what you seek as 'formlessness'. The reason is that what was 'formless' for the pre-Christ mystic, now, as the event horizon shifts, becomes cognitively experiential reality - it's what we call Spiritual World in the most general sense. It's my personal opinion that the word 'formless' is way too abstract. I'm not sure if there are two persons in this forum who conceive the same thing when they hear it. Maybe that's why it is liked, I don't know. It's like a wildcard for inexplicable conscious experience. Anything that we can't make sense of, we throw in the bucket labeled 'formless'. As long as we can think about things comfortably, we call them forms. As we shift our focus closer and closer to our Thinking core, we begin to experience 'eyestrain'. Just as it becomes painful to focus our eyes on an object that is too close, so it is in the spiritual sense. We often hear about spiritual myopia. This is readily understandable - people only comprehend their limited perimeter. But there's also spiritual hyperopia. Our inability to experience the Thinking process is precisely about that. We approach the event horizon of thinking and it becomes painful. At this point we say 'now things are becoming formless! This is the edge of Consciousness from whence everything sprouts.' Yet through proper development we can shift the event horizon and these intimate experiences become completely clear. Now what was previously formless turns out to be dynamic, living Spiritual process, full of meaning. Just as any ordinary thought carries an idea (even if it is confused idea), so all Spiritual processes are expressions of living ideas, ideas expressed through be-ing.

As said, the horizon never disappears. It only moves further and further towards the Fountainhead. The Kabbalists expressed this in their Wisdom. They could speak of the ten attributes (Sephiroth) of God, yet they called the primordial limitless - Ain Soph Aur. So this knowledge is not missing at all. But what has opened up for cognitive evolution between Ain Soph Aur and man, is what concerns the Initiates after the times of Golgotha. Because therein lie the keys for the redemption of humanity.

[SanteriSatama]

All that to say, I think all the "potential" and "no-thing" talk are just ways to obscure the fundamental paradox intrinsic to positing a Ground of all relational content that itself is neither relational nor content. I would accept a straightforward admission of the paradox like "Its being is nonbeing" or something like that -- at that point, it's posited as non-rational and simply not amenable to the sort of rational investigation Kastrup purports to be undertaking, such that all reason can do is gesture at its own horizon, beyond which is the Whereof We Cannot Speak. I have no problem with a straightforwardly mystical heart of rational discourse, but what I've gotten so far seem to be no more than rhetorical tricks employed to mask the fact that it is paradoxical, non-rational, mystical.

"Potential" (Greek: dynamis) and it's being as nonbeing go directly back to Sophist by Plato, and its discussion of Great Kinds: the interrelations of polarities same-different, moving-still and being-nonbeing. The treatise is as rational as Plato gets - and he could be also very mythical and mystical - a structural analysis of the interdependendent relations of a trinity of foundational polarities.

Heidegger spent loads of time and attention reading, thinking and contextualizing that culmination of Plato's inquiry into Forms. Heidegger's conclusion of his inquiry can be summarized: Aristotle made a mess of it. To make sense of European philosophy, Plato's original is very much worth reading.

The term 'dynamis' translates as potential, power (both Macht and Kraft), force, etc., and by extension also as Will and the en- in Aristotle's energeia. Which physicalism made an awful mess of.

To define 'rational' (English 'relational' is a direct translation of the Latin word) as something in the confines of just static system building by bivalent logic is daft. Plato's treatise moves on two levels: ontology and general linguistics, which are practically inseparable in in philosohical discourse. In that sense structuralism and post-structuralism are just repetition of Plato's relational-rational methodology in Sophist, with more resolution. In ontological conclusion 'dynamis' spells process philosophy. Plato's own fatal mistake was purely linguistic and grammatological: he states that nouns are primary to verbs. Which comparative linguistics falsifies. Aristotle's linguistic turn made Plato's grammatological mistake into ontology of 'substance metaphysics', as Aristotle is to blame for both of those words. And with bivalent "Aristotelean logic", the dynamics of European obsession of bivalent and static system building, and constantly trying to force those over process philosophical ontology, became the main current of European philosophy, as well as Spirit.

[SanteriSatama]

I'm sorry if I have offended someone with the word 'savage'. I accept proposals for politically correct term that refers to a human being at instinctive stage of development.

No offence taken. My criticism is ontological, does the referant of the referring exist in any empirical sense? And if so, how does the referant exist exactly?

I suggested IMHO very politically correct technical term 'degenerate imbecille'. An alzheimer case in an old peoples home - or in oval office - could serve as an example of an empirical referant.

Or perhaps "infant", if you want to try to build a model of child development psychology?

All good. Without this bend in the stream of discussion I would have remained unaware of the old discussion and your mention of Voodoo example, and your normal and common (for Europeans) but all the more deeply mistaken view of our inability to "let in thieves and burglars" in our temples of bodily awareness, where we have the power to transform forms and meanings, and necessity of giving power to fear. There's no such necessity especially in the Spirit World - or elsewhere for that matter.

Power to self-heal without strict separation of internal and external, me and other - is that not your quest also? Thank you for the opportunity to confirm from an empirical experience, yes we can.

[Eugene I]

What I've wrote in the previous post doesn't depend on documental support. We're speaking about the very spiritual core of the human being. All that is required is living Experience of Thinking (knowing-2) - of the Conscious Spiritual Activity. I'll be very sad if by any chance you 'agree' just because you are presented with more quotes. This simply completely misses the point of everything we're doing here.

You might be right, Cleric, but from my extensive reading the Western spiritual and philosophical literature and years of being in the Church I've hardly ever heard of any mention of knowing the formless aspects (except for that Eckhart's quote may be), while in the Eastern traditions the whole practice and teaching is specifically and explicitly targeted towards the knowing of the formless aspects. But overall I agree that as the "horizon" of individual conscious activities expand, they "should" expand into both the depths, relations and hierarchies of the ideal content, as well as into the realms of the formless aspects, and it should not matter much if it happens to someone with Eastern or Western background.

On another note, IMO, I do not think this process of horizon expansion is asymptotic. This is because the fractal of all possible ideas/forms/conscious states is unlimited, and so no matter how much we expand the horizon, we will never be any "asymptotically" closer to to the fullness of all possible states. It is like counting to google does not get us any closer to infinity compared to counting to 100, because infinity is equally infinitely far from google as it is far from 100.

[SanteriSatama]

This is because the fractal of all possible ideas/forms/conscious states is unlimited, and so no matter how much we expand the horizon, we will never be any "asymptotically" closer to to the fullness of all possible states. It is like counting to google does not get us any closer to infinity compared to counting to 100, because infinity is equally infinitely far from google as it is far from 100.

Yes. "Unlimited", "unbound", "open-ended" are much more coherent and correct concept-expressions for the transfinite than Cantor's "completed infinity".

[AshvinP]

I'm sorry if I have offended someone with the word 'savage'. I accept proposals for politically correct term that refers to a human being at instinctive stage of development.

I propose Jung and Gebser term of "archaic man".