Is Rovelli 'Dragooning the Human Spirit'?

[Eugene I]

I agree. And myself I'm enjoying working on all of those frontiers - penetrating into the mystical realms as a spiritual practitioner, researching the outer phenomenal worlds as a scientist, and creating novel constellations of ideal forms that further re-shape and develop the phenomenal forms in my engineering and musical practices.

[AshvinP]

I agree. And myself I'm enjoying working on all of those frontiers - penetrating into the mystical realms as a spiritual practitioner, researching the outer phenomenal worlds as a scientist, and creating novel constellations of ideal forms that further re-shape and develop the phenomenal forms in my engineering and musical practices.

I should clarify what I mean by the "outer phenomenal approach". That is also an approach to spiritual and supersensible knowledge. So when I study and practice the law, no matter how much effort I put into it, I am not penetrating into the spiritual realm. Same for the scientist. It is only when we see those fields as dim reflections of the supersensible realms and begin to experience those higher realms via imaginative, inspired, and intuitive thinking that we are truly engaged in the "outer phenomenal approach". Our intellectual reasoning activity can bring us to the threshold of that approach if it is directed at the content of the spiritual realm rather than mere phenomenal appearances of the physical realm. (and, as always, I am not talking about two divided realms, but using the best language I am aware of to highlight the distinctions within the One essentially unified realm).

[Eugene I]

Agreed too, but here is where we need to be really careful and sober, because it is too easy to fool ourselves and confuse the creations of our own imaginations or personal subconscious activity with the content of higher spiritual realms. Years ago I used to read a lot of writings of Christian mystics describing their visions of Heavenly realms and communications with angelic creatures etc, many of those experiences being really bizarre. I'm not in a position to judge the validity of such spiritual perceptions, but myself I'm always very cautious and critical about any perceptions or spiritual experiences that I encounter in my spiritual practice. As opposed to natural sciences, in the spiritual realm we do not have such verification criteria as experimental measurements and math, and we are left with more "fuzzy" and vague truth/verification criteria. And where it comes to considering/accepting similar spiritual perceptions and experiences of other people, it becomes even more unreliable. This is the real problem of spiritual science in our human form.

[AshvinP]

Agreed too, but here is where we need to be really careful and sober, because it is too easy to fool ourselves and confuse the creations of our own imaginations or personal subconscious activity with the content of higher spiritual realms. Years ago I used to read a lot of writings of Christian mystics describing their visions of Heavenly realms and communications with angelic creatures etc, many of those experiences being really bizarre. I'm not in a position to judge the validity of such spiritual perceptions, but myself I'm always very cautious and critical about any perceptions or spiritual experiences that I encounter in my spiritual practice. As opposed to natural sciences, in the spiritual realm we do not have such verification criteria as experimental measurements and math, and we are left with more "fuzzy" and vague truth/verification criteria. And where it comes to considering/accepting similar spiritual perceptions and experiences of other people, it becomes even more unreliable. This is the real problem of spiritual science in our human form.

Yes, we must be careful and sober about both spiritual science and "physical science". For the latter, we have come to believe in the modern age that we are observing phenomenon and testing their relations by way of 'measuring' devices and then comparing the measurements to derive the principles at work. The measuring devices are actually our own abstractions - we give meaning to what is a "pound" and what is a "gram" etc. so that they can be usefully compared to one another. I am not really well-versed in science so my examples will be pretty poor, but I think you get what I mean. So what we are really testing the phenomenal relations against is our own Reason. We create the abstractions of measurement and see whether the relations between the abstractions can be harmonized in a way that makes them useful to applied problems. And that is extremely useful to such applications - without the abstract reasoning we would never have the technology we have now. But it has never been telling us anything about essential relations. In the modern age, we came to believe that falsehood because the measurement abstractions were confused for the Reality itself, and it is a very difficult habit of mind to break. BK points this out often as well.

Why are the abstractions not the Reality itself? After all, they are based on 'things' we can see and measure. It is precisely because there is a spiritual Reality we cannot perceive. This conclusion every pre-modern culture came to and encoded in their various myths (and the farther we go back, the more directly this Reality was perceived). The invisible Reality is the only Reality and it is the source of all phenomenal appearances. So how do we go about distinguishing between our own fantasy (Coleridge uses "fantasy" to differentiate from "imagination" as the latter is fundamental to perceiving the Reality) and concepts which proceed from the shared spiritual Reality? With the exact same tool we use in physical science - our Reason. None of these can be simply accepted as they appear - not in the physical realm (sensible) or the spiritual (supersensible). We must test all of them against our Reason. Before we develop faculties of spiritual perception and higher cognition, it is true that we will not attain very high resolution on the supersensible Reality, but the intellectual concepts which also come from the spiritual world can and must be tested. All forms of thought come from the one and only essential realm, which is the spiritual. Eventually we can also test the images of that realm with Imaginative thinking.

We have accessible 'databases' of supersensible knowledge encoded in world mythology and esoteric traditions which comment on those mythologies. We cannot simply take those commentaries and state them as truths without first thinking through what they are saying and testing them against our experience of the mythic imagery by way of Reason/Imagination. Spiritual science tells us explicitly to do no such thing. Once we start taking a hard look at those mythologies, we will find a remarkable image of supersensible knowledge form within us. That has been my experience so far. Not just one or two mythologies, but every single mythology from every ancient culture, East-Middle-West. As long as we remember they are speaking from different spatiotemporal perspectives and modes of consciousness (due to metamorphic progression), which is difficult for the modern intellect to do, but must be done, then that larger image will emerge. The same can be done with aesthetics, as I have tried to show some through poetry and music so far in my essays. None of this is easy, as I am sure earning your engineering expertise was not easy, and neither was my law degree, but that is the only way to knowledge in any realm. Yet it becomes easier as we get in the habit of doing it. If we keep our minds always on the spiritual, try hard to see the spiritual in all that we do and feel and think, then it becomes a habit in the opposite direction of the modern age.

[Jim Cross]

No point.

OK, so if this no-thingness process has no point of origin, i.e. it's process all the way down, in other words uncaused, I'm missing how it is not the essence of our being ... which under idealism is the aware process of ideation, aka M@L.

Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise

[Soul_of_Shu]

No point.

OK, so if this no-thingness process has no point of origin, i.e. it's process all the way down, in other words uncaused, I'm missing how it is not the essence of our being ... which under idealism is the aware process of ideation, aka M@L.

Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise

Seems like reaching the stage of .... essence? ... no essence? ... meh!

[Ben Iscatus]

I like that. It inspires these imaginary lines:

There is no independent arising
Nor is there any dependent arising
Nor is there any independent co-arising
Nor is there any dependent co-arising
Nor is there any idea of anything arising or co-arising
Dependently or Independently
For there is nothing to exist
Whether with a cause or without one
Nor is there the idea of anything having a cause
Or the idea of anything not having a cause
Now in the past or in the future
For there is nothing at all to arise or co-arise
And nothing ever did arise or co-arise
And nothing ever will arise or co-arise
For 'arising' is a meaningless term
As is everything else

Which matters not at all
Because there is no 'everything else' in existence
There is nothing at all to exist
There never was anything
There never will be anything
Nor even any idea of anything
Now in the past or in the future

So please put that in your pipe and smoke it
Except you can't
Because there is no pipe
And there is no smoking
And there is no idea of a pipe
And there is no idea of smoking
And there is no 'you' to smoke it
And there is no idea of you smoking it
There never was any idea of you smoking it
And there never will be any idea of you smoking it
At all ever but not Amen

Because there can be no Amen
If there is no end
And there is no beginning
For there never was a beginning
And there never was an end
Nor was there ever any idea of a beginning
Or any idea of an end
Nor will there ever be any idea of a beginning
Or any idea of an end
To this pointless charade
And this meaningless pretence
Except that there can be no pointless charade
Or any meaningless pretence
Nor can there even be the very idea of a pointless charade
Or the very idea of a meaningless pretence
Now in the past or in the future

Nor can these lines be anything
Thrown into a drunken T S Eliot's reject pile
By a drunken Ezra Pound
Because there are no lines
There is no reject pile
There is no T S Eliot
There is no Ezra Pound
And alas there is not even any drunkenness
Now in the past or in the future
Nor any idea of any of these things or people
Because things and people do not exist
They never did exist
They never will exist
Since not only is there no present past or future
There is not even any existence
Either in reality
Or as an idea
Or even as a Word
which is now
Always was
And must forever be
Ad infinitum
Dumb

[Soul_of_Shu]

I like that. It inspires these imaginary lines ...

How pulchritudinously apt !

[AshvinP]

I like that. It inspires these imaginary lines ...

How pulchritudinously apt !

I have to say that reminds me of...

"O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.
Eternity bores me,
I never wanted it.

What I love is
The piston in motion . . .
My soul dies before it."
- Sylvia Plath

[Eugene I]

Yes, we must be careful and sober about both spiritual science and "physical science". For the latter, we have come to believe in the modern age that we are observing phenomenon and testing their relations by way of 'measuring' devices and then comparing the measurements to derive the principles at work. The measuring devices are actually our own abstractions - we give meaning to what is a "pound" and what is a "gram" etc. so that they can be usefully compared to one another. I am not really well-versed in science so my examples will be pretty poor, but I think you get what I mean. So what we are really testing the phenomenal relations against is our own Reason. We create the abstractions of measurement and see whether the relations between the abstractions can be harmonized in a way that makes them useful to applied problems. And that is extremely useful to such applications - without the abstract reasoning we would never have the technology we have now. But it has never been telling us anything about essential relations. In the modern age, we came to believe that falsehood because the measurement abstractions were confused for the Reality itself, and it is a very difficult habit of mind to break. BK points this out often as well.

Why are the abstractions not the Reality itself? After all, they are based on 'things' we can see and measure. It is precisely because there is a spiritual Reality we cannot perceive. This conclusion every pre-modern culture came to and encoded in their various myths (and the farther we go back, the more directly this Reality was perceived). The invisible Reality is the only Reality and it is the source of all phenomenal appearances. So how do we go about distinguishing between our own fantasy (Coleridge uses "fantasy" to differentiate from "imagination" as the latter is fundamental to perceiving the Reality) and concepts which proceed from the shared spiritual Reality? With the exact same tool we use in physical science - our Reason. None of these can be simply accepted as they appear - not in the physical realm (sensible) or the spiritual (supersensible). We must test all of them against our Reason. Before we develop faculties of spiritual perception and higher cognition, it is true that we will not attain very high resolution on the supersensible Reality, but the intellectual concepts which also come from the spiritual world can and must be tested. All forms of thought come from the one and only essential realm, which is the spiritual. Eventually we can also test the images of that realm with Imaginative thinking.

We have accessible 'databases' of supersensible knowledge encoded in world mythology and esoteric traditions which comment on those mythologies. We cannot simply take those commentaries and state them as truths without first thinking through what they are saying and testing them against our experience of the mythic imagery by way of Reason/Imagination. Spiritual science tells us explicitly to do no such thing. Once we start taking a hard look at those mythologies, we will find a remarkable image of supersensible knowledge form within us. That has been my experience so far. Not just one or two mythologies, but every single mythology from every ancient culture, East-Middle-West. As long as we remember they are speaking from different spatiotemporal perspectives and modes of consciousness (due to metamorphic progression), which is difficult for the modern intellect to do, but must be done, then that larger image will emerge. The same can be done with aesthetics, as I have tried to show some through poetry and music so far in my essays. None of this is easy, as I am sure earning your engineering expertise was not easy, and neither was my law degree, but that is the only way to knowledge in any realm. Yet it becomes easier as we get in the habit of doing it. If we keep our minds always on the spiritual, try hard to see the spiritual in all that we do and feel and think, then it becomes a habit in the opposite direction of the modern age.

You are exactly right in your first paragraph, I was also brainstorming this "epistemological measurement problem" a while ago. But this brings us back to the problem we already discussed but I don't think it was resolved. In the natural science it can be phrased like this: if the measurement procedures and instruments are abstractions, and if the logic and math we use to validate our theories are also abstractions, then what criteria do we have to distinguish abstractions from Reality? What can we possibly know about Reality in natural sciences if we can only operate with abstractions?

And exactly the same problem can be extrapolated to the spiritual realm. I agree that there is a lot of content in the mystical and esoteric traditions and mythology that may contains certain truths about the Reality. At the same time, they are undoubtedly full of human-made abstractions and products of human imagination and fantasy. So, how do we distinguish the former former from the latter?

Or let's say I had a certain mystical experience. Suppose its content is logically consistent and all makes sense from the point of view of Reason. How do I know if what I experienced has any relevance to the actual invisible Reality or if it's just my hallucination or a product of my subconscious mental activity?