Intuitive Idealism vs. Analytic Idealism (Part II): An alternative formulation of idealism

[Soul_of_Shu]

And yet again, what I conclude from all of this repetitive back-and-forth with no resolution in sight is that the conditioned mindsets that were there at the outset remain unchanged ... but hey, carry on regardless

[Eugene I]

That's because the "conditioned mindsets" are the way for the "unconditioned mindset" to explore the possibilities not achievable from the "unconditioned mindset" perspective. In a way, the "unconditioned mindset" is limited in its own unconditionality.

[Cleric K]

Cleric, you are describing a closed-prison Abarahamic religion paradigm of beings all metamorphically converging to comply and unite their individual activities with a unified global activity and structure of the One Spirit with its pre-existing set of truths and meanings. As I said above, I find this paradigm totalitarian and meaningless. The free will, even if it exists, also becomes meaningless in such world. In my post above I described an alternative paradigm where the Spirit is ever growing and exploring new previously unknown areas and realms of meanings and truths and where the mission of individuated souls is not to comply with global pre-existing truths, but to be the pioneers of exploring the new realms. We are on the very frontier of the Spirit's exploration into the new and unknown.

(Shu, as usual, what is written is primarily for the sake of by-watchers who can make their own conclusions)


I wonder how you read that in my last post, since I didn't even reach the higher spiritual experiences. I finished with things in low enough personal level that even open-minded materialists could experience.

Furthermore what I described is not a 'paradigm' but an actual path of inner experience that anyone can investigate for themselves. And even if they don't, even thinking livingly through the descriptions already tells quite a lot.

We always reach this point where it's all about a belief in what happens after the threshold of death. All your examples have one thing in common - there's clear dichotomy between the Earthly sandbox and the supposed afterlife. In other words, all the rhythmic layers within which our spiritual activity is undoubtedly embedded on Earth magically vanish after death and everyone can experience whatever they want in the Candy Shop (assuming they haven't become too badly entangled in karma). In other words, both worlds operate under totally different rules - or rather there are rules on Earth but none as soon as we lay down the body.

When you say that rigorous and morally disciplined development of higher forms of consciousness is incapable of knowing anything certain except its own mish-mash of entanglement, you practically declare that "it's all about picking a belief of choice". Because if clear, lucid higher development is incapable of discerning the layers of being and thus everything is highly suspicious, then what remains for all the other abnormal states which all have one thing in common - clear cognition is always suppressed. This is true for channeling, alien abductions, NDEs, psychedelic and visionary experiences and so on.

Certainly you resign before the fact that we're restricted in the Earthly spectrum - we simply can't deny that - if we try to act as if there are no walls we hurt ourselves or even die. Yet your belief of choice is that on the other side we're all free electrons.

The 'totalitarian' paradigm that you protest against becomes completely meaningful if we comprehend that the physical world is only the Body of a Cosmic Organism, which also has Soul and Spirit. In the same way you can protest that it is totalitarian and meaningless to experience disease, without ever realizing that we inflict that disease as a result of our disorderly life of soul and spirit. Just as life on Earth is healed when body, soul and spirit are brought into harmony, so it is for the Macrocosmic organism. And even on the purely superficial level it's only logical that microcosmic life and Macrocosmic are self-similar like nested fractal levels. But when our desire for independence (even if it can only be supported by blind belief) gets the upper hand, all logic is ignored.

[Eugene I]

Nope, you misunderstood me, Cleric, our existence is always conditional and restricted by certain previously existed structures both in incarnate and discarnate forms. In the discarnate there is more flexibility, yet, the archetypal structures still exist and restrict us in certain ways. But what I'm saying is that these structures are never "written in stone" and are ever-evolving, their telos is not to converge to some universal unified pre-existing global archetype, but to expand into the "Godel's shop" of unlimited diversity of structures/archetypes.

But the way this process unfolds is never to jump into some entirely novel structure or form "out-of-the-blue", it never practically works that way. The process is always gradual, no matter how disruptive or revolutional it might be at certain points - we expand into new frontiers by baby-stepping from the existing frontiers. We create new structures from the existing ones by utilizing our previous structure-making skills. This is how evolution and creative activities (in art and engineering) practically work.

I understand that there are adherents of Abrahamic theological paradigms that find them very meaningful and comforting, but there are still people who just don't see it this way. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Abrahamic approach is plain wrong, it does have its merits and people are definitely free to choose it if it works for them. The only thing I'm saying that the people for whom the Abrahamic paradigm does not work and does not deliver worthwhile meanings - they have right to choose alternative paradigms even within the theistic and idealistic worldviews. And I'm presenting one of them above (without insisting that it's the best one or the only one plausible), which is mostly based on Steve's Petemann theology with some minor additions.

[AshvinP]

Nope, you misunderstood me, Cleric, our existence is always conditional and restricted by certain previously existed structures both in incarnate and discarnate forms. In the discarnate there is more flexibility, yet, the archetypal structures still exist and restrict us in certain ways. But what I'm saying is that these structures are never "written in stone" and are ever-evolving, their telos is not to converge to some universal unified pre-existing global archetype, but to expand into the "Godel's shop" of unlimited diversity of structures/archetypes.

But the way this process unfolds is never to jump into some entirely novel structure or form "out-of-the-blue", it never practically works that way. The process is always gradual, no matter how disruptive or revolutional it might be at certain points - we expand into new frontiers by baby-stepping from the existing frontiers. We create new structures from the existing ones by utilizing our previous structure-making skills. This is how evolution works.

You are operating in a world of pure abstraction which refuses under all circumstances to reflect on its living experience, rather than simply reflecting on its own abstractions and deriving spiritual conclusions from those abstractions. Everyone can see this by simply asking whether there is any logical connection between your conclusions. Like Justin on the other thread, you want best of both worlds - our experience is always structured by archetypal forces, incarnate and disincarnate, but not so structured that we can ever reach solid conclusions about that structure while we are alive. It's truly astounding how modern prejuduces blind us to the most simple truth, so we rather live in a world of absolutely confliting abstractions than one with inner logic which harmonizes the abstractions in our concrete experience. We saw that in your music analogy too - once the obvious conclusion was reached, you add "yet undoubtedly" the opposite of that conclusion is also true.

[Eugene I]

The creative world of ever-evolving forms in Spirit is not an abstraction for me, but the everyday living experience, because creativity is my main life activity (both professional as an engineer and hobby as a musician). But I understand that there are uncreative people who just don't see and don't experience the world this way, for them what I say is a complete abstraction because they have no experiential reference for it, and there is nothing wrong with that too. Uncreative people do not create, but only experience and utilize what has been created before, and that mode of existence has its own merits too. But they tend to see the world through the Abrahamic-religious perspective: God created everything, everything to be known already exists, and their role is only to metamorphically evolve to fully participate in the pre-created structure.

There is room for many modes of living and perspectives on reality, as long as we allow for the diversity and do not enforce our modes and worldviews on each other. I can co-exist peacefully with people adhering to Abrahamic or any other traditions and worldviews as long as they do not enforce their modes/views on me. It's this totalitarian enforcement, the worldviews that exclude others, that I find problematic.

[ParadoxZone]

Cleric,

There is interest, even from those who have been advised they're not interested.

Your posts are not too long. Please don't stop for that reason. It takes me a while to read them. That is not a complaint. It's because at least some "processing" needs to accompany the reading, otherwise it would feel like starting from scratch every time.

Thank you.

[AshvinP]

The creative world of ever-evolving forms in Spirit is not an abstraction for me, but the everyday living experience, because creativity is my main life activity (both professional as an engineer and hobby as a musician). But I understand that there are uncreative people who just don't see and don't experience the world this way, for them what I say is a complete abstraction because they have no experiential reference for it, and there is nothing wrong with that too.

As Cleric keeps pointing out to you, "creativity" is not enough. Your "creativity" forsakes all logic and reason when it comes to anything outside of your direct experience. Cleric provides living examples of his own experience which we can all verify within our own, and instead of trying to verify and respond directly to his reasoning, you retreat back into abstractions about "Abrahamic theology" which was never mentioned before. You assume your mode of pure abstract thinking about the spiritual must be everyone else's mode, ironically practicing and projecting the mechanistic uniformity you also claim to criticize. Why else do you keep bringing up the deepest spiritual questions like "the problem of evil" and assuming you can solve it (or "prove" there is no solution) by mechanically listing out "scenarios" and "options" and comparing them to one another? That is a perfect illustration of what I am saying above. Let's recap your arguments to Cleric and myself so far:

- Everyone has experienced the higher cognition Cleric is imaginatively describing for thousands of years, and most of them realized there can be no detailed resolution on the spiritual realm beyond completely fattened out concepts like "collective unconscious" - I showed how that was false characterization of Jung.

- Jungian archetypes can be thought of as global, local, sub-local, ad infinitum - I showed how that is also false characterization and leads to the "irreconcilable worlds" that Cleric mentioned, but times infinity.

- If we adhere to the archetypal structure which can be objectively verified, then we are inhibiting "free will" and imposing deterministic uniformity - Cleric and myself have more than adequately addressed the major flaws in this reasoning, which are self-evident to anyone considering their own living experience in the physical (incarnate) world, where overarching structures clearly apply and are a matter of life and death.

- The rest of your posts have been random "metaphors" which purport to illustrate your point, but are actually internally incoherent.

Notice that all of these are separate arguments with no relation to one another - you are not sticking with arguments and expanding on them or responding to our objections to them, but throwing around completely different arguments and seeing if any of them might stick. Clearly none of them do.

[Soul_of_Shu]

(Shu, as usual, what is written is primarily for the sake of by-watchers who can make their own conclusions)

This by-watcher, as the mod, must keep following it, thus I envy those by-watchers who have the option of opting out after the same point has been made in umpteen different ways, with various and sundry endless words arrangements

[Cleric K]

Nope, you misunderstood me, Cleric, our existence is always conditional and restricted by certain previously existed structures both in incarnate and discarnate forms. In the discarnate there is more flexibility, yet, the archetypal structures still exist and restrict us in certain ways. But what I'm saying is that these structures are never "written in stone" and are ever-evolving, their telos is not to converge to some universal unified pre-existing global archetype, but to expand into the "Godel's shop" of unlimited diversity of structures/archetypes.

But the way this process unfolds is never to jump into some entirely novel structure or form "out-of-the-blue", it never practically works that way. The process is always gradual, no matter how disruptive or revolutional it might be at certain points - we expand into new frontiers by baby-stepping from the existing frontiers. We create new structures from the existing ones by utilizing our previous structure-making skills. This is how evolution works.

Technically, the Cosmic Man 'paradigm' that you dislike is precisely what provides what you secretly yearn for. The reason you can't see it that way, as I've tried to explain many times, is because the nature of Time is not understood.

If one takes even the most preliminary steps in the path of higher development that I often describe, it'll be understood that Life only makes sense as continual development process, which outgrows layer after layer in rhythmic fashion. Every stage of evolution reveals the spiritual structure within which consciousness was forced to flow previously. As this processes continues one approaches the seed of the Cosmic Fractal. And here is the greatest challenge. One imagines that approaching this seed of pure potential is like sad event where all the fun ends (Steve's essay on perfection). Like I said, this only applies when one can't escape the intellect operating under the Newtonian clock. Just as we get false idea if we imagine the land around us continuing flatly in all directions, so we get false conception if we imagine Newtonian time continuing linearly till the 'last' state. One imagines this as riding on a train, approaching the last station and starting to worry "But I don't want this to end, I want to keep riding".

One has to work on his own to at least notice the glaring anthropomorphism of this conception. First, one imagines that consciousness experiences time in the same Newtonian ticks until the very last moment (or even after that if we assume 1.1 from your enumeration). Second, one imagines that up until that last moment one will feel as an atomic ego in quite the same way as today. Third, which is related to the second, is that in these states where the One Cosmic Consciousness encompasses more and more of the Eternal potential, it still feels as an isolated ego, feeling human-like emotions, desires to keep experiencing, fear of boredom at the end and so on.

I really can't convey these things in words. It's practically impossible to get true understanding of the nature of Time while caught into the intellectual rhythm. I've shown this before:



It's by no means representative but it can be used as an analogy. Development really continues endlessly in the Candy Shop. Except that this endless journey is not experienced from the point of view of atomic egos (this is something which you haven't addressed - the question of genesis and fate of individual perspectives).

Notice the flow of the fishes in the big circle in the upper part. They coalesce from infinity pass the center and go into infinity. It is somewhat in this way that the World Process looks like (again this is very abstract way to put it and can't really be truly grasped if we only depend on the intellect).

Why is the idea of telos (fishes coming from involution on the right and evolving into infinity at the left) so repulsive? Because one identifies with one of the fishes. This is the only reason. One can't help but imagine himself as atomic perspective that must have continuous existence endlessly. If we identify with that fish, then going towards infinity (perfection) on the left would be felt like marching towards the grimmest doom. The fish says "This is outrageous, totalitarian! I refuse to be a pawn in the hands of some Gods, I want to swim forever!"

I'm struggling to find words to express this. One should rather imagine that the more the fish moves to the left, the more the One Consciousness transcends its limited form and encompasses more and more of the whole process, seeing that it is that same One Consciousness within each fish. So it's precisely the eternal Candy Shop exploration that you dream of but it is experienced not by eternal individual atomic fishes but by the One Eternal Consciousness, which continually awakens within the involuting fishes and becomes itself as the forms of the fishes evolve into unity. Clearly this again is subject to be misunderstood if one can't break from Newtonian time because one imagines that after the One Consciousness expands from the evolving fishes to encompass more and more of its Eternal potential, Time continues to tick in the same Newtonian way and it says to itself "Ok, that was fun, I awakened within one of the fishes and expanded to my entirety. Now Let's dive again in the involuting forms." What this kind of thinking misses is that the involution and evolution never cease, there are continuous waves after waves of fishes that experience their awakening and expansion into the Whole. In that eternal Whole time no longer makes sense in the way we conceive it. We can say that the movement of the fishes has never even happened, it was only an idea explored out of the Eternal and infinite potential. From the One perspective it is absolutely irrelevant 'who' has experienced a given fish - at the end the beginning and the end of time are One.

The greatest obstacle for proper comprehension of these, admittedly probably hardest ideas of all (for the intellectual ego, that is), is our desire that we must experience everything for ourselves, and that this experience must go on forever. We simply remain blind for the way the ego creeps in and demands eternal life for itself.

I know that my description is not satisfactory and this is so because it can only be understood if the individual adds something from himself, his deepest core, something which can't be conveyed by any other external means. I can only say that the nature of Time-Consciousness is far more weirder and fantastic than people even dare to imagine. Once one experiences even a glimpse of that nature then such joy fills our entire World that nothing can be compared with it. We then only feel like getting down on our faces and repeat Thank You, Thank You Thank You ... endlessly, because Reality turned out to be far more ingenious and incredible than we could even imagine through fantasizing the eternal perpetuation of our atomic ego, ticked by the Newtonian clock and linearly exploring forms forever.