Why do alters of mind at large need to eat in order to stay alive?

[Cleric K]

Hi all,

Something that I haven't been able to figure out after reading (and absolutely loving) quite some of Bernardo's work is why alters need food in order to stay dissociated from mind at large. Consciousness obviously does not need 'fuel' in order to exist, and it also seems strange that an alter needs to consume certain endogenous experiences that are happing in mind at large(what to us looks like food) in order to continue to exist. Couldn't mind at large just as easy have resulted in alters that just exist and don't need food? Why does it cost energy to maintain an alter? Isn't energy just an appearance within in consciousness? If mind at large could also created alters that don't need food, then it is strange that all organisms need food.

I hope someone can enlighten me!

It's nice that you ask questions like this because only in this way we can see the incompetence of the Flat MAL.

Starbuck correctly notices that there're kind of rules that we must conform to but this still leaves the question open of how all this has come about. And it is practically the rule that in flat MAL scenarios (such as in mysticism) these questions are simply pushed away. It's enough for the mystic to focus on the supposed pure consciousness that is above and transcends everything, even if this doesn't lead to any understanding of the World. In fact, the mystic views any attempt to have clear understanding of the world as becoming lost in the ego. One must simply accept the world as a thin dream picture that for some inexplicable reasons just happens to operate in the way we see it.

If we take seriously that there's depth to MAL and with our intellect we're only bubbling along the surface, it becomes possible to investigate the archetypal processes that after many transformations become the flattened projection on our sensory screen. We need the Magic Eye in order to delaminate this flattened projection and trace the deeper processes behind it.

It would take me too far to enter in much details but I'll try to present a very simplified picture.

You say "Consciousness obviously does not need 'fuel' in order to exist" and this is a very good point. Actually this kind of consciousness exists superimposed with our ordinary one but we need training in order to be able to extract concepts from there. Otherwise, we find ourselves in this realm (or we can say spectrum of consciousness) every night in deep dreamless sleep. Through appropriate spiritual development we can bridge the spectrum and we can have conscious experiences at that level.

Not only this spectrum of consciousness exists but when we penetrate there we already know that at the same time we glimpse at the evolutionary process that led us from there to our present state - that is, this high form of consciousness is also something that was the natural state in the deep past. In these primordial states of evolution we have a situation which is precisely in the way your intuition suggests. One picture I can think of, borrowed from our physical world, is that of a superfluid. We know that fluids cooled near to absolute zero temperature can flow forever without friction. Well, this is kind of the situation in this early eon, except we shouldn't imagine freezing temperatures. In fact, we shouldn't at all try to imagine some external (sensory-like) environment. There's only pure inner experience in this state and we can say that it consists purely of time. Naturally it's very difficult to imagine this without some preparation but we can at least point into a direction. We must completely remove all sensory perceptions, feelings and the thoughts about them. What we're left with is pure meaning or Intuition. We flow along states of being like in a superfluid, effortlessly, without friction. This flow is not merely endless walk in the Godel candy shop. It's an implosion of memory, a growth process, where the Intuitions gradually and integratively flow together and build a more and more complete Intuition of the Whole. This is the archetypal flow of Time.

Now the next part is what is practically missing from any flat MAL consideration. In the second iteration or eon of our evolutionary history, there's a kind of repetition of the first eon but with very important difference. Now the consciousness of man differentiates from the primordial time flow (well, man was not yet conscious at that stage but it'll take us too far to go into details. For simplicity we imagine here that man was conscious). The effect of this differentiation is that man (i.e. MAL looking through the perspective of man) takes some of the Intuitions but in a way also extricates himself from the primordial time flow. We now have a two-tier system. At this point we already can speak of archetypal life. In the first eon we can't really speak of life precisely because of the frictionless time flow, it's only a process of integration of memory, trying to encompass the Whole. In the second eon we should imagine that we take part of this process with us but the other part of the previously innerly experienced time flow, now becomes environment for us. This is still very far from the physical environment of today, of course. The key to consider is that not only we have to integrate memory (in the way we do in the first eon) but we also have to keep integrating the time flow that has now become more or less external. This now has a kind of indirection to it. We live in a Cosmic state of consciousness but there's an underlying stratum (the now externalized time flow) which is now a kind of carrier wave for our consciousness. This we can already call life process of growth. In certain way, the old integration of memory (entirely experienced from the first-person perspective, so to speak) now presents itself as a rhythmic life process of growth. On top of this process we have the Intuitive consciousness which not only integrates its memory but must now relate its unfoldment against the life process. In other words, it's not enough to integrate memory within ourselves but we must also do that in harmony with the externalized time flow, which we call life. If our inner integration runs out-of-phase with the life integration, our consciousness would diminish. Our consciousness increases in intensity and scope, the more the Intuitive spectrum is in resonance with the externalized spectrum. Thus we see that in this two-tier system the primordial time flow of integration, which is now inverted for us and constitutes the life spectrum, is no longer frictionless. The fact that our Intuitive consciousness has differentiated from the primordial flow already hints that now it can work against that (life) flow. In other words, depending on the conscious relations, the life process can either dissipate of integrate. This integration is a kind of growth as if resulting from nutrition. In the previous time flow we are also having nutrition - we're feeding upon the Intuitions that we implode into memory to make our state more and more an image of the Whole. Yet, as said, because of the frictionless nature of this process we can't really speak as yet of life. In the second eon, the externalized time flow, from which we differentiate, we can call light, although this is not yet the visible light we know but inner soul light. Instead of imploding Intuitions, now the light-life process implodes light. This is its nutrition. For this reason we can say that at that stage man led a kind of plant life. There was no physical form, roots, etc. but effectively we were breathing in our purely spiritual organism light which was integrated into a kind of light body of Cosmic proportions.

There are two more iterations before we reach our present stage (we're in the fourth). Each of them repeats the previous iterations but in addition to that man's consciousness differentiates more and more. Just as adding additional mirrors in a room can lead to very complicated reflections, so every next iteration leads to exponentially complicated reverberations.

In our age we have these four layers of indirection. At one end is our "I", the superfluid integrative process of memory, at the other end is what we call the physical body. We understand our physical bodies only abstractly today. We simply think intellectually about the sensory perceptions. But in reality, the physical body is related with the primordial first eon, where everything was an integrative time-flow. Today, we have completely abstract shadow of this primordial flow, separated from our thinking "I" through several layers of indirection.

If we understand all the above we can grasp also why we need to eat. The life of our physical body is reverberation of the second eon. There's a constant integrative flow of time-memory which however is experienced innerly not by our ego but by other beings (perspectives of MAL) which have their consciousness at these highest levels. Within our deeply convoluted perspective we live only with the inverted images of these processes. Because of our specific evolutionary scenario, it has become possible that our thinking ego could go quite out-of-phase with the underlying processes which leads to the possibility of experiencing astonishingly varying states of being, yet at the price that we can interfere non-harmonically with these underlying layers on the waves of which our ego consciousness vibrates. This has made the possibility for disease and death.

As a side note I should say that here lies one fundamental error that Bernardo perpetuates. It's the statement that our body is what consciousness looks like from 'outside'. It'll take me too far to follow in details how misleading this is and how such an idea blocks the way for proper growth of consciousness in the higher order processes. If anything, we can say that only within the activity of nerves and the movement of the blood we have something to which we can seek reflection in our conscious awareness. As soon as we continue towards the breathing, digestion, metabolism, cells and so on, we can never find the true origins of these things within our personal psyche. We must go outside ourselves into the wider spiritual Cosmos for this. Within our organs, growth processes, physical structure, etc. work beings that literally weave the planetary spheres and the zodiac. We must really appreciate how different this feels from what BK maintains. In the latter case when we look at our body we imagine that all we see is contained within our consciousness. Development of consciousness towards the higher order realms is only possible if when we see our body, our spirit is directed towards the wide expanses of the Cosmos and realize that the body is like a fractal structure embedded into the Spheres. We can only understand our organic structure if we understand the Cosmos.

I know that all this can be a lot to swallow unless one has already thought in such directions but we can at least try to appreciate that physical life mirrors a primordial eon of pure time-memory integration. Today this integration is only indirectly perceived within the sensory spectrum, as if inverted in relation to our actual thinking cognition. The path of evolution consist in the gradual expansion of consciousness within these primal spectrum bands (which are not really past and gone but are superimposed in our current state, only we are out-of-phase with them). In this process we gradually understand what the World is made of, the grand rhythms of Cosmic beings, on the consciousness-time waves of which our ego state flows. By attuning to these grand rhythms our consciousness can flow 'vertically' along the spectrum - we need to build a frequency gradient made of the proper concepts and ideas. From there we gain the impulses and wisdom to guide the collective development towards harmony with the Divine beings and their rhythms and as a result discover our own truly Divine origins.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I know that all this can be a lot to swallow ...

Cleric ... apologies if you've answered this before, but do you address a broader audience outside of this forum who may be primed for your ideas, i.e. any published books, any blog, any videos, any interviews, etc, even if only in your mother tongue? If not, why not? Given that 'hard-to-swallow' ideas such as those found in the Seth books reached an audience of many millions over the past 50 years, it seems there is an audience to be reached. Or do you go by the dictum that when one is ready for the ideas, then one will naturally find them arriving, as if in a like-attracts-like fashion, into one's sphere of awareness?

[Cleric K]

Cleric ... apologies if you've answered this before, but do you address a broader audience outside of this forum who may be primed for your ideas, i.e. any published books, any blog, any videos, any interviews, etc, even if only in your mother tongue? If not, why not? Given that 'hard-to-swallow' ideas such as those found in the Seth books reached an audience of many millions over the past 50 years, it seems there is an audience to be reached. Or do you go by the dictum that when one is ready for the ideas, then one will naturally find them arriving, as if in a like-attracts-like fashion, into one's sphere of awareness?

No, I don't address broader audience. The reason is that one has to mature first before looking to have a greater exposure. For me this forum has been very valuable school. Through the reactions I receive I learn a lot. This is an invaluable feedback which helps me refine the way I express ideas. Time will tell what will happen.

[Soul_of_Shu]

No, I don't address broader audience. The reason is that one has to mature first before looking to have a greater exposure. For me this forum has been very valuable school. Through the reactions I receive I learn a lot. This is an invaluable feedback which helps me refine the way I express ideas. Time will tell what will happen.

Thanks ... What do you make of BK's claim that the writing of his early books was Daemon-driven—in the sense of the Daemon being like some 'greater' Self—and that it was actually the case that he wrote them because he couldn't not write them?

[Cleric K]

Thanks ... What do you make of BK's claim that the writing of his early books was Daemon-driven—in the sense of the Daemon being like some 'greater' Self—and that it was actually the case that he wrote them because he couldn't not write them?

That's perfectly valid. I myself, about 16 years ago, once I had some of my initial insights, also felt the urge to write them down. And I did, I even had them on a website. As the years went by and my understandings evolved further I saw that there were many things that were very misleading in the way I had written them. I removed the website. I must say that the very core has remained intact but it became more and more thoroughly expressed, not only in ideas but in life in general. One of the great lessons after all these years for me is that it's not the point to just impart your thoughts in the environment. It's a two way process. We need to always listen first to the souls and feel what they need, where they are in their karmic landscape. Sometimes a small gesture full of genuine Love has a much greater impact that trying to force feed them ideas that they don't experience any hunger for.

So the impulse to write is very real and is part of the individual development. It indeed flows as inspiration from our higher strata of consciousness. I don't remember if it was Bach or Beethoven but they say that they hear the symphony all the time and it would drive them mad unless they write it down.

Of course we must always guard for hidden motives. If we want to write because we want to be famous, to record our name in history, this rarely turns out well. Within the unique web of entanglement where each one of us finds themselves, we must always strive to do what is best for the World development. That's why prayer is such an important thing. It's the soul activity that opens up to breathe the potential, to make ourselves as conductors of this potential. How do we know what is the best? We don't know concretely but we know that out of the infinite possibilities in the Cosmic potential it is inevitable that a harmonious resolution must exist. Not only that but this potential is something living, intelligent, we can turn to it, work with it, speak with it. Most of the changes happen at night. While we're awake we're actually quite rigid in our consciousness. It's much like our astral body sticks to the physical as a Velcro strip, with very little wiggle room. At night the strip detaches and can change orientation in ways impossible while in the physical state. This change of orientation can happen also when we consciously loosen the astral body through the methods of higher development. Then not only that the Velcro is loosened and can change orientation but we also witness the Time spectrum. It's like we have different potential clusters, which are actual beings, every one trying to manifest itself. Not all of them wish well for humanity, they are following their own interests. The wave function of our ordinary psyche is a superposition of such macrocosmic beings battling for dominance over the human soul. The more we connect with one being-potential rather than another, the more everything we express in our life collapses from potentialities within the spectrum in question.

I went quite astray from your original question but these things are important. It's one thing to feel inspired and having the urge to express something but we also need the reciprocal activity. We need to have a high ideal. Concentrating on the high ideal, praying to it, is a method for attunement that gradually shifts the wave patterns.

The thing with early age exposure is that we rigidify our momentary views in the World. Then if at some point we discover that some of our early ideas were incomplete or even wrong, we face a dilemma. We either stubbornly continue to maintain our previous ideas, in order to avoid the inconvenience of confessing to the World that we made a mistake, or we go on to rectify the mistake.

[PaulSmid]

Not only this spectrum of consciousness exists but when we penetrate there we already know that at the same time we glimpse at the evolutionary process that led us from there to our present state - that is, this high form of consciousness is also something that was the natural state in the deep past. In these primordial states of evolution we have a situation which is precisely in the way your intuition suggests. One picture I can think of, borrowed from our physical world, is that of a superfluid. We know that fluids cooled near to absolute zero temperature can flow forever without friction. Well, this is kind of the situation in this early eon, except we shouldn't imagine freezing temperatures. In fact, we shouldn't at all try to imagine some external (sensory-like) environment. There's only pure inner experience in this state and we can say that it consists purely of time. Naturally it's very difficult to imagine this without some preparation but we can at least point into a direction. We must completely remove all sensory perceptions, feelings and the thoughts about them. What we're left with is pure meaning or Intuition. We flow along states of being like in a superfluid, effortlessly, without friction. This flow is not merely endless walk in the Godel candy shop. It's an implosion of memory, a growth process, where the Intuitions gradually and integratively flow together and build a more and more complete Intuition of the Whole. This is the archetypal flow of Time.

Now the next part is what is practically missing from any flat MAL consideration. In the second iteration or eon of our evolutionary history, there's a kind of repetition of the first eon but with very important difference. Now the consciousness of man differentiates from the primordial time flow (well, man was not yet conscious at that stage but it'll take us too far to go into details. For simplicity we imagine here that man was conscious). The effect of this differentiation is that man (i.e. MAL looking through the perspective of man) takes some of the Intuitions but in a way also extricates himself from the primordial time flow. We now have a two-tier system. At this point we already can speak of archetypal life. In the first eon we can't really speak of life precisely because of the frictionless time flow, it's only a process of integration of memory, trying to encompass the Whole. In the second eon we should imagine that we take part of this process with us but the other part of the previously innerly experienced time flow, now becomes environment for us. This is still very far from the physical environment of today, of course. The key to consider is that not only we have to integrate memory (in the way we do in the first eon) but we also have to keep integrating the time flow that has now become more or less external. This now has a kind of indirection to it. We live in a Cosmic state of consciousness but there's an underlying stratum (the now externalized time flow) which is now a kind of carrier wave for our consciousness. This we can already call life process of growth. In certain way, the old integration of memory (entirely experienced from the first-person perspective, so to speak) now presents itself as a rhythmic life process of growth. On top of this process we have the Intuitive consciousness which not only integrates its memory but must now relate its unfoldment against the life process. In other words, it's not enough to integrate memory within ourselves but we must also do that in harmony with the externalized time flow, which we call life. If our inner integration runs out-of-phase with the life integration, our consciousness would diminish. Our consciousness increases in intensity and scope, the more the Intuitive spectrum is in resonance with the externalized spectrum. Thus we see that in this two-tier system the primordial time flow of integration, which is now inverted for us and constitutes the life spectrum, is no longer frictionless. The fact that our Intuitive consciousness has differentiated from the primordial flow already hints that now it can work against that (life) flow. In other words, depending on the conscious relations, the life process can either dissipate of integrate. This integration is a kind of growth as if resulting from nutrition. In the previous time flow we are also having nutrition - we're feeding upon the Intuitions that we implode into memory to make our state more and more an image of the Whole. Yet, as said, because of the frictionless nature of this process we can't really speak as yet of life. In the second eon, the externalized time flow, from which we differentiate, we can call light, although this is not yet the visible light we know but inner soul light. Instead of imploding Intuitions, now the light-life process implodes light. This is its nutrition. For this reason we can say that at that stage man led a kind of plant life. There was no physical form, roots, etc. but effectively we were breathing in our purely spiritual organism light which was integrated into a kind of light body of Cosmic proportions.

This theory of yours sounds interesting to me. It just seems like we don't have that much reason to believe that what you describe is the way things actually are. Is there any empiric evidence that would support the claims you make? I do find your idea of alters gradually having to eat more and more 'physical' stuff over the different eons is very interesting. But it almost sounds more like a myth to me.

[Starbuck]

Hi Paul, I hear a lot of people make this sharp distinction between a dissociated alter in the 'material' realm and completely non dissociated Mind at large which we seemingly dissolve into at death. I still think the jury is out on that. For instance in eastern religion there is a subtle realm between lives (semi dissociated if you like). It makes sense to me that we could be there at some point, but need to incarnate (either because of desire or to balance previous actions) into a more 'dense' form of mentation which looks like the 'material' realm. In that sense, we need to play by its rules while we are here, which include consuming food etc. You can type that key board and I can read this screen because we are using the same building block rules that go with sharing this realm. Like in the matrix you can probably break those rules but they are very entrenched.

This rings pretty true to me. But, this kind of structure to reality does not sound like something that a instinctive, non-metacognitively aware mind at large would naturally evolve into. This kind of structure to reality would seem more like a conscious design by a true creator god. I'm pretty open to this possibility, but I don't think Bernardo is.

But if god basically wants to have an experience in a dense plain of mentation, and decides that needing to eat food would be part of that, then that does explain it. Problem is that now you have a conscious, almighty creator god on your hands.

I think you can get incredible intricacy, consistency, structure and apparent design by incremental expressions of will or desire. All you need is M@Ls primal desire to dissociate, and then the subsequent desire of limited alters for experience, sensual gratification, but ultimately for meaning and love. Are not our desires often repetitive and based on themes and 'story arcs'? Just expanded that to nested, Russian doll layers of experience and representation. I imagine your own life is rich, nuanced and augmented. When you look back, that has all been shaped by your preferences and non-preferences creating your perception and reality. And as Bernardo repeatedly says 'it's got to look like SOMETHING'. So why not this? I don't really see the problem here.

Maybe there is some metacognitive designer, but A) How would we ever know? and B) Why postulate something extra and unparsimonious beyond what we already know. This need for a knowing creator god seems to be so very deeply ingrained within us unfortunately. Anthropomorphising the divine when we don't have to - apart from meeting our own desire for security of course

[Cleric K]

This theory of yours sounds interesting to me. It just seems like we don't have that much reason to believe that what you describe is the way things actually are. Is there any empiric evidence that would support the claims you make? I do find your idea of alters gradually having to eat more and more 'physical' stuff over the different eons is very interesting. But it almost sounds more like a myth to me.

It's normal that it sounds as a myth. But just as any myth it has its origins. The ancient myths had their origins in atavistic clairvoyance. The good news is that this modern myth can be extracted directly from our inner experience. For more information about the transformation of consciousness that humanity is at the threshold of, you might be interested in this reply to Eugene. If that is understood, then also the myth will become much closer to reality.

[AshvinP]

Hi Paul, I hear a lot of people make this sharp distinction between a dissociated alter in the 'material' realm and completely non dissociated Mind at large which we seemingly dissolve into at death. I still think the jury is out on that. For instance in eastern religion there is a subtle realm between lives (semi dissociated if you like). It makes sense to me that we could be there at some point, but need to incarnate (either because of desire or to balance previous actions) into a more 'dense' form of mentation which looks like the 'material' realm. In that sense, we need to play by its rules while we are here, which include consuming food etc. You can type that key board and I can read this screen because we are using the same building block rules that go with sharing this realm. Like in the matrix you can probably break those rules but they are very entrenched.

This rings pretty true to me. But, this kind of structure to reality does not sound like something that a instinctive, non-metacognitively aware mind at large would naturally evolve into. This kind of structure to reality would seem more like a conscious design by a true creator god. I'm pretty open to this possibility, but I don't think Bernardo is.

But if god basically wants to have an experience in a dense plain of mentation, and decides that needing to eat food would be part of that, then that does explain it. Problem is that now you have a conscious, almighty creator god on your hands.

I think you can get incredible intricacy, consistency, structure and apparent design by incremental expressions of will or desire. All you need is M@Ls primal desire to dissociate, and then the subsequent desire of limited alters for experience, sensual gratification, but ultimately for meaning and love. Are not our desires often repetitive and based on themes and 'story arcs'? Just expanded that to nested, Russian doll layers of experience and representation. I imagine your own life is rich, nuanced and augmented. When you look back, that has all been shaped by your preferences and non-preferences creating your perception and reality. And as Bernardo repeatedly says 'it's got to look like SOMETHING'. So why not this? I don't really see the problem here.

Maybe there is some metacognitive designer, but A) How would we ever know? and B) Why postulate something extra and unparsimonious beyond what we already know. This need for a knowing creator god seems to be so very deeply ingrained within us unfortunately. Anthropomorphising the divine when we don't have to - apart from meeting our own desire for security of course

This sounds to me like getting life from incremental expressions of non-life, soul from incremental expressions of non-soul, morality from incremental expressions of amorality, etc. One of our deepest Intuitions is that man has a Spirit which animals simply do not have. I know many modern people will engage their intellect to argue about that, but their life and actions tell a much different story. There's another major flaw in BK idealism - that which can only come from the deepest depths of MAL, transpersonally shared Intuition, is deemed illusory and what incremental expressions of pure instinct "look like" to us, even when the inner meaning of the Intuition contradicts the notion of "pure instinct".

[Starbuck]

It's only incremental from our perspective as alters. From the perspective of M@L its all happening now in one big thought orgasm.