How the Mind Meets the Body

[ParadoxZone]

Ashvin,

I've been reading this thread with great interest. I hope it's not considered churlish to point out that Justin asked a very direct question and you have responded, while seemingly failing to answer his question. This is fair comment, I believe, as in other threads you have asked direct questions and then bemoaned the fact that they weren't directly addressed.

So what is your answer (rather than response) to Justin's question?

As religion, capitalism, Marx, atheism etc have also come in for mention in this thread, I also wondered - what would President Ashvin do? Assuming you swept to power on a platform of disgust for establishment parties, structures, institutions (shared widely I believe by most, on whichever end of the spectrum of ideas), what would be your policies and priorities for your new administration? How about writing an inaugural address to the American people, and by extension to all of us? Something that marries the practical and spiritual? Something like this would help, in my view, clarify your ideas for the great unwashed (me included).

I'd love to read such a hypothetical address - I mean this very sincerely. It would also, I think, suit your writing style.

I don't think it would fall foul of the mod, who has his role to fulfil. Remember, you have been elected on what is basically an anti-politics as usual platform. You might think of it as Trump, but with an actual soul.

And, bearing in mind Justin's question, your address might include reference to Afghanistan and those other places not in the news (eg Yemen). This is just a suggestion, you're the one who has been elected, not me.

This post has been prompted by this thread but also by a comment in another thread, where you comment on the utility of the whirlpool metaphor for someone "in agony" - which got me thinking of a recent interaction we had which included references to Victor Frankel, CBT, and whether the techniques involved were "tricks" or not.

And I know that you might recoil at the notion of the practical and spiritual being distinct things. I agree with that. Yet, still ......

(Now wrestling with the idea of coordinating a T-shirt campaign from my sofa. "Vote AshvinP - he knows the score". Of course, it could go the other way too, depending on that draft address.)

PS

I now remember, from another post, that you are probably not eligible to be President. Not a "natural born citizen", I think the phrase is. Don't let that put you off. Rules are fluid, as we're all beginning to comprehend.

[Soul_of_Shu]

No, Dana, we are definitely not supposed to transcend objective meaning. That is the foundation of objective idealism as well. Saying thinkers and their ideas can exist in a world of complete relative interpretation is another way of abdicating responsibility for actually contemplating what they are communicating to us.

So you're suggesting that this contemplation of what they are communicating to us can be completely free, under the current circumstances, from the conditioning of the mindset through which the contemplation is happening? That looks conceivable on paper, so to speak, but what I find, almost inevitably with these arguments, is that after several pages of back and forth, with no resolution in sight, is that the respective conditioned mindsets that were there at the outset remain unchanged. So I'm interested in how, not just on paper, but in actual practice, this pattern might be overcome. But perhaps I'm just being naive. I also recognize that neither of you are just trying to convince each other, which seems unlikely, but that you're both addressing the larger audience of the forum, in an effort to set the record straight. So in that sense you're both like opposing lawyers (speaking of predisposed mindsets) addressing a jury. In which case, maybe each of you, in your next comment, could make your closing argument, and we'll send the jury out and await a verdict

[AshvinP]

No, Dana, we are definitely not supposed to transcend objective meaning. That is the foundation of objective idealism as well. Saying thinkers and their ideas can exist in a world of complete relative interpretation is another way of abdicating responsibility for actually contemplating what they are communicating to us.

So you're suggesting that this contemplation of what they are communicating to us can be completely free, under the current circumstances, from the conditioning of the mindset through which the contemplation is happening? That looks conceivable on paper, so to speak, but what I find, almost inevitably with these arguments, is that after several pages of back and forth, with no resolution in sight, is that the respective conditioned mindsets that were there at the outset remain unchanged. So I'm interested in how, not just on paper, but in actual practice, this pattern might be overcome. But perhaps I'm just being naive. I also recognize that neither of you are just trying to convince each other, which seems unlikely, but that you're both addressing the larger audience of the forum, in an effort to set the record straight. So in that sense you're both like opposing lawyers (speaking of predisposed mindsets) addressing a jury. In which case, maybe each of you, in your next comment, could make your closing argument, and we'll send the jury out and await a verdict

You are really overthinking things here (not to be confused with Thinking capital "T"). Obviously we all have biases, prejudices, etc., but these things exist on a gradient - it's not all or nothing. We can't assume because two people continuously disagree that neither of them can be more correct. My approach is simple - if I am very familiar with something and someone misrepresents it, I point it out and keep pointing it out as long as they keep doing it. If not for the benefit of that person, because they have made up their mind to never admit error, than for the benefit of others, like you say. In the process of writing essays, I have studied Barfield's books and essays/articles at length. I also know he was an Anthroposophist, as he also makes very clear in his essays. And like I said to you before on the other thread, these things aren't going to stop happening. You can tell us to wrap it up on this thread, but it will just pop up on another one soon enough. Notice I am not starting threads to show why everyone else misunderstands Barfield, but simply reacting to the misrepresentations as they regularly manifest, just as I did with Eugene on the other thread. But whatever you want to do is fine, I'll just keep calling it like I see it as it pops up over and over again in future threads, in very predictable ways.

[Soul_of_Shu]

You can tell us to wrap it up on this thread, but it will just pop up on another one soon enough. Notice I am not starting threads to show why everyone else misunderstands Barfield, but simply reacting to the misrepresentations as they regularly manifest, just as I did with Eugene on the other thread. But whatever you want to do is fine, I'll just keep calling it like I see it as it pops up over and over again in future threads, in very predictable ways.

Just as lawyers are predictably conditioned to do, so yes, I'm naive to think it could be otherwise.

[AshvinP]

And I know that you might recoil at the notion of the practical and spiritual being distinct things. I agree with that. Yet, still ......

PZ,

This is really a critical issue - how do you "agree with that" but also say "yet, still..."? Yet still what? I am not trying to arbitrarily criticize you here, because this is one of the things we see all too often in modern society. "I know the spiritual is the practical, and they cannot be divided, but I'm still going to treat them as separate because that's how everyone else does things." It's easy to see why this logic leads nowhere. It is truly a failure of Imagination in the sense of Coleridge, Steiner, and Barfield. We see everyone playing by the political 'rules' of the game, telling us we aren't helping others if we are only working on our own inner transformation, and we just accept that as Gospel. The reality is that we are of no use to others without that inner transformation, and we desperately need to expand our time horizons beyond the next election cycle. None of these major world problems will be solved within 2, 4, 20, or even 100 years by "collective practices". The longer we put off a serious commitment to the practical spiritual, the longer those problems will continue and get worse. I understand why we are all tempted to put it off - it is truly easier to protest in the streets or join an advocacy group than it is to do the most simple things in our own lives to develop more discipline, prayer, contemplation of the Divine, etc. That is how we really come to know the Wisdom behind the great spiritual traditions - when we find it harder to pick up a Bible and read a few verses at night than to spend many hours a day on social media calling for "social justice" or other such things.

[AshvinP]

And I know that you might recoil at the notion of the practical and spiritual being distinct things. I agree with that. Yet, still ......

PZ,

This is really a critical issue - how do you "agree with that" but also say "yet, still..."? Yet still what? I am not trying to arbitrarily criticize you here, because this is one of the things we see all too often in modern society. "I know the spiritual is the practical, and they cannot be divided, but I'm still going to treat them as separate because that's how everyone else does things." It's easy to see why this logic leads nowhere. It is truly a failure of Imagination in the sense of Coleridge, Steiner, and Barfield. We see everyone playing by the political 'rules' of the game, telling us we aren't helping others if we are only working on our own inner transformation, and we just accept that as Gospel. The reality is that we are of no use to others without that inner transformation, and we desperately need to expand our time horizons beyond the next election cycle. None of these major world problems will be solved within 2, 4, 20, or even 100 years by "collective practices". The longer we put off a serious commitment to the practical spiritual, the longer those problems will continue and get worse. I understand why we are all tempted to put it off - it is truly easier to protest in the streets or join an advocacy group than it is to do the most simple things in our own lives to develop more discipline, prayer, contemplation of the Divine, etc. That is how we really come to know the Wisdom behind the great spiritual traditions - when we find it harder to pick up a Bible and read a few verses at night than to spend many hours a day on social media calling for "social justice" or other such things.

Damn I just edited my own previous post instead of quoting it

I don't really feel like typing it out again now, but basically I said it all begins and ends with the individual, as Cleric expressed recently on another thread (quoted below). We cannot expect any systemic policies to change what is fundamentally an individual spiritual problem, as people who have not transfigured their will, feelings, and thoughts into alignment so that they seek what is Good, Beautiful, and True will never be in a position to fix systemic problems at the collective level, but will only make things worse.

Here the Gospel informs us about the proper principles of Creation, which in our sensory spectrum we have gradually turned upside down. Why is providing the basic needs for survival so difficult on Earth? Because of the out-of-phase relationships between beings. In other words, the reign of egoism. Let's think of the stock market. Why is the stocks graph so complicated? Because it is the result of multitude of conscious perspectives which would like to pull it in their own interest. As a result we get a highly non-linear and practically impossible to predict behavior. It's impossible to predict because no one wants it to be predictable. Well, in general everyone wants to be able to predict it but in such a way that only they have the secret knowledge and can profit from it. If everyone could predict it then the whole game would become meaningless. So we have a perfect example how human beings are in a situation where they need to perpetuate the chaos and unpredictability in order to keep their game going.

This is a general picture of the whole Fall. Paradise corresponds to a highly correlated 'wave function' of the Earthly realm. It's like a healthy organism where the kingdoms of nature are like the Earth's bodily systems - mineral realm would correspond to the skeletal system, the plant kingdom would correspond to the life processes, the animal kingdom to consciousness, pain, pleasure, joy, perceptions, and finally Man would correspond to the Solar Logos that looks through the bodily systems of the Earth and reflects in them his self-consciousness. Needless to say, that picture would be very different from the Earth of today. Everything would be, if we may use the expression, made of pliant imaginative substance, which responds livingly to the impulses of the Spirit. If we have to put it into a scientific picture, we could say that quantum tunneling would be the norm within the wave function of this Earthly organism. Everything would be just barely reaching the threshold of decoherence.

The story of the Fall is the story of the organs of the Earth's organism going progressively out-of-phase. In this way the plants, animals were gradually differentiated and became independent and even, instead of living in symbiotic relationships which are normal in any healthy unitary organism, they begin to feed on each other. This paints a diametrically opposite picture of evolution, in comparison to the materialistic vision. Instead of starting with inert matter, passing through self-replicating chemicals, then to proto-cells, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, multicellulars, we have practically the opposite. We have a grand symbiotic organism, which as said, has not yet any atomic structure, cells, etc. In esoteric language we could say that it was of etheric nature, barely approaching the threshold of mineralization (decoherence of the wave function). As the life processes within this spiritual organism began to go out-of-phase, higher beings predicted that this would quickly lead to dissolution so the process had to be counteracted. Somehow it was needed that even though the etheric substance would decohere into particle waves, it's characteristic dynamics should be preserved. That's how biological life begins to take form. Biological life is nothing else but 'frequency gradient' that serves to transduce the etheric dynamics (higher order wave functions) all the way down to the decohered particle waves. In this way the etheric life processes could continue to guide the particle waves along the gradient, even in the midst of severe mineralization. The Earth organism (which is practically the Cosmic Man's Body) began to differentiate its 'organs' into the various genus of plant and animal life. Unicellular life precipitated from the higher forms as even more fragmented life processes. And the mineral kingdom of today is the particle wave remnants of primordial etheric life processes. The physical form of man was that which could resist in the greatest degree the decoherence process and preserve its ability to become bearer of the Spirit, the "I", now not from Cosmic perspective at the periphery of the Earth, but as an "I" that experiences reality from within a physical bodily perspective.

Let the above stand as a fairytale, a modern language myth. It's exactly the opposite of the materialistic myth of abiogenesis but just maybe that's also the reason that so far no one can reproduce any such abiogenetic process - even in theory.

So in this scenario of the Earth organs going out-of-phase and devouring each other, everything becomes much more difficult, much more resisting, with much greater friction. (please note that the above picture is greatly simplified. For example, the kingdoms of Nature have their Cosmic counterparts too, it's not all within the Earthly body.) That's how we reach the story in Genesis where it's said "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (clearly here it's being spoken about the Earthly man, made of the Earth's substance. The Spirit of Man comes from elsewhere)

So in the Fall man has to worry about food and clothing. He is pressed down by the environmental forces and he has to fight for his survival. Now we're getting back to the Kingdom. The Sun Spirit, the "I", has made its way into the dense decohered Earthly spectrum. Now it begins its work of bringing back the resonant harmonic relations of the Cosmic Organism. This is what everyone of us does individually through Thinking in which the "I" manifests. So far humans are busy hijacking this Thinking for the satisfaction of egoistic desires which perpetuates the out-of-phase relationships, keeps the stock market graph chaotic and makes everyone worry for the 'daily bread'.

The Gospel tells us that we can never fix things by focusing on the bread. As long as the decohering forces rule, the bread will always be uncertain. Instead, the Gospel invites us to first seek the Kingdom and its righteousness. What does this mean? It starts from the individual. Each person is an image of the Cosmic organism. As Thinking is recognized more and more as manifestation of the Cosmic Spirit within the sensory spectrum, it becomes more and more empowered, it becomes creative. Today it is entirely within reach of every human being to take their destiny in their own hands. By enlightening our Thinking, filling our hearts with Love and conducting through our Will only noble and righteous deeds, we begin to restore the coherence within our own being. This leads to actual healing. Of course it's of great significance also what we eat, drink, breathe. We can't expect to elevate ourselves spiritually while at the same time we destroy our physical vessel.

Once these powerful impulses move beyond the individual we already have the means for transformation of family and social life. All of this can only happen by completely free and fully conscious individual initiative. Ultimately, as the invisible structure of the Cosmic organism begins to be harmonized, the effects of the Fall begin to be reversed. In the far future this will extend to the other realms of Nature, for example man will be able to communicate with the animal kingdom. If we may use the expression, to live in such a harmonic spectral structure would be as having perpetual luck. Food will be there when needed, the right beings will cooperate when needed and so on, just as in a healthy organism a cell receives its nutrition on time, it gets its immune defense on time and so on. Of course all of this will happen not instinctively but fully consciously it will be up to us to create these resonant and harmonic relations within the spectrum of existence. Clearly this is still very far ahead of time. And the funny thing is that humans still don't even know that such a work must be undertaken.

[Soul_of_Shu]

(Now wrestling with the idea of coordinating a T-shirt campaign from my sofa. "Vote AshvinP - he knows the score". Of course, it could go the other way too, depending on that draft address.)

For the record, I'd vote for Ashvin, albeit, I'd have to be Murican, or he'd have to run for Prime Minster of Canuckistan, but I somehow seriously doubt that he's going to give up his day job for that exercise in futility.

[Soul_of_Shu]

What would y'all make of a candidate running on this platform?

[AshvinP]

(Now wrestling with the idea of coordinating a T-shirt campaign from my sofa. "Vote AshvinP - he knows the score". Of course, it could go the other way too, depending on that draft address.)

For the record, I'd vote for Ashvin, albeit, I'd have to be Murican, or he'd have to run for Prime Minster of Canuckistan, but I somehow seriously doubt that he's going to give up his day job for that exercise in futility.

Thanks, Dana, and I will gladly move up to Canada if you provide me food and shelter I am sure I can find some legal work to do there.

Also, I am a natural born citizen of the U.S. so eligible to run for President, but would rather be homeless than depend on a career in politics...

[Soul_of_Shu]

Thanks, Dana, and I will gladly move up to Canada if you provide me food and shelter I am sure I can find some legal work to do there.

As long as you have your vaccine passport

I'm curious about your take/critique on this Jordan Hall assessment ...