Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, Idealism vs Materialism

[Cleric K]

Speaking of which, another question for Cleric: what's up with the notion of transitioning from 4th density to 5th? Does that correlate to any spheres of spiritual activity in Steiner-esque cosmology?

Not really. Well, with some stretch of imagination we can always find some superficial mapping between them but we must be clear that there's fundamental difference between what is called World in the esoteric traditions and the New Age literature. Most New Agey systems that I know (by the way one of the most comprehensive ones is Anna Hayes'. They've really put much effort into this one I would say, as sci-fi scenario, it's much more entertaining than TC's Large Computer System ) have pretty similar conceptions of the 'densities'/dimensions. They are viewed more or less as parallel worlds, each one with it's own bodies, planets, etc. but of course of somewhat finer and more malleable matter, the higher we go.

One will hardly find any genuine Gnostic cosmology in New Age materials. The reason is because it's much more convenient to take our human life as an atomic entity and just copy-paste it in different imagined dimensions. True penetration into higher worlds reveals the Worlds as 'layers' (which of course we must imagine intepenetrating, all filling the entirety of space) of which the human being is as a cross-section so to speak (in the way I've tried to illustrate in the Deep MAL picture, for example).

The New Age densities are so sweet for the intellect because they demand no exertion. They are so pleasantly convenient. We need no self-knowledge at all. We just need to fantasize ourselves teleported in a different more ethereal world. Compare this with the work needed to explore patiently our own being and differentiate within it the different strata (the most crude of which are perception, thinking, feeling, willing). Not so easy. And people like easy That's what they pay for.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Not really. Well, with some stretch of imagination we can always find some superficial mapping between them

Yeah but Steiner wasn't a breatharian ... So there !!

[AshvinP]

I haven't been able to meet or hear of anyone who strikes me as having had this upgrade. In a world of 8 billion, and mass internet connectivity, it's almost surprising that we don't come across a few homo sapientior types. So I'm a skeptic. Harari says homo deus will have to be bio-engineered; but that won't be for spiritual qualities, will it?

Sharing your skepticism. If we look back at the millennia of the human history, we can see a certain progress in human behavior and mentality, much of it can be attributed to the technological and cultural progress and access to quality education. But the progress has been very slow, gradual and haven't yet touched the deep instinctive egoic human survival mechanisms. There have been many examples of spiritually progressed individuals, but they represent only a negligible minority of population. But also, over the history, there have been a lot of utopian theories (as part of some spiritual traditions, or as philosophical or sociopolitical theories such as communism) that might seem like very attractive and easy silver-bullet solutions to humanity's problems, but never worked in practice due to their over-simplistic understanding of reality and of the underlying problems. So, to hope that the humanity as a whole will upgrade into homo-trans-egoic within a century (by massively adopting idealism of Anthroposophy or what's not) would be rather naive.

But we should ask ourselves why do we have such unrealistic expectations for the progress of humanity? After all, the human progress is orders of magnitude faster compared to the natural selection based evolution progress. Why would we expect it to be even faster?

And you should continue to ask yourself why you keep misrepresenting Anthroposophy. Your posts have really become farces. It is like me coming to your place of work and shooting down your proposed engineering designs without knowing a single thing about engineering. How could you possibly know about it if you have not read anything by its founder, Steiner? And if you have read something by him, and want to critique it, you can post an excerpt and make a logical critique. We know that won't happen, though, because it is the hard work of reading and understanding that you guys desperately want to avoid. Anthroposophy says each individual must do that hard work or they will not make any spiritual evolutionary progress, which is basically the opposite of your bolded statement. The very attractive and easy "solution" is to avoid spiritual effort altogether and assume all will be revealed to you upon death, or at least you don't have to worry about what's valid and invalid until after you are dead. It is exactly what the materialist does - they say spiritual reality, if it exists, cannot be discerned while we are alive, and probably we will die and that's it. Think about it... you have taken materialism and simply called it "nondual" and "idealist" to make your view seem less mechanistic and absurd. The underlined part shows you are still failing to take idealism seriously, as you think natural selection of physical stuff over billions of years is what drives human evolution. Every idealist during or after the rise of materialism was aiming to combat its de-spiritualization, de-mythologization, etc. of the world - you are trying to circumvent all of that and regress right back to mechanistic materialism.

[Eugene I]

And you should continue to ask yourself why you keep misrepresenting Anthroposophy. Your posts have really become farces. It is like me coming to your place of work and shooting down your proposed engineering designs without knowing a single thing about engineering. How could you possibly know about it if you have not read anything by its founder, Steiner? And if you have read something by him, and want to critique it, you can post an excerpt and make a logical critique. We know that won't happen, though, because it is the hard work of reading and understanding that you guys desperately want to avoid. Anthroposophy says each individual must do that hard work or they will not make any spiritual evolutionary progress, which is basically the opposite of your bolded statement. The very attractive and easy "solution" is to avoid spiritual effort altogether and assume all will be revealed to you upon death, or at least you don't have to worry about what's valid and invalid until after you are dead. It is exactly what the materialist does - they say spiritual reality, if it exists, cannot be discerned while we are alive, and probably we will die and that's it. Think about it... you have taken materialism and simply called it "nondual" and "idealist" to make your view seem less mechanistic and absurd. The underlined part shows you are still failing to take idealism seriously, as you think natural selection of physical stuff over billions of years is what drives human evolution. Every idealist during or after the rise of materialism was aiming to combat its de-spiritualization, de-mythologization, etc. of the world - you are trying to circumvent all of that and regress right back to mechanistic materialism.

My response to this would be exactly like Steve's, he said it all:

I do believe that almost any metaphysical thinking can have elements of truth. Now for me, personally, I get off the bus when, from my perspective, 'things go off the rails'. For instance, from my recent foray into Steiner's thought, I did feel things went off the rails quickly. Way too much speculation that seemed fanciful. Here's a couple of images that, in my opinion, reflect that

[AshvinP]

And you should continue to ask yourself why you keep misrepresenting Anthroposophy. Your posts have really become farces. It is like me coming to your place of work and shooting down your proposed engineering designs without knowing a single thing about engineering. How could you possibly know about it if you have not read anything by its founder, Steiner? And if you have read something by him, and want to critique it, you can post an excerpt and make a logical critique. We know that won't happen, though, because it is the hard work of reading and understanding that you guys desperately want to avoid. Anthroposophy says each individual must do that hard work or they will not make any spiritual evolutionary progress, which is basically the opposite of your bolded statement. The very attractive and easy "solution" is to avoid spiritual effort altogether and assume all will be revealed to you upon death, or at least you don't have to worry about what's valid and invalid until after you are dead. It is exactly what the materialist does - they say spiritual reality, if it exists, cannot be discerned while we are alive, and probably we will die and that's it. Think about it... you have taken materialism and simply called it "nondual" and "idealist" to make your view seem less mechanistic and absurd. The underlined part shows you are still failing to take idealism seriously, as you think natural selection of physical stuff over billions of years is what drives human evolution. Every idealist during or after the rise of materialism was aiming to combat its de-spiritualization, de-mythologization, etc. of the world - you are trying to circumvent all of that and regress right back to mechanistic materialism.

My response to this would be exactly like Steve's, he said it all:

I do believe that almost any metaphysical thinking can have elements of truth. Now for me, personally, I get off the bus when, from my perspective, 'things go off the rails'. For instance, from my recent foray into Steiner's thought, I did feel things went off the rails quickly. Way too much speculation that seemed fanciful. Here's a couple of images that, in my opinion, reflect that

And my response to that is exactly as Cleric responded to Steve, which unsurprisingly went unaddressed.

I still find it odd, though, that hierarchies smell of elitism to you. The table with spiritual beings that you referenced is nothing else but a higher resolution version of your own Venn diagrams. So it's not really about hierarchies [or "fanciful speculation"] but about the insistence that any such higher resolution view can not possibly be attained to (because we are by definition a bubble of consciousness completely opaque to the Divine Consciousness). Since any possibility for higher order consciousness living in the same spiritual space as the Divine and concentric to it, is dismissed out of hand, the only possibility left is to declare any such higher resolution views derived from careful investigation of the higher realms, to be nothing but power structures (another kind of Church) forced upon humans for their enslavement.

So before even addressing these higher resolution diagrams, one must examine himself and be clear: what is it in me that resist the idea of consciousness growing into the Divine? Whose interests I'm really protecting by fiercely maintaining the rigid walls of my personal consciousness?

[Eugene I]

So before even addressing these higher resolution diagrams, one must examine himself and be clear: what is it in me that resist the idea of consciousness growing into the Divine? Whose interests I'm really protecting by fiercely maintaining the rigid walls of my personal consciousness?

Most spiritual traditions are paths for consciousness to grow into the Divine, but some paths go off the rails.

If my fellow engineer tells me that he designed a device for spiritual science to communicate with Archangel Michael, I will not bother figuring out how his device works but will recommend him to talk to a psychiatrist.

[AshvinP]

So before even addressing these higher resolution diagrams, one must examine himself and be clear: what is it in me that resist the idea of consciousness growing into the Divine? Whose interests I'm really protecting by fiercely maintaining the rigid walls of my personal consciousness?

Most spiritual traditions are paths for consciousness to grow into the Divine, but some paths go off the rails.

If my fellow engineer tells me that he designed a device for spiritual science to communicate with Archangel Michael, I will not bother figuring out how his device works but will recommend him to talk to a psychiatrist.

The words matter here, Eugene. We need to be precise. Specifically the word "grow". What spiritual path are you familiar with which says we can grow, in this lifetime, through the concentric layers of consciousness towards the Divine? The only ones you are familiar with which say that, like Anthroposophy, are the ones you also reject out of hand for various illogical reasons which keep shifting from "power hierarchies", to "fanciful imagination", to "insanity", in a never-ending cycle of unimaginative materialistic thought. Other times, when you are pretending you have considered the view carefully, because the other standard objections have been addressed, you say "I agree" but everyone can have their own ascent through the layers according to their own egoistic pleasure. And that's what this all boils down to you - your ego clinging to it's own desires at the expense of the Whole.

Do you think Jung should have also talked to a psychiatrist (perhaps Freud?) when he wrote the following in Modern Man in Search of a Soul?

According to the primitive idea of mana, the beautiful moves us, and it is not we who create beauty. A certain person is a devil - we have not projected our own evil upon him and in this way made a devil out of him... The mana conception has it that there exists something like a widely distributed force in the external world that produces all those effects which are out of the common. Everything that exists, acts, for otherwise it would not be actual...

So far we can easily follow this primitive idea. The difficulty arises when we try to carry its implications further, for they reverse the process of psychic projection of which I have spoken. These implications are as follows: it is not my imagination or my awe that makes a sorcerer of the medicine-man; on the contrary, he is a sorcerer and projects his magical powers upon me. Ghosts are not hallucinations of my mind, but appear to me of their own volition...

The question is nothing less than this: 'does the psychic in general - that is, the spirit, or the unconscious arise in us; or is the psyche, in the early stages of consciousness, actually outside us in the form of arbitrary powers with intentions of their own, and does it gradually come to take its place within us in the course of psychic developments? Were the dissociated psychic contents - to use our modern terms - ever parts of the psyches of individuals, or were they rather from the beginning psychic entities existing in themselves... Were they only by degrees embodied by man in the course of development, so that they gradually constituted in him that world which we now call the psyche?

The whole question strikes us as dangerously paradoxical, and yet we are able to conceive something of the kind. Not only the religious teacher, but the pedagogue as well, assumes that it is possible to implant in the human psyche something that was not previously there. The power of suggestion and influence in a fact... the idea of a complicated building-up of the psyche is expressed in primitive form is many widespread beliefs - for instance, possession, the incarnation of ancestral spirits, the immigration of souls, and so forth. When someone sneezes, we still say: "God bless you", and mean by it: "I hope your new soul will do you no harm."

And before you claim he was just speculating and asking questions, take note that I can easily demonstrate to you from his other writings that such a claim is not true and that he believed the best and most logical explanation for these archetypal psychic powers are spiritual beings not unlike the Archangel Michael manifesting within our soul's activity.

[Eugene I]

There are healthy and unhealthy ways to search for a Soul.
Often the eyes speak more than philosophical books about the essence of what is being communicated.
In that respect I find the photos of Steiner and Jung very telling.




Compare it with Maharshi

[AshvinP]

There are healthy and unhealthy ways to search for a Soul.
Often the eyes speak more than philosophical books about the essence of what is being communicated.
In that respect I find the photos of Steiner and Jung very telling.

You have officially lost it, my friend. I am glad you posted this though, so it's clear to everyone else that your incessant anti-Anthroposophical comments have nothing to do with philosophy, metaphysics, spirituality, science, logic, or reason. I am sure BK will find your erudite critique of Jung here very informed and persuasive as well.

[Eugene I]

And another way to tell how healthy a spiritual path is - is how the followers of that path behave and if the spiritual practice of that path helps them to be better persons. "Ye shall know them by their fruit."