Cleric's Responses to Mystical Metaphysics (or How to Make a Logical Argument)

[Eugene I]

To begin with, imaginative vision is something that can only be present in the soul after being developed. After all, a five-year-old child is not yet a mathematician; the mathematical pictorial capacity must first be developed. It is also not strange that a development of soul from a pre-mathematical capacity to a mathematical capacity can be continued further in a certain way. That is, what has already been brought to a certain clarity of inner experience in mathematical thought can be developed further. Now, however, we must ask ourselves if someone is correct who says, "Yes, but the relationship must be established to ordinary sense-perceptible observation." In one way he is quite correct, and it is important to pursue this relationship in a detailed way.

So you are basically saying that any spiritual experiences, be them mine or of other people having spiritual, meditative or NDE experiences, have nothing to do with "higher cognition" the Steiner and Cleric are able to attain, even though people do regularly report enhanced cognitive abilities during such experiences (me included, but especially those of NDE); and that is because if me or other people would experience higher cognition, they would undoubtedly report the same knowledge that Steiner and Cleric have attained. This is clearly a superiority claim with quite twisted logic.

Now in this sentence:

I can't claim that this is all that can be available to conscious beings. You seem to claim that you possess some other mysterious experiential-cognitive faculties that allow you to acquire deeper knowledge of the world of ideas/causes behind the "screen" of perceptions, and I admit that I do not have such abilities. Since I have no confirmation of such faculties based on my own experience, I have no grounds to believe you, but on the other hand, have no grounds to prove you wrong either, so my only option is to remain agnostic and indecisive about it.

What I meant here is that any spiritual experience I ever had was always part of my direct conscious experience, which means any cognition, perception, idea or imagination I ever had always appeared and appears on my "screen" (space) of my conscious experience available to me, even though I have had a wide range of spiritual experiences (including many instances of telepathic communications), most of them hardly describable in words. But I can still assume that there is a reality "behind" the "screen" or "space" of my direct conscious experience available to me (because I'm not a solipsist), and this is exactly what I said above.

So, the point is: no matter what kind or what level of spiritual perceptions, experiences or ideas you can ever have, individual or shared, they are always your direct conscious experiences and appear in the space ("screen") of your awareness. You simply can not have any direct access to any realities without direct conscious experience of them, you can only experience them as they appear or exist in the space (on the "screen") of your awareness. So, the claim that someone can directly and experientially know something "behind" the screen/space of their awareness simply makes no sense: you either directly know something because it appears within your space of awareness, or you do not.

[Cleric K]

So, the point is: no matter what kind or what level of spiritual perceptions, experiences or ideas you can ever have, individual or shared, they are always your direct conscious experiences and appear in the space ("screen") of your awareness. You simply can not have any direct access to any realities without direct conscious experience of them, you can only experience them as they appear or exist in the space (on the "screen") of your awareness. So, the claim that someone can directly and experientially know something "behind" the screen/space of their awareness simply makes no sense: you either directly know something because it appears within your space of awareness, or you do not.

It does make perfect sense but the flat view has to be overcome. As an engineer you should be quite comfortable with the idea that the movement of thoughts, sympathies and antipathies, etc. are only the surface expression of deeper spiritual 'machinery'. This is the 'behind'. It's not behind your monitor, it's more appropriate to think of it as behind your face/front part of the brain, in what is subconscious. To know about the subconscious as simple shapes on the screen is the psychoanalytical, Freudian approach, which is completely intellectual. We build intellectual picture of what might be living in the subconscious. Higher cognition moves the eye of the spirit 'behind our face' (similar to the Guardian Angel's perspective in the Alex Grey's painting), so that the physical, soul and spirit processes that make our ordinary ego 'tick' are now 'in front' of us. We live and weave completely into the normally subconscious layers of soul and spirit that constitute our Earthly character. Of course, if one assumes that his spirit eye is already at the outer periphery of the One Consciousness, naturally they'll allow themselves to have direct experiences only on the sensory screen (which includes normal sensory-like imagination, dreams, visions, etc.) confronted and thought about with rigid intellectual concepts. That is, they'll allow themselves to think about their ego only in external psychoanalytical way, or better still, simply push away any thoughts about an ego, which leaves what lies behind the face completely in the shadows.

[Cleric K]

So I hope that we've cleared that Thinking path shouldn't be confused with intellectual-theoretical path. Instead, it is the direct facing with everything that chains the free spirit. It is Thinking path in the sense that we're not blindly following dogmatic rules and rituals but everything must pass through our clear cognition. Yet this is only the beginning. Everything passes through clear cognition but if it doesn't turn into Loving impulse in the Heart and devoted deeds of the Will, we are not yet human in the true sense of the word.

To clarify my point, when I inspect the above paragraph, I am unable to translate the thoughts into understandable unadorned English. It appears to me that the author is trying to wrap thoughts in psuedo-intrigue and mystery. For comparison, Rupert Spira speaks from common personal experience.

If you would like I can help you understand the paragraph. Then, after you have deep understanding of it you may rewrite it into plain English such that it satisfies your criteria. That will be useful feedback for me and will help me express better in the future.

[AshvinP]

So, the point is: no matter what kind or what level of spiritual perceptions, experiences or ideas you can ever have, individual or shared, they are always your direct conscious experiences and appear in the space ("screen") of your awareness. You simply can not have any direct access to any realities without direct conscious experience of them, you can only experience them as they appear or exist in the space (on the "screen") of your awareness. So, the claim that someone can directly and experientially know something "behind" the screen/space of their awareness simply makes no sense: you either directly know something because it appears within your space of awareness, or you do not.

It does make perfect sense but the flat view has to be overcome. As an engineer you should be quite comfortable with the idea that the movement of thoughts, sympathies and antipathies, etc. are only the surface expression of deeper spiritual 'machinery'. This is the 'behind'. It's not behind your monitor, it's more appropriate to think of it as behind your face/front part of the brain, in what is subconscious. To know about the subconscious as simple shapes on the screen is the psychoanalytical, Freudian approach, which is completely intellectual. We build intellectual picture of what might be living in the subconscious. Higher cognition moves the eye of the spirit 'behind our face' (similar to the Guardian Angel's perspective in the Alex Grey's painting), so that the physical, soul and spirit processes that make our ordinary ego 'tick' are now 'in front' of us. We live and weave completely into the normally subconscious layers of soul and spirit that constitute our Earthly character. Of course, if one assumes that his spirit eye is already at the outer periphery of the One Consciousness, naturally they'll allow themselves to have direct experiences only on the sensory screen (which includes normal sensory-like imagination, dreams, visions, etc.) confronted and thought about with rigid intellectual concepts. That is, they'll allow themselves to think about their ego only in external psychoanalytical way, or better still, simply push away any thoughts about an ego, which leaves what lies behind the face completely in the shadows.

I'm not sure Eugene is even granting reality to flattened Freudian subconscious... certainly not Jungian depth psychology of collective subconscious, and of course not thr living shared ideational realms of spiritual science. Anyway, the normal reaction when people don't understand something, as Cleric keeps pointing out, is to ask questions with genuine desire to get answers. It is not to bombard the thread with all manner of obfuscations. That only happens when someone is truly disgusted by an idea, for reasons unknown to them, and they can't help but express that disgust. That we need to explain this to full grown adults is another matter entirely...

Anybody still confused should read the Anthroposophy for Dummies thread and see how Anthony has been going about it. I am sure he doesn't agree with all we have written to him. In fact he may downright disagree with a bunch of what we are writing to him, but he also knows, like any reasonable person, that he needs to know more first before intelligently commenting or critiquing one way or another. It's really that not that complicated, folks. Socrates figured this stuff out 2500 years ago.

[Eugene I]

It does make perfect sense but the flat view has to be overcome. As an engineer you should be quite comfortable with the idea that the movement of thoughts, sympathies and antipathies, etc. are only the surface expression of deeper spiritual 'machinery'. This is the 'behind'. It's not behind your monitor, it's more appropriate to think of it as behind your face/front part of the brain, in what is subconscious. To know about the subconscious as simple shapes on the screen is the psychoanalytical, Freudian approach, which is completely intellectual. We build intellectual picture of what might be living in the subconscious. Higher cognition moves the eye of the spirit 'behind our face' (similar to the Guardian Angel's perspective in the Alex Grey's painting), so that the physical, soul and spirit processes that make our ordinary ego 'tick' are now 'in front' of us. We live and weave completely into the normally subconscious layers of soul and spirit that constitute our Earthly character. Of course, if one assumes that his spirit eye is already at the outer periphery of the One Consciousness, naturally they'll allow themselves to have direct experiences only on the sensory screen (which includes normal sensory-like imagination, dreams, visions, etc.) confronted and thought about with rigid intellectual concepts. That is, they'll allow themselves to think about their ego only in external psychoanalytical way, or better still, simply push away any thoughts about an ego, which leaves what lies behind the face completely in the shadows.

That's true, and the insights into the "machinery behind" the mundane human thoughts and perception and studying/observing the mechanics of the ego structures have always been part of many spiritual traditions of the past (including Buddhist: there is a reason they called their meditation technique "Vipassana" which means "insight meditation"). But what I'm saying is: once you penetrate into the deeper levels of the "machinery", everything you can ever perceive, experience or directly know still always appear on the "screen" (in the "space") of your awareness, so you simply expand the space into the layers that have been previously unconscious. But you still can not "penetrate" beyond the screen/space of your awareness (because it is not possible to experience anything that you would not be aware of, anything "beyond" the space of your direct awareness).

So we are back to corner 1: many meditative and spiritual practices of many traditions have been doing exactly the same: they expand the limits of our awareness into higher/lower realms of our consciousness machinery. Yet, you claim that your level of cognition is by far higher than that of others, that you are far ahead of all other traditions and are able to penetrate into much higher/deeper levels of cognition and attain the knowledge of higher-level truths not available to practitioners of other paths. Most content of your posts is targeted do demean the practices and spiritual experiences of other traditions (Eastern in particular) or NDE experiencers, and demonstrate that the level of "high-cognition" that you attained following the path of Anthroposophy is far superior to those. And this superiority claim this the real problem of your spiritual science.

[Soul_of_Shu]

To clarify my point, when I inspect the above paragraph, I am unable to translate the thoughts into understandable unadorned English. It appears to me that the author is trying to wrap thoughts in psuedo-intrigue and mystery. For comparison, Rupert Spira speaks from common personal experience.

Though I could be mistaken, it may be also instructive to keep in mind that English is not Cleric's native language. And while he speaks it very well, there are always gong to be challenges in mastering the subtleties of a different language, often making it come across as more unusual than what we're used in North American. Even native English speakers when writing books for publication have to have good editors go through it to make it as concise and intelligible as possible. I doubt that he has a literary editor at his disposal.

[Eugene I]

So anyway, we are going in circles here as usual. But I'm curious: out of 250 registered members of the forum and after huge volumes of topics, materials and posts produced by Creric and Ashvin over the last 6 months, how many members would actually subscribe to the Cleric-Ashvin version of spiritual science?
Those who would subscribe please vote "yes" below and briefly explain your reasons.

[AshvinP]

It does make perfect sense but the flat view has to be overcome. As an engineer you should be quite comfortable with the idea that the movement of thoughts, sympathies and antipathies, etc. are only the surface expression of deeper spiritual 'machinery'. This is the 'behind'. It's not behind your monitor, it's more appropriate to think of it as behind your face/front part of the brain, in what is subconscious. To know about the subconscious as simple shapes on the screen is the psychoanalytical, Freudian approach, which is completely intellectual. We build intellectual picture of what might be living in the subconscious. Higher cognition moves the eye of the spirit 'behind our face' (similar to the Guardian Angel's perspective in the Alex Grey's painting), so that the physical, soul and spirit processes that make our ordinary ego 'tick' are now 'in front' of us. We live and weave completely into the normally subconscious layers of soul and spirit that constitute our Earthly character. Of course, if one assumes that his spirit eye is already at the outer periphery of the One Consciousness, naturally they'll allow themselves to have direct experiences only on the sensory screen (which includes normal sensory-like imagination, dreams, visions, etc.) confronted and thought about with rigid intellectual concepts. That is, they'll allow themselves to think about their ego only in external psychoanalytical way, or better still, simply push away any thoughts about an ego, which leaves what lies behind the face completely in the shadows.

That's true, and the insights into the "machinery behind" the mundane human thoughts and perception and studying/observing the mechanics of the ego structures have always been part of many spiritual traditions of the past (including Buddhist: there is a reason they called their meditation technique "Vipassana" which means "insight meditation"). But what I'm saying is: once you penetrate into the deeper levels of the "machinery", everything you can ever perceive, experience or directly know still always appear on the "screen" (in the "space") of your awareness, so you simply expand the space into the layers that have been previously unconscious. But you still can not "penetrate" beyond the screen/space of your awareness (because it is not possible to experience anything that you would not be aware of, anything "beyond" the space of your direct awareness).

So we are back to corner 1: many meditative and spiritual practices of many traditions have been doing exactly the same: they expand the limits of our awareness into higher/lower realms of our consciousness machinery. Yet, you claim that your level of cognition is by far higher than that of others, that you are far ahead of all other traditions and are able to penetrate into much higher/deeper levels of cognition and attain the knowledge of higher-level truths not available to practitioners of other paths. Most content of your posts is targeted do demean the practices and spiritual experiences of other traditions (Eastern in particular) or NDE experiencers, and demonstrate that the level of "high-cognition" that you attained following the path of Anthroposophy is far superior to those. And this superiority claim this the real problem of your spiritual science.

Eugene - everyting written above is either incoherent (1st paragraph) or downright falsehoods (2nd paragraph). I don't think you are lying intentionally, rather I think your subconscious prejudices have clouded your judgment so badly that you cannot remember anything either Cleric, or yourself, have written on this topic. Sometimes you say you have experienced the same higher cognition as Cleric, other times you say you have not, other times you say it doesn't exist, other times you say it is all delusional cult-like indoctrination, other times you said "I agree with all of that but... Godel's candy shop!" (that is the actual extent of your argument), and now you are asserting blatant falsehoods about Cleric and our position - "demean the practices and spiritual experiences of other traditions (Eastern in particular)" and "not available to practitioners of other paths". We have both clearly expressed dozens of times that all other spritual traditions are integral developments in the overall process which will continue to produce fruit as we progress into future epochs (in fact the Western cultural traditions are now in decline). Cleric has also shown how the path to higher cognition is available to everyone. Each person on this forum, with a bit of good will, effort, patience, and attentive thought, can begin on that path and a few here already have in good faith, with absolutely nothing to lose if the exercises do not produce fruit. So, please, spare us this routine and start doing some of your own memory exercises so we don't remain forever in this nightmarish rendition of Groundhog's Day.

In the meantime, let's take another trip down memory lane so everyone is clear about Cleric's and my own position:


viewtopic.php?p=6210#p6210

Bhagavad Gita portrays in a magnificent way the culmination of an epoch of evolution. The basic mood can be expressed as something like: "The soul is sinking deeper and deeper towards the sensory dream-pictures. Unless this is counteracted, the soul runs the real danger to be dissipated in the fragments. The impulse of Krishna gives the soul force that counterbalances this descent. Yes, the soul is sinking deeper and deeper into decoherence but it must keep the image of the Divinity within itself if it is to survive and keep its wholeness."
...
These are very deep topics and it's perfectly normal if very little of the above is immediately understood. The important thing is to realize that everything is moving, evolving, unfolding. The Divinity that spoke through Krishna is not exactly the same as the one that went through the gate of Golgotha, nor it is exactly the same as the Divinity that speaks today within our souls. The Sun-Spirit is itself going through metamorphic development. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;" Nothing stays static or ever repeats in the exactly same form. This is precisely what the Christ impulse should lead us to experience. Through the event of Golgotha a Cosmic process was triggered that begins to redeem the world of Maya. Not simply to cast it away as useless dream picture, but to infuse if with the forces of the Word. In other words, we only know the world of Maya when we attain to the perspectives from which that world is spoken forth. This is what it means to spiritualize matter - to experience how the Spirit works into the forms and take on from there our own creative work. This work begins from our own substance. Physical matter is the last thing we'll master. We begin from the more immediate and malleable towards the more resisting and opaque. We begin through our thinking substance which must first and foremost transform the astral substance - our desires and passions - and make it a docile instrument of the Spirit.

As far as the Bodhisattvas, these are the most advanced members of the human evolution. Every time a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha an important impulse is added to human development. The important thing is that in the Buddha impulses humanity works as if from below upwards. Something is transformed within human nature in order to accommodate the Divine. As I've said several times, the deed of Gautama Buddha hasn't even reached its real significance yet. The perfection of perceiving, thinking, feeling, willing - which is at the heart of this impulse - is yet to be unfolded in its true grandeur. Similarly, in the future Bodhisattva Maitreya, through his attainment of Buddhahood, will unfold the impulse of Love in ways unfathomable today. Love is to become a real creative force.

All of this happens in the context of the unfoldment of the Christ impulse - the Spiritualization of reality through Love. This is the master blueprint. What happened through the event of Golgotha is only the seed for something that will unfold in all future time "and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.". Just as our ordinary life can be very diverse, yet it all starts with the birth event, within the context of which everything unfolds, so the birth of the Spirit within the physical realm marks a starting point within the context of which the Cosmic unfoldment will proceed. There'll be many more impulses that will concretize the details of this process but nevertheless everything is within the same context - that the Divine should grow more and more from the seed that physical man is. This is a twofold process. Physical man is the soil that is being refined below but the true Man comes from above and transfigures it. The accommodation of this higher Man is something that we can initiate only in complete freedom, out of Love.

As long as we understand things in their evolutionary context everything fits into place. The whole Cosmic development is an organic process, rhythmically unfolding.

[Soul_of_Shu]

So anyway, we are going in circles here as usual. But I'm curious: out of 250 member of the forum and after huge volumes of topics, materials and posts produced by Cleric and Ashvin over the last 6 months, how many members would actually subscribe to the Cleric-Ashvin version of spiritual science?
Those who would subscribe please vote "yes" below and briefly explain your reasons.

Guess I should have activated the 'poll' function

For the record, my answer would be yes and no, as with just about every model delineating metaphysical/cosmological models I've investigated, BK's, Gebser's, Wilber's, Plotinus', Whitehead's, Aurobindo's, Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Tibetan Buddhism, Aztec cosmology, the Seth books, and more, there are some aspects of Steiner's ideas, which are the basis of Ashvin/Clerics ideas, that I resonate with, and some that I don't. Indeed, of the vast volumes of things he has written and lectured about, covering a multifarious range of topics, it would be impossible that he wasn't wrong about some of it. And even that which I resonate with, I still consider provisional, pending further developments, but he's no exception in that regard.

[ParadoxZone]

Eugene,

Yes.

Not fully subscribed, yet seriously investigating.

Reasons

1. Makes sense of "personal" experiences, some intuitions and many concensus facts about the world. Those personal experiences are historic, some are ongoing and persistent.

2. From reviewing the argumentation, it's become clearer and clearer that cleverer minds than mine are unable or unwilling to put up a logical argument against the Cleric/Ashvin view of the world. I've been looking for that recently. This current appeal to democracy as well as previous posting of pictures of various eyes has caused me to infer this. Of course I could be persuaded otherwise. However, you'd have to actually read PoF and start with trying to dismantle the phenomenology described therein. I've managed it, others are doing it, yet you haven't. Why not?

PS - There's nothing lacking in Cleric's English writing.