Questions about higher consciousness

[idlecuriosity]

@Cleric, (editing that I'm not trying to be rude here, just bluntly curious, apologies in advance.) I had to add, if I end up having to use those understandings for those things then wouldn't it just be that way as a matter of course and not necessitate you telling me I have to think a certain way first? I can't help but feel there should no need to stipulate that prerequisite, I think, in the same way Lou stated in another thread that his seeming exaltation of an anarchist's writings wasn't a thing because he thought that their ideas were necessarily better, but because he wanted to steadily work it out with a step by step unbiased perspective of it. He cited that if the methodology that always dominates was better, materialism wouldn't have gained so much traction despite it's structural fallibility. Indeed, I agree.

I would think more fondly of just letting the journey in and of itself take me without any preconceptions about what to expect. If I must use it for higher purposes, I would become that way by matter of course I think. If my life has taught distilled any humility to me it's that we don't control everything and that's alright

[AshvinP]

Would higher consciousness enable me more self control and inner strength? I definitely consider the, not only materialistic, but 'typical' way people are taught to conceive of problems to be suboptimal even within the boundaries of what's considered mundane understanding, as if cultural paradigms and zeitgeists work as a sort of prison for our perception.

It absolutely leads to better self control and inner strength. And many other things. But you might first want to learn more. The big question is why do you want this self control and inner strength?

Seeking higher knowledge as means of enhancement of Earthly life is never a good idea. This inevitably leads to the dark arts.

Seek higher knowledge only if you are not afraid that in the light of every step towards self-knowledge (higher knowledge begins first and foremost with self-knowledge), your understanding of what you really are and what goals are worthy or superficial for pursuit, will change accordingly.

Seek higher knowledge only if you are open for the possibility that you'll have to use it for correspondingly higher goals which far transcend our Earthly personal interests.

It's mostly so I'm able to make others happy, which is somewhat contingent on having the strength to perform well. That is why I must grow. Of course, the fact it'd help me with my competitive aspirations is a plus but I was already relatively confident in my 'earthly talents' so to speak!

This is why I want this higher knowledge. It's not because I think I'm special, it's because I've learnt I'm far from it and I can't keep promises I've made like this. I do not know if that satisfies your prerequisites but that's my answer. I'm also unafraid of if it will transform my outlook on or propagate an indifference to failure, I simply view that as an extension of someone shedding the earthly arrogance that one can want something with all their heart and be pompous enough to think defeat isn't just another side of that coin. Someone always has to 'lose' and it just so happens it's my turn this time, that's fair

Some parts of me are more at peace than they might immediately seem. The rest... Probably would benefit being excised by these pursuits if the passage of time doesn't do it's job healing them

*adding, if words sufficed to communicate everything then we'd probably have no need of these firsthand experiences you extol the merits of, but hopefully the picture does a job of communicating why this wouldn't be a useless pursuit and that I'm a rare case of someone who's blindspot in earthly functioning isn't their lack of spiritual enlightenment per se but rather needing to heal spiritual injuries. It's simply that those are seldom distinguishable from weakness to what they interact with and some people are inherently more susceptible to them, whether they begin as or grow to be that way

We should be careful here. "Making others happy" is just as much an "Earthly personal interest" of the sort Cleric is referencing as anything else like power, greed, status, etc. If we examine more closely what we are seeking when we "make others happy", it will likely turn out to be the way that makes us feel about ourselves. This is not "common sense" for the modern age, but nevertheless it holds true under closer scrutiny. That latter part is really what is spiritual, as Cleric said, figuring out what we truly are, and allowing that truth to naturally point us towards what specific endeavors we need to develop for ourselves in Earthly life. The white spiritual path (as opposed to dark arts) is truth-seeking, truth-embodying, and truth-ensouling above all else, i.e. "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free".

[idlecuriosity]

I can't consider that truth as good or bad though. I don't think that'd make sense. To presume that there's an idealistic superposition over our materialistic reality as BK justifiably does in the face of certain absurdities is understandable. However, to extrapolate from this that our consciousness follows from something that shares our values is not much different than abrahamic religion or what those historically did when they described a faultily assumed material reality with material terms. If I'm what you'd subjectively consider a light or dark whirlpool I wouldn't know without looking deeper and void of bias, would I? And whichever it is, I certainly won't be sorry if I end up befitting a certain spiritual definition which you yourself intuited, fellow human that you are and (I assume) not omniscient/all knowing, if you are not.

I also don't think there is a single person alive who deserves to not know who they are. It reminds me of a line in a story from an admittedly very reprehensible character where he fought to defend the birth of something evil that would've been bad news on the basis that it only deserves to be judged for what it does *after* birth and sought to find either a vindication or indictment of his own wayward predilections through observing what this thing would choose. It's the same with understanding more of what we are, right? And if there's anything about us you still don't know, what's to propose the dark arts wouldn't befit us?

You said it's about finding out more of us, so how much do you know personally? If less than about 90%, 50%, 40%... I don't know if a number can be ascribed to it. That might be short sighted. But I'd be really surprised if it's enough to say with certainty that we're a force for good or higher spiritual accomplishments (or at least that we *have* to be)

[AshvinP]

I can't consider that truth as good or bad though. I don't think that'd make sense. To presume that there's an idealistic superposition over our materialistic reality as BK justifiably does in the face of certain absurdities is understandable. However, to extrapolate from this that our consciousness follows from something that shares our values is not much different than abrahamic religion or what those historically did when they described a faultily assumed material reality with material terms. If I'm what you'd subjectively consider a light or dark whirlpool I wouldn't know without looking deeper and void of bias, would I? And whichever it is, I certainly won't be sorry if I end up befitting a certain spiritual definition which you yourself intuited, fellow human that you are and (I assume) not omniscient/all knowing, if you are not.

I also don't think there is a single person alive who deserves to not know who they are. It reminds me of a line in a story from an admittedly very reprehensible character where he fought to defend the birth of something evil that would've been bad news on the basis that it only deserves to be judged for what it does *after* birth and sought to find either a vindication or indictment of his own wayward predilections through observing what this thing would choose. It's the same with understanding more of what we are, right? And if there's anything about us you still don't know, what's to propose the dark arts wouldn't befit us?

You said it's about finding out more of us, so how much do you know personally? If less than about 90%, 50%, 40%... I don't know if a number can be ascribed to it. That might be short sighted. But I'd be really surprised if it's enough to say with certainty that we're a force for good or higher spiritual accomplishments (or at least that we *have* to be)

I was not saying you should presuppose what is good or bad, actually the exact opposite. We should approach the facts before us (not abstract theories, but the givens of our immanent experience) without any sympathy or antipathy, without any moral judgment, without any expectations of what we "should" find, without any predefined aims of "making others happy", etc. All of those things will only color the lens through which we look at the givens of experience, thereby making it more difficult to proceed with unbiased objective assessments. Even the bold part is a pre-judgment about "values" and "relgion" which should be discarded. Whatever objective truths we discover along this journey, no matter what prior systems of thought they do or do not align with, we should confront with honesty, courage, and willingness to uncover more. This alone is what I refer to as "white spiritual path" - a path free of any and all prejudices towards the truths we approach and find. I think I have quoted this from Bergson a million times already, but since you are new I will quote it again, because it is spot on about the sort of careful and systematic knowing effort desperately needed in our times.

An intuition, which claims to project itself with one bound into the eternal, limits itself to the intellectual. For the concepts which the intelligence furnishes, the intuition simply substitutes one single concept which includes them all and which consequently is always the same, by whatever name it is called: Substance, Ego, Idea, Will.

Philosophy, thus understood, necessarily pantheistic, will have no difficulty in explaining everything deductively, since it will have been given beforehand, in a principle which is the concept of concepts, all the real and all the possible. But this explanation will be vague and hypothetical, this unity will be artificial, and this philosophy would apply equally well to a very different world from our own. How much more instructive would be a truly intuitive metaphysics, which would follow the undulations of the real! True, it would not embrace in a single sweep the totality of things; but for each thing it would give an explanation which would fit it exactly, and it alone. It would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one?

Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. Furthermore, it will be a rich, full unity, the unity of a continuity, the unity of our reality, and not that abstract and empty unity, which has come from one supreme generalization, and which could just as well be that of any possible world whatsoever. It is true that philosophy then will demand a new effort for each new problem. No solution will be geometrically deduced from another. No important truth will be achieved by the prolongation of an already acquired truth. We shall have to give up crowding universal science potentially into one principle.

- Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1946)

[idlecuriosity]

I'll read all of this carefully, thank you very much for the reply. Our impasse may be a consequence of how inhibiting words are. I view my desires as important but I do not view them as a 'truth' or of any substantive relevance to how one should pursue growth. Correlation isn't causation in that sense.

"without any predefined aims of "making others happy", etc. "

You are presuming I'm making that decision on account of inherent values. No, no, I fully embrace the material (stressing that; they could have objective qualities in higher consciousness) subjectivity of my desires and ascribe to them an immaterial and unreasonable priority. Current me might not have engendered the bonds I have or the reasons I have if ran through the situations that procreated them twice. That doesn't mean they aren't important to me but I separate the first step on a path that follows the want of it's destination from each step that succeeds it, they are each different. I can segregate an ulterior objective from something that would taint how I cultivate a craft. But you must understand that by undertaking this journey I may actually end up finding that, because I harbour desires and they appear as immaterial but existent qualia to me that have left their material nest and stand disembodied from what created them, accepting my motives could end up being closer to the correct answer than discarding them. I don't know if science can or can't entirely explain why they are important to me, either, but they certainly seem like objective givens to my experience now they exist (e.g. the process of them being borne is an earthly one and contingent on matter, but I don't see why I'd consign to that the same value as what it gives me after.)

Some, not all

last edit; I assume it's contingent on matter. I can speculate about why I might like a person or why their struggles motivate me, but it's only seeming likelihood based on the 'fact' they supposedly occurred on earth. Given the presumed omnipresence of higher consciousness, that too may well be a reductive presupposition

[idlecuriosity]

I can't consider that truth as good or bad though. I don't think that'd make sense. To presume that there's an idealistic superposition over our materialistic reality as BK justifiably does in the face of certain absurdities is understandable. However, to extrapolate from this that our consciousness follows from something that shares our values is not much different than abrahamic religion or what those historically did when they described a faultily assumed material reality with material terms. If I'm what you'd subjectively consider a light or dark whirlpool I wouldn't know without looking deeper and void of bias, would I? And whichever it is, I certainly won't be sorry if I end up befitting a certain spiritual definition which you yourself intuited, fellow human that you are and (I assume) not omniscient/all knowing, if you are not.

I also don't think there is a single person alive who deserves to not know who they are. It reminds me of a line in a story from an admittedly very reprehensible character where he fought to defend the birth of something evil that would've been bad news on the basis that it only deserves to be judged for what it does *after* birth and sought to find either a vindication or indictment of his own wayward predilections through observing what this thing would choose. It's the same with understanding more of what we are, right? And if there's anything about us you still don't know, what's to propose the dark arts wouldn't befit us?

You said it's about finding out more of us, so how much do you know personally? If less than about 90%, 50%, 40%... I don't know if a number can be ascribed to it. That might be short sighted. But I'd be really surprised if it's enough to say with certainty that we're a force for good or higher spiritual accomplishments (or at least that we *have* to be)

I was not saying you should presuppose what is good or bad, actually the exact opposite. We should approach the facts before us (not abstract theories, but the givens of our immanent experience) without any sympathy or antipathy, without any moral judgment, without any expectations of what we "should" find, without any predefined aims of "making others happy", etc. All of those things will only color the lens through which we look at the givens of experience, thereby making it more difficult to proceed with unbiased objective assessments. Even the bold part is a pre-judgment about "values" and "relgion" which should be discarded. Whatever objective truths we discover along this journey, no matter what prior systems of thought they do or do not align with, we should confront with honesty, courage, and willingness to uncover more. This alone is what I refer to as "white spiritual path" - a path free of any and all prejudices towards the truths we approach and find. I think I have quoted this from Bergson a million times already, but since you are new I will quote it again, because it is spot on about the sort of careful and systematic knowing effort desperately needed in our times.

An intuition, which claims to project itself with one bound into the eternal, limits itself to the intellectual. For the concepts which the intelligence furnishes, the intuition simply substitutes one single concept which includes them all and which consequently is always the same, by whatever name it is called: Substance, Ego, Idea, Will.

Philosophy, thus understood, necessarily pantheistic, will have no difficulty in explaining everything deductively, since it will have been given beforehand, in a principle which is the concept of concepts, all the real and all the possible. But this explanation will be vague and hypothetical, this unity will be artificial, and this philosophy would apply equally well to a very different world from our own. How much more instructive would be a truly intuitive metaphysics, which would follow the undulations of the real! True, it would not embrace in a single sweep the totality of things; but for each thing it would give an explanation which would fit it exactly, and it alone. It would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one?

Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. Furthermore, it will be a rich, full unity, the unity of a continuity, the unity of our reality, and not that abstract and empty unity, which has come from one supreme generalization, and which could just as well be that of any possible world whatsoever. It is true that philosophy then will demand a new effort for each new problem. No solution will be geometrically deduced from another. No important truth will be achieved by the prolongation of an already acquired truth. We shall have to give up crowding universal science potentially into one principle.

- Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1946)

I had to edit a bunch, the double post is hopefully an acceptable scarcity. Again, thanks a lot for entertaining my concerns. I'm new to philosophy so I have to clarify a lot of things and even if I seem to be able to 'speak the same tongue' on some level, I already see the contiguity of language struggling with illustrations of my ignorance or the questions I'd want answered about it, leaving alone how it might accommodate the things I'm a little more certain of. It'll take me time to learn to talk about this and one of you considerately repudiated the notion that everything about it is transmissible in text anyway, so I'm grateful for the trying.

edit: ouch, and again, I had to. Baby steps...

[AshvinP]

I'll read all of this carefully, thank you very much for the reply. Our impasse may be a consequence of how inhibiting words are. I view my desires as important but I do not view them as a 'truth' or of any substantive relevance to how one should pursue growth. Correlation isn't causation in that sense.

"without any predefined aims of "making others happy", etc. "

You are presuming I'm making that decision on account of inherent values. No, no, I fully embrace the material (stressing that; they could have objective qualities in higher consciousness) subjectivity of my desires and ascribe to them an immaterial and unreasonable priority. Current me might not have engendered the bonds I have or the reasons I have if ran through the situations that procreated them twice. That doesn't mean they aren't important to me but I separate the first step on a path that follows the want of it's destination from each step that succeeds it, they are each different. I can segregate an ulterior objective from something that would taint how I cultivate a craft. But you must understand that by undertaking this journey I may actually end up finding that, because I harbour desires and they appear as immaterial but existent qualia to me that have left their material nest and stand disembodied from what created them, accepting my motives could end up being closer to the correct answer than discarding them. I don't know if science can or can't entirely explain why they are important to me, either, but they certainly seem like objective givens to my experience now they exist (e.g. the process of them being borne is an earthly one and contingent on matter, but I don't see why I'd consign to that the same value as what it gives me after.)

Some, not all

last edit; I assume it's contingent on matter. I can speculate about why I might like a person or why their struggles motivate me, but it's only seeming likelihood based on the 'fact' they supposedly occurred on earth. Given the presumed omnipresence of higher consciousness, that too may well be a reductive presupposition

IC (I like to address people in my posts, but simply "idle" or "curiosity" just sounds odd ),

It's very good that you are intuiting these things. Steiner discusses this as well at some length in PoF - the fact that what we subconsciously intuit about the ideal world, including what finds expressions in our deepest desires and feelings, can only find its logical explanation in the true Unity of ideation and experience in general. Part of the reason we are so confident in saying "just observe the phenomena and reason carefully" is because we have the utmost confidence that this will inevitably lead us all to be "swimming in the main channel of the idea", thereby integrating our apparent 'hard' differences and fragmented existences. It is not confidence born of blind faith, but of carefully reasoned experience which also provides the inner motive for informed faith.

Yet, in my own reasoned experience, I have found that the one area where we hesitate the most to pursue the logical reasoning path to its furthest reaches is when it comes to our own lack of knowledge. This is why Socrates said, "True Wisdom is knowing that you know nothing". It is intuited by many modern thinkers as well - "shadow", "unconcious", "alter-ego", etc. We have the tendency to think whatever light we have shed on our inner life so far has really brought us to some complete form of being, and that is precisely when we let our guard down the most. Then the Devil sneaks in and takes the hindmost. It is the ever-present danger of pride within us - "pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall".

At a certain point, though, it should become unmistakeable that the layers of our own subconscious yet to be penetrated are practically infinite. That is why we can never rest comfortable thinking we have safe-guarded ourselves from the deep pitfalls of allowing in desires, preferences, feelings, prior assumptions, etc. That comfort should be an indication that we are now, more than ever, most vulnerable to these influences. I am not saying this is your current state... I couldn't possibly know enough about you to make that assessment now. But it's just general words of warning for all to consider, because, truth be told, none of us are even the slighest bit free from our shadows yet.

[idlecuriosity]

I'll read all of this carefully, thank you very much for the reply. Our impasse may be a consequence of how inhibiting words are. I view my desires as important but I do not view them as a 'truth' or of any substantive relevance to how one should pursue growth. Correlation isn't causation in that sense.

"without any predefined aims of "making others happy", etc. "

You are presuming I'm making that decision on account of inherent values. No, no, I fully embrace the material (stressing that; they could have objective qualities in higher consciousness) subjectivity of my desires and ascribe to them an immaterial and unreasonable priority. Current me might not have engendered the bonds I have or the reasons I have if ran through the situations that procreated them twice. That doesn't mean they aren't important to me but I separate the first step on a path that follows the want of it's destination from each step that succeeds it, they are each different. I can segregate an ulterior objective from something that would taint how I cultivate a craft. But you must understand that by undertaking this journey I may actually end up finding that, because I harbour desires and they appear as immaterial but existent qualia to me that have left their material nest and stand disembodied from what created them, accepting my motives could end up being closer to the correct answer than discarding them. I don't know if science can or can't entirely explain why they are important to me, either, but they certainly seem like objective givens to my experience now they exist (e.g. the process of them being borne is an earthly one and contingent on matter, but I don't see why I'd consign to that the same value as what it gives me after.)

Some, not all

last edit; I assume it's contingent on matter. I can speculate about why I might like a person or why their struggles motivate me, but it's only seeming likelihood based on the 'fact' they supposedly occurred on earth. Given the presumed omnipresence of higher consciousness, that too may well be a reductive presupposition

IC (I like to address people in my posts, but simply "idle" or "curiosity" just sounds odd ),

It's very good that you are intuiting these things. Steiner discusses this as well at some length in PoF - the fact that what we subconsciously intuit about the ideal world, including what finds expressions in our deepest desires and feelings, can only find its logical explanation in the true Unity of ideation and experience in general. Part of the reason we are so confident in saying "just observe the phenomena and reason carefully" is because we have the utmost confidence that this will inevitably lead us all to be "swimming in the main channel of the idea", thereby integrating our apparent 'hard' differences and fragmented existences. It is not confidence born of blind faith, but of carefully reasoned experience which also provides the inner motive for informed faith.

Yet, in my own reasoned experience, I have found that the one area where we hesitate the most to pursue the logical reasoning path to its furthest reaches is when it comes to our own lack of knowledge. This is why Socrates said, "True Wisdom is knowing that you know nothing". It is intuited by many modern thinkers as well - "shadow", "unconcious", "alter-ego", etc. We have the tendency to think whatever light we have shed on our inner life so far has really brought us to some complete form of being, and that is precisely when we let our guard down the most. Then the Devil sneaks in and takes the hindmost. It is the ever-present danger of pride within us - "pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall".

At a certain point, though, it should become unmistakeable that the layers of our own subconscious yet to be penetrated are practically infinite. That is why we can never rest comfortable thinking we have safe-guarded ourselves from the deep pitfalls of allowing in desires, preferences, feelings, prior assumptions, etc. That comfort should be an indication that we are now, more than ever, most vulnerable to these influences. I am not saying this is your current state... I couldn't possibly know enough about you to make that assessment now. But it's just general words of warning for all to consider, because, truth be told, none of us are even the slighest bit free from our shadows yet.

This is off subject and I definitely think your responses deserve more attention lavished on them than this but what would be the consequential pitfalls of studying both the 'dark' and 'light' arts as you call them? There is no reason one cannot separate the pursuits or even embark upon a third or fourth set of considerations and studies about mixing the two. It's also not the case that having an earthly motivation for my learning can't give birth to a secondary motivation or that I even need one; given that you're proselytizing that I abscond from a base desire because of it's incompatibility with the objective, perhaps that incompatibility can work in my favour because it would introduce the same bias to want to know more about what we are in the process of finding out?

I'm probably just mouthbreathing semantics at this point but it came to mind. Even in an ocean of water and ripples I would assume the whirlpool encompasses both it's effect on the 'atomized' material body scientists salivate at deconstructing and it's continuity as one small part of a whole, while also being affected by my whirlpool specifically. I would assume the reason we don't dissolve into phenomenal consciousness *could well be* our body but that it spins a whirlpool of phenomenal consciousness that keeps us consistent even as we sleep too, owing in part due to that pc as well as the body.

Either way, I had an offhand question; what makes a spoon not phenomenally conscious while still allowing a sleeping human to be? Seems like a dumb question but I've learnt a lot in just a few days so parts fall off and you all seem knowledgeable about things like that (I'm pretty sure it's that we just don't remember dreams but are still 'conscious', now I remember. Oh, yeah. I even came across that myself... Shows how consistently I've kept track of my discoveries. Oof.)

[idlecuriosity]

'desires'

I don't necessarily think peeling away a layer of our subconscious representing a desire and examining it in isolation needs to mean that desire goes, you may even be able to find a more productive way of substantiating the need it wants fulfilled. I understand the concept as explained elsewhere; you can magnify a subconscious layer and freeze it in time infinitely, like a vector shape that can indefinitely expand without ever losing it's definition. For the other such shadows I'd understand but I profess skepticism at this seeming conceptual abstinence from worldly pursuits and shirking of how these methodologies could potentially aid us, either in finding strategies for our goals or disentangling ourselves from a faulty desire (perhaps helping us find a less toxic one in such a case, too, and this is common)

That is not to say that it should contaminate or affect the process of examination anymore than it might need to for you to browse the subjects. Blacksmiths and swordsmen employ entirely different skillsets, after all, even presuming the one who forges the blade were to wield it himself

[AshvinP]

This is off subject and I definitely think your responses deserve more attention lavished on them than this but what would be the consequential pitfalls of studying both the 'dark' and 'light' arts as you call them? There is no reason one cannot separate the pursuits or even embark upon a third or fourth set of considerations and studies about mixing the two. It's also not the case that having an earthly motivation for my learning can't give birth to a secondary motivation or that I even need one; given that you're proselytizing that I abscond from a base desire because of it's incompatibility with the objective, perhaps that incompatibility can work in my favour because it would introduce the same bias to want to know more about what we are in the process of finding out?

I'm probably just mouthbreathing semantics at this point but it came to mind. Even in an ocean of water and ripples I would assume the whirlpool encompasses both it's effect on the 'atomized' material body scientists salivate at deconstructing and it's continuity as one small part of a whole, while also being affected by my whirlpool specifically. I would assume the reason we don't dissolve into phenomenal consciousness *could well be* our body but that it spins a whirlpool of phenomenal consciousness that keeps us consistent even as we sleep too, owing in part due to that pc as well as the body.

It's no problem, as I don't mind answering thoughtful questions at all. But I don't think this is just syntax right now. The "dark path" is synonymous with the path which assumes one is a complete being, so as to know one's innermost desires and feelings so well that those can be relied upon to direct one's pursuits in life. It is trusting in one's own intellectual ego more than the Wisdom of the Spirit which works through our higher reasoning activity. Put another way, the most basic thing we can reason out for ourselves, before all else, and with almost no effort, is that we are massively incomplete beings with little to no knowledge of the forces working among and through us to bring about the entire world we experience (and all that we subconsciously experience but are unaware of). If that claim stands firm when tested against our logic and reason (the Spirit working within us), then we should trust in it and follow its implications closely.

Either way, I had an offhand question; what makes a spoon not phenomenally conscious while still allowing a sleeping human to be? Seems like a dumb question but I've learnt a lot in just a few days so parts fall off and you all seem knowledgeable about things like that (I'm pretty sure it's that we just don't remember dreams, now I remember. Oh, yeah. I even came across that myself... Shows how consistently I've kept track of my discoveries. Oof.)

It's probably more deep question that most assume. What indeed makes the sleeping human different from the spoon? There are many ways of approaching of that question, but let me try a quick and dirty one - the capacity to awaken. Under my view, the entire Cosmos is a living organism with all manner of living organisms fractally nested within it. So our perceptions in the world surrounding us are either the outer surfaces of living ideational beings or the end-result of the ideational activity of living beings. Our intuition tells us what we call a "spoon" falls into the latter category. The spiritual path of higher knowing is a path of confirming that intuition by perceiving the living ideational activity whose end product is "spoon" - by making what is subconsciously intuited fully conscious, i.e. by awakening.