Eugene I wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 10:16 pm
For example, I can have a thought bearing an idea/meaning of a "material world" existing beyond consciousness. Using my imagination I can imagine it very vividly. But the question is: how does this meaning relates to the reality? Does such material world actually exist? How do I know if it is true or not? Or I can have an idea of some advanced mathematical construct, for example, an uncountable infinity (Kantor's aleph 1). Does it exists in any way in reality other than just as a meaning of my thought in my imagination? Phenomenology does not address these questions, but epistemology does.
But that problem also applies to what you wrote and to PoF. Yes, by using Imaginative and Intuitive higher cognition we can have very high-level subtle imaginations and ideas, and we can have it in a shared way between a group of people. For example, we can both have intuitions and imaginations about Zodiacs. I can imagine and intuit Zodiacs and their possible relations with the life on Earth. But how do we know and verify in a spiritually-scientific way that the Zodiacs in fact are parts of the structures that govern the phenomenal realities that we experience as sense perceptions (i.e. the realities of the apparent physical world), and that they are not just our shared imaginations? We can imagine together a shared idea of a Pink Unicorn. But how do we know that it corresponds to any actual reality? This is very important question and I think people asked you about it on this forum: how do you know that your higher-cognition imaginations have any relevance to actual reality of the spiritual and/or physical world? What is a way to verify them and not just take them as beliefs? These are, again, epistemological questions.
I've addressed these issues in various places, for example in the
Man, Know Thyself essay. There are two aspects.
First, we should understand that there's something which higher cognition presents as undeniable fact. For example in our ordinary consciousness the undeniable facts are the experiences of color, thoughts, sounds, etc. (I know that you gave the example where this can be denied. I'll return to it) In other places you have also mentioned that our temperament, desires and so on are completely real but at the same time we are not them. That's correct. Yet this de-identification doesn't free us from this bodily and soul environment. If I ignore my physical body on the pretext that I'm not it, it is my de-identified being that will experience the pain as the body deteriorates. So it's up to my spiritual activity to cherish and organize my inner and outer environment.
This environment becomes much more objective when we rise to Imaginative cognition. Just as we can see how blood is forced to flow through the arteries and veins, so the objective panorama reveals the curvature of our higher organization within which our ordinary consciousness if forced to flow. We can never attain to this panorama with mere de-identification with the processes as we cognize them in our ordinary state. Instead we must come to know the living forces behind these processes with intimacy that will be completely repugnant for those who would like to simply think them away or only observe them 'objectively' from a safe distance. It's not without reason that this panorama is called in Initiatic science the
Guardian at the Threshold. The intellectual conceptions we have of ourselves (irrelevant if we identify with it or not) is rarely very objective. When we cross the threshold our ordinary consciousness is on display before our now higher standpoint of being. As an example, from this vantage point it becomes very clear how certain soul forces act in such a way that our intellectual self experiences
doubt. What I'm here describing for example, is met with doubt by most readers. When we confront the panorama of our bodily and spiritual organism we perceive exactly the kinds of soul forces that
press down on the intellect and keep it into its own plane of oscillation. This is experienced as undeniable fact in the same way we experience color and sound in the ordinary state. It's undeniable because it is not intellectual interpretation of visionary states but because our consciousness lives within the spiritual currents which when decohered become the intellect, which no longer grasps the curvature which makes it think and doubt whatever it thinks and doubts.
Now the second aspect which deals with truth. You say:
Eugene I wrote: ↑Sun Nov 21, 2021 3:40 am
But Thinking can also manifest an idea "there is no such thing as Thinking experiencing, it's an illusion (c) Dennett". So now I have two ideas both real and existing simultaneously but contradicting each other as polarities. Imagine that: Thinking is so powerful that it can think that it does not exist! And the idea that "Thinking does not exist" is as real as the idea "Thinking exists" and as real as Thinking itself. WOW! But Thinking in actuality can not exist and not exist simultaneously. The epistemological question now is: which one of these two ideas are the Truth corresponding to the actuality of Thinking? And how do we find this out?
Here we should make a clear distinction. We can surely experience both thoughts. The dual nature of thinking is such that to any statement we can formulate also its negation. This is important to keep in mind because we
never lose the ability to doubt in the intellect. The moment I return from the Imaginative state to the decohered intellectual state, I can immediately doubt the reality of what I experienced just an instant ago. This is not to imply that the higher perceptions are less certain than the sensory but only to say that it is
in principle possible to doubt - there's no force that forbids me to. In the same way if I close my eyes now, I can doubt if the perceptions of the monitor in front of me were really 'there' (I'm speaking only of the perceptions, not the monitor-in-itself).
The word 'real' is a little slippery to use. For example Dennett says that the experience of Thinking is an illusion. If he is to be consistent, he would have to say "But the experience of the illusion is real". He'll probably not do that but instead his 'truth' will consist in the perpetual denial of anything real. In other words, the only
implicitly real thing for him (of course it will never be called real explicitly) is the ability to perpetually deny the real.
It's obvious that the whole problem comes from the implicit dualism in thinking. From the onset, thinking has
already divided the world content into two categories - real and illusion. In our age this split is not something that the thinker consciously chooses. It is much rather unknowingly contracted from the environment, so to speak. That's why it's so difficult to point it out - the thinker doesn't remember to have ever made such a splitting decision. For him this is simply how the world is. In this sense, asking if thinking is real, implicitly assumes the Kantian divide and asks if there's something in the 'real' world-in-itself out there, which corresponds to the subjective experience of thinking. I think this has been dealt with sufficiently in this forum (including Ashvin's repost of his essay).
Assuming that we're free from the Kantian divide, we can still formulate the two thoughts - thinking exists of doesn't exist. We're not asking if thinking-in-itself exists outside consciousness but simply if the experience exists. As long as the two statements exist only as valid syntactic structures, they are both valid. But we must be clear that they have also semantics which go beyond the arrangement of words themselves. We can be content with both statements only if we ignore the fact that they are statements
about something. If we expand the sphere of inquiry in this way, one of them aligns with the facts while the other contradicts them. As soon as we become aware that the statement itself is already a thinking act, one of the statements becomes the confirmation of the act while the other, its denial.
The above comes to show that things are undecidable only if we assume consciously or unconsciously, the Kantian divide and imagine that thinking speaks about things that will forever remain beyond the sphere of what can be immediately known. When thinking works in its own element (idea) then the thinking judgments are either consonant with the overall curvature of meaning or dissonant to it. The same holds for 2+2=4 and 2+2=5. They are both arrangements of mathematical symbols but one of them aligns with the mathematical landscape while the other doesn't.
So we see that we can never assert truth in isolation. We can speak of truth only in the sense of the harmony of the facts. This holds also for higher cognition. Supersensible perceptions don't come to us with labels true or false. All of them are realities but they align in different degrees to the overall ideal landscape.
Having said that, it can be mentioned that what we consider false statements are much more potent in the higher realms. As a matter of fact much of our world wouldn't exist if that was not the case.
Let's consider something as "the Earth is flat". In our ordinary life we see this as a statement about the geometry of the planet which can be confirmed or disproved when related with the totality of the facts. But in the soul (astral) world this statement has its own life. In the astral world we meet a being which is completely real, it goes through its own evolution. Just think how this idea is something much more for human life than mere geometric statement. Books are written, websites are created, conferences are held, whole human destinies are intertwined with this idea. The idea is the soul substance that they breathe, what forms part of their reality. Just as covid, this idea-being lives its life through humans. It expands, grows. In the astral world this is an objective process. The intellect will say "nonsense, the idea exists only in the minds of the individual persons and they simply synchronize their activities based on it". And thinking like this is at the core of the dead end into which human affairs are going. It's simple refusal to go deeper in the facts. It's like claiming that all compass needles have their own opinion but secretly whisper to each other in what direction to turn such that they can fool humans that there's such thing as magnetic field.
Every idea, irrelevant if true or false, in the astral is a real being that goes through development. As strange as this may sound, these ideas actually 'fight' each other. Not with astral fists and swords but they compete for the same astral substrate that allows their consciousness to expand. They want to grow and use human astral bodies as their organs. This being is something versatile. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even need to understand geometry. It needs certain patterns of movement of soul activity which reflect its consciousness. The geometric statement in human souls is only a fertile soil where this being can proliferate its patterns and strengthen its consciousness. So we see that Pratchett was on to something when he comically describes how men give powers to their gods through their faith in them.
Many secrets will be unveiled when people begin to understand these things. Most urgently - those that are related to social life and the life of nations. As long as we don't realize that the social and national moods are flowing within higher order curvature of meaning, we'll remain as puppets on strings in the hands of deeper forces. No amount of legislation, treaties, protests and so on will normalize the situation.
Now the above may sound to some as confirmation that every truth is relative and reality consists in perpetual conflict of group beings. But this is not the case. The being of the flat Earth has conditions for existence only in particular epoch of Cosmic development in the same way certain weeds have their season of bloom. As a contrived example, if we imagine that space travel becomes routine matter as taking a cab, the conditions for the existence of this being will deteriorate. It will either disappear or will be forced to adapt to different kind of existence. There's One ideal landscape, One coherent Idea of the World, One curvature of meaning. All those beings that have their existence based on currents that don't align with the Cosmic curvature, are forced to change as the Cosmic curvature metamorphoses. But as long as the conditions still exist, these beings form a kind of tumorous existence on top of the lawful Cosmic organism.
I know that this will evoke resentment in many who value their 'freedom' and will say "I would rather die as a tumor than be a slave to the Whole". Well, this is really the whole drama of the fallen evolutionary scenario. It is true that living in a tumorous reality presents unique experiences. Yet the possibilities of a healthy body are immeasurably greater than those of a diseased body laying in the hospis. Yes, we're servants of the good healthy habits but what we reap as a result is multiplied thousandfold in the degrees of freedom we have. The Truth is not there to tell what each one shall do with their freedom but to reveal what are the lawful consequences of each path.
As we can see, in the higher worlds there isn't something that is not real. Everything is real in a much higher degree than what we know through our intellectual-sensory consciousness. The question is no longer is this real or illusion, is this true or false but how this fits in the grand scheme of things? Even a hallucination has its lawful explanation if consciousness expands to encompass the currents that have led to its manifestation. And this job is by no means easy. That's why Steiner has stressed on every occasion how important it is to learn to think properly before we even decide to get anywhere near the threshold. Those who judge reality through their sympathies and antipathies are the easiest victims in the higher worlds. There one becomes a puppet on invisible strings in much greater degree than this is the case in ordinary consciousness. Only through tireless integrating of everything into the harmony of the facts, is it possible to find the proper place of everything in the Cosmic curvature of meaning.
It is about time to overcome the childish conception that Truth can be found in some statement of the intellect and framed on the wall to be bowed at as an icon. We can't simply stare at a phrase and ask "but is this true or false". We should much rather get an organic feeling of Truth. Our existence is a constant metamorphosis, a growth process, and every thought, idea, feeling, act is like nutrition for this process, it interferes with it, changes the growth rate, causes bigger of shriveled leaves, modifies the colors of the flowers and so on. We can never grasp things in this way as long as we insist on seeing thinking as phantom layer of meaning that builds a mental picture of existence and then asks if reality is really like that picture. Thinking must penetrate reality as the mycelium network does the substrate and then we become much more aware of the curvature of meaning and how feelings, will and thinking itself modify that curvature, how they enclose it into a tumorous growth or unveil, elucidate and vivify it.
