Phenomenological idealism: definitions of common terms

[Eugene I]

And THAT's the dualism that you deny You keep seeing ideas as packets of meaning within awareness. You see awareness as circular container and ideas as rectangles within that container that can be arranged as mosaic but can never completely fill in the circle. And that's completely true when speaking of intellectual thoughts. If this is how it was, I wouldn't subscribe either. As said earlier this is the event horizon to which Hegel reaches. Your remarks are justified for Hegel's philosophy because for him the concept is indeed the ground reality. It is difficult to see how the world can emerge from the concepts of thinking. But please try to understand that the Idea in the sense of Goethe, is not a concept in the mind. It is the meaningful essence of the Cosmos. Just take your One Awareness and try to conceive that the more you move towards the apex the more meaningful it is.

Yes, I get it. There is a very subtle issue here, probably just linguistic. Every meaning has two "aspects" - the meaning "content" and the experience of the meaning itself. They are in reality never apart, so their distinction is purely conceptual. The content changes when we experience different meanings, the "experiencing" of the meanings is always the same. It's a real mystery. So yes, we can just call it "Meaning", but as I said, many people are unaware of the experiential aspect of the meanings, but that is very essential aspect that brings the unity to the multiplicity of meanings and should not be ignored. So, we can call it "self-experiencing meanings", and I would fully subscribe to it. What I'm trying to say is that the "experiencing" aspect of meaning (formless) is irreducible to the "content" of the meaning (form). I said that so many times that I hope we can put this now to rest.

[AshvinP]

And THAT's the dualism that you deny You keep seeing ideas as packets of meaning within awareness. You see awareness as circular container and ideas as rectangles within that container that can be arranged as mosaic but can never completely fill in the circle. And that's completely true when speaking of intellectual thoughts. If this is how it was, I wouldn't subscribe either. As said earlier this is the event horizon to which Hegel reaches. Your remarks are justified for Hegel's philosophy because for him the concept is indeed the ground reality. It is difficult to see how the world can emerge from the concepts of thinking. But please try to understand that the Idea in the sense of Goethe, is not a concept in the mind. It is the meaningful essence of the Cosmos. Just take your One Awareness and try to conceive that the more you move towards the apex the more meaningful it is.

Yes, I get it. There is a very subtle issue here, probably just linguistic. Every meaning has two "aspects" - the meaning "content" and the experience of the meaning itself. They are in reality never apart, so their distinction is purely conceptual. The content changes when we experience different meanings, the "experiencing" of the meanings is always the same. It's a real mystery. So yes, we can just call it "Meaning", but as I said, many people are unaware of the experiential aspect of the meanings, but that is very essential aspect that brings the unity to the multiplicity of meanings and should not be ignored. So, we can call it "self-experiencing meanings", and I would fully subscribe to it. What I'm trying to say is that the "experiencing" aspect of meaning (formless) is irreducible to the "content" of the meaning (form). I said that so many times that I hope we can put this now to rest.

An illustrative anecdote about Idea-archetypes:

An address based on the highest contemporary Science was given to the Natural Science Society at Jena by a very important Botanist of the day called Batsch. Two men, one some ten years older than the other, listened to this address, and it happened that they left the place together and fell into conversation. The younger said to the elder: ‘When one considers such an address, it shows once again how the scientific method of observation picks things to pieces, sets one by the side of another, and scarcely takes into consideration the homogeneous spiritual bond existing in all the different units.’ In other words it seemed wrong to the younger man that plant should be put side by side with plant without any reference to a higher something, which must also exist in the world, uniting the various plants.

The elder man replied: ‘It might perhaps be possible to find a method of studying nature, which goes to work differently, and which in spite of being a study which must lead to knowledge, has, as its aim, the unifying element, namely that which is absent in external observation by the various senses.’ The man took a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket and at once drew a remarkable shape, a shape that resembled a plant, but no existing plant, to be seen or perceived by the outward physical senses, a shape which, as it were, exists nowhere and of which he said that it existed indeed in no individual plant, but was the ‘plant-hood,’ the proto-plant type which existed in all plants and represented the unifying element. The younger man looked at it and said: ‘Yes, but what you have drawn there is not an experience, not observation, that is an idea’ — having in mind that only the human spirit could form such ideas, and that such an idea had no significance for external, so-called objective nature.

The elder man was unable to understand this objection at all, for he replied: ‘If that is an idea, then I see my ideas with my eyes!’ He meant that just as an individual plant is visible to the external sense of sight, and is an experience, so his proto-plant, although invisible by means of an external sense, was objective, existent in the outer world, living in all plants, the archetype in all individual plants. You know that the younger of these two men was Schiller, the elder Goethe.

[Eugene I]

You ask about the leap that Steiner takes. He doesn't take a leap but simply asks that we don't place self-imposed ceiling on how much the meaning of our state can grow. Otherwise we inevitably arrive at some kind of monadism where the different monads can experience some kind of meaning but there's limit. For example, it is impossible to speak of a greater monad which encompasses the meaning of the separate ones into a greater whole (and not only to encompass the meaning in some informative way but that this meaning is the creative intent through which smaller monads take shape, similarly to the way our meaning creates thoughts). In other words, the Cosmos at large, even if we don't call it blind and dark will, is assumed to operate in ways that neither the Cosmos nor the monads can experience as meaningful. They are bound to forever remain inexplicable, irrational, instinctive. We can fantasize that they are not irrational, that they are governed by some completely different kind of Divine logic, call it meaning2. Yet our meaning1 can never grow into meaning2.

You see, we must not confuse presenting ideas with leaps. Otherwise you won't be able to learn even the numbers in mathematics. There's nothing in your pre-mathematical consciousness that can convince you that there's such thing as numbers. So yes, you need a leap but not a leap of blind belief that will forever remain just that but a leap to experience the thoughts. No one is asking for belief in the Absolute Idea. The thing is that if you take this journey in a living way, by living in the thoughts, and not simply seek a hole in their alibi from distance, you'll make a small step in a new direction. Then you'll make another step and another. Then you'll have to ask yourself "OK. If I'm moving in that direction, how much more I can go before I hit the ceiling?" Then the realization will come that the ceiling is there only if we place it ourselves. This allows us to speak meaningfully about the point at infinity where the road leads. If you say "That's an assumption" I'll say "OK, come with me. Let's go together. Show me where the ceiling is."

The thing to realize is that these ideas are not to be framed on the wall and believed (eventually verified after death). This knowledge is practical. We can speak of growing meaning because we experience it ourselves in small steps. If we don't take the first step we can speculate forever if even the first step is possible. But if we have experienced at least one step then we feel that the burden of proof is on us to think of an excuse why it should be impossible to take the second, the third and so on steps. Hedge in the other thread is at least honest that he is afraid of what he might find. And this is natural in our age. This fear is the same as the fear of death. It's the fear of spiritual reality. As any fear, it is overcome through knowledge and gradual strengthening through experience.

Now let's talk about "spiritual epistemology" There are three approaches people take:
- Closed agnostic approach - "I don't want to take any unwarranted assumptions". That is indeed the placing the "self-imposed ceiling on how much the meaning of our state can grow", I agree that many modern non-dual practices get stuck at such position.
- "Everything I can spiritually cognize or experience is real and true" - people doing that are New Agers, challenners, all kinds of esoterics and drug trippers etc. Whatever wild idea or wild experience they may have they jump to believe that it is "real" (corresponds to actual reality).
- An open but careful approach is to recognize that any experience or cognition of a meaning does not automatically makes it true, there needs to be a critical discernment exercised to find out if it is actually true. A systematic way to do it is to recognize that any such cognition is a "leap" that requires to take it as an assumption and analyze the arguments to support such assumption. This is not to put a "self-imposed ceiling on how much the meaning of our state can grow", it is only to put a "filter" though which any false assumptions would not go through. Science can only be science if it has a way to discard false ideas by certain means, otherwise it would be an ever growing collection of wild theories. I believe that if we are doing "spiritual science" then this means there needs to be a way to "filter" the meanings. And that is what I have been asking all along - how do we do that? I haven't seen any answers yet.

So, going back to the testcases, let's take this one:
1. "Conscious experience arises from energy" per JW claim. JW cognizes a meaning of energy form observing nature (just like Goethe cognized a meaning of "flower" from observing flowers) and a meaning of idea that "consciousness emerges from energy". That is a fully legit meaning, not a "fancy", it could very well be true.
2. "Conscious experience does not arise from energy" per idealism. A spiritual practitioner cognizes from their spiritual experience the meaning of "Awareness/Consciousness" and the idea "Cosnciousness does not emerge from anything". That is also a fully legit meaning, not a "fancy", it could very well be true.

But they can not be both true, there is only one way consciousness actually is. So, which of those are actually true? Or both? One none? What does it mean for an idea or meaning to be "true"? And what is the method to find out which one is true?

[Ben Iscatus]

Cronenberg's take on it ...

Hmm, I sense some backtracking here. I'd like to appreciate what patience and effort and reasoning through the phenomenon actually makes of a dog turd. At some point, practical results of the theory must be communicated and judged! Endless arguments about the best modus operandi to knowledge will not suffice. As a starting point, I'd suggest a dung beetle knows knows the most, a fly less and a Naturalist still less. Below that, comes the man in the street. Right at the bottom comes an Absolute Idealist because he always has his head in the clouds.

[AshvinP]

Cronenberg's take on it ...

Hmm, I sense some backtracking here. I'd like to appreciate what patience and effort and reasoning through the phenomenon actually makes of a dog turd. At some point, practical results of the theory must be communicated and judged! Endless arguments about the best modus operandi to knowledge will not suffice. As a starting point, I'd suggest a dung beetle knows knows the most, a fly less and a Naturalist still less. Below that, comes the man in the street. Right at the bottom comes an Absolute Idealist because he always has his head in the clouds.

So where does Ben end up on that heirarchy of dog turd knowledge? I am assuming you feel yourself to be the King of that particular hill so please share what your careful reasoning has illuminated with the rest of us mere mortals in the clouds. Or maybe Anna Brown has another excellent video on coming to peaceful non-knowing acceptance with the aforementioned turds?

[Ben Iscatus]

Ha! Pleased to see a sense of humour. I stepped on one the other day, so I have practical experience.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Ha! Pleased to see a sense of humour. I stepped on one the other day, so I have practical experience.

Tell me about it ... likewise when wintering in Mexico where the poop-n-scoop idea has not entered into the collective ethos, dogs roam free as they like, and the flies live an ideal street life.

[Eugene I]

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.

Cleric, thanks, very insightful post, and what you wrote in that post is actually close to my intuitive understanding, but my analytical intellect is still processing it. Please disregard my previous post, I haven't read your post yet when I wrote it.

I think there are two aspects of this. One is regarding all that is happening within the world of ideations - the evolution of the universe of ideas. Some higher order beings manifest these evolving ideas and other beings perceive them as sense perceptions or high-cognition perceptions, and these ideas and beings they evolve through the experiencing and interactions etc. Something like a "galaxy" of interacting and evolving together living ideas-beings. But since the power of Thinking to manifest ideas is literally unlimited, there may be, and probably must be, a large variety of such galaxies undergoing similar evolutions. We just happen to be in one of them, and once we exist in one of them, of course we inevitably travel along the paths of the galactic gravitational field, even though there is a lot of local degrees of freedom. So yes, if any idea happens to happen in one of these galaxies, it is real and true. And if any negating idea happens to happen, it is also real and true. In theistic terms, God can "will into existence" literally anything it can express as an idea (which is the same as to say it is "omnipotent").

This is similar to the galaxy of mathematical ideas. You wrote "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." But it is actually possible to formulate an arithmetical system with different set of axioms (different mathematical landscape) where 2x2=5 would actually be true. And the number of such arithmetical systems is literally unlimited.

But the other aspect is related to the special kind of ideas that Thinking applies to itself (self-referential ideas). This is because there is only one way the Thinking itself exists and functions. In other words, Thinking itself is unconditional reality. Thinking knows itself intimately through experiencing and knowing itself and its activity. It knows that it can intentionally bring forth ideas. So, the idea "Thinking can not intentionally bring forth ideas" is unconditionally false, because it can be tested against how Thinking actually is by itself. Similarly, Thinking directly knows that it experiences itself (aware of itself), so the idea "Thinking is not aware of itself" is unconditionally false. There are also certain self-referential ideas that are undecidable. For example, the idea "There is something existing beyond Thinking and beyond the universe of its ideas" is in principle undecidable, because there is no way Thinking can ever test whether it is true or false.

[Cleric K]

So, going back to the testcases, let's take this one:
1. "Conscious experience arises from energy" per JW claim. JW cognizes a meaning of energy form observing nature (just like Goethe cognized a meaning of "flower" from observing flowers) and a meaning of idea that "consciousness emerges from energy". That is a fully legit meaning, not a "fancy", it could very well be true.
2. "Conscious experience does not arise from energy" per idealism. A spiritual practitioner cognizes from their spiritual experience the meaning of "Awareness/Consciousness" and the idea "Cosnciousness does not emerge from anything". That is also a fully legit meaning, not a "fancy", it could very well be true.

But they can not be both true, there is only one way consciousness actually is. So, which of those are actually true? Or both? One none? What does it mean for an idea or meaning to be "true"? And what is the method to find out which one is true?

Eugene, I'll skip your immediate question at this time. Instead I would like to offer you a meditation that we can do together. Since (hopefully) we've made some progress with the understanding of the Idea, I would like to make this even more lucid. From such a lucid foundation questions like the above will be easier to tackle.

I'm not a big fan of the form-formless polarity. For me it is not very practical because what is formless in one state of consciousness is quite structured from the higher one (even though not structured in the sense of mineral structure). Furthermore I'm not sure if there are two persons around here who imagine the same thing when they hear these terms - I don't except myself from this. Nevertheless I'll try to relate these terms in the way I believe they are used by you (I might be wrong).

We begin by quieting down the mind, relaxing the body - the standard stuff. Now we begin to gently go through core subjects that are topics here - consciousness, ideas, thinking and so on. What are these? Thoughts in the mind. Packets of sensory-like verbal sounds going together with meaning. They are clearly within the field of awareness. Compared to that field, they are only small wave-packets. These thoughts are carriers of certain ideas. As we navigate through these thoughts we experience the meanings of the ideas. Then we begin to imagine how these ideas are interrelated, they exist in certain relations. We begin to imagine how any ideas conceivable can be related to that complex which grows as a sphere. But no matter how big and interrelated this sphere of interrelated ideas becomes it still exists only as content within awareness. Two other spheres appear - the egos of Ashvin and Cleric that snatch at the sphere and don't let go. Then you say "Guys, your're missing something. No matter how big and meaningful this sphere becomes it is still something that is experienced within the field of awareness. You're preoccupied with the sphere of meaning and lose from sight that everything happens in the field of awareness."

Let's now disregard the spheres. We throw them away and start again with clean mind. Let's look at the thought 'awareness'. It is a wave-packet of meaning within the field of awareness that carries the idea of 'awareness'. It's just a spark, a symbol in consciousness. By no means can the thought be even compared with awareness itself. Let's try to trace how this thought appears in the field.

If the thought simply pops into awareness we don't get much insight about its origin. In a similar way thoughts pop in when we listen someone speak. We don't know the deeper reasons for the thoughts, the words are simply being impressed in us by our correspondent and we experience them together with their meaning. But when we think the thought 'awareness' ourselves, there's difference. We feel active in the process of popping in. It might not be very clear what exactly we're doing but without any doubt we can feel completely involved. I say "can" because it is up to us focus our activity such that we experience this involvement. Everyday we go through torrents of thoughts but most of them simply pour in semi-automatic way. Here we want to pay closer attention to what exactly we're doing in order to produce the thought.

To make the transition easier, first we can simply produce the mind-sound 'awareness' without any focus on its meaning and simply try to feel how we literally speak it forth. To make sure we're not speaking the sound through well-trodden habits of mind, it is very useful to try and produce the sound in a different way than how we would normally do. For example, we can speak the sound very slowly 'aaawwaaaarrrneeessss' and try to experience as closely as possible how we produce every variation of the pitch, the vowels, the consonants. The goal is to to feel how we're fully involved in the production of the mind-sound, how we can be creative, how every mind sound follows perfectly our spiritual intentions.

Now the trickier part. Not only do we need to produce the sound but also experience its meaning. So we know that the word awareness symbolizes our inner experience of the total field of consciousness. Not only the field but everything that we become less and less able to follow as we move towards the periphery of awareness. This is the total reality for us. But how and what do we do in order to shrink this all encompassing reality into a mere verbal sound? Here things become slippery but we must try to acknowledge that the total experience of awareness is in itself something meaningful. When we look in our room, even if we don't look at anything particular or think anything concrete, we still feel that we experience some kind of general meaning. Our visual field doesn't look like TV static of which concrete objects become discernible only when we explicitly focus our attention on them and think their ideas. No, even though we don't speak it out as concrete word, we're aware that we're looking at our room. Experiments like this show us that awareness really has meaningful dimension to it. It is something that is simply there. We can't make the visual view of our room meaningless even if we try to. We can't convert it into meaningless blurry noise. However general this meaning might be, it is simply there and gives us implicit knowing of what we are seeing.

Now returning to our meditation, in a similar way our awareness is experienced as something that has dimension of meaning. We can simply contemplate this totality completely thoughtlessly, see it as a calm surface of a lake. In relation to our everyday experiences this contemplation can be quite indeterminate as far as meaning goes. There are no shocking revelations, convoluted philosophical ideas, psychedelic visuals - only calm awareness, yet with dimension of meaning, even though as simple as the mere knowing that this calmness is being experienced. This meaning is not an thought, it is not contained in this or that part within the field of awareness, it's simply the fact that there's awareness of be-ing. To be aware, in itself means that there's some quality of existence that is being known (there's no need to involve a question like 'known by who'). If that quality of existence was not known it would be the same as if there's no awareness of existence. To be aware means to know that something is happening - it's that simple. Here knowing is not related to thoughts - only to the implicit dimension of meaning inseparable from awareness. These are many words for something very simple but it's just to make sure everything is really clear.

After we have lived through this awareness for a while we can become active once again and produce the sound 'awareness'. Now we're in position to experience this in a much more dynamic way. We can feel how this implicit dimension of meaning somehow becomes focused, as if light rays are focused with magnifying glass and produce the verbal word. Not only that but we can feel how we're creatively involved in this process. We don't produce the dimension of meaning. It is there on its own. The focused word can by no means capture the full reality of this dimension. It's only a 'holographic' extract, a symbol. But if we try to feel from whence comes the meaning which distinguishes the mere verbal sound from the meaningful word, we'll have to recognize that it is not our product. We are active in the act of focusing of meaning but the meaning itself is not something that we create. It was there all along implicit in the meaningful dimension of awareness. All we did was to agitate our spiritual vocal cords and allow the dimension of meaning to sound through. It is like we're saying "This spiritual sound that I produce is the anchorage, the symbol for the meaning that I can't even encompass fully. This symbol is by no means the awareness. It can't even capture anything of its totality. Yet it is a token which when I experience, reminds me of the meaningful dimension which was concentrated in the act of producing the sound."

When we experience this meaning no longer as the unencompassable dimension but as localized meaning into the verbal sound, we speak of a concept. When we think intellectually, we throw around the verbal sounds or symbols that are focal points of such localized meanings. We speak of 'awareness', 'consciousness', 'feelings', 'thoughts' and so on but we rarely stop to experience each of these words in the meditative way above. Originally, each of these words has received its conceptual meaning through a process as we have gone through, even though not nearly as intimately. For example when we say 'joy' we have a sound with conceptual meaning but this meaning originally was extracted from awareness which was filled with the feeling of joy. This experience allows us to pass its meaningful dimension through our spiritual vocal cords and concentrate it in the word 'joy'.

Now these simple exercises can cardinally change the way we meditate. This is not something commonly found in Eastern style meditations. Instead, in what we performed above, the critical focus is on the fact that our spiritual activity is the fully conscious means through which the meaningful dimension of awareness is being condensed into a symbol. Depending on your meditative habits this may have been difficult. I know from my own experience that meditations can indeed become habitual and if we're used to meditate by continually letting go and simply passively contemplate the contents of awareness, a great resistance might be felt when we try to experience ourselves as the active force in producing the spiritual sounds. This doesn't require any metaphysical postulates of an "I", self or whatever. That we can experience full creative involvement in the production of the spiritual sound, is a fact of experience. It's completely independent of what metaphysical theories we might have about this creative force. Here we're simply trying to feel completely at one with the activity. Here a rigorously schooled Buddhist may feel great resistance because he may see this as an attempt to identify with something. But we're not identifying with anything. We are not contemplating the word and thinking that we are the word. We simply try to feel completely responsible for the production of the sound. If we feel the urge to dissociate from this act and rather contemplate how the Cosmos produces the sound, we're once again active but our activity moves into the blind spot - our activity is to merge with the background and passively observe. This is connected with the prejudice that what happens on its own is objective while what we feel involved in is subjective - thus, unreliable. This is a failed argument because when we choose to observe passively we're still determining the mode of investigation through our activity - we're just putting it in the blind spot. It's much better to face the facts and recognize that spiritual activity is legitimate part of the given. It is only a secondary judgment of thinking, to decide that spiritual activity in which we feel creatively involved is somehow only an illusion or a secondary product of those phenomena that we feel uninvolved with and thus seem more 'objective'. We must realize that only when we are one with the spiritual activity producing the sound, we have an example where thought is produced for which we're fully aware how it comes about and where its meaning comes from. Passive contemplation can never build that bridge between the dimension of meaning and the packets of conceptual meaning in the thought-symbols. We must insert ourselves as creative spiritual activity between these two poles and experience how we participate in the transduction of meaning into the symbol.

Now if it's not clear already, this meaningful dimension of awareness is what Goethe calls the Idea. Thus Idea is never separate from awareness. Small ideas and concepts are experienced only when this dimension is focused with the help of spiritual activity which speaks forth the symbols that anchor the unencompassable meaning into the localized symbols.

I might be wrong but I believe you call this unmanifested domain of awareness, the formless. It is the thing that is always beyond any particular thought and concept, it is the imperceptible Cosmic womb of all. At the moment we call it a womb, we have performed in a split second, quite instinctively, the whole meditation that has been stretched in time above. Then we have meaningful extract of meaning focused in the thought-symbol 'womb' but this meaningful extract can in no way be equated with the formless dimension of meaning from which it has precipitated.

What we've performed in this meditation is really only the rudimentary beginnings of something which can grow. It's the fully conscious spiritual activity which learns to focus the meaningful light of the formless into forms. In this way it is like we're probing the formless. This is the basis of what is called intuitive thinking. We're no longer simply rearranging symbols with limited meaning in the field of consciousness and asking questions about their logical relations but our thinking becomes the sense organ for the formless meaning. This sensing doesn't work in the usual way. We don't see the formless as we see color and sound. Instead, we live in it and allow it to pass through our spiritual vocal cords and be concentrated into a symbol with which the intellect can work too. In this way, by probing the most varied configurations of the formless awareness, we begin to gain consciousness of the logic of the formless. At this time I don't speak about anything esoteric! Let that be clear. It's much rather in the spirit of what Goethe said:

To judge by the plants and fish I have
seen in Naples and Sicily, I would, if I were ten years younger, be very tempted to make a trip to
India, not in order to discover something new, but in order to contemplate in my own way what
has already been discovered.

The absolutely same holds here. Initially there's no need to go beyond ourselves. It'll be a huge gain if we can experience how the words and concepts such as those that we looked at - awareness, joy - are produced by thinking through focusing the formless meaningful dimension spread out in the totality of awareness into thought-perceptions and concepts. If this is mastered, then everything which has to follow comes in completely natural and gradual way. Imaginative cognition is approached when our spiritual activity is able to produce images not only of static, mineral-like concepts extracted from the formless meaning dimension of awareness but of fluid metamorphic processes within the formless.

These are such exciting topics that I can keep writing on and on. But it is enough for now. Let's first see if what was so far described could be followed, not simply theoretically but in living meditative experience.

[AshvinP]

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.

Cleric, thanks, very insightful post, and what you wrote in that post is actually close to my intuitive understanding, but my analytical intellect is still processing it. Please disregard my previous post, I haven't read your post yet when I wrote it.

I think there are two aspects of this. One is regarding all that is happening within the world of ideations - the evolution of the universe of ideas. Some higher order beings manifest these evolving ideas and other beings perceive them as sense perceptions or high-cognition perceptions, and these ideas and beings they evolve through the experiencing and interactions etc. Something like a "galaxy" of interacting and evolving together living ideas-beings. But since the power of Thinking to manifest ideas is literally unlimited, there may be, and probably must be, a large variety of such galaxies undergoing similar evolutions. We just happen to be in one of them, and once we exist in one of them, of course we inevitably travel along the paths of the galactic gravitational field, even though there is a lot of local degrees of freedom. So yes, if any idea happens to happen in one of these galaxies, it is real and true. And if any negating idea happens to happen, it is also real and true. In theistic terms, God can "will into existence" literally anything it can express as an idea (which is the same as to say it is "omnipotent").

This is similar to the galaxy of mathematical ideas. You wrote "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." But it is actually possible to formulate an arithmetical system with different set of axioms (different mathematical landscape) where 2x2=5 would actually be true. And the number of such arithmetical systems is literally unlimited.

But the other aspect is related to the special kind of ideas that Thinking applies to itself (self-referential ideas). This is because there is only one way the Thinking itself exists and functions. In other words, Thinking itself is unconditional reality. Thinking knows itself intimately through experiencing and knowing itself and its activity. It knows that it can intentionally bring forth ideas. So, the idea "Thinking can not intentionally bring forth ideas" is unconditionally false, because it can be tested against how Thinking actually is by itself. Similarly, Thinking directly knows that it experiences itself (aware of itself), so the idea "Thinking is not aware of itself" is unconditionally false. There are also certain self-referential ideas that are undecidable. For example, the idea "There is something existing beyond Thinking and beyond the universe of its ideas" is in principle undecidable, because there is no way Thinking can ever test whether it is true or false.

I think one thing that will be very helpful to consider is the Time-Consciousness spectrum that Cleric wrote about. My understanding of it is pretty limited, but here is something to consider - in our dream life, we frequently experience how what feels like many hours of meaning can be packed into 30 minutes of "normal" waking time. That is because we are traveling through layers of the subconscious, which are not other than the spiritual realms (Nolan does a great job representing this Time-dynamic of dreams in Inception). These subconscious-spiritual layers are represented by the colored layers moving towards the Center in Cleric's Deep MAL image. Now if we have an unexamined antipathy for the concept of any heirarchical spiritual structure, then all of this will be rejected out of hand. If we overcome that antipathy, however, we can see how relatively 'short' time-experience for higher spiritual beings can structure entire centuries and epochs of "normal" Earthly time. This is why I shared the image and asked where people would place these abstract intellectual thoughts - if we are assuming they are all equal to each other in Power then we will reach conclusions like you do above, which are clearly a problem for "absolute idealism", IF that assumption holds true. But it doesn't and we can reason out exactly why it doesn't. If we equate our own mineralized 2-D flattened thoughts to the archetypal Ideas which structure entire epochs, we are simply projecting an amorphous, homogenized strawman onto the highly structured Reality which allows us to declare it "absurd" from the outset and ignore it.