Intuitive Idealism vs. Analytic Idealism (Part II): An alternative formulation of idealism

[Steve Petermann]

Cleric K,

First, let me say that I totally affirm us probing the depths of our being to better understand ourselves and our place in the totality of reality. From a theistic perspective, I talk about this as the dimension of depth in everything.

After having read some of your essays and posts, what is unclear to me is what valuation you have for abstract thought or its function in the grand scheme of a spiritual journey. Perhaps you could help me with that. There seems to be a denigration of abstract thinking in your ideas but I've probably got that wrong.

Here's my take. I'm with philosopher Michael Polanyi that we have two modes of knowing. One is an explicit mode that is well structured. Here we can think of explicit cognitive systems of thought. However, there is also what he calls the 'tacit mode' where "we know more than we can say". This tacit mode could also be called an intuitive mode. Both are in operation all the time for us. Now, from experience, we find that both of these can be in error. They get tested constantly both with exposure to other explicit systems and daily life. If someone points out a logical fallacy or empirical problem in the explication that may reveal an error. Also, we may act on an intuition with negative real results and that reveals an error in that intuition. Or a change in explicit knowing may reveal an intuitive error. These two ways of knowing are in constant dialog, each informing the other. We live our lives within this constantly changing dialog. Explicit abstractions help us try to make sense of reality such that we can survive and hopefully thrive. Intuitions help us act quickly and orient ourselves in life without a lot of analysis. While categories are helpful, I don't think a sharp demarcation can be drawn between the explicit and tacit modes. They are tightly integrated.

When it comes to our spiritual or religious journey I also think both are relevant. Our explications in metaphysics or theology provide a structural framework within which we can try to understand things and orient our spiritual journey. Our spiritual intuitions can either affirm those explications or call them into question. They can also guide us on that journey without constantly analyzing things. Here again, there is a constant dialog and integration. Reading and studying religious or metaphysical ideas can inform our explicated systems and practices like prayer, meditation, and ritual can inform our intuitive spirituality.

I would say that the divine transcendent realm is supra-rational. It is not irrational but also beyond rationality. The rational element (which we try to explicate) has been called the Logos, immanent in this reality. Accordingly, abstract constructs may or may not be in consonance with that Logos. The transcendent realm beyond rationality we may experience as well. Meditators of all sorts offer reports of this and it is also found in many religious traditions.

I apologize if I've missed the following in your writings. So, all this is to ask you what you are practically proposing? What are we to think about our abstract formulations. Should they be abandoned? If not, how should we feel or think about them? Also, have you thought about a practical plan for attaining the goals you think are important for humanity? Is there a new discipline or practice you are advocating for? Is there a way to confirm it is the right path?

[Cleric]

Cleric, the "immediate experience and awareness of thinking" and 'swimming through medium' 'made of' experiential-knowing" have been part of Vipassana meditation for 2500 yrs. There is no doubt that conscious activity has many layers and "orders" interconnected with each other and it is definitely possible to experience higher-order and subtle modes of thinking - intuitive, imaginative ets. And whatever levels of consciousness activity are experienced, as long as we do not add any abstract interpretations to them, it is always a flow of experiential-knowing. And that's also how the patterns of ego are revealed in that flow. That's exactly how Vipassana meditation works, if you just stop here, and until this point I'm entirely with you. But once you start adding to that living experience your interpretations of it such as "harmonic waves" or "living being-ideas" or "Christ Consciousness", that is where your belief system starts forming and solidifying and becomes impenetrable to any other possible interpretations.

There is nothing wrong with having interpretations of the flow of the experiential-knowing. We could not function in reality if we would not be able to develop interpretative ideas and meanings that help us to navigate through the flow. The difference is in how we "interpret" our interpretative ideas -whether we take them as undoubtable and absolute or contingent/conditional truths about the reality. As an example, every sane scientist understands that the math models of reality are approximations and abstractions of reality, and as long as this is understood, there is nothing wrong in using these abstractions in practical life, and they indeed prove to be very useful, but still always temporary, conditional, approximate and contingent. But if we trap ourselves into believing in their absolute truthfulness, we block ourselves from any further progress in replacing older and inaccurate models with newer and more accurate.

What you say contains the solution to the problem. Just think how for a completely materialistically thinking scientist, what you say about Vipassana would sound absurd. He would claim that all we have is sense perceptions and thoughts about them. If you claim that you can experience in full lucid cognition the higher order structure of a novel, for example, that you could examine its temporal structure as spread out before you and trace how it fractally shapes the chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words, he would say that you're simply investing reality into your intellectual understanding of the structure of the novel, that you're fantasizing. Yet from your perspective you know that this is not true because you know that when you survey the higher order being of the novel, you're not at all using the intellect, quite the contrary - the intellect decoheres as lower order patterns from that structure.

So in our case you seem to place completely arbitrarily a ceiling of how far this going deeper can go. What I say is that if we continue even further, we cross the threshold of death and continue into even higher orders of experiential-knowing. The life of the Macrocosmic Sun Being, which had its microcosmic expression in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is found within these higher orders to be the fractal archetype of the Life of Man. In certain sense, each human life on Earth is a variation of that archetype and we discover our true humanity, when our consciousness penetrates into these Divine realms. Then we can trace how our whole life destiny decoheres from the Macrocosmic Being, and becomes 'horizontally' entangled with all other human individualities, which leads to astonishing variety of life journeys.

I know that the above sounds outrageous to you but all I want to point out is that it's all a matter of not placing arbitrary limits to how far our spirit can deepen its experiential-knowing process. When we place the ceiling at the upper bound of the Earthly ego, we allow ourselves to have higher experiences only as far as they concern our personal life. Anything that goes beyond it we consider only intellectual speculation. Yet if we experience the crossing of the threshold, then we already find ourselves in a realm where the destinies of souls interact and shape the moulds into which life in the sensory spectrum unfolds.

I'm not saying the above to convince you in anything. I just wanted to point out that we're predisposed to place the ceilings of possibilities according to our levels of comfort. All I can say is that the experiential-knowing process can proceed far beyond the personal sphere. The processes and beings at these levels are just as self-evident as the higher structures of the personal psyche are for the Vipassana practitioner. This in itself doesn't mean that it should be blindly believed but the facts communicated from these states can be thought about and everyone can decide for themselves if they cohere into a meaningful picture of reality, which directly translates to practical guidelines for the pressings problems that humankinds desperately struggles with.

[Eugene I]

So in our case you seem to place completely arbitrarily a ceiling of how far this going deeper can go. What I say is that if we continue even further, we cross the threshold of death and continue into even higher orders of experiential-knowing. The life of the Macrocosmic Sun Being, which had its microcosmic expression in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is found within these higher orders to be the fractal archetype of the Life of Man. In certain sense, each human life on Earth is a variation of that archetype and we discover our true humanity, when our consciousness penetrates into these Divine realms. Then we can trace how our whole life destiny decoheres from the Macrocosmic Being, and becomes 'horizontally' entangled with all other human individualities, which leads to astonishing variety of life journeys.

No, my position is ever-openness to ever-expanding experiential-knowing with no ceiling or "floor" whatsoever. It's the opposite - as soon as you define for yourself "in stone" that what you are experiencing is only limited to some closed-defined process, ideas/meanings, or entities (such as The life of the "Macrocosmic Sun Being") you set a ceiling for the expansion of your consciousness. This is not to say that such being does not necessarily exist, we may indeed come to know it after crossing the threshold of death. But whatever beings, meanings or processes in consciousness we come to know, there is no ceiling and there is always something beyond them. The depths of reality are inexhaustible and ineffable likely even for the highest Divine itself (Divine irrational/ineffable abyss as per Jakob Böhme).

But notice how you implicitly introduced a belief and interpretation: "Macrocosmic Sun Being, which had its microcosmic expression in the life of Jesus of Nazareth". Here you interpret your experiential-knowing and some historic facts and texts in a specific way that form into your belief. Again, there is nothing wrong with having beliefs, as long as we recognize them as contingent.

[Cleric]

Cleric K,

First, let me say that I totally affirm us probing the depths of our being to better understand ourselves and our place in the totality of reality. From a theistic perspective, I talk about this as the dimension of depth in everything.

After having read some of your essays and posts, what is unclear to me is what valuation you have for abstract thought or its function in the grand scheme of a spiritual journey. Perhaps you could help me with that. There seems to be a denigration of abstract thinking in your ideas but I've probably got that wrong.

Here's my take. I'm with philosopher Michael Polanyi that we have two modes of knowing. One is an explicit mode that is well structured. Here we can think of explicit cognitive systems of thought. However, there is also what he calls the 'tacit mode' where "we know more than we can say". This tacit mode could also be called an intuitive mode. Both are in operation all the time for us. Now, from experience, we find that both of these can be in error. They get tested constantly both with exposure to other explicit systems and daily life. If someone points out a logical fallacy or empirical problem in the explication that may reveal an error. Also, we may act on an intuition with negative real results and that reveals an error in that intuition. Or a change in explicit knowing may reveal an intuitive error. These two ways of knowing are in constant dialog, each informing the other. We live our lives within this constantly changing dialog. Explicit abstractions help us try to make sense of reality such that we can survive and hopefully thrive. Intuitions help us act quickly and orient ourselves in life without a lot of analysis. While categories are helpful, I don't think a sharp demarcation can be drawn between the explicit and tacit modes. They are tightly integrated.

When it comes to our spiritual or religious journey I also think both are relevant. Our explications in metaphysics or theology provide a structural framework within which we can try to understand things and orient our spiritual journey. Our spiritual intuitions can either affirm those explications or call them into question. They can also guide us on that journey without constantly analyzing things. Here again, there is a constant dialog and integration. Reading and studying religious or metaphysical ideas can inform our explicated systems and practices like prayer, meditation, and ritual can inform our intuitive spirituality.

I would say that the divine transcendent realm is supra-rational. It is not irrational but also beyond rationality. The rational element (which we try to explicate) has been called the Logos, immanent in this reality. Accordingly, abstract constructs may or may not be in consonance with that Logos. The transcendent realm beyond rationality we may experience as well. Meditators of all sorts offer reports of this and it is also found in many religious traditions.

I apologize if I've missed the following in your writings. So, all this is to ask you what you are practically proposing? What are we to think about our abstract formulations. Should they be abandoned? If not, how should we feel or think about them? Also, have you thought about a practical plan for attaining the goals you think are important for humanity? Is there a new discipline or practice you are advocating for? Is there a way to confirm it is the right path?

Steve, I don't have much time now. I'll read your essay on depth later and only outline some answers here.

* When I criticize abstract thinking it only refers to the cases where Thinking becomes locked into a closed system of thought. Please note that here 'Thinking' is meant in the general sense of spiritual activity, which would include also the two more specific types of thinking that you mention. When I speak of abstract thinking I almost exclusively have in mind the types of intellectual activity which work with thought models of reality and try to map them to the perceptions (not only sensory but feelings, willing, etc.) Contemporary science is a fine example of this, where we deal with completely intellectual (abstract) model of reality, consisting of mathematical quantum fields, that are being mapped (correlated) to what the senses and their extensions (microscope, telescope, particle accelerators, etc.) provide. Even if we don't subscribe to any particular philosophical outlook, the very mode of intellectual conduct divides reality in two irreconcilable domains - the one of our closed system of abstract thought and the other of the external reality that presses into our consciousness as perceptions and that we try to model/correlate with our thought system.

* Things become different if we understand Thinking as the most intimate expression of our spiritual be-ing. It is in Thinking that we recognize our existence as an "I". From this perspective we can see the importance of the 'vertical' or depth axis, along which our thoughts precipitate from our spiritual core. Abstract thinking, we can say, hijacks the fruits of this process into a 'horizontal' plane and completely disregards their livingly experienced spiritual origination. I highly recommend Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, if you would like to experience more intimately Thinking as living spiritual activity.

* The main task of humanity today is to rise to clear awareness the fact that such a 'horizontal' plane of closed-system patterns of thoughts can never lead outside of itself and can only try to mimic through logical dynamics, the remaining soul contents. When we break away from the horizontal plane, which requires nothing more than livingly experiencing our spiritual activity, we begin to work cognitively in the whole soul volume, so to speak. This is more or less known today among the various spiritual practices, which have knowledge of how we can work with our thought in order to set in motion currents and forces in our soul and bodily life, such that we can promote healing, harmonious exchanges with our fellow human beings, etc.

* This is only part of the work however and can easily lead to egoistic strivings, when everyone focuses on their spiritual well-being, without idea of the macro rhythms within which we are embedded. For the other part we need higher knowledge. We need to understand the structure of reality that is beyond our waking Thinking and perceptions. This higher knowledge puts us in living connection with the spiritual beings that form the matrix of reality, so to speak. We need to understand the higher rhythms and goals of these being so that we can arrange our own development accordingly. Otherwise it would be like preparing our bathing suits and flip-flops without caring that we're embedded in a seasonal rhythm and winter is coming. There are Divine beings which form a kind of fractal-like, hierarchical 'wave function' of the living Universe. Within the potential of these superimposed rhythms we unfold our own spiritual activity within the degrees of freedom that we have. It's clear that our choices determine our future freedom. If we enter winter in bathing suit we'll get sick and our potential for spiritual expression will be severely limited. We call these actions which put humans in dissonant relations with the Whole and thus lead to limiting freedom, pain and death, in the most general sense - sin. If you have followed our last few posts here with Eugene you can find there the most general essence of what higher cognition consists of.

* So this is in a nutshell. There are tons more that can be spoken but the most urgent needs of our times are that humans realize that they are free spiritual beings. Then to investigate the depths of reality so that we can comprehend the spiritual structure within which we're nested and as such that we can unfold our human activities in a ways that are in harmony with the Macrocosmos and would thus lead to gradual spiritualization of all human affairs, leading to life based on higher intelligence, love and brotherhood. This life is not a utopian life restricted in the Earthly garden. Consciousness must grow along the vertical, into the whole spiritual spectrum. In the far future, our physical bodies will be on Earth but with our consciousness we would be able to see everything from a Solar perspective, as organic, living and vibrant Whole, where every being strives to contribute with its creativity to bring even more beauty and splendor to the evolving Cosmic Being.

[Cleric]

But notice how you implicitly introduced a belief and interpretation: "Macrocosmic Sun Being, which had its microcosmic expression in the life of Jesus of Nazareth". Here you interpret your experiential-knowing and some historic facts and texts in a specific way that form into your belief. Again, there is nothing wrong with having beliefs, as long as we recognize them as contingent.

And you immediately snap back to consider that such a statement is impossible to be the direct result of actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos, and as such, it can never be anything more than a blind belief and interpretation. This is what I call ceiling As you said, it really boils down to crossing the threshold of death while alive and this has been the goal of Initiation in all ages. Today these methods of Initiation are open to all, not only to the hierophants in the mystery centers of the past. In fact, humanity must live more and more on both sides of the threshold here on Earth, if we are not to spiral down into destruction. Unless we build the bridge with the spiritual world, which is the development of consciousness towards the higher spectrum of reality, we'll follow in our consciousness the entropic fate of decohering physicality.

[Eugene I]

And you immediately snap back to consider that such a statement is impossible to be the direct result of actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos, and as such, it can never be anything more than a blind belief and interpretation. This is what I call ceiling As you said, it really boils down to crossing the threshold of death while alive and this has been the goal of Initiation in all ages. Today these methods of Initiation are open to all, not only to the hierophants in the mystery centers of the past. In fact, humanity must live more and more on both sides of the threshold here on Earth, if we are not to spiral down into destruction. Unless we build the bridge with the spiritual world, which is the development of consciousness towards the higher spectrum of reality, we'll follow in our consciousness the entropic fate of decohering physicality.

Right, so now I go back to my older post where I described my own actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos as a Christian, a Sufi and a Dzogchen Buddhist, every time experientially-knowing quite different perspectives and experiences on the Macrocosmos, and neither of them turned out to be the whole story and the final truth. So, I'm saying that whatever experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos you may ever have, before or after crossing the threshold of death, it is never the end-in-itself unless you place a ceiling there and define for yourself that you arrived at your destination: the final truth. So, the "blind belief" is - whatever actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos you may have - you make yourself believe that this what reality actually is and there is nothing beyond that. So, I'm pointing to an epistemological error in your attitude towards your living experiential-knowing - you interpret it as an actual macrocosmic reality as it actually is rather than a contingent/conditional product of melding of manifestations originating from your personal and human-collective unconsciousness and the beyond-human conscious activity and the activity of macrocosmic, and such interpretation becomes your interpretational belief. In The Tibetan Book of Dead they talk a lot about after-death experiences of deities and realms but repeat throughout the book - "recognize them as manifestations of your own mind". I would not agree that those are only manifestations of "your own" mind, they are likely more than that, but that's a sober approach to any living experiences we may ever have.

Here is another example of actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos

[Lou Gold]

But notice how you implicitly introduced a belief and interpretation: "Macrocosmic Sun Being, which had its microcosmic expression in the life of Jesus of Nazareth". Here you interpret your experiential-knowing and some historic facts and texts in a specific way that form into your belief. Again, there is nothing wrong with having beliefs, as long as we recognize them as contingent.

And you immediately snap back to consider that such a statement is impossible to be the direct result of actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos, and as such, it can never be anything more than a blind belief and interpretation. This is what I call ceiling As you said, it really boils down to crossing the threshold of death while alive and this has been the goal of Initiation in all ages. Today these methods of Initiation are open to all, not only to the hierophants in the mystery centers of the past. In fact, humanity must live more and more on both sides of the threshold here on Earth, if we are not to spiral down into destruction. Unless we build the bridge with the spiritual world, which is the development of consciousness towards the higher spectrum of reality, we'll follow in our consciousness the entropic fate of decohering physicality.

Somehow, I'm reminded of an old dialog between Castaneda and the perhaps fictional Don Juan. Carlos asks where the path of knowledge (spiritual path) leads? DJ says, "All paths lead nowhere." Carlos asks, "Then why choose the path of heart?" DJ responds, "Because it is the only one that has heart."

From my personal experience along shamanic indigenous and Christian paths, I can report that being on a path of heart is an awesome experience well beyond simple mind/body distinctions. I agree that it is available to all and that maintaining its blessings is a continuing work offered in many forms. One need not know which path is the most globally or cosmically the 'highest' but, surely, one must have a confident experiential answer for the question, "Is this the Path of Heart for me?" May all be so blessed.

[AshvinP]

And you immediately snap back to consider that such a statement is impossible to be the direct result of actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos, and as such, it can never be anything more than a blind belief and interpretation. This is what I call ceiling As you said, it really boils down to crossing the threshold of death while alive and this has been the goal of Initiation in all ages. Today these methods of Initiation are open to all, not only to the hierophants in the mystery centers of the past. In fact, humanity must live more and more on both sides of the threshold here on Earth, if we are not to spiral down into destruction. Unless we build the bridge with the spiritual world, which is the development of consciousness towards the higher spectrum of reality, we'll follow in our consciousness the entropic fate of decohering physicality.

Right, so now I go back to my older post where I described my own actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos as a Christian, a Sufi and a Dzogchen Buddhist, every time experientially-knowing quite different perspectives and experiences on the Macrocosmos, and neither of them turned out to be the whole story and the final truth. So, I'm saying that whatever experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos you may ever have, before or after crossing the threshold of death, it is never the end-in-itself unless you place a ceiling there and define for yourself that you arrived at your destination: the final truth. So, the "blind belief" is - whatever actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos you may have - you make yourself believe that this what reality actually is and there is nothing beyond that. So, I'm pointing to an epistemological error in your attitude towards your living experiential-knowing - you interpret it as an actual macrocosmic reality as it actually is rather than a contingent/conditional product of melding of manifestations originating from your personal and human-collective unconsciousness and the beyond-human conscious activity and the activity of macrocosmic, and such interpretation becomes your interpretational belief. In The Tibetan Book of Dead they talk a lot about after-death experiences of deities and realms but repeat throughout the book - "recognize them as manifestations of your own mind". I would not agree that those are only manifestations of "your own" mind, they are likely more than that, but that's a sober approach to any living experiences we may ever have.

Here is another example of actual living experiential-knowing expanded into

This may be the most outlandish sentiment expressed that I have read on an online forum, and that's saying something. Your argument here has become "I have experienced the deepest spiritual realities through every religious path and realized none of make sense as a whole, so now I won't consider any of your experiences with reason but dismiss them as personal fantasy." It's also the most dangerous sentiment in the modern world, as Cleric has tried to illustrate many times. It leads to the complete negation of an objective spiritual reality that is the source of all existence and meaning. It leaves the phenomenal world in tiny fragments and tribal instincts. Yes I know you will project that back onto me, but I hope at least others can follow the simple logic and see for themselves that your non-spiritual path leads nowhere but into a dark abyss of meaningless, crass, and decadent mystic materialism.

[Cleric]

Right, so now I go back to my older post where I described my own actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos as a Christian, a Sufi and a Dzogchen Buddhist, every time experientially-knowing quite different perspectives and experiences on the Macrocosmos, and neither of them turned out to be the whole story and the final truth. So, I'm saying that whatever experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos you may ever have, before or after crossing the threshold of death, it is never the end-in-itself unless you place a ceiling there and define for yourself that you arrived at your destination: the final truth. So, the "blind belief" is - whatever actual living experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos you may have - you make yourself believe that this what reality actually is and there is nothing beyond that. So, I'm pointing to an epistemological error in your attitude towards your living experiential-knowing - you interpret it as an actual macrocosmic reality as it actually is rather than a contingent/conditional product of melding of manifestations originating from your personal and human-collective unconsciousness and the beyond-human conscious activity and the activity of macrocosmic, and such interpretation becomes your interpretational belief. In The Tibetan Book of Dead they talk a lot about after-death experiences of deities and realms but repeat throughout the book - "recognize them as manifestations of your own mind". I would not agree that those are only manifestations of "your own" mind, they are likely more than that, but that's a sober approach to any living experiences we may ever have.

Sorry, Eugene, but we speak of very different things when we use the words "experiential-knowing expanded into the Macrocosmos". Living with Christ in the heart or feeling oneness with God the Father that fills the entirety of space and time is not the higher cognition that the Gnostic Initiates have perfected in the last two thousand years. I have nothing against these methods, in fact they are tremendously important spiritual practices but when we speak of actual cognition within the Spheres, the experience has infinitely more to it that the feeling of expansion and oneness.

I always ask people fascinated with psychedelic dissolution in the one consciousness or those with mystical experiences arrived at by other means, "if you are really united with the One Consciousness, how come you experience nothing of the way the Cosmos is structured? Of the planets, the suns? The kingdoms of nature, the destinies of souls and their incarnations? How come you are one with everything yet still experience it from quite specific perspective, even though with smeared boundaries?" Well, people simply don't think about these things. That's why popular mysticism is so convenient and appetizing - it rises no questions! The World is a thin dream image and all the astonishing complexity and lawfulness of the Cosmos is just an insignificant peculiarity of how the One Consciousness dreams the thin image.

Higher cognition leads precisely to this inner structure of reality. Just as our own life is ordered by our thoughts and ideas, so when we find ourselves within the higher spectrum of reality we live together with the World Thoughts of beings. These living Thoughts are like lines of force along which the consciousness of lesser beings coalesce. At even lower level these are the standing wave patterns where the Cosmic potential decoheres to the level of elementary particles, which science examines.

And again, I don't say the above to convince or 'convert' anyone. These are principal positions that can be understood by healthy reason. Then we can really think about it and say "If this is true what does it mean for the general picture of reality? How does all this fit the perceptible facts I have at my disposal? Does it offer any explanation? Does it offer any direction, solution to the problems we are facing?" These are the important questions. No one benefits if they simply stuff their heads with concepts without any use - even if they correspond to the highest truths. One of the reasons there's such a disconnect between our Earthly cognition and the higher worlds is that the spiritual traditions that we have inherited from the ancients, are practically dead fossils. They are sets of dogmas and practices that one simply chooses to conform to. They may give some peace of mind but ultimately they serve to lead us throughout our Earthly life without us doing too much damage to ourselves and others. The target is really beyond the threshold of death. Ever since the event of Golgotha this target has crossed the threshold of death and entered our world. The sensory spectrum and the higher spiritual world have been bridged from that moment. Bridged on archetypal level but every human must complete that bridging individually in their consciousness. That's why Spiritual Science and the other streams of esoteric Christianity are indispensable in our time. It's not about promoting world-wide sect or a new religion. It's now about gaining real, living, experiential knowledge of ourselves. Getting to know the degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity that we didn't even know exist. It's about bringing back the musicality of the Cosmos, the Harmony of the Spheres. This can only happen by our own free initiative.

In the last few posts I've described as best as I could the general direction in which the higher forms of cognition are to be sought. We need this not to dissolve in a general feeling of oneness with the Universe that we then color with beliefs and intellectual interpretations. We need it in order to fully consciously investigate how the human being is formed out of the superposition of World Thoughts - the Thoughts that Think us and within which we unfold our limited microcosmic thoughts.

[Eugene I]

Back to the sectarian Taliban mindset:
- There is Truth
- The Truth is revealed to our group only - those who share our particular knowing/understanding - through revelation or experiential-knowing or whatever other means
- The truth must be proselyted by whatever means possible for the benefit of the humanity
- Those who don't agree with us and hold different paradigm or experiential-knowing of the Truth are dangerous because they distort or deny the Truth. They must be militantly confronted