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

[Eugene I]

Cleric, you are simply confusing the product of your subconscious spiritual activity with the universal truth, and a symptom of it is that your are absolutely convinced that you are getting it right and everyone else whose experience-knowing does not align with yours must be getting it wrong. That's a sure sign of a sectarian delusion. As I said, there are usually some facets of macrocosmic truths in our knowing-experiences, so what we perceive is a mix of our own manifestations and of the facets of the macrocosmic truth, with our own part usually prevailing, and a failure to admit and recognize it leads to self-delusion. I gave you the link to Pentecostals, do you see any similarity? Of course you don't.

[Cleric K]

Cleric, you are simply confusing the product of your subconscious spiritual activity with the universal truth. As I said, there is usually the facets of macrocosmic truths in our knowing-experiences, so what we perceive is not always and entirely our own manifestations, but in most part they usually are. I gave you the link to Pentecostals, do you see any similarity? Of course you don't.

Ok, Eugene. All these back and forths could have been spared if you had declared up front "I don't believe that it is even in principle possible for human consciousness to extend and know directly something of the workings of the higher strata of the One Consciousness." This is little odd to hear from a non-dualist, where there shouldn't really be any hard boundaries but anyway.

Yeah, it's funny that you send the Pentecostals because this is where humanity at large is heading. The materialists that say "my brain", as if they are in complete control of all the hidden processes that precede their thoughts and behavior on the surface of consciousness, are not in a different position. And as long as people say "don't even dare to penetrate the subconscious! You'll never be able to find your way. There's no chance you can distinguish things there and your bound to succumb to illusions", we'll continue to be locked into the sensory-intellectual spectrum and living our lives believing we're free, while we're being fed the thoughts to think, the feelings to feel and acts to will, without ever knowing what powers we're serving and declaring "this is my free choice".

And here's my version

[AshvinP]

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

There is no militaristic confrontation. While Cleric patiently tries explaining the reason why he is speaking of different quality experience-knowing, to obviously deaf ears, I am highlighting your view's clear parallels with 20th century materialism and its denial of spirituality and all objective Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, which is precisely why we have faced and continue to face such violence and turmoil in the world. You use "sectarian" to speak about your own personal sensitivities and self-righteous indignation, since, in your mind, there really is no objective Reality beyond your own personal experience and knowledge, while I use that word to denote actual real life tragic consequences for humanity if we continue down the tribalistic path you want us to stay on.

[Soul_of_Shu]

This thread will soon be locked until further notice, and I don't think I need to explain why. Hopefully for the sake of those who've contributed without the rancor and pissing-match digressions, it can continue again in the spirit that I feel Adur intended.

[Adur Alkain]

It seems ridiculous, of course, to think that a complete amateur like me could come up with an idea for an experiment that has never occurred to any professional physicist. But the thing is, I don't think that any professional scientist has thought about QM in the way that I do. I sincerely think that my idea, and my version of idealism, is completely new.

While you're at it, perhaps you could offer an explanation for the apparency of cutlery flying off a level table top with apparently no known force acting upon it? Long before I was interested in metaphysics, this is the kind of event that left one searching for explanations that could account for such events—for which I've yet to find one that is wholly satisfying, other than the very basic conclusion that the phenomenal cosmos, including space and time, is fundamentally mind-conceived idea construction, but is not an explication on its own.

Hi Soul_of_Shu,

I can't explain events like that, but I can explain why they are so elusive: according to the "law of consistency", that kind of events lie outside physical reality. They can be witnessed, but they can't be measured. In other words, to witness an event like that one must be in an altered state of consciousness, experiencing an alternate reality. This doesn't mean that those events aren't real. It only means that physical or consensual reality is only a thin layer within a vast universe of experience.

This is only my guess, of course. But my bet is that no "weird" or "paranormal" event of this kind will ever be observed and measured under scientific conditions... unless some physical explanation for the event is found.

[AshvinP]

This thread will soon be locked until further notice, and I don't think I need to explain why. Hopefully for the sake of those who've contributed without the rancor and pissing-match digressions, it can continue again in the spirit that I feel Adur intended.

I actually would appreciate an explanation. Eugene is putting his view out there that Cleric and I are speaking of spiritual reality out of personal subconscious fantasy, which in his view is "sectarian" and leads to some sort of religious oppression of people such as himself, and I am responding that this sort of dismissal of spiritual reality in the modern age is common and dangerous, as it actually leads to concrete "sectarian" tribal tendencies in societies, as recent history demonstrates. If we cannot speak of the practical consequences of our views, then what is the point? I don't think there were any excessive ad hominem attacks or anything (saying someone's view is "sectarian" does not count as ad hom IMO).

[Soul_of_Shu]

Hi Soul_of_Shu,

I can't explain events like that, but I can explain why they are so elusive: according to the "law of consistency", that kind of events lie outside physical reality. They can be witnessed, but they can't be measured. In other words, to witness an event like that one must be in an altered state of consciousness, experiencing an alternate reality.

I suppose I could've slipped into an altered state while engaged in the meditative practice of preparing dinner on auto-pilot, so to speak. For sure, it is not conforming to the rule set of the consensus construct, so it would seem that for whatever reason there needs to be a suspension of the intense focus within that construct, when the mind is rather more unfocused, and drifting off into some more dream-like, imaginal state. However, I also intuit that there are psychic forces involved, given the association of such events with so-called poltergeist activity. As it happens, the flying cutlery incidents occurred only a few times shortly after moving into the house I currently reside in. I never actually met the previous owners, but heard through the grapevine that they were a very elderly couple who had to move due to the husband's serious heart-related health issues, and that he passed away shortly after the move. So there is this sense that there was a reluctance to leave whatever psychic attachment there was with his beloved home within the corporeal construct. Again, suffice to say it seems far more complicated than what the current very constricted mindset of the prevailing paradigm allows for, and for which, if nothing else, idealism at least opens the door to taking seriously the investigation of alternate, as you say, non-measurable factors.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I actually would appreciate an explanation. Eugene is putting his view out there that Cleric and I are speaking of spiritual reality out of personal subconscious fantasy, which in his view is "sectarian" and leads to some sort of religious oppression of people such as himself, and I am responding that this sort of dismissal of spiritual reality in the modern age is common and dangerous, as it actually leads to concrete "sectarian" tribal tendencies in societies, as recent history demonstrates. If we cannot speak of the practical consequences of our views, then what is the point? I don't think there were any excessive ad hominem attacks or anything (saying someone's view is "sectarian" does not count as ad hom IMO).

Well, given that it's been going on repetitively for several pages now, after both saying that it was 'done', with no resolution in sight, and it seems clear that whatever is driving it is not about to stop any time soon, I'm taking the moderator's prerogative of calling it done, and not just ostensibly speaking. Time to move on.

[Steve Petermann]

I suppose I could've slipped into an altered state while engaged in the meditative practice of preparing dinner on auto-pilot, so to speak. For sure, it is not conforming to the rule set of the consensus construct, so it would seem that for whatever reason there needs to be a suspension of the intense focus within that construct, when the mind is rather more unfocused, and drifting off into some more dream-like, imaginal state. However, I also intuit that there are psychic forces involved, given the association of such events with so-called poltergeist activity. As it happens, the flying cutlery incidents occurred only a few times shortly after moving into the house I currently reside in. I never actually met the previous owners, but heard through the grapevine that they were a very elderly couple who had to move due to the husband's serious heart-related health issues, and that he passed away shortly after the move. So there is this sense that there was a reluctance to leave whatever psychic attachment there was with his beloved home within the corporeal construct. Again, suffice to say it seems far more complicated than what the current very constricted mindset of the prevailing paradigm allows for, and for which, if nothing else, idealism at least opens the door to taking seriously the investigation of alternate, as you say, non-measurable factors.

From a scientific point of view, there could be a couple of explanations but they would be incredibly rare. The first would be quantum tunneling. The second would be chaos theory. With chaos theory, there could have been an incredibly small initial vibration that because of chaos magnification created a self-reinforcing harmonic that did it. However, I would think you would have noticed this. Both seem incredibly unlikely but still within probabilities.

A paranormal explanation would be telekinesis. Only you would know if something was going on in your mind that might have created this effect. I myself have witnessed three events in my life that have convinced me there is something to paranormal phenomena. One incident did seem to involve telekinesis.

[AshvinP]

I actually would appreciate an explanation. Eugene is putting his view out there that Cleric and I are speaking of spiritual reality out of personal subconscious fantasy, which in his view is "sectarian" and leads to some sort of religious oppression of people such as himself, and I am responding that this sort of dismissal of spiritual reality in the modern age is common and dangerous, as it actually leads to concrete "sectarian" tribal tendencies in societies, as recent history demonstrates. If we cannot speak of the practical consequences of our views, then what is the point? I don't think there were any excessive ad hominem attacks or anything (saying someone's view is "sectarian" does not count as ad hom IMO).

Well, given that it's been going on repetitively for several pages now, after both saying that it was 'done', with no resolution in sight, and it seems clear that whatever is driving it is not about to stop any time soon, I'm taking the moderator's prerogative of calling it done, and not just ostensibly speaking. Time to move on.

Fair enough, the back & forth on this thread was done anyway. But Cleric and I will keep making posts about objective spiritual reality and how most serious questions cannot be answered without factoring it in, some people will keep getting irritated, and we will be back at some version of "sectarian fantasy" type argument soon enough. Mark my words, for I am the Nostradamus of these matters