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

[AshvinP]

The telos of the Living God is "to live and experience life in all its forms" ((c) Steve). I do not see anything wrong with fragmentation of the MAL into multiple monads, this is not something problematic that needs to be fixed IMO.

Anyone can listen to a musical composition with a few instruments out of tune, in different keys, on different parts of the song, or playing different songs altogether, and immediately experience why this fragmentation is a major problem, in fact THE major problem. Steve also writes about that:


https://dlcommunion.org/a-music-metapho ... issonance/

Perhaps you have heard someone practicing the piano or some other instrument. It may be going well but all of a sudden, a note is struck that doesn’t seem right. Depending on how out of place it is, it may even make us cringe. In music this could be called a dissonance.

Definitions:
Consonance:
“a combination of notes which are in harmony with each other.”

Dissonance:
“a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements.”

In a consonant piece of music things fit together well. There may be many variations in timbre, intensity, tempo and the like, but everything fits together so well it may even seem inevitable. I am particularly fond of the Rachmaninoff piano concerto 3. It has all the elements of great music where we experience the full range of emotions. It’s a long piece with many variations but in the end it all works. In great music, there are periodic cycles of rising and falling tension, variations on a theme, and often many voices at work but taken together as a whole it can be a satisfying experience. The same is true for other forms of art.

Dissonance is quite different. There is something that seems out of place and disjointed from the rest. At some point there is a level of discomfort that arises and a tension created that begs for some resolution. Now, this dissonance need not be by accident. One example of this can be seen in jazz. A dissonance is introduced to create tension but eventually there is a resolution such that, in total, it makes sense. We feel relieved that it wasn’t just left hanging there.

Also, no one has made a case for any final static Unity or "perfection" of the sort you keep referencing. You are simply imposing that strawman on Cleric. I am sure Steve holds to the possibility and high probability that humanity approaches higher knowledge of the Divine realm in an ever-expanding process. Not a multiverse of separate Divine realms for each tradition and for each person, but One unified Divine realm. If not, then he would have some serious problems reconciling with Christian scripture.

[Cleric K]

Cleric, your left picture is one of the possible scenarios that I also can not 100% rule out, but it does not describe exactly what I meant. What I meant is a combination of both left and right pictures. I do not deny the existence of MAL (Global Consciousness) as an active and intentional global subject with its telos for the world and meanings/values. Still, the universe of forms within the MAL's mind is structured in a more complex multi-group and multi-realm way with more than a single vertical hierarchy that you describe. And that universe of forms and structures is a co-manifestation of MAL global subject together with the interest groups and individual monads.

OK. We put that to rest until the next heated up thread

Also, regarding your "integration" telos, I can not rule it out but I do not believe the MAL's telos for the universe is integration into some state of unity and perfection. This would be one of the soteriological schemes that Steve criticized in his essays, and I agree with him. IMO the universe is indeed going through an evolutionary process, there is an "evolutionary development of the cosmic organism", but there is no "perfection and unification end" to this process, it is never-ending because the universe of forms is inexhaustible. The telos of the Living God is "to live and experience life in all its forms" ((c) Steve). I do not see anything wrong with fragmentation of the MAL into multiple monads, this is not something problematic that needs to be fixed IMO.

I've tried several time to speak about this but it has been even more misunderstood than everything else.

The criticism of the integration telos stems entirely out of thinking locked into Newtonian linear time. I've read Steve's essay on this and you can see it plainly:

The problem with perfection is that this inevitably leads to an end to life with all its wonders of discovery, disappointment, defeat, and victory. In the end there is only silence and lifelessness.

Now I don't blame anyone for this kind of thinking, because it is so deeply ingrained that practically there's nothing else that it can be compared to - thus, it's operating completely unconsciously. That's also the reason why it's so difficult to point attention to this and why whatever I say on the topic goes in one ear and exits the other.

In the quote above (just like any other critique in that spirit) it is plainly obvious that there's not even a hint of questioning the nature of Time. It is seen entirely as a Divine Turing Machine (with free will of course) that ticks forward according to the Divine Newtonian Clock. It's imagined that the Machine reaches the halting state of perfection yet consciousness continues to tick along the Divine Clock. Divine Mind looks around stuck in the perfect state and wonders "What's the point? Everything froze. I'd much rather keep switching states endlessly than having to stay frozen in a perfect state and spend eternity witnessing how infinite amount of ticks clock by". Yes, if this is the vision for perfection I wouldn't be thrilled either

There's disconnect between our observation of change and our thinking about it. If this was not the case it would never occur to one to speak about a static lifeless state where nevertheless consciousness continues to tick and becomes increasingly bored. I think the Descartes duality is obvious here. One cannot escape the clocking of the intellect and that's why he sees the experiential states as changing and eventually halting, yet one can't stop his thinking clock - one cannot see his thinking as also being part of the progression of experiential states. But this is not surprising granted that thinking is entirely in the blind spot of modern man and there's strong resistance to experience it as living spiritual activity, where thinking is the actual flow of states.

I'll leave these things as meditations for the reader, as obviously my attempts to throw light on these topics are generally ignored.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I'll leave these things as meditations for the reader, as obviously my attempts to throw light on these topics are generally ignored.

Well, certainly not in this case. I try to read them all, sometimes having to reread some passages, with an open mind, as much as possible not letting the predisposed conditioning get in the way, and come away from it with an appreciation for its intriguing, yet provisional, perspective, in that it might indeed be a true enough mythos under the circumstances, without expecting it to be some definitive account. And insofar as I can apply it in anyway to facilitate the Bodhisattva bound process and project, that is a bonus.

[Cleric K]

I'll leave these things as meditations for the reader, as obviously my attempts to throw light on these topics are generally ignored.

Well, certainly not in this case. I try to read them all, sometimes having to reread some passages, with an open mind, as much as possible not letting the predisposed conditioning get in the way, and come away from it with an appreciation for its intriguing, yet provisional, perspective, in that it might indeed be a true enough mythos under the circumstances, without expecting it to be some definitive account. And insofar as I can apply it in anyway to facilitate the Bodhisattva bound process and project, that is a bonus.

Thanks Dana!

[Eugene I]

The criticism of the integration telos stems entirely out of thinking locked into Newtonian linear time. I've read Steve's essay on this and you can see it plainly:

The problem with perfection is that this inevitably leads to an end to life with all its wonders of discovery, disappointment, defeat, and victory. In the end there is only silence and lifelessness.

Now I don't blame anyone for this kind of thinking, because it is so deeply ingrained that practically there's nothing else that it can be compared to - thus, it's operating completely unconsciously. That's also the reason why it's so difficult to point attention to this and why whatever I say on the topic goes in one ear and exits the other.

In the quote above (just like any other critique in that spirit) it is plainly obvious that there's not even a hint of questioning the nature of Time. It is seen entirely as a Divine Turing Machine (with free will of course) that ticks forward according to the Divine Newtonian Clock. It's imagined that the Machine reaches the halting state of perfection yet consciousness continues to tick along the Divine Clock. Divine Mind looks around stuck in the perfect state and wonders "What's the point? Everything froze. I'd much rather keep switching states endlessly than having to stay frozen in a perfect state and spend eternity witnessing how infinite amount of ticks clock by". Yes, if this is the vision for perfection I wouldn't be thrilled either

There's disconnect between our observation of change and our thinking about it. If this was not the case it would never occur to one to speak about a static lifeless state where nevertheless consciousness continues to tick and becomes increasingly bored. I think the Descartes duality is obvious here. One cannot escape the clocking of the intellect and that's why he sees the experiential states as changing and eventually halting, yet one can't stop his thinking clock - one cannot see his thinking as also being part of the progression of experiential states. But this is not surprising granted that thinking is entirely in the blind spot of modern man and there's strong resistance to experience it as living spiritual activity, where thinking is the actual flow of states.

I'll leave these things as meditations for the reader, as obviously my attempts to throw light on these topics are generally ignored.

Right, so if seems we have these alternatives (let me know if I'm missing any others):

1. Integrated perfection state and telos with two sub-alternatives:
- 1.1 Integrated perfection with "ticking time"/change continuing indefinitely
- 1.2 Timeless integrated perfection (no ticking once the perfection and oneness is reached)

2. The telos that MAL intentionally defined is the development of life which is not headed towards integration and perfection, but towards endless exploration of the inexhaustible universe of forms, in other words, towards endless Life. Since time is needed for such exploration, time never stops.

I can not 100% rule out 1.1 and 1.2 variants but they don't feel appealing to me, they both are the end of Life (no matter whether the time will continue ticking or not). But I think it's still worth understanding why these views and other soteriological schemes have been around in many religions for millennia. We see life around us full of suffering, problems and imperfections, and we also have an intuition of "perfection" where none of those problems exists. People can't help feeling that there is something wrong with them and with the world around them that needs to be either rejected (Buddhist approach) or fixed by divine intervention (Abrahamic religions), so it is psychologically very natural for them to develop a rejection of life in its current state in favor of the perfection. However, the intuition of perfection and goodness (that originates in the Divine Mind) is not intended to reject life (on the grounds that life does not seem to conform to the ideal of perfection), but to guide the life development process and counter-act the destructive tendencies in the Ying-Yang dynamic equilibrium that provides the dynamic polarities to make Life possible.

Another problem I see with 1.2 scenario is this: God "stepped" from timeless perfection into time and life and dissociation into multiple subjects/monads with all its sufferings and struggles (but also with discoveries and joys) only with the purpose of eventually getting out of it back into integrated timeless perfection. But then what is the point of such circular endeavor?

[Cleric K]

Right, so if seems we have these alternatives (let me know if I'm missing any others):

1. Integrated perfection state and telos with two sub-alternatives:
- 1.1 Integrated perfection with "ticking time"/change continuing indefinitely
- 1.2 Timeless integrated perfection (no ticking once the perfection and oneness is reached)

2. The telos that MAL intentionally defined is the development of life which is not headed towards integration and perfection, but towards endless exploration of the inexhaustible universe of forms, in other words, towards endless Life. Since time is needed for such exploration, time never stops.

I can not 100% rule out 1.1 and 1.2 variants but they don't feel appealing to me, they both are the end of Life (no matter whether the time will continue ticking or not). But I think it's still worth understanding why these views and other soteriological schemes have been around in many religions for millennia. We see life around us full of suffering, problems and imperfections, and we also have an intuition of "perfection" where none of those problems exists. People can't help feeling that there is something wrong with them and with the world around them that needs to be either rejected (Buddhist approach) or fixed by divine intervention (Abrahamic religions), so it is psychologically very natural for them to develop a rejection of life in its current state in favor of the perfection. However, the intuition of perfection and goodness (that originates in the Divine Mind) is not intended to reject life (on the grounds that life does not seem to conform to the ideal of perfection), but to guide the life development process and counter-act the destructive tendencies in the Ying-Yang dynamic equilibrium that provides the dynamic polarities to make Life possible.

Another problem I see with 1.2 scenario is this: God "stepped" from timeless perfection into time and life and dissociation into multiple subjects/monads with all its sufferings and struggles (but also with discoveries and joys) only with the purpose of eventually getting out of it back into integrated timeless perfection. But then what is the point of such circular endeavor?

The list is not exhaustive

The points above still conceive Time as a clock that ticks and propagates the conscious states forward. I asked you this in the Candy Shop thread but didn't receive answer (sorry if you answered but I missed it). What is memory in your view? Not speaking in a restricted physical context but in the general spiritual. I suppose you take it that in the disincarnate state we should be able to see ourselves within the flow of time, so some kind of memory should exist. How this ties up with the endless life? Can memory grow infinitely? If life has no beginning and no end then memory should already be infinitely large as it must have integrated infinite previous states. Or we have a moving window encompassing states that have been experienced, with the oldest constantly fading away?

[Steve Petermann]

Also, no one has made a case for any final static Unity or "perfection" of the sort you keep referencing. You are simply imposing that strawman on Cleric. I am sure Steve holds to the possibility and high probability that humanity approaches higher knowledge of the Divine realm in an ever-expanding process. Not a multiverse of separate Divine realms for each tradition and for each person, but One unified Divine realm. If not, then he would have some serious problems reconciling with Christian scripture.

As I said in a prior post, I'm ambivalent about the idea of spiritual evolution. On the one hand, I think that our explicated metaphysical systems have evolved and become closer to the truth about the divine. These may cognitively and intuitively inform us better about our place in reality and our relationship to the divine. However, on the other hand, I don't think this explicated "progress" means that prior points in history were spiritually inferior in the sense of lived life. Explications aren't what is ultimately important. What is ultimately important is how we live, relate to others, our environment, and God. Explications can inform that lived life but in every age, there was still the divine transcendent depth at work. Tillich called this "the mystical a priori", Calvin called it "sensus divinitatis", and it has been described as "a still, small voice". When the rubber meets the road in a lived life that divine depth can be instantiated even in spite of "flawed" explications. In other words, we can still embrace our divine depth regardless of the explications we adhere to.

If not, then he would have some serious problems reconciling with Christian scripture.

While I find great actionable wisdom and revelation in Christianity, I don't call myself a Christian anymore. I am unaffiliated. So, I'm not trying to reconcile anything with Christianity, as a system. One of the reasons for this and why I also find other major religious traditions not compelling is that they are world-rejecting. There are many other reasons as well. Prominent religious scholar, Robert Bellah talks about the evolution of religious sentiment and how when the major traditions emerged roughly before and during the axial age, there was a general world-rejection and dualistic sentiment. This world rejection inevitably leads to the need for some "fix". If something is fundamentally wrong with the world, as it is, then it is only natural that religious formulations will formulate some fixing process. So we get eschatology(end times) and soteriology (salvation schemes). I think the cosmos is fundamentally, exactly as God wants it. There is nothing to fix because it is shaped according to divine goals. Just as it is, it offers opportunities for lived moments of love, beauty, meaning, courage, faith in the face of doubt, compassion, grit, selflessness, and on and on. I talked about this here and how this very cosmos we living in makes all that possible.

Accordingly, I don't think there is an end game. How could there be an end to the creation of all those noble things I mentioned? This universe may end in heat death and it won't be because some idealized endpoint (omega point) has been reached. I don't like to speculate beyond that but I do believe that there will continue to be a Divine Life or many Divine Lives in some form, some similar to ours and some perhaps very different, all with divine goals in mind for them.

[Eugene I]

The list is not exhaustive

The points above still conceive Time as a clock that ticks and propagates the conscious states forward. I asked you this in the Candy Shop thread but didn't receive answer (sorry if you answered but I missed it). What is memory in your view? Not speaking in a restricted physical context but in the general spiritual. I suppose you take it that in the disincarnate state we should be able to see ourselves within the flow of time, so some kind of memory should exist. How this ties up with the endless life? Can memory grow infinitely? If life has no beginning and no end then memory should already be infinitely large as it must have integrated infinite previous states. Or we have a moving window encompassing states that have been experienced, with the oldest constantly fading away?

I do not have a definite answer but hypothetically I can say that we only have to assume the infinitude of memory if we assume that time had no beginning (which means that there already have been infinite number if ticks passed). But, together with Santeri, I do not believe that actual infinity (of time, space, memory, numbers, ideas or whatever) exists. Whatever happens in time/space/life is always finite. Timeless does not mean "encompassing the infinitude of time", but it means "the absence of time" or "beyond time". In this case the memory needed to track and memorize all life events also does not need to be infinite, but it does need to be able to grow without limits. In other words, we only need to assume that we can gradually grow the always-limited life resources without encountering any limits, but we do not need to assume that the resources are actually infinite.

[Steve Petermann]

Another problem I see with 1.2 scenario is this: God "stepped" from timeless perfection into time and life and dissociation into multiple subjects/monads with all its sufferings and struggles (but also with discoveries and joys) only with the purpose of eventually getting out of it back into integrated timeless perfection. But then what is the point of such circular endeavor?

Right, this is why I reject Advaita Vedanta and Buddhist "end games". As you say, what was the point? Life is such a grand adventure with both its sorrows and joys. Personally, I hope there is nothing like a heavenly existence, as typically described. I suffer just like everyone else, but there is such a meaningful profoundness to life why would we want anything else? Sure, we hope our sufferings will abate and joys increase. This does happen from time to time and we can and should work fervently toward that. Inevitably, things change and we must face new challenges but this also creates such an opportunity for personal and global spiritual growth. In each new situation, we can step up and work for the good and beautiful.

[AshvinP]

Also, no one has made a case for any final static Unity or "perfection" of the sort you keep referencing. You are simply imposing that strawman on Cleric. I am sure Steve holds to the possibility and high probability that humanity approaches higher knowledge of the Divine realm in an ever-expanding process. Not a multiverse of separate Divine realms for each tradition and for each person, but One unified Divine realm. If not, then he would have some serious problems reconciling with Christian scripture.

As I said in a prior post, I'm ambivalent about the idea of spiritual evolution. On the one hand, I think that our explicated metaphysical systems have evolved and become closer to the truth about the divine. These may cognitively and intuitively inform us better about our place in reality and our relationship to the divine. However, on the other hand, I don't think this explicated "progress" means that prior points in history were spiritually inferior in the sense of lived life. Explications aren't what is ultimately important. What is ultimately important is how we live, relate to others, our environment, and God. Explications can inform that lived life but in every age, there was still the divine transcendent depth at work. Tillich called this "the mystical a prior", Calvin called it "sensus divinitatis", and it has been described as "a still, small voice". When the rubber meets the road in a lived life that divine depth can be instantiated even in spite of "flawed" explications. In other words, we can still embrace our divine depth regardless of the explications we adhere to.

This is just one of the innumerable reasons why the "spiritual evolution" must be understood properly. Generally, it is thought of as the "evolution" of peoples' ideas and knowledge over linear time. This view is also related to what Cleric is referencing about the failure to understand Time properly (he has written a few essays on that topic as well - "Time as Super-Structure" and "Time-Consciousness Spectrum"). That "evolution of ideas" is not what we are referring to with spiritual evolution, "evolution of consciousness", or "metamorphoses of the Spirit [consciousness]". Rather we are speaking of the evolution of perception-cognition itself, which can be traced very precisely throughout the prior epochs. This evolution is reflected in mythology, philosophy, art, science, and human culture in general, across many different civilizations. If you are familiar with Owen Barfield or Jean Gebser, they both write about at this at length. Gebser especially provides an extremely thorough analysis of it in The Ever-Present Origin. Steiner also wrote/spoke about it in many different places. I wrote a few essays about it called Metamorphoses of the Spirit which are posted on this forum. So far, in my experience, no one actually challenges this view or the arguments made in favor of it, but many people outright ignore it when formulating their arguments or responding to ours on different matters. As I am sure you can tell, this metamorphic progression, if true, has major implications for all matters related to human culture, especially spirituality. Under this view, no prior stage of spiritual evolution is considered more "inferior" to later ones, as they were all indispensable for the progression of the Whole and prior ones will reappear in the later ones for very precise 'purposes' (in unique ways). I always like referring to this quote by Hegel, which captures it nicely:


“The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit


I am curious to know your thoughts, if any, on this metamorphic progression.

If not, then he would have some serious problems reconciling with Christian scripture.

While I find great actionable wisdom and revelation in Christianity, I don't call myself a Christian anymore. I am unaffiliated. So, I'm not trying to reconcile anything with Christianity, as a system. One of the reasons for this and why I also find other major religious traditions not compelling is that they are world-rejecting. There are many other reasons as well. Prominent religious scholar, Robert Bellah talks about the evolution of religious sentiment and how when the major traditions emerged roughly before and during the axial age, there was a general world-rejection and dualistic sentiment. This world rejection inevitably leads to the need for some "fix". If something is fundamentally wrong with the world, as it is, then it is only natural that religious formulations will formulate some fixing process. So we get eschatology(end times) and soteriology (salvation schemes). I think the cosmos is fundamentally, exactly as God wants it. There is nothing to fix because it is shaped according to divine goals. Just as it is, it offers opportunities for lived moments of love, beauty, meaning, courage, faith in the face of doubt, compassion, grit, selflessness, and on and on. I talked about this here and how this very cosmos we living in makes all that possible.

Accordingly, I don't think there is an end game. How could there be an end to the creation of all those noble things I mentioned? This universe may end in heat death and it won't be because some idealized endpoint (omega point) has been reached. I don't like to speculate beyond that but I do believe that there will continue to be a Divine Life or many Divine Lives in some form, some similar to ours and some perhaps very different, all with divine goals in mind for them.

Right, I also do not like the world-rejecting aspects of exoteric Christian tradition and have written about it critically as well. Again, the metamorphic progression is indispensable in understanding these transitions. Although we certainly find the seeds of dualism and eventual unhealthy world-rejection or world-obsession emerging from the Axial Age, it did not resemble anything like what we have now. It was not until the 15th century when this new impulse developed towards nominalism, rationalism, dualism, and materialism, and also found its way into some forms of idealism and mysticism. That is especially true of Kantian transcendental idealism, whose epistemology is about as world-rejecting as one can get in Western philosophy. We really need to right our relationship with Space and Time, as Cleric has been discussing the latter to understand why most of the "scenarios" and "problems" Eugene and yourself have been mentioning here are non-issues, or rather self-imposed problems. A part of that righting of the relationship (which is not other than our relationship with the Christ-being) is understanding the limits of abstract intellect and how it must always serve the 'right-brain' integral Wisdom of higher cognition. I explore this more in a new mythology essay - Part II of the 4th epoch (Greco-Roman). In the meantime, I see Cleric has asked several times about the linear "clocking" time issue and it would be nice to hear you guys respond to that.