Eugene I wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 10:20 pm
Cleric, very useful post, thanks.
Thanks, Eugene, I'm glad it was of use.
Eugene I wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 10:20 pm
But on the above, I would ask you to give a quote form one of the modern good standing non-duality teachers, for example Rupert Spira, stating that to solve the splitting problem we need to eradicate thinking. Being very familiar with his teachings, I assure you that he never said or implied that. On the contrary, the main point of his teaching/practice is exactly what you stated: Consciousness (that you call Thinking) to become aware of itself. Same applies to many other good-standing non-duality teachers, such as Adyashanti, Tolle etc. Of course and unfortunately, there are many charlatans in that field who might teach to eradicate thinking, and we can't do anything about that other than to point out that they are doing it wrong.
Of course, the image of brute annihilation of thinking is exaggeration (although, as you say, we can certainly find even such minor teachings). It would be more appropriate to say that the path of development of thinking into higher cognition is blocked. And I don't mean this in any demeaning way. I hold great respect for Spira and others. It is clear that their teachings help millions to find meaning in their life. But we should be very aware of a thin line. We spoke with Adur about this. It is OK to say "It's enough for me to lift my attachment to my bodily image, to my desires and opinions. I leave deeper knowledge for next life". And that's fine. It's much more than the majority of humans will ever accomplish. But this delaying of acquisition of deeper understanding of reality begins to build an
artificial dam between the worlds. The greatest misconception is that we can have clear understanding of ourselves without understanding the deeper structure of reality. This can only be supported in a Flat MAL model, where we consider ourselves to be direct perspective of the One, while everything which has to do with structure, worlds, beings is our external environment. This gives the impression that as long as we focus on the
general truth that all is consciousness, we're grounded in the foundations of reality - that is,
nothing stands in between our Earthly perspective and the One. Everything of manifested nature is considered to be our relations with aspects of the One which stand as
external reality to our perspective. (please don't get hung upon the word 'external'. It's used in full awareness of the unbroken essence of the One Consciousness).
Even though it is certainly an 'upgrade' in comparison to crude materialism, this view can block development of consciousness further down the line. It can be said that materialists are more objective about the way consciousness works in comparison to most spiritually inclined people. Through rigorous study, scientists have discovered something which is completely conflated by most spiritualists.
These are facts that can be found in any book on the brain. Here we have the neurological image of what we know as Willing, Feeling and Thinking. There are so many things that can be elucidated here. Everything comes together in such a beautiful way when these layers are understood in their true nature. Scientists are right to assume that these layers of the brain correspond to evolutionary transformations. It's only that it is imagined that this evolution has happened linearly entirely in the physical realm. Before there could be three parts of the brain in the physical body, there have been evolutionary iterations within spiritual space. There have been several convolutions of Cosmic Consciousness that increase the manifoldness of the Cosmos
in expense of being decohered at the periphery.
The scientists are objective. The reptilian brain corresponds to our instinctive will. The limbic system and the hippocampus give the dreamy world of feelings, sympathies and antipathies, pain and pleasure. The neocortex awakes man to the light of thinking where all the below subconscious experiences are brought in meaningful unity through the ever expanding horizon of the "I"-being. The scientist says "The neocortex is the output, the 'pixels' of consciousness as produced by the activity below." This is fine. But where physicalism falls short is that because of its own nature, it is seen as impossible to have consciousness in the layers below the neocortex, in the same way the pixels on the screen say nothing about the hardware below.
The modern flattened spirituality fares no better. Not much is achieved when everything is conflated in the general term 'consciousness'. What is achieved is that spiritual activity is mastered to the extent that the chaotic patterns in the neocortex are quieted down and are then contemplated within the unbroken warmth and laminarity of the feelings rising from the midbrain (of course we use the brain as a placeholder here. Consciousness is neither generated, not reflected only in the brain). It's interesting that from this standpoint, modern non-dualism doesn't even have the right foundation to claim that consciousness is indeed one. I was thinking on commenting on this in relation to a BK interview someone posted here. There BK once again gave the example of the sensory deprivation tank and how when we remain in pure consciousness we live in the One consciousness. But this is such a logical fallacy that it's little saddening to hear it used by someone like BK, who is otherwise determined to crush the irrationality of materialism. The fallacy is to confuse
featurelessness of consciousness with oneness of consciousness. By the same token we can say that two formatted hard drives are one just because both hold zeroes that can't be distinguished from one another. How can we ever be sure that the experience of empty consciousness is the background of reality and not simply the laminar completely local brain activity? To anyone who seriously considers these things it should be clear that we can never approach the oneness aspect of consciousness in such a way. Instead, we can only do that when we interact with the spiritual activity of other beings not only through the sensory spectrum but in the full spectrum, which includes thinking, feeling and willing. We speak of one physical space because we can interact with our physical bodies. In the same way, we can speak of one consciousness only if we can interact with thoughts, feelings and will of other beings in the same spiritual space. Just as little as standing still can prove that we share the same physical space, so it's impossible to know of oneness of consciousness if we stand still in its emptiness.
From the flattened perspective, willing, feeling and thinking are mere conscious phenomena, no different than red, green and blue. It is assumed that the master container is Consciousness and everything else are only permutations of conscious phenomena. As said, here the physicalist is much closer to truth than the flat spiritualist. The latter doesn't concern himself with the lawfulness and hierarchic relations between the phenomena. It's left out for the wildcard-Consciousness to take care of. When the ancient Hebrew was asked why this or that exists, his answer would be "Because Yahve made it so". Such is the view also of naive religiosity today: it's so simple - God created everything, what is there to philosophize about it? It's a powerful explain-all-wildcard. Similarly, nondualism delegates all the mysteries to Consciousness. If we can't figure something out we say "Don't worry, the intellect is limited, it can never understand these things. Consciousness takes care of everything." And even though from certain aspect we're justified to say that, we must be aware that this is only a general truth. It is useful to give us orientation but when it becomes a dam between thinking and the inexplicable Consciousness, it really makes the 'non-dual' designation appear strangely out of place.
So this is the point that we arrive at in almost every discussion. It is based on the belief that what we have is enough, that as long as we recognize the illusionary social role we play, we're firmly grounded in reality. This we can do comfortably only if we imagine that there's literally
nothing between our Earthly perspective and the perspective of the One Consciousness that encompasses all (except the threshold of death).
On the other hand, in the light of the labyrinth examples from before, if we understand that the brain parts correspond to spiritual strata of reality, it will be clear that the stream of consciousness we experience at the surface (even if quieted down in meditation) is still only at the membrane of the neocortex.
When we walk through physical labyrinth we navigate through walls, stones, dust and so on. While the thinking process remains in the blind spot it looks like we're a third-person spectator of reality and we must find the proper mental picture that fits perceptions perfectly. But when we realize ourselves as a spiritual being then we begin to see thinking as movement through a spiritual labyrinth. The thoughts are our perceptions of the walls of it. This is our approach towards Imaginative cognition. We no longer think for the sake of an abstract mental picture of the supposed reality-in-itself but we find our own being in a higher order stratum of reality, within the 'channels', 'ducts' and 'pipes' of which we observe how our states of ordinary consciousness take shape. The neocortex becomes a panoramic experience of our thinking life. These states are further embedded within the flows of destiny, of which we experience only dim shadows in the forms of sympathies and antipathies. Even further we live in the purely spiritual world where the archetypal forces at the foundations of our existence are to be found.
We can observe a beautiful connection here. In lines of what Ashvin quoted above from a previous post, when we live in thinking we're in the middle between the below and the above, the small and the large, QM and GR. The more we move 'down', the more we move towards universality in multiplicity. Every animal has a brain yet the more primitive the animal is, the more common the brain behavior is. There's not much emotion or creativity to be found in a crocodile. It's a perfected willing organism that acts with cold determination. When we reach the realm of cells and particles everything becomes more and more universal, even though in infinite multiplicity. So at the lower pole we have Oneness projected into multiplicity. On the other hand, when we move 'up', we once again move towards universality but now as unity of meaning. The stream of our ordinary conscious states become meaningful when we grow in self-knowledge and understand how this stream is weaved out of our hitherto subconscious opinions, prejudices, likes, dislikes, motor habits and so on. The world content becomes even more meaningful when we see the latter elements in their interrelations with other human beings, with the social organism, with nations. More meaning is attained to when we perceive all these states of being as flowing within the streams of higher order time waves, which determine the evolutionary epochs within which memory integrates. And so on, as we approach asymptotically the Idea of Time and Being, within the Alpha and Omega poles of which, all existence is differentiated and played out as integration of memory/meaning. Of course, we shouldn't imagine this in a purely psychoanalytical or intellectually-metaphysical way. All these layers of reality are living ideas-beings within the One Consciousness and it's the task of higher order cognition to live consciously within them and not only in the concept-shadows they cast in the intellect. So here we have multiplicity encompassed as a meaningful whole in Oneness. It's a polarity of One, between the poles of which infinity of possible states of being are differentiated.
I realize that this post is somewhat chaotic and there are many things that must be supported from many different sides in order for the connections to be traced but my point was to simply draw attention to the way that conflating everything into an all-encompassing, yet cognized only abstractly, concept such as Consciousness, remains as a barrier to the real experience of the deep order of the same Consciousness that the nondualist knows and loves. Here we can learn from the physicalist and accept in humility that what we experience in our waking consciousness is only the surface of several convoluted worlds of soul and spirit. Flattening these worlds into the generalized 'consciousness' bars all possibilities to make sense of reality. One is left with the patient hope that things will be somehow magically resolved after death.