Criticism

[Cleric K]

Sorry to interrupt, but was anyone else recently having issues with the site not loading, and getting an error message?

Yes, there was some problem. Generally it was working with great delay for every request but at times it was bailing out with 'name resolution' error. It seems the website is contacting some other server, which has been probably broken and every request was delayed as a result.

[Martin_]

Sorry to interrupt, but was anyone else recently having issues with the site not loading, and getting an error message?

Yes, there was some problem. Generally it was working with great delay for every request but at times it was bailing out with 'name resolution' error. It seems the website is contacting some other server, which has been probably broken and every request was delayed as a result.

same here. i had problems last night, but it's working fine at the moment. Canada / US

[AshvinP]

Now with this in mind it should be clear why what Eugene says above sounds really as paragraph 22. Let me put it into a bluntly simple example. We have a door and we stand on one side of it. There are two statements "The door can be gone through" and "The door can't be gone through". It's a fact that as long as we are on the same side of the door we can speak about possibilities. We say IF the door can be gone through. Now Eugene and Martin say that they are open for the possibility that the door can be gone through but they reserve the possibility that this may actually not be the case. Who knows, maybe some clever genius can prove the you-shall-not-pass theorem. But in any case, I hope it's clear that the openness for the possibility of going through the gate remains entirely in phantom layer of the intellect. It is as if by definition all that talk about the gate is bound to forever remain purely abstract speculation. It is completely forgotten that the statement refers to something that can indeed be verified. Not proven entirely within the bounds of the phantom layer but verified when phantom thinking steps outside pure abstraction.

Another example. I see a pencil on the desk in front of me. I can speculate: "It is either possible or impossible to lift that pencil with my hand". Eugene and Martin say "We're open that it might be possible to lift the pencil but we don't want to subscribe to religious dogma. We'll live our life as if the pencil can be lifted because it has beneficial pragmatic consequences but we stay on the sure side and remain open that this can be proven wrong at any point in time."

Cleric,

Thank you!

It's funny because I started re-reading your earliest posts on the forum and came across this below - I was thinking of starting a new thread called "Cleric and the No-Arm-Movement Paradigm", or something similar, and posting all the various illustrations you have given over the many months. This one actually had me laughing when I imagined the back and forth in the manner you wrote it. Since you have now also contributed the "no-going-through-door" and "no-lifting-pencil" paradigms, I will just post it here. It also goes to show just how long you have been trying to make this same point here.

viewtopic.php?p=362#p362

A very simple (probably insultingly simple) example could be if we have never moved our arm and hold on to the "no-arm-movement" paradigm. Someone tells us "Hey, it is actually possible to move your arm". We reply "Negative. I have never experienced arm movement so there's no such a thing." Furthermore, if the no-arm-movement paradigm is presented in such a way that it is considered the ultimate reality, then we'll actively suppress any hints of movement because we believe that any movement leads us into the illusionary world of "arm-movement". We can very clearly see the fallacy here. There are experiences that can only become confirmed reality if we actively pursue them.

And this is the peculiar situation of humanity in our age. We are on a threshold where thought-only cognition becomes lost in the abstractness of isolated thoughts that build upon themselves. On the other hand, the impossibility to transcend thinking through thinking throws many in the completely opposite extremum, and consider thoughts worthless along with the self-reflective quality they entail.

But couldn't it be that thinking activity is only a more limited form of a higher form of spiritual activity of self-reflective quality?

[Ben Iscatus]

Yet these worlds are not isolated, they form a gradient. And it's man's task to gain consciousness of the meaningful flow not only within the intellect but also in the other strata of reality.

Yes, of course we can know more than we know now, but if the thing-in-itself is truly an idea outside time and space (the scaffolding of our dissociation), that's a definition of transcendent, is it not?

Some of the representations of the ideas that contribute to a pencil (making it what it really is) include carbon atoms forming in a star. And since all ideas are ultimately entangled, being simultaneous excitations of the transpersonal mind's transcendent, unitary universal field, the icon "pencil" is part of that. We can't fully disentangle a single icon by thought (in other words, we can't completely know it) because it is not really a separate object. To make it so is to forget that time and space are not fundamental. To really know the pencil, we need to be the transpersonal mind itself - which of course we are, though we are veiled from it by the idea of "dissociation". Dissociation is, by definition, an idea that only allows us a limited, perspectival, spatio-temporal representation of the thing in itself.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Cleric,

Thank you!

It's funny because I started re-reading your earliest posts on the forum and came across this below - I was thinking of starting a new thread called "Cleric and the No-Arm-Movement Paradigm", or something similar, and posting all the various illustrations you have given over the many months. This one actually had me laughing when I imagined the back and forth in the manner you wrote it. Since you have now also contributed the "no-going-through-door" and "no-lifting-pencil" paradigms, I will just post it here. It also goes to show just how long you have been trying to make this same point here.

viewtopic.php?p=362#p362

A very simple (probably insultingly simple) example could be if we have never moved our arm and hold on to the "no-arm-movement" paradigm. Someone tells us "Hey, it is actually possible to move your arm". We reply "Negative. I have never experienced arm movement so there's no such a thing." Furthermore, if the no-arm-movement paradigm is presented in such a way that it is considered the ultimate reality, then we'll actively suppress any hints of movement because we believe that any movement leads us into the illusionary world of "arm-movement". We can very clearly see the fallacy here. There are experiences that can only become confirmed reality if we actively pursue them.

And this is the peculiar situation of humanity in our age. We are on a threshold where thought-only cognition becomes lost in the abstractness of isolated thoughts that build upon themselves. On the other hand, the impossibility to transcend thinking through thinking throws many in the completely opposite extremum, and consider thoughts worthless along with the self-reflective quality they entail.

But couldn't it be that thinking activity is only a more limited form of a higher form of spiritual activity of self-reflective quality?

I don't know about others, but I have yet to experience the horizon rising relative to the sun to block it out, as any feeling other than the sun setting. I suspect that whatever the culture, some sort of linguistic equivalent of sun setting, or sinking is used to describe this experience. Only through reasoned thinking, does one deduce that this is a provisional and relative experience, and not what it appears to be, however convincing it may seem. And yet, does any amount of thinking about it actually change that apparency? Would one ever wax poetically about feeling the horizon rising to block the sun? Perchance, if from day one of seeing the event, mommy and/or daddy said, "look child how the horizon is rising to block the sun", from then onward might one actually experience it that way, and forgo having to deduce otherwise?

[Eugene I]

Let's look closely at the above thinking attitude. It would be quite on the mark if the question was "Is string theory right?". Then one could answer "Contingently and pragmatically, string theory works for me but I prefer not to accept it as religious dogma and remain open that at some point it might be proven wrong". Such an attitude is indeed the healthiest approach for intellect operating with the Kantian divide. It's the most logical thing to do. If the thing-in-itself is in principle to forever remain only asymptotically approached through mental models which approximate the dynamics of its appearances, then it's only a sign of sound thinking that we don't claim absolute truthiness for our model. Even if our model currently matches all known facts it could still turn out that thousand years from now, a new phenomenon can be discovered that doesn't fit the model. This is all fine and is indeed the healthy attitude towards the unknowable thing-in-itself (if we assume that it is indeed forever unknowable).

Cleric, you are twisting the arguments. Such position is not necessarily based on Kantian premise (although it may be for many modern scientists, but it does not have to be that way). Even if the Reality may be fully knowable and if there is there is no fundamental Kantian divide, that does not mean that our current knowledge of it is ultimate and complete. So what you are doing is starting from the (implicit) assumption that the reality is fully knowable and immediately jumping to the view that your knowledge of the Reality is the ultimate Truth.

But let's consider something else. You already gave similar example. Let's take the statement "I experience thinking". If we approach this with the same attitude as the above, it will sound something like "My working hypothesis is that I do indeed experience thinking but that's only my pragmatic approach. I remain open to the possibility that I may not be experiencing thinking. I want to remain unbiased and accept that I can only asymptotically approach this fact but I can never be certain about it. If I claim certainty, it would immediately turn into religious dogma and this is simply bad science."

Twisted argument again. As I said above, nobody is questioning the experiencing of thinking, but using that obvious fact (of experiencing thinking) you are trying to smuggle an unwarranted assumption that there is nothing else in the world other than Thinking. The former is an obvious fact of our direct experience, the latter is an assumption, which, if smuggled without accepting it as an explicit assumption, becomes a religious dogma.

Another example. I see a pencil on the desk in front of me. I can speculate: "It is either possible or impossible to lift that pencil with my hand". Eugene and Martin say "We're open that it might be possible to lift the pencil but we don't want to subscribe to religious dogma. We'll live our life as if the pencil can be lifted because it has beneficial pragmatic consequences but we stay on the sure side and remain open that this can be proven wrong at any point in time."
...What is not understood here is that part (1) actually speaks about a path of experience, not about empty speculations that are bound to remain phantom models of reality-in-itself. Yes, it might be that the path leads to a dead end but adding (2) simply shows that there's no intent whatsoever to verify (1).

No, the pragmatic approach is to actually try to lift it without assuming any beliefs whether it is possible or not, but assuming a working hypothesis that it can be lifted until it is experimentally proven that it can not be lifted. Such approach is pragmatic and active but does not require any religious unwarranted beliefs, it only needs working hypotheses until they become proven facts, or become disproven. It is exactly the path of experience.

For the n-th time I say that it's not about convincing anyone that the possibility of lifting the pencil is the true possibility, without the person verifying it for himself. It's all about pointing out to the simple cognitive error that is being committed over and over again. The error is that thinking self-defeats itself. It declares openness for a possibility in (1) but in the second part of the sentence (2) it practically denies that very possibility. It's as simple as that. Really! In (1) we open up for the possibility to find the cognitive element in reality at large, in (2) we say "Yeah but we can never know if this is really true so it's better to remain honest and embrace agnosticism." Seriously. Is it really so difficult to see the glaring contradiction in this? What's the point of speaking about the possibility of cognitive element in reality in (1) when just an instant later (2) we declare that it is in principle impossible to know if this is true.

It is true that too much of skepticism leads to a stagnant agnosticism when people do not want to do anything because they don't know anything about Reality and do not want to make any assumptions in order to undertake actions. This is an extreme to be avoided. But you are using this example to drag us to the other extreme: do not question any assumptions but accept them as religious beliefs because only in this case you can advance yourself in spiritual knowledge. But that approach is as unhealthy and dangerous and the agnostic one. We should accept certain assumptions and undertake actions in order to advance our knowledge, but we should do it with understanding that our assumptions may be wrong so that we can be open to correct our assumptions if our practice gives us evidences that the assumptions might be wrong.

Now, I said it before, here what the real issue is. I'm studying PoF now and I see that Steiner was indeed an outstanding thinker and his PoF has a lot of valuable spiritual and philosophical insights. But what I'm also seeing happening is a tendency to make a religious sect out of his philosophy, which I'm sure Steiner himself would not support. I have seen too many abusive religious sects that were initially based on healthy practices and teachings but later became closed and abusive sectarian groups. There are certain red flags to distinguish a healthy spiritual practice or teaching form a sect. One of them is discouraging critical thinking and questioning the assumptions, but instead enforcing a belief system that needs to be taken as faith without questioning. The argument is exactly like Cleric put it: you have to accept the teaching/practice as a belief because you are not spiritually advanced enough to verify that it is in fact true. If you will have any doubts in it, your doubts will not let you to advance in the spiritual practice, so you have to let them go in order to advance. Another common feature is a total trust in the spiritual leader: since you are not advanced enough, you cannot have a judgement of what's true and what's not, so you need to trust your teacher and do the practice he teaches you without questioning it. I'm not saying that every religion is a sect, by far it is not. However, those who had been involved in religious practices know the difference between a healthy religious tradition and a sectarian one.

[AshvinP]

viewtopic.php?p=362#p362

A very simple (probably insultingly simple) example could be if we have never moved our arm and hold on to the "no-arm-movement" paradigm. Someone tells us "Hey, it is actually possible to move your arm". We reply "Negative. I have never experienced arm movement so there's no such a thing." Furthermore, if the no-arm-movement paradigm is presented in such a way that it is considered the ultimate reality, then we'll actively suppress any hints of movement because we believe that any movement leads us into the illusionary world of "arm-movement". We can very clearly see the fallacy here. There are experiences that can only become confirmed reality if we actively pursue them.

And this is the peculiar situation of humanity in our age. We are on a threshold where thought-only cognition becomes lost in the abstractness of isolated thoughts that build upon themselves. On the other hand, the impossibility to transcend thinking through thinking throws many in the completely opposite extremum, and consider thoughts worthless along with the self-reflective quality they entail.

But couldn't it be that thinking activity is only a more limited form of a higher form of spiritual activity of self-reflective quality?

I don't know about others, but I have yet to experience the horizon rising relative to the sun to block it out, as any feeling other than the sun setting. I suspect that whatever the culture, some sort of linguistic equivalent of sun setting, or sinking is used to describe this experience. Only through reasoned thinking, does one deduce that this is a provisional and relative experience, and not what it appears to be, however convincing it may seem. And yet, does any amount of thinking about it actually change that apparency? Would one ever wax poetically about feeling the horizon rising to block the sun? Perchance, if from day one of seeing the event, mommy and/or daddy said, "look child how the horizon is rising to block the sun", from then onward might one actually experience it that way, and forgo having to deduce otherwise?

My understanding is yes, transfigured thinking does change that apparency by revealing the actual way in which our cognition is led to construct it in the first place. It is not only an abstract theory of how intellectual cognition constructs these apparencies, but concrete perception of that intellectual cognitive activity as it constructs. But, as Cleric said above, the main point here is that we will never gain confidence in this capacity of Thinking if we assume it cannot be confirmed through active pursuit, i.e. that Thinking is merely "waxing poetically" and nothing more substantial. Then thinking becomes exactly what we have limited it to and nothing more, just like no-arm-movement becomes an unshakeable reality if we never try to actively move the arm. Again, Cleric does not want us to simply accept this as an abstract theory and say, "if I keep thinking about the horizon rising to block the Sun enough, then maybe I will see this happening". That is not active pursuit of higher Thinking, but actually a strawman of Thinking our intellect creates to avoid the active pursuit.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you."

[Soul_of_Shu]

My understanding is yes, transfigured thinking does change that apparency by revealing the actual way in which our cognition is led to construct it in the first place. It is not only an abstract theory of how intellectual cognition constructs these apparencies, but concrete perception of that intellectual cognitive activity as it constructs. But, as Cleric said above, the main point here is that we will never gain confidence in this capacity of Thinking if we assume it cannot be confirmed through active pursuit, i.e. that Thinking is merely "waxing poetically" and nothing more substantial. Then thinking becomes exactly what we have limited it to and nothing more, just like no-arm-movement becomes an unshakeable reality if we never try to actively move the arm. Again, Cleric does not want us to simply accept this as an abstract theory and say, "if I keep thinking about the horizon rising to block the Sun enough, then maybe I will see this happening". That is not active pursuit of higher Thinking, but actually a strawman of Thinking our intellect creates to avoid the active pursuit.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you."

I suppose if Thinking this soul-being of the sole Being into a transcorporeal perspective whereby the experience is seeing this bodily form standing upon a spinning-spiralling planet following the sun on its orbiting of the galactic centre at 200 km/second, it rather becomes a moot point.

[Cleric K]

Yes, of course we can know more than we know now, but if the thing-in-itself is truly an idea outside time and space (the scaffolding of our dissociation), that's a definition of transcendent, is it not?

Some of the representations of the ideas that contribute to a pencil (making it what it really is) include carbon atoms forming in a star. And since all ideas are ultimately entangled, being simultaneous excitations of the transpersonal mind's transcendent, unitary universal field, the icon "pencil" is part of that. We can't fully disentangle a single icon by thought (in other words, we can't completely know it) because it is not really a separate object. To make it so is to forget that time and space are not fundamental. To really know the pencil, we need to be the transpersonal mind itself - which of course we are, though we are veiled from it by the idea of "dissociation". Dissociation is, by definition, an idea that only allows us a limited, perspectival, spatio-temporal representation of the thing in itself.

Actually we can hardly conceive of any idea outside space and time. We can conceive of timeless ideas, such as 2+2=4, which are independent of temporal relations but still, this concrete form of the timeless relations is known within the temporal intellect.

In this sense ideas (meaning) assume temporal be-ing. For example, the idea of 'nutrition', when contemplated as pure concept has similar timeless feeling to it. That's why it's called abstract idea - it's extricated (abstracted) from its living context. We then contemplate a mineralized symbol for the idea.

But in fact, our current human consciousness is the only form of consciousness which can hold ideas in this way. At all other levels we have ideas in the process of be-ing. The idea of nutrition has its be-ing in everything which lives in the complicated dynamics of life. We experience the idea of 'sound' every time we hear or produce a sound. Similarly, the idea of nutrition doesn't exist in some Cosmic abstractness but it finds its being in everything that exhibits the patterns of growth, metabolism, etc. And this need not be strictly biological life. Biological life is only a decohered shadow of more fundamental forms of growth.

Seen in this way, our intellect is such a kind of experience of meaning, where we can make mineral (frozen) snapshots of the total dynamic reality. When we think 'nutrition' we don't behold the complete reality. It's only a mineralized symbol for something which we can behold in a quite different state of consciousness (Inspirative cognition). When we prepare our meal, we can step back and ask "Why am I doing this?" Because we are hungry. All our thoughts and actions are flowing within the curvature of the desire to eat. We not simply blindly go through this process (although this is also possible) but we can understand that this is happening. To understand is to experience some meaning which unites all these thoughts and actions into a meaningful whole. Yes, we can abstract this meaning into concepts like hunger, nutrition and so on, but we must not forget that we extract them only because this meaning is already concealed in the metamorphosis of our states. When we grasp the concept of 'hunger' it is not that we become conscious of hunger for the first time. The experience has been there before but now we have created a token of meaning which embodies the feeling of hunger.

When we rise in the Inspirative realm we don't find there some Cosmic intellect which holds abstract idea of nutrition and seeks to implement it the world. The idea finds its being in rhythmical concentration and dissipation of potential, similarly to the way our ideas find their being in verbal sounds. These rhythms act like carrier waves within which the potential can be further differentiated.

You're analysis on the compound nature of the pencil is right on target. It is so with everything. It's Indra's net but in living, dynamic way. To understand a thing we must trace all its relations with everything else. So we understand the pencil not by imagining some abstract transcorporeal idea of 'pencil' but by seeing it as interference of the living trees, the graphite, language, writing, the thoughts of those who invented it and so on. Our concept of 'pencil' is only a token for the sum total of this complicated process, even if we rarely try to follow these threads.

It's similar with things not created by man. Even a small bacterium is the interference of countless beings whose activity add up to what we perceive through the senses, only as a shadow.

Sorry for writing too much again. The point of the above is recognize that abstract ideas are found only in the human intellect. In other places we have meaningful be-ing. The interference of these beings we perceive only in the flattened experience of our Earthly state. We attain do the depth of reality by reaching not only for the flattened sensations but also the shapes of meaning that are active behind phenomena. The idea of dissociation loosens its grip when we begin to realize that we're swimming in a ocean of living meaning.

[Martin_]

Does this ocean of living meaning have Structure?
Because if it does, I have a hard time envisoning this structure without it bringing (due to the Nature of Structure) various modes of dualities. (Or maybe Polarities is a better word)

But then again, maybe my question is of the same nature as "How many sides does a Moeibus strip have?"