Essay: Man, Know Thyself

[Lou Gold]

David, do you realize that your video presents a very romanticized 'Bambi-like' cutesy anthropocentric view of domesticated animal life? There's an Eskimo wisdom statement that I like a lot: "Gifts turn wolves into dogs."

I recognize your (romanticized?) preference for 'wildness', Lou. My view of 'love' is that it is 'tame' (meek?) and 'taming'. It is why you and I don't 'friend'-connect, I think.

I would rather be/engage with a dog and have a dog be/engage with me as a companion (instead of 'wild' 'wolf' (like you?).

The Eskimo does not romanticize the wolf. He sees both the tamed slavery of his sled dog and the wild free spirit of the wolf as essential to his being human. And I agree.

[Cleric K]

Cleric,

Simple question: Have you actually read David Abram or contemplated Goethe? I ask only to discover if your rejection of them is informed? "The Spell of the Sensuous" is one of the few philosophy books I've read I've only tiny-dipped into Goethe but it was enough for me to grok an alignment with my direct experience.

I haven't read Abram's books. I've seen his lectures. I too have only tiny-dipped into Goethe but have read more in the sort of summaries and commentaries.

Not only that I don't reject the phenomenological approach but I fully endorse it. What I'm pointing out is that in animism this approach is used for narrower purposes leading to questionable moral life. Once self-consciousness is attained, we are no longer on safe ground if we look to dance with instinctive life. We don't know the sources of these instincts. While we live animal life we don't know them either but at least we have no choice. Now we do have choice and this raises the whole question of what man is, what his place in the Universe is and what he should do. If we force ourselves to live by instinct, like what you suggested with the 'heart', we don't know who we are serving because both good and evil live in the heart.

Mathew 7:21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,

Biotic life is completely essential - it is the womb into which the Spirit awakens. But the Spirit goes nowhere if it decides to prevent this awakening to go even further and prefers to be driven by dreamy instincts.

Actually this in itself is a great point for meditation - can we be certain that our desire to be carried on the waves of living Nature is really Nature's will? Or it's our own subconscious unwillingness to take on the work that Nature wants us to do and instead we mask this unwillingness as if it's Nature that does not want us (or we simply consider it impossible) to become conscious of her spiritual structure?

The mischief begins when something is left out or denied.

This is the crucial point that needs to be deeply considered. What do you imagine in 'mischief'? Is it a mischief when one tribe destroys another? You see, things are getting very mixed and confused in this area. At some level we want to care for the 'whole', so that nothing is left or denied but at the same time we can't accomplish that through instinctive life - there we find only struggle for survival. So whether we want it or not we reach again the point where man as thinking being must add something to Nature, which does not exist in the realm of instinctive choiceless-choice. This something is moral life. This is the paradox - when we say that "We should care for the 'we', for the whole" we are already conducting moral choices but at the same time we try to present things as if they have to emerge out of themselves, through choiceless-choice, without any human moral agency. We are contradicting ourselves.

It's a 'We' and not an 'I'.

There's a great difference between an "I" that lives consciously and gives its life for the whole and an "I" that dissolves in the instinctive life of the whole because it thinks that in this way it achieves its highest purpose.

[David_Sundaram]

The Eskimo does not romanticize the wolf. He sees both the tamed slavery of his sled dog and the wild free spirit of the wolf as essential to his being human. And I agree.

'Tame' = 'slavery' and 'wild' = 'freedom' is your miss-begotten/begetting (IMO) projection/interpretation.

[David_Sundaram]

The male lion does not kill the cubs because of wickedness. He doesn't think whether he should or should not kill them. He's following the inner compulsion of his instinctive nature. The Spirit is enchanted in the instinctive dream of the lion, it simply flows together with instinct.

Man becomes man because an additional layer of spiritual activity emerges in the form of thinking. This is where the Sprit is able to differentiate itself from the world of pure instinct. At this point man can begin to ask questions, to have ideas, to look for higher purpose of his existence. At this point he can say to himself: "Yes, instinctual dream life has led me up to the point where I find myself. I can see that formerly I've been unconsciously flowing together with blind urges. Now I can distinguish my thinking-self from this flow and I can choose to oppose this flow. To know what I should oppose and what I should go along, I must understand what I am and what's my place in the Universe."

In 'agree'ment with this, excerpted from my treatise:

"Unlike those soul configurations which inhabit and pursue Life’s objectives using more constitutionally ‘hard-wired’ (and therefore less capable of elective information processing) bodies, we (we, in this case, referencing souls ensconsed in more advanced kinds of physiological platforms; and advanced, in this case, referencing greater ‘bandwidth’ accommodating information-reception, information-processing and information-transmission [brain-]capabilities) can and so may cognitively appreciate and apprehend the functional significance(s) of and so operationally elect to relate to the constellational configurations of our own and others’ existential gestalts (or  aspects thereof) in ways of our own choosing (hence the phenomenon known as ''free will').

We have the potential to learn from and choose to change the patterns of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors based on the ‘feedback’ of personal experience so as to become more knowing and adept at creatively executing Life’s Love and Joy maximization aimed Source-code, which (as postulated and argued in Chapter 1) is the imperative that ubiquitously operates within all Being. Hence our development of keener discernment and the capacity to be more functionally discriminating (I don’t mean by way of stereotyping, of course!) and, consequently, our increasingly selective execution of possible choices such as acceptance, trust, devotion, wariness, rejection, banishment,* etc. in relation to others and increasing degrees of wisdom in terms of the ways in which we choose to deploy our ‘will’ in such regards.

[Footnote*: This is just a categorical list of conceptually black-and-white thought-feeling-and-behavior options which I have compiled to illustrate the point I am making. The  ways which Mind and Spirit may choose to flow, and consequently ‘act’, in are spectrumatically infinite, both in terms of variety and admixtural combination.]

The learning and consequent wisdom-development I speak of is in the ‘direction’ of more fully appreciating the functional commonalities and connections between one’s ‘self ’ and other ‘selves’ and so of relationally engaging with others as well as Life-at-Large in ways which, more and more so in the long term, synergically augment and improve the quality of both our own and others’ experiences and expressions of Love and Joy, thereby increasing the likelihood that not just our own but others’ wishes and desires to experience and express Love and Joy will be optimally fulfilled as well in  the process (except of course if, when and as said others are so other‑exploitive and self-aggrandizing that they sully and diminish the potential for conjoint experience and expression of Love and Joy, in which case non‑cooperation and counteraction may be our choice, for the same aiming-to-maximize the experience and expression of Love and Joy in relation to and with others in Life’s Flow ‘reason’).

All of which explains our gradual progression (albeit, as a result of their still selfishly biased calculus in the foregoing regards, not in every soul’s case, and, even in the cases of those who do progress in this regard, often in periodically regressive, learning the ‘hard’ way, fashion!) from completely selfish, to familial, to clannish, to tribal, to ethnographic, to anthropocentric, and, finally, to cosmically all-inclusive, completely self-transcendent psycho­spiritual ‘i’dentifications and corollary allegiances - meaning that, with experience and education, over the course of time, folks increasingly think, feel and believe and so more and more conscientiously act knowing that, though each and every individual and group is unique and so differs from  others in significant ways, one’s ‘self ’ and all other ‘selves’ are really integral aspects of Life’s Flow and so, despite apparent differences, we are all relationally connected aspects of the same (pertaining to the Universe we are in, at least) Cosmic Being-Doing, which is Life Itself in action!"

[Lou Gold]

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 6:10 am
The mischief begins when something is left out or denied.

This is the crucial point that needs to be deeply considered. What do you imagine in 'mischief'? Is it a mischief when one tribe destroys another? You see, things are getting very mixed and confused in this area. At some level we want to care for the 'whole', so that nothing is left or denied but at the same time we can't accomplish that through instinctive life - there we find only struggle for survival.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says the mischief begins with the thoughts of 'me' and 'mine'. I agree.

In instinctive life there is cooperation as well as competition and the emerging scientific thinking is that mutuality is actually more critical for survival. What does seem to change is not morality as much as the context of action, moving from a narrow niche to a planet. This is an ecological shift. Errors that once were quite permissible at small scale become ecocidal at another scale.

[Soul_of_Shu]

'Tame' = 'slavery' and 'wild' = 'freedom' ...

Indeed, what about those wasps that somehow turn spiders into egg-hosting 'slaves' that are tasked with the role of spinning ~ not their usual fly-trapping webs ~ but structures that will serve as the hatched wasp larvae's cocoon? Seems such 'slavery' runs deep

[Lou Gold]

Sure. These traits exist at every level, including the so-called "higher realms" and the challenge always is to integrate the opposites in balance. It is romantic to glorify one to the exclusion of the other.

[Lou Gold]

GOOD NEWS

Out beyond my favorite spot for sunrise offerings and devotions this morning, the whales were leaping joyously. Some hibiscus and rose petals seemed a a mere gesture until the exuberant appearance of the great beings filled my heart with joy.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Whales turned Lou into flower-offering slave?

[Cleric K]

Than you, David, for the quotes!

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says the mischief begins with the thoughts of 'me' and 'mine'. I agree.

In instinctive life there is cooperation as well as competition and the emerging scientific thinking is that mutuality is actually more critical for survival. What does seem to change is not morality as much as the context of action, moving from a narrow niche to a planet. This is an ecological shift. Errors that once were quite permissible at small scale become ecocidal at another scale.

Things seem to get really mixed up here. I don't think there are many people in this forum that don't see the ecological problems. Things like animal agriculture, overfishing, deforestation, etc. all contribute to the ecological crisis. I don't think anyone here would deny this and would suggest that man should continue on his path of self-seeking exploitation.

What we are here discussing is of different character. It is about what's the solution of the problem. Your citation of Krishna is slightly out of context. The trouble is not that we can say "I" but when our "I" seeks the satisfaction of its desires at expense of others. To suggest that self-consciousness must be abolished is a naïve solution to the problem. It's like saying "Man can't handle his 'I' so it's in the best interest of all life that this 'I' be taken away". If this is the philosophy we might as well quote Stalin instead of Krishna: Есть человек - есть проблема. Нет человека - нет проблемы (There's a man - there's a problem. There's no man - there's no problem). This would be the best solution, wouldn't it? If only man could disappear from Earth, all remaining life would be completely instinctive, under the will of Nature.

The bias that you project on me is actually motivated by your disbelief that the "I" of man can be ennobled and become a conductor of Divine Life. In your view the "I" emerges as an individual texture on the surface of total life. But deeper penetration into the nature of the "I" reveals it to be more of portal. Think of the narrowest part of a hourglass. That's the pinhole of the "I", through which the Higher Nature of man gradually flows into the Lower Nature. Obviously this process has not even remotely began in the vast part of humanity. But the fact that we are speaking of these things in a place like this, shows that there are people ripe enough to at least think about such a possibility.

What I'm trying to suggest here is that if men simply revert to their primitive instincts things wouldn't go for the better. Then people will simply die in tribal wars but at least you'll be happy that it's Nature's will and man is not doing anything "wrong". Instead of dissolving the "I" in the instinctive whole, the "I" can be ennobled and inspired by its Divine Nature. Then we again reach wholeness. Something that has always been called brotherhood of men. Not an instinctive swarm of dreaming animals but society of free individual beings, living in expanded awareness towards the higher worlds, striving to express their highest ideals and contributing to the whole out of Love.

Instead of the picture of the "I" as a transient individual texture on the total surface of life, I can suggest another picture:

A torus turning within itself. A symbol for meditation. Of course, it should not be taken too literally and too far. It can't represent all important aspects of reality but nevertheless, it hints at an idea. Think of the middle part as the narrow part of the hourglass, the "I" experience. Divine Life is constantly flowing through it and becomes perceptible below. That's how Nature gradually comes to know herself - by constantly transcending her own forms and encompassing them in higher stages of consciousness.