The Central Topic

[Cleric K]

Well, there was a time, not all that long ago, when I would have said much the same. But these things can, and indeed will, actually change.

Dana, can you identify what has actually changed such that things became more comprehensible? Is it as when we struggle with a mathematical formula until we finally grasp it. Or it's more like an inner hindrance has been overcome, of which there wasn't even clear awareness previously?

It's not necessary to answer if you don't have a clear conception at this time. As a matter of fact this is an important guideline in higher development. We need to attain certain inner patience and not be in haste to fragment everything into words. We need to allow things to quietly grow. It can be compared to learning a language. As long as we insist to always mechanically translate everything in and out of our own language we'll never learn to think and understand the new language directly. The new language will remain as a metaphor which we can only interpret through our own language. Of course, the translational period is completely unavoidable (and necessary if we are to communicate with our peers) but we shouldn't turn that into a barrier which says that the higher order language can only be felt aesthetically but meaningfully interpreted only in our own thinking language.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Well, there was a time, not all that long ago, when I would have said much the same. But these things can, and indeed will, actually change.

Dana, can you identify what has actually changed such that things became more comprehensible? Is it as when we struggle with a mathematical formula until we finally grasp it. Or it's more like an inner hindrance has been overcome, of which there wasn't even clear awareness previously?

It's not necessary to answer if you don't have a clear conception at this time. As a matter of fact this is an important guideline in higher development. We need to attain certain inner patience and not be in haste to fragment everything into words. We need to allow things to quietly grow. It can be compared to learning a language. As long as we insist to always mechanically translate everything in and out of our own language we'll never learn to think and understand the new language directly. The new language will remain as a metaphor which we can only interpret through our own language. Of course, the translational period is completely unavoidable (and necessary if we are to communicate with our peers) but we shouldn't turn that into a barrier which says that the higher order language can only be felt aesthetically but meaningfully interpreted only in our own thinking language.

That's an excellent question Cleric, and one that I haven't given much thought to, and deserves some considerable thought go into it. This I will attempt over the course of the day, or maybe even two, as sleeping/dreaming on it often helps, and hopefully arrive at some percipient answer in response. Suffice to say for now that I''m intrigued and inspired by the new language learning/acquiring analogy.

[Shajan624]

Cleric,

Is there anything which can be communicated unambiguously?

Yes. For example, 13x17, or any piece of scientific knowledge. Why such objectivity is possible is an interesting question. I will not speculate about it at this point.

With this in mind, there's no need to arbitrarily hard-split the conscious phenomena into things which can be unambiguously communicated and things that can not. It's really about if we can find the same ideas which unite the ambiguity of perceptions.

I am not sure I follow you. If anyone could do that (find the same ideas which unite the ambiguity of perceptions) and communicate objectively there shouldn’t be any more ambiguity!

I agree that with the first sentence. But what would you say about thinking? Not as some abstract term in the way we speak of 'computation' but as the actual experiential reality when you observe your thinking, when, say, you multiply 13x17? We may not have theoretical explanation of thinking but we certainly know what it is from the standpoint of direct experience. We can't start with 'mind' because we must first think about what 'mind' means. But biological evolution is not so primary either. Trace back your life and try to remember if you were born with that certainty of biological evolution. Or it came only at some point as you were growing up and you have thought about such things? In this sense, would you agree that thinking is more immediate and certain than both 'mind' and 'biological evolution'?

‘Thinking’ belongs to the same category as ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’. None of them can be used to explain objective knowledge because we do not (objectively) know what these words mean. I am not saying such words have no meaning, only we do not know enough to talk with clarity.

You say ‘we certainly know what it (thinking) is from the standpoint of direct experience’. Referring to direct experience as some kind of ‘knowledge’ is the source of enormous confusion. I think the word ‘knowledge’ should be used solely to mean objective knowledge (as in science).

The second thing is that I'm not sure how what you say about 'higher cognition' ties up with the way you finish your essay:

The foundation, ultimate ground of all reality, will forever remain beyond our objective grasp. Our ancestors were aware of this ignorance and it was the source of their wisdom.

So is 'higher cognition' for you simply the realization that there's something which will forever remain beyond the grasp of knowledge? Or you're being open for the possibility that things that have been hitherto beyond grasp can become objective conscious facts through the appropriate cognitive development?

This is again linked to the confusion between ‘knowledge’ and ‘direct experience’. Higher cognition for me would be the realization that all knowledge rests on something beyond our objective grasp, something that can only be experienced.

I believe the insatiable thirst to objectify points to our own deep rooted insecurity. ‘I’, the ‘knower’, barely 10000 years old, evolved from the ungraspable with the mission to acquire ‘knowledge’, to objectify everything it comes into contact with. Objective knowledge was useful for survival but at the same time involved the risk of ‘knower’ attempting the impossible, objectifying its own source, potentially leading to an existential crisis. This conflict can only be resolved when ‘I’ realizes its true nature, its intimate relationship with the ground of all reality.

[Jim Cross]

Yes, indeed. This is what has been spoken of many times here. Most recently to this post to Shajan in this very thread. What you mention is the dual nature of thinking that was spoken of in the linked post.

Good thing we cleared that up before someone went into a loop.

And I begin again to ask myself what it could have
been, this unremembered state which brought with it
no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense
that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose
presence other states of consciousness melted and
vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I
retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank
the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same state,
illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to
make one further effort, to follow and recapture
once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing
may interrupt it in its course I shut out every
obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and
inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from
the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is
growing fatigued without having any success to
report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that
distraction which I have just denied it, to think of
other things, to rest and refresh itself before the
supreme attempt. And then for the second time I
clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position
before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that
first mouthful, and I feel something start within me,
something that leaves its resting-place and attempts
to rise, something that has been embedded like an
anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is,
but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the
resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces

[AshvinP]

If we must have a metaphysics (with an ontological primitive no less) for whatever utility it may serve. then the only thing that makes any sense is dual aspect monism.

We should be clear that Cleric's essay is saying we don't need to posit any abstract metaphysics. In fact, doing so is one of the most counter-productive things in our current time, because it only serves as a reflection back to us of what we are assuming from the outset, not what we are logically reasoning. He pointed to this in the last comment:

But here's the thing: you can confirm the reliability of correlations through technological success but you can never confirm if your choice to use correlative thinking is in itself a reliable choice for seeking deeper answers about reality. The reason is that choosing the way of thinking about reality is not something that reality forces upon us. We feel forced to update our models to match perceptions but nothing forces us into correlative thinking in the first place. We chose it through thinking (or the fathers of modern science chose it for us). If this thinking has been unreliable or incomplete, then the choice of correlative science will inherit these shortcomings.
...
Now we must make clear one thing here on which it depends whether there's a point to continue this dialog at all. If at this point you say that you don't care at all about anything else but correlative science then there's no real point to continue. Unless one is open for the possibility that correlative cognition is not the final and ultimate mode of knowing, we'll be wasting the time of both of us.

The consistent materialist (and Kantian idealist), if he was logically reasoning through the implications of his worldview, would arrive at the same conclusion as the non-dual mystic - we should stop our correlative thinking immediately! Reality is already unified and it is precisely our correlative thinking which divides things up to make the correlations and obscure this mystical union. Our correlative thinking could only serve to falsify the unified Reality which we already intuit as existing. Of course, this is never advocated. We know it is practically a death-blow to all activity in our lives which seeks to answer the questions our soul is always asking, such as philosophical and scientific inquiry, so instead we engage the correlative thinking and stop the logical reasoning before we get to that inevitable conclusion. We stop the logical reasoning precisely when the abstract metaphysical worldview reflects exactly what we desired to find from the outset and nothing more. Hence it becomes only a reflection of what we assumed at the outset and nothing more. One could say The Central Topic is about perceiving that one-sided and arbitrary choice we are always making in these inquiries, which practically makes it impossible for the inquiry to ever go beyond our own initial assumptions.

[Eugene I.]

As said, in the thinking tree metaphor it is as if our thinking wants to have its feet firmly on the ground - that is, we feel secure only where the leaves (concepts) touch the ground (perceptions). But where should we place, for example, the exercise where we imagine the moving circle? Clearly, we're not having sensory perceptions, so we're not touching the ground. Metaphorically we are a little further up the branch. We're doing something there which we perceive independently of the contacts points with the ground. Now what we should realize is that this already gives us some kind of knowledge but in different way, as if polar-opposite way. We don't see the metaphorical branch as we see external perceptions but we 'touch' its interior through the degrees of freedom of our imaginative thinking. See, it's not about what 'things' there are in perceptions but about exploring the way our thinking is constrained. This gives us knowledge of the tree from the inside. To be more concrete and relate back to what was already said in the Central Topic, we can investigate how ideas, opinions, prejudices, sympathies and antipathies, hopes and fears, in fact constrain the palette of possible thoughts that we think. In the tree metaphor, all these things represent the inner geometry of the branches within which our thinking activity operates. The more we orient ourselves within these constraints, the more intuition we gain about the geometry and dynamics of our conscious experience. If we are to extend this metaphor even further, we can say that we can liberate our activity to such an extent that we become conscious even within the roots and thus of the ground. In this way we can find the inner reality of what we otherwise experience only indirectly as sensory world (where the leaf-concepts touch the ground). This is mentioned only in passing, it's more 'advanced' and not strictly needed for the Central Topic.

I'll stop here. So the main thing to feel is that through the experience of thinking and its constraints from within, we gain different kind of knowledge. It's like thinking becomes one of those modern 3D scanners that probe the interior of a building in all directions and build 3D model. Except that with thinking we don't build a model but directly explore the degrees of freedom which allow us to know the constraints within which we operate. Now you may tell if you reject that knowledge as useless or you're open that it might be valuable but is simply beyond your perimeter of interests (correlative thinking), or something else.

Cleric, what you are saying is correct within the framework of idealism, and it's pretty trivial. If we assume that our sense perceptions are not caused by non-mental "external" world (as it is assumed in materialism or dual-aspect monism), and if we assume that Thinking/Consciousness is all there is (those are the two words pointing to the same inner reality!), we necessarily arrive to conclusion that all sense perceptions must be the result of the same thinking activity that gives rise to all our volitional phenomena (imaginations, thoughts). However, most of this process (thinking giving rise to perceptions) is not directly open to us in our direct personal conscious experience. We can only guess (by applying intuition/imagination) about how could perceptions arise from the "tree" of inter-connected ideations, and this is what you are suggesting I guess. But the fact is - these "tree" structures are veiled from us in our human form of consciousness, we can only guess about it but can never be sure if our intuitions about these structures in fact correspond to their actual structure. Many people who previously attempted to do that turned out to be wrong and took their own abstract fantasies for the reality of higher-order thinking structures (Steiner included). Still, if someone likes to do that then who we are to tell them not to? Some of these intuitions may actually turn out to be true. But as we discussed that before, there is a reason why this veil exists, There is a unique opportunity to experience the reality in a "veiled" way which would not be possible without the veil. Instead of trying to understand what we are supposed to do here in the "veiled" mode, we think the "veil" is a problem or a mistake that needs to be removed or penetrated through, we think that there is a fundamental problem with our "veiled" mode of existence and the "veil" is exactly the root of the human problems that needs to be resolved. I see it as a major flaw in Steiner's SS, he was addressing a wrong problem. IMO the real problems are much deeper (if it is even appropriate to call them "problems"), and the "veiled" existence actually helps us to resolve them rather than being a hindrance. As the Buddhists say, the human form is the best form of existence to achieve the enlightenment.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Guys, this is drifting well off-topic again. I really don't want to have someone start a topic on idealism vs dual-aspect/dialetical monism, and have to move a bunch of comments again. From now on I'll just be deleting them.

[Cleric K]

‘Thinking’ belongs to the same category as ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’. None of them can be used to explain objective knowledge because we do not (objectively) know what these words mean. I am not saying such words have no meaning, only we do not know enough to talk with clarity.

You say ‘we certainly know what it (thinking) is from the standpoint of direct experience’. Referring to direct experience as some kind of ‘knowledge’ is the source of enormous confusion. I think the word ‘knowledge’ should be used solely to mean objective knowledge (as in science).

This is again linked to the confusion between ‘knowledge’ and ‘direct experience’. Higher cognition for me would be the realization that all knowledge rests on something beyond our objective grasp, something that can only be experienced.

Shajan, I see your position now but it will take us way off topic to address this. Actually it is completely concentric with the Central Topic but it is something that has been gone through so many times in this forum, that I more or less assume people already understand the basic position. I can give here only few hints.

‘Thinking’ belongs to the same category as ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’. None of them can be used to explain objective knowledge because we do not (objectively) know what these words mean. I am not saying such words have no meaning, only we do not know enough to talk with clarity.

Please try to step back and see what is really given in the riddle of existence. You might say that the given is the objective world but that would be incorrect. The given is the world of direct experience - colors, sounds, feelings, thoughts, etc. In themselves these perceptions don't say anything about objective world. I gave that example to Jim - your visual experience is not that different in waking life and while dreaming. While dreaming you feel like you're going through an objective world. Only upon awakening you say 'it was just a dream'. So what has changed? The meaning, the understanding that you experience in relation to perceptions. For this reason, the given is the perceptions. What the nature of these perceptions is, we're yet to find out when we start to think about them. Seen in this way, what you call objective world is really only a specific spectral band of conscious phenomena which you have decided that informs you about an objective world out there. So practically, for some reason you have drawn a chalk line within consciousness and you have said "color, sound, smell, touch, etc. tell me about the objective world out there. On the other side of the chalk line are feelings, will, thoughts. These I'll strike out as unreliable and potential source of 'enormous confusion'. I'll try to explain them away through the phenomena on the other side of the chalk line".

So few things to realize:
1. The totality of conscious phenomena meets us as an amalgamation. A color in itself doesn't tell us if it is a dream color, sensory color, psychedelic color. We have understanding of the color depending on the meaningful context that thinking moves through.
1. The chalk line is drawn by thinking, which divides the spectrum of phenomena and arbitrarily decides that some are more primary than others and sets out to explain the latter with the former.
2. If we believe that thinking is in principle unreliable then how can we trust the thinking-decision to strike out half of the given? Imagine that you are on an exam and you're given a math problem with several givens. Then you strike out half of them and say "I believe these are redundant. I'll try to solve the problem only with the other half and hopefully all those that I've stricken out will emerge at some point out of them." As simple as this may sound, this is really what we're doing when set out to seek "objective knowledge" and strike out the other spectrum of phenomena as "source of enormous confusion".

[Jim Cross]

Guys, this is drifting well off-topic again. I really don't want to have someone start a topic on idealism vs dual-aspect/dialetical monism, and have to move a bunch of comments again. From now on I'll just be deleting them.

It is somewhat off-topic but this is how we got there.

In the discussion of Central Topic arose the idea of consciousness changing or evolving over time.If there is some specific thrust to this history that is leading us to some place in the future, it would be reflected in science as much as it would be in art, politics, religion, and other cultural endeavors. Science and technology would be changing and at the same time changing us. Once science is seen as an ally rather than an opponent, DAM would make the most sense as a pragmatic ontology.

Incidentally, I wrote some more extended along this line in the context of writing about Julian Huxley.

Here is a more extended quote that ends with the quote by Huxley.

The congruence between the world of the spirit and science is broken in modern times. Although there are some scientists who profess a religious faith, they mostly do so not because of science but in spite of it. A few “mavericks” (notice the quotes) try to argue with the science and find some special niche for God in science where it seems there is no room to squeeze Him in. A few, mostly physicists, find in the profound mathematical order of the universe something like a “God” but there is no way of connecting that “God” to any historical religious traditions. Beyond that, science and scientists are mostly atheistic. Any connection to religion is broken.

The question must be asked whether there is really any need for the connection to be restored? Do we need religion at all whether it be a religion with or without God?

Huxley’s answers “yes” to this. “Religion in some form is a universal function of man in society, the organ for dealing with the problems of destiny, the destiny of individual men and women, of societies and nations, and of the human species as a whole.” The problem is that the explanations and understandings of the old religions are no longer viable. They have lost their explanatory value. We still need religion to preserve our connection to divinity. Divinity, as Huxley defines it, is “not truly supernatural but transnatural – it grows out of ordinary nature but transcends it”. Huxley’s proposal is for a new religion that strips out God but still enables us to connect to the world on a spiritual level.

Huxley never managed to explain what form exactly this new religion would take. Religion as we know it consists of more than a set of beliefs and moral teachings. It involves assemblies of believers, rituals, and mutual assistance. It is difficult to imagine a Sunday service with a scientist explaining DNA or reading from Darwin to the congregation, although a marriage or funeral might be more imaginable. With most contemporary science, the chasm between scientific knowledge and the divine is unbridgeable. The mathematical equations of the Big Bang provide no spiritual solace.

There is one place in science, perhaps one of the most problematic areas, that could connect science with the divine. Huxley even alludes to it:. “When we look at biological evolution as a whole, we find that the most notable improvement is the improved organization of mind; in other terms, a higher organization of the capacity for awareness.” Consciousness itself is the bridge. Consciousness is at the nexus of our ability to experience the divine and our ability to understand the world. Huxley goes beyond the sterile, unproductive debate whether mind is reducible to matter. “Human beings are organizations of – do not let us use the philosophically tendentious word ‘matter’, but rather the neutral and philosophically non-committal term translated from the German Weltstoff – the universal ‘world stuff’. But our organization has two aspects a material aspect when looked at objectively from the outside, and a mental aspect when experienced subjectively from the inside. We are simultaneously and indissolubly both matter and mind.”

[Cleric K]

Cleric, what you are saying is correct within the framework of idealism, and it's pretty trivial. If we assume that our sense perceptions are not caused by non-mental "external" world (as it is assumed in materialism or dual-aspect monism), and if we assume that Thinking/Consciousness is all there is (those are the two words pointing to the same inner reality!), we necessarily arrive to conclusion that all sense perceptions must be the result of the same thinking activity that gives rise to all our volitional phenomena (imaginations, thoughts). However, most of this process (thinking giving rise to perceptions) is not directly open to us in our direct personal conscious experience. We can only guess (by applying intuition/imagination) about how could perceptions arise from the "tree" of inter-connected ideations, and this is what you are suggesting I guess. But the fact is - these "tree" structures are veiled from us in our human form of consciousness, we can only guess about it but can never be sure if our intuitions about these structures in fact correspond to their actual structure. Many people who previously attempted to do that turned out to be wrong and took their own abstract fantasies for the reality of higher-order thinking structures (Steiner included). Still, if someone likes to do that then who we are to tell them not to? Some of these intuitions may actually turn out to be true. But as we discussed that before, there is a reason why this veil exists, There is a unique opportunity to experience the reality in a "veiled" way which would not be possible without the veil. Instead of trying to understand what we are supposed to do here in the "veiled" mode, we think the "veil" is a problem or a mistake that needs to be removed or penetrated through, we think that there is a fundamental problem with our "veiled" mode of existence and the "veil" is exactly the root of the human problems that needs to be resolved. I see it as a major flaw in Steiner's SS, he was addressing a wrong problem. IMO the real problems are much deeper (if it is even appropriate to call them "problems"), and the "veiled" existence actually helps us to resolve them rather than being a hindrance. As the Buddhists say, the human form is the best form of existence to achieve the enlightenment.

Eugene, I've already accepted your position and won't try to talk you out of it. I only would like to point out that it is based on a belief without trying to make you abandon that belief.

You say that the veil is there for a reason and basically we shouldn't mess with it. OK, I can see very well how one may believe this. There isn't anything more that we can attain by talking. Our talks have led to the point where you've basically pressed your back against the Guardian at the Threshold and you have chosen not to turn your head around but instead wait for death to see what is behind you. And that's fine. In our age it is still not strictly necessary to gain supersensible vision of ourselves (although it's necessary to at least understand these things).

But it's worth pointing also at the other alternative which is not as crazy as it may sound. Actually we have quite some reasons to conclude that the sorry state of humanity today is as it is precisely because of this great polarization of existence in relation to the veil.

First, as the whole Central Topic speaks about, the 'behind the veil' is not some other world out there that has significance only for disincarnate humans, angels and gods. It is where our own soul and spiritual guts belong, so to speak. QM metaphor, GR metaphor, Fourier metaphor, Tree metaphor - I won't repeat them. We are not entirely on one side of the veil as some atomic being, while another world awaits us on the other side. I've said this before - the veil is more like a surgical drape. Our sensory perceptions are on one side, while the gory details of our soul and spiritual nature are on the other. And even this is misleading because there are no geometric 'sides'. Both 'sides' are one within the other, the 'drape' is only a degree of consciousness. So by refusing to gain consciousness of our depths, we're not being humble but we simply refuse to know anything about the way our desires, sympathies, antipathies, passions, opinions, prejudices, fears and also family, national, cultural, racial, special layers, shape the flow of conscious states that we experience only as the tip of the iceberg, on the visible side of the surgical drape.

When we see it in this way, suddenly things turn around and we're not quite the humble soul which believes that it will break some rules if it tries to gain self- and world-knowledge. I repeat because it seems this is one of the greatest source of confusion - the veil doesn't separate us from other independent worlds that we have simply agreed to close our eyes for. We live on both sides of the veil always, but we're fully awake only at the sensory-intellectual side. Every night in sleep we expand also on the other side of the drape.

By not seeking knowledge of the gory details of our soul and spiritual depths, we're actually hurting world development, in the same way that children that grow up to be spoiled and egoistic persons are hurting their families and society. In this way it is our duty to take our education in our own hands and investigate our structure and perfect it according to our high ideal.

So these are the two alternatives.
1/ We believe that on Earth it's the right thing to live entirely in the mind cone and not to seek anything about the deeper processes on the waves of which our thinking flows and actions manifest. We accept that all the lies, crimes, suffering are just how they are meant to be, that everyone has accepted to participate in exactly this form of reality and it's wrong to try and change anything. Our job is only to experience our destiny whatever it might be. Let's repeat that this world conception is based on belief based on a mixture of religious revelations, New Age teachings, NDEs and so on. The common thread in all cases is that the veil is not to be messed with. Don't touch anything, be a good person, do not harm, live your destiny, that's what you're here for.
2/ By simple self-observation we can realize that much of our thinking and behavior are shaped by subconscious sympathies, antipathies, opinions, prejudices, etc. Through direct experience we can see that it is possible to make these subconscious flows conscious and even to take conscious control over them. This is the basis of freedom. Not freedom to do whatever we want but the freedom from the implicit order which has hitherto determined the ways in which our conscious states unfold. When we do even a tiny bit of this work we quickly realize that this is the actual reason for the whole Earthly drama - people are not free. They are enslaved by the implicit flow on the back side of the drape and blindly follow their subconscious desires which continually drive them in conflict with their environment. When we realize this we understand that it is about every individual taking their education in their fully conscious hands and unveiling the implicit order such that we can become conductors of higher moral imagination and intuition.

To summarize even more:
1/ We accept our temperament, character, desires, etc., as intrinsic part of our atomic soul and assume this is what we've come to experience. We don't think even for a moment that any of this may be a crude stone that needs to be polished into diamond. We accept the sorry state of humanity as a matter of course. All of this we can support only through belief because we can never, by definition, lift the veil and verify if any of this is true.
2/ We walk a real path of self development which leads us to consciousness of the implicit order where we find the convergence of all mysteries of humanity - evolutionary development, the question of evil, the question of perfection, etc. The drape is not there as a hard boundary to test the faithful if they'll be tempted to peek before their last breath but is simply our current (individual and average collective) horizon of consciousness. It's in the course of evolution to grow in consciousness within the implicit order, so that we can realize our spiritual freedom and lift humanity from the half-human half-animal instinctive state. None of this is a matter of belief but only of clear thinking then courage and determination. Every tiny step we make in that direction is a confirmation of the reality of the path we're treading.

I repeat that this is not to convince anyone. It's just a statement of plain facts. The point of the Central Topic is to show that the possibility for gaining consciousness of the implicit order - our soul and spiritual guts - is always at hand. Everyone is free to reject this possiblity but let at least be honest and say that it's their decision not to investigate the time-depth behind the "I"/eye, instead of accusing those who speak of that time-depth of being liars, deceivers, supremacists, etc. It's enough to look at 1/ and 2/ and really see where each route leads and what interests it serves.