Is it just me who is going through a lot of existential angst about idealism?

[Lou Gold]

This points to something we also keep trying to point out. To understand our arguments, you must at least to attempt to understand our perspective and ideal foundations. (not accept, but understand). You cannot simply project your own perspective, understandings, ideas, habits, etc. onto us and then declare us imcomprehensible from that perspective. Of course we are incomprehensible from that perspective. For ex., we say the 5-year old child has not even incarnated the Ego-"I" who reasons logically through appearances of the world, and we say this is supported by our shared experience and the solid science reasoned from that experience. So reflecting from your own personal adventure into your understanding of our position is destined to make the latter non-sensical. It may be helpful to consider Jung's insight here.

I was not projecting Ashvin. I was reflecting in order to share a common dilemma of trying to communicate something complicated. You are saying something obvious, namely that if your audience makes the effort to embrace (understand, stand under) your symbolic universe they will arrive at the same conclusions as you do. OF COURSE! The conclusions are embedded in your symbolic universe, But your communication challenge is to speak with people outside of your symbolic universe. I was not projecting onto you and Cleric. I was offering the example of how I, as a storyteller, attempted to deal with this challenge in my realm of complicated concerns. It's trite but there's merit in Keep It Simple Stupid -- K.I.S.S.

No, Lou, understanding is not the same as accepting and concluding. I can work towards understanding many different 'symbolic universes' without concluding they are accurate or complete. The only reason I can make specified comparisons with philosophical and spiritual systems other than my own is because I do work towards that understanding. A fair evaluation of a conceptual worldview always presupposes understanding that worldview, but not accepting it.

As Cleric said, if there is no interest in fairly evaluating the outlook, because logically evaluating any outlook is itself seen as a mostly worthless pursuit, then that's all that needs to be said here. The claims of "incomprehensibility" don't need to be mentioned, because we have already established why that manifests - because there is no attempt to 'stand under' our symbolic universe when reading about it in our posts.

No, Lou, understanding is not the same as accepting and concluding. I said, to embrace (understand, stand under) will lead you to similar conclusions. The problem (perhaps not reconcilable) is that I am by nature a bridge person whereas you seem as an advocate for one side or the other. I'm looking for similarities, you for difference. In my view, this is the difference making the difference. Viva diversity!

[Ben Iscatus]

Ashvin, the archetype of self-sacrifice has found no home in your psyche. I understand.

[Cleric K]

Cleric,

Perhaps your audience could better grok what you are saying if you could phrase as if you were speaking directly to a five-year old child. Doing that would offer a concrete example of the use of language for a child-level understanding and give meaning for your audience to your assertion, This is not difficult to understand. It's child-level-easy to understand. Can you do it as a first-person adult speaking directly to a second-person child?

I can indeed do that, Lou. I can speak in non-intellectual pictures - because this is what children readily absorb in the forms of fairy tales for example. These are deep archetypal imaginative symbols which the child doesn't at all comprehend in its waking consciousness but the soul absorbs them with great joy. These living stories take hold as kernels, as seeds, from which certain faculties grow and reach maturation only much later in life.

The thing is that once again you demand simple stories but this doesn't at all mean that they'll feel agreeable to you. For example, the story about fall and redemption. This is one of the kernels which can awaken forces deep in the soul when absorbed properly.

And at this point you'll quickly turn the other side (at least judging from statements you've made in the past). If I remember correctly you've said before "Yeah, it's a nice story but it's a Biblical story - only one of the many possible". So once again you turn from story teller to philosopher, who doubts, weighs and so on.

We shouldn't delude ourselves. Things presented simply and plainly doesn't make them sympathetic. As a matter of fact, the more clearly things are presented (and thus the more difficult to logically reject), the more irrational the listener becomes, simply by trying to manifest their antipathy towards the ideas in any way possible.

Cleric provides the child-like easy to understand example of an air hose supplying to a diver in his post above. He is speaking of more than reason, predictably, participating and cause/effect in nature. He is adding a feeling or mood to every perception-actually he says the feeling proceeds the perception.
IOW, seeing is a feeling/meaning baked into reality.
The part I don’t understand is how he proves the above via an argument.
I think it’s possible to convert/appreciate everything as a mood, but first one has to decide between Christian, Hindu, Native American, etc belief system THEN be committed to that every minute of every day.
I think Cleric would say we are already ‘feeling’ but missing out of the really good stuff, which just happens to be Christian good stuff.

Lorenzo, you miss the point here again. The question is precisely to realize that no matter what you decide between (Christian, Hindu, etc.) there's still the actual, the real thinking spiritual activity which does the deciding. Our thinking is obviously a reality that can be quite independent (above) of any of the outer religious forms. The times for equipping humans with dogmas and rituals, in the rails of which their lives must flow, are gone. These were the helping wheels, the scaffolds, around which young humanity was guided to grow. We're speaking of something completely concrete and real - it's the living beings that we are, which think about these old religious shells, and must now draw the direction for our development through our own understanding and Love.

You ask about a proof. How would you prove to a dying man that he has ruined his life through his chaotic way of life? There's plenty of evidence about the harm of various foods, liquids and gases that people put in their bodies, yet it's quite clear that many of them continue doing it.

If contemporary people were not raised in complete materialism and default dishonesty, anyone would see immediately that in almost all cases the primary driving force of human conduct is desire. Logic only comes second and only if it somehow supports the desire. So we have the same inversion as before.

Humanity is sick. I think no sane person will deny that. Yet everyone chooses to deal differently with it. Those who don't want to burden themselves with it say "It's just the way it is. There's nothing to be fixed. MAL especially created the sandbox like this because this is what it wanted to experience".

But at the same time, anyone with at least the most basic spiritual hygiene, knows very well that with our thinking spirit, we're above desire, habit, vice. It's not easy to alter these heavily inertial soul patterns - we need certain knowledge and effort to do so. Just like we need knowledge about keeping the body healthy, so we need certain knowledge about how to feed and organize the soul. The food for the soul are our thoughts and feelings, which for most people pass completely uncontrollably like torrents. We have learned to select our foods, to wash them, to cook them, but as far as our soul is concerned we're indiscriminate pipe through which any kinds of substances pass without any chance of us of noticing them, let alone filter them. Yet with some knowledge and effort it is perfectly possible to gain this vigilance and the changes in our inner states are quickly appreciated. Only who has never made even the most preliminary steps in that direction can argue that it is impossible (for example by saying that we're hard wired in the brain in this way, that MAL has made us thus for a reason and we shouldn't interfere, etc.)

So it's once again the dualism of non-dualism. There's a hard boundary (which is no other but the great divider of death) between the Earthly realm and the supposed other world.

The story of fall and redemption is really about the fact that there's really One World (by the way Ashvin's summary 1,2,3,4... is very nice in that regard). The fall is a kind of degeneration of the One World, where decoherence, conflict and opposition take the upper hand. Humans have taken part in this fall largely instinctively, just as children are often mean to other children, they hit them and take their toys, not because of calculated and well reasoned actions but of subconscious desires. Redemption is achieved by awakening to the fact that even amidst great decoherence, our spiritual core is nevertheless part of the same that One World. It is up to us to develop the faculties through which to transform the chaotic state we've descended into.

This is huge work, no doubt about it. It requires not only effort but also many sacrifices. And that's the simple reason why people instinctively prefer to close their eyes for the prospect that such a work lies before our souls. Then the veil is invented, the soul interest groups and so on - anything, as long as it keeps the hard boundary between the worlds intact, which alone can put our conscience to sleep by believing that there's no point to bridge the worlds.

This is really the most urgent waking call for humans today. As long as we imagine that we're physically and psychically sick 'by design' and we have chosen to experience this (thus we shouldn't try to interfere) we're firmly subscribing to the dualism of non-dualism. We're here to watch a movie (even if it is a horror movie) and stay as uninvolved and detached as possible.

Hopefully more people will come to their senses and realize the things which are really completely common sense. Just as what I do today will have its consequences also tomorrow when I wake up after night sleep, so everything we do collectively, shapes the unfoldment of the One World's metamorphosis. It seems after thousands of years of development humans still haven't learnt the law of cause and effect.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric,

Perhaps your audience could better grok what you are saying if you could phrase as if you were speaking directly to a five-year old child. Doing that would offer a concrete example of the use of language for a child-level understanding and give meaning for your audience to your assertion, This is not difficult to understand. It's child-level-easy to understand. Can you do it as a first-person adult speaking directly to a second-person child?

I can indeed do that, Lou. I can speak in non-intellectual pictures - because this is what children readily absorb in the forms of fairy tales for example. These are deep archetypal imaginative symbols which the child doesn't at all comprehend in its waking consciousness but the soul absorbs them with great joy. These living stories take hold as kernels, as seeds, from which certain faculties grow and reach maturation only much later in life.

The thing is that once again you demand simple stories but this doesn't at all mean that they'll feel agreeable to you. For example, the story about fall and redemption. This is one of the kernels which can awaken forces deep in the soul when absorbed properly.

And at this point you'll quickly turn the other side (at least judging from statements you've made in the past). If I remember correctly you've said before "Yeah, it's a nice story but it's a Biblical story - only one of the many possible". So once again you turn from story teller to philosopher, who doubts, weighs and so on.

We shouldn't delude ourselves. Things presented simply and plainly doesn't make them sympathetic. As a matter of fact, the more clearly things are presented (and thus the more difficult to logically reject), the more irrational the listener becomes, simply by trying to manifest their antipathy towards the ideas in any way possible.

Sorry Cleric. You don't remember correctly. I never said that.

[AshvinP]

I was not projecting Ashvin. I was reflecting in order to share a common dilemma of trying to communicate something complicated. You are saying something obvious, namely that if your audience makes the effort to embrace (understand, stand under) your symbolic universe they will arrive at the same conclusions as you do. OF COURSE! The conclusions are embedded in your symbolic universe, But your communication challenge is to speak with people outside of your symbolic universe. I was not projecting onto you and Cleric. I was offering the example of how I, as a storyteller, attempted to deal with this challenge in my realm of complicated concerns. It's trite but there's merit in Keep It Simple Stupid -- K.I.S.S.

No, Lou, understanding is not the same as accepting and concluding. I can work towards understanding many different 'symbolic universes' without concluding they are accurate or complete. The only reason I can make specified comparisons with philosophical and spiritual systems other than my own is because I do work towards that understanding. A fair evaluation of a conceptual worldview always presupposes understanding that worldview, but not accepting it.

As Cleric said, if there is no interest in fairly evaluating the outlook, because logically evaluating any outlook is itself seen as a mostly worthless pursuit, then that's all that needs to be said here. The claims of "incomprehensibility" don't need to be mentioned, because we have already established why that manifests - because there is no attempt to 'stand under' our symbolic universe when reading about it in our posts.

No, Lou, understanding is not the same as accepting and concluding. I said, to embrace (understand, stand under) will lead you to similar conclusions. The problem (perhaps not reconcilable) is that I am by nature a bridge person whereas you seem as an advocate for one side or the other. I'm looking for similarities, you for difference. In my view, this is the difference making the difference. Viva diversity!

This is the great delusion people place themselves under here re: philosophy/phenomenology of Thinking, especially you, Eugene, and Ben, and it really occurs for practically everything you evaluate intellectually. What you are actually doing is changing our outlook to resemble your own and then finding similarities between your outlook and your slightly modified other outlook, projected onto and confused for ours. Then you feel like you are being charitable and virtuous, while I am being "divisive" by trying to make clear what the arguments actually are. Do you want to know how I can tell?

Because, in the many months of posting that outlook here, and corresponding with Eugene and yourself and sometimes Ben, you guys have never, not once, responded for clarification of the points we are making. Eugene will say "I agree" and then write something diametrically opposed to our outlook. You will use it as a basis for highlighting your own views and experience with spirituality, etc. Ben will simply write one sentence dismissing it and pretend he understood it well enough to dismiss. Yet other times you guys claim it is impossible to understand, which contradicts all your previous posts implying you understood it.

These are all mechanisms, mostly subconscious IMO, through which the dualism of non-dualism is maintained and the core insights of monist idea-lism are avoided. Cleric posted an illustrative post with the air-filter analogy. I posted 7 bullet points to summarize the basics of the position. Cleric responded with another Fall-Redemption illustration. Ben outright refused to consider what was written. You have been responding but not mentioning any of those things or asking questions about them, only trying to relate it back to your own views. Lorenzo made an attempt to restate Cleric's understanding in his own words, so I will give him credit for that. That is a perfectly legitimate way of actually discussing the substance.

[Anthony66]

1. There is only One World (not one "dream world" existing 'next to' another "real world").

I'm not sure what you are getting at with the parenthetical statement. My understanding is that the world "out there" is a result of the mentation of structured conscious perspectives or beings that could be conceptualized as a dream world. We perceive this and then represent it through our thinking activity. The typical representation is a "flattened" panorama of shapes and sounds and colors. Through the development of our thinking, this representation comprises ever richer depths of meaning. How far off the mark is that?

[AshvinP]

1. There is only One World (not one "dream world" existing 'next to' another "real world").

I'm not sure what you are getting at with the parenthetical statement. My understanding is that the world "out there" is a result of the mentation of structured conscious perspectives or beings that could be conceptualized as a dream world. We perceive this and then represent it through our thinking activity. The typical representation is a "flattened" panorama of shapes and sounds and colors. Through the development of our thinking, this representation comprises ever richer depths of meaning. How far off the mark is that?

Anthony,

It is off the mark because of the subtle distinction that is missed, and, if I have learned anything recently, our intellect is always missing this distinction when thinking of the world and its own role in it. You are implying in bold that the One World out there already exists prior to our thinking activity, and then we come along to represent it with that activity after perceiving it. The reality is that the thinking activity comes first and then precipitates meaning into the currently flattened perceptions. Perceiving can be thought of as the outwardly projective aspect of inner Thinking. Our clarity of perception has come at the expense of our consciousness and correct understanding of this inseperable relationship.

With our current cognition, it appears if many things simply exist prior to our thinking in that way, because we are not conscious of the 'path' that our thinking-flow travels before arriving as perceptions which seem to exist independently of it. This was actually necessary for human beings to become self-aware with inner thought-life. The thinking "I" must be set apart from the perceptual world, which is actually a reflection of its own activity, to behold itself. The process of restoring the actual relationship, without sacrificing the self-awareness, is becoming more conscious of the flow from which the perceptual world precipitates; consciously tracing it back to its Origin, so to speak. We use the inner and outer perceptual reflective world as the tool it was always meant to be for our own Self-awakening. Eventually, obviously with much effort, this translates into a 'sense-free' living thinking, i.e. thinking which is not reliant on perceptual reflections for its own Self-awareness. This thinking consciously moves and 'touches' the countours of imperceptible meaning directly.

When we realize this reversal of the meaning-perception relationship applies not only to objects we perceive around us, but also the forms we perceive within us - thoughts, feelings, desires - and the cultural/temporal forms of human institutions, worldviews, epochs, etc, it is easier to also understand how confused modern man has become in philosophy and science (systematic thinking in general, of the sort we are all engaging right now on the forum). The intellectual ego has been inflated to feel it is reponsible for all of these things (over-materialized), but clearly our rich spectrum of inner experience and entire epochs of time are not structured by intellectual thinking activity. Alternatively, it is inflated to feel it has understood its own absolute limitations (over-spiritualized), walling it off from any further Self-knowledge, and then practically goes about thinking through the world content just like the over-materialized ego. This latter one is analytic idealism, in a nutshell. As Cleric said, the "I"-World dualism is maintained under the intellectual concept of 'non-dualism'.

[Cleric K]

Sorry Cleric. You don't remember correctly. I never said that.

OK, I don't insist. It is simply my general impression that you don't feel good about descent-ascent narratives (you have protested many times about the usage of the word 'higher'), which is related with the dislike of the idea of ascent/spiritual development/evolution (which is blamed to be concealed elitism).

[mikekatz]

1. There is only One World (not one "dream world" existing 'next to' another "real world").
2. We are this One World - the World we see is our inner life projected as something other than us, i.e. the objects and processes we perceive around us.
3. Our current perspective we call our "I" is also another projected object/process in this same sense.
4. Our real, most essential "I" is the inner life of the entire outer form we call "the Universe" (not static, but always changing).
5. To re-member and re-cognize our real "I", we need to find the perceptible forms in the Universe which are undeniably connected to our current conscious activity and 'trace back' where they come from. (if we simply call ourselves the "real I" or experience mystical oneness and nothing further, we are still only identifying with the current projected "I" without realizing it).
6. These are our thought-forms and our own thinking which manifests them.
7. The process of observing and understanding our own thinking activity better, not as 'external' object to study, but as the activity we are engaged in right now when reading these words and forming concepts of their meaning, in the living transformations of that meaning, is also the process of rediscovering our essential Self.

Hi Ashvin
Points 1-4, agreed!

Points 5-6, don't agree. As per point 2, the One World seems dual because of the projection of the inner world as something other than us (your words). So there's an "I" that is the subject that perceives, and the object is whatever is perceived.

Where we differ, radically it seems, is that the outer world includes everything except consciousness. This includes our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions, all our perceptions. These are all outer to consciousness and are perceptions / projections.

Therefore, to find, or get to, or approach (all these words are wrong, just metaphors or pointers), One World, to experience non-dual, one has to experience the consciousness out of which duality arises. You can't "trace back" to non-dual by examining "thought-forms", because "thought forms" are by their very nature already dual. If you observe your thought forms, there is your consciousness observing, and the thought forms, and you are in duality.

Point 7, well, yes, we should be mindful, because if we are aware of our reading right now, and we are conscious of our thoughts and feelings as we read, and we can see our biases, etc. More important, being mindful makes us aware of the apparent duality in which we live, which is far better than not being mindful, forgetting our awareness, and just living in a flat material world.

And mindfulness allows us into the next step:

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction. It's a turning of consciousness inward / backward, by means of meditation or prayer or some such. Sat-Chit-Ananda, Consciousness-Knowledge-Bliss.

Once that happens, everything changes. When you return the dual world, Love floods into everything. Everything shines. If everyone in the world had been there just once, the madness in this world would vanish.

[AshvinP]

1. There is only One World (not one "dream world" existing 'next to' another "real world").
2. We are this One World - the World we see is our inner life projected as something other than us, i.e. the objects and processes we perceive around us.
3. Our current perspective we call our "I" is also another projected object/process in this same sense.
4. Our real, most essential "I" is the inner life of the entire outer form we call "the Universe" (not static, but always changing).
5. To re-member and re-cognize our real "I", we need to find the perceptible forms in the Universe which are undeniably connected to our current conscious activity and 'trace back' where they come from. (if we simply call ourselves the "real I" or experience mystical oneness and nothing further, we are still only identifying with the current projected "I" without realizing it).
6. These are our thought-forms and our own thinking which manifests them.
7. The process of observing and understanding our own thinking activity better, not as 'external' object to study, but as the activity we are engaged in right now when reading these words and forming concepts of their meaning, in the living transformations of that meaning, is also the process of rediscovering our essential Self.

Hi Ashvin
Points 1-4, agreed!

Points 5-6, don't agree. As per point 2, the One World seems dual because of the projection of the inner world as something other than us (your words). So there's an "I" that is the subject that perceives, and the object is whatever is perceived.

Where we differ, radically it seems, is that the outer world includes everything except consciousness. This includes our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions, all our perceptions. These are all outer to consciousness and are perceptions / projections.

Therefore, to find, or get to, or approach (all these words are wrong, just metaphors or pointers), One World, to experience non-dual, one has to experience the consciousness out of which duality arises. You can't "trace back" to non-dual by examining "thought-forms", because "thought forms" are by their very nature already dual. If you observe your thought forms, there is your consciousness observing, and the thought forms, and you are in duality.

Point 7, well, yes, we should be mindful, because if we are aware of our reading right now, and we are conscious of our thoughts and feelings as we read, and we can see our biases, etc. More important, being mindful makes us aware of the apparent duality in which we live, which is far better than not being mindful, forgetting our awareness, and just living in a flat material world.

And mindfulness allows us into the next step:

The only way out of duality is the way of the non-dual masters. Understanding that consciousness is the root of everything, the root of me, and the root of of the world, Consciousness has to turn back on itself, dropping everything else. This is not an action, because action already implies duality. It's an inaction. It's a turning of consciousness inward / backward, by means of meditation or prayer or some such. Sat-Chit-Ananda, Consciousness-Knowledge-Bliss.

Once that happens, everything changes. When you return the dual world, Love floods into everything. Everything shines. If everyone in the world had been there just once, the madness in this world would vanish.

Mike,

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Let me clarify, I most definitely consider inner experiences to be perceptual (reflective) forms like outer forms, i.e. they cannot be considered naively real. They are not direct perceptions of the "I"-consciousness in its living activity. Actually they are more like dead husks of meaning, after the life of thinking has already been extinguished. I think this failure to treat inner forms like outer forms is the basis for analytical/mystical idealism. Schopenhauer, for ex., perceived inner experiences via introspection and assumed he was direclty perceiving the universal Will itself and bypassing all thinking.

So I agree with that portion of your comment. However, when you write the bold, I think you have implicitly slipped in a dualism which divides thinking from perception. You ascribed the duality-status to the thought-forms instead of to your own mode of perceiving them. That is the basis of all modern dualism - the intellectual ego projects its own localized limitation onto Reality itself and then hits the "impenetrable barrier" it has projected and assumes it is absolute limitation. If that were the case, then settling for mystical oneness via standard nondual approach would indeed be the only option. But we are saying that's not actually the case. There is no absolute limitation built into Reality itself, only localized ones related to our own shortcomings.

Instead, we can see how the nexus of living thinking activity and deadened perceptions, which are mostly fixed and flattened reflections of that activity (its helpful to consider "dead" as forms which have stopped moving), remains present in the meaning they share. To be clear, simply noticing the meaning of a thought-form is not the process of 'tracing back' to the living activity. It really takes a paradigmatic shift in thinking, from horizontal to vertical, to get back into the living flow of thinking. That being said, the only reason I still write essays and what not is because I can sense concretely the shift in my thinking when I reason deeply through the outer and inner forms.

Consider when we say something has become "second nature" for us. We are not saying somehow we were magically imparted with more fluid and living, i.e. non-reflective (or sense-free), thinking. Rather, we are saying that, through the process of patient and participatory observation and reasoning, we gave a new life to our thinking which allows it to become more effortless and fluid. Our thinking goes out and actively touches meaning instead of extinguishing itself in fixed perceptions. It has been "born again", so to speak. So these benefits can be realized right now by observing our own thinking and reasoning through the forms that it takes in our experience.