Anthony66 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 1:44 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 2:59 pm
Anthony66 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 2:34 pm
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'.
Ashvin,
Serious question...why do you think it is so hard for us to understand you? Cleric and yourself write well with rich language. You try to explain yourself from many angles. You write extensively. And yet I (and it appears others) continue to struggle to nail your views as evidenced here. I'm PhD educated, from the STEM side of the house. Admittedly I only have a superficial level of reading in all things philosophy. I read all that you guys post, sometimes a number of times over. I've read PoF. I've tried asking clarifying question. I practice the red dot meditation daily. I try to be more attentive to the world around me. But it just hasn't fully clicked yet. BK, on the other hand is very easy to understand.
I sense there is something deep and transformative here that brings various threads of inquiry together. I will continue to strive. But it is a real struggle.
If I ever get it, I plan to be your PR rep, dumbing it down for the masses. I suspect it is a rare individual that understands ASS easily
Anthony,
I have no clue. As Cleric so often illustrates in a new and fascinating ways, like his
latest post re: infernal loops, we are not talking about an intellectual theory. That would be my first guess - you seem to be speaking of it above as an intellectual theory, but it's really a
new way of perceiving reality. I am sure my own intelletual habits contribute to that misunderstanding when responding to you - there is only so much life I can bring to my descriptions at this stage of my knowing path. The reasons for these things often lie within our souls, not our thinking intellect, so each individual must do an honest Self-inquiry to reveal the twisted currents within which kill the life of the ideas, make them into thought-fragments, before arriving to the conscious intellect.
Consider the idolatry of space, which Cleric metaphorically untangled for us in the latest post. How many go about their understanding concretely that their inner world is a
shared medium of W-F-T activity just like the spatial world around them, and, moreover, the latter is an outward reflective manifestation of the former? How many take that seriously and let it influence the way they perceive all phenomena in their experience? It's immediately obvious that a significant inner effort is required to translate "inner world is a shared medium of WFT activity like spatial world" into a concrete living experience of reality. So maybe that's the issue - you can sense the deep underlying logical coherence of what is written but it also remains only dry intellectual theory.
The first step is to realize this is
our shortcoming - mine and yours - not the flaw of Reality itself or Steiner, Cleric, or anyone else with spiritual sight. We must first take the beam out of our own eyes before criticizing the speck in our brother's eyes. A certain soul mood of humility, devotion, patience, gratitude will go a long, long way when approaching the concretization of these concepts. The power of that mood in our experience really cannot be overstated. Remember, if what we are saying is accurate, then the inner world has even
more causal efficacy than the material world which most people consider pre-existing and "concrete" to their senses. Our feelings and intentions really matter! We could start by simply being more appreciative that we are on this treasure trove of a forum. It is clear that some people here, who I don't even need to name, are resentful of that fact, and that is also why they will never realize the underlying potential. By denying the concrete efficacy of reasoning, feeling, willing, they have blocked their own access to that potential.