The Central Topic

[AshvinP]

A very good example of multi-layered thinking can be found in computer systems, where each layer of machine code -> programming language -> operating system -> application -> ... -> ...
are layeres of higher and higher abstraction. These levels did not appear by themselves. A human being thought them up.

Not sure that's what Ashvin means with vertical thinking though. The computer- and math- types of abstraction seem pretty mineralized to me...

Then again, maybe this is exactly vertical thinking, it's just that we would do better if we applied it to ourselves instead of the outside world...

I want to add, in addition to what Cleric commented here, a very broad level view of this dynamic. So broad it will be quite unhelpful if not also related to the more immediate experience Cleric mentioned re: development from infancy to adulthood.

Why do we perceive anything in an ideal Cosmos? After all, it is all qualia-meaning which has no spatial structure. The horizontal thought says, "because we have dissociated from this undifferentiated meaning and become alters, viewing the ideas of MAL as something external to us, i.e. perceptions". There is nothing untrue about this thought, but notice why it is true. It has simply restated what was already immediately apparent from our experience. Once we accept all is Idea-Meaning, the rest is just another way of saying what we already know - we are viewing the meaning of One Mind mostly from the outside as perception.

Horizontal thinking may go a bit further and say, "we are on the outside because we dissociated, like a person with DID has personalities which dissociate from their unified Personality." Has this explained anything or is it yet another restatement of what is already known?
The great truth of idealism is that absolutely every appearance on the phenomenal plane can serve as a metaphor for the One Mind reality in some significant way. Actually this fact immediately defeats Kantian and Schop epistemology, but horizontal thinking takes no notice. If it did take notice, becoming self-aware of what it is actually doing through this reasoning, then it would begin to develop vertical thinking. As Cleric has illustrated, the infernal loop develops from polarization of the hysteresis - because what we are doing with our activity and what we are perceiving in thought remains completely out of phase.

Once this polarity spirals back into some unity, thinking can ascend vertically. Then it becomes more clear why we perceive things external to us. It's not just a restatement of this fact, but an actual explanation (still very surface level explanation, but actually moving to deeper levels of explanation). This explanation is none other than what Cleric already posted about the infant and its unknown inner desires as external laws of nature. It's also what he illustrated in depth in the TCoTCT essays and Time-Consciousness essay. What follows is taken directly from the latter with few changes/additions. In our everyday experience, we find causative character only in the ideas through which we guide the transformation of our own willing-feeling-thinking states, like the idea of 'going to work today'. For something like the idea of the 'day and night cycle', our idea is only reflective. We have no justification to speak of our idea of day and night being causally responsible for that cycle, but simply an idea which we become conscious of in reflection. This is like the baby who is able to passively reflect on instinctual forces of desire and declares it external laws of nature.

The ideas of 'going to work' and 'day and night cycle' are both are, in fact, uniting the perceptual frames which occur within their meaningful context, but the former we can speak of as 'our own' and the latter as external to us. In fact, this sense of not being creatively responsible for certain ideas, while also becoming conscious of their existence, is what leads to an external perceptual world in the first place, for individuals and humanity as a whole. We have 'cast out' certain inner soul activity so that we may become conscious of ourselves and the world. In that process of involution - inner activity into perception - the relations become so complex and nonlinear that we cannot remember what or how it is related to our own activity. As long as remain stuck in horizontal hysteresis loop, this forgetfulness remains and we begin externalizing the explanations for perceptions to all sorts of intellectual concepts - god, idea, matter/energy, will, nothingness, etc. The common factor is that all of these seem to make something else responsible for the dissociation. We forget that "something else" was originally our own inner activity cast out into perceptions, including conceptual thoughts. Why take responsibility for reassociating if something else is running the show? Either it will happen or it won't, but we have washed our hands of the entire affair.

If we look more closely, though, we will find the two types of ideas we looked at before are not rigidly separated. There are examples of ideal rhythms which initially look like natural laws that we can only abstractly reflect upon but gradually turn out to be completely in our ability to encompass from within with our own living ideas, either alllowing them or not allowing them to become the motive for our will. We're speaking about instincts, habits, learned behavior, etc. Through inner effort, we can rise to a point where we encompass these elements and intervene in their unfoldment. An interesting example is breathing. Here we have something which can be perceived passively as occurring as a result of natural law, but at the same time we can 'step in' and consciously guide the process. That transfiguration of seemingly external law into internal idea has been the basis of all traditional meditative practice. So our abstract idea about breathing as a process governed by natural laws is transfigured into a process which unfolds as a result of our own creative ideation. Inner meaning which became perception becomes inner meaning again at a higher (more conscious) level, and now we creatively participate in its unfoldment. We consciously work on the ideas which will precipitate into the future environment.

Again, it is what we have been doing in mostly instinctive way throughout the modern age via philosophy, science, art, etc. No one can deny past ideas worked upon during this time have become our current environment. But there is no Wisdom in this ideal unfoldment until it becomes conscious what we are doing and how what we are doing relates to what we are perceiving. This is what Steiner endeavored to do through PoF - make us more conscious of what we are always doing through spiritual activity. Only then are we thinking vertically and, therefore, paying closer attention to how our creative spiritual activity will shape the landscape for generations to come. In this process, we also come to realize how our creative activity is not entirely ours - many higher order perspectives have been guiding this process through us and we cannot become truly conscious of our own activity until we also know these perspectives. To know, in this sense, is nothing less than experiencing their activity from within. Neither Cleric, nor certainly not myself, can claim such knowledge, but it's clearly not all or nothing - there is a gradient. Otherwise how would Cleric be able to illustrate these deeper explanations in such detail? Anyone who can reason through analytic idealism can also develop vertical thinking of this sort, with 10-15 min of spare time each day.

[Anthony66]

Do you think it would be a fair summary to say that outside of a fairly restricted set of phenomena, horizontal propositional reasoning is very limited. In the realm of the moral in particular, horizontal and vertical reasoning is required to plumb an expansive meaning of phenomena.

Let's first keep in mind that the horizontal and vertical are not isolated phenomena. So even when we're engaged in horizontal reasoning, we're still using the vertical forces which drive thinking, yet this thinking keeps reprojecting itself on the perceptual plane in a kind of infernal loop. This is important to keep in mind. Even our most mundane thinking is still activity of our spirit. It is the patterns, rhythms, loops into which that activity flows, which give it its peculiar character. A broken record which snaps back at the same position still produces sound in the same way as a normal record. It's the infernal dynamics which make the activity to keep snapping back onto the same patterns.

Where does the physical brain sit within horizontal/vertical thinking?

I would think that the brain is a partial image of mental configurations - a reified thought object through which our active thinking precipitates thoughts. Is that close to the mark in SS speak?

[Cleric K]

Where does the physical brain sit within horizontal/vertical thinking?

I would think that the brain is a partial image of mental configurations - a reified thought object through which our active thinking precipitates thoughts. Is that close to the mark in SS speak?

First we have to be careful when we work with the idea that the brain (or anything) is an image of something experienced in consciousness. I'm not saying that we can't express in this way but we should be very vigilant because this invites very easily the dual thinking which works in the blind spot, imagining that it can hold in one hand the brain-in-itself, in the other - conscious phenomena, and match them together.

To be safe, we always need to start from the givens. Ultimately, we experience a flow of states of being. Part of this flow happens without any consciousness of us being involved (such as in the sensory spectrum) but another part is shaped by our spiritual activity (most clearly experienced in the flow of thinking).

To approach the question in a healthy way we need to think in terms of what constricts our flow of being? Some time ago I gave a metaphor to Gunay with the water of our spiritual activity and the riverbed. The latter constricts the flow but is also being gradually changed by the water.

It is helpful to think of the infinite possibilities that our states can unfold into. For example, the joints of the fingers of my hands restrict their movement such that I can't touch the back of the same hand. Now here's the trick. We'll succumb in impossible dualisms if we try to speculate what the joints are in themselves and how they constrict my movement. The solution is to see them as symbols for possibilities.

Forget for a while our physical conceptions. I'm looking at my hand. It may be a dream-hand, the body may not exist as such - it doesn't matter. The certain thing is that I experience a palette of perceptions and through the exercise of my spiritual activity I can augment that palette. For example, with my index finger I can easily touch the palm of the same hand. So the state where I experience the touching of my palm is within the possible states into which I can transform to. On the other hand, it seems I can't easily find a way to exercise my will such that I experience a touch to the back of the same hand.

It doesn't matter if we're talking about our hand, foot, any other part of the body, feelings, thoughts. We should grasp the general truth that through our spiritual activity we can transform into certain states of being, while others, even though we can conceive of them in thought, are inaccessible.

There are also many states which we can't access and we can't even conceive of. For example, if I'm mathematically illiterate, the state where I think the proof of the Pythagorean theorem is such a state that I can't find a way to. There's nothing in my present illiterate being which even suggests that such states can be experienced.

The whole idea is to gradually change the way we think about reality. It's not about subscribing to some fantastic theory but it's actually the opposite - we step back and stick to the given. The examples above don't require any postulations. Actually they require the opposite - that we let go of our stubborn preconceived notions of a world-in-itself that should mirror our subjective world.

The brain is a complicated thing. It'll turn into a very long post if I'm to enter into greater details. Yet in certain sense, just like our joints, we can conceive of our nerves as images of the constrictions of the riverbed through which our states metamorphose. An actual riverbed is not a mere mirror-image of the water - it is a whole environment through which the water flows. In a similar way, the brain is a riverbed environment which constricts the way our states of being can evolve. Yet there's also no hard boundary between the water and the riverbed. If it helps, we can imagine that the riverbed is frozen water, so they share the same essence. Ultimately there's everywhere the flow of the Spirit but in relative perspectives, some of these flows are experienced as riverbeds by other flows.

When we think of the brain or the body as a whole, we should feel that it's the whole Cosmic environment that our spiritual flow rubs against. And this is quite clear, since our body coalesces and is nourished by the 'stuff' of the Cosmos.

So the horizontal aspect of thinking manifests in its strongest when our spiritual flow is too weak to alter the environmental riverbed. The environment (not only our bodily but also outside) forms the channels and ducts that constrict what our next state of being can be.

The vertical aspect begins with the realization that there's no hard duality between the environment and our spiritual flow. It's only that what from our perspective we consider to be environment, is for other levels of being, their spiritual flow. These levels of being see reality from the same 'side' as we do. It can be said that we only see an 'aperture' of what they see. The analogy with modulation is always useful:

For example, our activity can be imagined as the shorter waves, while the longer wave is the environment. Yet that environmental wave is also expression of spiritual activity seen from a different level of being. Note that the longer wave shapes the palette of possibilities for us. For example, while we're modulated at the peak of the longer wave, the lower parts are beyond our reach.

In this sense, our brain, body, soul and sensory environments, are like these riverbeds which constrict the possibilities for our next states of being. Yet there's no hard boundary between the two. We very well know that through learning (which is exercise of our thinking activity) we alter the brain riverbed.

Things are not that complicated but they have to be experienced from the proper perspective. As long as we want to place ourselves outside of reality and theorize about it, all the above will be seen as complete abstraction. But if we make the reality of our own living spiritual flow the center of investigation, then all the words above are only labels for direct spiritual experiences, just like 'red', 'hot', 'joy' are labels for spiritual experiences.

The take away is that we should move away from simply seeking the images of our current activity and instead turn attention to the way our present flow is constricted and how there are infinite states that we can transition into if we find the inner gestures to do so. In this sense, the perceptual world (which includes the brain) is a symbol of the invisible riverbed which constrains the accessible states of our becoming.

[Anthony66]

Where does the physical brain sit within horizontal/vertical thinking?

I would think that the brain is a partial image of mental configurations - a reified thought object through which our active thinking precipitates thoughts. Is that close to the mark in SS speak?

First we have to be careful when we work with the idea that the brain (or anything) is an image of something experienced in consciousness. I'm not saying that we can't express in this way but we should be very vigilant because this invites very easily the dual thinking which works in the blind spot, imagining that it can hold in one hand the brain-in-itself, in the other - conscious phenomena, and match them together.

To be safe, we always need to start from the givens. Ultimately, we experience a flow of states of being. Part of this flow happens without any consciousness of us being involved (such as in the sensory spectrum) but another part is shaped by our spiritual activity (most clearly experienced in the flow of thinking).

To approach the question in a healthy way we need to think in terms of what constricts our flow of being? Some time ago I gave a metaphor to Gunay with the water of our spiritual activity and the riverbed. The latter constricts the flow but is also being gradually changed by the water.

It is helpful to think of the infinite possibilities that our states can unfold into. For example, the joints of the fingers of my hands restrict their movement such that I can't touch the back of the same hand. Now here's the trick. We'll succumb in impossible dualisms if we try to speculate what the joints are in themselves and how they constrict my movement. The solution is to see them as symbols for possibilities.

Forget for a while our physical conceptions. I'm looking at my hand. It may be a dream-hand, the body may not exist as such - it doesn't matter. The certain thing is that I experience a palette of perceptions and through the exercise of my spiritual activity I can augment that palette. For example, with my index finger I can easily touch the palm of the same hand. So the state where I experience the touching of my palm is within the possible states into which I can transform to. On the other hand, it seems I can't easily find a way to exercise my will such that I experience a touch to the back of the same hand.

It doesn't matter if we're talking about our hand, foot, any other part of the body, feelings, thoughts. We should grasp the general truth that through our spiritual activity we can transform into certain states of being, while others, even though we can conceive of them in thought, are inaccessible.

There are also many states which we can't access and we can't even conceive of. For example, if I'm mathematically illiterate, the state where I think the proof of the Pythagorean theorem is such a state that I can't find a way to. There's nothing in my present illiterate being which even suggests that such states can be experienced.

The whole idea is to gradually change the way we think about reality. It's not about subscribing to some fantastic theory but it's actually the opposite - we step back and stick to the given. The examples above don't require any postulations. Actually they require the opposite - that we let go of our stubborn preconceived notions of a world-in-itself that should mirror our subjective world.

The brain is a complicated thing. It'll turn into a very long post if I'm to enter into greater details. Yet in certain sense, just like our joints, we can conceive of our nerves as images of the constrictions of the riverbed through which our states metamorphose. An actual riverbed is not a mere mirror-image of the water - it is a whole environment through which the water flows. In a similar way, the brain is a riverbed environment which constricts the way our states of being can evolve. Yet there's also no hard boundary between the water and the riverbed. If it helps, we can imagine that the riverbed is frozen water, so they share the same essence. Ultimately there's everywhere the flow of the Spirit but in relative perspectives, some of these flows are experienced as riverbeds by other flows.

When we think of the brain or the body as a whole, we should feel that it's the whole Cosmic environment that our spiritual flow rubs against. And this is quite clear, since our body coalesces and is nourished by the 'stuff' of the Cosmos.

So the horizontal aspect of thinking manifests in its strongest when our spiritual flow is too weak to alter the environmental riverbed. The environment (not only our bodily but also outside) forms the channels and ducts that constrict what our next state of being can be.

The vertical aspect begins with the realization that there's no hard duality between the environment and our spiritual flow. It's only that what from our perspective we consider to be environment, is for other levels of being, their spiritual flow. These levels of being see reality from the same 'side' as we do. It can be said that we only see an 'aperture' of what they see. The analogy with modulation is always useful:

For example, our activity can be imagined as the shorter waves, while the longer wave is the environment. Yet that environmental wave is also expression of spiritual activity seen from a different level of being. Note that the longer wave shapes the palette of possibilities for us. For example, while we're modulated at the peak of the longer wave, the lower parts are beyond our reach.

In this sense, our brain, body, soul and sensory environments, are like these riverbeds which constrict the possibilities for our next states of being. Yet there's no hard boundary between the two. We very well know that through learning (which is exercise of our thinking activity) we alter the brain riverbed.

Things are not that complicated but they have to be experienced from the proper perspective. As long as we want to place ourselves outside of reality and theorize about it, all the above will be seen as complete abstraction. But if we make the reality of our own living spiritual flow the center of investigation, then all the words above are only labels for direct spiritual experiences, just like 'red', 'hot', 'joy' are labels for spiritual experiences.

The take away is that we should move away from simply seeking the images of our current activity and instead turn attention to the way our present flow is constricted and how there are infinite states that we can transition into if we find the inner gestures to do so. In this sense, the perceptual world (which includes the brain) is a symbol of the invisible riverbed which constrains the accessible states of our becoming.

I'm not convinced our respective analogies and language are describing different dynamics. The brain is in some sense filtering or constraining or modulating the thinking activity.

Neurophysiology speaks of neuroplasticity, the formation of novel neural pathways (riverbeds) as a result of our thinking activity in response to environmental interactions. Babies and infants in particular, lay down large quantities of new neural pathways as they explore and learn about their environment. This reshaping of the riverbed is an intra-life evolution if you like. But what about evolution across lives? How do we understand the genetic aspects that carry across on the physical plane and manifest in changed neural architectures in future generations?

[Cleric K]

I'm not convinced our respective analogies and language are describing different dynamics. The brain is in some sense filtering or constraining or modulating the thinking activity.

Neurophysiology speaks of neuroplasticity, the formation of novel neural pathways (riverbeds) as a result of our thinking activity in response to environmental interactions. Babies and infants in particular, lay down large quantities of new neural pathways as they explore and learn about their environment. This reshaping of the riverbed is an intra-life evolution if you like. But what about evolution across lives? How do we understand the genetic aspects that carry across on the physical plane and manifest in changed neural architectures in future generations?

As said, these topics are quite complicated. They are extremely interesting for me personally but in order to approach them in satisfactory manner, we would need much more essays. If I speak here about these details in few words, everything will be out of context and people will again complain that it is incomprehensible (more justifiably in this instance).

Generally I try to keep things in the domain of PoF where everyone can verify things through nothing but investigation of their own spiritual activity. Clearly, the questions above demand much deeper study, so anything that can be said will inevitably sound as free floating claims to those who haven't attempted to approach these depths.

First, the genetic makeup of humans won't change too much at least for few more millennia. Today's genetics very well identifies the space-like aspect of life encoded in DNA. As it is now, a three-base codon encodes one of the 20 amino acids. So we have an alphabet where the words are protein blueprints. But the strange thing is that apparently there is no information about the time-like aspect. No instructions have been found that encode how, when, what should be done.

As an analogy, this is like having architectural documentation which explains the form of the bricks, beams, tiles, windows, doors, etc. but there's nothing about in what order and how they should be assembled. Of course scientists are not very concerned about this because they simply assume that the process is somehow self-supporting. Bricks are produced, wood is cut and somehow the products keep perpetuating the process.

In time this will be found to be entirely wishful thinking. It's once again a question of understanding the Time aspect of being (which has been dealt with here several times already). If we can't awaken to the fact that our active thinking is the temporal law which orders unfoldment of phenomena in time, then biological life will likewise remain only the fantastic speculation that it's all a finely tuned table of billiard balls.

I'm saying this in order to make the distinction between the genetic information which encodes the protein structure and the way these elements unfold in time. Practically, the genetic makeup that we currently have is quite sufficient for quite some more time to come. As you noted, the neuroplasticity is one example. It's clear even for today's science that two identical twins (same DNA) can develop quite different brains depending on the kind of development they receive (which is to say - what kind of spiritual activity has been exercised).

Then we have our life of feelings (soul/astral body). Our emotional states very clearly have strong relation with breathing, circulation, digestion, etc. Even further than this, there's little doubt today that the emotional states modulate the working of the physical body on even deeper level. It's well known how depression, stress, grief, etc. are linked to weakening of the immune system, organ malfunction, cancerous growths, etc.

When people begin to take seriously the obvious thing - that through our spiritual activity (thinking, feeling, willing) we actively work both on our bodily and also the external environment - then also the questions will be explored of what idea, feelings and actions are health promoting and which destroy the harmony of the organism.

The singularity of the "I" acts like an ordering principle which must grasp the proper ideas about what reality is, what we are and how we actively participate in the ever metamorphosing state of being. This is what we're doing here. We're exercising the ideal degrees of freedom of our being. The next step is extending our activity, which is no longer of only intellectual nature but begins to take hold on the processes of the soul (desires, sympathies, antipathies - remember the baby example). This is the most immediate and urgent task today. Then further than this our activity begins to more actively affect the way life processes work in us. Please note that here our spiritual activity works in these domains but we don't say that our body is how our activity looks from the outside. I believe it has been shown numerous times already how erroneous this idea is. When we work upon our home, when we place our furniture, objects, etc., we're modifying the riverbed. The way we have placed the sofa will determine the possible future states of being that we can experience when we watch TV. Many other potential states of watching TV from other positions have become unmanifestible because they depend on the sofa being placed elsewhere. So our home furniture riverbed determines the palette of possible becoming yet we would hardly say that this is how our consciousness looks from outside. It's certainly shaped by our conscious activity and in turn it affects our future possible flow of becoming but it's clear that our spirit works upon an environment. It's not that different with our brain and body. They are not what our consciousness look like from the outside but they are the living environment that we shape as far as we can and which in turn shapes what states of being are achievable for us.

So we have a great field for work in front of us. There's no need to be eager to mutate our DNA. As said, our DNA has the blueprints for the building blocks which are completely sufficient for millennia to come. The problem is not in the bricks - it's in the soul and spirit builder. Our spiritual constitution is that which must be transformed first. To put it simply - we're using the blueprints of DNA and very inefficient and even harmful ways. The human being can change a lot by having quite the same DNA but putting it into use in different ways. The organizing soul forces that we develop in life, survive the loss of the physical body in seed-like way and begin to unfold once again when the next embryo begins to develop.

In certain sense, the genetic (physical) pool and the life, soul and spirit forces are somewhat decoupled in our Earthly evolutionary scenario. The souls carry with them the temporal forces but they have to work with different palettes upon uniting with the fertilized egg. It's like the imaginative skills of a painter live in his deeper spiritual being but he can't manifest the paint substances out of himself. He unites with a physical workshop which provides different materials for the different colors and he has to adapt and learn to use them in the best way possible. This also explains why certain kinds of physical damages to DNA have detrimental effects. The painter might have developed virtuoso soul forces in previous life but if his new tools are faulty he might never be able to put anything significant on the canvas.

Here we touch upon deeper secrets of evolution because in times long gone, the color substance itself could also precipitate from Imagination. We could say that the Earth was still a much more spiritual arena, not yet attained to its crystalline rigidity. As the imaginative world was mineralizing (the ways in which states of being could flow were becoming more and more constrained) it was becoming more and more impossible for the souls to produce the mineral body out of themselves. Instead, a way had to be found to grow physical bodies from one another through spiritual forces that guide their temporal unfoldment. And that's the reason why the physical and the spiritual paths are following somewhat out-of-phase ways at this time. The physical palettes must be passed from body to body which forms the genealogical path while the spiritual cores of humans seek the appropriate palettes such that they would allow them to develop the higher order organization further. Yet we should remember that this separation is not absolute, the physical and the spiritual are not ontologically different realms. Instead, we could say that the mineral world is a manifestation of elemental spiritual beings/processes which follow a much more templated behavior. Our intercourse with these beings severely restricts the possible ways through which we can transform our state of being from frame to frame.

In the far future these two paths will unite once again, when the Earthly realm will begin to spiritualize once again - that is, more and more of the environment will be direct reflection of conscious spiritual activity. To move towards this future goal we need to start from the most immediate things. We need to put our soul life in order, which can only happen if we understand how man is embedded in the Cosmos. We can't put that life in order for it's own sake - it's all an interconnected Cosmic Life flow. As we do that, we'll also gradually begin to overcome what we today call disease. It's funny how today we accept disease as some immutable law of reality. It's once again the result of inner spiritual paralysis, that people refuse to recognize that we're sick in soul, life and body not because "MAL wanted to experience precisely that" but because we don't want to even consider the possibility that deeper understanding of reality is needed, that changes in conceptions, habits, ways of doing things are needed. We live life without ever consulting the 'user manual', so to speak, then things go terribly wrong and instead of recognizing that we need to learn how reality works, we say that it's all by design and there's nothing to be fixed. When we understand from our own experience how the singularity of the spirit in us is in position to put order in our individual life, we'll also understand how social harmony can only be found when we learn to relate with higher order singularities, on the waves of whose activity, for example, nationalistic feelings are modulated.

As said in the beginning, I realize that all this comes as very incomplete and unsupported statements. A lot more needs to be said in order to support them from different sides. So I'm OK if people complain. But nevertheless, those who think these things through will see how everything begins to fit in a vast harmonious panorama which not only doesn't contradict our ordinary practical and scientific experience but actually makes sense of it. We begin to understand why exactly things happen in the way they do, in a way no mechanistic theory, which imagines bricks that self-assemble, can.

[Anthony66]

First, the genetic makeup of humans won't change too much at least for few more millennia.

What will be the driver of this change? In other words, how do you understand macroevolution?

I think we are in agreement insofar as the brain having a constraining/modulating/filtering effect in the metamorphosis of being. But you seem to be objecting to the characterization of the brain as a partial image of mental processes. This of course is Kastrupian but I thought Ashvin has used that language on occasion. I may be mistaken. The other way you like to describe things physical is in terms of the mineralization of thinking. Would that be more in line with how you describe the physical brain?

[Cleric K]

First, the genetic makeup of humans won't change too much at least for few more millennia.

What will be the driver of this change? In other words, how do you understand macroevolution?

This varies in the course of evolution. What is the main driver that ensures basic education and development of the child? Clearly, spiritual activity of other beings (for example parents) which serve as context for the growing person. As the spirit within the bodily complex attains to greater self-consciousness and understanding, then the motives are drawn more and more from creative freedom, inspired by high ideal (the basic message of PoF).

In this sense macroevolution has been brought so far by the living context which is in itself expression of the activity of beings. These beings go after their own evolution but the interconnectedness of everything makes it such that it is of their interest that human beings too evolve into greater integrity. In a similar sense, the pursuit of our own moral goals ensure that we also take care of our cells since we're interdependent. (of course this analogy shouldn't be taken too far because we'll always have wrong idea of spiritual relations if we picture them as strictly spatially hierarchical)

The main point is that humanity is entering a stage of development where it is up to us to seek living understanding of the Cosmic organism and determine the drive for change according to our moral ideals. We've spoken so many times about this. It's like a young person is entering adulthood but he still expects that external forces should drive him, tell him what to do, provide him with food and shelter, etc.

I think we are in agreement insofar as the brain having a constraining/modulating/filtering effect in the metamorphosis of being. But you seem to be objecting to the characterization of the brain as a partial image of mental processes. This of course is Kastrupian but I thought Ashvin has used that language on occasion. I may be mistaken.

I'm not fanatically opposed the Kastrupian metaphor but as with every metaphor/analogy we should know that it can ever capture only a limited aspect of something much more encompassing. Of course that on the most general level everything is reflection of spiritual activity. But when we begin to enter into greater details, our concepts should correspondingly become more exact and precise. If we begin to trace the image metaphor further, we'll have to speak not only in general terms but with more precision. If we take things too superficially we'll quickly find ourselves in bizarre situations. For example, if we subscribe rigidly to the idea "the brain is an image of mental processes" then we should address the following. As far as our conscious experience of mental processes is concerned, at any given time we experience only a handful of 'pixels' of the practically infinite possible thoughts we can think. So as inner experience, we have thoughts 'lighting up' and others 'lighting off'. Now what is this flashing on and off of thought reflected as? If we say that the brain is the image of this flashing then it would seem that neurons should appear and disappear in the brain, reflecting the appearance and disappearance of thought experiences. Clearly this doesn't happen. On the other hand brain activity (neuron firing) appears and disappears, thus we can correlate things more strongly there. This is what neuroscience has always been doing.

You see, we should be careful not to be superficial with our ideas. As said, the idea "the brain is the image of mental processes", if taken in archetypal sense can be seen as general truth. But if we say that as if we're saying something concrete about our thoughts and brain, then we're being utterly abstract. And there's no need to even try prove this - if we're honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that we have no clue how on Earth inner experience could look like a brain as seen by the senses. Such a statement simply floats in the air. It's so abstract that we don't know what to do with it.

We should get in the habit of seeking reality and not simply floating abstractions. It is indeed possible to find the spiritual processes that in truth are the forming forces of the brain structures but we need to seek them on another level. If I may express it thus, we can think inside the head but to understand the forces that build the head we must go outside it. Even in Imaginative consciousness we still can't find these forces completely. In the Imaginative world we're still dealing mainly with soul forces. Here we understand human life, we understand the currents that flow in social life, which the undeveloped man experiences only as blind desires - he says "I like this, I want that", etc. We also understand animal life. To perceive the life forces which shape our body we need still higher degrees of consciousness - that of Inspiration. At that level we understand the plant world from its Cosmic perspective. We only attain to that level of consciousness if we're capable of sacrificing our personal life. As far as we desire to pursue goals which are entirely ours and are not aligned with greater understanding of the Cosmic organism, we can't rise beyond the Imaginative world. We rise to Inspiration when we find the level of being which no longer desires anything for itself. The worth of this being is not determined by what it possesses, what it manages to suck into its soul perimeter, but by what it continually gives as creative streams. In the Inspirative world we're equally interested in the rock, the plant, the animal, the human, the higher beings. All of these form interrelated Cosmic organism. If I may put it into a metaphor, if we take our spirit to be an artist, in the Imaginative world it is still possible to create forms for our own enjoyment or share them with others but in order to feel for example some kind of satisfaction from the reaction of others. We seek a return from other beings in the form of their appreciation for what we did. Nothing of this can be found in the world of Inspiration. At that level we realize in the most sublime sense that the whole Cosmos is the most fantastic art form and our highest bliss consists in being able to contribute in this ever evolving work. At this level of being, finally, what is beautiful, what is good and beneficial for all, begin to coincide. We know very well that in our fragmentary Earthly life very rarely what gives us pleasure is beneficial for ourselves, let alone for others. We believe there's always a tradeoff and that one can't experience joy if he's not self-seeking egoist. Evolution moves in the direction where finally the highest bliss results from the sacrificial deeds of Love, for the benefit of all. That is, what is morally good, beautiful and beneficial for the Cosmic Edifice, is also the highest joy.

It may seem that I've digressed from the question but I just wanted to hint about the ways our whole being should transform if we are to reach the levels from which the life forms receive their artful formative forces. At that level we can indeed find the Cosmic Thoughts which correspond to the archetypal forms of life. Yes, this is important to keep in mind - in the higher worlds we find the archetypal forces. These are fractally iterated in the elemental kingdoms. For example, in the spiritual world there's only one archetypal 'cell'. It's actually the Solar system itself (its spiritual being, not the mineral shadow). So in every biological cell we see the fractalized manifestation of the archetypal forces, as they interfere with other forces and attain to more and more constricted manifestations.

I know that things stated in this way seem quite fantastic. It's difficult to approach them gradually in just few paragraphs. Nevertheless, it at least hints of the way things should be approached. We're lost in abstractions if we simply postulate that this or that sensory perception is image of mental or other processes. It's not enough to declare that abstractly without any perception of how it actually happens to be so. We need actual inner transformation such that we extend in the spectrum of being to where we can trace things in full reality and not only as intellectual conjectures.

The other way you like to describe things physical is in terms of the mineralization of thinking. Would that be more in line with how you describe the physical brain?

Keep in mind that in man we have all four kingdoms - mineral, plant, animal, human. The brain can only be understood as slice of something from all kingdoms. Think of unicellular organisms like green algae. They are just free floating living cells - images of mineral and life forces working together. Now imagine that higher order forces swirl through the cells and organize them in more complicated tissues, organs, etc. Then we have a multicellular organism. It's curious to note that we have also examples of organism that are transitionary. They are basically independent unicellular organism but gather together and form specialized colonial organs. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonophorae

When we think in this multilayered way, we arrive at a much more truthful picture. The human being is very complex interference of many different worlds. We can now think about the brain in a different way. We see that we live there in symbiosis with all the kingdoms. We owe the mineral structure to the mineral archetypal forces. The cells (neurons) have their basic structure due to the life archetypal forces. The higher archetypal forces of the soul and the spirit order the lower kingdoms for higher purposes. So it's complicated. It's not a 'flat' image. Many different forces come together in the human image. The thinking of our ego is actually only the tiniest tip of this Cosmic iceberg. In our waking consciousness we practically only modulate the processes, nothing of our thoughts, feelings and actions as we experience them, create the structures. All the heavy lifting is performed by other kingdoms, of which our human being is like a slice. In the course of evolution we'll take more and more of these functions upon ourselves. For example, Ashvin recently mentioned the important example with breathing - how most of the time it is automatic but we can take conscious control if we decide. This hasn't always been possible. In a similar way, today most people don't have conscious control over their heartbeat. Those more experienced with meditation may already have some feeling of what this will be like. In the course of evolution our heart rhythms will become similar to breathing - we'll find new degrees of freedom (moving the earlobe) through which we'll be able to work upon circulation. The most important of these degrees of freedom is that of Love. The heart center will become more and more a Sun-like organ through which we'll pour our being into the Cosmic artform. Many people even today have some feeling of this heart flow.

Once again, although it seems I'm digressing, the goal is to show that if we'll be looking for images of spiritual activity we can't remain at the level of ordinary thinking, feeling and willing. At that level we'll find at most correlates with electrical brain activity, blood pressure, etc. - everything that science studies already anyway. To find the 'mental processes' which are responsible for the lobes of the brain, for the structure of the cell and so on, we'll have to discover completely unsuspected degrees of freedom of our spirit which weave well beyond the bounds of our skin. These are the object of higher development. Seeing the world as collective and Divine artform and giving our life for its perfection are already such degrees of freedom which are hardly explored today. As a matter of fact, precisely these latter forms of spiritual activity are the most direct way to find what it really means to be human in the Cosmic sense.

[AshvinP]

First, the genetic makeup of humans won't change too much at least for few more millennia.

What will be the driver of this change? In other words, how do you understand macroevolution?

I think we are in agreement insofar as the brain having a constraining/modulating/filtering effect in the metamorphosis of being. But you seem to be objecting to the characterization of the brain as a partial image of mental processes. This of course is Kastrupian but I thought Ashvin has used that language on occasion. I may be mistaken. The other way you like to describe things physical is in terms of the mineralization of thinking. Would that be more in line with how you describe the physical brain?

It may also be helpful to remember in Western spiritual tradition, man is the imago dei, the 'image of God'. Clearly this was never intended to mean the physical perceptual structures of man directly reflect God himself, not even for the most literal minded creationists. The real resemblance comes in the deep archetypal meaning of man's durational and evolving activity, of which our current state is always only a seed which can unfold into this higher potential. Modern thinking allows us to discover the shadows of these meaningful principles, which we then calls 'laws of nature', 'mathematical systems', archetypes, etc. Yet these laws have been externalized, i.e. disconnected from their relation to our own soul, and therefore lack the qualitative aspect and the depth structure of that aspect. Everything is flattened out, even within most psychological theory.

The appearance-reality distinction has been mutilated by modern philosophy, especially analytic idealism. Materialists went from outer appearances which "represent" mindless forces 'behind' them, and idealists from inner appearances (concepts) which represent "ideas of MAL" behind them. The former failed to even continue reasoning into the inner world of experience, so you would the latter is more complete in that regard, but actually idealism has quickly forgotten about outer perceptions. The laws of nature are practically discarded as flows of dream imagery which is mostly random and underserving of precise explanation. Since human reason is also discarded in the process, the materialist is more likely to realize the flaw of its idolatry of outer perception than the idealist of its flawed logic of inner perception. The latter has dug its hole a good deal deeper.

The mirror analogy is used to at least bring more continuity back into this distinction, as when we move in front of a mirror and our activity causes the reflection. There is a real deep sense in which the perceptual world
is an inversion of soul and spirit worlds. As Cleric points out, our thinking itself must be inverted from passive reflective to active imaginative if we are to move from physical perception to spiritual perception. It is like a glove being turned inside-out - our entire perspective on the world inverts. We will find inversion comparisons like this all over the place. For ex, it's interesting to consider how, when we think on the physical plane, we move in the higher worlds of meaning, constrained by the metabolic-limb riverbed, and when we will in the higher worlds, we move on the physical plane, constrained by the brain riverbed (of course these are interconnected systems). These are the activities so out of phase with eaxh other because of decohered intellectual thinking.

But we must take notice of how general this understanding is, as Cleric highlighted, no matter how many inverted relations we add to the list. At a certain point, we are no longer building confidence in the general relation, since we already have that, but simply accumulating intellectual points to feel smarter and more insightful. We aren't actually gaining any deeper, more precise, more conscious understanding of our living activity as it reflects into perceptual experience. Personally, I am inclined to move entirely away from any talk of "appearance" or "representation" and reframe in terms of incomplete perception distinguished from more complete perception. When we rest comfortable in the former, we engage in idolatry, we live in Maya. When we continue moving through perception in active logical thinking (including higher cognition), we bring the Maya we imposed on the world content to higher and higher completions, unveiling deeper layers of living meaningful relations.

This won't happen by intellectual thinking, because it only knows how to think in terms of "our representations" and "world behind our representations". One way or another, it finds a way to insert this dualism. Sometimes between mind and matter and other times within the sphere of mind itself ("pure consciousness" vs. "ideation-thinking"). Even the mirror analogy can become this way because the analogy, after all, lives on the physical plane. It only makes sense to our intellect in rigid spatial terms. So it is with all similar analogies. These are necessary for communication but not at all sufficient for understanding. Cleric's detailed illustrations across many domains of modern experience are much more helpful - these allow us to also flow through the logic which connects the metaphorical images over time. Yet they are all symbols pointing to the new habits of willing-feeling-thinking we are seeking in spiritual development. The higher flows of spiritual activity which make sense of the old habits, i.e. allow us to actually perceive (not in physical way) how those templated habits come into existence.

[Anthony66]

It may also be helpful to remember in Western spiritual tradition, man is the imago dei, the 'image of God'. Clearly this was never intended to mean the physical perceptual structures of man directly reflect God himself, not even for the most literal minded creationists. The real resemblance comes in the deep archetypal meaning of man's durational and evolving activity, of which our current state is always only a seed which can unfold into this higher potential. Modern thinking allows us to discover the shadows of these meaningful principles, which we then calls 'laws of nature', 'mathematical systems', archetypes, etc. Yet these laws have been externalized, i.e. disconnected from their relation to our own soul, and therefore lack the qualitative aspect and the depth structure of that aspect. Everything is flattened out, even within most psychological theory.

I know you've touch on this subject from time to time, but how does SS approach the topic of God? From what I understand, such a being would be one with the unfolding reality, approachable via the gradients of our thinking activity. He would not sit on the other side of an unbridgeable chasm that can only be crossed via a vacuous leap of faith. Conversely, in our current state of evolution he is to be found far "behind the veil", essentially inaccessible to most.

In terms of the traditional language and descriptors used in Christian theology, what are reasonable? (given these are but conceptual designations):

• ground of being

• omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient

• infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth (Westminster Shorter Catechism)

Would we understand his being to in someway encompass all beings or is there some manner of separation?

Or are all such questions better left alone?

[Cleric K]

I know you've touch on this subject from time to time, but how does SS approach the topic of God? From what I understand, such a being would be one with the unfolding reality, approachable via the gradients of our thinking activity. He would not sit on the other side of an unbridgeable chasm that can only be crossed via a vacuous leap of faith. Conversely, in our current state of evolution he is to be found far "behind the veil", essentially inaccessible to most.

In terms of the traditional language and descriptors used in Christian theology, what are reasonable? (given these are but conceptual designations):

• ground of being

• omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient

• infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth (Westminster Shorter Catechism)

Would we understand his being to in someway encompass all beings or is there some manner of separation?

Or are all such questions better left alone?

Before such questions can be addressed, we should really question our motives. It's no secret that the God question is very charged. Part of the reason is because in the last few centuries humanity has generally entered a stage where we did away with any higher Intelligence. For many this is connected with a feeling of relief. Richard Dawkins also uses such comparison. He says that most of the atheists he had 'converted' report a feeling of release, as if a great burden fell from their shoulders. And this is understandable. It's simply the feeling of not having to care for anything but our own desires and their intellectual justifications. There's no longer any need to be vigilant, to observe the kinds of thoughts and feelings that pass through our soul and to try to guide them (except for compliance with agreed upon social and legal norms).

We should really get a good feeling for this. We should be perfectly clear of this tendency in us, to feel as top level authority which has simply decided to behave within a consensual system. Not because there's anything inherently true, good, right, etc. in that system but because it would be too much trouble if misbehaving. From this modern stage, the questions about God can become very misleading. That's why I wouldn't go into your questions now. Not because we can't speak of them in any meaningful way but because it would be useless unless the ground is cleared.

The question of God will have to be approached from another side. Trying to list the attributes of the Divine secretly puts us in the Flat MAL picture, where we imagine a grand Divine Bubble that we try to characterize. The questions one secretly asks are "Is there such Bubble at all? If yes, is it worth my time to seek some relationship with it?"

This is related to the two questions.

In other places we could speak differently but in this forum, where almost everyone has built some conception of MAL, we can't make even a step forward unless one tries to meditate on the question: "What is the nature of the 'spiritual space' between the souls?". Everyone would merrily use the metaphor of vortex of consciousness but what is the medium between the vortices? Of course the templated answer would be "consciousness!" But do we really try to understand the consequences of our thus abstractly posed answer?

Seriously, I don't know for how many times already we arrive at this point. Before asking about the attributes of God, we should be clear with ourselves if we are capable of thinking about be-ing in a way different than nicely spatially separated bubbles/vortices.

Unless one feels a glaring insufficiency in the 'spiritual vacuum model' (dark/instinctive/unconscious spiritual space between vortices) then it's quite useless to speak about attributes of God because the latter will be considered to be nothing but yet another grand vortex in the flat spiritual vacuum, around which smaller vortices decide to orbit.

They question to meditate on is "What is the nature of be-ing (if any) which is responsible for the 'fluctuations' of the 'spiritual vacuum' - both intra- and inter- human vortex. If one doesn't feel this question to be central to the mystery of our existence, it's quite pointless to speak of anything else.