This reminded me of something that coincidentally I'm investigating lately. Like it's mentioned in the movie Inception, an interesting aspect of dreams is that we don't remember how they started. This is a common aspect in every light-dark cycle. We have gradual dimming of consciousness which we can't consciously trace. Then we awaken in certain circumstances which quickly or more gradually integrate with our overall intuition. This is how we awaken in our present life, for example. We don't remember how the dream began.AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 7:42 pm And of course there are vital Earthly purposes served by those forces, but we are gradually trying to bridge them with the living depth thinking so as to attain more continuity of consciousness through the alternating 'light-dark' periods, which occurs not only from life to after-life, or waking to sleeping (or non-meditating to meditating), but also while we are awake between our thinking (somewhat awake), feeling (dreaming), and willing (sleeping).
What's interesting is that even our thinking trains are of the same nature. This we can notice when in meditation we investigate the nature of our distractions. Just like falling asleep, we're never clearly conscious of being distracted. We say "I used to concentrate on that thought but now I awakened to the fact that there has been an interruption and I have switched to thinking of something else". So in a strange way we constantly reincarnate in our thoughts. In Imagination we can see how a thought train has a life on its own. It begins to grow and integrates until the "I" (which lives in the growth of the thought) awakens to its reflection in the image. Not all thoughts have the conditions to grow into fruits within which the intuition of the "I" is reflected. Most of our daily buzzing thoughts are like aborted growth which never reflects the activity of the "I", let alone deeper secrets of the spiritual worlds. We have these rhythms on all scales. Our incarnation is the growth of one such Cosmic Image that seeks to reflect the intuition of the Whole.
When we think ordinary thoughts we're doing the same, it's only that the thoughts are felt as fragmentary details within the Image and we easily lose the sense for the Gestalt (to borrow from Wayfarer's terminology). Nevertheless, what is in our more narrow focus of the holistic Image, only makes sense within our whole intuitive context. Our thoughts are normally pointed at the most various directions but the secret goal is always to make a more perfect image of the intuitive context.
We express images of our intuition. These images grow to fit the perfect intuition of the eternal Idea. Yet the images fail to reach that goal. It is as if they are rejected by Cosmic Intuition, like we hear our conscience say "no, this not yet it". We rise our image and try to fit it into the intuition of the Whole, yet it is like a piece of metal that enters a templating machine - shavings are shed. These are rejected, they don't fit. This turns the cycle. The shavings and the intuition connected with them become the seeds for the next attempt. The growth process begins again, where the intuitions of the previous imperfections are sought to be rectified in the new growth. These things are observed within the dynamics of our spiritual activity itself and it's no wonder why Hegel expressed them in his Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis triad. Thesis is our growing Image, our Cosmic self-reflection. We encounter the Antithesis when that reflection can't fit Cosmic Intuition. Then we have Synthesis. From the friction and shavings of this attempt, the new growth is born.
After death, our inner world grows into the Cosmic, from which it has always been a perspective. The details of our past life begin to be embedded in the holistic panorama. The panorama grows through the Cosmic spheres which are like the living concentric dials of a Cosmic clock, forming a unique temporal constellation. The Image of our whole Cosmic environment is meant to reflect the intuitive archetypal activities, as if through a center that makes perfect sense of everything. Alas, it becomes clear that our Image is imperfect. The intuition that we grasp doesn't make perfect sense of the rotations of the archetypal dials. Thus our inner Image of Cosmic existence is rejected. The 'corners' of the Image that don't fit, become apparent. Then we try to alleviate this. We understand that the Image has to be modified. We begin to work on the corners by adjusting the constellation of the dials - as far as we have conscious say on them, because their movements are the reflections of the intuitive activity of independent spiritual beings. Yet at this level we're clumsy. These corners are like communicating vessels - we adjust one but the whole Image changes. Trying to adjust the dials as to harmonize with all Cosmic spiritual intents, requires greater and greater precision and attention to details. It's like trying to fix the leak in the bathroom. We start with simple intent but as we enter the details a whole world of complexity emerges.
Think of the way our present science imagines the world expanding from the singularity of the Big Bang. If that singularity was perfectly homogenous, because of reasons of symmetry, space and energy would expand as a perfectly laminar sphere. But it is said that because of miniscule imperfections of the singularity (which today we observe in the cosmic microwave background radiation), there were tiny variations of the energy's density and this results into clumping of energy into clusters separated by great voids. Tiny variations in the singularity lead to greatly different results in the expanded state.
We can use this as a metaphor. When our Cosmic Image has expanded we don't have the 'grip' to change it in any way we like. It's like trying to change the place of two particles in a fluid. We can't reach in and take them without disturbing the whole volume in unpredictable ways. Thus we seek points of support, ways to differentiate and stabilize the Image, such that we can get a more precise grip and apply the needed corrections. In this way the whole world is re-created .
We have often spoken how even without knowing, scientists are investigating the degrees of freedom of their spiritual activity. I find it very interesting in Roger Penrose's case.
In his Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, in a completely abstract way he has noticed that the conditions in the Big Bang and the supposed heat death of the universe are practically the same. As he explains above, in a world of only photons, scale and time lose meaning. So what is unimaginably large is no different than that which in the Big Bang is supposed to have had its structure that expanded and cooled into new clusters.
Of course, I’m not including this to suggest such Cosmological models but only to show how something that can be found in Intuition secretly makes its way in the thoughts of mathematicians.
From our spatial perspective we tend to think of reincarnation as some detachment from the Earthly ball, floating around in orbit and for some reasons we decide (or we are forced) to return. Intuitive cognition reveals that there isn’t in fact such ‘turning back’. We always move forward in our evolutionary process. It’s only that as our Cosmic inner Image expands after death and gradually becomes apparent that it’s not a perfect fit to the eternal intuitive Whole, the imperfections of the Image begin to grow into a new world. Trying to get a grip on the details that should be adjusted, leads us into a very specific perspective of the Cosmic image, where we reawaken and continue the art process of shaping the Cosmic Image. Needless to say, this is not a task that we can do for ourselves only - that is, to perfect our Cosmic image as something in itself, independently of all the kingdoms, the whole humanity and our Cosmic environment. Even if we try to ignore all these things, they’ll become imperfections of our Cosmic Image, from which ultimately the new world grows again.
I would like to build upon the metaphor in order to remind how all this is to be alleviated. Meditation is really connected with the law of ‘shrinking’. If we go in the woods with a ball gown, we’ll get tangled in every branch and shrub. Similarly, while we have our inner authority spread over all phenomena, we get tangled in everything. The solution is to grow small. When we relax the moles in the periphery, they don’t tangle in our gown as much. This has nothing to do with the 'letting go' through which we become susceptible to hypnotic states. We only temporarily entrust our periphery to higher powers, while we concentrate in a tiny spot in the head that is mole free, like the eye of a hurricane.AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 7:42 pm One thing which I am sure you have experienced in meditation is the torrent of chaotic soul-life which emerges when we are trying to deepen concentration into a unitary thought-image. Our thoughts, passions, anxieties, concerns, etc. keep swirling around and it's like playing whack-a-mole, as soon as one mole is squashed by our concentrating efforts, another pops up to take it place. We may employ some technique and have success squashing the moles and then find we are now thinking about how we attained that success, thereby sucked right back into the torrents. Our lower nature will use even our successes to distract us from the high Ideal in that way.
If moles keep coming up even then, we simply need to be patient and keep going. This is a process that takes time. It’s not that easy to relax the fabric layers of our gown. Moles grow to titanic dimensions in respect to us yet we now easily pass through their 'intermolecular spaces', just like two galaxies collide, yet no stars ever hit each other. Of course all these references to scale and size shouldn't be taken in rigid spatial sense. We need to extract the living qualities from these concepts.
Then at some point we find that we grasp once again the periphery but now in a different way. It’s more like our whole environment is of thought nature. We have clothed ourselves in the thought-texture of the image of meditation. In normal cognition we need to see the mole and only then it evokes certain thought in us. Instead, now the thought-texture is more of a reflection of the ways our deeper intuitive activity weaves. We can once again sense the distractions but this time as a reflection of our intuitive life. In other words, while in normal cognition we experience in our thought-images, monolithic intuitions that feel fully ours, in the Imaginative state the thought-image expands to become our whole environment. In the thought-texture of that environment now reflect not only out atomic intuitions but our whole intuitive context is felt as highly differentiated and largely independent - our activity is only a contribution in that landscape.
Ashvin did a great job responding to this. As long as we operate in the sensory spectrum there will always be these layers of intellectual activity. They are simply part of the gradient. So we shouldn’t imagine that we’ll get away from our thinking voice. As Ashvin said, it’s rather that you become capable of expressing deeper intuition through that voice, you find the leeway. The work continues on all levels. A singer has to develop her voice gradually, such that she can gain this fine control of the will over breathing, the larynx, tongue, lips. All this makes it possible to express artistic intuition. It’s the same with our inner voice. Just as a virtuoso would be mute without a musical instrument, so the spirit can’t reach the sensory spectrum without proper instruments within that spectrum. The sixteen-petal lotus flower is where our deeper soul life becomes structured and then reflected in images in the head organ. In this sense, the suit includes also the organs of the soul body. We shouldn’t imagine that we can simply separate from it and be free in the leeway. If we would do that, we would simply succumb into the deepest unconsciousness. It is a gradual process where every opening of the leeway if followed by work on the organs. Like the virtuoso - he gains new insights about ways to perfect the violin, which then allow him to express musical ideas that previously couldn’t reach the sensory world. Of course, to get the insight we also need the concentrative activity. Fiddling only in the technical layer dissipates us. We need rhythmic alternations.Federica wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 10:46 pm Yes, I have indeed lured myself into believing that I had made progress, and that my complex was becoming more under control. I see the illusion constructed by the intellect, an additional wave of activity that only covers up the chains of the soul and sensory loops, which are still active, only doubled by one extra unit of heaviness, that our willed spiritual activity will have to disentangle. I will now try to listen to the two wavelengths, and see if they can be perceived as operating one over the other. Thank you!