AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 8:42 pm
Federica,
I am going to ignore your blaming the lack of your substantive response to my points, on my adding in "subtitles" and other speculations about my "use of language". I am using plain English. In the parts you do respond to, you repeat many of the same phenomenological errors. I will point these out to you once again below.
Federica wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 6:52 pm
No, and I never asserted the sensory-conceptual instruments themselves make our activity more spiritual.
You did: “Yet the nature of this set of constraints is such that, within its sub-sensory spectrum, our activity becomes somewhat more spiritualized”. I understand that was just inaccurate rendering through language. Or, shall we say, I don’t get your language.
But they can be understood as
reflections (this is a subtitle you are only now adding) of more spiritualized activity.
Would you please explain what is meant by “more spiritualized activity” and how technology facilitates that?
If you understand that it was an 'inaccurate rendering through language', then there's no need to treat it like I was making that assertion. At the very least, if it was unclear, you could have asked about it.
Spiritual evolution is not just something that occurs for individuals, but the collectives which those individuals comrpise. These collective developments manifest through the higher intelligence "I" beings and their activity. Everything that happens on the physical plane, in Nature and Culture, from epoch to epoch, can be traced as reflections of that ideational activity. I am only mentioning this more 'metaphysical' part because I know you already agree with it in theory, but I don't think you are taking it seriously enough. You seem to feel some technological phenomena are simply beyond the purview of this spiritual process.
Through that higher activity, human thinking consciousness attains greater thinking DoF and becomes more oriented towards spiritual principles. That is the basis of all modern philosophy and science, including materialism and its technologies, and the principles we have discerned through them ('principles' is another way of saying 'archetypal ideations'). We go from impressing language on stones, papyrus, paper with ink, to impressing it on airwaves and digital signals, from impressing data through cables and wires through Wi-Fi and 'bluetooth'. We can sense the concrete spiritualization being
reflected in the medium of transmission (not caused by that medium). The same principle applies to all computer technology including VR.
We should also be clear that the mediums themselves are reflections of spiritual activity of a much higher order, responsible for creating the natural environment which our own spiritual activity can 'work against'. The forces of the mineral and plant kingdoms, the normal sensory spectrum, are all maintained through the activity of what SS calls 'elemental beings', which are the 'offspring' of much higher beings. In fact, these elemental beings evolved through another stream of evolution in which they lagged behind and therefore fell beneath the 'mineral' stage. So everything serves a critical purpose in the holistic spiritual economy and we wouldn't have the opportunity to develop our spiritual capacity if not for the elemental beings, to whom we should be grateful.
Federica wrote:You are abstracting to 3rd person metaphysics here when asserting the bold.
One really gets the feeling that, because the sentence in bold annoys you, you whip the Third Person Metaphysics joker. That sentence in bold is simply to confront yours: “The transformation of imagery is less dependent on our physical legs, arms, etc.” I am saying, that transformation of imagery can’t be less (or more) dependent on arms and legs.
When you go through life, is the transformation of the spatio-temporal imagery not dependent on the intents you manifest through your physical organism?
Dependent on the intents yes, dependent on the idea, yes. But that’s not what you wrote!
It is also dependent on the
instrument through which the intents-ideas can be expressed. If there was no such dependence, we would all be the equivalent of the Gods in terms of power to manifest/transform imagery. The only way I can begin to understand how you are failing to see this connection is that you are abstracting to 3rd person mystical idealist perspective, which says, 'I am the One Consciousness and all these physical constraints are simply Maya... they can't
actually restrain my spiritual activity!'
The problem is not that you have lapsed into such a perspective in the course of this dicussion, which is perfectly natural, but that you feel yourself to be
immune to such a lapsing because of previous insights and therefore are unaware that it has occurred. Then you get frustrated and defensive when I point it out.
Federica wrote:Yes, of course, and I have never once asserted the VR experience by itself will lead us to find the proper relation of Idea to perception. If it can't, what is the teaching it can lead us to? If you call it pedagogical, it has to lead us somewhere.
Once we find the proper relation, our work is not done. In fact it's just the beginning of our work. We are never reaching a final destination at which we can kick our legs up and rest comfortable. And we would be foolish not to take all the help we can get from our natural and cultural environment in this never-ending work, as we will meet great resistance from our lower nature all along the way. If you feel the VR experience or the metaphors derived from it are not a help
for you, that's fine, but that doesn't mean it can't possibly offer pedagogical value to any human being on the Earth, regardless of time and circumstance.
Federica wrote:The question has always been, after we begin to understand that proper relation through our experience of first-person intuitive thinking activity and our study of spiritual science, do cultural phenomena such as VR tech offer any potential opportunities for supplementing our understanding? Your position has been that, while certainly other cultural phenomena and technologies offer that opportunity - Absolutely not so. You will not find anything in my older posts not even suggesting that other technologies can offer opportunities to supplement our understanding - for some reason VR falls outside the spectrum of pedagogical tools for our living spiritual activity.
Well then the discontinuity is even worse... but I have a feeling you may have misspoke here. Surely you think other cultural technologies, such as the computers we are using right now, offer opportunities to supplement our understanding? I guess I need to add, the computers as isolated units don't automatically supplement our understanding (of course no such isolated units actually exist), but our spiritual activity meeting its
instrument in the computer tech which it developed.
So the only great significance I see in the VR-supplemented sensory spectrum is, at the cultural level, that it enacts certain evolutionary trends, whilst, at the individual level, I think it’s only significant in terms of the soul preferences it reveals.
On these bases, I am still convinced that VR as a regular practice is at best - for those on a living thinking path - a useless gizmo, a gadget-practice unable to deliver any original state (exclusively experienceable through VR practice), and at worse - i.e. for everyone else - I think it's a damaging practice, apt to exasperate materialistic beliefs, and to exasperate a baseline of fear and anxiety with regards to knowledge and mastery of the physical and spiritual environments, in all the ways I have previously said.
Federica wrote:To counter your position, I only need to provide one single example, present or future, in which the VR perspective could offer our living thinking pedagogical value through an experience not available through non-VR experience, even if the person uses it for 30 min and never picks up the headset again.
By trying to make VR valuable as a one-off experience, I think you are weakening your position further. You are renouncing any possibility that VR can train us to notice thinking gestures by contrast, and you bet on a sort of revelatory power of VR. VR as revelation… It’s not going to work… It cannot work!
That's not my position! As I keep pointing out. The time of 'external' revelations is far over. So that's not what I am arguing at all with respect to VR.
Follow the logic here carefully. You have set your position on VR up as such an extreme, generalized, blanket, universal dismissal of its value that the one-off pedagogical experience is enough to defeat it. Whether VR can be valuable as more than a one-off experience for some people is a completely separate issue. Most likely it can be, for
some people.
Federica wrote:The above reveals that you are investing more causal power in the material technology than in the user's living spiritual activity. That is how you draw these generalized metaphysical conclusions which compare the VR tech itself to a mediocre and unskilled surgeon, rather than the person using it.
Ashvin, when you say that this tool is pedagogical, meaning a teacher, and that we can get a revelation through its use, you are the one who puts causal power in that technology. When I compare it to an unskilled surgeon, I am only just countering your entrustment in the tool's pedagogical value.
You are projecting your abstract generalizing argument onto me, in addition to continuing to misattribute the "get a revelation from VR" argument to me. I never say "
we" can get something from VR, that "we" should use VR as a spiritual practice, or anything similar. I am not making blanket metaphysical conclusions about the nature of VR and how it must always be good or evil in relation to growing our spiritual activity. The whole point of my posts on this topic is to point out the principled reasons we should
avoid making such conclusions if we want to better understand our first-person relational perspective within a ceaseless spiritual evolutionary process. No natural or cultural phenomena we encounter is absolutely good or evil, a blessing or a curse, a means to salvation or something beyond redemption. It is critical in our epoch that humans come to understand this principle in a living way. When it is understood in a living way, it won't be constantly overriden by our personal antipathies and opinions.
Federica wrote:Think about this way - Cleric developed his living thinking the more effcient way (not exactly - he said that he didn’t exactly develop it so very efficiently through the years), as we also recommend others do. Now after so and so years of spiritual training, he has decided to explore these intellectual scaffolds for supplemental spiritual value (and VR to some extent), for his own benefit and ours.
This is not the first time you intend to recruit Cleric’s view on VR to your support, but for me this is a stretch (based on what I can read on the forum, of course, though I believe more, not less, cautionary comments have been shared outside). Although Cleric has shared a general “since it’s here, let’s see what can be done” approach, and did say that VR “can help us realize that the concept of space is not that absolute after all” (and that’s about it, when it comes to his tribute to VR on this forum), his comments to your essay start with warnings about VR becoming “one of the greatest spiritual traps”, and with feeling “still little uneasy” about it, because VR is “such a thin ice”. So I for myself don't know whether or not he's gaining supplemental value from VR exploration.
Do you see how this fact by itself negates your entire position, assuming he and others are actually gaining that supplemental spiritual value from the exploration?
I don’t make such an assumption, because I don’t find on this forum any support for it, therefore I don’t see for the moment any “facts” involving Cleric that would negate my entire position.
And, as mentioned before, that fact of 'helping us realize the concept of space is not that absolute after all' (which is quite a huge realization), by itself, would defeat your extreme position, assuming it's valid.
But the point is, with respect to Levin's models - we have all gained enormous value from Cleric's decision to descend into the intellectual scaffolding, based on our comments from that thread. If that intellectual scaffolding didn't exist, there would be nothing for people like him, with their living thinking, to descend into. Yet, on the other hand, that intellectual scaffolding can and is being used by others, like perhaps Levin himself, for infernal (transhumanist) goals. So what makes the difference whether this intellectual scaffolding becomes a great spiritual blessing for us on the forum or a pre-curse to the infernal goals? And if you see what I am pointing to with that question, what is the reason why VR tech and VR experience is somehow in a completely different category than other material technologies with their sensory-intellectual scaffolding?
Ashvin,
I imagine that from your viewpoint it all must be quite boring and repetitive and in that sense I appreciate your reply. But I don’t get your first sentence:
I am going to ignore your blaming the lack of your substantive response to my points, on my adding in "subtitles" and other speculations about my "use of language". I am using plain English.
Maybe you breezed through it so fast that words fell back upside down after your passage?
If you understand that it was an 'inaccurate rendering through language', then there's no need to treat it like I was making that assertion. At the very least, if it was unclear, you could have asked about it.
You may call it a speculation and you may ignore it, but this was an example of how you are stretching language, and how unnecessary misunderstandings can follow (and do follow). That’s why I have called it, as you presented it, an assertion. With that said, I luckily have a
minimum understanding of the given topic which allows me to see that it
could be a question of language, more than meaning, so I mentioned that.
(I noted you don’t even grant me such minimum understanding, little surprisingly after your reprimand here if I may say, I'm coming to that).
Spiritual evolution is not just something that occurs for individuals, but the collectives which those individuals comprise. These collective developments manifest through the higher intelligence "I" beings and their activity. Everything that happens on the physical plane, in Nature and Culture, from epoch to epoch, can be traced as reflections of that ideational activity. I am only mentioning this more 'metaphysical' part because I know you already agree with it in theory, but I don't think you are taking it seriously enough. You seem to feel some technological phenomena are simply beyond the purview of this spiritual process.
I certainly don’t feel tech phenomena are beyond the purview of spiritual processes, and I have said multiple times that I recognize there are insights to glean, and meaning to grasp in VR as a cultural phenomenon. I don’t know why you are forgetting that now, but I want to add what I consider a key question: how do you fit the idea of
dead ends of evolution in these collective developments and the ideational activity that shapes them?
Through that higher activity, human thinking consciousness attains greater thinking DoF and becomes more oriented towards spiritual principles. That is the basis of all modern philosophy and science, including materialism and its technologies, and the principles we have discerned through them ('principles' is another way of saying 'archetypal ideations'). We go from impressing language on stones, papyrus, paper with ink, to impressing it on airwaves and digital signals, from impressing data through cables and wires through Wi-Fi and 'bluetooth'. We can sense the concrete spiritualization being reflected in the medium of transmission (not caused by that medium). The same principle applies to all computer technology including VR.
Ok - Observing that already at the time of language impression on stones, man was impressing language on airwaves too (through speech) I tentatively interpret your idea of growing spiritualized activity as more conscious activity? Is this correct? Though maybe it’s not, because what’s the substantial difference between mastering stone sculpting and mastering airwaves? They present us with different constraints, but they’re all laws of nature, so why should the latter be more spiritualized/conscious? Certainly not because air feels more lofty than stone? All sensorial spectrum is mineral, there’s a slice of mineral in every kingdom, therefore digital signals, as a materialist technology, constitute a wider but equally mineral mastery of the laws of nature, compared to stone, and not necessarily more conscious. If so, I still don’t get in which sense you describe them as more spiritualized. I see them as equally spiritualized, because that is, and always has been, the nature of our activity, while the evolving element in evolution is the expansion of human thinking with respect to itself. Only thinking can manipulate itself and make or break human evolution. The feeling and willing spheres, as expressions of that activity, are more anecdotal. Or not anecdotal, but more free to happen or not happen in specific configurations, especially the sensory spectrum. So in which sense do you speak of such a linear spiritual crescendo, and growing of degrees of freedom linearly reflected in the sensory instruments?
[The transformation of imagery] is also dependent on the instrument through which the intents-ideas can be expressed. If there was no such dependence, we would all be the equivalent of the Gods in terms of power to manifest/transform imagery. The only way I can begin to understand how you are failing to see this connection is that you are abstracting to 3rd person mystical idealist perspective, which says, 'I am the One Consciousness and all these physical constraints are simply Maya... they can't actually restrain my spiritual activity!'
Here the argument seems to border on the absurd…
Are you really saying you think I don’t realize that a leg and an arm present us with different constraints? I hope I won’t sound pretentious if I insist that I actually do.
And if there is a real risk that I can lapse in that type of mystical unconsciousness, I actually got lucky. First because - by chance - I haven’t try to fly away from my window to land on the supermarket place today, and second, such constraints were also one of the takeaways of Cleric’s new essay on Levin’s research - that we are at a mid-point level of integration, giving and receiving constraints from and to the above, as well as the the below levels - point that I even referred to when making exactly that remark! So, really, it would have been impossible to miss those constraints!
You stated that activity is more spiritualized when operated through fingers and head, and less spiritualized when operated through arms and legs, and that’s what I was questioning. Our activity is obviously constrained differently by a leg than by an eye, but it doesn’t depend on them to be more or less spiritualized. The CEO doesn’t depend on the middle management to be the CEO, but has to take into account the constraints coming from the management’s activity. The transformation of imagery does not depend less on legs in VR, or more on them in the natural world, it happens as fully spiritualized activity regardless, although when we make it express through legs, yes - it will make do with leg constraints.
Luckily (again!) I expressed the idea that our activity is equally spiritualized all the time, in 3 or 4 more alternative phrasings, the incriminated one being only one of them, so I still have hope that you will change your mind on this point, and grant me that basic level of
living understanding.
The problem is not that you have lapsed into such a perspective in the course of this discussion, which is perfectly natural, but that you feel yourself to be immune to such a lapsing because of previous insights and therefore are unaware that it has occurred. Then you get frustrated and defensive when I point it out.
Ashvin, I don’t feel immune to any lapsing. I know intuitions don’t grant anything, and I constantly have the painful experience of losing the awareness of ideas, and oftentimes even their memory. I can say this is my number one preoccupation and struggle, and whether or not I will be able to improve this status. It’s true that I am far from neutral, feelingwise, but that part is clearly improving and is not as big of a concern as the lapsing. Still, lapsing is not what’s happened here, as I hope I’ve been able to show.
Well then the discontinuity is even worse... but I have a feeling you may have misspoke here. Surely you think other cultural technologies, such as the computers we are using right now, offer opportunities to supplement our understanding? I guess I need to add, the computers as isolated units don't automatically supplement our understanding (of course no such isolated units actually exist), but our spiritual activity meeting its instrument in the computer tech which it developed.
I haven’t misspoken. I confirm I don’t think the computer I am using right now supplements my “understanding”. It does eliminate sensory constraints in a powerful way, while it also adds some. I do reap the benefits of this technology without a clear understanding of how it works, in the same way I do with cars, home equipment, networks of various kinds, and all the technologies we commonly use, including books and older tech, down to the materials that clothe 99% of our sensory experiences, down to the stuff we nourish our bodies with, also. I would agree that, as technologies have historically eliminated, and continue to eliminate, enormous amounts of sensory constraints, they also necessarily add some, that are inherent to their nature. But the crucial element is
in which proportions (I am saying this tentatively, it’s a new idea). These proportions could be the watershed between pre-materialist and post-materialist tech.
As we can observe, the more we move on, the more technology is created to
add constraints, rather than to remove them. The more we dwell in the current evolutionary loop, the more the technology birthed in this space is one that supplements, not our
understanding, but our sensory spectrum. The energy that should go to improving thinking mastery, goes to improving mastery of senses, and technology is increasingly bent to serve this purpose. In the past, it was used to clear the constraints of the physical plane, so as to enhance the possibilities to deepen religious, mystical, philosophical, and artistic endeavors. But now we are witnessing a reversal, where new technology is less and less focused on eliminating sensory constraints, and more focused on creating new ones.
So it’s a gradient. I don't set VR apart from anything. I don’t have an extreme position just for VR. To get back to the initial question, I think the internet, and the interface constituted by this computer, both eliminate and add conspicuous (and probably comparable) amounts of constraints, so they definitely change the sensory landscape and the way it feeds back into our activity, but do they “
supplement my understanding?” What does that even mean… Again, if all activity is equally spiritualized, as it is, holistic understanding increases in the form of expansion of Thinking, independent (and I don’t mean there are no constraints!) of the specific sensory landscape our will and circumstances put under our nose. Thinking has to expand its conscious grip on whatever sensory landscape is experienced, and beyond. It’s a self-generated impulse, not one ignited by the senses. When such impulse is nourished from within, we develop our knowledge/understanding, so that whatever space of constraints can be integrated. When we have that impulse, we also press on the space of constraints with causal agency, to make it as conducive as possible to that same thinking expansion. Does the change to my space of constraints, as produced by my computer, supplement this process? Who knows how alternative configurations would have interacted and integrated? I don’t think it’s an important question, or even an inquirable one.
As you said, the computer unit cannot be extrapolated from my space of constraints which is being integrated by my thinking activity at any given moment. And so it is for your VR set, of course, at any given moment. But thoughts can evolve and stir the will to act. So a better way to put my position on VR would be this. Because VR is part of those dead-end technologies that have lapsed into and live in the post-materialist, intellectual, infernal loop, aiming to supplement sensory perceptions in order to serve the illusion of mastery and truth, what does it tell that some souls have it integrated in their set of constraints? And for those who have further been able to encompass it within the light of their conscious thinking activity, what does it tell about their life, soul, and unique ego perspective, individual and with effects on collective, that they are keeping it in their configuration?
That's not my position! As I keep pointing out. The time of 'external' revelations is far over. So that's not what I am arguing at all with respect to VR.
Follow the logic here carefully. You have set your position on VR up as such an extreme, generalized, blanket, universal dismissal of its value that the one-off pedagogical experience is enough to defeat it. Whether VR can be valuable as more than a one-off experience for some people is a completely separate issue. Most likely it can be, for some people.
Right, I have misunderstood your position here. I follow why you spoke of one-off value. Sorry.
You are projecting your abstract generalizing argument onto me, in addition to continuing to misattribute the "get a revelation from VR" argument to me. I never say "we" can get something from VR, that "we" should use VR as a spiritual practice, or anything similar. I am not making blanket metaphysical conclusions about the nature of VR and how it must always be good or evil in relation to growing our spiritual activity. The whole point of my posts on this topic is to point out the principled reasons we should avoid making such conclusions if we want to better understand our first-person relational perspective within a ceaseless spiritual evolutionary process. No natural or cultural phenomena we encounter is absolutely good or evil, a blessing or a curse, a means to salvation or something beyond redemption. It is critical in our epoch that humans come to understand this principle in a living way. When it is understood in a living way, it won't be constantly overridden by our personal antipathies and opinions.
I wonder, here again, about one question: if no cultural phenomenon is absolutely positive or negative, but it just happens, and it’s up to the individual to make it a pedagogical tool or not - beyond the moral questions this position raises - what is your understanding of a dead end of evolution then?
And, as mentioned before, that fact of 'helping us realize the concept of space is not that absolute after all' (which is quite a huge realization), by itself, would defeat your extreme position, assuming it's valid.
But the point is, with respect to Levin's models - we have all gained enormous value from Cleric's decision to descend into the intellectual scaffolding, based on our comments from that thread. If that intellectual scaffolding didn't exist, there would be nothing for people like him, with their living thinking, to descend into. Yet, on the other hand, that intellectual scaffolding can and is being used by others, like perhaps Levin himself, for infernal (transhumanist) goals. So what makes the difference whether this intellectual scaffolding becomes a great spiritual blessing for us on the forum or a pre-curse to the infernal goals? And if you see what I am pointing to with that question, what is the reason why VR tech and VR experience is somehow in a completely different category than other material technologies with their sensory-intellectual scaffolding?
I like this question! First, why do you see a principal problem in there being nothing to descend into for people with living thinking? Could they not, in principle, put their whole energy into ascension, for example in the detailed ways illustrated earlier in this thread?
What makes the difference whether the model becomes a blessing for us or a precurse to infernal goals - I would say: it’s not an either/or. Now that it’s become a blessing for us, it can still transform into infernal goals. Also, while Cleric was doing this, he was not doing something else, say, meditations that could have both elevated the collective evolution and become a blessing for us if verbalized on the forum. It’s impossible to know, and even a very strange question to ask/speculation to make.
What seems important to me, though, is that Cleric descended in Levin’s model in cohered manner. It's an exploration in thinking of an intellectual scaffolding. Ok, he watched the videos, and read the papers, which are sensory experiences, but that’s ancillary to what you call descending, I guess. The descent is, he thought in the model, he thought about it, verbalized it. So why call it a descent, after all? I would imagine that a descent should involve feeling, and above all, will/decohesion. Descent means ‘in the sensory spectrum’ doesn't it?
In a similar way, we can (try to) encompass VR as a cultural phenomenon (it’s not a descent) and understand its meaning in the grand ideational scheme - be it a dead-end meaning, or smoothed-in meaning, both... - but descending into its practice with feeling and will fits differently in the spiritual activity, compared to exploring an intellectual scaffolding. Not
qualitatively different, because it’s all equally spiritualized activity all the time (please comment here if you mean that there is a crescendo of “spiritualization”, as I understand you do) but the
degree of interactivity with the environmental levels, or the causal fabric of the activity, are different. This difference is not about being more or less conscious of reality/being (which I am unsure if it's the junction you would take at this point, but I may be wrong?) It’s not about how advanced thinking expansion is. This difference is something else. It’s about how much it overlaps across levels of causality. And I feel it has big significance, at least while we have an alive physical body, that we make our thinking expansion proceed or not in such a way that it will overlap and press across levels of causality, down to the sensory, and make us descend or not descend in those experiences.
***
I know I made it a long post, I certainly don’t expect a reaction on everything. If you could take one thing, would you please pick the question about dead ends? Thank you!