A Phenomenology of Cognition (Max Leyf)

[Stranger]

It really sounds as if you are objectifying your subjectivity in a spiritual panorama. I can't be sure from only what you have written here. This hypothesis has the advantage of explaining perfectly why the wall is being hit. The fact is that when our current subjectivity is thrown into the perceptual spectrum, either material or spiritual, we lose all ability to gain consciousness of how that subjectivity is constantly shaping the spectrum. In PoF terms, we have forgotten there is still present thinking structuring what we experience as 'limitless fullness', existing behind our current perspective and flowing through the fractal time-layers of our cognitive becoming. The materialist can stare at perceptions all day and never reach the relational structuring taking place between their thinking and the perceptions because that present activity is forgotten. In this case he remains with a bunch of fragmented perceptions which he can only unite with abstract mechanical laws, externalized from his own real-time thinking. The mystics/spiritualists simply take it a level or two deeper inwards before the forgetting occurs. They polarize to a wholeness of perceptions, where everything is perfectly related and unified, but this can only be grasped in meaning with the current subjective perspective which has been dissociated from and thrown into the unified panorama.

It is all purely subjective, there is just no sense of a subjective "center of doer-experiencer" in it. It is not fragmented, it is perfectly whole, undivided and all inter-related. I do not even know what "objective" means anymore.

[AshvinP]

It really sounds as if you are objectifying your subjectivity in a spiritual panorama. I can't be sure from only what you have written here. This hypothesis has the advantage of explaining perfectly why the wall is being hit. The fact is that when our current subjectivity is thrown into the perceptual spectrum, either material or spiritual, we lose all ability to gain consciousness of how that subjectivity is constantly shaping the spectrum. In PoF terms, we have forgotten there is still present thinking structuring what we experience as 'limitless fullness', existing behind our current perspective and flowing through the fractal time-layers of our cognitive becoming. The materialist can stare at perceptions all day and never reach the relational structuring taking place between their thinking and the perceptions because that present activity is forgotten. In this case he remains with a bunch of fragmented perceptions which he can only unite with abstract mechanical laws, externalized from his own real-time thinking. The mystics/spiritualists simply take it a level or two deeper inwards before the forgetting occurs. They polarize to a wholeness of perceptions, where everything is perfectly related and unified, but this can only be grasped in meaning with the current subjective perspective which has been dissociated from and thrown into the unified panorama.

But this is all stuff Cleric has illustrated probably a dozen or more times on the forum already, so I'm not sure what good it will do to continue pointing to it in this way. At this point, I don't know if you still feel it is impossible for anyone to build the gradient further while on Earth, or simply that you have been unable to build it further because there is something off in your approach? If the latter, then what are acceptable explanations for what is 'off', if not the ones we have been offering here?

It is all purely subjective, there is just no sense of a subjective "center of doer-experiencer" in it. It is not fragmented, it is perfectly whole, undivided and all inter-related. I do not even know what "objective" means anymore.

Alright well here is another way of approaching it, which surely has been mentioned before, but maybe in slightly different form. Instead of trying to find some 'center of doing-experiencing', which is indeed problematic, we could probe some questions for intuitive orientation. For ex., we could ask why have we chosen this palette of exercises over others in our spiritual practice - what are the various factors of our personal and collective life, extended through time (across incarnations as well), which brought us to this state of being where we are exploring the optimal ways of spiritual practice? Federica pointed to some similar questions as well. The materialist has no interest in this question at all - such a question only leads him deeper into the purely 'subjective' life where none of the deeper reasons for the objective world content are expected to be found. So naturally he avoids all such inquiries in scientific investigation. For the idealist/spiritualist, it should be much more evident why that is the most fruitful direction of investigation, since All is of the nature of the spiritual activity which expresses itself in our character, interests, passions, sympathies, emotions, ideas and thoughts, etc. But the great error comes when it is expected such a question can be explored with our current mode of thinking-perception, and we will find the deeper reasons in the concepts we have already acquired since childhood to our current age. (and it should remain perfectly clear that, whenever we try to recollect an emotion, for ex., we are doing it through thinking which abstracts a concept of that emotion). 

In some ways, the educated materialist has progressed further here - he would say the deeper reality behind the phenomena of colors is nothing which resembles the colors themselves in the slightest. Instead they are 'oscillating vibrations' which can hardly be perceived, conceptualized or imagined concretely, only mathematically described. When the spiritualist investigates the outer or inner perceptual spectrum, in contrast, he generally expects to find some explanation which closely resembles the experiential palette and conceptual templates he is already familiar with. For ex. you wrote:

The wall I hit is when dealing with the percepts. I can intuitively sense the meanings behind the percepts, but (as I said before) I do not experience the full process of spiritual activity creating the percepts from the meanings the same way I experience the spiritual activity in the "I am saying these words" exercise. But as you said, we should not expect to have a full access to that layer of Thinking.

It's not that we shouldn't expect to have access to the deeper layers, but we shouldn't expect the activity which manifests them to resemble anything we are currently familiar with, whether in outer perception or inner experience (including nondual). These are the more evolved activity-forms which are always present simultaneously with less evolved ones, modulating the latter, and simply cannot be derived from those less evolved ones we are currently engaging from within their context. We have all gotten so used to projecting our current thinking into the subconscious and the supra-conscious domains of activity that we take it for granted this is how the deeper processes of reality are to be found, unless we adopt the Kantian route and abandon the possibility altogether (but continue to philosophize and pursue science inconsistently with that conclusion). And we have already established we aren't yet at the more evolved stage, even with nondual meditation, because we don't already know clearly why we are doing this spiritual practice instead of another one or none at all. So the role of humble prayer is practically indispensable here as well, because we are seeking to expand our cognitive being into completely unexplored regions which cannot be anticipated beforehand. We can prayerfully ask some of those questions into the higher worlds, without preconceived expectation of the answer, as we embark on our meditative exercises.

[Stranger]

PS:

But this is all stuff Cleric has illustrated probably a dozen or more times on the forum already, so I'm not sure what good it will do to continue pointing to it in this way. At this point, I don't know if you still feel it is impossible for anyone to build the gradient further while on Earth, or simply that you have been unable to build it further because there is something off in your approach? If the latter, then what are acceptable explanations for what is 'off', if not the ones we have been offering here?

It is definitely keeping expanding further along the gradient, but as I said, in everyday activities I'm getting pulled into my habitual "typical human" mode of functioning when I lose this wide-open awareness of the thinking-awaring flow, and that is the limitation that inhibits the further building. Itis like there are two gradients: the higher level calling-pulling towards building further, and the lower-level slippery slope-gradient pulling me back into the habitual mode. The lower-level gradient is not totally blocking or setting the hard limit for the further growth, but I need to continuously struggle with it and apply effort to switch to the higher-level gradient.

[Stranger]

Alright well here is another way of approaching it, which surely has been mentioned before, but maybe in slightly different form. Instead of trying to find some 'center of doing-experiencing', which is indeed problematic, we could probe some questions for intuitive orientation. For ex., we could ask why have we chosen this palette of exercises over others in our spiritual practice - what are the various factors of our personal and collective life, extended through time (across incarnations as well), which brought us to this state of being where we are exploring the optimal ways of spiritual practice? Federica pointed to some similar questions as well. The materialist has no interest in this question at all - such a question only leads him deeper into the purely 'subjective' life where none of the deeper reasons for the objective world content are expected to be found. So naturally he avoids all such inquiries in scientific investigation. For the idealist/spiritualist, it should be much more evident why that is the most fruitful direction of investigation, since All is of the nature of the spiritual activity which expresses itself in our character, interests, passions, sympathies, emotions, ideas and thoughts, etc. But the great error comes when it is expected such a question can be explored with our current mode of thinking-perception, and we will find the deeper reasons in the concepts we have already acquired since childhood to our current age. (and it should remain perfectly clear that, whenever we try to recollect an emotion, for ex., we are doing it through thinking which abstracts a concept of that emotion). 

Right, I actually have no expectations, I just try to "push the frontier" wherever it leads me and flow along the gradient that I sense from the highest spiritual levels.

And I don't care anymore what materialists think

It's not that we shouldn't expect to have access to the deeper layers, but we shouldn't expect the activity which manifests them to resemble anything we are currently familiar with, whether in outer perception or inner experience (including nondual). These are the more evolved activity-forms which are always present simultaneously with less evolved ones, modulating the latter, and simply cannot be derived from those less evolved ones we are currently engaging from within their context. We have all gotten so used to projecting our current thinking into the subconscious and the supra-conscious domains of activity that we take it for granted this is how the deeper processes of reality are to be found, unless we adopt the Kantian route and abandon the possibility altogether (but continue to philosophize and pursue science inconsistently with that conclusion). And we have already established we aren't yet at the more evolved stage, even with nondual meditation, because we don't already know clearly why we are doing this spiritual practice instead of another one or none at all. So the role of humble prayer is practically indispensable here as well, because we are seeking to expand our cognitive being into completely unexplored regions which cannot be anticipated beforehand. We can prayerfully ask some of those questions into the higher worlds, without preconceived expectation of the answer, as we embark on our meditative exercises.

Yeah, agree, that makes sense.

[AshvinP]

Alright well here is another way of approaching it, which surely has been mentioned before, but maybe in slightly different form. Instead of trying to find some 'center of doing-experiencing', which is indeed problematic, we could probe some questions for intuitive orientation. For ex., we could ask why have we chosen this palette of exercises over others in our spiritual practice - what are the various factors of our personal and collective life, extended through time (across incarnations as well), which brought us to this state of being where we are exploring the optimal ways of spiritual practice? Federica pointed to some similar questions as well. The materialist has no interest in this question at all - such a question only leads him deeper into the purely 'subjective' life where none of the deeper reasons for the objective world content are expected to be found. So naturally he avoids all such inquiries in scientific investigation. For the idealist/spiritualist, it should be much more evident why that is the most fruitful direction of investigation, since All is of the nature of the spiritual activity which expresses itself in our character, interests, passions, sympathies, emotions, ideas and thoughts, etc. But the great error comes when it is expected such a question can be explored with our current mode of thinking-perception, and we will find the deeper reasons in the concepts we have already acquired since childhood to our current age. (and it should remain perfectly clear that, whenever we try to recollect an emotion, for ex., we are doing it through thinking which abstracts a concept of that emotion). 

Right, I actually have no expectations, I just try to "push the frontier" wherever it leads me and flow along the gradient that I sense from the highest spiritual levels.

Eugene, do you see the problem with this assertion? The reason we ask such questions as the ones I mentioned above is because we must be still flowing within the context of certain soul-attractor forces which are steering our spiritual activity, and we desire to make these more conscious. If we assume those forces simply aren't present (or they are external to us in some way, and we are doing the best we can possibly do), that we transcended them into a pure state of desire-free, preference-free, expectation-free spiritual seeking, then we are ensuring they will never be brought to consciousness.

On the physical plane, we have an expectation that phenomena simply present themselves to us without having to seek them out through inner activity. And that is a justified expectation, because most things simply manifest to us in the course of experience. But that can't be carried over onto the spiritual plane. The forces working behind our current perspective to steer our activity won't reveal themselves to us if we (a) deny that we have any perspective to begin with or (b) deny the existence of the forces steering our activity. Of course I am not speaking of what we say about these things outwardly, but of our disposition inwardly.

Please don't take this the wrong way - often you tell us you agree with what we are saying, but then when prompted by various questions, you end up writing something which shows you were only agreeing in the abstract. It's not about whether we can reach this sort of theoretical agreement, but whether we inwardly understand what is being spoken of and how it applies to our own concrete situation. Assuming you do agree that your current perspective (even in meditation) is contextualized within these attractor forces, perhaps it would helpful if you named a few sympathies or antipathies or preferences which could be at play for you.

[Stranger]

Right, I actually have no expectations, I just try to "push the frontier" wherever it leads me and flow along the gradient that I sense from the highest spiritual levels.

Eugene, do you see the problem with this assertion? The reason we ask such questions as the ones I mentioned above is because we must be still flowing within the context of certain soul-attractor forces which are steering our spiritual activity, and we desire to make these more conscious. If we assume those forces simply aren't present (or they are external to us in some way, and we are doing the best we can possibly do), that we transcended them into a pure state of desire-free, preference-free, expectation-free spiritual seeking, then we are ensuring they will never be brought to consciousness.

On the physical plane, we have an expectation that phenomena simply present themselves to us without having to seek them out through inner activity. And that is a justified expectation, because most things simply manifest to us in the course of experience. But that can't be carried over onto the spiritual plane. The forces working behind our current perspective to steer our activity won't reveal themselves to us if we (a) deny that we have any perspective to begin with or (b) deny the existence of the forces steering our activity. Of course I am not speaking of what we say about these things outwardly, but of our disposition inwardly.

Please don't take this the wrong way - often you tell us you agree with what we are saying, but then when prompted by various questions, you end up writing something which shows you were only agreeing in the abstract. It's not about whether we can reach this sort of theoretical agreement, but whether we inwardly understand what is being spoken of and how it applies to our own concrete situation. Assuming you do agree that your current perspective (even in meditation) is contextualized within these attractor forces, perhaps it would helpful if you named a few sympathies or antipathies or preferences which could be at play for you.

You probably misunderstood me because that is what I meant: I try not to shape my path according to my own current expectations or preferences, but instead attune to the meanings and curvatures from the forces of the higher spiritual levels that I can possibly reach to and then follow their curvature wherever it leads me. I do have an intuition on that curvature of the forces behind my current perspective, that is exactly why I am following it (otherwise how would I know where to go?)

The only "antipathy" I have is when I am forcefully pulled back to a habitual low-cognition mindless or daydreaming state in my everyday activities and become controlled again by habitual subconscious egoic cognitive and behavioral patterns. But when I am in the "flow" state, I have no personal preferences, everything is acceptable but the flow naturally goes along the lawful curvatures from the highest levels of spiritual activity.

There is a dynamic polarity of evolutionary and de-evolutionary forces, each having its own curvatures. This is where our free will comes into play where we can freely choose which force and curvature to follow. If that would not be the case, our evolution would be totally robotic and deterministic (which would not make any sense from the perspective of the Cosmic Thinking). So, when we make a conscious choice of which curvature to follow, it is ok to have an "antipathy" to the opposite force and resist its gravitational pull, otherwise we will be like a Brownian particle randomly dragged back-and-forth along whichever force happens to catch us at each moment. This is where the power of Will becomes the key player.

[AshvinP]

Right, I actually have no expectations, I just try to "push the frontier" wherever it leads me and flow along the gradient that I sense from the highest spiritual levels.

Eugene, do you see the problem with this assertion? The reason we ask such questions as the ones I mentioned above is because we must be still flowing within the context of certain soul-attractor forces which are steering our spiritual activity, and we desire to make these more conscious. If we assume those forces simply aren't present (or they are external to us in some way, and we are doing the best we can possibly do), that we transcended them into a pure state of desire-free, preference-free, expectation-free spiritual seeking, then we are ensuring they will never be brought to consciousness.

On the physical plane, we have an expectation that phenomena simply present themselves to us without having to seek them out through inner activity. And that is a justified expectation, because most things simply manifest to us in the course of experience. But that can't be carried over onto the spiritual plane. The forces working behind our current perspective to steer our activity won't reveal themselves to us if we (a) deny that we have any perspective to begin with or (b) deny the existence of the forces steering our activity. Of course I am not speaking of what we say about these things outwardly, but of our disposition inwardly.

Please don't take this the wrong way - often you tell us you agree with what we are saying, but then when prompted by various questions, you end up writing something which shows you were only agreeing in the abstract. It's not about whether we can reach this sort of theoretical agreement, but whether we inwardly understand what is being spoken of and how it applies to our own concrete situation. Assuming you do agree that your current perspective (even in meditation) is contextualized within these attractor forces, perhaps it would helpful if you named a few sympathies or antipathies or preferences which could be at play for you.

You probably misunderstood me because that is what I meant: I try not to shape my path according to my own current expectations or preferences, but instead attune to the meanings and curvatures from the forces of the higher spiritual levels that I can possibly reach to and then follow their curvature wherever it leads me. I do have an intuition on that curvature of the forces behind my current perspective, that is exactly why I am following it (otherwise how would I know where to go?)

The only "antipathy" I have is when I am forcefully pulled back to a habitual low-cognition mindless or daydreaming state in my everyday activities and become controlled again by habitual subconscious egoic cognitive and behavioral patterns. But when I am in the "flow" state, I have no personal preferences, everything is acceptable but the flow naturally goes along the lawful curvatures from the highest levels of spiritual activity.

There is a dynamic polarity of evolutionary and de-evolutionary forces, each having its own curvatures. This is where our free will comes into play where we can freely choose which force and curvature to follow. If that would not be the case, our evolution would be totally robotic and deterministic (which would not make any sense from the perspective of the Cosmic Thinking). So, when we make a conscious choice of which curvature to follow, it is ok to have an "antipathy" to the opposite force and resist its gravitational pull, otherwise we will be like a Brownian particle randomly dragged back-and-forth along whichever force happens to catch us at each moment. This is where the power of Will becomes the key player.

I understand, Eugene. And I want to thank you for the direct and frank responses. As Cleric and Federica also said, you have made your approach very clear on the Demiurge and this thread. There is really no question as to what is going on with that approach. Aside from everything else, I think it should be clear now that we understand it, we are offering a constructive criticism of it, and so it is not simply a question of semantic differences. We haven't been arguing past each other this whole time.

There is basically a dual-individuality being expressed here. While in the normal non-meditative state, you feel there are the subconscious egoic personality forces which steer your cognition-perception towards dualistic mode. You make some progress with this over time, but nothing which would ever indicate it is realistic to expect that either you or humans in general can earn their spiritual freedom from within this Earthly context. When you enter the nondual meditative state, on the other hand, all of these habitual forces are objectified as part of the higher Cosmic flow and there are no personalized soul-factors (desires, preferences, sympathies-antipathies, etc.) still existing behind you, flowing your activity in one way or another. You are free to evaluate what curvatures are taking place and choose whether to follow them or not (this reminds me of the lesson from Plato's allegory - 'the only reason we remain unfree is because we assume we are already free'). Then when you return to normal state, these habitual tendencies flow back into your corporeal personality from the 'false light' or 'de-evolutionary' forces.

But this apparent discontinuity between your meditative and non-meditative personality only exists because the gradient of cognition which flows through the ego has not been discerned yet. We can only discern the gradient by taking responsibility for the attractor forces, as personal factors which are always steering our spiritual activity, and resisting their flow through the concentrated ego-perspective. We can only become conscious of those forces which we are able to differentiate from through resistance - as long as we flow along with them, we remain merged with them and assume they are immutable parts of the higher Cosmic flow. Cleric pointed out quite a few times why this feels as the greatest condescension for you - it seems the height of absurdity to contract yourself within the ego-perspective as you carefully resist the forces and gradually become conscious of their personalized conditioning, when you can just expand directly into the nondual flow and follow the 'higher-order' curvature wherever it leads.

This is the whole reason why in our age, meditation that seeks the true Unity of existence can only find it by making the paths straight for the subtler being that speaks through the intellectual mask. We should clearly feel how this presents an inner conflict. For example, for someone with an ‘all inclusive’ philosophy, the only way forward seems to be expansion towards the richness of spiritual phenomena. In meditation we leak ourselves over the totality of our soul contents and imagine that we have sacrificed our ego, that we’re now one with the Cosmic flow (the blue arrow expanding and rubbing against the wavy interior). Such a person will see as a heresy the idea that we have to actually temporarily shrink back to a point in our head. This seems absurd, it’s like locking ourselves in our ego. Yet this seems so only if we don’t realize that it is through the ego that the true spiritual potential of the One manifests, that the ego is only its rigid mask.
...
Here someone may ask: “But what if that higher being has already awakened in me? What if I’m already it?” This is a very common position. The simple answer is that we’re always in the middle of the flow (think of the turning torus). Thus there’s always higher potential that has not yet manifested, there's an even deeper arrow within the one that we experience as our self-conscious being.

You responded that you 'get that', but above you write - "But when I am in the "flow" state, I have no personal preferences, everything is acceptable but the flow naturally goes along the lawful curvatures from the highest levels of spiritual activity." So it is clear that you didn't get it, or you got it but disagree that the deeper arrows exist. Your personality, whether in nondual meditation or normal state, is not separate from those deeper arrows, which manifest in the soul-forces mentioned before. When you enter the nondual state, you don't leave the Earthly personality in the other room, partitioned off from the meditative perspective. Even after death this shedding of the Earthly personality only happens gradually through lawful stages of purification. So we understand your approach and either you are open to seriously considering the constructively offered criticism and advice, in response to your own queries about why certain walls to building the cognitive-perceptual, nondual-dual, gradient persist, or you aren't.

[Federica]

Can you explain exactly what is the problem with this filter of human cognition, and what and how exactly it needs to be fixed and what needs to be changed or sacrificed/recycled? And also how and why it leads to duality?

So you would like to hear more about the filter of human cognition. Let me try, Eugene.
In the exchanges above about the ins and outs of your meditative practice, it’s as if you were given a lush mental-spa treatment by Ashvin Great exchange I'm learning from, thanks both! Let's see if I can now tell you a meditation-time story about the filter of human cognition


The “problem” with this filter, or its opportunity, or its quality - any of these takes is valuable - is that the filter is both the biggest existential riddle, and our means to solve it, with the added difficulty that we weren't presented with a riddle, we weren’t given any notice a riddle would be there. Since we were born in it, we have always been, and are fully immersed in our filtering mode of cognition-being. In a way we are the riddle, because it characterizes our humanity, it’s our peculiar trait, within the holistic panorama of reality and the intelligences reality is made of. Therefore, our ascending path to Oneness inevitably arises from the center of the filter, and it involves the exact recognition of this modality of cognizing-being that our human nature expresses.


In other words, the filter can be seen as the essence of our human nature. Not an essence that needs to be discarded or fixed, but our fundamental, true reason for existing as humans. So we express the filter - we were “made” so, with a destructive filter that expresses our perceptual way of being - and we also impress the filter, meaning it's also our means to cognize-create, along the same red thread. We destroy and we restore, we downcycle byproducts, and we upcycle them. There's this logical red thread that intersects our being at the level of the sensory-perceptual world. It's like a Cosmic Hint we discover at our innermost core, at the center of the filter. Then we would be downright crazy to cut the thread and discard the Hint. It’s our sole chance to find our way to Oneness! The way can only cycle through impressing and creating with the broken pieces of our destructive-dualizing cognition as raw material.
Now, I suspect this might sound like an unpromising start to your ears, but please suspend non-dual judgment, accept to explore this idea with undivided attention. It won’t harm your ongoing non-dual attunement in any way, would it?


People often end up doing pay-the-bills jobs they don’t identify with. We often don’t find our daywork self-realizing and fulfilling. Well, the human cognitive filter is every human being's perfectly ideal job task we all can and should discover, so that we can identify and merge with it. It's not an advertised job, still it has the most self-realizing and fitting work description ever, if we only can discover it and see through it.
It’s about recognizing our essence, so that we can find that ‘sweet spot’ where what we do equals what we are, equals what we know. Tackling this triple equation I was speaking of in my ‘’’essay’’’, some will find it easier to take it from the doing-side in order to turn it inside out (realizing it in its wholeness), some will achieve that better by considering it from its being-side, and some others from its knowing-side.
Let’s look at the doing-side. This filter is our unique and sole chance to work with something that will make a difference in the economy of the engine of reality, if we only could become engrossed in it. There’s a helpful description of this ‘doing’ Cleric has given, with the mathematician's example - and we could just as well replace mathematician with engineer:

Imagine that you are a mathematician and you work in a team with other colleagues on a complicated problem. Now imagine that you’re so engrossed in this problem that you forget the surrounding world, you forget your bodily needs, your perceptions, your Earthly desires. Now the meaning of the mathematical ideas is your whole world. They are not simply ideas in your mind but the ideas are the structure of that world and your own being. To solve the problem is to find a specific configuration of your own ideal form.

Now, if instead of seeing the filter as a problem, we accept being engrossed in the idea of the filter, wholeheartedly working with it in the exact way the mathematician does in Cleric's example, we will eventually but surely observe the inner transformation Ashvin was speaking of. The physiognomy (the exakt outer profile) of this inner transformation we cannot exactly foresee, we have to accept that. The reason we can't see, from our current position, the how of our being's future growth is that it’s pioneering. It’s new ground! And in this sense you are right that it requires a skeptical-faithful approach with little more faith than skepticism in the mix, but we are only lucky it is so, otherwise we would hamper our elevation by believing we are already doing everything right, and we’re already aware of both the background and the profile of our upcoming transformation.

We are dealing with entirely new evolutionary impulses here, new forms of cognition and perception and understanding. (...) we will learn to encompass them all with increasing ease through the inner transformation, because all outer forms are physiognomic expressions of these inner forces we are integrating.

It will be a learning progression, not an eureka moment. No light-bulb to be switched on. This can happen with concepts, of course, but what we are endeavoring here is not grasping a concept. We are inflowing with our whole being the true engine of reality. As I previously tried to describe: “We start to merge the planes, physical and ideal. Grasping/understanding and acting/happening/creating start to overlap, until they will eventually coincide.” The plane of acting/happening is what Ashvin calls physiognomic expressions. It’s the plane of form, that has a sensorial quality to it, that we need to recycle/turn inside out, into its inner equivalent. And we can only inflow the inner equivalent through owning our dual, fragmentary, tempting, low-cognition, human plane of forms and senses.


It’s both our misery and our salvation. And the only way to redeem the misery of duality is to dive into it, turn it inside out. If we tried to discard it as dual, it would persecute us forever, not because it’s evil, but because we weren’t able to see through it. Again, owning duality is the only way. It’s both our blessing and our curse. If we behead the curse, we behead all possibility of blessing also. Repeating what Ashvin and Cleric said in different words, this process of owning our cursing cognitive filter is a pioneering and progressive growing process where-when a whole new skillset is formed. So we must sacrifice now the expectation that we know the terms of this growing process that awaits. The only thing we can expect is that the growth in action, in cognition and in being, will transform us in the most intimate sense, in ways that we cannot foresee, still should approach with openness and trust and enthusiasm. Just like a pioneer! You guys on the other side of the Atlantic should have good grounds to exactly know how this feeling feels, right? Or maybe you were born in it and you don’t, just like the fish is unaware of the water?


Anyway, back to the engrossed mathematician, or engineer, and to the pioneering spirit required by the work - our collective work of turning the filter inside out:

Now the meaning of the mathematical ideas is your whole world. They are not simply ideas in your mind but the ideas are the structure of that world and your own being. To solve the problem is to find a specific configuration of your own ideal form. However, just when you think that you have found the solution form, you see certain imperfections and through them a whole wider ideal world confronts you and now your form has to solve for these new ideal dimensions too. Now imagine that this inner space is not at all simple and uniform but complicated language-like hierarchy. You feel yourself to be a unity in this world not because you have a body but because your being is like an idea that grows and evolves. Your idea-being is not your own property but is itself part of the world. Imagine that as a mathematician you fully identify with your work.

“To solve the problem is to find a specific configuration of your own ideal form” = Doing equals being.

“you see certain imperfections and through them a whole wider ideal world confronts you” = It’s new ground!

“Your idea-being is not your own property but is itself part of the world” = Don’t worry, Eugene, you will recognize and find the Oneness you are longing for as you engage and progress on the path! It’s just that the turns the path needs to go through have to be recalibrated. Duality has to be turned inside out, by diving into it, head first. We have to be like the mathematician, fully identified in this work of upcycling the filtered-out byproducts back into our own cognitive process - all of them, without exception. Every little dual-perceptual piece counts (which includes thought-pictures, soul-pictures, and sensory-pictures) for an even, successful turnover.


I had in mind to continue the illustration in an even more exemplified, practical segue, to provide extra anchoring to the “beautiful and inspiring declarations”, as you would say. But this post has grown long enough, isn't it, let's pause it here for now.

[Stranger]

I understand, Eugene. And I want to thank you for the direct and frank responses. As Cleric and Federica also said, you have made your approach very clear on the Demiurge and this thread. There is really no question as to what is going on with that approach. Aside from everything else, I think it should be clear now that we understand it, we are offering a constructive criticism of it, and so it is not simply a question of semantic differences. We haven't been arguing past each other this whole time.

There is basically a dual-individuality being expressed here. While in the normal non-meditative state, you feel there are the subconscious egoic personality forces which steer your cognition-perception towards dualistic mode. You make some progress with this over time, but nothing which would ever indicate it is realistic to expect that either you or humans in general can earn their spiritual freedom from within this Earthly context. When you enter the nondual meditative state, on the other hand, all of these habitual forces are objectified as part of the higher Cosmic flow and there are no personalized soul-factors (desires, preferences, sympathies-antipathies, etc.) still existing behind you, flowing your activity in one way or another. You are free to evaluate what curvatures are taking place and choose whether to follow them or not (this reminds me of the lesson from Plato's allegory - 'the only reason we remain unfree is because we assume we are already free'). Then when you return to normal state, these habitual tendencies flow back into your corporeal personality from the 'false light' or 'de-evolutionary' forces.

But this apparent discontinuity between your meditative and non-meditative personality only exists because the gradient of cognition which flows through the ego has not been discerned yet. We can only discern the gradient by taking responsibility for the attractor forces, as personal factors which are always steering our spiritual activity, and resisting their flow through the concentrated ego-perspective. We can only become conscious of those forces which we are able to differentiate from through resistance - as long as we flow along with them, we remain merged with them and assume they are immutable parts of the higher Cosmic flow. Cleric pointed out quite a few times why this feels as the greatest condescension for you - it seems the height of absurdity to contract yourself within the ego-perspective as you carefully resist the forces and gradually become conscious of their personalized conditioning, when you can just expand directly into the nondual flow and follow the 'higher-order' curvature wherever it leads.

This is the whole reason why in our age, meditation that seeks the true Unity of existence can only find it by making the paths straight for the subtler being that speaks through the intellectual mask. We should clearly feel how this presents an inner conflict. For example, for someone with an ‘all inclusive’ philosophy, the only way forward seems to be expansion towards the richness of spiritual phenomena. In meditation we leak ourselves over the totality of our soul contents and imagine that we have sacrificed our ego, that we’re now one with the Cosmic flow (the blue arrow expanding and rubbing against the wavy interior). Such a person will see as a heresy the idea that we have to actually temporarily shrink back to a point in our head. This seems absurd, it’s like locking ourselves in our ego. Yet this seems so only if we don’t realize that it is through the ego that the true spiritual potential of the One manifests, that the ego is only its rigid mask.
...
Here someone may ask: “But what if that higher being has already awakened in me? What if I’m already it?” This is a very common position. The simple answer is that we’re always in the middle of the flow (think of the turning torus). Thus there’s always higher potential that has not yet manifested, there's an even deeper arrow within the one that we experience as our self-conscious being.

You responded that you 'get that', but above you write - "But when I am in the "flow" state, I have no personal preferences, everything is acceptable but the flow naturally goes along the lawful curvatures from the highest levels of spiritual activity." So it is clear that you didn't get it, or you got it but disagree that the deeper arrows exist. Your personality, whether in nondual meditation or normal state, is not separate from those deeper arrows, which manifest in the soul-forces mentioned before. When you enter the nondual state, you don't leave the Earthly personality in the other room, partitioned off from the meditative perspective. Even after death this shedding of the Earthly personality only happens gradually through lawful stages of purification. So we understand your approach and either you are open to seriously considering the constructively offered criticism and advice, in response to your own queries about why certain walls to building the cognitive-perceptual, nondual-dual, gradient persist, or you aren't.

Two points to comment here:
- In the "flow" state the personality, ego and its preferences do not go away and are not repressed, they are still there and they unfold, it is that they do not capture and take control over the entire state, the state does not "collapse" into a narrow tube of mindlessly following the preferences or desires. In that case the Free Will is in control and can stay on track following the curvature of higher-order meaning of its free choice. That is what I meant by having "no preferences" in a sense that they are there but not in control anymore.
- This question about the ego is not that we need to "shrink back" to the ego or not. It is a question of what is in the driving seat. The ego becomes an anti-evolutionary force when the state of consciousness is collapsed into a "black hole" around the ego-center and becomes completely driven by egoic impulses without any awareness of what is going on. The Free Will is completely dormant in this state and we act like robots controlled by the mechanics of unconscious egoic forces. This is the dualistic state. In the nondual state of the "flow" the individual features of the ego still function, and they are what shape our individualities, but they are no longer in the driving seat, they are only "coloring" our state, but not in control of it. The "flow" state is a state of a complete awareness and transparency where the Free Will is fully unleashed. So, it is not the question of accepting or denying the ego, but a question of in which "mode" the ego is functioning. In the nondual mode the ego becomes the unique individuality through which the individuated activity of thinking is unfolding unimpededly.

[Stranger]

Duality has to be turned inside out, by diving into it, head first.

Thanks for the explanations, Federica. My few comments:
- We are already deep in duality head first. It already happened, so no need to convince that we need to do it. And we are now approaching the point where we need to "turn it inside out", so that's exactly what switching to nondual mode is about. We have been in duality for a very long time, we learnt from it, we grew through it, it was a necessary evolutionary phase, but that period of duality has its natural end in the metamorphic evolutionary process and the curvature of our evolution is steering us into a different mode of being - the nondual one.
- I think I said it before: the human perceptual filter is not duality per se, it only one of the conditions that catalyzes the duality, but it does not fully determine it. So, going back to my phenomenological analysis of human perception, this filter is not the step where the dualistic split actually happens.