Anthroposophy as Fascio

[Cleric K]

Right, we need to move ahead and do spiritual science with greater precision to progress further. But how is it greater precision if we deny the realization of oneness which is essential part of knowing the reality with greater precision and leaving behind the distorted and imprecise dualistic perception of reality? We just agreed with Scott that awareness is universal, and knowing this experientially is not an abstraction but a practical tool for the realization of oneness. Then any kind of spiritual science attempting to know the reality with more precision has to include such essential knowledge of oneness and universality of awareness. Otherwise, it would not be precise and so cannot be claimed to be a science.

What I and Anthony are pointing to is that the realization of oneness should be an integral part of spiritual science, otherwise, if such integration is lacking, then it is not spiritual science in a full sense. But no one suggests that SS should be all reduced to only the realization of oneness, we only suggest to integrate it as an essential component and method of scientific exploration and development of thinking.

As spoken previously, the problem is that unnoticeably, the experience of oneness is assumed to be the source of our present philosophy instead of recognizing how we have patched it up from the most varied places. Now if we ask "but why do you assume Initiatic science doesn't already include that oneness?" (I have tried to show that it is impossible to live in the Inspirative and Intuitive stages of consciousness and not understand the oneness of spiritual reality in the most living and direct way), then your argumentation goes to say "well, if there was oneness, there wouldn't be any talk about nested existence, about being intrinsic part of the evolution of the Cosmic context and so on". In other words, this oneness is thrown around as a trump card that 'beats everything' (as Joey would say) and it is very conveniently used in the way "if you knew oneness you wouldn't be talking about the things you talk about. Since you don't talk about the things I talk about, you must not understand oneness." But again - here one completely conflates the experience of oneness for something that gives from itself the preferred cosmology about nondual worlds, post incarnational careers and so on.

To give a more concrete example I can take another role. I can take a position similar to Lorenzo's but even more extreme. I take the position that true liberation is nonexistence. I claim that all those talks about nondual worlds, Gödel's candy shop, post incarnational careers are falsity upon falsity. My experience of oneness reveals the Absolute Nothingness (as Adur had called it). All talks about existence as nondual noncorporeal being is a lie perpetuated by the forces of evil. The true experience of oneness reveals to me only the absolute potential of nonexistence and a liberated being dissolves after death in that potential forever. Otherwise it keeps reincarnating.

There. There's nothing of SS here. It's all nonduality and oneness. Of course you would disagree with such a view. It would be a little trickier because you won't be able to blame the disagreement directly on the ignorance of oneness, since my whole philosophy is founded on oneness. The only way would be for you to tell me that my experience of oneness is incomplete. You would say "If you had gone into the experience of oneness all the way, you would have intuited the nondual worlds and the souls enjoying Gödel's candy shop." But I could equally counter: "No, no. It is your experience of oneness that is incomplete. If you had known oneness in its absolute nature you would have known that all that candy stuff is simply a projection of your not yet resolved thirst for continued existence of your ego. You are on the borderline between duality and nonduality. Your ego wants to be liberated from the world of suffering but still wants to maintain immortal existence. Thus it fantasizes heavenly realms which however, after death evaporate as a naive dream and one is hurled back into incarnation."

It's clear that nothing of value can proceed from that point onwards. It's one's word against the other's. Everyone thinks that the other has incomplete experience of oneness. And it is of no use to present me with NDE accounts. I would reply that these are completely expected because they proceed from quite secular people going through abnormal states and naturally their thirst for existence is projected into fantastic visions.

As an exercise you can try to convince my nondual alter out of its position. No Steiner and SS involved. Pure nonduality. Why my experience of oneness is wrong when it tells me that all nondual disincarnate existence is only a fantastic projection of the unresolved thirst of the ego for immortal existence? How would you convince me that from my experience of oneness with ultimate reality, it somehow follows that I'll go in Gödel's candy shop after death?

I hope this makes the point that the arguments about SS have very little to do with oneness or its lack. It's a simple conflict of world outlooks, the cause of which is misidentified. The only reasonable way out is to seek the actual facts of existence in their manifold relations, which are not only a matter of taste but can be lawfully followed in the reality of our flow of becoming. Above all we should start with "How do I know?" I hope the last post in the other thread can help us move further in that direction.

[Federica]

On the other extreme end, if the ego has no solid ground, it’s impossible to find orientation and follow any route. A point of self-reference needs to be there in defined form, working as a soundbox to echo the inputs, so one can use the feedback for continuous adjustment. It doesn’t matter that it’s imperfect, as long as it's kept ‘scalable’.

So what I meant is, in order to quench the thirst for knowledge one has to find a balanced route for the ego, where self-origin is maintained in individuated form, but also scalable, rather than simply extensible. And if one prefers to stay strong and immovable in that origin instead, then the thirst for knowledge cannot be quenched, but only renounced, or numbed.

OK, good. Balance is the in-the-now quest in a dynamic system. I might prefer the word "expandable" to "scalable" in order to accomodate all "externalities" but I think we are talking about much the same thing.

Lou... I intentionally used scalable - as opposed to extendible, or expandable - to suggest that there really are two very different ways to conceive progression on the path. We can either remain stuck in our current, possibly ego-inflated, level of understanding, when we do add pieces of knowledge by expansion, but without accepting to move the apex of our cone of awareness. Most of all we want to remain true, so to say, to what we are currently persuaded our self is, more than to Truth. So we only broaden the aperture of our cone of awareness, and in so doing we subtly cap any qualitative progression. We only add pieces to our current setup, but we refuse to question the setup itself. Maybe scalable is not the ideal word, as it may suggest the preservation of some initial proportions. But do you get what I was trying to say?

Alterantively, we keep our current mode of knowledge scalable, and so we are humbly conceiving the possibility that our very sense of what understanding is will be revolutionized and transformed in currently unconceivable ways. We are open to a quantum leap that can blow away our current perspective. This second mode is necessary to allow for true progression. But this possibility is excluded, when one's ego is too proud and out of balance, more attached to remaining "true to oneself", as we often hear today, than to discover what reality are (if I can say so).

[Federica]

One is like the child weaning itself off of parents, teachers, authorities, etc. so that it can give birth to the thinking "I" within and take more creative responsibility for its further evolution (SS). The other is like the child striving to realize its in utero state of Oneness with its Mother. It seeks to know itself as pure Awareness, rather than thinking awareness of the World Content.

This is really a perfect analogy, Ashvin!
It's more than an analogy. This position of the child who strives to realize Oneness with its mother is specular to the one of the Egyptians who kept a strong link with the physical world by mummifying their dead bodies, as you have described on the other thread. Their trajectory through their disincarnate cycle remained close to the physical Earth, "lower altitude" so to say, in its unfolding in the Spiritual world. Specularly, whoever has remained energetically bound to the Mother more than necessary (through physical or psychological circumstances) will experience more difficulties in being fully and completely born to this physical world, and will feel strong attraction to the mystical asymptote of the hysteresis of thinking. Their trajectory in incarnate form will tend to remain too fixated on Oneness, too aspiring to direct connection with Divinity. I am realizing this applies to people I know well. I can't push the parallel far enough to see what the evolutionary usefulness of this "higher altitude route" through the Sense world could be, where one does not fully descend on Earth at birth, and therefore has not enough grip on the physical, and has difficulties turning the sensory experience inside out...

[Lou Gold]

On the other extreme end, if the ego has no solid ground, it’s impossible to find orientation and follow any route. A point of self-reference needs to be there in defined form, working as a soundbox to echo the inputs, so one can use the feedback for continuous adjustment. It doesn’t matter that it’s imperfect, as long as it's kept ‘scalable’.

So what I meant is, in order to quench the thirst for knowledge one has to find a balanced route for the ego, where self-origin is maintained in individuated form, but also scalable, rather than simply extensible. And if one prefers to stay strong and immovable in that origin instead, then the thirst for knowledge cannot be quenched, but only renounced, or numbed.

OK, good. Balance is the in-the-now quest in a dynamic system. I might prefer the word "expandable" to "scalable" in order to accomodate all "externalities" but I think we are talking about much the same thing.

Lou... I intentionally used scalable - as opposed to extendible, or expandable - to suggest that there really are two very different ways to conceive progression on the path. We can either remain stuck in our current, possibly ego-inflated, level of understanding, when we do add pieces of knowledge by expansion, but without accepting to move the apex of our cone of awareness. Most of all we want to remain true, so to say, to what we are currently persuaded our self is, more than to Truth. So we only broaden the aperture of our cone of awareness, and in so doing we subtly cap any qualitative progression. We only add pieces to our current setup, but we refuse to question the setup itself. Maybe scalable is not the ideal word, as it may suggest the preservation of some initial proportions. But do you get what I was trying to say?

Alterantively, we keep our current mode of knowledge scalable, and so we are humbly conceiving the possibility that our very sense of what understanding is will be revolutionized and transformed in currently unconceivable ways. We are open to a quantum leap that can blow away our current perspective. This second mode is necessary to allow for true progression. But this possibility is excluded, when one's ego is too proud and out of balance, more attached to remaining "true to oneself", as we often hear today, than to discover what reality are (if I can say so).

Yeah, I thought your choice of scalable might be intentional. I lean more toward expandable only because it seems to fit better my direct learning experience in my current non-abstract process. As you might imagine, dying is full of humbling experiences, which turn out to be great teachers, the best ones I've ever had. But ... pause ... I seem to be heading toward an abstract parsing of words, concepts, representations, which previously just led me into endless circles. Sorry about that.

Have you checked out my Henry Moore blog post? It probably communicates my view better.

[Lou Gold]

One is like the child weaning itself off of parents, teachers, authorities, etc. so that it can give birth to the thinking "I" within and take more creative responsibility for its further evolution (SS). The other is like the child striving to realize its in utero state of Oneness with its Mother. It seeks to know itself as pure Awareness, rather than thinking awareness of the World Content.

This is really a perfect analogy, Ashvin!
It's more than an analogy. This position of the child who strives to realize Oneness with its mother is specular to the one of the Egyptians who kept a strong link with the physical world by mummifying their dead bodies, as you have described on the other thread. Their trajectory through their disincarnate cycle remained close to the physical Earth, "lower altitude" so to say, in its unfolding in the Spiritual world. Specularly, whoever has remained energetically bound to the Mother more than necessary (through physical or psychological circumstances) will experience more difficulties in being fully and completely born to this physical world, and will feel strong attraction to the mystical asymptote of the hysteresis of thinking. Their trajectory in incarnate form will tend to remain too fixated on Oneness, too aspiring to direct connection with Divinity. I am realizing this applies to people I know well. I can't push the parallel far enough to see what the evolutionary usefulness of this "higher altitude route" through the Sense world could be, where one does not fully descend on Earth at birth, and therefore has not enough grip on the physical, and has difficulties turning the sensory experience inside out...

I hope that what I'm going to say is not taken as criticism or judgement. From a purely descriptive witness perspective, I find two individuals who have never birthed a child in this lifetime agreeing that childbirth is a better analogy. This, thusly, strikes me as an abstraction. What am I missing?

[ScottRoberts]

My point is that awareness is universal (assuming idealism), so to go on about capital-A Awareness (in the way you do) doesn't add anything useful to the ontology of idealism.

Sure, we already agreed to drop the capitalization, so let's put it to rest. But the key here is what you affirmed above (in bold).

Why is it key? Why does my bolded statement suggest anything more than idealist ontology? (I think your response will be what you say next, so let's explore that).

I don't remember using the term "absolute Oneness", neither I see any point in calling it "relative Oneness". I agree that deducing the first cause is a useless and abstract ontological exercise. If you experientially know the oneness as "I am awareness of ...", as the " awareness is universal", then this is it, no other "mystical blast" or "ontological first cause" is needed.

While awareness is universal, my awareness is not (otherwise you would know what I had for breakfast this morning.) The point of calling it "relative oneness" is to note that mystical "experiencing oneness" is not final, and may just be your oneness, and from a higher POV may be more manyness.

So, if we practice mindfully experiencing this oneness of universal awareness every moment, it will over time disentangle our dualistic patterns of perception and cognition (subject-object, self-others, mind-matter), together with egoic patterns tightly entangled with this dualistic perception, and bring us to the next level in the development of cognition where we continue developing as individuated spiritual/thinking activities always harmony with experientially known cosmic oneness. It is all practical and experiential.

So, according to you, we need to meditate on the universalism of awareness to overcome dualist perspectives and not be bad. Is this the case? Let's look into it.

1. subject/object dualism. I already said this is misnomer, and should be called subject/object polarity, our current experience of oneness/manyness polarity, and see no problem with it.

2. spirit/matter dualism. This is a necessary stage in our spiritual development to finalize our becoming individuals. It is also clearly not the cause of our badness, since all that badness existed long before it arrived. (If anything it has lessened it, in that we are more self-conscious.) It is, though, a false view of reality, and will be overcome when, through higher cognition, we once again experience the spirit of matter.

3. self/other dualism. This is simply always the case unless we simply dissolve into the Godhead. In that case, our whole existence would have been meaningless. Even if we merge with a "group soul", as esoteric literature describes it, we are still individuals within it, though in that case we will know what the other had for breakfast.

What I am getting at is, though it is the case that self/other dualism is a prerequisite for badness, we won't eliminate badness by transcending dualism, since we won't be transcending dualism (other than spirit/matter dualism, which as noted, is not the cause of badness). Badness is a result of our beliefs, desires, and feelings. So to become good we need to unearth these beliefs, desires, and feelings, which is to say, to explore our thinking, an unending work which meditating on oneness and awareness is just a desire to shortcut.

[AshvinP]

One is like the child weaning itself off of parents, teachers, authorities, etc. so that it can give birth to the thinking "I" within and take more creative responsibility for its further evolution (SS). The other is like the child striving to realize its in utero state of Oneness with its Mother. It seeks to know itself as pure Awareness, rather than thinking awareness of the World Content.

This is really a perfect analogy, Ashvin!
It's more than an analogy. This position of the child who strives to realize Oneness with its mother is specular to the one of the Egyptians who kept a strong link with the physical world by mummifying their dead bodies, as you have described on the other thread. Their trajectory through their disincarnate cycle remained close to the physical Earth, "lower altitude" so to say, in its unfolding in the Spiritual world. Specularly, whoever has remained energetically bound to the Mother more than necessary (through physical or psychological circumstances) will experience more difficulties in being fully and completely born to this physical world, and will feel strong attraction to the mystical asymptote of the hysteresis of thinking. Their trajectory in incarnate form will tend to remain too fixated on Oneness, too aspiring to direct connection with Divinity. I am realizing this applies to people I know well. I can't push the parallel far enough to see what the evolutionary usefulness of this "higher altitude route" through the Sense world could be, where one does not fully descend on Earth at birth, and therefore has not enough grip on the physical, and has difficulties turning the sensory experience inside out...

Thanks, Federica.

We can also consider it in the context of our collective evolution. Eugene previously spoke of the wise teachers of humanity who can redeem the Earth evolution. When I asked about how we can contribute now, basically the idea was that we can continue our evolution in other realms after death and then choose to go on a Bodhisattva mission and guide humanity from 'above'. Through spiritual scientific investigation, we learn that this process already happened during the infancy of humanity. It is an image of how we evolved from our instinctive, collective animal stages to something much more similar to our current individual thinking consciousness. To begin with, all the wise sages, teachers, leaders, etc. were actually higher supra-human souls incarnated in human sheaths. This lasted even into the time of ancient Egypt, which connects to what we were discussing on the other thread. They said 'the Gods were our leaders' because their leaders actually were Angelic beings incarnated in human bodies. Those beings had not gone through previous incarnations like the rest of us.

We can only understand our primordial human evolution if we are aware of this process. But this phenomena basically ended at that time. Once we get to ancient Greek civilization, humans who have gone through the normal incarnational process were tasked with leading civilization further. What was once received as wise instruction and impulses from without becomes fully inwardized, and this culminates in the Christ events and impulse. Now the Divine lives fully in the inner forces which animate our thinking and we can progressively unfold these forces, bringing new life into the appearances which had to spiritually and physically die for our development. A physical birth requires a spiritual death and a spiritual birth requires a physical death (or many of them). We can't expect the higher beings to descend and sacrifice themselves once again to lead us further - they already did that, to the utmost imaginable extent.

All around us we see a subconscious longing for the primordial past way of progressing further, where outer events and impulses will bring us forward. Even in materialistic popular culture that is evident - maybe some random mutation will make us X-men mutants with super spiritual powers. Or the Avengers will save us. Of course it is even more stark in fundamentalist religious circles where people are waiting for the apocalypse, rapture, 2nd coming, eternal salvation and virgins in heaven, etc. And what we find in mystical streams is not too different. It's harder to notice with the latter because we may have a patchwork of imaginations stitched together from different sources, as Cleric noted. None of it comes directly from experience of the higher worlds, oneness, etc., but from theories overlaid on top of those experiences which are rooted in past traditions. The key point is that we are not just seeking to criticize these streams and their world outlooks, but understand exactly why they are arising now and what that can teach us about how to move forward.

What I just wrote above is a brief recapitulation of similar points which have been made in many posts now on this forum, from different angles. Every recapitulation should result in something truly new coming forth, such as an exploration of the fourfold convolution of our inner be-ing which Cleric continues to illustrate for us. I want to be clear that there is no negative criticism here just for the sake of criticizing. We are at a critical juncture of evolution and we have, in a sense, been thrown back on ourselves. The most natural thing right now is to feel a subconscious resentment for the Gods who have seemingly abandoned us, a desire for someone or something to blame, and a longing for the ancient sources of Wisdom and primordial Unity. We simply need to begin discerning how the key to recovering that Wisdom of the past is through creatively manifesting the future. It is all there as fuel and kindling to ignite our higher ideational capacity and bring what is new into the World by working back through the folds.

[AshvinP]

One is like the child weaning itself off of parents, teachers, authorities, etc. so that it can give birth to the thinking "I" within and take more creative responsibility for its further evolution (SS). The other is like the child striving to realize its in utero state of Oneness with its Mother. It seeks to know itself as pure Awareness, rather than thinking awareness of the World Content.

This is really a perfect analogy, Ashvin!
It's more than an analogy. This position of the child who strives to realize Oneness with its mother is specular to the one of the Egyptians who kept a strong link with the physical world by mummifying their dead bodies, as you have described on the other thread. Their trajectory through their disincarnate cycle remained close to the physical Earth, "lower altitude" so to say, in its unfolding in the Spiritual world. Specularly, whoever has remained energetically bound to the Mother more than necessary (through physical or psychological circumstances) will experience more difficulties in being fully and completely born to this physical world, and will feel strong attraction to the mystical asymptote of the hysteresis of thinking. Their trajectory in incarnate form will tend to remain too fixated on Oneness, too aspiring to direct connection with Divinity. I am realizing this applies to people I know well. I can't push the parallel far enough to see what the evolutionary usefulness of this "higher altitude route" through the Sense world could be, where one does not fully descend on Earth at birth, and therefore has not enough grip on the physical, and has difficulties turning the sensory experience inside out...

I hope that what I'm going to say is not taken as criticism or judgement. From a purely descriptive witness perspective, I find two individuals who have never birthed a child in this lifetime agreeing that childbirth is a better analogy. This, thusly, strikes me as an abstraction. What am I missing?

Maybe that we have both been children and also adults who easily understand the longing for a return to childhood

[Lou Gold]

This is really a perfect analogy, Ashvin!
It's more than an analogy. This position of the child who strives to realize Oneness with its mother is specular to the one of the Egyptians who kept a strong link with the physical world by mummifying their dead bodies, as you have described on the other thread. Their trajectory through their disincarnate cycle remained close to the physical Earth, "lower altitude" so to say, in its unfolding in the Spiritual world. Specularly, whoever has remained energetically bound to the Mother more than necessary (through physical or psychological circumstances) will experience more difficulties in being fully and completely born to this physical world, and will feel strong attraction to the mystical asymptote of the hysteresis of thinking. Their trajectory in incarnate form will tend to remain too fixated on Oneness, too aspiring to direct connection with Divinity. I am realizing this applies to people I know well. I can't push the parallel far enough to see what the evolutionary usefulness of this "higher altitude route" through the Sense world could be, where one does not fully descend on Earth at birth, and therefore has not enough grip on the physical, and has difficulties turning the sensory experience inside out...

I hope that what I'm going to say is not taken as criticism or judgement. From a purely descriptive witness perspective, I find two individuals who have never birthed a child in this lifetime agreeing that childbirth is a better analogy. This, thusly, strikes me as an abstraction. What am I missing?

Maybe that we have both been children and also adults who easily understand the longing for a return to childhood

I made this image



in support of the mothers who must let go as their child becomes a strong individuated being.

I surely understand the longing for childhood but if you do not feel the presence of the child in you now, why not?

[Stranger]

Why is it key? Why does my bolded statement suggest anything more than idealist ontology? (I think your response will be what you say next, so let's explore that).

It is idealist ontology and nothing more

While awareness is universal, my awareness is not (otherwise you would know what I had for breakfast this morning.) The point of calling it "relative oneness" is to note that mystical "experiencing oneness" is not final, and may just be your oneness, and from a higher POV may be more manyness.

Universality of awareness does not necessarily mean full exchange of information across its space. Awareness as the lucidity of conscious experience is the same in all individuals, the content of what is being awared of is different.

So, according to you, we need to meditate on the universalism of awareness to overcome dualist perspectives and not be bad. Is this the case? Let's look into it.

1. subject/object dualism. I already said this is misnomer, and should be called subject/object polarity, our current experience of oneness/manyness polarity, and see no problem with it.

2. spirit/matter dualism. This is a necessary stage in our spiritual development to finalize our becoming individuals. It is also clearly not the cause of our badness, since all that badness existed long before it arrived. (If anything it has lessened it, in that we are more self-conscious.) It is, though, a false view of reality, and will be overcome when, through higher cognition, we once again experience the spirit of matter.

Subject-object has nothing to do with oneness/manyness, it is a false view of reality similar to mind/matter, there is no such thing in reality as objects separate from subjects. Yes, these views are both necessary as an evolutionary stage, but at certain evolutionary point become outdated just like the view that the Earth is placed on turtles. And what the heck is the "spirit of matter" if there is no such thing as "matter"?

3. self/other dualism. This is simply always the case unless we simply dissolve into the Godhead. In that case, our whole existence would have been meaningless. Even if we merge with a "group soul", as esoteric literature describes it, we are still individuals within it, though in that case we will know what the other had for breakfast.

It depends on what is meant by "self". If you ask an average human they will tell you that they perceive their "self" as an entity existing separate from other selves and from the outside world, existing inside its human body as an experiencer of the outside world and a "doer" in the outside world. People perceive their self as an entity in almost ontological sense as a "center of perception and actions". They basically view the reality as if it is perceived by their "self" from the center inside their head. Likewise, they perceive others as "entities" existing inside their heads or bodies. This is just another false view, we will call it "separate self-entity" dualism. But if by "self" we mean an individuated spiritual/thinking activity interacting with other similar thinking activities, then this is not a false view, but you will find very few humans who actually perceive/view their self in this way. So, the "separate self-entity" can be transcended after it is realized as a false view without dissolving into the Godhead.

What I am getting at is, though it is the case that self/other dualism is a prerequisite for badness, we won't eliminate badness by transcending dualism, since we won't be transcending dualism (other than spirit/matter dualism, which as noted, is not the cause of badness). Badness is a result of our beliefs, desires, and feelings. So to become good we need to unearth these beliefs, desires, and feelings, which is to say, to explore our thinking, an unending work which meditating on oneness and awareness is just a desire to shortcut.

So, all these three kinds of dualism can be transcended (even though it may take a long time to practically accomplish). Once this is done, the prerequisite will be gone. But this is of course not enough to transcend the badness, all those additional false beliefs need to be dismantled, desires and feelings sacrificed, and this requires a consistent practice. However, once the dualism is transcended in a practical way, the egoic desires will lose much of their ground and justification, because there is no longer the "entity-self" to which these desires would pertain. One needs to examine this mechanism by penetrating into subconscious layers in meditation and experiencing how these desires form and how they are always rooted in the sense of the separate self-entity. As an example, how would one sustain a desire for wealth if there is no sense of separate self-entity to whom this wealth would belong?

On the other hand, if the dualism is not transcended, eliminating the badness becomes almost a futile endeavor, because the self of separate self-entity will always be a catalyst of desires (because the sense of separate self-entity wants to survive and prosper, it fears death, it is always concerned and obsessed with itself etc). This is not a philosophy, it is a practical observation.