KASTRUP AND SHELDRAKE ON THE COSMIC MIND

[AshvinP]

Ashwin, could you imagine or describe a thought experiment, even if just in principle, how to measure or detect the influence of archetypal beings?

For that to be done, Lorenzo, we first have to be willing to explore the reality of our purely qualitative life. What is your view on the fundamental emotions of gratitude, love, reverence, and so forth? Can these be measured with a Geiger counter? Can they be detected with a brain scan as specific brain states that explain their depth and fullness?

We could ask similarly about the idea, "how to measure or detect the influence of archetypal beings". Can this idea itself be measured and detected through physical instruments? It is in the very life of such ideas that the archetypal influences are to be found. They are to be found in all the contextual factors that led us into the vicinity of thinking about the world through a specifically colored lens and asking questions from that colored perspective.

We can measure\detect (the influence of) emotions of love and gratitude, etc. - - - brain scans, galvanic skin response and similar are performed ad nauseum.
So based on your response, the short answer is that the influences of archetypal beings can be detected\measured by looking to our psychophysiology, detected only in principle if we can't detect this influence at the moment OR are you suggesting the influences of archetypal beings cannot be detected and can only be believed or considered?

Yes, in that sense, everything we measure/detect in the perceptual world is an expression of the archetypal beings. For ex. when we study the geological layers of the Earth, the oceans and rivers, the flora and fauna, and the patterns of human culture (like industrial and economic patterns for ex.), we are studying the mineral, life, soul, and spiritual bodies of the Earth organism. The Earth as a planetary whole is an archetypal being.

You see, with the blood we cannot fail to notice; it is red, it contains all kinds of substances, and so we say to ourselves: The blood is something special. With water, we simply think: Ah well, it's water. It attracts less notice; and the substances it contains —apart from hydrogen and oxygen, which are in water — are not present in such large quantities as iron is, for instance, in the blood. So people pay no heed to this. But it is true, nevertheless, that the whole water circulation has tremendous significance for the life of the earth. And just as the human organism could not live if it did not have its blood circulation, so would the earth be unable to live if it did not have its water circulation.

But this will remain a 'Gaia' abstraction if we can't penetrate to the inner dimension of the outer expressions. The emotions of love and gratitude are abstractions for the person who has only studied their outer expressions in brain scans, skin responses, etc. but has not immersed their consciousness in the feeling currents of love and gratitude. Or if a person only studies the muscular structure and movements of a smile but does not penetrate to the inner state of joy and satisfaction, the 'smile' remains an abstraction. When these remain abstractions, a person can easily convince themselves that love, gratitude, joy, etc. are nothing but the quantitative properties outwardly detected and gradually their inner experience will be diminished according to the image of their conceptions.

It is the same principle with the archetypal influences. We need to immerse our consciousness in the archetypal currents that structure the temporally extended rhythms of our soul-life, which are the same currents that structure the rhythms of the Earth organism, if they are not to remain abstractions. Once our inner experience is thickened through this archetypal resonance, we will not only see how the outer measurements are the expression of inner activity, but we will discover many new outer patterns in sensory life that we never even noticed before, such as the Earth's waterways as its blood circulation. Our very capacity to measure/detect will expand along with our attention, imagination, and intuition. This has always been the archetypal process through which cultural paradigms shift and we are simply awakening to it more deeply.

[lorenzop]

For that to be done, Lorenzo, we first have to be willing to explore the reality of our purely qualitative life. What is your view on the fundamental emotions of gratitude, love, reverence, and so forth? Can these be measured with a Geiger counter? Can they be detected with a brain scan as specific brain states that explain their depth and fullness?

We could ask similarly about the idea, "how to measure or detect the influence of archetypal beings". Can this idea itself be measured and detected through physical instruments? It is in the very life of such ideas that the archetypal influences are to be found. They are to be found in all the contextual factors that led us into the vicinity of thinking about the world through a specifically colored lens and asking questions from that colored perspective.

We can measure\detect (the influence of) emotions of love and gratitude, etc. - - - brain scans, galvanic skin response and similar are performed ad nauseum.
So based on your response, the short answer is that the influences of archetypal beings can be detected\measured by looking to our psychophysiology, detected only in principle if we can't detect this influence at the moment OR are you suggesting the influences of archetypal beings cannot be detected and can only be believed or considered?

Yes, in that sense, everything we measure/detect in the perceptual world is an expression of the archetypal beings. For ex. when we study the geological layers of the Earth, the oceans and rivers, the flora and fauna, and the patterns of human culture (like industrial and economic patterns for ex.), we are studying the mineral, life, soul, and spiritual bodies of the Earth organism. The Earth as a planetary whole is an archetypal being.

You see, with the blood we cannot fail to notice; it is red, it contains all kinds of substances, and so we say to ourselves: The blood is something special. With water, we simply think: Ah well, it's water. It attracts less notice; and the substances it contains —apart from hydrogen and oxygen, which are in water — are not present in such large quantities as iron is, for instance, in the blood. So people pay no heed to this. But it is true, nevertheless, that the whole water circulation has tremendous significance for the life of the earth. And just as the human organism could not live if it did not have its blood circulation, so would the earth be unable to live if it did not have its water circulation.

But this will remain a 'Gaia' abstraction if we can't penetrate to the inner dimension of the outer expressions. The emotions of love and gratitude are abstractions for the person who has only studied their outer expressions in brain scans, skin responses, etc. but has not immersed their consciousness in the feeling currents of love and gratitude. Or if a person only studies the muscular structure and movements of a smile but does not penetrate to the inner state of joy and satisfaction, the 'smile' remains an abstraction. When these remain abstractions, a person can easily convince themselves that love, gratitude, joy, etc. are nothing but the quantitative properties outwardly detected and gradually their inner experience will be diminished according to the image of their conceptions.

It is the same principle with the archetypal influences. We need to immerse our consciousness in the archetypal currents that structure the temporally extended rhythms of our soul-life, which are the same currents that structure the rhythms of the Earth organism, if they are not to remain abstractions. Once our inner experience is thickened through this archetypal resonance, we will not only see how the outer measurements are the expression of inner activity, but we will discover many new outer patterns in sensory life that we never even noticed before, such as the Earth's waterways as its blood circulation. Our very capacity to measure/detect will expand along with our attention, imagination, and intuition. This has always been the archetypal process through which cultural paradigms shift and we are simply awakening to it more deeply.

So it looks like we're back to one has to have faith . . . especially when the claim is 'x' is everything (or everything is 'x'), the 'x' loses it's utility. If all influences are from archetypal beings then 'influences from archetypal beings' doesn't mean anything.
Can't we isolate\detect\measure the influence from the Saturn-being, or the Christ-being, even in principle?

[AshvinP]

We can measure\detect (the influence of) emotions of love and gratitude, etc. - - - brain scans, galvanic skin response and similar are performed ad nauseum.
So based on your response, the short answer is that the influences of archetypal beings can be detected\measured by looking to our psychophysiology, detected only in principle if we can't detect this influence at the moment OR are you suggesting the influences of archetypal beings cannot be detected and can only be believed or considered?

Yes, in that sense, everything we measure/detect in the perceptual world is an expression of the archetypal beings. For ex. when we study the geological layers of the Earth, the oceans and rivers, the flora and fauna, and the patterns of human culture (like industrial and economic patterns for ex.), we are studying the mineral, life, soul, and spiritual bodies of the Earth organism. The Earth as a planetary whole is an archetypal being.

You see, with the blood we cannot fail to notice; it is red, it contains all kinds of substances, and so we say to ourselves: The blood is something special. With water, we simply think: Ah well, it's water. It attracts less notice; and the substances it contains —apart from hydrogen and oxygen, which are in water — are not present in such large quantities as iron is, for instance, in the blood. So people pay no heed to this. But it is true, nevertheless, that the whole water circulation has tremendous significance for the life of the earth. And just as the human organism could not live if it did not have its blood circulation, so would the earth be unable to live if it did not have its water circulation.

But this will remain a 'Gaia' abstraction if we can't penetrate to the inner dimension of the outer expressions. The emotions of love and gratitude are abstractions for the person who has only studied their outer expressions in brain scans, skin responses, etc. but has not immersed their consciousness in the feeling currents of love and gratitude. Or if a person only studies the muscular structure and movements of a smile but does not penetrate to the inner state of joy and satisfaction, the 'smile' remains an abstraction. When these remain abstractions, a person can easily convince themselves that love, gratitude, joy, etc. are nothing but the quantitative properties outwardly detected and gradually their inner experience will be diminished according to the image of their conceptions.

It is the same principle with the archetypal influences. We need to immerse our consciousness in the archetypal currents that structure the temporally extended rhythms of our soul-life, which are the same currents that structure the rhythms of the Earth organism, if they are not to remain abstractions. Once our inner experience is thickened through this archetypal resonance, we will not only see how the outer measurements are the expression of inner activity, but we will discover many new outer patterns in sensory life that we never even noticed before, such as the Earth's waterways as its blood circulation. Our very capacity to measure/detect will expand along with our attention, imagination, and intuition. This has always been the archetypal process through which cultural paradigms shift and we are simply awakening to it more deeply.

So it looks like we're back to one has to have faith . . . especially when the claim is 'x' is everything (or everything is 'x'), the 'x' loses it's utility. If all influences are from archetypal beings then 'influences from archetypal beings' doesn't mean anything.
Can't we isolate\detect\measure the influence from the Saturn-being, or the Christ-being, even in principle?

Lorenzo, it is really simple. When you isolate, detect, and measure influences in the sensory world, you are thinking. When we use ideas to develop technologies that extend our sensory capacity, we are thinking. When we ask the question, "Am I really thinking, or do measurements simply appear in my consciousness?", we are still thinking to ask the question. Thinking is at the center of it all.

From where or when do our capacities and ideas that inspire our questions and organize the perceptual world into principles, laws, influences, and so forth, come? If a person is satisfied leaving this question as a complete mystery or answering it with empty abstractions, like 'brain processes', 'emergence', 'evolution', 'quantum void', 'pure awareness', and so on, then the living reality of archetypal beings will unsurprisingly remain obscured. If we are performing a mathematical calculation, we can't at the same time pay attention to the thinking process that is doing the calculation. It is the latter where we find the experience of archetypal beings.

Do you need faith that there is a thinking process doing the mathematical calculation, or is it actually the only thing you know for certain? The calculation itself may be an arbitrary set of symbols that mimic sensory perceptions which are simply dream images of some brain in a vat, but still, the experience of the thinking process remains valid no matter what. It is only when we cut ourselves off from this 100% certain reality that we begin to require blind faith in our conceptual explanations for a 'reality' that is supposed to exist on the 'other side' of conscious thinking experience. Then we default to the empty abstractions as the 'causes' for thinking mentioned above and put our faith in them, blindly betting on them for our eternal future.

[lorenzop]

The suggestion that our thoughts\thinking is influenced or perhaps sourced from archetypal beings doesn't seem reasonable or intuitive. In fact, if I 'thought' this was the case, I'd revolt and strive for freedom from these tricksters. Why even bother with the having of human beings anyways if it's all tricksters?

[AshvinP]

The suggestion that our thoughts\thinking is influenced or perhaps sourced from archetypal beings doesn't seem reasonable or intuitive. In fact, if I 'thought' this was the case, I'd revolt and strive for freedom from these tricksters. Why even bother with the having of human beings anyways if it's all tricksters?

Lorenzo, your ability to allow your deeper soul-gestures to condense into verbal encodings almost perfectly intact can be a great advantage. In fact, most people encode these gestures into the most convoluted and rather grotesque intellectual forms in an (unconscious) attempt to obscure them, and it is only after pages and pages of back-and-forth discussion that the true gestures begin to surface. Yours, on the other hand, are like perfect snowflakes that have crystallized the 'atmospheric dynamics' of the soul life faithfully.





The bold snowflake, if understood as a testimony to the inner soul gestures from which it condensed, tells us exactly why the 'proof' of archetypal beings is not forthcoming for you. The very thought of your inner life not being entirely "yours" as a private possession is a cause for revolution. Such snowflakes provide great opportunities for us to reflect on our inner organization and bring something to light that previously lurked in the shadows. That 'bringing to light' of the deeper soul structure is the engagement with archetypal beings, even if we don't realize this in crystal clear intuition or concepts yet. Then it is only a matter of further elucidating the testimonies of our thoughts via inner concentrated development and whole new unsuspected worlds will be found inwardly embedded in our soul structure.

[lorenzop]

The suggestion that our thoughts\thinking is influenced or perhaps sourced from archetypal beings doesn't seem reasonable or intuitive. In fact, if I 'thought' this was the case, I'd revolt and strive for freedom from these tricksters. Why even bother with the having of human beings anyways if it's all tricksters?

Lorenzo, your ability to allow your deeper soul-gestures to condense into verbal encodings almost perfectly intact can be a great advantage. In fact, most people encode these gestures into the most convoluted and rather grotesque intellectual forms in an (unconscious) attempt to obscure them, and it is only after pages and pages of back-and-forth discussion that the true gestures begin to surface. Yours, on the other hand, are like perfect snowflakes that have crystallized the 'atmospheric dynamics' of the soul life faithfully.





The bold snowflake, if understood as a testimony to the inner soul gestures from which it condensed, tells us exactly why the 'proof' of archetypal beings is not forthcoming for you. The very thought of your inner life not being entirely "yours" as a private possession is a cause for revolution. Such snowflakes provide great opportunities for us to reflect on our inner organization and bring something to light that previously lurked in the shadows. That 'bringing to light' of the deeper soul structure is the engagement with archetypal beings, even if we don't realize this in crystal clear intuition or concepts yet. Then it is only a matter of further elucidating the testimonies of our thoughts via inner concentrated development and whole new unsuspected worlds will be found inwardly embedded in our soul structure.

I wrote I do not believe there are archetypal beings feeding me thoughts\thinking, not your what I highlighted in red above. BTW, I am not impressed with BS phrases like "crystallized the 'atmospheric dynamics' of the soul life", "inner soul gestures" and "inwardly embedded in our soul structure".

[AshvinP]

The bold snowflake, if understood as a testimony to the inner soul gestures from which it condensed, tells us exactly why the 'proof' of archetypal beings is not forthcoming for you. The very thought of your inner life not being entirely "yours" as a private possession is a cause for revolution. Such snowflakes provide great opportunities for us to reflect on our inner organization and bring something to light that previously lurked in the shadows. That 'bringing to light' of the deeper soul structure is the engagement with archetypal beings, even if we don't realize this in crystal clear intuition or concepts yet. Then it is only a matter of further elucidating the testimonies of our thoughts via inner concentrated development and whole new unsuspected worlds will be found inwardly embedded in our soul structure.

I wrote I do not believe there are archetypal beings feeding me thoughts\thinking, not your what I highlighted in red above. BTW, I am not impressed with BS phrases like "crystallized the 'atmospheric dynamics' of the soul life", "inner soul gestures" and "inwardly embedded in our soul structure".

So if there are no beings structuring your thinking, yet your thought-life is not entirely yours as a private possession, then what is it?

Anyway, the point is that there is an obvious connection between your inner revulsion to the idea that every thought you produce is unfolding within a deeper context of spiritual activity, and your lack of 'intuition' for this deeper context. This is like locking ourselves in a windowless basement and then saying the experience of sunlight is not very reasonable or intuitive.

As usual, mostly these things are written for the benefit of others who have put in the work and thereby extract much more meaning from the metaphors and ideas, as they can sense how they intimately relate to their own stream of living experience. If I completely lacked that sense, I wouldn't be impressed by anything written here either.

[lorenzop]

So if there are no beings structuring your thinking, yet your thought-life is not entirely yours as a private possession, then what is it?

There are explanations for thunder (for example) that don't include a god of thunder. The notion that the world is filled with 'trickster gods' has been debunked.

[Cleric K]

The suggestion that our thoughts\thinking is influenced or perhaps sourced from archetypal beings doesn't seem reasonable or intuitive. In fact, if I 'thought' this was the case, I'd revolt and strive for freedom from these tricksters. Why even bother with the having of human beings anyways if it's all tricksters?

Lorenzo, what do you find appalling here? For example, it's hard to dismiss the fact that our thoughts are currently at least partly influenced/shaped by whatever our brain might be. Furthermore, we're stuck in a body, glued to the surface of a planet, shaped by society, common human knowledge, and so on. We don't even have to go into SS here, we can use BK's language: there's something in MAL that corresponds to these constraints. BK also suggests that our dis.bubble is not airtight. It's completely reasonable that our thought processes can be influenced (even sourced) by processes at large.

So the question really is: is this bearable (not urging you to revolt) because you consider these MAL processes to be really mindless? In other words, is what is appalling, the fact that these macrocosmic constraints might be actually something mindful, intentional, meaningful?

In still other words: if the stuff of MAL is instinctive, blind, something like a more refined physical process, then you're completely at peace with the constraints, you don't revolt and don't seek freedom. It's like saying "That's alright, it's just mindless MAL stuff, can't be angry with it. It would be like being angry to a rock."

But if it turns out that there's 'something to be like' these contextual forces, within which our microcosmic existence is embedded, if it turns out that they could correspond to some form of consciousness (obviously very different from our embodied) which is meaningful and intentional, then immediately you feel abused, humiliated, and you are ready to revolt? It's like saying "You dirty MAL, if you were mindless, that would be alright, I wouldn't say a thing, but if you are shaping the evolutionary context based on some meaningful intents - now that's scandalous!"

[lorenzop]

The suggestion that our thoughts\thinking is influenced or perhaps sourced from archetypal beings doesn't seem reasonable or intuitive. In fact, if I 'thought' this was the case, I'd revolt and strive for freedom from these tricksters. Why even bother with the having of human beings anyways if it's all tricksters?

Lorenzo, what do you find appalling here? For example, it's hard to dismiss the fact that our thoughts are currently at least partly influenced/shaped by whatever our brain might be. Furthermore, we're stuck in a body, glued to the surface of a planet, shaped by society, common human knowledge, and so on. We don't even have to go into SS here, we can use BK's language: there's something in MAL that corresponds to these constraints. BK also suggests that our dis.bubble is not airtight. It's completely reasonable that our thought processes can be influenced (even sourced) by processes at large.

So the question really is: is this bearable (not urging you to revolt) because you consider these MAL processes to be really mindless? In other words, is what is appalling, the fact that these macrocosmic constraints might be actually something mindful, intentional, meaningful?

In still other words: if the stuff of MAL is instinctive, blind, something like a more refined physical process, then you're completely at peace with the constraints, you don't revolt and don't seek freedom. It's like saying "That's alright, it's just mindless MAL stuff, can't be angry with it. It would be like being angry to a rock."

But if it turns out that there's 'something to be like' these contextual forces, within which our microcosmic existence is embedded, if it turns out that they could correspond to some form of consciousness (obviously very different from our embodied) which is meaningful and intentional, then immediately you feel abused, humiliated, and you are ready to revolt? It's like saying "You dirty MAL, if you were mindless, that would be alright, I wouldn't say a thing, but if you are shaping the evolutionary context based on some meaningful intents - now that's scandalous!"

Correct, there are many explanations where our thoughts come from other than archetypal beings, for example: karma; stresses in the body; field of pure awareness; and if the mind is elastic and porous, shared ideas\thoughts amongst families\societies\cultures.
As I understand 'archetypal beings', and archetypal beings as a source of thoughts\thinking, this would be like planet Saturn or catness (as inherent identities\essences of reality) feeding me thoughts or influencing my thinking?