KASTRUP AND SHELDRAKE ON THE COSMIC MIND

[Stranger]

The fact of experience is that we feel responsible for thinking, it is our intention which we manifest in the form of thought pictures.
In pure thinking we feel maybe the stressfulness of the process we willed to understand something.

In thinking (active thinking) we feel as the causing force behind the thought forms.
If we fully stay in the given, our thinking feels like our innermost and only (controllable) activity.
We feel like a ego (center of consciousness which is a unique perspective to all others) which can will thought forms into existence.

The given don't tell us that there is only eternal conscious oneness, which dreams every thing.
Even if you have such an experience, you must think in order to grasp it and make it useful to your understanding of the world.

To say that there Is no I means that you must be able to think.
And if you study your thinking, than it's feel like its you own unique becoming.

Here you have direct experience of your own consciousness vs theoretical explanations of your experience

We both agree that thinking (active thinking) is the causing force behind the thought forms, and we agree that it's a spiritual activity and not an "entity". As long as we realize that and do not mistakenly think of it as a kind of "separate self-entity", we can use "I"-pronoun as a linguistic label for that.

But if you ask random people on the street, 99.99% of them will assure you that they perceive themselves as separate self-entities, and not as spiritual activity of aware-thinking-willing. This belief in the reality of separate self is the root of human egotism and the sense-belief of our separation from the rest of reality. So, this is the problem that I was addressing here.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric offers:

The difference would only come when we consider the method of knowing. It's obvious that in our ordinary consciousness we have no sense organ for morphic fields. We know only the bodily senses. Thus when we speak of them, they become abstract theories, they remain only as thoughts in our intellect. So I wouldn't say that I disagree with him but only that if these things are not to remain abstractions, we need also the method Initiation. Man has to find lucid consciousness in the strata where these fields are found as ideal reality, just like we find our thoughts and ideas as reality.

Lou offers:

Doesn't Sheldrake say that we do have senses for energetic fields as when we quite commonly think of someone just before they phone us or when we sense that someone is looking at us and turn toward the exact local. And he speaks of these senses not being limited to humans in the example of dogs knowing when their owners are on the way home. Furthermore, he offers published scientific investigations of these phenomena. How does this fit into your view?

Sure Lou, I'm not saying that Sheldrake doesn't recognize or try to study non-ordinary experiences. Grof, McKenna, and many, many others have been doing nothing but this. The question is that it all remains as impressions across the dissociative boundary. We feel like a soul bubble with our visionary interior, and feel that something impresses in a non-sensory way in our inner experience. A presentiment of a telephone call also impresses in this way. Yet as long as we're stuck with our intellectual modeling inside the soul enclosure, the nature of the spiritual world remains a mystery. This is quite obvious. Even after decades of psychedelic experimentation, people still haven't moved even beyond the first step - they still wonder if this imaginative interior is something real, whether it is just brain hallucination, whether entities truly impress across the boundary or they are just figments of our own interior and so on.

People ponder on the 'sense of being stared at' but there's another such stare that doesn't attract much attention yet although it is far more important. It is the sense that higher Intelligences stare through our inner world. There's a great difference here: they are not on the other side of our soul bubble and staring towards ourselves. They stare from within our soul bubble.

Arguably, the most important being that we should get a sense of being stared by, is the Christ.

Have you considered things from this angle? It's easy to imagine being stared at from another vantage point since this is how things feel in the physical world. But can you conceive that there are higher order Intelligences which stare in your soul not from the other side of the dissociative membrane but from within. Is it conceivable that these Intelligences are active and creative in the region of your hidden life, from whence, for example, conscience emerges? Could it be that the Christ doesn't act from outside, but Inspires from within your thoughts, feelings and actions. He energizes your spiritual activity, just like conscience can give it impetus. In other words, our intellectual ego may exist in the same relation to the Christ as a mask to the real face? Could it be that the intellectual ego is not simply something that hinders our visions impressed from across the dissociative boundary but something that must be educated, ennobled, purified, strengthened, such that its life can become a continuation of a higher spiritual life?

Cleric,

Yes, I've considered, contemplated and communed with the point-of-view you suggest. One of the things it feels like is a shower of gold. Another thing it feels like is an inner peacefulness. And more. No, I'm not there permanently or mostly in that state. The cleaning, firming, giving and devoting are an on-going spiritual work that does indeed change me fundamentally, an evolving as the practice is maintained. Sure, there's a role for the intellectual ego. It might say, "I am not God but I have an ambition" and get on with the real work, which is on our own self. There are lots of tricks and traps presented by the false self like falling into intellectually criticizing the ways of others. One must take care to not go back to sleep.

[Stranger]

Have you considered things from this angle? It's easy to imagine being stared at from another vantage point since this is how things feel in the physical world. But can you conceive that there are higher order Intelligences which stare in your soul not from the other side of the dissociative membrane but from within. Is it conceivable that these Intelligences are active and creative in the region of your hidden life, from whence, for example, conscience emerges? Could it be that the Christ doesn't act from outside, but Inspires from within your thoughts, feelings and actions. He energizes your spiritual activity, just like conscience can give it impetus. In other words, our intellectual ego may exist in the same relation to the Christ as a mask to the real face? Could it be that the intellectual ego is not simply something that hinders our visions impressed from across the dissociative boundary but something that must be educated, ennobled, purified, strengthened, such that its life can become a continuation of a higher spiritual life?

[Lou Gold]

There is an unwarranted hidden premise in the question here, Lou: "thinking is a functionality that something/someone "does" in relation to something/someone else".... But thinking is the foundational constituent of the entire Cosmos!


It constitutes all reality, that is, all intelligences, directly! Not that someone, being outside thinking, does the thinking. It's not that we are a body with an organ that does the thinking and/or some other mysterious agent is doing it for us, unbeknownst to us. Any other impressions that obscure this reality are impoverished perceptions going around in circles in the sensory spectrum, read through the prism of favorite interpretation grids - hopelessly arbitrary.


Let's see beyond the grids, through us. We are a flow of conscious experiences in the process of recovering awareness of its entire depth of being as part of the primordial thinking fluid. Is it possible to take this idea seriously in oneself?

I understand your view that all is thought and do not dispute it. Do you assign any meaning to planes of consciousness or the existence of archetypal beings? How shall we speak of them in the context of all is thought? Is it valid to ask, "who is thinking this thought?"

Do you really "understand my view", Lou?

Nominally, Bernardo Kastrup also holds this view. All is mind. And any other so-called idealist nominally holds it as well! The whole problem is when this remains a “view”, entirely dissociated from the reality of it. One does not do A+B. On the one side, one screams “All is mind! All is consciousness!” only to immediately default back, in everything one thinks and does in everyday life, to an implicit inner stance fully centered in the physical world and in one’s physical body. It’s only from that aliased sensory-bound perspective that one can say “I believe the interesting question is who does the thinking”.

The archetypal beings - as well as all other beings who are not humans, animals, or elemental beings bound to the Earth elements - do not have this problem of dreaming that one’s physical extension is the control tower, the super-partes center of one’s activity. It’s not so much about “speaking of them”, as if they were a reality external to us, to which we apply the abstract tool of thinking so that we are enabled to “speak of them”. It is much more that we search and find the direct experience of our interconnectedness with them, by training our spiritual activity (thinking), so that it can become able to perceive spiritual reality meaningfully, in its non-sense-perceptible foundations in which we and the archetypal beings alike have our true home, our true being.

These higher intelligences (flows of conscious intentions) live in creative awareness at the level of the idea-made foundations of reality, but still beam down their archetypal creative power all the way into the dense layers of matter, and stand in relation with the rest of reality (the rest of the large variety of evolving experiential flows, including us) in a way that could be tentatively depicted - in heavily banalized and flattened manner - as in the picture that I’ve now uploaded in my profile.

Federica,

Please check out my response to Cleric here,

[Federica]

I understand your view that all is thought and do not dispute it. Do you assign any meaning to planes of consciousness or the existence of archetypal beings? How shall we speak of them in the context of all is thought? Is it valid to ask, "who is thinking this thought?"

Do you really "understand my view", Lou?

Nominally, Bernardo Kastrup also holds this view. All is mind. And any other so-called idealist nominally holds it as well! The whole problem is when this remains a “view”, entirely dissociated from the reality of it. One does not do A+B. On the one side, one screams “All is mind! All is consciousness!” only to immediately default back, in everything one thinks and does in everyday life, to an implicit inner stance fully centered in the physical world and in one’s physical body. It’s only from that aliased sensory-bound perspective that one can say “I believe the interesting question is who does the thinking”.

The archetypal beings - as well as all other beings who are not humans, animals, or elemental beings bound to the Earth elements - do not have this problem of dreaming that one’s physical extension is the control tower, the super-partes center of one’s activity. It’s not so much about “speaking of them”, as if they were a reality external to us, to which we apply the abstract tool of thinking so that we are enabled to “speak of them”. It is much more that we search and find the direct experience of our interconnectedness with them, by training our spiritual activity (thinking), so that it can become able to perceive spiritual reality meaningfully, in its non-sense-perceptible foundations in which we and the archetypal beings alike have our true home, our true being.

These higher intelligences (flows of conscious intentions) live in creative awareness at the level of the idea-made foundations of reality, but still beam down their archetypal creative power all the way into the dense layers of matter, and stand in relation with the rest of reality (the rest of the large variety of evolving experiential flows, including us) in a way that could be tentatively depicted - in heavily banalized and flattened manner - as in the picture that I’ve now uploaded in my profile.

Federica,

Please check out my response to Cleric here,

I did. I don't think it brings any answers or comments to what I wrote above.

[Lou Gold]

Is the desire to reach out, to connect, to share love with another, to harmonize, to attain and maintain peace also related to the same idea-feeling of "I"? Is it similarly dysfunctional? If not, why not?

Yes, while we are within the "personal" (separate self) layer, the good desires that you described are also related to the idea-feeling of "I". So, I'm not saying that it is overall always bad or always dysfunctional. But it's still the root of our dualistic state (when we divide the reality into "I" and not-"I"), and duality necessarily involves the swings between polarities. As long as you have the "I"-sense, you are destined to swing between impulses to share and harmonize and impulses to fear and obtain something for yourself. It's only when we transcend to the transpersonal level when we can transcend this polarity-pendulum altogether, can reach to the unconditional love irrelevant to the sense of "I" and can fully liberate our stream of consciousness from the egoic desires rooted in the sense of "I".

Seems also true when we divide into "ego" and "not ego." In spiritual work we must guard against developing an anti-ego ego. I try to focus on the fulcrum rather than the swings. I like the notion of Francis of Assisi that the perfect joy is to have a peaceful heart no matter how the swinging goes.

[Stranger]

Seems also true when we divide into "ego" and "not ego." In spiritual work we must guard against developing an anti-ego ego. I try to focus on the fulcrum rather than the swings. I like the notion of Francis of Assisi that the perfect joy is to have a peaceful heart no matter how the swinging goes.

Right, the "ego" vs "anti-ego" is a vicious cycle of ego pretending to try to get rid of itself. The only way to break through this merry-go-around is to experientially realize the reality of the spiritual activity of the egoless Aware-Thinking-Feeling (ATF) as the source behind the world of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions. The ATF is the same as Christ-consciousness, Buddha nature, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Shiva, Yahwe, Allah - these are just different pointers to the same Reality in different traditions (even though they usually are grossly misunderstood, personified and externalized in the exoteric forms of these traditions).

The reason Francis of Assisi had a peaceful heart was because his heart was rooted in Christ so he could see through the swings by seeing the reality through Christ's eyes.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
― Meister Eckhart

[Lou Gold]

Do you really "understand my view", Lou?

Nominally, Bernardo Kastrup also holds this view. All is mind. And any other so-called idealist nominally holds it as well! The whole problem is when this remains a “view”, entirely dissociated from the reality of it. One does not do A+B. On the one side, one screams “All is mind! All is consciousness!” only to immediately default back, in everything one thinks and does in everyday life, to an implicit inner stance fully centered in the physical world and in one’s physical body. It’s only from that aliased sensory-bound perspective that one can say “I believe the interesting question is who does the thinking”.

The archetypal beings - as well as all other beings who are not humans, animals, or elemental beings bound to the Earth elements - do not have this problem of dreaming that one’s physical extension is the control tower, the super-partes center of one’s activity. It’s not so much about “speaking of them”, as if they were a reality external to us, to which we apply the abstract tool of thinking so that we are enabled to “speak of them”. It is much more that we search and find the direct experience of our interconnectedness with them, by training our spiritual activity (thinking), so that it can become able to perceive spiritual reality meaningfully, in its non-sense-perceptible foundations in which we and the archetypal beings alike have our true home, our true being.

These higher intelligences (flows of conscious intentions) live in creative awareness at the level of the idea-made foundations of reality, but still beam down their archetypal creative power all the way into the dense layers of matter, and stand in relation with the rest of reality (the rest of the large variety of evolving experiential flows, including us) in a way that could be tentatively depicted - in heavily banalized and flattened manner - as in the picture that I’ve now uploaded in my profile.

Federica,

Please check out my response to Cleric here,

I did. I don't think it brings any answers or comments to what I wrote above.

I'm glad you are exploring "pictorial thinking." I love the art medium called "encaustics", which involves hot flowing wax. Mostly it's used in a conventionally painterly way. I used to use it to explore what I did not have words for and its evolving into forms I recognized. It's still hard to give words to it all. Perhaps you can see the process in this old painting of mine, which I recently turned into a monochrome titled "Liquid Light"?

[Federica]

Right, the "ego" vs "anti-ego" is a vicious cycle of ego pretending to try to get rid of itself. The only way to break through this merry-go-around is to experientially realize the reality of the spiritual activity of the egoless Aware-Thinking-Feeling (ATF) as the source behind the world of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

Naturally there's not much of a concrete, actual *way* in recommending to "experientially realize the reality of the spiritual activity of the egoless Aware-Thinking-Feeling (ATF) as the source behind the world of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions".

So how do you go from this statement, or declaration, to a real way, one that can really be walked, to make progress every day? What are your concrete experiential methods?

[Cleric]

Cleric,

Yes, I've considered, contemplated and communed with the point-of-view you suggest. One of the things it feels like is a shower of gold. Another thing it feels like is an inner peacefulness. And more. No, I'm not there permanently or mostly in that state. The cleaning, firming, giving and devoting are an on-going spiritual work that does indeed change me fundamentally, an evolving as the practice is maintained. Sure, there's a role for the intellectual ego. It might say, "I am not God but I have an ambition" and get on with the real work, which is on our own self. There are lots of tricks and traps presented by the false self like falling into intellectually criticizing the ways of others. One must take care to not go back to sleep.

Thank you, Lou!

Yes, the Golden Light is characteristic. Of course, we need to remember that its inner reality is the Light of Wisdom and the Warmth of Love. It is these that the human "I" has to become a conductor and expression of. Through meditation we focus that Light, which ultimately precipitates into clear concepts, but when we find it lacking - prayer is the key. Through prayer the soul opens to breathe in the living Spirit from the depths of existence.