Donald Hoffman's search for a mathematical theory of consciousness

[AshvinP]

I'm sure Cleric can respond with more helpful elaborations, but I will only say that we are externalizing thinking (CA) as long we keep looking for some other 'mathematical or algorithmic structure' that should be responsible for shaping sensory experience, besides our own CA. We have to experience how our own thoughts unfold along the curvatures of spiritual intents, including the very thoughts we are thinking now, and then we will naturally understand how sensory experience is formatted through that intimate thought-structure. Of course, this is heavily resisted for many reasons we have discussed at length in previous discussions.

Again I will quote the essay on this point:

For this inverse movement, our verbal concepts should be understood as testimonies to more mysterious ‘curvatures’ that constrain them and along which they stream. When we see a stranger who is walking down the street, we know that the quantitative properties of the arm and leg movements, the walking direction, the speed, and so on, do not exhaust the meaning of the activity – we know the person is also driven by some invisible feelings and desires; walking for some imperceptible purpose. The outer perceptions testify to this invisible inner life. Likewise, our conceptual explorations here can also testify to the shared inner life that animates their movements so long as we keep this nexus in view and approach the descriptions vividly and from the most varied angles.
...
Most people would not be thrilled to discover that their ‘informed’ and impassioned thinking about politics, economics, world events, and so on, is simply an unconscious commentary on the pictures which have filled their soul space throughout the course of life. We could say it is a space of thought-potential from which linear sequences of verbal thoughts collapse, according to how images interfere with one another based on unexamined sympathies and antipathies, likes and dislikes, feelings of pleasure and pain... We don’t know exactly why they lead us to think in one way and not others, to pay attention to certain ideas and not others, to hold certain opinions and not others, etc. As uncomfortable as it may be to confront this aspect of our conceptual life, becoming more conscious of these relations is the path to spiritual freedom.

Oh, I agree with that, being a meditator myself. I have no misconception that DH's CAs theory is only a model, a mental representation of the actual process that happens in the living thinking, and as a mental representation, it is doomed to be inaccurate and abstracted. This is exactly per Cleric's comments in this thread related to the "real hard problem of consciousness". But with such disclaimer, there is still a place for mathematical and other abstracted models of reality. If natural science would not develop such models, we would not have technology and would not be communicating on this forum. We need to appreciate the fact that all modern technology is the product of abstracted scientific models, even though they, by their very nature, are always inherently inaccurate representations of the living spiritual reality.

Yes, but we also have to see how the future is moving in a radically different direction in which these mental crutches become increasingly useless for cultural progress, and often harmful, even for technological purposes. We can say these crutches gave our infant CA a way to interact with the curvatures of spiritual intents without bothering too much about what the latter are and how our lives are embedded within them. They made it easier for us to focus on transforming our momentary state to a broader palette of states that are useful for various Earthly goals. It is like a person who is given a brand new car ready-made and simply needs to learn some basic techniques to get around town, without needing to bother with any of the inner thought-processes of engineering, design, etc. that went into making the car work.

But imagine the car itself is changing such that its functioning becomes more and more reliant on our insightful participation - we now need to know something about the engine, fuel, electrical processes, etc. if the car is to keep running smoothly. This is simply a mechanical analogy for a completely inner and living process of increasing resonance with the spiritual intents that make our mental representations possible. We need to get 'under the hood' of these mental representations and take more creative responsibility for their unfolding. Otherwise, we will find the car starts getting clunky, the steering is not so smooth anymore, the tires lose pressure, it starts smoking from the hood more often, and so forth. That is exactly what is happening to the collective mental life right now because people have refused to grow living insight into what takes place under the hood of their everyday and intellectual thinking.

New progressive technologies that can help us expand our range of interests and goals to encompass the lives of more and more beings simply won't be forthcoming if we don't learn to release the model crutches and swim more freely with the spirit within the curvatures of intents. We have to remember we are dealing with the spiritual process by which all of human culture has evolved since time immemorial and continues to evolve. By gaining more direct and intimate insight into that process, we can creatively steer it in the most fruitful directions for collective human ideals. By neglecting that insight and resting on the crutches adapted to our infant spiritual existence, we end up with increasingly unstable and pathological forms of cultural practices and technology that resemble a small child trying to drive an 18-wheeler.

[Stranger]

Yes, but we also have to see how the future is moving in a radically different direction in which these mental crutches become increasingly useless for cultural progress, and often harmful, even for technological purposes. We can say these crutches gave our infant CA a way to interact with the curvatures of spiritual intents without bothering too much about what the latter are and how our lives are embedded within them. They made it easier for us to focus on transforming our momentary state to a broader palette of states that are useful for various Earthly goals. It is like a person who is given a brand new car ready-made and simply needs to learn some basic techniques to get around town, without needing to bother with any of the inner thought-processes of engineering, design, etc. that went into making the car work.

But imagine the car itself is changing such that its functioning becomes more and more reliant on our insightful participation - we now need to know something about the engine, fuel, electrical processes, etc. if the car is to keep running smoothly. This is simply a mechanical analogy for a completely inner and living process of increasing resonance with the spiritual intents that make our mental representations possible. We need to get 'under the hood' of these mental representations and take more creative responsibility for their unfolding. Otherwise, we will find the car starts getting clunky, the steering is not so smooth anymore, the tires lose pressure, it starts smoking from the hood more often, and so forth. That is exactly what is happening to the collective mental life right now because people have refused to grow living insight into what takes place under the hood of their everyday and intellectual thinking.

New progressive technologies that can help us expand our range of interests and goals to encompass the lives of more and more beings simply won't be forthcoming if we don't learn to release the model crutches and swim more freely with the spirit within the curvatures of intents. We have to remember we are dealing with the spiritual process by which all of human culture has evolved since time immemorial and continues to evolve. By gaining more direct and intimate insight into that process, we can creatively steer it in the most fruitful directions for collective human ideals. By neglecting that insight and resting on the crutches adapted to our infant spiritual existence, we end up with increasingly unstable and pathological forms of cultural practices and technology that resemble a small child trying to drive an 18-wheeler.

I agree. But with all that said, the question again is how to integrate this living insightful approach with mathematics which is by nature a mental abstraction, so that we can continue developing sciences and technologies in more harmonious ways while still using all the power of mathematical tooling.

[AshvinP]

I agree. But with all that said, the question again is how to integrate this living insightful approach with mathematics which is by nature a mental abstraction, so that we can continue developing sciences and technologies in more harmonious ways while still using all the power of mathematical tooling.

I would say this is already being done to some rudimentary extent through spiritual science. These things are only in their initial stages so much of their potential remains untapped. For example, one could look at the work of George Adams and Olive Whicher with projective geometry. There is also the work of Frank Chester. In a certain sense, the current sensory spectrum already embeds limitless spiritual potential that has been impressed into it over the aeons and we just need to find the creative and moral ways of bringing it forth through our CA. We should expect these efforts to take us in entirely unsuspected directions with respect to the mathematical sciences as well as art, religion, etc. Our own self-image will radically transform in this process since we are no longer passive agents analyzing an 'independent world' but everything we livingly study/shape in the surrounding world also shapes us at the same time.

By the way, since we have been discussing QM, Schrodinger's equation, and how it is a symbol for the workings of spiritual reality in relation to the sensory plane, I am interested to hear your perspective on the following quote that was posted on another thread but you may not have seen.

We pay attention only to what actually happens, not to what may be continually happening and which we have escaped. The range of such possibilities is infinitely greater than that of actual happenings.

...All these possibilities which do not become reality on the physical plane exist as forces and effects behind the physical world in the spiritual world and reverberate through it. It is not only the forces which actually determine our life on the physical plane that stream down upon us but also the measureless abundance of forces which exist only as possibilities, some of which seldom make their way into our physical consciousness. But when they do, this usually gives rise to a significant experience. Do not say that what has been stated, namely that numberless possibilities exist, that for example this lecture might have been cancelled, in which case those sitting here would have had different experiences — do not say that this invalidates karma. It does nothing of the kind. If such a thing were said it would imply ignorance of the fact that the idea of karma just presented holds good only for the world of realities within the physical life of men. The truth is that the spiritual life permeates our physical life and there is a world of possibilities where the laws operating as karmic laws are quite different. If we could feel what a tiny part of what we might have experienced is represented by the physical realities and that our actual experiences are only a fractional part of the possibilities, the infinite wealth and exuberance of the spiritual life behind our physical life would be obvious to us.

...Although during the hurry and bustle of daily life people are for the most part disinclined to give rein to feelings of what might have happened, nevertheless there are times in life when events that might have happened have a decisive influence upon the soul. If you were to observe your dream-life more closely, or the strange moments of transition from waking life to sleep or from sleep to waking life, if you were to observe with greater exactitude certain dreams which are often quite inexplicable, in which certain things that happen to you appear in a dream-picture or vision, you would find that these inexplicable pictures indicate something that might have happened and was prevented only because other conditions, or hindrances. intervened. A person who through meditation or some other means makes his thinking more mobile, will have moments in his waking life during which he will feel that he is living in a world of possibilities; this may not be in the form of definite ideas but of feelings. If he develops such feelings he is preparing himself to receive from the spiritual world impressions from human beings who were connected with him in the physical world. Such influences then manifest as genuine dream-experiences which have meaning and point to some reality in the spiritual world. In teaching us that in the life between birth and death karma holds sway, Anthroposophy makes it quite clear that wherever we are placed in life we are faced perpetually with an infinite number of possibilities. One of these possibilities is selected in accordance with the law of karma; the others remain in the background, surrounding us like a cosmic aura. The more deeply we believe in karma, the more firmly we shall also believe in the existence of this cosmic aura which surrounds us and is produced by forces which converge but have been displaced in a certain way, so that they do not manifest on the physical plane.

[Cleric K]

The problem is that mathematics is by nature a mental abstraction. Yet, from the direct experience we know that the sensory experiences are always structured with precise mathematical regularities, and if we want to approach and understand/explain this fact, we need to use mathematics. There is a paradox here, may be Cleric can elaborate on this.

We need to be extra careful here. We know that true paradoxes do not exist. Paradoxes are contradictory thought-flows, like the Barber paradox.

So to solve this paradox we need to investigate the so far unquestioned thinking channels within which our cognitive flow meanders. The problem stems from the very beginning when you say:

Obviously, notwithstanding the undeniable experiential fact that all we know about ourselves and reality is only conscious experiences, it is also undeniable fact that sensory experiences are highly ordered and structured mathematically, and this fact needs to be explained. This is precisely what DH theory is trying to address. Obviously, structured perceptional experiences constitute only a limited set of the totality of our conscious experiences (which includes all kinds of non-sensory experiences that are not mathematically structured), and so, CA theory would have only a limited applicability and cannot be claimed to be the exhaustive theory of consciousness.

The bold part has a factual side - the fact that there's intuited lawfulness of our physical flow - but also an implicit side that secretly gets dragged along and causes all kinds of trouble.

What do we conceive of when we say "sensory experiences are highly ordered and structured mathematically"? The phenomenological thing to say would be "When I think mathematically, when I transform through cognitive states following the rules of calculation, I experience quantities which when mapped to other quantified perceptions, fit very well." This is a safe position because we state only a phenomenological fact. It remains a plain truth no matter what the deeper facts could reveal. When we say that the sensory experiences are structured mathematically, we place stronger demand because we now secretly conceive of a mathematical ghost that governs the sensory transformations.

To put that more graphically we can consider: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." When we take our present conscious perspective as a basis (even if non-dually purified), we are tempted to imagine that God pictured in his divine mind, for example, the planets, then scratched his head and said: "Hmm.. let me see what to do with those... Of all the possible ways they can move, I'll constrain them into elliptic pathways." So God intends his mathematical intuition over the sensory forms (which condense from his divine imagination) and makes sure they conform to the elliptical equations.

This is basically the way these things were approached in the early intellectual days, for example, by Kepler with his orbital equations. These people still had very strong religious feelings and were enthusiastic because they believed that in the mathematical formulas they think the same thoughts of God, that rule the world as laws of nature. For example, Kepler could have imagined that God indeed thought "I will make planets sweep equal areas of their orbital ellipse for the same interval of time." Thus, when we discover this mathematical idea we imagine that we have discovered the ideal law that governs the physical transformations.

Thus, we need to be very careful when we ask questions. Even without noticing, the question in itself already contains a whole hidden framework within which it expects the answer.

If we are careful, we'll see that even in Genesis we are hinted at a deeply esoteric fact (alluded to even in the early pages of PoF by Steiner). The Elohim first do their creative work and then perceive the results (which were good). A miniature manifestation of this process is found all the time in our thinking. We intuitively steer our flow of becoming and then we perceive the sounds of our thinking voice. Normally these are so blurred together that we pay no attention but in meditation, when we try to 'split the now', we can indeed feel our thought perceptions as a receding echo of our invisible intuitive gestures.

One way to metaphorically approach this mystery is through the IFS analogy (Ashvin uses it in the essays and previously it was more graphically expanded in our conversation with Cosmin here). Please, take some time to play with the IFS web tool. Try to feel how the movements of the coordinate frames (the L shapes) produce the most varied forms. Most importantly, try to feel how it is not so easy to predict what the result would be. In a sense, we first do (move the frames) and then we see (whether it is good or not). Then in retrospect we can analyze the forms, find certain mathematical ratios, and so on. But imagine that we don't know how the forms have been produced. Then we take the orderly structured forms and wonder what mathematical thoughts have placed them in such patterns. This leads us to a dead end because the forms were never produced by 'horizontal' patching.

This is only an analogy but it can help us gain some intuition about reality. When we behold the lawfulness of the inner World content, we wonder what mathematical laws have been used to arrange the forms in such a way and constrain their metamorphoses. This, however, is the wrong question to ask, because even the Gods did not produce the forms in such a way. Instead, the individual contextual fields of the Cosmic Mind, intend their intuitive steering (analogous to the invisible L-shape movements) and as a result, the World state implodes in corresponding ways (as if adding Time tree-rings). All this can be so vividly experienced in meditation, only if we are willing to experiment with our inner activity. Our intuitive movements continuously implode thought forms as an integrating memory picture. The perception of the World state is such a Cosmic Memory picture that continually implodes based on the intuitive movements within the mind fields (the morphing vowels exercise is one way to get an intimate experience of this process).

So with all this said, we have to pay special attention to what we are trying to do when we seek the mathematical structure of the sensory world. When we seek the laws of physics we are analyzing only the memory picture of the Cosmos. We try to explain the patterns and transformations of the continuously imploding memory picture through relations that we find entirely within that picture. This holds for formal thinking as a whole. Mathematical thinking, propositional logic, etc. (for pictorial intuition of that I remind of this post) are forms of steering the flow of our states according to rules that we have extracted from the perceptual/memory tableau. Similarly to the quote about language and words that Federica posted, in this way we traverse rigid space of possible cognitive states. The memory pictures dictate the dynamics of our intuitive L-movements. In a sense, we only repeat our past movements in different combinations.

I agree. But with all that said, the question again is how to integrate this living insightful approach with mathematics which is by nature a mental abstraction, so that we can continue developing sciences and technologies in more harmonious ways while still using all the power of mathematical tooling.

The bold part again contains much implicit baggage. All our science and technology can be compared to a function optimization process. Every earthly activity is affected by many variables. We produce technology, tools, yet we modify the World state always in one and the same way - through the intuitive modification of our L-movements and observing the perceptual feedback of the imploding memory picture of the Cosmos. I think the recent advances in machine learning (which is a fancy word precisely for a function optimization problem) clearly show that. More and more scientists become skeptical that there are intellectually graspable mathematical laws of Nature at its foundation (which would imply that old Keplerian thinking - that God animates the World content based on intellectual mathematical thinking). Recent successes in protein folding, complex gravitational simulations, etc., show that we can pretty decently mimic these systems by taking a function with millions of coefficients and tweaking them until the function fits the training data. With this no one is under the illusion that this is how reality works - we simply mimic its appearances (the parts that we can quantify). However, on the positive side, this may help us understand that our traditional physics thinking is not that different after all. It all boils down to realizing that the higher order minds do not move their Ls according to computations in the way we manifest them in our stepwise cognitive sequences. This of course doesn't mean that these L-movements do not exist in certain lawful relations. It's precisely the latter that implode into the Cosmic memory tableau which seems structured and lawful. Morph the Ls - that is, steer our intuitive intents differently - and the imploding picture of the World state morphs too.

If we want to continue developing sciences and technology through the mathematical tooling, we need to support the duality between the inner perceptual/memory picture of the World state and our deeper spiritual activity. We seek mathematical relations within the memory tableau and use that as feedback to change the coefficients of our Ls, through which we manifest the inner activity that builds the technological tools and utilizes them. In short, this kind of science and thinking, feel comfortable only when the movements of the Ls are impelled by patterns contained in the memory tableau. Then these patterns are repeated in different combinations. In other words, our scientific and formal thinking is entirely driven by that which is already past, that which can be discerned as patterns in the memory tableau. Creativity in this sense is simply a lucky coincidence of factors that we can't predict.

To move toward a brighter future, we can no longer consider the Cosmic memory tableau as something separate and ruled by its own mathematical laws, while our subtler being hovers over it and somehow interacts with it. If we see things in this way it is obvious that we could manipulate the sensory panorama only if we understand the laws that govern it. Then from above, we imagine, we could manipulate those laws such that we can guide the sensory metamorphoses in any way we see fit (hopefully morally inspired). This, however, leaves the physical world as an object-in-itself, driven by its intrinsic laws, which are different from whatever drives the flow of our soul and spiritual states. I believe that the IFS metaphor can help us gain an intuition of how these two worlds are One.

So if we can't find the laws-in-themselves that govern the physical world, then how should we perfect our science and technologies? By first perfecting them within our innermost flow of being. We shall start by investigating how we intuitively steer the flow of existence (symbolized with the L shapes) and how this affects the imploding perceptual/memory tableau of the World state. We need to realize that all forces that constrain the movements of our Ls are invisible (supersensible), they are not something that we see in the tableau (although they can be Imaginatively symbolized). In the same way, the Ls in the IFS are not something that we see in the fractal image, yet they guide the recursive implosion.

Today we need to strive for mastering the inner flow. How to steer the imploding movie flow through our intuitive intents, how the latter are constrained, resisted, shaped by those of other beings, along the whole gradient of the Cosmic Mind. As Ashvin noted, the first fruits of this mastery will manifest as inner balance, self-control, healing, etc. However, the more we collectively master our flows and attune to each other and the higher flows, the more harmonious the whole World flow will be.

If we take something like agriculture we see that it is a constant war with pests, diseases, bad weather, and so on. This may seem crazy today, but when we better organize the flow, the whole environment will be steered differently. Some people even today may have experience with this in their gardens, where the moral forces of the gardener overflow the etheric body and positively influence the etheric body of the whole garden, they become fused. It's as if the gardener connects his blood and lymph system to that of the surrounding environment and now his inner strength and immune forces spread out and benefit the common organism.

Yes, such things indeed seem crazy today. It's hard to believe that the gardeners of the future would have to fuse their etheric bodies to that of the garden. Then, just like we have inner experiences within our brain, limbs, etc., so our consciousness expands and have inner experiences in the whole volume of the garden. Then movements of our Ls can implode the World state in a direction that results in better health for our common organism. Then pests, for example, will simply have no interest in the garden. They would find it distasteful, just like a scoundrel has no interest in going to the library.

Here it is very important to realize that we can't achieve this harmonic fusion one-sidedly and become a dictator over the garden. The life processes in the garden are steered by even higher L-movements. It's not about usurping this activity but about attuning to it and guiding it based on the insight and needs within the physical world. When these needs are in tune with the general World evolution, the higher collective beings of the plant world will gladly resonate with our intents because it is for everyone's benefit. Thus we see how morality plays in here. If we want to grow the food only to sell it and use the money for our own personal goals, it might be difficult to find harmonious mutual relations with the higher flow.

Things become even more magical when we reach the physical world. The devices of the future won't be something that utilize our better understanding of the laws of the physical-world-in-itself, but instead will be something like amplifiers of our inner intents. Our L-movements would cascade through the stages of the device and manifest on a larger scale. Here, however, even deeper moral coordination will be needed. Even if we could get our hands on one such future device today, it would simply not work. No one would be able to set it in motion. This is simply due to the fact that the devices don't utilize some hardcoded laws of Nature that are immutable and independent of everything else. This is probably the greatest obstacle to present scientific thinking. It's not about learning the laws of something external to us and then utilizing it, but about flowing together with the inner flow of the lawfulness (the highest order Ls). So it's not about manipulating the law but becoming the law. And since the laws of the physical world are the most universal, so the moral integrity needed for this future technology will be of the highest degree. In a sense, the seeming statistical randomness of our world results from the constant tug of war of the most varied conflicting intuitive intents. The Gaussian randomness is something like the smeared-out average of this tug of war. The future physico-spiritual technology will rest upon the fact that different levels of the mind fields become concentric, as if conspiring toward a common goal. Then it is as if the total wavefunction of the World state becomes 'biased' towards something that deviates from the pure random distribution.

This is a lot to digest but I hope it gives a direction. The most important thing to realize is that as long as we try to reach insight into the laws of the physical world (mathematical or otherwise) we keep conceiving of the latter as something separate that can be manipulated only through the indirection of our mathematical thinking. These mathematical thought-fragments form a screen that stands between our inner activity and the true inner Cosmic activity that moves the Ls. To take part in the implosion in its true nature, we need the inner expansion of consciousness and attunement all the way to the highest order contextual Ls. Of course, before we reach this stage, we need to go through mastery of our personal sphere, then the social/soul sphere (connected also with the ensouled animal world), then the life sphere (shared with the plant world) and only then we can reach the inner reality of the L forces that manifest the implosion of the physical aspects of the World flow. It is not that these should be achieved one by one, in the sense that we need to be fully ready with the social attunement before we proceed with the life spectrum. We are always working on all of them simultaneously, yet the degree to which we can master them depends on the more proximate layers. We can't have our conscious flow expanded in the garden if we haven't organized our personal sphere (which would otherwise continuously collapse the flow into our personal organs, desires, problems, etc.)

[Stranger]

Thanks for the insights, Cleric, I have nothing to disagree here. My only comment is that in the IFS example there is still a computational machinery that transforms our gestures into the resulting shapes. So, the IFS is an interplay of the willing gestures of the player and the "machine" producing the images in the background. Likewise, when we do willing gestures and observe the mathematically structured sensory results, the whole process between the gesture and the result remains hidden from us. I get your point is that the idea that there are some rigid "mathematical-physical laws in place" that do the transformation work is a materialistic paradigm of "the world as a machine" that does not correspond to the living reality of the spiritual world. However, there still needs to be an understanding of how exactly this process works from the perspective of the living spiritual activity. How exactly does it happen that, when we perform our willing gestures and initiate a chain of actions through the concentric hierarchy of the spiritual world, we get back a sensual perception that exactly fits into the Schrodinger equation? That looks like a complete miracle, but if we are in spiritual science, we claim to be able to have a knowledge of the living spiritual processes and structures which should make no room for unexplainable "miracles". I agree that for us the only way to penetrate into these layers is by getting experiential insight into the living reality of this process.

But anyway, that's the point of DH work. Currently there is an explanatory gap in the philosophy of idealism that materialists keep throwing back at idealists: if everything is consciousness, then the appearance of the mathematically structured material world remains a complete "miracle" with no rational explanation whatsoever. This challenge needs to be addressed. Saying that "somehow the spiritual intents of higher order beings get morphed into mathematically structured sensory experiences" may be a good starting point, but it does not resolve the challenge in the scientific way. Whether DH does it right or wrong, at least he tries. If someone has a better or more correct way of doing it, let them try. But so far he is the only one who actually tries. Again, I get your point that he is still going the old "scientific method" way of trying to juggle the abstract math without living experiential insights into the spiritual reality, and I agree that this is where the fallacy of his approach is.

[AshvinP]

Thanks for the insights, Cleric, I have nothing to disagree here. My only comment is that in the IFS example there is still a computational machinery that transforms our gestures into the resulting shapes. So, the IFS is an interplay of the willing gestures of the player and the "machine" producing the images in the background. Likewise, when we do willing gestures and observe the mathematically structured sensory results, the whole process between the gesture and the result remains hidden from us. I get your point is that the idea that there are some rigid "mathematical-physical laws in place" that do the transformation work is a materialistic paradigm of "the world as a machine" that does not correspond to the living reality of the spiritual world. However, there still needs to be an understanding of how exactly this process works from the perspective of the living spiritual activity. How exactly does it happen that, when we perform our willing gestures and initiate a chain of actions through the concentric hierarchy of the spiritual world, we get back a sensual perception that exactly fits into the Schrodinger equation? That looks like a complete miracle, but if we are in spiritual science, we claim to be able to have a knowledge of the living spiritual processes and structures which should make no room for unexplainable "miracles". I agree that for us the only way to penetrate into these layers is by getting experiential insight into the living reality of this process.

But anyway, that's the point of DH work. Currently there is an explanatory gap in the philosophy of idealism that materialists keep throwing back at idealists: if everything is consciousness, then the appearance of the mathematically structured material world remains a complete "miracle" with no rational explanation whatsoever. This challenge needs to be addressed. Saying that "somehow the spiritual intents of higher order beings get morphed into mathematically structured sensory experiences" may be a good starting point, but it does not resolve the challenge in the scientific way. Whether DH does it right or wrong, at least he tries. If someone has a better or more correct way of doing it, let them try. But so far he is the only one who actually tries. Again, I get your point that he is still going the old "scientific method" way of trying to juggle the abstract math without living experiential insights into the spiritual reality, and I agree that this is where the fallacy of his approach is.

I think you are confusing an intellectual expectation for an 'explanatory gap'. The ancient Egyptians artistically rendered their intuition of the lawful sensory transformations in myths and hieroglyphs. Although that didn't help them build computers, it helped them accomplish other practical goals in the stream of spiritual life that we have lost familiarity with. We artistically render our intuition of superimposed states transforming in sequence with Schrodinger's equation. Now we are beginning to recover the ancient intimate knowledge that these superimposed storylines are in fact the contextual rhythms of Cosmic spiritual intents. Why should we expect our mathematical glyphs to be the only way to artistically render that intuition such that we can pursue practical goals in spiritual life (including art, technology, etc.)? If modern people only insisted on moving their thinking through ancient mythological structures to explain the sensory world, we would have never developed any modern technology.

If someone who has only learned arithmetic says, "I will constrain my thinking movements into the glyphs of [+, -, x, /] and from those particular symbols, and those alone, I want you to explain how to explore the intuition of mathematical relations in calculus, otherwise I will claim that you are invoking a miracle", we would rightly dismiss them as myopic and pay no attention to their protests about us expanding the glyphs. Such a person doesn't realize they are applying expectations derived from their limited past states of being onto unfamiliar intuition of future potential within the mental domain. It is the same thing when someone says it's a "miracle" to elucidate the sensory domain through the artistic symbols of karmic laws orchestrated by spiritual intents that flow through our first-person thinking perspective.

Likewise, if they say that an adequate explanation can only be something in which our first-person thinking perspective doesn't participate, they are clinging to past modern habits of analyzing the World state from a safe distance. If they say we can't become the explanation of how spiritual intents manifest the mathematically structured sensory world through our harmonic spiritual activity, then they are simply ignorant of their own spiritual potential. These are not rational arguments but profound misunderstandings of who we are and what reality is.

[Stranger]

Likewise, if they say that an adequate explanation can only be something in which our first-person thinking perspective doesn't participate, they are clinging to past modern habits of analyzing the World state from a safe distance. If they say we can't become the explanation of how spiritual intents manifest the mathematically structured sensory world through our harmonic spiritual activity, then they are simply ignorant of their own spiritual potential. These are not rational arguments but profound misunderstandings of who we are and what reality is.

Yeah, I get your point. You are basically saying that the gap may not be closable in principle within the traditional scientific method of abstract third-person-perspective math modeling approach, and that may very well be true.

[Cleric K]

Thanks for the insights, Cleric, I have nothing to disagree here. My only comment is that in the IFS example there is still a computational machinery that transforms our gestures into the resulting shapes. So, the IFS is an interplay of the willing gestures of the player and the "machine" producing the images in the background. Likewise, when we do willing gestures and observe the mathematically structured sensory results, the whole process between the gesture and the result remains hidden from us. I get your point is that the idea that there are some rigid "mathematical-physical laws in place" that do the transformation work is a materialistic paradigm of "the world as a machine" that does not correspond to the living reality of the spiritual world. However, there still needs to be an understanding of how exactly this process works from the perspective of the living spiritual activity. How exactly does it happen that, when we perform our willing gestures and initiate a chain of actions through the concentric hierarchy of the spiritual world, we get back a sensual perception that exactly fits into the Schrodinger equation? That looks like a complete miracle, but if we are in spiritual science, we claim to be able to have a knowledge of the living spiritual processes and structures which should make no room for unexplainable "miracles". I agree that for us the only way to penetrate into these layers is by getting experiential insight into the living reality of this process.

This is where the concentration of our thinking ray comes into the picture. It's completely true that regarding sensory perceptions (say, looking at the movements of our hand) there's much hidden from view. But in our inner experience it is possible to find an exceptional case.

Even though concentration seems like something static, it still extends in time. Think of a cathode ray and how it must continuously bombard the luminophore to give the effect of a statically luminous point. When we form a thought-image in our mind we concentrate on it as if we want to feel how all our intuitive activity is projected in it. Here 'image' doesn't necessarily imply something visual. Any phenomenon that can be remembered can be called a thought image. Our inner voice can also be used. As we have discussed many times, memory images and thought images are practically of the same nature - the difference is only the direction from which they are projected. As such the sound of our inner voice (or any other thought perception) is like the near instantly manifesting memory image of what we just did with our invisible intuitive activity.

So we concentrate with the intent to close the distance between our intuitive intent (the invisible movement of the L) and the perception image. This is the critical point where much misunderstanding happens. People hear these words and objects: "But this doesn't explain anything. Now you speak of a cathode ray, bombardment, and so on. This is still hidden machinery that I don't see at all. So we're still stuck with an abstract intellectual explanation - a thought-model of the true but hidden from consciousness process." This, however, simply shows that one immediately gives up on closing the distance. One feels more comfortable perceiving the thought images as if further away. The inner activity is very dim and instinctive, and the thought images seem to pop out as if in a dream. This is the hysteresis process that we have spoken about before.



Our intuitive intents are like out-of-phase with the thought images. Concentration aims to spiral this hysteresis process into unity, to bring them in phase. This is initially very uncomfortable. Our intellect needs the hysteresis. It provides the required distance, giving us the characteristic feeling of being a thinker hidden in the background who thinks about things. The trouble is that our intellectual self wants to maintain the same kind of distance even when it thinks about itself. Thus, the intellect conceptualizes itself through thought images of neurons, energy, information, pure consciousness, etc. This gives a false feeling of being in control, as if by holding on to these distanced thought images our intellect has a firm grasp on reality. This is why concentration may feel uncomfortable at first. By closing the distance we can no longer maintain these thought-images and we feel that we are losing ourselves. If we persist, however, we soon find a new way of knowing ourselves. Now we won't know ourselves through distant thought images reflecting our fuzzy opinion of what we are, but we intimately follow as a real-time process how our intuitive intents impress as thought images. This is how we begin to gain intimate intuition of the degrees of freedom of our inner activity and the invisible constraints within which it operates. Thus, the more we are able to intensify our concentration, resist cognitive diffusion and philosophizing in the hysteresis out-of-phase condition, the more the distance closes and we feel our thought images as tightly following our intuitive movements. These last words are no longer models that try to 'explain' how thinking works but are like artistic expression through which we can depict what the experience is like. Thus, they only make real sense when we strive to reach this state so that we can, from our own experience, express it with similar words and images. If we try to understand these words entirely metaphysically, then we're still bouncing in the hysteresis process - we don't reflect images of our real-time inner activity but project thought images that depict our intuition about some theoretical existence.

Now you may ask what this has to do the sensory perceptions. The answer is that ultimately, the whole inner volume of experience - which in its fullness is the totality of the World - is like a thickening thought image, except that it is not a thought image that we single-handedly produce. Our intellectual thoughts are only like 'finishing touches', modulations over the totality of this imploding image. To know the reality of the remaining part of this Cosmic image, we need to close the distance more and more. This leads us to states where we begin to grasp whole bendings of the phenomenal flow as following the curvatures of intuitive activity, just like on a smaller scale we feel our personal mental images as flowing within and reflecting the intuitive curvatures of our intuitive activity.

Let me try to make this really vivid. Try to fill your inner phenomenal space with attention and feel it like an infinite sphere. Here our visual images are not the best, so we should rather feel our inner bodily volume, filled with all kinds of sensations. Then we can imagine how this bodily volume expands. In this way, we shouldn't picture some abstract and speculative phenomenal space but try to feel our experiential volume as a stripped-down version of the infinite sphere. We can conceive this boundless space as white light, however not only light but containing the potential for any imaginable kind of inner phenomena. Then we can imagine how this space is hollowed out, filtered, such that out of the infinite potential only the sensations filling the volume shaped as our body remain. And even they are differently filtered. Normally we find color and auditory 'pixels' in the head region, tactile pixels in other parts of the body, warmth pixels practically in the whole bodily volume, and so on.

Now this complexly filtered phenomenal volume is a mystery. Not only it is wonderous how it has been filtered in exactly this way but it also goes through continuous metamorphosis. Just like in QM, it is as if a mysterious wavefunction continually oscillates and thus makes it more or less probable to find certain phenomenal pixels in certain parts of the volume.



In this mystery, the only not-so-mysterious oscillation of pixels is at the point of our focused intuitive activity. This is the exceptional point in which we have full intuitive awareness of the phenomenal oscillations. Our intuitive intents are fully in phase with the metamorphoses of the phenomenal pixels. Here, in this minuscule spot, we are One with phenomenal space. Again - we can only reach this experience when we stop philosophizing in the hysteresis loop, but instead concentrate all our intuitive activity on the spot in phenomenal space and close the distance as much as possible.

Now this doesn't mean we 'create' the pixels at this spot. We have no right to claim that. What we can claim is only that we are fully united with the temporal law that oscillates the pixels. We simply know in the most intimate way how this tiny segment of the movie flow unfolds.

We can't say the same for the wider volume of phenomenal space, though. In our will, this hysteresis process cannot be so easily overcome. Here we justifiably can say that there's something hidden between our intuitive willing activity and the manifesting oscillations of phenomenal pixels. This distance, however, also can be diminished.

Of course, inner space is not as simple as the animation above. It is extremely complicated, as if the wavefunction is composed of the most varied frequencies with different phase relations.



Yet these oscillations can also be known with the same intuitive intimacy as we know our thinking oscillations. It is all a matter of transforming our state in such a way that our intuitive movements become completely in phase with the oscillations of phenomenal pixels. This path of inner transformation leads us through a whole gradient of intuitive activity that modulates/filters the phenomenal sphere at different scales.

Now what is a being in this context? It's nothing else than a relative experience of phenomenal space where the interference of modulations produces a stable and persistent pattern. We can easily imagine countless relative perspectives where the oscillations interfere in such a way that only phenomenal noise is produced. But when the totality is experienced from within special points of musical interference, and when this phenomenal experience appears as imploding/compressing/integrating (the basis of memory), then we have an intuitive experience of be-ing, of continuity of existence within the metamorphoses of phenomenal space.



These are not simply passive observation points but also points from within which the World state is modulated based on the specific intuition that has been integrated.

It is important not to imagine these relative perspectives as fundamentally spatial. We cannot speak meaningfully about the perspective of another being as being left or right from us. It would be better to picture only one phenomenal space with one center. We understand the other perspectives not by moving spatially but by transforming our perspective such that we can attune to the corresponding intuitive activity and recognize the way it modulates the Cosmic volume. This is especially important to note with respect to the departed human beings and the higher beings. They don't feel that they are placed at a certain point in phenomenal space but instead their intuition integrates a much greater volume of it. For human beings this really depends on the level of development. If the inner life hasn't been organized while still constrained within the oscillations of bodily phenomenal space, to resonate with the higher order intuitive activities that morph phenomenal space at greater scales (by seeking these intuitions through living thinking), the sojourn between death and rebirth passes through a Cosmically expanded state but completely inexplicable and nebulous.

If we grasp this Imagination, we should also grasp the source of the mathematical lawfulness. The higher the perspective of be-ing, the more integrated the phenomenal space feels. For example, for the highest beings, we can say that the phenomenal space indeed feels like something simple and orderly (like the animation with the sphere). Obviously, at such a level we can't speak of consciousness similar to ours, with bodily perceptions, bouncing emotions and thoughts. Yet these Divine beings grasp the boundless phenomenal space as a fractal grid of potential - from the shortest elemental wavelengths, to the longest Cosmic. Their consciousness is simple but nevertheless, within this grid they intuitively grasp any possible state of being that can manifest when it is modulated/filtered in specific ways. Other perspectives of phenomenal space give more partial intuition of the totality and thus their intuitive activity modulates phenomenal space correspondingly. At our human scale we experience a very complicated interference of intuitive intents which filter phenomenal space in correspondingly complicated ways. As the modulations of intuitive intents interfere and diminish the phenomenal pixels at certain points, these oscillations can appear as having permanence (standing waves) that may further feel like moving (this is how things are modeled in QM too, the Gaussian wavepacket below is the sum of all the vertically stacked oscillations)



So we can see that the musically lawful ways through which phenomenal space metamorphoses follow completely naturally from the oscillatory intuitive activity. The key here is to realize that the perspective of phenomenal space that the consciousness of the highest beings encompasses is not like some mind having random fantasies but is very lawful, fractal-like. Only in this way phenomenal space can be experienced as One - through the self-similarity of phenomenal oscillations at all scales. These oscillations form a foundational lattice, which itself goes through rhythmic transformations, thus acts as the archetypal 'carrier wave' over which the eons of evolution are modulated. Over this carrier lattice all possible first-person states of being take shape as complex deviations from perfect self-similarity.

All this may sound very abstract but it is actually easy to intuit. All we need is to transform our thinking habits and instead of thinking about a theoretical world, we should encompass with our attention phenomenal space. Now we don't think about the probability of an electron being found at certain place in the space on the other side of consciousness, but think about the way the 'white light' of inner phenomena is diminished and filtered, how these interferences give rise to the effect of movement (as in the Gaussian packet above), and so on.

Yet the critical key to all this is to find the exceptional point where intuitive activity and phenomena are fully in phase. This is the spot of concentrated thought. Once we establish this point (which initially feels in the head region), it will act as a point of compression around which more and more of the phenomenal volume will be experienced completely in phase with intuitive intents at all scales. This is the destiny of a worldline of be-ing, which follows as a continuous stream the rhythmic unfolding, leading to greater and greater consciousness of the ways in which the World phenomenal volume is modulated and filtered. If we don't develop the strength to establish this in-phase point, we remain in the hysteresis process, where our dim intuitive activity chases the abstract thought images of all written above and can't comprehend how it can be anything more than a wild metaphysical fantasy.

[AshvinP]

Likewise, if they say that an adequate explanation can only be something in which our first-person thinking perspective doesn't participate, they are clinging to past modern habits of analyzing the World state from a safe distance. If they say we can't become the explanation of how spiritual intents manifest the mathematically structured sensory world through our harmonic spiritual activity, then they are simply ignorant of their own spiritual potential. These are not rational arguments but profound misunderstandings of who we are and what reality is.

Yeah, I get your point. You are basically saying that the gap may not be closable in principle within the traditional scientific method of abstract third-person-perspective math modeling approach, and that may very well be true.

Yes, but more importantly, we know exactly why it is true, as imaginatively illustrated by Cleric's latest post. Which, I would say, answers your previous question - "how to integrate this living insightful approach with mathematics which is by nature a mental abstraction" - both descriptively and by exemplifying the answer.

So there is no Kantian boundary being erected where we say, "Sorry, all your mathematical modeling efforts are in vain because the spiritual gestures responsible for sensory experience are off limits until after death". Rather it is shown exactly how their assumptions, expectations, etc. are leading them off course and exactly how to correct that course, such that the original motivations for pursuing mathematical modeling of the sensory world can be realized (assuming they are in harmony with the Cosmic contextual intents). Everything that inspires mathematical scientists and intellectual thinkers in general to pursue knowledge of the World state can be pursued more effectively, organically, and ethically if the appropriate inner sacrifices are made.

[Stranger]

Yes, but more importantly, we know exactly why it is true, as imaginatively illustrated by Cleric's latest post. Which, I would say, answers your previous question - "how to integrate this living insightful approach with mathematics which is by nature a mental abstraction" - both descriptively and by exemplifying the answer.

So there is no Kantian boundary being erected where we say, "Sorry, all your mathematical modeling efforts are in vain because the spiritual gestures responsible for sensory experience are off limits until after death". Rather it is shown exactly how their assumptions, expectations, etc. are leading them off course and exactly how to correct that course, such that the original motivations for pursuing mathematical modeling of the sensory world can be realized (assuming they are in harmony with the Cosmic contextual intents). Everything that inspires mathematical scientists and intellectual thinkers in general to pursue knowledge of the World state can be pursued more effectively, organically, and ethically if the appropriate inner sacrifices are made.

Agree