Essay: Spiritual Exposure Therapy

[Federica]

This is a very useful method to bring the intuitive background into awareness. Nonetheless, I think the crux of the problem is sensory perception. When it’s a matter of recognizing the intuitive curvature guiding mathematical inner activity, I guess Kant could agree. Those mental pictures are still on our own side. But it’s with mental pictures of sensory perceptions on the other side of reality that Kant (and the entire epochal approach he represents) remained stuck in the inability to elevate the gaze from the pictures. And that’s where the fear primarily resides also.

I'm curious about this. The way I see it, the combined intuitive curvatures that drag the lawful transformation of our sensory images are the most remote from our intellectual scale of inner gestures. The most proximate to the latter are the mental pictures like the mathematical thoughts, with which we have much more intuitive resonance than the erratic buzzing fly, etc. In that sense, the first sphere of inner activity we need to courageously confront is concealed within our mental pictures, the lawful flow of our philosophical-scientific-mathematical thoughts. We can only reach the deeper scales that elucidate the lawful sensory transformations through the scale of intellectual and imaginative thought-phenomena.

As soon as we become more sensitive to these deeper imaginative gestures, on the other hand, we already begin to experience the sensory flow as more intimately related to our inner life and movements. The receded movements of our soul being are experienced as also shaping much of the sensory landscape that meets us, particularly those domains of the latter that are shaped by human cultural activity. These shadowy and selfish soul movements primarily keep us at such cognitive distance from the 'outer world', which eventually leads to us seeking the 'true cause' of our inner experience in some other reality existing 'behind' the perceptions. Once we confront the Guardian and illuminate these soul movements, then we already begin to know our inner life as superimposed with the inner activity that structures 'outer' phenomena. This is the most important step for modern humanity to overcome its fear of inner activity as we approach the soul-spiritual threshold as individuals and collectives.

I'm curious about this. The way I see it, the combined intuitive curvatures that drag the lawful transformation of our sensory images are the most remote from our intellectual scale of inner gestures.

Yes, that’s why the fear and the difficulty resides there, in the sensory images.

In that sense, the first sphere of inner activity we need to courageously confront is concealed within our mental pictures, the lawful flow of our philosophical-scientific-mathematical thoughts.

I guess that’s one way to go about it. But what if Kant easily agrees with that, but then can’t bridge the same approach to the sensory pictures? After all, PoF tackles the latter upfront, to contrast the Kantian view. There are various ways and I am not absolutely sure “we can only reach the deeper scales that elucidate the lawful sensory transformations through the scale of intellectual and imaginative thought-phenomena.” Perhaps it’s a matter of individual organization? As I said, the way through the scale of intellectual thought-phenomena is surely of great help, but perhaps more attuned to the materialistic mind, detail-oriented, so to say.

Don’t you think a more artistic mind, more in tune with larger ideas, could find a more intuitive path starting from the nature of thinking and memory, as described in PoF (hysteresis) and from there, connecting with spiritual movement, form, and precipitation in matter and its perception? Personally I may have a slight preference for the approach you describe, but it has occurred to me that a more religious mind could find a slightly higher path more walkable, to get to the same realization of superimposition. There, one would prefer to experiment with natural objects, rather than man-made, to “see” the fragmentation of matter coming from its other origin, and from there also realizing the intimacy of perception, and how it happens within us, rather than outside.

Because, it seems to me that the fear of inner activity is, at its core, the fear of matter.

[AshvinP]

This is a very useful method to bring the intuitive background into awareness. Nonetheless, I think the crux of the problem is sensory perception. When it’s a matter of recognizing the intuitive curvature guiding mathematical inner activity, I guess Kant could agree. Those mental pictures are still on our own side. But it’s with mental pictures of sensory perceptions on the other side of reality that Kant (and the entire epochal approach he represents) remained stuck in the inability to elevate the gaze from the pictures. And that’s where the fear primarily resides also.

I'm curious about this. The way I see it, the combined intuitive curvatures that drag the lawful transformation of our sensory images are the most remote from our intellectual scale of inner gestures. The most proximate to the latter are the mental pictures like the mathematical thoughts, with which we have much more intuitive resonance than the erratic buzzing fly, etc. In that sense, the first sphere of inner activity we need to courageously confront is concealed within our mental pictures, the lawful flow of our philosophical-scientific-mathematical thoughts. We can only reach the deeper scales that elucidate the lawful sensory transformations through the scale of intellectual and imaginative thought-phenomena.

As soon as we become more sensitive to these deeper imaginative gestures, on the other hand, we already begin to experience the sensory flow as more intimately related to our inner life and movements. The receded movements of our soul being are experienced as also shaping much of the sensory landscape that meets us, particularly those domains of the latter that are shaped by human cultural activity. These shadowy and selfish soul movements primarily keep us at such cognitive distance from the 'outer world', which eventually leads to us seeking the 'true cause' of our inner experience in some other reality existing 'behind' the perceptions. Once we confront the Guardian and illuminate these soul movements, then we already begin to know our inner life as superimposed with the inner activity that structures 'outer' phenomena. This is the most important step for modern humanity to overcome its fear of inner activity as we approach the soul-spiritual threshold as individuals and collectives.

I'm curious about this. The way I see it, the combined intuitive curvatures that drag the lawful transformation of our sensory images are the most remote from our intellectual scale of inner gestures.

Yes, that’s why the fear and the difficulty resides there, in the sensory images.

In that sense, the first sphere of inner activity we need to courageously confront is concealed within our mental pictures, the lawful flow of our philosophical-scientific-mathematical thoughts.

I guess that’s one way to go about it. But what if Kant easily agrees with that, but then can’t bridge the same approach to the sensory pictures? After all, PoF tackles the latter upfront, to contrast the Kantian view. There are various ways and I am not absolutely sure “we can only reach the deeper scales that elucidate the lawful sensory transformations through the scale of intellectual and imaginative thought-phenomena.” Perhaps it’s a matter of individual organization? As I said, the way through the scale of intellectual thought-phenomena is surely of great help, but perhaps more attuned to the materialistic mind, detail-oriented, so to say.

Don’t you think a more artistic mind, more in tune with larger ideas, could find a more intuitive path starting from the nature of thinking and memory, as described in PoF (hysteresis) and from there, connect with spiritual movement, form, and precipitation in matter and its perception? Personally I may have a slight preference for the approach you describe, but it has occurred to me that a more religious mind could find a slightly higher path more walkable, to get to the same realization of superimposition. There, one would prefer to experiment with natural objects, rather than man-made, to “see” the fragmentation of matter coming from its other origin, and from there also realizing the intimacy of perception, and how it happens within us, rather than outside.

Because, it seems to me that the fear of inner activity is, at its core, the fear of matter.

I think that, phenomenologically speaking, what we modern humans fear the most is the prospect of confronting, resisting, and thereby transforming our soul constitution, i.e. our opinions, beliefs, desires, passions, character traits, etc. The longer we can externalize the true causes of our inner activity into religious beliefs, various intellectual frameworks, and/or mystical visions, the more we can click mental puzzle pieces together that make us feel like we have attained understanding without actually transforming our soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing. It is our shadowy and selfish soul habits that obscure the spiritual foundations (karmic laws) of the lawful sensory flow, since they deeply motivate us to avoid understanding the latter as the lawful consequences of our own receded spiritual activity. That receded activity has fashioned the 'external' context of our present state, i.e. the structure of our living body and the paths of experience associated with it, including our family, community, temperament, language, geography, etc. As long as we can ignore this reality through our assumptions, beliefs, mechanical thinking habits, etc., we can avoid confronting the living feedback of the sensory flow that would naturally lead us toward developing compensatory qualities (virtues) and taking on compensatory tasks.

There are many different conceptual and imaginative approaches that can lead into the vicinity of fulfilling this task of soul purification, such as PoF, the essays on this forum, Scaligero, etc. Yet they all lead to spiritualizing our thinking, to begin with, so we can more livingly discern the way in which our thoughts are modulated on the waves of deeper soul movements, and the latter can, in turn, be gradually tweaked to attain more concentric and harmonious functioning between the nested spheres of our intuitive context. The fear and associated avoidance mechanisms manifest most intensely at this boundary of the inversion horizon, before we have intimately discerned the concentrically nested layers of inner activity. People find the most varied excuses to avoid this discernment because, as soon as we do, the inner axis of becoming is rendered much more transparent to intuitive activity and then it's only a matter of prayerful discipline and persistence. If we fall short in our efforts, as we inevitably will, we are at least fully conscious of how we are falling short and in what direction we can make up the distance, so to speak. We are no longer tempted to project the obstacles onto other human or divine souls that structure the sensory world. As long as we can keep that inner axis obscured by our dead thinking and selfish feeling habits, on the other hand, we can continue feeling justified in our learned helplessness, a victim of the inexorable soul-sensory flow.

A thinker like Kant comes up right against the threshold of inner activity, realizing the futility of endlessly clicking together mental puzzle pieces that mimic sensory perceptions, but cannot discern the immanent presence of his intentional gestures in the act of philosophizing in this way. Since those gestures can't be found as yet more puzzle pieces, they are cast out into the 'noumenal' realm of things-themselves, forever beyond the imaginative movements by which we do philosophy, theology, and science. It only takes the intuitively sparked inversion of perspective, via spiritualized thinking, to discover this immanent presence of 'noumenal reality', though. We must first discover that presence on the 'same side' of our thinking experience, in the deeper soul gestures that modulate the palette of thoughts that we rearrange and combine to form our intellectual outlooks and make our daily decisions. Only by purifying and concentrically aligning those soul gestures can we discover the spiritual gestures that modulate the broader palette of Earthly sensory events.

[Federica]

Ashvin, I apologize, I inadvertently edited your McKenna post, instead of quoting it. Do you happen to still have the original text?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, I apologize, I inadvertently edited your McKenna post, instead of quoting it. Do you happen to still have the original text?

No, but it's ok, there wasn't much additional text. I will try to add some more thoughts on that topic in response to your post tomorrow. I added back the video and Cleric's quote.

[Federica]

Ashvin, I apologize, I inadvertently edited your McKenna post, instead of quoting it. Do you happen to still have the original text?

No, but it's ok, there wasn't much additional text. I will try to add some more thoughts on that topic in response to your post tomorrow.

Ok. I am sorry. Here are the beginning of your post, the link to Clerics post, and the video you shared:

"Revisiting the topic of psychedelics, which I have been trying to contemplate more deeply as a means of phenomenological orientation to our spiritual structure and dynamics, I'd like to share this discussion between JP and Dennis McKenna (Terrence's brother). It fits in very well with the topic of spiritual exposure therapy. Particularly helpful is the section on the 'hierarchy of concepts' and McKenna's response, 'the reality hallucination'. There is also the later section on Carl Rogers and exposure therapy. (another great section is on 'impending mortality', where JP speaks about 'splitting the now moment' to reveal its implicit meaningful structure and mitigate the fear of death)"

[AshvinP]

Revisiting the topic of psychedelics, which I have been trying to contemplate more deeply as a means of phenomenological orientation to our spiritual structure and dynamics, I'd like to share this discussion between JP and Dennis McKenna (Terrence's brother). It fits in very well with the topic of spiritual exposure therapy. Particularly helpful is the section on the 'hierarchy of concepts' and McKenna's response, 'the reality hallucination'. There is also the later section on Carl Rogers and exposure therapy. (another great section is on 'impending mortality', where JP speaks about 'splitting the now moment' to reveal its implicit meaningful structure and mitigate the fear of death)

I remember that post from Cleric. As you keep the focus on this topic, you are doing more than simply deepen phenomenological orientation. Psychedelics are a trap for so many nowadays. Imagine if someone were doing posts and posts on porn, just to help phenomenological orientation, and deeply grasp why people are doing it. I am not saying that psychedelics is porn. But, I am saying that where you keep your focus matters. So I will again try to counter this choice, or, as yourself call it, this like.

I will add some thoughts on my overall perspective here. It goes without saying that we should always try to bring more consciousness to the risks/dangers in spiritual life, not just of psychedelic use but of everything we ingest in our normal diet, the images we allow to permeate our etheric organism, the occult exercises we engage in, and so forth. In what follows I am not trying to convince you of any particular position on psychedelics or argue about the "rightness" of what is written - the overall perspective and approach is as inwardly certain to me as just about anything on the spiritual path. The purpose is only to stimulate our intuitive thinking and put into practice what is otherwise explicated in the content of the words.

What I see in your posts on this topic is a one-sided focus on hypothetical people who may come across a post/essay on psychedelics and take it in the wrong way, ignore the caveats, disclaimers, etc. and simply latch onto the positive words about psychedelic therapy as a means of justifying their latent disposition to indulge in those substances. But by focusing attention on these hypothetical third persons, you lose sight of the first-person and real-time value for the souls on this forum, here and now. This only happens when we start to feel like there is nothing left to learn about aspects of the phenomenal spectrum - we have reached the definitive framework for understanding it - and now the only task is to convey this information to others, warn against risks, pronounce judgments, etc. We feel the whole phenomenon can be safely bracketed off to one side and the main goal is to avoid lending any kind of verbal support to the practice.

Imagine that, instead of writing the numerous phenomenological explorations of psychedelics in response to Lou and others, like the one quoted before, Cleric simply pronounced a few judgments about psychedelics like you are doing now. He said, "Lou, you don't need to mess up your path back to spirit by grinding the higher realities with Ayahuasca - in all circumstances and cases, psychedelics dynamite the labyrinth and you can take my word for it. Just start doing imaginative meditations and you will reach the higher realities and forget about all this psychedelic nonsense." Then neither Lou nor anyone else on this forum would have an opportunity to actually experience their inner activity moving in novel directions as they contemplate the psychedelic phenomenon in its wider spiritual context. 

It seriously helps to just try and feel how the experience of our spiritual activity shifts when meditating on something like Cleric's post versus something like yours above. Do you feel the experience is similar, that they are both opening up new inner degrees of freedom that can explore wider contexts of meaning? All too often we are eager to opinionate and create frameworks about the "path back to soul and spirit", which makes 'spiritual knowledge' much more convenient and readily accessible, but this often comes at the expense of livingly experiencing ourselves on that path, which no doubt requires greater fluidity and effort. The latter experience comes precisely through moving our intuitive activity through the diversity of the phenomenal spectrum, with as much loving interest as possible, and allowing the latter to speak to us from the most varied angles, to enter into a ceaseless dialogue with it that strengthens our soul forces.

Everything unfolding in the phenomenal spectrum is the spiritual world speaking to us and we should vigilantly prepare our soul forces such that we become receptive to this speech instead of letting it pass right through our meager conceptual slots, our rigid palette of opinions and judgments. 

I will choose still one more comparison to make the matter clearer. Suppose someone is a carpenter; he has learnt carpentry and intends to make furniture. In his work as a carpenter he makes certain pieces of furniture and continues to do so for many years. This is his job. But something else happens as well; he becomes more skilful, his manipulations more effective; he acquires something else, inasmuch as his own organism becomes more skilful. This is a kind of supplementary achievement. It is the same with spiritual activities. If, as a botanist, I think and make great efforts for years in the sphere of botany, that is all to the good, but as well as this my mind becomes more flexible. That is also of help. I am better ‘drilled’ than I was some decades ago. Please do not take the expression in its ordinary trivial sense, if I say that the spiritual scientist must have been previously ‘drilled.’ He must use his drilling to make his spiritual powers more mobile, more flexible. Then, when everything that is otherwise practised in the world is placed directly in the service of self-education as happens in meditation and concentration, in the exercises that are given for the purpose of penetrating into the spiritual world—we duly prepare ourselves for this. Please take the words, ‘we prepare ourselves,’ as something infinitely important, for in reality we can never do anything more than prepare ourselves to enter the spiritual world; the rest is an affair of that world itself; the spiritual world must then come to us. It will not do so if we remain in the usual state of human beings on the physical plane. Only when we have transformed our soul-forces in the way indicated can we hope that the spiritual world will come to us. It cannot be anything like investigation in the physical world, for then we go towards the things we are investigating. We can only prepare so that when the spiritual world comes towards us, it will not escape us, but make a real impression upon us.

It must therefore be said: All that we can do to develop the capacity for spiritual investigation is to prepare ourselves worthily, in order that when karma wills that the spiritual world shall confront us, we shall not be blind and deaf to it. We can so prepare ourselves, but the manifestation of the spiritual world is an act of grace by that world and must be thought of as such.

And so to the question: How can one succeed in penetrating into the spiritual world?—the answer must be: We must prepare ourselves by adopting every measure that makes our actions more skilful, more mobile, that trains our thinking, makes our feeling and perception more delicate, more full of devotion. And then: Wait, Wait, Wait! That is the golden rule—to be able to wait in restfulness of soul.

When we really start to experience the otherwise dry and prosaic details of scientific inquiries into the phenomenal spectrum as intuitive sparks, portals to higher intuitions, then skirting past these details because of all kinds of hypothetical risks we imagine we are protecting hypothetical people from, will feel like passing up on a cold glass of water when we are dried out and parched. To quench our spiritual thirst we need to visit the most diverse domains of phenomenal experience and attain an ever-more holistic intuitive grasp of reality. As another comparison, these hypothetical people we imagine we need to defend from the risks of psychedelics function like the 'denied spacetime' (inaccessible noumenal realm) that philosophers imagine to justify their refusal to move their imaginative activity beyond the boundaries of their skin and the present moment. It gives us a convenient feeling of "understanding" entire domains of the phenomenal spectrum and therefore no need to inquire further.

Of course, if we are presenting information about psychedelics (or anything else, like diet or occult exercises) to average people without any more comprehensive context, we should take as much care as possible to provide some of that context and make clear we are not one-sidedly advocating for thoughtless experimentation. But when we are on this forum, and when we are providing some of that wider context and precautions, our reactionary impulses should bear greater scrutiny. They can teach us about our own tendencies to make things easier on ourselves by forming convenient frameworks about this or that topic, which allow us to avoid the hard work of investigating everything in fine and detailed resolution. This is how "approaching the Guardian" goes from something abstract, a step that we need to somehow take at some later time along the path, to more concrete living experience in the here and now. If we feel forced to "counter" things of this nature, then that feeling has something to teach us if we are willing to listen patiently.

Separately from all that, the following discussion is an excellent overview of the detailed scientific method involved in some of these psychedelic studies, for anyone interested in gaining a broader orientation to this continually expanding and unfolding phenomenon. Again, if we feel we automatically cannot approach such a discussion without antipathy and prejudice, this is a feeling we can learn from.

Dr. Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., is a professor of neuroscience, psychiatry, and behavioral science and director of the Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of over 400 scientific research publications and has trained more than 50 postdoctoral research fellows. He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health and numerous pharmaceutical companies in the development of new psychotropic drugs.

Dr. Roland Griffiths and I discuss the research with John Hopkins University. We spoke about how he got into psychedelics and convinced ethic committees to approve such research, why he chose the scientific path, specifics about his studies with psilocybin, transformations of cancer patients with family members, the impact of psilocybin in existing institutions, the ongoing studies he is performing with long-time meditators and religious leaders, how the integration of psilocybin into society may look and more.

[Federica]

Reading your post above, although I agree with the general principle you remind of, I also see the endless list of presuppositions about me and why I write what I write, and I think this is unnecessary, and mostly detrimental to peaceful discussions. Though I don't think it would lead anywhere to go into any details. What I will say is, I listened to the first Q&A in the McKenna video, and I don't understand what relevance you saw there. This doesn't help attenuate my sense that all this psychedelic talk is not the best use of our focus, as I guess one may understand. You said above it was a very relevant conversation, very interesting concept of reality hallucination, etcetera.

But McKenna basically says, like BK :- normally there is a dashboard of perception / we don’t access true reality / but psychedelics eliminate the dashboard and we get direct access / that’s good because the dashboard may be bogged and cause diseases, and with psychedelics one can bypass that, and become free from the flawed dashboard temporarily.
That's his answer. So this “reality hallucination” is nothing else than the dashboard of perception. Then he uses this theory to support the opinion that it may be therapeutic. Then, the whole thing is rationalized by materialistic brain-based explanations: the psychedelics do some rewiring in the circuitry, allow the brain to do a “big reset”, and that’s why you may turn out cognitively better off. In my view, there is nothing interesting in this train of thoughts at all, but only 1. a trite theory (reality hallucination), 2. an attempt to back it up through “science” (psychedelics do some reset of the brain, "like when you reboot your PC"), and 3. the psychedelic experience of entities more real than real. From there, the conclusion that it’s useful to tame our scientific arrogance with psychedelics.

Honestly, listening to these kinds of trivialities doesn't help refine my phenomenological sensitivity, and I doubt it could do it for anyone else. And so I wonder, why did you point to that video? To say it bluntly, for me it was a waste of time, and not because I am rigid and refusing to approach this topic, but because there is nothing of relevance there - not in that Q&A at least, I didn't watch the end. As I said, time is short. It's soon Christmas and there is so much for me to learn, and thousand other crucial lectures and videos, for example on the Christ impulse, the Cosmic Christ, the angelic realm, the evolution of thought, or even just what Güney has written on the other thread. That is such a better use of my time than watching psychedelic enthousiasts in interview with a self-regarding celebrity (and by the way, yes, I do have antipathy for academic people who are advisors for the pharmaceutical industry - one of the most unfathomably corrupt and evil places on this planet, that creates endless and shameful conflicts of interest for "scientists", and endless opportunities for them to contribute to spread greed, fear, and death). So if you and others prefer to binge watch Jordan Peterson and/or endless psychedelics talks for phenomenological exploration, feel free, but for my part, right now I prefer to use my free time to read, listen to, and watch something else, like for example this video on Esoteric Christianity (I am aware I already shared it in the past) and no problem if we are not on the same page.

[AshvinP]

Reading your post above, although I agree with the general principle you remind of, I also see the endless list of presuppositions about me and why I write what I write, and I think this is unnecessary, and mostly detrimental to peaceful discussions. Though I don't think it would lead anywhere to go into any details. What I will say is, I listened to the first Q&A in the McKenna video, and I don't understand what relevance you saw there. This doesn't help attenuate my sense that all this psychedelic talk is not the best use of our focus, as I guess one may understand. You said above it was a very relevant conversation, very interesting concept of reality hallucination, etcetera.

But McKenna basically says, like BK :- normally there is a dashboard of perception / we don’t access true reality / but psychedelics eliminate the dashboard and we get direct access / that’s good because the dashboard may be bogged and cause diseases, and with psychedelics one can bypass that, and become free from the flawed dashboard temporarily.
That's his answer. So this “reality hallucination” is nothing else than the dashboard of perception. Then he uses this theory to support the opinion that it may be therapeutic. Then, the whole thing is rationalized by materialistic brain-based explanations: the psychedelics do some rewiring in the circuitry, allow the brain to do a “big reset”, and that’s why you may turn out cognitively better off. In my view, there is nothing interesting in this train of thoughts at all, but only 1. a theory (reality hallucination), 2. an attempt to back it up through “science” (psychedelics do some reset of the brain, "like when you reboot your PC"), and 3. the psychedelic experience of entities more real than real. From there, the conclusion that it’s useful to tame our scientific arrogance with psychedelics.

Honestly, listening to these kinds of trivialities doesn't help refine my phenomenological sensitivity, and I doubt it could do it for anyone else. And so I wonder, why did you point to that video? To say it bluntly, for me it was a waste of time, and not because I am rigid and refusing to approach this topic, but because there is nothing of relevance there - not in that Q&A at least, I didn't watch the end. As I said, time is short. It's soon Christmas and there is so much for me to learn, and thousand other crucial lectures and videos, for example on the Christ impulse, the Cosmic Christ, the angelic realm, the evolution of thought, or even just what Güney has written on the other thread. That is such a better use of my time than watching psychedelic enthousiasts in interview with a self-regarding celebrity (and by the way, yes, I do have antipathy for academic people who are advisors for the pharmaceutical industry - one of the most unfathomably corrupt and evil places on this planet, that creates endless and shameful conflicts of interest for "scientists", and endless opportunities for them to contribute to spread greed, fear, and death). So if you and others prefer to binge watch Jordan Peterson and/or endless psychedelics talks for phenomenological exploration, feel free, but for my part, right now I prefer to use my free time to read, listen to, and watch something else, like for example this video on Esoteric Christianity (I am aware I have already shared it in the past) and no problem if we are not on the same page.

Yes, and the reason I think my previous points are important is because when we are motivated to not find anything useful for our intuitive orientation, that will condition our perception and understanding of the content we encounter. The plethora of symbolic illustrations and examples that can anchor our intuition and quench our spiritual thirst will pass right through our consciousness. In fact, we may even experience the opposite of what would otherwise result if we approached without prejudice, as you have continually experienced with JP's ideas, and which Cleric also helped elucidate when you asked him about it.

The only reason I bring this up is because, so far, you have not been able to help but chime in with your critical opinions when I decide to spend my time on these things and include references to them in my posts/essays. As indicated, there is no possible way you will convince me to forego moving my intuitive activity thoroughly through the unfolding phenomenal spectrum and discussing the resulting insights, because I have inwardly experienced how this is synonymous with the high ideal of spiritual evolution. It would be like trying to convince me to stop meditation. As Steiner indicated above, this 'drilling' process is just as necessary as imaginative meditation for inner receptivity to the soul-spiritual world. So yes, I also agree that you don't need to spend time on what you feel is simply beyond your ability to get value from, and I hope that includes resisting the critical opinions going forward.

[Federica]

I think that, phenomenologically speaking, what we modern humans fear the most is the prospect of confronting, resisting, and thereby transforming our soul constitution, i.e. our opinions, beliefs, desires, passions, character traits, etc. The longer we can externalize the true causes of our inner activity into religious beliefs, various intellectual frameworks, and/or mystical visions, the more we can click mental puzzle pieces together that make us feel like we have attained understanding without actually transforming our soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing. It is our shadowy and selfish soul habits that obscure the spiritual foundations (karmic laws) of the lawful sensory flow, since they deeply motivate us to avoid understanding the latter as the lawful consequences of our own receded spiritual activity. That receded activity has fashioned the 'external' context of our present state, i.e. the structure of our living body and the paths of experience associated with it, including our family, community, temperament, language, geography, etc. As long as we can ignore this reality through our assumptions, beliefs, mechanical thinking habits, etc., we can avoid confronting the living feedback of the sensory flow that would naturally lead us toward developing compensatory qualities (virtues) and taking on compensatory tasks.

There are many different conceptual and imaginative approaches that can lead into the vicinity of fulfilling this task of soul purification, such as PoF, the essays on this forum, Scaligero, etc. Yet they all lead to spiritualizing our thinking, to begin with, so we can more livingly discern the way in which our thoughts are modulated on the waves of deeper soul movements, and the latter can, in turn, be gradually tweaked to attain more concentric and harmonious functioning between the nested spheres of our intuitive context. The fear and associated avoidance mechanisms manifest most intensely at this boundary of the inversion horizon, before we have intimately discerned the concentrically nested layers of inner activity. People find the most varied excuses to avoid this discernment because, as soon as we do, the inner axis of becoming is rendered much more transparent to intuitive activity and then it's only a matter of prayerful discipline and persistence. If we fall short in our efforts, as we inevitably will, we are at least fully conscious of how we are falling short and in what direction we can make up the distance, so to speak. We are no longer tempted to project the obstacles onto other human or divine souls that structure the sensory world. As long as we can keep that inner axis obscured by our dead thinking and selfish feeling habits, on the other hand, we can continue feeling justified in our learned helplessness, a victim of the inexorable soul-sensory flow.

A thinker like Kant comes up right against the threshold of inner activity, realizing the futility of endlessly clicking together mental puzzle pieces that mimic sensory perceptions, but cannot discern the immanent presence of his intentional gestures in the act of philosophizing in this way. Since those gestures can't be found as yet more puzzle pieces, they are cast out into the 'noumenal' realm of things-themselves, forever beyond the imaginative movements by which we do philosophy, theology, and science. It only takes the intuitively sparked inversion of perspective, via spiritualized thinking, to discover this immanent presence of 'noumenal reality', though. We must first discover that presence on the 'same side' of our thinking experience, in the deeper soul gestures that modulate the palette of thoughts that we rearrange and combine to form our intellectual outlooks and make our daily decisions. Only by purifying and concentrically aligning those soul gestures can we discover the spiritual gestures that modulate the broader palette of Earthly sensory events.

*************

I think that, phenomenologically speaking, what we modern humans fear the most is the prospect of confronting, resisting, and thereby transforming our soul constitution, i.e. our opinions, beliefs, desires, passions, character traits, etc.

The lower self is lazy, obstinate, and weak. It resists the loss of convenience, for sure. More than a fear, I would call this an evil greed - the opposite of self-sacrifice. But beyond that, at a deeper level, I think the fear we feel is the fear of separation, which the material state continually reflects back to us. As a consequence of our experience of separation, the lower self says: “since I have to remain separate, as it seems, let me try to take as much comfort as possible to myself. That's the least I deserve.”

In this sense, I say the main fear is not a fear of possible future inner activity that would dissolve the comforts, but a present fear of the existing state of separation. Separation is the same as matter. Spiritualization of thinking - yes, it has to be the starting point, because there are really no other choices, but the spiritualization of thinking can be introduced in different ways, and what I am saying is: your way which begins from better realizing the intuitive background when counting (as an example) may not help to later transform the experience of the world of matter, along the exact phenomenological path you highlight.

The mystery you referred to speaking of Kant in the "Save the materialist" thread - that he didn’t realize the basic logical error in his train of thought (as shown in PoF) - is an indirect proof of what I am saying. That the mystery occurred. I think it's because he was afraid of matter. That’s why he didn’t see how to break free from mental images. So to repeat, I am not contesting the validity of your step-by-step (which is also the one walked by Cleric in his latest essay series) but I don’t think it's an imperative (you present it as an imperative) for the spiritualization of thinking. It is perfect for the mind coming to spiritual science from a background of materialist orientation, but not everyone is like that.

[Federica]

It's pretty remarkable, I've clicked on this video, while waiting for my next meeting, and what Brian Gray describes here is pretty much what I said above. He uses the example of human relationships, but the human impulse he highlights is the same, we could replace the longing for another human being in the example with longing for unity with the fullness of reality: we have a longing for unity - a fear of separation/matter - and egoism is a result of these workings.

From 04:30 to 11:05:


I think Kant felt this longing for unity with the fullness of reality, which is fear of matter. But he couldn't overcome that fear, couldn't deal with that suffering, coming from the frustrated longing. So he tried to processed it by recursively encircling it in mental pictures (overthinking it, in the video) until he bumped without realizing against the rock bottom of percept (hence the mystery) and when the frustration only kept growing, in proportion with the chased "object" continually escaping union, he came to a point when he gave up, by creating a final negative mental picture of defeat - the unknowable. It's tragic... someone had to take that place in the evolution of human thinking, and it's by no means a satisfying one.