Saving the materialists

[Federica]

As you say, the primary value from these discussions with academic philosophers, comes from training our thinking forces to be more sensitive to intuitive consonances and dissonances within chains of reasoning, as we interact with them and get feedback from conducting our own intuitive activity in that conceptual 'dance'. That sensitivity will be instrumental for our higher development:

Doesn't it sound cynical said in this way?

[AshvinP]

As you say, the primary value from these discussions with academic philosophers, comes from training our thinking forces to be more sensitive to intuitive consonances and dissonances within chains of reasoning, as we interact with them and get feedback from conducting our own intuitive activity in that conceptual 'dance'. That sensitivity will be instrumental for our higher development:

Doesn't it sound cynical said in this way?

Yeah, I guess it could sound that way. It is, of course, the truth, for the reasons discussed and as indicated by the Steiner quote. On the inner path, we shouldn't lose sight of our motivations, especially at the early stages. Primarily it is a self-interested endeavor, and we shouldn't overlay all kinds of imagined virtues on top of it, like we are engaging in all these discussion only to "help others" reach the truth. That is a convenient way to think about it, but rarely overlaps with the underlying reasons for our continued efforts. Then we are little different from the evangelicals who imagine their preaching is only motivated by the pure desire to "save souls".

At the same time, though, we begin to realize that our self-interest on the inner path also coincides with the interest of more expanded spheres of souls that we are entangled with. Unveiling the truthful intuitive consonances and dissonances of spiritual activity, even if motivated by self-interest to begin with, also helps us become sensitive to the best of ways of intimately understanding and interacting with other souls going forward. Perfecting our own soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing concentrically coincides with the spiritualization of Culture, Nature, and the World as a whole.

[Federica]

As you say, the primary value from these discussions with academic philosophers, comes from training our thinking forces to be more sensitive to intuitive consonances and dissonances within chains of reasoning, as we interact with them and get feedback from conducting our own intuitive activity in that conceptual 'dance'. That sensitivity will be instrumental for our higher development:

Doesn't it sound cynical said in this way?

Yeah, I guess it could sound that way. It is, of course, the truth, for the reasons discussed and as indicated by the Steiner quote. On the inner path, we shouldn't lose sight of our motivations, especially at the early stages. Primarily it is a self-interested endeavor, and we shouldn't overlay all kinds of imagined virtues on top of it, like we are engaging in all these discussion only to "help others" reach the truth. That is a convenient way to think about it, but rarely overlaps with the underlying reasons for our continued efforts. Then we are little different from the evangelicals who imagine their preaching is only motivated by the pure desire to "save souls".

At the same time, though, we begin to realize that our self-interest on the inner path also coincides with the interest of more expanded spheres of souls that we are entangled with. Unveiling the truthful intuitive consonances and dissonances of spiritual activity, even if motivated by self-interest to begin with, also helps us become sensitive to the best of ways of intimately understanding and interacting with other souls going forward. Perfecting our own soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing concentrically coincides with the spiritualization of Culture, Nature, and the World as a whole.

There is another way to think about it that is neither "I want to literally pick your brain", nor "I want to help you find the truth". This is: "I am open to have a discussion and we don't know where it is going to lead us, along what lines of force it's going to interfere".

In any case, I would be more interested in continuing on the post just above.

[AshvinP]

Doesn't it sound cynical said in this way?

Yeah, I guess it could sound that way. It is, of course, the truth, for the reasons discussed and as indicated by the Steiner quote. On the inner path, we shouldn't lose sight of our motivations, especially at the early stages. Primarily it is a self-interested endeavor, and we shouldn't overlay all kinds of imagined virtues on top of it, like we are engaging in all these discussion only to "help others" reach the truth. That is a convenient way to think about it, but rarely overlaps with the underlying reasons for our continued efforts. Then we are little different from the evangelicals who imagine their preaching is only motivated by the pure desire to "save souls".

At the same time, though, we begin to realize that our self-interest on the inner path also coincides with the interest of more expanded spheres of souls that we are entangled with. Unveiling the truthful intuitive consonances and dissonances of spiritual activity, even if motivated by self-interest to begin with, also helps us become sensitive to the best of ways of intimately understanding and interacting with other souls going forward. Perfecting our own soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing concentrically coincides with the spiritualization of Culture, Nature, and the World as a whole.

There is another way to think about it that is neither "I want to literally pick your brain", nor "I want to help you find the truth". This is: "I am open to have a discussion and we don't know where it is going to lead us, along what lines of force it's going to interfere".

Yep, and if you embodied this principle more than preaching it, you never would have isolated my phrase and called it "cynical" or translated it into "I want to literally pick your brain", with no apparent goal for productive discussion. This happens way too often across threads these days for it to continue going unnoticed...

In any case, I would be more interested in continuing on the post just above.

Me too, and I will reply soon.

[Federica]

Yeah, I guess it could sound that way. It is, of course, the truth, for the reasons discussed and as indicated by the Steiner quote. On the inner path, we shouldn't lose sight of our motivations, especially at the early stages. Primarily it is a self-interested endeavor, and we shouldn't overlay all kinds of imagined virtues on top of it, like we are engaging in all these discussion only to "help others" reach the truth. That is a convenient way to think about it, but rarely overlaps with the underlying reasons for our continued efforts. Then we are little different from the evangelicals who imagine their preaching is only motivated by the pure desire to "save souls".

At the same time, though, we begin to realize that our self-interest on the inner path also coincides with the interest of more expanded spheres of souls that we are entangled with. Unveiling the truthful intuitive consonances and dissonances of spiritual activity, even if motivated by self-interest to begin with, also helps us become sensitive to the best of ways of intimately understanding and interacting with other souls going forward. Perfecting our own soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing concentrically coincides with the spiritualization of Culture, Nature, and the World as a whole.

There is another way to think about it that is neither "I want to literally pick your brain", nor "I want to help you find the truth". This is: "I am open to have a discussion and we don't know where it is going to lead us, along what lines of force it's going to interfere".

Yep, and if you embodied this principle more than preaching it, you never would have isolated my phrase and called it "cynical" or translated it into "I want to literally pick your brain", with no apparent goal for productive discussion. This happens way too often across threads these days for it to continue going unnoticed...

I haven't isolated it. It was standing in isolated meaning already, in the middle of the post. This is someone you have discussed with in the past. You know where he gravitates as an individual thinker, and throwing him in the "academic philosophers" category that provides such and such use, doesn't seem right to me. And if you don't see possibility of productive discussion in these remarks, it must mean that you do not embody the principle either.

[AshvinP]

I am glad you've come to something like this. It's indeed a fantastic demonstration, and looks to me like an ideal exemplification of what I have been saying (which you steadily opposed) all throughout the Chat GPT thread: the deep connection of language with feeling found in its sound quality on the one hand (mostly overlooked, or overheard, connection today) and its potential disconnection from thinking and meaning on the other hand. This is ingrained not only in Hebrew language specifically, but in the sound of any language. I don't count how many times I mentioned the sound...

Great!

No one denied that, Federica. Anyone who has spent the least amount of time with spiritual science and inner development, would know that. This is not the first time I have contemplated those lectures. So the idea of anyone "steadily opposing" this was read into the conversation by you, but was never there. We have all discussed the 'inner gestures' that we aim to become more sensitive to countless times on this forum, and if we have been understanding that concretely, it means precisely what is demonstrated in that video. The inner gestures are what come to outer expression in the feeling-rich tone, intonation, articulation, etc.

What you seemed to be missing is how we can spiral the inner feeling-imbued gestures that come to expression through artistic language into our dry and fragmented philosophical and scientific concepts, and generally our everyday language usage (which is partly why I added a comment about that with the video). You were leaning toward a hard divide there, a "check valve", not too much unlike JW (which is why I was hoping the previous Steiner quote on how the ancient liberal arts were experienced would be helpful for you as well). That's why you kept quoting the Steiner passage about "thinking in words" as if this was 'proof' that no deeper archetypal meaning can be experienced through our ordinary linguistic scale of thinking. This is why you dislike whenever I try to illustrate the 'smooth continuity' between these strata/scales of our inner activity. When I asked, "When we make mechanical, associative, dreamy thought-connections of experience through our ordinary linguistic cognition, are these completely isolated from the meaningful experience itself?", you replied, "If by "linguistic cognition" you mean language use - Yes, pretty much so."

I'm not sure we can make any progress in this discussion unless we make it much more concrete, so everyone is clear exactly where the issues reside. What is a concrete example of language being disconnected from thinking and meaning, in your view? What determines this disconnect? How do we restore the connection and spiritualize our current linguistic habits of thinking?

It's very easy to find examples in everyday communications we read, listen to, attend to...
There is no need to appeal to a lack of higher cognition to recognize the more or less pronounced disconnection of the flow of words from thinking and meaning. Remaining within plain intellectual thinking, it's common to start a thought and then lack the cognitive strength to lead it properly to completion. Instead, it's common to start dreaming, or flying on the wings of arbitrary, lazy trains of thought that we have frequently witnessed, or to let the vague resonance, or familiarity - as Steiner says - of a word/constellation of words attract the subsequent flow, more or less mindlessly. I said it before, but to repeat: I don't call myself out of these habits of weakness. They are pervasive, and we are all exposed to these common practices. In a way, they are considered best practices, at least very acceptable practices. Without going into politically charged topics, I can give you a neutral example coming from an association surely comprised of well willing people. I was reading the following this morning. They operate for the larger application of genetic sequencing techniques to diagnose child diseases. As a brief example, their homepage states the following about the causes of diseases in children:

Cause

Many people wonder why children get sick with an undiagnosed disease, but since doctors or researchers do not know what kind of disease it is, they cannot know the cause.

Willefonden believes that knowing the reason why one's child is sick, is one of the many important reasons why the child needs a diagnosis.

https://willefonden.se/diagnos/orsak

It's probably not necessary to go through the above in detail. And I've picked something very short: the rest of this site provides various examples of similar dreaming in longer form. And more examples are everywhere. However, regardless of the shallowness of thought and captivation in word-ebbs encountered in everyday communication, LLMs do their thing, and gather from this text associations between - for example - "cause", "reason", "sick", "diagnosis", "undiagnosed"... contributing to the linguistic mapping of “cause” with legitimacy of meaning equalized to that of, say, the Gospel of Saint Matthew.

How to restore the lost connection: we have been discussing this through thousands of posts... Beyond all the possible angles, there is some basic strengthening of cognitive muscles that can be done regardless of higher cognition, to become more sensitive to the derailment of self-sustained trains of thought along weak, idle paths of least-resistance, paths that borrow from worded bits and pieces that happen to be at hand, in whatever contextual correlation. This derailment is facilitated by language, it happens on the wings of words. Words are the sensory vehicle that we borrow in order to disclaim the responsibility to fuel the intellectual process with inner forces, along its entire curve, and to its accomplishment. Dedicated observation of one's mental pictures can help detect, or sense, at what junctures the derailment tends to happen, what cognitive loads are let go of, and what immediate benefits or reliefs they are typically traded against.

Imbuing language with sound and feeling - at a minimum through art, poetry, music, singing, acting, or even simply reading out things (but this latter can be tricky in its own way) - can be another means to develop that sensitivity from the other side of activity. Since language directly connects with both thinking and feeling, it is possible to revive it from both sides...

Ok, so I am going to use another example because I think it illustrates the principles better, which apply just as much to your example as well.

We know our linguistic palette emerges as imaginative replicas of bodily experiences. When we incarnate meaning into the imaginative substance and experience this as the inner voice, we are encoding the meaning we are instinctively steering through into these replicas. As a really trivial example, when we conduct our spiritual activity to travel outside and meet a friend, we may experience the meaning of gloomy coldness in comparison to the meaning of dim mental pictures of cozy warmth and sunshine on previous days, and that whole imaginative complex of meaning gets encoded as the commentary, "How about this weather? It keeps oscillating wildly to the extremes!" Of course, in order to incarnate the meaning in the verbal form 'oscillating', we should have already steered through some bodily or imaginative experience with the meaning of swinging back and forth. There are many other such connections we could draw. Then let's say we get into a whole discussion with our friend about the weather, its recent patterns, global warming, the dangers of industrial civilization, the potential solutions, and so on. This would be a classic example of the dim, associative, dreamy chain of language usage, which however people generally feel is their original, well-reasoned, creative expression of meaning. 

We can first notice how this whole dreamy conversation starts from genuine feedback from the perceptual environment on our spiritual activity, the meaning of atmospheric phenomena that we are experiencing when steering toward the state of meeting our friend. It also involves the feedback we experience when steering our thinking toward dim intuitions of why the phenomena manifest this way, based on prior experiences, beliefs, expectations, knowledge, etc. None of this is arbitrary or random - there are lawful reasons why our spiritual activity has been constrained in this direction. All the relationships we have, the interests we have accumulated, the knowledge we have gained from education, the places in which we live, our physical and psychological sensitivities, and so on, are lawfully related to our higher-order karmic intents. Generally speaking, the World we encounter is continually providing feedback as to how we can better understand and fulfill those intents, except with ordinary physical cognition the meaningful feedback has been chopped up into many fragments.

Now here are some questions to contemplate:

At any point in this conversation do we stop steering through intuited meaning of various intentional curvatures along which our thinking flows, and start manipulating verbal forms within a completely isolated layer of arbitrary or 'random' meanings, disconnected from those underlying curvatures?

Where does the real abstraction from living experience occur? Can we really say it occurs as soon as we incarnate the meaning of the weather phenomena into verbal forms? Or rather does it occur when, based on some myopic and selfish motivations, we start using those verbal forms to philosophize on the 'explanation' of this weather phenomena based on prior beliefs, expectations, preferences, and so on? 

The main point here is that there is nothing that inherently necessitates that the incarnation of meaning into verbal forms is a "disclaiming of responsibility to fuel the intellectual process with inner forces". In fact, the more we incarnate meaning into verbal forms and resist the usual selfish pathways of dreamy philosophizing based on associative mental pictures drawn from classically conditioned experience, the more we fuel the process with inner forces. We develop these inner forces through the verbal forms and we can't attain this result if we shy away from using them. These forms serve as the kindling for our fiery activity. Meditation is simply a way of intensifying that resistance and propelling those inner forces by concentrating our incarnation of meaning into a unitary mental picture - verse, image, theme, etc. - but the underlying principle remains the same.
 
On that note, I would also like to revisit the following principle discussed before and see if you are still reluctant about it. This is a tremendously important principle and will help us orient toward the continuity of meaningful feedback in a concrete way. What is mentioned about "natural science" can also be applied to any situation where we actively conduct our thinking activity against perceptual experience, and even to situations where we have become passive and simply flow along with associative chains stimulated by perceptual experience (including soul perceptions). The reason why is because, at any point along this associative chain, we can actively insert our "I" into its unfolding (awaken) and begin making the feedback process more and more conscious. We are simply awakening to what is already the case, but which has been obscured by our myopic perspective and selfish aims.
 

So the thinking mind that turns its concentrated attention to the sensory spectrum and its lawful transformations is indeed engaged in the same principle we engage in meditative resistance, and that is the inner reason why natural science works. As long as we can avoid imposing our selfishly steered cognitive judgments on the inner experiences that feedback, whether in natural science or meditation, we gain immense insights into the higher worlds and their continual modulation of ordinary sensory life. Our intended thinking flow conflicts with the wider World flow and that feeds back on us as panoramic meaningful images of the inner constraints, which are automatically condensed into verbal scientific commentary. Of course, most natural scientists are unconscious that this is what is happening, and that is why everything generally gets reduced to the lowest common denominator of meaningful feedback, i.e. seemingly external 'laws' that govern nature.

But that shouldn't prevent us from becoming more conscious of the inner reasons for our philosophical and scientific thinking experience (and Steiner's early works, and some later ones, are clearly centered around building this smooth continuity). Many esoteric scientists are engaged in natural science and can form more expansive intuitions against their perceptions and research precisely for that reason, i.e. they have become more conscious of the inner movements that the meaningful sensory feedback points to. As Goethe wrote, "each new object, well contemplated, opens a new organ in me." In this way we can penetrate the archetypal foundations that elucidate the ordinary experiences that we normally assume are 'obvious' or take for granted as something we can 'just do' (like scientific thinking), exactly as Steiner said in that quote. He makes it pretty clear - "so that one can penetrate into the higher worlds through an intensification of the cognitive forces which already exist less intensely in ordinary life and in science." There is endless value that can come from experiencing the inner Unity that brings all these diverse domains of inquiry into harmony with one another.

Cleric mentioned in a recent comment to you, "It is a strange feeling because the more clear it becomes, the more I see how... well.. simple it really is (not the complexity of the World flow but our proper stance within it)." And I feel this is truly the case as well - there is an elegant and profound simplicity to the vertical axis of spiritual activity, which allows us to take the principle of 'meditative resistance' and practically gain insights into the reason why all human thinking inquiries since the dawn of human culture have yielded fruits for progressive cultural development. To know the principle of 'meditative resistance', of course, is to inwardly experience it radiating into our thinking efforts. Steiner often remarked on how higher beings are meditating our current phenomenal space into existence, the same space we meditate on through natural science to recursively reveal insights into the core inner lives and movements of those higher beings. The human initiates seeded the impulses for future epochs through their meditations as well. Modern natural science is simply a less intense manifestation of that same principle - after all, it is precisely through these sciences that the sensory landscape has been and is being transformed. What was once occult has become exoteric.

Even our abrupt distractions within the flow of meaningful feedback of thoughts point right back to these soul curvatures that comprise our Earthly personality, which is an objective aperture of the wider World flow that we can associate with our true 'Individuality' and the living Cosmos as a whole. By gaining some distance on our thinking flow and taking the proper perspective on the distractions and abstractions as meaningful feedback, they start to become direct mirrors of the contextual hierarchy of meaning that we are instinctively steering through. It is of vital importance that we begin to realize this is already the case even with the weather example or the example you provided. Now if we are still on the same page about all of what is said above, and you are concretely orienting to this continuity of spiritual activity and meaning across the curvatures of existence, then that's great. Then the previous confusion between us on the other thread could only have been about JP and LLMs, which it seems has been cleared up as well by Cleric's latest posts (which more elegantly and concretely expressed many of the points I raised before, as usual).

If the LLM is trained on the most superficial cognitive outputs of modern humanity, that just means the mapping that can potentially be extracted through our insightful efforts will reflect back the shallowest layers of the continuous contextual hierarchy of activity-meaning. If it is also trained on the Gospels, etc., then our mapping efforts may yield some reflection of deeper layers of that contextual hierarchy. None of these layers are disconnected from one another, but are overlapping and interrelated like the systems and organs of a living organism. Such principles as those discussed above will necessarily start as abstract, but it is precisely the aim of the intuitive thinking path to make the continuity, overlaps, interrelations, organic connections, etc. between the scales more and more concrete, such that the deadened layers of meaning can be given new life through our expanded spiritual activity. 

This may seem like a contradiction - how can the linguistic layer be dead yet also overlapping with the living layers at the same time? Well, this is like the Schrodinger cat paradox and it's only a paradox from the intellectual perspective. We have to gradually get used to weaving in these seemingly paradoxical situations when it comes to spiritual reality. Death and Life are truly one and the same from more integrated perspectives, and it is precisely by realizing this Unity in our own intimate experience through our spiritual activity that they will spiral together from the ordinary Earthly perspective. The more we try to hold open a discontinuity between the scales of inner activity by finding inherent flaws and faults in the receded outputs of spiritual activity themselves, the more we put obstacles in the way of realizing the underlying Unity. We may keep saying all the right things but secretly we justify the lack of experiential unity by blaming the 'nature of reality' in some way, and wait for the higher experiences to manifest within us from some other direction, when really the latter can only manifest through the already receded forms.

[AshvinP]

There is another way to think about it that is neither "I want to literally pick your brain", nor "I want to help you find the truth". This is: "I am open to have a discussion and we don't know where it is going to lead us, along what lines of force it's going to interfere".

Yep, and if you embodied this principle more than preaching it, you never would have isolated my phrase and called it "cynical" or translated it into "I want to literally pick your brain", with no apparent goal for productive discussion. This happens way too often across threads these days for it to continue going unnoticed...

I haven't isolated it. It was standing in isolated meaning already, in the middle of the post. This is someone you have discussed with in the past. You know where he gravitates as an individual thinker, and throwing him in the "academic philosophers" category that provides such and such use, doesn't seem right to me. And if you don't see possibility of productive discussion in these remarks, it must mean that you do not embody the principle either.

Not at all, it was directly related to the ongoing discussion with Guney and his remarks about the benefits of discussing with someone who is an academic philosopher.

I'd like there to be a productive discussion, which is why my responses are always aimed at moving away from personal opinions back to core principles of the spiritual path, but it takes the effort of two people for that to happen. Do you care to find a way of relating "doesn't seem right to me" to something of core significance for our spiritual efforts here (not just more opinions strung together)? If so, then I am willing to listen.

My original point was not intended to categorize any particular person or make them into a resource for plundering. Like I said, I see how things can sound that way in isolation, just like JP can sound a certain way when we clip phrases, but when are we going to learn the lesson of isolating phrases and making uncharitable judgments based on how things initially appear or sound? How many times do we need to be in error before the pattern suggests to us a different approach is needed?

What I was pointing to is that, on the spiritual scientific path, we are trying to become more inwardly sensitive and conscious of what we, and everyone else, is doing when engaging in dialogues or reading/listening to others. It is simply an inner reality that we exercise our logical thinking force by sensing intuitive consonances and dissonances. Do we want to flow along with this process ignorantly, and therefore continually fall into traps of misunderstanding and mischaracterizing other people, or do we want to make it more conscious and better resonate with their intuitive movements? It's a really simple point. Please, the next time your attention is sucked into particular phrasing, do us a charitable favor and try to see the wider context and resonate with the spirit of what is being expressed.

[Federica]

Yep, and if you embodied this principle more than preaching it, you never would have isolated my phrase and called it "cynical" or translated it into "I want to literally pick your brain", with no apparent goal for productive discussion. This happens way too often across threads these days for it to continue going unnoticed...

I haven't isolated it. It was standing in isolated meaning already, in the middle of the post. This is someone you have discussed with in the past. You know where he gravitates as an individual thinker, and throwing him in the "academic philosophers" category that provides such and such use, doesn't seem right to me. And if you don't see possibility of productive discussion in these remarks, it must mean that you do not embody the principle either.

Not at all, it was directly related to the ongoing discussion with Guney and his remarks about the benefits of discussing with someone who is an academic philosopher.

Güney made remarks about the benefits of discussing with him who is an academic philosopher. He didn't make remarks about the benefits of discussing with someone who is an academic philosopher.

I'd like there to be a productive discussion, which is why my responses are always aimed at moving away from personal opinions back to core principles of the spiritual path, but it takes the effort of two people for that to happen. Do you care to find a way of relating "doesn't seem right to me" to something of core significance for our spiritual efforts here (not just more opinions strung together)? If so, then I am willing to listen.

Definitely. This is the reason why I put my initial remark in soft terms (suggesting it was not your intention), and in question form. The principle is very simple, and I already expressed that. It is that we should care about the individual we are discussing with, listen with neutrality of soul, and all else that is presented at the beginning of "Knowledge of the higher worlds and its attainment." This doesn't seem possible when the known person is categorized back into a profession (imagine if someone you know described the experience of discussing philosophy with you in terms of "the thing about discussing philosophy with lawyers"). And, you did it again when you supposed that my remarks against picking the brain of academic philosophers automatically meant I was recommending "trying to help them find the truth". That's not what I meant, but you (uncharitably?) suggested it.


My original point was not intended to categorize any particular person or make them into a resource for plundering. Like I said, I see how things can sound that way in isolation, just like JP can sound a certain way when we clip phrases, but when are we going to learn the lesson of isolating phrases and making uncharitable judgments based on how things initially appear or sound? How many times do we need to be in error before the pattern suggests to us a different approach is needed?

I certainly need to become more charitable and generous, in a way that is less connected to circumstances. But I never quote in bad faith, with the purpose of severing a text from its context, to make it say what it wasn't meant to say. So for example in the JP quote I shared on the other thread, I wasn't generous enough to read a larger portion of the book and to spend the energy necessary to put myself in his shoes. That's true. But I didn't try to distort his intentions by quoting cleverly, leaving out the next sentence, or similar. I would add, I definitely see I am not the only one struggling with that. I don't know how many times I will need to be in error before I perfect that in myself. How many times do you think you will need?


What I was pointing to is that, on the spiritual scientific path, we are trying to become more inwardly sensitive and conscious of what we, and everyone else, is doing when engaging in dialogues or reading/listening to others. It is simply an inner reality that we exercise our logical thinking force by sensing intuitive consonances and dissonances. Do we want to flow along with this process ignorantly, and therefore continually fall into traps of misunderstanding and mischaracterizing other people, or do we want to make it more conscious and better resonate with their intuitive movements? It's a really simple point. Please, the next time your attention is sucked into particular phrasing, do us a charitable favor and try to see the wider context and resonate with the spirit of what is being expressed.


Ashvin, please know that last night I actually read the previous version of this post, before you significantly edited it. So I have in mind how you characterized me there, and assured me that my "tendencies" are "very obvious to the rest of us". Sparing "the rest of you", and myself, uncharitable speculations on what that may signify, let's notice, though, that doing such edits shows, in itself, that I am definitely not the only one struggling to see the wider context, and resonate with the spirit of what is being expressed.



PS: Incidentally, I am glad to see you refer to core principles in this post. In the other discussion about assisted death - I am not sure if you left it intentionally or not - you pointed to a case by case approach to moral questions, so I am glad to see principles are still important in your case by case view.

[AshvinP]

I certainly need to become more charitable and generous, in a way that is less connected to circumstances. But I never quote in bad faith, with the purpose of severing a text from its context, to make it say what it wasn't meant to say. So for example in the JP quote I shared on the other thread, I wasn't generous enough to read a larger portion of the book and to spend the energy necessary to put myself in his shoes. That's true. But I didn't try to distort his intentions by quoting cleverly, leaving out the next sentence, or similar. I would add, I definitely see I am not the only one struggling with that. I don't know how many times I will need to be in error before I perfect that in myself. How many times do you think you will need?


What I was pointing to is that, on the spiritual scientific path, we are trying to become more inwardly sensitive and conscious of what we, and everyone else, is doing when engaging in dialogues or reading/listening to others. It is simply an inner reality that we exercise our logical thinking force by sensing intuitive consonances and dissonances. Do we want to flow along with this process ignorantly, and therefore continually fall into traps of misunderstanding and mischaracterizing other people, or do we want to make it more conscious and better resonate with their intuitive movements? It's a really simple point. Please, the next time your attention is sucked into particular phrasing, do us a charitable favor and try to see the wider context and resonate with the spirit of what is being expressed.


Ashvin, please know that last night I actually read the previous version of this post, before you significantly edited it. So I have in mind how you characterized me there, and assured me that my "tendencies" are "very obvious to the rest of us". Sparing "the rest of you", and myself, uncharitable speculations on what that may signify, let's notice, though, that doing such edits shows, in itself, that I am definitely not the only one struggling to see the wider context, and resonate with the spirit of what is being expressed.


PS: Incidentally, I am glad to see you refer to core principles in this post. In the other discussion about assisted death - I am not sure if you left it intentionally or not - you pointed to a case by case approach to moral questions, so I am glad to see principles are still important in your case by case view.

Since you have avoided all discussion of spiritual principles in your response, I will keep this brief. The original comment is still valid, but I figured it wouldn't lead to any productive discussion because you would predictably become recalcitrant and defensive when I pointed out how the tendencies were obvious to the rest of us. Editing comments does not "in itself" show anything, except in this case a desire to hold open the potential for discussion of core principles. I see you have declined that invitation.

Of course you don't intentionally aim to misunderstand and mischaracterize people, but you continuously do, anyway. This is the essence of spiritual unfreedom - the results of your thinking experience continually defy your intentions. Why? Precisely because you habitually latch onto isolated phrases and your associated initial feelings, sensitivities, and thoughts about those phrases, also falling into mental laziness to avoid exploring the wider context so as to refine your initial judgments. Instead you rush to spit out your instinctive commentary in a post on the forum.

The irony is that, in these situations, you are exemplifying the associative, dreamy, algorithmic form of thinking while also criticizing it heavily in your posts as if it's an isolated layer of reality. Fortunately for you, it isn't, and it can be redeemed if you work on making conscious and resisting the underlying instinctive habits. "Making conscious" does not mean simply producing more mental pictures imbued with the meaning, "I certainly need to become more charitable and generous, in a way that is less connected to circumstances." It means exercising a deeper scale of inner effort to live in the aura of charity and generosity, to draw on their Cosmic forces to resist initial impulses and judgments on a case by case basis. We will know that you are reaching into these deeper scales of spiritual activity, not by hearing it reported from you, but because we will start seeing less and less (not more and more) of these kinds of posts manifesting.

As for my errors, I am happy to take them seriously once they are pointed out to me. Simply being at tension with your subjective opinions, like about how something sounds "cynical" or about how "assisted death is automatically immoral", is not "error". Was I in error about ML? Was I in error about JP? LLM? Was I in error about sensitivity to intuitive consonances and dissonances on the path of initiation? Was I in error about natural scientific research as a less intense instance of meditative resistance? If you think so, please show me with careful reasoning.

[AshvinP]

Definitely. This is the reason why I put my initial remark in soft terms (suggesting it was not your intention), and in question form. The principle is very simple, and I already expressed that. It is that we should care about the individual we are discussing with, listen with neutrality of soul, and all else that is presented at the beginning of "Knowledge of the higher worlds and its attainment." This doesn't seem possible when the known person is categorized back into a profession (imagine if someone you know described the experience of discussing philosophy with you in terms of "the thing about discussing philosophy with lawyers").

I forgot to address this, which I'm sure you will admit is hardly a line of reasoning about core principles that can stimulate discussion, just a reference to KHW. It's all based on your premature subjective opinion that I was categorizing people, that simply using a designation like "academic philosophers" in a comment means I am setting up some kind of rigid system of "how to interact" based on professions. Perhaps this rushed assumption reflects more about your approach than mine?

It should be self-evident that becoming more sensitive to intuitive consonances and dissonances means exactly listening with neutrality of soul, and all else presented in KHW. That was the whole essence of my response to Guney - that we should inwardly strive to become more and more receptive to what people are actually communicating with their intuitive movements, instead of what we prefer or assume them to be communicating based on rigid templates of past experiences and expectations.

Perhaps you felt insulted by my comment to Guney because you saw it how it applies to your interactions with me (and JP), as exemplified in this most recent one as well. Thus you felt the need to 'push back' somehow and turn my own point against me. And I will admit, I had you in mind as well when writing that post. I was hoping you would take it as constructive feedback, not as an opportunity to illustrate the tendency we should strive to avoid in real-time.