Lou Gold wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:19 pm
Cleric,
I wish you would stop asserting what I don't say. I do not see a contradiction between philosopher and storyteller. I see different direct experiences (stories) resulting in different preferred philosophies (rationalizations). I further intuit that the math-and-physics position of no space-time is correct and from that perspective developmental notions of intent of God or Human make no sense, which is exactly what the mystics say. I further have faith in an instinctively creating loving God that does not distinguish between you and me. Eternity is just in love with the productions of time. I am intrigued by the possibility suggested by Don Hoffman that there may be arising in consciousness an abundance view that will replace the old scarcity view in which competition, striving and conscious intention seem so important and that it may in reality be possible for us to just play in the fields of the Lord. To enter the Kingdom be as a child curious about possibility.
OK, Lou. I only tried to show that I'm not pushing imperative mental models but to describe direct experiences where fully conscious spiritual activity lives in the heart-world, and testifies that the beings in that world don't live unconscious instinctive life but are fully self-aware and wide awake. In fact, our human consciousness looks only like a dim, drunken state in comparison. These beings are what give the messages to the shaman, who teach him about the relations between plants and diseases, about the forest and the animals.
You ask me about direct experience - there, I give it. You and Santeri feel that I'm biased by calling these beings higher. Well, suggest a word then! How would you call beings for which all your thoughts, feelings and will are transparent, who understand what you struggle with, what divides you, what your soul longs for and what is sabotaging it? Beings that see human life in the
real interconnectedness of all life and not in intellectual concepts as we see it. Beings that see when humans are headed for a precipice long before we fall off the cliff, and try to warn us.
SanteriSatama wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:00 pm
"Higher", can't wave at you in friendly manner, because it wants to escape the lower part
What a beautiful description of human class struggles! Yet it has nothing to do with spiritual reality. These beings are and have always been engaged with us. Just as a parents feels joy and happiness when their children grow bright, loving and healthy, so these beings employ their energies to help us achieve our potential and they feel real joy when we do that. But they also feel very specific sadness when humans stray in the paths leading to desolation. It's especially moving to co-experience with them how they feel when human beings simply don't believe that they exist. And there's nothing egoistical in this sadness. They are not spoiled ladies hungry for attention. They are not sad for themselves - they are sad for us. They have long ago overcome the egoistical state. Parents today love their children and make sacrifices for them but there are many who secretly see this as an investment so that when old age comes there would be someone to take care of them. There's nothing of this character above. The beings can take care of themselves just fine. They don't grow old. They only become more and more perfect in Love and Wisdom.
So tell me - how do you call these beings? Lower, deeper, outer, inner, left, right? I don't really care about the word as long as the reality to which it points is understood. Now you'll tell me that there's no right word because you don't
believe that such beings exist or if they exist they are only some kind of blindly-instinctive Cosmic love-energy that glues everything together.
And that's OK. I've always said that these things in no way should be blindly believed. They should simply be experienced
in thought. I can't do more than that. I can only describe experiences. I fully understand that from another's perspective it's not possible to distinguish between description of experience and description of imperative mental model.
And this is also the great difference between the East and the West. Here I don't mean West in the sense of science, business and technology. I speak of the West in the sense of something that is barely visible at this moment, so only those who have eyes to see it and ears to hear it can recognize it. It's a delicate sprout, something vulnerable and weak, which can nevertheless grow into something strong, wise and full of Love. The extract of the West emerges as new thinking, new feeling and new acting, from the ruins of western civilization. This fruit of the West will once again illuminate the mighty ancient Cosmic breadth of the East. The East can't do this by itself - it was shaped in an age where thinking was not yet a thing. It received everything readymade in atavistic Imaginations from the spiritual world. But then the problematic child of thinking appeared and with it the "I". The East has easy solution "Throw that baby into the water, it ruins everything!". That's why the East seeks the pure awareness, it wants to restore the splendor of the past, the times when man was beholding the mighty pictures of other worlds. That's why it sees the thinking "I" as a tumor, as unfortunate happening - the sooner it is removed - the better. But thankfully, the beings that oversee our development know better than this and they are fighting together with us. It's a battle for the spiritual seed of man - something that certain forces want to suffocate and destroy before it has gotten the chance to see the light of day.
As the seed grows and becomes stronger it reaches again at the depths of the Cosmos. The fruit of the West doesn't escape the East, as suggested, but comes to it and fertilizes it, so that Feminine Soul (East) and Masculine Spirit (West) become a unity. The "I" finds again through effort and sweat on the brow the mighty vistas that the ancient Hindus knew. But now they are beheld in full consciousness with full understanding how man relates to them.
You see, there's no need to believe in these things. They can be thought about. And it simply requires that one follows the thoughts to their ultimate conclusions. If one takes the idea of balance between the two Cosmic Principles to the heart, not only as abstract smearing out of differences within the mind, one cannot fail but arrive at conclusions as the above. The very fact that in Eastern mood the Universe is seen as grand instinctive Soul/Void/Awareness (the Great Mother) while the Spirit is seen only as an accidental side effect, and truth is approached by undoing that side effect, is one of the most glaring examples of Cosmic disbalance one can imagine. Yet it is not recognized as such. Just as the example with the seesaws was not recognized for what it was.
And there's a great difference between the ancient Wisdom and what is today breaking its way. Ashvin, Scott and others also feel it in their battles in other threads. It is something very simple. The "I" that penetrates the spiritual structure of reality has certain experiences which the Eastern mind doesn't have - not because it can't have them but because it doesn't want to - it fiercely rejects them. The wide awake "I" does not have any problem to understand the Eastern state. I can testify this for myself. The shamanic state, the no-thought/no-self state, the trance state, the psychedelic state, the sleep and dream states - these are all things that the growing "I" knows and
understands - not theoretically but from direct experience. The "I" doesn't reject the mystical state of awareness devoid of content. It doesn't say "I don't believe that such a thing exists". Quite the contrary - I personally confirm from direct verification that these states exist. But I also confirm the existence of a higher stage of cognition, where the "I" doesn't dissolve but experiences its spiritual sources, within a world of living beings.
That's the great difference between East and West:
The Soul says - "I don't believe in what you say. I outright reject it. From my perspective you are a deluded mind on a power trip, too intoxicated with its 'higher' experiences to notice the fundamental peace of the undivided being"
The Spirit says - "Not only that I don't reject the fundamental peace of undivided being but I fully confirm it from my own experience. But I also testify that the nature of the Spirit can't be derived from whirlpools in the soul waters. We sin against the truth if we are to do this, we fall into Cosmic one-sidedness. It is the Spirit that swirls these vortices in the first place. The Spirit, the creative principle that reveals today within the thinking "I" is only now beginning to organize the soul waters so that the Macrocosmic "I" can discover its reflection in them. The Spirit needs the Cosmic Waters of the Soul to know of its existence and the Soul needs the Light of the Spirit if it's not to remain in deep Cosmic sleep."
So there it is. A point to ponder. A real test for those who claim to love balance of dualities.