Nietzsche and Christianity - Metaphysical Idealist Critique

[Eugene I]

For the nondualist this conviction is even stronger because through the experience of removing thoughts from existence one feels that he perceives the whole explanation of the thoughts.

No. I'm not one of those nondualists, I would never claim that. I do not think the experience of the absence of thoughts has any significance, although I experienced it myself many times. There are some practical merits to it, but not of any crucial significance. Neither I would claim that I have the whole explanation of the thoughts.

We should simply make a self-test with us and consider the idea that there may be many hidden layers of spiritual activity, completely unconscious to us, which shape our being and we experience only their end product at the surface as thinking. Pondering on this idea can tell us a lot about ourselves.

Yes, I absolutely admit that.

If we consider the above question in depth we'll reach the conclusion that even though we have reached the core of the intellectual mode of consciousness (in thinking about perceptions), even this liberated mode, looking fully objectively and detachedly on perceptions, is itself still Maya - we simply don't perceive the hidden layers of the spiritual world, on the surface of which we experience our thoughts and identify through them as a liberated no-self.

Agreed

I've talked many times that this can be accomplished only through meditation that follows the thread of our intellectual spiritual activity. Through proper development, this thread leads us to the actual spiritual world where the forces behind our thinking are discovered, and together with this a completely different experience of what we are.

Agreed. I personally spend a lot of my time in meditation as part of my spiritual practice (well, skipped today due to too much typing ), and that is exactly what I try to do: to trace the origins of my thoughts, to see how my volitional acts affect the phenomenal content, to observe the inter-dependence of thoughts, images, volitional acts and phenomenal experiences, to discriminate between the phenomenal experience and acts of thinking and interpretation of that experience, to uncover any unconscious taken-for-granted interpretational thoughts and so on. I humbly admit that I was not able to get to the very root of how the thoughts and phenomenal experiences are formed in the unconscious. In the Buddhist tradition it was perfectly understood and such ground-level unconscious activity was called "Alaya Vijnana", and the Buddhists never claimed that they understand all there is to consciousness. They admitted that the awareness itself and the "mechanism" of its creative unfolding into the variety of conscious experiences and forms it's a great and ineffable mystery.

Now, if you were able to get any deeper than that and have any findings there, please share with us, I would be very interested. But as you might have already seen, I don't accept sloppy answers and theories , unless I can prove them to myself or you can somehow prove them to us.

[Cleric]

Now, if you were able to get any deeper than that and have any findings there, please share with us, I would be very interested. But as you might have already seen, I don't accept sloppy answers and theories , unless I can prove them to myself or you can somehow prove them to us.

Oh no, things like this can't be proven in the usual sense You are literally asking me to prove that 'the one wanting the proof' should experience crossing the gate of death while still in a body.

[Eugene I]

Oh no, things like this can't be proven in the usual sense You are literally asking me to prove that 'the one wanting the proof' should experience crossing the gate of death while still in a body.

Right, so until we leave the body, we are stuck with what we have here in our human state/form and have to work with that and do as much as we can. And we can still do a lot in the spiritual domain, if we don't waste our time on useless activities and concentrate on spiritually beneficial and productive ones. Philosophy also helps on the the intellectual side, with understanding of its limitations. Creative and artistic work helps too, for me at least quite profoundly. Thus, heading back to the meditation cushion

[AshvinP]

I've talked many times that this can be accomplished only through meditation that follows the thread of our intellectual spiritual activity. Through proper development, this thread leads us to the actual spiritual world where the forces behind our thinking are discovered, and together with this a completely different experience of what we are.

Agreed. I personally spend a lot of my time in meditation as part of my spiritual practice (well, skipped today due to too much typing ), and that is exactly what I try to do: to trace the origins of my thoughts, to see how my volitional acts affect the phenomenal content, to observe the inter-dependence of thoughts, images, volitional acts and phenomenal experiences, to discriminate between the phenomenal experience and acts of thinking and interpretation of that experience, to uncover any unconscious taken-for-granted interpretational thoughts and so on. I humbly admit that I was not able to get to the very root of how the thoughts and phenomenal experiences are formed in the unconscious. In the Buddhist tradition it was perfectly understood and such ground-level unconscious activity was called "Alaya Vijnana", and the Buddhists never claimed that they understand all there is to consciousness. They admitted that the awareness itself and the "mechanism" of its creative unfolding into the variety of conscious experiences and forms it's a great and ineffable mystery.

Now, if you were able to get any deeper than that and have any findings there, please share with us, I would be very interested. But as you might have already seen, I don't accept sloppy answers and theories , unless I can prove them to myself or you can somehow prove them to us.

That was going to be my next question to you, Eugene, but you have answered it. We as humans find motivation in concrete plans for ourselves (in a very broad sense of that word). Without those plans, we devolve into stagnation and resentment. But if the plan is "reunite with God in Heaven when He deems me ready" or "be absorbed back into the Cosmic Unity when It deems me ready", then we also eventually devolve into stagnation and resentment because the plan lacks any concreteness to our daily lives. So we need a set of goals nested within each other, some which are lofty and grand and others which are simple and plausible to attain at any given time.

Circling back around to Nietzsche, that was a huge part of his critique of the dominant religious formulations - they focused on ONE goal, in some distant future, which isn't even our goal because it can never be reached through our personal will and ambition, only by some Cosmic grace. In the absence of such immanent personal goals, we stop having reasons to take on the responsibility entailed by setting clear goals and clear standards to reach them. We don't have to take on the responsibility which comes with failing to meet our clearly-defined goals. And without that responsibility, we lose our meaning to exist, i.e. we become nihilistic.

[Cleric]

Right, so until we leave the body, we are stuck with what we have here in our human state/form and have to work with that and do as much as we can. And we can still do a lot in the spiritual domain, if we don't waste our time on useless activities and concentrate on spiritually beneficial and productive ones. Philosophy also helps on the the intellectual side, with understanding of its limitations. Creative and artistic work helps too, for me at least quite profoundly. Thus, heading back to the meditation cushion

Not quite what I meant
Point is, unless the question of death is resolved while in a body, the Earth will quite literally remain the sandbox of pain and suffering. What separates the living from the dead and the higher beings is the form of consciousness. And the question that can't be formally proven but yet everyone solves for themselves is whether the worlds shall be bridged (that is, man evolves in addition to the intellect, forms of consciousness penetrating the higher worlds while still in a body) or the Earth is a fixed domain supporting only one mode of consciousness and everything else happens elsewhere in the beyond.

[Eugene I]

That was going to be my next question to you, Eugene, but you have answered it. We as humans find motivation in concrete plans for ourselves (in a very broad sense of that word). Without those plans, we devolve into stagnation and resentment. But if the plan is "reunite with God in Heaven when He deems me ready" or "be absorbed back into the Cosmic Unity when It deems me ready", then we also eventually devolve into stagnation and resentment because the plan lacks any concreteness to our daily lives. So we need a set of goals nested within each other, some which are lofty and grand and others which are simple and plausible to attain at any given time.

Circling back around to Nietzsche, that was a huge part of his critique of the dominant religious formulations - they focused on ONE goal, in some distant future, which isn't even our goal because it can never be reached through our personal will and ambition, only by some Cosmic grace. In the absence of such immanent personal goals, we stop having reasons to take on the responsibility entailed by setting clear goals and clear standards to reach them. We don't have to take on the responsibility which comes with failing to meet our clearly-defined goals. And without that responsibility, we lose our meaning to exist, i.e. we become nihilistic.

I absolutely agree here, Ashvin. And from my "Buddhist"-shaped perspective, my understanding of Nirvana is that it is not a final stagnant destination, but simply a transformational gate into a different, "redeemed" way of individuated conscious existence that liberates and unleashes the full potential of creative development of consciousness and allows to pursue our own developmental goals, define our own meanings to exist and explore the infinite space of consciousness forms (a-la Hoffman's "Godel candy shop"). By the way, "merging with Cosmic Unity" is a theme that can be often found in the Vedic and particularly Advaita non-dual traditions and writings of their mystics, but nowhere in the Buddhist tradition (and that's why I'm not with the classical Advaita).

IMO, the ability of Consciousness to unfold into the world of forms by "splitting" into both temporal and multiple-individuation domains allows it to unleash its creative "Masculine" potential. If there would be no change and no multitude of individuated spaces of spiritual activity, but only a changeless single-space "Cosmic Unity", there would be no way for the creative potential to express/unfold. So, the fact that Consciousness does such temporal and individuation fragmentation is not "duality" by itself (as it is wrongly understood in some versions of non-dual teachings), neither it is a "dissociation disorder" (as the DID term used by BK may suggest), but it is a very natural way for consciousness to unleash its potential to create and explore forms without ceasing to be a unity in its ontic ground.

I do not believe that "returning" to the changeless single-space "Cosmic Unity" is a telos of the consciousness at large. And even the term "returning" might be inadequate as there probably was never such timeless unity in the first place. Thanks to the Gödel theorem and it's "spiritual" interpretation/extension, the space of consciousness forms is unlimited and can never be exhausted, we can never try all candies in the "Gödel candy shop" of Consciousness, and thus there is no end to the exploration and development of Consciousness.

[SanteriSatama]

or the Earth is a fixed domain supporting only one mode of consciousness and everything else happens elsewhere in the beyond.

The self-destructive aspect of the algorithms at work seem to exclude the possibility that mainstream human consciousness could remain as is. "Things remaining the same" is the most utopian fantasy.

[SanteriSatama]

IMO, the ability of Consciousness to unfold into the world of forms by "splitting" into both temporal and multiple-individuation domains allows it to unleash its creative "Masculine" potential. If there would be no change and no multitude of individuated spaces of spiritual activity, but only a changeless single-space "Cosmic Unity", there would be no way for the creative potential to express/unfold. So, the fact that Consciousness does such temporal and individuation fragmentation is not "duality" by itself (as it is wrongly understood in some versions of non-dual teachings), neither it is a "dissociation disorder" (as the DID term used by BK may suggest), but it is a very natural way for consciousness to unleash its potential to create and explore forms without ceasing to be a unity in its ontic ground.

Nice consensus forming here.

[AshvinP]

IMO, the ability of Consciousness to unfold into the world of forms by "splitting" into both temporal and multiple-individuation domains allows it to unleash its creative "Masculine" potential. If there would be no change and no multitude of individuated spaces of spiritual activity, but only a changeless single-space "Cosmic Unity", there would be no way for the creative potential to express/unfold. So, the fact that Consciousness does such temporal and individuation fragmentation is not "duality" by itself (as it is wrongly understood in some versions of non-dual teachings), neither it is a "dissociation disorder" (as the DID term used by BK may suggest), but it is a very natural way for consciousness to unleash its potential to create and explore forms without ceasing to be a unity in its ontic ground.

Nice consensus forming here.

Indeed! Now how do we get Eugene to accept Christ as his Lord and Savior?? Just kidding... kind of.

[Lou Gold]

IMO, the ability of Consciousness to unfold into the world of forms by "splitting" into both temporal and multiple-individuation domains allows it to unleash its creative "Masculine" potential. If there would be no change and no multitude of individuated spaces of spiritual activity, but only a changeless single-space "Cosmic Unity", there would be no way for the creative potential to express/unfold. So, the fact that Consciousness does such temporal and individuation fragmentation is not "duality" by itself (as it is wrongly understood in some versions of non-dual teachings), neither it is a "dissociation disorder" (as the DID term used by BK may suggest), but it is a very natural way for consciousness to unleash its potential to create and explore forms without ceasing to be a unity in its ontic ground.

Nice consensus forming here.

Indeed! Now how do we get Eugene to accept Christ as his Lord and Savior?? Just kidding... kind of.

I suspect his problem is with Christians (like mine is).