Can Idealism be without thought?

[Lou Gold]

On the other hand, if we at least admit as a possibility that there's something that can be known about the riddle of existence, we'll have to start from somewhere. And assuming we dismiss belief as an explanation, the only alternative is to start from the given.

Just listened to Corbin saying that there's no knowledge, only knowing. That sounds good. Belief comes from belief in knowledge, which is dull. Let's not confuse belief and knowledge with poetry. Let's not translate Einzige und sein Eigentum for worse ("Ego and it's own"), but for better: Unique and its property.. When we speak already from philosophical skepticism, free of belief, free from knowledge, we do hermeneutics. Poetry, hermeneutics and translation. This is how The Given, the Source, The Creative Nothing becomes and flows, in its nominal fake-belief substance of as-if-existence.

Cleric K: One might consider shifting from starting from a 'known' (some fundamental truth), which is the Western approach toward a Shamanic approach of way-finding amidst a great mysteriousness called "doing whatever works."

Santeri: KISS -- Keep It Simple Stupid.

[SanteriSatama]

Santeri: KISS -- Keep It Simple Stupid.

I think it's called my destiny that I'm changing.

[ScottRoberts]

Yes, excellent post. A couple of comments:

But it is rarely taken into account that the experience results from a method of meditation that is being actively sought after. We repel any form of spiritual activity because we believe that by doing so we attain to the grounds of existence.

One might also note that after one "comes down" from the experience one has a memory of it. That means that there is that which persists from before having the experience, through having it, and after it. I would call that the "self", which is to say there has to be a self in order to have a "no-self" experience.

Yet anyone who has dared to break the dogma of no-thought, no-self, can confirm that within a higher state it is in fact possible to have experiences of self-reflecting quality that are not thought themselves but precede thoughts. A common metaphor for this kind of experiences is to picture regular thoughts as standing wave forms within a deeper stratum of spiritual activity. Many meditators would readily agree with such a metaphor but will fiercely oppose the idea that there's a kind of spiritual activity of a self-reflective quality within the deeper stratum. But this opposition is not based on some kind of certain experience that shows beyond any doubt that it's impossible for such a kind of spiritual activity to exists within deeper reality.

The problem here lies not in what the experiences tell out of themselves but in what we seek within the experiences through our preconceived ideas. There's no doubt that it is possible to experience a tranquil state detached from the thought-forming process and thus from the self that this process entails. But this experience itself does not tell us anything of whether there could be other states within which we can experience self-reflective spiritual activity. The only way to confirm the reality of such a state would be to experience it. But this is exactly what mystics will never do because it goes against their beliefs.

Not all mystics Such spiritual activity of a deeper sort has been described by the mystic Franklin Merrell-Wolff:

At the deepest level of discernible thought there is a thinking that flows of itself. In its purity it employs none of the concepts that could be captured in definable words. It is fluidic rather than granular. It never isolates a definitive divided part, but everlastingly interblends them all. Every thought includes the whole of Eternity, and yet there are distinguishable thoughts. The unbroken Eternal flows before the mind, yet is endlessly colored anew with unlimited possibility. There is no labor in this thought. It simply is. It is unrelated to all desiring, all images, and all symbols.

]

It might also be noted that Merrell-Wolff also denies that the "no-thought" experience is fundamental, that there is a higher state in which there is no difference between the "no-thought" state and "thought" state. You might be interested in my essay Tetralemmic Polarity which attempts to put this into a form that can be used as an ontological basis.

But couldn't it be that thinking activity is only a more limited form of a higher form of spiritual activity of self-reflective quality?

Yes, and (according to Rudolf Steiner) it is by thinking about thinking that one puts oneself on a path to accessing that higher form.

[Cleric K]

Just listened to Corbin saying that there's no knowledge, only knowing.

OK. Agree. No knowledge
But let's go even further. Let's unlearn as much as possible. Let's unlearn so far that we are like naked beings into existence. No prior knowledge of anything. Well, let's keep at least language and our ability to discern and describe the contents of experience, otherwise we can't go on with this discussion.

We now find ourselves in a pristine existence or rather - experience is being experienced (we don't know we are "we" yet). How can the totality of this experience be described? Certainly not by saying that we are having a subjective experience of an objective world. We have unlearned ideas like outer world, inner world, self, God, consciousness, awareness, void, etc.

If we are to describe the contents of experience, two things are needed: one - the ability to recognize the "parts" of the experience. Let's call these parts in the most general sense - perceptions. Two - meaning/concepts/ideas that go together with the perceptions. Let's consider the perception of yellow. The color sensation itself can be experienced together with a thought that attached the concept of yellow to the perception. The perception can come and go, there can be many yellow perceptions at once but in all cases it is possible to experience the same concept of yellow in relation to them. At this stage we don't know what this yellow perception represents - could be optical, could be imagined, could be hallucinated. There's nothing in the perception itself to immediately reveal anything about its origins. We encounter is as pure experiences of color. The idea of a hidden world behind the perception can only come later when additional concepts and ideas are connected to it through thinking.

The goal of this exercise is exactly to distinguish what is truly given as a hard fact of experience and what is only later added through thinking about the given.

So within the totality of experience we find perceptions, feelings, will, thoughts, concepts, ideas. All this is given as an amalgamation of experience. Everything moves and shifts. How do we make sense of all this? Where do we start? Is there anything stable within the given that we can anchor the experience to?

This is how The Given, the Source, The Creative Nothing becomes and flows, in its nominal fake-belief substance of as-if-existence.

This sounds beautiful but do we really find it in the given? Is it really something we find confronting us as a fact or is it something that we attain to only later? What is the Source? What is the Creative Nothing? Is it a perception, feeling, thought, idea that we find within the given? If it's not part of the initial given, can we describe a path that leads us from the given to the reality of these ideas?

[Cleric K]

You might be interested in my essay Tetralemmic Polarity which attempts to put this into a form that can be used as an ontological basis.

Thank you, Scott, for your comments!
I started exploring your site few months ago but obviously I got distracted. Thank you for reminding me, I'll read it.

Yes, and (according to Rudolf Steiner) it is by thinking about thinking that one puts oneself on a path to accessing that higher form.

Yes! Actually my question was a provocation in exactly this direction. I was interested to see what the general mood on such topics is. Clearly, the no-thought/no-self paradigm seems to be much more "in fashion" these days. Probably because it is such a convenient and easy step for upgrading a materialistic outlook into a spiritual one.

[Eugene I]

But couldn't it be that thinking activity is only a more limited form of a higher form of spiritual activity of self-reflective quality?

It certainly could. And even more, thinking self-reflective activity can be only a more limited form of a higher form of spiritual activity of non-self-reflective thinking. Cleric, you presented a bi-polar dichotomy of only two possibilities: self-reflecting thinking and "mystical" experience of non-self-reflecting non-thinking. This is because, based on your and most other peoples experience, any thinking can only be self-reflective. But that is not true, as many advanced practitioners of non-dual practices will testify that it is quite possible to have non-self-reflective thinking. In other words, the "mystical" experience of no-self has nothing to to with non-thinking (although often it is first discovered in the experience of non-thinking or a transcendence of thinking). You can be perfectly functional and thinking individual existing in a state of consciousness transcending the self. That does not mean that self-reflection or self-reference completely disintegrates. It can still be present but in a limited and relative way with clear realization that such self reflectiveness is only functional but not absolute in any way. It may be true that the ideation of "I" is one of the pre-conceived or a-priori ideations that we possess as human forms of consciousness, but that does not necessarily mean that it corresponds to or reflects any actual or ontic reality of "I".

which is to say there has to be a self in order to have a "no-self" experience

How about the other way around: there has to be a non-self in order for the experience of "self" to arise in it. In this way the "self" actually exists and it is real, but only as a phenomenon. It is as real as the experience of color or taste or thought, and in fact, it is essentially a meaning of a thought, and in that sense it is real. But you can not experientially find any other aspect of reality of "self" other than the meaning of a thought about the "self".

[Eugene I]

So within the totality of experience we find perceptions, feelings, will, thoughts, concepts, ideas. All this is given as an amalgamation of experience. Everything moves and shifts. How do we make sense of all this? Where do we start? Is there anything stable within the given that we can anchor the experience to?

There definitely is: it is the ever-present awareness of any perceptions, feelings, will, thoughts, concepts, ideas. The perceptions, feelings, will, thoughts, concepts, ideas are always changing and fleeting, the awareness of them never changes, it does not move and does not shift, it is ever-stable and all other experiences are anchored to it and inseparable from it. If there would be no awareness, no experience of any perceptions, feelings, will, thoughts, concepts, ideas would ever be possible. Also, it is possible to experience the absence of perceptions, feelings, will, thoughts, concepts, ideas, but it is not possible in principle to experience the absence of awareness. So this is where we start and where we end. If you want to call this awareness as "self", that's fine, but such "self" has nothing to do with self-reflectiveness of our thinking or with any ideation of "I". Awareness is simply what it is how we know it directly and experientially here and now prior to any thinking about it, self-reflecting or analyzing it, and so it does not matter how we label it linguistically as long as we do not confuse it with some other irrelevant phenomenon or ideation.

In other words, experientially this awareness is simply the very presence of every conscious experience, or simply the very "experiencing" of it. But it is our habitual (and one can argue: pre-conceived or a-priori) dualistic thinking pattern that associates the awareness with the idea of "I" as the subject of awareness ("I am ware of ..."). But if we simply look at our direct conscious experience we will only find the "experiencing" and never the "I" that experiences. The "I' is simply a cognitive extrapolation of the direct experience. It is quite similar to our habitual naive realistic or materialistic perception, where we habitually and unconsciously interpret our experiences as the experiences of some "real objects" of the external material world. The dichotomy of subject><object is so deeply programmed in our cognitive patterns that even when we dispel materialism and get rid of the misconceptions of "external objects", we still hold to the concept of the "internal subject". But this is only the first step of the process of emancipation and liberation of consciousness. Transcendence of this subject><object dichotomy in a full sense means the transcendence of both the objects and the subject.

[SanteriSatama]

Well, let's keep at least language and our ability to discern and describe the contents of experience, otherwise we can't go on with this discussion.

We now find ourselves in a pristine existence or rather - experience is being experienced (we don't know we are "we" yet). How can the totality of this experience be described?

Ollaan.

This (in)complete asubjective being can be uttered effortlessly in Finnish, but not in European language. "Totality" tastes already too much like transcendental subject, and the asubjective verb can speak also from the pre-"middle" of perfective and imperfective aspect. Distinction yet uncreated and/or paused, like subject-object distinction.

The fully grammatical sentence "Ollaan." sounds about as bare as language can get. The expression can be listened as a bottomless well of the indefinite, pure being. Not even qualia need to be present as content of a container. Yet the verb does not imply nihilism, a state of non-sentience. First referred (carried again) into language is sense of being, which philosophical terminology can try to discuss as "bodily awareness" or "self".

The goal of this exercise is exactly to distinguish what is truly given as a hard fact of experience and what is only later added through thinking about the given.

We agreed to practice knowing by discussing in language. Nice thing about linguistic turn is that it enables to really turn and walk back from distinctions forced by grammar of European language, and sink into more primitive, primal language.

How do we make sense of all this? Where do we start? Is there anything stable within the given that we can anchor the experience to?

The metaphor of the bog, a central theme in poetry of Seamus Heaney, can sing this sinking away from anything stable and fixed.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric K,

I was interested to see what the general mood on such topics is. Clearly, the no-thought/no-self paradigm seems to be much more "in fashion" these days. Probably because it is such a convenient and easy step for upgrading a materialistic outlook into a spiritual one.

I dunno about the asserted "spiritually fashionable" or "upgrade from materialism" spins. I like it for a different reason. When I recall moments of "being in the zone" -- especially in crisis situations -- the aspect that I remember most clearly is being in something other than my common thought/self paradigm. In this special zone, my perception seemed equal to and in union with my doing without a sense of separation or analysis or 'thoughtfulness'.

Consider this scenario: you've been wandering aimlessly through the woods and you suddenly realize you don't know the way back, you're lost, and a bit of panic enters your thoughts. To counter the panic, you sit down, close your eyes, breathe deeply and calm yourself. After awhile and in a state of inner calm, you look up and suddenly see the way. Seeing it you immediately go for it. Done deal! My sense of "no-thought/no-self" is like this and not an elevated mystical state or spirituality.

[Eugene I]

Seeing it you immediately go for it. Done deal! My sense of "no-thought/no-self" is like this and not an elevated mystical state or spirituality.

Right. There is actually nothing mystical about it. But it may take someone to go through a long path of "mystical experiences" or spiritual seeking in order to arrive there. Yet many people get there without any altered states or mystical experience, they just simply "get it". And it has nothing to do with "non-thinking", it's just that often people get there by transcending, disrupting or suspending their habitual thinking patterns (such as in Zen practice for example).