Eugene, thanks for your response on the other thread.
Eugene I wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:57 pm
Another key question is: how this "ideal relations" carry a power to create actual conscious experiences? This is basically the same "hard problem of consciousness". Either these "ideal relations" are themselves of the very nature of conscious experiences, or, if not, then they somehow "give rise" to conscious experiences, in which case we run into the "hard problem" again.
This is one of the points that will take many more generations of humans to get over. Currently the psychological inertia is great. We're so used to use our thinking in the abstract modelling way (especially with materialism, where this is the only conceivable way) that it's now very difficult to overcome these thinking habits.
If we try to model the universe through 'idea relations', in the same way we try to model it with matter, (conscious) energy, etc., we'll never approach reality. We can only speak of idea relations when we take them from actual experience - and that's our own experience. The trouble is that the deeper we go in this way, the more we deconstruct our own being, the more we understand how we function. And this is something that not very many people want to do. Objective view of ourselves is not always the most pleasant sight. The difficulty in spiritual science is that we can never understand the Cosmos in the true sense unless we understand ourselves. The reason is that our personality is only an outlet of something much larger and we need to understand how it filters and shapes the greater potential.
So idea relations can be grasped only in a very limited way through abstract reasoning, like mathematics. We can certainly build analogies and metaphors using abstract concepts but these must always be used to point attention to reality.
For example, what are we doing here? Each one of us experiences a unique constellation of ideas. Everyone arrived at them through their unique life path. Now we are interacting using language which is a medium for idea exchange. When you read the things here, they produce certain effects in your soul - these are idea relations - real ones and not abstract. These idea either resonate with your current constellation of ideas or not. If they don't, you may try to reckon if it's because the ideas are illogical, contradictory, etc. or because they clash with a feeling and so on.
In short, we need to develop the habit to always seek the concrete experiences. There's no need for hard problems because we're not making any models. We are not trying to explain reality through theory of everything. We don't assume our thinking to be a completed tool that we use to speculate about the nature of reality. Instead thinking perceives how it is shaped and restricted by the unique constellation of ideas and their relations. Through proper conduct of our spiritual activity we can change our 'phase relationship' with ideas. Here we should overcome another habit - the notion that ideas are merely intellectual curiosities and they simply accumulate but they don't change anything except our understanding. But this isn't true. For example, let's consider the idea of 'soul' in comparison to 'brain'. Let's ignore the exact details of this soul for the moment. As long as both concepts exist only as abstract words in our intellect it's true that nothing really changes except our theoretical knowledge. But there's a great difference if we live though the ideas with our whole being. It feels different if I'm only a brain or a soul that uses the brain as a reflecting apparatus. And note that here it's not at all about belief. Belief can have a place in the theoretical case, where we subscribe to one or the other word but that doesn't really change anything. In the second case we don't need belief but only
willingness to explore the ideas in a living way. If we do that we find that if we unite with the idea of soul we really feel differently and we find new forms of spiritual activity that didn't make sense in the brain case. For example, if I have pain in a part of my body I may try to visualize soothing currents that heal and restore the harmony of the tissues. This experiment makes no sense in the brain paradigm but is completely sane if we have a soul. There's still no need to subscribe or believe in anything. The point is that through these ideas we expand the spectrum of what is possible for our spiritual activity, which also leads to corresponding perceptions (the soothing currents is usually not something that the materialist has experience of). So here we have a real idea relation again. We relate with the idea of soul in the most intimate and living way, experiment with it, and this leads not to theoretical speculations but to actual forms of spiritual activity and perceptions that were previously non-existent. So we see that ideas should become something living, actual
forces to be investigated and not simply concepts in the mind.
Eugene I wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:05 pm
However, Shaibei, who I think is also a believer in the "higher-order unities of ideal relations" of the Divine origin, does not believe that the idea "Christ is the Messiah" belongs to such "higher-order unities" according to his spiritual intuition and his Kabalistic spiritual science (but Shaibei, please correct me if I'm wrong). So, suppose I want to agree with the reality of the "higher-order unities of ideal relations". But which one, the Christian or Judaic? How do I choose?
This is a very poor way to approach this question. Let's start by saying that one can find the Idea-being that we call Christ even if he was born on an isolated island and doesn't know about the existence of the bible. Simply put, if one reaches the idea of M@L and seeks how his microcosmic (bodily) perspective relates to the Macrocosmic perspective, he'll need to 'invent' the Christ and find the most fruitful relation to that Idea-being, even though he has never heard of it and would not call it that.
So the question "How do I choose" is misunderstood. It's like asking "How do I choose between building a one or two floor house", while at the same time I don't have neither the knowledge, nor the materials,
nor the intent to build a house. In other words, we reach the Idea of the Christ only when we have explored our interior and then find a missing component there. If we haven't reached that state it's pointless to "choose". The time for believing in the Christ is over. Now it's time for
work. Now it's entirely a question of 'building our house' in the most real sense.