Bernardo's latest essay

[Soul_of_Shu]

Would you be willing to elaborate?

Quite simply that all which under materialism we conventionally refer to as 'things' are 'ideas' ... no more, no less. So if it's said we find 'nothing' at all, I find it preferable to say we find no 'thing' at all, lest 'nothing' is taken to mean a state of non-ideation.

[Eugene I]

It must be stressed that these pictures don't represent some third person theories of reality. It's impossible to draw a 'first-person picture'. As soon as we draw a line on the paper, it's already external to us. So it is up to us to make the inner effort and look at the pictures as pointers to inner experiential realities.

Cleric, the point is: neither you nor Ashvin have any clue what "Experiencing" I am talking about. What you said above is absolutely correct if by "experiencing" you imply the experiencing of perceptions, and so I agree with what you said above. In other places you talked about "oceanic consciousness experiences of Oneness" etc, but it is still not anything even close to what I'm referring to. I am talking about a different kind of "Experiencing". I was trying to use the word "Awareness", but you also confused it with "self-awareness", so I tried to use a different word, but it did not help.

The thing is: it is indeed not easy to to grasp what is exactly this "Experiencing/Awareness/Buddha's nature/Sat-Chit-Ananda" is. People practicing Eastern traditions spend years on meditation cushions trying to get it, and still most of them fail. Let alone people who don't even try and don't even care. It is a known problem in the Eastern traditions: there are no adequate words or descriptions of this "Awareness" that can be used to help people to discover it, because it is not an object, or an action, or a feeling or any kind of form or idea at all. So most of our discussion has been just talking over each other heads. I have nothing against what you say about Thinking activity and its embracing the experiences of sense perceptions. It is just not what I am trying to convey and has nothing to do with that.

As I sad, the realization of Awareness is optional. you can perfectly keep following your chosen path of spiritual science without bothering to know anything about it, there is nothing wrong with that. It is just that it is something you could do (if you would care to), which perhaps could enhance your experience and understanding of other facets of Reality with some inevitable spiritual consequences as well. But again, it is entirely optional.

[DandelionSoul]

Quite simply that all which under materialism we conventionally refer to as 'things' are 'ideas' ... no more, no less. So if it's said we find 'nothing' at all, I find it preferable to say we find no 'thing' at all, lest 'nothing' is taken to mean a state of non-ideation.

I think that we might be pretty close in our views, though I tend to use "thing" in a broad enough sense that it would encompass ideas or processes or... heh... anything else. Essentially, "thing" gestures at whatever might be a topic of discussion. I'm gonna bracket that, though, and say that I agree that under an idealist perspective there simply are no things as materialists define them: the concept of material things becomes nonsense in a world entirely composed of ideas.

I am talking about a state of non-ideation, though, and as you pointed out, the idea of non-ideation always already implies ideation -- hence, a ground of ideas which is not an idea only appears as an idea: non-ideation presupposes ideation just in order to talk about it. There is no Ground of ideas without actual ideas, because there is no conceivable absence of ideation, and such an absence can only be conceptualized from a perspective of actual ideas; absence from the perspective of absence is just... well... nameless void, empty emptiness, etc.. So the Ground and what emerges from/in/through the Ground are not two. So the Ground itself is not absolute or non-relational; it is always already in relation in order for it to be Ground at all.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I think that we might be pretty close in our views, though I tend to use "thing" in a broad enough sense that it would encompass ideas or processes or... heh... anything else. Essentially, "thing" gestures at whatever might be a topic of discussion. I'm gonna bracket that, though, and say that I agree that under an idealist perspective there simply are no things as materialists define them: the concept of material things becomes nonsense in a world entirely composed of ideas.

I am talking about a state of non-ideation, though, and as you pointed out, the idea of non-ideation always already implies ideation -- hence, a ground of ideas which is not an idea only appears as an idea: non-ideation presupposes ideation just in order to talk about it. There is no Ground of ideas without actual ideas, because there is no conceivable absence of ideation, and such an absence can only be conceptualized from a perspective of actual ideas; absence from the perspective of absence is just... well... nameless void, empty emptiness, etc.. So the Ground and what emerges from/in/through the Ground are not two. So the Ground itself is not absolute or non-relational; it is always already in relation in order for it to be Ground at all.

And thus with the fusion, the confusion ends

[Eugene I]

Naturally, it should be precisely the nondualists who should embrace with ease the possibility to go beyond the head and live with Cosmic Thoughts. Unfortunately this is exactly what is resisted the most. It's much preferred to focus on the buzzing confusion and its heartfelt unity, rather than to seek the causative forces, the World Thoughts that shape the folds of reality. This results in reality being conceived as Great Mysteriousness where it's pointless to seek deeper understanding of anything. Experience of Cosmic Thoughts require coming to terms with the Higher Self. Most nondualists dismiss any notion of self, let alone Higher Self. With this they dismiss any possibility to live cognitively within Macrocosmic ideational activity.

Just one more comment. Cleric, you wrote a fascinating essay and I entirely resonate with it. There is definitely the Macrocosmic ideation activity and definitely a spiritual path to enhance our individual spiritual activity to comprehend the higher layers of the Cosmic activity, and there is definitely a benefit to it. I don't know what other non-dualist claim or resist, but I'm not one of those who resist or deny such path. Neither I deny the reality of self or Higher Self, the only thing I'm saying is that the self or Self are spiritual activities, not "entities".

I'm simply pointing to another aspect of reality unaccounted in this paradigm. When it remains unaccounted, it does not make this paradigm wrong in any way or negate any of its benefits. It just makes it incomplete, it's like looking only at one side of the coin instead of seeing the coin as a unity of two sides.

Also, to your criticism:

In other words, the ideal content which Thinking weaves into the World of perceptions/experiences, you see as something in addition, something which is not essential for the true nature of the experiential world. In a way, our ideas just inflate our personal bubble on the side of ideas, which correspondingly increases the amount of thought-forms. Clearly, you see this as something which brings about disbalance, something which obscures the pure (direct) experiential reality. This needs to be balanced with pure experience. If we return to our book analogy this would sound like we're going astray when we trace and reveal the above mentioned relations through Thinking. We're only adding layers of thoughts/concepts on top of the pure experience. You agree that this is useful, that there's 'nothing wrong with it' but still you see it as deterring from the purity of direct experience. In other words, you consider that there's something pristine and irreplaceable in the experience of the incomprehensible text, which is lost once we work upon it with Thinking.

You misunderstand what I'm saying. When referring to "Experiencing", I'm not referring to "perceptional experiences" to which Thinking adds some ideal content. I'm talking about Conscious Experiencing (Awareness) of everything at all, including Thinking and all its ideal content. Every act and idea of Thinking is equally Experienced in the same way every sense perception or feeling is Experienced. Thinking is not "adding" anything on top of Experiencing, because Thinking is happening with (and inseparable from) the same Experiencing.

Experiencing/Awareness is just another linguistic label for "formless" in the Scott's mumorphism of "formless-forms". Formless and forms are two aspects of Reality that never exist in a "pure" form apart from each other, they are simply two inseparable aspects of Reality, like two sides of a coin, or like water and waves of the ocean. Yet when we reflect on Reality with Thinking (which always takes place as the spiritual activity of the same Reality) but miss/ignore the formless aspect, we get an incomplete reflection of Reality. When we only see and experience waves and do not notice the water, we get an incomplete picture and understanding of the ocean, which often becomes fragmented (because waves indeed look fragmented from each other when the same water of which they are all made is not known). When we both experientially "see" and intellectually "know" that the waves are activities of the water, and see the ocean as the unity of waves and water, we have more encompassing and unifying vision and understanding of the reality of the ocean. But that does not negate any benefit of knowing the hierarchically relational content of the fabric of the waves by Thinking activity. These two kinds of knowledge do not negate each other, but rather complement each other.

[AshvinP]

It must be stressed that these pictures don't represent some third person theories of reality. It's impossible to draw a 'first-person picture'. As soon as we draw a line on the paper, it's already external to us. So it is up to us to make the inner effort and look at the pictures as pointers to inner experiential realities.

Cleric, the point is: neither you nor Ashvin have any clue what "Experiencing" I am talking about. What you said above is absolutely correct if by "experiencing" you imply the experiencing of perceptions, and so I agree with what you said above. In other places you talked about "oceanic consciousness experiences of Oneness" etc, but it is still not anything even close to what I'm referring to. I am talking about a different kind of "Experiencing". I was trying to use the word "Awareness", but you also confused it with "self-awareness", so I tried to use a different word, but it did not help.

The thing is: it is indeed not easy to to grasp what is exactly this "Experiencing/Awareness/Buddha's nature/Sat-Chit-Ananda" is. People practicing Eastern traditions spend years on meditation cushions trying to get it, and still most of them fail. Let alone people who don't even try and don't even care. It is a known problem in the Eastern traditions: there are no adequate words or descriptions of this "Awareness" that can be used to help people to discover it, because it is not an object, or an action, or a feeling or any kind of form or idea at all. So most of our discussion has been just talking over each other heads. I have nothing against what you say about Thinking activity and its embracing the experiences of sense perceptions. It is just not what I am trying to convey and has nothing to do with that.

As I sad, the realization of Awareness is optional. you can perfectly keep following your chosen path of spiritual science without bothering to know anything about it, there is nothing wrong with that. It is just that it is something you could do (if you would care to), which perhaps could enhance your experience and understanding of other facets of Reality with some inevitable spiritual consequences as well. But again, it is entirely optional.

The only way your view can be reconciled with ours is to say what you call "Experiencing" is identical to what we call "Thinking". That could also explain why you cannot think of any practical differences between adopting one view or the other. Otherwise, the points and criticisms raised in Cleric's latest post are still completely valid against your view. It really doesn't matter whether I or he or anyone else has "grasped" the state you are speaking of, because our argument re: Thinking is that, whatever that state is, it is only through Thinking that the Reality experienced gains ever-expanding meaning in higher and higher resolution. And that is the course of all spiritual development at the collective level, and should be the aim for each individual in their lifetimes. Since there is very little practical difference by your own admission, I can only conclude that last part about what "is" and "should be" is what you disagree with and therefore the root of your incessant pushback.

PS - I wrote the above while you were writing your latest comment, but what I said is even more applicable now that you say - "I'm talking about Conscious Experiencing (Awareness) of everything at all, including Thinking and all its ideal content." Basically you are trying to subsume Thinking as a category of "Experiencing", which is also what I said you would soon do in a private message to Cleric

And for some reason you still think Scott's formless aspect of mumorphism does not include Thinking, when that is the formless aspect. Thinking (Ideating) = formlessness.

[Eugene I]

The only way your view can be reconciled with ours is to say what you call "Experiencing" is identical to what we call "Thinking". That could also explain why you cannot think of any practical differences between adopting one view or the other. Otherwise, the points and criticisms raised in Cleric's latest post are still completely valid against your view. It really doesn't matter whether I or he or anyone else has "grasped" the state you are speaking of, because our argument re: Thinking is that, whatever that state is, it is only through Thinking that the Reality experienced gains ever-expanding meaning in higher and higher resolution. And that is the course of all spiritual development at the collective level, and should be the aim for each individual in their lifetimes. Since there is very little practical difference by your own admission, I can only conclude that last part about what "is" and "should be" is what you disagree with and therefore the root of your incessant pushback.

PS - I wrote the above while you were writing your latest comment, but what I said is even more applicable now that you say - "I'm talking about Conscious Experiencing (Awareness) of everything at all, including Thinking and all its ideal content." Basically you are trying to subsume Thinking as a category of "Experiencing", which is also what I said you would soon do in a private message to Cleric

And for some reason you still think Scott's formless aspect of mumorphism does not include Thinking, when that is the formless aspect. Thinking (Ideating) = formlessness.

I'll put it this way:
Thinking is a form-comprehending and form-creating activity of Reality.
Experiencing if the conscious-experiencing formless aspect of Reality.
Thinking can comprehend the formlessness (Experiencing) by reflecting it with ideas of formlessness. But any ide of formlessness sis not the same as formlessness as it is.

Now, we can define it in a different way and use the term "Thinking" (which I call "Reality") to also include the formlessness/Experiencing, and that would be fine too. It's all a matter of defining the linguistic terms that we use. But the point is, if we exclude/ignore formlessness from Thinking and only define Thinking as spiritual activity within the ideal content, then such definition/understanding of Thinking would be incomplete, becoause the formlessness is not an idea.

If we say "one side of a coin = coin", it is true in a sense that one side of the coin is no other than the coin. But it is not true in a sense that one side of a coin is all what the coin is. Because there is another side of the same coin, which is ontologically the same coin and inseparable from the other side. But epistemologically it can remain unknown to a local/individuated activity of Thinking, in which case it would be an incomplete knowledge of the "coin" missing the other side (the formlessness aspect). One thing is to pose a philosophical formula " formless aspect. of Thinking (Ideating) = formlessness", another thing is to actually "know" it experientially, because the formlessness aspect is not an idea and does not belong the ideal content (forms), yet it can be experienced directly and reflected by Thinking activity. The waves are no other than water, and water are no other than waves, yet this does not mean that waves (ideal content) are all that the ocean is, because there is also the "water" aspect to each wave. And the key thing is that regardless of the particular form each wave takes, the "water" aspect is always the same and continuous, and that is why it is fundamentally unifying.

[Lou Gold]

And thus with the fusion, the confusion ends

Haul water, build fire, cook rice -- before and after.

[AshvinP]

The only way your view can be reconciled with ours is to say what you call "Experiencing" is identical to what we call "Thinking". That could also explain why you cannot think of any practical differences between adopting one view or the other. Otherwise, the points and criticisms raised in Cleric's latest post are still completely valid against your view. It really doesn't matter whether I or he or anyone else has "grasped" the state you are speaking of, because our argument re: Thinking is that, whatever that state is, it is only through Thinking that the Reality experienced gains ever-expanding meaning in higher and higher resolution. And that is the course of all spiritual development at the collective level, and should be the aim for each individual in their lifetimes. Since there is very little practical difference by your own admission, I can only conclude that last part about what "is" and "should be" is what you disagree with and therefore the root of your incessant pushback.

PS - I wrote the above while you were writing your latest comment, but what I said is even more applicable now that you say - "I'm talking about Conscious Experiencing (Awareness) of everything at all, including Thinking and all its ideal content." Basically you are trying to subsume Thinking as a category of "Experiencing", which is also what I said you would soon do in a private message to Cleric

And for some reason you still think Scott's formless aspect of mumorphism does not include Thinking, when that is the formless aspect. Thinking (Ideating) = formlessness.

I'll put it this way:
Thinking is a form-comprehending and form-creating activity of Reality.
Experiencing if the conscious-experiencing formless aspect of Reality.
Thinking can comprehend the formlessness (Experiencing) by reflecting it with ideas of formlessness. But any ide of formlessness sis not the same as formlessness as it is.

So now you are resorting to a hard dualism of Experiencing (formless activity #1) and Thinking (formless activity #2). How do these two formless activities interact with each other, or how does #1 give rise to #2? That is rhetorical question because we already know there is no answer to such dualistic quandaries. You are creating these dualities for the sole purpose of avoiding our arguments on Thinking which show it is the only activity which integrates experience into Unity. You cannot address them specifically, so you are just adding activities and rearranging them to find some combination which is coherent and downgrades the essential role of Thinking. Cleric did an excellent job in his last post, as usual, pointing out all the flaws in your approach to these issues. Since you keep avoiding the arguments being made by saying you "agree" and are talking about something else completely that we somehow keep missing, I can tell there is no point in persisting.

[Eugene I]

So now you are resorting to a hard dualism of Experiencing (formless activity #1) and Thinking (formless activity #2). How do these two formless activities interact with each other, or how does #1 give rise to #2? That is rhetorical question because we already know there is no answer to such dualistic quandaries. You are creating these dualities for the sole purpose of avoiding our arguments on Thinking which show it is the only activity which integrates experience into Unity. You cannot address them specifically, so you are just adding activities and rearranging them to find some combination which is coherent and downgrades the essential role of Thinking. Cleric did an excellent job in his last post, as usual, pointing out all the flaws in your approach to these issues. Since you keep avoiding the arguments being made by saying you "agree" and are talking about something else completely that we somehow keep missing, I can tell there is no point in persisting.

I'm just saying that every form has a formlessness aspect, and formlessness always has forms. There is no dualism here because ontologically they are never separate. But our individual reflection (thinking) can be ignorant of the formlessness, just like our individual thinking can be ignorant of Cosmic ideas. Cleric says that our human (limited) thinking activity can be ignorant of higher-level Cosmic ideations, and that is absolutely correct, but that does not create any dualism between known and unknown ideas. Similarly, there is no dualism between formlessness and forms, but our individual human thinking activity may be ignorant of the formless aspect of Thinking. But because formlessness is not an idea (even though there is an idea of formlessness in the Cosmic ideal content), the way Thinking can comprehend the formlessness is not just by reaching to the "idea of formlessness", but by reaching to the direct experiencing of formlessness, and this is possible because the formlessness itself is conscious Experiencing.