Bernardo's latest essay

[Cleric]

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.

I think you're just being caught up by the term Thinking. Everything you say will be correct if we accept that when you say Thinking you actually mean intellectual thinking (arranging symbols/words into complexes) and when you say Ideas you mean the rigid concepts that are incarnated into the intellectual symbols/words.

You implicitly agree that when you say experientially "see", there's a kind of knowing, there's awareness of what is being seen, even if it's not condensed into a concept that the intellect can grasp and incarnate into a symbol. From an older post:

Such experience also brings realization of the fundamental Oneness of Consciousness in its formless aspect. Because formless is the same in every form and every idea, it is like a "glue" that unites everything into oneness (in addition to the oneness of the ideal content through its inter-relations).

It's clear that there's a kind of knowing experience of that gluing aspect. It's not a blind experience, it's direct knowledge. You call this knowledge non-ideal, I would call it non-conceptual or intuitive. We'll save much confusion if it's understood that what is called Idea points precisely at this element of knowing. Problems arise only when we try to imagine ideas as 'things' within consciousness. They are not. We can speak of the thought-forms (inner verbalizations, visual symbols, etc.) as things but we "see" the meaning of the thoughts in exactly the same way in which you say that the ocean is "experientially seen". I think we'll make progress if we come to terms with the fact that in the higher seeing of the ocean there's also knowing - it's the awareness of what is being experientially seen. This knowing attribute of Consciousness is what is called Idea in the Western sense. It's not a 'thing', within consciousness - it's the very experience of knowing, it's exactly the formless, invisible aspect, which elucidates with meaning the contents of experience (even if it is direct, intuitive meaning and not conceptualized). We can think of the concepts of the intellect as condensed, holographic shards of the vaster knowing that can be experienced only through direct intuition (what you call experiential seeing). So they are more like different scales of knowing, yet the meaningful essence experienced within consciousness is of the same fundamental nature.

[Cleric]

Those are very deep questions, how pure math, sensing and empirism relate. For Greeks there was no distinction between pure and applied mathematics, they started from naturally continuous geometry and derived discrete number theory that way, by relating line segments and areas and giving those relations numerical values.

Child development in some aspects repeats fractally the evolution of humanity. Mathematics begin with numbers or simply - counting. Numbers are qualities before they are conceptualized. Just as there's a common quality between yellow lemon and yellow apple, so there's a common quality between two arms and two legs. From the first we extract the idea of 'yellowness', from the second - of 'twoness'. This is what a child learns first. Geo-metry begins again with counting - we count how many steps it takes to walk some distance, how many stick lengths fit somewhere and so on. This is something that the child learns later. It's more complicated because there's a level of indirection. The child first learns to count because it can extract the qualities of the numbers directly from the perceptions - count of hands, apples. Geo-metry is second iteration of counting - we're counting relations between the meter (steps, sticks) and the thing being measured. It's obvious that this is a more complicated task and naturally it can only be mastered after acquiring the skill of counting immediate perceptions.

I'm not saying that numbers can't be derived from continuous geometry (they can be derived in many ways - sets, Church lambda numerals, etc.) but only pointing out the progression in purely cognitive evolution.

[Eugene I]

It's clear that there's a kind of knowing experience of that gluing aspect. It's not a blind experience, it's direct knowledge. You call this knowledge non-ideal, I would call it non-conceptual or intuitive. We'll save much confusion if it's understood that what is called Idea points precisely at this element of knowing. Problems arise only when we try to imagine ideas as 'things' within consciousness. They are not. We can speak of the thought-forms (inner verbalizations, visual symbols, etc.) as things but we "see" the meaning of the thoughts in exactly the same way in which you say that the ocean is "experientially seen". I think we'll make progress if we come to terms with the fact that in the higher seeing of the ocean there's also knowing - it's the awareness of what is being experientially seen. This knowing attribute of Consciousness is what is called Idea in the Western sense. It's not a 'thing', within consciousness - it's the very experience of knowing, it's exactly the formless, invisible aspect, which elucidates with meaning the contents of experience (even if it is direct, intuitive meaning and not conceptualized). We can think of the concepts of the intellect as condensed, holographic shards of the vaster knowing that can be experienced only through direct intuition (what you call experiential seeing). So they are more like different scales of knowing, yet the meaningful essence experienced within consciousness is of the same fundamental nature.

Looks like we are getting there, but this subject is really terminologically confusing. The "Experiential knowing" that I'm talking about It's not even intuitive. Intuitive knowing of this "experiential knowing" is already a "reflection", it is establishing an intuitive idea about that "Experiential knowing". But even if I have no intuitive idea about the "Experiential knowing" and even if I'm completely ignorant of it, I'm still always experiencing this "Experiential knowing" every moment in every act of thinking and perceptional activity, because every thinking activity, every thought, idea, perception, feeling, volition are equally "Experientially known" (even if I have no clue about it). This "Experiential knowing" is a FACT regardless whether we have any intuitive comprehension of it or not. A bird "Experientially knows" its every perception and very birdy-thinking idea but has no intuitive comprehension of the fact that they are all "Experientially known". Yet, the "Experiential knowing" is still always there in the bird's conscious activity. If there would be no "Experiential knowing" in the first place, we cold never have any intuitive idea about it or any "experiential seeing" of it. This "Experiential knowing" is what makes every moment of conscious/spiritual activity to be "real", "experienced" and "known" to us, and this is what fundamentally distinguishes consciousness from "intelligent matter": a super-duper-AI made of computer hardware (in materialism framework) can have very rich intelligent activity but would have no "Experiential knowing" of its own activity whatsoever.

So let me try to clarify the confusion. There is a reason I call it "Experiencing" with capital E to distinguish it from other meanings of the word "experiencing". By "Experiencing" I mean this very "Experiential knowing" which is always taking place regardless whether we are consciously aware of it or not (whether we "experientially see/comprehend" this "Experiential knowing" it or not). Now, we can actually notice its presence and realize that we can actually "experientially see" it, but such noticing is already an act of intuitive thinking. It is like "seeing" the sky that is always there regardless whether we see it or not, the sky that "illuminates" the scene with its light and makes it possible for us to see/experience everything. So, you are correct when saying that we can only comprehend/see the "Experiential knowing" with thinking. Yet, regardless whether we comprehend it or not, it always exist in the first place every moment.

[Cleric]

Looks like we are getting there, but this subject is really terminologically confusing. The "Experiential knowing" that I'm talking about It's not even intuitive. Intuitive knowing of this "experiential knowing" is already a "reflection", it is establishing an intuitive idea about that "Experiential knowing". But even if I have no intuitive idea about the "Experiential knowing" and even if I'm completely ignorant of it, I'm still always experiencing this "Experiential knowing" every moment in every act of thinking and perceptional activity, because every thinking activity, every thought, idea, perception, feeling, volition are equally "Experientially known" (even if I have no clue about it). This "Experiential knowing" is a FACT regardless whether we have any intuitive comprehension of it or not. A bird "Experientially knows" its every perception and very birdy-thinking idea but has no intuitive comprehension of the fact that they are all "Experientially known". Yet, the "Experiential knowing" is still always there in the bird's conscious activity. If there would be no "Experiential knowing" in the first place, we cold never have any intuitive idea about it or any "experiential seeing" of it. This "Experiential knowing" is what makes every moment of conscious/spiritual activity to be "real", "experienced" and "known" to us, and this is what fundamentally distinguishes consciousness from "intelligent matter": super-AI made of computer hardware (in materialism framework) can have very rich intelligent activity but would have no "Experiential knowing" of its own activity whatsoever.

So let me try to clarify the confusion. There is a reason I call it "Experiencing" with capital E to distinguish it from other meanings of the word "experiencing". By "Experiencing" I mean this very "Experiential knowing" which is always taking place regardless whether we are consciously aware of it or not (whether we "experientially see/comprehend" this "Experiential knowing" it or not). Now, we can actually notice its presence and realize that we can actually "experientially see" it, but such noticing is already an act of intuitive thinking. It is like "seeing" the sky that is always there regardless whether we see it or not, the sky that "illuminates" the scene with its light and makes it possible for us to see/experience everything. So, you are correct when saying that we can only comprehend/see the "Experiential knowing" with thinking. Yet, regardless whether we comprehend it or not, it always exist in the first place every moment.

So far so good. We'll make another step forward if we distinguish between intuitive thinking and Intuition, which is the highest form of cognition available to contemporary man. It practically coincides with what you call Experiential knowing. I agree that when we extract a concept from this Intuitive cognition/Experiential knowing it becomes property of intuitive thinking.

The keyword is Experiential knowing. This knowing has the same essential idea-nature, as the ordinary concepts. Concepts, Imaginations, Inspirations, Intuitions. These form the gradient of ideal content from the most fragmentary to the most holistic. In Intuition we don't have separate ideas. We can imagine that there's only one idea as big as the Cosmos. This idea is not an object within consciousness or intuitive reflection of the Experiential knowing - it is the very essence of the 'knowing' in the Experiential knowing. True Intuition is precisely the meaningful essence for which you say that is directly experienced and when we think about it we only have a thought reflection (fractally similar). Everything you said about the "seeing the sky", etc. hold true for Intuitive consciousness. It is precisely when we strip away ordinary thinking, Imaginative and Inspirative cognitive activity, that we remain with the pure Experience that is being known as meaning filling the whole Consciousness.

We'll be able to make another step forward if we consider that this Experiential knowing is not entirely passive state but can metamorphose according to our spiritual activity. In other words we can be meaningfully active even without decohering this activity to ordinary thoughts. In certain sense we navigate through the holistic Experience that is being known, in fully conscious way, without the need to reduce/reflect it to intellectual thoughts.

[Eugene I]

So far so good. We'll make another step forward if we distinguish between intuitive thinking and Intuition, which is the highest form of cognition available to contemporary man. It practically coincides with what you call Experiential knowing. I agree that when we extract a concept from this Intuitive cognition/Experiential knowing it becomes property of intuitive thinking.

The keyword is Experiential knowing. This knowing has the same essential idea-nature, as the ordinary concepts. Concepts, Imaginations, Inspirations, Intuitions. These form the gradient of ideal content from the most fragmentary to the most holistic. In Intuition we don't have separate ideas. We can imagine that there's only one idea as big as the Cosmos. This idea is not an object within consciousness or intuitive reflection of the Experiential knowing - it is the very essence of the 'knowing' in the Experiential knowing. True Intuition is precisely the meaningful essence for which you say that is directly experienced and when we think about it we only have a thought reflection (fractally similar). Everything you said about the "seeing the sky", etc. hold true for Intuitive consciousness. It is precisely when we strip away ordinary thinking, Imaginative and Inspirative cognitive activity, that we remain with the pure Experience that is being known as meaning filling the whole Consciousness.

We'll be able to make another step forward if we consider that this Experiential knowing is not entirely passive state but can metamorphose according to our spiritual activity. In other words we can be meaningfully active even without decohering this activity to ordinary thoughts. In certain sense we navigate through the holistic Experience that is being known, in fully conscious way, without the need to reduce/reflect it to intellectual thoughts.

We are still talking about different things. As I said, a bird looks at a berry an Experiences a perception of a berry. Then a feeling of hunger arises in it and there is Experiencing of that feeling. Then it has a thought "want to eat that berry" and the moment it has that thought it Experiences that thought. It has no intuitive knowing/comprehension of the fact that it Experiences all these mental forms, yet the conscious Experiencing of them is still there. This "Experiencing" is not an idea, or a sensation, or a feeling, it's the "Clarity", the "Presence" with which every idea or sensation or feeling is present in our (and bird's) space of conscious Experiencing. This Clarity is not a state, not an "activity" and it never metamorphoses, it is always ever-present and ever-the-same never-changing Clarity of Experiencing present in every conscious being every moment of now.

But yes, when we exercise our Intuitive Thinking, we can realize/comprehend/recognize this Clarity/Presence, and do so by reflecting it and reporting it with our Thinking to our Thinking. And that would constitute now the intuitive "knowing" of idea-nature. And yes, such intuitive "knowing" of the Clarity can metamorphose according to our spiritual activity. But even if I would be a dumb guy with undeveloped intuitive Thinking ability, I would still experience every thought, idea or sensation with the same Experiential Clarity and Presence, but without having any clue about it. This Clarity of conscious Experiencing is always present regardless whether we have any intuitive "knowing" of it or not.

[AshvinP]

So far so good. We'll make another step forward if we distinguish between intuitive thinking and Intuition, which is the highest form of cognition available to contemporary man. It practically coincides with what you call Experiential knowing. I agree that when we extract a concept from this Intuitive cognition/Experiential knowing it becomes property of intuitive thinking.

The keyword is Experiential knowing. This knowing has the same essential idea-nature, as the ordinary concepts. Concepts, Imaginations, Inspirations, Intuitions. These form the gradient of ideal content from the most fragmentary to the most holistic. In Intuition we don't have separate ideas. We can imagine that there's only one idea as big as the Cosmos. This idea is not an object within consciousness or intuitive reflection of the Experiential knowing - it is the very essence of the 'knowing' in the Experiential knowing. True Intuition is precisely the meaningful essence for which you say that is directly experienced and when we think about it we only have a thought reflection (fractally similar). Everything you said about the "seeing the sky", etc. hold true for Intuitive consciousness. It is precisely when we strip away ordinary thinking, Imaginative and Inspirative cognitive activity, that we remain with the pure Experience that is being known as meaning filling the whole Consciousness.

We'll be able to make another step forward if we consider that this Experiential knowing is not entirely passive state but can metamorphose according to our spiritual activity. In other words we can be meaningfully active even without decohering this activity to ordinary thoughts. In certain sense we navigate through the holistic Experience that is being known, in fully conscious way, without the need to reduce/reflect it to intellectual thoughts.

We are still talking about different things. As I said, a bird looks at a berry an Experiences a perception of a berry. Then a feeling of hunger arises in it and there is Experiencing of that feeling. Then it has a thought "want to eat that berry" and the moment it has that thought it Experiences that thought. It has no intuitive knowing/comprehension of the fact that it Experiences all these mental forms, yet the conscious Experiencing of them is still there. This "Experiencing" is not an idea, or a sensation, or a feeling, it's the "Clarity", the "Presence" with which every idea or sensation or feeling is present in our (and bird's) space of conscious Experiencing. This Clarity is not a state, not an "activity" and it never metamorphoses, it is always ever-present and ever-the-same never-changing Clarity of Experiencing present in every conscious being every moment of now.

But yes, when we exercise our Intuitive Thinking, we can realize/comprehend/recognize this Clarity/Presence, and do so by reflecting it and reporting it with our Thinking to our Thinking. And that would constitute now the intuitive "knowing" of idea-nature. And yes, such intuitive "knowing" of the Clarity can metamorphose according to our spiritual activity. But even if I would be a dumb guy with undeveloped intuitive Thinking ability, I would still experience every thought, idea or sensation with the same Experiential Clarity and Presence, but without having any clue about it. This Clarity of conscious Experiencing is always present regardless whether we have any intuitive "knowing" of it or not.

You are inserting a dualism in here just to keep Thinking in a separate domain (not only epistemically, but ontologically). All of your analogies make use of dualist imagery as a way of pointing out the underlying Reality. "A bird looks at a berry" and so forth, which also raises the dualist flaw of philosophizing from a non-human perspective which you cannot possibly have experienced. In your analogies, there is always a subject beholding a separate object, whether it is a berry, an emotion or an idea. That is how you view the activity of Thinking - for you it is an activity which comes along later and reflects on the pure Experiencing. I am not sure how we can better explain the hard dualism of that view better than Cleric already did.

And then you also beg the question about Thinking activity by restricting it to something that is always less than what is needed for what you call "Experiential knowing" (and more recently "Experiential Clarity" and "Presence"). When we make clear that intellectual thinking does not exhaust Thinking, you start describing the "Experiencing" as something more like Imaginative and Inspirative Thinking. When Cleric says, based on his own experience, that what you are relating is exactly like Intuition as the "highest cognition available to contemporary man ", you then push the "Experiencing" back onto some other allegedly higher level "knowing" (which, based on your bird analogy, actually sounds like a lower level of knowing).

I am summarizing all of the above because I seriously want you (or others who are still paying attention) to observe how your logic progresses in these arguments. Why does it progress this way? Because there is only one objective - to make sure there is no bridge between ideal content as we normally experience it (or as we experience it in imaginative and intuitive thought) and the ideal content of the most fundamental and unified experience. In fact, you refuse to even call the meaning of the experience "ideal content" even though you say that it is a mode of "knowing", which should raise red flags for people immediately. How can we speak of "knowing" under idealism without Thinking and ideal content? We can't - we can only speak of such things under dualism (and maybe not even that).

You also say Thinking is activity of creating forms, but you refuse to call it "formless" under any circumstance, even though that's the only type of activity it could possibly be. Why is that? For the same reason as above. So, in your view, we end up with ideal content of Thinking and the "knowing" of Experiencing which are somehow fundamentally different and discontinuous with each other. Ideal content of Thinking never gets us to "Experiential knowing" and "Experiential knowing" never gets us to ideal content of Thinking. So you say the solution is to piece them together. And we are still left with no idea why your dualist view matters... how does it change anything Cleric or I have claimed about spiritual Reality? It doesn't. So why are we even talking about it? Who knows.

PS - can we put some kind of poll up on this issue? Because I feel like Cleric has explained away this false distinction between "Experiential knowing" and Thinking better than anyone could possibly hope for, but then, after Eugene comments, I start to wonder if I am the only who sees it that way...

[Eugene I]

Because Cleric keeps insisting that what he calls "Experiential knowing" is an "intuitive idea-nature" that can "metamorphose", it is obvious that he is talking about a completely different phenomenon. Because this "Clarity" that I'm referring to never metamorphoses.

[AshvinP]

Because Cleric keeps insisting that what he calls "Experiential knowing" is an "intuitive idea-nature" that can "metamorphose", it is obvious that he is talking about a completely different phenomenon. Because this "Clarity" that I'm referring to never metamorphoses.

Yes, I should have been more clear - the bridge of ideal content you want to avoid is the one which makes Cleric's conclusion of metamorphosing Idea inevitable. That conclusion is what makes all claims to much higher cognition intellectually plausible for each human. If the highest possible Unity did not metamorphose in the world-evolving process, then there is no reason to think we will ever reach understanding of it through our own evolving cognition. So either you are begging the question by saying a "metamorphosing knowing" cannot be "Experiential knowing", or what you call "Experiential knowing" is actually a meditative state which stops short of going through the "pinhole of cognition" to discover the ideating activity across the 'event horizon'. Our arguments here are precisely establishing the fundamental knowing by Thinking so that there is deep inner continuity of cognition between each individual and the Cosmic Unity. I guess that is a rather large practical difference - without such continuity, as we fail to find in your view, the link is broken just as it is with Kant.

[AshvinP]

Because Cleric keeps insisting that what he calls "Experiential knowing" is an "intuitive idea-nature" that can "metamorphose", it is obvious that he is talking about a completely different phenomenon. Because this "Clarity" that I'm referring to never metamorphoses.

Yes, I should have been more clear - the bridge of ideal content you want to avoid is the one which makes Cleric's conclusion of metamorphosing Idea inevitable. That conclusion is what makes all claims to much higher cognition intellectually plausible for each human. If the highest possible Unity did not metamorphose in the world-evolving process, then there is no reason to think we will ever reach understanding of it through our own evolving cognition. So either you are begging the question by saying a "metamorphosing knowing" cannot be "Experiential knowing", or what you call "Experiential knowing" is actually a meditative state which stops short of going through the "pinhole of cognition" to discover the ideating activity across the 'event horizon'. Our arguments here are precisely establishing the fundamental knowing by Thinking so that there is deep inner continuity of cognition between each individual and the Cosmic Unity. I guess that is a rather large practical difference - without such continuity, as we fail to find in your view, the link is broken just as it is with Kant.

One more thing about this "practical difference" issue. There is, of course, a huge practical difference between our views, just as there is between our view and any dualism or philosophy of universal Will. The reason why I asked about it, though, is because it seems lately your view has increasingly metamorphosed to incorporate many of our points while maintaining a fundamental schism which also shifts around. I am not even saying that critically, because at least it means you are paying attention to our arguments and taking some of them seriously. But the problem is that fundamental schism which you feel obligated to maintain under all circumstances for some reason. Instead of rehashing the same old reasons why such a schism is problematic, I am just going to relate my own experience here:

When I first showed up on the old forum last year, I had been previously prompted by Scott to look into Owen Barfield, but I still had a very superficial understanding of his "evolution of consciousness". He also prompted me towards Coleridge and Steiner. At that time, I was still very much skeptical, like Simon, of any claims that man can experience what it is like to be God himself. In fact, just writing that phrase now in mere intellectual mode, it sounds kind of ridiculous to me. When I finally got around to considering Steiner, with Cleric's additional prompting, that is when my perspective changed radically. I did not have to abandon any of the deep insights I found in thinkers like BK or Jung or anyone else, rather everything I had previously found intellectually stimulating was literally illuminated to reveal also its deep practical significance for my spiritual journey.

It led me to begin dwelling with these thoughts and writing about them for many hours at a time and I almost never feel 'burnt out' when doing so (as long as I keep at least some time for normal work and life activities). Instead of viewing those activities as two separate domains of my life I view them as natural extensions of one another. And when I look back on the time I spent merely studying these things without any such higher illumination, I realize it was only my self-imposed limitation on knowledge that caused me to "waste" so many hours of my life (it's hard to say it is truly "wasted" because, illuminated or not, it eventually led me to where I am now). It was that which made me think "metaphysical speculations" are little more than just that - abstract speculations which I can take or leave depending on my mood. So that is why this issue is so fundamental to everything else and I presume you sense that too, otherwise I am not sure why you would also devote so much time to questioning our view.

[Eugene I]

One more thing about this "practical difference" issue. There is, of course, a huge practical difference between our views, just as there is between our view and any dualism or philosophy of universal Will. The reason why I asked about it, though, is because it seems lately your view has increasingly metamorphosed to incorporate many of our points while maintaining a fundamental schism which also shifts around. I am not even saying that critically, because at least it means you are paying attention to our arguments and taking some of them seriously. But the problem is that fundamental schism which you feel obligated to maintain under all circumstances for some reason. Instead of rehashing the same old reasons why such a schism is problematic, I am just going to relate my own experience here:

I was "conditionally" adapting to your views and have nothing in particular against them. All this evolutionary metamorphotic stuff, Barfield and Steiner are great. But I'm just trying to turn your Thinking activity towards a different facet of Reality. It amazes me that you guys still have no clue what I'm talking about. But it's ok, as I said, it's entirely optional Anyway, I'm giving up