Bernardo's latest essay

[Astra052]

OK sorry I probably misunderstood the first time. I don't really follow now either. Does the above mean the question of Ground vs. no Ground is meaningless or that the concept of "no Ground" is meaningless, or something else?

Apologies for the delay in responding. I felt it would be wise to read Rovelli's book for myself first, to try to get a sense of exactly what Kastrup's contention with him is, before trying to unpack my intuition here. I have my own issues with Rovelli's perspective, in that he seems to fundamentally misunderstand the Hard Problem, but in terms of the (lack of) Ground, I think I can stand by my initial reply, which is that I don't think the dispute amounts to much at all. Kastrup likes to say of his Ground, his Mind at Large, that just as ripples on a lake are nothing but the lake, or the vibrations of a guitar string are nothing but the guitar string, so the patterns of excitement of M@L are nothing but M@L. So far so good. But then what is M@L without its patterns of excitement? What can we say about it? It seems to me that we can say nothing -- it is the unrealized disposition for patterns of excitement, but an unrealized disposition isn't anything at all.

To say, with Rovelli (as he says with Nagarjuna), that underlying the mutually arising world of things is nothing is, at least as I see it, to say exactly that: there is nothing that the Ground is, and if there is nothing that the Ground is, then the Ground is nothing, and I don't see "The Ground is nothing" as meaningfully distinct from "There is no Ground." So there is no Ground. Kastrup is wrong. But... on the other hand... while M@L without its ripples is nothing, M@L is not without its ripples. It is rippling. Or, per Rovelli, we might say that while a relational reality without any actualized relationships is nothing, in fact, relationships are actualized: reality is relating. Hence, the disposition underlying those relationships -- the fundamental relatability itself, or M@L -- is realized in the relationships themselves and reveals itself in every revelation of every relationship or being or ideation or what-have-you. So there is a Ground. So Rovelli is wrong.

The conclusion that seems unavoidable to me is just this: mutual arising extends even to the relationship between Ground and contingent arisings in/on/through the Ground. The eternal and the temporal constitute one another. The Ground of the world of relations only exists through the relations it grounds, which only exist or cohere through it. They are not two. So when Rovelli brackets the world of things-in-relation and sets it aside and, without it, goes on the hunt for that in which it's grounded and finds nothing at all, he hasn't missed anything -- there's not anything for him to miss. He's not wrong. But when Kastrup looks at the world of things-in-relation and, through it, gestures at that in which it's grounded, he isn't wrong, either. As Lou Gold said in their response to me, form is emptiness and emptiness is not other than form. This, I suspect, is what Nagarjuna meant when he said that even emptiness is empty, and if it isn't, then, at least, it's what I would mean by his words.

So to answer your question directly, yes to all three: the distinction is meaningless, because it's a distinction without a difference or, at most, a quirk of the particularity of perspectives; the concept of "no Ground" is meaningless because there is nothing to deny in the concept of "Ground" apart from its arisings; and the Ground of being and the being of beings reveal themselves as, well, interbeing.

I may be wrong but I think Rovelli may be misunderstanding the Buddhist concept of nothing. It's not "nothing" in the sense we may use it as a synonym for non-existance but it's more meant as "no-thing". No-thing is trying to get across that view that everything we see is entirely relational and not independent from anything else, so the base of it all is no-thing becuase there isn't a single "thing" generating it all or causing it all. If you really wanted to you could probably describe M@L as no-thing becuase its not a single "thing" like a godhead divinely acting upon the world but more like the force that drives things.

[AshvinP]

Sure! Since I wrote about this in a recent essay, Thinking, Memory, and Time (Part III), I am going to paste a relevant excerpt:

Before proceeding further, we should remain clear - Heidegger does not exclude the "imagination", "inspiration", or "intuition" from Thinking. Spiritual contemplative personalities often partition abstract intellect from all these other modes of contemplation and consider only the former "thinking". That is a fundamental mistake and one that Heidegger, even with his mature exploration of Eastern mysticism, did not make. He recognized that all of these contemplative activities belong to and only belong to the domain of Thinking. We belong to that place where we must find our essential role. My heart belongs to my circulatory system and my lungs belong to my respiratory system, while both are essential to and therefore inseparable from my 'physical' existence.

My heart cannot claim for itself my in-breathing and out-breathing and my lungs cannot claim for themselves the circulation of my blood. So it is that my willing, feeling, and thinking activities belong to distinct and asymmetrical domains of my spiritual existence. The same applies for the Willing, Feeling, and Thinking of humanity writ large, because my personal activities are microcosms of the macrocosm. The soul-activities of Willing and Feeling fulfill their essential roles in the differentiated perspectives of human beings. They are what imbue us with unique personalities as our lives unfold in the integral flow of Time. Without these living beings constantly impelling our conscious experience into new thought-states, we would never experience any flow of Time.
...
Human spirits, for example, present to us as a book - we read their gestures, expressions, eye movements, speech, etc. and are thereby drawn closer into their inner experience. If we were to ignore that reality of shared experience, then we would perceive human spirits as lifeless corpses moving around mechanically. In fact, there is a real danger of that occurring in the modern world with modern technology. We may soon be unable to tell any difference between interacting with a human spirit or an AI algorithm pretending to be such a spirit. Yet that same technology, when treated as nothing more than a symbol of an underlying spiritual reality, also reminds us that 'invisible' spiritual forces form all of our social interactions in a highly specified manner.

In what way besides Thinking could we approach such an invisible yet highly specified Reality? Thinking fulfills its essential role, then, through the integration of varied human souls - "I have not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them." It takes what presents to us as differentiated appearances of willing and feeling and weaves back together the ideal constellations which make sense of those appearances as a living whole. We often refer to this process when speaking of the "spirit" of a text, especially in common law traditions. The highly differentiated rules of court decisions and statutes can only be effective when they are born of the principle (spirit) underlying them. Old rules must continuously be reborn in that spirit to remain relevant and useful.

Such realities can be spoken of so casually in conversation that we look entirely past their essential meaning, so let us dwell on it some more. Our thinking, through its rebirth, takes the most varied notes and tones of the human soul provided by willing-feeling and synthesizes them into a harmony which sounds exceptionally pleasant to the eternal Spirit. We cannot understand these distinct essential roles of W-F-T in complete isolation from one other, because all experience always consists of all three qualities in Tri-Unity. And it is only that living Trinity which provides food for our thought; which provokes the most thought within us; which eternally calls upon us to Think.

That is Steiner's view of W-F-T in a very crude nutshell. Many problems in philosophy come from the simple refusal to recognize these distinct essential roles of, W-F-T in the unfolding of our experience. If you really want to explore the specific role of Thinking in this world-evolving process, then I highly recommend reading Steiner's The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom). It's even possible to read individual chapters of the book without being completely lost.

Thank you for all of this! I'm going to have to read Steiner whenever I can, along with your three essays. You also mentioned the Deep M@L essay (which I don't think you wrote, but you commended) in another very long thread I'm slowly crawling through. I went and read that one a few hours ago and it was fascinating. Engaging just with what you've written here, though, you said, "All experience always consists of all three qualities in Tri-Unity." To follow the Trinity metaphor, that would suggest Experience as analogous to the Godhead, and Willing/Thinking/Feeling as the three Persons?

I know I ask a lot of questions, and I appreciate you (all of you, actually) bearing with me. I'm still trying to learn about the frameworks in dialogue here and sort out where my inclination to agree or disagree at certain points is due to differences/similarities in actual metaphysical content versus where it's due to some of the key words (consciousness, experience, thought, existence, being, mind, etc.) just being used differently by different people in different contexts.

No problem! And don't be turned off by all of our (mostly my) contentious side debates with people here, we have been going at some of these issues like that for awhile. There is no love lost

Thank you for consideration of the essays as well. Deep M@L essay was written by Cleric, who I must say played a huge role in my inspiration to begin writing essays myself. Yes, every experience consists in those three activities. There is also deep connection to the Christian Trinity, although I prefer not to speak of it that way because it runs a high risk of idolatry i.e. assuming the living essence of the Godhead roughly corresponds to our intellectual concepts of those activities. That being said, we could tentatively say it is Father (W), Son (F), and Holy Spirit (T). Of course none of these concepts matter nearly as much as what they are pointing to, which is that we must align our W-F-T to reunite with the Divine and that always starts with Self-knowledge.

[Eugene I]

I may be wrong but I think Rovelli may be misunderstanding the Buddhist concept of nothing. It's not "nothing" in the sense we may use it as a synonym for non-existance but it's more meant as "no-thing". No-thing is trying to get across that view that everything we see is entirely relational and not independent from anything else, so the base of it all is no-thing becuase there isn't a single "thing" generating it all or causing it all. If you really wanted to you could probably describe M@L as no-thing becuase its not a single "thing" like a godhead divinely acting upon the world but more like the force that drives things.

Right, this is the same as we just discussed but using different words: "formless" as "no-thing", and forms as "things". There is a "no-thing" (which is not "nothing" but rather not-a-thing) that "moves" (volitionally) and experiences/knows all things/forms/ideas.

[AshvinP]

So both the formless and formative forces are expressed in spiritual activity of Thinking. A separate activity does not need to be added to Thinking for both forces to be expressed (even if, in Reality, there are more activities such as Willing and Feeling). Can you at least acknowledge that?

Yes, as I said before, I'm fine with defining Thinking in a broader sense that includes both aspects/powers of formless and formative (and so there is nothing that would need to be added to Thinking). In that sense "Thinking" would be synonymous with "Consciousness". What I am questioning is the reduction of the wholeness of Consciousness to only "one force" - to the ideal content only, disregarding the formless/formative "force". And another important point is: the formative/formless "force" (I call it "aspect" but whatever) is not only the force that "moves from one thought to another", but also that consciously Experiences/Knows each thought/form/idea. The key thing is that the formative force/aspect it not an idea or form, but that which "moves from one thought to another" (volitional aspect) and that which Experiences every ideal form. Ideas/forms by themselves do not have any free will/volition and any ability to Experience. Its the formless/formative force that volitionally moves the ideas and experiences them and "gules" them all together into Oneness. Yet, the formative force never exists in a "pure state" apart from or in the absence of any forms/ideas.

Let's remember that all of these concepts are employed to express how a Unity (one Power) also expresses as threefold in our experience. There is only One formless force which has three fundamental aspects of W-F-T, and likewise with formative force. And "formlessness is not other than form and form is not other than formlessness". So we can only speak of a "Knowing" (formless) force existing inseparably from the "Idea" (formative). Scott's illustration re: Thinking I quoted highlights that point. Likewise, we cannot have two formless forces, one that moves from one thought to the other (Thinking), and one that moves from one experience to another (Experiencing), where the former comes along and adds ideal content to the latter after the fact. Therefore your bolded assertion is incorrect. Not only is that dualism, thereby destroying the One Power we are seeking to express philosophically in the first place, it is not how anything actually manifests in our experience. There is always ideal content in our experience and it is only that ideal content which allows us to relate ("glue together") percepts-concepts and therefore have meaningful experience and engage in discussions such as this one. Pushing that responsibility back onto "that which Experiences" (separate from Thinking) may be convenient for us, because it seems we no longer have to Think to achieve higher Unities, but it does not reflect the Reality we actually experience, the Reality which places that responsibility squarely on our shoulders.

[Eugene I]

So we can only speak of a "Knowing" (formless) force existing inseparably from the "Idea" (formative). Scott's illustration re: Thinking I quoted highlights that point.

Agreed

Likewise, we cannot have two formless forces, one that moves from one thought to the other (Thinking), and one that moves from one experience to another (Experiencing), where the former comes along and adds ideal content to the latter after the fact. Therefore your bolded assertion is incorrect.

You misunderstood what I was saying. It is exactly like the above: we can not have two separate forces: moving and experiencing, but only one force that moves and experiences inseparably and simultaneously. But if you only assert that the force is W-F-T but ignore that it is also (inseparably and simultaneously) Experiencing, then that would be ignoring an important aspect of Thinking, the same as if we would ignore the volitional aspect and claim that there is no volition/free-will to Thinking. Experiencing/Knowing is a fundamental formless aspect/force of Thinking (not added to it or separate from it) that should not be ignored.

[AshvinP]

So we can only speak of a "Knowing" (formless) force existing inseparably from the "Idea" (formative). Scott's illustration re: Thinking I quoted highlights that point.

Agreed

Likewise, we cannot have two formless forces, one that moves from one thought to the other (Thinking), and one that moves from one experience to another (Experiencing), where the former comes along and adds ideal content to the latter after the fact. Therefore your bolded assertion is incorrect.

You misunderstood what I was saying. It is exactly like the above: we can not have two separate forces: moving and experiencing, but only one force that moves and experiences inseparably and simultaneously. But if you only assert that the force is W-F-T but ignore that it is also (inseparably and simultaneously) Experiencing, then that would be ignoring an important aspect of Thinking, the same as if we would ignore the volitional aspect and claim that there is no volition/free-will to Thinking. Experiencing/Knowing is a fundamental formless aspect/force of Thinking (not added to it or separate from it) that should not be ignored.

You are proposing a fourfold Unity of W-F-T-E. OK, but the question is and has always been, why are you adding "E" when its unifying knowing function is also accommodated by "T"? Why are we creating two different kinds of "Knowing", one by "T" and one by "E"? Or are you removing "Knowing" from "T" altogether?

[DandelionSoul]

I may be wrong but I think Rovelli may be misunderstanding the Buddhist concept of nothing. It's not "nothing" in the sense we may use it as a synonym for non-existance but it's more meant as "no-thing". No-thing is trying to get across that view that everything we see is entirely relational and not independent from anything else, so the base of it all is no-thing becuase there isn't a single "thing" generating it all or causing it all. If you really wanted to you could probably describe M@L as no-thing becuase its not a single "thing" like a godhead divinely acting upon the world but more like the force that drives things.

That may be, and I suspect that there is more than one take within the various traditions of Buddhism -- I don't think there's a singular Buddhist metaphysics. Nevertheless, it still seems to me a distinction without a difference. What is it that makes it a force, or a base, or a mind, or anything else we might call it? It's only the relationship it has to the world of shapes and forms that makes it the ground of that world. Hence, the ground, the emptiness itself, is empty: it lacks independent existence.

[Eugene I]

It's only the relationship it has to the world of shapes and forms that makes it the ground of that world. Hence, the ground, the emptiness itself, is empty: it lacks independent existence.

I agree. But neither the world of shapes/ideas would be able to exist separate or without the formless "ground" that volitionally moves and experiences the shapes/forms/ideas. They are inseparably related/intervened.

[DandelionSoul]

No problem! And don't be turned off by all of our (mostly my) contentious side debates with people here, we have been going at some of these issues like that for awhile. There is no love lost

Thank you for consideration of the essays as well. Deep M@L essay was written by Cleric, who I must say played a huge role in my inspiration to begin writing essays myself. Yes, every experience consists in those three activities. There is also deep connection to the Christian Trinity, although I prefer not to speak of it that way because it runs a high risk of idolatry i.e. assuming the living essence of the Godhead roughly corresponds to our intellectual concepts of those activities. That being said, we could tentatively say it is Father (W), Son (F), and Holy Spirit (T). Of course none of these concepts matter nearly as much as what they are pointing to, which is that we must align our W-F-T to reunite with the Divine and that always starts with Self-knowledge.

You'll get no argument from me about idolatry. Metaphysicians are especially at risk of falling for the most insidious sort of idol: the kind we keep in our heads and build out of words and concepts. I tend to think that our relationship to metaphysical concepts (including, and perhaps especially, God concepts) ought to be understood as a little bit more akin to an icon, a picture that helps us connect to the reality it represents, and we run into trouble if we start imagining that those pictures are the reality.

[Cleric]

But in your philosophy the wholeness of Reality is entirely reduced to Ideal, and this is what I and Santeri and many others resist.

It's not at all 'reduced' to Ideal. We all agree that the experiential and ideal are united in a whole. In the Absolute they are one. I agree that we can speak of the Absolute only abstractly, we can't humanly conceive of that state. Yet we can approach it asymptotically and the kind of convergence we experience in that direction allows us to say something.

Thinking is the center through which we approach this convergence. Let's consider pure thinking. The perception of the thought-form (verbal or otherwise) is a tight reflection of the idea which is the meaningful essence filling consciousness. The thought-form is experiential symbol for our knowing, our understanding, or simply - the ideal side of consciousness. Here's another picture.



Let the outer circle represent the Absolute where the two aspects of perception and idea are completely merged (I've drawn them slightly offset to make them visible but they should be completely one over the other). We can approach the Absolute approximately in this way: let's imagine a circle. We do that through our thinking spiritual activity. On one hand we have some sensory-like perception on our screen of imagination, on the other we have the knowing, the idea, that this inner perception is not simply some buzzing chaos of pixels but a circle. We know that because the pixels themselves reflect our ideating activity, we project our idea of circle as thought-perceptible symbol. In the Absolute these two aspects are completely merged - there's no 'distance' between idea and percept. The World is our Idea, the percept of the World Content (content of consciousness) is like a perfect reflection of the World-Idea. They are so perfectly matched that we can't compare it with anything from our normal life. In our ordinary life Ideas and perceptions are always slightly out-of-phase. For example, if we have tried above to imagine the circle, some people who don't have very vivid imagination, would find it not that easy. It's difficult to project our circle-idea perfectly on the screen of imagination, it resists our activity. Actually this is what allows us at all to speak about difference between perceptions and ideas. If they were perfectly fused together, as in the Absolute, there would also be no means to make distinction.

We find ourselves within a metamorphic view where Perception and Idea are largely out-of-phase. In certain sense our individual consciousness is the same infinite sphere as that of the Absolute (it's not just some dissociated bubble within it). We experience a state of the Absolute where the Idea we experience doesn't fit exactly the Perceptual content (I remind that by Perceptions it's mean not only the senses but also feelings, will, thought-forms, supersensible perceptions, etc.) The only place where they are almost in-phase is our thinking. It's a small island within consciousness where we have something resembling the state of the Absolute at infinity. Yet the thought-perceptions of our thinking are not perfect images of the ideas. They can't be perfect because they are embedded in a larger context. We can't have perfect fusion only in thinking while everything around it is still out-of-phase. This would imply that thinking exists as some completely independent element within the One Absolute Consciousness, and as such can be perfect in itself. But this is not so. Just as there are no perfectly closed systems in physics, so our thinking is an open system and can only be perfect if it reaches the state of the Absolute where truly everything fuses together.

From the above we can easily understand the whole metamorphic evolutionary process. Absolute Idea and Idea-Reflections (Perceptions) are out-of-phase from the standpoint of our limited perspective. Our thinking is like the seed point where this fusion is being restored, where Idea and Percept are imploding in-phase. From this seed point the Absolute will grow. That's why it's in the course of humanity's development to learn about the spiritual beings and their ideating activity. Through uniting with their World Thoughts we gradually restore the in-phase relationship between Absolute Idea and Absolute Perception. This restoration happens in the individual conscious perspective. It's relativity taken seriously. Our own thinking activity is the center point, the pinhole through which the Absolute turns inside-out.