Bernardo's latest essay

[Eugene I]

Ashvin, no matter how many made-up philosophical arguments you can throw to prove that music is wrong, people who have "musical ears" will play and listen anyway. I understand that for people who don't have musical ears music is a nonsensical noise, and it's not their fault. But "those who have ears let them hear", so I'll leave it at that.

[Cleric K]

Now, there are two different meanings of the word "to know". One is to know some meaning intellectually: "I know that NY is located in US" or "I know that 2x2=4" or "I know that the sky is blue". Such knowing is the knowing of meanings, I'll call it knowing-1. The other meaning of the word "to know" is to know "experientially" - to "see", "experience" and "experientially know" the blueness of the sky (knowing-2). Even when we think about abstract ideas like an idea of a circle and know-1 their meanings, we still also simultaneously know-2 them - we also experience the meanings and ideas. It is true that in reality both are always lumped together - you can not know-1 any meaning without also experiencing/knowing-2 that meaning, and you can not know-2 any form (idea, sensation, feeling) without knowing-1 its meaning at least to a tiny degree.

So if that's the case, why am I still distinguishing them (notice: distinguishing, not separating!)? First, its because knowing-1, according to our experience, is widely variable - we can be in a highly intelligent mode deeply comprehending the meanings and even, in super-cognitive mode, comprehending Cosmic Meanings, or we can be in a dumb mode like deep sleep hardly comprehending any meanings at all. However, knowing-2 never ever changes: we still experientially equally clearly know-2/experience every form, sensation or idea that appear in our space of consciousness.

Eugene, with your precise mind you could achieve so much! Only if you were willing to use knowing-2 to penetrate the very process of Thinking. Yes, it's challenging because it's the very process where the Ouroboros bites its tail (and the intellect feels comfortable only when head and tail are separate), but it's also the only way we can approach knowingly-2 the furnace of existence.

Let's try to dive deeper together. I've already tried that with the cup meditation but apparently without much success. Let's use the sky as an example. We put our thoughts under control and immerse entirely in the blueness of the sky, without thinking, conceptualizing, speculating, etc. We simply experientially know-2 what we experience. But what exactly is this knowing? Here we approach something which holds the key for proper understanding of this enigma. In pure contemplative knowing-2 we have monolithic experience. There's no jerking of thoughts, no surging of emotions. Pure contemplative perception imbued with knowing-2, as something holistic, unbroken, filling the whole infinite conscious space like laminar atmosphere. I believe this is what you mean when you say "knowing-2 never ever changes". It is this ever present knowing-2. Yet undoubtedly this knowing also provides specific experiences. Even though the essential character of knowing-2 is the same, there's still difference when we experientially know-2 blue sky or green meadow. So what is it that differs?

Let's try to make the example even more defined. Let's imagine we're lying on the grass and looking at cloudless sky such that our entire visual field is completely filled with the blue color of the sky. In purely visually-sensory aspect we experience color filling our consciousness. We can have somewhat similar experience if we look at a ceiling painted (and properly illuminated) in the same color. Let's imagine that the purely visual perception is indistinguishable in both cases. In other words, if we were blindfolded and someone laid us down somewhere and removed our blindfold, we wouldn't be able to tell if we're seeing sky or ceiling. What I'm trying to convey is that there's something else in the experience which makes the difference between seeing ceiling or sky. Clearly, experientially knowing-2 only the perceptual color is not enough. What is it that makes the experience different when we see sky or ceiling, even though the visual experience is exactly the same? Well, this is what is called the ideal element. It's another type of quality to the experience, yet quality which is like polar opposite of perceptions. It's what complements perceptions with meaning. And it is here that we must be most vigilant not to fall for the blind spot. If we call the ideal element 'just another quality' it's easy to imagine that this element may or may not be present in consciousness. For example, the quality of blue color may or may not be present in consciousness. If we imagine in the same way that the ideal element may or may not be present in consciousness we commit a grave error. The quality of blue may be absent in our current state but there's always some kind of perception - even if it is the perception of nothingness, void. In the very same way there's always some kind of ideal atmosphere permeating consciousness - even if it is experienced as the knowing-2 that the void is being experienced.

So in knowing-2 there's the ideal/knowing/understanding/meaningful 'atmosphere' that makes the difference in experience between knowing that we see a ceiling or the sky, even though the visual element is exactly the same. To recapitulate, in knowing-2 we have monolithic experience, completely united with the permanent aspect of consciousness, as you call it, yet this experiential knowing feels differently depending not only on the sensory perception but also on the quality of the knowing 'atmosphere', which makes the actual difference between ceiling and sky. I hope we're together so far. These are very elementary things and require nothing but sound introspection to be observed.

Let's go further. How do we come to knowing-2 of sky or ceiling? We should pause here and appreciate that both sky and ceiling are not at all simple things. If we drop into existence with no prior knowledge of anything. We can be aware of color qualities and this is the World Content for us. We have no idea that the colors mean something more than the most immediate knowing-2 we experience when we confront them. In order for the blue color to become infused with meaning of ceiling or  sky we need to go a long way. This is what we do from the time we are born. The amalgamation of feelings and perceptions are gradually differentiated by being infused with meaning. Now we can again give ourselves to contemplative knowing-2 of the sky but now there's great difference compared to the case where we only had blueness filling the World Content, which was all there was, as far as our knowing is concerned. Now we have the blue World Content but also the knowing-2 that we're looking at the sky. And even though this knowing is something monolithic in the pure experience, it is actually something that can be experienced in the way we do, only because this monolithic meaning exists implicitly in the most complicated relations with other meanings. There's a whole implicit context of the contents of knowing-2, that we experience at any given time. This have been mentioned several times already by me and Ashvin - the meaning of 'sky' can never exist in isolation. It is meaningful only because it exists in implicit relations to countless other knowing-2 experiences, which refine the meaning, like the outer world, ground, planet, atmosphere, birds, etc. It's bad enough that our thinking falls in the blind spot but we're even more blind when it comes to the metamorphic implicit context without which there wouldn't be any meaning-2 even for the simplest phenomena.

I beg you not to thrust down again what I said above as 'mere meanings of the intellect' which belong to knowing-1 but are experienced by knowing-2. As you can see I've made all attempts to stay entirely in the directly experiential, no numbers, no abstract verbal constructions 'the sky is blue'. We're dealing entirely with contemplative and experiential knowing-2 of direct perceptions and we fully embrace the fact that there's a monolithic and unchanging consciousness uniting the contents of knowing-2.

What we must appreciate from all this is that our knowing-2 experiences do not exist for themselves. The meaning-2 that we experience in these states would never be there if we haven't worked with our spiritual activity (Thinking) to differentiate and organize the amalgamation of perceptual experiences. It is the ideal atmosphere, which is responsible for this differentiation (not to be confused with separation). Without it, there wouldn't be any experiential difference between blue ceiling and sky. Knowing-2 would know only the buzzing confusion, even if it has the non-changing and permanent quality imbued!

As said, if we simply 'wake up' with blueness filling our consciousness, there are no means to know if we see sky, ceiling or whatever. How does knowing-2 know what is being experienced in normal circumstances? Thanks to the implicit metamorphic context! The space-time context (which is the intellectual conceptualization of the musical transformation of our metamorphic spiritual experience) is there in the 'periphery' of the blueness. We know-2 whether we have laid down on the grass or the carpet. In the moment of the experiential contemplation of blueness, this fact is already a past event but it is still holographically embedded in the whole conscious experience. This is the wider blind spot mentioned above. It's so easily forgotten that the meaning-2 that we experience in contemplation simply can't be what it is unless the whole metamorphic history of our current state is holographically embedded in it.

So there it is. I have nothing against knowing-2. As I've said several times this is not at all some unknown to Western Initiation. It simply has the name Intuitive consciousness - experientially knowing-2 in a monolithic fashion, in full awareness of the unity of Consciousness, contemplatively encompassing the whole World Content (perceptions) but still experiencing it's full meaning (idea). Where views diverge is that spiritual development recognizes that everything we think, feel and do, embeds holographically in the metamorphic view and this changes the character of the experiential knowing-2. If we haven't instinctively worked with Thinking as an infant, blue color filling consciousness would be known-2 only as that. The work with thought allows for the blueness to be complemented with the atmospheric ideal quality of ceiling or sky. In a similar way, unless we work with Thinking, our meditative states will remain always the same. This is why Western Initiation goes further than Eastern mysticism. Where the mystic experiences buzzing void, the Initiate experiences void infused with spiritual-ideal 'atmosphere' which makes the void state experientially different - World Content shaped by the ideating activity of spiritual beings. Just as the concepts of sky and ceiling don't simply pop out of the blue (pun intended), but the blue must be rigorously worked upon by Thinking and related with the whole World of Ideas, which makes it possible to differentiate between the two, so spiritual beings don't just pop out of the void. We need to till the metamorphic soil such that we prepare the Thoughts which can accommodate the higher experiences. Otherwise we stare right in them in the void and they pass through us without being registered, just as we can stare at blue without ever registering whether we see sky or ceiling.

[ScottRoberts]

And by the way, quoting Scott (from out private messaging):

I'm working on a clarification of what I mean by 'mumorphism', but this may take a while. Meanwhile, to answer your first question, for ontological purposes, I regard 'form' and 'ideal content' as synonymous, and 'idea' as synonymous with 'thing'.

As for your second question, no, formlessness is not an idea, but 'formlessness' is. That is, it is a concept used in expressing an ontology, but I consider it problematic to say "there is formlessness". It is this problem that I am trying to work out.

Here Scott makes a distinction between Formlessness as such (as an aspect of Reality), which is not an idea, and "formlessness" as a concept (reflection, idea) used in expressing an ontology (by Thinking). But if Formlessness is not an idea, then how would Thinking ever know about it? Would not it then be a Kantian "thing in itself" inaccessible to Thinking? No, because Formlessness is Conscious Experiencing by its nature, and that is what makes it knowable to Thinking.

I believe that you are missing an important point in my analysis. It shows up in your putting "formlessness" on one side, and "ideas" on the other, as in this from a later post:

Ideas/forms by themselves do not have any free will/volition and any ability to Experience.

This glides over the distinction I make between 'idea' and 'form' (or 'ideal content'). Thus your picture might look like:

formlessness ------- idea/ideal content

while mine is

formlessness ------ idea ------- ideal content.

So my saying "formlessness is not an idea" just means that it alone does not make an idea. One also needs ideal content, and it should be pointed out that a form (an ideal content) is also not an idea. So it is correct that a form by itself does not have any free will, but it is incorrect to say that an idea does not. In fact, I would say it is problematic to say "there are forms" or "there is formlessness", in that saying either leads one into the temptation of reifying either. One can only say, unproblematically, that there are ideas.

[Eugene I]

Now, there are two different meanings of the word "to know". One is to know some meaning intellectually: "I know that NY is located in US" or "I know that 2x2=4" or "I know that the sky is blue". Such knowing is the knowing of meanings, I'll call it knowing-1. The other meaning of the word "to know" is to know "experientially" - to "see", "experience" and "experientially know" the blueness of the sky (knowing-2). Even when we think about abstract ideas like an idea of a circle and know-1 their meanings, we still also simultaneously know-2 them - we also experience the meanings and ideas. It is true that in reality both are always lumped together - you can not know-1 any meaning without also experiencing/knowing-2 that meaning, and you can not know-2 any form (idea, sensation, feeling) without knowing-1 its meaning at least to a tiny degree.

So if that's the case, why am I still distinguishing them (notice: distinguishing, not separating!)? First, its because knowing-1, according to our experience, is widely variable - we can be in a highly intelligent mode deeply comprehending the meanings and even, in super-cognitive mode, comprehending Cosmic Meanings, or we can be in a dumb mode like deep sleep hardly comprehending any meanings at all. However, knowing-2 never ever changes: we still experientially equally clearly know-2/experience every form, sensation or idea that appear in our space of consciousness.

So in knowing-2 there's the ideal/knowing/understanding/meaningful 'atmosphere' that makes the difference in experience between knowing that we see a ceiling or the sky, even though the visual element is exactly the same. To recapitulate, in knowing-2 we have monolithic experience, completely united with the permanent aspect of consciousness, as you call it, yet this experiential knowing feels differently depending not only on the sensory perception but also on the quality of the knowing 'atmosphere', which makes the actual difference between ceiling and sky. I hope we're together so far. These are very elementary things and require nothing but sound introspection to be observed.
[/quote]
Cleric, I agree with the holographic metamorphic process of Thinking that you described, and the role of intuitive thinking and perceptions. However, we are still talking about different knowing-2. The intuitive thinking that you described is still a different kind, let's call it knowing-3, and what you said about intuitive "direct" knowing-3 is all correct. This, as I said before, is the biggest stumbling block for the practitioners of Eastern tradition: it is virtually impossible to describe exactly what the knowing-2 is (until one suddenly "gets it"). But it has nothing to do with intuitive knowing-3 of the "undifferentiated" perception of the blue sky. When we lie on the grass and observe the sky and the Thinking embraces the perceptions and starts adding the acts of knowings-1 to the sensory/intuitive knowing-3, all the knowings-3 and knowings-1 are also experienced with knowing2. Knowing-2 is the "clarity" with which we experientially know every single form, idea, perception, act of Thinking, volition, feeling. I really don't know how to describe it better, but if we are not getting anywhere, I guess we can just stop, it's not a big deal.

[Eugene I]

This glides over the distinction I make between 'idea' and 'form' (or 'ideal content'). Thus your picture might look like:

formlessness ------- idea/ideal content

while mine is

formlessness ------ idea ------- ideal content.

So my saying "formlessness is not an idea" just means that it alone does not make an idea. One also needs ideal content, and it should be pointed out that a form (an ideal content) is also not an idea. So it is correct that a form by itself does not have any free will, but it is incorrect to say that an idea does not. In fact, I would say it is problematic to say "there are forms" or "there is formlessness", in that saying either leads one into the temptation of reifying either. One can only say, unproblematically, that there are ideas.

Scott, thanks for clarifications. I guess it's again a terminological confusion. So, in your terminology, the idea is the wholeness/unity of formlessness and ideal content, like a coin having two sides. I'm fine with any terminology as long as we precisely define the terms.

But I'm turning again to the knowning-2 problem (apparently, the "hard problem of consciousness" for idealism). How does the "idea" consciously experience/know the ideal content, or formlessness, or itself, or anything? How does the "idea" preform volitional acts with free will when moving/manipulating the ideal content? What is THAT which consciously experiences the whole content of consciousness? What is THAT which freely makes volitions? We can call such "THAT" the "idea" (or whatever, any word would work), it's just that such term would be at odds and would have little to do with traditional understanding of the word "idea" associated with the content of our thoughts. Contents of out thoughts do not experience anything and do not act volitionally. I think you are just going to confuse people with such terminology. So I would propose to call it AEDI
So here is a "refined" scheme:

-----------------------knows-2----------------------------
formlessness ------ AEDI ------- ideal content.
---------------------volitions/acts---------------------------

[ScottRoberts]

Scott, thanks for clarifications. I guess it's again a terminological confusion. So, in your terminology, the idea is the wholeness/unity of formlessness and ideal content, like a coin having two sides. I'm fine with any terminology as long as we precisely define the terms.

But I'm turning again to the knowning-2 problem (apparently, the "hard problem of consciousness" for idealism). How does the "idea" consciously experience/know the ideal content, or formlessness, or itself, or anything? How does the "idea" preform volitional acts with free will when moving/manipulating the ideal content? What is THAT which consciously experiences the whole content of consciousness? What is THAT which freely makes volitions? We can call such "THAT" the "idea" (or whatever, any word would work), it's just that such term would be at odds and would have little to do with traditional understanding of the word "idea" associated with the content of our thoughts. Contents of out thoughts do not experience anything and do not act volitionally. I think you are just going to confuse people with such terminology.

Yes, this way of using the word 'idea' can be confusing, but I think it serves a pedagogical purpose. That is, to move one's thinking in Cleric's direction of seeing ourselves as idea-beings, and as surrounded by more advanced idea-beings.

But, if I want to avoid confusion, I use the term 'conscious act' instead of 'idea', even though for me these are one and the same. And with that change, all your questions are answered. What experiences ideal content? Conscious activity. What knows (-1 and -2)? Conscious activity. What wills? Conscious activity.

[Cleric K]

Cleric, I agree with the holographic metamorphic process of Thinking that you described, and the role of intuitive thinking and perceptions. However, we are still talking about different knowing-2. The intuitive thinking that you described is still a different kind, let's call it knowing-3, and what you said about intuitive "direct" knowing-3 is all correct. This, as I said before, is the biggest stumbling block for the practitioners of Eastern tradition: it is virtually impossible to describe exactly what the knowing-2 is (until one suddenly "gets it"). But it has nothing to do with intuitive knowing-3 of the "undifferentiated" perception of the blue sky. When we lie on the grass and observe the sky and the Thinking embraces the perceptions and starts adding the acts of knowings-1 to the sensory/intuitive knowing-3, all the knowings-3 and knowings-1 are also experienced with knowing2. Knowing-2 is the "clarity" with which we experientially know every single form, idea, perception, act of Thinking, volition, feeling. I really don't know how to describe it better, but if we are not getting anywhere, I guess we can just stop, it's not a big deal.

I expected that That's why I said:

I beg you not to thrust down again what I said above as 'mere meanings of the intellect' which belong to knowing-1 but are experienced by knowing-2. As you can see I've made all attempts to stay entirely in the directly experiential, no numbers, no abstract verbal constructions 'the sky is blue'. We're dealing entirely with contemplative and experiential knowing-2 of direct perceptions and we fully embrace the fact that there's a monolithic and unchanging consciousness uniting the contents of knowing-2.

I feel your motivation. It's the asymptotic approaching of a limit. Anything that can ever be expressed, written, felt, thought and so on, points at the very bleeding edge of experience, which is felt to be the container of all, to be above all.

I know you hold that the above understanding is exclusive property of Eastern spirituality but I must once again point attention that this is not at all something that Western esoterism (or even philosophy) is blind about. It's expressed in simple words even in the very beginning of PoF through the fact that when Thinking observes itself it always sees itself as it was just an instant ago. The current Thinking is experienced precisely in the knowing-2 manner (not 3), while the shed skin of the Ouroboros is what is known-3.

What you're doing I call "flirting with the event horizon"  (note that I use the term loosely, not in the strict black hole sense. Information can flow in and out the dark core but we're simply not conscious of the interior). People here do it in different ways:
Adur/Almaas: beneath the event horizon there's absolute nothingness! It can never be experienced, remembered, perceived but yet it's possible to be known-X.
Eugene: The event horizon has been crossed by few oriental mystics but the experience is completely inexplicable, there's nothing that can be bridged with knowing-1/3. Anything we try to cognize about it immediately becomes reduced to knowing-1/3.
Mandibil: The black hole void exists but don't even dare to cross the event horizon. It's dangerous and you'll regret it. It can only lead to delusions.

Actually, I must say that I sympathize the most with Mandibil. Not because I agree with the absolute impermeability of the event horizon but because flirting with it indeed results in irrational thinking. We're forced to postulate all kinds of mysterious knowings-X just to preserve the inexplicability of the experience and to make sure Thinking has no access to it.

Things remain inexplicable only as long as the event horizon is fixed. It's true that our kowing-2 activity proceeds from within the void (the formless) and becomes knowable-1/3 only when it's already shed away. The event horizon is continuously shedding dead Ouroboros skin scales away. Yet this event horizon is movable, so to speak. It's not fixed. This is not as difficult to understand as it may sound.

Let's consider a simple man, a savage. Life proceeds instinctively. Consciousness experiences perceptions and reflex-like will-reactions - monkey see, monkey do. The causes for the savage's behavior lie beneath his conscious event horizon. He simply witnesses perceptions and the instinctive reactions to them. When we move to the spiritually developed man we find out a whole new layer of inner activity. What for the savage lies in the subconscious regions, becomes experiential reality. The "I" can differentiate itself from the surging sea of desires, instincts, passions. It can interfere through its spiritual activity, it can give way to certain desires while block or reroute others. Please note that this is a whole new domain of spiritual experience. It's not just mechanical surface polishing of instincts. It's not like "monkey still sees and does, except the behavior is more refined". There's a completely new world of inner experiences which simply don't exist in the savage's consciousness. In certain sense the event horizon has moved more towards the fountain of Consciousness. The developed man is conscious and can interfere with spiritual processes which lie beneath the horizon of the savage. The savage becomes conscious of his will only when it becomes a perceptual fact. The developed man can intercept the spiritual volition as it is still sprouting in the soul and can guide its unfoldment or suppress it altogether if needed. For the savage the event horizon is like the surface of the Sun where he can only witness the violent prominences and sunspots. The developed man is conscious deeper in the convection zone and can guide the plasma currents to some extent. But the event horizon is not fixed at that stage either. For the Initiate the horizon moves even further towards the Core and as such he becomes conscious of processes that precede the personal soul life. He lives together with spiritual processes that animate the kingdoms of Nature and the collective depths of humanity.

This horizon has been steadily moving in the course of evolution. Major critical point was crossed about two thousand years ago. Prior to that, incarnated humans could very well know about the threshold of the event horizon, but the contents of the soul that were shedding could not be traced to nothing comprehensible, they simply seemed to emerge from the mystery of the soul depths. This changed in a profound way through the Incarnation, which, so to speak, enclosed the curvature of the event horizon and now the soul contents could still be felt as emerging from depths beneath the horizon, but now these depths had Center - there's now an "I". Not the biographical unity of experiences, which people had even long before that, but the spiritual principle leading the individual in full consciousness to the World-All. The deep activity of the "I" is where the Cosmic Ouroboros is not simply theoretically but Experientially known-2.

The horizon keeps moving and more and more of what was hidden is brought to light:

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be brought to light.

Western esoterism has worked out the spiritual methodology for the process of horizon movement. So far it has happened instinctively but now it is we who must knock and we who must seek. The horizon is always there. I keep stressing on that. That's why we need the deeper reverence, humility and prayer. No matter how much has been brought to light, there's still infinitely more concealed, which is beyond our conscious control.

I don't think I can make things more explicit than this. Western esoterism builds on the heritage of the East. Nothing has been thrown away (I'm not speaking about the external history of the West exemplified by the church, science and abstract philosophy). The knowing-2 of the experience at the bleeding edge of the event horizon is still there. But the horizon has moved further. What Gautama Buddha couldn't experience while incarnated, simply because of where we were along the metamorphic progress of the humanity's evolution, can now be experientially known as supersensible perceptions. For the mystic, the World ends at the event horizon of personal consciousness, and passes in the inexplicable Experience of the One Consciousness. For the Christian Initiate the event horizon has moved further thanks to the fact that he can preserve the Center of spiritual activity even beyond the body. The reason is that this Center is no longer the personal bubble's center but the Center of the World-All. The World doesn't end at the horizon of personal consciousness but passes into the Macrocosmos where the "I", concentrically united with the Center of All, lives together with the World Thoughts that weave creatively the human being and the kingdoms of Nature, the planets and the stars. These World Thoughts have always been there but in former times they were entirely beneath the event horizon. The ancients could only observe mighty Cosmic pictures that these Thoughts painted in their souls, such as those recorded in the Vedic literature. But the first-person cognitive experience of these World Thoughts was not yet possible. Before we can experience from first-person perspective the World Thoughts we must first experience our microcosmic Thinking as it crosses the event horizon and becomes perceptible thought-forms - words, symbols, etc. This is something that barely too many thinkers do today, even though a powerful impulse has been given a century ago. Thinking still consists of 'hearing words' and dribbling with their arrangements. Thinkers still shy away from the Experience (belonging to knowing-2) of the World Thinking Process, the point of implosion where the Cosmic Ouroboros bites its tail.

I really hope things are more clear now. I completely agree with you - there's always something inexplicable lying beneath the event horizon. The tearing that precipitates from the horizon has already been distanced from this deep and mysterious process, so I agree that if we focus on the already shed contents within the soul we're blind for the tearing process (known by 2). But it's simply not true that this knowledge is missing in Western Initiatic science. Not only that it is not missing but the whole science revolves around the proper attitude towards what lives beneath the horizon. If I have to put it in few words, the Western method consists in the cognitive evolution of Prayer. Prayer that becomes creative and knowing activity. Whole books can be written about this. Through this proper attitude and our spiritual activity, we become dynamic ideating force in the World Gradient. We also actively participate in the movement of the event horizon. In exoteric Christianity the horizon is fixed. Christ is within it, we're outside it. Prayer is not yet cognitive. For Prayer to become cognitive it means that we want with all our Love to Think the Thoughts of the Cosmic Word, the Logos, to experience ourselves as conductors of the Word, how they emerge from the depths of the World-All and how we perform our humble duty with Love, by ensuring that these Thoughts fall as good seeds on fertile soil such that they can further the metamorphic process. The mistake of the mystic is to confuse the tearing process at the event horizon with the grounds of existence. The mystic beholds the soul contents in the same way as any other human being (arguably with much deeper awareness). Yet as far as the World Process is concerned, everything becomes flattened at the event horizon. It's enough for him know-2 the tearing of the contents of consciousness at the horizon, even though there's no understanding whatsoever why things are the way they are. I repeat - the Christin Initiate doesn't ignore the tearing process at the event horizon. He even goes further to find the proper attitude towards the depths beneath the horizon (which the mystic considers either non-existent or lateral, because he believes he's already at the grounds of being at the horizon). This attitude is not simple worship of something transcendental that can never be approached but is living metamorphosis which continuously moves the event horizon such that what has been formerly working subconsciously from the depths is brought to light and experienced as first-person spiritual activity propelled by idea.

PS: When I speak about mysticism I don't refer neither to you, nor to all Eastern schools. I'm mainly speaking about the modern nondual teachings which flood the West in their popular formulations.

[Lou Gold]

"My advice, don't be a Buddhist. Just be a person with a good heart.
We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality.
When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything.
That is all."
~ Kalu Rinpoche

[SanteriSatama]

It's the asymptotic approaching of a limit.

Which does not mean really mean anything much, if you don't first postulate the oxymoron idea of "actual and completed infinity" and start believing in such, because some academic authorities maintain the narrative that such idea is not a self-contradictory claim in a language game that postulates both LNC and LEM as the foundational axioms of it's bivalent logic. LNC and and LEM correspond to denials of the "both and" and "neither nor" horns the tetralemma, which on this forum is best known from Scott's presentation.

"Cantor's Paradise" is the post-modern joke of the formalist arbitrary language games that take a piss on empirical (ie. intuitive etc. experiental) truth. All the joke does is to postulate actual infinity (in the form of infinite set of "points") as the metric, against which no movement can touch another movement, or even move a goal post. Yes, the goal post of futile arguing against Zeno's proofs stays intact, the empirical validity of Zeno is about as firm as ever. Mathematics just tends to be slow and thorough in it's pace, and Cantor-Hilbert paradigm is doing it's proof by self-contradictory absurdity very thoroughly.

But while the authoritarian followers keep on doing their formalism-physicalism tripping of their post-modern metanarrative of post-truth language gaming (and gets offended when reminded that's the original meaning of 'post-modern') we can also move on to a more coherent foundation and build and be something better.

Yet this event horizon is movable.

Yes.

Let's consider a simple man, a savage.

Let's not con, I don't like the taste of that cider.

I called a formulation of an animistic theory 'The Savage Theory' because it's much more simple than your projection of "a simple savage", which is a very complex and not very healthy layering of cultural narratives. There's no empirical foundation for the narrative except the self-reflection of an European as a degenerate imbecille.

[SanteriSatama]

This came up in the feed. Worth watching the whole thing, something IMHO nice about the asymptote ceiling in the end:

https://odysee.com/@veritasium:f/the-lo ... periment:1

If odysee don't work for you, the Alphabet-Google platform has it too: