Philosophical Speculations

Here is the podcast version of the lecture referenced in the post above. After the description of the bodily organization of the Greeks - in the second part of the lecture - it is also explained how this evolution of the bodily organization of man connects with what Ashvin quoted on the other thread: This is why Christ said, "except ye become as little children...". There we find the clearest explanation of the Christ ideal, or impulse, and what it exactly means for us as an ideal to tend to, in relation to the soul we harbor during the first 3 years of life (Son of God).

It's an illuminating lecture, that also provides a very concrete sense of how the evolution of our inner-outer organization runs parallel to the evolution of our planet Earth, here and now. The physical Earth, just like our physical body, exhibits today densification, rigidification and decay. These dense layers of existence have entered their declining phase. In our times of climate change, it’s incredibly insightful and revealing to consider these ideas, and how in the future we may work at overcoming our decaying physical body and physical planet, through the exemple of Christ ideal.

Cleric wrote: ↑Tue Nov 19, 2024 3:30 pm It should be noted that these developments started to occur only around the first millennium BC, which is not surprising since the spirit was descending deeper and deeper in the physical spectrum. Additionally, these philosophies were still not what we today consider as materialism. If we have to compare it with something modern, probably the closest would be something like pan-psychism. Democritus, for example, considered the soul to be composed of soul (fire) atoms. Such a fact shouldn't be passed by lightly. Whatever the philosophies at these times were, if we read with deeper feeling, it is clear that for man of that age, the soul was still a tangible reality that couldn't simply be ignored. Only much later our inner life thinned out to such an extent that one could fantasize that inner experience could somehow emerge from non-experience.

In short, materialism of today can be expressed as "Only lifeless, mechanical matter/energy is real. Our inner experience is non-reality." While the ancient materialists would rather say something like "Only my spiritual existence within the constraints of the physical body and environment is real. There can't be conscious existence beyond this organization." In other words, these philosophers, because of their deepening entanglement with the physical processes, could no longer sense the holistic nature of the existential flow, thus they rightfully thought "It's logical that when this body decomposes, nothing of these inner experiences would be possible."

This might be true about Greek philosophers. But if we look at the Charvaka school, we see a different picture rather close to the modern materialism and atheism. The Charvaka school originated around 6th century BC and their views denied any kind of spiritual existence, awareness after death or world beyond the visible physical universe.

"There is no world other than this;
There is no heaven and no hell;
The realm of Shiva and like regions,
are fabricated by stupid imposters."
— Sarvasiddhanta Samgraha, Verse 8

"The fire is hot, the water cold, refreshing cool the breeze of morn;
By whom came this variety? from their own nature was it born."

"O, the highly wise! Arrive at a conclusion, therefore, that there is nothing beyond this Universe. Give precedence to that which meets the eye and turn your back on what is beyond our knowledge."

"so I say, after death there is no awareness."
""no God, no samsara (rebirth), no karma, no duty, no fruits of merit, no sin."

Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2024 6:36 pm

Cleric wrote: ↑Tue Nov 19, 2024 3:30 pm It should be noted that these developments started to occur only around the first millennium BC, which is not surprising since the spirit was descending deeper and deeper in the physical spectrum. Additionally, these philosophies were still not what we today consider as materialism. If we have to compare it with something modern, probably the closest would be something like pan-psychism. Democritus, for example, considered the soul to be composed of soul (fire) atoms. Such a fact shouldn't be passed by lightly. Whatever the philosophies at these times were, if we read with deeper feeling, it is clear that for man of that age, the soul was still a tangible reality that couldn't simply be ignored. Only much later our inner life thinned out to such an extent that one could fantasize that inner experience could somehow emerge from non-experience.

In short, materialism of today can be expressed as "Only lifeless, mechanical matter/energy is real. Our inner experience is non-reality." While the ancient materialists would rather say something like "Only my spiritual existence within the constraints of the physical body and environment is real. There can't be conscious existence beyond this organization." In other words, these philosophers, because of their deepening entanglement with the physical processes, could no longer sense the holistic nature of the existential flow, thus they rightfully thought "It's logical that when this body decomposes, nothing of these inner experiences would be possible."

This might be true about Greek philosophers. But if we look at the Charvaka school, we see a different picture rather close to the modern materialism and atheism. The Charvaka school originated around 6th century BC and their views denied any kind of spiritual existence, awareness after death or world beyond the visible physical universe.

"There is no world other than this;
There is no heaven and no hell;
The realm of Shiva and like regions,
are fabricated by stupid imposters."
— Sarvasiddhanta Samgraha, Verse 8

"The fire is hot, the water cold, refreshing cool the breeze of morn;
By whom came this variety? from their own nature was it born."

"O, the highly wise! Arrive at a conclusion, therefore, that there is nothing beyond this Universe. Give precedence to that which meets the eye and turn your back on what is beyond our knowledge."

"so I say, after death there is no awareness."
""no God, no samsara (rebirth), no karma, no duty, no fruits of merit, no sin."

This is my first time hearing of Charvaka, but I did notice this on the Wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka# ... of_sources
Bhattacharya 2011, pp. 10, 29–32 states that the claims against Charvaka of hedonism, lack of any morality and ethics and disregard for spirituality is from texts of competing religious philosophies (Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism). Its primary sources, along with commentaries by Charvaka scholars, are missing or lost. This reliance on indirect sources raises the question of reliability and whether there was a bias and exaggeration in representing the views of Charvakas. Bhattacharya points out that multiple manuscripts are inconsistent, with key passages alleging hedonism and immorality missing in many manuscripts of the same text.[67]

The Skhalitapramathana Yuktihetusiddhi by Āryadevapāda, in a manuscript found in Tibet, discusses the Charvaka philosophy, but attributes a theistic claim to Charvakas - that happiness in this life, and the only life, can be attained by worshiping gods and defeating demons. Toso posits that as Charvaka philosophy's views spread and were widely discussed, non-Charvakas such as Āryadevapāda added certain points of view that may not be of the Charvakas'.[75]

Buddhists, Jains, Advaita Vedantins and Nyāya philosophers considered the Charvakas as one of their opponents and tried to refute their views. These refutations are indirect sources of Charvaka philosophy. The arguments and reasoning approaches Charvakas deployed were so significant that they continued to be referred to, even after all the authentic Charvaka/Lokāyata texts had been lost. However, the representation of the Charvaka thought in these works is not always firmly grounded in first-hand knowledge of Charvaka texts and should be viewed critically.[42]

Likewise, states Bhattacharya, the charge of hedonism against Charvaka might have been exaggerated.[67] Countering the argument that the Charvakas opposed all that was good in the Vedic tradition, Riepe 1964, p. 75 states, "It may be said from the available material that Cārvākas hold truth, integrity, consistency, and freedom of thought in the highest esteem."

Also, qualifying Democritus philosophy as panpsychist would be a real stretch, I think.

"According to Democritus, the world consists of nothing but atoms (indivisible chunks of matter) in empty space (which he seems to have thought of as an entity in its own right). These atoms can be imperceptibly small, and they interact either by impact or by hooking together, depending on their shapes. The great beauty of atomism was its ability to explain the changes in things as due to changes in the configurations of unchanging atoms. Democritus thought that the soul consists of smooth, round atoms and that perceptions consist of motions caused in the soul atoms by the atoms in the perceived thing."

From: "The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century"
GA 254 - Lecture III


"In the form in which it appeared in the nineteenth century, as an actual view of the world, materialism had never hitherto existed. True, there had been individual materialistic philosophers such as Democritus and others—you can read about them in my book Riddles of Philosophy—who were, so to speak, the forerunners of theoretical materialism. But if we compare the view of the world they actually held with what comes to expression in the materialism of the nineteenth century, it will be quite evident that materialism had never previously existed in that form. Least of all could it have existed, let us say, in the Middle Ages, or in the centuries immediately preceding the dawn of modern thought, because in those days the souls of men were still too closely connected with the impulses of the spiritual world. To conceive that the whole universe is nothing more than a sum-total of self-moving atoms in space and that these atoms, conglomerating into molecules, give rise to all the phenomena of life and of the spirit—such a conception was reserved for the nineteenth century."

Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2024 7:18 pm Also, qualifying Democritus philosophy as panpsychist would be a real stretch, I think.

"According to Democritus, the world consists of nothing but atoms (indivisible chunks of matter) in empty space (which he seems to have thought of as an entity in its own right). These atoms can be imperceptibly small, and they interact either by impact or by hooking together, depending on their shapes. The great beauty of atomism was its ability to explain the changes in things as due to changes in the configurations of unchanging atoms. Democritus thought that the soul consists of smooth, round atoms and that perceptions consist of motions caused in the soul atoms by the atoms in the perceived thing."

You are quoting people who have no intuition that there is even a spiritual evolutionary process underway and are therefore forced to project modern consciousness back into all past ages. They imagine the ancient Greeks were rearranging abstract mental pictures on the intellectual plane and philosophizing about the 'nature of reality' just like people do today. Federica already went over all of this in depth. It is the height of flattened intellectual understanding which imagines it can encompass the profound ancient philosophies and spiritual traditions without any corresponding inner development.

On one hand, you often acknowledge there is a spiritual evolutionary process that is reflected in our individual and collective Earthly development, which forms the entire basis for Martinus' spiritual outlook, for example (and also Sri Aurobindo, from a more Eastern perspective). But when it comes to understanding what lived in the souls of the ancient thinkers, on the other hand, or correspondingly how the meditative modes of resonating with spiritual realities have shifted between then and now, you are willing to ignore the entire spiritual evolutionary process. Everything just gets flattened onto a linear plane of understanding.

Living thinking, in contrast, doesn't try to categorize the ancients based on our familiar intellectual frameworks, but simply uses these labels like 'panpsychist' as a way of resonating with the underlying feeling that lived in their souls, as they experienced great transformations in the soul life stemming from the underlying unfoldment of spiritual evolution, just as we should once again be experiencing now.

Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2024 7:18 pm Also, qualifying Democritus philosophy as panpsychist would be a real stretch, I think.

"According to Democritus, the world consists of nothing but atoms (indivisible chunks of matter) in empty space (which he seems to have thought of as an entity in its own right). These atoms can be imperceptibly small, and they interact either by impact or by hooking together, depending on their shapes. The great beauty of atomism was its ability to explain the changes in things as due to changes in the configurations of unchanging atoms. Democritus thought that the soul consists of smooth, round atoms and that perceptions consist of motions caused in the soul atoms by the atoms in the perceived thing."

But see that for him inner experience (soul/psyche) was tangible, substantial and thus he feels the need to conceive soul content as also made of special 'smooth, round atoms' distinct from purely material atoms. Which modern materialist would talk like that? Today it is considered that only the matter atoms are real, while the inner experience is something virtual, non-real. That's why I compared it with pan-psychism because there inner experience is at least given same status of reality, even though inherent in the physical atoms.

But anyway. It's difficult to argue about these things because one can always say that in the end we can't be certain how the ancients experienced reality and whether it felt different from modern consciousness. Fortunately, everything of prime importance can already be found in our real-time inner experience here and now. When we start from there and work our way outward, we gradually gain insight in a quite unexpected manner even about such things that seem to be 'in the past'.

Cleric wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2024 8:45 pm But anyway. It's difficult to argue about these things because one can always say that in the end we can't be certain how the ancients experienced reality and whether it felt different from modern consciousness. Fortunately, everything of prime importance can already be found in our real-time inner experience here and now. When we start from there and work our way outward, we gradually gain insight in a quite unexpected manner even about such things that seem to be 'in the past'.

There is definitely a trend and direction in humanity's evolutionary path, we can clearly trace it as an average trend. However, we should not oversimplify it, the reality is more nuanced and diverse than in may look like on the surface. The reason I pointed to those ancient forms of materialism is to show it as an example. In reality, there is and has always been a large variety of souls incarnating on Earth, most of them native to Earth, but many from other races, many souls leaving Earth and either incarnating in other races or ascending to higher realms, and even each native human soul progressing at different paces and going along different paths and directions. This is why even in ancient times there were souls very tightly bound to their physical bodies and weakly connected to the nonphysical realms (and those would be the people inclined to adopt materialistic views even in ancient times), as well as people still strongly connected to nonphysical realms in later and modern times. Also, there is a variety of levels and realms in the nonphysical universe, and correspondingly there is variety of soul-body constitutions more or less connected to those realms. This is why in spiritual traditions and practices there have been so much variety of views and approaches made for people of different soul constitutions developing along different evolutionary paths. And this will continue this way, there is no magic pill that works for all. At the same time, science is universal, and every soul would benefit from learning and mastering spiritual science and integrating it into their practice and path regardless of their evolutionary direction or soul constitution.

Stranger wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 2:17 am There is definitely a trend and direction in humanity's evolutionary path, we can clearly trace it as an average trend. However, we should not oversimplify it, the reality is more nuanced and diverse than in may look like on the surface. The reason I pointed to those ancient forms of materialism is to show it as an example. In reality, there is and has always been a large variety of souls incarnating on Earth, most of them native to Earth, but many from other races, many souls leaving Earth and either incarnating in other races or ascending to higher realms, and even each native human soul progressing at different paces and going along different paths and directions. This is why even in ancient times there were souls very tightly bound to their physical bodies and weakly connected to the nonphysical realms (and those would be the people inclined to adopt materialistic views even in ancient times), as well as people still strongly connected to nonphysical realms in later and modern times. Also, there is a variety of levels and realms in the nonphysical universe, and correspondingly there is variety of soul-body constitutions more or less connected to those realms. This is why in spiritual traditions and practices there have been so much variety of views and approaches made for people of different soul constitutions developing along different evolutionary paths. And this will continue this way, there is no magic pill that works for all. At the same time, science is universal, and every soul would benefit from learning and mastering spiritual science and integrating it into their practice and path regardless of their evolutionary direction or soul constitution.

We are again at the place we always get to, and I struggle to find new approaches that can elucidate what's at stake here

Let's consider the implicit view again. Individual agents modulate the common spiritual environment. I still don't know your exact position on this, but to me, in such a paradigm, it seems necessary that the more 'real' or 'substantial' phenomena should be those energized by the attentional activity of more beings. To put it bluntly, if all spiritual beings decide to stop paying attention to the Earth and everything related to it, it should simply dissolve as a fading dream image, and the beings will remain in their 'naked' spiritual state.

This unveils a hidden polarity in this view - the phenomenal screen/space whose qualitative 'pixels' the agents energize, and the pure agents themselves. This raises an interesting question. Let's say an agent has cleared all entanglements with the screen, thus he's not drawn to incarnation again, he's not even entangled with the Solar system, he's a truly free agent. But now we can ask what determines the unique individuality of this naked spiritual agent. The very fact that he's still a well-formed individual agent suggests that there's still some structure (there's something setting apart one agent from another, the least of which is the fact that the agent has a unique memory of his individual journey). If phenomenal space (both physical-sensory and higher) is no longer a factor, then what is it that makes the agent's perspective different from that of other beings? In simple terms, there should be some kind of partitioning that is no longer in phenomenal space since one is no longer entangled with it and is thus free of its influences. So what is this other aspect of reality where the naked individuality is partitioned and where the memory resides?

Cleric wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 5:15 pm This unveils a hidden polarity in this view - the phenomenal screen/space whose qualitative 'pixels' the agents energize, and the pure agents themselves. This raises an interesting question. Let's say an agent has cleared all entanglements with the screen, thus he's not drawn to incarnation again, he's not even entangled with the Solar system, he's a truly free agent. But now we can ask what determines the unique individuality of this naked spiritual agent. The very fact that he's still a well-formed individual agent suggests that there's still some structure (there's something setting apart one agent from another, the least of which is the fact that the agent has a unique memory of his individual journey). If phenomenal space (both physical-sensory and higher) is no longer a factor, then what is it that makes the agent's perspective different from that of other beings? In simple terms, there should be some kind of partitioning that is no longer in phenomenal space since one is no longer entangled with it and is thus free of its influences. So what is this other aspect of reality where the naked individuality is partitioned and where the memory resides?

Good question, Cleric. Of course, the spiritual agents are never entirely "naked", there are always aspects/levels of reality where the structures and memories of their consciousness are formed and abide. There is a hierarchy of these layers (some call them "dimensions"). The higher is the dimension, the more different the perception of reality is as compared to our average human perception. Usually, for each being It spans over multiple levels, depending on the developmental stage of a being, but there is always a "center of gravity" - the most dominant level where most of the structures of individual consciousness reside. This "center of gravity" will naturally determine on which level of consciousness the next residence is going to be after completing a particular life cycle. Those who grew out of human mentality level and shifted their "center of gravity" to some other higher level will naturally not incarnate as humans anymore. But such beings are rather rare, most humans will continue incarnating and evolving with the rest of humanity. This hierarchy of levels is also not a one-dimensional vertical, but rather a manifold with quite complex multi-dimensional structure of realms.