Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 7:07 pm For purposes of that analogy, I should have compared the 'nondual' pole with the supra-sensory living process. Although we generally associate the experience of Earthly corporeal life with the dual and the post-death incorporeal with the nondual, so it works both ways.

What you write above basically sums up the whole thing. You fail to discern the polar nature of existential reality because you are analyzing it with your dualistic intellect. If you had attained to imaginative perception, where the content of all the abstract reflections lose their ontological meaning, then there would no longer be any question that the One reality evolves holistically as a rythmic alternation between the poles at various scale-depths of convolution. This is the stream of becoming which Cleric illustrated that is applicable at all scales, levels, depths, etc. of reality, dual or nondual, corporeal or incorporeal, or whatever else, it doesn't matter - it always applies. If you simply took the time and interest to carefully read over what Cleric was actually writing, then you either would not have written what you wrote above or you would have "disagreed" with all those illustrations and explained why.

As it stands, your view is exactly a mirror image of the dualistic and exoteric Christian understanding where darkness, evil, earthly manifestation, etc. is simply a privation of light and good and the unmanifest Divine. It is like a water bottle that is filled with water (darkness) and our task is to simply realize this fact and wait passively until someone or something else after death takes away all the water or reveals there is actually no water in the bottle. The only difference is you have made the Serpent in Eden into the 'true light' and the Elohim into the 'false light'. Western esoteric understanding has advanced beyond this dualistic mindset for many centuries now, and every individual is now in a position to make this clear to themselves. But as we keep pointing out, the dualistic intellect will keep cherry-picking only those texts and data points which support its preconceived prejudices and ignore all others, until it finally endeavors to experience the force of its own inward reality which is of a polar rhythmic nature.

OK, enough of accusing each other of being on the side of the Serpent, but the only thing I can say is that this is a remarkably perverted interpretation of reality. There is indeed an interplay of polarities and levels in the world of forms that shapes its dynamics and rhythms, but all of it never affects the fundamental never-changing reality of Oneness which has no polarity whatsoever. You really seem to have no clue or experiential insight into what Oneness and the Divine Light of Self-Knowing is (which is at the core of all authentic esoteric spiritual traditions of the West and East). But it is exactly the dualistic intellect that intellectually interprets the Oneness as only one polarity of the duality of poles.

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 7:33 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 7:07 pm For purposes of that analogy, I should have compared the 'nondual' pole with the supra-sensory living process. Although we generally associate the experience of Earthly corporeal life with the dual and the post-death incorporeal with the nondual, so it works both ways.

What you write above basically sums up the whole thing. You fail to discern the polar nature of existential reality because you are analyzing it with your dualistic intellect. If you had attained to imaginative perception, where the content of all the abstract reflections lose their ontological meaning, then there would no longer be any question that the One reality evolves holistically as a rythmic alternation between the poles at various scale-depths of convolution. This is the stream of becoming which Cleric illustrated that is applicable at all scales, levels, depths, etc. of reality, dual or nondual, corporeal or incorporeal, or whatever else, it doesn't matter - it always applies. If you simply took the time and interest to carefully read over what Cleric was actually writing, then you either would not have written what you wrote above or you would have "disagreed" with all those illustrations and explained why.

As it stands, your view is exactly a mirror image of the dualistic and exoteric Christian understanding where darkness, evil, earthly manifestation, etc. is simply a privation of light and good and the unmanifest Divine. It is like a water bottle that is filled with water (darkness) and our task is to simply realize this fact and wait passively until someone or something else after death takes away all the water or reveals there is actually no water in the bottle. The only difference is you have made the Serpent in Eden into the 'true light' and the Elohim into the 'false light'. Western esoteric understanding has advanced beyond this dualistic mindset for many centuries now, and every individual is now in a position to make this clear to themselves. But as we keep pointing out, the dualistic intellect will keep cherry-picking only those texts and data points which support its preconceived prejudices and ignore all others, until it finally endeavors to experience the force of its own inward reality which is of a polar rhythmic nature.

OK, enough of accusing each other of being on the side of the Serpent, but the only thing I can say is that this is a remarkably perverted interpretation of reality. There is indeed an interplay of polarities and levels in the world of forms that shapes its dynamics and rhythms, but all of it never affects the fundamental never-changing reality of Oneness which has no polarity whatsoever. You really seem to have no clue or experiential insight into what Oneness and the Divine Light of Self-Knowing is (which is at the core of all authentic esoteric spiritual traditions of the West and East). But it is exactly the dualistic intellect that intellectually interprets the Oneness as only one polarity of the duality of poles.

Cleric just addressed what your 'self-knowing of Oneness' actually is, as he has many times on this forum before, which you conveniently ignored. It's only the very beginning of attaining real spiritual knowledge across the threshold of death, but you have idolized it into the highest and most pure attainment of Earthly consciousness because you prefer to feel yourself as the apex-level perpsective in reality. That's why you casually dismiss everything that is presented to you as if you already know it. You repeatedly make blanket assertions about all the world's traditions which turn out to be wrong, but that doesn't seem to slow you down one bit and question whether some more humility is needed.

We have spoken about the so called nondual state from many different angles. In the context of conversations with Mike we have called it 'stepping out of the movie'. This is what the direct experience presents us with - we become aware at a more holistic level of consciousness from which we realize our daily freefall through quantized states of being. We encompass the memory reverberations of our own states. Even if we don't verbalize it, this contemplation has the meaning of "This is what I'm doing every day, even though I'm completely engrossed in the details and lack the awareness that this is all happening (Mike's self-remembrance)."

Alright, this is all great. No one has ever denied or demeaned the value of this. Not only that but this is the first necessary step through which we should pass on our way towards real self knowledge. If we can't observe our own states of being (the exceptional state), we can't make the tiniest step forward because all higher cognition begins with the consciousness that our state is inseparable from the World-state and in fact they can only be studied as a Cosmic whole.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 7:51 pm Cleric just addressed what your 'self-knowing of Oneness' actually is, as he has many times on this forum before, which you conveniently ignored. It's only the very beginning of attaining real spiritual knowledge across the threshold of death, but you have idolized it into the highest and most pure attainment of Earthly consciousness because you prefer to feel yourself as the apex-level perpsective in reality. That's why you casually dismiss everything that is presented to you as if you already know it. You repeatedly make blanket assertions about all the world's traditions which turn out to be wrong, but that doesn't seem to slow you down one bit and question whether some more humility is needed.

That only tells me that Cleric also has no clue. He confuses the "observing our own states of being", which is a useful practice but only one of the practical steps towards the realization of the fundamental Oneness of reality, with the Oneness itself. Oneness does not invalidate the dynamics and structures of the world of forms, but it is just a true state of being at the fundamental level of reality that has no polarity/alternative, and remarkably it can be known experientially, because it is the Divine Self-Knowing. And realization of this truth is essential for discerning the realities of the Cosmos on all levels, prior to or after the threshold of death, because without such realization our state of consciousness can only be inevitably confused in the state of duality, which is simply a distorted perception of reality of both material and higher spiritual realms. Which means that one cannot have a "real spiritual knowledge across the threshold of death" without the realization of Oneness.

But as we discussed many times before, I agree that the realization of Oneness is not the end of the path and does not give a full omniscience of the structure and dynamics of the Cosmos on all levels. It only reveals what the reality fundamentally IS, but not all of what it DOES. So, it's only a beginning of the path of true knowledge where both the knowledge of what reality IS and how its forms are structured and what they DO unfolds. But only acquiring the knowledge of the structures and dynamics without the experiential knowing of the Oneness of the fundamental nature of reality can only lead to incomplete knowledge, and the structures and dynamics will inevitably be misunderstood without the knowing of the underlying Oneness.

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 8:19 pm That only tells me that Cleric also has no clue. He confuses the "observing our own states of being", which is a useful practice but only one of the practical steps towards the realization of the fundamental Oneness of reality, with the Oneness itself. Oneness does not invalidate the dynamics and structures of the world of forms, but it is just a true state of being at the fundamental level of reality that has no polarity/alternative, and remarkably it can be known experientially, because it is the Divine Self-Knowing. And realization of this truth is essential for discerning the realities of the Cosmos on all levels, prior to or after the threshold of death, because without such realization our state of consciousness can only be inevitably confused in the state of duality, which is simply a distorted perception of reality of both material and higher spiritual realms. Which means that one cannot have a "real spiritual knowledge across the threshold of death" without the realization of Oneness.

But as we discussed many times before, I agree that the realization of Oneness is not the end of the path and does not give a full omniscience of the structure and dynamics of the Cosmos on all levels. It only reveals what the reality fundamentally IS, but not all of what it DOES. So, it's only a beginning of the path of true knowledge where both the knowledge of what reality IS and how its forms are structured and what they DO unfolds. But only acquiring the knowledge of the structures and dynamics without the experiential knowing of the Oneness of the fundamental nature of reality can only lead to incomplete knowledge, and the structures and dynamics will inevitably be misunderstood without the knowing of the underlying Oneness.

As said, the funny thing is that I all I have to do is say that I know what you are talking about but I can't describe it because it is beyond words, and then you'll agree that I have pretty good clue about Oneness As said so many times, we speak concretely about these things not in order to give the impression that these sublime realities can be reduced to a handful of intellectual concepts but only because if we are to ever get moving we need some form of climber's holds. These can't in the faintest capture the richness of the higher states, they only serve as geodetic markers. I guess it is quite clear to anyone that if we forever repeat that "it's inexplicable", we can't expect that anything will ever become explicable.

But anyway. We have the beginning and we agree on it. It's not about having abstract mental-image replica of the structures and dynamics of reality - we're seeking living, in vivo consciousness of the way our being is composed from the forces and beings of the Cosmos.

So let's continue from here. In what direction should we proceed if we want to cross the threshold of purely intellectual cognition and begin to see reality, at least glimpses, from the perspectives of our higher levels of being? And of course, this should happen in such a way that the intellect doesn't remain isolated in an orthogonal realm, but can understand from direct experience how the higher orders of reality shape its quantized states (otherwise, from the intellect's point of view things will remain as inexplicable as ever).

We're all tired (at least I am) of all this going over and over again through the same things. Let's move further for a change. I repeat - we're in full agreement that amassing abstract metaphsical theories of the worlds, the hierarchies and so on, leaves us in the dry plane of the dual intellect. It's undisputable that we need to move in a completely novel direction, orthogonal to the intellectual plane. In the last few years, we've been talking about nothing but this novel direction. But let's start afresh. How in your view we should go on with the task of gaining true cognition (that in which our higher being lives) that alone can give us true orientation within the Earthly realm?

Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:44 pm So let's continue from here. In what direction should we proceed if we want to cross the threshold of purely intellectual cognition and begin to see reality, at least glimpses, from the perspectives of our higher levels of being? And of course, this should happen in such a way that the intellect doesn't remain isolated in an orthogonal realm, but can understand from direct experience how the higher orders of reality shape its quantized states (otherwise, from the intellect's point of view things will remain as inexplicable as ever).

We're all tired (at least I am) of all this going over and over again through the same things. Let's move further for a change. I repeat - we're in full agreement that amassing abstract metaphsical theories of the worlds, the hierarchies and so on, leaves us in the dry plane of the dual intellect. It's undisputable that we need to move in a completely novel direction, orthogonal to the intellectual plane. In the last few years, we've been talking about nothing but this novel direction. But let's start afresh. How in your view we should go on with the task of gaining true cognition (that in which our higher being lives) that alone can give us true orientation within the Earthly realm?

I'm in full support of such constructive approach. But there are a few issues here for me though:
- Whenever I attempt to speak of the higher cognition, I'm being accused of having a wrong understanding of what higher cognition is, so I quit trying. By the way, the environment on this forum is quite unfriendly and does not promote sincere and open discussions (may be that is why most people left?). I usually step in only once in a while just to point people in the direction of Oneness hoping to spark their inspiration.
- I am more interested in studying the structures and laws of the nondual state, and I'm only a beginner there taking baby steps.
- As I said, I have no language and little conceptual apparatus to describe and convey the meanings that I am discovering in that realm.
- Even if I try to convey these meanings, only people with a living experience of the nondual state will understand what realities these words are actually pointing to, and others will most likely misunderstand.

In the Buddhist Dzogchen tradition (which I also associate with) it is actually forbidden to openly speak about personal experiences of the realities of the nondual state. This knowledge was only passed from a teacher directly to a student who the teacher regarded as having sufficient maturity to understand, or shared by student with a teacher. The reason is simple: it is because, without sufficient maturity and spiritual experience, this knowledge will most likely be misunderstood, which will only cause more harm and confusion than good. Now the texts of these traditions are more openly available, but the practice of secrecy regarding openly discussing the experiences still applies, and so I have to respect it.

And the last thing: I spent too much time on the forum over the last days and I'm rather tired, so I need to take a break

Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:44 pm We're all tired (at least I am) of all this going over and over again through the same things.

Cleric, it has crossed my mind that these foundational steps you made the effort to once again so carefully and insightfully explain can now be the perfectly appropriate basis of chapter one of the future book Güney was speaking of!
One can agree with what Eugene said that, sadly, many would shy away from, or stumble upon, a book like PoF. From my recent experience I can say that I have not succeded once in the few attempts I've made to get another person to read anything av Steiner. But the words you have impressed in this thread in particular would not suffer from such impediment. The language you speak is exactly what people of the present time can and need to hear, and read!

(Ashvin, I think what you write is also uniquely insightful, and I believe at some not too far away point in the future, it should take book form, or similar)

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 10:07 am

Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:44 pm We're all tired (at least I am) of all this going over and over again through the same things.

Cleric, it has crossed my mind that these foundational steps you made the effort to once again so carefully and insightfully explain can now be the perfectly appropriate basis of chapter one of the future book Güney was speaking of!
One can agree with what Eugene said that, sadly, many would shy away from, or stumble upon, a book like PoF. From my recent experience I can say that I have not succeded once in the few attempts I've made to get another person to read anything av Steiner. But the words you have impressed in this thread in particular would not suffer from such impediment. The language you speak is exactly what people of the present time can and need to hear, and read!

(Ashvin, I think what you write is also uniquely insightful, and I believe at some not too far away point in the future, it should take book form, or similar)

Thank you, Federica! As I've mentioned before, there are few essays that I've been working on and maybe it's time to get back on them. They are nothing new, it's the same old central topic but maybe they could help someone shorten the language barrier that is encountered with PoF.

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:53 pm I'm in full support of such constructive approach. But there are a few issues here for me though:
- Whenever I attempt to speak of the higher cognition, I'm being accused of having a wrong understanding of what higher cognition is, so I quit trying. By the way, the environment on this forum is quite unfriendly and does not promote sincere and open discussions (may be that is why most people left?). I usually step in only once in a while just to point people in the direction of Oneness hoping to spark their inspiration.
- I am more interested in studying the structures and laws of the nondual state, and I'm only a beginner there taking baby steps.
- As I said, I have no language and little conceptual apparatus to describe and convey the meanings that I am discovering in that realm.
- Even if I try to convey these meanings, only people with a living experience of the nondual state will understand what realities these words are actually pointing to, and others will most likely misunderstand.

In the Buddhist Dzogchen tradition (which I also associate with) it is actually forbidden to openly speak about personal experiences of the realities of the nondual state. This knowledge was only passed from a teacher directly to a student who the teacher regarded as having sufficient maturity to understand, or shared by student with a teacher. The reason is simple: it is because, without sufficient maturity and spiritual experience, this knowledge will most likely be misunderstood, which will only cause more harm and confusion than good. Now the texts of these traditions are more openly available, but the practice of secrecy regarding openly discussing the experiences still applies, and so I have to respect it.

And the last thing: I spent too much time on the forum over the last days and I'm rather tired, so I need to take a break

OK, so I take this as a confirmation to my question in that post In other words, you are working on your way towards cognition of the nondual realms but you don't think that this path passes through the development and liberation of the nondual cognitive forces which are rigidified in the intellect.

My attempt at constructive approach wasn't so much about the details of the path, which may indeed vary personally but about the general orientation. There are things which we should be clear about right from the beginning. This is the greatest lesson we should have extracted from materialism and its hard problems. The hard problem of consciousness arose only because of a very specific soul configuration through which humanity had to pass. In certain sense man had this stubbornness which kept telling him "There's not enough scientific data, the answer may be right behind the next corner." Of course, the dead-endedness of this approach could have been clearly cognized even in the time of Newton (like Goethe did). It had nothing to do with insufficient scientific data. It's a matter of unprejudiced thinking. Yet there was something in materialism which was highly luring, which with ease biased thinking in the corresponding direction. It was the desire to feel independent of anything spiritual (not yet with Newton but certainly with latter thinkers). This had the positive role to lead man to independent thinking but when taken further than necessary it inevitable leads to the demise of humanity, to conflict and moral degradation.

In a similar way, there are principal positions which we should elucidate by unprejudiced thinking even before we begin on our path to nondual cognition. It is as simple as it is for the hard problem, except that it is on a different level. We see through the hard problem when we soberly realize that no amount of mechanical combinations of thoughts about atoms or neurons, can ever produce the inner experience of color, feeling and thought itself. It is simply a thinking error if we imagine that if we pile up billions of these thoughts then somehow the inner qualia will magically emerge. The solution is the simplest it can ever be - just don't discard parts of the given that you can't recover in any other way. Don't try to produce one part from another but work your way through their holistic harmony, such that they are seen in their lawful flow.

The nondual path presents us with the possibility for the exact same cognitive error. It's the discarding of the cognitive force present in the intellect in order to seek some other, yet unknown, nondual cognitive force which is completely orthogonal to the intellect. This can be called 'the mystical hard problem': how to experientially comprehend the existence of the intellect (and cognitive meaning) from an inexplicable experience which has no trace of anything that even reminds of thought?

Is there any reason for wonder why progress in that direction is practically stalled? When we know the nature of the hard problem, is there any wonder why materialistic theories of consciousness and origin of life have stalled to a stop?

What is even more interesting is that forces that keep the materialist entangled in their hard problems are of the quite same nature as those that keep us away from approaching the reality of the thinking spirit within us. One simply thinks "This can't be it. There must be another explanation. I'll keep searching for that miracle." There's so much we can understand about human nature if we dispassionately contemplate these inner forces that perpetuate our blind faith in the miracle that will solve the hard problem, instead of addressing the core issue here and now.

What could be more obvious and logical than the fact that if there's such thing as cognition of our higher being (granted that we're not separate from that being), then it must be manifesting in our intellectual voice in some very constrained way. If we neglect this fact and refuse to concentrate and know the higher nondual forces that speak through our thinking voice, then how on Earth do we expect to find them elsewhere? And even if we could find them, this would only turn into another duality, because then we would have two irreconcilable forms of cognition that don't speak to each other.

This is like being in the Plato's cave and realizing that the dim light arrives from the wider world. The logical thing would be to trace that light as it grows stronger and stronger until we find ourselves in the broad daylight of the Spirit. Instead, we prefer the hard problem. We postulate that the source of the intellectual light in the cave is 'false' and has nothing to do with the light outside. Then we begin to dream about the 'true' light outside, while we push aside the dim glimmers in the cave. Is there any surprise that we never make any progress in this way? Neither we ever find this 'true' light nor our glimmering intellect has any hope to bridge itself to reality.

In the future people will look back on this episode of human evolution and will see that it has been shaped by the exact same forces that look for miracles that solve hard problems. Who benefits from all this? Only the lower self who by postponing development ensures its hegemony. This is the simple truth. By ignoring it and preferring to believe that it's too early to say, that there's not yet enough nondual experimental data and it hasn't yet been ruled out that in the far future by some miracle we may find that higher nondual cognition independent of our thinking core, we accomplish nothing else but to extend the mandate of the lower self.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:20 pm In the future people will look back on this episode of human evolution and will see that it has been shaped by the exact same forces that look for miracles that solve hard problems. Who benefits from all this? Only the lower self who by postponing development ensures its hegemony. This is the simple truth. By ignoring it and preferring to believe that it's too early to say, that there's not yet enough nondual experimental data and it hasn't yet been ruled out that in the far future by some miracle we may find that higher nondual cognition independent of our thinking core, we accomplish nothing else but to extend the mandate of the lower self.

Sounds good to me, Cleric. Nondual cognition is not independent of our thinking core, it is the same thinking core but only in a different mode of perceiving reality. You are pointing towards the practical methods to realize the lawful mechanics of thinking (in both dual and nondual modes), and that's a different topic which is definitely useful, but I prefer to do it on my own and not to get involved in discussions. My reluctance to participate in such discussions on this forum is not because I consider nondual mode independent of thinking, but because of the reasons I states above.

Stranger wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:44 pm Sounds good to me, Cleric. Nondual cognition is not independent of our thinking core, it is the same thinking core but only in a different mode of perceiving reality. You are pointing towards the practical methods to realize the lawful mechanics of thinking (in both dual and nondual modes), and that's a different topic which is definitely useful, but I prefer to do it on my own and not to get involved in discussions. My reluctance to participate in such discussions on this forum is not because I consider nondual mode independent of thinking, but because of the reasons I states above.

Eugene, a question about the latest meditation you posted on the other thread. I'm writing here because it fits the topic better.

I'm sure you know that the affirmation "I'm indestructible and changeless", if taken one-sidedly becomes something very seductive to the lower self. So the question really is what is changeless?

We can picture our being metaphorically as a sphere, similar to the Deep MAL picture. The periphery is volatile as our thoughts change, our moods change, our preferences, even our character and temperament between incarnations could be quite different (since there's something that has to be compensated and balanced).

So what is changeless has to be deeper than the morphing personalities. But even our understanding of a human soul can't be fundamental (thus the soul is not absolutely changeless). What is changeless transcends even the personal worldlines of becoming (it is for this reason that in the Deep MAL picture, ultimately there's only one Center - the Divine that is experienced from different perspectives). So when we understand things in this way, our changeless being is really something that can be only asymptotically approached towards the point of Source, which is the eternal and infinite potential of Being that lives in all beings.

With this in mind, it is clear that meditating on "I'm indestructible and changeless" can become a trap where we become comfortable at a certain shell of the sphere and picture it as changeless. In reality it might be quite malleable but it transforms at the pace of a glacier. Even by looking at the clouds (unless there are high winds) it is difficult to observe in real time how they morph. It's difficult to see the movement of the minute arrow of a clock, let alone the hour arrow. You get the point. There are plenty of opportunities to mistake our apparent stability for the changeless nature of our most intimate being.

I know that you are aware of all this and my question is what are your methods to counteract this danger? For example, the fact the Eugene in this present incarnation feels certain sympathies and antipathies about reincarnation obviously cannot be a part of the changeless aspect because what we call incarnation doesn't even exist in the higher strata of being (where there's only transformation). When you meditate, what are the countermeasures to be taken in order to avoid mistaking the changeless aspect of the essential being with something that is relatively consistent through our present incarnation but at the scale of evolution is only a swing of a pendulum far from equilibrium?