Philosophical Speculations

ScottRoberts, where have you been all this time?
You are bringing in yet another way to show Eugene that something fundamental in his approach needs to be put under serious scrutiny! Cleric and Ashvin have been leveraging the way of living thinking, with variable results. As for me, lacking both the patience and the depth of understanding to go that way, I have been highlighting the psychological side of things, with sorely poor results. You are now showing Eugene the limits of his approach from a purely philosophical perspective. Is there anything more that could be done here, any fourth horn of a tetralemma of action to open Eugene’s eyes and heart? As Ashvin said, probably it would be easier in person.
Eugene, maybe we should send Güney to your home, now that we know about the mma, to give you a little demonstration and shake? If ScottRoberts’ way also fails to convey the truth of reality to you, that could be our last resort

Stranger wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 12:15 pm Also, in the Christian theology it is a common understanding that God is not compelled to create the Universe of Forms, so He creates the Universe as an act of free choice. He of course did it as a result of some Thinking activity prior to manifestation of the Universe and beyond the linear time. So, God, as B-E-T, is prior to the universe of forms, he is sovereign and is never conditioned by the universe, even though always involved with it and the universe is never ontologically separate from Him. And so we can be like Him when we go through Theosis and realize the unconditioned Oneness of our Divine nature.

What is your vision for such a unconditioned existence? I'm OK with speaking about the Absolute as unconditioned (in the sense of limitless potential). I'm OK even to speak that we're One with this potential (we're manifestation of the potential). But where things get murky is when you try to bring down this unconditionality to your manifested soul level - even if it is in the nondual heaven. So can you explain in what way exactly you'll be unconditioned there? To be absolutely unconditioned would mean that you can recreate the whole Cosmos and its inhabitants according to your unconditioned Divine preferences. In other places you have said that this is not so and we still exist in some kind of nondual worlds and relate with individual nondual beings. So it seems to me that the unconditionality that you speak of is simply the freedom to run naked in the nondual Eden without anyone bothering you, without having any duties, responsibilities, and only enjoying your time as long as you don't bother other beings or cause damage to the garden.

ScottRoberts wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 2:10 am You don't see a "hard problem" because you have already arm-waved it away with your "thinking ability",

Well, "thinking ability" is fundamental, it's not "arm-waving", it's just applying the ontological approach. You declare the Manyness as fundamental, I declare Thinking (as "thinking ability") as fundamental.

But anyway, I'm ok with your ontology but there is one problem with it. How can Manyness be fundamental (ontologically equal to Oneness) if it is impermanent, or as Buddha said, "born — become — made — fabricated"? The only way around it that I can see is to go Platonic and declare that Manyness is the primordially existing Idea-manifold and we are just "slicing" through it in linear time. This ontology is problematic to me from many perspectives, including moral, as well as parsimony. The parsimony concern is that we are introducing here some ontological premise that are in principle and way beyond our direct experience. The moral concern is that it makes our life meaningless, we are just aimlessly wondering around in a timelessly existing labyrinth of Manyness without creating or achieving anything really.

Notes:

- What Scott described as 'polar logic' is exactly the higher-order logical reasoning which we develop through Imaginative thinking (which is not simply artistic/aesthetic thinking, but requires systematic training to bring forth). It is a logic not bound to think only within the format of linear sequential time, which is why the usual 'Oneness' philosophy cannot imagine unconditioned, timeless existence which simultaneously metamorphoses.

- Within the Manyness are not only outer forms, but also inner forms such as thoughts, emotions, desires. Any 'pure experience' of Oneness would also need to show it is not within the context of those inner forms. For ex., the desire to sit down and do the deep meditation, or the emotions of compassion and joy which are experienced.

- A pure experience of Oneness unconditioned by Manyness should allow us to transport ourselves through space-time at will. Of course that isn't possible. Instead the experiencer can say, "I sat down to meditate and then ended the meditation and it felt to be a certain duration". So the experiencer is still conditioned by a stream of temporal becoming, i.e. Manyness.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 10:30 am What is your vision for such a unconditioned existence? I'm OK with speaking about the Absolute as unconditioned (in the sense of limitless potential). I'm OK even to speak that we're One with this potential (we're manifestation of the potential). But where things get murky is when you try to bring down this unconditionality to your manifested soul level - even if it is in the nondual heaven. So can you explain in what way exactly you'll be unconditioned there? To be absolutely unconditioned would mean that you can recreate the whole Cosmos and its inhabitants according to your unconditioned Divine preferences. In other places you have said that this is not so and we still exist in some kind of nondual worlds and relate with individual nondual beings. So it seems to me that the unconditionality that you speak of is simply the freedom to run naked in the nondual Eden without anyone bothering you, without having any duties, responsibilities, and only enjoying your time as long as you don't bother other beings or cause damage to the garden.

Within our current limitations of the human soul we cannot claim that we have the full access to all the depths of the Divine, but we do share some fundamental qualities of the Divine, namely Beingness, Awareness and Thinking ability/potential. The Beingness, Awareness and Thinking ability are accessible in our direct first-person experience, and they are exactly the qualities that are unconditional, because, as we can see in our direct experience (if we notice them and include them in our focus of attention), they never ever change and are never affected by anything happening in the world of forms. They are also the qualities that all living beings share, which makes us all united in these qualities. It is the same infinite field of Beingness, Awareness and Thinking potential where we all exist as individuated spiritual activities, that is why it is also Oneness. You may ask: "OK, there is beingness, awareness, thinking, they are indeed changeless, but who cares? What's the importance of this realization? What's the point of even talking about it?". The point is moral and practical. When we ignore this unifying aspect of Reality, we perceive the world only as multiplicity of forms, we see separate selves and things in the world, we perceive ourselves as separate entities - selves, interacting with the world, but separately existing. Look at how we perceive ourselves: we unconsciously think that we are a "center" of perceiving somewhere in our head that experiences the external world, and this "center" is somehow something separate from the world. This is a completely distorted perception reality and a cause of serious moral and psychological problems. This is the core around which our ego develops, because we now need to struggle for survival of our separate self, defend it against other selves, fearing losses to the self and wanting gains. Welcome to the world of duality and struggling egos. When we realize Oneness in these Divine aspects, we realize that our sense of self is only a fabricated idea incoherent with reality, and on the more fundamental level the reality is Oneness of interconnected streams of individuated spiritual activities of the same Oneness. When we apply this realization practically, our ego complex with personal egoic likes and dislikes gradually dissolves, and the experience of unity naturally brings about the development of such qualities as Love, Compassion and experiencing Beauty. When this state becomes mature, we now act and create, but not out of egoic likes and dislikes anymore, but only motivated by Love and creation of Beauty, and this is exactly how the Divine is creating, so we become Divine-like and co-creators. You can assume that in such state we also gain more access to the depths of the Divine and to the realm where the beings sharing the same state of Oneness live, we communicate with higher-order beings existing in the same state of Oneness and we share with them their qualities, meanings and experiences and can make our contributions aligned with their curvatures of meanings, have responsibilities and duties aligned with common goals and meanings. In the transitional process the dualistic structures of our soul organism (dualistic perception and the complex of Karmic egoic patterns) gradually dissolves and a new structure is gradually formed with nondual perception of the world, absence of the sense of separate self, and new cognitive and behavioral patterns through which the qualities of Love, Compassion and Beauty naturally act. There is a whole new world functioning in a very different way compared to the dualistic world where we live now, it is hard for us to imagine it, but this is what Christ called "Kingdom of Heaven" and the Buddha called "Nirvana".

I came to give life—life in all its fullness. (John 10:10)

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 12:58 pm - Within the Manyness are not only outer forms, but also inner forms such as thoughts, emotions, desires. Any 'pure experience' of Oneness would also need to show it is not within the context of those inner forms. For ex., the desire to sit down and do the deep meditation, or the emotions of compassion and joy which are experienced.

There is a "core" omnipresent unchanging experience of Oneness knowing Oneness (gnosis) that just goes in and out of cognitive focus. But with ongoing practice a new inner context and new soul structures develop around this core gnosis with the "emotions of compassion and joy which are experienced" as I described in the reply to Cleric. These soul structure of course belong to Manyness, and there is nothing wrong about it, it is supposed to be this way. It is a different way of functioning and different soul structure in the world of Manyness that is fully aligned with Oneness, while in our dualistic state we only function in Manyness and ignoring Oneness, and as a consequence, the ego-complex develops with all is moral problems and suffering.

- A pure experience of Oneness unconditioned by Manyness should allow us to transport ourselves through space-time at will. Of course that isn't possible. Instead the experiencer can say, "I sat down to meditate and then ended the meditation and it felt to be a certain duration". So the experiencer is still conditioned by a stream of temporal becoming, i.e. Manyness.

The experience of Oneness is always in our field of experience, it's just goes out of focus when we end meditation, just like we don't notice things that are in our peripheral vision, but they are still experienced. In the mature stable nondual state it never goes out of focus, whether during meditation or everyday activities.

But going back, the fact that you have no clue about these questions but you still claim that you are connected with higher-order beings who never showed you anything about Oneness is a proof that you are connected with a wrong hierarchy.

Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 1:20 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 12:58 pm - Within the Manyness are not only outer forms, but also inner forms such as thoughts, emotions, desires. Any 'pure experience' of Oneness would also need to show it is not within the context of those inner forms. For ex., the desire to sit down and do the deep meditation, or the emotions of compassion and joy which are experienced.

There is a "core" omnipresent unchanging experience of Oneness knowing Oneness (gnosis) that just goes in and out of cognitive focus. But with ongoing practice a new inner context and new soul structures develop around this core gnosis with the "emotions of compassion and joy which are experienced" as I described in the reply to Cleric. These soul structure of course belong to Manyness, and there is nothing wrong about it, it is supposed to be this way. It is a different way of functioning and different soul structure in the world of Manyness that is fully aligned with Oneness, while in our dualistic state we only function in Manyness and ignoring Oneness, and as a consequence, the ego-complex develops with all is moral problems and suffering.

- A pure experience of Oneness unconditioned by Manyness should allow us to transport ourselves through space-time at will. Of course that isn't possible. Instead the experiencer can say, "I sat down to meditate and then ended the meditation and it felt to be a certain duration". So the experiencer is still conditioned by a stream of temporal becoming, i.e. Manyness.

The experience of Oneness is always in our field of experience, it's just goes out of focus when we end meditation. In the mature stable nondual state it never goes out of focus, whether during meditation or everyday activities.

What I'm saying is that this experience of Beingness-Experiencing-Thinking (ability) cannot serve as evidential support for a Ground of our current existence which is not rhythmically influenced by the pole of Manyness, because it is, as you also stated above.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 1:32 pm What I'm saying is that this experience of Beingness-Experiencing-Thinking (ability) cannot serve as evidential support for a Ground of our current existence which is not rhythmically influenced by the pole of Manyness, because it is, as you also stated above.

No, the existence in the nondual state is still rhythmically influenced by Manyness, as well as influenced by the experience of the timeless presence of Oneness. It is a unity of both influences, but now in harmony with each other, so that the new structures of Manyness that we co-create in such state are always in harmony with Oneness, as opposed to our activity in Manyness when it is disconnected from the experience of Oneness.

But I am still amazed that you keep relentlessly rejecting Oneness. Scott is in full agreement that Oneness is at least as ontologically valid as Manyness, why aren't you? What is your problem with Oneness? (I know what the problem is with it for the Lucifer and his hierarchy, they don't want to be one with the Divine)

Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 1:45 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 1:32 pm What I'm saying is that this experience of Beingness-Experiencing-Thinking (ability) cannot serve as evidential support for a Ground of our current existence which is not rhythmically influenced by the pole of Manyness, because it is, as you also stated above.

No, the existence in the nondual state is still rhythmically influenced by Manyness, as well as influenced by the experience of the timeless presence of Oneness. It is a unity of both influences, but now in harmony with each other, so that the new structures of Manyness that we co-create in such state are always in harmony with Oneness, as opposed to our activity in Manyness when it is disconnected from the experience of Oneness.

But I am still amazed that you keep relentlessly rejecting Oneness. Scott is in full agreement that Oneness is at least as ontologically valid as Manyness, why aren't you? What is your problem with Oneness? (I know what the problem is with it for the Lucifer and his hierarchy, they don't want to be one with the Divine)

Do you realize what you wrote above contradicts practically everything you wrote to Scott? Such as:

It was the Buddha himself who, in his original teachings in Pali Canon, taught about reaching the state of the absence of Many
...
A more problematic statement is this: "The One acts on the Many (unifying), and the Many acts on the One (shaping a new Many)." which implies that One can be conditioned or changed by many, and so in this equation One and Many become fully equal in the ontological terms.
...
But some people with more advanced meditative experience achieve states with the absence of Many as an experiential fact, and that fact is the experiential proof for them that the Many cannot be the ontological fundamental (because the fundamental, by definition, cannot come and go, appear and disappear).

So what happens is you polarize to Oneness and practically ignore Manyness in all your reasoning and philosophical-spiritual conclusions. We then show this to you and eventually you realize there is no logical way to deny the pole of Manyness. So you admit it. But instead of seeking to understand how this admission works back into modifying your previously flawed conclusions, you pretend it's what you have been saying all along, that all 4 of us have been misunderstanding you the whole time, and then you instinctively accuse us of denying Oneness or following some false hierarchy or something similar. The same pattern repeats in exchanges with Cleric as well. It's all right here in plain sight.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 2:27 pm So what happens is you polarize to Oneness and practically ignore Manyness in all your reasoning and philosophical-spiritual conclusions. We then show this to you and eventually you realize there is no logical way to deny the pole of Manyness. So you admit it. But instead of seeking to understand how this admission works back into modifying your previously flawed conclusions, you pretend it's what you have been saying all along, that all 4 of us have been misunderstanding you the whole time, and then you instinctively accuse us of denying Oneness or following some false hierarchy or something similar. The same pattern repeats in exchanges with Cleric as well. It's all right here in plain sight.

Where exactly did I ignore Mayness? Give a quote. All I'm saying is that Manyness and Oneness need to be in full harmony, none of them ignored. This is exactly what Christ meant by saying "I came to give life—life in all its fullness." (John 10:10) But you keep rejecting Oneness.

So, I ask you the last time to stop twisting and misinterpreting my words. If you don't I will stop communicating with you because it is completely unproductive. We have a good and productive discussion with Scott and Cleric here, but the only thing you do here is twisting and misinterpreting my words with no honest attempt to constructively contribute or understand what I actually mean.