Philosophical Speculations

Anthony66 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 2:41 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 10:03 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 11:24 pm Well I wasn't correcting any of your comments. But I think it makes a difference if people are interested in now understanding what it means more precisely, even if they didn't earlier or contradicted themselves. These things need to be understood somewhat clearly if any inner contradictions are to be noticed. Otherwise it will just feel like semantic nitpicking.

Ashvin, I know, you were offering yet another concrete and well substantiated illustration to help. My point is that, at this stage, it's very likely to be useless. Let's even say, I am convinced it's useless, and maybe even counterproductive. You and Cleric have been offering countless posts, pages and pages and pages of insightful illustrations. Every post is like a pristine lake, in which reflection the intellectual arrangements jubilate and take delight in admiring themselves, without ever dipping not even the little finger, let alone letting the substance of the waters purify and inflow understanding.
I am still happy and thankful for all your attempts, insofar as they are precious for us who are interested in improving our understanding, but as far as Eugene's position goes, they defeat the purpose of helping him make any progress. As you recently noticed, he has not changed one iota in his beliefs since last year. So, unfortunately, people are not "interested in now understanding what it means more precisely, even if they didn't earlier or contradicted themselves". The pattern of these exchanges has now continued for long, and it is repeating itself ad nauseam. Enough is enough. Evidently, it's not possible to build anything at all, before the old constructions are dismantled. So the only way is to bring to the surface and under the spotlight, the continuously overlooked contradictions. It has to be made incontrovertible how one is crushed by his own abstract concepts, as soon as they are made the foundation of beliefs of choice that remain in the blind spot, taken for higher revelations. Dismantling is gross and not fun, still it is necessary groundwork. I can do it, it's unskilled work, that doesn't require much competence or expertise.

This counsel seems to assume that convincing another is achieved through "countless posts, pages and pages and pages of insightful illustrations". But in matters of which are discussed here, a new perspective can shine forth from a single phrase. I know that is true of myself - often a few words from a many thousand word post can have the greatest weight. And insights don't happen linearly or formulaically. I know of people who have been exposed to the Christian message for decades and then one day the lights came on and it finally makes sense to them.

Anthony66 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 2:41 pm And remember that there are the onlookers like me who have benefited greatly from these interactions. I haven't posted much lately due to the business of work but also because Eugene has done such a great job in stimulating the various responses and illustrations from you guys.

Anthony66 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 2:41 pm I'd also add that I don't think "side SS" has really displayed an understanding of non-dual experience. There have been the many illustrations of the Oneness/Manyness spectrum, but I've never got the sense that the seismic shift in perspective described by those who have a non-dual awakening is appreciated and explained.

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life!

It is the Day of Resurrection! Let us be radiant, O people! It is the Passover, the Passover of the Lord! From death to life, and from earth to heaven Christ our God has passed us who sing the hymn of victory!

Let us purify our senses and we shall behold Christ, radiant with the inaccessible light of the Resurrection, and shall hear Him saying clearly, Rejoice! as we sing the hymn of victory!

Let the heavens rejoice in a worthy manner and let the earth be glad, and let the whole world, visible and invisible, keep festival. For Christ our eternal joy is risen!

Come, let us drink a new beverage, not miraculously drawn from a barren rock, but the Fountain of Incorruption springing from the tomb of Christ, in Whom we are strengthened.

Now all things are filled with light: heaven and earth, and the nether regions. So let all creation then celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, by which it is strengthened.

Yesterday, O Christ, I was buried with Thee, and today I rise with Thy arising. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee. Glorify me, O Saviour, with Thee in Thy Kingdom.

When they who were held by the chains of hell beheld Thy boundless compassion, O Christ, they hastened to the light with joyful feet, clapping the eternal Passover.

Carrying lamps, let us approach Christ, Who comes forth from the tomb like a bridegroom. And with the feast-loving orders of Angels, let us celebrate the redeeming Passover of God.

Thou didst descend into the nether regions of the earth, O Christ, and didst shatter the eternal bars which held the prisoners captive; and like Jonah from the sea-monster, after three days Thou didst rise from the grave.

Lift up thine eyes about thee, O Zion, and see! For lo! Thy children come to thee from the West and from the North and from the Sea and from the East, as to a beacon lighted by God, blessing Christ in thee for ever.

Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee. Now dance for joy and be glad, O Zion! And thou, pure Mother of God, rejoice in the rising of thy Child.

Today all creation is glad and rejoices, for Christ has risen and hell has been spoiled. Today the Master spoiled hell and raised the prisoners from all the ages whom it had held in bitter bondage.

Cleric wrote:I believe everyone here already knows what you mean by Oneness, which is effectively quite different from what Lou, Mike, Lorenzo mean, which would become apparent if they were willing to go down the road with you in the way we do. You are in general agreement with them only because you all equally celebrate the wildcard state for which there are no words. But if you were to go into details, your vision of post incarnational careers, nondual worlds and so on, would quickly diverge from, for example, Lou’s vision, who came here to be grounded in the mycelium-like network of being and not to ascend. Btw, in the past Lou’s main accusation to Western esotericism was that it is ascension based.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 3:12 pm Christ is Risen!
Indeed He is Risen!

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 7:42 pm I do not deny the validity of SS with its approach to the development of higher cognition and acquiring knowledge of structures and laws of the Cosmos. The problem is that SS claims that all other spiritual traditions and other paths are now outdated, and we all now have to follow only the occultic SS way in our future evolution while all other paths are denied as if no longer relevant because SS absorbed them all already. But this "absorption" claim turns out to be not true because the SS is ignorant and in denial of Oneness which is the core of all those traditions that it claims to had absorbed. One can always do SS if they are interested, there is nothing wrong with it, just like one can always do secular science as a hobby or a profession. But to claim that it is the only true and universal spiritual path and that all other spiritual paths are no longer relevant is a distortion and a very sectarian approach. This claim might have some validity if SS would include the realization of Oneness, but since it does not do it then its universalistic claim is invalid.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 8:18 pm If you have read and understood something about the nature of higher existence, as for example in the Steiner's quote, how could you imagine that one can merge with the inner essence of the spiritual beings and co-experience their first-person spiritual states (as it happens after death and also in Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness) and yet have no experiential knowledge of Oneness? How could we surrender our lower being to the Christ Being, and experience His Solar nature giving us our Life, yet have no notion of Oneness?

Steiner wrote:One day not long after we had begun to work, a member of this circle came and explained that he must withdraw again. He had seen that we were not on the right path, for it was not a matter of seeking all the things that we sought, but of seeking Unity. That was an idee fixe with this person. In a long conversation he developed the fixed idea of Unity and then left us in order to seek unity. He thought to arrive at the supersensible just through this seeking for Unity, through this idee fixe of Unity. But the idea of oneness or unity is something only resulting from the last abstractions of the outer physical life. This striving after oneness is in fact the most material towards which one can strive. It is precisely of this oneness-striving that one must be cured if one wishes to stand correctly in the spiritual world. Here in the sense world it is so easy to say: we must seek oneness everywhere, we must seek unity in the plurality, in the multiplicity. But that is something which only has significance for the physical sense world here. For when we pass through the gate of death then we do not have multiplicity, but something which comes before our soul as an overwhelming consciousness. When we have passed through the portal of death we have nothing but oneness around us, continuous oneness. It is then a matter of rightly finding plurality, multiplicity. We must strive there for nothing else than to come out of oneness into multiplicity.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 7:42 pm I do not deny the validity of SS with its approach to the development of higher cognition and acquiring knowledge of structures and laws of the Cosmos.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 10:13 pm I don't get why you still make such statements. If there is only one concrete thing we can all 100% agree on right now, it's that you absolutely deny the validity of SS, its approach, and its experiential knowledge of the higher worlds. Just in your last comment you reiterated that Steiner practically doesn't understand what he is speaking of with respect to the nature of our journey across the threshold. From your POV, he is filled with ideas incepted by the dualistic hierarchy and that is the entire basis of SS and its understanding of Earthly evolution. We could produce reams of quotes just like the one you vehemently disagree with. So let's just cement that fact so there is no artificial sense that your approach and knowledge understands, encompasses. tolerates, etc. all paths. This "unity" in outer appearance only is symptomatic of the entire reductionist approach.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 11:55 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 10:13 pm I don't get why you still make such statements. If there is only one concrete thing we can all 100% agree on right now, it's that you absolutely deny the validity of SS, its approach, and its experiential knowledge of the higher worlds. Just in your last comment you reiterated that Steiner practically doesn't understand what he is speaking of with respect to the nature of our journey across the threshold. From your POV, he is filled with ideas incepted by the dualistic hierarchy and that is the entire basis of SS and its understanding of Earthly evolution. We could produce reams of quotes just like the one you vehemently disagree with. So let's just cement that fact so there is no artificial sense that your approach and knowledge understands, encompasses. tolerates, etc. all paths. This "unity" in outer appearance only is symptomatic of the entire reductionist approach.

I may also disagree with many scientists or philosophers, but that does not mean I deny the validity of science or philosophy as a method of acquiring knowledge. This is the difference between the scientific and sectarian approaches. In the scientific and philosophical approach people admit that they can be wrong, they take their views hypothetically, and many of them indeed were wrong with their theories or philosophies, including the most leading scientists or philosophers. In the sectarian approach it is unthinkable, they consider their views to be always true and any other views not aligned with them always by default wrong, especially when related to the founders of their sects. If Steiner would really be a scientist, he would present his teachings as assumptive, as all good scientists and philosophers do, but instead, he and his followers accepted them as the truth in its final form with no possibility of being wrong. And as I said, in the spiritual realm it is especially important to be skeptical and exercise spiritual discernment because it is very easy to become deceived by imposter discarnate beings. I do not claim that Steiner got his esoteric knowledge from the dualistic hierarchies, but I'm just pointing to the possibility of it being quite real, for a simple reason that I don't see even a glimpse into Oneness in his teachings (in the way it was pointed to by Christ or in the Eastern nondual traditions), but instead, a very assertive denial of it: " It is precisely of this oneness-striving that one must be cured if one wishes to stand correctly in the spiritual world."

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 3:12 pm Christ is Risen!
Indeed He is Risen!

Let Christ, the Divine Logos, resurrect in us through the crucifixion and death of our separate-ego-self, and abide and live in our souls when we awake into the Primordial Oneness from the sleep and the tomb of our deluded dualistic state of mind.

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life!

It is the Day of Resurrection! Let us be radiant, O people! It is the Passover, the Passover of the Lord! From death to life, and from earth to heaven Christ our God has passed us who sing the hymn of victory!

Let us purify our senses and we shall behold Christ, radiant with the inaccessible light of the Resurrection, and shall hear Him saying clearly, Rejoice! as we sing the hymn of victory!

Let the heavens rejoice in a worthy manner and let the earth be glad, and let the whole world, visible and invisible, keep festival. For Christ our eternal joy is risen!

Come, let us drink a new beverage, not miraculously drawn from a barren rock, but the Fountain of Incorruption springing from the tomb of Christ, in Whom we are strengthened.

Now all things are filled with light: heaven and earth, and the nether regions. So let all creation then celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, by which it is strengthened.

Yesterday, O Christ, I was buried with Thee, and today I rise with Thy arising. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee. Glorify me, O Saviour, with Thee in Thy Kingdom.

When they who were held by the chains of hell beheld Thy boundless compassion, O Christ, they hastened to the light with joyful feet, clapping the eternal Passover.

Carrying lamps, let us approach Christ, Who comes forth from the tomb like a bridegroom. And with the feast-loving orders of Angels, let us celebrate the redeeming Passover of God.

Thou didst descend into the nether regions of the earth, O Christ, and didst shatter the eternal bars which held the prisoners captive; and like Jonah from the sea-monster, after three days Thou didst rise from the grave.

Lift up thine eyes about thee, O Zion, and see! For lo! Thy children come to thee from the West and from the North and from the Sea and from the East, as to a beacon lighted by God, blessing Christ in thee for ever.

Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee. Now dance for joy and be glad, O Zion! And thou, pure Mother of God, rejoice in the rising of thy Child.

Today all creation is glad and rejoices, for Christ has risen and hell has been spoiled. Today the Master spoiled hell and raised the prisoners from all the ages whom it had held in bitter bondage.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 8:40 am

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 1:12 am Well, if your understanding of "Oneness" is "all inclusive oneness, without boundaries, a spiritual soup of existence", then it has nothing to do with what I was pointing to, of what Christ and Buddha meant by Oneness, so you apparently just did not understand what I was trying to convey. But I do not have any more steam left to try to explain it again

But anyway, thanks for the lecture, these words from Steiner are quite revealing and show that anthroposophy is actually incompatible with oneness, so I realize that all my attempts to steer anthroposophy into accepting oneness are futile and were destined to fail, and I now understand your resistance to it. Needless to say, this resistance is based on complete misunderstanding of what it actually is, both by Steiner and you. For Steiner, oneness is "the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another", and for you, instead of or in addition to, it is "a spiritual soup of existence without boundaries".

I anticipated this response. In fact I intended to put in parentheses personal notes to you at precisely these points because it was very predictable that you would hook at the words and miss the holistic meaning.

To put that into a comparison that even a child would understand, what we’re doing here is like speaking about an expedition to the North Pole. It is explained how the conditions there are different, how our activity should be correspondingly adapted and so on. Then someone says “These are all philosophical debris. What you speak of misses the most important aspect – that there’s all-encompassing whiteness there. Everything else is just fragments that pull you away from the essential.” However, what the latter position misses is that these statements are made from the comfort of armchair philosophy/spirituality. It neglects the fact that when we truly approach the North Pole and not only fantasize about it, we don’t need any special effort to continuously remind ourselves that there’s whiteness everywhere. This is a given fact there, we can’t escape that whiteness even if we try. But now we have completely different problems – things that we simply never considered from the comfort of our armchair in front of the warm fireplace. These are the things that we have been taking for granted all along, while we were fixating on the all-importance of whiteness. But as soon as we’re stripped of our warmth we would understand that we have neglected something important.

As simple as it is, this metaphor depicts the situation. I believe everyone here already knows what you mean by Oneness, which is effectively quite different from what Lou, Mike, Lorenzo mean, which would become apparent if they were willing to go down the road with you in the way we do. You are in general agreement with them only because you all equally celebrate the wildcard state for which there are no words. But if you were to go into details, your vision of post incarnational careers, nondual worlds and so on, would quickly diverge from, for example, Lou’s vision, who came here to be grounded in the mycelium-like network of being and not to ascend. Btw, in the past Lou’s main accusation to Western esotericism was that it is ascension based. I wonder whether in the light of these exchanges it is recognizable that the latter is much more grounded and committed to the evolution of our whole Cosmic context than the philosophy which sees the world only as a tangential sandbox of duality, without real significance except helping us reach the conclusion that it must be overcome and left behind. But such things only show how superficially everything is grasped – as long as words like ‘oneness’, ‘all-inclusive diversity’, ‘inexplicability of the great mysteriousness’ are mentioned, it is assumed that everyone is on the same page. When ‘finding our true relations to spiritual beings’ is mentioned, it is assumed that one tries to perpetuate the state of separateness and duality.

So as said, your vision of Oneness has been well explicated. You are God in the flesh and you assume your core sense of individual being is practically eternal and independent of whether you are in a bodily context or not. The post was not meant to doubt the fact that we’re all of One Divine Spirit but only to point out that after death this fact is overwhelming and in fact we need special skills to support our (nondual) individual perspective. To see the relevance of these things you would have to ponder on the question what keeps your nondual individuality after death from from dissolving into the truly all-encompassing Divine.