Philosophical Speculations

Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:13 pm If a complete TOE was possible (and thankfully it's not) and if people found it, that would be the tragic halt of all evolution. Spiritual activity would flow in a perpetual loop, it would never feel the need to go outside that loop. It's thanks to the constant contradiction that we face that we are forced to grow towards higher unities.
As long as the highest tool for knowledge is considered intellectual thinking, in the sense of building thought models and mapping them to perceptions, higher consciousness will always stay out of reach.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:15 pm

Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:13 pm If a complete TOE was possible (and thankfully it's not) and if people found it, that would be the tragic halt of all evolution. Spiritual activity would flow in a perpetual loop, it would never feel the need to go outside that loop. It's thanks to the constant contradiction that we face that we are forced to grow towards higher unities.
As long as the highest tool for knowledge is considered intellectual thinking, in the sense of building thought models and mapping them to perceptions, higher consciousness will always stay out of reach.

Good point!

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:27 pm I don't see evolution as goal as much as creativity wanting to create. A living Supreme Whatever instinctively creating more life. "Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

Eugene I wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:14 pm So, what I'm saying is: if we really want to influence the route of humanity in the direction of spiritual progress, to demonstrate the practical and spiritual benefits of idealism and spiritual life, we need to come to peaceful terms with each other and stop fighting and claiming any superiorities. We need to find the common grounds, accept our differences, offer people in the world the whole package of our spiritual paths and let them choose the paths that they resonate with and that feel true to them. We might think that by fighting with each other we will make our faith of choice win, but exactly the opposite will happen: we will loose the people's trust, because they look not so much at our arguments, but at our behavior, now what we say, how we say it and how we live. On the other hand, we are all always free to present arguments to advocate our faiths and practices, to show their benefits, to share our spiritual experiences, as long as we do it in peaceful and non-confrontational way without demeaning other faiths and practices.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:14 pm Yep, Cleric, I would agree with all you said above. And this is what most spiritual traditions aim to do - be it Christianity, Judaism, indigenous ones, Buddhism and so on. But each of them still offer somewhat different views, different spiritual paths and recipes. They still have a lot in common and they all address the issues you described, yet in different ways, and some of those ways are not compatible and reconcilable (as we found from our discussion).

And as we just discussed with Asvin, until the final truth is known to all of us, we have to live in this situation of diversity of views and faiths. And if we will continue our religious wars, people will look at us and say: "Look, these followers of religions and spiritual practices claim to point to the truth that leads to spiritual progress, love and peace, but they can't stop fighting with each other, hating and even killing each other. So, where is that spiritual progress and peace and love that they promote but cannot even demonstrate with their own behavior?"

So, what I'm saying is: if we really want to influence the route of humanity in the direction of spiritual progress, to demonstrate the practical and spiritual benefits of idealism and spiritual life, we need to come to peaceful terms with each other and stop fighting and claiming any superiorities. We need to find the common grounds, accept our differences, offer people in the world the whole package of our spiritual paths and let them choose the paths that they resonate with and that feel true to them. We might think that by fighting with each other we will make our faith of choice win, but exactly the opposite will happen: we will loose the people's trust, because they look not so much at our arguments, but at our behavior, now what we say, how we say it and how we live. On the other hand, we are all always free to present arguments to advocate our faiths and practices, to show their benefits, to share our spiritual experiences, as long as we do it in peaceful and non-confrontational way without demeaning other faiths and practices.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:21 pm What I've always strived to point out is a direction of development of cognition (not faith) which can be thought of as the lawful evolution of the intellect into a higher-order form of consciousness.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:21 pm This form of consciousness is completely independent of any religious creed, just as our pure thinking activity in its core is completely independent of any philosophical system. It's just that from that stage of higher cognition we can see how religions have played out their pedagogical roles through the history of mankind. Krishna, Yahve, Buddha, Christ, etc. - all these become objects of investigation for higher consciousness, just as rocks, plants and animals are objects of investigation for the intellect.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:21 pm We don't need Christianity or any other tradition in order to discover our pure spiritual activity within the higher order of things. But once we are there we can see how these great beings fit in the grand scheme of things. We can see how they all work for a common goal yet that goal is unfolding as a process and each of the great spiritual impulses add, so to speak, a different organ to the growing body of humanity and it's important for men to understand this process because it is precisely because of this lack of deeper understanding that all the fights proceed. That's all.

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:04 pm I would say cognition (not belief). For me, cognition or direct experience is the basis of faith.

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:04 pm Now we arrive at the all important "WE".

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:50 pm Eugene, you have a tendency to say you "agree" when you don't actually agree, or maybe it's the other way around and you do agree but continue to argue for the opposite conclusion. So which is it, are we "imprisoned to a private space of experience until we die", therefore making all metaphysical-spiritual models equally valid, or can our conceptions-perceptions in this life, in this world, lead us to knowledge of the 'higher realms' which Cleric is referencing? Do you believe metaphysical-spiritual models are of another essence than scientific models, or are they continuous with each other in their essence? I seriously just want to figure out what your position is.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:31 pm

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:04 pm I would say cognition (not belief). For me, cognition or direct experience is the basis of faith.

Perfectly correct! (the word faith seems to have reverberated from the previous posts)

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:04 pm Now we arrive at the all important "WE".

Lou, accept this just as a way of expression. When I write here I experience the communication with the souls very vividly. I don't feel like I'm in my mansion and just spit out letters with a cannon. It's a real communion of souls, the written words are only the steps on the floor while our souls really dance. Sometimes clumsily, sometimes much more gracefully. I use "we" because that's how I experience this communion. When we succeed to experience certain idea together we actually meet there, we practically touch each other within the one consciousness. Whether anyone is able to find use of the idea within their unique perspective is another matter but in the experience of the idea itself we are one. That's why I use 'we' all the time.