Philosophical Speculations

Stranger wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 7:33 pm woah, what a psychic attack! Don't you guys realize that you actually look funny?

If, in the pursuit of Truth, one is not ready to look funny in the eyes of some, or in the eyes of many, that is a major hindrance to spiritual development. For my part, while I encounter various hindrances, this is one I have been able to improve on, and so I care less and less about looking funny. Is it important to not look funny for you?

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 8:49 am

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:29 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 5:12 pm



The 'interrogation-style' in itself never seemed to be a problem for you, as evident, for example, here:




So the reason why, in this context of the bear question, the approach is perceived as 'interrogation-style' is that one feels 'threatened' by the risk of being taken aback by someone who is implicitly recognized as having reached a higher level of cognition than oneself. Then it becomes a battle between one's ego and one's thirst for knowledge.
Your ego knows it will have to give way if you stay. Your thirst for knowledge knows it will have to give way, if you go.
You have both in good measure, Eugene, but which principle will win is hard to tell...

Ashvin,

I'm curious. Do you feel that you have let go of your ego by participating in this forum?

Lou, I'm not sure if you noticed - I wrote the above, not Ashvin.

Ooops, sorry Federica. My bad.

But your post triggered (for me) great questions: Does anyone here think that they've let go of their ego or that coming or going is in their case not ego driven? Although I've met a wide range of more and less balanced egos, I've never met someone without one. I've read about some but I'm wondering if anyone here has actually met a person without an ego? Does anyone here actually want to be egoless?

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 9:21 am Ooops, sorry Federica. My bad.

But your post triggered (for me) great questions: Does anyone here think that they've let go of their ego or that coming or going is in their case not ego driven? Although I've met a wide range of more and less balanced egos, I've never met someone without one. I've read about some but I'm wondering if anyone here has actually met a person without an ego? Does anyone here actually want to be egoless?

I was using ‘ego’ in the common sense, not in the sense of ego-consciousness, or of individuation.

I guess we could see it in terms of polarity. Within the context of the world process, a healthy ego depends on the balance between the polarities of extreme humility and extreme pride. If we disregard self-determination completely, intents dissolve in the soup of total depersonalization, and it’s impossible to ground the will. At the polar opposite of extreme pride, it’s impossible to imagine being wrong, being less-than, unaware-of, and there’s hardly any room for feeling truly thankful, grateful, or prestigeless. But it’s enough that the ego is even only slightly out of balance towards one or the other end, for the soul to experience some friction, sooner or later, on the path of spiritual development. I know it from experience.

When confronted with a new step on the path, the over-inflated ego is only ready to consider it as an additional piece of knowledge to incorporate, rather than a fully unknown qualitative leap, unknown in both its essence and its modality. Correspondingly, gratitude and thankfulness are granted, rather than entered. In other words, one sees the own cone of awareness as fixed in its apex, and only variable in the degrees of its aperture. So one is ready to grant recognition and gratitude to new pieces of knowledge appearing within the growing aperture of the cone, not to abandon oneself in gratitude in the volume of unknown intelligence that encompasses the apex from all ‘sides’, letting go of the fixed point of self-origin (apex). This makes the feeling of gratitude unconsciously self-reflective, rather than outwardly shining, and limits spiritual development to incorporation of additional pieces within a set environment. Naturally, this attitude emerges in one’s relationship with the Spirit, as well as in human relationships.

On the other extreme end, if the ego has no solid ground, it’s impossible to find orientation and follow any route. A point of self-reference needs to be there in defined form, working as a soundbox to echo the inputs, so one can use the feedback for continuous adjustment. It doesn’t matter that it’s imperfect, as long as it's kept ‘scalable’.

So what I meant is, in order to quench the thirst for knowledge one has to find a balanced route for the ego, where self-origin is maintained in individuated form, but also scalable, rather than simply extensible. And if one prefers to stay strong and immovable in that origin instead, then the thirst for knowledge cannot be quenched, but only renounced, or numbed.

ScottRoberts wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 2:57 am My point is that awareness is universal (assuming idealism), so to go on about capital-A Awareness (in the way you do) doesn't add anything useful to the ontology of idealism.

Sure, we already agreed to drop the capitalization, so let's put it to rest. But the key here is what you affirmed above (in bold).

We already know the relative Oneness we call "I". And we already know Oneness/Manyness polarity though it is mistakenly called subject/object dualism (it should be called subject/object polarity). As for "absolute Oneness", that, for us, is just an abstraction. We might engage in a logical exercise to deduce that there is an absolute Oneness, like we do to deduce a First Cause or Prime Mover, but that doesn't really get us anywhere.

I don't remember using the term "absolute Oneness", neither I see any point in calling it "relative Oneness". I agree that deducing the first cause is a useless and abstract ontological exercise. If you experientially know the oneness as "I am awareness of ...", as the " awareness is universal", then this is it, no other "mystical blast" or "ontological first cause" is needed. So, if we practice mindfully experiencing this oneness of universal awareness every moment, it will over time disentangle our dualistic patterns of perception and cognition (subject-object, self-others, mind-matter), together with egoic patterns tightly entangled with this dualistic perception, and bring us to the next level in the development of cognition where we continue developing as individuated spiritual/thinking activities always harmony with experientially known cosmic oneness. It is all practical and experiential.

Anthony66 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:28 am In response to your questions...

1) Obviously I don't know "exactly" what it is like to attain these states of consciousness - non-dual, imaginative, inspirative, or intuitive or the panoply of higher states out there. But I have done a spiritual retreat in India and various workshops where I have had a firsthand taste of what is probably at play. I've listened to hundreds of hours of teaching of non-dual teachers like Spira and Swami Sarvapriyananda and gained insights.

2) Transcendence, ineffability, bliss often accompany the non-dual state. And rather than being counterproductive to spiritual evolution, they may well be an encouragement to continue to delve deeper. This has been the testimony of many.

How can one sacrifice that which one does not have nor has attained? It's all very well that certain individuals in the past have achieved these high states but it is not much use if the non-dual state hasn't reached a level of "fixation in the population".

3) Appealing again to the concept of biological fixation, from an initial "non-dual mutation", greater numbers of people become aware of, seek, and attain this state and so transform the human organism. The same can be said of the SS states.

Anthony,

The testimony of #2 flies in the face of what we have concretely experienced right here on this forum (and I have also experienced on others), in my view. The people one-sidedly seeking the 'non-dual state' and those personally enriching qualities, most of whom don't even pay lip service to exploring the living details of our spiritual evolutionary epic, lose all interest in finding the concrete pathways through which their spiritual activity can advance the Earth's evolution. Eventually what gets fixated is the apex-level mind container perspective, which can only conceive of higher realities in terms of its current cognitive formatting. As we have mentioned many times, the Oneness experienced in the nondual state embeds an entire Cosmos of beings and their intelligible speech, which has been smeared out, and which is not 'ineffable' in the sense that word is used by the modern mystics.

For higher knowledge to precipitate into the average person's cognitive aperture over time, there must be a means of both becoming receptive to the Cosmic Speech (which also permeates and structures our normal waking life), and also translating it into our own human language. That translation process involves the transformation of our entire personality. Otherwise we are simply expecting this knowledge to be miraculously implanted in us as we are now and, when that predictably doesn't happen, we use it as an excuse to avoid further development, saying, 'I guess the Divine Oneness does not want any further development to occur right now'. Right here on this forum, we have heard about how humanity must wait for an outer apocalyptic event before there is any chance of further spiritual evolution for the masses. This is not spiritual development towards inner freedom, but enslavement to current expectations and wishful thinking. Inevitably this mindset leads to stagnation of the inner spirit flowing through us, and we wait for the apocalypse or death.

We should not make idols out of our wise teachers or their teachings, including Steiner. A big difference I see between the nondual teachers and esoteric scientists like Steiner is that the latter was well aware that the teachings he was tasked with distributing, in the form he was distributing them, would be maladapted to later epochs of civilization. He knew that the forms must evolve with the organic constitution of humanity itself. The nondual gurus, on the other hand, don't seem to have this awareness. They are giving the same teachings which were given thousands of years ago and in the same form (even if they use modern vocabulary to express the forms). We don't even hear about spiritual evolution or how its developments should influence the path to higher states and worlds now. Either they aren't aware of this evolution or they think it's entirely irrelevant for some reason. We only need to maintain our sober reasoning to discern that something is off here, and I would also remind of everything Cleric wrote here. The standard for testing these things should be our sober reasoning, not the promises of personal bliss and transcendence and 'seismic shifts' (whatever those personally mean to us).

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:36 pm The nondual gurus, on the other hand, don't seem to have this awareness. They are giving the same teachings which were given thousands of years ago and in the same form. We don't even hear about spiritual evolution or how its developments should influence the path to higher states and worlds now. Either they aren't aware of this evolution or they think its entirely irrelevant for some reason.

You don't hear it because of your ignorance about them. In the Buddhist tradition spiritual evolution has always been the essential part and can be found in the teaching of spiritual progression through so-called "bhumis" (the stages of spiritual development), where on the higher levels of bhumis many supernatural abilities and the knowledge of higher realms are attained.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:46 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:36 pm The nondual gurus, on the other hand, don't seem to have this awareness. They are giving the same teachings which were given thousands of years ago and in the same form. We don't even hear about spiritual evolution or how its developments should influence the path to higher states and worlds now. Either they aren't aware of this evolution or they think its entirely irrelevant for some reason.

You don't hear it because of your ignorance about them. In the Buddhist tradition spiritual evolution has always been the essential part and can be found in the teaching of spiritual progression through so-called "bhumis" (the stages of spiritual development), where on the higher levels of bhumis many supernatural abilities and the knowledge of higher realms are attained.

That's not what I am speaking of, at all. I am speaking of the rounds, globes, epochs, and cultural epochs through which the Earth and humanity has progressed. The progression through which the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms as we know them have manifested, and through which humanity has evolved from instinctive group-soul life to lucid thinking individuality through the development of its body-soul-spirit constitution. I am well aware that we can find all sorts of ancient references to a progressive development starting with Zarathustra and continuing to the Gnostics, but none of that provides the clarity and precision we need in the age of scientific consciousness to progress further in our evolution, rather than retrogress back to ancient mediumistic abilities.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:54 pm That's not what I am speaking of, at all. I am speaking of the rounds, globes, epochs, and cultural epochs through which the Earth and humanity has progressed. The progression through which the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms as we know them have manifested, and through which humanity has evolved from instinctive group-soul life to lucid thinking individuality through the development of its body-soul-spirit constitution. I am well aware that we can find all sorts of ancient references to a progressive development starting with Zarathustra and continuing to the Gnostics, but none of that provides the clarity and precision we need in the age of scientific consciousness to progress further in our evolution, rather than retrogress back to ancient mediumistic abilities.

Right, we need to move ahead and do spiritual science with greater precision to progress further. But how is it greater precision if we deny the realization of oneness which is essential part of knowing the reality with greater precision and leaving behind the distorted and imprecise dualistic perception of reality? We just agreed with Scott that awareness is universal, and knowing this experientially is not an abstraction but a practical tool for the realization of oneness. Then any kind of spiritual science attempting to know the reality with more precision has to include such essential knowledge of oneness and universality of awareness. Otherwise, it would not be precise and so cannot be claimed to be a science.

What I and Anthony are pointing to is that the realization of oneness should be an integral part of spiritual science, otherwise, if such integration is lacking, then it is not spiritual science in a full sense. But no one suggests that SS should be all reduced to only the realization of oneness, we only suggest to integrate it as an essential component and method of scientific exploration and development of thinking.

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:29 am
On the other extreme end, if the ego has no solid ground, it’s impossible to find orientation and follow any route. A point of self-reference needs to be there in defined form, working as a soundbox to echo the inputs, so one can use the feedback for continuous adjustment. It doesn’t matter that it’s imperfect, as long as it's kept ‘scalable’.

So what I meant is, in order to quench the thirst for knowledge one has to find a balanced route for the ego, where self-origin is maintained in individuated form, but also scalable, rather than simply extensible. And if one prefers to stay strong and immovable in that origin instead, then the thirst for knowledge cannot be quenched, but only renounced, or numbed.

OK, good. Balance is the in-the-now quest in a dynamic system. I might prefer the word "expandable" to "scalable" in order to accomodate all "externalities" but I think we are talking about much the same thing.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 1:16 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:54 pm That's not what I am speaking of, at all. I am speaking of the rounds, globes, epochs, and cultural epochs through which the Earth and humanity has progressed. The progression through which the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms as we know them have manifested, and through which humanity has evolved from instinctive group-soul life to lucid thinking individuality through the development of its body-soul-spirit constitution. I am well aware that we can find all sorts of ancient references to a progressive development starting with Zarathustra and continuing to the Gnostics, but none of that provides the clarity and precision we need in the age of scientific consciousness to progress further in our evolution, rather than retrogress back to ancient mediumistic abilities.

Right, we need to move ahead and do spiritual science with greater precision to progress further. But how is it greater precision if we deny the realization of oneness which is essential part of knowing the reality with greater precision and leaving behind the distorted and imprecise dualistic perception of reality? We just agreed with Scott that awareness is universal, and knowing this experientially is not an abstraction but a practical tool for the realization of oneness. Then any kind of spiritual science attempting to know the reality with more precision has to include such essential knowledge of oneness and universality of awareness. Otherwise, it would not be precise and so cannot be claimed to be a science.

What I and Anthony are pointing to is that the realization of oneness should be an integral part of spiritual science, otherwise, if such integration is lacking, then it is not spiritual science in a full sense. But no one suggests that SS should be all reduced to only the realization of oneness, we only suggest to integrate it as an essential component and method of scientific exploration and development of thinking.

Cleric, Scott, Federica, and I have been saying that investigating the thinking activity through which the World manifests, including our own soul-life, is not other than realizing Oneness. We are saying that the Spirit of Oneness awakens to itself through these thought-structures, which is made clear to us by a careful first-person assessment of how we principally know-perceive anything of the World and the Divine. We don't need to be Bruce Wayne by day investigating the thought-structures of the World and Batman by night fighting the dualistic World to realize our Oneness. If we conceive our spiritual task in this way, we are maintaining the split in our be-ing which is the actual root of dualistic consciousness.

In theory, everything you write above is fine, but in practice, as we prompt for more details of your understanding, it becomes clear we are speaking of cross-purposeful methods. One is like the child weaning itself off of parents, teachers, authorities, etc. so that it can give birth to the thinking "I" within and take more creative responsibility for its further evolution (SS). The other is like the child striving to realize its in utero state of Oneness with its Mother. It seeks to know itself as pure Awareness, rather than thinking awareness of the World Content. Again, we shouldn't focus too much on the isolated words being used here, but try to sense the entire striving which underlies these approaches. It is exactly the living thinking approach which instills in us the ability to develop that sense of underlying cognitive currents which animate the isolated forms, so we don't become too fixated on the latter.

It is true that we need to reorient our thinking investigation to a Heliocentric (spiritual Sun-oriented) perspective, so that we understand all phenomenal appearances (including our own soul-life) as the outer physiognomy of spiritual forces - ideational forces of the nested Spheres from the Earth to Sun, the Sun to Saturn. What we perceive in outer space is, in truth, the outer markers for the hierarchies and their spheres of intentional activity in which all our striving is embedded - this entire gradient gives meaningful context to what we are doing here on Earth, in this incarnation, on this forum, in each and every post we are writing. This reorientation only comes through a rhythmic alternation of prayerful meditative activity which is quite different from the conceptual study we are used to, but it all flows through our thinking "I" consciousness.