Philosophical Speculations

Apanthropinist wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 12:45 pm Strangely enough, Descartes demonstrated the limit of logic (and primitive of consciousness), with the 'Cogito' and perhaps may have been better to just say "I am". I'm sympathetic to his attempt to figure things out logically though I oppose the dualism it assumed. The Cartesian experiment applied to the question of fate or free will, simulation or reality, reveals, if we think it through to its ultimate conclusion, that logically we cannot tell the difference, in practice. It is a paralysing trap where logic ultimately defeats itself and goes into an endless loop. That is the limit of logic and language of a dissociated alter as we are now. After that it is anyone's guess as a guess is all it could be and would use language so would be suspect to the same loop. Consciousness itself cannot describe itself, it simply 'is'. For me poetry comes closest as a finger pointing to any spirituality not because of the words but what they point to. But that is just my opinion.

Thank you for making the above substantive point. From what I can tell, you are implicitly accepting the Kantian ontic-epistemic dualism even though you are rejecting Cartesian dualism. The two are intimately related. Kant implicitly accepted Cartesian dualism of subject-object when deriving his epistemology. It implicitly defines "knowledge" as a set of subjective experiences which correspond to a separate set of objective 'facts' residing 'outside' of the subject. When that division is maintained and knowledge is constricted in such a manner, it is indeed self-limiting and necessitates a conclusion that we can never derive true knowledge of the noumenal realm from experience. But one of the main points of my essays has been that the division should not be maintained because that is not the Reality we are dealing with. Goethe was a prime example of Kant's contemporary who went in the opposite direction because he understood the interior-exterior hard division was arbitrary and, ultimately, incorrect.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 1:56 pm

Apanthropinist wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 12:45 pm Strangely enough, Descartes demonstrated the limit of logic (and primitive of consciousness), with the 'Cogito' and perhaps may have been better to just say "I am". I'm sympathetic to his attempt to figure things out logically though I oppose the dualism it assumed. The Cartesian experiment applied to the question of fate or free will, simulation or reality, reveals, if we think it through to its ultimate conclusion, that logically we cannot tell the difference, in practice. It is a paralysing trap where logic ultimately defeats itself and goes into an endless loop. That is the limit of logic and language of a dissociated alter as we are now. After that it is anyone's guess as a guess is all it could be and would use language so would be suspect to the same loop. Consciousness itself cannot describe itself, it simply 'is'. For me poetry comes closest as a finger pointing to any spirituality not because of the words but what they point to. But that is just my opinion.

Thank you for making the above substantive point. From what I can tell, you are implicitly accepting the Kantian ontic-epistemic dualism even though you are rejecting Cartesian dualism. The two are intimately related. Kant implicitly accepted Cartesian dualism of subject-object when deriving his epistemology. It implicitly defines "knowledge" as a set of subjective experiences which correspond to a separate set of objective 'facts' residing 'outside' of the subject. When that division is maintained and knowledge is constricted in such a manner, it is indeed self-limiting and necessitates a conclusion that we can never derive true knowledge of the noumenal realm from experience. But one of the main points of my essays has been that the division should not be maintained because that is not the Reality we are dealing with. Goethe was a prime example of Kant's contemporary who went in the opposite direction because he understood the interior-exterior hard division was arbitrary and, ultimately, incorrect.

Here is a relevant excerpt re: the above from my essay on Kant.

At the beginning of his Critique of Reason [Kant] takes two steps that he does not justify, and his whole edifice of philosophical teachings suffers from this mistake.

He right away sets up a distinction between object and subject, without asking at all what significance it has then for the intellect to undertake the separation of two regions of reality (in this case the knowing subject and the object to be known). Then he seeks to establish conceptually the reciprocal relationship of these two regions, again without asking what it means to establish something like that.

If his view of the main epistemological question had not been all askew, he would have seen that the holding apart of subject and object is only a transitional point in our knowing, that a deeper unity, which reason can grasp, underlies them both, and that what is attributed to a thing as a trait, when considered in connection with a knowing subject, by no means has only subjective validity.
...
The contemplation of things in their connection to us always remained for [Goethe] a quite subordinate one, having to do with the effect of objects upon our feelings of pleasure and pain; he demands more of science than a mere statement as to how things are in their connection to us. In the essay The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object, he determines what the task of the researcher is: He should take his yardstick for knowledge, the data for his judgment, not from himself, but rather from the sphere of the things he observes.

This one statement characterizes the deep antithesis between the Kantian and the Goethean way of thinking. Whereas with Kant, all judgments about things are only a product of subject and object, and only provide a knowing about how the subject beholds the object, with Goethe, the subject merges selflessly into the object and draws the data for his judgment from the sphere of the things. Goethe himself says therefore of Kant's adherents: “They certainly heard me but had no answer for me nor could be in any way helpful.
-Rudolf Steiner, Goethean Science

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 1:56 pm

Apanthropinist wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 12:45 pm Strangely enough, Descartes demonstrated the limit of logic (and primitive of consciousness), with the 'Cogito' and perhaps may have been better to just say "I am". I'm sympathetic to his attempt to figure things out logically though I oppose the dualism it assumed. The Cartesian experiment applied to the question of fate or free will, simulation or reality, reveals, if we think it through to its ultimate conclusion, that logically we cannot tell the difference, in practice. It is a paralysing trap where logic ultimately defeats itself and goes into an endless loop. That is the limit of logic and language of a dissociated alter as we are now. After that it is anyone's guess as a guess is all it could be and would use language so would be suspect to the same loop. Consciousness itself cannot describe itself, it simply 'is'. For me poetry comes closest as a finger pointing to any spirituality not because of the words but what they point to. But that is just my opinion.

Thank you for making the above substantive point. From what I can tell, you are implicitly accepting the Kantian ontic-epistemic dualism even though you are rejecting Cartesian dualism. The two are intimately related. Kant implicitly accepted Cartesian dualism of subject-object when deriving his epistemology. It implicitly defines "knowledge" as a set of subjective experiences which correspond to a separate set of objective 'facts' residing 'outside' of the subject. When that division is maintained and knowledge is constricted in such a manner, it is indeed self-limiting and necessitates a conclusion that we can never derive true knowledge of the noumenal realm from experience. But one of the main points of my essays has been that the division should not be maintained because that is not the Reality we are dealing with. Goethe was a prime example of Kant's contemporary who went in the opposite direction because he understood the interior-exterior hard division was arbitrary and, ultimately, incorrect.

The division in Kant's transcendental idealism cannot be acknowledged in analytic idealism because there is nothing other than mind and so cannot be 'outside' and 'objective' as such, it's just as it appears across a dissociated boundary (A boundary which would have consequences if we ran flat out at a wall telling ourselves it's an appearance). Just as the limit of logic and language could be said to be the dissociative boundary of the dissociated alters mental boundary in the same way as Kastrup suggests that what appears to be physical form, our metabolising biological body, is a dissociative boundary without which there would just be an entropic goo. The mental boundary is interesting for me because it seems to be effected by psychedelics in a way that somewhat dissolves or expands the dissociative boundary (literally in increased cortical association in the presence of tryptamines) and may go some way to cover the evidential explanatory weakness about relating Dissociative Identity Disorder as evidence of a dissociation Kastrup's argument relies on and which he admits is weak in terms of evidentiary support.

So the ontic-epistemic dualism of Kant, between thing-in-itself and appearance, is dissolved by analytic idealism because there is no 'thing-in-itself' that is anything other than Mind and simply how it 'appears' or 'what it looks like' across a dissociated boundary. It's an image, and it fragged my mind when I first contemplated that because it was, in one sense, as Gibran said 'pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.'

My guess is the boundary you object to is the knowledge boundary of the dissociated alter? In other words you want to know the Mind At Large or 'God' as you might term it? Is it something like that? The question would be, how can your know or experience that which you already are but simply in a state of dissociation which is the illusion of separation? How does one identity in a person with Dissociated Identity Disorder know another identity in that same person? They don't and yet they are both 'within' one person.

Apanthropinist wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 6:41 pm So the ontic-epistemic dualism of Kant, between thing-in-itself and appearance, is dissolved by analytic idealism because there is no 'thing-in-itself' that is anything other than Mind and simply how it 'appears' or 'what it looks like' across a dissociated boundary. It's an image, and it fragged my mind when I first contemplated that because it was, in one sense, as Gibran said 'pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.'

My guess is the boundary you object to is the knowledge boundary of the dissociated alter? In other words you want to know the Mind At Large or 'God' as you might term it? Is it something like that? The question would be, how can your know or experience that which you already are but simply in a state of dissociation which is the illusion of separation? How does one identity in a person with Dissociated Identity Disorder know another identity in that same person? They don't and yet they are both 'within' one person.

Correct. It's not about what I (as limited ego) want to know, but what I can know. Or, rather, why can't I know that which I share my essence with, because the most parsimonious and powerful explanation for my experience is that I do, in fact, share in such knowledge? DID does not claim hard boundary of alters who can never be re-associated, from what I understand.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 6:55 pm

Apanthropinist wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 6:41 pm So the ontic-epistemic dualism of Kant, between thing-in-itself and appearance, is dissolved by analytic idealism because there is no 'thing-in-itself' that is anything other than Mind and simply how it 'appears' or 'what it looks like' across a dissociated boundary. It's an image, and it fragged my mind when I first contemplated that because it was, in one sense, as Gibran said 'pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.'

My guess is the boundary you object to is the knowledge boundary of the dissociated alter? In other words you want to know the Mind At Large or 'God' as you might term it? Is it something like that? The question would be, how can your know or experience that which you already are but simply in a state of dissociation which is the illusion of separation? How does one identity in a person with Dissociated Identity Disorder know another identity in that same person? They don't and yet they are both 'within' one person.

Correct. It's not about what I (as limited ego) want to know, but what I can know. Or, rather, why can't I know that which I share my essence with, because the most parsimonious and powerful explanation for my experience is that I do, in fact, share in such knowledge? DID does not claim hard boundary of alters who can never be re-associated, from what I understand.

Well there's a lot to unpack in that and first, no, DID is not a hard boundary as I alluded to in my end questions in previous post but we don't understand how they are re-associated as far as I am aware..

Is it not more a case of sharing in a process rather than knowledge? A process as yet unfolding?

However a response to your question is suggested in the final chapter of Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics "The highest degree of the will's (M@L) self-understanding is achieved through human contemplation of the eternal Ideas which reveal the will's (M@L) basic templates of striving or natural modes of excitation and, therefore, it's essential properties."

"The will learns about what it yearns and why.....to replace the instinctive dispositions of the will with deliberate purposes.'

I am still mulling over how Kastrup decodes how Schopenhauer suggests we go about this contemplation. What does that 'look like', can it be fleshed out by argument, are they simply concepts and, as such, being words, we cannot describe the how because the how would involve our entry across the limiting boundary of logic and language? Could we demonstrate this by logical argument so it becomes clear to us in a way that a valid and sound argument puts and end to our questions? Is that possible is my question and probably why I have such a boner about a valid and sound argument.

One thing I keep coming back to is this:

"If all nature presses towards man, it thereby intimates that man is necessary for the redemption of nature...and that in him existence at last holds before itself a mirror in which life appears no longer senseless but in its metaphysical significance...Nature needs knowledge and it is terrified of the knowledge it has need of..'

Quote from Nietzsche on Schopenhauer's philosophy
From 'Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics' p103

Or is that just the Dionysian nature of Nietzsche?

Apanthropinist wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 8:32 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 6:55 pm

Apanthropinist wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 6:41 pm So the ontic-epistemic dualism of Kant, between thing-in-itself and appearance, is dissolved by analytic idealism because there is no 'thing-in-itself' that is anything other than Mind and simply how it 'appears' or 'what it looks like' across a dissociated boundary. It's an image, and it fragged my mind when I first contemplated that because it was, in one sense, as Gibran said 'pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.'

My guess is the boundary you object to is the knowledge boundary of the dissociated alter? In other words you want to know the Mind At Large or 'God' as you might term it? Is it something like that? The question would be, how can your know or experience that which you already are but simply in a state of dissociation which is the illusion of separation? How does one identity in a person with Dissociated Identity Disorder know another identity in that same person? They don't and yet they are both 'within' one person.

Correct. It's not about what I (as limited ego) want to know, but what I can know. Or, rather, why can't I know that which I share my essence with, because the most parsimonious and powerful explanation for my experience is that I do, in fact, share in such knowledge? DID does not claim hard boundary of alters who can never be re-associated, from what I understand.

Well there's a lot to unpack in that and first, no, DID is not a hard boundary as I alluded to in my end questions in previous post but we don't understand how they are re-associated as far as I am aware..

Is it not more a case of sharing in a process rather than knowledge? A process as yet unfolding?

However a response to your question is suggested in the final chapter of Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics "The highest degree of the will's (M@L) self-understanding is achieved through human contemplation of the eternal Ideas which reveal the will's (M@L) basic templates of striving or natural modes of excitation and, therefore, it's essential properties."

"The will learns about what it yearns and why.....to replace the instinctive dispositions of the will with deliberate purposes.'

I am still mulling over how Kastrup decodes how Schopenhauer suggests we go about this contemplation. What does that 'look like', can it be fleshed out by argument, are they simply concepts and, as such, being words, we cannot describe the how because the how would involve our entry across the limiting boundary of logic and language? Could we demonstrate this by logical argument so it becomes clear to us in a way that a valid and sound argument puts and end to our questions? Is that possible is my question and probably why I have such a boner about a valid and sound argument.

One thing I keep coming back to is this:

"If all nature presses towards man, it thereby intimates that man is necessary for the redemption of nature...and that in him existence at last holds before itself a mirror in which life appears no longer senseless but in its metaphysical significance...Nature needs knowledge and it is terrified of the knowledge it has need of..'

Quote from Nietzsche on Schopenhauer's philosophy
From 'Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics' p103

Or is that just the Dionysian nature of Nietzsche?

Yes, definitely! Sharing in the integrating process of higher knowledge. Nietzsche was right on the money, as usual, and that was Jung's view as well, as expressed in his Answer to Job. Schopenhauer made progress from Kantian ontic-epistemic divide by claiming we can experience the noumenal Will through introspection (and perhaps good art-music), but he also ruled out the possibility of ever communicating that experience with others or even with ourselves through specified ideas, which restores the divide for all intents and purposes, because no rigorous investigation and systematization of the noumenal realm can be done under his view.

I thought this is a better place to continue this discussion that we had on another thread

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 10:27 pm That is the fundamental argument I have been making here - 1) Philosophical-scientific (outer) divide from mental-spiritual (inner) is artificial holdover of Cartesian-Kantian divides and 2) Humanity's mode of perceiving-thinking (activity of Spirit) has been qualitatively evolving, as demonstrated by both analogy and empirical data. We are now at the beginning stages of what Gebser called "aperspectival", Barfield called "final participation", Teilhard de Chardin called "Omega Point", and others called various other names. This stage involves the Spirit (thinking activity) becoming an organ of our perception of ideal relations just as our other five senses perceive their respective content.

Of course, none of that will make sense if you simply reject the metamorphic progression of Spirit, hence the essays. If you have philosophical-scientific reasons to reject the metamorphic argument, then I am all eyes to read them.

I do not reject the metamorphic progression, it's been happening since the axial age, but is rapidly accelerating in our times. Western spiritual and philosophical traditions definitely progressed a lot and catalyzed the development of Western civilization and its cognitive level with the emphasis on thinking and creative activity of consciousness. However, we saw the progression in human civilization along two major streams: Western and Eastern. It is not a coincidence that we saw a massive infusion of Eastern spiritual traditions to the West over the last century, it was just the right time for that. While indeed lacking in many respects (such as philosophical, scientific and spiritual discoveries of the Western stream), they brought important spiritual discoveries and advances unknown to the Western traditions. Instead of staying in denial and confrontation/superiority mode, the best approach I see is to integrate the best parts of both, to leave the absolutist and exclusivist mindsets and claims behind and to learn and absorb the discoveries, advancements and practices from both streams. That may not be so easy task as they still have certain philosophical and practical incompatibilities, it is similar to the attempts to integrate quantum and relativity theories in physics. Perhaps a critical, flexible and innovative approach is needed to re-examine and re-adjust both and find ways to integrate them in some workable and more encompassing theoretical and practical paradigm.

We can actually see it nowadays happening everywhere in the West, it is happening already with the spread of modern non-dual teachings and practices abandoning their Eastern cultural baggage and adopting to and integrating with the Western mentality and traditions. Many people already understood and grasped the values of both traditions/streams and are working on integrating both in their lives. We can arrogantly ignore it and keep going along our own traditional Western or Eastern ways, or we can recognize it, participate and contribute to such integrative metamorphic process.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 11:52 pm I thought this is a better place to continue this discussion that we had on another thread

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 10:27 pm That is the fundamental argument I have been making here - 1) Philosophical-scientific (outer) divide from mental-spiritual (inner) is artificial holdover of Cartesian-Kantian divides and 2) Humanity's mode of perceiving-thinking (activity of Spirit) has been qualitatively evolving, as demonstrated by both analogy and empirical data. We are now at the beginning stages of what Gebser called "aperspectival", Barfield called "final participation", Teilhard de Chardin called "Omega Point", and others called various other names. This stage involves the Spirit (thinking activity) becoming an organ of our perception of ideal relations just as our other five senses perceive their respective content.

Of course, none of that will make sense if you simply reject the metamorphic progression of Spirit, hence the essays. If you have philosophical-scientific reasons to reject the metamorphic argument, then I am all eyes to read them.

I do not reject the metamorphic progression, it's been happening since the axial age, but is rapidly accelerating in our times. Western spiritual and philosophical traditions definitely progressed a lot and catalyzed the development of Western civilization and its cognitive level with the emphasis on thinking and creative activity of consciousness. However, we saw the progression in human civilization along two major streams: Western and Eastern. It is not a coincidence that we saw a massive infusion of Eastern spiritual traditions to the West over the last century, it was just the right time for that. While indeed lacking in many respects (such as philosophical, scientific and spiritual discoveries of the Western stream), they brought important spiritual discoveries and advances unknown to the Western traditions. Instead of staying in denial and confrontation/superiority mode, the best approach I see is to integrate the best parts of both, to leave the absolutist and exclusivist mindsets and claims behind and to learn and absorb the discoveries, advancements and practices from both streams. That may not be so easy task as they still have certain philosophical and practical incompatibilities, it is similar to the attempts to integrate quantum and relativity theories in physics. Perhaps a critical, flexible and innovative approach is needed to re-examine and re-adjust both and find ways to integrate them in some workable and more encompassing theoretical and practical paradigm.

We can actually see it nowadays happening everywhere in the West, it is happening already with the spread of modern non-dual teachings and practices abandoning their Eastern cultural baggage and adopting to and integrating with the Western mentality and traditions. Many people already understood and grasped the values of both traditions/streams and are working on integrating both in their lives. We can arrogantly ignore it and keep going along our own traditional Western or Eastern ways, or we can recognize it, participate and contribute to such integrative metamorphic process.

I am not sure how many more different ways I can say this... but let me attempt another - the metamorphic view does not exclude any authentic Eastern spiritual traditions or downgrade their importance in the whole progression. There is both temporal and 'spatial' progression of Spirit in that sense. Eastern spirituality will have an even bigger resurgence than it already has in the last century. So if that is your biggest quarrel with my essays, then you should rest assured I am not at all promoting that view. I will quote Hegel again and say the different aspects of flowering plant can also be analogized 'spatially' to Eastern, Persian and Western.

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 12:40 am

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 11:52 pm I thought this is a better place to continue this discussion that we had on another thread

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 10:27 pm That is the fundamental argument I have been making here - 1) Philosophical-scientific (outer) divide from mental-spiritual (inner) is artificial holdover of Cartesian-Kantian divides and 2) Humanity's mode of perceiving-thinking (activity of Spirit) has been qualitatively evolving, as demonstrated by both analogy and empirical data. We are now at the beginning stages of what Gebser called "aperspectival", Barfield called "final participation", Teilhard de Chardin called "Omega Point", and others called various other names. This stage involves the Spirit (thinking activity) becoming an organ of our perception of ideal relations just as our other five senses perceive their respective content.

Of course, none of that will make sense if you simply reject the metamorphic progression of Spirit, hence the essays. If you have philosophical-scientific reasons to reject the metamorphic argument, then I am all eyes to read them.

I do not reject the metamorphic progression, it's been happening since the axial age, but is rapidly accelerating in our times. Western spiritual and philosophical traditions definitely progressed a lot and catalyzed the development of Western civilization and its cognitive level with the emphasis on thinking and creative activity of consciousness. However, we saw the progression in human civilization along two major streams: Western and Eastern. It is not a coincidence that we saw a massive infusion of Eastern spiritual traditions to the West over the last century, it was just the right time for that. While indeed lacking in many respects (such as philosophical, scientific and spiritual discoveries of the Western stream), they brought important spiritual discoveries and advances unknown to the Western traditions. Instead of staying in denial and confrontation/superiority mode, the best approach I see is to integrate the best parts of both, to leave the absolutist and exclusivist mindsets and claims behind and to learn and absorb the discoveries, advancements and practices from both streams. That may not be so easy task as they still have certain philosophical and practical incompatibilities, it is similar to the attempts to integrate quantum and relativity theories in physics. Perhaps a critical, flexible and innovative approach is needed to re-examine and re-adjust both and find ways to integrate them in some workable and more encompassing theoretical and practical paradigm.

We can actually see it nowadays happening everywhere in the West, it is happening already with the spread of modern non-dual teachings and practices abandoning their Eastern cultural baggage and adopting to and integrating with the Western mentality and traditions. Many people already understood and grasped the values of both traditions/streams and are working on integrating both in their lives. We can arrogantly ignore it and keep going along our own traditional Western or Eastern ways, or we can recognize it, participate and contribute to such integrative metamorphic process.

I am not sure how many more different ways I can say this... but let me attempt another - the metamorphic view does not exclude any authentic Eastern spiritual traditions or downgrade their importance in the whole progression. There is both temporal and 'spatial' progression of Spirit in that sense. Eastern spirituality will have an even bigger resurgence than it already has in the last century. So if that is your biggest quarrel with my essays, then you should rest assured I am not at all promoting that view. I will quote Hegel again and say the different aspects of flowering plant can also be analogized 'spatially' to Eastern, Persian and Western.

The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

I will add one more thought here - if we are taking the metamorphic process seriously, then we need to apply it consistently throughout history. That will mean the ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato, for ex., did not experience "ideas" as we experience them. They were, for him, still retaining some concrete sensuous aspect, rather than purely abstract free-floating concepts. So his realm of ideas was not at all what we now picture it to be. I am not saying we should all be "Platonists" of some sort, but again that we need to be consistent in our application of the spiritual progression.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 1:06 pm Answer to your question: yes, I did have such experience, I told about it before. It was an experience of a "lucid" deep sleep which I entered after lucid dreaming, where there was absolutely nothing at all and even no knowledge that I have the experience. It was a really dumb coma/vegetable state. But somehow it was recorded in the memory. But after I woke up I recalled that state and realized that even though there was nothing to experience and no knowledge/meta-cognition of experiencing, the experiencing itself was still clearly there. But of course I agree that in our waking state the thinking (whether on intuitive or on rational level) always accompanies our experience, I have no problem with that. But notice that all those acts of knowing and thinking are also experiences. The main point of this exercise is to realize that the whole universe is "made of" only different conscious experiences (of a great variety of forms), exactly like BK said in his yesterday's chat. So, that's what the "direct experience" is: seeing the world as it actually is: a flow of direct experiences of forms, without denying the reality of those forms, ideas etc. There is nothing "mystical" here, it's really simple.

The experience you describe is well known in spiritual science. In fact, in spiritual training we must learn to introduce this state through our own will. This is the training for true Intuitive consciousness. Please note, that when describing the thoughtless cup exercise I said that it only points to Intuitive consciousness.

Steiner wrote:The third step in higher knowledge, necessary for rising to Intuition, can be achieved only by developing to its highest point a faculty which, in our materialistic age, is not recognised as a cognitional force. What is revealed through Intuition can be attained only by developing and spiritualising to the highest degree the capacity for love. A man must be able to make this capacity for love into a cognitional force.

To approach Intuitive consciousness in fully conscious way we need to suppress all forms of soul life (thinking, feeling, willing) that we know from our intercourse with the sensory spectrum. If man without spiritual training would do this he would simply fall into complete unconsciousness or at most to the comatose state that you describe. Actually we find ourselves in this state every night in deep dreamless sleep but the soul experiences don't register as sensory-like perceptions and related concepts (thus they are not remembered), simply because these don't exist in that state. If we were to suddenly become conscious within this state we would experience an overwhelming terror. The reason is that we would find our "I"-being as dismembered and spread out into the Cosmos. We don't really appreciate how much in fact our unitary physical body plays out to support our coherent ego-sense. It's like our spirit being, for many years, is used to live in a very familiar house, where everything is known and predictable - we know where the bathroom, the kitchen is, we know where the salt is kept. As soon as the support of the body is lost, in the truest sense we find ourselves as spread out into the Cosmos, completely dismembered and unable to differentiate ourselves from the spiritual processes and beings there. This is a terrifying experience unless approached gradually and with the proper preparation. The only way we can counterbalance this fear is through Love. We need to completely consciously unite ourselves with the impulse of Love. Not in order to dissolve merrily in the whole but to find ourselves as an individual spiritual being in this completely spiritual state. In the incarnate state the support of the bodily spectrum gives us the kernel around which the "I" can find its stable reflection but in the spiritual world there are no such means. We find our reflection there everywhere and in every being and there are no means to differentiate what's really us. Only when we unite ourselves with the Spring of Love we are able to differentiate what we are. In this state we can gain self-consciousness only through the flow of Love that goes through us. We can't define ourselves by our possessions, body, thoughts, desires, etc. because all these are missing now. All that we thought is us and defines us is now spread out and belongs to the beings of the Cosmos. That's why we can't have self-consciousness in this world as long as we identify with the things that are granted to us in the incarnate state. The abstract idea that "it's all one" or "I'm not the body and the ego" don't help much. It's rarely realized that we support these ideas again with the help of the physical and etheric body. The fact that we have de-identified with our body and ego doesn't at all mean that we have found the spiritual substitute that will give us consciousness in the spiritual world. The only way we can gain self-consciousness as spiritual beings is through what is constantly being created anew through our activity. In the higher world we are not what we identify with but what we create out of ourselves. If in the bodily state the body is the well-formed and unitary lake which helps us to recognize ourselves, then in the spiritual world we recognize ourselves only through what constantly flows through us as fresh water and contributes to the whole Cosmos. This is the true impulse of Love. This is the basis of the new emerging consciousness and if these things are not understood, future man will fall more and more into decadence. Instead of rising in consciousness, becoming more lucid, he'll succumb more and more into the degenerating physical world and his consciousness will dim down together with it. When we discover within our innermost core the inexhaustible source of the water of Life, which is true Love, that only gives without worrying about how, when and what it will receive, we also discover the living and dynamic Spiritual Life which gives us our cognitive self-consciousness. We practically create our consciousness through the outflow of Love. The more we Love, the more our Love is replenished.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 1:06 pm The only thing I would say about your spiritual science is this. Natural science is a very useful branch of human activity and brought us a lot of knowledge. But that does not mean that scientists are the only people that are doing things "right" and that every single human has to become a scientist. Similarly, if you are doing spiritual science, great for you, please do and share with us your discoveries. But that does not mean that you are the only person doing things "right" and everyone else that do or understand things differently are doing it wrong, and does not mean that everyone has to become a spiritual scientist. There are many other ways to develop consciousness and do all kinds of spiritual and mundane activities.

The role of natural science is not to say what is right and wrong but to reveal facts. It's a fact that that plant lives when watered with water and dies when watered with gasoline. The same holds true for spiritual science. It reveals facts attained through the higher spiritual forces. These facts can be understood through thinking even without developing the higher skills ourselves. Right and wrong is up to us.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue May 04, 2021 1:06 pm It's this attitude "those who are not with us are against us and serving evil forces" is problematic here, the same attitude with which Jesuits burned the witches because they honestly believed that they are "evil". This is based on an epistemological fallacy that assumes that there is only one truth, and this is exactly the truth that we have the knowledge of, therefore any other variants of "truth" have to be wrong. This is what I call "spiritual dictatorship". Even if there is an absolute truth comprehensible by thinking, that does not mean that it is exactly your variant of truth. So, please give us a break, let people have different views, do different practices, develop and grow in their own ways, and you can keep doing your own, noone is going to stop you, and you can share with us your discoveries and the benefits of your views and practices, I'm sure you will find other followers. I follow my own non-dual practice but always say that it is entirely optional and I can be wrong with my views. But I still take them "provisionally" and keep practicing because I see a practical benefit in it for me, that's all.

I really hope that witchburning is gone for good. Any form of compulsion is completely incompatible with the impulse of Love. If someone thinks that people will be bettered by deploying Christian spiritual dictatorship, they simply don't understand the first thing about the Christ impulse. We can be locked in a prison, we may be forced to perform rituals, even to believe out of fear, but there's no outer force that has access to our innermost core. It is entirely up to the individual to unveil the mysteries of that core in complete freedom.

We must make a clear distinction here once and for all. Spiritual science speaks of truths in the sense of facts. One such fact is what was described above about the attainment of self-consciousness in the Devachan (spirital world). This is something that can be verified. The nature of these things is such that their truth is directly revealed by the very direct experience. It's a fact that if we simply remove in meditation all the contents of our ordinary consciousness, we arrive at the comatose state, which you correctly recognize is still an experience. But it's also a fact that through developing our slumbering soul forces, we can attain to clear consciousness in this vegetative state (you have actually used the most precise terms when you called the state vegetative or comatose. This only confirms the authenticity of your experience.) We experience this state as if on the edge of complete unconsciousness because our normally developed "I" can't grasp there anything that is self-similar to itself, there's nothing to mirror our existence. But when we connect, in the described way, with the impulse of Love, then the comatose state is illuminated by our cognitive Love force. Then we find ourselves in the proper spiritual world, where we are spirit among spirits.

The very fact that we reach consciousness in this state through the Love impulse is in itself the confirmation. To speak of variants of truth would require that there are other ways to gain consciousness in that realm. I'm open for other suggestions.

It is true that no one is required to consider these things. Everyone is free to do whatever they want - that's their own right and wrong. These are variants of spiritual conducts. That's why I've always said that the paths are infinite but in no way they lead to the same results. Spiritual investigation reveals the facts that we must take into consideration if we want to take our spiritual development in our hands. As said, when we reach to the innermost spiritual core, the fountain of our spiritual activity, no external force, no even some powerful god, can intervene there. So it's illusionary to expect that from our point of history onwards things will happen automatically. Yes, many conditions will certainly change constantly, without humans taking part, but as far as their realization as true spiritual beings, that's entirely individual task.

Such are the things revealed through our deeper penetration into the facts of reality. If at this point it's still said: "I don't care about these facts, why should everyone play by the same rules? The beauty of life is that there are infinite possibilities!" it's like saying "I don't care how the human body works. Why should I breath only air and eat nutritious food? What kind of dictatorship is that?!" Everyone is forced to admit that there are certain laws that the physical body must comply to in order to be healthy and able to unfold in the greatest freedom, yet it's outright dismissed that such a thing may be possible for our soul and spiritual organism. And the reason is simple - people simply don't see their soul and spirit. They use them all the time but they don't recognize then, they don't distinguish them. They are either projected onto and confused with the body or it's imagined that our spiritual nature is completely independent and free from its spiritual environment. It's the task of spiritual investigation to elucidate these soul and spiritual rules (which are subject to the evolving Cosmic context, they are not some immutable eternal laws, just as the rules of the physical body are specific to our particular biology). The task is to allow humans make informed decisions about how to conduct their lives such that the greatest physical, soul and spiritual prosperity - individual and collective - can be attained. If the reports of spiritual investigation are rejected, it's not because they have been thought through thoroughly or because the path for their verification was explored but simply because they clash with desires. It's simply preferred that the world should be constituted otherwise, that higher cognition must be wrong in some way. This pattern of behavior is well known from ordinary life, most commonly in adolescents. They don't reject the advices of adults because they have considered them deeply and thought them through but because they clash with their youthful and energetic desires to live their lives as they want. It's much better to think that adults are simply from a past generation, that they don't understand that the world has changed and so on. As any parent knows, nothing will prevent the child to go the way it wants - and this is how it should be! Yet the advice of the parent must be there - to act as health restoring counterbalance, even if it comes into play much later when the young person was already burnt in the fires of passion. The role of spiritual investigation and the Christ impulse as a whole is of a similar nature. It won't and it must not prevent souls to test the laws of the physical, soul and spiritual world on themselves, but the counterbalance must be there. Things like these must be uttered, even if the one speaking them forth is accused of being dyed-in-the-wool spiritual dictator.