BK's 'Phantom World' Hypothesis for NDEs

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, please be careful.

I did NOT say that the way to go was to speak to BK about "communion with the dead". Not only my words above, but also, my own comment to BK are the indisputable proofs this is NOT what I recommended. Your statement therefore is at best, careless reading, and at worst, wish to be right, and defensiveness.

I said VERY CLEARLY that the way to go with Bernardo is Clerics way.

The fact that he reacted negatively and without the least understanding is NOT in anyway a proof you were correct. YOU are the one who were endeavoring to facilitate a different and new understanding for him, and it was UP TO YOU to make the meaning as accessible to his personality as possible. It's not a good idea to push his lack of understanding for the inner path, entirely on him. It's just as much OUR inability to pierce the boundary of understanding of an intelligent thinker.

And when I say OUR, I am talking about me and you. Cleric is NOT included here. His reply is not at all a "comment to the article", as you call it. He has sacrificed his comment to the article, preferring to come in the thread of your comment instead, and try to undo the (fully foreseeable) effect of esoteric words on BKs current perspective.

You are misreading my comment - I said the 'communion with the dead' comparison didn't seem a promising path of engagement, which is why I said (in your words) - "nääääääääääääää, not promising at all, he is worsening his stance, ego-inflated, etcetera." I didn't say anything about you suggesting that was the 'way to go' with BK - you simply read that into my comment through the prism of antipathy.

I hope you at least see how the etheric death spectrum comparison is much different than communion with the dead based on there only being one 'dissociative boundary' instead of two. It's a completely different thing.

I'm sorry, Federica, I'm not going down this rabbit hole of your personal antipathies anymore. The result is entirely predictable from past experience and it will have nothing to do with calmly discussing the important spiritual ideas.

As long as you are still doing the soul work, there is no need to address it further. I think you will make a huge step in this soul work if, the next time you feel so irritated by something I do in the comments, you resist the urge to condense it into a post on the forum. That is the soul work which makes a difference. I know the potent effectiveness of this strategy entirely from experience.

Right, I may have misinterpreted that particular point - sorry about that. But this does not change the objective situation as it appears from the posts and the blog comments. Of course my irritation is real, but also anecdotal. What's way more important is that you don't accept even the possibility that your esoteric comment might be part of the reason why BK has reacted as he did, and his intellectual stance, ego inflation, etc are not the only reasons. For my part, I have surely much more soul work to do, but I definitely don't see that you have completed yours. You have to control your patronizing instinct.

And by the way, of course Owen Barfield still thinks. He does it through us, who think his ideas, read his books, and have new intiatives about them, making them into new ideas and new books, new deeds.

There is no objective situation here, Federica. There is something completely trivial and subjective - me expressing some ideas about BK's latest article, deciding not to comment, changing my mind to comment after Cleric's post stimulated an idea, and you being irritated and insulted at this decision and deciding to express that. Everything else flows from that subjective feeling.

Sure, I could have made my comment less esoteric and more general, as I usually do. I chose to go a different route this time. Cleric weighed in to help smooth out the situation. It's no big deal - it's trivial. It's not something to get up in arms about, get irritated about, point fingers about, etc. BK's salvation from abstract thinking does not rest on my comment. You wouldn't even be suggesting such a thing if not for the initial irritation with my trivial decision.

Neither was my comment about OB 'not thinking' something to take so literally and bring up again out of the blue simply to 'one up' me.

[Cleric K]

For those not following the comments on the blog article, here's a transcript of the latest messages:

The great thing about Idealism is that it doesn’t need to talk about "prana" or "etheric life force", because the so-called physical is just an appearance or image of an inner mental state as viewed by the evolved senses. If there were an etheric body, then that would just be an image too (of even subtler mental states). So if we're saying that prana animates the physical body, we're really only saying that one inner mental state informs another – it’s likely part of a recursive fractal structure. The danger of referring to separate “bodies” is that it cants the whole business towards dualism. So I do agree with Bernardo about the difficulties created by esoteric labels.

Ben, it is the same 'subtle vehicle' you mentioned in the first comment.

Anyway, Cleric addressed the main issue above. We need to find the *depth* of inner mental states of MAL and trace how it is *always* present in our normal contextual flow of experience, i.e. how it elucidates the constraints on and possibilities for our intentional activity. NDEs simply bring into more clear view an aspect of our inner organization that is always there during life and without which we cannot make sense of the lawful transformations of our inner life (including sensory experience).

If we are following this reasoning concretely, then it should become evident how this MAL depth of inner states has the utmost practical significance for our scientific understanding of normal sensory experience, of human history, of natural evolution, etc. It is perfectly fine to drop the ancient esoteric labels and speak more technically about these things, as long as we remember the ideas are always referring to concrete realities in our first-person stream of experience (the only experience we can ever know).

Yes, the true nature of these ‘bodies’ is indeed MAL’s *ideal* activity, but as I wrote above, in our *ordinary* consciousness we do not have direct experience of this mentation. By avoiding *thinking* about these deeper strata of ideal activity, we completely *preclude* any possibility of our consciousness expanding into their reality. For example, when we think mathematically we use some mental images – Arabic or Roman numerals, apples, fingers, etc. Obviously, none of these images is the ideal reality of Number. We manipulate the images in our imagination according to deeper mathematical intuition, within the curvature of which our thought-images flow. The mental images only help us to intuitively grasp the invisible ideal streamlines, analogously to the way iron filings help us conceive of the invisible magnetic force lines. Imagine a mathematician saying “These mental images are only appearances, they are not the true ideal reality, they are empty symbols, thus I won’t deal with them.” But in this way, it is guaranteed that he’ll *never* discover the reality of mathematical ideas. Before reaching mathematical intuition we need to use the ‘training wheels’ of mental symbols, these are the mental ‘iron filings’ through which we become acquainted with the deeper ideal streamlines of MAL. It’s quite the same with the contextual ideal strata within which our thinking being is embedded.

If we refuse to use our mental imagery, feelings, and physical sensations as ‘iron filings’ through which we gain intuition of the deeper ideal streamlines of MAL, we simply remain in inner paralysis. Just as little we can discover mathematical ideal streamlines without allowing mental images of numbers to follow their curvatures, so little we can know the ideal depth of MAL without intuiting how conscious phenomena follow individual, shared, and archetypal ideal curvatures. The key here is that we *do not* fantasize that our inner imagery is the reality. We’re *fully aware* that it is only artistic expression. The reality is the invisible ideal activity that orders phenomena across all scales.

We may believe that we save ourselves from dualism by avoiding using mental images to artistically (metaphorically) represent MAL’s ideal activity but in this way we fall into an even greater duality – we forever cut ourselves from the possibility to *grow into* the ideal depth of reality. The duality is still there. Instead of imagining ‘etheric body’, we imagine a large fuzzy mental image of MAL. Yet the reality of the ideal activity of this MAL always remains on the *other side* of the duality. We really need to meditate on this: seeing our thinking forms as ‘iron filings’ following the streamlines of *ideal intents* of different scales – from personal to Cosmic.

[Federica]

There is no objective situation here, Federica. There is something completely trivial and subjective - me expressing some ideas about BK's latest article, deciding not to comment, changing my mind to comment after Cleric's post stimulated an idea, and you being irritated and insulted at this decision and deciding to express that. Everything else flows from that subjective feeling.

Sure, I could have made my comment less esoteric and more general, as I usually do. I chose to go a different route this time. Cleric weighed in to help smooth out the situation. It's no big deal - it's trivial. It's not something to get up in arms about, get irritated about, point fingers about, etc. BK's salvation from abstract thinking does not rest on my comment. You wouldn't even be suggesting such a thing if not for the initial irritation with my trivial decision.

Neither was my comment about OB 'not thinking' something to take so literally and bring up again out of the blue simply to 'one up' me.

Ashvin, if you don’t see the connection, well that’s interesting, but I don’t need to highlight it, since you always get it right anyway. In fact, you are certainly right that it would be useless for me to add any comments here. Be my guest, keep all your chips, they decorate quite nicely.

[Lou Gold]

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

“A Great Wagon” by Rumi

[lorenzop]

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

“A Great Wagon” by Rumi

So little is understood re NDE’s that virtually all belief systems can ‘explain’ them

[Lou Gold]

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

“A Great Wagon” by Rumi

So little is understood re NDE’s that virtually all belief systems can ‘explain’ them

Same with ordinary life...

[lorenzop]

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

“A Great Wagon” by Rumi

So little is understood re NDE’s that virtually all belief systems can ‘explain’ them

Same with ordinary life...

Probably because there isn't a singular answer or explanation.

[Lou Gold]

So little is understood re NDE’s that virtually all belief systems can ‘explain’ them

Same with ordinary life...

Probably because there isn't a singular answer or explanation.

Except that there is a way for each person. Nothing to argue over. Much to live fully.