Essay: Symphony of Minds

[Federica]

So, with that clarified, do you understand the distinction being made in the quote above, how there is a qualitative difference between our experience of phenomena that proceed from our inner activity, such as the thoughts/words when we're telling a story, and those that we confront passively, such as the words we hear when listening to someone else's story?

The separate self will gladly take credit for the speaking and the listening, for the creation of music and for the appreciation of another's music. The separate self will take ownership in the eating of a strawberry.
So in this sense there is no difference.
With compassion and politeness, we don't squash the separate self, we integrate Unbounded Being.

Lorenzo, if we could visualize the preference that you express here, it could be pictured for example as below. When you are invited to introspect on what happens in your mental activity as you operate the calculation, you don't prefer to admit:




Your preference goes for something like that, instead:





Do you see that you have this preference to go with your theory of choice for how consciousness works, rather than with what your experience tells you directly? If your theory of choice states something contrary to your inner experience, you actually prefer to look away from your own conscious experience, and brandish the 'evidence' provided by the theory.

Do you see this preference of yours?

[Cleric K]

The separate self will gladly take credit for the speaking and the listening, for the creation of music and for the appreciation of another's music. The separate self will take ownership in the eating of a strawberry.
So in this sense there is no difference.
With compassion and politeness, we don't squash the separate self, we integrate Unbounded Being.

OK, then things are clear. You do understand what inner activity is, it’s only that for you this is simply what the playback of the Dream process feels like in consciousness. Thus the Cosmic Dreamer within your localized perspective doesn’t have a problem with the conscious experience of inner activity per se, but only with the experience of being somehow consciously and causally responsible for some aspects of it.

In other words, there’s a clear “separation of concerns”. We can symbolize it with . We have the dark side of the Dream – the mysterious non-conscious guts of the Dream process that alone are responsible for the unfolding playback. The light side is the conscious experience, which is a completely passive visualization/experience of the playback.

For example, the dark side of the Dream is responsible for planets orbiting, grass growing, hearts beating, thoughts appearing – this is the Dream process ‘ticking’. The light side must only observe the playback. It’s a fatal illusion if the Dreamer stumbles upon a conscious inner intentional activity that in its innermost core feels to be the causal reality of ‘ticking’ - i.e. inner activity, the experience of which cannot be blamed on some other process. This only shows how naive and misguided the Dreamer has become. Much like Phoebe:



Thus the so-called ‘non-duality’ rests on a fundamental duality. A fundamental “separation of concerns” . The dark side of the Dream process is Monica in the other room (representing the non-conscious Great Mysteriousness), flipping the switch, ‘ticking’ the Dream process forward. Phoebe is on the light side of consciousness, falling under the illusion of ‘I'm totally doing it!’. Thus the enlightened mind says: “Monica (the dark side of the Dream) does her non-conscious job. On the light side, I’m doing mine – I’m just letting go and being one with Being – that is, dissolving in the experience of Monica flipping the switch on the dark side.”

Do you agree with this depiction?

[Lou Gold]

Personally, I'm currently preferring a simple distinction between esoteric science and exoteric science.

About naming the arithmetic, another possibility is to simply perform the answer spontaneously. One might call it, "Being the Answer"

Such spontaneity is indeed possible in Rainman-like cases. But the question is whether when you tried to multiply a pair of two-digit numbers, the answer spontaneously popped up and you were the answer? Or you had to intentionally and effortfully work your way toward it? (if you tried it at all)

If the answer didn't appear spontaneously and instead you had to effortfully do something to reach it, then we have at least one example of something in our existence that can only happen if accompanied by the conscious experiences of meaningful intent and will.

Could it be that there are also other things in our existence that would never spontaneously happen unless they are effortfully worked toward with meaningful intent and will? Is it blasphemy to conceive that maybe, just maybe (or as you say - perhaps), our collective future depends on such activities that are unlikely to just happen spontaneously, but instead have to be worked toward with meaningful intent and will? If this could be the case but we nevertheless choose to sit and wait for a spontaneous miracle while things keep going from bad to worse, whose fault will that be?

These are very simple questions. Child-level, no degree needed.

Yikes Cleric, you are masterful at reframing a question to fit your purpose. Yes, I did the exercise and I had to do something. What got in the way of spontaneity was my childhood training with multiplication tables, which I loved and mastered quite proficiently, Yes, my habit involved will and intention.

Years ago I had a friend who was the most evolved person I've ever met. He was an advanced meditator with some form of Kabbalah. He loved problems and he could just see answers. When he was not being a hippie in the woods, he worked for outfits such as Lockheed-Martin on projects like designing the solar masts for the International Space Station. A professor of cognition and education was developing non-verbal IQ tests like the amount of time it would take to assemble a pattern from a scatter of puzzle pieces. He tested the new approach with my friend who was African-American from an ordinary urban background.. He fit the profile. The professor had six different puzzle pieces tests. He laid one out and explained he would hit the stopwatch to start the test. When he did my friend quickly clasped them together and opened his hands to reveal the solution. He repeated this on all six tests. The astonished professor said our friend convinced him that whatever they thought of as intelligence and were studying via IQ tests really wasn't very intelligent.

This is whet I mean by spontaneously performing the answer or "Being the Answer". Of course, it involves will and intent, which is why the common adage says, "Be the change you want to see." OK, that's my best shot at communicating.

You conclude rhetorically with...

Could it be that there are also other things in our existence that would never spontaneously happen unless they are effortfully worked toward with meaningful intent and will? Is it blasphemy to conceive that maybe, just maybe (or as you say - perhaps), our collective future depends on such activities that are unlikely to just happen spontaneously, but instead have to be worked toward with meaningful intent and will? If this could be the case but we nevertheless choose to sit and wait for a spontaneous miracle while things keep going from bad to worse, whose fault will that be?

What I don't get is why you need to pin a comment like this onto the discussion?

This is a very simple question. Child-level, no degree needed. Why do you need to do it?

[lorenzop]

Do you agree with this depiction?

We certainly can have the sensation of a separate self, the sensation of being a separate unit of consciousness - and if we wish to feed that sensation we have that option.
Having the sensation of a separate self we should not deny that - we should behave and think in accordance with what we know to be correct behavior, the best we can. Our 'duty' is to think, behave and desire from unboundedness of Being - in lieu of that we do the best we can.

[Cleric K]

Yikes Cleric, you are masterful at reframing a question to fit your purpose. Yes, I did the exercise and I had to do something. What got in the way of spontaneity was my childhood training with multiplication tables, which I loved and mastered quite proficiently, Yes, my habit involved will and intention.

Years ago I had a friend who was the most evolved person I've ever met. He was an advanced meditator with some form of Kabbalah. He loved problems and he could just see answers. When he was not being a hippie in the woods, he worked for outfits such as Lockheed-Martin on projects like designing the solar masts for the International Space Station. A professor of cognition and education was developing non-verbal IQ tests like the amount of time it would take to assemble a pattern from a scatter of puzzle pieces. He tested the new approach with my friend who was African-American from an ordinary urban background.. He fit the profile. The professor had six different puzzle pieces tests. He laid one out and explained he would hit the stopwatch to start the test. When he did my friend quickly clasped them together and opened his hands to reveal the solution. He repeated this on all six tests. The astonished professor said our friend convinced him that whatever they thought of as intelligence and were studying via IQ tests really wasn't very intelligent.

This is whet I mean by spontaneously performing the answer or "Being the Answer". Of course, it involves will and intent, which is why the common adage says, "Be the change you want to see." OK, that's my best shot at communicating.

You conclude rhetorically with...

Could it be that there are also other things in our existence that would never spontaneously happen unless they are effortfully worked toward with meaningful intent and will? Is it blasphemy to conceive that maybe, just maybe (or as you say - perhaps), our collective future depends on such activities that are unlikely to just happen spontaneously, but instead have to be worked toward with meaningful intent and will? If this could be the case but we nevertheless choose to sit and wait for a spontaneous miracle while things keep going from bad to worse, whose fault will that be?

What I don't get is why you need to pin a comment like this onto the discussion?

This is a very simple question. Child-level, no degree needed. Why do you need to do it?

OK, Lou, I'm sorry. It's just that your post seemed to completely ignore the point of the example and sounded like another "How about philosophy without thoughts?"

[Cleric K]

Do you agree with this depiction?

We certainly can have the sensation of a separate self, the sensation of being a separate unit of consciousness - and if we wish to feed that sensation we have that option.
Having the sensation of a separate self we should not deny that - we should behave and think in accordance with what we know to be correct behavior, the best we can. Our 'duty' is to think, behave and desire from unboundedness of Being - in lieu of that we do the best we can.

That's great. Although, I'm not sure why you and Eugene always lead inner activity to the problem of a separate self. It has been pointed out so many times that diffusing inner activity doesn't change the fact that we still behold existence from a specific perspective. If I look through my eyes and stop thinking, I'm still experiencing the same physical perspective of Being. If in deep meditation the boundaries of my body dissolve, I'm still experiencing a unique perspective within Being.

Our inner activity doesn't need to feed the separateness (that is, egoism). It surely can, but we should in no way equate inner activity with separateness/egoism. Instead, we can do what you suggest - think, behave and desire from unboundedness of Being.

Thus we reach a very simple conclusion. It is a simple fact that no matter what we think or avoid to think, we experience a unique perspective of Being. We can't change that fact by just muting our inner activity. So the real question is, like you say, to seek the inner activity that harmonizes with our moral ideal and understanding of reality.

We can observe an interesting polarity that has two extremes. One extreme is when we completely embrace the belief that Monica is flipping the switch and we only observe the playback. Such a view however doesn't have any practical value. We still need to act 'as if' things depend on our inner activity. We can't simply let go and observe how Monica takes us out of bed, showers us, works, feeds us, and so on.

On the other extreme is Phoebe. This is where there's rightful criticism about how free we really are. It's true that most of our life we simply flow along and say "I'm totally doing it!", without realizing just how many of the things happen for the most complicated reasons, and as you say, we just take credit. This is just as a pathological condition, as the first.

In a deeper sense, free activity is that which can no longer be traced to causal chains. The Initiates call it 'creation out of nothing'. This is inner activity emanating as if from the Nirvanic depth of existence. As this activity emanates it is still formatted by the contextuality of our unique perspective of Being. For example an Angel, an alien, or a human Initiate, all can act out of Nothingness, out of Nirvana, yet that activity becomes structured according to the specific contextuality of the unique perspective of Being.

Concentrated thought can be considered as a ray emanating out of our free Nirvanic Being. It is a creative ray, it is the form the essential Being takes as it is sieved through the contextual constraints.

So this is the progression in spiritual evolution. The mission of Buddha paved the way through which the human mind, through rigorous self-discipline can reach the Nirvanic edge of Nothingness/Allness/Eternity. Yet if this was to remain the final evolutionary impulse, man would remain a passive, contemplative being. He would just reach the Nirvanic state and wait patiently to drop the physical constraints at death. The impulse that furthers the evolutionary process is brought through the Christ. To mimic or become One with the Buddha consciousness is to reach the edge of Nothingness, the edge of Time. To mimic or become One with the Christ consciousness (not Jesus the human being, but the Sun-Spirit that dwelt in Jesus for three years from the Baptism to the Crucifixion) is to think, feel and act out of Love, in complete freedom, from out of Nirvana. The easiest and most direct way in which modern man can find a real experience of this raying is in the experience of strengthened and focused thought ray. As long as we believe that our thought is just a visualization of the flipping switch on the dark side of the Dream, we're not yet free. Just like Karma guides our life as a whole, so our thinking ray is still steered by unknown factors. And not only that, but we voluntarily give our thinking ray to those factors, we practically give it away, we say "There, take it all, I don't need it." Alas, what we give away in this way is precisely the Ray of Love that emanates in complete freedom (uncaused), out of Nothingness/Allness, from the bosom of the Eternal. You have said before that we're only free when we reach the experience of Being that undresses the contextuality of Karma. In the same manner, it can be said that a thought is free when it emanates from this Nirvanic realm - a thought that is not caused by anything external.

Of course, this doesn't in the least mean that now any thought we think can be considered to emanate out of Nothingness. As said, it still becomes formatted by the contextuality of existence, all the way to the physical constraints and the brain. That's why we concentrate our Ray of thought. We know that this ray is thick, made of many layers, but deep within, there's the inner core, the creative ray emanating from the Eternal. That's why I described to Guney, that this kind of meditation is like splitting the Now. It is as we try to split the Ray and peel the layers, while getting closer and closer to the Nirvanic core. As we approach this state, we gain true higher cognition, because we don't see visions but realize Intuitively in what kind of layers our Nirvanic ideal ray is constrained and formatted.

[lorenzop]

I can’t speak for Eugene, but if this were a forum re politics or cycling I would not bring up the separate self.
I falsely presumed the separate self and our true nature was an issue of this forum.
I admit I am a drag here, wasting folks time in advancing the discussion folks want to move in, so I will step aside. It’s pretty obvious I’m not going to ‘get’ what you and Ashwin are suggesting, and Anthrosophy wouldn’t likely fall into my belief scope anyways, so I will step aside.

[Lou Gold]

Yikes Cleric, you are masterful at reframing a question to fit your purpose. Yes, I did the exercise and I had to do something. What got in the way of spontaneity was my childhood training with multiplication tables, which I loved and mastered quite proficiently, Yes, my habit involved will and intention.

Years ago I had a friend who was the most evolved person I've ever met. He was an advanced meditator with some form of Kabbalah. He loved problems and he could just see answers. When he was not being a hippie in the woods, he worked for outfits such as Lockheed-Martin on projects like designing the solar masts for the International Space Station. A professor of cognition and education was developing non-verbal IQ tests like the amount of time it would take to assemble a pattern from a scatter of puzzle pieces. He tested the new approach with my friend who was African-American from an ordinary urban background.. He fit the profile. The professor had six different puzzle pieces tests. He laid one out and explained he would hit the stopwatch to start the test. When he did my friend quickly clasped them together and opened his hands to reveal the solution. He repeated this on all six tests. The astonished professor said our friend convinced him that whatever they thought of as intelligence and were studying via IQ tests really wasn't very intelligent.

This is whet I mean by spontaneously performing the answer or "Being the Answer". Of course, it involves will and intent, which is why the common adage says, "Be the change you want to see." OK, that's my best shot at communicating.

You conclude rhetorically with...

Could it be that there are also other things in our existence that would never spontaneously happen unless they are effortfully worked toward with meaningful intent and will? Is it blasphemy to conceive that maybe, just maybe (or as you say - perhaps), our collective future depends on such activities that are unlikely to just happen spontaneously, but instead have to be worked toward with meaningful intent and will? If this could be the case but we nevertheless choose to sit and wait for a spontaneous miracle while things keep going from bad to worse, whose fault will that be?

What I don't get is why you need to pin a comment like this onto the discussion?

This is a very simple question. Child-level, no degree needed. Why do you need to do it?

OK, Lou, I'm sorry. It's just that your post seemed to completely ignore the point of the example and sounded like another "How about philosophy without thoughts?"

OK. I understand what catches you. Thank you for acknowledging it. We all have hooks that we must be cautious about I'm a storyteller rather than a philosopher and communication is my core concern. This is why I focus on language. Parsimony for me is found in poetic simplicity. Lao Tzu offers some of the best. My 'hook' is that I can react too strongly facing complex elaborations.

As a storyteller I'm here to learn how to communicate with people who often seem very different in the way they use language; not wrong but different.
I also learn some philosophy along the way, which appeals to the thinking part of me. I've evolved with age from my more youthful activist days of strongly taking sides toward an ever-deepening preference for the still point on the bridge or near the fulcrum of a balance where I can be closer to the 'perfect joy' of having a peaceful heart whether or not my hopes or expectations are being met. For myself, in the late stage of heart failure, this has very practical implications as well. I can't say that I willed my context or condition other than choosing to be born into a terminal process. I'm probably more of a cosmo-panpsychist than a materialist or idealist but my concern is practical more than ontological.

I suggested that it might be useful in our dualist dialogues to to contemplate that there are both esoteric and exoteric sciences; that both are scientific and evolve; and that both contain a spectrum of agreements and disagreements, myths and models, poetry and jargon. I consider it plausible that the 'savage' was actually seeing something real and important and potentially useful to modern man.

I like this quote of Peter Deunov:

If you pursue happiness, you are an ordinary person. If happiness pursues you, you are an extraordinary person. Do not chase happiness; let it chase you.

I presume that philosophers and philosophy aspire toward the extraordinary.

As an old guy who has been preoccupied with life-review I like the notion that what sets the extraordinary person apart from the common one is that the latter has made more mistakes and realized they are true gems of learning.

[Cleric K]

I can’t speak for Eugene, but if this were a forum re politics or cycling I would not bring up the separate self.
I falsely presumed the separate self and our true nature was an issue of this forum.
I admit I am a drag here, wasting folks time in advancing the discussion folks want to move in, so I will step aside. It’s pretty obvious I’m not going to ‘get’ what you and Ashwin are suggesting, and Anthrosophy wouldn’t likely fall into my belief scope anyways, so I will step aside.

Sure, Lorenzo, you can always take a break.
But maybe just take the following, next time you meditate.

When we see our thoughts as caused by something else, our thoughts are Karma. They follow us like something that we want to evade, just like destiny follows people and they try to evade it. The only way to resolve that Karma is by experiencing a thought that no longer points away but right back towards the uncaused creative activity of the "I".
When you reach the edge of Time in your meditation, when you are at the horizon where the manifest comes out of nothing, you can hear through you - "Let there be Light" and then the essential and unbounded Being that dreams in your perspective becomes a creative Being that can no longer blame on something else its Ray of Love, that fills and illuminates the inner Cosmos. This doesn't mean that our speck of an Earthly ego becomes equal to that Being. Yet the Dreamer that creates Worlds begins to awaken within our perspective to its creative uncaused inner activity.

[lorenzop]

When we see our thoughts as caused by something else, our thoughts are Karma. They follow us like something that we want to evade, just like destiny follows people and they try to evade it. The only way to resolve that Karma is by experiencing a thought that no longer points away but right back towards the uncaused creative activity of the "I".
When you reach the edge of Time in your meditation, when you are at the horizon where the manifest comes out of nothing, you can hear through you - "Let there be Light" and then the essential and unbounded Being that dreams in your perspective becomes a creative Being that can no longer blame on something else its Ray of Love, that fills and illuminates the inner Cosmos. This doesn't mean that our speck of an Earthly ego becomes equal to that Being. Yet the Dreamer that creates Worlds begins to awaken within our perspective to its creative uncaused inner activity.

I can agree with this - having a thought or desire from 'the uncaused creative activity of the "I"', or from Love, etc. . . . follow\support\encourage that thought or desire.