Essay: Man, Know Thyself

[Soul_of_Shu]

From some absolute perspective that's certain. Just as it is certain that "something exists". The question is what's the relation of the action figure to the Essence. One perspective is that the figure pops into existence at birth, looks around, and dissolves into the dream at death. But there's also a gate which allows us to explore our relation to the Essence. Interestingly, this gate is the same one as the gate of death. And by exploration I don't mean the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity but a living experience of the Essence forming the action figure.

In this case, The Dreaming Essence dreaming up having this corporeal 'action figure' experience is fine with this relationship ... at least so far, as it may be soon due for a trade-in. Then these new transfigured models with apparently less capacity for karmic baggage look tempting

[Lou Gold]

I understand your concern and I'm aware that in the essay I focused on the individual ascent to higher cognition. I did that because we are in a thinking forum. Everyone here builds a mental picture of reality. It would be a gap too wide if I'm to simply start presenting facts of higher cognition (that would show how the individual is embedded in the collective). That's why I focus on the path that can lead man from individual thinking to the spirit. This path does not require belief in authority - only sober, unprejudiced thinking. That's why what I say is constantly being viewed as an ego lost in abstract fantasies. Yet this is the only way one can reach to first-hand experience of the Spirit without subscribing to a religious faith and divination.

OK, I sense that we are again going to start circling the same old wagons but I sincerely believe that you are missing my essential point, which is NOT that the focus on the mind will obscure the heart but rather that the focus on the 'higher' will obscure the necessity for full integration with the lower. Please consider the brief treatise by Jung I have posted in a new thread. Furthermore, in terms of a core theme of this forum, I assert that both Materialism and Idealism actually-factually function as religious faiths and the move from the former to the latter will require the proverbial leap. Concerning 'divination' one of the simplest offerings I know comes from Ibn 'Arabi: I saw Divinity with the Eye of the Heart. I said, "Who are You?" It said, "You"

And so, here we go again.

[AshvinP]

The temptation (and distraction) when entering a great forest like this is to focus on the great standing ones, the tall trees that have (following Jung) "crowns in heaven and roots in hell." However thrilling this tree perspective is, it will not give a picture of the forest, which I'm using as an analog of the Whole or the One in our dialog. To grok the forest one must dive more deeply into the substrata of a collective network mycorrhizal fungi that make the great forest possible. Thusly, we need not a higher view as much as an expanded one and the expansion quite literally goes in all directions leading into The Great Mysteriousness (TGM), which can be known only by virtue of TGM choosing (willing) to know Itself through us co-creatively. It is my belief that we humans often mistake an expanded view as something higher and by training our spiritual and scientific attention on the 'higher' often get diverted from the ground on which we stand, defining it as somehow lesser or lower.

That is also the imagery used by Deleuze and Guattari in a A Thousand Plateaus (just going by JDE's summary on YouTube, I would never attempt to read it myself). It develops the philosophical concept of the "rhizome":

Deleuze and Guattari use the terms "rhizome" and "rhizomatic" (from Ancient Greek ῥίζωμα, rhízōma, "mass of roots") to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus, they oppose it to an arborescent (hierarchic, tree-like) conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections. Their use of the "orchid and the wasp" is taken from the biological concept of mutualism, in which two different species interact together to form a multiplicity (i.e. a unity that is multiple in itself). Hybridization or horizontal gene transfer would also be good illustrations.

"As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of 'things' and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those 'things.' A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by 'ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.' Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a 'rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.' The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.

"In this model, culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space."

[Lou Gold]

One path starts with Wisdom. When consciousness expands in this way we find the proper relations to Cosmic Life and this opens the path for Love. The individual, starts from the certainty of his own being and works outwards. As the horizon expands we must find our right relations to the beings that we encounters and this can only happen through Love. That's how the individual finds himself as a creative spirit within the collective Cosmic Edifice. Wisdom leading us to Love, and both begin to reveal Truth. That's one path and clearly the one that I'm focusing on here - as I said, because it's more appropriate for the thinking souls that have been drawn to this forum.

According to the Old Tradition, this is how Wisdom expresses it.

[Lou Gold]

Ashvin,

That is also the imagery used by Deleuze and Guattari in a A Thousand Plateaus (just going by JDE's summary on YouTube, I would never attempt to read it myself). It develops the philosophical concept of the "rhizome":

Interesting. Thanks! I believe this makes me a multi-aspect multi-direction monist.

I have an intuitive feeling that philosophy is beginning a long march from the abstract elegance of physics to the more complex and nuanced embodied biology, which I find in both the father and son, Rupert and Merlin Sheldrake.

[Cleric K]

OK, I sense that we are again going to start circling the same old wagons but I sincerely believe that you are missing my essential point, which is NOT that the focus on the mind will obscure the heart but rather that the focus on the 'higher' will obscure the necessity for full integration with the lower. Please consider the brief treatise by Jung I have posted in a new thread. Furthermore, in terms of a core theme of this forum, I assert that both Materialism and Idealism actually-factually function as religious faiths and the move from the former to the latter will require the proverbial leap. Concerning 'divination' one of the simplest offerings I know comes from Ibn 'Arabi: I saw Divinity with the Eye of the Heart. I said, "Who are You?" It said, "You"

I see. I thought that this was more or less clear, that's why I didn't address it directly.

But this is based on a misconception of what the 'higher' is. That's why I tried to explicitly address it:

Higher cognition does not lead us to some remote, alternative reality. Our immediate experiences already show that. We don't perceive some speculative entities with fantasized relations to our world. The elemental beings throw light on our own soul life. We only understand our normal state of consciousness when experienced from the higher state. The higher contains the causes of the lower. In this sense, the perceptions of the elemental beings don't lead us away from reality but exactly the opposite - they complement and explain reality. This process continues even further with relation to the higher beings. When we experience their activities, we understand not only the forces working in the individual man but also these that shape the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, the nations, the whole humanity and the Cosmos. Every step deeper into the Spiritual World, reveals something of the riddles lying behind its projection within the sensory world.

Imagine that we are at the center of a sphere. If I understand your concern correctly, you are worried that rising 'higher' (towards the North pole) puts us more and more out of touch with the everything that stands below us. And in fact this could be so, if we pursue spirituality in some one-sided escapist way. But genuine development works in such a way that as we move higher, we are not moving away from our center but we are expanding another sphere - as we strive to increase the radius upwards, the whole sphere expands and we grow with the same radius also downwards below the center. We understand the network of life only when we see how it is build from the higher perspective.

The higher not only doesn't obstruct the view of the lower but it is the only thing that can throw light on the lower and from this to gain the insight of how true harmonization should occur.

This is easily visible (for whoever has the eyes to see it) in modern medicine. Medicine keeps searching for the causes of cancer within DNA, environment, etc. And it is true that these are real factors but supersensible perception shows that the main causes of this disease are of spiritual character. The astral body influences the etheric, the etheric builds up the mineral body. When an individual carries heavily conflicting emotions within the astral body, they can be discerned as an inner war (this has some relation to your Jung quote). Part of the astral body wants to emancipate and extricate itself from the whole. This constant fight within the soul body reflects itself within the etheric where it disrupts the natural growth of tissues. When the process goes far enough, the emancipated astral organism makes for itself part within the physical body that it can feel as its own. Of course, this process in the long run destroys the whole.

I'm not expecting anyone to believe this but it's nevertheless food for thought. Imagine if you can know this from your own experience, if you have observed this, and the compare it to the efforts of medicine - trying to fix the depths - DNA repair, nanorobots, chemotherapy, etc. All this addresses only the end result of a spiritual process and all efforts will be wasted. If the leak is stopped at on place, the pressure will break from another.

It is quite the same with all problems of our world. Everything we see with our senses is only the shadow, the end result of a spiritual process, large part of which is, unfortunately, of diseased character. That's why we need to go 'higher', to address our spiritual structure, and that transforms also the physical world - the 'lower'.

[Lou Gold]

I see. I thought that this was more or less clear, that's why I didn't address it directly.

But this is based on a misconception of what the 'higher' is. That's why I tried to explicitly address it:

I beg you, perhaps hopelessly, to consider substituting the word 'expanded' for the word 'higher', which would evade lots of confusions swirling about notions of evolution and progress. BTW, when I converse with the so-called 'higher beings' of the Astral, they tell me that there is also a war going on there. "As above, so below."

[Cleric K]

I beg you, perhaps hopelessly, to consider substituting the word 'expanded' for the word 'higher'

I wish I could do that but it would be untruthful . They are different words. They don't mean the same thing. For example, as I write now, I'm focused on the topic, the keyboard, the monitor. But if I become also aware of the room, the house, the planet - my awareness expands. If I include also the dance of inner imagery - it expands further.
Higher consciousness is different. Instead of being told something by astral beings (in expanded consciousness) it allows you to experience reality from their perspective - from their level of consciousness. And this level is 'higher' anyway you look it. Our soul life, all our collective thoughts, feelings, will is like the ground on which these beings walk. Then it also becomes apparent that the Astral is not a separate world but is here, superimposed on the physical so to speak - there's only one world. With our feelings, we live in the very same Astral, where the wars are waged. Our astral bodies are part of the battleground. It's just that in our ordinary state the astral is experienced only as feelings, desires, sympathies and antipathies, only as far as they are related to something from the sensory realm. Development of higher cognition allows to perceive the astral in general, not only the parts sucked in by the senses.

[Lou Gold]

I beg you, perhaps hopelessly, to consider substituting the word 'expanded' for the word 'higher'

I wish I could do that but it would be untruthful . They are different words. They don't mean the same thing. For example, as I write now, I'm focused on the topic, the keyboard, the monitor. But if I become also aware of the room, the house, the planet - my awareness expands. If I include also the dance of inner imagery - it expands further.
Higher consciousness is different. Instead of being told something by astral beings (in expanded consciousness) it allows you to experience reality from their perspective - from their level of consciousness. And this level is 'higher' anyway you look it. Our soul life, all our collective thoughts, feelings, will is like the ground on which these beings walk. Then it also becomes apparent that the Astral is not a separate world but is here, superimposed on the physical so to speak - there's only one world. With our feelings, we live in the very same Astral, where the wars are waged. Our astral bodies are part of the battleground. It's just that in our ordinary state the astral is experienced only as feelings, desires, sympathies and antipathies, only as far as they are related to something from the sensory realm. Development of higher cognition allows to perceive the astral in general, not only the parts sucked in by the senses.

Interestingly, I would also say to you, "I wish I could do that but it would be untruthful." The tension, in my view, is that when I say, "When I converse with the astral beings," you seem to project onto me a meaning that I am talking with someone outside of myself. If I am correct about this projection, I ask you to replace it with a perception that I'm reporting my direct experience. Would this be too difficult? Why?

Consider the 'no self' perspective of Ramana Maharshi saying, "I see God in the tree because I see the tree as a tree."

[Lou Gold]

PS: From a soul perspective, I came here not to go higher but to get grounded. Where we would agree, I suspect, is that the word 'humble' derives from the Greek humus and means earthly or grounded.