Essay: Man, Know Thyself

[Lou Gold]

PS: Of course, you are correct that more shade and more organic litter result in more fungi. There are lots of ways to achieve this without redwoods.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Well, in keeping with the 'forest' metaphor, while not necessarily redwoods, as it could just as well be other trees, there are both 'lowly' and 'lofty' roles that play into its unicity, and I don't see some inverted hierarchy of importance. In any case, if we may stretch the metaphor even further, around these parts the dung-filled cow pastures are also comprised of long fallen leafage and trees, so such inter-being transcends spatiotemporal limitations.

And lest one forget, oh Loucifer, the 'fallen' ones that comprise the corporeal realm

[Lou Gold]

"And lest one forget, oh Loucifer, the 'fallen' ones that comprise the corporeal realm "

Certainly, and they perform a sacred function. I am in no way arguing against 'inter-being'. I am arguing for it on a more equal footing.

[Lou Gold]

[Soul_of_Shu]

I am in no way arguing against 'inter-being'. I am arguing for it on a more equal footing.

I didn't get the impression that Cleric was prioritizing the transcorporeal over the corporeal, as being somehow more crucial in importance. Although as the descriptor 'higher' may give that impression, I would prefer the term transcorporeal.

[Lou Gold]

I am in no way arguing against 'inter-being'. I am arguing for it on a more equal footing.

I didn't get the impression that Cleric was prioritizing the transcorporeal over the corporeal, as being somehow more crucial in importance. Although as the descriptor 'higher' may give that impression, I would prefer the term transcorporeal.

'Transcorporeal' might work for me. I offered Cleric the option of 'expanded' consciousness but he insisted on 'higher'.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Indeed, with the aperspectival integral stage may be the need for neologisms with which to convey its ideation.

[Cleric K]

David, thank you for your quotes!

Here're some random thoughts.
Words like 'superior' carry too much baggage from human affairs. It's difficult to think about 'superior' without 'exploitation'. But this is man's fault. It is up to us to remove personal coloring from concepts.
In nature we find hierarchies everywhere. It's true that plants and fungi can exists without the animal and human world. It's also true that the Sun can exist without biological life on Earth.
We can imagine that that highest consciousness is also the most universal, from physical perspective - that is, it has the nature of space and time with potential for everything that could exist within it. The Spirit stirs and shapes this potential for limited existence, without becoming entangled in it.
Second iteration of the process it to have beings that not only experience the potential but 'zoom into' certain time lines and experience metamorphoses in time. In the previous stage consciousness is free from the potential, now it becomes entangled with it and is forced to experience how the potential unfolds in time lines. This is life. Consciousness is spread out in the Cosmos but rides on the growth processes. There're not yet conditions for the experience of clear consciousness within the growth processes. If the spirit zooms into these processes it would experience something akin to deep sleep. It can't recognize its activity there. It's unconscious of itself. We're not yet talking here about biological life. This is life in an archetypal form, as processes within Cosmic consciousness.
Third iteration is zooming into cosmic life and having experiences from a perspective inside the growth processes. Life processes are so advanced that they can dimly reflect to the spirit the happenings within them. Now we have life plus instincts - pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain in a dream like consciousness.
Fourth iteration is to refine the physical, life and consciousness layers to such an extent that the spirit not only experiences existence from that embodied perspective but can also recognize itself within it. We have reached man.

Clearly, at every iteration, part of the previous iterations must stay behind and form the foundation for the next iteration. Thus man stands into the world only because he is standing on the shoulders of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. These beings have stayed behind, so that they can form the platform on which human life can unfold. Man is the highest being in Nature but is at the same time the most dependent. He can only exists in this form because all the previous iterations are supporting his platform.

Now we can imagine human evolution as consisting of walking the same path in the reverse direction but in full consciousness. In this sense, as we go forward in time, we slowly integrate everything that lies symmetrically backwards in time. The magnificent wisdom of the ancient yogis, the instinctive healing knowledge of the tribes and so on. All this we'll find again but without losing the gift of full self-awareness which was the gem that could be only forged by descending to the greatest depths of matter and egoism.

[Lou Gold]

Man is the highest being in Nature but is at the same time the most dependent. He can only exists in this form because all the previous iterations are supporting his platform.

Perhaps you say this because you conceive a 'being' as an individual entity and not as a mountain or a river or a forest or other ways of conceiving an ecology as a conscious agent or entity or intelligent network. I am agnostic-leaning-strongly-skeptical that Homo sapiens are the highest being in Nature. Furthermore, there is the interesting question of directionality even from the pov of an individual human being where there is today much more materialist scientific awareness of both inner human cellular structure, ocean depths and the outer cosmos. I can more easily imagine an expanding sphere of awareness than a broad based pyramid. However, I am not arguing one model versus another as much as trying to expose the very definite biases associated with a chosen model.

[Cleric K]

Highest in the sense that within the sensory realm man is the only life form capable of reflecting self-consciousness within the physical form - that is, the spirit experiences itself as an ego within the living body.
In certain sense it is also the lowest - it is the lowest the self conscious spirit can descend. It experiences a thinking spark but everything else is taken care for by other beings. So man is indebted to the whole Cosmos for his ability to say "I" within a body. Evolution is the fully conscious repayment of this debt - alleviating Nature from her task of supporting our bodily sheaths and making this task the work of our creative spirituality.

Plants, for example, have their consciousness much higher in the spiritual world - they don't have individual egos within each stalk of grass but there's a collective planetary spirit. Individual plants are the 'extensions' of this spirit within the sensory realm. Planetary plant consciousness does not experience death when a plant is uprooted. It could rather be likened to the pulling of a hair, the spirit experiences slight pain as if a hair has been pulled out of its 'scalp'.

This is true for animals, although in different degree. Animals already experience dreamy consciousness, pain and pleasure, within the body. The self-consciousness of animals is in the form of a group-soul, living in the Astral world. It experiences the death of individual animals as the severing of a limb of its organism, but the group consciousness itself does not know death.

Man is the only being that experiences death within the sensory world because the spirit has completely identified with the life of the bodily senses. The strongest this identification is, the more traumatic the passing through the gate of death is. If the "I" has not known itself as a spiritual being within life, it experiences a great loss at death - it loses the foundation that has allowed it to know itself and identify as John Smith.. If the "I", while alive, has found something of its Higher Self - part of consciousness independent of the sensory - this something is unaffected by death and consciousness is not interrupted, it only undresses John Smith as a clothing.