Essay: Man, Know Thyself

[Lou Gold]

Ashvin,

I assert that "cooperation, altruism, conflict and competition" are neutral and are defined as good or evil only in the context of time and conditions. "There is a season for all under Heaven." Yes, there are, I expect, deeper levels of understanding which go 'beyond good and evil' , which events will force us (in one form or another) to realize.

Perhaps that context only appeared recently in human history, let alone the history of life on Earth. Why should 'events' force us to realize the deeper levels of understanding as opposed to us freely seeking and confronting them ourselves?

My speculation is that people resist letting go of habits born of earlier adaptive choices largely because they cling to their habits to avoid feeling the pain of earlier trauma and fear letting go, which is completely understandable. Thus, it often takes "hitting the wall" (an event) to incentivize a choice to change (which not everyone makes). My go-to guy about addictions is Gabor Maté

[Soul_of_Shu]

To take, once again, the wasp and spider example, the case can be made that Consciousness, all there truly is, could not care less, nor have any preference for, whether it is Dreaming of being the wasp alter or the spider alter in that scenario, or any other given alter in the seeming infinitude of such incredibly complex and unique scenarios playing out in nature, be it predator or prey, altruistic or sibling-kill-sibling, cooperative or conflictive, friend or foe, human nature or fungi nature, and that Its primary interest in what prevails is never-ending novelty. And then while Consciousness dreaming of being the meta-cognitive human, there is the imagining that it might be preferable to be the wasp rather than the spider, or the Angel rather than the corporeal ones, all the while forgetting that it is the entire show and audience discovering novel ways, in life and in death, to keep playing everyOne, for indeed we're all being played, and no scenario is precluded.

[Cleric K]

Not necessarily, may be time (not being fundamental) is one of the facets of "becoming" that allows for the possibilities to come into existence, while without time they would virtually not exist in any sense at all and there would simple be the "Being" without any "becoming".

If we look at that from conscious-experiential point of view (rather that intellectual), and if we look into our direct conscious experience, we see a variety of forms appearing and being experienced in our field of conscious experience as a succession of states ("in time"), with the forms of infinite variety never repeating themselves, yet there is an ever-present and never-changing feature that is common to every experience - the awareness/experiencing of these forms itself. So, the awareness appears to be totally timeless, yet the qualia experienced by the awareness always change in time. To me this is the factual reality of time co-existing with and inseparable form timelessness, and once we recognize it, there is no need anymore to invent an idea of a "Being" existing in "timelessness" as some imaginary metaphysical inference. The timelessness of the awareness is fundamental to it (because awareness is changeless fundamentally and by nature - it is impossible to experience the disappearance or any change in experiencing/awareness itself), yet from this fact we can not conclude that it also contains the infinite integral of all possible states.

This is an example of how knowing the reality experientially as it is (as much as it is given to us in the direct conscious experience) and inferring about it metaphysically can lead to very different conclusions. But in any case, I've read a lot on what philosophy have said about Platonism, but all I got from it is that it still remains inconclusive, as it usually happens in metaphysics. The Platonist hypothesis (eternal/timeless pre-existence of ideations) is unprovable (non-verifiable and non-falsifiable) simply because it is impossible to prove (or disprove) the pre-existence of an idea before such idea appears in someone's mind.

I completely agree that within the intellect, the question of existence of ideas as 'things in themselves' can never be solved. It's just the nature of intellectual thinking - every thought invokes also its opposite. That's its dual nature. If the glass is half-empty it can also be half-full.

But different ideas have practical implications that lead to specific conscious experiences. The place where we can experience 'becoming' most clearly is within thinking. There we experience the succession of states of being in such a way that ideas continually crystalize into thought perceptions. We are constantly becoming the future ideas (states of being), which precipitate as past perceptions (memory).
So the question is, are there any practical benefits of addressing the future states in some way, even if they have not yet reached their realization? I would say 'yes'.

Of course, on variant is to experience the act of becoming with 'our back at the future'. In this way we continually experience our thinking as it precipitates in memory and we are fully justified to say that the ideas we think about only became real in the 'now'. But it is also possible to turn with our 'face towards the future' and actively will our becoming. You are an engineer so I guess this example will resonate. In creative thinking we can assume the first stance and only expect to find the solution of the problem within our thinking perceptions. The actual solution (which is some idea) is not contained within our past perceptions - otherwise we would simply recollect it from there and it wouldn't really be a creative solution. We must become the new solution. If we move towards the future with our back, we are basically blindly moving backwards and hoping that we'll hit the solution to our problem. The other variant is to walk towards the solution while facing in the direction of will. This is a different conscious experience altogether. Clearly, when we will our way towards the solution we don't perceive these solutions in the way we perceive the past. It's more like groping in darkness towards something unknown, pushing and touching our way towards our goal. But we can invoke a specific conscious mode that we can call soul openness. I hope that is won't be misunderstood but we can call this soul disposition a mood of prayer. In certain sense we can fill our soul with the feeling that the solution of the creative problem already exists as a potential. We know the general shape of the idea we're looking for, we know how it should relate to other ideas, we only don't yet know its concrete form. In popular terms this can be called 'out of the box thinking' but when we turn that into a spiritual practice it becomes something much deeper. My job also requires technological creativity and for me this approach has great practical benefits. It takes the form of meditation. The soul opens up as a flower willing to accept the Sunlight. This can only be experienced properly in the mood of humility and prayer mentioned. We are perfectly aware that what we are looking for is 'larger' than us, we don't contain it yet. But still, we have the faith that it exists, that it can be found. We focus on the general idea, even if we don't know it yet in its concreteness and are ready to willfully become that idea. We are ready for our own future state of being, carrying the idea, to displace our current state. Of course, rarely one finds the solution in the very act of this meditation. As a matter of fact, if we are too charged with expectation that any moment the idea will pop in, we are hindering the process. It's much better to dedicate the meditation only to the opening up and Sun-bathing in the rays of the Idea World and not expect immediate results. Very often the concrete ideas will be discovered only on the next morning after sleep. In all cases when we reach the concrete idea we should consider it an act of grace and we should fill our soul with deep gratitude. These are healthy feelings for the soul and are actually the proper way to transcend egoism. As long as we take some kind of pride when we find a solution for a problem, we don't understand at all the essential being. The more we feel gratitude and openness for everything we experience, the more we reinforce the creative flow.

I can testify that this process achieves even more real form in higher cognition. As we leave behind intellectual thought, the contents of consciousness expand around the moment 'now'. In certain sense we experience simultaneously more from the past and more from the future. It is very difficult to give some analogy for this, based on the ordinary state of consciousness. Probably we can get some remote idea about this in the appreciation of music. There's no music in the 'now'. We only experience music when our consciousness encompasses simultaneously a 'slice' of states of being extending in time. This is one of the reasons why music has so powerful effect on the soul - through music the soul experiences a premonition of the higher stages of consciousness.

The higher experiences become experiential reality when we begin to perceive that the space of our future states is neither non-existent, nor random but it has some structure. These experiences are most clearly attained when our consciousness is experienced from the standpoint of the heart soul organ within the astral realm. In that state we no longer juggle with concepts but we find whole time-fragments of our life as holistic panoramic experiences. To this area belongs the experience of 'the life flashing before one's eyes' in NDEs. This life panorama is something that is achieved naturally in the course of higher development. These time-fragments are not some disconnected perceptions but are experienced within something akin to a Cosmic organic growth process. This process not only leads to our current 'now' but can be traced to some extent as it grows into the future. In other words, we come to know something about Karma. It'll take us too far to go into the details. It can only be said that future Karma is not something fixed as a predefined movie strip but can be more thought of as a kind of strange attractor (chaos theory). In other words, even if we think that our thoughts and actions are completely free, they are still 'selected' from a restricted palette of the idea world, which funnel into a specific domain of possible states of being. For example, it can be experienced through the heart organ that we are on a 'collision course' with another incarnated soul. What we are able to reveal about the details is dependent on many factors. Gradually, as the souls approach themselves in the astral world, the palette of thoughts and actions that we experience in the sensory realm becomes more and more concrete. Even if we think that we are completely free, we are in fact realizing our Karma, which ultimately leads to the convergence on the physical plane where we meet the person in question.

So higher cognition confirms that the future has a particular structure, a palette of possible future states of being. This holds true not only for the individual but for the whole humanity. When we transcend the panorama of our own personal life within the astral world, we pass through another pinhole and gain consciousness in an even higher realm, where we encounter the Karma of humanity and how our own incarnations are entangled within it. This is where we can discover something about the rhythmic epochs that follow one another, each adding something specific to the evolution of men. And this is the actual source of knowledge that we can use in order to consciously direct our evolution such that these future states can be realized in the best possible way. These general future states of humanity are as certain as the fact that winter follows summer. These grand rhythms shape the macrocosmic palette of states that humanity can experience. The concrete form of the experiences are subject to relative freedom. There's an actual gradient of this freedom, it's not some two level system. The more the individual becomes free from his own determining factors, the more he becomes conscious of the higher levels of the gradient from which he can choose the direction of his spiritual activity, of his becoming. As an analogy - we are free to prepare for the winter or not. If we stock up wood, prepare warm clothes, etc., we'll have one kind of experience. If we believe that the summer will never end and go around in flip-flops and swim suit, we'll have different experience. It's up to humanity to seek the higher stages of consciousness and perceive there the grand rhythms of the Cosmos. Only in this way we can work for our future out of knowledge.

Over the years I've distilled few intellectual tools that help me 'translate' between the higher experiences and the ordinary state. If someone's interested it might be a topic for another essay.

[Lou Gold]

Of course, on variant is to experience the act of becoming with 'our back at the future'. In this way we continually experience our thinking as it precipitates in memory and we are fully justified to say that the ideas we think about only became real in the 'now'. But it is also possible to turn with our 'face towards the future' and actively will our becoming. You are an engineer so I guess this example will resonate. In creative thinking we can assume the first stance and only expect to find the solution of the problem within our thinking perceptions. The actual solution (which is some idea) is not contained within our past perceptions - otherwise we would simply recollect it from there and it wouldn't really be a creative solution. We must become the new solution. If we move towards the future with our back, we are basically blindly moving backwards and hoping that we'll hit the solution to our problem. The other variant is to walk towards the solution while facing in the direction of will. This is a different conscious experience altogether. Clearly, when we will our way towards the solution we don't perceive these solutions in the way we perceive the past. It's more like groping in darkness towards something unknown, pushing and touching our way towards our goal. But we can invoke a specific conscious mode that we can call soul openness. I hope that is won't be misunderstood but we can call this soul disposition a mood of prayer. In certain sense we can fill our soul with the feeling that the solution of the creative problem already exists as a potential. We know the general shape of the idea we're looking for, we know how it should relate to other ideas, we only don't yet know its concrete form. In popular terms this can be called 'out of the box thinking' but when we turn that into a spiritual practice it becomes something much deeper. My job also requires technological creativity and for me this approach has great practical benefits. It takes the form of meditation. The soul opens up as a flower willing to accept the Sunlight. This can only be experienced properly in the mood of humility and prayer mentioned. We are perfectly aware that what we are looking for is 'larger' than us, we don't contain it yet. But still, we have the faith that it exists, that it can be found. We focus on the general idea, even if we don't know it yet in its concreteness and are ready to willfully become that idea. We are ready for our own future state of being, carrying the idea, to displace our current state. Of course, rarely one finds the solution in the very act of this meditation. As a matter of fact, if we are too charged with expectation that any moment the idea will pop in, we are hindering the process. It's much better to dedicate the meditation only to the opening up and Sun-bathing in the rays of the Idea World and not expect immediate results. Very often the concrete ideas will be discovered only on the next morning after sleep. In all cases when we reach the concrete idea we should consider it an act of grace and we should fill our soul with deep gratitude. These are healthy feelings for the soul and are actually the proper way to transcend egoism. As long as we take some kind of pride when we find a solution for a problem, we don't understand at all the essential being. The more we feel gratitude and openness for everything we experience, the more we reinforce the creative flow.

Not in disagreement with you I would like to point out that this is preeminently a religious statement.

So higher cognition confirms that the future has a particular structure, a palette of possible future states of being. This holds true not only for the individual but for the whole humanity. When we transcend the panorama of our own personal life within the astral world, we pass through another pinhole and gain consciousness in an even higher realm, where we encounter the Karma of humanity and how our own incarnations are entangled within it. This is where we can discover something about the rhythmic epochs that follow one another, each adding something specific to the evolution of men. And this is the actual source of knowledge that we can use in order to consciously direct our evolution such that these future states can be realized in the best possible way. These general future states of humanity are as certain as the fact that winter follows summer. These grand rhythms shape the macrocosmic palette of states that humanity can experience. The concrete form of the experiences are subject to relative freedom. There's an actual gradient of this freedom, it's not some two level system. The more the individual becomes free from his own determining factors, the more he becomes conscious of the higher levels of the gradient from which he can choose the direction of his spiritual activity, of his becoming. As an analogy - we are free to prepare for the winter or not. If we stock up wood, prepare warm clothes, etc., we'll have one kind of experience. If we believe that the summer will never end and go around in flip-flops and swim suit, we'll have different experience. It's up to humanity to seek the higher stages of consciousness and perceive there the grand rhythms of the Cosmos. Only in this way we can work for our future out of knowledge.

Higher cognition notices and knows experientially also that our feet are under water in flooded coastal cities. This is the power, not of intellect, but of events.

So higher cognition confirms that the future has a particular structure, a palette of possible future states of being. This holds true not only for the individual but for the whole humanity. When we transcend the panorama of our own personal life within the astral world, we pass through another pinhole and gain consciousness in an even higher realm, where we encounter the Karma of humanity and how our own incarnations are entangled within it. This is where we can discover something about the rhythmic epochs that follow one another, each adding something specific to the evolution of men. And this is the actual source of knowledge that we can use in order to consciously direct our evolution such that these future states can be realized in the best possible way. These general future states of humanity are as certain as the fact that winter follows summer.

What is not certain is that it will be humanity defined as Homo sapiens who will be the ones who make this discovery. Indeed, the best bet we can make from past iterations of being human is that something new will emerge as an adaptively evolved or hybridized or replacement version of what we have now. There is nothing in our understanding of evolution that suggests that Homo sapiens are forever or even very long term.

[These grand rhythms shape the macrocosmic palette of states that humanity can experience. The concrete form of the experiences are subject to relative freedom. There's an actual gradient of this freedom, it's not some two level system. The more the individual becomes free from his own determining factors, the more he becomes conscious of the higher levels of the gradient from which he can choose the direction of his spiritual activity, of his becoming. As an analogy - we are free to prepare for the winter or not. If we stock up wood, prepare warm clothes, etc., we'll have one kind of experience. If we believe that the summer will never end and go around in flip-flops and swim suit, we'll have different experience. It's up to humanity to seek the higher stages of consciousness and perceive there the grand rhythms of the Cosmos. Only in this way we can work for our future out of knowledge./quote]

This is a nice dream and I feel no need to challenge it other than to say that we have arrived at a point where we will more likely work for our future out of not knowing and leave it to the survivors to rationalize the knowing. Meanwhile, I wrote a poem a few years ago:

Perhaps

Perhaps because a lifetime is short 
and because I’ve entered my end zone
Each day seems more and more 
a good day to die, meaning to live well
 
I see the necessity, in this final phase,
to know death as a friend, as an ally toward happiness
Perhaps like a lover urgent with the desire
to birth new life into the world


Perhaps this is why I have such an urge 
to create, to be a maker while I can 
Does dying arrive this way, at first 
as an urgent lover? 


Perhaps the desire is for happiness, the real kind 
Not the kind that comes from shopping 
Like new life, real happiness comes from what is created
A giving more than a getting, offered with joy


Perhaps something better can be created
That possibility always captures my heart
Perhaps the best that happens is made together
Like a work party or a festa of children


Perhaps I and it are meant to be that way, filled by play
I’m not sure but certainty is not necessary 
The promise of perhaps 
is enough to hold my heart in a happy way

Over the years I've distilled few intellectual tools that help me 'translate' between the higher experiences and the ordinary state. If someone's interested it might be a topic for another essay.

By all means. Please do.

[Lou Gold]

In Line Waiting to See the Higher View

(Image: "Sightseeing" by Jamie Lluch)

[Cleric K]

Not in disagreement with you I would like to point out that this is preeminently a religious statement.

I know what you mean but it's actually more of an objective assessment of the facts of experience. We are not in complete control of our knowledge. Probably everyone has experienced that in the school years, when struggling with a math problem at an exam. It's useless to pretend that it is under our control to solve the problem, even if we know that in principle we are capable of it. If it was completely under our control we would just exercise this control and solve the problem. Pragmatic man of today has reached the maxim "You have to believe in yourself". This reflects the fact that at any moment we experience only the tiniest tip of the iceberg, while all our knowledge, skills, etc. are beneath the surface of consciousness. It is not about religion but about healthy self-knowledge to know how to relate the tip of the iceberg towards the invisible part. We achieve nothing if we pretend that this invisible part is under our control - the facts show that this is not always the case. That's why, from purely practical perspective it can discovered that one achieves much better results when accommodating a soul mood of openness and receptivity for what is beyond our immediate control. I agree that this mood attains religious magnitude when we are open in this way not only to what may be living in our skull but to the whole Cosmos. But precisely because we reach these things from the practical perspective, the religious magnitude no longer equates to blind belief.

This is a nice dream and I feel no need to challenge it other than to say that we have arrived at a point where we will more likely work for our future out of not knowing and leave it to the survivors to rationalize the knowing. Meanwhile, I wrote a poem a few years ago:

Why the pessimism, Lou? This is the point where it's appropriate to distinguish the "I" from the "we". Why should you feel dragged by the collective if you don't harmonize with its direction? Even if we are forced to witness bodily, the downfall of humanity, in our inner world we can be free. When we walk in the city we can spread waves of Love to the souls and pray that their reason awakens. At night, when we meditate and pray, we can spread the same waves over the sleeping people. This is very effective practice because at sleep, the astral bodies and the "I"s of people are loosened from the physical and etheric. Every night we expand into the higher worlds. If we don't remember anything it's only because our waking state deals with concepts evolved primarily in relation to the sensory perceptions. The higher experiences can't find their matching concepts and thus can not be recollected. This is also the reason why the reality of the astral body precipitates only as sensory-like images in dreaming - this is the only thing that the intellectual self can make out of the experience.
The waves we send at night can have effect on the sleeping beings much more readily than if we speak about these things in waking. We shouldn't imagine that we'll transform humanity in this way, overnight. Even if only one person wakes up in the morning with a thought of inspiration - even if he doesn't know the reason for it - it's a great win for the whole.

Thank you for your poem!

[Lou Gold]

Why the pessimism, Lou?

Again. Cleric, this is your projection. Actually-factually, and as I hope might be revealed by my poem, I am quite optimistic that "not knowing" and "childlike curiosity at the wonder of it all" is precisely the way to go and I enthusiastically find myself more and more devoted to The Great Mysteriousness. Why? Because this has been my in-process experience. Yes, dreams have been important to me, indeed life-changing, indeed affirming the immense value of not knowing and paying attention. Is it because I see trauma as part of the process that you conclude that I'm pessimistic? If that's so, please check out my new post about trauma and spiritual development, which coincidentally/synchronously may have anticipated this question.

BTW, I do not assert that your story is wrong. I report simply that it is not my story and not my sensibility. If it is yours, all I can say is, "May you have a blessed journey."

[Soul_of_Shu]

Even if only one person wakes up in the morning with a thought of inspiration - even if he doesn't know the reason for it - it's a great win for the whole.

As I gaze out the window this morning at yet another 25 cm of snow covering the dreamscape, I do feel somewhat blessed that some human alter felt inspired to re-engineer Mind's primal ideation into a snowplow so I can get to the store

[Lou Gold]

Shu,

At least you have electricity. Imagine the millions down south who don't.

[Lou Gold]

Even if only one person wakes up in the morning with a thought of inspiration - even if he doesn't know the reason for it - it's a great win for the whole.

Several years ago, as my 80th birthday was approaching, I sensed that I still had another good project in me. Sitting at the ceremonial table during a Santo Daime session, I asked, "What's my mission now?" The inner voice instantly responded, "To be a happy person!" I find it a delightful ongoing work.