New interview with Bernardo

[Cleric K]

This is one of the key questions of epistemology and ontology and there is no straight answer to it. The answer depends on one's ontological/epistemological position and chosen definitions of what is considered to be real. The definition of what is real differs widely across different metaphysics.

I can share my personal understanding/definition of "real". First, all phenomena of conscious experience are absolutely real by the very fact of their direct conscious experience. The experiencing (awareness) itself is real for the same reason. That includes the thoughts since the thoughts are also conscious phenomena, but it does not include the content/meanings of the thoughts. For example, a thought "Unicorn exists" is real, but the Unicorn (as a content/meaning of that thought) is not real in the same sense that the thought itself is real. One can still argue that the Unicorn as a meaning is still "real", but its modus of reality is different from the modus of reality of the thoughts. The reality of meanings is a "secondary" reality with a different modality of existence. And finally the third modality of existence is the reality of other "things" beyond the phenomena of our direct conscious experiences (for example, material objects in materialism), but the reality of these "things" has also a different modality - their reality is hypothetical. Since we have no direct experience of them and no direct and unfalsifiable evidence of their existence, we can only infer about their reality.

So, to summarize, there are three modalities of reality:
1. The reality of the phenomena of direct conscious experience and the awareness/experiencing of them itself.
2. The reality of the meanings of thoughts.
3. The realities which modus of existence is different from 1 and 2, whatever it can be

Some questions immediately arise:
- Is there anything at all that belongs to #3? May be all there exists only belongs to #1 and #2 categories? We do not know the answer, but different metaphysics are based on different hypotheses on what are the "things" belonging to the #3.
- How the elements of #2 correspond to the elements of #1 and #3 (if any)? This is the question of establishing the truthfulness criteria. We can say that a meaning (element of #2) is true if we can establish its 1-to-1 correspondence to the elements of #1 and/or #3. For example, we can say that the (abstract) meaning "2+2=4" is true because it corresponds to the patterns of #1 elements (observed sensory phenomena of conscious experience), while the meaning "2+2=5" is not true because there is no such correspondence. In other words, the thought "2+2=5" is real in #1 sense, its meaning is also real in #2 sense, but it can be called an "illusion" or "false" because there is no direct correspondence between such meaning and the elements of #1. This is of course a primitive and rough sketch, it just gives a basic idea. In reality such correspondence can never be fully established. Similarly, we can use the same scheme for the correspondence between #2 and #3 elements, the problem is that such correspondence will always remain hypothetical because the existence/reality of the elements of #3 is itself always and only hypothetical. And of course, the "Self" belongs to #3, IMO, together with "matter", "God" and so on, the reality of which remains hypothetical and a matter of inference (if held philosophically) or faith (if held religiously).

Eugene, I'm much in line with the points you've laid down.
I think we can safely discard #3, as far as it's meant as something than in it's very postulation makes it impossible to have experience for (like Kant's 'thing in itself' that can never by known directly and as such can only be held by belief). Since we are concerned with only what the given can tell us, I think we can do this.

Let's focus again on thinking - as this is a point where epistemology and phenomenology converge. Before we have separated the world content into modalities and polarities we have our thinking - we couldn't speak of awareness, color, experience, etc. if we haven't formed a concept of them through thinking. Every modality or polarity - like subject/object, mind/matter, being/non-being, etc. - are already products of thinking trying to analyze the world content. In relation to thinking the world content seems to come into two distinguishable parts - world of perceptions and world of ideas. We are not postulating these as two distinct realms (as mind/matter) but only recognizing their distinct properties within the world content, in the same way we can recognize the distinction between color and tone. So in the act of thinking we are constantly uniting perceptions with concepts/ideas. This, I suppose we agree, falls into #1.

I also agree with #2 in the following sense. I can imagine a green sky. In this case I have the perceptions of my imagination that are connected with the idea of 'green sky'. As you said - this is a perfectly valid experience. It only becomes 'false' if I claim that this idea would match the sensory perceptions of the sky (in contrast to the perceptions of my imagination). Then there's a discord. The sensory perception naturally unites with the idea 'the sky is blue' and I can't reconcile this with the idea 'the sky is green' - the ideas are contradictory.

What about numbers? The mathematical thought-form-symbols are real - they implement mathematical ideas. When I see two apples, I can unite the perception with the concept of 'red' (if the apples are red). I can also discover the idea of 'twofoldness'. There's something in common between two apples, two hands, two legs - they all can be united with the idea of twofoldness. This idea may be experienced even without external perceptions - we can build for ourselves an imaginary picture of two sticks, two light blobs, or simply a symbol that expresses the idea. That's how mathematical thinking can become free from sensory perceptions and we can explore the relations of mathematical concepts and ideas in our own thinking. Whether these ideas in themselves can be correlated with the dynamics of the sensory perceptions is another matter. This is where physics stands - it tries to extract these mathematical ideas which correlate with sensory perceptions. Whether these ideas are in some way the causes of the sensory world is a different question. Most physicists wouldn't subscribe to that - they would say that they simply look for correlations between mathematical and sensory dynamics. With all this said, yes - there's no need to look for something externally real behind the numbers (in the sense of #3). The mathematical ideas themselves are real enough.

Now the big prejudice that comes over and over again is that these mathematical or any other ideas exist 'only in our heads'. But the given does not force us into such a conclusion. If we think something like that we are implicitly postulating isolated perception/idea bubbles for every being as 'things in themselves' and this can only belong to #3. The one world of ideas is a big stumbling stone for many because it seems to postulate some metaphysical common world of ideas (like a Platonic world). But it's not. It's the other way around. The given presents us with only one world of ideas. We go beyond the given when we postulate separate (and by definition inaccessible to us, thus only supported by belief, thus in #3) personal worlds of ideas.

Let's investigate more closely how we arrive at a concept such as 'awareness'. We don't have some clear cut perception of awareness (or at least I don't). For me, when I think of awareness, I expand my focus to encompass the totality of the world of perceptions - sensory, feelings, thoughts, will - everything. Then I make the observation that from moment to moment I can always encompass this totality - even if the contents of perceptions constantly change. Just as the idea of 'twofoldness' was abstracted out of the most diverse pairs of perceptions, so the idea that there's always a totality of perceptions can be abstracted out as an all-encompassing idea of 'awareness'.

As an act of cognition, the above doesn't really differ from the way I recognize the sensory perception of a dog and connect it with the concept of 'dog'. Similarly, it's the same act of cognition that we perform when we arrive at the idea of 'self' - there are certain perceptions and the perceptions of spiritual activity itself, that can naturally unite with the concept of "I". The question is - is there any difference in the act of cognition in the way I unite the concept of awareness and the concept of "I" to the world content? Not really. It's the same fundamental act of thinking, uniting concepts/ideas to perceptions. I remind that we have discarded #3 - we are currently wholly within #1.

It can be argued that the concept of awareness is more real because there's always a totality of perceptions while on the other hand it's possible to have that totality without clear perception of self-activity (which unites with the concept of self), which makes the concept of "I" unreal. But this argument is quite arbitrary. In the same way we can argue that the concept of dog is unreal because we don't always have a sensory perception of dog nearby. Furthermore, here we're quite impalpably elevating awareness to a status that leads it into #3. We are not always aware of 'awareness', in the same way we're not always aware of 'dog'. Most of our daily routine work is aware neither of 'awareness', neither of 'self' - we are fully engulfed in the concepts of our task at hand. Does this mean mean that 'awareness' is unreal? It's something of #3 to believe that even when we are doing something else, there's an 'entity' of awareness that persists. "Yeah, but we can always focus on the totality of experience and confirm that the concept of awareness is there". Alright, but we can do absolutely the same thing with the concept of "I". There's nothing on Earth that can stop me to bring my attention to my own spiritual activity and unite the concept of "I" in relation to it. In the very same sense I can argue that it's always 'there', just as the totality of perceptions (awareness).

So let's be clear - we're not at all trying to elevate anything into #3 - that would go against our desire to be grounded in reality, in the given. The point is that when we observe closely our own cognitive process, we can see that we are apt to assign quite arbitrarily the dividing line between 'real' and 'illusion'. I totally agree that if we imagine the self as an entity in #3, we have all rights to be suspicious - just as for any other forever inaccessible 'thing in itself'. But if we biasedly assign weights to concepts, as some being more real than others, we're simply making things harder for ourselves - we are creating hard problems that are unsolvable by definition.

Personally I don't care about #3. What I care is that the concept if "I" is found naturally within the world content and my aim is to uncover more and more the interrelationships between the elements of the world content. If I draw an artificial line that separates part of the world content as real and the other as illusion I need to have a good justification for this. And the given doesn't provide me with such justification. My thinking is no way more justified to attach the concept of awareness, than the concept of "I", and vice versa. Whether I like it or not - the perceptions that unite with the concept of "I" are there so it's in my best interest to find their proper place in the world content.

[Eugene I]

Cleric, I would agree with most of what you said, but again, would not subscribe to equating the reality status of awareness and self.

Before going into the awareness vs self discussion, let me make some remarks. The correspondence between our human ideations / language and reality is one of the major problems in philosophy, the one Wittgenstein and many other philosophers struggled, and the one any metaphysics faces. Idealism is not immune to it and I’m not aware of anyone fully resolving it within the framework of idealism.

Here is one of the problems I’m trying to address, hopefully it will explain the reasoning behind my definitions/classifications. I don’t claim that my scheme of “classification of realities” is consistent or valid, but it’s the one I figured to solve that specific problem. Let me illustrate the problem with this example. Suppose we claim that everything we experience in our consciousness experience is equally real, including all meanings and contents of all our thoughts. That would include the meaning of a thought “matter exists”. Now, a materialist will say: if you claim that all content of your direct conscious experience is equally real, including all meanings of all thoughts, then how come you claim that the meaning of the thought “matter is real” is false or an “illusion”? So, clearly we need to establish some criteria applicable to the meanings of thoughts in order to differentiate them on the basis of “truthfulness”.

But here we run into another issue because any criterion of truthfulness itself belongs to the meanings of thoughts, so how can we claim the truthfulness of the criterion of truthfulness itself? We would have to admit that such criterion has to be an axiom (contingent upon mutual agreements), a hypothesis, which is unprovable by itself, because it would need another meta-criterion of truthfulness to prove its own truthfulness, which would lead us either to a circular self-referential paradox, or a bad infinity. So, we would end up with the Wittgenstein “language games” scenario.

There is also a terminological confusion between the notions of “real” and “true”. The meanings of our thought are absolutely real in a sense that they are present and consciously experienced, nevertheless we apply the term “illusion” to some of them when they do not meet certain truthfulness criteria, with “illusion” meaning that they are either logically inconsistent or inconsistent with the content of our sensory experience. Anyway, Cleric, I think you said the same thing in your post, so I’m just restating.

Now, going back to comparing the reality status of awareness vs self. I agree that both are concepts, both are the meanings of our ideations, merely the reflections of some qualities and aspects of our phenomenal conscious experience. My claim is that the concept of “self” belongs to the same category as the concept of “dog” – these are ideations and concepts aimed to model the world of forms and appearances, and in that sense they are perfectly real and may be fully valid and practically useful concepts (depending on their logical consistency and correspondence with the data of the sensory perceptions). However, there is something qualitatively different about the concept of awareness. Of course, such difference can be deciphered only as a result of our thinking and analysis, and is itself a meaning of a thought, so one can argue that the validity of the idea of such difference is itself questionable and contingent to our choice of the truthfulness criteria. With that disclaimer said, we can still examine the difference. Here are a few very clear differences between the awareness and all other phenomena of conscious experience:

- The very existence of the consciousness experience is not contingent upon the presence of “dogs”, “cats” and “selves”. There may be no dogs, no cats and no sense of self perceived/experienced, even if we would try to be aware of them, yet that would not disrupt the continuity of conscious experiencing itself. One can actually enter a state of empty consciousness with no phenomenal experiences of any forms at all, including the sense of self, , yet in such state the continuation of experiencing/awareness would still be maintained (I can testify this based my own meditative experience). So, the conscious experience itself is contingent upon the existence/presence of awareness. If there would be no experiencing (awareness, the very ability to experience), there would be no conscious experience at all.

- You said “We are not always aware of 'awareness', in the same way we're not always aware of 'dog'. Most of our daily routine work is aware neither of 'awareness', neither of 'self' - we are fully engulfed in the concepts of our task at hand.” This is true, but there is still a difference that you missed: when we apply the ability to memorize and analyze the past experiences, we can re-examine them and become aware of the experiences that we missed at the moment of their experiencing. By doing that we may notice that the awareness is and was always present every moment of our experience, regardless if we were aware of the presence of awareness or not, but gods, cats and the sense of self is not always present, their presence is not constant over time.

- By further analyzing the awareness, we may notice that it is always inseparably present in the experience of every form. The forms themselves and their qualia may vary over space/time, but the awareness never changes and is always the same in the experience of every form. Also, it’s exactly this quality of awareness that mysteriously unite all experienced phenomena into the wholeness of our private conscious experience. Based on that we would conclude that the awareness is the “invariant” of our conscious experience and the one that enable the oneness/unity of the world of conscious experience.

- Typically the forms are dependent on each other, they typically causally condition each other, a quality that Buddha noticed in his principle of "dependent origination". However, we notice that the presence of awareness is never conditioned by any forms. We can describe it as being "unconditional".

- Based on the above observations, we can claim that the awareness belongs to a very special kind of realities. The realities of dogs, cats and selves belong to the reality of fleeting forms. That does not make them “unreal” or “illusory” in any way, they are still perfectly real in a sense that they are present and experienced in our given conscious experience. However, the reality of awareness has a fundamentally different modality of existence. It has the quality of a “fundamental”, a quality of “oneness”, a quality of being “invariant” and "unconditional" – it never changes or depends on other forms, it is always present in our conscious experience, it unites the conscious experience in a continuous "oneness", and the very existence of conscious experience is contingent upon the existence of awareness.

- Now, what conclusions we can derive from the above observations depends on a personal philosophical position and intuition. My take is that, based on the above, the awareness is fundamentally different from any other phenomena and qualities we can ever find or experience, including the sense of self. In a way, it has a quality of being “fundamental”. Now, does it fully qualify it to be declared as the “ontic fundamental” – that I do not know, although I personally tend to think it is the case, but I still cannot prove it (as if there is anything that can be proved in the realm of ontology). But one thing I am convinced is that the awareness is qualitatively and fundamentally different from all other known to us qualities, qualia, concepts and ideas, including the one of “self”.

Ashvin, sorry for not responding to your questions directly, but I hope I addressed them in my response above.

[Cleric K]

Thanks, Eugene.

Let's approach the no-self state. First we quiet down our own thinking. The contents of awareness still bubbles dynamically. We resist to be caught up by the images and continue to hold our own. Gradually, the bubbling also subsides. Then we remain in the sea of tranquility. Pure receptivity, no borders, no forms, no self-animated activity.

What I'm about to say belongs to the 'vertical' duality. As long is it's though out purely in the abstract, it stays in the mind as 'horizontal' duality. We need a deep state for this, that's why we began with the above.

Now I'm going to switch to occult language.

The state achieved above has always been know in the Mysteries as the experience of the Universal Soul. It's the infinite space of receptive awareness. Cosmic Passivity, Receptivity. The Cosmic Womb.

Let's now disturb the sea of tranquility by producing a lightning of activity. The activity agitates the Cosmic Waters. What we know experience is known as the Universal Spirit. Cosmic Activity acting through infinite time.

These are the Cosmic Feminine and the Cosmic Masculine. The Divine Mother and the Heavenly Father, in the dance of their sacred Cosmic Marriage - The Cosmic Balance.

The Universal Soul gives the materials, the space for consciousness, the arena. The Universal Spirit is the Creator, producing through His activity the forms within the Cosmic Womb. When there's activity, there's transformation, thus there's time. The unbounded space of the Universal Soul is infinity. The unlimited time of the Universal Spirit is eternity. Both are One, yet they need to polarize in order for existence to manifest. The Hammer and Anvil that forge the Heavens.

Now why does the Universal Soul seems more fundamental? Because we experience it from a specific point on the evolutionary arc. When we merge with it, we experience our past, the times when we were gently carried within the maternal womb in our cosmic dream. Only gradually within the Universal Soul did the Universal Spirit begin to awaken. That's why He is rightfully recognized as latecomer. Yet this is only apparent. The two Cosmic Principles never exist without one another. The Spirit has simply been hidden. It was not yet possible for Him to recognize His Cosmic Reflection within the Soul Waters. Through the evolutionary arcs the two Principles ebb and flow into each other in a great rhythmic dance. In the far future, as the Spirit continually transforms his bodily cocoons and finds His Freedom, He'll become more and more involved with the transformation of the Cosmic environment and participate in the creation of new Soul forms where the same Universal Spirit will awaken in a next wave of beings. That's how our evolution is being shaped. Although we only now begin to discover the Universal Spirit, He - from the perspectives of countless beings - was active in the preparation of the human forms where He can awaken. Wave after wave The Mysterious One, goes through evolutionary arcs that evolve back into Wholeness.

[Eugene I]

That sounds very nice, Cleric, but not that I would believe in such myth With using imagination and good storytelling skills, we could throw in a dozen of other similar creation myths, both involving and not involving the idea of "self". And which one would we be supposed to believe in?

But going back to ordinary language, I would agree that the fundamental cannot be reduced to awareness alone, otherwise there would be no potential for change, time, will and unfolding of forms. So the ability of the "reality" not only to be consciously aware, but to also change and create forms, must be fundamental to reality as well. But here we are speaking about the abilities (to change, be expressed in forms and phenomena, to perform willful activities), not about the particular forms that unfold from such abilities. So, back to corner one of the "self", I don't see how the sense of self would belong to such category of fundamental abilities. Based on my experience, the sense of self is not necessary for the functioning of (my individual) consciousness in full capacity and the absence of the sense of self does not inhibit my abilities to function in any way (it actually enhances them), so my conclusion is that the sense of self does not belong to the category of fundamental abilities of consciousness.

[Cleric K]

But here we are speaking about the abilities (to change, be expressed in forms and phenomena, to perform willful activities), not about the particular forms that unfold from such abilities. So, back to corner one of the "self", I don't see how the sense of self would belong to such category of fundamental abilities.

OK. I'm now unsure what exactly you mean by 'self' If you speak of the 'self' as a created form - of course that this is not fundamental. The form of the self is a restriction that filters the particular way that Cosmic Activity can manifest change and find its reflection in Cosmic Awareness. The form of the self, along with the body and environment filter the palette of possible states that Cosmic Activity can change into. Cosmic activity speaks forth through the filtering apparatus the word "I" but if it takes this "I" to mean the form of that apparatus, it means that it doesn't yet recognize its Cosmic origin. It falls into identification with the forms.

[Eugene I]

Yes, I speak of the self as a created form that is expressed and experienced as our sense of individual self. My claim is that any other concept of self or "I", be it individual self or Cosmic Self, would belong to #3 category of the concepts of mythical entities.

Then, you speak about the Cosmic activity, and I definitely agree that there is a Cosmic activity. However, somehow you associate this activity with the "I", and I don't follow how to you get to such association. "Cosmic activity" is an activity, it's a "verb", it's a "doing". But "I" is a "noun", it's an "entity". I fail to see how you arrived from "doing" to "entity". IMO, as I mentioned before, we habitually apply our cognitive patterns of associating the "actions" with the "subjects" and "objects" as if these "subjects"/"objects" are the "performers" of actions, because we use it as a cognitive model of the patterns that we observe in the stream of phenomena. Such model helps us to function in the world of forms, so we got very used to it and assume that it is universal and applicable to the fundamental level of reality itself. So then we habitually extrapolate such cognitive habit to the Cosmic fundamentals (without even doubting that it would be legitimate to do so) and we claim that if we are observing the Cosmic activity, then there must be a Cosmic "I" that must be the "performer" of such activity. But we have no ground to extrapolate the models derived from patterns that we observed in the realm of forms and phenomena to the fundamentals of reality. I think we discussed this before, so going in circles again

[Eugene I]

Here is the thing. In science we create theories and models that help us to advance in understanding the reality, but such process involves both creation of new models and destruction and abandoning the old and outdated less accurate models. Similarly in the spiritual domain we create myths that help us to understand deeper layers of reality and of our consciousness, but in that process we need to dispel and abandon old myths that do not serve us anymore. IMO the myth of the "Cosmic Self" is one of such outdated myths.

[Cleric K]

Well, 'activity' is actually a noun 'Activing' (if there's such a word) would be the verb. In the same sense 'doing' can be used in a sentence both as a verb or a noun. This only hints again at the dual nature of things - even if reflected only in language - we can never have only one pole. If there's activity (as a verb) this activity can also be objectified as a process (as a noun). For example 'running' can be used as 'the child is running'. But we can also investigate it as noun, as the act of running - we can analyze it, how it's related to the movement of the limbs, how it affects breathing, etc.

It's possible to concentrate wholly on thinking (as a doing) but the moment thinking becomes the object of itself, it beholds itself as a noun - as process, as 'something' that can become object (noun) for itself. It's true that when thinking becomes the object of itself it perceives its past form. The living process casts its 'doing' as a snake skin, as a shell, which becomes the object for the new thinking (verb). In this sense thinking can never know itself as a perception (noun) in its current reality. The objectified perception of thinking is always one step in the past in relation to the current thinking.

For the above reason you are correct that the verb is more 'internal', more 'intimate' than the noun. But it's also true that the verb would never know of its existence it if wasn't able to objectify itself, to cast itself as a form, as a noun. This is the basic spiritual action that is performed in order for self-consciousness to exists. The word "I" is not intellectually inferred. The verb doesn't follow a train of thoughts at the end of which it reaches the conclusion that such a thing as "I" (which the verb uses to refer to itself) exists. The verb recognizes its existence because it recognizes its own doing (now as a noun) as it crystalizes into forms. It can say to itself "That's my existence being cast into a form".

In this sense - yes, it's useless to postulate a metaphysical "I", a doer (a noun in #3) that produces the doing (the verb). I've never tried to do that because there's no need for it. The verb in Cosmic proportions, can perfectly well objectify itself and can say "I exist, I recognize myself as activity producing the forms I perceive". In this sense the Cosmic Verb recognizes itself and calls itself Cosmic "I" - the verb simply recognizes its fundamental existence, it does not postulate a 'doer' behind itself. This act does not in any way add something artificial. The doing exists, it's real - it's a process. It can do things without any self-consciousness but it can also objectify itself and recognize its existence.

I'm in perfect accord with you when you say that doing precedes the perception of itself. Doing must objectify itself in order to perceive itself but it makes no sense to me that 'doing' is falling into illusion when it recognizes itself as something that exists and is real. Why shouldn't it be possible for it to become aware of itself as a process (noun)? Otherwise we are being paradoxical in our own thinking. One one hand we speak with certainty that the doing, the verb is real, yet we deny it the possibility to know of its existence. If this wasn't possible then how do we (the activity) know at all that activity exists, if it could never become object for thinking?

Things are very simple actually. It's just again a question of recognition of the Feminine and Masculine. The noun (space) and the verb (time).

We can really speak of illusions only when the verb identifies itself with perceptions. If it says "I'm this or that" then we have misidentification (this includes the identification with a metaphysical entity in #3).

[Eugene I]

The doing exists, it's real - it's a process. It can do things without any self-consciousness but it can also objectify itself and recognize its existence.... Why shouldn't it be possible for it to become aware of itself as a process (noun)?

Cleric, I'm fine and agree with this interpretation. Yes, it can be interpreted as a verb or as a noun, but regardless, the key is that it's a self-conscious and self-aware process, but not an "entity doing" the process and "entity perceiving the experiences". I think you agreed with that above, so we are on the same page.

But here is the problem: if you ask people (just ordinary ones on the street, or even practitioners of most spiritual traditions) how they understand the "I" or "self", I'm sure the vast majority of them will say that the "I"/"self" is some kind of an "entity" which is the "doer", the "perceiver", the "thinker" of all actions associated with personal conscious activity, because this is exactly the how the "sense of self" works. The "sense of self" that we all have is the sense of a "doer" and "perceiver", not just a sense of a conscious process or activity. So, if you agree that there is only activity, a process, but not an entity of a "doer" and "perceiver" behind such activity, then labeling this activity as "I" would be misleading and a source of great confusion for most people, because they would still interpret it as an entity (and that is how I also was confused when you spoke about the "I"). If you take most spiritual traditions (except for Buddhism), or philosophies (even including Bernardo's idealism), none of them would interpret the "self"/"I" the way you did above. This is why IMO it's better to avoid the labels like "I" and "self" altogether (not from the everyday language of course, but from philosophical discourse and spiritual practice), because they carry a baggage of those habitual misconceptions about the nature of the spiritual activity. We should use linguistic labels that describe the realities most accurately without creating confusions. If we agree that we are talking about Spiritual Activity, or Spiritual Process, then those are the right labels to use, rather than "I" or "self".

[Cleric K]

OK. Now I have to go in a direction that I'm not sure you're willing to follow. But I'll nevertheless do it because it's the only place where the solution of this problem can be found.

I wrote about the dual nature of verb-noun but I didn't imply that one is the reality and the other only effect. Yes, it's true that in our familiar state of consciousness it's clearly the case that activity precedes the recognition of its reflection but that does not imply that the reflection is pure illusion and doesn't say anything true about its source. To trace this into a greater detail we have to turn again to thinking.

We don't perceive the true Mysteriousness that expresses through thinking, as something laid down in front of us. It's thinking trying to figure out its essential nature, when it comes up with the concepts of 'doing' and 'doer', 'thinking' and 'thinker'. Unfortunately, thinking can never capture the full reality of its essence in a thought. Thinking can say "OK, so I'll conceive my essence as pure activity and the fact the I can objectify myself as a 'thing', I'll conceive only as a projection. But I'm not a 'thing', I'm pure 'doing'." When stated like this it becomes obvious that nothing is gained in this way. Of course, we'll never express ourselves explicitly like that but effectively that's the meaning implicit in our conception of reality. Thinking still identifies with something - the concept of 'doing'. Even if it invents newspeak in order to make the word "I" a taboo, it gains nothing if it simply continues to think about itself in third person, as when it says "not I exist but spiritual activity" - it just shuffles the grammar a little.

We can think of the verb and noun as dual parts of the one Mysteriousness, just as in physics we stumble on things like wave-particle duality. The Mysteriousness is neither a verb, nor a noun. It becomes these only when thinking analyzes itself and identifies with one part of the duality, while declaring the other as only being an illusionary shadow.

These things are glaringly clear when we cross the threshold. It's only when spiritual activity is forced to bounce between the mirrors of the head that it needs to build thought models of itself - because when thinking says "In reality there's only 'doing' and not a 'doer'" it produces a model-thought and identifies with it. Yet thinking is neither the concept of 'doer', nor the concept of 'doing' - it gives rise to the thoughts but it cannot capture its full essence in any one thought. Any thought captures only a limited perspective of the one essence, in the same sense that a (unbendable) sheet of paper is one but we can always see only one side of it.

So this is the first step - to recognize the parts of the duality and realize that we can never resolve anything if we try to explain one through the other - even if from our experience it seems that the two parts are asymmetrical - that is, we experience one as somehow more fundamental (this apparent asymmetry is of great significance actually but it's a topic for another time). The idea of balance is intuitively felt as harmonious for many but we should just observe how we avoid this balance (often quite unconsciously) in certain circumstances.

For example, the balance is lost when we merge with pure awareness (Cosmic Receptivity, the Feminine) and declare that self-driven activity is only an illusion. It's also lost when we identify with pure activity (Cosmic Masculine) while dismissing the fact that activity would never know of its existence if it wasn't possible to mirror it into form.

Even if we think from purely logical perspective, we can reach the pinhole that seems to disturb so many here. Where else can we find a place where opposites come together, except in will (activity) that beholds the form it creates (thought-perception)? That's why this concentration (assuming all other preparatory work is done) on spiritual activity beholding the form it projects, becomes the portal through which we cross the threshold. Our eye becomes 'single'. We find our spiritual being at a state before it enters and becomes split within the mirror system. Now we don't at all 'think' about what we are - this act of self-identification belongs to the split-eye. If we try to think of 'what we are' we simply return in the ordinary state within the mirrors. The matter is that in this state we no longer need to identify ourselves with anything, we don't need explanation for ourselves because the experience in itself contains the explanation - it's self-explanatory. In our normal state we have the need to identify and seek explanation for ourselves because we feel that we are incomplete - we are searching for our missing part. When we find one part, we lose sight of another. Then if we find the another, we lose sight of the first. This endless bouncing is settled when we cross the threshold. In the higher state self-consciousness and self-activity are inseparably united, there's no more conflict between 'doing' and 'doer'. We experience ourselves at the same time as a stable center and as activity emanating from it. Not only that life doesn't end here but it can be said that it's where real life begins. This doesn't mean that we transcend our limitations, our body, the structure of our personality, the environment - we simply begin to perceive them as the labyrinth into which our spiritual be-ing is entangled, and which we must set out to transform, ennoble, enliven, resurrect and spiritualize.

So the "I" word is not the problem - it's not the source of evil. The word is a natural result of higher spiritual activity (where the duality is united) experiencing itself restricted in thinking (where we identify with a thought-side). Things won't be fixed if we transition to newspeak and replace "I" with a third person pronoun. Man will be able to do just as much evil in that case - if not more! Here modern Buddhism should simply rightly observe itself. Humans don't improve because they discard the "I" pronoun. As a matter of fact, this might even have the opposite effect - one can become even more blind for what lies beneath the surface. Buddhists improve because of right thought, right speech, right action, etc. These are the things that transform us. If a wicked man meditates on the non-existence of his self, he would neither become aware of the true sources of his wickedness, nor he'll be able to transform it.

We are tackling the problem from the wrong side, just as the 'war on drugs' can't resolve anything, so it's for the 'war on the self'. In both cases the solution lies in true knowledge of what man is, what are the hidden forces that drive him to want this or that. Self-mastery is not achieved by enforcing restrictions on the possibilities for wrong-doing but by rising to ever higher levels of consciousness where the consequences of the possibilities are clearly perceived and one can conduct their life in freedom, in accordance to their highest aspirations.