Cosmic Consciousness: meta-cognitive or non-meta-cognitive?

[Eugene I]

My question from an Idealist slant is can the fundamental be expressed as a Divinely Integrated Diversity, which seems to me as a perfect antidote for Dissociated Identity Disorder? If one might ask for a practical principle for making this possible, I would suggest mutual respect.

Yes, it absolutely can be expressed and can be directly experienced as a Divinely Integrated Diversity.

[Cleric K]

But the question that I was pointing to is somewhat different. When we talk about MAL we mean the Cosmic Consciousness as a whole, Consciousness as an ontic fundamental of reality (as per monistic idealism), and the question is: what are the fundamental qualities of such MAL and whether such MAL possesses its own subjective perspective and an ability to meta-consciously think and act.

I see. Well, in that case my answer is that I don't have an answer I can refer to my post here. At certain point we reach the boundaries of time. I personally can't form any conception of what existence without time could be like. Everything that we experience is a constant integrative flow. This is true even in no-thought/no-self states. Although our normal notion of time breaks down when we dissociate from all activity, nevertheless when we are back we can certainly testify that we experienced duration. The integrative flow of consciousness was still going, even though there were no thought-milestones around us to help us track time as we are used to.

So that's it - I can't reach the absolute state of MAL and have an experience that I can describe. Where time begins there are already multitude of beings already existing, on different levels of development. How this happens - beats me. You see how difficult it is - the moment we try to envision some 'process' that has prepared the initial conditions for our Solar system we implicitly bring time into the picture. The whole question if such a pre-process is self-conscious or not loses any meaning. Whatever it is, it's certain that we can't imagine it through consciousness operating in time.

But this shouldn't cause despair. The processes and beings that we can experience through the means at our disposal actually can give answers to all questions that have implications for real life. Yes - the question about 'what the Absolute state feels like' might be an interesting philosophical puzzle but actually has no implications for real life. "How come? There're great implications if the Absolute is self-conscious or not". Actually not. The real implications are within the beings that are active in the unfoldment of the Solar evolution and these we can know about. I don't know if the Absolute implies some telos to the multiverse but it can be investigated how the local Stellar beings shape the meta-flow of evolution. In this sense there's telos. It's not one that tells what each one of us must do with their freedom but it shapes the alpha and omega points and gives rise to the volume of potential in between. We can see this all around us. Even our current earthly life is one such telos - we experience birth, then unfoldment of potential and then death. Who can deny that our earthly existence is shaped through this? We have relative freedom but we can't escape the alpha and omega of our current incarnation - the palette of possible states that we can experience is shaped between these points. Such a panorama of living rhythms within rhythms is unveiled before us in Spirit land. We can see that our whole evolution is flowing in a Cosmic context supported by macrocosmic self-aware beings. One day, when we reach their stage of evolution we'll be in position to create the flow for other beings to experience their evolutionary arcs.

Now, in all these cases it was an actual spiritual experience, not merely intellectual exercise, and it led to real personality transformation and practical consequences. Yet, those experiences and insights are still very different from each other and give different perspectives on the nature of reality. So, the experiential and practical criteria are indeed necessary, but not sufficient to give us the undoubtful clues to the nature of reality.

All these things are resolved when consciousness continues to evolve. Every such tradition explores states of being that are slowly being integrated. This integration is not about closing our eyes and declaring 'it's all one' but reaching the deeper sources of existence. From there we can trace how different configurations of our invisible structure are experienced as different soul moods, different intellectual inclinations, different temperaments and so on. Man will slowly unveil these things.

Here's a metaphor. Let's imagine that we are dreaming. We all know how conditions in the physical world may find their way into dreams. For example, if we've put a little too many blankets we might be getting very hot. This can project into the dream in the most various ways. For example, we may have a dream that there's a Solar anomaly, it's growing into Red Giant and making conditions unlivable on Earth. Now think how many theories and ideas might be developed within the dream about the how and why this happens. Yet it's only if we become lucid in our dream and perceive something from the physical state that we might get to the real causes.

This is not a very good analogy but presents something true above our waking life. Just as there are processes in the dream that we don't perceive at all but are the real causes of the heat, so in our Earthly life everything can be traced to processes within the Spiritual realms. Interestingly, we attain to these processes by going back into the direction of the dream (astral) world but without losing consciousness.

I was just curious if you had a similar or analogous direct experience?

Yes, I've had an experience that was transformative for me. I was heavily scientifically-materialistically oriented. The question of the brain was very interesting to me. I've had just read the book Synaptic Self. It was purely materialistic brain theory but nevertheless it gave me great insights about the three main brain parts - the primitive (reptilian) brain, the middle (mammalian) brain and the neocortex, which are tightly related to will, feeling and thinking. I remember that I was searching something about fractals online and stumbled upon some articles in new-age like style but they were speaking very scientifically about consciousness being the fundamental substance, extending in 4D, 5D, etc. I remember how I thought to myself while reading "Is this guy for real?!" I was not absolutely dismissive, the idea that consciousness could be the 'other side' of matter (I didn't know the term panpsychism) didn't look that outrageous but still I was all about brains. Long story short, one night in my bed, at the borderline between waking and falling asleep, I was thinking very intensely and then suddenly I broke into a different state. It was very interesting, I'll probably remember this moment all my life. I don't recall what exactly I was thinking about but I was pushing very hard and suddenly the forms of my thoughts broke lose. I remember vividly how it was like everything became fluid and I actually made few strokes with my imaginary hands as if I've just found that I can swim and I propelled myself a little further in this fluid.
There were many other events later in my life but this will of course always stand out because in an instant my view was changed so radically. I now knew from my direct experience that my consciousness can flow like a fluid in the space around the body. For me consciousness became something of a field. At this time I had zero spiritual knowledge. Only then I started to realize this what I was experiencing was the motivation for religions. The whole trip was very confused in retrospect. Materialism doesn't evaporate that easy - the "I" simply switches the concepts through which it explains itself to itself.
Anyway. Then the Angels played their role and I got acquainted in a very unlikely way with a person who introduced me to anthroposophy and another very important spiritual stream that I'll speak about some day. I began eating books on Spiritual Science as warm bread. Immediately I began meditation too. The experience for me was not that much that I was pondering on Steiner's ideas but I was simply becoming clear headed on what I was experiencing anyway. I was realizing how my gaze was confused while trying to apply my materialistic ideas in relation to these out-of-brain experiences. Everything was clicking into place. Everything was already there, it was simply that I was looking at it by trying to force inappropriate concepts on it.
In the course of few years I've refined what I already had access to and then it was already time to address things that I had yet to to develop. And that's how the spiritual path is taken, which is not concerned only with higher forms of consciousness but with life in all it's aspects.

Cleric - I am wondering whether we can analogize the above to our experience of 'simple' instinctual drives like hunger, thirst, lust, etc., i.e. do we perceive them in the same way the gods perceive the spiritual space we are probing in abstract thinking

Well, it's little convoluted. It is very convenient to imagine beings nicely arranged in a hierarchical structure but it's not that simple. There's one general rule - everything projects in everything
I think I know where you're going with your idea (I might be wrong though). I had major headaches for years because I was trying very hard to fit things in the fractal structure. This led me to look on myself as a level in the fractal and thus to imagine everything 'lower' than me as sub-fractals of me. But through much confusion finally I was able to perceive my mistake and how misleading this model was.
It turned out that the elemental beings of the drives (which seem lower than us and live in the astral body) are not reduced from our fractal level but from completely different beings 'higher' than us, who are the architects of the drives for the human.
Currently we can experience such fractals proceeding from us only in our thinking - that's what really belongs to us. Our earthly life is wholly shaped through the elemental beings in the physical, etheric and astral but they don't proceed from 'our fractal' - they are supported by higher beings and we interact with them. Our "I" experience is 'inserted' between the bodies and the higher beings. As we'll transform our bodies (starting from the astral outward) we'll really liberate the current elementals and be able to create our own elementals out of ourselves which will then be more appropriately to say that proceed as sub fractals of ourselves. When we work on ourselves we already do this, although we can perceive the results of this work only when we gain spiritual perception. That's how evolution proceeds. We awaken in a situation where everything is created for us then we gradually liberate all beings that support our bodily natures and continue to do ourselves through creative activity, what was previously done for us by other beings (Nature). This continues on Cosmic scales. One day from the perspective of Atma we'll be responsible for the whole local Cosmic environment as proceeding from us. Interestingly, there's only one Atma. This is one of the mysteries of evolution - the way how now there are many souls but at the level of Atma it's only one.

do the beings which constitute those drives think 'abstractly' about the individual human experience?

No, they are instinctive, semi-automatic forms of consciousness. They don't experience an "I".

[Lou Gold]

I was just curious if you had a similar or analogous direct experience?

Yes, I've had an experience that was transformative for me. I was heavily scientifically-materialistically oriented. The question of the brain was very interesting to me. I've had just read the book Synaptic Self. It was purely materialistic brain theory but nevertheless it gave me great insights about the three main brain parts - the primitive (reptilian) brain, the middle (mammalian) brain and the neocortex, which are tightly related to will, feeling and thinking. I remember that I was searching something about fractals online and stumbled upon some articles in new-age like style but they were speaking very scientifically about consciousness being the fundamental substance, extending in 4D, 5D, etc. I remember how I thought to myself while reading "Is this guy for real?!" I was not absolutely dismissive, the idea that consciousness could be the 'other side' of matter (I didn't know the term panpsychism) didn't look that outrageous but still I was all about brains. Long story short, one night in my bed, at the borderline between waking and falling asleep, I was thinking very intensely and then suddenly I broke into a different state. It was very interesting, I'll probably remember this moment all my life. I don't recall what exactly I was thinking about but I was pushing very hard and suddenly the forms of my thoughts broke lose. I remember vividly how it was like everything became fluid and I actually made few strokes with my imaginary hands as if I've just found that I can swim and I propelled myself a little further in this fluid.
There were many other events later in my life but this will of course always stand out because in an instant my view was changed so radically. I now knew from my direct experience that my consciousness can flow like a fluid in the space around the body. For me consciousness became something of a field. At this time I had zero spiritual knowledge. Only then I started to realize this what I was experiencing was the motivation for religions. The whole trip was very confused in retrospect. Materialism doesn't evaporate that easy - the "I" simply switches the concepts through which it explains itself to itself.
Anyway. Then the Angels played their role and I got acquainted in a very unlikely way with a person who introduced me to anthroposophy and another very important spiritual stream that I'll speak about some day. I began eating books on Spiritual Science as warm bread. Immediately I began meditation too. The experience for me was not that much that I was pondering on Steiner's ideas but I was simply becoming clear headed on what I was experiencing anyway. I was realizing how my gaze was confused while trying to apply my materialistic ideas in relation to these out-of-brain experiences. Everything was clicking into place. Everything was already there, it was simply that I was looking at it by trying to force inappropriate concepts on it.
In the course of few years I've refined what I already had access to and then it was already time to address things that I had yet to to develop. And that's how the spiritual path is taken, which is not concerned only with higher forms of consciousness but with life in all it's aspects.

I'm glad that you did. It's a precious gift. Thanks for sharing.

[AshvinP]

Cleric - I am wondering whether we can analogize the above to our experience of 'simple' instinctual drives like hunger, thirst, lust, etc., i.e. do we perceive them in the same way the gods perceive the spiritual space we are probing in abstract thinking

Well, it's little convoluted. It is very convenient to imagine beings nicely arranged in a hierarchical structure but it's not that simple. There's one general rule - everything projects in everything
I think I know where you're going with your idea (I might be wrong though). I had major headaches for years because I was trying very hard to fit things in the fractal structure. This led me to look on myself as a level in the fractal and thus to imagine everything 'lower' than me as sub-fractals of me. But through much confusion finally I was able to perceive my mistake and how misleading this model was.
It turned out that the elemental beings of the drives (which seem lower than us and live in the astral body) are not reduced from our fractal level but from completely different beings 'higher' than us, who are the architects of the drives for the human.
Currently we can experience such fractals proceeding from us only in our thinking - that's what really belongs to us. Our earthly life is wholly shaped through the elemental beings in the physical, etheric and astral but they don't proceed from 'our fractal' - they are supported by higher beings and we interact with them. Our "I" experience is 'inserted' between the bodies and the higher beings. As we'll transform our bodies (starting from the astral outward) we'll really liberate the current elementals and be able to create our own elementals out of ourselves which will then be more appropriately to say that proceed as sub fractals of ourselves. When we work on ourselves we already do this, although we can perceive the results of this work only when we gain spiritual perception. That's how evolution proceeds. We awaken in a situation where everything is created for us then we gradually liberate all beings that support our bodily natures and continue to do ourselves through creative activity, what was previously done for us by other beings (Nature). This continues on Cosmic scales. One day from the perspective of Atma we'll be responsible for the whole local Cosmic environment as proceeding from us. Interestingly, there's only one Atma. This is one of the mysteries of evolution - the way how now there are many souls but at the level of Atma it's only one.

Yep that's exactly where I was going thanks for clearing that up.

[Brad Walker]

How does a nonmetacognitive cosmic scale mind evolve flawless disassociation before metacognition?

[Eugene I]

How does a nonmetacognitive cosmic scale mind evolve flawless disassociation before metacognition?

But why do we assume that it has ever been a singular one before dissociation? May be it is dissociated and has always been dissociated by its very nature?

[Lou Gold]

How does a nonmetacognitive cosmic scale mind evolve flawless disassociation before metacognition?

But why do we assume that it has ever been a singular one before dissociation? May be it is dissociated and has always been dissociated by its very nature?

Isn't dissociation fundamentally entwined with creativity?

[Brad Walker]

How does a nonmetacognitive cosmic scale mind evolve flawless disassociation before metacognition?

But why do we assume that it has ever been a singular one before dissociation? May be it is dissociated and has always been dissociated by its very nature?

How does a fundamentally disassociated cosmic mind evolve objective reality? Why is physical reality necessary for metacognition?

[Brad Walker]

A cosmic disassociated mind will have disproportionately many Boltzmann brains, violating the anthropic principle.

[Cleric K]

Yep that's exactly where I was going thanks for clearing that up.

BTW I hope this will be cleared up in BK's philosophy. The idea that "the physical human being is what consciousness looks like from 'outside'" springs from certain intuition but is a good example how when certain ideas, when they are simply extrapolated, become untruths. If we speak of consciousness as a whole (including the Cosmic unconscious), we can say that but there's nothing in our personal waking consciousness that corresponds to the shape and biological function of the liver. It is true that our personal consciousness (our astral being) is connected to the liver (experienced as certain feelings) but if we want to trace the origins of the physical body itself we would have to go to the widest expanses. The whole Zodiac projects the forces that shape our physical body. The more we want to understand the physical body and world, the more we have to understand the whole spiritual Cosmic environment. The 'lowest' and the 'highest' and mysteriously connected.