The purpose after full comprehension of itself?

[Lou Gold]

My thought is that Divinely Integrated Diversity co-arises interdependently with creativity, change and checks-and-balances and this requires only that God love God, which may be entirely instinctual. An entity at any level need not be metacognitive to will continuing creativity or to respond to a tummy ache. Subjective sentience called Love is all that is required. God is Love. Hate is not the opposite of Love, Fear is. God does not fear.

The difference between diversity and differentiation is that the form describes a state, the latter is process. We experience differences, not states.

I agree that sentience is more fundamental than metacognitive sapience. Fear and hate are forms of love, arising from attached love. Neither is outside or independent of the integrated process. Fear is an excellent guide in some ways, going towards your fears you can face and overcome them and learn something new.

I choose "Divinely Integrated Diversity" because that is the phrase given to me by Daime when I asked how to grok trees standing apart in seeming separation in a Váreza Forest in Western Amazônia. With due respect for your highly developed skill with linguist nuance, I'll hold with the phrase given to me. The event occurred during my early days here at the forum. The specific context was a dawn meditation near the margin of the Xipamano River at the frontier of Brazil and Peru where I had been listening with Daime and others to the sounds of the birds awakening in the forest. Looking at a group of trees appearing to stand as separate sentinels, I asked, "Is this a Dissociated Identity Disorder?" and was given my now-preferred phrase, which I use despite sharing your desire for linguist nuance favoring process.

I agree that fear is an excellent guide toward the expanded intelligence of right relationship for those navigating the flows of dissociation. Knowing that cars can hurt causes one to look both ways before crossing the street, thus allowing both ignorance and phobic fear to be replaced with intelligence. I believe this happens instinctively, without fear or injury, for God who is whole.

[SanteriSatama]

I choose "Divinely Integrated Diversity' because that is the phrase given to me by Daime when I asked how to grok trees standing apart in seeming separation in a Váreza Forest in Western Amazônia. With due respect for your highly developed skill with linguist nuance, I'll hold with the phrase given to me. The event occurred during my early days here at the forum. The specific context was a dawn meditation near the margin of the Xipamano River at the frontier of Brazil and Peru where I had been listening with Daime and others to the sounds of the birds awakening in the forest. Looking at a group of trees appearing to stand as separate sentinels, I asked, "Is this a Dissociated Identity Disorder?" and was given my now-preferred phrase.

I gratefully accept that gift of Yage as an example of evolution process of poetry of philosophical terminology. My wording was inspired by your wording coming from your communion with Yage. These three stages of DID form a continuum of expanding comprehension from subjective state to holistic state to holistic process. Yage is a very wise and strong friend because it co-evolves with and through us, our communions. Yage can stay unbounded and evolve only if it keeps on learning also on its part of our relation. Though I no more drink the jungle brew, does not mean our relation has been lost. Both phrases have been given to you, inspired by you. You can think that it's your role to choose and pick either, but you are also free to relate both-and see more clear with wisdom of hind-sight, how you did your part in the in-between.

[Lou Gold]

Like I said, I appreciate the process orientation of your phrase. Thanks for the gift. I suspect that my preference relates to the notion that species diversity is seen from an ecological pov as Nature's insurance policy and not from a preference for a metaphysical pov.

Right now I'm contemplating that my body is networking 43 trillion cells instinctively, that there are more viruses on earth than stars in the cosmos and that no two snowflakes are the same. A few weeks ago, driving along in the rain, we turned a curve and there was a literal end of a rainbow hovering just above the road before us. No pot of gold. Something better.



Back to the post theme, I believe the purpose is love.

PS: Perhaps the more than a billion views of the video says something beyond philosophy.

[SanteriSatama]

Like I said, I appreciate the process orientation of your phrase. Thanks for the gift. I suspect that my preference relates to the notion that species diversity is seen from an ecological pov as Nature's insurance policy and not from a preference for a metaphysical pov.

Aloha. Not putting all your eggs in the same basket is very good practical wisdom. "All is valuable" was also received during Yage session, and I don't consider it especially metaphysical pov, but bottom level fusion of ethics and ontology, the whole of nature. Process philosophy of Unique, inherent value of each unique, applies also to each moment and duration of experiencing, as each of those is unique. We can further qualify that the inherent value of each unique is on the asubjective level, subjective valuations are part of the process of differentiation-creation. "Only matters of taste can be debated"

[Lou Gold]

I find your conversations quite tasty.

[Cleric K]

Ashvin, Eugene, thanks!

Certainly, concepts and notions can be a springboard for higher spiritual spheres. In what sense do they really elevate the soul? When you hear from them the spirit and will of the one who wrote them. This includes means like poetry, rhetoric and the like and not mere concepts. I was not convinced by the "philosophy of freedom" that Steiner had really solved the problem with Kant. He simply divides reality into concepts and sensory perception like Maimon. Only that unlike the latter he assumes it is the bottom line.
This perception is also reflected in what Steiner calls "clairvoyance." You probably know what claims Steiner made that I can not agree with and that history has proven to be nothing but mere imagination not "concepts" reflecting the world of senses. And this is exactly the problem

My previous post could be fully comprehended without anyone ever heard of Steiner. I was especially careful not to enter into pro/anti Steiner discussion. I won't do that now either. I'll only point out few things that you seem to have gotten wrong about PoF, again not in Steiner's defense but for the sake of the facts.

"He simply divides reality into concepts and sensory perception". This is incorrect in many ways. First, it's not about dividing anything but recognizing what is already there, just as recognizing red and blue is not some artificial division of 'color'. Second, it's not at all about only sensory perceptions. The term perception should be taken in the widest sense possible. We can say it thus: anything that we can think about is a kind of perception. Clearly, this includes not only sensory perceptions but all inner experience, including thinking itself and potentially higher experiences. For example, the feeling of humility can be perceived and thought about. Third, the other half of existence is the world of ideas, with concepts being only more specific ideas. PoF is not about dividing these two worlds - of perception and ideas - but showing how they can be united. This unity finds its seed point with the realization than when thinking becomes the object of itself, we have an instance where idea and perception belong together. Everywhere else perceptions and ideas meet like aliens, they seem so different and irreconcilable. But in the experience of thinking we find an actual point where both worlds flow into each other. For example, when we hear external word we have clear separation between the perception and the concept, they are almost orthogonal experiences, leading us to speak of subjective and objective worlds. When we hear our inner thinking voice, perception and concept are inseparably united.

"This includes means like poetry, rhetoric and the like and not mere concepts". This is a good example and shows the difference between thinking about concepts abstractly (for example, verbal thought 'table' in absence of sensory perception) and concepts that are experienced in relation to other perceptions. For example, if I read poetry about love but I've never experienced it, I'll be having only abstract concepts, mere words. If I do have real experience of love then the concepts will relate to these feelings. Yet even if I don't know how love feels like this doesn't prevent me to understand at least logically something about it. For example, from the words of the poet I may understand that this love, whatever it is, can be related with other soul experiences, such as inspiration, enthusiasm, self-renunciation and so on. When these things are experienced livingly we can get very good intuition where this love feeling is to be sought. It's almost like spiritual triangulation - we don't know the 'location' of the experience we're reading about but through its relation to other experiences, that we may already know, we are able to form some idea. Finally, at some point we may arrive to the actual experience of love and then the concept finally finds the corresponding perceptions.

It's the same in relation to descriptions of the higher worlds. Normally they sound as the wildest abstractions but they are never intended to remain that way. For example, if we hear about 'etheric body', this sounds just as abstract as the concept of 'string' in string theory. The big difference is that through the appropriate development we can reach to the perception of the etheric body and then the concept is no longer abstract. But even long before that we can form intuition about this by 'triangulating' the concept through as many other experiences as possible. For example when it's said that the physical body is what we have in common with minerals, while the etheric body is what we have in common with plants, we are already pointing attention at specific direction. What makes plants different from minerals is that the mineral substance within the plant is animated in very characteristic way. This still doesn't lead us to the reality of the etheric body but gradually we are able to think about it. As we develop more concepts taken from spiritual perception in this way, we gradually begin to feel their logical relations. For example, if someone describes to us the contents of a room we gradually build a picture of it. Then if they say "There's a chair in the corner" and later say "there's a cupboard in the corner", if we are really attentive we'll say "wait a minute, make up your mind, is it a chair or cupboard?". So it is with the higher worlds. As we become acquainted with their descriptions we begin to feel the logic and even if we may not be a seer ourselves, we're quite capable of feeling if there's something out of place in certain descriptions.

The logical question is: how can we be sure that these "seers" are not simply charlatans and they have created purely abstract and consistent formal system that they talk about but that doesn't correspond to anything perceptible? The answer here is that everyone individually should judge this for themselves. The character of the higher worlds is such that everything that is revealed from there has direct implications for ordinary life. The higher worlds are not remote parallel worlds but the deeper spiritual reality of which the sensory world is only a shadow. For this reason everything about higher cognition can be tested against the sensory world. This is actually the whole point of looking into the higher worlds - not in order to satisfy our curiosity but to draw the impulses that we need for solving the Earthly problems. This is possible because we live in the higher worlds with our feelings, thoughts, will. These elements are the 'substance' of the higher worlds, it's just that we project them entirely on the screen of sensory perceptions, instead of seeking to comprehend them within their native environments. Man is a cross-section of all worlds but in our age all is being flattened over the sensory screen. We simply refuse to speak of anything unless it is somehow grounded into sense perceptions.

[Lou Gold]

Consciousness doesn't emerge from combinations of unconsciousness, just as light doesn't emerge from combinations of darkness.

The ancient wisdom of the stars in the first gaze of a newborn, coming out of mother's womb into this world and seeing this very first time. My deepest gratitude for having seen that gaze, the greatest wonder.

Amen.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric,

Consciousness doesn't emerge from combinations of unconsciousness, just as light doesn't emerge from combinations of darkness.

How do you know this? I ask because I have seen otherwise.

[Cleric K]

Cleric,

Consciousness doesn't emerge from combinations of unconsciousness, just as light doesn't emerge from combinations of darkness.

How do you know this? I ask because I have seen otherwise.

There are two stages to this:

1. We must first realize something that is specific to thinking. That is that we can never produce concepts through combination of other concepts. Let's take the simplest example. The concepts of 'one' and 'two'. We are so used to think about 1 + 1 = 2 that we very easily mistake that if we think of two 'one' concepts together this somehow produces the concept of two. But this is not the case. Every concept is discovered independently. For example, let's imagine that we have no concepts of any numbers. We look at an apple and experience the concept of apple. Then someone adds one more next to it. Now we look at the one, look at the other, but we need a jump of insight to discover the concept of 'twofoldness'. Then we can experience this idea in relation to all things that come in pairs - two arms, two legs, etc. We should really appreciate the fact that there's an insight. If we are not very bright we might be looking at the apples separately or together but we might never come to the idea of twofoldness. We may never conceive that there's something in common between two apples and two hands. The concept of 'two' does not consist of two concepts of 'one', neither of the concept of 'three' from which we subtract the concept of 'one'.

This holds true for everything. There's no such thing as creating concepts by mechanical combinations. The concept of 'lion' does not consist of combination of the concepts 'fur', 'claws', 'fangs', 'mane', etc. Every concept lives in certain relations with other concepts but we can't produce concepts in some mechanical way. Every concept is a unique holistic idea-experience that must be independently discovered.

It is only because we develop certain intuition about things, that makes us open for concepts to be inspired in us effortlessly. For example, if we have the general intuition for numbers we may look at 78543098 + 32568013 = 111111111. It is quite possible that it's the first time in our life that we see these concrete numbers. Yet we are versed in the domain of numbers and when we see their symbolic records we can quite effortlessly match the corresponding concepts. It is this effortless matching that misleads us into thinking that we create the concepts. Interestingly, mathematics in itself in no way 'claims' that numbers or whatever mathematical objects are 'produced' from one another. We only explore their relations. The idea of causality does not exist there. Does the left side of the equation cause the right or vice versa?

If the above was properly understood there would never be any hard problems in philosophy and science. Why are there hard problems? Because people have no sense that they fantasize how they combine concepts and produce other concepts. The materialist thinks the concepts of neurons puts the 'plus' sign between them and places on the other side of the equation the concept 'consciousness'. This is the very same problem that the idealist faces when he tries to produce the alter's consciousness from the concept of MAL. The concept of our consciousness it's taken from reality, from actual perceptions but the concept of MAL is abstract, we only have the idea and the thoughts about it. Then if we imagine combinations between the unconscious MAL on one side of the equation and we place the concept of our consciousness on the other side, imagining that somehow we produce it in this way, we make the same fallacy as the materialist.

Of course all the above, even if understood, is usually not taken into account because it's said "Yes, it's true that the mind discovers its concepts and can't create them from one another but this doesn't mean that in the real world this is not possible". So we arrive at the Kantian split. We admit that we can't produce the concept of consciousness from the concept of neuron but we fantasize that in the 'real' world this is exactly what happens.

So this is the first part. We should be perfectly clear that as long as we are thinking in concepts there's no way to combine the concept of unconsciousness and produce as a result the concept of consciousness. We may map between them and imagine any magic we want that converts one into the other but as far as our thinking process is concerned it is in principle impossible to experience such a conversion. We can only discover the concepts of consciousness and unconsciousness independently and explore their relations. This is actually the rightful place of thinking. It's not about fantasizing how things are produced from one another but to explore their relations, which in itself is discovery of new concepts and ideas that relate other concepts and ideas. If this rightful essence of thinking is understood, the nature of higher cognition can also be understood easily.

The above doesn't mean that we can't use words like 'produces', 'yields', 'creates', etc. It's just that we should be careful for the hard traps.



2. The second stage concerns direct experience. It is directly related to the first. The more we come to terms with our thinking, the more we see clearly. When we unlearn this parasitic habit of fantasizing how things are produced from one another, we no longer fall in for the hard traps. It's very simple - don't fantasize that which you can never observe.

You say "I ask because I have seen otherwise." The question is what we perceive and what we add out of ourselves through thinking. We can experience darkness, groping into darkness and then gently we perceive sparklings of light, gradually becoming stronger and stronger. OK, so what does the experience tell us out of itself? Darkness, then light. Light appears in darkness. This is the raw experience. When we say that light is born out of darkness we are already thinking, we're modifying the raw experience through thinking. We're adding something from ourselves, it's our opinion, preference, that the 'particles' of darkness are the fundamental stuff and light is, for example, mere friction between them, thus - an illusion. If we are completely unprejudiced we should accept the uncolored facts of experience - there are both light and darkness, the most we can do is to investigate their relationships. If we speculate how one creates the other, we're coloring the picture through our own thoughts.

This becomes even more clear in the higher worlds, where everywhere we perceive is relationships of beings. We perceive transformations, metamorphoses but any attempt to pass judgment on what is primary and what secondary simply returns us into our intellectual state. It is only here that we can speculate like that. In the higher worlds we just need to be objective and investigate the relations of the beings from all directions.

[Lou Gold]

You say "I ask because I have seen otherwise." The question is what we perceive and what we add out of ourselves through thinking. We can experience darkness, groping into darkness and then gently we perceive sparklings of light, gradually becoming stronger and stronger. OK, so what does the experience tell us out of itself? Darkness, then light. Light appears in darkness. This is the raw experience. When we say that light is born out of darkness we are already thinking, we're modifying the raw experience through thinking. We're adding something from ourselves, it's our opinion, preference, that the 'particles' of darkness are the fundamental stuff and light is, for example, mere friction between them, thus - an illusion. If we are completely unprejudiced we should accept the uncolored facts of experience - there are both light and darkness, the most we can do is to investigate their relationships. If we speculate how one creates the other, we're coloring the picture through our own thoughts.

This becomes even more clear in the higher worlds, where everywhere we perceive is relationships of beings. We perceive transformations, metamorphoses but any attempt to pass judgment on what is primary and what secondary simply returns us into our intellectual state. It is only here that we can speculate like that. In the higher worlds we just need to be objective and investigate the relations of the beings from all directions.

Let me presume that you are not denying my experience and subtly (or directly) suggesting that my perceptions were merely projections of my thoughts. My questions to you merely asks whether you are reporting your direct experience or your logical analysis/speculation, the latter which appears to me as ascent-and-light biased. I also value the light and hold it lovingly along with the dark in communion with each other. Is your direct experience other than this, perhaps a top-down enlightenment?

I confess that I love poetry more than analysis for it seems to me as more the language of the heart. In Wendell Berry's great poem "The Country of Marriage", he says,

The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

What does this mean to you (if anything) in the context of your experience?