Essay: Beyond the Flat M@L

[AshvinP]

The word ‘meaning’ is used a lot here in this thread and other threads, by both you and Ashwin. Sometimes with ‘Cosmic’ or as ‘landscape’. What are you referring to?

Meaning is what we live in all the time. It is what we perceive all around us in the world. The perceptual characteristics of the world are about as varied as they can get, but the meaning is what unites them into coherent experiences. Cognitive science has also confirmed that we perceive meaning prior to quantitative perceptual structures. When I have referred to "cosmic meaning", probably I meant intuitions, inspirations, and imaginations. The former are meanings immediately given in perception for modern man, like the meaning of spatial dimension, while the latter are more the archetypal meanings of the sort we discern in mythology, poetry, music, and aesthetics of all sort.

So meaning is not a characteristic or property of the world, but a paradigm/model through which we experience the world. Is freedom then to live without meaning?

Meaning is the world. We, as humans, are metamorphosing meanings. To live without meaning, in any metaphysical sense, would be to not exist at all. But, if non-existence is not an option, then freedom can only be the conscious perception and embodiment of meaning in ever-greater measure. I was just watching this clip of Harris podcast with Peterson, which speaks to the "ecological approach to visual perception" that I was referencing earlier, i.e. meaning is perceived prior to physical structure (around 34 min.).

[Cleric K]

The word ‘meaning’ is used a lot here in this thread and other threads, by both you and Ashwin. Sometimes with ‘Cosmic’ or as ‘landscape’. What are you referring to?

In more philosophical language we would be talking about idea / ideal content. Yet the experience here in forum shows that people simply refuse to take any deeper comprehension of what this word "Idea" points to (in the Goethean sense). Instead, it is always demeaned to be equal to nothing more than abstract concept in the intellect, thus ideas are simply seen as dust-like particles in the more encompassing 'awareness'. For this reason the language has slowly shifted more in favor of the word "meaning", which hopefully should point to something more experiential.

To clarify what meaning is, we shouldn't resort to abstract definitions but draw directly from experience. Language is probably the clearest place to observe. Where lies the difference between the sound of words in a foreign language and one that we understand? The purely auditory perception is more or less the same in both cases. So there's some imperceptible (supersensible) difference. This experiential element which enriches the pure sound is what we call meaning.

The greatest obstacle for modern man is that habitually we want to reduce everything to sensory-like perceptions. Thus there's great resistance to recognize meaning in its own right, as the ideal reality of our experience.

Another clear example is simply our own verbal thinking. The words of our own inner voice that we hear, sound as sensory-like auditory perceptions. Yet there's so much more to thinking than the sounds of our inner voice, which are only the final precipitation. What is it that makes the words of our inner voice not to sound as incomprehensible foreign language? So much can be learned if people were willing to simply actively experience the thinking process. It would quickly be found that we're constantly moving within supersensible meaningful (ideal) landscape. The verbal words are only symbols for that ideal world. The more intimately we investigate how we express in symbols (thoughts) this invisible ideal topology, the more we build intuition about its 'geometry' and laws.

The difficulty is that this 'geometry' and laws are not something that we can see detached from ourselves and investigate from a safe distance on the petri dish. It is the lawful reality which shapes our thinking flow. Our thinking is at the same time perception of this reality and active expression of it.

As long as one desires to simply detach from thinking and passively notice thoughts entering and leaving the field of consciousness, it's impossible to have any inkling of what this meaningful topology (aka spiritual world) is in reality.

[lorenzop]

For myself, and perhaps others in this forum, I see thinking self as a process/activity and not as an identity. Or, it’s an error to see thinking self as an identity.
Does not mean to banish or distance oneself from thinking, but to bring in the light, or nurture a familiarity with transcendent as self.
I ‘think’ what you are proposing is an upgrade in experience, like moving from economy class to first/business class. I don’t see this as an advance in freedom, but an upgraded enslavement.
But to be honest, I understand very little of what you and Ashwin write.

[Cleric K]

For myself, and perhaps others in this forum, I see thinking self as a process/activity and not as an identity. Or, it’s an error to see thinking self as an identity.
Does not mean to banish or distance oneself from thinking, but to bring in the light, or nurture a familiarity with transcendent as self.

Yes, no one is advocating for identification with anything. Thinking is a process, yes, but very unique one because we feel creatively involved in it. And here there's no need to even bring the question of 'self'. If you imagine a moving sphere, you can observe how the movements are direct reflections of your imaginative intentions. This is a simple fact of experience, it doesn't depend on having a concept or theory of self.

This is a crucial distinction. Living experience of thinking activity doesn't preclude the transcendent. Why should we deny the transcendent the possibility to be spiritually active? Why do we condemn it to simply be passively aware of processes for which the causes can never be intimately experienced?

It's perfectly fine to loosen our rigid bonds with the Earthly role that we play but it's a mistake to view thinking as attribute produced by that movie character. The spiritual activity which precipitates as our intellect, flows from the transcendent, and we cripple our higher being if we seek it only as receptive awareness.

I ‘think’ what you are proposing is an upgrade in experience, like moving from economy class to first/business class. I don’t see this as an advance in freedom, but an upgraded enslavement.
But to be honest, I understand very little of what you and Ashwin write.

Here once again thinking is seen as something belonging strictly to the Earthly character which can be upgraded but still remains below the transcendent. In that case, no matter how fancy the thinking becomes, it's still just a game of light reflections and refractions, which you call upgraded enslavement.

The only way things can make sense to you is if you open up for the possibility that the forces that precipitate as ordinary thinking are innate to the transcendent. And why would be otherwise? Does it make any sense for the transcendent being, which is supposedly the source of all conceivable potential for experience, to be lacking the possibility of creative spiritual activity? How could be possible that the ability to feel creatively responsible for something (as we are for our thoughts) could exist in the movie character but doesn't exist in deeper archetypal form within the transcendent?

So the goal is not simply to upgrade the intellect to some fancier but still self-enclosed logic system. The goal is become conscious within the creative flow of the transcendent, of which the intellect is only a shadow. So the transcendent has its own form of spiritual activity, which we can call higher order Thinking. It is not our familiar laying down of trains of concepts. It is activity of being which Imaginatively shapes the streams within which, on a lower level, our thoughts are perceived as leaves. If we don't experience the meaningful stream, we only see the moving leaves and call that thinking activity. Then we deidentify with the leaves because we feel that there's something deeper than them. Yet we simply passively wait for death. The transcendent is active within the stream itself. We move closer to it not by dreaming of it in passive contemplation but by experiencing the kind of spiritual activity in which it weaves. We must allow the transcendent to be spiritually active in us. We need to experience ourselves as partially active in the higher forces, greater than our movie character, which shape the stream within which the ordinary thought-leaves flow.

[AshvinP]

But to be honest, I understand very little of what you and Ashwin write.

There was a time not too long ago when I would understand little of what Cleric is writing now. There was even a time when I would understand little of what I am writing now. I hope people can at least be open to the possibility that our own lack of understanding is the Spirit, or the Consciousness, or the MAL, or whatever we want to call it, providing us the opportunity to grow into better understanding. Cleric's posts, for ex., at least reveal to us their are modes of perceiving and thinking of the world content which we have never come across before and may point to something higher from which they precipitate. If we were never exposed to these posts, then we would never know there are higher layers of archetypal meaning we can potentially grow into. All things, even lack of understanding, come to us by grace of the transcendent.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

[Anthony66]

In our time we're seeing an upsurge of Idealism. Driven by scientific cautiousness and parsimony, we're trying to take small and secure steps. But sometimes cautiousness and parsimony can easily be mistaken for disguised conservatism and resistance for change.

We have a very telling story from the history of humanity. The idea of the flat Earth seems the most parsimonious and down to the facts explanation. It seems that it requires zero assumptions because we see flat ground around us and this makes us feel that we are unjustified to assume curved Earth beyond the horizon - it looks like we are going beyond the facts and only complicating the picture. But the fact is that the flat Earth idea also makes an assumption based on imperfect observation. The solution comes only when we take all facts into consideration and not only the most immediate ones. Of course this requires some mental exertion and this is inconvenient, to say the least.

We find ourselves in a similar situation today with the emerging view, called in modern language Mind at Large (M@L). As we come out of the materialistic conceptions, the most parsimonious and factious view seems to be to assume M@L as the pure awareness, known for millennia in mysticism, in which our individual consciousness emerges only as a kind of a dream picture.



The above illustration shows in a metaphorical way this conception. We have personal consciousnesses emancipating us from the totality of M@L and allowing us to experience relations with other differentiated islands of consciousness. We can also envision other entities within M@L (the globe, which might represent some deity) which may not have physical appearance but still could form relationships with human consciousnesses. In modern metaphors the differentiated islands of M@L are often described as dissociated alters, bubbles separating from the ocean, whirlpools, etc. I'll try to give here few indications showing that this is an overly simplistic view which not only delays our progress but actually leads in the opposite direction.

Just as Earth's surface looks flat only because we are too close to it, so we can imagine that our idea of M@L can be imprecise because of a too shallow perspective. Below we can see a different metaphor.



Enclosing the curvature of M@L is only part of the work. Unless we address the question of the interior, we're still 'in the dark' regarding our inner nature. If we imagine that in some way the interior is illuminated (we'll see how this can happen), the picture would look something like the following:



I'll call the above Deep M@L in contrast to Flat M@L. Even at first glance we already see that this change of perspective leads to very serious repercussions. Before I continue I would like to say that nothing of this is new. These things have been known in one form or another, for millennia by the Initiates but they really began to take the shape that we'll see here in post-Christ time, ever since the Gnostic schools began to explore these Mysteries. This secret knowledge has been carried by a spiritual stream through the centuries and only about a little more than hundred years ago it began to disseminate in the general population - simply because humans are getting ripe for this. I also want to underline that the images presented here are nothing but analogies and metaphors. Nowhere in reality we'll ever be able to discover such geometric structures. What we are interested in is to grasp some ideas through the analogies. When we have the ideas, the visual representation can be discarded. Just as 'high' and 'low' temperature is meaningless in geometric sense, so everything here must be striven for the ideas themselves. The visual aids are only an intellectual scaffold that must be dismantled after it has served its purpose. Also it must be stated that the above illustration is incomplete. It focuses only on something very specific. There are many things missing from it so in no way it should be taken as full model of reality. As an analogy we can have topological, geographical, political, etc. maps - all of them represent only specific aspects of the Earth and can't explain anything in isolation. I beg the reader to withhold any preliminary judgments about the meaning of the layers and the center in the illustration. We'll try to elucidate them only gradually.

Just as globular Earth resolves many enigmas, impossibilities and contradictions existing in the flat Earth model, so does Deep M@L in relation to Flat M@L. What will be given below can be in no way exhaustive, it can be no more than hints that would have to be studied further.

Probably the most striking difference between the pictures above is that they completely change the way we view our personal consciousness. In Flat M@L every consciousness is an individuated part of M@L. This is the first fact of experience that we habitually extend 'beyond the horizon' and make an assumption. Here we are mislead by our spatial conceptions, derived from the sensory world. Just because our physical bodies are perceived as clearly separate entities in space we extend this idea to M@L and assume that our consciousness is also an enclosed unity. That's why we easily resonate with metaphors like bubbles, whirlpools, etc. Deep M@L, on the other hand, reveals that there's really only one space of consciousness. We can take the faces to represent our Earthly ego consciousness (and not the physical face) while everything 'behind' them represents subconsciousness. Nevertheless, we should imagine that our individual consciousness spans all the way from the One Center to the face - the light cones. Viewed in this way it can be said that different beings within Deep M@L are only different perspectives, points of view of the One Center. Because of the specific stage of evolution we find ourselves in, currently most people are conscious only at the Earthly ego face level, while everything behind is shrouded in sleep. As we'll see, it's possible for modern man, through self-development, to lift that shroud to varying extents. The spheres closer to the center represent archetypal ideas of Macrocosmic nature. As we go towards the periphery they are experienced in more and more complicated interrelationships, ultimately leading to the highly fragmented human condition of today. So the 'interior' of M@L is 'made of' ideas, yet not the rigid and lifeless concepts that we juggle with in our intellect but ideas that are actual living, creative processes. These are neither only intellectual metaphors for some external (to the personal whirlpool) processes in the Flat M@L, nor materialistic metaphors for biological and social functions. They are in the most real sense the creative ideas of Deep M@L, of whose complex interactions we are currently experiencing only a very fragmentary perspective. To distinguish these living processes within M@L from the rigid concepts of our intellect we'll call the former idea-beings.

Intellectual ideas only have meaning in relation to other ideas. For example, what meaning could it have to imagine empty M@L with nothing else but the single idea of a chair? This idea can never be what it is if it's not related to the ideas of human being, floor, gravity, etc. It is similar with the idea-beings. We shouldn't imagine that they are something self-contained that can exist independently. They only exist in relation to other idea-beings. In this sense we can say that idea-beings correspond to specific perspectives within M@L which receive their meaning only in relation to the unique constellation of all the other countless ideas-beings. We can think in the same way about man too. He's an idea-being that experiences the meaning of his perspective only because of his unique and highly complicated relation to the constellation of other idea-beings. For example, our perspective receives its natural 'feel' because M@L experiences (even if they are not conceptualized) the ideas of life, perception, desire, self, Earth, other humans, etc. We are idea-beings that struggle to find their proper relations to other idea-beings.
Seen in this way, we can envision M@L as the infinite and eternal idea-potential, which can be experienced through differentiated relative perspectives.

Compare the above with the view of the personal psyche in Flat M@L. There we have only a personal bubble that builds a mental representation of the supposed reality. Even though we assume we are part of one consciousness we can only envision that through intellectual abstractions (models that live entirely locally to our consciousness) or through mystical experiences, where all cognition ceases and we are left only with feeling and perception. This leads us to the next point.

The two views of M@L lead to diametrically opposite perspectives on the role of thinking. In Flat M@L thinking is viewed as a secondary effect. This also explains why the mystical meditative method is one for extinguishing all mental activity. From the mystic's point of view, the whole intellectual endeavor, and the whole Earthly life as a matter of fact, is to a great extent captured by the Sisyphus myth - the thinker only inflates his personal bubble but this doesn't at all get him closer to reality. Reality can only be felt and contemplated thoughtlessly when all thinking is abolished.
All this is very different in Deep M@L. Here we recognize that thinking is the actual expression of the primordial creative activity of M@L. At our stage of evolution M@L recognizes its existence through spiritual activity expressed in thoughts. This immediately hints that it is exactly through exploring the constraints of this activity that we come to know better and better what we really are.
In general, human thinking today is very superficial. It often remains at the level of hearing words, arranged in logical and grammatical unities. The first step towards understanding of our spiritual activity, is to exercise livingly experienced thinking. Once we can distinguish our living activity, of which the verbal thought is only the end result, similar to snake skin separated from the living being, we are on our way to understand what the light cone represents and also what is meant with 'behind' the face.
When we think about things like the ones we are describing so far, we are already probing the interior of Deep M@L through our thinking and extracting mineral-like concepts from there. If we think about myths, archetypes, etc., we're still doing that only intellectually, which is in fact an absolutely necessary step. To overcome the mineral-like concepts of the intellect we need the higher forms of cognition that are well known in Spiritual Science.
When we overcome thinking consisting of arranging mineral concepts in logical trains, thinking becomes a living organism, that can reshape itself, grow, shrink, merge with color, sound, feelings, etc. In certain sense our thinking becomes something like the octopus which can sense and repeat the shapes and colors of the environment through mimicry. Our thinking becomes both a metamorphosing activity and a sensing organ - much like the sense of touch depends both on activity and receptivity. Here's the place to dispel any doubts that what we are describing has anything to do wild fantasy. It's the exact opposite of fantasy. In fantasy we impose our will against reality. Here we use our will to touch and feel reality. We are only interested in our activity as far as it can confront something real, in a way similar to how the mathematician is interested only in proper relations of mathematical thoughts. Mathematical thoughts constrain and define each other. Similarly, through our mobile and living spiritual activity we actually explore the constraints that shape our sensing, imagination, ordinary thinking, feeling, willing, etc. In this way we begin to sense how the processes and idea-beings (including other humans) restrict and shape our own perspective. In Spiritual Science this stage of cognition is called Imaginative consciousness. It is no longer dependent on the sensory organs but explores through liberated spiritual activity the inner idea-geometry of Deep M@L and our relations to the idea-beings. Here we no longer have intellectual thoughts about things but we are experiencing the constellation of idea-beings that shape our perspective, by merging our cognitive activity with their dynamic imprints, and thus becoming aware of them. Yet from these experiences, concepts can be condensed, which can be used for communication and intellectual understanding. As long as we always remember that the concepts point to realities and should not turn into an abstract framework, we are safe from illusions.
The other two stages of cognition - Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness - lead to ever deeper experience of Deep M@L. Through Imaginations we become aware of the ways idea-beings restrict and shape our perspective but their inner life still remains somewhat remote from us. It's like having to learn about beings only through their movements and gestures but without any means of language. The next two stages of cognition progressively lead to more and more intimate experiences of the actual inner states that other beings experience.

We already see how radically different the two approaches are. In Flat M@L we are stuck either with abstract models that forever remain as floating structures within our own bubble or we sacrifice cognition in exchange of mystical feeling of oneness with the encompassing M@L. In Deep M@L it is through the evolution of cognition that we actually come to know what we are - an ever evolving perspective of the One Idea. Here we not only don't collapse cognition and succumb into nebulous feelings but cognition is our point of contact with the creative Idea - cognition evolves by feeling its way towards the archetypal forces that support the structure of Deep M@L. We come to know reality not when we dissolve into heartfelt oneness with the whole but when we continually integrate harmoniously the workings of M@L's creative ideas into our perspective.

Deep M@L allows us to solve the very significant mystery of time. Once we understand the hierarchically interacting idea-beings we come to view time as something completely different. Every idea-being is something holistic that encompasses relations with other idea-beings. An analogy with a symphony can be useful. Closest to the Center we have the archetypal idea of the symphony which exists as something whole, that can be encompassed from a certain M@L perspective as all existing in the 'now'. Yet this holistic idea can be seen also to spread out as a process with a beginning and an end, or exposition, development and recapitulation. This idea-being can be thought of as containing only the most general idea-potential for any conceivable symphony. It acts as a kernel in relation to which more specific ideas can be experienced. In certain sense, more differentiated idea-beings (perspectives) can explore how they can creatively unfold their activity within the context of higher archetypal ideas. When these ideas are differentiated further they become more and more specific, just as a musical idea becomes more and more specific as it goes through musical phrases, bars, notes, sound vibrations. Metaphorically speaking, it can be said that our human condition corresponds to a thus formed composition, experienced in what seems as linear time. But in reality it's all a matter of complicated non-linear interaction of idea-beings within Deep M@L. We explore this non-linear depth through thinking and the higher forms of cognition. It must be kept in mind that in this analogy the symphony should be taken as something living, in the sense that all parts evolve together, and they all contribute creatively. The archetypal form of the symphony doesn't dictate its details but only the general structure. Other idea-perspectives develop the details independently. Furthermore, man is not an isolated 'sound' in this hierarchy but his perspective spans all the way to the Center - there's no principal isolation. The 'man-sound' is not something isolated but, so to speak, represents a holographic perspective of the whole idea-structure - from the most archetypal, to the most detailed. Yet this perspective finds itself in relations to other differentiated holographic ideas. The difference for man lies in how well integrated his perspective is and whether he can identify himself only with the fragmentary 'sounds' or can gain consciousness also of the deeper archetypal ideas.
The illustration of Deep M@L above should be thought of as containing more and more holistic ideas as we move towards the Center, reaching an ideal unity of all-that-can-ever-be as an eternal 'now'. The Center should not be thought of as some special 'entity' but as the One Idea that unities harmoniously all ideas. It's not a question whether such an idea exists - if we can think about it - it exists. The question is how this idea relates to us and all other idea-beings. The movement towards the periphery can be envisioned as 'spectrum analyzing' the unity and experiencing perspectives of idea-beings as they find their relations with all other idea-beings. The metamorphoses of perspectives through these relations are experienced as continual becoming, which entails the experience of time. Even though we can hypothetically envision the One Idea itself as some absolute perspective that integrates within itself everything that can ever be, it's still true that the experience of a differentiated perspective within the whole is something different, experiencing itself as a unique interference of the One Idea and all other differentiated ideas.

Deep M@L is in full harmony with relativity (not speaking of the mathematical models but the general idea). All we ever experience is a single perspective of M@L. The illustrations above are misleading in this sense. There's no such perspective that can see M@L from such a third person vantage point. Yet through the higher forms of cognition we can know how other perspectives interact with us and even resonate as far as possible with their points of view. In certain sense, solipsism finds its healthy version with this. We are solipsists in the sense that we can never step outside and look on the whole M@L from third person perspective and we accept this. But we also don't need to fall into the Kantian trap and fantasize separate and inaccessible bubbles of consciousness for every being. All we can know about the different being-perspectives of M@L we'll find through the higher forms of consciousness. There are two important characteristics that distinguish healthy solipsism from the pathological. The first is that we should in no way imagine that we are responsible for anything else than our immediate spiritual activity, which is most clearly expressed in thinking. We have no reasons to believe (and it can never be anything more than belief) that our ego consciousness is somehow responsible also for the dynamics of all other beings. In healthy solipsism we fully embrace the autonomy of other beings and we simply acknowledge that we gain nothing by abstractly fantasizing their consciousnesses as some separate and opaque whirlpools, bubbles or brains. We focus on our interaction with the beings which is the only real thing we can experience. As we progress in our spiritual development these inner interactions become much more deeper and comprehensive, and give us much more intimate experience of the states of other beings, compared to just fantasizing their conscious experiences.
The second characteristic we'll address at the end of this discussion.

The question of evolution is not very clear in Flat M@L. One of the common views imagines that beings gradually coagulate and complexify from the ground M@L's unconscious awareness, which is nothing but idealized materialism. Other views assume more spiritual stance and view the physical realm as an arena for incarnation of souls. The paths of the souls and the world are largely decoupled. The world is seen as going through perpetual cycles, while the souls incarnate and gain experience independently, eventually reaching the non-dual state - their identification with M@L.

Deep M@L draws a different picture of evolution. This is seen directly from the fact that there's no difference between world and individual consciousness - the deeper, and increasingly unified idea-layers of the different perspectives are responsible also for their reflection in the unified outer world that we perceive through the senses. The evolution of the world is at the same time evolution of consciousness and even though different human perspectives can vary in their development, as a whole, humans, animals, plants, etc. evolve as parts of one Cosmic organism. It'll take us too far to go into details so we'll only sketch a very rudimentary picture of this vast topic.

Evolution doesn't proceed monotonically but in a rhythmic fashion. There are several grand iterations or eons through which M@L has passed before it reached its current state. In order to grasp something about the first and most remote from us stage, we have to discard all our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, life. Nothing of this existed at that time. It was a Cosmic state of M@L without any world, objects, etc. In every iteration some of the archetypal ideas differentiate and create from themselves a layer of multiplicity, a kind of multiplied reflection of their essence. The first iteration began with the reflection of what we can call the archetypal idea of will. These archetypes exist in timelessness. Very vague echo of this primordial condition we can find today when we think, for example, mathematically. The mathematical ideas and their relations are timeless but through our willed thinking they are experienced in temporal context. Of course, in these ancient times the ideas were not at all the rigid concepts of today's intellect. The archetypal idea of will, when it became reflected into temporal multiplicity, became the actual reality of will. There was not yet intellect at that time that could reflect in abstract concepts. As said earlier, all ideas exist in relations. There's no such thing as will as a thing in itself. Instead, through the differentiation of the archetypal will idea, it becomes at the same time the reflection of all other timeless ideas, to which the will-idea is related. Now the timeless ideas become related through temporal willed becoming. For this reason we speak of idea-beings - ideas in the process of temporal becoming. They are all willing their becoming towards the One timeless Idea, which is the perfect unity of all ideas.

The perspective of M@L, which through continuous transformations became what we experience today, at these ancient times was such that the One Idea of M@L could not at all recognize its essence in the multiplicity of will-reflections of archetypes. M@L, within man's perspective, was deeply unconscious at that time.
In the timeless, all ideas exist in all possible relations and degrees of integration. As the timeless becomes reflected into the temporal will, we find a whole spectrum of idea-beings at different levels of integration and thus - levels of consciousness. This is another consequence of the mentioned relativity. We should completely abandon the vision that there's some absolute and global state of M@L. Every perspective-being of M@L experiences its relations to all other idea-beings and its own becoming - it looks like the world and its evolution have been created just for its sake. In this sense, as idea-beings are actively working on their integration, they were also integrating man's perspective because the idea of man is part of them.

In the second iteration other archetypal beings reflected their timeless essence into multiplicity which intermingled with the already existing will-reflection. This gave rise to much more manifold relations between the ideas but comes at a price. Now the primordial state becomes as if slightly veiled. As an analogy, we can consider paper and ink as fundamental reality but when the ink is in the form of text, we experience second order ideas. These second order idea-experiences are unique in themselves but they overshadow the archetypal foundations. We gain a new, more convoluted mode of consciousness but at the price of obscuring the archetypal idea-beings.

In the third iteration yet another world of multiplicity is intermingled. Now M@L experiences something similar to today's dream consciousness but still in Cosmic setting. M@L still doesn't recognize itself as self-conscious being but flows together with images - impressions of all other idea-beings. Needless to say, this new consciousness veils even further the fundamental state.

Then we arrive at the fourth iteration in which we find ourselves today. Another archetypal idea becomes reflected in multiplicity - that of form. Now the perspective of M@L becomes sufficiently integrated that it can finally recognize itself as an active causative force within the idea-form of the ego. But at the same time we find ourselves in several levels of reflection which interrelate in the most fantastically complicated ways. The foundational state is covered in several veils. Yet these veils are not some hard boundaries. It is entirely within man's power to consciously integrate his perspective and to recognize how the four layers reflect within each other. Although we described the four iterations as following each other, in certain sense they are as if one into the other. That's the reason we can at all speak of them. Through Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness we can experience respectively how the third, second and first iterations work together. That's how we can explore the convoluted nature of M@L within its depth and trace how the archetypal ideas have metamorphosed through multiple reflections to reach the most abstract state that we experience today.
The journey through the first three iterations up to the middle of the fourth is know as involution. M@L's perspective convolutes into the reflections of archetypal idea-beings, ultimately reaching self-consciousness in the deep world of multiplicity. From M@L's perspective within man, it has always striven for integration. It was other idea-beings that inflate the reflected world, such that M@L can reach its point of awakening in a very complex state. M@L within man is always pointed at the same Central goal but in the period of involution it's integration is being outweighed by the expanding and convoluting forces of other idea-beings. This forces M@L to seek it's integration within more and more fragmentary or microcosmic domains. Finally it reaches its self-reflection within the ego and continues its integration as always. But now this integration begins to outweigh the expanding forces and the perspective begins to deconvolute by finding the harmony of the fragmented idea-reflections within the One timeless Idea. M@L will pass through fifth, sixth and seventh iterations which are like the reverse of the first three. Yet they'll be experienced in completely different way, in full consciousness - this we call evolution. Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness will be the normal states of cognition in the fifth, sixth and seventh iterations. At the end of the seventh iteration M@L will have accomplished its temporal journey and will experience from its own perspective all seven iterations as an integrated grand Cosmic Idea.

As we said, the illustration of Deep M@L above is incomplete. It represents only the deeper layers (which we can take to represent the iterations and the three higher forms of consciousness) but in reality there should be also three layers in front of the faces - the reflected multiplicities which mirror the three inner layers. This already shows the limitations of diagrams like this - there's simply no way to capture the facts in one single drawing. If we add three more outer concentric spheres to the illustration, although the outermost would seem as the furthest from the Center it is actually tightly related to the innermost - the outer is the differentiated reflection of the archetypal inner. The same hold for the other two. The fourth layer of ego consciousness (the faces) unites with its reflection in our eon that's why it's drawn as a single layer - the ego finds its unity in the multiplicity of thoughts. The three outer layers would represent perception (the outermost), life and desire. From these layers, which can be thought of as kingdoms of elemental nature, our bodily sheaths are composed. It should be noted that at our stage of evolution, the outer sheaths are not a product of our thinking ego consciousness. We are only associated with them and live in a kind of symbiosis. In the future iterations man will be spiritually creative in his bodily sheaths, just as today he creates his thoughts. These ideas are illustrated in the following slides (press the Play button). We need to emphasize the importance of the fact that no drawing can ever represent reality. That's why two different renderings are presented, which symbolize the same things in different ways. If we try to understand the illustrations in a literal way we'll be in the position of someone who reads the word 'Love' and doesn't realize that it points to experiential reality, but instead imagines Love as the shapes of the letters.



Just as other beings were active in our development, so we will be, once we evolve beyond the narrowly personal experiences. Man's activity will be such that he'll participate in the creation of conditions where other perspectives of M@L will be able to experience their unique awakening and evolution. So in this relative reality, we can say that there are always many parallel 'pipelines' of development. Those perspective of M@L that are on the evolving path of integration create the conditions for those that are yet to convolute into complexity. In this way M@L continually experiences perspectives that integrate the differentiated and fragmented experiences back into the eternal Cosmic infinite potential.

Whatever we say in few paragraphs can never be anything more than a quite superficial sketch. If there's interest in a deeper dive, I may put together something more detailed about the process of evolution and how it is experienced from the perspective of M@L.

Our particular evolutionary scenario is very peculiar in that a certain expansion of possibilities within multiplicity has been achieved. This is tightly related with the question of evil. Here we'll mention only something very general. In our fourth iteration M@L awakens to its own self-reflective, creative potential as a thinking ego. Yet this self-reflection is in a certain sense distorted, it's off-center and this prevents M@L to recognize itself as a Cosmic being. Instead M@L self-identifies within a limited context of perceptions and ideas which leads to the most varied kinds of incomplete self-images. In the most general sense this results in M@L being drawn either too much towards the fragmentary reflections or towards free-floating ideas. This is illustrated below:



In the first case M@L experiences fragmentary existence within the world of reflection and is thus forced to build its self-image out of these fragments. This condition corresponds to the general materialistic state where M@L identifies with the sensory perceptions of the body, thoughts and desires. It's not strictly necessary that this outlook should be materialistic. It can be completely spiritual but still M@L could see itself as amalgamation of spiritual elements (like in some versions of Flat M@L). This condition can be described as premature intellectualization. M@L has not yet reached the higher order ideas that bring unity to the perspective and feels compelled to build picture of itself and the world out of what is available at hand - sensory perceptions and fleeting spiritual life. In this way M@L misses its real center and tries to find its true nature entirely within the reflections.

In the second case M@L is drawn towards ideas freed from the conditioning of perceptions. This finds expression in arts, religion, spirituality. Here M@L sees the world of reflection as a hinderance for the expression of its true nature. Yet the center is missed again - thinking is viewed only as a marginal and inherently imperfect capability of consciousness. All forms of spiritual life that proceed from this off-center condition have something in common - there's always a sense of expectation. Thinking cognition is considered incapable of penetrating into the mysteries of existence, yet at the same time there are no other alternatives. Thus M@L resorts to religious and mystical feelings. These in themselves are not proper forms of cognition - thinking must find its peace with them. This produces a fundamental dichotomy which is also the cause for the mentioned sense for expectation. There's always something that is to be expected, some future event - Second Coming, First Contact - or most commonly, simply death. M@L feels locked in a state that it believes is beyond its own power to overcome. Thus it expects the experience of its true nature only by virtue of such an external event. This condition can be called premature spiritualization. M@L yearns for the life in higher order ideas but refuses to find how they reflect in the perceptions available at hand. These potential perceptions are expected at some future point.

M@L can't find its Macrocosmic nature within the reflections because there it finds only local unities. It can't find it in free-floating ideas either, because thinking is assumed incapable of penetrating in them and thus the resolution is expected at a future point. It should be noted that these two tendencies are always intermingled together - when one grows it creates the other as a mirror image and vice versa. When we combine the fragmentary perceptions with abstract thinking and theories we arrive at the physical Maya (illusion). When we build spiritual ideas as expectation supported by belief we arrive at spiritual Maya. Both these aspects inflate a whole sphere of phantom ideas that we are currently entangled with and which shape our lives. It should be noted that the phantom ideas of Maya are not in themselves evil. Evil issues because the ideas are one-sided, and when they are insistently pursued, we're ignorant of their disbalancing repercussions.

When M@L finds its balanced condition it experiences itself midway between ideas and perceptions (reflections). From this state can begin proper integration of the perspective. As this integration progresses, the higher forms of cognition are unveiled as the spiritual forces hidden behind ordinary thinking. In this way Macrocosmic ideas elucidate the world of reflections and through this M@L also recognizes itself in its Macrocosmic nature.

We can also mention that Deep M@L is in perfect accord with Quantum Mechanics. We can take the wave function as a symbol for the unique hierarchical constellation of idea-beings that constitute our perspective. Out of this constellation we decohere our thoughts. This is an important distinction compared to the commonly assumed view that consciousness collapses the wave function in the physical world. Obviously it's true that our activity affects the outer world but we can't claim that we experience this in any direct way. It's pure fantasy to imagine that our thoughts somehow further reduce to become the neurons and atoms of the brain. The physical structure has different origin which can be investigated only through the higher forms of cognition. Only in this way we can observe the perspectives of idea-beings from which the elemental kingdoms are reflected, in a similar way that our thoughts are reflected from our ideas through thinking.

The question of hierarchy is also problematic in Flat M@L, since it can only be conceived as external associations of beings. For example, in the first image there's a sphere that symbolizes a highly evolved being - deity - which can form relations with human beings. In this view it is completely a matter of choice to form such relations and it can even be seen as a hinderance if a being wants to find it's real grounds in M@L instead of looking for meaning in external relations.
In Deep M@L the whole idea of hierarchy has completely different meaning. It has nothing to do external hierarchical associations of beings but it's the actual structure of M@L itself. As far as our normal thinking is concerned, ideas clearly form hierarchical relationships. In Flat M@L these ideas are seen as representations of reality, existing only within the individual being's consciousness. In Deep M@L the ideas that we probe and experience in intellectual thoughts are the very same beings that can be revealed through higher cognition as living idea-beings. For example, the idea of Capitalism is actually an idea-being in the deeper layers of M@L. We shouldn't imagine that this being is only that. As an analogy, it would be incorrect to say that if someone pushes me, he is wholly a push-being. By saying that that there's an idea-being of Capitalism we refer only to the way this being Inspires our perspective. It's very difficult (especially from our limited human condition) to form a proper image of the actual experience of these beings. Even through Intuitive cognition, where we practically merge in resonance with the other being's perspective, we can understand only as much as this perspective has in common with ours. Anyway, this being of Capitalism has found its way into the evolution of humanity and individual humans structure their physical relations by expressing that idea-being in their thoughts and actions. This is a clear example of the way that our so called consensus reality is not some external agreement but is the result of the common layers of ideas that shape our individual perspectives and relate them together.
Here one may ask: "What's the practical value of such a view? In the end run it's quite irrelevant if we believe that ideas are just in our heads or are part of collective M@L." This is only true if we never leave the limited materialistic world conception. Otherwise there can be very significant differences. Let's take a global conflict as World War II. In the naïve view, this conflict issued because of a long chain of cause and effect relationships, which similar to domino pieces affected each other and finally culminated in the war. Yet within Deep M@L the picture is quite different. Before there's a conflict in the sensory realm, there's already a conflict between idea-beings in the deeper layers of M@L. These beings are in various relations with the national idea-beings, ultimately leading to specific attitudes between the populations of countries. Ultimately those in power can express these hidden forces and realize the ideal conflict into the physical plane. This already shows that humans are practically blindly following the processes in the deeper layers of M@L, imagining that they express their own national moods, their own ideas, etc., while in fact they are only becoming outlets for the hidden layers of M@L. And it's here that we touch upon the question of freedom and the task of humanity. It is up to us seek deeper understanding, through living thinking and the forms of higher cognition. When we understand the deeper structure of M@L we are also free to express the ideas that match our highest aspirations.
Interestingly, if we allow ourselves to go 'meta' about it, even this whole discussion already points to one such conflict between idea-beings. The ideas of Flat and Deep M@L are only abstractions of some deeper processes in M@L. According to individual Karma one may be drawn more towards one or the other. Irrelevant to which we sympathize, as long as we act out of feeling, we're unfree. What we say here about Deep M@L has no value if it's simply sympathized with or even worse - blindly believed. The only thing that counts is if it can be fully and livingly understood. Only then it can become healthy feeling and we can perceive the practical consequences of such a view.

The concept of Karma is not very straightforward in Flat M@L. Usually it's accepted that we need to be compassionate and free from desires that attach us to the sensory world if we want to reach the non-dual state but when it's a question about destiny, Karma between souls, etc., things become more obscure. There's no clear mechanism how the individual souls are related together. Some background mechanism is needed within M@L but without a method of its investigation it remains an object of belief.
In Deep M@L Karma is a very clear concept - it is the relations between idea-beings. Destinies are intertwined because we share a common idea world. If I do wrong to somebody we entangle with an elemental idea-process which, to put it into a metaphor, in my perspective is experienced as 'convex', while the other experiences as 'concave'. This process persists and affects both our perspectives until the entanglement is resolved.

Reincarnation is clearly comprehensible in Deep M@L. The loss of the physical body is only a detachment from the elemental beings of the physical sheath. Practically we don't go in some 'other' world but simply shift our focus of attention to phenomena in which we live all the time anyway but are outweighed by the intensity of the sensory perceptions (unless we consciously develop our sensitivity). After death we lose the physical basis of the senses and intellect and we are forced successively into Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive consciousness (which everyone experiences as far as they are developed). In our Earthly life we are not conscious of our relations with idea-beings (unless we work for it) but this is what we live in after the loss of the body. The whole reincarnation cycle is like a sub-rhythm of the grand iterations of M@L (as is also the sleep-waking rhythm). Every time we incarnate we go through an involutionary descent into the more convoluted states of consciousness, where we once again experience the acquisition of the ego and then, after death, we continue in Imaginative, Inspirative and finally Intuitive consciousness. When we reach this highest point we know that we are still an incomplete being, we don't feel as a stable self there but we are carried on the waves of the idea-beings. As we strive to acquire the unity of our Cosmic perspective, more and more the imperfections in that perspective begin to protrude and as we try to sort them out, they begin to transform into the seed-idea of what is to become our next incarnation, or descent into convolution of consciousness. As we become freer from personal entanglements, we become in position to work for the good of the whole humanity. We can't do otherwise because the layers of humanity are also part of our perspective. We can never reach perfection as long as the Cosmic organism as a whole is imperfect.
There's nothing extraordinary about the incarnational rhythm of convolution and deconvolution of consciousness. In a more balanced situation that rhythm wouldn't be perceived to be much different than a higher order of breathing. Today the gate of death is such a mystery only because humans have invested too much in the sphere of Maya at expense of the real picture. The greatest hinderance for the integration of reality into the sensory consciousness is not so much lack of knowledge, but much rather a mixture of feelings - fear, shame, guilt, pride and so on.

Deep M@L throws light on the historical development of religions. In ancient times man was still emerging out of his dreamy consciousness, slowly moving toward clear self-consciousness. At the time of ancient India, the perspective of humans, even though not yet lucidly self-aware, could experience as atavistic Imaginations the realities of the deeper layers of M@L. These Imaginations were not experienced as we can experience them today - as a mode of cognition - but as revelations, instinctive visions of deeper Cosmic realities. That's how the grand wisdom of the ancient Hindus has taken form. As time progressed, consciousness contracted more and more into the physical body and the Imaginations were slowly fading away. This gradually diminished the great Cosmic vistas to pantheism and mythology. Men could still feel the spiritual aspect within the elements, plants and animals. Higher truths were dressed in myths.
Buddhism marks an important evolutionary impulse which gives the important methods of self-discipline of mind, feeling and will, such that man can differentiate his spiritual being from the bodily sheaths. On the other hand the exploration of cognition through thinking exploded in ancient Greece.
We should mention the important mission of the Hebrew people. This is rarely taken into consideration but it was result of highest wisdom that they were commanded not to make an image of their God. We should really try to feel how different this was in the face of all other forms of spirituality which still had their idols or worshipped the elements. The Hebrews took a radical turn in the development of humanity. Whenever they had to address their God they had to turn inwards. They could only worship their God within the soul. In our discussion it should already be clear that this was a slow preparation for human consciousness to conceive of the Center of M@L. Man had to turn his gaze away from the revealed visions and idolatry perceptions and turn inwards to seek the one God.
The Christ event marks the culmination of this long preparatory work when, so to speak, the curvature of the Flat M@L was enclosed. Now for the first time in a physical body it was possible for a M@L perspective to experience itself in full self-consciousness. Of course this was only the turning point, the general perspectives of humans integrate at wildly different rates. For two thousand years this realization of Deep M@L was achievable only within the Mystery schools by the Initiates but now these deep secrets are gradually making their way in the general population. The Christ impulse is the impulse of Love. We see that Love receives a much deeper meaning than it is generally the case. 'Love your neighbor as yourself' finds a completely new meaning. It's one thing to love and have compassion for other beings in Flat M@L but it's a whole new level of Love to be able to find all beings within our own consciousness. Love is not some external law but the inner necessary condition if we're to reveal of our own deep structure. Without Love we insist on staying unconscious about reality and experience our being only within a very limited domain of ideas.
In Flat M@L the world religions are viewed as different paths supposedly leading to the same goal. Yet we'll never be able to comprehend these differences unless we put them into an evolutionary context. Without this we are simply forced to accept their peculiar natures, even though they are completely contradictory at times. All such contradictions are completely resolved in Deep M@L. Once we see the religions as evolutionary impulses that serve to develop certain faculties of humanity and ultimately lead to the integration of the deep perspective, everything becomes clear and fully comprehensible.

Dissociation boundaries are not an issue in Deep M@L. There's only one Central Idea and infinite possible perspectives. The reason that other perspectives seem to be isolated from ours is the same as the reason why someone who is mathematically illiterate is isolated from mathematical ideas and their symbolic perceptions. It's all a matter of development and integration of the perspective. Our physical bodies are clearly distinct in space and most certainly the perspective of M@L that we experience within these bodies is tightly related with them. Yet anyone who has experienced true empathy knows that soul life can imprint itself between different perspectives. In our ordinary state this takes form only of feeling but in the higher forms of consciousness it is real cognition of the way soul and spirit interact directly.

This question is so notoriously difficult only for the simple reason that we try to employ the wrong kind of cognition for it - that of the intellect. When we try to understand how different perspectives can experience each other, we almost inevitably assume the mentioned non-existent third-person point of view. The different perspectives are now only abstract symbol-thoughts in our mind which we struggle to imagine how to convert into actual first-person experience. Practically we're trying to accomplish the same impossible task that we call the hard problem of consciousness. We can't build from abstract thoughts our own experience, let alone the experience of several beings. All this is resolved when we realize in humility that it's only through the expansion and integration of our own and only perspective that we'll ever approach also the inner experiences of other beings. We can never understand anything about another being's perspective through abstract thinking alone. We need actual Love for this.

We spoke about resonating with the perspectives of other beings but didn't say anything about the transformation of our perspective, which leads us to higher levels of self. This is a very deep topic that deserves it's own separate essay. We'll only mention few words at the end of this discussion.

The question of morality is also completely clear in Deep M@L. Morality is not some arbitrary rules decreed by a Divinity for humans to follow. Instead, it's the measure for our spiritual activity and whether it leads to greater harmonization and integration of the Cosmic perspective or the opposite. Since the Cosmos is one and the same thing with our deeper strata of consciousness, while we work on the integration of our perspective we are at the same time working for the moral development of the whole world. Here we shouldn't imagine that we turn away from the outer world and manipulate reality only from the spiritual depths. No - we draw the moral impulses from the spiritual depths and then manifest them through our own activity in the outer world.

~~~

After all this an objection may be raised: "What if Flat M@L is the true reality and all the above exists only in the mind, in the individual bubble of consciousness?" We can answer this in two parts.

First, anyone how has experienced even the smallest glimpse of cognition deeper within M@L already knows the answer for certain. Why the certainty? Mystical, visionary, psychedelic, dream states, etc. have something in common - they are experienced as exceptional states that confront the intellect as a riddle. The intellectual self must decide what to do with these experiences, how they should be interpreted. This is very different in the higher stages of cognition. Just as our thinking is the only self-evidently certain thing in the ordinary state, so the higher forms of cognition are experienced in the same self-evident and certain way. They are even far more certain than the intellect because the intellect is only a more limited and rigid form of the higher forms of spiritual activity.

Of course the above can't be convincing for anyone who dismisses such things. This leads us to the second part which consists of the simple fact that everything above can be perfectly well understood by normal thinking. It's the logical relations between the concepts and their ability to elucidate the deepest mysteries of existence that gradually give us confidence that we're dealing with something serious. But the ideas must really be lived through. We can compare this with a description of a gymnastic exercise. One level of understanding is to build a mental picture of it. But we only gain real, experiential understanding if we perform the exercise. In our discussion we don't need to assume a physical posture but only a cognitive one, to experience the ideas in their proper relations. This doesn't require that anything should be believed - beliefs serve no purpose here - all that is needed is to livingly think the ideas through. Alas, such a living experience of ideas is often resisted. Usually there's an irrational fear that if the ideas are considered too up close, we can become deluded as the same person that speaks the ideas forth. But such a fear is unjustified. It's a matter of cognitive maturity. If we resist thinking some ideas through, just because we are afraid that they may shaken our understanding, this only speaks of the hidden uncertainty in our current foundations.
As it is always the case "Ye shall know them by their fruits" - if ideas like these bring lucidity, clarity, breadth, inspiration and most importantly - real soul force, then they'll prove their worth in practice.

Finally we'll address the second characteristic of what we called healthy solipsism. We should always be conscious that there are other levels of self behind our ego. We fall into a dangerous illusion if we imagine that our ego consciousness is 'top level' and everything we do is the product of free creativity issuing directly from the Center. We should never forget that all our thoughts, feelings, acts are experienced only as a limited perspective of M@L and it's our task to find our relation with the deeper layers. Even if we gain access to higher perspectives, and thus a glimpse of our higher self's point of view, our ego consciousness is still our primary mode of existence on Earth.
Similarly to the way our ego thinks the thoughts, so the higher Self Imaginatively dreams our ego and its desires - a higher dream that will become more and more lucid as we evolve. In our normal consciousness we feel our face as a kind of a mask standing in front of the ego, in higher cognition the ego itself stands as a mask in front of the higher Self. No matter how many university degrees, how much life experience, how much achievements we have, our ordinary self is still only a child in the eyes of the higher Self. We can't build the higher Self from our thoughts. We can only awaken in it through humility, sacrifice and prayer-like openness towards what is greater than us. The higher perspectives can't fit in our skull, so to speak. It's the other way around - they reveal how the skull and the ego living in it come to be. For this reason we need complete openness because the higher worlds are in everything, we can't locate them only here or there.
We are always in the middle - as the Hermetic principle says "As above, so below". But there's a radical difference in the way we address both of these worlds. In the below we employ our perception together with thinking, feeling and willing. But for the above we must reverse our attitude. We can approach that which doesn't yet fit in our conceptions only in the deepest humility. We need the missing science of prayer which leads us to the knowledge of the above through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. What is today commonly called prayer is a caricature. Without this prayer-like openness for the world of the Spirit we're like a body that is conscious only of its exhalation and imagines that it creates the air out of itself. Only when we find ourselves as a middle point that breathes in what comes from the higher realms, and then employs all the gifts thus received in the outer world, we find our upright stance within the Deep M@L.

When we speak of integration of perspective, it's too easy to imagine that as some kind of inflation, as sucking in the contents of the Cosmos into our consciousness. But in reality it's the opposite. In our Earthly state we have already sucked in the whole Cosmos in ourselves. Our 'face' consciousness is already at the tip of the convoluted Deep M@L iceberg. The actual integration is achieved through sacrifice. As long as we insistently identify with forms and patterns within our consciousness, we're not letting go of our self-image. That's also why the unity of perspectives is such a stumbling stone for the intellect. The thinking ego always reaches the point to ask "but what will happen with me?" As said earlier, here we are touching upon a whole science. We can't do much more than give hints. As Wisdom speaks "Oh lose yourself to find yourself anew."

Given things have been a bit quiet here of late, I thought I might ask another 101 question. How do we understand the anesthetized state in terms of the Deep M@L? The lights are out for the individual. There is negligible brain activity detectable. What is happening with the Thinking activity? What is going on behind the veil?

[lorenzop]

Being under anesthesia is a state of mind, just like dreaming, sleeping and being awake are states of mind.
They are states of mind not states of consciousness - we have to keep the mind and consciousness separate.
Using BK terminology, M@L is not a state of mind.
When you come out of surgery, and if you are asked if you felt anything, or was aware of the surgery you respond NO.
You respond with confidence , there was consciousness but no awareness of anything. ‘Awareness of’, ‘not aware of’ are states of mind.

[Cleric K]

Given things have been a bit quiet here of late, I thought I might ask another 101 question. How do we understand the anesthetized state in terms of the Deep M@L? The lights are out for the individual. There is negligible brain activity detectable. What is happening with the Thinking activity? What is going on behind the veil?

To use Lorenzo's terminology, we're aware of only that which can be integrated into the holistic state of our evolving "I"-experience. Today when people repeat consciousness, consciousness, consciousness, it is usually taken completely for granted that this consciousness experiences continuity through time. But it is easy to see that this continuity results only because of the continual integration of the states of being into the coherent "I"-experience. I know that many will object that the "I" is an illusion but then they should answer the following: imagine that instead of our usual stream of consciousness we were to experience successions of completely random states of being. Now we experience a 'frame' of inner experience of John Smith, then of some alien in a galaxy far away, then of a dog, then of a divinity and so on. Would there be a sense of continuity? Would there be awareness that our subjective state jumps through these random states? See, no matter how we try to avoid it, the very facts of existence lead us back to this continuity of a certain spiritual perspective. When we jump from the state of John Smith to that of the alien, we're not just any alien. We're an alien that can say to itself "an instant ago I was John Smith but now I'm an alien". So our current alien state must contain as memory within itself that it arrived from that of John Smith. Only because this spiritual perspective grows and embeds within itself reverberations of its previous states, we can speak of continuity of consciousness. If every our state of being was a disconnected complex of spiritual phenomena, there wouldn't be any consciousness of existence through time.

These are simple things, practically self-evident, yet because of the fascination with illusionism, the are ignored and one leaves the question of continuity of consciousness completely unexamined in the blind spot. One simply takes for granted that pure awareness somehow maintains identity through time.

If we reflect with the needed seriousness on this continuity of consciousness, we would find completely natural explanations of the different states - waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, anesthesia, etc.

One of the most prolific topics for reflection is to consider the following. Without any doubt, we can be conscious only of what we can think of. There simply isn't such a spiritual experience for which we can say "I experienced that but I can't think of it". It is true that we may not have clear cut concepts about the experience but we can certainly think about it by saying for example "I went through this inexplicable state. I don't know what it is but it was incredible." So if we introspect closely what we're doing when we think like that, we'll observe that when we say "I went through this inexplicable state" we really summon the memory of that state. We try to fill our soul with the the perceptual and feeling content, as if to reconstruct the mystical state.

Now what about things that we may have experienced but we simply don't have the conceptual and perceptual 'slots' to remember and think about in our waking state? Very simple - then we have what we have when we try to think about our deep dreamless sleep or anesthetic state. It seems that nothing happened there, that we went through darkness. Probably the only thing we can recollect is that we spent time in that darkness.

If we allow ourselves to reflect deeply on these topics most of the nature of higher cognition will also come out as a completely natural conclusion. Really, if we consider with humility that not only during sleep but even now we're submerged in a world of spiritual activity, which however doesn't register in our everyday thinking forms (not even into the popular spiritual concepts), then we'll realize that just because we don't remember anything of the dark states (except the duration of darkness) or just because we're not conscious in this very moment of the higher order Thinking flows that shape the dreamscape, it doesn't mean that they don't exist and they don't guide every 'frame' of our existence.

As a simplified example we can think of Amazonian natives who are conscious of their land being destroyed but have no concepts of economics, corporations, industry, etc. In short, they are not conscious of the forms of spiritual activity of 'civilized' man, which are responsible for the changes in their environment. So the natives may imagine that their land is destroyed for no reason at all, it's just a part of inexplicable flow of phenomena. But we know that there's living thinking spirit behind the events, which is knowable if we can resonate with its thought forms. This example is limited, because the forms of thinking of civilized man are not that different from those of the native, they are only more convoluted, more complicated, but still they revolve around the basic human needs and desires. To grasp the deeper layers of spiritual activity of the Cosmos, however, we need to explore forms of our own spiritual activity which our sensory perceptions and associated Earthly feelings and desires can't stimulate out of themselves. For this reason, these forms of spiritual activity simply pass through us unregistered and when the physical organs shut down we're left in duration of darkness. In reality this darkness if full of the activity of beings that work on human destinies, the evolution of humanity, the kingdoms and the whole Cosmic context. All this is a spiritual language. The dreamscape is shaped by lawful spiritual activity. Human concepts resonate, for example, with words (sounds). That's why we can think in words. But in the language of an angel, the 'words' are living streams in the soul strata of man and animals. If we are to understand the language of an angel we need to raise to a much more comprehensive view of soul life. We can never do this by declaring thing to be illusions and simply rest peacefully in nebulous feeling of unboundedness. We need real interest in our surrounding world, real empathic interest in the soul lives of our fellow beings. Only then we begin to grasp the archetypal streams within these lives. Only then we can begin to sense how the most varied beings modulate these streams. Yet all of this belongs to a higher order of the dreamscape. To find that order we need to see how our own life is embedded within this stream (we can't find it in others if we can't first find it in ourselves).

As long as our concepts are of the form "provide food", "have fun", "visit places", "reproduce", "imagine that everything is illusion" and so on, our spiritual activity is simply too dissimilar from the higher order spiritual activities. To understand a mathematician our spiritual gestures (math thinking) must become similar to those of the mathematician. In the same sense, to have consciousness of the higher orders spiritual activity that meaningfully shape the flow of reality, we need to liberate the forces currently chained in our intellectual forms and make this liberated spiritual activity similar to the higher order flows. Only in this way our consciousness grows into the depths of reality. Then we begin to cognize the hidden order of the dreamscape and can say "All this is always part of reality - it is what creates reality. But it is a language that simply passes through my cognition as far as it is chained to the intellectual forms. I had to liberate unsuspected forces that have been previously formatted in the rigid thought forms. Now my spiritual activity flows in a way similar to the way higher beings art the rhythms and forms of the dreamscape. As long as I didn't know myself as a spirit that can move in these ways, all of this was simply darkness." So in this sense, the development of higher cognition in our age consists first, in the fully conscious lifting of our spiritual activity from the rigid intellectual forms and finding ourselves as a higher being that can shape the flow of reality in novel ways (initially we shape this flow by mastering the flow of our own life of thinking, feeling, willing), second, in the ability to condense the higher flows into intellectual concepts and images. The latter we do not in order to become locked in these concepts but to build the gradient bridge along the depth axis, between the spiritual activity locked in the intellectual plane and the higher order spiritual activities that shape reality.

To summarize:
1. We can't take the darkness of sleep/anesthesia as some absolute quality of consciousness. Our consciousness can only be understood properly if we take into account the continual memory integration which alone gives the sense of continuity through time.
2. Then we understand we can only be conscious/remember things that can be properly integrated in our evolving state.
3. Even if we're surrounded by cognitive activity which however is too dissimilar from our own intellectual (or the lack of it in popular mysticism), then this world of activity is simply darkness to us.
4. By lifting Thinking from the rigid intellectual forms and finding the higher order flow of the spirit, we begin to live in higher languages of MAL's cognition. These languages do not consist simply of strings of reflective concepts that build mental pictures of the world-in-itself but are themselves the driving forces of the flows of the dreamscape, just like our own ordinary thinking, on a smaller scale, is the driving force of our thought perceptions and imagination.

[Anthony66]

Thanks Cleric. That all makes sense.

One of the most prolific topics for reflection is to consider the following. Without any doubt, we can be conscious only of what we can think of. There simply isn't such a spiritual experience for which we can say "I experienced that but I can't think of it". It is true that we may not have clear cut concepts about the experience but we can certainly think about it by saying for example "I went through this inexplicable state. I don't know what it is but it was incredible." So if we introspect closely what we're doing when we think like that, we'll observe that when we say "I went through this inexplicable state" we really summon the memory of that state. We try to fill our soul with the the perceptual and feeling content, as if to reconstruct the mystical state.

One would need to clearly define what we mean by "think" here. The mystic with years of meditative experience would claim that he reaches states of pure stillness and serenity, devoid of thinking. I have had glimpses of this state through my meditative practice. Certainly one can look back and bring to memory such as experiences and describe it using the mechanism of thinking. But it would seem that in the moment, thinking can cease.

[Federica]

Thanks Cleric. That all makes sense.

One of the most prolific topics for reflection is to consider the following. Without any doubt, we can be conscious only of what we can think of. There simply isn't such a spiritual experience for which we can say "I experienced that but I can't think of it". It is true that we may not have clear cut concepts about the experience but we can certainly think about it by saying for example "I went through this inexplicable state. I don't know what it is but it was incredible." So if we introspect closely what we're doing when we think like that, we'll observe that when we say "I went through this inexplicable state" we really summon the memory of that state. We try to fill our soul with the the perceptual and feeling content, as if to reconstruct the mystical state.

One would need to clearly define what we mean by "think" here. The mystic with years of meditative experience would claim that he reaches states of pure stillness and serenity, devoid of thinking. I have had glimpses of this state through my meditative practice. Certainly one can look back and bring to memory such as experiences and describe it using the mechanism of thinking. But it would seem that in the moment, thinking can cease.

As I understand it, this clear definition of what "think" means has been given, for example, in the various layers of the Central Topic. As I understand it - clearly, you are thinking when you now form a mental image (a memory) of your past state when you experienced 'cessation' of thinking. This thought/memory/mental image encompasses the “perceptual and feeling content, as if to reconstruct the mystical state”. As it does that, thinking ensures the I-continuity through time. It smoothly covers our I-experience through time, bridging that so-called cessation of thinking. So thinking is not only real-time thinking, filled with instant perception. Rather, thinking can also (and in a certain sense, only) be filled with past thinking, past feelings, past sensations, past content. In this way is woven the continuity of thinking that gives the I its reality. In a sense, it's the same thing. In this way, everything that is experienced is necessarily also 'covered' by thinking. This realization dissipates the illusion of no thought.

Maybe another way of saying it is this. In the twofold nature of thinking, there is always the content - what we are thinking about - and what we are doing with our thinking activity (or what our thinking activity is doing with us). A mystical state 'devoid of thinking' can happen. Then you have removed content from thinking, and there is nothing you are thinking about. This can happen. However this does not mean thinking as spiritual activity is absent at that moment. Your I is bridged. Thinking is there. Your I is in it. Your I is it. In other words, you are still having an experience that thinking is accompanying. And later you can even produce a thought that you can fill with the recollection of that moment. That recollection will constitute the content of the new thought. The new thought is a memory. Thinking cannot be interrupted. It has not ceased during the meditative state. It has maintained its encompassing, unifying quality all throughout. That's also why you can later attribute that experience to yourself and feel that it was you going through that particular state. Only, you have been fluctuating along the hysteresis curve through that period of time.