Metamorphoses of the Spirit: Transfiguring our Thinking (Part I)

[Eugene I]

The accusations for universalism are founded on prejudice. There are two ways to come to terms with the unity of the World. One is to accept everything as it is, as an amalgamation, where everything is fine the way it is. Ultimately this leads to some kind of deconstructivism. The other way is to penetrate into the actual spiritual organism that binds everything together. The reason that this is being seen as dictatorship is because from within the deconstructed perspective it looks like one deconstructed perspective tries to spread its view over all other. This probably fits well for the ambitions of the Church in the past centuries but has nothing to do with what we're speaking of here. We're interested in the true depth from which the deconstructed interest groups can be perceived and their origins explained. The only possible objection to this is that such a deep point of view is not possible, that the interest groups/individuals are the fundamental 'atoms' of the spiritual world and the One consciousness is only a neutral container for them, similarly to the way physical space is considered the container for particles. Clearly, on the purely abstract level, it's not possible to go beyond this conflict. It's one's word against another's. The only thing I can mention again is that the word derived from the higher worlds gives logical explanation for the conflicts between the deconstructed groups. It also gives the means and methods for their resolution and the possibility for the development of the individual's spiritual potential to the fullest, in complete freedom. Whoever wants to oppose these findings can do nothing more but proclaim them to be nothing more than a spiritual communistic ideology (clearly, all explanations about individual freedom and realization of human potential to the fullest have no power to show that such a view has no relation to the facts). Higher knowledge doesn't aim to destroy the interest groups, it just has the duty to indicate how they can make themselves compatible with the higher rhythms of Cosmic development. If nothing changes, shamanism will meet more and more only the inferior spirits. Instead of healing, all kinds of psychic deviations will develop and no one will know why. If nothing changes, nondual traditions will miss more and more the essential spiritual core of the human being. The outer world will fall more and more into decadence and the nondualist will explain this with the Kali Yuga, that he has to simply stay focused and pass through the incarnate dream and so on. There will be larger and larger disconnect between the interests of the souls and the happenings in the outer world, which results in a general mood of apathy. Things are even more clear for materialism, where even at this time, the life dispersed into the senses already leads to all kinds of nervous diseases (even though medicine is still a long way from spotting the connection). So it's not about spreading one ideology over everything else but elucidating the facts. Politics will continue, science will continue, arts will continue, economics will continue but everything will have to receive the light of the Spirit. The Divine must find its way into every expression of life. The ideas that spiritual life and Earthly happenings are strictly separate things or that spiritual life is the Earthly life, will be one of the greatest hinderances for evolution.

Cleric, you are confronting the "deconstructed" paradigm of development with the "single stream" paradigm. What I'm saying that those are not the only paradigms possible, and the "multi-stream" paradigm IMO is another possibility. The universe of consciousness with its infinite possible conscious states is very multi-dimensional, and there is not just a single common direction in which it expands and develops. The "multi stream" paradigm is about developing and exploring consciousness in all possible directions. A "seeming" side effect of it is a deconstruction and disconnect between groups travelling in different directions. But what actually happens is the mutual enhancement, because souls/alters may (and do) change their streams and learn from experiencing of multiple streams, and this is how the streams enrich each other, exchange methods and insights, and develop as a whole. As an analogy, it may seem that the modern science has fragmented into many areas of specialization and went into a deconstruction mode, but it is actually the opposite. We can see how quickly advances in one area get quickly adopted and applied in other areas. It's a living organism where diversity and narrow specialization goes together with information, ideas and technology exchange and mutual enrichment. Natural science is exploring all possible areas of nature available to us in all possible directions, there is no single "stream" or "discipline" of science. As a whole it is definitely progressing, but the progress is in its expansion, sophistication and covering more and more areas in many different directions.

[Cleric K]

Cleric, you are confronting the "deconstructed" paradigm of development with the "single stream" paradigm. What I'm saying that those are not the only paradigms possible, and the "multi-stream" paradigm IMO is another possibility. The universe of consciousness with its infinite possible conscious states is very multi-dimensional, and there is not just a single common direction in which it expands and develops. The "multi stream" paradigm is about developing and exploring consciousness in all possible directions. A "seeming" side effect of it is a deconstruction and disconnect between groups travelling in different directions. But what actually happens is the mutual enhancement, because souls/alters may (and do) change their streams and learn from experiencing of multiple streams, and this is how the streams enrich each other, exchange methods and insights, and develop as a whole. As an analogy, it may seem that the modern science has fragmented into many areas of specialization and went into a deconstruction mode, but it is actually the opposite. We can see how quickly advances in one area get quickly adopted and applied in other areas. It's a living organism where diversity and narrow specialization goes together with information, ideas and technology exchange and mutual enrichment. Natural science is exploring all possible areas of nature available to us in all possible directions, there is no single "stream" or "discipline" of science. As a whole it is definitely progressing, but the progress is in its expansion, sophistication and covering more and more areas in many different directions.

I understand, Eugene. The parallel streams always exist but it's a different matter when some streams are headed into a direction which exists only in the imagination. In my language there's a proverb that roughly translates to 'to do the bill without the bartender' - that is, we're imagining things in one way without taking the trouble to check against what Living Nature has to say about it. It's this Cosmic Context that needs to be explored, otherwise we're like the "man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash". And I do agree that building a house on sand is also a valid experience that consciousness can explore.

I don't want to sound like a fanatic clergyman saying all heathen are doomed to burn in hell. These times are gone. I would never go at Buddhist forum, or Christian forum and try to challenge their faith. But here we're in a place that values thinking. And even though the Sun-Spirit is still seen entirely as something religious by most, actually it is in the deepest sense connected with cognition. In the most real sense we attain to the Sun-Spirit when we trace our cognitive being, in the same way that the animal would attain to thinking if it were to trace it's instinctive impulses. Obviously there are many paths which still explore Earthly life without any question about the origins of the human spirit but let there be no illusion that one can penetrate the depths of being without finding the proper relation with the Sun-being. One can say "there are different paths that don't need any relations to the Sun-being." These paths exist on Earth but in the Macrocosm we simply don't have self-consciousness without proper relation to the Sun-being - we would lead a Moon, dream-like existence without the Sun, we are carried on a stream of imagery, dimly reacting with feelings. It's like we need to find through our free activity the proper relation to the brain if we want to think. Man is in exactly this situation in relation to his higher nature - he can only connect with it in absolute freedom.

[Eugene I]

I don't want to sound like a fanatic clergyman saying all heathen are doomed to burn in hell. These times are gone. I would never go at Buddhist forum, or Christian forum and try to challenge their faith. But here we're in a place that values thinking. And even though the Sun-Spirit is still seen entirely as something religious by most, actually it is in the deepest sense connected with cognition. In the most real sense we attain to the Sun-Spirit when we trace our cognitive being, in the same way that the animal would attain to thinking if it were to trace it's instinctive impulses. Obviously there are many paths which still explore Earthly life without any question about the origins of the human spirit but let there be no illusion that one can penetrate the depths of being without finding the proper relation with the Sun-being. One can say "there are different paths that don't need any relations to the Sun-being." These paths exist on Earth but in the Macrocosm we simply don't have self-consciousness without proper relation to the Sun-being - we would lead a Moon, dream-like existence without the Sun, we are carried on a stream of imagery, dimly reacting with feelings. It's like we need to find through our free activity the proper relation to the brain if we want to think. Man is in exactly this situation in relation to his higher nature - he can only connect with it in absolute freedom.

Well, yes, and many spiritual traditions and NDE accounts suggest that there is a Divine being (NDE experiencers call it the Being of Light). But as I said earlier, some NDE accounts suggests that he is not the only Divine being in the universe of Consciousness, just like the Sun is not the only star in the physical universe, so our local spiritual Sun may not be the center of the universe of Consciousness, which is not to de-prioritize or demean its role within its realm and its creation in any way. Since we currently live in its domain, we definitely need to have a relation to our Sun. Also, "integration" may not be the ultimate telos for the creation, as I mentioned before.

Also, what makes you think that he was represented exactly and only by the Christ and not by Krishna (per Bhagavad Gita) or Vajradhāra Buddha or any other traditional Deities, and that only Christianity presents the "true" perspective on the Divine? It was very eye-opening for me to learn from NDE accounts how different the Being of Light turned out to be compared to what I learned before from Christianity.

[AshvinP]

The whole idea of science was very different, as it included everything related to the four causes (ie Aristotle). So it included philosophy and theology. Any subject where the cause can be established exactly so that there could be no other cause, was science. It wasn’t about observing nature, abstracting it (usually mathematically), and then testing that the abstraction holds true as our modern understanding of science entails.

We can say the rigorous empirical aspect of science was not considered in Aquinas' time, but that does not fundamentally alter what is being pursued. All science, as all philosophy, is about observation and thinking. It is about taking some data from observation and figuring out, through reason, what higher order ideal relation (of concepts) explains that data. That was the same for Aquinas as it is for modern scientists.

]But how are you to verify things? Jung for example concluded that in psychology you see archetypes, and that these archetypes were in a sense shared between everyone in a collective consciousness. From an idealist perspective this of course makes a lot of sense. Now how do you know that this is not the same mistake physicalists make when they think material objects are the full reality? From a psychology perspective that doesn’t matter, for how they present in the psyche is what matters. That is the subject being studied. But when you expand this to physics, or to theology, you have to make a lot of assumptions about how the different ways of knowing correlate to the reality behind them. This is not a small thing. The very reason the scientific process is as it is, is because humans have a long history of making apparently obvious assumptions that turn out to be completely and fundamentally wrong.

I would argue "how they present in the psyche is what matters" for all philosophical and scientific pursuits. That is generally what we call phenomenology, basically starting with Hegel. Psychology, as Nietzsche observed, was in the best position to observe the psychic phenomenon which lead us back to their sources in the relations of idea-beings. The latter are what Jung termed "archetypes of the collective unconscious". Steiner took the phenomenological approach with our spiritual activity of thinking in the PoF, which is what the final part of this essay will explore. There is really no sense in me going beyond what I have already written since I hope to post that soon and I will not find a better way of explaining it than will be used in that final part.

[AshvinP]

I am not really following your metaphor here. What are the "modes" we are discussing? It seems to me like we are reverting to Flat MAL (as opposed to Deep MAL) with the whirlpool imagery.

The 'modes' would be any modality in which M@L is experiencing its ideation as a subjectified locus of Consciousness. So it could be in a cognitively more 'refined' transcorporeal way, i.e. beyond this corporeal idea construct, compatible with Cleric's model.

Got it. My hesitation with whirlpool analogy is the implication that the "subjectified" locuses of Consciousness are only temporary, and when we reach higher worlds it simply disappears back into the stream. Rather, I think it is more appropriate to say the higher worlds illuminate the intricate ideal relations which appear on the screen of our normal perception as tiny and fragmented whirlpools.

[AshvinP]

I don't want to sound like a fanatic clergyman saying all heathen are doomed to burn in hell. These times are gone. I would never go at Buddhist forum, or Christian forum and try to challenge their faith. But here we're in a place that values thinking. And even though the Sun-Spirit is still seen entirely as something religious by most, actually it is in the deepest sense connected with cognition. In the most real sense we attain to the Sun-Spirit when we trace our cognitive being, in the same way that the animal would attain to thinking if it were to trace it's instinctive impulses. Obviously there are many paths which still explore Earthly life without any question about the origins of the human spirit but let there be no illusion that one can penetrate the depths of being without finding the proper relation with the Sun-being. One can say "there are different paths that don't need any relations to the Sun-being." These paths exist on Earth but in the Macrocosm we simply don't have self-consciousness without proper relation to the Sun-being - we would lead a Moon, dream-like existence without the Sun, we are carried on a stream of imagery, dimly reacting with feelings. It's like we need to find through our free activity the proper relation to the brain if we want to think. Man is in exactly this situation in relation to his higher nature - he can only connect with it in absolute freedom.

Well, yes, and many spiritual traditions and NDE accounts suggest that there is a Divine being (NDE experiencers call it the Being of Light). But as I said earlier, some NDE accounts suggests that he is not the only Divine being in the universe of Consciousness, just like the Sun is not the only star in the physical universe, so our local spiritual Sun may not be the center of the universe of Consciousness, which is not to de-prioritize or demean its role within its realm and its creation in any way. Since we currently live in its domain, we definitely need to have a relation to our Sun. Also, "integration" may not be the ultimate telos for the creation, as I mentioned before.

Also, what makes you think that he was represented exactly and only by the Christ and not by Krishna (per Bhagavad Gita) or Vajradhāra Buddha or any other traditional Deities, and that only Christianity presents the "true" perspective on the Divine? It was very eye-opening for me to learn from NDE accounts how different the Being of Light turned out to be compared to what I learned before from Christianity.

Since I share that perspective I will provide my answer (from an admittedly abstract intellectual perspective for myself) - everything I have been writing about in the essays. Consider this - all the people quoted in Part 2 "Incarnating the Christ" shared that perspective and made metamorphic arguments to that effect. Also consider Barfield's philological argument provided in that essay. Then of course all the thinkers quoted in this part of the essay shared the Christ-perspective. So maybe the question should not be what makes us think that - Cleric and I have written plenty on why we think that - but what specifically makes you think that it is not the case. You have cited the varying NDE accounts, so duly noted. What else?

[Eugene I]

Since I share that perspective I will provide my answer (from an admittedly abstract intellectual perspective for myself) - everything I have been writing about in the essays. Consider this - all the people quoted in Part 2 "Incarnating the Christ" shared that perspective and made metamorphic arguments to that effect. Also consider Barfield's philological argument provided in that essay. Then of course all the thinkers quoted in this part of the essay shared the Christ-perspective. So maybe the question should not be what makes us think that - Cleric and I have written plenty on why we think that - but what specifically makes you think that it is not the case. You have cited the varying NDE accounts, so duly noted. What else?

You want to count people who share that belief against those who don't?
There are 2.3 billion Christians in the world who do.
There are 1.8 billion Moslems, 1.2 billion Hindus, 530 million Buddhists, 500 indigenous people and 14 million Judaists in the word who don't. Those are not atheists but believers in the existence of a Deity or Deities. If I start quoting form the philosophers belonging to those traditions, this thread will explode

[AshvinP]

Since I share that perspective I will provide my answer (from an admittedly abstract intellectual perspective for myself) - everything I have been writing about in the essays. Consider this - all the people quoted in Part 2 "Incarnating the Christ" shared that perspective and made metamorphic arguments to that effect. Also consider Barfield's philological argument provided in that essay. Then of course all the thinkers quoted in this part of the essay shared the Christ-perspective. So maybe the question should not be what makes us think that - Cleric and I have written plenty on why we think that - but what specifically makes you think that it is not the case. You have cited the varying NDE accounts, so duly noted. What else?

You want to count people who share that belief against those who don't?
There are 2.3 billion Christians in the world who do.
There are 1.8 billion Moslems, 1.2 billion Hindus, 530 million Buddhists, 500 indigenous people and 14 million Judaists in the word who don't. Those are not atheists but believers in the existence of a Deity or Deities. If I start quoting form the philosophers belonging to those traditions, this thread will explode

Sorry, I phrased that question poorly. What in the arguments Cleric or I have made for the Christo-centric approach do you take issue with? Not simply the conclusion of Christo-centrism, but the actual arguments. We have given plenty of arguments to choose from. It would be easier for you to specify one or two or three you take issue with than for us to keep making those same arguments over and over again each time you question the conclusion.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Got it. My hesitation with whirlpool analogy is the implication that the "subjectified" locuses of Consciousness are only temporary, and when we reach higher worlds it simply disappears back into the stream. Rather, I think it is more appropriate to say the higher worlds illuminate the intricate ideal relations which appear on the screen of our normal perception as tiny and fragmented whirlpools.

Well, as stated, the metaphor has its limitations. I'm not wanting to convey the cessation of subjectification, but rather the ever-evolving diversion and reversion of the focus of activity. The main point I'm trying to make is that I don't find much resonance with thinking in terms of disunion><reunion. But in trying to reframe it to convey what does resonate, words seem to be falling short. If I can come up with a way to express it better, I'll report back here, or in the next instalment.

[Simon Adams]

We can say the rigorous empirical aspect of science was not considered in Aquinas' time, but that does not fundamentally alter what is being pursued. All science, as all philosophy, is about observation and thinking. It is about taking some data from observation and figuring out, through reason, what higher order ideal relation (of concepts) explains that data. That was the same for Aquinas as it is for modern scientists.

Yes there is definitely a big overlap there.

I would argue "how they present in the psyche is what matters" for all philosophical and scientific pursuits. That is generally what we call phenomenology, basically starting with Hegel. Psychology, as Nietzsche observed, was in the best position to observe the psychic phenomenon which lead us back to their sources in the relations of idea-beings. The latter are what Jung termed "archetypes of the collective unconscious". Steiner took the phenomenological approach with our spiritual activity of thinking in the PoF, which is what the final part of this essay will explore. There is really no sense in me going beyond what I have already written since I hope to post that soon and I will not find a better way of explaining it than will be used in that final part.

I’ll wait for that, but at least we have found the root of where we disagree. It’s all about the grand narrative you have. We each build our own ‘wall of truth’, which is our Weltanschauung. For the physicalist, the foundations are laid on the material world, and it’s measured properties. For the artist it may be something like beauty. For the traditional theist, it’s god. Our ‘learning’ will nearly always be changing around the bricks on the top of the wall, or adding bricks. Normal decision making only ever looks at a couple of bricks at a time, something that would be critical for survival in an evolutionary sense. You don’t want to be thinking about the meaning of life every time a new predator comes sniffing around the cave entrance.

This is why people are so resistant to changing fundamental ontologies, as you can’t change the bricks at the bottom without much if not all of the rest of the wall coming down. It usually only happens when people are “at the end of their tether”, or something happening where they can see the whole wall at once. All these debates on the internet, YouTube etc can be seen in this light, as people from different ontological foundations are speaking about the top couple of rows on their wall, and wondering why they don’t match the top couple of rows of the person they’re talking to.

In the case of all those you mention, and presumably yourself, the foundation of the wall is the psyche. There are bricks and indeed whole courses that will match with someone’s wall where the foundation is god, but because they sit in a different part of the wall, there will always be a misalignment of sorts.