Part 2 of Kastrup and Vervaeke coming up May 21

[AshvinP]

Also, JV describes himself as a Neoplatonist on many different occasions and is clearly more aligned with my position on Thinking. He may engage in nondual meditative practices, just as Steiner and plenty of other Western adepts have done, but his world-conception is still much more aligned with a Plotinus, Aquinas, Spinoza, Hegel, Steiner, etc. You are very skilled at referencing people who fundamentally disagree with your position as support, like you did with Heidegger... I will give you that

Right, this is why I said that I'm sympathetic with John's approach as an integration of Eastern and Western paths. I know form my own experience that the Eastern insights and practices are practically working and beneficial, and John and plenty of others also confirm that from their experiences, so there is no way I will give up on them. But, just like John, I'm very opened to integrating them with Western parts, and I've been in fact doing it as part of my personal path.

I am not sure where you got the idea that Steiner or Cleric's approach does not "integrate" the Eastern path in terms of all the helpful practices. I remember Cleric even described his own meditative practice while he was doing it. And, from what I understand, Steiner goes much further in terms of the critical role Eastern spirituality has played in the past and will play in the centuries to come. Since the West is in decline, in some ways the Eastern spirituality will play an even more important role than Western, although authentic Christianity, rediscovered as concrete relation with Christ being from within, remains as the connective tissue between the two. So if you were under the misunderstanding that spiritual science excludes such things this entire time, perhaps that clarification will go a long way to reconciling our respective positions.

But anyway, can we also return to the core issues we began to discuss here? You claimed we must stop trying to "grab and hold" corners of the phenomenal world, because they are fundamentally impermanent and therefore cause deleterious attachment. I stated that I argue for the exact opposite with relation to the phenomenal world. Of course we are not talking about basic egotism and materialist attachment here... no one here argues that is good or healthy, so please do not revert to that. We are talking metaphysics and epistemology - whether a) it is possible for us to grab hold of some noumenal aspect of the phenomenal world (which is a possibility even many Western idealists would rule out) and (b) if it is possible, whether we should strive to do so in order to expand knowledge of the noumenal relations. What do you think?

That is a big and still open question for me: is there any, as you say, "noumenal" aspects in the phenomenal world? I have no strong reason to believe there are, yet I'm open to considerations. But before even attempting to do that, we should first define what we exactly mean by "noumenal", and second, find out if there are any experiential facts/evidences or rationale to support such assumption. Perhaps other term instead of "noumenal" would be more appropriate here.

But I'm actually not claiming that we should never grasp on any phenomenal forms, that would be an extremist position. Once we transcend identification with and clinging to our egoic structures and attain spiritual freedom, there is nothing wrong with valuing and even clinging to things of the phenomenal world (as long as we watch for the remainings of the ego to sneak in and grasp on them behind our consciousness, because it is usually the ego that tends to grasp). It becomes a question of practical spiritual psychology - we should just watch if our tendency to grasp gets in the way and starts making more harm than good, because usually when we grasp on something, we become dependent on it and tend to go into conflicts with people who do not share our preferences/attachments.

What I mean here by "grasping" (or whatever similar term we use) is cognitive grasping (and emotional, but let's just focus on cognition for now), as a conscious means of finding a 'jumping off point' from which we can build systematic understanding of truly noumenal relations. "Noumenal" being the underlying ideal relations which give rise to all that we experience from our senses and thoughtful inquiry (primarily our solid scientific data points and concepts which connect them, but also solid philosophical conclusions). I think it's clear that I incline towards a conception in which those ideal relations are actual beings with personalities, which is also how Nietzsche (sort of), Jung, Barfield, and of course Steiner conceived of the relations, but we do not need to presume that at this point. We just need to answer the question of whether there is something in the phenomenal world which we can grasp to 'leverage' our way into those underlying ideal relations so they can be systematically experienced and investigated. What do you think?

[Eugene I]

I am not sure where you got the idea that Steiner or Cleric's approach does not "integrate" the Eastern path in terms of all the helpful practices. I remember Cleric even described his own meditative practice while he was doing it. And, from what I understand, Steiner goes much further in terms of the critical role Eastern spirituality has played in the past and will play in the centuries to come. Since the West is in decline, in some ways the Eastern spirituality will play an even more important role than Western, although authentic Christianity, rediscovered as concrete relation with Christ being from within, remains as the connective tissue between the two. So if you were under the misunderstanding that spiritual science excludes such things this entire time, perhaps that clarification will go a long way to reconciling our respective positions.

Well, just practicing meditation is only scratching the surface, there is a lot more to the the Eastern practices, and sorry to say that, but based on your and Cleric's critical but shallow judgments about the Eastern traditions, you are clearly lacking practical and spiritual experience and deep understanding of them. If you are really interested in integrating them, you would need to dive deeper and more openly and wholeheartedly into them to discover all their benefits and psychological/spiritual processes they employ, and then bring them to integrate into your paradigm.

What I mean here by "grasping" (or whatever similar term we use) is cognitive grasping (and emotional, but let's just focus on cognition for now), as a conscious means of finding a 'jumping off point' from which we can build systematic understanding of truly noumenal relations. "Noumenal" being the underlying ideal relations which give rise to all that we experience from our senses and thoughtful inquiry (primarily our solid scientific data points and concepts which connect them, but also solid philosophical conclusions). I think it's clear that I incline towards a conception in which those ideal relations are actual beings with personalities, which is also how Nietzsche (sort of), Jung, Barfield, and of course Steiner conceived of the relations, but we do not need to presume that at this point. We just need to answer the question of whether there is something in the phenomenal world which we can grasp to 'leverage' our way into those underlying ideal relations so they can be systematically experienced and investigated. What do you think?

As usual, there is much confusion around terminology (regarding "clinging"), people imply different meanings to the same words.

Regarding the ideal relations, this is rather a Platonic view, but I'm open to that. I honestly have little knowledge of this tradition but I have a book on the history of Platonism/Neo-Platonism and plan to read it sometime.

[AshvinP]

I am not sure where you got the idea that Steiner or Cleric's approach does not "integrate" the Eastern path in terms of all the helpful practices. I remember Cleric even described his own meditative practice while he was doing it. And, from what I understand, Steiner goes much further in terms of the critical role Eastern spirituality has played in the past and will play in the centuries to come. Since the West is in decline, in some ways the Eastern spirituality will play an even more important role than Western, although authentic Christianity, rediscovered as concrete relation with Christ being from within, remains as the connective tissue between the two. So if you were under the misunderstanding that spiritual science excludes such things this entire time, perhaps that clarification will go a long way to reconciling our respective positions.

Well, just practicing meditation is only scratching the surface, there is a lot more to the the Eastern practices, and sorry to say that, but based on your and Cleric's critical but shallow judgments about the Eastern traditions, you are clearly lacking practical and spiritual experience and deep understanding of them. If you are really interested in integrating them, you would need to dive deeper and more openly and wholeheartedly into them to discover all their benefits and psychological/spiritual processes they employ, and then bring them to integrate into your paradigm.

I believe you say that because we have any judgments at all about Eastern traditions. For you, judgments of what someone else considers important are impermissible, even though you engage in such judgments often. No matter what I say here, and how much I point to the deep knowledge of a Steiner or a Jung about Eastern traditions, including Steiner's practice of such things, you will claim they and Cleric are misunderstanding because they are passing some judgment. It is especially hypocritical because, what you call "integration", is effectively annihilation of the Western paradigm from all consideration. You merely want the appearance of being "tolerant" to other traditions even though the substance of what you claim is an outright rejection of those traditions.

What I mean here by "grasping" (or whatever similar term we use) is cognitive grasping (and emotional, but let's just focus on cognition for now), as a conscious means of finding a 'jumping off point' from which we can build systematic understanding of truly noumenal relations. "Noumenal" being the underlying ideal relations which give rise to all that we experience from our senses and thoughtful inquiry (primarily our solid scientific data points and concepts which connect them, but also solid philosophical conclusions). I think it's clear that I incline towards a conception in which those ideal relations are actual beings with personalities, which is also how Nietzsche (sort of), Jung, Barfield, and of course Steiner conceived of the relations, but we do not need to presume that at this point. We just need to answer the question of whether there is something in the phenomenal world which we can grasp to 'leverage' our way into those underlying ideal relations so they can be systematically experienced and investigated. What do you think?

As usual, there is much confusion around terminology (regarding "clinging"), people imply different meanings to the same words.

Regarding the ideal relations, this is rather a Platonic view, but I'm open to that. I honestly have little knowledge of this tradition but I have a book on the history of Platonism/Neo-Platonism and plan to read it sometime.

Why are we now back to reducing everything to philosophical labels?? I am asking specific questions which are not at all dependent on the labels. The concepts of noumenon and phenomenon are very simple and I know you have knowledge of them through basic familiarity with philosophy. You seem to abort every discussion of these things as soon as they get to the threshold of making actual progress, which is not very different from your strategy towards spirituality in general.

[AshvinP]

I have almost finished the interview. Around 1:30 JV mentiond the stark contrast between assumptions around knowledge and wisdom before and after Descartes. No reason is given for why there is such a sudden shift. Bk is aware of the metamorphic argument as he has read Barfield and Gebser but also does not mention it.

This is a major stumbling block for all philosophy and science now. Perhaps the metamorphic argument is not seen as one with enough substantial evidence to explicitly incorporate. I disagree, but it is reasonable given how radical the claim is by standards of historical study in the modern era.

Clearly JV and BK feel a sense of urgency about the meaning crisis and all the counterfeit paradigms asserting themselves to fill that void. I hope they will also see how the metamorphic progression must be confronted head on to show how such paradigms are hollow and the types of discussions they are having need to be broadened out.

[Adur Alkain]

I really enjoyed this long conversation (I also watched part 1). I think John Vervaeke is one of the most stimulating thinkers around, his series of lectures on his Youtube channel is epic. It was nice to witness the respectful and even heartful interaction between him and Bernardo.

I especially loved what Bernardo said about not judging yourself (which also implies not judging others). He was expressing true wisdom there.