Part 2 of Kastrup and Vervaeke coming up May 21

[AshvinP]

Not true... you are treating Thinking as a flashlight which sheds light on unified objects so we too can then realize they are unified. That is not how it works. It makes no sense to speak of "always ontologically unified" objects in the world unless Thinking has first unified their percept-concept aspects.

So, are you saying that the objects are actually separate from the Ontic Primitive unless/until they are unified by thinking?
Or do you mean that no objects/experiences can even come into existence unless "thinking has first unified their percept-concept aspects"?

No to first, yes to second.

No phenomenal world comes into existence without unifying Thinking activity. This will not make sense for anyone holding to Kantian divide and, of course, any materialist-dualist view. Under the monist idealist view, "comes into existence" is not essentially different than "being attended to by Thinking". We can never rule out that there is some separate realm of experiences which somehow "stock" our realm with 'copies' of those experiences when we start Thinking in relation to them, but such a realm is by definition external to our experience, can never be known, and, therefore, may as well not exist.

[Eugene I]

No phenomenal world comes into existence without unifying Thinking activity. This will not make sense for anyone holding to Kantian divide and, of course, any materialist-dualist view. Under the monist idealist view, "comes into existence" is not essentially different than "being attended to by Thinking". We can never rule out that there is some separate realm of experiences which somehow "stock" our realm with 'copies' of those experiences when we start Thinking in relation to them, but such a realm is by definition external to our experience, can never be known, and, therefore, may as well not exist.

I agree with that, simply because the phenomenal world is actually the product of thinking activity of Consciousness on the large scale.
But when it comes to the local thinking activity within the individual alter, such "local" thinking activity may not "process" certain aspects or qualia of the phenomenal world presented in the field of experience. So there is no contradiction between the above statements.

Yet there is a puzzling "chicken and egg" problem here. No phenomena of thinking activity can come into being without the ability of thinking to exist in the first place. Here "in the first place" does not mean progression in time (as if there was a state of the existence of potential thinking activity without any actual thinking and existence of phenomena). So, thinking could not produce any ideas/phenomena if thinking would not exist. Thinking could not self-reflect and know that it is thinking unless it would exists and would be able to consciously experience its own thinking. So the existence and awareness of thinking are not ideas or products of thinking, but rather prerequisite aspects of it. This is why Vervaeke calls them "adverbial aspects". This is not to say that these aspects ever exist "without" thinking or in any way separate from it.

In Scott's terms, the formless does not exist without forms. But equally, the forms do not, and in principle can not exist without formless. Forms and formless (existence-awareness) are two inseparable parts of Reality, and abstracting only one aspect and ignoring the other, or reducing formless to forms, would be a distortion of reality.

[AshvinP]

No phenomenal world comes into existence without unifying Thinking activity. This will not make sense for anyone holding to Kantian divide and, of course, any materialist-dualist view. Under the monist idealist view, "comes into existence" is not essentially different than "being attended to by Thinking". We can never rule out that there is some separate realm of experiences which somehow "stock" our realm with 'copies' of those experiences when we start Thinking in relation to them, but such a realm is by definition external to our experience, can never be known, and, therefore, may as well not exist.

I agree with that, simply because the phenomenal world is actually the product of thinking activity of Consciousness on the large scale.
But when it comes to the local thinking activity within the individual alter, such "local" thinking activity may not "process" certain aspects or qualia of the phenomenal world presented in the field of experience. So there is no contradiction between the above statements.

Yet there is a puzzling "chicken and egg" problem here. No phenomena of thinking activity can come into being without the ability of thinking to exist in the first place. Here "in the first place" does not mean progression in time (as if there was a state of the existence of potential thinking activity without any actual thinking and existence of phenomena). So, thinking could not produce any ideas/phenomena if thinking would not exist. Thinking could not self-reflect and know that it is thinking unless it would exists and would be able to consciously experience its own thinking. So the existence and awareness of thinking are not ideas or products of thinking, but rather prerequisite aspects of it. This is why Vervaeke calls them "adverbial aspects". This is not to say that these aspects ever exist "without" thinking or in any way separate from it.

In Scott's terms, the formless does not exist without forms. But equally, the forms do not, and in principle can not exist without formless. Forms and formless (existence-awareness) are two inseparable parts of Reality, and abstracting only one aspect and ignoring the other, or reducing formless to forms, would be a distortion of reality.

The phenomenal co-creation, "participatory knowing" that JV references in the discussion, happens at all scales including the individual person. It is also important to remember the metamorphic progression - participatory Thinking has gone from passive experience of outward thoughts moving inwards to active experience of inward thoughts moving outwards and, although we have briefly lost all awareness of the participatory aspect, that will not remain true indefinitely and our Thinking activity will then have major influence on the phenomenal world. None of these relations remain static and frozen in time. And that is also why we must learn to "control our thoughts like we control our arms and legs" (Steiner).

The "chicken and egg" puzzle goes away once we realize Thinking is fundamental - yes Thinking presupposes conscious experience and conscious experience presupposes Thinking. Willing, Feeling, and Thinking are all fundamental formless forces. You seem to keep placing Thinking in category of "impermanent forms" where it does not belong - it is permanent formless activity. And it is the only activity which we can know as our own and can observe how thought-forms integrate with percepts to create unified experience of world content. Any claims that assert otherwise are themselves products of Thinking activity, so they do not have any warrant to claim unification apart from Thinking.

[Eugene I]

The "chicken and egg" puzzle goes away once we realize Thinking is fundamental - yes Thinking presupposes conscious experience and conscious experience presupposes Thinking. Willing, Feeling, and Thinking are all fundamental formless forces. You seem to keep placing Thinking in category of "impermanent forms" where it does not belong - it is permanent formless activity. And it is the only activity which we can know as our own and can observe how thought-forms integrate with percepts to create unified experience of world content. Any claims that assert otherwise are themselves products of Thinking activity, so they do not have any warrant to claim unification apart from Thinking.

Let's leave behind this misunderstanding/miscommunication. I never said that Thinking, as an immanent and fundamental activity of Consciousness, is impermanent. I agree that Thinking itself is part of the formless aspects, and I confirmed it many times. It has also always been part of the Buddhist philosophy where Nirmanakaya - the thinking/manifestation activity - is an inseparable part of the Trikaya, the unity of fundamental aspects of emptiness-beingness (Dharmakaya), awareness (Sambhogakaya) and manifestation of forms (Nirmanakaya). What I was saying is that phenomena themselves, which are the products of the thinking activity, are always impermanent. And the key here is that this fundamental triple-aspect of Reality (Existence-Experiencing-Thinking) by itself is not ideas/phenomena, they are formless aspects and not forms, they are always permanent (while forms are always impermanent), and they are aspects of Reality that makes ideas/phenomena possible and that manifest them into existence. At the same time, these aspects never exist without or apart from forms, exactly because the thinking activity is permanent and therefore unstoppable.

[AshvinP]

The "chicken and egg" puzzle goes away once we realize Thinking is fundamental - yes Thinking presupposes conscious experience and conscious experience presupposes Thinking. Willing, Feeling, and Thinking are all fundamental formless forces. You seem to keep placing Thinking in category of "impermanent forms" where it does not belong - it is permanent formless activity. And it is the only activity which we can know as our own and can observe how thought-forms integrate with percepts to create unified experience of world content. Any claims that assert otherwise are themselves products of Thinking activity, so they do not have any warrant to claim unification apart from Thinking.

Let's leave behind this misunderstanding/miscommunication. I never said that Thinking, as an immanent and fundamental activity of Consciousness, is impermanent. I agree that Thinking itself is part of the formless aspects, and I confirmed it many times, and it has always been part of teh Buddhist philosophy where Nirmanakaya - the thinking/manifestation activity - is an inseparable part of the Trikaya, the unity of emptiness (Dharmakaya), awareness (Sambhogakaya) and manifestation of forms (Nirmanakaya). What I was saying is that phenomena themselves, which are the products of the thinking activity, are always impermanent. And the key here is that this fundamental triple-aspect of Reality (Existence-Experiencing-Thinking) by itself is not ideas/phenomena, they are formless aspects and not forms, they are always permanent (while forms are always impermanent), and they are aspects of Reality that makes ideas/phenomena possible and that manifest them into existence.

I would love to leave it behind but it has cropped up again in your post above. Maybe it would help if you just explain what is the significance that the "phenomena themselves [forms], which are products of thinking activity, are always impermanent". What knowledge do we gain about Thinking activity or thought-forms from realizing this "impermanence"?

Of course, I do not agree forms as such are impermanent. The whole point of Scott's mumorphism is to show how formless force is not other than formative force and therefore both are fundamental to every experience we have had or could possibly have. These forces constitute each other by working through and against each other. So thought-forms are just as fundamental as Thinking activity. Do you agree?

[Eugene I]

I would love to leave it behind but it has cropped up again in your post above. Maybe it would help if you just explain what is the significance that the "phenomena themselves [forms], which are products of thinking activity, are always impermanent". What knowledge do we gain about Thinking activity or thought-forms from realizing this "impermanence"?

Of course, I do not agree forms as such are impermanent. The whole point of Scott's mumorphism is to show how formless force is not other than formative force and therefore both are fundamental to every experience we have had or could possibly have. These forces constitute each other by working through and against each other. So thought-forms are just as fundamental as Thinking activity. Do you agree?

As I said before, the question is "what's ontic/fundamental and what's not" is irrelevant and to me is meaningless. The point is, while the thinking activity itself is permanent, the forms that it produces are always impermanent, while inseparable from the the Reality/muomorphism. This is all we know from our own experience. You can still always assume that all the forms always exist (in potentiality or actuality) somewhere else in Consciousness the infinite "reservoir" of forms/ideas, but that is a Platonic assumption that I do not necessarily subscribe to.

The significance of such knowledge (which is part of the Buddhist four "noble truths") is a different non-philosophical but rather practical-spiritual-psychological part of the non-dual spiritual practice. It points us to the fact that we can never grab and hold to anything in the phenomenal world (including the spiritual practices/paths/castles themselves) because everything there in the phenomenal world is ultimately impermanent. This is not to say that it has no value or meaning. It's just to release the "grabbing" tendency to it, and such release unleashes the fundamental freedom of Consciousness from being conditioned by the forms/structures that it creates.

Western traditions also pose the fundamental freedom of choice that all conscious beings possess, and it is this freedom that gives us the power to disengage from our egoic impulses and make choices and decisions towards higher spiritual realities without being conditioned by the egoic structures. It is this fundamental freedom that makes spiritual development possible, otherwise we would be forever animal thinking machines who always follow their egoic desires. So, the realization of the impermanence of forms was one of the tools in the Buddhist practice to re-claim and realize such freedom of choice.

Another part of this is realization that what we ARE existentially are never the impermanent forms (the body, human mind, thoughts, emotions etc), but THAT which produces and knows the forms - the beingness-awareness-thinking itself. The impermanent forms are what we DO, but not what we permanently ARE. The forms cannot produce and experience themselves, its is the aspects of formlessness (experiencing-thinking) that produces and experiences the forms. The forms do not exist but by themselves, but it is the beingness aspect of formlessness that makes their existence possible. This realization releases us from false identification with impermanent forms that we always tend to do and which is at the root of our egotism and selfishness.

[AshvinP]

I would love to leave it behind but it has cropped up again in your post above. Maybe it would help if you just explain what is the significance that the "phenomena themselves [forms], which are products of thinking activity, are always impermanent". What knowledge do we gain about Thinking activity or thought-forms from realizing this "impermanence"?

Of course, I do not agree forms as such are impermanent. The whole point of Scott's mumorphism is to show how formless force is not other than formative force and therefore both are fundamental to every experience we have had or could possibly have. These forces constitute each other by working through and against each other. So thought-forms are just as fundamental as Thinking activity. Do you agree?

As I said before, the question is "what's ontic/fundamental and what's not" is irrelevant and to me is meaningless. The point is, while the thinking activity itself is permanent, the forms that it produces are always impermanent, while inseparable from the the Reality/muomorphism. This is all we know from our own experience. You can still always assume that all the forms always exist (in potentiality or actuality) somewhere else in Consciousness the infinite "reservoir" of forms/ideas, but that is a Platonic assumption that I do not necessarily subscribe to.

The significance of such knowledge (which is part of the Buddhist four "noble truths") is a different non-philosophical but rather practical-spiritual-psychological part of the non-dual spiritual practice. It points us to the fact that we can never grab and hold to anything in the phenomenal world (including the spiritual practices/paths/castles themselves) because everything there in the phenomenal world is ultimately impermanent. This is not to say that it has no value or meaning. It's just to release the "grabbing" tendency to it, and such release unleashes the fundamental freedom of Consciousness from being conditioned by the forms/structures that it creates.

Right, and that is why I asked the question, because I suspected that was the significance of labeling thought-forms "impermanent". It is diametrically opposed to what I am arguing for in various essays. Although I would much rather my views (or Cleric's) be opposed in this constructive way than with simple dismissals as "fantasy", so I must thank you for that. These types of criticisms get some good discussion going so that, even if we are not convincing the other person, our positions are being clarified to everyone's benefit.

What I am arguing is precisely that Thinking activity is the only activity which allows us to "grab and hold [something] in the phenomenal world". Moreover, I am arguing this grabbing and holding of the phenomenal world is of the utmost importance in our age, because without it we have a guaranteed descent into more nihilism. Again, "we must learn to control our thoughts like we control our arms and legs". I would argue that is also the fundamental mission of thinkers like BK and JV - it is the primary reason they have these discussions with such a sense of urgency in the first place.

The reasons why I disagree with your position are all outlined in the essays and I would say the primary reason for me writing them was to address your position and all similar ones. Kant vs. the World and the metamorphic ones especially. My conclusion, obviously derived from others, is that the grabbing of the ideal phenomena is what is necessary for true spiritual freedom, which in turn is necessary for genuine ethical outlook and behavior. The ongoing hesitation to grab anything firmly will not unleash "fundamental freedom of Consciousness" but rather a phenomenal world which dissolves quickly into an entropic soup.

Western traditions also pose the fundamental freedom of choice that all conscious beings possess, and it is this freedom that gives us the power to disengage from our egoic impulses and make choices and decisions towards higher spiritual realities without being conditioned by the egoic structures. It is this fundamental freedom that makes spiritual development possible, otherwise we would be forever animal thinking machines who always follow their egoic desires. So, the realization of the impermanence of forms was one of the tools in the Buddhist practice to re-claim and realize such freedom of choice.

Another part of this is realization that what we ARE existentially are never the impermanent forms (the body, human mind, thoughts, emotions etc), but THAT which produces and knows the forms - the beingness-awareness-thinking itself. The impermanent forms are what we DO, but not what we permanently ARE. The forms cannot produce and experience themselves, its is the aspects of formlessness (experiencing-thinking) that produces and experiences the forms. The forms do not exist but by themselves, but it is the beingness aspect of formlessness that makes their existence possible. This realization releases us from false identification with impermanent forms that we always tend to do and which is at the root of our egotism and selfishness.

Again, if you read Part II of Transfiguring our Thinking, you will see the ethical individualism Steiner posits and that I am supporting is not about "freedom of choice" in the manner you suggest above. It is about investigating the true nature of our ideal relations in the world, with increasing specificity and resolution, so that we may see how our choices impact our most true Self which stretches across space and time. It is only through that informed perspective that we can begin to think and act in true freedom. We can then see how what we ARE and what we DO are not divided from one another but rather belong to each other (as briefly mentioned in Heidegger essay Part I). My position on that essential relation between Being and Thinking will become more clear in Heidegger essay Part II.

[Eugene I]

Right, and that is why I asked the question, because I suspected that was the significance of labeling thought-forms "impermanent". It is diametrically opposed to what I am arguing for in various essays. Although I would much rather my views (or Cleric's) be opposed in this constructive way than with simple dismissals as "fantasy", so I must thank you for that. These types of criticisms get some good discussion going so that, even if we are not convincing the other person, our positions are being clarified to everyone's benefit.

What I am arguing is precisely that Thinking activity is the only activity which allows us to "grab and hold [something] in the phenomenal world". Moreover, I am arguing this grabbing and holding of the phenomenal world is of the utmost importance in our age, because without it we have a guaranteed descent into more nihilism. Again, "we must learn to control our thoughts like we control our arms and legs". I would argue that is also the fundamental mission of thinkers like BK and JV - it is the primary reason they have these discussions with such a sense of urgency in the first place.

The reasons why I disagree with your position are all outlined in the essays and I would say the primary reason for me writing them was to address your position and all similar ones. Kant vs. the World and the metamorphic ones especially. My conclusion, obviously derived from others, is that the grabbing of the ideal phenomena is what is necessary for true spiritual freedom, which in turn is necessary for genuine ethical outlook and behavior. The ongoing hesitation to grab anything firmly will not unleash "fundamental freedom of Consciousness" but rather a phenomenal world which dissolves quickly into an entropic soup.

You are judging non-dual practices without ever practicing them or having any in-depth understanding of how they work spiritually and psychologically from the first-person perspective of personal experience. Millions of people practiced them and found them extremely effective, useful and not entailing in any kind of nihilism. J. Vervaeke is one of the living examples of that. Rupert Spira, Tich Nat Than, Adyashanti and many other Buddhist and Adavaitic masters are other human examples of how spiritually transformative and beneficial these practices are that make people less self-centered and nihilistic and more loving, empathic, ethical, accepting and open. This is the state of consciousness with full involvement in life, in thinking and creative activity without addictive over-clinging to forms or egoic self-centered identification.

But as I said before, these practices are optional. If you don't like them and prefer your spiritual science approach, no problem, go for it if it works for you or for other people. It's when you start claiming the absolute superiority of your approach and demeaning other spiritual paradigms and traditions where it becomes problematic.

But anyway, I'm personally taking the integrative approach, and having practiced both in Western and Eastern traditions and knowing from experience their strong and weak parts, I'm trying to fuse and integrate them onto a more encompassing approach and path, cleaning from the weak parts but keeping the useful and beneficial parts. For me it's not a question of "if this or that is better", but of "this and that are good and useful".

We can then see how what we ARE and what we DO are not divided from one another but rather belong to each other (as briefly mentioned in Heidegger essay Part I). My position on that essential relation between Being and Thinking will become more clear in Heidegger essay Part II.

I agree, they always belong to each other. When what we ARE and what we DO exist in a perfect unity and balance, this is the unified sate of consciousness not prone to distortion and egotism. The problematic state is when we become completely identified with what we DO, confusing/taking what we DO for what we all ARE, while neglecting that aspect of what we actually ARE (the formless).

But I can tell you one practical thing. As BK and John discussed, there have been a massive exodus of people from the Christian tradition over the last decades. People are clearly not coming back, but still disappointed in materialism and searching for the new religious and philosophical paradigms, and millions of them have already been engaged in and absorbed the Eastern non-dual traditions while looking for ways to integrate them with the Western mentality and approach. This integration is happening already everywhere on a massive scale. If you choose to ignore this fact and keep demeaning these traditions, very few will follow you and it is a sure way to remain on the fringing periphery of the spiritual progression of humanity. There will always be people pursuing the spiritual paths along some exotic and isolated sectarian practices/religions, it is also normal. But if you are hoping to reach to masses with your nihilistic attitude towards non-dual traditions, then you will most certainly not succeed.

[AshvinP]

Right, and that is why I asked the question, because I suspected that was the significance of labeling thought-forms "impermanent". It is diametrically opposed to what I am arguing for in various essays. Although I would much rather my views (or Cleric's) be opposed in this constructive way than with simple dismissals as "fantasy", so I must thank you for that. These types of criticisms get some good discussion going so that, even if we are not convincing the other person, our positions are being clarified to everyone's benefit.

What I am arguing is precisely that Thinking activity is the only activity which allows us to "grab and hold [something] in the phenomenal world". Moreover, I am arguing this grabbing and holding of the phenomenal world is of the utmost importance in our age, because without it we have a guaranteed descent into more nihilism. Again, "we must learn to control our thoughts like we control our arms and legs". I would argue that is also the fundamental mission of thinkers like BK and JV - it is the primary reason they have these discussions with such a sense of urgency in the first place.

The reasons why I disagree with your position are all outlined in the essays and I would say the primary reason for me writing them was to address your position and all similar ones. Kant vs. the World and the metamorphic ones especially. My conclusion, obviously derived from others, is that the grabbing of the ideal phenomena is what is necessary for true spiritual freedom, which in turn is necessary for genuine ethical outlook and behavior. The ongoing hesitation to grab anything firmly will not unleash "fundamental freedom of Consciousness" but rather a phenomenal world which dissolves quickly into an entropic soup.

You are judging non-dual practices without ever practicing them or having any in-depth understanding of how they work spiritually and psychologically from the first-person perspective of personal experience. Millions of people practiced them and found them extremely effective, useful and not entailing in any kind of nihilism. J. Vervaeke is one of the living examples of that. Rupert Spira, Tich Nat Than, Adyashanti and many other Buddhist and Adavaitic masters are other human examples of how spiritually transformative and beneficial these practices are that make people less self-centered and nihilistic and more loving, empathic, ethical, accepting and open. This is the state of consciousness with full involvement in life, in thinking and creative activity without addictive over-clinging to forms or egoic self-centered identification.

But as I said before, these practices are optional. If you don't like them and prefer your spiritual science approach, no problem, go for it if it works for you or for other people. It's when you start claiming the absolute superiority of your approach and demeaning other spiritual paradigms and traditions where it becomes problematic.

But anyway, I'm personally taking the integrative approach, and having practiced both in Western and Eastern traditions and knowing from experience their strong and weak parts, I'm trying to fuse and integrate them onto a more encompassing approach and path, cleaning from the weak parts but keeping the useful and beneficial parts. For me it's not a question of "if this or that is better", but of "this and that are good and useful".

First, I am not claiming any specific person is nihilistic because of their spiritual belief, rather societies at large are moving in that direction, but you already know that. Second, I take the metamorphic process not as abstract intellectual concept to play around with, but as a living reality. Which is why I suggest what has worked for "millions of people" in the past is NOT what will work for people today or in the future. We are not frozen in the 5th century BC or AD. Rather we are on the tail end of an era which has brought the world to the brink of annihilation several times in the last 100 years, and that is easily traced to what Vervaeke calls the "meaning crisis" i.e. a profound lack of spiritual meaning. BK also agrees it is real and needs to be addressed urgently. So that is not some radical judgment I am passing on the world because of my peculiar esoteric Christian sensibility.

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

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?

[Eugene I]

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.

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.