Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 11:05 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 10:29 pm
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.