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

[AshvinP]

When ideal content is added to the stream of perception, including thought-forms, we have the realization that the rosebud is in essence a continually developing form (a living form). Steiner's example is good because it shows how our participation in the living form (putting it into water) is also what allows there to be a living form. It is the same with "unity" of phenomenon-noumenon. There is so sense of talking about "unity" without Thinking being who is seeking for and participating in that "unity". Outside of that context, it is truly a meaningless question whether there is "unity" which simply exists without ideal content. We need to remember that there is no third-person 'external' perspective on this question.

Ashvin, you keep answering a question different from what I asked. I have nothing against your claim that ""unity" (or experiencing or existence) does not exist without ideal content". I agree that it always exists with ideal content. I'm asking a different question: is the ideal content all there is to the existence (reality, conscious experience, unity) or whether there are aspects of reality irreducible to the ideal content only? Is the reality (existence, experiencing) entirely exhausted by and reducible to the ideal content of it?

I am addressing the original claim you made and the question of whether there is a "fact of unity" apart from Thinking "about" the "fact of unity". The answer to that question is "no" for reasons provided before. Your question above has been answered a million times as well. I actually put this sentence in the essay with you in mind

Willing, feeling and thinking all form a Tri-Unity of experience. In the metamorphic history of Spirit, there was a time when Cosmic thoughts were experienced by humans as 'external' sensations (Jean Gebser's "archaic-magical" consciousness). After the Incarnation of Christ, there was a reversal of experience in which those same Cosmic thoughts were experienced from within. Willing and feeling, then, are soul processes which renew the Cosmic thoughts within and carry them forward into the future of humanity. That is a very crude summary of a monumental topic, but I include it simply so we are clear that willing and feeling play indispensable roles in the metamorphic progression of Spirit.

There is no willing or feeling without ideal content, and there is also no ideal content without willing or feeling. Back to the claim you were actually making before - that unity of phenomenon-noumenon can be found in "pure" awareness-being without ideal content. That goes against the entire thrust of this series:

Here we must remember the purpose of delving into the Spirit's metamorphic progression in the first place - it was to find an anchor from which we could rediscover our participation in the world-evolving process. Here we mean "participation" in the sense of Lucien Levy-Bruhl ("participation mystique") and Owen Barfield ("original participation") - the actual co-creation of the phenomenal world. We must rediscover that participation if we are to begin viewing the world contents as multi-dimensional images with interiority rather than flat 'things' with only exterior surfaces.

If we accept that such an anchor can be found in all fundamental aspects of experience, then we have completely negated the purpose of the anchor. It is only through spiritual activity of Thinking that we can form the basis of spiritual investigation of higher worlds.

[Eugene I]

Ashvin, you again answered a wrong question.

"fact of unity" apart from Thinking "about" the "fact of unity".

When I say "apart", I do not mean "separate" or "existing without". I mean aspects of reality irreducible to thinking.

One cannot of course let thinking arise without having brought about consciousness beforehand.
Steiner

You may interpret "beforehand" in whichever way you want, but at least it means that consciousness is not thinking only, and there are aspects of consciousness irreducible to thinking. Whether or not those aspects can exist without thinking/ideation is entirely different question.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, you again answered a wrong question.

"fact of unity" apart from Thinking "about" the "fact of unity".

When I say "apart", I do not mean "separate" or "existing without". I mean aspects of reality irreducible to thinking.

I don't know how I can be more clear in my answer - there are three aspects of Reality which are all fundamental and inseparable - willing, feeling, thinking.

And you are now avoiding addressing the most relevant point I am making - "Back to the claim you were actually making before - that unity of phenomenon-noumenon can be found in "pure" awareness-being without ideal content. That goes against the entire thrust of this series:"

[Eugene I]

I don't know how I can be more clear in my answer - there are three aspects of Reality which are all fundamental and inseparable - willing, feeling, thinking.

And you are now avoiding addressing the most relevant point I am making - "Back to the claim you were actually making before - that unity of phenomenon-noumenon can be found in "pure" awareness-being without ideal content. That goes against the entire thrust of this series:"

I never said ""pure" awareness-being without ideal content". I never claimed that "pure awareness" exists without ideal content. So you are again addressing a wrong issue. I'm only saying that the awareness as a fundamental aspect of Reality is irreducible to the ideal content, while never existing apart from it.

But here is where the real issue is. You said that " there are three aspects of Reality which are all fundamental and inseparable - willing, feeling, thinking. . " And I am saying that you are missing other fundamental, immanent and inseparable aspects of reality (beingness and awareness) that are irreducible to willing, feeling, thinking. And that is exactly where your interpretation of spiritual science is incomplete. And with such interpretation you even go against Steiner's own formulation of spiritual science where he said

One cannot of course let thinking arise without having brought about consciousness beforehand.
Steiner

- meaning consciousness with its totality of all other aspects, and not reduced to thinking only.

And so, because these fundamental aspects are irreducible to thinking only, they are not exhaustible by thinking, in other words, thinking an ideas can never fully encompass those aspects. Which is the same as to say that those aspects are "ineffable" to thinking. Yet, those aspects are ever-present in our direct conscious experience as facts. And thinking/cognition can always become aware of them and reflect them in its ideation activity.

[AshvinP]

I don't know how I can be more clear in my answer - there are three aspects of Reality which are all fundamental and inseparable - willing, feeling, thinking.

And you are now avoiding addressing the most relevant point I am making - "Back to the claim you were actually making before - that unity of phenomenon-noumenon can be found in "pure" awareness-being without ideal content. That goes against the entire thrust of this series:"

I never said ""pure" awareness-being without ideal content". I never claimed that "pure awareness" exists without ideal content. So you are again addressing a wrong issue.

But here is where the real issue is. You said that " there are three aspects of Reality which are all fundamental and inseparable - willing, feeling, thinking. . " And I am saying that you are missing other fundamental, immanent and inseparable aspects of reality (beingness and awareness) that are irreducible to willing, feeling, thinking. And that is exactly where your interpretation of spiritual science is incomplete. And with such interpretation you even go against Steiner's own formulation of spiritual science where he said

One cannot of course let thinking arise without having brought about consciousness beforehand.
Steiner

- meaning consciousness with its wholeness of all other aspects in addition to thinking only.

No, that is completely irrelevant - you can put awareness-being under willing (or better yet thinking) or keep it as a 4th aspect, it does not matter one bit to the points we are arguing. I guess I need to remind you of your own original point:

Spiritual thinking is indeed the activity where the phenomenal appearances and the noumenal 'thing-in-itself' are unified, but it is not the only aspect of consciousness where they are unified. You are ignoring again the adverbial aspects of spiritual activity - Beingness, Awareness, here-nsess, now-ness, in which the phenomenal appearances and the noumenal 'thing-in-itself' are also unified. I agree that cognition also belongs to the same category of adverbial aspects (and therefore agree with the rest of your essay in general), however, by ignoring the rest of the adverbial aspects your paradigm of spiritual science remains incomplete.

What you claim above is simply incorrect. The phenomenon-noumenon are not also unified in our beingness, awareness, willing, feeling, or any other non-Thinking activity. You are also taking the Steiner quote wildly out of context, a context in which he is arguing for the exact opposite of what you claim above.

[Eugene I]

I see. The reason you make such claims ("you can put awareness-being under willing (or better yet thinking)") is simply because you are missing the experiential realization of these aspects of Reality and you only experientially know willing and thinking, so to you "awareness-being" are simply cognitive ideas that you can "put under" thinking.

This is what non-dual practices do - experientially revealing these irreducible aspects of Reality that people miss in their habitual conscious activity, and this is what most Western philosophies and religions are missing and where they are incomplete.

Experiential realization of these aspects is called "enlightenment" in non-dual traditions. "Enlightenment" is also an important "gate" in the metamorphic process in the evolution of consciousness, it makes the cognitive reflection of all aspects of reality more complete, adding to it the aspects that were previously experientially missing. And from that perspective most Western philosophies and religions (Christianity included) are predominantly pre-enlightenment ones, (which is OK, as they still have a lot of value and usefulness).

[Soul_of_Shu]

I've this idea about ditching the term idealism and going with ideationism ... the idea being that there is only fundamental, uncaused ideation ... Sorry personified God worshippers, for He/She too is an idea.

[Eugene I]

As a side note, I've been listening to Dennett and Chalmers own comments in their different interviews about their disagreement. They are actually friends, they meet each other often at conferences and talk. What differentiate Chalmers form other philosophers prior to him (except for may be a few such as W. James and like) is that he experientially knows the irreducible nature of conscious experiencing, and that is why he was first in the Western philosophy (after 2.5 millennia of its development!) to formulate the "hard problem". And Dennett is simply missing such realization. So, just like for you Ashvin, for Dennett the "conscious experience" is just ideas about conscious experience among all other mental phenomena and ideas. Of course his position is different from yours because he claims "matter" to be fundamental and mental phenomena to be "epiphenomena" of material activity. But because he is missing the experiential realization of the irreducibility of conscious experience (awareness), for him all this content of our consciousness is just mental phenomena (perceptions, ideas, volitions, feelings), which he calls "illusions" (which is the same as to say that they are "epiphenomena"). So the root cause of his mistake is that he is missing the experiential realization of the experiential aspect of conscious experience, and therefore missing the understanding of its irreducibility, and it is the same mistake you are making.

[Eugene I]

I've this idea about ditching the term idealism and going with ideationism ... the idea being that there is only fundamental, uncaused ideation ... Sorry personified God worshippers, for He/She too is an idea.

I actually find the term "idealism" very misleading and making people to think that "idealism" is the metaphysics posing that the ideas and ideation is the only ontic fundamental (which is exactly Ashvin's formulation). I like Hoffman's term "consciousness realism" suggesting metaphysics of "consciousness" as the totality of all its aspects (where ideation is necessarily included as one of the aspects of course!)

[Cleric K]

I never said ""pure" awareness-being without ideal content". I never claimed that "pure awareness" exists without ideal content. So you are again addressing a wrong issue.

But here is where the real issue is. You said that " there are three aspects of Reality which are all fundamental and inseparable - willing, feeling, thinking. . " And I am saying that you are missing other fundamental, immanent and inseparable aspects of reality (beingness and awareness) that are irreducible to willing, feeling, thinking. And that is exactly where your interpretation of spiritual science is incomplete. And with such interpretation you even go against Steiner's own formulation of spiritual science where he said

One cannot of course let thinking arise without having brought about consciousness beforehand.
Steiner

Eugene, over and over again the problem comes from the fact that you want to put hard boundary between the forms of spiritual activity. Yes, intellectual thinking and its rigid concepts was the last to arrive and it will be the first to go when we continue with our evolution. This was illustrated in the slides in the Deep M@L essay. The most fundamental form of spiritual activity that we can reach is of the kind of will imbued with meaning, with creative goal, so to speak. What you call fundamental, immanent is still a conscious state of a spiritual being. Here we experience things precisely in the 'direct' way you mention and what is called Intuitive consciousness. There are no intellectual concepts in this state, but there's still meaning. Actually the meaning is infinitely more clear and all-encompassing than that which can be captured by disparate concepts. That's why we can speak of ideation even at this level, even if it is not the ideation of the intellect and in fact we can have clarity on this form of ideating activity only through advanced meditation. What you call the other aspects of reality (beingness and awareness) we cannot even formulate in this way in the world of Intuition. We can speak of beingness and awareness only through our intellect. In the higher world we are completely united with our meaningful activity. We don't have the means to project it into a concept and say "awareness is what truly exists".
It's for this reason that thinking, feeling, willing are not 'other' aspects of reality but the gradient of spiritual activity. Currently we are awake spiritual beings within thinking and from here we work on to metamorph towards the higher forms of activity.

We can make an analogy with physics here. The four fundamental forces are thought to have been united as one force in the primordial state. Then as the universe cools down they differentiate into different forces. This is very crude analogy, that could be quite misleading, but it makes the point that in the primordial state there is a unified spiritual activity which is nevertheless ideating, meaningful. Through the eons of evolution, this activity was 'delaminated' and we now have our lucid being only in thinking. It's also important to mention that what we experience today as will, from the standpoint of our ordinary consciousness, is not the same as the primordial unified spiritual activity. The primordial activity we can know only through higher development in meditation, when we really come to know that state.

No one here argues that the concepts of the intellect (which you seem to mistake for ideas in the general sense) are the foundation of reality. They are at best rigidified points of reference. Much like chocks used in rock climbing to give points of support. But it makes no sense to speak of 'awareness-being' as something completely independent of, or 'above', the forms of spiritual activity (t, f, w).