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

[Simon Adams]

Nice article Ashvin. Sorry I’ve been a bit busy and only just got to it and the debate afterwards. It’s strange because I both agree with all of you, and disagree with all of you .

I agree with Eugene, in that my experience of ‘raw’ consciousness comes through the eastern tradition. In that you keep delving into the self, and by deliberately stilling any content, you get a clearer view of what ‘holds’ the content. So when you say “ideal content”, my natural thought is that the phrase itself gives a clue - even though the container is not separate from the contents. The contents shape the container, but all there is is container.

Where I start to part from Eugene maybe is in the fundamental nature of higher order meaning. From my perspective the eastern view keeps all of this within the horizontal. This is quite natural for them, as they spend huge effort on narrowing in on the valuable insight into consciousness that comes from stilling all vertical activity. Also so much of our time in the vertical is mundane, and there is peace in the mundane when the mind has the single focus on it that comes from the “mindful” way of the horizontal.

Nonetheless I am still curious as to what the vertical is for Ashvin and Cleric. You talk of ‘higher order’ ideas, which I’m very comfortable with, but seem to ground them in the horizontal. So MaL presumably generates them as it goes, and as it learns through it’s disassociations, but isn’t that fairly arbitrary then? Even though my views are in so many ways closer to yours, and I agreed with much in your post, it’s not just that this is different from my view, but I’m not clear what makes ‘higher’ to be higher. What is the rightness meaning or rightness of the ideas relative to?

From my perspective the eastern enlightenment is the direct experience of the unity of creation, all the ‘things’ of the universe, which I call the horizontal. The vertical is where our thoughts and concepts live. However for me, with an omniscient god that is ‘other’ than the universe, who was omniscient at the start of the universe, and with us being the image of this ‘other’ (and not of the universe), the ‘higher’ ideas are the ones closer to the truth, the fulness that is god. Yes the horizontal is also part of that image, and this is why the eastern enlightenment is profound. But equally it’s just a reflection. The idea of consciousness itself being a reflection of something more fundamental, or of our ideas, our search for truth, being attempts to mirror something something more fundamental, will I’m sure make everyone here think I’m unnecessarily complicating things (or that I’m just nuts ), but this is just a natural conclusion to me, and everything seems to fit together better like this.

Of course I don’t expect anyone to agree with this more traditional view, not just because of my philosophically naive descriptions. It also jars with the last ~400 years of philosophy that tries to reduce our knowledge purely to that which can be proven. But on the things of the universe, I generally agree with you!

[Eugene I]

If the post-enlightenment level of cognition was really unleashed, the Logos (the Word) would also be known from direct experience.

If you establish right relationships with the Word, he will reveal you all those structures you mentioned. Those are the constructs of the astral part of our local universe "behind" the scenes of the material one.

The post-enlightenment state does not necessarily make anyone omniscient and knowing all the realities and entities of the astral and any other world. The higher-level cognitive abilities still need to be developed (if wanted), and experiential knowing of the "adverbial" nondual aspects does not automatically make that happen. In fact, these are not related to each other at all. You can develop extraordinary extra-sensory and high-cognition abilities (these are called "siddhis" in the Eastern traditions and has always been part of the Vedic and Buddhist practices), and yet still miss the realization of adverbial aspects. Or you can have such realization but have your extra-sensory and extra-cognitive abilities not much developed.

By the way, the Buddha, at his post-realization state and extraordinary sensory abilities developed, informed us about the existence of many deities, realms and worlds beyond the astral and physical world of our local creator-deity the Word (called Brahma in the Vedic tradition). He confirmed the existence of Brahma-the-Word as the creator of our world and he actually visited him (as described in the "Brahma invitation" sutta). He also pointed that fully enlightened souls usually do not incarnate anymore in the "Brahmaloka" - the material and astral world of Word-Brahma (unless they do it with a specific "Bodhisattva" mission) and typically advance to live in other realms (called "Pure Lands") that are more suited for the post-enlightened state of consciousness.

But it all depends on what value and effort you put in the development of specific cognitive abilities. You seem to put a lot of value into the extra-sensory access to the existing astral structures created by our local God-creator (Word), but that is only your personal opinion and choice. There is a lot of other venues where you can develop your higher levels of cognition. I'm personally not much interested in exploring and knowing those structures, and I find the aesthetic and non-dual dimensions more appealing. The universe of consciousness is unlimited, you can go and develop in any directions to any levels and explore any structures (already existing or build your own). None of those venues are mandatory in any way (including "enlightenment").

[Cleric K]

Nonetheless I am still curious as to what the vertical is for Ashvin and Cleric. You talk of ‘higher order’ ideas, which I’m very comfortable with, but seem to ground them in the horizontal. So MaL presumably generates them as it goes, and as it learns through it’s disassociations, but isn’t that fairly arbitrary then? Even though my views are in so many ways closer to yours, and I agreed with much in your post, it’s not just that this is different from my view, but I’m not clear what makes ‘higher’ to be higher. What is the rightness meaning or rightness of the ideas relative to?

The first thing would be to distinguish 'higher order ideas' from intellectual ideas that address higher realities. For example, I can think of an angel. Within the intellect this is a concept/idea that points to a being that is not immediately perceptible for the senses. In this respect we address the direction of the vertical but it's the role of higher forms of consciousness that can really experience the realities along the vertical. And at this point we have some of the greatest prejudices. As long as we imagine that we can sojourn into the higher worlds as an atomic being (similar to our physical) and see outside of us other beings (like an angel), we're simply fantasizing based on our Earthly consciousness. To experience the deeds of an angelic being requires at least Imaginative consciousness. Let's approach this with an example. If two friends of mine give me contradicting advices I feel their spiritual influences on me, pulling me in different directions. Of course, materialistic conceptions would rule that out immediately and imagine that it's simply the air molecules agitated by their voice, that reached my ear, and caused certain changes in my brain. Yet if we haven't completely lost our sensitivity we can feel (women are better at this) how the living spiritual being of someone has immediate influence on us. This is only a conjecture in the ordinary state of consciousness but it becomes perceptible reality even as close as the astral world. There we can perceive how our soul life weaves out of countless such influences. If we think away the physical bodies of our friends we are left only with the spiritual influences. We can imagine in roughly this way how multitude of non corporeal beings influence us in a similar way, even though we don't recognize it. In the astral realm we truly observe these processes as in the sensory spectrum we perceive color and sound. Forces are not 'things' in the sensory realm. We infer magnetism from the way magnets move iron particles but we don't see it. In the higher worlds the forces are perceived because we merge with the ideating activity of the beings. For example, if a ball hits another and sets it in motion I can only conceptualize the mechanical laws. But if I push a ball I feel additional element - my will, which is real 'thing' for me. In a similar way, in my ordinary state there are many things that can be thought about only abstractly but in higher forms of cognition we resonate with the spiritual activity of beings and this adds the additional element - now disconnected sensory elements (or element of my own soul life) become related through the influence of beings, which I perceive as something real, just as I perceive my own spiritual activity as something real. This is what I call higher order ideas in the proper sense. It's an actual experience within the domain of the creative Cosmos. They are higher because they practically pass right through our intellect and senses but are perceptible reality in their domain. They are higher because they explain the processes of our ordinary life, which is only like a shadow of the higher order processes. Of course, when we project these higher experiences within the intellect they are really reduced to concepts. Yet these concepts are pointers towards reality and if we think them through livingly, we approach the actual supersensible experiences. For example the above - comparing the activity of an angel to the influence of our friends, is only an analogy within the intellect but if we meditate on it we can really open up for the real experiences of our soul being the interfering arena of the activity of many beings.

[AshvinP]

Nice article Ashvin. Sorry I’ve been a bit busy and only just got to it and the debate afterwards. It’s strange because I both agree with all of you, and disagree with all of you .

I agree with Eugene, in that my experience of ‘raw’ consciousness comes through the eastern tradition. In that you keep delving into the self, and by deliberately stilling any content, you get a clearer view of what ‘holds’ the content. So when you say “ideal content”, my natural thought is that the phrase itself gives a clue - even though the container is not separate from the contents. The contents shape the container, but all there is is container.

Where I start to part from Eugene maybe is in the fundamental nature of higher order meaning. From my perspective the eastern view keeps all of this within the horizontal. This is quite natural for them, as they spend huge effort on narrowing in on the valuable insight into consciousness that comes from stilling all vertical activity. Also so much of our time in the vertical is mundane, and there is peace in the mundane when the mind has the single focus on it that comes from the “mindful” way of the horizontal.

Nonetheless I am still curious as to what the vertical is for Ashvin and Cleric. You talk of ‘higher order’ ideas, which I’m very comfortable with, but seem to ground them in the horizontal. So MaL presumably generates them as it goes, and as it learns through it’s disassociations, but isn’t that fairly arbitrary then? Even though my views are in so many ways closer to yours, and I agreed with much in your post, it’s not just that this is different from my view, but I’m not clear what makes ‘higher’ to be higher. What is the rightness meaning or rightness of the ideas relative to?

From my perspective the eastern enlightenment is the direct experience of the unity of creation, all the ‘things’ of the universe, which I call the horizontal. The vertical is where our thoughts and concepts live. However for me, with an omniscient god that is ‘other’ than the universe, who was omniscient at the start of the universe, and with us being the image of this ‘other’ (and not of the universe), the ‘higher’ ideas are the ones closer to the truth, the fulness that is god. Yes the horizontal is also part of that image, and this is why the eastern enlightenment is profound. But equally it’s just a reflection. The idea of consciousness itself being a reflection of something more fundamental, or of our ideas, our search for truth, being attempts to mirror something something more fundamental, will I’m sure make everyone here think I’m unnecessarily complicating things (or that I’m just nuts ), but this is just a natural conclusion to me, and everything seems to fit together better like this.

Of course I don’t expect anyone to agree with this more traditional view, not just because of my philosophically naive descriptions. It also jars with the last ~400 years of philosophy that tries to reduce our knowledge purely to that which can be proven. But on the things of the universe, I generally agree with you!

Thanks, Simon.

It may be simpler if we just speak in terms of "meaning" rather than ideal content. Substitute meaning for all references to ideal content. For instance, when the mystic dives deeply into Self and gets "a clearer view of what 'holds' the content", we are saying the mystic finds the higher order meaning behind the phenomenal experiences. Cleric is definitely the person to answer questions about specifics dealing with 'higher cognition', the horizontal and vertical etc., but I will just offer that the vertical of 'higher cognition' reveals the Source (or at least some sources) of the meaning we are always seeking in our phenomenal relations and the higher order unities of those relations. They are bathed in the light of the Spirit's activity and therefore come to life within us, as perhaps someone who was studying a map of a landscape for many years and then finally got a chance to visit the landscape for himself. There is continuity between studying the map and visiting the territory, but also a major qualitative difference.

Ultimately, I think a lot of the arguments here come down to implicit acceptance of flawed philosophical assumptions. One could be the Kantian epistemic divide which makes us think 'higher cognition' is just visionary fantasy. It is a very hard one for anyone to fully shake off. Another could be the notion that we can philosophize about Reality from a third-person perspective, standing apart from the subjects and objects of study. I would call that the anti-phenomenological approach. These assumptions lead us into questions which are fundamentally irresolvable and therefore meaningless. If you try let go of any such assumptions and prejudgments, at least for a little while, and then read Steiner's PoF, I think you will see how simple yet powerful the arguments are.

[Cleric K]

But it all depends on what value and effort you put in the development of specific cognitive abilities. You seem to put a lot of value into the extra-sensory access to the existing astral structures created by our local God-creator (Word), but that is only your personal opinion and choice. There is a lot of other venues where you can develop your higher levels of cognition. I'm personally not much interested in exploring and knowing those structures, and I find the aesthetic and non-dual dimensions more appealing. The universe of consciousness is unlimited, you can go and develop in any directions to any levels and explore any structures (already existing or build your own). None of those venues are mandatory in any way (including "enlightenment").

I fully agree that not everyone has to develop higher levels of cognition. But in our age it becomes more and more life-critical that it should be at least known what these observations reveal. Because it really makes difference for our life on Earth and future evolution. Our collective destiny will be very different if everyone thinks that we're here in the Earthly sandbox just for personal creative experiments, with no regard for all the social turmoil, or if we take seriously what higher cognition reveals (and what the message of the Gospels tell from another angle), that it is our creative responsibility to bridge the worlds and participate in the development of the Solar organism. It's not something that we do for someone else's sake - we are building our own Cosmic being in this way.

[Eugene I]

From my perspective the eastern enlightenment is the direct experience of the unity of creation, all the ‘things’ of the universe, which I call the horizontal. The vertical is where our thoughts and concepts live. However for me, with an omniscient god that is ‘other’ than the universe, who was omniscient at the start of the universe, and with us being the image of this ‘other’ (and not of the universe), the ‘higher’ ideas are the ones closer to the truth, the fulness that is god. Yes the horizontal is also part of that image, and this is why the eastern enlightenment is profound. But equally it’s just a reflection. The idea of consciousness itself being a reflection of something more fundamental, or of our ideas, our search for truth, being attempts to mirror something something more fundamental, will I’m sure make everyone here think I’m unnecessarily complicating things (or that I’m just nuts ), but this is just a natural conclusion to me, and everything seems to fit together better like this.

Well, it depends on the school. Tibetan schools go way further than just settling in the "flat" horizontal perspective of the universe, and as post-enlightenment practices they develop into "vertical" structures of the non-dual realms where they actually develop senses and "subtle bodies" in those realms (called "rainbow bodies" in Dzogchen practices etc), and also establishing relations with the inhabitants of those realms, but those are "secret" practices for advanced yogis. The point of this practice is, when the body dies, the soul structure will already have a body belonging to the "Pure Land" non-dual realms and will move on to abide and naturally fit there.

[Eugene I]

I fully agree that not everyone has to develop higher levels of cognition. But in our age it becomes more and more life-critical that it should be at least known what these observations reveal. Because it really makes difference for our life on Earth and future evolution. Our collective destiny will be very different if everyone thinks that we're here in the Earthly sandbox just for personal creative experiments, with no regard for all the social turmoil, or if we take seriously what higher cognition reveals (and what the message of the Gospels tell from another angle), that it is our creative responsibility to bridge the worlds and participate in the development of the Solar organism. It's not something that we do for someone else's sake - we are building our own Cosmic being in this way.

Right. From the perspective of non-dual paths it is in a way similar and driven by empathy and compassion, with engagement in the collective and individuals destiny, albeit with different emphases on the development of somewhat different cognitive abilities/areas. But overall I believe both Christian spiritual science and non-dual paths contribute positively in that direction and have much in common (such as opposing materialism and moving away from egoic self-centered souls structures towards higher-level and more encompassing/integrated structures).

[AshvinP]

The question whether there is ideal content is actually irrelevant here. Yet, as I said, in the dog's state of consciousness the ideal content of the adverbial aspects is indeed zero, a dog has no clue about them, but experientially they are still present, they are just not reported by dog's cognition. So, when we do recognize them with the cognition, the ideal content of our recognition of adverbial aspects is simply a reflection of the experiential facts of the existence of those aspects.

But if you can point me towards a passage where Heidegger said that the "Being" is only an idea, then I would be happy to say Heidegger was wrong on that.

Eugene,

I just wanted to let you know I did not forget about this Heidegger controversy and your comment motivated me to write an "addendum" to explore that topic.

[Simon Adams]

The first thing would be to distinguish 'higher order ideas' from intellectual ideas that address higher realities. For example, I can think of an angel. Within the intellect this is a concept/idea that points to a being that is not immediately perceptible for the senses. In this respect we address the direction of the vertical but it's the role of higher forms of consciousness that can really experience the realities along the vertical. And at this point we have some of the greatest prejudices. As long as we imagine that we can sojourn into the higher worlds as an atomic being (similar to our physical) and see outside of us other beings (like an angel), we're simply fantasizing based on our Earthly consciousness. To experience the deeds of an angelic being requires at least Imaginative consciousness. Let's approach this with an example. If two friends of mine give me contradicting advices I feel their spiritual influences on me, pulling me in different directions. Of course, materialistic conceptions would rule that out immediately and imagine that it's simply the air molecules agitated by their voice, that reached my ear, and caused certain changes in my brain. Yet if we haven't completely lost our sensitivity we can feel (women are better at this) how the living spiritual being of someone has immediate influence on us. This is only a conjecture in the ordinary state of consciousness but it becomes perceptible reality even as close as the astral world. There we can perceive how our soul life weaves out of countless such influences. If we think away the physical bodies of our friends we are left only with the spiritual influences. We can imagine in roughly this way how multitude of non corporeal beings influence us in a similar way, even though we don't recognize it. In the astral realm we truly observe these processes as in the sensory spectrum we perceive color and sound. Forces are not 'things' in the sensory realm. We infer magnetism from the way magnets move iron particles but we don't see it. In the higher worlds the forces are perceived because we merge with the ideating activity of the beings. For example, if a ball hits another and sets it in motion I can only conceptualize the mechanical laws. But if I push a ball I feel additional element - my will, which is real 'thing' for me. In a similar way, in my ordinary state there are many things that can be thought about only abstractly but in higher forms of cognition we resonate with the spiritual activity of beings and this adds the additional element - now disconnected sensory elements (or element of my own soul life) become related through the influence of beings, which I perceive as something real, just as I perceive my own spiritual activity as something real. This is what I call higher order ideas in the proper sense. It's an actual experience within the domain of the creative Cosmos. They are higher because they practically pass right through our intellect and senses but are perceptible reality in their domain. They are higher because they explain the processes of our ordinary life, which is only like a shadow of the higher order processes. Of course, when we project these higher experiences within the intellect they are really reduced to concepts. Yet these concepts are pointers towards reality and if we think them through livingly, we approach the actual supersensible experiences. For example the above - comparing the activity of an angel to the influence of our friends, is only an analogy within the intellect but if we meditate on it we can really open up for the real experiences of our soul being the interfering arena of the activity of many beings.

This makes a lot of sense in terms of ‘real’ interactions versus the sense-mediated aspects of interaction. I can see these are important from a spiritual perspective down here on earth, let alone in the bigger scheme of things, and often almost invisible to us when we’re not being self aware. To take a negative example, we get angry with someone for something where we’re actually annoyed with ourselves, that person is then grumpy the rest of the day and puts five more people in a bad mood etc. Likewise I can see these experiences shaping ‘higher ideas’, that we then condense into abstract concepts.

However what I find difficult to imagine is this process being responsible for the foundations of order and intelligibility. The universe doesn’t seem to pop up with the foundational elements then evolving over time. The nature of carbon, of hydrogen, of the water molecule, 3 dimensional space, the very order of of the mathematical basis of nature, so much that seems so much more than anything that develops over time. I can accept the view that we just can’t understand these things yet, more so than inventing trillions of trials and errors. I assume that from your perspective all these things originated as “supersensible experiences” at some point?

[AshvinP]

The question whether there is ideal content is actually irrelevant here. Yet, as I said, in the dog's state of consciousness the ideal content of the adverbial aspects is indeed zero, a dog has no clue about them, but experientially they are still present, they are just not reported by dog's cognition. So, when we do recognize them with the cognition, the ideal content of our recognition of adverbial aspects is simply a reflection of the experiential facts of the existence of those aspects.

But if you can point me towards a passage where Heidegger said that the "Being" is only an idea, then I would be happy to say Heidegger was wrong on that.

Eugene,

I just wanted to let you know I did not forget about this Heidegger controversy and your comment motivated me to write an "addendum" to explore that topic.

This has been posted by the way, Eugene, and anyone else interested.

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