Intuitive Idealism vs. Analytic Idealism (Part II): An alternative formulation of idealism

[Lou Gold]

I really like Barfield. I found Saving the Appearances a very interesting and inspiring read. Saying that he was ethnocentric was not intended as an insult. But it's a fact.

There is something very interesting about all you Eastern mystical types, in which I include Eugene, yourself (Adur), Justin, probably Lou, Ben, Marteen, and I am sure a few others on the forum - anyone with natural affinity to Eastern mystical tradition (which I presume would also be reflected in big 5 personality test in high level of trait openness to experience and low trait conscientiousness) - you have a complete inability to separate out logical arguments from personal emotions, i.e. sympathies and antipathies. Since calling someone "ethnocentric" is not insulting, this fact definitely should not be either. You guys assume that anyone who reaches a logical, reasoned out conclusion which highlights Western spiritual development must do so because of ethnocentric bias. Even if there is no logical connection between those two things other than your pure uninformed speculation - uninformed by your own admission - you still feel very confident in the conclusion. (Adur's quote of Barfield from A History in English Words is great example of this phenomena)

Why do you assume that? Because it is what you guys do in all of your own arguments! Therefore, you assume everyone else must reason in the same way you do - form the sympathies and antipathies for a position first, and only then reason out from those. Of course this will not be admitted, because it is repressed in the shadow intellect. The 'compensation' is to project it out onto all others as a sort of 'atonement' - "I am making up for my own bias by calling it out in everyone else". Sometimes the people you call out will have that bias, sometimes not - it's a matter of pure luck since logical reasoning has taken a backseat to unexamined sympathies and antipathies. The latter are not actually "formed", though, but come with you at birth, so it is completely outside of any reasoned considerations in this lifetime.

I don't expect any of you guys to accept this argument, as the egocentrism involved is very potent and therefore defense mechanisms will be strong, but if others pay close to attention and see the similarities between your responses to topics concerning Western spiritual evolution, which in this iteration have all manifested in relation to poor old chap Barfield, it will be very evident. Adur, I still hold out a bit of hope that you can get introspective on this issue and overcome the natural antipathy for Western spiritual evolution by prioritizing Reason and logic, but it will take quite a bit of effort. In all seriousness, I really appreciated your work on the QM front and in challenging BK's idealism, but the next step you need to take from abstract model to concrete Thinking is blocked by these sorts of unexamined prejudices, so you really need to focus on removing those blockages.

Ashvin,

I don't feel insulted in the least. But I wouldn't call myself an "Eastern mystical type". I'm much more interested in quantum mechanics than in Buddhism or Vedanta, for example. My favourite spiritual tradition is Shamanism (which in my view lies at the root of all spirtual traditions on Earth).

I never took that "big 5 personality test", in part because I can't stand Jordan Peterson, and in part because it looks to me rather arbitrary and superficial. But you are spot on in saying that I would rate high in "openness to experience" and very, very low in "conscientiousness".

I fear this lack of "conscientiousness" is the main issue here. I tend to throw about these offhand remarks (like that I can't stand Jordan Peterson, for example) without thinking much about them. I'm just expressing a personal feeling, not trying to make a logical argument. I'm simply enjoying the conversation, I'm taking part in this forum because I'm having fun. But I can see that for some of you (like you and Cleric, especially) this forum is a much more serious affair, and I can understand that this lightness of mine may seem annoying or even insulting. I'm sincerely sorry for that. I admire your conscientiousness, honestly. And I learn a lot from you.

That said, I'm perfectly able to distinguish between logical arguments and personal emotions. But for me both are important. I personally feel very strongly that all human cultures on Earth are equally valid and valuable. The ongoing loss of indigenous languages and cultures across the world is a tragedy, in my view. But I can clearly separate that personal feeling I have (I have always felt an emotional affinity with indigenous peoples, since I was a kid) from logical arguments.

The logical argument in this case would go like this: the notion of cultural evolutionism (which was supported by anthropologists like Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl) has been largely dismissed in contemporary anthropology, on purely scientific grounds. Here is a quote from Wikipedia ("Unilineal evolution" article):

The early 20th century inaugurated a period of systematic critical examination, and rejection of unilineal theories of cultural evolution. Cultural anthropologists such as Franz Boas, typically regarded as the leader of anthropology's rejection of classical social evolutionism, used sophisticated ethnography and more rigorous empirical methods to argue that Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan's theories were speculative and systematically misrepresented ethnographic data. Additionally, they rejected the distinction between "primitive" and "civilized" (or "modern"), pointing out that so-called primitive contemporary societies have just as much history, and were just as evolved, as so-called civilized societies. They therefore argued that any attempt to use this theory to reconstruct the histories of non-literate (i.e. leaving no historical documents) peoples is entirely speculative and unscientific. They observed that the postulated progression, a stage of civilization identical to that of modern Europe, is ethnocentric.

But like I said, I don't think this "ethnocentric bias" invalidates Barfield's work in any way. I think his insights about the evolution of Western mind are deep and accurate. And I personally find the work of Lévy-Bruhl much more interesting than more "scientific" approaches to ethnology. These 20th century "scientific" approaches are rooted in materialism, and view the evolution of humanity as a basically meaningless and purposeless process.

Like I said, I'm completely on board with this idea of a spiritual evolution unfolding in our Western culture. I can't wait for that "final participation" to take over. This tumbling civilization desperately needs it! But I still feel that indigenous peoples should be left alone to find their own path, their own evolution (if they want or need to evolve at all; maybe some of them don't).

You haven't really addressed that question, as far as I can see. What is your view? Do you think that there is no "salvation" outside the spiritual evolution Barfield talks about? Do you feel that indigenous cultures are lacking something? I'm open to that idea. But I can't help feeling that those indigenous cultures have valuable wisdom in them. My dream for the future of humanity is a sense of a global spiritual-scientific community (probably English-speaking) peacefully and harmoniously coexisting with the richness of cultural diversity. This would be a global spiritual community where all kinds of different spiritual views could exist side by side, engaged in a peaceful, enriching dialogue.

Adur, my dream aligns best with what I perceive as your more pluralist approach of there being many valid paths to the One. Also, I caution that ethnocentrism runs incredibly deep because culture was our survival school as social beings. Sadly, I note that your parenthetical comment -- (probably English-speaking) -- raises the issue to high relief. As Wade Davis asks (here), how would it feel to you if the chosen language group was completely outside of your cultural experience and did not reflect your conditioned sense of reality?

Ashvin, my path is not Eastern mystical. It is a syncretic combination of African indigenous, Amerindian shamanic and Abrahamic mystical (Jewish, Christian, Sufi). I also have great appreciation for the teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and more in a pluralistic appreciation for the gifts of a broad spectrum of Wisdom traditions. That said, the Holy Cross, Jesus and Mary are firm in my heart and fundamental to how I integrate my understanding.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, my path is not Eastern mystical. It is a syncretic combination of African indigenous, Amerindian shamanic and Abrahamic mystical (Jewish, Christian, Sufi). I also have great appreciation for the teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and more in a pluralistic appreciation for the teachings of a broad spectrum of Wisdom traditions.

"Eastern mystical" was probably too narrow of a label, because really I am talking about all non-Western esoteric approaches. They all ignore or severely downplay the clear metamorphic progression of Spirit that we have discussed endlessly here, and I have tried to highlight in all my essays, which I suppose are not read through completely very often. If they were read, though, then it would be undeniable that the Old Testament and New Testament, which underlie the "Abrahamic faiths", especially the mystical traditions of the last 2000 years, reflect this spiritual evolution very clearly and the direction in which it is heading very clearly. At the end of the day, tossing these philosophical and spiritual labels back and forth, which I also engage in sometimes, is just a way to avoid the real concrete meaning of the spiritual evolution we are talking about. No combination of labels makes us less complicit in that avoidance strategy.

[Lou Gold]

Ashvin, my path is not Eastern mystical. It is a syncretic combination of African indigenous, Amerindian shamanic and Abrahamic mystical (Jewish, Christian, Sufi). I also have great appreciation for the teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and more in a pluralistic appreciation for the teachings of a broad spectrum of Wisdom traditions.

"Eastern mystical" was probably too narrow of a label, because really I am talking about all non-Western esoteric approaches. They all ignore or severely downplay the clear metamorphic progression of Spirit that we have discussed endlessly here, and I have tried to highlight in all my essays, which I suppose are not read through completely very often. If they were read, though, then it would be undeniable that the Old Testament and New Testament, which underlie the "Abrahamic faiths", especially the mystical traditions of the last 2000 years, reflect this spiritual evolution very clearly and the direction in which it is heading very clearly. At the end of the day, tossing these philosophical and spiritual labels back and forth, which I also engage in sometimes, is just a way to avoid the real concrete meaning of the spiritual evolution we are talking about. No combination of labels makes us less complicit in that avoidance strategy.

Hmm. I guess I sensed this when I was editing my comment to include, "That said, the Holy Cross, Jesus and Mary are firm in my heart and fundamental to how I integrate my understanding." Perhaps we had been typing at the same time. I do not argue beliefs. I only wanted to clarify my own.

[Soul_of_Shu]

"Eastern mystical" was probably too narrow of a label, because really I am talking about all non-Western esoteric approaches. They all ignore or severely downplay the clear metamorphic progression of Spirit that we have discussed endlessly here, and I have tried to highlight in all my essays, which I suppose are not read through completely very often. If they were read, though, then it would be undeniable that the Old Testament and New Testament, which underlie the "Abrahamic faiths", especially the mystical traditions of the last 2000 years, reflect this spiritual evolution very clearly and the direction in which it is heading very clearly. At the end of the day, tossing these philosophical and spiritual labels back and forth, which I also engage in sometimes, is just a way to avoid the real concrete meaning of the spiritual evolution we are talking about. No combination of labels makes us less complicit in that avoidance strategy.

I posted a link elsewhere to a post made by Don Salmon back in 2014 in which Ulrich Mohrhoff compares the ideas of Jean Gebser to those of Aurobindo, which may be of interest here, since I'm not sure that participants in this thread are following the various spin-offs from this discussion, and they may offer some pertinent feedback.

From Ulrich Mohrhoff's "The Veil of Avidya"

Evolution of human consciousness according to Jean Gebser

According to modern evolutionary theory, our sensory systems are shaped by natural selection to allow homo sapiens to survive within its niche, not to present it with a faithful depiction of its niche. We don’t expect the sensory system of a cockroach, a gecko, or a chipmunk to reveal the true nature of reality. We expect it to give simple signals suited for survival in a particular niche. The neo-Darwinian synthesis leads us to look upon the phenomenal world as a species-specific user interface. A user interface, like a computer desktop with its icons, is useful precisely because it does not resemble what it represents. A file icon hides the complexity of the hardware and software that makes it so useful as a representation of a file (Hoffman, 2000, in press, forthcoming).

What the scientific theory of evolution rarely takes into account is that the paradigms of modern science stand or fall by the particular user interface that brought them into play. Nobody has brought this point more clearly into focus than evolutionary philosopher and cultural historian Jean Gebser (1985), in his magnum opus The Ever- Present Origin. As the subtitles of its two parts indicate, The Every-Present Origin is “A Contribution to the History of the Awakening of Consciousness” and “An Attempt at the Concretion of the Spiritual.” According to Gebser, the awakening of consciousness passes through four “user interfaces”: the archaic structure, the magic structure, the mythical structure, and the mental structure. As its name suggests, the mythical structure deals with the world through the medium of myth, whereas the mental structure deals with it with the help of philosophy and science.

Each of these structures of consciousness has an efficient and a deficient phase. A once efficient structure becomes deficient when it is confronted with the irruptions of the next structure. The diminishing returns of modern science documented by John Horgan (1996) in The End of Science, by Lee Smolin (2006) in The Trouble with Physics, and by Peter Woit (2006) in Not Even Wrong are signs that we are once again on the threshold of a new structure of consciousness — this time a structure that neither philosophy nor science is able to cope with, as little as the mythical medium is able to cope with the manifestations of the mental structure. We therefore need to distance ourselves from the claim that science can make us understand things as they are in themselves. While the mythical world is a world of images, the mental structure is able to integrate two-dimensional images into a system of three-dimensional objects — the so-called “material world.” But as this three-dimensional “coagulation” of images came into being with the mental structure, so it will fade into irrelevance with the consolidation of the integral structure, along with its representational mediums, philosophy and science.

The mutations from one consciousness structure to another are analogous to Kuhn’s (1962) paradigm shifts, but they happen on a grander scale. We are not merely presented with a theory that is capable of dealing with the anomalies of a previous theory. By gaining a new user interface, we enter a new world.

Gebser (1985, p. xxix) himself equated the consciousness he called “integral” with that Sri Aurobindo has called “supramental,” and he described it in similar terms. For Gebser, the origin — the source from which all springs — is spiritual; evolution is essentially a series of transformations by which the world becomes ever more diaphanous — transparent and revelatory of its spiritual origin. The diapheneity or “shining through” of the origin leads to concrete awareness of the whole in each part. Released from its perspectival fixation both in space and in time, the individual comes to perceive the manifestation from the aperspectival viewpoint particular to the origin — i.e., from everywhere and everywhen at once. This corresponds to the supermind’s primary poise. Seen from the supermind’s secondary poise, both the past and the future are present in the present.

It is interesting to note that Gebser became familiar with the works of Sri Aurobindo a long time after the completion of The Ever-Present Origin. In a lecture published towards the end of his life, he observes:

“my conception of the emerging of a new consciousness, which I realized in winter 1932/33 in a flashlike intuition and started describing since 1939, resembles to a large extent the world conception of Sri Aurobindo, that was at that time unknown to me. Mine is different from his insofar, as it is directed only to the Western world and does not have the depth and the gravidity of origin of the genially represented conception of Sri Aurobindo. An explanation for this apparent phenomenon may be seen in the suggestion, that I was included in some manner within the strong field of force as radiated by Sri Aurobindo.“(Gebser, 2005)

When dealing with individuals that are integrally conscious, the metaphor of the user interface breaks down. The supermind is truth consciousness. It knows things as they are in themselves, for it is by its own creative imagination that they exist. And since the integral structure will not only supersede but also fully integrate the mental and all preceding structures, as was emphasized by both Gebser and Sri Aurobindo, its emergence will justify the interpretation of the consciousness mutations discussed by Gebser as progressive thinnings of the veil of avidya.

Epilogue:

One is left to wonder what could bridge the enormous gulf between, on the one hand, current mainstream psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind and, on the other hand, such profound insights into the nature of reality, evolution, and consciousness as those we owe to Jean Gebser and Sri Aurobindo.

Here the recently published book Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century by Kelly et al. (2006) offers hope. The authors of this outstanding volume marshal evidence for a large variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in many cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. The relevant issues are framed in the context of the work of F. W. H. Myers. Myers’s model of human personality, which he began to formulate in the early 1880s, became the theoretical framework for psychical research and remained so for decades. Much of the later work of William James, including Varieties of Religious Experience, can be viewed as the systematic application of Myers’s central theoretical ideas to problems in religion, epistemology, and metaphysics.

Aldous Huxley (1961, pp. 7–8), comparing Myers’s (1903) posthumously published Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death to better-known writings on the “unconscious” by Freud and Jung, justly wondered:

How strange and how unfortunate it is that this amazingly rich, profound, and stimulating book should have been neglected in favor of descriptions of human nature less complete and of explanations less adequate to the given facts!

Myers’s huge body of published writings is essentially an elaboration of the view that certain phenomena of psychology, particularly of abnormal psychology and psychical research, demonstrate that human personality is far more extensive than we ordinarily realize. It was Myers who introduced the term “subliminal” into scientific psychology. He held that the biological organism, instead of producing consciousness, limits and shapes ordinary waking consciousness out of a vastly larger subliminal self, concealed from the former by what we have called the veil of avidya. Anticipating Gebser, Myers described the evolution of consciousness as a process in which we become “more and more awake.” A “general perceptive power” (Myers, 1903, Vol. 1, p. 118) informs the protoplasm, and having shown itself so far modifiable as to acquire these highly specialised senses which I possess, it is doubtless still modifiable in directions as unthinkable to me as my eyesight would have been unthinkable to the oyster. (Myers, 1889, p. 190)

Myers conceived of evolution as tending toward “constantly widening and deepening perception of an environment infinite in infinite ways” (HP, vol. 1, p. 96). Psychological anomalies, therefore, come in two basic varieties — evolutive and dissolutive: “in studying each psychical phenomenon in turn we shall have to inquire whether it indicates a mere degeneration of powers already acquired, or, on the other hand, “the promise and potency” if not the actual possession, of powers as yet unrecognised or unknown.” (Myers, 1885, p. 31)

Contemporary mainstream psychology is in dire need of this insight. “Not only is the number of rediscoveries shamefully high,” Draaisma (2000, p. 5) writes, “but valuable empirical and conceptual work carried out in older traditions has disturbingly little impact on present-day research. The result is that certain defects in theory formulation diagnosed as long ago as the nineteenth century, are repeatedly reintroduced in psychology.” Anticipating Sri Aurobindo’s concept of involution, Myers (1903, Vol. 1, p. 118) stated that “All human powers . . . have somehow or other to be got into protoplasm and then got out again. You have to explain first how they became implicit in the earliest and lowest living thing, and then how they have become thus far explicit in the latest and highest.”

In his review of Human Personality, William James (1903) wrote: “Myers’s theory, so far, is simple enough. It only postulates an indefinite inward extension of our being, cut off from common consciousness by a screen or diaphragm not absolutely impervious but liable to leakage and to occasional rupture. The “scientific” critic can only say it is a pity that so vast and vaguely defined a hypothesis should be reared upon a set of facts so few and so imperfectly ascertained.”

A century later, the relevant facts are no longer “so few,” and a significant fraction of them is anything but “imperfectly ascertained.” Many of Myers’s observations have been powerfully confirmed, reinforcing the need for a theory of human personality which — like his — encompasses the full range of human experience. Irreducible Mind is an important pointer in the direction of such a theory.

[AshvinP]

"Eastern mystical" was probably too narrow of a label, because really I am talking about all non-Western esoteric approaches. They all ignore or severely downplay the clear metamorphic progression of Spirit that we have discussed endlessly here, and I have tried to highlight in all my essays, which I suppose are not read through completely very often. If they were read, though, then it would be undeniable that the Old Testament and New Testament, which underlie the "Abrahamic faiths", especially the mystical traditions of the last 2000 years, reflect this spiritual evolution very clearly and the direction in which it is heading very clearly. At the end of the day, tossing these philosophical and spiritual labels back and forth, which I also engage in sometimes, is just a way to avoid the real concrete meaning of the spiritual evolution we are talking about. No combination of labels makes us less complicit in that avoidance strategy.

I posted a link elsewhere to a post made by Don Salmon back in 2014 in which Ulrich Mohrhoff compares the ideas of Jean Gebser to those of Aurobindo, which may be of interest here, since I'm not sure that participants in this thread are following the various spin-offs from this discussion, and they may offer some pertinent feedback.

From Ulrich Mohrhoff's "The Veil of Avidya"

Evolution of human consciousness according to Jean Gebser

I think you will like my new essay, Dana, as Gebser is the central guide running through it. The EPO really was a magnificent accomplishment in documenting the metamorphic progression of Spirit, and stands entirely alone in the category of single works to do so. Some people would put Spengler's The Decline of the West in that category, but for me there is really no comparison in terms of sheer detail and Gebser also manages to imbue it with a living essence beyond mere chains of abstract concepts.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I think you will like my new essay, Dana, as Gebser is the central guide running through it. The EPO really was a magnificent accomplishment in documenting the metamorphic progression of Spirit, and stands entirely alone in the category of single works to do so. Some people would put Spengler's The Decline of the West in that category, but for me there is really no comparison in terms of sheer detail and Gebser also manages to imbue it with a living essence beyond mere chains of abstract concepts.

I don't know how you do it, making so many excessive comments , and managing to write long essays to boot ... When do you actually work ? Anyway, looking forward to it, as I couldn't agree more about Gebser's impressive contribution.

[Lou Gold]

I posted a link elsewhere to a post made by Don Salmon back in 2014 in which Ulrich Mohrhoff compares the ideas of Jean Gebser to those of Aurobindo, which may be of interest here, since I'm not sure that participants in this thread are following the various spin-offs from this discussion, and they may offer some pertinent feedback.

Thank you Dana. This is quite wonderful. Intuitively, I especially like the notion of science and philosophy as "representational mediums" that will fade away in the flow of evolution. My brush with Aurobindo's thought was brief but intense. It happened 40 years ago when I read for hours in his "The Life Divine." I did not comprehend it but just reading it became a way of holding it, of stepping under its canopy, of understanding it. Later, I discovered that a great deal of the lingo of the then popular "Human Potential Movement" was brought into the American psychological flow by a founder of Esalen, Michael Murphy, who had studied in the Aurobindo library in India and was using his language. For me, those words had power.

[AshvinP]

I think you will like my new essay, Dana, as Gebser is the central guide running through it. The EPO really was a magnificent accomplishment in documenting the metamorphic progression of Spirit, and stands entirely alone in the category of single works to do so. Some people would put Spengler's The Decline of the West in that category, but for me there is really no comparison in terms of sheer detail and Gebser also manages to imbue it with a living essence beyond mere chains of abstract concepts.

I don't know how you do it, making so many excessive comments , and managing to write long essays to boot ... When do you actually work ? Anyway, looking forward to it, as I couldn't agree more about Gebser's impressive contribution.

This is going to sound silly, I know, but it is really 100% fruit of the Spirit. One year ago, if I attempted to work, write essays, post 5-10 comments per day, play some basketball, practice piano, etc... it just wouldn't happen. Even if I could make the time, I would be way too mentally exhausted. Now it's really not so difficult for me, although maybe my post quality has gone down because I don't put much effort into writing them. Still, it's a drastic improvement for me, and I have only realized like 0.0000000000000000...1% of the spiritual fruits one can realize.

[Soul_of_Shu]

This is going to sound silly, I know, but it is really 100% fruit of the Spirit. One year ago, if I attempted to work, write essays, post 5-10 comments per day, play some basketball, practice piano, etc... it just wouldn't happen. Even if I could make the time, I would be way too mentally exhausted. Now it's really not so difficult for me, although maybe my post quality has gone down because I don't put much effort into writing them. Still, it's a drastic improvement for me, and I have only realized like 0.0000000000000000...1% of the spiritual fruits one can realize.

And here I thought it must be crystal meth

[Adur Alkain]

Ashvin,

I don't feel insulted in the least. But I wouldn't call myself an "Eastern mystical type". I'm much more interested in quantum mechanics than in Buddhism or Vedanta, for example. My favourite spiritual tradition is Shamanism (which in my view lies at the root of all spirtual traditions on Earth).

But like I said, I don't think this "ethnocentric bias" invalidates Barfield's work in any way. I think his insights about the evolution of Western mind are deep and accurate. And I personally find the work of Lévy-Bruhl much more interesting than more "scientific" approaches to ethnology. These 20th century "scientific" approaches are rooted in materialism, and view the evolution of humanity as a basically meaningless and purposeless process.

Like I said, I'm completely on board with this idea of a spiritual evolution unfolding in our Western culture. I can't wait for that "final participation" to take over. This tumbling civilization desperately needs it! But I still feel that indigenous peoples should be left alone to find their own path, their own evolution (if they want or need to evolve at all; maybe some of them don't).

You haven't really addressed that question, as far as I can see. What is your view? Do you think that there is no "salvation" outside the spiritual evolution Barfield talks about? Do you feel that indigenous cultures are lacking something? I'm open to that idea. But I can't help feeling that those indigenous cultures have valuable wisdom in them. My dream for the future of humanity is a sense of a global spiritual-scientific community (probably English-speaking) peacefully and harmoniously coexisting with the richness of cultural diversity. This would be a global spiritual community where all kinds of different spiritual views could exist side by side, engaged in a peaceful, enriching dialogue.

Adur,

Thank you for the considerate response. Just to be clear, I am not claiming any of you guys are doing this out of personal bitterness - I am sure you guys are pretty cheerful overall even when posting about these things. And I hope it's obvious I am not claiming that I am immune from this same prejudice, which is why I added on the last comment. It takes a lot of effort and discipline to work on these things meaningfully so they do not govern our thoughts, which I suppose is related to the more "serious affair" that we take our forum interactions i.e. posts to be. I think that is a fair assessment on your part, because I am beginning to realize that nothing is lost in this lifetime - everything we do, feel, and think has great significance. But I don't find that to have any sort of depressing effect, actually it brings me a lot of joy to know how richly meaningful all of my actions, feelings, and thoughts are in the whole course of Cosmic evolution. Like I said, you are extremely self-aware and that is great. That much shows really clearly through your comments, like the one above.

So you reach the bolded conclusions - which are similar to Eugene's music analogy where the process of exploration, trial and error, etc. refines to musical harmony as everyone learns from each other's thought-output and makes the necessary adjustments (it's not how I would frame the analogy but you get the point) - and then, like Eugene, you add in the "BUT". It's very good that you are self-aware of this "BUT" sentiment which is pulling your logical reasoning away from where it is naturally taking you. From our perspective, and that of Barfield, we have reached the stage in spiritual evolution where that sort of thing absolutely should not be allowed to happen. Our thinking activity (which it appears you already intuit is shared rather than divided up between "alters", another great advantage you have) is not other than the spiritual evolution itself - that is how the Spirit evolves towards integration i.e. "final participation".

So, to answer your question directly, no there is no salvation apart from that spiritual evolution under this view. There is only Spirit, as Cleric referenced in a recent comment. There are not pockets of humanity who are a part of the spiritual evolution and other parts who are totally outside of it. In fact, if somehow Reality was structured in this way, I would find that as the most depressing and prejudicial aspect. Indigenous cultural practices are not around forever, according to my understanding. But, for that matter, on a long enough timeline, our current physical bodies are not around forever! When we move from Earth to Jupiter phase of evolution, we will be living in an environment and bodies totally unrecognizable to us right now. Of course this will sound pretty "insane" to most people, since we are all conditioned by modern prejudices to rule out such things and treat them as products of a deluded mind.

But if we reflect on what the biggest objections to such developments are, I think we will find none of them follow logically from metaphysical idealism or spiritual reality - rather they are all based in flawed rationalist, materialist-dualist, reductionist axioms and/or the prioritizing of sympathies and antipathies over logical reasoning. And these are not just predictions for the distant future - we can actually begin experiencing these realities right now! Cleric has been offering many exercises which can help us develop imaginative Thinking which transfigures intellect and allows us real glimpses into the spiritual reality underlying this entire evolutionary process. Like he said in recent comment:

"Thinking of the Heart refers to actual higher form of spiritual activity. We get there when we pass through Thinking and rise its cognitive element into the world of Feeling. Then Feeling, is experienced in a completely different way than the nebulous sympathies and antipathies of the ordinary state."

Ashvin,

I've been too busy these days to properly reply to you. I feel this conversation is an important one, and I think it will take some time to make clear what our differences are. So I hope you will be patient with me and be willing to wait sometimes for days until I respond.

I see two intertwined questions here: one is the relation between thinking and feeling; the other is the question of whether the spiritual evolution of humanity has necessarily to follow one single path.

The first question is too difficult for me to tackle right now. For now I'll only say that I partially agree with that quote from Cleric: when one reaches a certain level of spiritual development thinking and feeling become unified or harmonized, so that there can be no conflict between them. I love the expression "Thinking of the Heart".

But I doubt that the way to get there is to "pass through Thinking and rise its cognitive element into the world of Feeling". From my perspective, the way to harmonize Thinking and Feeling is rather to let the logical mind be guided by the heart.

To reach the Truth, the heart is the guide, not the thinking mind. By "heart" I don't mean egoic sympathies and antipathies, likes and dislikes, of course. In fact, if we inquire into sympathies and antipathies, likes and dislikes, we always find not true feelings, but mental concepts. Sympathies and antipathies are distorted feelings, feelings distorted by thoughts, prejudices, mental constructs. A very clear indication of this is that for the enlightened Heart (the human heart free of distortion and conditioning) there are no antipathies, no dislikes. The Heart loves everything, everything that is real.

It's the Heart what knows the Truth, not the thinking mind (or logical reasoning). The thinking mind can bring understanding and clarity to what the heart knows, but the heart is the only guide. Only the heart can distinguish the real from the unreal (what is really there, or here, from fantasies created by the mind). Only the heart can know the truth directly.

What I call intuition is a working together of heart and head (or thinking mind). But like I said, this is a difficult question for me. I don't know exactly how this works. I'm learning.

Here is an example that may be useful: when I read Cleric's posts, I usually don't understand intellectually most of what he says. My logical reasoning mind would instantly dismiss his words as gibberish. But my heart tells me that there is something deeply truthful and authentic in Cleric's words. That makes me want to read him more carefully and try to understand.

Having said all this, I can go back to the second question: the unified (or not) spiritual evolution of humanity. I can see that I have some egoic dislikes and antipathies against mainstream Western culture (including Christianity). These come from my cultural conditioning, and have to do with mental constructs around ethnic identity, etc. But I can see through those, and find a deeper layer of undistorted feeling, which I know comes from my true heart.

And this is what my heart says: there is only ONE humanity. And this one humanity is the expression and manifestation of the one true nature, the one universal consciousness.

That's it. And now my logical reasoning can come in and try to make sense of that insight, and here is what I can come up with at the moment: cultural diversity is not an obstacle to realizing the fundamental unity and oneness of humanity. We don't need to reach some future evolutionary stage to realize and acknowledge that oneness. We can realize it right now. With all our cultural differences.

So my personal provisional conclusion is that the question of whether the spiritual evolution of humanity will follow a single, unified path remains completely open. Maybe you and Barfield are right, and that's where we are heading. But I don't see any reason why this should be the case. In my imagination I can envision a completely unified humanity (sharing a state of "final participation", or maybe further developments of spirit), and I can also envision a diversified humanity, with different groups living in different spiritual worlds but still being able to communicate with each other and recognize their fundamental unity. Both possibilities seem equally beautiful to me. Maybe I lean more towards the second possibility, but I don't reject the first one at all.

And for the present, I feel it would be wiser if we all remained open and open-minded around this question... None of us knows what is going to happen, after all. My sense is that not even The Creative Intelligence behind all this knows what is going to happen in the end. (And yet again, I'm also open to the possibility that there is a Divine Plan.) In any case, I don't think we can reach any conclusion one way or another by employing logical reasoning alone.

So what do you think? Is it okay to acknowledge that we really don't know? Or do you see that attitude as an obstacle?