The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

[Stranger]

Is a rain drop incompatible with the atmospheric forces which produces the rain? The trap to watch out for is really simple - as soon as we say two perspectives which obviously exist are "incompatible" or "mutually exclusive" or something similar, we have created a dualism and a hard problem.

Cmon, there exist two ideas "2+2=4" and "2+2=5", the first one is coherent with reality, the second one is not, and they are logically incompatible with each other in a sense that a person cannot hold them both true simultaneously, but where do you see dualism and hard problem here?

Here is another example: there are two ideas: "thinking exists" and "thinking does not exist". Both ideas are still ideas produced by the same thinking, they both can be thought and in that sense they are both "compatible" with thinking, but the second idea is "incoherent" with the actual reality of thinking.

Cleric used to say that some ideas do not align with "the harmony of the facts of experience", that's another good way to look at it.

[AshvinP]

Is a rain drop incompatible with the atmospheric forces which produces the rain? The trap to watch out for is really simple - as soon as we say two perspectives which obviously exist are "incompatible" or "mutually exclusive" or something similar, we have created a dualism and a hard problem.

Cmon, there exist two ideas "2+2=4" and "2+2=5", the first one is coherent with reality, the second one is not, and they are logically incompatible with each other in a sense that a person cannot hold them both true simultaneously, but where do you see dualism and hard problem here?

This is not the same. Notice I said perspectives, and not 'ideas' or 'thoughts' (and even ideas are not mutually exclusive, but relatively incomplete in relation to other ideas). This is exactly the problem. You are not trying to inhabit the living first-person perspective of 'intuitive sense of me', but only treat it as a thought-abstraction which is mutually exclusive to another thought-abstraction of 'divine self which has awakened from the dream of separate me'. I am not saying you have not experienced any nondual state in which the sense of 'separate me' is absent, but that your intellectual analysis is forced to snap back into this dualism because you have largely forsaken any interest in exploring the lawful structures via higher cognition. It is only through the latter that we can overcome the dualism of 'non-dualism'.

These perspectives are not isolated math equations. They do not conform to Aristotelian logic, where either X or not X is true (law of excluded middle), but are the living source of that logic and all other forms of logic which are employed for our Earthly becoming. They manifest these cognitive tools for our inner perfection through their polar rhythmic interaction. The higher Self casts its inner being out as outer physiognomy so that it can be experienced objectively as a means of developing moral virtues in relative freedom, which then feeds back to the Self in its continued morally creative evolution. We call the lawfulness of the outer physiognomy, "logic". By becoming conscious of the detailed spiritual structure through which this rhythmic incarnational process unfolds, we gradually spiral the lower perspective into the higher one, bringing them into closer unity i.e. continuity of consciousness.

[Federica]

Herregud how insightfully it is explained!

I hope everyone reading Ashvin's last two posts will get at least the insight that there's something of extreme and foundational relevance here. Thank you Ashvin! At least that everyone will get a direct sense that all the references to "first person", "intellectual reasoning vs. living thinking" etc. point to something real and absolutely substantial.

Has that meaning come alive through the explanations above? If not, has at least the intuition sprouted that something crucial is highlighted there, without which it's not possible to move forward?

If the intuition has not come, but there is a willingness to understand that, here's a live lecture by Dennis Klocek, that builds up in elementary way the very first step to it. In my opinion, this particular lecture provides an elementary (thus only preliminary) step to understanding living thinking, in a way that is basically connected to the everyday logical thinking we are used to. Maybe it can facilitate a sense that exercises would really lead to something concrete. Maybe it can facilitate the integration of the idea expressed above, which is not only a preliminary step, but a whole, functioning idea that once integrated opens the way to living thinking. Literally, it opens access to the starting point of the path (while this lecture in isolation can't).

This lecture, given at a Greenwood Waldorf School Teacher Conference, looks at escaping the abstract, linear, protocol-driven approach to problem solving that constitutes proof for the sciences. This approach to science, which has permeated all aspects of life from economics, to politics, social interactions and cultural development, has implications for human consciousness that go beyond technology and nature and reach into the moral aspects of human existence. The historical and philosophical basis for the phenomenological approach to science is shared through the work of Goethe, Franz Brentano and Rudolf Steiner.

https://dennisklocek.com/lecture/develo ... -thinking/

[AshvinP]

Herregud how insightfully it is explained!

I hope everyone reading Ashvin's last two posts will get at least the insight that there's something of extreme and foundational relevance here. Thank you Ashvin! At least that everyone will get a direct sense that all the references to "first person", "intellectual reasoning vs. living thinking" etc. point to something real and absolutely substantial.

Has that meaning come alive through the explanations above? If not, has at least the intuition sprouted that something crucial is highlighted there, without which it's not possible to move forward?

If the intuition has not come, but there is a willingness to understand that, here's a live lecture by Dennis Klocek, that builds up in elementary way the very first step to it. In my opinion, this particular lecture provides an elementary (thus only preliminary) step to understanding living thinking, in a way that is basically connected to the everyday logical thinking we are used to. Maybe it can facilitate a sense that exercises would really lead to something concrete. Maybe it can facilitate the integration of the idea expressed above, which is not only a preliminary step, but a whole, functioning idea that once integrated opens the way to living thinking. Literally, it opens access to the starting point of the path (while this lecture in isolation can't).

This lecture, given at a Greenwood Waldorf School Teacher Conference, looks at escaping the abstract, linear, protocol-driven approach to problem solving that constitutes proof for the sciences. This approach to science, which has permeated all aspects of life from economics, to politics, social interactions and cultural development, has implications for human consciousness that go beyond technology and nature and reach into the moral aspects of human existence. The historical and philosophical basis for the phenomenological approach to science is shared through the work of Goethe, Franz Brentano and Rudolf Steiner.

https://dennisklocek.com/lecture/develo ... -thinking/

Thanks, Federica, and also for the helpful Klocek link. I want to flesh it out a little bit more, since only in this way can we begin to move off the horizontal plane of thought-abstractions. As is, what is written is likely to be continually reduced to that plane.

On this plane, we have an example of the polar dynamic in our speech. One person steers through meaningful linguistic space and then casts out the inner experienced meaning into words which resonate with their conceptual palette of language-forms. Thereby the 'subjectively' experienced meaning becomes an objective fact of shared existence. Another person experiences similar intuitive meaning in shared archetypal space and casts it out in a different language form. If suddenly person A was free to cast out meaning in the language of person B without going through a gradual learning curvature, there would be no continuity of consciousness, and that simply can't happen if reality is to remain coherent (which obviously it does). We are still entirely on the horizontal plane of personal incarnational rhythms of thinking-perception.

Yet we can imagine a first-person perspective which casts out the entire palette of language forms, which from our perspective exists as a field of potential words to be used in our objective communications of meaning, from its inner intuitive experience of the holistic meaning of an entire language. It experiences the entire language, which constitutes the social life of an entire community, as we experience a relatively fragmented string of words. This higher perspective of inner-outer won't be experienced the same as ours, obviously. The two poles are much more united than they are for our lower perspective. The whole casting process from inner to outer is done consciously, with clear intention, whereas we normally do it instinctively and thereby have the freedom to idolize one pole or the other. The higher perspective has no such freedom apart from its lawful connection to the lower one. So we see that 'free will' is only to be found in the progressive manifestation of the higher perspectives within and through the lower ones.

Likewise, what we consider the field of potential for our states of being in a given lifetime is cast out from the intuitively experienced meaning of a higher first-person perspective. And the same applies to entire cultures and epochs of time, as well as humanity as a whole throughout its entire evolutionary cycle. Then we come to lofty perspectives which cast out the Earth and Solar System's evolution as a whole, with all of its differentiated life waves. These are the vertical layers of our higher Self. Our bodily organism is actually a microcosmic image of this entire spectrum of forces, an objectification of these nested, interpenetrating, superimposed incarnational rhythms. It has been constellated through forces working from the very beginning of our Solar evolution. We can also notice how the time periods of moment, day, life, epoch, etc. are phenomenal manifestations of the nested rhythms - the latter are not taking place within the latter, but are the living explanation of why we experience these nested time periods.

None of the rhythms can be reduced to other ones. Our daily incarnational acts of perception-thinking cannot be somehow derived from the lifetime incarnational rhythms as its reduction base. At the same time, none of the rhythms can be understood apart from the context of the other ones. We can't ever understand the Cosmic scale rhythms without also the Earthly rhythms. None of our first-person life experiences will ever make sense apart from the holistic context which spans many incarnations at various scales of activity. Of course this is very inconvenient for the intellect, which can only grasp its own experience in reductionist terms. It wants to isolate certain rhythms and investigate them piecemeal, hoping to build up a solid framework of understanding of Cosmic evolution from such a strategy. Or it wants to reduce all the rhythms to the 'pure subjectivity' of the Divine Self rhythm. This can't be done. We can only enlarge our interest in the living phenomenal experience and widen/deepen the aperture of our thinking-perspective.

So we can already see why the only hope for living understanding is through inverted spiritual activity which steers its devotion and strength along the inner gradient, inflowing higher ideations (and the primary tool for Cosmic attunement is always prayer). The higher ideations serve as a sort of 'glue' which molds the perceptual phenomena and conceptual understandings into increasingly holistic relations and keeps them firmly in place. Otherwise everything written above, if understood at all, will be practically forgotten when the same issues are explored at a later time. This is not a separate parallel process to fully realizing the potential of the Divine Self - it is one and the same. We are only moving towards the latter in 'nondual practice' if we are gradually increasing continuity of consciousness, enlightening the liminal spaces of sleep, death-rebirth, previous incarnations, etc. The writings of Steiner or Cleric are most helpful because they work through a rhythmic alternation of metaphors, analogies, illustrations with conceptual descriptions. Ideally there is a zooming out and zooming in along the rhythmic gradient, panning left and right, surveying past and future of evolution, etc. This already taps into the imaginative sphere to draw down its forces into our conceptual inquiries.  

[Federica]

Thanks, Federica, and also for the helpful Klocek link. I want to flesh it out a little bit more, since only in this way can we begin to move off the horizontal plane of thought-abstractions. As is, what is written is likely to be continually reduced to that plane.

On this plane, we have an example of the polar dynamic in our speech. One person steers through meaningful linguistic space and then casts out the inner experienced meaning into words which resonate with their conceptual palette of language-forms. Thereby the 'subjectively' experienced meaning becomes an objective fact of shared existence. Another person experiences similar intuitive meaning in shared archetypal space and casts it out in a different language form. If suddenly person A was free to cast out meaning in the language of person B without going through a gradual learning curvature, there would be no continuity of consciousness, and that simply can't happen if reality is to remain coherent (which obviously it does). We are still entirely on the horizontal plane of personal incarnational rhythms of thinking-perception.

Yet we can imagine a first-person perspective which casts out the entire palette of language forms, which from our perspective exists as a field of potential words to be used in our objective communications of meaning, from its inner intuitive experience of the holistic meaning of an entire language. It experiences the entire language, which constitutes the social life of an entire community, as we experience a relatively fragmented string of words. This higher perspective of inner-outer won't be experienced the same as ours, obviously. The two poles are much more united than they are for our lower perspective. The whole casting process from inner to outer is done consciously, with clear intention, whereas we normally do it instinctively and thereby have the freedom to idolize one pole or the other. The higher perspective has no such freedom apart from its lawful connection to the lower one. So we see that 'free will' is only to be found in the progressive manifestation of the higher perspectives within and through the lower ones.

Likewise, what we consider the field of potential for our states of being in a given lifetime is cast out from the intuitively experienced meaning of a higher first-person perspective. And the same applies to entire cultures and epochs of time, as well as humanity as a whole throughout its entire evolutionary cycle. Then we come to lofty perspectives which cast out the Earth and Solar System's evolution as a whole, with all of its differentiated life waves. These are the vertical layers of our higher Self. Our bodily organism is actually a microcosmic image of this entire spectrum of forces, an objectification of these nested, interpenetrating, superimposed incarnational rhythms. It has been constellated through forces working from the very beginning of our Solar evolution. We can also notice how the time periods of moment, day, life, epoch, etc. are phenomenal manifestations of the nested rhythms - the latter are not taking place within the latter, but are the living explanation of why we experience these nested time periods.

None of the rhythms can be reduced to other ones. Our daily incarnational acts of perception-thinking cannot be somehow derived from the lifetime incarnational rhythms as its reduction base. At the same time, none of the rhythms can be understood apart from the context of the other ones. We can't ever understand the Cosmic scale rhythms without also the Earthly rhythms. None of our first-person life experiences will ever make sense apart from the holistic context which spans many incarnations at various scales of activity. Of course this is very inconvenient for the intellect, which can only grasp its own experience in reductionist terms. It wants to isolate certain rhythms and investigate them piecemeal, hoping to build up a solid framework of understanding of Cosmic evolution from such a strategy. Or it wants to reduce all the rhythms to the 'pure subjectivity' of the Divine Self rhythm. This can't be done. We can only enlarge our interest in the living phenomenal experience and widen/deepen the aperture of our thinking-perspective.

So we can already see why the only hope for living understanding is through inverted spiritual activity which steers its devotion and strength along the inner gradient, inflowing higher ideations (and the primary tool for Cosmic attunement is always prayer). The higher ideations serve as a sort of 'glue' which molds the perceptual phenomena and conceptual understandings into increasingly holistic relations and keeps them firmly in place. Otherwise everything written above, if understood at all, will be practically forgotten when the same issues are explored at a later time. This is not a separate parallel process to fully realizing the potential of the Divine Self - it is one and the same. We are only moving towards the latter in 'nondual practice' if we are gradually increasing continuity of consciousness, enlightening the liminal spaces of sleep, death-rebirth, previous incarnations, etc. The writings of Steiner or Cleric are most helpful because they work through a rhythmic alternation of metaphors, analogies, illustrations with conceptual descriptions. Ideally there is a zooming out and zooming in along the rhythmic gradient, panning left and right, surveying past and future of evolution, etc. This already taps into the imaginative sphere to draw down its forces into our conceptual inquiries.  

Yes, said in this way the interconnectedness between layers, from the higher perspectives to our individual one, is almost paradoxically made accessible to the intellect. It also comes to mind that, with this example of language, you have laid out another illustration of what Cleric has referred to as aliasing in the context of meditation.