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The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 8:10 pm
by Cleric K
This was intended as a reply to mgjohnson2552 on the thread here. I was planing anyway to write about the exact same topic so I decided to post to a new thread instead.
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~ Firm point of departure

First we must always start from solid foundations, grounded in the given. Current science tries to grasp reality by creating an intellectual model of it and show the logical rules by which this model transforms in time. There are many different approaches which are deeply equivalent. For example, the Schrodinger equation models reality as a time-dependent wave function which must conform to certain restrictions. A Turing machine is another example of a state that evolves through time. Cellular automata are another approach. What is common between all these is that we build a certain mental picture of reality and then apply rules to transform that picture from 'frame to frame'. All these are founded on a common presupposition - it's assumed that reality exists 'out there' and we can build an intellectual replica of it. We can't afford such a presupposition if we want to stay firmly grounded in the given. The most we can say without going beyond the given facts is that we experience World Content entirely of conscious phenomena - colors, sounds, feelings, thoughts, etc. These are in continuous metamorphosis. So we are basically approaching the question in the same way as science but instead of imagining a real world 'out there' which our thoughts reflect, we take the immediate world of the metamorphosis of the World Content of consciousness. When we do this we are safe because we don't presuppose anything. Even if there are many deeper facts behind the appearances of conscious phenomena this doesn't change the given fact that we experience the continuous transformation of the conscious World Content.

~ Our place in the metamorphic process

Another very important observation is that a large part of the World Content seems to follow unknown rules in its transformation. Yet at the same time there are elements of the World Content which are completely known - these are our thoughts. From the whole spectrum of conscious phenomena, the percepts of our thinking are the only part for which we feel directly and causally responsible. We feel somewhat involved with feelings too but they are much more elusive. When we reach the will, there's a complete layer of unknowns between our conscious intent and the final result which we observe through the senses - we have not the slightest conscious clue of all the complex processes that happen in the nerves, the muscle cells, in order for our conscious intent to become perceptible bodily motion.

OK. So far we've established that reality for us consists of perceptual World Content which is in continuous metamorphosis. Within this Content there's a gradient of phenomena for which we feel directly responsible or not at all. Current science seeks 'laws of nature' that should explain the patterns and rhythms of transformation of the World Content. It even tries to explain in the same way our own thinking, which is very unfortunate because in this way we're blinding ourselves for the only thing that we feel creatively responsible for and replace it with dead abstractions. There's nothing in the given that justifies this, since no matter how we combine the dead thoughts, we can never reconstruct from them the actual living process that brings them into existence. In a similar way, no matter how we arrange fossilized bones, we can never clothe them in living flesh. This doesn't mean that dealing with abstract thoughts is useless. Just as the arrangement of bones can be correct in respect to the living being from which they have remained, so the abstract thoughts are useful as long as they are always experienced in living relation to the actual spiritual activity which births them.

~ Metamorphosis is a growth process

Another important observation is that we don't simply transform between free floating states but every next state in a way builds upon or resonates with all previous states. In ordinary language we speak about the faculty of memory. Without this integration of states we would never be able to speak of a stream of conscious experience. If every state of being was experienced only for itself, we would always live in a now for which we can never know how we got to (even the very question of 'how we got here' could never arise, because this already requires some experience of continuity of consciousness).

~ The Time-Consciousness spectrum

We feel ourselves as situated within a time stream because we can experience ideas that link together the separate states of being. Thanks to memory we form ideas about the past but we can have ideas for the future too. For example, if I'm on my way to the store, I might be busy with many different thoughts and feelings but still, there's an overarching idea of 'going to the store' which makes the set of 'frames' of my walk meaningfully united.

It's really useful if we can grasp the World Content as a kind of Time-Consciousness spectrum. Conscious phenomena naturally can be differentiated, for example colors, sounds, etc. In a similar way we can differentiate phenomena which have different time-spans or wavelengths, so to speak. These phenomena are recognized when we elucidate them with the proper ideas through thinking. Ideas can be formed for phenomena which are independent of our activity (for example, the day and night cycle) or for our own willed activity (going to the store).

Image


In the above picture we have 'spectrum analyzed' the Time-Consciousness layers. It must be immediately stated that none of this should become a rigid abstract theory. Everything that we describe as conscious time rhythms must be immediately related to something concrete that we find as living conscious experience. Here someone can object that there's no proof that such rhythms exist, that it might all be just in our head. This simply shows the extent to which the Kantian divide has been embedded into one's thinking. One almost immediately declares his conscious experience as unreality in order to postulate the 'true' reality somewhere out there. As we said, we do nothing more than sticking to the given. As far as our immediate experience is concerned, these waves we draw simply symbolize our ability to encompass the unity of states of being that are spread in time. For example, the materialist would object that our idea of 'going to the store' is just a mirage resulting from the momentary state of the brain and that what really exists is an avalanche of cause and effects (firing of neurons, muscle cells actions, etc.) that propagate forward in time. Here we simply need to be aware that if we didn't have the actual idea of 'going to the store', which experientially overarches through time, we would never be able to speak of any science that tries to explain it by chains of completely sequential mechanical states. It is a simple fact of experience that we feel the idea of 'going to the store' as hovering above the chain of states of our walk. We don't presuppose or postulate anything by recognizing this overarching nature of the idea and we simply illustrate this in a picture. We're simply trying to read out what the given can speak out of itself instead of arbitrarily discarding its elements and trying in vain to produce them through combinations of intellectual thoughts.

~ Surveying the higher order Time-Consciousness

So we've reached the idea of Time-Consciousness spectrum, which is nothing fancy but only the recognition that through our thinking activity we can relate the states of our metamorphic process as being related by superimposed layers of ideas - both passively reflective and actively motivating the will. I invite the reader to make a very simple survey of their current state of being. Even though we live in a momentary 'now', it is embedded into a meaningful temporal context. For example, we are in certain part of our daily life. Reading these lines could be happening while we're at home before sleep, or we're riding on a bus to work. In the latter case we're embedded within the daily work rhythm. This can be related to even longer wavelength rhythms. For example, our job might be a part of internship which is within an even longer wavelength of educational degree. All these are embedded in the wavelength of our childhood-adolescence-adulthood rhythm. With risk of becoming annoying I'll once more repeat that there's no need to seek some reality of these rhythms 'out there'. There's no need to fantasize these rhythms as some exotic vibrating energy or anything of that sort. We are speaking concretely about inner experiences. We let the experiences speak for themselves, without coloring them with abstract theories. All we are pointing out is that the ideas of these ever widening rhythms bring meaningful unity to the separate states. That's all.

~ Reflective and creative ideas

It's true that in our everyday experience we find some causative character only in the ideas through which we guide the transformation of our metamorphic process (like the 'going to the store' idea). For something like 'day and night' cycle, it's perfectly valid to say that our idea is only reflective. We have no justification to speak of our idea of day and night being causally responsible for that cycle.

If we look closely we find out that these two types of ideas are not rigidly separated. There are examples of rhythmic waves which initially look like natural laws that we can only abstractly reflect upon but gradually turn out to be completely in our ability to encompass them from within with living ideas and allow them or not to become the motive for our will. We're speaking about instincts, habits, learned behavior, etc. Our everyday conduct is weaved out of elements of which we're rarely conscious, even though the perceptual consequences of these elements are clearly part of our World Content. Through inner effort we may rise to a point where we encompass these elements and intervene in their unfoldment. An interesting example is breathing. Here we have something which can be perceived passively as occurring as a result of natural law but at the same time we can 'step in' and consciously guide the process. Thus our abstract idea about breathing as a process governed by natural laws is transformed into a process which unfolds as a result of our creative ideation.

~ The inversion horizon

Here it might be useful to introduce an analogy (and it's only an analogy!). Imagine a membrane moving back and forth quite slowly. Then we imagine that its motion becomes more and more rapid. At some point it becomes so fast that we no longer can see a moving membrane but something like a thick stationary plate. When the movements become more than 20 in a second we can even perceive sound. What we're trying to point attention to is that our 'now' sense is, so to speak, placed in the middle of different wavelengths/frequencies. The longer wavelength feel like we're going through them (think again about day/night cycle). At certain stage the alternations become so rapid that many cycles are contained in our 'now' experience. Here's the place to mention that our 'now' state is not really an infinitesimal thin moment of time but is more like a slice of states of being that we encompass simultaneously. Probably the best example for this is music. When we listen to music we undoubtedly encompass some short period of time as a whole, otherwise we would never be able to make sense of a melody. Don't worry if this analogy stands as quite abstract at the moment, hopefully it will become more clear below.

The key point in the above analogy is to grasp that there's a kind of transition or inversion between rhythms which are bigger than our 'now' and those that fit inside. This is not simply a matter of mathematical scaling but has qualitative impact too (already mentioned how the visual and audible aspects of the membrane change across this threshold). We can translate this analogy to concrete experiences such as those of becoming aware of unconscious habit. While we're unconscious of it, it's like we're being carried by rhythms larger than our now. Our metamorphing state is unknowingly being driven by these waves. We need a kind of expansion of our time-consciousness span in order to grasp the disparate 'frames' of this unconscious habit and find its unity. Please note that there's a great difference between simply having a reflective idea that somewhat mechanically stitches together a sequence of states of being, and the actual qualitative change of this rhythm such that it becomes experienceable in the expanded now. The difference is that in the latter case we reach such a position in which we are really able to consciously alter the rhythm in question. For example, we know theoretically that many kinds of abdominal pain are caused by the unconscious contraction of muscles. One reason can be higher levels of stress which continuously keep our muscles 'ready for fight'. When this condition is prolonged we begin to experience pain. Even though we have the abstract idea which unites the painful states in time, this doesn't yet give us conscious resolution to the problem (that's why people usually resort to drugs). On the other hand, if through changes of lifestyle, practices in relaxation and meditation, mastering of psychic states, etc., we're able to lift to state of consciousness where we can address the stressful condition, now the unifying idea becomes of active character which can motivate our will and thus our condition can be altered. So we may say that there's a gradient of roughly three stages. First, we're being carried entirely unconsciously by the rhythms. We may have abstract concepts for these rhythms but not inner conscious experience of them. Second, we reach living conscious experience of the rhythms. We not only abstractly think about them but we first handedly experience how they work through us, even if at this stage we're not yet in position to alter them. Third, we're able to modulate the rhythms.

~ Going deep into the spectrum

Now that we understand the spectrum of Time-Consciousness and the fact that we're being un- or half-consciously carried by great amount of rhythm-waves, the logical question would be: how much of these unconscious rhythms can be brought to awareness? The answer is - there's no limit. Now the following will sound outrageous to most but we can really go so deep into the Time-Consciousness spectrum that we can even find the true origins of the day/night cycle - not as abstract sensory concept of a mechanically rotating planet but as actual conscious rhythmic spiritual process, similarly to the way we can recognize that a conscious intent can be the causative factor behind our physical breathing. Clearly, the level at which the day/night rhythm can become conscious transcends the personal perimeter of our consciousness into a higher spiritual world, where the spiritual deeds of beings have global consequences for beings like us, focused in the much fragmented bands of the spectrum.

To make the above a little less outrageous we can present, at least as an indication, the direction into which these higher order spiritual processes can be discovered. Let's approach this through a meditative exercise. We can imagine in our mind's eye that we're drawing a circle. Let's focus on a light-point, similar to a tip of a pen, and begin moving it into a circle. It's not that important to try and hold into imagination the actual perimeter of the circle - only the moving light-tip, where all our thought activity is focused, is enough. Let's further try to make that movement really slow and smooth, without allowing any distraction to 'lift the pen tip from the imaginative surface', so to speak. People without much experience in exercises of this kind may find it quite challenging to move the focused light tip without any interruption even for a small segment of the circle. Thoughts, feelings, memories, sensory perceptions - all these bubble up and distract us, taking our focused attention away and causing us to lift the light tip. Yet through perseverance and good effort we gradually develop our spiritual skills and are able to slowly and smoothly draw the circle, without our laser-like focused light-tip budging at the slightest. At that point we can expand on the exercise and gradually reduce the radius of the circle, thus moving in a inward spiral toward a center. Finally we arrive at the center and all movement ceases. All our thought-activity is focused as a laser beam, energizing the light tip at the center. Now it should be said that the fact that we don't give in to the budging distractions doesn't mean that their forces aren't there. Some of the distracting rhythms really quiet down but many others continue to be active and now we cognitively feel how they move against our concentrated spiritual activity. This is the basic principle behind developing any of the stages of higher cognition, although it takes slightly different particular form in each case. As long as the metamorphosis of our states of being proceeds in an avalanche-like fashion, with us being completely dragged by the stream of sensations, feelings, desires, and our thinking being nothing more than a dry reflective commentary on the happenings, we're completely unconscious of the true nature of all these conscious phenomena. We are conscious of being tossed around and dragged by them but not of the true causes of these forces. We need to exercise our willpower and gain control over our spiritual activity in order to stabilize and focus it in spite of the surging forces. Now with this, a kind of inversion happens, similar to the qualitative change in the analogy with the membrane. Previously we were conscious of being tossed around by the most varied perceptions, our attention was automatically sucked in by them, now we have our stronghold, we've won for ourselves an island of imaginative 'substance' (the light tip) which is entirely of our own making. The external phenomena continue to work their way and try to drag us along but now we withstand these influences and instead we experience their imprints within our imaginative core, without allowing our focused attention to budge. If we may use the expression, our focused imaginative activity turns into a crystal ball in which the activity of the environment impresses. We don't perceive these activities in the same way we perceive and think intellectually about ordinary perceptions - remember - the intellect has been wholly focused into the energization of the light tip. There's no movement of ordinary attention, there are no chains of verbal thoughts - all this has imploded into a point. Yet the meaningful essence normally imbued into intellectual thoughts is now stabilized and fills the entire sphere of consciousness. The impressions of the environment within this essence is experienced directly as images full of immediate meaning. What we have described is the onset of Imaginative cognition. Within the stabilized core of our thinking activity we now begin to perceive in meaningful impressions the dynamics of the spiritual environment. A whole world gradually opens up. Currents, forces which were formerly unconsciously carrying us on their waves now become supersensibly perceptible. We have extricated our activity from their dominion, we have differentiated, and now perceive how formerly our activity was shaped and formatted by these forces.

Can we say something more concrete about these forces that now begin to reveal before our spiritual gaze? Indeed we can. Initially these are primarily elements of our personality. Formerly subconscious layers of our psyche are now shifted into clear cognition. Our hidden soul life is literally spread before us like an open book. Further than this we begin to become conscious of wavelengths of much wider span. For example, we rarely know why we are drawn to one profession rather than another. This is usually accepted as accidental consequence of genes and effects of the environment. Yet within the Imaginative realm we may become conscious of impulses that our soul has been carrying even before entering the current incarnation. There's a higher order idea within the soul which aims at something specific. The soul needs to develop something of its structure and focuses on it. In our ordinary consciousness these higher aims project as sympathies and desires. We simply feel drawn to something and not so much to other things. As a whole, sympathies and antipathies become one of the most important tools for the spiritual investigator because for him or her they are not simply arbitrary peculiarities of their character but point to deeper reality of which the sympathies and antipathies are only mute shadows. There are reasons for every sympathy and antipathy that we experience and these are found when the higher order time-consciousness waves are brought to lucid awareness.

Besides elements of our soul life that are concretely ours, in the Imaginative realm we also discover how we are entangled with soul processes of our human peers. Here again - affection to a specific person is not something random. That we like their eyes or smile is usually only a commentary on the intellectual surface. Major friendships, partnerships and so on are part of higher order time-consciousness waves, which again most often exist in their germinal form way before we enter the body.

Going further we encounter higher order processes (actual spiritual be-ings) who determine the character of whole nations. Once again, we can only gain cognition of these layers when we differentiate from our identification with race and nation and experience these forces against our liberated spiritual activity - only then they become perceptible spiritual reality for us.

This journey through the rhythms of creation can continue, where we find the grand waves of evolutionary development of humanity and our whole planetary system. In the most real sense, the materialistic civilization of today is conscious only of the mechanical movement of a membrane without understanding that this movement is actually the flattened projection of a sounding symphony with extremely complicated hierarchical composition, where each musical part is imbued with deepest wisdom.

It should be noted that the higher we go in the spectrum, the more are the lower order rhythms elucidated too. There's a kind of reciprocal action or said in other words, our consciousness expands simultaneously towards the higher, which in turn reveals the concealed harmony of the lower. In this sense the highest spiritual forces are also the ones that lay the foundation of the physical human being. By physical it's not meant the concrete biological form we witness today but that the forces, which for example differentiate into head-forces, rhythmical-heart-breathing-forces and metabolic-limb-will-forces are present as archetypal trinity in the highest levels of the spectrum. There's no head made of bone, particles and so on, at that level but all the forces that much later will decohere into these details are already present there in germinal form.

So this is, in a very simplified nutshell, how we are placed within the Time-Consciousness spectrum. We're living in decisive times where humans must out of their own initiative decide to penetrate the depths of this spectrum and understand how they are embedded within the hierarchical rhythm structure. The greatest obstacle is that this structure can't be probed by external means with mechanical measuring devices. We can only find the higher order waves which rule the Cosmos around us by finding how they express in ourselves, in the way indicated above. Of course this comes with the inconvenience that we must first pass through the murky layers of our own personality and karma, and this is rarely a pleasant experience. Yet we must 'shew ourselves men' and have the courage to endure the pulling out of the thorn from the flesh because what follows afterwards compensates for all hardships.

~ Wrapping it up

The extract of all this should be that our constantly metamorphosing state of being can be experienced as composed of superimposed Time-Consciousness waves, each of which is not something abstract but actual living idea, causally creative. Some of them we're conscious of - like the ideas through which we govern our life. Others we recognize only abstractly - as the laws of nature. Through inner transformation we can differentiate from these waves that carry us unconsciously and bring them to lucid awareness. This is achieved by our moment 'now' growing to grasp the higher order rhythms within itself. As a result we no longer feel as if time flows as a chain of causes end effects, similar to a train of domino pieces but consciousness encompasses the creative ideas of the Cosmos which serve as hierarchical foundation on the waves of which the ordinary human consciousness flows. Time becomes the expression of meaningful creative acts of beings, just as our 'going to the store' is an idea which shapes events in the sensory worlds.

I would like to include a quote from Rudolf Steiner which is precisely in the spirit of everything we've been speaking so far:

Rudolf Steiner wrote:In rising to a higher level of consciousness we actually gaze into a quite different kind of Space, one that is unknown to ordinary experience, one that would come into being if the flow of Time were, so to speak, constantly to congeal, to coagulate. Think of it in this way. — If you wanted to have before you what you experienced yesterday, one moment of yesterday would have to be as if fixed; and the immediately present moment — which has even now already passed — would have to be held as if in a snapshot, and then all these snapshots would have to be placed side by side. That will give you an inkling of what the spiritual investigator sees livingly before him. He has before him not ordinary space but Space of an altogether different character from physical space, as if the world were perpetually being photographed and the photographs placed side by side. This other kind of Space is essentially and fundamentally different from the space known to man in everyday life. In this latter space it is impossible to discern a picture of the spiritual Space just referred to. For if one tries to draw some line in physical space, this can only be done where lines already exist. But what the spiritual investigator traverses in spiritual Space cannot be inscribed at all, for there Time becomes Space; we pass from one point to another.

Ordinary consciousness is enclosed within space and cannot emerge from it. But the spiritual investigator does emerge from it. He knows how he has to move to events which may have taken place four or five days previously. He can draw a line along which he moves from today to five days ago. Such a line cannot be traced in ordinary space. So we arrive at a concept of Space which corresponds with the memory of the spiritual investigator and in which lines may be drawn which do not belong to ordinary space. This is something that may be called Space with a new dimension, a fourth dimension. The Space which the investigator thus enters has one more dimension than is ever found in ordinary space. We must therefore say that the spiritual investigator emerges from three-dimensional space the moment his higher memory begins to operate. Such a concept of four-dimensional Space is not only thinkable, but there is actually a higher faculty — the higher memory — for which this four-dimensional Space is absolutely real.

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA119 ... 30p01.html


In my personal path, the realization of the Time-Consciousness spectrum has been the most transformative life event. It really consists in actual transformation of inner perspective. In our materialistic age we feel as our soul life is being carried on the stream time. When we attain to inner mastery, we can stabilize our spiritual activity and anchor it within itself. Our concentrated activity becomes its own stable center. Then our whole experience in relation to time changes:

Image


Instead of feeling dragged along an external stream, we now feel that we are always at the same center of being, around which the World Content metamorphoses and we are active contributor to this metamorphosis. We now live at the center of a mandala which we comprehend as superimposed rhythmic layers of living spiritual activity. From this perspective everything in reality can be brought to awareness, it's all a matter of resonant attunement. Here we must mention that, that this transformation also reveals the erroneous conception of 'dissociation'. There's no real dissociation. Nothing separates from anything else. It's all a matter of attunement. We feel dissociated only as long as we don't have the inner means to traverse the Time-Consciousness spectrum. As long as we are helplessly locked into certain rhythmic patterns of consciousness, we feel that we are being carried by external forces - natural laws, time, etc. When we center ourselves within the mandalic spectrum, our whole life's meaning takes a new direction - we're now engaged in spiritual musicality, working, attuning, testing resonant relations. The more we bring the different rhythmic layers into harmony, the more holistic the hole mandalic spectrum becomes and thus we can move along it and follow how higher order time waves, consciously willed by spiritual beings, support the foundations of our metamorphic journey. There's only one Time-Consciousness spectrum and countless relative experiences of it.

Where all this leaves Timelessness? We approach the latter when we ascend to spiritual rhythms of higher and higher order. Ultimately, in a kind of an asymptotical approach, we conceive of the primordial Time-Idea, the fractal seed that becomes infinitely spectrum analyzed into lesser superpositions of rhythms that are being traversed through limited apertures of consciousness.

We must remember that there are always rhythmic levels that are above our inversion horizon. There's always something larger within which we're moving. We can only properly address these higher order rhythms through the soul mood of prayer. We're not speaking of the caricature of prayer like asking for a new car or wife. It's about realizing that we only ever realize our true human potential by expanding our consciousness along the full time spectrum. We need humility and willingness to harmonize ourselves with the higher order rhythms of beings. Only when we bring the different rhythm layers in harmonic relationships, our consciousness can transduce along the gradient - that is, the inversion horizon moves. If we are not willing to do that we simply voluntarily lock ourselves within the limited spectrum band of our intellectual soul life, call that 'dissociation' and go on to spindle fantastic theories that justify our situation. Hopefully humans will make up their mind and turn their gaze towards the depths of being because only there we can find the lasting solutions of the tragic social problems of our times and the path of true evolution.

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 10:40 pm
by AshvinP
Tremendous post, Cleric! It was truly eye-opening.

One should first notice how what you are writing is immanently logical, yet without lacking meaningful detail (in fact, it is very much the opposite). For me, it was like reading "2 + 2 = 4" but feeling like I had just learned complex algebra and was ready to tackle the most difficult engineering problems. I did not have to wade through abstract intellectual models which have no relation my inner experience, and then figure out equally abstract ways to connect those models to my experience. It was all embedded neatly within the concepts and images you presented. That fact alone, if we try hard to remain honest with ourselves, should make us jump up and take notice that very important meaning is being conveyed here.

As for the content itself, it is really uplifting to sense how it all can be verified within our own experience - not so we can feel we have solved the riddles of the Cosmos, but precisely to feel excited about how many riddles are still left waiting for us to begin solving, right this moment and the next. It was a very well-Timed build up of melodic and harmonious thoughts into their natural crescendos! I felt that the content brought to life within me the oft-quoted concept of "microcosm of the macrocosm". One such crescendo was this simple observation - "It's really useful if we can grasp the World Content as a kind of Time-Consciousness spectrum. Conscious phenomena naturally can be differentiated, for example colors, sounds, etc. In a similar way we can differentiate phenomena which have different time-spans or wavelengths, so to speak."

Such a beautifully simple concept - differentiating phenomena based on temporal "wavelengths" - yet one which I rarely, if ever, would think of without being prompted to by people who write about such things. And of course the imagistic elaborations greatly enriched the meaning. There is much more that could be said about the content, but I will leave it there for now. Thank you!

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2021 12:57 pm
by AshvinP
AshvinP wrote: Fri Aug 20, 2021 10:40 pm Tremendous post, Cleric! It was truly eye-opening.

One should first notice how what you are writing is immanently logical, yet without lacking meaningful detail (in fact, it is very much the opposite). For me, it was like reading "2 + 2 = 4" but feeling like I had just learned complex algebra and was ready to tackle the most difficult engineering problems. I did not have to wade through abstract intellectual models which have no relation my inner experience, and then figure out equally abstract ways to connect those models to my experience. It was all embedded neatly within the concepts and images you presented. That fact alone, if we try hard to remain honest with ourselves, should make us jump up and take notice that very important meaning is being conveyed here.

As for the content itself, it is really uplifting to sense how it all can be verified within our own experience - not so we can feel we have solved the riddles of the Cosmos, but precisely to feel excited about how many riddles are still left waiting for us to begin solving, right this moment and the next. It was a very well-Timed build up of melodic and harmonious thoughts into their natural crescendos! I felt that the content brought to life within me the oft-quoted concept of "microcosm of the macrocosm". One such crescendo was this simple observation - "It's really useful if we can grasp the World Content as a kind of Time-Consciousness spectrum. Conscious phenomena naturally can be differentiated, for example colors, sounds, etc. In a similar way we can differentiate phenomena which have different time-spans or wavelengths, so to speak."

Such a beautifully simple concept - differentiating phenomena based on temporal "wavelengths" - yet one which I rarely, if ever, would think of without being prompted to by people who write about such things. And of course the imagistic elaborations greatly enriched the meaning. There is much more that could be said about the content, but I will leave it there for now. Thank you!

Another consideration here is how one approach, the one you outline above, asks us to become more and more aware of how our previous states of being were manifested in our experience and that process practically never ends - each future state provides a higher qualitative perspective on the previous ones without reducing into "one concept to explain them all". When the abstract modeling approach is taken, we actually become less aware of the connection between the new state and the previous states. It is as if the previous states never existed or were never important. Of course, at modern levels of abstraction, we can't even tell the difference between current and future states because they are all equally abstract, so we are forever shifting between such states and getting "diminishing returns" on the meaningful impact on our experience. It is no wonder so many prominent minds are coming up with so many different abstract models and "TOE". Or the same models are taken from one to another and quite literally marketed under different name, like sugary products in the grocery store.

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2021 5:53 pm
by Cleric K
AshvinP wrote: Sat Aug 21, 2021 12:57 pm
AshvinP wrote: Fri Aug 20, 2021 10:40 pm Tremendous post, Cleric! It was truly eye-opening.

One should first notice how what you are writing is immanently logical, yet without lacking meaningful detail (in fact, it is very much the opposite). For me, it was like reading "2 + 2 = 4" but feeling like I had just learned complex algebra and was ready to tackle the most difficult engineering problems. I did not have to wade through abstract intellectual models which have no relation my inner experience, and then figure out equally abstract ways to connect those models to my experience. It was all embedded neatly within the concepts and images you presented. That fact alone, if we try hard to remain honest with ourselves, should make us jump up and take notice that very important meaning is being conveyed here.

As for the content itself, it is really uplifting to sense how it all can be verified within our own experience - not so we can feel we have solved the riddles of the Cosmos, but precisely to feel excited about how many riddles are still left waiting for us to begin solving, right this moment and the next. It was a very well-Timed build up of melodic and harmonious thoughts into their natural crescendos! I felt that the content brought to life within me the oft-quoted concept of "microcosm of the macrocosm". One such crescendo was this simple observation - "It's really useful if we can grasp the World Content as a kind of Time-Consciousness spectrum. Conscious phenomena naturally can be differentiated, for example colors, sounds, etc. In a similar way we can differentiate phenomena which have different time-spans or wavelengths, so to speak."

Such a beautifully simple concept - differentiating phenomena based on temporal "wavelengths" - yet one which I rarely, if ever, would think of without being prompted to by people who write about such things. And of course the imagistic elaborations greatly enriched the meaning. There is much more that could be said about the content, but I will leave it there for now. Thank you!

Another consideration here is how one approach, the one you outline above, asks us to become more and more aware of how our previous states of being were manifested in our experience and that process practically never ends - each future state provides a higher qualitative perspective on the previous ones without reducing into "one concept to explain them all". When the abstract modeling approach is taken, we actually become less aware of the connection between the new state and the previous states. It is as if the previous states never existed or were never important. Of course, at modern levels of abstraction, we can't even tell the difference between current and future states because they are all equally abstract, so we are forever shifting between such states and getting "diminishing returns" on the meaningful impact on our experience. It is no wonder so many prominent minds are coming up with so many different abstract models and "TOE". Or the same models are taken from one to another and quite literally marketed under different name, like sugary products in the grocery store.
Thank you, Ashvin, for your positive feedback. I'm very happy that you find these things useful.

As I wrote, for me this way of looking on things was one of the most significant steps on my path. As anyone else trained in scientific thinking, my mind was completely engaged in thinking in models. To be honest (I've mentioned this before) my path towards the spiritual was quite chaotic and in many ways improper. My break into a kind of Imaginative consciousness was more or less accidental. For this reason I didn't have the clarity of what exactly was needed in order do develop higher cognition gradually and in a healthy manner. It took me years to rectify all this and I wouldn't say that the damage is fully undone yet. When I found that the most fruitful way for moving along the gradient of consciousness was indeed viewing consciousness as Time spectrum, I was so excited! My scientific mind immediately grasped at the opportunity and began building actual TOEs based on the spectrum ideas. You see, at that time the distinction between actual Imaginative cognition and abstract thinking was completely smeared out. I would have some higher experiences which the intellect would immediately snatch and try to build a metaphysical theory out of the fragments. It literally took me years of fighting with this. It was so obvious that the higher consciousness immediately decoheres as soon as I begin to think abstractly, yet I was desperately trying to build the higher worlds out of thoughts. Part of my motivation for this was that there were particular persons in my life, with scientifically atheistical views (same as me few years before that), who I would have very much liked to convince in the reality of the higher consciousness spectrum by elaborating the terminology as best as I could. Of course this didn't happen. It took much more time until I came to peace with that. This forum has also helped me a lot to form a more balanced position towards the views of others and realize that it's not enough to explain things clearly.

Understanding the higher order conscious spectrum requires certain shift in perspective. I'm saying 'understanding' and not 'directly experiencing' because it is completely possible to understand how ordinary consciousness is embedded in the higher order rhythms even if we don't yet see them for ourselves. Changing the way we think about time, for me at least, was the key which allowed my intellectual ego to find it's orientation. I can't describe what JOY this was giving me (and continues to this day). Both religion and mysticism demand from the ego a kind of renunciation of cognition and acceptance that it can never have any thoughtful experience of true reality but only a surrender to the flow of the heart. This was a major pain for me. When I discovered how to move along the Time spectrum, this was like a dream come true. It turned out that thinking could really live along the gradient of higher consciousness. A bridge was built! Of course, as said, it took me a long time to differentiate the actual forms of higher cognition from the intellectual thoughts. It was like placing them in their appropriate frequency bands. But the fact remains to this day that viewing the conscious World in terms of superimposed rhythms, not abstractly, but as expressions of creative ideas, gives me the most flexible language to translate between the higher experiences and intellectual terminology.

As mentioned in the essay, getting in habit to stop from time to time and paying attention to the temporal context, is of great value. Just as we can stop and assess our spatial position, starting from our current place, expanding outside our house, city, country, planet, galaxy, so we can do something similar in terms of time. At any point we can try to encompass what we are doing, what we were doing previously through the day, the previous day, what we're planning to do the next day, in what phase of our life we are and so on. When we do that we really begin to sense these superimposed fractally embedded rhythms within rhythms. One very effective exercise, which Steiner always recommended highly, is to do a retrospective walk backwards in time in the evening before bed. We practically calm down and begin from the current moment to walk towards the past in reverse order, passing through the daily events, until we reach the time we woke up in the morning. This is tremendously beneficial exercise. Not much happens initially but we gradually develop precisely these inner skill that allow us to expand the 'now' and encompass Time as a panoramic image.

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2022 1:54 pm
by Anthony66
Cleric K wrote: Fri Aug 20, 2021 8:10 pm To make the above a little less outrageous we can present, at least as an indication, the direction into which these higher order spiritual processes can be discovered. Let's approach this through a meditative exercise. We can imagine in our mind's eye that we're drawing a circle. Let's focus on a light-point, similar to a tip of a pen, and begin moving it into a circle. It's not that important to try and hold into imagination the actual perimeter of the circle - only the moving light-tip, where all our thought activity is focused, is enough. Let's further try to make that movement really slow and smooth, without allowing any distraction to 'lift the pen tip from the imaginative surface', so to speak. People without much experience in exercises of this kind may find it quite challenging to move the focused light tip without any interruption even for a small segment of the circle. Thoughts, feelings, memories, sensory perceptions - all these bubble up and distract us, taking our focused attention away and causing us to lift the light tip. Yet through perseverance and good effort we gradually develop our spiritual skills and are able to slowly and smoothly draw the circle, without our laser-like focused light-tip budging at the slightest. At that point we can expand on the exercise and gradually reduce the radius of the circle, thus moving in a inward spiral toward a center. Finally we arrive at the center and all movement ceases. All our thought-activity is focused as a laser beam, energizing the light tip at the center. Now it should be said that the fact that we don't give in to the budging distractions doesn't mean that their forces aren't there. Some of the distracting rhythms really quiet down but many others continue to be active and now we cognitively feel how they move against our concentrated spiritual activity. This is the basic principle behind developing any of the stages of higher cognition, although it takes slightly different particular form in each case. As long as the metamorphosis of our states of being proceeds in an avalanche-like fashion, with us being completely dragged by the stream of sensations, feelings, desires, and our thinking being nothing more than a dry reflective commentary on the happenings, we're completely unconscious of the true nature of all these conscious phenomena. We are conscious of being tossed around and dragged by them but not of the true causes of these forces. We need to exercise our willpower and gain control over our spiritual activity in order to stabilize and focus it in spite of the surging forces. Now with this, a kind of inversion happens, similar to the qualitative change in the analogy with the membrane. Previously we were conscious of being tossed around by the most varied perceptions, our attention was automatically sucked in by them, now we have our stronghold, we've won for ourselves an island of imaginative 'substance' (the light tip) which is entirely of our own making. The external phenomena continue to work their way and try to drag us along but now we withstand these influences and instead we experience their imprints within our imaginative core, without allowing our focused attention to budge. If we may use the expression, our focused imaginative activity turns into a crystal ball in which the activity of the environment impresses. We don't perceive these activities in the same way we perceive and think intellectually about ordinary perceptions - remember - the intellect has been wholly focused into the energization of the light tip. There's no movement of ordinary attention, there are no chains of verbal thoughts - all this has imploded into a point. Yet the meaningful essence normally imbued into intellectual thoughts is now stabilized and fills the entire sphere of consciousness. The impressions of the environment within this essence is experienced directly as images full of immediate meaning. What we have described is the onset of Imaginative cognition. Within the stabilized core of our thinking activity we now begin to perceive in meaningful impressions the dynamics of the spiritual environment. A whole world gradually opens up. Currents, forces which were formerly unconsciously carrying us on their waves now become supersensibly perceptible. We have extricated our activity from their dominion, we have differentiated, and now perceive how formerly our activity was shaped and formatted by these forces.
Cleric,

What are some other meditations/exercises that one can employ to develop higher cognition? What are the key elements that are helpful in our lives?

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:41 pm
by Federica
Cleric K wrote: Fri Aug 20, 2021 8:10 pm This was intended as a reply to mgjohnson2552 on the thread here. I was planing anyway to write about the exact same topic so I decided to post to a new thread instead.
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~ Firm point of departure

First we must always start from solid foundations, grounded in the given. Current science tries to grasp reality by creating an intellectual model of it and show the logical rules by which this model transforms in time. There are many different approaches which are deeply equivalent. For example, the Schrodinger equation models reality as a time-dependent wave function which must conform to certain restrictions. A Turing machine is another example of a state that evolves through time. Cellular automata are another approach. What is common between all these is that we build a certain mental picture of reality and then apply rules to transform that picture from 'frame to frame'. All these are founded on a common presupposition - it's assumed that reality exists 'out there' and we can build an intellectual replica of it. We can't afford such a presupposition if we want to stay firmly grounded in the given. The most we can say without going beyond the given facts is that we experience World Content entirely of conscious phenomena - colors, sounds, feelings, thoughts, etc. These are in continuous metamorphosis. So we are basically approaching the question in the same way as science but instead of imagining a real world 'out there' which our thoughts reflect, we take the immediate world of the metamorphosis of the World Content of consciousness. When we do this we are safe because we don't presuppose anything. Even if there are many deeper facts behind the appearances of conscious phenomena this doesn't change the given fact that we experience the continuous transformation of the conscious World Content.

~ Our place in the metamorphic process

Another very important observation is that a large part of the World Content seems to follow unknown rules in its transformation. Yet at the same time there are elements of the World Content which are completely known - these are our thoughts. From the whole spectrum of conscious phenomena, the percepts of our thinking are the only part for which we feel directly and causally responsible. We feel somewhat involved with feelings too but they are much more elusive. When we reach the will, there's a complete layer of unknowns between our conscious intent and the final result which we observe through the senses - we have not the slightest conscious clue of all the complex processes that happen in the nerves, the muscle cells, in order for our conscious intent to become perceptible bodily motion.

OK. So far we've established that reality for us consists of perceptual World Content which is in continuous metamorphosis. Within this Content there's a gradient of phenomena for which we feel directly responsible or not at all. Current science seeks 'laws of nature' that should explain the patterns and rhythms of transformation of the World Content. It even tries to explain in the same way our own thinking, which is very unfortunate because in this way we're blinding ourselves for the only thing that we feel creatively responsible for and replace it with dead abstractions. There's nothing in the given that justifies this, since no matter how we combine the dead thoughts, we can never reconstruct from them the actual living process that brings them into existence. In a similar way, no matter how we arrange fossilized bones, we can never clothe them in living flesh. This doesn't mean that dealing with abstract thoughts is useless. Just as the arrangement of bones can be correct in respect to the living being from which they have remained, so the abstract thoughts are useful as long as they are always experienced in living relation to the actual spiritual activity which births them.

~ Metamorphosis is a growth process

Another important observation is that we don't simply transform between free floating states but every next state in a way builds upon or resonates with all previous states. In ordinary language we speak about the faculty of memory. Without this integration of states we would never be able to speak of a stream of conscious experience. If every state of being was experienced only for itself, we would always live in a now for which we can never know how we got to (even the very question of 'how we got here' could never arise, because this already requires some experience of continuity of consciousness).

~ The Time-Consciousness spectrum

We feel ourselves as situated within a time stream because we can experience ideas that link together the separate states of being. Thanks to memory we form ideas about the past but we can have ideas for the future too. For example, if I'm on my way to the store, I might be busy with many different thoughts and feelings but still, there's an overarching idea of 'going to the store' which makes the set of 'frames' of my walk meaningfully united.

It's really useful if we can grasp the World Content as a kind of Time-Consciousness spectrum. Conscious phenomena naturally can be differentiated, for example colors, sounds, etc. In a similar way we can differentiate phenomena which have different time-spans or wavelengths, so to speak. These phenomena are recognized when we elucidate them with the proper ideas through thinking. Ideas can be formed for phenomena which are independent of our activity (for example, the day and night cycle) or for our own willed activity (going to the store).

Image


In the above picture we have 'spectrum analyzed' the Time-Consciousness layers. It must be immediately stated that none of this should become a rigid abstract theory. Everything that we describe as conscious time rhythms must be immediately related to something concrete that we find as living conscious experience. Here someone can object that there's no proof that such rhythms exist, that it might all be just in our head. This simply shows the extent to which the Kantian divide has been embedded into one's thinking. One almost immediately declares his conscious experience as unreality in order to postulate the 'true' reality somewhere out there. As we said, we do nothing more than sticking to the given. As far as our immediate experience is concerned, these waves we draw simply symbolize our ability to encompass the unity of states of being that are spread in time. For example, the materialist would object that our idea of 'going to the store' is just a mirage resulting from the momentary state of the brain and that what really exists is an avalanche of cause and effects (firing of neurons, muscle cells actions, etc.) that propagate forward in time. Here we simply need to be aware that if we didn't have the actual idea of 'going to the store', which experientially overarches through time, we would never be able to speak of any science that tries to explain it by chains of completely sequential mechanical states. It is a simple fact of experience that we feel the idea of 'going to the store' as hovering above the chain of states of our walk. We don't presuppose or postulate anything by recognizing this overarching nature of the idea and we simply illustrate this in a picture. We're simply trying to read out what the given can speak out of itself instead of arbitrarily discarding its elements and trying in vain to produce them through combinations of intellectual thoughts.

~ Surveying the higher order Time-Consciousness

So we've reached the idea of Time-Consciousness spectrum, which is nothing fancy but only the recognition that through our thinking activity we can relate the states of our metamorphic process as being related by superimposed layers of ideas - both passively reflective and actively motivating the will. I invite the reader to make a very simple survey of their current state of being. Even though we live in a momentary 'now', it is embedded into a meaningful temporal context. For example, we are in certain part of our daily life. Reading these lines could be happening while we're at home before sleep, or we're riding on a bus to work. In the latter case we're embedded within the daily work rhythm. This can be related to even longer wavelength rhythms. For example, our job might be a part of internship which is within an even longer wavelength of educational degree. All these are embedded in the wavelength of our childhood-adolescence-adulthood rhythm. With risk of becoming annoying I'll once more repeat that there's no need to seek some reality of these rhythms 'out there'. There's no need to fantasize these rhythms as some exotic vibrating energy or anything of that sort. We are speaking concretely about inner experiences. We let the experiences speak for themselves, without coloring them with abstract theories. All we are pointing out is that the ideas of these ever widening rhythms bring meaningful unity to the separate states. That's all.

~ Reflective and creative ideas

It's true that in our everyday experience we find some causative character only in the ideas through which we guide the transformation of our metamorphic process (like the 'going to the store' idea). For something like 'day and night' cycle, it's perfectly valid to say that our idea is only reflective. We have no justification to speak of our idea of day and night being causally responsible for that cycle.

If we look closely we find out that these two types of ideas are not rigidly separated. There are examples of rhythmic waves which initially look like natural laws that we can only abstractly reflect upon but gradually turn out to be completely in our ability to encompass them from within with living ideas and allow them or not to become the motive for our will. We're speaking about instincts, habits, learned behavior, etc. Our everyday conduct is weaved out of elements of which we're rarely conscious, even though the perceptual consequences of these elements are clearly part of our World Content. Through inner effort we may rise to a point where we encompass these elements and intervene in their unfoldment. An interesting example is breathing. Here we have something which can be perceived passively as occurring as a result of natural law but at the same time we can 'step in' and consciously guide the process. Thus our abstract idea about breathing as a process governed by natural laws is transformed into a process which unfolds as a result of our creative ideation.

~ The inversion horizon

Here it might be useful to introduce an analogy (and it's only an analogy!). Imagine a membrane moving back and forth quite slowly. Then we imagine that its motion becomes more and more rapid. At some point it becomes so fast that we no longer can see a moving membrane but something like a thick stationary plate. When the movements become more than 20 in a second we can even perceive sound. What we're trying to point attention to is that our 'now' sense is, so to speak, placed in the middle of different wavelengths/frequencies. The longer wavelength feel like we're going through them (think again about day/night cycle). At certain stage the alternations become so rapid that many cycles are contained in our 'now' experience. Here's the place to mention that our 'now' state is not really an infinitesimal thin moment of time but is more like a slice of states of being that we encompass simultaneously. Probably the best example for this is music. When we listen to music we undoubtedly encompass some short period of time as a whole, otherwise we would never be able to make sense of a melody. Don't worry if this analogy stands as quite abstract at the moment, hopefully it will become more clear below.

The key point in the above analogy is to grasp that there's a kind of transition or inversion between rhythms which are bigger than our 'now' and those that fit inside. This is not simply a matter of mathematical scaling but has qualitative impact too (already mentioned how the visual and audible aspects of the membrane change across this threshold). We can translate this analogy to concrete experiences such as those of becoming aware of unconscious habit. While we're unconscious of it, it's like we're being carried by rhythms larger than our now. Our metamorphing state is unknowingly being driven by these waves. We need a kind of expansion of our time-consciousness span in order to grasp the disparate 'frames' of this unconscious habit and find its unity. Please note that there's a great difference between simply having a reflective idea that somewhat mechanically stitches together a sequence of states of being, and the actual qualitative change of this rhythm such that it becomes experienceable in the expanded now. The difference is that in the latter case we reach such a position in which we are really able to consciously alter the rhythm in question. For example, we know theoretically that many kinds of abdominal pain are caused by the unconscious contraction of muscles. One reason can be higher levels of stress which continuously keep our muscles 'ready for fight'. When this condition is prolonged we begin to experience pain. Even though we have the abstract idea which unites the painful states in time, this doesn't yet give us conscious resolution to the problem (that's why people usually resort to drugs). On the other hand, if through changes of lifestyle, practices in relaxation and meditation, mastering of psychic states, etc., we're able to lift to state of consciousness where we can address the stressful condition, now the unifying idea becomes of active character which can motivate our will and thus our condition can be altered. So we may say that there's a gradient of roughly three stages. First, we're being carried entirely unconsciously by the rhythms. We may have abstract concepts for these rhythms but not inner conscious experience of them. Second, we reach living conscious experience of the rhythms. We not only abstractly think about them but we first handedly experience how they work through us, even if at this stage we're not yet in position to alter them. Third, we're able to modulate the rhythms.

~ Going deep into the spectrum

Now that we understand the spectrum of Time-Consciousness and the fact that we're being un- or half-consciously carried by great amount of rhythm-waves, the logical question would be: how much of these unconscious rhythms can be brought to awareness? The answer is - there's no limit. Now the following will sound outrageous to most but we can really go so deep into the Time-Consciousness spectrum that we can even find the true origins of the day/night cycle - not as abstract sensory concept of a mechanically rotating planet but as actual conscious rhythmic spiritual process, similarly to the way we can recognize that a conscious intent can be the causative factor behind our physical breathing. Clearly, the level at which the day/night rhythm can become conscious transcends the personal perimeter of our consciousness into a higher spiritual world, where the spiritual deeds of beings have global consequences for beings like us, focused in the much fragmented bands of the spectrum.

To make the above a little less outrageous we can present, at least as an indication, the direction into which these higher order spiritual processes can be discovered. Let's approach this through a meditative exercise. We can imagine in our mind's eye that we're drawing a circle. Let's focus on a light-point, similar to a tip of a pen, and begin moving it into a circle. It's not that important to try and hold into imagination the actual perimeter of the circle - only the moving light-tip, where all our thought activity is focused, is enough. Let's further try to make that movement really slow and smooth, without allowing any distraction to 'lift the pen tip from the imaginative surface', so to speak. People without much experience in exercises of this kind may find it quite challenging to move the focused light tip without any interruption even for a small segment of the circle. Thoughts, feelings, memories, sensory perceptions - all these bubble up and distract us, taking our focused attention away and causing us to lift the light tip. Yet through perseverance and good effort we gradually develop our spiritual skills and are able to slowly and smoothly draw the circle, without our laser-like focused light-tip budging at the slightest. At that point we can expand on the exercise and gradually reduce the radius of the circle, thus moving in a inward spiral toward a center. Finally we arrive at the center and all movement ceases. All our thought-activity is focused as a laser beam, energizing the light tip at the center. Now it should be said that the fact that we don't give in to the budging distractions doesn't mean that their forces aren't there. Some of the distracting rhythms really quiet down but many others continue to be active and now we cognitively feel how they move against our concentrated spiritual activity. This is the basic principle behind developing any of the stages of higher cognition, although it takes slightly different particular form in each case. As long as the metamorphosis of our states of being proceeds in an avalanche-like fashion, with us being completely dragged by the stream of sensations, feelings, desires, and our thinking being nothing more than a dry reflective commentary on the happenings, we're completely unconscious of the true nature of all these conscious phenomena. We are conscious of being tossed around and dragged by them but not of the true causes of these forces. We need to exercise our willpower and gain control over our spiritual activity in order to stabilize and focus it in spite of the surging forces. Now with this, a kind of inversion happens, similar to the qualitative change in the analogy with the membrane. Previously we were conscious of being tossed around by the most varied perceptions, our attention was automatically sucked in by them, now we have our stronghold, we've won for ourselves an island of imaginative 'substance' (the light tip) which is entirely of our own making. The external phenomena continue to work their way and try to drag us along but now we withstand these influences and instead we experience their imprints within our imaginative core, without allowing our focused attention to budge. If we may use the expression, our focused imaginative activity turns into a crystal ball in which the activity of the environment impresses. We don't perceive these activities in the same way we perceive and think intellectually about ordinary perceptions - remember - the intellect has been wholly focused into the energization of the light tip. There's no movement of ordinary attention, there are no chains of verbal thoughts - all this has imploded into a point. Yet the meaningful essence normally imbued into intellectual thoughts is now stabilized and fills the entire sphere of consciousness. The impressions of the environment within this essence is experienced directly as images full of immediate meaning. What we have described is the onset of Imaginative cognition. Within the stabilized core of our thinking activity we now begin to perceive in meaningful impressions the dynamics of the spiritual environment. A whole world gradually opens up. Currents, forces which were formerly unconsciously carrying us on their waves now become supersensibly perceptible. We have extricated our activity from their dominion, we have differentiated, and now perceive how formerly our activity was shaped and formatted by these forces.

Can we say something more concrete about these forces that now begin to reveal before our spiritual gaze? Indeed we can. Initially these are primarily elements of our personality. Formerly subconscious layers of our psyche are now shifted into clear cognition. Our hidden soul life is literally spread before us like an open book. Further than this we begin to become conscious of wavelengths of much wider span. For example, we rarely know why we are drawn to one profession rather than another. This is usually accepted as accidental consequence of genes and effects of the environment. Yet within the Imaginative realm we may become conscious of impulses that our soul has been carrying even before entering the current incarnation. There's a higher order idea within the soul which aims at something specific. The soul needs to develop something of its structure and focuses on it. In our ordinary consciousness these higher aims project as sympathies and desires. We simply feel drawn to something and not so much to other things. As a whole, sympathies and antipathies become one of the most important tools for the spiritual investigator because for him or her they are not simply arbitrary peculiarities of their character but point to deeper reality of which the sympathies and antipathies are only mute shadows. There are reasons for every sympathy and antipathy that we experience and these are found when the higher order time-consciousness waves are brought to lucid awareness.

Besides elements of our soul life that are concretely ours, in the Imaginative realm we also discover how we are entangled with soul processes of our human peers. Here again - affection to a specific person is not something random. That we like their eyes or smile is usually only a commentary on the intellectual surface. Major friendships, partnerships and so on are part of higher order time-consciousness waves, which again most often exist in their germinal form way before we enter the body.

Going further we encounter higher order processes (actual spiritual be-ings) who determine the character of whole nations. Once again, we can only gain cognition of these layers when we differentiate from our identification with race and nation and experience these forces against our liberated spiritual activity - only then they become perceptible spiritual reality for us.

This journey through the rhythms of creation can continue, where we find the grand waves of evolutionary development of humanity and our whole planetary system. In the most real sense, the materialistic civilization of today is conscious only of the mechanical movement of a membrane without understanding that this movement is actually the flattened projection of a sounding symphony with extremely complicated hierarchical composition, where each musical part is imbued with deepest wisdom.

It should be noted that the higher we go in the spectrum, the more are the lower order rhythms elucidated too. There's a kind of reciprocal action or said in other words, our consciousness expands simultaneously towards the higher, which in turn reveals the concealed harmony of the lower. In this sense the highest spiritual forces are also the ones that lay the foundation of the physical human being. By physical it's not meant the concrete biological form we witness today but that the forces, which for example differentiate into head-forces, rhythmical-heart-breathing-forces and metabolic-limb-will-forces are present as archetypal trinity in the highest levels of the spectrum. There's no head made of bone, particles and so on, at that level but all the forces that much later will decohere into these details are already present there in germinal form.

So this is, in a very simplified nutshell, how we are placed within the Time-Consciousness spectrum. We're living in decisive times where humans must out of their own initiative decide to penetrate the depths of this spectrum and understand how they are embedded within the hierarchical rhythm structure. The greatest obstacle is that this structure can't be probed by external means with mechanical measuring devices. We can only find the higher order waves which rule the Cosmos around us by finding how they express in ourselves, in the way indicated above. Of course this comes with the inconvenience that we must first pass through the murky layers of our own personality and karma, and this is rarely a pleasant experience. Yet we must 'shew ourselves men' and have the courage to endure the pulling out of the thorn from the flesh because what follows afterwards compensates for all hardships.

~ Wrapping it up

The extract of all this should be that our constantly metamorphosing state of being can be experienced as composed of superimposed Time-Consciousness waves, each of which is not something abstract but actual living idea, causally creative. Some of them we're conscious of - like the ideas through which we govern our life. Others we recognize only abstractly - as the laws of nature. Through inner transformation we can differentiate from these waves that carry us unconsciously and bring them to lucid awareness. This is achieved by our moment 'now' growing to grasp the higher order rhythms within itself. As a result we no longer feel as if time flows as a chain of causes end effects, similar to a train of domino pieces but consciousness encompasses the creative ideas of the Cosmos which serve as hierarchical foundation on the waves of which the ordinary human consciousness flows. Time becomes the expression of meaningful creative acts of beings, just as our 'going to the store' is an idea which shapes events in the sensory worlds.

I would like to include a quote from Rudolf Steiner which is precisely in the spirit of everything we've been speaking so far:

Rudolf Steiner wrote:In rising to a higher level of consciousness we actually gaze into a quite different kind of Space, one that is unknown to ordinary experience, one that would come into being if the flow of Time were, so to speak, constantly to congeal, to coagulate. Think of it in this way. — If you wanted to have before you what you experienced yesterday, one moment of yesterday would have to be as if fixed; and the immediately present moment — which has even now already passed — would have to be held as if in a snapshot, and then all these snapshots would have to be placed side by side. That will give you an inkling of what the spiritual investigator sees livingly before him. He has before him not ordinary space but Space of an altogether different character from physical space, as if the world were perpetually being photographed and the photographs placed side by side. This other kind of Space is essentially and fundamentally different from the space known to man in everyday life. In this latter space it is impossible to discern a picture of the spiritual Space just referred to. For if one tries to draw some line in physical space, this can only be done where lines already exist. But what the spiritual investigator traverses in spiritual Space cannot be inscribed at all, for there Time becomes Space; we pass from one point to another.

Ordinary consciousness is enclosed within space and cannot emerge from it. But the spiritual investigator does emerge from it. He knows how he has to move to events which may have taken place four or five days previously. He can draw a line along which he moves from today to five days ago. Such a line cannot be traced in ordinary space. So we arrive at a concept of Space which corresponds with the memory of the spiritual investigator and in which lines may be drawn which do not belong to ordinary space. This is something that may be called Space with a new dimension, a fourth dimension. The Space which the investigator thus enters has one more dimension than is ever found in ordinary space. We must therefore say that the spiritual investigator emerges from three-dimensional space the moment his higher memory begins to operate. Such a concept of four-dimensional Space is not only thinkable, but there is actually a higher faculty — the higher memory — for which this four-dimensional Space is absolutely real.

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA119 ... 30p01.html


In my personal path, the realization of the Time-Consciousness spectrum has been the most transformative life event. It really consists in actual transformation of inner perspective. In our materialistic age we feel as our soul life is being carried on the stream time. When we attain to inner mastery, we can stabilize our spiritual activity and anchor it within itself. Our concentrated activity becomes its own stable center. Then our whole experience in relation to time changes:

Image


Instead of feeling dragged along an external stream, we now feel that we are always at the same center of being, around which the World Content metamorphoses and we are active contributor to this metamorphosis. We now live at the center of a mandala which we comprehend as superimposed rhythmic layers of living spiritual activity. From this perspective everything in reality can be brought to awareness, it's all a matter of resonant attunement. Here we must mention that, that this transformation also reveals the erroneous conception of 'dissociation'. There's no real dissociation. Nothing separates from anything else. It's all a matter of attunement. We feel dissociated only as long as we don't have the inner means to traverse the Time-Consciousness spectrum. As long as we are helplessly locked into certain rhythmic patterns of consciousness, we feel that we are being carried by external forces - natural laws, time, etc. When we center ourselves within the mandalic spectrum, our whole life's meaning takes a new direction - we're now engaged in spiritual musicality, working, attuning, testing resonant relations. The more we bring the different rhythmic layers into harmony, the more holistic the hole mandalic spectrum becomes and thus we can move along it and follow how higher order time waves, consciously willed by spiritual beings, support the foundations of our metamorphic journey. There's only one Time-Consciousness spectrum and countless relative experiences of it.

Where all this leaves Timelessness? We approach the latter when we ascend to spiritual rhythms of higher and higher order. Ultimately, in a kind of an asymptotical approach, we conceive of the primordial Time-Idea, the fractal seed that becomes infinitely spectrum analyzed into lesser superpositions of rhythms that are being traversed through limited apertures of consciousness.

We must remember that there are always rhythmic levels that are above our inversion horizon. There's always something larger within which we're moving. We can only properly address these higher order rhythms through the soul mood of prayer. We're not speaking of the caricature of prayer like asking for a new car or wife. It's about realizing that we only ever realize our true human potential by expanding our consciousness along the full time spectrum. We need humility and willingness to harmonize ourselves with the higher order rhythms of beings. Only when we bring the different rhythm layers in harmonic relationships, our consciousness can transduce along the gradient - that is, the inversion horizon moves. If we are not willing to do that we simply voluntarily lock ourselves within the limited spectrum band of our intellectual soul life, call that 'dissociation' and go on to spindle fantastic theories that justify our situation. Hopefully humans will make up their mind and turn their gaze towards the depths of being because only there we can find the lasting solutions of the tragic social problems of our times and the path of true evolution.

***

I was reading again through the time-consciousness spectrum, as I periodically do, once again finding the exercise very beneficial, and I thought about a few points, in connection with the experience of the given and its metamorphosis. Reading it for the first time a while ago, I certainly didn’t understand the reasoning in depth. I was simply following it. Even today, with better experiential orientation, I still have to micromanage myself through the careful consideration of the given, and as I’m doing it, the following comes to mind.

Cleric wrote:Another very important observation is that a large part of the World Content seems to follow unknown rules in its transformation. Yet at the same time there are elements of the World Content which are completely known - these are our thoughts. From the whole spectrum of conscious phenomena, the percepts of our thinking are the only part for which we feel directly and causally responsible. We feel somewhat involved with feelings too but they are much more elusive. When we reach the will, there's a complete layer of unknowns between our conscious intent and the final result which we observe through the senses - we have not the slightest conscious clue of all the complex processes that happen in the nerves, the muscle cells, in order for our conscious intent to become perceptible bodily motion.

OK. So far we've established that reality for us consists of perceptual World Content which is in continuous metamorphosis. Within this Content there's a gradient of phenomena for which we feel directly responsible or not at all.


As we know, we first observe that our given experience consists of sense perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, as conscious phenomena (in more reasoned-out terms, it consists of thought-pictures of sense perceptions, thought-pictures of feelings, and other thought-pictures).
Then the tripartite categorization Will-Feeling-Thinking is introduced, which I have become so used to now. However, from an experiential perspective, this triad seems external. Looking closely, it appears that WFT is not a direct element of the given, and I believe it can blur understanding, especially when it comes to the Will. The Will doesn’t seem to be given, as a category of conscious phenomena. Rather, what's exactly given is our thought-picture of the intent “I will now walk to the table” and later the thought-pictures of all sensory perceptions connected to the flow of becoming that follows. Thus the Will seems to be a concept that unites certain type of thoughts with certain type of metamorphoses (meaningful series of sense percepts), in this case, a physical action of walking to the table. So the first question is: what is gained by starting the static-form observation of the given with the WFT supporting framework, when the Will inevitably points to transformation, or is in itself transformation already?


Then, when we observe the continuous metamorphosis of our experiences and how they unfold - in other words, when we ask what else can be observed without theorizing - I believe some further doubts may arise. Because, yes, thoughts are statically experienced as “completely known”, but when it comes to the "rules of their transformation", the experience is not necessarily that of mastery and creative responsibility. On the other end, when it comes to the will, and how our intents unfold in the perceptual-sensory spectrum, although we have no clues of the processes occurring in the nerves and muscles, and more generally no clues of any processes occurring in between our intents of movement and our movement, we can still feel creatively responsible for that unfolding, to some extent. That is our experience. Realizing the complete ignorance of our inner bodily processes doesn’t erase the experience of conscious steering of our bodily movements through will. The ballet dancer does have a sharp consciousness of the transformation of intents into sensory perceptions of bodily motion, feeling highly creative responsibility for the movements, and so does the craftsman. And we might feel a higher degree of freedom in the steering of our becoming closer to the table, through intention, than we do about a feeling of for example sadness, anger, pride, etc. On the other hand, as mentioned, the full responsibility we can feel with regards to conscious steering of our thinking flow, can be read as willed thinking, which blurs the situation even more. So it seems difficult to grasp, as suggested, that we feel “not at all responsible" for the will, directly responsible for our thoughts, and somewhere in between with respect to feelings.


In other words, the degree of conscious steering in the transformation of phenomena is less obvious to assess than it seems.


I didn’t expect it when starting this post, but now, with further reflection and focus on sticking to the given, I wonder how useful this use of the WFT categorization is in this connection.
Experiential inquiry only allows us to take stock of thought-pictures, and they are of three types: sensory, that includes one's own physical body, feeling, and other thought-pictures. From here, moving to what's observable of their transformation, beyond its vast mysteriousness, we can observe a force originating from the 'I', that we call intention, or Will - the direct contribution of the self to the shape of the observable becoming. Nonetheless, the experienced intensity/effectiveness of this self-originating, creative force, interfering with the whole spectrum of the largely unmastered unfolding of World Content, is variable, not along but across the WFT categories. Namely:
When it comes to sense perception, I can influence the transformation of the thought-pictures to some extent, thanks to my immersion in that spectrum through the physical body. There is one remarkable experience: I have at least some ability to interfere with virtually all sensory percepts. Even the thought-picture of the distant scenery I gaze towards, through the window, which transformation I am tempted to imagine as very largely independent from my action, can be steered in my flow of becoming. I only have to use my will to close my eyes, or look elsewhere in the next frame. Another observation is that the intensity/effectiveness of the will seems to increase with the proximity of my physical body (more senses become actionable) and to decrease again once the boundary of the skin is passed, looking at bodily sensations. And that’s about it: the experienceable DoF in the transformation of the sensory spectrum are all but obvious.
With regard to the perception of feelings, we have a clear sense of creative interference with the given, but extracting any rules of transformation from it, seems arduous.
Lastly, for the thought-pictures that don’t contain senses or feelings, we feel the highest degree of freedom, though only as a possibility and not as a rule, to the extent that the experience of powerlessness in steering the thinking flow can be remembered.


A second point I am realizing as I’m writing is that, when we inquire the “rules of transformation” of our static given into a flow of being, searching for experiential evidence of becoming, we are actually quitting the given. And even when we're very careful not to extract hypotheses or predictive theories, and we only focus on observation on case by case basis of what degree of freedom are available to our willed experience - even when we simply look at how our degrees of freedom play out in becoming - we are already using time and memory to restore the process of reality, already leaving behind the field of pure percepts.

So, when we say that we feel more creatively responsible for some kind of phenomena and less of some others, it seems to me that we have left the given, and have started extracting rules. We are creating not an abstract theory, but an inner model that we can use to either predict the degree of freedom of a future conscious phenomenon based on its type, or to draw further conclusions out of that categorization. In this case, by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation, and so we have started reintegrating concepts to percepts. Thus, we have moved out of the given, into the reality of the thinking process. We have not theorized an external model/law of nature, still, we have extracted a sort of inner model. Maybe an inner model based on direct experience of the flow of becoming, is a way to refer to 'the concept of concept' itself. Maybe 'inner model' could be a definition of concept, not sure if it’s entirely correct. In any case, it seems to me that at this point we have jumped ahead, in the phenomenological exercise, leaving the domain of the given well behind.


In summary, these were a few thoughts and questions about the usefulness of addressing in further depth these initial considerations about the given, especially because they serve as a firm point of departure for the time-consciousness spectrum, but also for the phenomenology of cognition.

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 11:27 pm
by AshvinP
Federica wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:41 pm ***

I was reading again through the time-consciousness spectrum, as I periodically do, once again finding the exercise very beneficial, and I thought about a few points, in connection with the experience of the given and its metamorphosis. Reading it for the first time a while ago, I certainly didn’t understand the reasoning in depth. I was simply following it. Even today, with better experiential orientation, I still have to micromanage myself through the careful consideration of the given, and as I’m doing it, the following comes to mind.

Cleric wrote:Another very important observation is that a large part of the World Content seems to follow unknown rules in its transformation. Yet at the same time there are elements of the World Content which are completely known - these are our thoughts. From the whole spectrum of conscious phenomena, the percepts of our thinking are the only part for which we feel directly and causally responsible. We feel somewhat involved with feelings too but they are much more elusive. When we reach the will, there's a complete layer of unknowns between our conscious intent and the final result which we observe through the senses - we have not the slightest conscious clue of all the complex processes that happen in the nerves, the muscle cells, in order for our conscious intent to become perceptible bodily motion.

OK. So far we've established that reality for us consists of perceptual World Content which is in continuous metamorphosis. Within this Content there's a gradient of phenomena for which we feel directly responsible or not at all.


As we know, we first observe that our given experience consists of sense perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, as conscious phenomena (in more reasoned-out terms, it consists of thought-pictures of sense perceptions, thought-pictures of feelings, and other thought-pictures).
Then the tripartite categorization Will-Feeling-Thinking is introduced, which I have become so used to now. However, from an experiential perspective, this triad seems external. Looking closely, it appears that WFT is not a direct element of the given, and I believe it can blur understanding, especially when it comes to the Will. The Will doesn’t seem to be given, as a category of conscious phenomena. Rather, what's exactly given is our thought-picture of the intent “I will now walk to the table” and later the thought-pictures of all sensory perceptions connected to the flow of becoming that follows. Thus the Will seems to be a concept that unites certain type of thoughts with certain type of metamorphoses (meaningful series of sense percepts), in this case, a physical action of walking to the table. So the first question is: what is gained by starting the static-form observation of the given with the WFT supporting framework, when the Will inevitably points to transformation, or is in itself transformation already?


Then, when we observe the continuous metamorphosis of our experiences and how they unfold - in other words, when we ask what else can be observed without theorizing - I believe some further doubts may arise. Because, yes, thoughts are statically experienced as “completely known”, but when it comes to the "rules of their transformation", the experience is not necessarily that of mastery and creative responsibility. On the other end, when it comes to the will, and how our intents unfold in the perceptual-sensory spectrum, although we have no clues of the processes occurring in the nerves and muscles, and more generally no clues of any processes occurring in between our intents of movement and our movement, we can still feel creatively responsible for that unfolding, to some extent. That is our experience. Realizing the complete ignorance of our inner bodily processes doesn’t erase the experience of conscious steering of our bodily movements through will. The ballet dancer does have a sharp consciousness of the transformation of intents into sensory perceptions of bodily motion, feeling highly creative responsibility for the movements, and so does the craftsman. And we might feel a higher degree of freedom in the steering of our becoming closer to the table, through intention, than we do about a feeling of for example sadness, anger, pride, etc. On the other hand, as mentioned, the full responsibility we can feel with regards to conscious steering of our thinking flow, can be read as willed thinking, which blurs the situation even more. So it seems difficult to grasp, as suggested, that we feel “not at all responsible" for the will, directly responsible for our thoughts, and somewhere in between with respect to feelings.


In other words, the degree of conscious steering in the transformation of phenomena is less obvious to assess than it seems.


I didn’t expect it when starting this post, but now, with further reflection and focus on sticking to the given, I wonder how useful this use of the WFT categorization is in this connection.
Experiential inquiry only allows us to take stock of thought-pictures, and they are of three types: sensory, that includes one's own physical body, feeling, and other thought-pictures. From here, moving to what's observable of their transformation, beyond its vast mysteriousness, we can observe a force originating from the 'I', that we call intention, or Will - the direct contribution of the self to the shape of the observable becoming. Nonetheless, the experienced intensity/effectiveness of this self-originating, creative force, interfering with the whole spectrum of the largely unmastered unfolding of World Content, is variable, not along but across the WFT categories. Namely:
When it comes to sense perception, I can influence the transformation of the thought-pictures to some extent, thanks to my immersion in that spectrum through the physical body. There is one remarkable experience: I have at least some ability to interfere with virtually all sensory percepts. Even the thought-picture of the distant scenery I gaze towards, through the window, which transformation I am tempted to imagine as very largely independent from my action, can be steered in my flow of becoming. I only have to use my will to close my eyes, or look elsewhere in the next frame. Another observation is that the intensity/effectiveness of the will seems to increase with the proximity of my physical body (more senses become actionable) and to decrease again once the boundary of the skin is passed, looking at bodily sensations. And that’s about it: the experienceable DoF in the transformation of the sensory spectrum are all but obvious.
With regard to the perception of feelings, we have a clear sense of creative interference with the given, but extracting any rules of transformation from it, seems arduous.
Lastly, for the thought-pictures that don’t contain senses or feelings, we feel the highest degree of freedom, though only as a possibility and not as a rule, to the extent that the experience of powerlessness in steering the thinking flow can be remembered.

Federica,

I think the WFT gradient is extremely helpful in terms of orienting our normal conscious experience towards spiritual realities - in fact I would say it is one of the most critical, as this threefold relation of sleepy (W), dreamy (F), and wakeful (T) consciousness will help us make sense of some very deep aspects of spiritual science, since this archetypal structure propagates itself through all of Cosmic evolution. But, leaving that aside for now, let me address your phenomenological point directly.

You are correct that we are dealing with thought-pictures of the 'will' and 'feeling' and 'thinking', i.e. we have thoughts about our willed intents and our emotions which are not the intents/emotions themselves, and this already suggests that the intersection of appearances and reality, between thought-pictures and the activity which produces them, will be found in thinking. What does it mean to find this intersection? It means we have a place where the 'rules of transformation' are transparent to us because we are responsible for them. That is what we call logic in relation to thoughts. These are transparent to the point where we have even devised various sorts of logics to employ as necessary for our aims.

With respect to the will, however, the rules of transformation are to be found precisely in the manner by which our intents get translated into perceptions through the bodily organism. We may shift our gaze, close our eyes, etc., and thereby influence the aperture of our perceptual spectrum, but we have no clue how the ideas-intents manifest themselves as the specific stream of spatiotemporal perceptions. That is why we can say we are sleeping with respect to our will in ordinary waking cognition. The higher-order Logic by which intents become spatiotemporal perceptual streams is not at all transparent to us, it's unconscious. We feel to have very little creative responsibility for this entire intents-to-perception process.

We can further observe that we can hardly trace the deeper reasons for most of our encounters with the outer perceptual spectrum - often we rationalize narratives post-hoc for why we do some things and not others, but if we observe carefully, it is often the case that there are deeper subconscious forces related to our own soul-life, our family life, our community/nation, our race/gender/species, which lead us to be at a certain place at a certain time, and once we are placed into a routine in our lives for work or family, there's relatively little flexibility to adapt it freely. Of course that soul-conditioning also influences our thinking to a certain extent, but it's much easier for us to take hold of our thought-processes and adapt them to our intents, for ex. through concentration/meditation where we spiral the will into our thinking.

A second point I am realizing as I’m writing is that, when we inquire the “rules of transformation” of our static given into a flow of being, searching for experiential evidence of becoming, we are actually quitting the given. And even when we're very careful not to extract hypotheses or predictive theories, and we only focus on observation on case by case basis of what degree of freedom are available to our willed experience - even when we simply look at how our degrees of freedom play out in becoming - we are already using time and memory to restore the process of reality, already leaving behind the field of pure percepts.

So, when we say that we feel more creatively responsible for some kind of phenomena and less of some others, it seems to me that we have left the given, and have started extracting rules. We are creating not an abstract theory, but an inner model that we can use to either predict the degree of freedom of a future conscious phenomenon based on its type, or to draw further conclusions out of that categorization. In this case, by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation, and so we have started reintegrating concepts to percepts. Thus, we have moved out of the given, into the reality of the thinking process. We have not theorized an external model/law of nature, still, we have extracted a sort of inner model. Maybe an inner model based on direct experience of the flow of becoming, is a way to refer to 'the concept of concept' itself. Maybe 'inner model' could be a definition of concept, not sure if it’s entirely correct. In any case, it seems to me that at this point we have jumped ahead, in the phenomenological exercise, leaving the domain of the given well behind.


In summary, these were a few thoughts and questions about the usefulness of addressing in further depth these initial considerations about the given, especially because they serve as a firm point of departure for the time-consciousness spectrum, but also for the phenomenology of cognition.

I'm pretty confused about this second point, especially what is meant by 'field of pure percepts'. It seems you feel that 'reintegrating concepts to percepts', such as the concept of a remembered time-flow of transforming states of being, is beyond the given? In which case, we need to remember that inner concepts are just as much given aspects of experience as outer percepts - our thinking perceives concepts in the world like our eyes perceive colors.

Clearly we do feel more creatively responsible for our idea of 'go to the store' than we do for the idea of 'day/night cycle', right? I would say this distinction is entirely within the given of our experience as an intuitive stream of becoming. The latter is really the most directly given aspect of all experience - there is an 'I' who is constantly metamorphosing through various qualitative phenomena, outer and inner, and using the sensory-conceptual feedback to adapt/adjust its navigation to whatever extent possible, according to various ideas-intents along a gradient of creative responsibility. When that feedback process is strengthened (through progressive cognitive awakening to our subconscious and supra-conscious experience), and therefore the capacity to adapt/adjust our navigation towards ideas-intents expands, we say we have gained DoF and increased the aperture of creative responsibility for the ideas which structure our experience. Do you disagree?

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 7:48 am
by Federica
AshvinP wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 11:27 pm Federica,

I think the WFT gradient is extremely helpful in terms of orienting our normal conscious experience towards spiritual realities - in fact I would say it is one of the most critical, as this threefold relation of sleepy (W), dreamy (F), and wakeful (T) consciousness will help us make sense of some very deep aspects of spiritual science, since this archetypal structure propagates itself through all of Cosmic evolution. But, leaving that aside for now, let me address your phenomenological point directly.

You are correct that we are dealing with thought-pictures of the 'will' and 'feeling' and 'thinking', i.e. we have thoughts about our willed intents and our emotions which are not the intents/emotions themselves, and this already suggests that the intersection of appearances and reality, between thought-pictures and the activity which produces them, will be found in thinking. What does it mean to find this intersection? It means we have a place where the 'rules of transformation' are transparent to us because we are responsible for them. That is what we call logic in relation to thoughts. These are transparent to the point where we have even devised various sorts of logics to employ as necessary for our aims.

With respect to the will, however, the rules of transformation are to be found precisely in the manner by which our intents get translated into perceptions through the bodily organism. We may shift our gaze, close our eyes, etc., and thereby influence the aperture of our perceptual spectrum, but we have no clue how the ideas-intents manifest themselves as the specific stream of spatiotemporal perceptions. That is why we can say we are sleeping with respect to our will in ordinary waking cognition. The higher-order Logic by which intents become spatiotemporal perceptual streams is not at all transparent to us, it's unconscious. We feel to have very little creative responsibility for this entire intents-to-perception process.

We can further observe that we can hardly trace the deeper reasons for most of our encounters with the outer perceptual spectrum - often we rationalize narratives post-hoc for why we do some things and not others, but if we observe carefully, it is often the case that there are deeper subconscious forces related to our own soul-life, our family life, our community/nation, our race/gender/species, which lead us to be at a certain place at a certain time, and once we are placed into a routine in our lives for work or family, there's relatively little flexibility to adapt it freely. Of course that soul-conditioning also influences our thinking to a certain extent, but it's much easier for us to take hold of our thought-processes and adapt them to our intents, for ex. through concentration/meditation where we spiral the will into our thinking.

A second point I am realizing as I’m writing is that, when we inquire the “rules of transformation” of our static given into a flow of being, searching for experiential evidence of becoming, we are actually quitting the given. And even when we're very careful not to extract hypotheses or predictive theories, and we only focus on observation on case by case basis of what degree of freedom are available to our willed experience - even when we simply look at how our degrees of freedom play out in becoming - we are already using time and memory to restore the process of reality, already leaving behind the field of pure percepts.

So, when we say that we feel more creatively responsible for some kind of phenomena and less of some others, it seems to me that we have left the given, and have started extracting rules. We are creating not an abstract theory, but an inner model that we can use to either predict the degree of freedom of a future conscious phenomenon based on its type, or to draw further conclusions out of that categorization. In this case, by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation, and so we have started reintegrating concepts to percepts. Thus, we have moved out of the given, into the reality of the thinking process. We have not theorized an external model/law of nature, still, we have extracted a sort of inner model. Maybe an inner model based on direct experience of the flow of becoming, is a way to refer to 'the concept of concept' itself. Maybe 'inner model' could be a definition of concept, not sure if it’s entirely correct. In any case, it seems to me that at this point we have jumped ahead, in the phenomenological exercise, leaving the domain of the given well behind.


In summary, these were a few thoughts and questions about the usefulness of addressing in further depth these initial considerations about the given, especially because they serve as a firm point of departure for the time-consciousness spectrum, but also for the phenomenology of cognition.

I'm pretty confused about this second point, especially what is meant by 'field of pure percepts'. It seems you feel that 'reintegrating concepts to percepts', such as the concept of a remembered time-flow of transforming states of being, is beyond the given? In which case, we need to remember that inner concepts are just as much given aspects of experience as outer percepts - our thinking perceives concepts in the world like our eyes perceive colors.

Clearly we do feel more creatively responsible for our idea of 'go to the store' than we do for the idea of 'day/night cycle', right? I would say this distinction is entirely within the given of our experience as an intuitive stream of becoming. The latter is really the most directly given aspect of all experience - there is an 'I' who is constantly metamorphosing through various qualitative phenomena, outer and inner, and using the sensory-conceptual feedback to adapt/adjust its navigation to whatever extent possible, according to various ideas-intents along a gradient of creative responsibility. When that feedback process is strengthened (through progressive cognitive awakening to our subconscious and supra-conscious experience), and therefore the capacity to adapt/adjust our navigation towards ideas-intents expands, we say we have gained DoF and increased the aperture of creative responsibility for the ideas which structure our experience. Do you disagree?

"I think the WFT gradient is extremely helpful"

Ashvin, I know that…
You know, I am the same person writing in the other threads of this forum as well, unless you doubt it :D
I was not challenging the extreme usefulness of WFT in all sorts of contexts. To be frank, reading those first lines of your reply I thought “Ok, this is not going to address my remarks” and indeed... Not that there’s any expectation for these admittedly boring points to be addressed - even for me they are boring, it’s like doing some housework. That’s how logic with a small "l" feels to me in a way.

I’m saying, we want to address the immediate given of experience - what a naive observer can notice, not knowing anything about philosophical arguments and forums, only equipped with sound and calm observation intent - yet a category is introduced, that moreover is made of functionally (hence temporally) uneven elements. This is not at all an issue in the thousand ways this category can be helpfully used, but here we are addressing the pure given of experience!

By the way, I never studied the philosophy of logic and I might make gross mistakes, however, for me this article you linked is poor, to say the least - enough to notice it lists AI among the various “types of logic” which to me indicates that the author, although he writes about logic, must lack some very basic pieces in the logical reasoning area. And you must have lacked the motivation to reply to my post, which is absolutely understandable, but why did you force yourself? :)

I will spare you a reformulation of my first point, and when it comes to the second, well, “the field of percepts” is an expression you can find in Max Leyf’s essay in the other thread, and again, that you didn't notice it only tells me one thing :)
And please be assured, I have not suddenly lost track of all our previous discussions on the phenomenology of cognition. In a sense, everything is within the given of experience, it’s just that here the naive observer is addressed, so in their immediate given, the process of reintegration of concepts and percepts might not be included. And naturally I don’t disagree with your last statement. It might be that I’ve simply been unable to clarify my point well enough, but we don’t have to continue this round, I am sorry for the confusion, and thank you for your effort!

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 12:50 pm
by AshvinP
Federica wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 7:48 am
AshvinP wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 11:27 pm Federica,

I think the WFT gradient is extremely helpful in terms of orienting our normal conscious experience towards spiritual realities - in fact I would say it is one of the most critical, as this threefold relation of sleepy (W), dreamy (F), and wakeful (T) consciousness will help us make sense of some very deep aspects of spiritual science, since this archetypal structure propagates itself through all of Cosmic evolution. But, leaving that aside for now, let me address your phenomenological point directly.

You are correct that we are dealing with thought-pictures of the 'will' and 'feeling' and 'thinking', i.e. we have thoughts about our willed intents and our emotions which are not the intents/emotions themselves, and this already suggests that the intersection of appearances and reality, between thought-pictures and the activity which produces them, will be found in thinking. What does it mean to find this intersection? It means we have a place where the 'rules of transformation' are transparent to us because we are responsible for them. That is what we call logic in relation to thoughts. These are transparent to the point where we have even devised various sorts of logics to employ as necessary for our aims.

With respect to the will, however, the rules of transformation are to be found precisely in the manner by which our intents get translated into perceptions through the bodily organism. We may shift our gaze, close our eyes, etc., and thereby influence the aperture of our perceptual spectrum, but we have no clue how the ideas-intents manifest themselves as the specific stream of spatiotemporal perceptions. That is why we can say we are sleeping with respect to our will in ordinary waking cognition. The higher-order Logic by which intents become spatiotemporal perceptual streams is not at all transparent to us, it's unconscious. We feel to have very little creative responsibility for this entire intents-to-perception process.

We can further observe that we can hardly trace the deeper reasons for most of our encounters with the outer perceptual spectrum - often we rationalize narratives post-hoc for why we do some things and not others, but if we observe carefully, it is often the case that there are deeper subconscious forces related to our own soul-life, our family life, our community/nation, our race/gender/species, which lead us to be at a certain place at a certain time, and once we are placed into a routine in our lives for work or family, there's relatively little flexibility to adapt it freely. Of course that soul-conditioning also influences our thinking to a certain extent, but it's much easier for us to take hold of our thought-processes and adapt them to our intents, for ex. through concentration/meditation where we spiral the will into our thinking.

A second point I am realizing as I’m writing is that, when we inquire the “rules of transformation” of our static given into a flow of being, searching for experiential evidence of becoming, we are actually quitting the given. And even when we're very careful not to extract hypotheses or predictive theories, and we only focus on observation on case by case basis of what degree of freedom are available to our willed experience - even when we simply look at how our degrees of freedom play out in becoming - we are already using time and memory to restore the process of reality, already leaving behind the field of pure percepts.

So, when we say that we feel more creatively responsible for some kind of phenomena and less of some others, it seems to me that we have left the given, and have started extracting rules. We are creating not an abstract theory, but an inner model that we can use to either predict the degree of freedom of a future conscious phenomenon based on its type, or to draw further conclusions out of that categorization. In this case, by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation, and so we have started reintegrating concepts to percepts. Thus, we have moved out of the given, into the reality of the thinking process. We have not theorized an external model/law of nature, still, we have extracted a sort of inner model. Maybe an inner model based on direct experience of the flow of becoming, is a way to refer to 'the concept of concept' itself. Maybe 'inner model' could be a definition of concept, not sure if it’s entirely correct. In any case, it seems to me that at this point we have jumped ahead, in the phenomenological exercise, leaving the domain of the given well behind.


In summary, these were a few thoughts and questions about the usefulness of addressing in further depth these initial considerations about the given, especially because they serve as a firm point of departure for the time-consciousness spectrum, but also for the phenomenology of cognition.

I'm pretty confused about this second point, especially what is meant by 'field of pure percepts'. It seems you feel that 'reintegrating concepts to percepts', such as the concept of a remembered time-flow of transforming states of being, is beyond the given? In which case, we need to remember that inner concepts are just as much given aspects of experience as outer percepts - our thinking perceives concepts in the world like our eyes perceive colors.

Clearly we do feel more creatively responsible for our idea of 'go to the store' than we do for the idea of 'day/night cycle', right? I would say this distinction is entirely within the given of our experience as an intuitive stream of becoming. The latter is really the most directly given aspect of all experience - there is an 'I' who is constantly metamorphosing through various qualitative phenomena, outer and inner, and using the sensory-conceptual feedback to adapt/adjust its navigation to whatever extent possible, according to various ideas-intents along a gradient of creative responsibility. When that feedback process is strengthened (through progressive cognitive awakening to our subconscious and supra-conscious experience), and therefore the capacity to adapt/adjust our navigation towards ideas-intents expands, we say we have gained DoF and increased the aperture of creative responsibility for the ideas which structure our experience. Do you disagree?

"I think the WFT gradient is extremely helpful"

Ashvin, I know that…
You know, I am the same person writing in the other threads of this forum as well, unless you doubt it :D
I was not challenging the extreme usefulness of WFT in all sorts of contexts. To be frank, reading those first lines of your reply I thought “Ok, this is not going to address my remarks” and indeed... Not that there’s any expectation for these admittedly boring points to be addressed - even for me they are boring, it’s like doing some housework. That’s how logic with a small "l" feels to me in a way.

I’m saying, we want to address the immediate given of experience - what a naive observer can notice, not knowing anything about philosophical arguments and forums, only equipped with sound and calm observation intent - yet a category is introduced, that moreover is made of functionally (hence temporally) uneven elements. This is not at all an issue in the thousand ways this category can be helpfully used, but here we are addressing the pure given of experience!

By the way, I never studied the philosophy of logic and I might make gross mistakes, however, for me this article you linked is poor, to say the least - enough to notice it lists AI among the various “types of logic” which to me indicates that the author, although he writes about logic, must lack some very basic pieces in the logical reasoning area. And you must have lacked the motivation to reply to my post, which is absolutely understandable, but why did you force yourself? :)

I will spare you a reformulation of my first point, and when it comes to the second, well, “the field of percepts” is an expression you can find in Max Leyf’s essay in the other thread, and again, that you didn't notice it only tells me one thing :)
And please be assured, I have not suddenly lost track of all our previous discussions on the phenomenology of cognition. In a sense, everything is within the given of experience, it’s just that here the naive observer is addressed, so in their immediate given, the process of reintegration of concepts and percepts might not be included. And naturally I don’t disagree with your last statement. It might be that I’ve simply been unable to clarify my point well enough, but we don’t have to continue this round, I am sorry for the confusion, and thank you for your effort!

Federica,

You have a really interesting way of presenting and responding to arguments, I will give you that! Whenever I challenge your points, it must be because I didn't read them carefully or feel motivated to actually address them :) Of course that is possible, but then I would expect the response to be more of a measured clarification than a defensive reaction and dismissal of everything written.

What little you have hinted to in the way of clarification above, still makes me think I completely disagree with your points. WFT is absolutely within the given of experience. We have to start making concrete differentiations for inner activity if we want to get anywhere with our reasoning, especially in phenomenology. The latter isn't about restricting ourselves to some hypothetical 'naive observer' and what he can or can't notice (notice the term "naive" was never used in Cleric's essay). In fact, we should assume we have an observer who is paying very close attention to the entire field of outer-inner experience and is soundly reasoning through that field at all times. Likewise, none of the TC spectrum phenomenology requires very philosophical terminology, but of course it can be used if we happen to be on a philosophy forum where it is likely to be understood. Otherwise the language can be adapted to the inner meaning which we intend to convey depending on the audience. Needless to say, the average 'joe six pack' will probably tune out no matter what language is used.

The process of reintegration of concepts and percepts is part of the given, period. The only reason, which is an important reason, to speak of 'pure field of percepts' is to help the imagination discern what otherwise takes place subconsciously through the intuitive linking of percepts with concepts, as a matter of course. In other words, it addresses the standard objection that, 'I perceive a coherent world even without any reflective thinking'.

PoF wrote:Just as little is it legitimate to regard the sum of perceptual characteristics as the thing. It might be quite possible for a spirit to receive the concept at the same time as, and united with, the percept. It would never occur to such a spirit that the concept did not belong to the thing. It would have to ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the thing.

But the phenomenology of cognition is all about discerning, despite the simultaneity of concept-percept for intuitive perception, how our thought-perceptions which link percepts together in a more holistic fashion are part of the given, otherwise we can't make any progress. It must be understood that the concepts-ideas discerned through thinking are integral parts of the given. There are no assumptions about the 'nature' of time, memory, etc., only observation of the given fact that our thought-experiences are integrated into continuity of consciousness through whatever we refer to as 'memory' and 'time'.

The link to various types of logic was only meant to address your point - "Because, yes, thoughts are statically experienced as “completely known”, but when it comes to the "rules of their transformation", the experience is not necessarily that of mastery and creative responsibility." The logical process which links concepts to other concepts can be completely known.

PoF wrote:What in all other spheres of observation can be found only indirectly, namely, the relevant context and the relationship between the individual objects, is, in the case of thinking, known to us in an absolutely direct way. I do not on the face of it know why, for my observation, thunder follows lightning; but I know directly, from the very content of the two concepts, why my thinking connects the concept of thunder with the concept of lightning. It does not matter in the least whether I have the right concepts of lightning and thunder. The connection between those concepts that I do have is clear to me, and this through the very concepts themselves.

If you feel these are 'admittedly boring points' and 'housework', why even make them? I don't think they are as tangential to a proper understanding of phenomenology of spiritual activity as you are making them seem to be right now. You have chosen very central points of the phenomenology to focus on, such as the WFT spectrum. And you also called into question the most central point of the entire phenomenological essay - "So, when we say that we feel more creatively responsible for some kind of phenomena and less of some others, it seems to me that we have left the given, and have started extracting rules."

It is often the case that we will have a solid understanding in one context and let it slip away in another context, for a variety of intellectual and soul reasons which are deeply rooted. That is nothing to be worried about, in fact it's completely natural part of esoteric development, as we venture into unfamiliar conceptual territory. But we should also try to make this aspect of our cognitive patterns more and more conscious when we have the opportunities to do so. If you feel I am completely off the mark here, set out to argue against you for no legitimate reason at all, and don't' want to discuss further, that's fine too, we can leave it.

Re: The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 1:11 pm
by Cleric K
Federica wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 7:48 am I’m saying, we want to address the immediate given of experience - what a naive observer can notice, not knowing anything about philosophical arguments and forums, only equipped with sound and calm observation intent - yet a category is introduced, that moreover is made of functionally (hence temporally) uneven elements. This is not at all an issue in the thousand ways this category can be helpfully used, but here we are addressing the pure given of experience!
Federica, I believe that you're taking a somewhat restricted view on what the given is. We should remember that we're dealing with living phenomenology. Thus the experiences of our spiritual activity should also be included into our investigations.

Here's a simple example. Take a small object and place it in front of you. Place your hand as if you are about to grab it. Then begin to imagine how you take the object. As always, the more slowly and smoothly we do this imagining, the better. Repeat this imagining over and over again. At some point decide to actually take the object. Try to feel the difference. Naturally, the difference is very elusive. We can't point our finger at it. But yet undoubtedly we feel that we do something differently. We know how to steer our spiritual activity such that we not only imagine the movement but we actually perform it.

In this respect will is also something that we phenomenologically know about. Yes, it doesn't approach us as something that simply impresses into our observation. We know about will only through its active experience. Yet this experience is something phenomenological. It is given in the sense that we don't simply postulate it in the way we postulate parallel universes. There's something in our immediate experiences which makes the difference between only imagining the movement and actually performing it.
Federica wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:41 pm Looking closely, it appears that WFT is not a direct element of the given, and I believe it can blur understanding, especially when it comes to the Will. The Will doesn’t seem to be given, as a category of conscious phenomena. Rather, what's exactly given is our thought-picture of the intent “I will now walk to the table” and later the thought-pictures of all sensory perceptions connected to the flow of becoming that follows.
The key here is to distinguish between simply imaging the intent “I will now walk to the table” and the way we have to apply our spiritual activity if we are to really walk there. There is difference, no matter how difficult to pinpoint. In the second case we do something in addition to our imaginative intent. This additional activity is what fully justifies us to speak of bodily will as something concrete. It would be otherwise if we observe hitting billiard balls and imagine some will in the process. This may be true on deeper level (since reality is spiritual in nature) but in our human cognition such will is entirely inferred as some abstract explanation for the flow of perceptions. This is different in our will. We don't simply infer will by the fact that we observe how our imaginative intents match perceptions - we have to do something in addition to the imagination if we're to get moving. This additional activity is not simply inferred. It is a fact of experience. We have to add that different type of spiritual activity or we'll be left only with our imaginative intent.

It is similar with feeling, although we're slightly more conscious there. Take something as "Love your enemies". Here's something that invites us to stir our feelings. Once again we can do experiments and differentiate between only imagining that we love our enemies and actually feeling how we open our heart and secretly bless them.

When speaking of 'rules of transformation' we shouldn't imagine that intellectual models continually insert themselves between spiritual phenomena and and our meaningful experience. These rules are innerly known in the way we know the extents of our limbs, the ranges of the joints and so on. The rules are the background intuition through which we know the ways we can transform our bodily states.

It is similar with thinking. The rules here are not about stepping outside our thinking process and overlaying on it some theory of logic, while forgetting that we're still thinking this whole process. Instead, the rules of transformation of thinking are once again about the intuitive orientation within the ideal space that we're traversing. We don't have to make abstract model of this space. When we're active in steering through that space, our perceptual content (thought-images) already tell something about that landscape since they are formed according to its curvatures. In Imagination the thought-image fills our entire soul and now reflects even higher orders of the ideal topology that we always traverse.
Federica wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:41 pm Then, when we observe the continuous metamorphosis of our experiences and how they unfold - in other words, when we ask what else can be observed without theorizing - I believe some further doubts may arise. Because, yes, thoughts are statically experienced as “completely known”, but when it comes to the "rules of their transformation", the experience is not necessarily that of mastery and creative responsibility. On the other end, when it comes to the will, and how our intents unfold in the perceptual-sensory spectrum, although we have no clues of the processes occurring in the nerves and muscles, and more generally no clues of any processes occurring in between our intents of movement and our movement, we can still feel creatively responsible for that unfolding, to some extent. That is our experience. Realizing the complete ignorance of our inner bodily processes doesn’t erase the experience of conscious steering of our bodily movements through will. The ballet dancer does have a sharp consciousness of the transformation of intents into sensory perceptions of bodily motion, feeling highly creative responsibility for the movements, and so does the craftsman. And we might feel a higher degree of freedom in the steering of our becoming closer to the table, through intention, than we do about a feeling of for example sadness, anger, pride, etc. On the other hand, as mentioned, the full responsibility we can feel with regards to conscious steering of our thinking flow, can be read as willed thinking, which blurs the situation even more. So it seems difficult to grasp, as suggested, that we feel “not at all responsible" for the will, directly responsible for our thoughts, and somewhere in between with respect to feelings.

In other words, the degree of conscious steering in the transformation of phenomena is less obvious to assess than it seems.
Yes it is true that these ideal soul spaces that we flow through are not at all obvious but I think you overlook the fact that all our conscious willing passes through thinking as well. This is what the above exercise demonstrates. All our bodily movements can be imagined. In fact, it is as if this imagination is allowed to work further in the bodily spaces in order to activate movement.

The reason you see the rules of craftsmanship as more immediate than that of thinking is because we're dealing with a well trodden spaces that our imagination can activate. We shouldn't forget that all those spaces were only gradually explored. If you have never played ballet you won't find it at all obvious how to move your body graciously. You may imagine the movements (based on what you have seen with your eyes elsewhere), you may rehearse them even in meditation, imagining that you are dancing but once you try it, the constraints of the body come into play. You'll need a lot of practice to make your body follow your imagination (disregard this example if you are a professional ballet dancer :) ).

In that sense the rules of transformation that we learn about are once again the rules through which our bodily imagination can unfold. These rules have been intuited through the constant feedback of the mysterious bodily depths. Yet they are still somewhat independent. The state of our body changes and what we imagine we want to do may no longer flow in the body as we expect (aging, disease, trauma, etc.).

The key however is that our bodily imagination seems more obvious than higher more abstract thinking-imagination, simply because we're much more versed in it. We have that intuitive space of bodily imagination that we have developed through our life and we can navigate it quite effortlessly for most of our daily actions.

Actually in the course of spiritual development we have to become more and more conscious even of our most ordinary movements. We need to clearly live in that bodily imagination and clearly feel how our imaginative intents flow even in the mundane activities. One such important aspect is learning to eat consciously, to feel how that food has absorbed the life of the Sun, how it was grown, how it reached our table and how we now take that transformed Sun-life into ourselves. Most of the time we're completely unconscious about how we chew the food and how we swallow it. We're usually thinking about quite other things, watching TV, talking with people and so on.

The same holds with the rules of transformation of our higher imagination. Our intuitive orientation within them is only gradually developed.

In summary, our bodily imagination is only one of the aspects. For most people it is the most thoroughly explored and that's why they feel its rules of transformation to be the most obvious. But these are still rules of thinking imagination developed through interaction with the bodily mystery. This is clear through the fact that anything we can do with our body we can imagine without moving. But we can do even more. We can imagine bodily movements that won't be supported by the constraints of the body. I can imagine jumping and making a backflip but if I try this in practice I'll end up in the hospital :)
Federica wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:41 pm So, when we say that we feel more creatively responsible for some kind of phenomena and less of some others, it seems to me that we have left the given, and have started extracting rules. We are creating not an abstract theory, but an inner model that we can use to either predict the degree of freedom of a future conscious phenomenon based on its type, or to draw further conclusions out of that categorization. In this case, by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation, and so we have started reintegrating concepts to percepts. Thus, we have moved out of the given, into the reality of the thinking process. We have not theorized an external model/law of nature, still, we have extracted a sort of inner model. Maybe an inner model based on direct experience of the flow of becoming, is a way to refer to 'the concept of concept' itself. Maybe 'inner model' could be a definition of concept, not sure if it’s entirely correct. In any case, it seems to me that at this point we have jumped ahead, in the phenomenological exercise, leaving the domain of the given well behind.
The important thing is to pay attention to this elusive difference between only imagining bodily movement and allowing that imagination to turn into an impulse of the will. Then we'll understand that our imagination grows into the constraints of the body and intuits its rules. It's the same but in the opposite direction when we deal with higher cognition. We once again have grow into the higher constraints and intuit their rules, except that everything is inverted - we have to feel how our spiritual activity flows within something greater than us. In the above you seem to place a strict split between the given as something that we find through the interaction with the bodily spectrum and our thinking process. But they are all united. When we think actively we once again live in a given experience in the phenomenological sense. It is not given in the sense that some external force bestows it to us but in that it is an immediate experience, it is not something that we only speculate about.

This 'inner model' that you speak about is the thinking imagination that flows itself into the bodily processes. When we meditate we do leave the most superficial bodily sensations behind but only in order to find the deeper lawfulness below them. In the end, our higher moral imagination works back in the bodily life, in our actions. So even though there's rhythmic interplay, as a whole our thinking imagination grows in both directions. Higher cognition doesn't go away from the physical world but finds its true living causes. In that way we feel even more intimate connection with the spiritual forces of the body.