The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

[Federica]

Hi Eugene,

Because I wanted to give you a reply uninfluenced by what Ashvin and Cleric have added to your post, I haven’t yet read the entire thread. And for this same reason, I don’t know whether your understanding has evolved since you wrote this. I’ll comment on this version, as of yesterday, just please disregard if outdated. My understanding has evolved since yesterday, to the extent that I wasn't interpreting will, in the WFT triad, in the correct way, at the time I wrote what you quoted.

First, I agree with Cleric and Ashvin that all phenomena are always part of the given, no matter whether they are (or appear to be) the percepts or results of further conceptual processing of percepts. But this living process of the temporal interplay between some phenomena and their consequent processing by cognition is indeed complex and mysterious. Thinking builds new though-ideas as "reflections" of previously experienced phenomena (those can be precepts, feelings, acts of will, or other thought-ideas),

Yes, I agree with that, and have now a clear idea of what an “act of will” is, in particular. So hopefully we are all on the same page on this: what you call “reflections” elaborated by thinking (I think Ashvin has called them “thought-perceptions”) are the given of experience, and they can reflect various conscious phenomena as you stated. Just to be clear, these reflections are not mere reflections, they are a restoration where the percept is re-inflown with the relevant concepts, so we can have our usual experience of flow of conscious becoming in coherent manner.

and then the newly formed ideas can be in certain degrees of coherence with the phenomena that they reflect upon (sometimes they are completely incoherent, sometimes they are more coherent). It is worth noting that the "reflection" idea of a phenomenon is never fully equivalent to the original phenomenon, but it is always some kind of a transmuted form of it. That does not mean that there is no shared ideal content. Nevertheless, all of these phenomena always remain an inseparable part of the "given" which is a living content of Consciousness.

Ok, here I am not completely sure what you intend with this varying degree of coherence/incoherence of the reflection. I would rather suggest the idea of completeness/exhaustivity of the reflection, as previously presented by Cleric. In short the reflection is never an absolutely complete work of restoring full reality by matching back the percept with the relevant concepts/meaning, and this is precisely why we can perceive/have consciousness of the reflection. If that match was perfect, the reason for existing of the perception would be hollowed out, offset completely, it would disappear, and we would be projected in the wholeness of pure meaning/pure spirit/pure idea. Perception is only there as a useful riddle/detour to meaning/reality for us humans. It creates traction for us to feel the call of meaning. Finding the whole meaning would annihilate perception, because its deep usefulness would be exhausted.
As Cleric put it (the traction I mentioned is called void here):

For example, we can try to fill the void with meaningful essence in the shape of a 'hexagon'. It's like saying: "this thing (we can't address it with its real concept because that would immediately fill the void perfectly and the perception would vanish) looks to me like a hexagon." The void sucks in our ideal nature into itself and we assume the meaning-shape of a hexagon. Yet, just like the pencil, the perception doesn't completely disappear because the idea that we experience is not a perfect fit. The hexagon fills the circle but there are six sectors of the circle that remain:

Now these sectors will continue to exercise suction on our essential being, which would suggest infinity of other shapes of meaning that could fill the sectors. If we imagine this process even further we can picture how a whole Universe of perceptions and meaning can sprout forth.

But I agree that dividing WFT into such categories is somewhat "artificial", and that it is a result of ideational reflection of thinking experiencing itself and its own functioning and capacities. Yet, I think such division has some ground and usefulness because it reflects different "qualities" of the thinking aspects and aspects of the phenomena it produces. It is practically useful to differentiate between these aspects and qualities, while always remembering that such differentiation is a result of the cognitive "reflection" of thinking experiencing itself.

Yes, I guess we all agree on that.

But we are now approaching a mystery-question whether the "reflection" of Thinking when it experiences itself can be entirely equivalent to Thinking itself, or if it always remains a "reflection", a content of an ideation only. Which comes to a key question of the phenomenological idealism: is Thinking fully equivalent to its Idea of itself (by Idea I mean phenomenologically experienced Idea, not a "metaphysical" one)? For example, think about this mystery: Thinking certainly exists and it knows it, and we all know it (otherwise we would not be thinking), and knowing it means that Thinking has an idea of its own existence. But is the idea of Thinking's own existence fully equivalent to the existence itself (which is the same as to ask: is the existence an idea and only and idea)? A while ago I was confident that existence is not only an idea, and I argued for this conviction on this forum, but now I'm not so sure anymore, it remains a mystery for me at this point. Perhaps is it more appropriate to say that it is in fact the Idea that includes its own existence (in other words, self-causing Idea). As a phenomenological fact, existence is a directly knowable reality, Thinking (Consciousness) directly phenomenally knows that it exists, and in that sense this knowledge is equivalent to existence. Same applies to all other aspects of Consciousness such as awareness/experiencing, willing, thinking, feeling etc.

My understanding of the mystery-question would be: Thinking with capital T continually knows itself through the multiplicity of various beings (through a hierarchy, living on/as an ideal/spiritual landscape). A curlicue, a detour, a modality within this hierarchy is humanity/the perceptual World (practically the same thing, in the economy of the whole engine, because perception is what man does by being human). So Thinking has an unimaginably complex knowing of itself, and the phenomenologically experienced idea you speak of (ours) is one modality of the unitary Thinking engine. We are responsible for becoming conscious of that modality being integral to the full reality of Thinking. Maybe you are looking at the question starting from the standpoint of human condition, experiencing the idea of existence? Maybe starting from the standpoint of Thinking reality itself, comprising humanity but also other beings (although impossible intellectually, but as an intention) could balance out the elements of the question. Although I have not experienced it, I would imagine that the consciousness of the full coincidence of Thinking and its existence (spiritual nature of all reality), only can emerge for us humans in higher cognition. We can’t solve it by squeezing our brains now. And I would say, the same is true, when we zoom in on humanity, for the phenomenologically experienced idea: it can be “entirely equivalent to Thinking itself” when pervaded by consciousness. With this, we come back to the hexagone example: When the percept is fully and perfectly re-enliven by its ideal half (the full and fully fitting bundle of concepts it is calling for) the reflection disappears and only pure ideal reality remains.

[AshvinP]

Here is where the rubber meets the road. It is why we refer to the 'dualism of non-dualism', or how the natural plane is considered 'orthogonal' to the psychic and spiritual planes. When we proceed through inverted spiritual activity into higher modes of cognition, even only the Imaginative, there is no mistaking that the lawfulness of the natural domain, as studied by the natural sciences and its remarkable results so far, can only be made sense of when the perceptual spectrum is expanded into the lawfulness of higher worlds. In other words, we can't make sense of anything which occurs during our normal waking day, in a scientific way, without also understanding what happens to our organism within and from the spiritual worlds when we sleep. The latter is nothing other than what we also experience between death-rebirth. Of course we can only livingly understand this if our thinking is flexible and fluid enough not to be constrained by the dogma of linear time flow. Time-flow is the phenomenal manifestation of these nested WFT incarnational dynamics. Cleric has provided many helpful posts for grasping this nature of Time, including this TC spectrum essay. 

Oh, I think you misunderstood me again, I admit it may be partly my fault due to my imprecise explanations. I said many times that "there is nothing wrong with the mother Earth", there is nothing wrong with natural plane and it is not "orthogonal" to spiritual planes at all, it's surely all part of the vertical and lawful structure of the Cosmos. Likewise, in my dialog with Federica I pointed that there is nothing wrong with human perceptual filter. The duality has not much to do with the natural realm (although certain structures and laws may catalyze its development), the beings can live in dualistic state both in incarnate and discarnate forms.

What I meant is the structures we see in our human society (and likewise they exist in the societies of discarnate beings) built upon and developed from the dualistic perception of the world. For example, most of human political structures are based on the dualistic perception and egoic motivations stemming from it. Most of the materialistic science is built upon the dualistic models of the world. Most of corporate structures are built upon the egoic principles of greediness and competition which again stem from dualistic perception. Most of the human education is of the same kind. This is what is orthogonal to the spiritual nondual content and structures. This is not the structures of natural and material world per se, these are structures artificially built by humans (and other discarnate beings) upon the natural structures based on their abstracted and erroneous dualistic perception of reality. So, that is why I said that I have no interest in further studying all this body of dualistic human knowledge and human structures (as well as structures and knowledge of the discarnate dualistic realms) build on the erroneous dualistic perception of reality, because they are irrelevant and orthogonal to the authentic nondual structures of the spiritual realms.

Yes, that was all agreed. My only interest in wading into the details of 'dualistic science', as well as the theories, is to find the Spirit working within those details of nature and culture which can be released to redeem the dualistic, physicalized appearances. But then we arrived to the idea of expanding the perceptual spectrum through spiritual sight, to gain more complete information on what informs the natural dynamics we observe. You commented:

Yes, it is quite conceivable that it is possible, certainly in the domains of our psychic life, including the sleeping states, subconscious (individual and collective) etc. There are certainly some areas of reality accessible to such SS. I was just skeptical of how much can be known by SS with respect to the aspects of the natural world

That is what made it seem you were treating them orthogonal, because higher cognition could know more about the psychic world but not at the same time increase its knowledge of the natural world. So do you now agree that these 'aspects of the natural world' can only be made sense of through what takes place in the domains of psychic and spiritual life, within the liminal spaces of sleep-waking and death-rebirth? In other words, all the remarkable results of natural science in the last few hundred years can only be made sense of and, therefore, further refined and improved upon if we expand our knowledge into the higher worlds from which all natural and cultural phenomena precipitate?

But we don't need to get into all the details of how this lawful entanglement is taking place, which requires extensive living study (as indicated in that Steiner lesson on the other thread), but only to discern why this is the only possibility that makes logical sense of the elemental to archetypal spiritual spectrum. We need to really sense how our lawful becoming on the physical plane is an image of this - "The oneness of all things is much more overwhelming at that stage. It is as if we could immediately preconceive how any decision would ripple through the Cosmic fabric and what that will lead to. Thus our existence there is like constant communion with this board of Intelligent beings and we together seek creative solutions to the overall becoming of the Cosmic context." And it will become an ever more perfect image the more conscious we make ourselves of this relationship. That is the task of our Earthly evolution, and we will only feel like it is something distant and remote as long as we procrastinate on taking it up. Once the first steps are made, it is made very clear to us how our lives of intuitive becoming can only make sense in the context of this Ideal. We can only make sense of humanity's entire evolution in this context.

None of this is simply theoretical knowledge - it is exactly what can lead to the elimination of selfishness and egoism. When people can livingly sense how they were of a different gender, race, nationality, etc. in a previous incarnation, and how that previous incarnation is still lawfully working into the current one, how will this affect how they treat people in the current one? When they can livingly sense how all their economic, political, religious, etc. ideologies, which they are normally willing to spill blood over, precipitated in from the spiritual worlds very much independently of their own Earthly will? This is how scientific consciousness spirals into moral imagination in a concrete way through self-knowledge of the Spirit. It spirals in a way that can lead people to begin living, for the very first time, with a complete sense of responsibility for their neighbors, humanity, and the Earth organism as a whole, in all circumstances and at all times. When they are even willing to sacrifice their lives for others who they have never met - "greater Love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend". Such a Love simply isn't possible through isolated mystical realizations. There is no cause for a duality of radical pessimism or optimism under this view, but only a realization that the outcome of Earthly evolution will only be as optimistic as we are able to imagine, inspire, and intuit in a fully conscious way. 

All you said about the Cosmic content is correct. But I think you may be still missing this metamorphic process of transitioning from dualistic to nondual states of consciousness. The dualistic phase was an epoch in human history that developed lawfully through natural conditions of humanoid evolution, however, it is coming to a dead end and stagnation. It is impossible to grow into higher levels of spiritual development without breaking through the dualistic perception and "separate me" egoic bubble. In order to reach to the higher levels, beings need to go through a metamorphic stage of leaving behind their egoic and dualistic structures of cognition and transforming/transcending to the nondual ones by rebuilding their state of consciousness starting from deep subconscious layers where the dualistic perception and the sense of "separate me" reside. IMO, this metamorphic transformation is the only viable solution for the progress of humanity. And as we all agree, this nondual transformation is a necessary but not sufficient step, humans also simultaneously need to expand the frontiers of their cognition and reach to the higher levels of the spiritual knowledge of all laws and structures as you rightly said.

Yes, well, I was pointing out how reaching to the higher levels of the spiritual knowledge of all 'laws and structures' is the means to actually transform the egoic and dualistic structures, at the individual and collective scales. For ex., what would the world look like if many more people have a precise living sense of the metamorphosis which takes place at physical death and the journey which they go through in the planetary spheres, like Cleric does and tried to roughly describe for us in some previous posts? Let's be clear - he isn't building or borrowing some abstract model of a 'board of intelligent beings' we commune with after death. Obviously these are crude metaphors and analogies for supra-sensory realities which simply don't fit into our Earthly concepts, but they have precipitated from precise living experience. How much of the egoic structures of modern civilization are rooted in an absurdly unhealthy fear of physical death and ignorance of what sort of noble Cosmic service one will take part in across the threshold?

But if someone approached the art of music with only the feeling, 'there is a world of musical rhythms here and they sound really nice and I might learn how to play some day', we wouldn't expect a Love for music to grow from that. It would only grow when nourished by a living embrace of the detailed structure of the musical rhythmic world, including but not limited to a detailed theoretical knowledge of that structure, and continuous practical and creative engagement with an instrument, with an ideal of using the musical skill for selfless aims.

[Stranger]

So do you now agree that these 'aspects of the natural world' can only be made sense of through what takes place in the domains of psychic and spiritual life, within the liminal spaces of sleep-waking and death-rebirth? In other words, all the remarkable results of natural science in the last few hundred years can only be made sense of and, therefore, further refined and improved upon if we expand our knowledge into the higher worlds from all natural and cultural phenomena precipitate?

agreed

Yes, well, I was pointing out how reaching to the higher levels of the spiritual knowledge of all 'laws and structures' is the means to actually transform the egoic and dualistic structures, at the individual and collective scales. For ex., what would the world look like if many more people have a precise living sense of the metamorphosis which takes place at physical death and the journey which they go through in the planetary spheres, like Cleric does and tried to roughly describe for us in some previous posts? Let's be clear - he isn't building or borrowing some abstract model of a 'board of intelligent beings' we commune with after death. Obviously these are crude metaphors and analogies for supra-sensory realities which simply don't fit into our Earthly concepts, but they have precipitated from precise living experience. How much of the egoic structures of modern civilization are rooted in an absurdly unhealthy fear of physical death and ignorance of what sort of noble Cosmic service one will take part in across the threshold?

Agreed with all above, but in addition and with the acceptance of all of that, I always emphasize specifically how much of the egoic structures of modern civilization are rooted in an absurdly unhealthy and entirely incoherent idea of "separate self", and how this idea could be dispelled and dismantled together with its egoic structures, and how most of the humanity issues stemming from this idea could be resolved, if we would individually and collectively experientially realize the fundamental Oneness of the Cosmic organism. And how the origin of this "separate me" idea is rooted in the erroneous dualistic perception of reality.

[Stranger]

Ok, here I am not completely sure what you intend with this varying degree of coherence/incoherence of the reflection. I would rather suggest the idea of completeness/exhaustivity of the reflection, as previously presented by Cleric. In short the reflection is never an absolutely complete work of restoring full reality by matching back the percept with the relevant concepts/meaning, and this is precisely why we can perceive/have consciousness of the reflection. If that match was perfect, the reason for existing of the perception would be hollowed out, offset completely, it would disappear, and we would be projected in the wholeness of pure meaning/pure spirit/pure idea. Perception is only there as a useful riddle/detour to meaning/reality for us humans. It creates traction for us to feel the call of meaning. Finding the whole meaning would annihilate perception, because its deep usefulness would be exhausted.

Yes, that makes sense.

We can’t solve it by squeezing our brains now. And I would say, the same is true, when we zoom in on humanity, for the phenomenologically experienced idea: it can be “entirely equivalent to Thinking itself” when pervaded by consciousness. With this, we come back to the hexagone example: When the percept is fully and perfectly re-enliven by its ideal half (the full and fully fitting bundle of concepts it is calling for) the reflection disappears and only pure ideal reality remains.

Yes, that's true. But I like poking the mystery questions once in a while

[AshvinP]

So do you now agree that these 'aspects of the natural world' can only be made sense of through what takes place in the domains of psychic and spiritual life, within the liminal spaces of sleep-waking and death-rebirth? In other words, all the remarkable results of natural science in the last few hundred years can only be made sense of and, therefore, further refined and improved upon if we expand our knowledge into the higher worlds from all natural and cultural phenomena precipitate?

agreed

Ok, so what would you say is your hesitation or skepticism still that some significant extent of this spiritual scientific, nondual research, practically applicable to the domains of natural science, has already been undertaken through decades of rigorous investigation? Is it because most people in the dualistic, egoic paradigm haven't heard about it or accepted it yet?

And do you have interest in also undertaking and furthering it?

Yes, well, I was pointing out how reaching to the higher levels of the spiritual knowledge of all 'laws and structures' is the means to actually transform the egoic and dualistic structures, at the individual and collective scales. For ex., what would the world look like if many more people have a precise living sense of the metamorphosis which takes place at physical death and the journey which they go through in the planetary spheres, like Cleric does and tried to roughly describe for us in some previous posts? Let's be clear - he isn't building or borrowing some abstract model of a 'board of intelligent beings' we commune with after death. Obviously these are crude metaphors and analogies for supra-sensory realities which simply don't fit into our Earthly concepts, but they have precipitated from precise living experience. How much of the egoic structures of modern civilization are rooted in an absurdly unhealthy fear of physical death and ignorance of what sort of noble Cosmic service one will take part in across the threshold?

Agreed with all above, but in addition and with the acceptance of all of that, I always emphasize specifically how much of the egoic structures of modern civilization are rooted in an absurdly unhealthy and entirely incoherent idea of "separate self", and how this idea could be dispelled and dismantled together with its egoic structures, and how most of the humanity issues stemming from this idea could be resolved, if we would individually and collectively experientially realize the fundamental Oneness of the Cosmic organism. And how the origin of this "separate me" idea is rooted in the erroneous dualistic perception of reality.

But the question is how can we truly dispel and dismantle the egoic structures. The intellect tends to race ahead of its own lawful becoming, which is why we speak of 'racing thoughts' and such. We see this pretty clearly in the egoic culture today, where there are so many movements which feel they can solve all the world's injustices in a fortnight. Certainly very few people imagine the Earthly work of moral perfection will take its course over many more rhythmic incarnational cycles. Shouldn't we also be on guard for any similar feeling which comes to us through our mystical efforts? We are easily tempted to ignore the deeper arrows, accumulated over aeons, which are still subconsciously modulating our current perspective and therefore preserving the egoic imperfections. This reality is also reflected in the fact that we can't maintain the non-egoic, non-dualistic state throughout our waking experience, which you had previously acknowledged for yourself. The spiritual scientific path of higher knowledge is about gradually bridging that gap so the non-egoic state is firmly rooted in our individual and collective waking experience on Earth.

[Stranger]

Ok, so what would you say is your hesitation or skepticism still that some significant extent of this spiritual scientific, nondual research, practically applicable to the domains of natural science, has already been undertaken through decades of rigorous investigation? Is it because most people in the dualistic, egoic paradigm haven't heard about it or accepted it yet?

And do you have interest in also undertaking and furthering it?

My two comments:
- As I said, it is possible that some significant extent of this spiritual scientific, nondual research, practically applicable to the domains of natural science, has already been undertaken through decades of rigorous investigation, but I haven't seen any significant outcomes from it yet in terms of any new breakthrough or even smaller scale discoveries related to the domain of natural science.
- My interest in investigating the domain of natural sciences is of lower priority right now, not because it is unimportant, but because I believe it is more important for me personally, and for humanity overall, to focus on fixing the dualistic perception and illusion of separate self. As I said, we already progressed a lot in natural sciences and technology development, but still significantly lagging in spiritual development and are stuck in the dualistic perception of reality. But once this problem of dualistic perception is solved and resolved, sure we can focus on developing spiritual sciences in all directions - natural and elemental realm, higher realms, etc. Of course, the work on dispelling dualistic delusion is tightly related to developing higher cognition, because it is only from the levels of higher cognition where we can understand the mechanics of our perception residing in subconscious layers.

But the question is how can we truly dispel and dismantle the egoic structures. The intellect tends to race ahead of its own lawful becoming, which is why we speak of 'racing thoughts' and such. We see this pretty clearly in the egoic culture today, where there are so many movements which feel they can solve all the world's injustices in a fortnight. Certainly very few people imagine the Earthly work of moral perfection will take its course over many more rhythmic incarnational cycles. Shouldn't we also be on guard for any similar feeling which comes to us through our mystical efforts? We are easily tempted to ignore the deeper arrows, accumulated over aeons, which are still subconsciously modulating our current perspective and therefore preserving the egoic imperfections. This reality is also reflected in the fact that we can't maintain the non-egoic, non-dualistic state throughout our waking experience, which you had previously acknowledged for yourself. The spiritual scientific path of higher knowledge is about gradually bridging that gap so the non-egoic state is firmly rooted in our individual and collective waking experience on Earth.

Here I agree, it is a natural process governed by lawful structures in our unconscious, so this metamorphic process takes time, there are no bypasses and shortcuts. But the point is: when we go through this process, in order to facilitate this metamorphic transformation, it is most efficient to focus on the areas where the root of the egoic structures resides (which, as I said many times, currently is in dualistic perception and illusion of separate self). My approach here again is pragmatic and engineering, I rather focus on finding the roots of the most important problems and practically working on fixing them than just contemplating on the declarations and philosophical views even if they feel very encouraging and beautiful or focusing efforts in areas not related to these important and higher priority problems.

[AshvinP]

Ok, so what would you say is your hesitation or skepticism still that some significant extent of this spiritual scientific, nondual research, practically applicable to the domains of natural science, has already been undertaken through decades of rigorous investigation? Is it because most people in the dualistic, egoic paradigm haven't heard about it or accepted it yet?

And do you have interest in also undertaking and furthering it?

My two comments:
- As I said, it is possible that some significant extent of this spiritual scientific, nondual research, practically applicable to the domains of natural science, has already been undertaken through decades of rigorous investigation, but I haven't seen any significant outcomes from it yet in terms of any new breakthrough or even smaller scale discoveries related to the domain of natural science.
- My interest in investigating the domain of natural sciences is of lower priority right now, not because it is unimportant, but because I believe it is more important for me personally, and for humanity overall, to focus on fixing the dualistic perception and illusion of separate self. As I said, we already progressed a lot in natural sciences and technology development, but still significantly lagging in spiritual development and are stuck in the dualistic perception of reality. But once this problem of dualistic perception is solved and resolved, sure we can focus on developing spiritual sciences in all directions - natural and elemental realm, higher realms, etc. Of course, the work on dispelling dualistic delusion is tightly related to developing higher cognition, because it is only from the levels of higher cognition where we can understand the mechanics of our perception residing in subconscious layers.

But the question is how can we truly dispel and dismantle the egoic structures. The intellect tends to race ahead of its own lawful becoming, which is why we speak of 'racing thoughts' and such. We see this pretty clearly in the egoic culture today, where there are so many movements which feel they can solve all the world's injustices in a fortnight. Certainly very few people imagine the Earthly work of moral perfection will take its course over many more rhythmic incarnational cycles. Shouldn't we also be on guard for any similar feeling which comes to us through our mystical efforts? We are easily tempted to ignore the deeper arrows, accumulated over aeons, which are still subconsciously modulating our current perspective and therefore preserving the egoic imperfections. This reality is also reflected in the fact that we can't maintain the non-egoic, non-dualistic state throughout our waking experience, which you had previously acknowledged for yourself. The spiritual scientific path of higher knowledge is about gradually bridging that gap so the non-egoic state is firmly rooted in our individual and collective waking experience on Earth.

Here I agree, it is a natural process governed by lawful structures in our unconscious, so this metamorphic process takes time, there are no bypasses and shortcuts. But the point is: when we go through this process, in order to facilitate this metamorphic transformation, it is most efficient to focus on the areas where the root of the egoic structures resides (which, as I said many times, currently is in dualistic perception and illusion of separate self). My approach here again is pragmatic and engineering, I rather focus on finding the roots of the most important problems and practically working on fixing them than just contemplating on the declarations and philosophical views even if they feel very encouraging and beautiful or focusing efforts in areas not related to these important and higher priority problems.

Eugene,

There is great tension in the colored sentences. I am really not trying to nitpick anything here, but when it is indicated to me that what has been written was not understood (even if provisionally agreed upon), I feel it only makes sense to try and clarify it further for you.

The process of developing higher cognition is the very same process of furthering spiritual scientific research. There is no getting rid of dualistic/egoic perception for individuals and collectives and then deciding whether to build up spiritual science as something additional to that. The latter is precisely the means by which we do the former, by working back through many nested layers of deeper arrows conditioning our current egoic perspective. We have given various examples of this work in the previous posts in terms of increasing living knowledge of the death-rebirth journey, the Karmic laws working into cultural history, etc. Many more could be given. Do you see why this living knowledge is absolutely necessary before there can be any continuous, long-lasting consciousness which leads to universal brotherhood and concretely realized Oneness? Here's another example Cleric gave to Federica recently:

This is the process of redemption. Science with all its abstractness will have to be redeemed, spiritualized. We have a long road ahead before the dreamscape begins to become imaginatively pliable. For quite more time we'll still have to work with our hands and walk with our feet. If everything goes well, human life on Earth will transform such that the night and day cycle will be much more integrated.

Our night time should become something like a night-long meditation where we consciously expand in the higher order spaces and work creatively together with departed souls and higher beings. Everything we learn from the sensory spectrum will have to be worked upon in the higher spaces. This is similar to the way how social and political ideas are worked upon and they then steer the will in the perceptual spectrum, except that in that case we're using completely intellectual ideas, while in future we'll be consciously working on the curvatures of the higher order spaces. This will be true artistic engineering of our spacetime flow.

The daytime will be the more 'manual' aspect of life, where the elemental worlds will have to attuned to the higher flow. Needless to say, there will still be animals and human beings at all stages of development, so there'll be a lot of educational work to be done with the beings whose consciousness flows within the more elemental, fragmentary streams.

Do you see how we can say something like the above is the gradual means to actually dispelling the illusion of separate self and egoity, in the way that is most lasting and fruitful for humanity?

[Stranger]

Do you see how we can say something like the above is the gradual means to actually dispelling the illusion of separate self and egoity, in the way that is most lasting and fruitful for humanity?

Developing higher order cognition is doing SS, going inside subconscious layers with higher cognition and uncovering the dualistic perception and egoic structures is also SS, working with and reaching to higher-order beings, both during sleep and daytime is also SS (by the way, I practiced dream yoga and lucid dreaming). What I meant is that there are areas, for example elemental kingdom or some natural laws related to physics, that are not as important at this moment for solving the dualistic perception problem. The area of knowledge of the laws of spiritual and natural realm is huge, it includes so many different sub-areas and sub-kingdoms with very complex structures. But we need to focus on those areas that are more directly related to our pressing problems at this moment. We can use SS to find out the behavior of molecules on the microbiology level. Would it be useful? Sure it would be, but not as useful at the current time as solving the problem of dualistic perception. It's like studying the structures of the flowers in your garden while your house is burning. So, it is all a matter of priorities considering the limited amount of time and resources each of us have in our lives.

[Federica]

Yes, I can sense that you are interested in refining the presentations to reach more people. I think that factored into your comments on my liminal spaces essay too. It's a very fine line to walk, because we want to make it as concrete and accessible as possible, but it also needs to 'strain' the intellect to the point where it starts to lift itself out of habitual patterns of abstract thinking through these existential issues. Generally the metaphors and analogies are the ideal means of striking that balance. But it's interesting because, as you can see in my initial response to Cleric's essay, I found, and still find, the TC spectrum to be the most accessible way of approaching a phenomenology of spiritual activity, perhaps even more so than PoF only because it's shorter and uses some modern metaphors/language. Naturally many topics of discussion from PoF are left out, which are also critical for further enlivening our understanding. Of course there is always room for refinement, but I just didn't feel the things you highlighted needed to be refined, but were foundational to the phenomenology and also pretty accessible.

Well, I'm only interested in being able to explain what I do in a reasonable and down-to-earth way. Today I certainly don't feel in a position to "reach more people", at all. That would be pretentious and also very unreasonable. The reason why I initially omitted to mention that, is precisely to avoid giving off the impression that I want to go around preaching the living thinking path! In the distant future, however, I would definitely like to be able to positively contribute and give back, by "reaching more people". I guess in general I am very used to explaining things to people, through my work and even hobby.

"I just didn't feel the things you highlighted needed to be refined, but were foundational to the phenomenology and also pretty accessible."

Maybe you're right, and maybe it's not about the intro to the T-C spectrum in particular. I also find the essay pretty accessible, evidently. But if I look at my personal learning experience, I would definitely notice that it's strange to have only now really understood the meaning of will in the way WFT is used in this forum, for example. Sure, it can be negligence on my part, but maybe also that it is taken for granted as a basic thing, therefore its exact meaning is rarely made explicit.

The intuitive perception is normally subconscious - in fact this is what allows for spatiotemporal representation of WFT activity - but the gradient of concept-percept integration will be normally conscious if we simply don't leave out our ever-present spiritual activity from our experience of the perceptual spectrum. Actually what is not really given, and needs to be imagined and reasoned out separate from real-time experience, is a 'pure field of percepts' which would be more like a chaotic, blooming, buzzing confusion.

Surely I agree, the field of percepts is unconscious, "not really given, and needs to be reasoned out separate from real-time experience". We don't naturally perceive the world as a new-born baby does. But so is the process of reintegrating concepts and percepts. I still don't get how you can say that "The process of reintegration of concepts and percepts is part of the given, period." What is given is the final product, what you have called "thought-perception".

The above describes the process of cognition, which ordinarily only becomes conscious in the product of knowledge and not in the process.

Are you going to stretch it to the point of saying that the process of reintegration of concepts and percepts is part of the given, period, but it is also unconscious? And that the immediate given of experience can be unconscious, at times?

I guess you have three alternative choices:

1. You change your hard statement
2. You disagree with Max Leyf
3. You keep your statement, agree with Max Leyf, and set the meaning of "given of experience we want to stick to" so oddly large, that it comprises both conscious and unconscious processes.

But if you feel that you have a good grasp of the WFT relationship in relation to the givens of our experience after Cleric's post, then I don't see any point debating this further. I certainly don't want to argue about what you did or didn't mean in your original post. That's the past and is only relevant to the extent it is still influencing your understanding now. Let me know if there are still any lingering issues.

For me, the point in continuing debting is that I also would like (if possible of course) to understand your position in detail, as I believe there is always much to learn in it for me. But would you please clarify what you are suggesting that I have changed in between my original post and now?

[AshvinP]

Do you see how we can say something like the above is the gradual means to actually dispelling the illusion of separate self and egoity, in the way that is most lasting and fruitful for humanity?

Developing higher order cognition is doing SS, going inside subconscious layers with higher cognition and uncovering the dualistic perception and egoic structures is also SS, working with and reaching to higher-order beings, both during sleep and daytime is also SS (by the way, I practiced dream yoga and lucid dreaming). What I meant is that there are areas, for example elemental kingdom or some natural laws related to physics, that are not as important at this moment for solving the dualistic perception problem. The area of knowledge of the laws of spiritual and natural realm is huge, it includes so many different sub-areas and sub-kingdoms with very complex structures. But we need to focus on those areas that are more directly related to our pressing problems at this moment. We can use SS to find out the behavior of molecules on the microbiology level. Would it be useful? Sure it would be, but not as useful at the current time as solving the problem of dualistic perception. It's like studying the structures of the flowers in your garden while your house is burning. So, it is all a matter of priorities considering the limited amount of time and resources each of us have in our lives.

Cleric commented on this glowing part previously:

Our whole existence is continual discovery. All that matter is to simply remove any expectations for achievements in this lifetime. It is clear there are many obstacles that will prevent us to reach many of the deep secrets of reality in this lifetime but at no point we should say "There's no reason even to start because I won't have enough time in this life to fulfill the goal." This is what we must protect from.

Your response to that entire post was two sentences long, of course including the 'boilerplate' (legal lingo) agreement

So I guess what is lacking is really the interest in understanding what this higher cognition thing is all about. It isn't already familiar and known and requires a very humble approach. My various examples were likewise ignored, of how dualistic/egoic perception can only be dealt with in a realistic way when we discern precisely how the Oneness manifests itself in all our normal domains of living experience. There is simply no possibility of discerning the Oneness of humanity, for ex., unless we unveil all our Karmic entanglements across aeons of incarnations, which are responsible for all the political, economic, social, familial relationships we have and take for granted. No amount of mystical revelations will give us this knowledge and anyone who has pursued the mystical path also confirms that.

But if there is no interest, then there is no point in continuing, so we can agree to disagree for now.