The Time-Consciousness Spectrum

[Stranger]

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.

I 1000% agree with that. Now let's read again what I actually said:

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

and yes, I forgot to mention, but I will definitely add to the above "unveil all our Karmic entanglements across aeons of incarnations". Remember I said in another thread how these egoic patterns are inherited from our ancestors and history? I mentioned "genetic inheritance" but the mechanisms of inheritance are of course karmic in general (which may include genetic and other ways of inheritance through structures of more subtle bodies through reincarnations). I have a Buddhist background, why would I deny karmic inheritance?

Nowhere I said that doing SS practice is not needed or not important. The only thing I said is that it is more efficient to concentrate on those areas of SS that are more tightly related to the issues we are currently challenged with (which are dualistic perception, delusion of separate self, the egoic complex with its karmic patterns etc). And so, it is less important at this point to investigating the structures of molecules, flowers, elemental and other natural domains etc, (at least for me). But anyway, we are splitting a hair here. We all agree that we need to practice SS, period.

[AshvinP]

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.

That's a good point, and it is true that even many philosophically educated people will have little understanding of these subtle inner distinctions. Most people feel like "WFT" is a completely arbitrary categorization, even amongst idealists and especially among mystics. I think it would be helpful, when approaching people with WFT phenomenology, to take advantage of Cleric's simple illustration distinguishing the feel of imagining physical activity and the feel when that imagination descends into bodily movement.

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.

Yes, I would say what is unconscious can be part of the given, because the given is always a process. Think about it - every moment of existence is a revelation of what was previously unconscious, now integrated into our conscious stream of becoming. Every perceived moment, simply by existing, we have a slightly more expanded aperture of our intuitive being that we didn't have before. A key realization of this phenomenology is that there are no static thoughts, perceptions, objects, etc., which are laid out before us as 'given' final products, but that these 'entities' only exist in our thoughts and never really help us make sense of our actual experience. We never actually rely on such thought-abstractions to steer our lives productively, but only fantasize that we do.

We can't limit the "given" to what people have abstractly convinced themselves in the modern age - if that is what was really given, then there would be no need for the phenomenology. The latter is crafted to gradually unwind the abstract illusions of what only appears to be "given" and penetrate to what is actually given, which dawns on us when the first-person thinking perspective is reintegrated into the ceaseless World Process. Then we begin to see the actual given as a constant stream of becoming in which our thinking is always participating, and we can follow that red thread ever-further into the subconscious and supra-conscious.

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?

I wasn't really suggesting what changed - you would need to answer that. My focus from the original post was mainly on the WFT spectrum in so far as we normally asleep in our will processes, dreaming in our feeling process, and somewhat awake in our thinking process. In other words, as Cleric noted, all the examples you gave in terms of craftmanship, ballet dancing, etc. actually point towards the wakefulness of our thinking process, rather than the will process.

[AshvinP]

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.

I 1000% agree with that. Now let's read again what I actually said:

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

and yes, I forgot to mention, but I will definitely add to the above "unveil all our Karmic entanglements across aeons of incarnations". Remember I said in another thread how these egoic patterns are inherited from our ancestors and history? I mentioned "genetic inheritance" but the mechanisms of inheritance are of course karmic in general (which may include genetic and other ways of inheritance through structures of more subtle bodies through reincarnations). I have a Buddhist background, why would I deny karmic inheritance?

Nowhere I said that doing SS practice is not needed or not important. The only thing I said is that it is more efficient to concentrate on those areas of SS that are more tightly related to the issues we are currently challenged with (which are dualistic perception, delusion of separate self, the egoic complex with its karmic patterns etc). And so, it is less important at this point to investigating the structures of molecules, flowers, elemental and other natural domains etc, (at least for me). But anyway, we are splitting a hair here. We all agree that we need to practice SS, period.

We aren't splitting hairs, Eugene. There is a major divergence in our understanding of what SS/higher cognition is and how the natural, psychic, and spiritual planes relate to one another. It surfaces again and again in the responses. But there is no way for anyone to begin an approach of reconciling this divergence if one party to it doesn't realize it is there, but instead wants to 'agree', in the abstract, to absolutely everything written by the other party. That implies that everything we are writing has already been explored and evaluated thoroughly by you - but how is that even possible? It isn't. Going from 100% agreement to 1000% agreement doesn't make it any less abstract.

If you actually agreed with what I am writing, in a concrete way, then you wouldn't say it is "more efficient" to concentrate on certain areas you prefer, which are basically Eastern mystical practices developed thousands of years ago. I know there is great variation amongst them and you are not advocating the standard 'merge into the Oneness' practices, but none of them are equivalent to what we are speaking of as higher cognition. None of them allow us to investigate precisely our past incarnations. They don't allow us to make sense of our lawful evolutionary arcs which have resulted in our present state of being. They don't bridge the discontinuities of consciousness between sleeping and waking, or death and rebirth.

What we are writing here are not explanations of these things to be agreed with, but simply prompts to actually do the hard work of learning about them ourselves. If you are interested in that, then maybe you can do the inner-outer work, come back in 3-6 months time, and tell us if you agree. We are happy to answer questions along the way, to the best of our abilities.

[Stranger]

If you are interested in that, then maybe you can do the inner-outer work, come back in 3-6 months time, and tell us if you agree.

Yes, that's a good idea! See you then...

[Federica]

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.

Yes, I would say what is unconscious can be part of the given, because the given is always a process. Think about it - every moment of existence is a revelation of what was previously unconscious, now integrated into our conscious stream of becoming. Every perceived moment, simply by existing, we have a slightly more expanded aperture of our intuitive being that we didn't have before. A key realization of this phenomenology is that there are no static thoughts, perceptions, objects, etc., which are laid out before us as 'given' final products, but that these 'entities' only exist in our thoughts and never really help us make sense of our actual experience. We never actually rely on such thought-abstractions to steer our lives productively, but only fantasize that we do.

We can't limit the "given" to what people have abstractly convinced themselves in the modern age - if that is what was really given, then there would be no need for the phenomenology. The latter is crafted to gradually unwind the abstract illusions of what only appears to be "given" and penetrate to what is actually given, which dawns on us when the first-person thinking perspective is reintegrated into the ceaseless World Process. Then we begin to see the actual given as a constant stream of becoming in which our thinking is always participating, and we can follow that red thread ever-further into the subconscious and supra-conscious.

Ashvin,

Thank you for your elaboration. As usual, it is insightful. I did think about the given as process, as you suggested. It prompted me to write a long, probably unnecessary text. At this point, I would rather ask you if you could comment on the introductory paragraph to the essay, in relation to your idea that the given can be unconscious. Unexpectedly, the two seem contradictory to me, but maybe I am missing some larger meaning.

[In science] 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.

[Federica]

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".

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.

Yes, I would say what is unconscious can be part of the given, because the given is always a process. Think about it - every moment of existence is a revelation of what was previously unconscious, now integrated into our conscious stream of becoming. Every perceived moment, simply by existing, we have a slightly more expanded aperture of our intuitive being that we didn't have before. A key realization of this phenomenology is that there are no static thoughts, perceptions, objects, etc., which are laid out before us as 'given' final products, but that these 'entities' only exist in our thoughts and never really help us make sense of our actual experience. We never actually rely on such thought-abstractions to steer our lives productively, but only fantasize that we do.

We can't limit the "given" to what people have abstractly convinced themselves in the modern age - if that is what was really given, then there would be no need for the phenomenology. The latter is crafted to gradually unwind the abstract illusions of what only appears to be "given" and penetrate to what is actually given, which dawns on us when the first-person thinking perspective is reintegrated into the ceaseless World Process. Then we begin to see the actual given as a constant stream of becoming in which our thinking is always participating, and we can follow that red thread ever-further into the subconscious and supra-conscious.

Ashvin,

Thank you for your elaboration. As usual, it is insightful. I did think about the given as process, as you suggested. It prompted me to write a long, probably unnecessary text. At this point, I would rather ask you if you could comment on the introductory paragraph to the essay, in relation to your idea that the given can be unconscious. Unexpectedly, the two seem contradictory to me, but maybe I am missing some larger meaning.

[In science] 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.

PS. I wrote unexpectedly, I meant unsurprisingly, sorry.

[AshvinP]

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".

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.

Yes, I would say what is unconscious can be part of the given, because the given is always a process. Think about it - every moment of existence is a revelation of what was previously unconscious, now integrated into our conscious stream of becoming. Every perceived moment, simply by existing, we have a slightly more expanded aperture of our intuitive being that we didn't have before. A key realization of this phenomenology is that there are no static thoughts, perceptions, objects, etc., which are laid out before us as 'given' final products, but that these 'entities' only exist in our thoughts and never really help us make sense of our actual experience. We never actually rely on such thought-abstractions to steer our lives productively, but only fantasize that we do.

We can't limit the "given" to what people have abstractly convinced themselves in the modern age - if that is what was really given, then there would be no need for the phenomenology. The latter is crafted to gradually unwind the abstract illusions of what only appears to be "given" and penetrate to what is actually given, which dawns on us when the first-person thinking perspective is reintegrated into the ceaseless World Process. Then we begin to see the actual given as a constant stream of becoming in which our thinking is always participating, and we can follow that red thread ever-further into the subconscious and supra-conscious.

Ashvin,

Thank you for your elaboration. As usual, it is insightful. I did think about the given as process, as you suggested. It prompted me to write a long, probably unnecessary text. At this point, I would rather ask you if you could comment on the introductory paragraph to the essay, in relation to your idea that the given can be unconscious. Unexpectedly, the two seem contradictory to me, but maybe I am missing some larger meaning.

[In science] 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.

Federica,

Let me clarify the sense in which I mean "unconscious", because that's not really the best term to use here. When we want to contemplate the 'conscious world content' of metamorphosing outer-inner qualia, we access memory. The accessing of memory is always a reaching into the subconscious to bring a certain flow of experience into consciousness. We don't have all remembered experiences in the aperture of our consciousness at any given time, yet it is absolutely necessary for that aperture to expand into memory for there to be any continuity of thinking experience of the world content. (there are also needs to be a certain conscious orientation towards our unmanifest potential states of being, which we could call supra-consicous). In a sense, what is given needs to expand with our phenomenology. There is no fixed given from the outset.

This is relevant because, in our ordinary cognition in which we allow our passionate Earthly life to continually condition our abstract thought from the bottom up, we can easily restrict the "given" to what amounts to an isolated photograph of our state of perceptual experience at any given moment. But such a photo is only an artifact of our intellectual consciousness which can abstract a static state of being out from the flow of experience and say to itself in full confidence, this is the given. It idolizes that abstraction and convinces itself that is actually how the world is experienced from its first person perspective. Our phenomenology needs to dethrone that idol by unwinding the assumptions and bringing back attention to the actual givens which flow through the "I" perspective.

Normally I wouldn't phrase this in terms of the unconscious or subconscious, because it gets confusing. This is all generally what we should consider the aperture of given conscious phenomena experienced through our first person stream of becoming, because that intuitive stream of becoming is itself a given of consciousness. It is what allows for continuity of consciousness. So we need to keep "conscious phenomena" fluid and flexible, relative to the way we normally conceive it, so we aren't overly restricting the given in a way that cuts off the integrative concept-percept process which must take place for coherently expanding experience. Surely we need to reason to this given, because we must unwind the abstractions which have piled up on top of it, and continue reasoning to expand out once we realize our deeper reasoning is itself the given and the precondition for all givens to manifest.

[Stranger]

Regarding this discussion about what "given" means, I guess we also need to differentiate between the "limited given" that is being registered by our current limited attention span vs "larger given" that could be fully available to be registered providing we would have an unrestricted attention span. For example, when we look at some object, our attention span usually focuses on the object and does not register the objects in our peripheral vision areas, nevertheless, the content of the peripheral vision is still always a part of our conscious experience ("larger given").

[Federica]

Federica,

Let me clarify the sense in which I mean "unconscious", because that's not really the best term to use here. When we want to contemplate the 'conscious world content' of metamorphosing outer-inner qualia, we access memory. The accessing of memory is always a reaching into the subconscious to bring a certain flow of experience into consciousness. We don't have all remembered experiences in the aperture of our consciousness at any given time, yet it is absolutely necessary for that aperture to expand into memory for there to be any continuity of thinking experience of the world content. (there are also needs to be a certain conscious orientation towards our unmanifest potential states of being, which we could call supra-consicous). In a sense, what is given needs to expand with our phenomenology. There is no fixed given from the outset.

This is relevant because, in our ordinary cognition in which we allow our passionate Earthly life to continually condition our abstract thought from the bottom up, we can easily restrict the "given" to what amounts to an isolated photograph of our state of perceptual experience at any given moment. But such a photo is only an artifact of our intellectual consciousness which can abstract a static state of being out from the flow of experience and say to itself in full confidence, this is the given. It idolizes that abstraction and convinces itself that is actually how the world is experienced from its first person perspective. Our phenomenology needs to dethrone that idol by unwinding the assumptions and bringing back attention to the actual givens which flow through the "I" perspective.

Normally I wouldn't phrase this in terms of the unconscious or subconscious, because it gets confusing. This is all generally what we should consider the aperture of given conscious phenomena experienced through our first person stream of becoming, because that intuitive stream of becoming is itself a given of consciousness. It is what allows for continuity of consciousness. So we need to keep "conscious phenomena" fluid and flexible, relative to the way we normally conceive it, so we aren't overly restricting the given in a way that cuts off the integrative concept-percept process which must take place for coherently expanding experience. Surely we need to reason to this given, because we must unwind the abstractions which have piled up on top of it, and continue reasoning to expand out once we realize our deeper reasoning is itself the given and the precondition for all givens to manifest.

Ashvin,
I'm following. This topic has turned out to be more taxing than expected! A few remarks:


""unconscious" not really the best term to use here"
First you didn’t like the field of percepts, now you don’t like conscious/unconscious. OK, but I just want to recall these are not my inventions, they’re concepts I picked from Max Leyf.


“The accessing of memory is always a reaching into the subconscious”. Is it? I must be very naive…


“We don't have all remembered experiences in the aperture of our consciousness at any given time”
Indeed, we don’t have them all at any given time, but you’ve just said “always” two lines above.


“yet it is absolutely necessary for that aperture to expand into memory for there to be any continuity of thinking experience of the world content”
Exactly, but when I made this same remark in my first comment to this thread: “by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation” you pushed it back.

"This is relevant because, in our ordinary cognition in which we allow our passionate Earthly life to continually condition our abstract thought from the bottom up, we can easily restrict the "given" to what amounts to an isolated photograph of our state of perceptual experience at any given moment..."

This is not the issue: I never implied that the given is a static picture. I always referred to it as moving, just like our perceptions are always moving.

So we need to keep "conscious phenomena" fluid and flexible, relative to the way we normally conceive it, so we aren't overly restricting the given in a way that cuts off the integrative concept-percept process which must take place for coherently expanding experience. Surely we need to reason to this given, because we must unwind the abstractions which have piled up on top of it, and continue reasoning to expand out once we realize our deeper reasoning is itself the given and the precondition for all givens to manifest.

Anyhow, I understand what you mean here, and in which sense you want to bring the precept-concept-process within the firm point of departure. You mean “unconscious” as “transformational” and in this transformation you include the full process of cognition of the perceptual sphere. Understood, but in this case I think the word given should be replaced. In my opinion it really is misleading, in relation to the meaning you have expressed here. I intend this in practical sense. When someone - like Lauriso recently did - asks a few questions as a newcomer, and you recommend the T-C spectrum essay as a response, it’s very unlikely that he/she will understand what is meant by “given” without further context.

But, ok, thanks for clarifying this. Now I have two reservations I need to check and further inquire on the topic:

- That when we say "Feeling" for example, the concept really arises from the given, as you intend it, not as an abstraction.
- That the understanding of the given as you have here explained is necessary to continue reading the T-C essay.

[AshvinP]

Federica,

Let me clarify the sense in which I mean "unconscious", because that's not really the best term to use here. When we want to contemplate the 'conscious world content' of metamorphosing outer-inner qualia, we access memory. The accessing of memory is always a reaching into the subconscious to bring a certain flow of experience into consciousness. We don't have all remembered experiences in the aperture of our consciousness at any given time, yet it is absolutely necessary for that aperture to expand into memory for there to be any continuity of thinking experience of the world content. (there are also needs to be a certain conscious orientation towards our unmanifest potential states of being, which we could call supra-consicous). In a sense, what is given needs to expand with our phenomenology. There is no fixed given from the outset.

This is relevant because, in our ordinary cognition in which we allow our passionate Earthly life to continually condition our abstract thought from the bottom up, we can easily restrict the "given" to what amounts to an isolated photograph of our state of perceptual experience at any given moment. But such a photo is only an artifact of our intellectual consciousness which can abstract a static state of being out from the flow of experience and say to itself in full confidence, this is the given. It idolizes that abstraction and convinces itself that is actually how the world is experienced from its first person perspective. Our phenomenology needs to dethrone that idol by unwinding the assumptions and bringing back attention to the actual givens which flow through the "I" perspective.

Normally I wouldn't phrase this in terms of the unconscious or subconscious, because it gets confusing. This is all generally what we should consider the aperture of given conscious phenomena experienced through our first person stream of becoming, because that intuitive stream of becoming is itself a given of consciousness. It is what allows for continuity of consciousness. So we need to keep "conscious phenomena" fluid and flexible, relative to the way we normally conceive it, so we aren't overly restricting the given in a way that cuts off the integrative concept-percept process which must take place for coherently expanding experience. Surely we need to reason to this given, because we must unwind the abstractions which have piled up on top of it, and continue reasoning to expand out once we realize our deeper reasoning is itself the given and the precondition for all givens to manifest.

Ashvin,
I'm following. This topic has turned out to be more taxing than expected! A few remarks:


""unconscious" not really the best term to use here"
First you didn’t like the field of percepts, now you don’t like conscious/unconscious. OK, but I just want to recall these are not my inventions, they’re concepts I picked from Max Leyf.

Federica,

I meant that the 'unconscious' isn't the best way to speak of this aperture of first-person becoming which generally implicates a process extending into 'past' and 'future'. Normally I would use the unconscious or subconscious to mean that which is beyond even this aperture, like our experiences during sleep. That is where we normally have gaps in our stream of becoming, or before a certain time in our current incarnation. Of course these experiences are also critical to understanding our current state of being, but they are not within the aperture of conscious phenomena which I would call the "given".

“The accessing of memory is always a reaching into the subconscious”. Is it? I must be very naive…


“We don't have all remembered experiences in the aperture of our consciousness at any given time”
Indeed, we don’t have them all at any given time, but you’ve just said “always” two lines above.


“yet it is absolutely necessary for that aperture to expand into memory for there to be any continuity of thinking experience of the world content”
Exactly, but when I made this same remark in my first comment to this thread: “by asking the question of the continuous metamorphosis of conscious becoming, we have interfered time and memory with observation” you pushed it back.

"This is relevant because, in our ordinary cognition in which we allow our passionate Earthly life to continually condition our abstract thought from the bottom up, we can easily restrict the "given" to what amounts to an isolated photograph of our state of perceptual experience at any given moment..."

This is not the issue: I never implied that the given is a static picture. I always referred to it as moving, just like our perceptions are always moving.

We have to make certain thinking-gestures when we want to recall something in memory, right? That is what I would call a 'reaching into the subconscious', again with the caveat we are using 'subconscious' here in a broad sense. Or we could call it a reaching into the 'not immediately perceptual consciousness'. Here is a passage from Steiner to consider:

There is, however, another indication — and such indications are all I want to give to-day — that as earthly men we live always in the present moment. Here, too, we need only be sufficiently unprejudiced to grasp all that this statement implies. When we see, hear, or otherwise perceive through our senses, it is the actual moment that is all-important for us. Whatever has to do with the past or the future can make no impression on our ears, our eyes, or on any other sense. We are given up to the moment, and thereby to space.

But what would a man become were he entirely given up to the present moment and to space? By observing ordinary life around us we have ample proof that, if a man is thus completely engrossed, he is no longer man in the full sense. Records of illness give evidence of this. Well-authenticated cases can be quoted of persons who, at a certain time in their lives, become unable to remember any of their former experiences, and are conscious only of the immediate present. Then they do the craziest things. Contrary to their ordinary habits, they buy a railway ticket and travel to some place or other, doing everything necessary at the time quite sensibly, with more intelligence, and perhaps with more cunning, than usual. They have meals and do all the other little things in life at the normal time. On arrival at the station to which they booked, they take another ticket, going possibly in an opposite direction. They wander about in this way, it may be for years, until they come to a stop at some place, suddenly realising they don't know where they are. Everything they have done, from the moment they took the first ticket, or left their home, is blotted out from their consciousness, and they remember only what took place before that. Their life of soul, the whole of their life as human beings on earth, becomes chaotic. They no longer feel themselves to be a unified person. They had always lived in the present moment and had been able to find their way about in space, but now they have lost their inner feeling for time; they have lost their memory.

When a man loses his inner feeling for time — his really intimate connection with the past — then his life becomes a chaos.

So it is similar to imagining a 'pure field of percepts' without the concepts linking them into a harmonious whole. This 'inner feeling for time' is what I am placing within the given conscious aperture of intuitive becoming. I would not call this an 'interfering of time and memory with observation', in the sense that we are constructing a model which goes beyond the givens of thinking observation. If we want to call it an 'inner model', I guess that's fine, but I think it's misleading to imply that this is going beyond the givens of our normal intuitive stream of becoming. Or if by 'observation' we mean pure sense-perception in the present moment, then of course that can't be equated with the actual givens.

So we need to keep "conscious phenomena" fluid and flexible, relative to the way we normally conceive it, so we aren't overly restricting the given in a way that cuts off the integrative concept-percept process which must take place for coherently expanding experience. Surely we need to reason to this given, because we must unwind the abstractions which have piled up on top of it, and continue reasoning to expand out once we realize our deeper reasoning is itself the given and the precondition for all givens to manifest.

Anyhow, I understand what you mean here, and in which sense you want to bring the precept-concept-process within the firm point of departure. You mean “unconscious” as “transformational” and in this transformation you include the full process of cognition of the perceptual sphere. Understood, but in this case I think the word given should be replaced. In my opinion it really is misleading, in relation to the meaning you have expressed here. I intend this in practical sense. When someone - like Lauriso recently did - asks a few questions as a newcomer, and you recommend the T-C spectrum essay as a response, it’s very unlikely that he/she will understand what is meant by “given” without further context.

But, ok, thanks for clarifying this. Now I have two reservations I need to check and further inquire on the topic:

- That when we say "Feeling" for example, the concept really arises from the given, as you intend it, not as an abstraction.
- That the understanding of the given as you have here explained is necessary to continue reading the T-C essay.

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As said previously, I don't think the "given" is something to define with rigid contours from the outset of reading the essay. It refers to a background intuition we all have of our metamorphosing thinking states of being. The meaning of this intuition will be fleshed out in the process of reasoning through the phenomenology of thinking, if we remain flexible and open to normally unfamiliar configurations of our own thinking. This is the critical purpose of the phenomenology - it shouldn't only be an exercise in gaining a conceptual model of 'thinking as spiritual activity', but a living experience of our own thinking beginning to discern itself from the inside-out. A newcomer shouldn't really understand these things from the outset - if they feel that they have such an understanding right away, that would mean they are considering it all abstractly. Actually I find this to universally be the case when anyone "agrees" very quickly with something which is no doubt unfamiliar to modern habits of thinking. The desire for clear cut definitions of inner experiential activity is really what needs to be sacrificed for the phenomenology to reveal its deeper meaning.