Cleric's Responses to Mystical Metaphysics (or How to Make a Logical Argument)

[AshvinP]

Real history shows that human beings lived in an extremely fragmented and bloody state of perpetual war with each other until these impulses towards shared truth and knowledge manifested. Obviously it is a work in progress, but that should go without saying to anyone who has already abandoned Newtonian static view and adopted an evolutionary perspective.

Interestingly enough, that is exactly what is happening now: millions of resuscitated people have NDE experiences and bring back to us the shared truths from the realms above the human, but unfortunately their messages do not align with your particular understanding of truth. So, in a way, by clinging to your version of the truth and rejecting a possibility of different versions, you are exactly obstructing the evolution towards the knowledge of the higher level truths.

No one has ever said genuine NDE experiences do not bring back equally genuine experiences of the spiritual realms. In fact, the exact opposite is true under our view - they must be genuinely valid experiences of spiritual realms. The problem is they are not consciously entered or prepared for in any way, so, like many psychedelic experiences, the images are naively accepted as they appear without much if any ability to connect them in a reasoned manner. It is actually the same problem which occurs on the Earthy plane when people treat "endogenous experiences" as the totality of ideal content which makes sense of what those experiences are and where they come from.

So here again is another illustration of your inability to fairly evaluate our position, because you don't even know what the position is. Many times in the past, you have also assumed our position to be the exact opposite of what it actually is. How can this be explained? If it were just a couple times, maybe it is because both Cleric and my writing is so poor that we cannot effectively communicate our own positions to anyone. But if it happens many dozens of times without fail, when we have both tried every single phrasing, analogy, and illustration we can think of to express the ideas, then that habitual misperception and misunderstanding is due to your own unexamined prejudices.

[Martin_]

I am not going to state the conclusions, because, since you are already reading it, the process of following the phenomenology and logical progression for oneself is very important. Here I will just say the following - Steiner is outlining the basics of how the World Content appears to us as split into outward percept and inner concept; observation and thinking. It is important to remember he has not actually reached any conclusions at this point in his phenomenology. So, he has not posited that "observation" and "thinking" are two entirely different processes in Reality or that they are the same process expressed in two different ways. That is why it is "phenomenology" - he is only dealing with how the World Content presents itself to us in our immanent experience.

PS - I know most here are aware of the very general conclusions, such as the one I stated in the first part of my response to you, since we mention them often, but here I mean all the 'intermediate' conclusions which give the broader ones their full depth and living essence.

I've skimmed ahead a bit (the next chapter) so I see where he is heading (for now). And I understand that it's important for that's to come, so he spends some time on it. Still though; that is my annotated summary for that section of the text and will stay that way unless someone has a better suggestion.

(I hope I'll make it all the way through; I have a tendency of starting projects very ambitiously... )
P.S. I might start a new thread: "PoF-the book club!"

strap on the gloves

Oh I don't wear gloves...

[Eugene I]

It is actually the same problem which occurs on the Earthy plane when people treat "endogenous experiences" as the totality of ideal content which makes sense of what those experiences are and where they come from.

I think one of the key discrepancies between your position and most NDE accounts is that you believe that the state of humanity and creation overall is somehow wrong, "fallen", fragmented and dualistic, and this is a problem that needs to be fixed by returning to the unity of the ideal content and integration of fragmented selves into the single Self. However, what most NDE accounts reveal is the opposite: the life of the cosmos is indeed evolving, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it and nothing needs to be fixed. God wanted to know itself and know and consciously experience the fullness of all forms, but the only way to do that was to divide into multiplicity of beings and experience life in all possible forms from all possible perspectives. This is how the new ideal content of the knowledge available to the Divine is continuously being expanded and created. There is no pre-existing ideal content that we need to return to by abandoning our individuated perspective, but on the opposite, it is the multitude of our individuated perspectives that create and enrich and enhance this content. And that is why we are continuously being sent by Divine to incarnate into humans and other lower-level cognition forms, and then return back and bring that knowledge back to the Divine. It is being done for a purpose. Yet, this does not negate the evolution and the development of the human form of consciousness, the evolution still happens, and this evolution is the way for the Divine to experience and know all forms and states of the human perspective, from the most primitive (in the past of human time) to the most advanced (in the future of human time).

[AshvinP]

It is actually the same problem which occurs on the Earthy plane when people treat "endogenous experiences" as the totality of ideal content which makes sense of what those experiences are and where they come from.

I think one of the key discrepancies between your position and most NDE accounts is that you believe that the state of humanity and creation overall is somehow wrong, "fallen", fragmented and dualistic, and this is a problem that needs to be fixed by returning to the unity of the ideal content and integration of fragmented selves into the single Self. However, what most NDE accounts reveal is the opposite: the life of the cosmos is indeed evolving, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it and nothing needs to be fixed. God wanted to know itself and know and consciously experience the fullness of all forms, but the only way to do that was to divide into multiplicity of beings and experience life in all possible forms from all possible perspectives. This is how the new ideal content of the knowledge available to the Divine is continuously being expanded and created. There is no pre-existing ideal content that we need to return to by abandoning our individuated perspective, but on the opposite, it is the multitude of our individuated perspectives that create and enrich and enhance this content. And that is why we are continuously being sent by Divine to incarnate into humans and other lower-level cognition forms, and then return back and bring that knowledge back to the Divine. It is being done for a purpose. Yet, this does not negate the evolution and the development of the human form of consciousness, the evolution still happens, and this evolution is the way for the Divine to experience and know all forms and states of the human perspective, from the most primitive (in the past of human time) to the most advanced (in the future of human time).

Well... where to start with this one. There are a lot of ways to go here. First, I will briefly mention that Cleric has pointed before to the fact that, within the spiritual realms, we are first approached by those beings who are most tied into the physical realm, and those are precisely the beings whose activity is most associated with Earthly deception. I already know how your mind is interpreting these words... I am not asking you to accept this reality, because you won't even accept the reality of any objectively higher structure of spiritual realms in the first place. But I am pointing this out to make clear that spiritual science does not just throw its hands up when it comes to NDEs or other similar accounts saying, "we have no idea why they have different spiritual experiences than us, but our experiences are the right ones!" When spiritual science fails to have an experience-based and well-reasoned account of other views, it does not speak on them at all.

Secondly, you are once again assuming the exact opposite of spiritual science view in the bold. I would seriously compile all of these into bullet points for you, if I thought you would print them out and tape to your computer desk every time you choose to write a post on PoF or spiritual science, because then 90% of what you write would be left out once you realize they are complete misrepresentations. Maybe I will compile it and see if Dana can pin it as a post in the topic-specific section, so it can easily be referenced either by others or by us, to save from typing all the corrections out again. Suffice to say, there is no spiritual scinece claim that we need to return to any previous state of existence or abandon any individuated experiences or perspectives we have had so far. Like I said, it is the exact opposite, which is clear when we consider what the word "evolution" means in an ideal context. Spritual evolution does not mean to move back to past ideal modes of existence nor does it entail any previous ideal structures of existence being lost in the later forms. All such structures are brought along in the metamorphic progression.

At a much more basic level, anyone who reflects for awhile and is honest with what thoughts come back from that reflection will know intuitively that humanity-nature is "fallen" and needs redemption in some way. That is the basis of every single spiritual tradition which has ever existed, including all the Eastern ones, and it is plainly evident from the way we treat each other and the way we treat Nature. If the incarnation, death, reincarnation, et al. process was simply a circular wheel of experience as you appear to be describing it, without any sort of spiraling redemptive arc, then the anti-natalists would be the most wise among us, because it means physical Reality is a nightmarish place and it is better for no one to ever be born into it. This is truly the ego at its worst, dismissing millennia and aeons of cross-cultural Wisdom to substitute its own preferred spiritual reality that really was conjured up in the course of a few years of your single lifetime and on the basis of NDE accounts from other people. There really isn't anything left to add to that...

[Lou Gold]

As a matter of pure curiosity, I wonder if anyone has actually met in this corporeal existence a person (not a writing of or about some luminary) who does not have unconscious beliefs that determine their personal choice of a model that best serves the evolution of their being? And does not the practice and pursuit of a chosen model require that it be viewed as an absolute TRUTH? For me this was a great insight of Kastrup's "More Than Allegory" and attracted me to this forum, which seems now to have unrelentingly drifted toward something else.

Such people are indeed rare and I can't claim I belong to that crew, but this is a constant work in progress for me. I think the difficulty to accomplish this is rooted in our ego-structure - in the fear of uncertainty and unknown, because the unknown and uncertainty has always been a threat to survival for our ancestors. For many people just allowing for a possibility that they may not know the ultimate truth is so terrifying that they simply cannot sanely exist without a firm belief in at least some version of the ultimate truth. But that a recipe for trouble, because there is a vast variety of different possible formulations of the ultimate truth, and so inevitably different people cling to different formulations and become conflicting with each others because they consider other people attaching to other versions of truth to be infidels and enemies. This is the root cause of all religious and ideological wars and atrocities in the history. And nobody would expect them to give up their beliefs, the problem is not in beliefs, but in not allowing for even a possibility for their beliefs to be wrong. It would simply take to admit "I believe in such and such, but I may be wrong", and millions of lives could be saved.

"I believe that one of the greatest mistakes made by human beings is to want certainties when trying to understand something"
Carl Rovelli

It's an ongoing work for me too Eugene. My best teacher thus far has turned out to be being in my end zone of a miraculous life. Rather than feeling fearful or anxious I found it was most useful to hold a Great Mysteriousness in loving embrace, which rather than an avoidance of things unknown (or even unknowable) seemed as a welcoming of further learning. I can't say I've personally known any fully realized beings but I have met some pretty evolved folks. There's a combination of qualities they exude -- humility, high performance, childlike spontaneity that is somehow thoughtful and aware. They are fun to be around.

[Lou Gold]

As a matter of pure curiosity, I wonder if anyone has actually met in this corporeal existence a person (not a writing of or about some luminary) who does not have unconscious beliefs that determine their personal choice of a model that best serves the evolution of their being?

How would I know if I did? Would they even know? And if neither of us know, did it truly happen?

I dunno how it would be for you. I've never met fully realized being but I've been blessed with knowing some pretty evolved folks. Perhaps the student and the teacher create each other in an interdependent co-arising. I dunno in any intellectual way. All I can say is that it felt good to be around them as in something new to me was happening and not a recycling of old confusions. It felt like friendship, like authentic simple relationship. I believe we both knew.

[Eugene I]

Well... where to start with this one. There are a lot of ways to go here. First, I will briefly mention that Cleric has pointed before to the fact that, within the spiritual realms, we are first approached by those beings who are most tied into the physical realm, and those are precisely the beings whose activity is most associated with Earthly deception. I already know how your mind is interpreting these words... I am not asking you to accept this reality, because you won't even accept the reality of any objectively higher structure of spiritual realms in the first place. But I am pointing this out to make clear that spiritual science does not just throw its hands up when it comes to NDEs or other similar accounts saying, "we have no idea why they have different spiritual experiences than us, but our experiences are the right ones!" When spiritual science fails to have an experience-based and well-reasoned account of other views, it does not speak on them at all.

Secondly, you are once again assuming the exact opposite of spiritual science view in the bold. I would seriously compile all of these into bullet points for you, if I thought you would print them out and tape to your computer desk every time you choose to write a post on PoF or spiritual science, because then 90% of what you write would be left out once you realize they are complete misrepresentations. Maybe I will compile it and see if Dana can pin it as a post in the topic-specific section, so it can easily be referenced either by others or by us, to save from typing all the corrections out again. Suffice to say, there is no spiritual scinece claim that we need to return to any previous state of existence or abandon any individuated experiences or perspectives we have had so far. Like I said, it is the exact opposite, which is clear when we consider what the word "evolution" means in an ideal context. Spritual evolution does not mean to move back to past ideal modes of existence nor does it entail any previous ideal structures of existence being lost in the later forms. All such structures are brought along in the metamorphic progression.

At a much more basic level, anyone who reflects for awhile and is honest with what thoughts come back from that reflection will know intuitively that humanity-nature is "fallen" and needs redemption in some way. That is the basis of every single spiritual tradition which has ever existed, including all the Eastern ones, and it is plainly evident from the way we treat each other and the way we treat Nature. If the incarnation, death, reincarnation, et al. process was simply a circular wheel of experience as you appear to be describing it, without any sort of spiraling redemptive arc, then the anti-natalists would be the most wise among us, because it means physical Reality is a nightmarish place and it is better for no one to ever be born into it. This is truly the ego at its worst, dismissing millennia and aeons of cross-cultural Wisdom to substitute its own preferred spiritual reality that really was conjured up in the course of a few years of your single lifetime and on the basis of NDE accounts from other people. There really isn't anything left to add to that...

As I already said, your position is escapist anti-life and against Divine creation. You think God made a mistake or decided to deceive us for purpose? That's a blasphemy. God created Earth not to deceive us, it is not a deception. It was created on purpose which you are not aware of. It does not require redemption, but its development does entail in evolution towards higher forms. The fact that many historic religions were also anti-life does not mean that they were right.

But regardless, our dispute here can be summarized with a few sentences:
Me: You might be right, but look, there so many ways you might as well be wrong.
You: There is no way I can be wrong, I know and speaking the Ultimate Truth, this is spiritual science.
Me: The foundation of science is allowing a possibility to be wrong. You position is not science, but a fundamentalist sectarianism.

[Eugene I]

It's an ongoing work for me too Eugene. My best teacher thus far has turned out to be being in my end zone of a miraculous life. Rather than feeling fearful or anxious I found it was most useful to hold a Great Mysteriousness in loving embrace, which rather than an avoidance of things unknown (or even unknowable) seemed as a welcoming of further learning. I can't say I've personally known any fully realized beings but I have met some pretty evolved folks. There's a combination of qualities they exude -- humility, high performance, childlike spontaneity that is somehow thoughtful and aware. They are fun to be around.

We are on the same page, Lou. Hope you are doing well.

[Ben Iscatus]

I can't say I've personally known any fully realized beings but I have met some pretty evolved folks. There's a combination of qualities they exude -- humility, high performance, childlike spontaneity that is somehow thoughtful and aware. They are fun to be around.

Hmm! Sounds like Anna Brown.

[AshvinP]

Well... where to start with this one. There are a lot of ways to go here. First, I will briefly mention that Cleric has pointed before to the fact that, within the spiritual realms, we are first approached by those beings who are most tied into the physical realm, and those are precisely the beings whose activity is most associated with Earthly deception. I already know how your mind is interpreting these words... I am not asking you to accept this reality, because you won't even accept the reality of any objectively higher structure of spiritual realms in the first place. But I am pointing this out to make clear that spiritual science does not just throw its hands up when it comes to NDEs or other similar accounts saying, "we have no idea why they have different spiritual experiences than us, but our experiences are the right ones!" When spiritual science fails to have an experience-based and well-reasoned account of other views, it does not speak on them at all.

Secondly, you are once again assuming the exact opposite of spiritual science view in the bold. I would seriously compile all of these into bullet points for you, if I thought you would print them out and tape to your computer desk every time you choose to write a post on PoF or spiritual science, because then 90% of what you write would be left out once you realize they are complete misrepresentations. Maybe I will compile it and see if Dana can pin it as a post in the topic-specific section, so it can easily be referenced either by others or by us, to save from typing all the corrections out again. Suffice to say, there is no spiritual scinece claim that we need to return to any previous state of existence or abandon any individuated experiences or perspectives we have had so far. Like I said, it is the exact opposite, which is clear when we consider what the word "evolution" means in an ideal context. Spritual evolution does not mean to move back to past ideal modes of existence nor does it entail any previous ideal structures of existence being lost in the later forms. All such structures are brought along in the metamorphic progression.

At a much more basic level, anyone who reflects for awhile and is honest with what thoughts come back from that reflection will know intuitively that humanity-nature is "fallen" and needs redemption in some way. That is the basis of every single spiritual tradition which has ever existed, including all the Eastern ones, and it is plainly evident from the way we treat each other and the way we treat Nature. If the incarnation, death, reincarnation, et al. process was simply a circular wheel of experience as you appear to be describing it, without any sort of spiraling redemptive arc, then the anti-natalists would be the most wise among us, because it means physical Reality is a nightmarish place and it is better for no one to ever be born into it. This is truly the ego at its worst, dismissing millennia and aeons of cross-cultural Wisdom to substitute its own preferred spiritual reality that really was conjured up in the course of a few years of your single lifetime and on the basis of NDE accounts from other people. There really isn't anything left to add to that...

As I already said, your position is escapist anti-life and against Divine creation. You think God made a mistake or decided to deceive us for purpose? That's a blasphemy. God created Earth not to deceive us, it is not a deception. It was created on purpose which you are not aware of. It does not require redemption, but its development does entail in evolution towards higher forms. The fact that many historic religions were also anti-life does not mean that they were right.

No, we deceive ourselves through the creation. We don't deeply consider anything anymore, only pretend to be "experts" in this or that so our ego has a voice. We misrepresent positions on purpose so our own ego can feel like it has satisfactorily engaged with the material and dismissed it. We make up our mind to read something, to take some concrete action towards actual understanding, and then we back out immediately. It is not "many historical religions" which have recognized this fallen nature and need for redemption, but every single spiritual tradition which has ever existed. Christianity was the first to make clear what I say in the first sentence, among other things, and how we can only seek the redemption from this fallen nature within ourselves, not from external sources like abstract idea of "Divine" or from fantasized images like "Godel's candy store". Those are easy ways for the ego to ignore the hard work necessary for actually making a difference in our own lives and perhaps the life of others. These things will take many lifetimes to reach their complete fulfillment, but the redemptive arc of history is perfectly clear to anyone who will open their eyes, and it is available to be manifested in the desires, feelings, and thoughts right now of each individual soul who is willing to take hold of it. As Cleric eloquently put it on the other thread, "it is at a thought's distance. Just like in geometry, it takes only an infinitesimal step in a direction perpendicular to the flat surface, in order to know that a depth axis exists." The Divine is no abstract idea but a concrete reality living in each of us right now, and can be nourished if we just give it a little bit of thoughtful, loving attention.


“Some people want to look upon God with their eyes, as they look upon a cow, and want to love God as they love a cow. Thus they love God for the sake of external riches and of internal solace; but these people do not love God aright ... Foolish people deem that they should look upon God as though He stood there and they here. It is not thus. God and I are one in the act of knowing.” - Meister Eckhart