Eugene I wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:14 pm
Most spiritual traditions are targeted towards developing higher condition faculties, I already said that a few times. But what they discover as a result of their higher cognition investigations it often quite different across the traditions. Now, I can give you an example: in one of the discussions you claimed that you are able to cognize the structure of Zodiacs with your access to higher cognition, and then pointed to the fact that other spiritual traditions (such as the Eastern ones) were not able to cognize any evidences of the Zodiacs, and therefore, this fact points to the insufficiency of the Eastern meditation practices. I could give you a similar argument: I did experience a presence of spiritual beings in my spiritual journeys, but my experiences were quite different from yours. Now, I could similarly claim that your higher cognition is inferior compared to mine because you have not experienced what I experienced, but I would never make such claim. So, it's not about disputing the benefits of developing higher cognition, all spiritual seekers and spiritual traditions do that. It's about claiming that "my" higher cognition and the knowledge I get from it is in any way superior to "yours" (which is a sure symptom of sectarianism).
(I wrote this before I saw your latest post but I think what's below will address it as well)
I fully agree that "my word against yours" can never lead to anything. Isolated experiences don't help much. It is only when their place is found within the overall harmony of the facts, that we can tell which is true and which not. As we've often said, it's useless to ask if an experience
in itself is true or not. From the perspective of our metamorphic process in the most general sense we can call true those experiences which lead us even further and integrate into an ever expanding horizon of the harmony of the facts. False ideas are those which don't fit into the expanding perspective and thus can only be supported by keeping certain boundaries to the sphere of our consciousness. We need these boundaries because we need darkness, we need to keep the false idea from contacting the general Ideal organism, otherwise in the harmonic light of interconnectedness the false idea is useless. While in the darkness, the false idea is also useless in the higher sense but nevertheless it can become a beacon around which certain beings can unfold their activity.
We really need to get a feeling for this. This has been said so many times already that I don't know if anyone pays attention anymore - gradually thinking must transform from a bunch of loosely related concepts that aim to build a floating replica of the supposed 'reality-in-itself', to an actual living process which ingrows, fuses with the World Content, similarly to the way the network of plant roots penetrate the soil. In similar way our thinking organism grows into the World and the cognitive experience of this is what is called harmony of the facts. In other words, this process is not something that we observe from the outside but it's the experienced
from within thinking activity that grows and feels reality.
Steve Petermann wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:19 pm
For a spiritual seeker, it is helpful if there is a progression that starts with their concerns and then addresses those concerns in such a way they can understand. No easy task for metaphysical thinking but necessary if the message is to get across to a broad audience. After all, metaphysics is essentially a question/answer enterprise. So, for those offering a metaphysical vision, they also need to 'put in the work' to make it accessible in a coherent way.
I agree. As someone who comes from scientific/mathematical/computer algorithmic background, it has always been my goal to find ways to build things gradually and sequentially. This is not always possible and we must be careful if we simply use that as an excuse by saying "Unless you present your ideas as clear sequence of thoughts that build strictly one upon another, I'll not try to understand them." This is not possible for trivial things let alone for deeper ones. Is it possible to understand a car in a linear way? Not really. We have no choice but study the different parts in some sequence and only gradually we'll have the complete picture as we are able to hold in our mind the ideas of the different parts and relate them in a whole.
Imagine if a baby was to say "I'm not learning any language unless it is presented to me as a nice gradation of things that I already know "breastfeeding, burping, crying, pooping, sleeping". It's obvious that this can never work. Through the acquisition of language an element awakens in the child's soul which was previously mute, it couldn't express itself and thus was not conscious of itself. This acquisition doesn't happen into a nice linear sequence of words, out of which the whole language follows. Instead the baby is bombarded constantly with verbal perceptions until the spirit grasps the game (this is simplified of course, the process is much more deeper). The thing is that we don't start with some primary words and then build everything else from there. In fact, no word is meaningful in isolation. Meaning of words exists as mutually supporting organs of a thinking organism.
This process is a very good analogy for what humanity must now go through, although in fully conscious way. The higher order soul and spirit processes are like a language too. We can't start from ordinary words and build out of them this higher language, just like the baby can't start with 'breastfeeding' and 'pooping' and build out of it ordinary language/thinking. The parents speak to the baby as if from a higher world of meaning and it slowly
grows into that world. Today higher beings and Initiates also speak into a higher language that we must grow into. This growing into is actually a twofold process. In certain sense we already exist in the higher world but we are mute and unable to reflect our being within the cognitive palette below, just as the baby's ego can only express in the most basic forms of behavior until it begins accommodate into the body and the cognitive palette. So on one hand our organization builds up from below upwards while our spiritual being meets it from above downwards. As they adapt to each other, the spirit can express more and more freely and creatively. As long as the spirit is trapped into the biological and lower instincts it is enslaved by them. Today we're in position to participate in this process fully consciously, by working on our organization so that our "I" can awake more and more into the higher order processes. Nature can't help us anymore. It is up to us to open for what flows from above and thus rise ourselves above blind desire, instincts, preconceived opinions, patterned thoughts and speech. This is a completely real process. Just as language and thinking brings a whole new level of existence within the baby's consciousness, so by rising above the bodily and soul 'channels' within which our spirit is ordinarily enforced to flow (as intellect thinking about the world) a whole new world opens to us.
There's no need to refer to the Zodiac or Angles in the above. These are all completely understandable things for any normally functioning thinking. This understanding is not in the way we understand microbes on a petri dish in the lab. We can still see the logic if we look at the above as external ideas on a petri dish, as if we are afraid to allow them come any closer and be infected by them. Yet we only understand them in the true sense when we assume the shape of the ideas with our spirit, just as the baby understands language not from the outside but when it begins to imitate the words from within. This doesn't mean to believe them. We can believe an idea only when it sits on the petri dish and we have no other means to tell if it is true or not but we simply choose to believe it or not. When we assume the shape of the idea with our spiritual activity we already have practical experience. In this way we have a real experience which either grows harmoniously in the general thinking organism or not. Most of the ideas above (as in PoF) are of such kind that they state nothing but their shape. For example, when we're being told that it is possible to observe our thinking, some may look at that idea on the petri dish and wait for scientists to prove its 'safety' before allowing it come any closer. But if we allow ourselves to experience the idea - that is, we make an attempt to experience livingly our thinking - then the very act is also the proof of the idea. When we continue to expand our activity in this way, by exploring the shapes and dynamics our thinking takes as it follows both sensory and soul processes, we grow into the World process and experience the harmony of the facts. Further down the road we can find also how the Zodiac fits into this harmony. But if one doesn't want to experience the reality which is right in front their eyes, what's the point to speak about realities which require much wider horizon so that many more processes can be grasped simultaneously as a twelvefold unity?