Does idealism lead to more compassion ?

[AshvinP]

Yes, I can look at a tree, contemplate it, and not see that energy. Most people who are honest with themselves will say the same thing. Perhaps you and Ramana are the rare cases, which means you are very fortunate. The rest of us perceive everything from trees to the very dimensions of space and time abstractly, bereft of their living qualitative essence. What I am saying, though, is that there is still a tangled thread of Spirit which runs through all of these now abstracted phenomena and we can unravel it through our clear and precise cognition. That is the thread which BK denies, for no other reason than his philosophy dictates, from the outset, that this thread cannot exist. So he never thinks to even look for the thread. The same exact sort of denial holds true for materialists. Until we unravel that thread back to its spiritual origins, we can only expect to remain in the sort of world devoid of genuine ethical interactions with nature and with others that we have today. At its deepst core, it is not a national issue, a racial issue, a gender issue, an agricultural issue, or any sort of sociocultural issue, but a spiritual issue.

"Yes, I can look at a tree, contemplate it, and not see that energy. Most people who are honest with themselves will say the same thing. Perhaps you and Ramana are the rare cases, which means you are very fortunate. The rest of us perceive everything from trees to the very dimensions of space and time abstractly, bereft of their living qualitative essence. "

Ashvin,

With total respect for your honest statement of personal perception, I would like to challenge it. Can't you look at a house plant and instantly see whether it is dead or alive? Perhaps it may be harder with a deciduous tree in the winter but surely not with an evergreen. And, in general, don't you quickly see/feel/sense the difference between a living being and a corpse. This is the "living qualitative essence" energy that you suggest that you don't "see". Are you the one who is so caught up in an abstraction that you are expecting something more spectacular? Can you really not see the extraordinary ordinariness of the "living qualitative essence" ???

Lou,

This is exactly what I am talking about. You are assuming what we naively perceive as the "living tree" is the totality of its qualitative essence that can be potentially perceived. This is 100% materialist position, which is fine for you to hold, especially if you are not really into this whole "philosophy" thing But I wish you and people like BK would be more straightforward about it... if you think what is directly perceptible to normal intellectual cognition is the full living essence of the tree, then that should be stated. The [subconscious] reason it is not stated by BK is because that is dead giveaway he is holding to naive realist, materialist position. So instead he says, "that is the full tree for purposes of science, and the rest of the living tree essence we need to wait until after death to find out, or if we merge back into instinctive MAL, we will never find out".

The same mentality holds true for every living phenomena that we can perceive. It is precisely because my normal intellect tells me, "this makes no sense... there is a living essence of the tree which cannot be captured by its physical quantitative dimensions or any juggling around of abstract concepts", that I am motivated to go searching for the deeper essence of the tree with my cognitive activity. I do not expect this deeper essence to simply fall into my lap by way of meditation, psychedelics, "grace of God", etc. That is not how genuine knowledge arrives to me in any other endeavor, so why should it for the tree essence? Some are satisfied with whatever is immediately revealed to their perception or after some mystical contemplation, which is fine. But, again, I wish that would be stated more plainly.

[AshvinP]

I must concede that BK seems to revert to some degree of aporia here, as he continues to insist in his most recent interview that there is no evidence that any sense of some transcorporeal state of individuated selfhood persists when the corporeal expression of the dissociated alter dissolves. In which case, what is this "you and I" that experiences each other's memories when we die?

Right, but the main point is that BK, like 99% of other modern philosophers, has prevented himself from ever saying anything meaningful about the spiritual i.e. life across the threshold of physical death. Like materialism, this critical idealism has ensured that it can only seek an ethics within the physical world, such as "categorical imperative" of Kant, and all such frameworks will fall short for obvious reasons (assuming there is actually existence beyond the physical). So, for BK it is either say nothing about ethics, adopt materialist utilitarian ethics, or throw out pure abstract speculations. Those are the options and all of them are terrible ones. In that sense, this comment is half critique, half pity for BK. I don't envy a professional philosopher who cannot speak meaningfully about ethics.

We won't know for sure what he meant until he deigns to come here though. It's a shame he didn't grace us with an elaboration on what he specifically meant

I think he has made his position pretty clear, at least in terms of what he feels can be justified philosophically and scientifically. It is the critical idealism of Schop. That is reflected clearly in the comment Dana posted. I am sure there are other places where he has commented on physical death and ethical values in a similar way. These positions are logically necessitated by his Schop-idealist framework.

[idlecuriosity]

I'm morbidly curious, because I've at least read enough to agree this school of thinking is cognizant of many logical non congruities that materialistic positions don't suffice to explain; will it ever be possible to mathematically measure some of the phenomena you might have experienced or the way our perception behaves in the state of higher consciousness, assuming you've explored beyond the boundary of what a materialistic model of our neurology allows for? Or if notes wouldn't work for that, would it be possible to ever have science experiments combining someone's first hand purveyance of stimuli/perception/thought and brain monitoring equipment made to see what the thoughts would be otherwise, so we can maybe see if there's a chasm betwixt the two? Perhaps in a roundabout way I'm wondering what you've came across to render you so certain there's a continuation of life beyond the threshold, that there's a spiritual concrete reality and what the basic principles of that would constitute (or at least the ones BK is ignoring)

Mostly since it'd help me learn more about my own understanding of life and death and where we go when we sleep or go under

[AshvinP]

I'm morbidly curious, because I've at least read enough to agree this school of thinking is cognizant of many logical non congruities that materialistic positions don't suffice to explain; will it ever be possible to mathematically measure some of the phenomena you might have experienced or the way our perception behaves in the state of higher consciousness, assuming you've explored beyond the boundary of what a materialistic model of our neurology allows for? Or if notes wouldn't work for that, would it be possible to ever have science experiments combining someone's first hand purveyance of stimuli/perception/thought and brain monitoring equipment made to see what the thoughts would be otherwise, so we can maybe see if there's a chasm betwixt the two? Perhaps in a roundabout way I'm wondering what you've came across to render you so certain there's a continuation of life beyond the threshold, that there's a spiritual concrete reality and what the basic principles of that would constitute (or at least the ones BK is ignoring)

Mostly since it'd help me learn more about my own understanding of life and death and where we go when we sleep or go under

I have not experienced the spiritual beyond the threshold consciously with higher cognition. My understanding is that there is no "modeling" of any sort, i.e. representational cognition that we normally employ. That being said, we already have abstract mathematical models which are clearly pointing to (but are not identical with) spiritual reality. For ex, QM models and Einstein's GR equations re: relativistic time, only make sense if "objective reality" is entirely intertwined with our own observation-cognition . Donald Hoffman has often remarked that math equations frequently become teachers of those who developed them and I think that is exactly right. They end up capturing much more than was consciously intended. However, abstract math necessarily leaves out the qualities of meaning which are inherent to spiritual Reality. I am sure Cleric's forthcoming essays will go into much more detail here.

We should remember that we are always experiencing spiritual reality, because Reality is, after all, unified. The issue is that we do not currently perceive the spiritual within the physical with mere intellectual cognition. Developing higher cognition is the process of lifting the veils of Maya i.e. cleansing the 'doors of perception' to perceive the ever-present and omni-present spiritual within the phenomenal world. There are many, many reasons to have confidence this spiritual reality exists. We have ancient mythology, scripture, philosophy, etc. which really makes no sense whatsoever unless it is pointing to a shared spiritual reality. Then we have aesthetics where imaginative cognition is more explicit (but still mostly subconscious). IMO the best works of art in music, poetry, painting, architecture, etc. are clearly speaking to this spiritual reality.

Finally we have our own experience of the world around us, where the intricate dynamics of life processes, sleep-wake cycles, inner experience of willing-feeling-thinking activities, etc. are complete riddles when only viewed from the "natural sciences". The problem is that we won't even re-cognize the deficiencies in abstract physicalist explanations until we rediscover the participatory role of our own cognition in the world. Once we begin observing our own thinking, we are lifted above the abstractions to see how they arose in the first place and how they are functioning as convenient fictions of our experience. We can then remember them as symbols which are pointing us towards the various threads of spiritual reality within the phenomenal world and we can begin unraveling them with our Reason and, eventually, higher cognition.

[Lou Gold]

Yes, I can look at a tree, contemplate it, and not see that energy. Most people who are honest with themselves will say the same thing. Perhaps you and Ramana are the rare cases, which means you are very fortunate. The rest of us perceive everything from trees to the very dimensions of space and time abstractly, bereft of their living qualitative essence. What I am saying, though, is that there is still a tangled thread of Spirit which runs through all of these now abstracted phenomena and we can unravel it through our clear and precise cognition. That is the thread which BK denies, for no other reason than his philosophy dictates, from the outset, that this thread cannot exist. So he never thinks to even look for the thread. The same exact sort of denial holds true for materialists. Until we unravel that thread back to its spiritual origins, we can only expect to remain in the sort of world devoid of genuine ethical interactions with nature and with others that we have today. At its deepst core, it is not a national issue, a racial issue, a gender issue, an agricultural issue, or any sort of sociocultural issue, but a spiritual issue.

"Yes, I can look at a tree, contemplate it, and not see that energy. Most people who are honest with themselves will say the same thing. Perhaps you and Ramana are the rare cases, which means you are very fortunate. The rest of us perceive everything from trees to the very dimensions of space and time abstractly, bereft of their living qualitative essence. "

Ashvin,

With total respect for your honest statement of personal perception, I would like to challenge it. Can't you look at a house plant and instantly see whether it is dead or alive? Perhaps it may be harder with a deciduous tree in the winter but surely not with an evergreen. And, in general, don't you quickly see/feel/sense the difference between a living being and a corpse. This is the "living qualitative essence" energy that you suggest that you don't "see". Are you the one who is so caught up in an abstraction that you are expecting something more spectacular? Can you really not see the extraordinary ordinariness of the "living qualitative essence" ???

Lou,

This is exactly what I am talking about. You are assuming what we naively perceive as the "living tree" is the totality of its qualitative essence that can be potentially perceived. This is 100% materialist position, which is fine for you to hold, especially if you are not really into this whole "philosophy" thing But I wish you and people like BK would be more straightforward about it... if you think what is directly perceptible to normal intellectual cognition is the full living essence of the tree, then that should be stated. The [subconscious] reason it is not stated by BK is because that is dead giveaway he is holding to naive realist, materialist position. So instead he says, "that is the full tree for purposes of science, and the rest of the living tree essence we need to wait until after death to find out, or if we merge back into instinctive MAL, we will never find out".

The same mentality holds true for every living phenomena that we can perceive. It is precisely because my normal intellect tells me, "this makes no sense... there is a living essence of the tree which cannot be captured by its physical quantitative dimensions or any juggling around of abstract concepts", that I am motivated to go searching for the deeper essence of the tree with my cognitive activity. I do not expect this deeper essence to simply fall into my lap by way of meditation, psychedelics, "grace of God", etc. That is not how genuine knowledge arrives to me in any other endeavor, so why should it for the tree essence? Some are satisfied with whatever is immediately revealed to their perception or after some mystical contemplation, which is fine. But, again, I wish that would be stated more plainly.

Ashvin,

Let's see if we can dialog here. It begins with not presuming to know the experience of an other. Better to ask. You have introduced a new qualifier in demanding perception of "aliveness" as a, "totality of its qualitative essence." You did not ask if I claim this totality. Let me respond so that you need not project anything onto me. As a storyteller, I will try to share more with images than with philosospeak in which I'm unskilled.

NO! I do not claim this perception for myself or claim that such totality is a commonplace experience for others. I had only one experience, perhaps no more than a nanosecond-long glimpse 40 years ago, which was so life-changing, generative of new growth, unforeseen development and consistently firm that I can now describe it as my personal foundational experiential "faith". Not a mere belief or intellectual projection or abstraction, it has remained firm in the face of many challenges. But, I surely do not claim it as a "totality". Also, I can not offer personal witness of Ramana Maharshi nor have I pursued his version of self-inquiry but my small familiarity, reading about him and etc, tells me that it seems safe to presume that he was much more developed in consciousness than I am. Why, or what do I recognize in such an affirming way? I recognize it in my own single nanosecond experiential glimpse. It's the reason that, although I am not on the Vedanta path, I have had a photo of Ramana with me or on my altar ever since first seeing it. About the totality, which surely must include post-corporeality, I also have the Caravaggio image of Saint Francis meditating on my altar. The ways and views of Ramana and Francis are VERY different but there is some familiar evocativeness for me in both of these images. Something that I recognize as beyond mere intellect. Something that resonates or vibrates within me. It's not intellectual, although it probably would become so if I tried to describe it.





So what might this vibe of totality be???

The Persian mystic poet Rumi whose ecstatic stream yielded about 70,000 verses plus several important spiritual texts and whose translations have become 700 years later the best-selling poetry in America, famously or infamously said: You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop. Yes, this is dangerous. A Santo Daime hymn, more cautiously, says: "I am not God but I have an aspiration." Keeping this caution in mind, another great Santo Daime hymn concludes:

I am the shine of sun
I am the shine of moon
I give shine to the stars
Because they all accompany me

I am the shine of sea
I live in the wind
I shine in the forest
Because she belongs to me

And who is this I am??? I had a life-changing glimpse resulting in what is so far 40 years of work on both the material and spiritual planes that gave me an aspiration, an aspiration that fails the moment I fall into any sense of separation. Now, in my end-zone, bearing the fruits of my many errors and still making some, I have fewer preconceptions and a greater appreciation for the many spokes (paths) on the great wheel of life and the glorious mysteriousness of it all, a great mysteriousness that I can only call Love. Perhaps, I, as well as multitudes of others, am the ones who can accept reality and can still love. Yes, it's an ongoing work.

Although I very much appreciate the way Bernardo's Analytic Idealism challenges the materialist reductionist dominant paradigm, his very conceptual analogs and metaphors are not inspiring to me. Only when I'm in deep suffering do I feel like a Dissociated Identity Disorder or an isolated whirlpool. In my more healed, more whole, more well moments, I sit at the Hawaiian shoreline watching the sunset light fading behind the tallest mountain on earth and feel a profound connection with ocean and rain drops and a very alive Divinely Integrated Diversity. I do not call this exceptional. Yes, the totality of living essence may not be commonplace but surely the feeling of aliveness, even if only a mere remnant fragment of a thread toward totality, is powerful indeed. I'm happy to perceive it as an "extraordinary ordinary." It is LOVELY INDEED!

[AshvinP]

Although I very much appreciate the way Bernardo's Analytic Idealism challenges the materialist reductionist dominant paradigm, his very conceptual analogs and metaphors are not inspiring to me. Only when I'm in deep suffering do I feel like a Dissociated Identity Disorder or an isolated whirlpool. In my more healed, more whole, more well moments, I sit at the Hawaiian shoreline watching the sunset light fading behind the tallest mountain on earth and feel a profound connection with ocean and rain drops and a very alive Divinely Integrated Diversity. I do not call this exceptional. Yes, the totality of living essence may not be commonplace but surely the feeling of aliveness, even if only a mere remnant fragment of a thread toward totality, is powerful indeed. I'm happy to perceive it as an "extraordinary ordinary." It is LOVELY INDEED!

Lou,

I made a criticism of BK's analytic idealism, you responded it was "too harsh", I responded to that, and now we have come full circle to you criticizing BK analytic idealism in pretty much the same way I had in the initial comment you responded to. None of this is about you personally or me personally. Whatever we happen to perceive in Nature, clearly a large portion of the world has not and does not. There is no other sensible explanation for why Nature is in the state that it is in today. Many humans barely treat other humans as living beings right now. But there is no sense pointing the fingers at others, because it all incarnates and reincarnates in our own hearts each and every new day, every new year, every new lifetime. Therefore it is each individual's spiritual responsibility to confront what lives in their own heart and participate in the microcosmic-Macrocosmic evolution through that process. That's all I am saying.

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

I made a criticism of BK's analytic idealism, you responded it was "too harsh", I responded to that, and now we have come full circle to you criticizing BK analytic idealism in pretty much the same way I had in the initial comment you responded to. None of this is about you personally or me personally. Whatever we happen to perceive in Nature, clearly a large portion of the world has not and does not. There is no other sensible explanation for why Nature is in the state that it is in today. Many humans barely treat other humans as living beings right now. But there is no sense pointing the fingers at others, because it all incarnates and reincarnates in our own hearts each and every new day, every new year, every new lifetime. Therefore it is each individual's spiritual responsibility to confront what lives in their own heart and participate in the microcosmic-Macrocosmic evolution through that process. That's all I am saying.

By "too harsh" I meant a sweeping tone that felt quite unlike what you are saying here, which has a generosity toward other ways that I'm very comfortable with. But getting back to the initial theme of the thread, I do not find compassion located in philosophy as much as in relationship. In this sense of mitakuye oyasin (all our relations) one can as easily be compassionate as a materialist as an idealist. And, yes, I believe the relationship approach is just as available to the naive as to the most sophisticated.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Here is an excerpt/preview from another recent BK interview (full version only available to Patreon benefactors), wherein he once again emphasizes that the notion of some transcorporeal, individuated sense of selfhood—i.e. a disembodied sense of a distinct self contra other-than-self, surely integral to feeling compassion, i.e. suffering with the other —is pretty much unfounded and based in 'wishful thinking'. As well, he reiterates his admittedly biased resistance, indeed aversion, to the so-called paranormal—a category so broad as to include, would it not, even Jung's notion of synchronicity, and personal events described DJM. One does have to wonder what is at the root of this self-contradiction.

[Ben Iscatus]

the notion of some transcorporeal, individuated sense of selfhood—i.e. a disembodied sense of a distinct self contra other-than-self, surely integral to feeling compassion, i.e. suffering with the other —is pretty much unfounded and based in 'wishful thinking'.

I believe this is due to
1. the understanding that even if true, personal transcorporeal existence it is only a transitional process. Eventually, as per Indus Valley ideas, we are reabsorbed into Brahma or MAL (I did think you believed this too, Dana);
2. a reluctance to continue in one's current identity (even if in a more refined state) - a preference to finish with the dissociation altogether, since dissociation inevitably implies suffering, and we cannot usefully suffer on behalf of everyone else - we cannot end the suffering of other dissociated beings.

[Lou Gold]

Here is an excerpt/preview from another recent BK interview (full version only available to Patreon benefactors), wherein he once again emphasizes that the notion of some transcorporeal, individuated sense of selfhood—i.e. a disembodied sense of a distinct self contra other-than-self, surely integral to feeling compassion, i.e. suffering with the other —is pretty much unfounded and based in 'wishful thinking'. As well, he reiterates his admittedly biased resistance, indeed aversion, to the so-called paranormal—a category so broad as to include, would it not, even Jung's notion of synchronicity, and personal events described DJM. One does have to wonder what is at the root of this self-contradiction.

Dana,

This confuses me:

... the notion of some transcorporeal, individuated sense of selfhood—i.e. a disembodied sense of a distinct self contra other-than-self, surely integral to feeling compassion, i.e. suffering with the other —is pretty much unfounded and based in 'wishful thinking'.

Why would a fully unified identity between the part and the One NOT also be compassionate, even ultimately so? Although separation may be a precursor to unification and carry its own forms of compassion -- mutualism, reciprocity, charity, caring and sharing, etc -- why would full union between the Father and Son (using Christian lingo) not also be fully compassionate in a Love that is no longer individualized and personal but instead guaranteed as present and available for all as in the notion of Christ Consciousness or Buddha Mind. Aren't there many ways to verbally represent the state of Union, why would any require the representations born of separation?

When Rumi says:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

why might this suggest any lack of compassion?

PS: If full unification/integration/no-dissociation is the end of suffering, what might there be to be compassionate about?