JustinG wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 12:12 am
Here's the way I make sense of issues like this:
Expeditions into the 'supersensible' involve dissociation from one's physiological body and can be extremely threatening to one's sense of self. To avoid a psychotic break it is imperative that a new belief structure is available to replace the one that has been shattered. Once this new belief structure has been adopted, it provides a new and valid way of making sense of things. However, the new belief structure, like the old one before it was shattered, can be held very firmly (hence, the difficulties in extricating people from cults, no matter what empirical evidence is provided to them).
This is not meant to imply that all religions or spiritual systems are cults - it could just as easily be argued that physicalism is a cult. Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that spiritual systems are always constructed from a particular situatedness and place in the world. Hence, in my view a good way to assess a religion or spiritual system is through the degree of tolerance and respect it has for other belief systems, and the the extent to which it cultivates humility.
I have a very vivid memory from my childhood. My parents were watching the news on TV every evening. I remember very clearly how I was staring at the person on the screen, I see his lips moving, I hear words sounding but all I understand was "blah-blah-blah ... blah-blah". It's such a vivid memory because I was thinking in my childish mind and I was aware that this is happening. I was simply aware that although I was hearing words in my own language, it was still the case that I understood nothing. It was like foreign tongue to me. Thus with my brother we had to endure the boredom until the news were over so we can watch the kids program.
I believe anyone can come upon something similar in their own experience. So what happens when people today take their supersensible expeditions intentionally or accidentally and when the so called dissociation is threatened? Very simple - they see the news broadcast. In our materialistic age the default mode is to be unaware of the broadcast and in addition, to fiercely deny its existence. The accidental glimpses into other 'TV channels' lead to the intellect saying: "OK, I concede. The news broadcast is really there. But this broadcast is completely unintelligible. I see the movement, I feel that I live within this fabric all the time but all I hear is blah-blah. This 'blah-blah' is the most beautiful sound imaginable. It's deeply aesthetic, far more than anything which even the greatest artists can produce in the sensory realm. It just stands there, all around me and within me. Yet with my thoughts I stand outside it. I can dissolve in it, swim with it but my understanding remains on my side, the mystery - on the other."
Now let's turn my child memory into a metaphor. The children gather together on a high child council and decide on the futurities. They speak "The news broadcast exists. That's a fact we can't deny - the words come forth from the teevo. Yet none of us can understand these words. We understand our toys but these words we don't. As such we are forced to
interpret the words through the toys we know. Some of us say that the words speak of a basket of dolls. Others say it's about a trinity of a ball, a stick and a rubber ducky. Still others maintain that it's foolish to seek any understanding of the words - that they are simply noise into which we fantasize shapes, just like we see a face on the Moon. So we've gathered today to sign a treaty of tolerance and humility. All the children tribes are free to have their own interpretation of the broadcast. What unites us all is than none of us knows the truth. So let's hold on to this. We're strong when we are united. We're united when we are One. And we're One in our ignorance. This is what keeps us together. Other than that, let anyone arrange their toys in any way they find pleasure in."
What's missing in that picture? The fact that the children live as Peter Pan in Neverland. They don't know that whether they like it or not, time moves forwards and they with it. There are many things that we can gather from this metaphor. Let's start with the fact that when we grow up, we don't simply begin to make more and more complicated toy-interpretations of the news. Instead, we
grow into the words. We begin to live in their meaning
from within. Please take note of this simple fact.
I hope it's clear that the metaphor refers to our current evolutionary situation. We're always in a state of transition but this one is particularly charged. People are becoming aware of the broadcast by different means. Yet it is largely unintelligible. We only make interpretations with our intellectual toy-concepts. Yes, this may sound insulting but our concepts like atom, alter, MAL are only toy-approximations of the words. This doesn't mean that they don't refer to anything of value. Indeed they do! In certain sense even more than we allow ourselves to believe. But the
great prejudice is that the words
can't be understood at their own level of meaning, that the reality of the words is bound to forever remain only in the realm of aesthetic and religious feelings. This is the crucial point.
As it often happens in life, laughter can very quickly turn into tears, love into hate, humility into arrogance. The children's humility, their treaty for tolerance of all toy-interpretations, quickly turns into arrogance as soon as some child proposes that the broadcast
can be understood but we must grow into its level of meaning. This breaks the dream of Neverland. Ashvin has written great essays that trace the evolution of consciousness. Most modern people halfheartedly admit that everything is developing in some way but as soon as we reach the question of consciousness - it's all Neverland. The children assume they have always been and will always be what they are now. Thus they are forced to burn at the stake anyone who proposes that consciousness can grow into the meaningful dynamics of the broadcast.
In order not to remain unsubstantiated I'll mention what has been said over and over again on many occasions. In order to move from the metaphor to reality we must understand what it means
in practice and not only as poetic expression. So we reach again the question of thinking. As long as we live entirely in the layer of already formed thoughts, the world looks like arrangement of such thoughts. Any idea about the deeper meaning of the world can only be an interpretation, arrangement of toy-thoughts. It looks like we're locked into this interpretative layer. But we're not. Because we can investigate the spiritual process which precedes the formed thoughts. We are active in that process but we haven't developed sensitivity for it. We identify with the already formed words but can't identify with the spiritual activity which speaks forth the thoughts.
This doesn't require anything esoteric. It requires only to investigate the direction that has always laid in the blind spot. Science and philosophy have filled the World with thoughts
about the World but so far haven't tried to perceive how the World speaks the thoughts through us and how we are perspective of the World Being.
Mystical and psychedelic experiences throw us into the broadcast. As long as we operate with our toy-concepts it's all a matter of interpretation (and thus belief) about the nature of the broadcast-in-itself. Remember the simple fact from above: the child doesn't learn to understand the broadcast by overlaying it with increasingly complicated toy models but instead it grows into the meaning and finds new concepts. This gives an analogy for higher cognition. Higher cognition is
not increasingly complicated intellectual interpretation of the mystical or psychedelic broadcast. It is growing into its meaningful dynamics. This proceeds as evolution of Thinking. Please take good note of the fact that
our thoughts do not need interpretation. We don't arrive at the meaning of our thoughts by first perceiving them and then somehow deriving their meaning by interpreting the perceptions (verbal, symbolic, etc.). This would lead to regression because the interpretative thoughts would themselves need interpretation and so on. It's actually the opposite - the meaning that we live in,
explains out of itself the thought-perceptions. For all other perceptions we can make thinking interpretations. Similarly, when we grow into the forces at the foundation of our thinking, they are experienced as the
immediate meaning which explains ordinary thinking and
not as ever increasing number of intellectual thoughts that overlay the broadcast.
JustinG wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 12:12 am
To illustrate this point, readers might like to try the following spiritual exercise:
1. Imagine a society in which there are only two classes, a priestly class and a slave class. Members of the priestly class spend all their time, apart from time spent meeting physiological needs, on meditation, spiritual exercises and discussion of higher worlds. Members of the slave class spent all their time meeting the needs of members of the priestly class, apart from time spent meeting their own physiological needs and a half hour of meditation per day which they are permitted. The slave class also interpret the arduous labour they perform day in and day out as a form of spiritual practice.
2. Reflect on the following words of Jesus (Luke 4:18):
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor;
he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty them that are bruised,
3. Ask yourself the question - is a member of the priestly class likely to be more or less spiritually advanced than a member of the slave class?
If we're quoting the gospels maybe we should also include:
Mark 10:45 wrote:
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
I think this attempt to present spirituality as some elitist club that exploits the ignorant souls has worn out. And I'm not saying that this hasn't been the case all over the world, in the past and today, in Churches and Ashrams. But to present this as an excuse for not pursuing deeper understanding of reality is really just that - an excuse.
The above objections simply fail to grasp that today, understanding the spiritual being of man is not simply a question for picking a leisure time hobby. Our common human destiny depends on this understanding. And this understanding doesn't require that one should become an ascetic. I have a day time job like anyone else.
Once again, it all boils down to the question if one imagines that spirituality is just an exotic fancy about the afterlife, only viable for those who have too much spare time thanks to the fact that they live on the backs of others, or we really take non-dualism/monism seriously and understand that it is our greatest responsibility to deepen our spiritual life and thus our proper comprehension of reality. This we should do not in order to separate ourselves with the elite but precisely as the Christ said - to serve and even give our life. To give one's life doesn't mean to die pointless death. It means to give our life of selfish pursuits of pleasure and replace it with life of higher purpose which takes into account the evolution of the Whole. We take riches from above but we'll be a thief if we keep them for ourselves. Everything must be employed in practical life, for the transfiguration of science, the arts, individual and social life.
Of course this wouldn't be well taken. We'll hear immediately "Oh, no, no, no. This is Earth, this is Neverland. Let God take care of Heaven, here we're on our own. We need politics, we need legislation. We need economics for distribution of toys. We're the masters of this and we must employ our toy-intellect for it. Do whatever you want but don't try to mix the two worlds together, alright?"