Stranger wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 11:44 pmI tried to dispel such "reductionist mysticism" so many times before, but Cleric keeps tirelessly beating this strawmanFederica wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 10:42 pmCleric wrote:The problem here lies not in what the experiences tell out of themselves but in what we seek within the experiences through our preconceived ideas. There's no doubt that it is possible to experience a tranquil state detached from the thought-forming process and thus from the self that this process entails. But this experience itself does not tell us anything of whether there could be other states within which we can experience self-reflective spiritual activity. The only way to confirm the reality of such a state would be to experience it. But this is exactly what mystics will never do because it goes against their beliefs.
Let me try to explain in simple words. We all experience "subjectivity" in our every phenomenological experience (percept, thought, feeling etc), which we call "self", or "I". The problem of dualistic perception is that we, at a very early stage of our child development, developed a sense-idea that this subjectivity belongs to us only, that it is only our own personal subjectivity, and that it is different/separate from the subjectivity of other people. This is a cognitive mistake. If our parents and other people would correct that mistake, we would abandon it, but unfortunately 99.99999% of humans also carry that mistake, so it is culturally conditioned. Anyway, an important feature of that sense of "my own self" is that it is tightly associated with the sense of "my own body, thoughts, feelings" etc, they get wrapped into one "package" of "me and everything that I am" (which includes everything we identify ourselves with). So, when people start nondual practices, the first step they need to go through is to dis-associate their sense of subjectivity from their bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings in order to arrive to the understanding that the subjectivity and those phenomena are not indivisibly melded in a firm "package" structure of "my own self" (that is separate from similar "self-packages" of other people). In other words, to arrive at the understanding that "I am not the body, the feelings, the thoughts, I am something that subjectively experiences them". The practical way to do that is to experience one of those "no-thought" meditative states and phenomenologically prove that there can be a state of "pure subjectivity" without any bodily sensations, feelings or thoughts, and arrive at the experiential realization that "I am indeed not the body, the feelings, the thoughts, I am something else that subjectively experiences them". Once that is done, there is no point to get stuck in that "no-thought" meditation anymore (even though many people do get stuck in that state and believe that this is in fact the "nondual state" of their seeking). This "no-thought" stage is only temporary and provisional, and being stuck in it actually becomes an impediment for further stages of nondual spiritual practice. Instead, the next stages involve realizations that:
- There cannot be "many" subjectivities in the Cosmos, there can only be one subjectivity, one "I" ("I am THAT" stage-realization). In other words, there is only one way to subjectively experience (be aware), and all beings share the same "way of being aware".
- There is actually no duality between the subjectivity and the phenomena that are subjectively experienced, and that the phenomena are actually inseparable from their subjectivity as a fact of their direct phenomenological experience, there is actually no "gap" between any phenomenon and its subjectivity (subjective experience). Another related realization is that there is nothing else in the entire Cosmos other than subjectively experienced phenomena (because no matter how hard we try in meditation, we cannot experientially find any "thing" or phenomenon that would be separate from or exist independently of its subjective experience/awareness). Combined with "there can only be one subjectivity" realization, this becomes the nondual state of "I am everything" realization/stage, which is the realization that there is only One Divine Consciousness in which the entire Cosmos is unfolding by Thinking-Willing-Feeling creative activity and is being subjectively experienced through its individuated, but not separate, spiritual thinking-willing-feeling creative activities. Notice that for this stage to happen, it has to be a meditative experience necessarily with the presence of phenomena. The "no-thought" state would be totally useless at this stage.
AS. Eugene, please be careful when you quote someone’s post that includes quotes. What you have put under my name above has been written by Cleric and has to be presented as such. Would you please do whatever you need to do in order to remember this going forward.
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Coming to your explanations, I take note that your philosophical position starts with that statement about our generalized cognitive mistake, or psychosis. You put it at the starting point of everything. But it remains unclear how you made that initial choice. It seems to me that the statement about our experience of individuated subjectivity being a “cognitive mistake” is a floating idea, to use Cleric’s words. What is the phenomenological ground for the idea? It’s only afterwards - after the idea has been wholeheartedly adopted and absorbed - that the “cognitive mistake” is inquired as phenomenologically experienceable by means of various practices.
This is not the same as aiming to, and striving for, unbiased thinking as a cognitive starting point, not as utilitarian technique used as second step, to derive what we have already welcomed in our raw heart as true point of departure. In your approach, the thorough examination does happen - but only as stage two. It should be stage one! But because you have an affinity for the viewpoint 'individuated subjectivity = cognitive mistake', because it feels right, then you say yes to it first, you put it at the center of everything. Instead of starting from the given, you start from this love and passion for a sort of spiritual-political idea, so to say, because it feels immediately and deeply right in your heart. It seems to me that this approach suffers two major issues. The first is, it’s only anchored in itself: how can you ever be sure that the psychotic (as you called it) separate self is not the author of a just as psychotic philosophical viewpoint? How can you be sure that the phenomenological backup is not self validation of the ideological statement emitted by the psychotic separate self? The second issue is, this approach leaves the highest human potential unexpressed and mortified, to the extent that it keeps knowing and acting passion-driven, and only backed by thought.
For my part, I’ve only just started acting on the arbitrariness of a passion-driven approach to knowing/doing/being. Nonetheless, starting is enough to realize that if we want to be worthy of our human potential, we need to invert stage one and stage two. We can't start with the gut feeling of what attracts our soul constitution, and then refine and embellish that feeling with thinking. Instead, we need to recognize that our heart is biased in ways that are, to a large extent, obscure for us. Our heart is submitted to the most diverse streams of influence that can only be discerned and transformed by making good use of the higher-order leverage that we find available for us to grow into as thinking potential. If we put our heartfelt impulses in the driver seat, we are not using our potential, our gift, our freedom, and we linger in an obsolete mode of undisclosed, unblossomed human potential. That’s sad. There’s a system update available, and it would be, not only sad, but also reckless to continue to run on older, improper versions.
Many end their earthly life in the blustery lands of the life of soul, exposed to the strongest tides. But if we, who are still alive, choose to ignore the possibility to develop ourselves from within our thinking potential, that means we are choosing to abort the True self that has been conceived within us. Instead of opening to our second birth, we operate our pre-dissolution. By not nurturing, growing, and making the True self blossom within us, we waste the possibility of elevating ourselves above the wavering of our untransformed heart, and remain caught in the troubled currents of the soul mass. But even if our unenlightened heart is in charge right now, we are still alive. We still have a window of opportunity open before us. It shows us that the “better way” we’ve always been wondering about, more or less consciously, actually exists. It’s not a state, it’s a path. And we have the unheard-of chance of finding ourselves exactly in front of an entry point to that path. Are the harsh winds storming through our hearts strong enough to make us turn our head away from this window of opportunity?