Anthony66 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:05 am
Eugene,
There appears to be a certain meeting of the minds here between you and the SS folk. Am I correct?
While I've been following the conversation with great interest, I have to admit that my comprehension of the SS posts is nowhere near 100%. I struggle to understand the many Kantian divides that appear to be hiding behind every rock. What I would appreciate is if you could provide the key insights or clarifications which have brought this level of apparent alignment between the mystic and the "phenomenologicalists".
Yeah, I would say Ashvin is in a sort of witch-hunting mood seeing "Kantian divides" everywhere
As usual, there needs to be a good balance. The world is a unity of multiplicity, there are seeming divisions that fundamentally never break the unity. Such divisions are only "apparent" - it is how we interpret the world in the attempt to make sense of it, they are necessary for cognition to work. Notice how RS himself described it:
Steiner wrote:The process takes place as follows: Thinking first
lifts out certain entities from the totality of the world-whole. In the given there is actually
no singularity, for all is continuously blended. Then thinking relates these separate entities
to each other in accordance with the thought-forms it produces, and lastly determines the
outcome of this relationship.
So the key is to figure out how and at which circumstances such act of "lifting out" actually helps and when it becomes practically problematic. It usually becomes problematic when we forget or don't consciously realize that such "lifting out" is only a conditional act of thinking and start to believe that such lifted-out "entities" exist as real and separate entities (subjects and objects) in some "external world" apart from the "me-perceiver". We "lift out" the content of the "world-whole" apart form the experiencing of it, and it becomes a "3-rd person perspective" abstracted from the actual 1-st person experiencing of it, which is necessary for the scientific method to work, but then we mistakenly take such "3-rd person perspective" as something existing for real. So, all those "dualistic delusions" (as they are called in the Eastern traditions) or "Kantian divides" originate in this cognitive mistake of naive realism. Essentially, this dualistic perception is just an interpretative-filtering layer in our cognitive processing of the reality as we perceive it. It is an illusion. It veils from us the underlying inseparable unity of the world. There are two approaches to "undo" the dualistic perception and restore the experience of the unity - we can call it "mystical" and SS.
Essentially at any given moment in our 1-st person conscious experience of "now" there is in fact just a One Indivisible Phenomenon. It is self-experiencing, we can never find any "experiencer" standing apart from it, because the moment we think we identify such an experiencer ("me", "self") it immediately becomes the inseparable part of the same Phenomenon. So essentially, the Phenomenon is self-experiencing. In such Phenomenon as it is present there is no subject or object, inside or outside. However, to make sense of the Phenomenon we need to exercise cognition/thinking, and cognition works by "conditionally" tearing apart the Phenomenon into pieces (individual forms and phenomena) in order to cognate their relations and meanings. But remarkable is that every act and meaning of the cognition automatically becomes an inseparable part of the Phenomenon the moment it arises. Moreover, thinking itself is an inseparable part of the Phenomenon. The Phenomenon is ever-present in the now (=suchness, presence, Being), and ever-self-experiencing (Awareness), we can call these as two "existential dimensions" of the Phenomenon (again emphasizing that calling them "dimensions" does not introduce any division/separation but just conditionally "lifts out" certain qualities/aspects of the Phenomenon).
Essentially, this is how "mystics" see the world - as a singular inseparable ever-present self-experiencing Phenomenon, without paying much attention to what's going on in the dimension of meanings and ideas brought forth by intentional thinking. The thoughts with their meanings are just perceived as part of the Phenomenon, present and experienced, there is nothing special about them. So essentially, the "mystical" approach is in fact phenomenological. It is just mostly ignorant to a rich ever-evolving ideal content in the dimension or meanings. As Buddhists say, "there is nothing happening". "Mystics" do not know and do not care how and why the forms in the Phenomenon are related to each other and how and where they originate from. By doing so their spiritual state becomes stagnant and devoid of a developmental momentum in the dimension of meanings. This is not only how mystics intellectually understand the world, but how they experientiality perceive it after many years of spiritual practice and re-programming their habitual cognitive patterns. There is still a lot of value and insight into the essential unity and nature of the world in the existential dimensions in such mystical way of direct experiencing of the world. Yet, it misses/ignores a whole and rich developmental dynamics and momentum towards perfection in the dimension of ideas and meanings. As the Dzogchen Buddhists say - the Reality (Phenomenon) is already perfect in its natural state of the primordial unity (if we dismantle the dualistic perception of it), there is no point of improving it any further. Here is a famous "The Cuckoo's Song of Total Presence" in the Dzogchen tradition:
The nature of multiplicity is nondual
and things are pure and simple;
being here and now is thought-free
and it shines out in all forms, always all good;
it is already perfect, so the striving sickness is avoided
and spontaneity is constantly present.
The SS approaches it form a different angle. It realizes that all the perceived phenomena are essentially a product of volitional Thinking activity at Large. There is no essential difference between sense perceptions and ideas, they are all of the same essence of the Idea. So essentially, all the content of the Phenomenon is the Idea that unfolds in time as a rich interconnected ever-evolving universe of shared meanings. Realizing this essential unity of the universe of perceptions and meanings dispels the dualistic illusion. On the other hand SS mostly ignores the "existential" dimensions/aspects (of suchness and awareness) and the indivisible unity of the Phenomenon in these existential dimensions. They don't see it as particularly useful, because they already restored the unity of the Phenomenon as One Idea and dispelled the Kantian divide. The world of meanings, if taken by itself at the current moment, seems to be imperfect, but metamorphously evolves toward a state of perfection, the completeness of Knowledge and Love. In such approach the meanings and ideas and their role in the Phenomenon are overemphasized and taken "too much for real", as opposed to them being underemphasized in the mystic approach.
IMO I do not see any contradiction between these two approaches, but still see each of them as limited view and insufficient extreme if taken alone emphasizing (lifting-out) certain selected dimensions of the Phenomenon and ignoring the left-out aspects of it. I think what is needed is a balanced and wholistic approach that includes both and restores the unity of the Phenomenon in all its dimensions but still allows for the dynamics and developmental momentum in the dimension of meanings. The Phenomenon is in fact primordially already perfect as it is, yet paradoxically is ever-evolving towards the ideal perfection in the dimension of meanings, and there is no contradiction here. If the primordial ever-present perfection and unity is ignored, we suffer, feel insufficient, frustrated and lost in our current state of imperfection, and we feel too much anguish to find a relief from it. If we realize the primordial perfection and unity but ignore the the dynamics in the dimension of meanings, we pass into a mystic "bliss-out" stagnant nirvanic state. But if we integrate both approaches, we can still evolve towards perfection in the dimension of meanings without much suffering and anguish but in a healthy and wholistic way, never losing sight of the primordial perfection and unity in the existential dimensions.