Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 5:00 pm
My comment: you are definitely right when talking about implicit and explicit order and our participation etc. However, the "implicit order" is not what I meant by "formless". I'm approaching it from my experience of being immersed in non-dual practices. In these practices the "formless" is an inseparable aspect of Thinking, which is simply that the Thinking "IS" and that it is "Aware" (i.e. it consciously experiences all its ideas), this is not what brings the order, but what makes Thinking possible. This may seem obvious: duhh, or course Thinking "is" and is "aware", how could it be otherwise, what's the point of even talking about it? Well, the point is: is brings the awareness of the dimension of unity - all Thinking is unified in its (formless) aspects of Being and Awareness, and the spiritual benefit of such realization was realized in the non-dual traditions, and also by such philosophers as Fichte and Heidegger in the West. But in addition to that, Thinking is also unified in its shared ideal content and order. These two aspects of unity go together with each other, not against each other. We don't need to confront them and claim that one kind of unity is more important or more true than the other, they are both true and realizing both helps to dismantle dualism.
I'm little hazy once again on the exact use of formless here but I hope I'm getting it right. Some time ago, still on the old forum, I posted same pictures of different spiritual outlooks. I presented the Eastern mystical in this way:
We should be clear that Buddhist meditators actually reach the highest Intuition in their meditations. In the Deep MAL picture this would correspond to experiencing the vicinity of the Center.
In the context of the previous post, to live in Intuition would mean to live completely in the meaningful dimension of awareness, without the need to project that meaning into symbols of lower order thinking. So in a sense, Buddhism indeed reaches the Ground Being, which I believe you want to include with your usage of formless.
The peculiar thing is that this Intuition is experienced in a very specific way. The reason is that, as we already spoke, it is reached by completely renouncing any kind of spiritual activity, except that of the willful renouncing itself. In the spiritual world (the implicit order) we can perceive only what is similar to us (to our consciousness, that is), we can experience the consciousness of a being if we can resonate with it. If that being is active, we need to act together with it, to resonate with its meaningful willing. Only in this way we can know it. On the contrary, if we enter the highest regions in complete passivity, we experience the
crystalized Intuition of the spiritual world. What is this like? It's precisely the Indra's net. Of course the net itself is really the Intuition clothed in Imagination but the essence is experienced in the highest Intuition. We practically experience there the secret of the one and the many. Yet we experience this as Cosmic crystal lattice. I've spoken about this before - we can find the true nature of the physical world only in Intuition. We need the highest consciousness in order to grasp the lowest world. They belong together, like two poles. Yet when we say 'physical world' we shouldn't imagine the crude physical matter. This will take too long to explain now. We can just assume that the highest consciousness is also responsible for the ground world (which is really Schop's World Will) which after several iterative 'foldings' reaches today's state (so we see, Schop is partially right because what he sees is the aspect of involution. Yet he doesn't recognize the other aspect of Escher's painting, from which everything can be seen as diminished meaning). So the Buddhist truly reaches these depths but in completely crystalized manner. The beings at these stages are creative beings, they are active. They consciously renounce from themselves the World Will which becomes the raw arena of evolution. We can experience this in Intuition only if we align with the active World Will, thus we must experience the Cosmic scale activity of beings. If we approach these heights with the ideal of absolute objectivity (that is, completely detached observer), we can experience the spiritual world as Cosmic crystal lattice where consciousness reflects infinitely between the nodes in dependent arising. This is the mineralized experience of the spiritual world. We see it in this way because we practically see ourselves. We have become crystalized observer, who doesn't dare to move in order not to disturb the perfect objectivity of the Cosmos, and for this reason we see the Cosmos as made of elements similar to us - we see a Cosmos of frozen observers in mathematically precise relations - the Indra's net, the Cosmic crystal lattice. To experience the metamorphosis of this world we need to know metamorphosis in ourselves. As said many times, the first place where we can know something which extends in time is our livingly experienced thinking.
So with all this in mind, we can appreciate that Buddhism, through rigorous discipline reaches actually to the highest regions, to the foundations of reality. Yet without knowing ourselves as spiritually active being, we can't find spiritual activity anywhere. We don't have the organ that gives us consciousness of spiritual activity. We have that organ only if we have consciousness of spiritual activity within ourselves. If we can be conscious of it in ourselves, we'll be able to find it also in the Cosmos. The fact that we objectively observe transformation of phenomena doesn't yet mean that we experience spiritual activity. The scientist also observes transformation of phenomena but analyzes them as frozen time frames related by abstract laws. If the abstract law is to be grasped as resulting from spiritual activity, we need to find that perspective from which the transformation can be experienced as thinking/willing process of a being. Only in this way we can know the real inner motive power of the law from within and not only as a sequence of frames from without.
I hope this puts things in the proper perspective. Things are really complicated. We can't simply place them on a linear scale. As we see, we can reach the highest Intuition yet experience it only in its mineral aspect. So if I have understood your comment properly, this should give the answer why you feel that there's something truly fundamental in your Buddhist practice. It is really there. But must be animated, such that we can begin to explore the implicit order which can't be captured through the mineral element. Our spiritual activity must become at least fluidic in order to perceive in Imaginations, the beings and processes in the etheric and astral worlds. If we don't develop these forms of activity, the higher worlds pass through us (as they do at any point of time) without having an organ that can resonate with their nature.