The Central Topic

[Eugene I.]

To keep the talk centered, may everyone state their view on the question of time. Does every moment simply build upon the previous? Or there's some structure/attractor/curvature that spans across time and there could be corresponding modes of consciousness that can resonate with it (which alone can explain something like destiny)? Then anyone can think for themselves if this makes any practical difference for our life here or not.

There are definitely structures/curvatures/attractors in the universe of meanings just like there are laws and structures in the physical realm. Yet, in both realms these are only frameworks, they shape but do not pre-determine the process of the unfolding of life. There is so-called "butterfly effect" where infinitesimal changes may lead to tectonic shifts in the global events and curvatures. Also, like in the ocean, there is a multitude of curvatures/flows where living beings have the innate ability to traverse and change between the flows along their individual paths by exercising their free will.

Another thing to note here: the development of Consciousness has two components - evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary path is following along the existing attractors and curvatures. But if that would be the only avenue, the scope of development would be rather limited. What makes this scope ever expanding and unlimited is the revolutionary component where completely new meanings and structures are being invented and movements and events that do not follow traditional attractors are happening all the time. Most of these new inventions turn out to be useless, yet some of them become useful and beneficial and get accepted through the course of development on the global scale turning into new global attractors. Obviously, there must be a good balance between these two components, otherwise, without the evolutionary component, there would be a chaos of continuous revolution, likewise, without revolutionary component, the development would only deterministically follow rigid pre-existing structures and curvatures and the scope of such development would be very limited. With these two components acting together, the process of the development of Consciousness is creative, dynamic, ever-changing and expanding into the realms of the unknown, with the multitude of curvatures and shapes never rigid, but constantly evolving and changing. Also, it is not a top-down process where the higher-order beings set the curvatures and the lower-level beings only follow them. The creative process happens continuously on all levels, it goes both top-down and bottom-up with continuous exchange of information across all levels. It's a living organism where the contribution of every little amoeba is as important as the contribution of the highest Divinity.

[Eugene I.]

Then comes Eugene and begins to mud the water for everyone with things that should have been settled long ago. He keeps returning with the Platonism argument, although it has been worked out at length (for example here). Then he says that if all potential exists as simultaneous infinity this makes existence meaningless because nothing new is ever created. This is also based on faulty logic and has been addressed, for example here.

I never agreed to those.

The newly 'created' idea simply fits perfectly within the ideal landscape, only complementing the picture, as if it has always been there.

I simply don't think so. They often do fit with the landscape, but also often don't fit within the ideal landscape and break through it allowing the landscape to expand into new dimensions and realms that re not determined by the landscape. See my post on evolutionary and revolutionary components of the development of the ideal landscape.

Regarding this post, as a musician. I do not agree with it either. Music is not a sequence notes, it's a conscious experience of music (whether it's an experience of the performer or the listener), and every performance of the same composition is always unique and always shaped by the performer in a unique way. In addition, every listening experience of the same performance by every individual listener is always unique. Therefore, the space of music is innumerable and can not be enumerated with natural numbers, or any numbers at all for that matter.

[Cleric K]

There are definitely structures/curvatures/attractors in the universe of meanings just like there are laws and structures in the physical realm. Yet, in both realms these are only frameworks, they shape but do not pre-determine the process of the unfolding of life. There is so-called "butterfly effect" where infinitesimal changes may lead to tectonic shifts in the global events and curvatures. Also, like in the ocean, there is a multitude of curvatures/flows where living beings have the innate ability to traverse and change between the flows along their individual paths by exercising their free will.

Another thing to note here: the development of Consciousness has two components - evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary path is following along the existing attractors and curvatures. But if that would be the only avenue, the scope of development would be rather limited. What makes this scope ever expanding and unlimited is the revolutionary component where completely new meanings and structures are being invented and movements and events that do not follow traditional attractors are happening all the time. Most of these new inventions turn out to be useless, yet some of them become useful and beneficial and get accepted through the course of development on the global scale turning into new global attractors. Obviously, there must be a good balance between these two components, otherwise, without the evolutionary component, there would be a chaos of continuous revolution, likewise, without revolutionary component, the development would only deterministically follow rigid pre-existing structures and curvatures and the scope of such development would be very limited. With these two components acting together, the process of the development of Consciousness is creative, dynamic, ever-changing and expanding into the realms of the unknown, with the multitude of curvatures and shapes never rigid, but constantly evolving and changing. Also, it is not a top-down process where the higher-order beings set the curvatures and the lower-level beings only follow them. The creative process happens continuously on all levels, it goes both top-down and bottom-up with continuous exchange of information across all levels. It's a living organism where the contribution of every little amoeba is as important as the contribution of the highest Divinity.

That's fine but notice how the essential question is once again simply shifted further down. In the above we still get a sense for a spacetime of possibilities where certain conscious attractors act, yet implicitly we place a cap on how much of this configuration spacetime can be grasped by consciousness holistically. The above picture presents islands of consciousness - macrocosmic attractors (gods), humans, amoebas, etc. which brings back the question what is the spacetime in between these islands? We know that the default nondual answer would be decisive 'consciousness!' Yet what's the point of calling it that if no-thing can ever know it as such? For the islands within this 'consciousness', the fabric of reality (the spacetime of possibilities) forever remains on the opaque side as some reality-in-itself. I'm only pointing out the obvious - that your efforts are always aimed to ensure that such a point of view within the so called 'one consciousness', which grasps more and more of the configuration spacetime as a whole, is impossible. This is done for the simple reason that otherwise it would logically lead to the implications that we're not simply loci of conscious fabric which attract and repel each other through exchange of spiritual photons (part of the opaque to consciousness fabric-in-itself) but the our loci exist within the Thoughts of higher order loci concentric to ours.

I'm not trying to change your mind, just trying to show where the real difference stands. The Flat MAL conception demands that the fabric uniting all is ultimately something opaque and forever unknowable by the loci of consciousness. This was true with Schop, it's true with BK, it's true here too. And I repeat that this is done for the sole reason of ensuring the apex position of the ego. The ego is willing to acknowledge other powerful loci of consciousness which externally curve the configuration spacetime - to which it can either comply or revolt - but the ego feels at peace only if it imagines that the potential within its own bounds is something that no other consciousness can know from the 'same side'. For this reason, this potential is readily imagined as some abstract field, information, whatever but not as something that can be experienced from within.

[Eugene I.]

This is done for the simple reason that otherwise it would logically lead to the implications that we're not simply loci of conscious fabric which attract and repel each other through exchange of spiritual photons (part of the opaque to consciousness fabric-in-itself) but the our loci exist within the Thoughts of higher order loci concentric to ours.

I'm not trying to change your mind, just trying to show where the real difference stands. The Flat MAL conception demands that the fabric uniting all is ultimately something opaque and forever unknowable by the loci of consciousness. This was true with Schop, it's true with BK, it's true here too. And I repeat that this is done for the sole reason of ensuring the apex position of the ego. The ego is willing to acknowledge other powerful loci of consciousness which externally curve the configuration spacetime - to which it can either comply or revolt - but the ego feels at peace only if it imagines that the potential within its own bounds is something that no other consciousness can know from the 'same side'. For this reason, this potential is readily imagined as some abstract field, information, whatever but not as something that can be experienced from within.

In one sense they exist "within" the higher order loci and curvatures, in another sense, those curvatures shape but do not determine the individual paths. In addition, there is not a single attractor-locus in the universe of Consciousness, but a multitude of them. Each attractor can indeed be experienced from within, but each locus has the innate ability to shape their own path by exercising free choice to follow along a particular attractor. And in addition, as I said above, each lower-level locus has creative abilities to break through the existing curvatures into new meanings and dimensions, thereby contributing to the global development of meanings and attractors.

What I'm saying is that the attractors definitely exist and can be known, it's just that they do not deterministically shape the flow of Consciousness.

Let me give another perspective on this. The physicalist/materialist paradigm that idealism attempts to confront is based on these two premises:
1. All events, ideas, meanings and conscious experiences in the universe are entirely reducible to events happening in the fundamentally unconscious matter
2. All events happening in the fundamentally unconscious matter are by nature not qualitative, but quantitative, and therefore entirely reducible to and describable by quantities (i.e. mathematical ideas and equations)

Now, the "Absolute Idea" version of idealism (evolved from the Plato philosophy) only denies the first premise, but essentially subscribes to the second one, even though the second premise is generalized as "all conscious experiences are entirely reducible to and describable by ideas". So, essentially, it is still half-way physicalism, it's a "Newtonian" paradigm in idealism. From this basic premise follow all these views of living-being-ideas following the attractors of higher-order being-ideas etc. It's a universe of ideas where all there ever exists is entirely reducible to ideas, and since ideas are timelessly ever-existing, there necessarily follows the timeless existence of the totality of all ideas - "the Absolute Idea of all ideas".

However, the objection to physicalism (that Chalmers formulated as "the hard problem of consciousness") actually challenges both of the physicalist premises. The second one is challenged by the claim that qualia (qualitative conscious experiences) are never exhaustively reducible to and describable by quantities (just like Cleric tried to reduce/describe music by Godelian encoding them with natural numbers). Generalizing this Chalmers argument, we can also claim that conscious experiences are never exhaustively reducible to and describable by ideas/meanings. Meanings and ideal content are only aspects or infinitely more rich fabric of qualitative conscious experiences. In other words, qualia are irreducible to ideas, but on the other hand, ideas are reducible to qualia, because essentially ideas are the qualia of thoughts. But still, the ideal content, with its meanings and curvatures, definitely contributes to the shaping of every-moment qualitative experience, yet never exhaustively determines and describes it. Just like an idea of a piece of music described by the sequence of notes always shapes the performance of the piece and the experience of it, but never exhaustively determines and describes the always-fresh, always-unique and infinitely more rich conscious experience of performing of or listening to the piece. In other words, for Plato and Platonists every performance and experience of a music piece is a distorted and non-perfect "shadow on the cave's wall" of a timeless and perfect idea of the piece. For experiential-consciousness idealists (Kastrup, Spira, others incl myself) the music is its actual qualitative conscious experience of it where the idea of this music piece is only one of the aspects of it.

[Eugene I.]

PS: so, for experiential-consciousness idealists, the music is a unique ever-fresh experience of music, and for each idea of a music piece there is an innumerably rich infinite variety of qualitative conscious experiences of the same music (that includes not only auditory sensations, but emotional, intuitive, spiritual and other indescribable other-dimensional subtle aspects of the experience of music that is always unique for every listener, and even unique for every listening experience for the same listener), each of them equally perfect, valuable and unique in its own way. The reality of conscious qualitative experience is much richer and deeper than just thinking of ideas (be it of lower of higher order, rational or intuitive) and it is never reducible to those ideas. The ideas are only the "skeletons" of the totality of conscious experience while all other infinite aspects of it constituting the "flesh" of it.

[AshvinP]

Now, the "Absolute Idea" version of idealism (evolved from the Plato philosophy) only denies the first premise, but essentially subscribes to the second one, even though the second premise is generalized as "all conscious experiences are entirely reducible to and describable by ideas". So, essentially, it is still half-way physicalism, it's a "Newtonian" paradigm in idealism. From this basic premise follow all these views of living-being-ideas following the attractors of higher-order being-ideas etc. It's a universe of ideas where all there ever exists is entirely reducible to ideas, and since ideas are timelessly ever-existing, there necessarily follows the timeless existence of the totality of all ideas - "the Absolute Idea of all ideas".

I am going to quote a passage from Steiner here for only one simple reason - to highlight how those who insist on the fabric-in-itself perspective, which is placed in opposition to the reality as we perceive and know it, cannot imagine, or find it extremely difficult to imagine, the possibility that the higher order loci of consciousness can be experienced from within. Therefore, they assume everything someone else writes is a matter of taking some old philosophy and using its conceptual guidelines as the means of building up a worldview. This is what they do with their abstract thinking, so it must be what everyone else does.

This “planetary development” of man and of the other beings belonging to earth will form the subject of the following discussions... By this we do not wish to say that the three conditions were not preceded by others. But everything which precedes these three is lost in a darkness which for the present the research of mystery science cannot illuminate. For this research is not based on speculation, on a day dreaming in terms of mere concepts, but on actual spiritual experience. As our physical eye can see outdoors only as far as a certain boundary line and cannot look beyond the horizon, so the “spiritual eye” can look only as far as a certain point in time. Mystery science is based on experience and is content to remain within this experience. Only in a conceptual splitting of hairs will one want to find out what was “at the very beginning” of the world, or “why God really created the world.” For the scientist of the spirit it is rather a matter of realizing that at a certain stage of cognition one no longer poses such questions. Everything man needs for the fulfillment of his destiny on our planet is revealed to him within spiritual experience. The one who patiently works his way into the experiences of scientists of the spirit will see that within spiritual experience man can obtain full satisfaction concerning all those questions which are vital to him.

There is no 'Platonism' or 'Absolute Idealism' involved here. Steiner goes out of his way to comment that many facts of Cosmic Consciousness reside outside the purview of current spiritual science because the latter is based on cognitive perceptual experience of the higher order loci, not 'mere concepts' of an ancient or modern philosophy. If the claims were based in some metaphysical theory of idealism, then there would be no need to clarify any such limits. The same can be said of Cleric's posts here. Actually the TCT essays don't even deal in any supersensible observations, only point to their logical necessity.

It's quite irrelevant whether we accept the supersensible experiences as valid or think they are hallucinations or even outright lies. They cannot be criticized by assinging some philosophical label to them and then judging their merits based on that world-conception, or whatever the judger imagines it to be. The interesting thing here is, the very fact that this keeps happening, unbeknownst to the person doing it, is solid evidence for the reality of higher cognition which the lower cognition simply cannot grasp experientially, and which finds it difficult to imagine how the higher could exist even theoretically.


https://fallacyinlogic.com/straw-man-ar ... n_Argument

Straw man argument is a flawed line of reasoning that occurs when someone substitutes an opposing argument with a distorted, oversimplified, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of it in order to make it easier to defeat.

As such, this fallacy takes the following logical form:

Person 1 makes an argument X.
Person B creates a distorted version of person A’s argument (the “straw man”).
Person B attacks the distorted version of argument X.
Typically, it gives the impression of being a reasonable counter to the original claim, but in reality, it attacks a position or view that their opponent doesn’t really hold. Moreover, the claim may be distorted by taking it out of context, focusing only on a single aspect of it, or being only remotely related to it.

[Eugene I.]

For this research is not based on speculation, on a day dreaming in terms of mere concepts, but on actual spiritual experience.

There is no argument that the Steiner's paradigm is based on spiritual experience. The argument is whether or not all spiritual/conscious experiences are entirely reducible to the ideal content. If yes (which seems to be a premise of Steiner's paradigm), then all there is to the world is only the self-experiencing-living-Idea. The alternative version (which is more appropriate to call "consciousness-realism") is that the infinite richness of conscious experiences is irreducible to any ideal content of it.

[AshvinP]

For this research is not based on speculation, on a day dreaming in terms of mere concepts, but on actual spiritual experience.

There is no argument that the Steiner's paradigm is based on spiritual experience. The argument is whether or not all spiritual/conscious experiences are entirely reducible to the ideal content. If yes (which seems to be a premise of Steiner's paradigm), then all there is to the world is only the self-experiencing-living-Idea. The alternative version (which is more appropriate to call "consciousness-realism") is that the infinite richness of conscious experiences is irreducible to any ideal content of it.

No one is making that underlined argument, and we keep trying to explain why, but you keep substituting the responses out in exchange for what you call 'Platonism' and 'Absolute Idealism', and even your conceptions of those have nothing to do with the argument being made. Nothing can be reduced to anything else and the intellect simply cannot grasp the Triune existence of WFT. This doesn't mean we can't speak about it, but we must be perfectly clear and precise that we are only using metaphors to point towards it.

We cannot understand Beauty, for ex., through concepts, only through experience. That is generally true of all aspects of human existence, but it's easiest to see here. All existential values of man - truth, wisdom, beauty, goodness, freedom, etc. - are ones which unfold through us in the process of becoming who we are. We are only at the very dawn of this process. As the physical age of humanity grows older, the spiritual age grows younger, until we are finally re-birthed into the higher worlds (assuming we sieze hold of the opportunity to do so, which every individual has today).

Without the ability to communicate the actual experience, an ability which none of us have, we can only try to indirectly approach these things with our concepts. What is an example of something universally considered beautiful? It's tough to say these days, since there is so much cynicism of anything spiritual. How about Beethoven's symphonies? I know there are many people today, probably younger people, who think classical music is old trash and prefer the mechanized beats of EDM. There is a real battle reflected here - our culture has been tending towards the materialization of everything spiritual and we should pay close attention, as it is accelerating rapidly. Nevertheless, I am sure most here agree on this music being beautiful in a very high sense.

"The polyrhythm of the following example occurs in the ‘Eroica.’ No ear can analyze the plenitude of contrasts although it can experience it audially. In our enjoyment of music we employ levels of capacity far in advance of our organic development. The musical work of art [since Beethoven] permits us to establish capacities in practice enabling us to intuit subsequent man and his reality. It points once again to the absurdity of the old adage 'nothing is new under the sun’ invoked to discredit the limitless drive of creativity.”
- Hermann Scherchen, On the Essence of Music (1946)

We really come to a crossroads here. People speak of imagination, inspiration, intuition, as above, but who understands these as modes of cognition that we can harness consciously, as we do with the intellect? Thinking cannot be conceptualized any more than Feeling/Beauty or Willing/Goodness. It is what does the conceptualizing, but it is not identical to that conceptualizing. None of them can be reduced to anything else. "Thinking" or "Ideation" is simply our word to conceptually describe that which allows us to bring the 'future' into the present now, i.e. to integrate experiential states of being which are subconscious in the manner Cleric has been outlining in recent posts. It is what allows us to perceive 'subsequent man', to become who we are through ever-expanding spheres of experience. How do we try to anticipate the future today during normal conditions of our existence?

Simple, we "think". In science, we think through fragmented perceptions to discern the meaningful laws and principles which unite them and thereby 'predict the future', i.e. integrate more states of being into our present pallette. When we move from secular science which only studies outer perceptions to the world of inner perceptions, however, suddenly whatever we are doing - which we designate with the word "thinking" - no longer applies. We are suddenly cynical and skeptical, demanding "proof" it can be done beyond any reasonable doubt before we endeavor to actually do it. The reason we question it to such an extent before doing it is because, if it can be done, we are forced into an uncomfortable position - we are suddenly responsible for the World's unfoldment in a very real and immanent way. Our seemingly "private" inner experience is not so private anymore, and our inner desires, feelings, and thoughts begin to matter just as much as throwing a punch to someone's face

Ironically and tragically, it is the irrational denial of this possibility that ensures experience will stagnate and contract for those who choose material and intellectual convenience over adaptation and evolution; who choose the love of worldly pleasures over the Love of the eternally flowing Spirit which manifests itself in all art forms and their shared meaning. By doing so, we sow the seeds of the very thing we are most afraid of, i.e. the contracting novelty and richness of experience, which many people dimly refer to now as the 'meaning crisis'. If meaning was something personal and private, then there would be no crisis to speak of. There is no need for this crisis to worsen on the descending trajectory it is on, though. It is an entirely self-inflicted wound. None of this is about 'escaping' the planet - exactly the opposite. The Earth is our Home and our Mother - she gives birth to these spiritual capacities within us and therefore we are responsible for ensuring her full potential is manifested by bringing those capacities to fruition.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Speaking of daydreams, here's an open question: If some magic could be invoked that would bring about a Cleric-esque paradigm shift in a relatively timely way, such that the ideas expressed here as 'the central topic' could somehow be offered to the zeitgeist with some firm resolve, how likely would that succeed any more than esoteric Christianity succeeded, before its bastardization into what is now but a dim reflection of its hope-filled origins, in delivering on its claims of lasting redemption, before it too would succumb to some bastardized version, leaving the 'clerics' of the world as rare as snow leopard sightings in the wild, while we endure some eons more of painfully gradual evolution?

[AshvinP]

Speaking of daydreams, here's an open question: If some magic could be invoked that would bring about a Cleric-esque paradigm shift in a relatively timely way, such that the ideas expressed here as 'the central topic' could somehow be offered to the zeitgeist with some firm resolve, how likely would that succeed any more than esoteric Christianity succeeded, before its bastardization into what is now but a dim reflection of its hope-filled origins, in delivering on its claims of lasting redemption, before it too would succumb to some bastardized version, leaving the 'clerics' of the world as rare as snow leopard sightings in the wild, while we endure some eons more of painfully gradual evolution?

I would question the premise here. From a more macro perspective on spiritual evolution, the inner meaning (spirit) of outer forms - the esoteric of the exoteric - is always moving outwards to become the outer forms.
This happens with great lag time normally, so we hardly notice with our myopic vision. A part of our modern era delusion is that we, as collectives, can completely arrest this process or significantly alter it with our own intellectual designs. Everything finds its place in the Wisdom of evolution, including this deep descent into matter, this dark night of the modern soul. Without it, spiritual science would never have been possible, or the moral impulse towards spiritual freedom. That will also feedback into the process of making the esoteric exoteric, the subconscious conscious, the invisible transparent, etc.

Only recently have I realized how futile it is to hope some magic bullet will awaken the likes of a Peterson, Pageau, Kastrup, etc by way of my design, to the depths of spiritual reality. But who is to say their role is not also charted within the course of Wisdom as it unfolds into Freedom and Love? Some people can prepare certain soil for others to awaken while they themselves may not awaken to the same extent, at least in this incarnation. These "others" are the individuals right here on this forum and similar places. We often underestimate the impact of the individual awakening in the course of destiny. Things are really inverted from the physical perspective- value is attached to the opinions of large crowds and the convictions of a few solemn individuals is obscured from view. But this is only Maya.

"And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it."