The Central Topic

[Eugene I.]

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.[/i]”
- Hermann Scherchen, On the Essence of Music (1946)

That is exactly my point. Creativity evades any rigid structures and attractors imposed by any higher-order hierarchy. The process of development is not entirely hierarchical, not entirely top-down controlled, but it happens on all levels simultaneously. Hierarchy and attractors do exist, but they are only frameworks to allow life to flourish and creatively to develop and expand in all directions, often springing into entirely new dimensions and creating new attractors that could not be created or controlled from higher-level hierarchies. This gives the deeper meaning for our human life - to participate in the co-creation of life on all levels, and not simply follow along the universal attractors established by higher-order hierarchy. In other words, the spiritual universe is a democracy and not an autocracy of higher-order hierarchies, it's expanding towards unlimited multi-culture, not to monoculture. God is not a control freak

And regarding the role of thinking and ideation - it is definitely a progressive force, nobody denies that, and the vector of development is definitely pointing towards reaching to higher and more subtle levels of cognition. But it's only one of the aspects of conscious activity intervened with all other aspects of conscious experience. And also, the development of cognition is not one dimensional like climbing a single staircase of cognitive hierarchy, but multi-dimensional and expanding into many different dimensions, with new dimensions and avenues of development emerging all the time. For example, the experience of music is not reducible to universals like "beauty" or "harmony", but it's much more rich and diverse. Same applies to all other creative activities. Of course, there are always some universal meanings, but the reality is always infinitely more rich and can never be entirely reduced to such ideal universals.

[AshvinP]

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.[/i]”
- Hermann Scherchen, On the Essence of Music (1946)

That is exactly my point. Creativity evades any rigid structures and attractors imposed by any higher-order hierarchy. The process of development is not entirely hierarchical, not entirely top-down controlled, but it happens on all levels simultaneously. Hierarchy and attractors do exist, but they are only frameworks to allow life to flourish and creatively to develop and expand in all directions, often springing into entirely new dimensions and creating new attractors that could not be created or controlled from higher-level hierarchies. This gives the deeper meaning for our human life - to participate in the co-creation of life on all levels, and not simply follow along the universal attractors established by higher-order hierarchy. In other words, the spiritual universe is a democracy and not an autocracy of higher-order hierarchies, it's expanding towards unlimited multi-culture, not to monoculture. God is not a control freak

The question is, how do we stop merely speculating about "creativity" and actually become creative? The quote was, again, a symbol pointing to what capacities beyond our current 'organic development' we can actually realize. The intellectual desire of, "I want to experience everything, always, simultaneously", and to codify this in something called "experiential-consciousness idealism", for no mysterious reason, prevents us from actually becoming creative thinkers. It kills the motivated movement towards becoming, not just consumers of abstract concepts, but producers of living ideas. It gives birth to the rigid structures we are intellectually claiming to avoid. Almost the entire evolution of thinking in the modern age, and thereby diverse endeavors from the fields of science to politics to economics, can be understood if this simple reality of the intellectual ego and how it operates is discerned. People intellectually speculate about "democracy" and we get dictatorship. They speculate about "free productive markets" and we get rabid consumerism. They speculate about "freedom of the proletariat" and we get centralized top-down planning of worst sort. They speculate about "endless novelty" and we get infernal loops of tedious and repetitive concepts. People here need to decide whether they are satisfied with these completely inverted outcomes of mere speculation or whether they would rather experience creativity, novelty, and freedom in its living essence within their own consciousness - their own thinking, feeling, and willing - and thereby participate in the gradual yet concrete realization of these ideals within human existence.

[Anthony66]

Did you really mean "infinitely many conceivable states"? I was expecting the absolute state to encompass all the states that were actually temporally realized. We had a progression of self-similar states which imposed a constraint on the sequence and then we have an absolute state which apparently has no constraints with its infinite conceivable states.

I'm not sure I understand the source of your confusion. Can you elaborate?

You described a progression of self-similar states where a given frame contains embedded within itself the patterns of others. Stated differently, a successor state doesn't have a discontinuity with respect to prior states....except when it comes to the absolute state. The absolute state doesn't seem to share the property of self-similarity which other states have. It has content not manifested in prior states.

[Eugene I.]

The question is, how do we stop merely speculating about "creativity" and actually become creative? The quote was, again, a symbol pointing to what capacities beyond our current 'organic development' we can actually realize. The intellectual desire of, "I want to experience everything, always, simultaneously", and to codify this in something called "experiential-consciousness idealism", for no mysterious reason, prevents us from actually becoming creative thinkers. It kills the motivated movement towards becoming, not just consumers of abstract concepts, but producers of living ideas. It gives birth to the rigid structures we are intellectually claiming to avoid. Almost the entire evolution of thinking in the modern age, and thereby diverse endeavors from the fields of science to politics to economics, can be understood if this simple reality of the intellectual ego and how it operates is discerned. People intellectually speculate about "democracy" and we get dictatorship. They speculate about "free productive markets" and we get rabid consumerism. They speculate about "freedom of the proletariat" and we get centralized top-down planning of worst sort. They speculate about "endless novelty" and we get infernal loops of tedious and repetitive concepts. People here need to decide whether they are satisfied with these completely inverted outcomes of mere speculation or whether they would rather experience creativity, novelty, and freedom in its living essence within their own consciousness - their own thinking, feeling, and willing - and thereby participate in the gradual yet concrete realization of these ideals within human existence.

I agree with that. In fact, this creative activity and direct experience of the creativity is what I do every day in my profession and my hobbies. But what I was trying to do here is to present a philosophical foundation for the creativity, a foundation that would give a deeper meaning to creativity and show that creativity is not just a byproduct of evolution of molecular organisms or one of the human egoic desires, but a fundamental driving force of the development of consciousness on all levels, from very primitive to the highest level ones. We are all participants of never-ending co-creation. And I hope such philosophical foundation and presentation of the deep meaning of creativity will not remain a subject of mere speculation for people, but will become a motivation to discover the creative abilities and creative experiences for themselves.

So, for me, the "final participation" is not a participation in some kind of total blissful unity/oneness of timeless state of all states, but a participation in the collective creativity, in the never-ending process of ever-expanding creation of reality. IMO this is the telos of the universe that explains and justifies the diversity, individuation and incarnations, because it is through this diversity, individuation and incarnations that the universe of Consciousness keeps creating the ever-new reality. This gives a deep meaning to our human life in spite of all its sorrows and it shows that our human state is not a "fall", a "sin", or a temporary imperfect state of being to be overcome, but it is exactly the way the universe of Consciousness develops and creates, which in no way precludes us from evolving and developing our higher order abilities of our cognition, because that is also a part of continuous creation of a new man.

[Cleric K]

You described a progression of self-similar states where a given frame contains embedded within itself the patterns of others. Stated differently, a successor state doesn't have a discontinuity with respect to prior states....except when it comes to the absolute state. The absolute state doesn't seem to share the property of self-similarity which other states have. It has content not manifested in prior states.

OK, I get it now. The answer is that as we integrate our world-line, we reach higher order archetypal patterns which we begin to recognize also in other world-lines. To put it simply, if, for example, we learn something about mathematics, then we begin to comprehend a whole world of soul perspectives of other beings who are living in the same ideas. This is very significant. We're not a self-enclosed sphere which simply becomes denser and denser with past states. Everything which we organize and develop within ourselves acts as an organ which puts us in resonance with many other states of being who share similar archetypal patterns. We can compare that with language. Our world-line integrates similarly to the way we integrate our vocabulary as we grow up. But of course as children we don't learn language as monotonic increase of known words for our own pleasure. Instead, everything that we integrate, immediately places us in connection with all other world-lines (beings) to which we're harmonically attuned through our shared linguistic archetypes (which largely shape our thinking).

This is also the basis of the reading of the so-called Akasha chronicle. And that's also why it's very difficult to do that reading for other human beings because it is directly related with our own spiritual development. As an analogy, if we know only vision but no hearing, we can't resonate with the world-line of another being and trace its auditory experiences. For us, all beings in Akasha will seem just as deaf as us. In the same way, if we haven't developed mathematical thinking ourselves, then the world-lines of all math geniuses, even if we approach them in Akasha, won't speak anything intelligible to us. We'll feel that the souls of these beings were involved in some kind of activity but it's all a foreign language, gibberish to us. So we see that evolution is not only some self-seeking progression along a line. The beauty of evolution is that gradually we integrate all kinds of virtues and through them we begin to perceive the Cosmic potential also of parallel world-lines. Our virtues are the organs through which the great variety of expressions of the Spirit becomes intelligible to us. It's indeed a language.

The Absolute state symbolizes the fact that there's no limit to how much the One consciousness can encompass. Imagine if I were to tell you that my native language is a completely separate compartment of reality and you'll never be able to know anything about it. It doesn't make much sense, does it? This is actually the exact opposite of what the human spirit is best at - we always feel that we have the potential to find these overarching states which can bridge, for example, the words of two different languages. In a similar sense our states of being are like hieroglyphs of Cosmic script. When we understand the meaning of our own states we being to decipher that meaning everywhere because there's archetypal meaning which is fractally present in many other world-lines too. So the Absolute state serves as a symbol that tells us that there's always overarching states which can grasp archetypal meaning both in our world-line but also in others'. The Cosmos becomes a living script for us and in every instant we're metamorphosing towards states which can resonate with the meaning inherent everywhere.

[AshvinP]

The question is, how do we stop merely speculating about "creativity" and actually become creative? The quote was, again, a symbol pointing to what capacities beyond our current 'organic development' we can actually realize. The intellectual desire of, "I want to experience everything, always, simultaneously", and to codify this in something called "experiential-consciousness idealism", for no mysterious reason, prevents us from actually becoming creative thinkers. It kills the motivated movement towards becoming, not just consumers of abstract concepts, but producers of living ideas. It gives birth to the rigid structures we are intellectually claiming to avoid. Almost the entire evolution of thinking in the modern age, and thereby diverse endeavors from the fields of science to politics to economics, can be understood if this simple reality of the intellectual ego and how it operates is discerned. People intellectually speculate about "democracy" and we get dictatorship. They speculate about "free productive markets" and we get rabid consumerism. They speculate about "freedom of the proletariat" and we get centralized top-down planning of worst sort. They speculate about "endless novelty" and we get infernal loops of tedious and repetitive concepts. People here need to decide whether they are satisfied with these completely inverted outcomes of mere speculation or whether they would rather experience creativity, novelty, and freedom in its living essence within their own consciousness - their own thinking, feeling, and willing - and thereby participate in the gradual yet concrete realization of these ideals within human existence.

I agree with that. In fact, this creative activity and direct experience of the creativity is what I do every day in my profession and my hobbies. But what I was trying to do here is to present a philosophical foundation for the creativity, a foundation that would give a deeper meaning to creativity and show that creativity is not just a byproduct of evolution of molecular organisms or one of the human egoic desires, but a fundamental driving force of the development of consciousness on all levels, from very primitive to the highest level ones. We are all participants of never-ending co-creation. And I hope such philosophical foundation and presentation of the deep meaning of creativity will not remain a subject of mere speculation for people, but will become a motivation to discover the creative abilities and creative experiences for themselves.

So, for me, the "final participation" is not a participation in some kind of total blissful unity/oneness of timeless state of all states, but a participation in the collective creativity, in the never-ending process of ever-expanding creation of reality. IMO this is the telos of the universe that explains and justifies the diversity, individuation and incarnations, because it is through this diversity, individuation and incarnations that the universe of Consciousness keeps creating the ever-new reality. This gives a deep meaning to our human life in spite of all its sorrows and it shows that our human state is not a "fall", a "sin", or a temporary imperfect state of being to be overcome, but it is exactly the way the universe of Consciousness develops and creates, which in no way precludes us from evolving and developing our higher order abilities of our cognition, because that is also a part of continuous creation of a new man.

Let's refocus on the main point of TCT, given your last post. You say,

"(1) creative activity and direct experience of the creativity is what I do every day in my profession and my hobbies..." and then "(2) in no way preludes us from evolving and developing higher order abilities of our cognition."

Do you understand #1 to be equivalent to #2? How would you describe these higher order abilities of cognition and your experience with them?

This is the real crux of the issue and I hope these questions can be answered in a straightforward way, without bringing up extraneous topics that I am not asking about, like any philosophical categories of thought. I am only asking about first-person experience of higher order cognition and how you understand it in the context of your comments above.

[Eugene I.]

Let's refocus on the main point of TCT, given your last post. You say,

"(1) creative activity and direct experience of the creativity is what I do every day in my profession and my hobbies..." and then "(2) in no way preludes us from evolving and developing higher order abilities of our cognition."

Do you understand #1 to be equivalent to #2? How would you describe these higher order abilities of cognition and your experience with them?

This is the real crux of the issue and I hope these questions can be answered in a straightforward way, without bringing up extraneous topics that I am not asking about, like any philosophical categories of thought. I am only asking about first-person experience of higher order cognition and how you understand it in the context of your comments above.

Right, I think we are getting to the core of the issue here. I perfectly understand that #1 and #2 are equivalent providing that our role in the development process is co-creation and not only just following the attractors and cognizing the structures and curvatures created by higher-order hierarchies. However, if our only role is to follow the curvatures and attractors, and all our individual creative contributions that are not aligned with those attractors are considered as only some useless or even harmful activity of our individual egos, then I don't agree with such view on the path of "evolving and developing higher order abilities of our cognition". So, the answer really depends on how exactly #2 is interpreted and whether it leaves any room for our creative co-participation.

[AshvinP]

Let's refocus on the main point of TCT, given your last post. You say,

"(1) creative activity and direct experience of the creativity is what I do every day in my profession and my hobbies..." and then "(2) in no way preludes us from evolving and developing higher order abilities of our cognition."

Do you understand #1 to be equivalent to #2? How would you describe these higher order abilities of cognition and your experience with them?

This is the real crux of the issue and I hope these questions can be answered in a straightforward way, without bringing up extraneous topics that I am not asking about, like any philosophical categories of thought. I am only asking about first-person experience of higher order cognition and how you understand it in the context of your comments above.

Right, I think we are getting to the core of the issue here. I perfectly understand that #1 and #2 are equivalent providing that our role in the development process is co-creation and not only just following the attractors and cognizing the structures and curvatures created by higher-order hierarchies. However, if our only role is to follow the curvatures and attractors, and all our individual creative contributions that are not aligned with those attractors are considered as only some useless or even harmful activity of our individual egos, then I don't agree with such view on the path of "evolving and developing higher order abilities of our cognition". So, the answer really depends on how exactly #2 is interpreted and whether it leaves any room for our creative co-participation.

We are indeed getting to the core of the issue. I want to pose one simple question for us to investigate, leaving all other questions aside for now. This will be the most productive way forward to a shared understanding, I feel. I ask you to please consider what is written below carefully.

Q: What do Cleric and Ashvin mean when they write 'higher Imaginative cognition'?

Let's be clear - the question is not whether Imaginative cognition exists, or what really is the essence of such a cognition. Those are topics for another time. I am not even including what Steiner means by it, because I don't want findingblanks or someone else to suddenly incarnate on the forum and quote some passage way out of context to muddle up the issue. The only question right now is what we mean by it when presented in our various posts on this forum.

Although I am confident Cleric shares my understanding here, I will only speak for myself right now. In my understanding, #1 cannot possibly be equivalent to #2. Imaginative cognition is not simply more creative, more intelligent, more flexible, etc. thinking. It is all those things, but also much more. The difference between IC and normal intellectual thinking can be analogized to that between self-aware reflective thinking of an adult human and instinctive thinking of an infant or clever animal. We are talking about a major qualitative transformation here, an evolutionary leap. 

I suppose I contributed some to the misunderstanding when always mentioning our current thinking and higher Thinking is continuous and of the same essence. That is true in the same way the adult human being is continuous and of the same essence of his former infant self. But the qualitative difference in cognition is just as great as well. So there is no sense in which someone could be imaginatively cognizing while they work at any regular job or engage in any regular hobby, like playing a musical instrument. But what I mentioned before is also at play - the lower simply cannot grasp the higher and finds it difficult to even imagine how the higher could exist in theory.

In fact, developing Imaginative cognition requires us to begin living in two different worlds, so to speak. If we were to engage such cognition after meditating while trying to go about the normal course of daily affairs, it would be a debacle. It simply wouldn't work. We wouldn't be able to get any of our normal intellectual activities done. Here I am not intending to claim that I have personal experience with this, but only that it's my well-informed understanding of the situation at this time. The long term aim is much more continuity of higher consciousness for humanity, but that will take great time to develop in any significant way. I want to also be clear that I do not intend to speak of mystical states of consciousness here, as they are known to any nondual traditions - that is not my meaning.

So how can we even speak of IC and think about approaching it before actually developing it, if it's so much higher and not identical to what is already known in nondual traditions? That is precisely what Cleric has provided us in the TCT essays - metaphors and analogies which put us on a path towards shifting our perspective just enough to ascend to a more living thinking perspective on what this evolutionary leap to IC entails and how to go about it with simple exercises. Although the perspectival shift is quite simple - it is an inversion of our current perspective in many ways - the implications of successfully making it are profound and wide-ranging. First and foremost, we need to abandon the idea that we currently have an apex, top-level, mind-container perspective on the World Content.

If we think that we are mostly free thinkers, we are mostly creative thinkers, and we mostly grasp the standard objects of inquiry in philosophy, theology, science, and art - questions of essence, god, evolution, beauty, etc. - then we are most definitely stuck within this mind-container perspective. We have no sense for the much higher, invisible meaningful context of soul forces which funnel our thinking into very narrow, templated channels of mineralized concepts. We have no sense of how our thinking is dragged around by sense-experience nonstop throughout most of our waking day. Now I am getting carried away, so let me stop and return to the main question. We can debate the existence of this higher meaningful context, hierarchical structures and what not later.

From the above, is it clear to you what we mean by higher cognition, why #1 is not even close to equivalent with #2 for us, and why this makes the nature of our arguments much different than you suppose? For us, the questions of attractors, top-down ideas, hierarchies, co-creation, novelty, etc. is entirely irrelevant at the abstract conceptual level. The meaning of those concepts emerge from our subconscious Imaginative thinking and the real issue is whether we have any solid reasons to think the latter exists and can be consciously harnessed by the average thinking individual today. The answers to all those other questions - how various philosophical concepts can logically cohere - will only come from the higher perspective of living and imaginative thinking, if it exists and is attainable.

Does this make sense? Not whether you agree with the existence or description of IC above, but does it make sense what I mean when I refer to it? 

[Soul_of_Shu]

Does this make sense? Not whether you agree with the existence or description of IC above, but does it make sense what I mean when I refer to it? 

I'm not sure what you mean above. So I'm curious how it relates to, for example, the writing of the best poetry. In this case, it certainly doesn't happen when it is the 'mini-me' thinking it through—that being actually a hindrance producing only the poorest sort—but rather it is more a serendipitous encounter with a greater order Imaginative Thinking that is the purview of one's Psyche at large, with Its human expression, pen in hand, being the vehicle and vocabulary through which the Poetry is chanelled/translated into wordform, such that others might share in it. This too is one's understanding of how Mozart encountered the music-of-the-spheres Symphonies that awaited the rare talent, facility and dexterity required to play them in corporeal form; and likewise Einstein's encounter with the paradigm-shifting Equations. So 'who' actually Thinks these up, and whence do they come, or why? I can only concur that once in that state of Mind one is quite incapable, let's say, of the reasoned pondering of a bank statement, or writing a grocery list. As for deliberately developing that capacity to transcend workaday thinking, so as to access its Divine counterpart at will, I can't claim any mastery or special understanding.

[Cleric K]

To make a hint about the nature of what's at hand here, we should point attention to something we do quite habitually when thinking about these things.

We're very well aware how sensitive the topic about hierarchies is. People immediately picture a power struggle and no matter how hard one tries, nothing can make them consider the possibility that this is only an anthropomorphized projection over reality.

Let's try to observe what we're psychologically doing when rebelling against the concept of hierarchy. In our sensory life we have the intuition about Nature. We take that as the arena, the system of elements and laws against which our individual consciousness experiences itself. Whether the essence of Nature is matter, energy, MAL or whatever, the fact is that in our experience we're clear that there are on one hand things which happen synchronistically to our meaningful intents (primarily our thoughts and to a lesser degree our bodily will, which depending on our health status may or may not follow our intents) and on the other hand the perceptual phenomena which follow their own mysterious unfolding. The latter we call collectively Nature. As a middle case we include also all other human beings which as far as their independence from our intents is concerned, can be seen as belonging to Nature, but since we can resonate with their meaningful intentions, we recognize them as islands of Nature which are expressing meaningful intentions, similarly to the way we do.

This shapes the familiar picture we all know. The almost default world-feel for the man of today is to conceive of a kind of Natural landscape (I repeat that it doesn't matter whether we call that matter, will, God, etc.) and islands within this landscape which transform their states according to meaningful intents.

Now when people here think about hierarchy, they imagine forces acting between the islands. Some exert weaker forces, some can influence the whole world. While my intentions may not be able to do much more than shuffle the furniture in my room, other persons at key positions, through their intentions may alter the course of life for many.

But there's something very important here. As a whole, we don't imagine other islands to be much different than us. Yes, they may be more gifted, stronger, wiser and so on, but we still picture them as loci of meaningful intents within the landscape of Nature.

This is how Eugene and others instinctively opposed to any depth/verticality, grasp all the talks about higher order beings. I have pretty low hopes that what I write here will make any difference because it is not the first time we go over it, but the whole issue is that all those views hold the implicit feeling for an objective and conscious-neutral background of Nature on top of which different islands exercise their meaningful intents.

For example, Eugene readily agrees that there are beings, gods, attractors but he sees them only as more powerful magnets which exert greater influence on smaller iron filings.

There's one basic test through which we can verify that we see things in this way. It's the fact that we can very easily imagine the Natural landscape even in the absence of these other attractors. This is at the crux of the matter. We imagine that these attractors send their influences, they may even compete for power over the iron filings but we, the small filings, imagine that the picture of the Cosmos won't change very much if these attractors disappear in a snap. Yes, just like at the time of government change, one imagines that this will be accompanied by social turmoil and temporary chaos but still, this has nothing to do with the general landscape of Nature and the way we individually experience it.

The key to consider here is that we always picture these other beings - human or godly - as doing some things which in principle we could do ourselves too. Anyone can imagine themselves to be a king or a president. Actually this is what even the most uneducated people do. The drunkard says "If I were president I would make drinks free for everyone!" And that's the reason people are opposed to hierarchies - because they imagine that they can do things better. And this is a source for endless debates - whether we need hierarchical social, economic, political structure or we'll be better off with one tier, peer to peer system. No matter which the system, one still imagines that it's all a matter of delegating responsibilities. The president is still no different than me, only he happens to be at a key position, more learned, etc.

While this is justified when dealing with human beings, it turns out that the same thinking is applied towards higher realities. Yes, gods have great influence over the souls of men, they can inspire them to be good or evil but one imagines that even if these gods were to evaporate in a snap, we'll still feel as human beings in bodies, surrounded by the Natural landscape and we'll still have our thoughts, feelings and will. Maybe we'll simply suddenly feel more lonely as if someone has left us but that's all.

This is also the reason why New Agey beliefs are so convenient. One very easily imagines that within their own soul-bubble they are quite self-contained. Their thoughts, feelings and will are entirely their possession. After death the Natural landscape becomes more pliable, more energetic but one still feels that they confront it with their self-contained soul bubble.

The true understanding of the vertical spirituality can begin only when we conceive that these higher beings are the strata of our own inner world. In other words, if we imagine that we can incise something of the higher worlds and this will leave us more or less unaffected and we'll still contemplate the Natural landscape, then we simply don't yet understand what's being talked about here. To imagine this is like imagining that our thoughts or feelings or will or all of them at the same time, can be stripped away and this will leave our inner experience unaffected, maybe only causing some temporary inconvenience while we adapt to the changed Natural environment.

This is at the core of the issue - the individual soul life is seen as atomic element confronting a Natural/Heavenly world. It's only logical that from such a perspective the influence of any other external loci of being will be seen as entirely optional. Even if all living beings disappear in an instant and we're left with our own self confronting the Natural environment, we still imagine that our essential experience wouldn't change fundamentally but we'll simply have to adapt and learn to make it on our own without the cooperation of other human and divine beings.

Although Shu's example has a point, it's worth noting that it can still be seen in the above way. When we write a great poem we have some letters on paper. One can argue that given enough time, a monkey playing with a typewriter can randomly type the characters in the correct order. It doesn't matter that the chance for this to happen are mindbogglingly miniscule. The point is that it is conceivable in principle. The materialists will be the first to object that there's no need for Divine inspiration. It's a matter of lucky flow of neural activity that happens once in a while. In other words, even though godly inspiration acts as an attractor for our thoughts and makes it more likely to make a great poem, one can still imagine it very easily that such poems can come about even in the absence of such attractors, maybe only with much more time and trial and error effort.

The key to notice here is that things will always remain unclear as long as we focus on things that are peripheral to our innermost being. True self-knowledge begins when we begin to recognize strata within this innermost being without which our stream of consciousness, through which we know ourselves as a being having spiritual experience through time, would simply be disrupted and there would be no "me" to be aware of this disruption.

It has to be emphasized once more that popular non-dual teachings of our superficial age simply seal tight this atomicity of the soul bubble by renaming it to 'pure awareness'. This amounts to nothing else but the arbitrary demarcation between things that we consider peripheral and illusionary and things that we flatten within ourselves and consider self-sufficient, immutable, eternal and unquestionable.

This is the plain reason why conversations with Eugene can never move further. He has sealed tight the sphere within himself, considers it eternal 'experiencing' and all other beings - human or divine - are only optional circumstances embellishing the Natural landscape. Yes, he agrees that they act as attractors and constrain the unfoldment of our flow of being but if they were to suddenly disappear we would simply feel more free, less constrained - nothing of our sealed bubble neither of the Natural landscape, would change dramatically.

That's why I keep returning to the question: what is the neutral natural order? If we conceive that beings are only attractors that constrain each other, then if we imagine them away, what is it that we're left with? We're still left with some constraints, right? We're still constrained in space, time, the form of our body, our desires, ideas. What are these?

Of course Eugene answers to this "I have no idea, I'll check it out on the other side" and thus the conversation ends. Yet he keeps for himself the conviction that all relations with higher order beings are only optional game of attraction and repulsion, which has nothing to do with the fundamental arena of spacetime.