So, I've been through parts 1-3 (thanks again Cleric!).
First off, I'm very happy to see Cleric and Eugene being on essentially on the same page with regards to this central discussion. As I said at the outset on my original post, I was surprised by the amount of overlap I saw between the two of you, and this confirms it.
I'm replying to the series here and not in part 3 because my own experiences, as far as I can see, are very much in line with Eugene's as expressed above in this topic.
Cleric:
The exercise in the first part is for me the similar to many versions of mantra-based meditations. They are indeed useful, and I practised one form of them for many years, and received much understanding in the process.
I found this part 2 of your essay difficult to experience, although I do understand what you are saying. It's just that it's too intellectual, and my mind just wants to get to grips with it as an external logic exercise. However, Eugene rescued me here, especially with the Spira quote.
Part three, with the Fourier metaphor, is for me a beautiful description of the flow of consciousness and how it sometimes is for me.
So, I kind of "get it". I get that there's the possibility of great spiritual growth, that the universe is not just flat, and that there could be hierarchies of being available to us. And I appreciate your efforts to unveil these possibilities.
Where I am, I accept that "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" could very well be only the starting point. But it's a necessary starting point. All that you are pointing to is the next step after Knowing that Knows only Knowing, and I'm mostly not at this step yet. Because of that, all talk of what could lie beyond is just tunnel mode intellectual games, which is counter-productive for me.
Eugene said this:
This fully lines up with my experience too, and so we have the stepping-out-of-the-movie step before the Knowing that Knows only Knowing step.Basically, the "stepping out of the movie" is only the first stage of the practice when we dis-identify from the "me" character of the movie and learn to observe it objectively form a noninvolved "witness" perspective. But at the next stage we realize that there is no gap between the "witness" and the "movie", they are the same thing, the witness merges with the movie and the subject-object duality collapses. So, all your criticism is really about the first "stepping out" stage, and you are right, of course it is insufficient and transitory, but it is still a necessary step towards the full merge.
And even the stepping-out-of-the-movie step is not trivial. Part of the quote in my original topic from Ouspensky:
(emphasis mine)I spoke of my observations and deductions to the people in our group as well as to my various literary friends and others. I told them that this was the center of gravity of the whole system and of all work on oneself; that now work on oneself was not only empty words but a real fact full of significance thanks to which psychology becomes an exact and at the same time a practical science. I said that European and Western psychology in general had overlooked a fact of tremendous importance, namely, that we do not remember ourselves; that we live and act and reason in deep sleep, not metaphorically but in absolute reality. And also that, at the same time, we can remember ourselves if we make sufficient efforts, that we can awaken. ...
And not having seen the magnitude of the idea he of course could not see the central position which the idea of the absence of consciousness and the idea of the possibility of the voluntary creation of this consciousness ought to occupy in our thinking. Only it seemed strange to me that Volinsky could not see this even when I pointed it out to him.
I subsequently became convinced that this idea was hidden by an impenetrable veil for many otherwise very intelligent people—and still later on I saw why this was so.
What Ouspensky is saying here, and what I can attest to fully, is that it's very difficult if not impossible to get many, if not most, people to actually experience even stepping out of the movie. People think they know what it means, they can intellectually assent to it, they can even say they are doing it, but they are not. And that's just stepping out of the movie! And as we are all agreed, stepping out of the movie is far away from Knowing that Knows only Knowing.
And so, Cleric, your frustration about people not understanding about thinking vs. Thinking, tunnel mode vs. funnel mode, higher levels of spiritual activity, etc., is very real. Your admirable efforts to get people to see are hampered just by this, that you are setting the starting bar of your discussions way too high. And this is precisely the reason that so many traditions require, at least initially, individual transmission of ideas and practice.
What all of the above means for me, and I emphasize for me only, is that the discussions on this forum are of limited value. I hope I don't offend anyone, I certainly don't mean to. I'm just at a different stage in my path.
I wish everyone an amazing year!
