Anthony66 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 04, 2022 1:35 pm
Tell me what you think of this diagram which is trying to depict the difference between Bernardo's idealism and the one that you and Cleric seem to be describing.
On the left is Bernardo's model of perception. The large light grey oval represents MAL with the grey triangles representing its ideations - shadowy, indistinct and unrepresented. The small dark grey ovals represent dissociations who receive a flow of information corresponding to the "triangle precursor" thoughts in MAL and represent or decohere the object, in this case a green triangle.
On the right is "Deep MAL". Flows of thought originate from the yellow source and flow through various conscious centers. There is no precursor triangle "out there". It is more "in here" although depicting that on a 2-D diagram is difficult. There is a sense though that the light grey conscious centers are interior to the dark grey centers. Finally the green triangle is formed in the mind and then projected out as an appearance of physicality.
Hi Anthony,
Thank you for this post! Ashvin already covered the main points. I understand very well what you try to convey in the second image and when looked at through a certain perspective it is a completely valid way to express things. Our efforts now should be how to avoid images like these to become
a trap for the intellect.
I have often mentioned the example with the geo- and heliocentric perspective.
click for image
It's clear that the geocentric is much more complicated. There are so many things that we must keep in mind simultaneously. It's similar with the second image. And I'm quite certain that for most readers here, that image is just as weighty as the geocentric view - our intellect is simply being crushed by the weight of all the details.
Yet everything changes when we assume the proper vantage point. For this reason I would like to once again turn the foundations. If we get that clear, we'll be able to speak safely about the depth.
It's really all contained in the very beginning of PoF. Yet our field experience here shows that people simply don't recognize how these simple and unpretentious words actually speak about something much deeper than we're prepared to suppose.
To same extent we have purely linguistic barrier. It turned out to be impossible here in the forum to show what the concept of 'idea' implies (in the Goethean sense). It is constantly taken to be equal to a mere concept in the mind. That's why Ashvin gradually shifted to use the word 'meaning'. Alas, it too proves to be problematic. Most people can't help but see in that as if someone tries to enforce premeditated meaning of life.
I'll try once more with a metaphor, which is neither new, nor it is the first time it is employed here. But I'm simply struggling to find something to which modern man can relate without becoming lost in dry words.
I'll use the metaphor of a video game (VG). As usual, we'll have to step back and try to determine what is the truly given in the riddle of existence. We'll have to let go of our default ideas of physical world, subject, object, God, consciousness, etc. and try to build on secure foundations.
The first thing is to recognize the contents of existence, which in PoF style is called the totality of perceptions - not only sensory but also feelings, thoughts, will, imagination. Practically, we call perception anything which we can
think about, which can become object of our thinking. We're not saying what perception
is in itself, we only recognize that whatever it is - color, sound, feeling - these are qualitative experiences that we can be conscious of. And to be conscious of them means that we can confront them with our thinking.
In our VG metaphor this would correspond to the totality of
outputs - video display, speakers, vibrations, fans, etc. Once again, we don't know what these stimuli are in themselves. We only know that they confront us.
Another part of the metaphor is the fact that through our activity we're providing
inputs to the game. Normally these are keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.
Now what is the VG experience in the most general sense? It's a stream of output stimuli (perceptions) which come towards us, so to speak. But there's also the stream of our input actions (will) which go from us towards the game. The important thing is that these inputs cause certain changes in the incoming (perceptual) stream. In other words, there's
feedback. But we must be perfectly clear that not everything reflects our inputs. For example, in a racing game our will is reflected back to us as the fact that the perceived car turns, accelerates, brakes, etc. But the scenery, the road, the other cars do not depend on our actions.
It is similar in our real life. There's a constant stream of perceptions and we continually send the stream of our activity out. As a result, some parts of the incoming perceptual stream are modified.
Now comes the most challenging part. While in the VG analogy we interface with the game through our will - we press keys, click, double-click, etc., we should imagine that the game reflects also our thinking. Think of it thus - when we press a key we're
doing something with our will. As a result a perceptual change is fed back to us. It is similar with thinking. When we think, we're doing something, we're still willing something into reality. It's not muscle movement but it is still something that we try to project into reality. And once again, the perceptual world feeds back on us - these are our thought perceptions, for example, our inner voice.
From my observations on this forum, this last part is the greatest obstacle for most people. They simply don't want to awaken to the fact that they're innerly doing something and as a result the game feeds back thought perceptions. Both materialists and idealists want to watch their thoughts as on movie, as if something else is responsible for them. This is the main goal of the light dot exercise (btw I don't know from whence came the 'red' dot
I spoke of light dot only). The goal is gain clear awareness of the fact that we're innerly willing something and the game reflects back corresponding changes in the 'pixels'.
Our thinking is the kind of input where the output that is being fed back and the input are most in sync. They are so in sync that we feel as the seamless creator of the thought-pixels. They follow our thought-willing intents so closely, so perfectly, that it is through them that we at all gain consciousness of our role in the game.
With feelings things are much less in sync. Sometimes we're angry and even though we try to will some more positive emotions, the game still feeds back anger on us.
In bodily will things are most remote. This may sound strange to many, because in certain sense, the movements of our fingers reflect our intents to no lesser degree than our inner voice reflects thinking. Yet this holds true only as long as our fingers are healthy. If there's some problem in our body we quickly realize how much distance there really is between our willing intents and the perceptual feedback of our body.
Finally, there's also a whole other domain of pixels, which we commonly call 'the world', which do not at all nudge at our inputs. So we have a whole palette of possible inputs which cause modifications in the output stream with various degrees of consistency.
Now I believe that this metaphor is completely intelligible for a person living in our present age. Even if the person hasn't spend too much time with video games, these things are part of our present culture and they should be easily relatable.
Note that what we did is not to build some theory of reality. We don't postulate some world computer, we don't postulate what the pixels are, we don't postulate what we are. We're focused entirely within the given. We simply use modern language to point at inner experiences.
It is really simple - we have the incoming stream of perceptions and our outgoing stream of will. We don't say that these streams exist as things in themselves. We don't say how they interact. These are only linguistic handles for inner experience. We experience the stream of colors, sounds, etc., no matter what name we give it. We experience ourselves as a willing source, that tries to augment the perceptual stream, no matter what name we give it. As long as we stay firmly in the given, we're safe from errors. Note that the way we describe things is equally applicable for our normal waking life but also for our dream life. That's because we don't go beyond the given to speculate what lies behind perceptions. Even in dreams, we still experience perceptual stream and we still do things through which we augment it.
This leads us to the question of lawfulness. As with every game, there're certain relations between what we do with the inputs and what feeds back on us. For example, if I'm playing a first-person shooter, when I press the up arrow, my hero moves forwards. Blobs of pixels which were formerly small, begin to grow larger - I'm getting closer to some objects. Of course, in a real computer there's no physical game space inside it. It's all calculations. The 3D environment on screen is only a synthetic picture produced by calculations. The virtual space of the game doesn't exist as such somewhere behind the screen. Yet this doesn't prevent us to learn the lawfulness of this virtual space and how the pixels change in response to our inputs. I tried to present an interesting case
here, which is on the same topic. Our focus is not on speculating what the world is, how many dimensions it has, of what particles it is made. We only investigate how the perceptual stream is augmented in response to our willing inputs.
This is the major shift of scientific perspective that we must achieve. Science, for quite some centuries now, has been preoccupied with imagining a toy-model of the world and describing the rules through which this model transforms from frame to frame. This places the scientist (or philosopher) as an invisible spectator outside reality. Yet even Kant knew that such a vantage point is nowhere to be found! The artificial nature of this vantage point is what creates the geocentric complexity, under which weight we're crushed.
Here we're simply trying to assume the proper perspective, which is firmly grounded in the given. There's no need to fantasize a vantage point outside of the supposed reality. Our existential flow is already what is directly given to us and it is that flow which we must investigate. Of course this calls for new cognitive habits. For the longest time we've become used to the virtual vantage point outside the Cosmos. We're so used to it, that today we face the greatest difficulties even to point attention to the fact that people actually think from there. Thinking has sunk entirely in the blind spot. We think about the supposed toy-model of the world but we don't stop even for a second to consider that our thinking itself is the most immediate example of the time-flow of reality. What more do we need? We have the stuff of reality - the perceptual stream. We have the activity of reality - our will. We have their interaction - the perceptual stream is continually being augmented in response to our activity. Furthermore this augmentation is not random but follows certain lawful patterns.
Returning to the difficulties that we face. It's bad enough that people don't want to feel as the active force behind the perceptions of thoughts, but it
becomes downright impossible to make the next step which is to recognize that our ordinary thinking is only a limited expression of even deeper level of spiritual activity.
In VG we have a limited input palette. There are only some keys which are used. For example, we have keys to steer our car but we don't have a key that lifts it up in the air. So there are certain input slots, so to speak, buttons, levers, potentiometers, through which our willing interfaces with the game. It's similar with our thinking. Our language forms one such 'keyboard' through which we interact with the game and receive feedback through the perceptual stream. But think about the following: when we interact with the keyboard with our fingers we have our hands which operate in a volume of space where we can make the most varied hand gestures. Yet only these gestures which hit the keys and have some perceptible effect in the game, are those which have significance. We should imagine that our hands are normally invisible, we don't even know that they exist but we somehow (for ex. trial and error) learn to employ our will in such a way that we hit some keys and the car on the screen moves. Please note that this doesn't invite us immediately to think about our hands. Instead, we're focused on the perceptual feedback. We learn to will things such that we can steer our car on the screen, we may never even reach the point to think about the fact that there are actually hands pressing the buttons.
It's somewhat similar with our thinking. In the course of life we've learned to produce the thinking inner verbal sound that help us navigate the game. But what exactly are we doing in order to push these thought buttons? With what part of our invisible willing being we're doing this? Unsurprisingly, most people in our age never even get the hint that such questions can be asked. But today it is of vital importance that such questions are asked. Why? Because we need to realize the way in which our linguistic-mathematical-symbolic-thinking keyboard restricts our deeper activity to express only through these rigid slots. We have no consciousness of all the other potential things that our activity can do.
Let's address one of the most fundamental problem in this forum. The stumbling stone for many. The question for the non-dual consciousness which for many represents that absolute origin of reality.
Our VG analogy can help us here. The mystical state makes a very important observation. It practically says: "Throughout our live we're busy pressing the thinking, feeling and willing buttons of the game and the perceptual stream changes accordingly. Yet this is not the full reality. Actually, this is only an illusion. We should recognize that when we step back from the keyboard, we become conscious of a wider consciousness, which is ordinarily sucked in the input slots of the game. When we step back, we realize that in our normal life, we're as hypnotized by the slots and we know ourselves only through them. But we can be free from the limited consciousness which invests itself in the slots, and instead expand into the pure consciousness, completely unconstrained and limitless."
This is the basic non-dual philosophy. And it is splendid! It is very important. We have given it the most varied names. For example, with Mike we arrived at the concept of "Stepping out of the movie". But in the light of our VG analogy, does anyone spot something missing?
Please note this well. It's very simple, it's only attachedness to ideas which prevents us to see it. It's very well that we can step out of the input slots and be aware of the wider consciousness which is no longer restricted in any one of them. But does the reader notice how surreptitiously we have also gotten rid of the willing activity itself? Why should we split things in this way? If we find ourselves in a wider state, free from the rigid thinking, feeling and willing slots, why not investigate the wider degrees of freedom which our liberated spiritual activity is now in position to know? Why not come to know our active being in the nature that is has before it has become condensed into the input slots? Why be content with simply stepping outside the slots and simply be 'awaring' and 'experiencing'. Please note this well. In the mystical state we still live in the perceptual stream of the game but we have lifted ourselves from the rigid keys. But at the same time, we completely forsake any form of activity. We have liberated our spiritual activity from the rigid slots but
only in order to paralyze it in passive perceiving of the output stream.
This is the greatest fallacy of modern non-dualism. And please note that I say 'modern'. This is not Buddha's fault. Buddha did everything perfectly, as it was appropriate for his time. It is the fault of modern man that he insist on keeping paralyzed that, which is supposed to be active. This insistence introduces completely unwarranted duality in the otherwise imagined to be non-dual state. Completely unjustifiably consciousness is split in the part that can be active, that can will and perceive how the perceptual stream is augmented in response, and in the part that liberates itself from the input slots but together with that it also leaves behind any kind of willing activity. In other words, the perceptual stream becomes completely external, there's no longer anything which the will finds feeding back on itself, and as a result giving self-consciousness.
This is as simply as I can explain this. Higher forms of cognition proceed from the fact that we can be active even in these regions above the rigid input slots. This activity feels differently. I won't go into details here because the post is already long enough.
I'll stop here. We haven't even approached the second image and the individual circles. We stayed firmly in our given experience. This is completely intentional. Let's see how well things are understood so far.
In our VG analogy, we have the perceptual incoming stream. We don't care what's 'behind' that stream. We're only noting the bare facts. On the other hand there exists such thing as our thinking/feeling/willing activity which acts as inputs for the game. As a result the perceptual stream reacts, it changes. If there's no correlation between our willing intents and the perceptual stream we would never gain self-consciousness. Imagine that instead of playing the game you're watching an youtube video where someone else plays. You press buttons on the keyboard but there's absolutely no correlation between what you're doing and what happens on screen. Imagine that we can't have direct perception of our hands (as the prior example), that we can only know of our willing intents when we see their correlated reflections on screen. Thus we learn to know ourselves as a willing spiritual being only through the fact that there's in-phase relation between what we will and what we perceive. If these two are out of phase, as when we watch someone else playing, then we're willing 'in the dark', we don't have self-consciousness at all! Self-consciousness is gained when our willing intents and the augmented perceptual stream lock together. This is what our thinking achieves. In thinking our hidden thinking intents meet the perceptual stream which includes our inner voice and they are locked in. That's why the will can recognize itself and say "I'm thinking these inner words, they reflect what I'm secretly doing with my activity". It's similar with the light dot.
Once we have our self-consciousness, even if through the rigid input slots (keys) of linguistic-mathematical-symbolic thinking, we can gradually grow from there. Not by simply letting go of the slots and succumbing to pure contemplation of the perceptual stream to which we have no contribution (as if we watch someone else play on youtube) but by trying to gradually recognize how our liberated activity outside the slots augments the perceptual stream, even if in a way different than our ordinary bodily thinking, feeling and willing.
Let's see how clear all this is. And this is not only for Anthony but for anyone following. Let's hear if this metaphor is understood. Only if we understand these basic things from the healthy vantage point, we'll be able to continue growing out into the more obscure mysteries, such as those on the second image.
PS: Anthony, I won't address your question from the
other thread at this time. The reason is that half of higher development is to simply understand in a living way the very foundations of it. This is what we try to do above. This analogy shouldn't remain abstract theory. One should try see it as purely phenomenological description of our own inner experience. We should not imagine someone else playing and perceiving the game. We should experience how we ourselves perceive, how we ourselves will, how our will modifies the perceptual stream and how we recognize what we're doing in these modifications.
