Is it just me who is going through a lot of existential angst about idealism?

[Anthony66]

Cleric,

What confidence can we have in our logical reasoning faculty? If I am currently in an "unliberated" state, unaware of the nature of the forces pulling my cognitive strings, is not my thinking to be viewed with great suspicion (by my thinking )?

Interestingly, I've often tried to use the same argument to point out the fallacy of philosophies that see thinking as inherently illusionary.

If this is really the case (that thinking is inherently illusionary and to be viewed with great suspicion) then how can we have confidence in our idea that pushing away cognitive spiritual activity and only observing quietly, actually presents us with the non-illusionary true reality? After all, if thinking is illusionary, we should take the idea of the no-thought 'enlightenment' as equally suspicious!

The reason people don't notice this elementary fallacy is because they are blind about the fact that they actually think this conclusion. Instead, because they dimly repel cognition, they imagine that their decision and confidence in doing so, proceeds from some completely different spiritual faculty (usually going by the name 'intuition').

The fallacy is elementary indeed. It's the belief that if we don't do anything, we can't go wrong. It's something like "Whoever is afraid of bears doesn't go into the woods." So whoever doesn't want to err in thinking, simply should avoid thinking! So simple, isn't it? Unfortunately, this philosophy is refuted by practically every practical experience. There's even a saying "Anything can draw enemy fire on you, including doing nothing." People imagine that just because they repel cognition, from that moment on every form of meaning that they experience is coming from some deep and unerring intuition.

As a matter of fact it is completely possible that the meaning can come from deep intuition! The error is to draw the hard line between this vague intuition and our ordinary thinking. This is just another incarnation of the dualism which inevitably surfaces somewhere, when we don't have clear consciousness of our spiritual activity. We could never settle this with Eugene, for example. At some point the mystic decides that the meaning he experiences as no-thought intuition ('experiencing' or whatever) is of categorically and irreconcilably different kind than the meaning we experience in the intellect! It is really paradoxical how popular non-dualism creates hard dualisms at every step and doesn't even recognize it! Even the most basic glance over this should suggest that if we are to take non-dualism seriously, the most reasonable thing is to see intuition and the intellect as different states of aggregation of meaning, so to speak. In other words, in our intellectual thoughts we experience crystalized intuition.

We can see this fallacy everywhere really. People are really fond of drawing such hard and irreconcilable boundaries. Mike for example speaks of the background of everything and everyone but there there's no longer any trace of Mike. So we have two completely orthogonal states of being and not the faintest idea about any possible gradient in between. And who wants to hear about gradient? Gradient quickly relates to hierarchy and that's too much to bear for most. Thus one remains with flat mysticism, with the paradoxical dual non-dualism, with illusionary ghost of the thinking ego on one side, and the 'true' transcendent reality on the other, yet with absolutely no point of contact between them.

If we see things without emotional bias, then we should naturally conclude that there's something of our deep spiritual intuition which crystalizes in our rigid intellectual vessels. Yet the meaningful essence is of the same nature. Just as we can trace how a fluid crystalizes into a solid, so we can trace how fiery Intuition condenses into airy Inspiration, which condenses into fluid Imagination, which crystalizes into solid intellect. This is a gradient of cognition - spiritual life in meaning. There are no hard and irreconcilable boundaries. Just as we can see blocks of ice floating on water, so we can observe how our thoughts crystalize from the world of Imagination. Yes, the dynamics and rhythms at each level are different, but the primordial essence is the same.

So to your question. There's no single dividing line between liberated and non-liberated state. Yes, there are distinguishable thresholds between 'states of aggregation'. There are certain points in our life when we may have epiphanies, when we suddenly get an 'aha!' moment and lots of the pieces of the puzzle come together but still, these are only milestones along an infinite road. The important thing is to get a sense of sound thinking. We need to develop a good feeling for harmonious relation of thoughts and dissonant clashes. This sensitivity should be developed first about the most elementary facts. In our hectic age we hardly realizes how little sense of truth we have. And part of the reason is that we've become completely comfortable with lying. Lies have become a completely natural part of our life. From Santa Claus, to all the lies and deceptions that businesses require if they are not to be crushed by the competition. The result is that modern man feels almost nothing when he tells a lie. It's just words in specific arrangement - no big deal. It seems as natural part of the game. Alas, these 'normal' for our age cognitive habits have completely devastating consequences for our thinking life.

An illogical thought should cause us real pain. It should sound like grinding metal, like unbearable squeaky sound. Conversely, a logical thought should sound as a pleasant chord, it should gladden our heart and spin luminous threads in all directions.

So in our intellect we're not at all exiled from the higher world of musical meaning. It is only that we have to work much harder, to experiment with the arrangements of thoughts and see how they fit. The analogy with water and ice-cubes is useful. There are currents, streams of harmony in the higher fluidic strata. These are not separate and remote worlds. We're submerged in them, we breath and think them. When our ice-cube thoughts are aligned with these streamlines, we cognitively feel their harmony. This is not a 'copy' of the higher harmony - it is the the same harmony.

That's why, the quest for truth is always about the harmony of the facts. We can never have certainty by taking few concepts, say "God", "Angel", "matter" and try to combine them in the most various ways as pieces of puzzle. We'll always wonder "How can I be certain whether this or that arrangement is the correct one?". Simple - we can't. We gain the certainty only when we begin to spin threads from these concepts and try to follow their dynamics in all of reality, not only some chosen limited domain. The harmony of the facts will be musically confirmed or contradicted as we expand the horizon of our investigation. This is what we do everywhere. It's what science does, it's what forensics does. We can speak of truth only as an ever expanding horizon where everything fits together in a musical harmony. The more we can follow the logical movement of the ice-cubes (that is, the ordinary logical connections), the more we begin to sense the higher order flow within which they are streamlined.

As a practical advice, I can suggest the following. As long as we have fortified ourselves in a certain outlook, it is very difficult to make sense of these things. We're in the fortified tower and we're shelled by words. We don't allow the words come very close - that is, we don't allow ourselves to think them. We only observe them as linguistic shapes and reflect them with our shield. Then we either say "These shapes make no sense" or we say "I know these things in and out. They look similar to what X and Y said. Nothing new." This is very characteristic. Each one of us can notice this if we try. Very often when we listen to something, we don't think about the ways it can be right but instead we think only about all the ways it can be wrong (as seen from our perspective).

The solution is to allow a new 'alter' take form in us. We need to enter a dialog with ourselves. We should allow a being take form in us which tries to understand things. Then we begin to converse with ourselves. We take both sides alternatively. This is much more difficult to do, even though logically it is completely straightforward. The resistance is completely emotional, it has nothing to do with logic. Yet if we manage to overcome that resistance, we'll quickly realize how until now we have been paralyzing our own progress. We realize that not only we don't loose anything when we think things from different sides but we only gain.

This is a very powerful inner experience. It is immeasurably more powerful than de-identifying with the ego and declaring it an illusion - this simply merges the ego with the background, as a chameleon. Instead, when we begin to think from both sides, we quickly realize that our true being only becomes richer and richer. We overcome the fear of understanding other points of view. This fear is very widespread even if not readily admitted. Most commonly people are afraid to understand things (like the ones we talk about here) because they are worried they'll be lulled into some sectarian framework of thought. We can overcome this fear only when we discover the strength and flexibility of our spirit. When we can confidently think through the perspectives of anyone. These thinking perspectives only add to the harmony of the facts. Thinking frameworks are dangerous only when we try to lock into one of them and call it 'the true one'. When we understand our spiritual activity as ever evolving be-ing, all thinking frameworks are only pieces of the Cosmic puzzle that we need to master.

So this is my humble advice - don't be afraid to give birth within yourself to a being which tries to see things from a new angle. A being which asks not "How can I ever know if that is true" but a being which asks "If this is true, and I follow the thread of the facts, where do they lead me? Do they contradict or harmonize and explain everything that I've encountered through experience?"

I'm not sure if you've addressed my concern.

For example, at viewtopic.php?p=10263&sid=dcb8c4b11cef8 ... baa#p10263 you say:

This is not the end however. Anyone who honestly thinks about this will have to admit that even though we feel directly responsible for the thoughts, we can't claim that we know in full details why we think precisely the thoughts we think at a given moment. In other words, we feel that there are processes that precede the end product of thinking.

At viewtopic.php?p=5010#p5010 you introduce "idea-beings".

These posts and your other writings seem to be suggesting a realm of mentation, at least partly veiled from our current cognition, which is impacting our thinking. How can we be sure there aren't malicious forces that are causing our attempts at logical thinking to go astray (at least until we can shine the light on that behind the veil)?

[Cleric K]

Hi Cleric

I don't get this at all.

In the first state I mentioned in my last post, Self-Remembering, you're not at all getting rid of willing. Actually, and to the contrary, if you are not in a state of self-remembering / mindfulness, you are not really willing or acting. You are responding completely mechanically (unconsciously) the way you have always responded. You are not willing, you are being willed by your background, your habits, your culture etc. What Gurdjieff called waking-sleep.

If you are self-remembering, you are seeing the inputs coming into you, to use your analogy, and you are seeing (and sometimes choosing) the activity going out from you. You are active. When you self-remember, there's now a space between the inputs and the outputs. You are aware of the inputs, and with practice you can be aware of your "standard" output or response. It's precisely and ONLY here, that you have the opportunity to exercise your will.

For example, someone says something to you that usually triggers you to respond angrily. Because you are aware / awake / conscious, you may be able to observe the anger rising in you before you respond. You have a choice then to not respond with anger. THAT is using your will, and that opportunity only arises because of your watching.

Again with practice, and grace, you may even see why you are getting angry, you may become aware of some incident or attitude that has patterned your whole life in these situations. If you see that fully, that particular anger response goes forever. That is REAL WILL.

And with the second non-dual state, it also results in real will and activity. When duality returns, you start seeing the connectedness and inter-dependence of the inputs and the outputs. As you say in your analogy, the inputs actually change. You are changing the world, and you are changing yourself.

Thanks Mike, your example is really useful. Let me build upon it.

The first thing to notice is that we become conscious of the forces that lead us into anger only when we differentiate from them. I've often given the example with gravity. As long as we're in free fall we can't know gravity (ignoring micro tidal forces). It's the same as being somewhere in deep space in relatively flat spacetime. We become aware of gravity only when our free fall is resisted by the ground beneath our feet.

It's similar in our soul life. As long as we free fall with the game stream, we can't have any consciousness of the forces that drag us along. Only when we try to find a stable point, we begin to feel how the streams drag against us.

Mike already hinted at this but let's make it really clear. It is not anger that drags us. There are other forces which guide is in a way that we manifest anger. So the goal is not to become conscious of anger itself - we're already conscious of it. The goal is that by resisting anger, we begin to gain consciousness of the forces that lead is into manifesting it. As a side note, we can't overcome anger or any other soul expression by simply stubbornly resisting it. In this way, sooner or later we'll be exhausted and we'll be defeated. The resistance is needed only to give us consciousness of the actual forces that lead us into anger. It is these forces that we must reorganize (and we can't reorganize them if we're not conscious of them). Once they are reorganized, we won't be led into the flow of anger.

Now let's use this to make a step further. Let's turn attention to thinking. Imagine that each of our thoughts is like a tiny fit of anger. We're manifesting our thoughts but in certain sense we're in free fall in this process. We have very little consciousness of the forces that shape the channels through which our cognition flows.

This in itself points at the most important distinction between Oriental and Occidental meditation. The Eastern meditation can be described as seeking blissful free fall. We merge with the flow of the Cosmos (the background of everything and everyone). We do that so seamlessly (as in the second non-dual state) that we no longer perceive Mike or anyone else. There's only the blissful unitary flow of the Cosmos (even though we behold only a small aperture of this flow).

Evolutionary development has led to the point where we have become more and more conscious of the flow which proceeds through our "I". It is only when we exercise this creative flow (our inputs into the game), which is different from the perceptual flow, that we gain self-consciousness.

For the traditions of the old, which try to find their place in the current epoch, this differentiation of the free fall into perceptual stream (in which we live entirely in the free fall) and the active stream of our will, is seen as the descent into duality. The only way to solve this duality is by reversing it - to use all individual will for one goal - to merge once again with the perceptual and blissful free fall. This is practically the Sisyphus myth - the whole quest into duality of perception and will (rolling the stone uphill) leads only to the realization that it's all pointless and the stone should roll back.

When the myth evolves, the picture changes, and the pole of first-person creative activity continues to grow, gradually becoming responsible for more and more of the world content (clearly this is connected with moral development because if the will grows in egoistic manner it will lead to conflict). Then, what these evolved beings do, serves as the background flow within which newly evolving beings awaken to their free fall and begin to develop their own meaningful will, which in the course of evolution, grows into the Divine Will, which creates worlds, just as we currently create thoughts.

With this said, it should be easier to understand that there are deeper forces that act within the expression of our "I" activity. We can't become conscious of these forces by free falling into bliss, anymore than we can become conscious of the reasons for anger by free falling with anger. Occidental meditation builds upon Oriental. The expansion of awareness, of the perceptual stream is still there. But we can no longer afford our will to free fall into bliss. This can only be a temporary distraction from our tasks. It can't solve the problems that face humanity in the same way heroin can't. It can only put us to sleep while the problems grow bigger and bigger. We need to take conscious hold of that stream of spiritual activity and make it outlet of Love and Wisdom. That's why modern meditation begins by gathering all the forces of our spiritual activity and concentrating them on a meaningful idea-symbol.

Through this conscious effort, we disrupt the habitual flow where our thoughts manifest as tiny fits of anger (I'm not saying that anger is the force behind thoughts, it's only an analogy. The point is that in ordinary thinking we simply flow with whatever comes, just like we flow with unchecked anger). Through concentration of our spiritual activity on the thought-symbol/image, we gain a point of stability, just like the ground beneath our feet provides such a point. Then we begin to feel how the habitual forces of thinking, feeling and willing begin to drag against our new point of stability. Thus we begin to gain consciousness of these forces. We don't simply speculate about them, as Freudian psychoanalysis seeks explanations of human behavior. We practically perceive the actions of these forces as they impress into our concentrating effort. In other words, in this early stage of higher cognition we begin to perceive the forces of our soul life in something akin to negative impressions. If we imagine our soul interior as a sphere of wax, then as we try to stabilize this sphere (by filling it with the concentrated idea-image), the forces of the soul realm begin to drag against it. If we don't resist these forces with our concentration, we're simply dragged along them, enter the free fall and it becomes impossible to have consciousness of them. But when we stabilize our concentration, the forces begin to impress in our soul, as a seal impresses into wax. In this Imaginative cognition we don't yet have direct consciousness of the forces themselves, instead we're conscious of their negative impressions into our soul substance (negative, in the same sense as the wax receives the negative image of the seal).

This is a lot to take in one breath and no one should feel bad if it's not very clear immediately. But still, human minds of today should gradually become accustomed to such ideas. Otherwise we're facing great dangers if the blissful free fall (the mystical state) is assumed to be the highest achievement. I hope the above at least hints how through focusing our individual activity we can begin to gain consciousness of the forces and beings that structure the invisible world, which when beheld only in mystical and blissful free fall, appears to be completely laminar oneness.

If there's one thing to take away from all this, let it be that the laminar blissful free fall becomes a rich and structured world, only when we begin to work on our spiritual development. For those freely falling with anger, it seems that everything is going in the only possible way. They may call it physical determinism, fate or whatever. But the fact is that those who make the effort to differentiate themselves from the emotional free fall, begin to gain consciousness of the forces which normally unknowingly shape our soul life. In the same way, through differentiating our spiritual activity from the habitual and quite automatic flow of thoughts, we begin to gain consciousness of a whole world of living forces.

[Cleric K]

I'm not sure if you've addressed my concern.

For example, at viewtopic.php?p=10263&sid=dcb8c4b11cef8 ... baa#p10263 you say:

This is not the end however. Anyone who honestly thinks about this will have to admit that even though we feel directly responsible for the thoughts, we can't claim that we know in full details why we think precisely the thoughts we think at a given moment. In other words, we feel that there are processes that precede the end product of thinking.

At viewtopic.php?p=5010#p5010 you introduce "idea-beings".

These posts and your other writings seem to be suggesting a realm of mentation, at least partly veiled from our current cognition, which is impacting our thinking. How can we be sure there aren't malicious forces that are causing our attempts at logical thinking to go astray (at least until we can shine the light on that behind the veil)?

Anthony, my previous post to Mike can serve as foundation here. Yes, indeed there are forces that can lead us into many different directions. The answer would be the same as in my previous post. We shouldn't look on logical thinking as isolated phenomenon. Only about thinking enclosed in a limited framework, we can have doubts if it is correct. But thinking should be seen as ever expanding perception of lawful relations.

Imagine that you're a detective and you're solving a case. If you have only a limited set of evidence you can combine the facts with your thinking. But then you can ask "How can I be sure that my seemingly logical arrangement of this puzzle doesn't lead me astray?" This is a valid question. There are plenty of examples in forensics where facts seem to be logically related but still the general conclusion is wrong because there are other quite unexpected unknown facts, which alter the picture significantly.

But if our investigation continuously expands and integrates more and more facts then it no longer makes sense to ask "How can I be sure that learning more about reality doesn't lead me astray?" And I know that this is actually a position that many spiritual schools take today. That growing with our thinking into the lawfulness of reality, is actually completely optional and it is enough to simply let go and wait for death. This demands the same question: "How can I be certain that malicious forces don't lull me to sleep by whispering in my ear - let go, you need not have interest in the world, it's an illusion. Just free fall into the bliss that expects you after death".

This is a problem that everyone should solve for themselves. As said previously, we can only do that in constructive manner if we allow both sides to think their voice in us, and not simply take one side and demand that the other should prove itself to us.

This is one part of the problem. Of course things are not that easy in practice. Many people have the desire to do what is good, what is beneficial and so on but this requires deeper understanding of the World processes. These processes span long periods of time. For example, wise parents know that there are times when they need to be stern with the child. This is not pleasant neither for the child nor for the parents but in the face of long term good, this is fully justified. So we shouldn't mistake the good with that which gives us immediate gratification. As a matter of fact, especially in our age, almost everything which is beneficial for the World development, demands sacrifices on our side.

So how do we know in what way to direct our energies? There's no simple answer to this, there's no fixed algorithm. Things are further complicated by the fact that each one of us has quite unique life path. But there's one thing that can be taken as universal method - prayer. Of course, it's not about the naive begging of some deity out there to grant our whishes. Instead, the prayer should be the manifesto of our earnest desire and readiness to employ our energies in the most wise and loving way.

The spiritual forces, malicious or otherwise, are like attractors for human activity. We have the divine capital - our free spiritual activity - and we can invest that capital in different enterprises. How do we choose these enterprises? By nourishing our high ideal. The quality of our thoughts, feelings, desires, attract the corresponding potential. That's what the role of prayer is - it's an act of attunement. We pray to overcome the obstacles which stay on the way to what we want to become. We pray that our 'wavefunction' of be-ing can be attracted into the domain of the 'phase space' that corresponds to our high ideal.

I know that all this is difficult to take but we should try to think it through seriously. The age of materialism has programmed us to think that we can interact with reality only through our bodily will, guided by a calculating brain. But today we should investigate a much wider palette of spiritual activity through which we interact with reality. Our imagination emanated in the form or prayer attracts the potential of our becoming. People will say "I don't believe this - prove it!" This is something everyone will have to experiment with on their own. With the greatest scientific seriousness. And this is not to urge people to become mind-over-matter fanatics. Not at all. The matter that we must learn to shape is first and foremost our own heart and mind. If we have no power over the matter of our thoughts and our desires, it is useless to try influence the flow outside of us. Even if we somehow succeed into it, it can only be a form of black magic. The white mage starts with what really belongs to him - his thoughts - and works outwards, vivifying, resuscitating, liberating, harmonizing everything he expands into. So we must learn to work in new ways with our thoughts, feelings, will and imagination. These are new buttons, new levers through which we augment the flow of the game.

[AshvinP]

I'm not sure if you've addressed my concern.

For example, at viewtopic.php?p=10263&sid=dcb8c4b11cef8 ... baa#p10263 you say:

This is not the end however. Anyone who honestly thinks about this will have to admit that even though we feel directly responsible for the thoughts, we can't claim that we know in full details why we think precisely the thoughts we think at a given moment. In other words, we feel that there are processes that precede the end product of thinking.

At viewtopic.php?p=5010#p5010 you introduce "idea-beings".

These posts and your other writings seem to be suggesting a realm of mentation, at least partly veiled from our current cognition, which is impacting our thinking. How can we be sure there aren't malicious forces that are causing our attempts at logical thinking to go astray (at least until we can shine the light on that behind the veil)?

Anthony,

I want to add something briefly to what Cleric wrote in response. It may be helpful to 'triangulate' these things with the perspective of someone much closer to your own spiritual path, i.e. myself. To be clear, I am not giving any sort of occult spiritual advice here, because I have no experience to do so. Also, as Cleric noted, such advice is very specific to every individual's path.

I can lend support to what Cleric says about prayer. It's remarkable what sincere and selfless prayer can accomplish within us, that we cannot accomplish for ourselves with thinking alone. It is not something which can be proved intellectually, but rather aligns with the principle, "seek first the Kingdom of God in righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." It is an efficacious reality we can justify to ourselves only by living within it for some time, in devotion and good faith.

Furthermore, it helps me, when I get the sort of questions you do, which I certainly do from time to time, to ask myself why I am asking the question. I am also considering this in the context of your other question on the Time-Consciousness thread. Obviously there is no issue with seeking out focused thinking meditative exercises (and Cleric has shared many on this forum), or with trying to understand the nature of higher spiritual forces which work within us. But we should also realize how our conceptual reasoning is necessary for that understanding. I am sure you will admit there are many pieces of the spiritual evolutionary puzzle which you are still fitting together conceptually in relation to your current experience. We can't underestimate the power of that reasoning to begin perceiving how the higher order logic of spiritual realms works into our own. This is why we are embodied beings who have descended into the modern age - it prepares us for the necessary yet sacrificial and sometimes treacharous journey back to the spiritual realms in consciousness with our freely exercised activity. We should not be too eager to skip over this preparation. I have been writing about this a bit in upcoming essay, so I will quote another excerpt here again, which includes an analogy made by Cleric previously (at this rate the entire essay will be excerpted in various posts )

"Let's imagine the balancing of forces as a scale. Let's further imagine that our current scale is on one end of a much larger scale. Both of those seesaws can be on one end of an even bigger scale, and so forth. It is a limited analogy because it presents things as too rigid of a branching structure, while the reality is more fluid. Nevertheless, it can serve as an illustration for the following: if we are conscious only of our perceptible scale, even if we balance it perfectly, we still don't know our position in relation to the larger scales. These are higher-order scsles and our oscillations between spirit and matter are always within their context. We need higher-order consciousness to perceive that everything we do in our normal state is carried on these even higher-order oscillations. This analogy illustrates why someone who seems to act one-sidedly in our normal experience may be actually striving to work for balancing a higher order imbalance they can perceive. And, conversely, if we perfectly balance our perceptible scale (for example the spirit/matter, meaning/perception scale) and just rest peacefully, believing that we have accomplished our Cosmic duty, we have become blissfully ignorant of the higher order imbalances that must still be addressed."

The higher-order scales are not perceived by our rational intellect now, because they have become super-sensible. Their forces live beyond the fourth dimension where our intellect resides. That intellect only perceives the scale of 'liberal' or 'conservative' categories; only the flattened outer surfaces of the inner (psychic) soul-forces which give rise to these political dispositions. Since the inner world is considered a private bubble of experience by the atomized ego, these forces are stripped of their causal efficacy in the sense-perceptible world of natural and cultural forms. Logical reasoning, however, brings us back to the reality of the shared inner Cosmos, of which the outer Cosmos is a partial reflection. It is that graudal reasoning which also safeguards us against assuming a state of complete knowledge we don't already have or skipping over any balancing scales in our ascension. We gain a more holistic understanding of what we are doing when we engage the proper tempo of the logical ascent-descent rhythm. Just as we do when listening to or playing a musical piece, we can then sense within our organism, in a concrete and living way, when the timing of our spiritual activity is being slowed down too much or rushed too fast.

[mikekatz]

Hi Cleric

I don't get this at all.

In the first state I mentioned in my last post, Self-Remembering, you're not at all getting rid of willing. Actually, and to the contrary, if you are not in a state of self-remembering / mindfulness, you are not really willing or acting. You are responding completely mechanically (unconsciously) the way you have always responded. You are not willing, you are being willed by your background, your habits, your culture etc. What Gurdjieff called waking-sleep.

If you are self-remembering, you are seeing the inputs coming into you, to use your analogy, and you are seeing (and sometimes choosing) the activity going out from you. You are active. When you self-remember, there's now a space between the inputs and the outputs. You are aware of the inputs, and with practice you can be aware of your "standard" output or response. It's precisely and ONLY here, that you have the opportunity to exercise your will.

For example, someone says something to you that usually triggers you to respond angrily. Because you are aware / awake / conscious, you may be able to observe the anger rising in you before you respond. You have a choice then to not respond with anger. THAT is using your will, and that opportunity only arises because of your watching.

Again with practice, and grace, you may even see why you are getting angry, you may become aware of some incident or attitude that has patterned your whole life in these situations. If you see that fully, that particular anger response goes forever. That is REAL WILL.

And with the second non-dual state, it also results in real will and activity. When duality returns, you start seeing the connectedness and inter-dependence of the inputs and the outputs. As you say in your analogy, the inputs actually change. You are changing the world, and you are changing yourself.

Thanks Mike, your example is really useful. Let me build upon it.

The first thing to notice is that we become conscious of the forces that lead us into anger only when we differentiate from them. I've often given the example with gravity. As long as we're in free fall we can't know gravity (ignoring micro tidal forces). It's the same as being somewhere in deep space in relatively flat spacetime. We become aware of gravity only when our free fall is resisted by the ground beneath our feet.

It's similar in our soul life. As long as we free fall with the game stream, we can't have any consciousness of the forces that drag us along. Only when we try to find a stable point, we begin to feel how the streams drag against us.

Mike already hinted at this but let's make it really clear. It is not anger that drags us. There are other forces which guide is in a way that we manifest anger. So the goal is not to become conscious of anger itself - we're already conscious of it. The goal is that by resisting anger, we begin to gain consciousness of the forces that lead is into manifesting it. As a side note, we can't overcome anger or any other soul expression by simply stubbornly resisting it. In this way, sooner or later we'll be exhausted and we'll be defeated. The resistance is needed only to give us consciousness of the actual forces that lead us into anger. It is these forces that we must reorganize (and we can't reorganize them if we're not conscious of them). Once they are reorganized, we won't be led into the flow of anger.

Now let's use this to make a step further. Let's turn attention to thinking. Imagine that each of our thoughts is like a tiny fit of anger. We're manifesting our thoughts but in certain sense we're in free fall in this process. We have very little consciousness of the forces that shape the channels through which our cognition flows.

This in itself points at the most important distinction between Oriental and Occidental meditation. The Eastern meditation can be described as seeking blissful free fall. We merge with the flow of the Cosmos (the background of everything and everyone). We do that so seamlessly (as in the second non-dual state) that we no longer perceive Mike or anyone else. There's only the blissful unitary flow of the Cosmos (even though we behold only a small aperture of this flow).

Evolutionary development has led to the point where we have become more and more conscious of the flow which proceeds through our "I". It is only when we exercise this creative flow (our inputs into the game), which is different from the perceptual flow, that we gain self-consciousness.

For the traditions of the old, which try to find their place in the current epoch, this differentiation of the free fall into perceptual stream (in which we live entirely in the free fall) and the active stream of our will, is seen as the descent into duality. The only way to solve this duality is by reversing it - to use all individual will for one goal - to merge once again with the perceptual and blissful free fall. This is practically the Sisyphus myth - the whole quest into duality of perception and will (rolling the stone uphill) leads only to the realization that it's all pointless and the stone should roll back.

When the myth evolves, the picture changes, and the pole of first-person creative activity continues to grow, gradually becoming responsible for more and more of the world content (clearly this is connected with moral development because if the will grows in egoistic manner it will lead to conflict). Then, what these evolved beings do, serves as the background flow within which newly evolving beings awaken to their free fall and begin to develop their own meaningful will, which in the course of evolution, grows into the Divine Will, which creates worlds, just as we currently create thoughts.

With this said, it should be easier to understand that there are deeper forces that act within the expression of our "I" activity. We can't become conscious of these forces by free falling into bliss, anymore than we can become conscious of the reasons for anger by free falling with anger. Occidental meditation builds upon Oriental. The expansion of awareness, of the perceptual stream is still there. But we can no longer afford our will to free fall into bliss. This can only be a temporary distraction from our tasks. It can't solve the problems that face humanity in the same way heroin can't. It can only put us to sleep while the problems grow bigger and bigger. We need to take conscious hold of that stream of spiritual activity and make it outlet of Love and Wisdom. That's why modern meditation begins by gathering all the forces of our spiritual activity and concentrating them on a meaningful idea-symbol.

Through this conscious effort, we disrupt the habitual flow where our thoughts manifest as tiny fits of anger (I'm not saying that anger is the force behind thoughts, it's only an analogy. The point is that in ordinary thinking we simply flow with whatever comes, just like we flow with unchecked anger). Through concentration of our spiritual activity on the thought-symbol/image, we gain a point of stability, just like the ground beneath our feet provides such a point. Then we begin to feel how the habitual forces of thinking, feeling and willing begin to drag against our new point of stability. Thus we begin to gain consciousness of these forces. We don't simply speculate about them, as Freudian psychoanalysis seeks explanations of human behavior. We practically perceive the actions of these forces as they impress into our concentrating effort. In other words, in this early stage of higher cognition we begin to perceive the forces of our soul life in something akin to negative impressions. If we imagine our soul interior as a sphere of wax, then as we try to stabilize this sphere (by filling it with the concentrated idea-image), the forces of the soul realm begin to drag against it. If we don't resist these forces with our concentration, we're simply dragged along them, enter the free fall and it becomes impossible to have consciousness of them. But when we stabilize our concentration, the forces begin to impress in our soul, as a seal impresses into wax. In this Imaginative cognition we don't yet have direct consciousness of the forces themselves, instead we're conscious of their negative impressions into our soul substance (negative, in the same sense as the wax receives the negative image of the seal).

This is a lot to take in one breath and no one should feel bad if it's not very clear immediately. But still, human minds of today should gradually become accustomed to such ideas. Otherwise we're facing great dangers if the blissful free fall (the mystical state) is assumed to be the highest achievement. I hope the above at least hints how through focusing our individual activity we can begin to gain consciousness of the forces and beings that structure the invisible world, which when beheld only in mystical and blissful free fall, appears to be completely laminar oneness.

If there's one thing to take away from all this, let it be that the laminar blissful free fall becomes a rich and structured world, only when we begin to work on our spiritual development. For those freely falling with anger, it seems that everything is going in the only possible way. They may call it physical determinism, fate or whatever. But the fact is that those who make the effort to differentiate themselves from the emotional free fall, begin to gain consciousness of the forces which normally unknowingly shape our soul life. In the same way, through differentiating our spiritual activity from the habitual and quite automatic flow of thoughts, we begin to gain consciousness of a whole world of living forces.

Hi Cleric,

Thanks! I think we are saying almost the same thing, but you seem to want to re-state it.

The first thing to notice is that we become conscious of the forces that lead us into anger only when we differentiate from them. I've often given the example with gravity. As long as we're in free fall we can't know gravity (ignoring micro tidal forces). It's the same as being somewhere in deep space in relatively flat spacetime. We become aware of gravity only when our free fall is resisted by the ground beneath our feet.

It's similar in our soul life. As long as we free fall with the game stream, we can't have any consciousness of the forces that drag us along. Only when we try to find a stable point, we begin to feel how the streams drag against us.

Mike already hinted at this but let's make it really clear. It is not anger that drags us. There are other forces which guide is in a way that we manifest anger. So the goal is not to become conscious of anger itself - we're already conscious of it. The goal is that by resisting anger, we begin to gain consciousness of the forces that lead is into manifesting it. As a side note, we can't overcome anger or any other soul expression by simply stubbornly resisting it. In this way, sooner or later we'll be exhausted and we'll be defeated. The resistance is needed only to give us consciousness of the actual forces that lead us into anger. It is these forces that we must reorganize (and we can't reorganize them if we're not conscious of them). Once they are reorganized, we won't be led into the flow of anger.

I stated this quite clearly (or so I thought, lol) above. I explicitly said that "...you may even see why you are getting angry, you may become aware of some incident or attitude that has patterned your whole life in these situations. If you see that fully, that particular anger response goes forever."

Where I disagree though, is where you say "So the goal is not to become conscious of anger itself - we're already conscious of it." Here, again, we come down to self-remembering. And I wasn't 100% clear on this, so let me add in this:

Of course we are already conscious that we get angry - but only after the fact. "Someone said X, and it made me really angry." Even, "Someone said X to me now, and I am really angry now." In both cases, we received the inputs, and the outputs follow mechanically and unconsciously. A trigger is a great metaphor for this. In comes the input, out goes the angry output.
With self-remembering, you see this in real time. You see the input come in, you see the anger rising, and you see the output happening. There is a sense of "Oh, this came in, I am reacting automatically, and I am sending this out".

BTW, the reason you cannot succeed at resisting emotions like anger, according to Gurdjieff (and self-remembering confirms this easily), is that emotions are far quicker than intellect or thoughts. Gurdjieff even pegs the difference at 30,000 times faster. That's why you can never reason someone out of anger, or jealousy, etc. It's only when consciousness can insert a "gap" between the input and output, that the opportunity to see the origin of your output is even remotely possible.

The tragedy of the times we are living in, especially in the west, is that we do not self-remember. We think we self-remember, but we do not. Of course if I ask you now whether you are self-remembering, you can do a kind of introspection and say yes, but that is nothing like what self-remembering is. You know those special times when you are viewing a landscape, interacting with a loved one, hitting a perfect golf or tennis shot, or appreciating a piece of music in that special way, etc., not in the normal way, but when the feeling of awe and presence arises? THAT is self-remembering. It's "How strange, this is me, here, experiencing all this wonder."

And most of the time, most of us are nowhere near that. You know you had breakfast this morning, went to work (or commuted to your home office lol), read your emails, replied to some, spoke to work colleagues, made decisions, etc. You know you did it, just as you know you got mildly or majorly annoyed with that damn email. But in all of that, you were NOT self-remembering. You were just responding automatically in terms of your worldview, your likes and dislikes, your culture, etc. You were not there. What chance of WILLING is there in this state? Absolutely none.

I'm just like that, by the way. I make no pretence to be different. Sometimes I can self-remember more, sometimes less. The difference between self-remembering and not is vast. The benefits are vast. No spiritual activity can take place without it - without being present, even a discussion like this is just an intellectual game.

Nothing could be more important to an individual on the spiritual path than this. No matter how much one yearns, no matter how strongly one feels there is more to this world, if you can't bring the actual presence of consciousness into your seeking, you are just playing with thoughts. Actually self-remembering, being present, being mindful, being meta-conscious, call it what you will, is the basic tool of spirituality.

A carpenter, to fashion wooden planks into a desk, needs carpentry tools, and needs to actually do the work using those tools. A person may study everything there is to know about carpentry, he may know about every tool and how to use it, but that does not make him a carpenter. He has to actually do it. Similarly, a person may know everything there is to know about philosophy and spirituality, he may know what everyone has said about it, but he actually has to do it too. He has to engage his tool, and that tool is self-remembering.

I'm sorry to always harp on about this, it's clearly not of interest to most people here. I was intending to reply to other things in your post, but this is already far too long. I think this would be a good time for me to take a break from this forum.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric wrote:

The first thing to notice is that we become conscious of the forces that lead us into anger only when we differentiate from them. I've often given the example with gravity. As long as we're in free fall we can't know gravity (ignoring micro tidal forces). It's the same as being somewhere in deep space in relatively flat spacetime. We become aware of gravity only when our free fall is resisted by the ground beneath our feet.

It's similar in our soul life. As long as we free fall with the game stream, we can't have any consciousness of the forces that drag us along. Only when we try to find a stable point, we begin to feel how the streams drag against us.

Mike already hinted at this but let's make it really clear. It is not anger that drags us. There are other forces which guide is in a way that we manifest anger. So the goal is not to become conscious of anger itself - we're already conscious of it. The goal is that by resisting anger, we begin to gain consciousness of the forces that lead is into manifesting it. As a side note, we can't overcome anger or any other soul expression by simply stubbornly resisting it. In this way, sooner or later we'll be exhausted and we'll be defeated. The resistance is needed only to give us consciousness of the actual forces that lead us into anger. It is these forces that we must reorganize (and we can't reorganize them if we're not conscious of them). Once they are reorganized, we won't be led into the flow of anger.

In Ukraine, last Sunday was, under the lenten calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church, "Forgiveness Sunday." Trapped in his apartment on the outskirts of Kyiv well-known Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Irvanets offered a brief poem, "I shout to the world. I won't forgive anyone."

[AshvinP]

I'm sorry to always harp on about this, it's clearly not of interest to most people here. I was intending to reply to other things in your post, but this is already far too long. I think this would be a good time for me to take a break from this forum.

Mike, how do you feel about the esoteric quote-wisdom I shared - "Do not stop on any step, no matter how high, or it will become a snare."

Despite its simplicity, or because of it, I feel like that sums up the entire argument between you and Cleric. He is saying, "we don't have to stop on that step". You are saying, "yes we do, and the only reason you don't know it is because you don't understand what the step is". I think Cleric has demonstrated very clearly, in many posts, via many metaphors, that he understands exactly what that "self-remembering" step is. So I am wondering if you have any additional arguments for why that is the last possible step? Or, if you feel there are additional steps, why do you also feel Cleric has not taken the next one?

[mikekatz]

I'm sorry to always harp on about this, it's clearly not of interest to most people here. I was intending to reply to other things in your post, but this is already far too long. I think this would be a good time for me to take a break from this forum.

Mike, how do you feel about the esoteric quote-wisdom I shared - "Do not stop on any step, no matter how high, or it will become a snare."

Despite its simplicity, or because of it, I feel like that sums up the entire argument between you and Cleric. He is saying, "we don't have to stop on that step". You are saying, "yes we do, and the only reason you don't know it is because you don't understand what the step is". I think Cleric has demonstrated very clearly, in many posts, via many metaphors, that he understands exactly what that "self-remembering" step is. So I am wondering if you have any additional arguments for why that is the last possible step? Or, if you feel there are additional steps, why do you also feel Cleric has not taken the next one?

Hi Ashvin

I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying explicitly that self-remembering is the first step. Then, I've also spoken about a second step (non-dualism), and I have never excluded there being other steps. These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are.

And, in the same way that Cleric is repeating how Thinking is not thinking, I am repeating how self-remembering is not just intellectually assuming I am always present during our normal waking state. And also in the same way Cleric is saying (or at least that's how I understand him), that unless you are Thinking you are just playing intellectual games, I'm saying the same about self-remembering.

Your quote is no doubt true. But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all. The steps may look like they are going up, but they are still on the horizontal and not the vertical.

But clearly, I'm not expressing myself well.

[AshvinP]

I'm sorry to always harp on about this, it's clearly not of interest to most people here. I was intending to reply to other things in your post, but this is already far too long. I think this would be a good time for me to take a break from this forum.

Mike, how do you feel about the esoteric quote-wisdom I shared - "Do not stop on any step, no matter how high, or it will become a snare."

Despite its simplicity, or because of it, I feel like that sums up the entire argument between you and Cleric. He is saying, "we don't have to stop on that step". You are saying, "yes we do, and the only reason you don't know it is because you don't understand what the step is". I think Cleric has demonstrated very clearly, in many posts, via many metaphors, that he understands exactly what that "self-remembering" step is. So I am wondering if you have any additional arguments for why that is the last possible step? Or, if you feel there are additional steps, why do you also feel Cleric has not taken the next one?

Hi Ashvin

I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying explicitly that self-remembering is the first step. Then, I've also spoken about a second step (non-dualism), and I have never excluded there being other steps. These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are.

And, in the same way that Cleric is repeating how Thinking is not thinking, I am repeating how self-remembering is not just intellectually assuming I am always present during our normal waking state. And also in the same way Cleric is saying (or at least that's how I understand him), that unless you are Thinking you are just playing intellectual games, I'm saying the same about self-remembering.

Your quote is no doubt true. But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all. The steps may look like they are going up, but they are still on the horizontal and not the vertical.

But clearly, I'm not expressing myself well.

Mike,

What reason do you have to be confident there are more steps? Who are the people 'far wiser' and what steps have they claimed beyond the "self-remembering" step and how did they imagine these steps (I realize they cannot be described, but I am looking for any indication of what vicinity of experience they are in, like Cleric provides for Imaginative, Inspirative, Intuitive consciousness)?

No one has claimed what you wrote in bold, and we all agree with the underlined. Along with the 2 questions above, my other question is why you think Cleric's imaginative consciousness is "still on the horizontal and not the vertical"?

[mikekatz]

Mike, how do you feel about the esoteric quote-wisdom I shared - "Do not stop on any step, no matter how high, or it will become a snare."

Despite its simplicity, or because of it, I feel like that sums up the entire argument between you and Cleric. He is saying, "we don't have to stop on that step". You are saying, "yes we do, and the only reason you don't know it is because you don't understand what the step is". I think Cleric has demonstrated very clearly, in many posts, via many metaphors, that he understands exactly what that "self-remembering" step is. So I am wondering if you have any additional arguments for why that is the last possible step? Or, if you feel there are additional steps, why do you also feel Cleric has not taken the next one?

Hi Ashvin

I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying explicitly that self-remembering is the first step. Then, I've also spoken about a second step (non-dualism), and I have never excluded there being other steps. These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are.

And, in the same way that Cleric is repeating how Thinking is not thinking, I am repeating how self-remembering is not just intellectually assuming I am always present during our normal waking state. And also in the same way Cleric is saying (or at least that's how I understand him), that unless you are Thinking you are just playing intellectual games, I'm saying the same about self-remembering.

Your quote is no doubt true. But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all. The steps may look like they are going up, but they are still on the horizontal and not the vertical.

But clearly, I'm not expressing myself well.

Mike,

What reason do you have to be confident there are more steps? Who are the people 'far wiser' and what steps have they claimed beyond the "self-remembering" step and how did they imagine these steps (I realize they cannot be described, but I am looking for any indication of what vicinity of experience they are in, like Cleric provides for Imaginative, Inspirative, Intuitive consciousness)?

No one has claimed what you wrote in bold, and we all agree with the underlined. Along with the 2 questions above, my other question is why you think Cleric's imaginative consciousness is "still on the horizontal and not the vertical"?

Hi Ashvin

First, where did I say I'm confident there are other steps? I said "These are the only two steps in my actual experience, but I can't exclude there being others, and many people far wiser than me have claimed there are."

I've mentioned Gurdjieff extensively in this discussion, and I've mentioned how he structures One World in terms of octaves. he also structures the type of Being in One World, which of these are and are not available to us as we are, and which we can grow into. And he details the capabilities of beings at every level. If you are interested in his ideas, you can download "In Search of the Miraculous" by PD Ouspensky for free.
Also Buddhism structures One World in the same way, with multiple steps on the ladder of Being.
So does Kabbalah.
Christianity has levels of Being as well, Angels, Archangels, etc. But I'm not read up on those so I don't know for sure.
So, if you're trying to intimate that only Cleric is outlining multiple levels of being and multiple levels of One World, that is incorrect.

Second, I never said that "Cleric's imaginative consciousness is still on the horizontal and not the vertical" When I said "But, if you are playing intellectual games without actual experiencing, you are not actually stepping up any steps at all.", I thought I was clearly saying that unless one is self-remembering / Thinking / conscious / present, then whatever one hears will be heard at the horizontal level, no matter how profound the utterances are. "Him who has ears to hear, let him hear." or however it goes.

I would never make a judgement about whether Cleric, you, or anyone else here can hear what is being said. I can only speak for myself, and I have repeatedly said that much of what is said here is beyond my experience.

And my focus on this first step of being present to what is happening in the mind, self-remembering, Thinking, and so on, is because I know myself how easy it is to just get sucked into the horizontal intellectual games of analysing what people are saying, and trying to agree or refute because I do or don't agree with it.