Animals, language and thinking

[Güney27]

What is the implication of such a finding ?
Perhaps it is wrong to assume that it is our thinking that distinguishes us from animals


https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20 ... sc/020000c

[Lou Gold]

What is the implication of such a finding ?
Perhaps it is wrong to assume that it is our thinking that distinguishes us from animals


https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20 ... sc/020000c

As well as distinguishing humans from plants and from fungi.

[Cleric K]

What is the implication of such a finding ?
Perhaps it is wrong to assume that it is our thinking that distinguishes us from animals


https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20 ... sc/020000c

That's a good question, Guney. The answer lies in the distinction between thoughts and self-conscious thinking.

Thoughts are ubiquitous. As a matter of fact, even the earliest experiences in proper spiritual development, lead us to the realization that everything in our inner world is of thought-nature. Everything is being thought by something.

The difference is that from the perspective of the animal's soul body, these thoughts are like dream images, they are part of a universal dream flow.

Imagine that you live in selfless, dreaming consciousness which experiences feelings and thoughts coming and going. Yet nothing of these experiences hints that there's such a thing as a first-person spiritual force which can projects itself in the contents of consciousness and recognize its contribution.

Now I'll use a metaphor. Imagine that the coming and going thoughts are like floating objects entering and leaving the field of consciousness. Now further imagine that these thoughts initially float in some inexplicable maybe even chaotic way but that doesn't even bother you because there's still no 'you' to be bothered. 'You' is only potential not yet manifested, flowing together with conscious phenomena. Now imagine that some of the thoughts begin to show some regularity. It's like there's a center of gravity around which the thoughts bend. Consider the way scientists pinpoint the locations of blackholes by tracing the paths of stars:



In a similar way, in the course of evolution a strange quality begins to awaken which makes thoughts feel as if they revolve around an invisible singularity. The bending force of the singularity recognizes how it swirls the thoughts around and even learns to manipulate them, thus it gains self-reflectance in thoughts.

And here lies the difference between the animal kingdom and human. Within the sphere of inner experiences pertinent to an individual animal body, it is full of thought-like phenomena but there's not yet a singularity which can augment the course of thoughts and in turn recognize itself within this activity. On the other hand, the evolution of humanity has been the process of this singularity becoming more and more 'in focus', being able to recognize its causative nature within the bodily complex.

This doesn't mean that the thoughts within an animal body don't have their center of gravity. It's only that this center is still 'outside' the sphere of thoughts related to a particular individual body. As an analogy, you can look at the above animation again and imagine that if we look at some peripheral area, there'll be motion of stars without any clear center.

Please note that many of today's spiritual schools see it as their ideal to reverse the process of the singularity coming into crisp focus. The singularity declares itself to be an illusion and yearns to return to the previous state of dream-like consciousness, where everything flows without any conscious cause.

On the other hand, the continuation of evolution leads to the human singularity finding its Cosmic nature. The singularity is not created by the body/brain. It's only that the latter have become sufficiently developed so that the singularity can use them to revolve thoughts around itself. Yet this singularity is Cosmic in its essence and furthermore it is inherently concentric with the Universal Singularity (and thus any singularity). Once we realize how we swirl thoughts around our center, we can continue the process to seek the centers around which also other phenomena within our consciousness revolve. This is achieved in degrees - Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. In Imagination it is like we recognize phenomena that are shaped by singularities but we don't yet have clear cognition of them. We perceive only their effects within inner space, yet we recognize that these effects gravitate around something. In Inspiration we already grasp not only the effects but also the meaning which causally swirls the phenomena. And in Intuition we become concentric with other singularities and we experience their Cosmic contributions similarly to the way we experience the contributions of our "I"-singularity to the orbits of our thoughts. At this level of consciousness we already understand the essential nature of reality - that it's all perspectives of the Universal Singularity perceiving their relative relations.

So in short, the difference is that within man, the Cosmic singularity not only experiences thoughts but it also recognizes its causative existence in them. The singularity becomes self-conscious. It begins to reflect and know its nature. This the animal does not yet do, even though it lives in universal thoughts.

[AshvinP]

Please note that many of today's spiritual schools see it as their ideal to reverse the process of the singularity coming into crisp focus. The singularity declares itself to be an illusion and yearns to return to the previous state of dream-like consciousness, where everything flows without any conscious cause.

Thanks for the new illustration of the "I"-singularity, Cleric!

It's interesting how we convince ourselves in modern secular culture that 'granting higher thinking' to animals is somehow doing them a favor (as if we could just do that with the wave of a wand). We start with this theory of ours that animals and humans are basically the same - which is like throwing 'spiritual change' into the tin cups of all lower organisms - and then only seek out the data points which seem to "confirm" it, while ignoring the rest.

I try to remember we are involved in an evolutionary process. My consciousness was at some point that of an animal as well, and it is only because idea-beings at their "human" stage at that time chose to keep evolving and lay the foundation I now know as "human history and culture" that I could develop my current level of agency, which is at a critical juncture where I can choose to continue evolving and eventually help free the will of future "humans", i.e. the current animals, or I can rest comfortable where I am, keeping the reflective thinking agency that was graciously given to me, all to myself. While I do that, I can hand out intellectual theories to the animals about how they should be happy for the thinking agency they have, as if that does something to actually raise them up.

Instead, we can endeavor to make our reflective thinking truly creative, so that we may lay a foundation for these other organisms to also evolve their own agency, as such a foundation was laid for us before. We can become conscious that ideal evolution isn't something that will keep happening for us or to us, but something we make happen through selfless acts of higher thinking., which nevertheless align with our own short, medium, and long-term Self-interest as well.

[AshvinP]

Please note that many of today's spiritual schools see it as their ideal to reverse the process of the singularity coming into crisp focus. The singularity declares itself to be an illusion and yearns to return to the previous state of dream-like consciousness, where everything flows without any conscious cause.

Thanks for the new illustration of the "I"-singularity, Cleric!

It's interesting how we convince ourselves in modern secular culture that 'granting higher thinking' to animals is somehow doing them a favor (as if we could just do that with the wave of a wand). We start with this theory of ours that animals and humans are basically the same - which is like throwing 'spiritual change' into the tin cups of all lower organisms - and then only seek out the data points which seem to "confirm" it, while ignoring the rest.

I try to remember we are involved in an evolutionary process. My consciousness was at some point that of an animal as well, and it is only because idea-beings at their "human" stage at that time chose to keep evolving and lay the foundation I now know as "human history and culture" that I could develop my current level of agency, which is at a critical juncture where I can choose to continue evolving and eventually help free the will of future "humans", i.e. the current animals, or I can rest comfortable where I am, keeping the reflective thinking agency that was graciously given to me, all to myself. While I do that, I can hand out intellectual theories to the animals about how they should be happy for the thinking agency they have, as if that does something to actually raise them up.

Instead, we can endeavor to make our reflective thinking truly creative, so that we may lay a foundation for these other organisms to also evolve their own agency, as such a foundation was laid for us before. We can become conscious that ideal evolution isn't something that will keep happening for us or to us, but something we make happen through selfless acts of higher thinking., which nevertheless align with our own short, medium, and long-term Self-interest as well.

I will also add, what is written in the last paragraph above is independent of spiritual science, in its most general understanding. Whether what previously evolved was mindless material genes, instinctive consciousness, and/or overarching living Ideas, it is undeniable that the current ideal activity of humanity will shape the future Earthly environment for all living organisms, as our previous ideal activity already has to a significant extent. After all, this is the basis for all the movements which identify human cultural activity as a major source of problems for the plant and animal kingdoms, and philosophies such as 'animism'. So we are only saying this undeniable fact can be taken much more seriously and our ideal activty can be carried out with responsibility - with an eye also towards what benefits the animal and plant kingdoms - through higher knowledge and Wisdom.