Cleric K wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 11:38 am
Federica wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 6:03 pm
I don't understand the disconnection you are pointing to, other than perhaps, again, in opposition to Kant. You say: ‘he has disconnected ideas and ideation (subject) from will/perceptions (objects)’. I understand he puts perceptions on the subject side, and will too, on the subject side. There is only subject. The only thing that makes will disconnected from subject is the poor membrane of dissociation. This is really not much of a thing, and it’s porous, and it’s subject to all sorts of impingements and waves. How can this thin membrane be held accountable for disconnection, and worse for being the foundation of a whole dualistic system? That would be a dualism between water inside and water outside a fish net.
Federica, maybe it's worth specifying more clearly what duality it is here spoken of.
In the most general sense we can speak of two kinds. The first we can call
theoretical. The second is the
actual, living, experiential, practical. The former is very easy to define and resolve. For example, I can say "It's all One!" There - I'm the greatest non-dualist one can ever be. What could be more inclusive than this? But let's try to introspect more closely what we're really doing in this way. We're summoning a thought within the field of consciousness - in this case a verbal thought. Normally, the thoughts that we produce are
mental images of something. For example, the verbal thought 'red' is a mental image of the qualitative experience of redness. Note that the verbal thought in my mind is not colored red. It's not even a color perception, it's a sound.
Side question: how is it not a color perception? What is the difference between the conjunction mental image of the red experience + sound and the conjunction mental image + sight of a red flower, once we have said that perception (sound or flower) is inseparable from thought / mental image.
Yet it exists in resonant relation with the color qualia of red, so when I hear 'red', together with the sound, a remembrance of the color experience is summoned.
Ok, I understand your point here.
Now when we say "water inside and water outside the fish net" we also have a verbal thought, a sound. Hopefully this mental image should exist in resonant relations with actual living experience. If that's not the case, we say that the thought is abstract. It's abstracted away from any real experience, we don't even know how to imagine what it speaks of.
So this is the first thing to be vigilant of. We should be clear that ideally our thoughts should always be images of actual living experience. In certain sense the thoughts (concepts) are like holographic symbols, handles for the much more encompassing constellation of spiritual phenomena that we want to pinpoint.
When Ashvin speaks of BK succumbing to dualism, it is implied that this experiential perspective from which the words can be seen as symbols of living experience, is
not sought. Of course, 'on paper' BK is non-dualist - we have the water inside, water outside and the porous fish net. Very elegant solution. Yet most will agree that the former sentence exists as thought image within the
interior of the fish net, in our personal consciousness. But what if we're not satisfied only with the symbolic arrangement of the words 'water', 'fish net', 'inside', 'outside'? What if we want to seek the living experience from whence such words can be seen as direct testimonies, in the same way the verbal thought 'red' is a testimony for the spiritual experience of redness?
I understand what is meant by dualism then. But now the question becomes:
Are you saying that you will only allow yourself to do philosophy if you can maintain this lived, experiential, non-abstract quality all throughout the thought process in your construct? What is a speculation then, apart from the given name of this forum?
Can one go anywhere free from speculations or postulates of any sorts in philosophy?
Yes, I was aware of BKs being a theory. Not a theorem that can be irrefutably proven within a given world, like a mathematical one can, under a certain set of abstract starting conditions. But a theory, that requires the reader, or listener, to accept to be presented with it, to be sold the theory, to ponder it at the best of their abilities and affinities, and then, bluntly said, decide for themselves whether they what to buy it or not (I realize I might be using thinking in an inappropriate way here, but.. Is there anything else I can do?)
And are you also saying that your approach is freed from this inappropriate commerce, and if so, is there anything that makes people not adopt this approach other than laziness or intellectual weakness?
What I wasn’t aware of is that there was a way to ‘seek the living experience from whence the words 'water', 'fish net', 'inside', 'outside' can be seen as direct testimonies’. And if it’s so that you don’t have the burden to sell it, then I guess my only hope is to ask what the price is and hope I will be able to afford it?
Here things become more problematic and here's the concealed dualism. The intellect (for example in the form of arrangements of verbal thoughts) remains entirely within the bounds of the fish net. It can postulate that it's essence is part of an ocean and the fish net interior is in constant exchange with the outside through the pores but what is the
living experience which can be described in such a way? Here most will speak of the mystical experience or the psychedelic experience but these remain entirely inexplicable phenomena.
Well, to be fair there is a little bit more living experience there than just tripping: meditation, parapsychological experiences, synchronicities, mysticism, religious devotion…
Anyone with sober sense for their inner life will have to admit that whatever these experiences are, ultimately we're left once again with the intellect in the interior, which builds
abstract theories that should explain the inexplicable experience. That's the reason why one can have a lot of experience with psychedelics and still remain a materialist. If the brain can generate
..can the brain generate them..?
any kind of subjective experience why not create also an experience which feels to be boundless ocean of consciousness? Why should the brain be forced to create subjective experiences which only feel to be the size of the head?
This is the actual dualism. Ultimately we have a wall of phenomena and we build intellectual models of the within and the beyond. For some, outside is Heaven and God. For others, it is the water demarcated by porous membrane.
By now if anything, I have come a little closer to what you mean by dualism. Thank you.
The fact remains that the intellect lives strictly within the soul space - whatever its nature is - and even if it theoretically postulates continuity between the interior and exterior, experientially we continue to behold only the inner wall (interface) and speculate about the essence of what's behind it. Unless we get a very real feel for this fact, nothing of what Ashvin speaks of will be grasped.
Federica wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 6:03 pm
To be honest, the question that interests me is to find a philosophical system that is able to
1. explain reality - which to me means, on one side, ideate an explanation that is both encompassing and continuous, and on the other side, more importantly, able to accommodate experimental evidence of all kinds; and
Here we should make another thing perfectly clear. I'm not saying that you intend it in this way but most certainly it is so for the vast majority. When we seek explanations, even without knowing it, we've assumed a specific epistemological stance. We may not even know what epistemology is, we may not know what philosophy is but in general we expect some explanatory
thoughts that should feel satisfactory, they should be resonant with all our perceptions. If they are not resonant we feel cognitive dissonance and we simply say that the explanation doesn't make sense, it doesn't fit reality.
When we seek explanations in this way, we subconsciously assume that knowledge about reality as attained by building a thought image of reality which should be matched against all perceptions. But this leaves one important factor out of the question - what is thinking itself?
I still wonder: what else can we do?
We assume that thinking exists for the sole purpose to create a mental mirror image of reality, then we go on to say that this image-creating activity exists only within the fish net. We create a mental image of the outside but postulate that all thought dissolves as we cross the net. This is the duality - that the intellect can only speculate about the essential nature of the beyond the net but decides that it can only know about it from its own interior part by building mental idols of the ocean.
This is clear.
The question is, can we proceed from the mental idols to living reality, such that we discover deeper spiritual activity of
thought-like nature, which only crystalizes into intellectual thought forms as it crosses the net pores? The most crucial thing to realize
Realize and not postulate? Realize through thinking? Experiencing then?
in this prospect is that thinking is now not merely a mental mirror of reality. The experience of thinking in itself is part of the World Process.
This is supposed to be gained by realization?
This already gives us a very different insight into what explaining/knowing reality means. When we speak of our bodily will, we know there's great difference between having the mental picture of, for example, a gymnastic exercise and actually performing it. The latter is also a kind of experiential knowledge which we can attain to only by setting our will in motion. Then we have real practical influence on reality, our will imprints in the tapestry of perceptions. We need similar understanding also about thinking. The experience of consciously willing our thoughts
The very first step of my ‘philosophical quest’ has been to ‘realize’ how much of my thought process was NOT the effect of volition!
is in itself a kind of experiential knowledge through which we understand how our thinking spiritual activity imprints into the perceptual tapestry. From this point we only need to open up for the possibility
(this seems to be a very dangerous choice of verb in your construct...) that there's such activity also beyond the personal net and that our ordinary intellect is only its crystalized form. Thus it becomes possible for us to seek these higher order World Thoughts, which govern the large scale metamorphosis of the perceptual tapestry. These Thoughts can also be seen as images, as World Imagination but also within them are the World Ideas, the Cosmic meaning which drives their metamorphosis. Only in this way the duality can be reconciled in practice and not only on paper.
Not sure if I will be able to afford it, however I do feel I grasp a little more of this approach by now. Thank you, Cleric K!
To summarize, analytical idealism today postulates the World Mind (Mind At Large), yet human thoughts exist only within the porous net. Even though they are both called 'water', there's practical discontinuity between the human mind and the World Mind. The former can only speculate about the latter through abstract mental images and assume that inexplicable mystical and psychedelic experiences somehow indicate the reality of the World Mind.
This should be contrasted with the possibility that this World Mind has World Thoughts. These are not merely reflective mental images of some reality-in-itself but the impressions of meaningful will, which shapes the flow of being. Our microcosmic (within the net) flow is embedded within the macrocosmic flow. True knowledge consists into expanding consciousness such that we live fully consciously along the gradient of being. Then knowing the Thoughts is no longer a mental copy of some supposed reality beyond but living together with the spiritual forces which shape the flow of reality. These spiritual forces are experienced from the
same side as we experience our "I"-activity, yet we don't contain them, as we feel we do our intellectual thoughts. Instead, we glimpse at the first-person perspective Thoughts within which our human perspective is carried. This resolves the duality in the true sense, since we bridge within ourselves human and Cosmic Thought. And I stress once more that this bridging can't be attained to only on paper. It's an actual inner transformation of how we experience ourselves as spiritual beings. It's as different as being in a dream and dimly speculating about lucidity vs. actually doing the inner gestures which transform our dream experience and turn it into a lucid dream. There's a great difference between being a dream character and having intellectual theory about the waking world and actually stepping into lucidity. The latter is no longer merely theoretical explanation but living experiential knowledge. In the same manner, when we awaken to the place of thinking in our inner landscape, we're on our path towards lucidity, where we awaken within ourselves to a higher order world, with higher order World Thoughts which shape the dreamscape. Each of these World Thoughts can be experienced when we gain lucidity at the particular level of being. These levels of being are all concentric, they look at the inner dream world tapestry from the same side, so to speak. It's like there are different
levels of self which shape the macrocosmic flow of the dreamscape, while at our human level we've become entangled into arrangements of intellectual thoughts, which build ever heavier mental picture of reality, instead of seeking lucidity within the higher order spiritual activity which shapes the dreamscape.
I think anyone would agree that there are no attempts on BK's side to seek such a possibility for awakening to higher order strata of the dreamscape and discover that there is actually living meaningful activity of higher beings, which Think the dream context from the same side as the one from which our "I" thinks thoughts, and our human perspective is only a dim aperture, where we've lost our coherency with the meaningful flow of the dream context and see it as external reality which opposes us and demands explanation by making a coherent mental mirror of it.