Cleric K wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 10:13 am
The criticism is not meant to demean BK's efforts but only to point attention that we need to be vigilant for something. I'm fully aware that most people would say "BK's mission is to simply take the first step - show the inconsistencies of materialism. Others will continue the work further." But the thing is that there's great significance what this first step is. It can easily turn also into a last step (dead end) and that's the kind of
constructive criticism we're offering here.
It's true, in our materialistic age it seems as a big deal when someone says that reality is spiritual in essence, that matter is simply the name we have given to the specific dynamics of a part of the perceptual spectrum. But if we continue our reasoning further we'll quickly realize that this in itself doesn't lead a long way as far as the transformation of our human conduct goes.
First of all, why is BK and others concerned about confronting materialism? Hopefully it isn't just to win an intellectual fight and in the end claim "See, I have truer understanding of reality than you do." Instead, one feels that the materialistic conception actually cripples the human spirit, it limits our spiritual potential. It invites us to live animalistic lives building on the foundations of physical survival and only slightly embellishing it with higher interests like music, poetry, philosophy, etc. This is really what is at stake here. That by having incorrect understanding of what reality is, how it functions and how we contribute to it, we're being severely limited to purely bodily life receiving commentary from futile intellect.
So people who find interest in idealism in most cases are drawn by the possibility that morality and harmonious human conduct can find support through our understanding of the laws of existence. It's a common misconception that by simply admitting the underlying One consciousness, we attain to something beneficial for our Earthly life. As a matter of fact, ever since the advent of quantum field theories, scientists also live in 'oneness'. There are no fundamentally separate particles. It's all ripples in the continuous quantum fields. In this sense we're all one. So what is the practical difference when we call the supposed ground of reality not quantum field but MAL?
It should be clear that simply holding an understanding about the continuous nature of reality
in itself has no moral consequences. The idealist would say "You shall not harm another because we're one consciousness". So what? Does this mean that the materialist is justified to harm another because they share one energy quantum field? What's the big deal of speaking of one consciousness when I don't experience the pain of another? A materialist capable of empathy is just as sensitive for the suffering of others. If we think things through, we'll see clearly that the idea of the undivided grounds of existence doesn't have anything to say about morality. Neither believing in a ground energy field (materialism) forces me to be insensitive to the pain of others, nor belief in one field of consciousness automatically makes me sensitive (in fact, the dissociation theory ensures that others' pains are beyond my local field).
Here things get very mixed up. The idea that oneness somehow implies morality is simply false. True morality results from genuine insight into the nature of reality. Just as we have understanding of the effects of watering a plant with water or gasoline, so we should have living understanding of the way our thoughts, feelings and actions 'water' the Cosmic interference pattern. Then we should have understanding that these ripples that we produce through the one field of reality have certain dynamics, lawfulness. This has always been known as the law of Karma.
The critical thing to realize is that simply showing the inconsistencies of materialism, in itself can never give us the kind of consciousness where we can observe the workings of spiritual dynamics, of Karma. Not only that, but we'll once again be left in the same old state where human souls are ripped apart by conflicting desires which throw them into conflict with themselves and others. Even if tomorrow it was to happen that the whole world would adopt the idea of MAL, nothing would change very much. As a matter of fact, things may get even worse because people will begin to experiment with their psychic abilities (which have been hitherto chained by materialistic conceptions) and this would quickly escalate into the widespread use of black magic.
These are very serious things. Refuting materialism doesn't really lead to deeper insight into reality, let alone to higher moral conduct. Pointing our finger at materialism and blaming it for the misfortunes of humanity simply diverts our attention from the essentials - which are what lives deep in the human soul. Unless we recognize the forces and beings of the spiritual world, which on the surface of our consciousness emerge as desires pulling our yoke hither and tither, materialism actually protects us from greater evil. In certain sense, our ability to wreck havoc is constrained. It will be far more dangerous if certain occult powers are unleashed and fall in the hands of unrestrained desires. No amount of preaching about oneness can lead to harmonious moral conduct, similarly to that the understanding of the one unified quantum field, doesn't stop the ill-intended to utilize them for the creation of more destructive technologies. Even with full awareness of the one field of consciousness, one who doesn't understand the depth of his own soul and the source of desires, wouldn't hesitate to pursuit these desires no matter what. The one field of consciousness will simply be valuable condition for one to spread the tentacles of control over greater domains of reality in much more occult manners.
And this is the reason for the constructive criticism here. All effort should be to deepen our soul life and understand the higher strata of reality, which otherwise blindly pull our yoke and we believe that we fulfill our own desires. Unfortunately it is precisely the late soul mood of BK which forecloses any possibility for such deepening - since the soul depths are seen as inexplicable black box, into which no form of cognition can ever penetrate. This practically puts the lid on evolution and no one should be surprised when in the future people who have left behind materialism long ago, wage occult wars between each other, utilizing the forces of the one field of consciousness through the dark arts.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 6:21 pm
Practically, what Cleric responded is all too real. In addition to this website, there is a discord server dedicated to BK's idealism. The comments there are 90% bashing of materialists, of the sort we might hear on a playground, as if the intellectual label "materialist" defines the very essence of someone's being and we can find all flaws of modern thinking within that label, and about 7% remarks about how we are all "one consciousness". The other 3%, if I am being generous, is devoted to matters of moral significance as they relate to the logical implications of
idea-lism, and mostly that is on side threads started by one other person and myself.
BK wrote a book called "Dreamed Up Reality". We often here about Maya in the nondual discussion. But it seems the possibility that
we are part of that dreamed up Maya, as atomized intellects perceiving and conceptualizing the world, is entirely ignored. It simply isn't taken the least bit seriously. For ex., BK just wrote an article speculating on
"How can you be me?". To preserve the atomistic dissociation theory, and the conviction that the rational intellect is the very apex of cognitive evolution, he speculates the analytic idealist equivalent of the infinite multiverse 'explanation'.
The latter is sometimes used by the atheist-physicalist to 'explain' how consciousness evolved in this universe and how it is so finely-tuned for life and sentience. BK uses it to 'explain' how we can exist in dissociated bubbles of consciousness yet all be the same Consciousness in essence. He posits that each dissociated perspective is constantly time-traveling to occupy the dissociated perspectives of other 'alters' it is interacting with, like a person playing chess against themselves. There is no discussion of more holistic Time-experience, as Cleric discussed in several recent posts, or about the integration of Memory through the ceaseless evolution of ideational activity.
Of course this article got glowing reviews on the server - the riddle of One Consciousness existing alongside 'dissociated alters' had been solved once and for all! The point here is to notice how all of this is done for only one reason - to simply avoid admitting that the rational intellect lives in Maya, its concepts are Maya, and its sense of atomization is Maya. It is done to preserve the theory of dissociated bubbles which, in turn, preserve the intellect at the apex of cognitive evolution, with no living ideas between it and the One Consciousness that it should seek out, pay attention to, and grow into. It is felt that the chess analogy works because Cosmic ideation within and between the human perspective and that of God/MAL is similar to that of two people making decisions while playing chess, i.e. rational intellect with only mineralized concepts to work with.
Ultimately it's not about criticizing BK, because BK is not reading any of this. He won't be reading Cleric's Nth metaphorical and imaginative illustration of Time-consciousness on the other thread, so there's not even a possibility of it being constructive for him. Why should that stop it from being constructive for the rest of us? This cliquish adherence to the public-facing academics is Maya. It is born of the physicalist perspective that what is bigger, weighs more, gets more views, has more followers, etc. is what wins the battles for human body, soul, and spirit. We feel that any truths we have won for ourselves can't possibly match up with those produced from the academic Goliath, no matter how sound our own logic and reasoning. So we must choose a 'side' and remain completely loyal to its doctrines.
But what if the individuals winning ideas through the strength of their own inner experience and reasoning is precisely the way in which failing philosophical-spiritual (or anti-spiritual) paradigms grow into new ones with minimal casualties of war in the process?
Kastrup wrote:More than in previous experiments, I find it extraordinarily difficult this time to recall the details of the experience. Like a regular dream that one forgets seconds after waking up, this time the experience began fading fast, even before I was back to more ordinary states of consciousness. Still, I remember that, at some point in the experiment, I was saying repeatedly in thought: “I am trying, but I cannot understand it... I am trying...” Something was being displayed in the screen of my mind; something extraordinarily profound and complex, but I could not make sense of it. It was very, very hard to grasp, whatever it was.
The gestalt of the experience was that of a “better informed” alter ego of mine trying to convey something to his space-time-bound doppelganger. I had a hard time making sense of “his” message. Yet, very slowly, the entire situation started becoming clearer. At some point, I felt as though my supposed alter ego were metaphorically opening the dome of inner theater above my head – like the moving dome of an astronomical observatory – revealing a profound and unprecedented truth operating busily and inconspicuously just behind what had previously been the boundary of my perceptual universe.
What I then “saw” was indescribable. How inadequate words are. This... “thing” that was revealed... froze me to the spot. It was a pattern. Whatever doubt I might have harbored about whether these experiences truly entailed knowledge input from outside my brain evaporated: there was absolutely no way this thing, this unfathomable miracle of a pattern, could have come out of my primate head.
We only need to take these words of BK, written soon after altered state of consciousness, more seriously. Our current state of conceptual activity is more Maya than we can imagine, but the fact that we can know this, as BK knew it above, is the greatest hope, for it means the gradient between our current state and higher ones is continuous and can be consciously grown into without limit. That is not to say without constraints, because it is actually the structured constraints which
make the growing possible. The poor in spirit are blessed because they are in a position of humility to realize the Maya of their situation and, by that very realization, begin to grow out of it in a living and productive, not merely theoretical and often vindictive, way.
I am still new here, so not sure if this is a pattern, but it seems like indulging a little too long in BK-ish speculations is, believe it or not, a high-risk behavior on this forum, that can stir some serious ire and trigger some impressive deployment of forces.
It’s understandable that this unresolved ‘dispute debt’ with BK, apparently going back to years of private conversations on other servers, colors your attitude. This is a part I am not familiar with and really not interested in digging out. Although I certainly believe the playground description, let’s just drop this part because, as you say, the question is another one here.
So let me to try to unearth and restore what remains on the ground after this almost fully conjunct double layer of steamrolling.
I say ‘almost’ because there seems to be one point, not even a minor one, where you, Cleric and Ashvin (if I am allowed to drop the intials) are actually not in full agreement with each other. I’ll get back to that. Let’s go to the main topics first and do some reparation. I agree steamrolling is more fun, but hey, someone has to do it, if we don’t trust dried-out begonias to make it happen - with all due respect to all members.
You say, the spiritual, non-material nature of reality doesn’t lead in itself to the behavioral transformation we need. So be it, but which philosophy, tradition, or teaching has been so gross as to posit that all reality is non material, then sit down and get ready to watch the world transform? If this is not a BK-specific critique, and as I guess you are not throwing in the garbage in one blow millennia of non-materialistic traditions, which are these philosophies we should walk past now - the modern mystics? Is it them, with BK, the mistaken pioneers whose first step of great significance is bringing humanity from bad materialism to worse?
Bad materialism. Let’s look at it. What I think is missing in your account of the havoc of materialism is the most important reason why materialism is bad. No worries I am not about to resort back to those philosophical mannerisms longing for axiomatic elegance and parsimony. No need. The worst outcome of materialism is clearly the made up attachment to a personal identity. This is what creates the escalation of shortsightedness, egotism, narcissism, and generalized violence we all witness, at a (hopefully) lesser scale in our own thinking patterns and behaviors ,and at full scale out there, all around us!
Materialism gives our ego, or intellect, both the aspiration and the green light to build for itself this beautiful, dignified, authentic, proud identity that grounds so nicely the narrative of why we do what we do in our life. It does it so beautifully that we cannot but fall in such a pure, deep love and connection with the story. The reason why we grow so attached to this edifying narrative that tells us our reason to exist, is because it allows our little materialistic body-brain to feel grand again, despite its materialistic self belief. And we are so relieved when the hard work of putting together this persona starts to take shape, at least in provisional version…. We are crafting the narrative that will now be able to spare us the overwhelming sense of inadequacy that our little body-brain would otherwise succumb to.
The narrative so tells us under which flag we should rally, what side we should support, and what are the matching opinions that we can proudly brandish. It’s full options and we become so identified with it, so attached to this meaningful, heartwarming, face-saving narrative, that before we know it, we also find ourselves ready to think and do whatever it takes, ready to go to the most extreme lengths, for the only real sake of keeping us integral. We have to stay true to it, honor it, live up to it. What is more vital than having an inspiring purpose for our life that comes in so handy to answer with some gravity any questions about what our life is all about?
Materialism doesn't limit us to ‘animalistic life plus intellect embellishments from art and philosophy’. In fact, the ‘embellishments’ are way more pernicious than that. Futile intellect gives our material little self permission to go to whatever lengths of manipulation and violence, provided that it is for the sake of the ‘higher ideals’ we have sealed in the narrative. Which more often than not is just a suit we picked up and jumped in, either because it was given to us and we had no better initiative, or because we did go shopping and found it was looking quite good on us. In both cases we have now come to think the suit fits us perfectly. We now love the suit, we are one with the suit, and by this same token, ready to judge, demean, ridicule, insult and of course also invade, attack and eliminate whatever or whomever does not cooperate with our narrative. Of course desires are an additional problem with materialism, but this attachment to identity is worse.
Now to the second question you raise, morality. You bring it in as a primal, legitimate quest from people curious about idealism and then you argue that a monist understanding of reality cannot grant it.
I actually doubt that people are drawn to idealism in search of morality. That was certainly not my reason. If the one thing people are seeking is ‘morality’ first, if that is where one wants to start, well why not go with the fundamentalists? They definitely put morality number one! Everything else derives from it. How can we say that their morality is not appropriate if that’s our blank starting point? (and by the way, sadly, that’s exactly how their followers start following them).
Who in their right mind would search for “rules of conduct” first and then a philosophy that supports them? Rules for the conduct of what? Only after understanding what it is that requires conduct, and how it works, only after understanding ‘the laws of existence’ can we lay out, if necessary, the rules to conduct it.
And it is true that the not-so-recent-anymore discoveries in the foundations of physics have not had any major social impact. They haven’t been integrated, not even by the scientific community. Instead they are being kept aside, in a small abstract bubble where a small nerdy community is allowed to play around with them and even publish, while everyone else anyway is still fine with only acknowledging the good old Newtonian framework, because after all, it is still so incredibly handy in everyday life. The scientific community is quite skilled at keeping things nice and separate and keep going as if nothing had happened. I mean look at the treatment a guy like Rupert Sheldrake is given even today, after a life of experimentally indisputable evidence production. Materialistic momentum can easily take care of things like that, surely for a few more years, or decades…
Next, your point that one consciousness does not have moral consequences. Yes, simply proclaiming that consciousness is one, or bashing materialism will not redeem our societies from its current dysfunctional state. But here's the problem: you seem to imply that there’s only two ways societies can benefit from harmonious and beneficial earthly life. Either the moral rules (you shall not harm another) should come from shared perception (if I don’t experience the pain of another why should I not harm them) or they should simply be imposed by fear, in other words, by the law of Karma. Once we understand how our thoughts, feelings and actions 'water' the Cosmic interference pattern, you say, and that the ripples that we produce through the one field of reality have certain dynamics, then we stick to (Karma dictated) morality. So it's basically the fear of backlash.
Let’s say we catch ourselves secretly wishing our enemies failure and misfortune. First we don’t act on the wish, of course not, otherway Karma would strike, but then because the thought is already out there and we can’t take it back, what do we do, we bash ourselves and… what else? Do we rush to thinking school so we learn how to dig new thinking patterns, set thinking rails in them, always choose the right thoughts and then hook them up on the proper rails? Is it by training that way that thoughts can only just turn out fully right? What does freedom mean under the law of Karma?
I find it difficult to accept that harmonious behavior should come either from fear or from shared pain (which actually resorts to fear as well). There should be a third way.
What if the experiential intuition of one consciousness is brought further into an understanding of reality that enables us to disconnect our happiness from desires, so as to cut the pull of addiction and exploitation? Then we could enjoy the same exact experiences we were used to chasing as we are presented with them, but this time in a free, disinterested way.
And what if we could disconnect our sense of self from visceral attachment to opinions, factions, parties, flags, sides, so as to cut the pull of aggression and violence? Then we could engage in healthy interactions, and discuss the same exact topics we were used to strenuously identifying with, but this time without feeling that our honor, our pride and our whole identity is at stake?
Wouldn’t that be a healthier foundation for a society where we could, as the Saint said, “Love and do what you want” and where virtuous behaviors would come naturally from an embodied understanding of one consciousness, rather than be forced upon us by an overhanging karmic rule?