Conformal Cyclic Meditation

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, maybe this example is now worn out to the point where it won't find its right-sounding linguistic form for a little while. I am the one to blame, I've been too much focused on language. Beyond vocabulary, the parallel with the fingers typing on a computer makes me wonder about one thing. Fingers are not necessary, but only practical for using the computer interface. I could give the machine inputs in various alternative ways. On the contrary, in VR it’s intentional and crucial that there’s no alternative. The fingers are instrumental to the experience as such, not as the interchangeable tools they are for our computers, that live in relative harmony with the surrounding spectrum. Our computers fairly negotiate their place within the perceptual spectrum. VR doesn’t negotiate anything, it seeks to exterminate its surroundings. It’s the seclusion I referred to before, in which a schizophrenic threshold is passed (pathological as you called it), beyond which we become both abducted and the abductor. This inevitably sends me back to the idea of hunching on oneself, implosion, and dead end. Maybe I would spare this question for the dead end post: are these differences irrelevant in all respects?

In any case, even amidst these questions, the exchange is helping me look for continuity more than for differentiation, in the same line as Cleric's post on Levin. Thanks for the wealth of new supporting illustrations in this post. And I'm impressed by the sacrifice you're making and the composure it demonstrates. I can only hope I will attain some similar capability someday.

Federica,

Allow me to ask a few brief questions on this, and I understand if you would rather not continue much further on this topic. I sort of like it because VR is a new phenomena and therefore it forces us to test our principled understanding of spiritual evolution against a relatively unfamiliar manifestation of that evolution. Anyone can hold on to a bunch of principles, and many people do, but they only develop strength within us when they are tested.

1) Can you imagine a scenario in which VR technology develops further so that we can also feed it all necessary inputs in many different ways, perhaps by voice, without any hand controllers? Just as the computer started as some humongous set of clunky servers which took up an entire room and now nearly every person has one in their pocket or on their wrist, could a similar progression happen for VR?
(also, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have not yet tried VR?)

2) What is your feeling on the inner disposition argument I made previously, in relation to the mindset we must adopt to feel/think that there are some phenomena which, of themselves, pass a 'schizophrenic threshold'? What is the principle reason we could not adopt this same line of reasoning to say other phenomena have passed such thresholds, including other souls, who we feel/think are no longer 'negotiating their place within the perceptual spectrum'?

I will respond to the other part of the post separately.

Ashvin,

Sure, it's mainly that I'm wary of becoming tedious. Otherwise I would have no issue going on. My answers:

1) Absolutely, and that’s an example (steering the flow through voice rather than hand control) of how the technology will probably result in, and merge with, transhumanism. I never thought it was static. But what’s noticeable is, the experience it constitutes at this moment in time is constrained in the particular way I described - no alternatives. By contrast, at this same particular moment in time, I can continually choose how I interact with my computer. I have alternative constraints that mix in the sensorial spectrum in various ways. In VR, it’s crucial that there’s no such choice. It’s reductive, exclusive, seclusive.

The bold is what I was getting at. Do you discern the flaw in reasoning to conclusions about the nature of any phenomenal experience from how it manifests to us at any particular moment in time? We are dealing with the basic PoF principles here.

If I am given a rosebud today, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall tomorrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see today's state change continuously into tomorrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages. The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance cross-section of an object which is in a continual process of development.

If the argument you are making is dependent on these momentary appearances - in this case, the argument that the VR experience seeks to 'exterminate our surroundings' by uniquely constraining our activity beyond the 'schizophrenic threshold' - then it can't possibly be valid. If we end up with VR technology which manages to integrate with our perceptual environment, and you can continually choose how to interact with the VR experience, then the argument is defeated. So what does that tell us about the underlying line of reasoning, and the conclusions which the argument is reaching right now?

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have not yet tried VR?" It’s correct. I haven’t tried VR yet, but not because I’m strenuously resisting it. Last year it was even a question of possibly having it incorporated in my training/coaching work. A startup proposed that to me. In the end, for other reasons, it hasn’t happened, but I was open to exploring the possibility, because, even with my antipathy, I appreciate innovative pursuits and, also, I know that sooner or later it will happen in the industry. It is happening.

This raises another issue which I touched on briefly before. If it is happening and permeating the culture across many domains, should we have any sense of responsibility for permeating it with our own living understanding and thereby providing some counter-balance to the abstract, mechanistic, transhumanist, etc. approach to it which is prevalent and which will be spreading? What would happen to humanity as a whole if spiritually conscious people decided to generally avoid materialistic technologies whenever they could and simply work on their own development? This question is especially relevant when we begin to discern, in a living way, that our spiritual consciousness is only possible because other streams of development have lagged behind and formed the natural and cultural environments in which we live and operate, and that our spiritual consciousness only expands to the highest spheres when we become permeated with that sense of sacrificial responsibility. I am reminded of a passage here.

The thrusting down of certain beings accompanied the [coming in of] the Son Principle; there is no higher development without other [development] being thrust down into the depths. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were thrust down in this way. Whoever develops himself upwards, takes upon himself a tremendous responsibility, that is the great tragedy; the corollary of every saint is that a great number of beings are thrust down. There would be no development if this kind of thrusting down did not take place. A man must continually thrust others down, as he develops himself upwards. That is why all development which takes place out of self-interest is evil and reprehensible; it is only justifiable if done for the development of other beings. Only he who would raise up those who have been thrust down is fit for development.

2) Are we back to splitting vocabulary then? It’s fine for me, especially if we can make a  bonfire with all the splits Not sure what could be burned, but I got from your latest graph that fire is the most spiritualized element of the physical-mineral spectrum, whatever that might foreshadow that air cannot, in terms of scary upcoming technological evolutions.
So, to answer your question, by no means am I adopting a mindset in which phenomena do things by themselves! Which should be clear when I say that in VR we become both abducted, and the abductor. Previously I have worded that in various ways, for example by saying that - levels of spiritualization being supposed equal - what makes a difference is how and

how much [our spiritual activity] overlaps across levels of causality. And I feel it has big significance, at least while we have an alive physical body, that we make our thinking expansion proceed or not in such a way that it will overlap and press across levels of causality, down to the sensory, and make us descend or not descend in those experiences.

Also, if we are to play this game, your vocabulary seems to suggest that, in the unitary system that holds the causal levels together, you are writing off one direction in the two-way causal flow, when you state:

in VR the activity is not more 'spiritualized' because the body parts or instruments are different, but the instruments are (slightly) different and differently utilized because the activity is more spiritualized

The last part is fair, and elsewhere I have mentioned several times that there is a constant feed back between the spiritual activity and the forms which it impresses and utilizes for further clarification and expansion of activity. Nevertheless it is more helpful to always look for causes of physical manifestations in spiritual activity when we investigate phenomena, because even what we call the forms of the 'physical world' or 'cultural world', which serves as resistance-constraints to our spiritual activity, is the expression of higher-order spiritual activity in which ours is nested.

I am not quite following the part about the difference being in how much our activity is overlapping across levels of causality. In your view, is this overlapping a function of the technology being used or the individuality using the technology? In other words, could an individual using VR still manage to consciously engage their activity across all levels of causality?

This being said, I feel positively about the inner disposition of keeping in mind the usefulness of this exchange for our personal spiritual development. But how is this different from getting to grips with the phenomenon, provided that one strives for first person understanding? What am I missing in the inner disposition you suggest?

What I am asking is as follows. What would the world look like if people began to not only draw universal conclusions about certain phenomena on the physical plane based on their momentary manifestations in time, but to also allow those thoughts to then permeate their feeling and will? I'm looking at this question as a matter of principle, quite independent of what particular phenomena we are speaking of. What would happen, for ex., if certain groups of people, in their manifestations on the physical plane, were thought to have crossed a threshold of materialistic thinking, after which they have detached themselves from the normal sensory-conceptual spectrum from which spiritual development is possible? This is not to be taken as a suggestion that we need to sacrifice first-person understanding of phenomena for some abstract sense of being 'fair' to the phenomena or people using the technology, but rather that our inner disposition towards phenomena is intimately bound up with our very capacity for understanding the phenomena in a living way.

[Federica]

Ashvin,

I have some extra work coming up, and I haven’t written a complete reply to the post just above this one. I still would like to draft a few replying thoughts.


Are you saying that the phenomenon-VR becomes known to us as a percept, in the same way a mental or a visual picture of a rosebud does? Do we know materialism as a percept? What about humanity, or the Cosmos? I wouldn’t agree that VR is a phenomenal experience. We can obviously have a phenomenal experience of VR, but is it solely that limited first-person experiential slice of the VR phenomenon you intend to speak of, when you express your views about it in general form? It makes me think of one of your essay graphs, illustrating an overarching idea spanning through centuries of human evolution. You certainly don’t mean we can encompass ideas of that kind uniquely as percepts? It seems like you are equating concepts with ideas of any magnitude.


In the specific example of VR and computers, I am comparing two pictures, VR nowadays, and computers nowadays, noticing how they operate differently, knowing that this doesn’t pre-determine their future evolution in univocal terms (there's a 'probably' in my text).
Moreover, you are distorting in a less than fair way my “argument”. I certainly didn't try to show that VR “seeks to exterminate our surroundings”. I referred to “its surroundings”. In context, it's clear that I mean “it seeks to supplement and replace the natural perceptual spectrum.” It is a matter of fact, an observation. It’s what VR is doing.
Even assuming that we can speak of a complex idea/phenomenon such as VR in the same terms as we refer to the percept/concept of a rosebud, I have the right to describe my percept of a rosebud today, and to compare it to that of a tulip - knowing that they don’t exhaust what the rosebud or the tulip are - ans similarly I can describe an observation of VR today and compare it with other observations, knowing that this does not exhaust what VR is, or its nature.

So what does that tell us about the underlying line of reasoning, and the conclusions which the argument is reaching right now?

Yes, I know your are saying that a blind spot is revealed. But I would like to ask you, what phenomenal experience do you have of even a somewhat circumscribed ‘thing’ like Levin’s model? How did you develop your understanding of it?


And even more strikingly, if you argue that I am guilty of dead, third-person thinking because I say that “the technology will probably result in, and merge with, transhumanism” then please tell me why a statement like this one for example, should not incur the same exact vice:

The way modern materialistic thinking culture is looking now, not enough living thinking will develop to make things better before they get a lot worse.

Is this not an argument that you make “dependent on momentary appearances”?
Are you not drawing conclusions from how it looks "now"...? What do we make of the basic PoF principles here?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I have some extra work coming up, and I haven’t written a complete reply to the post just above this one. I still would like to draft a few replying thoughts.


Are you saying that the phenomenon-VR becomes known to us as a percept, in the same way a mental or a visual picture of a rosebud does? Do we know materialism as a percept? What about humanity, or the Cosmos? I wouldn’t agree that VR is a phenomenal experience. We can obviously have a phenomenal experience of VR, but is it solely that limited first-person experiential slice of the VR phenomenon you intend to speak of, when you express your views about it in general form? It makes me think of one of your essay graphs, illustrating an overarching idea spanning through centuries of human evolution. You certainly don’t mean we can encompass ideas of that kind uniquely as percepts? It seems like you are equating concepts with ideas of any magnitude.

Yes and this is a key realization for the deepening of our spiritual consciousness. Of course we aren't eradicating all differentiation between percepts-concepts as we inquire into them scientifically, but for purposes of a principled discussion about their general role in spiritual evolution, we should treat all phenomenal manifestations in this way. A general rule is that anything we can think about is a percept-concept. This includes our inner forms of experiences (desires, emotions, thoughts, habits, character, etc.), our modes of activity, our worldviews, our collective identifications, national modes of organization, our cultural institutions and technologies, and our entire sense of 'me' which is woven out of the previous ones. This isn't any arbitrary rule. Anything which doesn't immediately present to us in the nature of willing-feeling-thinking, as holistic intuitive intents, is veiling that spiritual activity which impresses the forms as it becomes entangled with our personalized intellectual cognition. Anything which appears situated in the abstract dimensions of space and unfolding from frame to frame in linear time is veiled by our cognition. These decohered forms manifesting through what we experience as the convolutions of cosmos, nature, individuals, and culture dimly reflect to us the nested vertical Time-layers of rhythmic spiritual activity.

In the specific example of VR and computers, I am comparing two pictures, VR nowadays, and computers nowadays, noticing how they operate differently, knowing that this doesn’t pre-determine their future evolution in univocal terms (there's a 'probably' in my text).
Moreover, you are distorting in a less than fair way my “argument”. I certainly didn't try to show that VR “seeks to exterminate our surroundings”. I referred to “its surroundings”. In context, it's clear that I mean “it seeks to supplement and replace the natural perceptual spectrum.” It is a matter of fact, an observation. It’s what VR is doing.
Even assuming that we can speak of a complex idea/phenomenon such as VR in the same terms as we refer to the percept/concept of a rosebud, I have the right to describe my percept of a rosebud today, and to compare it to that of a tulip - knowing that they don’t exhaust what the rosebud or the tulip are - ans similarly I can describe an observation of VR today and compare it with other observations, knowing that this does not exhaust what VR is, or its nature.

Notice how I stated above that it is our cognition which veils the spiritual activity underlying phenomenal manifestations. We need to be clear that the phenomena themselves are not tricking us in Kantian fashion, but only when the underlying activity becomes entangled with our personal egoic nature do they appear in decohered forms. This is a bedrock principle of spiritual science.

So when you say "it's what VR is doing", or "it [VR] seeks" to do something, what is being referred to? The phenomenon itself or the phenomenon in its entanglement with individual cognitive agents?

I suppose you have the right to do anything, but it's not the basis of a logical argument. This discussion was never framed as one in which I challenged your isolated observations of the VR experience. And your assertions were far from being mere observations about that experience compared with observations of other experiences. That was your line of reasoning to reach conclusions such as:

But using VR or drugs is cheating. We try to manipulate thinking through perception.

In this sense, VR is both a capitulation and a glorification of duality.

Because I don’t think there’s anything additional to explore in VR either. How could there be, it’s a restricted kingdom.

I don’t believe there is anyone to rescue in the belly of VR. We are alone there.

What I’m saying is, it’s completely unnecessary, and at the very least a time waster, to engage in VR as a practice, hoping to extract spiritual lessons from regular use.

I'm only quoting these to remind what I have been challenging throughout, which is the pronouncements on the nature of VR-phenomenon and it's complete inability to offer anything of pedagogical value to our living thinking, present or future.

So what does that tell us about the underlying line of reasoning, and the conclusions which the argument is reaching right now?

Yes, I know your are saying that a blind spot is revealed. But I would like to ask you, what phenomenal experience do you have of even a somewhat circumscribed ‘thing’ like Levin’s model? How did you develop your understanding of it?


And even more strikingly, if you argue that I am guilty of dead, third-person thinking because I say that “the technology will probably result in, and merge with, transhumanism” then please tell me why a statement like this one for example, should not incur the same exact vice:

The way modern materialistic thinking culture is looking now, not enough living thinking will develop to make things better before they get a lot worse.

Is this not an argument that you make “dependent on momentary appearances”?
Are you not drawing conclusions from how it looks "now"...? What do we make of the basic PoF principles here?

I don't think there's anything flawed with observing the bold, and in fact I pretty much agree with it, to the best of my predictive capacities at present (which I should add are informed by spiritual scientific research from others). Likewise what you quoted from me is a probability assessment of spiritual evolutionary outcomes in the near-term. These are not principled conclusions on the nature of natural or cultural phenomena or what our living spiritual consciousness can potentially mine from them.

As for Levin's model, I'm not exactly sure what the question is. My understanding of it as an analogy for the depth structure of spiritual activity, with its sevenfold lawfulness, was built by following Cleric's illustrated reasoning, helped by my previous understanding of spiritual science and experience of the depth structure of my own spiritual activity, as it convolutes within the layers of soul forces, life forces, and physical forces.

[Cleric K]

Actually, one would break the concentration mainly because things become way too real, scarily real. Then one feels the need to look back and feel the firm support of intellectual hammering, saying “Oh, thank God, I’m still here”.

Yes! I definitely felt that fear. A fear of maybe not being able to come back. And I immediately looked back… (I don't rememeber at which occasion. I remember the fear, I don't remember the exact occasion).

Don't worry, Federica. Every experience makes us more courageous. And you already know how this fear can be overcome. It is by nourishing this inner communion with the beings that love you and keep sublime ideas for your life's unfolding. It is in their embrace that you'll be swaddled. "They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." You are in their embrace even know. It's only that you're that grown up girl that has come to count on herself. And this is a great achievement that each one of us must surmount. Yet there are always powers greater than our steering perspective, which support our whole living context. When we gradually develop this unconditional trust and love for these luminous intelligences, then we lose ourselves only to find ourselves again.

[Federica]

Actually, one would break the concentration mainly because things become way too real, scarily real. Then one feels the need to look back and feel the firm support of intellectual hammering, saying “Oh, thank God, I’m still here”.

Yes! I definitely felt that fear. A fear of maybe not being able to come back. And I immediately looked back… (I don't rememeber at which occasion. I remember the fear, I don't remember the exact occasion).

Don't worry, Federica. Every experience makes us more courageous. And you already know how this fear can be overcome. It is by nourishing this inner communion with the beings that love you and keep sublime ideas for your life's unfolding. It is in their embrace that you'll be swaddled. "They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." You are in their embrace even know. It's only that you're that grown up girl that has come to count on herself. And this is a great achievement that each one of us must surmount. Yet there are always powers greater than our steering perspective, which support our whole living context. When we gradually develop this unconditional trust and love for these luminous intelligences, then we lose ourselves only to find ourselves again.

Thank you so much, Cleric, for these undreamt-of, encouraging, and far more than encouraging words!

[Federica]

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have not yet tried VR?" It’s correct. I haven’t tried VR yet, but not because I’m strenuously resisting it. Last year it was even a question of possibly having it incorporated in my training/coaching work. A startup proposed that to me. In the end, for other reasons, it hasn’t happened, but I was open to exploring the possibility, because, even with my antipathy, I appreciate innovative pursuits and, also, I know that sooner or later it will happen in the industry. It is happening.

This raises another issue which I touched on briefly before. If it is happening and permeating the culture across many domains, should we have any sense of responsibility for permeating it with our own living understanding and thereby providing some counter-balance to the abstract, mechanistic, transhumanist, etc. approach to it which is prevalent and which will be spreading? What would happen to humanity as a whole if spiritually conscious people decided to generally avoid materialistic technologies whenever they could and simply work on their own development? This question is especially relevant when we begin to discern, in a living way, that our spiritual consciousness is only possible because other streams of development have lagged behind and formed the natural and cultural environments in which we live and operate, and that our spiritual consciousness only expands to the highest spheres when we become permeated with that sense of sacrificial responsibility. I am reminded of a passage here.

The thrusting down of certain beings accompanied the [coming in of] the Son Principle; there is no higher development without other [development] being thrust down into the depths. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were thrust down in this way. Whoever develops himself upwards, takes upon himself a tremendous responsibility, that is the great tragedy; the corollary of every saint is that a great number of beings are thrust down. There would be no development if this kind of thrusting down did not take place. A man must continually thrust others down, as he develops himself upwards. That is why all development which takes place out of self-interest is evil and reprehensible; it is only justifiable if done for the development of other beings. Only he who would raise up those who have been thrust down is fit for development.

Ashvin,

In this post I will only reply to the one point selected above. I don't intend to leave the rest behind, but I have not enough time right now, in proportion to how fast I can go, plus I suspect this moral question is dense enough to be usefully considered separately from the other aspects.


In essence, I still don't get why permeating phenomena with our own living understanding requires descending into them, and practicing them. As I argued before, I think it's completely possible to permeate a phenomenon with living understanding without becoming entangled with it, without moving our will through it, as Cleric (and you!) did with Levin’s model for example.
(And you: That’s by the way the sense of my previous question about your understanding of that model. You didn't 'descend' in it, did you? You have grasped the model livingly, still not based on a first-person experiential slice of the phenomenon. Nonetheless, you have stated that such limited first-person experience is the only thing you want to rely on, when speaking of phenomena).


As you said elsewhere, “everything we think, perceive and do matters”, so why should it not be possible to make a positive difference for the elevation of our group-soul, or however it’s appropriate to call it, and for the whole, by developing our understanding through thinking, and by practicing inner sacrifice? Living thinking doesn't necessarily mean that one has to live the experience perceptually, does it?


As you said elsewhere, “proactive individual awakening to intuitive spiritual activity also translates into a broader awakening at the higher nested scales of community, nation, 'race', gender, species” so why would that way be less responsible, or irresponsible, compared to ‘descending’? Why would it not counterbalance the mechanistic, abstract, evil effects just as well, or better? Moreover does it imply that monks, ascetics, and other spiritually oriented people who choose to express their spirituality otherwise than by descending in cultural and social phenomena are morally deplorable, or irresponsible?


More generally, where do you put the moral threshold? How much evil are you ready to take in for the sake of counterbalancing cultural phenomena from within them? I understand that VR doesn’t look like much, but what cultural/social phenomena are evil enough that none is supposed to descend there for purification purposes - No cultural phenomenon is too bad? You stated “It should also be clear that, although no particular individual must start using VR to extract spiritual value from it, some individuals must.” Is this principle just as clear and applicable to any other cultural-social phenomena of our time?

If no, where do you put the moral threshold?
If yes (as I think it should be in your line of reasoning) what is the moral rationale behind it? Can moral intuition send some spiritually conscious individuals in the acted, living, perceptual experience of any phenomena?

[AshvinP]

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have not yet tried VR?" It’s correct. I haven’t tried VR yet, but not because I’m strenuously resisting it. Last year it was even a question of possibly having it incorporated in my training/coaching work. A startup proposed that to me. In the end, for other reasons, it hasn’t happened, but I was open to exploring the possibility, because, even with my antipathy, I appreciate innovative pursuits and, also, I know that sooner or later it will happen in the industry. It is happening.

This raises another issue which I touched on briefly before. If it is happening and permeating the culture across many domains, should we have any sense of responsibility for permeating it with our own living understanding and thereby providing some counter-balance to the abstract, mechanistic, transhumanist, etc. approach to it which is prevalent and which will be spreading? What would happen to humanity as a whole if spiritually conscious people decided to generally avoid materialistic technologies whenever they could and simply work on their own development? This question is especially relevant when we begin to discern, in a living way, that our spiritual consciousness is only possible because other streams of development have lagged behind and formed the natural and cultural environments in which we live and operate, and that our spiritual consciousness only expands to the highest spheres when we become permeated with that sense of sacrificial responsibility. I am reminded of a passage here.

The thrusting down of certain beings accompanied the [coming in of] the Son Principle; there is no higher development without other [development] being thrust down into the depths. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were thrust down in this way. Whoever develops himself upwards, takes upon himself a tremendous responsibility, that is the great tragedy; the corollary of every saint is that a great number of beings are thrust down. There would be no development if this kind of thrusting down did not take place. A man must continually thrust others down, as he develops himself upwards. That is why all development which takes place out of self-interest is evil and reprehensible; it is only justifiable if done for the development of other beings. Only he who would raise up those who have been thrust down is fit for development.

Ashvin,

In this post I will only reply to the one point selected above. I don't intend to leave the rest behind, but I have not enough time right now, in proportion to how fast I can go, plus I suspect this moral question is dense enough to be usefully considered separately from the other aspects.


In essence, I still don't get why permeating phenomena with our own living understanding requires descending into them, and practicing them. As I argued before, I think it's completely possible to permeate a phenomenon with living understanding without becoming entangled with it, without moving our will through it, as Cleric (and you!) did with Levin’s model for example.
(And you: That’s by the way the sense of my previous question about your understanding of that model. You didn't 'descend' in it, did you? You have grasped the model livingly, still not based on a first-person experiential slice of the phenomenon. Nonetheless, you have stated that such limited first-person experience is the only thing you want to rely on, when speaking of phenomena).


As you said elsewhere, “everything we think, perceive and do matters”, so why should it not be possible to make a positive difference for the elevation of our group-soul, or however it’s appropriate to call it, and for the whole, by developing our understanding through thinking, and by practicing inner sacrifice? Living thinking doesn't necessarily mean that one has to live the experience perceptually, does it?


As you said elsewhere, “proactive individual awakening to intuitive spiritual activity also translates into a broader awakening at the higher nested scales of community, nation, 'race', gender, species” so why would that way be less responsible, or irresponsible, compared to ‘descending’? Why would it not counterbalance the mechanistic, abstract, evil effects just as well, or better? Moreover does it imply that monks, ascetics, and other spiritually oriented people who choose to express their spirituality otherwise than by descending in cultural and social phenomena are morally deplorable, or irresponsible?


More generally, where do you put the moral threshold? How much evil are you ready to take in for the sake of counterbalancing cultural phenomena from within them? I understand that VR doesn’t look like much, but what cultural/social phenomena are evil enough that none is supposed to descend there for purification purposes - No cultural phenomenon is too bad? You stated “It should also be clear that, although no particular individual must start using VR to extract spiritual value from it, some individuals must.” Is this principle just as clear and applicable to any other cultural-social phenomena of our time?

If no, where do you put the moral threshold?
If yes (as I think it should be in your line of reasoning) what is the moral rationale behind it? Can moral intuition send some spiritually conscious individuals in the acted, living, perceptual experience of any phenomena?

Federica,

Let's look at the classic illusion Cleric presented recently.





I think we agree the white triangle phenomenon is not by itself evil, deceptive, etc. It is, however, pulling our thinking in a direction which perceives something as 'being there' when it is actually not there. Yet, when we simply look at it, we are not 'descending into evil' or anything similar. Such an illusion only becomes deceptive or evil when we are unaware that the white triangle is an illusion - that it's actually not there - and therefore we idolize it. In this case, it would be if we simply assume there is a white triangle drawn over the upside down triangle and the black circles, and therefore all the shapes exist equally from the activity of being drawn. In reality, the white triangle exists by virtue of the 'not drawing' for the drawn shapes. In the sense of the mantra I shared on the other thread, we confuse what 'flees from existence as nothing' for existence and reality itself. 

On the other hand, if we are aware that this white triangle emerges because our intellectual cognition is tricked by the organization of liminal spaces in the image - by what is not drawn - then we can start investigating what significance such a trick carries and how it can be useful as an analogy for our inner life of spiritual activity. Cleric used it as a visual analogy for how inner desires can be 'seen' as real, concrete forces which steer our soul-life when we differentiate from them, by actively denying ourselves a simple indulgence we would otherwise take up without any thought. It is an analogy because the inner life is not a spatial phenomenon, so we don't actually perceive some shape which represents our desires. When we differentiate from those desires, it's more like we sense the concrete intuition of how the temporal rhythm of our spiritual activity is being overly attracted by those desires towards the Earthly elemental spectrum, at the expense of harmony with the Cosmic rhythms which serve our high ideals. 

Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar? Is there not something missing if Cleric just mentioned the illusion, described it with words, but never presented the actual image for us to visualize? Now I am sure an objection will immediately arise that this white triangle phenomenon is surely not comparable to the complexities of the VR-phenomenon. So we could come closer to the latter with the computer technology of our phone, laptop, desktop, etc. After all, at its root, VR is computer technology. It reflects a further stage of human thinking mastery over the mineral forces. Can we imagine gaining a living understanding of these computer technologies if we never interfaced with them, perhaps if we lived in the jungle all our lives, but have only heard and read about 'computers' as detached abstract concepts? 

Just to reiterate, the point is not that every single person needs to penetrate VR technology with living understanding for their spiritual growth or that of humanity, but that we are better off when some people do, given that this technology exists and is spreading. Perhaps we will be directly involved in that process or perhaps not. When it comes to Levin's models as an analogy for the lawful configuration spaces of spiritual activity, I am not sure how it can be said we didn't 'move our will' through it. I would say Cleric did most of all to construct the analogy, and we did as well to watch the videos, look at the illustrations, read the words, and really try to inhabit the perspective from which the analogical reasoning was being issued. Of course that doesn't mean we need to become Levin himself and adopt his motives, intentions, ideals, etc. for pursuing the models. We are never required to do any such things for living understanding, and in fact we can't attain the latter without pure intentions and high ideals.

Let's also consider this passage from Steiner:

Consciousness arises when the astral body and ego destroy the physical and etheric bodies during the day. When the astral body and ego become aware of their physical surroundings it's as if the nerves were being torn to pieces.

Corporeal tiredness arises from the destructive, deadly effect of the astral body and ego on the etheric and physical bodies. The streaming of the physical world into man's organism has a poisonous, destructive effect.

At night the ego and astral body take in the forces of the spiritual world and stream them into the physical and etheric bodies. They surround the physical body with pictures that have a healing effect on it. The first thing a man sees when the spiritual world opens before him for the first time is his physical body. This picture of the physical body has a healing effect on him. Likewise the astral body and ego work upon the rest of man in a strengthening, healing way at night through true pictures out of the spiritual world. They stream into the ripped nerve strands and destroyed organism. Thereby forces from the spiritual world stream in at night that eliminate tiredness from the body.

The reason I mentioned before how we gain normal self-consciousness by killing the living spiritual impulses from our nerve-sensory organization, is to really drive home how we are all immersed in what can be properly called 'spiritually destructive' activity, all the time, with our waking consciousness. Materialistic technologies, such as the computers we are using now, are Ahrimanic in this sense, through and through. This will sound like some abstract label until we discern that 'Ahrimanic' is pointing to a living force which we are always utilizing to exist on the physical plane with self-consciousness. Is this existence evil by itself? It is only when we either remain ignorant of this process, like in the classic illusion, or we use our knowledge of this process for purely selfish aims, that we can call the interaction between the moral agent and the phenomenon, evil. Then we are utilizing our technology to remain mired in the past of already accomplished intents, which are convenient and comfortable and pleasurable, but do not serve to bring about a healthy future for our Cosmic organism. If we instead interface with the technology to draw in future impulses which help realize the full potential of that Cosmic organism, i.e. out of Love, then we can't call this a descent into evil. Then it is a sacrificial descent for purposes of a higher ascent. The moral threshold resides within the individual agency and his intentions-ideals, not within the phenomena themselves. 

To a certain extent, the discernment of the living forces which permeate our normal consciousness is only possible once we orient our "I"-consciousness from the inner Heliocentric perspective and differentiate from those forces. Until then, we should at least reduce the obstacles to attaining such an orientation. A major obstacle for the modern intellect is reaching premature conclusions, by ceasing the logical reasoning when one feels satisfied that an understanding of phenomena and their deeper nature has already been reached. We should really take seriously how immersed in Maya we are, how many gaps in our attentive awareness there are from constant thought-distractions, how much meaningful spiritual activity is taking place from within the 'dark' liminal spaces we are cycling through at night when we sleep and all throughout the day as well. As Socrates foretold for the modern physical consciousness, which really began growing in his time, "the only true Wisdom is in knowing you know nothing". This doesn't mean we should stop inquiring into phenomena, but the exact opposite. We should continue our inquiries while resisting the temptation to separate out our own spiritual activity and therefore our own complicity in and responsibility for the phenomena of culture and nature.

[Federica]

This raises another issue which I touched on briefly before. If it is happening and permeating the culture across many domains, should we have any sense of responsibility for permeating it with our own living understanding and thereby providing some counter-balance to the abstract, mechanistic, transhumanist, etc. approach to it which is prevalent and which will be spreading? What would happen to humanity as a whole if spiritually conscious people decided to generally avoid materialistic technologies whenever they could and simply work on their own development? This question is especially relevant when we begin to discern, in a living way, that our spiritual consciousness is only possible because other streams of development have lagged behind and formed the natural and cultural environments in which we live and operate, and that our spiritual consciousness only expands to the highest spheres when we become permeated with that sense of sacrificial responsibility. I am reminded of a passage here.

Ashvin,

In this post I will only reply to the one point selected above. I don't intend to leave the rest behind, but I have not enough time right now, in proportion to how fast I can go, plus I suspect this moral question is dense enough to be usefully considered separately from the other aspects.


In essence, I still don't get why permeating phenomena with our own living understanding requires descending into them, and practicing them. As I argued before, I think it's completely possible to permeate a phenomenon with living understanding without becoming entangled with it, without moving our will through it, as Cleric (and you!) did with Levin’s model for example.
(And you: That’s by the way the sense of my previous question about your understanding of that model. You didn't 'descend' in it, did you? You have grasped the model livingly, still not based on a first-person experiential slice of the phenomenon. Nonetheless, you have stated that such limited first-person experience is the only thing you want to rely on, when speaking of phenomena).


As you said elsewhere, “everything we think, perceive and do matters”, so why should it not be possible to make a positive difference for the elevation of our group-soul, or however it’s appropriate to call it, and for the whole, by developing our understanding through thinking, and by practicing inner sacrifice? Living thinking doesn't necessarily mean that one has to live the experience perceptually, does it?


As you said elsewhere, “proactive individual awakening to intuitive spiritual activity also translates into a broader awakening at the higher nested scales of community, nation, 'race', gender, species” so why would that way be less responsible, or irresponsible, compared to ‘descending’? Why would it not counterbalance the mechanistic, abstract, evil effects just as well, or better? Moreover does it imply that monks, ascetics, and other spiritually oriented people who choose to express their spirituality otherwise than by descending in cultural and social phenomena are morally deplorable, or irresponsible?


More generally, where do you put the moral threshold? How much evil are you ready to take in for the sake of counterbalancing cultural phenomena from within them? I understand that VR doesn’t look like much, but what cultural/social phenomena are evil enough that none is supposed to descend there for purification purposes - No cultural phenomenon is too bad? You stated “It should also be clear that, although no particular individual must start using VR to extract spiritual value from it, some individuals must.” Is this principle just as clear and applicable to any other cultural-social phenomena of our time?

If no, where do you put the moral threshold?
If yes (as I think it should be in your line of reasoning) what is the moral rationale behind it? Can moral intuition send some spiritually conscious individuals in the acted, living, perceptual experience of any phenomena?

Federica,

Let's look at the classic illusion Cleric presented recently.





I think we agree the white triangle phenomenon is not by itself evil, deceptive, etc. It is, however, pulling our thinking in a direction which perceives something as 'being there' when it is actually not there. Yet, when we simply look at it, we are not 'descending into evil' or anything similar. Such an illusion only becomes deceptive or evil when we are unaware that the white triangle is an illusion - that it's actually not there - and therefore we idolize it. In this case, it would be if we simply assume there is a white triangle drawn over the upside down triangle and the black circles, and therefore all the shapes exist equally from the activity of being drawn. In reality, the white triangle exists by virtue of the 'not drawing' for the drawn shapes. In the sense of the mantra I shared on the other thread, we confuse what 'flees from existence as nothing' for existence and reality itself. 

On the other hand, if we are aware that this white triangle emerges because our intellectual cognition is tricked by the organization of liminal spaces in the image - by what is not drawn - then we can start investigating what significance such a trick carries and how it can be useful as an analogy for our inner life of spiritual activity. Cleric used it as a visual analogy for how inner desires can be 'seen' as real, concrete forces which steer our soul-life when we differentiate from them, by actively denying ourselves a simple indulgence we would otherwise take up without any thought. It is an analogy because the inner life is not a spatial phenomenon, so we don't actually perceive some shape which represents our desires. When we differentiate from those desires, it's more like we sense the concrete intuition of how the temporal rhythm of our spiritual activity is being overly attracted by those desires towards the Earthly elemental spectrum, at the expense of harmony with the Cosmic rhythms which serve our high ideals. 

Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar? Is there not something missing if Cleric just mentioned the illusion, described it with words, but never presented the actual image for us to visualize? Now I am sure an objection will immediately arise that this white triangle phenomenon is surely not comparable to the complexities of the VR-phenomenon. So we could come closer to the latter with the computer technology of our phone, laptop, desktop, etc. After all, at its root, VR is computer technology. It reflects a further stage of human thinking mastery over the mineral forces. Can we imagine gaining a living understanding of these computer technologies if we never interfaced with them, perhaps if we lived in the jungle all our lives, but have only heard and read about 'computers' as detached abstract concepts? 

Just to reiterate, the point is not that every single person needs to penetrate VR technology with living understanding for their spiritual growth or that of humanity, but that we are better off when some people do, given that this technology exists and is spreading. Perhaps we will be directly involved in that process or perhaps not. When it comes to Levin's models as an analogy for the lawful configuration spaces of spiritual activity, I am not sure how it can be said we didn't 'move our will' through it. I would say Cleric did most of all to construct the analogy, and we did as well to watch the videos, look at the illustrations, read the words, and really try to inhabit the perspective from which the analogical reasoning was being issued. Of course that doesn't mean we need to become Levin himself and adopt his motives, intentions, ideals, etc. for pursuing the models. We are never required to do any such things for living understanding, and in fact we can't attain the latter without pure intentions and high ideals.

Let's also consider this passage from Steiner:

Consciousness arises when the astral body and ego destroy the physical and etheric bodies during the day. When the astral body and ego become aware of their physical surroundings it's as if the nerves were being torn to pieces.

Corporeal tiredness arises from the destructive, deadly effect of the astral body and ego on the etheric and physical bodies. The streaming of the physical world into man's organism has a poisonous, destructive effect.

At night the ego and astral body take in the forces of the spiritual world and stream them into the physical and etheric bodies. They surround the physical body with pictures that have a healing effect on it. The first thing a man sees when the spiritual world opens before him for the first time is his physical body. This picture of the physical body has a healing effect on him. Likewise the astral body and ego work upon the rest of man in a strengthening, healing way at night through true pictures out of the spiritual world. They stream into the ripped nerve strands and destroyed organism. Thereby forces from the spiritual world stream in at night that eliminate tiredness from the body.

The reason I mentioned before how we gain normal self-consciousness by killing the living spiritual impulses from our nerve-sensory organization, is to really drive home how we are all immersed in what can be properly called 'spiritually destructive' activity, all the time, with our waking consciousness. Materialistic technologies, such as the computers we are using now, are Ahrimanic in this sense, through and through. This will sound like some abstract label until we discern that 'Ahrimanic' is pointing to a living force which we are always utilizing to exist on the physical plane with self-consciousness. Is this existence evil by itself? It is only when we either remain ignorant of this process, like in the classic illusion, or we use our knowledge of this process for purely selfish aims, that we can call the interaction between the moral agent and the phenomenon, evil. Then we are utilizing our technology to remain mired in the past of already accomplished intents, which are convenient and comfortable and pleasurable, but do not serve to bring about a healthy future for our Cosmic organism. If we instead interface with the technology to draw in future impulses which help realize the full potential of that Cosmic organism, i.e. out of Love, then we can't call this a descent into evil. Then it is a sacrificial descent for purposes of a higher ascent. The moral threshold resides within the individual agency and his intentions-ideals, not within the phenomena themselves. 

To a certain extent, the discernment of the living forces which permeate our normal consciousness is only possible once we orient our "I"-consciousness from the inner Heliocentric perspective and differentiate from those forces. Until then, we should at least reduce the obstacles to attaining such an orientation. A major obstacle for the modern intellect is reaching premature conclusions, by ceasing the logical reasoning when one feels satisfied that an understanding of phenomena and their deeper nature has already been reached. We should really take seriously how immersed in Maya we are, how many gaps in our attentive awareness there are from constant thought-distractions, how much meaningful spiritual activity is taking place from within the 'dark' liminal spaces we are cycling through at night when we sleep and all throughout the day as well. As Socrates foretold for the modern physical consciousness, which really began growing in his time, "the only true Wisdom is in knowing you know nothing". This doesn't mean we should stop inquiring into phenomena, but the exact opposite. We should continue our inquiries while resisting the temptation to separate out our own spiritual activity and therefore our own complicity in and responsibility for the phenomena of culture and nature.

Thanks Ashvin, for yet again a thorough reply.
I see from what emerges as your expressed reasoning that there must be an underlying solid and extensive consistency, and I hear the resonance of the intents you want to convey, such as the necessity to take very seriously our immersion in Maya. But when I try to fit my questions in the space of these various emerging pieces they don't connect, no matter how I turn them around.

For example, reading this: "Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar?" the immediate objection is actually not the one you foretold. It's rather as follows:


Q: Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar?


A: No, you’re right, we, or someone, couldn’t have.


Q: Could you and Cleric gain the same pedagogical value from Levin’s model, even without being part of the research team, without willfully engage in the experiment, without looking at those cells and measuring their behaviors, by simply reasoning about the general concept of levels of causality, presented to you in lecture/paper form from afar through words and graphs?


A: Well, yes, it looks like you actually could!


***

Another one: "Materialistic technologies, such as the computers we are using now, are Ahrimanic in this sense, through and through. This will sound like some abstract label until we discern that 'Ahrimanic' is pointing to a living force which we are always utilizing to exist on the physical plane with self-consciousness." I wonder:

I had understood that Ahrimanic pointed to intellectual reductionism, to precipitating reality into dead thoughts that aim to replicate it. If so, not everyone, in particular no spiritually conscious individuals need to utilize the Ahrimanic impulse in order to be incarnated and alive in a physical body and to exist on the physical plane?

[AshvinP]

Thanks Ashvin, for yet again a thorough reply.
I see from what emerges as your expressed reasoning that there must be an underlying solid and extensive consistency, and I hear the resonance of the intents you want to convey, such as the necessity to take very seriously our immersion in Maya. But when I try to fit my questions in the space of these various emerging pieces they don't connect, no matter how I turn them around.

For example, reading this: "Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar?" the immediate objection is actually not the one you foretold. It's rather as follows:


Q: Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar?


A: No, you’re right, we, or someone, couldn’t have.


Q: Could you and Cleric gain the same pedagogical value from Levin’s model, even without being part of the research team, without willfully engage in the experiment, without looking at those cells and measuring their behaviors, by simply reasoning about the general concept of levels of causality, presented to you in lecture/paper form from afar through words and graphs?


A: Well, yes, it looks like you actually could!

Federica,

I see more precisely what you were getting at now. I would state it as follows. Levin and his team doesn't get the same pedagogical value from their own models as we do because they haven't developed living thinking (which goes hand in hand with good intents and high ideals). As mentioned before, though, all of that could change quite literally in an instant if their intellect was 'tricked' so as to become self-conscious of the illusion that their models are pointing to some reality 'out there', which is a completely unwarranted abstract postulate, instead realizing it is pointing right back at their first-person, real-time thinking activity which is doing the modeling.

Now if we took people with equally developed living thinking, i.e. first-person, real-time thinking out of the blind spot, all else being equal, and asked who would get more pedagogical value, (a) the ones who only contemplated the 'afterglow' in words and graphs, or (b) the ones who also endeavored to look at the cells, measure their behaviors, and selflessly immerse themselves in the phenomenal objects of their study, then my answer would be (b). Of course, as Cleric described, most of what is done is computer simulation of the projected behaviors of cells according to the laws of dead thinking, but the point being that one always benefits from a very detailed consideration of phenomenal appearances and their dynamics, IF one's living thinking can guard against the idolatry of illusion.

***

Another one: "Materialistic technologies, such as the computers we are using now, are Ahrimanic in this sense, through and through. This will sound like some abstract label until we discern that 'Ahrimanic' is pointing to a living force which we are always utilizing to exist on the physical plane with self-consciousness." I wonder:

I had understood that Ahrimanic pointed to intellectual reductionism, to precipitating reality into dead thoughts that aim to replicate it. If so, not everyone, in particular no spiritually conscious individuals need to utilize the Ahrimanic impulse in order to be incarnated and alive in a physical body and to exist on the physical plane?

I hesitate to write my own explanation here because I don't want it to be misleading, so I will quote a passage from Steiner which I think is very clear and comprehensive on this point, without requiring excessive background knowledge.

Now it would certainly be convenient — and this solution is chosen at least theoretically by very many souls — to say: “Yes, indeed, Ahriman seems to be a dangerous fellow. If he has such an influence on the world and on human affairs, the simplest thing to do is to banish from the human soul all the impulses that come from him.” This might seem to be the most convenient solution, but to the spiritual world it would be about as sensible as if someone, in order to restore the balance to a pair of scales, were to take off whatever was weighing down the lower one. These beings we call Ahriman and Lucifer are right here in the world, they have their task in the universal order, and one cannot sweep them away. Besides, it is not a question of annihilating them, but — as in the case of the weights on both sides of the scales — the ahrimanic and luciferic forces must balance each other in their influence on human beings and on other beings. We do not bring about the true activity of any of the various forces by removing it but by placing ourselves in the right relationship to it. We have the wrong attitude to these luciferic and ahrimanic beings if we simply say that they are bad and harmful. Although these powers rebel in a certain sense against the general order of the universe — which had already been designed before they entered it — this does not stem from the fact that they invariably have to exercise a harmful activity, but rather that — like the others whom we have met as lawful members of the higher worlds — they have a definite sphere of activity in the sum total of the universe. Their opposition to and rebellion against the cosmic order consists in their going beyond their own sphere; they exert beyond this sphere the forces they should employ only within their lawful domain. From this standpoint let us consider Ahriman or the ahrimanic beings.

We can best characterize Ahriman by saying: he is the Lord of Death, far and wide the ruler of all the powers that have to bring about in the physical sense world what this world has to have, the annihilation and death of its entities. Death in the sense world is a necessary part of its organization, for otherwise the beings in it would accumulate to excess, if destruction of life were not at hand. The task of regulating this in a lawful way fell to Ahriman from the spiritual world; he is the ruler of the ordering of death. His sovereign domain is the mineral world, a world that is utterly dead. One can say that death is poured out over the whole of the mineral world. Furthermore, because our earth world is constituted as it is, the mineral world and its laws pervade all the other kingdoms of nature. Plants, animals, human beings — all are permeated, as far as they belong to the earth, by the mineral; they absorb the mineral substances and, with them, all the forces and laws of the mineral kingdom; they are subject to these laws insofar as they are part of the being of the earth. Therefore whatever belongs justifiably to death extends also into the higher regions of the lawful rule of Ahriman. In what surrounds us as external nature, Ahriman is the rightful Lord of Death and should not be regarded as an evil power but as one whose influence in the general world order is fully legitimate. We will enter into a right relationship with the sense world only when we bring a creditable interest to bear upon it, when our interest in the sense world is so reasonable that we can see everything in it without greedily demanding eternal life for any of its physical forms; on the contrary, that we can do without them when they meet their natural death. To be able to rejoice rightly in the things of the sense world but not to be so dependent on them as to contradict the laws of death and decay — this is the right relationship of the human being to the sense world. To bring about this right relationship to growth and decay, the human being has the impulses of Ahriman within himself; for this reason they pulsate in him.

Ahriman, however, can overstep his bounds. In the first place, he can so far overdo that he sets to work on human thinking. A man who does not see into the spiritual world and has no understanding of it will not believe that Ahriman can put his fingers upon human thinking in a very real way — nevertheless, he does! Insofar as human thinking lives in the sense world, it is bound to the brain, which according to universal law is subject to decay. Ahriman has to regulate the passage of the human brain towards decay, but when he oversteps his territory, he develops the tendency to loosen this human thinking from its mortal instrument, the brain, in order to make it independent. He tries to detach the physical thinking directed to the sense world from the physical brain, into whose current of decay this thinking should merge when the human being passes through the gate of death. Ahriman has the tendency, when he admits man as a physical being into the stream of death, to snatch his thinking out of the current of decay. Throughout a man's whole life Ahriman is always fastening his claws into this thinking activity and working on the human being so that his thinking will tear itself away from destruction. Because Ahriman is active in this way in human thinking and because men bound to the sense world naturally perceive only the effects of the spiritual beings, those who are thus in the clutches of Ahriman feel the impulse to wrench their thinking out of its place in the great cosmic order. The result is the materialistic frame of mind; this is the reason men want to apply their thinking only to the sense world, and the people who refuse to believe in a spiritual world are the ones particularly obsessed by Ahriman: it is he who enters their thinking and prevails upon its remaining in the sense world.

[Federica]

Thanks Ashvin, for yet again a thorough reply.
I see from what emerges as your expressed reasoning that there must be an underlying solid and extensive consistency, and I hear the resonance of the intents you want to convey, such as the necessity to take very seriously our immersion in Maya. But when I try to fit my questions in the space of these various emerging pieces they don't connect, no matter how I turn them around.

For example, reading this: "Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar?" the immediate objection is actually not the one you foretold. It's rather as follows:


Q: Could we have ever gained the same pedagogical value if we, or someone, had not willfully engaged our living thinking with the visual illusion, but simply reasoned about the general concept of 'illusions' from afar?


A: No, you’re right, we, or someone, couldn’t have.


Q: Could you and Cleric gain the same pedagogical value from Levin’s model, even without being part of the research team, without willfully engage in the experiment, without looking at those cells and measuring their behaviors, by simply reasoning about the general concept of levels of causality, presented to you in lecture/paper form from afar through words and graphs?


A: Well, yes, it looks like you actually could!

Federica,

I see more precisely what you were getting at now. I would state it as follows. Levin and his team doesn't get the same pedagogical value from their own models as we do because they haven't developed living thinking (which goes hand in hand with good intents and high ideals). As mentioned before, though, all of that could change quite literally in an instant if their intellect was 'tricked' so as to become self-conscious of the illusion that their models are pointing to some reality 'out there', which is a completely unwarranted abstract postulate, instead realizing it is pointing right back at their first-person, real-time thinking activity which is doing the modeling.

Now if we took people with equally developed living thinking, i.e. first-person, real-time thinking out of the blind spot, all else being equal, and asked who would get more pedagogical value, (a) the ones who only contemplated the 'afterglow' in words and graphs, or (b) the ones who also endeavored to look at the cells, measure their behaviors, and selflessly immerse themselves in the phenomenal objects of their study, then my answer would be (b). Of course, as Cleric described, most of what is done is computer simulation of the projected behaviors of cells according to the laws of dead thinking, but the point being that one always benefits from a very detailed consideration of phenomenal appearances and their dynamics, IF one's living thinking can guard against the idolatry of illusion.

Ashvin,

First, there is no need to create a diversion by bringing in Levin and his team, other-people-with-equally-developed-living-thinking-i.e.-first-person-real-time-thinking-out-of-the-blind-spot, or the delivery crew.
It’s obvious that, exactly as in your original question, in my question, I’m comparing what you and Cleric got from the model from afar, with what you and Cleric could have gotten by means of willful descent into it.


Do you see the dilemma you are faced with? Now, when we lift the diversion, you have no choice but either (1) disavow your stated principle that willful engagement in phenomena grants higher pedagogical value (could we or someone have ever gained the same pedagogical value?) or (2) conclude that Cleric has an imperfect understanding of Levin’s model because he only contemplated the afterglow.