The realm of the Demiurge

[AshvinP]

Eugene,

Parallel to your discussion with Cleric, I was wondering if you could share with us what specifically you have done so far in your attempts to decompartmentalize the nondual state from the dual state. What is generally your go-to meditative method for the nondual state? You previously mentioned trying exercises from HTKHW, so which ones specifically have you worked with? Besides meditation, have you tried any other spiritual exercises which could potentially build the gradient from dual to nondual? I think we all agree here that reading a lot of books or scripture, esoteric or otherwise, is not going to cut it.

I was trying and hoping to "decompartmentalize" and integrate the nondual state with my entire human mind for years, but after a while I realized that it's just not happening and there is a deep incompatibility with it inherent in the subconscious structures of human mind. Meditative methods of nondual state are a whole different discussion, and I'm not advanced enough to teach that, there are people in the nondual community that can do it much better. The only thing I can say is that I just "switch there" into the nondual state-perception of reality when meditating and also often during the day, but then I inevitably get pulled out of it into the habitual dualistic mode in everyday activities. Also, my other main activity is blending the nondual state with my creative art and music activities, I try to play and paint "from" that state so to speak, not always successful though. In that way I exercise my higher cognition faculties (imaginative, intuitive, inspirational, esthetic, creative etc) in the active nondual mode as opposed to a passive meditative state. I tried some exercises that Cleric suggested and some from Klocek's book, but I found that my meditative and artistic activity essentially includes exercising and training the same faculties but in a more integrated way so to speak. But I do not see anything wrong with those exercises, I assume they can really help people who do them regularly.

Well there is a major discontinuity happening here. On the one hand, things are being presented here in the spirit of pointing you towards the development of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. On the other hand, you feel you already have developed or are developing them through artistic practice. Then you say, 'yeah I know about all that, it's still dualistic consciousness which can't transform our practical and living experience-perception of the world... so the dualism is baked right into the rigid structures of the subconscious mind'. You speak of these subconscious structures as 'genetic' for that reason. The materialist also said our thought-life is limited by physical-genetic structures until recently. Now, those who continued to reason through the Earthly spectrum, with a mindset that there is still a ton she has yet to teach us, are forced to recognize that things are not so simple and rigid as they previously thought. Our brains and our genes are actually quite plastic and pliable. So the mystic 'non-dualist' is stuck in materialist thought of the 19th and early 20th centuries, while the materialists themselves have progressed further. 

Artistic practice is certainly beneficial for spiritual development, but it is not the same thing as imaginative cognition. Even the first steps towards the latter reveal to us that all limitations we abstractly place on 'dualistic consciousness' are the limitations of our personal organization at any given time, not that of any external force in reality. Someone who still locates the source for such limitations in Nature, God, the Demiurge, or anything similar, simply has not developed any higher cognition which is capable of building the gradient. But no amount of explanation, quotes from Steiner, illustrations from Cleric, will be able to illuminate this fact for you (or apparently Mike) until you guys are willing to humbly admit, to yourselves, that there are spheres of inner development which you simply can't imagine and therefore don't suspect. These modes of cognition are not already known elements in front of your mind's eye, even when you are in the nondual state. They are completely new impulses which need to inflow our consciousness from the archetypal unknown. If we start with personal preferences, abstract opinions, speculations, and Demiurgic theories about the archetypal realms, then we don't stand a chance. 

As we know, all spiritual and religious traditions of the past developed in exoteric forms followed by masses, and esoteric forms of their spiritual realization by inner path of first-person experiential insight followed by only few individuals. We can disregard the exoteric forms, but even the esoteric ones of all traditions never mentioned a possibility of salvation or spiritual realization in the current human form, neither they ever mentioned the "spiritual progress of humanity". Being esoteric, they had deeper insight in the fundamental flaws of the human nature and well understood the impossibility of such progress or salvation.

Ironically, what you/Steiner are promoting is also a "salvation from beyond" from following the "curvatures of meaning" of higher-order beings. What you don't realize is that these higher beings are themselves deluded, they are higher-order beings of the dualistic realm above the Earth. If you or anyone want to stay in their domain and believe in progress and harmony on Earth while living within the dualistic human nature, it's fine, it's completely your choice. But don't make this choice mandatory, there are souls that choose the truth of the nondual state and nothing can make them to accept any compromise with the dualistic delusion. Nondual and dualistic states don't mix, it's like water and oil.

I just want to briefly touch on this. First, I wonder if you notice how you are oscillating widlly from, "And yes, the states are bridgeable, even through a common dualistic language..." to the states being entirely unmixeable like 'water and oil'? That has happened several times on this thread. With such oscillations, can you really be confident that your lower 'Demiurgic' nature, with its passions and preferences, is not in control and steering your thinking on this issue whichever way it pleases at any given time?

What Cleric has been trying to illustrate more broadly is that we don't know what you write above - in fact, what we know from careful study is the opposite. We know the esoteric always precedes the exoteric as its supra-sensory source. They are not orthogonal to each other, they don't run in parallel with each other. The exoteric (outer) is the lawful outgrowth of the seeds planted by the esoteric (inner), or the outer physiognomy of the esoteric, and this relation holds good in every domain of nature and culture, from the formation of the mineral, plant, animal kingdoms to religion, science, and art. It is the same relation between our esoteric journey through the higher worlds after death and our exoteric incarnation on Earth. That is the key polar archetypal relation to understand, which Cleric has metaphorically pointed to in several different ways on this thread alone.

When this polar relation is split into competing dualities in our abstract thought, then we end up with exactly the discontinuity you keep pointing to between the dual and nondual. That discontinuity is an artifact of our own abstract intellect fueled by shadowy passions and desires and preferences. Because of this artifact, we then say 'my current limitations = universal limitations, progress = immediate physical progress, spiritual understanding = average human reading and comprehending PoF, higher order beings = salvation from beyond', and many similar false equivalences. All of those result from the false presumption that the esoteric is orthogonal, parallel, or otherwise discontinuous, from the exoteric. Yet what careful thinking shows is that the inner (esoteric) is always in the process of becoming outer (exoteric) and the latter is always in process of feeding back into the former in a rhythmic evolutionary process. If we decide to split them apart and/or only fix our attention on one tiny section of the holistic evolution, like the modern age, we will obviously reach a flawed understanding and seek out theories to parrot that understanding back to us. 

Beyond that, every Christian esoteric tradition speaks of the possibility of fully redeeming the human form and the Earth as a whole. That is exactly how the Philosopher's Stone is understood.

It hides from the profane, but reveals to the Initiate the more clearly how he is to labor day by day to make for himself that choicest of all gems, the Philosopher's Stone--more precious than the Kohinoor; nay, than the sum of all earthly wealth! It reminds him how mankind, in its ignorance, is hourly wasting the actual concrete material that might be used in the formation of this priceless treasure.

To keep him steadfast and true through every adversity, the Rose cross holds aloft, as an inspiration, the glorious consummation in store for him that overcometh, and points to Christ as the Star of Hope, the "first fruits," Who wrought this marvelous Stone while inhabiting the body of Jesus.

Upon investigation it has been found that there was in all systems of Religion a teaching reserved for the Priest-craft and not given to the multitude. The Christ also spoke to the multitude in parables, but explained the inner meaning of these parables to the disciples, to give them an understanding more suited to their developed minds.

Paul gave "milk" to the babes or younger members of the community, but "meat" to the strong who had studied more deeply. Thus there has always been an inner and an outer teaching, and this inner teaching was given in so-called Mystery Schools which have changed from time to time to suit the needs of the people among whom they were designed to work.

Heindel , Max. The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception (Illustrated) (p. 502). Kindle Edition.

[Stranger]

But no amount of explanation, quotes from Steiner, illustrations from Cleric, will be able to illuminate this fact for you (or apparently Mike) until you guys are willing to humbly admit, to yourselves, that there are spheres of inner development which you simply can't imagine and therefore don't suspect.

OK, we indeed reached a major discontinuity and a stumbling point where you claim that we have no inner experience of higher cognition and therefore cannot imagine and understand what Anthroposophy is all about, and we claim that you have no inner experience of nondual state and therefore cannot comprehend what nonduality is all about. The rest is just talking over each other heads.

I just want to briefly touch on this. First, I wonder if you notice how you are oscillating widlly from, "And yes, the states are bridgeable, even through a common dualistic language..." to the states being entirely unmixeable like 'water and oil'? That has happened several times on this thread.

Your misunderstanding, “bridgeable” and “unmixable” are different things. As an analogy, there is a sane state and a psychotic state. They are “unmixable” or “orthogonal" because they bear a completely incompatible perceptions and interpretations of reality. Yet, they are “bridgeable” because a person can recover from psychosis and transition its state of consciousness back to the sane state. So, by “bridgeable” I meant that humans can transition from dualistic to nondual state during their human life, yet the sates are unmixable because they bare fundamentally different perceptions of realty. This is actually a good analogy because the dualistic state is indeed a state of psychosis where people perceive and believe in reality of entities that simply do not exist.

What Cleric has been trying to illustrate more broadly is that we don't know what you write above - in fact, what we know from careful study is the opposite. We know the esoteric always precedes the exoteric as its supra-sensory source. They are not orthogonal to each other, they don't run in parallel with each other. The exoteric (outer) is the lawful outgrowth of the seeds planted by the esoteric (inner), or the outer physiognomy of the esoteric, and this relation holds good in every domain of nature and culture, from the formation of the mineral, plant, animal kingdoms to religion, science, and art. It is the same relation between our esoteric journey through the higher worlds after death and our exoteric incarnation on Earth. That is the key polar archetypal relation to understand, which Cleric has metaphorically pointed to in several different ways on this thread alone.

You are again either misunderstanding or misinterpreting me on purpose. I never said that esoteric and exoteric aspects of traditions are orthogonal, I simply said that they coexist, and yes, you are right, they are related. I only said that dualistic and nondual states of consciousness are orthogonal.

Beyond that, every Christian esoteric tradition speaks of the possibility of fully redeeming the human form and the Earth as a whole. That is exactly how the Philosopher's Stone is understood.

There is a gazillion of Christian denominations, sects and esoteric teachings, with many of them having very weird and bizarre beliefs. But according to the views of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (which include both esoteric and exoteric aspects), the full redemption of humanity will only happen after the second coming of Christ when the souls will be reunited with incorruptible form of their bodies. Until the second coming the human body will remain in a corrupted state. Yet, I'm not aware of a single Christian sect or denomination claiming that we are supposed to keep continuously reincarnating into humans.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. … I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. (Nicene Creed)

We believe also in the resurrection of the dead. For there will be in truth, there will be, a resurrection of the dead, and by resurrection we mean resurrection of bodies … It is, then, this very body, which is corruptible and liable to dissolution, that will rise again incorruptible. … The resurrection of the dead will come to pass at the divine will and sign … We shall therefore rise again, our souls being once more united with our bodies, now made incorruptible and having put off corruption, and we shall stand beside the awful judgment-seat of Christ (St. John Damascene, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith )

But it's interesting to watch you employing your professional "good cop/bad cop" tactics of pretending to ask sincere questions only to find contradictions in your opponent answers with no sincere desire to actually understand what the other person is trying to say. Sometimes professions make bad influences on peoples personalities.

[AshvinP]

But no amount of explanation, quotes from Steiner, illustrations from Cleric, will be able to illuminate this fact for you (or apparently Mike) until you guys are willing to humbly admit, to yourselves, that there are spheres of inner development which you simply can't imagine and therefore don't suspect.

OK, we indeed reached a major discontinuity and a stumbling point where you claim that we have no inner experience of higher cognition and therefore cannot imagine and understand what Anthroposophy is all about, and we claim that you have no inner experience of nondual state and therefore cannot comprehend what nonduality is all about. The rest is just talking over each other heads.

I just want to briefly touch on this. First, I wonder if you notice how you are oscillating widlly from, "And yes, the states are bridgeable, even through a common dualistic language..." to the states being entirely unmixeable like 'water and oil'? That has happened several times on this thread.

Your misunderstanding, “bridgeable” and “unmixable” are different things. As an analogy, there is a sane state and a psychotic state. They are “unmixable” or “orthogonal" because they bear a completely incompatible perceptions and interpretations of reality. Yet, they are “bridgeable” because a person can recover from psychosis and transition its state of consciousness back to the sane state. So, by “bridgeable” I meant that humans can transition from dualistic to nondual state during their human life, yet the sates are unmixable because they bare fundamentally different perceptions of realty. This is actually a good analogy because the dualistic state is indeed a state of psychosis where people perceive and believe in reality of entities that simply do not exist.

What Cleric has been trying to illustrate more broadly is that we don't know what you write above - in fact, what we know from careful study is the opposite. We know the esoteric always precedes the exoteric as its supra-sensory source. They are not orthogonal to each other, they don't run in parallel with each other. The exoteric (outer) is the lawful outgrowth of the seeds planted by the esoteric (inner), or the outer physiognomy of the esoteric, and this relation holds good in every domain of nature and culture, from the formation of the mineral, plant, animal kingdoms to religion, science, and art. It is the same relation between our esoteric journey through the higher worlds after death and our exoteric incarnation on Earth. That is the key polar archetypal relation to understand, which Cleric has metaphorically pointed to in several different ways on this thread alone.

You are again either misunderstanding or misinterpreting me on purpose. I never said that esoteric and exoteric aspects of traditions are orthogonal, I simply said that they coexist, and yes, you are right, they are related. I only said that dualistic and nondual states of consciousness are orthogonal.

Beyond that, every Christian esoteric tradition speaks of the possibility of fully redeeming the human form and the Earth as a whole. That is exactly how the Philosopher's Stone is understood.

There is a gazillion of Christian denominations, sects and esoteric teachings, with many of them having very weird and bizarre beliefs. But according to the views of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (which include both esoteric and exoteric aspects), the full redemption of humanity will only happen after the second coming of Christ when the souls will be reunited with incorruptible form of their bodies. Until the second coming the human body will remain in a corrupted state. Yet, I'm not aware of a single Christian sect or denomination claiming that we are supposed to keep continuously reincarnating into humans.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. … I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. (Nicene Creed)

We believe also in the resurrection of the dead. For there will be in truth, there will be, a resurrection of the dead, and by resurrection we mean resurrection of bodies … It is, then, this very body, which is corruptible and liable to dissolution, that will rise again incorruptible. … The resurrection of the dead will come to pass at the divine will and sign … We shall therefore rise again, our souls being once more united with our bodies, now made incorruptible and having put off corruption, and we shall stand beside the awful judgment-seat of Christ (St. John Damascene, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith )

But it's interesting to watch you employing your professional "good cop/bad cop" tactics of pretending to ask sincere questions only to find contradictions in your opponent answers with no sincere desire to actually understand what the other person is trying to say. Sometimes professions make bad influences on peoples personalities.

There have never been any 'claims' made here, Eugene. This is no abstract debate about whether you have higher cognition. It was taken as a given that you have not developed imaginative cognition, because that was indicated loud and clear from everything you have written, treating Earthly experience as orthogonal to that of the higher worlds. That is the entire premise of your original post and every subsequent post you wrote about the Demiurge. So Cleric tried to lead you step by step through the givens of experience to illustrate that not only are the states bridgeable and mixable, but we can't understand our current waking dual state in the slightest unless we understand the nondual state is thoroughly mixed with it. The latter is what makes the former intelligible and our entire evolutionary task is to trace back the latter from the former. Of course you can't deny the logic of the phenomenology presented, so you continue to "agree" at every step (while also contradicting what you just "agreed" with), but this abstract agreement doesn't equal understanding.

My questions were genuine, trying to understand where exactly you were hitting so many obstacles to develop imaginative cognition (based on your post about 'seeing no progress') , but your answers simply revealed you aren't trying to develop it at all. That's like someone complaining they don't see any progress in their piano playing skills, and when asked what they do to improve those skills, answering 'oh I never started with the piano, actually I decided to get drums instead because I like them more'. You tried Cleric and Klocek's exercises for a few months or weeks or, most likely, days or hours, before deciding you were already doing them 'in a more integrated way' and therefore abandoning them. But clearly nothing else can be said to point you in the right direction, because you are actively interested in keeping your Earthly preferences at all costs. What irks you so much about the 'Demiurge' is actually that aspect of your own soul-life (not 'genetics') which keeps clinging to the mere Earthly nature, despite being given every opportunity to let go, but when this remains subconscious it is projected out as some demonic external entity ruling over you.

There is a gazillion of Christian denominations, sects and esoteric teachings, with many of them having very weird and bizarre beliefs. But according to the views of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (which include both esoteric and exoteric aspects) what you said is simply not true. According to their view, the full redemption of humanity will only happen after the second coming of Christ when the souls will be reunited with incorruptible form of their bodies. But what you do is you take the views of some of the Christian sects and declare them "esoteric" to confirm your views, and you declare "exoteric and abstract" the views of other Christian denominations that do not confirm your views. Yet, I'm not aware of a single Christian sect or denomination claiming that we are supposed to keep continuously reincarnating into humans.  

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. … I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. (Nicene Creed)

We believe also in the resurrection of the dead. For there will be in truth, there will be, a resurrection of the dead, and by resurrection we mean resurrection of bodies … It is, then, this very body, which is corruptible and liable to dissolution, that will rise again incorruptible.  … The resurrection of the dead will come to pass at the divine will and sign … We shall therefore rise again, our souls being once more united with our bodies, now made incorruptible and having put off corruption, and we shall stand beside the awful judgment-seat of Christ (St. John Damascene, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith )

I was not quoting that to confirm my view - actually what Cleric has written here many times over confirms that view without any resort to esoteric literature or scripture. It was quoted to show that your statement was inaccurate - "We can disregard the exoteric forms, but even the esoteric ones of all traditions never mentioned a possibility of salvation or spiritual realization in the current human form, neither they ever mentioned the "spiritual progress of humanity".

All these tribalized sects of exoteric Christianity exist because they also cannot experientially reconcile their Earthly being with their Cosmic being, holding them unmixable and discontinuous. As long as that remains the case, you will get just as many sects as you have subjective and earthly desires and preferences for heavenly things to work this way or that way, according to what suits their current state of being most. They will continue to project their own subconscious soul-tendencies onto satan, secular scientists, atheists, muslims, etc. and their own potential salvation onto external forces from beyond the Earth and beyond death. They will put faith in their creeds like the new-agers put faith in Demiurge conspiracy theories and the Luciferic promise of free-floating evolution after death.

[Stranger]

There have never been any 'claims' made here, Eugene. This is no abstract debate about whether you have higher cognition. It was taken as a given that you have not developed imaginative cognition, because that was indicated loud and clear from everything you have written, treating Earthly experience as orthogonal to that of the higher worlds. That is the entire premise of your original post and every subsequent post you wrote about the Demiurge. So Cleric tried to lead you step by step through the givens of experience to illustrate that not only are the states bridgeable and mixable, but we can't understand our current waking dual state in the slightest unless we understand the nondual state is thoroughly mixed with it. The latter is what makes the former intelligible and our entire evolutionary task is to trace back the latter from the former. Of course you can't deny the logic of the phenomenology presented, so you continue to "agree" at every step (while also contradicting what you just "agreed" with), but this abstract agreement doesn't equal understanding.

We are simply revolving around the "major discontinuity and a stumbling point". The earthly experience is not orthogonal to higher worlds. It's the nondual and dualistic states of consciousness that are orthogonal to each other, both in earthly and in higher worlds experiences, exactly like psychotic delusion is orthogonal to sane state. Souls get into a deluded dualistic state, whether in human or discarnate forms, and then they recover into the sane nondual state, whether in human or discarnate form, although the human form is not fully compatible with the nondual state due to its genetic composition. But, as I said many times, you cannot understand it unless you know the nondual state experientially.

I was not quoting that to confirm my view - actually what Cleric has written here many times over confirms that view without any resort to esoteric literature or scripture. It was quoted to show that your statement was inaccurate - "We can disregard the exoteric forms, but even the esoteric ones of all traditions never mentioned a possibility of salvation or spiritual realization in the current human form, neither they ever mentioned the "spiritual progress of humanity".

Show me a quote from any Christian sources claiming that we are supposed to continuously reincarnate into humans, or that a transformation of human body into incorruptable state is possible before the second coming of Christ and full resurrection.

[AshvinP]

There have never been any 'claims' made here, Eugene. This is no abstract debate about whether you have higher cognition. It was taken as a given that you have not developed imaginative cognition, because that was indicated loud and clear from everything you have written, treating Earthly experience as orthogonal to that of the higher worlds. That is the entire premise of your original post and every subsequent post you wrote about the Demiurge. So Cleric tried to lead you step by step through the givens of experience to illustrate that not only are the states bridgeable and mixable, but we can't understand our current waking dual state in the slightest unless we understand the nondual state is thoroughly mixed with it. The latter is what makes the former intelligible and our entire evolutionary task is to trace back the latter from the former. Of course you can't deny the logic of the phenomenology presented, so you continue to "agree" at every step (while also contradicting what you just "agreed" with), but this abstract agreement doesn't equal understanding.

We are simply revolving around the "major discontinuity and a stumbling point". The earthly experience is not orthogonal to higher worlds. It's the nondual and dualistic states of consciousness that are orthogonal to each other, both in earthly and in higher worlds experiences, exactly like psychotic delusion is orthogonal to sane state. Souls get into a deluded dualistic state, whether in human or discarnate forms, and then they recover into the sane nondual state, whether in human or discarnate form, although the human form is not fully compatible with the nondual state due to its genetic composition. But, as I said many times, you cannot understand it unless you know the nondual state experientially.

I was not quoting that to confirm my view - actually what Cleric has written here many times over confirms that view without any resort to esoteric literature or scripture. It was quoted to show that your statement was inaccurate - "We can disregard the exoteric forms, but even the esoteric ones of all traditions never mentioned a possibility of salvation or spiritual realization in the current human form, neither they ever mentioned the "spiritual progress of humanity".

Show me a quote from any Christian sources claiming that we are supposed to continuously reincarnate into humans, or that a transformation of human body into incorruptable state is possible before the second coming of Christ and full resurrection.

Even your analogies don't work, Eugene, because analogies are drawn from reality and not an isolated realm of abstract thought. The psychotic state is not orthogonal to the sane state. There is obviously a lawful relation between them. Actually we can't understand any such relation until we start investigating the physical-etheric-astral-ego depth structure of the human organism, and we already know what your investigation into that consists of. In fact, the sane state can metamorphose into the psychotic state if there is an inundation of mystical or visionary experience without the discplining force of ego-consciousness attained through rigorous spiritual training which builds the healthy gradient.

I just showed you the quote from Heindel in the Rosicrucian stream, which is obviously esoteric Christianity.

[Stranger]

Even your analogies don't work, Eugene, because analogies are drawn from reality and not an isolated realm of abstract thought. The psychotic state is not orthogonal to the sane state. There is obviously a lawful relation between them. Actually we can't understand any such relation until we start investigating the physical-etheric-astral-ego depth structure of the human organism, and we already know what your investigation into that consists of. In fact, the sane state can metamorphose into the psychotic state if there is an inundation of mystical or visionary experience without the discplining force of ego-consciousness attained through rigorous spiritual training which builds the healthy gradient.

They are lawfully related because the transition between them ocurred through a lawful process f recovery. Yet, they are incompatible with each other because a person cannot hold both the psychotic and sane interpretations of the reality as true simultaneously.

I just showed you the quote from Heindel in the Rosicrucian stream, which is obviously esoteric Christianity.

And where exactly in this quote it is stated that we are supposed to continuously reincarnate into humans, or that a transformation of human body into incorruptable state is possible before the second coming of Christ and full resurrection?

PS: The knowledge about Demiurge is not a "New Age conspiracy theory", it is rooted in Gnostic, Buddhist and Hindu traditions, as
I showed before

[Stranger]

It's all really simple:
- The reality is Oneness. Oneness is the truth.
- Knowing and experientially perceiving reality as Oneness is a true, natural and sane nondual state of consciousness.
- Perceiving reality as multiplicity of selves, subjects and objects is a delusion, it is a dualistic spiritual insanity and the root cause of the egoic state of mind.
- The laws of the functioning of consciousness allow both states to occur, they are both lawful. Transitioning between them is also a lawful process.
- These two states are incompatible/orthogonal to each other, one cannot hold both of them as true perceptions of reality without violating the natural laws of logic.

Now, investigating the natural laws governing these states and their transition is always useful, no question about that. However, it is not a prerequisite for recovering from dualistic insanity, just like a person does not necessarily need to be an expert in psychiatry in order to recover from psychosis, they just need to realize that their perception of reality is distorted and untrue. It would be wrong to suggest that one cannot recover from dualistic delusion until one knows and understands all the lawful structures, because it would only postpone and procrastinate the process of recovery from delusion. But the best approach is to do both - to recover from delusion AND to learn and know the lawful structures, but one should not hold the other.

Regarding the exoteric aspect of recovery, there are no accounts of any human (except for Christ after resurrection) who recovered from dualistic delusion AND was also able to fully transmute their exoteric physical human form into full compliance with the esoteric nondual state of consciousness. All Western saints and Eastern masters always admitted that their human nature/mind remained "sinful" and corruptible. It might be possible in principle to transform the human nature into incorruptible form whereby completing the recovery in both esoteric and exoteric aspects, however it has never happened yet for any human in the entire history (except for Christ). It is exactly by experientially studying the natural laws governing the functioning of human body and mind (including the laws of genetics and human psychology) that reveals the current incompatibility of the lawful composition of exoteric human body-mind with esoteric nondual state of consciousness.

[Cleric K]

OK, we indeed reached a major discontinuity and a stumbling point where you claim that we have no inner experience of higher cognition and therefore cannot imagine and understand what Anthroposophy is all about, and we claim that you have no inner experience of nondual state and therefore cannot comprehend what nonduality is all about. The rest is just talking over each other heads.

But there's also major asymmetry here, Eugene! It's not about us vs. them.

It's about the thing that everyone agrees with on the logical level, yet a minute later does the diametrically opposite.

We have spoken about the so called nondual state from many different angles. In the context of conversations with Mike we have called it 'stepping out of the movie'. This is what the direct experience presents us with - we become aware at a more holistic level of consciousness from which we realize our daily freefall through quantized states of being. We encompass the memory reverberations of our own states. Even if we don't verbalize it, this contemplation has the meaning of "This is what I'm doing every day, even though I'm completely engrossed in the details and lack the awareness that this is all happening (Mike's self-remembrance)."

Alright, this is all great. No one has ever denied or demeaned the value of this. Not only that but this is the first necessary step through which we should pass on our way towards real self knowledge. If we can't observe our own states of being (the exceptional state), we can't make the tiniest step forward because all higher cognition begins with the consciousness that our state is inseparable from the World-state and in fact they can only be studied as a Cosmic whole.

C'mon people, if we focus only on the nondual state, we can't even rule out materialism! There's nothing special in the ability of the brain to electrically feedback its own states. Thus all that self-remembrance, in itself, can't even give us the certainty whether there's spiritual depth to reality or we're simply a mechanical brain that has become mesmerized by its ability to self-remember itself and has decided that all else pales into comparison. In that case, the celebrated inexplicability (orthogonality) of the nondual state might easily be just a brain on the brink of losing cognitive coherency.

Thus the nondual state is simply being abused in our age. Because everyone uses it as a universal wildcard. I gave a simple example before. By virtue of that same nondual state I can say: "why worry about reincarnation? There's no such thing in the first place. Think about it: if all you have ever known is only the purity of the nondual state, would it ever occur to you that there's such a thing as reincarnation? Don't you think about reincarnation only because you have heard or read about it and it became stuck in your mind, turning into existential anxiety?"

Now go argue with that. I can say that it is you who are in the clouds of the Demiurge because you're sporting fantastic ideas about reincarnation which are nowhere to be found in the pure nondual state.

This is really at the core of the problem. Certain ideas are cherry-picked from the environment and then the nondual state is casually thrown in as if it gives support to the narrative. Then if someone questions the ideas, the first person only smiles and says "It's quite obvious that you haven't reached the nondual state. Otherwise you would know." (and the funny thing is that all I need is to say something that agrees with your ideas, for you to say that I 'nailed it' and suddenly I would pass as enlightened that has quite good experiential knowledge of the nondual state)

But this doesn't stand even in the face of the most elementary facts. If the nondual state was enough, why would there be so many branches of Buddhism and all other hundreds of teachings that stamp themselves as nondual, and which can't agree on their ideas?

In our age it is precisely the Demiurge that has the greatest interest in keeping man divided between the explicable and the inexplicable, between the dual and the nondual.

It is so simple. Today even the most naive person is quite enlightened when it comes to conspiracy theories. Everyone will agree that the greatest power is keeping people in ignorance, while the evil elite pulls the strings from behind the scene. Yet it never occurs to us that this is also the case in our most intimate spiritual life. We imagine that the orthogonality of the dual and nondual is normal. It never passes through our mind that there are forces who thrive on the fact that we willfully accept ignorance. Not only that we accept it but we become increasingly ingenious about the ways to justify it. Today we think that we see through Orwell's ideas, that we're well prepared to recognize them at work in the outer world of politics and social life, yet we embrace them with all our power when we implicitly proclaim "ignorance is strength". And we really do that when we say "I can't make any sense of the nondual state. It is completely incompatible with my intellectual patterns of thought. Thus the nondual equals complete ignorance when seen from my thinking self. Yet I embrace this ignorance as the most valuable thing."

The problem is not that we embrace the inexplicable. This we actually need to do, we need to open to the inexplicable as a child that is eager to learn. The problem is that we singlehandedly postulate the absolute boundary between the explicable and the inexplicable and justify that impermeability by genetics, the Demiurge and what not, while it is precisely the Demiurge that has the greatest profit to keep that impermeability. Then we are fed with a spoon certain ideas across the 'dissociative boundary' that feel good to our heart and we don't even question them. And why would we, when they precipitate from the nondual realm, which we can't make sense of with thinking?

I wouldn't mind a Christian who tells me "it is my belief of choice that I'll go to Heaven after death." But here we try to enter in the living spiritual process that thinks and believes. In other words, we should self-remember while we think and believe. But it is simply nonsensical when one follows this deepening of inner reality up to a point but then stops and says "That direction is interesting but it ignores the nondual." This is simply another way of saying "it threatens the ignorance thus you must be doing something wrong. Obviously you don't know the nondual state because if you did you would know that ignorance is the highest achievement while on Earth."

[AshvinP]

Even your analogies don't work, Eugene, because analogies are drawn from reality and not an isolated realm of abstract thought. The psychotic state is not orthogonal to the sane state. There is obviously a lawful relation between them. Actually we can't understand any such relation until we start investigating the physical-etheric-astral-ego depth structure of the human organism, and we already know what your investigation into that consists of. In fact, the sane state can metamorphose into the psychotic state if there is an inundation of mystical or visionary experience without the discplining force of ego-consciousness attained through rigorous spiritual training which builds the healthy gradient.

They are lawfully related because the transition between them ocurred through a lawful process f recovery. Yet, they are incompatible with each other because a person cannot hold both the psychotic and sane interpretations of the reality as true simultaneously.

I just showed you the quote from Heindel in the Rosicrucian stream, which is obviously esoteric Christianity.

This is all the same issue as before, which Cleric tried to illustrate for you. You said you agreed with it, but you keep writing things like the above which show you didn't understand what you were agreeing with. One is always holding the sane state in the psychotic state - otherwise how could there be any continuity of consciousness after recovery which says, "I was deviated from 'true perceptions' which I mistook for reality and now I have readjusted"? The states cannot be divided up into orthogonal slices of reality if we remain connected with given experiences and sound reasoning, just like the waking and sleeping states cannot be so neatly divided. In fact we are always sleeping with an aspect of our being while we feel ourselves to be 'fully awake'.

Here’s something subtle that we very often overlook. Let’s say that a cup falls down and shatters. Then I think “I wish that didn’t happen. If the world is of spiritual essence why can’t I simply imagine the pieces coming back together and the cup jumping intact on my desk?” But in the literal sense we do exactly that! We imagine the cup coming together. This is what we do with our spiritual activity and this is what we get! We indeed steer the World state in a direction where we imagine the cup coming together. And all of this is really part of the World state, our brain fires differently in that direction – firing that is in harmony with the holistic direction in which we move.

When we imagine the cup coming together we steer through states where we experience such imaginative content and it is holistically in tune with corresponding parts of the sensory spectrum. We shouldn’t conceive that our imagination ‘sends waves’ that cause the brain to fire in some way or vice versa. The World-state evolves as something whole. The question is in what ways we can feel creatively responsible for the evolution of the state.

To summarize – when we imagine the cup coming together, this is what we get – we evolve towards a World state where the contents of our imagination and the brain state, and in fact everything in the Cosmos, is just what it should be for our state to be what it is.

This person who imagines the cup coming back together could be called 'insane' if he mistakes the isolated imagination for the actual World-state, which means he is implicitly treating them as orthogonal. The act of imagination itself is part of the evolving World-state and does not constitute insanity of its own accord. We only develop 'spiritual insanity' if we idolize our isolated dualistic perception and confuse it for the actual World-state, without realizing there are many other lawful relations at work in which our imagination of the cup coming back together is constrained from making the cup come back together. It only develops if we say, 'either my act of imagination is part of the World-state or the cup is shattered, but it can't be both at the same time'.

Now who is actually idolizing - 1) the person who develops an entire spiritual theology where his current dualistic self is projected into the post-death spectrum, out of a felt necessity (not a logical one) because he treats the nondual and dual states as orthogonal, and his current mode of thinking is then used to anticipate what his situation will be and what he will choose to do after death,

or 2) the person who seeks to gradually loosen the cognitive constraints of the dualistic self and discover the ways in which the nondual being experiences itself within those constraints, without ever presumptuously assuming he has fully escaped those constraints to know what he will choose after death?

And where exactly in this quote it is stated that we are supposed to continuously reincarnate into humans, or that a transformation of human body into incorruptable state is possible before the second coming of Christ and full resurrection?

PS: The knowledge about Demiurge is not a "New Age conspiracy theory", it is rooted in Gnostic, Buddhist and Hindu traditions, as
I showed before

It is beyond any doubt that the Rosicrucian stream teaches the reality of reincarnation - no one has said anyone teaches we are supposed to do anything, but only what the lawful constraints of our stream of becoming actually are. A physicist doesn't go around saying you are supposed to obey the law of gravity which attracts you back to the Earth, only that you currently do (and esoteric teaching doesn't make reincarnation into a universal homogenous law applicable to everyone at all times). It also teaches that Jesus' body was transfigured into the 'incorruptible state' and this is the first fruits of what all humans can potentially attain through the indwelling Spirit.

That Christ taught Rebirth and also the law of Consequence is perhaps shows in not other place as clearly as in the case of the man who had been born blind, where His disciples asked, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John ix:2). Had Christ not taught Rebirth and the Law of Consequence, the natural answer would have been, "Nonsense! How could a man have sinned before he was born, and have brought blindness upon himself as a result? But Christ does not answer in that way. He is not surprised at the question, nor does He treat it as being at all unusual, showing that it was quite in harmony with His teachings.

He explains, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of (the) God should be made manifest in him." The orthodox interpretation is that the man was born blind in order that Christ might have the opportunity of performing a miracle to show His power. It would have been a strange way for a God to obtain glory-- capriciously condemning a man to many years of blindness and misery that He might "show off" at a future time! We would consider a man who acted in such a manner a monster of cruelty. How much more logical to think that there may be another explanation. To impute to God conduct which, in a human being, we would denounce in the strongest terms, is surely unreasonable.

Christ differentiates between the physically blind body of the man and the God within, which is the Higher Self. The dense body has committed no sin. The God within has done some deed which manifests in the particular affliction from which he is suffering. It is not stretching a point to call a man a God. Paul says, "know ye not that ye are Gods? and he refers to the human body as the "temple of God," the indwelling spirit.
...
When death came Moses' face shone and Buddha's body become alight. They all reached the stage when the spirit begins to shine from within--but then they died. Christ Jesus reached that stage on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is of the very highest significance that His real work took place subsequent to that event.

Heindel , Max. The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception (Illustrated) (pp. 164-165). Kindle Edition.

More on reincarnation:

The important thing is that here the eternal is shown as against the temporal, and the disciples see into a world which lies beyond this world. Afterwards they said to the master, “All this should only have come to pass once Elias has come again.” Thus they spoke to him as though reincarnation was taken as a matter of course, as also in many other passages in the gospels. John asked, “Art thou Elias come again?” Then answered the master, “Elias is indeed come again — John the Baptist is Elias. But the people did not recognise him. Say it unto no man until I come again.” Here we have the general, religious, profound truth of reincarnation uttered in the intimate conversation between the master and his disciples. At the same time it is set down as a testament: “Say it unto no man until I come again.” This coming again refers to a much later time, the time when all men will recognise Christ through their higher comprehension. When this comes about then will He reappear to them.

...The doctrine of reincarnation and karma as a generally accepted idea was to be laid aside until this time. At that time people should know nothing of reincarnation and karma, so that they were obliged to take the life between birth and death as something of particular value and importance. Humanity had to pass through all stages of life experience. Up to the time of Christ, reincarnation was generally accepted. Life between birth and death was only a passing episode. But then man had to learn to take life on earth as something important. An extreme form of this teaching was the dogma of eternal punishment and eternal reward. This is an extreme form. What mattered was that each human individuality, each “God-man”, should pass through one incarnation in which he knew nothing of reincarnation and karma and in which he appreciated the vital importance of life between birth and death.

Also, not that this really matters, but on the term 'Demiurge':


https://www.britannica.com/topic/Demiurge

Demiurge, Greek Dēmiourgos (“public worker”), plural Demiourgoi, in philosophy, a subordinate god who fashions and arranges the physical world to make it conform to a rational and eternal ideal. Plato adapted the term, which in ancient Greece had originally been the ordinary word for “craftsman,” or “artisan” (broadly interpreted to include not only manual workers but also heralds, soothsayers, and physicians), and which in the 5th century BC had come to designate certain magistrates or elected officials.

Plato used the term in the dialog Timaeus, an exposition of cosmology in which the Demiurge is the agent who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces all the physical things of the world, including human bodies. The Demiurge is sometimes thought of as the Platonic personification of active reason. The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

[Stranger]

This person who imagines the cup coming back together could be called 'insane' if he mistakes the isolated imagination for the actual World-state, which means he is implicitly treating them as orthogonal. The act of imagination itself is part of the evolving World-state and does not constitute insanity of its own accord. We only develop 'spiritual insanity' if we idolize our isolated dualistic perception and confuse it for the actual World-state, without realizing there are many other lawful relations at work in which our imagination of the cup coming back together is constrained from making the cup come back together. It only develops if we say, 'either my act of imagination is part of the World-state or the cup is shattered, but it can't be both at the same time'.

But that is exactly how the majority of people perceive the world: they indeed mistake and idolize as true the isolated imagination for the actual World-state and confuse it for the actual World-state, that is exactly what the dualistic insanity is. It is true that the sane state is contained in the actual World-state as a lawful state, and that is exactly why the recovery is possible. But, as I said many times, the "orthogonality" simply means that a person cannot simultaneously hold the isolated imagination as the actual World-state as true, and at the same time hold the wholistic perception of the Oneness as the actual World-state as true. They logically contradict each other. It is the same as one cannot simultaneously be a materialist and idealist as these worldviews are incompatible and contradict each other. You probably see a different meaning in the term "orthogonality" and that is why we are arguing here.

If a system obeys natural laws that does not mean that it necessarily serves good purposes. The laws allow enough freedom of possibilities to realize both sane and insane, beneficial and harmful states and structures. The nuclear bomb obeys natural laws, yet it does not serve good purposes. Similarly, the lawful structures of both nondual and dualistic states (both esoteric and exoteric aspects) obey natural laws, yet the dualistic one is untrue, insane and distorted ("fallen" and "corrupted" in Christian terms) while the nondual one is natural, true and sane.

Heindel , Max. The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception (Illustrated) (pp. 164-165). Kindle Edition.

OK than, Rosicrucian believed in reincarnation into humans, as well as Anthroposophists, but that is against the Nicene Creed. I consider any sect which faith does not comply with the Nicene Creed to be not Christian (at least in a full sense).

Also, not that this really matters, but on the term 'Demiurge':

Yes, the term was adopted from Greek mythology, but the term does not really matter, it's the actual spiritual reality that matters. Christians called him "Satan". The real difference between Christian and Gnostic views is that Gnostics believed that the Demiurge actually created the material world (so the material world is irreparably corrupted) while Christians believed that the true God created material world as "good" but it was corrupted by the actions of Satan and the fall of Adam and remains to be corrupted and under the rule of Satan until the second coming of Christ (re. Apocalypses and the quotes from Gospels and Epistles that I gave). This difference does not really change the fact that the current state and lawful structure of the human form (both body and mind) remains corrupted.