A Phenomenology of Cognition (Max Leyf)

[Stranger]

PS: The "ego" is a very complex structure that has different features, aspects and modes of functioning, so it would be inappropriate to label the ego as a whole as "good" or "bad". It all depends on which aspects and modes of the ego we are talking about, and which stage of the evolutionary development they apply to. All aspects of ego were a progressive force on the previous stages of humanity, and it was the essential mechanism of the evolution of humanoids and their survival. At the current stage certain aspects of ego still serve as a progressive force, while other aspects (that we label as "egotism") became an impeding force of the evolutionary dynamics (even though it is still a lawful and natural force). When we are in the "mindless" and dualistic mode, all forces and aspects of ego are in full control, so this becomes a pull-up-down dynamics where the opposite forces of ego naturally interplay without our awareness of it and without the involvement of the Free Will. One of the features of such state is identification where our thinking completely identifies with the whole ego, its roles and features, which allows the ego to be in the driver seat. When the switchover to the nondual state happens, the role of the ego changes substantially, and it becomes the structure that shapes the individuality of the spiritual activity, but does not control it and no identification occurs. A person can still say "I am an attorney" meaning that the spiritual activity functions in the society in an attorney role but without any identification with the role.

[Federica]

Duality has to be turned inside out, by diving into it, head first.

Thanks for the explanations, Federica. My few comments:
- We are already deep in duality head first. It already happened, so no need to convince that we need to do it.

I was not meaning that in any general evolutionary sense, but for us here and now in individual practice. And with "turn inside out" I mean initiating the process of conscious restoration of meaning, new creation through the careful examination of the various layers, starting from the recognition of how our perception of the world arises, then exploring our soul preferences. So I was not trying to convince you to go into dual mode. Rather to remain in dual mode (aware of personal identity and participating perspective) as the only possible path - along the same thread but backward.

- I think I said it before: the human perceptual filter is not duality per se, it only one of the conditions that catalyzes the duality, but it does not fully determine it. So, going back to my phenomenological analysis of human perception, this filter is not the step where the dualistic split actually happens.

Well, we disagree here. I see the perceptual cognitive filter that we have/are (the bifurcating nature of human cognition) as the necessary condition for the perception of the physical world.
I understand you have the impression (and probably not only the impression) to have repeated things multiple times and that one can't just go on and on. It’s just to say that I am not expecting any particular reply to this one. It's maybe a good thing to let it rest and possibly consider it from another angle when the appropriate opportunity presents itself.

[Federica]

PS: The "ego" is a very complex structure that has different features, aspects and modes of functioning, so it would be inappropriate to label the ego as a whole as "good" or "bad". It all depends on which aspects and modes of the ego we are talking about, and which stage of the evolutionary development they apply to. All aspects of ego were a progressive force on the previous stages of humanity, and it was the essential mechanism of the evolution of humanoids and their survival. At the current stage certain aspects of ego still serve as a progressive force, while other aspects (that we label as "egotism") became an impeding force of the evolutionary dynamics (even though it is still a lawful and natural force). When we are in the "mindless" and dualistic mode, all forces and aspects of ego are in full control, so this becomes a pull-up-down dynamics where the opposite forces of ego naturally interplay without our awareness of it and without the involvement of the Free Will. One of the features of such state is identification where our thinking completely identifies with the whole ego, its roles and features, which allows the ego to be in the driver seat. When the switchover to the nondual state happens, the role of the ego changes substantially, and it becomes the structure that shapes the individuality of the spiritual activity, but does not control it and no identification occurs. A person can still say "I am an attorney" meaning that the spiritual activity functions in the society in an attorney role but without any identification with the role.

Without commenting on the details of these statements about evolution, may I ask how you came to adopt this view? Because from the external perspective of me reading the statements, there is at this point no means to accept or reject them except gut feeling, faith, sympathy/antipathy, ascription to others, or similar.

[AshvinP]

Two points to comment here:
- In the "flow" state the personality, ego and its preferences do not go away and are not repressed, they are still there and they unfold, it is that they do not capture and take control over the entire state, the state does not "collapse" into a narrow tube of mindlessly following the preferences or desires. In that case the Free Will is in control and can stay on track following the curvature of higher-order meaning of its free choice. That is what I meant by having "no preferences" in a sense that they are there but not in control anymore.
- This question about the ego is not that we need to "shrink back" to the ego or not. It is a question of what is in the driving seat. The ego becomes an anti-evolutionary force when the state of consciousness is collapsed into a "black hole" around the ego-center and becomes completely driven by egoic impulses without any awareness of what is going on. The Free Will is completely dormant in this state and we act like robots controlled by the mechanics of unconscious egoic forces. This is the dualistic state. In the nondual state of the "flow" the individual features of the ego still function, and they are what shape our individualities, but they are no longer in the driving seat, they are only "coloring" our state, but not in control of it. The "flow" state is a state of a complete awareness and transparency where the Free Will is fully unleashed. So, it is not the question of accepting or denying the ego, but a question of in which "mode" the ego is functioning. In the nondual mode the ego becomes the unique individuality through which the individuated activity of thinking is unfolding unimpededly.

I think we veered into too much of an abstract metaphysical direction. Since apparently there is confusion about what exactly "ego" is pointing to, let's drop that. All of these terms should be tied back to first-person concrete stream of becoming. We were speaking of preferences, sympathies, etc.

So would it be accurate to say that, when in normal activities mode, you have various sympathies and antipathies? For ex., you have a sympathy for doing creative musical and drawing meditations, more so than doing exercises such as concentration on 'I think the words'. But in the nondual meditative state, no such sympathies or preferences are conditioning your willing gestures anymore, and therefore you have 'Free Will' to evaluate all curvatures of meaning equally and follow them or not follow them?

[Stranger]

So I was not trying to convince you to go into dual mode. Rather to remain in dual mode (aware of personal identity and participating perspective) as the only possible path - along the same thread but backward.

I think we have some misunderstanding here. Nondual mode is not an absence of participating perspective. But that's ok

Well, we disagree here. I see the perceptual cognitive filter that we have/are (the bifurcating nature of human cognition) as the necessary condition for the perception of the physical world.

Again, some misunderstanding here. Of course, the perceptual cognitive filter is a necessary condition for the perception of the physical world, as well as the major feature of human nature. But I was saying that neither perception of the physical world, nor perceptual cognitive filter by themselves constitute the dual mode. I described the difference between dual and nondual modes here and that difference has nothing to do with the perceptual cognitive filter or perception of the physical world.

Without commenting on the details of these statements about evolution, may I ask how you came to adopt this view?

From my first person spiritual/meditative practical experience where I watched and studied carefully how the egoic structure works.

[Stranger]

So would it be accurate to say that, when in normal activities mode, you have various sympathies and antipathies? For ex., you have a sympathy for doing creative musical and drawing meditations, more so than doing exercises such as concentration on 'I think the words'. But in the nondual meditative state, no such sympathies or preferences are conditioning your willing gestures anymore, and therefore you have 'Free Will' to evaluate all curvatures of meaning equally and follow them or not follow them?

Correct. That does not mean the "Free Will" makes always the right choices because of the limitations of my current knowledge and perspective, so it is an iterative process of assessing the currently available knowledge of the meanings, practically following their curvatures, and reassessing after new perspectives and knowledge open along the path. So, in a way, it is a living-flowing-reshaping process.

[Federica]

So I was not trying to convince you to go into dual mode. Rather to remain in dual mode (aware of personal identity and participating perspective) as the only possible path - along the same thread but backward.

I think we have some misunderstanding here. Nondual mode is not an absence of participating perspective. But that's ok

Well, we disagree here. I see the perceptual cognitive filter that we have/are (the bifurcating nature of human cognition) as the necessary condition for the perception of the physical world.

Again, some misunderstanding here. Of course, the perceptual cognitive filter is a necessary condition for the perception of the physical world, as well as the major feature of human nature. But I was saying that neither perception of the physical world, nor perceptual cognitive filter by themselves constitute the dual mode. I described the difference between dual and nondual modes here and that difference has nothing to do with the perceptual cognitive filter or perception of the physical world.

We might be going around in circles and in various layers of misunderstanding...
At the linked post you wrote:
"the nondual mode of cognition is when any context is not perceived or interpreted as a reality separate from the unity of conscious experience of One Consciousness"
but I don't recognize this possibility within the context of standard cognition of the physical world.
This said, it's true that in my latest post I referred to dual peception in "my" sense, of standard human cognitive process of sense perception and physical world, forgetting that you use "dual" to describe something else, that I personally have no experience of, but I understand you define it as an alternative way to cognize the physical world. To me it sounds theoretical and that's why I had forgotten it. Sorry.

[Stranger]

We might be going around in circles and in various layers of misunderstanding...
At the linked post you wrote:
"the nondual mode of cognition is when any context is not perceived or interpreted as a reality separate from the unity of conscious experience of One Consciousness"
but I don't recognize this possibility within the context of standard cognition of the physical world.
This said, it's true that in my latest post I referred to dual peception in "my" sense, of standard human cognitive process of sense perception and physical world, forgetting that you use "dual" to describe something else, that I personally have no experience of, but I understand you define it as an alternative way to cognize the physical world. To me it sounds theoretical and that's why I had forgotten it. Sorry.

I understand your bold statement, and that is why I tried to break the standard physical world cognition-perception process into steps and point to the step where the dualistic split actually happens, and this step turns out to be not at the step of the perceptional filer, but it occurs later along the subconscious cognitive processing flow (which is possible to change without breaking the perception flow). And that is why it is possible to transition to the nondual mode in human form without breaking the perceptional filter and the sensation of the physical world. But that's ok, no worries, I hope this info might still be of use for your future considerations.

[AshvinP]

So would it be accurate to say that, when in normal activities mode, you have various sympathies and antipathies? For ex., you have a sympathy for doing creative musical and drawing meditations, more so than doing exercises such as concentration on 'I think the words'. But in the nondual meditative state, no such sympathies or preferences are conditioning your willing gestures anymore, and therefore you have 'Free Will' to evaluate all curvatures of meaning equally and follow them or not follow them?

Correct. That does not mean the "Free Will" makes always the right choices because of the limitations of my current knowledge and perspective, so it is an iterative process of assessing the currently available knowledge of the meanings, practically following their curvatures, and reassessing after new perspectives and knowledge opens along the path. So, in a way, it is a living-flowing process.

Ok but irrespective of whether we are making the 'right' choices or not, the question is to what extent are our willing gestures conditioned within the context of the personalized soul-forces.

Let's refer to the Newton color theory. I use this example for simplicity, but it could just as easily be applied to practically all secular scientific theories. He set up a prism, passed light through it, and observed the differentiated color spectrum emerge. From that, he concluded there is pure white light existing in the world 'out there', which contains all the colors within it and, when refracted through a prism, the colors emerge. What he failed to account for was his own willing-thinking perspective which designed and executed the experiment. That by itself doesn't give us enough knowledge to determine what exactly is happening, but one thing is for sure - no account of reality can possibly be complete or heading towards completion if it fails to consider the agentic thinking perspective which is always participating in the phenomenal process.

A similar thing happens in your 'account' of the nondual state. You are forgetting that you only arrive to the nondual state because of all the soul-force conditioning which exists in the normal state. The most direct one being your sympathy towards certain spiritual practices, but we must also include practically every factor which led you to be born into a certain family, in a certain place, with a certain upbringing, to attend certain schools, to choose a certain career path, to arrive on the nondual path, etc. All of these reflect the lawful, fractal conditioning forces across incarnations and during the current incarnation which are embedded in your current perspective, and which chooses to do the nondual meditations. We can only safely ignore that conditioning if we declare it irrelevant or forget about it altogether, like the secular scientist. Otherwise we need to squarely confront the fact that it exists and is working into our current perspective regardless of whether we are in the meditative state or not. Then we realize our choice of which curvatures to explore isn't so freely willed after all.

To be clear, we are not claiming you have this conditioning and those pursuing Anthroposophical methods don't. We all have that conditioning. But it is only the modern initiatory method through the brow chakra which allows us to become conscious of the conditioning, not in any abstract intellectual way (as we are speaking of it now), but as living forces which steer our intuitive becoming. In the process of becoming conscious of these forces, we discover certain leeway in the 'riverbed' of our soul-life through which our intuitive activity can find novel ways to flow through and manifest itself in our conceptual and bodily life. I know this likely sounds very monotonous, boring, slow grind, but the living process of engaging this quest is the most intimately real experience we can have. It is the very process of evolving higher cognition so that we can consciously cross the threshold of sleep-death, with discerning judgment intact, and dwell with archetypal beings whose activity is responsible for the Earthly kingdoms, thereby building the gradient to Earthly consciousness.

[Stranger]

Ok but irrespective of whether we are making the 'right' choices or not, the question is to what extent are our willing gestures conditioned within the context of the personalized soul-forces.

Let's refer to the Newton color theory. I use this example for simplicity, but it could just as easily be applied to practically all secular scientific theories. He set up a prism, passed light through it, and observed the differentiated color spectrum emerge. From that, he concluded there is pure white light existing in the world 'out there', which contains all the colors within it and, when refracted through a prism, the colors emerge. What he failed to account for was his own willing-thinking perspective which designed and executed the experiment. That by itself doesn't give us enough knowledge to determine what exactly is happening, but one thing is for sure - no account of reality can possibly be complete or heading towards completion if it fails to consider the agentic thinking perspective which is always participating in the phenomenal process.

A similar thing happens in your 'account' of the nondual state. You are forgetting that you only arrive to the nondual state because of all the soul-force conditioning which exists in the normal state. The most direct one being your sympathy towards certain spiritual practices, but we must also include practically every factor which led you to be born into a certain family, in a certain place, with a certain upbringing, to attend certain schools, to choose a certain career path, to arrive on the nondual path, etc. All of these reflect the lawful, fractal conditioning forces across incarnations and during the current incarnation which are embedded in your current perspective, and which chooses to do the nondual meditations. We can only safely ignore that conditioning if we declare it irrelevant or forget about it altogether, like the secular scientist. Otherwise we need to squarely confront the fact that it exists and is working into our current perspective regardless of whether we are in the meditative state or not. Then we realize our choice of which curvatures to explore isn't so freely willed after all.

To be clear, we are not claiming you have this conditioning and those pursuing Anthroposophical methods don't. We all have that conditioning. But it is only the modern initiatory method through the brow chakra which allows us to become conscious of the conditioning, not in any abstract intellectual way (as we are speaking of it now), but as living forces which steer our intuitive becoming. In the process of becoming conscious of these forces, we discover certain leeway in the 'riverbed' of our soul-life through which our intuitive activity can find novel ways to flow through and manifest itself in our conceptual and bodily life. I know this likely sounds very monotonous, boring, slow grind, but the living process of engaging this quest is the most intimately real experience we can have. It is the very process of evolving higher cognition so that we can consciously cross the threshold of sleep-death, with discerning judgment intact, and dwell with archetypal beings whose activity is responsible for the Earthly kingdoms, thereby building the gradient to Earthly consciousness.

Of course there is always conditioning by our individuated structure of the ego, that is exactly what I said here:
and it becomes the structure that shapes the individuality of the spiritual activity, but does not control it
In the nondual state when the whole structure of the ego becomes fully transparent though full awareness, all this conditioning is exposed, is still shapes the space of our decisions but does not rigidly control it anymore so that we can consciously make Free-Will decisions based on available higher-level meanings, specifically nondual meanings from higher-level nondual reams that we get access to in the nondual state. On other words, notwithstanding the ego conditioning, there is always a "window of opportunities" within the current conditioning for the Free Will to act according to the higher-level meanings.

BTW, opening the brow chakra is also part of Eastern spiritual traditions (nondual practices included)