A Phenomenology of Cognition (Max Leyf)

[Federica]

Yes, it wouldn't be wrong to say that I have faith in the path. True, also, that without this 'faith' I couldn't move on for very long. However it must be immediately added that this faith has very little to do with blind religious faith (we could equally say, it has very little to do with the grace of faith). My approach is very different. A gross analogy could be a financial one. I am investing my assets in this path and I expect a very high return. Not because I have clairvoyance, not because I bet on it based on what others say, but because it proves to me, month after month, that the payouts are there. First I got into it 'by chance' because it effectively addressed (in the first insights then provided by Cleric and Ashvin) some dissatisfaction I had with BKs philosophy. Then the only "risk" I took - you could say based on faith, other would say based on affinity, or gut feeling - was to spend some time at the beginning, getting familiar with the spirit of the path. All that has happened afterward has not been faith-based, in the sense that I constantly get returns for the efforts I put in. Sure, I could still abandon the path and pursue other promising investments. The reason I am not doing it is that I have certain faith that what's been happening so far, will continue to unfold and bear fruits. I have a vague sense of the extension of the long way ahead. As I said, this is not only a tough task, it's also super exciting, and I couldn't accomplish it without the faith that the little that has unfolded (and is unfolding) is not just an incredibly bizarre coincidence, rather it is a solid proof that there is logic and lawfulness to this path, which is getting integrated, though in modest and vastly incomplete ways so far.

Yes, I can see your inspiration, and I understand that your faith is not blind.
IMO all teachings and practices are incomplete but many have good practices and insights into the facets of the truth, and Anthroposophy is certainly one of them. It is sad to see how some people turn it into a sectarian and rigid closed system of beliefs and practices that does not tolerate any deviations or extensions, something I do not think Steiner would appreciate.

I think the way the question is turned, makes it inherently unsolvable, and ultimately, unhelpful.
Unsolvable because, even if we imagine it was possible to somehow demonstrate that some did, how would this make sense with the inherent living thinking, first-person nature of this path? If it was possible, it would be a logical absurdity for the living thinking path to be both living and "demonstrated". The word “demonstration” would lose significance. Demonstrated how, based on what self invalidating methods? Or methods that are completely at odds with the higher cognition they should demonstrate.
The question is also unhelpful, because a demonstration (whatever it might mean) would not help us in the least, with our individual progression, because progression needs to be directly experienced.
One would receive much more encouragement and confirmation from 'investing' some initial efforts and watch the results (but eagerness and excitement are required, that's the thing) rather than speculating around impossible demonstrated cases of living thinking. I do think this is the true spirit of your question: "How can I find the motivation to seriously dive into this inquiry?"

That's right, the inner experience of another person is not verifiable, but we can still consider it as an evidence providing that we can trust a person who tells us about it. For example here you answered honestly and I appreciate you honesty (and even the fact that you actually answered, which I could not get from Cleric) and I trust you:

For my part, certainly not. As I see it, there are many many milestones on the way, before that realization.

Eugene,

Since you have not yet officially closed this other entrance, I will quote the following about the risks of not being interested in the hows of the sensory/dual world:

From this standpoint it will also be readily understood why the Threshold to the supersensible world is watched over by a Guardian. In no case may real insight into those regions be permitted to anyone lacking the requisite faculties; therefore, when at the hour of death anyone enters the other world while still incompetent to work in it, the higher experiences are shrouded from him until he is fit to behold them.

When the student enters the supersensible world, life acquires quite a new meaning for him; he discerns in the physical world the seed-ground of a higher world, so that in a certain sense the higher will appear defective without the lower. Two outlooks are opened before him; the first into the past and the second into the future. His vision extends to a past in which this physical world was not yet existent; for he has long since discarded the prejudice that the supersensible world was developed out of the sense-world. He knows that the former existed first, and that out of it everything physical was evolved. He sees that he himself belonged to a supersensible world before coming for the first time into this sense-world. But this pristine supersensible world needed to pass through the sense-world, for without this passage its further evolution would not have been possible. It can only pursue its course when certain things will have developed requisite faculties within the realm of the senses.

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/Engli ... 0_c10.html

[Cleric K]

Well, I said many times that in addition to experiencing oneness (that's not a "feeling of oneness" by the way, it's a direct experience), I also always try to reach to the knowledge of structures and meanings of the Book while not being separate from them. What I was pointing to is that the direct experience of the "mechanics" of how the perceptions are formed is still not available to my direct experience. This is not "dissatisfaction", but just a simple fact, because I can never fully know all the structure until I experience it from first-person perspective as a living inner experience.

But OK, I got it. In simple words what you are saying means "you are always doing it wrong, you will never get it right unless you give up your stupid nondual practice, fully subscribe to the Anthroposophy, believe in all its premises and follow all its recipes and exercises exactly". Sounds like a philosophy of freedom

OK, Eugene Just one question because to this day I don’t have an idea what exactly you have (if you have) tried of the various meditative experiments that have been commented here. It is interesting for me how you feel about them.

For example, let’s take again “I think these words.” Are you capable of whole-heartedly pronouncing these words and feel how the meaningful intents proceed from your nondual core but are forced to take verbal form as they are 'squeezed' through the elemental oragnism? Or you feel certain uneasiness to experiment with your voice? I can imagine that this is easily the case for many nondual practitioners who look upon their thinking voice as an illusionary phenomenon and thus they feel actual horror if they have to feel creatively responsible for the words they hear – this for them is like the total negation of everything they have sworn by. To feel as having anything to do with the thinking voice is like falling for the greatest illusion of all.

[Stranger]

For example, let’s take again “I think these words.” Are you capable of whole-heartedly pronouncing these words and feel how the meaningful intents proceed from your nondual core but are forced to take verbal form as they are 'squeezed' through the elemental oragnism? Or you feel certain uneasiness to experiment with your voice? I can imagine that this is easily the case for many nondual practitioners who look upon their thinking voice as an illusionary phenomenon and thus they feel actual horror if they have to feel creatively responsible for the words they hear – this for them is like the total negation of everything they have sworn by. To feel as having anything to do with the thinking voice is like falling for the greatest illusion of all.

When I think or utter "these words", there is a flow of beautiful phenomena of meanings, intents, thoughts and sounds interconnected with each other and with the rest of Reality through a fabric of structured relations, all of them inseparable from the Oneness of All, from its Awareness and Beingness, and there is no "me"-observer who is observing this flow. There is nothing illusory in this marvelous flow, no uneasiness whatsoever, it is all Reality as it is. There is also no such thing as a "nondual core". The illusion comes when the mind fabricates an idea-imagination that there is "my-self" as a separate entity or "center of perception" (a "core") that thinks, utters or types these words and there is a "Cleric-self" as another entity/center who perceives them, and there are separate "things" in the "external world outside of me", this is what "illusion" means in nondual teachings (I actually explained it in the parallel thread). There are indeed people in the nondual community that interpret the World of forms as an "illusion" ust like you described (and I'm not one of them), usually that is because they are on the stage #2 of the path.

[Cleric K]

When I think or utter "these words", there is a flow of beautiful phenomena of meanings, intents, thoughts and sounds interconnected with each other and with the rest of Reality through a fabric of structured relations, all of them inseparable from the Oneness of All, from its Awareness and Beingness, and there is no "me"-observer who is observing this flow. There is nothing illusory in this marvelous flow, no uneasiness whatsoever, it is all Reality as it is. There is also no such thing as a "nondual core". The illusion comes when the mind fabricates an idea-imagination that there is "my-self" as a separate entity or "center of perception" (a "core") that thinks, utters or types these words and there is a "Cleric-self" as another entity/center who perceives them, and there are separate "things" in the "external world outside of me", this is what "illusion" means in nondual teachings (I actually explained it in the parallel thread). There are indeed people in the nondual community that interpret the World of forms as an "illusion" ust like you described (and I'm not one of them), usually that is because they are on the stage #2 of the path.

That’s great. Yes, indeed we don’t find ‘me’ within this panoramic experience as some ‘thing’, side by side with other spiritual phenomena that fill our awareness. However we can still use that word in a meaningful way, without needing to postulate or believe in anything.

We can still speak of our true being in the following sense. Think about the fact that you play guitar. Think about the way this has made it possible that you discover a whole aspect of your spiritual being which otherwise would remain completely unknown. This includes aspects of your life of will, all the skills and techniques you have etched into your physical machinery, it includes the aesthetic feelings, it includes the forms of your spiritual activity that explore musical patterns and curvatures through Time and manifest them through your bodily organs.

Or think about the following. Imagine you have grown up stranded on an island. You have learned to survive but you have never heard words, you never developed language. Thus (similarly to the way I wrote to Guney) your being would live in pictorial consciousness of food, predators and so on. All the meaning that we explore in this forum would be non-existent to you. You wouldn't even reflect on your existence, it would be simply an instinctive flow through sensory pictures and dim willing towards those that feel pleasurable and away from those that are painful.

When things are seen in this way, it is quite clear that our deeper being has certain potential that may or may not be realized. But more importantly – if it is not realized, we can’t even know that such manifestations of our being are possible. They simply don’t exist in our version of reality.

So the potential of our nondual spiritual core can be known (can know itself) in as much as it is capable of finding its expressions, be it in music, verbal thinking or whatever. Again – this is not to imply that this potential can be perceived somewhere, as some ball of energetic potential or who knows what. Yet we certainly develop our intuitive comprehension of the ways our potential manifests. We can understand how this potential would never find the light of consciousness if we didn’t make efforts to learn the guitar, to read books, to reflect on the great questions of existence.

Would you agree with such an understanding of the ‘nondual core’ - as the infinite potential of the One that is gradually manifesting through our first-person spiritual activity and in this way we gain consciousness about what it is to exist, to have orientation within reality, to reflect ourselves in thoughts, to steer our stream of becoming?

[Stranger]

Would you agree with such an understanding of the ‘nondual core’ - as the infinite potential of the One that is gradually manifesting through our first-person spiritual activity and in this way we gain consciousness about what it is to exist, to have orientation within reality, to reflect ourselves in thoughts, to steer our stream of becoming?

If that is what you mean by "nondual core" then I 100% agree with the above. Very eloquent and precise statement. Although I think the word "core" is a bit confusing as it sounds like this potential resides in some "core" but is absent on the "peripheries", while in reality this potential is present equally everywhere in the "infinite space of consciousness". But that's ok, we are splitting the hair here.

[AshvinP]

Would you agree with such an understanding of the ‘nondual core’ - as the infinite potential of the One that is gradually manifesting through our first-person spiritual activity and in this way we gain consciousness about what it is to exist, to have orientation within reality, to reflect ourselves in thoughts, to steer our stream of becoming?

If that is what you mean by "nondual core" then I 100% agree with the above. Very eloquent and precise statement. Although I think the word "core" is a bit confusing as it sounds like this potential resides in some "core" but is absent on the "peripheries", while in reality this potential is present equally everywhere in the "infinite space of consciousness". But that's ok, we are splitting the hair here.

Just a note - I think it's helpful to distinguish phenomenology from metaphysics. With metaphysics, we can indeed justifiably say the nondual being is both core and periphery. But, if we are trying to examine the ways in which this nondual being concretely manifests through our first-person spiritual activity (phenomenology), such a metaphysical statement would serve as an obstacle to further exploration. We would be starting from the end result, with nowhere left to go, rather than the beginning. Same thing with speaking of "me" as a locus of the nondual being's consciousness which experiences a first-person stream of becoming from within.

[AshvinP]

I would just caution that we should avoid taking the 'waste product' metaphor too rigidly or negatively.

Ashvin,
It's interesting, I'm reading again Max Leyf's phenomenology and I believe the idea of waste product (which I find helpful, with the caveat you indicated) was directly suggested to me by the phrasing. I didn't notice it on the first read, all these words are employed to describe standard cognition: destruction, disintegration, pure chaos, nothingness, non-being, annihilation. This angle is not found in PoF, I believe, it's new. In fact, I think it's a pedagogically great way to illustrate cognition.

First, it's helpful because it invites the student/reader to really relativize the physical world, and maybe for the first time, bump into the idea of the gross, dense pull the physical world exerts on our senses, which makes it look so exhaustive. In other words, in these few lines, the reader is easily guided to the realization that what the physical world is exhaustive of is our senses, not the fullness of reality, as the default wordview goes.

Second, after the destruction, the idea is offered of the perpetually fresh start of the more conscious cognitive process. The clean slate is an easier intuitive handle, in accord with so many insights and images, and more inviting for the student.

In short, I believe this phenomenology dresses cognition in clean-cut, attractive guise, that fittingly accentuates its traits to make it more easily accessible for the student. What do you think?

Federica,

Yes I agree with the above. Of course we shouldn't take 'destruction' etc. too negatively, but rather as a necessary polarity of life-death, conscious continuity-discontinuity which allows for the development of inner freedom and moral agency within the realm of the senses, as you also shared with the other Steiner quote, so that we may inherit our Divine creative responsibilities within the Cosmic evoluton.

I think you're right Steiner doesn't use that angle in PoF, but it is rife in his spiritual scientific lectures. There is a quite literal destruction of our physical-etheric organism taking place through the ordinary thinking activity. This is the reason for both sleep and physical death. I think I shared this quote before:

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.

By strengthening our thinking to perceive Imaginations with waking consciousness, we are then consciously participating in this healing-redeeming process, as we simultaneously maintain greater continuity of consciousness, although certainly not to the extent we will avoid death in our current incarnation. As you can imagine, this is all very central to the redmeption of Earthly evolution. It doesn't need to be one or the other anymore - either expanding our consciousness or maintaining life and evolution on Earth. Instead, doing the former in the moral way also contributes directly to the latter (through the deed of Christ), so that the Earth can evolve into the Cosmos with and through us.

[Stranger]

Eugene,

Since you have not yet officially closed this other entrance, I will quote the following about the risks of not being interested in the hows of the sensory/dual world:

From this standpoint it will also be readily understood why the Threshold to the supersensible world is watched over by a Guardian. In no case may real insight into those regions be permitted to anyone lacking the requisite faculties; therefore, when at the hour of death anyone enters the other world while still incompetent to work in it, the higher experiences are shrouded from him until he is fit to behold them.

When the student enters the supersensible world, life acquires quite a new meaning for him; he discerns in the physical world the seed-ground of a higher world, so that in a certain sense the higher will appear defective without the lower. Two outlooks are opened before him; the first into the past and the second into the future. His vision extends to a past in which this physical world was not yet existent; for he has long since discarded the prejudice that the supersensible world was developed out of the sense-world. He knows that the former existed first, and that out of it everything physical was evolved. He sees that he himself belonged to a supersensible world before coming for the first time into this sense-world. But this pristine supersensible world needed to pass through the sense-world, for without this passage its further evolution would not have been possible. It can only pursue its course when certain things will have developed requisite faculties within the realm of the senses.

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/Engli ... 0_c10.html

This is a good point, Federica, let me clarify. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, there is nothing wrong with the sensory and physical realm, nothing inherently wrong with Mother Earth, the sensory realm by itself is not dual, it is actually nondual by nature, because Oneness is the actual state of the World (including its material levels). Duality is an artificial layer of perception-interpretation when we unconsciously perceive and interpret the sensory data in a specific dualistic way (it is important to understand the difference between sensations and perceptions). Basically, the mind subconsciously produces the layer of abstract meanings/ideas overlayed on the raw sensory data and interpreting the reality is a dualistic way and veiling out the underlying factual Oneness. Also, it is indeed important to understand how exactly such dualistic perception-interpretation functions in order to be able to dismantle/redeem it. However, as a result of such dualistic perception, the mind fabricates a humongous amount of dualistic structures of abstract meanings and ideas that are deluded and incoherent with respect to Reality, and studying these deluded structures is irrelevant. I mean, one can still invest time to study them, but it's mostly a waste of time IMO (it's like studying the structures of LSD hallucinations that are totally irrelevant and incoherent with reality), and it is better to invest time and efforts in developing and expanding into coherent modes of cognition.

Also, on another note, we all agree that we are on the evolutionary path of expanding consciousness, and while still in the human body, we are also participating in the human evolution on Earth. However, as we know from the natural and human history, there are periods of continuous evolution and periods of disruptive/revolutionary transitions where the old structures come to a dead end and become too rigid and impeding for the future evolution. This happened when the evolution switched from dinosaurs to mammals, from other humanoids to sapiens, from monarchies to democracies and so on. Likewise, the question is whether the solidified structures of human body-mind where the dualistic perception is rooted became too rigid and impeding for the future evolution and require a revolutionary transition to a new (also material!) form, or whether they can still be smoothly transformed by continuous process of redeeming/recycling. Also it is important to keep in mind that the dualistic meaning structures do not only reside in the physical realm, but also extend to and supported from the nonphysical realms of dualistic discarnate beings. This is actually the key point in the "Demiurge" thread discussion. Honestly, I do not know the definite answer, but I am open to both possibilities and I can see strong arguments supporting both possibilities.

[Cleric K]

If that is what you mean by "nondual core" then I 100% agree with the above. Very eloquent and precise statement. Although I think the word "core" is a bit confusing as it sounds like this potential resides in some "core" but is absent on the "peripheries", while in reality this potential is present equally everywhere in the "infinite space of consciousness". But that's ok, we are splitting the hair here.

Good. Let’s continue then. We agree that the invisible infinite potential is continually manifesting and becoming experientially known, turning inside-out through our perspective as it were. It’s important to consider Ashvin’s remark. It is one thing to understand within our so far manifested state that we’re of one essence with the full (yet unknown) potential but it is altogether different thing to experience consciously the potential.

Thus it is useful to draw the following distinction. There are many things that may potentially manifest through our stream of becoming. For example, you may learn to play many more musical instruments. It is true that the skills and experience of playing these instruments will be something new, not contained within that which you already know. But at the same time these experiences will manifest within a ‘sub-space’ of possibilities, of whose ‘geometry’ you more or less have some orientation. Yes, the movement of the fingers may be something that you have never tried before, the sound of the instrument may be different from anything you have ever heard, yet all these experiences still fall into certain pockets of potential that won’t strike you as something that was inconceivable before you have tried it.

That’s one. The other thing we can understand with the analogy of having only primitive pictorial consciousness and the awakening of the intellectual ego. Now this is something that in the most literal sense is inconceivable in the primitive consciousness. It’s not just another form of sensation that the primitive man hasn’t yet experienced. It is the Spirit that awakens to a whole new level of consciousness, where it can creatively manifest its potential of becoming into mental images and reflect its existence in them.

It is that same Spirit which is active also in the primitive man but there it can have only a very dim consciousness and constrained degrees of freedom of its creative potential. There the activity of the Spirit is like instinctive pushing and pulling within the labyrinth of spiritual sensations. Yet there’s no consciousness that this pushing and pulling is happening, that the activity has continuity through time and so on. This becomes possible when the Spirit, in the form of intellect, finds its new degrees of freedom, through which it can reflect to itself the fact that it exists and is active. From that perspective we can say “In the primitive state my essential being was also present, yet I have been muted, I’ve been sucked into and shaped after the contents of my consciousness and all my activity consisted in dim pushing towards phenomena that felt good and pulling from what felt bad.”

Now do you conceive as a possibility that we may be in a similar situation even today, that our lucid intellectual life, even though on a higher level, is still akin to instinctive pushing and pulling within a flow of mental images? The difference, of course, is that our activity is much more refined and we can steer the flow in such a way that the stream of mental images seem to completely reflect our intuitive intentions.

In an analogous way, there’s an as yet unknown higher level of self, to which my intellectual consciousness relates in the same way that the primitive consciousness relates to the intellect. Of course there’s also difference because the Spirit is already much more self-aware within the intellect. Thus it can anticipate its own higher stages of consciousness. For example within the intellect we can say “It’s impossible to fit in my present intuitive sense of being how the higher stage of being will be experienced. What I know though, through making analogy with the primitive and intellectual stage, is that there’s something of that higher being that experiences itself in thinking and is able to say “I” to itself. What I know is that at some future time, when my spirit loosens the intellectual forms it will be capable of looking back upon my present state and recognize how in a certain sense it has been muted and constrained within the intellect.”

Does this make sense?

[Federica]

This is a good point, Federica, let me clarify. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, there is nothing wrong with the sensory and physical realm, nothing inherently wrong with Mother Earth, the sensory realm by itself is not dual, it is actually nondual by nature, because Oneness is the actual state of the World (including its material levels). Duality is an artificial layer of perception-interpretation when we unconsciously perceive and interpret the sensory data in a specific dualistic way (it is important to understand the difference between sensations and perceptions). Basically, the mind subconsciously produces the layer of abstract meanings/ideas overlayed on the raw sensory data and interpreting the reality is a dualistic way and veiling out the underlying factual Oneness. Also, it is indeed important to understand how exactly such dualistic perception-interpretation functions in order to be able to dismantle/redeem it. However, as a result of such dualistic perception, the mind fabricates a humongous amount of dualistic structures of abstract meanings and ideas that are deluded and incoherent with respect to Reality, and studying these deluded structures is irrelevant. I mean, one can still invest time to study them, but it's mostly a waste of time IMO (it's like studying the structures of LSD hallucinations that are totally irrelevant and incoherent with reality), and it is better to invest time and efforts in developing and expanding into coherent modes of cognition.

the sensory realm by itself is not dual, it is neutral.

I don’t agree here, the above sounds self-contradictory - “sensory realm” means just that: a mode of experience that has to be “dual”. There is not a neutral Mother Earth out there, that can be walked upon and experienced in various ways. There is human nature interacting with the one reality, and its way of doing it is to “bifurcate and disintegrate its structure”, to say it with Max Leyf. This is the way “the human being is situated in the world", or in reality.
What you say about Mother Earth sounds like a falling back into materialistic default worldview?
We have to be super careful, it’s almost ingrained in our intellect… I know how it sneaks back in, as soon as it is chased out.

Duality is an artificial layer of perception-interpretation when we unconsciously perceive and interpret the sensory data in a specific dualistic way.

Well, there is only one way to perceive sensory data - better said: only one way to have sense perceptions.
The way I intend sensation and perception is: every sensation is a perception, but not the other way around. Thought-pictures, for instance, are perceptions but not sensations. Once we have a perception of the type ‘sensation’, we cannot do otherwise in the moment than destroy its reality, split it in two, it’s our incarnate human nature. It is not an interpretational choice.

as a result of such dualistic perception, the mind fabricates a humongous amount of dualistic structures of abstract meanings and ideas that are deluded and incoherent with respect to Reality

The mind (intellect) creates thought-pictures and standard knowledge, like, say, the standard curriculum of a certain university degree, or the thought-picture of a tree. Now, when Steiner says that we should discern in the physical world the seed-grounds of the higher, he does not refer to that. Still, that is what our human mind does which makes it dualistic. What we should turn to, and inquire, and study is the connection, the specularity, the mutual dance,of the physical world and the spiritual, it's all part of the same engine. The physical is of enormous help to approximate our being to the structure of the spiritual, just because of this specularity.

So, although it pulls us into the sensorial “destruction”, where we precipitate thought-pictures and so on and so forth, we do need to stay there, and persevere, because the insights that we will find there are a key to deciphering the higher worlds. Even, its the whole reason why the physical world is there: to make us do the tough work of deciphering it, and discerning in it the keys that we cannot do without if we want to ascend to the higher.

No shortcuts Eugene, that’s how it is! Come-on let’s do the work, we are in the perfectly right place to do it!