A Phenomenology of Cognition (Max Leyf)

[Stranger]

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.

I changed my wording there a little bit and said that it's not "neutral", it is actually nondual by nature. By "Mother Earth" I definitely did not mean materialistic interpretation of it. By "material" I mean sensory data related to experiences of our sensory and visible world where our consciousness functions in the human form. In fact, all these sensations are just first-person conscious experiences, there is nothing "material" in them. It is only when we build upon these direct experiences our mind-fabricated interpretation of "material world out there that causes these sensory experiences" where we arrive at materialistic worldview and/or dualistic perception of it.

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.

Ok,let me clarify, there is a subtle difference between the "raw" sensation and the perception of the raw sensory data. Assume that you are looking at an apple. The raw sensation is your visual sensation of the visual scene as it is just like a newly-born child would experience it, it is like a visual "soup". This sensation is actually your direct conscious experience inseparable from experiencing/awareness of this sensation (so it is nondual by nature). What happens next is a layer of information processing going on in your subconscious where pattern recognition occurs and shape and color are recognized. This is not duality yet, it is just consciousness associating the meanings of basic shape-color structures with the raw visual sensation, and these meanings are thought-forms that are also consciously experienced again inseparable from the awareness of them (so they are nondual). Next step is when the mind recognizes the abstract category to which these patterns correspond, such as a category of "apples". Again, this is a necessary data processing step and there is nothing dualistic in it, because we are not yet interpreting that the apple is a "separate object". But there is usually another layer of unconscious processing that most people have, which is interpreting this shape recognized and classified into a specific category as a "separate real object existing in the external objective world" (most people interpret it as a "material" object in the "material" world ), and that is the layer where the dualistic perception happens and naive-realistic-materialistic worldview resides. But all these processing layers typically happen immediately and unconsciously so a person is presented with the whole "package" of raw sensory data together with all the outcomes of these processing steps, and, as a result, the person "sees" the real separate and material "apple out there in the external world". This whole process is called "perception", and when it includes the last layer of the dualistic interpretation, it is called "dualistic perception". Turning it into nondual perception is actually straightforward: what needs to be removed is only the last step of the data processing. There is nothing wrong with the raw sensory data and the first necessary processing steps (pattern recognition and classification into categories). This dualistic perception is an incoherent/deluded way of perceiving the sensory data of what we call "material realm", while the "material realm" by itself (prior to its dualistic layer of data processing) is nondual by nature. The practical problem is that eh dualistic perception is deeply rooted in our subconscious layers and it is practically no so easy to dismantle/redeem.

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 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 create thought-pictures and so on, 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 into 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!

That is great, I like your thoughtful approach. So, based on my above explanations (not sure if you still agree with them or not) here we come to the "deciphering" point where we need to understand what knowledge related to the so-called "physical world" is based on and derived from the dualistic perception (and therefore is inherently incoherent with reality) and what knowledge of the "physical world" is based on a coherent (nondual) way of perceiving the "physical world". Only nondual perception of the physical world can lead to a harmonious mutual dance with the Spiritual, while the dualistic way of perceiving will always be incoherent with the Spiritual.

[Federica]

That is great, I like your thoughtful approach. So, based on my above explanations (not sure if you still agree with them or not) here we come to the "deciphering" point where we need to understand what knowledge related to the so-called "physical world" is based on and derived from the dualistic perception

It is! I like it too, how you are providing the above explanations - how you're building a gradient, as Ashvin would say. So I'll do my best to give you the thourough reply these explanations deserve. It will be tomorrow, though, or I'll fall asleep while I'm typing

[Stranger]

Does this make sense?

Yes, makes perfect sense. I always feel that the spiritual development goes towards more "refined" forms of cognition. and the spiritual potential unfolds not simply into manifesting a variety of mental forms of all kinds, but its development flows towards more and more refined levels of cognition and creation of more refined forms. "Refined" does not mean more complex, but rather of higher spiritual quality so to speak.

[Federica]

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.

I changed my wording there a little bit and said that it's not "neutral", it is actually nondual by nature. By "Mother Earth" I definitely did not mean materialistic interpretation of it. By "material" I mean sensory data related to experiences of our sensory and visible world where our consciousness functions in the human form. In fact, all these sensations are just first-person conscious experiences, there is nothing "material" in them. It is only when we build upon these direct experiences our mind-fabricated interpretation of "material world out there that causes these sensory experiences" where we arrive at materialistic worldview and/or dualistic perception of it.

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.

Ok,let me clarify, there is a subtle difference between the "raw" sensation and the perception of the raw sensory data. Assume that you are looking at an apple. The raw sensation is your visual sensation of the visual scene as it is just like a newly-born child would experience it, it is like a visual "soup". This sensation is actually your direct conscious experience inseparable from experiencing/awareness of this sensation (so it is nondual by nature). What happens next is a layer of information processing going on in your subconscious where pattern recognition occurs and shape and color are recognized. This is not duality yet, it is just consciousness associating the meanings of basic shape-color structures with the raw visual sensation, and these meanings are thought-forms that are also consciously experienced again inseparable from the awareness of them (so they are nondual). Next step is when the mind recognizes the abstract category to which these patterns correspond, such as a category of "apples". Again, this is a necessary data processing step and there is nothing dualistic in it, because we are not yet interpreting that the apple is a "separate object". But there is usually another layer of unconscious processing that most people have, which is interpreting this shape recognized and classified into a specific category as a "separate real object existing in the external objective world" (most people interpret it as a "material" object in the "material" world ), and that is the layer where the dualistic perception happens and naive-realistic-materialistic worldview resides. But all these processing layers typically happen immediately and unconsciously so a person is presented with the whole "package" of raw sensory data together with all the outcomes of these processing steps, and, as a result, the person "sees" the real separate and material "apple out there in the external world". This whole process is called "perception", and when it includes the last layer of the dualistic interpretation, it is called "dualistic perception". Turning it into nondual perception is actually straightforward: what needs to be removed is only the last step of the data processing. There is nothing wrong with the raw sensory data and the first necessary processing steps (pattern recognition and classification into categories). This dualistic perception is an incoherent/deluded way of perceiving the sensory data of what we call "material realm", while the "material realm" by itself (prior to its dualistic layer of data processing) is nondual by nature. The practical problem is that eh dualistic perception is deeply rooted in our subconscious layers and it is practically no so easy to dismantle/redeem.

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 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 create thought-pictures and so on, 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 into 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!

That is great, I like your thoughtful approach. So, based on my above explanations (not sure if you still agree with them or not) here we come to the "deciphering" point where we need to understand what knowledge related to the so-called "physical world" is based on and derived from the dualistic perception (and therefore is inherently incoherent with reality) and what knowledge of the "physical world" is based on a coherent (nondual) way of perceiving the "physical world". Only nondual perception of the physical world can lead to a harmonious mutual dance with the Spiritual, while the dualistic way of perceiving will always be incoherent with the Spiritual.

***

Alright, Eugene, let's resume from where we left:

I changed my wording there a little bit and said that it's not "neutral", it is actually nondual by nature. By "Mother Earth" I definitely did not mean materialistic interpretation of it. By "material" I mean sensory data related to experiences of our sensory and visible world where our consciousness functions in the human form. In fact, all these sensations are just first-person conscious experiences, there is nothing "material" in them. It is only when we build upon these direct experiences our mind-fabricated interpretation of "material world out there that causes these sensory experiences" where we arrive at materialistic worldview and/or dualistic perception of it.

Yes, the change was good! So you say the Earth is non-dual by nature, and I’m fine with that: it’s all one engine. The only ‘messy’ part of the Thinking engine is us! We don’t even bother to let the thinking force inflow us as is, we have to strip it off of itself, or split it: like in nuclear fission, we mess up the unity of reality (Uranium nucleus) because we are not capable of getting energy from its core as is (non-dual). So we destroy the nucleus, hoping we will get the energy (Spirit) out. We do get some sub-optimum reverberations, but the sacrifice is the biggest imaginable. The sacrifice goes on until we are able to redeem the destruction in consciousness, hence in truth. What we redeem is all the broken pieces. It’s not that we discard some broken pieces and keep some others. We need to enter and pervade with awareness the exact workings of all pieces, including the sensory realm, otherwise we won’t be able to re-act the nucleus.

Ok, let me clarify, there is a subtle difference between the "raw" sensation and the perception of the raw sensory data. Assume that you are looking at an apple. The raw sensation is your visual sensation of the visual scene as it is just like a newly-born child would experience it, it is like a visual "soup". This sensation is actually your direct conscious experience inseparable from experiencing/awareness of this sensation (so it is nondual by nature).

Ok I’ll call the raw sensation ‘the soup’, for simplicity. It’s described in PoF as well, it’s the famous “percept” (which, as purported in PoF - in itself and in turn - is nothing else than a concept, but let’s not complicate it too much, it’s enough here to say that a percept of an apple (a raw sensation of an apple) is a ‘spoonful of soup’. What it means is that - as you said - the soup is a visual (or otherwise sensory) scene, not a collection of separable singularities, like an apple or a tree. Still, for pedagogical purposes we provisionally speak of a spoonful of soup, so that we can imagine scooping it out of the scene. Hence we can speak of the percept - or raw sensation - of an apple. As you say, “this sensation is actually your direct conscious experience”. Yes, Steiner would say, this percept is the “immediately given content of unthinking observation”. So far everything matches. Now, exactly at this point, I encounter an issue in your reasoning. Before we come to it, let’s remember how Steiner usefully puts it at this point: the percepts are the content/the objects of observation, while we call perception the process in which we are engaged. So you say: “This sensation is actually your direct conscious experience inseparable from experiencing/awareness of this sensation (so it is nondual by nature)”.
Alright, let’s look very carefully at this junction. I’ll try to show you that this is actually an arbitrary labeling of the percept as “good/non-dual”. It’s understandable that we do this labeling, because we start with the rough idea that we are the problem - which is indeed correct - and that somehow, with our cognition, we mess things up - again, correct! - and that reality as it is does not contain any errors in itself - correct! And so we conclude: then, the raw sensation/percept, must be good and non-dual! But this is where a small inaccuracy is hidden, that derails the whole reasoning. The thing is that the percept is the result of our ‘destructive cognition’, not reality as is!
Let’s think about fission. The percept is one of the smaller nuclei that we obtain after a neutron is made to react with the nucleus of uranium235. Now, your reasoning proceeds as if the percept was a pristine part of the engine. It is not! So that’s the issue. Raw sensation is not non-dual. It’s part of the by-products.
Another way to look at it: if it was true that raw percept is pristine reality, that would mean that the nature of non-dual reality, above and beyond human intervention, is perceptual. But we know that the core of the non-dual engine is of Spiritual/Thinking nature. It’s only man who splits it, as a condition for experiencing the sensory realm. That’s how we process the thinking force in our human organization/system.


Let’s note here that a thought-picture is also a percept, it’s also raw content, not of sensation, such as observation with our eyes, but it’s still raw content of our perception. It appears to our consciousness the same way a visual picture does (that’s why we call it a thought-picture) and we don’t really know how and whence. Therefore, it’s also raw in a big sense. Yet, the moment we become meta-conscious of it - like we are doing now - we initiate, though in minimal way first, the process of restoration of reality, because we are using our consciousness to extricate what’s going on (It might help here to remember that the ‘soup’ perceived by the new-born baby is an aggregate of visual, auditory, etc… contents of ‘sensation’, but also of the bodily sensations - pain, pleasure, hunger… - and of the feelings that might come with all that. It's an inseparable bundle).

What happens next is a layer of information processing going on in your subconscious where pattern recognition occurs and shape and color are recognized. This is not duality yet, it is just consciousness associating the meanings of basic shape-color structures with the raw visual sensation, and these meanings are thought-forms

Yes, what you describe here is Thinking resuming its workings, after the destructive passage of human cognition. Notice, this happens in Thinking, before it happens in us. Thinking is bigger than man. We are in it, not the other way around. So what you have described here is the natural way in which the Thinking force, through us, starts the reorganization of all the broken pieces, putting back together the percepts with concepts and ideas (meaning, as you say). In Steiner's words, it’s Thinking drawing threads from one element of observation to another, linking definite concepts [with the 'spoonfuls of soup'] and thereby establishing a relationship between them.
This activity of interrelating the soup with its ideal-conceptual half, that we ascend to (in small, standard-cognitive ways at first) is both non-dual and dual. It’s non-dual in the sense that it’s Thinking rolling its engine, it’s Thinking operating the restoration of reality. And it’s also dual when we see it from our human perspective, because we execute this restoration at first (standard cognition) in the context of our physical world. So from this angle we come to the lawful conculsion, once again: we cannot separate dual and non-dual, discard the first and run with the second, without making abstractions. A very thoughtful phenomenology, as we are doing, allows us to progressively realize that. I want to emphasize here that your precise and challenging questions are an integral, positive part of this real-time phenomenology we are doing. They are helping me to become even more conscious of what I am trying to walk you through, and so I am thankful for your participation in this collective work. It’s really a progressive process of cognition that requires effort, and multiple iterations. Just as we are doing here and now.

This is not duality yet, it is just consciousness associating the meanings of basic shape-color structures with the raw visual sensation, and these meanings are thought-forms that are also consciously experienced again inseparable from the awareness of them (so they are nondual)

All the above being said, we see here that the italic part relies on inaccurate basis, and is not itself accurate.
We could continue to dissect your text, sentence by sentence, but I would prefer to pause here, because at this point there is already a lot we have laid out, that needs to be inflowed with various iterations of conscious first-person effort (again, I need to continue the iterations just as much as you…) So let’s call a little time-out now, but then we continue, OK?

[Stranger]

We need to enter and pervade with awareness the exact workings of all pieces, including the sensory realm, otherwise we won’t be able to re-act the nucleus.

Couldn't agree more, the continuous awareness/mindfulness of all levels of the thinking processes and pervasion into previously unconscious layers is a key to any efficient practice.

Ok I’ll call the raw sensation ‘the soup’, for simplicity. It’s described in PoF as well, it’s the famous “percept” (which, as purported in PoF - in itself and in turn - is nothing else than a concept, but let’s not complicate it too much, it’s enough here to say that a percept of an apple (a raw sensation of an apple) is a ‘spoonful of soup’. What it means is that - as you said - the soup is a visual (or otherwise sensory) scene, not a collection of separable singularities, like an apple or a tree. Still, for pedagogical purposes we provisionally speak of a spoonful of soup, so that we can imagine scooping it out of the scene. Hence we can speak of the percept - or raw sensation - of an apple. As you say, “this sensation is actually your direct conscious experience”. Yes, Steiner would say, this percept is the “immediately given content of unthinking observation”. So far everything matches. Now, exactly at this point, I encounter an issue in your reasoning. Before we come to it, let’s remember how Steiner usefully puts it at this point: the percepts are the content/the objects of observation, while we call perception the process in which we are engaged. So you say: “This sensation is actually your direct conscious experience inseparable from experiencing/awareness of this sensation (so it is nondual by nature)”.

Alright, let’s look very carefully at this junction. I’ll try to show you that this is actually an arbitrary labeling of the percept as “good/non-dual”. It’s understandable that we do this labeling, because we start with the rough idea that we are the problem - which is indeed correct - and that somehow, with our cognition, we mess things up - again, correct! - and that reality as it is does not contain any errors in itself - correct! And so we conclude: then, the raw sensation/percept, must be good and non-dual! But this is where a small inaccuracy is hidden, that derails the whole reasoning. The thing is that the percept is the result of our ‘destructive cognition’, not reality as is!
Let’s think about fission. The percept is one of the smaller nuclei that we obtain after a neutron is made to react with the nucleus of uranium235. Now, your reasoning proceeds as if the percept was a pristine part of the engine. It is not! So that’s the issue. Raw sensation is not non-dual. It’s part of the by-products.
Another way to look at it: if it was true that raw percept is pristine reality, that would mean that the nature of non-dual reality, above and beyond human intervention, is perceptual. But we know that the core of the non-dual engine is of Spiritual/Thinking nature. It’s only man who splits it, as a condition for experiencing the sensory realm. That’s how we process the thinking force in our human organization/system.

Let’s note here that a thought-picture is also a percept, it’s also raw content, not of sensation, such as observation with our eyes, but it’s still raw content of our perception. It appears to our consciousness the same way a visual picture does (that’s why we call it a thought-picture) and we don’t really know how and whence. Therefore, it’s also raw in a big sense. Yet, the moment we become meta-conscious of it - like we are doing now - we initiate, though in minimal way first, the process of restoration of reality, because we are using our consciousness to extricate what’s going on (It might help here to remember that the ‘soup’ perceived by the new-born baby is an aggregate of visual, auditory, etc… contents of ‘sensation’, but also of the bodily sensations - pain, pleasure, hunger… - and of the feelings that might come with all that. It's an inseparable bundle).

OK, that's good, so we are basically addressing two issues here. I'm approaching it from practical perspective, as an engineer. In my profession we do not label things as "good" or "bad" but as functional or non-functional, or performing or non-performing up to specs, and then, if a system is not performing, we find the root cause of the performance break and the exact place in the system where this happens, and then find ways to fix it.

Anyway, we are looking now at two different places where the break/incoherence happens:

- One issue is in the latest processing layer, as I pointed in my previous post, where the dualistic interpretation of the sensory experience happens. This is definitely the incoherent step and needs to be fixed.

- Another issue is the one you pointed, and I agree with that. The percepts are actually the result of the ideations of Thinking, and we can intuitively know that. But this is exactly why I asked the previous question if there is anybody being able to experientially get access to this machinery process of Thinking ideations creating raw percepts. Honestly, with all my meditation practice I was not able to do that. I'm not denying that we should try to expand out awareness into this level of Thinking, we by all means should try, it's just that I was not able to do that yet. But also, even if we do not have a direct experiential access to that level, but just intuitively know that the level is "there", then in this case I do not see a problem of dualistic split here. We know that the percepts are still phenomena of conscious experience inseparable from the Oneness of Awareness-Beingness, so this is not where the dualistic incoherence occurs, it is only a temporary limitation of our current state of cognition.

Yes, what you describe here is Thinking resuming its workings, after the destructive passage of human cognition. Notice, this happens in Thinking, before it happens in us. Thinking is bigger than man. We are in it, not the other way around. So what you have described here is the natural way in which the Thinking force, through us, starts the reorganization of all the broken pieces, putting back together the percepts with concepts and ideas (meaning, as you say). In Steiner's words, it’s Thinking drawing threads from one element of observation to another, linking definite concepts [with the 'spoonfuls of soup'] and thereby establishing a relationship between them.
This activity of interrelating the soup with its ideal-conceptual half, that we ascend to (in small, standard-cognitive ways at first) is both non-dual and dual. It’s non-dual in the sense that it’s Thinking rolling its engine, it’s Thinking operating the restoration of reality. And it’s also dual when we see it from our human perspective, because we execute this restoration at first (standard cognition) in the context of our physical world. So from this angle we come to the lawful conculsion, once again: we cannot separate dual and non-dual, discard the first and run with the second, without making abstractions. A very thoughtful phenomenology, as we are doing, allows us to progressively realize that. I want to emphasize here that your precise and challenging questions are an integral, positive part of this real-time phenomenology we are doing. They are helping me to become even more conscious of what I am trying to walk you through, and so I am thankful for your participation in this collective work. It’s really a progressive process of cognition that requires effort, and multiple iterations. Just as we are doing here and now.

OK, this is very important point. You are right that in the current typical human mode of the content restoration we go through a mix of dual and nondual cognitive ways. My claim (which is actually a claim of nondual teachings/practices) is that is it unnecessary to involve the dual mode because the dual mode is redundant and is a root cause of the major incoherence of our current human mode of existence - the human egoic cognitive-behavioral complex. I can go in length to explain the phenomenology of how the egoic complex develops from dualistic cognition/perception, but that is a different discussion. But again, my claim is that we can fully function in the context of the physical world without engaging any dualistic steps in our perception-cognition. When that practically happens it unroots the very root cause of the egoic complex and its whole structure will simply fall apart.

To clarify what I said about dual mode being "unnecessary": I meant that it is a necessary step in the evolutionary path of humans, but at a certain point it becomes outdated and unnecessary when the metamorphic transition to the nondual mode of cognition happens, and then, post the transition, we can continue the evolutionary path in the nondual mode even in the context of the physical world.

And my other claim is that we actually can run the nondual mode without making any “metaphysical” abstractions. And on the opposite, the dual mode is always based on making metaphysical abstractions, even though most of these abstractions are unconscious in our habitual flow of cognition/perception. But to understand my point, we need to define and converge to understanding of what exactly dual and nondual modes are.

Let me try to sketch some ways to approach this:

- In the framework of the phenomenological idealism, existence means being consciously phenomenally experienced. Anything that is not consciously experienced does not exist. As they say in Advaita, "Consciousness is all there is", where "Consciousness" is not a metaphysical idea, but the wholeness of the content of conscious experience. There is One Consciousness, and if we approach it phenomenologically, all its content is always inseparably experienced by the same Consciousness without subject-object split, and therefore cannot be separated from it. Any separation can only be done as an act of abstract imagination through a metaphysical abstraction. That includes all the content of the physical world, which means that the fact that the content belongs to the physical world does not necessarily make it automatically dualistic, it's only the metaphysical abstract interpretation of this content that can make it dualistic. Reality is Oneness in diversity of forms and phenomena, so the diversity of its phenomenal content does not break the unity.

- So, 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.

- Based on that, dualistic split happens every time our thinking interprets any content (physical or non-physical) as a reality separate from Conscious phenomenal experience of it. As a fact of direct experience, any content is always a phenomenon of conscious experience, and therefore it is always inseparable from Consciousness that experiences it. Even abstract mathematical concept like “a number" is still an idea-phenomenon of conscious experience, and so, if taken as a phenomenon of experience, does not create any dualistic split, notwithstanding the fact that the idea is about an abstraction of a "number". It is only through abstracting the content of that phenomenon from its phenomenal conscious experience where the split between the content and Consciousness occurs. In other words, every time we assign a "metaphysical" meaning to the reality of any content, we create a split, and now, in our imagination, the content becomes "split" from the rest or the One Reality of Consciousness. As long as we remain in the phenomenological realm of the direct conscious experience, we are in nondual mode, but as soon as we switch to "metaphysics", we are in duality. "Metaphysics" does not need to be a high-end philosophy, a child believing in the independent reality of Santa Claus in its imagination abstracted from Reality of Conscious experience is already doing "metaphysics". Or, every naive materialist is doing "metaphysics" every time they imagine a "material world out there" abstracted from its direct phenomenal conscious experience.

- Now, if we, for example, consider again the raw percepts, even if we do not directly experience the process of their creation by the Thinking ideation, it still remains nondual as long as it is experienced inseparably as a phenomenon of Conscious experience as long as we are not abstracting it apart from the unity of Conscious experience. Similarly, any content of the physical world can be treated nondually if we do not abstract it from the reality of its direct phenomenal conscious experience. This means that we can perfectly function (think, feel, will, act) in the physical realm in the nondual mode as long as we maintain the full and continuous awareness of the first-person conscious experience of this phenomenal content and do not abstract it from its phenomenal experience.

- So, a recipe of the nondual mode is simple: never split any content from direct conscious phenomenal experience of it, and maintain a continuous and full awareness of every phenomenon (idea, percept, etc) being experientially inseparable from its conscious phenomenal experience, and never split any content from the conscious phenomenal experience of it. Practically such split happens every time we ignore and forget the conscious experience of a content and only cognate the content itself abstracted/split from its experience (automatically assigning some sort of "metaphysical existence" to such content independent of its experience). But practically it is easier said than done, and that is a whole different topic about how to actually practically accomplish it.

- So now, going back to the consideration of the process of visual perception in my previous post, we can see how this metaphysical "split" of the content from reality of conscious experience occurs at this last step of data processing where we assign in our imagination an abstract status of "metaphysical existence" to a "separate object" that we call "apple":

But there is usually another layer of unconscious processing that most people have, which is interpreting this shape recognized and classified into a specific category as a "separate real object existing in the external objective world" (most people interpret it as a "material" object in the "material" world ), and that is the layer where the dualistic perception happens and naive-realistic-materialistic worldview resides.

Now, to put all the above back to the content of the Cosmic development of Consciousness, the transition from dual to nondual modes is only one part of the whole evolutionary and metamorphic process of the expansion and development of consciousness, and should not be isolated from other aspects of it (such as development of higher cognition, SS, expansion of cosnciousness etc).

[AshvinP]

- Another issue is the one you pointed, and I agree with that. The percepts are actually the result of the ideations of Thinking, and we can intuitively know that. But this is exactly why I asked the previous question if there is anybody being able to experientially get access to this machinery process of Thinking ideations creating raw percepts. Honestly, with all my meditation practice I was not able to do that. I'm not denying that we should try to expand out awareness into this level of Thinking, we by all means should try, it's just that I was not able to do that yet. But also, even if we do not have a direct experiential access to that level, but just intuitively know that the level is "there", then in this case I do not see a problem of dualistic split here. We know that the percepts are still phenomena of conscious experience inseparable from the Oneness of Awareness-Beingness, so this is not where the dualistic incoherence occurs, it is only a temporary limitation of our current state of cognition.

Allow me to add in a really crude analogy here. The other day my cat was on the deck and wanted to come back inside. I decided to set up a little experiment - I put a pillow in front of the screen door and then opened it. She was naturally confused at first - how to get back inside? She starts sniffing around the pillow, scratching at it some. She paces around a little bit, looking around, looking up at me, looking at the pillow. She even puts her front paws on the top of the pillow and peers over for a bit before going back down. But she doesn't jump over - it's like she just can't make up her mind what to do with this pillow obstacle. Is it even possible to get over it?

Then I get her treat bag and start shaking it and, sure enough, she immediately jumps clear over the pillow with courage and confidence and is back inside. All she needed was some motivation by an object of her intense desire! Then the pillow obstacle situation revealed itself as it truly is - not something insurmountable in the least. Of course she wasn't reflectively thinking about the situation as I just explained it, but you get the point. Since she doesn't have that reflective cognitive capacity to form memories accessible at will, no doubt the next time I put the pillow obstacle up she will run through similar steps again. We, on the other hand, would remember that the obstacle is easily surmountable and get around it. Yet when it comes to new and unfamiliar obstacles, like those of the spiritual scientific path, we are very much in a similar situation to the cat.

In fact, when it comes to inner obstacles we need to overcome, our intellectual cognitive capacity starts to work in the opposite direction. Then it reflects itself into all manner of reasons to declare these obstacles as absolute barriers. Yet the first step to finding the degrees of inner freedom through which the barriers are overcome is the same - we need to be transformed so that we are motivated to find that leeway within our own lives. When it comes to inner motivation, it is quite the opposite of the outer motivation - instead of leaning into our immediate pleasures which motivate us, we need to sacrifice those pleasures so they are reborn as an intense longing for carrying out our spiritual responsibilities. One of the greatest pleasures for the intellectual soul is to build up models and theories and to examine the World Process from the side, keeping itself at a safe distance so it can maintain its own sense of relative security and stability while it feels itself attaining great "understanding" of reality. 

This is secretly what we are doing when we ask, 'can anyone experientially get access to this machinery process of Thinking ideations creating raw percepts?', even if it doesn't seem that way because we used the world "experientially". We expect that we (or other people on the path) basically remain the same while we delve into the machinery of the inner cognitive process, as observers who start to unveil how percepts are precipitating from that process and therefore we hone in on the location within the structure where we can 'plug the leak' to stop it from happening. Or, if we can't find it (and we can't, because reality isn't structured with us off to the side), then we conclude it must be practically impossible or only possible after some indeterminate time passes or event occurs (like death, apocalypse, second coming, etc.). But this expectation embeds a really elemental error - the same error of all modern materialistic thinking - that is born from the fear of losing the sense of stability we have in our current identifications. These are mostly identifications well below the threshold of our normal waking consciousness.That is what Cleric illustrated in the previous post as well.

This is similar to the way the materialist expects to understand his own consciousness – he imagines that his brain can be scanned and a model of it laid down in front of him. It’s obvious that the real mind that contemplates the model is still distinct from the model itself. If one would state otherwise it will be an obvious error. Yet we commit the exact same error when we imagine that we can move towards the 'nondual' periphery of pure consciousness and contemplate the engine of reality (where also the guts of the thinking self are expected to be found) laid down as some spiritual phenomena in front of us.
...
And this contains the whole reason why thinking remains as nebulous as ever. Because one has to go through thinking, to explore the creative constraints that make us think in one or another way. Thus the guts are to be found through deepening of self-knowledge. Isn’t it obvious why this goes nowhere when we imagine that we already know (or have sacrificed) all there is to know about ourselves? It’s imagined that if we don’t feel there to be any self, then we have overcome it and we’re in position to contemplate how the lower self works. But this is such an elementary mistake. The animal also doesn’t feel to have any self, does this mean that it lives in an enlightened state?

But from the subsequent comments, it feels as if this point was completely missed. Federica has been pointing to the involutionary process through which the unified reality has been fragmented by our cognitive process over the course of many epochs. Of course, that is also something we recapitulate every day as we incarnate into the sensory world. She wrote, "The only ‘messy’ part of the Thinking engine is us!" Exactly, and we should try to get a very concrete first-person sense of what these 'by-products' or 'waste products' are within us. Clearly it's not enough for us to simply apply labels like interests, habits, sympathies, antipathies, passions, etc. Then the intellectual soul still tends to view them from the side like the engine parts so that it can formulate a nice model. Instead we need to find the courage and motivation to confront these tendencies within ourselves and undertake the inverted spiritual activity which alone can discover the leeway of our becoming from within this conditioning. These layers of our instinctive becoming were laid down and inwardized precisely so that we may intuitively work back through them to develop new spiritual faculties. Every old, habitual quality sacrificed is redeemed by forming the basis for fresh new forces which advance the Cosmic evolution. There is great Wisdom embedded in the entire nested rhythmic structure of involution-evolution and we need to make that more conscious, in the most living and practical way.

[Stranger]

There is great Wisdom embedded in the entire nested rhythmic structure of involution-evolution and we need to make that more conscious, in the most living and practical way.

I agree with all of this, but all of it only sounds like beautiful and inspiring declarations at this point. I'm a practical person, so I would like to know a practical method or an exercise that I can use to have a inner first-person direct and phenomenal experience of the process of the ideations of Cosmic Thinking producing percepts. I understand that with intuitive cognition we can access the ideations from which the percepts precipitate (like an idea of a flower from which the percept of the flower precipitated), but I am talking about the phenomenal experiencing of the actual process of the ideation of flower turning into a percept of a flower. For example, in our thinking we can have an idea of a "circle" and evolve it into the imagination of a "geometrical circle", and we can phenomenally experience the whole developmental step-by-step process of this thinking flow. Similarly, there must be an experience of the whole developmental creative flow-process of the flow of Thinking from the idea of a flower to the percept of it (because everything that exist must always be phenomenally experienced from some subjective perspective). However, currently in my personal field of phenomenal experience I have no access to this flow. This is not a complaint or a feeling of any insufficiency, but simply a statement of a fact.

[AshvinP]

There is great Wisdom embedded in the entire nested rhythmic structure of involution-evolution and we need to make that more conscious, in the most living and practical way.

I agree with all of this, but all of it only sounds like beautiful and inspiring declarations at this point. I'm a practical person, so I would like to know a practical method or an exercise that I can use to have a inner first-person direct and phenomenal experience of the process of the ideations of Cosmic Thinking producing percepts. I understand that with intuitive cognition we can access the ideations from which the percepts precipitate (like an idea of a flower from which the percept of the flower precipitated), but I am talking about the phenomenal experiencing of the actual process of the ideation of flower turning into a percept of a flower. For example, in our thinking we can have an idea of a "circle" and evolve it into the imagination of a "geometrical circle", and we can phenomenally experience the whole developmental step-by-step process of this thinking flow. Similarly, there must be an experience of the whole developmental creative flow-process of the flow of Thinking from the idea of a flower to the percept of it (because everything that exist must always be phenomenally experienced from some subjective perspective). However, currently in my personal field of phenomenal experience I have no access to this flow. This is not a complaint or a feeling of any insufficiency, but simply a statement of a fact.

Well we're still circling around the core point of sacrificial inner transformation as the means through which the nondual intuitive core can discover more leeway in its expressions within our intellectual-sensory life. I suppose Cleric may be posting a response to your last comment soon, which continues that discussion. Let's wait and see. I was simply trying to reinforce the point a bit, because it is still falling by the wayside.

The exercises are all there for gradually strengthening our will, our feeling, and our thinking - dozens and dozens of them. But as long as we approach them with incorrect understanding of what they are doing within us and unreasonable expectations of what we gain from them, there is no point even trying them. They don't simply transport us into some spiritual experience of archetypal processes which crystallize perceptions from holistic Ideas. Again, if we are expecting something like this, then we haven't yet understood the first-person process of sacrificial transformation which is being spoken of.

[Stranger]

Well we're still circling around the core point of sacrificial inner transformation as the means through which the nondual intuitive core can discover more leeway in its expressions within our intellectual-sensory life. I suppose Cleric may be posting a response to your last comment soon, which continues that discussion. Let's wait and see. I was simply trying to reinforce the point a bit, because it is still falling by the wayside.

The exercises are all there for gradually strengthening our will, our feeling, and our thinking - dozens and dozens of them. But as long as we approach them with incorrect understanding of what they are doing within us and unreasonable expectations of what we gain from them, there is no point even trying them. They don't simply transport us into some spiritual experience of archetypal processes which crystallize perceptions from holistic Ideas. Again, if we are expecting something like this, then we haven't yet understood the first-person process of sacrificial transformation which is being spoken of.

Ashvin, to be honest, I have difficulty in understanding all these long and vague esoteric statements. I have a practical down to earth personality with minimalistic engineering approach, I need to understand the practical steps and details of how the cognition process works step-by-step, how and what exactly needs to be sacrificed, how and what exactly needs to be developed and so on without being overwhelmed with all these vague analogies and esoteric expositions using unclear and vague language. May be for people like me Cleric or you could just make a concise list with descriptions or links to practical exercises and steps with clear instructions. You probably already have topics on the forum that discussed these practical steps and I apologize if I missed them.

But thanks for clarifying that "They don't simply transport us into some spiritual experience of archetypal processes which crystallize perceptions from holistic Ideas.", because that is how I understood (or misunderstood) the expansion of consciousness into the ideational process of Cosmic Thinking.

From the perspective of my nondual practice, I know what exactly needs to be sacrificed in the first-person process, and those are:
- The dualistic step in the perception process that I described.
- All the dualistic content developed from that cognitive mistake of dualistic perception, including all its derived content of egoic cognitive-behavioral patterns (egoic thoughts, desires and so on)

But I assume that this is not enough to be sacrificed and would loke to know if I am missing anything here.

[Federica]

(...)

OK, that's good, so we are basically addressing two issues here. I'm approaching it from practical perspective, as an engineer. In my profession we do not label things as "good" or "bad"

Perfect. I have used “good” as semantic shortcut, but it’s better if we can drop it.

One issue is in the latest processing layer, as I pointed in my previous post, where the dualistic interpretation of the sensory experience happens. This is definitely the incoherent step and needs to be fixed.

I know it's your preferred point, but I suggest we proceed in consequential and orderly manner, and put this point in the queue for now, because you say it’s the latest processing layer. Let’s proceed phenomeno-logically and first agree or disagree on the ground that’s been covered so far, just so we can then logically and thoroughly arrive at the latest layers. It's the only way to guard against an approach based on preferences/assumptions.

Another issue is the one you pointed, and I agree with that. The percepts are actually the result of the ideations of Thinking, and we can intuitively know that. But this is exactly why I asked the previous question if there is anybody being able to experientially get access to this machinery process of Thinking…

I don’t see in which sense you have come to consider this one “another issue”? This issue is exactly the one that presents itself to us when we carefully and thoughtfully follow the phenomenological unfolding. It’s not a standalone point that we can optionally discuss, then put on the shelf for possible further use, if applicable. This is our crucial issue, at the point we have moved with the discussion, like there’s no way around! We need to turn just this point inside out, if we want to make progress in our journey through cognition-becoming.


Moreover you say that you agree with me that “percepts are actually the result of the ideations of Thinking”
But that’s not what I said. It’s thinking with small t, not capital T. The percepts are the result of the ideational flow through the filter of human cognition. So I am not sure what you are doing here... I am pausing the comment of the rest of your paragraph, because there you set off for a whole reasoning based on this misunderstanding.

But again, my claim is that we can fully function in the context of the physical world without engaging any dualistic steps in our perception-cognition. When that practically happens it unroots the very root cause of the egoic complex and its whole structure will simply fall apart.

Eugene, I’m not sure how useful it’d be to enter in this discussion, while the preceding points are not streamlined, clarified, and continuous in shared understanding. Reading the above, it seems to me that the phenomenological approach is suddenly abandoned, and preference is given to a statement (the claim) which is driven by what follows (“when that happens it unroots the very root cause of the egoic complex”) as a desirable outcome that is posited there, becoming an attractor of your target statement, rather than as a realization implied by careful phenomenological (experiential) inquiry of cognitive process.

In other words, you are willing to follow and agree/disagree up to a point, but then, just at the moment when your own unfolding reasoning would lead you to seriously review some of your staples, you snap back to a discontinuous point, when arguments become “separate issues”, the focus moves to “practical matters like in engineering” and you default back to the wish of “dismantling egoic structures”. At this point of the reasoning, this unrooting of egoic structures really comes in from nowhere. It’s a new entry in the reasoning, which, by virtue of some pre-existing right of residence in your mental organization, suddenly becomes entitled to drive the desired conclusion that “we can function without dualistic steps”. This is how the logic of what is happening looks from my perspective.

There’s this unlawful 'insider' that lives within the borders of your own domain, but you don’t dare to submit it to ID control. For some reason, it has permanent residence, and can even decrete what your cognition is supposed to be able to do or not do (it decreets that it can fully function without dualistic steps), rather than let the experiential test show how it functions in practice. This Resident Wish also theorizes that evolutionary dualism used to be necessary, but now we‘re at a stage where it’s not any longer the case, etc. etc.

And my other claim is that we actually can run the nondual mode without making any “metaphysical” abstractions.

Well, what I have just illustrated describes exactly how you are harboring and nurturing such abstractions.

Then the sketches you offer at the end seem to me like you are cozily furnishing the home of your Resident Wish. The historical perspective of Advaita, the conceptual context provided by the mathematical concept of number, look like ways to plump the spot for the Resident Wish to settle down even more comfortably, and feel even more entitled in its unjustifiably privileged position.

Ultimately, the requirement you state and restate at practically every turn of your sentences, that the content of experience is “always inseparable from Consciousness that experiences it” really seems to come in, rather than as a phenomenological realization (as you have yourself shared) as a requirement dictated from downhill, by the postulated necessity to dismantle the ego. Basically it’s like the mantra of the Resident Wish.



PS. The colorful descriptions I use are not meant to mock your position, I hope it's not coming across in this way. I'm trying to make what I mean as unequivocal as possible, I hope I’ve been able to somehow communicate this intention.