A Phenomenology of Cognition (Max Leyf)

[Federica]

Thanks for your thoughtful answer, Federica, you addressed my questions. I get what you are saying, you have faith in the path, and that's the only way you can accomplish it.

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.

Right, I admit that was an overstatement on my part, of course these are collectively/cosmically created structures, we may be able to consciously participate in them but we cannot "bend" them as we would wish according to our individual preferences. Still the question remains: was there anyone who was able to consciously inwardly experience that machinery of the creation of sensory experiences?

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?"

Right, I didn't mean refusal or struggle with the precipitated thoughts, I meant exactly being able to become conscious of the machinery of their generation, and as we become conscious, also being able to willfully participate in this generation process and bending it according to the curvatures of higher-order meanings. In other words, we redeem the unconscious and mechanistic lower-order cognitive processes by making it conscious, "becoming" it and willfully redeeming it by shaping it according to higher-order meanings. So, I was asking if anyone here was actually able to fully accomplish it as an actual internal experience?

For my part, certainly not. As I see it, there are many many milestones on the way, before that realization.
The way it looks to me, Eugene, is that your question here is very similar, if not identical, to the question just above.

[Stranger]

Would it be correct to say that you're much rather interested in #3, which would correspond not to investigating this funnel of temporal becoming but rather directly expanding towards the oneness with the whole Torus - simultaneous past and future, oneness and multiplicity and so on? I repeat that the investigation of the flow through the center doesn't negate #3 - on the contrary - it realizes it.

Please understand this - I'm not trying to twist your words, it's simply that we're at the core of the issue but to get to the end you have to recognize this inner conflict between (1) focusing primarily on the oneness with the Book, even though it remains inexplicable and (2) starting from the humble thinking voice that begins to turn the Book inside-out, where as Ashvin said, our own life becomes the living evidence of the Book's flow of story.

I see no contradiction here, because what #3 truly means is the full merge with the Book and becoming it, not simply a static way of being aware of the oneness of all phenomena, but including becoming one with its meanings and with the dynamic process of the flow and its bending. This is my practice. However, in my practice I still can not penetrate and unite with the intrinsic machinery of the production of the perceptions and automatic thoughts. I can intuit into the existence of lawful structures that generates them, but am I still not able to observe/witness all their workings as an actual inner living experience. I can only do that when I exercise the higher cognition where the whole dynamic process of thinking becomes fully transparent and conscious.

[Federica]

What I write is much more about the basic principles. The perception-thinking hysteresis we find in our ordinary cognition reflects an essential polar relation throughout the entire gradient, which only becomes the hysteresis as we know it when it is 'stepped down' through the convolutions. At the much higher scales, we could say it's more akin to a sacrifice-redemption hysteresis, where Will and Ideation is of a much more deeply moral character than we are used to feeling about our own activity. (...)
I am only highlighting that it exists along the entire gradient of the nested "I" perspectives. But the huge difference being that, in our current intellectual convolution of waking consciousness, we are always at risk of splitting the hysteresis and idolizing one pole or the other.

Here I understand clearly what you meant with "something akin to waste" - a necessary outplay of the hysteresis across the entire gradient of cognition/reality.

[Cleric K]

I see no contradiction here, because what #3 truly means is the full merge with the Book and becoming it, not simply a static way of being aware of the oneness of all phenomena, but including becoming one with its meanings and with the dynamic process of the flow and its bending. This is my practice. However, in my practice I still can not penetrate and unite with the intrinsic machinery of the production of the perceptions and automatic thoughts. I can intuit into the existence of lawful structures that generates them, but am I still not able to observe/witness all their workings as an actual inner living experience. I can only do that when I exercise the higher cognition where the whole dynamic process of thinking becomes fully transparent and conscious.

Of course there's no contradiction. As said, #3 is the goal at infinity, it is that towards which we're evolving - the Book to be united with its meaning. The whole question is whether simply meditating on the feeling of oneness with the Book will ever magically make the meaning pop up or the whole journey of evolution consists in the gradual and patient learning to read, growing through the hierarchical sentences, paragraphs, chapters of the Book's meaningful essence. Meaning that is not simply carbon-copied knowledge in the mind but our essential meaningful awareness of what we are, what the World is and how we can take our part in the continuous (re)writing of the Book.

OK, Eugene, I won't push any further. We have the Book analogy, the arm analogy, the torus analogy and many more. So I guess it's no longer a matter of not explaining things enough. It's simply that you have decided to go your own way - to seek the meaning of the Book through focusing on the feeling of being one with it. At this point it doesn't bother you that even conceptually it's not clear how any meaning can ever be added in this way, much like science today is not deterred by the fact that every law of physics seems to work against abiogenesis. All that we are saying is that there's a way that starts with the meaningful becoming at the center of our being and grows from there, turning the Book inside-out through the pinhole of our "I", uniting it with its ideal essence.

[Federica]

However, in my practice I still can not penetrate and unite with the intrinsic machinery of the production of the perceptions and automatic thoughts. I can intuit into the existence of lawful structures that generates them, but am I still not able to observe/witness all their workings as an actual inner living experience.

the whole journey of evolution consists in the gradual and patient learning to read, growing through the hierarchical sentences, paragraphs, chapters of the Book's meaningful essence. Meaning that is (...) our essential meaningful awareness of what we are, what the World is and how we can take our part in the continuous (re)writing of the Book.

Eugene, I think your dissatisfaction with "still not witnessing" will eventually save you, leading you to the gradual and patient work, and through it, to the awarness of "how we can take part in the continuous (re)writing of the book."

After the destruction we operate by precipitating thought-pictures, we have free rein to create new, higher cognition.
I wish this could inspire you:

The new Creation shimmers before the backdrop of non-being. It is perennially fresh because it has never existed before, like the virginal birth of Venus who floats on the foam of chaos, born on the scallop-shell of consciousness to arrive on the shore of knowledge.

[Stranger]

Of course there's no contradiction. As said, #3 is the goal at infinity, it is that towards which we're evolving - the Book to be united with its meaning. The whole question is whether simply meditating on the feeling of oneness with the Book will ever magically make the meaning pop up or the whole journey of evolution consists in the gradual and patient learning to read, growing through the hierarchical sentences, paragraphs, chapters of the Book's meaningful essence. Meaning that is not simply carbon-copied knowledge in the mind but our essential meaningful awareness of what we are, what the World is and how we can take our part in the continuous (re)writing of the Book.

OK, Eugene, I won't push any further. We have the Book analogy, the arm analogy, the torus analogy and many more. So I guess it's no longer a matter of not explaining things enough. It's simply that you have decided to go your own way - to seek the meaning of the Book through focusing on the feeling of being one with it. At this point it doesn't bother you that even conceptually it's not clear how any meaning can ever be added in this way, much like science today is not deterred by the fact that every law of physics seems to work against abiogenesis. All that we are saying is that there's a way that starts with the meaningful becoming at the center of our being and grows from there, turning the Book inside-out through the pinhole of our "I", uniting it with its ideal essence.

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

[Stranger]

Eugene, I think your dissatisfaction with "still not witnessing" will eventually save you, leading you to the gradual and patient work, and through it, to the awarness of "how we can take part in the continuous (re)writing of the book."

Well, as I just said to Cleric, because I can never fully know all the structure until I experience it from first-person perspective as a living inner experience. Since the direct experience of this "machinery" is not available to me, so I cannot fully know it in a full sense. I'm OK with that, this is not "dissatisfaction", but just a statement of a simple fact.

[Federica]

Eugene, I think your dissatisfaction with "still not witnessing" will eventually save you, leading you to the gradual and patient work, and through it, to the awarness of "how we can take part in the continuous (re)writing of the book."

Well, as I just said to Cleric, because I can never fully know all the structure until I experience it from first-person perspective as a living inner experience. Since the direct experience of this "machinery" is not available to me, so I cannot fully know it in a full sense. I'm OK with that, this is not "dissatisfaction", but just a statement of a simple fact.

Ok, maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part in this case, I will admit I am not sure
Anyway I should have refrained from writing this last Venus-themed post, because now my previous reply to you is snowed under a big pile, and I was much more interested in hearing from you about that one...

[Stranger]

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.

[Federica]

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?