The Nature of the sensory world or do we really *know* the ultimate ground of reality?

[AshvinP]

The knowing of the Being does not preclude us in any way from pushing the borders of the envelope into the "horizontal" dimension of your green line diagram, and in the horizontal dimension it is very conceivable that we so far have seen nothing and have not imagined before yet, and there is yet a lot to uncover and discover. The horizontal structural dimension and the vertical existential dimension do not contradict or restrict each other in any way, but complement each other. So, I am still very interested in pushing the envelope of the horizontal dimension and discovering the depths of this structures. You keep trying to convince me that I need to do it, but affirmed that I'm interested many times before. So, count me in and let's move on, you promised to tell us more about the nature of the sensory world, I'm all hearing.

But I keep wondering why you are so stubbornly opposed to reaching to and realizing Oneness in the "vertical" existential dimension, even though this was the call of all spiritual traditions and their founders including Christ, Buddha and so on? What's wrong with integrating the development in both vertical and horizontal dimensions of reality in a wholistic approach? Why do you reject the fundamental Oneness of the Reality and a possibility for us to know it inwardly and experientially, if Christ called us to do exactly that in this human life? And notice that it is exactly the Lucifer's agenda to keep us ignorant about our Oneness in the fundamental ground of reality, and keep us divided in the world of duality that exists not on Earth but only in our minds and in the artificial structures of the Lucifer's hierarchy (which I have no interest in studying). These structures are incoherent and orthogonal to the Divine structures created in Oneness, exactly like St. Paul said "what fellowship can light have with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6)

But the thing is: if you keep so fiercely rejecting the possibility of reaching to Oneness in our human life, then knowingly or unknowingly, you are working for Lucifer, which means that the structures you are reaching to also belong to the Lucifer's hierarchy. I am interested in expanding the knowledge into the structures of horizontal dimensions, but not of the dualistic realm of Lucifer and not in the company belonging to the Lucifer's hierarchy.

Just a couple points,

- Cleric was pointing to the self-admitted fact that you hit the 'hard limit' on pushing the intuitive envelope, not some hypothetical externalized person with 'dualistic perception'.

"You feel that you hit a hard limit, that by meditating on this intuitive envelope (the intuition of pure be-ing), you clearly see that this envelope is not filled any further with new phenomena, let alone phenomena that reveal something of the structure of the higher worlds and their beings"

- Why do you hit this hard limit? Because you have reduced the green line into the horizontal dimension. The green line is actually the vertical depth gradient of intuitive becoming from our current perspective to the Godhead. So you have turned the flattened, hardened intuition of 'pure experiencing-existing-being' into the "vertical" dimension (when it's actually thinking stuck in the horizontal dimension), and the depth gradient of cognitive becoming into the "horizontal" dimension (when it's actually thinking ascending the vertical dimension). The polarized intellect inevitably flips these things upside down.

-Your concept of the Luciferic influence is stuck many thousands of years in the past, i.e. on the horizontal plane, at the time of the Fall. Many evolutionary developments have occurred since then, namely the Mystery of Golgotha and the polar reversal I referenced on the other thread, where Christ became united with the Earth soul and Lucifer became a Cosmic being. In fact, the Luciferic impulse is exactly what propels us to feelings of Oneness in the modern age. Actually all the uniting principles of philosophy and art and innovative science is only possible through the Luciferic impulse, which also must be embraced to a certain extent when developing higher cognition. Except this impulse can be taken to egoistic excess through the mystical reductionist approach which seeks to equate its intuition of 'experiencing-existing-being' with that of the eternal Godhead responsible for all Creation, unless it is also balanced by the supremely humble and moral impulse of Christ. That is why Lucifer has always been associated with excessive pride.

“How you are fallen from heaven,
O [d]Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
13For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
14I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’
15Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the [e]lowest depths of the Pit."
(Isaiah 14)

[Stranger]

- Cleric was pointing to the self-admitted fact that you hit the 'hard limit' on pushing the intuitive envelope, not some hypothetical externalized person with 'dualistic perception'.

"You feel that you hit a hard limit, that by meditating on this intuitive envelope (the intuition of pure be-ing), you clearly see that this envelope is not filled any further with new phenomena, let alone phenomena that reveal something of the structure of the higher worlds and their beings"

No, I never said that I hit the hard limit in pushing the intuitive envelope, on the contrary, I'm constantly expanding my intuitive envelope in the nondual realms. My envelope is continuously filled with new phenomena and opening of new horizons into the structures of higher nondual worlds.

I was talking only about the patterns of the dualistic structures still residing in the subconscious hindering the development on the higher levels, but not as any kind of limit, but rather as a factor that hinders and slows down the process. And you are continuing your tactic of misinterpreting my words.

-Your concept of the Luciferic influence is stuck many thousands of years in the past, i.e. on the horizontal plane, at the time of the Fall. Many evolutionary developments have occurred since then, namely the Mystery of Golgotha and the polar reversal I referenced on the other thread, where Christ became united with the Earth soul and Lucifer became a Cosmic being. In fact, the Luciferic impulse is exactly what propels us to feelings of Oneness in the modern age. Actually all the uniting principles of philosophy and art and innovative science is only possible through the Luciferic impulse, which also must be embraced to a certain extent when developing higher cognition. Except this impulse can be taken to egoistic excess through the mystical reductionist approach which seeks to equate its intuition of 'experiencing-existing-being' with that of the eternal Godhead responsible for all Creation, unless it is also balanced by the supremely humble and moral impulse of Christ. That is why Lucifer has always been associated with excessive pride.

Lucifer is a master of masquerading, he does not want us know what his agenda is about and wants do distract us from finding it out. His agenda is about maintaining the dualistic realm, and the duality on which it is founded is a lie. The moral impulse of Christ is Love in Oneness. The message of Christ is universal and timeless and does not change in time, because it is the message of timeless Oneness and timeless Love. Anyone who is in opposition to it works for Lucifer, knowingly or unknowingly. By showing your rejection of Oneness with the Father you reveal your affiliation with him.

"I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." (John 17)

He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

[AshvinP]

Lucifer is a master of masquerading, he does not want us know what his agenda is about and wants do distract us from finding it out. His agenda is about maintaining the dualistic realm. The moral impulse of Christ is Love in Oneness. The message of Christ is universal and timeless and does not change in time, because it is the message of timeless Oneness and timeless Love. Anyone who is in opposition to it works for Lucifer, knowingly or unknowingly.

"I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." (John 17)

Ok, Billy

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxhQqLnLAwJQ ... S4zyCRYE-1


Also this may of be interest for those who wish to better understand what has happened on this thread:

If we think of those beings which man regards as his own divine beings, we must say: we can feel and sense them in the right way only if we conceive of them as effecting the equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principles. We can never feel in the right way what we should feel as the Divine if we do not enter upon this threefold order. Consider from this point of view Milton's Paradise Lost, or Klopstock's Messiah which came into existence under the influence of Paradise Lost. Here you have nothing of a real comprehension of a threefold world structure, you have instead a battle between the supposedly good and the supposedly evil, the battle between heaven and hell. You have the mistaken idea of the duad brought into man's spiritual evolution; you have what is rooted in popular consciousness as the illusory contrast between heaven and hell, introduced into two cosmic poems of modern times.

It is of no avail that Milton and Klopstock call the heavenly entities divine beings. They would only be so for man if they were conceived of on the basis of the threefold structure of world existence. Then it would be possible to say that a battle takes place between the good and the evil principles. But as the matter stands, a duad is assumed, the one member of which has the attributes of the good and receives a name derived from the divine, while the other member represents the diabolical, the anti-divine element. What does this really signify? Nothing less than the removal of the divine from consciousness and the usurping of the divine name by the Luciferic principle; so that in reality we have a battle between Lucifer and Ahriman; only, Ahriman is endowed with Luciferic attributes, and the realm of Lucifer is endowed with divine attributes.

You see the far-reaching consequences revealed by such a consideration. While human beings believe they are dealing with the divine and the diabolical elements when contemplating the contrasts described in Milton's Paradise Lost or Klopstock's Messiah, they are, in reality, dealing with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. There is no consciousness present of the truly divine element; instead, the Luciferic element is endowed with divine names.

[Stranger]

In reality we have a battle between Lucifer and Ahriman; only, Ahriman is endowed with Luciferic attributes, and the realm of Lucifer is endowed with divine attributes.

Correct, Lucifer presents itself with divine attributes of progress, love between separate selves, service and so on, but all of it still within the realm of separation and duality, while contrasting it with the Satanic/Ahriman pole of destructive attributes, in order to maintain the dynamics within the realm of duality/separation and maintain the illusion for the involved souls that they work on the "good side" against the "evil side", or the other way around. In reality the Luciferic-Satanic opposition is a controlled opposition within the same dualistic realm, like two sides of the same coin. The realm of Oneness transcends this artificial opposition.

Reposting some relevant previous posts here:

if we dive into the Biblical mythology, there is a very-high-order spiritual being called Lucifer (Morning Star) who used to be a Seraphim, but "fell from heavens". His fall was exactly the choice to exist in a mode of consciousness as a "self" separate from the Divine Oneness in which the rest of the Seraphims and other Angels remained. According to the myth, he convinced 1/3 of other Angels to go with him into the dualistic mode, so you can guess that his arguments were quite convincing. It is naive to believe that Lucifer is kind of fierce-evil-looking "Satan" with horns and fire from his mouth. He actually remains the "angel of light", just disconnected from the Divine Oneness and pursuing his own project of building the domain of dualistic existence in the ego-consciousness mode sincerely believing that this is the right thing to do.

we do not pick up the dualistic mode only when we incarnate in our human form, we got "infected" with it from Lucifer and his dualistic-mode angels. They are "dark" beings only in a sense that they do not see/experience the Divine Light of Self-knowing (because they are in the dualistic mode). Lucifer convinced us that we can become "like gods" by starting to perceive the world dualistically. For an immature soul only knowing the innocent nondual state (living in the nondual innocence in the garden of Eden) the dualistic state is indeed a strong temptation because there can be so many strong and emotional experiences and possible scenarios of inter-personal relations and life situations there that are simply not possible to experience in the nondual mode. The dualistic mode is indeed much more rich in its emotional and situational experiences. It can be compared with taking hallucinogenic drugs that put us into a mode of very intense inner hallucinatory experiences, and then we become addicted to them. And (surprise!) these dualistic drug-like experiences quite often turn into "bad trips" and entail with a lot of psychological suffering, there is no free lunch here. So, we fell for those thrilling dualistic experiences, and by doing that for so long we got so deeply immersed into this dualistic mode and addicted to it that we entirely lost our ability to perceive the reality nondualistically, the subject-object split became a perceptual pattern and habit for us deeply ingrained in our subconscious karmic perceptional mechanism. And once we did that, the whole egoic complex of preferences, desires, likes and dislikes, liking "good" objects or subjects and disliking "bad" ones started developing around this dualistic split (I explained already how it happened). This is what the myth of tasting the "apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil" in Eden means in its esoteric sense. Salvation for us means switching back to the nondual mode of the Divine Light of Self-knowing, which is the same as the Oneness with the Father of which Christ spoke. Once we accomplish that, we can continue happily living and further evolving in any elemental-level realms including the Earth as humans while seamlessly integrating with the nondual higher order beings, because now there would be no barrier for us to become attuned with their nondual state of consciousness.

[AshvinP]

In reality we have a battle between Lucifer and Ahriman; only, Ahriman is endowed with Luciferic attributes, and the realm of Lucifer is endowed with divine attributes.

Correct, Lucifer presents itself with divine attributes of progress, love between separate selves, service and so on, but all of it still within the realm of separation and duality, while contrasting it with the Satanic/Ahriman pole of destructive attributes, in order to maintain the dynamics within the realm of duality/separation and maintain the illusion for the involved souls that they work on the "good side" against the "evil side", or the other way around. In reality the Luciferic-Satanic opposition is a controlled opposition within the same dualistic realm, like two sides of the same coin. The realm of Oneness transcends this artificial opposition.

That wasn’t the point. There is no chance understanding the Luciferic and Ahrmicanic impulses, balanced by the Christ impulse, if we continually seek to externalize them as good or evil powers, or 'controlled opposition', to analyze from a safe distance. These impulses live within our soul lives, each and every One. Our soul life unfolds within their overarching context, including our nondual meditations on Oneness. It's when we abstract and externalize these forces, by losing sight of the Christ impulse towards self-consciousness of the living details through which the One Spirit manifests, losing sight of the humble and meek Spirit of confession and repentance (metanoia), that we inevitably create an oppositional duality and oscillate between the poles. Then we start to imbue the Ahrimanic force of erroneous outer perception with Luciferic qualities, as you just did in the last post. Ahriman becomes Lucifer and the real Lucifer remains in the blind spot. Then we start to worship this hidden Lucifer as the Divine Oneness, the Holy Trinity, etc. Finally, to complete the circle of unconscious externalization, we project what we ourselves are doing, in the worship of the oppositional powers, onto others and the world at large. These are the far reaching consequences Steiner spoke of. So many aspects of modern existence can be understood if we become conscious of this dynamic through living understanding of the Christ impulse which works within our own thinking soul and mediates between the poles of Lucifer (over-spiritualization towards the One) and Ahriman (over-materialization towards the Many).

[Federica]

I think ditching two of the most important Western philosophers of the 20th century is rather arrogant position. I can't help noticing that arrogance is one of the hallmarks of Anthoposophists

Eugene, this twisting of words, and calling us names, does not honor your intelligence.
So to recenter, can we look closer at Cleric’s question?

Clearly, a perception of an apple on the table is some kind of modification of our inner environment. If we simply say that only the perception of the apple exists and there's nothing else, we should be able to explain why this perception seems to come from the perception of an apple tree, why the latter appears to have grown from a perception of a seed and so on.

What in your are these processes and what drives them? Are they simply 'animated' by the Divine subjectivity in the way a cartoonist would draw them frame by frame?

You said:

Well, if we are still in idealism, then all these processes are only conscious experiences, whether they happen within the stream of phenomena of our individual conscious activities, or those of higher-order beings, or at the level of the Divine subjectivity. The particularities of this process is the subject of SS as far as I understand it.

Here I notice that you are like drawing contiguous circles: or, or, or. I invite you to rewire, or reorganize, the inner model in real time, while you are reading, as a test. It starts with imagining these three “or” as concentric, instead of increments to one another (which concretely means self-excluding, despite the "Oneness" signboard dominating the theoretical scene).
We are a minuscule experiencing-ideating circle in the middle of various larger ones. The larger circles are more advanced intelligences, cognizing in ways that we can’t cover within our little contact surface with reality (small circle). This is a first gross approximating image.
Then we could imagine that our minuscule circle, concentric with the larger circles, is actually not concentric with other circles, but with whole spheres (the intelligences and ideations of some higher-level beings). So, not only do we cover only a tiny portion of the bigger circles, but now there appears to be a whole previously unsuspected spherical dimension in the larger encompassing ideations, that we have no idea whatsoever of, and zero contact surface with, apart from our same flattened little circle.
Further, imagine that this projection suggested here is still based on something we can easily grasp (a sphere) and that the larger ideations are more encompassing, more playable, more brightly shining, and more aptly grasping, in ways we can’t even start to imagine. Maybe the sphere-intelligences that are exponentially more advanced than the large-circle ones in grasping reality can, but we definitely cannot. Beyond which level, the only intuition that we can try to put paper airplane wings on and fly is that, higher up in the hierarchy, the next level, enormously wiser than the previous one, is cognizing in ways that we can’t even start to conceive how our absolutely brightest efforts can’t approach. Even the periphery of their periphery is inconceivable to us.

Beyond my basic attempt, this and much more has already been presented in luminous terms, explicitly to your attention, in words that you might have missed completely:

So, Eugene, you didn’t comment on my previous post about aliasing, so I don’t know what you think of these things.

Still, with all this being said, in order to start inquiring about the hierarchy and expanding into it, there is no more appropriate set than this limited, grounded, duality-generating, human perspective that we hold right now, as much torn apart between Luciferic and Ahrimanic tendencies as it can be. So instead of externalizing/demonizing "Luciferic" tendencies, self-defined as everything-we-dont-like, trying to extract us from them, ignoring their polar counterbalancing opposite (Ahrimanic impulses), it’s about eagerly deciphering the true Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses, yours and mine, active in our own, yours and mine, present nature and behavior, recognizing them and owning them, as the only way to sublimate them and transform them from within. Not by stepping aside from them.
As soon as we try to discard them by stating that we are not them, they will only chase us more. Not only that: they will prosecute and eat us up from a deepening blind spot. Again, the helpful intuition is that of concentric aliasing. Everything is included in the fullness of reality. It has to be, if we want to keep exerting our will, staying on track, walking along the ridge, not falling in any blind spots on the sides.
As for the integration of these tendencies, I doubt there is any brighter and more concise way to say it than as Ashvin put it:

So many aspects of modern existence can be understood if we become conscious of this dynamic through living understanding of the Christ impulse which works within our own thinking soul and mediates between the poles of Lucifer (over-spiritualization towards the One) and Ahriman (over-materialization towards the Many).

And so, to refocus even more on the initial question:

what in your view is the relation between images in memory/imagination and immediate sensory perception? What's the difference between looking at an apple with your eyes and summoning the image of an apple later in your meditations?

[AshvinP]

- Cleric was pointing to the self-admitted fact that you hit the 'hard limit' on pushing the intuitive envelope, not some hypothetical externalized person with 'dualistic perception'.

"You feel that you hit a hard limit, that by meditating on this intuitive envelope (the intuition of pure be-ing), you clearly see that this envelope is not filled any further with new phenomena, let alone phenomena that reveal something of the structure of the higher worlds and their beings"

No, I never said that I hit the hard limit in pushing the intuitive envelope, on the contrary, I'm constantly expanding my intuitive envelope in the nondual realms. My envelope is continuously filled with new phenomena and opening of new horizons into the structures of higher nondual worlds.

By the way, there was no misinterpretation here. What you write above simply can't be the case. You keep pointing to this yourself, over and over, in every thread and almost every other comment. For ex:

"But I am still interested to hear from Cleric about the nature of the sensory world."

Any genuine unveiling of new horizons into the structures of higher nondual worlds should simultaneously elucidate the nature of the sensory world, because the latter is the outer physiognomy of the former. You don't imagine this can be the case because you subconsciously divide the polar structure of reality into ideal and perceptual, macrocosmic and microcosmic, nondual and dualistic, divine and luciferic, etc. That experiential division is still conditioning your thinking at every turn, regardless of your nondual meditations and insights. It is still conditioning our thinking as well, but we mitigate that by becoming conscious of the conditioning and striving to remain conscious of it. We don't convince ourselves that we have transcended all oppositional forces, even for one tiny moment, by ascending to pure experience of the Divine Oneness. We don't go out of our way looking for scriptures and theories to support this naturally tempting conviction.

I used previously the analogy of pushing the couch from opposite sides, but actually it's better to say the 'nondual' approach is alternating between pushing and then pulling the couch from the same side (our current Earthly perspective) with equal or greater force. Any potential gains from living contemplation of the Spirit's manifestation in our stream of becoming is unwound by a collapsing of all distinctions into Oneness. It's clear that the whole purpose of the nondual meditations is to sleep through the living details of how the Will enfolds itself in the archetypal layers which precipitate intents into the normal conceptual-perceptual spectrum (which you keep confirming in your comments). These are exactly the details which make clear to us that our current intuition of Oneness is not 1:1 isomorphic with the Divine experience of Oneness in any of its aspects. They are the concrete incarnational details which sacrifice the immediate personal feeling and conviction of Oneness for the gradual awakening to and therefore actualization of transpersonal Oneness within the enfolded layers of the Cosmic organism.

[Stranger]

That wasn’t the point. There is no chance understanding the Luciferic and Ahrmicanic impulses, balanced by the Christ impulse, if we continually seek to externalize them as good or evil powers, or 'controlled opposition', to analyze from a safe distance.

Of course they are all within us, but it is still a controlled opposition of forces within us controlled by the higher order beings of the dualistic hierarchy.

God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Dostoevsky

[Stranger]

So many aspects of modern existence can be understood if we become conscious of this dynamic through living understanding of the Christ impulse which works within our own thinking soul and mediates between the poles of Lucifer (over-spiritualization towards the One) and Ahriman (over-materialization towards the Many).

Calling Christ's message of Oneness with the Father as Lucifer's over-spiritualization towards the One is the most twisted misinterpretation of the Christ mission ever possible.

[Stranger]

This is it guys, my conclusion:
- You are deeply in dualistic state of consciousness and have no intention or motivation to transcend it. You minds make up dozens of objections and reasons not to transcend it and remain deeply identified with your sense of separate self and ego. We already wrote tens of pages on these discussions going in circles and I have no further interest in being involved in them. I asked you in another thread if you are sincerely interested in nonduality, you never answered explicitly, but I can see from your posts that the answer is "no"
- You openly deny and oppose the Christ's message with the appeal to Oneness that we are supposed to internalize as our inner experience in this very human life (non even to mention the Eastern nondual spiritual traditions)
- Your teaching/practice of Anthroposophy gives you no motivation for such transcendence
- I have no interest in doing any spiritual study or practice in a company associated with dualistic spiritual hierarchies and their structure of meanings