The source of the 'Hard Problem of Consciousness'

[Stranger]

But, as long as we remain within the framework of the ego-consciousness, we will inevitably also experience the world "through" the filtering of the ego-consciousness which will inevitably remain reductionistic.

I believe you are tending to reinstate a hard threshold that yourself have already worked through, and made souple, in the progression of your recent exchanges with Cleric, which could be described as Cleric did in the recent "bycicle wheel" post:

I'm really happy the image made sense (even though it can never be the full picture). Maybe it elucidates from another angle the milestone we reached with Eugene - that complete Oneness is at the perimeter at infinity, yet as soon as we have manifested stream of existence through time, a being's perspective already finds itself in certain 'phase relations' with other beings. These relations are much more symphonic in the higher strata but can become dissonant when the relations go out of phase in the more differentiated strata. It's important to keep in mind that instead of the perimeter we can think also of a center (like the Deep MAL picture). In both cases we deal with symbols so we can't expect that it is either one or the other. This however speaks to our deep intuition that the Divine One is both the Center and the Periphery (even if in purely geometric sense it seems contradictory). We have the Great Poles once again, in between which all exploration of differentiated potential manifests. Through all ages this mystery has been encoded with the simple occult symbol of a circle with a dot in the center.

Cleric talks here about the complete Oneness which embraces the knowledge of both One Essence and of the entirety of all its forms and which indeed is achievable only at infinity. I'm talking about realizing Oneness in Essense which can be reached as a certain evolutionary event in time and does not necessarily need to wait until the entirety of forms becomes known.

[AshvinP]

But, as long as we remain within the framework of the ego-consciousness, we will inevitably also experience the world "through" the filtering of the ego-consciousness which will inevitably remain reductionistic.

I believe you are tending to reinstate a hard threshold that yourself have already worked through, and made souple, in the progression of your recent exchanges with Cleric, which could be described as Cleric did in the recent "bycicle wheel" post:

I'm really happy the image made sense (even though it can never be the full picture). Maybe it elucidates from another angle the milestone we reached with Eugene - that complete Oneness is at the perimeter at infinity, yet as soon as we have manifested stream of existence through time, a being's perspective already finds itself in certain 'phase relations' with other beings. These relations are much more symphonic in the higher strata but can become dissonant when the relations go out of phase in the more differentiated strata. It's important to keep in mind that instead of the perimeter we can think also of a center (like the Deep MAL picture). In both cases we deal with symbols so we can't expect that it is either one or the other. This however speaks to our deep intuition that the Divine One is both the Center and the Periphery (even if in purely geometric sense it seems contradictory). We have the Great Poles once again, in between which all exploration of differentiated potential manifests. Through all ages this mystery has been encoded with the simple occult symbol of a circle with a dot in the center.

Cleric talks here about the complete Oneness which embraces the knowledge of both One Essence and of the entirety of all its forms and which indeed is achievable only at infinity. I'm talking about realizing Oneness in Essense which can be reached as a certain evolutionary event in time and does not necessarily need to wait until the entirety of forms becomes known.

Cleric gave a really simple test on this thread for whether we are engaged in reductionism - if we imagine to be One with forces-contents we cannot even possibly imagine, such as those which animate the intellect for most people (or those which animate the imagination, inspiration, intuition for higher development), then we are reducing the actual Oneness, which we logically established must encompass all evolutionary worldlines as its own from first-person perspective, to our current experience-feeling-concept of 'oneness'. We then forsake the actual path of realizing Oneness through the potential latent within its integrating forms, including our own soul and that of humanity.

What is the desire to realize Oneness in Essence at a certain evolutionary event in time? What can we learn about/from the perspective which has this desire? We can make endless abstract hypotheses for ourselves to justify these desires, or tell anyone and everyone who questions it that it's simply beyond their experience-comprehension, but the perspective which is doing such things is still there and should be investigated. It is a rich perspective with a lot to offer us, but only if we acknowledge its existence. The path of higher development via modern initiation doesn't seek to possess knowledge of the 'Essence' of reality, only to participate in scientifically, aesthetically, and morally perfecting the capacities of knowledge and wisdom by which the Essence, whatever it is, makes itself known within and through the World.

[Stranger]

What is the desire to realize Oneness in Essence at a certain evolutionary event in time? What can we learn about/from the perspective which has this desire? We can make endless abstract hypotheses for ourselves to justify these desires, or tell anyone and everyone who questions it that it's simply beyond their experience-comprehension, but the perspective which is doing such things is still there and should be investigated. It is a rich perspective with a lot to offer us, but only if we acknowledge its existence. The path of higher development via modern initiation doesn't seek to possess knowledge of the 'Essence' of reality, only to participate in scientifically, aesthetically, and morally perfecting the capacities of knowledge and wisdom by which the Essence, whatever it is, makes itself known within and through the World.

Right, so this is where the difference between these paths still resides.

Realization of Oneness in Essence at a certain evolutionary event in time is not a desire or an abstract hypotheses, it is a real event that already happened to thousands of people and will continue happening. And it is what Christ and Buddha called us to accomplish even in our current life, or at least in one of our future lives, and they would not do that if it would not be possible or beneficial for our spiritual development. And, if "The path of higher development via modern initiation doesn't seek to possess knowledge of the 'Essence' of reality, only to participate in scientifically, aesthetically, and morally perfecting the capacities of knowledge and wisdom by which the Essence, whatever it is, makes itself known within and through the World", then it is a problem - it basically denies the messages of Christ and Buddha and denies the possibility and usefulness of such realization, or at least accepts it as something only achievable asymptotically at infinity. This realization is not mandatory, it is a free choice always available for every soul, and no one is forcing anybody to make this choice. However, denying usefulness or even a possibility of such realization would be a grossly distorted worldview. It is OK to opt out from this realization for yourself, but it is not OK to try to convince others that this realization is useless or even impossible.

So, to summarize:
- Anthroposophy ("the path of higher development via modern initiation") claims to be the only valid path for the modern state of human consciousness and affirms that the older spiritual traditions became outdated and absorbed within the Anthroposophical path.
- However, it disregards and rejects the core message of both Eastern nondual traditions (Advaita, Buddhism, Taoism) and Christ's mission and message calling for the realization of the nondual Essence of reality and reaching to oneness in Essense during our current human life. So, how is that Anthroposophy claims to include all previous spiritual traditions, yet denies their core message?

[AshvinP]

What is the desire to realize Oneness in Essence at a certain evolutionary event in time? What can we learn about/from the perspective which has this desire? We can make endless abstract hypotheses for ourselves to justify these desires, or tell anyone and everyone who questions it that it's simply beyond their experience-comprehension, but the perspective which is doing such things is still there and should be investigated. It is a rich perspective with a lot to offer us, but only if we acknowledge its existence. The path of higher development via modern initiation doesn't seek to possess knowledge of the 'Essence' of reality, only to participate in scientifically, aesthetically, and morally perfecting the capacities of knowledge and wisdom by which the Essence, whatever it is, makes itself known within and through the World.

Right, so this is where the difference between these paths still resides.

Realization of Oneness in Essence at a certain evolutionary event in time is not a desire or an abstract hypotheses, it is a real event that already happened to thousands of people and will continue happening. And it is what Christ and Buddha called us to accomplish even in our current life, or at least at one of our future lives, and they would not do that if it would not be possible. And, if "The path of higher development via modern initiation doesn't seek to possess knowledge of the 'Essence' of reality, only to participate in scientifically, aesthetically, and morally perfecting the capacities of knowledge and wisdom by which the Essence, whatever it is, makes itself known within and through the World", then it is a problem - it basically denies the messages of Christ and Buddha and denies the possibility and usefulness of such realization, or at least accepts it as something only achievable asymptotically at infinity. This realization is not mandatory, it is a free choice always available for every soul, and no one is forcing anybody to make this choice. However, denying usefulness or even a possibility of such realization would be a grossly distorted worldview. It is OK to opt out from this realization for yourself, but it is not OK to try to convince others that this realization is useless or even impossible.

As repeated often, no one is denying the possibility of realizing Oneness - we are questioning whether it is a one-off event which can be possessed by our current state of consciousness, or whether that desire to possess it is exactly what prevents us from progressively realizing the manifest Unity within our living domains of experience, not in the mystical abstract, but in concrete ways which constantly feedback into our practical stream of becoming in and through the World, and gradually bridge the discontinuities of consciousness.

We can point to endless verses and deeper esoteric meanings which also call into question such a myopic, constricted perspective on the realization of Oneness. The holistic evolution of World mythologies/scriptures over many ages itself points away from such a perspective. You would then respond, 'but the scriptures are so written that the simple fishermen can fully understand it'. That's exactly the reductionism we are speaking of. That makes no sense even under your own theory that the current Earthly evolution is marked by a dualistic consciousness - it reduces the depth meaning of verses to that which can be grasped by the dualistic consciousness of 'fishermen'. The full potential latent in the verses of scripture has then been reduced to what is only evident from the outer surface of its forms. We are constantly told of the 'mystery' of the Christ revelation - the mysteries were called as such because the full extent of their meaning had not yet precipitated into normal consciousness of the time.

This depth of meaning doesn't only add measurements to the verses like we may get more meaning from a table if we know its depth, weight, color, etc. in addition to its height and length, but it actually inverts the most tempting meanings of the verses in so far as they are isolated from the holistic context and interpreted by the intellect which is conditioned by the physical sensory spectrum and our personal desires, preferences, opinions, etc. The only way out of this entanglement from a circular loop of personalized preferences dictating our interpretations which further reinforce our preferences and so forth, is unbiased, disinterested, dispassionate logical reasoning. That is the spirit of the Logos which purifies the personal will in service of the Will of the Father. When we notice a blatant contradiction in our position, like the one pointed out above, we should humbly allow it to work in us and guide us further instead of rationalizing it away. Instead of invoking the name of Christ at every opportunity to support our personal preference for immediate feeling of Oneness, we can seek the lawfulness through which the Oneness becomes known.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’"

[Stranger]

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’"

That's right. And what is the Will of the Father?

"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)

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23)

From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 4:17)

That does not mean there is no work needed to be done on our part. Quite the opposite, realizing this Christ's call to oneness requires an extraordinary undertaking on our part. And the key part of this undertaking is transcending our ego-consciousness:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Matthew 16:24)

“I am crucified with Christ, but I live; yet not I anymore, but Christ lives in me" Galatians 2:20

The above is about the Christ's message, but if we look at the core esoteric practices/teachings of other world's spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Advaita or Shaivism of Hindu tradition, Sufism of Islamic tradition, they are also essentially about experientially reaching to Oneness.

But how about expanding our consciousness to the knowledge of the World Though-content on higher levels through the practice of living thinking? Yes, it is also needed and it will become even more available to us once we transcend the bubble of our ego-consciousness and reach to the Oneness in Essense:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matt 6. 33)

[AshvinP]

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’"

That's right. And what is the Will of the Father?

"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)

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23)

From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 4:17)

That does not mean there is no work needed to be done on our part. Quite the opposite, realizing this Christ's call to oneness requires an extraordinary undertaking on our part. And the key part of this undertaking is transcending our ego-consciousness:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Matthew 16:24)

“I am crucified with Christ, but I live; yet not I anymore, but Christ lives in me" Galatians 2:20

The above is about the Christ's message, but if we look at the core esoteric practices/teachings of other world's spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Advaita or Shaivism of Hindu tradition, Sufism of Islamic tradition, they are also essentially about experientially reaching to Oneness.

But how about expanding our consciousness to the knowledge of the World Though-content on higher levels through the practice of living thinking? Yes, it is also needed and it will become even more available to us once we transcend the bubble of our ego-consciousness and reach to the Oneness in Essense:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matt 6. 33)

Alright, Eugene, this is as usual becoming too repetitive and abstract. I think Luke was trying to focus in on an organic, living, evolving understanding and experience of our perception-cognition, and the concrete ways in which we can participate in spiritualizing our cognition to address the reductive approaches to the World Content from which the 'hard problems' spring. And I further think the fruits of the different approaches to investigating that question are evident from the types of responses he received. Beyond that, I'm not really interested in rehashing what was already addressed ad nauseum on the other threads and which would simply distract from what could otherwise be a novel and fruitful discussion about our living place in the spiritual evolutionary process.

[Stranger]

Alright, Eugene, this is as usual becoming too repetitive and abstract. I think Luke was trying to focus in on an organic, living, evolving understanding and experience of our perception-cognition, and the concrete ways in which we can participate in spiritualizing our cognition to address the reductive approaches to the World Content from which the 'hard problems' spring. And I further think the fruits of the different approaches to investigating that question are evident from the types of responses he received. Beyond that, I'm not really interested in rehashing what was already addressed ad nauseum on the other threads and which would simply distract from what could otherwise be a novel and fruitful discussion about our living place in the spiritual evolutionary process.

That's right, we are going in circles. But emphasizing again, the path of realization of oneness is the most opposite to abstraction, it is a path of living first-person organic inner conscious thinking-being experience. But of course, for those who reject this path it will remain abstract because they would have no experiential references to the descriptions of these experiential realities.

But it is also relevant to this thread because we are talking here about reductionism and I was pointing that if living thinking path excludes the realization of Oneness then it will inevitably remain reductionistic since it would reduce the Reality only to its Thought-content and then inevitably idolize it.

You shall have no other gods before me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. (Exodus 20)

Which means we should never idolize the forms, the content of reality, disregarding the Oneness, the Father, that creates and experiences the content.

[AshvinP]

But it is also relevant to this thread because we are talking here about reductionism and I was pointing that if living thinking path excludes the realization of Oneness then it will inevitably remain reductionistic since it would reduce the Reality only to its Thought-content and then inevitably idolize it.

You shall have no other gods before me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. (Exodus 20)

Which means we should never idolize the forms, the content of reality, disregarding the Oneness, the Father, that creates and experiences the content.

Why would it do that reduction? Only if it has a personal interest in comprehending the Cosmos in terms of static 'essences' of a fixed 'Reality', which is the opposite of the phenomenological and original scientific method. The latter makes peace with its incomplete comprehension, humbly admitting its limited aperture of observation-thinking, and seeks to patiently and diligently unveil the threads which weave the fragmented appearances of the World, including its own thinking soul-life, into progressively higher unities of experience. It has no obsession with knowing the full and final 'truth' of the World's 'essences', grasping for and possessing that knowledge like the apple in the garden of Eden. True science is willing to sacrifice that personal obsession for dispassionate, transpersonal inquiries into living experiential processes. No living detail is too small or insignificant for this science. It discerns that the One Spirit speaks to the individual soul through those living details of nature and culture, and patiently listens to that Speech without imposing any experiential-emotional-conceptual abstractions on it. The latter may make the process of listening seem less 'boring' for a little while, but it comes at the expense of the Cosmic speech inflowing our consciousness and expanding it to levels of discernment which were previously impossible to imagine and suspect.

[Stranger]

Why would it do that reduction? ... It has no obsession with knowing the full and final 'truth' of the World's 'essences', grasping for and possessing that knowledge like the apple in the garden of Eden. True science is willing to sacrifice that personal obsession for dispassionate, transpersonal inquiries into living experiential processes. No living detail is too small or insignificant for this science. It discerns that the One Spirit speaks to the individual soul through those living details of nature and culture, and patiently listens to that Speech without imposing any experiential-emotional-conceptual abstractions on it. The latter may make the process of listening seem less 'boring' for a little while, but it comes at the expense of the Cosmic speech inflowing our consciousness and expanding it to levels of discernment which were previously impossible to imagine and suspect.

Because you can never understand what the One Spirit tells you through the living details of its manifestations if you only look at the details and never experientially discover within you the Living Spirit Itself that speaks through these details. You become lost in the details and reduce all your living experience only to the details leaving the direct experiential intimate knowledge of the Spirit as an abstract unreachable goal and postponing it till eternity. And you are doing again attempts to demean, twist and misinterpret the nondual realization in all possible ways by labeling it as "personal interest in comprehending the Cosmos in terms of static 'essences' of a fixed 'Reality', which is the opposite of the phenomenological and original scientific method" and "personal obsession for dispassionate, transpersonal inquiries into living experiential processes".

Everything is painted with the brush of the invisible one.
Let us follow the signs and find the painter.
Rumi

And saying it again and again, all spiritual traditions are about reaching and knowing the Living Spirit though the direct inner living experience which is available to us not at an unreachable eternity, but as an actual event in time, even in this current human life. This is what Rumi talked about, and Christ, and Buddha, and Lao Tze, and Meister Eckhart, and Ramana Maharshi, and all the masters and saints of the spiritual traditions, But this is what Anthroposophy denies.

That basically means that Anthroposophy is the path of dualistic evolution of consciousness claiming that the evolution is only possible through expanding the ego-consciousness with its dualistic perception of reality towards encompassing the living knowledge of the higher levels of the World Thought Content, but denying the possibility and any benefit of direct experiential knowing of the One Spirit that creates this Though-content. And as such, it basically lies about encompassing all other spiritual traditions, because all those traditions are exactly about reaching to the living knowledge of the One Spirit.

[lorenzop]

Reductionism and imagination are the working of the finite mind attempting to understand Oneness, to anticipate Oneness. For example one might use reductionism and\or the imagination to predict and anticipate what an apple might taste like.
Once the apple is being tasted, reductionism and the imagination are no longer required, they fall away.
Likewise when Oneness is 'being experienced', reductionism and the imagination, and all attempts of the finite mind to understand Oneness are no longer relevant.
In this regard, reductionism and the imagination are neither right nor wrong.