Triadic idealism: a model for the fundamental nature of reality

[AshvinP]

I can see some arrogance in the attitude of anthroposophist: "only we have the right phenomenological approach grounded in esoteric experience and every other perspective is always only empty abstraction". It is a sectarian black-and white approach of "we are always right, those who don't subscribe to our beliefs are always wrong". Even if your approach would indeed be the most aligned with the truth, that does not mean that other approaches may have at least some insights into at least some aspects of the truth, and may be even some aspects still missing in your approach. So, I think, certain openness and humility is always useful.

As you can see, despite my rather soft post, and your initial factual expression, you later felt that it was necessary to reaffirm your position more strongly against me, recalling the ideas of arrogance, lack of humility, and taking a dig at “the anthroposophist” at the same time. Again, this was not present in your spontaneous reply, you got caught up by Feelings. As we both know, Feelings are perceived as thought-pictures just as thoughts are, and so my whole point with this long post is: please don’t forget that the trend, the direction of your thought-pictures is likely to go towards a hardening. Please, factor that in when you consider your interactions. Obviosuly, this is completely accessible to your attention.
Eugene, I hope and wish that you see the positive intention that makes me write all that. I know, I have not yet answered your question on the other thread, but I will have to take a pause now, I will continue later, or maybe tomorrow, as it’s now close to midnight where I live.

You are right about noticing that in my responses T comes before F, it has to do with my personality.

But that particular quoted passage was rather related to Ashvin's arrogant attitude, and I apologize if it sounded like it was relevant to your attitude. But I also see how Ashvin's arrogant approach may also be poisoning the minds of other people who sympathize with anthroposophy. which is definitely a concern. He seems to be totally fine with no feeling of wrongdoing whatsoever and continuing with employing the tactics of intentional twisting and misinterpretations and even lies by ascribing to people something they never said for the purpose of proving the views of other teachings/practices/philosophies wrong, and with consistently arrogant attitude towards them. This is especially dissonant when the same person proclaims high moral standards according to the teaching/philosophy they claim to adhere to. I do not see a point in continuing any discussions in that way.

Come on, Eugene, everyone is "twisting" and "misinterpreting" when they point to your inner contradictions in a way you can't immediately rationalize to the clever intellect.

I just don't get it: are you continuing twisting my words for purpose or what?
...
Cleric, I'm giving up on you, you choose to keep twisting and misinterpreting my words even though I wrote pages trying to describe the nondual state.

And those were in response to his much more mild-mannered comments than my own. Now you are saying you couldn't control your response to Federica on this thread because your antipathy for my comments on another thread. The excuses have become quite absurd.

I don't expect a response to this, and even if you do, I won't be responding to you directly anymore. I only wonder how you will react to the latest post from Cleric which you were previously anticipating eagerly. Will it be 'agreed' with and cast aside, or will it be characterized as further "twisting" since it mentioned you in a way that doesn't acknowledge you are already at the vanguard of spiritual wisdom on this forum? Or will it be contemplated as something unexpected, fresh, new, pedagogical and deserving of serious interest? Time will tell.

[Stranger]

Come on, Eugene, everyone is "twisting" and "misinterpreting" when they point to your inner contradictions in a way you can't immediately rationalize to the clever intellect.

I just don't get it: are you continuing twisting my words for purpose or what?
...
Cleric, I'm giving up on you, you choose to keep twisting and misinterpreting my words even though I wrote pages trying to describe the nondual state.

Ther is a difference between misinterpretations as a result of misunderstanding, and intentional lies and misinterpretations (better be called "misrepresentations" in this case) for the sake of proving someone views wrong that you consistently employ. I do not know if those Cleric's misinterpretations were intentional or not, but it is quite obvious in your case. In any professional discussions, such as in academic philosophy or science, such way or conducting debates would be considered unacceptable, unprofessional and unethical. And IMO this is one of the reasons most people seeking to have productive philosophical discussions left this forum.

[Lou Gold]

The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science

Newly launched by Alan Lightman who teaches "Science and Humanities" at MIT, this book, at least superficially, seems worth tossing into this discussion.

[Federica]

I can see some arrogance in the attitude of anthroposophist: "only we have the right phenomenological approach grounded in esoteric experience and every other perspective is always only empty abstraction". It is a sectarian black-and white approach of "we are always right, those who don't subscribe to our beliefs are always wrong". Even if your approach would indeed be the most aligned with the truth, that does not mean that other approaches may have at least some insights into at least some aspects of the truth, and may be even some aspects still missing in your approach. So, I think, certain openness and humility is always useful.

As you can see, despite my rather soft post, and your initial factual expression, you later felt that it was necessary to reaffirm your position more strongly against me, recalling the ideas of arrogance, lack of humility, and taking a dig at “the anthroposophist” at the same time. Again, this was not present in your spontaneous reply, you got caught up by Feelings. As we both know, Feelings are perceived as thought-pictures just as thoughts are, and so my whole point with this long post is: please don’t forget that the trend, the direction of your thought-pictures is likely to go towards a hardening. Please, factor that in when you consider your interactions. Obviously, this is completely accessible to your attention.
Eugene, I hope and wish that you see the positive intention that makes me write all that. I know, I have not yet answered your question on the other thread, but I will have to take a pause now, I will continue later, or maybe tomorrow, as it’s now close to midnight where I live.

You are right about noticing that in my responses T comes before F, it has to do with my personality.

But that particular quoted passage was rather related to Ashvin's arrogant attitude, and I apologize if it sounded like it was relevant to your attitude. But I also see how Ashvin's arrogant approach may also be poisoning the minds of other people who sympathize with anthroposophy. which is definitely a concern. He seems to be totally fine with no feeling of wrongdoing whatsoever and continuing with employing the tactics of intentional twisting and misinterpretations and even lies by ascribing to people something they never said for the purpose of proving the views of other teachings/practices/philosophies wrong, with labeling them as "abstract" without any way to prove whether people's statements are grounded in their first-person phenomenological or spiritual experience or not, and with consistently arrogant attitude towards them. This is especially dissonant when the same person proclaims high moral standards according to the teaching/philosophy they claim to adhere to. I do not see a point in continuing any discussions in that way.

Eugene,
In this last post, what I was describing above - in terms of your inner organization prompting you to write a spontaneous reply first, then impelling you to extend it and rephrase it toward a significant hardening and souring, under the impulse of feelings - has happened again. The purple text is the voice of your new layer of thought-pictures that imposed themselves once your thinking got caught up by feelings. Please consider the effect. Again, we are all, in a way or another, subjected to tricky soul dynamics, but the way they play out is different for everyone, and it's much easier to realize that in someone else, of course. In this case, please see how this feeling-coloring and reelaboration of your initial thoughts is causing you considerable prejudice. We all have the potential to become more conscious of these effects. Please, bring more attention to this effect, it could be playing similarly in your interactions IRL with a balanced start, then going toward a worsening of tone. The way F affects us depends on our past, what we went through, etc. We have the possibility to bring this effect more under the scope of our awareness, the path of living thinking being a great help in this.

It's clear that your words at the top of the post: "I see some arrogance..." - and please keep in mind the place I am coming from, when saying all this - the references to arrogance, lack of humility, etc., were initially referred to me, not to Ashvin. You had called my ideas arrogant in the post just above, etc. etc. - it's crystal clear. We let it fall, this is not what I want to highlight. Now, note: your words in purple, it's when you got caught by that second layer of F-thoughts, again, and were impelled to considerably harden the picture. So you directed that souring toward Ashvin. We all need to bring these effects much more into the scope of our awareness. I am working at that, and I invite you to use this situation to do the same. Please see how this has worked out here. In this post, this effect pushed you to revise your words and add that Ashvin was intentionally twisting your words, and even lying. I know in that moment you felt that Ashvin was lying, but again, please consider why and how you felt so. Ashvin was certainly not lying, and not having an intention to twist your words, just as Cleric had not, the other week. Evidently, Ashvin does not have this evil mind you were describing here, although you were tricked into feeling so, and so you edited the post in these terms. Our faculties allow us to work on these things, Eugene. Please let's do this work, it's necessary for our conscious development. I will continue later on the other thread.

[Stranger]

Eugene,
In this last post, what I was describing above - in terms of your inner organization prompting you to write a spontaneous reply first, then impelling you to extend it and rephrase it toward a significant hardening and souring, under the impulse of feelings - has happened again. The purple text is the voice of your new layer of thought-pictures that imposed themselves once your thinking got caught up by feelings. Please consider the effect. Again, we are all, in a way or another, subjected to tricky soul dynamics, but the way they play out is different for everyone, and it's much easier to realize that in someone else, of course. In this case, please see how this feeling-coloring and reelaboration of your initial thoughts is causing you considerable prejudice. We all have the potential to become more conscious of these effects. Please, bring more attention to this effect, it could be playing similarly in your interactions IRL with a balanced start, then going toward a worsening of tone. The way F affects us depends on our past, what we went through, etc. We have the possibility to bring this effect more under the scope of our awareness, the path of living thinking being a great help in this.

It's clear that your words at the top of the post: "I see some arrogance..." - and please keep in mind the place I am coming from, when saying all this - the references to arrogance, lack of humility, etc., were initially referred to me, not to Ashvin. You had called my ideas arrogant in the post just above, etc. etc. - it's crystal clear. We let it fall, this is not what I want to highlight. Now, note: your words in purple, it's when you got caught by that second layer of F-thoughts, again, and were impelled to considerably harden the picture. So you directed that souring toward Ashvin. We all need to bring these effects much more into the scope of our awareness. I am working at that, and I invite you to use this situation to do the same. Please see how this has worked out here. In this post, this effect pushed you to revise your words and add that Ashvin was intentionally twisting your words, and even lying. I know in that moment you felt that Ashvin was lying, but again, please consider why and how you felt so. Ashvin was certainly not lying, and not having an intention to twist your words, just as Cleric had not, the other week. Evidently, Ashvin does not have this evil mind you were describing here, although you were tricked into feeling so, and so you edited the post in these terms. Our faculties allow us to work on these things, Eugene. Please let's do this work, it's necessary for our conscious development. I will continue later on the other thread.

Instead of diverting the topic into psychoanalysis of my personality, I would ask you again the same request I asked yesterday:

When you do it, also show me where BK, Nikolaj, or me ever said that they already know everything and nave "no reverence and longing towards the unexpected, the unsuspected, the unimagined".

Until you do it, I will consider such claim to be lying.

But anyway, as I said, I'm leaving the forum because I see that our discussion reached the dead end and is going nowhere, none of your crew are willing to open to even a possibility of realizing the Oneness of the Divine Self in the current human life, and of course it is completely your free choice to accept it or not and there is nothing I can further do for you. I gave you all possible pointers, explanations (to the best of my ability, which I admit is not so good and I'm often not very accurate in my wordings), and plenty of quotes from the scriptures of various traditions. In response all of you opposed me with all possible ways to misinterpret and reject or simply ignore the message that I was trying to convey. But this forum still has some usefulness for honest spiritual seekers as it shows how sophisticated and truth-mimicking the system of deceptions in the dualistic realm can become and how they need to develop spiritual discernment to recognize it.

[Federica]

Eugene,
In this last post, what I was describing above - in terms of your inner organization prompting you to write a spontaneous reply first, then impelling you to extend it and rephrase it toward a significant hardening and souring, under the impulse of feelings - has happened again. The purple text is the voice of your new layer of thought-pictures that imposed themselves once your thinking got caught up by feelings. Please consider the effect. Again, we are all, in a way or another, subjected to tricky soul dynamics, but the way they play out is different for everyone, and it's much easier to realize that in someone else, of course. In this case, please see how this feeling-coloring and reelaboration of your initial thoughts is causing you considerable prejudice. We all have the potential to become more conscious of these effects. Please, bring more attention to this effect, it could be playing similarly in your interactions IRL with a balanced start, then going toward a worsening of tone. The way F affects us depends on our past, what we went through, etc. We have the possibility to bring this effect more under the scope of our awareness, the path of living thinking being a great help in this.

It's clear that your words at the top of the post: "I see some arrogance..." - and please keep in mind the place I am coming from, when saying all this - the references to arrogance, lack of humility, etc., were initially referred to me, not to Ashvin. You had called my ideas arrogant in the post just above, etc. etc. - it's crystal clear. We let it fall, this is not what I want to highlight. Now, note: your words in purple, it's when you got caught by that second layer of F-thoughts, again, and were impelled to considerably harden the picture. So you directed that souring toward Ashvin. We all need to bring these effects much more into the scope of our awareness. I am working at that, and I invite you to use this situation to do the same. Please see how this has worked out here. In this post, this effect pushed you to revise your words and add that Ashvin was intentionally twisting your words, and even lying. I know in that moment you felt that Ashvin was lying, but again, please consider why and how you felt so. Ashvin was certainly not lying, and not having an intention to twist your words, just as Cleric had not, the other week. Evidently, Ashvin does not have this evil mind you were describing here, although you were tricked into feeling so, and so you edited the post in these terms. Our faculties allow us to work on these things, Eugene. Please let's do this work, it's necessary for our conscious development. I will continue later on the other thread.

Instead of diverting the topic into psychoanalysis of my personality, I would ask you again the same request I asked yesterday:

When you do it, also show me where BK, Nikolaj, or me ever said that they already know everything and nave "no reverence and longing towards the unexpected, the unsuspected, the unimagined".

Until you do it, I will consider such claim to be lying.

But anyway, as I said, I'm leaving the forum because I see that our discussion reached the dead end and is going nowhere, none of your crew are willing to open to even a possibility of realizing the Oneness of the Divine Self in the current human life, and of course it is completely your free choice to accept it or not and there is nothing I can further do for you. I gave you all possible pointers, explanations (to the best of my ability, which I admit is not so good and I'm often not very accurate in my wordings), and plenty of quotes from the scriptures of various traditions. In response all of you opposed me with all possible ways to misinterpret and reject the message that I was trying to convey. But this forum still has some usefulness for honest spiritual seekers as it shows how sophisticated and truth-mimicking the system of deceptions in the dualistic realm can become.

First, it seems like there's a need to state the obvious. Let's say someone has reverence and longing for the unexpected, and I say they don't. In that case, my words would not be a lie, of course. They would be my (wrong) opinion or view, on that person's inner stance towards the unexpected. A lie is something else, Eugene, you must know that.
Besides, what I wrote is certainly not psychoanalysis, but the result of simple observation of what is written on this forum.

Now, I can certainly write a long piece about what I believe Ashvin pointed to with that reference to reverence and longing, but if you, as you say, are leaving the forum, it would not make any sense to do it. In that case, I would rather spend that time reading Cleric's post on the phenomenon of light, that I have still not read, just to answer your posts instead. So I will only write it if you are interested, if you'll read it. If you now say that you will read it, and reply to it, I will be glad to write it. So please just let me know.

[Cleric K]

But anyway, as I said, I'm leaving the forum because I see that our discussion reached the dead end and is going nowhere, none of your crew are willing to open to even a possibility of realizing the Oneness of the Divine Self in the current human life, and of course it is completely your free choice to accept it or not and there is nothing I can further do for you.

I thought we have settled this already. To put things once again within the analogy of lucid dreaming, Oneness is the realization within the dream that we're of One essence with a higher Self, from whose perspective (to be realized through development or in the course of evolution) our present waking state is dreamy and confused.

To this we all agree. But then discord arises once again as soon as it is suggested that it is indeed the time (we're even a little bit late) to make way for the Higher being such that it can gradually awaken to consciousness. Even though this is generally agreed with, very soon the conversation goes "It's OK to seek this higher lucidity but you still miss the aspect of Oneness and your efforts leave you in the dual." But this makes no sense! It's like two dream persons agreeing that there's a higher being that is dreaming and they are of One essence with it. Then one of them continues further to make way for the higher being to awaken within the dream, to bring something of its higher lucidity into the dream, while the other says "You're not open even for the possibility of realizing Oneness with the Divine Self." In other words, that person insists that the general feeling of Oneness should be the highest experience and thus any more concrete realization of lucidity is seen only as dabbling with the dual fragments.

I don't know in what more explicit way this can be pointed out. It's like dreaming and dimly intuiting that there's waking self with his concrete life and destiny, yet refusing to let that waking self awaken to what's rightfully his own - the dreaming perspective. Instead, any such attempts are labeled as dualistic endeavors that only break the Oneness.

Anyone can decide for themselves which is greater Oneness - a dream character that nebulously basks in the feeling of Oneness with the dimly intuited higher being or making the paths straight such that the higher being can awaken more and more at its own level of consciousness yet reaching into the dream - just like in ordinary lucid dreaming we awaken to the higher consciousness that lives in the telos of our Earthly life, yet we continue to interface with the dream. In which of the two cases we are more One with the higher self? I believe the answer is obvious.

Please, let's mark this off once and for all. No one is closing off for the possibility of realizing Oneness. In fact we only try to convey how we're at a stage where this realization must go even further. We're no longer at a stage where it is enough to say "Life is but a dream of the Divine". The Divine seeks its lucidity from above and we're accommodating that lucidity from below, so to speak.

It's obvious that such attempts are still seen as inferior to the general feeling of Oneness. Basically it is said "I agree that the Oneness of today is only a stage and I don't know what its further realization would be like but it's certainly not what the stream of Initiatic science which unfolds the Christ mystery, is suggesting." This amounts to dreaming and saying "I realize that this is a dream but I don't want to allow the higher being that dreams me to awaken. This is too dangerous because it may be a dual illusion. Thus I'll continue to bask in the general feeling that there's a higher being that dreams me but I'll wait for some more certain way for the higher being to awaken and take over its dream - even if this means to wait for death."

[lorenzop]

I hope you'awl can see the humor and tragedy in this discussion - it's like poor people with few means, arguing what it will be like to be rich, how many rooms a rich person's mansion must have, how many yachts, what are the taxes, etc.
You do realize that even with best intentions, we all mistate the truth, according to our current understanding, right?
Nobody is right if everybody is wrong.

[AshvinP]

I hope you'awl can see the humor and tragedy in this discussion - it's like poor people with few means, arguing what it will be like to be rich, how many rooms a rich person's mansion must have, how many yachts, what are the taxes, etc.
You do realize that even with best intentions, we all mistate the truth, according to our current understanding, right?
Nobody is right if everybody is wrong.

On this forum, we have generally moved past the Kantian divide between noumenon/phenomenon which says the 'rich person's mansion' can never be known until after our personal death. I say 'personal death' because, logically speaking, other people have died before us and have experienced the mansion beyond the threshold, and again it is only the Kantian divide which suggests that knowledge cannot be shared with us on this side of the threshold. So by maintaining the artificial divide, we are not only writing off the supra-sensory knowledge of anyone still alive, but also that of everyone who has already died. As usual, these things will become obvious to us once we experience even a tiny bit of the inner forces which animate our current thinking. Then the fact that the spirit worlds are right here, always present, interwoven with and modulating our normal experience in a perfectly knowable way, can no longer be ignored. It can't be ignored by way of rationalization any more than we can ignore the fact that a flame begins to burn us when we stick our hand right over it.

Besides that, it's OK if we aren't always at the vanguard of spiritual wisdom and knowledge. We don't need to bring everyone else down to equal levels of misstating truths and wrongness. It's OK to feel insecure in our current knowledge and seek the reasons why within ourselves, rather than externalizing those reasons onto reality as a whole, onto all people for all time. Our lives won't end if we admit that perhaps there are people who have been placed into our lives who have ascended above us in spirit knowledge and we have something to learn from them. Everyone on the path of modern initiation needs to make this stark admission initially and continue making it as life unfolds. It becomes easier and easier as our living knowledge of the immensity of spiritual depths increases - eventually we realize it couldn't possibly be any other way. It's not arrogant to admit our own limitations in this area, but humble. It is the first step towards clearing out the deadwood of abstract opinions, models, theories, etc. and making room for new unfamiliar ideas which can kindle our imagination, inspiration, and intuition.

[lorenzop]

you must be a hoot at dinner parties