Anthroposophy as Fascio

[Lou Gold]

No, not the stars.
Could you be more precise on what you meant with: "Yikes, the opposite is always always true"?

For example: "There are no rules, including this one. "

How is this related with anything I wrote about "the cone"?

Methinks, it's getting too much to unravel. The cone was bifurcated into aperture/lens. Both are true/false based on one's location. The representations of dualist language are thusly challenging for all of us. I didn't mean to trigger a big discussion. I'm getting more these days from focusing on accepting many things that previously seemed illogical, probably as a result of my academic days where the dialectic reigned supreme. Nowadays, in my space of active or aware dying, my views seem more liminal, diverse and multidirectional. Blame it on my location, I guess. Best regards to you.

[Federica]

For example: "There are no rules, including this one. "

How is this related with anything I wrote about "the cone"?

Methinks, it's getting too much to unravel. The cone was bifurcated into aperture/lens. Both are true/false based on one's location. The representations of dualist language are thusly challenging for all of us. I didn't mean to trigger a big discussion. I'm getting more these days from focusing on accepting many things that previously seemed illogical, probably as a result of my academic days where the dialectic reigned supreme. Nowadays, in my space of active or aware dying, my views seem more liminal, diverse and multidirectional. Blame it on my location, I guess. Best regards to you.

Lou, if I may ask, what are you getting from accepting the things that previously seemed illogical? (I am not trying to go anywhere with this question, only to understand your current activity)

[Lou Gold]

How is this related with anything I wrote about "the cone"?

Methinks, it's getting too much to unravel. The cone was bifurcated into aperture/lens. Both are true/false based on one's location. The representations of dualist language are thusly challenging for all of us. I didn't mean to trigger a big discussion. I'm getting more these days from focusing on accepting many things that previously seemed illogical, probably as a result of my academic days where the dialectic reigned supreme. Nowadays, in my space of active or aware dying, my views seem more liminal, diverse and multidirectional. Blame it on my location, I guess. Best regards to you.

Lou, if I may ask, what are you getting from accepting the things that previously seemed illogical? (I am not trying to go anywhere with this question, only to understand your current activity)

Federica, words are difficult because of differing locations but I would respond that generally I'm getting more compassion toward myself and others. More spectacularly, I never could have logically imagined that dying might feel like the best time of my life.

[Anthony66]

Higher being in this case refers simply to a perspective which experiences the intellectual self as its suit, so to speak. Of course, there are levels but in this particular case it was used in a more general manner.


This is a good question and hints at the difficulties we encounter when we try to have a clear intellectual definition of "what I am". I would say that the second form - thinking united with the higher being - is better but it really depends on what exactly one implies. How would you describe this unity?

Rupert Spira is fond of the metaphor of Mary and Jane. In it, Mary falls asleep and dreams she is Jane in the streets of London. Jane experience herself as a separate self, but when she starts investigating who she really is, she finds out she is not a separate self (Jane) in London, but that she was Mary all the time. Everything was just Mary, including all the objects and other subjects in London. All was just a dream in Mary's mind.

This partly gets at the issue but it does flatten things into "everything was just Mary". The dynamics of Jane's mind in the context of Mary's mind are left largely unaccounted for. The "non-dual awakening" of Jane happens either when Mary awakens from sleep and so destroys Jane or perhaps when a level of lucid-dreaming occurs.

Anthony,

If Jane is to awaken to her existence as Mary, then what does this mean? Mary doesn't only 'destroy' Jane, but comes to understand why and how Jane experienced herself as this separate dream personality (assuming Mary lucidly remembers the dreaming). Everything which occurred within the dream is understood as archetypal symbols for higher-order spiritual activity. Perhaps the dream narrative of wandering through a never-ending maze with weird creatures is understood as the symbol of a Mary's childhood experience of getting lost from her parents in a mall with strangers. Does the nondual awakening result in a similar precise understanding of wandering through the maze of normal Earthly life? I had asked Eugene before for a written example from someone who had so awakened, which could give us more confidence in such a conclusion. Can you provide that?

As the term suggests, non-dual awakening is simply a profound shift in consciousness that involves the realization of the fundamental unity and interconnectedness of all things. It is not an understanding, intellectual or conceptual, rather a direct and immediate experience. It is Jane awakening to her "Mary nature". There is no "precise understanding", no details on offer as far as I can tell.

[AshvinP]

Rupert Spira is fond of the metaphor of Mary and Jane. In it, Mary falls asleep and dreams she is Jane in the streets of London. Jane experience herself as a separate self, but when she starts investigating who she really is, she finds out she is not a separate self (Jane) in London, but that she was Mary all the time. Everything was just Mary, including all the objects and other subjects in London. All was just a dream in Mary's mind.

This partly gets at the issue but it does flatten things into "everything was just Mary". The dynamics of Jane's mind in the context of Mary's mind are left largely unaccounted for. The "non-dual awakening" of Jane happens either when Mary awakens from sleep and so destroys Jane or perhaps when a level of lucid-dreaming occurs.

Anthony,

If Jane is to awaken to her existence as Mary, then what does this mean? Mary doesn't only 'destroy' Jane, but comes to understand why and how Jane experienced herself as this separate dream personality (assuming Mary lucidly remembers the dreaming). Everything which occurred within the dream is understood as archetypal symbols for higher-order spiritual activity. Perhaps the dream narrative of wandering through a never-ending maze with weird creatures is understood as the symbol of a Mary's childhood experience of getting lost from her parents in a mall with strangers. Does the nondual awakening result in a similar precise understanding of wandering through the maze of normal Earthly life? I had asked Eugene before for a written example from someone who had so awakened, which could give us more confidence in such a conclusion. Can you provide that?

As the term suggests, non-dual awakening is simply a profound shift in consciousness that involves the realization of the fundamental unity and interconnectedness of all things. It is not an understanding, intellectual or conceptual, rather a direct and immediate experience. It is Jane awakening to her "Mary nature". There is no "precise understanding", no details on offer as far as I can tell.

Exactly, Anthony - so it is not an awakening, in any genuine sense. I think this has been discussed a dozen or more different ways. Recently, Cleric mentioned a person who loads up on doses of LSD and experiences the "awakening" to fundamental 'unity and interconnectedness of all things' in that way. There is no principle difference between that and what you are describing above, is there? That person can also claim direct and immediate experience of profound unity and if you ask him, 'so what did it all mean?', he will tell you to stop worrying about precise understanding and bask in the glow of the experience. Perhaps there are more immediate health risks with LSD, but the non-immediacy of consequences associated with other practices shouldn't convince us they don't exist.

If reality is of idea-nature and thought-nature, as we all agree, then awakening should bring us within the sphere of cognitive currents which animate the world within us and the world around us. These are not intellectual or conceptual, but rather the living currents which are only experienced as intellectual concepts after they die within our egoistic soul-life. In their true nature, they are much more alive than the colors, smells, sounds, tastes, textures we bump our way through in the sensory spectrum and can be cognitively experienced as such. At the same time, we come to know exactly how these experiences relate to our body-life, our soul-life, and our overall stream of destiny across multiple incarnations. There is no rolling of the dice and simply hoping it is all working out OK for us.

That is why I remarked earlier, I think much of your dissastisfaction on this front comes from an under-appreciation of how unity and interconnectedness can be experienced via higher cognition, which is true awakening. It is natural for us to under-appreciate such things we have no direct conscious experience with, but the other issue is that we cannot reach such a direct experience unless we remain truly open to its reality. That is the nature of modern intiation in spiritual freedom. Not just open in our intellectual thought, but in our hearts. We can remain open to how radically transformative these new impulses are, at the level of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, as adaptations of what we already know from ancient traditions. These are actually the same impulses which inspired all of those traditions, but remained only within the sphere of a select few and was experienced in a much less lucid way than we can experience them now.

[Stranger]

If reality is of idea-nature and thought-nature, as we all agree.

It is this cognitive error that blocks you from the non-dual awakening that Anthony is talking about.

[AshvinP]

If reality is of idea-nature and thought-nature, as we all agree.

It is this cognitive error that blocks you from the non-dual awakening that Anthony is talking about.

The path of higher cognition can also spot errors but it gives precise reasoning, often in more imaginative form such as metaphors/analogies, for why a line of thinking has gone astray. Non-dual awakening can't do that, but can only preach to the 'heathens'. I see no reason to roll the dice on a path which can't speak to my reasoning faculty or give me practical methods of steering my holistic stream of becoming in spirit-soul-body. Our soul-life is like a curling stone:





It is drifting back through the concentric layers of convolution to its Center, along winding paths and obstacles, often much too slow or much too fast. (of course it doesn't remain an atomic unit, as suggested by spatial analogies). Through higher cognition, we gain the cognitive vitality, leeway, and feedback to use our ego-consciousness as 'brushes' which lower the friction of the sensory-conceptual spectrum and 'make straight the paths' for the indwelling Spirit to guide our soul to its heart's destination in a balanced way. We have been instinctively doing this with our inherited cultural traditions (ethical impulses) and intellectual thinking for some time now, but through modern intitiation we do it with much more skill, with greater techne.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curling

The player can induce a curved path, described as curl, by causing the stone to slowly rotate as it slides. The path of the rock may be further influenced by two sweepers with brooms or brushes, who accompany it as it slides down the sheet and sweep the ice in front of the stone. "Sweeping a rock" decreases the friction, which makes the stone travel a straighter path (with less curl) and a longer distance. A great deal of strategy and teamwork go into choosing the ideal path and placement of a stone for each situation, and the skills of the curlers determine the degree to which the stone will achieve the desired result.

There are no empty promises of supreme bliss, complete understanding of the Godhead, free wandering into other galaxies after death, or anything similar, but the profound sense of satisfaction which only comes by creatively taking hold of one's destiny, in full lucid consciousness, with humility and devotion.

[Stranger]

The path of higher cognition can also spot errors but it gives precise reasoning, often in more imaginative form such as metaphors/analogies, for why a line of thinking has gone astray. Non-dual awakening can't do that, but can only preach to the 'heathens'.

"Thinking must precede ideas" - Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom

And Thinking is not an idea but a capacity for production and cognition/experiencing of ideas. Ideas cannot exist by themselves, there would be no ideas if there would be no Thinking. Therefore, it is not true that "reality is of idea-nature and thought-nature", the reality cannot be reduced to only ideas exactly because Thinking must precede ideas.

The rest of your post is just giving a bunch of reasons why you personally dislike the non-dual awakening and prefer the path of higher cognition development, and that's fine, it is totally your choice. There is no doubt that the path of higher cognition development is greatly beneficial. It is just that it is by itself insufficient and incomplete without non-dual awakening. So, if you reject the non-dual awakening, the only one who is going to limit their knowledge of reality and cognitive capacity is you. But the thing is: if you really progress along the path of higher cognition development, at some point the non-dual awakening will happen inevitably, it's just a matter of time.

[AshvinP]

The path of higher cognition can also spot errors but it gives precise reasoning, often in more imaginative form such as metaphors/analogies, for why a line of thinking has gone astray. Non-dual awakening can't do that, but can only preach to the 'heathens'.

"Thinking must precede ideas" - Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom

And Thinking is not an idea but a capacity for production and cognition/experiencing of ideas. Ideas cannot exist by themselves, there would be no ideas if there would be no Thinking. Therefore, it is not true that "reality is of idea-nature and thought-nature", the reality cannot be reduced to only ideas exactly because Thinking must precede ideas.

The rest of your post is just giving a bunch of reasons why you personally dislike the non-dual awakening, and that's fine, it is totally your choice.

I caution against it because it can only lead to thinking through reality in abstractions, as again shown above. What it purports to do and what it actually does remain at complete odds. Therefore it is not a true cognitive awakening from within our standard intellectual state. 'Non-dual awakening' is a misnomer - it should simply be 'non-dual experience'. But then we also need to address the implicit dualism which inevitably maintains when investigating reality in the normal cognitive state, so 'non-dual' is also a misnomer. It is more like 'temporarily unified spiritual experience'. I don't dislike this temporarily unified spiritual experience, but think it is only the first step towards unveiling the genuine spirit worlds across the threshold via higher cognition which leads to long-lasting (multi-incarnational), satisfactory, and mutually redemptive spiritual experience of more perfect Union from 'glory to glory'.

[Stranger]

I caution against it because it can only lead to thinking through reality in abstractions, as again shown above. What it purports to do and what it actually does remains at complete odds. Therefore it is not a true cognitive awakening from within our standard intellectual state. 'Non-dual awakening' is a misnomer - it should simply be 'non-dual experience'. But then we also need to address the implicit dualism which inevitably maintains when investigating reality in the normal cognitive state, so 'non-dual' is also a misnomer. It is more like 'temporarily unified spiritual experience'. I don't dislike this temporarily unified spiritual experience, but think it is only the first step towards unveiling the genuine spirit worlds across the threshold via higher cognition which leads to long-lasting (multi-incarnational), satisfactory, and mutually redemptive spiritual experience of more perfect Union from 'glory to glory'.

Agreed, they are all misnomers, they are only linguistic pointers to reality as it is known through a "direct and immediate experience" (as Anthony said), and as pointers they are never accurate. But the unified nature of reality is not temporary, it is how it actually always is: always-unified-diversity (and this phrase is also only an inaccurate pointer and arguably a misnomer). Mary never actually stopped being Mary, she only temporary forgot it.