Reincarnation and Analytic Idealism

[V. Christodoulides]

V.,

One can be more parsimonious than BK's idealism, as follows:

There is thinking, feeling, and sense perception. For convenience, I will call all these together "ideational activity". Non-ideational activity would be activity of which there is no awareness, the sort of thing materialists think there is. (The word 'ideational' indicates that there is some form (idea) involved, where 'form' just means that which distinguishes one ideational act from others.)

So the completely parsimonious starting point is that there is all and only ideational activity. One cannot doubt that there is ideational activity (since to doubt is an ideational act). One can doubt that there is only ideational activity, but that doesn't matter, since one will never experience non-ideational activity.

The term "ideational acticity" does not refer to an abstraction, as you are engaged in it by reading this sentence. While one can doubt that there is a single, unified subjsct, indeed one can doubt that there is any 'subject' at all, one cannout doubt that there is ideational activity. Hence, this an indubitable, completely parsimonous philosophical starting point with no abstractions.

But can one get anywhere with this as one starting point? Yes, one can. (See Federica's post for where to look.) This approach is basically observing and thinking about ideational activity, without bringing in abstractions.

Scott,

In addition to Ashvin's response, I would like to also say that the existence of at least one subject cannot be doubted. Subjective experience implies an experiencer (subject) that is experiencing. Notice that this does not necessarily imply a duality. I guess we agree that everything is experiential (inside awareness), there is nothing outside, not even the subject. They are one. I would personally say that ultimately, the One Unified Reality (Universal Subject) is experiencing itself.

[V. Christodoulides]

I understand that someone could paint from all this a crude, new-age picture consisting of invisible so-called subtle bodies (emotional, electrical, ethereal, and light bodies to name a few) floating around and whatnot.9 All I am saying though, is that Bernardo’s dissociation model can be safely expanded in its scope. It can set the guiding example for the development of a rational reincarnation/relocalisation model. If we are to develop such a model (in which the basics of Bernardo’s model are 100% retained), then the idea that individual minds might be directly represented as light bodies may not be so far-fetched after all. Makes you wonder if all those reports describing beings made of light (aka angels) are referring to encounters with unconstrained individual minds. If any such beings exist, they are most probably in a disincarnate state between incarnations.10

Regardless of what our manifested representations might or might not be, there is a most important (and I am sure mutually agreed upon) point to be mentioned. It is the fact that our core, most inner pure subjectivity is not represented in any manifested form at all. It is a singularity when it comes to ‘physical’, or any other description. Nonetheless, it is an intrinsic and inseparable part of us, individual minds, no matter how obscured it might appear to be. Our so-called spirit could be said to be this unchanging, timeless, and ever-present part of ourselves. It is this shared quality that binds us all together as one and the same at heart.

So (coming back to debatable territory) each of us, split-off personalities in the mind of nature, could be generally called individual spirit/mind/body complexes. The spirit and body aspects are also essentially mental, but there is a clear distinction between each of the three components assigned to a dissociated complex inside the mind of nature. The spirit part is eternally permanent, and the body part is impermanent. As for the mind part, there is an aspect of the individual mind that persists throughout the whole of its universal cycle. There are also aspects of the individual mind that are a product of only each particular incarnation and are very shallow. As transient as the corresponding incarnational body itself. During the incarnation, the totality of the individual mind is pinpointed into a tiny fraction of the overall stream. The rest, which is the majority, is filtered out.

V.,

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your essay and it is a surprisingly logical way of deducing what some would call 'esoteric' concepts as referred to above, particularly that of the spirit-soul-body structure and the subtle bodies, which indeed make reincarnation more philosophically comprehensible. I am curious, did you start with any general affinity for such concepts and then seek to logically deduce them from the analytic idealist framework?

Ashvin,

Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it. Yes, you are right. I already thought that this is the way things work when it comes to the evolution of consciousness. Coming across Analytic Idealism actually helped me to better explain them, even to myself.

[ScottRoberts]

In addition to Ashvin's response, I would like to also say that the existence of at least one subject cannot be doubted.

Actually, it can be doubted. Many Buddhists do (the "no-self" doctrine).

Subjective experience implies an experiencer (subject) that is experiencing.

Yes, but you have just assumed that there is subjective experience, and not, say, 'experience that is neither objective nor subjective'. The distinction between subject and object is a product of thinking, which is what allows for doubt. (Note: I am not saying the distinction isn't a good one to make, just that it cannot be considered fundamental. I am not an adherent of the "no-self" doctrine.)

Notice that this does not necessarily imply a duality. I guess we agree that everything is experiential (inside awareness), there is nothing outside, not even the subject. They are one. I would personally say that ultimately, the One Unified Reality (Universal Subject) is experiencing itself.

While I would prefer saying ultimately that there is the One/Many polarity, which is present in all experience.

[ScottRoberts]

Alright, so it seems a key part of the phenomenological idealist approach is to highlight how all ideational experience is temporally extended. The normal habit of thinking has a difficult time remembering this fact and often lifts snapshots of experience out of a continuum in order to reach philosophical conclusions. Thereby it convinces itself that there are forms of 'non-ideational' activity, whether mindless (materialist) or instinctively conscious (mystic, philosopher of will, etc.).

Yes, but I would also bring in that to be aware of temporality requires timelessness. Also, another way to put the "snapshot" problem is to note that there is no isolatable ideational act (every act is contextually embedded). Put another way, there is only one Form.

We could introduce two similar observations here - 1) animals who appear to be consciously aware without thinking/memory, 2) dreamless sleep states. For #2, it seems that the response would be similar to that for the 'nothingness' state. We don't remember the dreamless sleep experience but we sense duration that bridges the normal state from the previous day to the current normal state. Is that correct and how would you address #1?

Yes, on the dreamless sleep. As for animals, My speculation (as I lack higher cognition) is that an individual animal is not a spiritual being. What we perceive as a rock is a word being expressed by the ideational activity which appears as the mineral world. Likewise, an individual animal is an expression of the "group soul" (I think that's the term) of the animal's species. Which is what is meant, for example, in Native American stories of humans interacting with Coyote, not with a coyote.

[Federica]

You are welcome Federica. Thank you very much for your response and for providing various resources for study! I have a lot of digging to do.

Hi V, Those are a few entry points that have been particularly helpful for me, and there is surely a lot to dig into! Another approach is to make it a living group discussion right in this thread, as we are doing.

First of all, you are right except when it comes to our own self. Our own mental inner life is known directly by our own selves. The noumena are knowable in this case. Schopenhauer has pointed out this missing fact in Kant's philosophy with his book, "The World as Will and Representation". We know our own selves directly and immediately as 'Will' without the need for representations or inferences. However, when it comes to your own 'Will' for example, I do not have direct access to it, like you do. I only have indirect access through the use of representations and inferences. The same goes for the 'Will' of the rest of the world at large. We, incarnated humans, seem to be behind a very very hard-to-penetrate "screen of perceptions" that seems to distort almost everything that passes through its lens. We do get hints of this underlying unity though. One way is by escaping the confines of our dashboard in so-called "transcendent experiences" of felt union with the world or even with another individual being, wherein there seems to be a merge of two previously dissociated consciousnesses. A possible and interesting second way seems to be the conscious and focused act of deeply contemplating the readings of our very dashboard. They too have something to tell about this unity. The dashboard with its readings is an intrinsic part of reality and thus all it can possibly be truly about is the underlying unity. Everything, no matter how distorted it may seem, is an aspect of this underlying unity.

Yes. I recognize I have simplified a lot by making BK's approach the same as Kant, and Schopenhauer. My aim was to highlight the common aspects.

(Before I move on to your 2nd paragraph, I want to clear up something. I think that we may be using two different definitions for the word 'framework'. For me, every attempt trying to explain reality, including your philosophical approach, falls under the characterization of 'framework-based'. What you are trying to communicate to me is certainly pointing to our lived experience that is beyond the philosophical framework itself, but I do not see how any Idealistic theory differs from this. Analytic Idealism for example, points to the same lived experience. The difference between different theories is only that they try to explain and describe the same lived experience in different ways.

By framework-based approach I mean the intellectual activity that results in a model of reality (the framework), i.e. an abstract construction that we conceive as a representation of reality, a replica of it. One builds the model by setting an ontological prime first, and then conceiving a whole philosophical model, for example. Or by observing a phenomenon, and later trying to extract a model from observation. This is the largely predominant approach to cognizing. Bernardo does that, modern scientists in any field do that. The common approach is to think about a certain reality, trying to describe it.
The path of living thinking that I referred to above does not do that (so I have to disagree with you).
Instead of letting our thinking activity fill up with a series of certain contents (whatever they might be, including inner life, as in psychology for instance) which then occupy it and catalyze our attention, the living thinking approach expands attention to the activity of thinking itself, rather than only what it is occupied by. This is a very different activation and exertion of thinking activity. As Cleric puts it, in living thinking we go from:

a bunch of loosely related concepts that aim to build a floating replica of the supposed 'reality-in-itself', to an actual living process which ingrows, fuses with the World Content, similarly to the way the network of plant roots penetrate the soil. In similar way our thinking organism grows into the World and the cognitive experience of this is what is called harmony of the facts. In other words, this process is not something that we observe from the outside but it's the experience from within thinking activity that grows and feels reality.

You will find more context in the Time-Consciousness Spectrum, but probably the most useful post to grasp why this is not framework-based is this.

The Kantian paradigm has been overcome by the Schopenhauerian one and now Analytic Idealism is refining and updating the latter according to new knowledge and insights (scientific and otherwise). Analytic Idealism pertains to the field of analytic philosophy. So, how has it been overcome exactly? And how did you come to the conclusion that humanity has evolved, in the way you are describing, around the end of the 19th century? Also, what do you mean by the "path of living thinking"? (Excuse me if the answers are to be found in the links you provided. I haven't read everything yet.)

Completely legitimate questions, V! I tried to provide a telegraphic hint, but you are right, there are tons more to say. You would find the starting point to the answers at the links, yes, especially to the first and last of your questions, that have a common answer. The exact way to overcome the Analytical Idealism paradigm in direct experience becomes clear together with the understanding of what is meant by living thinking. As I tried to outline above, we can first imagine the normal way to use our operative system 'thinking' (that is, thinking about something) as a 'bidimensional' type of activation of thinking. In other words, we can think of this or that content - thus we can roam on a 2D plane - but the 'mechanism' of our thinking gesture is always the same, that is we apply thinking to this, or that, or that). However we could also uncover an unsuspected depth of thinking (as a metaphor, how our thinking activity can roam on a 3D plane) by noticing that we can regulate not only the specific content we think about, but also the quality of the 'thinking gesture'. We can leave it fully engulfed into the manyness of this or that content - in a way, oblivious of itself - or we can recollect it, zooming out of all content, to focus on the activity of thinking as pure activity. In this experienced depth of thinking, we don't produce a framework, we experience our being part of the fabric of reality directly. And we can of course also find alternation of the two extremes - manyness of content versus oneness of thinking-reality - through philosophical-phenomenological inquiry, ideally in association with the practice of exercises.

I didn't want to be too unpolite and only refer you to links, so I have tried to provide some form of initial response. But please know there's x times more clarity and insight at the posts I have linked.

I more or less agree with your 3rd paragraph. Humans do evolve through stages, and indeed the connection between spirit and man was stronger back then. However, I am not sure this was a different stage in the evolution of human consciousness per se. There were no fundamental differences, as far as I'm aware, between humans back then and modern humans. They were much more in touch with the spiritual aspect of reality because of their openness to such ideas and possibilities. We, modern humans, have not lost this potential, but we have restricted our own selves to a self-imposed limiting picture of what we truly are and are capable of. We are less open to the possibilities as a culture. Furthermore, can you please explain to me how this ancient way of living is different from the more recent breakthrough you are proposing?

It's not a breakthrough, but a continuous transformation of consciousness through time, similar to the growth process of an individual, from childhood, to teen-age, to adulthood, to old age, as an analogy. But please allow me to put this question on hold, because a proper answer would take us far away from the entry point (plus I am not sure I would be able to provide a great account of that trajectory). We can certainly come back to this. The main idea to uncover (not posit) is that the unfolding of human civilization is not only mad of an unfolding of outer historical events plus evolution of thought, but is also an evolution of the human body-soul-spirit(=thinking) organization itself, meaning that the type of thinking gestures, the quality of thinking activity man has been able to operate through time has been constantly evolving too.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that our innate perceptions and cognitive activity themselves already segment the world before we even try to put it in frameworks. This innate segmentation comes with being a normal individual human that is naturally limited in its ability to fully experience the holistic nature of reality. Our very senses for example, already cut this unified reality into different bits and pieces -> (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory). I do admit though that there is indeed a real argument to be made about frameworks' tendency to further segment reality. But since I believe that philosophy can only be shared through frameworks, the point is to come up with the frameworks that best retain, and point to, this holistic aspect of our lived experience. I am totally with you here. In that reality is basically one and we should strive to experience it as such.

You are not wrong, the process of perception-cognition is a delicate one to be experientially inquired, and we do "segment" perception, as you say. We do that by means of concepts. There is much more to say here to elucidate cognition, from perception through concepts and ideas, which is exactly the way through which clarity can be reached that philosophy cannot only be shared by frameworks.

Now, I still don't see how have these problems been solved by your approach, or how they are only a byproduct of our faulty way of thinking and thus do not really exist. Idealism, through Analytic Idealism, has almost entirely solved the decomposition problem by the way. There is a clear and plausible argument made as to how the problem is solved. The only thing left is finding the full explanation for the mechanism of dissociation. My opinion is that an explicit account of how exactly this process functions on the universal level to bring about the appearance of multiple dissociated mental complexes is necessarily hard (if not impossible) to obtain while in incarnated dissociated form. But, since this pursuit is quite recent, this remains to be seen. If you ask me personally, I am more than satisfied with what basic explanations we already have. For reference, you can take a look at this short essay from Bernardo and/or this longer essay from Bernard Carr that utilizes a more scientific approach to tackle this.

I will come to your last paragraph in another post. Thanks for the links!

[AshvinP]

Alright, so it seems a key part of the phenomenological idealist approach is to highlight how all ideational experience is temporally extended. The normal habit of thinking has a difficult time remembering this fact and often lifts snapshots of experience out of a continuum in order to reach philosophical conclusions. Thereby it convinces itself that there are forms of 'non-ideational' activity, whether mindless (materialist) or instinctively conscious (mystic, philosopher of will, etc.).

Yes, but I would also bring in that to be aware of temporality requires timelessness. Also, another way to put the "snapshot" problem is to note that there is no isolatable ideational act (every act is contextually embedded). Put another way, there is only one Form.

We could introduce two similar observations here - 1) animals who appear to be consciously aware without thinking/memory, 2) dreamless sleep states. For #2, it seems that the response would be similar to that for the 'nothingness' state. We don't remember the dreamless sleep experience but we sense duration that bridges the normal state from the previous day to the current normal state. Is that correct and how would you address #1?

Yes, on the dreamless sleep. As for animals, My speculation (as I lack higher cognition) is that an individual animal is not a spiritual being. What we perceive as a rock is a word being expressed by the ideational activity which appears as the mineral world. Likewise, an individual animal is an expression of the "group soul" (I think that's the term) of the animal's species. Which is what is meant, for example, in Native American stories of humans interacting with Coyote, not with a coyote.

Right. I suppose I am mostly trying to explore how we can build a phenomenological gradient to such supersensible realities. PoF is one way, but I think your polar philosophical idealism is probably a useful stepping stone for many people since I have often heard others say that they have a hard time following PoF right out of the gate. In some ways, it is too dissimilar from the normal philosophical habits of thinking. Eventually, that leap into uncomfortable territory needs to be made, but perhaps there is a bridge here that makes it less of a leap. It is also useful to think through all the various questions, concerns, objections, and so forth that would be raised to the experiential reality of 'there is only ideational activity'.

Comparing the particular forms of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms to the words of an incomprehensible language (for the intellect) spoken by ideational agencies is a great approach. I think speech will always be one of the most helpful metaphors for the ideational structure of reality since we intuitively resonate with that activity. Similarly, we could say that the ideational quality of animal consciousness is to be found flowing through the human perspective that observes them. So we point to the simple phenomenological principle that we can only know of animal consciousness through our own. When we go beyond the snapshots for particular animals to systematically observe how groups of animals behave, then we discern something more akin to our own intent-driven ideational capacity. The ideational activity is discerned in the temporally extended, ecological behavior of the animals, within their own groups and also with respect to the other natural kingdoms.

I wonder if that can be usefully extended to point towards higher-than-human ideational activity. What sort of ideational activity can be experientially discerned by observing groups of humans over time? I think here we probably need to get into the evolution of consciousness across the ages and see whether it can be thoughtfully discerned as the result of higher ideational activity which spans it. So we need to start thinking of segments of time as particular snapshots, like we have done with spatial perceptions or individual experiences, spanned by ideational activity.

Do you have any thoughts on how to philosophically address that or, similarly, the objection that the forces of nature do not appear to be ideational but rather instinctive? Bernardo often mentioned how natural forces are mathematically predictable like that of an instinctive crocodile, whereas human ideational activity is much more unpredictable. How do we reconcile that difference?

[AshvinP]

I understand that someone could paint from all this a crude, new-age picture consisting of invisible so-called subtle bodies (emotional, electrical, ethereal, and light bodies to name a few) floating around and whatnot.9 All I am saying though, is that Bernardo’s dissociation model can be safely expanded in its scope. It can set the guiding example for the development of a rational reincarnation/relocalisation model. If we are to develop such a model (in which the basics of Bernardo’s model are 100% retained), then the idea that individual minds might be directly represented as light bodies may not be so far-fetched after all. Makes you wonder if all those reports describing beings made of light (aka angels) are referring to encounters with unconstrained individual minds. If any such beings exist, they are most probably in a disincarnate state between incarnations.10

Regardless of what our manifested representations might or might not be, there is a most important (and I am sure mutually agreed upon) point to be mentioned. It is the fact that our core, most inner pure subjectivity is not represented in any manifested form at all. It is a singularity when it comes to ‘physical’, or any other description. Nonetheless, it is an intrinsic and inseparable part of us, individual minds, no matter how obscured it might appear to be. Our so-called spirit could be said to be this unchanging, timeless, and ever-present part of ourselves. It is this shared quality that binds us all together as one and the same at heart.

So (coming back to debatable territory) each of us, split-off personalities in the mind of nature, could be generally called individual spirit/mind/body complexes. The spirit and body aspects are also essentially mental, but there is a clear distinction between each of the three components assigned to a dissociated complex inside the mind of nature. The spirit part is eternally permanent, and the body part is impermanent. As for the mind part, there is an aspect of the individual mind that persists throughout the whole of its universal cycle. There are also aspects of the individual mind that are a product of only each particular incarnation and are very shallow. As transient as the corresponding incarnational body itself. During the incarnation, the totality of the individual mind is pinpointed into a tiny fraction of the overall stream. The rest, which is the majority, is filtered out.

V.,

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your essay and it is a surprisingly logical way of deducing what some would call 'esoteric' concepts as referred to above, particularly that of the spirit-soul-body structure and the subtle bodies, which indeed make reincarnation more philosophically comprehensible. I am curious, did you start with any general affinity for such concepts and then seek to logically deduce them from the analytic idealist framework?

Ashvin,

Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it. Yes, you are right. I already thought that this is the way things work when it comes to the evolution of consciousness. Coming across Analytic Idealism actually helped me to better explain them, even to myself.

V.,

Could you elaborate on what sources you worked with previously to reach these conclusions about the evolution of consciousness, i.e. through the spirit-soul-body structure over many incarnations?

[ScottRoberts]

Right. I suppose I am mostly trying to explore how we can build a phenomenological gradient to such supersensible realities.
....

I'll be responding in a new thread.

[V. Christodoulides]

V.,

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your essay and it is a surprisingly logical way of deducing what some would call 'esoteric' concepts as referred to above, particularly that of the spirit-soul-body structure and the subtle bodies, which indeed make reincarnation more philosophically comprehensible. I am curious, did you start with any general affinity for such concepts and then seek to logically deduce them from the analytic idealist framework?

Ashvin,

Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it. Yes, you are right. I already thought that this is the way things work when it comes to the evolution of consciousness. Coming across Analytic Idealism actually helped me to better explain them, even to myself.

V.,

Could you elaborate on what sources you worked with previously to reach these conclusions about the evolution of consciousness, i.e. through the spirit-soul-body structure over many incarnations?

Ashvin,

Mostly the 'Law of One Material'. It is speculative and controversial material but I found the metaphysical and ontological aspects of it really interesting and helpful. I recommend that the information contained therein be examined in and of itself, without much attention given to whence it came from. If you are interested, I can provide you with more details.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it. Yes, you are right. I already thought that this is the way things work when it comes to the evolution of consciousness. Coming across Analytic Idealism actually helped me to better explain them, even to myself.

V.,

Could you elaborate on what sources you worked with previously to reach these conclusions about the evolution of consciousness, i.e. through the spirit-soul-body structure over many incarnations?

Ashvin,

Mostly the 'Law of One Material'. It is speculative and controversial material but I found the metaphysical and ontological aspects of it really interesting and helpful. I recommend that the information contained therein be examined in and of itself, without much attention given to whence it came from. If you are interested, I can provide you with more details.

V.,

I assure you that on this forum there is no undue skepticism of communications from the spiritual worlds regarding the nature of our reality in connection with those worlds. You may have noticed, if you had a chance to look around, that Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy are mentioned on many of the threads. The biggest question I see in this context is what the communications are prompting us to do in terms of our spiritual seeking? Many systems out there give us copious amounts of information about the nature of spiritual reality (the only reality there is), and the Anthroposophical (or spiritual scientific) approach is not an exception in that regard, since it provides details of spiritual reality that can occupy us for lifetimes, but the big difference is that it also illuminates the means by which we can verify that information ourselves through the development of our intuitive thinking. Steiner takes very seriously the following:

Let us for a moment consider thought. What is it, my friends, to take thought? Took you then thought today? What thoughts did you think today? What thoughts were part of the original thought today? In how many of your thoughts did the creation abide? Was love contained? And was service freely given? You are not part of a material universe. You are part of a thought. You are dancing in a ballroom in which there is no material. You are dancing thoughts. You move your body, your mind, and your spirit in somewhat eccentric patterns for you have not completely grasped the concept that you are part of the original thought.

Not only mediums and channelers can get on the same 'vibration level' as higher spiritual beings and commune with them to attain intuitive, inspirational, and imaginative insights about individual and collective destinies, but so can every human being with the modern intellectual constitution, which of course includes everyone on this forum. If we are really 'part of a Thought' that is the creative potential of the Cosmos, then the natural place to start seeking that potential is in the observation-experience of our own intimate thinking activity where the Thought manifests in a decohered form. Federica has already outlined some of these things for you and pointed you toward certain resources where we can begin that conscious experience of our intuitive thinking capacity.

In my personal experience, there is very little that is more inspiring than rediscovering esoteric concepts about spiritual reality as inner experiential certainties. That is what the spiritual path of intuitive thinking provides. Since you are now also well-versed in idealistic philosophy, I think you would have little trouble following along with Steiner's Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, which also addresses the frameworks of every other modern philosophy. Below are a few things that Steiner said about PoSA. 

“For in the case of a book like this, the important thing is so to organize the thoughts it contains that they take effect. With many other books it doesn’t make a great deal of difference if one shifts the sequence, putting this thing first and that later. But in the case of The Philosophy of Freedom that is impossible. It would be just as unthinkable to put page 150 fifty pages earlier as it would be to put a dog’s hind legs, where the front ones belong.”

“Catharsis is an ancient term for the purification of the astral body by means of meditation and concentration exercises. If a reader takes this book as it was meant and relates to it in the way a virtuoso playing a composition on the piano relates to its composer, reproducing the whole piece out of herself, the books organically evolved thought sequence will bring about a high degree of catharsis.”

“Within this book thinking is experienced in a way that makes it impossible for a person involved in it to have any other impression, when he is living in thought, he is living in the cosmos. This relatedness to cosmic mysteries is the red thread running through the book.”

I am happy to hear more about your experience working through the Law of One as well.