Thinking about death

[Ben Iscatus]

"Indeed, the various aspects of our soul-life that we call "me" are living elementals, playing off of each other in the most varied ways. What else could they be, dead abstractions? Carl Jung was another great phenomenologist who verified this."

Ashvin, I send out hundreds of thoughts a day. I haven't seen them have an effect on reality unless I wilfully embody them. If elementals have no efficacy, then what you say is an interesting speculation (or extrapolation), but it is not "verified". However, as you must realise, my main point is not about elementals per se. It is about the whole conceptual apparatus you espouse without experiential evidence. I respect your right to philosophise in this way. You must respect the right of others to do so too, in their own way.

[lorenzop]

I have no entry point for terms like "living elementals", "soul life", "weave our inner activity into the World state" . . . these expressions don't convey any notion I can latch onto . . . and they're not even googleable. To me they read like words randomly slammed together.

[AshvinP]

"Indeed, the various aspects of our soul-life that we call "me" are living elementals, playing off of each other in the most varied ways. What else could they be, dead abstractions? Carl Jung was another great phenomenologist who verified this."

Ashvin, I send out hundreds of thoughts a day. I haven't seen them have an effect on reality unless I wilfully embody them. If elementals have no efficacy, then what you say is an interesting speculation (or extrapolation), but it is not "verified". However, as you must realise, my main point is not about elementals per se. It is about the whole conceptual apparatus you espouse without experiential evidence. I respect your right to philosophise in this way. You must respect the right of others to do so too, in their own way.

Ben, of course, everyone has the right to philosophize abstractly. It is not like we censor people who do so. In fact, we are the main source of continued discussion on abstract philosophy, because we genuinely try to inhabit the perspective from which it is being done and therefore understand the meaning of what other people are conveying. I think we both know the few sentence post and responses that are typical of that philosophical approach would quickly fizzle out otherwise.

That can hardly be said the other way around though - the abstract philosophizers hardly try to inhabit the phenomenological perspective and understand the meaning of its concepts. After years, there is little progress on that front. We are only pointing to a new way for those who are tired of endless recursions of abstract debates about the homogenous 'ground of existence', which never move to more practical questions of how to unite with the highly structured ground of existence. It is a humble process of uniting without presupposing we can continuously encompass and opinionate on the mysterious forces we are uniting with. We resist the urge to project our experiential limits at any given time as fundamental limits to the knowledge of others. We realize that others can be our teachers no matter how much we dislike their expressions at first.

Once we sacrifice the desire to continually encompass the higher living forces in our abstract opinions, we actually begin to notice them at work everywhere. We indeed begin to intuitively trace how our hundreds of daily thoughts are weaving themselves into the objective World state. We notice concretely how our life circumstances are reflections of our intuitive activity at various scales, not just random 'bad luck' or the impositions of other external malefactors. Just because these inner threads are not verified by the abstract philosophers, who usually start from the assumption they can't be verified, doesn't mean they are unverifiable. This is the most obvious thing when we think about it. I will never find that which I positively avoid looking for with devoted interest and intent. And it's equally easy to see how much responsibility we avoid by keeping our thoughts as private entities that practically have no effect on others. Only when our spirit dares to bump into this subconscious desire and flow through it can we awaken to the reality of the inner threads that weave us into an organic whole with our planetary environment.

[Ben Iscatus]

Ashvin, in fairness, you asked whether I had any thoughts directly relating to this thread. My thoughts on death are that it is nothing to fear. However, I think that dying slowly and painfully is fearful and would be a disgrace if the Thinker-of-Reality were metacognitive and moral.

[tjssailor]

What is data, for you as idealist?

The data of "human" experience.

Are you saying that the way "consciousness uses life forms", for example, is part of your own human experience?

Obviously. I am a point of view of consciousness associated with a specific body. To deal with extreme fear of death I had to understand death through the experiences of consciousness appearing as other human life forms. The understanding I came to was that death is an experience of light, love and peace. A return to ones true nature.

What do you understand death to be for you and your loved ones?

[Federica]

The data of "human" experience.

Are you saying that the way "consciousness uses life forms", for example, is part of your own human experience?

Obviously. I am a point of view of consciousness associated with a specific body. To deal with extreme fear of death I had to understand death through the experiences of consciousness appearing as other human life forms. The understanding I came to was that death is an experience of light, love and peace. A return to ones true nature.

What do you understand death to be for you and your loved ones?

tjssailor, when you say: "I am a point of view of consciousness associated with a specific body", what makes you call this statement an experience of yours? When did it happen? How would you describe the experience?

Now if you say that it's an understanding, that you have decided to accept and believe in, because it suits your preferences and brings you some benefits, then it would be clearer to me.

I understand death as the moment when the individual closes the books of a material life, and initiates a new cycle of ideal existence, hopefully capitalizing on the experiences gained through the physical sheath. It's the death of one's physical expression, but also the birth, or reemergence, of the self to a less dispersed existence, within the community of being one belongs to.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, in fairness, you asked whether I had any thoughts directly relating to this thread. My thoughts on death are that it is nothing to fear. However, I think that dying slowly and painfully is fearful and would be a disgrace if the Thinker-of-Reality were metacognitive and moral.

Let's say you suddenly awakened to how your own past activity, in this life or previous ones, in connection with other human activity, has shaped the planetary environment such that everything from natural disasters, illnesses, and cultural atrocities became possible within the otherwise harmonious rhythms of Nature/Culture, leading to the realities of dying slowly and painfully. I'm not asking you whether this is true or whether you can have direct knowledge of such a scenario. But if this is even conceivable as a possibility, would it at all influence your thinking about the 'Thinker-of-Reality' and its nature? Could such a possibility nudge your philosophical focus at all in a different direction, perhaps towards learning what it is within you, and within the collective human organism, that leads to such disharmonious imbalances within the Cosmos?

[Ben Iscatus]

Ashvin said: "But if this is even conceivable as a possibility, would it at all influence your thinking about the 'Thinker-of-Reality' and its nature? Could such a possibility nudge your philosophical focus at all in a different direction, perhaps towards learning what it is within you, and within the collective human organism, that leads to such disharmonious imbalances within the Cosmos?"

The problem here is that there are too many “what-ifs” to make any assessment useful. What if there is reincarnation? What if I was a bad boy in previous lives? What if karma is real rather than human guilt and judgement projected on to the universe?

I would tend to resolve such unknowable imponderables by putting the question back to the Thinker-of Reality: why, if there are such laws of existence, were we born unaware of them? Why, if we had some sort of contract with some sort of higher self to suffer in a certain way, were we born not knowing we had signed the contract? Actually, it is interesting to ask your opinion of this as a lawyer. Can a contract be regarded as valid if the individual who signed the contract is obliged to forget that he made it (not merely that he forgot it – but that he was obliged –forced- to forget it?) Also, how can we know that when signing the contract we could not know or appreciate the depths of suffering that we were to face; after all, if we did, we would not need to actually experience it – and if we sign such a contract in a cosy (drunken?) atmosphere of love and bliss quite unable to understand what is to come, then would that not be a nasty kind of deception? Without answers to such questions, I think one must indeed remain sceptical.

[lorenzop]

Let's say you suddenly awakened to how your own past activity, in this life or previous ones, in connection with other human activity, has shaped the planetary environment such that everything from natural disasters, illnesses, and cultural atrocities became possible within the otherwise harmonious rhythms of Nature/Culture, leading to the realities of dying slowly and painfully. I'm not asking you whether this is true or whether you can have direct knowledge of such a scenario. But if this is even conceivable as a possibility, would it at all influence your thinking about the 'Thinker-of-Reality' and its nature? Could such a possibility nudge your philosophical focus at all in a different direction, perhaps towards learning what it is within you, and within the collective human organism, that leads to such disharmonious imbalances within the Cosmos?

Even if one could accumulate the above knowledge, perhaps even know of all the thoughts and feeling of every human who has ever lived, or will ever live; this knowledge is not worth a hill of beans towards answering the question you asked . . . nor does having this knowledge move towards the recognition of one's true nature.
You would know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, that could be cool.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin said: "But if this is even conceivable as a possibility, would it at all influence your thinking about the 'Thinker-of-Reality' and its nature? Could such a possibility nudge your philosophical focus at all in a different direction, perhaps towards learning what it is within you, and within the collective human organism, that leads to such disharmonious imbalances within the Cosmos?"

The problem here is that there are too many “what-ifs” to make any assessment useful. What if there is reincarnation? What if I was a bad boy in previous lives? What if karma is real rather than human guilt and judgement projected on to the universe?

I would tend to resolve such unknowable imponderables by putting the question back to the Thinker-of Reality: why, if there are such laws of existence, were we born unaware of them? Why, if we had some sort of contract with some sort of higher self to suffer in a certain way, were we born not knowing we had signed the contract? Actually, it is interesting to ask your opinion of this as a lawyer. Can a contract be regarded as valid if the individual who signed the contract is obliged to forget that he made it (not merely that he forgot it – but that he was obliged –forced- to forget it?) Also, how can we know that when signing the contract we could not know or appreciate the depths of suffering that we were to face; after all, if we did, we would not need to actually experience it – and if we sign such a contract in a cosy (drunken?) atmosphere of love and bliss quite unable to understand what is to come, then would that not be a nasty kind of deception? Without answers to such questions, I think one must indeed remain sceptical.

Thanks for these questions, Ben. Actually, it is a very common occurrence in my field. Sometimes I ask whether people personally guaranteed a business loan, for ex., and they say "yeah, I vaguely remember signing something but I didn't even read the document, it was full of technical jargon... so doesn't that mean it's not effective?" Of course, the answer is no, the guarantee is still effective. My willful ignorance of the terms I have agreed to is not a defense to my liability. Now my client can respond, "I was obliged not to read the terms... the language was so complex that I was practically forced into signing it without reading it".

And many people today really feel this is justified - "I signed the document because I had to, I needed the money and it benefitted me at the time, but now my business is failing, I am in over my head with repayments, and it's simply unfair that my creditors want to hold me to the contract." It is easy to see why this is a problematic disposition to go through life with - we reap the benefits of our bargain when things are going well, but when things start to turn sour, we want to disclaim our entire involvement in the bargain. If suddenly business picks up and we need a new line of credit for fresh inventory, we want to put the bargain back in place. This is a decent image of how we normally cognitively oscillate with our reaction to events that bring pleasure or pain during the course of our lives. In the former case, life is gratefully experienced with transpersonal hope, meaning, and purpose, but in the latter case, it is experienced with skepticism, cynicism, and resentment.

This analogy can't go too far, because it's all still based on our myopic and rigid sensory intuition of 'who we are' and 'what we bargained for'. We are tempted to imagine our pre-incarnate life in the higher worlds was basically the same as it is now, except in a more blissful and loving atmosphere. We are tempted to ignore the Cosmic tasks that we were involved in completing, not only for our own personal development toward higher perfection, but the perfection of the entire Earth as a living organism. The possibility that everything we perceive around us as the natural kingdoms and stellar spheres become our inner world between incarnations is ignored or written off as absurd. The fact that we can only evaluate the bargain in the holistic context of our Cosmic evolution is conveniently forgotten.

So we have to honestly ask ourselves if we are even in a position to judge the bargains we have struck before we have gained much deeper insight into the conditions that were present when we struck them, which were quite orthogonal to everything we currently experience in our fragmented, atomic sensory states. It all comes back to the question of whether such things can be experientially known, so they don't forever remain a black box of 'what-ifs' into which we can project our unexamined personal preferences and desires. This is why the phenomenology of intuitive activity, which leads to the intimate cognitive experience of our soul-structure, is at the root of all these existential questions and our ability to meaningfully approach them. Even the initial steps on this path make clear there is no metaphysical boundary to higher knowledge and the only thing preventing the latter is our desire to encompass it immediately and with little effort, or our conviction that, because we haven't already done so, it must be impossible.