Anthroposophy as Fascio

[ScottRoberts]

Yes, you got it! We can indeed transcend there directly without going through the intermediate "I'm nothing" mystical phase which is, I agree, rather problematic. But providing if you can really practically do it.

Who said anything about transcendence, unless you call having the thoughts "What am I thinking" and "Why am I thinking it" transcendent.

But still, even though we developed that ability, how often do you see people exercising it? I don't see more people doing it in our times compared to the times when Buddhism flourished in the first millennium, it is still rare.

Self-reflection is all over the place, though granted in most cases it is not taken as a spiritual practice. I call it "going meta". But think back to that Steiner quote I gave earlier:

All civilized life and all spiritual effort really consists in the one work, which has for its object to make the ego the master. Everyone now living is engaged in this work whether he wishes it or not, and whether or not he is conscious of the fact.

And here is a koan: who is watching the thoughts?

I am. And who am I? I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness. Koan solved. Now the question to ask is why did Buddhists of yore regard this as a koan?

[Lou Gold]

We can watch our thoughts, not just have them. And if we do (watch them) deeply, note how they are conditioned by desires and dubious beliefs.

Yes, indeed! And this has happened for the shaman and mystic as well as for the artist and the scientist.

My point is that we no longer need shamanistic or mystical trappings (or be an artist or scientist) to get on with spiritual development. Which is not to say they have nothing interesting to say (I quoted a mystic yesterday).

Good, Scott, I think we agree. One possible minor quibble. My experience with modern shamans and eclectic shamanic ways is based on a personal regular non-abstract living practice of a syncretism of folk Catholicism, African diasporic religions, Indigenous rituals, and Spiritism, as well as whatever my multi-lives heritage and learnings from modern science bring to the situation in the here-and-now. Perhaps, this is why I'm so insistent on honoring a diversity of ways. In general, the shamanic view focuses more on finding whatever way works and less on searching for an ultimate Truth.

[Stranger]

I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness. Koan solved. Now the question to ask is why did Buddhists of yore regard this as a koan?

I was joking You are exactly right, you are the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in you stream of consciousness, and that is the mystical experience. It is called "mystical" and "transcendental" simply because this is not at all how people in the mundane state perceive themselves, but in fact there is nothing mystical about it, it is completely natural and very simple. And that is exactly what I was saying here all the time: we are the awareness (for which I was beaten repeatedly). It is also nondual because the awareness is impossible to separate from the continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in the stream of consciousness, there is no "gap" between the subject and object of awareness, it is all inseparable One even though it manifests as Many. That's it!

[Lou Gold]

Yes, you got it! We can indeed transcend there directly without going through the intermediate "I'm nothing" mystical phase which is, I agree, rather problematic. But providing if you can really practically do it.

Who said anything about transcendence, unless you call having the thoughts "What am I thinking" and "Why am I thinking it" transcendent.

But still, even though we developed that ability, how often do you see people exercising it? I don't see more people doing it in our times compared to the times when Buddhism flourished in the first millennium, it is still rare.

Self-reflection is all over the place, though granted in most cases it is not taken as a spiritual practice. I call it "going meta". But think back to that Steiner quote I gave earlier:

All civilized life and all spiritual effort really consists in the one work, which has for its object to make the ego the master. Everyone now living is engaged in this work whether he wishes it or not, and whether or not he is conscious of the fact.

And here is a koan: who is watching the thoughts?

I am. And who am I? I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness. Koan solved. Now the question to ask is why did Buddhists of yore regard this as a koan?

I'm not a Buddhist. I have not done a koan based practice. My understanding is that Buddhists use koans to assist folks in asking productive questions. I think Christians use mysteries in a somewhat similar way. Holding them deeply changes people and brings them inward toward their resolutions and new levels of challenge. Why is it ongoing instead of permanently 'final' is because a dynamic system evolves. Wanting it not to evolve causes a lot of mischief.

[Stranger]

We step from one Maya (of the senses) into another. ... If we go through an OBE or lucid dream and believe ourselves to be a pure spirit that exercises its unquestionable intentions, we simply remain blind about the way the higher spiritual being manifests. We have outgrown naive realism in respect to the sensory world but fall for the same trap in the states where we feel not to have any body and thus believe that whatever we perceive is finally reality 'as it is' (because we believe that the physical senses alone are the source of illusions). This image needs to be understood.

You are exactly right, it is Maya all the way through, and acquiring such understanding is an important lesson of lucid dreaming and OBE practice. It is easier to see the Maya in the lucid dream or OBE (because it is so fluid and subject to our manifestations), and then it should naturally become evident that the material realm is Maya in the same way. Also, in lucid dreams and OBE we learn how to manifest and then we start to understand the way the higher spiritual beings manifest, because it is the same manifestation mechanism inherent to all spiritual beings: we can all manifest our ideations into the forms and percepts by willful intentions. It is the same manifestation power by which the higher beings manifest to us our percepts of physical reality. In other words, in lucid dreams and OBE we can learn the skills of manifestation, and we can learn about the way the higher spiritual beings manifest. And we also learn the causal flow of spiritual activity: it is the ideas and intentions that cause percepts and forms into existence.

[AshvinP]

We step from one Maya (of the senses) into another. ... If we go through an OBE or lucid dream and believe ourselves to be a pure spirit that exercises its unquestionable intentions, we simply remain blind about the way the higher spiritual being manifests. We have outgrown naive realism in respect to the sensory world but fall for the same trap in the states where we feel not to have any body and thus believe that whatever we perceive is finally reality 'as it is' (because we believe that the physical senses alone are the source of illusions). This image needs to be understood.

You are exactly right, it is Maya all the way through, and acquiring such understanding is an important lesson of lucid dreaming and OBE practice. It is easier to see the Maya in the lucid dream or OBE (because it is so fluid and subject to our manifestations), and then it should naturally become evident that the material realm is Maya in the same way. Also, in lucid dreams and OBE we learn how to manifest and then we start to understand the way the higher spiritual beings manifest, because it is the same manifestation mechanism inherent to all spiritual beings: we can all manifest our ideations into the forms and percepts by willful intentions. It is the same manifestation power by which the higher beings manifest to us our percepts of physical reality. In other words, in lucid dreams and OBE we can learn the skills of manifestation, and we can learn about the way the higher spiritual beings manifest. And we also learn the causal flow of spiritual activity: it is the ideas and intentions that cause percepts and forms into existence.

I think Cleric's point was exactly that we do not understand the way our higher spiritual being manifests the sensory spectrum through the experience of lucid dreams and OBE which is still formatted by the normal cognition. Look at the highlighted part again.

In response to your previous post, I was going to share an additional excerpt from Steiner in that lecture, which hopefully makes the relationship more clear as well. I hope you can remain open to the possibility that, when we start to explore this living depth of our spiritual activity, the real discrepancies in understanding start to manifest more clearly and undeniably. When we remain talking about Oneness-Manyness in the abstract, it is very easy to get the impression that everyone is one the same page even if they aren't. I think that's exactly what's happening in your dialogue with Scott right now. He discerns a pretty stark disagreement but you, on the other hand, feel that you guys are basically saying the same thing. That is emblematic of our entire abstract discourse in modern society right now. Because of that silent agreement to remain in surface-level abstractions, very few people even get the opportunity to become conscious that there is a deeper level of discourse to be had which reveals completely unsuspected holes in our previous knowledge. These holes actually shake the very foundations of our previous way of thinking through the World Content.

The following should show, not why it is 'Maya all the way through', but rather why it is the very structure of spiritual reality that we experience in both the higher cognitive experience and the physical sensory experience, only from completely different angles which arose in the course of evolution for very definite purposes. The more we become conscious of this rhythmic alternation and its purposes, the more spiritual freedom to shape it that we attain. Becoming conscious of these precise relations at ever-higher stages is the act of growing into our Divinity.

A true spiritual science is not concerned to speak in general, abstract phrases and affirm the presence of a universal divine ordering in the world. It is not satisfied to describe the single objects of the world in their sense-aspect and then add: And now within this sense-appearance a general world-ordering holds sway. Spiritual science has to show in concrete detail how this divine ordering of the world works. If we would be adequate to the tasks of human evolution in the future, we cannot be content merely to say: I feel refreshed after a sound and healthy sleep; God has granted me refreshment. We should have to despair of science if we must insist upon a strict science for the world of the senses, and could not at the same time extend this strictness to what relates to the supersensible, but there had to remain content with phrases, such as the general statement that a divine ordering lies at the foundation of the world. No, on the contrary, we learn to be more and more definite... In this way we come to see more and more clearly how the spiritual lives in the physical. The means of knowledge that hold good today admit only a physical content of the world, supplemented by a way of speaking in general terms of how in, or above, this physical content lives something spiritual. Humanity will, however, sink lower and lower in civilization and culture if men will not learn to extend to the spiritual world the strict exactitude practised in the study of the external world.

When, with Inspired Consciousness, we follow up further the stages of sleep and pass from the first to the second stage, the inner experience of the soul becomes altogether different from what it is in the life of day.

Now it is quite possible to recognise by means of ordinary natural science — if we will only follow it out to the consequences — that our life of soul is intimately attached to the processes of breathing and of blood-circulation, and to the process of nutrition that permeates the circulation; we can feel that something is taking place when, for example, we exert ourselves strongly in movement. We feel how the soul-and-spirit within us is united with the activities of our body, and when we try to form a picture of the breathing process or of the circulatory process, we know that we are picturing something in which, during waking life, dwells the experience of the soul, in which it is, as it were, embedded. The experience of the soul during sleep is not attached in any way to the senses, nevertheless it too is a well-defined inner life that can also be referred to something, in the same way that the inner life of day can be referred to the life of breathing and the life of circulation. Inspired Knowledge leads us to see how this inner life of night-time is connected with an unfolding of inner forces, comparable with the unfolding of the forces of breathing and of circulation, and is in fact a copy of the planetary movements of our system. Note well, I do not say that every night from going to sleep until waking we are ourselves within, or united with, the movements of the planets, but that we are inserted into something which is a copy, so to speak in miniature, of our planetary cosmos or rather of its movements. As our life of soul by day has its dwelling-place in the circulation of the blood, so our life of soul by night is inserted into something which is a copy of the planetary movements of our solar system. If we must say for the day-time: the white corpuscles, the red corpuscles circulate in us, the breathing power revolves in us, enabling us to breathe in and breathe out — then we must say for the night-time: there revolves in us a copy of the movement of Mercury, of the movement of Venus, of the movement of Jupiter. Our life of soul from going to sleep to waking is, so to say, in a little planetary cosmos. From being personal and human our life becomes cosmic during sleep. And Inspired Knowledge can then discover how when we are tired in the evening, the forces which have held our blood in pulsation during the day are able to keep vitality going during the night through their own faculty of persistence, but that in order to be turned again into the day life of soul, these forces require the fresh impulse that comes from the experience of a copy of the planetary cosmos during the night. In the moment of waking the after-effects are implanted into us of the experience we have received from the copies of the planetary movements.

This it is which unites the cosmos with our individual life. When we wake in the morning, the forces we need would not be able to stream into us in the right way so that consciousness is properly present, if we had not this after-working of the experiences of the night.

[ScottRoberts]

I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness. Koan solved. Now the question to ask is why did Buddhists of yore regard this as a koan?

I was joking You are exactly right, you are the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in you stream of consciousness, and that is the mystical experience. It is called "mystical" and "transcendental" simply because this is not at all how people in the mundane state perceive themselves, but in fact there is nothing mystical about it, it is completely natural and very simple. And that is exactly what I was saying here all the time: we are the awareness (for which I was beaten repeatedly). It is also nondual because the awareness is impossible to separate from the continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in the stream of consciousness, there is no "gap" between the subject and object of awareness, it is all inseparable One even though it manifests as Many. That's it!

You were "beaten" (by me at least) for making a big deal about "Awareness" and "Being" (capitalizing them, for one thing), and for insisting on the need to "experience Oneness" (with the implication this is a mystical experience) to get over dualism.

[Stranger]

We step from one Maya (of the senses) into another. ... If we go through an OBE or lucid dream and believe ourselves to be a pure spirit that exercises its unquestionable intentions, we simply remain blind about the way the higher spiritual being manifests. We have outgrown naive realism in respect to the sensory world but fall for the same trap in the states where we feel not to have any body and thus believe that whatever we perceive is finally reality 'as it is' (because we believe that the physical senses alone are the source of illusions). This image needs to be understood.

I think Cleric's point was exactly that we do not understand the way our higher spiritual being manifests the sensory spectrum through the experience of lucid dreams and OBE which is still formatted by the normal cognition. Look at the highlighted part again.

It all depends on how we approach what we experience in LD/OBE. If we do it akin to drug trips for fun and continue to believe "that whatever we perceive is finally reality 'as it is' ", then yes, Cleric was exactly right, we will remain blind about the way the higher spiritual being manifests. If we do LD/OBE seriously as a spiritual practice and carefully, in a scientific way, study how our ideations and intentions can be manifested into lucid forms, then we can understand that whatever we perceive is not the final reality, but a collective manifestation of ideational willful activity of spiritual beings, including us ourselves and other beings on higher levels of cognition.

On a side note, it is interesting how you guys have a strange habit to think negatively. Whatever we discuss, you usually point to ways how it would be misunderstood or done in wrong ways, and usually assume that other people misuse and misunderstand it by default. I prefer positive thinking (not that I always succeed in that) and try to find out how what we do in spiritual practices, both old and new, can be used in constructive ways to learn, gain more knowledge and evolve. If we have the motivation for spiritual development, the awe about the mysteries of reality and "I want to know" mindset, then everything we do and experience will be a learning experience for us. Of course we should also be careful to do it in the safe and right way and be aware of pitfalls, but not to the extent of becoming negative.

[Stranger]

You were "beaten" (by me at least) for making a big deal about "Awareness" and "Being" (capitalizing them, for one thing), and for insisting on the need to "experience Oneness" (with the implication this is a mystical experience) to get over dualism.

The experiential knowing that "I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness." is a big deal. The only difference that I can see between what I was saying "I am the Awareness" and yours "I am the awareness" is the capital "A" Some time ago on this forum we agreed to capitalize the words if they apply to universal realities. Isn't awareness universal in a sense that every sentient being is "the awareness of the stream of consciousness" (in the same way that we use the capitalized word "Thinking" because it is universal)? And this is also automatically the "experience of Oneness", isn't it? (because awareness is always inseparable from the stream of consciousness and this fact is also universal). Regarding "Beingness", Heidegger had a good text on it called "Time and Being" (capitalized too) where he shows why such realization is also important in many ways, highly recommended.

It is a big deal because if we do not know it and if we instead believe that we are separate human beings-selves, then we perceive ourselves and reality in such a distorted way that any kind of knowledge, science or activity will also be inevitably distorted (and this state is called "duality"). And the practical consequence of this distortion for humanity is the mess that we have created on Earth. If everyone would know themselves as "I am the awareness of continuity, (relative) permanence, and repetition in my stream of consciousness", and not "I am a separated human being that needs to survive, gain possessions, fear losses and death", how it would be possible for people to fight in wars, to be involved in corporate greediness, government corruption, personal fights, crimes etc?

[AshvinP]

We step from one Maya (of the senses) into another. ... If we go through an OBE or lucid dream and believe ourselves to be a pure spirit that exercises its unquestionable intentions, we simply remain blind about the way the higher spiritual being manifests. We have outgrown naive realism in respect to the sensory world but fall for the same trap in the states where we feel not to have any body and thus believe that whatever we perceive is finally reality 'as it is' (because we believe that the physical senses alone are the source of illusions). This image needs to be understood.

I think Cleric's point was exactly that we do not understand the way our higher spiritual being manifests the sensory spectrum through the experience of lucid dreams and OBE which is still formatted by the normal cognition. Look at the highlighted part again.

It all depends on how we approach what we experience in LD/OBE. If we do it akin to drug trips for fun and continue to believe "that whatever we perceive is finally reality 'as it is' ", then yes, Cleric was exactly right, we will remain blind about the way the higher spiritual being manifests. If we do LD/OBE seriously as a spiritual practice and carefully, in a scientific way, study how our ideations and intentions can be manifested into lucid forms, then we can understand that whatever we perceive is not the final reality, but a collective manifestation of ideational willful activity of spiritual beings, including us ourselves and other beings on higher levels of cognition.

On a side note, it is interesting how you guys have a strange habit to think negatively. Whatever we discuss, you usually point to ways how it would be misunderstood or done in wrong ways, and usually assume that other people misuse and misunderstand it by default. I prefer positive thinking (not that I always succeed in that) and try to find out how what we do in spiritual practices, both old and new, can be used in constructive ways to learn, gain more knowledge and evolve. If we have the motivation for spiritual development, the awe about the mysteries of reality and "I want to know" mindset, then everything we do and experience will be a learning experience for us. Of course we should also be careful to do it in the safe and right way and be aware of pitfalls, but not to the extent of becoming negative.

I'm going to see what Cleric responds to your latest post, but I will comment on the 2nd part briefly. What we have a habit of doing is being honest, instead of trying to whitewash over critical discrepancies. If we do the latter, the discussion stops and no one gains anything of value. You call it being positive, but practically it means no one learns anything. Like I just explained, the silent agreement to remain in cordial abstractions may make us feel positive about our current knowledge, but it doesn't help us grow and evolve.

We don't artificially withhold credit or praise to you, Eugene. We get nothing out of maintaining an argument with you for no legitimate reason. There is plenty else to discuss once certain foundational matters have been settled, as the other threads show. But your comments keep revealing to us that you are thinking through the relation of the spiritual and physical in a very superficial way. The last one above included. Every time we prompt you to elaborate on your understanding, that is only further confirmed. It is the default way of thinking in most analytic idealist circles, but of course you feel that has been overcome. So when we offer constructive feedback on this flawed understanding, you call it being negative. We can only make these things a learning experience if we are willing to admit our mistakes, our missteps, our errors, our default thinking habits, and learn from them. If we assume that we already have the most optimal understanding of the relations involved, at all times, then we aren't learning but only maintaining our comfort. We are in the best position to learn when we are positively excited and enthused to be corrected by thorough reasoning. Cleric didn't just say "you're doing lucid dreaming wrong", but gave detailed reasoning why its implications are being misunderstood.