This forum

[Cleric]

Cleric - Your lumber metaphor and use is the exact definition of 'cultish' - odd that you can't see it. You're suggesting that you (and Ashwin) see and speak of wood in the only correct and reasonable manner.
A more useful metaphor would be that you and Ashwin see wood as a Sentient Being, and the Saw is the Soul as living thinking cutting through World Content . . . and anyone who does not see it this way is wasting everyone's time.

I see how you see it in that way. But this is only another example of the Toruk Makto fallacy. In your mind there are two things: the state of the inexplicable potential of (non-)experience, and the infinite variety of mere thought-fragments (and all other conscious contents) - the manifested potential. You see what I say as cultish because it sounds like someone trying to advertise their thought-fragments as the true ones (instead of recognizing the real background of being).

Just tell me: do you conceive as a possibility, that the null-state that you cherish could be only a threshold of transition? An evolutionary milestone? Like the pupa transforming into a butterfly temporarily loses its concrete form. Do you consider it possible that the null-state may be such a liquified state of being that is mistaken for the absolute ground of existence, instead of being recognized as a threshold before awakening within a higher, more expanded inner perspective of being inside MAL? If you are absolutely certain that there's no such thing and that in your meditations you reach the absolute edge of all existence, then it is obvious why not only what we say, but what anyone could say about such things would be seen as a cult of a handful of thought fragments.

[Cleric]

Unfortunately it's too late, I don't believe anyone would return.

But the point it - this forum was created as an open platform for philosophical speculations. Anyone who is/was interested in specific practical ways to explore the reality deeper than just philosophical speculation (and there is a large variety of such ways including different religions and spiritual practices) should have gone to the places where the practitioners of such specific ways socialize (be it online or in real life). Every religion and spiritual practice have their own platforms on the internet, including Anthroposophy. But you guys have committed a theft in the virtual space - you hijacked the existing forum, changed its subject and content and pushed away anyone who would not subscribe to it by cultivating heavy criticism and intolerance to alternative views, including personal attacks (see Ashvin's above posts as an example). You had high hopes that among hundreds of members you would find many who would subscribe to your paradigm, but apparently that did not happen. Ironically, this happened not because of any flaws of Steiners philosophy and spiritual teachings, but mostly because of the said forceful behavior and tactics of the group of his followers on this forum. Philosophers are usually intelligent and open-minded people who are not so easy to manipulate and convert into cult followers.

I have a lot of respect to Steiner and his teachings, even though I do not fully subscribe to them. But my feeling is that if he would know what some people do in his name, he would be deeply concerned and ashamed.

OK, Eugene. I see your point and I apologize that we have driven the forum in a direction that deviates from pure speculation. But picture that this purity was maintained. Where do you think that would have ever led to? After a decade, a century of pure speculation, what would have become of man? Do you believe that Truth could have been born inside such a container of speculation, abstracted from all reality? Or you are fully aware that this is impossible and you just miss a 'family safe' place where you can exercise abstract speculation knowing that it is not threatened by any contact with reality?

[Stranger]

OK, Eugene. I see your point and I apologize that we have driven the forum in a direction that deviates from pure speculation. But picture that this purity was maintained. Where do you think that would have ever led to? After a decade, a century of pure speculation, what would have become of man? Do you believe that Truth could have been born inside such a container of speculation, abstracted from all reality? Or you are fully aware that this is impossible and you just miss a 'family safe' place where you can exercise abstract speculation knowing that it is not threatened by any contact with reality?

Fair enough, it's good that you admit that.

Science, arts, speculative philosophy and other things in life all have their place and role. You cannot take materialists and draw them straight into spiritual science or any other spiritual practice or teaching. They need to go by steps, starting right from the point where they currently stay - from their speculative worldview, and walk them step-by-step out of their speculative materialism. Their speculative materialistic views need to be first dispelled by the same tool - by philosophical speculative rational discourse. Only then, once they drop it, they can become open to explore further practical paths to go deeper. This (addressing materialism on the speculative level) is what Bernardo is doing and this is what this forum was supposed to help with. I believe, with all limitations of his approach and his philosophy, Bernardo is doing a fantastic job of bringing millions of people out of the delusion of materialism.

At the same time there would be nothing wrong to suggest to people any further steps of deeper exploration of reality, including Anthroposophy, if done appropriately. You could create your own Anthroposophy platform and participate in this forum only to suggest your paradigm to people and provide the links to your platform (this is what many people did here including Scott Roberts, Steve Petermann etc). Or you could even request to create a separate section on this forum dedicated to Anthroposophy and focus your activity there. Either way the forum would continue to be very active and you would have a better auditory to expose your paradigm to. But instead, by hijacking the whole forum and driving people away, you basically shot yourself into the foot: people are gone now and you have virtually no auditory to present Anthroposophy to. And I suspect that many of those who left now have a rather bitter and negative impression about Anthroposophy because of the way it was so forcefully imposed on this platform.

[lorenzop]

I see how you see it in that way. But this is only another example of the Toruk Makto fallacy. In your mind there are two things: the state of the inexplicable potential of (non-)experience, and the infinite variety of mere thought-fragments (and all other conscious contents) - the manifested potential. You see what I say as cultish because it sounds like someone trying to advertise their thought-fragments as the true ones (instead of recognizing the real background of being).

Just tell me: do you conceive as a possibility, that the null-state that you cherish could be only a threshold of transition? An evolutionary milestone? Like the pupa transforming into a butterfly temporarily loses its concrete form. Do you consider it possible that the null-state may be such a liquified state of being that is mistaken for the absolute ground of existence, instead of being recognized as a threshold before awakening within a higher, more expanded inner perspective of being inside MAL? If you are absolutely certain that there's no such thing and that in your meditations you reach the absolute edge of all existence, then it is obvious why not only what we say, but what anyone could say about such things would be seen as a cult of a handful of thought fragments.

I had to google 'Toruk Makto fallacy', and I know I've seen the movie Avatar . . . I'm not familiar with the movie to comment on how I may be suffering from the fallacy( and you and Ashwin ) are somehow not.
I hope I didn't give the impression that I think 'special abilities', ie high cognition and intuition, levitation, astral travel, etc. are not possible or don't have value . . . this was not my intent. My objections were in placing special abilities at high priority, or necessary for spiritual growth.
The literature of religious traditions are chock full of these special abilities - and the literature also warn of their capacity to entrap and ensnare the seeker who is not well established in Being. IOW, placing special abilities in such an exalted position is putting the cart before the horse.
I have accused Steiner of using shiny objects to attract followers.
However, we are not that far apart (as I've suggested before). We could pick 1,000 people at random and 999 would think everyone who participates in this form is equally crazy.

[AshvinP]

OK, Eugene. I see your point and I apologize that we have driven the forum in a direction that deviates from pure speculation. But picture that this purity was maintained. Where do you think that would have ever led to? After a decade, a century of pure speculation, what would have become of man? Do you believe that Truth could have been born inside such a container of speculation, abstracted from all reality? Or you are fully aware that this is impossible and you just miss a 'family safe' place where you can exercise abstract speculation knowing that it is not threatened by any contact with reality?

Fair enough, it's good that you admit that.

Science, arts, speculative philosophy and other things in life all have their place and role. You cannot take materialists and draw them straight into spiritual science or any other spiritual practice or teaching. They need to go by steps, starting right from the point where they currently stay - from their speculative worldview, and walk them step-by-step out of their speculative materialism. Their speculative materialistic views need to be first dispelled by the same tool - by philosophical speculative rational discourse. Only then, once they drop it, they can become open to explore further practical paths to go deeper. This (addressing materialism on the speculative level) is what Bernardo is doing and this is what this forum was supposed to help with. I believe, with all limitations of his approach and his philosophy, Bernardo is doing a fantastic job of bringing millions of people out of the delusion of materialism.

At the same time there would be nothing wrong to suggest to people any further steps of deeper exploration of reality, including Anthroposophy, if done appropriately. You could create your own Anthroposophy platform and participate in this forum only to suggest your paradigm to people and provide the links to your platform (this is what many people did here including Scott Roberts, Steve Petermann etc). Or you could even request to create a separate section on this forum dedicated to Anthroposophy and focus your activity there. Either way the forum would continue to be very active and you would have a better auditory to expose your paradigm to. But instead, by hijacking the whole forum and driving people away, you basically shot yourself into the foot: people are gone now and you have virtually no auditory to present Anthroposophy to. And I suspect that many of those who left now have a rather bitter and negative impression about Anthroposophy because of the way it was so forcefully imposed on this platform.

Sorry, I forgot to mention before, but your comment has reminded me, there are analytic idealism forums on Discord and Reddit (just as there are Anthroposophy forums in which I participate and where plenty of fruitful discussion happens). It's pretty odd, yet also funny to me, that you are basing all of these accusations on simple ignorance of other forums and your own lack of participation in broader spheres of discourse for the last few years. It's like you started believing that whatever website you happen to be on for exploring a certain topic must be the only website there is for that topic, whether analytic idealism or spiritual science. But I guess that is exactly what you started believing about spiritual reality as well, i.e. the Toruk Makto fallacy, so it makes sense.

Anyway, I invite you and Lorenzo to join those forums and try your experiment of intellectually persuading people out of the materialistic way of life into the spiritual depths via 'speculative rational discourse'. Let us know how it goes! Don't worry about us here, we will continue doing what we do just fine without your valuable input

[Stranger]

Sorry, I forgot to mention before, but your comment has reminded me, there are analytic idealism forums on Discord and Reddit (just as there are Anthroposophy forums in which I participate and where plenty of fruitful discussion happens). It's pretty odd, yet also funny to me, that you are basing all of these accusations on simple ignorance of other forums and your own lack of participation in broader spheres of discourse for the last few years. It's like you started believing that whatever website you happen to be on for exploring a certain topic must be the only website there is for that topic, whether analytic idealism or spiritual science. But I guess that is exactly what you started believing about spiritual reality as well, i.e. the Toruk Makto fallacy, so it makes sense.

Anyway, I invite you and Lorenzo to join those forums and try your experiment of intellectually persuading people out of the materialistic way of life into the spiritual depths via 'speculative rational discourse'. Let us know how it goes! Don't worry about us here, we will continue doing what we do just fine without your valuable input

To remind you the history, this forum was originally created by Bernardo first on Google and then it was moved to this PHP platform to make it easier to navigate. Bernardo considered it to be a platform for discussions related to his work on analytical idealism, and that is why he had a link to this forum on his personal website. So, this forum was not just a random place for analytical philosophy discussions like on Reddit, but it was created by Bernardo initiative with a specific purpose, which was to help people converting from materialism to idealism to better digest Bernardo's message and understand his arguments. However, Bernardo himself, being extremely busy, after the movement from Goole, basically left this forum to run on its own and rarely ever visited it, trusting a few of his followers to maintain it according to his original intention. After the hijacking by you guys happened, I let him know that the forum is no longer a platform for the discussions directly related to his work and to analytical idealism in general, and as a result of this, he removed the link from his website, which I believe, was very appropriate thing to do for him.

[Martin_]

Cleric, I enjoyed our talks.

Ashvin; judge and jury.

That's all I have to say.
And I'm quite sure I won't get the last word in.

[AshvinP]

Sorry, I forgot to mention before, but your comment has reminded me, there are analytic idealism forums on Discord and Reddit (just as there are Anthroposophy forums in which I participate and where plenty of fruitful discussion happens). It's pretty odd, yet also funny to me, that you are basing all of these accusations on simple ignorance of other forums and your own lack of participation in broader spheres of discourse for the last few years. It's like you started believing that whatever website you happen to be on for exploring a certain topic must be the only website there is for that topic, whether analytic idealism or spiritual science. But I guess that is exactly what you started believing about spiritual reality as well, i.e. the Toruk Makto fallacy, so it makes sense.

Anyway, I invite you and Lorenzo to join those forums and try your experiment of intellectually persuading people out of the materialistic way of life into the spiritual depths via 'speculative rational discourse'. Let us know how it goes! Don't worry about us here, we will continue doing what we do just fine without your valuable input

To remind you the history, this forum was originally created by Bernardo first on Google and then it was moved to this PHP platform to make it easier to navigate. Bernardo considered it to be a platform for discussions related to his work on analytical idealism, and that is why he had a link to this forum on his personal website. So, this forum was not just a random place for analytical philosophy discussions like on Reddit, but it was created by Bernardo initiative with a specific purpose, which was to help people converting from materialism to idealism to better digest Bernardo's message and understand his arguments. However, Bernardo himself, being extremely busy, after the movement from Goole, basically left this forum to run on its own and rarely ever visited it, trusting a few of his followers to maintain it according to his original intention. After the hijacking by you guys happened, I let him know that the forum is no longer a platform for the discussions directly related to his work and to analytical idealism in general, and as a result of this, he removed the link from his website, which I believe, was very appropriate thing to do for him.

Remaining stuck in the past and being resentful gets us nowhere. This your nondual practice should have taught you as well. As long as you guys keep returning to this forum, not to considerately read and engage our posts, but to complain and accuse and reminisce on your grievances, you are stuck in the past.

I am grateful for your presence on this forum for so many years. It sparked endlesss inspiring posts from Cleric, without which, my own intuitive orientation to spiritual reality would be sorely lacking. However, I get the sense that such a benefit may not continue anymore. Even though Cleric has endless patience, the key issue is the Toruk Makto fallacy with regards to the 'nondual state', and I am not sure either you or Lorenzo can remain open to any realities beyond that sacred cow, which leads to more Unity than even you have experienced. Cleric is actually pointing more to what you can do to move from closed loops of thought than what is needed for the metaphysical materialists. The same principles apply to the metaphysical materialist and mysticist.

I am inviting you to consider that more deeply and also move into the future, preferably somewhere else. There are plenty of forums where the original intention of BK, as you have stated it, is still alive. There are materialists on the Reddit and Discord servers, since a few are always attracted to idealist forums. You can work on debating, persuading, etc. them, instead of simply showing up to distract and demean us. Now you have Martin who may follow you as well, I'm not sure. Use your imagination and try something new!

[Stranger]

I am grateful for your presence on this forum for so many years. It sparked endlesss inspiring posts from Cleric, without which, my own intuitive orientation to spiritual reality would be sorely lacking. However, I get the sense that such a benefit may not continue anymore. Even though Cleric has endless patience, the key issue is the Toruk Makto fallacy with regards to the 'nondual state', and I am not sure either you or Lorenzo can remain open to any realities beyond that sacred cow, which leads to more Unity than even you have experienced. Cleric is actually pointing more to what you can do to move from closed loops of thought than what is needed for the metaphysical materialists. The same principles apply to the metaphysical materialist and mysticist.

You may be surprised, but the main reason I keep returning is to actually read Cleric's posts (which is what I'm doing right now in this thread). But the reason I do not comment is because I know I will be beaten to death for wrong understanding of them

[AshvinP]

I am grateful for your presence on this forum for so many years. It sparked endlesss inspiring posts from Cleric, without which, my own intuitive orientation to spiritual reality would be sorely lacking. However, I get the sense that such a benefit may not continue anymore. Even though Cleric has endless patience, the key issue is the Toruk Makto fallacy with regards to the 'nondual state', and I am not sure either you or Lorenzo can remain open to any realities beyond that sacred cow, which leads to more Unity than even you have experienced. Cleric is actually pointing more to what you can do to move from closed loops of thought than what is needed for the metaphysical materialists. The same principles apply to the metaphysical materialist and mysticist.

You may be surprised, but the main reason I keep returning is to actually read Cleric's posts (which is what I'm doing right now in this thread). But the reason I do not comment is because I know I will be beaten to death for wrong understanding of them

Yes, and this is key issue, the Toruk Makto fallacy. You immediately take any suggestion of incorrect understanding as being 'beaten to death'. Cleric would not continually write the posts if they were understood correctly. Neither would I suggest you had an incorrect understanding if this had not become evident from years of postings and discussions. So why do you feel this is a beatdown to death? It could only be because you assume it is impossible that you are misunderstanding the higher cognitive path, because you already encompass the ground-level reality from which it emerges and the only thing you may be missing are the details that are mostly worked out with intellectual thinking or some visionary capacities.

As Cleric has said a few times already on this thread, it is inevitable that this will be felt like a tyranny, a cult, a beatdown, because there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is being spoken of. It is felt like we are trying to force our philosophical or visionary understanding of higher worlds onto everyone else, and arbitrarily telling people they have misunderstood, because it is simply assumed that's all spiritual science could be, just another spiritual framework among many others. Why would he keep emphasizing this point in every post if there wasn't some truth to it?

PS - since when did you not comment on the posts?? Whenever you visit the forum, you comment often to let us know how you already know what we are speaking about and 'agree' with it. What I said was missing was any questions to clarify what is surely unfamiliar to you.