Logical Proof of Free Will

[GrantHenderson]

Hey all, I wrote a logical theory for how we have free will, and I'm interested in feedback.
There probably isn’t much new information here for you guys. But I am attempting to write a logical proof that would be engage the average reader, and be convincing to even the harshest critics of free will. In order for this to be effective, it cannot be too long or detailed, but must communicate its points clearly using prose. So there are some interesting ideas I unfortunately had to leave out.


Yes, we have free will, and there is a simple empirical test anyone can do to prove it.

We have free will because we have the capability to meditate.

The major reason many believe we do not have free will is because it is inconceivable that we could gain conscious control over every factor that influences our actions, and act in a contrary manner. It is clear that our thoughts are repeatedly under the influence of countless factors, such as our bodily functions, our sensory interactions with our environment, our past experiences, conceptual systems of thought, genetics, personal inclinations, etc. Many are drawn to the logical conclusion that in order to have “free will” we would have to succeed in the seemingly impossible task of becoming aware of all these factors of influence on our thoughts in order to overcome them by a greater “will power”. However, this stance fails to consider that we are in fact capable of freeing our thoughts from these influences without having to gain conscious control over them. Free will doesn't require gaining conscious control over every factor that influences our thoughts, but rather, escaping them, thereby rendering them inconsequential to our thoughts. More specifically, we can free our thoughts from the confines of our physical body and its causal influences on our thoughts.

An empirical example of our ability to escape the factors of influence on our thoughts is our capability to meditate on command. Meditation is the practice of clearing one's mind of thoughts and emotions, using both mental and physical techniques. Meditation has been reliably measured to reduce brain activity in the default mode network (DMN). While it takes a certain amount of mindfulness, we are capable of meditating under mental duress and stimulating environmental circumstances. Considering this, to presume that any causal (determinable) influence on our thoughts could cause us to meditate is a contradiction. Meditation is a reduction in thought activity, while causal influences on our thoughts are additions of thought activity. A causal influence on our thoughts couldn’t possibly have a null influence on them, for it must induce some sort of effect on them. Therefore, a causal influence on our thoughts could not be responsible for a reduction in our own thought activity via meditation. While we may be compelled to think and act a certain way due to the factors of influence over our thoughts, these factors of influence certainly do not suppress their own effects on our thoughts. Likewise, while we perhaps may be compelled to want to meditate via some causal influence(s), such cannot be responsible for the actual act of meditation. Therefore, our conscious mind is solely responsible for performing meditations. Whereas, the effects of physical phenomena on and of our physical body do not cause us to meditate.

While this conclusion about meditation itself does not demonstrate how our remaining thoughts are self induced, free from determinable influences, it is evidence of a philosophy of mind that supports a logical framework for free will. Meditation empirically proves that mental phenomena is not a subset of physical phenomena by demonstrating that our mind is capable of functioning independent of our physical body. For now, we will call this stuff of mind “non-physical”. While that description of the mind does not suffice to explain the mind in a meaningful way, it is an important fact to recognize for demonstrating how we have free will. When we meditate, we momentarily free our thoughts from the influence of our physical body and of physical phenomena in general. At this same moment, or set of moments, our mind is functioning (thinking) independent of our physical body and of physical phenomena. Our physical brain cannot contribute to our thoughts at the same moment or set of moments in which our non-physical mind contributes to our thoughts independent from our physical body/brain because our thoughts are the stuff of mind, and mind alone. The use of our mind is in thought. So the moment or set of moments in which our mind thinks independent from our physical body/brain is by our mind, and our mind alone. Therefore, we are thinking by our own free will, without the causal influences on and of our physical body. While this moment of free will may be very short lived, and cannot be empirically depicted and quantified among the mass assembly of brain activity, it is the logical consequence of our mind functioning independent from the influences of our physical body/brain.

Many will contest that there is a lack of empirical verifiability in this theory for it to be sufficient. They may claim that we cannot physically measure the effects of our free will and link the cause back to our free will. However, this is because our free will is a product of mental, but not physical phenomena. Therefore, empirical induction can only be used as it pertains to our mental, inner-experiences, as opposed to physical brain activity. In other words, the effects of meditation on our inner experiences must be consistent with the theory in order for the theory to be testably correct. It has already been shown that meditation is empirical proof that we can use our mind independent of our physical body. The contention that remains is if we experience a conscious disconnection from our physical body while meditating. The truth is that this is exactly what meditation reportedly does: People pursue meditation in order to experience a clear understanding of the world that exists beyond their direct involvement within it. Our mind sheds its connection from the selfish impulses, desires and sensations affected by our physical body to peer into the realm of objective ideals. The more focused our meditations become, the more our decisions align with objective ideals outside our personal preferences, desires, impulses and sensations. Thus, the logical theory that our thoughts must transcend outside the confines of our physical body in order to have free will is supported by empirical observation of our inner experiences.

This conclusion provides a clear framework for explaining our conscious experience, and the role of our free will. It demonstrates that we have 3 fundamental aspects of our being. Our being is fundamentally composed of mind, physical body, and spirit. Firstly, as previously mentioned, we have a mind which deals with all matters that we are currently aware of and are thinking about. Our mind is evident by the basic empirical fact that we can think about it. This was long ago deduced by Descartes with his famous quote “I think, therefore I am”. Our mind is the basis of our personal identity, or our “I”. Our mind mediates in-between the two other fundamental aspects of being; our physical body (identity), and our spiritual identity. These other two aspects of our being work upon our mind separately, and induce different effects thereto. Our physical body grounds our mind into a subjective experience of physical reality. Everything about our experience that has subjective characteristics is informed by our physical body. For example, our pleasures and displeasures are based on bodily sensory responses, our perception of physical objects are based on our physical eyes, etc. All that is physically perceptible to us is only so as subjective experience. So when our mind escapes its connection from its physical body, it also escapes its connection from its subjective experience of reality, therefore, opening itself up to an objective experience of reality — all that is objectively true of reality. Therefore, our spirit is our minds connection to objective reality. While our physical eyes alert our mind to physical objects, our spirit gives our mind insight into what objective qualities and processes comprise of these physical objects. While our physical body alerts our mind of pleasing and displeasing sensations, our spirit gives our mind insight into what is causing these sensations. Our spirit is our minds connection to all that is true in the form of ideas.

Our mind identifies with our physical body and our spirit, but it cannot identify with both simultaneously. Our physical body and spirit are incompatible and irreconcilable aspects of our being because our physical body is a subjective aspect of our being, while our spirit is an objective aspect of our being. Therefore, our mind must alternate between identifying with our physical body, disconnected from our spirit, and identifying with our spirit, disconnected to our physical body. When our mind identifies with our physical body, disconnected from our spirit, it obtains information from and about the physical world by means of our physical body/senses. Our resulting thoughts are then determined by our physical body, for they are solely based on our physical body. Whereas, when our mind disconnects from our physical body and identifies with our spirit, it relays that information to our spirit which extracts the true and valuable ideas they carry. These sorts of insights are ones obtained based on objective ideals, free from physical influences. Our mind then reidentifies with our physical body and disconnects from our spirit to carry these insights back to our physical body to be integrated into action upon the physical world. This completes our mindful and spiritual act of free will. This act our mind imposes upon the physical world through our physical body also allows our physical body to once again work upon our mind. This repeats the cycle upon which our mind alternates between acting upon our physical body and our spirit. This basic cycle repeats indefinitely. Whilst our conscious experience has both objective and subjective qualities, we cannot transcend this cycle.

This theory forces us to consider mind phenomena as more than just physical content or activities. We must instead understand the significance of the meaningful, spiritual phenomena that underlies our conscious experiences. Without nurturing the divine spirit within us, we become slaves to our own impulses and desires. Whereas, when we nurture this divine spirit, we learn to live beyond ourselves. We can master our impulses and desires to think and act freely in accordance to what is truly valuable to our lives and the lives of others.

[AshvinP]

Our mind identifies with our physical body and our spirit, but it cannot identify with both simultaneously. Our physical body and spirit are incompatible and irreconcilable aspects of our being because our physical body is a subjective aspect of our being, while our spirit is an objective aspect of our being. Therefore, our mind must alternate between identifying with our physical body, disconnected from our spirit, and identifying with our spirit, disconnected to our physical body. When our mind identifies with our physical body, disconnected from our spirit, it obtains information from and about the physical world by means of our physical body/senses. Our resulting thoughts are then determined by our physical body, for they are solely based on our physical body. Whereas, when our mind disconnects from our physical body and identifies with our spirit, it relays that information to our spirit which extracts the true and valuable ideas they carry. These sorts of insights are ones obtained based on objective ideals, free from physical influences. Our mind then reidentifies with our physical body and disconnects from our spirit to carry these insights back to our physical body to be integrated into action upon the physical world. This completes our mindful and spiritual act of free will. This act our mind imposes upon the physical world through our physical body also allows our physical body to once again work upon our mind. This repeats the cycle upon which our mind alternates between acting upon our physical body and our spirit. This basic cycle repeats indefinitely. Whilst our conscious experience has both objective and subjective qualities, we cannot transcend this cycle.

This theory forces us to consider mind phenomena as more than just physical content or activities. We must instead understand the significance of the meaningful, spiritual phenomena that underlies our conscious experiences. Without nurturing the divine spirit within us, we become slaves to our own impulses and desires. Whereas, when we nurture this divine spirit, we learn to live beyond ourselves. We can master our impulses and desires to think and act freely in accordance to what is truly valuable to our lives and the lives of others.

Hello Grant,

Thanks for this stimulating argument for free will. It certainly holds together well and makes sense. What you wrote about meditation reminds me of another quote:

The ever anew exercised meditation of the construction of reality in human cognition is not only a progressive approach of man to his true nature, but also (and as a matter of fact long before the attainment of his goal) the granting of absolute meaning that man himself presents. It [i.e. this reality meditation] grants the certainty that there is an absolute meaning, for it progressively realizes this meaning. This signifies that the nature of meditation is not something to attain but to achieve – an achievement by which man accomplishes himself. Modern meditation does not desire an entrance into a spiritual world antecedent to it, but rather freely gives itself the responsibility for the origin of a spiritual world, which can only arise out of man accomplishing himself in meditation as a world first. Modern meditation does not object to a desire for self-perfection for reasons that renunciation might expect an all the more richer welcome – but from the insight that neither desire nor renunciation can attain a real meditative content, since only the meditation itself can give this to the latter. This is not the loan that awaits it, but the gift that it offers to the world. Modern meditation is not the path into a pre-meditative world, but the formation of a new metamorphosis of the world. The nature of modern meditative experience is neither one of creaturely emerging from the creative powers of the world nor the dissolution therein, but the transformed emergence of creative spirituality from human self-formation. Meditation is the moral intuition of the human being, the moral imagination of the transmutation of the world process in man and the moral technique of freedom.

There is a lot more to comment on your post and perhaps others will come along with comments soon. For now, I wanted to ask you a question related to the part quoted above.

Have you considered the possibility that the physical body is the Spirit, as experienced by mind within a certain mode of objective consciousness? In other words, the possibility that there is a spiritual perspective from which what we experience as the physical body (with all its organic processes) and what we experience as mind (with all its psychic functions) is felt to proceed forth just as thoughts are felt to proceed forth from our ordinary "I" perspective.

I am not putting this forth as an abstract metaphysical theory, because if we follow the logic, it also implies that our current "I" perspective can grow into greater resonance with these higher-order perspectives from which the psychic and bodily support for our local activity proceeds. There is only Spirit activity at various scales, or states of aggregation, and some perspectives provide the 'curvatures of potential' (which we abstractly label 'mind/soul' and 'body') in which others unfold their activity, progressively awakening to their own creative spirituality that will support the activity of future waves of relative perspectives. In that sense, not only are the body and spirit not incompatible or irreconcilable aspects of our being, but we can fully reconcile them in our living experience through our focused meditative efforts.

[Federica]

Speaking of the question of free will - that I have been reminded of today - I want to report here the most helpful, inspiring illustration I've ever read:

"It may appear to you either presumptuous to want to talk about the future, or as an impossibility to be able to determine anything about the future of humanity. However, if you think about it a little, you will find that the idea that one can know something about the future is not entirely unfounded. All you need to do is compare these things with what the ordinary researcher, for example the natural scientist, can know about the future. He can tell you exactly that, if he mixes oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur together under any conditions, sulfuric acid will always be formed. You can tell exactly what happens when you catch rays through a mirror. Yes, this goes even further in relation to the things of external life; one can predict solar and lunar eclipses for indefinitely long periods of time.

Why can you do that? Because, and insofar as, one knows the laws of physical life. If someone now recognizes the spiritual laws of life, they can also use these laws to say what must happen in the future. It's just that people are usually troubled by one question. It is so easy to think that knowing in advance what will happen is in contradiction with freedom, with arbitrary human action. That is an incorrect feeling. If you bring sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen together under certain conditions, sulfuric acid is formed; this is due to the law of bringing things together. But whether you do it depends on your will. And so it is spiritually too.

A person will do what will happen of their own free will, and the higher the person develops, the freer they will be. One should not think that what a person will do in the future is already determined now because someone can foresee it. But most people have no real understanding of this question, and in fact it is one of the most difficult. Since ancient times, philosophers have struggled with the question of human freedom and the lawful predetermination of phenomena. Almost everything that has been written in this area is highly inadequate, because people usually cannot distinguish between foresight and predetermination. Looking ahead is no different than looking at distant points in space. If you look in space at a distant point, let's say at the street corner over there, and you see that one person is giving another person ten pfennigs, have you then brought about this action? Has any cause been given for it by your seeing it? No. You just see that he does it, and that doesn't compel him to act that way. Now, in a certain respect, it is the same in time, but people cannot understand it. Suppose you are embodied again in a few thousand years. You then do something of your own free will; This is just like the example of the ten pfennigs. The seer may see what will be done in the future, and this future action is no more determined by the present point in time than the gift of the ten pfennigs is determined by the point in space.

It is often said: "when you see that something is going to happen, it is actually predetermined". But then you confuse the future with the present. That wouldn't be foresight into the future if it were already determined. You don't see something that is already there, but rather something that is yet to come. You must clearly understand the concept of looking into the future. This must be practiced and cultivated in patient meditation. Only then will you find the opportunity to grasp these things correctly."


Rodulf Steiner, Theosophy of the Rosicrucian - Munich, June 5, 1907
GA 99 - Part XIII The Future of Man

[GrantHenderson]

Our mind identifies with our physical body and our spirit, but it cannot identify with both simultaneously. Our physical body and spirit are incompatible and irreconcilable aspects of our being because our physical body is a subjective aspect of our being, while our spirit is an objective aspect of our being. Therefore, our mind must alternate between identifying with our physical body, disconnected from our spirit, and identifying with our spirit, disconnected to our physical body. When our mind identifies with our physical body, disconnected from our spirit, it obtains information from and about the physical world by means of our physical body/senses. Our resulting thoughts are then determined by our physical body, for they are solely based on our physical body. Whereas, when our mind disconnects from our physical body and identifies with our spirit, it relays that information to our spirit which extracts the true and valuable ideas they carry. These sorts of insights are ones obtained based on objective ideals, free from physical influences. Our mind then reidentifies with our physical body and disconnects from our spirit to carry these insights back to our physical body to be integrated into action upon the physical world. This completes our mindful and spiritual act of free will. This act our mind imposes upon the physical world through our physical body also allows our physical body to once again work upon our mind. This repeats the cycle upon which our mind alternates between acting upon our physical body and our spirit. This basic cycle repeats indefinitely. Whilst our conscious experience has both objective and subjective qualities, we cannot transcend this cycle.

This theory forces us to consider mind phenomena as more than just physical content or activities. We must instead understand the significance of the meaningful, spiritual phenomena that underlies our conscious experiences. Without nurturing the divine spirit within us, we become slaves to our own impulses and desires. Whereas, when we nurture this divine spirit, we learn to live beyond ourselves. We can master our impulses and desires to think and act freely in accordance to what is truly valuable to our lives and the lives of others.

Hello Grant,

Thanks for this stimulating argument for free will. It certainly holds together well and makes sense. What you wrote about meditation reminds me of another quote:

The ever anew exercised meditation of the construction of reality in human cognition is not only a progressive approach of man to his true nature, but also (and as a matter of fact long before the attainment of his goal) the granting of absolute meaning that man himself presents. It [i.e. this reality meditation] grants the certainty that there is an absolute meaning, for it progressively realizes this meaning. This signifies that the nature of meditation is not something to attain but to achieve – an achievement by which man accomplishes himself. Modern meditation does not desire an entrance into a spiritual world antecedent to it, but rather freely gives itself the responsibility for the origin of a spiritual world, which can only arise out of man accomplishing himself in meditation as a world first. Modern meditation does not object to a desire for self-perfection for reasons that renunciation might expect an all the more richer welcome – but from the insight that neither desire nor renunciation can attain a real meditative content, since only the meditation itself can give this to the latter. This is not the loan that awaits it, but the gift that it offers to the world. Modern meditation is not the path into a pre-meditative world, but the formation of a new metamorphosis of the world. The nature of modern meditative experience is neither one of creaturely emerging from the creative powers of the world nor the dissolution therein, but the transformed emergence of creative spirituality from human self-formation. Meditation is the moral intuition of the human being, the moral imagination of the transmutation of the world process in man and the moral technique of freedom.

There is a lot more to comment on your post and perhaps others will come along with comments soon. For now, I wanted to ask you a question related to the part quoted above.

Have you considered the possibility that the physical body is the Spirit, as experienced by mind within a certain mode of objective consciousness? In other words, the possibility that there is a spiritual perspective from which what we experience as the physical body (with all its organic processes) and what we experience as mind (with all its psychic functions) is felt to proceed forth just as thoughts are felt to proceed forth from our ordinary "I" perspective.

I am not putting this forth as an abstract metaphysical theory, because if we follow the logic, it also implies that our current "I" perspective can grow into greater resonance with these higher-order perspectives from which the psychic and bodily support for our local activity proceeds. There is only Spirit activity at various scales, or states of aggregation, and some perspectives provide the 'curvatures of potential' (which we abstractly label 'mind/soul' and 'body') in which others unfold their activity, progressively awakening to their own creative spirituality that will support the activity of future waves of relative perspectives. In that sense, not only are the body and spirit not incompatible or irreconcilable aspects of our being, but we can fully reconcile them in our living experience through our focused meditative efforts.

The physical body is the symbol of spiritual influences, but I wouldn’t call them the same thing. An apt way to describe the body is “multiplicity”, whereas the spirit is unity, and these are opposite, contradicting categories. However, it is important to understand that unity is held together by multiplicity, and that multiplicity is made “real”from unity.

Excess unity breaks apart. Like how a government that spends money fixing stuff within its country only has that money because of the tax payers that actually generate it. When the government gets too big it can no longer serve a healthy economy.

Whereas, it’s much easier to understand how excess multiplicity breaks apart. A lot of that can be seen in the identity politics portrayed throughout much of the western world. There are no sufficient unifying categories cohering the split identities with reality.

[AshvinP]

The physical body is the symbol of spiritual influences, but I wouldn’t call them the same thing. An apt way to describe the body is “multiplicity”, whereas the spirit is unity, and these are opposite, contradicting categories. However, it is important to understand that unity is held together by multiplicity, and that multiplicity is made “real”from unity.

Excess unity breaks apart. Like how a government that spends money fixing stuff within its country only has that money because of the tax payers that actually generate it. When the government gets too big it can no longer serve a healthy economy.

Whereas, it’s much easier to understand how excess multiplicity breaks apart. A lot of that can be seen in the identity politics portrayed throughout much of the western world. There are no sufficient unifying categories cohering the split identities with reality.

Hi Grant,

I surely agree about the fracturing nature of identity politics and I think 70+ million Americans may as well  

I am curious how you think of the body/matter as a symbol of spiritual influences. You're probably familiar with the Hermetic principle, 'as above, so below'. This is reflected in astrological science, for example, in the way that stellar rhythms and conjunctions somehow influence the inner states of Earthly human experience. Yet we can notice that this is still a correspondence between our mental pictures of the stellar rhythms and conjunctions and our mental pictures of inner states. We don't have any clear intuition of these macro-scale movements, just like we don't have any clear intuition of movements at the quantum level. In other words, we wouldn't say that the reality of these planetary movements (the 'spacetime curvature', whatever that is) is also moving our mental pictures about the movements. Rather we feel that we encode our nebulous intuition of those movements into mental pictures that replicate familiar bodily experiences, usually visual experience. Then we seek the Unity - the 'laws', principles, etc. - that should "explain" the multiplicity of mental pictures and their transformations. 

Yet is that the only direction in which we can seek to harmonize the Unity with the multiplicity? How can we more intimately experience the correspondence between spiritual movements and their reflections in our manifold mental pictures, such that the former intuitively explains the latter?

Let's imagine we concentrate on the title of a song. We have a mental image at the focus of our conscious experience which anchors our overall intuition (Unity) for the sphere of potential experiences (multiplicity) that can manifest if we were to start singing the song, i.e. we have some intuitive sense for the time span of the song and the rhythmic transformations our inner voice would have to go through. We can approach a similar intuition even if we simply try to feel what a minute or an hour is, not by abstractly philosophizing about it or imagining a clock, but by trying to stretch our inner life in all directions as if to feel how our present ‘ticking’ of thinking is embedded in a greater rhythmic flow. 

Then we can begin singing the song, experiencing the playback of our relatively unified and holistic intuition. Now our singing mental voice moves through the 'intuitive curvature' that was previously anchored in the song title. There are a lot of audial perceptual elements in this playback (multiplicity) - our words are not only monotonically pronounced but their pitch is bent up and down according to the melody. The melody can be grasped as repeating patterns grouped in measures, phrases, verses, and so on. Notice how all these diverse perceptual elements are explained through our intentional activity that unpacks the holistic intuition of the song title. We know them by feeling how we live in something meaningfully intended (the intuitive intent), which we can’t see perceptually as a ‘thing’, yet it clearly gives us intuition for the way the symbolic multiplicity of phenomena unfold - from whence they came and to whence they are going.

We could also imagine that, while we are experiencing the playback of the song, we somehow forget that we are intentionally singing. Then we hear some lyrics but they sound like random words that have popped into our consciousness. We have no intuitive sense of why it appeared nor that something else should appear afterward - we have lost the intuitive background context that was provided out of our intentional activity. Then we may start philosophizing or scientifically thinking about the mysterious lyrics - we try to complement our mental pictures with other mental pictures that seem to 'make sense' of the audial perceptions, like 'neurons', 'pure consciousness', and so on. We snap together mental pictures like puzzle pieces until they start to feel intuitively coherent (and then usually we stop and imagine we have reached an "explanation"). This is a way of seeking Unity similar to what we do with our astronomical/astrological science, but it remains completely abstract. We don’t know with certainty whether our mental puzzle truly corresponds to reality, even though the pieces may snap together very convincingly together.

Contrast that with the experience of suddenly remembering our intentional singing activity. We no longer need to assemble mental puzzles but instead, the intuitive curvature of our intent to sing (or philosophize) fills the vacuum. This intuitive intent is not some additional perceptual objects in our consciousness, like the audial sensations of our inner singing voice, but the 'meaningfully curved' background of their flow. In that sense, it is in our experience of intentional imaginative activity where we continuously straddle the domains of Unity and Multiplicity and concretely realize their reciprocal harmony. We experience an intimate relation between our holistic intuition and its perceptual playback, such that the latter feels to be the decohered reflection of the former. They are no longer felt to be so orthogonal or "contradicting categories", but we discover (and co-create) the 'unifying categories' through our intentional activity.

It may feel like we are speaking of trivial mental experiences that have no relevance for the broader social sphere, but that would be only be true if we imagine that the intuitive curvatures end at some outer boundary of our personal sphere and beyond that we’re dealing with some other form of reality, some 'things-in-themselves', completely opaque to our cognitive life. If we heal ourselves from this unwarranted prejudice, our concentrated intentional activity can lead us into stages of consciousness where we grasp the unfolding of the existential 'song' as flowing not only through the intuitive curvatures of our personal soul life, but also curvatures that we can call archetypal and universal. It is as if different levels of mind are responsible for a whole contextual hierarchy of meaning, along whose curvatures the total existential state lawfully plays back. 

[GrantHenderson]

The physical body is the symbol of spiritual influences, but I wouldn’t call them the same thing. An apt way to describe the body is “multiplicity”, whereas the spirit is unity, and these are opposite, contradicting categories. However, it is important to understand that unity is held together by multiplicity, and that multiplicity is made “real”from unity.

Excess unity breaks apart. Like how a government that spends money fixing stuff within its country only has that money because of the tax payers that actually generate it. When the government gets too big it can no longer serve a healthy economy.

Whereas, it’s much easier to understand how excess multiplicity breaks apart. A lot of that can be seen in the identity politics portrayed throughout much of the western world. There are no sufficient unifying categories cohering the split identities with reality.

Hi Grant,

I surely agree about the fracturing nature of identity politics and I think 70+ million Americans may as well  

I am curious how you think of the body/matter as a symbol of spiritual influences. You're probably familiar with the Hermetic principle, 'as above, so below'. This is reflected in astrological science, for example, in the way that stellar rhythms and conjunctions somehow influence the inner states of Earthly human experience. Yet we can notice that this is still a correspondence between our mental pictures of the stellar rhythms and conjunctions and our mental pictures of inner states. We don't have any clear intuition of these macro-scale movements, just like we don't have any clear intuition of movements at the quantum level. In other words, we wouldn't say that the reality of these planetary movements (the 'spacetime curvature', whatever that is) is also moving our mental pictures about the movements. Rather we feel that we encode our nebulous intuition of those movements into mental pictures that replicate familiar bodily experiences, usually visual experience. Then we seek the Unity - the 'laws', principles, etc. - that should "explain" the multiplicity of mental pictures and their transformations. 

Yet is that the only direction in which we can seek to harmonize the Unity with the multiplicity? How can we more intimately experience the correspondence between spiritual movements and their reflections in our manifold mental pictures, such that the former intuitively explains the latter?

Let's imagine we concentrate on the title of a song. We have a mental image at the focus of our conscious experience which anchors our overall intuition (Unity) for the sphere of potential experiences (multiplicity) that can manifest if we were to start singing the song, i.e. we have some intuitive sense for the time span of the song and the rhythmic transformations our inner voice would have to go through. We can approach a similar intuition even if we simply try to feel what a minute or an hour is, not by abstractly philosophizing about it or imagining a clock, but by trying to stretch our inner life in all directions as if to feel how our present ‘ticking’ of thinking is embedded in a greater rhythmic flow. 

Then we can begin singing the song, experiencing the playback of our relatively unified and holistic intuition. Now our singing mental voice moves through the 'intuitive curvature' that was previously anchored in the song title. There are a lot of audial perceptual elements in this playback (multiplicity) - our words are not only monotonically pronounced but their pitch is bent up and down according to the melody. The melody can be grasped as repeating patterns grouped in measures, phrases, verses, and so on. Notice how all these diverse perceptual elements are explained through our intentional activity that unpacks the holistic intuition of the song title. We know them by feeling how we live in something meaningfully intended (the intuitive intent), which we can’t see perceptually as a ‘thing’, yet it clearly gives us intuition for the way the symbolic multiplicity of phenomena unfold - from whence they came and to whence they are going.

We could also imagine that, while we are experiencing the playback of the song, we somehow forget that we are intentionally singing. Then we hear some lyrics but they sound like random words that have popped into our consciousness. We have no intuitive sense of why it appeared nor that something else should appear afterward - we have lost the intuitive background context that was provided out of our intentional activity. Then we may start philosophizing or scientifically thinking about the mysterious lyrics - we try to complement our mental pictures with other mental pictures that seem to 'make sense' of the audial perceptions, like 'neurons', 'pure consciousness', and so on. We snap together mental pictures like puzzle pieces until they start to feel intuitively coherent (and then usually we stop and imagine we have reached an "explanation"). This is a way of seeking Unity similar to what we do with our astronomical/astrological science, but it remains completely abstract. We don’t know with certainty whether our mental puzzle truly corresponds to reality, even though the pieces may snap together very convincingly together.

Contrast that with the experience of suddenly remembering our intentional singing activity. We no longer need to assemble mental puzzles but instead, the intuitive curvature of our intent to sing (or philosophize) fills the vacuum. This intuitive intent is not some additional perceptual objects in our consciousness, like the audial sensations of our inner singing voice, but the 'meaningfully curved' background of their flow. In that sense, it is in our experience of intentional imaginative activity where we continuously straddle the domains of Unity and Multiplicity and concretely realize their reciprocal harmony. We experience an intimate relation between our holistic intuition and its perceptual playback, such that the latter feels to be the decohered reflection of the former. They are no longer felt to be so orthogonal or "contradicting categories", but we discover (and co-create) the 'unifying categories' through our intentional activity.

It may feel like we are speaking of trivial mental experiences that have no relevance for the broader social sphere, but that would be only be true if we imagine that the intuitive curvatures end at some outer boundary of our personal sphere and beyond that we’re dealing with some other form of reality, some 'things-in-themselves', completely opaque to our cognitive life. If we heal ourselves from this unwarranted prejudice, our concentrated intentional activity can lead us into stages of consciousness where we grasp the unfolding of the existential 'song' as flowing not only through the intuitive curvatures of our personal soul life, but also curvatures that we can call archetypal and universal. It is as if different levels of mind are responsible for a whole contextual hierarchy of meaning, along whose curvatures the total existential state lawfully plays back. 

I’m in agreement with your analysis that there can only be reciprocation between the spirit (unity) and material (multiplicity), so neither can exist in totality without the other. That was my point when I mentioned that unity is held together by multiplicity and that multiplicity is made real by unity.

But the other point I was making is that it is also important to understand them as separate categories in order to deepen our understanding of how they drive and sustain one another. If we say that they are the same thing, then we are also implying that we can achieve unity without concern for multiplicity, and without unity consequently breaking down into chaos. It’s just a bit misleading. So it’s important to understand that they are separate categories that drive each other. Like how each side of the yin yang symbol has a circle of the opposing sides' colour within it.

I think the relationship between the spiritual and material is similarly illuminated by Christ. The earthly world behaves such that the spirit serves the body, and this world is driven and sustained by its inverse function of sacrificing the body in service to the spirit. This ultimately restores our ability to name (make meaning) and consequentially, the world inverts on itself to behave such that the body serves the spirit, and this world is driven and sustained by its inverse function of manifesting the spirit onto the body. Sacrificing the body in service to the spirit in the earthly world provides the body as an instrument for the inverted world of heaven which consequently behaves as such — the generation of meaning on top of the bodily instrument. And inversely, the manifestation of the spirit onto the body that occurs in heaven renews the earthly world, which behaves as such — the spirit serving the body.

When we are given the life sustaining forces from heaven, but continually fail to offer ourselves back up in return, we “drain” these life sustaining forces, so to speak, and recede excessively into ourselves and our world of illusions. We become the multiplicity unbinded from the uniting forces of heaven.

Recognizing them as different categories is important for recognizing where we are in excess of one without the other, not for recognizing that there can be one without the other.

[AshvinP]

I’m in agreement with your analysis that there can only be reciprocation between the spirit (unity) and material (multiplicity), so neither can exist in totality without the other. That was my point when I mentioned that unity is held together by multiplicity and that multiplicity is made real by unity.

But the other point I was making is that it is also important to understand them as separate categories in order to deepen our understanding of how they drive and sustain one another. If we say that they are the same thing, then we are also implying that we can achieve unity without concern for multiplicity, and without unity consequently breaking down into chaos. It’s just a bit misleading. So it’s important to understand that they are separate categories that drive each other. Like how each side of the yin yang symbol has a circle of the opposing sides' colour within it.

I think the relationship between the spiritual and material is similarly illuminated by Christ. The earthly world behaves such that the spirit serves the body, and this world is driven and sustained by its inverse function of sacrificing the body in service to the spirit. This ultimately restores our ability to name (make meaning) and consequentially, the world inverts on itself to behave such that the body serves the spirit, and this world is driven and sustained by its inverse function of manifesting the spirit onto the body. Sacrificing the body in service to the spirit in the earthly world provides the body as an instrument for the inverted world of heaven which consequently behaves as such — the generation of meaning on top of the bodily instrument. And inversely, the manifestation of the spirit onto the body that occurs in heaven renews the earthly world, which behaves as such — the spirit serving the body.

When we are given the life sustaining forces from heaven, but continually fail to offer ourselves back up in return, we “drain” these life sustaining forces, so to speak, and recede excessively into ourselves and our world of illusions. We become the multiplicity unbinded from the uniting forces of heaven.

Recognizing them as different categories is important for recognizing where we are in excess of one without the other, not for recognizing that there can be one without the other.

Right, I agree that it is critical to recognize the distinction between spiritual experience and material (sensory) experience so we can attain the proper balance.

What I'm pointing to is the fact that we can distinguish them even more and deepen our understanding of their reciprocal relationship much further than we can do with our conceptual categories. In a certain sense, those conceptual categories are the expression of spiritual activity when it is still halfway merged with material processes (the brain and neurosensory system). We can easily see how, for example, our ordinary mental pictures (thoughts, concepts) are replicas of bodily experiences. We can think with our inner voice because we have first become familiar with producing sounds through our vocal tract and likewise hearing physical sounds from others. If we investigate our mental (soul-spiritual) life closely, we will see that practically all of our thoughts/concepts are replicas of bodily experience in this same way. Even when we think about the lofty realms of Divine beings and activity, we are ordinarily forced to imagine bigger, more expansive, more powerful, but nevertheless sensory-like things conducting their activity in sensory-like ways. 

In that sense, the task for deepening our understanding further becomes to pull apart or delaminate our spiritual/imaginative life from the bodily life so we actually experience body- and sense-free thinking. We can experience our spiritual activity weaving independently of the sensory formatting. Our natural development brought us to the point where we can think intellectually about these things but, as described above, our thoughts remain closely tied to bodily experience. If we continue to conduct our thinking activity in the same way we have become accustomed to through that natural development, we may combine sense-like thoughts in more and more different ways to represent our intuition of "spiritual unity" and the relationship between "spirit and body", but our activity itself remains mired in the multiplicity of sense-like thoughts. To extend our thinking into the actual kingdom of Unity, however, we need to conduct it in new and unfamiliar ways, like we would also do to weave our inner activity in pure mathematical relations.

This is where phenomenology of spiritual activity and concentrated meditation comes in, which attains a similar skill to pure mathematical reasoning but also imbued with qualitative life and content. What was discussed before with the imaginative singing exercise is already a preliminary example of this. We aren't only amassing conceptual facts about the nature of "intentionally singing" and "holistic intuition", but we live into the experience described and therefore attain a concrete inner orientation to the relationship between our unifying intentional activity and the multiplicity of perceptual experiences that unfold along the curvature of that intent. We can utilize our concepts as artistic descriptions of those intimate inner experiences. For example, we can orient to this inner experience using a metaphor to the presently fictional warp drive.





Here it is imagined that the spacecraft somehow warps spacetime and causes itself to fall forward. It’s like a fancier version of the donkey with a carrot on a stick. Instead of a carrot, we hold a blob of concentrated mass/energy (like a small planet) just in front of our spaceship. The mass/energy curves spacetime and our spaceship falls forward in its gravity well. As we move forward, however, the blob also moves forward (as if attached to the stick) and thus keeps accelerating us. To make it more applicable to our situation, we can imagine that our intuitive intents (like intentionally singing) are the morphing spacetime curvature (the intuitive essence of our conscious space), while the spacecraft is, for example, the phenomenal contents of our contextually modulated singing voice. There’s no need to over-intellectualize this. It’s only a matter of feeling how the curvature of our intuitive activity leads the condensation of the imaginative contents.

I am interested if you see how this leads to an entirely different way of distinguishing the categories of spirit and body/matter and 'explaining' the relationship between them, i.e. how they drive and sustain one another? 

[GrantHenderson]

I’m in agreement with your analysis that there can only be reciprocation between the spirit (unity) and material (multiplicity), so neither can exist in totality without the other. That was my point when I mentioned that unity is held together by multiplicity and that multiplicity is made real by unity.

But the other point I was making is that it is also important to understand them as separate categories in order to deepen our understanding of how they drive and sustain one another. If we say that they are the same thing, then we are also implying that we can achieve unity without concern for multiplicity, and without unity consequently breaking down into chaos. It’s just a bit misleading. So it’s important to understand that they are separate categories that drive each other. Like how each side of the yin yang symbol has a circle of the opposing sides' colour within it.

I think the relationship between the spiritual and material is similarly illuminated by Christ. The earthly world behaves such that the spirit serves the body, and this world is driven and sustained by its inverse function of sacrificing the body in service to the spirit. This ultimately restores our ability to name (make meaning) and consequentially, the world inverts on itself to behave such that the body serves the spirit, and this world is driven and sustained by its inverse function of manifesting the spirit onto the body. Sacrificing the body in service to the spirit in the earthly world provides the body as an instrument for the inverted world of heaven which consequently behaves as such — the generation of meaning on top of the bodily instrument. And inversely, the manifestation of the spirit onto the body that occurs in heaven renews the earthly world, which behaves as such — the spirit serving the body.

When we are given the life sustaining forces from heaven, but continually fail to offer ourselves back up in return, we “drain” these life sustaining forces, so to speak, and recede excessively into ourselves and our world of illusions. We become the multiplicity unbinded from the uniting forces of heaven.

Recognizing them as different categories is important for recognizing where we are in excess of one without the other, not for recognizing that there can be one without the other.

Right, I agree that it is critical to recognize the distinction between spiritual experience and material (sensory) experience so we can attain the proper balance.

What I'm pointing to is the fact that we can distinguish them even more and deepen our understanding of their reciprocal relationship much further than we can do with our conceptual categories. In a certain sense, those conceptual categories are the expression of spiritual activity when it is still halfway merged with material processes (the brain and neurosensory system). We can easily see how, for example, our ordinary mental pictures (thoughts, concepts) are replicas of bodily experiences. We can think with our inner voice because we have first become familiar with producing sounds through our vocal tract and likewise hearing physical sounds from others. If we investigate our mental (soul-spiritual) life closely, we will see that practically all of our thoughts/concepts are replicas of bodily experience in this same way. Even when we think about the lofty realms of Divine beings and activity, we are ordinarily forced to imagine bigger, more expansive, more powerful, but nevertheless sensory-like things conducting their activity in sensory-like ways. 

In that sense, the task for deepening our understanding further becomes to pull apart or delaminate our spiritual/imaginative life from the bodily life so we actually experience body- and sense-free thinking. We can experience our spiritual activity weaving independently of the sensory formatting. Our natural development brought us to the point where we can think intellectually about these things but, as described above, our thoughts remain closely tied to bodily experience. If we continue to conduct our thinking activity in the same way we have become accustomed to through that natural development, we may combine sense-like thoughts in more and more different ways to represent our intuition of "spiritual unity" and the relationship between "spirit and body", but our activity itself remains mired in the multiplicity of sense-like thoughts. To extend our thinking into the actual kingdom of Unity, however, we need to conduct it in new and unfamiliar ways, like we would also do to weave our inner activity in pure mathematical relations.

This is where phenomenology of spiritual activity and concentrated meditation comes in, which attains a similar skill to pure mathematical reasoning but also imbued with qualitative life and content. What was discussed before with the imaginative singing exercise is already a preliminary example of this. We aren't only amassing conceptual facts about the nature of "intentionally singing" and "holistic intuition", but we live into the experience described and therefore attain a concrete inner orientation to the relationship between our unifying intentional activity and the multiplicity of perceptual experiences that unfold along the curvature of that intent. We can utilize our concepts as artistic descriptions of those intimate inner experiences. For example, we can orient to this inner experience using a metaphor to the presently fictional warp drive.





Here it is imagined that the spacecraft somehow warps spacetime and causes itself to fall forward. It’s like a fancier version of the donkey with a carrot on a stick. Instead of a carrot, we hold a blob of concentrated mass/energy (like a small planet) just in front of our spaceship. The mass/energy curves spacetime and our spaceship falls forward in its gravity well. As we move forward, however, the blob also moves forward (as if attached to the stick) and thus keeps accelerating us. To make it more applicable to our situation, we can imagine that our intuitive intents (like intentionally singing) are the morphing spacetime curvature (the intuitive essence of our conscious space), while the spacecraft is, for example, the phenomenal contents of our contextually modulated singing voice. There’s no need to over-intellectualize this. It’s only a matter of feeling how the curvature of our intuitive activity leads the condensation of the imaginative contents.

I am interested if you see how this leads to an entirely different way of distinguishing the categories of spirit and body/matter and 'explaining' the relationship between them, i.e. how they drive and sustain one another? 

Yeah. Your warp drive example works well. Ill get to that in a minute.

While I agree that we can pull apart our spiritual life from our bodily life, I think its important to emphasize that it isn't disconnected from it, but the relationship is just inverted. We now experience from the perspective of our spirit, as opposed to our body. Our spirit sits on top of our body, so our experience of the world from the perspective of our spirit is free of bodily-sensory impulses and thoughts. However, we are still informed by bodily sensory content, but in a way where it happens beneath us, and where our interaction with it is from the perspective of the spiritual influences behind them.

Another way to demonstrate pulling away from the bodily influences and higher towards the divine logos is the Caduceus Staff:



The top cycle symbolizes the divine spirit, whereas the lower cycle symbolizes the body. You'll notice that the snakes bandwidth gets greater as it continues to climb up the staff, symbolizing the enriching of its spirit. As the snake continues to move up the staff, and its heavenly body is enriched, its physical body takes the place of where the heavenly body just was, so on and so fourth.

[AshvinP]

While I agree that we can pull apart our spiritual life from our bodily life, I think its important to emphasize that it isn't disconnected from it, but the relationship is just inverted. We now experience from the perspective of our spirit, as opposed to our body. Our spirit sits on top of our body, so our experience of the world from the perspective of our spirit is free of bodily-sensory impulses and thoughts. However, we are still informed by bodily sensory content, but in a way where it happens beneath us, and where our interaction with it is from the perspective of the spiritual influences behind them.

That's a good point. It is quite evident even in our normal thinking that the physical body must be a highly spiritual constellation of processes - the Wisdom of its construction and operation is beyond human fathoming. We wouldn't be able to move a finger if we suddenly became creatively responsible for these processes. Normally this fact is mostly obscured from us because we feel like our conscious perspective encompasses the body, hovers above it and manipulates it with ease (unless we are ill or injured, and then the reality is made more clear), but through the delamination our perspective can invert and we begin to intuit that it's spiritual processes (connected with the planets and Zodiac) are actually structuring our conscious perspective, acting as the latter's meaningful context. Again, this is also evident from normal reasoning, but our reasoned ideas feel so insubstantial that we don't take them too seriously. Instead we stick with the immediate experience of encompassing the body as something 'smaller' and 'below' us. Through intuitive development, however, we become more inwardly sensitive to how our inner activity is continually modulated on the more encompassing waves of the bodily experience. We could say the pure archetypal form of the physical body is the Resurrection Body.

Another way to demonstrate pulling away from the bodily influences and higher towards the divine logos is the Caduceus Staff:

...

The top cycle symbolizes the divine spirit, whereas the lower cycle symbolizes the body. You'll notice that the snakes bandwidth gets greater as it continues to climb up the staff, symbolizing the enriching of its spirit. As the snake continues to move up the staff, and its heavenly body is enriched, its physical body takes the place of where the heavenly body just was, so on and so fourth.

That's a great symbol to meditate on, thanks!