Bernardo's journey

[Cleric]

I've seen a little of this recent interview:



At this point Bernardo seems to have settled that MAL is conscious after all. See toward the end of this chapter about the great void 42:03.

But on the other hand, his conviction that the MAL state and the Earthly state are irreconcilably orthogonal until death seems to be strong. 1:03:30. He says "we can't understand it [what MAL is doing] and we don't need to." It's interesting - earlier (47:50) he speaks about being God, the point where we become the thing in itself "To know God from the first-person perspective is to be God". Yet then somehow human cognition is completely robbed of the possibility to find its concentric relations to God, although it inevitably is being thought by God. I wonder how that disconnect would be justified.

[AshvinP]

I've seen a little of this recent interview:



At this point Bernardo seems to have settled that MAL is conscious after all. See toward the end of this chapter about the great void 42:03.

But on the other hand, his conviction that the MAL state and the Earthly state are irreconcilably orthogonal until death seems to be strong. 1:03:30. He says "we can't understand it [what MAL is doing] and we don't need to." It's interesting - earlier (47:50) he speaks about being God, the point where we become the thing in itself "To know God from the first-person perspective is to be God". Yet then somehow human cognition is completely robbed of the possibility to find its concentric relations to God, although it inevitably is being thought by God. I wonder how that disconnect would be justified.

Cleric,

Thanks for sharing this video - it is good to update on Bernardo's journey at this time.

You say, "Bernardo seems to have settled that MAL is conscious after all". I presume you mean, something more conscious than the 'instinctive consciousness' we are used to?

I am interested to hear some more of what that means to you or anyone else who wants to weigh in. In that video section, he speaks of the 'void' being actually like a carrier wave, a 'fundamental tone', where there is 'pure knowing' but nothing else which can be differentiated in its cognitive texture, so to speak. In a certain way, this seems like a downgrade from instinctive consciousness, although perhaps he envisions the instinctive consciousness as another carrier wave nested within this more fundamental tone.

Then there is the disconnect you mention between the first-person human cognitive perspective and that of MAL/God which thinks the human perspective, and I also wonder about how it is rationalized.

[Cleric]

You say, "Bernardo seems to have settled that MAL is conscious after all". I presume you mean, something more conscious than the 'instinctive consciousness' we are used to?

Ashvin, I had in mind what he says here 45:33. So he recognizes that there must be spiritual activity behind everything in the Cosmos but then a bridge simply cannot be found. The thinking ego feels itself as part of MAL turned inside out and can’t conceive of any other way of finding the macrocosmic perspective, besides going through death. Hence the dualism of non-dualism.

We can present things thus:



These are two polar modes between which cognition switches. Like the camera analogy in the other thread, we place our vantage point in one place and look towards another.

1/ First we place ourselves in the feeling of Cosmic unity, the core subjectivity. From that perspective we say “I am identical to God’s first-person perspective” thus we feel our ego identified with the Divine. From that perspective all reality must be seen as proceeding from some form of spiritual activity (as he admits in the above fragment of the interview).

2/ Second we place ourselves in the intellectual dust and feel our ego identified with it. Then looking towards unity, we feel utterly helpless. We’re clear that there’s simply no way that we can produce unity from our mental dust. The only solution seems to be death, where we expect that the intellectual dust will be forced to dissolve and we’ll become MAL again.

Indeed, death truly is the only solution. Except that we have to step into that condition methodologically, in full consciousness and without losing our body.

Even by just looking at the above images, the answer seems to be stinging our eyes. With all the talks about balance, non-duality and so on, the most glaringly obvious thing seems to be to find the intersection of the two perspectives. How this is achievable in practice is commented in the other thread. In short, we expect to find a place where the core subjectivity feels to be first-personally creative in the mental dust. In this way we have the best of both worlds – MAL’s Will recognizes itself (grows in intuition) in the reflections in the mental dust particles. This is simply the living experience of thinking.

On the logical level this is so eye-pokingly obvious. Yet people who are otherwise all-in for balance between everything, completely fail to internalize the above. Why is that? Because we fall victim to our own dissociative theory. Like the bi-stable illusions, we constantly switch between the two modes. But as we spoke in the other thread, we’re not conscious of the switch, just like we don’t remember our falling to sleep. Thus, if we’re not vigilant, we become completely insensitive to that switching and no longer recognize how we think from the positions of two completely conflicted personalities.

Two souls reside, alas, within my breast,
And each one from the other would be parted.
The one holds fast, in sturdy lust for love,
With clutching organs clinging to the world;
The other strongly rises from the gloom
To lofty fields of ancient heritage.

We believe that we’re a unitary being dissociated from MAL but it turns out that we’re not that different from a split-brain patient ourselves. We’re throwing the blame for our disease onto something external (and don’t we do that all the time?), failing to understand that it is within us that the dissociation happens. We’re switching between two alters all the time, when one speaks, the other keeps silent. Luckily, these two alters are not entirely separated to the degree we have in split brain patients. Yet what happens when this split is pointed out? Various things. One is to simply justify that state with some clever logic. Another is to recognize the split but see it as “a gift to hold dear, more than a mystery to resolve”. Others simply sign out, as Wayfarer did.
Why this great opposition? The concrete obstacles are diverse but in the end it all boils down to the fact that this unity can be found only in complete freedom. Thus we can only find it if we make the effort to step towards it. As long as we switch between the two modes, cause and effect are always separated. We always wait for something to happen – death, first contact, second coming, lucky neural firing, etc. But this unity is the only thing that can only happen if we ourselves become the cause. Only in this way the causative will of MAL can recognize itself in thinking. When we approach our thinking activity, when we find that tiny thought-image in which MAL finds its reflection, we reach a point for which we can no longer seek external cause. Any such attempt simply splits us again and we become lost in intellectual dust, being completely blind about the fact that MAL’s will flows in the thoughts.

[AshvinP]

You say, "Bernardo seems to have settled that MAL is conscious after all". I presume you mean, something more conscious than the 'instinctive consciousness' we are used to?

Ashvin, I had in mind what he says here 45:33. So he recognizes that there must be spiritual activity behind everything in the Cosmos but then a bridge simply cannot be found. The thinking ego feels itself as part of MAL turned inside out and can’t conceive of any other way of finding the macrocosmic perspective, besides going through death. Hence the dualism of non-dualism.

Ahh ok I prematurely stopped the video before that part - now I see! Thanks also for this illustrative elaboration.

Great quote from Goethe also, which seems to be an alternate rendering of what's in my footnote.

We believe that we’re a unitary being dissociated from MAL but it turns out that we’re not that different from a split-brain patient ourselves. We’re throwing the blame for our disease onto something external (and don’t we do that all the time?), failing to understand that it is within us that the dissociation happens. We’re switching between two alters all the time, when one speaks, the other keeps silent. Luckily, these two alters are not entirely separated to the degree we have in split brain patients. Yet what happens when this split is pointed out? Various things. One is to simply justify that state with some clever logic. Another is to recognize the split but see it as “a gift to hold dear, more than a mystery to resolve”. Others simply sign out, as Wayfarer did.

Yes, I think it would be have been interesting if this thread was started before Wayfarer signed out, since he wanted to discuss Kastrup's ideas and apparently little else. I have a feeling that another excuse would have come to justify remaining in the comfortable split-brain mode. I guess it's too "esoteric" if one desires to heal one's Self!

[Federica]

I have watched a little, including the passage about the void. Based on that, it seems to me Bernardo’s position is stable. M@L is conscious, its spiritual activity or, in his words, its mentations, are represented by the laws of nature, but it’s not meta-conscious, it only has a spontaneous, instinctual “core subjectivity”. Rather, what seems different to me, compared to slightly older videos, is Bernardo's attitude. Maybe it’s just contextual to this one video, I don’t know, or maybe it's my arbitrary take, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate further in this direction anyway, so I would simply notice, to echo the title of this thread, what I intuit as the expression of a non linear soul trajectory.

[Federica]

Speaking of Bernardo's new attitude of allegiance/submission to Levin which I mentioned in the cell intelligence thread, I am reading Bernardo's latest Youtube community comments, written a few hours ago. Things are getting clearer. He speaks of his new company called Syncthetics, and what he's doing to protect himself and his community from these "mad, dark times". Indeed, things are getting clearer...

HOW DO WE COPE IN THESE MAD TIMES?
I'm not as presumptuous as to suppose that I have the answers here, but I can share with you what I am doing, for what it is worth.
First, I've acknowledged to myself that these are times unlike anything we've seen since 1945; times driven by anger, vindictiveness, and destructive impulses at a level unseen in three generations; forces that are vastly overwhelming decency, empathy, kindness, and respect. There is a reason the word "mad" means both "angry" and "insane," and that's what we're witnessing. Something I hadn't quite sensed before has been simmering, repressed in the collective human psyche for a long time, and it is bursting out now, there's no stopping it, it must exhaust itself. Yet, I've also acknowledged to myself that the past 80 years have been a historical anomaly of relative peace and prosperity. Now, we're simply back to the historical norm as it had always been, as our great-grandparents experienced it, and that's all there is to it.
Second, I am taking my eyes off the big world and focussing on my micro-reality: my family, friends, daily activities, and so on. I've unsubscribed to every news channel online (regular cable TV is something I haven't had already for 15 years or so) and to every geopolitics/war/political commentator. I love them, but I need to protect my sanity. I will only check local headlines in my local little newspaper now and then, and that's it. I will live in a near-vacuurn of news.
Third, I will focus on what I CAN change and leave what I can't to others (they exist and are quite clear- eyed about the situation). What I CAN change is through my work: my writing, leading Essentia Foundation, and developing the AI technology behind Syncthetics BV, my new company. These things will now be my world.
Fourth, I will be kind to myself, pursue things that are nurturing, edifying, and insulated from the news cycle. I will read good books, watch good old films, drink good wines, spend a little time again on my computer restoration hobby (in the photo below, you can see the latest SOL-20 computer, the very first home computer from 1976, which I'm restoring). I'll spend time with my partner and my cats, in the garden, walking in the woods, and out with friends. I will take more weekend trips to nature in Germany, so to breath fresh air and enjoy the autumn colors.
I cannot tell you that everything will be okay. Although this is history repeating itself, history has never had the weapons, neither in power nor in quantity, that are readily available to all parties today. What I CAN tell you is that you, and I, have done what we could, so whatever comes, our conscience is clear. Extract yourself from national and international news. Turn back to your personal world, your personal life, your neighborhood, your family and friends, your work, your hobbies, your pets. Live small and simply, and leave the rest to nature.

and then:

You may have already noticed - otherwise you soon will - that I am trying to engage more with you personally, through comments, to recover some sense of community in these difficult times. I have also cleared this space from the energy of MAGA and populism; respectfully, we don't need that energy here right now. I've noticed that they discourage you from commenting. Hopefully this is no longer the case now; you will no longer be confronted or pounced upon negatively for expressing your valid concerns with the state of our culture. My time is quite limited for social media interactions, but I'll try. Next year I hope to do live YouTube sessions with you regularly, in Ask-Me-Anything format. Let us hold the energy of reason and decency together through these dark times.

Got it, Bernardo!

The bold is added

https://www.youtube.com/@bernardokastrup/community

[Cleric]

Speaking of Bernardo's new attitude of allegiance/submission to Levin which I mentioned in the cell intelligence thread, I am reading Bernardo's latest Youtube community comments, written a few hours ago. Things are getting clearer. He speaks of his new company called Syncthetics, and what he's doing to protect himself and his community from these "mad, dark times". Indeed, things are getting clearer...

Thanks Federica. Things are really multilayered. We should remember that many of the problems that we face are deeper in the astral body and thus, even if we touch upon the intellectual expression of certain truths, it may never build the momentum that could set the deeper strata in motion. I watched a video with BK some time ago that throws some more light on the depth of the issues.


(it should start at 59:36)

BK says how idealism and physical science are not like polar opposites, such that once we accept idealism, we discard everything from physicalism. Koch jokes that in that case one can reap all the benefits of idealism - such as no-death - and still do normal science. He then asks if there are some drawbacks to accepting idealism. Then BK begins to explain that to him there are - how he didn't fear death but now he actually does.

He further explains how in a difficult psychedelic trip he had to fight a demon. He now actually fears death because in a sense he feels protected while in the body and now dreads that after death he may find himself in such a never-ending bad trip. I watched this months ago so I'm not sure if he really said it in the video or I'm only reconstructing the meaning by myself, but I think he said that disembodied existence in MAL could actually be hellish and in fact, the embodied state could be preferable (in other words, MAL invented the embodied state to save itself from the hellish Cosmic state).

Of course, to anyone who has at least some acquaintance with Initiatic Science, it is plainly obvious that BK fought the Guardian - that is, the lower self was not ready to die and resurrect in the higher. It should be clear, however, that even if we explain these things to him, this would hardly be of any help. I think it is evident from his testimony (about focusing on his micro-life) that he has recoiled from any possible inner experience of the spiritual world.

[AshvinP]

I have also noticed that BK either closed down his Facebook page or it was suspended for some reason. A lot of people were also saying they got banned from his page. I'm not sure what exactly is going on there, but it makes sense in light of what Federica shared.

Of course, to anyone who has at least some acquaintance with Initiatic Science, it is plainly obvious that BK fought the Guardian - that is, the lower self was not ready to die and resurrect in the higher. It should be clear, however, that even if we explain these things to him, this would hardly be of any help. I think it is evident from his testimony (about focusing on his micro-life) that he has recoiled from any possible inner experience of the spiritual world.

This is key - we must traverse the soul spectrum before reaching the spiritual world. I think this is why ideological extremes have become so pernicious in our time. These are not simply political thoughts, arguments, and positions, but living soul curvatures that steer our thinking states. Yet they come most into focus in the political domain. Both supremacist and 'egalitarian' ideologies, the latter being that which BK is heavily entangled with (as many other intellectually creative thinkers, except a few like JP), are summed up by the tendency for externalization. Instead of viewing the modern cultural climate as a testimony to our own intimate soul curvatures, thoughts are continually steered toward pointing at other evil, degenerate, dangerous, etc. people 'over there', in this or that economic class, this or that gender, this or that race, this or that political party, etc. During a mystical trip, this goes a step more inward and becomes an even more intimate experience of the soul world as externalized demons and beasts. Then this projected reality is used as a justification for further entrenchment into Ahrimanic fear of the higher soul-spiritual world. Alas, the momentum of such an inner tendency combined with the modern cultural climate is such that it will likely only be worked out in a future incarnation.

[Federica]

Speaking of Bernardo's new attitude of allegiance/submission to Levin which I mentioned in the cell intelligence thread, I am reading Bernardo's latest Youtube community comments, written a few hours ago. Things are getting clearer. He speaks of his new company called Syncthetics, and what he's doing to protect himself and his community from these "mad, dark times". Indeed, things are getting clearer...

Thanks Federica. Things are really multilayered. We should remember that many of the problems that we face are deeper in the astral body and thus, even if we touch upon the intellectual expression of certain truths, it may never build the momentum that could set the deeper strata in motion. I watched a video with BK some time ago that throws some more light on the depth of the issues.

BK says how idealism and physical science are not like polar opposites, such that once we accept idealism, we discard everything from physicalism. Koch jokes that in that case one can reap all the benefits of idealism - such as no-death - and still do normal science. He then asks if there are some drawbacks to accepting idealism. Then BK begins to explain that to him there are - how he didn't fear death but now he actually does.

He further explains how in a difficult psychedelic trip he had to fight a demon. He now actually fears death because in a sense he feels protected while in the body and now dreads that after death he may find himself in such a never-ending bad trip. I watched this months ago so I'm not sure if he really said it in the video or I'm only reconstructing the meaning by myself, but I think he said that disembodied existence in MAL could actually be hellish and in fact, the embodied state could be preferable (in other words, MAL invented the embodied state to save itself from the hellish Cosmic state).

Of course, to anyone who has at least some acquaintance with Initiatic Science, it is plainly obvious that BK fought the Guardian - that is, the lower self was not ready to die and resurrect in the higher. It should be clear, however, that even if we explain these things to him, this would hardly be of any help. I think it is evident from his testimony (about focusing on his micro-life) that he has recoiled from any possible inner experience of the spiritual world.

Usch, ja, always tough for me to listen to accounts of psychedelic trips. As much as I realize this is just another problem of my own astral body, it always gives me a deep sense of defeat, termination, and loss. Anyway he doesn't explicitly say that MAL could be hellish, but the idea is clearly there. He says "I don't know, and that is the problem." What I find interesting is that he depicts his creation of analytic idealism almost like an antidote (at 1:03) to the meaninglessness of imagining all the hard earned maturity and ideas lost at death. As if his philosophy was a means to infuse his legacy in nature. Now he knows, so the ego-problem at least is solved.

I have also noticed that BK either closed down his Facebook page or it was suspended for some reason. A lot of people were also saying they got banned from his page. I'm not sure what exactly is going on there, but it makes sense in light of what Federica shared.

Yes, he has "respectfully" cleaned up the space, since he doesn't need certain energies "right now" (perhaps later)

[AshvinP]

I have also noticed that BK either closed down his Facebook page or it was suspended for some reason. A lot of people were also saying they got banned from his page. I'm not sure what exactly is going on there, but it makes sense in light of what Federica shared.

Yes, he has "respectfully" cleaned up the space, since he doesn't need certain energies "right now" (perhaps later)

It appears FB simply restricted his account for unknown reasons. Some of my attempted posts have been rejected for "violating community standards" as well, but it's difficult to figure out what wording is being targeted by the algorithm in relatively long posts. I have to agree with him that its a really frustrating and arbitrary platform. The account he shut down, on the other hand, was X.

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2024/11 ... DYsS2A&m=1