ChatGPT answers metaphysical questions :)

[AshvinP]

There is no immanent connection between those concepts and their worded materialization in the essays.

What does this mean, Federica? How is there is no immanent connection? Yes, different words could be used, the essays could also be written in a different language, but some words had to be used for us to locate and resonate with the relevant inner gestures. How could that happen without an immanent connection? How can you think verbally about spiritual scientific research in a spiritually productive way without such a connection?

How can you think verbally without words? Indeed, you can't, but that's the whole point I've been making from the beginning: you can think non-verbally. So I believe I've already answered the question, and you may want to read the post by Cleric quoted above in its entirety. But to elaborate, I would add the following.

As long as one moves within the space of standard cognition, words come in handy, and may be necessary, for two purposes. First, in case we want to fit in our intellect complex ideas and work with them. Then, we use language like a sort of Zip software, to compress concepts and ideas, so that they take less space, and can be managed and assembled in fluid reasoning by the intellect. Words are also used - like in Clerics essays - as a way to make the concepts portable and available to others, across time and space, in standard cognitive mode. However, there is no immanence of the symbolic tokens in the concepts themselves. Rather, the tokens are like useful add-ons. We can think non-verbally and be operational with concepts, in full and direct connection with meaning. We can even, to some extent, communicate with others non-verbally. Now, the precise extent to which we may engage in spiritual activity, and share it with others, free from any tokenization of experience in word-symbols, depends on the level of cognition of the individuals involved. But even in standard cognition, it’s easy to see how we can receive concepts, and behold them as they are, without verbal commentary, for example in the realm of sensory experiences.

You can picture to yourself the Eiffel tower without any need to rely on words. If, in the moment you recall it or think about it, you momentarily forget what it’s called, you can still see it very clearly in your mind’s eye. Here it's evident how the concept of the Eiffel tower doesn’t need any symbolic tokens to exist, to be received, and to be immediately operable in your consciousness. The verbal token we are familiar with - be it in any idiom, expressed in whatever worded workaround - is superfluous for the concept to dynamically shine in you. There is no symbolic concept of the Eiffel Tower. There is its concept and, optionally, there are linguistic ways to zip it in language form, to create a tokenized sensory experience (sound and rhythm) on top of the initial mental picture, that connects with that concept. No immanence. The zip file is very useful though, to make the concept portable, for you and for others, and easily communicable (for example in an essay), transferable through time and/or space. Although, if you are not writing an essay, but on holiday in Paris with a friend, and visit the Eiffel Tower, you don’t even need any zip file to share that experience with her. The concept can reach both of you in connection with the Eiffel tower precepts, and, although there surely are some individual experiential differences, there is certainly some form of sharing going on without any tokenization needed.

This examples of normal experiences in standard cognition already go a long way to show the non-immanence of word-symbols in concepts. But notice, when higher cognition is developed, the need to rely on verbal tokens for certain purposes (complex reasoning and communication) decreases. If you and a friend have higher cognition (or perhaps even only one of you) and you Ashvin are thinking about the Eiffel tower as part of a particular intent that also involves them, they may know it, without any need for you to zip the Eiffel tower and send it over in word symbols. Of course, this is not a black and white thing, but I want to highlight from yet another viewpoint that there is no immanence of word-symbols in the concept. Anyone can speechlessly recall or picture to oneself the Eiffel tower. Not only that, individuals who have developed some level of higher cognition may communicate it to/from others just as speechlessly, to the extent they can connect with another mind above the level of verbal (sensory) communication.

We could go on and consider what happens with sequences of mental pictures of complex ideas, to find that our intellect needs language to accommodate within its mindspace long series of concepts and operate with them. Then, the intellect needs the zip files, otherwise its capacity is rapidly overwhelmed. And we could enter in the workings of the Zip software, look at the coding inside, but do you agree so far?

I don't agree. As mentioned before, our articulations of these topics can reveal blind spots in our reasoning if we remain open to that possibility. I think this post is an even clearer example of why the Mandelbrot and dirt shoveling illustrations were necessary.

When you think about the verbal thinking layer of experience as superfluous and added on, you are reducing it to the higher order ideal spaces. You imagine we can access pure conceptual meaning and communicate it independently of the verbal strata of cognition, where the latter is felt like an unnecessary addition that only drags the meaning down through a 'detour' into crysallized forms, and is at best only necessary for limited practical aims of communication for Earthly goals but can be bypassed if we have developed higher cognition. But this reductive way of understanding verbal thinking is inaccurate phenomenologically and therefore leads to a misunderstanding of higher cognitive experience as well.

It's clear that we don't generally experience lucid meaning in the absence of verbal thinking. We are certainly steering through intuitive meaning when we interact with the sensory landscape, various objects and people and their physical gestures, but we only awaken to that meaning when it is anchored in our verbal thoughts. This isn't simply some superfluous process though. It provides an opportunity to experience the meaning from a brand new intuitive pespective and develop new intuitions against this imploding verbal kernel. No objective thinking investigations would be possible without that function of the irreducible verbal curvature of our inner activity.

Speaking in more metaphysical terms, spiritual activity and its polar dynamic is generally symbolic in its functioning across the board. Every lower strata of inner activity is an encoding (or reflection) of higher meaningful curvatures. Holistic imaginative experiences, which are the most proximate inner dimension of what we normally experience as mental pictures and 'pure' conceptual meaning (for example in mathematical reasoning), are still encodings of more integrated Inspired states of inner activity, and so on. Of course we shouldn't get fixated on particular word forms and definitions - we can equally speak of perceptions (including words), thoughts, and concepts as analogical, metaphorical, portals, artistic testimonies, or whatever. We can also use an image like this:





Our verbal thoughts are like sparkles ignited by the depths of intuitive existence that we instinctively steer through, modulated over the ideal waves of the hierarchies, but again they aren't superfluous additions but also feed back and modulate the hierarchical depths. The sparkles are the finishing touches on meaningful inner activity that extends through the entire depth. These types of metaphors, like also the enconding and zip metaphors, are very useful and necessary, but we should always realize their limitations and that the living intimate experience of verbal thinking, for example, will always be more than what we can delineate via the metaphors. There is always continual feedback and cross-modulation through the inner strata, and zipping meaning into a word-packet simply doesn't capture this aspect. Neither does the sparkles image. We have to bring this additional aspect ourselves via living and reasoned experience.

Even in higher cognitive states, our intellectual verbal self may recede out of focus from our horizon of consciousness, but it still remains present as the stable pillar of concentrated activity that anchors our more integrated flow of becoming. It is only through this 'silver chord' that we can orient to and refine the higher meaning, naturally condensing the latter into objective thought mappings that allow individual and collective humanity to spiritualize the Earthly phenomenal spectrum. This should also shed light on why mapping the verbal strata cannot be deemed irrelevant to attaining new insights into our spiritual structure. Of course, how exactly something like LLM can be utilized to generate fruitful mappings is a spiritual research question (simply asking "what is a witch?" probably won't get us too far), but there is no principle reason to say it is perfectly useless or superfluous in all circumstances.

[Federica]

What does this mean, Federica? How is there is no immanent connection? Yes, different words could be used, the essays could also be written in a different language, but some words had to be used for us to locate and resonate with the relevant inner gestures. How could that happen without an immanent connection? How can you think verbally about spiritual scientific research in a spiritually productive way without such a connection?

How can you think verbally without words? Indeed, you can't, but that's the whole point I've been making from the beginning: you can think non-verbally. So I believe I've already answered the question, and you may want to read the post by Cleric quoted above in its entirety. But to elaborate, I would add the following.

As long as one moves within the space of standard cognition, words come in handy, and may be necessary, for two purposes. First, in case we want to fit in our intellect complex ideas and work with them. Then, we use language like a sort of Zip software, to compress concepts and ideas, so that they take less space, and can be managed and assembled in fluid reasoning by the intellect. Words are also used - like in Clerics essays - as a way to make the concepts portable and available to others, across time and space, in standard cognitive mode. However, there is no immanence of the symbolic tokens in the concepts themselves. Rather, the tokens are like useful add-ons. We can think non-verbally and be operational with concepts, in full and direct connection with meaning. We can even, to some extent, communicate with others non-verbally. Now, the precise extent to which we may engage in spiritual activity, and share it with others, free from any tokenization of experience in word-symbols, depends on the level of cognition of the individuals involved. But even in standard cognition, it’s easy to see how we can receive concepts, and behold them as they are, without verbal commentary, for example in the realm of sensory experiences.

You can picture to yourself the Eiffel tower without any need to rely on words. If, in the moment you recall it or think about it, you momentarily forget what it’s called, you can still see it very clearly in your mind’s eye. Here it's evident how the concept of the Eiffel tower doesn’t need any symbolic tokens to exist, to be received, and to be immediately operable in your consciousness. The verbal token we are familiar with - be it in any idiom, expressed in whatever worded workaround - is superfluous for the concept to dynamically shine in you. There is no symbolic concept of the Eiffel Tower. There is its concept and, optionally, there are linguistic ways to zip it in language form, to create a tokenized sensory experience (sound and rhythm) on top of the initial mental picture, that connects with that concept. No immanence. The zip file is very useful though, to make the concept portable, for you and for others, and easily communicable (for example in an essay), transferable through time and/or space. Although, if you are not writing an essay, but on holiday in Paris with a friend, and visit the Eiffel Tower, you don’t even need any zip file to share that experience with her. The concept can reach both of you in connection with the Eiffel tower precepts, and, although there surely are some individual experiential differences, there is certainly some form of sharing going on without any tokenization needed.

This examples of normal experiences in standard cognition already go a long way to show the non-immanence of word-symbols in concepts. But notice, when higher cognition is developed, the need to rely on verbal tokens for certain purposes (complex reasoning and communication) decreases. If you and a friend have higher cognition (or perhaps even only one of you) and you Ashvin are thinking about the Eiffel tower as part of a particular intent that also involves them, they may know it, without any need for you to zip the Eiffel tower and send it over in word symbols. Of course, this is not a black and white thing, but I want to highlight from yet another viewpoint that there is no immanence of word-symbols in the concept. Anyone can speechlessly recall or picture to oneself the Eiffel tower. Not only that, individuals who have developed some level of higher cognition may communicate it to/from others just as speechlessly, to the extent they can connect with another mind above the level of verbal (sensory) communication.

We could go on and consider what happens with sequences of mental pictures of complex ideas, to find that our intellect needs language to accommodate within its mindspace long series of concepts and operate with them. Then, the intellect needs the zip files, otherwise its capacity is rapidly overwhelmed. And we could enter in the workings of the Zip software, look at the coding inside, but do you agree so far?

I don't agree. As mentioned before, our articulations of these topics can reveal blind spots in our reasoning if we remain open to that possibility. I think this post is an even clearer example of why the Mandelbrot and dirt shoveling illustrations were necessary.

When you think about the verbal thinking layer of experience as superfluous and added on, you are reducing it to the higher order ideal spaces. You imagine we can access pure conceptual meaning and communicate it independently of the verbal strata of cognition, where the latter is felt like an unnecessary addition that only drags the meaning down through a 'detour' into crysallized forms, and is at best only necessary for limited practical aims of communication for Earthly goals but can be bypassed if we have developed higher cognition. But this reductive way of understanding verbal thinking is inaccurate phenomenologically and therefore leads to a misunderstanding of higher cognitive experience as well.

You have to stop inventing what is not there, Ashvin, and start reading honestly, and with the least possible amount of prejudices, without adding your personal interpretations of what I may mean (in the best case; in the worse - maliciously doing as if you had read what is not there).

I think I have been so far too kind, as I often am, by letting slip by the sides all the questions you have left unanswered in the last few pages of this thread, and treating the points in detail. By the way, what you are writing here is already in contradiction with that post by Cleric that you, hastily and bewildered, quoted without reading, believing you had found an instance of Cleric using the expression "linguistic thinking" in the way you intended it, without realizing it was used in the way opposite to your assertions.

The only reason why I am not making that list of skipped points now, is that I don't think it's worth my efforts, facing such a level of pretentiousness and bad will, especially noticing how many times you have blatantly mis-interpreted my words, read what was not there, only to let the points fall when called out, and continuing here.

Of course we experience lucid non verbal meaning, for example in the situations given in that post.
But no amount of further writing here would pass through the barrier of your pretentiousness anyway, so there would be no use in argumenting further.

[AshvinP]

How can you think verbally without words? Indeed, you can't, but that's the whole point I've been making from the beginning: you can think non-verbally. So I believe I've already answered the question, and you may want to read the post by Cleric quoted above in its entirety. But to elaborate, I would add the following.

As long as one moves within the space of standard cognition, words come in handy, and may be necessary, for two purposes. First, in case we want to fit in our intellect complex ideas and work with them. Then, we use language like a sort of Zip software, to compress concepts and ideas, so that they take less space, and can be managed and assembled in fluid reasoning by the intellect. Words are also used - like in Clerics essays - as a way to make the concepts portable and available to others, across time and space, in standard cognitive mode. However, there is no immanence of the symbolic tokens in the concepts themselves. Rather, the tokens are like useful add-ons. We can think non-verbally and be operational with concepts, in full and direct connection with meaning. We can even, to some extent, communicate with others non-verbally. Now, the precise extent to which we may engage in spiritual activity, and share it with others, free from any tokenization of experience in word-symbols, depends on the level of cognition of the individuals involved. But even in standard cognition, it’s easy to see how we can receive concepts, and behold them as they are, without verbal commentary, for example in the realm of sensory experiences.

You can picture to yourself the Eiffel tower without any need to rely on words. If, in the moment you recall it or think about it, you momentarily forget what it’s called, you can still see it very clearly in your mind’s eye. Here it's evident how the concept of the Eiffel tower doesn’t need any symbolic tokens to exist, to be received, and to be immediately operable in your consciousness. The verbal token we are familiar with - be it in any idiom, expressed in whatever worded workaround - is superfluous for the concept to dynamically shine in you. There is no symbolic concept of the Eiffel Tower. There is its concept and, optionally, there are linguistic ways to zip it in language form, to create a tokenized sensory experience (sound and rhythm) on top of the initial mental picture, that connects with that concept. No immanence. The zip file is very useful though, to make the concept portable, for you and for others, and easily communicable (for example in an essay), transferable through time and/or space. Although, if you are not writing an essay, but on holiday in Paris with a friend, and visit the Eiffel Tower, you don’t even need any zip file to share that experience with her. The concept can reach both of you in connection with the Eiffel tower precepts, and, although there surely are some individual experiential differences, there is certainly some form of sharing going on without any tokenization needed.

This examples of normal experiences in standard cognition already go a long way to show the non-immanence of word-symbols in concepts. But notice, when higher cognition is developed, the need to rely on verbal tokens for certain purposes (complex reasoning and communication) decreases. If you and a friend have higher cognition (or perhaps even only one of you) and you Ashvin are thinking about the Eiffel tower as part of a particular intent that also involves them, they may know it, without any need for you to zip the Eiffel tower and send it over in word symbols. Of course, this is not a black and white thing, but I want to highlight from yet another viewpoint that there is no immanence of word-symbols in the concept. Anyone can speechlessly recall or picture to oneself the Eiffel tower. Not only that, individuals who have developed some level of higher cognition may communicate it to/from others just as speechlessly, to the extent they can connect with another mind above the level of verbal (sensory) communication.

We could go on and consider what happens with sequences of mental pictures of complex ideas, to find that our intellect needs language to accommodate within its mindspace long series of concepts and operate with them. Then, the intellect needs the zip files, otherwise its capacity is rapidly overwhelmed. And we could enter in the workings of the Zip software, look at the coding inside, but do you agree so far?

I don't agree. As mentioned before, our articulations of these topics can reveal blind spots in our reasoning if we remain open to that possibility. I think this post is an even clearer example of why the Mandelbrot and dirt shoveling illustrations were necessary.

When you think about the verbal thinking layer of experience as superfluous and added on, you are reducing it to the higher order ideal spaces. You imagine we can access pure conceptual meaning and communicate it independently of the verbal strata of cognition, where the latter is felt like an unnecessary addition that only drags the meaning down through a 'detour' into crysallized forms, and is at best only necessary for limited practical aims of communication for Earthly goals but can be bypassed if we have developed higher cognition. But this reductive way of understanding verbal thinking is inaccurate phenomenologically and therefore leads to a misunderstanding of higher cognitive experience as well.

You have to stop inventing what it's not there, Ashvin, and start reading honestly, and with the least possible amount of prejudices, without adding your personal interpretations of what I may mean (in the best case, in the worse - maliciously doing as if you had read what is not there).

I think I have been so far too kind, as I often am, by letting slip by the sides all the questions you have left unanswered in the last few pages of this thread and putting effort in ignoring your behavior and treating the points in detail. By the way, what you are writing here, is already in contradiction with that post by Cleric that you, hastily and bewildered, quoted without reading, believing you had found an instance of Cleric using the expression "linguistic thinking" in the way you intended it, without realizing it was used in the way opposite to your assertions.

The only reason while I am not making that list of skipped points now, is that I don't think it's worth my efforts, facing such a level of pretentiousness, and bad will, especially thinking back to how many times you have blatantly mis-interpreted my words, read what was not there, only to let the point fall when called out, and continuing here.

Of course we experience lucid non verbal meaning, for examples in the situations given by Cleric in that post.
No amount of further writing here would pass through the barrier of your pretentiousness anyway, so there would be no use in argumenting further.

We have seen the ostrich sticking head in the sand move often on this forum, many times from you in recent discussions. You always do this once your posts leave no room for mistaken interpretations, those interpretations are revealed as flawed, and you have no way of 'proving yourself right' anymore. Then the only option is to abort. You get insulted, act like no one has understood you yet, and stick the head in the sand so you can remain comfortable in your reductive thinking oscillations. You simply don't want to put in the work that is necessary to attain a healthy and fluid orientation to inner realities, preferring to rest on your categorical schemas about "verbal thinking", "symbols", and so forth. It is really sad to witness your pride continually getting so thoroughly in the way of your intuitive orientation.

It's your arrogant assumption that you are now hovering above the one-sided soul pathways we are all vulnerable to as modern humans, that keeps you flowing so deeply within them in these situations. Then when it is pointed out to you, that is used as an opportunity to feel further insulted and victimized, to entrench even further into unhealthy attitudes. Yes, I can understand it's not easy to continually end up in these situations and confront your flawed thinking and judgments, but you bring this on yourself. No one put you into these situations to shame you, rather it is the perfectly predicatable consequence of your own receded activity on this forum. The need to define and argue about every little word (which reveals who is actually fixated on the word layer of meaning), to form rushed opinions, to criticize every thinker I mention on the forum without knowing their work, to prove to everyone you are "right", to form rigid frameworks, to look down on other forum members, and so on... could only end up here. This is your own activity coming back to meet you and if you can't deal with it on this scale without throwing constant tantrums, well, it's not going to get any easier on the inner path.

Also, Cleric's post couldn't be any more clear that verbal thinking isn't superfluous add on, as you continue to repeat in various ways.

So it's not about simply abandoning verbal thinking but uniting its hierarchical structure of meaning with pictorial thinking.

[Federica]

I don't agree. As mentioned before, our articulations of these topics can reveal blind spots in our reasoning if we remain open to that possibility. I think this post is an even clearer example of why the Mandelbrot and dirt shoveling illustrations were necessary.

When you think about the verbal thinking layer of experience as superfluous and added on, you are reducing it to the higher order ideal spaces. You imagine we can access pure conceptual meaning and communicate it independently of the verbal strata of cognition, where the latter is felt like an unnecessary addition that only drags the meaning down through a 'detour' into crysallized forms, and is at best only necessary for limited practical aims of communication for Earthly goals but can be bypassed if we have developed higher cognition. But this reductive way of understanding verbal thinking is inaccurate phenomenologically and therefore leads to a misunderstanding of higher cognitive experience as well.

You have to stop inventing what it's not there, Ashvin, and start reading honestly, and with the least possible amount of prejudices, without adding your personal interpretations of what I may mean (in the best case, in the worse - maliciously doing as if you had read what is not there).

I think I have been so far too kind, as I often am, by letting slip by the sides all the questions you have left unanswered in the last few pages of this thread and putting effort in ignoring your behavior and treating the points in detail. By the way, what you are writing here, is already in contradiction with that post by Cleric that you, hastily and bewildered, quoted without reading, believing you had found an instance of Cleric using the expression "linguistic thinking" in the way you intended it, without realizing it was used in the way opposite to your assertions.

The only reason while I am not making that list of skipped points now, is that I don't think it's worth my efforts, facing such a level of pretentiousness, and bad will, especially thinking back to how many times you have blatantly mis-interpreted my words, read what was not there, only to let the point fall when called out, and continuing here.

Of course we experience lucid non verbal meaning, for examples in the situations given by Cleric in that post.
No amount of further writing here would pass through the barrier of your pretentiousness anyway, so there would be no use in argumenting further.

We have seen the ostrich sticking head in the sand move often on this forum, many times from you in recent discussions. You always do this once your posts leave no room for mistaken interpretations, those interpretations are revealed as flawed, and you have no way of 'proving yourself right' anymore. Then the only option is to abort. You get insulted, act like no one has understood you yet, and stick the head in the sand so you can remain comfortable in your reductive thinking oscillations. You simply don't want to put in the work that is necessary to attain a healthy and fluid orientation to inner realities, preferring to rest on your categorical schemas about "verbal thinking", "symbols", and so forth. It is really sad to witness your pride continually getting so thoroughly in the way of your intuitive orientation.

It's your arrogant assumption that you are now hovering above the one-sided soul pathways we are all vulnerable to as modern humans, that keeps you flowing so deeply within them in these situations. Then when it is pointed out to you, that is used as an opportunity to feel further insulted and victimized, to entrench even further into unhealthy attitudes. Yes, I can understand it's not easy to continually end up in these situations and confront your flawed thinking and judgments, but you bring this on yourself. No one put you into these situations to shame you, rather it is the perfectly predicatable consequence of your own receded activity on this forum. The need to define and argue about every little word (which reveals who is actually fixated on the word layer of meaning), to form rushed opinions, to criticize every thinker I mention on the forum without knowing their work, to prove to everyone you are "right", to form rigid frameworks, to look down on other forum members, and so on... could only end up here. This is your own activity coming back to meet you and if you can't deal with it on this scale without throwing constant tantrums, well, it's not going to get any easier on the inner path.

It's interesting that your main line of attack is always and constantly to look at the past and try to ground your points in there (under the deforming lens of your personal biases). I was just reading in your essay how you argue about the past and future orientations in Kantian philosophy. And you are the first to apply the opposite of what you preach, as soon as you are not in an essay writer posture. Anyway, I think I have argued enough points that you have simply ignored, while continually deforming some others, so it's hardly me who is aborting this discussion. I would be happy to continue it, as soon as anyone with good will shows interest in continuing it. The rest of your comments here are so unwarranted, in hindsight I think I should not have pardoned the similar ones you have allowed yourself to make multiple times now in the recent past. There is one thing that is right in the above, though not in the sense you mean it: it's me attracting this behavior in my flow of becoming, of course, and it's up to me to learn from that.

[AshvinP]

Anyway, I think I have argued enough points that you have simply ignored, while continually deforming some others, so it's hardly me who is aborting this discussion.

That's a major part of the problem - you are continually trying to argue points, getting lost in the elemental details and therefore failing to see the broader gestures at work in our spiritual existence. It is similar to FB and his psychic phemomenology - the more you try to point his attention to broader spiritual gestures, the more he focuses on dissecting every little nook and cranny of soul experience. You are similarly trying to find refuge in your micro-arguments about every single phrase used instead of discerning the holistic principled patterns of spiritual existence that are being expressed. You call the latter "spiritual impressionism" so as to rationalize your continual avoidance of these broader gestures and what blind spots they may reveal in your current thinking.

There is a great irony here. On the one hand, you keep accusing JP/me of flattening concepts into the "word-layer" (on what reasoned basis, no one has been able to figure out yet), but on the other hand, you find it difficult to see how the constant references on this forum to "symbolic testimonies", ""symbolic encoding", "symbolic gestures", "artistic testimonies", and so on could have anything to do with "symbolic concept", which you call an impossible paradox or whatever. In other words... You are latching onto particular word formulations and making pedantic arguments based on those instead of trying to direct attention to the conceptual meaning that is anchored by all these word sequences, which we have tried to elucidate in many different ways already. Then that focus on the verbal tokenization gets projected onto me and poor old JP. You are even proud that you can form endless opinions from analyzing these verbal tokens without any wider meaningful context for them.

Maybe you should also start looking at receded activity more carefully instead of shoveling behind your back like there is nothing more to learn from it. Then you would clearly notice this etched pattern repeating itself on the forum with ever greater intensity and frequency.

[AshvinP]

By the way, this is a great thread and series of posts to revisit (and incidentally is one of the few times I have seen Cleric use the same metaphor/example to illustrate the same point). I'm not posting this to rehash the past or prove some point, but to anyone reading fairly it should be clear the same core issues are at play. Since these discussions can quickly get convoluted and carried away in many directions (which I have also contributed to here), it helps to have some clear statements to refocus attention toward the most important principles for our inner orientation, especially when considering the indispensable function of artistic/symbolic linguistic thinking, such as we constantly strive to employ on this forum, for higher knowledge.


viewtopic.php?p=19240#p19240

Here we should remember that there’s something in the steering of every spiritual perspective that is not reducible to other perspectives. In other words, when we know something of the archetypal patterns of reality, this doesn’t directly translate to knowledge of how things will evolve. We know that we’ll pass through the portal of death. This is an archetypal rhythm. But this in itself doesn’t determine the full details of how our life will be lived. It is known that the Earth will make a full revolution around the Sun in a year but this doesn’t fully determine what humans will make out of world history in that time. In that sense, there are things that can be known with archetypal certainty but the playing out of the details is creatively determined down the gradient. It is our job to understand how the carrier waves of reality evolve in order to navigate them with the greatest freedom.

The conclusion is that the perceptual world is not something simple that simply follows our intuitions but reflects infinitely complex interference of activity of beings. For this reason, perceptions always invite us to seek new intuitions. We can’t say “I no longer need the perceptual world, I’ll investigate the intuitive activity itself” because this activity can’t be known in itself, in isolation. There’s always also the perceptual pole of existence (I remind that this doesn’t mean only sensory perceptions but the full spectrum of spiritual phenomena). Our intuitions work upon perceptions and organize their precipitation. This in turn leads us to new ways in which perceptions present themselves, which leads us to new intuitions and so on. There’s always this rhythmic interplay. There’s no point in which we say “OK, I found my way in the ideal world so now the perceptual pole is redundant, I can simply predict the perceptions by knowing the ideal activity.” As long as we exist as a being that has a relative perspective in reality, there’s always a perceptual mystery, simply because we can’t know the free spiritual activity of all beings simultaneously. The perceptual world encodes the interference of intents of beings. Thus there’s always something to learn from the perceptual pole because it’s only against it that we can find the intuitive intents. Thus as long as we perceive, there are also new intuitions to be found.
...
I think both are true. On one hand there’s really something which is already known but on the other, one is still surprised in the sense that every metaphor is a different inner way to experience these spiritual dynamics. In other words, one can ask: “If I have never found these metaphors, would I still know of the deeper spiritual dynamics?” The answer would be no. Of course, on some level we do know them. That’s why most spiritual teachings compare the development of deeper knowledge as a kind of remembering. One can say that these intuitions have always been merged in the intuitive background, yet they would have never come into focus if they didn’t incarnate in the metaphorical thinking gestures.

It’s worth grasping this because it is a source of great confusion when we take the abstract general truths to be enough. For example we can say “There’s existence”. This is a fact so general that it will be valid as long as we exist. Everything else can be seen as happening within the context of this fact. Yet we can never derive the infinite variety of existence from that general concept.

For this reason, every new metaphor is also a surprise. Maybe not in the sense that it turns our understanding 180 degrees but because we find new ways in which the general truths can be experienced as concrete reality.

I would say that Levin’s model has been a surprise for me. I think it provides a conceptual language that can quite easily be adopted to speak about our spiritual experience in concrete ways. This is what really is the most decisive step in our spiritual evolution – we need to find ways to think and speak of our temporal unfolding with ever greater clarity.

[Federica]

It's staggering how your trains of thoughts-feelings in these situations follow a frighteningly rigid template. All your typical steps are there again, you tick them off methodically in the same order, same words and same intentions, including the drop of admission in a sea of self-indulgence, and your final alibi quote. A lot to be learned from being involved in and somehow facilitating these loops for sure.

[Federica]

Cleric, if it’s not too much to ask, would you share if you also think that JP impersonates the Christ impulse, and if you agree with Ashvin’s ideas on language and symbols as expressed in this thread (leaving aside the personal comments)? Not in long elaborations but as general orientation: do you think that Ashvin’s understanding of language and symbols has issues, or does it go more or less in the right direction? If sharing this is compatible with the way you intend your participation here and now, I would appreciate that.

[Cleric]

Cleric, if it’s not too much to ask, would you share if you also think that JP impersonates the Christ impulse, and if you agree with Ashvin’s ideas on language and symbols as expressed in this thread (leaving aside the personal comments)? Not in long elaborations but as general orientation: do you think that Ashvin’s understanding of language and symbols has issues, or does it go more or less in the right direction? If sharing this is compatible with the way you intend your participation here and now, I would appreciate that.

Yesterday I started writing the following in response to your previous post but didn't have time to finish it:

Thank you, Cleric. No you haven't missed it. I meant both. Not that the output we may decide to work with doesn't enter our flow of becoming. A student who uses GPT to write a dissertation surely has GPT frames entering the flow, mental pictures, receding memories --- "meaning" in some standard sense. And the same happens if I use it. But other than that, I believe what we can learn from the LLMs doesn't come from the side of its output, but from a reflection on its advent as a technology. And I don't see that the result of a query, for example the reply to the question "What is a witch", is a map similar to the Mandelbrot map above. The real LLM map, as GS said, remains hidden for us, in its connection with output generation. The "map" of the LLM similar to the Mandelbrot map is precisely what's in the background of the technology, not in its output. The map is what can be grasped while watching GS's videos. What new, insightful thoughts can you get from an instance (or multiple instances) of output, as below? How this instance of output is different, meaning-wise than any other standard sources of info about witches? What deeply meaningful hard science of symbols can one get here? What meaning that only an LLM can provide?

That's for sure. We can only guess (unless someone has the chance to ask) but as far as I'm acquainted with JP's stance, I doubt that he implies that information about the weighting of ideas can be queried and gotten as an answer from the chat itself. This would require a kind of 'introspection', which doesn't exist in LLMs. As we said before, the model can't even introspect whether a token-vector represents a whole word or a single character.

JP says: "the large language models have mapped out the symbolic world and what they have mapped out is the probability
that ideas will co-occur" so he thinks one can read ideas, directly, in the symbolic output, that is, he calls idea the average of the very mixed bag of more or less dreamy language use. There is a lot of what Steiner calls "thinking in words" there, which is a main driving force of why words (not ideas) co-occur. But JP sees it as a mapping of co-occurring ideas, rather than co-occurring words. I believe the link between aggregated word usage and living ideas is weak, such as can be gathered from outputs like this, and the link between the singular output (as for example above) and the Mandelbrot-like high-level map is also weak... but I realize that mental pictures are being formed, as we read the GPT results.

I'm not as familiar with JP as Ashvin is, but from what I've watched (I haven't read books of his) he lays down his view more or less unequivocally. For him meaning is the ground of reality (and not in a sense of a 'substance'). As he says, reality is made not of matter but of what matters. Thoughts, words, are embodiments of the spirit. They exhibit the secret order of the Logos. So is the whole World.

In this sense, I think his position is comparable to Levin who wants to use technology as a kind of periscope into the Platonic order, except that JP takes this more from a psychological perspective (everyone with their craft) and sees the expressions of TFW as testimonies of the secret Platonic order. The common thing between them is that neither investigates the possibility that we can awaken to consciousness within these depths. Instead, one remains at the condensation horizon where intellectual thoughts take shape. In this sense, JP is as far as one can go in the cognitive experience of the Logos (higher ideal orders of reality) while still remaining entirely within the intellectual gestures. With such a grasp on his stance, it is difficult for me to imagine that he seeks meaning/ideas as somehow contained in the LLM statistics or even in human-written text.

Think of the popular word clouds.


(Source)

Even though highlighting individual words clearly misses the context in which the word has been used, it still gives us some clues about the ideas that the speaker has been expressing. It seems to me that JP means something of this kind when he describes his view on LLMs, except that we're no longer speaking of the frequency of occurrences of single words but of more complicated relations of words. But still, these co-occurrences tell us something about the proximity of the ideas embodied in the words, just like the words in the cloud above tell something about the ideas that went through Trump's mind at that time. Whether these thought-words were Inspired or they were improvised at the moment, reflected his well-trodden inner musings, given to him by someone who wrote his speech, etc., is a different question. As long as the texts on which LLMs have been trained are produced by thinking beings, it is natural that the weightings of words should reflect something of the ideal relations. And again, I fully agree with you that this weighting is not something that we query the user side of the LLM about, but which we can only investigate from a meta-perspective. And the same holds true even if we analyze regular books 'by hand'. Our analysis can never be found as contained in the existing text but we produce it by growing into an encompassing sphere.

The way I see it, if we need to look for the shortcomings in JP's position, it would have to do with the fact that the intellect can't find the higher being that animates it from within the higher order (it is only felt as the Divine Logos). In that sense, one has not much of a choice but to become an intellectual gladiator, much like BK says for himself. This, however, makes it seem that our job on Earth is to convince others of the higher truths, and then we'll see what to do next. In JP's case, if we imagine that he convinces the whole world and there's no more need for intellectual battles, this would lead to the positive vision that normal exoteric Christians have - we are here on Earth, we live a peaceful moral life as far as we can, everything else is God's job, and our own existence eventually continues after death in the heavenly regions.

So if we need to focus on where JP is insufficient, it should be that Earthly existence still remains capped in the sensory-intellectual spectrum. It is from this position that all other endeavors can start to go in the wrong direction. For example, in such a utopian scenario one can say "Well, we have understood ourselves as embodiments of the living Logos. Our society is now morally sound, we have not many problems. While we live our peaceful, pious lives and wait for death, we may as well explore something of the hidden orders, for example by analyzing the patterns of language, seeking archetypal patterns in biology, and so on. All of this, however, should remain as a gentle exercise, that shouldn't strike back on our moral life."

Of course, all of this is only a limited view that I have gathered about him. We should remember that many of these public figures have private meditations of their own that they wouldn't put out without reluctance, especially when they have built a following and have turned that into a means to provide for living. It is conceivable that JP considers also karma and reincarnation, a more extended evolutionary story, but we can only guess. In any case, at this time language is his prime method of probing the secret meaningful world of the Logos. In other words, besides that world being mystically felt as gushing through the inner perspective of our Earthly avatar, the condensing intellectual thoughts are the only things that we can make a 'hard science' of, but I think it is clear he feels the meaning of these thoughts is descending from the realm of the Logos.

---

About your linguistic conversation with Asvhin - I'll have to follow more carefully the latest posts but here are a few isolated things:

On one hand, I understand your motivation for the Eiffel Tower (ET) example. Our visual canvas indeed feels more like ground, while our verbal thoughts are sent as smoke rings against it. If we stop puffing the smoke rings we still see the canvas (as if we project the image with our ray of activity). Yet, the visual picture of the tower is still a symbolic anchor against which the concept is experienced. You can try to concentrate on the picture of the ET. You can pronounce also the words, maybe in different languages. But try to concentrate on the concept/meaning of the ET without using either a word or a visual image, or making a shape with your imaginary hands, etc. Not so easy, is it? Without any imaginative support we are left wondering "How do I even know what I'm concentrating on? What does it even mean to concentrate on the pure meaning/concept, without any inner phenomena that the meaning elucidates? What would that feel like?" We may try to cheat by picturing a blurry blob and recast the concept into it, but that's still another symbol we have created. As a matter of fact, such a meditation gives a hint about what training for Inspirative cognition feels like.

On the other hand, Ashvin's response may have left the impression, that he can't grasp cognition without verbal support (as if he can't experience the concept of the ET by contemplating the inner image without casting a word smoke ring). So it's natural that one who can think about the ET both pictorially and verbally should see the one who prioritizes verbal thought, as being stuck in a more constrained situation. Ashvin can answer for himself, but here's what I think.

Verbal thought is important because in the inner sound phenomena ('shapes' in the sound ether) we experience much more finely the reflection of our spiritual activity. For example, when we visually picture the ET, this usually comes as a whole stamp. Normally we don't build up the inner image in the way we would draw it bit by bit. Thus, thinking in pictures clearly relies on the etheric reverberations of past visual perceptions. When we think of the ET, it's like we browse for a whole photograph within our etheric organism. It should immediately be said that something very similar can happen when we think verbally in such ready-made etheric audiograms (analogy with the etheric photographs). This kind of thinking is what you are mainly and rightly opposed to. Yet, as far as the investigation of our deeper spiritual activity goes, the willful manipulation of the phenomenal 'pixels', seems to feel more intimate when we do that in the sound of our inner voice. Try it and tell how it feels to you. Try manipulating the color pixels of an inner image and observe how it feels in relation to your inner activity. Then try it with manipulating the auditory pixels of your inner voice. Which of the two feels more intimate, as if reflecting more of your I-ness, and which feels a little bit more remote, as if you manipulate something on a canvas at a small distance? It's not a question of demeaning or avoiding one kind of imaginative activity in expense of another, in exactly the same way as we shouldn't avoid bodily will, just because it feels to manifest through more unknown layers. So in this sense, just like we have previously graded TFW according to how in-phase they feel to our innermost intuitive intents, so we can differentiate even the strata of purely imaginative activity into such gradations from more remote to more intimate - warmth ether, light/color ether, sound ether, life ether.

Through SS we should already have sense about many reciprocal things (like when Christ says that the last shall be first). Our larynx is not destined to remain a mere sound-producing organ (both in the physical and etheric sense). Here we should think of Cymatics. As we evolve, the sound of our inner activity becomes much more encompassing and creative. Then even the pixels of the light ether will feel much more intimate and in-phase with our intuitive intents. Even in the Imaginative state the color element is still somewhat more remote - we are aware of how little of the intricate details of the pictorial content are shaped by our own activity (we have said before that the Angelic minds are actually predominantly creative there, but a lot can also be of elemental nature).

So in conclusion, it's not about cementing ourselves in thinking in words, but knowing how our spiritual activity manifests. Verbal thinking is important as far as we can retrace through it and liberate the forces presently constrained within the larynx, and even further in the heart, which would really unlock the future creative possibilities of the Logos-Word.

[Cleric]

Cleric, if it’s not too much to ask, would you share if you also think that JP impersonates the Christ impulse, and if you agree with Ashvin’s ideas on language and symbols as expressed in this thread (leaving aside the personal comments)? Not in long elaborations but as general orientation: do you think that Ashvin’s understanding of language and symbols has issues, or does it go more or less in the right direction? If sharing this is compatible with the way you intend your participation here and now, I would appreciate that.

Yesterday I started writing the following in response to your previous post but didn't have time to finish it:

Thank you, Cleric. No you haven't missed it. I meant both. Not that the output we may decide to work with doesn't enter our flow of becoming. A student who uses GPT to write a dissertation surely has GPT frames entering the flow, mental pictures, receding memories --- "meaning" in some standard sense. And the same happens if I use it. But other than that, I believe what we can learn from the LLMs doesn't come from the side of its output, but from a reflection on its advent as a technology. And I don't see that the result of a query, for example the reply to the question "What is a witch", is a map similar to the Mandelbrot map above. The real LLM map, as GS said, remains hidden for us, in its connection with output generation. The "map" of the LLM similar to the Mandelbrot map is precisely what's in the background of the technology, not in its output. The map is what can be grasped while watching GS's videos. What new, insightful thoughts can you get from an instance (or multiple instances) of output, as below? How this instance of output is different, meaning-wise than any other standard sources of info about witches? What deeply meaningful hard science of symbols can one get here? What meaning that only an LLM can provide?

That's for sure. We can only guess (unless someone has the chance to ask) but as far as I'm acquainted with JP's stance, I doubt that he implies that information about the weighting of ideas can be queried and gotten as an answer from the chat itself. This would require a kind of 'introspection', which doesn't exist in LLMs. As we said before, the model can't even introspect whether a token-vector represents a whole word or a single character.

JP says: "the large language models have mapped out the symbolic world and what they have mapped out is the probability
that ideas will co-occur" so he thinks one can read ideas, directly, in the symbolic output, that is, he calls idea the average of the very mixed bag of more or less dreamy language use. There is a lot of what Steiner calls "thinking in words" there, which is a main driving force of why words (not ideas) co-occur. But JP sees it as a mapping of co-occurring ideas, rather than co-occurring words. I believe the link between aggregated word usage and living ideas is weak, such as can be gathered from outputs like this, and the link between the singular output (as for example above) and the Mandelbrot-like high-level map is also weak... but I realize that mental pictures are being formed, as we read the GPT results.

I'm not as familiar with JP as Ashvin is, but from what I've watched (I haven't read books of his) he lays down his view more or less unequivocally. For him meaning is the ground of reality (and not in a sense of a 'substance'). As he says, reality is made not of matter but of what matters. Thoughts, words, are embodiments of the spirit. They exhibit the secret order of the Logos. So is the whole World.

In this sense, I think his position is comparable to Levin who wants to use technology as a kind of periscope into the Platonic order, except that JP takes this more from a psychological perspective (everyone with their craft) and sees the expressions of TFW as testimonies of the secret Platonic order. The common thing between them is that neither investigates the possibility that we can awaken to consciousness within these depths. Instead, one remains at the condensation horizon where intellectual thoughts take shape. In this sense, JP is as far as one can go in the cognitive experience of the Logos (higher ideal orders of reality) while still remaining entirely within the intellectual gestures. With such a grasp on his stance, it is difficult for me to imagine that he seeks meaning/ideas as somehow contained in the LLM statistics or even in human-written text.

Think of the popular word clouds.


(Source)

Even though highlighting individual words clearly misses the context in which the word has been used, it still gives us some clues about the ideas that the speaker has been expressing. It seems to me that JP means something of this kind when he describes his view on LLMs, except that we're no longer speaking of the frequency of occurrences of single words but of more complicated relations of words. But still, these co-occurrences tell us something about the proximity of the ideas embodied in the words, just like the words in the cloud above tell something about the ideas that went through Trump's mind at that time. Whether these thought-words were Inspired or they were improvised at the moment, reflected his well-trodden inner musings, given to him by someone who wrote his speech, etc., is a different question. As long as the texts on which LLMs have been trained are produced by thinking beings, it is natural that the weightings of words should reflect something of the ideal relations. And again, I fully agree with you that this weighting is not something that we query the user side of the LLM about, but which we can only investigate from a meta-perspective. And the same holds true even if we analyze regular books 'by hand'. Our analysis can never be found as contained in the existing text but we produce it by growing into an encompassing sphere.

The way I see it, if we need to look for the shortcomings in JP's position, it would have to do with the fact that the intellect can't find the higher being that animates it from within the higher order (it is only felt as the Divine Logos). In that sense, one has not much of a choice but to become an intellectual gladiator, much like BK says for himself. This, however, makes it seem that our job on Earth is to convince others of the higher truths, and then we'll see what to do next. In JP's case, if we imagine that he convinces the whole world and there's no more need for intellectual battles, this would lead to the positive vision that normal exoteric Christians have - we are here on Earth, we live a peaceful moral life as far as we can, everything else is God's job, and our own existence eventually continues after death in the heavenly regions.

So if we need to focus on where JP is insufficient, it should be that Earthly existence still remains capped in the sensory-intellectual spectrum. It is from this position that all other endeavors can start to go in the wrong direction. For example, in such a utopian scenario one can say "Well, we have understood ourselves as embodiments of the living Logos. Our society is now morally sound, we have not many problems. While we live our peaceful, pious lives and wait for death, we may as well explore something of the hidden orders, for example by analyzing the patterns of language, seeking archetypal patterns in biology, and so on. All of this, however, should remain as a gentle exercise, that shouldn't strike back on our moral life."

Of course, all of this is only a limited view that I have gathered about him. We should remember that many of these public figures have private meditations of their own that they wouldn't put out without reluctance, especially when they have built a following and have turned that into a means to provide for living. It is conceivable that JP considers also karma and reincarnation, a more extended evolutionary story, but we can only guess. In any case, at this time language is his prime method of probing the secret meaningful world of the Logos. In other words, besides that world being mystically felt as gushing through the inner perspective of our Earthly avatar, the condensing intellectual thoughts are the only things that we can make a 'hard science' of, but I think it is clear he feels the meaning of these thoughts is descending from the realm of the Logos.

---

About your linguistic conversation with Asvhin - I'll have to follow more carefully the latest posts but here are a few isolated things:

On one hand, I understand your motivation for the Eiffel Tower (ET) example. Our visual canvas indeed feels more like ground, while our verbal thoughts are sent as smoke rings against it. If we stop puffing the smoke rings we still see the canvas (as if we project the image with our ray of activity). Yet, the visual picture of the tower is still a symbolic anchor against which the concept is experienced. You can try to concentrate on the picture of the ET. You can pronounce also the words, maybe in different languages. But try to concentrate on the concept/meaning of the ET without using either a word or a visual image, or making a shape with your imaginary hands, etc. Not so easy, is it? Without any imaginative support we are left wondering "How do I even know what I'm concentrating on? What does it even mean to concentrate on the pure meaning/concept, without any inner phenomena that the meaning elucidates? What would that feel like?" We may try to cheat by picturing a blurry blob and recast the concept into it, but that's still another symbol we have created. As a matter of fact, such a meditation gives a hint about what training for Inspirative cognition feels like.

On the other hand, Ashvin's response may have left the impression, that he can't grasp cognition without verbal support (as if he can't experience the concept of the ET by contemplating the inner image without casting a word smoke ring). So it's natural that one who can think about the ET both pictorially and verbally should see the one who prioritizes verbal thought, as being stuck in a more constrained situation. Ashvin can answer for himself, but here's what I think.

Verbal thought is important because in the inner sound phenomena ('shapes' in the sound ether) we experience much more finely the reflection of our spiritual activity. For example, when we visually picture the ET, this usually comes as a whole stamp. Normally we don't build up the inner image in the way we would draw it bit by bit. Thus, thinking in pictures clearly relies on the etheric reverberations of past visual perceptions. When we think of the ET, it's like we browse for a whole photograph within our etheric organism. It should immediately be said that something very similar can happen when we think verbally in such ready-made etheric audiograms (analogy with the etheric photographs). This kind of thinking is what you are mainly and rightly opposed to. Yet, as far as the investigation of our deeper spiritual activity goes, the willful manipulation of the phenomenal 'pixels', seems to feel more intimate when we do that in the sound of our inner voice. Try it and tell how it feels to you. Try manipulating the color pixels of an inner image and observe how it feels in relation to your inner activity. Then try it with manipulating the auditory pixels of your inner voice. Which of the two feels more intimate, as if reflecting more of your I-ness, and which feels a little bit more remote, as if you manipulate something on a canvas at a small distance? It's not a question of demeaning or avoiding one kind of imaginative activity in favor of another, in exactly the same way as we shouldn't avoid bodily will, just because it feels to manifest through more unknown layers. So in this sense, just like we have previously graded TFW according to how in-phase they feel to our innermost intuitive intents, so we can differentiate even the strata of purely imaginative activity into such gradations from more remote to more intimate - warmth ether, light/color ether, sound ether, life ether.

Through SS we should already have sense about many reciprocal things (like when Christ says that the last shall be first). Our larynx is not destined to remain a mere sound-producing organ (both in the physical and etheric sense). Here we should think of Cymatics. As we evolve, the sound of our inner activity becomes much more encompassing and creative. Then even the pixels of the light ether will feel much more intimate and in-phase with our intuitive intents. Even in the Imaginative state the color element is still somewhat more remote - we are aware of how little of the intricate details of the pictorial content are shaped by our own activity (we have said before that the Angelic minds are actually predominantly creative there, but a lot can also be of elemental nature).

So in conclusion, it's not about cementing ourselves in thinking in words, but knowing how our spiritual activity manifests. Verbal thinking is important as far as we can retrace through it and liberate the forces presently constrained within the larynx, and even further in the heart, which would really unlock the future creative possibilities of the Logos-Word.