KASTRUP AND SHELDRAKE ON THE COSMIC MIND

[Stranger]

Cmon guys, if a clock can do it, we can do it too!


"For you to deceive yourself on something that is plain obvious, you have to be incredibly intelligent. In order to be able to hide the obvious from yourself, you have to engage in acrobatic dance of concepts and ideas."
Bernardo Kastrup

[Stranger]

The "I" can't directly see itself in the process of breaking the balls, as another ball that is being broken, so it forgets about its own existence when theorizing about the 'laws' of reality. It is the same thing every scientist does when they forget to account for the fact that their "I" sets up the experiments that elicit certain movements of natural processes and their "I" analyzes the results to formulate 'laws of nature'. Of course, if the insightful agency that always links Idea and Perception is completely blotted out from consciousness, everything will start to seem mindless and mechanical.

Likewise, it is the insightful and active "I" that doesn't see any advantage in believing some things and not others, or that mimics the transformation of perceptual states in its concepts and thereby derives the 'laws of motion' for planets around the Sun. It is the same "I" that disregards the perceptual states and simply extrapolates the mechanical 'laws of motion' into mathematical models that will supposedly hold good for all time (which has already proven to be a false assumption of the "I" according to the latest research of planetary motion). It is the "I" that dreams it needs to believe in things rather than know them because it forgot its own insightful agency by which all is known.

If you look into your direct experience, you will not find any "real I" other than your idea of "I". The idea that there is some "I" behind the actions that cannot know itself "just like an eye that cannot see itself" is only an abstract idea that we have been conditioned to believe in. Essentially it's no different than the idea of "matter" which somehow exists "out there" but cannot be directly experienced. If there is something you cannot find in your direct conscious experience, it means that there is simply no ground to believe that it actually exists. This applies to the abstract idea of a spaghetti monster, the abstract idea of matter, this also applies to the abstract idea of "I".

When looked directly into the actual facts of conscious experience, all that can be found is only Aware-Thinking-Willing (ATW) manifesting thoughts and actions. ATW is not a pronoun ("I"), it's a verb, it's "doing" without an entity of a "doer". The actual "thinker-doer-willer" is nowhere to be found apart from the idea of the "thinker-doer-willer", but this idea is simply another idea that is being willfully thought by ATW. ATW has enormous power to deceive itself, to create abstract thoughts and imaginations about some imaginary entities (like "I", matter, external objects etc) and creating beliefs-thoughts that these entities exist as something other than just thoughts and imaginations produced by ATW.

Moreover, if we assume that there exists the "I"-entity and that this "I" is universal for all sentient beings, then we run into a logical contradiction. How come if there is only one "I", then one sentient being does not experience the thoughts and perceptions of any other sentient being? If there is only one "I" which knows and experiences everything, then all knowledge and experiences would necessarily have to be shared and integrated into a single stream of conscious knowledge-experience.

It's precisely because there is no universal "I", a universal center of doing and experiencing, that ATW can think and act "locally" in the individuated streams of thinking and actions. The experiences and ideas can certainly be shared between the individuated streams; however, they also many not.

[Lou Gold]

As an old guy, I surely love this way performed brilliantly last night... and, yeah, I think it's relevant.

[Güney27]

The "I" can't directly see itself in the process of breaking the balls, as another ball that is being broken, so it forgets about its own existence when theorizing about the 'laws' of reality. It is the same thing every scientist does when they forget to account for the fact that their "I" sets up the experiments that elicit certain movements of natural processes and their "I" analyzes the results to formulate 'laws of nature'. Of course, if the insightful agency that always links Idea and Perception is completely blotted out from consciousness, everything will start to seem mindless and mechanical.

Likewise, it is the insightful and active "I" that doesn't see any advantage in believing some things and not others, or that mimics the transformation of perceptual states in its concepts and thereby derives the 'laws of motion' for planets around the Sun. It is the same "I" that disregards the perceptual states and simply extrapolates the mechanical 'laws of motion' into mathematical models that will supposedly hold good for all time (which has already proven to be a false assumption of the "I" according to the latest research of planetary motion). It is the "I" that dreams it needs to believe in things rather than know them because it forgot its own insightful agency by which all is known.

If you look into your direct experience, you will not find any "real I" other than your idea of "I". The idea that there is some "I" behind the actions that cannot know itself "just like an eye that cannot see itself" is only an abstract idea that we have been conditioned to believe in. Essentially it's no different than the idea of "matter" which somehow exists "out there" but cannot be directly experienced. If there is something you cannot find in your direct conscious experience, it means that there is simply no ground to believe that it actually exists. This applies to the abstract idea of a spaghetti monster, the abstract idea of matter, this also applies to the abstract idea of "I".

When looked directly into the actual facts of conscious experience, all that can be found is only Aware-Thinking-Willing (ATW) manifesting thoughts and actions. ATW is not a pronoun ("I"), it's a verb, it's "doing" without an entity of a "doer". The actual "thinker-doer-willer" is nowhere to be found apart from the idea of the "thinker-doer-willer", but this idea is simply another idea that is being willfully thought by ATW. ATW has enormous power to deceive itself, to create abstract thoughts and imaginations about some imaginary entities (like "I", matter, external objects etc) and creating beliefs-thoughts that these entities exist as something other than just thoughts and imaginations produced by ATW.

Moreover, if we assume that there exists the "I"-entity and that this "I" is universal for all sentient beings, then we run into a logical contradiction. How come if there is only one "I", then one sentient being does not experience the thoughts and perceptions of any other sentient being? If there is only one "I" which knows and experiences everything, then all knowledge and experiences would necessarily have to be shared and integrated into a single stream of conscious knowledge-experience.

It's precisely because there is no universal "I", a universal center of doing and experiencing, that ATW can think and act "locally" in the individuated streams of thinking and actions. The experiences and ideas can certainly be shared between the individuated streams; however, they also many not.

The I not as an substantial entity, but it's a fact that we feel active creative in thinking.

We feel the thinking activity as our own, and we differentiate ourselves from everything other in our lives.

You have come to certain conclusions, and you have certain ideas, which you share here with other beings.
All you doings in practical life is indicating that you are different, than your surroundings.

It's not about some entity which we encounter and say 'this is my I'.
This makes no sense.

I would say it's intuitively known

[Stranger]

The I not as an substantial entity, but it's a fact that we feel active creative in thinking.

We feel the thinking activity as our own, and we differentiate ourselves from everything other in our lives.

You have come to certain conclusions, and you have certain ideas, which you share here with other beings.
All you doings in practical life is indicating that you are different, than your surroundings.

It's not about some entity which we encounter and say 'this is my I'.
This makes no sense.

I would say it's intuitively known

what you describe is only an intuitive idea that is fabricated in our individuated streams of thinking to label it. The fact is simply that there is active creative stream of individuated thinking, that's it. The label "I" is actually redundant, but we use it habitually.

However, there is a problem here. If we examine carefully our own experience and investigate where our egoic feelings and desired come from, we find that they develop around and are rooted in the sense-idea of individual "I". The idea-feeling of "I" is the root of our feeling of separation, of dualistic perception of reality and of the complex of egoic and selfish desires and fears. So, in fact, this fabricated label-idea of "I" is quite harmful. We are free to keep it, it's our choice, but I would suggest to think carefully whether it's a beneficial choice for our spiritual evolution.

[Lou Gold]

The I not as an substantial entity, but it's a fact that we feel active creative in thinking.

We feel the thinking activity as our own, and we differentiate ourselves from everything other in our lives.

You have come to certain conclusions, and you have certain ideas, which you share here with other beings.
All you doings in practical life is indicating that you are different, than your surroundings.

It's not about some entity which we encounter and say 'this is my I'.
This makes no sense.

I would say it's intuitively known

what you describe is only an intuitive idea that is fabricated in our individuated streams of thinking to label it. The fact is simply that there is active creative stream of individuated thinking, that's it. The label "I" is actually redundant, but we use it habitually.

However, there is a problem here. If we examine carefully our own experience and investigate where our egoic feelings and desired come from, we find that they develop around and are rooted in the sense-idea of individual "I". The idea-feeling of "I" is the root of our feeling of separation, of dualistic perception of reality and of the complex of egoic and selfish desires and fears. So, in fact, this fabricated label-idea of "I" is quite harmful. We are free to keep it, it's our choice, but I would suggest to think carefully whether it's a beneficial choice for our spiritual evolution.

The idea-feeling of "I" is the root of our feeling of separation, of dualistic perception of reality and of the complex of egoic and selfish desires and fears.

Is the desire to reach out, to connect, to share love with another, to harmonize, to attain and maintain peace also related to the same idea-feeling of "I"? Is it similarly dysfunctional? If not, why not?

[Lou Gold]

As an old guy, I surely love this way performed brilliantly last night... and, yeah, I think it's relevant.

Seems that Paramount has blocked on all platforms the stellar video of 80 year-old Joni Michell performing "Both Sides Now" at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Guess that there's more going on than I suspected.

[Cleric]

Cleric offers:

The difference would only come when we consider the method of knowing. It's obvious that in our ordinary consciousness we have no sense organ for morphic fields. We know only the bodily senses. Thus when we speak of them, they become abstract theories, they remain only as thoughts in our intellect. So I wouldn't say that I disagree with him but only that if these things are not to remain abstractions, we need also the method Initiation. Man has to find lucid consciousness in the strata where these fields are found as ideal reality, just like we find our thoughts and ideas as reality.

Lou offers:

Doesn't Sheldrake say that we do have senses for energetic fields as when we quite commonly think of someone just before they phone us or when we sense that someone is looking at us and turn toward the exact local. And he speaks of these senses not being limited to humans in the example of dogs knowing when their owners are on the way home. Furthermore, he offers published scientific investigations of these phenomena. How does this fit into your view?

Sure Lou, I'm not saying that Sheldrake doesn't recognize or try to study non-ordinary experiences. Grof, McKenna, and many, many others have been doing nothing but this. The question is that it all remains as impressions across the dissociative boundary. We feel like a soul bubble with our visionary interior, and feel that something impresses in a non-sensory way in our inner experience. A presentiment of a telephone call also impresses in this way. Yet as long as we're stuck with our intellectual modeling inside the soul enclosure, the nature of the spiritual world remains a mystery. This is quite obvious. Even after decades of psychedelic experimentation, people still haven't moved even beyond the first step - they still wonder if this imaginative interior is something real, whether it is just brain hallucination, whether entities truly impress across the boundary or they are just figments of our own interior and so on.

People ponder on the 'sense of being stared at' but there's another such stare that doesn't attract much attention yet although it is far more important. It is the sense that higher Intelligences stare through our inner world. There's a great difference here: they are not on the other side of our soul bubble and staring towards ourselves. They stare from within our soul bubble.

Arguably, the most important being that we should get a sense of being stared by, is the Christ.

Have you considered things from this angle? It's easy to imagine being stared at from another vantage point since this is how things feel in the physical world. But can you conceive that there are higher order Intelligences which stare in your soul not from the other side of the dissociative membrane but from within. Is it conceivable that these Intelligences are active and creative in the region of your hidden life, from whence, for example, conscience emerges? Could it be that the Christ doesn't act from outside, but Inspires from within your thoughts, feelings and actions. He energizes your spiritual activity, just like conscience can give it impetus. In other words, our intellectual ego may exist in the same relation to the Christ as a mask to the real face? Could it be that the intellectual ego is not simply something that hinders our visions impressed from across the dissociative boundary but something that must be educated, ennobled, purified, strengthened, such that its life can become a continuation of a higher spiritual life?

[Cleric]

Regarding Nature as having a heart or mind is an (honest\authentic) intuition, not a preference. Personally, I don't share that intuition . . . maybe someday.

It's interesting to reflect on what stands in the way of that intuition. This reminds me to ask something that I've wanted to ask before.

You have explained many times that in your view the highest goal is to know one's true being. Spokenly or unspokenly, you've made it clear that we know that being by putting aside our intellectual self (by putting it to sleep, for example, by chanting OM), such that we can feel One with our true background being (as if before its essence is wrinkled in the form of a thinking ego). Everything else is only golden calves upon golden calves.

Above you say: "I don't share that intuition (yet)". Who speaks here? I assume it's the thinking ego. The thinking self expresses its present situation. It says: "At this point, I feel that my innermost essence is of instinctive nature. My ego emerges on top of that dark, instinctive will-process. I admit some chance that Nature could be ideating Spirit (instead of blind will) but at this time I don't intuit that within myself."

If we really contemplate this with the needed seriousness, we would have to admit that we know our true essence only as far as it filters through the intuitive form of our thinking ego. This is why we say that "I have" or "I do not yet have that intuition". If we think about it, our true essence is already what it is. If it is a creative spirit (and not simply blind will), then there's something that filters out this truthful intuition. In other words, we do not yet know our true essence in full (the intuitive form of our ego is not aligned with the true being, otherwise it would have the intuition).

Does this make sense? Is it conceivable that from a static perspective, there's no clear way to know whether our ego is the conscious tip of a fundamentally unconscious iceberg, or our ego is a rigidified intellectual mask of a more fundamental form of Intelligence? In other words, how do we know that a missing intuition means that it doesn't exist at all, or that our thinking ego still stands in the way of (filters out) that intuition?

[Güney27]

The I not as an substantial entity, but it's a fact that we feel active creative in thinking.

We feel the thinking activity as our own, and we differentiate ourselves from everything other in our lives.

You have come to certain conclusions, and you have certain ideas, which you share here with other beings.
All you doings in practical life is indicating that you are different, than your surroundings.

It's not about some entity which we encounter and say 'this is my I'.
This makes no sense.

I would say it's intuitively known

what you describe is only an intuitive idea that is fabricated in our individuated streams of thinking to label it. The fact is simply that there is active creative stream of individuated thinking, that's it. The label "I" is actually redundant, but we use it habitually.

However, there is a problem here. If we examine carefully our own experience and investigate where our egoic feelings and desired come from, we find that they develop around and are rooted in the sense-idea of individual "I". The idea-feeling of "I" is the root of our feeling of separation, of dualistic perception of reality and of the complex of egoic and selfish desires and fears. So, in fact, this fabricated label-idea of "I" is quite harmful. We are free to keep it, it's our choice, but I would suggest to think carefully whether it's a beneficial choice for our spiritual evolution.

The fact of experience is that we feel responsible for thinking, it is our intention which we manifest in the form of thought pictures.
In pure thinking we feel maybe the stressfulness of the process we willed to understand something.

In thinking (active thinking) we feel as the causing force behind the thought forms.
If we fully stay in the given, our thinking feels like our innermost and only (controllable) activity.
We feel like a ego (center of consciousness which is a unique perspective to all others) which can will thought forms into existence.

The given don't tell us that there is only eternal conscious oneness, which dreams every thing.
Even if you have such an experience, you must think in order to grasp it and make it useful to your understanding of the world.

To say that there Is no I means that you must be able to think.
And if you study your thinking, than it's feel like its you own unique becoming.

Here you have direct experience of your own consciousness vs theoretical explanations of your experience