Philosophical Speculations

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 11:02 am It's pretty remarkable, I've clicked on this video, while waiting for my next meeting, and what Brian Gray describes here is pretty much what I said above. He uses the example of human relationships, but the human impulse he highlights is the same, we could replace the longing for another human being in the example with longing for unity with the fullness of reality: we have a longing for unity - a fear of separation/matter - and egoism is a result of these workings.

Certainly, we can speak generally of the fear of the fragmented appearances (matter) that we continually encounter in sensory life, which continually reminds us of how far we have separated from primordial Unity and our subconscious ideal of potential future Unity. Yet how would you characterize this fear more specifically in relation to the soul world? What is it in our time that is most proximately responsible for the fragmented appearances of sensory life? What is the relationship to our capacity for interest and attention with respect to the inner lives of other beings?

The mystery you referred to speaking of Kant in the "Save the materialist" thread - that he didn’t realize the basic logical error in his train of thought (as shown in PoF) - is an indirect proof of what I am saying. That the mystery occurred. I think it's because he was afraid of matter. That’s why he didn’t see how to break free from mental images. So to repeat, I am not contesting the validity of your step-by-step (which is also the one walked by Cleric in his latest essay series) but I don’t think it's an imperative (you present it as an imperative) for the spiritualization of thinking. It is perfect for the mind coming to spiritual science from a background of materialist orientation, but not everyone is like that.

Sorry, I didn't notice this post before, although I think my questions from the last post are still open. I think the 'fear of matter' is the most general way to express it, and the outermost symptom of deeper soul movements that result in the decoherence of the imaginative spectrum into the mineralized thoughts/perceptions which we think of as "matter". So my essay/posts have been directed toward probing these deeper soul movements.

Of course, our specific formulations of the essays here are only a few out of infinite ways to approach the spiritualization of thinking. I don't think anyone has claimed that everything of importance can be found in those essays, or that they are the definitive steps for cultivating living thinking. Yet in all cases a continuous gradient needs to be established between philosophical-scientific-etc. (intellectual) thinking and the higher modes, which is perhaps what you call "step-by-step". One need not have a strictly materialist orientation to be an intellectual thinker, although often that is how intellectual thinkers begin by default in our particular time. As long as our spiritual activity is most 'in focus' at the intellectual scale of gestures, where we generally click together mental puzzle pieces to make some sense out of our experiential flow, the gradient which maintains continuity between that scale and the deeper scales is the only viable path of spiritualizing thinking.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 12:04 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 11:02 am It's pretty remarkable, I've clicked on this video, while waiting for my next meeting, and what Brian Gray describes here is pretty much what I said above. He uses the example of human relationships, but the human impulse he highlights is the same, we could replace the longing for another human being in the example with longing for unity with the fullness of reality: we have a longing for unity - a fear of separation/matter - and egoism is a result of these workings.

Certainly, we can speak generally of the fear of the fragmented appearances (matter) that we continually encounter in sensory life, which continually reminds us of how far we have separated from primordial Unity and our subconscious ideal of potential future Unity. Yet how would you characterize this fear more specifically in relation to the soul world? What is it in our time that is most proximately responsible for the fragmented appearances of sensory life? What is the relationship to our capacity for interest and attention with respect to the inner lives of other beings?

From the essay:

this line of reasoning begins with the assumption that our immanent experiences and mental representations are stimulated and structured by some other reality that can never be found within them or in any way continuous with them.

Because of that bistable dynamic, the intuitive intents were exiled into a ‘noumenal realm’ and we began to feel that only the mental images can be directly experienced and investigated.

we can sense how it could only be born from the fear of extending our inner activity into novel domains of intuitive meaning

therefore I believe you intend that modern man:

fears inner activity / rejects realization of selfishness and soul entanglement -----> postulates noumenal reality -------> is stuck in mental pictures



To me it seems more like:

fears separation/ fears matter as foreign object of knowledge ----> forms mental pictures to grasp it ---> is frustrated by ‘rejection’ / theorizes noumenal reality --------> becomes selfish and more soul-entangled



Here the fear of grasping matter doesn't directly tell about soul entanglement, but is painful, confines us in mental pictures in order to know it (learned helplessness) hence reinforces separation, suffering, and selfishness and unrealized soul entanglement.


But perhaps both takes could be put in circular form and would then look somewhat similar to each other which would also answer your second question

By the way I've noticed that Jordan Peterson recently said he's against assisted suicide/death if the government is authorized to decide it, but not if the family doctor in agreement with the family decides. Is this in keeping with the Christ impulse in your books?

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 9:18 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 12:04 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 11:02 am It's pretty remarkable, I've clicked on this video, while waiting for my next meeting, and what Brian Gray describes here is pretty much what I said above. He uses the example of human relationships, but the human impulse he highlights is the same, we could replace the longing for another human being in the example with longing for unity with the fullness of reality: we have a longing for unity - a fear of separation/matter - and egoism is a result of these workings.

Certainly, we can speak generally of the fear of the fragmented appearances (matter) that we continually encounter in sensory life, which continually reminds us of how far we have separated from primordial Unity and our subconscious ideal of potential future Unity. Yet how would you characterize this fear more specifically in relation to the soul world? What is it in our time that is most proximately responsible for the fragmented appearances of sensory life? What is the relationship to our capacity for interest and attention with respect to the inner lives of other beings?

From the essay:

this line of reasoning begins with the assumption that our immanent experiences and mental representations are stimulated and structured by some other reality that can never be found within them or in any way continuous with them.

Because of that bistable dynamic, the intuitive intents were exiled into a ‘noumenal realm’ and we began to feel that only the mental images can be directly experienced and investigated.

therefore I believe you intend that modern man:

fears inner activity / rejects realization of selfishness and soul entanglement -----> postulates noumenal reality -------> is stuck in mental pictures

Yes, although I would elaborate the first part to say the selfish soul entanglement comes first (the Fall), which decoheres the reflective imaginative spectrum of inner activity, leading to intellectual gestures that mimic fragmented sensory impressions and obscure the more holistic movements of the spiritual world. It is only then that we can speak of fearing separation/matter, since we are no longer sensitive to how the Spirit weaves within most sensory events. Our receded spiritual activity (karmic destiny) comes to meet us as foreign objects. We are tempted to project into this black box of inner knowledge all sorts of 'material' or 'spiritual' threats, dangers, fixed forces of necessity, and corresponding philosophical-scientific axioms, assumptions, etc. that support this underlying phobic feeling.

To me it seems more like:

fears separation/ fears matter as foreign object of knowledge ----> forms mental pictures to grasp it ---> is frustrated by ‘rejection’ / theorizes noumenal reality --------> becomes selfish and more soul-entangled



Here the fear of grasping matter doesn't directly tell about soul entanglement, but is painful, confines us in mental pictures in order to know it (learned helplessness) hence reinforces separation, suffering, and selfishness and unrealized soul entanglement.


But perhaps both takes could be put in circular form and would then look somewhat similar to each other which would also answer your second question

I think yours is how it initially seems when spiritual activity awakens to its existence convoluted within reflections within reflections, like it just finds itself in a sensory dreamscape with no memory of how it arrived there. Then it feels surrounded by unknown phenomenal transformations, tries to grasp them through intellectual gestures, etc. This feedback process can certainly reinforce and heighten selfish soul entanglements, but it can't be located as the cause of the latter, since those entanglements are presupposed in the obscured perspective on sensory transformations. It's only because we dream our way through those soul entanglements and have lost all sensitivity to them, that we fail to discern what they contribute to the lack of inner knowledge which stimulates our fear of the sensory dreamscape. We harbor great antipathy for fellow beings which continually repels us from consciously resonating with their inner lives.

Most importantly, to overcome the fear that has arisen through the Fall, we must confront the selfish soul entanglements first and foremost. This was done instinctively through various cultural practices previously, but now it can only be done through intimate and fully conscious insight into our soul constitution and its place within the wider spiritual context. After all, the most pervasive fear in our time is that of suffering and death which is a direct consequence of the Fall that brought suffering, toil, and death, i.e. the decohered imaginative (etheric-life) spectrum. The technically immortal simple organisms that ML often refers to are like the last echoes of this Edenic state of existence within the physical spectrum. To bring new life into the latter is to expand our lucid intuitive consciousness into the soul world and purify/transmute the lower soul constitution into its higher spiritual counterpart.

As thinking individuals growing back into resonance with the etheric spectrum, we all instinctively sense this looming possibility and this calling for greater creative responsibility. Yet the more we prefer to cling to our selfish soul entanglements instead, the more we spawn reasons to fear the possibility for creative responsibility rather than freely embrace it. Our intellectual outlooks and systems (like 'noumenal boundary') then emerge as a rationalized commentary on this underlying hesitation and fear that we are steering through.

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 12:12 am By the way I've noticed that Jordan Peterson recently said he's against assisted suicide/death if the government is authorized to decide it, but not if the family doctor in agreement with the family decides. Is this in keeping with the Christ impulse in your books?

I thought you were done spending time on JP

First, we should notice the Christ impulse is not about formulating universal moral maxims that we can conveniently apply in all circumstances, which then spares us the effort of thinking deeply through those circumstances. That is the legalistic or fundamentalist (atavistic legalism) approach, which was necessary as a crutch for spiritual life, but should gradually be phased out since the 1st century and especially in our time, since Christ is incarnating in the etheric and the law can been written on our hearts through higher cognition. That is, we can seek deep understanding of the inner karmic threads of destiny, incarnating the appropriate moral intuitions, on a case by case basis.

Of course, we will inevitably fall short of perfect moral intuition in many circumstances, and many times we will need to make decisions as best we can based on the insight we have reached. The modern Christ impulse is reflected, not in the content of the judgments we reach, but in the very process of reaching those judgments by intuitively thinking through the phenomenal circumstances as thoroughly and as best we can, aimed toward the ideal of Truth. As SM puts it, "Instead of the ends justifying the means, the means also justify (and change) the ends, because the means are recursively linked with the ends; they are mutually self-generative."

I see JP consistently trying to do exactly that in every area of inquiry he approaches, which doesn't mean he will reach perfect judgments, indeed none of us will, but it means we remain fluid, open, and seeking the high ideal with imaginative thinking, viewing any given existential question from as many angles as possible. It means we strive to remain humbly aware of our imperfections and the possibility of reaching flawed judgments based on our incomplete context. With that living awareness we can at least give ourselves a chance to make what remains immature and imperfect within our soul, gradually more perfect over time. It's interesting to watch JP's interviews/lectures and notice how he often pauses and closes his eyes while speaking, as if doing short meditations between words to more closely attune to the intuitions he is seeking.

Specifically the question of assisted suicide is a very interesting one from a spiritual scientific perspective, I can already sense there are many factors involved, although I would need to think it through more carefully. Of course, if our friend simply gets tired of life's struggles and asks us to help him/her end it, that is a straightforward "no" since we are contributing to the abrupt interruption of karmic destiny and that will create a very disoriented experience between death and rebirth. The interesting questions always emerge at the extreme boundary cases, like a family member who has lapsed into a deep coma and the living body is only artificially sustained by life support. Are we simply chaining their souls to the Earthly spectrum in this way for selfish reasons? I don't know.

Also, I think hosting a roundtable discussion on the psycho-spiritual significance of the Gospel narratives is quite aligned with the Christ impulse

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 2:05 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 9:18 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 12:04 pm


Certainly, we can speak generally of the fear of the fragmented appearances (matter) that we continually encounter in sensory life, which continually reminds us of how far we have separated from primordial Unity and our subconscious ideal of potential future Unity. Yet how would you characterize this fear more specifically in relation to the soul world? What is it in our time that is most proximately responsible for the fragmented appearances of sensory life? What is the relationship to our capacity for interest and attention with respect to the inner lives of other beings?

From the essay:

this line of reasoning begins with the assumption that our immanent experiences and mental representations are stimulated and structured by some other reality that can never be found within them or in any way continuous with them.

Because of that bistable dynamic, the intuitive intents were exiled into a ‘noumenal realm’ and we began to feel that only the mental images can be directly experienced and investigated.

therefore I believe you intend that modern man:

fears inner activity / rejects realization of selfishness and soul entanglement -----> postulates noumenal reality -------> is stuck in mental pictures

Yes, although I would elaborate the first part to say the selfish soul entanglement comes first (the Fall), which decoheres the reflective imaginative spectrum of inner activity, leading to intellectual gestures that mimic fragmented sensory impressions and obscure the more holistic movements of the spiritual world. It is only then that we can speak of fearing separation/matter, since we are no longer sensitive to how the Spirit weaves within most sensory events. Our receded spiritual activity (karmic destiny) comes to meet us as foreign objects. We are tempted to project into this black box of inner knowledge all sorts of 'material' or 'spiritual' threats, dangers, fixed forces of necessity, and corresponding philosophical-scientific axioms, assumptions, etc. that support this underlying phobic feeling.

To me it seems more like:

fears separation/ fears matter as foreign object of knowledge ----> forms mental pictures to grasp it ---> is frustrated by ‘rejection’ / theorizes noumenal reality --------> becomes selfish and more soul-entangled



Here the fear of grasping matter doesn't directly tell about soul entanglement, but is painful, confines us in mental pictures in order to know it (learned helplessness) hence reinforces separation, suffering, and selfishness and unrealized soul entanglement.


But perhaps both takes could be put in circular form and would then look somewhat similar to each other which would also answer your second question

I think yours is how it initially seems when spiritual activity awakens to its existence convoluted within reflections within reflections, like it just finds itself in a sensory dreamscape with no memory of how it arrived there. Then it feels surrounded by unknown phenomenal transformations, tries to grasp them through intellectual gestures, etc. This feedback process can certainly reinforce and heighten selfish soul entanglements, but it can't be located as the cause of the latter, since those entanglements are presupposed in the obscured perspective on sensory transformations. It's only because we dream our way through those soul entanglements and have lost all sensitivity to them, that we fail to discern what they contribute to the lack of inner knowledge which stimulates our fear of the sensory dreamscape. We harbor great antipathy for fellow beings which continually repels us from consciously resonating with their inner lives.

Most importantly, to overcome the fear that has arisen through the Fall, we must confront the selfish soul entanglements first and foremost. This was done instinctively through various cultural practices previously, but now it can only be done through intimate and fully conscious insight into our soul constitution and its place within the wider spiritual context. After all, the most pervasive fear in our time is that of suffering and death which is a direct consequence of the Fall that brought suffering, toil, and death, i.e. the decohered imaginative (etheric-life) spectrum. The technically immortal simple organisms that ML often refers to are like the last echoes of this Edenic state of existence within the physical spectrum. To bring new life into the latter is to expand our lucid intuitive consciousness into the soul world and purify/transmute the lower soul constitution into its higher spiritual counterpart.

As thinking individuals growing back into resonance with the etheric spectrum, we all instinctively sense this looming possibility and this calling for greater creative responsibility. Yet the more we prefer to cling to our selfish soul entanglements instead, the more we spawn reasons to fear the possibility for creative responsibility rather than freely embrace it. Our intellectual outlooks and systems (like 'noumenal boundary') then emerge as a rationalized commentary on this underlying hesitation and fear that we are steering through.

Yes, I agree. My ‘flowchart’ wanted to be an illustration of the Kantian perspective, not an illuminated view. For sure without soul entanglement, matter wouldn't appear terrifying. In fact, as you imply, it wouldn't appear at all. The whole purpose with the flowchart was to suggest that, because of the fear being attached to (for the missguided reasons just discussed) the sensory spectrum, the therapy could perhaps take a more roundabout path, gradient, that tries to attenuate that feeling of separation first, rather than to heighten sensitivity to the intuitive context in pure thinking first. I have in mind Kant himself, for example - his delicate figure and face, and large aspiration to higher worlds, his portrait, head, name, and I can almost sense that he would have agreed with there being an intuitive context underlying the vowel exercise, but that wouldn't have helped him treat the fear of matter, and break free from mental pictures (just as the indisputable elusiveness of mental pictures didn't help him avoid his basic logical error). And I also have in mind Eugene, who read, appreciated, and likely practiced inner space stretching, but without being moved beyond his perspective, despite some most promising conditions being present, and dispite inner space stretching having been presented in the most skillfull way. So I was thinking that some treatment of sensory experience first could possibly help, particularly for people who have certain types of soul organization...

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 2:23 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 12:12 am By the way I've noticed that Jordan Peterson recently said he's against assisted suicide/death if the government is authorized to decide it, but not if the family doctor in agreement with the family decides. Is this in keeping with the Christ impulse in your books?

I thought you were done spending time on JP

I work on myself, of course, but this shouldn't give you the idea to flood the thread with even more JP videos
The only reason I'm not adding a video on his esthetic surgeries at this point is that I suspect you would contrive a way to put that in alignment with the Christ impulse too

First, we should notice the Christ impulse is not about formulating universal moral maxims that we can conveniently apply in all circumstances, which then spares us the effort of thinking deeply through those circumstances. That is the legalistic or fundamentalist (atavistic legalism) approach, which was necessary as a crutch for spiritual life, but should gradually be phased out since the 1st century and especially in our time, since Christ is incarnating in the etheric and the law can been written on our hearts through higher cognition. That is, we can seek deep understanding of the inner karmic threads of destiny, incarnating the appropriate moral intuitions, on a case by case basis.

Yes, this was already noticed and agreed, this is basic PoF.

Of course, we will inevitably fall short of perfect moral intuition in many circumstances, and many times we will need to make decisions as best we can based on the insight we have reached. The modern Christ impulse is reflected, not in the content of the judgments we reach, but in the very process of reaching those judgments by intuitively thinking through the phenomenal circumstances as thoroughly and as best we can, aimed toward the ideal of Truth. As SM puts it, "Instead of the ends justifying the means, the means also justify (and change) the ends, because the means are recursively linked with the ends; they are mutually self-generative."

Ok, but obviously this point needs to find some form of counterbalance, lest all and everything becomes justified "as-best-one-can" trial and error. So, the questions that await clarification here are: how the reasoning that government should not legislate on assisted death, but family should decide, constitutes "intuitive thinking through the phenomenal circumstances", and what "as best one can" means (I believe, in the perspective of your own essay it should mean very little).

I see JP consistently trying to do exactly that in every area of inquiry he approaches, which doesn't mean he will reach perfect judgments, indeed none of us will, but it means we remain fluid, open, and seeking the high ideal with imaginative thinking, viewing any given existential question from as many angles as possible. It means we strive to remain humbly aware of our imperfections and the possibility of reaching flawed judgments based on our incomplete context. With that living awareness we can at least give ourselves a chance to make what remains immature and imperfect within our soul, gradually more perfect over time. It's interesting to watch JP's interviews/lectures and notice how he often pauses and closes his eyes while speaking, as if doing short meditations between words to more closely attune to the intuitions he is seeking.

"exactly"... what? "as best one can" is very arbitrary and very little exact. It could be for example, that, as a celebrity, or as someone with a very elevated self-image, one can't really accept to say "I don't know", even though one may feel that answer would be the as-best-I-can answer. In this sense, prefacing his answer with a personal story of a personal illness is a very manipulative way to prepare the audience for applauding him (this technique leverages well known psychological levers), just as his political exploitation of the question, like "government should not take away our freedom like that, isn't it?" also seems quite manipulative to me. And so, once again, I feel that your judgment about the answer being "intuitive" and heartfelt is a very indulgent judgment, that pleases your strong sympathy for JP.

Specifically the question of assisted suicide is a very interesting one from a spiritual scientific perspective, I can already sense there are many factors involved, although I would need to think it through more carefully. Of course, if our friend simply gets tired of life's struggles and asks us to help him/her end it, that is a straightforward "no" since we are contributing to the abrupt interruption of karmic destiny and that will create a very disoriented experience between death and rebirth. The interesting questions always emerge at the extreme boundary cases, like a family member who has lapsed into a deep coma and the living body is only artificially sustained by life support. Are we simply chaining their souls to the Earthly spectrum in this way for selfish reasons? I don't know.

Great, that's appreciated, and I would like to sooner or later continue this exploration.

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 4:06 pm Yes, I agree. My ‘flowchart’ wanted to be an illustration of the Kantian perspective, not an illuminated view. For sure without soul entanglement, matter wouldn't appear terrifying. In fact, as you imply, it wouldn't appear at all. The whole purpose with the flowchart was to suggest that, because of the fear being attached to (for the missguided reasons just discussed) the sensory spectrum, the therapy could perhaps take a more roundabout path, gradient, that tries to attenuate that feeling of separation first, rather than to heighten sensitivity to the intuitive context in pure thinking first. I have in mind Kant himself, for example - his delicate figure and face, and large aspiration to higher worlds, his portrait, head, name, and I can almost sense that he would have agreed with there being an intuitive context underlying the vowel exercise, but that wouldn't have helped him treat the fear of matter, and break free from mental pictures (just as the indisputable elusiveness of mental pictures didn't help him avoid his basic logical error). And I also have in mind Eugene, who read, appreciated, and likely practiced inner space stretching, but without being moved beyond his perspective, despite some most promising conditions being present, and dispite inner space stretching having been presented in the most skillfull way. So I was thinking that some treatment of sensory experience first could possibly help, particularly for people who have certain types of soul organization...

As we have discussed before, the gradient of purifying the soul constitution - habits and tendencies of thinking, feeling, willing - is simultaneously a treatment of sensory experience, insofar as the two greatly overlap and co-modulate one another. The fragmented sensory appearances only appear that way because of our reluctance to intimately discover our own receded spiritual activity within them, and the corresponding creative responsibility that would come with such a discovery. It is like if we are confronted by the physical gestures of a person we just met, and become terribly afraid, but have no desire or motivation to effortfully discover the emotions, ideas, ambitions, hopes, goals, etc. of the person. Then we can't be surprised that the gestures continue to stimulate fear.

Cleric discussed this bi-directional expansion in ISS Part 5:

Inner activity at any scale provides a causally active ‘spectral band’ of the World flow that can’t be compensated for by any other scale. Our higher soul being cannot properly gain orientation within the flow of destiny without the intuitive insights that can only be gained at the sensory-intellectual scale. At the same time, as the veil hints, the expansion of consciousness proceeds in both directions, so to speak. When we begin to awaken within our higher soul being, we also begin to comprehend certain aspects of our micro-scale life. In particular, we begin to sense how the dream flow of the soul being is very tightly related with the functioning of the bodily organs, like the liver, heart, lungs, and so on. In all cases, however, these intuitive insights are not gained by mere patching or mental images but from our consciousness expanding from the Mode 2 concentration. Then, just as our fingers chase one another along a holistic intuitive flow, so we begin to experience our thinking flow as holistically embedded into the deeper dream-like soul flow. As soon as we begin to ponder questions like “But what am I in relation to that deeper soul being?”, the flow state fragments and we find ourselves patching up metaphysical mental images. For the duration of the harmonized flow we feel to be one with the higher being and we feel that we navigate and bend the dream flow together, even though our intellectual being has a very limited intuition of the soul-flow dynamics. In the other direction, the sensations in the physical kernel become much more differentiated, we begin to sense the presence of the various internal organs, and, for example, we gain much deeper insight about the way our soul life is unfolded over the rhythms of breathing and blood circulation. As such, proper harmonization of our meso-scale sensory-intellectual flow with the deeper soul flow (macro scale), is simultaneously related to rhythmic harmonization of the lower (micro-scale) life, of which, breathing and circulation are the most proximate.

Finding the relation of our intellectual self to the totality of the World flow is an inherently difficult task. It’s not that it is technically difficult but it is constantly undermined by the tendency of the intellectual self to define and identify itself with certain sets of mental images. For instance, this tends to make the soul-self feel like some completely distinct entity that influences our flow from outside our inner experience. In reality, however, even though the movements of the deeper soul spheres are indeed quite independent of our meso-scale intuitive intents, all these spheres are one within another. This also gives deeper meaning to the word ‘concentration’. In that, we truly make the spheres concentric (sharing the same center) and musically attuned. The soul-self bends the flow from within the very same ‘here and now’ that we know in our intellectual being. The difference is within the greater scope of the intuitive curvature that is being shaped from within this center, and within which our ordinary inner life, at our meso ticking scale, is modulated.

But perhaps you have an entirely different 'treatment of sensory experience' in mind - in which case, could you elaborate on what that would look like?

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 5:20 pm The only reason I'm not adding a video on his esthetic surgeries at this point is that I suspect you would contrive a way to put that in alignment with the Christ impulse too

I'm not sure why you are so against presenting things in their wider context when it comes to these topics, rather isolating words and phrases from that context as much as possible. If someone else was doing the same thing with Steiner's work, using isolated phrases as a means of labeling him with sexism, racism, antisemitism, anti Christian, etc., I doubt you would hesitate to speak up and ask for wider context.

Could it be that withholding this context makes it easier to support your already established opinion about him? I think you are anticipating that if the video with the wider context was presented, the latter would make your implication that JP isn't aligned with the Christ impulse much weaker.

Federica wrote:

First, we should notice the Christ impulse is not about formulating universal moral maxims that we can conveniently apply in all circumstances, which then spares us the effort of thinking deeply through those circumstances. That is the legalistic or fundamentalist (atavistic legalism) approach, which was necessary as a crutch for spiritual life, but should gradually be phased out since the 1st century and especially in our time, since Christ is incarnating in the etheric and the law can been written on our hearts through higher cognition. That is, we can seek deep understanding of the inner karmic threads of destiny, incarnating the appropriate moral intuitions, on a case by case basis.

Yes, this was already noticed and agreed, this is basic PoF.

I think your very asking of the original question and the expectation it could be answered, without any additional context for JP's remarks or your own reasoning about the question of assisted suicide/death, means it was not noticed in this context.

Federica wrote:

Of course, we will inevitably fall short of perfect moral intuition in many circumstances, and many times we will need to make decisions as best we can based on the insight we have reached. The modern Christ impulse is reflected, not in the content of the judgments we reach, but in the very process of reaching those judgments by intuitively thinking through the phenomenal circumstances as thoroughly and as best we can, aimed toward the ideal of Truth. As SM puts it, "Instead of the ends justifying the means, the means also justify (and change) the ends, because the means are recursively linked with the ends; they are mutually self-generative."

Ok, but obviously this point needs to find some form of counterbalance, lest all and everything becomes justified "as-best-one-can" trial and error. So, the questions that await clarification here are: how the reasoning that government should not legislate on assisted death, but family should decide, constitutes "intuitive thinking through the phenomenal circumstances", and what "as best one can" means (I believe, in the perspective of your own essay it should mean very little).

You didn't present any of JP's reasoning or its context, so it's hard to evaluate that bold question further.

"As best one can" means based on the sum total of our moral intuitions in relation to any given set of phenomenal circumstances, when a concrete judgment or decision cannot be indefinitely delayed.

The other question that needs clarification is why someone concluding that assisted suicide could be ethically permissible in certain circumstances, with the family's consent, is automatically against the Christ impulse? That was the question I was mainly addressing in my previous post.

Federica wrote:

I see JP consistently trying to do exactly that in every area of inquiry he approaches, which doesn't mean he will reach perfect judgments, indeed none of us will, but it means we remain fluid, open, and seeking the high ideal with imaginative thinking, viewing any given existential question from as many angles as possible. It means we strive to remain humbly aware of our imperfections and the possibility of reaching flawed judgments based on our incomplete context. With that living awareness we can at least give ourselves a chance to make what remains immature and imperfect within our soul, gradually more perfect over time. It's interesting to watch JP's interviews/lectures and notice how he often pauses and closes his eyes while speaking, as if doing short meditations between words to more closely attune to the intuitions he is seeking.

"exactly"... what? "as best one can" is very arbitrary and very little exact. It could be for example, that, as a celebrity, or as someone with a very elevated self-image, one can't really accept to say "I don't know", even though one may feel that answer would be the as-best-I-can answer. In this sense, prefacing his answer with a personal story of a personal illness is a very manipulative way to prepare the audience for applauding him (this technique leverages well known psychological levers), just as his political exploitation of the question, like "government should not take away our freedom like that" also seems quite manipulative to me. And so I, once again, feel that your judgment about the answer being "intuitive" and heartfelt is a very indulgent judgment, that pleases your strong sympathy for JP.

It sounds like you are saying that presenting a wider context for our reasoning, like JP apparently did (you haven't shared the video, so I don't know), is "manipulative". This simply makes no sense unless you are approaching with an antipathy and a motivation to find JP as manipulative. Without that motivation coloring our perception of the thoughts, one could easily find a personal story about illness as honest, intimate, and illustrative. And one could easily find the idea that government should not be coercively involved in such decisions as entirely aligned with PoF ethical individualism. It's the same motivation that made you so sure JP was reducing meaning to the output of LLMs, when he clearly wasn't. Cleric also conveyed this "contrived" alignment with the Christ impulse.

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, 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.

It's not that any of this is difficult to discern in JP's talks, only you don't give yourself a chance to discern it. Such motivations lead you to selectively ignore anything that cuts against the narrative and only latch onto those isolated parts of a video that make you feel that something is fishy, something needs to be 'called out' as anti-spiritual. If you aren't approaching with such a motivation, then it shouldn't be difficult to directly address JP's substantive reasoning, within its whole context, without imposing your personal feelings of "manipulation" onto the ideas expressed. Otherwise, you don't need to spend time on JP, and you also don't need to spend time trying to convince the rest of us that the Christ-Logos impulse that is obviously driving his thinking, isn't actually there.

Federica wrote:

Specifically the question of assisted suicide is a very interesting one from a spiritual scientific perspective, I can already sense there are many factors involved, although I would need to think it through more carefully. Of course, if our friend simply gets tired of life's struggles and asks us to help him/her end it, that is a straightforward "no" since we are contributing to the abrupt interruption of karmic destiny and that will create a very disoriented experience between death and rebirth. The interesting questions always emerge at the extreme boundary cases, like a family member who has lapsed into a deep coma and the living body is only artificially sustained by life support. Are we simply chaining their souls to the Earthly spectrum in this way for selfish reasons? I don't know.

Great, that's appreciated, and I would like to sooner or later continue this exploration.

Ok, I look forward to your thoughts on how this issue can be approached from a spiritual scientific perspective, which I am sure we all agree is aligned with the Christ impulse since it is aimed toward unveiling the inner Truth of our ever-evolving existence.