Meditation

[Cleric]

Thank you for providing new analogies! I can't answer the question since I don't have experience of what is being analogized, I don't know. Mine was only a one-sided report that, from that side, something is unclear. The only thing I can say is, from my one-sided perspective, in the abnormal situation of 'thinking in tongues', I would then struggle to grasp the difference between the first two strata, since when I speak without understanding the words I am pronouncing, what do I get more than thought perception? Since it isn't acceptable to simply say that Imagination is analogized by perception and Inspiration by the meaningful gesture, maybe the explanation of why not could give some form of understanding in standard cognition?

One way to conceive of the difference between the first two levels could be if you think about the difference between hearing someone speak gibberish and thinking gibberish. At the first level we have only the sound perception. The second level adds the consciousness that we're somehow responsible for the sound (when we hear external sound this awareness is missing). In other words, without the second level, an external sound and the sound of our voice should be indistinguishable.

[AshvinP]

I agree, it seems that in trying to keep it short, I've glossed over this.

Maybe it would make more sense if we delaminate our thinking into three strata. First the perception. Then the gesture, which however is not yet fully meaningful. Maybe we can compare this with thinking baby-talk sounds. Or some abnormal situation when we 'think in tongues' without understanding the words. And the third would be when thoughts express concepts and ideas. Do you think this is a better analogy?

Federica and Cleric,

What if we imagine a hand that is protruding from a hole in a wall? In our ordinary consciousness, the hand is completely blurry to the point where we can't even tell if it's a living hand or just some pixels moving around powered by a mechanical device. With imaginative consciousness, the hand is easily recognized as attached to a living being with definite intents, however, the gestures made by the hand remain inexplicable to us. Then with inspired consciousness, the wall is removed and we perceive a whole organic being directing the hand and this gives us clarity as to the meaning of the gestures as well. So then we can apply this analogy to the sound of a babbling brook or the growth of a plant and say imaginative experience clearly reveals to us there is intentional ideation animating the sound or growth (not just by abstract concepts), but the meaning remains obscure. Inspired experience also reveals the meaning of the underlying speech at work.

Of course, all such analogies will miss the subtle nuances of transitions within higher experience, but could this be a useful way to think about it with low/broad resolution?

Thanks for your idea, Ashvin! I can't qualify your analogy. As said above, I could only tell if I had those experiences in the first place. The main difficulty I face is that as it seems, moving/merging with the being's thinking gesture doesn't allow understanding of intents. I thought it did.

Maybe it's a gradation of intensity/scope of intent that can hardly be mapped out to our standard understanding of intention, where we either grasp it or we don't?

In your example, the good point is that in imaginative cognition we see the "gesture", and we don't get its meaning. But at the same time what is the difference between perception and gesture within that level? (with the pink in mind?)
It is only because our transformed thinking gestures merge with those which fill the whole of Cosmic soul space, that we understand the perceptual counterpart as images of higher order reality.

Federica,

Maybe it helps to think about it as follows. Imagine you perceive the wind blowing through and swaying the leaves of a tree, or moving a wave across the lake. You don't really have any clear experience of this perception as the expression of intentional activity, as you would if you perceived another human being moving their legs or arms while dancing, correct? So imaginative cognition somewhat bridges that gap and expands our ability to resonate with the Cosmic soul space to the extent that even the movements of nature are experienced as the expression of intentional activity. But at this point, the meaning of those movements remain just as inexplicable as the meaning of the dance movements (let's imagine it's some ancient dance of an indigenous culture that we have no familiarity with). Through inspired cognition, the meaning of the 'soul dance' becomes explicable because we can resonate more directly with the spirit forces (the supersensible 'wind') that structure the meaningful context of destiny in which the dance unfolds.

[Cleric]

Federica and Cleric,

What if we imagine a hand that is protruding from a hole in a wall? In our ordinary consciousness, the hand is completely blurry to the point where we can't even tell if it's a living hand or just some pixels moving around powered by a mechanical device. With imaginative consciousness, the hand is easily recognized as attached to a living being with definite intents, however, the gestures made by the hand remain inexplicable to us. Then with inspired consciousness, the wall is removed and we perceive a whole organic being directing the hand and this gives us clarity as to the meaning of the gestures as well. So then we can apply this analogy to the sound of a babbling brook or the growth of a plant and say imaginative experience clearly reveals to us there is intentional ideation animating the sound or growth (not just by abstract concepts), but the meaning remains obscure. Inspired experience also reveals the meaning of the underlying speech at work.

Of course, all such analogies will miss the subtle nuances of transitions within higher experience, but could this be a useful way to think about it with low/broad resolution?

We can, of course, use such analogy but I think that it still makes the nature Inspiration difficult to grasp. It still suggests that we should somehow see perceptually the being (of course, I know that you use it metaphorically but still, it can secretly kindle some expectations). Realistically, we don't see the spiritual beings in the usual sense. This is somewhat possible in the Imaginative state but what we perceive is not the actual being. It's only a pictorial experience of the forces that the being manifests. We live in the effects of the being and the way they impress in our soul space but to 'see' the being means to live in its thoughts. This may sound disappointing because it seems that the spiritual beings always remain something elusive that we can't grasp. But actually, living together with the thoughts of the being gives us a supremely richer experience of what it is (just as we could never have the experience of what being a human being is if we couldn't live in our thoughts).

[Federica]

Thank you for providing new analogies! I can't answer the question since I don't have experience of what is being analogized, I don't know. Mine was only a one-sided report that, from that side, something is unclear. The only thing I can say is, from my one-sided perspective, in the abnormal situation of 'thinking in tongues', I would then struggle to grasp the difference between the first two strata, since when I speak without understanding the words I am pronouncing, what do I get more than thought perception? Since it isn't acceptable to simply say that Imagination is analogized by perception and Inspiration by the meaningful gesture, maybe the explanation of why not could give some form of understanding in standard cognition?

One way to conceive of the difference between the first two levels could be if you think about the difference between hearing someone speak gibberish and thinking gibberish. At the first level we have only the sound perception. The second level adds the consciousness that we're somehow responsible for the sound (when we hear external sound this awareness is missing). In other words, without the second level, an external sound and the sound of our voice should be indistinguishable.

Yes, but if I'm not mistaken this workaround doesn't help as an analogy to understand the levels of cognition, since an analogical differentiation is to be found with respect to the higher beings alone.

[Federica]

Federica,

Maybe it helps to think about it as follows. Imagine you perceive the wind blowing through and swaying the leaves of a tree, or moving a wave across the lake. You don't really have any clear experience of this perception as the expression of intentional activity, as you would if you perceived another human being moving their legs or arms while dancing, correct? So imaginative cognition somewhat bridges that gap and expands our ability to resonate with the Cosmic soul space to the extent that even the movements of nature are experienced as the expression of intentional activity. But at this point, the meaning of those movements remain just as inexplicable as the meaning of the dance movements (let's imagine it's some ancient dance of an indigenous culture that we have no familiarity with). Through inspired cognition, the meaning of the 'soul dance' becomes explicable because we can resonate more directly with the spirit forces that structure the meaningful context of destiny in which the dance unfolds.

Ashvin,
Sorry I'm not sure I am getting the examples. Is the human dance first given as an example of transparent meaning in standard cognition and later as opaque meaning that is elucidated by inspired cognition? As for the movements of nature, it seems to me the easiest way to sense the Cosmic intentionality in standard cognition.
I would maybe end here my replies on this topic for tonight, since I doubt my ability to add anything fresh and meaningful at this point...

[Cleric]

Yes, but if I'm not mistaken this workaround doesn't help as an analogy to understand the levels of cognition, since an analogical differentiation is to be found with respect to the higher beings alone.

I may be wrong but probably you are conceiving of the higher levels of cognition as existing on an entirely different level compared to that of ordinary cognition. But as we have said before, even in normal consciousness, if we're able to experience these levels of perception, gesture, concept, "I", we already live in the spiritual world, albeit stripped off the flesh (as in the last post to Guney) and grasping it only in bone-like thoughts. But still, there's something of Intuition in our experience of "I". There's something of Inspiration when we move through ideas and so on. In other words, the beings are already present in the same stratum (in a sense they constitute that stratum) where we feel to move in ideas. Yet from this stratum we experience only that which can resonate with the 'least common denominator' of our bodily perceptions (and our normal thoughts are images of sensory phenomena, for example - the sensory-like sound of our inner voice). When our spiritual activity discovers its new forms of mobility, we find that in the ideal stratum we swim together with the ideal activity of beings. We have been there all along but couldn't register the activity of the beings because it can't be captured in the ordinary sensory patterns. Actually, it is still there, even in the sensory patterns but it is so non-localized that we could never recognize the secret correlation between perceptions through intellectual analysis.

[Federica]

Yes, but if I'm not mistaken this workaround doesn't help as an analogy to understand the levels of cognition, since an analogical differentiation is to be found with respect to the higher beings alone.

I may be wrong but probably you are conceiving of the higher levels of cognition as existing on an entirely different level compared to that of ordinary cognition.

I see how in the quote it may look like I do, but I don't. For example as I've written to Ashvin just above, I see the movements of nature as the easiest way to perceive Cosmic intentionality in standard cognition. Anyway, I'm sorry for the probably tiresome recap this has led to.

[AshvinP]

Federica,

Maybe it helps to think about it as follows. Imagine you perceive the wind blowing through and swaying the leaves of a tree, or moving a wave across the lake. You don't really have any clear experience of this perception as the expression of intentional activity, as you would if you perceived another human being moving their legs or arms while dancing, correct? So imaginative cognition somewhat bridges that gap and expands our ability to resonate with the Cosmic soul space to the extent that even the movements of nature are experienced as the expression of intentional activity. But at this point, the meaning of those movements remain just as inexplicable as the meaning of the dance movements (let's imagine it's some ancient dance of an indigenous culture that we have no familiarity with). Through inspired cognition, the meaning of the 'soul dance' becomes explicable because we can resonate more directly with the spirit forces that structure the meaningful context of destiny in which the dance unfolds.

Ashvin,
Sorry I'm not sure I am getting the examples. Is the human dance first given as an example of transparent meaning in standard cognition and later as opaque meaning that is elucidated by inspired cognition? As for the movements of nature, it seems to me the easiest way to sense the Cosmic intentionality in standard cognition.
I would maybe end here my replies on this topic for tonight, since I doubt my ability to add anything fresh and meaningful at this point...

The human dance was an example of intentional will-force that is transparent but meaning that is still obscure. In our imaginative state, we could say the Cosmic movements are experienced in an analogous way.

I think Cleric is correct that the most helpful analogies proceed from our experience of first-person thinking activity so we don't build unreasonable expectations of the higher states, like we are passively observing the activity of beings that are external to us. Our own will is actively involved in and bound up with the perception of higher-order spiritual activity. In our ordinary state, before we have taken any steps of imaginative meditation, we can sense the Cosmic intentionality in the movements of nature only through conceptual apprehension. In other words, we make logical inferences that there is this intentionality based on our well-grounded belief that reality is spiritual in essence. We don't experience the intentionality like we do with our own thought-perceptions, even if we are thinking in unintelligible gibberish. There is no need to conceptually apprehend the latter because it is immediately and inwardly experienced as being the case.

With the imaginative state, the intentional Cosmic movements that stir our soul-life, and therefore the corresponding movements of nature, are experienced in the same way, i.e. from the same side as the intentionality through which we manifest our thought-perceptions. So the will-force that stirs these movements is experientially clear to us, but they can remain mostly 'gibberish' until we amplify resonance through the inspired state. Then we are living in the experience of the willed activity of intelligible Cosmic thoughts. I hope that adds a little bit of clarity. We can certainly reason this gradation of inner activity-experience out for ourselves even with ordinary cognitive development, because that's basically what I am doing right now as well. Perhaps some of my efforts and experiences so far make it easier for me to intuit what Cleric and others are pointing to, but I am far from having direct conscious experience across the threshold. It is exactly the analogies that make this possible because what is being analogized to (our normal thinking-perceptual states) is already a spatiotemporally formatted experience of the higher strata of beings and their intentional activity, as Cleric said.

[Federica]

so we don't build unreasonable expectations of the higher states, like we are passively observing the activity of beings that are external to us.

You too are misunderstanding me. I was speaking of the logic of the analogy required for it to be fully conducive, fully an analogy. The question was well that the initial analogies might need to be squared? Yes. Nevertheless you have both then switched in mode "let's help her square her soul space".

[AshvinP]

so we don't build unreasonable expectations of the higher states, like we are passively observing the activity of beings that are external to us.

You too are misunderstanding me. I was speaking of the logic of the analogy required for it to be fully conducive, fully an analogy. The question was well that the initial analogies might need to be squared? Yes. Nevertheless you have both then switched in mode "let's help her square her soul space".

Actually, that comment was pointing to my own mistake of using a potentially misleading analogy when better ones are available. I didn't say you were building unreasonable expectations of the higher states.

But, after questioning the initial analogies and being presented with different analogies, you did say to us both that you are not in a position to qualify the analogies because you 'lack the experiences' they are pointing to. Yet the only reason you are in any position to question the analogies is because there is something in your experience that makes them seem ill-fitting.

In my opinion, we should get in the habit of seeing all our confusions about spiritual principles as reflecting something about our soul space to contemplate and work on, not just technical misalignments. Even if that turns out to be a 'misunderstanding', we will benefit greatly from treating it in that way.