Philosophical Speculations

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 2:34 pm Thinking at large, as spiritual foundation of all reality not submitted to the meannesses our spacetime Earthly environment, is a logically derivable understanding.

I think we are just playing with words here. By calling it BATWF I was referring to exactly the same thing as what you call "Thinking at large". It was pointed out many times on this forum, by people including Scott and me, that this is not only "Thinking at large", but the inseparable wholeness of "Beingness, Awareness, Thinking, Willing and Feeling at Large". When we limit our view and exploration only to one aspect of this Pentagon at Large, we will inevitably narrow our perspective and knowledge of Reality at Large.

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 2:52 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 2:34 pm Thinking at large, as spiritual foundation of all reality not submitted to the meannesses our spacetime Earthly environment, is a logically derivable understanding.

I think we are just playing with words here. By calling it BATWF I was referring to exactly the same thing as what you call "Thinking at large". It was pointed out many times on this forum, by people including Scott and me, that this is not only "Thinking at large", but the inseparable wholeness of "Beingness, Awareness, Thinking, Willing and Feeling at Large". When we limit our view and exploration only to one aspect of this Pentagon at Large, we will inevitably narrow our perspective and knowledge of Reality at Large.

OK, perhaps when we go to your flower example it will make the discussion progress. Because of course I don't think I am playing with words. We can call it spiritual, or ideal activity if you prefer. The problem with BATWF is that it suggests that being is not the same thing as thinking for example, and that's one big crux of the question. It's only in our human spacetime environment that thinking is something that we do, among other stuff. But I'll come to your example. Hopefully we'll progress.

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 3:03 pm OK, perhaps when we go to your flower example it will make the discussion progress. Because of course I don't think I am playing with words. We can call it spiritual, or ideal activity if you prefer. The problem with BATWF is that it suggests that being is not the same thing as thinking for example, and that's one big crux of the question. It's only in our human spacetime perspective that thinking is something that we do. But I'll come to your example asap. Hopefully we'll progress.

BATWF is one and the same thing, but it has various aspects. You might agree that the Willing aspect can be distinguished from Thinking and from Feeling aspects (and notice that Steiner also makes such distinction), while they are still inseparable and are simply different ways the activity or states of BATWF can unfold and be experienced.

Stranger wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2024 10:21 pm For example, let's consider this scenario and do it in a living experience scenario. Let's say there is a higher-order being or a group of beings who with their imaginative-intuitive cognition imagine and manifest an intuitive pictorial idea of a flower (as a part of the wholeness of their creation of the world). From the perspective of their living experience, the flower is the content of their imagination. But I am having a perceptual living experience of this flower through which the intuitive idea is being communicated to me. Through such perception the experience of this flower-idea is shared between them and me.

Now, let's say I'm a mathematician imagining another intuitive visual idea of "something" that has never been imagined before (some kind of weird geometrical manifold). This is not yet a shared experience, no one else has ever experienced it yet. For now, this "something" only remains a part of my individual perspective and not yet part of Reality at Large. We may argue that "we can't tell if it's yet real or not". But when I share this idea with others and it propagates through the hierarchy to the higher-order beings, and they may even implement it into the structure of Reality at Large, then this visual idea now becomes a shared living experience. Will it make it more "real" or "true"?

So, what makes the ideal content real and true? Do they become real when higher-order beings implement these ideas in a harmony with the laws of the wholeness of the created structure? After all, they are simply the products of their intuitive-imaginative thinking, aren't they? Or do they become real when they are shared and not simply remain a part of the individual living experience? What is the criterion of "reality" and "truth" in the world of living thinking and of ideations that the living-thinking produces, whether individually or collectively?

On your flower example: your wording suggests that you ascribe to higher beings cognitive modes and capacities commensurable, if not similar, with the human ones. Yes, you imagine that a flower can be brought to life through their activity (which a human obviously can't do in our times) but other than that, you seem to conceive the spiritual activity of higher beings directly comparable with that of humans. You imagine the singular flower as a content in their imagination. You use the concept of content, the concept of mental picture of a flower, the concept of an imagination that contains mental pictures, like our does. This approach is not helpful, because it makes you do assumptions and tricks you into thinking that higher beings function in a certain arbitrary way, that ends up to be modeled on human cognition. Higher beings don't have mental pictures. Only humans do. My experience of the flower, you can call it living, but it's not living. It's a static mental picture that recedes into the past. I can be as first-person as I want, I can really imagine the flower in good will, and do my best. That will not be "living" in the way we mean it on this forum when we speak of living thinking. It will be actually much more dead than alive: a mental picture of a flower! That picture cannot be shared as such with any higher being, because it's only a very earthly, spacetime-based experience. So this is the first point: we don't want to create an arbitrary picture of higher beings and their activity. Your take and wording seems to suggest that thinking is something they do, as an activity, similar to what we do on Earth. But thinking is what they are... They are not a separate figure that, at times, produces thinking, or mental pictures. Such prejudices need to be held back, until some more living (in the true sense) understanding is progressively acquired.

On the example of geometrical imagination of the mathematician: be sure that if a mathematician can create a mental picture about it, it's not out of a cosmic void! It would still not be a shared experience, in the sense that only we as humans have mental pictures, but you can be sure it can't originate out of nothing, from within the mind of the mathematician in a vacuum. Instead, there is a complete architecture (for lack of a better word) evolved and maintained by cooperations of higher beings, out of which the mathematician may have glimpsed at that little bit that, in their human mind, takes the shape of the particular geometrical object. I am not asking you to believe there are such architectures. I am only mentioning it in order to point to the direction of what I'm trying to convey, hoping I will make myself more clear for you. I personally don't experience those architectures, though I know they can eventually be experienced directly, as spiritual-scientific facts, to the extent that appropriate higher cognition is developed. It's not as a belief that I know it's possible, but because it makes consistent and overall sense with all else I am in the process of approaching. As I said, it's a progressive understanding, but its foundations are quite accessible. So be sure, there is nothing you can just come up with out of a supposedly cosmic void, that you can then share with other humans, so that later, a higher being gets to know it. That's an abstract construct, which, I believe, results from the background impression that beings are figures, or entities, or delineations, and that they then become filled with activity of some sort, like some sort of BATFW or with mental pictures. But that’s an undue abstraction, modeled on the Earthly environment.


So, to your question: what makes ideal content real and true?
In our human environment, all experience is real and true - that's undeniable. If you want to imagine a unicorn, and are able to, you do have an experience, there is an ideal content that is formed. It is matter-of-factly real, that's one thing. Now, beyond this self-evident fact of direct experience, the discernment by our own cognitive forces of what is real or not real in the spiritual worlds takes effort and time, since it requires the development of stages of spiritual cognition. Higher reality can only be unveiled progressively. This doesn’t prevent us, though, from studying and learning from what others have ascertained, at the occasion of their own spiritual-scientific explorations, as part of our individual path towards direct experience. Moreover, we can rapidly get to the point where we have the certainty that this is how things stand, and that such progressive discovery is concretely attainable.

After all, they are simply the products of their intuitive-imaginative thinking, aren't they?

“simply”? But there’s nothing else than spiritual activity, Eugene…. “Intuitive-imaginative thinking" is all there is….

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 2:42 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 2:18 pm Again, the mental pictures point to a very real inner experience, but the only reason for using them is to create a transcendental split (I'm not saying that's why they were used back when the Sutra was inscribed, but that's how they are used today).

The practical reason to use the mental pictures is to inspire practitioners for that actual attainment of this "X" experience (let me call it like that), and to use these descriptions as hints or pointers to that direction. Using a famous analogy, it's a finger pointing to the moon. the finger itself should not be conflated with the moon and does not resemble or describe the moon, it only redirect our attention towards the direction of movement towards the moon.

There is no reason to take the real experience of this state negatively described above and absolutize it. Instead it can be taken exactly as you say in your last post - "There is another criterion that we can apply here: the criterion of relevance to the wholeness of the world content. And such relevance is not a black-and-white criterion, but rather a spectrum... It's just that some of the pieces of this content fit together more harmoniously than some others." If you are tempted to immediately say this does not apply to the state because it is not "content" but 'pure Nirvanic realization' or something similar, then that just goes to show how often we are willing to discard our own reasoning to absolutize some portion of experiential content if that fits with our preferred narrative. We are willing to find portions of experiential content that fall outside or beyond the spectrum i.e. that are transcendent.

Steiner has pointed to this same state in many places, a state of profound inner peace, bliss, and silence, but the difference is that he doesn't absolutize it. He realizes that concealed within this state is the symphonic activity of the contextual Minds which can be endlessly explored.

This "X" state is actually very relevant to the wholeness of the world content, it's kind of a "glue" that brings the brokenness, dualities and confrontations in the world to harmony and unity. The experience of peace and bliss are rather side effects of this primal experience, but this experience in no way denies or suppresses the activity of the contextual Mind, it only makes it more harmonious and takes this activity to the next developmental level.

Directly this peace is achieved in the empty consciousness, what I have described as an inwardly experienced, all-embracing, cosmic feeling of happiness gives way to an equally all-embracing pain.

The emptying of consciousness may be a trigger for this "X" experience, but it may not. This is why in some traditions people practice the empty state of consciousness, but unfortunately often confuse it with the "X" state. The "X" state itself has nothing to do with empty consciousness, it is perfectly compatible with both empty-quiet and active states of consciousness, simply because it is unconditioned.

Yes, and the only reason mental pictures can act as such symbolic pointers is because the experiential X state resides on the same spectrum of experience as our ordinary thinking. There is nothing in the experience of X that tells us to absolutize it, to call it "unconditioned" and make it into the ultimate golden calf, as Lorenzo would put it, by which all other states and insights are measured. That only happens when we return to the ordinary intellectual state and began using our ordinary philosophical habits to interpret the state and its significance. The author of the Sutra was not doing that but modern mystical practitioners most certainly are, as we see clearly in these discussions. This is exactly what Kant did (standing in for all modern thinkers who fell into the transcendental trap) - he had nebulous intuition of the 'noumenal reality' (spiritual in nature) and allowed his philosophical mental pictures to absolutize that state and measure all ordinary cognitive states against it. Schop took it a level deeper into something like the mystical Will experience and that is similar to where you are resting with X now.

If another person like Steiner reaches the X state and goes further into its spiritual significance, expanding into the more holistic insights embedded within X, which seem to be at tension with your preferred interpretation, then it is automatically assumed the other person is speaking of a Y state, i.e. he has not reached your X state but something else below the X state. Practically speaking, this means that anything which provides insight into how our Earthly conduct relates to lawful possibilities of experience after death, for example the memory tableau, are conveniently discarded. You come to the forum and say all the 'right' things - it is good, helpful, and necessary to explore the SS insights and add these to our other perspectives and insights, but practically you never do that. You don't thoroughly explore the SS practices and insights because you feel the absolutized state guarantees your preferred narrative for who we are and what happens after death (which again is not provided out of the X state but is added on through philosophical-religious mental pictures patched together from the most varied sources, like NDEs).

The fact that you respond so quickly to anything written is further evidence of this absolutized perspective - you have templated metaphysical answers to any possible illustrations, quotes, examples, line of reasoning, etc. that can be directed to you. All of that is felt to be immediately transparent to your philosophical perspective on the X state, which hovers above every other possible insight. That is why you don't feel any need to struggle and wrestle with the questions and examples, to really contemplate them deeply and see how things fit together. With this approach, everything must be smeared out into the most general terms. You can't point to any high resolution on this "next level of development" that conveniently outstrips anything that can be reached by anyone else. At bottom, it's all about whether we have any genuine interest in self-knowledge, about the most varied elastic inner tensions that lead us to conceptualize things in the way described above and absolutize our preferred narratives. Yet the latter narrative acts as a way to continually avoid that self-knowledge, so it becomes a Catch-22. We can only break the vicious cycle through radical humility and a corresponding willingness to live through the insights of higher knowledge in good faith, feeling our way into its harmonious structuring of our experience.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 4:34 pm If another person like Steiner reaches the X state and goes further into its spiritual significance, expanding into the more holistic insights embedded within X, which seem to be at tension with your preferred interpretation, then it is automatically assumed the other person is speaking of a Y state, i.e. he has not reached your X state but something else below the X state. Practically speaking, this means that anything which provides insight into how our Earthly conduct relates to lawful possibilities of experience after death, for example the memory tableau, are conveniently discarded. You come to the forum and say all the 'right' things - it is good, helpful, and necessary to explore the SS insights and add these to our other perspectives and insights, but practically you never do that. You don't thoroughly explore the SS practices and insights because you feel the absolutized state guarantees your preferred narrative for who we are and what happens after death (which again is not provided out of the X state but is added on through philosophical-religious mental pictures patched together from the most varied sources, like NDEs).

You can only understand the spiritual significance of the state "X" and why it is unconditioned if you actually experience it. But if you have no motivation or interest in getting this experience, you do not need to invent any justifications for that. It's fine, there is no mandate or obligation here. There is plenty of time ahead, it will quietly wait for you when you become ready.

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 4:48 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 4:34 pm If another person like Steiner reaches the X state and goes further into its spiritual significance, expanding into the more holistic insights embedded within X, which seem to be at tension with your preferred interpretation, then it is automatically assumed the other person is speaking of a Y state, i.e. he has not reached your X state but something else below the X state. Practically speaking, this means that anything which provides insight into how our Earthly conduct relates to lawful possibilities of experience after death, for example the memory tableau, are conveniently discarded. You come to the forum and say all the 'right' things - it is good, helpful, and necessary to explore the SS insights and add these to our other perspectives and insights, but practically you never do that. You don't thoroughly explore the SS practices and insights because you feel the absolutized state guarantees your preferred narrative for who we are and what happens after death (which again is not provided out of the X state but is added on through philosophical-religious mental pictures patched together from the most varied sources, like NDEs).

You can only understand the spiritual significance of the state "X" and why it is unconditioned if you actually experience it. But if you have no motivation or interest in getting this experience, you do not need to invent any justifications for that. It's fine, there is no mandate or obligation here. There is plenty of time ahead, it will quietly wait for you when you become ready.

Here is the spiritual significance of your absolutized interpretation of the X state. Of course, you will immediately reject this and say either Steiner is wrong or he is speaking about something completely different from the X state. But when you are eventually ready to start questioning the cognitive frameworks and expectations that you are merged with, the very soul constellation through which the X state is reached, as Cleric indicated on the other thread, then it may be fruitful to ask the following question - if somehow what Steiner was saying could be shown as 100% valid and applicable to your understanding of the X state, would you even want to know about this? Would you be willing to follow the intuitive threads wherever they lead or, rather, would you sacrifice the Truth on the altar of the "unconditioned" X interpretation that allows you to hover above the Cosmic curvatures and any insights that can be gained from attuning with their intents? If we contemplate such questions enough, and we are brutally honest with ourselves, we will realize that most often we don't even want to know these things. We would rather remain in ignorance of them and hover above, feeling like we already encompass everything of relevance, even if it means we have to remain riddled with hard problems and questions about how the manifest World comes into be-ing.

Even the first steps toward Imaginative cognition reveal this crippling inner fear of higher knowledge. It is exactly as Steiner said with respect to the memory tableau - "Many people do not like this precise clarity, because it brings them to enlightenment regarding much that they would prefer to see in a different light from the light of truth. But one must endure the fact that one is able to look upon one's own inner being in utter freedom from preconceptions, even if this being of oneself meets the searching eye with reproach."

I certainly do not mean to be irreverent, nor do I destroy any ideal through lack of reverence, for I have a deep feeling for all the beauty contained, for instance, in the mysticism of a St. Theresa or of a St. John of the Cross. Do not think that I am second to anyone in admiring all the beauty contained in such mystical expressions. But those who have some experience of the special way in which, for instance, St. Theresa or St. John of the Cross produced their visions, know to what extent human desires have a share in these visions. They know that desires which live in the soul's depths have a share particularly in mystical experiences, and these desires may lead a spiritual investigator to study the bodily constitution of these mystics. Nothing is desecrated when a spiritual investigator draws attention to such things, when he indicates that in certain organs he discovers an inner state of excitement, that the nerves exercise a different influence on certain organs, thus producing a certain effect in the soul, which may even take on the beautiful aspect of the visions described by St. John of the Cross or by St. Theresa, or by other mystics of that type. We are far more on the right track if we seek the foundation of such visions, which are so beautiful and poetic in the case of St. Theresa and of St. John of the Cross, in certain bodily conditions than in the beholding of some nebulous mystery.

As I have said I do not wish to pull to pieces something which I revere as much as any other person in this room, but the truth must be shown, and also the critical attitude derived from an anthroposophical foundation. It must be shown that an anthroposophist above all should not fall a prey to illusions. Above all, he should be free from illusion in regard to human desires which are rooted in the human organism, desires rooted in the physical human organism which flare up, come, so to speak, to boiling point, if I may use this expression, and lead to the most beautiful visions.

A person who wishes to become a spiritual investigator in the anthroposophical sense, should not only strengthen his thinking through meditation, but he should also transform his desires through self-training.

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 4:48 pm ...

Eugene, if it may help, what Ashvin says and quotes about transformation of desire and willingness to face the challenges that come with the development of higher cognition, is true for the vast majority of those who take that path, I believe.
It is certainly true for me, and I guess the difficulty is also well captured by these Meister Eckhart's words:

"if we do not have oneness with God, we should want it. And if we don’t yet want it, we should want to want it", that I learned about, in context, from this substack. It's an alternative lens: on the conversion of desire and the magnum opus

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 5:13 pm Even the first steps toward Imaginative cognition reveal this crippling inner fear of higher knowledge. It is exactly as Steiner said with respect to the memory tableau - "Many people do not like this precise clarity, because it brings them to enlightenment regarding much that they would prefer to see in a different light from the light of truth. But one must endure the fact that one is able to look upon one's own inner being in utter freedom from preconceptions, even if this being of oneself meets the searching eye with reproach."

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 5:39 pm Eugene, if it may help, what Ashvin says and quotes about transformation of desire and willingness to face the challenges that come with the development of higher cognition, is true for the vast majority of those who take that path, I believe.
It is certainly true for me, and I guess the difficulty is also well captured by these Meister Eckhart's words:

"if we do not have oneness with God, we should want it. And if we don’t yet want it, we should want to want it", that I learned about, in context, from this substack. It's an alternative lens: on the conversion of desire and the magnum opus

It's interesting that you quoted Eckhart because he is actually a "state X" teacher pointing to the same "X" state that Buddha pointed to in that quote that I mentioned, but Eckhart uses somewhat different language and approach to it with simplified techniques and practices adopted for modern people. One of his books is called "Stillness speaks". He calls it "Stillness" or "Space" for a lack of a better word, but the addition of the verb "speaks" points to the fact that it is not an empty state of consciousness.

Eckhart Tolle wrote: When you are no longer totally identified with forms, consciousness—who you are—becomes freed from its imprisonment in form. This freedom is the arising of inner space. It comes as a stillness, a subtle peace deep within you, even in the face of something seemingly bad. This, too, will pass. Suddenly, there is space around the event. There is also space around the emotional highs and lows, even around pain. And above all, there is space between your thoughts. And from that space emanates a peace that is not “of this world,” because this world is form, and the peace is space. This is the peace of God.

Now you can enjoy and honour the things of this world without giving them an importance and significance they don’t have. You can participate in the dance of creation and be active without attachment to outcome and without placing unreasonable demands upon the world: Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self-created suffering comes to an end. All such suffering is due to an overvaluation of form and an unawareness of the dimension of inner space.

Stranger wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 5:54 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2024 5:39 pm Eugene, if it may help, what Ashvin says and quotes about transformation of desire and willingness to face the challenges that come with the development of higher cognition, is true for the vast majority of those who take that path, I believe.
It is certainly true for me, and I guess the difficulty is also well captured by these Meister Eckhart's words:

"if we do not have oneness with God, we should want it. And if we don’t yet want it, we should want to want it", that I learned about, in context, from this substack. It's an alternative lens: on the conversion of desire and the magnum opus

It's interesting that you quoted Eckhart because he is actually a "state X" teacher pointing to the same "X" state that Buddha pointed to in that quote that I mentioned, but Eckhart uses somewhat different language and approach to it with simplified techniques and practices adopted for modern people. One of his books is called "Stillness speaks". He calls it "Stillness" for a lack of a better word, but the addition of the verb "speaks" points to the fact that it is not an empty state of consciousness.

Eckhart Tolle wrote: When you are no longer totally identified with forms, consciousness—who you are—becomes freed from its imprisonment in form. This freedom is the arising of inner space. It comes as a stillness, a subtle peace deep within you, even in the face of something seemingly bad. This, too, will pass. Suddenly, there is space around the event. There is also space around the emotional highs and lows, even around pain. And above all, there is space between your thoughts. And from that space emanates a peace that is not “of this world,” because this world is form, and the peace is space. This is the peace of God.

Now you can enjoy and honour the things of this world without giving them an importance and significance they don’t have. You can participate in the dance of creation and be active without attachment to outcome and without placing unreasonable demands upon the world: Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self-created suffering comes to an end. All such suffering is due to an overvaluation of form and an unawareness of the dimension of inner space.

I don't know Meister Eckhart at all, apart from some isolated quotes that I occasionally find in theoria press. The reason I quoted him is to say that it's practically inevitable to fight with oneself when approaching these things. We have to fight against our own preferences and prejudices, which first and foremost means, we have to see them, and it's not flattering at all, not as an endeavor, not as a finding. It's probably also why not many of those who have come in contact with these ideas here are still around.

I didn't know this quote, but it seems fully compatible with what we are saying.