Philosophical Speculations

So I am trying hard to stick with my "rules" for the Philosophy Unbound post because I believe they can really help get a productive dialogue going on an extremely important debate within idealism between multiple people and perhaps over a sustained amount of time that doesn't burn to nothingness within a day or two as is usually the case. At the same time, Eugene and I got into our own little tussle in PMs and I feel, as long as we are putting effort into our comments, we may as well share them with everyone else in case they help clear anything up with regards to these types of philosophical issues (or convince you even more that we are both totally insane ).

Eugene I wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 7:14 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 6:52 pm If the Idea quality suddenly disappeared, then Being quality would still continue existing 'in the dark' (no one knows about it, but it is still there). There are so many modern philosophical flaws wrapped up in such an assertion, including the 3rd person spectator fallacy.

I call them "aspects". So yes, the Being aspect would continue existing even if the Idea of it would disappear. And it would not existed "in the dark" because the direct Experiencing of Being would still be there. The Thinking would just not reflect it or report it with any ideas. Bernardo talked about it in his talk with John when he described how everything existing in the reality of Consciousness is always experienced, but not always "reported" (reflected by thinking).
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As I told you many times, the Experiential Gnosis (Experiencing aspect of Reality) is what closes the Kantian divide, in addition to Thinking. I'm not arrogant, but I'm stubborn because this is confirmed with my mystical experience of Being Experiencing itself regardless of whether such experience is reported with Thinking.
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In Scott terms, the ideal content is equivalent to his term "forms". But in addition to the aspect of forms with all its ideal content, there is also formless. Formless is inseparable form forms and forms are inseparable from formless, because they are both inseparable aspects of the same Reality. Yet, formless is not reducible to forms, it is a different aspect of Realty which is not equivalent to or reducible to ideas. Otherwise, if formless would be reduced to forms, we (Scott included) would not even speak of formless and would only speak of ideas/forms. In other words, formless is not an idea, so not all Reality is ideas only and there are aspects of Reality not reducible to ideas. But because these aspects are still experiences, the Kantian divide does not occur, because Reality directly experiences all its aspects (whether they are ideas or not) from the 1-st person perspective.

So, what you and Cleric are missing is the direct mystical experience of those non-ideal aspects. Which is not surprising since you disregard the Eastern spiritual tradition that opens the gate to such experience. Surely, it is only through thinking that you can consciously reflect them, but once you do it you would also see that they always exist regardless of whether thinking reports them or not.

I get the feeling you do not read any of my essays on metamorphic progression, Heidegger's lectures, etc., or only skim them to find an isolated part you can disagree with, and same for Cleric's beleaguered posts. If you did, then you would not continue misrepresenting Heidegger's position. Or if you simply are not sure what it is (his position is certainly not self-evident and takes much effort to penetrate), then you could ask questions to clarify. Maybe you even think that is the appropriate the way to deal with Western "exclusionary" spiritual types. I have no idea the reason but it is happening on a regular basis. But I guess these back-and-forths at least help me find better ways to express my points, so let's keep trying...

The first bolded part is in great tension with everything you have acknowledged before re: Scott's mumorphism and the Tri-Unity of Willing, Feeling, Thinking. Or the Quaternity of Being-Willing-Feeling-Thinking. Or the "Quinternity" of Being-Experiencing-Willing-Feeling-Thinking. It does not matter how many essential aspects you want to add that you think we are missing, because the underlying criticism remains the same regardless - claiming one aspect can continue existing without the others, as you did above, negates their essential nature. There is simply no getting around that.

Furthermore, the second bolded statement indicates you are still not understanding what is at issue here - what does it mean to "confirm" something in the sense you are using it? It means to demonstrate to your satisfaction that the experience you had of "Being Experiencing itself" is not unique to you and reveals an essential Truth about Reality. How can that be possible without some ideal content which accompanies the experience? As soon as we begin cognizing and talking about "demonstrating anything to satisfaction" we are already dwelling within the realm of Thinking and ideal content. You may not like the fact that, based on that unavoidable implication, we are always dwelling within that realm, but that is simply the way it is.

Eugene wrote: A question for you: in another thread you said "we could rightly say it was "unconscious" or "in deep sleep" in the process of fragmenting into differentiated perspectives." I assume that means MAL was also not aware of its existence (did not have an idea of its existence). So, you said "it was (unconscious), yet it could not exist because there was no "idea of existence" at that stage. You come to contradiction

Yes, the MAL global perspective was not aware of its existence. But in that same post I said "all perspectives are real". So our human perspectives (or other beings) which are self-conscious also existed within the total Unity of experience. As Cleric further explained on that thread, we cannot simply opt in and out of the idealist refutation of "objective" linear temporality when it suits our argument. You are imagining one unconscious perspective (MAL) in a bubble and taking that to mean, at some specific point in time, we had a situation where experience was devoid of ideal content. That conclusion can only be reached by assuming the flawed nominalist, Cartesian and Kantian paradigms, metaphysical assumptions that have only existed for 600 years or so. As Cleric and I and have said many, many times to you before, they are heavily influencing your arguments here.

It means to demonstrate to your satisfaction that the experience you had of "Being Experiencing itself" is not unique to you and reveals an essential Truth about Reality. How can that be possible without some ideal content which accompanies the experience?

You keep misinterpreting of what I 'm saying. I never said that any experience is possible without some ideal content. I only say that the Reality is not reducible to and not totally equivalent to its ideal content. Consciousness, experiencing/awareness, beingness, thinking and willing are not ideas, they are realities. But I absolutely agree that they always exist and act with some ideal content. The ideas of the ideal content can reflect the realities of Consciousness, awareness, beingness, thinking, willing and so on, but the ideas of those "things" are not those things themselves, the ideas are not ontically/existentially equivalent to those realities, they are only reflections of theses realities. In other words, thinking with its ideal content cannot fully "swallow" the wholeness of reality and reduce it its ideal content. There are aspects of reality that are not equivalent to ideas, even though they never exist in a "pure form" apart from the ideal content.

The objection to my view would be that such distinction between Reality and its ideal content would pose the Reality as unknowable by reason "thing in itself" and introduce the Kantian divide. The answer is no, because in such version of idealism the Reality is fundamentally conscious beingness-experiencing, so it always IS and always experiences all its aspects and forms, including all the the ideas, while being not separate from these aspects and ideas. Experience and what is experienced is the inseparable unity. So, the Reality experiences and experientially intimately knows itself directly and by virtue of this experiencing the Kantian divide is closed.

Otherwise, we arrive at "ideas-only" version of idealism where all there is to reality is only ideas, including the Reality/Consciousness itself, experiencing, thinking, willing, being etc. So "Consciousness is willing an action" would actually be "An idea of Consciousness is having an idea of willing of an idea of action". Or "Consciousness experiences its existence" is actually "An idea of Consciousness has an idea of experiencing of an idea of existence". I would call this philosophy as a "Platonic extremism". I wonder if Scott, Cleric, Heidegger and Steiner would actually subscribe to such version of idealism.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 12:06 pm

It means to demonstrate to your satisfaction that the experience you had of "Being Experiencing itself" is not unique to you and reveals an essential Truth about Reality. How can that be possible without some ideal content which accompanies the experience?

You keep misinterpreting of what I 'm saying. I never said that any experience is possible without some ideal content. I only say that the Reality is not reducible to and not totally equivalent to its ideal content. Consciousness, experiencing/awareness, beingness, thinking and willing are not ideas, they are realities. But I absolutely agree that they always exist and act with some ideal content. The ideas of the ideal content can reflect the realities of Consciousness, awareness, beingness, thinking, willing and so on, but the ideas of those "things" are not those things themselves, the ideas are not ontically/existentially equivalent to those realities, they are only reflections of theses realities. In other words, thinking with its ideal content cannot fully "swallow" the wholeness of reality and reduce it its ideal content. There are aspects of reality that are not equivalent to ideas, even though they never exist in a "pure form" apart from the ideal content.

The objection to my view would be that such distinction between Reality and its ideal content would pose the Reality as unknowable by reason "thing in itself" and introduce the Kantian divide. The answer is no, because in such version of idealism the Reality is fundamentally conscious beingness-experiencing, so it always IS and always experiences all its aspects and forms, including all the the ideas, while being not separate from these aspects and ideas. Experience and what is experienced is the inseparable unity. So, the Reality experiences and experientially intimately knows itself directly and by virtue of this experiencing the Kantian divide is closed.

Otherwise, we arrive at "ideas-only" version of idealism where all there is to reality is only ideas, including the Reality/Consciousness itself, experiencing, thinking, willing, being etc. So "Consciousness is willing an action" would actually be "An idea of Consciousness is having an idea of willing of an idea of action". Or "Consciousness experiences its existence" is actually "An idea of Consciousness has an idea of experiencing of an idea of existence". I would call this philosophy as a "Platonic extremism". I wonder if Scott, Cleric, Heidegger and Steiner would actually subscribe to such version of idealism.

I understand your approach more and more every day. It is very similar to Schopenhauer and I doubt you know how much he has influenced your view (and Western idealism in general). He is second only to Kant in German idealist influence. Basically it is an intellectualized version of Eastern mystical thought which, ironically, through its own abstract thinking, wants to avoid giving "abstract thinking" or anything similar any room to "infringe" upon what it considers the domain of the Will (which you call "Beingness" or "Experiencing", presumably to make it seem like you are talking about something other than the Will in Schopenhauer's sense, but you are not). Everything called "endogenous experience" can be placed under the Will in his sense, as explained by BK (even "pure" thoughts and feelings for him, but at least you recognize those must remain distinct, I think).

Anyway, I am still trying to stick with my Philosophy Unbound format for now, so I will avoid addressing Schopenhauer (or BK) argument directly any more than I already did. In bolded statement, you repeat the error Cleric and I have pointed out many times, which is confusing "ideas" for mere abstract intellectual concepts, rather than Ideas as envisioned by the great Idealist philosophers in the West up to Hegel-Steiner. If you restrict the ideal domain to only mere intellect, than of course what you are saying is correct and no one among us or any of those Western philosophers means "ideas", "ideation", "thoughts", "thinking", "cognition", etc. in that sense. Thinking (or any similar term) always encompasses Mere Intellect (Ratiocination), Reason, Imagination, and Intuition. The latter two belong only to the domain of Thinking (if you disagree and want to debate that particular point, we can).

In your second bolded statement, are you claiming this "knowing" is a knowing which falls outside the domain of Thinking? I suspect you are based on everything else claimed, but I will ask anyway to be certain. If you are, then you are restating exactly Schopenhauer's position that the Will operating in him knows itself and that knowing can be logically extrapolated to the experience of all other beings without invoking the activity of Thinking as what allows and only allows the "knowing". Again, that is exactly why I set up the other post to hash out this exact issue of contention, because it is a major one in Western idealist philosophy, perhaps the major one. But I guess we first needed to have this side debate for me to explain why you, in fact, are on Schopenhauer team.

I'm not restricting the ideal content to only intellectual "thoughts"/ideas, I understand that imaginations and intuitive forms are also part of the ideal content. The point is, they are all forms. But, if we take Scott's muomorphism, the reality is not reducible to only forms. There is also formless aspect that is irreducible to forms/ideas (whether intellectual, imaginative, intuitive or of any any other kind), while the formless never exist apart from forms. And the reason we know this for a fact is because formless can experience itself directly, because conscious experiencing (together with and in addition to ideation) is the fundamental aspect of formlessness. I don't care what you call the "formless" - will, beingness-awareness, Consciousness or whatever. WE are referring not to linguistic terms, but to experiential reality.

The mystery of Reality is that formless is no other that forms (ideas), yet all forms are experienced, and the experiencing of forms is not a form/idea, but THAT which makes the ideas knowable/experience-able. The experiencing is always accompanied by forms, and forms are always accompanied by experiencing, but they are irreducible to each other, while also inseparable.

But I asked this question many times and never got a clear answer from you. Do you believe that Consciousness, existence, awareness, experiencing are only ideas? If yes, then what is having these ideas? If yes, then when Consciousness experiences a form (a blue sky), in your version it is actually "an idea of Consciousness that has an idea of experiencing of an idea of blue sky". Or, instead of "Consciousness is aware of its existence" it turns out to be "an idea of Consciousness has an idea of awareness of an idea of existence" Please give a "yes" or "no" answer.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 1:35 pm I'm not restricting the ideal content to only intellectual "thoughts"/ideas, I understand that imaginations and intuitive forms are also part of the ideal content. The point is, they are all forms. But, if we take Scott's muomorphism, the reality is not reducible to only forms. There is also formless aspect that is irreducible to forms/ideas (whether intellectual, imaginative, intuitive or of any any other kind), while the formless never exist apart from forms. And the reason we know this for a fact is because formless can experience itself directly, because conscious experiencing (together with and in addition to ideation) is the fundamental aspect of formlessness. I don't care what you call the "formless" - will, beingness-awareness, Consciousness or whatever. WE are referring not to linguistic terms, but to experiential reality.

The mystery of Reality is that formless is no other that forms (ideas), yet all forms are experienced, and the experiencing of forms is not a form/idea, but THAT which makes the ideas knowable/experience-able. The experiencing is always accompanied by forms, and forms are always accompanied by experiencing, but they are irreducible to each other, while also inseparable.

But I asked this question many times and never got a clear answer from you. Do you believe that Consciousness, existence, awareness, experiencing are only ideas? If yes, then what is having these ideas? If yes, then when Consciousness experiences a form (a blue sky), in your version it is actually "an idea of Consciousness that has an idea of experiencing of an idea of blue sky". Or, instead of "Consciousness is aware of its existence" it turns out to be "an idea of Consciousness has an idea of awareness of an idea of existence" Please give a "yes" or "no" answer.

No, you still misunderstand Scott's mumorphism. Formlessness does not "know itself" without forms, it's the exact opposite - it only knows itself through the formative force operating through and against it. And, the Hegel-Steiner position is that, only the formless force of Thinking is what allows such knowing. So, again, you are in fact on team Schopenhauer because you reject that position and adopt one very similar to his, you just haven't realized it yet.

Seriously, I have answered this question a million times already, in a million different ways, and can locate each one in the comment history if necessary. NO, they are not only ideas, they are a Tri-Unity of willing, feeling and ideation (thinking) and their corresponding forms (existing in tetralemmic polarity). Every experience of the infinite manifold experiences is such a Tri-Unity.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 1:52 pm No, you still misunderstand Scott's mumorphism. Formlessness does not "know itself" without forms, it's the exact opposite - it only knows itself through the formative force operating through and against it. And, the Hegel-Steiner position is that, only the formless force of Thinking is what allows such knowing. So, again, you are in fact on team Schopenhauer because you reject that position and adopt one very similar to his, you just haven't realized it yet.

Seriously, I have answered this question a million times already, in a million different ways, and can locate each one in the comment history if necessary. NO, they are not only ideas, they are a Tri-Unity of willing, feeling and ideation (thinking) and their corresponding forms (existing in tetralemmic polarity). Every experience of the infinite manifold experiences is such a Tri-Unity.

Could you please stop misinterpreting and mis-phrasing of what I said?

Where did I said that "Formlessness "knows itself" without forms"? Of course it always know itself through/with forms. It is just that the awareness/experiencing of forms is not a form, but THAT which experiences forms.

Every experience of the infinite manifold experiences is such a Tri-Unity.

Then I don't know what we are disputing anymore, because this is also exactly my position, and exactly the Buddhist Trikaya of the unity of Emptiness(Beingness)-Awareness-Ideation (Dharmakaya-Sambhogakaya-Nirmanakaya) that never exist apart from each other or without each other. But it is not true that only ideation bears the unity. All of these three aspects equally bear the unity. But the key here is the difference between understanding of the tri-unity as a truth/idea by thinking only, and directly "mystically" experiencing it as an experiential/existential fact. Such experiencing is not accomplished "without" thinking, but the thinking is only what "reflects" this experience with certain and appropriate ideas (be them rational or intuitive).

I would like to add just one detail to what Ashvin said (I see there are new posts since I started writing). Ideas seem to always snap back to intellectual concepts because this is the only way we know them in our ordinary consciousness. We need understanding of the higher modes of consciousness in order to overcome this. And these modes can be understood even if we don't yet experience them.

We can approach the distinction, for example, if we think about why the sap in the plant moves? We can have physical understanding of this but in the spiritual world it's revealed that this movement archetypally originates from spiritual activity of beings. Just as our ordinary spiritual activity is thinking, so the activity of these beings is this life flow. And this activity is meaningful to them (imbued with ideal content) just as our thought-forms are imbued with ideal-content for us. Yet our thoughts are like rigid sparks within the nervous system, while the activity of these beings is something mobile, in constant metamorphosis, which we recognize on the surface as forces of Nature. This is the crucial moment - our human activity unfolds amidst the higher spiritual activity of these beings. In other words we need to seek to understand the spiritual activity of beings which support the matrix of our reality. This matrix is their activity. This activity is completely meaningful to them, just as thoughts are meaningful to us. They don't philosophize whether their activity is 'mere ideas' - it's the expression of their beingness, just as thinking is expression of ours. Their activities are like 'carrier waves' on top of which the lower beings 'modulate' their own beingness. Unless we grasp this hierarchical structure we'll always end up with the flat picture where every being simply fantasizes things independently and we somehow end up with the 'least common denominator' of our collective fantasies (the consensus reality). But this view assumes that our human ego consciousness is in essence not that different from some god's consciousness - only the contents are different. Yet his is not what we find out in higher consciousness. It's much more like the higher beings' activity is the higher order spiritual structure over which our human consciousness is modulated.

For those unfamiliar, here's an explanation for what is meant by modulation:


As always, every analogy has only quite limited application. In our case the carrier wave is the consciousness of the higher beings, which is completely imbued with ideal content - they know what they are doing and they are pursuing specific goals. Our human consciousness is the message signal which in reality exists as modulation over the carrier. Yet in our ordinary state we are aware only of the message signal - our thinking and perceptions. To expand the analogy it should be said that there are several layers of such modulations, which are gradually revealed through the stages of higher cognition - Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. For example, in our analogy, to have Imaginative consciousness would mean to attain to lucid consciousness of the third picture - the modulated signal. We now experience how we live together with the higher beings and how our ordinary consciousness is only the message signal, without awareness of the carrier. In the Imaginative realm we can experience both the spiritual carrier activity and also our ordinary.

If this is understood, it'll elucidate from yet another angle why our relations with higher beings is not something that we can opt in and out as we desire. For example, the Christ consciousness can be thought of one such carrier wave. Our "I" consciousness is modulated over that carrier irrelevant if we believe it or not. In that case if we say "There are other paths, I can evolve without knowing anything about the Sun-Spirit" we simply misunderstand the whole picture. To evolve means precisely to understand the carrier waves of the higher beings over which our ordinary consciousness is only a modulation. It simply makes no sense to imagine that we can take our message signal and evolve it along other paths independent of any carrier wave.

Cleric, thanks for clarifications. Putting the Sun-Spirit topic aside because is it a different topic, I agree with all you said about the interconnected and hierarchical variety/structure of the ideal content, and that we always exist in inter-relations with all other beings and in the wholeness of the ideal content. But my point was that all this ideal content (including the "I" of the Sun-Spirit) is not all there is to the Reality, because there is also THAT (the-same-everywhere experiencing-awareness-beingness-thinking-willing-Consciousness) which experiences all this ideal content, produces it and bears the unity of it. If we ignore it and only see the ideal content, we would have an incomplete and limited perspective on reality.

Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 2:16 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 1:52 pm No, you still misunderstand Scott's mumorphism. Formlessness does not "know itself" without forms, it's the exact opposite - it only knows itself through the formative force operating through and against it. And, the Hegel-Steiner position is that, only the formless force of Thinking is what allows such knowing. So, again, you are in fact on team Schopenhauer because you reject that position and adopt one very similar to his, you just haven't realized it yet.

Seriously, I have answered this question a million times already, in a million different ways, and can locate each one in the comment history if necessary. NO, they are not only ideas, they are a Tri-Unity of willing, feeling and ideation (thinking) and their corresponding forms (existing in tetralemmic polarity). Every experience of the infinite manifold experiences is such a Tri-Unity.

Could you please stop misinterpreting and mis-phrasing of what I said?

Where did I said that "Formlessness "knows itself" without forms"? Of course it always know itself through/with forms. It is just that the awareness/experiencing of forms is not a form, but THAT which experiences forms.

Eugene, you said "and we know this because formlesness can experience itself directly." That is not true according to me and I am not sure why I need to keep repeating that I disagree.

Now if instead you had said, "and we know this because formlesness can *only* know itself through ideal and *only* ideal forms", we would would be in agreement. But obviously that's not your position. You are firmly with Schopenhauer and BK on this topic, as further established by your comment on the Philosophy Unbound thread. There is no shame in that... they are two brilliant people. You are trying to distance yourself from those two philosophical geniuses for no apparent reason.

Eugene wrote:

Ashvin wrote:Every experience of the infinite manifold experiences is such a Tri-Unity.

Then I don't know what we are disputing anymore, because this is also exactly my position, and exactly the Buddhist Trikaya of the unity of Emptiness(Beingness)-Awareness-Ideation (Dharmakaya-Sambhogakaya-Nirmanakaya) that never exist apart from each other or without each other. But it is not true that only ideation bears the unity. All of these three aspects equally bear the unity. But the key here is the difference between understanding of the tri-unity as a truth/idea by thinking only, and directly "mystically" experiencing it as an experiential/existential fact. Such experiencing is not accomplished "without" thinking, but the thinking is only what "reflects" this experience with certain and appropriate ideas (be them rational or intuitive).

You should know what we are disputing, because you just restated exactly what I am disputing right after you said "then I don't know what we are disputing anymore". Ideation *only* bears the Unity, according to me. So can we just agree that we do, in fact, disagree about that??

Eugene I wrote: ↑Fri May 28, 2021 3:47 pm Cleric, thanks for clarifications. Putting the Sun-Spirit topic aside because is it a different topic, I agree with all you said about the interconnected and hierarchical variety/structure of the ideal content, and that we always exist in inter-relations with all other beings and in the wholeness of the ideal content. But my point was that all this ideal content (including the "I" of the Sun-Spirit) is not all there is to the Reality, because there is also THAT (the-same-everywhere experiencing-awareness-beingness-thinking-willing-Consciousness) which experiences all this ideal content, produces it and bears the unity of it. If we ignore it and only see the ideal content, we would have an incomplete and limited perspective on reality.

You practically say "There's a perspective above all perspectives, above every conditioning factor" and this is THAT. If we focus on the ideal content we miss THAT. Yes, it'll be limiting if I seek to form an abstract framework of thought (a TOE) and try to replace every living experience with thoughts belonging to that framework. But I hope it should be quite clear by now that no one here is advocating for such a thing. We're interested exactly in the gradual unveiling of the Great Mysteriousness through living experience in order to continuously emerge from cocoon after cocoon and finding more and more of the completeness of reality. And here's the point of bifurcation - it seems that for you the very focus on THAT already puts you above all cocoons, in other words, exploring the actual gradient of cocoons is optional. It's like you're saying "Guys, exploration of the ideal relations of the cocoons is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but you're ignoring THAT which is above all cocoons." To this I can only respond that we're not ignoring THAT but precisely unveiling it. The idea that we're above all conditioning factors (above all carrier waves) when we focus on THAT simply doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny. If that was really the case we should have been able to observe the workings of the Universe from that vantage point. So this focus on THAT is really a focus on the feeling of being larger than life, so to speak. A feeling that doesn't allow us to consider any higher carrier wave that we might be riding in the very same moment when we meditate on the feeling of being on top of everything.

To this will be objected: "But the moment we imagine that there's something above us, we immediately submerge below it and become conditioned by it". OK, this is also possible. But if in our meditation of THAT we were really at the top, above all conditionings, why don't we see anything of the workings of the Universe? This should be the case if we attain to the completely unconditioned perspective of THAT, shouldn't it? After all, if the One unconditioned Consciousness can't experience the spiritual intents that support the Cosmos, who can? What's the real point on focusing on the feeling of being on top of all if this never unveils anything more then a nebulous state? So we're stuck. We want to know the top of THAT, yet we can approach this only as strong feeling. At the same time we refuse to unveil the ideal content of reality because we consider that optional. So it's like wanting to be fed but refusing to take any food and focusing only on the feeling of 'what it might be to be fed'.