GENIUS FORUMS

Note:

David wrote: "He knew that his understanding of Reality was absolutely true, though, and he openly claimed it as such. His teachings, in turn, stemmed from that understanding."

I think the key to the whole deal is here. It is stating the obvious, but the obvious needs to be stated.

David knows he understands the absolute and true nature of Reality. He claims it as such. His teachings, in turn, stem from that understanding.

I really don't blame anyone for having strong convictions. The acts and thoughts that give power to a man's life stem directly from the force of his convictions. For good or for evil this is one of the main operational truths of life. It functions like that at a 'demonic' level and at an 'angelic' level.

It is all very interesting, I think, since we might all be able to agree (at least) that having (discovering, choosing, enforcing) convictions is really the epitome of 'maleness'. I think it must stem from our original activity as hunters: the first conviction is to hunt an animal, set a spear into its heart, wound it, kill it and feed the tribe. It requires a unitary focus. The concentration of force that produces all 'great things' comes from our convictions. Also, it is sometimes...what is the word?...pleasant to have ultra-strong convictions when others have lax convictions, when they cannot decide, when they are neither fish nor fowl, neither hot not cold but lukewarm.

dejavu:
The puppy is male, so we know it's no creamcake, but it could still have hydatids. I'd hazard a guess that he'd move out of its path, but not stoop to pat it.

Carmel:
Oh, this puppy is a creamcake:) He recently won a cute puppy contest and though he is disease free, I'll make no assurances as to whether or not he licked his own ass 20 minutes prior to approaching David...

guest_of_logic wrote:

... the simplicity, the effort to zoom into what matters, what existence deep down is, without getting into the form of whatever manifests.

The problem will probably become self-evident when I explain what I mean by minimisation: that is, to (deliberately) reduce to a minimal degree the true significance of a thing or concept.

I think that you are talking about something else: focus. The focus of this forum is, at its broadest, agreeable to me; it's only when defocusing turns to minimization that I hear alarm bells ringing.

How would you propose to focus without reducing the significance of things and concepts deemed to be obstructing a the broader, deeper, wider and clearer view that is the submitted goal here?

That you have issues with the determination of which things or concepts have "true signifiance" and which not: that's something else entirely. Then you do not have a problem with the minimization but with which things are selected to be minimized.

It's possible to take anything, any concept and discuss the potential significance of it for ones development in spiritual terms. In some ways that could be said to be exactly the goal of the forum: to use logic and reason in determining "true" or ultimate significance of anything.

So can we assume for these reasons that you hear alarm bells ringing not because the dismissing but because specifically what is dismissed that you think might have value and significance, hesitating to throw it away without being certain it is indeed not going to help?

If so, I can completely understand and you should verify for yourself first. It's possible that for you something might hold lots of significance, something you need to explore further first before delving into any 'absolute'. To me that would seem completely normal and natural. The only thing is that I'd suggest to you to really monitor if you're really getting something out of these discussions here. Don't let it become a distraction in itself because they can become a powerful obsession, leading to nothing good.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:I find it interesting that you refer to "obsession or attachment to [...] deeper meanings" as "[clouding] the view", and in the next paragraph imply that "deeper meanings" are "fluff". Clouding the view of what? "The everlasting true nature of existence"?

Well, I was talking about being attached to any apparent depth of meaning, or any experience. One can be literally carried away when investigating nature from an existential viewpoint, when the multiplicity and oneness becomes more clear and clear. But this journey too can end in a maze, or a hall of mirrors which can create endless recursive effects to get lost in.

This is where I see a process of minimisation happening on this forum, and it speaks perhaps to a pre-supposition, or at least to a hasty conclusion: that ultimately meaning is accidental; that ultimate understanding is "empty"; that what we feel when we contemplate the unanswered (or unanswerable) is meaningless; that feeling itself is meaningless; that neither meaning nor feeling have any relevance to "the everlasting true nature of existence".

Meaning might be called accidental but that doesn't prevent meaning popping up everywhere. The minimizing here is all about revealing ultimate limits to meaning giving but not to suggest one can or should stop dealing with meaning. The true nature of existence having no ultimate meaning to us is a conclusion that cannot be avoided though, based on the simple discovery what existence is and how meanings cannot touch it.

Meaning and feeling, so dismissively swept off the table. A cold and impersonal reality; mechanistic: machine-like even. The inevitable clockwork of the stars; and no starry-eyes for robots: would you minimise yourself to a machine?

But you can only say that by minimizing all the machines when you define them as somehow cold and lifeless. And to me feeling and thoughts are one and the same. Rationality being the crown on our head full of chaotic senses and interpretations, reflexes and instincts. I don't think genius could even develop without a lot of feel, exceptional feeling even. Only for emotion, or any feeling which actively drugs our ability to think in situations that need clear headed thought while sustaining its own continuing appearance - the root of all addiction, for that I'd reserve a special place in hell...

Alex T. Jacob wrote:... having (discovering, choosing, enforcing) convictions is really the epitome of 'maleness'. I think it must stem from our original activity as hunters: the first conviction is to hunt an animal, set a spear into its heart, wound it, kill it and feed the tribe.

Rationality surely is a product of a fierce warrior instinct. The need to get smart, wise up, to free the tribe. The killer instinct, perhaps the reptilian illumination, has grown inwards into a war between competing ideas and convictions. With warring gods and idols, internalized torture chambers, "bloody thoughts", all growing a new generations of ruthless dragon slayers: using the pen, the extension and expression of the mind to strike with courage. It's in these times we can see most clearly how the inner and the outer are blending, distinctions blurring. One word, wise or foolish, can now launch a thousand jets but a thousand jets cannot change one iota anymore. What a world! What a word!

All violence is redeemed in wisdom.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:... your methods are too exclusive because they do not seem to arise from a whole person (mind, emotion, will etc.). They themselves are 'fractured' methods.

After hundreds of post this "whole person" is more illusive and mystical than a Jesus or a Buddha. What if blending emotion in would mean a suspension of mind? Then we can forever try to combine them but the efforts would never go anywhere, actually the fracture will be caused by blending such contradictions mindlessly.

What if the whole history of person has been a string of fractures? What if we all come from broken homes? Is the desire to somehow become whole not an expression of the very brokenness? And as such an extension and continuation of it?

This is the summary of my criticism of hundreds of posts from this entity called "Alex" and some other names. This deep down desire to heal, to cling perhaps to a pre-modern, natural state or to desire a future ideal, is merely a reflection of a deeper truth: that we can find wholeness in understanding why we seem broken, why the monstrosity: that everything we have build upon is thanks to that, our psyche, our faith, our morality as well as the science. Any brokenness as consequence of everything already past. Modernity as a wild growth, a cancerous protrusion of all that went before it, culminating in a seemingly never-ending repetition of broken mirrors.

Only then a new understanding can dawn: that the wholeness cannot be created but can only work out of the already realized unity. And methods will keep on appearing fractured, meanings will be just as contextual and relative as ever. And the mystical "whole" person will never appear in terms of human personality. It will have to substantially move beyond a personality and its various neuroses and emotions to understand how this wholeness is already the case.

Alex T. Jacob wrote: "But you can't become "whole" simply by stringing bits of multiplicity together and hoping that the outcome will be a pleasing, coherent success. You need to first dive down into the unity underlying all things. And then, after that, you can go back into the world, as it were, and begin the study of multiplicity in a coherent fashion, with each step of this endeavour thoroughly grounded in unity. And in the light of this unity, things like "wholeness" and "cohesion" can be re-evaluated and placed into proper context."

6) However I never suggested even remotely such a 'stringing together'. It seems to be true enough about seeking unity in oneself. Not only from an intuitive perspective but from a psychoanalytic perspective. The implication is finding the core within oneself and living in the world from that core. But, all the criticism one makes of your presuppositions, your praxis, is only to suggest that this process is open-ended, fluid, personal, and is always (I suggest) conducted against the background of eventual death. All the roads we travel lead to the same place. All the choices we make have to be considered from that perspective. I think this knowledge might keep us from getting too grandiose about our own selves, our mission, etc.

You still don't have the faintest understanding of what I am talking about, Alex, and I think that is primarily because you are trapped entirely within multiplicity. Even the way you talk about unity is done in terms of multiplicity. You unwittingly think of it as being just another strand of multiplicity.

There is only way to enter into unity and that is by going beyond multiplicity altogether. There is no other way to do it. All your talk about there being many different ways and solutions to attaining unity is nonsense. It might make sense to you, but that is only because it involves affirming the only world you know - that of multiplicity. But to anyone who has actually gone beyond multiplicity and realized unity, your comments, I assure you, are a source of great amusement.

For those of you more in the know, I'm sure you can see that the well-known Zen story, oft-quoted on this forum, can be reworked as follows:

Multiplicity,
No multiplicity,
Multiplicity once again.

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Carmel wrote:David:
The trouble is, anything can be regarded as "extreme", just as anything can be regarded as "balanced". All it requires is a shift in perspective.

Carmel:
That's true up to a point, but wait...It's so black that it's white?! so hot that it's cold? We do live in a dualistic world, afterall.

Don't forget, though, that terms like "extreme" and "balanced", in the context we are using them, are nothing more than value-judgments. It is like making the judgment that luke-warm activity is "balanced" and venturing off into hot or cold territiories is "extreme". None of these judgments are absolute.

Yet, we can still strive to think less in less extreme terms... more holistically.

Even holism can easily be viewed as "extreme" from a non-holistic perspective.

Carmel wrote:David:
From the perspective of enlightened wisdom, the "middle way" of doing everything in moderation represents an extreme form of lifelessness.

Carmel:
It's not about "moderation" or lifenessness. It's about knowing when to engage in life and when to detach from it. That takes wisdom. It's easy to live in a cave.

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I can discern any content in these comments .....

Carmel wrote:David:
He knew that his understanding of Reality was absolutely true, though, and he openly claimed it as such. His teachings, in turn, stemmed from that understanding.

Carmel:
That is why Buddhism is considered a religion, rather than a philosophy, by most people. His views were subjectively true, not absolutely true, regardless of what he claimed.

In short, you don't believe in enlightenment, then?

Carmel wrote:David:
Your use of the word "dogma" is misplaced here. Can it be called "dogmatic to strive and reach full understanding of the nature of Reality, and then teach others about it? If so, then the Buddha was dogmatic.

Carmel:
I say he's not dogmatic because he wasn't forceful about teaching his views. He wasn't trying to recruit people to his ideology, in fact, it's said that originally, he didn't want his teachings to be put in writing for fear that they would be misinterpreted by the masses.

How very dogmatic of him to say that ..... ;)

I know what you're trying to say, but you're going too far in saying that the Buddha didn't know the truth at all, and that he was deceiving himself in thinking that he did. It's not a really a choice between religiously believing that he knew the truth and philosophically asserting that he didn't. One needs to reject those two extremes and follow the "middle way" between them ......

Carmel wrote:David:
Yes, he encouraged people to think for themselves, but in his own mind his understanding of Reality and the path to enlightenment was "unsurpassed" and beyond question. And he didn't regard anyone else to be "enlightened" unless they had reached that same high level of understanding themselves.

Carmel:
Yeah, what a schmuck! ...j/k, actually I've been rereading some of "The Dharma"...I've come across some relevant passages, I may them post at a later time(or start a new thread).

Please do.

Carmel wrote:Carmel
Do you experience compassion as a feeling or merely a consequence of logic?

David:
The former, when my mind is not quite on song. The latter, when it is.

Carmel:
ok, what if a playful, frolicking puppy, approached you. Would you respond to him or ignore him?

It would depend on what mood I'm in.

I don't really subscribe to the idea that our behaviour should follow absolute rules that are set-in-stone. That, to me, would be a lifeless existence. Rather, I affirm flexible, spontaneous, intelligent behaviour that springs from a deep understanding of Reality.

Sorry, if the question sounds trite, but I'm trying to understand how far you take your detached state.

I take it all the way - that is, I take it so far that it ceases to be detached behaviour and instead becomes fully engaged behaviour that consciously drinks in the fullness of reality in every single moment.

-

As you know, David, I don't consider 'enlightnment' a genuine category. There is only 'enlightenment' of a given person, in a given time, and each 'enlightened' person acts differently, thinks differently, operates in the world differently.

It is a huge mistake to set 'enlightenment' up as an absolute category. It is actually destructive to the notion of spiritual advancement, in my understanding.

Also, respectfully, though you may be right that I don't 'understand' what you are talking about (because my core presuppositions are different, of course!), it is not at all that I have not known or felt 'enlightenment'. It is just not something that I would ever talk about.

Whatever is our inner state of being, and however we get to it, we still do it when in a body. That means that we are (thereofr) connected to the 'body' which is to say 'the world' and to concrete and temporal activity in the world. Perhaps me largest disagreement is that you abstract yourselve(s) from the reality we all have to live?
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Diebert,

In the I-Ching there is a hexagram called The Well. The pictogram for this image/idea is two lines up and down intersected by two other lines side to side: like a tic-tac-toe game. The Well is a way to picture human life on the earth. It is also a way to picture an individual in relation to the sources of life and consciousness. Looking at the pictogram, there are nine squares. The central square is where The Well is located, where the 'water' is located. Water is the source of life. But, on a spiritual level, 'water' is also emblamatic for the fountain of life, value, nourishment. In that hexagram, as run through the consciousness of Richard Wilhelm, it speaks of a 'bucket' for reacing down into the well to get to the water. 'If the bucket is broken or if the rope is too short' you can't get to the spiritual nourishment. The project fails. Or, if the well is old and collapsed (old methods, old religious pracitices, an old order of conceptualizing the cosmos and our relationship to it), it is described as 'full of mud' or a place where one might only 'spear fish'.

The Well in this sense is the human relationship to the 'fibres of life' in which we exist. The material earth, growing food, our relationship to material resources, but also the social structure, which in ideal terms is constructed around a 'true font'. It seems to me that in whatever sort of spirituality we devise, discover, propose or invent, that we have to see it against the back-drop of our actual human life, what has actually produced us.

Diebert wrote: "This is the summary of my criticism of hundreds of posts from this entity called "Alex" and some other names. This deep down desire to heal, to cling perhaps to a pre-modern, natural state or to desire a future ideal, is merely a reflection of a deeper truth: that we can find wholeness in understanding why we seem broken, why the monstrosity: that everything we have build upon is thanks to that, our psyche, our faith, our morality as well as the science. Any brokenness as consequence of everything already past. Modernity as a wild growth, a cancerous protrusion of all that went before it, culminating in a seemingly never-ending repetition of broken mirrors.

"Only then a new understanding can dawn: that the wholeness cannot be created but can only work out of the already realized unity. And methods will keep on appearing fractured, meanings will be just as contextual and relative as ever. And the mystical "whole" person will never appear in terms of human personality. It will have to substantially move beyond a personality and its various neuroses and emotions to understand how this wholeness is already the case."

The 'deep down desire to heal' is your own projection, I think. I think I just start from different premises than you. I like what you have written. I think you could do much better with it by posting your ideas independantly of mine. I think that a sane goal for the individual is to live a balanced life: to earn a decent living, contribute something of value to the culture, to advance some of the higher goals of culture. This is the human person who stands in 'correct' relationship to the physical matrix, and to the 'wellsprings'. If this connection, which I think is part of humility and recognition of our concrete conditions, is absent, if the boys go off in strange spaceships of thought into worlds beyond this world, if they lose their connection to the real sources of life, they will only go into distortions. The distortions will manifest, as I see things, as mental disorders.

There is another I-Ching hexagram that is also, I think relevant here: The Ting. It is a ritual vessel in which the offering is placed in the temple. It is a concrete object that is fashioned by man. In a sense it is man himself. In the best of cases it is the very advanced men that culture can produce, as a result of its situation in respect to The Well, the social structure. I also see that individual as a 'something' with a concrete root. In that line it says:

"Here we see civilization as it reaches its culmination in religion.
The ting serves in offering sacrifice to God. The highest earthly values
must be sacrificed to the divine. But the truly divine does not manifest
itself apart from man. The supreme revelation of God appears in prophets
and holy men. To venerate them is true veneration of God. The will of God,
as revealed through them, should be accepted in humility; this brings inner
enlightenment and true understanding of the world, and this leads to great
good fortune and success.

THE IMAGE

Fire over wood:
The image of THE CALDRON.
Thus the superior man consolidates his fate
By making his position correct.

The fate of fire depends on wood; as long as there is wood below, the fire burns
above. It is the same in human life; there is in man likewise a fate that lends
power to his life. And if he succeeds in assigning the right place to life and
to fate, thus bringing the two into harmony, he puts his fate on a firm footing.
These words contain hints about fostering of life as handed on by oral tradition
in the secret teachings of Chinese yoga.

I think it is worthwhile to see things in very concrete and down-to-earth ways. I have a feeling this is fundamentally where I differ from you and Quinn. I don't think you really have a mature understanding of spiritual or religious life. I think your grasp is boyish and incomplete.

It is from this general position that I launch my critiques. The critiques, while certainly imperfect, often hit their mark quite nicely not because of any personal virtue but perhaps because of the strength of my 'presuppositions' in comparison to yours (?)

Alex T. Jacob wrote:In the I-Ching there is a hexagram called The Well. The pictogram for this image/idea is two lines up and down intersected by two other lines side to side: like a tic-tac-toe game. The Well in this sense is the human relationship to the 'fibres of life' in which we exist.

As well as the Celtic and Christian crosses. Our consciousness arises at the intersection of a perceived material horizon and a perceived spiritual stairway. This turns the center, the well opening, into our consciousness. Any relationship with horizontal (material) life or vertical (divine, spiritual) life are the various arms spiraling away from the center, a centrifugal force force with what we'd regard as "life" or being - manifestation of angular momentum.

I think that a sane goal for the individual is to live a balanced life: to earn a decent living, contribute something of value to the culture, to advance some of the higher goals of culture. This is the human person who stands in 'correct' relationship to the physical matrix, and to the 'wellsprings'.

One could also recognize that as average, normal and frankly quite uninteresting. And I've actually lived such life and I know it to be the siren song of mediocrity. Surely it has function but it belongs to spiritual death and decay - decadence - and you've the guts to put in on a pedestal and worship it! It fits the bill though, as there can be no other viable direction appearing to your way of looking at things. And don't recoil with "you cannot know my outlook" - the modern human experience is fairly transparent these days although it likes to hide behind a manifold of mysterious, "unheard" of stuff - the ever-promising "new" as well digging into "old".

if they lose their connection to the real sources of life, they will only go into distortions. The distortions will manifest, as I see things, as mental disorders.

What are those real sources of life? There's only one source as the Well should have taught you. From there all other things are provided by in a spontaneous, effortless manner . But you cannot imagine that, you're actually seriously considering that die-hard posters here will be sooner or later be carried off on a stretcher or became some kind of Jack Nicholson in the Shining, lost in the mazes of ones own disconnecting. What needs to be seen though is that this already is the case: it's normality: the stuff you call wholeness, Johny!

I think it is worthwhile to see things in very concrete and down-to-earth ways. I have a feeling this is fundamentally where I differ from you and Quinn. I don't think you really have a mature understanding of spiritual or religious life. I think your grasp is boyish and incomplete.

To me you sound not concrete and earthy at all. You reside in fantasy land up there high in your castle of contrived feeling and fragments of philosophies. And you're too old, too rigid to ever come down without an accident. If you only could become more boyish, like a child. But the conversations have been interesting nevertheless.

Diebert wrote: "One could also recognize that as average, normal and frankly quite uninteresting. And I've actually lived such life and I know it to be the siren song of mediocrity. Surely it has function but it belongs to spiritual death and decay - decadence - and you've the guts to put in on a pedestal and worship it! It fits the bill though, as there can be no other viable direction appearing to your way of looking at things. And don't recoil with "you cannot know my outlook" - the modern human experience is fairly transparent these days although it likes to hide behind a manifold of mysterious, "unheard" of stuff - the ever-promising "new" as well digging into "old".

Even the great sages---you could refer to the great yogis as well as the beloved Taoist sages---lived simple, normal, 'average' lives. I think, in your rather obvious hostility (something to be looked at, I think) you didn't capture what I was getting at. I wasn't talking about strange Celtic crosses but a diagram on the Earth: the well at the center of the human community (central square) with the surrounding squares as cultivated fields. What this means is that no matter what one's projects---average or spectacular---one is connected to an organic whole.

Again, our presuppositions are radically different. You are (evidently) trying to break out of your mediocrity, something that oppresses you, renders you small, insignificant. I have always had the feeling that there was a strong romantic current here. What we in fact have is some angry restless boys, living in their parent's middle-class basement, who will do almost anything to break out of that terrible constraint. Some of them, like one recent arrival, exist down in a rabbit-hole of dispair from which there appears to be no escape. (I mention this because it is very really the context of this forum, if one were to be truthful). When once it might have been Dungeons & Dragons, now it is all the romance of spiritual monks, grand quests for Holy Grail, all of it conducted while still (of course) living in mom's basement. Sometimes, I have had the thought that it is all imaginary---grand, imagined projects. However, I tend to think (and say) that I do respect the strong focus QRS recommend.

And you continue to misunderstand with: "It fits the bill though, as there can be no other viable direction appearing to your way of looking at things." What I tried to do with a reference to The Well (and Chinese social philosophy) was to place any spiritual activity and striving within a naturalistic, human continuum. The 'sage' in that world has a relationship with human beings and human things. I distinctly get the impression, here, that you have kicked off from that dock...

If you are going to refer to grand spiritual achievements and Nietzschean scaling of radical mountains, you are going to have to speak about it Diebert. You are also going to have to demonstrate it in your person. Independantly of latching onto me to make your points, I think you should really speak about what you are really talking about: yourself as the grand spiritual outcome, the New Man.

"What are those real sources of life? There's only one source as the Well should have taught you. From there all other things are provided by in a spontaneous, effortless manner . But you cannot imagine that, you're actually seriously considering that die-hard posters here will be sooner or later be carried off on a stretcher or became some kind of Jack Nicholson in the Shining, lost in the mazes of ones own disconnecting. What needs to be seen though is that this already is the case: it's normality: the stuff you call wholeness, Johnny!"

Most likely (heh heh) it is precisely the Die Hard posters who will be carried off in a stretcher. (Joke).

If there is one sounce for Life, and one 'living water', then there is an open conversation about what it is, what it does and how one discovers it and nourishes oneself and others with it. I guess we are not in disagreement about the source (that it exists) but we are very much in disagreement about what at its essence it is, and does. The pressupositions that arise from this are axial.

And when I refer to mental disorder, I am not thinking of anyone in specific. I am saying, or repeating, what is said in the 6-gram The Well. If our rope does not get down to the water or if the bucket is cracked, we won't be able to put the water to use.

The Well. The town may be changed,
But the well cannot be changed.
It neither decreases nor increases.
They come and go and draw from the well.
If one gets down almost to the water
And the rope does not go all the way,
Or the jug breaks, it brings misfortune.

The result of disconnetion from the 'Living Water' is maddness, distress, chaos, etc. It will also happen, I suggest, if we misunderstand and misapply 'spiritual truths'. I don't think this can be stressed enough: the whole landscape of so-called 'spiritual growth' movements, especially in the post-war era, is strewn with such casualties.

Because you or anyone considers himself some sort of senior member doesn't hold much water in my book.

"To me you sound not concrete and earthy at all. You reside in fantasy land up there high in your castle of contrived feeling and fragments of philosophies. And you're too old, too rigid to ever come down without an accident. If you only could become more boyish, like a child. But the conversations have been interesting nevertheless."

And if you have enjoyed the conversations that is a definite plus for you, isn't it? I too have enjoyed and continue to enjoy them. ;-)

Alex T. Jacob wrote:As you know, David, I don't consider 'enlightnment' a genuine category. There is only 'enlightenment' of a given person, in a given time, and each 'enlightened' person acts differently, thinks differently, operates in the world differently.

A perfectly natural thing to say for a person stuck in multiplicity.

It is a huge mistake to set 'enlightenment' up as an absolute category. It is actually destructive to the notion of spiritual advancement, in my understanding.

It is certainly destructive of the world of multiplicity, as viewed by the ego. Which, of course, would be a tremendous advancement.

Enlightenment is absolute because unity itself is absolute - that is, utterly beyond the relativity and uncertainity of multiplicity.

Also, respectfully, though you may be right that I don't 'understand' what you are talking about (because my core presuppositions are different, of course!), it is not at all that I have not known or felt 'enlightenment'. It is just not something that I would ever talk about.

Why? Are you ashamed of it?

What you call "enlightenment" is simply an altered state or an elevated feeling (a "sublime" moment) which happens to have some religious content. Better than nothing, I suppose, but still infinitely removed from the great enlightenment enjoyed by sages.

Whatever is our inner state of being, and however we get to it, we still do it when in a body. That means that we are (thereofr) connected to the 'body' which is to say 'the world' and to concrete and temporal activity in the world. Perhaps me largest disagreement is that you abstract yourselve(s) from the reality we all have to live?

As a first step, yes - but as a prelude to reconnecting to the body and the world in a far more amazing way.

There is a reason why Jesus said, "If you want to follow me, you must first give up your own life" - and it had nothing to do with recruiting religious followers or being dogmatic.

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote: To me you [Alex] sound not concrete and earthy at all. You reside in fantasy land up there high in your castle of contrived feeling and fragments of philosophies. And you're too old, too rigid to ever come down without an accident. If you only could become more boyish, like a child.

The Kingdom of Heaven isn't for grandpa-like people ....

Perhaps what Jesus really said was, "You must become like those little grandpas over there", and it just became mangled in the translations over the years. :)

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Alex T. Jacob wrote:In the I-Ching there is a hexagram called The Well. The pictogram for this image/idea is two lines up and down intersected by two other lines side to side: like a tic-tac-toe game. The Well is a way to picture human life on the earth. It is also a way to picture an individual in relation to the sources of life and consciousness. Looking at the pictogram, there are nine squares.

By the way, I'm not familiar with such pictogram with its nine squares or the idea of the image having anything to do with rice fields or "fibers of life". Did you make it up? The usual #48 is water above wood, it's about getting water out, like plants do. The whole I-Ching tradition is consistent in connecting the idea of water with truth and wisdom, and likens its own availability to a well. If you must hi-jack a tradition, try to be a bit more skillful at least.

Diebert wrote: "The whole I-Ching tradition is consistent in connecting the idea of water with truth and wisdom, and likens its own availability to a well. If you must hi-jack a tradition, try to be a bit more skillful at least."

The pictogram (the ancient Chinese character) for the hexagram is the two sets of crossed lines as I said. If you get your hands on an I-Ching you will see. The specific trigrams that make up the hexagram are 'Sun' wood (or wind) under 'K'an' water, as you say.

When I do decide to hijack a tradition (it sounds like fun...) I will certainly take your advice and 'try to be a bit more skillful at least'. But you know, skill is not my strong suit...
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Let's see. I have been a 'poet' and and 'aesthete', a sociologist, a gleaner from the fields of 'multiplicity', and now, grandpa. Thanks alot, Diebert.

David wrote: "What you call "enlightenment" is simply an altered state or an elevated feeling (a "sublime" moment) which happens to have some religious content. Better than nothing, I suppose, but still infinitely removed from the great enlightenment enjoyed by sages."

Well, I didn't make any grand claims! ;-)

Still, one must focus on individual sages and not speak of them as 'one thing'. That is my main point. To put it more specifically, I think your use of 'enlightenment' as an absolute category is misguided, and I also think this stems from 'skewed pressupositions'. It certainly does not mean that I dismiss Saints or Sages, what they say and what they do. But they say and they do very different things, often, from what you seem to recommend.

Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Santa Teresa de Jesus, San Juan de la Cruz, the Baal Shem Tov---all great sages. And each of them has a different focus, a different teaching, a different tradition that gave birth to them. It is interesting to wonder what they might have thought of an enlightenment path constructed on atheism, Nietzscheanism, the philosophy of Otto Weininger, and a strict rationalism, all thrown in the same pot and stirred dizzyingly...

David, if you don't see the irony in this, you need to go back to humorschool...

Alex T. Jacob wrote: Let's see. I have been a 'poet' and and 'aesthete', a sociologist, a gleaner from the fields of 'multiplicity', and now, grandpa. Thanks alot, Diebert.

They're all the same thing, really.

David wrote: "What you call "enlightenment" is simply an altered state or an elevated feeling (a "sublime" moment) which happens to have some religious content. Better than nothing, I suppose, but still infinitely removed from the great enlightenment enjoyed by sages."

Well, I didn't make any grand claims! ;-)

Still, one must focus on individual sages and not speak of them as 'one thing'. That is my main point.

Or even better, one should focus on both the individual sages and the absoluteness of truth. Not just the former.

Sages have different personalities and have to deal with different issues depending on what culture or era they live in, but this has no bearing on their inner understanding of reality, which is always absolute. You're confusing two distinct realms here.

Next you'll be trying to use the different personalities of mathematicians to prove that mathematical truths are subjective .....

Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Santa Teresa de Jesus, San Juan de la Cruz, the Baal Shem Tov---all great sages.

Are they?

And each of them has a different focus, a different teaching, a different tradition that gave birth to them. It is interesting to wonder what they might have thought of an enlightenment path constructed on atheism, Nietzscheanism, the philosophy of Otto Weininger, and a strict rationalism, all thrown in the same pot and stirred dizzyingly...

Except for the strict rationalism part, the enlightened path that I talk about isn't constructed on these things at all.

David, if you don't see the irony in this, you need to go back to humorschool...

The "irony" that you are seeing is being manufactured by your own poor reasoning skills. For example:

"Ten people all claim to know the truth and they all offer differing views,
Therefore, they are all wrong".

These are kindergarten errors, Grandpa. You're too old to be making them.....

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Anyway, I'm not sure I see the point of continuing this discussion. It's clear that that you're never going to leave the realm of multiplicity. Indeed, you could live for a million years and, at the end, you'd still be reading and studying and "framing questions" and being witty and going around in circles - and you would still not have advanced a single inch.

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Alex T. Jacob wrote:The pictogram (the ancient Chinese character) for the hexagram is the two sets of crossed lines as I said. If you get your hands on an I-Ching you will see. The specific trigrams that make up the hexagram are 'Sun' wood (or wind) under 'K'an' water, as you say.

Wow, you have a real I-Ching set in your toy box?

By the way, the character 井 is not a pictogram, it's an ideogram, actually a compound of several iconic elements. It might be tempting to divine meanings from the composition but since there are often also phonetic elements involved and in many cases no relation to the complete pictogram at all, I'd be a bit hesitating to conjure up rice fields.

I do admit there's something to this though, a sense of order, counting, from the unified to the diverse. But while you seem to be stressing some derived meaning of the specific embedding of the well into the fields or community, it's more appropriate (on so many levels) so see how it's all but a construct out of the ordering, meaning-giving mind.

From the diversity one can never distill the present unity by alchemical or analytical means.

Your view is much like 井底之蛙.

Master Diebert, I offer my humble obeisances...

"Pictogram: Written pictures of words or their sounds. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and modern Chinese characters are examples of pictographic script."

We are all, don't you think? frogs in our wells... ;-)

"I do admit there's something to this though, a sense of order, counting, from the unified to the diverse. But while you seem to be stressing some derived meaning of the specific embedding of the well into the fields or community, it's more appropriate (on so many levels) so see how it's all but a construct out of the ordering, meaning-giving mind."

(Again, *genuflections and scraping* before your Towering---Shining?---Intellect.)

It is wise, I think, to always place ourselves again and again on the Earth. To locate ourselves on the land, with a well at the center. Our physical structure is there and it gives rise to all other possibilities. It is common sense I think. Similarly, our spiritual selves---thoughts. strivings and activities---always have to return to 'reality'. When people take spiritual ideas, put them in a rocket-ship, and seek to exit the solar system, it all gets a little freaky...

And I can't say that the essential facts that define our existence are, as you imply, inter-positions of the 'ordering, meaning-giving mind'. I think I am talking about something far more essential. The source of our material life in 'water', and the source of our spiritual life in another sort of 'water'. It is a compelling idea.

And that of course has been my thrust all throughout this conversation. I think it is also the base platform on which I construct a certain level of opposition to your-plural program.

David wrote: "Next you'll be trying to use the different personalities of mathematicians to prove that mathematical truths are subjective ..... "

Important point. There is a huge difference between mathematical facts and human perception of truth. Mathematical facts offer no insights into greater truths, nor could mathematical facts produce insight, epiphany, samadhi or nirvana. They are not on the same plane, it seems to me.

I think though that you have conflated them, and out of this there arises a whole group of errors.

"Anyway, I'm not sure I see the point of continuing this discussion."

For you I doubt there is any point. But I did not start this recent round of questioning/opining/engaging with others with you in mind. The conversation, so far, has served my purposes very nicely. I hope others have gained from it as I have.

"...and being witty and going around in circles - and you would still not have advanced a single inch".

Another very good question to be asked! What is advancement within this human life we have? What really is 'spiritual advancement'? So many questions arise from this question, and you most certainly do not have the final answer. As I say, I suggest that you have a hurried, tendentious and incomplete answer that you 'wield against all comers'.

It is probably best, David, that you just opt-out...

Alex T. Jacob wrote: "Pictogram: Written pictures of words or their sounds. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and modern Chinese characters are examples of pictographic script."

There are some Chinese characters which are considered actual pictograms but your Well is not one of them. It's a technicality, forget it.

It's clear enough: you want to connect the source of life, consciousness, any idea of enlightenment, to the matrix of life, its substrate as not only condition but way to examine and explore these things. But multiplicity will not contain any trace of underlying unity, by definition. One needs first to unify the mind, its operating concepts, before one can recognize the unity in everything.

It is wise, I think, to always place ourselves again and again on the Earth. To locate ourselves on the land, with a well at the center.

But are you doing that? If your earth would be actual sand, you could still say those things but it would be as shifty and illusive as the sand you call earth. If you never stepped on rock before, the whole concept of home and earth would be alien to you. You could only work with an echo, an idea lifted from elsewhere but it would fall apart under any scrutiny.

Alex T. Jacob wrote: Mathematical facts offer no insights into greater truths, nor could mathematical facts produce insight, epiphany, samadhi or nirvana. They are not on the same plane, it seems to me.

Without desiring to tackle the whole subject right now I only want to remark there are quite a few documented stories which suggest mathematical concepts can have an amazing effect on our mind, easily matching what's usually considered an epiphany. Especially advanced geometry, conceptualizing higher dimensions and space-time, quantum behavior - they all have had impacts on the ones delving deep into them, especially on an academic, advanced level.

In a general sense this is easy to grasp: every experience capable of lifting our mind up and placing it into a complete new orientation can be transforming. What a mathematician does in his mind is just as real and vivid to him as for someone else who walks in the meadows with the sun out and butterflies dancing around him, when suddenly a lightning bolt takes down a tree not far away. Anyone doubting this has no idea what happens in the mind of an advanced mathematician, the detail and the complexity of those processes, like a vivid, crystal clear landscape with it inhabitants, smells and sounds.

It's possible mathematics, even while we can approach it now mainly through abstract reasoning, could provide a more "real", more complete description of our universe than our usual senses. Seen in that light, it might not be so crazy to think in some future mathematical studies could provide a rather clear path to the greatest truths.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:David wrote: "Next you'll be trying to use the different personalities of mathematicians to prove that mathematical truths are subjective ..... "

Important point. There is a huge difference between mathematical facts and human perception of truth. Mathematical facts offer no insights into greater truths, nor could mathematical facts produce insight, epiphany, samadhi or nirvana. They are not on the same plane, it seems to me.

No, they not on the same plane in that sense. Thanks for the stating the obvious there, but it wasn't the point I was making.

I was illustrating the way in which the absoluteness of truth isn't affected by the varying personalities of those who come to know it, just as the absoluteness of mathematical facts isn't affected in this way.

You're right in saying that philosophic truths differ vastly from mathematical truths in terms of content and spiritual/existential consequences, but nonetheless they still both share the quality of absoluteness.

In your constant attempts to undermine the absoluteness of philosophic truths, you are undermining their ability to trigger the massive spiritual/existential consequences which they are capable of, thereby rendering them as harmless as mathematical truths. Which, deep down, has been the agenda all along......

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First off, the 'pictogram issue'. I am happy you brought it up. You suggested that it be forgotten, that it was a 'technicalty' on your part. Well, consider it forgotten. Done. Finished. Only a resentful woman would hold on to such an irrelevant stupidity.

So, Onward, upward!
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Diebert wrote: "It's clear enough: you want to connect the source of life, consciousness, any idea of enlightenment, to the matrix of life, its substrate as not only condition but way to examine and explore these things. But multiplicity will not contain any trace of underlying unity, by definition. One needs first to unify the mind, its operating concepts, before one can recognize the unity in everything."

The fact is, to be quite honest, non-ironical, direct, is that we (you and I, David and I, but for somewhat different reasons) have a significantly different group of presuppositions, so that the philosophy and praxis we speak about, never seems quite to jibe. But another aspect is that neither do our mutual viewpoints put us completely at odds. David, quite frankly, has and will likely always need to 'villify' me, ridicule me, put rather absurd labels on me, and it is true that to some extent you chime in on all this since, in fact, you consider yourself superior to me, more advanced, more masculine, etc. (This is now and has always been backdrop to all our communication which I tolerate because that is just the way you are). Let's just get this shit on the table. It will allow us to have a more honest and possibly more fruitful conversation.

You have chosen this word 'multiplicity', not me. I don't necessarily think in those terms. True, I am chary of thinking in absolute terms, which I think can be (but is not always) a disease of thinking. But this does not mean, therefor, that my only option is to stare into a kaleidoscope and, like, 'trip out'. I sometimes think that, despite your smarts, you really internalize these arbitrary poles you establish for me.

Going back a ways, Laird and I expressed a certain admiration for many traits of the QRS focus. As Laird wrote: "They are serious about understanding reality, and for that I can't fault them; they are serious about interrogating the assumptions of convention, and I can't fault them for that either; they are serious about constructing a spiritual platform, and I find that admirable: so I agree that the questions, focus and possibility of discipline are right; it's just the particular definitions, answers, solutions and paradigms that I debate."

With the idea of 'The Well' (a way of thinking about human life, a way of thinking about spiritual life), I chiefly wanted to resituate man---in our conversations---in his 'true setting'. I think that this is what both Laird and I (and possibly some others) want. We are not comfortable with SOME of the 'definitions, solutions and paradigms', but in my case that does not mean that I cannot consider the idea of 'enlightenment' or even nirvana, etc. Truthfully, I don't consider those ideas very useful, and certainly not in the way they are used here, for all the reasons I describe. So, it is of course a seemingly reasonable proposition that one might need to "unify the mind, its operating concepts, before one can recognize the unity in everything". No part of what I have said, or my critiques, dismisses such an proposal.

But I still think that the idea of a Well, as a way to refer to God, or to the Mystery of Existence, to the process of intellectual and spiritual evolution, points in the direction of so many different kinds of relationships to that 'Well'. This, to me, is a very important point. That relationship occurs in the body, mind, heart and soul of a living person. It is not a sole and solitary experience, but a multiplicity of relationships.

"If you never stepped on rock before, the whole concept of home and earth would be alien to you. You could only work with an echo, an idea lifted from elsewhere but it would fall apart under any scrutiny."

I really don't understand what you are getting at. I refer to 'the earth' as the most central thing to all human experience. The body. The physical. The condition of life, which is a big issue for the Chinese.

"It's possible mathematics, even while we can approach it now mainly through abstract reasoning, could provide a more "real", more complete description of our universe than our usual senses. Seen in that light, it might not be so crazy to think in some future mathematical studies could provide a rather clear path to the greatest truths."

It could very well be true. What I meant was more that the basic mathematical facts or just a group of facts without value. The one who makes value, who divines 'meaning', who proposes 'truth', is a human being, and that process is a very special and unique process. All people participate in it, just as they all take place in life. Some take it to farther points.

However, it still seems to me that mystical union, that of the Saints and Sages, is not dependant on higher mathematics but on a quite distinct, mysticism.
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David wrote: "In your constant attempts to undermine the absoluteness of philosophic truth, you are undermining their ability to trigger the massive spiritual/existential consequences which they are capable of, thereby rendering them as harmless as mathematical truths. Which, deep down, has been the agenda all along..."

No, I have issues with the way 'absolute truths' are used by religious and other sorts of persons. I would likely, myself, stay out of a project that had to do with establishing absolutes for our world, but I would not condemn or ridicule or minimize the mystic's description of his experience.

And again, I can only mention differences in our 'core presuppositions' which seem to be unbridgable. You, David Quinn, do not own, manage or dole-out the ineffable of this existence. Yet you act like you do. You succumb to the errors of absolutist thinking prevalent in human (religious) community.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:David wrote: "In your constant attempts to undermine the absoluteness of philosophic truth, you are undermining their ability to trigger the massive spiritual/existential consequences which they are capable of, thereby rendering them as harmless as mathematical truths. Which, deep down, has been the agenda all along..."

No, I have issues with the way 'absolute truths' are used by religious and other sorts of persons. I would likely, myself, stay out of a project that had to do with establishing absolutes for our world, but I would not condemn or ridicule or minimize the mystic's description of his experience.

The problem is, you don't stay out of it. Your life and your thinking is every bit as shaped by your own understanding of what is absolutely true as mine is. It's just that you try to keep it hidden from your own consciousness and pretend that it is not there, which has the consequence of undermining any further development of your core understanding of things.

In other words, underneath the erudite and witty dinner-guest type personality lies a very rigid man tied to a selection of half-baked, ill-thought out "absolutes", who doesn't like it when other people bring the matter to the surface and openly promote the value of knowing the absolute authentically, intelligently and consciously. It tends to spoil the dinner party atmosphere, I guess.

You're not going to get anywhere, Alex (not that you want to, of course), until you acknowledge the rigidness of your own mind and the way it is firmly tethered to a lattice of "absolutes".

And again, I can only mention differences in our 'core presuppositions' which seem to be unbridgable. You, David Quinn, do not own, manage or dole-out the ineffable of this existence.

True, I don't. But nor do I try to.

In essence, all I do is inform others about this fantastic treasure I have found and how they might find it for themselves. But people tend to get very uppity about it, as their own egos are involved.

Yet you act like you do.

No, I don't. Out of an underlying defensiveness, you are grabbing the wrong end of the stick.

You succumb to the errors of absolutist thinking prevalent in human (religious) community.

Not at all.

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David:
It would depend on what mood I'm in.

Carmel:
You have moods? ;)

David:
I don't really subscribe to the idea that our behaviour should follow absolute rules that are set-in-stone. That, to me, would be a lifeless existence. Rather, I affirm flexible, spontaneous, intelligent behaviour that springs from a deep understanding of Reality.

...

I take it all the way - that is, I take it so far that it ceases to be detached behaviour and instead becomes fully engaged behaviour that consciously drinks in the fullness of reality in every single moment.

Carmel:
I can appreciate that.

I wrote a more detailed response to you, but it didn't post properly, and now, the moment has passed...

Thanks for the discussion, thus far, perhaps I'll pick up on it at a later time.

Some quotes by Carl Jung which may be relevant to some of things recently discussed. Not to hold his ideas up as a be-all or emd-all, but to show different ways the mind and spirit can take hold of existential questions and issues.
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"Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion."

---Psychological Aspects of the Modern Archetype (1938)

"No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass. Freedom stretches only as far as the limits of our consciousness."

---Paracelsus the Physician (1942)

"You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return."

---The Undiscovered Self (1958)

"The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God. Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?"

---The Undiscovered Self (1958)

"Reason alone does not suffice."

---The Undiscovered Self (1958)

"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy."

---Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of Individuation (1921)

"The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form—an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other. "

---Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

"Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic — and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images — be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will — are lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive.

---The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1934)

"The erotic instinct is something questionable, and will always be so whatever a future set of laws may have to say on the matter. It belongs, on the one hand, to the original animal nature of man, which will exist as long as man has an animal body. On the other hand, it is connected with the highest forms of the spirit. But it blooms only when the spirit and instinct are in true harmony. If one or the other aspect is missing, then an injury occurs, or at least there is a one-sided lack of balance which easily slips into the pathological. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal."

---The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943)

"My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The Difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose colden green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results."

---Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960)