Nikolai1

Utterly off-topic, but start a new thread perhaps?

Could you explain how a person can be a materialist, and view consciousness to be primary?

One thing I have noticed is that when I write on this forum I am simultaneously learning from the words that I write. It is as if writing is some kind of formality I have to go through in order to learn what I already know. Therefore I can well imagine how writing, but not posting the words, will feel just as satisfying. These threads are like Rorschach inkblots. They provoke insights which I receive as I myself write them.

What I am talking about is the same surrender the materialist makes to the givens of objective reality. When we view someting as a 'given', our attitude is one of surrender. I talk about surrender to the heart. I talk about seeing that who and what we love is not of our choosing. It makes objective that which is most subjective. I love one woman and one woman only...and I must surrender to that fact as if it were an Alp on the lanscape that was there aeons before we were born and which we all must accept . The heart specifies. It makes real, but it is real for us only, When we adjust ourselves to our heart's reality we become very directed. We become very powerful. We achieve mastery over the only reality that is truly ours to master because our energies are not scattered by those shared objectives that are only partially true for us.

Hi Daeluin, I thought your post was absolutely fascinating, but it was an explanation of Daoist philosophy. It didn't address the problem we all as individuals face, which is: from the perspective of the culture we live in in the west, which has shaped the way we are and think, all this Daoist philosophy is so much nonsense. Talk like this in public, at the local bar or mall, and you will be genrally considered as a freak, and you will be dismissed as a freak. How do we integrate this with what we have here in the west? Of course we can talk about to our heart's content here on this site but how can we integrate it with what is around us. Integration is what I'm talking about, and there are so many people, especially on this site, whose passion for Daoism just eclipses their own roots. When Wilhelm was in China he became Chinese; and when he returned to Germany he resumed his career as a priest and preached conventional Christian sermons. His soul was deeply divided; his Chinese psyche came to him only in foreboding dreams the true meaning of which he could not countenance. The task surely is to be beyond east and west, beyond science and I Ching?

Hi there, http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/the_secret_of_the_golden_flower.pdf This is a good document because it contains Jung's fascinating preface the to Wilhem's translation. This explains a lot about how Jung understood the text and gives great insight into Jung's own psychology. Jung's eulogy to Wilhelm is included as an appendix. As It was a eulogy, he isn't being fully open about his views on Wilhem and is he is more candid in his own autobiography: Memories, Dream and Reflections. The relevant passage is: Another must read on this subject is Jung's preface to Wilhelm's I Ching, where he explains the I Ching operating through synchronicity...so the hexagram is the appearance of a psychically meaningful moment in the flow of reality. Link here: http://www.iging.com/intro/foreword.htm

Society and its science will throw plenty of its truths my way, but If my intellect can frame the argument against them, then they are not my spells. I cannot be deceived because my intelligence is very broad, very immense. And them some spells come my way. Surely it is a meaningless folly to hit tennis balls over the net and inside the line? It's an activity fit for an ape! But do you know what? I don't care! I don't care!

When I talk about heart's desire you must understand that I do no think these can be chosen on a whim. What we love, what we value, we do not choose. Rather, I say, they choose us. This is the point at which I surrender. It is the point at which I bow before what is objectively granted. The scientific truth we all accept I see as a certain bewitchment. The people are bewitched by something that is not necessarily the case. The spell will pass; but the spell, for now, is real...it is objective. I seek the spells that have been cast in my own heart and I wish to be enchanted by them, deceived even. The spells that enchant others do not enchant me. My quest has been for my own disenchantment hitherto. Now I will allow the magic back...on my terms!

Obviously, because my perception of agreement is very much based on the premises we don't share.

Yes I understand you Karl. It's your use of the word existence that confuses me because one might say that consciousness is the evidence of my existence so the two aren't dichotomised. But anyway, I view the two positions as identical deep down. I see only correspondence between the inner and the outer. When I say that knowledge in the heart will be reflected in the outer reality I am not actually talking about a creative process, even though language can make it sound that way and, also, that 'knowledge creates reality' I view as a suitable metaphor for the world of time and space. All talk of causality I view as metaphorical. If we say that consciousness emerges passively out of material existence, I acknowledge the metaphor. I can see why people might talk in this fashion. If I talk of consciousness creating matter, I also like the metaphor. I prefer the second. Why? Because this was the new exciting insight for me. It is the thing I have really had to work hard to see is the case. My dissatisfaction with materialism drove me on...I knew there was more to it than materialism. And then, with the help of certain experiences, I saw the complementary viewpoint and my mind was expanded! I think you and I have been guilty of talking past each other much of the time.

When I look around me, particularly when I mix with those interested in spiritual cultivation, fear of the other (whether it be the feminine, the masculine or something else) is not the main problem. I see woman displaying rationality, linearity and I see men being affectionate and intuitive. We are a reflective bunch who have often learnt not to live according to stereotyped rules and genderings. The problem is not fear of encountering the other, it is failure to integrate it. We still let ourselves live in compartments. By day we go to work and live with the mindset of the team, by night we meditate and read esoteric books and engage in strange practices. We have different sets of friends. We have friends and colleaugues who we hide from and we do not share what we share on this site. We have not found the words to relate to them and we feel embarrassed to reveal our true beliefs. Some of us cannot even speak to our spouses. They ask us what we are reading and we hardly know how to explain. We do not like our parents to see the kind of books that are on our shelves. Like Wilhelm we are divided souls. We accept both sides of our psyche, but never at the same time.

I'm sorry but I'm still confused. I press you on this because I agree that this distinction is an important and fundamental one. But I need to understand you first!

Consciousness vs existence is no dichotomy. Did you mean consciousness vs matter?

What about all those who 'choose' a higher self. I mean the same essential identity but larger and wiser and capable of more far-seeking action? Edit : sorry I see you probably answered that:

Hi Karl I talked earlier about how our values (our heart's desires) are not just ethical but intellectual in nature. When an intellectual value is very deeply held, it is called a 'truth' when shared with the majority, and a 'belief' when not. As before, these intellectual values can be authentic and personally endorsed, or they can be inauthentic and largely foisted on us by society. One of the deepest of these values is our sense of being an individual in time and place. In other words, we can come to see that this is an equivocal value statement and doesn't consititute absolute truth. When we see this (and this is the vision that is so often called 'awakening') a former intellectual value loses its, let's call it, cash value. It is not something that can be endorsed any longer. It is part of the herd mentality...in fact it IS the herd mentality. When our deepest identity is no longer seen, felt and understood to be individuated, all sense of inner and outer completely breaks down. Such terms belong to a world view we no longer endorse. You may call me an 'intrinsicist' but, for me, this applies no more than 'extrinsicist'. You also talked about free will... From the viewpoint just described, there is no place where either free will or determinism obtain. Both are nothing more than quite nice tropes, more or less, for explaining the transformations that apparently happen in an apparently external reality. There is nothing imposed upon me that I cannot view as being chosen, with a simple shift in perspective. You may believe in your free will, but that to me is just a value that you uphold, and that is your prerogative. The Science of the Awakened, as I've said many times is a description of an investigative paradigm complementary to normal science. You could call it a way of viewing things that is not commonly known about. By it we can gain understanding on a whole raft of things that our formerly held values obscured from us. I therefore pronounce it and endorse it. It is the intellectual value that arises when a certain old value has lost its unequivocal value. You've said that you have no wish to commit suicide and so shall not endorse this value. This, again, is your prerogative and I do not wish to deceive you by sayng that suicide can be avoided.

Yes absolutely. And of course we are all born with certain truly individual values, and we naturally uphold them and they make us unique. The process I am interested in here, is the discovery of those values that have been stamped out by society. Actually, if they were totally stamped out they wouldn't cause us trouble. It is the fact they they constantly niggle at us when we are honestly trying to be good dutiful citizens, and make our lives rocky. They are stamped on, but not killed off, and that makes us suffer. The spiritual life is this process of awakening to who we really are, and what we, and no-one esle, really want. It is the process of surrounding ourselves with what we love and making our world brighter in the process. It is hard, a heroic struggle, but when you are called to it you can't say 'no.' Yes I can see that. What strikes you as irrational, I call something like inauthentic. The inauthentic is that which we assume to be true but haven't tested in the crucible of our own heart. The inauthentic comes when we listen to the herd and not ourselves. I have said here that our heart is infallible as mathematics.

Karl We only start talking about the heart when we find ourselves parting company from the herd. It is that which is not shared in the world of words and concepts. And from the herd's perspective the direction we are taking looks highly whimsical. But for you yourself, it is not whim, but rather a mandate that comes from a deeper place than the herd can appreciate. It is the call of your actual individuality - anathema to all group think. So why we find ourselves following this strange and uncharted course we can never say. It is the truth that is not recognised by the herd, so we aren't interested in whether it is irrational from their perspective.

Firstly, what you call 'value' is the same as what I call 'heart's desires', expressed discursively. They are givens. They are 'no matter whats'. They are the thing that we uphold their own sake, even though we see that others do not. The fact that you were conscious of your own values, and risked loneliness in order to uphold them, I have no doubt is the recipe for your happy marriage. It takes great courage to follow our heart, and I mean live by our values. Too often we have been told to ignore our unique values in favour of those commonly held. Living alone is not a situation we have been taught to value, and so many of us make sure that doesn't happen and compromise ourselves in the process. All this you know. All I want you to understand is that not all of our values are consciously apprehended. They can remain largely drowned out by the communal values, perhaps from the cradle to the grave. The crisis point I talk about in this thread comes when we have 'seen through' so many of society's values but have not found any replacements. This is hugely painful and disorientating. We have realised our marriage is unhappy, but cannot for the life of us work out why. The replacements come from listening to our actual heart's desires. Societal values are legion. We hardly suspect how they pervade our experience. We may fancy ourselves rugged individualists, but we're not. And that aren't just ethical values, they are also intellectual, aesthetic...you name it. As we see through one, we see through legions that are of the same species. We find the reality that we share with others fall away in huge chucks. We do not have to take them all one by one. Our lives became darker and narrower and lonelier and. yes, it is suicide because we are literally killiing ourselves. We are killing off the source of so much of what we are: the store of shared value. As we learn to identify the true voice of the heart it is unmistakable because it is the only one doing any talking. We find that some things stay with us - some values we do not renounce. These are the ones we got right in the first place. We were never entirely deaf to our heart, and so some things - it could be our marriage, our career, even our love of tennis - but some things don't need to change.

Karl - so how do you and your wife's values differ?

The expression of our heart is love. It is a very powerful force, the primal force, the only force. Gravity, we see, is nothing other than a kind of metaphor for this. Love is always there - it is a constant and unremitting pulling of the lover for the beloved. When we discover that our need is not the woman, but to love the woman - our love is already fully requited, though we may be separated by time and space. This is the revelation: our true desire is to give love, not the other way round. To give love is transcendent and contains both the giving and the taking. And in the real world this is simply irresistable. We love freely, liberally and expect nothing in return. No desperate, frantic scenes of love. We can reveal ourselves simply and naively. "To love you is my only desire. Whether you respond is perfectly up to you...I am already satisfied." We do not need outer reality to affirm what is in our hearts. Our love is its own affirmation and its own truth. We are relaxed, and the world of time and space has absolutely no choice but to reflect back what we give. The woman will of course, love us back. But that is immaterial to us!

Hi Karl, When we give up the mind it's because it has lost all ability to solve the important questions of life. It is finished, caput. We have taken the mind to its utmost limits and it can tell us how to live. When this question arises in full consciousness: how should I live?, the question 'why should I live?' is not far behind. You are absoultely right that it is subtle suicide, in fact, I would not call it subtle. It is suicide, plain and simple, for it is the end of who you were. There is no going back. There is no going back to a time when the world made sense. There is no going back to a time when you seek the same life as the others for the same reasons. It is a religious turning. As I've argued many times, there are many ways of reaching this place...in fact to approach it with the mind is quite rare as people go. There are very few people with a truly mortified intellect. But if you want to stay charitable, try not to view as some kind of cowardly escape. The person who has reached the end of the intellectual road has got there by asking some uncommonly difficult questions.

Karl, I've been following your conversation with Des and for me it still boils down to this distinction between rational living (which we can call the head) and following the heart. You said: This is nothing more than a belief. It is quite easy to look at our lives and notice that, at a conservative estimate, 99.99999% of our lives are totally unplanned. I've been awake only an hour and there hve already been a near comstant stream of unplanned, but significant events. Even when we do actively plan, things can turn out very different. This planning really is not as big a thing as you make it. When we accept this we definitely relax, into the moment. We go with the flow, literally. We have a certain trust that we are equipped to meet all that will come our way, by using skills and insights that are radically unique to that moment. It is not rational, predicate based living. This moment's axiom is the next moment's fallacy. When we aren't trying to orchestrate our lives, which is all about trying to repeat what has been best about the past in the future, we stop using the intellect as our guide. It is our heart that steps onto centre-stage. We do what what we want to do, what inspires love and attention in us. To begin with, our heart's desires are still quite distant outcomes...like the far off dream of the entrepreneur. But as we bcome more adept, we find that are very lives reflect our hearts desires more and more. Our lives become filled with what we love and we feel love. Living by the heart is now a here and now thing. Our present moment is loved, and it is enough. I've called this thread the science of the awakened, but the key methodology is trust. It is trust that our hearts are a reliable guide to universal truths. It is the trust that by following the heart we will no longer need to feel the sense of lack that is the driving force behind all intellectual search.

Suicidality is wishing to die because you are suffering and wish to suffer no longer. What I am talking about is the feeling that you cannot possibly continue living. You feel utterly expended. You have no further interest nor motivation to continue. You are not suffering, probably far from it. You simply have nothing left to do and no reason to do it. It feels like the exhaustion of your life force. Can anyone relate to this strange state of mind?

Good for you TaoBurned - I think the worst is behind you!

Unfortunately the students aren't children, but suffering adults in the prime of life.