11-05-2019, 07:08 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-05-2019, 07:11 AM by Asolsutsesvyl.)
How does objectivity and subjectivity relate to polarity? In short, I think you can keep them separate at the level of definition, though both positive and negative dynamics have much to do with both objective and subjective reality.
This a big subject area, and touches on the history of metaphysics in terms of the Fourth Way, the Ra contact, and the Cassiopaean Experiment. The third of these tried to unify the metaphysics of the first two, introducing serious distortions in the process.
Don Elkins, Ra, and keeping it simple
In the original introduction to the Ra material, Don Elkins refers to a natural element of subjectivity in spiritual activities. He does not question its role in mystical affairs.
Ra recommends a balance between an intuitive and an analytical approach in spiritual matters. More generally, as an approach to life, neither is more positive or negative in itself.
My guess is that Don Elkins considered positivity and objectivity to be independent variables. That is, a two-dimensional picture could be given where they are separate axes.
In such a picture of the mind, a balanced and positive approach would lead to the positive half of the picture being filled along a continuum reaching from the most subjective to the most objective. That's not a simple matter, and people differ in their capacities in subjective and objective areas, so in practice, such a picture will always be much more uneven.
A key point is that suppressing exploration and activity, or inwardly distorting the attitude towards, subjective and/or objective experience and activity, means blockage or imbalance, and is ultimately something to move past in learning one's lessons.
People who reject objective reality scramble large areas of awareness, and end up projecting other things onto what exists, instead of accepting what exists. It also makes it much harder to respond to catalyst successfully, since viable means and actions are likely to be rejected in advance.
In the case of subjective parts of reality, rejection is likely to lead to a counter-productive fighting with the self, which may spill over outwards in various ways. When it gets bad, and increased control is the only way seen to resolve the problems perceived, it can spiral sharply into something strongly negative. Or, if the focus is more strictly one of self-control, then a self-suffocating approach may result, or a detrimental leap into an external source of help which does not correct the imbalance, but instead furthers it.
Gurdjieff's thinking
This will be sketchy, because Gurdjieff's thinking is a very tricky topic. Gurdjieff directly perceived reality in a multi-layered way, and accepted far more as "real" and existing "out there" than is dealt with by materialistic science. He was a superb systems thinker from a time before that label came of use, and developed models taking into account all the levels of reality he found real.
He didn't care much for materialistic science, except for its practical uses. What was objective to Gurdjieff was what had a "concrete" existence, whether the substances involved were material in materialistic terms, or something different. God itself was objective in Gurdjieff's terms, as a kind of atom with a role unique in the cosmos, indivisible, yet containing everything.
The main concern for Gurdjieff was that humanity was asleep, hypnotized by forces which keep it under control, and that humanity - or a sufficient number - needed to wake up in order to prevent disaster. What Gurdjieff called imagination can be translated roughly as "distortions in consciousness separating it from reality", and he saw it as the great evil to be eliminated. (In Gurdjieff's own terms, "consciousness" has several levels and meanings, not elaborated on here.)
Gurdjieff saw people as malfunctioning machines whose souls were either absent or not in charge, leading to a deranged circus on the collective level, and making things like World Wars I and II (during his time) not only possible but inevitable. Only by a sufficient number waking up, becoming truly conscious, and influencing the rest of humanity, could humanity prevent destroying itself and all its future possibilities.
He made many sharp distinctions running contrary to the mentalities of all the surrounding cultures, and the Work he instructed people in was anything but easy. All the difficulties, harshness, and control involved was organized in a complex and dynamically regulated way, intended to add up to the "harmonious development of man".
While Gurdjieff seems to have helped at least a few people greatly, on the whole the results of his teaching were very mixed, and for the most part, what was hoped for never happened. Entering the final years of his life, and following a serious car accident, Gurdjieff suddenly downscaled his teaching activities and wrote books for future generations. After the accident, he claimed that he had "died" in some sense, and his energy then went into elaborating a message out of a newly inspired hindsight.
The mental models Gurdjieff developed included layers and distinctions of both inner and outer reality which, in principle, do not leave anything out, and which honor what is conventionally referred to as objective and subjective. (Book-length material is needed for a decent overview.) But something seems to have been askew in how it was applied to the people he came in contact with. An imbalance, combined with the intensity of what he was doing, ruined the good intentions.
Oversimplification doesn't scale
The thinking at the core of what Montalk distinguishes as a second phase of the Cassiopaean Experiment, from the early 00's and on, is built on ideas and tendencies part of the picture from early on. The big shift in mentality he chronicled is a matter of how the dots are connected; they became connected more firmly, in a very simple pattern.
The QFS philosophy centered around the unification of the ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, in a Gurdjieffian sense, with the positive and negative polarities, respectively. Subjectivity became a defining characteristic of STS consciousness, and its elimination seen as the key in striving towards STO consciousness.
Over the years, the boundary between what's seen as subjective and objective has changed. The earlier "Cassiopaean spirituality" is now seen as New Age nonsense which has been moved past through a long and difficult learning process. Gurdjieff's thinking is not the basis of how objective and subjective is defined, as most of the intricate structure of Gurdjieff's ideas has been stripped away and replaced by much simpler thought.
From the beginning of the mentioned phase of the Cassiopaean Experiment, Gurdjieff was a major inspiration, but his ideas not at the center, but rather draped around the actual core mentality, and fuel for its development. In the era of the online forum, a metaphor of the online community as a "house" made clear that Gurdjieff's ideas were part of the furniture and decor rather than the architecture.
A problem with the very wide-ranging use of two words, objective and subjective, when given an increasingly nuanced and fuzzy range of meaning, is that the semantics become slippery. The flow of words will look good, but on examination, the meaning may subtly shift from thought to thought, without the thinker noticing. Ironically, this core feature of the teaching furthers subjectivity. The result is what Gurdjieff observed regarding thought and language, where people think they agree or disagree based on words rather than actual meaning, the two at odds.
Then enters a sense of urgency, and hyperbolic expressions of what is positive, negative, important, and dangerous. Over time, the idea that only those who "pay strict attention to objective reality" (C's) become part of the future, others reduced to dreams in the past, has morphed into an extremely imbalanced psychology. Inner burdens are unresolved, and in response to catalyst, people look outwards and harden their resolve to be "objective" at all costs. A barrier grows between an increasingly stormy world of the soul and the outer world, while signs related to the 4D activity of the community intensify.
If the core of a "system" is made too simple, it may be possible to build around that core for a time, and maybe more quickly and efficiently than possible on a more complex foundation. But eventually, the oversimplification at the core leads to confusion and overcomplication when the "system" is extended, dysfunction increasing over time. For a clean design and a sane implementation to be possible as a "system" scales up in size and scope, oversimplification of basic components must be avoided (though it is optimal for them to be as simple as they can without being oversimplified).
General thoughts
There's several kinds of "simple". The teaching of the Ra contact has a simplicity at the core which "scales" well, and seems to be carefully constructed to avoid leading people to leave any major part of the big picture out.
What are the pitfalls of wisdom teachings? They go wrong when they magnify some areas of reality out of proportion while blinding people to other areas. Too many hard and fast guidelines, overgeneralizations, hyperbolic maxims, etc., and "wisdom" will lead to mixed-up mental and emotional patterns.
The Law of One books do not lead people particularly strongly in choosing how to approach reality. The teaching on the polarities goes the farthest in so doing, but is at the same time full of subtleties often missed or selectively ignored by readers. As part of a positive path, a balanced approach is, in general, recommended. (There seems to be major overlap with Jungian insights regarding that.)
The subjective reaches of consciousness are part of life, and as part of a balanced approach, not something to be avoided. A positive orientation will only manifest fully when the personal subjective world becomes part of a positive psychic landscape. And I think subjectivity may be inseparable from individuality; consciousness perhaps extends in that direction whenever there is separation from unity with all in the structure of the consciousness. If so, subjectivity is always part of existence in density 4 as well, and probably 5.
There's also several kinds of "quixotic". Ironically, trying to destroy subjectivity in oneself as an individual being may be a "quixotic" striving on a scale similar to that of trying to fully become "one with all" without going through the journey of the densities in-between in the octave.
In order to choose one's personal brand of "quixotic" quest wisely, it may help to, basically, be wise about wisdom. A good maxim when not wise enough to be wise enough may be the classic "keep it simple, stupid". If in doubt as to which kind of simple, then something which basically makes sense in relation to experience, instead of being disconnected from it, intuitively seems the best bet.
Returning to Gurdjieff for a final thought, there's a point to exploring the structure and "things" of non-materialistic realities in a serious way. If "objective" is to be redefined to include things belonging to more levels of reality, as investigators in paranormal areas may want to do, then it is however best to keep the dictionary as clear and unambiguous as possible, avoiding mixing too much into the most basic words used.
This a big subject area, and touches on the history of metaphysics in terms of the Fourth Way, the Ra contact, and the Cassiopaean Experiment. The third of these tried to unify the metaphysics of the first two, introducing serious distortions in the process.
Don Elkins, Ra, and keeping it simple
In the original introduction to the Ra material, Don Elkins refers to a natural element of subjectivity in spiritual activities. He does not question its role in mystical affairs.
Ra recommends a balance between an intuitive and an analytical approach in spiritual matters. More generally, as an approach to life, neither is more positive or negative in itself.
My guess is that Don Elkins considered positivity and objectivity to be independent variables. That is, a two-dimensional picture could be given where they are separate axes.
In such a picture of the mind, a balanced and positive approach would lead to the positive half of the picture being filled along a continuum reaching from the most subjective to the most objective. That's not a simple matter, and people differ in their capacities in subjective and objective areas, so in practice, such a picture will always be much more uneven.
A key point is that suppressing exploration and activity, or inwardly distorting the attitude towards, subjective and/or objective experience and activity, means blockage or imbalance, and is ultimately something to move past in learning one's lessons.
People who reject objective reality scramble large areas of awareness, and end up projecting other things onto what exists, instead of accepting what exists. It also makes it much harder to respond to catalyst successfully, since viable means and actions are likely to be rejected in advance.
In the case of subjective parts of reality, rejection is likely to lead to a counter-productive fighting with the self, which may spill over outwards in various ways. When it gets bad, and increased control is the only way seen to resolve the problems perceived, it can spiral sharply into something strongly negative. Or, if the focus is more strictly one of self-control, then a self-suffocating approach may result, or a detrimental leap into an external source of help which does not correct the imbalance, but instead furthers it.
Gurdjieff's thinking
This will be sketchy, because Gurdjieff's thinking is a very tricky topic. Gurdjieff directly perceived reality in a multi-layered way, and accepted far more as "real" and existing "out there" than is dealt with by materialistic science. He was a superb systems thinker from a time before that label came of use, and developed models taking into account all the levels of reality he found real.
He didn't care much for materialistic science, except for its practical uses. What was objective to Gurdjieff was what had a "concrete" existence, whether the substances involved were material in materialistic terms, or something different. God itself was objective in Gurdjieff's terms, as a kind of atom with a role unique in the cosmos, indivisible, yet containing everything.
The main concern for Gurdjieff was that humanity was asleep, hypnotized by forces which keep it under control, and that humanity - or a sufficient number - needed to wake up in order to prevent disaster. What Gurdjieff called imagination can be translated roughly as "distortions in consciousness separating it from reality", and he saw it as the great evil to be eliminated. (In Gurdjieff's own terms, "consciousness" has several levels and meanings, not elaborated on here.)
Gurdjieff saw people as malfunctioning machines whose souls were either absent or not in charge, leading to a deranged circus on the collective level, and making things like World Wars I and II (during his time) not only possible but inevitable. Only by a sufficient number waking up, becoming truly conscious, and influencing the rest of humanity, could humanity prevent destroying itself and all its future possibilities.
He made many sharp distinctions running contrary to the mentalities of all the surrounding cultures, and the Work he instructed people in was anything but easy. All the difficulties, harshness, and control involved was organized in a complex and dynamically regulated way, intended to add up to the "harmonious development of man".
While Gurdjieff seems to have helped at least a few people greatly, on the whole the results of his teaching were very mixed, and for the most part, what was hoped for never happened. Entering the final years of his life, and following a serious car accident, Gurdjieff suddenly downscaled his teaching activities and wrote books for future generations. After the accident, he claimed that he had "died" in some sense, and his energy then went into elaborating a message out of a newly inspired hindsight.
The mental models Gurdjieff developed included layers and distinctions of both inner and outer reality which, in principle, do not leave anything out, and which honor what is conventionally referred to as objective and subjective. (Book-length material is needed for a decent overview.) But something seems to have been askew in how it was applied to the people he came in contact with. An imbalance, combined with the intensity of what he was doing, ruined the good intentions.
Oversimplification doesn't scale
The thinking at the core of what Montalk distinguishes as a second phase of the Cassiopaean Experiment, from the early 00's and on, is built on ideas and tendencies part of the picture from early on. The big shift in mentality he chronicled is a matter of how the dots are connected; they became connected more firmly, in a very simple pattern.
The QFS philosophy centered around the unification of the ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, in a Gurdjieffian sense, with the positive and negative polarities, respectively. Subjectivity became a defining characteristic of STS consciousness, and its elimination seen as the key in striving towards STO consciousness.
Over the years, the boundary between what's seen as subjective and objective has changed. The earlier "Cassiopaean spirituality" is now seen as New Age nonsense which has been moved past through a long and difficult learning process. Gurdjieff's thinking is not the basis of how objective and subjective is defined, as most of the intricate structure of Gurdjieff's ideas has been stripped away and replaced by much simpler thought.
From the beginning of the mentioned phase of the Cassiopaean Experiment, Gurdjieff was a major inspiration, but his ideas not at the center, but rather draped around the actual core mentality, and fuel for its development. In the era of the online forum, a metaphor of the online community as a "house" made clear that Gurdjieff's ideas were part of the furniture and decor rather than the architecture.
A problem with the very wide-ranging use of two words, objective and subjective, when given an increasingly nuanced and fuzzy range of meaning, is that the semantics become slippery. The flow of words will look good, but on examination, the meaning may subtly shift from thought to thought, without the thinker noticing. Ironically, this core feature of the teaching furthers subjectivity. The result is what Gurdjieff observed regarding thought and language, where people think they agree or disagree based on words rather than actual meaning, the two at odds.
Then enters a sense of urgency, and hyperbolic expressions of what is positive, negative, important, and dangerous. Over time, the idea that only those who "pay strict attention to objective reality" (C's) become part of the future, others reduced to dreams in the past, has morphed into an extremely imbalanced psychology. Inner burdens are unresolved, and in response to catalyst, people look outwards and harden their resolve to be "objective" at all costs. A barrier grows between an increasingly stormy world of the soul and the outer world, while signs related to the 4D activity of the community intensify.
If the core of a "system" is made too simple, it may be possible to build around that core for a time, and maybe more quickly and efficiently than possible on a more complex foundation. But eventually, the oversimplification at the core leads to confusion and overcomplication when the "system" is extended, dysfunction increasing over time. For a clean design and a sane implementation to be possible as a "system" scales up in size and scope, oversimplification of basic components must be avoided (though it is optimal for them to be as simple as they can without being oversimplified).
General thoughts
There's several kinds of "simple". The teaching of the Ra contact has a simplicity at the core which "scales" well, and seems to be carefully constructed to avoid leading people to leave any major part of the big picture out.
What are the pitfalls of wisdom teachings? They go wrong when they magnify some areas of reality out of proportion while blinding people to other areas. Too many hard and fast guidelines, overgeneralizations, hyperbolic maxims, etc., and "wisdom" will lead to mixed-up mental and emotional patterns.
The Law of One books do not lead people particularly strongly in choosing how to approach reality. The teaching on the polarities goes the farthest in so doing, but is at the same time full of subtleties often missed or selectively ignored by readers. As part of a positive path, a balanced approach is, in general, recommended. (There seems to be major overlap with Jungian insights regarding that.)
The subjective reaches of consciousness are part of life, and as part of a balanced approach, not something to be avoided. A positive orientation will only manifest fully when the personal subjective world becomes part of a positive psychic landscape. And I think subjectivity may be inseparable from individuality; consciousness perhaps extends in that direction whenever there is separation from unity with all in the structure of the consciousness. If so, subjectivity is always part of existence in density 4 as well, and probably 5.
There's also several kinds of "quixotic". Ironically, trying to destroy subjectivity in oneself as an individual being may be a "quixotic" striving on a scale similar to that of trying to fully become "one with all" without going through the journey of the densities in-between in the octave.
In order to choose one's personal brand of "quixotic" quest wisely, it may help to, basically, be wise about wisdom. A good maxim when not wise enough to be wise enough may be the classic "keep it simple, stupid". If in doubt as to which kind of simple, then something which basically makes sense in relation to experience, instead of being disconnected from it, intuitively seems the best bet.
Returning to Gurdjieff for a final thought, there's a point to exploring the structure and "things" of non-materialistic realities in a serious way. If "objective" is to be redefined to include things belonging to more levels of reality, as investigators in paranormal areas may want to do, then it is however best to keep the dictionary as clear and unambiguous as possible, avoiding mixing too much into the most basic words used.
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