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Just to continue on the discussion of where spiritual insight originates from in human beings. According to the authors spiritual insight is innate in all cosmic endowed minds, according to the authors these 3 cosmic intuitions are material acumen, moral discrimination and spiritual insight. In 16:6.9 the authors quite literally call spiritual insight an intuition. Cosmic mind is the gift of the Local Mother Spirit.
“…and spiritual insight which are an integral part of his cosmic-mind endowment as a personal being.”
192.5) 16:6.9 These scientific, moral, and spiritual insights, these cosmic responses, are innate in the cosmic mind, which endows all will creatures. The experience of living never fails to develop these three cosmic intuitions; they are constitutive in the self-consciousness of reflective thinking.
(192.7) 16:6.11 It is the purpose of education to develop and sharpen these innate endowments of the human mind;P193:4, 16:7.5 When man fails to discriminate the ends of his mortal striving, he finds himself functioning on the animal level of existence. He has failed to avail himself of the superior advantages of that material acumen, moral discrimination, and spiritual insight which are an integral part of his cosmic-mind endowment as a personal being.According to the authors spiritual insight is innate in all cosmic endowed minds
According to the authors, spiritual insight is a gift, a faculty of human personality which accrues as a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster in the God-hungry mortal mind. (101:6.5) It is a gift to personality from God.
According to the authors, spiritual insight is a gift, a faculty of human personality which accrues as a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster in the God-hungry mortal mind. (101:6.5) It is a gift to personality from God.
Yes it is a gift from God, the Local Mother Spirit is God. I agree that it does accrue (grow) as a result of the presence of the T.A.
The first level of cosmic insight is that of causality. I understand this teaching at p.192 to imply no more than what the philosopher Kant maintained, against Hume, that human mind is endowed with the innate capacity to conjecture some cause in the presence of every effect, and that this is a power of mind different from animal mind’s derivation of meaning from memory of repeated experiences of sequence.
A concrete example?
I watched a large dog on a long tether at a picnic recently, who inadvertently wound its leash around a tree until it had no freedom of movement. It did not question this predicament but sat there a bit forlorn over its misfortune. This is not a ‘dumb dog’ but an animal acquiescing in a limitation of animal mind. It could not picture the causal elements of its situation to itself in order to undo them.
I am like this sometimes when dreaming – the most impossible situations will arise, in which I am simply a helpless spectator or actor. I dreamed for example that I was a passenger on an airplane one instant, and was in the very next instant riding a bus out of the airport – without pausing to ask how this happened. I simply carried on with the dream, and in the next instant I walked to the back of the bus and entered a classroom! No problem, the dream simply went on, and me inside it unquestioning.
From this I would surmise that an important part of me was actually sleeping during the dream – the portion of my mental furniture which would have immediately questioned the idiotic sequence.
The revelators say (p.91) that it is the innate insights of cosmic mind which prevent us from becoming helpless tools of institutions and alleged rules of behavior, etc. That is, they prevent our lives from descending to the animal level of acceptance of effects without questioning causes.
There is a list in Paper 42:3 that describes the capabilities of mind when associated with the pattern of personality. Mind is creative and personality is cocreative. Mind gravitates toward unity and personality is designed to unify. It’s a match made in heaven. And, when mind and personality function well together, it seems as though there are almost limitless potentials available.
Here’s the list of what mind always reaches out for:
- Creation of material mechanisms.
- Discovery of hidden mysteries.
- Exploration of remote situations.
- Formulation of mental systems.
- Attainment of wisdom goals.
- Achievement of spirit levels.
- The accomplishment of divine destinies – supreme, ultimate, and absolute.
One of the other things I find interesting about mind is that it always reaches out for spirit levels when associated with personality. This property is quite conducive to the achievement of spiritual insight. And isn’t it also interesting that human self-consciousness (a function of the interaction between personality pattern and mind) has innate quests for the same three levels of reality that cosmic mind offers a complimentary reality recognition response to? It’s as though they are perfect partners, personality and mind.
16:9.9-13 In human self-consciousness four universe-reality realizations are latent and inherent:
1. The quest for knowledge, the logic of science.
2. The quest for moral values, the sense of duty.
3. The quest for spiritual values, the religious experience.
4. The quest for personality values, the ability to recognize the reality of God as a personality and the concurrent realization of our fraternal relationship with fellow personalities.But there’s a fourth quest that personality has unique to itself, and that is the quest for other personalities, human and divine. That might line up with #7 of mind – the accomplishment of divine destinies. For is not the personality of God the Father our destiny?
You might be wondering what this interplay between mind and personality have to do with spiritual insight. I have contended that spiritual insight is a faculty of human personality, a consequence of the presence of the Adjuster. Spiritual insight occurs within the mind, but mind itself is not the insight; it is merely the arena in which it takes place. Mind is associated with insight, but it requires personality, actually two – human and divine – to establish the necessary relationship. (Relationships are necessary for experience.) Both the quest by the personality and the reality recognition by the cosmic mind are required for the religious experience. However, the personality participating in this relationship is one dominated by the divine Spirit, the Adjuster.
- The quest for knowledge, logic of science = Causation, the reality domain of the physical senses, scientific real of logical uniformity.
- The quest for moral values, the sense of duty = Duty, the reality domain of morals in the philosophic realm.
- The quest for spiritual values, the religious experience = Worship, the spiritual domain of the reality of religious experience.
Nice addition, Bonita, I am grateful for that first list.
Before contributing to this group’s thoughts on spiritual insight, I want to move from my comment on our gift of material insight (of causation, logical rule, comparison, etc.) to a thought or two about the second level of cosmic reality-response, described in Paper 16 as reason and the intuition of Duty.
Without sorting out the question of where it’s coming from, I believe it is very simply put our innate (but variable) human tendency to perceive a rightness or wrongness in every interpersonal relation obtaining in any group.
The revelator also calls it the recognition of right and wrong. Note, they dodn’t imply that our recognition of right and wrong is fail-safe or fool-proof (which is why they follow several human thinkers in urging the need to develop this intuition by exercise). But I think it may be generally affirmed that, given a choice between decisions A and B, we have an innate sense that one will seem more right or more wrong than the other.
One of the results of this intuition, I believe, is that it actually allows us to ‘see’ (recognize) evil (in order to overcome it with good) whereas animal mind ‘sees’ only danger and safety, predator and prey, trick and treat, etc. If it weren’t for this cosmic mind endowment of moral consciousness, we would know only pleasure and pain, but neither evil nor good.
This is not rocket science, but I would like to hear if anyone thinks it does not make sense in the context of the revelation.
It occurs to me that my example (further up) of my own ‘helplessness’ during some dream states yields interesting light on the revealed concept of reality-response.
Why am I ‘led by the nose’ through the radical time-space shifts of the dream state without questioning the odd sequences? I hinted that some part of my mind might be actually sleeping, but maybe it is more likely that I am simply not in the presence of actual time-space reality (I am in fact ‘creating’ the dream) and therefore the reality-response does not kick in in the dream state.
Does this make sense? I am attracted to the idea because it fits so well with the notion that the TA sometimes utilizes the sleep state for thought-adjustering. How could this occur if part of my cosmic mind was checked out? Instead, it makes more sense to conjecture that in an ‘adjustered’ dream sequence, my reality response is called to life by the fact that the TA does represent a universe reality.
But I think it may be generally affirmed that, given a choice between decisions A and B, we have an innate sense that one will seem more right or more wrong than the other.
Interesting. I would say that this innate sense functions best in a mind not dominated by selfishness or influenced by error. It works best in a mind that’s actually looking for the meaning of morality.
Anecdote: Last summer a bunch of suburban teenage boys passed through my yard on the way to the field beyond to play baseball, and on their way they lifted two of my garbage can lids. I didn’t see them do it, but I was home and the back door was open. A few hours later I took some trash out and discovered the missing lids. I was stunned. I live in an upscale neighborhood with dependable, sociable neighbors who don’t need lids for their cans. I decided to walk down to the field. Lo and behold, there they were, being used as bases. I walked up to each lid authoritatively and snapped it back. Then I stood at home plate and asked them all why they took my lids without asking? (I would have let them borrow them had they asked.) Their answer: “We needed them.” That was it! No sorry, it won’t happen again, all I got was that they needed them. They saw them and assumed it was okay to just take whatever they wanted. Needless to say, they all got a talking to about integrity and personal responsibility . . . actually none of them ever returned to the field . . . (don’t know if they were scared or ashamed or went elsewhere to steal bases). But my point is, so many people have faulty right/wrong sensors, innate or not. They’re simply not trained to make those evaluations, to think deeply about something before doing it. Granted, these were just kids, but by 15 or 16 the average person should have a clue, and I find a large part of society has no interest in developing these innate sensitivities. It’s a genuine problem.
Summarizing, I think that innate cosmic responses may function in a mind even though it is not looking for them, but those innate responses will not be perceived or recognized, or perhaps they’ll be misunderstood. The first step is discovery, the second is recognition. If someone is not looking for a reality response, they’re not going to recognize it, even when hit over the head with it. Okay a little exaggeration there, but what I mean to do is to illustrate what the revelators mean by their regret that, “so few delight in cultivating these qualities of courageous and independent cosmic thinking.”
I think Reader that the 2nd cosmic intuition is a spiritual form of morality. I think there is a lower form of morality that you are referring to that is not the 2nd cosmic intuition but in fact an animal form of morality. The moral zone is superanimal. But the 2nd cosmic intuition is not animal at all, its a cosmic morality. IMO most human beings are just relying on this animal form of morality. I think the 2nd cosmic intuition is a human form of morality. I think that the cosmic intuitions when utilized by a higher consciousness transform that animal form of morality that we associate with our conscience into a cosmic morality.
Does this make sense? I am attracted to the idea because it fits so well with the notion that the TA sometimes utilizes the sleep state for thought-adjustering. How could this occur if part of my cosmic mind was checked out? Instead, it makes more sense to conjecture that in an ‘adjustered’ dream sequence, my reality response is called to life by the fact that the TA does represent a universe reality.
You may recall the quote that says that the mind is not time-bound (p135:04). The dream state occurs at the subconscious level of the mind where ideas, images, emotions, etc. from everyday life are stored randomly; therefore, they generally appear randomly because they are not connected to time. They are not part of memory because they are unconscious. In order to have a recognizable time sequence, I think they would have to be conscious.
You probably already know this but I’ll include it in case other readers don’t. The subconscious mind is a reservoir for unconscious material accrued during everyday life; it’s a part of normal mental function. Not every piece of data being received by the mind can be processed by the conscious intellect; much is stored for later assimilation and use. It is also a storage place for unexpressed feelings, emotions and desires which occasionally find release in dreams or in moments of disinhibition. These emotions tend to be powerful because they have not been expressed, they’re pent up.
The Adjuster resides in the superconscious, and although he has access and influence over the entire mind, his work is in the higher mind. Anything of potential value swimming around in the mental soup will get captured and tagged. The Adjuster tries to adjust and coordinate those tidbits of experience and information in such a way as to make them accessible to the conscious mind to be used for further growth. You can’t make free-will choices on anything that is not conscious. I’m guessing that occasionally there are adjustable thoughts in the subconscious that have to be pulled from the soup to the higher mind, and perhaps that is why they get so garbled up in the process. I don’t know for sure, it’s just conjecture.
110:5.2 Man’s dream experiences, that disordered and disconnected parade of the un-co-ordinated sleeping mind, present adequate proof of the failure of the Adjusters to harmonize and associate the divergent factors of the mind of man.
110:5.4 While their mortal hosts are asleep, the Adjusters try to register their creations in the higher levels of the material mind, and some of your grotesque dreams indicate their failure to make efficient contact. The absurdities of dream life not only testify to pressure of unexpressed emotions but also bear witness to the horrible distortion of the representations of the spiritual concepts presented by the Adjusters. Your own passions, urges, and other innate tendencies translate themselves into the picture and substitute their unexpressed desires for the divine messages which the indwellers are endeavoring to put into the psychic records during unconscious sleep.
110:5.5 It is extremely dangerous to postulate as to the Adjuster content of the dream life. The Adjusters do work during sleep, but your ordinary dream experiences are purely physiologic and psychologic phenomena.
I don’t think dreaming has anything to do directly with the cosmic mind. It’s my understanding that use of the cosmic mind reality recognition responses require a conscious state. How can you recognize something without being awake and conscious. A dream state may provide a feeling about something that we chose to interpret intuitively, but I think, for the most part, we’re generally wrong about that.
110:5.5 It is extremely dangerous to postulate as to the Adjuster content of the dream life. The Adjusters do work during sleep, but your ordinary dream experiences are purely physiologic and psychologic phenomena.
When the authors use the phrase “extremely dangerous” I think that means like eternal survival danger, not just material danger. One of the sophistries of the Rebellion was self-righteousness. If we confuse our thoughts with Deity, that is essentially an embrace of self righteous thinking. Its extremely self-righteous to think that our thoughts even in sleep are the voice of Deity. IMO people who make this mistake are in as the authors say an extremely dangerous situation.
. . . an animal form of morality. The moral zone is superanimal.
I’m trying to make sense out of this statement. How can you have an animal form of morality if morality is superanimal? Isn’t that illogical (Spock here.)
I’m trying to make sense out of this statement. How can you have an animal form of morality if morality is superanimal? Isn’t that illogical (Spock here.)
Well there is a moral zone that is superanimal. So anyone caught in that zone has an animal form of morality. A Superanimal is still a animal. Its just a fancier animal.
(193.4) 16:7.5 When man fails to discriminate the ends of his mortal striving, he finds himself functioning on the animal level of existence. He has failed to avail himself of the superior advantages of that material acumen, moral discrimination, and spiritual insight which are an integral part of his cosmic-mind endowment as a personal being.
Its just a fancier animal.
Like a chihuahua all dressed up, or an animal with super powers, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? What the hell are you talking about?
Its just a fancier animal.
Like a chihuahua all dressed up, or an animal with super powers, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? What the hell are you talking about?
Hahah well what happens if someone is functioning on the animal level of existence?
(193.4) 16:7.5 When man fails to discriminate the ends of his mortal striving, he finds himself functioning on the animal level of existence. He has failed to avail himself of the superior advantages of that material acumen, moral discrimination, and spiritual insight which are an integral part of his cosmic-mind endowment as a personal being.
They are not functioning as humans at this point. At least not human in the eyes of the authors. So your left with a very complex and highly functioning animal.
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