Pre/post fallacy & stage beige

[Eva]

I work with the mentally disabled and/or severely autistic population that mostly fall to the stage beige in spiral dynamics. These folks exist in a pre-egoistic state, are mostly or completely dependable on others, and have no consciousness to speak of. Some people point out that since these people could care less about their survival, have no sense of self and/or other (theory of mind), and go purely on their sensorial experiences without much planning that they might actually be closer to God-consciousness than us, who are able to trip into our own ego and survival.

Any thoughts on this, do you feel like this is a pre/post fallacy?

[Carl-Richard]

It could be a case of the pre/post fallacy in a broad sense. People think the same about animals and small children. They conflate the lack of presence of the thought faculty with the lack of thought-identification. 

I think the term enlightenment deals with a transformation from a thought-identified state to a non-identified state. If there didn't exist the capacity of thought-identification in the first place, it doesn't make much sense to call it an enlightened state.

Enlightened people are very capable of deep thought. They might not either experience thoughts the same way as a thought-identified person, or they may lack the first-person experience of it all together. Regardless, they do indeed express the behavior associated with having a thought faculty.

Small children and advanced animals are also capable of a degree of cognitive activity that may be classified as thought, and some may even be capable of creating a self-concept and thus identification. So even there, it may not necessarily be the case that they would qualify as existing in a state free of the drama of thoughts.

Edited July 21, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Eva]

Thank you for commenting! Very well-thought points. Especially I liked this one:

I think the term enlightenment deals with a transformation from a thought-identified state to a non-identified state. If there didn't exist the capacity of thought-identification in the first place, it doesn't make much sense to call it an enlightened state.

So one would indeed need to rise up from the complete unconsciousness to a regular consciousness and continue on to a higher state of consciousness etc. So there are no shortcuts. These folks just are at the beginning, not the end. Great points, thanks for commenting!

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Eva said:

So one would indeed need to rise up from the complete unconsciousness to a regular consciousness and continue on to a higher state of consciousness etc. So there are no shortcuts. These folks just are at the beginning, not the end. Great points, thanks for commenting!

I'm not denying that animals or children or autistic people may have a vastly different experience of reality than "normal" people, and that this state may be devoid of many of the kinds of thought-laden suffering that the majority of humans experience. However, historically and pragmatically speaking, enlightenment is a term created by "normal" people in order to describe a level of attainment or a process, namely the human experience of self-transcendence. When you take a term that is so tightly meshed together with a specific context and start separating it from that context, it kinda starts losing its meaning. After all, when you're thinking about "enlightened people", you're thinking about humans.