[snip]

    I like the movie screen analogy too and of course there are endless variations of such stories. I suppose we could think of Plato's Cave as an early form of movie projection analogy too. This also reminds me of the experiences, especially when I was younger, of going to the movies on a Saturday afternoon to see the latest offering and sometimes, at the end, when it was just over and the lights came up, having that weird experience of not remembering for a moment that I had been sitting in the theater --I was so caught up in the story that I had believed I was in it.

    Spinoza refers to ordinary dreaming and also to "dreaming with our eyes open" in a few places in his writings and I imagine dreaming is a very common experience for most of us. Has anyone here not experienced waking up during a particularly vivid dream and being vaguely aware that it is a dream, but then (especially if it is pleasurable) drifting back into it again and maybe back out of it a few times before finally "fully waking up"?

    But what about when we are not asleep in the ordinary sense but rather are "awake" and walking around? Spinoza writes:

===== E3: PROP. 26, Note (My CAPS):
--Thus we see that it may readily happen, that a man may easily think too highly of himself, or a loved object, and, contrariwise, too meanly of a hated object. This feeling is called pride, in reference to the man who thinks too highly of himself, and is a species of madness, wherein a man DREAMS WITH HIS EYES OPEN, thinking that he can accomplish all things that fall within the scope of his conception, and thereupon accounting them real, and exulting in them, so long as he is unable to conceive anything which excludes their existence, and determines his own power of action.
=====

    In considering a phrase such as; "dreaming with our eyes open", we may think only of some very rare circumstance, perhaps we were driving across the desert on a long straight stretch of road and suddenly we realize that we have driven many miles, maybe even right through some small town, without being able to remember having done so. But what Spinoza refers to above does not seem to be such a rare experience at all. If we are honest with ourselves we will probably have to admit that we spend many a waking hour lost in some little inner drama, even as externally we go on about our ordinary activities like driving or grocery shopping, etc. Such little "movies in our heads" may involve such things as rehearsing over and over again something we want to do like asking our boss for a raise or asking the next door neighbor out on a date or imagining how great our upcoming vacation is going to be. Even if we are at the same time aware enough of our surroundings that we respond as needed to conditions there those little "movies in our head" often become the focus of our attention for hours on end and in that sense we are often "dreaming with our eyes open."

    Another example Spinoza offers may be a little harder to understand and to realize:

===== E3: PROP. 2, Note (My CAPS):
...If our folly does not carry us so far as this, we must necessarily admit, that the decision of the mind, which is believed to be free, is not distinguishable from the imagination or memory, and is nothing more than the affirmation, which an idea, by virtue of being an idea, necessarily involves (E2P49). Wherefore these decisions of the mind arise in the mind by the same necessity, as the ideas of things actually existing. Therefore those who believe, that they speak or keep silence or act in any way from the free decision of the mind, do but DREAM WITH THEIR EYES OPEN.
=====

    As a personal experience --which I do not expect anyone else here to take as any kind of proof but only as a suggestion that you look for similar such experiences in your own day-to-day lives --when I experience a "higher level of awakening", as I have described elsewhere as "Moments in Eternity", it is NOT like catching myself daydreaming about some particular thing and then realizing it, rather it is more like realizing that my "whole life", with all the particular events in my memory and even the events immediately prior to this "moment", where I might have believed that I have been quite awake and focused, is, by comparison, merely a particular dream involving time and place as the confusions of my own imagination/memory. For those "moments" I know directly what Spinoza refers to as the "Intellectual Love of God." Still, during those moments, the ordinary "dream of life" continues, seemingly "far below" (or some such, no metaphor actually fits of course), but it is now seen as nothing but the motion and rest of the myriad parts of my own "movie machine" body. In other words, it's not like I'm carried away to some distant time or place, but rather it's as though the ordinary confusions involving time and place have, until that moment, been seemingly "carrying me away" from my actual Union with the Infinite and Eternal Being which these "moments" involve.

    As Spinoza notes concerning this "Intellectual Love of God", this is no ordinary fleeting pleasurable sensation, but rather it is the direct knowledge of Eternal Perfection Itself:

===== E5: PROP. 33, Note:
--Although this love towards God has (by the foregoing Prop. E5P33) no beginning, it yet possesses all the perfections of love, just as though it had arisen as we feigned in the Coroll. of the last Prop. E5P32C. Nor is there here any difference, except that the mind possesses as eternal those same perfections which we feigned to accrue to it, and they are accompanied by the idea of God as eternal cause. If pleasure consists in the transition to a greater perfection, assuredly blessedness must consist in the mind being endowed with perfection itself.
=====

    As you mentioned, for most people who have experienced such glimpses (maybe even for many who do not yet realize they have already briefly experienced what we may be talking about here since it seemed so disconnected from what they believe to be "reality"), it seems as though we arrive at this state by accident and indeed that is how my experiences seemed to come and I most often just shook my head and thought something like; "That was a weird thought!" and continued on with my ordinary life. Later I saw that many people have also had such experiences and have tried to write about or explain them, either to others or to themselves, but the experience remains, as is often said, ineffable. As Spinoza shows, words and images are not True Ideas.

    Although I have studied many other methods purporting to help bring one closer to this (to use Spinoza's term) "Blessedness", I find that following Spinoza's reasoned method seems to act for me like doing physical exercise in order to be ready for some physical task to come when we will need more strength than we ordinarily have available. I wrote a little about this mental exercising some time back here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spinoza/message/1987

By exercising our power of Reason "before hand", as it seems anyway from the viewpoint of time and place, then, when those "moments" do come, we will be better able to observe them and to "stay with them" as Spinoza seems to have alluded to when he wrote:

===== TEI-P11(5):
...it was not at random that I used the words, "If I could go to the root of the matter," for, though what I have urged was perfectly clear to my mind, I could not forthwith lay aside all love of riches, sensual enjoyment, and fame. One thing was evident, namely, that while my mind was employed with these thoughts it turned away from its former objects of desire, and seriously considered the search for a new principle; this state of things was a great comfort to me, for I perceived that the evils were not such as to resist all remedies.

    Although these intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet afterward, as the true good became more and more discernible to me, they became more frequent and more lasting; ...
=====

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts about these states of mind with us. It seems that in many philosophical or academic circles the relating of personal experience is frowned upon. Perhaps that is why such folks seldom even mention, let alone actually discuss, the nature of the Emotions which Spinoza spends so much time on in The Ethics, Parts 3 and 4. Perhaps they assume that if one's life is revealed to be driven by any emotion then they cannot possibly be a "real" philosopher and so they keep silent about such things or speak of them only abstractly and in the third person.

    Even if, some seem to think, we might have to admit to having once or twice given into some passion in our distant past, these are certainly not things to be looked at and examined as an important exercise for helping free our mind for the higher pursuits. However, it certainly seems to me that studying our own particular emotions is a major part of Spinoza's method leading to Blessedness as he writes in Part 5:

===== E5: PROP. 20, Note:
...I have now gone through all the remedies against the emotions, or all that the mind, considered in itself alone, can do against them. Whence it appears that the mind's power over the emotions consists:--

1. In the actual knowledge of the emotions (E5P4CN).

2. In the fact that it separates the emotions from the thought of an external cause, which we conceive confusedly (E5P2 and E5P4CN).

3. In the fact, that, in respect to time, the emotions referred to things, which we distinctly understand, surpass those referred to what we conceive in a confused and fragmentary manner (E5P7).

4. In the number of causes whereby those modifications [Affectiones] are fostered, which have regard to the common properties of things or to God (E5P9 and E5P11).

5. Lastly, in the order wherein the mind can arrange and associate, one with another, its own emotions ([E5P10] E5P10N and E5P12, E5P13, E5P14)....

...And now I have finished with all that concerns this present life: for, as I said in the beginning of this note, I have briefly described all the remedies against the emotions. And this everyone may readily have seen for himself, if he has attended to what is advanced in the present note, and also to the definitions of the mind and its emotions, and, lastly, to Propositions E3P1 and E3P3. It is now, therefore, time to pass on to those matters, which appertain to the duration of the mind, without relation to the body.
=====

    Thanks again for sharing your thoughts here and I hope you and others will say more about such things as might relate to what Spinoza expressed as his aim, especially in writing The Ethics.