Question about the "Objective world"

[Lysander]

You are thinking in abstract physicalist terms which the idealist outright rejects as having any reality, and therefore lacking any use when speaking of underlying essence. There are no essential spatial dimensions, i.e. position and size. Information is not stored anywhere in "space". Think about it this way - when you perceive a color, does some meaning arrive simultaneously with its perception, or does it come as nonsensical data which you later render sensible by retrieving the meaning from some "database" container? Clearly it is the former, because what you are actually perceiving is the noumenal essence of color which is its meaning. There is no "physical object" you perceive, only meaning.

Reading your posts has had a big impact on my thinking, especially the emphasis on how we only perceive inter-personal shared meanings. I had never come across this before coming to the forum.

Thanks for the feedback, Lysander. I could say the same for myself a year ago. I had come across the abstract concept of Reality as shared meaning. for ex. in Peterson and Vervaeke videos, but they remained isolated concepts not really plugged into the whole network of ideas I had surrounding essential Reality. It is sort of scary to think that this hyper fragmented state is the default position of most people in the world, but on the other hand it only took a bit of prompting from others and a slight shift in perpspective to have these things connect with each other much more smoothly in my thinking. There is still much much more work to be done, for sure, but it is hopeful and exciting to know one's thinking is oriented in what proves to be a consistently fruitful direction.

Consistently fruitful is a very good measure. In other descriptions meaning is certainly arrived at but not immediately and this abstracted process tends towards meaning-generation/discovery getting lost in the process, and the interpersonal aspect isn't gotten to at all. For example, it is common to describe perception as first leading the mind into forming "concepts" or "images" of the raw data that is seen. This seems a preliminary step towards arriving to meaning, right? Meaning is a later addition onto the immediate concept or do you view this process differently?

[AshvinP]

Reading your posts has had a big impact on my thinking, especially the emphasis on how we only perceive inter-personal shared meanings. I had never come across this before coming to the forum.

Thanks for the feedback, Lysander. I could say the same for myself a year ago. I had come across the abstract concept of Reality as shared meaning. for ex. in Peterson and Vervaeke videos, but they remained isolated concepts not really plugged into the whole network of ideas I had surrounding essential Reality. It is sort of scary to think that this hyper fragmented state is the default position of most people in the world, but on the other hand it only took a bit of prompting from others and a slight shift in perpspective to have these things connect with each other much more smoothly in my thinking. There is still much much more work to be done, for sure, but it is hopeful and exciting to know one's thinking is oriented in what proves to be a consistently fruitful direction.

Consistently fruitful is a very good measure. In other descriptions meaning is certainly arrived at but not immediately and this abstracted process tends towards meaning-generation/discovery getting lost in the process, and the interpersonal aspect isn't gotten to at all. For example, it is common to describe perception as first leading the mind into forming "concepts" or "images" of the raw data that is seen. This seems a preliminary step towards arriving to meaning, right? Meaning is a later addition onto the immediate concept or do you view this process differently?

Yes I view this process completely differently. The "common" approach you mention is at the root of so many philosophical wrong turns in the modern age. It assumes we use our minds/thinking to recreate a totality which is already present in the perceptions themselves. Modern science has confirmed what a few philsophers already figured out 100+ years ago - thinking and perceiving are inseperable activities. So what really occurs is our inner thinking (currently felt as inner but not always) provides the ideal content to percepts arriving from without (and endogenous percepts from within) to render a more complete image of the phenomenon. That simple shift in perpspective on this matter truly undoes 99% of flawed philosophical conclusions and entire world-conceptions of the modern age.

[Lysander]

Thanks for the feedback, Lysander. I could say the same for myself a year ago. I had come across the abstract concept of Reality as shared meaning. for ex. in Peterson and Vervaeke videos, but they remained isolated concepts not really plugged into the whole network of ideas I had surrounding essential Reality. It is sort of scary to think that this hyper fragmented state is the default position of most people in the world, but on the other hand it only took a bit of prompting from others and a slight shift in perpspective to have these things connect with each other much more smoothly in my thinking. There is still much much more work to be done, for sure, but it is hopeful and exciting to know one's thinking is oriented in what proves to be a consistently fruitful direction.

Consistently fruitful is a very good measure. In other descriptions meaning is certainly arrived at but not immediately and this abstracted process tends towards meaning-generation/discovery getting lost in the process, and the interpersonal aspect isn't gotten to at all. For example, it is common to describe perception as first leading the mind into forming "concepts" or "images" of the raw data that is seen. This seems a preliminary step towards arriving to meaning, right? Meaning is a later addition onto the immediate concept or do you view this process differently?

Yes I view this process completely differently. The "common" approach you mention is at the root of so many philosophical wrong turns in the modern age. It assumes we use our minds/thinking to recreate a totality which is already present in the perceptions themselves. Modern science has confirmed what a few philsophers already figured out 100+ years ago - thinking and perceiving are inseperable activities. So what really occurs is our inner thinking (currently felt as inner but not always) provides the ideal content to percepts arriving from without (and endogenous percepts from within) to render a more complete image of the phenomenon. That simple shift in perpspective on this matter truly undoes 99% of flawed philosophical conclusions and entire world-conceptions of the modern age.

If I may, I'll push for some more clarity. The common way would say "Yes, inner thinking provides the ideal content to percepts in the following way. Percepts are raw pixel- or feeling-data. Inner thinking makes concept or images from this data." But, this is not what you mean. Certainly, there must be a translation from raw sense impression to a concept, right? So the details of this process must matter to us if thinking and perceiving are inseparable.

The first bolded part confuses me and I'm not sure which word is most responsible - either recreate or already present. For you, the totality [of meanings] is not immediately clear and obvious so it cannot be simply 'recreated' but must be discovered/recognized? Am I on the right track?

[Cleric K]

If I may, I'll push for some more clarity. The common way would say "Yes, inner thinking provides the ideal content to percepts in the following way. Percepts are raw pixel- or feeling-data. Inner thinking makes concept or images from this data." But, this is not what you mean. Certainly, there must be a translation from raw sense impression to a concept, right? So the details of this process must matter to us if thinking and perceiving are inseparable.

The first bolded part confuses me and I'm not sure which word is most responsible - either recreate or already present. For you, the totality [of meanings] is not immediately clear and obvious so it cannot be simply 'recreated' but must be discovered/recognized? Am I on the right track?

If I may add something: it's of critical importance to explore in living meditative experience our own thinking. We need a thorough appreciation of the fact that in the observation of our own thinking we perceive something that is immediately explained by our own spiritual activity. It might be said that the thought-perceptions mirror the meaningful dynamics of our spiritual activity.

From this point we can explore in meditation how this changes as we move along the gradient of the perceptual spectrum. Note that our own thinking can also be perceived as (we can think in) sensory-like color or tone (clearly when we think verbally with our inner voice) but as said, there's difference when we move towards the perception that we recognize as belonging to the sense organs. As we go away from pure thinking, then passing through feeling, we can say that our spiritual activity and the perceptions can be more and more out-of-phase or decoupled. In our feeling life we still have some degree of intervention, we can, for example, open up our heart to love through conscious intent but it's certainly not that easy and it depends on many other factors. When we move even further to the sensory body, perceptions and thinking seem completely decoupled. We can clearly distinguish that, for example, visual perceptions move on their own quite independently of what we think of them. This is also the main reason why it's convenient for the intellect to postulate the hard disconnect between itself and the world-in-itself.

It's tremendously valuable if we are able to move along this axis in meditation. Just as we can focus our attention on our feet and gradually move it along the body all the way to the top of the head, then go back and forth, so we can exercise moving along the axis that has our own sense-free thinking (thinking that perceives itself) at one pole and moving along the gradient towards more and more decoupling towards the pole of sensory perceptions. If we are able to do this, it already becomes comprehensible that the sensory spectrum is not in principle that different from the perceptions of our own thinking, its just that the activity which is responsible for the dynamics of that spectrum lies beyond the threshold of our waking intellectual cognition. This points attention to the need for higher forms of consciousness though which we live together with World Thoughts and beings whose activity is largely responsible for the sensory spectrum, from which our intellectual thinking is quite decoupled.

PS: We shouldn't imagine that the sensory spectrum is a flat surface, where higher order processes just paint perceptions in the way a painter would draw a landscape. This is a common misconception which leads to the widespread belief that the physical world is just a thin dream-like picture with no intrinsic reality. This is not the case. When we say that higher order spiritual beings and processes are responsible for the sensory spectrum we should at the same time think that they are active within or they constitute the actual physical and subtler organization, the nervous system, the sense organs, etheric, astral organs, etc. It's only that all this is entirely experienced from within. So there's tremendous depth in the way higher beings are convoluted in their activity, such that on the intellectual surface we behold only the sensory shadow, which can be thought of as the perception of the flattened out World Thoughts.

[AshvinP]

Consistently fruitful is a very good measure. In other descriptions meaning is certainly arrived at but not immediately and this abstracted process tends towards meaning-generation/discovery getting lost in the process, and the interpersonal aspect isn't gotten to at all. For example, it is common to describe perception as first leading the mind into forming "concepts" or "images" of the raw data that is seen. This seems a preliminary step towards arriving to meaning, right? Meaning is a later addition onto the immediate concept or do you view this process differently?

Yes I view this process completely differently. The "common" approach you mention is at the root of so many philosophical wrong turns in the modern age. It assumes we use our minds/thinking to recreate a totality which is already present in the perceptions themselves. Modern science has confirmed what a few philsophers already figured out 100+ years ago - thinking and perceiving are inseperable activities. So what really occurs is our inner thinking (currently felt as inner but not always) provides the ideal content to percepts arriving from without (and endogenous percepts from within) to render a more complete image of the phenomenon. That simple shift in perpspective on this matter truly undoes 99% of flawed philosophical conclusions and entire world-conceptions of the modern age.

If I may, I'll push for some more clarity. The common way would say "Yes, inner thinking provides the ideal content to percepts in the following way. Percepts are raw pixel- or feeling-data. Inner thinking makes concept or images from this data." But, this is not what you mean. Certainly, there must be a translation from raw sense impression to a concept, right? So the details of this process must matter to us if thinking and perceiving are inseparable.

The first bolded part confuses me and I'm not sure which word is most responsible - either recreate or already present. For you, the totality [of meanings] is not immediately clear and obvious so it cannot be simply 'recreated' but must be discovered/recognized? Am I on the right track?

I will refer to Cleric's elaboration. One thing I find helpful is to remember that all perceptual content is, in essence, meaning. Whether it arrives from without or within, we are always perceiving meaning. So the "raw sense data" is not of some different essence than the concepts added to them. As Cleric referred to, it is our current perspective on the spiritual reality which renders much of the thought-content as arriving from within instead of from without. That is why it is also helpful to remember there was a time in the ancient past when thoughts were vividly perceived as arriving to the soul from without. Other 20th century thinkers have remarked on this metamorphic progression of thought in their own ways. Consider Jung, who says, "we are still as much possessed today by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians... Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus... and produces disorders in the brains of politicians and journalists who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world". In the modern age, that assertion will be taken as merely "psychological", but he is truly speaking of the "World Thoughts and beings" that Cleric referenced. When we reflect on it a bit, there is really not much else "archetypes of the collective unconscious" could refer to. Most importantly, as Cleric said, we must experience how thinking about our own thinking (spiritual activity), where the noumenal meaning and phenomenal perceptual content is united, reveals this truth of our involvement in the co-creation of the phenomenal world (or I should say serves as the basic starting point for revealing that truth).

For an example of how the standard view is expressed in modern philosophy, I am posting an excerpt from essay on Metamorphoses of the Spirit which discusses Kant and Schopenhauer:

Thinkers like Immanuel Kant assumed the 'external' world of appearances came to us in a complete form. Individual humans, then, must somehow create within themselves a self-contained model of ideas which approximates that 'external' world in order to gain true knowledge. How can such a Herculean task be accomplished?

Kant's epistemic "solution", or, more accurately, his abandonment of the pursuit, came in his claim that each individual takes categorical judgments and unconsciously spreads them over the real world before perceiving the results (discussed with more detail in Res Ipsa Loquitur - Kant vs. the World). Therefore, we are always and only perceiving the judgments we ourselves have imposed on the world rather than any aspect of the 'thing-in-itself'. We do not take notice of our ongoing acts of imposed judgments and, even if we did, we cannot ever undo them. Although most philosophers in the wake of Kant did not even attempt to challenge this epistemically nihilistic claim, a few brave ones tried to circumvent it.

Most of them made little headway or simply continued speculating from a third-person perspective which pretends to stand apart from the world, a method which Kant had already ruled out (appropriately). One in particular, though, does stand out from the rest and deserves mention - Arthur Schopenhauer. He recognized there is a fundamental aspect of all beings which we can experience in the absence of any other phenomenon - our will. If we were to be placed in a sensory deprivation chamber without sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell, then we would still experience our will. Why Schopenhauer fell short can be observed from what he is leaving out from the category of "phenomenon" - precisely our thought-forms.

Schopenhauer can say, at best, that our willing plus our thinking is always experienced. Anything short of that is abstractly speculated from our thinking activity rather than being rooted in the givens of our experience. Schopenhauer cannot possibly claim universal Will exists without ideal content. To fully internalize the point I am making, we should remember that we can only philosophize from what we experience via our first-person perspective as human beings (as Kant understood), because we cannot know anything external to that perspective. Some would call that approach "solipsism" and I am not opposed to that characterization, except I would call it "healthy solipsism".

I am not claiming our limited ego is the only thing we can know exists, which is what I call "unhealthy solipsism". Rather, we are admitting in humility that all we logically derive from outside our first-person experience is an assumption which, whether actually true or untrue, we cannot verify empirically in any case. So, what can any person, including those who enter deep mystical states, claim to have experienced? It will become obvious that, no matter what we experience in the 'deprivation chamber', when any ideal content is expressed, either to ourselves internally or to others, we are already in the presence of thinking activity.

Schopenhauer cannot justifiably claim that there is Will in the absence of ideal content. He is adding an unverifiable assumption that experiences can exist without ideal content. There is no good reason why this assumption would be warranted. Schopenhauer assumes that which cannot, under any circumstance, be directly perceived in the given - the assumption that his will is identical to the will of others i.e. the universal Will, and the latter is only mixed with ideas in some limited representational domain. Yet that assumption is itself a product of thinking activity - the quintessential example of sawing off the branch on which one is sitting.

[Lysander]

If I may, I'll push for some more clarity. The common way would say "Yes, inner thinking provides the ideal content to percepts in the following way. Percepts are raw pixel- or feeling-data. Inner thinking makes concept or images from this data." But, this is not what you mean. Certainly, there must be a translation from raw sense impression to a concept, right? So the details of this process must matter to us if thinking and perceiving are inseparable.

The first bolded part confuses me and I'm not sure which word is most responsible - either recreate or already present. For you, the totality [of meanings] is not immediately clear and obvious so it cannot be simply 'recreated' but must be discovered/recognized? Am I on the right track?

If I may add something: it's of critical importance to explore in living meditative experience our own thinking. We need a thorough appreciation of the fact that in the observation of our own thinking we perceive something that is immediately explained by our own spiritual activity. It might be said that the thought-perceptions mirror the meaningful dynamics of our spiritual activity.

From this point we can explore in meditation how this changes as we move along the gradient of the perceptual spectrum. Note that our own thinking can also be perceived as (we can think in) sensory-like color or tone (clearly when we think verbally with our inner voice) but as said, there's difference when we move towards the perception that we recognize as belonging to the sense organs. As we go away from pure thinking, then passing through feeling, we can say that our spiritual activity and the perceptions can be more and more out-of-phase or decoupled. In our feeling life we still have some degree of intervention, we can, for example, open up our heart to love through conscious intent but it's certainly not that easy and it depends on many other factors. When we move even further to the sensory body, perceptions and thinking seem completely decoupled. We can clearly distinguish that, for example, visual perceptions move on their own quite independently of what we think of them. This is also the main reason why it's convenient for the intellect to postulate the hard disconnect between itself and the world-in-itself.

It's tremendously valuable if we are able to move along this axis in meditation. Just as we can focus our attention on our feet and gradually move it along the body all the way to the top of the head, then go back and forth, so we can exercise moving along the axis that has our own sense-free thinking (thinking that perceives itself) at one pole and moving along the gradient towards more and more decoupling towards the pole of sensory perceptions. If we are able to do this, it already becomes comprehensible that the sensory spectrum is not in principle that different from the perceptions of our own thinking, its just that the activity which is responsible for the dynamics of that spectrum lies beyond the threshold of our waking intellectual cognition. This points attention to the need for higher forms of consciousness though which we live together with World Thoughts and beings whose activity is largely responsible for the sensory spectrum, from which our intellectual thinking is quite decoupled.

PS: We shouldn't imagine that the sensory spectrum is a flat surface, where higher order processes just paint perceptions in the way a painter would draw a landscape. This is a common misconception which leads to the widespread belief that the physical world is just a thin dream-like picture with no intrinsic reality. This is not the case. When we say that higher order spiritual beings and processes are responsible for the sensory spectrum we should at the same time think that they are active within or they constitute the actual physical and subtler organization, the nervous system, the sense organs, etheric, astral organs, etc. It's only that all this is entirely experienced from within. So there's tremendous depth in the way higher beings are convoluted in their activity, such that on the intellectual surface we behold only the sensory shadow, which can be thought of as the perception of the flattened out World Thoughts.

I really appreciate everyone's dialogue and generosity.

I understand there are percepts (or any other word will do) which refer to the free-thinking mind-contents, such as thoughts and memories. And there are percepts from the sense-organs which are outside my control. As well as that I can will my attention to zoom back and forth. The bolded part isn't clear to me. I understand the disclaimer that it's full reality lies "beyond the threshold of our waking intellectual cognition." But I am not clear how to understand higher order spiritual reality, except as a tradition-specific cosmology. Are you and Ashvin defending an Anthroposophic view or putting forth some metaphysical scaffolding that describes all (Idealist, spiritual) traditions, in other words, a Truth?

In either case, I would ask for clarity about: (1) World Thoughts, (2) other higher order spiritual beings - is this related to possible trans-corporeal dissociated alters which I asked Soul of Shu about in the other thread? (3) Ashvin wrote, "where the noumenal meaning and phenomenal perceptual content is united, reveals this truth of our involvement in the co-creation of the phenomenal world (or I should say serves as the basic starting point for revealing that truth)." I have a childlike question about this: When one thinks, are these thoughts influencing via participation some shared thought-realm, such as implicated in the type of reasoning such as stated by J. Krishnamurti that one person's elevation in consciousness affects the whole? Or, the more anti-metaphysical view, do thoughts only have influence when they are expressed in words or actions in the sensory-realm? This is how I am interpreting what you mean when you speak of trans-personal shared meanings. Not only shared symbolism of the sensory-realm but also a shared thought-space of some form. Maybe my visualization is still a bit crude.

[Cleric K]

I understand there are percepts (or any other word will do) which refer to the free-thinking mind-contents, such as thoughts and memories. And there are percepts from the sense-organs which are outside my control. As well as that I can will my attention to zoom back and forth. The bolded part isn't clear to me. I understand the disclaimer that it's full reality lies "beyond the threshold of our waking intellectual cognition." But I am not clear how to understand higher order spiritual reality, except as a tradition-specific cosmology. Are you and Ashvin defending an Anthroposophic view or putting forth some metaphysical scaffolding that describes all (Idealist, spiritual) traditions, in other words, a Truth?

It really depends on what you imply by 'Athroposophic view'. If that implies just another variant of 'tradition-specific cosmology' then no, I don't defend that. We can have right approach to anthroposophy only if we realize that it's a path of direct experience. Practically, it discloses the path of Initiation, which for the longest time has been kept in deepest secrecy in the mystery centers. The reason for this is that humanity reaches today a stage of development where it becomes a question of vital importance that man should find his right bearings within reality. And this entails proper penetration and understanding of the spiritual foundations of existence.

In other words, what has survived today as pictorial and tradition-specific cosmologies, man of today is in position to experience in its reality. The trouble is that contemporary man is not at all inclined to deepen his own spiritual life in such a direction. It's obvious for the scientifically minded but religiously-spiritual people don't fare any better. The latter usually are content to have a set of beliefs and all the rest is expected to be taken care of in the afterlife. The idea that the afterlife is also here and now, and it's a matter of transformation of consciousness to access it, is usually even more repulsive to religious people, that it is to scientists. For scientists it's all the same because it sounds just as any other spiritual mumbo-jumbo. But for some spiritual/religious people this is much more offending because it puts into question their position, by demanding that there's more to spiritual life than having beliefs.

You say "I am not clear how to understand higher order spiritual reality". This is completely natural in our age, since there's practically nothing in our outer civilization today which even hints at that. Even the contrary - any talks about these things are mocked and fiercely resisted. So it's not surprising that you lack that clarity. The question is do you want to understand anything more about it? And it's not an easy question. Just as "do you want to go to the dentist" is not an easy question. It's only because we're fairly aware that if we don't go to the dentist, things will turn much worse in the long run, that gives us the motivation to go, even though we would be happy if 'that cup could pass from us'. Humanity is in a similar situation today in regards to the spiritual world. You know how when a person is prepared for surgery the body is covered with a sheet and only the place to be operated is exposed. Strange as it may sound, in relation to our spiritual organism we're in a similar position. Each one of us has his or her own sheet that exposes only the experiences of the sense organs and the will, feelings and thoughts related to them. We're not at all interested into lifting that sheet and revealing the general spiritual organism that pulsates and lives in every thought and feeling and that is responsible even for the physical forms. The view could be disturbing, to say the least. Yet modern man must gradually come to awareness that this sheet must be lifted sooner or later. As with the dentist - the more we delay, the more painful it will become in the long run.

Our point of contact with that spiritual organism which constitutes our true being is much, much closer that most would like to admit. It's actually the most intimate part of ourselves - the thinking of our ego. This is already disturbing enough. It's much more convenient to sport thinking about neurons, energies, dimensions, gods, heaven, etc. - all these things are kept 'at safe distance' from the reality of the ego, they are just thoughts that we may believe point to something true. But when we turn to the very thinking process which brings these thoughts into existence, we're truly dealing with spiritual reality. There we feel naked, vulnerable. Thanks to others who have already trodden this path, we have a wealth of knowledge that can prepare us on our personal Initiatic journey.

I guess that none of the above brought any more clarity to the question. And that's OK. Higher order spiritual reality can only be approached very gradually, patiently and with nothing but humility and mood of prayer. One analogy which I find useful, I mentioned here yesterday. It's the standing wave analogy. This is a metaphor which if we experience deeply, gives us some indication about in what relation we, in our ordinary thinking, are positioned in regards to the higher worlds. So the higher worlds are not separate places where we somehow travel with our soul, but are the ever present living processes on the waves of which we experience our ordinary consciousness. We may say that higher order spiritual processes lie in our subconsciousness. If we take another extremely simplified analogy, we can say that our spiritual being is fluid and only parts of it crystalize into ice. Let the ice represent the intellectual thoughts. Through the appropriate meditative and concentrative exercises we can lift to consciousness not only the ice crystals but also the fluid currents they are embedded in. The greatest difficulty in understanding this is that these higher order currents are not something that simply appears as an additional perceptual layer before the eyes of our ego but is what animates the ego itself. In other words we need to open up towards forces that are higher, in the most sacred sense, than our waking self. It's not about reducing the higher self to mere intellectual thoughts and perception but about experiencing how the higher self thinks us.

In either case, I would ask for clarity about: (1) World Thoughts, (2) other higher order spiritual beings - is this related to possible trans-corporeal dissociated alters which I asked Soul of Shu about in the other thread? (3) Ashvin wrote, "where the noumenal meaning and phenomenal perceptual content is united, reveals this truth of our involvement in the co-creation of the phenomenal world (or I should say serves as the basic starting point for revealing that truth)." I have a childlike question about this: When one thinks, are these thoughts influencing via participation some shared thought-realm, such as implicated in the type of reasoning such as stated by J. Krishnamurti that one person's elevation in consciousness affects the whole? Or, the more anti-metaphysical view, do thoughts only have influence when they are expressed in words or actions in the sensory-realm? This is how I am interpreting what you mean when you speak of trans-personal shared meanings. Not only shared symbolism of the sensory-realm but also a shared thought-space of some form. Maybe my visualization is still a bit crude.

I hope what I wrote above already throws some light on this question. Yes, our thoughts and feelings are part of a shared world, just as our bodies are part of the shared physical world. In reality, they are not separate worlds but only 'frequency bands' of the One world, if we may use that expression. It's just that the more we move towards the spiritual, the more universal and non-local the influences become. This quote might be of interest:

A further point of importance is what spiritual science calls orientation in the higher worlds. This is attained when the student is permeated, through and through, with the conscious realization that feelings and thoughts are just as much veritable realities as are tables and chairs in the world of the physical senses. In the soul and thought world, feelings and thoughts react upon each other just as do physical objects in the physical world.

As long as the student is not vividly permeated with this consciousness, he will not believe that a wrong thought in his mind may have as devastating an effect upon other thoughts that spread life in the thought world as the effect wrought by a bullet fired at random upon the physical objects it hits.

He will perhaps never allow himself to perform a physically visible action which he considers to be wrong, though he will not shrink from harboring wrong thoughts and feelings, for these appear harmless to the rest of the world. There can be no progress, however, on the path to higher knowledge unless we guard our thoughts and feelings in just the same way we guard our steps in the physical world.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 10 – Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment – II: The Stages of Initiation