Observation, logic, folklore and presuppositions

[Eugene I.]

Thanks for leaving me out of your examples, Ashvin, but I'd like to bluntly add a beef of my own. The lingo of the Steiner approach is full of what I for one perceive as a superiority complex. "Higher Cognition" or "Spiritual Science" or "Clairvoyance" are full of the superiority vibe.

You pinpointed it exactly, Lou. The idea of superiority is one of the main motifs in Steiner's belief system. He of course never admitted it explicitly because he never realized it himself. It is of no coincidence that the idea of superiority of Arian/German race aligned so well with Steiner's worldview, it is not just his accidental mistake or cultural influence, because it perfectly aligns with the main motive of his whole worldview - a universe built with a hierarchy based on the idea of superiority. The higher thinking is superior to intellectual, the higher beings are superior to humans, the Sun Man is superior to all beings, the Arian race is superior to others, the Anthroposophic initiates are superior to other humans, the spiritual high-cognition clairvoyant knowledge of the initiates is superior to all other knowledge and spiritual experiences of all other human sciences, philosophies and spiritual traditions. The irony is: the superiority complex is one of the worst mental delusional prisons someone can built for themselves, and rather detrimental for spiritual health.

[Lou Gold]

I'd like to add that I'm pleased to see that Bernardo has eliminated the forum button from his homepage. I do not see this as a censorship of any particular position but rather as a cancelation to elsewhere of an unfettered weirdness of words. IMHO, the great limitation thus far of a new Idealism is the absence of compelling meaning and purpose beyond critiquing physicalism, which is no doubt an important mission. But there needs to be a story in order to prevent an endlessly wandering mental meander, which can be endlessly hitchhiked or hijacked.

[AshvinP]

Here is a clear example of what FB refuses to acknowledge might be happening here, even though it's obvious. Jim doesn't believe such a thing as "higher cognition" exists, and likely has no idea what is meant by imagination, inspiration, and intuition. What are the chances Jim can properly evaluate spiritual claims which are entirely rooted in an understanding of what those things mean and the concrete possibility they can be attained? ZERO chance. Jim is not the only one. Eugene, Ben, and Martin also don't understand these things. And, based on the exchange with Cleric on the other thread, I don't think FB understands it either, which would explain why he can't provide that context, despite being so familiar with Steiner's lectures. FB views higher cognition as just another set of abstract concepts which can be adopted or excluded without any practical difference in one's immanent experience or knowledge of spiritual evolution. That is why he feels the latter is completely irrelevant context for evaluating claims about the "integrating" or "absorption" of the Christ impulse over the next 1,500 years. That is why he thinks there is no possibility of ever "verifying" it. One does not need to be clairvoyant to see how such a feeling escapes all logic and reason.

Thanks for leaving me out of your examples, Ashvin, but I'd like to bluntly add a beef of my own. The lingo of the Steiner approach is full of what I for one perceive as a superiority complex. "Higher Cognition" or "Spiritual Science" or "Clairvoyance" are full of the superiority vibe. Where is acknowledgement of other sophisticated spiritual technologies and the tremendous value of, for example, Buddhist meditation or indigenous shamanism or an enlivened modern animism?

Getting personal, when Ashvin says something like, "I've barely scratched 0.01% of 0.01% of what is to be known", I do not respond, "Maybe if you drank some ayahuasca you'd learn more." But when I report an interesting awareness that I've not yet stabilized as commonplace, Ashvin urges me to read Steiner as if it holds the Truth. I confess that this sounds both arrogant and disrespectful of the fact that I'm older, I've probably been around more spiritual blocks and I have gained a firm faith and some valuable grains of wisdom.

That philosophical discourse ends up being an adversarial and contentious argument between this-or-that way seems as the dualism Ashvin is pointing at as habitual. The way out of it seems to me not as more needing analysis or argumentation or assertions that the other "really doesn't understand" but to practice stepping out of separation mode in whatever way offers meaning in one's own process by appreciating and respecting and elevating a diverse multitude of other ways. In my view, we rise and fall together. Aho Mitakuye Oyasin.

Amen. Thank you Lou.

Cleric shows in precise, easy to follow, clear detail why the above is projection onto what we don't yet understand in his latest brilliant post onThe Central Topic. The physicalist looks at the Cosmos and finds the abstractions 'speed of light', 'gravity', 'space' floating as thought-contents in his mind container, so he combines them together in various ways and posits the existence of a 'black hole' beyond which there is no knowledge. And indeed he finds what he himself has projected onto the unknown canvas of outer space. He has then reified and idolized the speed of his own abstract thought-system (light) into a fixed law of the Cosmos, denying himself the opportunity of ever knowing anything beyond the currently visible world, i.e. the realms of meaning underlying it. That is how "superiority", "arrogance", etc. are functioning in your mind containers right now.

But like I said before, you are not hurting anyone but yourselves through this assumption of God-like status. There are a million things about Anthroposophy that I think about and want to speculate about, but resist the urge to out of caution and humility. So I end up writing about one or two topics in a bunch of different ways. That is why you feel like I am so sure of myself when it comes to these things - because I am limiting myself to the one or two things I actually am sure that I understand very well. You guys feel it is OK to endlessly speculate by rearranging abstract thought-concepts in front of you, which is how pretty much everyone thinks these days, but then you shouldn't feel so shocked when a bunch of the speculations are challenged and revealed to be devoid of substance or logical coherence.

This will be the last post I respond to on this thread. Carry on if you want, but I strongly urge anyone who still has an open mind to follow the link above and seriously consider what Cleric wrote.

This is something to which every modern person should have no problem to relate. Within the intellectual state we feel more or less as mind-container and within this container we experience the thoughts, perceptions, essentially - the contents of consciousness. We feel certain singularity within this consciousness which is the reason we can speak of an "I" or ego. Essentially all conscious phenomena are relatable to that singularity. Different people can give different names to that singularity. For some it's simply the human ego, for others its transpersonal One Consciousness but in all cases there's this one container of experience. This is symbolized on the figure as the apex of the cone. It's the vantage point which embraces conscious phenomena. We feel this apex as the top-level observation tower below which everything happens - everything which we're conscious of happens before the eye of consciousness. What's outside this consciousness cone (the thing-in-itself) is another story.

Practically all branches of modern human life utilize this mode of cognition which really consists of ordering thoughts in logical arrangements. Ever since the exploration of propositional logic, formal systems, universal computation (Turing machines, Lambda calculus, etc.) and things like that, the intellect has reached it's grounds so to speak. From this point onwards anything that may be discovered can be immediately shown to be equivalent to some of the axiomatic systems of thinking. For this reason, as far as the logical grounds of the intellect are concerned, the ceiling has been hit, so to speak. From now on it's all about refinement and filtration of the correct intellectual thoughts which supposedly should represent the laws of Nature. The state of philosophy is even more sorry because it is completely lost in abstractions which can hardly be related to anything of practical significance.
...
Everything that I've tried to write about, practically has this single goal in mind. To bring to attention the extreme one-sidedness of the modern intellectual consciousness. This is the dualism that Ashvin speaks about - we recede quietly at the apex which turns into our blind spot and from there, as some God-like authority we rearrange our mental representations. This one-sidedness is overcome when we awaken to the fact that with our thinking we're inserted midway in the spectrum of reality. That not only we can scientifically work with mental content but we can be fully conscious also of the living time-context within which our thinking unfolds. The most important characteristic of this time-context is that it is concrete. It's not about fantasizing some hypothetical mind and its hypothetical time-context. All of this snaps back to the old habits and we arrange thoughts in the mind cone. Instead, we must seek our current time-context. This means that we must make our current thinking the object of investigation. This is the current World Process and not some imagined mental representation of supposed world process.

[findingblanks]

Thank you, Lou.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Thank you, Lou.

And thanks to all here, as the 'story' remains a work in progress, a turbulent, whirlpooling confluence/divergence of streams and undercurrents, at once muddy, at times clearing, always provisional, dynamic, ever-evolving, never-ending, all meaningful contributions to it, when we actually put our minds and hearts to it, and rise above mere snide remarks and animosity, are much appreciated.

[Ben Iscatus]

He of course never admitted it explicitly because he never realized it himself. It is of no coincidence that the idea of superiority of Arian/German race aligned so well with Steiner's worldview, it is not just his accidental mistake or cultural influence, because it perfectly aligns with the main motive of his whole worldview - a universe built with a hierarchy based on the idea of superiority. The higher thinking is superior to intellectual, the higher beings are superior to humans, the Sun Man is superior to all beings, the Arian race is superior to others, the Anthroposophic initiates are superior to other humans, the spiritual high-cognition clairvoyant knowledge of the initiates is superior to all other knowledge and spiritual experiences of all other human sciences, philosophies and spiritual traditions. The irony is: the superiority complex is one of the worst mental delusional prisons someone can built for themselves, and rather detrimental for spiritual health.

This really gets to the nub of the matter. Nicely put, Eugene.

[Soul_of_Shu]

He of course never admitted it explicitly because he never realized it himself. It is of no coincidence that the idea of superiority of Arian/German race aligned so well with Steiner's worldview, it is not just his accidental mistake or cultural influence, because it perfectly aligns with the main motive of his whole worldview - a universe built with a hierarchy based on the idea of superiority. The higher thinking is superior to intellectual, the higher beings are superior to humans, the Sun Man is superior to all beings, the Arian race is superior to others, the Anthroposophic initiates are superior to other humans, the spiritual high-cognition clairvoyant knowledge of the initiates is superior to all other knowledge and spiritual experiences of all other human sciences, philosophies and spiritual traditions. The irony is: the superiority complex is one of the worst mental delusional prisons someone can built for themselves, and rather detrimental for spiritual health.

This really gets to the nub of the matter. Nicely put, Eugene.

Yes, clearly the anti-superiority view is the superior view

Is the metamorphosed imago stage superior to the larval stage? ... Is the integral stage superior to the mental, mythic, magic, and archaic stages? ... Or are they all vital to the ever-evolving cycle of life, always transcending yet including, at once corporeal and transcorporeal, there not being one without the other?

Steiner, BK, et al, are of the soupy re-configuration in the chrysalis ... what will emerge? Nothing 'superior' but rather integral.

[Ben Iscatus]

what will emerge? Nothing 'superior' but rather integral.

Integral theory? Fine, so long as the Ken Wilber brigade don't take over the forum!

[Lou Gold]

Yes, clearly the anti-superiority view is the superior view

Is the metamorphosed imago stage superior to the larval stage? ... Is the integral stage superior to the mental, mythic, magic, and archaic stages? ... Or are they all vital to the ever-evolving cycle of life, always transcending yet including, at once corporeal and transcorporeal, there not being one without the other?

Steiner, BK, et al, are of the soupy re-configuration in the chrysalis ... what will emerge? Nothing 'superior' but rather integral.

And the new mix may easily be a new immanence as well as or even instead of a new transcendence -- a reenchanted, reanimated. restoried more meaningful world.

[Jim Cross]

Lou,

Thanks. To a degree I was trying to make the same point but your version of it is much more concrete, more visceral, and all together better.

Even though Ashvin included your comment in his, I don't see anything like a response to your points (or mine).