On Symbolic Ordering, Theology, and Hierarchical Mystagogy

[AshvinP]

Firstly, where do we put the concept of, say, theory, or the concept of materialism, in this partition?

I would put the concept of 'materialism' into the man-made category in so far as it is informed by thought-forms drawn from our cultural sphere, and in the natural category in so far as it is informed by thought-forms drawn from the natural sphere of molecules, atoms, electrons, etc. Most concepts span both the cultural and natural spheres. A table isn't only a human invention but is also made of natural objects like wood, glass, and so forth. However supersensible concepts are entirely sense-free since they don't rely on any natural appearances. A person who is deaf, dumb, and blind and without any formal education can theoretically draw mathematical concepts purely from their inner spiritual forces, even if it would be very difficult in practice. The concepts of colors, however, could not be so drawn even theoretically. So it isn't any arbitrary differentiation. In the image below, the supersensible objects live in our middle morphic space of thinking, while the man-made objects live primarily in the 'emotional' space below, and natural objects live in the lowest two spaces. There is a degree of attenuation from the experience of underlying intents the lower we go from the middle space, while usually the higher spaces are completely abstracted from the course of objective life in the natural domain or are collapsed into our own personal intents, i.e. "we create truth, art, and morality".

[Federica]

Ashvin,

I don’t get what the connection is with thanking for misfortune, but I surely do the same. I would say, for me this part is not the most difficult. While I did have some level of victimizing self-talk in the past, this has vanished completely today, because it used to come from ignorance, or better, from the painful awareness of it - ignorance of future, of why things happen, of the meaning of life. Today I am still very ignorant, of course, but the crucial difference is, I know ignorance can be bridged, and how. This is more than enough to fill me with a very concrete, not idealized, gratitude that is present at any moment.

Federica,

Since you mentioned an exercise to purify the personality of lower reactive impulses, I was sharing a similar exercise. It seems to me that it would be easier for us to resist the reactive irritation we get from reading other people's ideas expressed through a certain style, tone, vocabulary, and so forth, than it would be to resist the reactive distress, frustration, anger, and so forth that arrives from physical illness or injury, even if the latter are relatively minor. Would you say that, in those circumstances, you don't have any sense of a reactive negative impulse at all?

No, you're right, I can't claim I have entirely and completely eliminated all distress related to adverse circumstances or physical issues. But I have strongly reduced it, in intensity and quality. There can be preoccupation, but not anger. Now one could say there's no guarantee this would continue in the face of major issues. However, I feel I have a better understanding of my life cycle, I know I am not alone, I'm not prey to randomness or injustice. In a few days, or a few decades, this body will be gone and the relatively minor issues I am having are a language, or an invitation, a route to navigate. Which is actually a good transition into the second question.

With that said, would you say there is any difference in your experience of perceiving the "tree" concept in comparison to your experience of perceiving the "hexagon" or "equilateral triangle" concept? If so, how would you characterize those differences? In other words, what does your experience of perceiving these concepts speak to you about the course and quality of your own conceptual activity that is seeking the intentional flow of evolution?

Sure there is. First I would say that I experience the thought-image of hexagon and the thought-image of tree, rather than their concepts. When I say they have the same level of transparency, I mean there is a strenuous effort to make in vertical direction from there, in both cases, and it doesn’t feel 'the end of road' in one case versus the other. I don’t feel to have reached any dead end with the triangle, or hexagon, as I don’t with the table or the tree. But they are clearly different experiences. One (tree or table) is a sensory experience in space, the other in aspatial, entirely initiated in thinking. They require very different thinking efforts and they also invite, or allow for, different relations to feeling.
For the tree: it’s a unique event that has to be integrated and brought into balance with the existing experiential understanding of anything else that intersects with ‘tree’. It’s a new data point that updates my level of understanding of ‘tree’. It reminds me of the cone image Cleric used. The new experience materializes with a certain weight within the cone and I recalculate my central understanding of ‘tree’ through this expanded multiplicity. I then know ‘tree’ a little more, I have a new chance to align with the one concept a little better, by an effort of the type of balancing multiplicity and finding its oneness, and through it, its symbolic value, that only can appear once the space-bound specifics and other complexities are bypassed. With the geometric concept the type of effort required goes opposite way. It’s like balancing a much thinner cone, or even there’s no balancing to produce. The hexagon appears already perfectly balanced in its pureness, but it’s not transparent. It has to be enlivened with breadth and multiplicity, in order to reveal symbolic meaning.

So I would say, with the tree the effort is to unify and move from the periphery to the center, and for the geometrical form, I start from the center and the effort is to move out and expand from there to the periphery. The intent and the ideal help to invoke have opposite directions. I could also say, from multiplicity to oneness (tree) a meditative effort is required, from oneness to multiplicity (hexagon) a concentrating one. Feeling: starting from multiplicity (tree), working through meditative effort, feelings have to be tamed, guided and concentrated. Starting from oneness (hexagon), in concentrating effort, feeling has to be created, just as the thought-image is created, and they have to be expanded and multiplied from there.

[AshvinP]

Firstly, where do we put the concept of, say, theory, or the concept of materialism, in this partition?

I would put the concept of 'materialism' into the man-made category in so far as it is informed by thought-forms drawn from our cultural sphere, and in the natural category in so far as it is informed by thought-forms drawn from the natural sphere of molecules, atoms, electrons, etc. Most concepts span both the cultural and natural spheres. A table isn't only a human invention but is also made of natural objects like wood, glass, and so forth. However supersensible concepts are entirely sense-free since they don't rely on any natural appearances. A person who is deaf, dumb, and blind and without any formal education can theoretically draw mathematical concepts purely from their inner spiritual forces, even if it would be very difficult in practice. The concepts of colors, however, could not be so drawn even theoretically. So it isn't any arbitrary differentiation. In the image below, the supersensible objects live in our middle morphic space of thinking, while the man-made objects live primarily in the 'emotional' space below, and natural objects live in the lowest two spaces. There is a degree of attenuation from the experience of underlying intents the lower we go from the middle space, while usually the higher spaces are completely abstracted from the course of objective life in the natural domain or are collapsed into our own personal intents, i.e. "we create truth, art, and morality".

Sorry, I need to make a correction here. The thought-forms of atoms, electrons, etc. are mostly supersensible. That's the interesting thing - materialistic philosophy only became possible when the "I" entered into the middle morphic space (or perhaps the upper portion of that space) which represents the consciousness soul. Instead of transitioning into an intuitive experience of the superconscious intelligences who structure our own conceptual activity and Nature, however, it populated Nature with mindless supersensible phantoms and postulated that our conceptual activity arises as an epiphenomenon of those phantoms. Thereby this philosophy-science allows us to maintain our personal intelligence and intents at the apex of evolution. I say "us" because there is no shortage of idealists, mystics, spiritualists, and esotericists who do a similar thing. We maintain a conceptual superstructure about spiritual reality so we can avoid entering into the intuitive flow of conceptual activity, which alone convinces us of the reality that our sphere of inner experiences and intents is not 'private' but subject to the wisdom of Divine judgment. We should always ask ourselves to what extent the course of our spiritual activity may be motivated by a similar desire to maintain the illusory privacy of inner experience, rather than surrendering that illusion to the Will of shared reality. That is the reason why we engage in this phenomenology to experience the manifest World as symbols for higher activity.

[Federica]

Firstly, where do we put the concept of, say, theory, or the concept of materialism, in this partition?

I would put the concept of 'materialism' into the man-made category in so far as it is informed by thought-forms drawn from our cultural sphere, and in the natural category in so far as it is informed by thought-forms drawn from the natural sphere of molecules, atoms, electrons, etc. Most concepts span both the cultural and natural spheres. A table isn't only a human invention but is also made of natural objects like wood, glass, and so forth. However supersensible concepts are entirely sense-free since they don't rely on any natural appearances. A person who is deaf, dumb, and blind and without any formal education can theoretically draw mathematical concepts purely from their inner spiritual forces, even if it would be very difficult in practice. The concepts of colors, however, could not be so drawn even theoretically. So it isn't any arbitrary differentiation. In the image below, the supersensible objects live in our middle morphic space of thinking, while the man-made objects live primarily in the 'emotional' space below, and natural objects live in the lowest two spaces. There is a degree of attenuation from the experience of underlying intents the lower we go from the middle space, while usually the higher spaces are completely abstracted from the course of objective life in the natural domain or are collapsed into our own personal intents, i.e. "we create truth, art, and morality".

Sorry, I need to make a correction here. The thought-forms of atoms, electrons, etc. are mostly supersensible. That's the interesting thing - materialistic philosophy only became possible when the "I" entered into the middle morphic space (or perhaps the upper portion of that space) which represents the consciousness soul. Instead of transitioning into an intuitive experience of the superconscious intelligences who structure our own conceptual activity and Nature, however, it populated Nature with mindless supersensible phantoms and postulated that our conceptual activity arises as an epiphenomenon of those phantoms. Thereby this philosophy-science allows us to maintain our personal intelligence and intents at the apex of evolution. I say "us" because there is no shortage of idealists, mystics, spiritualists, and esotericists who do a similar thing. We maintain a conceptual superstructure about spiritual reality so we can avoid entering into the intuitive flow of conceptual activity, which alone convinces us of the reality that our sphere of inner experiences and intents is not 'private' but subject to the wisdom of Divine judgment. We should always ask ourselves to what extent the course of our spiritual activity may be motivated by a similar desire to maintain the illusory privacy of inner experience, rather than surrendering that illusion to the Will of shared reality. That is the reason why we engage in this phenomenology to experience the manifest World as symbols for higher activity.

"The thought-forms of atoms, electrons, etc. are mostly supersensible."

Yes (or completely supersensible, since they are not accessible to our senses)

"That's the interesting thing - materialistic philosophy only became possible when the "I" entered into the middle morphic space (or perhaps the upper portion of that space) which represents the consciousness soul. Instead of transitioning into an intuitive experience of the superconscious intelligences who structure our own conceptual activity and Nature, however, it populated Nature with mindless supersensible phantoms and postulated that our conceptual activity arises as an epiphenomenon of those phantoms. Thereby this philosophy-science allows us to maintain our personal intelligence and intents at the apex of evolution."

Yes. I would just prefer to call it philosophy, and not philosophy-science (because natural science can be practiced outside materialism, and then there is spiritual science. I know you have recently started zooming out of it, to balance it out with a more Platonic-symbolic-religious counter approach, but for me, I still like it )


But the thought behind my initial question was: I don't see why it's useful to make the distinction man-made / not man-made. I still don't see why, and I think you somehow agree, when you admit that a table is not only man-made, and that materialism also is in between. That was exactly my thought from the beginning. Where I would concede there might be a difference between man-made and not man-made is in the feeling (although I experience a much bigger difference in feeling between tree and hexagon, than between tree and table)

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I don’t get what the connection is with thanking for misfortune, but I surely do the same. I would say, for me this part is not the most difficult. While I did have some level of victimizing self-talk in the past, this has vanished completely today, because it used to come from ignorance, or better, from the painful awareness of it - ignorance of future, of why things happen, of the meaning of life. Today I am still very ignorant, of course, but the crucial difference is, I know ignorance can be bridged, and how. This is more than enough to fill me with a very concrete, not idealized, gratitude that is present at any moment.

Federica,

Since you mentioned an exercise to purify the personality of lower reactive impulses, I was sharing a similar exercise. It seems to me that it would be easier for us to resist the reactive irritation we get from reading other people's ideas expressed through a certain style, tone, vocabulary, and so forth, than it would be to resist the reactive distress, frustration, anger, and so forth that arrives from physical illness or injury, even if the latter are relatively minor. Would you say that, in those circumstances, you don't have any sense of a reactive negative impulse at all?

No, you're right, I can't claim I have entirely and completely eliminated all distress related to adverse circumstances or physical issues. But I have strongly reduced it, in intensity and quality. There can be preoccupation, but not anger. Now one could say there's no guarantee this would continue in the face of major issues. However, I feel I have a better understanding of my life cycle, I know I am not alone, I'm not prey to randomness or unjustice. In a few days or a few decades this body will be gone and the relatively minor issues I am having are a language, or an invitation, a route to navigate. Which is actually a good transition into the second question.

With that said, would you say there is any difference in your experience of perceiving the "tree" concept in comparison to your experience of perceiving the "hexagon" or "equilateral triangle" concept? If so, how would you characterize those differences? In other words, what does your experience of perceiving these concepts speak to you about the course and quality of your own conceptual activity that is seeking the intentional flow of evolution?

Sure there is. First I would say that I experience the thought-image of hexagon and the thought-image of tree, rather than their concepts. When I say they have the same level of transparency, I mean there is a strenuous effort to make in vertical direction from there, in both cases, and it doesn’t feel 'the end of road' in one case versus the other. I don’t feel to have reached any dead end with the triangle, or hexagon, as I don’t with the table or the tree. But they are clearly different experiences. One (tree or table) is a sensory experience in space, the other in aspatial, entirely initiated in thinking. They require very different thinking efforts and they also invite, or allow for, different relations to feeling.
For the tree: it’s a unique event that has to be integrated and brought into balance with the existing experiential understanding of anything else that intersects with ‘tree’. It’s a new data point that updates my level of understanding of ‘tree’. It reminds me of the cone image Cleric used. The new experience materializes with a certain weight within the cone and I recalculate my central understanding of ‘tree’ through this expanded multiplicity. I then know ‘tree’ a little more, I have a new chance to align with the one concept a little better, by an effort of the type of balancing multiplicity and finding its oneness, and through it, its symbolic value, that only can appear once the space-bound specifics and other complexities are bypassed. With the geometric concept the type of effort required goes opposite way. It’s like balancing a much thinner cone, or even there’s no balancing to produce. The hexagon appears already perfectly balanced in its pureness, but it’s not transparent. It has to be enlivened with breadth and multiplicity, in order to reveal symbolic meaning.

So I would say, with the tree the effort is to unify and move from the periphery to the center, and for the geometrical form, I start from the center and the effort is to move out and expand from there to the periphery. The intent and the ideal help to invoke have opposite directions. I could also say, from multiplicity to oneness (tree) a meditative effort is required, from oneness to multiplicity (hexagon) a concentrating one. Feeling: starting from multiplicity (tree), working through meditative effort, feelings have to be tamed, guided and concentrated. Starting from oneness (hexagon), in concentrating effort, feeling has to be created, just as the thought-image is created, and they have to be expanded and multiplied from there.

It sounds to me like you are describing exactly the relative levels of experiential transparency between the concepts, except you don't want to call it "transparency" for some reason

We both know that all outer and inner perceptions are the manifestations of higher-order intents. The reason we can say the hexagon concept-image is experienced as more transparent or more of a 'dead-end' is because, experientially, it refers us immediately back to our own intent. We intended the hexagon concept-image and we know it isn't drawn from sensory experience. It didn't simply arrive to confront us out of a mysterious void. With the table concept-image, it doesn't refer back to our own intent (unless we fashioned the table) but at least to an intent that we can easily resonate with, i.e. that of designing something for practical use. With the tree concept-image, it practically refers us to no intent that we can resonate with and feel it exists independently of human intent and we are simply drawing it from memory of sensory experience.

Since you are on an esoteric path of intuitive thinking, you know that's not the end of the story for the hexagon and sense there is something beyond your personal intent, but that doesn't negate its relative experiential transparency compared to the table or the tree. That is why we generally use supersensible concepts-images in meditation to enter into the intentional flow of spiritual activity rather than tables or trees. On the other hand, in the concentration exercise, we use a simple man-made object rather than natural or supersensible ones. That is because the immediate aim is somewhat different than meditation. The following from Scaligero should help.

The operation [of concentration] consists in reconstituting, from an object or from a theme, the thinking synthesis at its foundation, by retracing its dialectical-analytical development, until discovering its initial pure concept. The conceptual determination, however, can be completely grasped to the extent that it is an evocation of a human-made product. From such an object, the spiritual practitioner can extract all the analytical thought by means of which the object was constructed—reascending this thought until recovering it as the intuitive thinking that conceived the object, namely, (until recovering it) as the concept... From mental picture to mental picture, the exercise mnemonically reconstitutes original synthetic thinking. Therefore, the object cannot be anything that is not produced by human beings. It cannot be a crystal, or a plant, or an animal, or the sky, etc. Concentration on these objects does not realize the wisdom of the exercise, which consists in drawing from an object all the thinking that thought it, so as to be able to eliminate the sensory support and be in the presence of the synthesis-idea.
...
Meditation distinguishes itself from concentration for the fact that, while concentration takes up an object, or a theme—independently of its meaning—as a means for the dynamic synthesis of thinking, “meditating” is thinking that moves directly according to the spiritual meaning of an object or a theme. In concentration, the content of thinking is of no importance. Rather, one makes sure that it is unrelated to the interests of the spirit. In meditation, however, the content, insofar as it is spiritual, arouses in its pure immediacy the movement of thinking, namely, the imagining, which simultaneously connects feeling and willing to thinking... One turns to a content that can be immediately had as an image. Such an image must correspond to an inner objective experience. Therefore, it must be drawn from a text of Spiritual Science or one of traditional wisdom, or else suggested by a spiritual instructor. For example, “Terrestrial gold is the mineral trace of the Sun.” It is not a matter of analyzing the concept of “gold” or of “Sun,” nor of rationally analyzing the relationship between them but, rather, of assuming the image as it directly manifests in the words, that is, of receiving the immediate resounding of these words within the soul. The three forces of the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—in their pure state, are simultaneously recalled in this immediate resounding.

Scaligero, Massimo. A Practical Manual of Meditation . Lindisfarne. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

It sounds to me like you are describing exactly the relative levels of experiential transparency between the concepts, except you don't want to call it "transparency" for some reason

We both know that all outer and inner perceptions are the manifestations of higher-order intents. The reason we can say the hexagon concept-image is experienced as more transparent or more of a 'dead-end' is because, experientially, it refers us immediately back to our own intent. We intended the hexagon concept-image and we know it isn't drawn from sensory experience. It didn't simply arrive to confront us out of a mysterious void. With the table concept-image, it doesn't refer back to our own intent (unless we fashioned the table) but at least to an intent that we can easily resonate with, i.e. that of designing something for practical use. With the tree concept-image, it practically refers us to no intent that we can resonate with and feel it exists independently of human intent and we are simply drawing it from memory of sensory experience.

Since you are on an esoteric path of intuitive thinking, you know that's not the end of the story for the hexagon and sense there is something beyond your personal intent, but that doesn't negate its relative experiential transparency compared to the table or the tree. That is why we generally use supersensible concepts-images in meditation to enter into the intentional flow of spiritual activity rather than tables or trees. On the other hand, in the concentration exercise, we use a simple man-made object rather than natural or supersensible ones. That is because the immediate aim is somewhat different than meditation. The following from Scaligero should help.

The operation [of concentration] consists in reconstituting, from an object or from a theme, the thinking synthesis at its foundation, by retracing its dialectical-analytical development, until discovering its initial pure concept. The conceptual determination, however, can be completely grasped to the extent that it is an evocation of a human-made product. From such an object, the spiritual practitioner can extract all the analytical thought by means of which the object was constructed—reascending this thought until recovering it as the intuitive thinking that conceived the object, namely, (until recovering it) as the concept... From mental picture to mental picture, the exercise mnemonically reconstitutes original synthetic thinking. Therefore, the object cannot be anything that is not produced by human beings. It cannot be a crystal, or a plant, or an animal, or the sky, etc. Concentration on these objects does not realize the wisdom of the exercise, which consists in drawing from an object all the thinking that thought it, so as to be able to eliminate the sensory support and be in the presence of the synthesis-idea.
...
Meditation distinguishes itself from concentration for the fact that, while concentration takes up an object, or a theme—independently of its meaning—as a means for the dynamic synthesis of thinking, “meditating” is thinking that moves directly according to the spiritual meaning of an object or a theme. In concentration, the content of thinking is of no importance. Rather, one makes sure that it is unrelated to the interests of the spirit. In meditation, however, the content, insofar as it is spiritual, arouses in its pure immediacy the movement of thinking, namely, the imagining, which simultaneously connects feeling and willing to thinking... One turns to a content that can be immediately had as an image. Such an image must correspond to an inner objective experience. Therefore, it must be drawn from a text of Spiritual Science or one of traditional wisdom, or else suggested by a spiritual instructor. For example, “Terrestrial gold is the mineral trace of the Sun.” It is not a matter of analyzing the concept of “gold” or of “Sun,” nor of rationally analyzing the relationship between them but, rather, of assuming the image as it directly manifests in the words, that is, of receiving the immediate resounding of these words within the soul. The three forces of the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—in their pure state, are simultaneously recalled in this immediate resounding.

Scaligero, Massimo. A Practical Manual of Meditation . Lindisfarne. Kindle Edition.

Ok, now I see why you say man-made. But I feel this nuance is secondary to me. I can experience intent in the experience of the tree as well. "I have intent" doesn't mean "I made the tree", it means I steered the experience of the tree into existence, into my flow of becoming, in which I can certainly experience much shared intent.

Similarly, in the quote, it appears that Scaligero speaks of concentration in 2 quite different variations: concentration on a man-made object as a way to extract the concept, similar to the thinking exercise in Steiner's 6 exercises, and then concentration on a supersensible object (like the mandala we recently spoke of) in order to experience the force of thinking, through the effort of going beyond the object of thinking.

So again, I don't see the general usefulness of partitioning concepts as man-made, sensory, and suprasensory.
The usefulness of concentrating on man-made objects seems to be limited to the first of the 6 basic exercises, control of thinking, but not to concentration in general, in the way we most often speak of it here.

By the way, with this said, I don't get how Scaligero states that man-made objects can grant the discovery of the pure concept. As you said, there is much more than the productive intent in a man-made object.


But ok, I can use the word transparency if we intend by it that the exagon, without sensory distractions and complications, makes concentration more easy, by allowing us to go beyond the pure concept, to allow the multiplicity of spiritual reality/beings to appear in the periphery.

[AshvinP]

It sounds to me like you are describing exactly the relative levels of experiential transparency between the concepts, except you don't want to call it "transparency" for some reason

We both know that all outer and inner perceptions are the manifestations of higher-order intents. The reason we can say the hexagon concept-image is experienced as more transparent or more of a 'dead-end' is because, experientially, it refers us immediately back to our own intent. We intended the hexagon concept-image and we know it isn't drawn from sensory experience. It didn't simply arrive to confront us out of a mysterious void. With the table concept-image, it doesn't refer back to our own intent (unless we fashioned the table) but at least to an intent that we can easily resonate with, i.e. that of designing something for practical use. With the tree concept-image, it practically refers us to no intent that we can resonate with and feel it exists independently of human intent and we are simply drawing it from memory of sensory experience.

Since you are on an esoteric path of intuitive thinking, you know that's not the end of the story for the hexagon and sense there is something beyond your personal intent, but that doesn't negate its relative experiential transparency compared to the table or the tree. That is why we generally use supersensible concepts-images in meditation to enter into the intentional flow of spiritual activity rather than tables or trees. On the other hand, in the concentration exercise, we use a simple man-made object rather than natural or supersensible ones. That is because the immediate aim is somewhat different than meditation. The following from Scaligero should help.

The operation [of concentration] consists in reconstituting, from an object or from a theme, the thinking synthesis at its foundation, by retracing its dialectical-analytical development, until discovering its initial pure concept. The conceptual determination, however, can be completely grasped to the extent that it is an evocation of a human-made product. From such an object, the spiritual practitioner can extract all the analytical thought by means of which the object was constructed—reascending this thought until recovering it as the intuitive thinking that conceived the object, namely, (until recovering it) as the concept... From mental picture to mental picture, the exercise mnemonically reconstitutes original synthetic thinking. Therefore, the object cannot be anything that is not produced by human beings. It cannot be a crystal, or a plant, or an animal, or the sky, etc. Concentration on these objects does not realize the wisdom of the exercise, which consists in drawing from an object all the thinking that thought it, so as to be able to eliminate the sensory support and be in the presence of the synthesis-idea.
...
Meditation distinguishes itself from concentration for the fact that, while concentration takes up an object, or a theme—independently of its meaning—as a means for the dynamic synthesis of thinking, “meditating” is thinking that moves directly according to the spiritual meaning of an object or a theme. In concentration, the content of thinking is of no importance. Rather, one makes sure that it is unrelated to the interests of the spirit. In meditation, however, the content, insofar as it is spiritual, arouses in its pure immediacy the movement of thinking, namely, the imagining, which simultaneously connects feeling and willing to thinking... One turns to a content that can be immediately had as an image. Such an image must correspond to an inner objective experience. Therefore, it must be drawn from a text of Spiritual Science or one of traditional wisdom, or else suggested by a spiritual instructor. For example, “Terrestrial gold is the mineral trace of the Sun.” It is not a matter of analyzing the concept of “gold” or of “Sun,” nor of rationally analyzing the relationship between them but, rather, of assuming the image as it directly manifests in the words, that is, of receiving the immediate resounding of these words within the soul. The three forces of the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—in their pure state, are simultaneously recalled in this immediate resounding.

Scaligero, Massimo. A Practical Manual of Meditation . Lindisfarne. Kindle Edition.

Ok, now I see why you say man-made. But I feel this nuance is secondary to me. I can experience intent in the experience of the tree as well. "I have intent" doesn't mean "I made the tree", it means I steered the experience of the tree into existence, into my flow of becoming, in which I can certainly experience much shared intent.

But what you are speaking of here are your concepts about steering the experience of the tree into your flow of becoming. The concepts are pointing to realities in some way or another, but you don't experience the manifestation of the tree with the same intuitive clarity that you experience your own conscious intent that manifests the hexagon image. When we stop to voice such experiences to ourselves after the fact through the mediation of concepts, it can seem like we experience them in a similar way, but that is simply masking the intuitive experience underneath.

Similarly, in the quote, it appears that Scaligero speaks of concentration in 2 quite different variations: concentration on a man-made object as a way to extract the concept, similar to the thinking exercise in Steiner's 6 exercises, and then concentration on a supersensible object (like the mandala we recently spoke of) in order to experience the force of thinking, through the effort of going beyond the object of thinking.

So again, I don't see the general usefulness of partitioning concepts as man-made, sensory, and suprasensory.
The usefulness of concentrating on man-made objects seems to be limited to the first of the 6 basic exercises, control of thinking, but not to concentration in general, in the way we most often speak of it here.

Yes, Scaligero is referring to the 1/6 exercise to control thinking with "concentration". The mandala exercise is what he would refer to as "meditation".

Referring back to Cleric's image of the morphic spaces. Do you see how spreading our intellectual concepts through the lower spaces would give rise to a differentiated structure of concepts that are more or less attenuated from the experience of intent that we find in our own thinking morphic space? It doesn't really matter what labels we use to describe this differentiated structure, but there must be some experiential differentiation between concepts that remain in the thinking space versus those that reach into the emotional space versus those that reach into the life and physical spaces, correct? It is really nothing other than Steiner's oft-mentioned observation that we are awake in our thinking, dreaming in our feeling, and sleeping in our will.

By the way, with this said, I don't get how Scaligero states that man-made objects can grant the discovery of the pure concept. As you said, there is much more than the productive intent in a man-made object.


But ok, I can use the word transparency if we intend by it that the exagon, without sensory distractions and complications, makes concentration more easy, by allowing us to go beyond the pure concept, to allow the multiplicity of spiritual reality/beings to appear in the periphery.

Perhaps this will provide more context:

The concentration exercise consists in evoking a human-made object that, preferably, is exhaustible in a minimal series of mental pictures, by means of which the maximum thinking-force can be expressed. Therefore, it must be the simplest of objects.

Since the goal of concentration is to experience the synthetic element of thinking, normally alienated in the analytical-rational process, the object must be one whose meaning does not exert any influence upon the operation, since this operation demands only the arid a-psychic willful determination of thought. The original force of thinking lies within this willful determination. We only need to discover it. This force is itself in movement within the activity aimed at discovering it. Such movement is fundamental to the whole life of the soul and its relation with the spirit and the body, because, for the first time, the typical order, “I”-soul-body, normally contradicted by everyday experience is realized. Therefore, this basic exercise is the key to the equilibrium and wellbeing of the soul and the body. The fact that—despite its elementary nature—it is always difficult to realize, can be explained by means of its truly exceptional task, namely, to be the ideal operation that reconstitutes the original equilibrium of the formative human principles.

The wisdom of the exercise lies in its simplicity. One evokes the object—needle, or pencil, or button, etc.—and describes it with precision. One then briefly makes out its history and individualizes its function. This essential operation, conducted with a least amount of indispensable mental pictures, finally gives rise to an image synthesis, or concept, which is useful to keep before one's consciousness, objectively, as the initial image of the object. The more such an image-synthesis can be objectively contemplated, the more the concentration becomes the experience of the spirit. During the exercise, one must not be distracted by any other thoughts. If this distraction occurs, one must reascend the unrelated mental image to the point in which it illegitimately intervened.

Scaligero, Massimo. A Practical Manual of Meditation . Lindisfarne. Kindle Edition.

[Anthony66]

Anthony,

I am glad you are continuing to read and work with the posts. And there is no reason to feel that you need to generate novel material. Simply working through the material on this forum is enough. There is no problem with having challenging questions when approaching the scripture or any spiritual realities. In fact, everything should present to us as a great question, a mysterious riddle. That is a great way to reawaken our symbolic thinking capacity, IF we are approaching it with genuine questions rather than cynical doubts that we are calling "questions". There is a fine line between them and too often we confuse the latter for the former. Genuine questions leave us with an open-mind and a fiery enthusiasm to ask more questions and start exploring the answers. Cynical doubts leave us in a state of skeptical stagnation, a feeling that we have already exhausted the topic in our thought and there is simply nowhere left to go.





We often mention how the whole essence of the modern problem, across all domains of inquiry, is leaving our first-person spiritual activity in the blind spot. Are those things absolutely expressed in "common intellectual thought forms", for all time, or are those simply the thought forms you bring to bear on them at your current stage of development? I quoted the Apostle's Creed before in a previous comment. Would you grant that my experience of what is being conveyed there may be quite distinct from yours? It's not that I can't understand the intellectual meaning, but I can also view that meaning in a higher light. There are many superimposed layers of meaning and many of the higher layers are veiled to my current consciousness as well. If we expect all higher perspectives to be equally available to all people who have inherited the capacity to think, at all times and regardless of individual merit, then we are keeping our own spiritual activity and its role in World Evolution in the blind spot.

This was all symbolically explored in Cleric's morphic spaces post, so you may want to revisit that again. There is no fundamental difference between secular scientists observing the motion of dead concepts and thereby deriving absolute 'laws of physics' to which all higher life-soul-spirit experiences can be reduced, and you observing the configurations of dead intellectual forms in the religious domain and thereby deriving the meaning of absolute doctrines to which all 'RCC theology' can be reduced. Why limit this conclusive judgment to only RCC theology, in that case? Shouldn't we equally extend that to EOC, Protestant, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist theology (to the extent the latter have been formulated for the layperson to understand)? There are great risks if we continue to indulge these end-user habits of thinking. There is no better way to explore the meaning of theology than to return to its inspired source in scripture, without passion or prejudice, and with the symbolic capacity that it naturally invites.

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3)

Of course understanding varies between individuals and within individuals across time. But within our current morphic intellectual space we maintain concepts shared between people which carry a certain semantic range. Concepts like hell clearly have a referent which could be endlessly plumbed of meaning. But the centre of the semantic space is "a bad place or state". And salvation (another term worth plumbing!) from hell is found only in the RCC, at least according to traditional dogma. Of course there have been reflections, particularly from second Vatican, what actually constitutes being "in" the RCC. But esotericists, with their extreme stretching of the semantic range of a host of theological concepts, have not been looked favourably upon by the RCC.

That is true, there is a semantic range. But when we move from isolated concepts like 'hell' or 'heaven', which as you note are already quite deep, and move to the relations of these concepts that constellate a semantic space like 'salvation through faith in Christ', or an even broader/deeper space like 'salvation through faith in Christ as embodied by the institution of the RCC', do you see how the issue becomes much more complex? It seems you implicitly acknowledge there are great mysteries surrounding such things, but you are still hesitant to renounce very firm and definite thoughts about what they mean. Both the fundamentalists and the atheists put themselves in the same position - they want these things to be very transparent to their modern conceptual understanding and then project that desire for surface-level transparency back through the entire history of the Church.

But any honest and effortful survey of the scriptures and the early Church writings, for ex., reveals that the mysterious character of such things was front and center in the early Christian consciousness. We could take the example of Origen, who surely must be considered influential in the organic development of the early Church and its traditional doctrine. What are your thoughts on the following passage?

What John calls the eternal Gospel, and what may properly be called the spiritual Gospel, presents clearly to those who have the will to understand, all matters concerning the very Son of God, both the mysteries presented by His discourses and those matters of which His acts were the enigmas. In accordance with this we may conclude that, as it is with Him who is a Jew outwardly and circumcised in the flesh, so it is with the Christian and with baptism. Paul and Peter were, at an earlier period, Jews outwardly and circumcised, but later they received from Christ that they should be so in secret, too; so that outwardly they were Jews for the sake of the salvation of many, and by an economy they not only confessed in words that they were Jews, but showed it by their actions. And the same is to be said about their Christianity. As Paul could not benefit those who were Jews according to the flesh, without, when reason shows it to be necessary, circumcising Timothy, and when it appears the natural course getting himself shaved and making a vow, and, in a word, being to the Jews a Jew that he might gain the Jews— so also it is not possible for one who is responsible for the good of many to operate as he should by means of that Christianity only which is in secret. That will never enable him to improve those who are following the external Christianity, or to lead them on to better and higher things. We must, therefore, be Christians both somatically and spiritually, and where there is a call for the somatic (bodily) Gospel, in which a man says to those who are carnal that he knows nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, so we must do. But should we find those who are perfected in the spirit, and bear fruit in it, and are enamoured of the heavenly wisdom, these must be made to partake of that Word which, after it was made flesh, rose again to what it was in the beginning, with God.

The foregoing inquiry into the nature of the Gospel cannot be regarded as useless; it has enabled us to see what distinction there is between a sensible Gospel and an intellectual and spiritual one. What we have now to do is to transform the sensible Gospel into a spiritual one. For what would the narrative of the sensible Gospel amount to if it were not developed to a spiritual one? It would be of little account or none; any one can read it and assure himself of the facts it tells— no more. But our whole energy is now to be directed to the effort to penetrate to the deep things of the meaning of the Gospel and to search out the truth that is in it when divested of types.

Origen. The Complete Works of Origen (Illustrated) (pp. 1450-1451). Delhi Open Books. Kindle Edition.

Perhaps an appropriate way to view all of this is via the mathematical concept of projection - reducing a higher dimensional space to a lower one. In terms of our day-to-day experience, we can similarly think of a 3-dimensional object casting a 2-D shadow onto the ground. In either case the projected image has lost information in relation to the higher dimensional counterpart.

We can agree that the various spiritual concepts have layers of meaning or depth. They lie in a high dimensional space. But my contention is that the RCC (and other denominations/communions) have mapped these meanings into a lower dimensional space, a crystallized space, where the meaning has been largely lost and most likely distorted. This latter is captured in the creeds and dogmas and is the space the exoteric churches operate in. It is the space which declares esotericism as heretical. But you seem to be arguing that the richer meaning can be resurrected from the ashes of the projection after the information has been lost. In the mathematical world, this is known to be impossible.

The quote you provide from Origen is fascinating. Of course much of what Origen said was viewed with suspicion and declared as heretical by the latter church councils. But I'd love to know how much the sense of a spiritual Gospel (whatever is meant by this term) permeated the thinking of the early church and of Jesus' teaching itself versus "knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified" which became the central teaching of Christianity.

[AshvinP]

Of course understanding varies between individuals and within individuals across time. But within our current morphic intellectual space we maintain concepts shared between people which carry a certain semantic range. Concepts like hell clearly have a referent which could be endlessly plumbed of meaning. But the centre of the semantic space is "a bad place or state". And salvation (another term worth plumbing!) from hell is found only in the RCC, at least according to traditional dogma. Of course there have been reflections, particularly from second Vatican, what actually constitutes being "in" the RCC. But esotericists, with their extreme stretching of the semantic range of a host of theological concepts, have not been looked favourably upon by the RCC.

That is true, there is a semantic range. But when we move from isolated concepts like 'hell' or 'heaven', which as you note are already quite deep, and move to the relations of these concepts that constellate a semantic space like 'salvation through faith in Christ', or an even broader/deeper space like 'salvation through faith in Christ as embodied by the institution of the RCC', do you see how the issue becomes much more complex? It seems you implicitly acknowledge there are great mysteries surrounding such things, but you are still hesitant to renounce very firm and definite thoughts about what they mean. Both the fundamentalists and the atheists put themselves in the same position - they want these things to be very transparent to their modern conceptual understanding and then project that desire for surface-level transparency back through the entire history of the Church.

But any honest and effortful survey of the scriptures and the early Church writings, for ex., reveals that the mysterious character of such things was front and center in the early Christian consciousness. We could take the example of Origen, who surely must be considered influential in the organic development of the early Church and its traditional doctrine. What are your thoughts on the following passage?

What John calls the eternal Gospel, and what may properly be called the spiritual Gospel, presents clearly to those who have the will to understand, all matters concerning the very Son of God, both the mysteries presented by His discourses and those matters of which His acts were the enigmas. In accordance with this we may conclude that, as it is with Him who is a Jew outwardly and circumcised in the flesh, so it is with the Christian and with baptism. Paul and Peter were, at an earlier period, Jews outwardly and circumcised, but later they received from Christ that they should be so in secret, too; so that outwardly they were Jews for the sake of the salvation of many, and by an economy they not only confessed in words that they were Jews, but showed it by their actions. And the same is to be said about their Christianity. As Paul could not benefit those who were Jews according to the flesh, without, when reason shows it to be necessary, circumcising Timothy, and when it appears the natural course getting himself shaved and making a vow, and, in a word, being to the Jews a Jew that he might gain the Jews— so also it is not possible for one who is responsible for the good of many to operate as he should by means of that Christianity only which is in secret. That will never enable him to improve those who are following the external Christianity, or to lead them on to better and higher things. We must, therefore, be Christians both somatically and spiritually, and where there is a call for the somatic (bodily) Gospel, in which a man says to those who are carnal that he knows nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, so we must do. But should we find those who are perfected in the spirit, and bear fruit in it, and are enamoured of the heavenly wisdom, these must be made to partake of that Word which, after it was made flesh, rose again to what it was in the beginning, with God.

The foregoing inquiry into the nature of the Gospel cannot be regarded as useless; it has enabled us to see what distinction there is between a sensible Gospel and an intellectual and spiritual one. What we have now to do is to transform the sensible Gospel into a spiritual one. For what would the narrative of the sensible Gospel amount to if it were not developed to a spiritual one? It would be of little account or none; any one can read it and assure himself of the facts it tells— no more. But our whole energy is now to be directed to the effort to penetrate to the deep things of the meaning of the Gospel and to search out the truth that is in it when divested of types.

Origen. The Complete Works of Origen (Illustrated) (pp. 1450-1451). Delhi Open Books. Kindle Edition.

Perhaps an appropriate way to view all of this is via the mathematical concept of projection - reducing a higher dimensional space to a lower one. In terms of our day-to-day experience, we can similarly think of a 3-dimensional object casting a 2-D shadow onto the ground. In either case the projected image has lost information in relation to the higher dimensional counterpart.

We can agree that the various spiritual concepts have layers of meaning or depth. They lie in a high dimensional space. But my contention is that the RCC (and other denominations/communions) have mapped these meanings into a lower dimensional space, a crystallized space, where the meaning has been largely lost and most likely distorted. This latter is captured in the creeds and dogmas and is the space the exoteric churches operate in. It is the space which declares esotericism as heretical. But you seem to be arguing that the richer meaning can be resurrected from the ashes of the projection after the information has been lost. In the mathematical world, this is known to be impossible.

Anthony,

The bold is the heart and soul of Christianity and what Christ accomplished for us, is it not? Our entire known personality is a 'projection' in the same sense. I'm not even sure it's impossible in the mathematical world, since there is the holographic principle which says all of 3D reality can be recovered from a 2D hologram. 

The holographic principle is a property of string theories and a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region — such as a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon

If there is anything I have been trying to convey about the creeds and dogmas of the RCC, it's that they should not be treated essentially differently from any other natural or cultural forms that have been flattened and encrusted in the modern age through our habits of thinking. Every form has an ideal archetype that emanates from the top-down, through human I-consciousness, and into the manifest world. The distortion always occurs in our particular mode of thinking, habits of soul, and myopic perspective rather than the ideal archetype itself. We need to learn to look upon even the forms that we find very disturbing or disagreeable as manifestations of ideal archetypes that are quite independent of human intellectual consciousness and that we have distorted through the latter. The process of redemption can only come from retracing the process of descent, first in our thinking consciousness and later through the soul, life, and physical spaces. That is not only the heart of the Christian faith but also the heart of esoteric science.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear...

Through faith... Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11)

The creeds and dogmas were not made by human concepts 'which do appear' from the bottom-up but through top-down ideal impulses which are 'not seen'. We should try to notice what we are subtly doing in our thinking when we locate the source of problems in the creeds and dogmas and traditions themselves, which is similar to the spiritualist/mystic/fundamentalist who locates the source of problems in the perceptual world and the physical body. Practically, we are forsaking our faith in the Spirit that lives in our thinking consciousness and is alone capable of redeeming the ashes of the World from the deserts, dens, and caves of the modern age. These things remain pretty abstract until we also explore concrete examples through our imaginative and intuitive thinking. I previously shared an example of a dogma that I had found disagreeable and even irredeemable to some extent, i.e. that of the Virgin Birth. At that time, I was thinking that it could only refer to the purity of Mary's soul and had nothing to do with the biological process of reproduction, i.e. it couldn't be the case that Joseph had nothing to do with the conception of Jesus.

Here is a simple example - that of the 'virgin birth'. The evangelicals dogmatically hold that the Bible teaches Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit and Joseph had nothing to do with the conception of the Jesus child. Yet when we look at the actual content of the Gospels, particularly Luke and Matthew, we find genealogies traced out in great detail for the precise purpose of showing how the lineages of Jesus go through Jospeh (and another father, since there were in fact two Jesus children to begin with). What would be the point of all that if Joseph actually had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus? We don't need clairvoyant perception here, just simple and sound reasoning. Do the critical scholars fare any better? No, they hold to the exact same dogmatic interpretation and then use that as a reason for dismissing the content, because it is absurd that a human child could be physically born without a human father. So the evangelicals and critical scholars are arguing over their own dogmatic illusions and the actual content has fallen by the wayside. We will find the same thing applies to many other aspects of scripture as well.

The above is not necessarily incorrect, but I have since intuited with the help of Tomberg that the dogma of the Virgin Birth is not so simple. There is a biological dimension to it that indeed makes it unique from all other human births and is entirely aligned with esoteric science. I can't really go into the details of that because it is still a hazy intuition for me that I cannot usefully condense into conceptual terms. I think it would take quite a few posts to meaningfully convey what I am referring to. Suffice it to say, what I wrote above was equally an expression of my own cognitive limitations as it was of the shortcomings of the Christian faithful who hold fast to the Virgin Birth dogma or the skeptics who believe such a dogma clearly has a biological component. I was separating out the "biological" from the spiritual in an unwarranted manner. These are things we need to pay attention to and strive to overcome through faith in our living spiritual principles of redemption and resurrection. Our Hope is in the fact that even the densest, most hardened thing of all, our physical bodies and mineral nature, is being raised back to life through us.

We usually feel that the esoteric understanding of the Christ events and scripture is something more recent, added on top of the "traditional" dogmas of the Church, but that's an inversion. The esoteric understanding came first and only later hardened into exoteric forms. That is how the progression goes for all natural and cultural developments - things are occultly prepared and then outwardly manifested. But the esoteric stream continued throughout the centuries of Christian history and we find more or less direct references to it in the theological writings of the saints of the RCC. We mentioned Origen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Aquinas, and John of the Cross already, and could add many more names to that list (I realize not all of them were deemed saints by the Church). Who is to say that the creeds and dogmas are to be universally interpreted by the rules of modern theology and we are to exclude all the earlier theologians, mystics, and saints who thought through and inwardly experienced the truths of Scripture and held fast to their outer expression in dogmas? We would only do that if we are seeking to locate the blame for these interpretations in our cultural institutions rather than in our own thinking consciousness. Only when we permeate the exoteric with the esoteric do we get something whole and all our judgments in the World should strive for wholeness. 

The quote you provide from Origen is fascinating. Of course much of what Origen said was viewed with suspicion and declared as heretical by the latter church councils. But I'd love to know how much the sense of a spiritual Gospel (whatever is meant by this term) permeated the thinking of the early church and of Jesus' teaching itself versus "knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified" which became the central teaching of Christianity.

Yes, that is a great question to explore and we should do so before casting out our judgments. Again, we can only say "knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified" became the "central teaching of Christianity" if we have excluded everything 'not seen', or even things seen but not paid attention to, from the teaching. Everything is fluid, mobile, in process of development through rhythms of descents and ascents and the more we deepen our own intuitive thinking, the more we will notice how the 'teaching' once was and could again be much more than we currently assess it to be.

[Federica]

But what you are speaking of here are your concepts about steering the experience of the tree into your flow of becoming. The concepts are pointing to realities in some way or another, but you don't experience the manifestation of the tree with the same intuitive clarity that you experience your own conscious intent that manifests the hexagon image. When we stop to voice such experiences to ourselves after the fact through the mediation of concepts, it can seem like we experience them in a similar way, but that is simply masking the intuitive experience underneath.

Ashvin - I have already explained, I hope clearly, that I don’t experience the tree and the hexagon in a similar way. In the first case there is multiplicity to balance and there is an equilibrium, intersection, or synthesis, however we want to call it, to find. In the second case, unity, oneness, is already present. So I can say, with you, that there’s more intuitive clarity in the supersensible hexagon. But my remark was about something else! It’s about the man-made feature, that comes from Scaligero. I don’t think it’s important. There’s the same effort of balancing multiplicity in the experience of the tree and of the man-made table. That I made the table, or that someone else did, so that I can conceptualize that process, has no major role in how transparently I experience the table. That’s all I was saying!

Yes, Scaligero is referring to the 1/6 exercise to control thinking with "concentration". The mandala exercise is what he would refer to as "meditation".

Referring back to Cleric's image of the morphic spaces. Do you see how spreading our intellectual concepts through the lower spaces would give rise to a differentiated structure of concepts that are more or less attenuated from the experience of intent that we find in our own thinking morphic space? It doesn't really matter what labels we use to describe this differentiated structure, but there must be some experiential differentiation between concepts that remain in the thinking space versus those that reach into the emotional space versus those that reach into the life and physical spaces, correct? It is really nothing other than Steiner's oft-mentioned observation that we are awake in our thinking, dreaming in our feeling, and sleeping in our will.

Absolutely correct, it’s again the same thing I am trying to say! It seems like you have not read my first reply (yes, I know ) I absolutely confirm the different experience of the hexagon. That’s because it remains within the thinking and feeling spaces exclusively. On the contrary, both the tree and the table reach down into the physical space, and that’s why, as you say, they are less intuitively clear. They require some conceptual trial, error, and funneling. Now they may be slightly different from each other because there could be less life in a table than in a tree, but this has nothing to do with the fact that the table is man-made! A stone is not man-made, still it descends in a similar way into the physical space, with similar opaqueness compared to the table and the tree, maybe just with some less life and feeling. But to all relevant intents and puposes here, table and tree are eqally transparent. So I ask you: can we let go of this man-made distinction once and for all?

Perhaps this will provide more context:

The concentration exercise consists in evoking a human-made object that, preferably, is exhaustible in a minimal series of mental pictures, by means of which the maximum thinking-force can be expressed. Therefore, it must be the simplest of objects.

Since the goal of concentration is to experience the synthetic element of thinking, normally alienated in the analytical-rational process, the object must be one whose meaning does not exert any influence upon the operation, since this operation demands only the arid a-psychic willful determination of thought. The original force of thinking lies within this willful determination. We only need to discover it. This force is itself in movement within the activity aimed at discovering it. Such movement is fundamental to the whole life of the soul and its relation with the spirit and the body, because, for the first time, the typical order, “I”-soul-body, normally contradicted by everyday experience is realized. Therefore, this basic exercise is the key to the equilibrium and wellbeing of the soul and the body. The fact that—despite its elementary nature—it is always difficult to realize, can be explained by means of its truly exceptional task, namely, to be the ideal operation that reconstitutes the original equilibrium of the formative human principles.

The wisdom of the exercise lies in its simplicity. One evokes the object—needle, or pencil, or button, etc.—and describes it with precision. One then briefly makes out its history and individualizes its function. This essential operation, conducted with a least amount of indispensable mental pictures, finally gives rise to an image synthesis, or concept, which is useful to keep before one's consciousness, objectively, as the initial image of the object. The more such an image-synthesis can be objectively contemplated, the more the concentration becomes the experience of the spirit. During the exercise, one must not be distracted by any other thoughts. If this distraction occurs, one must reascend the unrelated mental image to the point in which it illegitimately intervened.

Scaligero, Massimo. A Practical Manual of Meditation . Lindisfarne. Kindle Edition.

This additional context just shows that Scaligero for some reason mixes up the purpose of Steiner's first basic exercise, control of thinking, and the purpose of concentration on a supersensible object in order to grasp the hidden nature-force of pure thinking, such as the type of concentration typically initiating a meditation. He says that both are for the purpose of grasping the force of pure thinking, which is contradictory, as it seems, because he recommends a man-made object in the first case (which is not recommended for concentration-meditation) and a supersensible object or verse in the latter, saying that both are intended to enter the pure force of thinking.

As I understand it, the first basic exercise - which can benefit from being done on man-made objects - has little to do with entering the force of thinking. It’s ‘merely’ a strength exercise that builds up the habit to direct our thinking activity at will, resisting distractions and sort of activating a beam of thinking intention that we can apply to whatever object we want, intensively and continuously. But Scaligero’s mixing up the two exercises!