I am sorry for the long text. I’m not entirely confident these thoughts are worth the amount of text, but I hope so.
LIFE ANIMATION (THE FORMATIVE FORCE OF LIFE) IS PART OF ANY IDEATION WE CAN THINK OF
Cleric K wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:16 pm
one of the greatest obstacles is the inertia of the way we think about processes of any kind, which is of course the result of the intellectual mode of cognition. In our sensory life basically we can only create forms.
The 'animation' of the forms is left to the laws of reality. This is the case with any technology that we presently know - from the primitive to the advanced. If we create a windmill, we create the parts and let the wind do the animation. If we create a computer, we etch the traces of the circuits and let electricity do the rest.
We have the same approach even towards life.
Yes, the distinction between forms and animation of the forms has an exact reflection in Kürten’s illustrations: right now we are incarnated in the mineral Life round/Elementary Kingdom, and what we master is mineral form, we have consciousness of it and we approach everything at the level of mineral form, be it our physical body, all other manifested living and non-living phenomena, and also our thinking: we abstractify it to form, through the filtering operated by our brain. We don’t yet know how to understand etheric forces, beyond their sense perceptible mineral component that we study from without.
Cleric K wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:16 pm
we have to sense how we technologically create the forms and let Nature animate them. ...This polarity was at the core of the TCOTCT, where it was attempted to show that only in our spiritual activity we live in an actual temporal law which metamorphoses the forms through time. ...The life forces have to be found as something spiritual,
as something that intends the metamorphoses of the forms, as we intend the metamorphoses of thoughts.
This parallel between understanding life forces and our experience of willed thinking - that we have to will the living metamorphosis of form, similar to how we find ourselves able to do it in thinking, is so helpful. It sets the tone and the context. This too finds coincidence within Kürten’s picture of the seven-fold structure of Spirit land. Drawing directly from Steiner, he notices: when we think sense-free thoughts (ideate what is not already there in sense-perceptible reality) the activity is structured in the fourth region of Spirit land, that is, in the
fourth Elementary Kingdom. where the formless thought-seeds of (pure) thinking itself shape the archetypal thought forms originating the spiritual-mental activity of man, that condenses into sense-free thoughts. So
the ideation of a windmill that we find precipitated in thought form has its spiritual background process, its depth process, in this fourth Elementary Kingdom.
What I am getting at is: this fourth region of Spirit that we are currently traversing - where pure thinking makes it all the way down to perceptible (but sense-free) thought-images - brings inside it not only the shaping activity of its own beings, as described, but also the activities of the beings of the first three (higher) Kingdoms: the 7th (highest) providing the thought-seeds that shape physical form, the 6th, providing the thought-seeds of life forces to animate the forms, and the 5th, providing the thought-seeds of soul forces.
Therefore, I think that
even in the windmill and in the computer - in all man-made manifestations of creative ideation -
the forces of life are included. Because we are in the operating activity of the 4th region, that brings the forces of the first three Kingdoms (physical form, life form, and soul form) into the specifically human sphere of conscious thinking. And so the life formative forces are included here. Without these, the condensed thought-image of the windmill would not be possible.
So maybe, we could extend the above parallel between thinking animation (fully within our reach, with the vowel exercise for instance) and life animation (that we hope to internalize, instead of leaving it over to Nature). Could it be said that
any process of transformation that we recognize as such has life? That any metamorphosis we are aware of has to incorporate the principles of life, even the windmill, the computer, and the ideation behind the cell simulation too. Any process that we expect to be animated once we put in the right forms, is ruled by life-like principles, because ideation is only possible once all four levels of thought-seeds (form, life, soul, and thought itself) are brought together from the top, and down, in condensable archetypes of the fourth region.
Another way to say it, from the opposite end, would be - with Steiner - that “man's ordinary forces of thought are refined formative and growth forces.” The wind that animates the mill realizes a process of transformation that in some sense is of growth nature, there is creation. We ‘only’ need to see it. It is a creation that descends into matter from the high-seated means of our ideation, through life and soul forces. The static, lifeless forms condensing from the highest (7th) region of Spirit are set in motion by the large spectrum interaction of all these forces. So
probably even the failed cell simulation in itself is life-like? for the ideation it comprises, which would be impossible without the principles of life and growth operating in the background of it.
In short, life animation can’t be imagined in isolation. Its formative forces are part of any ideation we can think of. With Kürten: “The creative, shape-giving activity of the elementary kingdoms is thus the basis of all phenomena through which being comes into manifestation.”
“BIOLOGY” AS AN IDEA, IS NOT HELPFUL TO UNDERSTAND LIFE FROM WITHIN
In this perspective, biology - biological machinery and growth - in itself
does not appear as a truly homogenous category of life, that requires to be understood as such (although it looks so). Just because our senses tell us there are similar cells in plants, animals and in man, and they all reproduce alike, it doesn't mean that what we need to understand is “cell”. Because life from within is different in every different kingdom of Nature: (so-called) life-less, plant, animal, man. Instead of focusing on cell and its components, the relevant distinctions are those given by the Spirit regions, the Elementary Kingdoms - physical form, life, soul, thinking. The highest Spirit region gives form to formless matter, down to the crystal. Formless matter responds to certain physical laws, but the more
form is shaped, the closer we get to an inversion of those laws. Maybe we could say that, at the formless level, growth/animation only exists as a
completely diffused principle of ‘life’. With the laws of nature applied to the formless, 'animation' is experienced as perfectly diffused in all reality. Then, at the level of mineral form (crystal), as opposed to formless mineral (fluid or gas)
‘proto-life’ begins to appear. We come closer to the second region, that of the formative forces of life. We break a crystal in two, and we have two integral crystals, not one broken crystal. It’s almost a meaningful reproduction. (For formless matter, it doesn’t even make sense to think in terms of any ‘reproduction’ processes).
Further, as we really enter the second spirit region, the thought-seed of growth/life is inflected differently for plant, animal and human existence (what we today call “biology”) through
unique combinations with the other formative forces at play. From diffused ‘life’ of the formless, through the proto-life of crystals,
life here gets internalized in individual beings at various levels of ‘intensity’ (unconscious life in plants, sentient life in animals, conscious in man), but, as you say, life is not added from the side onto these forms, as isolated ingredient. Rather, life forces are
intertwined with the formative forces of physical form only (plant) or with physical form forces plus soul forces (animal) or with physical form forces plus soul forces and ego (man). On the material plane, what we perceive are precipitations of these different interferences.
TRYING TO FIND A MORE SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE
Cleric K wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:16 pm
biological life must be thought of much more as a kind of
language in which the spiritual world thinks as it reaches into the decohering physical spectrum.
I wonder if it could be said that biological life is a
family of languages in which the spirit thinks as it reaches into the decohering physical spectrum. Because the combinations of forces expressed in plant, animal and man differ from one another, a plant cell would not reflect the same language as a cell of a human body, although the sense-perceptible, precipitated cellular processes may appear similar to one another. Again, we should maybe refrain from the convenient approach of dissecting the life forces, flattening them into the concept of biology. And we should refrain from identifying the
lowest common denominator of life in the cell (or other sense perceptible sub-parts of cell). That would be the Ahrimanic bottom-up approach. Ahriman says: “
Across the board, the cell is our blueprint leading to an understanding of all life.” Could we say that?
Life forces seem to me like primal,
individualizing forces, and - in their physical-material effects -
spatially differentiating forces, through growth/reproduction. Life forces bring
temporal transformation from the level of formless diffusion, into the individualized sphere of the Earthly beings. In other words, life force brings evolution on the inner side of beings, operating from within their individuality, rather than only at the formless and diffuse level of the laws of nature.
- On the physical plane, life forces make the thought-seed of “growth/reproduction/evolution”
spatially condensed within the existence of organized bodies.
- On the spiritual, spaceless plane, the individualizing and differentiating forces of life are in fact
rhythmical forces that set the tempo of evolution.
In this perspective, life forces (EK 2) are always expressed in interaction with physical forces (EKs 1+2), sometimes with soul forces too (EKs 1+2+3), and sometimes also with ego forces (EKs 1+2+3+4). Therefore, they can’t be understood in isolation from the other formative forces. Trying to understand life forces from within, would then equal an attempt to understand the various interactions of forces. In our thinking, we experience the complete synthesis of all four levels, so we should have the means for that understanding from within.
And maybe an
enzyme transformation, although it sense-perceptually
looks consistent across the biological board, is the
flattened material precipitation of different languages of transformative life that can’t be inferred from the mere observation-simulation of the enzyme transformation.
I have a metaphor for that. It’s as if someone composed an English verse, a German verse, and a French verse by
mentally aligning all the letters of a Scrabble table game, and then read out the verses for us. We hear the three verses, without knowing any of the languages, and we are fascinated. We want to retrace their creation and to learn to compose verses in the same way. But even if we have full access to all the letter-pieces in the game,
there is nothing in the letter-pieces themselves that can help us understand the making of the verses. Like an enzyme with respect to plant, animal and human life, the Scrabble letter “a” could be part of all the verses, as a decohered piece, "a" is common to all the verses, but there’s no way to become a trilingual poet, no way to understand how the verses were composed, only based on understanding the alphabet letters.
Our only way is to learn the languages first. If we learn French, we can at least hope to grasp the French verse, and see how it comes about in terms of the Scrabble letter-pieces. Similarly, only if we understand plant life language, can we grasp plant growth from within, and then see how its precipitation may include enzymes. Those enzymes may be part of precipitated animal growth as well, but no chance to grasp animal growth from within without learning the animal-specific language of interactions. There is another metaphor for the same idea that I will borrow from Anthony:
Anthony66 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 29, 2023 4:56 am
projection is not a bijective function - there is not a one-to-one relationship between the domain and range. For example a 3-D point (1,2,3) may project to a 2-D plane as (1,2) but so may (1,2,4). From the 2-D point (1,2) one can't uniquely map back to 3-D - one can't determine whether to traverse back to (1,2,3) or (1,2,4) or to (1,2,5) for that matter.
Is the above enough of a foundation to say that biology as a concept is overestimated, misleading, and maybe even Ahrimanic, and that life forces are better understood as individualizing/differentiating/rythmical? I’m not sure, I hope so.
If the above makes sense, I would think that understanding cellular ‘selfless’ reproduction from within requires
abandoning the bottom-up biological perspective of starting from the analysis of our mental pictures of cell, and cell reproduction. Because these pictures are only sparse alphabet letters that require knowledge of a different language depending on what verse the letters have precipitated from. And even if we were able to unconsciously come up with the correct words and verses, by AI-combining all available letter-pieces in all possible ways,
we wouldn’t recognize the verses as meaningful, we wouldn't single them out of the series, if we haven’t internalized the language first. So I now think that understanding
a cell from within actually doesn’t mean much. A plant cell may look similar to animal and human cells, but the language of life spoken by the Spirit through the plant being is a uniquely meaningful interaction of forces that has to be grasped in itself first, no matter how the condensation of that language on the sense perceptible plan may look and behave in material space.
Cleric, does any of these thoughts go along the lines you intended to indicate?