GA 13 - Rudolf Steiner's "Secret Science in Outline"

[Federica]

I have now finished chapter III, still under the strong impression of slowly pushing through distracting forces. I remind myself that the disturbances can only be understood in connection with the experiencer.

Anyhow, with this chapter, I’ve gained a more keen sense that after-death experiences of reality are perceived as coming from within one’s own individuality - non locally - yet incorporating the recognition that other individualities are expressing themselves through them. In parallel with which, connection with other beings is experienced without separation, as an immediate, transparent communion of an individuality with another.

This concrete look into existence between death and birth is clarifying, and also quite alarming in another sense: so immense is the experiential and evolutionary value that can be overlooked and missed when the chance of life on Earth is wasted to an unconscious existential flow. I am reminded of the image of the obscure glass. What hadn’t occurred to me so far is that the obscure glass would be experienced as an inner prison. How terrible to realize very practically that one has been the methodical builder of that prison, and to realize that reality could have finally been known through be-ing, without any mediation, if only one had cultivated the freedom to patiently pursue true knowledge during life on Earth. I will watch with interest the comments to this Chapter in the Youtube discussion.

[Federica]

I will watch with interest the comments to this Chapter in the Youtube discussion.

I have now watched the last (fourth) discussion. My general impression is a confirmation of the difficulty of extracting oneself from the intellectual perspective alone, and connecting the concepts encountered in the book to one's own experience, in thought and feeling, in an introspective way. Despite the intentions and efforts, it seems to me that this difficulty has burdened the discussion. It's only thanks to the guided discussions and ideas unfolding on this forum that I have gained some understanding of what mode of inquiry one should aspire to, in order to make progress in a truly phenomenological way, and what ingrained mental habits are to be recognized and disengaged from, when reading a book such as this.

[Federica]

re: physical-etheric bodies without the Fall - this post by Cleric was very illuminating for me.

I am struggling with that post:

Actually the physical body is not the source of evil but it has become what it is (and the whole environment) in the process of the Fall. In spiritual sense, the physical body can be thought of from the inner side, as the 'screen' of the senses and sensory-like imagination, as pure experiences, without looking for something 'behind' them. In another type of evolution, this physicality may have never reached the level of fragmentation that we witness. To use an analogy from the quantum world, it can probably be said that physical existence would live on the borderline, where it barely collapses to more complex particles, maybe just photons, physical light. I'm using these terms loosely. So the higher human parts - the etheric, astral and the "I" - would still experience the screen of imagination and senses but that screen would be more like a Cosmic mirror. Man would never succumb into the error that he's seeing external reality in that mirror (in the same sense that man today doesn't confuse the image in a mirror for some other world). Instead, he would slowly gain his own self-consciousness, by recognizing his own activity within the mirror - just as we now recognize ourselves in thoughts - and then he would be aware that everything he experiences in that mirror of physicality is reflecting the doings of all kinds of beings, just as he himself is one of these beings. The need for a picture of some external world would never emerge. The senses would not at all be used to look 'outside'. Actually we should think of the senses only through their inner experiences of tone, light, smell, taste, etc., without imagining some physical organs. These sensory experiences would reflect the spectrum of spiritual life. There's simply no 'outside' world - everything that explains reality is within the spiritual. The physical world is just a barely manifested inner experience of light and warmth, where Cosmic life projects its image.

Through the Fall, man becomes tempted to dive into the mirror images themselves. This is the moment in Genesis where it's said for Adam and Eve "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked". This signifies the moment where human beings begin to experience the images on the mirror screen as things in themselves, they no longer understand them as reflections of the Spirit.

...the borderline? I thought there was no "borderline"...
...particles "more complex" than what?


How would the higher bodies experience the screen of the senses without sense organs? only as imaginative experience?
Why is physical light "less fragmented"? How to perceive it without physical eyes...
I understand that the mirror of physicality could be grasped as a mirror of the spiritual, as the reflection of interconnected spiritual activity, but what would that experience of "physicality" consist of that is different from our current experience of it? Why would that be called physicality? If there is no picture of an external world to interpret, what makes that physicality a physicality, distinguished from an experience of the soul?

The question that arises for me (which confirms that I'm not getting it) is: If there would be no outside world, all reality explained spiritually... wouldn't it be more accurate to say: there would have been no physicality?

Federica,

I'll just add a brief comment for now and perhaps Cleric will expand.

I think what you are saying is generally correct, if we define "physicality" to mean 'a state of mineralized consciousness by which we necessarily believe that we are experiencing an external world unrelated to our spiritual activity'. But then if we say, 'and hence there would be no physicality without this state', we aren't any closer to understanding the inner nature of the physical-sensory body that does exist for us today and which is undergoing a path of spiritualization.

Remember, even through the current physical body, we are perceiving a limited temporal aperture that reflects Cosmic constellations of ideal activity. So the question is how do we translate, in our thinking, our current phenomenal experience of a mineralized 'external world' into the underlying reality that is concealed by it? We want to unveil what is already the case for sensory existence but is obscured by the convolution of the Fall. Every 'body' has its corresponding spiritual archetype, its true inner nature, its true intended function in the depth hierarchy of spiritual intents.

That function generally relates to perceptually manifesting spiritual activity so it can become conscious of its weaving at ever-more integrated (holistic) levels of intents, approaching the Absolute. But perceptions don't only need to be mineralized and 'outer', just as our thought-perceptions are felt to be 'inner' testimonies of our activity and can become encompassing ideas/imaginations. Then they exist more at the 'borderline' of manifestation. We can have the experience of colors, sounds, etc. that are not attached to any objects but weave freely as more perfect reflections of the spiritual activity that is animating them. It's interesting to consider how we normally feel like the inner life is flattened and the outer perceptual world is extended infinitely in all directions. Imagine a reversal of that situation - the inner life is infinitely deep (in temporal sense) and the sensory screen is 2D, yet its content is rich with living feeling and ideal meaning that speaks to our ongoing role in the Cosmic symphony of evolution.

Also, I would say we should distinguish between 'sense organs' and 'physical organs'. We can understand everything, even our thinking activity, as a sense organ (it senses ideal meaning). Yet some of these sense organs have already reached the culmination of their development and are therefore experienced as 'physical organs' that currently provide the most support for our self-reflective activity, which again are only felt as mineralized spatial structures due to the Fall. Over the course of evolution, the higher (more integrated) sense organs will unfold and provide the support for our self-reflective activity. These evolutionary stages can already be glimpsed now through modern initiation.

I must say, now that I've read the description of the human "physical body" in Old Saturn, and the whole description of that planetary condition, I have a more comfortable understanding of "that post" by Cleric and of your (Ashvin and Cleric) subsequent explanations of the difference between mineral and physical.
The borderline of manifestation is the reflective quality of 'physical', the same experienced by the Spirits of Wisdom and other Spirits in their interactions with the liveless physical body of man during their Saturn existence. That lifeless body was a mirror for the inner life of other beings, who were gaining a more advanced consciousness by going out of themselves and having their life reflected back to them by man's physical body. Similarly, we have today a chance to progress in consciousness by having our TFW activity reflected back to us by the mirror of the earthly sense world, whose consciousness also will eventually benefit from being imbued with human consciousness in this way, evolving from their various states (dreamy, dreamless sleep, below dreamless sleep respectively for animals, plants, and minerals). And the other way round, I guess we can say we are still a mirror, in our soul consciousness, for the higher beings who reflect their ideal activity in our 'lifeless' intellectual thoughts (for a still predominant part). And, imbued by this powerful force of thinking, we have a chance to start evolving our I-consciousness to its next stage already now, while also providing the corporeality on which the continued evolution of the higher being themselves unfolds.


PS:

I don't remember if it's in GA13 or somewhere else but RS emphasizes that we shouldn't confuse physicality
and minerality.

Yes, it's indeed here that Steiner says that:

When “physical body” is spoken of, we must beware of thinking of man's present physical corporeality. For we have carefully to distinguish between physical body and mineral body. A physical body is one that is governed by the physical laws that are observable today in the mineral kingdom. The present physical body of man is not only governed by the physical laws; it is also permeated with mineral substance. On Saturn there can be no question of physical-mineral body of this kind. There, there is only a physical corporeality, governed by physical laws — which laws express themselves solely in warmth-effects. Thus the physical body on Saturn is a delicate, tenuous, ethereal body-of-warmth.

[AshvinP]

And the other way round, I guess we can say we are still a mirror, in our soul consciousness, for the higher beings who reflect their ideal activity in our 'lifeless' intellectual thoughts (for a still predominant part). And, imbued by this powerful force of thinking, we have a chance to start evolving our I-consciousness to its next stage already now, while also providing the corporeality on which the continued evolution of the higher being themselves unfolds.

This is a good summary, Federica. Let me add a small note here.

In a sense, we have reached our grounds of freedom because our thoughts have become lifeless and no longer reflect the ideal depth activity of the hierarchies. Our dead intellectual thoughts are like a broken mirror of the Cosmos, only reflecting tiny sparks of intuitive Light here and there. The longer it remains that way, the less it is capable of even reflecting those tiny sparks. Steiner has spoken of how the hierarchies and the departed souls are losing the capacity to understand what happens within much of the Earthly sphere for that reason. For example:

And when the people of that time were in the life between death and a new birth, far more of this earthly life reached upward into yonder life — if I may use the term “upward.” Nowadays it is exceedingly difficult to communicate with those who are in the life between death and a new birth, for the languages themselves have gradually assumed a form such as the dead no longer understand. Our nouns, for instance, soon after death, are absolute gaps in the dead man's perception of the earthly world. He only understands the verbs, the “words of time” as they are called in German — the acting, moving principle. Whereas on earth, materialistically minded people are constantly pulling us up, saying that everything should be defined and every concept well outlined and fixed by clear-cut definition, the dead no longer know of definitions; they only know of what is in movement, they do not know that which has contours and boundaries.

Yet Christ brought the impulse to restore the mirror quality of our thoughts by imbuing new imaginative life through our willed thinking. Since our thoughts died, however, each individual can only accept this gift and unite with this impulse in freedom. Thereby we can restore the creative dialog between the Earth and the spiritual Cosmos, freely reflecting the Divine intents through our thoughts, feelings, and deeds. This is a uniquely Earth human task, as the 3rd hierarchy who went through their humanity on Saturn, Sun, and Moon never convoluted so deep as to lose the life of thinking and separate from the Cosmic rhythms in this way.

[Federica]

And the other way round, I guess we can say we are still a mirror, in our soul consciousness, for the higher beings who reflect their ideal activity in our 'lifeless' intellectual thoughts (for a still predominant part). And, imbued by this powerful force of thinking, we have a chance to start evolving our I-consciousness to its next stage already now, while also providing the corporeality on which the continued evolution of the higher being themselves unfolds.

This is a good summary, Federica. Let me add a small note here.

In a sense, we have reached our grounds of freedom because our thoughts have become lifeless and no longer reflect the ideal depth activity of the hierarchies. Our dead intellectual thoughts are like a broken mirror of the Cosmos, only reflecting tiny sparks of intuitive Light here and there. The longer it remains that way, the less it is capable of even reflecting those tiny sparks. Steiner has spoken of how the hierarchies and the departed souls are losing the capacity to understand what happens within much of the Earthly sphere for that reason. For example:

And when the people of that time were in the life between death and a new birth, far more of this earthly life reached upward into yonder life — if I may use the term “upward.” Nowadays it is exceedingly difficult to communicate with those who are in the life between death and a new birth, for the languages themselves have gradually assumed a form such as the dead no longer understand. Our nouns, for instance, soon after death, are absolute gaps in the dead man's perception of the earthly world. He only understands the verbs, the “words of time” as they are called in German — the acting, moving principle. Whereas on earth, materialistically minded people are constantly pulling us up, saying that everything should be defined and every concept well outlined and fixed by clear-cut definition, the dead no longer know of definitions; they only know of what is in movement, they do not know that which has contours and boundaries.

Yet Christ brought the impulse to restore the mirror quality of our thoughts by imbuing new imaginative life through our willed thinking. Since our thoughts died, however, each individual can only accept this gift and unite with this impulse in freedom. Thereby we can restore the creative dialog between the Earth and the spiritual Cosmos, freely reflecting the Divine intents through our thoughts, feelings, and deeds. This is a uniquely Earth human task, as the 3rd hierarchy who went through their humanity on Saturn, Sun, and Moon never convoluted so deep as to lose the life of thinking and separate from the Cosmic rhythms in this way.

Thanks, Ashvin. It's a strong image - the mirror fragments and the slow death of their reflectivity. It also connects with the technology topic.

[Federica]

I have yet to watch the last Urphänomen meeting (n. 6). I'm planning to do it this week. By the way, a helpful schedule, with exact page/paragraph numbers for the 13 upcoming GA 13 meetings has been shared here, useful to whomever wants to follow along. It's also not too late to join the discussion now, catching up on the first three chapters of RS's Secret Science.

Meanwhile, I want to mention this 2021 post about the emergence of Guilds (btw, the entire Base Camp newsletter is very interesting to me). I notice that the Urphänomen Group defines itself a Research Guild and I'd like to highlight it as an example of what looks like an emerging development: more and more often, forward-looking thinking, thinking "at the threshold", is fertilized and grown outside the restrictive boundaries of Academia. As it seems, this goes in parallel with a certain trend of possible decline of Academia as the exclusive place, the high place, almost the sacred place, for the development of knowledge and research.

In contrast, research guilds are more eclectic groups, based on freedom - freedom from administrative rules, money rules, ascription and power rules - where voices are enabled to share ideas, findings, and practices not on basis of formal and/or administrative entitlement, but on grounds of practical, ideal progression (which is not an oxymoron). I believe that even initiatives such as BKs Essentia Foundation (and other comparable ones) though not exactly research guilds, are an emerging type of structures that also contribute to pinpoint how Academia is losing its primacy, in many respects. I think this is positive pressure put on the latter, hopefully triggering some form of fruitful transformation in the long run.

Coincidentally, we have also recently mentioned the paths of two physicists who parted from Academia, basically because of the structural restrictions it imposes on free, ideal research: Sabine Hossenfelder and Marco Masi, and I wanted to briefly bring all these bits together, to highlight a seemingly growing, welcome trend of our present times.

[Federica]

Regarding the supposed formulaic content of your posts, for what it's worth, my feedback is, this is in general not at all how I perceive it. I do find a consistent experiential character in your comments, though they are consistently different in nature from Cleric's and others', despite often treating the exact same aspects of reality. This is very interesting for me as a reader. I would say that in general your illustrations incorporate more sudden 'jumps' between the intellectual, sequential, logical plane and the intuitive one, compared to others’, which is in itself not a negative, since the jumps may demand more effort, but also can offer more momentum. Surely depends also on the particular reader’s predispositions. There is much more I could say here, and I have tried to express these differences in visual form, in drawing, but I am not satisfied with the rendering at this point.

Ashvin,

Speaking of individual and recognizable ways to convey ideal truths, the anthroposophical writings of Steve Hale are - as I see it - the closest I have found so far to your own approach, as it transpires in your written page. In the few short essays I am reading - it’s a newly started newsletter - there are plenty of stimulating analogies to the spirit. While you and Cleric are perhaps curious to see what I mean by that, I suspect this content could be of great value for those who, like me, hope to improve their holistic understanding of reality on the path of living thinking. These posts are for me an additional way of training my being to move anthroposophically through concepts, and familiarize myself with the results of healthy, sensible inner gestures. For example, from the latest instalment (and I look forward to reading those on the etheric Christ): Adductive Reasoning and the Development of the SupraRational Perspective:

The evolutionary-teleological perspective, in its macrocosmic, cosmic, and microcosmic representations, seeks to provide an understanding of the current cycle of time and life based on the detailed and descriptive knowledge contained within the laws of spiritual manifestation and their purposeful intent. This knowledge is facilitated and developed by the methods associated with reasoning in its fourth form, called adduction, which serves this perspective, and out of which, seeks to develop the suprarational perspective of individual man as its natural result.

The significance of adductive reasoning that differentiates it from the three earlier forms of reasoning [deductive, inductive, and reductive reasoning] and eventually demonstrates its superiority over them, is its dedicated emphasis on the gaining of knowledge with understanding. It accomplishes this by seeking to draw together all the necessary facts and data on any particular subject in a synthetical manner. This form of reasoning knows, and is naturally attentive toward, the need for and availability of those divergent aspects of a subject that serve to coalesce and synthesize knowledge in a higher form that gives this understanding. This type of thinking and reasoning enables the suprarational perspective to develop in an interesting way. The chief feature of the three existing forms of reasoning, and which serves to differentiate them as to their intended purpose, can be indicated by the direction that each of them takes as to the organized enhancement of the perspective that each is dedicated to developing to fruition. The direction of deductive reasoning, in service of the spiritual-material perspective 2500 years ago, was a downward-tending movement that sought to subtract the particular components of a physical-material world view out of the generalized contents of a directly perceived, or spiritual ideal. This process consisted of the arduous task of creating physical categories and identities in order to establish rational equivalencies out of metaphysical, or non-rational causation. This led, when fully developed, to the perspectival impetus to involve these categories and identities of material existence, through inductive reasoning, into a mechanical world-view that would serve its materialistically-oriented developments.

Once this was established, reasoning reverted back again in the direction of a kind of ultra deduction with the intent of reducing the material constituencies and identities in order to form the basis for a scientific world-view that would serve the developments of ultra materialism, as evidenced by the current technological age. The thing to be understood about these three types of reasoning is that, while they differ in terms of direction in order to support the development of each’s particular perspective, they all seek and are satisfied with the effective knowledge gained in the realm of effects. That is, each is inspired to develop a particular aspect of our physical-sensory, and time-bound world of matter. Since matter only exists and appertains the senses in the realm of effects, separate from its causes, these forms of reasoning can only give a certain limited kind of knowledge without the real understanding that comes with the knowledge of causation.
…

[Federica]

Regarding the latest Urphänomen discussion - the seventh - on Steiner's Secret Science, I notice that Matt Segall (towards the end of minute 25) asks, speaking of Saturn (from the transcript):

"..and just another thing to note about the strange inversion here this isn't the evolutionary process we're used to, thinking of evolution in our materialistic age quite differently, so Steiner is basically saying that the senses... like sense qualities of taste precede the organs which we would assume are responsible for them so... taste actually leads to metabolism and digestion and, you know, and so it's the reverse of the physical causal mechanistic understanding that we would have nowadays. Very important to note that, but I also think it's interesting... last thing I'll share is that Steiner seems to be saying that Saturn had a physical nature that it was... it was not gas, it was not liquid or solid, but he says yet finer substance than gas and gas is just this warmth quality condensed, right? and so it's tempting here to start to try to imagine... well you know nowadays... and I've talked about plasmas before, and I don't want to overly literalize what Steiner is saying but what sort of a physicality might he be talking about and is there any equivalent in contemporary physics it's one question I want to raise..."


..and we remember that Cleric, at page 5 of this thread gave a preview of the answer to this exact question: the meaning of physical, beyond mineral (!)

[Federica]

Later in the same video (minute 41-42) Angus shares a graph he drew, with notes on it. He says (from the transcript):

"I would like to share how I like to process what is a really dense 20 pages of matter, not because my method is good, it's just my method. The reason for doing it is I'd like to encourage other people to share how they process. There's so many moving parts in this little bit, and it's not going to get any easier when we come to Sun, Moon and Earth, so I make notes. I guess you guys do as well, and I came up with some graphics, and then I decided okay I'll do the whole thing so I created this, with labels and things, which gave me something to just dwell on, to to live with this picture, with these labels, and what's interesting is how new ideas or associative ideas pop in there, when you've actually got content to work with you. It's almost like you've created a provisional picture for yourself, that becomes like a a sandpit for other ideas to play in there..."


Like Angus, I also felt the need to scribble with color pencils while reading, so I'll add how Saturn planetary condition looks like in my sketch . Only Saturn space is filled out for now, since I haven't read about the other conditions yet. I know it's misleading to think of the conditions as planets. This is just a mindless provisional sketch. I'm sharing it in the hope that a visual cue may trigger interest for some who have not yet started reading. I definitely agree that, however wrong, drawing does provide something to dwell on. It helps digest the text somehow, beyond the rational mind. As said in the video, it's a really dense text, and an incredible cognitive adventure to dive in. I hope people will embark on it. It's urgent.