Saving the materialists

[Federica]

Today grammar has become very abstract. Going back into times of which history tells us nothing, but which, nevertheless, are still historical times, we find that grammar was not the abstract subject it is today but that men were led through grammar into the mystery of the individual letters. They learned that the secrets of the cosmos found expression in the letters. The single vowel was brought into connection with its planet, the single consonant with the single sign of the Zodiac; thus, through the letters of the alphabet, Man gained knowledge of the stars.

Someone just brought my attention to the following presentation, which is fantastic. It really illustrates for us the inner axis along which spiritual science can lead. Even our ordinary dry and prosaic speech used in philosophy, science, theology, etc. is of this same archetypal essence, resonating with much deeper experiential realities, except the underlying intuition anchored in the word-symbols has been 'chopped up' and decohered into fragments. We have lost inner sensitivity to the holistic, feeling-imbued qualities of our ordinary linguistic concepts. Through inner exercises, however, we can restore that sensitivity and begin to spiritualize our philosophical and scientific thinking. Science and Art can spiral together into unity as symbolic anchors of the Cosmic Spirit that animates our soul at the individual and collective scales.





Such a presentation also becomes much richer with the benefit of spiritual scientific revelations. It goes to show how so many souls in our time are instinctively finding their way to the threshold of deeper scales of inner activity.

We make use of language to express what we want to say and to reveal what lives in our souls. It is in the way in which language is used as a means of expressing the inner life of soul that the several epochs in the evolution of humanity differ radically from one another. If we go back to the ancient Hebrew epoch and to the wonderful modes of expression used in the temple-language, we find that there was a quite different way of clothing the secrets of the soul in words—a way undreamed of nowadays. In the old Hebrew language only the consonants were written, the vowels being inserted afterwards; and when a word was uttered the echoes of a whole world reverberated in it—not, as is the case to-day, some more or less abstract concept. The reason why the vowels were not written was that they were an indication of the speaker's inmost being, whereas the consonants were intended to depict external objects or conditions. For example, whenever an ancient Hebrew wrote the letter B—or what corresponded to our present B—it always evoked in him a sense of warmth and a picture of some outer condition, in this case something in which one could be enclosed, as in a shelter or a house. The sound B could not be uttered without this feeling as an accompaniment. Again, the sound A (ah) could not be uttered without conveying the impression or image of something inwardly powerful, of a radiating force. The content of the soul thus projected into words streamed out into space and into other souls. Language was therefore much more alive, much more related to the secrets of existence than is the case nowadays. (GA 124)

I am glad you've come to something like this. It's indeed a fantastic demonstration, and looks to me like an ideal exemplification of what I have been saying (which you steadily opposed) all throughout the Chat GPT thread: the deep connection of language with feeling found in its sound quality on the one hand (mostly overlooked, or overheard, connection today) and its potential disconnection from thinking and meaning on the other hand. This is ingrained not only in Hebrew language specifically, but in the sound of any language. I don't count how many times I mentioned the sound...

Great!

[Güney27]

Dualism focuses only on the separation made by human consciousness between I and world. Its whole striving is a powerless wrestling for the reconciliation of these contrasts, which it alternately calls spirit and matter, subject and object, or phenomenon and appearance.
Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (Chapter 2)

This a great quote to start with and one that JW should have no problem resonating it, since it also aligns with the view he has expressed. I have not gotten to the rest of your response yet, but just wanted to point out that the Wilson translation is best for PoF. In that, it is translated as "thinking and appearance", which makes a lot more sense than "phenomenon and appearance".

I think that’s right, since Heidegger came to a relative same conclusion. That’s the reason I quoted this passage. I think it would be the best thing if he read Steiner in German, since he is read the most German philosophers in their original language. Steiners is really hard to read in German, it’s easier for me to read him in English but I feel like that I got a more deep understanding of his work in German. It’s interesting that the German philosophers (at least in the last couple century) are the heart of philosophical innovation ( Brentano,Husserl, Steiner, Heidegger, Gadamer, Goethe, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Jung, Cassier, Schopenhauer, Nietszsche, Hegel….)
there is something interesting about the German spirit.

[Güney27]

Ps: I’m really interested how he will respond to point 3 (the problem of his metaphysical postulat of a noumenal and phenomenal (reduction) and his statement about evolution. Since he is an academic philosopher, I’m really excited. Steiner made the criticism in PoF chapter 5 (if I’m not wrong). Do you think that it would be a better start to read GA 1 or to 2 first?

[AshvinP]

I am glad you've come to something like this. It's indeed a fantastic demonstration, and looks to me like an ideal exemplification of what I have been saying (which you steadily opposed) all throughout the Chat GPT thread: the deep connection of language with feeling found in its sound quality on the one hand (mostly overlooked, or overheard, connection today) and its potential disconnection from thinking and meaning on the other hand. This is ingrained not only in Hebrew language specifically, but in the sound of any language. I don't count how many times I mentioned the sound...

Great!

No one denied that, Federica. Anyone who has spent the least amount of time with spiritual science and inner development, would know that. This is not the first time I have contemplated those lectures. So the idea of anyone "steadily opposing" this was read into the conversation by you, but was never there. We have all discussed the 'inner gestures' that we aim to become more sensitive to countless times on this forum, and if we have been understanding that concretely, it means precisely what is demonstrated in that video. The inner gestures are what come to outer expression in the feeling-rich tone, intonation, articulation, etc.

What you seemed to be missing is how we can spiral the inner feeling-imbued gestures that come to expression through artistic language into our dry and fragmented philosophical and scientific concepts, and generally our everyday language usage (which is partly why I added a comment about that with the video). You were leaning toward a hard divide there, a "check valve", not too much unlike JW (which is why I was hoping the previous Steiner quote on how the ancient liberal arts were experienced would be helpful for you as well). That's why you kept quoting the Steiner passage about "thinking in words" as if this was 'proof' that no deeper archetypal meaning can be experienced through our ordinary linguistic scale of thinking. This is why you dislike whenever I try to illustrate the 'smooth continuity' between these strata/scales of our inner activity. When I asked, "When we make mechanical, associative, dreamy thought-connections of experience through our ordinary linguistic cognition, are these completely isolated from the meaningful experience itself?", you replied, "If by "linguistic cognition" you mean language use - Yes, pretty much so."

I'm not sure we can make any progress in this discussion unless we make it much more concrete, so everyone is clear exactly where the issues reside. What is a concrete example of language being disconnected from thinking and meaning, in your view? What determines this disconnect? How do we restore the connection and spiritualize our current linguistic habits of thinking?

[AshvinP]

Ps: I’m really interested how he will respond to point 3 (the problem of his metaphysical postulat of a noumenal and phenomenal (reduction) and his statement about evolution. Since he is an academic philosopher, I’m really excited. Steiner made the criticism in PoF chapter 5 (if I’m not wrong). Do you think that it would be a better start to read GA 1 or to 2 first?

GA1 is a great text to work through. Although it's technically about Goethe's approach to art, philosophy, science, math, etc., it's pretty much the foundations of spiritual science as well. I think Steiner states things in some of the most clear ways there, especially regarding epistemology.

I suspect JW may say about the evolutionary story that it just that, a convenient story, and that we need to use some kind of story as a framework for speaking intelligibly about the natural kingdoms and humanity. He may say it's not a metaphysical theory that he has certainty about, but is simply the best we can do with the intellect (which is the maximum cognitive capacity, according to him) in order to have any sort of coherent discussion about evolution and how humanity arrived at its current state. (this is similar to what Hoffman does - he uses evolutionary theory to doubt the 'truthfulness' of the perceptual landscape, everything except the perceived evolutionary process itself - when asked how he can rely on that, he simply says that it's how some other reality projects into the interface and maybe we can't rely on it, but we need to rely on something to even start our inquiries and continue having a discussion).

Knowledge can only be studied in the act of knowing

These are great points you raise in the rest of the response. Along the lines above, I want to share the rest of Hegel's quote (which JW may be familiar with).

"A main point of the critical [Kantian] philosophy consists in the fact that before it sets out to develop a knowledge of God, the essence of things, etc., it is demanded that the faculty of knowledge must be investigated as to whether it is capable of doing such things. One must know the instrument before one undertakes the work that is to be achieved by means of it. If this instrument should prove insufficient, all endeavor would be wasted. This thought has appeared so plausible that it aroused the greatest admiration and agreement, and led knowledge, motivated by an interest in the objects of knowledge, back to itself. If, however, one does not want to deceive oneself with words, it is quite easy to see that other instruments can be investigated and judged in some other way than by undertaking the work with them for which they are meant. But knowledge can be investigated in no other way than in the act of knowledge; in the case of this so-called instrument, the process to test it is nothing but knowledge itself. To know before one knows is as absurd as the wise intention of the scholastic thinker who wanted to learn to swim before he dared go into the water."

[Güney27]

Ps: I’m really interested how he will respond to point 3 (the problem of his metaphysical postulat of a noumenal and phenomenal (reduction) and his statement about evolution. Since he is an academic philosopher, I’m really excited. Steiner made the criticism in PoF chapter 5 (if I’m not wrong). Do you think that it would be a better start to read GA 1 or to 2 first?

GA1 is a great text to work through. Although it's technically about Goethe's approach to art, philosophy, science, math, etc., it's pretty much the foundations of spiritual science as well. I think Steiner states things in some of the most clear ways there, especially regarding epistemology.

I suspect JW may say about the evolutionary story that it just that, a convenient story, and that we need to use some kind of story as a framework for speaking intelligibly about the natural kingdoms and humanity. He may say it's not a metaphysical theory that he has certainty about, but is simply the best we can do with the intellect (which is the maximum cognitive capacity, according to him) in order to have any sort of coherent discussion about evolution and how humanity arrived at its current state. (this is similar to what Hoffman does - he uses evolutionary theory to doubt the 'truthfulness' of the perceptual landscape, everything except the perceived evolutionary process itself - when asked how he can rely on that, he simply says that it's how some other reality projects into the interface and maybe we can't rely on it, but we need to rely on something to even start our inquiries and continue having a discussion).

Knowledge can only be studied in the act of knowing

These are great points you raise in the rest of the response. Along the lines above, I want to share the rest of Hegel's quote (which JW may be familiar with).

"A main point of the critical [Kantian] philosophy consists in the fact that before it sets out to develop a knowledge of God, the essence of things, etc., it is demanded that the faculty of knowledge must be investigated as to whether it is capable of doing such things. One must know the instrument before one undertakes the work that is to be achieved by means of it. If this instrument should prove insufficient, all endeavor would be wasted. This thought has appeared so plausible that it aroused the greatest admiration and agreement, and led knowledge, motivated by an interest in the objects of knowledge, back to itself. If, however, one does not want to deceive oneself with words, it is quite easy to see that other instruments can be investigated and judged in some other way than by undertaking the work with them for which they are meant. But knowledge can be investigated in no other way than in the act of knowledge; in the case of this so-called instrument, the process to test it is nothing but knowledge itself. To know before one knows is as absurd as the wise intention of the scholastic thinker who wanted to learn to swim before he dared go into the water."

It’s still a metaphysical postulate, when someone states that reality (our perceptual landscape) exist as a reduction of something, which is not the reality we perceive. It’s basically akin to Kants split (I’m aware that he wouldn’t agree with me in that, and maybe he will eludicate the argument). I think that we can detect metaphysical claims most often to problems that arise in a given world conception like for example the hard problem.

The problem is that his postulate negates an evolutionary framework, which function under a naive realistic epistemological position. And if we the universe disappears with human consciousness, then micro organism certainly will do to. It was always a problem for me that esotericism isn’t in harmony with science, but now I can see that science (not as a method, but the theories we make about life, consciousness and so on) are metaphysical too.

I have the concern that one can interpret steiners PoF in a materialistic way like many people do with Jung’s work. Although it is clear that Jung actively studied the depths of the psyche (soul/astral body), even trough his imaginative faculty which he developed, and trough which he studied the astral regions which he then called collective unconscious (astral world in esoteric terms), people think about his “theory” (its empirical work in his case) trough a neuroscience/evolutionary framework. And I realized that it is very common even for jungians to do so. Even Jordan Peterson do so (in the little I watched). And I see the same risk for Steiners PoF. In our conversation I mentioned Jung and he seemed to be interested, so I think besides Steiner, Jung can help to. But the problem is that without the work of Steiner, which tackles our naive assumptions about the “world”, it could be easy to understand Jung like the people above described. So I’m not very clear about this idea.

I also don’t want to share too many essays from the forum, because most people who read them in a metaphysical way, will be repelled when they read that there are higher minds which contextualize our state of consciousness. I don’t know how JW would allow such a possibility by yet. So it is a really hard conversation, but very important too, because we get feedback from an academic philosopher which is a really good way to test our understanding and communication skills.

Thanks for the quoted passage, I will integrate them in future messages.

[AshvinP]

Ps: I’m really interested how he will respond to point 3 (the problem of his metaphysical postulat of a noumenal and phenomenal (reduction) and his statement about evolution. Since he is an academic philosopher, I’m really excited. Steiner made the criticism in PoF chapter 5 (if I’m not wrong). Do you think that it would be a better start to read GA 1 or to 2 first?

GA1 is a great text to work through. Although it's technically about Goethe's approach to art, philosophy, science, math, etc., it's pretty much the foundations of spiritual science as well. I think Steiner states things in some of the most clear ways there, especially regarding epistemology.

I suspect JW may say about the evolutionary story that it just that, a convenient story, and that we need to use some kind of story as a framework for speaking intelligibly about the natural kingdoms and humanity. He may say it's not a metaphysical theory that he has certainty about, but is simply the best we can do with the intellect (which is the maximum cognitive capacity, according to him) in order to have any sort of coherent discussion about evolution and how humanity arrived at its current state. (this is similar to what Hoffman does - he uses evolutionary theory to doubt the 'truthfulness' of the perceptual landscape, everything except the perceived evolutionary process itself - when asked how he can rely on that, he simply says that it's how some other reality projects into the interface and maybe we can't rely on it, but we need to rely on something to even start our inquiries and continue having a discussion).

Knowledge can only be studied in the act of knowing

These are great points you raise in the rest of the response. Along the lines above, I want to share the rest of Hegel's quote (which JW may be familiar with).

"A main point of the critical [Kantian] philosophy consists in the fact that before it sets out to develop a knowledge of God, the essence of things, etc., it is demanded that the faculty of knowledge must be investigated as to whether it is capable of doing such things. One must know the instrument before one undertakes the work that is to be achieved by means of it. If this instrument should prove insufficient, all endeavor would be wasted. This thought has appeared so plausible that it aroused the greatest admiration and agreement, and led knowledge, motivated by an interest in the objects of knowledge, back to itself. If, however, one does not want to deceive oneself with words, it is quite easy to see that other instruments can be investigated and judged in some other way than by undertaking the work with them for which they are meant. But knowledge can be investigated in no other way than in the act of knowledge; in the case of this so-called instrument, the process to test it is nothing but knowledge itself. To know before one knows is as absurd as the wise intention of the scholastic thinker who wanted to learn to swim before he dared go into the water."

It’s still a metaphysical postulate, when someone states that reality (our perceptual landscape) exist as a reduction of something, which is not the reality we perceive. It’s basically akin to Kants split (I’m aware that he wouldn’t agree with me in that, and maybe he will eludicate the argument). I think that we can detect metaphysical claims most often to problems that arise in a given world conception like for example the hard problem.

The problem is that his postulate negates an evolutionary framework, which function under a naive realistic epistemological position. And if we the universe disappears with human consciousness, then micro organism certainly will do to. It was always a problem for me that esotericism isn’t in harmony with science, but now I can see that science (not as a method, but the theories we make about life, consciousness and so on) are metaphysical too.

I have the concern that one can interpret steiners PoF in a materialistic way like many people do with Jung’s work. Although it is clear that Jung actively studied the depths of the psyche (soul/astral body), even trough his imaginative faculty which he developed, and trough which he studied the astral regions which he then called collective unconscious (astral world in esoteric terms), people think about his “theory” (its empirical work in his case) trough a neuroscience/evolutionary framework. And I realized that it is very common even for jungians to do so. Even Jordan Peterson do so (in the little I watched). And I see the same risk for Steiners PoF. In our conversation I mentioned Jung and he seemed to be interested, so I think besides Steiner, Jung can help to. But the problem is that without the work of Steiner, which tackles our naive assumptions about the “world”, it could be easy to understand Jung like the people above described. So I’m not very clear about this idea.

I also don’t want to share too many essays from the forum, because most people who read them in a metaphysical way, will be repelled when they read that there are higher minds which contextualize our state of consciousness. I don’t know how JW would allow such a possibility by yet. So it is a really hard conversation, but very important too, because we get feedback from an academic philosopher which is a really good way to test our understanding and communication skills.

Thanks for the quoted passage, I will integrate them in future messages.

We should also be careful here and try to give as much credit where and when it is due. For example, let's take a passage from one of the essays:

Let’s focus on the way we will the movements of our body. In a biological sense, every movement results from the contraction of muscles. The contraction on the other hand is really sliding of the muscle fibers against each other.

Now without much more context and inner effort to discern the type of thinking underlying what is expressed above, we can default into a certain mental laziness and easily conclude the author is materialistically interpreting inner experience - he is reducing inner will activity to mechanical physical-biological processes. This is the risk you point out for people approaching the essays with default habits. But we also have a tendency to forget this risk also exists for us when approaching thinkers we are so far unfamiliar with. The risk is compounded because we are so used to seeing people flowing with abstract reductionist thinking habits, it feels right to assume this of everyone.

As Cleric indicated before, we should give some credit to JW for trying to use his concepts about "reduction to eigenstate" and so on as symbols for some entirely immanent and overlapping reality, which however cannot be cognitively experienced in his view and therefore can only be loosely (negatively) described with these symbolic pictures. He still feels we are always experiencing this superimposed reality that he is trying to describe, and can sense its presence through certain aesthetic channels of consciousness which vibrate in resonance with its subharmonics, so to speak. The evolutionary narrative is definitely a metaphysical postulate since it is beyond ordinary experience, yet this idea of perceptual thinking experience as "reduction" from entangled and holistic existence, is practically another way of speaking of "Maya" or the aliasing metaphor. There is certainly a fine line between that and metaphysical theory of "transcendent reality", and JW is flirting heavily with that line as all mystical thinkers do. Yet there is some dim experiential foundation for these symbolic pictures.

JP is an even clearer case where credit is due, if we investigate the wider context of his spiritual thinking. What you say about many Jungians reducing the collective unconscious to evolved genetic and neurological mechanisms is true, but certainly not for him. We discussed this at some length on the other thread (see Cleric's latest post). Just as Steiner will go into intricate details of the human organism and its processes to help anchor and flesh out intuitions of our soul-spiritual existence, so JP does a similar thing. The latter, of course, doesn't have the extrasensory perception that brings a more complete image of what's going on within the living body or the natural kingdoms, but he is still working with fragments of the same experiential knowledge that can anchor our underlying intuitions of spiritual evolution and how to orient toward more creative responsibility within the evolutionary flow.

As you say, the primary value from these discussions with academic philosophers, comes from training our thinking forces to be more sensitive to intuitive consonances and dissonances within chains of reasoning, as we interact with them and get feedback from conducting our own intuitive activity in that conceptual 'dance'. That sensitivity will be instrumental for our higher development:

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA056/En ... 28p01.html

The second is the development of feeling. Nobody should train the feeling, before he has not brought the thinking free from sensuousness to a certain level. That who knows how it looks in these higher worlds tells you: if you ascend to the higher worlds, you come to the astral world and then to the spiritual or devachanic one. The impressions are completely different there than the human being can imagine who knows the physical world only. Even if all experiences are different, one thing remains: the logic, the healthy thinking. The human being who appropriates the healthy thinking who is a reasonable person firmly standing on his legs cannot go astray if he ascends to the worlds that offer many surprises. That who develops this self-assured thinking working from the origin of the soul has a sure leader also beyond that border where one can hardly distinguish between the physical and the supraphysical.

But that training of thinking only works when we try hard to truthfully discern how concepts are being used and woven together in any given interaction, based on the ever-growing context of our dialogue (or listening to others) that elucidates the patterned thinking movements involved. The more we develop our own inner sensitivity, the more we will be able to make finer distinctions in these diverse circumstances. That is a critical part of strengthening our soul forces, perfecting our thinking activity. It all begins with charity and graciousness, which is much easier spoken about than practiced in our modern culture, but nevertheless can be cultivated with deeper scales of inner effort. And none of this is to suggest you aren't doing that, since clearly that is your motivation for entering this dialogue with JW. It's just a friendly reminder of principles of higher development that can often slip off the inner radar.

[Güney27]

GA1 is a great text to work through. Although it's technically about Goethe's approach to art, philosophy, science, math, etc., it's pretty much the foundations of spiritual science as well. I think Steiner states things in some of the most clear ways there, especially regarding epistemology.

I suspect JW may say about the evolutionary story that it just that, a convenient story, and that we need to use some kind of story as a framework for speaking intelligibly about the natural kingdoms and humanity. He may say it's not a metaphysical theory that he has certainty about, but is simply the best we can do with the intellect (which is the maximum cognitive capacity, according to him) in order to have any sort of coherent discussion about evolution and how humanity arrived at its current state. (this is similar to what Hoffman does - he uses evolutionary theory to doubt the 'truthfulness' of the perceptual landscape, everything except the perceived evolutionary process itself - when asked how he can rely on that, he simply says that it's how some other reality projects into the interface and maybe we can't rely on it, but we need to rely on something to even start our inquiries and continue having a discussion).





These are great points you raise in the rest of the response. Along the lines above, I want to share the rest of Hegel's quote (which JW may be familiar with).

"A main point of the critical [Kantian] philosophy consists in the fact that before it sets out to develop a knowledge of God, the essence of things, etc., it is demanded that the faculty of knowledge must be investigated as to whether it is capable of doing such things. One must know the instrument before one undertakes the work that is to be achieved by means of it. If this instrument should prove insufficient, all endeavor would be wasted. This thought has appeared so plausible that it aroused the greatest admiration and agreement, and led knowledge, motivated by an interest in the objects of knowledge, back to itself. If, however, one does not want to deceive oneself with words, it is quite easy to see that other instruments can be investigated and judged in some other way than by undertaking the work with them for which they are meant. But knowledge can be investigated in no other way than in the act of knowledge; in the case of this so-called instrument, the process to test it is nothing but knowledge itself. To know before one knows is as absurd as the wise intention of the scholastic thinker who wanted to learn to swim before he dared go into the water."

It’s still a metaphysical postulate, when someone states that reality (our perceptual landscape) exist as a reduction of something, which is not the reality we perceive. It’s basically akin to Kants split (I’m aware that he wouldn’t agree with me in that, and maybe he will eludicate the argument). I think that we can detect metaphysical claims most often to problems that arise in a given world conception like for example the hard problem.

The problem is that his postulate negates an evolutionary framework, which function under a naive realistic epistemological position. And if we the universe disappears with human consciousness, then micro organism certainly will do to. It was always a problem for me that esotericism isn’t in harmony with science, but now I can see that science (not as a method, but the theories we make about life, consciousness and so on) are metaphysical too.

I have the concern that one can interpret steiners PoF in a materialistic way like many people do with Jung’s work. Although it is clear that Jung actively studied the depths of the psyche (soul/astral body), even trough his imaginative faculty which he developed, and trough which he studied the astral regions which he then called collective unconscious (astral world in esoteric terms), people think about his “theory” (its empirical work in his case) trough a neuroscience/evolutionary framework. And I realized that it is very common even for jungians to do so. Even Jordan Peterson do so (in the little I watched). And I see the same risk for Steiners PoF. In our conversation I mentioned Jung and he seemed to be interested, so I think besides Steiner, Jung can help to. But the problem is that without the work of Steiner, which tackles our naive assumptions about the “world”, it could be easy to understand Jung like the people above described. So I’m not very clear about this idea.

I also don’t want to share too many essays from the forum, because most people who read them in a metaphysical way, will be repelled when they read that there are higher minds which contextualize our state of consciousness. I don’t know how JW would allow such a possibility by yet. So it is a really hard conversation, but very important too, because we get feedback from an academic philosopher which is a really good way to test our understanding and communication skills.

Thanks for the quoted passage, I will integrate them in future messages.

We should also be careful here and try to give as much credit where and when it is due. For example, let's take a passage from one of the essays:

Let’s focus on the way we will the movements of our body. In a biological sense, every movement results from the contraction of muscles. The contraction on the other hand is really sliding of the muscle fibers against each other.

Now without much more context and inner effort to discern the type of thinking underlying what is expressed above, we can default into a certain mental laziness and easily conclude the author is materialistically interpreting inner experience - he is reducing inner will activity to mechanical physical-biological processes. This is the risk you point out for people approaching the essays with default habits. But we also have a tendency to forget this risk also exists for us when approaching thinkers we are so far unfamiliar with. The risk is compounded because we are so used to seeing people flowing with abstract reductionist thinking habits, it feels right to assume this of everyone.

As Cleric indicated before, we should give some credit to JW for trying to use his concepts about "reduction to eigenstate" and so on as symbols for some entirely immanent and overlapping reality, which however cannot be cognitively experienced in his view and therefore can only be loosely (negatively) described with these symbolic pictures. He still feels we are always experiencing this superimposed reality that he is trying to describe, and can sense its presence through certain aesthetic channels of consciousness which vibrate in resonance with its subharmonics, so to speak. The evolutionary narrative is definitely a metaphysical postulate since it is beyond ordinary experience, yet this idea of perceptual thinking experience as "reduction" from entangled and holistic existence, is practically another way of speaking of "Maya" or the aliasing metaphor. There is certainly a fine line between that and metaphysical theory of "transcendent reality", and JW is flirting heavily with that line as all mystical thinkers do. Yet there is some dim experiential foundation for these symbolic pictures.

JP is an even clearer case where credit is due, if we investigate the wider context of his spiritual thinking. What you say about many Jungians reducing the collective unconscious to evolved genetic and neurological mechanisms is true, but certainly not for him. We discussed this at some length on the other thread (see Cleric's latest post). Just as Steiner will go into intricate details of the human organism and its processes to help anchor and flesh out intuitions of our soul-spiritual existence, so JP does a similar thing. The latter, of course, doesn't have the extrasensory perception that brings a more complete image of what's going on within the living body or the natural kingdoms, but he is still working with fragments of the same experiential knowledge that can anchor our underlying intuitions of spiritual evolution and how to orient toward more creative responsibility within the evolutionary flow.

As you say, the primary value from these discussions with academic philosophers, comes from training our thinking forces to be more sensitive to intuitive consonances and dissonances within chains of reasoning, as we interact with them and get feedback from conducting our own intuitive activity in that conceptual 'dance'. That sensitivity will be instrumental for our higher development:

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA056/En ... 28p01.html

The second is the development of feeling. Nobody should train the feeling, before he has not brought the thinking free from sensuousness to a certain level. That who knows how it looks in these higher worlds tells you: if you ascend to the higher worlds, you come to the astral world and then to the spiritual or devachanic one. The impressions are completely different there than the human being can imagine who knows the physical world only. Even if all experiences are different, one thing remains: the logic, the healthy thinking. The human being who appropriates the healthy thinking who is a reasonable person firmly standing on his legs cannot go astray if he ascends to the worlds that offer many surprises. That who develops this self-assured thinking working from the origin of the soul has a sure leader also beyond that border where one can hardly distinguish between the physical and the supraphysical.

But that training of thinking only works when we try hard to truthfully discern how concepts are being used and woven together in any given interaction, based on the ever-growing context of our dialogue (or listening to others) that elucidates the patterned thinking movements involved. The more we develop our own inner sensitivity, the more we will be able to make finer distinctions in these diverse circumstances. That is a critical part of strengthening our soul forces, perfecting our thinking activity. It all begins with charity and graciousness, which is much easier spoken about than practiced in our modern culture, but nevertheless can be cultivated with deeper scales of inner effort. And none of this is to suggest you aren't doing that, since clearly that is your motivation for entering this dialogue with JW. It's just a friendly reminder of principles of higher development that can often slip off the inner radar.

Thanks for your clarification Ashvin.

It is true that Jw may speak symbolically in form of scientific language. I think he starts trough phenomenology, he sees humans(Dasein- “being-there”), as a part from existence, and not distinguished trough a subject/object dichotomy. All form of science and metaphysics try reduce existence in form of abstract models. And trough esthetic knowledge (I don’t have really figured out what exactly that is, although I have a vague sense of understanding)one can experience the world in a non reductive way, we can perceive its meaning. But then he seems to speak about energy, Quantum physics and so on, as if he takes these models as something literal, like most people do. I quoted him saying that the universe is just a human (representation) reduction, of something energetic. So he takes scientific abstraction as something reals here, which would contradict the fact that he think of the perceptual landscape, as something which only belongs to human consciousness. Of course I can understand him completely wrong, and he will clarify it in an understandable way if I do so.

If we don’t start from the given, and postulate our thoughts over the perceptual landscape, we always run into big problems. If we postulate the world is just a representation of the brain for example, our postulate (which is metaphysical speculation) will imply that there is no point of searching true knowledge, even trough the scientific method.

I know little from JP, so I can’t really discuss his ideas. It seemed only so from the shorts that I saw. I noticed he published his new book, „We who wrestle with God“ will you read it?

[AshvinP]

It is true that Jw may speak symbolically in form of scientific language. I think he starts trough phenomenology, he sees humans(Dasein- “being-there”), as a part from existence, and not distinguished trough a subject/object dichotomy. All form of science and metaphysics try reduce existence in form of abstract models. And trough esthetic knowledge (I don’t have really figured out what exactly that is, although I have a vague sense of understanding)one can experience the world in a non reductive way, we can perceive its meaning. But then he seems to speak about energy, Quantum physics and so on, as if he takes these models as something literal, like most people do. I quoted him saying that the universe is just a human (representation) reduction, of something energetic. So he takes scientific abstraction as something reals here, which would contradict the fact that he think of the perceptual landscape, as something which only belongs to human consciousness. Of course I can understand him completely wrong, and he will clarify it in an understandable way if I do so.

If we don’t start from the given, and postulate our thoughts over the perceptual landscape, we always run into big problems. If we postulate the world is just a representation of the brain for example, our postulate (which is metaphysical speculation) will imply that there is no point of searching true knowledge, even trough the scientific method.

Yeah, that is also the strangest part of his philosophy for me. I don't understand how he is thinking about the fundamental "energy". Is it imbued with some instinctive experiential perspective, similar to the lowest organisms he described? Is it just raw experiential noise, or pure experiential potential that is funneled down into coherent meaningful perspectives? Is it entirely non-experiential? Obviously if it's the first or the last, then there is a dualism and hard problem that cannot be reconciled. For now, I tend to think he takes the "ineffability" very seriously and would say it is meaningless to even speak about its 'properties' or 'nature' - all we can say is there is some Unifying principle, which can be symbolized as 'energy potential', and that's it. The rest of philosophy is simply about tearing down the old metaphysical habits of thinking and finding ways to live in esthetic perception, which should then inspire new ways of living harmoniously through the ineffable Fount. We have so far been unable to discover any ways of positively speaking about this whole existential situation, so the main task is to warn people away from trying to do so (which always leads to conflict) and wait for 'salvation' to arrive mysteriously in the future or via death.

I know little from JP, so I can’t really discuss his ideas. It seemed only so from the shorts that I saw. I noticed he published his new book, „We who wrestle with God“ will you read it?

I haven't ordered it yet. But I have been consistently following most of his lectures, interviews, discussions, etc. for about 5 years, so I think I already basically know what's expressed there. Nevertheless there are probably helpful new research, examples, and illustrations to work with.

[Federica]

I am glad you've come to something like this. It's indeed a fantastic demonstration, and looks to me like an ideal exemplification of what I have been saying (which you steadily opposed) all throughout the Chat GPT thread: the deep connection of language with feeling found in its sound quality on the one hand (mostly overlooked, or overheard, connection today) and its potential disconnection from thinking and meaning on the other hand. This is ingrained not only in Hebrew language specifically, but in the sound of any language. I don't count how many times I mentioned the sound...

Great!

No one denied that, Federica. Anyone who has spent the least amount of time with spiritual science and inner development, would know that. This is not the first time I have contemplated those lectures. So the idea of anyone "steadily opposing" this was read into the conversation by you, but was never there. We have all discussed the 'inner gestures' that we aim to become more sensitive to countless times on this forum, and if we have been understanding that concretely, it means precisely what is demonstrated in that video. The inner gestures are what come to outer expression in the feeling-rich tone, intonation, articulation, etc.

What you seemed to be missing is how we can spiral the inner feeling-imbued gestures that come to expression through artistic language into our dry and fragmented philosophical and scientific concepts, and generally our everyday language usage (which is partly why I added a comment about that with the video). You were leaning toward a hard divide there, a "check valve", not too much unlike JW (which is why I was hoping the previous Steiner quote on how the ancient liberal arts were experienced would be helpful for you as well). That's why you kept quoting the Steiner passage about "thinking in words" as if this was 'proof' that no deeper archetypal meaning can be experienced through our ordinary linguistic scale of thinking. This is why you dislike whenever I try to illustrate the 'smooth continuity' between these strata/scales of our inner activity. When I asked, "When we make mechanical, associative, dreamy thought-connections of experience through our ordinary linguistic cognition, are these completely isolated from the meaningful experience itself?", you replied, "If by "linguistic cognition" you mean language use - Yes, pretty much so."

I'm not sure we can make any progress in this discussion unless we make it much more concrete, so everyone is clear exactly where the issues reside. What is a concrete example of language being disconnected from thinking and meaning, in your view? What determines this disconnect? How do we restore the connection and spiritualize our current linguistic habits of thinking?

It's very easy to find examples in everyday communications we read, listen to, attend to...
There is no need to appeal to a lack of higher cognition to recognize the more or less pronounced disconnection of the flow of words from thinking and meaning. Remaining within plain intellectual thinking, it's common to start a thought and then lack the cognitive strength to lead it properly to completion. Instead, it's common to start dreaming, or flying on the wings of arbitrary, lazy trains of thought that we have frequently witnessed, or to let the vague resonance, or familiarity - as Steiner says - of a word/constellation of words attract the subsequent flow, more or less mindlessly. I said it before, but to repeat: I don't call myself out of these habits of weakness. They are pervasive, and we are all exposed to these common practices. In a way, they are considered best practices, at least very acceptable practices. Without going into politically charged topics, I can give you a neutral example coming from an association surely comprised of well willing people. I was reading the following this morning. They operate for the larger application of genetic sequencing techniques to diagnose child diseases. As a brief example, their homepage states the following about the causes of diseases in children:

Cause

Many people wonder why children get sick with an undiagnosed disease, but since doctors or researchers do not know what kind of disease it is, they cannot know the cause.

Willefonden believes that knowing the reason why one's child is sick, is one of the many important reasons why the child needs a diagnosis.

https://willefonden.se/diagnos/orsak

It's probably not necessary to go through the above in detail. And I've picked something very short: the rest of this site provides various examples of similar dreaming in longer form. And more examples are everywhere. However, regardless of the shallowness of thought and captivation in word-ebbs encountered in everyday communication, LLMs do their thing, and gather from this text associations between - for example - "cause", "reason", "sick", "diagnosis", "undiagnosed"... contributing to the linguistic mapping of “cause” with legitimacy of meaning equalized to that of, say, the Gospel of Saint Matthew.

How to restore the lost connection: we have been discussing this through thousands of posts... Beyond all the possible angles, there is some basic strengthening of cognitive muscles that can be done regardless of higher cognition, to become more sensitive to the derailment of self-sustained trains of thought along weak, idle paths of least-resistance, paths that borrow from worded bits and pieces that happen to be at hand, in whatever contextual correlation. This derailment is facilitated by language, it happens on the wings of words. Words are the sensory vehicle that we borrow in order to disclaim the responsibility to fuel the intellectual process with inner forces, along its entire curve, and to its accomplishment. Dedicated observation of one's mental pictures can help detect, or sense, at what junctures the derailment tends to happen, what cognitive loads are let go of, and what immediate benefits or reliefs they are typically traded against.

Imbuing language with sound and feeling - at a minimum through art, poetry, music, singing, acting, or even simply reading out things (but this latter can be tricky in its own way) - can be another means to develop that sensitivity from the other side of activity. Since language directly connects with both thinking and feeling, it is possible to revive it from both sides...