Saving the materialists

[AshvinP]

On the theme of bridging anthroposophical understanding for the benefit of the intellect, I'm just pinpointing this Steiner quote for later - from GA 128/3:

"it would nevertheless be extraordinarily interesting, since not everybody is capable of becoming clairvoyant, if such facts could be accepted by external physiology, accepted, let us say, as possible ideas, so that people would say: “I will for once imagine that what is attained by means of the inner clairvoyant eye is, after all, not such complete nonsense as it is often supposed to be. On the contrary, I shall neither believe nor disbelieve this; but I shall let it remain as an idea presented to me, and shall then investigate what external physiology can point out, whether, out of all that is asserted by occultists, anything whatever can be substantiated by showing clearly that it is actually confirmed by external observation.”"

It would also be extraordinarily interesting if my cat could decide to go on a fasting regimen

Let's also look later in that lecture:

We can try, at least, to let such things work upon us; and, if we allow them to do so in ever-increasing number, one new fact after another comes to light till it becomes impossible after a time to say, in the light and easy manner in which we so often hear a superficial solution proposed: “Here are some of these visionaries dreaming that the old myths and sagas contained the pictorial impress of a deeper wisdom!” If a man hears two or three, or let us say even ten, such “correspondences” presented, as these so often are presented in literature in a wholly superficial way, it is of course quite possible for him to oppose the idea that there is a deeper wisdom contained in the myths and sagas than in external science; that mythology leads us deeper into the foundations of things and of Being than do the methods of natural-scientific study. But if he allows such examples to work upon him again and again, and then becomes aware that, throughout the whole extent of the thought and feeling of men and of peoples, it is verified that in pictorial conceptions everywhere and always, over all parts of the earth, anyone with a very accurate observation and devoted interest in sagas and myths may find the metamorphoses of a deeper wisdom, then he will be able to understand why certain occultists can with justice say as they do: “He alone really comprehends the myths and sagas who has penetrated into human nature with the help of occult physiology.”

What does it mean to let such things work on us again and again, in contrast to the intellect being presented two or three or ten such correspondences? This is the question we should answer by inquiring into our own inner process and noticing what we had to do (and let go, in the sense of 'negative knowledge') before the conceptual symbols truly began to work on us.

[Federica]

The one you indicate is definitely one angle of the question - among plethora of other angles. Another one angle would be the cat question for example. But you shall not go around twisting people's arms to make them do what you have decided they should do, because that's what you would do. Please, Ashvin, do not make the mistake of indulging in that kind of forcible preaching. You are needed in much higher capacities than that.

[AshvinP]

The one you indicate is definitely one angle of the question - among plethora of other angles. Another one angle would be the cat question for example. But you shall not go around twisting people's arms to make them do what you have decided they should do, because that's what you would do. Please, Ashvin, do not make the mistake of indulging in that kind of forcible preaching. You are needed in much higher capacities than that.

This is what Eugene would also respond when we emphasized how the human soul has arrived at the time when it needs to start swimming with its spiritual activity, IF it desires to expand intuitive orientation to the lawful contextual dynamics and harmonize with them. He would begin accusing us of preaching, tyranny, dictatorship, and so on, when we questioned Godel's candy shop of options to attain higher knowledge of spiritual reality. I am sure that when he responded in this way, you had no problem spotting that it was steered by a reactive-defensive tendency of the intellect to avoid diving through the pinhole of cognition.

Last year, he even proposed (via Kim) that the concept of 'energy' could be analytically used to describe how higher beings influence the Earthly spectrum. In that discussion, Cleric put it quite nicely (as also to Guney recently):

KM says how the Creator forms in his mind an image of what kind of world he wants to create and then goes on with its realization. Now you may say that I'm nitpicking, that these are simplified descriptions and shouldn't be taken too literally. But that is exactly the point - it makes a world of difference in what way we simplify things... The main idea to be extracted from all this is that if we really want to approach the primal reality, we need to concentrate on the process of intuitive movements manifesting into perceptible thought images... Now on the surface, one may say that the above is just a different way of conveying what also KM says. The thing however is not so much in the words chosen for the description but how this description urges us to place ourselves differently in the World Process.

So your 'angle' to save the materialists is nothing new, it is simply what the intellect has been striving to do for centuries now, imagining there must be a more indirect approach to gain confidence in its spiritual reality (which even you pointed out to Eugene in the linked comment). The selective snipping of Steiner's lectures does not change this fact, either. We are only safe when we freely orient to these questions through the introspection of our cognitive process, because as Cleric said to Guney, PoF and spiritual science emerge as a matter of course through that introspective process. Beyond that, it simply makes no sense that we could approach the content of SS without prejudice before we have become sensitive to what the intellectual prejudices are and how to address them, which obviously requires the phenomenology of thinking.

It is not dogmatic to recognize that, beneath the superficial intellectual gestures, we share much of the same soul-spiritual structure and depth-dynamics, and how understanding the latter brings human souls into harmony of thinking, feeling, and willing. Yes, it is truly a strait and narrow way and there are few who find it, but on this way, there is inner certainty and abundant life. Dogmatism in life emerges when the entrenched intellect refuses to transform itself and demands a way to be shown its higher reality through a simple linear progression of mental states that draw from past experiences and concepts. This is when we get the rationalist attitude, reductionist science, religious apologetics, and so on.

[Federica]

It would be nice, Ashvin, if you could mind resisting decorating your posts with the usual deformations some time. In the meantime, Steiner's wish, which you have called a selective snippet, gets only clearer in the larger context of the full lecture, lecture cycle, and entire corpus of Steiner works. Still, it's hard to unsee its crystal-clearness even when taken as standalone "snippet":

It would nevertheless be extraordinarily interesting, since not everybody is capable of becoming clairvoyant, if such facts could be accepted by external physiology, accepted, let us say, as possible ideas, so that people would say: “I will for once imagine that what is attained by means of the inner clairvoyant eye is, after all, not such complete nonsense as it is often supposed to be. On the contrary, I shall neither believe nor disbelieve this; but I shall let it remain as an idea presented to me, and shall then investigate what external physiology can point out, whether, out of all that is asserted by occultists, anything whatever can be substantiated by showing clearly that it is actually confirmed by external observation."

I'll give now a real-life exemple of how to concretely start building that bridge, in the words of a present-day anthroposopher, who has not let those wishes of Steiner's unheard and unworked. One would expect that you appreciate his work - I'm referring to Christoph Hueck - based on your past comments, though I believe you may now attempt to argue something along the lines that what he means has nothing to do with building a bridge towards spiritual science for intellectual thinking and natural science (good luck if this is your direction).
Let us not snip anything: the entire presentation (autotranslate available) is the best way to realize how he's guiding the audience through the forming and connecting of unfamiliar concepts. As he says at the beginning (1:30): "I have spent my entire life with the question of how to actually understand the bridge between anthroposophy and natural science".

[AshvinP]

I'll give now a real-life exemple of how to concretely start building that bridge, in the words of a present-day anthroposopher, who has not let those wishes of Steiner's unheard and unworked. One would expect that you appreciate his work - I'm referring to Christoph Hueck - based on your past comments, though I believe you may now attempt to argue something along the lines that what he means has nothing to do with building a bridge towards spiritual science for intellectual thinking and natural science (good luck if this is your direction).
Let us not snip anything: the entire presentation (autotranslate available) is the best way to realize how he's guiding the audience through the forming and connecting of unfamiliar concepts. As he says at the beginning (1:30): "I have spent my entire life with the question of how to actually understand the bridge between anthroposophy and natural science".

Federica,

Why don't you trust your own inner process anymore? Every time I point attention to ways of exploring that inner process and probing the contours of the 'bridge' in that way, you deflect back to quotes from Steiner et al. as an appeal to external authorities. I'm sorry, but it is the image of unfreedom. This is like arguing with a fundamental Christian - whenever we try to point attention to the holistic evolutionary principles reflected in the Biblical narrative, the fundamentalist will selectively quote verses (interpreted by the intellect) and say, "See, scripture is crystal-clear, there is no such 'evolution of consciousness' or 'higher cognition' described. I can never unsee this crystal clearness of the verses." It doesn't dawn on them that the clearness of scripture can only depend on how we place our perspective within the experiential World process.

It's interesting that, on another thread, Eugene started on this same line of reasoning about how we need to build the bridge to deeper spiritual knowledge. Unfortunately, the subject dropped after a few comments.

Fair enough, it's good that you admit that.

Science, arts, speculative philosophy and other things in life all have their place and role. You cannot take materialists and draw them straight into spiritual science or any other spiritual practice or teaching. They need to go by steps, starting right from the point where they currently stay - from their speculative worldview, and walk them step-by-step out of their speculative materialism. Their speculative materialistic views need to be first dispelled by the same tool - by philosophical speculative rational discourse. Only then, once they drop it, they can become open to explore further practical paths to go deeper. This (addressing materialism on the speculative level) is what Bernardo is doing and this is what this forum was supposed to help with. I believe, with all limitations of his approach and his philosophy, Bernardo is doing a fantastic job of bringing millions of people out of the delusion of materialism.

The bold part is unviable and you know it

You can't walk out of abstract metaphysics (no matter if they are physicalist or idealist) by thinking in their channels, any more than you can draw figures on a flat sheet of paper and hope that at some point they will emerge in the Z direction.

Expecting that one must first drop their materialistic habits before they are free to consider deeper reality is a fallacy that attains many different forms in life. The most common is the general understanding that one can engage in spiritual life only after they have secured their material life and thus they finally have the free time for other things. However, if this is our ideal, as life often teaches us, we never reach that point of security. It always seems that there's something more to be secured and thus we keep postponing inner work for better days, when the economy is better, when there's peace, etc. Such a view proceeds from a completely erroneous understanding of what the spiritual dimension of our existence is. It sees spirituality as some exotic leisure time hobby that people can give their time to after retirement (only if they are still healthy and well in the head, that is). In fact, it is precisely in hardships and suffering that we can know and find the true value of real spiritual life.

Thus, the bold is precisely a recipe for speculating indefinitely and bouncing in the loops of closed formal systems of metaphysical thought. This traversal of mental states lying on a closed flat surface can never give us the certainty: "Aha, so by looping through this pattern of mental states, I feel confident enough that the Z direction is real and now I can finally allow my being step there and explore novel states of being." This can never do. We can only understand the true spiritual dimension of existence when we realize that we already partake in it while we are thinking metaphysically, when we understand our thinking activity as ropes hanging from a higher stratum of existence, dragging in the dust below. The shapes in the dust are what we call thought perceptions. We move these thought ropes instinctively and contemplate their dusty feedback. It is impossible to analyze the shapes in the dust and find there 'proof' that the ropes exist (one can always lift their hands and say 'the dust shapes simply come and go on their own). We can only find the spiritual reality of the ropes when we begin to exercise our inner intuitive activity, when we begin to move the ropes (which are the 'fibers' of our own spiritual being) in novel ways and perceive the feedback, the degrees of freedom and constraints. It is these inner movements that expand as new levels of consciousness.

If we are to extend this metaphor a little, it can be said that the ropes do not start from us. They hang from even deeper strata of being (coming from behind the back of our head, so to speak) and our Earthly self modulates their movement. The deeper movements of the ropes we can understand only when we find the humility to allow higher levels of self to glimpse through our Earthly perspective - which reciprocally means that our intellectual ego also glimpses through their perspective and can forge concepts, since for a moment we are resonantly attuned as one.

So in a nutshell, we can't dispel materialism or any form of metaphysics by a clever configuration of dust devils. Neither can we do that by putting ourselves in a fuzzy inexplicable state that is simply the edge of falling fast asleep. We can only make an evolutionary step forward when we realize that Truth can't be found in any particular dust configuration but in the awakening of our inner being that is active along the depth of the thinking process. If we can't awaken to our inner being within the movement of the thought fibers, we'll be expecting in vain our deeper self to manifest from some lateral direction that we can't even conceive.

I will try to listen to the Hueck lecture soon. But I have already quoted the introduction of his book on evolution, which makes it clear how he imagines and pursues the bridge from natural to spiritual science. That whole book is an introspective exercise that helps us pay attention to our inner movements while contemplating facts of the evolutionary process. Indeed, I can't unsee the book that I just read from Hueck a month ago. Its method of pursuing the bridge couldn't be any clearer, at least for anyone who is already versed in the phenomenology of thinking.

"In palaeoanthropology, the early upright walking beings are not spoken of as humans, but as apes (‘Pithecus’); the status of a human being is only conferred when the brain is of a particular size. By this attribution, one transfers the humane to consciousness and not to the activity of the will, which always precedes the reflective faculty. The essential difference between humans and animals, however, lies in the origin of will activity – in humans freely determined from within, in animals instinctively determined from the outside – and only secondarily in different cognitive abilities! Thinking is also based on an inner, intuitive will activity. Not only in erection and action, but also in cognition, the will is always primary. Only it is easily overlooked, for one lives within one’s own will activity; one simply carries it out without observing it. If one takes into account the will working in cognition, one is led to a new conception of evolution, indeed to a new and much more real knowledge of man and the world in general. In conscious activity one experiences the will as a self-supporting, spiritual reality. Materialism only survives because the autonomous will is so little activated and therefore remains unnoticed.

When the autonomous will becomes inwardly conscious, self-consciousness arises. It is the conscious will that looks at itself – as a spiritual force in man – in true self-knowledge.{206}

He who conceives of himself as ‘I’ finds a fact more true and irrefutable than any other in the world. With all other cognitions, empiricism and theory must first be put together. This always leaves a residual uncertainty about their actual fit. In self-knowledge, this uncertainty is completely overcome; in it, empiricism and theory are the same, they appear as one. The ‘I’ is the source of the will. It creates itself by knowing itself, and it knows itself by creating itself. “The I cannot be shaken.”{207}

In order to avoid an obvious misunderstanding, it should be expressly pointed out that the ‘I’ does not mean the ‘ego’-conception. This is only a bodily mirrored representation, not a reality. The real ‘I’ lives in activity, it is a being of will and as such is initially free from referring back to itself. It is active attention, attentive activity. Precisely because it lives before its reflection, it remains unnoticed as a spiritual being in ordinary consciousness, for “active bringing forth and contemplative confrontation do not get along with each other” (Rudolf Steiner).

He who discovers (awakens) himself as a spiritual ‘I’ can no longer think that he has arisen from a ‘non-I’, from matter or lower organisms. He must think the whole evolution anew."

Hueck, Christoph J.. Evolution in the Double Stream of Time (pp. 187-188). epubli. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

You are being nothing less than dishonest with your reply, therefore I will not bother commenting until you correct it yourself. Let's see if you will ever be able to do it.

[AshvinP]

Here is Hueck eloquently expressing how to pursue and pariticipate the true Bridge in crystal-clearness

"Mayr is right insofar as life eludes observation if one looks for it like an object. Precisely because life flows continuously, it cannot be a single thing (or a force acting only presently). If one wants to grasp the flow of life like its parts, one reaches into the void. One must participate in the process of life, follow it and grasp it, if one wants to understand it. Then one finds out that there is an intimate connection between the organisms and oneself, a bridge which leads to the reality of the living.

This bridge is what we are talking about here. It will be seen that it is related to the experience of time, indeed that it is virtually ‘made of time’ [see video feedback meditation, etc.]. For we live in time. And the qualities of time can only be grasped inwardly; it is not an externally visible phenomenon (for the change in the position of the sun, the advance of the hands of the clock are only spatial changes). Through the inner observation of time one can recognize what life is. Time lived and experienced is the medium that connects life and cognition.

We are usually not fully aware of the flow of life. We see the small avocado plant today and the somewhat larger one tomorrow – but we do not see the living development that lies in between. However, it is possible to consciously ‘dive’ into this development process. One can actively imagine the changing organism and thus comprehend its development. Such observation of nature, not just observing and noting, but actively participating, opens an inner field of experience in which the living and transforming forces of the organic can be observed and explored. How this observation is possible, and to which results it can lead is described here in detail.

A procedure in which the research contents only appear through the activity of the observer seems to contradict the conventional view of natural science, which aims precisely at the elimination of all subjective influences. However, this objection cannot prevent one from carrying out the inner observations oneself. One can proceed as in an empirical science, even if one produces the facts to be observed oneself. Of course, one must be as conscientious in doing so as in any other science. One must strictly adhere to the phenomena, strive for the greatest possible freedom from contradiction in the explanations, the results must be intersubjectively reproducible and permit predictions which in turn can be confirmed by observation, and so on.

We do not want to presuppose theories about life and its forms, but simply turn to biological phenomena with an open mind and answer our own questions ourselves. We look at all biological phenomena: from living organisms to their organs, metabolism, and genes, to the fossils that tell of their evolution. In doing so, we challenge common explanations, however familiar they may be. We want to illuminate and explore the preconscious knowledge about living things that implicitly underlies all biological knowledge. We are interested in how life, organic development, and evolution are thought. We want to develop and ground a morphology of evolutionary thought through introspective empirical observation."

Hueck, Christoph J.. Evolution in the Double Stream of Time: An Inner Morphology of Organic Thought (p. 19). epubli. Kindle Edition.

[AshvinP]

I'm not sure if we have mentioned this before on the forum, but I've recently been reviewing Kuhlewind's book "Working with Anthroposophy," which is extremely relevant to our ongoing discussions about the bridge from ordinary intellectual experience to a living understanding of spiritual science. Along with GK's own discussion about this bridge, it contains a wealth of quotes from Steiner on various themes related to attaining "healthy human understanding." I recommend anyone who is interested to pick up a copy of the book. GK also generally observes that the threshold for HHU has receded greatly since Steiner's time, given the radical externalization of thinking and disincentivizing of inner original effort, and I think there is merit to that observation. Here are two representative passages, one from GK and the other as quotations from a Steiner lecture:

"ONE SOURCE of misunderstandings is certainly to be found in Steiner's very frequent appeal to “healthy, unprejudiced human understanding.” Once spiritual truths have been attained through appropriate research and put in proper verbal form, it is said, then they are comprehensible to healthy human understanding. Attention, however, is rarely paid to what Steiner meant by this phrase. If we take account of what he said about it, we would work with his texts far more cautiously. (See Appendix IV)

From the texts cited in Appendix IV, it should be clear that healthy human understanding is by no means something generally given, but rather a great challenge which can hardly be met except through a schooling of consciousness. It is often characterized by Steiner as “pure thinking”. This expression is profound; it points to a graduated series of acts of purification with regard to thinking.

The first stage consists in freeing thinking from all emotional admixtures, prejudices, inclinations, and so forth. The second frees it from perceptual elements. Thinking thereby becomes “free of sense-qualities,” and yet may still remain abstract, i.e. on the everyday level. (See Appendix V) In the next stage, thinking is cleansed of past-elements. This means that it becomes free of the body and no longer relies on brain processes. It raises itself up to the processual, living, or imaginative plane of pure, living thinking. Further higher stages are no longer called “thinking”, although they contain living thinking within themselves (cognitive feeling and willing).

Living thinking is healthy, unprejudiced thinking — i.e., “healthy human understanding.” It is such living thinking alone that can communicate and understand spiritual research. (See Appendix V)

Whenever one encounters a path or teaching that is to lead to higher cognitions, one has to overcome a paradox. The paradox is that one receives the teaching with an as yet untaught, untransformed consciousness. Such a consciousness actually cannot understand the teachings which surpass its capacities. The ability to find one's way out of this trap (or paradox of consciousness) depends upon two mutually antagonistic gestures. The first is the gesture of modern consciousness—the consciousness soul — which can look at or reflect upon itself, i.e., can move on two planes, even if the higher is only fleetingly and seldom touched3. The second is a description of the beginning of the path, or of the most accessible part of the teaching, given in such a way that the consciousness striving upward can meet it. This is the path to thought-intuition. If such a meeting of the upward-striving consciousness with the description of the beginning of the path or teaching occurs, then the path is assured from step to step. Only on the path of concrete exercises in consciousness is real understanding of the teaching gradually possible. For provisional or beginning understanding, the consciousness must be raised to the appropriate level of consciousness at least momentarily. Self-reflection can help here, in that it can notice nonunderstanding or inadequate understanding — important experiences for anthroposophical study."

Kühlewind, Georg. Working with Anthroposophy . SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.

Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind (GA197), lecture of June 24, 1920:
“It is much more important for the total effect of world evolution that a brilliant materialist exists, who represents materialism brilliantly — for it takes spirit to do so, and sometimes it takes very little spirit to plead for a dull mysticism. The dull mystic can, in certain circumstances, contribute much more to the materialization of the world than the brilliant materialist. It is a question of the qualities of the spiritual. That this is recognized is much more important than its contents. This is what has to be learned; for we do not want to achieve spirit as a logical system, but we want to achieve it in its reality. And so I ask, Could not the spirit live in the spirited materialist more than in the dull spiritualist? These things have to be understood and realized by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is a question of the reality of the spirit, not of the abstract assertion of this or that. People forget precisely this, how much it really is a question of realities, and not of theories!”

[What is at issue is not theories, but spiritual deeds, the transformation of thinking in its givenness, in its dependence on the brain. — G.K.]

Ibid., again the lecture of July 30, 1920:

“Western people are simply on their way to becoming beings that think only with their physical brains.... People have become accustomed to thinking merely with the physical brain; that is the normal way to think today. Everything in our normal literature, in our entire modern science, is material thinking, is this kind of thinking....” “Therefore it is not a question of replacing an old insight or cognition with a new one, but rather a question of achieving cognition as a deed, an act. This protects the soul from being locked into mere materialism; protects the soul-spiritual element from being locked into the ahrimanic (whereby the I would be suspended). Thus, it is not a question of refuting materialism, but rather of protecting humanity from materialism's becoming right; for materialism is on the way to being right, not wrong.... It is a question of making materialism incorrect; because materialism, since it is not merely a false theory, is on its way to becoming a fact.... It is not because it is false that we have to overcome this materialism with words that remain theory; we must overcome it because it is correct, we have to combat its existence precisely as something correct. This gives things a different aspect. We do not stand in the reality of the spiritual world with theories but with cognitions that are deeds in relation to the cosmos.”

[Federica]

I'm not sure if we have mentioned this before on the forum, but I've recently been reviewing Kuhlewind's book "Working with Anthroposophy," which is extremely relevant to our ongoing discussions about the bridge from ordinary intellectual experience to a living understanding of spiritual science. Along with GK's own discussion about this bridge, it contains a wealth of quotes from Steiner on various themes related to attaining "healthy human understanding." I recommend anyone who is interested to pick up a copy of the book. GK also generally observes that the threshold for HHU has receded greatly since Steiner's time, given the radical externalization of thinking and disincentivizing of inner original effort, and I think there is merit to that observation. Here are two representative passages, one from GK and the other as quotations from a Steiner lecture:

"ONE SOURCE of misunderstandings is certainly to be found in Steiner's very frequent appeal to “healthy, unprejudiced human understanding.” Once spiritual truths have been attained through appropriate research and put in proper verbal form, it is said, then they are comprehensible to healthy human understanding. Attention, however, is rarely paid to what Steiner meant by this phrase. If we take account of what he said about it, we would work with his texts far more cautiously. (See Appendix IV)

From the texts cited in Appendix IV, it should be clear that healthy human understanding is by no means something generally given, but rather a great challenge which can hardly be met except through a schooling of consciousness. It is often characterized by Steiner as “pure thinking”. This expression is profound; it points to a graduated series of acts of purification with regard to thinking.

The first stage consists in freeing thinking from all emotional admixtures, prejudices, inclinations, and so forth. The second frees it from perceptual elements. Thinking thereby becomes “free of sense-qualities,” and yet may still remain abstract, i.e. on the everyday level. (See Appendix V) In the next stage, thinking is cleansed of past-elements. This means that it becomes free of the body and no longer relies on brain processes. It raises itself up to the processual, living, or imaginative plane of pure, living thinking. Further higher stages are no longer called “thinking”, although they contain living thinking within themselves (cognitive feeling and willing).

Living thinking is healthy, unprejudiced thinking — i.e., “healthy human understanding.” It is such living thinking alone that can communicate and understand spiritual research. (See Appendix V)

Whenever one encounters a path or teaching that is to lead to higher cognitions, one has to overcome a paradox. The paradox is that one receives the teaching with an as yet untaught, untransformed consciousness. Such a consciousness actually cannot understand the teachings which surpass its capacities. The ability to find one's way out of this trap (or paradox of consciousness) depends upon two mutually antagonistic gestures. The first is the gesture of modern consciousness—the consciousness soul — which can look at or reflect upon itself, i.e., can move on two planes, even if the higher is only fleetingly and seldom touched3. The second is a description of the beginning of the path, or of the most accessible part of the teaching, given in such a way that the consciousness striving upward can meet it. This is the path to thought-intuition. If such a meeting of the upward-striving consciousness with the description of the beginning of the path or teaching occurs, then the path is assured from step to step. Only on the path of concrete exercises in consciousness is real understanding of the teaching gradually possible. For provisional or beginning understanding, the consciousness must be raised to the appropriate level of consciousness at least momentarily. Self-reflection can help here, in that it can notice nonunderstanding or inadequate understanding — important experiences for anthroposophical study."

Kühlewind, Georg. Working with Anthroposophy . SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.

Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind (GA197), lecture of June 24, 1920:
“It is much more important for the total effect of world evolution that a brilliant materialist exists, who represents materialism brilliantly — for it takes spirit to do so, and sometimes it takes very little spirit to plead for a dull mysticism. The dull mystic can, in certain circumstances, contribute much more to the materialization of the world than the brilliant materialist. It is a question of the qualities of the spiritual. That this is recognized is much more important than its contents. This is what has to be learned; for we do not want to achieve spirit as a logical system, but we want to achieve it in its reality. And so I ask, Could not the spirit live in the spirited materialist more than in the dull spiritualist? These things have to be understood and realized by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is a question of the reality of the spirit, not of the abstract assertion of this or that. People forget precisely this, how much it really is a question of realities, and not of theories!”

[What is at issue is not theories, but spiritual deeds, the transformation of thinking in its givenness, in its dependence on the brain. — G.K.]

Ibid., again the lecture of July 30, 1920:

“Western people are simply on their way to becoming beings that think only with their physical brains.... People have become accustomed to thinking merely with the physical brain; that is the normal way to think today. Everything in our normal literature, in our entire modern science, is material thinking, is this kind of thinking....” “Therefore it is not a question of replacing an old insight or cognition with a new one, but rather a question of achieving cognition as a deed, an act. This protects the soul from being locked into mere materialism; protects the soul-spiritual element from being locked into the ahrimanic (whereby the I would be suspended). Thus, it is not a question of refuting materialism, but rather of protecting humanity from materialism's becoming right; for materialism is on the way to being right, not wrong.... It is a question of making materialism incorrect; because materialism, since it is not merely a false theory, is on its way to becoming a fact.... It is not because it is false that we have to overcome this materialism with words that remain theory; we must overcome it because it is correct, we have to combat its existence precisely as something correct. This gives things a different aspect. We do not stand in the reality of the spiritual world with theories but with cognitions that are deeds in relation to the cosmos.”

Yes, I read the book and appreciated it. Yet, getting what HHU - or sound common sense - really means in Steiner is not so easy. It's a thin line. For example, in this lecture (1922) it appears clearly that sound common sense refers to someone who has not developed clairvoyance. And so the question becomes: how is it possible to purify one's thinking, go through a serious schooling, practice sense-free thinking, without seeing anything, without developing any clairvoyance?

In ancient times, people possessed an instinctive clairvoyance as a lingering spark of their premortal lives. This has faded and died away. It is no longer there, this instinctive clairvoyance. Human beings had to acquire a sense of freedom in an intermediate stage. But humanity has again entered the stage where they need an eye for the spiritual world they enter after death. And they will not have this eye unless they acquire it here on Earth. Just as the physical eye must be acquired in premortal existence, so too must the eye for perceiving the supersensible after death be acquired here through spiritual science, through spiritual understanding. Not through clairvoyance—that is each person's own affair—but through understanding, with sound common sense, of what is explored through clairvoyant research. It is simply not true when it is said that one must see into the spiritual world oneself if one wants to believe the things that clairvoyants say. Oh no, it is not like that. Use your common sense, and you will realize that the ear is actually a celestial organ; you will understand this through your common sense. Such a fact can only be discovered through clairvoyant research, but once discovered, it can be understood. One simply has to engage with it, to think and feel it through. And this understanding through common sense of what is given from the spiritual world—not clairvoyance, but this understanding—is what the spiritual eye gives after death. The clairvoyant must acquire this spiritual eye just as any other person must. What one has acquired through imaginative knowledge, what one has perceived, fades after a few days. It only doesn't fade when it has been brought down to the level of ordinary understanding. One is then forced to understand this matter in the same way as the person to whom one is communicating it understands it. For what constitutes the task of humankind on Earth is not, in itself, clairvoyance. Clairvoyance is only necessary to discover supersensible truths. But what is the duty of man under oath is to comprehend supersensible truths with ordinary, sound common sense.

Man and the supersensible world of hearing - Stuttgart, December 9, 1922 - GA 218/16
https://rudolf-steiner-online.de/app.ht ... GA218%2F16
(for some reason the link only works when copy pasted, not clicked)

[Kaje977]

Yes, I read the book and appreciated it. Yet, getting what HHU - or sound common sense - really means in Steiner is not so easy. It's a thin line. For example, in this lecture (1922) it appears clearly that sound common sense refers to someone who has not developed clairvoyance. And so the question becomes: how is it possible to purify one's thinking, go through a serious schooling, practice sense-free thinking, without seeing anything, without developing any clairvoyance?

By becoming a practical thinker:
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA108/En ... 18p01.html
This is what Steiner usually refers to, when he talks about "common sense". I'm 90% sure.

There is another exercise that is to be practiced especially by those to whom the right idea usually does not occur at the right time.

Such people should try above all things to stop their thinking from being forever influenced and controlled by the ordinary course of worldly events and whatever else may come with them. As a rule, when a person lies down for half an hour's rest, his thoughts are allowed to play freely in a thousand different directions, or on the other hand he may become absorbed with some trouble in his life. Before he realizes it such things will have crept into his consciousness and claimed his entire attention. If this habit persists, such a person will never experience the occasion when the right idea occurs to him at the right moment.

If he really wants this to happen, he must say to himself whenever he can spare a half hour for rest, “Whenever I can spare the time, I will think about something I myself have chosen and I will bring it into my consciousness arbitrarily of my own free will. For example, I will think of something that occurred two years ago during a walk. I will deliberately recall what occurred then and I will think about it if only for five minutes. During these five minutes I will banish everything else from my mind and will myself choose the subject about which I wish to think.”

He need not even choose so difficult a subject as this one. The point is not at all to change one's mental process through difficult exercises, but to get away from the ordinary routine of life in one's thinking. He must think of something quite apart from what enmeshes him during the ordinary course of the day. If nothing occurs to him to think about, he might open a book at random and occupy his thoughts with whatever first catches his eye. Or he may choose to think of something he saw at a particular time that morning on his way to work and to which he would otherwise have paid no attention. The main point is that it should be something totally different from the ordinary run of daily events, something that otherwise would not have occupied his thoughts.

If such exercises are practiced systematically again and again, it will soon be noticed that ideas come at the right moments, and the right thoughts occur when needed. Through these exercises thinking will become activated and mobile—something of immense importance in practical life.