On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[Güney27]

Steiner, in *Philosophy of Freedom*, states that the fundamental dichotomy lies between observation (in German, *Beobachtung*, synonymous with perception) and thinking. This dualism, however, is a product of the epistemological tradition, which separates perception and thinking (the pure act of thought) and assigns them different ontological determinations. Meaning must be something connected to perception. When we use the concept of shame, we describe an embodied situation that has a specific meaning, a specific quality (not in isolation, but in the context of our environment and other constitutive situations), which distinctively highlights it, allowing us to produce a concept, a symbolic form, to express this meaningful and qualitative experience. Our corporeality must play a special and decisive role here, as it is the condition of these experiences. Focusing solely on the act of thinking (though this is very important) can lead to neglecting this “dimension.”

Thanks for the synopsis of your current thought, Guney. I also hope we can lead this in a fruitful direction. Let's see if we can first get clear on the nature of PoF, Cleric's essays, and all similar phenomenological presentations (collectively, 'intuitive thinking path'). If we start to subtly transform these into something they are not and were never meant to be, this will become a problem, because it cuts off one of the most important resources for developing and expanding intuition of the pre-conceptual realm (perhaps more appropriately characterized as the post-conceptual realm, since we can only enter into it through the portal of already developed intellectual life). It's like we are driving on a steep and curvy mountain road, and along the way, we start taking down the signs that warn us of tight turns ahead or the potential for falling rocks. The next time we drive on that road, we will lack proper orientation to the obstacles and pitfalls.

What is envisioned by the intuitive thinking path is that we will begin to understand the pre-conceptual realm when our inner cognitive movements become more pre-conceptual (this also gives another perspective on the chaotic aggregate imagination and the cognitive movements of PoF in general, which are not intended as 'ontological determinations'). Cleric pointed out before how the merely conceptual intellect has become excessively dependent on a linear progression of mental pictures to 'explain' experienced reality, i.e., a chain of premises, facts, and reasoning in which the intellect only feels comfortable when each step builds upon the previous, upon familiar experiences and concepts. This is practically what defines the conceptual realm. The fact is that, as long as we continue seeking the answer in the content of various philosophical systems, our inner movements remain insensitive to their pre-conceptual gestures. That is why the intuitive thinking path does not merely present another philosophical system, but a palette of imaginative and introspective exercises that bring the soul into more intimate contact with its organic pre-conceptual gestures.

Here is an interesting passage that I listened to recently, which relates to the question of finding the leap into the pre-conceptual:

"There is a statement that has been taken for granted by official science but that anthroposophists should learn to realize is without meaning: “Nature makes no leaps.” This sounds objective, yet it is senseless, because nature continually makes leaps. If you follow the development of a plant, you find that there is a leap whenever something new appears in the course of its development. A leap takes place from the regular leaf formation to the blossom, from the calyx to the petals, from the petals to the stamen, and so on. After nature has developed gradually for some time, it makes further leaps; indeed, all existence makes leaps. Therein lies the essential nature of evolution, that crises and leaps take place. It is one of those commonplaces resulting from the terrible laziness of human thinking when human beings say that “nature makes no leaps”; in reality it makes many leaps." (GA 118)

Thus, we can see that, by closely investigating the life of our cognitive process, it's characteristic qualities, patterns, and principles, we discover something of the organic leaps which also characterize the wider World flow as it comes to expression in both human culture and the kingdoms of nature. We come to know the leap to higher knowledge by inwardly participating in it, by experiencing how it is continually manifesting in our intuitive life that is normally drowned out by our habituated sensory-intellect movements. So we aim to enter into the living flow of intuitive space, which is the flow that we are always instinctively navigating to paint our finished concepts about reality within our conscious aperture of the World state.

By extending our lucid intuitive consciousness into this flowing pre-conceptual context, we by no means float off as an untethered balloon from the bodily environment. In fact, we become even more intensely conscious of our daily bodily gestures and their sensory feedback. It is obvious that this bodily context takes much of its course from our imaginative life. We plan our days, move from point A to point B, interact and communicate with others, probe the nature of existence via philosophy and science, and so on. Of course, there are many aspects of the bodily context which seem to run their course independently of our imaginative life, such as the weather or illnesses and so on, but even many of these can be traced to previous ways in which the imaginative life was conducted, individually and collectively. So it only makes sense to become more intimately familiar with the dynamics of these imaginative movements through which we often direct our bodily context and discern its meaningful feedback.

Let's use an example from ML's research. Levin and his team have conducted experiments with planaria flatworms in which they ‘rewrite’ the worm’s bioelectric patterns such that the biological machinery manifests the potential of growing two heads instead of one. How did such an experiment originate? It was first an idea in the consciousness of Levin and his team. They ‘extended’ their imagination into this space of potential and intuited certain possibilities for manipulating the bioelectric patterns and actualizing new forms in the worm’s morphological space. There is no suggestion here that their imagination is the source of such lawful possibilities, but it is undeniably the case that the latter could only come to physical expression if the researchers involved first extended their thinking into intuitive space and probed its potential. Thus, it is incumbent that we better understand the cognitive process by which those results were made possible. That doesn’t mean we are floating off into our imagination and forsaking the experimental process, but rather we are trying to refine and better orchestrate the latter by exploring the intuitive process that is always prior to the experiments.

As we have discussed many times before, growing our intuition into this pre-conceptual realm can become quite uncomfortable and inconvenient, because the first patterned movements we need to leap across are intellectual habits (like over-dependence on linear progressions of thoughts) and stubborn character traits that we have identified with. These are living drives that are invested in maintaining their unquestioned existence and grip on the soul. They secretly whisper to us that, by investigating the cognitive process too closely, we are neglecting the bodily context where our attention should be focused. But why do we trust these whispers? Because, as we have seen, the characteristic dynamics of the cognitive process are exactly what elucidate the nature of the bodily context across the scales of existence, from personal to collective. The bodily environment and its lawful metamorphoses begin to be known in their inner nature as the collective and symphonic flow of memory and anticipation/hope, imagination and will.

Hello Ashvin,

Could you give me a hint about SS concepts that Cleric implicitly describes in his essays?

[AshvinP]

Hello Ashvin,

Could you give me a hint about SS concepts that Cleric implicitly describes in his essays?

Sure, Guney, there are many such overlaps. Of course, the most important overlap is the introspective method for exploring the lawful dynamics of the full experiential spectrum (sensing, thinking, feeling, willing). If we pursue this diligently, we will surely begin to discover the correspondences for ourselves and, moreover, they won't feel like only a theoretical schema of remote conceptual associations. The SS concepts will feel like a reminder of the dynamics we have discovered within our intimate cognitive process, and an invitation to refine and deepen our intuitive orientation to those dynamics, to explore that intuition from many different angles.

We can start with a somewhat remote example. We know Steiner has often lectured on the lawful transformations between incarnations, for example, how our spiritual deeds in one incarnation sow the seed for our physiological head-organization in the next incarnation. That is something that will initially feel like a completely floating metaphysical speculation. The following quote is from the Inner Space essay, but a similar inner principle was also explored in the Video Feedback essay. Again, there is little value if we simply absorb the contents of these examples without participating in the relevant exercises. Only through the latter participation do we begin to illuminate aspects of SS that speak about deeper scales of lawful transformation, i.e., those we experience between death and rebirth. (actually we will first become sensitive to the transformations within a single incarnation, for example, from life stage to life stage).

Imagine that you stand in front of a mirror and wave your hand, except that the reflection manifests only after some delay. To develop a more living feel for this we may experiment with this online demonstration.

As we move the mouse cursor (or our finger on a touch device) over the rectangular area, a red circle follows our movements. With the slider above we can increase the delay between our movements and the time the circle is drawn. There are a few things to observe here.

...Then, as we continue to increase the delay toward one second and more, things become more difficult. Now much greater exertion and concentration are needed if we are to feel the movements as something whole. If we continue to increase the delay, at some point the invisible elastic thread is ‘severed’, and now we find our attention jumping between the cursor and the red circle. When our attention is on the cursor, the circle feels in the periphery and barely moving under our control. This effect becomes even more dramatic when we increase the delay to even greater values. Now the red circle may feel as if moving completely on its own, as some completely foreign object. On the other hand, if our attention is anchored on the circle, we still continue to move the cursor but on autopilot, so to speak. The consequence of this is that the temporal curvature of our movements is not vividly intuited (it remains in the background as it were) and thus by the time the circle repeats these movements, they feel as something that we do not remember sharply.

Again, the concept that our current head organization is the lawful transformation of spiritual deeds from our previous incarnation should feel like something we can only abstractly approximate at first. Participating in the red circle exercise or video feedback meditation will not suddenly 'prove' the validity of this concept through some stepwise logical train of thought. Such a concept is only truly verified once we consciously experience deeper scales where our activity moves along with the lawful transformations at issue, i.e., the experiences between death and rebirth. Yet working with such exercises is the only way that we will gradually loosen the intellectual-sensory mask and create new leeway through which we can probe the supersensory movements and their 'inner geometry'. That will allow our imaginative consciousness to more easily resonate with the SS concepts when they are presented, more concretely and intimately. Put another way, the SS concepts will start to feel more like imaginative exercises that we can practically utilize in the same way as the red circle or video feedback.

An example that should be more proximate to our current verifiable inner experience is the memory panorama that we experience shortly after physical death (what Steiner sometimes calls the etheric 'death spectrum'), or when we cultivate new degrees of freedom for exploring the etheric spectrum during life through concentration exercises and phenomenological study-meditation. We can all introspect examples such as that given below and at least feel intimations of the deeper imagistic soul flow which is always there and which we are always utilizing to think through existence (whether thinking about breakfast or the hermeneutic structure of reality). 

viewtopic.php?t=1008

The more we learn to resist the nudges, the more we realize that we can, in a sense, think through such nudges. In our normal consciousness, we feel the need to speak out our thoughts through our inner voice word by word. When we resist going through these grooves (where the verbal thoughts are produced in sequence) we begin to realize that we can still experience the meaning of our thoughts by allowing their meaningful nudge but withholding the flow through the sequential verbal thoughts. This leads to a kind of imaginative thinking, where holistic meaning is grasped within the metamorphoses of rich images. Here ‘images’ refers to not only visual but any kind of conscious phenomena, in the same way that we can remember memory images of any kind of conscious phenomena. For example, take the verbal thought “I need to make breakfast”. This thought reflects certain intuition about the way we intend the movie flow. By resisting the sequential verbal thought, we may feel the nudge of this intuitive intent similar to the way we experience a flash of memory. When we remember something, say an event from our life, it usually fills our intuition as if we grasp the whole scene as a storyboard picture. This picture may be very dim, it may have no details, it may not even be visual in nature, but there’s nevertheless some conscious sensation that anchors the intuition about everything connected with the event in question. If we need to explicate that memory-intuition, the storyboard flash will have to be expanded into many more movie pictures and lines of dialog. Similarly, when we resist explicating our thoughts about the breakfast verbally, its nudge can be experienced as a similar storyboard flash where we see ourselves preparing it. Through some practice, we can become aware that our inner flow always consists of the metamorphoses of such soul images. In fact, at this level, our soul life is of precisely the same nature as when we dream at night. The difference is that when we’re awake these dream images are being continuously constrained by the grooves of physical life. From that perspective, verbal thinking can be grasped as the intuition of this hidden soul dreaming being additionally broken down into a stream of symbolic encodings. The important thing, however, is that on a deeper level, we always flow through such soul imagery, it’s only that through the conscious habits of our age we are normally conscious at the level of the symbolic modulations and the rest is only dimly felt. If this is understood, it should also be clear that one of the goals of concentration is to resist the usual habits that quite subconsciously break down the deeper flow through the soul groove into symbolic encodings.

At a broader level, the whole metaphor of the World groove and its curvatures (in the Phonograph essay) symbolizes the spiritual intents of the hierarchies (including humanity), along which superimposed experiential potential is decohered and rhythmically explored. When SS speaks of the planetary aeons, rounds, root races, cultural epochs, and so on, these are characterizations of the grooves that structure our stream of becoming, the nested lawful constraints that all contribute unique qualities and textures to our experiential flow at any given time. 

We could go on exploring many more overlaps, but it is the greatest feeling when we discover these ourselves. Some inner principle we are exploring through the essays may spontaneously remind us of the lawful connections described by spiritual science across the scales of existence. It may not even be something that seems related at first. We don't need to make it a goal to seek out these correspondences, because if we patiently investigate the inner dynamics, they will naturally dawn on us over time, and the whole corpus of spiritual science will start to seem much less abstract, remote, theoretical, etc. We have used the metaphor of transitioning from geocentric to heliocentric perspective before, and that is truly how it feels after we become sufficiently sensitive to the inner constraints that shape our real-time experiential state. Then the SS concepts feel like they testify to these concentric constraints that shape and steer the 'orbits' of our states around a depth axis of evolutionary intents.

[Cleric]

Could you give me a hint about SS concepts that Cleric implicitly describes in his essays?

Guney, most of the things I write about, especially the last iterations of essays, indeed focus primarily on the phenomenology of thinking and probably only hint at deeper realities. However, in posts here and there, those have been mentioned too. Maybe the most SS elements I have ever included were in the Deep MAL essay. There it wasn't at all my goal to substantiate the ideas of reincarnation, evolution, and so on, but only to show how by just assuming a different stance, many of these mysteries simply start falling into place. This stance is approached not by making more assumptions but by actually shedding away our current ones. This is the same intuition contained in Federica's quote of Steiner, where he says that the many things said are a kind of 'negative' knowledge - they do not add assumptions but are instructions for removing them.

Proper phenomenology of thinking actually leads us into this stance, and then the occult matters can be grasped not as beliefs about the afterlife, but as the pulsating fabric into which our very existence here and now is modulated. I remember a few years ago, here on the forum something about Atlantis came along. Naturally, these things are met with the greatest suspicion and even ridicule. In a sense, it's a good thing to approach such things cautiously. Then Ashvin responded something in the sort of (I'm recreating the meaning only) "When we discover the proper inner stance, then even if we don't believe in what Steiner says about Atlantis, we understand that something like that must have existed." And it really marks a great point in our development when we reach this stage. This happens when we attain such inner mobility that we are no longer spellbound by the apparent immutability of the physical world. As long as we are mesmerized by the latter (our inner activity is glued to the brain's circuitry, so to speak), we'll always conceive of two different worlds - one rigid and concrete, that which we 'rub against', while the 'spiritual' remains for us only a fantasy, a brain-bound mental picture. When we reach the needed inner coherence in meditation, we begin to grasp the flow of existence as a unitary spectrum. Then it becomes a trivial observation that our present state (which is inseparable from the whole Cosmic environment) has been reached from a more fluidic, laminar flow condition. We can draw a metaphor through the phenomenon of turbulence.



Notice how the initial laminar flow gradually interferes with itself and becomes exponentially complicated. This reminds of recursive (or fractal) generation. In fact, there are ways to generate turbulence-like flow with such methods.


http://www.hector.ac.uk/casestudies/turbulent_flows.php

Of course, we should not mistake the flow we speak of for something that we can look at from the side. The flow is not some exotic and 'objective' perception of reality-in-itself but an artistic image for our first-person experience of temporal becoming. This is precisely why the phenomenology of thinking is of prime importance. The actual flow that we speak of can only be experienced when we tightly observe how our intuitive intents impress in the metamorphoses of imaginative 'pixels', and the images sink in memory like the video feedback. Of course, we do not see visually our thoughts moving away in space, but our sense for the integrating memory-intuiton of what mental states we have gone through in order to reach our presently precipitating mental image, can be artistically depicted as such video feedback metaphor.

The point is, that when we awaken within these depth-dynamics of our immediate existence, then we feel the basic characteristics of the intermediate states between the laminar and the fully turbulent, and even thought we may not call such states of existence 'Atlantis' we know that something like it must have been gone through.

Through meditative concentration we can reach laminarity of our inner flow, even though initially on a very limited scale - we support that laminarity only at the focal point of our concentrated attentional activity - all the rest, the whole turbulence of our brain and bodily environment, and the world, we temporarily let go and relax in the periphery. Yet, through this tiny point of laminarity, we already gain intuitive insight about a Cosmic inner flow-state that is laminar through and through. It can be said that this tiny patch of laminarity is not merely an image of the greater Cosmic laminar flow, but it is a tiny aperture of its actual essence. Thus, evolution (when becoming a consciously directed process) is the process through which our complicated, turbulent World flow is 'infected' with the laminarity of the focused flow, and this 'infection' of harmony begins to spread into the turbulence, gradually rectifying its chaotic eddies. In a nutshell, the key idea is that we should not say "The Cosmos has been laminar in the distance past when it was in a Heavenly condition, but now everything is made of turbulence through and through." Instead, these two conditions also exist at this very moment (that's why we can use the fractal hierarchy as a metaphor). The simpler Cosmic laminar flow is like a general archetypal flow of inner existence that even now acts like the curvature within which the countless relative flow-perspectives are differentiated, and when these perspectives steer the flow of becoming in unsynchronized ways, turbulence and friction issues, to the extent that existence feels heavy, resisting, and material. (Note that even according to official science there's no 'hard' matter, in the sense of some fundamental diamond-like hard 'chunks'. There's only greater and lesser concentrations of wave-like 'energy'.)

You may say that the examples above are all over the place, but the goal is to hint that all of that remains pure speculation, only as long as this depth spectrum between laminarity and turbulence remains just an abstract idea. When it becomes a symbol for what our existence feels like (when we reach a more coherent meditative flow), then everything else also attains a completely unexpected reality. We may not be able to confirm the details; we may not know the characteristics of the principal archangels, for example, but we already have awakened within a spectrum of being where something like that must be there - simply because this 'there' is now intersecting our inner experience, even if only in its broad outlines.

[Federica]

The overarching intuition that elucidates the disparate things is only gradually developed as the seemingly isolated concepts and inner flow patterns begin to be grasped from within a more stable perspective that coheres them, just like the intuition of a fern leaf coheres the dot perceptions above.

This becomes even more difficult as we move toward Inspiration and Intuition. Basically, nothing that we speak out of the Intuitive depths of existence can make sense as an isolated data point. This is also why we should have an individual approach when speaking about such things to someone. Without the sense that there's a deeper center of intuitive coherence, what we say will always sound as mere metaphysical speculation if not something worse (maybe we've simply lost our mind?).

Today's recording by Rudolf Steiner Press Audio includes a passage analogous to the above:

Spiritual things can be proved only by experiencing them. This does not hold true of understanding them, however. Anyone with a healthy mind can understand any adequate presentation. But to be adequate it has to have supplied that healthy mind with all the pertinent data, so pertinently arranged that the very manner of the presentation convinces of the truth of a given conclusion. It makes a strange impression to have people come and say that spiritual scientific truths ought to be as susceptible of proof as assertions about facts observed in the sense world. A person who makes such a demand shows that he is unfamiliar with the difference between perception of things spiritual and ordinary experience on the physical or historical level. Individuals who acquaint themselves with anthroposophy will notice that the single truths it presents fit into the picture of anthroposophy as a whole and that this whole in turn supports the further single truths they hear. These further truths then illuminate things heard in the past. An increasing familiarity with anthroposophy is thus constant growth in experiencing its truth. The truth of a mathematical statement can be discerned in a flash but it is correspondingly lifeless. Anthroposophical truth is a living thing, conviction cannot be arrived at in a single moment. It is alive and goes on growing. Conviction about anthroposophy might be compared to a baby just starting out in life: uncertain at first, scarcely more than a belief. But the more one learns the more certain one's conviction becomes. This growing up of anthroposophical conviction is actually proof of its inner aliveness.

[Stranger]

Steiner proceeds to explain how knowledge comes about, attempting to clarify how phenomena are known, which also means how phenomena manifest (since Steiner does not assume metaphysical realism). Here, he assigns thinking the role of giving meaning, as well as determining what phenomena are as such or otherwise. He tries to show how thinking, which has a different connotation for him than for many other thinkers, constitutes the world. I think this is problematic; Steiner overlooks what phenomena and their givenness are. In a certain sense, Heidegger went further than Steiner, because instead of asking about the subject’s knowledge (or epistemological questions), Heidegger asks about the meaning of Being. Steiner starts with the question of how knowledge arises, which leads to the realm of objects (the known world), thus to an ontic sphere, while Heidegger asks about Being, that which grants existence to the ontic.

Guney, you are exactly right, thanks for mentioning this. I’ve been pointing to this blind spot in Steiner’s approach all along, but people here do not seem to understand the significance of this blind spot. Steiner and his followers dismiss the whole dimension of Being-Knowing, the experiential-existential modality of phenomena and of thinking itself together with its ontological, epistemological and spiritual significance. This is what Heidegger recognized in his “Time and Being”, as you rightly pointed, and what the ancient non-dual spiritual traditions were pointing to. Perhaps this could be the gateway to the resolution of the question that you asked?:

How can we access the lived experience, the dimension, of the concept of the sacred or the concept of God? How can we, in general, access this dimension of the signified from the theoretical perspective? This, for me, is the most important theme of philosophy, made possible through thinking. It is, so to speak, the search for the pre-conceptual realm that has deepened my interest in philosophy to an infinite degree.

At least it was for me (and for many others that came along this path before me), but everyone needs to explore this path for themselves because it can only be traversed experientially and not just by abstract thinking.

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

[AshvinP]

Guney, you are exactly right, thanks for mentioning this. I’ve been pointing to this blind spot in Steiner’s approach all along, but people here do not seem to understand the significance of this blind spot. Steiner and his followers dismiss the whole dimension of Being-Knowing, the experiential-existential modality of phenomena and of thinking itself together with its ontological, epistemological and spiritual significance. This is what Heidegger recognized in his “Time and Being”, as you rightly pointed, and what the ancient non-dual spiritual traditions were pointing to. Perhaps this could be the gateway to the resolution of the question that you asked?:

Eugene,

Could you state the above for us in less abstract terms? Like, practically speaking, what does this 'blind spot' in the spiritual scientific approach entail? Perhaps you could quote something from Heidegger that you feel is missing from the SS approach, explain what it means to you, and then we can see how it harmonizes or clashes with what RS has lectured or what we have explicated on this forum. I am hoping we can find some new ways of approaching this discrepancy, since it's obvious none of our previous attempts have addressed this blind spot that you suspect to exist. After all these years, we seem to be back to square 1.

[Stranger]

Eugene,

Could you state the above for us in less abstract terms? Like, practically speaking, what does this 'blind spot' in the spiritual scientific approach entail? Perhaps you could quote something from Heidegger that you feel is missing from the SS approach, explain what it means to you, and then we can see how it harmonizes or clashes with what RS has lectured or what we have explicated on this forum. I am hoping we can find some new ways of approaching this discrepancy, since it's obvious none of our previous attempts have addressed this blind spot that you suspect to exist. After all these years, we seem to be back to square 1.

Hey Ashvin, we discussed this so many times before that I don't think we will come to an agreement this time and I don't think I can add anything to what has been already said. I was just commenting on and agreeing with the Güney's observation.

[Güney27]

Steiner proceeds to explain how knowledge comes about, attempting to clarify how phenomena are known, which also means how phenomena manifest (since Steiner does not assume metaphysical realism). Here, he assigns thinking the role of giving meaning, as well as determining what phenomena are as such or otherwise. He tries to show how thinking, which has a different connotation for him than for many other thinkers, constitutes the world. I think this is problematic; Steiner overlooks what phenomena and their givenness are. In a certain sense, Heidegger went further than Steiner, because instead of asking about the subject’s knowledge (or epistemological questions), Heidegger asks about the meaning of Being. Steiner starts with the question of how knowledge arises, which leads to the realm of objects (the known world), thus to an ontic sphere, while Heidegger asks about Being, that which grants existence to the ontic.

Guney, you are exactly right, thanks for mentioning this. I’ve been pointing to this blind spot in Steiner’s approach all along, but people here do not seem to understand the significance of this blind spot. Steiner and his followers dismiss the whole dimension of Being-Knowing, the experiential-existential modality of phenomena and of thinking itself together with its ontological, epistemological and spiritual significance. This is what Heidegger recognized in his “Time and Being”, as you rightly pointed, and what the ancient non-dual spiritual traditions were pointing to. Perhaps this could be the gateway to the resolution of the question that you asked?:

How can we access the lived experience, the dimension, of the concept of the sacred or the concept of God? How can we, in general, access this dimension of the signified from the theoretical perspective? This, for me, is the most important theme of philosophy, made possible through thinking. It is, so to speak, the search for the pre-conceptual realm that has deepened my interest in philosophy to an infinite degree.

At least it was for me (and for many others that came along this path before me), but everyone needs to explore this path for themselves because it can only be traversed experientially and not just by abstract thinking.

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

Eugene, thank you for your comment.
I believe the discrepancy between your position and Steiner’s bears similarities to the relationship between negative theology and positive theology.
Let us consider Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who rejects positive knowledge of God in favor of affirming participation in the divine, in contrast to precise knowledge of supersensory realms. I think a fundamental divide lies here.

Both paths are likely valuable: the occult path of initiation and the path of mystical union. I do not wish to diminish either, even though I can partially understand their cognitive stances. At the moment, I find the path of synthesizing both approaches valuable, as I see it in Tomberg’s Meditations on the Tarot.

There, and in other texts and letters by Tomberg, one can discern the foundation for his break with Anthroposophy. He does not believe that Steiner’s spiritual science is feasible and considers its endeavor doomed to fail. While he does not view Steiner’s diagnosis of the problems (the state of human consciousness, the danger of the Ahrimanic impulse, etc.) as incorrect, he finds fault in Steiner’s approach to addressing them. This is a major controversy.

From my perspective, with my incomplete knowledge at this point, I also do not see salvation in Anthroposophy, which, for many of its followers, has become a dogmatic religion. This does not mean I do not regard Steiner as a master from whom we can and must learn. However, I no longer see him as a leading figure for the future or as a bearer of redemptive knowledge.

I am even more critical, however, of pure non-dualism, which offers the experience of unity with the ground of being. The impulse of Christianity, which not only brings purification of the lower self, thus enabling liberation as we know it from Buddhism, for example, but also the transformation of human nature and, consequently, the world, I consider the greatest and most important impulse for human redemption. This is precisely the basis of the spirituality of the Church (Orthodox/Catholic). It outlines a path rooted in the tradition of the saints, a community of reverence, and so forth. This path holds the potential to manifest the aforementioned goal.

The Reformation, however, disconnected humanity from this tradition. Through its increasing reification of existence, it introduced the great impulse of materialism and the scientific will to knowledge into human consciousness. These are the very dangers that confront us, which Steiner recognized like few others, though his approach is questionable. Perhaps it will be the task of the Church to curb this impulse and place it in service of the doctrine of redemption, thereby transforming and “Christianizing” it. Thus, I doubt that seeking ecstatic experiences of unity would yield any meaningful results.

Perhaps Steiner’s spiritual science is too deeply shaped by the impulse of the will to knowledge and the reformative drive for precision. I cannot say this with certainty, however, as I am still a student, attempting to view these matters from various perspectives rather than judging with certainty. This response is not a philosophical elaboration of the previous discussion, but I believe such elaboration is unnecessary. Heidegger offered interesting insights and thoughts on ontological questions, but it would be misguided to try to derive a spirituality from his philosophy. Heidegger inquires into the meaning of being in an intellectual and philosophically reflective manner and is not a spiritual guide.

[AshvinP]

Eugene,

Could you state the above for us in less abstract terms? Like, practically speaking, what does this 'blind spot' in the spiritual scientific approach entail? Perhaps you could quote something from Heidegger that you feel is missing from the SS approach, explain what it means to you, and then we can see how it harmonizes or clashes with what RS has lectured or what we have explicated on this forum. I am hoping we can find some new ways of approaching this discrepancy, since it's obvious none of our previous attempts have addressed this blind spot that you suspect to exist. After all these years, we seem to be back to square 1.

Hey Ashvin, we discussed this so many times before that I don't think we will come to an agreement this time and I don't think I can add anything to what has been already said. I was just commenting on and agreeing with the Güney's observation.

I don't think you were agreeing with Guney, Eugene, as indicated in his response.

In any case, the issue is that "Steiner and his followers dismiss the whole dimension of Being-Knowing, the experiential-existential modality of phenomena and of thinking itself together with its ontological, epistemological and spiritual significance", seems like a flat-out falsity from our perspective. If I interpret those words with the meaning that most people familiar with this domain would ascribe to them, it seems to me like you have failed to understand even the basics of what SS is about. It's almost as if you tried to characterize was SS is about in bold, and then added that Steiner and his followers dismiss it.

Alternatively, you are using those words to mean something completely different, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that meaning. You also threw in that Heidegger recognized this meaning in 'Being and Time', which exists as a blind spot for SS. That seems like an easy way to help me understand what was meant - just quote the book!

[Güney27]

Eugene,

Could you state the above for us in less abstract terms? Like, practically speaking, what does this 'blind spot' in the spiritual scientific approach entail? Perhaps you could quote something from Heidegger that you feel is missing from the SS approach, explain what it means to you, and then we can see how it harmonizes or clashes with what RS has lectured or what we have explicated on this forum. I am hoping we can find some new ways of approaching this discrepancy, since it's obvious none of our previous attempts have addressed this blind spot that you suspect to exist. After all these years, we seem to be back to square 1.

Hey Ashvin, we discussed this so many times before that I don't think we will come to an agreement this time and I don't think I can add anything to what has been already said. I was just commenting on and agreeing with the Güney's observation.

I don't think you were agreeing with Guney, Eugene, as indicated in his response.

In any case, the issue is that "Steiner and his followers dismiss the whole dimension of Being-Knowing, the experiential-existential modality of phenomena and of thinking itself together with its ontological, epistemological and spiritual significance", seems like a flat-out falsity from our perspective. If I interpret those words with the meaning that most people familiar with this domain would ascribe to them, it seems to me like you have failed to understand even the basics of what SS is about. It's almost as if you tried to characterize was SS is about in bold, and then added that Steiner and his followers dismiss it.

Alternatively, you are using those words to mean something completely different, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that meaning. You also threw in that Heidegger recognized this meaning in 'Being and Time', which exists as a blind spot for SS. That seems like an easy way to help me understand what was meant - just quote the book!

I would say that Eugene means that Heidegger inquires about Being itself rather than beings. Perhaps he is referring to this ontological difference, which is so central to Heidegger’s thought. When we ask about things, forces, processes, essences, and so on, we are asking about beings, not about Being itself, which is something like the condition and possibility in which beings can exist. Heidegger’s philosophy is often associated with mysticism, particularly by philosophers who attempt to explore mysticism without religion. He is also frequently linked to negative theology.

As mentioned, I am currently rereading *Meditations on the Tarot* and Tomberg’s *Lazarus* book. For me, it has been one of the most formative, if not the most formative, occult book I have read so far. What was your experience with this work?