On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[Federica]

OK, this makes it clearer. I’ll mostly repeat what I said previously, but maybe recasting it in a new way can help.

Thank you! I definitely want to understand these relations rightly and I'll try again.

[Federica]

I apologize if this only shows I’m not getting the same ideas again. I know I’ve been fatiguing in this discussion, but I’ve decided to reply, hoping you wouldn’t feel obliged to further repurposing. I guess you wouldn’t.

we imagine that to operate the body we need to somehow, from within our soul life, push and pull the levers of the nervous system. This, however, is Maya. Anything that we imagine we can perceive and actuate is already part of the receding light-flow. By imagining that our imaginative perceptions are the actual ‘buttons’ and ‘levers’ of the physical body, the will-pole remains completely in the blind spot.

I believe that this is the danger Steiner was trying to warn about. He practically says, “By imagining that movement originates from the motor neurons, you are turning things upside-down. Instead, your inner experience of both the sensory and the motor neurons is already part of the receding light-flow. The true cause of motion can only be understood by the pushing with will toward the unknown.” Or, as we have given that metaphor many times, the danger consists in becoming through time with our back turned toward the future.

As I understand the nerve question, Steiner sees all muscles, not only the heart, as (inner) sense organs. Highlighting the observable motor-sensor differences in nerves just misses this key point. Together with their connecting nerves (CNS or sympathetic), all muscles are part of the light-pole, just like external sense organs and sense nerves are. If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it, not because I can’t fire my will in the direction of that purpose. Or better: I can’t move the hand, that is, I can’t perceive movement in its physical direction. Bodily movement really is perception of will impulses. This seems to me just another way of saying what you said: “The true cause of motion can only be understood by the pushing with will toward the unknown”. I agree with this. But, if this is the right approach, then I believe we are not allowed to add:

Since the heart is a muscle, actuated by neurons, we reach precisely your question: “But, as I asked before, why does the ventricle contract?” Well, it contracts because the muscle cells are activated by the neurons emerging from the cardiac plexus.

Because, as you said, Steiner warned us: we shouldn’t turn things upside down and imagine that movement, or heart contractions, originate from motor neurons. In other words, if we keep what we could call a 'high-level view' and strive to refrain from linear transpositions in Maya, we then refrain from imagining linear causes going from blood to heart, but we also refrain from imagining similar lines from motor nerves to movement in space. In the same way, we should also refrain from accepting as significant fact the apparent causal link going from heart (motor nerves/perception) to blood, even if science tells us it’s a fact. Because it’s a fact only in Maya, it’s a past perceptual fact, just like the perceptual fact that motor neurons cause movement. Not only that, but we also know that a scientific fact today may be disproved by a new scientific fact tomorrow, as it has already happened in the history of science.

Now, the way I would apply this 'high-level view' to the heart question, would be as follows. Muscles and their motor nerves are perceptual apparatuses. If the motor nerves of the heart - the master administrator muscle - are severed, I stop perceiving my entire body in the physical, that is, I stop existing in the physical perceptual feedback to the spiritual, and I die. But my will doesn't. My will lives on. So it’s not by default of will that I die, but by defaulting perceptual feedback at system level. Now, we can equally say that it is the systemic perceptual feedback (heart muscular pumping function) that keeps us incarnated and alive. It makes sense too: the heart function is what holds the blood flow and entire physical body into matter, until its pumping progression towards death is completed (in accordance with any salifying perceptual activity). In short, the pulsing of the heart reflects the inbuilt death function which keeps the physical body alive (into matter) during the time it takes it to exhaust it to death. While the flowing of the blood reflects the paradox of willful spiritual life trapped into matter.

With these characterizations, we haven’t sought any linear causal relations in the physical, I believe, but only pointed to the general physical correlates of the key warmth-light polarity. We only point to the relation between the nerve question and the heart question as physical reflections of the polarity between willful becoming and its perceptual feedback, and observe that such tension somehow keeps us incarnated for a certain while.

To summarize: it seems to me that following your pointing means we can’t say that one physical pole predominantly drives the other (just as the warmth-pole and light-pole remain in relative balance) and some transient, perceptual facts put forth by current science should not make any difference to that, because those facts - and all of natural science - are also part of the receding light-flow and can’t be harmonized as is with the spiritual foundations of our experience. That would be an attempt to harmonize spirit on the grounds of maya. In this sense, seeking the harmony of the facts would mean falling in the materialistic trap Steiner was guarding against.

That was one question. There is another one: we have just considered that we should not trace our life of will to a particular reflection in the light-pole. But at the same time we say: “we know that the will has its reflection in the warmth of the blood, while the light-pole (the receding imagery) is more connected with the nerves”. How do we know that, and what does that mean? We know it because the hierarchies made us in this way. This can be known supersensibly, by joining the perspective of the hierarchies. The Initiates do that, and possibly communicate this correspondence, as well as all other patterns of correspondences between the soul-spirit and the physical world. So for those who, like me, don’t have spirit vision, we follow and say: “Ok, it makes a lot of sense, I see the emerging big picture. Moreover, every micro development in inner experience seems to fit promisingly in that extensive picture”.

But what does it mean that the life of will is reflected in the warmth of the blood? If I can rightfully say that the will is expressed in the blood - not as an exclusive 1:1 connection, but as a predominant connection - if I accept that, then shouldn't I also expect that what the will does must find primary reflection in what the blood does? And that the interplay of warmth and light poles in inner experience be reflected in the interplay of blood flow and perceptual (nerve) activity - be this oriented toward the outer world (sense nerves) or the inner world (motor nerves)? But <blood> as we experience it intellectually can’t be anything other than a receding image in Maya, you will say. Then, what sense does it make to accept that it is the reflection of the will? As it seems to me, the causal link is already present at that initial level. So it’s not me looking for a specific link. Even if I don’t try to trace the action of blood to neurons and to muscles (and I do not try, since I am open to new takes on that, as I said), the question “Shouldn’t we be able to somehow find the shadow of the fiery soul life within the image of the physical body” has already been answered by “we know that the will has its reflection in the warmth of the blood, while the light-pole (the receding imagery) is more connected with the nerves”. It’s not me posing it.

From all this, what I tend to gather is the following. These things can only be known supersensibly. In intellectual experience, we can only say that the warmth-light polarity somehow balances our incarnated life and this interplay must be somehow reflected in the warmth-light dynamics in the physical body. Physical experiences cannot be traced conclusively and precisely, because we experience them in Maya, until we know them supersensibly in Imagination. This however, requires a completely open approach to the possibilities of scientific inquiry. What science contends today is grounded in nothing other than the “buttons and levers” approach, so we shouldn’t give it the status of absolute facts to be taken as given.

With regards to Steiner's contentions, if we welcome the motor and sense nerves pointing - all nerves and their muscular extensions are the image of perceptual feedback to our warm will - then we can also understand what he meant by the-heart-is-not-a-pump: basically this is a (very) special case of the previous. The heart is the image of systemic perceptual feedback to the life of will reflected in the blood, regardless of how exactly this macro-relation is reflected in the micro-images in the light-pole.

To conclude, I am not absolutely sure about all that. But this is what I can do at the moment. I am sorry if this is me still not getting it.

[AshvinP]

With the help of Hueck, I located this quote that fits quite perfectly with what has so far been discussed. This is why PoF and the general epistemic foundation is so critical, because through it, the rest of spiritual scientific descriptions become more intuitive and we can orient better to their source and aims (which are generally the same). Those descriptions help us take a new, more imaginative, perspective on existing scientific observations. Such things as the motor-sensory neurons and the blood-heart dynamics can quite literally transform our consciousness if we work with them consistently and pictorially. Steiner did not intend to upturn secular scientific observations or locate additional forces and laws to add on top of the physical dynamics thus discerned, i.e., as something working orthogonally into the receding light pole, because that misunderstands the way in which the latter takes its form and direction through the higher-order constraints of intuitive potential in which our deeper soul being steers its becoming. Cleric has given quite poetic expression to this relationship thus far.

The sad thing is that such illustrations will hardly find resonance with most Anthroposophists, which goes to show how difficult it has been for souls to orient within the scale spectrum, even with vast familiarity with the details of spiritual science. In that sense, Steiner may have even understated the threshold of "HHU", or at least when translated into our age, it can become misleading to imagine the intellect will naturally discern deeper spiritual realities by reasoning through the content of higher revelations. An ongoing 'magic eye' cognitive shift is necessary and, unfortunately, it is hardly pursued within Anthroposophy. Without it, the intellect is prone to continue along the momentum of its usual trajectory, which is imagining it can 'prove' spiritual reality (to itself or others) with combinations of receding images. For example, in some of the lectures, Steiner speaks of how the warmth organism communicates its influences to the airy organism, to the fluid organism, to the mineral organism. It's easy to see how this can be understood as the soul pushing buttons and levers to actuate bodily processes. In fact, without much inner work, it's difficult to imagine any other concrete way of orienting to what those relations symbolize.

Of course, the facts of the light pole should be investigated thoroughly and we should always remain open to wider constellations of such images, their relations, and new ways of looking at them. They should speak to us, not of rigid laws, mechanisms, or additional forces, but symbolically of impulses, feelings, and characteristic qualities that remind us of the gradient and rhythmic metmorphoses that we experience in our cognitive becoming, day in and day out. If we can't vividly locate any such concrete inner experiences, we can always remain grounded in the phenomenological foundations and that will, by itself, point our thinking to move along the proper vectors.

GA 65, 2 Nov 1916:

Therefore spiritual research must begin precisely where natural scientific thinking must end. That is to say, that which is will in thinking must be sought out in thinking. And this happens in all that the soul has to go through in those inner experiments … by inwardly strengthening thinking, so that the will working in thinking no longer remains unconscious to thinking, but this will becomes conscious, so that the human being really comes to experience himself in such a way that he lives and weaves, as it were, in thinking, is inside the life and weaving of the ideas himself and now no longer looks at the ideas themselves, but at that which he does. And in this the human being must become more and more … technician, must acquire more and more inner practice, must live into that which happens from himself as the life of the imagination takes place. Everything that the human being discovers in himself otherwise remains between the lines of life. It always lives in the human being, but it does not penetrate into the consciousness. ... If one develops such an inner vitality, such an inner liveliness in oneself, that one not only has ideas, but enters with one’s experience into this weighing up and weighing down, into this becoming and passing away of ideas, and if one can carry this so far that one no longer even brings into one's attention the content of the ideas, but only this activity, then one is on the way to experiencing the will in the world of ideas, to really experiencing something in the world of ideas which one does not otherwise experience in life. That is to say, if one faithfully adheres to what the scientific mode of imagination itself leads to, one must go completely beyond the way in which natural science researches. To a certain extent, one must not take what natural science explores, but one must watch oneself doing natural science. And what is practised in this way, and what can really only lead to success if it is practised for years - all scientific results are, after all, only achieved through long work - what is achieved in this way is a settling of the consciousness really into a quite different world. That which is achieved can only be experienced; it can be described, but it cannot be shown externally, it can only be experienced. For that which is attained is … in practice that to which the scientific way of thinking already points. This scientific way of thinking tells us: If I continue on my way, I come to a limit. I go as far as I can still find something of the human being. I do not find a world in which there is will and feeling. – But this world, where one discovers feeling and will just as objectively as one discovers plants and minerals here, this world is found when one can make this inner experience of the ideas in the soul effective between the lines of normal representations. Only now one experiences that which otherwise one can only suspect.

[Cleric]

As I understand the nerve question, Steiner sees all muscles, not only the heart, as (inner) sense organs. Highlighting the observable motor-sensor differences in nerves just misses this key point. Together with their connecting nerves (CNS or sympathetic), all muscles are part of the light-pole, just like external sense organs and sense nerves are. If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it, not because I can’t fire my will in the direction of that purpose. Or better: I can’t move the hand, that is, I can’t perceive movement in its physical direction. Bodily movement really is perception of will impulses. This seems to me just another way of saying what you said: “The true cause of motion can only be understood by the pushing with will toward the unknown”. I agree with this. But, if this is the right approach, then I believe we are not allowed to add:

Since the heart is a muscle, actuated by neurons, we reach precisely your question: “But, as I asked before, why does the ventricle contract?” Well, it contracts because the muscle cells are activated by the neurons emerging from the cardiac plexus.

Because, as you said, Steiner warned us: we shouldn’t turn things upside down and imagine that movement, or heart contractions, originate from motor neurons. In other words, if we keep what we could call a 'high-level view' and strive to refrain from linear transpositions in Maya, we then refrain from imagining linear causes going from blood to heart, but we also refrain from imagining similar lines from motor nerves to movement in space. In the same way, we should also refrain from accepting as significant fact the apparent causal link going from heart (motor nerves/perception) to blood, even if science tells us it’s a fact. Because it’s a fact only in Maya, it’s a past perceptual fact, just like the perceptual fact that motor neurons cause movement. Not only that, but we also know that a scientific fact today may be disproved by a new scientific fact tomorrow, as it has already happened in the history of science.

I think that this line of reasoning ends up in the same situation as the attempt to take the "heart is not a pump" as an absolute statement. We should understand what it means that the motor neurons are for sensing. I think we can confidently say that this sensing is not about our human consciousness having sensations. From ordinary science, we know that there's a clear distinction between motor and sensory neurons. They carry electric impulses in opposite directions. It is also interesting that there are investigations on people with damaged sensory nerves but intact motor nerves. What happens is actually quite logical. People are able to make movements, but they are very uncoordinated, lack precision. Things get even worse if they are not allowed to see their limb (which is like the last resort of having at least some sensory feedback). This really underlies the tight feedback loop that exists between actuating the muscles and having sensory feedback. We are indeed dependent on this tight feedback for proper coordination, but it is not the motor neurons that give us the sensation. I can also partly confirm that from my own experience. I'm not sure what the exact kind of anesthesia was (spine administered), but I lost sensations from the waist down (actually, it wasn't so much that it was a sensory void, but rather a very diffused and unchanging sensation for the lower body). Nevertheless, I could still pretty much move my legs, even though without the familiar sensory feedback. In retrospect, I wish I had experimented more in this state, but I guess I simply had other things on my mind at that time. So I think that "If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it" is not quite correct.

Thus, I think we should be careful not to mix the two kinds of nerves, just like we don't have to take 'the heart is not a pump' in the fully literal sense. We can still express in such a way as if the motor neurons perceive the will impulses, but now 'perception' doesn't mean that we have conscious sensations. Probably, we can say that our nervous system perceives the will impulses and propagates them to the muscles, but we still need the feedback of the sensory neurons if we are to have sensations, which turns out to be critical for refining the consequent steering of the will. In that sense, I don't think we are turning things upside down by recognizing that the will impulses use the nervous system as the leverage points through which bodily movements manifest.

It is true that to know the reality of the will pole, we need supersensible experience. Yet, as in Ashvin's quote above, this experience is not something that only high initiates can know - we can experience it right now when we investigate how we weave our thoughts. This evening, I was thinking that we can gain some intuition of this process in a very simple way. We do not even need spiritual conceptions in order to be aware that we can, to some extent, influence our heart rate. This is what we do when we try to 'calm down'. This is not always easy, but in general, by slowing down and deepening our breathing, by focusing on a calmer feeling and mental images, we may be able to transform our inner flow, and from thence, the heart rhythm. What's important is not so much the concrete actions through which we strive to change our state, but the fact that we aim to zoom into a continuation of the inner movie that has certain characteristics. We may say that the heart nerves perceive that willful steering and respond accordingly. Thus, it is this inner soul-morphing that we strive for, which can be said to be the cause of changes in circulation. We can also experiment with the other pole, trying to speed up our heart. This would be trivial if we simply speed up our breathing, but it can be achieved to an extent entirely through feeling and thought. We can simply imagine ourselves overwhelmed with tasks coming from all directions and how we hectically switch our inner focus from one to another. I think that such inner experiments can help us grasp a little bit better what this inner weaving of the soul really is (from an experiential perspective). We can also appreciate how most of the time we are thrown through different scenes of the inner movie, and how our circulatory system 'perceives' this flow and actuates the physical blood differently.

[Federica]

I think that this line of reasoning ends up in the same situation as the attempt to take the "heart is not a pump" as an absolute statement. We should understand what it means that the motor neurons are for sensing. I think we can confidently say that this sensing is not about our human consciousness having sensations. From ordinary science, we know that there's a clear distinction between motor and sensory neurons. They carry electric impulses in opposite directions. It is also interesting that there are investigations on people with damaged sensory nerves but intact motor nerves. What happens is actually quite logical. People are able to make movements, but they are very uncoordinated, lack precision. Things get even worse if they are not allowed to see their limb (which is like the last resort of having at least some sensory feedback). This really underlies the tight feedback loop that exists between actuating the muscles and having sensory feedback. We are indeed dependent on this tight feedback for proper coordination, but it is not the motor neurons that give us the sensation. I can also partly confirm that from my own experience. I'm not sure what the exact kind of anesthesia was (spine administered), but I lost sensations from the waist down (actually, it wasn't so much that it was a sensory void, but rather a very diffused and unchanging sensation for the lower body). Nevertheless, I could still pretty much move my legs, even though without the familiar sensory feedback. In retrospect, I wish I had experimented more in this state, but I guess I simply had other things on my mind at that time. So I think that "If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it" is not quite correct.

Thus, I think we should be careful not to mix the two kinds of nerves, just like we don't have to take 'the heart is not a pump' in the fully literal sense. We can still express in such a way as if the motor neurons perceive the will impulses, but now 'perception' doesn't mean that we have conscious sensations. Probably, we can say that our nervous system perceives the will impulses and propagates them to the muscles, but we still need the feedback of the sensory neurons if we are to have sensations, which turns out to be critical for refining the consequent steering of the will. In that sense, I don't think we are turning things upside down by recognizing that the will impulses use the nervous system as the leverage points through which bodily movements manifest.

It is true that to know the reality of the will pole, we need supersensible experience. Yet, as in Ashvin's quote above, this experience is not something that only high initiates can know - we can experience it right now when we investigate how we weave our thoughts. This evening, I was thinking that we can gain some intuition of this process in a very simple way. We do not even need spiritual conceptions in order to be aware that we can, to some extent, influence our heart rate. This is what we do when we try to 'calm down'. This is not always easy, but in general, by slowing down and deepening our breathing, by focusing on a calmer feeling and mental images, we may be able to transform our inner flow, and from thence, the heart rhythm. What's important is not so much the concrete actions through which we strive to change our state, but the fact that we aim to zoom into a continuation of the inner movie that has certain characteristics. We may say that the heart nerves perceive that willful steering and respond accordingly. Thus, it is this inner soul-morphing that we strive for, which can be said to be the cause of changes in circulation. We can also experiment with the other pole, trying to speed up our heart. This would be trivial if we simply speed up our breathing, but it can be achieved to an extent entirely through feeling and thought. We can simply imagine ourselves overwhelmed with tasks coming from all directions and how we hectically switch our inner focus from one to another. I think that such inner experiments can help us grasp a little bit better what this inner weaving of the soul really is (from an experiential perspective). We can also appreciate how most of the time we are thrown through different scenes of the inner movie, and how our circulatory system 'perceives' this flow and actuates the physical blood differently.

I agree that motor nerves are not about sensation. I never spoke of sensing and sensation. I spoke of perceiving - I literally said “perception of will impulses”. And if it wasn’t clear enough, I confirmed that by describing the action of motor nerves in the heart, and how I see it in relation to past and future. Therefore, your first two paragraphs are off-topic, and, I feel, also antipathetic, since they are built to oppose something I didn't say. Moreover, it's not me who said that the right way to understand Steiner's heads-up about nerves is:

Anything that we imagine we can perceive and actuate is already part of the receding light-flow. By imagining that our imaginative perceptions are the actual ‘buttons’ and ‘levers’ of the physical body, the will-pole remains completely in the blind spot.

I believe that this is the danger Steiner was trying to warn about. He practically says, “By imagining that movement originates from the motor neurons, you are turning things upside-down. Instead, your inner experience of both the sensory and the motor neurons is already part of the receding light-flow. The true cause of motion can only be understood by the pushing with will toward the unknown.”

Only to state in the next paragraph the same thing you had warned against:

Since the heart is a muscle, actuated by neurons, we reach precisely your question: “But, as I asked before, why does the ventricle contract?” Well, it contracts because the muscle cells are activated by the neurons emerging from the cardiac plexus.

Notice that we can find multiple Steiner passages stating the word-for-word equivalent of “If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it", which you said it’s not quite correct. So what do you do with all those passages?

(By the way, in the rest of my sentence that you omitted quoting, I wrote: “If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it, not because I can’t fire my will in the direction of that purpose. Or better: I can’t move the hand, that is, I can’t perceive movement in its physical direction”)

[Cleric]

I agree that motor nerves are not about sensation. I never spoke of sensing and sensation. I spoke of perceiving - I literally said “perception of will impulses”. And if it wasn’t clear enough, I confirmed that by describing the action of motor nerves in the heart, and how I see it in relation to past and future. Therefore, your first two paragraphs are off-topic, and, I feel, also antipathetic, since they are built to oppose something I didn't say. Moreover, it's not me who said that the right way to understand Steiner's heads-up about nerves is:

First, I want to assure you that there has been nothing antipathetic in my post. It seems we imply different meanings in what you write and how I read it. You say, “If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it, not because I can’t fire my will in the direction of that purpose. Or better: I can’t move the hand, that is, I can’t perceive movement in its physical direction”. The ‘or better’ part sounds just like a statement of the finished fact that we can’t move our hand. In other words, ‘I can’t move the hand’ is a statement about the fact that I fire my will, but no perception follows. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see this adding anything more than stating the plain fact.

The first part is more interesting since you say, “I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it [even though the will fires].” If we take this in the opposite sense, it sounds like “If I could perceive the hand, it would be able to move.” I understood this as if perceiving our hand (which in this context is synonymous with sensing) is a precondition for moving it. This is what I addressed in my post, and my apologies if this is not what you meant, but at this time, I can’t see a different way of reading it.

About the apparent contradiction between the will as a cause and the heart nerves as a cause: I tried to illustrate this previously. We need to realize that as long as we contemplate the perceptual pole, we always find certain patterns and regularities. When we speak of causes and effects in the perceptual world, we’re really recognizing certain patterns of unfolding perceptions, which follow each other quite consistently. Thus, I can say “the falling of the first domino piece causes a chain of events that leads to the falling of the last one in the train.” Yet, this ‘cause’ is really only a symbol for the consistent perceived lawfulness. For example, if I see a domino train in my dream, can I say in the same way that the dream image of the first piece causes the movement of the other dream pieces? When we speak of the inner impulse of will, however, we have a different meaning of cause. It is something that manifests in a very different way than merely passively recognizing perceptual patterns.

So there’s no contradiction in what I said. In the deeper sense, our willful becoming is a cause. But in the perceptual plane, it is also a fact that the heart nerve impulses are the lawful domino pieces that always precede the contractions of the heart muscle, which always precede the movement of the blood fluid.

All difficulties arise when we try to project our innerly known willing impulse also in the perceptual plane. Then we try to find the domino events that precede (and thus cause) the heart contraction. These are the domino events that you called ‘the possibly not yet discovered physical forces’. What I tried to show is that if we really want to trace the perceptual picture of domino pieces, we would have to consider the most minute physical state of everything within the body and beyond (the tornado analogy). So this diffuse activity ultimately funnels into particular neuron activation, and thus muscle contraction. This is all, at least in principle, surveyable within the perceptual plane.

The key, I guess, is to consider the bistable condition we find ourselves in – on one hand we trace the domino events within the perceptual plane (what science has always done), on the other hand we have the inner willing impulses, which steer the flow of becoming. Difficulties arise when we try to trace in detail how exactly the willful pushes transform into the perceptual contents. And this is precisely where we very easily snap into our familiar bistable pole and imagine that we can stand on the side and contemplate (supersensibly) how the will impulses become the light ripples, as a clear chain of domino events. It would be better if we conceive that there’s a Divine mystery in this transition from will to perceptual effect. There’s an interruption of consciousness within this mysterious inversion. And this is tremendously important. All evolution can be thought of as trying to zoom deeper and deeper within this blind spot of inversion (splitting the here and now), peeling the spiritual world around us in the process (that is, presently we have ‘swallowed’ the spiritual Cosmos within the blind spot of our existence, and in the reverse process we peel it back, sinking deeper and deeper toward the mysterious singularity). So we should really become sensitive about the way we snap in the one direction or the other within our intellectual life, when we try to trace how intuitive will shapes the receding perceptual frames.

At the core of the current discussion is to elucidate how Steiner made these bistable shifts and what he implied in the words he used. Because by saying “the blood moves the heart,” it isn’t really clear whether it’s being spoken about the vertical causality, or in fact about the possibility of tracing the domino events in the perceptual plane that eventually clearly show how the blood events precede and cause (in the perceptual sense) the heart events.

[Federica]

First, I want to assure you that there has been nothing antipathetic in my post. It seems we imply different meanings in what you write and how I read it. You say, “If the motor nerves in my arm are severed, I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it, not because I can’t fire my will in the direction of that purpose. Or better: I can’t move the hand, that is, I can’t perceive movement in its physical direction”. The ‘or better’ part sounds just like a statement of the finished fact that we can’t move our hand. In other words, ‘I can’t move the hand’ is a statement about the fact that I fire my will, but no perception follows. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see this adding anything more than stating the plain fact.

The first part is more interesting since you say, “I can’t move the hand because I can’t perceive it [even though the will fires].” If we take this in the opposite sense, it sounds like “If I could perceive the hand, it would be able to move.” I understood this as if perceiving our hand (which in this context is synonymous with sensing) is a precondition for moving it. This is what I addressed in my post, and my apologies if this is not what you meant, but at this time, I can’t see a different way of reading it.

What it adds is that physical movement is perception (past) of will impulses (future), not that perceiving the hand is a precondition for moving it. What the second part adds is “that is”: perceiving the hand (not sensing it) is the same as moving it. Movement/lack of movement in the hand is nothing other than the perceptual feedback to the will impulses. Just like the world movement in the light pole. The “because” is what I better expressed as “that is”. And I would say, “because” doesn’t necessarily indicate that what follows "because" is the cause of what precedes it. It may also mean “look” or “meaning”. But to eliminate any doubts (yeah...it didn't work...), I added “or better” and that the two are one and the same thing (“that is”).

About the apparent contradiction between the will as a cause and the heart nerves as a cause: I tried to illustrate this previously. We need to realize that as long as we contemplate the perceptual pole, we always find certain patterns and regularities. When we speak of causes and effects in the perceptual world, we’re really recognizing certain patterns of unfolding perceptions, which follow each other quite consistently. Thus, I can say “the falling of the first domino piece causes a chain of events that leads to the falling of the last one in the train.” Yet, this ‘cause’ is really only a symbol for the consistent perceived lawfulness. For example, if I see a domino train in my dream, can I say in the same way that the dream image of the first piece causes the movement of the other dream pieces? When we speak of the inner impulse of will, however, we have a different meaning of cause. It is something that manifests in a very different way than merely passively recognizing perceptual patterns.

So there’s no contradiction in what I said. In the deeper sense, our willful becoming is a cause. But in the perceptual plane, it is also a fact that the heart nerve impulses are the lawful domino pieces that always precede the contractions of the heart muscle, which always precede the movement of the blood fluid.

Exactly: for it not to be a contradiction, one has to intend a different meaning of cause. That the ventricle contracts as a consequence of the action of motor nerves is not really the case, rather, these are the same thing: the movement of the ventricle is the perceptual feedback materialized in the nerves. The real cause is the will, and the moving nerve-ventricles complex is its perceptual feedback system (I tried to say the same above too). I don’t think that the fact of the nerve impulses always preceding the contractions makes the impulses into a cause of the contractions in the real sense that we were looking for here, especially if we consider things in the spirit of Steiner’s exhortation to look at all nerves as nerves. I find that mixing causes/coincidences and real causes is not helpful in this context - which is, I believe, exactly what Steiner meant when he said: “The most important fact about the heart is that its activity is not a cause but an effect”.

All difficulties arise when we try to project our innerly known willing impulse also in the perceptual plane.
Perhaps, but I was not doing it.
Then we try to find the domino events that precede (and thus cause) the heart contraction.
Not doing it... it's clearly stated in my previous post.
These are the domino events that you called ‘the possibly not yet discovered physical forces’.
No. You will have noticed that I prefaced the reference to the future progresses of science with "not only that". As I said: "In the same way, we should also refrain from accepting as significant fact the apparent causal link going from heart (motor nerves/perception) to blood, even if science tells us it’s a fact. Because it’s a fact only in Maya, it’s a past perceptual fact, just like the perceptual fact that motor neurons cause movement. Not only that, but we also know that a scientific fact today may be disproved by a new scientific fact tomorrow" So I added the future evolution of science only as an additional point (but still relevant, as science today has no idea why potentized remedies have effect, for instance, which one could say is a huge gap in materialistic science).

At the core of the current discussion is to elucidate how Steiner made these bistable shifts and what he implied in the words he used. Because by saying “the blood moves the heart,” it isn’t really clear whether it’s being spoken about the vertical causality, or in fact about the possibility of tracing the domino events in the perceptual plane that eventually clearly show how the blood events precede and cause (in the perceptual sense) the heart events.

Yes. In cleartext:

- The most important fact about the heart and its motor nerves is that their activity is not a cause (the cause is the will) but an effect (perceptual feedback)

- The most important fact about any muscles (movement) and their motor nerves is the same as above.

[AshvinP]

At the core of the current discussion is to elucidate how Steiner made these bistable shifts and what he implied in the words he used. Because by saying “the blood moves the heart,” it isn’t really clear whether it’s being spoken about the vertical causality, or in fact about the possibility of tracing the domino events in the perceptual plane that eventually clearly show how the blood events precede and cause (in the perceptual sense) the heart events.

Indeed, and I have to admit, my perspective on this has shifted while contemplating the discussion on this thread and the relevant quotes from Steiner on these topics. It feels to me that Steiner may have overstepped on some of these assertions, for example:

To understand what I have just said, we must however also realise the connection of the soul and the physical being of man in the following respect. I have often emphasised that the nervous system of the physical body is a single organisation. It is mere nonsense, not even justified by external anatomy, to divide the nerves into 'motor' and 'sensory.' The nerves are all of one kind, and they all have one function.

 

The way I see it is, Steiner knew from supersensible experience that whatever the muscles do when actuating will impulses, and whatever the senses do when providing perceptual feedback of such impulses and their lawful constraints, are united at the Intuitive foundations. They are not in essence different from one another, only they appear to be as such from our convoluted perspective. Thus, Steiner generally warns against dividing motor nerves from sensory nerves, because if we do so in our intellectual theories, we will forever obscure the scale spectrum along which their functions become increasingly united. Which is to say, our ghostly sense-conditioned images will never be experienced more like concrete motor impulses. Our intellectual theories and models about 'motor vs sensory nerves' come at the expense of this deeper experiential realization.

From a principled phenomenological perspective, such things are quite easy to understand. As we descend along the convolutions of spiritual activity, as the latter is reflected many times over, this united function is teased apart into separate poles and, within the perceptual plane, it is quite justifiable to distinguish the resulting functions as motor nerves and sensory nerves. This is where Steiner may have become a bit careless, figuring that, even within the perceptual plane (at the intellectual scale), the facts can be traced such that the underlying unity is revealed. It seems that, in his justified attempt to point toward the deeper scale spectrum along which our intuition can grow, he also overstated what can be established from the perceptual patterns alone (even without a more imaginative perspective on those patterns). 

Yet, as you pointed out before, even the existence and recognition of such overzealous errors testifies to the profundity of Steiner's underlying project. It reveals that spiritual science is not a dogma or a system of concepts fashioned by a single individual, which others must accept or reject as 'true' on Steiner's authority (or lack of it), but it is truly a science, i.e., an exploration of objective reality that each individual can independently and freely partake in with their whole being, expanding and refining the insights of those who came before, contributing to the evolution of humanity. It is similar to what Steiner has previously said about truth and error - the fact that we can make errors about the perceptual plane in our thinking, recognize these errors, and transform them into truths, itself testifies to our participatory role in the experiential flow, and provides the opportunity to more perfectly realize that participatory role, if we stop and take the time to introspect on such facts deeply. 

The key consideration is what he expressed in the quote - "one must not take what natural science explores, but one must watch oneself doing natural science". The more we hold out hope that future discoveries within the perceptual plane, when contemplated at the intellectual scale, will establish the truth of supersensible influences, i.e., that it can 'be shown externally' without the corresponding inner experiences, the more difficult it becomes to watch oneself doing that contemplation and thus discovering the reality of the inwardly experienced influences and relations that one is trying to otherwise establish through the receded images. On the other hand, the more we devote ourselves to experiencing the spiritual dynamics within, the more the receded images will indeed begin to imaginatively reflect those same dynamics, even if within the perceptual plane they appear as 'the heart's pumping is a precondition for blood movement' or 'the motor and sensory nerves serve different functions'. The perceptual patterns only seem at odds with the deeper dynamics, even pointing to the complete opposite, as long as we fail to experience how such patterns take shape through our participatory perspective. This intimate experience is, of course, the central aim of spiritual science. 

With all that said, I remain completely open to the possibility that I am not viewing Steiner's assertions quite accurately, and indeed my original assessment was that Steiner was always pointing toward vertical causality rather than attempting to trace the domino events within the perceptual plane to show these things externally. If anything, I think the instances of the latter are few and far between, but may have manifested sometimes, mostly due to lack of more precise technologically acquired information on the physical dynamics (which we now tend to take for granted). Yet we do no favors to the spiritual scientific project, the central task of modern humanity, by ignoring the possibility of such errors or failing to try and understand exactly how such errors can take shape. By refining our understanding of how, we also gain a deeper appreciation for the depth of spiritual science, which is the depth of our own Intuitive being and becoming.

[Federica]

Indeed, and I have to admit, my perspective on this has shifted while contemplating the discussion on this thread and the relevant quotes from Steiner on these topics. It feels to me that Steiner may have overstepped on some of these assertions, for example:

To understand what I have just said, we must however also realise the connection of the soul and the physical being of man in the following respect. I have often emphasised that the nervous system of the physical body is a single organisation. It is mere nonsense, not even justified by external anatomy, to divide the nerves into 'motor' and 'sensory.' The nerves are all of one kind, and they all have one function.

 

The way I see it is, Steiner knew from supersensible experience that whatever the muscles do when actuating will impulses, and whatever the senses do when providing perceptual feedback of such impulses and their lawful constraints, are united at the Intuitive foundations. They are not in essence different from one another, only they appear to be as such from our convoluted perspective. Thus, Steiner generally warns against dividing motor nerves from sensory nerves, because if we do so in our intellectual theories, we will forever obscure the scale spectrum along which their functions become increasingly united. Which is to say, our ghostly sense-conditioned images will never be experienced more like concrete motor impulses. Our intellectual theories and models about 'motor vs sensory nerves' come at the expense of this deeper experiential realization.

From a principled phenomenological perspective, such things are quite easy to understand. As we descend along the convolutions of spiritual activity, as the latter is reflected many times over, this united function is teased apart into separate poles and, within the perceptual plane, it is quite justifiable to distinguish the resulting functions as motor nerves and sensory nerves. This is where Steiner may have become a bit careless, figuring that, even within the perceptual plane (at the intellectual scale), the facts can be traced such that the underlying unity is revealed. It seems that, in his justified attempt to point toward the deeper scale spectrum along which our intuition can grow, he also overstated what can be established from the perceptual patterns alone (even without a more imaginative perspective on those patterns). 

Said like that (the bold) it looks almost like you mean that the outer senses provide feedback to the will impulses leading to muscular movement. But the muscles with their movement are themselves the perceptual feedback to the will impulses - is this what you were meaning?

Regarding Steiner's becoming "careless" I don't think the word "careless" is ideal. In any case, regarding nerve anatomy, this other quote may help:

As I mentioned in my discussions of this matter over the past few days, the difference between the sensory and motor nerves, anatomically and physiologically, is not very significant. I never said that there is no difference at all, but that the difference was not very noticeable. Anatomical differences do not contradict my interpretation. Let me say this again: we are dealing here with only one type of nerves. What people call the “sensory” nerves and “motor” nerves are really the same, and so it really doesn’t matter whether we use sensory or motor for our terms. Such distinctions are irrelevant, since these nerves are (metaphorically) the physical tools of undifferentiated soul experiences. A will process lives in every thought process, and, vice versa, there is an element of thought, or a residue of sensory perception, in every will process, although such processes remain mostly unconscious.

[AshvinP]

Indeed, and I have to admit, my perspective on this has shifted while contemplating the discussion on this thread and the relevant quotes from Steiner on these topics. It feels to me that Steiner may have overstepped on some of these assertions, for example:

To understand what I have just said, we must however also realise the connection of the soul and the physical being of man in the following respect. I have often emphasised that the nervous system of the physical body is a single organisation. It is mere nonsense, not even justified by external anatomy, to divide the nerves into 'motor' and 'sensory.' The nerves are all of one kind, and they all have one function.

 

The way I see it is, Steiner knew from supersensible experience that whatever the muscles do when actuating will impulses, and whatever the senses do when providing perceptual feedback of such impulses and their lawful constraints, are united at the Intuitive foundations. They are not in essence different from one another, only they appear to be as such from our convoluted perspective. Thus, Steiner generally warns against dividing motor nerves from sensory nerves, because if we do so in our intellectual theories, we will forever obscure the scale spectrum along which their functions become increasingly united. Which is to say, our ghostly sense-conditioned images will never be experienced more like concrete motor impulses. Our intellectual theories and models about 'motor vs sensory nerves' come at the expense of this deeper experiential realization.

From a principled phenomenological perspective, such things are quite easy to understand. As we descend along the convolutions of spiritual activity, as the latter is reflected many times over, this united function is teased apart into separate poles and, within the perceptual plane, it is quite justifiable to distinguish the resulting functions as motor nerves and sensory nerves. This is where Steiner may have become a bit careless, figuring that, even within the perceptual plane (at the intellectual scale), the facts can be traced such that the underlying unity is revealed. It seems that, in his justified attempt to point toward the deeper scale spectrum along which our intuition can grow, he also overstated what can be established from the perceptual patterns alone (even without a more imaginative perspective on those patterns). 

Said like that (the bold) it looks almost like you mean that the outer senses provide feedback to the will impulses leading to muscular movement. But the muscles with their movement are themselves the perceptual feedback to the will impulses - is this what you were meaning?

I mean, in terms of our first-person conscious experience, we (mostly instinctively) fire our will in certain directions and we become aware of the lawful constraints it meets through imaginative feedback. That feedback then modulates how we further fire our will, whether in thinking or physical movement. As we know, we don't consciously experience the muscles with their movement (we are asleep in our will), rather we only experience physical sensations that feedback in the moment and, when we need to encompass such sensations through time, ghostly imaginative pictures that have been 'lifted' from and take the 'shape' of those physical sensations.

As Cleric mentioned before, I think it only makes sense to speak of the muscles, organs, etc. themselves 'perceiving' will impulses at deeper subconscious scales of activity, where the functions of the outer senses and the inner organism are increasingly united.

Regarding Steiner's becoming "careless" I don't think the word "careless" is ideal. In any case, regarding nerve anatomy, this other quote may help:

As I mentioned in my discussions of this matter over the past few days, the difference between the sensory and motor nerves, anatomically and physiologically, is not very significant. I never said that there is no difference at all, but that the difference was not very noticeable. Anatomical differences do not contradict my interpretation. Let me say this again: we are dealing here with only one type of nerves. What people call the “sensory” nerves and “motor” nerves are really the same, and so it really doesn’t matter whether we use sensory or motor for our terms. Such distinctions are irrelevant, since these nerves are (metaphorically) the physical tools of undifferentiated soul experiences. A will process lives in every thought process, and, vice versa, there is an element of thought, or a residue of sensory perception, in every will process, although such processes remain mostly unconscious.

I'm not sure if this addition helps his case or not, because I haven't much investigated the anatomical and physiological differences. I imagine these things have been studied quite a bit more through modern technology not available at his time. Perhaps the differences have become more noticeable precisely through such technology, similar to the functioning of the physical heart. Based on what Cleric has presented so far, I do find it unlikely that "such distinctions are irrelevant" within the perceptual plane. Again, it seems to me like the accurate observation of the bold, rooted in supersensible experience, is being too carelessly applied within the perceptual plane and thus it is concluded the physical distinction is practically irrelevant.