On the 'Culmination' of Anthroposophy

[AshvinP]

Nobody ever said that it's forbidden to begin early with concentration exercises, and that practical thinking is the imperative prologue to it. Yet, as Steiner explicitly recommends, a practical approach to life enhanced by practical thinking, as exemplified, is the very best prerequisite - die allerbeste Vorbedingung in Steiners words- to the development of clairvoyant consciousness.

Hence your number 1/ does not condition the intellect to expect a linear progression. Instead, it conditions it to find the bridge between intellectual and spiritual science (the same bridge which Cleric has said he is interested in developing for the scientifically minded person of today).

Please, Federica, try for a moment to lay aside what Steiner said and what you think he means, and instead try to freely orient to the inner process at work. In what way is it helpful as preparation to avoid introspection and meditative concentration in our 'practical thinking' exercises? If you are not proposing a path of thinking that initially avoids this archetypal foundation, then why do you keep emphasizing the pursuit of 'practical thinking' is non-meditative and distinct from imaginative concentration? Unless it is simply to have something to argue with me about, I imagine there is some basis for you continually emphasizing this point on thread after thread. Can you elaborate this basis without using Steiner's throat? What exactly does the pursuit of practical thinking entail and how does it enrich and deepen our inner life, orienting it to its spiritual foundations, while circumventing the principle of imaginative concentration?

The reason why I keep quoting Steiner is not because I'm unable to freely explore these processes by myself. It's instead to show that you may not take seriously what I say, but since it's Steiner who puts practical thinking as prerequisite for clairvoyant consciousness, you should be more careful before dismissing it.

I guess you know this very well already, and simply can't resist the rhetorical temptation to make me look dumb, unfree, stuck with "Steiner says", and so on. Besides, if you had read more carefully, you would know that I never said, suggested or imply that practical thinking leads or should lead to avoiding introspection. Instead I said the opposite, and the reason why I emphasize that practical thinking is non-meditative is for its bridging power for the benefit of the scientist who in general is not naturally open to concentration efforts. Practical thinking can help the scientifically oriented mind to develop a healthy sense for truth.

This has been well expressed in Martin O'Keefe-Liddard's post. Let us notice that you had the initiative to report that post which you described as "another great example of the direction in which the 'culmination' of Anthroposophy should be sought". Strangely enough, after I referred to the post as an excellent example of bridging intellectual and spiritual science via empiricism and practical thinking, you changed, and said "his post is only accurate insofar as the work with spiritual science as hypotheses engages a primarily introspective-meditative". Strange, isn't it? First you post it here as a commendable example of spiritual-scientific pursuit, only to doubt its accuracy, after I praised it. Anyway.

But this gets us nowhere, because it is disputed what Steiner and Martin mean in all of these configurations of skull bones. Even this has been useful, because I have now developed a deeper appreciation for how two souls can work with the exact same content and come away with quite different perspectives on its meaning (I have also been quoting Steiner and Cleric for the same reason you expressed, so it's not about making you look dumb, but realizing how we have both gotten stuck in this unfruitful approach). But if there is to be any progress toward mutual understanding, we need something more along the lines of what you provided here:

Practical thinking enriches our inner life by making the thinker more keenly aware of its correspondences with the outer life around us. It allow the rational mind to dive into the details of sensory reality, and follow the temporal patterns that emerge from those sequences of details. Along these patterns, the mind becomes more sensitive to the dynamic alignment of the thoughts with outer reality and its concepts. As I already said, the key is that the thoughts we have about the details only can arise in consciousness because they constitute the reality of those details in the first place. It's like skiing down a meandering piste. The routes are determined by both the piste and the skier, they are inscribed in both, and the varying sequence of meanders, or details, creates a sensitivity for the correspondence. In this way, practical thinking is simply a first subtle antidote to the modern, default attitude to consider that reality is "out there", and the thoughts about it are in our mind, as two separate worlds. It's so obvious and simple. This is what it means to develop a sense for truth. Practical thinking does not directly develop clairvoyant consciousness, as concentrative meditation does. But it educates the consciousness to a healthier relation to the unitary nature of reality, in a mood of careful, respectful, excited, even marveling empiricism. The spreading of this approach would be very beneficial today.

Thanks for this explication. How would you differentiate this idea of 'practical thinking' from what, for example, ML is doing when precisely studying the sensory patterns of biological life? Does ML's thinking process also lead to more sensitivity to the correspondence between the thoughts we have about the details and the reality of those details (for example, by noticing how there is a cognitive agentic element to how the patterns unfold)? If not, in what ways would you say his process deviates from what you are describing here as practical thinking? I hope we can continue exploring such questions independently of anything Steiner or anyone else has said, for now.

[Federica]

Practical thinking enriches our inner life by making the thinker more keenly aware of its correspondences with the outer life around us. It allow the rational mind to dive into the details of sensory reality, and follow the temporal patterns that emerge from those sequences of details. Along these patterns, the mind becomes more sensitive to the dynamic alignment of the thoughts with outer reality and its concepts. As I already said, the key is that the thoughts we have about the details only can arise in consciousness because they constitute the reality of those details in the first place. It's like skiing down a meandering piste. The routes are determined by both the piste and the skier, they are inscribed in both, and the varying sequence of meanders, or details, creates a sensitivity for the correspondence. In this way, practical thinking is simply a first subtle antidote to the modern, default attitude to consider that reality is "out there", and the thoughts about it are in our mind, as two separate worlds. It's so obvious and simple. This is what it means to develop a sense for truth. Practical thinking does not directly develop clairvoyant consciousness, as concentrative meditation does. But it educates the consciousness to a healthier relation to the unitary nature of reality, in a mood of careful, respectful, excited, even marveling empiricism. The spreading of this approach would be very beneficial today.

Thanks for this explication. How would you differentiate this idea of 'practical thinking' from what, for example, ML is doing when precisely studying the sensory patterns of biological life? Does ML's thinking process also lead to more sensitivity to the correspondence between the thoughts we have about the details and the reality of those details (for example, by noticing how there is a cognitive agentic element to how the patterns unfold)? If not, in what ways would you say his process deviates from what you are describing here as practical thinking? I hope we can continue exploring such questions independently of anything Steiner or anyone else has said, for now.

Indeed, empiricism does not guarantee practical thinking. Practical thinking favourably orient the student of the spirit towards clairvoyant consciousness, but it has its own prerequisites. Not only that. It needs to be stimulated, brought about and guided, in order to become transformative. For ML this doesn't seem to have happened so far.

Practical thinking emerges when empiricism is contextualized within the right attitude towards life and attention to the thinking process. This isn't a common natural occurrence. it requires orientation and education. ML shows a deep interest for detailed observation of nature and life, and also an openness to work with fluidity of concepts. That's helpful, but not sufficient to develop truly practical thinking, especially when preferences and blind spots work in the opposite direction as it seems to be the case for him. He would need a guide, but does his karma allow for that? I think he is a stunning example of empiricism breaking free from reductionism and its theoretical constraints, but still failing to overcome the third-person perspective.

Even if he speaks of first-person perspective, he conceives it as yet another experimental setup, rather than a genuine inner experience, complete in itself. I would even say that he practices a kind of 'enraged empiricism'. The more he flounders to break free from the quicksands of reductionism, the more he actually deepens his entanglement, in a sort of hyper vantage point, where duality becomes more and more solidly cemented in the background. He's in an unfortunate position where the etheric vibrations attuning to “flow-centric” perceptions are paired with such a soul configuration that the more he struggles against the net of reductionism, the more he gets entangled in its soul quality, or logic.

This submersion in the vantage point is signaled in clear outline when he for example expresses the thought that future man will be outraged by our present inability to see embodiment as something to take full control over. The more he indulges in this thought, the more he detaches himself from the here and now, pleased in the idea of conjunction with that future perspective, elevated above present consciousness. This takes him further away from really including himself in the reality of the consciousness-spectrum he studies. He does that in principle, but in reality the Platonic space is conceived as a traditional working hypothesis. It doesn’t occur to him to recognize himself within that space. He only uses it for its explanatory potential towards the dynamics of the lower layers. The higher layers remain functional, not living, and so he misses the experience of the full spectrum of reality. The higher layers are pliers through which he tries to enter and manipulate the lower layers, which are his ultimate focus - for personal reasons. The personal reasons are in the blind spot, and so the manipulative aims are justified by means of the diffuse morality of the radius of compassion, pain reduction, etcetera.

To say it coarsely, his merit has been to creatively solve the “connect 4 dots with three lines” puzzle, which hard-core reductionists couldn't solve. He’s been able to think outside that box, but his treatment of consciousness remains formal. That form is just another container wrapping the 'box' from the outside. For this reason his thinking remains impractical. The experiments don’t help the experimenter unite with phenomena through the eventful navigation of the one ideal flow. Rather, there is a postulated unity, or oneness, on one side; opportunistic, selective experiments on the other side; and a gaping blind spot in between.

[Kaje977]

Even if he speaks of first-person perspective, he conceives it as yet another experimental setup, rather than a genuine inner experience, complete in itself. I would even say that he practices a kind of 'enraged empiricism'. The more he flounders to break free from the quicksands of reductionism, the more he actually deepens his entanglement, in a sort of hyper vantage point, where duality becomes more and more solidly cemented in the background. He's in an unfortunate position where the etheric vibrations attuning to “flow-centric” perceptions are paired with such a soul configuration that the more he struggles against the net of reductionism, the more he gets entangled in its soul quality, or logic.

Well, this seems to be coming at the right time. I think this is precisely what I tend to struggle with currently. My soul activity oscilliates strongly, I noticed for a certain period of time this year (in September) I was aware that I was genuinely on the right path, and had inner experiences, until my unpleasant habits came back with full force, triggered by something minuscle. This threw me back into almost two months of stagnation, and only now I seem to become able to navigate all of it once more, despite being fully self-aware about it all the time (trust me, being self-aware of your negative habits and feeling like you can't do anything about it is even worse than not knowing about them. "Ignorance is bliss" is not just some random saying, I can empathically understand why one would say that). Only now I seem to be able to counter it, after having a certain experience. I really hope it would stay that way, but I seem to anticipate that I will fall back again. My idea was to change my environment, but then I would ultimately only delay the inevitable again once I enter a similar environment, hence why I look for ways to cause that change genuinely through my own inner effort.

[AshvinP]

Indeed, empiricism does not guarantee practical thinking. Practical thinking favourably orient the student of the spirit towards clairvoyant consciousness, but it has its own prerequisites. Not only that. It needs to be stimulated, brought about and guided, in order to become transformative. For ML this doesn't seem to have happened so far.

Practical thinking emerges when empiricism is contextualized within the right attitude towards life and attention to the thinking process. This isn't a common natural occurrence. it requires orientation and education. ML shows a deep interest for detailed observation of nature and life, and also an openness to work with fluidity of concepts. That's helpful, but not sufficient to develop truly practical thinking, especially when preferences and blind spots work in the opposite direction as it seems to be the case for him. He would need a guide, but does his karma allow for that? I think he is a stunning example of empiricism breaking free from reductionism and its theoretical constraints, but still failing to overcome the third-person perspective.

Even if he speaks of first-person perspective, he conceives it as yet another experimental setup, rather than a genuine inner experience, complete in itself. I would even say that he practices a kind of 'enraged empiricism'. The more he flounders to break free from the quicksands of reductionism, the more he actually deepens his entanglement, in a sort of hyper vantage point, where duality becomes more and more solidly cemented in the background. He's in an unfortunate position where the etheric vibrations attuning to “flow-centric” perceptions are paired with such a soul configuration that the more he struggles against the net of reductionism, the more he gets entangled in its soul quality, or logic.

This submersion in the vantage point is signaled in clear outline when he for example expresses the thought that future man will be outraged by our present inability to see embodiment as something to take full control over. The more he indulges in this thought, the more he detaches himself from the here and now, pleased in the idea of conjunction with that future perspective, elevated above present consciousness. This takes him further away from really including himself in the reality of the consciousness-spectrum he studies. He does that in principle, but in reality the Platonic space is conceived as a traditional working hypothesis. It doesn’t occur to him to recognize himself within that space. He only uses it for its explanatory potential towards the dynamics of the lower layers. The higher layers remain functional, not living, and so he misses the experience of the full spectrum of reality. The higher layers are pliers through which he tries to enter and manipulate the lower layers, which are his ultimate focus - for personal reasons. The personal reasons are in the blind spot, and so the manipulative aims are justified by means of the diffuse morality of the radius of compassion, pain reduction, etcetera.

To say it coarsely, his merit has been to creatively solve the “connect 4 dots with three lines” puzzle, which hard-core reductionists couldn't solve. He’s been able to think outside that box, but his treatment of consciousness remains formal. That form is just another container wrapping the 'box' from the outside. For this reason his thinking remains impractical. The experiments don’t help the experimenter unite with phenomena through the eventful navigation of the one ideal flow. Rather, there is a postulated unity, or oneness, on one side; opportunistic, selective experiments on the other side; and a gaping blind spot in between.

Ok, thanks. As I contemplate the bold ideas, it is difficult for me to imagine any way in which they are resolved independently of imaginative concentration within the first-person cognitive flow. As you do well to highlight, it's not a matter of substituting esoteric content for the intuited concepts of Platonic space, ingressions of patterns, cognitive light cones, a 'holarchy' of cognitive agents, nested observer windows, and so on. It's also not a matter of becoming more disciplined and precise in the experiments and sensory observations, thinking through the results more carefully. I think we can probably agree that someone like ML is about as careful as it gets when it comes to that process of thinking through the empirical patterns (with the exception of algorithmic behavior). In fact, the algorithmic blind spot points directly to the core issue, which is the 'frequent forgetting' of how one's own creative activity is involved in the experimental setups, instead externalizing that activity onto the 'hidden cognitive latencies' of the algorithm itself. Or, as you say, the inability to recognize himself within the Platonic space in real-time.

So those descriptions give us an outline of the core issues to be resolved for practical thinking to unfold, but the question is precisely what kind of inner process should unfold in our experience to begin resolving those issues? What kind of inner process truly brings hidden assumptions and preferences out of the blind spot, in a sustained way? When do we truly begin to feel like our soul life is stretched across the Platonic space and our precipitating thoughts at the horizon of consciousness are chopped up testimonies of a more living and integrated experiential space? Where does the right attitude to life and attention to the thinking process come from? How do we escape the negative feedback of soul factors which entangle us in the net of reductionism? Again, it's difficult for me to envision any inner process that works through empirical facts and logical connections between them, perhaps even employing certain exercises to discipline thinking, but fails to delve directly into the 'video feedback flow' and still manages to make progress with resolving these issues.

Thus, the only orientation and education that I can imagine producing fruits in this scenario is that which flows through the pinhole of concentration-meditation (including study-meditation of esoteric content). Do you see this as a failure of imagination, as an inability to 'think outside the box' and find another mode of practical thinking that prepares for, but does not yet directly encounter, the principle of meditation? If so, I am still not clear on what this other mode could look like, which transcends ML's highly empirical and intuitive process but does not yet reach the directly introspective process of the forum essays, for example. I realize that you feel Steiner has shown us what this other mode looks like in various places, but again, my perspective on those same places is quite different, so if you choose to elaborate, I hope we can still avoid referring to those quotes as examples.

[AshvinP]

Even if he speaks of first-person perspective, he conceives it as yet another experimental setup, rather than a genuine inner experience, complete in itself. I would even say that he practices a kind of 'enraged empiricism'. The more he flounders to break free from the quicksands of reductionism, the more he actually deepens his entanglement, in a sort of hyper vantage point, where duality becomes more and more solidly cemented in the background. He's in an unfortunate position where the etheric vibrations attuning to “flow-centric” perceptions are paired with such a soul configuration that the more he struggles against the net of reductionism, the more he gets entangled in its soul quality, or logic.

Well, this seems to be coming at the right time. I think this is precisely what I tend to struggle with currently. My soul activity oscilliates strongly, I noticed for a certain period of time this year (in September) I was aware that I was genuinely on the right path, and had inner experiences, until my unpleasant habits came back with full force, triggered by something minuscle. This threw me back into almost two months of stagnation, and only now I seem to become able to navigate all of it once more, despite being fully self-aware about it all the time (trust me, being self-aware of your negative habits and feeling like you can't do anything about it is even worse than not knowing about them. "Ignorance is bliss" is not just some random saying, I can empathically understand why one would say that). Only now I seem to be able to counter it, after having a certain experience. I really hope it would stay that way, but I seem to anticipate that I will fall back again. My idea was to change my environment, but then I would ultimately only delay the inevitable again once I enter a similar environment, hence why I look for ways to cause that change genuinely through my own inner effort.

Kaje, what you express reminded me of Federica's post I recently reviewed, which may be helpful.

The first thing to observe is that this struggle is ubiquitous for souls on the inner path and only intensifies along the way (although I think it is also true that, if we prayerfully align our life ideals with this inner path, we are never tempted beyond our current capacity to handle). The intensification is, in fact, a sign of development. As Cleric mentioned to you recently, our TFW soul capacities, which are normally held together in relatively concentric relations (harmonic coupling) in the course of sensory life, begin to split apart and go in their own directions as we bring the supersensible life more into focus. That which was previously managed for us becomes increasingly within our sphere of creative responsibility. Among other things, this leads directly to the feeling you expressed, and which St. Paul also expressed out of the same inner observation - “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."

A common theme of dealing with such issues is expanding our sense of the inner context in which our efforts are unfolding. We first have to attain a certain peace with the fact that our life destiny is composed of rhythms within rhythms, oscillating around each other in complex ways, and our present state is always placed somewhere within this context. Many of these rhythms are simply beyond our control, and these relate to transpersonal karma. For example, even our temperament in life can be considered, to a large extent, as part of a much more encompassing rhythm that will elude our inner efforts to transform during our present incarnation. Changing our outer environment won't torque this temperamental constellation very much, although perhaps certain environments harmonize better with our current temperament. That may be the best we can do in many of these situations. Becoming more intimately conscious of this encompassing context will naturally help us attain peace in the sense of the serenity prayer - "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

Once we attain a certain degree of serenity within the rotational rhythms of existence, then we should more easily discover the Inspiration to bounce back from descending movements and renew our efforts. We can't expect to simultaneously wage a war on all fronts of our soul life and prevail - this will assuredly overwhelm our efforts and lead to spiraling in the wrong direction. As it is often mentioned here, the domain of soul life where we have the most lucidity and can discover the most degrees of freedom, to begin with, is our imaginative life. Because of that, it is also easiest to develop enthusiasm for investigating and refining this imaginative domain. Through introspective observation of its characteristic dynamics, we can at least get an intuitive feel for the expansive rhythmic context in which our present state is always embedded. Thus, working patiently with the essays on this forum (which are always at our disposal and within reach, so to speak), for example, should greatly help us attain to inner serenity and help us deal with the inevitable descents into lower impulses and feelings.