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.

[Federica]

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.

I am not sure if what you describe (struggle to remain disciplined and master one's habits) is the same as Michael Levins struggle against reductionism, but I can certainly relate to what you say. It has happened to me multiple times. I am talking about discontinuous efforts with meditation and the other necessary practices. I think you are right: changing the outer environment may help a little, but the decisive change of environment (realignment with good habits) needs to happen inside. For me, some helpful ways to cause the change through inner effort are the following:


1. Acknowledge that the oscillations of soul activity are inevitable. What counts is that the overall trend is ascending, and that there is no total drop of spiritual intentions and actions. It's a navigation.


2. Realize vividly that every time we are giving in to old habits, or letting laziness slowing us down, we are ceding control to the Ahrimanic being who lives in our own being, side by side with our soul. This Ahrimanic double is a reality that needs to be acknowledged. The more it is perceived, the more it is possible to fight back, reject submission to its will, and reclaim control on our motives. Steiner describes this double in various places. This passage comes from a key lecture:

Our body, our soul, our spirit are what first approach our consciousness, as it were, but they are not everything standing in connection with our existence. Not in the least! What I am about to say is connected with certain mysteries of human becoming, of human nature, which must be known today and become ever better known.

When the human being enters into earthly existence through birth, acquiring his physical body, he does not gain only the possibility of giving his existence to his own soul. I beg you to consider this well. The human being by no means knows everything about this physical body. Many things go on in it about which he knows nothing! He gradually comes to know what goes on in this physical body, yet in a very unsuitable way, through anatomy and physiology. If we had to wait for nourishment until we understood the process of digestion—well, one could not even say that people would have to die of hunger, for it is unthinkable that one must know something about what the organs have to do in order to prepare food for the organism! Thus a human being comes into this world with the organism in which he has clothed himself but without extending down into this organism with his soul. The opportunity therefore exists a short time before we are born (not very long before we are born) for another spiritual being in addition to our soul to take possession of our body, of the subconscious part of our body.

A short time before we are born we are permeated by another being; in our terminology we would call it an Ahrimanic spirit-being. This is within us just as our own soul is within us. These beings spend their life using human beings in order to be able to be in the sphere where they want to be. These beings have an extraordinarily high intelligence and a significantly developed will, but no warmth of heart at all, nothing of what we call human soul warmth (Gemüt). Thus we go through life in such a way that we have both our souls and a double of this kind, who is much more clever, very much more clever than we are, who is very intelligent, but with a Mephistophelian intelligence, an Ahrimanic intelligence, and also an Ahrimanic will, a very strong will, a will that is much more akin to the nature-forces than our human will, which is regulated by the warmth of soul (Gemüt).

In the nineteenth century, natural science discovered that the nervous system is permeated by electrical forces. Natural science is right. But when natural scientists believe that the nerve-force that belongs to us as the basis of our conceptual life has something to do with electrical streams that go through our nerves, then they are incorrect. For the electrical streams, which are the forces put into us by the being I have just mentioned and described, do not belong to our own being at all. We carry electrical streams in us, but they are of a purely Ahrimanic nature.

These beings of high intelligence, but of purely Mephistophelian intelligence, and with a will more akin to nature than can be said of the human will, these beings once decided out of their own will that they did not want to live in that world in which they were destined to live by the wisdom-filled gods of the higher hierarchies. They wanted to conquer the earth, and to do this they need bodies; they do not have bodies of their own. They make use of as much of the human body as they can, because the human soul cannot entirely fill up the human body.

As the human body develops, these beings are able to enter this human body at a definite time before the human being is born, and below the threshold of our consciousness they accompany us. There is only one thing in human life that they absolutely cannot endure: they cannot endure death. Therefore they must always leave this human body, in which they have established themselves, before that body succumbs to death. This is a very harsh disappointment again and again, for just what they want to attain—to remain in human bodies beyond death—is thwarted. To do this would be a lofty achievement in the kingdom of these beings. Up until now they have not attained it.

Had the Mystery of Golgotha not occurred, had Christ not passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, conditions on earth would have been such that these beings would long ago have attained the possibility of remaining within the human being when he is karmically predestined for death. Then they would have completely triumphed over human evolution on earth, they would have become masters of human evolution on earth.

It is of tremendous and profound significance to have insight into the connection between Christ passing through the Mystery of Golgotha and these beings who want to conquer death in human nature but are not yet able today to endure it.


GA 178 - Geographic Medicine - Lecture II
as retrieved from the Rudolf Steiner Archive.

3. I am not sure how it would work for others, but for me I have found it beneficial to pray the Lord's Prayer as prayed by Rudolf Steiner, and then to prioritize the I-meditation:

Raise your feelings to your higher self. It is less important to educate yourself theoretically about the higher self than to feel in a very vivid way that you have a higher nature within you. Imagine that your ordinary self surrounds this higher nature like a shell, so that the latter is present in the lower self as its core. Once you have put yourself in this state of mind, say the following words to your “higher self” in a prayer-like manner (not aloud, but in your mind):


Strahlender als die Sonne
Reiner als der Schnee
Feiner als der Äther
Ist das Selbst
Der Geist in meinem Herzen
Dies Selbst bin Ich
Ich bin dies Selbst


While keeping this in mind, no other mental image should interfere. You should only feel your soul's gaze directed toward the higher self. Gradually, you will feel a wonderful strengthening emanating from the words of the above sentences. You will feel as if you have been lifted out of yourself. Gradually, a state will arise as if your soul were growing wings. This is the beginning, upon which you will then build further. This should take 2-3 minutes.

GA 267 - Soul Exercises I - Word and Symbol Meditations
as retrieved from the Rudolf Steiner Archive.

Before I inwardly say the verses, I try to put myself in that state of mind by concentrating on this visual Cleric shared a long time ago (to be clear: not by watching it, but by recreating the initial point in my mind's eye). For me it takes much longer that 2-3 minutes. Even if it's difficult and not optimal, I have noticed that starting with that Lord's prayer (which includes: "You do not allow the tempter to work in us beyond the capacity of our strength, for no temptation can live in your being, Father, and the tempter is only appearance and delusion from which You lead us, Father, to the light of knowledge") and continuing with the I-meditation is really of great support. I hope it helps.

[Federica]

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.

It is absolutely possible to pay attention to the thinking process and have the right attitude to life, without meditation. It is certainly more difficult (though not impossible) to become conscious of one’s own soul preferences and biases without meditation, but that’s OK: admittedly the aim of practical thinking is not to develop a finished state, but to prepare ordinary consciousness to become a fruitful body for the subsequent conception of the higher worlds.

As said, predispositions and karma definitely play a role. For some, it may be very difficult to become practical in their thinking, due to specific inner obstacles. They simply won’t find themselves oriented towards such an intention. Therefore, I’m not saying that there are given exercises and that anyone who tries them out becomes a practical thinker. But for the one who is fortunate to have enough genuine interest for the lawful unfolding of nature, and for life at large and its manifold event lines (which also are lawful) there are definitely ways to beneficially infuse one's inner spiritual process with practical wisdom, that do not require concentration-meditation.

The aim is to help the mind realize the unity which manifests as lawfulness in phenomena, and as ideal flow in consciousness. We know that the physical world tends to desensitize us to such real dynamics. It makes us lazy thinkers, make us insensitive, because it provides the foolproof guidance of the senses, that we have become used to completely rely upon. By contrast, in the spiritual worlds, a major difficulty is to learn to discriminate truth from delusion, in the absence of the more obvious guardrails offered by sensory experience.

We could say that practical thinking is developed when we figure out ways to use the sensory spectrum in pedagogical fashion, working around the obvious hints it tends to present us with, so that we can temporarily withdraw from that sensory feedback. In that interval, we learn by doing. How can thinking be trained within the sensory spectrum in this way? It’s like in sudoku or crosswords. We have the cheat sheet, or answer key, but don’t check it until we have completed the table, or at least done our very best.

For example we could start simple by examining lawful natural processes that natural science has already thought-modeled. We set up basic experiments in, say, physics and try to predict the unfolding before we run the experiment (if we are not already familiar with the results, of course). We could also watch a gigantic domino setup and try to mentally follow the pathways before it's triggered. The weather exercise is a more advanced type in this same category, because there is a lawfulness, but it’s not directly perceivable through the lenses of natural science. For this exact reason, it is important to first merely observe, and refrain from superimposing arbitrary deductions on the temporal flow of observations. After sufficient training with ‘undubbed’ observation, the lawful patterns begin to develop a certain sensitivity that can later be ‘collected’ within consciousness (if the right mood, openness, enthusiasm, etc. are there).

Even the mental gestures we engage when solving a simple math quiz make our thinking more practical, even if there's no observation phase involved, because we train our agility to follow previously traced ideal meanders that have certain lawfulness, and there’s a delay in feedback that allows us to benefit from the exercise. It's a sort of DIY with sensory application. For example:

You sell cucumbers from your garden at the vegetable market today. Your cucumbers are 99% water and 1% cucumber fiber. At 8:00 a.m., you have 100 kg of them on your stall. It's a very hot day, and by 3:00 p.m., not only have you not sold anything, but the cucumbers have become dehydrated, and now they're only 98% water. How much do they weigh then?

Another example, more difficult, could be to let lawfulness emerge in human interactions and behaviors. Can we become more sensitive to the thought flow as it manifests in others we are interacting with, or observing? Can we guess what will happen, or what will be said, just before it happens? Can we read a crime novel and anticipate the author’s mental patterns? If we succeed/fail, can we go through the unfolding process in our thinking once again, and feel the lawfulness of the entire process (as a confirmation or as a correction, respectively)? Can we become more sensitive to animal behavior after certain exposure to their habits, to the point that we begin to know with some level of confidence what is about to happen?

In all these examples, meditation and concentration are not involved. It’s not about sense-free thinking. Rather it’s about developing and practicing a keen interest in the sensory world, through timely observation, accompanied by appropriate feelings, openness, and so on. Progressively, this attentive exposure (when sensory feedback is pedagogically managed) develops into skills. One becomes able to smoothly follow and eventually anticipate observable patterns. These skills exhibit an increased agility in the world of the senses and demonstrate an improved grasp of the correspondence between thoughts and sensory phenomena.

That’s practical thinking.

[Cleric]

Maybe we can appreciate better the value of practical thinking by remembering that we are far less in fully conscious micromanaging control of our thought process. Words, grammar, logical trains, etc., are driven somewhat instinctively/intuitively. Yet, all these low-level skills have been forged in our etheric and physical bodies (all have higher-order archetypes too). We steer the flow of destiny as if we want to witness our evolution along a worldline where we hear ourselves expressing an idea or memory. Yet, we need the low-level patterns for this. It is similar with musical skills. We need musical imagination but also playing technique (practical skills), otherwise we simply can't bring down the inner sounds to the sensory world.

It has been interesting to me what the inner experience of something like this feels like:



Obviously, I'm not giving this as an example of higher cognition, but it is nevertheless a good illustration for the way we need to navigate a general flow that includes the milestones of the requested topics, yet also 'solve' (like imaginative sudoku) the in-between flow appropriately. It is clear that one can only do that if they have a rich vocabulary, a toolset of linguistic patterns, and a very broad common culture. The general milestones form certain attractors in the astral flow, and one needs to feel very vividly how the stacking Tetris pieces (linguistic patterns) align or deviate from the curvature.

It is important to keep in mind that we depend on such skills to bring down higher-order experiences to lucid consciousness. As already established, just having a flat pattern toolset is not enough, as this in itself doesn't develop the vertical-flow skills - the ability to follow the astral or intuitive attractors and express the 'rhymes'. Yet, the only way to develop the toolbox is by struggling through its elements. Even if we have developed finer sensitivity and the ability to glide through the flow-attractors of inner space, this doesn't save us from forging concepts and patterns at the intellectual scale. Intuition, Inspiration, and Imagination still need the cerebral and etheric skills to reach the sensory world. Of course, it is possible that the intellectual activity is forged in a much more fluid and inspired way, yet it still feels like a differentiable 'aggregate state' of spirit movements that can only be rightly developed at their intrinsic level.

In this sense, I think a great exercise for practical thinking is to often stop and observe "What am I trying to express in my inner monologue? What are the feelings and ideas that my soul is brooding over? What other ways can I find to express these feelings and ideas?" This helps us refine the horizontal practical skills, but also orients us vertically.

[Federica]

Maybe we can appreciate better the value of practical thinking by remembering that we are far less in fully conscious micromanaging control of our thought process. Words, grammar, logical trains, etc., are driven somewhat instinctively/intuitively. Yet, all these low-level skills have been forged in our etheric and physical bodies (all have higher-order archetypes too). We steer the flow of destiny as if we want to witness our evolution along a worldline where we hear ourselves expressing an idea or memory. Yet, we need the low-level patterns for this. It is similar with musical skills. We need musical imagination but also playing technique (practical skills), otherwise we simply can't bring down the inner sounds to the sensory world.

It has been interesting to me what the inner experience of something like this feels like:



Obviously, I'm not giving this as an example of higher cognition, but it is nevertheless a good illustration for the way we need to navigate a general flow that includes the milestones of the requested topics, yet also 'solve' (like imaginative sudoku) the in-between flow appropriately. It is clear that one can only do that if they have a rich vocabulary, a toolset of linguistic patterns, and a very broad common culture. The general milestones form certain attractors in the astral flow, and one needs to feel very vividly how the stacking Tetris pieces (linguistic patterns) align or deviate from the curvature.

It is important to keep in mind that we depend on such skills to bring down higher-order experiences to lucid consciousness. As already established, just having a flat pattern toolset is not enough, as this in itself doesn't develop the vertical-flow skills - the ability to follow the astral or intuitive attractors and express the 'rhymes'. Yet, the only way to develop the toolbox is by struggling through its elements. Even if we have developed finer sensitivity and the ability to glide through the flow-attractors of inner space, this doesn't save us from forging concepts and patterns at the intellectual scale. Intuition, Inspiration, and Imagination still need the cerebral and etheric skills to reach the sensory world. Of course, it is possible that the intellectual activity is forged in a much more fluid and inspired way, yet it still feels like a differentiable 'aggregate state' of spirit movements that can only be rightly developed at their intrinsic level.

In this sense, I think a great exercise for practical thinking is to often stop and observe "What am I trying to express in my inner monologue? What are the feelings and ideas that my soul is brooding over? What other ways can I find to express these feelings and ideas?" This helps us refine the horizontal practical skills, but also orients us vertically.

Ouah Nice skill!
I have often wondered what the significance of rap is for the evolution of consciousness

I see how practical thinking is connecting the vertical with the horizontal, and this can be done with one’s own horizontal, sensory existence too, through the physical tools. As in learning to read the weather patterns, micromanaging the horizontal process doesn’t work. One has to surf through the temporal constraints - rhymes and linguistic patterns or series of observations - using the attractors as loose guidance - be them the astral attractors in this rap or the elemental lawfulness of weather.

[AshvinP]

That’s practical thinking.

Thanks, these descriptions and examples really help me get a solid feel for what is meant by practical thinking.

Playing Chess is an exercise which, in many ways, embodies all these aspect of practical thinking you mentioned. For example, we need to focus on the way the pieces move and picture the possible scenarios of how the movements will unfold, anticipating the game flow which arises as a dynamic tension of our ideas and the opponent's ideas. This requires logical precision, patience, basic concentration, strengthening of memory, and similar qualities of thinking. Some people even play chess 'blindfolded', so they learn to unfold the moves while only relying on the etheric memory spectrum without visual sensory feedback (there is still audial feedback, of course, as the players call out their moves).

A key aspect of improving Chess play is, interestingly enough, selflessness. Of course, this selflessness manifests only within a limited domain for chess players, but it is still quite useful for practical thought life. Many players get stuck at low ratings because they can only remain narrowly focused on their own ideas and plans, the immediate moves they will be making and the proximate positions they want to attain. It becomes like tunnel vision, where we are blinded to the subtle ideas and movements of the other player in the periphery. It is actually quite difficult to try and inhabit the perspective of the other player and focus on their ideas, to pay attention to what their moves and positions are hinting toward. Even though I am keenly conscious of this fact and that it is necessary to play better (which is, ideally, to cultivate a selfless quality of thinking-being), to stop falling into traps and so forth, I find it very difficult to consistently think through the opponent's perspective and ideas for the game. It feels much more natural to introspect my own ideas and plans, and it feels like a huge strain to shift focus toward how the opponent's moves testify to another perspective with its own plans. 

So I can certainly appreciate the value of these practical thinking exercises for the higher life. Yet sensory-intellectual existence and its lawfulness provides a unique intuitive perspective - what Cleric referred to as its 'intrinsic level' above - which takes shape from its fixed-rule patterns and metamorphoses. This does not translate easily to the intrinsic level of supersensible dynamics. We experience quite distinct 'signatures' when weaving within these different frequency bands of spiritual activity, and these signatures suggest distinct (even inverted) ways of approaching them. The only reason I am able to mine pedagogical spiritual value from Chess playing is because I have already introspectively investigated the deeper imaginative dynamics and can see how the fixed-rule patterns can present a microcosmic image of higher-order existence. I already suspect that there are additional inner degrees of freedom through which these patterns can be utilized toward the ideal of inner perfection. Otherwise, I would be in the unfortunate position of millions of other chess players (often young kids), who become conditioned to this fixed-rule lawfulness and their neural pathways become correspondingly rigid. They start to feel like the dynamics of reality will always be graspable through these calculating gestures. Chess playing then ends up reinforcing selfish and unhealthy intellectual habits, and we end up with 'bullet games' where intellectual gestures become even more rushed and erratic.

Of course, this is rarely a consciously adopted stance, but it takes hold of the soul at a deeply subconscious level. This subtle conditioning cannot be over-exaggerated in our time. We know in Waldorf education this kind of highly intellectual work is avoided for young children for the first 7-14 years. It should also be approached carefully for already intellectually developed adults, who are seeking to 'become as children to enter the kingdom of heaven', for similar reasons. Our already rigid neural pathways should once again become more pliable, more receptive to subtle gestures of the spiritual world.  In that sense, I see this dynamic in a practically inverse way. It's not that practical thinking acts as great preparation for the concentrated-meditative life, but that the latter is necessary preparation to approach the former in a free and healthy way. It is easy to lose sight that we can only orient to and discuss the value of practical thinking as we are doing now, because we have already attained some sense of how this spectrum of thinking relates to the deeper supersensible dynamics which seek expression in the sensory spectrum through it. That is, we have already introspectively observed the inner relations to some extent. We have an alternative basis to compare the practical thinking spectrum with.

This is also related to the degeneration of the intellectual soul. We can say that practical thinking (which relates to 'Peter thinking' as well) is necessary in our time to resist the complete automation of the intellectual function, yet because of that degeneration, it also carries the greatest risk of excessive conditioning to its fixed-rule gestures, making souls reliant on it for any orientation to the lawful dynamics of reality (and, as we mentioned before, ML is unfortunately a soul we can see falling into this prison of conditioning in real-time). It's a double-edged sword in that sense. The other edge of the sword is only smoothed out when we become more conscious of how the practical thinking spectrum relates to the depth axis. Higher development revolves around attaining a keener sense of why we are doing what we are doing, what inner functions the exercises serve and what inner states they aim toward. That is why the exercises are never presented as stand alone entities, like we give someone a sudoku puzzle to solve, but always accompanied by detailed reasoning of their inner significance and potential fruits. These are not optional details, in my view, but an integral part of the exercise which renders them more introspective and meditative. 

I realize that this sounds like an almost impossible task. We say that the meditative life is preparation for practical thinking, but what about souls who are not prepared for the meditative life? What else can they use as gradual preparation if not practical thinking exercises? It is a classic Catch-22! The only thing that would render them prepared for practical thinking, is the thing they are not prepared for and seek through practical thinking. The only resolution I see here is that the practical thinking exercises become simultaneously introspective, as in Cleric's suggestion in the last post. When we think of meditative life, we shouldn't only imagine intense concentration that leads to clairvoyant states of experience. Something as simple as trying to observe the meaningful dimensions that our inner commentary is condensing from when it says, "this food tastes really good", is already meditative. No amount of chess games, sudokus, improv lessons, etc. can attain that introspective element for us. The guy in Cleric's video won't awaken to his inner process and utilize it to pursue spiritual ideals (instead of laughs and money) by endlessly refining his freestyle techniques. It is an additional, second-order element that we introduce into the exercises by our conscious orientation to what we are doing and why we are doing it. Once we cultivate that element, then we are prepared to refine our practical thinking and we realize how refining that thinking spectrum is absolutely necessary to harmonically bring the higher life, with its distinct stance and gestures, into the sensory flow.