Fighters for the Spirit

[AshvinP]

...

I came across a timely post on r/Anthroposophy which may you find helpful:

[Federica]

...

I came across a timely post on r/Anthroposophy which may you find helpful:

Great. I'd like to complement the above Steiner quotes with this one which IMHO has high chances to apply. I had in mind this passage when I commented above.

The further you ascend from the physical plane through the astral world into the Devachan realm, the more everything appears to you as a reflection of the physical plane, which you must first learn to read. This is easiest for the student to learn using numbers. Suppose you have the number 543 here on the physical plane; this number is read as its reflection, 345, on the astral plane. Likewise, all other things and freedoms are to be read as reflections. I'll choose a striking example: Here on the physical plane, you observe how the old hen lays the egg and how the young hen develops from the egg. If you consider the same event on the astral plane, you must go backward: there you first have the young hen, the hen becomes smaller and smaller, and finally emerges from the egg. Time also runs backward. You can see how incredibly confusing this must be for the student at first glance. The passions that emanate from a person are seen as in a tableau; they radiate from the center. The reflected passions appear as if a host of animals were rushing at you. People perceive their lower passions as all sorts of wild beasts, as mice, rats, and so on, surrounding them. If the student hasn't learned this, and the first experience of seeing their own passions rushing at them like mice and rats, then pathological conditions such as persecution mania and so forth can easily arise.


Myths and Legends, Occult Signs and Symbols - GA 101
VII. Group Ego and Individual Ego

Retrieved from the Rudolf Steiner Archive

[Federica]

I am not quite clear on the distinction you are drawing here. For example, to pay attention to the experience of the inner voice and its 'translucent' quality certainly requires concentrated thinking, and it's not clear that 'anyone can do it' in the same way as anyone can manipulate mathematical symbols in their imagination. The way that I experience it when comparing them, the former brings us a level deeper into quite unfamiliar gestures. It's not enough to simply recognize that I have an inner voice and it keeps streaming, but I need to pay attention to it within the context of a broader phenomenological exploration. The translucent quality won't become apparent unless I am able to also compare these streaming inner voice perceptions with other perceptual flows which constrain my inner activity and feel less translucent. All of that requires a certain concentration within the inner process, as well as interest and enthusiasm for exploring that process. In my mind, these are exactly the kind of introspective promptings that evaded many on this forum, like Eugene. If this 'lower phenomenology' becomes accessible to the soul, then the thinking perspective is already inverting and it's off to the races - which is to say, none of the other phenomenological promptings will be experienced as 'too difficult' or 'too remote', if the same interest and effort is brought in the soul's engagement with them.


***


I think 'faithfully depicting phenomenological experiences' can be taken in too narrow of a sense. It may seem like we are speaking about only describing the experience of immediately accessible sensory perceptions, mental pictures, inner activity, and so on. Yet we can see from the phenomenological essays that is not the case, as we can also describe potentially accessible experiences through various illustrations and metaphors. This is exactly what provides the larger perspective which serves as context for the dynamics we are exploring in our immediate and lucid intuitive process. As we know, the deeper scales of cognitive experience naturally elucidate what unfolds at our meso-scale, and therefore provides a living context for the latter. And I agree this is what Steiner constantly did. All the lectures about cosmology, the Earth's historical development, physiology, etc. are ways of probing this higher-order cognitive context and giving the listener, who approaches in an introspective mood, a more refined feeling for that context.

What you shared from Max, in my view, also requires introspective effort to attain a concrete sense of what he is metaphorically speaking about. For example, "You would have to represent the mapmaker representing the mapmaker representing etc." (like the hand drawing a hand, drawing a hand drawing a hand, etc.), invites us to translate our picture of recursive mapmaking into the experience of conducting our cognitive activity in abstract scientific inquiries and how the conductor inevitably gets left out of the resulting thought panoramas. If this insight were to stay at the level of 'modern science is rooted in a view from nowhere', then we are simply repeating an observation that has been made by previous philosophical thinkers for centuries. Only when we begin to experience our own cognitive process snapping into the view from nowhere as it explores the lawful relations, do we start bridging toward the imaginative scale of activity.

I made the distinction before. In the example of the experience of the “translucent inner voice” I understand it to mean that there is no attrition between the inner voice and the thinking context from which the voice emanates. There is symbiosis. The inner voice is translucent because it lets the thinking intents manifest in silent language as is. There is no experience of disturbances or deformations. Translucent means it doesn’t stand as a barrier between the intention on one side and the expressed linguistic thought on the other. I think this merging of our intention with the inner voice does not require inversion or concentration. Any healthy person - provided that the good will and enthusiasm for inner exploration are there - can experience that, for example by signing a song in their mind, or counting to ten. Or one can try to answer a quiz like this for example, to experience the difference between the barriers that slow down the search for a possible answer, versus the translucency of the inner voice, as soon as the intention condenses in a clearcut concept (and then again a slight lack of superfluidity in the transformation of the inner voice into the sounding voice).

Yes, in general there is not much motivation to try these things, even if they are accessible. Perhaps there is a sense of complete arbitrariness. It’s felt that it's awkward to imagine that something robust and real can emerge from such subjective exercises, I guess. So the question becomes how to offer a foundation and a context that elicit motivation to step into practice? Why should the reader engage in all the prompts? What they probably don't see is where it is going, and how such personal experiences end up elucidating the nature of reality. Could it be that the various illustrations and metaphors are great to provide the kind of context that helps whomever is already motivated and wants to expand their backing outward, from the center of an already oriented perspective? Could it be that a meta-context would be beneficial? I am not entirely sure at this point.


Regarding "Truth is a person", I agree. What you describe is one level of reading. But even a third-person reading can be thought-provoking and stimulating. That was my point. For example:

"It’s fitting, then, that the scientific ideal of knowledge prioritizes impartiality and absence of personal relationship between the subject and the object of knowledge. After all, how can an unrepresented thing form a relationship to a representation? But the scientific ideal of knowledge implicitly presupposes that reality can be known in this manner and, ipso facto, that reality is of a nature that lends itself to knowledge through this means. This mode of knowledge corresponds with what German designates with the verb wissen and Spanish with the verb saber, both of which generally concern facts and concepts that can be passed from one knower to the next without any relationship to the phenomena or objects from which those facts and concepts were derived.

But there is another kind of knowledge, rooted in sustained experiential encounter. German and Spanish observe this distinction by designating this form of knowledge with a different verb—kennen and conocer, respectively. The latter is the only manner of knowledge by which we can know a person, for instance, without reducing him to something he is not (i.e. like an economic unit or a collection of particles). Indeed, if reality is more like a person than a collection of facts, then it can only be known in this way."

For example here, a very approachable hypothesis is presented: "if reality is more like a person...". This should resonate strongly with the followers of Kastrup, Levin, and all philosopher and scientists of mind caught in the well known dualism. They could react to these sequences of concepts to connect the dots, with their intellect, and touch the truth that the representational mode of knowledge is incommensurate with the idea of conscious nature of reality / mind at large (a person). The evidence of incommensurate methods of knowing has been brilliantly reduced to its simplest form possible, and it should strike the intellectual mind by its limpidity, even without the introspection you point to.

[AshvinP]

I made the distinction before. In the example of the experience of the “translucent inner voice” I understand it to mean that there is no attrition between the inner voice and the thinking context from which the voice emanates. There is symbiosis. The inner voice is translucent because it lets the thinking intents manifest in silent language as is. There is no experience of disturbances or deformations. Translucent means it doesn’t stand as a barrier between the intention on one side and the expressed linguistic thought on the other. I think this merging of our intention with the inner voice does not require inversion or concentration. Any healthy person - provided that the good will and enthusiasm for inner exploration are there - can experience that, for example by signing a song in their mind, or counting to ten. Or one can try to answer a quiz like this for example, to experience the difference between the barriers that slow down the search for a possible answer, versus the translucency of the inner voice, as soon as the intention condenses in a clearcut concept (and then again a slight lack of superfluidity in the transformation of the inner voice into the sounding voice).

Yes, in general there is not much motivation to try these things, even if they are accessible. Perhaps there is a sense of complete arbitrariness. It’s felt that it's awkward to imagine that something robust and real can emerge from such subjective exercises, I guess. So the question becomes how to offer a foundation and a context that elicit motivation to step into practice? Why should the reader engage in all the prompts? What they probably don't see is where it is going, and how such personal experiences end up elucidating the nature of reality. Could it be that the various illustrations and metaphors are great to provide the kind of context that helps whomever is already motivated and wants to expand their backing outward, from the center of an already oriented perspective? Could it be that a meta-context would be beneficial? I am not entirely sure at this point.


Regarding "Truth is a person", I agree. What you describe is one level of reading. But even a third-person reading can be thought-provoking and stimulating. That was my point. For example:

"It’s fitting, then, that the scientific ideal of knowledge prioritizes impartiality and absence of personal relationship between the subject and the object of knowledge. After all, how can an unrepresented thing form a relationship to a representation? But the scientific ideal of knowledge implicitly presupposes that reality can be known in this manner and, ipso facto, that reality is of a nature that lends itself to knowledge through this means. This mode of knowledge corresponds with what German designates with the verb wissen and Spanish with the verb saber, both of which generally concern facts and concepts that can be passed from one knower to the next without any relationship to the phenomena or objects from which those facts and concepts were derived.

But there is another kind of knowledge, rooted in sustained experiential encounter. German and Spanish observe this distinction by designating this form of knowledge with a different verb—kennen and conocer, respectively. The latter is the only manner of knowledge by which we can know a person, for instance, without reducing him to something he is not (i.e. like an economic unit or a collection of particles). Indeed, if reality is more like a person than a collection of facts, then it can only be known in this way."

For example here, a very approachable hypothesis is presented: "if reality is more like a person...". This should resonate strongly with the followers of Kastrup, Levin, and all philosopher and scientists of mind caught in the well known dualism. They could react to these sequences of concepts to connect the dots, with their intellect, and touch the truth that the representational mode of knowledge is incommensurate with the idea of conscious nature of reality / mind at large (a person). The evidence of incommensurate methods of knowing has been brilliantly reduced to its simplest form possible, and it should strike the intellectual mind by its limpidity, even without the introspection you point to.

I think these examples help get at the crux of the matter. For example, someone could read the words you wrote about the translucent inner voice, understand the general meaning of the concepts you used, connect the dots to feel like it is an interesting observation, acknowledge and agree with that observation, yet still completely lack the import of what is implied. What is implied can never be explained at the level of conceptual sequences and panoramas, it can never be evoked by performing simple exercises, but only through performing such exercises self-consciously, i.e. turning attention in an entirely orthogonal direction to the content of the inner voice and placing that focused experience within a wider context of what we are continually doing through our imaginative lives. As we often mention, this is why introspective exercises are always accompanied by ample description of what they aim to do and to what general experiences they can lead, and how they fit into what we normally do with our thinking. Such context provides an introspective basis of comparison along the cognitive gradient.

We should feel how this is a very slippery distinction. It's not very easy to tell what remains at the level of conceptual understanding, i.e., the intellect sensing some harmonious meaning as the concepts click together, and what is instead rooted in concrete inner experience which expands intuitive orientation to the inner dynamics. And this is what led to endless "agreement" from Eugene, because the former was conflated with the latter. With the latter, the translucence of our inner voice becomes a description for our felt temporal intuition of its movement. That expanding temporal intuition is lacking in the mental tableaus, which can only be woven through computational gestures. The counting exercise is a good example, but again, only when it is done self-consciously. The soul should have heightened attention to the fact that there is something concealed within its counting gestures - the true intuitive life of its "I" - that 'explain' the inner voice in a way completely orthogonal to its ordinary explanatory movements.

"I am the Light of the world... Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true, for I know whence I came from and wither I go; but you do not know from whence I came or wither I go. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one." (John 8)

I know this is also what you were pointing to in your description of the inner voice only because I have also experienced it. It is simply impossible, on the other hand, for one who has not experienced it to recognize what you were pointing to. Like you said, our already oriented perspective is what makes the difference. Yet this particular kind of orientation only comes by faithfully pushing with the will into the unknown territory of the inner dynamics, never through a sequencing of concepts, no matter how encompassing this sequencing comes. The latter will always be "judging according to the flesh". So the level of understanding you are speaking of with Max's article is certainly helpful, but we should be clear it is no different than what Steiner was saying about Catholic philosophers and theologians. Indeed, the Catholic stream refined this philosophy of God/Truth is a person to its utmost extent. In other words, it is what such thinkers accomplished centuries ago with their intellectual movements and what every soul since then, who has immersed themselves in such logical arguments, has been able to attain as well.

I think that ML, BK, and others would contemplate such an argument and say, "Exactly, this fits nicely with my intuitions of the Divine as well and I completely agree with this idea". BK may quibble about the personal essence of MAL, but the general content of the idea would feel like something he has already thoroughly explored through his exposure to Western philosophy and theology. It is nothing new in the history of such thought and, despite its logical persuasiveness, it never led a single such thinker into the depth axis of real-time inner activity. The representational mode of knowledge won't feel insufficient or incommensurate with seeking Truth as a person until another more intimate mode of knowledge is tasted. At best, the familiar mode is felt insufficient and we end up with the Kantian impenetrable veil philosophy, which we know takes the strongest grip on the soul. Only when 'Truth is a person' is approached introspectively, does it truly strike the mind as something worth pursuing further in an orthogonal direction to standard philosophizing.

At the root of this discussion seems to be the given fact that it is difficult for the modern intellectual soul to feel motivated to move in an orthogonal direction from its familiar gestures into a novel kind of inner activity and perspective on the World Content. And that is indeed a given fact. Our default state is one of disinterest in such efforts. But what we also know is that the soul will eventually need to make this orthogonal movement if it wants to exit the waiting room bottleneck at the threshold. The more our inner activity becomes accustomed to the familiar movements, and feels these familiar movements expanding its mental tableau in a satisfactory way, the less it feels any burning need to move orthogonally. It may often be 'better than nothing' for the soul to build up a convincing mental tableau in this way (although not always), but when we are given opportunities to complement such tableaus with explicit guidelines for introspection, I simply see no convincing reason to hide this element until we feel the receiving soul is prepared. I don't see any need to shirk away from that element out of fear of the receiving soul's disinterested reaction. We can lead the horse to water, but we can't force it to drink. And the more we simply talk to the horse about how drinking the water is appetizing, the more we risk 'burying the lead', i.e., the simple fact that the horse is already drinking the water and has simply forgotten what it is doing. 

[AshvinP]

The more our inner activity becomes accustomed to the familiar movements, and feels these familiar movements expanding its mental tableau in a satisfactory way, the less it feels any burning need to move orthogonally.

By the way, I think we all have intimate experience with how this trajectory plays out. We may have an unhealthy habit, for example, which we have recognized quite clearly as incommensurate with our ideal life trajectory, and we start thinking about how we will wean our soul from its conditioning. Yet this conditioning pushes back strongly, so we say that will 'start the weaning tomorrow'. Then one day becomes a week, a week becomes a few months, a few months becomes a few years, and those years may very well last the rest of our lives. And with many such habits that are rooted in our deeper soul structure - our general temperament and disposition - it is reasonable not to expect a radical transformation in our current lifetime, even if we are doing the introspective work. We can't beat ourselves up about that or try to wean off of many such habits immediately and simultaneously. Yet it is precisely in our imaginative life, by which we conduct our intellectual inquiries about existence, where there is the most accessibility and pliability for the weaning process. It is the domain where we can finally stop procrastinating with rationalized excuses and get a foothold from which this process can begin in earnest. Yet that is only possible if we are given some explicit nudges in the right direction from another soul who has traveled the path, such that we can suspect this imaginative weaning is even possible and, once suspected possible and understood to some extent, worth pursuing deeper and deeper. 

As it so happens, I just came across a relevant imagination from Martin on FB:

ON BABUSHKA AND THE DOLLS: A CHRISTMAS IMAGINATION





With thanks to Richard Cooper for his inspirational Christmas post appended in the Facebook link below.

We call them Babushka dolls. The Russians call them matryoshka. We're wrong. But we got something right.

The old Russian story goes like this. Three Wise Men knocked on Babushka's door on their way to Bethlehem. Come with us, they said. See the newborn King. She fed them. Listened to their story. But she had a warm fire. Clean floors. Tomorrow, she said. I'll come tomorrow. By morning she knew. She gathered toys and went out into the snow. But she hadn't asked them the way. Now she wanders every Christmas Eve with her sack of toys, looking at sleeping children, asking if this one is the Christ-child. She never finds him. She'll never stop looking.

The matryoshka dolls do the same thing. Each holds another inside. Smaller and smaller. Same painted face going down and down. All waiting. Never opened.

Here's what matters. You're born into a people from outside. Not just your body. Your soul comes from before. It carries what you were. The people's spirit catches you. Shapes the body your soul inhabits. Moulds your blood. Your bones. The way thoughts move through you. You don't choose it. Your soul chose it before birth. Before memory.

The Russian spirit carries futures inside present forms. Soul capacities not yet awake. Waiting for an age that hasn't come. The matryoshka show this perfectly. Each doll complete but holding another within. Your soul is like this. What you are now holds what you'll become. But most people never crack open. Never pull out the next self waiting inside.

Babushka chose comfort over cold. One night. One choice. Her soul knew what it needed to do. Her body stayed by the fire. Now she wanders bearing gifts she can't deliver to a child she can't find. Split. Her soul seeking what her body refused.

We do this too. Every Christmas the same choice comes. Your soul knows. Your body wants warmth. Most of us stay. We say tomorrow. Then we become her. Or we become the dolls. Complete on the outside. The inner selves never born. Soul capacities never awakened. Gifts never given.
But you can choose the wandering. Let your soul lead your body into cold. Carry others' burdens knowing you won't see the end. That transforms everything. Her tragedy becomes your sacrifice. Her split becomes your wholeness.

The choice is now. Your soul remembers why it came. Your body wants the fire.

Tomorrow you're already wandering. The question is which part of you chose it.

The matryoshka don't open themselves. Your soul must crack your body open.

[Kaje977]

ON BABUSHKA AND THE DOLLS: A CHRISTMAS IMAGINATION





With thanks to Richard Cooper for his inspirational Christmas post appended in the Facebook link below.

We call them Babushka dolls. The Russians call them matryoshka. We're wrong. But we got something right.

The old Russian story goes like this. Three Wise Men knocked on Babushka's door on their way to Bethlehem. Come with us, they said. See the newborn King. She fed them. Listened to their story. But she had a warm fire. Clean floors. Tomorrow, she said. I'll come tomorrow. By morning she knew. She gathered toys and went out into the snow. But she hadn't asked them the way. Now she wanders every Christmas Eve with her sack of toys, looking at sleeping children, asking if this one is the Christ-child. She never finds him. She'll never stop looking.

The matryoshka dolls do the same thing. Each holds another inside. Smaller and smaller. Same painted face going down and down. All waiting. Never opened.

Here's what matters. You're born into a people from outside. Not just your body. Your soul comes from before. It carries what you were. The people's spirit catches you. Shapes the body your soul inhabits. Moulds your blood. Your bones. The way thoughts move through you. You don't choose it. Your soul chose it before birth. Before memory.

The Russian spirit carries futures inside present forms. Soul capacities not yet awake. Waiting for an age that hasn't come. The matryoshka show this perfectly. Each doll complete but holding another within. Your soul is like this. What you are now holds what you'll become. But most people never crack open. Never pull out the next self waiting inside.

Babushka chose comfort over cold. One night. One choice. Her soul knew what it needed to do. Her body stayed by the fire. Now she wanders bearing gifts she can't deliver to a child she can't find. Split. Her soul seeking what her body refused.

We do this too. Every Christmas the same choice comes. Your soul knows. Your body wants warmth. Most of us stay. We say tomorrow. Then we become her. Or we become the dolls. Complete on the outside. The inner selves never born. Soul capacities never awakened. Gifts never given.
But you can choose the wandering. Let your soul lead your body into cold. Carry others' burdens knowing you won't see the end. That transforms everything. Her tragedy becomes your sacrifice. Her split becomes your wholeness.

The choice is now. Your soul remembers why it came. Your body wants the fire.

Tomorrow you're already wandering. The question is which part of you chose it.

The matryoshka don't open themselves. Your soul must crack your body open.

A very beautiful story Ashvin. I'm not sure why (maybe just a wrong memory), but the story feels very familiar, I believe I heard it long ago in primary school, I believe. Or I'm just mixing it up with the story of the Three Wise Men in the Gospel. And the timing couldn't be, once again, more perfect : -)

[Federica]

We should feel how this is a very slippery distinction. It's not very easy to tell what remains at the level of conceptual understanding, i.e., the intellect sensing some harmonious meaning as the concepts click together, and what is instead rooted in concrete inner experience which expands intuitive orientation to the inner dynamics. And this is what led to endless "agreement" from Eugene, because the former was conflated with the latter. With the latter, the translucence of our inner voice becomes a description for our felt temporal intuition of its movement. That expanding temporal intuition is lacking in the mental tableaus, which can only be woven through computational gestures. The counting exercise is a good example, but again, only when it is done self-consciously. The soul should have heightened attention to the fact that there is something concealed within its counting gestures - the true intuitive life of its "I" - that 'explain' the inner voice in a way completely orthogonal to its ordinary explanatory movements.

"I am the Light of the world... Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true, for I know whence I came from and wither I go; but you do not know from whence I came or wither I go. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one." (John 8)

I know this is also what you were pointing to in your description of the inner voice only because I have also experienced it. It is simply impossible, on the other hand, for one who has not experienced it to recognize what you were pointing to. Like you said, our already oriented perspective is what makes the difference. Yet this particular kind of orientation only comes by faithfully pushing with the will into the unknown territory of the inner dynamics, never through a sequencing of concepts, no matter how encompassing this sequencing comes. The latter will always be "judging according to the flesh". So the level of understanding you are speaking of with Max's article is certainly helpful, but we should be clear it is no different than what Steiner was saying about Catholic philosophers and theologians. Indeed, the Catholic stream refined this philosophy of God/Truth is a person to its utmost extent. In other words, it is what such thinkers accomplished centuries ago with their intellectual movements and what every soul since then, who has immersed themselves in such logical arguments, has been able to attain as well.

I think that ML, BK, and others would contemplate such an argument and say, "Exactly, this fits nicely with my intuitions of the Divine as well and I completely agree with this idea". BK may quibble about the personal essence of MAL, but the general content of the idea would feel like something he has already thoroughly explored through his exposure to Western philosophy and theology. It is nothing new in the history of such thought and, despite its logical persuasiveness, it never led a single such thinker into the depth axis of real-time inner activity. The representational mode of knowledge won't feel insufficient or incommensurate with seeking Truth as a person until another more intimate mode of knowledge is tasted. At best, the familiar mode is felt insufficient and we end up with the Kantian impenetrable veil philosophy, which we know takes the strongest grip on the soul. Only when 'Truth is a person' is approached introspectively, does it truly strike the mind as something worth pursuing further in an orthogonal direction to standard philosophizing.

At the root of this discussion seems to be the given fact that it is difficult for the modern intellectual soul to feel motivated to move in an orthogonal direction from its familiar gestures into a novel kind of inner activity and perspective on the World Content. And that is indeed a given fact. Our default state is one of disinterest in such efforts. But what we also know is that the soul will eventually need to make this orthogonal movement if it wants to exit the waiting room bottleneck at the threshold. The more our inner activity becomes accustomed to the familiar movements, and feels these familiar movements expanding its mental tableau in a satisfactory way, the less it feels any burning need to move orthogonally. It may often be 'better than nothing' for the soul to build up a convincing mental tableau in this way (although not always), but when we are given opportunities to complement such tableaus with explicit guidelines for introspection, I simply see no convincing reason to hide this element until we feel the receiving soul is prepared. I don't see any need to shirk away from that element out of fear of the receiving soul's disinterested reaction. We can lead the horse to water, but we can't force it to drink. And the more we simply talk to the horse about how drinking the water is appetizing, the more we risk 'burying the lead', i.e., the simple fact that the horse is already drinking the water and has simply forgotten what it is doing. 

Ashvin,

It would be interesting to know whether you feel that Cleric's latest essay so far is also not going to lead "a single such thinker into the depth axis of real-time inner activity"? From part II:

everything we have developed so far requires nothing more than sound observation of the first-person IO process.

Is this sound observation fully accessible to the intellect?

[AshvinP]

We should feel how this is a very slippery distinction. It's not very easy to tell what remains at the level of conceptual understanding, i.e., the intellect sensing some harmonious meaning as the concepts click together, and what is instead rooted in concrete inner experience which expands intuitive orientation to the inner dynamics. And this is what led to endless "agreement" from Eugene, because the former was conflated with the latter. With the latter, the translucence of our inner voice becomes a description for our felt temporal intuition of its movement. That expanding temporal intuition is lacking in the mental tableaus, which can only be woven through computational gestures. The counting exercise is a good example, but again, only when it is done self-consciously. The soul should have heightened attention to the fact that there is something concealed within its counting gestures - the true intuitive life of its "I" - that 'explain' the inner voice in a way completely orthogonal to its ordinary explanatory movements.

"I am the Light of the world... Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true, for I know whence I came from and wither I go; but you do not know from whence I came or wither I go. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one." (John 8)

I know this is also what you were pointing to in your description of the inner voice only because I have also experienced it. It is simply impossible, on the other hand, for one who has not experienced it to recognize what you were pointing to. Like you said, our already oriented perspective is what makes the difference. Yet this particular kind of orientation only comes by faithfully pushing with the will into the unknown territory of the inner dynamics, never through a sequencing of concepts, no matter how encompassing this sequencing comes. The latter will always be "judging according to the flesh". So the level of understanding you are speaking of with Max's article is certainly helpful, but we should be clear it is no different than what Steiner was saying about Catholic philosophers and theologians. Indeed, the Catholic stream refined this philosophy of God/Truth is a person to its utmost extent. In other words, it is what such thinkers accomplished centuries ago with their intellectual movements and what every soul since then, who has immersed themselves in such logical arguments, has been able to attain as well.

I think that ML, BK, and others would contemplate such an argument and say, "Exactly, this fits nicely with my intuitions of the Divine as well and I completely agree with this idea". BK may quibble about the personal essence of MAL, but the general content of the idea would feel like something he has already thoroughly explored through his exposure to Western philosophy and theology. It is nothing new in the history of such thought and, despite its logical persuasiveness, it never led a single such thinker into the depth axis of real-time inner activity. The representational mode of knowledge won't feel insufficient or incommensurate with seeking Truth as a person until another more intimate mode of knowledge is tasted. At best, the familiar mode is felt insufficient and we end up with the Kantian impenetrable veil philosophy, which we know takes the strongest grip on the soul. Only when 'Truth is a person' is approached introspectively, does it truly strike the mind as something worth pursuing further in an orthogonal direction to standard philosophizing.

At the root of this discussion seems to be the given fact that it is difficult for the modern intellectual soul to feel motivated to move in an orthogonal direction from its familiar gestures into a novel kind of inner activity and perspective on the World Content. And that is indeed a given fact. Our default state is one of disinterest in such efforts. But what we also know is that the soul will eventually need to make this orthogonal movement if it wants to exit the waiting room bottleneck at the threshold. The more our inner activity becomes accustomed to the familiar movements, and feels these familiar movements expanding its mental tableau in a satisfactory way, the less it feels any burning need to move orthogonally. It may often be 'better than nothing' for the soul to build up a convincing mental tableau in this way (although not always), but when we are given opportunities to complement such tableaus with explicit guidelines for introspection, I simply see no convincing reason to hide this element until we feel the receiving soul is prepared. I don't see any need to shirk away from that element out of fear of the receiving soul's disinterested reaction. We can lead the horse to water, but we can't force it to drink. And the more we simply talk to the horse about how drinking the water is appetizing, the more we risk 'burying the lead', i.e., the simple fact that the horse is already drinking the water and has simply forgotten what it is doing. 

Ashvin,

It would be interesting to know whether you feel that Cleric's latest essay so far is also not going to lead "a single such thinker into the depth axis of real-time inner activity"? From part II:

everything we have developed so far requires nothing more than sound observation of the first-person IO process.

Is this sound observation fully accessible to the intellect?

Federica,

My feeling is that what the latest essay can lead to will depend entirely on the how the reader approaches and works with the content. What I was referring to in that quote was what Cleric metaphorically describes as "thrusting ourselves into a pipeline of mental potato processing and producing a satisfying Minecraft computer (MC)". This will never lead the mental potato processor into the depth axis of the intuitive game flow, no matter how satisfying the imaginative outputs are. The outputs about the structure of spiritual reality would continue hanging in the air as abstractions, and as Cleric put it, "there is something the words can point to only if we have tried to experiment and come to know the experiential reality that the words symbolize." And it is perfectly possible for someone to work through the entire essay, feel satisfied with the understanding of "superimposed IO flows", relate these concepts to other esoteric concepts they have learned, and so on, yet remain treading the surface and oblivious to the experience of the depth axis. Such a person would probably say, "This is a very interesting way to express it, but it is nothing new or groundbreaking, nor is it particularly important for me to continue working with. I already learned these elegant ideas about reality by studying the esoteric system of X, Y, or Z", like Marco.

What you quoted from Cleric, otoh, is synonymous with the introspective approach, in my view. This first-person observation of the IO process, which is most intuitively attuned in our cognitive flow, is fully accessible to the intellect. Indeed, it is the only aspect of the depth axis that is initially accessible to the intellect. In an interesting way, all the lawful IO dynamics of reality that the intellect imagines is accessible to it, like the laws of biology or physics, are actually the furthest removed from it. If we take the driving example that Cleric provided, we can imagine a situation where our conversation with the passenger became centered around the intuitive driving experience itself. For example, the passenger starts speaking about the unique intuitive language of the driving experience, its IO vocabulary and relations. Now we experience the conversation as gentle reminders of how to focus on that real-time intuitive driving experience, rather than something that distracts our attention from the experience and forces the latter to recede sharply into the background (as we would if the conversation was about anything else). Now the IO flows of driving and conversing are experienced more as a holistic harmony. That is what is always necessary for consciousness to attune within the depth axis, and what should serve as our guiding star for pedagogical purposes in this domain.