The Game Loop: Part 1 Mental pipelines

[Federica]

In any case, I am ready to come back to this specific point if you wish, let me just give it more thought.

Yes, that would be good Federica, and also the related point that becoming proficient at a game, just like a sport, scientific technique, or artistic practice, can become synonymous with strengthening and disciplining the imaginative-will process, and that we can always make what we are doing within this process more conscious. Therefore, there is always potential spiritual educational value from experimenting with such pursuits. I think it goes without saying that I am only interested in exploring these things based on phenomenological experience and corresponding insights, as a way of improving our orientation to the inner process, its characteristic dynamics, and its potential for refinement and expansion, not as a matter of theoretical argumentation or debate. Thanks.

First you have now shifted the topic to “virtual spaces” rather than games. These two sets only intersect. We can discuss virtual spaces too, but here we were discussing games, not virtual spaces in general, so I will stick to games for now. Surely, in what you call imaginative rehearsal - by which you basically mean reflecting about things to come, by oneself and in a quiet environment/home - one may feel safe, comfortable, protected, shielded from the outside and from direct contact with people. Every sane person needs some of that.

Now you are saying that a video game is an extension of this “imaginative rehearsal space”. I can’t agree with that. I agree that by playing video games, one may address a need for feeling safe, comfortable, protected within the intimacy of a private physical space. And this may become precisely one of those out-of-focus motives that induce someone to play daily video games. But that’s very different from education. If I’m home alone and calmly rehearse my engagements for the next day, or if I play my usual video game because it brings peace and comfort to my stressed mind, I can’t say that I am educating myself: I am merely satisfying a need through the repetition of a habit. Some would smoke instead, or drink a glass of wine to unwind. Education is something entirely different, it’s a willful effort, and in the context of the path of living thinking, education should moreover respond to additional criteria, as we know.

A video game can’t be simply an extension of our quiet reflection space, also because it is a model. In our reflection space we have large freedom to shape the space as we want. We may meditate, we may study, we may rehearse and ponder, etcetera, whereas a game is a shell with gross rules of transformation inside. As long as we keep them gross, it takes very little to look around and extract whatever metaphorical educational value there may be. And if we want to make the rules less gross, we have no choice but to make the game resemble life at large, which means, we build a transparent materialistic private island of consciousness in which we can indulge in our out-of-focus materialistic drives. As I said above (which you have ignored) we fall in the MoE trap, that is, in Cleric’s words, in the desire to "build the perfect model of reality".

Because of this trade-off typical of games, I say that their educational value beyond what Cleric has called interactive demos, is typically zero, for adults. When the games are too simple to work as Metaphors of Everything, they may be instructive, but their educational value is quickly exhausted. Like, the elastic circles interactive demo is great, but you wouldn't go on playing it every day, on and on. One may try it a few times, possibly return to it from time to time, and that’s it. And it has no big entertainment value (I believe). Conversely, when the game rules are made complex, we are leaning toward building a perfect model of reality, which means that we are creating a transparent shell that satisfies our materialistic-modeling drives. We create a simile for the world at large, but with a very convenient inbuilt control panel. So I really can’t find this parallel with the educational value of art, science, sports, etcetera, that you speak of.

I guess chess as a game, in its digital form, is more or less in the middle of the spectrum I have just delineated. I am curious, may I ask you a question? In the last online chess game you have played, what is the additional educational value you have extracted that you had not already gained from previous games? And can you say that such educational value was preponderant compared to the relaxing, calming, or entertaining value?

[AshvinP]

First you have now shifted the topic to “virtual spaces” rather than games. These two sets only intersect. We can discuss virtual spaces too, but here we were discussing games, not virtual spaces in general, so I will stick to games for now. Surely, in what you call imaginative rehearsal - by which you basically mean reflecting about things to come, by oneself and in a quiet environment/home - one may feel safe, comfortable, protected, shielded from the outside and from direct contact with people. Every sane person needs some of that.

Now you are saying that a video game is an extension of this “imaginative rehearsal space”. I can’t agree with that. I agree that by playing video games, one may address a need for feeling safe, comfortable, protected within the intimacy of a private physical space. And this may become precisely one of those out-of-focus motives that induce someone to play daily video games. But that’s very different from education. If I’m home alone and calmly rehearse my engagements for the next day, or if I play my usual video game because it brings peace and comfort to my stressed mind, I can’t say that I am educating myself: I am merely satisfying a need through the repetition of a habit. Some would smoke instead, or drink a glass of wine to unwind. Education is something entirely different, it’s a willful effort, and in the context of the path of living thinking, education should moreover respond to additional criteria, as we know.

A video game can’t be simply an extension of our quiet reflection space, also because it is a model. In our reflection space we have large freedom to shape the space as we want. We may meditate, we may study, we may rehearse and ponder, etcetera, whereas a game is a shell with gross rules of transformation inside. As long as we keep them gross, it takes very little to look around and extract whatever metaphorical educational value there may be. And if we want to make the rules less gross, we have no choice but to make the game resemble life at large, which means, we build a transparent materialistic private island of consciousness in which we can indulge in our out-of-focus materialistic drives. As I said above (which you have ignored) we fall in the MoE trap, that is, in Cleric’s words, in the desire to "build the perfect model of reality".

Because of this trade-off typical of games, I say that their educational value beyond what Cleric has called interactive demos, is typically zero, for adults. When the games are too simple to work as Metaphors of Everything, they may be instructive, but their educational value is quickly exhausted. Like, the elastic circles interactive demo is great, but you wouldn't go on playing it every day, on and on. One may try it a few times, possibly return to it from time to time, and that’s it. And it has no big entertainment value (I believe). Conversely, when the game rules are made complex, we are leaning toward building a perfect model of reality, which means that we are creating a transparent shell that satisfies our materialistic-modeling drives. We create a simile for the world at large, but with a very convenient inbuilt control panel. So I really can’t find this parallel with the educational value of art, science, sports, etcetera, that you speak of.

I guess chess as a game, in its digital form, is more or less in the middle of the spectrum I have just delineated. I am curious, may I ask you a question? In the last online chess game you have played, what is the additional educational value you have extracted that you had not already gained from previous games? And can you say that such educational value was preponderant compared to the relaxing, calming, or entertaining value?

Thanks for addressing this point, Federica. 

I think Cleric has shown quite well in this essay how all computer technology and corresponding 'spaces' of activity (including digital games) must evidently be extensions of the imaginative rehearsal space, where we manipulate and transform mental images that carry symbolic meaning (for example, in performing mathematical operations). They are simply ways of automating those mental operations, such that the latter are amplified and generated 'at scale', so to speak. Anything that we can accomplish through computer software is something that we could theoretically accomplish within our imaginative rehearsal space with infinite time and energy (or with potato pipelines, marbles, etc.). 

To begin answering your questions, I think it's helpful to first explore the principle of imaginative concentration a bit more. We know that we should take a simple, imaginative theme as the object of our concentrated movements. So let's take the circle drawing exercise from Cleric's last essay. We could even say we have constructed a very simple 'game' here with a single 'rule' of transformation. The only rule is that our inputting activity concentrates its full force on moving smoothly in a circle, and then we try to remain as receptive as possible to the feedback of imaginative outputs. There are no other tactical or strategic flows immediately involved (they are still there in the background), as we encounter in most other games and when navigating ordinary life circumstances. It is true that in our imaginative rehearsal space, we could freely move the pencil in any direction we wanted (or felt mysteriously compelled) and create any shape that we wanted, or start thinking about what to eat later, but that would negate the value of the concentration. Instead, we voluntarily constrain our imaginative activity within a one-dimensional rule set, like we are creating a laminar virtual game flow, such that we create the conditions to more keenly sense the inner process and the supersensible context in which it always unfolds. 

Would we say that, based on the simplicity of this game, its potential educational value will be quickly exhausted, and then we must find a different game to concentrate on? Can we only draw the imaginative circle a few rotations before it no longer yields any inner fruit? Or is it rather the case that there is infinite educational value to be mined from this simple concentrated exercise, and in a sense, that value reservoir exists precisely because we have voluntarily sacrificed the 'freedom' of our imaginative rehearsal space (which is actually its highly conditioned, associative movements within the imaginative volume that draw it to this or that meaning) through the artificial constraints of the game? 

In this sense, the principle of 'exhausting value' doesn't quite apply to concentration exercises and supersensible insights. It's very interesting to contemplate why. Basically, it's because 'knowing' an aspect of supersensible reality is not primarily about learning new facts, but about continually refining one's intuitive feeling for that aspect by encountering it from the most varied angles and with increasing intensity. It is about learning to take an already encountered aspect more and more seriously, which also eventually leads to deeper aspects revealing themselves to our increasingly serious gaze (all such aspects are traceable to beings, of course). These aspects can never be memorized and recalled in the same way we memorize facts about the sensory world, but must be continuously kindled anew through concentrated activity.

And these varied angles don't necessarily require different games, metaphors, themes, and so on, although that variation should certainly be helpful, because, as our perspective within any given exercise deepens, the 'angles' on supersensible reality also morph. In other words, our continually compounding intuitive perspective is intimately bound up with what aspects can reveal themselves and their deeper workings. We can easily verify that this is the case by working with the same forum essay experiments and exercises over and over again, for example. As you said to Kaje, the intuitive flow becomes increasingly densified and thus can be engaged with more seriously, like we normally engage the sensory flow. There will be no exhaustion of their value, unless we lose interest, enthusiasm, perform them mechanically, take them less seriously, and so on (which is a real risk).

All of this is most clearly experienced in the simple 'game' of imaginative concentration, yet it is also implicitly in the background of the more standard attempts to become proficient within the imaginative process. It is well-exemplified in sporting games like chess, because as you climb the ratings, the intuitive game signature also morphs. The tactical and strategic flows are experienced quite differently, almost as if playing a new game (which corresponds to new 'angles' on the intuitive flow). But again, even that is not necessary for the endless spiritual educational value. What is most important is the perspective, persistence, and enthusiasm we bring to exploring the intuitive process that is always present within the flow of such games and our life activities in general. 

I keep forgetting to start a running list of the various supersensible insights sparked by experimenting with chess, but maybe I will start now. One of the more recent ones relates to blindfold chess. The players are only told every next move by the opponent, but cannot see these moves reflected on a physical or virtual board. So, with each new move, we would need to 'manually' update the board state in our memory spectrum without any sensory images to anchor that updating process. Then we may experience it something like this:



Such experimentation can really give us a better intuitive feel for the difference between intellectual-sensory thinking and imaginative cognition, as Steiner describes:

"What is attained when we try to strengthen thought by earnest meditation? I already explained to you that meditation must begin by strengthening thought to such an extent that it becomes a transformed memory. Our ordinary memory contains inner pictures that reproduce the experiences of our ordinary earthly life since our birth. Through memory, the picture of some real event stands before the soul, and that our soul-life is healthily connected with the external world in which we live, is guaranteed by the fact that we do not somehow mix up things fantastically, but that our memory-pictures indicate things which really existed.

We must therefore come to the point of being able to place before our soul, in the imaginative understanding described in the last few days, pictures which resemble our ordinary memory pictures. These pictures simply arise by our more and more bringing meditation concepts into our consciousness, and thus strengthening the soul-faculty of thinking, just as a muscle is made strong through exercise. We must reach the point of strengthening thinking to such an extent that it can live within its own content, in the same way in which we ordinarily live within our sense-experiences through our senses."

There is still minimal sensory support in blind chess, because we need at least the sensation informing us of the next move by our opponent, but other than that, the imaginative game flow unfolds entirely supersensibly. The imaginative 'chessboard on the ceiling' can become almost like a physical board for us that is updated more effortlessly, as our inner activity becomes more accustomed to living within its own content. I suspect such exercises would translate quite directly to fruits in imaginative meditation sessions, although I haven't experimented much with this blindfold chess yet. 

(As a side note, it's interesting that the ancient initiates seeded games like chess precisely as a symbolic pedagogical tool for the average population that was losing its direct intuitive connection with the spiritual world. When we approach the game in this pedagogical way, it is like we are tapping back into the intentional curvatures of the ancient initiates, which had been buried in the soul depths underneath the rubble of the crystallized intellect, bringing those intents to fulfillment.)

It is certainly the case that the entertainment, emotional, or lower intellectual value of such games (just as any activity in life) will be experienced as preponderant to the educational value for some time, but we know progress is being made when that balance shifts and the preponderance becomes less and less, the educational value shines through more and more. For example, the moves on a chessboard can be experienced much like the moving cars on the highway. At first, when we see a car going faster than us, switching lanes, accelerating quickly, making noises, honking, and so on, our soul volume immediately stirs, and we cannot help but feel annoyed, frustrated, angry, impatient, etc. Yet the more we can concentrate within the flow and become interested in what these soul stirrings are trying to teach us, by resisting their immediate expression, the more we can navigate the flow calmly and smoothly. We don't immediately draw all kinds of inferences from the opponent's moves and allow our soul to be dragged along with those inferences, but instead, we try to dispassionately feel how all the moves fit within a wider intuitive flow context of ideas and counter-ideas, of soul habits and impulses. It can eventually become second nature to experience the game flow in this more pedagogical way.

PS - to be clear, none of this is to suggest that we can expect to develop spiritually by funneling all of our time into such games in this way, just as we cannot do so by funneling all our time into imaginative concentration. We always need a wholesome, well-rounded development that includes our ordinary life duties, and also ample study-meditation of spiritual scientific content that enriches our intuitive context.

[Federica]

Thanks for addressing this point, Federica. 

I think Cleric has shown quite well in this essay how all computer technology and corresponding 'spaces' of activity (including digital games) must evidently be extensions of the imaginative rehearsal space, where we manipulate and transform mental images that carry symbolic meaning (for example, in performing mathematical operations). They are simply ways of automating those mental operations, such that the latter are amplified and generated 'at scale', so to speak. Anything that we can accomplish through computer software is something that we could theoretically accomplish within our imaginative rehearsal space with infinite time and energy (or with potato pipelines, marbles, etc.). 

To begin answering your questions, I think it's helpful to first explore the principle of imaginative concentration a bit more. We know that we should take a simple, imaginative theme as the object of our concentrated movements. So let's take the circle drawing exercise from Cleric's last essay. We could even say we have constructed a very simple 'game' here with a single 'rule' of transformation. The only rule is that our inputting activity concentrates its full force on moving smoothly in a circle, and then we try to remain as receptive as possible to the feedback of imaginative outputs. There are no other tactical or strategic flows immediately involved (they are still there in the background), as we encounter in most other games and when navigating ordinary life circumstances. It is true that in our imaginative rehearsal space, we could freely move the pencil in any direction we wanted (or felt mysteriously compelled) and create any shape that we wanted, or start thinking about what to eat later, but that would negate the value of the concentration. Instead, we voluntarily constrain our imaginative activity within a one-dimensional rule set, like we are creating a laminar virtual game flow, such that we create the conditions to more keenly sense the inner process and the supersensible context in which it always unfolds. 

Would we say that, based on the simplicity of this game, its potential educational value will be quickly exhausted, and then we must find a different game to concentrate on? Can we only draw the imaginative circle a few rotations before it no longer yields any inner fruit? Or is it rather the case that there is infinite educational value to be mined from this simple concentrated exercise, and in a sense, that value reservoir exists precisely because we have voluntarily sacrificed the 'freedom' of our imaginative rehearsal space (which is actually its highly conditioned, associative movements within the imaginative volume that draw it to this or that meaning) through the artificial constraints of the game? 

In this sense, the principle of 'exhausting value' doesn't quite apply to concentration exercises and supersensible insights. It's very interesting to contemplate why. Basically, it's because 'knowing' an aspect of supersensible reality is not primarily about learning new facts, but about continually refining one's intuitive feeling for that aspect by encountering it from the most varied angles and with increasing intensity. It is about learning to take an already encountered aspect more and more seriously, which also eventually leads to deeper aspects revealing themselves to our increasingly serious gaze (all such aspects are traceable to beings, of course). These aspects can never be memorized and recalled in the same way we memorize facts about the sensory world, but must be continuously kindled anew through concentrated activity.

And these varied angles don't necessarily require different games, metaphors, themes, and so on, although that variation should certainly be helpful, because, as our perspective within any given exercise deepens, the 'angles' on supersensible reality also morph. In other words, our continually compounding intuitive perspective is intimately bound up with what aspects can reveal themselves and their deeper workings. We can easily verify that this is the case by working with the same forum essay experiments and exercises over and over again, for example. As you said to Kaje, the intuitive flow becomes increasingly densified and thus can be engaged with more seriously, like we normally engage the sensory flow. There will be no exhaustion of their value, unless we lose interest, enthusiasm, perform them mechanically, take them less seriously, and so on (which is a real risk).

All of this is most clearly experienced in the simple 'game' of imaginative concentration, yet it is also implicitly in the background of the more standard attempts to become proficient within the imaginative process. It is well-exemplified in sporting games like chess, because as you climb the ratings, the intuitive game signature also morphs. The tactical and strategic flows are experienced quite differently, almost as if playing a new game (which corresponds to new 'angles' on the intuitive flow). But again, even that is not necessary for the endless spiritual educational value. What is most important is the perspective, persistence, and enthusiasm we bring to exploring the intuitive process that is always present within the flow of such games and our life activities in general. 

I keep forgetting to start a running list of the various supersensible insights sparked by experimenting with chess, but maybe I will start now. One of the more recent ones relates to blindfold chess. The players are only told every next move by the opponent, but cannot see these moves reflected on a physical or virtual board. So, with each new move, we would need to 'manually' update the board state in our memory spectrum without any sensory images to anchor that updating process. Then we may experience it something like this:



Such experimentation can really give us a better intuitive feel for the difference between intellectual-sensory thinking and imaginative cognition, as Steiner describes:

"What is attained when we try to strengthen thought by earnest meditation? I already explained to you that meditation must begin by strengthening thought to such an extent that it becomes a transformed memory. Our ordinary memory contains inner pictures that reproduce the experiences of our ordinary earthly life since our birth. Through memory, the picture of some real event stands before the soul, and that our soul-life is healthily connected with the external world in which we live, is guaranteed by the fact that we do not somehow mix up things fantastically, but that our memory-pictures indicate things which really existed.

We must therefore come to the point of being able to place before our soul, in the imaginative understanding described in the last few days, pictures which resemble our ordinary memory pictures. These pictures simply arise by our more and more bringing meditation concepts into our consciousness, and thus strengthening the soul-faculty of thinking, just as a muscle is made strong through exercise. We must reach the point of strengthening thinking to such an extent that it can live within its own content, in the same way in which we ordinarily live within our sense-experiences through our senses."

There is still minimal sensory support in blind chess, because we need at least the sensation informing us of the next move by our opponent, but other than that, the imaginative game flow unfolds entirely supersensibly. The imaginative 'chessboard on the ceiling' can become almost like a physical board for us that is updated more effortlessly, as our inner activity becomes more accustomed to living within its own content. I suspect such exercises would translate quite directly to fruits in imaginative meditation sessions, although I haven't experimented much with this blindfold chess yet. 

(As a side note, it's interesting that the ancient initiates seeded games like chess precisely as a symbolic pedagogical tool for the average population that was losing its direct intuitive connection with the spiritual world. When we approach the game in this pedagogical way, it is like we are tapping back into the intentional curvatures of the ancient initiates, which had been buried in the soul depths underneath the rubble of the crystallized intellect, bringing those intents to fulfillment.)

It is certainly the case that the entertainment, emotional, or lower intellectual value of such games (just as any activity in life) will be experienced as preponderant to the educational value for some time, but we know progress is being made when that balance shifts and the preponderance becomes less and less, the educational value shines through more and more. For example, the moves on a chessboard can be experienced much like the moving cars on the highway. At first, when we see a car going faster than us, switching lanes, accelerating quickly, making noises, honking, and so on, our soul volume immediately stirs, and we cannot help but feel annoyed, frustrated, angry, impatient, etc. Yet the more we can concentrate within the flow and become interested in what these soul stirrings are trying to teach us, by resisting their immediate expression, the more we can navigate the flow calmly and smoothly. We don't immediately draw all kinds of inferences from the opponent's moves and allow our soul to be dragged along with those inferences, but instead, we try to dispassionately feel how all the moves fit within a wider intuitive flow context of ideas and counter-ideas, of soul habits and impulses. It can eventually become second nature to experience the game flow in this more pedagogical way.

PS - to be clear, none of this is to suggest that we can expect to develop spiritually by funneling all of our time into such games in this way, just as we cannot do so by funneling all our time into imaginative concentration. We always need a wholesome, well-rounded development that includes our ordinary life duties, and also ample study-meditation of spiritual scientific content that enriches our intuitive context.

Unfortunately, this attempt to seamlessly syllogize:



1/ Concentration has infinite educational value

2/ Concentration is a game

3/ Games have infinite educational value



does not work at all, Ashvin. The problem is in number 2, obviously (it's in the syllogism as well, but let's not be pedantic). The “game" of concentration is not a metaphor. In it, we don't juggle with concepts, we do real experiments and we apply the lessons learned in previous metaphorical and otherwise educational efforts. Suddenly, it’s not a rehearsal, a metaphor, a movie, or a story, anymore. It’s the real thing. We are not figuring and considering through metaphors how we may find ourselves either free falling, or taking responsibility for our flow of becoming. We are either free falling, for real, or taking responsibility for our flow, for real. When we play the elastic circles or another simple game, we are "rehearsing", yes, for a few minutes. Then, if we have understood the metaphor of the case, we can leave the game aside and put the learning into practice.

The value of game is metaphorical. It’s an oriented, more or less artistically shaped, conceptual-emotional spinning that aims to show or evoke something specific. I am sorry, there can’t be infinite educational value in that, just like you cannot play the elastic circles an infinite amount of times, pretending that there is infinite educational value every time. The game is a map, not the territory. Just because we are using a map as a pointer and a stimulus, it doesn’t become territory. If you understand the meaning of "metaphor" as used is this series, you must know what the value of game is. ”The goal is only to provide the conditions for an experience of a kind of IO flow that has some dynamic similarity with the more intimate IO flow that we aim to point attention to”, because “what we're after is something else.”

And perhaps there is a reason why you keep forgetting to start a list of the higher insights sparked by chess. By the way, how comes that without a written note, you are unable to recall any of these constantly forthcoming insights that every new game supposedly never fails to deliver?

Anyway, if you ever start such a list - or if any of those endlessly renewed insights emerged to consciousness - I’m still hopeful I may get an answer to the question: “what is the additional educational value you have extracted from your last game, that you had not already gained from previous games?” As we both know, long elaborations on how in (blindfold) chess one learns to memorize moves and to keep calm in upsetting conditions, cannot make up for the fleetingness of this entire proposition.

You know, you can still play chess - blindfold or in whatever variation - and chess paraphernalia, but at least admit that you do it primarily for reasons that are not its supposed infinite educational value.

[AshvinP]

And perhaps there is a reason why you keep forgetting to start a list of the higher insights sparked by chess. By the way, how comes that without a written note, you are unable to recall any of these constantly forthcoming insights that every new game supposedly never fails to deliver?

Anyway, if you ever start such a list - or if any of those endlessly renewed insights emerged to consciousness - I’m still hopeful I may get an answer to the question: “what is the additional educational value you have extracted from your last game, that you had not already gained from previous games?” As we both know, long elaborations on how in (blindfold) chess one learns to memorize moves and to keep calm in upsetting conditions, cannot make up for the fleetingness of this entire proposition.

You know, you can still play chess - blindfold or in whatever variation - and chess paraphernalia, but at least admit that you do it primarily for reasons that are not its supposed infinite educational value.

Federica,

Before I move on to address your previous points, which I will soon, can you please slow down and try to reflect on why you feel the need to take such a dismissive and condescending tone in these discussions, as if you are waging a battle against us? I say "us", because it's not just with me. Why should you become so accusatory and confrontational in these responses, as if you want to settle on a definitive conclusion that you were "right" about the games, once and for all? Then it's like you view any attempt to clarify the issues in a patient, dialogical manner, as some sort of attack that needs to be defended against. Ironically, that inner stance and tone may shift if you were to experiment more with resisting such impulses in chess (or other games) as a 'real thing' concentration exercise

(the answer to the bold, btw, is already in my previous response)

[Federica]

Federica,

Before I move on to address your previous points, which I will soon, can you please slow down and try to reflect on why you feel the need to take such a dismissive and condescending tone in these discussions, as if you are waging a battle against us? I say "us", because it's not just with me. Why should you become so accusatory and confrontational in these responses, as if you want to settle on a definitive conclusion that you were "right" about the games, once and for all? Then it's like you view any attempt to clarify the issues in a patient, dialogical manner, as some sort of attack that needs to be defended against. Ironically, that inner stance and tone may shift if you were to experiment more with resisting such impulses in chess (or other games) as a 'real thing' concentration exercise

I really look forward to the soon-to-come treatment of my previous post, which I am pasting at the bottom of this one, trusting that you are not merely trying to snow it under this collection of forcible hyperboles.

Since you insist, let me please you, by admitting that I find your manners irritating when you bluntly ignore key remarks, reply after reply, only to keep steamrolling your way. I don't exactly appreciate your metaphorical arm-twisting, when you manipulate the data of the discussion, thereby forcing me to put in wagons of extra energy that shouldn’t really be necessary to put in. Like when you blur everything, making a mashed potatoes pipeline of everything, saying that game is an “extension of the rehearsal space”, because, basically, we think while playing a digital game, just as we think in any other situation. Or when you put together an improbable syllogism and encapsulate it in verbose circles, as if the volume of text could make up for the fleetingness of the entire argument. Probably one can guess this irritation from my post, I can certainly give you that. I hope this satisfies your thirst for ... [fill in the blank with however you prefer to characterize your motive for this elegant note of yours]. I don't care about being right or wrong. I think I have demonstrated that enough. But it's baffling to see how, despite your many brilliant insights, you are writhing in this thing. Besides, I remind that the reply to this is pending:



Unfortunately, this attempt to seamlessly syllogize:



1/ Concentration has infinite educational value

2/ Concentration is a game

3/ Games have infinite educational value



does not work at all, Ashvin. The problem is in number 2, obviously (it's in the syllogism as well, but let's not be pedantic). The “game" of concentration is not a metaphor. In it, we don't juggle with concepts, we do real experiments and we apply the lessons learned in previous metaphorical and otherwise educational efforts. Suddenly, it’s not a rehearsal, a metaphor, a movie, or a story, anymore. It’s the real thing. We are not figuring and considering through metaphors how we may find ourselves either free falling, or taking responsibility for our flow of becoming. We are either free falling, for real, or taking responsibility for our flow, for real. When we play the elastic circles or another simple game, we are "rehearsing", yes, for a few minutes. Then, if we have understood the metaphor of the case, we can leave the game aside and put the learning into practice.

The value of game is metaphorical. It’s an oriented, more or less artistically shaped, conceptual-emotional spinning that aims to show or evoke something specific. I am sorry, there can’t be infinite educational value in that, just like you cannot play the elastic circles an infinite amount of times, pretending that there is infinite educational value every time. The game is a map, not the territory. Just because we are using a map as a pointer and a stimulus, it doesn’t become territory. If you understand the meaning of "metaphor" as used in this series, you must know what the value of game is. ”The goal is only to provide the conditions for an experience of a kind of IO flow that has some dynamic similarity with the more intimate IO flow that we aim to point attention to”, because “what we're after is something else.”

And perhaps there is a reason why you keep forgetting to start a list of the higher insights sparked by chess. By the way, how comes that without a written note, you are unable to recall any of these constantly forthcoming insights that every new game supposedly never fails to deliver?

Anyway, if you ever start such a list - or if any of those endlessly renewed insights emerged to consciousness - I’m still hopeful I may get an answer to the question: “What is the additional educational value you have extracted from your last game, that you had not already gained from previous games?” As we both know, long elaborations on how in (blindfold) chess one learns to memorize moves and to keep calm in upsetting conditions, cannot make up for the fleetingness of this entire proposition.

You know, you can still play chess - blindfold or in whatever variation - and chess paraphernalia, but at least admit that you do it primarily for reasons that are not its supposed infinite educational value.

[AshvinP]

Unfortunately, this attempt to seamlessly syllogize:



1/ Concentration has infinite educational value

2/ Concentration is a game

3/ Games have infinite educational value



does not work at all, Ashvin. The problem is in number 2, obviously (it's in the syllogism as well, but let's not be pedantic). The “game" of concentration is not a metaphor. In it, we don't juggle with concepts, we do real experiments and we apply the lessons learned in previous metaphorical and otherwise educational efforts. Suddenly, it’s not a rehearsal, a metaphor, a movie, or a story, anymore. It’s the real thing. We are not figuring and considering through metaphors how we may find ourselves either free falling, or taking responsibility for our flow of becoming. We are either free falling, for real, or taking responsibility for our flow, for real. When we play the elastic circles or another simple game, we are "rehearsing", yes, for a few minutes. Then, if we have understood the metaphor of the case, we can leave the game aside and put the learning into practice.

The value of game is metaphorical. It’s an oriented, more or less artistically shaped, conceptual-emotional spinning that aims to show or evoke something specific. I am sorry, there can’t be infinite educational value in that, just like you cannot play the elastic circles an infinite amount of times, pretending that there is infinite educational value every time. The game is a map, not the territory. Just because we are using a map as a pointer and a stimulus, it doesn’t become territory. If you understand the meaning of "metaphor" as used is this series, you must know what the value of game is. ”The goal is only to provide the conditions for an experience of a kind of IO flow that has some dynamic similarity with the more intimate IO flow that we aim to point attention to”, because “what we're after is something else.”

It is critical to bridge our feeling of 'separate concerns' between 'real experiments' and metaphorical exercises that merely prepare us for the real deal down the road. Everyone can probably relate to the feeling, when they first start meditating, that they are entering some kind of new space of activity that is separate from anything that they were doing in normal life. Where the feeling of newness comes from, however, is our shifting interest, enthusiasm, and perspective on the intuitive process that is always present across our life activities. Without that bridge, we will never be able to orient properly within the cognitive gradient. In other words, as long as we treat the metaphorical exercises as mere preparation for the 'real thing', a mock rehearsal of the inner experiences that we only get through the 'real practice', the educational value of those metaphors is not realized. The "conditions for an experience of a kind of IO flow that has some dynamic similarity with the more intimate IO flow that we aim to point attention to" are never created. Then, understandably, this only reinforces our feeling that this life activity is a separate concern from real meditation.

The elastic circles exercise is a great one to contemplate in this respect, although what we discuss could apply to any other metaphorical exercises as well (which, broadly, can include anything we somewhat consciously do in life, like folding the laundry). Let's first examine the description that accompanies the demonstration (which is also part of a much broader inner space description):

Cleric: "Here we have a simplified mechanical simulation of concentric circles (representing the spheres of our stretching exercise) that are linked to each other with elastic bands. Of all the circles we can exercise control only on the middle. We do that by using the slider to apply torque and accelerate its rotation left or right. We can quickly see how complicated the behavior of this whole system becomes. Unlike a simple harmonic pendulum, whose movements are very easy to encompass with holistic temporal intuition, here we witness a much more chaotic behavior.

The second slider controls a ‘veil’, through which we can progressively hide all circles except the middle. Try to feel how unintuitive the movements of the circle feel in that case. Although we apply torque with very clear intuitive intent, the movements exhibit quite strange behavior, such that we may even feel frustration. And isn’t this what we go through in our lives all the time? We continuously try to turn the sphere of our meso-scale intents, we picture doing this or that, going here or there, yet we constantly encounter the unintuitive elastic tensions of the World flow. In the other direction, when we are nervous and rushed, our meso-scale intents can be quite out-of-phase with the micro spheres of bodily life – our movements are jerky, we’re fidgeting, we knock objects off, we keep mistyping when writing a message, and so on. Most of our human problems can be traced to such a lack of insight into the metamorphoses of the World flow. We act naively, imagining that just because we apply torque in a certain direction, the whole World flow should conform, and follow just like the red dot follows the cursor. Yet, we soon encounter unexpected elastic tensions, bending our movie flow in unintuitive ways."


Once we have steered through the meaning of this description, we can then imagine condensing that meaning into a single dynamic image that we concentrate upon, just like we would with any other simple imaginative theme. What is the difference in experience between working through the metaphor in the essay, on the one hand, and making it into a concentration exercise, on the other, which is the 'real deal' (i.e., is not subject to the principle of exhausted value)? If we stick with the bare facts of inner experience, and refrain from overlaying those facts with any added assumptions, preferences, or speculations, the answer that reveals itself is quite simple. It is the same fundamental experience in both cases. Except in the latter case, what we are doing in our observation of the inner process has become more focused and intensified. When working through the essay description and the animation, it is like we have to micromanage the concentrated experience of the inner flow to a greater extent. Each word that our attention must process in sequence feels like it fragments the meaningful flow to a certain extent, introducing a certain level of indirectness. Again, it is the same meaningful curvature that our attention is flowing through, but when we condense that meaning into an image at the center of concentration, it is like there are fewer elements that we need to micromanage to attain the relevant supersensible experience.

If we can follow these bare given inner facts without prejudice (without a desire for wanting them to be different, for some reason), then it becomes evident that there indeed can be infinite educational value from working with the elastic circles metaphor, again and again. It becomes evident that we are not stuck in some preparatory map when working with such metaphors, but that the map has always been directly overlapping (superimposed with) the territory, and it is only our flattened cognitive perspective and myopic interest that obscures that superposition. Steiner also provides a great example of such a metaphorical image that, incidentally, also suggests why the principle of exhausted value disappears in this inverted domain of cognitive perspective (which can exist at all times, not only when we close our eyes in a dark room to meditate). When we approach our metaphorical activities in life with a genuine love for the intuitive process that is always present and makes those activities possible, and makes it possible for us to become proficient at those activities, then our pouring out of love in such activities makes it such that 'our cup runneth over' (infinite educational value). 


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA069e/E ... 25p01.html
"Spiritual research shows that the forces in this astral body and this I-bearer of the human being, which are so weak in ordinary everyday life that the person cannot be aware of them during sleep, can be kindled.

This is done by means of real spiritual methods. It is done through what is called meditation and concentration. If a person brings it upon themselves to make themselves an instrument for the truths of the spiritual world, they can do so through meditation and concentration.

Much is needed for this. Only one example will be given here. Imagine that you have a glass that is empty and one that is a quarter full of water, and you pour water from the full glass into the empty glass, and you now imagine that that this happening does not bring about what usually happens, namely that the glass from which he pours becomes emptier, but that by pouring into the other glass, the glass from which he pours becomes fuller and fuller!

We have to form such allegorical ideas ourselves, without claiming that they are real. If a person always remains within his reason and is aware that his idea is allegorical, he can have a certain feeling about it. This can then express a higher truth, for example about human love.

Love is a concept that is virtually impossible to penetrate. But you can express individual qualities of love in symbols.

He who pours the mild powers of his love into a heart in need of love will notice that he loses none of his power of love, but that through this giving his power becomes greater and greater. He will be able to use the symbol of the glass for this love, which does not become emptier by pouring into another, but fuller.

And when man then draws together all his thoughts, concentrating them on such a symbol, when man has the patience to concentrate his soul forces again and again on such an inner life of thought, then he evokes the slumbering forces from his soul and attains a state in which he becomes a true instrument for beholding the world behind sense perception."

You know, you can still play chess - blindfold or in whatever variation - and chess paraphernalia, but at least admit that you do it primarily for reasons that are not its supposed infinite educational value.

I will gladly admit that 99.9% of the things that I do in life are primarily for reasons that are not related to the infinite educational value of such activities, which is surely there, but which I leave untapped for the sake of lower impulses. That is what I have been stressing in these posts. The question is, once we realize this sobering fact about our shadowy motives in life, across the board, what do we want to do about it? We have no hope of unveiling and modulating those lower soul forces if we simply run away from the conditions which bring them to expression. Instead, we only do that when we place ourselves right in the midst of those conditions, where we could bring the lower impulses to expression, but work on resisting such expression and, instead, gradually grow inwardly sensitive to what is living and weaving beneath the surface. That is also a core principle of imaginative concentration and why it bears inner fruit. It would never work if it somehow placed us in a separate 'hermetically sealed' chamber where we are insulated from the lower impulses. It only works in a space where we can be as honest with ourselves as possible, and courageously confront all the lower impulses that continually seek to come to expression in life.

[AshvinP]

Anyway, if you ever start such a list - or if any of those endlessly renewed insights emerged to consciousness - I’m still hopeful I may get an answer to the question: “What is the additional educational value you have extracted from your last game, that you had not already gained from previous games?” As we both know, long elaborations on how in (blindfold) chess one learns to memorize moves and to keep calm in upsetting conditions, cannot make up for the fleetingness of this entire proposition.

As I hinted at in that post, the additional educational value in self-conscious chess games, as in imaginative concentration on the elastic circles theme (or whatever else), does not primarily come in the form of new facts about supersensible reality that I can provide to you. It is the same when we work through the essays on this forum, which often highlight the same inner dynamics that have been explored many times before. The additional educational value is, first and foremost, an unmistakable inner experience that we undergo, a continual expansion of intuitive orientation within the cognitive flow. It is the feeling of continually fleshing out the underlying intuitive process from new angles and with new depth. I have tried to communicate this feeling many different times using chess examples on the various threads, although I know my articulations are often too cursory, and I certainly don't expect them to be 'convincing' for anyone not yet sufficiently familiar with that underlying experience. In the latter case, they will just sound like random intellectual speculations about the 'spiritual meaning of chess' that will be quickly exhausted.

The blindfold chess example in particular is not about memorizing moves and keeping calm, but about getting a keener sense for what it means to steer the imaginative flow at a deeper, more holistic scale. When we sacrifice sensory support in the form of a physical or virtual board, then with each new move, we need to 'dig deeper' within the etheric spectrum with our inner activity to picture the compounded intuitive reverberations of previous moves. These stacked memory pictures must be felt as something holistic (not explored in sequence), something that hangs together and gives us a sense of the current board state. Again, this value will only be fully appreciated if we endeavor to experiment with it (or something similar) ourselves. With such experimentation, we truly develop an intuitive feel for the inner axis along which we would navigate to reach experiences like the holistic life tableau with imaginative cognition. The inner principle is the same, except the etheric spectrum we probe and navigate with imaginative cognition is no longer constrained by the rules of the chess game we are playing or our usual interest in winning the game. Yet there is a shared characteristic inner experience of probing that spectrum in both cases, and we can truly learn about how the deeper imaginative navigation feels through the blindfold chess navigation.

[Federica]

It is critical to bridge our feeling of 'separate concerns' between 'real experiments' and metaphorical exercises that merely prepare us for the real deal down the road. Everyone can probably relate to the feeling, when they first start meditating, that they are entering some kind of new space of activity that is separate from anything that they were doing in normal life. Where the feeling of newness comes from, however, is our shifting interest, enthusiasm, and perspective on the intuitive process that is always present across our life activities. Without that bridge, we will never be able to orient properly within the cognitive gradient. In other words, as long as we treat the metaphorical exercises as mere preparation for the 'real thing', a mock rehearsal of the inner experiences that we only get through the 'real practice', the educational value of those metaphors is not realized. The "conditions for an experience of a kind of IO flow that has some dynamic similarity with the more intimate IO flow that we aim to point attention to" are never created. Then, understandably, this only reinforces our feeling that this life activity is a separate concern from real meditation.

The elastic circles exercise is a great one to contemplate in this respect, although what we discuss could apply to any other metaphorical exercises as well (which, broadly, can include anything we somewhat consciously do in life, like folding the laundry). Let's first examine the description that accompanies the demonstration (which is also part of a much broader inner space description):

Cleric: "Here we have a simplified mechanical simulation of concentric circles (representing the spheres of our stretching exercise) that are linked to each other with elastic bands. Of all the circles we can exercise control only on the middle. We do that by using the slider to apply torque and accelerate its rotation left or right. We can quickly see how complicated the behavior of this whole system becomes. Unlike a simple harmonic pendulum, whose movements are very easy to encompass with holistic temporal intuition, here we witness a much more chaotic behavior.

The second slider controls a ‘veil’, through which we can progressively hide all circles except the middle. Try to feel how unintuitive the movements of the circle feel in that case. Although we apply torque with very clear intuitive intent, the movements exhibit quite strange behavior, such that we may even feel frustration. And isn’t this what we go through in our lives all the time? We continuously try to turn the sphere of our meso-scale intents, we picture doing this or that, going here or there, yet we constantly encounter the unintuitive elastic tensions of the World flow. In the other direction, when we are nervous and rushed, our meso-scale intents can be quite out-of-phase with the micro spheres of bodily life – our movements are jerky, we’re fidgeting, we knock objects off, we keep mistyping when writing a message, and so on. Most of our human problems can be traced to such a lack of insight into the metamorphoses of the World flow. We act naively, imagining that just because we apply torque in a certain direction, the whole World flow should conform, and follow just like the red dot follows the cursor. Yet, we soon encounter unexpected elastic tensions, bending our movie flow in unintuitive ways."


Once we have steered through the meaning of this description, we can then imagine condensing that meaning into a single dynamic image that we concentrate upon, just like we would with any other simple imaginative theme. What is the difference in experience between working through the metaphor in the essay, on the one hand, and making it into a concentration exercise, on the other, which is the 'real deal' (i.e., is not subject to the principle of exhausted value)? If we stick with the bare facts of inner experience, and refrain from overlaying those facts with any added assumptions, preferences, or speculations, the answer that reveals itself is quite simple. It is the same fundamental experience in both cases. Except in the latter case, what we are doing in our observation of the inner process has become more focused and intensified. When working through the essay description and the animation, it is like we have to micromanage the concentrated experience of the inner flow to a greater extent. Each word that our attention must process in sequence feels like it fragments the meaningful flow to a certain extent, introducing a certain level of indirectness. Again, it is the same meaningful curvature that our attention is flowing through, but when we condense that meaning into an image at the center of concentration, it is like there are fewer elements that we need to micromanage to attain the relevant supersensible experience.

If we can follow these bare given inner facts without prejudice (without a desire for wanting them to be different, for some reason), then it becomes evident that there indeed can be infinite educational value from working with the elastic circles metaphor, again and again. It becomes evident that we are not stuck in some preparatory map when working with such metaphors, but that the map has always been directly overlapping (superimposed with) the territory, and it is only our flattened cognitive perspective and myopic interest that obscures that superposition. 

I never spoke of, or hinted to, "separate concerns". You should really refrain from this continuous conceptual blurring, and manipulation of the data of the discussion. When we use a map in order to allow us to navigate a territory, the map and the territory are not separate concerns, as both of us know. Indeed, map and territory are then superimposed. We can refer to Cleric's Moire patterns demo to visualize the intuition of dynamic superposition. Your problem is that your entire description is not that of a superposition. You have unequivocally equated map and territory. You have literally written, I bolded it above: "It is the same fundamental experience in both cases". There is evidently a world of difference between speaking of superimposed domains - indeed, our existence is a connected whole of superimposed, contextual domains - and speaking of the two experiences - playing a game or demo versus meditating - being "the same". I am saddened to say, this latter position makes literally no sense.

So - no, Ashvin, the educational value will never be realized if we never move from reading essays and playing demos to meditating on an image that opens the way to the reality which the demo intended to point to. It is evidently not the demo itself that contains infinite educational value, and we do not access such value by playing it. We only access it by moving to another level of the superposition. Another proof is that an alternative artistic metaphor of the same reality - for example the Fourier transform metaphor - can work just as well as the elastic circles, under the mandatory condition that at some point we stop reading and juggling with concepts, and begin to meditate. There needs to be such converging to the center and stepping into another quality of action, no matter what particular map/metaphor/demo has prompted us. That's so elementarily obvious. I am really confused about why you insist on sinking deeper and deeper into this. But do you know what will put a due end to this question? This:

The other risk associated with such attempts (and even with standard Minecraft), however, is that it works too well and the players start to feel that in-game advancement to magician status, for example, corresponds to IRL spiritual development. It would then be felt like expanding our intuition of the game logic, such that our inputs ripple more directly into the wider game world state, is equivalent to expanding our intuition of reality itself. Yet that would only be the case if somehow the in-game skills are only unlocked through meditative efforts and corresponding self-knowledge, rather than completing various game tasks, challenges, etc.
…
such a modification would work best when the in-game achievements are indexed as much as possible to IRL study-meditative efforts, and the players are already well oriented to its pedagogical and metaphorical value for IRL spiritual development.

Yes, I agree with this! When players feel that in-game advancement (the map) corresponds to IRL spiritual development (the territory) it’s indeed a big problem. That’s the whole point I've been making. Indeed, playing the game is not the equivalent of expanding intuition of reality itself, and the risk is that players feel they are equivalent. Does this quote sound familiar perhaps? It should, because the author is ...you. You wrote this, you spoke of "IRL[!] spiritual development", and "reality itself" - in this thread, when I had not yet commented. Alright, well, there's no need to add anything else.

[AshvinP]

I never spoke of, or hinted to, "separate concerns". You should really refrain from this continuous conceptual blurring, and manipulation of the data of the discussion. When we use a map in order to allow us to navigate a territory, the map and the territory are not separate concerns, as both of us know. Indeed, map and territory are then superimposed. We can refer to Cleric's Moire patterns demo to visualize the intuition of the superposition. Your problem is that your entire description is not that of a superposition. You have unequivocally equated map and territory. You have literally written, I bolded it above: "It is the same fundamental experience in both cases". There is evidently a world of difference between speaking of superimposed domains - indeed, our existence is a connected whole of superimposed, contextual domains - and speaking of the two experiences - playing a game or demo versus meditating - being "the same". I am saddened to say, this latter position makes literally no sense.

So - no, Ashvin, the educational value will never be realized if we never move from reading essays and playing demos to meditating on an image that opens the way to the reality which the demo intended to point to. It is evidently not the demo itself that contains infinite educational value, and we do not access such value by playing it. We only access it by moving to another level of the superposition. Another proof is that an alternative artistic metaphor of the same reality - for example the Fourier transform metaphor - can work just as well, under the mandatory condition that at some point we stop reading and juggling with concepts, and begin to meditate. There needs to be such converging and stepping into another quality of action at the center, no matter what particular map/metaphor/demo has prompted us. That's so elementarily obvious. I am really confused about why you insist on sinking deeper and deeper into this. But do you know what will put a due end to this question? This:

The other risk associated with such attempts (and even with standard Minecraft), however, is that it works too well and the players start to feel that in-game advancement to magician status, for example, corresponds to IRL spiritual development. It would then be felt like expanding our intuition of the game logic, such that our inputs ripple more directly into the wider game world state, is equivalent to expanding our intuition of reality itself. Yet that would only be the case if somehow the in-game skills are only unlocked through meditative efforts and corresponding self-knowledge, rather than completing various game tasks, challenges, etc.
…
such a modification would work best when the in-game achievements are indexed as much as possible to IRL study-meditative efforts, and the players are already well oriented to its pedagogical and metaphorical value for IRL spiritual development.

Yes, I agree with that. When players feel that in-game advancement - the map - corresponds to IRL spiritual development - the territory - it’s indeed a big problem. That’s the whole point I am making. Indeed, playing the game is not the equivalent of expanding intuition of reality itself, and the risk is that players feel they are equivalent. Does this quote sound familiar perhaps? It should, because the author is you. You wrote this, in this thread, when I had not commented on games yet. Alright, well, there's no need to add anything else.

The fact that I recently wrote what you quoted, Federica, should indicate to you that I am speaking about something different than building the perfect ToE or MoE. Indeed, defaulting to building the perfect MoE is also a risk with imaginative meditation, and there are plenty of people who end up adapting their meditations to this tendency. Even at the scale of imaginative cognition, this can remain an acute risk.

But what I am speaking about is something much simpler. We only feel the need to universally characterize the nature of metaphorical exercises with "circumscribed limits" when we project what we have been able to accomplish through them, or the obstacles we have faced, as some fundamental property of their sensory or imaginative content that applies to everyone who works with them. For example, when I spoke of the relative indirectness of working with the concepts in Cleric's description of the elastic circles, that indirectness is not a fundamental property that is baked into the sensory-imaginative content. "Relative" is a keyword here. One person may experience it as a very cumbersome 'juggling of concepts' to intimate the relevant supersensible experience, and another person may experience it much more like a directly focused meditation that smoothly brings the supersensible experience into focus. In other words, there is nothing within the content of the metaphorical exercises themselves that forces us to feel like we are merely reading and juggling with concepts, rather than doing something more akin to meditation. And it is a huge danger in the spiritual domain when we take what we have experienced in working with such content so far, and project it as some universal property of that content. Only then do we feel like the educational value will be exhausted equally for anyone who works with such exercises.

More generally, the point of meditation is to accustom our inner being to a new experience of cognitive life, which should radiate back into our ordinary flow that is characterized by juggling with concepts. There is no static state here between 'life activity' or 'intellectual study', on the one hand, and 'meditation', on the other, but a dynamic and complementary process by which one continually fructifies the other. Eventually, our whole spectrum of human experience will become an unbroken meditation, as it is for the Divine beings, and this shouldn't be considered some remote goal state that we cannot make progress toward in the here and now. Everything in life can be gradually infused with the quality of meditative concentration and corresponding educational value. It's not about abstractly postulating some equivalence within the superposition from the outset, but bringing about that equivalence through our in vivo efforts.