Metamorphoses of the Spirit: Breaking Bad Habits

[Cleric K]

"And this can be verified." - how do you verify that exactly?

Well The fact that you're asking this question only shows your prejudiced attitude towards everything that is being put forward. All the talks about the nature of higher cognition had no other purpose than to elucidate this "how". Since you're still asking "how" I take it that you have formed a quite limited conception of what higher cognition actually is and what it reveals. Seems that what is called higher cognition is for you only speculative mosaic of thoughts about the unknowable higher world - that is, theology.

I'll try one final attempt with an analogy, that I take from Ashvin's essay here - that of dreaming and waking consciousness. I must stress that it's only an analogy, there are many different things when we speak about actual higher vs. waking consciousness (waking vs. dreaming in our analogy).

The first thing is to overcome the prejudice that there's a hard boundary between dreaming and waking consciousness (read - waking and higher consciousness). We know that our dreams can be influenced by happenings in the external world. For example, if it's really hot in my bedroom this may be experienced in the dream as if I'm trying to escape out of a burning building. Let's imagine that we become somewhat lucid in the dream and realize that our dream persona, our environment, etc. are only images for deeper processes of reality. This would correspond to the popular notion of enlightenment. Yet in itself, it doesn't present any details about these deeper processes but just the clear idea that our environment is only the shadow of reality. We need to go further than this if we are to investigate the depths of reality and how exactly they project into the shadow dream picture. It is clear that if we simply recombine in the most ingenious ways our dream content this will not lead us to waking consciousness but only to more complicated dream-models of it. Now if we are in the dream and someone speaks about rhythms, patterns, beings of higher life which are responsible for the dynamics of the dream pictures, we can say "that's an interesting model but no one can know these things. It's nothing but speculative thinking, a rationalization of the higher reality."

This is pretty much the situation today. It's generally accepted that the sensory realm truly is only the surface projection of a deeper reality but anything claiming that there's a possibility to penetrate in this depth is regarded with the greatest doubt.

The waking vs. dream analogy is not very good and that's why I very rarely resort to it. Because of the superficial thinking of our age, this analogy usually causes more confusion than explanation. One of the things is that both in our dream and waking life we operate with a similar intellectual mode of cognition. If the analogy is taken too literally this makes it look like the higher world simply changes the contents of our perceptions yet we remain more or less the same intellectual ego. This already makes it difficult to point attention to the higher forms of cognition because for this we need to reveal the higher forces which animate the intellect on a lower level.

You say every time that I repeat the same things for the 101th and 201th time but that's only because the point is missed over and over again. I hope that the above analogy can help at least for this - to place things in their proper relations. It's not about demeaning or preaching anything. It's simply the only way one can speak of these things if we need to be true to the facts. Yes, the dream consciousness is a permanent aspect within which the impermanent dream images come and go. But we place a bet if we think that the causes of the impermanent images are none of our dream-world's business (or if we think that the causes are wholly contained within the dream, as in materialism). So there are two things:

1. The nature of spiritual science is completely misunderstood because it's viewed only as conceptual speculation about the reality responsible for the dream imagery. The fact that through self-development is possible to increase lucidity and awaken in the higher world and trace the sources of the dream images - including our dreaming self - is outright dismissed as impossible and subject to the fundamental limits of knowledge. That's the reason for your "how" question. We've been speaking of nothing else than this "how" all the time but it's simply not taken seriously. It's preferred to see everything as elegant theory (Platonic or otherwise) but it's too insulting to consider that such knowledge can proceed from actual experiences from the waking world.
2. Even if the nature of spiritual science is understood (for which I don't see indications since you're still asking the "how" question) one can still say "well, maybe there's a reason why we feel disconnected from the higher world. This is what we chose to experience. We are messing where we are not supposed to if we try to bridge the dreaming and waking life." One can no doubt take such a position. Yet it's the duty of those who have some direct knowledge of the waking world to say something about the repercussions of ignoring the bridge. This bridge connects us not to some remote world but to what we really are in our subconscious depths. In the dream we have a body, name, temperament, desires, opinions, inclinations, yet we take these for granted. Penetration into the waking world reveals first and foremost the forces that shape our dream character. With this immediately become clear the reasons for the pitiful state of humanity today. Humans are ignorant of their spiritual nature, have all kinds of excuses that this nature is a taboo not to be messed up with, and that's how misery perpetuates.

I'm skeptical that all the above will make any difference but I do it to be clean with my conscience, that I've done everything in my power to present these things as clearly as possible.

[Cleric K]

You're quite right, it isn't a matter of what we like or dislike, it is what we can prove by argument. I kept this from when I was at University:

Philosophy is not not about the world. Philosophy is not about ideas or theories. Philosophy is not about books, or individual men and women.

Philosophy is about arguments.

True, arguments are often about the world. And arguments usually involve ideas or theories. And arguments can normally be found in books. And books, to our knowledge, are all written by men and women. But the subject-matter, the métier, of philosophy, is arguments. More particularly, philosophy is about arguments concerning the most general claims to be made about anything.

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.

The above is a good explanation for the fruitless state of academic philosophy in our age. To speak of philosophy as concerning itself with truth with little concern of men and women is like having botany interested in arguments about plants in general with little concern about any real plant. This is symptomatic of the unhealthy direction that intellectualism has taken. It rests upon a very serious assumption. That the truth of reality can be discovered in pure thought quite independent of perceptions.

In the above sense you are right - there's no way in the world I can 'argument' the narrative that I present in the same way that there's no way a botanist can argument the existence of a rose to those who have never seen one. From your posts I take it that you're experienced with psychedelics. Can you 'argument' the reality of the psychedelic experience to someone who has never had one? It's more than clear that this experience can never be reconstructed from combinations of intellectual thoughts. Your description is just a floating narrative for the skeptic, that can never be argumented.

The idea that thinking's role is to build an abstract model, mental copy of reality is relatively recent trend (speaking in centuries scale). But as we have spoken many times in this forum, there's nothing in the given which suggests that such thing is justified. In the given world of perceptions and ideas, thinking is organ for perception of ideas just as the eye is the organ for light. To see things visually clear we need proper point of view, proper illumination. So it is with ideas. We need proper and sound thinking in order to uncover the ideal landscape that complements the perceptions. This landscape is uncovered not by building intellectual arguments for the nature of the unknowable 'landscape-in-itself' but by realizing that it is through thinking that we touch and feel the ideal nature of this landscape. This is a shift of cognitive habits that is extremely difficult for contemporary man. Thinkers today are way too addicted to thinking about reality, instead of realizing that thinking itself is actual substance of reality, an imprint of reality, similar to the wax in which the seal is imprinted. If this is understood our whole quest for knowledge assumes different character. It's not about using thinking as some end-user product from the shelf in the mall and use it for argumentation and speculation, but experiencing its imprinted nature and trace from there the actual spiritual forces that do the imprinting.

So sleeping without dreams doesn't count? Mind At Large becoming dissociated alter doesn't count?
...
So dementia doesn't count?

I didn't want to bloat the previous post. Increase in integration doesn't need to happen in monotonically/linearly increasing manner. Instead it has complicated rhythms within rhythms nature. As you say, we have clear example in sleeping. Yet if we don't wake up on the next morning and continue the integration which includes the memory of the previous day, there's no one to know that he fell asleep.

So my example was that we have the two flows between the poles one against other, rhythmically alternating in dominance, yet stream of being can only be experienced when there's overall integration. This holds true for dementia too. Only when the soul emerges from the sclerotizing body it can awaken from the dim demential dream. I'm not saying that it's impossible for a perspective to disintegrate towards the pole of unconsciousness. I'm only saying that this devolution can never be experienced as a stream of becoming.

[AshvinP]

How do they exist in isolation? As said in the essay and mentioned to Eugene, the burden is on those who deny inseparability of thinking from the other categories. Because we all experience them as inseparable. Then we escape that conclusion of our experience by adding an assumption like "babies don't appear to think" or "simpler life forms don't appear to think". This topic is definitely not a matter of semantics under idealism, because idealism (at least of the Western variety) posits ideational activity as an irreducible aspect of Reality. So we need to be very clear on this topic of thinking as inseparable from sensing, willing and feeling.

We experience this daily. Just think how you can experience a feeling while sleeping. One feels the urge to go to toilet, or feels cold because the environment is getting cold, or you are in half-sleep and hear a sound, etc. Of course, these experiences in sleep can express itself also in form of dreams (one dreams of going to toilet, walking in a snowy landscape, or visualizes someone beating a drum, etc.) but there are also states of consciousness (try to recall this) where one does not think on the perceived phenomena at all and only feels without adding to the experience whatsoever thought. It is only when one wakes up that one thinks "oh... I must pee", "oh... I need another blanket", "oh... my neighbor is a noisy guy", etc. If you take the first-person approach to these philosophical issues you see that lots of things we take for granted are not that obvious at all.

You are taking "thinking" in too narrow of a sense. It's probably better for me to say "power to think". That power never goes away, as it is what allows us to form memories.

[Eugene I]

I'm skeptical that all the above will make any difference but I do it to be clean with my conscience, that I've done everything in my power to present these things as clearly as possible.

Clerics, you made a good explanation and analogy about dreaming and waking consciousness. From that perspective there is not that much difference between non-dual and spiritual science approach, since from both perspectives we are living in a dream and both approaches present a transition to the lucid state of the awareness of the "dreamer". Both accept the reality of the "waking state" beyond the dream world and a definite influence of the waking world on the dream world. Both accept the importance of knowledge and understanding the waking world (for example, there is a whole discipline of Buddhist cosmology doing exactly that), both assert that there is a connection between dream and waking world, including personal connection between the entities living in both worlds. There is as much spiritual science in non-dual traditions as it is in the theistic ones. Again, I entirely dismiss you claims that non-dual traditions ignore the existence and have no interest in studying the realities of the "waking world", it is simply not true.

There is one subtle difference though. From the non-dual perspective the "waking world" is as much a dream world as the "dream world". It's just another layer of the dream. That does not make the "waking world" unreal or unimportant. It's just to realize that there is a next level of lucidity and transcendence to it. The creators of the "dream worlds" themselves are the characters of the dream of the "waking worlds", they create and maintain the hierarchies and structures in the "waking world" that shape and govern the "dream world". Attaining the ultimate lucidity either in the "dream" or "waking" world opens a connection to the non-dream level of reality that is never conditioned or affected by any layers of the dream.

Now, back to my question "how do you verify that exactly?". We are asserting that we are doing "spiritual science" (in both theistic and non-dual paths). Now, if this is really science, then science should be based on scientific method, that is what distinguishes it from fairy-tales making. Granted, such science is very different from the natural sciences and should use different methods, yet, in any science that is to be called science, there must be certain methods of verifying and providing evidences and reasons for any views, hypotheses or claims of that science. If we abandon any ways to scrutinize, verify of prove the views and knowledge of such science, we will have no way of distinguishing the truths from mere fantasies. Now, every single spiritual path and tradition claims that they have direct access to and deep knowledge of the "waking world" beyond our dream world (including non-dual traditions of Buddhism and Advaita, all theistic traditions, all indigenous etc). Yet, the schemes and maps of the "waking world" of all of these traditions contradict each other quite significantly. So, if we look at them from spiritual science perspective, we have a situation where there is a variety of scientific models and maps of higher-level reality that contradict each other. So, the question is: how do we verify them and find out which one is more accurate?

[Apanthropinist]

You're quite right, it isn't a matter of what we like or dislike, it is what we can prove by argument. I kept this from when I was at University:

Philosophy is not not about the world. Philosophy is not about ideas or theories. Philosophy is not about books, or individual men and women.

Philosophy is about arguments.

True, arguments are often about the world. And arguments usually involve ideas or theories. And arguments can normally be found in books. And books, to our knowledge, are all written by men and women. But the subject-matter, the métier, of philosophy, is arguments. More particularly, philosophy is about arguments concerning the most general claims to be made about anything.

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.

The above is a good explanation for the fruitless state of academic philosophy in our age.

The above is a fantastic example of a fallacy known as inflation of conflict. Arguing a certain point that the entire field of knowledge (philosophy) is "in crisis". It's a great way of avoiding any scrutiny and criticism of your claims but somewhat bizarre and beyond ironic to try it on a philosophy forum.

To speak of philosophy as concerning itself with truth with little concern of men and women is like having botany interested in arguments about plants in general with little concern about any real plant.

I'd be grateful if you could draw my attention to where and by whom it has been suggested that philosophy has little concern of men and women? Apart from you of course in an attempt to support the fallacious 'it's all in crisis' claim. As noted 'philosophy is about arguments concerning the most general claims to be made about anything.' The philosophic burden of proof lies upon those who make unfalsifiable claims, not on those who reject them. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster So if you wish your claims to be taken seriously, philosophically, on a philosophy forum, then it may be wise to consider the audience you are attempting to address. Otherwise you're presenting another narrative of spiritual ideation. Which is fine and it is interesting, but please don't blow smoke when legitimately challenged.

This is symptomatic of the unhealthy direction that intellectualism has taken. It rests upon a very serious assumption. That the truth of reality can be discovered in pure thought quite independent of perceptions.

Hard not to agree with you that intellectualism has taken an unhealthy direction. It tends to have drifted into argument by prestigious jargon, argument by poetic language, equivocation, ambiguous assertion, etc etc etc. All the things Kastrup goes out of his way to avoid and why he presents a strong and persuasive argument, not without its weaknesses but fairly robust none the less. But as Jung once wisely noted, "We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth."

The thing is Cleric, I may be your 'opponent' but it does not follow that I oppose what you are attempting to claim. If your claims can stand up to scrutiny through attacks, then they will become more refined and stronger, if not, then they fail and must be added to the long list of narrative spiritual ideation.

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.

[AshvinP]

You're quite right, it isn't a matter of what we like or dislike, it is what we can prove by argument. I kept this from when I was at University:

Philosophy is not not about the world. Philosophy is not about ideas or theories. Philosophy is not about books, or individual men and women.

Philosophy is about arguments.

True, arguments are often about the world. And arguments usually involve ideas or theories. And arguments can normally be found in books. And books, to our knowledge, are all written by men and women. But the subject-matter, the métier, of philosophy, is arguments. More particularly, philosophy is about arguments concerning the most general claims to be made about anything.

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.

The above is a good explanation for the fruitless state of academic philosophy in our age.

The above is a fantastic example of a fallacy known as inflation of conflict. Arguing a certain point that the entire field of knowledge (philosophy) is "in crisis". It's a great way of avoiding any scrutiny and criticism of your claims but somewhat bizarre and beyond ironic to try it on a philosophy forum.

I can't speak for anyone else, but if the field were not "in crisis", along with pretty much every other dimension of human existence, I would not be here. What Cleric is saying is nothing new - it is a continuation of the Hegelian tradition and phenomenological tradition. But instead of settling for only the intellectual arguments those traditions produced, it seeks to verify those arguments and more through direct experience. I may not be able to confirm the accuracy of spiritual scientific claims until I experience them myself, but to pretend they are discontinuous with all of prior philosophy is not at all accurate. It is continuous in exactly the way we would expect it to be given our other knowledge of paradigmatic revolutions in the 20th century.

[Apanthropinist]

I can't speak for anyone else, but if the field were not "in crisis", along with pretty much every other dimension of human existence, I would not be here.

Well that's certainly a personal opinion but the fallacy Cleric employed, remains, philosophically. Perhaps there's a forum somewhere called 'Spiritual Science' where you don't have to employ the philosophical method at all but I doubt Kastrup, after whom this forum takes its name, would put his name to it. I'm not for one moment suggesting it wouldn't be interesting, I think it would, but it would likely be chock full of any number of Spaghetti Monsters which would only say something about the believer rather than the 'thing' being discussed.

What Cleric is saying is nothing new - it is a continuation of the Hegelian tradition and phenomenological tradition. But instead of settling for only the intellectual arguments those traditions produced, it seeks to verify those arguments and more through direct experience.

So I'll be able to verify those arguments and more through my own direct experience? Meaning, effectively, I am simply verifying my own experience......but then that's circular. Or maybe I can verify yours because it will be the same experience, right? That's what the scientific method aims for isn't it? Testable, verifiable, repeatable experiments which produce consistent results and can make predictions and are falsifiable......

I may not be able to confirm the accuracy of spiritual scientific claims until I experience them myself......

....and then you'd be engaging in a form of solipsism wouldn't you? Because you'd have no other metric to reference other than your own experience. That's not science in any way that I understand. Not that I'm a fan of materialist science, I'm not, but it is useful at what it does when it stays within its domain of competence.

......but to pretend they are discontinuous with all of prior philosophy is not at all accurate.

You then introduce and answer your own argument here, rather than one I have explicitly or implicitly made. It's called 'So you're saying....' However I can answer it for you by saying that it is discontinuous with the philosophical method we have employed for two millennia. Premises, conclusion, logic, valid and sound argument etc.

It is continuous in exactly the way we would expect it to be given our other knowledge of paradigmatic revolutions in the 20th century.

Well that's a good example of an ambiguous assertion.

[Eugene I]

But instead of settling for only the intellectual arguments those traditions produced, it seeks to verify those arguments and more through direct experience.

OK, so we are now coming to the truthfulness criteria and verification methods of the spiritual science. The spiritual science claims that the direct experience of the facts of the higher "waking" world is the confirmation for its intellectual arguments. We are running into a problem here. Steiner of any other adept of the neo-Christian spiritual science claims that he has a direct spiritual experience and revelations of the higher world and its structures and hierarchies and he communicates with inhabitants of that world from whom he receives that knowledge. Now, a practitioner of any other spiritual tradition, be it traditional Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Yoga, Buddhism, Vedic, indigenous etc. etc. will say exactly the same: he has direct visions, spiritual revelation states and communications with inhabitants of higher realms. Over the recent decades, a wealth of information about the higher after-death realms became available from the NDE and regression therapy accounts. In addition, a plethora of amazing spiritual states and revelations have been experienced by many people using hallucinogen drugs. And even more, not surprisingly, many residents of mental hospitals will also make very similar claims of having a visions and communicating with higher-world entities on everyday basis. One consistent feature of these experiences is that almost every experiencer has a sense of certainty and faith that his/her experiences represent the true facts describing the reality of the higher world.

Can we consider these experiences as facts that can be used to verify the intellectual arguments of the spiritual science (or any other spiritual tradition for that matter)? In natural sciences it is easier to use experimental facts as the means for verification of arguments because the natural facts are mostly very consistent with each other and reproducible when performed by different subjects. The problem is - the facts of the spiritual experiences are not consistent and not reproducible, they typically all contradict each other and differ from person to person and from tradition to tradition. From the history of humanity we know a plethora of spiritual and religious worldviews and beliefs, many of them pretty much nonsensical and contradicting each other, that were claimed to be confirmed by somebody spiritual experiences and revelations.

Now, this is where the spiritual science is different from personal worldviews or beliefs. As a person I can have my private spiritual intuitions, revelations and experiences and can form my personal worldviews and beliefs based on my experiences, there is nothing wrong with that. However, spiritual science claims objectivity, it claims that its truths are universal and are beyond private personal views, experiences or beliefs. But for that to happen, the spiritual science has to establish reliable and reproducible verification and truthfulness criteria.

So, if we want to move forward from reductionist natural sciences and from non-scientific religions to spiritual sciences, we need to establish those verification and truthfulness criteria. The problem is that subjective spiritual experiences can not be reliable verification criteria, because they are inconsistent with each other and non-reproducible. What else the spiritual science can use for its verification and truthfulness criteria?

Another option is to abandon any claims that the "spiritual science" is a real science that can provide verifiable and trustworthy knowledge about the world beyond the natural worlds, and admit that it belongs either to the area of religious beliefs, or to philosophy/metaphysics. Now, philosophy is definitely different from religion, because it has its own specific set of truthfulness criteria different from religions. So, if spiritual science claims to belong to the area of philosophy, it has to be in a position to withstand the challenge and scrutiny of philosophical method and its truthfulness criteria, which Apanthropinist mentioned above.

[AshvinP]

I can't speak for anyone else, but if the field were not "in crisis", along with pretty much every other dimension of human existence, I would not be here.

Well that's certainly a personal opinion but the fallacy Cleric employed, remains, philosophically. Perhaps there's a forum somewhere called 'Spiritual Science' where you don't have to employ the philosophical method at all but I doubt Kastrup, after whom this forum takes its name, would put his name to it. I'm not for one moment suggesting it wouldn't be interesting, I think it would, but it would likely be chock full of any number of Spaghetti Monsters which would only say something about the believer rather than the 'thing' being discussed.

What Cleric is saying is nothing new - it is a continuation of the Hegelian tradition and phenomenological tradition. But instead of settling for only the intellectual arguments those traditions produced, it seeks to verify those arguments and more through direct experience.

So I'll be able to verify those arguments and more through my own direct experience? Meaning, effectively, I am simply verifying my own experience......but then that's circular. Or maybe I can verify yours because it will be the same experience, right? That's what the scientific method aims for isn't it? Testable, verifiable, repeatable experiments which produce consistent results and can make predictions and are falsifiable......

I may not be able to confirm the accuracy of spiritual scientific claims until I experience them myself......

....and then you'd be engaging in a form of solipsism wouldn't you? Because you'd have no other metric to reference other than your own experience. That's not science in any way that I understand. Not that I'm a fan of materialist science, I'm not, but it is useful at what it does when it stays within its domain of competence.

......but to pretend they are discontinuous with all of prior philosophy is not at all accurate.

You then introduce and answer your own argument here, rather than one I have explicitly or implicitly made. It's called 'So you're saying....' However I can answer it for you by saying that it is discontinuous with the philosophical method we have employed for two millennia. Premises, conclusion, logic, valid and sound argument etc.

It is continuous in exactly the way we would expect it to be given our other knowledge of paradigmatic revolutions in the 20th century.

Well that's a good example of an ambiguous assertion.

There is no proper philosophy or science which does not start from experience and test results against experience. It's really a simple concept. Implicit in your statements above is that everyone's inner experience must be isolated to their own personal bubbles. But such an assumption is not coherent under idealism and only superficially reflective of our experience. It falls apart when we reflect more deeply on how it is that our ideal content is shared with others to make everything from communication to empathy possible. Western metaphysics has taken several turns for the "worse" in the last 2500 years, especially with the rise of nominalism, rationalism and materialism-dualism. Idealists like to assume they stand apart from those major detours, and that somehow they have managed to avoid being influenced by them, but nothing could be further from the truth. That is the bad habit which needs to be broken and soon. It is the habit of mind which convinces us we are only developing linearly without paradigmatic shifts, yet Thomas Kuhn has shown clearly why that is not the case. As Barfield says, "the obvious is the hardest thing of all to point out to those who have genuinely lost sight of it." Do we want to take the metamorphoses of consciousness seriously or only pay it lip service?

[AshvinP]

But instead of settling for only the intellectual arguments those traditions produced, it seeks to verify those arguments and more through direct experience.

OK, so we are now coming to the truthfulness criteria and verification methods of the spiritual science. The spiritual science claims that the direct experience of the facts of the higher "waking" world is the confirmation for its intellectual arguments. We are running into a problem here. Steiner of any other adept of the neo-Christian spiritual science claims that he has a direct spiritual experience and revelations of the higher world and its structures and hierarchies and he communicates with inhabitants of that world from whom he receives that knowledge. Now, a practitioner of any other spiritual tradition, be it traditional Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Yoga, Buddhism, Vedic, indigenous etc. etc. will say exactly the same: he has direct visions, spiritual revelation states and communications with inhabitants of higher realms. Over the recent decades, a wealth of information about the higher after-death realms became available from the NDE and regression therapy accounts. In addition, a plethora of amazing spiritual states and revelations have been experienced by many people using hallucinogen drugs. And even more, not surprisingly, many residents of mental hospitals will also make very similar claims of having a visions and communicating with higher-world entities on everyday basis. One consistent feature of these experiences is that almost every experiencer has a sense of certainty and faith that his/her experiences represent the true facts describing the reality of the higher world.

Can we consider these experiences as facts that can be used to verify the intellectual arguments of the spiritual science (or any other spiritual tradition for that matter)? In natural sciences it is easier to use experimental facts as the means for verification of arguments because the natural facts are mostly very consistent with each other and reproducible when performed by different subjects. The problem is - the facts of the spiritual experiences are not consistent and not reproducible, they typically all contradict each other and differ from person to person and from tradition to tradition. From the history of humanity we know a plethora of spiritual and religious worldviews and beliefs, many of them pretty much nonsensical and contradicting each other, that were claimed to be confirmed by somebody spiritual experiences and revelations.

Now, this is where the spiritual science is different from personal worldviews or beliefs. As a person I can have my private spiritual intuitions, revelations and experiences and can form my personal worldviews and beliefs based on my experiences, there is nothing wrong with that. However, spiritual science claims objectivity, it claims that its truths are universal and are beyond private personal views, experiences or beliefs. But for that to happen, the spiritual science has to establish reliable and reproducible verification and truthfulness criteria.

So, if we want to move forward from reductionist natural sciences and from non-scientific religions to spiritual sciences, we need to establish those verification and truthfulness criteria. The problem is that subjective spiritual experiences can not be reliable verification criteria, because they are inconsistent with each other and non-reproducible. What else the spiritual science can use for its verification and truthfulness criteria?

Another option is to abandon any claims that the "spiritual science" is a real science that can provide verifiable and trustworthy knowledge about the world beyond the natural worlds, and admit that it belongs either to the area of religious beliefs, or to philosophy/metaphysics. Now, philosophy is definitely different from religion, because it has its own specific set of truthfulness criteria different from religions. So, if spiritual science claims to belong to the area of philosophy, it has to be in a position to withstand the challenge and scrutiny of philosophical method and its truthfulness criteria, which Apanthropinist mentioned above.

Look, I have not had clear spiritual experiences of any sort from any of those traditions you mentioned. I am just going off of how things fit into the foundation of regular experience and ideas which I have the utmost confidence in (such as the metamorphoses of Spirit described in the essay). Cleric and Steiner's claims fit in extremely well while the vague spiritual claims made from other traditions are also explained by their claims, but not vice versa. The vague mystical claims explain very little of my own experience and certainly cannot encompass the experiential claims to knowledge made by Anthroposophy. So I could either throw my hands up and say "everyone is making claims and none of them are verifiable, so I will just be content with my ignorance" or I could make some tough decisions and follow where my intuition, reason and imagination is leading me, slowly but surely. I choose the latter.