Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 7:25 pm
PS - how do you heat your water in the morning? Is it just warm or boiling hot? I asked Cleric about this OMA exercise previously and if it's best to avoid electric sources of heat. He recommended trying to heat it through the Solar warmth, but that's not very practical for me, especially at this time of year. Even when it's hot, I can only do it by leaving water in my car. I would like to restart the exercise, though, since it's such a simple way to cleanse the system in the morning. Have you noticed any specific effects from this practice?

Not that I understand why electricity can't be redeemed in this case, since it's used to enhance spiritual development, however another way to avoid it and still get hot water would be to use tealight candles maybe, or other candles? Unless one has access to a fireplace, of course.

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 8:41 pm Thanks for elaborating, Cleric. I am clearly very far from all this. I was just wondering about ways to help rewiring the experience of music in general, in much more basic terms, having in mind that it's soon the end of music that stirs feelings, as you recently said.

Well, in that case it's probably useful to enter into the structure of music. Here modern technology can also be used to spark our imagination. For example, using this Chrome extension we can see the spectrum of anything on YouTube. As an example, I did this song (make sure to activate the higher quality from the settings - the cog icon).


(if the embedded player doesn't work try the direct link)

I did some manipulation to rotate the spectrum vertically because I think it can be helpful to see higher pitches as geometrically higher.

The violin is an instrument that is very similar to the human voice. In general, it is played monophonically, just like the human voice can play only one pitch at a time. In this case, the violin creates the melody. It's clearly visible in the bluish lines. The lowest of the lines is the fundamental tone, above it are the overtones.

The guitar in this case provides the harmony. It plays arpeggiated chords.

This simple two-instrument performance allows us to easily distinguish the two aspects. The melody is relatively easy to comprehend. We simply have a pitch that moves up or down. We can very easily feel this if we hum or whistle along.

Harmony is much more complicated. There are so many ways in which different pitches can be combined. And not only that, but these combinations and sequences result in different feeling transformations. These are achieved through chord progressions. They are very tightly related to any structure of a story, where, for example, we have introduction, development, culmination, and resolution.

The spectrum of the guitar chords is more complicated because it is polyphonic (even though in this case the notes are played in arpeggio). We can't that easily trace them with our linear thought as pitch that moves up and down through time. We would need parallel threads of thinking if we were to do that. Thus harmony is felt more holistically, like the aura, the color of each of the acts through which the development goes. The violin/melody is more like the voice that sings along (and in fact, the lyrics of the song use the partiture of the violin).

To this we can also add rhythm, although we don't have a specific instrument in this case. Usually rhythm is emphasized through percussive instruments.

So to enrich our inner experience of music we can try inner gestures. For example, we can use our imaginary hand horizontally, and move it up and down according to the pitch, much like the lines move up and down in the visualization.

Separately, we can follow the guitar and try to feel the chord progressions from bar to bar, we should try to feel how they provide the context within which the voice tells the story, how they build tension, pose questions, and then lead to resolution.

Finally, we can do both, we can gesticulate in our mind the movement of the pitch, while feeling how the feeling aura transforms from color to color, from bar to bar.

There are so many valuable insights that can be drawn from such experiences. For example, our intellectual thinking is monophonic, it's like melody, it has only a single thread of transformation. In Imagination we already have polyphony, interference of spiritual intents that impress in soul-space. We need to grasp the metamorphoses of the acts holistically.

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 10:49 pm Cleric, I am glad that it's possible to experience music in the way described! For my part this sounds a long way ahead of what I can hope to grasp at this point. I read the words, but I lack the concepts to extract any meaning, already from “listening with the whole volume of the room”. It was not long ago when I was imagining an object of concentration by mentally placing it in space more or less in front of my physical eyes. Then I learnt to let go of the idea of physical space in concentration. So the indication to expand into a given volume in space hardly lands for me, let alone the answer to the question: “Expand what?”, which is: something in between an organ of perception and a musical instrument
To conclude, I lack intuition for the whole idea of permanently resisting the flow of everything that makes music music - like melody, rhythm, harmony - to find real enjoyment in that negation (a temporary resistance, an elasticity of the rhythm, is inherent to what music is, and that I would understand).
Given all these difficulties, I would like to ask: what would be a first small step one can take with music that would orient in the right direction?

Federica,

This could be an important theme to explore further, because I also sense the great struggle to put on pause the sensual enjoyment of phenomena in order to cultivate enjoyment in exploring their inner dimension, which at first will be difficult and elusive. We should be clear that it is neither permanent resistance of musical experience nor a full frontal negation of all sensual enjoyment. If we did that, then we would only grow frustrated, depressed, resentful, and unmotivated to continue any further. We would snap back to sensual habits like a rubber band that has been stretched way too far, or simply break. So we need to be strategic here and work gradually on certain domains of sensual experience over time, applying small amounts of torque according to our intuitive feedback and ideals. 

We should first work on strengthening and refining our intuition for why the outer sacrifice is necessary to penetrate to the inner dimension of our soul gestures. The mathematical calculation is a really simple and helpful example to work with. When we start multiplying two numbers with our thinking-will and focus on obtaining the proper result, it is very difficult if even possible to simultaneously focus on the intuitive thinking-gestures we are making to perform the calculation. In that sense, all the energy of our inner gestures are focused into the outer conceptual-sensory experience and this greatly dims down our inner sensitivity to the energy of those movements. If we focus entirely on the intuitive gestures we are making to do the calculation, on the other hand, the calculation stops. Indeed, at first we need to diminish our conceptual and sensory calculations for the inner gestures to shine through into our consciousness. We can make this effort not only in concentration/meditation, but at opportune times during the daily stream of experience as well.

As we have discussed before, it's not helpful to think this inner experience is simply beyond us and we need to wait for some profound meditative
breakthrough before we can even start working with the imaginative volume. I think Cleric's musical demonstration shows the relationship between the outer experience of melody, harmony, and rhythm and the depth of inner TFW gestures can be concretely felt, even if at a dim level. Yet to go further we will need to increase our sensitivity by resisting the passive and consumptive outer habits while cultivating new inner habits that are active and aim toward creative responsibility. Even the act of seeking the inner dimension of outer experience in this sacrificial way is a gesture toward taking on more creative responsibility for the perceptual flow. We should trust that, the more gestures of this sort that we make, the more our inner organism will adapt itself to new patterns of being, rewiring the old psychic patterns. 

Our imaginative volume will begin to feel itself more 'entangled' with the surrounding environment. Perhaps as an initial experiment, we can simply try to sense how, when we focus on various objects in the room and their qualities, our whole soul life merges with those qualities. If we observe the color 'green', our whole soul life is the quality of green. This is important to decondition from the sense that we are a conscious subject 'over here' looking at sensory qualities 'over there'. All sensations unfold within the one and only 'inner space' that there is, which extends as far as the eyes can see, the ears can hear, and our kinesthetic imagination can reach (with normal consciousness). If we focus on an object in the distance and this stimulates certain feelings and thoughts, we are in a very real sense thinking through that object. This is the reality and there is nothing except our old psychic patterns that prevents us from gradually reorienting our intuition to its immanent experience.

With this new upbuilding sensitivity to the inner gestures, we gradually return to the outer musical experience with an added dimension of depth, that is, we intuitively sense more of our own creative involvement in bringing the musical experience to manifestation in the perceptual flow, just as we normally have intuition for bringing our inner voice into the perceptual flow. From our decohered perspective, music reflects the ideal movements we have experienced during sleep and between death-rebirth, which in reality are superimposed on our waking thinking experience as well, modulating the latter as overtones. Our soul life itself can be experienced more as an instrument on which Cosmic intents are playing, and our Earthly personality has an active role in continuously tuning that instrument (the soul organs) so it resonates more harmoniously with what our Individuality intends. 

Steiner wrote:With music it is different. Now we do not merge inner with outer, but enter directly into that which the soul experiences as the spiritual or psycho-spiritual; leave space entirely. Music is line-like, one-dimensional; is experienced one-dimensionally in the line of time. In music man experiences the world as his own. Now the soul does not assert something it needs upon descending into or leaving the physical; rather it experiences something which lives and vibrates here and now, on earth, in its own soul-spirit nature. Studying the secrets of music, we can discover what the Greeks, who knew a great deal about these matters, meant by the lyre of Apollo. What is experienced musically is really man's hidden adaptation to the inner harmonic-melodic relationships of cosmic existence out of which he was shaped. His nerve fibers, ramifications of the spinal cord, are marvelous musical strings with a metamorphosed activity. The spinal cord culminating in the brain, and distributing its nerve fibers throughout the body, is the lyre of Apollo. Upon these nerve fibers the soul-spirit man is “played” within the earthly sphere. Thus man himself is the world's most perfect instrument; and he can experience artistically the tones of an external musical instrument to the degree that he feels this connection between the sounding of strings of a new instrument, for example, and his own coursing blood and nerve fibers. In other words, man, as nerve man, is inwardly built up of music, and feels it artistically to the degree that he feels its harmonization with the mystery of his own musical structure.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 10:57 pm


So to enrich our inner experience of music we can try inner gestures. For example, we can use our imaginary hand horizontally, and move it up and down according to the pitch, much like the lines move up and down in the visualization.

Separately, we can follow the guitar and try to feel the chord progressions from bar to bar, we should try to feel how they provide the context within which the voice tells the story, how they build tension, pose questions, and then lead to resolution.

Finally, we can do both, we can gesticulate in our mind the movement of the pitch, while feeling how the feeling aura transforms from color to color, from bar to bar.

There are so many valuable insights that can be drawn from such experiences. For example, our intellectual thinking is monophonic, it's like melody, it has only a single thread of transformation. In Imagination we already have polyphony, interference of spiritual intents that impress in soul-space. We need to grasp the metamorphoses of the acts holistically.

Thanks! That's easy. So, as it seems, the direction goes first towards embracing the feeling, rather than away from it.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 2:22 pm Federica,

This could be an important theme to explore further, because I also sense the great struggle to put on pause the sensual enjoyment of phenomena in order to cultivate enjoyment in exploring their inner dimension, which at first will be difficult and elusive. We should be clear that it is neither permanent resistance of musical experience nor a full frontal negation of all sensual enjoyment. If we did that, then we would only grow frustrated, depressed, resentful, and unmotivated to continue any further. We would snap back to sensual habits like a rubber band that has been stretched way too far, or simply break. So we need to be strategic here and work gradually on certain domains of sensual experience over time, applying small amounts of torque according to our intuitive feedback and ideals. 

We should first work on strengthening and refining our intuition for why the outer sacrifice is necessary to penetrate to the inner dimension of our soul gestures. The mathematical calculation is a really simple and helpful example to work with. When we start multiplying two numbers with our thinking-will and focus on obtaining the proper result, it is very difficult if even possible to simultaneously focus on the intuitive thinking-gestures we are making to perform the calculation. In that sense, all the energy of our inner gestures are focused into the outer conceptual-sensory experience and this greatly dims down our inner sensitivity to the energy of those movements. If we focus entirely on the intuitive gestures we are making to do the calculation, on the other hand, the calculation stops. Indeed, at first we need to diminish our conceptual and sensory calculations for the inner gestures to shine through into our consciousness. We can make this effort not only in concentration/meditation, but at opportune times during the daily stream of experience as well.

As we have discussed before, it's not helpful to think this inner experience is simply beyond us and we need to wait for some profound meditative
breakthrough before we can even start working with the imaginative volume. I think Cleric's musical demonstration shows the relationship between the outer experience of melody, harmony, and rhythm and the depth of inner TFW gestures can be concretely felt, even if at a dim level. Yet to go further we will need to increase our sensitivity by resisting the passive and consumptive outer habits while cultivating new inner habits that are active and aim toward creative responsibility. Even the act of seeking the inner dimension of outer experience in this sacrificial way is a gesture toward taking on more creative responsibility for the perceptual flow. We should trust that, the more gestures of this sort that we make, the more our inner organism will adapt itself to new patterns of being, rewiring the old psychic patterns. 

Our imaginative volume will begin to feel itself more 'entangled' with the surrounding environment. Perhaps as an initial experiment, we can simply try to sense how, when we focus on various objects in the room and their qualities, our whole soul life merges with those qualities. If we observe the color 'green', our whole soul life is the quality of green. This is important to decondition from the sense that we are a conscious subject 'over here' looking at sensory qualities 'over there'. All sensations unfold within the one and only 'inner space' that there is, which extends as far as the eyes can see, the ears can hear, and our kinesthetic imagination can reach (with normal consciousness). If we focus on an object in the distance and this stimulates certain feelings and thoughts, we are in a very real sense thinking through that object. This is the reality and there is nothing except our old psychic patterns that prevents us from gradually reorienting our intuition to its immanent experience.

With this new upbuilding sensitivity to the inner gestures, we gradually return to the outer musical experience with an added dimension of depth, that is, we intuitively sense more of our own creative involvement in bringing the musical experience to manifestation in the perceptual flow, just as we normally have intuition for bringing our inner voice into the perceptual flow. From our decohered perspective, music reflects the ideal movements we have experienced during sleep and between death-rebirth, which in reality are superimposed on our waking thinking experience as well, modulating the latter as overtones. Our soul life itself can be experienced more as an instrument on which Cosmic intents are playing, and our Earthly personality has an active role in continuously tuning that instrument (the soul organs) so it resonates more harmoniously with what our Individuality intends. 

Steiner wrote:With music it is different. Now we do not merge inner with outer, but enter directly into that which the soul experiences as the spiritual or psycho-spiritual; leave space entirely. Music is line-like, one-dimensional; is experienced one-dimensionally in the line of time. In music man experiences the world as his own. Now the soul does not assert something it needs upon descending into or leaving the physical; rather it experiences something which lives and vibrates here and now, on earth, in its own soul-spirit nature. Studying the secrets of music, we can discover what the Greeks, who knew a great deal about these matters, meant by the lyre of Apollo. What is experienced musically is really man's hidden adaptation to the inner harmonic-melodic relationships of cosmic existence out of which he was shaped. His nerve fibers, ramifications of the spinal cord, are marvelous musical strings with a metamorphosed activity. The spinal cord culminating in the brain, and distributing its nerve fibers throughout the body, is the lyre of Apollo. Upon these nerve fibers the soul-spirit man is “played” within the earthly sphere. Thus man himself is the world's most perfect instrument; and he can experience artistically the tones of an external musical instrument to the degree that he feels this connection between the sounding of strings of a new instrument, for example, and his own coursing blood and nerve fibers. In other words, man, as nerve man, is inwardly built up of music, and feels it artistically to the degree that he feels its harmonization with the mystery of his own musical structure.

Thanks Ashvin, your post is on point, as far as I am concerned. I do feel the risk that these efforts, or even premises of efforts, may result in restlessness or rebellion rather than phenomenological understanding. The root problem is the ambiguity towards the experience of pleasure. We can call it enjoyment when it’s sense-free, but to be clear, the question is if and how it should be pursued, enjoyed as a side effect of something else, resisted, or else, and why it’s acceptable or not depending on whether it’s sense-based or sense-free. I know there is a whole chapter in PoF about that. Well, it’s one of the parts I only read once and I have forgotten it. Of course, I should be able to reconstruct that by myself through introspection, but to be honest that’s where the resistance may reside at this point. I am not sure I’m ready to give up the pleasure of listening to music and rest on the sound. So you are perfectly right - I first need to get a better sense of why the sacrifice is needed.
In the example of the song above - yes, the suggested exercise helps connect the sounds with inner gestures, yet this deepening - at least at this initial stage - seems to intensify the enjoyment, which at this point is certainly entirely sense-based. It's not passive, but it's sense-based. I don't know if it's consumptive. In this example, I can't see that we need to resist the sensory experience in order to observe the inner gestures. Rather, by noticing and distinguishing the inner gestures, the sense experience seems enhanced. As you say, maybe more awareness would come with small exercises. Thanks!

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 6:56 pm Thanks Ashvin, your post is on point, as far as I am concerned. I do feel the risk that these efforts, or even premises of efforts, may result in restlessness or rebellion rather than phenomenological understanding. The root problem is the ambiguity towards the experience of pleasure. We can call it enjoyment when it’s sense-free, but to be clear, the question is if and how it should be pursued, enjoyed as a side effect of something else, resisted, or else, and why it’s acceptable or not depending on whether it’s sense-based or sense-free. I know there is a whole chapter in PoF about that. Well, it’s one of the parts I only read once and I have forgotten it. Of course, I should be able to reconstruct that by myself through introspection, but to be honest that’s where the resistance may reside at this point. I am not sure I’m ready to give up the pleasure of listening to music and rest on the sound. So you are perfectly right - I first need to get a better sense of why the sacrifice is needed.
In the example of the song above - yes, the suggested exercise helps connect the sounds with inner gestures, yet this deepening - at least at this initial stage - seems to intensify the enjoyment, which at this point is certainly entirely sense-based. It's not passive, but it's sense-based. I don't know if it's consumptive. In this example, I can't see that we need to resist the sensory experience in order to observe the inner gestures. Rather, by noticing and distinguishing the inner gestures, the sense experience seems enhanced. As you say, maybe more awareness would come with small exercises. Thanks!

Right, so 'resisting the sensory experience' can be taken more broadly here. It's not so much about shutting out all sensory experience, which is not really possible during the normal course of life, but about resisting the passive and consumptive habits of our etched psychic configuration when engaging with sensory experience.

That is the amazing thing about the phenomenological or study-meditate approach - we can engage with sensory experience in an imaginative way that always points back to our inner gestures, so we remain continuously active and responsible in the perceptual flow, thinking and feeling through the meaningful gestures. This certainly should enrich the enjoyment of the sensory experience in some ways. From normal life, the 'sense-free enjoyment' could be compared to when we engage in some creative task that is aimed toward purposes beyond our own personal interests, like some charity work or even normal work where we go above and beyond what is required. It is the enjoyment of being meaningfully centered in the goal of inner perfection for transpersonal aims.

It is still an overall sacrifice. Imagine you form the intention to use the same active approach for every song you listen to on YT from now on. You will certainly meet resistance from habits of the old psychic configuration. It will take more time, effort, discipline, attention, etc. Yet these are the sacrifices we can gradually accustom our inner life to, as we start to feel the sense-free transpersonal enjoyment from the creative effort outweighs the discomfort, inconvenience, etc.

This approach can apply in many other areas besides musical experience. I mentioned previously how I started working with it in the domain of speech, which of course is similar to music in many ways. My cat gives me plenty of opportunities to work with this. If she does something silly, cute, funny, weird, etc., it is as if I can sense something stirred within my soul life that generates an instinctive speech pattern which bubbles to the surface and would normally manifest without a second thought, but at the last second the "I" gets involved and does one of these moves:





Then it's as if the speech force that would have instinctively pushed its way into manifestation is consciously intercepted by the "I", redirected inwardly, and repurposed to elaborate inner sensitivity to the soul configuration that generated it. We can also do this with reflexive physical mannerisms and gestures. Maybe we have the habit of bouncing our leg a lot while sitting down. Things like that. It's all the same underlying principle. Resisting these things will prove much more difficult than it may sound when we simply think about doing it, so there's definitely a good amount of sacrifice involved. Yet the more inner sensitivity we grow, the more that enlarges the sphere of our sense-free enjoyment and motivates us to pursue the efforts further, understanding the inner gestures at greater depths.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 7:43 pm Right, so 'resisting the sensory experience' can be taken more broadly here. It's not so much about shutting out all sensory experience, which is not really possible during the normal course of life, but about resisting the passive and consumptive habits of our etched psychic configuration when engaging with sensory experience.

That is the amazing thing about the phenomenological or study-meditate approach - we can engage with sensory experience in an imaginative way that always points back to our inner gestures, so we remain continuously active and responsible in the perceptual flow, thinking and feeling through the meaningful gestures. This certainly should enrich the enjoyment of the sensory experience in some ways. From normal life, the 'sense-free enjoyment' could be compared to when we engage in some creative task that is aimed toward purposes beyond our own personal interests, like some charity work or even normal work where we go above and beyond what is required. It is the enjoyment of being meaningfully centered in the goal of inner perfection for transpersonal aims.

It is still an overall sacrifice. Imagine you form the intention to use the same active approach for every song you listen to on YT from now on. You will certainly meet resistance from habits of the old psychic configuration. It will take more time, effort, discipline, attention, etc. Yet these are the sacrifices we can gradually accustom our inner life to, as we start to feel the sense-free transpersonal enjoyment from the creative effort outweighs the discomfort, inconvenience, etc.

This approach can apply in many other areas besides musical experience. I mentioned previously how I started working with it in the domain of speech, which of course is similar to music in many ways. My cat gives me plenty of opportunities to work with this. If she does something silly, cute, funny, weird, etc., it is as if I can sense something stirred within my soul life that generates an instinctive speech pattern which bubbles to the surface and would normally manifest without a second thought, but at the last second the "I" gets involved and does one of these moves:





Then it's as if the speech force that would have instinctively pushed its way into manifestation is consciously intercepted by the "I", redirected inwardly, and repurposed to elaborate inner sensitivity to the soul configuration that generated it. We can also do this with reflexive physical mannerisms and gestures. Maybe we have the habit of bouncing our leg a lot while sitting down. Things like that. It's all the same underlying principle. Resisting these things will prove much more difficult than it may sound when we simply think about doing it, so there's definitely a good amount of sacrifice involved. Yet the more inner sensitivity we grow, the more that enlarges the sphere of our sense-free enjoyment and motivates us to pursue the efforts further, understanding the inner gestures at greater depths.

Yes, I see. I read that post again, where you explained this same idea.
A time comes when doing isolated exercises and study becomes insufficient. The usual flow of everyday life must change too, but in an active way. I can't simply keep rubbing the thought that the inner path is there and has value, as I go about my day. If this is not invested in more active engagement with the experiential flow, it risks to become a superstitious gesture, or a compulsion. So I may start very small, with spotting recurring, seemingly harmless, small-thoughts. Doing something with every song I listen to is much more demanding, probably too ambitious for now!

Well on second thought, this attitude doesn't seem to be possible for me at this point. This is a work against nature, squared. Or x-ed. Where is the point of balance in this mortification process? I can't see it. Why not go to sleep on a bed of nails at this rate? A soft bed is highly consumptive and incredibly passive.

Federica wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 2:55 pm Well on second thought, this attitude doesn't seem to be possible for me at this point. This is a work against nature, squared. Or x-ed. Where is the point of balance? I can't see it. Why not go to sleep on a bed of nails at this rate? A soft bed is highly consumptive and incredibly passive.

What is an example of something that feels to be a bed of nails at this point? For ex. do you feel that way about resisting certain impulsive speech or bodily gestures that practically unfold on autopilot, without the presence of your thinking-will?

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 3:00 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 2:55 pm Well on second thought, this attitude doesn't seem to be possible for me at this point. This is a work against nature, squared. Or x-ed. Where is the point of balance? I can't see it. Why not go to sleep on a bed of nails at this rate? A soft bed is highly consumptive and incredibly passive.

What is an example of something that feels to be a bed of nails at this point? For ex. do you feel that way about resisting certain impulsive speech or bodily gestures that practically unfold on autopilot, without the presence of your thinking-will?

Nothing feels like a bed of nails, because I don't know that sensation. But resisting the flow of music certainly feels mortifying. Nervous bodily gestures are good to control, and impulsive speech too. But one can easily imagine valid reasons to exert such control that have nothing to do with mortifying our earthly existence.