Philosophical Speculations

Just a quick note: reading while trying to grasp the full context of the lecture and reading that tries to intuit the core message, could be considered as different kinds of experience. The former leads us into more Akasha-like experience. This is actually more difficult than the other. It requires greater degree of inner development. To grasp the nature of Saturn, Sun, Moon conditions, the bodies and so on, is actually not so difficult. We only need to unlearn certain cognitive habits of our mechanistic age and approach the ideas without prejudice and with living participation. It's not so difficult because these fundamental realities are present in each one of us as our most immediate essence. To know the context of the lecture, we're practically striving for more detailed clairvoyance, which not only seeks the principal realities but also to the historical context and soul life of those involved.

Like the whole spirit of this discussion, this doesn't mean that we have to first perfect the principles and only then think about the souls and the historical context. We can always do them together. And I guess that it may come down also to personal constitution. It might be easier for Federica to find the principle ideas when they are placed in the wider historical context. But we also should be careful to suggest that context loosely, because initially we can do that only instinctively based on certain understanding that we have and some historical ideas of how thing should have been in these times and places. I would say that it's fully safe if we seek that context as feeling. Any more concrete images should be taken provisionally because they might be only projections.

Karmic insight - looking into the concrete details of human destinies - is in magnitudes more difficult than knowing the general truths of existence. It's really difficult to conceive the degree of purity of our inner life and devotion to the evolutionary process that are needed in order to approach another soul and be able to intuit something truthful. Any hidden sympathies and antipathies that we may still harbor, can warp our perceptions in ways which are very hard to notice. For example, Riddles of Philosophy proceeds from such insight. These volumes are not in the least just a summary of the philosophies of some individualities. Most of what we find there speaks not so much about what these philosophers have written and published but the kind of inner life that they have led. In this way we can understand why the written works took the form they did even if the philosopher at that time hasn't been fully conscious of this.

The fact remains, however, that reading - in whatever way we do it - is only one part. As Steiner has been emphasizing, the other part is to take these ideas in quiet inner reflection and make them our own. This is the key. At this point neither the historical context remains, nor the souls of the participants. We should remain alone with the ideas and only with the invisible presence of the inner Master, from whom we seek the guidance towards the inner stance from which the ideas are grasped as obvious truths.

Thank you, both! With your combined comments, I think I’ve now gained a good grasp on the question.

Ashvin, just please know that, as I said, I consider myself lacking the least ability to read the larger perceptual spectrum. I thought I put in enough emphasis on that

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 12:57 pm Thank you, both! With your combined comments, I think I’ve now gained a good grasp on the question.

Ashvin, just please know that, as I said, I consider myself lacking the least ability to read the larger perceptual spectrum. I thought I put in enough emphasis on that

Federica,

It should be noted that when I mention something like 'confidence in reading ability', this is referring primarily to the unconscious soul gestures from Cleric's post. It is not something we normally have direct introspective access to with our concepts. In fact, through the latter, we may often express quite the opposite of what lives in our inner soul configurations. Shakespeare had a keen sense for this dynamic - "the lady doth protest too much, methinks." We have seen this many times on the forum as well - people speak outwardly of intuitive experience of Oneness, of getting rid of 'metacognition', of loving all others, and so forth, yet inwardly they flow along with abstract thinking, intellectual assumptions, selfish preferences, etc. more than ever before. Obviously, I am not directing this specifically at you, but as an overall soul tendency of the modern age.

It reminds me of a lecture I was reading recently:

Steiner wrote:It is difficult to break through the veil which separates the physical and spiritual worlds. This makes self-knowledge difficult to the greatest possible extent; one imagines that as something too easy. It is sometimes difficult already in the external physical sense. The significant philosopher Ernst Mach 4 — not Ferdinand Maack, otherwise, I would not have spoken of a significant philosopher [ ]— gave a grotesque example of it. Mach describes in one of his works that when he was a young man a disagreeable countenance struck him once in a mirror of a shop-window, which he had immediately to recognise as his own to his dismay. He experienced something similar later again. While getting into a bus he saw a man with an ugly face who met him from the other side, and recognised only afterwards that he had seen himself in the mirror. The human being is still even more uncertain about the being or form of the soul. People do not dream of what one has to do to get self-knowledge. In the subsoil of the soul, maya has often large dimensions. A human being has the impulse of cruelty; he lives together with people whom he torments every now and then et cetera. He looks for an external cause for it; he often uses an ingenious gift of invention to veil the structure of his soul. I myself knew somebody who spoke repeatedly how many great sacrifices his activity demanded. But I had to say that it was only a lust of his soul, which he satisfied. When he spoke of sacrifices that way, only egoism stood behind that. Real self-knowledge is only accessible if one advances in spiritual science gradually, in so far as he experiences by himself what is in the world.

There are chatting people in the world who organise chat hours [I wonder what Steiner would think of Discord ]. Apparently, that is even the case when men go to their sundowners. If they are asked, why they chat, people have all kinds of important reasons for that. But if we glide with our hand over velvet or silk, we have a feeling of pleasure. While somebody is chatting, his etheric body knocks perpetually against the air set in motion, and in doing so it is stroked. This is nothing bad. You understand what goes forward with chatting, only if you know that the human being has an etheric body.

Humankind goes towards a time when it must face such matters more and more. Spiritual science must arouse the consciousness for it more and more.

Nevertheless, we can indirectly discern these inner configurations from patterns of thought, feeling, and action, if we are able to distance ourselves from the latter enough. And many of them practically live in every modern intellectual personality. Jung noticed this too:

Jung wrote:In daily life it happens all the time that we presume that the psychic processes of other people are the same as ours. We suppose that what is pleasing or desirable to us is the same to others, and that what seems bad to us must also seem bad to them.

I only mention this because we don't want to form premature judgments about these inner configurations concerning others or ourselves. Those can also block our ability to become inwardly aware of them at a higher level.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 4:06 pm We remember our friend findingblanks. He is quite an enigma for me. Normally people dislike Steiner because they feel crushed by the tons of concepts that they can’t make sense of. But FB has spent years of studying them, yet obviously without anything reaching into the depth of the soul. One wonders from whence he draws the energy to do so. It all remains for him abstract conjecture. I remember that I asked him “OK, so after reading for all these years do you imagine it is possible that in the end it turns out that there’s no such thing as Saturn, Sun, Moon conditions, that it is all a mistake?” He was honest enough to affirm that this is a completely viable possibility for him. I can’t think of a better illustration for the image in 2/. After all these years of ‘studying’, in the end nothing has moved, nothing has clicked, and it all remains just as a floating conjecture.

It's very interesting that the day the above was posted, or maybe the day before, I started a discussion with FB (Jeff) on FB without realizing it at first. He had commented on Max's post of a Steiner quote. I will replay the discussion here simply because it may be of interest to others and help kindle the intuition for what it means to expand our 'spiritual freedom'. Observing his line of reasoning may also help us to orient more to 2/ from Cleric's post above. Also, it will help me feel more like the entire discussion was not time wasted It wasn't too much time, though, since I borrowed many of these metaphors and examples from Cleric.

To be fair, FB gave some interesting arguments and examples. But, at the end of the day, it all serves to justify the common soul preference of avoiding creative responsibility for the first-person flow of spiritual activity and what it continually impresses into the World state.

***

“If the I has really penetrated its deed with full insight, in conformity with its nature, then it also feels itself to be master. As long as this is not the case, the laws ruling the deed confront us as something foreign, they rule us; what we do is done under the compulsion they exert over us. If they are transformed from being a foreign entity into a deed completely originating within our own I, then the compulsion ceases. That which compelled us, has become our own being. The laws no longer rule over us; in us they rule over the deed issuing from our I. To carry out a deed under the influence of a law external to the person who brings the deed to realization, is a deed done in unfreedom. To carry out a deed ruled by a law that lies within the one who brings it about, is a deed done in freedom. To recognize the laws of one's deeds, means to become conscious of one's own freedom. Thus the process of knowledge is the process of development toward freedom.

Not all our deeds have this character. Often we do not possess knowledge of the laws governing our deeds. Such deeds form a part of our activity which is unfree. In contrast, there is that other part where we make ourselves completely at one with the laws. This is the free sphere. Only insofar as man is able to live in this sphere, can he be called moral. To transform the first sphere of our activity into one that has the character of the second is the task of every individual's development, as well as the task of mankind as a whole.

The most important problem of all human thinking is: to understand man as a free personality, whose very foundation is himself.”

—Rudolf Steiner, Truth and Knowledge

FB: I understand this within a specific, narrow frame of reference. And it is self-consistent with his terms has he defines them. And I think it corresponds to a type of experience that most adults can relate to.

I'm not sure if it captures the free actions of the person who either readily acknowledges that they do not know why they are acting in a given way, who acknowledge that it could be caused by all sorts of things. There are other actions that would consider free that I'm not sure his frame above captures. And I know he mentioned that the most free people he'd met were the uneducated, hard workers and farmers he'd had the privledge of knowing. I'm sure some of those people would feel they had consciously grasped the 'laws of their own deeds.'

There are people I know who live and act from deeply within the foundations of their being, yet who - when asked to talk about why they are doing such sacrifical and devoted activity - will reduce it to an obligation. Sometimes, yes, I think this reflects that they are not acting freely. But don't we all know of people who clearly are coming from deeply within the 'laws' of their own being, yet who don't frame their motives in a way that reflects this. If we do think such individuals exists, I'm not sure we can say that they have become conscious of the causes of their actions.

Anyway, I know this can all come across as nit-picky and as if Steiner missed something important. Ugh. The fun part is only if others have their own puzzelments about what might land outside of his descriptions. Because I agree that it's mainly boring to simply chop up logic in this domain.


Ashvin: Steiner's quote should be understood in the phenomenological context. Imagine a bird flying - make it go left, make it go right, make it loop around in a circle, and so forth. Try to feel as clearly as possible how you intend the direction of the bird. We should make this a kinesthetic exercise and really imagine it and get a feel for it like we would if we were doing yogic asanas. We will experience that the movements of the bird follow in lockstep with our intentional activity. Try to feel the difference between this activity and simply following a perception of a bird with your attention. Next time you see a bird try to move its perception with your intent in the way you move your imaginary bird.

The imaginary bird is still something mysterious. We don't know how exactly we gather the color 'pixels' through which we shape the image. We don't even know what the pixels are. But one thing is for certain - the movement of the image reflects our intentions. In contrast to other perceptions which simply appear and entrain our thinking, consciously intended thoughts not only appear but do so in full sync with our meaningful intents. Our thinking entrains the perceptions.

This is where we are truly free - where we *intuitively* know the 'laws' governing our thinking deeds and the perceptual thought-flow that results from our deeds. It's not about having clear-cut concepts about how our thinking intents steer the imaginary bird, but the intuitive experience of being united with the cause of the perceptual transformation - we know the cause because we are the cause. From this seed point of freedom, we can grow our cognition into the intuitive 'laws' that intend the perceptual flows of the deeper psychic, biological, and sensory domains.

FB: Yes. It is because we can go into the phenomenology that we can directly experience even our deepest insights arise spontaneously [this is where it suddenly dawned this is FB]. It is the phenomenological mode that can push against any intellectual (even if only sounding so) claim that we must become conscious of the laws of our actions in order to truly be free.

I think we are on the same page.

Ashvin: I don't agree the 'spontaneous' aspect is verified phenomenologically. It is something we later deduce from the fact that we aren't completely aware of what brought our thinking into a certain 'region' from which our intentional activity flows. To put it into a metaphor, if we walk through a museum we have our thoughts about everything we see but at the same time the guide leads us around and determines the context within which we manifest our thoughts. It's similar in thinking - we're intentionally producing our thoughts, but we're not fully aware of how we are being moved around the invisible landscape. If we aren't aware of the guide's higher-order intention, we may conclude 'my intentional activity spontaneously arises and goes away'.

The key point is that we can progressively make our thinking more sensitive to this contextual landscape in which it is flowing. Our thinking activity becomes like a sense organ of touch, feeling around for the various constraints that shape its flow. Then it experiences itself to be more and more creatively responsible for the 'spontaneity' that was otherwise feeding its intuitions and insights. Again, this is not a process of ratiocination, where we slowly piece together 'laws of activity' with discursive reasoning. I agree that would be practically useless. Instead, we experience the holistic intents from which our normal stream of spiritual activity precipitates and thereby gain insights into its constraints and its possibilities for new degrees of freedom.

FB: If you feel you can describe the moment you choose the intention, I'm game. If it requires metaphors and complex jargon, my hunch is the intricacy is lost.

So far, I've read incredibly clear descriptions of nearly any experience people have claimed to have. And I've gotten decent at describing my most subtle ones. But I've yet to hear a moment of choosing something over something else actually described. I hear lots of theory and lots of metaphor.

Ashvin: We can't expect to find the 'moment of choosing' as some clear-cut experience that can be fixed in concepts. That's why we need metaphors and symbols, i.e. the imaginative language of ceaselessly flowing life that refuses to be fixed in space or time.

But here is something much more literal. Imagine learning to play a musical instrument which makes it possible for you to discover a whole aspect of yourself that otherwise would remain completely unknown. This includes all the skills and techniques you etch into your physical organism, the aesthetic feelings integrated from the skill, your imaginative spiritual activity that explores musical patterns and manifests them through your bodily organs.

Throughout this whole temporally extended learning process, you are making decisions that open new unsuspected degrees of freedom for your spiritual activity. If these decisions weren't made, the DoF would simply remain as untapped potential. So our intuitive being has certain potential that may or may not be realized. But, more importantly, if it is not realized, we can’t even know that such manifestations of our being are possible. They simply don’t exist in our version of reality.

Our intentional activity is simply that which is continually exploring and manifesting new horizons of potential. Clearly, the ever-greater awareness and perfection of this activity have the utmost practical significance for our creative and ethical development, regardless of whether we can pinpoint any 'moment of choosing' as an abstract concept.

FB: Ashvin, I don't mean to say that we can only find a choice to happen at a specific moment. For me that is just one kind of experiential space we can talk about. I know that many people do think there are specific moments in which they make a choice. I ask for them to describe that moment. Thus far, it remains obscured in jargon. But, yes, we can talk about 'choice' in all sorts of ways.

"Throughout this whole temporally extended learning process, you are making decisions that open new unsuspected degrees of freedom for your spiritual activity."

That would be a great example, if you could describe the experience of this kind of decision.

No need to focus on 'the moment of choosing.' The key aspect has more to do with the knowing that something else could have been decided.

Ashvin: The issue is that, in normal experience, the knowing that something else could have been decided only comes in retrospect, once we have differentiated our spiritual activity from what it was previously merged with and flowing through.

For ex., when we are addicted to something, say alcohol, all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions are dragged along by this addiction as a matter of necessity. Out of all the things we could be thinking, feeling, and doing at any given time, a small subset that resonates with "I need alcohol to function" will be filtered out as what is possible at any given time. Even if we know about this addiction at the conceptual level, our spirit still experiences itself as owing its harmoniously functioning existence to the consumption of alcohol. When our spirit comes to experientially know itself as activity that can be supported entirely independent of that consumption, on the other hand, then it has turned this addiction "inside-out".

It is only at that point we can look back and say, "While I was merged with the alcohol addiction, my spirit only experienced a small subset of decisions regarding my thoughts and actions as the full spectrum of decisions that could be made. Only after my activity had been differentiated from this addiction, I recognized a broader spectrum of decisions could have been made at any given time while I was flowing with the addiction. My addiction obscured most of that spectrum and made my spirit feel like it could only channel its activity into certain thoughts and actions that resonated with the addiction."

That is how things usually stand. Through the inner cognitive development that Steiner relates to us, however, the situation can be inverted to a certain extent. We can concretely anticipate how certain 'curvatures' of our deeper being - we could call them 'higher order addictions' - are funneling our thoughts, feelings, and actions in the present. We can sense this *beforehand* and thereby awaken to what we *would be* thinking if we make a certain decision that flows along with that curvature. Then it's as if we intercept this incoming curvature and decide to resist it instead, thereby manifesting a different (hopefully more productive) stream of thoughts, feelings, and actions. So these horizons of potential can be concretely known via higher development, not only in retrospect but also in advance.

FB: Thanks, Ashvin. I love that Max LOVES this!

"We can sense this *beforehand* and thereby awaken to what we *would be* thinking if we make a certain decision that flows along with that curvature."

I'm not sure if this is question begging. But, I'll try again to ask a non-jargon question. It gets tough when the sentences pack so many wonderfully intriciate ideas, each filled with wonderful presuppositions and assumptions of shared lingo. So I'll try again to keep it clear and simple.

I think we agree that there isn't one kind of so-called 'free act.' And we probably agree that there would be a category of free action that requires very intense linguistic and conceptual distinctions and might even require a person to have achieved at least the first state of cognitive clairvoyance.

And, yet, Steiner would agree with us that there are experiences that we can all talk about that do not require that we pop away into that kind of conversation.

It might help if you could describe the most straightforward example of a free action that you can do in a daily way.

My experience is that when an intention arises it comes with its own unique will-impulse. In other words, if I stop typing right now and decide to do a will exercise, unless I am habitually determined to only do one exercise in one way, there will be a string of spontaneous 'next steps' that arise. I might notice the intention to place my hands directly in front of myself, then the intention to stare at my index finger for about thirty seconds, then I am suddenly intending to lift my finger in ten seconds, I do do that.

There are time that I'll actually thwart the 'decision' to make sure that I am not bound to it simply because it spontaneously arose. Of course, a close observation shows that even that intention arises spontaneously.

I know I'm not using fancy language or talking about higher perception. I can do that if necessary, but, for now at least, I'm trying to see if a conversation can be had that is not isn't two people trying to 'teach' the correct answer with special words. Maybe it could be more like two people talking simply about very close observation.

I just 'decided' to intentionally look at an object in the room. I thought of several that I know are in the room. And I chose the table to my right. And then I intentionally looked over at it for about five seconds.

Ashvin: Sure, Jeff, Steiner does speak of free acts in normal daily experience and so can we. This is what I mentioned in the first response: sense-free thinking acts. We are free when what we intend can be reliably reflected in the transformation of the perceptual flow. So the question is, where does the transformation of the perceptual flow reliably move in sync with our intent?

We can discern the gradient here in thinking, feeling, and willing/acting. Let's say we intend to think about "free will" and manifest a stream of inner voice perceptions. This will happen without any resistance - the stream of inner voice will manifest in sync with our intent (not that our thoughts will be accurate or very coherent, but they will manifest). On the other hand, if we intend to summon a state of intense joy or sorrow, we will meet much more resistance. Most people don't have the feeling degrees of freedom to transport their consciousness into such intense feeling states on demand. It is more tricky with bodily will - although it usually seems like the perception of our bodily will moves in sync with our intents, as it did in your examples, it is enough to imagine a paralyzed limb, a severe illness, bad arthritis, and so forth to see how much resistance our intents can meet in that domain. Of course, the perceptual flow of day and night, the seasonal changes, and so forth will continue regardless of our intent.

I know you are already familiar with this gradient since you are thoroughly familiar with Steiner. But it is something we can never really be too familiar with because our habits in normal sensory life usually condition us to lose sight of it. Here's another way to approach it. What is the only perception in our experience that we don't have to reflect on to be united with its meaning? We have to reflect on sensations, feelings, desires, etc. The only perception we don't reflect on is that of our inner voice - the words we hear when we think. If we had to reflect on our inner voice, it would be an endless recursion. Every act of reflection would generate a new stream of inner voice that we hear, and then we would need to reflect on that inner voice which generates a new stream of words, ad infinitum. Instead, we are immediately united with the meaning of our inner voice perceptions (concepts) and use them to reflect on everything else.

Notice how we aren't speaking about being 'free' in how and what we think, but only in the experience of thinking itself. We have been steered into a certain 'region' of thinking by many deeper contextual factors, but at the very tip of our intuitive thinking activity, we find the 'firm point' where our thought-acts are as of yet undetermined. This is where thinking can freely turn back upon its own activity, independent of the senses.

Again, I know these things are familiar to you. Since you have been graciously asking me questions, let me ask some back! Let's say that, in the end, we found this gradient of 'free acts' is an illusion of sorts, and that all our spiritual activity is equally 'spontaneous'. What practical relevance does this have for you? For ex., does it mean that we will remain just as 'free' if we intend to outsource our thinking to GPT than if we intend to turn thinking upon itself to inwardly perfect its capacity? That the person who gets all their thoughts from GPT is equally as 'free' as the person who draws upon their innermost moral intuitions? Does it make a difference if the perceptual flow is *experienced* as something we are creatively responsible for vs. something that simply happens to us spontaneously? Sorry, I know that's a few questions, feel free to choose just one.

FB: "Let's say that, in the end, we found this gradient of 'free acts' is an illusion of sorts, and that all our spiritual activity is equally 'spontaneous'. What practical relevance does this have for you?"

I'm assuming it has the same 'practical' relevance as your experiences of participating some aspect of the truth have for you. Like Steiner, we probably agree that the devotion to truth is not a utilitarian manner. Or, rather, anything utilitarian is downstream from our devotion to our moral intuition and the knowledge-dramas (in the YBA sense) therein. So, in the context of talking about our phenomenology and Steiner's epistemology, I'm not currently thinking about downstream positive effects. That said, I'd say a more profound (for me) experience of forgiveness is in the top tier.

"For ex., does it mean that we will remain just as 'free' if we intend to outsource our thinking to GPT than if we intend to turn thinking upon itself to inwardly perfect its capacity?"

Not in my view. My experience is that intentional states are extremely different than states of automated habit. I remember reading a study in which they got a group of community leaders who were doing work to benefit their local communities. These were people who all were outspoken about the importance of striving and making hard sacrificial choices. I don't remember the exact details, but they had this group of people engage in activities and then self-report on their experiences relative to intentionality. In one of the variables, they increased the caffine intake by a small but significant amount. They found, unsurprisingly, that this group of high-powered self sacrificers. Consistently ranked their experience of 'willing' their actions higher in the contexts in which they unknowingly had more caffeine. The silly, one-sided "NO FREE WILL" people laughed and used this for their flat and myopic points. Whereas I have no doubt about the value working within their will impulses and that it arose within their highly significant experiences of intentionality. The flat and ideological responses on both side miss the experience itself, in my opinion. I think you and I and many others know exactly what those people were experiencing. Again, this example is clearly in the category in which Steiner talked about 'the most free' people being those not educated or philosophical.

"That the person who gets all their thoughts from GPT is equally as 'free' as the person who draws upon their innermost moral intuitions?"

I think you must see what you did rhetorically there? I'm not against begging the question, but obviously your presupposition and semantic use of 'free' is exactly what we are talking about, so I can't simply respond to the question. That said, as mentioned above, the phenomenological difference is substantial between rolling over in bed to avoid getting up and surging with desire to get up and begin your day regardless of the fatigue. The 'rolling over' amplification habit of GPT is quite different from even a bunny rabbit's brave actions to go capture a bit of food in a scary situation, let alone a parent who helps their child pay closer attention to how their experience actually unfolds.

"Does it make a difference if the perceptual flow is *experienced* as something we are creatively responsible for vs. something that simply happens to us spontaneously?"

I assume my answers all sound repetitive at this point, but I fully see why from your frame you are curious in these terms. Yes, big difference. For instance, let's say I'm listening to a speaker talk at my child's school presentation. There is a big difference between these three versions of me:

#1. When the speaker says the phrase, "...and that is why we must not stop fighing for...", I notice myself shift to a slight annoyance regarding his vocal patterns.

#2. When the speaker says the phrase, "...and that is why we must not stop fighting for...", I notice myself suddenly resist the sudden slight annoyance that arose in my experience.

#3. When the speaker says the phrase, "...and that is why we must not stop fighting for...", I suddenly notice the quality of the last few minutes of my focus on the texture of the speaker's meaning.

I could create endless version of that moment. When Steiner first became aware that he was deeply bored by Rene Maran's novel, I do not think he chose or selected that experience from a tray of options. However, I have no doubt that he experienced many different states of intentionality when he then attempted to understand the nature of his boredom.

Years before that novel utterly bored Steiner, he said (in GA 115):

“Boredom is by no means something that arises simply of its own accord in the soul life, but is a result of the independent life led by our conceptions. It is these old conceptions desiring new ones, new impressions. The old conceptions crave fructification, desire new stimuli. For this reason we have no control whatever over boredom. It is merely a matter of the conceptions having desires that, unfulfilled, develop longings in us. That is why an undeveloped, obtuse person with few conceptions is less bored; he has few visualizations that could develop longings within him. But neither are those who continually yawn with boredom the ones who have achieved the highest development of their ego. This is added lest you might infer that the most highly developed people would be the most bored. There is a sort of cure for boredom; and in a higher stage of development boredom again becomes impossible."

Just because Steiner found himself experiencing boredom does not mean that he was not ever at the higher stage he is speaking about. Either way, he would have noticed his boredom arise before he either continued feeling bored (for the rest of the novel) or noticed a desire to find the beauty and originality of the novel arise.

Thanks for your questions. To sum up, yes, I experience a very significant difference between intentionality (this would include both moral intuitions and those tied up in deep subconscious patterns) and passivity. Just because I notice that they arise within a cognitive space in which any experience could arise does not imply (to me) that they are the same kind of spiritual event.

Ashvin: Thanks for these responses and examples, Jeff.

Before I comment more specifically, there is something unclear for me about "they arise within a cognitive space in which any experience could arise". I'm sure you would agree that there is only the first-person experience of reality, i.e. there is no perspective in reality that can stand back, observe 'cognitive spaces', and then determine whether the experiences arose spontaneously, randomly, mechanically and deterministically, as part of some Divine providential plan, etc.

So if we discern a clear gradient of intention between passive automated habits and your #3, is there any sense of speaking how the intentions are all spontaneous within our cognitive space? This is also why I mention the practical relevance. If we are speaking of the truth of our first-person experiential flow, then that truth must have practical relevance. Under monist idealism (which can be concluded from phenomenology of spiritual activity), it should also have practical relevance for the metamorphic flow of reality as a whole. In other words, if our conclusions about spiritual activity don't have immediate practical relevance, then we are probably deriving them from a non-existent 3rd-person perspective.

Does that make sense?

FB: I'm not sure if it makes sense, but let's see. One practical relevance for me is that I have found that certain states of intentionality (which always come together with other states and cognitions) are the most profound and meaningful experiences I've ever had. Whenever deep and meaningful intentions arise in me (even the scary and troubling ones wrapped in unknowing), these guide me towards deeper connections and deeper participation in the situations/events that matter the most. Whereas, the rolling-over feelings not only are a form of suffering but seem to only spread and maintain subtle forms of suffering.

For context to the above: Steiner's comments about the cognitive experience of PoF actually being better phrased as "It thinks in me" relate to what I mean when I speak of what suddenly comes with deeply intentional complexes of experience. I understand why for practical purposes we might often not phrase it that way.

Ashvin: Well stated. And this is why the firm point of thinking experiencing its own activity is so important, because here is where the "It" precipitates in "me" with intuitive clarity. We can leverage that fact to then become ever-more *intuitively* aware of the 'laws' (or whatever we want to call the intuitive dynamics) by which the "It" thinks me. This expanding intuitive orientation is simultaneously the process of closing the gap between "It" and "me", so they are increasingly experienced as One. This has immediate practical relevance not only for our evolving personal states, but for the evolving states of the World as a whole.

So, to summarize, I think all this brings us right back to the original Steiner quote. As he related, through perfection of intuitive activity, we are simply becoming more conscious of how the "It [always] thinks in me", which is becoming more 'conscious of one's own freedom'. We can already sense this in a nebulous way from ordinary intentional complexes of experience, as you related. Yet this sense can be made more and more lucid. And that becoming more lucidly conscious of the "It thinks in me" is the very process by which the manifest World evolves towards more integrated, holistic, spiritualized states.

FB: I'm thinking of Steiner's experience (along with many of ours, I believe) that often the most free people are not those who have consciously grasped the laws 'behind' their actions.

I have such heard people explain a behavior by saying, "They had no choice but to do it." This could easily be misunderstood to imply the person obviously was not acting freely. But it can also mean that the person simply isn't in the business of trying to find the most accurate words to express their experience and actions. In some cases (from my observations and my own experiences), "I had no choice," can be another way of saying, "It thinks in me." Not always. Maybe not often.

The point is that we seem to agree that the experience acting freely need not have a philosohically accurate conceptualization applied to it.

"“If the I has really penetrated its deed with full insight, in conformity with its nature, then it also feels itself to be master."

I think many people assume 'full insight' to imply attaching the correct concept to the motive.

"Often we do not possess knowledge of the laws governing our deeds. Such deeds form a part of our activity which is unfree."

So I only disagree with the above quote if its implication is taken to mean that 'knowledge' is some kind of accurate and conscious understanding. Of course, I'm not arguing that there are not some free deeds that are accompanied with a form of self-conscious and cognitive accuracy.


Ashvin: We agree that one can expand the horizon of free action through intuitive understanding that is not condensed into any rigorous conceptual system. Such systems do carry a risk of obscuring intuitive understanding because they play to the selfish intellectual habits of modern humans. It is not the conceptual systems themselves that are to blame, but our reductive habits when approaching them.

On the other hand, the conceptual link is always there, even as latent potential within the intuitive orientation, just as ice is latent potential in water vapor and liquid water. This makes great sense when considering that the art of condensing intuitive orientation into imaginative and intellectual concepts is not only to flesh out our personal consciousness of the intuitive dynamics but to participate in spiritualizing the World as a whole. Without this art, we couldn't have this conversation, and neither could Steiner (and many others) present the World with the ideas of spiritual science.

Knowledge must be conscious, of course, but it doesn't need to be in the most clear-cut concepts. Nevertheless, higher cognitive development provides greater degrees of freedom to cultivate the art of condensing the most helpful concepts, usually in the form of analogies, metaphors, etc., to help others intuitively orient their flow of experience to the "It thinks me". This will become an increasingly vital art to cultivate as time goes by (actually, it already was back in Steiner's time). Steiner was not only presenting a way for people to know the 'laws' of their personal experience, but to freely participate in fashioning the new harmonious 'laws', or ever-more conscious dialogue with the "It", by which the Earth will evolve into the Cosmos.

FB: It lets us speak in our own forms of poetry about these experience. And such speech won't (when it really is poetry) argue (just as we are not) with the ways freedom is unfolding. Some will grow increasingly hungry for a system or a 'way to say it' or the book that says it best; others will simply realize they are noticing what is arising right now, even when that is suddenly the willed realization they must stop procrastinating! Thanks, bye!

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:31 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 12:57 pm Thank you, both! With your combined comments, I think I’ve now gained a good grasp on the question.

Ashvin, just please know that, as I said, I consider myself lacking the least ability to read the larger perceptual spectrum. I thought I put in enough emphasis on that

Federica,

It should be noted that when I mention something like 'confidence in reading ability', this is referring primarily to the unconscious soul gestures from Cleric's post. It is not something we normally have direct introspective access to with our concepts. In fact, through the latter, we may often express quite the opposite of what lives in our inner soul configurations. Shakespeare had a keen sense for this dynamic - "the lady doth protest too much, methinks." We have seen this many times on the forum as well - people speak outwardly of intuitive experience of Oneness, of getting rid of 'metacognition', of loving all others, and so forth, yet inwardly they flow along with abstract thinking, intellectual assumptions, selfish preferences, etc. more than ever before. Obviously, I am not directing this specifically at you [whaat? ], but as an overall soul tendency of the modern age.

Ashvin,

Let me try to say it as neutrally as I can: the bold is not clear to me. I guess I will have to dissect your previous post a little, which I initially resisted doing, but since you insist

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:25 am When we speak of something like, for ex.

Federica wrote:...of the character of that region and you don’t give or attend a lecture in the same way in a small city as you do in a capital, and not under the same physical and spiritual influences in the middle of the winter as in early spring, or in late summer. Keeping in mind the friendly audience also gives me insights: how explicit, how direct, how formal, could the tone be?

This is something added by us to the perceptual givens of experience.

I don’t think there's much added. Notice, I didn’t add answers/concepts/doll movements. I only raised questions that I put out there to signify my openness and hope (I am not introducing this now, I explicitly elaborated on openness and hoping attitude above). I hope that meaning will appear through the larger-spectrum perceptual context too. In other words, the only things that are really added to the perceptual givens of experience are in feeling, which Cleric said is the safe way to approach this larger perceptual context of the event.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:25 am We may feel like we have a keen intuitive sense of these factors, but nevertheless, it is something added.
In other words, it isn't invariant - all the concepts we derive from perceiving the context in this way could be in error.

I don’t get how you speak of concepts here. Of course, I have to evoke the concept of small town, or at least of town, otherwise there would be no cognition in process as I read the word “Karlsruhe”. But I don't couple any other arbitrary concepts to ‘small town’. I'm not making it do somersaults rather than pirouettes. Then I also evoke the concepts of season and winter, inevitably, but again, I haven't inferred how winter stands in relation to other seasons and to the lecture through any added concepts and ideas. Don’t you agree I only asked questions and put out feelers?

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:25 am So that's the first thing - we are working from our somewhat preferentially tinged concepts about the givens of the lecture context. The next thing to mention is that, in this case, we are not necessarily using the perceptual flow of experience (which isn't the 'raw' perceptual flow) as a symbolic testimony for the spiritual gestures structuring the depth of intuitive activity, but as a framework through which we view and understand the ideas. In other words, we aren't distancing from the perceptual flow to view it objectively through the lens of the idea, but merging closer with it to view the idea through its lens (which is what we normally do in sensory life). This is certainly a subtle distinction.

In this continuation of your argument, I am not sure I grasp the subtle distinction properly, however, it seems to me it stands on the premise that I add stuff to the perceptual context, which I think I am not doing, other than in open form, in the form of adding trustful questions. In terms of doll metaphor, I do think a small-town doll, this is true. I do highlight the intellectual concepts. But I don’t twist the dolls in any way. I don’t “apply things to dolls”, in Cleric words. I don’t try to arbitrarily add or extract meaning from them by making them move in certain preferred ways with my soul-hands. For this reason I don’t risk adding any level of indirection. If I go to the dolls, it is only to try to “feel how our intellectual movements describe deeper full soul movements, even though we still can’t even imagine it” (Cleric).

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 4:31 pm

Cleric K wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 4:06 pm We remember our friend findingblanks...

It's very interesting that the day the above was posted, or maybe the day before, I started a discussion with FB (Jeff) on FB without realizing it at first. He had commented on Max's post of a Steiner quote. I will replay the discussion here simply because it may be of interest to others and help kindle the intuition for what it means to expand our 'spiritual freedom'. Observing his line of reasoning may also help us to orient more to 2/ from Cleric's post above. Also, it will help me feel more like the entire discussion was not time wasted It wasn't too much time, though, since I borrowed many of these metaphors and examples from Cleric. ...

By the way, when you say that it’s very interesting that you started the discussion with findingblanks on the same day or so he was mentioned by Cleric, I deem you are doing something very similar to what I do with the whole-spectrum context feelers, if not the same exact thing, only in a more nutshelly way!


Don't you think that, at this point, Ashvin could logically object to Ashvin: “Why would that be very interesting? This is arbitrary. You are playing with dolls. You should sacrifice adding concepts to the bare perceptual configuration of that event. Only focus on the discussion itself, and let the meaning arising from within it illuminate the larger-spectrum flow, without forming any premature judgments on the connection between that discussion and Cleric’s note.”

Federica wrote:

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 10:25 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:31 pm


Federica,

It should be noted that when I mention something like 'confidence in reading ability', this is referring primarily to the unconscious soul gestures from Cleric's post. It is not something we normally have direct introspective access to with our concepts. In fact, through the latter, we may often express quite the opposite of what lives in our inner soul configurations. Shakespeare had a keen sense for this dynamic - "the lady doth protest too much, methinks." We have seen this many times on the forum as well - people speak outwardly of intuitive experience of Oneness, of getting rid of 'metacognition', of loving all others, and so forth, yet inwardly they flow along with abstract thinking, intellectual assumptions, selfish preferences, etc. more than ever before. Obviously, I am not directing this specifically at you [whaat? ], but as an overall soul tendency of the modern age.

Ashvin,

Let me try to say it as neutrally as I can: the bold is not clear to me. I guess I will have to dissect your previous post a little, which I initially resisted doing, but since you insist

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:25 am When we speak of something like, for ex.




This is something added by us to the perceptual givens of experience.

I don’t think there's much added. Notice, I didn’t add answers/concepts/doll movements. I only raised questions that I put out there to signify my openness and hope (I am not introducing this now, I explicitly elaborated on openness and hoping attitude above). I hope that meaning will appear through the larger-spectrum perceptual context too. In other words, the only things that are really added to the perceptual givens of experience are in feeling, which Cleric said is the safe way to approach this larger perceptual context of the event.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:25 am We may feel like we have a keen intuitive sense of these factors, but nevertheless, it is something added.
In other words, it isn't invariant - all the concepts we derive from perceiving the context in this way could be in error.

I don’t get how you speak of concepts here. Of course, I have to evoke the concept of small town, or at least of town, otherwise there would be no cognition in process as I read the word “Karlsruhe”. But I don't couple any other arbitrary concepts to ‘small town’. I'm not making it do somersaults rather than pirouettes. Then I also evoke the concepts of season and winter, inevitably, but again, I haven't inferred how winter stands in relation to other seasons and to the lecture through any added concepts and ideas. Don’t you agree I only asked questions and put out feelers?

Federica,

I was speaking in the context of someone who takes those concepts and uses them as a framework to extract 'additional meaning' from the lectures. The bare concepts of "winter, summer, city, town, etc." must be employed in a certain way for them to be useful for that aim. For ex., one must conclude "Steiner would have been talking to his audience under the psycho-physical influences of Winter and within the context of city life, so this should help me understand the meaning of the ideas he is conveying to that audience." This conclusion could be correct, of course, but it is something added to the perceptual flow of the lecture that feeds back on our spiritual activity, and it is rife with possibilities for indirection and error.

Remember, this whole line of discussion started because you mentioned how that context was helping you determine what Steiner meant by 'reasoned thinking', 'intellectual thinking', and so forth. You may call that putting out feelers, but I still think it is an unduly personalized and therefore unhelpful way to triangulate the meaning of what Steiner is generally intending to convey, which is the lawful transformations of spiritual activity that transcend the contextual distinctions. Of course, if Steiner is giving a lecture specifically on how the climate, geography, culture, etc. influences soul mood and thinking in a region, which he has certainly done, then it's a different story. When the context is important for understanding the concepts conveyed, Steiner usually highlights this himself.

Federica wrote:

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 1:25 am So that's the first thing - we are working from our somewhat preferentially tinged concepts about the givens of the lecture context. The next thing to mention is that, in this case, we are not necessarily using the perceptual flow of experience (which isn't the 'raw' perceptual flow) as a symbolic testimony for the spiritual gestures structuring the depth of intuitive activity, but as a framework through which we view and understand the ideas. In other words, we aren't distancing from the perceptual flow to view it objectively through the lens of the idea, but merging closer with it to view the idea through its lens (which is what we normally do in sensory life). This is certainly a subtle distinction.

In this continuation of your argument, I am not sure I grasp the subtle distinction properly, however, it seems to me it stands on the premise that I add stuff to the perceptual context, which I think I am not doing, other than in open form, in the form of adding trustful questions. In terms of doll metaphor, I do think a small-town doll, this is true. I do highlight the intellectual concepts. But I don’t twist the dolls in any way. I don’t “apply things to dolls”, in Cleric words. I don’t try to arbitrarily add or extract meaning from them by making them move in certain preferred ways with my soul-hands. For this reason I don’t risk adding any level of indirection. If I go to the dolls, it is only to try to “feel how our intellectual movements describe deeper full soul movements, even though we still can’t even imagine it” (Cleric).

By the way, when you say that it’s very interesting that you started the discussion with findingblanks on the same day or so he was mentioned by Cleric, I deem you are doing something very similar to what I do with the whole-spectrum context feelers, if not the same exact thing, only in a more nutshelly way!


Don't you think that, at this point, Ashvin could logically object to Ashvin: “Why would that be very interesting? This is arbitrary. You are playing with dolls. You should sacrifice adding concepts to the bare perceptual configuration of that event. Only focus on the discussion itself, and let the meaning arising from within it illuminate the larger-spectrum flow, without forming any premature judgments on the connection between that discussion and Cleric’s note.”

Federica, you often say 'I don't do this', or 'this inner configuration doesn't apply to me', or 'this is not my issue, my issue is something else'. What I have been pointing to is what you are doing with your soul-hands in the very process of expressing such things. This is the premature judgment that I am saying we should avoid making. We will inevitably employ our concepts in certain ways that modify the perceptual flow of a lecture, post, or whatever else we stream our spiritual activity up against - this must happen. I don't claim my thinking to be free of all conditioning by soul mood and preferential concepts. What we have control over is how conscious we remain that we are involved in this conditioned activity.

The premature judgments about what we are or what we are not doing with our soul-hands block our ability to remain and grow more conscious because it is as if we are saying, 'This inner configuration cannot possibly exist within me, so whatever comes to my awareness must be something else'. It is little different than the materialist who says, 'The spiritual worlds cannot possibly exist, so whatever new phenomena I discover must be the result of mindless mechanism'. Of course, very few people are literally saying this or are even conscious that they are 'saying' this with their soul-hands. Rather they imagine themselves as being open to any and all new possibilities, just following their dispassionate reasoning where it leads. That's exactly the issue. The only safe path is to grow in self-consciousness and put as few judgmental obstacles in the way of the inflowing Spirit as possible.

It is not my place to try and convince you that certain inner configurations exist within you and are modulating your thinking. In fact, the most rewarding experiences on our path come from when we awaken to these ourselves, through our own free efforts. This happens gradually in stages, but it can also culminate in a flash of insight where we say, 'oh wow, I have been entirely merged with this assumption, preference, soul mood, etc., but only now have I gained the proper distance to see it clearly'. And when we notice these patterns of thinking in ourselves, in this lucidly intuitive way, we begin to notice them in others and culture at large.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 1:49 pm
Federica,

I was speaking in the context of someone who takes those concepts and uses them as a framework to extract 'additional meaning' from the lectures. The bare concepts of "winter, summer, city, town, etc." must be employed in a certain way for them to be useful for that aim. For ex., one must conclude "Steiner would have been talking to his audience under the psycho-physical influences of Winter and within the context of city life, so this should help me understand the meaning of the ideas he is conveying to that audience." This conclusion could be correct, of course, but it is something added to the perceptual flow of the lecture that feeds back on our spiritual activity, and it is rife with possibilities for indirection and error.

Ashvin, I have just demonstrated above how I don't do the bold. Sure, you can recursively comment that this "I don't do" statement in itself is shaped by my unconscious soul-hand in a way that suits you, and the next too, and the next too, but the fact remains that you won't find any concrete "use" of the concepts in what I wrote (unless you were speaking about a general modern tendency perhaps?) That Steiner spoke under the influences of winter is a FACT. Still, I never tried to put forward GUESSES on HOW this may have influenced his words. THIS is the relevant part that you insist to ignore. But never mind. You have unfortunately already classified this post I am writing, by means of your recursive inference about my soul-hands. So I won't annoy you with more arguments. Two last thoughts though:


1/ I still don't see how you manage to argue that - when you say that the coincidence of Cleric's FB note and your chat with him on the same day is "very interesting" - it's NOT a reference to the meaning potentially arising through the large-spectrum context of that discussion.


2/ I notice that this may be the first time (as far as I know) that you are in disagreement with Cleric.
I am interested in HOW you reconcile THIS (and the overall message of that post):

Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 6:21 am this doesn't mean that we have to first perfect the principles and only then think about the souls and the historical context. We can always do them together.

with THIS you wrote above: "I still think it is an unduly personalized and therefore unhelpful way to triangulate the meaning of what Steiner is generally intending to convey"

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 2:46 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 1:49 pm
Federica,

I was speaking in the context of someone who takes those concepts and uses them as a framework to extract 'additional meaning' from the lectures. The bare concepts of "winter, summer, city, town, etc." must be employed in a certain way for them to be useful for that aim. For ex., one must conclude "Steiner would have been talking to his audience under the psycho-physical influences of Winter and within the context of city life, so this should help me understand the meaning of the ideas he is conveying to that audience." This conclusion could be correct, of course, but it is something added to the perceptual flow of the lecture that feeds back on our spiritual activity, and it is rife with possibilities for indirection and error.

Ashvin, I have just demonstrated above how I don't do the bold. Sure, you can recursively comment that this "I don't do" statement in itself is shaped by my unconscious soul-hand, and the next too, and the next too, but the fact remains that you won't find any concrete "use" of the concepts in what I wrote (unless you were speaking about a general modern tendency here?) That Steiner spoke under the influences of winter is a FACT. Still, I never tried to put forward GUESSES on HOW this may have influenced his words. THIS is the relevant part that you insist to ignore. But never mind. You have unfortunately already classified this post I am writing, by means of your recursive inference about my soul-hands. So I won't annoy you with more arguments.

Federica, you have several times on this thread mentioned using the context for 'additional meaning' or 'expanding cores of meaning'. Why would you have even mentioned the contextual factors if that wasn't what you were doing to some extent? Why would Cleric and myself feel the need to comment on it if it wasn't at all at play? It just doesn't make any sense.

No one is saying to forcibly ignore the context or that we should somehow stream our thinking against the lectures without letting any concept of the context enter our consciousness whatsoever. We are simply pointing out pitfalls with that approach that clearly have some relevance to the whole course of discussion on this thread.

Federica wrote:Two last thoughts though:


1/ I still don't see how you manage to argue that - when you say that the coincidence of Cleric's FB note and your chat with him on the same day is "very interesting" - it's NOT a reference to the meaning potentially arising through the large-spectrum context of that discussion.


2/ I notice that this may be the first time (as far as I know) that you are in disagreement with Cleric.
I am interested in HOW you reconcile this (and the overall message of that post):[/color]

Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 6:21 am this doesn't mean that we have to first perfect the principles and only then think about the souls and the historical context. We can always do them together.

with this you wrote above: "I still think it is an unduly personalized and therefore unhelpful way to triangulate the meaning of what Steiner is generally intending to convey"

Thanks, Federica, because I had missed that entire comment from Cleric. I probably wouldn't have responded to your comment after that if I had noticed it, because it sums up this whole 'context' issue nicely.

All I can say in light of that post is, the bold blue is exactly what can go into our 'dataset' for indirectly (conceptually) discerning a pattern of overconfidence in the ability to 'read people' (and this isn't the first time you have compared snippets of our comments and suggested they are in disagreement). I mean, the whole spirit of that post aligns with what I have been trying to convey as well. Cleric writes:

I would say that it's fully safe if we seek that context as feeling. Any more concrete images should be taken provisionally because they might be only projections.

Previously, I wrote - "It can be helpful to read the summaries at the beginning which give a context for the lecture, but I would just keep this as a loose feeling in the background rather than trying to triangulate the meaning of the spiritual ideas through them." The rest of Cleric's post highlights exactly the projective pitfalls I have been trying to convey.

But, again, I am not going to try and 'prove' these modulated patterns of thinking exist, by going back through a bunch of posts. They will emerge in your consciousness as long as you continue doing the inner work and remain open to the concrete possibility that they exist as living configurations of our soul space.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 4:14 pm ...

Ashvin, I find your comments here quite eloquent, though maybe not in the exact way you intended them. This discussion may seem to have ended up in a wanting impasse at this point, but it's been relevant for me. I'm grateful to you for it, and to the beings for whom my soul has no secrets. Hopefully it hasn't been a entirely vain waste of time for you, in some way.