Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Nov 23, 2025 3:10 pm Playing Chess is an exercise which, in many ways, embodies all these aspect of practical thinking you mentioned. For example, we need to focus on the way the pieces move and picture the possible scenarios of how the movements will unfold, anticipating the game flow which arises as a dynamic tension of our ideas and the opponent's ideas. This requires logical precision, patience, basic concentration, strengthening of memory, and similar qualities of thinking. Some people even play chess 'blindfolded', so they learn to unfold the moves while only relying on the etheric memory spectrum without visual sensory feedback (there is still audial feedback, of course, as the players call out their moves).

A key aspect of improving Chess play is, interestingly enough, selflessness. Of course, this selflessness manifests only within a limited domain for chess players, but it is still quite useful for practical thought life. Many players get stuck at low ratings because they can only remain narrowly focused on their own ideas and plans, the immediate moves they will be making and the proximate positions they want to attain. It becomes like tunnel vision, where we are blinded to the subtle ideas and movements of the other player in the periphery. It is actually quite difficult to try and inhabit the perspective of the other player and focus on their ideas, to pay attention to what their moves and positions are hinting toward. Even though I am keenly conscious of this fact and that it is necessary to play better (which is, ideally, to cultivate a selfless quality of thinking-being), to stop falling into traps and so forth, I find it very difficult to consistently think through the opponent's perspective and ideas for the game. It feels much more natural to introspect my own ideas and plans, and it feels like a huge strain to shift focus toward how the opponent's moves testify to another perspective with its own plans. 

I’m no chess player but yes, it seems to me that chess is another good example. It has potential to develop practical thinking. The necessity to be interested in the other player’s plans is clear, given how the two strategies are inextricably enmeshed with one another. But why selflessness? Shouldn’t selflessness be disinterested, to deserve to be called so? To me it looks more like a vested interest in the dynamics that will determine success or failure. The only motive to get interested in the other’s plans is to beat them. Is a war strategist also selfless when trying to detect the enemy’s plans? And I doubt that chess can be a good training for empathy and selflessness in everyday life, since that gesture is solidly tied to selfish goals - win the game, become a better player and win future games.

Ashvin wrote:So I can certainly appreciate the value of these practical thinking exercises for the higher life. Yet sensory-intellectual existence and its lawfulness provides a unique intuitive perspective - what Cleric referred to as its 'intrinsic level' above - which takes shape from its fixed-rule patterns and metamorphoses. This does not translate easily to the intrinsic level of supersensible dynamics. We experience quite distinct 'signatures' when weaving within these different frequency bands of spiritual activity, and these signatures suggest distinct (even inverted) ways of approaching them.

Chess is fixed-rule only by half. The other player’s behavior is not fixed-rule, and it makes 100% of the practical value of the game. If it were only based on fixed-rule dynamics, chess would be absolutely insignificant. All other examples of practical thinking are also not fixed-rule. The degrees of variability are precisely what gives significance to the particular patterns that get impressed in the sensory flow. I agree that, as expressed by Cleric:

"it is possible that the intellectual activity is forged in a much more fluid and inspired way, yet it still feels like a differentiable 'aggregate state' of spirit movements that can only be rightly developed at their intrinsic level."

expressive skills can only be rightly developed in the sensory spectrum (their intrinsic level). But the thing is, once they are developed, or as they develop, something else happens. Not only those horizontal skills (improv) or manifestations (weather patterns, chess moves) become a vehicle for the expression of supersensible dynamics. Also, as the expressions manifest, a sensitivity to the lawful spiritual dynamics is developed. The temporal sequences of expressions draw a trace. The trace is traceable. It’s true that it may remain mostly unconscious, but it is also possible to collect it, like you would collect rain water. As soon as you exhibit any level of foreseeing capacity, even slightly above pure randomness, that’s the proof that a sensitivity is growing and is becoming collectible. If you tend to guess the other player’s moves above randomness, if you begin to develop a sense for the next-day weather in your locality, these are all signs that a practical fruit has ripened in thinking. You can leave it at that, or you can pick it. It’s true that many would need a guide in order to experience the process in this way, become conscious of the practical fruits, and pick them. Yet, the connection is there. It’s all the purpose of playing chess, or of developing practical thinking in any other way. As Cleric says at the end, one can usefully stimulate the expression of supersensible dynamics in appropriate conceptual form, strengthening the connection across worlds - not only the horizontal skills. This suggestion applies to practical thinking developed through one’s own physical-etheric toolbox. But the same vertical strengthening can be done when attention is directed to other portions of the sensory spectrum, like in chess (attention is directed to the other player’s thoughts) or weather forecast (attention is directed to elemental lawfulness).

Just as it is possible, and surely common, that people let the intellect take over, play chess to play chess, and study weather patterns to infer the cognitive light cone of storms (Levin) it is also possible to refrain from dubbing the patterns with the intellectual voice-over, and instead participate in them with adequate feelings and dedication. So the signatures are different and separate only if the sensory spectrum is approached as usual, through common intellectual gestures. But with education and guidance, things can turn otherwise.

Ashvin wrote:The only reason I am able to mine pedagogical spiritual value from Chess playing is because I have already introspectively investigated the deeper imaginative dynamics and can see how the fixed-rule patterns can present a microcosmic image of higher-order existence. I already suspect that there are additional inner degrees of freedom through which these patterns can be utilized toward the ideal of inner perfection. Otherwise, I would be in the unfortunate position of millions of other chess players (often young kids), who become conditioned to this fixed-rule lawfulness and their neural pathways become correspondingly rigid. They start to feel like the dynamics of reality will always be graspable through these calculating gestures. Chess playing then ends up reinforcing selfish and unhealthy intellectual habits, and we end up with 'bullet games' where intellectual gestures become even more rushed and erratic.

Well, how can you be sure, since you have only experienced introspective investigation of spiritual dynamics and then chess, in this order? That million other players become rigid and focused on the fixed-rule aspect (which I’m sure is the case) is because they don’t have a guide or teacher to help them collect the rainwater (moreover, I think that chess is not the best beginner tool for developing practical thinking, since its only interesting feature in that regard is the sensitivity that can develop for the other player's thoughts - a quite difficult kind of lawfulness).

To put it another way: just because ML remains stuck into intellectual empiricism, doesn’t mean that another scientist studying the same fields of life with a different soul disposition and different 'philosophical advisors', couldn’t develop practical thinking in that way. We even spent the last two years or so wondering and hoping that this would begin to happen to Levin, and you would consider it possible too! (even you've been the one who has been feeling most positively about that).

Ashvin wrote:In that sense, I see this dynamic in a practically inverse way. It's not that practical thinking acts as great preparation for the concentrated-meditative life, but that the latter is necessary preparation to approach the former in a free and healthy way. It is easy to lose sight that we can only orient to and discuss the value of practical thinking as we are doing now, because we have already attained some sense of how this spectrum of thinking relates to the deeper supersensible dynamics which seek expression in the sensory spectrum through it. That is, we have already introspectively observed the inner relations to some extent. We have an alternative basis to compare the practical thinking spectrum with.

Yes, we should keep that in sight, but also let us keep in sight that I argue for practical thinking as a great preparation for meditative life under the condition that one is educated and guided in that direction. That’s the famous bridge we have been talking about since last year. Some have to build it, for everyone’s benefit. It wouldn't come about by itself. I fully agree that sensory experience today, if left to itself, would hardly lead to practical thinking. But just as concentrative-meditative life requires guidance and education (99,9% of the time) so is it for practical thinking. And the claim is that, in such guided conditions, it can form a smoother platform for the successive development of clairvoyant consciousness. And I can’t fail to add: this is the "prerequisite" function of practical thinking, as Steiner said.

Ashvin wrote:This is also related to the degeneration of the intellectual soul. We can say that practical thinking (which relates to 'Peter thinking' as well) is necessary in our time to resist the complete automation of the intellectual function, yet because of that degeneration, it also carries the greatest risk of excessive conditioning to its fixed-rule gestures, making souls reliant on it for any orientation to the lawful dynamics of reality (and, as we mentioned before, ML is unfortunately a soul we can see falling into this prison of conditioning in real-time). It's a double-edged sword in that sense. The other edge of the sword is only smoothed out when we become more conscious of how the practical thinking spectrum relates to the depth axis.

Here I have to disagree: practical thinking is not Peter thinking. And above all: practical thinking (as already elaborated) does not move through fixed-rule gestures. That’s a confusion. Looking carefully at the examples, including chess, it's clear that it doesn’t stand up. Intellectual thinking is a double-edged sword. Practical thinking is not a double-edged sword, because what makes it practical is precisely what’s not intellectual in it!.

Ashvin wrote:I realize that this sounds like an almost impossible task. We say that the meditative life is preparation for practical thinking, but what about souls who are not prepared for the meditative life? What else can they use as gradual preparation if not practical thinking exercises? It is a classic Catch-22! The only thing that would render them prepared for practical thinking, is the thing they are not prepared for and seek through practical thinking. The only resolution I see here is that the practical thinking exercises become simultaneously introspective, as in Cleric's suggestion in the last post. When we think of meditative life, we shouldn't only imagine intense concentration that leads to clairvoyant states of experience. Something as simple as trying to observe the meaningful dimensions that our inner commentary is condensing from when it says, "this food tastes really good", is already meditative. No amount of chess games, sudokus, improv lessons, etc. can attain that introspective element for us. The guy in Cleric's video won't awaken to his inner process and utilize it to pursue spiritual ideals (instead of laughs and money) by endlessly refining his freestyle techniques. It is an additional, second-order element that we introduce into the exercises by our conscious orientation to what we are doing and why we are doing it. Once we cultivate that element, then we are prepared to refine our practical thinking and we realize how refining that thinking spectrum is absolutely necessary to harmonically bring the higher life, with its distinct stance and gestures, into the sensory flow.

In a sense, yes, practical thinking exercises inevitably become introspective, but not to mean that they morph in concentrative meditation. Cleric’s suggestion is introspective in that way because his post refers to one’s own physical-etheric bodies as the sensory playground for the development of practical thinking. Then there is a more intimate connection between the vertical dimensions and the toolbox, which lies within our own physicality. When it comes to know what we are doing and why, I guess we should be careful, since, as we said, there is also a need to silence the micromanaging, the voice-over of the intellect, which would gladly explain what is happening and why. Instead it’s important to surf quite loosely/intuitively through the observations at first. In this sense, I would really consider the development of practical thinking “another way", which at first remains differentiated from the development of clairvoyance properly so called. It calls for another type of guidance. Attention to thinking must grow, yes, but there is also a peculiar mood of patient and dutiful empiricism.
This is more like a mere sense, but personally I see the fields of chemistry, biology, geology, botany, agriculture, and medicine, as particularly fruitful fields for the education of practical thinking.

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Nov 23, 2025 10:10 pm I’m no chess player but yes, it seems to me that chess is another good example. It has potential to develop practical thinking. The necessity to be interested in the other player’s plans is clear, given how the two strategies are inextricably enmeshed with one another. But why selflessness? Shouldn’t selflessness be disinterested, to deserve to be called so? To me it looks more like a vested interest in the dynamics that will determine success or failure. The only motive to get interested in the other’s plans is to beat them. Is a war strategist also selfless when trying to detect the enemy’s plans? And I doubt that chess can be a good training for empathy and selflessness in everyday life, since that gesture is solidly tied to selfish goals - win the game, become a better player and win future games. [/color]

Right, the quality of selflessness is an ideal state that we are striving toward through such exercises, and we will surely begin all such exercises with more self-interested motives and goals. Yet a key aspect of gradually softening the egoic fortress is to consistently try and perceive the meaning of the phenomenal flow from other intuitive perspectives. Then we are aiming toward a state when competitive play becomes something more like a symbol for how souls can work with and through one another for mutual self-perfection. We are no longer interested in playing to gain rating points, get satisfaction from crushing our opponent, become super chess experts, win prize money, and so on, but for the love of the inner process that unfolds through Chess as an exercise. We start to feel like Chess playing is little different than engaging in a dialogue with others about intuitive thinking and its dynamics. Our opponents are understood as mirrors for these inner dynamics we share.

I myself am quite far from such an ideal selfless state of play, and again, the only reason I think this trajectory is a viable possibility for me is because of the second-order introspective element - the fact that I have become consciously sensitive to the inner possibilities which arise through the symbolic gameplay. That is the only reason I can understand there is a tangible and reachable ideal state to aim toward. Even with that element, it is not such a simple thing to utilize the exercise in this spiritual way, because we are constantly tempted by the lower impulses. But without the introspective element, I imagine it is practically impossible and the trajectory will often unfold in the opposite direction toward more selfishness, more impure motives, more impatience, more erratic gestures, etc., for the non-introspective souls (and we all begin non-introspective by default, except for rare karmic cases). 

Chess is fixed-rule only by half. The other player’s behavior is not fixed-rule, and it makes 100% of the practical value of the game. If it were only based on fixed-rule dynamics, chess would be absolutely insignificant. All other examples of practical thinking are also not fixed-rule. The degrees of variability are precisely what gives significance to the particular patterns that get impressed in the sensory flow. I agree that, as expressed by Cleric:

"it is possible that the intellectual activity is forged in a much more fluid and inspired way, yet it still feels like a differentiable 'aggregate state' of spirit movements that can only be rightly developed at their intrinsic level."

expressive skills can only be rightly developed in the sensory spectrum (their intrinsic level). But the thing is, once they are developed, or as they develop, something else happens. Not only those horizontal skills (improv) or manifestations (weather patterns, chess moves) become a vehicle for the expression of supersensible dynamics. Also, as the expressions manifest, a sensitivity to the lawful spiritual dynamics is developed. The temporal sequences of expressions draw a trace. The trace is traceable. It’s true that it may remain mostly unconscious, but it is also possible to collect it, like you would collect rain water. As soon as you exhibit any level of foreseeing capacity, even slightly above pure randomness, that’s the proof that a sensitivity is growing and is becoming collectible. If you tend to guess the other player’s moves above randomness, if you begin to develop a sense for the next-day weather in your locality, these are all signs that a practical fruit has ripened in thinking. You can leave it at that, or you can pick it. It’s true that many would need a guide in order to experience the process in this way, become conscious of the practical fruits, and pick them. Yet, the connection is there. It’s all the purpose of playing chess, or of developing practical thinking in any other way. As Cleric says at the end, one can usefully stimulate the expression of supersensible dynamics in appropriate conceptual form, strengthening the connection across worlds - not only the horizontal skills. This suggestion applies to practical thinking developed through one’s own physical-etheric toolbox. But the same vertical strengthening can be done when attention is directed to other portions of the sensory spectrum, like in chess (attention is directed to the other player’s thoughts) or weather forecast (attention is directed to elemental lawfulness).

Just as it is possible, and surely common, that people let the intellect take over, play chess to play chess, and study weather patterns to infer the cognitive light cone of storms (Levin) it is also possible to refrain from dubbing the patterns with the intellectual voice-over, and instead participate in them with adequate feelings and dedication. So the signatures are different and separate only if the sensory spectrum is approached as usual, through common intellectual gestures. But with education and guidance, things can turn otherwise.

The fixed-rule dynamic comes from the fact that our ideas and the other player's ideas are constrained through the rules of the game. We can verify it is fully fixed-rule by contemplating that no player can win against the latest AI engine (like Stockfish). If another player is utilizing such an engine to make their moves in any given position, we will surely lose the game, no matter how clairvoyantly we can penetrate to their inner perspective and ideas. It's like we discussed before on the thread about simulating life - we would never expect a computer simulation to deviate from the algorithm because a higher mind could not incarnate into the computer hardware without throwing it into chaos. Likewise, the only way to express creative ideas outside of the Chess fixed-rule system is to flip over the board. As long as the board remains intact, our ideas are tightly filtered through its constraints and our intellectual movements are being exposed to the intrinsic logic at this level. The same applies to all logical puzzles.

The practical value comes from the intellect refining its gestures within this intrinsic fixed-rule constraint, but I would add that it must do so introspectively, such that the fixed-rule system becomes an imaginative symbol for higher-order dynamics, before the practical value is truly realized. Until then, the skills developed remains as latent potential for practical value, like adding kindling to a pile of logs for a fire that has yet to be ignited by the spark of intuitive thinking. In that sense, I can't agree that anticipating the other player's move above randomness is a sign that the practical fruit has ripened. It is a sign that we have refined our intellectual movements within the fixed-rule constraint, and we have become inwardly accustomed to the fixed-rule patterns, but this can just as easily lead to impractical conditioning for life without the introspective element. What is not intellectual in such exercises is precisely the introspective element, which renders the otherwise fixed constraints pliable to the imagination. Those constraints then become a lever to stimulate 'uncommon' intellectual gestures instead of reinforcing the common gestures.

Ashvin wrote:The only reason I am able to mine pedagogical spiritual value from Chess playing is because I have already introspectively investigated the deeper imaginative dynamics and can see how the fixed-rule patterns can present a microcosmic image of higher-order existence. I already suspect that there are additional inner degrees of freedom through which these patterns can be utilized toward the ideal of inner perfection. Otherwise, I would be in the unfortunate position of millions of other chess players (often young kids), who become conditioned to this fixed-rule lawfulness and their neural pathways become correspondingly rigid. They start to feel like the dynamics of reality will always be graspable through these calculating gestures. Chess playing then ends up reinforcing selfish and unhealthy intellectual habits, and we end up with 'bullet games' where intellectual gestures become even more rushed and erratic.

Well, how can you be sure, since you have only experienced introspective investigation of spiritual dynamics and then chess, in this order? That million other players become rigid and focused on the fixed-rule aspect (which I’m sure is the case) is because they don’t have a guide or teacher to help them collect the rainwater (moreover, I think that chess is not the best beginner tool for developing practical thinking, since its only interesting feature in that regard is the sensitivity that can develop for the other player's thoughts - a quite difficult kind of lawfulness).

To put it another way: just because ML remains stuck into intellectual empiricism, doesn’t mean that another scientist studying the same fields of life with a different soul disposition and different 'philosophical advisors', couldn’t develop practical thinking in that way. We even spent the last two years or so wondering and hoping that this would begin to happen to Levin, and you would consider it possible too! (even you've been the one who has been feeling most positively about that).

Ashvin wrote:In that sense, I see this dynamic in a practically inverse way. It's not that practical thinking acts as great preparation for the concentrated-meditative life, but that the latter is necessary preparation to approach the former in a free and healthy way. It is easy to lose sight that we can only orient to and discuss the value of practical thinking as we are doing now, because we have already attained some sense of how this spectrum of thinking relates to the deeper supersensible dynamics which seek expression in the sensory spectrum through it. That is, we have already introspectively observed the inner relations to some extent. We have an alternative basis to compare the practical thinking spectrum with.

Yes, we should keep that in sight, but also let us keep in sight that I argue for practical thinking as a great preparation for meditative life under the condition that one is educated and guided in that direction. That’s the famous bridge we have been talking about since last year. Some have to build it, for everyone’s benefit. It wouldn't come about by itself. I fully agree that sensory experience today, if left to itself, would hardly lead to practical thinking. But just as concentrative-meditative life requires guidance and education (99,9% of the time) so is it for practical thinking. And the claim is that, in such guided conditions, it can form a smoother platform for the successive development of clairvoyant consciousness. And I can’t fail to add: this is the "prerequisite" function of practical thinking, as Steiner said.

Ashvin wrote:This is also related to the degeneration of the intellectual soul. We can say that practical thinking (which relates to 'Peter thinking' as well) is necessary in our time to resist the complete automation of the intellectual function, yet because of that degeneration, it also carries the greatest risk of excessive conditioning to its fixed-rule gestures, making souls reliant on it for any orientation to the lawful dynamics of reality (and, as we mentioned before, ML is unfortunately a soul we can see falling into this prison of conditioning in real-time). It's a double-edged sword in that sense. The other edge of the sword is only smoothed out when we become more conscious of how the practical thinking spectrum relates to the depth axis.

Here I have to disagree: practical thinking is not Peter thinking. And above all: practical thinking (as already elaborated) does not move through fixed-rule gestures. That’s a confusion. Looking carefully at the examples, including chess, it's clear that it doesn’t stand up. Intellectual thinking is a double-edged sword. Practical thinking is not a double-edged sword, because what makes it practical is precisely what’s not intellectual in it!.

The central question is, what is the inner nature of this education and guidance that we both agree is necessary for practical thinking to flourish? I suppose we both share the same guide and teacher on this forum - Cleric. How did Cleric guide us toward the 'uncommon' intellectual gestures through which we could interface with the lawful experiential flow? I'm sure we agree his posts and essays have 100% embodied the introspective element all throughout - they have been guidelines for how to observe our inner process more carefully and develop a refined feeling for its characteristic dynamics. In that sense, the guide and teacher in this intuitive thinking domain leads us to realize how we can also become our own guides and teachers, when we draw upon the inner Teachers and Teachings through the meditative impulse. It is a guidance toward inner freedom, which alone makes our thinking truly practical for life. That is what I have also wondered and hoped with respect to ML and all others I have attempted to dialogue with - that they would be open to the guidance of true introspective observation of the inner process. All of the posts have revolved around seeding and stimulating that specific interest and enthusiasm to grow within souls. 

No one can teach us how to 'do this' with practical thinking exercises, however. Someone can give us sudoku puzzles and try to teach us how to approach them with uncommon intellectual gestures that realize practical value, but this will sound like an incomprehensible foreign language. It may even sound like an outright contradiction, like someone is asking us to fasten our seatbelts and take them off at the same time. We only begin to appreciate how the seemingly opposite gestures are harmonized through introspective exercises, through which we begin to perceive how the 'standing wave' of fixed-rule intellectual systems takes shape within the carrier waves of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive dynamics. Then it's like we know how to fasten our seatbelts but also generate some slack in them, so they continue to provide their protective function but don't excessively bind us in place. Then we can steer the intellect through its intrinsic fixed-rule level with imaginative degrees of freedom to explore the carrier waves in which our steering unfolds.

In a sense, yes, practical thinking exercises inevitably become introspective, but not to mean that they morph in concentrative meditation. Cleric’s suggestion is introspective in that way because his post refers to one’s own physical-etheric bodies as the sensory playground for the development of practical thinking. Then there is a more intimate connection between the vertical dimensions and the toolbox, which lies within our own physicality. When it comes to know what we are doing and why, I guess we should be careful, since, as we said, there is also a need to silence the micromanaging, the voice-over of the intellect, which would gladly explain what is happening and why. Instead it’s important to surf quite loosely/intuitively through the observations at first. In this sense, I would really consider the development of practical thinking “another way", which at first remains differentiated from the development of clairvoyance properly so called. It calls for another type of guidance. Attention to thinking must grow, yes, but there is also a peculiar mood of patient and dutiful empiricism.

This is more like a mere sense, but personally I see the fields of chemistry, biology, geology, botany, agriculture, and medicine, as particularly fruitful fields for the education of practical thinking.

Yes, we shouldn't try to intellectually 'figure out' what we are doing and why we are doing it, rather it is an intuitive orientation that naturally blossoms from the introspective process. We attain 'explanations' of what we are doing and why in the sense of the counting exercise, where we continually remember our intent to count as the auditory Tetris pieces stack at the horizon of consciousness. Our expanding temporal intuition elucidates the nature of what we are engaged in and toward what ends, which is essentially attaining a keener sense for the nested evolutionary rhythms of existence in which our present state is embedded.

I don't see any necessary conflict between attention to thinking (introspection) and 'patient and dutiful empiricism'. I see the creative task of our age is to spiral them together, so one simultaneously becomes a means of carrying out the other. This is why I remain confused about this 'other type of guidance' that you are pointing to, if it is being differentiated from introspective guidance. With the latter, literally any field of inquiry, any logical exercise, any part of the World Content, can be leveraged for the education of practical thinking. So what could be the value of putting it off or merely preparing for it (that is, imagining that we are 'preparing' for it), instead of delving into it directly?

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Nov 24, 2025 3:50 pm Right, the quality of selflessness is an ideal state that we are striving toward through such exercises, and we will surely begin all such exercises with more self-interested motives and goals. Yet a key aspect of gradually softening the egoic fortress is to consistently try and perceive the meaning of the phenomenal flow from other intuitive perspectives. Then we are aiming toward a state when competitive play becomes something more like a symbol for how souls can work with and through one another for mutual self-perfection. We are no longer interested in playing to gain rating points, get satisfaction from crushing our opponent, become super chess experts, win prize money, and so on, but for the love of the inner process that unfolds through Chess as an exercise. We start to feel like Chess playing is little different than engaging in a dialogue with others about intuitive thinking and its dynamics. Our opponents are understood as mirrors for these inner dynamics we share.

I myself am quite far from such an ideal selfless state of play, and again, the only reason I think this trajectory is a viable possibility for me is because of the second-order introspective element - the fact that I have become consciously sensitive to the inner possibilities which arise through the symbolic gameplay. That is the only reason I can understand there is a tangible and reachable ideal state to aim toward. Even with that element, it is not such a simple thing to utilize the exercise in this spiritual way, because we are constantly tempted by the lower impulses. But without the introspective element, I imagine it is practically impossible and the trajectory will often unfold in the opposite direction toward more selfishness, more impure motives, more impatience, more erratic gestures, etc., for the non-introspective souls (and we all begin non-introspective by default, except for rare karmic cases). 


The fixed-rule dynamic comes from the fact that our ideas and the other player's ideas are constrained through the rules of the game. We can verify it is fully fixed-rule by contemplating that no player can win against the latest AI engine (like Stockfish). If another player is utilizing such an engine to make their moves in any given position, we will surely lose the game, no matter how clairvoyantly we can penetrate to their inner perspective and ideas. It's like we discussed before on the thread about simulating life - we would never expect a computer simulation to deviate from the algorithm because a higher mind could not incarnate into the computer hardware without throwing it into chaos. Likewise, the only way to express creative ideas outside of the Chess fixed-rule system is to flip over the board. As long as the board remains intact, our ideas are tightly filtered through its constraints and our intellectual movements are being exposed to the intrinsic logic at this level. The same applies to all logical puzzles.

The practical value comes from the intellect refining its gestures within this intrinsic fixed-rule constraint, but I would add that it must do so introspectively, such that the fixed-rule system becomes an imaginative symbol for higher-order dynamics, before the practical value is truly realized. Until then, the skills developed remains as latent potential for practical value, like adding kindling to a pile of logs for a fire that has yet to be ignited by the spark of intuitive thinking. In that sense, I can't agree that anticipating the other player's move above randomness is a sign that the practical fruit has ripened. It is a sign that we have refined our intellectual movements within the fixed-rule constraint, and we have become inwardly accustomed to the fixed-rule patterns, but this can just as easily lead to impractical conditioning for life without the introspective element. What is not intellectual in such exercises is precisely the introspective element, which renders the otherwise fixed constraints pliable to the imagination. Those constraints then become a lever to stimulate 'uncommon' intellectual gestures instead of reinforcing the common gestures.

I see that the players’ plans are constrained by the game rules, and these are fixed. But the other player’s plans aren’t: the same pawn move happening according to fixed rules could be part of a number of different underlying strategies, which in turn may express various underlying spiritual dynamics. Chess is only a fully fixed-rule game in the sense that whatever the ideas, their expression will necessarily manifest through sequences of pre-determined events, but my point is that the practical value is only there if the game is used to search attunement with the other player’s soul, through their strategy. I don’t think that playing against AI has any practical value. Then the game is reduced to only its fixed rules and what counts is only the iterative recalculations of highest-return moves combined with probabilities of countermoves. It’s not surprising that AI is superior at keeping constant track of all that. But this is not the same game. It becomes an insignificant mechanical game. I don’t think one can speak of the same game, when Ai is involved. Only the fixed rules remain the same, and so practical value is entirely lost. “Refining the intellectual gestures within the fixed rules” doesn't look very practical to me. That's almost the definition of impractical thinking.

I understand when you say that the competitive game becomes like a symbol of soul interaction, but when there is no soul to interact with, I don’t see how the fixed-rule system itself can become an imaginative symbol for higher-order dynamics. Then there is only a complex mechanism that we try to keep in movement as long as possible. Another layer of indirection is added, and improving means mimicking a fixed-rule mechanism which in turn mimics a fixed-rule abstract construction. There is no strategy to retrace, only a complex optimization function to mimic. Qualitatively, it is the same as saying that one understands cellular life better by following a cell simulation model that tries to mimic cell life transformation. But a real living cell is another game. And a chess game that opens up to soul attunement is also another game. Thus I still think that anticipating the other player's move above randomness is a sign that the practical fruit has ripened, because refined intellectual movements alone can't improve soul attunement. If soul attunement is improved (if strategies, not moves, become readable and feed back into the game dynamic) it points to deeper interactions with the other player, even though one remains unconscious of that. Intellectual refinement within fixed-rule constraints has no leverage to produce soul attunement, but can only produce functional optimisation. As you say, “what is not intellectual is precisely the introspective element”. Yes, but it's soul attunement, not fixed constraints, that become a lever to stimulate uncommon gestures (otherwise AI could do it too).

Federica wrote: ↑Mon Nov 24, 2025 9:53 pm I see that the players’ plans are constrained by the game rules, and these are fixed. But the other player’s plans aren’t: the same pawn move happening according to fixed rules could be part of a number of different underlying strategies, which in turn may express various underlying spiritual dynamics. Chess is only a fully fixed-rule game in the sense that whatever the ideas, their expression will necessarily manifest through sequences of pre-determined events, but my point is that the practical value is only there if the game is used to search attunement with the other player’s soul, through their strategy. I don’t think that playing against AI has any practical value. Then the game is reduced to only its fixed rules and what counts is only the iterative recalculations of highest-return moves combined with probabilities of countermoves. It’s not surprising that AI is superior at keeping constant track of all that. But this is not the same game. It becomes an insignificant mechanical game. I don’t think one can speak of the same game, when Ai is involved. Only the fixed rules remain the same, and so practical value is entirely lost. “Refining the intellectual gestures within the fixed rules” doesn't look very practical to me. That's almost the definition of impractical thinking.

I understand when you say that the competitive game becomes like a symbol of soul interaction, but when there is no soul to interact with, I don’t see how the fixed-rule system itself can become an imaginative symbol for higher-order dynamics. Then there is only a complex mechanism that we try to keep in movement as long as possible. Another layer of indirection is added, and improving means mimicking a fixed-rule mechanism which in turn mimics a fixed-rule abstract construction. There is no strategy to retrace, only a complex optimization function to mimic. Qualitatively, it is the same as saying that one understands cellular life better by following a cell simulation model that tries to mimic cell life transformation. But a real living cell is another game. And a chess game that opens up to soul attunement is also another game. Thus I still think that anticipating the other player's move above randomness is a sign that the practical fruit has ripened, because refined intellectual movements alone can't improve soul attunement. If soul attunement is improved (if strategies, not moves, become readable and feed back into the game dynamic) it points to deeper interactions with the other player, even though one remains unconscious of that. Intellectual refinement within fixed-rule constraints has no leverage to produce soul attunement, but can only produce functional optimisation. As you say, “what is not intellectual is precisely the introspective element”. Yes, but it's soul attunement, not fixed constraints, that become a lever to stimulate uncommon gestures (otherwise AI could do it too).

The main point is that we should remain keenly aware of how our inner movements are being formatted within these fixed constraints, even when we instinctively seek attunement with the other player's soul through the game feedback. That attunement can only be as rich as is allowed by the fixed constraints, since these likewise format the other player's inner chess life. In a certain sense, these rules act as the foundational lattice over which all creative chess strategy has taken shape over the centuries. Once the rules are in place, the intellect explores the resulting space of potential and filters out various possibilities for navigating the space in relatively optimal ways. That is how we arrive at the current palette of openings, defenses, gambits, end game strategies, and so on. Everything the intellect thus explores is conditioned over the rule lattice that dictates how it can navigate the space. When we instinctively seek soul attunement, we can only attune to that which has already crystallized from this narrow space of potential. And, in our time, this space of potential has been explored to the greatest extent possible. That is why people start seeking new forms of the game, with new rules, like Chess 960 or 'duck chess'.

There is only one exception to this fixed rule conditioning of our inner process within the gameplay, which is precisely when our attuning process is no longer done instinctively (unconsciously) but becomes a matter of introspective observation. Now the attunement process expands into the depth axis, because we can sense how the formatted chess life can symbolically image parts of existence that are more relevant to our soul being, which steers its flow within more encompassing intents and experiences a correspondingly unique perspective. This deeper flow has its unique tempo, rhythm, musicality, and general orientation to what reality is 'all about' - the way in which our inner activity interfaces with the phenomenal flow and feeds back toward ideal aims. The soul being cannot resonate with the fixed rules of chess at its more fluid level, since these constraints are incompatible with its gestures. Through introspective exercise, however, our intellectual being can bring its intrinsic fixed rule level into greater overlap with how reality is experienced and understood at the soul level. It no longer needs to arbitrarily invent new rules for the game, or endlessly create new games, but can explore a higher space of imaginative potential through the existing rules. Our deeper soul being then finds something of its reflection in the steering through fixed rule space.

For example, the whole process of moving through the ratings and playing varied opponents across this rating spectrum can become an image of the initiation process. As we move from lower to higher ratings, we can begin to feel how we are engaging with aspects of game play which were previously unsuspected. We realize that no amount of gestures at 500-level play would have prepared us to understand how the game is played at the 1500-level. It is like we were previously dreaming through 'how to play chess' and now we have awakened to an entirely new idea of what it means to play the game, which could have never been extrapolated from our dreamy chess existence. And likewise we can sense how and why the moves of even higher rated players feel quite unintuitive from our current perspective, like a mysterious attractor state of what we know and can do within the 'chess universe' so far. Imaginatively contemplating this unfolding spectrum of play as we participate in it can truly help us feel our way through the initiatory process from intellectual to higher cognition, as the 'game' of reality feels to deepen and morph in unsuspected ways. This value all depends on how much conscious orientation we attain to what we are otherwise instinctively doing to optimize our chess play.

I want to be clear that this is not about intellectually mapping the chess rules and resulting game dynamics onto aspects of deeper spiritual reality. I am only using Chess as a representative example of characteristic inner experiences we can lucidly explore when introspectively engaging with any such practical exercises, whether Chess or otherwise. These types of symbolic images born from steering within the fixed rule space are basically infinite, because we are observing the intuitive process from which the fixed rules (intellectual gestures) originally took shape. Refining our gestures within the fixed rules is then experienced as a natural extension of the initiatory process, like expanding the color palette available for the painting of our higher intuitions into clear and communicable form. An intellectual being without any introspective orientation to the intuitive process would simply lack any basis to know that its steering within the fixed rule space can be leveraged in this way.

I certainly wasn't suggesting that we get practical value from playing against AI. It was only a way of highlighting the fixed-rule nature of the space we are steering through. If a computer algorithm can fully 'figure out' the game, then the possibilities for creative expression are fully constrained within such a system. But I hope the above helps clarify the way in which the introspective element, working within and through the fixed constraints, becomes the lever to stimulate uncommon gestures. That is soul attunement which has become a conscious exercise, rather than only the instinctive soul attunement we must always engage to dimly understand what other people are doing.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Nov 24, 2025 3:50 pm The central question is, what is the inner nature of this education and guidance that we both agree is necessary for practical thinking to flourish? I suppose we both share the same guide and teacher on this forum - Cleric. How did Cleric guide us toward the 'uncommon' intellectual gestures through which we could interface with the lawful experiential flow? I'm sure we agree his posts and essays have 100% embodied the introspective element all throughout - they have been guidelines for how to observe our inner process more carefully and develop a refined feeling for its characteristic dynamics. In that sense, the guide and teacher in this intuitive thinking domain leads us to realize how we can also become our own guides and teachers, when we draw upon the inner Teachers and Teachings through the meditative impulse. It is a guidance toward inner freedom, which alone makes our thinking truly practical for life. That is what I have also wondered and hoped with respect to ML and all others I have attempted to dialogue with - that they would be open to the guidance of true introspective observation of the inner process. All of the posts have revolved around seeding and stimulating that specific interest and enthusiasm to grow within souls. 

No one can teach us how to 'do this' with practical thinking exercises, however. Someone can give us sudoku puzzles and try to teach us how to approach them with uncommon intellectual gestures that realize practical value, but this will sound like an incomprehensible foreign language. It may even sound like an outright contradiction, like someone is asking us to fasten our seatbelts and take them off at the same time. We only begin to appreciate how the seemingly opposite gestures are harmonized through introspective exercises, through which we begin to perceive how the 'standing wave' of fixed-rule intellectual systems takes shape within the carrier waves of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive dynamics. Then it's like we know how to fasten our seatbelts but also generate some slack in them, so they continue to provide their protective function but don't excessively bind us in place. Then we can steer the intellect through its intrinsic fixed-rule level with imaginative degrees of freedom to explore the carrier waves in which our steering unfolds.


Yes, we shouldn't try to intellectually 'figure out' what we are doing and why we are doing it, rather it is an intuitive orientation that naturally blossoms from the introspective process. We attain 'explanations' of what we are doing and why in the sense of the counting exercise, where we continually remember our intent to count as the auditory Tetris pieces stack at the horizon of consciousness. Our expanding temporal intuition elucidates the nature of what we are engaged in and toward what ends, which is essentially attaining a keener sense for the nested evolutionary rhythms of existence in which our present state is embedded.

I don't see any necessary conflict between attention to thinking (introspection) and 'patient and dutiful empiricism'. I see the creative task of our age is to spiral them together, so one simultaneously becomes a means of carrying out the other. This is why I remain confused about this 'other type of guidance' that you are pointing to, if it is being differentiated from introspective guidance. With the latter, literally any field of inquiry, any logical exercise, any part of the World Content, can be leveraged for the education of practical thinking. So what could be the value of putting it off or merely preparing for it (that is, imagining that we are 'preparing' for it), instead of delving into it directly?

The value of "merely preparing" is to help the scientifically minded person who feels that "there is more" to reality, attune themselves to the inner path, when the guidance of true introspective observation of the inner process doesn't seem to resonate immediately (as you have witnessed many times with the ones you have attempted to have a dialogue with). I don't understand why you are so resistant to this idea of building a bridge using the playground of practical, experimental life. Yes the inner path and empirical investigation should spiral together, but the initial steps may benefit from attunement brought about in a variety of manners.

Or is it that you are particularly resistant when I am the proposer? Because when Martin O'Keefe-Liddard proposed his version of bridge on FB, you decided to shared it here as "great example of how of the direction in which the 'culmination' of Anthroposophy should be sought"; when Cleric recently wrote "VT wanted to rescue the Catholic souls and thus sought ways to gently raise them into a more spiritual, Johnian existence, without overwhelming them with too many details emerging from initiatic science. I don’t think anyone can have anything against this. For my part, I also would like to refine bridges that can help the scientifically minded souls of our age to find a secure path to phenomenological reality" you didn't object: "scientifically-minded or not, they just have to read the basics, practice meditative concentration, and become their own teachers". So what's the matter really?

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 2:53 pm The value of "merely preparing" is to help the scientifically minded person who feels that "there is more" to reality, attune themselves to the inner path, when the guidance of true introspective observation of the inner process doesn't seem to resonate immediately (as you have witnessed many times with the ones you have attempted to have a dialogue with). I don't understand why you are so resistant to this idea of building a bridge using the playground of practical, experimental life. Yes the inner path and empirical investigation should spiral together, but the initial steps may benefit from attunement brought about in a variety of manners.

This is the whole question, Federica - whether this actually helps the scientific minded person who is reluctant to delve into the introspective path, or not. Do you entertain the possibility that this is not a settled question yet, and that we can gain value from exploring it further? All the discussion above is highlighting how this non-introspective 'bridge' you seem to be proposing is #1, rather than #2.

This is, in fact, what Cleric was also exploring on the VT thread. It's literally the exact same issue.

Cleric: "If we contemplate the John impulse from within these descending communities, we’ll say, “It is not yet the time. The souls around me are not yet prepared to approach these things. For the time being, I’ll keep them a private concern.” On the next day, however, we’ll say, “Conditions have worsened. The transition needs to be delayed a bit more.” And in this way, with each new day, instead of getting closer to the transition, it becomes more and more remote. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t help the souls that are still form-bound. But we need to be aware that the full blossoming of the flow-centric human being will require new wineskins."

Do the non-introspective 'practical exercises' still seem like new wineskins to you, despite all that has been discussed above?

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 3:17 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 2:53 pm The value of "merely preparing" is to help the scientifically minded person who feels that "there is more" to reality, attune themselves to the inner path, when the guidance of true introspective observation of the inner process doesn't seem to resonate immediately (as you have witnessed many times with the ones you have attempted to have a dialogue with). I don't understand why you are so resistant to this idea of building a bridge using the playground of practical, experimental life. Yes the inner path and empirical investigation should spiral together, but the initial steps may benefit from attunement brought about in a variety of manners.

This is the whole question, Federica - whether this actually helps the scientific minded person who is reluctant to delve into the introspective path, or not. Do you entertain the possibility that this is not a settled question yet, and that we can gain value from exploring it further? All the discussion above is highlighting how this non-introspective 'bridge' you seem to be proposing is #1, rather than #2.

This is, in fact, what Cleric was also exploring on the VT thread. It's literally the exact same issue.

Cleric: "If we contemplate the John impulse from within these descending communities, we’ll say, “It is not yet the time. The souls around me are not yet prepared to approach these things. For the time being, I’ll keep them a private concern.” On the next day, however, we’ll say, “Conditions have worsened. The transition needs to be delayed a bit more.” And in this way, with each new day, instead of getting closer to the transition, it becomes more and more remote. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t help the souls that are still form-bound. But we need to be aware that the full blossoming of the flow-centric human being will require new wineskins."

Do the non-introspective 'practical exercises' still seem like new wineskins to you, despite all that has been discussed above?

It's absolutely not the exact same issue.

In one case, it's the idea of the DOUBLE GAME. There is a secret, first class track for unknown friends, and a second class track for the Peter-like people, who are not supposed to know they are being gathered inside a sort of Purgatory-on-Earth, set up within the repurposed wineskin of the RCC. In the other case, the bridge, or the prerequisite of practical thinking, has nothing to share with such social-spiritual technology. It's a transparent attempt to allow opening souls to attune to the experience of unity between worlds, at first as a suggestive idea of unity between worlds, through the appropriate sensory supports. There is not the least amount of private concern here. Sure we can keep exploring the how, only if you refrain from illogical and inappropriate amalgam. Especially when (moreover) facts show that attempts to talk people into practicing the development of clairvoyance upfront do not work very well, to say the least.

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 3:47 pm Especially when (moreover) facts show that attempts to talk people into practicing the development of clairvoyance upfront do not work very well, to say the least.

Yes, or as Rodriel expressed before:

"The sober fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people incarnated on earth today, if approached with spiritual science in its original form, will have close to zero chance of benefiting from it. Is there really no imperative on the part of spiritual scientists to address this problem? Should we be content to limit the spirit of brotherhood we engender in this life to those who speak our exact language, when we know that learning to speak this language is simply not going to happen for most people? When confronted with a soul who shows some promise in rising to spiritual understanding, do we simply abandon them when our delivery fails to land?"

Except, I think he mostly had in mind when people are presented with a work like Theosophy, for example. If they are are presented with the Phonograph Metaphor, on the other hand, I think Rodriel would say this is exactly the kind of new wineskin that will help those souls who show some promise in rising to spiritual understanding, but are not yet prepared to benefit from the gritty details of spiritual scientific research. 

So what attempts do you have in mind which 'do not work very well'? For example, would Cleric's suggestion for a practical exercise before already be too introspective, too much leaning into practicing for clairvoyance, to work well? If you feel this would work well, then I hope you can elaborate on what distinguishes it from the video feedback meditation, for example.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 4:13 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 3:47 pm Especially when (moreover) facts show that attempts to talk people into practicing the development of clairvoyance upfront do not work very well, to say the least.

Yes, or as Rodriel expressed before:

"The sober fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people incarnated on earth today, if approached with spiritual science in its original form, will have close to zero chance of benefiting from it. Is there really no imperative on the part of spiritual scientists to address this problem? Should we be content to limit the spirit of brotherhood we engender in this life to those who speak our exact language, when we know that learning to speak this language is simply not going to happen for most people? When confronted with a soul who shows some promise in rising to spiritual understanding, do we simply abandon them when our delivery fails to land?"

Except, I think he mostly had in mind when people are presented with a work like Theosophy, for example. If they are are presented with the Phonograph Metaphor, on the other hand, I think Rodriel would say this is exactly the kind of new wineskin that will help those souls who show some promise in rising to spiritual understanding, but are not yet prepared to benefit from the gritty details of spiritual scientific research. 

So what attempts do you have in mind which 'do not work very well'? For example, would Cleric's suggestion for a practical exercise before already be too introspective, too much leaning into practicing for clairvoyance, to work well? If you feel this would work well, then I hope you can elaborate on what distinguishes it from the video feedback meditation, for example.

Yes, Rodriel's was a good question, but his preferred answer is not the only one which addresses the question. Great if he thinks that the Phonograph essays are what the unconvinced by Theosophy or Occult Science need (but I'd say I haven't noticed from the published posts that he's been particularly impressed by anything Cleric has written, so I would be a little surprised). For my part I can't imagine how phenomenology could be made better accessible for ordinary thinking, and I was convinced that these essays would have completely changed the game, opened a new world for any reader showing at least some promise in rising to spiritual understanding - and even for the average scientifically-minded person with no particular spirit seeking attitude. I was confident about that! And yet, for some mysterious reason, this has failed to happened. We have inexplicably seen a number of promising readers pass through these essays unaffected, even unimpressed. It's shocking and incomprehensible. People with articulated philosophical, spiritual, scientific interests, all convinced that "there is more", seem insensitive to them, as if inoculated with some specific desensitizing principle. I am sure you have tried on your side as well, as I also have.

The exercise given for practical thinking is of course useful for us who have some context, but we can't consider it in itself an approach to attune people to phenomenology. But the essays definitely are, and perhaps it would be worth discussing how it is possible that readers generally traverse them unaffected. I have no cues, but whatever the reasons, this fact has made me wonder: would a more applied scientific approach inspired by practical thinking have stronger appeal? I guess there is at least a small chance that people wake up, then recognize hints to the unity of reality, if presented with some aspects of applied disciplines from a spiritual scientific perspective. It is probably possible to refresh the applied studies initiated by Steiner in a way that leverages the details of sensory experience, and leads to the progressive intuition of participation at the same time. Needless to say, I don't have a detailed plan, but I think it's worth considering how this could be done in the future.

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 9:10 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 4:13 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Nov 25, 2025 3:47 pm Especially when (moreover) facts show that attempts to talk people into practicing the development of clairvoyance upfront do not work very well, to say the least.

Yes, or as Rodriel expressed before:

"The sober fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people incarnated on earth today, if approached with spiritual science in its original form, will have close to zero chance of benefiting from it. Is there really no imperative on the part of spiritual scientists to address this problem? Should we be content to limit the spirit of brotherhood we engender in this life to those who speak our exact language, when we know that learning to speak this language is simply not going to happen for most people? When confronted with a soul who shows some promise in rising to spiritual understanding, do we simply abandon them when our delivery fails to land?"

Except, I think he mostly had in mind when people are presented with a work like Theosophy, for example. If they are are presented with the Phonograph Metaphor, on the other hand, I think Rodriel would say this is exactly the kind of new wineskin that will help those souls who show some promise in rising to spiritual understanding, but are not yet prepared to benefit from the gritty details of spiritual scientific research. 

So what attempts do you have in mind which 'do not work very well'? For example, would Cleric's suggestion for a practical exercise before already be too introspective, too much leaning into practicing for clairvoyance, to work well? If you feel this would work well, then I hope you can elaborate on what distinguishes it from the video feedback meditation, for example.

Yes, Rodriel's was a good question, but his preferred answer is not the only one which addresses the question. Great if he thinks that the Phonograph essays are what the unconvinced by Theosophy or Occult Science need (but I'd say I haven't noticed from the published posts that he's been particularly impressed by anything Cleric has written, so I would be a little surprised). For my part I can't imagine how phenomenology could be made better accessible for ordinary thinking, and I was convinced that these essays would have completely changed the game, opened a new world for any reader showing at least some promise in rising to spiritual understanding - and even for the average scientifically-minded person with no particular spirit seeking attitude. I was confident about that! And yet, for some mysterious reason, this has failed to happened. We have inexplicably seen a number of promising readers pass through these essays unaffected, even unimpressed. It's shocking and incomprehensible. People with articulated philosophical, spiritual, scientific interests, all convinced that "there is more", seem insensitive to them, as if inoculated with some specific desensitizing principle. I am sure you have tried on your side as well, as I also have.

The exercise given for practical thinking is of course useful for us who have some context, but we can't consider it in itself an approach to attune people to phenomenology. But the essays definitely are, and perhaps it would be worth discussing how it is possible that readers generally traverse them unaffected. I have no cues, but whatever the reasons, this fact has made me wonder: would a more applied scientific approach inspired by practical thinking have stronger appeal? I guess there is at least a small chance that people wake up, then recognize hints to the unity of reality, if presented with some aspects of applied disciplines from a spiritual scientific perspective.

We can surely explore various reasons why this introspective method seems to present (or even trigger) inner obstacles for modern souls, and I would say we have already been exploring those reasons across these recent threads. It is critical to get a more refined feeling for these inner obstacles, because I think they also help us imagine the potential 'resolution space' that can be navigated. Again, the central theme of Cleric's elucidations on the VT thread was some of the key reasons for the inner obstacles (the intellect becomes attached to the trellis, traceable wires, and so on, which give it a firm sense of anchorange within intellectual-sensory coordinates, the CoT chain). 

Exercises for improving working memory can be instructive here, such as the one Kaje presented before. Even though these are highly practical, they still accustom us to life on this side of the threshold. This working memory function is one of the first vectors of ordinary soul life that begins to diffuse into the spiritual atmosphere upon crossing the threshold, as the soul needs to find more and more anchorage within its fluid, continually morphing spiritual gestures. It starts to experience the navigation within reality as a process of continual activity, kindling experiences (ideas) anew at each step. Then we are leading a nearly opposite life to what we have grown accustomed to in sensory existence, where we can rest our activity on the working memory function and cleanly trace our ideas to its representations. (the freestyle example is also helpful to consider here)

(again, strengthening this working memory function becomes an asset for higher development once we begin to do it consciously and introspectively, remaining lucidly aware of the dynamics suggested above)

Even more relevant was Cleric's response when I asked what kind of hope he places in the Anthroposophical project, a response which I feel fully aligned with my intuitive experience and which I have also tried to express before:

Cleric: "We shouldn't act as if Anthroposophy has offered us an investment plan with promises for a quick return, and now, a hundred years later, we're worried that it may not live up to the expectations (thus, we quickly seek to cash out and reinvest in a more conservative but hopefully safer plan). We are speaking about the evolutionary process of humanity here. Over long spans of time. Whose trajectory depends primarily on what human beings will understand about reality and how they will act upon it, what they will emanate. I don't have any special confidence in the Anthroposophical projects as they are now. In a way, I look at them as completely necessary attempts or even hints. Just like our first essays were necessary attempts, even if clumsy, and sometimes with errors. But this is part of gaining experience, probing, and expanding our intuitive horizons. It is important to notice that because of these attempts, we are at all able to discuss seriously the possibility of the spirit entering into the practical fields of human affairs. Without that, we might as well still live in a default conception of a rigid two-compartment world, with a hard boundary between the material and the spiritual. So with this in mind, we shouldn’t forget that these things are still incubating. Before we expect the World the change, we should see that change within ourselves.

Thus, what I have confidence in is the Spirit at work. I have confidence in the gradual inversion of our inner attitude. In the age of the intellectual soul, it can be said that our inner activity needs to be tethered to certain intuitive gestures and sensations. These are ToE principles for the scientist; they are the dogma-axioms for the religious. They give anchorage to the intellectual self. With the development of the spiritual soul, the most important thing is the inversion, to find that our true tether is in the spiritual world, in the invisible Sun.

This is the primary thing. We may grumble about the lack of World-scale results, but I don’t think anyone would deny the power of the Teachings of the new impulse to incite the transformation on an individual level. Thus, to me, "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them" is like a motto. This is the living, tangible reality – the inner immersion in the Divine, and having the constant desire to transform ourselves, such that we can conduct the currents in better and better ways, and to comprehend the depth of reality."

As Cleric also mentioned on that thread, the hints toward how the soul can find its true spiritual tether in the invisible Sun, the higher Self, is experienced as a (mostly subconsciously) scary prospect, like losing the ground beneath one's feet. That is why we speak of the Guardian. And encountering this Guardian, which all souls do when trying to rise in spiritual understanding, will always be experienced as a frightful prospect until the introspective approach is plunged into. Only this plunge can begin to give us objective cognitive distance from the deeper soul being and its flow, which then renders the encounter less terrifying and more pedagogical. We then feel like the fabric of inner life is not under threat of being torn asunder, but given a new kind of support to reconstitute it at a deeper level of integration (like the butterfly from the dissolved parts of the caterpillar). So it's once again an example of the Catch-22. 

We could sum it up as: the reason the introspective apparel doesn't work so well is that it is never actually tried on. The intellectual soul always manages to rationalize some excuse for why it should be delayed, postponed, why it's too demanding, too direct, and so on. It often subtly transforms the introspective exercise into a strictly logical one, a theoretical inquiry of the deeper dynamics. The fact is, out of all those on the forum with whom we have engaged, we have no idea how many actually tried the introspective apparel on. We know that Lorenzo, for example, quickly became exhausted by the 'flowery terminology' and gave up (and trying to find support within real-time spiritual gestures is indeed exhausting for ordinary intellectual habits). The soul doesn't even make it into the fitting room (the chrysalis) but immediately throws the apparel back on the shelf. 

It is tempting at this point to feel like the apparel needs to be substituted, that the soul should be given some more indirect way of trying the clothes on, which gradually leads to the fitting room. That is another verifiable inner dynamic. It is not only because we desire to help other souls, but because it also gives us a reason to spend more time out of the fitting room and within the traceable wires of sensory life. Yet this only exacerbates the conundrum, in my view. Just like the child learns most intimately and effectively by picking up subtle cues from the adults that surround it, others will learn most effectively about the introspective life that bridges across the threshold from what they observe us doing. If we lack enthusiasm for that life, so will they. Then the time for the collective transition to a flow-centric existence becomes increasingly delayed and remote. 

It is probably possible to refresh the applied studies initiated by Steiner in a way that leverages the details of sensory experience, and leads to the progressive intuition of participation at the same time. Needless to say, I don't have a detailed plan, but I think it's worth considering how this could be done in the future.

It is certainly worth considering, and I hope it is evident how the introspective approach (as exemplified in the essays) serves precisely this function of leveraging the details of the phenomenal flow and leading to progressive intuition of participation within that flow. This is the refreshment of spiritual science (or any science, art, religion, etc.) that Steiner continually pointed toward. It is already here, already established, already accessible to souls across the varied domains of life. Even if we don't see quick returns on investment, that doesn't mean we need to throw the apparel back on the shelf and seek another approach to the fitting room. Ironically, it only shows how much the same approach to the fitting room needs to be strengthened, because the value of introspective life can never be demonstrated to the intellect beforehand, but only becomes apparent through leading and exemplifying that Life itself.