Philosophical Speculations

Steiner says:

"We must first consider thinking quite impartially, without reference to a thinking subject or a thought object. For both subject and object are concepts formed by thinking."

Ashvin, you do realize that at this point in the text Steiner isn't even assuming that there is such an entity as "I", right?

Since you think that Chapter Two is exploring the essential nature of intuitive thinking, I somehow now suspect you think it recognizes the reality of the thinker as well. This would also be a mistake.

The 'thinker' isn't established until intuitive thinking is grasped consciously. I'm sure you disagree with this as well based on the same reasons you are claiming Steiner is showing us the essence of thinking.

findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:29 pm Your first comment about the exceptional state was how rare it is, so rare that many people never experience it. I assume that you will disqualify "I'm thinking about a desk," as not being the same as, "I'm thinking about a table".

The good news is that Steiner clearly differentiates "I'm thinking about a table" from the intuitive thinking that comes later in the book.

Fine, maybe that comment was a bit hyperbolic. I doubt most people actually go through their entire life without observing their own thinking at least once. The point is, they do not observe their own thinking nearly as much as they need to be going forward. That is what Steiner was pointing to in the essay I quoted from a century ago, and it has only become more true now with modern technology. If someone told you they eat every day but only chew their food once a week, then you would probably be alarmed and surprised that they haven't choked to death yet. That is the same way it is with modern people and the "exceptional state".

I really have to ask if you can explain how any of this is relevant to larger issues we are trying to approach? Clearly you think your understanding of what Steiner is writing in PoF is more accurate and complete than most others who call themselves "Anthroposophists". So, assuming you are right, what are the implications for his philosophy in general? How does it modify that philosophy in a significant way from what we understand it to be? I seriously just want to understand the connection you are trying to make here.

And I never said anything about "intuitive thinking" in my recent comments, so I have no idea why you have thrown that in there as if I claimed the "exceptional state" is intuitive thinking. I never made such a claim.

Also, it would be good to know where you were trying to take these questions I responded to:

Ashvin wrote:

FB wrote:And just to add/ask: and you would agree that it is not that the first form of reality we meet is this low-level conceptualized perception that is in need to more concepts to be a very rich an cognitively active figurated experience, yeah>

If you are talking about when I was conceived or born in current lifetime, then I can't remember the first form I met and how it was experienced. If you mean any form that I am seeing for the first time in current day, then it will depend on what sort of form. Perception of "stranger walking down the street" is not quite as rich in conceptual meaning as perception of "triangle" thought-form in my mind. In general, most forms I come across in my daily routine already have a fair deal of conceptual meaning but are still lacking any deeper spiritual meaning without much further contemplation. I expect that to change over time if I am disciplined and blessed to bring forth higher modes of cognition.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:45 pm

findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:42 pm "So it makes no sense to conflate them back together as "cognitive perception" in the context of Barfield's argument."

I think it is in History, Guilt, and Habit where Barfield explains why he certainly recognizes the earliest perception as cognitive. We don't have to nit-pick words if we understand each other. He simply explains very clearly why the earliest perceptions are of/as meaning.

Yes, the perception of Moon 2500 years ago for ex. carried much more and deeper meaning than perception of it today for most people.

I'll be surprised if Cleric thinks you are characterizing his thoughts very accurately. We'll see.

But, Ashvin, let's see if you also think Khulewind misses the point like I do:

"The first half of Rudolf Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom deals with a stage of consciousness that may be characterized by the fact that, at this stage, the contents of consciousness are given through observation. In particular, this field of consciousness is most suited for the observation of thinking - or, more accurately, the already-thought. What is meant by "thinking" in the first seven chapters of The Philosophy of Freedom is not the process itself but, as in the ordinary usage of the word, the result of this process as it enters consciousness."

Seems like Khulewind is as confused as me here. He goes on:

"Thinking realizes - though this does not happen consciously in thinking - that any statement it makes about itself can have no more value than any statement it makes about anything else. Thinking does not "see" itself while thinking, but only after thinking, after what has been thought; for the plane of thinking, of cognizing, is in no way altered by the fact that thinking thinks about what has been thought."

To me this is all perfectly in line with what Steiner says.

"Philosophy of Freedom describes the step that brings observation out of its "standing over against" what has been already thought into experience, the direct participation in thinking in the present. Observation must be directed to living thinking and the experience of living thinking."

Kuhwind and I (and I hate to say it, but Steiner as well) are saying that this latter activity of directing observation to the experience of living thinking is not what chapter two is pointing to.

Let's see if what Steiner says a few chapters later seems to argue against my point:

"The difficulty of grasping the essential nature of thinking by observation lies in this, that it has all too easily eluded the introspecting soul by the time the soul tries to bring it into the focus of attention. Nothing then remains to be inspected but the lifeless abstraction, the corpse of living thinking. [Note that mention is again made of the difficulties in experiencing thinking in the present, but it is not set aside as impossible, as in the quotation from the third chapter.] .... Thinking all too readily leaves us cold in recollection; it is as if the life of the soul had dried out. Yet this is really nothing but the strongly marked shadow of its real nature — warm, luminous and immersed deeply in the phenomena of the world. This immersion is brought about by a power that flows through the activity of thinking itself — this power is love in its spiritual form."

So you think that in Chapter 2 Steiner is talking about the experience of love in its spiritual form rather than the important first step of turning our observation to our thoughts themselves?

Sometimes, you sound as if you think these are the same actions and experiences.

I can assure you that somebody who realizes, "I am thinking about a table" is not at all necessarily experiencing the warm and luminous participation with the phenomena of the world that can be characterized as a power that is 'love in its spiritual form."

Remember Steiner says clearly that the experience he is pointing at in chapter 3 doesn't yet assure us that we exist as "I" beings nor does it tell us anything about the nature of reality.

In chapter 3 Steiner says that we are thinking and observing all the time. Less often we reflect abstractly back on what we are thinking, "I am thinking about X" or "I keeping assuming Y".

This less often occurrence is an exception to the nearly constant state of perceiving and thinking. It is abstract. As Steiner says:

"Nothing then remains to be inspected but the lifeless abstraction."

But these lifeless abstractions are still massively significant. Why? Because we produced them. At least it seems that way.

We actually don't yet know that there is any reality to "I" or to "world" but we certainly notice that we can observe our thoughts.

Many chapter's later, we will read:

"For although on the one hand intuitively experienced thinking is an active process taking place in the human spirit, on the other hand it is also a
)spiritual percept grasped without a physical sense organ. It is a percept in which the perceiver is himself active, and a self-activity which is at the
same time perceived. In intuitively experienced thinking, man is carried into a spiritual world also as a perceiver."

So in chapter 3 he says that we can't yet say there is an "I", we can't yet say anything substationally about the nature of the world. He says we can notice that now and then we reflect on our thoughts, "I am thinking about X".

Later he says that we are carried into a spiritual world also as a perceiver.

You believe that this grasping of the essential nature of intuitive thinking is the 'exceptional state' described in Chapter 3. At the very least, you'll need to explain why this experience is not also a simultaneous intuition of the true self and the nature of spirit. If you claim that the 'exceptional state' is also those deep and direct understandings, then you'll have to explain why Steiner says it is absolutely is not.

There is a great temptation to turn this less often occurrence of noticing our thoughts into the re-cognition of sprit that is the core experience of PoF. However, this less-often occurrence is merely an important foothold on the path.

"Also, it would be good to know where you were trying to take these questions I responded to..."

I was trying to tease out exactly what you are claiming about the necessary 'first form' in which we meet the world. You agree that we meet an already cognized world. You agree there is no pure percept in need of concept.

And from what you said recently, you think there is a much less rich first form (like the one Steiner prises that Volkelt painted, I assume) we encounter before we attach more meaningful concepts to it

I think this is just a different version of the same error regarding making a division where there is none.

When somebody wakes up fully refreshed and connected to their mind and heart and heads outside for a walk....and they hear the bright yelp of a kid and whip there head to see his joyous body expressing a complex blend of energy, curiousity and determination and then see the pride beaming off the mother's face and the carefully attended porch....

Anyway, this is the kind of rich and deeply felt experience that we all can probably relate to....

To claim that first we must meet the kind of experience that Steiner praises and calls the 'first form' in which reality must meet us before we weave into it the correct concepts....to claim that is to ignore experience or to impose an abstract model that makes it necessarily the case.

The next day you wake up and you are muddled and befuddled. You walk and sweep your eyes across the same things and notice a vastly different (both true in their own way) environment.

So, I was merely trying to get a clearer understanding of how you take this idea of a 'first form'. I think that adding concepts to our immediate experience can often dampen down the rich meaning we are experiencing.

But that isn't my point. My point is that there are errors that lead us to assume that Volkelt's characterization is an accurate representation of what we must then connect more concepts to in order to move past a mere juxtaposition of objects in space/time.

Your response helped me see that you basically do think Volkelt is describing a necessary structure.

findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 11:02 pm I'll be surprised if Cleric thinks you are characterizing his thoughts very accurately. We'll see.

But, Ashvin, let's see if you also think Khulewind misses the point like I do:

"The first half of Rudolf Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom deals with a stage of consciousness that may be characterized by the fact that, at this stage, the contents of consciousness are given through observation. In particular, this field of consciousness is most suited for the observation of thinking - or, more accurately, the already-thought. What is meant by "thinking" in the first seven chapters of The Philosophy of Freedom is not the process itself but, as in the ordinary usage of the word, the result of this process as it enters consciousness."

Seems like Khulewind is as confused as me here. He goes on:

"Thinking realizes - though this does not happen consciously in thinking - that any statement it makes about itself can have no more value than any statement it makes about anything else. Thinking does not "see" itself while thinking, but only after thinking, after what has been thought; for the plane of thinking, of cognizing, is in no way altered by the fact that thinking thinks about what has been thought."

To me this is all perfectly in line with what Steiner says.

"Philosophy of Freedom describes the step that brings observation out of its "standing over against" what has been already thought into experience, the direct participation in thinking in the present. Observation must be directed to living thinking and the experience of living thinking."

Kuhwind and I (and I hate to say it, but Steiner as well) are saying that this latter activity of directing observation to the experience of living thinking is not what chapter two is pointing to.

Let's see if what Steiner says a few chapters later seems to argue against my point:

"The difficulty of grasping the essential nature of thinking by observation lies in this, that it has all too easily eluded the introspecting soul by the time the soul tries to bring it into the focus of attention. Nothing then remains to be inspected but the lifeless abstraction, the corpse of living thinking. [Note that mention is again made of the difficulties in experiencing thinking in the present, but it is not set aside as impossible, as in the quotation from the third chapter.] .... Thinking all too readily leaves us cold in recollection; it is as if the life of the soul had dried out. Yet this is really nothing but the strongly marked shadow of its real nature — warm, luminous and immersed deeply in the phenomena of the world. This immersion is brought about by a power that flows through the activity of thinking itself — this power is love in its spiritual form."

So you think that in Chapter 2 Steiner is talking about the experience of love in its spiritual form rather than the important first step of turning our observation to our thoughts themselves?

Sometimes, you sound as if you think these are the same actions and experiences.

I can assure you that somebody who realizes, "I am thinking about a table" is not at all necessarily experiencing the warm and luminous participation with the phenomena of the world that can be characterized as a power that is 'love in its spiritual form."

Remember Steiner says clearly that the experience he is pointing at in chapter 3 doesn't yet assure us that we exist as "I" beings nor does it tell us anything about the nature of reality.

FB,

You are arguing with complete straw-men here, just as I predicted would happen when we rehashed this approach of yours. Not only are you attributing to me things I have never claimed, I am also sure no one reading this thread has any idea what philosophical conclusion you are arguing for right now. We are stuck in a complete morass of interpretations of Steiner's PoF (now some other guy "Cool Wind" and his interpretation has been added to the mix), and not even moving an inch towards the topic of the living thinking that everyone agrees Steiner is most concerned with. What is the reason for ignoring my requests and pursuing this obviously unproductive path? Some psychologist once pointed out, if you can't figure out the motivations for someone's actions after much contemplation, look at the results and consider the motivation was to bring about those results. The results of your approach here is the complete avoidance of any practical application of the essential meaning of Steiner's philosophy to our current day and moving forward into the future. I cannot figure out any other reason for you to not only stick with this approach, but not even respond to questions about why you are sticking with this approach and how it relates to any essential issues.

FB wrote:You believe that this grasping of the essential nature of intuitive thinking is the 'exceptional state' described in Chapter 3

No, false. I have said several times now you are mispresenting me with the above claim, yet you continue doing it. I only pointed out that your understanding of the "exceptional state" and of Steiner's quote about "present thinking" were wrong, not that it either one has anything to do with "intuitive thinking".

findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 11:32 pm I think this is just a different version of the same error regarding making a division where there is none.

#1 When somebody wakes up fully refreshed and connected to their mind and heart and heads outside for a walk....and they hear the bright yelp of a kid and whip there head to see his joyous body expressing a complex blend of energy, curiousity and determination and then see the pride beaming off the mother's face and the carefully attended porch....

Anyway, this is the kind of rich and deeply felt experience that we all can probably relate to....

To claim that first we must meet the kind of experience that Steiner praises and calls the 'first form' in which reality must meet us before we weave into it the correct concepts....to claim that is to ignore experience or to impose an abstract model that makes it necessarily the case.

#2 The next day you wake up and you are muddled and befuddled. You walk and sweep your eyes across the same things and notice a vastly different (both true in their own way) environment.

So, I was merely trying to get a clearer understanding of how you take this idea of a 'first form'. I think that adding concepts to our immediate experience can often dampen down the rich meaning we are experiencing.

Thanks for this answer!

If I understand correctly, you are saying #1 experience shows how we normally get experience very rich in meaning from quick perceptions of our environment without the need for methodical reflection and adding of concepts. You are also saying #2 example shows how it is our personal faculties which make the difference in richness of meaning rather than anything in the percepts themselves or our lack of finding the proper concepts for them.

Is that a correct understanding?

findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 9:17 pm Hey Cleric,

I posted my thoughts on 'exceptional state' and then noticed your request to hear what I think about that. There you go!

However please know that I do not assume that you shared Ashvin'sP's opinion that Steiner's phrase "obviously" refers to a state of consciousness that many people never experience. I imagine you may object to that characterization as well. However, on the whole, nearly all PoF student's would agree (at first) with AshvinP's belief. I certainly did.

I'm little tired at the moment so I couldn't really grasp entirely your characterizations of the exceptional state and where Steiner was wrong or not.

(wow by the time I wrote this I see quite a lot has gone on in the thread, and I see more clearly what you meant)

I'll just say few things before I drop to bed.

The exceptional state is not about observing thoughts. It's about observing thinking. It's a small difference in words but with great significance.

People have observed thoughts from the most ancient times. This observation was increasing in resolution, excelling at the times of the Greeks. But the Greeks couldn't yet observe thinking.

So what does it mean to observe thinking? Many people would say "I hear my neurotic voice in the head all the time, what's so exceptional about that? It would be exceptional if I could make him shut up!" Yes, but this is precisely what it is to 'hear thoughts' and not 'thinking'. The materialist also hears his thoughts. Why would Steiner say that they don't experience the exceptional state? Here are his words:

Steiner wrote: It is difficult for many people today to grasp the concept of thinking in its purity. Whoever raises as an objection to the picture of thinking painted here the statement of Cabanis that “The brain secrets thoughts as the liver does bile, the salivary glands saliva, etc.,” simply does not know what I am talking about. He tries to find thinking through a mere process of observation in the same way as we proceed with other objects from the content of the world. He cannot find it in this way, however, because just there it eludes our normal observation as I have shown. A person who cannot overcome materialism lacks the ability to call forth the characterized exceptional state which brings to his consciousness what remains unconscious to all other spiritual activity. With someone who does not have the good will to take this standpoint, one could as little speak about thinking as with a blind person about color. Still he should not believe that we regard physiological processes as thinking. He does not explain thinking, because he simply does not see it at all.

So what is it that makes the exceptional position different? Materialistic scientists are perfectly capable of observing thoughts, otherwise they wouldn't compare them to bile secreted from the liver. The difference is that when thinking is in the blind spot, when thinking reflects on itself, it has no other option but explain one thought with another. For the materialist the thoughts just pop up in consciousness, just as any other perception. The only way to explain thoughts is to imagine (through other thoughts) what processes were supposedly involved in the thinking process. Here's an attempt to illustrate this:



The difficulty in explaining the exceptional state is because its experience is resisted. And this is not limited only to materialists. Mysticism fares no better.

To experience thinking (and not simply thoughts popping up into consciousness) we need to merge and experience the cause of the thoughts. And the cause is we ourselves (and here we already lose the mystical auditory). Here's another illustration:



Now the blind spot is partially overcome. Now we again observe thoughts but we're in full awareness that these proceed from our most intimate spiritual activity (the arrows). The thought-perceptions are testimonies, imprints of our activity.

Here we come to the tricky part. I'll use a two-level analogy, similar to your sculptor but slightly modified. Let's imagine that we hold a paintbrush. Yet for some weird reason, our body is invisible and furthermore we've never seen it, such that we don't know it exists. Yet we occasionally observe paint blobs appearing here and there. This would correspond to the materialistic and mystical positions - thoughts (paint blobs) just pop up in consciousness. The difference is that the materialist is curious and tries to build theory of paint blobs which makes an elegant paint picture that explains how paint blobs appear. The mystic on the other hand views the blobs completely as a side effect, producing a vortex of paint, which is the illusion of an "I". There's no "I", they say. It's just an imagined through paint blobs, center of gravity for the paint blobs.

If we're free from the above prejudices, if we don't feel antipathy towards specific parts of the given, we can experience the causative force behind paint blobs. So to speak, we begin to experience correlation between our innermost spiritual activity and the paint blobs. Remember that this activity corresponds in the analogy to the willed movement of the invisible body. This inner motive force becomes known only gradually. Initially it is completely in the blind spot (we know only paint blobs - thoughts). As we begin to recognize also our thinking activity, we also begin to experience paint blobs which reflect that inner activity. Now we not only observe paint blobs but we experience that they proceed from our activity.

The critical point is that we know in a different way the thoughts (paint blobs) and our activity. The latter we can know only through intuition. I remind what we mean by intuition:

Steiner wrote:Thinking, out of man's world of concepts and ideas, brings this content to meet the perception. In contrast to the content of perception, which is given us from outside, the content of thought appears within us. Let us call the form in which it first arises, “intuition.” Intuition is for thinking what observation is for the perception.

The words are important. When we observe thinking, we have perceptions of thoughts, the meaning of which is grasped through intuition. The thinking activity itself, we don't really perceive it in any sensory-like manner. For example, when we think verbally we actually hear a voice, which is no different from auditory perception coming through the ears. But the fact that we are the causing activity of the thoughts is not something that we perceive in sensory-like way. This activity is not seen as color, form, heard as sound. We grasp it entirely through intuition. And this is the real reason why the exceptional state is so unapproachable for many. Because people are used to experience intuitions only against sensory-like perceptible thoughts and outer perceptions. To experience our spiritual activity, of which the thought-perceptions are only reflections, is already a supersensible experience (super- in the sense of above-). To experience the exceptional state means to be able to live at least in a rudimentary way, as a stable being within the element of intuition. This is the threshold between the intellectual and consciousness soul.

This is the same intuition, which when developed far beyond the thinking in the head, becomes Intuition, the highest form of cognition available to us. Through the exceptional state we experience in full reality how our supersensible spiritual activity (grasped only through intuition) is reflected in the sensory-like thoughts. When all our bodies are transformed sufficiently, this Intuition expands and lives together with spiritual activity which doesn't reflect only in brain activity but reflects in life processes and the very physical structure of the Cosmos. This is also the reason why the exercises for the development of Intuition, require to renounce all forms of ordinary thinking, Imaginative and Inspirative cognition. Only then we very gradually learn to live in the pure element of Intuition, where we no longer experience how the World impresses within our soul life but we are one with the causative spiritual activity of the Cosmos (similarly to the way we are one with the spiritual activity behind our microcosmic thought perceptions). We're getting in much more advanced waters here and it's not my point to bring the discussion in this direction but I just wanted to point how deep actually PoF goes. Even though in the exceptional state we experience the supersensible element of intuition only in the tiniest domain of our ordinary thoughts, it's still true that in this tiny spot we have oneness with the creative perspectives of the Cosmic Beings.

The picture above also throws light on the problem of perceiving the past thoughts. Our present thinking is experienced through intuition. Our thought-perceptions are the imprints that this spiritual activity leaves in the astral substance. When we observe these imprints, we already observe something that is imploding in Akasha and thus our current intuition is that we experience the imprints of what we have thought an instant ago. The key is to differentiate that we don't perceive our thinking activity as something belonging to the world of perceptions. The thought-imprints belong there but the process doesn't exists as something sensory-like perceptible. The process itself is grasped only in intuition, as innermost meaning filling consciousness and furthermore this meaning doesn't simply present itself to us but results from the very fact that we are the active causative force of thinking.

Personally I don't see a conflict between the way Steiner speaks in the beginning of PoF and later. He insures himself that he's not making two different versions of the exceptional state by speaking of the observation of thinking. We can understand that he means something more than observation of thoughts, even through the mere fact that he says that the materialist doesn't experience the exceptional state, since he sees the thoughts are being excreted from the brain. "He tries to find thinking through a mere process of observation in the same way as we proceed with other objects from the content of the world." Note that the materialists tries to find thinking in the wrong way, not thoughts. Thoughts he already sees well enough. "He does not explain thinking, because he simply does not see it at all." If we reflect on this, we already see quite clearly that Steiner doesn't speak of observation of thoughts. Of course, the spiritual activity of thinking, which is known by supersensible intuition, can be only gradually approached. So in this chapter, the careful beginner reader should at best say "Steiner speaks here about exceptional experience of thinking which I don't yet grasp. Let's see further down the pages." But I don't see how a careful reader may mistake the exceptional state for observation of thoughts. In this sense Steiner doesn't contradict himself later. He states things plainly and correctly, even if not yet completely. No one can jump directly to intuition. The exceptional state is a transformation of the simple observation of thoughts by becoming intuitively aware that it is the perceptual reflection of our own spiritual activity, that we are beholding. So yes, for the longest time we live together with thought-perceptions and living intuition. I don't think PoF even tries to speak about experience of Intuition only, without thought-perceptions. This already is the domain of Initiation and it requires more than the transformation of thinking only. In this sense, the exceptional state naturally contains also the observation of thoughts but is gradually being built up towards the clearer experience of intuition which explains the existence of the thoughts.

PS: Blanks, keep in mind that Ashvin is dealing with these ideas only for a few months. We on the other hand, have meditated for years on them. With that in mind, I'm personally quite fascinated how quickly and at what depth he penetrated into PoF. It's normal that words will only gradually be refined. This holds for each one of us.

Cleric K wrote: ↑Mon Jun 28, 2021 12:47 am

findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 9:17 pm Hey Cleric,

I posted my thoughts on 'exceptional state' and then noticed your request to hear what I think about that. There you go!

However please know that I do not assume that you shared Ashvin'sP's opinion that Steiner's phrase "obviously" refers to a state of consciousness that many people never experience. I imagine you may object to that characterization as well. However, on the whole, nearly all PoF student's would agree (at first) with AshvinP's belief. I certainly did.

I'm little tired at the moment so I couldn't really grasp entirely your characterizations of the exceptional state and where Steiner was wrong or not.

(wow by the time I wrote this I see quite a lot has gone on in the thread, and I see more clearly what you meant)

I'll just say few things before I drop to bed.

It's amazing how well your minds works when tired and going to bed compared to most people when they are wide awake in middle of the day

Based on Cleric's post, clearly I was treating the "exceptional state" (ES) as actually more mundane than it really is... it seems people do in fact go entire lifetimes without experiencing it. So FB you may have been correct about that, although I'm not exactly sure what your position is on the meaning of the ES.