Eugene I wrote: ↑Sat May 01, 2021 3:58 pm
Now, if the spiritual science is committed to use the same verification method based on verifiable and reproducible experiences, then you should confirm that and then we can move ahead and scrutinize the claims of the spiritual science against such verifiable and reproducible experiences. If you can not confirm that, then please explain what other kinds of experiences the spiritual science accepts as verification criteria.
Eugene, plenty of information has been given here so anyone who had interest would have already grasped everything that you ask about. I'm sure it will be no different this time but for the sake of anyone else who may be reading, let me repeat why it's justified to speak of spiritual science.
First we need to return some centuries back and remember
natural science before it became the abstract discipline of today. Think of botany, zoology, geology, astronomy, meteorology, etc. Here we have activity of the human spirit which describes forms, recognizes patterns and laws and forms concepts. The quest for a mathematical theory of everything appeared relatively recently. Natural sciences deal with the spectrum of our spiritual life the encompasses the senses. As it's mentioned in previous posts, the spectrum of inner life that corresponds to thinking, feeling and willing is considered unreliable - it's too volatile. Here we should be clear with one thing - the fact that the inner life is so dynamic doesn't mean that it can't be investigated. There are plenty of things in the sensory world that are highly complex (for example weather) but this doesn't stop scientists to keep perfecting their methods and understanding. The argument that inner life is subjective and agreement can never by reached is also untrue. We can agree about the existence of thoughts, feelings, sensations, will. We can agree to some basic laws that these inner elements conform to. What the 'subjectivity' excuse really secretly says is "I can't handle my own inner life, let alone draw some lawful observations from it." Claiming that inner life is too turbulent in order to become subject of rigorous study is quite selective dismission. The real problem is that people simply don't have any desire to go in that direction. In today's culture if one doesn't see how they can profit from certain endeavor, they lose interest immediately. We'll return to this. Yet not all souls operate under such paradigm. There have always been individuals who were willing to take the pains and develop the methods for investigation of the invisible part of the spectrum. This is today known as spiritual science.
Spiritual science is continuation of the same method of the natural sciences. Note that I say the
natural sciences. This is important. Today, almost by reflex, when it's spoken about science it's understood some
theory that tries to explain the workings of reality. Here also come all the talks about falsification and so on. The natural sciences are much more immediate - you have perceptions and discover concepts for the forms and their transformations. We can grasp spiritual science only if we don't mix it with the modern fascination with abstract theories. What the natural sciences do, spiritual science does too - it deals with supersensible perceptions and describes in concepts their characteristics, relations and transformations.
It is the part with the supersensible perceptions that is really the thorn in the flesh. There are many reasons for this. One has already been mentioned above. I'm not going to go in too many details - I've done that in other places. The key thing to understand is that spiritual science begins with
self-knowledge and
self-mastery. This answers the question about the volatility of our inner life. It's not very common today for people to be able to control their thought stream at will. To stop it on command, to concentrate it in a point and hold it for some time. Similarly it's not very 'trendy' to have mastery over passions and desires. In fact many parts of modern culture advocate unleashing of desires as the ultimate expression of freedom. It's not very popular also to have full control on the will - to be conscious of every movement of the body, the expressions of the face, etc. Yet these are the things that are needed in order for one to achieve the stability of inner life that is required for reliable inner perception. And this is only the preparation (which never ends). Then we must work with our spiritual activity, to concentrate it. As long as our inner life proceeds in semi-automatic way, we can't know much about ourselves. In a similar way a child doesn't have consciousness about what it takes to have bread on the table until it's old enough. Before that it accepts the bread for granted. Once it begins to provide for its bread a whole new spectrum of experiences are added to the metamorphic view. It's similar with the work on ourselves. As long as our inner life flows 'on its own' we don't have consciousness of the driving forces. Through self-mastery we gain more intimate control of inner life. Normally thinking, feeling and willing are very intimately connected. For example if someone says something wrong to me and I haven't done any work on my inner life, the heard words (which are thoughts for me) activate a whole cascade of processes - the feelings of insult and anger are aroused and I may even give him, completely instinctually, a blow. Things are very different when work on self-mastery has been performed. We reach a point of development where thinking, feeling and willing are under the control of the "I". Then when I hear the insult I take it with my tweezers and begin to examine it as a scientific object. My feeling and will are activated only if I allow it and in the way I decide.
The above may sound trivial and someone may say "Well, it's just like normal inner life but with more control!" But it's not the same. The thing is that the forces that give us this control are of
higher order. In other words, we not only make our inner life more orderly and harmonious but in this process we awaken forms of spiritual activity which are slumbering as long as we are dragged along the semi-controlled life - they simply don't exist for us! The stability of the inner life is not achieved in an on-off manner - it's an endless gradient of perfection of the metamorphic view. It's like slow and patient cleaning of the lenses, adjusting, reordering, which transforms the chaotic innerly turbulent flow into laminar but infinitely detailed flow where we begin to recognize our deeper spiritual structure - the organs of the astral body, the etheric streams that animate the physical body. Together with these we discover entire corresponding realms. As I've said many times, the transition to these higher forms of consciousness passes through the concentration of our spiritual activity (which is thinking in the ordinary state). When we achieve fine control over this concentration our thought becomes
sensitive. We no longer assert our thoughts everywhere but we become perceptive of how our thinking is being shaped and modified by the environment. A good preparation for this is if we simply practice to
listen when somebody speaks, to suppress all inner judgement and simply allow the words of our correspondent to speak for themselves. When we are trained in this way, in meditation our spiritual activity becomes a two-way organ - we need
intense will but also receptivity. We're not fantasizing anything. Our spiritual activity touches the living constraints within which it flows, and the impressions of the processes and beings that
are these constraints become perceptible to us - they are imprinted into the 'substance' of our spiritual activity as what is called Imaginations. As it can be seen, this type of meditation is not what is commonly popularized today as the achieving of some calm state and letting thoughts drift into oblivion. It's precisely that we take and focus our spiritual activity, that becomes the portal through which we approach the supersensory perceptions. Although we call them perceptions they are completely
cognitive perceptions in the same way as our thought perceptions (verbal, symbolic, etc.) are. It's just that we are not concerned only with what
we do with our activity but also use it as a
feeler in order to experience how the environment shapes the 'channels' through which our activity flows. In ordinary life we're not concerned with this - we simply think whatever comes without questioning why we think exactly these thoughts. It's precisely these questions that concern us in spiritual investigation. We don't speculate or intellectually interpret visions but go directly for our most intimate spiritual activity and explore not only how we can drive it with our will but also how the environment is reflected in it. In the beginning this environment is primarily our own being - everything which so far has been subconscious - our opinions, prejudices, inclinations, desires - begins to be perceptible as living elementary processes which constitute what we are in our normal life. The further we go the more we perceive how the souls around us, the nation, the Earthly environment shape our metamorphic view. This view is a hologram of the whole Cosmos. It's through the gradual refinement of our own role within it that we begin to recognize how the Earth projects into our view, how Venus, Saturn, Sun and so on project. Not through some sensory means but through their inner spiritual and living nature. The sensory perceptible planets are only mineral condensation of spiritual processes and beings.
I won't go any further. I just wanted to give a taste for the kind of work that is needed in order to develop and open the spiritual organs. Words like the above already make 97% of the audience to immediately lose interest. Of course it's not necessary that everyone should become spiritual investigator. What is thus discovered can be communicated as the facts of spiritual science and when livingly experienced through thinking they can become powerful inner impulses for transformation. Everything can be comprehended through normal unprejudiced thinking. The harmony of facts is something which we find on all levels, irrelevant of the form of cognition. I've explained in the Deep M@L essay that with thinking we are probing the very same space which becomes organized and perceptible for the seer. That's why thinking is so tremendously effective.
So there you have it. I did my best to describe at least in general lines the method of spiritual investigation. I explained how the problem of the unreliability is solved - through painstaking work on self-mastery. I showed why it's justified to call this type of investigation science - it's based on rigorous supersensible perception and forming concepts that can be communicated. Everything that is found in this investigation has practical consequences because it's taken directly from reality. The most pressing issues for today's humanity stem from the astral body - both the individual and the host of beings in the corresponding realm. All of these influence human affairs from the subconscious (from the point of view of normal consciousness) strata.
And that's the ungrateful position of spiritual science (and other spiritual streams that are inspired from these depths). Man of today simply doesn't want to hear about these things. The direction is too intimate and uncomfortable. It's much more preferable to seek the answers in the outer perceptions, abstract theorizing and accept our own being as a 'thing-in-itself', a work of Nature, God, that it's an illusion, and so on, and so on - anything else but to penetrate its reality.
I'm quite certain that all the above will be dismissed. But if it's at least comprehended why spiritual science is seen as so antipathetic, that's already a lot. Unfortunately people rarely will admit this. It's simply much more comfortable for the conscience if there's some 'good' reasons to stay as far as possible from these things. For example "I don't like Steiner, what good can ever come out of someone like him?". Or "I don't like that spiritual science speaks of the Christ. It looks like some conspiratory Christian agenda." The examples are endless. The common thing is that it's never the depth of the matter that is addressed but something at the periphery which 'proves' that it's worthless to even consider such nonsense. If the depths were addressed it would be found that we discover there the true sources of moral life worthy for free individuals acting out of Love and Wisdom. Life of responsibility and sacrifice. Yet also life of the deepest meaningfulness and fulfillment.
Fortunately we don't chop peoples heads off (unless you are ISIS) or burn them at the stake (as with Bruno) like the religious folk used to if their worldview was challenged. Progress hey 