Saving the materialists

[Federica]

the mystical practices that I personally pursue are fully experiential, they are solidly based on the introspective first-person experience of mystical states while being fully spiritually active, and embracing these experiences as means of pushing the boundaries of the actual realm of living experiences. In these practices there is a clear understanding of all the flaws of abstract thinking. It's not that abstract thinking is forbidden, it can be used as one of the cognitive tools for pragmatic reasons, but there is just a clear understanding of their limited applicability for gaining the introspective knowledge of Reality.

For example, you said: "just like we could never gain knowledge of our dream experiences except through our waking perspective. It's the same thing with mystical states." However, in the practice of dream yoga (lucid dreaming, which I practiced myself), the knowledge of dream experience is acquired while being in a fully lucid inner living state.

Without doubting anything you wrote above, a question would be: "pushing the boundaries of the actual realm of living experiences" and "gaining an introspective knowledge of Reality" may not be coincident sets of experience. Are you saying that with this mystical way of “pushing the boundaries...” you are actually also achieving introspective knowledge of Reality? And if yes, how can you be sure/escape the critique expressed above towards the critical-philosophical approach?

Why direct our thirst for knowledge towards the dreaming state, with the goal of deciphering it through lucid dreaming, whilst there is available to us a higher state of consciousness - the waking state - which is screaming to receive elucidation and clear understanding, as a portal into the nature of Reality? Not to say that dreams and lucid dreams are useless, but what justifies a focus on the dream state within which, however, the mental pictures the lucid dreamer has, suffer at least the same reality-check issue described above for the mental pictures we have in waking consciousness (that they are just more mental pictures, floating side by side with the mental pictures they would like to elucidate)?

[AshvinP]

So the main issue is that all abstract philosophy, science, theology, and mysticism continues to search for the 'nature of reality' where it can never be found, in its already finished (and therefore dead) mental pictures and concepts. The latter have been shed from the living spiritual process animating our thinking movements like dead skin from the snake. Yet instead of discarding those dead pictures (redirecting attention from them to the living inner process), the living inner process is discarded and cannot be recovered in any other way. It cannot be reconstructed from the dead and finished pictures anymore than the intuition of 'algebra' can be reconstructed from particular perceptions of algebraic equations - the idea always incarnates from the 'opposite direction' of the perceptual content, from within our living spiritual activity, for which the perceptual content can only serve as kindling to bring our intuitive movements into its vicinity.

I think I already agreed with this fundamental flaw of all flavors of abstract philosophy, theology and mysticism. However, just like not all philosophy is doomed to be abstract and disconnected from the living introspective experience, with spiritual science being one of the exceptions from this general trend, likewise not all mysticism is doomed to the same disconnect. It is true that many flavors of mysticism have this flawed approach, but at the same time many others do not. At least the mystical practices that I personally pursue are fully experiential, they are solidly based on the introspective first-person experience of mystical states while being fully spiritually active, and embracing these experiences as means of pushing the boundaries of the actual realm of living experiences. In these practices there is a clear understanding of all the flaws of abstract thinking. It's not that abstract thinking is forbidden, it can be used as one of the cognitive tools for pragmatic reasons, but there is just a clear understanding of their limited applicability for gaining the introspective knowledge of Reality.

For example, you said: "just like we could never gain knowledge of our dream experiences except through our waking perspective. It's the same thing with mystical states." However, in the practice of dream yoga (lucid dreaming, which I practiced myself), the knowledge of dream experience is acquired while being in a fully lucid inner living state.

Yes, lucid dreaming is an example of the principle that we must awaken with our spiritual activity before we know the dream experience, but as Federica rightly points out, LD by itself doesn't actually penetrate to the deeper reasons of those experiences but simply gives us more fluid mental pictures of colors, sounds, smells, feelings, etc. to add to the solid ones from waking experience.

We use names like "spiritual science" simply because, well, it has to be called something, but really we are speaking of a concentrated inner method of retracing into the experience of the real-time spiritual activity by which all other philosophies, sciences, religions, and mystical practices are formulated. So if one is practicing that method and prefers to call it some kind of "mysticism", it's not a big deal, although it's quite a misleading term for a method that is in all respects as rigorous, precise, repeatable, and objective as natural science, except expands into the full spectrum of human experience. What is of utmost importance to emphasize is the continuity of ordinary intellectual thinking (by which we do philosophy and science) and higher spiritual knowledge.

In other words, it should dawn on us that we have always been utilizing a method of concentration/meditation to gain insights into the lawful flow of experience. What is the practice of philosophy and science except the resisting of normal sensory-stimulated desires and preferences, subjective feelings, and so on, concentration on various domains of experience, and the receptiveness to what intuitive meaning feeds back on our concentrated thinking? Spiritual science is simply a name for the method by which we become more inwardly conscious of this whole process by which we always gain insights into the experiential World flow. By heightening our sensitivity to this process, we can purify, intensify, and expand the insights into the full depth of human experience. Not just the lawful transformation of sensory perception, but the inner life that is always implicit in the former as well. Whenever we observe and study sensory experience, there are always emotions, impulses, ideas, and intents associated with that, but these are generally merged into the intuitive background and therefore aliased from our scientific formulations. What kind of story are we missing about the reasons for sensory events because of that aliasing effect?

Now if you can show me a mystical thinker other than Steiner who has made this connection, I would be quite surprised. This is not to put anyone on a pedestal, but it simply a question that has so far been unanswered. So the real question is whether our spiritually active "mysticism", or whatever we want to call it, is actually leading us to greater inner sensitivity to the 'intuitive curvatures' through which our sensing-thinking-feeling-willing experience unfolds, i.e. the inner constellation of soul and spiritual forces that are continually shaping, constraining, steering the latter. If it is, then it will necessarily lead us into a science of the soul and spirit which is objective (or trans-objective and trans-subjective) and fully repeatable/verifiable. It will necessarily begin to spiritualize the very way in which we do philosophy, religion, and science, leading to new research questions and methods, new arts and rituals, etc. Until those broadly transformative fruits are made manifest, we can't put all methods on a plane of equivalence simply because they pay some attention to inner experience and activity.

[Stranger]

Without doubting anything you wrote above, a question would be: "pushing the boundaries of the actual realm of living experiences" and "gaining an introspective knowledge of Reality" may not be coincident sets of experience. Are you saying that with this mystical way of “pushing the boundaries...” you are actually also achieving introspective knowledge of Reality? And if yes, how can you be sure/escape the critique expressed above towards the critical-philosophical approach?

Why direct our thirst for knowledge towards the dreaming state, with the goal of deciphering it through lucid dreaming, whilst there is available to us a higher state of consciousness - the waking state - which is screaming to receive elucidation and clear understanding, as a portal into the nature of Reality? Not to say that dreams and lucid dreams are useless, but what justifies a focus on the dream state within which, however, the mental pictures the lucid dreamer has, suffer at least the same reality-check issue described above for the mental pictures we have in waking consciousness (that they are just more mental pictures, floating side by side with the mental pictures they would like to elucidate)?

There is no particular focus on the practice of lucid dreaming, it's just one of a variety of practices. The benefit of this practice is in further developing the state of lucidity, of being fully aware of everything happening in the space of inner first-person experience, and of pushing the boundaries of this space in all directions. The practice of spiritual science also pushes the boundaries toward the levels of high cognition (intuitive, imaginative, inspirational), which is no doubt very important. However, there are other levels and sub-realms in the vast space of living experiences that are also very useful and important to explore and integrate, such as the layers of sub-consciousness, the layers of nondual and mystical experiences, the layers of aesthetic experiences available through practices of art/music, the layers of dreamscapes accessible through lucid dreaming, the etheral and astral layers accessible in the practices of out-of-body astral projections, and so on. IMO it is useful to push these boundaries in all direction in order to acquire as full perspective on the living reality of thinking conscious experience as possible and as available to us in our human body.

[Federica]

There is no particular focus on the practice of lucid dreaming, it's just one of a variety of practices. The benefit of this practice is in further developing the state of lucidity, of being fully aware of everything happening in the space of inner first-person experience, and of pushing the boundaries of this space in all directions. The practice of spiritual science also pushes the boundaries toward the levels of high cognition (intuitive, imaginative, inspirational), which is no doubt very important. However, there are other levels and sub-realms in the vast space of living experiences that are also very useful and important to explore and integrate, such as the layers of sub-consciousness, the layers of nondual and mystical experiences, the layers of aesthetic experiences available through practices of art/music, the layers of dreamscapes accessible through lucid dreaming, the etheral and astral layers accessible in the practices of out-of-body astral projections, and so on. IMO it is useful to push these boundaries in all direction in order to acquire as full perspective on the living reality of thinking conscious experience as possible and as available to us in our human body.

Yes, but in all these layers, how can you be sure that this lucidity is Real? How to escape the critique expressed above towards the critical-philosophical-scientific approach, that the mental pictures the lucid dreamer has - and the mental pictures reflecting the added living experiences you list - are just more mental pictures, floating side by side with the mental pictures they are meant to elucidate (but can't)? What is the value of expansion if it remains at the level of mental pictures? How do you find a bearing in Reality, through all the described first-person experiences, if you don't first approach the only experience that can give us that (since it's the only one that passes the 'floating in arbitrariness' stress-test)?


The experiential hierarchy is: ... < dreaming < lucid dreaming < waking consciousness < thinking consciousness < ...


Since in this epoch we finally can access thinking consciosuness in this hierarchy, that's where we shall search for meaning and Reality, otherwise we are confining ourselves to a sub-level, which in practice leads us to another flavor of critical idealism, in the sense that we rest satisfied with mental pictures as means to know Reality - an impossible endeavor.

[Stranger]

Now if you can show me a mystical thinker other than Steiner who has made this connection, I would be quite surprised. This is not to put anyone on a pedestal, but it simply a question that has so far been unanswered. So the real question is whether our spiritually active "mysticism", or whatever we want to call it, is actually leading us to greater inner sensitivity to the 'intuitive curvatures' through which our sensing-thinking-feeling-willing experience unfolds, i.e. the inner constellation of soul and spiritual forces that are continually shaping, constraining, steering the latter. If it is, then it will necessarily lead us into a science of the soul and spirit which is objective (or trans-objective and trans-subjective) and fully repeatable/verifiable. It will necessarily begin to spiritualize the very way in which we do philosophy, religion, and science, leading to new research questions and methods, new arts and rituals, etc. Until those broadly transformative fruits are made manifest, we can't put all methods on a plane of equivalence simply because they pay some attention to inner experience and activity.

I would argue that the origin of the SS approach can be traced back to certain ancient mystical traditions. For example, the practice of vipassana meditation taught by the Buddha is essentially a practice of lucid observation and investigation of the very process of the living activity of consciousness-thinking that brings about the mental forms (thoughts, imaginations, emotions) into existence. So, the Budda is an example of the first one who did make this connection. No doubt Steiner made a big contribution into further advancing and succinctly describing this practice and its science. Personally, I tend not be an exclusivist and not to become an adept of only one particular paradigm and practice, be it spiritual science, mysticism, religion or philosophy, but integrate them all into all-encompassing approach in order to push the boundaries of our living knowledge and living experience of reality. Each of those give us access to certain realms of living experience while still having their own limitations. But I would also admit that the scientific method of SS in general intrinsically has no limitations and can be applied to all areas of conscious experiences and knowledge, including mystical and nondual, philosophical, art, natural sciences and so on. So, in that sense, I'm fully on the same page with you. The general approach is very straightforward: we cannot gain the knowledge and insight into the structures and nature of reality without gaining an experiential understanding and insight into the very living activity of consciousness that creates these structures and further evolves and develops through the experience of living in and through those structures.

[Stranger]

Yes, but in all these layers, how can you be sure that this lucidity is Real? How to escape the critique expressed above towards the critical-philosophical-scientific approach, that the mental pictures the lucid dreamer has - and the mental pictures reflecting the added living experiences you list - are just more mental pictures, floating side by side with the mental pictures they are meant to elucidate (but can't)? What is the value of expansion if it remains at the level of mental pictures? How do you find a bearing in Reality, through all the described first-person experiences, if you don't first approach the only experience that can give us that (since it's the only one that passes the 'floating in arbitrariness' stress-test)?


The experiential hierarchy is: ... < dreaming < lucid dreaming < waking consciousness < thinking consciousness < ...


Since in this epoch we finally can access thinking consciosuness in this hierarchy, that's where we shall search for meaning and Reality, otherwise we are confining ourselves to a sub-level, which in practice leads us to another flavor of critical idealism, in the sense that we rest satisfied with mental pictures as means to know Reality - an impossible endeavor.

Well, that will open a can of worms and draw us into a lengthy discussion of what is "real" and what is not, which is actually a very foundation of any epistemology of any spiritual or philosophical paradigm. Take, for example, a floating mental picture in our imagination, say, of a sphere. Is the imagined sphere real? Is the mental picture that contains the sphere real? Is the living experience of the creation and inner perception of the mental picture that contains the sphere real? Where is the demarcation line between what is real and what is not in our direct first-person experience, and what is objective and what is subjective, in this hierarchy? And how it is related to the creation and perception of a sphere in the living experience of other beings?

For starters, let's take an example: a child looks at a picture of a witch and imagines in his mind a 'real" living witch right in that picture, and then becomes afraid and runs away. The question is: what in this experience is real and what is not? We can distinguish here a number of "layers":
- a sensory visual experience of the picture
- a recognition of the visual pattern of a "witch" and an act of labeling this pattern as a "witch" referring it to previously learnt memories and the meaning of such entity as "witch"
- a belief (an idea) that there is such "real" entity as a witch living somewhere in the "outer world"
- a mental picture/projection that there is that same living witch entity present right now in the picture
- a feeling of fear and an impulse to run away from the picture
- an activity of child's consciousness-thinking that creates and experiences all these living phenomena
- and may be (as some may argue) there is actually a real witch existing on some non-physical level of reality but presenting herself right at the moment through this picture

Now, the question is: which of them are real and which are not? Or maybe which are "more" real and which are "less" real? And in what sense they are real or not? It the witch herself real? Is the mental picture of the which and an idea-belief in her reality is real? Is the living experience of all these is real?

[Federica]

Well, that will open a can of worms and draw us into a lengthy discussion of what is "real" and what is not, which is actually a very foundation of any epistemology of any spiritual or philosophical paradigm. Take, for example, a floating mental picture in our imagination, say, of a sphere. Is the imagined sphere real? Is the mental picture that contains the sphere real? Is the living experience of the creation and inner perception of the mental picture that contains the sphere real? Where is the demarcation line between what is real and what is not in our direct first-person experience, and what is objective and what is subjective, in this hierarchy? And how it is related to the creation and perception of a sphere in the living experience of other beings?

For starters, let's take an example: a child looks at a picture of a witch and imagines in his mind a 'real" living witch right in that picture, and then becomes afraid and runs away. The question is: what in this experience is real and what is not? We can distinguish here a number of "layers":
- a sensory visual experience of the picture
- a recognition of the visual pattern of a "witch" and an act of labeling this pattern as a "witch" referring it to previously learnt memories and the meaning of such entity as "witch"
- a belief (an idea) that there is such "real" entity as a witch living somewhere in the "outer world"
- a mental picture/projection that there is that same living witch entity present right now in the picture
- a feeling of fear and an impulse to run away from the picture
- an activity of child's consciousness-thinking that creates and experiences all these living phenomena
- and may be (as some may argue) there is actually a real witch existing on some non-physical level of reality but presenting herself right at the moment through this picture

Now, the question is: which of them are real and which are not? Or maybe which are "more" real and which are "less" real? And in what sense they are real or not? It the witch herself real? Is the mental picture of the which and an idea-belief in her reality is real? Is the living experience of all these is real?

But… Eugene… we have already opened that can of worms, we've had that discussion, and you have agreed with the inevitable conclusions. We have to go above and beyond “any spiritual or philosophical paradigms“ because paradigms are arrangements of mental pictures, as long as we ponder them as “paradigms”. SS is not yet another paradigm, it's not just another living experience, but a living, first-person experience that also opens to a science of the spirit: an objective, non-floating certainty about reality. We can run the stress-test again, and check it out, to be sure. This is not a cult of Steiner's SS. Any spiritual impulse that pursues the same freedom will do. As he mentioned, Cleric arrived to the same approach before he knew anything about Steiner, for example. Other humans are doing it as well, for sure. (It needs to be a pursuit of our current times, though, since man evolves, and it's only recently that thinking consciosness has become attainable for us. Ancient spiritual teachers have paved the way to this opening, it couldn't have become possible without them).

So in this sense, there’s no possibility of a smorgasbord of paradigms, as long as they remain paradigms - floating compositions of mental pictures - that don’t connect with the one Reality. Since this connection with the one Reality means becoming one with it, we cannot say - as we can in spacetime - that there may be many roads that lead "there". In this sense, there is only one way to become one with the experience of Reality: this consists of being one with it. We cannot model spiritual Reality on the basis of our sensory experience and imagine many paths to a destination.

In your sphere example, all the questions you lay out have already been answered:

Q: Is the imagined sphere Real?
A: We can't tell, based on the mere experience of imagining it, or based on any a posteriori reasoning on that first-person experience of imagining a sphere.

Q: Is the mental picture that contains the sphere real?
A: Yes, the mental picture exists as an experiential fact. It’s a thought-picture. But our endeavor here is to know Reality in its entirety. Reality with a capital R. The full depth that may vertically prolong that fact of inner experience.

Q: Is the living experience of the creation and inner perception of the mental picture that contains the sphere real?
A: Yes it is. This thought is the same as the above, because the mental picture of a sphere can only emerge to our consciousness as active creation. That is, there can’t be a rough percept of a sphere, in the same way that there can be a merely sensory percept of the drawing of a witch. In waking consciousness, conscious creation of the sphere as an instance of the concept-sphere is necessary, otherwise no picture appears.

Q: Where is the demarcation line between what is real and what is not in our direct first-person experience, and what is objective and what is subjective?
A: The demarcation line is found as we have described with regard to the fatal error of the various flavors of Kantian-inspired outlooks: there is no demarcation line, there is no dissociative boundary. We, in our sphere-experience expression, are on the same side as the mental picture of the sphere. We only need to recognize our active gesture with which (although we still have a body as we do that) we become one with the sphere. It’s only when we find ourselves reflecting on the past image, as we are doing now, and try to deduct from the image of the image, whether it’s real or not, only then do we fall into the subject-object split. Only when we cling to that past thought-picture, as we are doing now, trying to squeeze out conclusions about Reality from that receding picture, by creating more pictures, that still inexorably recede - only then do we remain stuck in the impossible conundrum of searching for reality in mental pictures.

Imagine a bunch of people neatly arranged in a line. You are invisible, and you are standing by the first person in the line. Now a serial killer enters the space. He shoots the first person in the line. You instinctively go to that person, you take their hand, but it's too late. 10 seconds after the first shot, the killer procedes to the second person. So you go to the second person, but it's too late. Soon enough, the third person is shot dead. You now start to emerge from the strong emotions and realize that the only way to get on top of the situation is to stop crying on one dead body after another, and get to the killer himself. The line is our limiting spacetime, in which we live, with our intellectual, physical brain. The killer is our dissecting mind, that literally kills the unity of Reality, in order to cognize it in our habitual intellect, and introduces the demarcation as a made-up condition for knowledge. But true knowledge is the opposite of subject-object separation. True knowledge is union in being.

In your example of the child and the spooky picture, we can proceed similarly to the sphere’s. First and foremost recognizing what we are doing right now with this non-living analysis. In words, you have agreed with that, in this thread! First-person experience doesn’t only mean that we try out things directly, in concrete sense, to avoid abstract speculations. There’s also another crucial step to walk, inside that same first-person experience: that we don’t start off with the prejudice of fundamental separation between us - as thinking, feeling and sensory beings - and the world content. The forces that affect the drawing of a witch are the same that affect our physical body; the feelings of fear we may connect with are also not only ours; most clearly of all, the thoughtful experience we live through when connecting the drawing-percept with the concept of witch is not something that simply springs from within us. Rather, we connect with thinking. Thinking gives us a chance to reunite the bare percept (which can’t be scary as such) to the concept of witch. In that activity, we are making up for the subject-object split we have ourselves originated, due to our limited ability to unite with the entire reality of that experience all at once.

And now, as we reflect on the whole process a posteriori, we are again fully navigating our human limitations, objectifying the whole thing, and trying to extract conclusions from receding mental pictures iow we attend to a series of already dead bodies. The only antidote to which would be to continually include this realization in our real time activity. We are limited in our brains, and we can’t do that fully while writing/reading this post. But we can surely try in the next moment of meditation. Realizing that is what all our discussions ultimately revolve around, always. It’s also what PoF is about - chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. Those are the absolute key to that realization.

[AshvinP]

Now if you can show me a mystical thinker other than Steiner who has made this connection, I would be quite surprised. This is not to put anyone on a pedestal, but it simply a question that has so far been unanswered. So the real question is whether our spiritually active "mysticism", or whatever we want to call it, is actually leading us to greater inner sensitivity to the 'intuitive curvatures' through which our sensing-thinking-feeling-willing experience unfolds, i.e. the inner constellation of soul and spiritual forces that are continually shaping, constraining, steering the latter. If it is, then it will necessarily lead us into a science of the soul and spirit which is objective (or trans-objective and trans-subjective) and fully repeatable/verifiable. It will necessarily begin to spiritualize the very way in which we do philosophy, religion, and science, leading to new research questions and methods, new arts and rituals, etc. Until those broadly transformative fruits are made manifest, we can't put all methods on a plane of equivalence simply because they pay some attention to inner experience and activity.

I would argue that the origin of the SS approach can be traced back to certain ancient mystical traditions. For example, the practice of vipassana meditation taught by the Buddha is essentially a practice of lucid observation and investigation of the very process of the living activity of consciousness-thinking that brings about the mental forms (thoughts, imaginations, emotions) into existence. So, the Budda is an example of the first one who did make this connection. No doubt Steiner made a big contribution into further advancing and succinctly describing this practice and its science. Personally, I tend not be an exclusivist and not to become an adept of only one particular paradigm and practice, be it spiritual science, mysticism, religion or philosophy, but integrate them all into all-encompassing approach in order to push the boundaries of our living knowledge and living experience of reality. Each of those give us access to certain realms of living experience while still having their own limitations. But I would also admit that the scientific method of SS in general intrinsically has no limitations and can be applied to all areas of conscious experiences and knowledge, including mystical and nondual, philosophical, art, natural sciences and so on. So, in that sense, I'm fully on the same page with you. The general approach is very straightforward: we cannot gain the knowledge and insight into the structures and nature of reality without gaining an experiential understanding and insight into the very living activity of consciousness that creates these structures and further evolves and develops through the experience of living in and through those structures.

Then it's clear we're not fully on the same page. Which brings us into the usual precarious situation we often find ourselves in on this forum - if I try to elaborate why it can't be traced back to ancient mystical traditions (in the sense that it simply advances and describes this ancient practice), and why the observation of living spiritual activity is something quite different in our time (not even possible many centuries ago), will this be taken as an insult? Will it be automatically assumed I am simply inventing reasons to defend my elitist and exclusivist position? Or will you remain open to the possibility that something is missing from your understanding of the SS method? I am hoping your question on the other thread suggests the latter.

It is difficult to describe the structured evolution of consciousness phenomenologically, in a way that will not come off as another philosophical framework which can be endlessly doubted or brushed aside as irrelevant. That is why I asked about whether any modern thinkers pursuing mystical practices could establish the connection between ordinary thinking and higher knowledge, and how the latter gives insight into and expands the former. You previously shared the work of Martinus, which is perhaps the closest we have come to an answer on that question, yet his work provides quite general outlines of spiritual evolution and not many concrete insights into what can be experienced across the threshold of physical death and how that relates to Earthly life. 

In that respect, we can look at a clear area where the results of spiritual science overlaps with modern science, insofar as the latter has begun to investigate NDEs (which also seem to inform your spiritual outlook). For example, Levin wrote this paper. 

Neuroscience, and behavioral science more broadly, seek to characterize the relationship between functional cognition and the underlying processes operating inliving tissue. The current paradigm focuses heavily on the brain, and specific mechanisms thought to underlie mental content and capabilities. One of the most interesting approaches to any field, which often leads to progress, is to highlight data which do not comfortably fit a specific dominant framework. Here, we review clinical and laboratory data in several unconventional systems which are not predicted by the current models in the field. Reduced brain mass or absent brain tissue without the expected loss of function (e.g. hydrocephalus, hemihydranencephaly), discrepancies between   cognitive   state   and   brain   function   (e.g.   accidental   awareness   during anesthesia, terminal lucidity), and cases of cognitive abilities exceeding the apparent skill of the individual, all highlight interesting features of the immense plasticity of the mapping between cognition and its living substrate. These cases suggest new avenues for research that at the very least stretch existing frameworks, and parallels to discoveries being made in the emergent form and behavior of synthetic constructs. We Speculate on a roadmap for the study of interesting and still poorly-understood features of embodied minds that could be impactful for biomedicine and engineering, as well as foundational philosophical issues.
...
The most all-encompassing work on consciousness and awareness near-death is Parnia’s AWARE studies (Parnia et al., 2023; Parnia et al., 2014). These investigate the transition to death by interviewing patients who have transitioned into death but then survive by resuscitation (Parnia & Fenwick, 2002; Parnia et al., 2014; Shlobin et al.,2023). Electrical activity of the brain was monitored throughout the resuscitation efforts by way of electroencephalography (EEG). In the original 2014 study, 46% of cardiac arrest survivors are reported to have formed memories during this time. While the near-death experience is associated with absent cerebral activity as monitored through EEG,patients experience heightened consciousness and a paradoxical level of awareness. In The most recent AWARE study, Sam Parnia and his team studied consciousness,awareness and anesthesia during cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation in hospital setting, and some patients recalled their heightened conscious experience,even though they were clearly unconscious by all other measurements during the cardiac arrest (Parnia et al., 2023). The study concluded that even if consciousness is clinically not detectable, consciousness might still be there. Cardiac arrest patients went through phenomenological experiences while they were being resuscitated and as they approached brain death (but not reached it – as no one has been brought back to life past brain death  (Shlobin et al., 2023)). Survivors of the resuscitation efforts were offered to be interviewed, where individuals shared their cognitive experience and memories while they were experiencing cardiac arrest. When this study interviewed consenting patients after resuscitation, a proportion of them had Recalled Experiences Of Death and/or transcendental experiences – a form of paradoxical lucidity where patients go through a meaningful review of their life in an drastically increased level of consciousness, they re-evaluate moral highs and lows in their own life (Parnia et al.,2023).

Now compare that to what Steiner describes of our first-person experience through Imaginative cognition (more than 100 years ago):

Ordinarily, the only thing we know in regard to this earthly existence is that which we can call up in memory; we have pictures of our experiences. But what is now experienced by means of this strengthened thinking is not of the same kind. It appears as if in a tremendous tableau so that we do not recollect merely in a dim picture what we passed through ten years ago, for instance, but we have the inner experience that in spirit we are retracing the course of time. If someone carries out such an exercise in his fiftieth year, let us say, and arrives at the result indicated, what then happens is that time permits him to go back as if along a “time-path” all the way, for instance, to the experiences of his thirty-fifth year. We travel back through time. We do not have only a dim memory of what we passed through fifteen years earlier, but we feel ourselves to be in the midst of this in its living reality, as if in an experience of the present moment. We travel through time; space loses its significance, and time affords us a mighty tableau of memory. This becomes a precise picture of man's life, such as appears, even according to scientific thinkers, when anyone is exposed to great terror, a severe shock—at the moment of drowning, for instance—when for some moments he is confronted by something of his entire earthly life in pictures appearing before his soul—to which he looks back later with a certain shuddering fascination. In other words, what appears before the soul in such cases as through a natural convulsion now actually appears before the soul at the moment indicated, when the entire earthly life confronts one as in a mighty tableau of the spirit, only in a time order. Only now does one know oneself; only now does one possess real self-observation.

It is quite possible to differentiate this picture of man's inner being from that which constitutes a mere “memory” picture. It is clear in the memory picture that we have something in which persons, natural occurrences, or works of art come upon us as if from without; in this memory picture what we have is the manner in which the world comes into contact with us. In the super-sensible memory tableau which appears before a person, what confronts him is, rather, that which has proceeded from himself. If, for instance, at a certain definite point of time in his life he began a friendship with a beloved personality, the mere memory picture shows how this person came to him at a certain point of time, spoke to him, what he owes to the person, and so on. But in this life tableau what confronts him is the manner in which he himself longed for this person, and how he ultimately took every step in such a way that he was inevitably led to that being whom he recognized as being in harmony with himself.

That which has taken place through the unfolding of the forces of the soul comes to meet one with exact clarity in this life tableau. Many people do not like this precise clarity, because it brings them to enlightenment regarding much that they would prefer to see in a different light from the light of truth. But one must endure the fact that one is able to look upon one's own inner being in utter freedom from preconceptions, even if this being of oneself meets the searching eye with reproach. This state of cognition I have called imaginative knowledge, or Imagination. (Steiner, GA 84, 15 Apr 1923)

That is the sense in which modern thinkers are just now getting around to probing the higher imaginative states of body- and sense-free integrated meaning with their thinking, based on the reports of NDEs. As we can see, this isn't some dry accumulation and analysis of facts about the "life review" like it is with standard scientific research, but intimate insight into how our normal memory faculty works and what is always implicit in that faculty. It has obvious practical implications for how we conduct our lives, how we relate to other souls who were attracted into our stream of destiny, how we can become more sensitive to the way in which our deeds reverberate in the lives of those other souls, in what direction we can begin compensating for our receded spiritual activity, and so on. 

This is what is meant by lucid observation and investigation of our living spiritual activity to discern how it is inwardly structured, shaped, steered, etc. In what sense can we reach these insights via vipassana meditation? Why haven't modern mystical practitioners reached them? You may say that they are simply focused on other things, on attaining other insights into our living experience that are neglected by spiritual science. What are examples of those other insights and neglected areas? If all first-person experience flows through our living spiritual activity, why would we be missing those other insights when we retrace into its structured flow? Again, I hope these questions will be really wrestled with so we can at least make some progress beyond the usual standstill we reach in these situations.

[Stranger]

And now, as we reflect on the whole process a posteriori, we are again fully navigating our human limitations, objectifying the whole thing, and trying to extract conclusions from receding mental pictures iow we attend to a series of already dead bodies. The only antidote to which would be to continually include this realization in our real time activity. We are limited in our brains, and we can’t do that fully while writing/reading this post. But we can surely try in the next moment of meditation. Realizing that is what all our discussions ultimately revolve around, always. It’s also what PoF is about - chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. Those are the absolute key to that realization.

OK, I get your point, so to reiterate, we can approach the same questions in two scenarios:
- the iterated mental reflection of imagining the sphere or a child looking at a picture, OR
- the actual living experience of you imagining a sphere right now, or you being a child looking at a picture.

I was actually meant the second scenario, but it is also interesting to look at the first one and find out how it is different from the second and how it affects the conclusions. But let's return to imagining a spere in the 2-nd scenario (your own living experience). You said:

Q: Is the imagined sphere Real?
A: We can't tell

Q: Is the mental picture that contains the sphere real?
Q: Is the living experience of the creation and inner perception of the mental picture that contains the sphere real?
Yes (and I agree with you here)

Q: Where is the demarcation line?
there is no demarcation line

Well, based on your answers there is some kind of demarcation or difference in existential status: the imagined sphere has some kind of "deficient" or indeterminant modus of reality ("We can't tell") as compared to the other two (mental picture itself and the living experience of it). The same applies to iterated reflections of past real living experiences that you mentioned. So, here is the question: how and why is it that the "content" of the mental pictures, reflections or ideas have a different existential modus compared to the actual imaginations, reflections and ideas and compared to their actual living experience? Why is the living imagination of a sphere is more real than the sphere itself that this imagination "carries"? Why a living experience of tasting an apple is more real than a reflection on a memory of tasting an apple sometime in the past? Having a reflection is also a living experience of thinking, then why is it any less real? We seem to still draw a demarcation line here and consider the reflections and mental pictures somehow less "real" or less "true" than the immediate living experiences. What do you think?

[Stranger]

This is what is meant by lucid observation and investigation of our living spiritual activity to discern how it is inwardly structured, shaped, steered, etc. In what sense can we reach these insights via vipassana meditation? Why haven't modern mystical practitioners reached them? You may say that they are simply focused on other things, on attaining other insights into our living experience that are neglected by spiritual science. What are examples of those other insights and neglected areas? If all first-person experience flows through our living spiritual activity, why would we be missing those other insights when we retrace into its structured flow? Again, I hope these questions will be really wrestled with so we can at least make some progress beyond the usual standstill we reach in these situations.

A simple answer is that those practices have different purposes, and as a consequence, utilize different techniques and emphasize different insights. It's like when a musician aims to prefect his performance to convey a certain aesthetic state or meaning through his music. Then knowing the science (whether natural or spiritual) may (or may not ) help him to achieve this goal, but in general such scientific knowledge is not so relevant. What he is actually doing is having a lucid living experience of performing the music and directly experiencing its aesthetic content, which is exactly what would spiritual scientist also do, but nevertheless the musician does not necessarily need to know anything about Steiner's philosophy in order to perform well. Would it help him to improve his performance if he is also trained in the theory and practice of SS and applies it in his performance practice? Very likely yes. But would not being familiar with SS necessarily make him a bad musician? Definitely not. So, I'm all for SS, but the fact that the practitioners of spiritual or mystical practices are or were not familiar with Steiner's SS does not invalidate their experiences and insights. What I can say for sure is that many of their genuine experiences and insights are founded in real first-person living experiences (as opposed to academic philosophers). Also, Steiner developed the methodology of SS, but did not have enough opportunity and time to apply it in all areas of human experience, such as different kinds of spiritual practices, artistic, natural-scientific and so on. But nothing prevents us to apply his approach to the area of our activity, in music for musicians, in spiritual practice for meditators etc. So, I don't see any contradiction here, but rather an opportunity for a future synergy and integration of SS in all areas of human activity where it has yet not been applied.