Saving the materialists

[AshvinP]

Thanks, Ashvin. Yes, I am sure the movements of the intellect are connected to processes of health and illness, as I wrote before in this thread. And yes, the choice to engage in spiritual exercise is free. However, the choice of a materialist not to follow a phenomenological invitation, not to engage in those exercises, is not really a free decision. The pointers that help deflate the intellect are necessary. But giving pointers only by “opening introspective-meditative portals which invite the intellect to experience its destructive nature”, no matter how skillfully it's done, runs big risks of being a prohibitive invitation. It's like describing for a prisoner how you freely roam in the open. Therefore my sense is still that your viewpoint is too radical.

I understand that the hysteresis cannot be addressed at the scale of thought images, but does that mean that it can't be conveyed at that scale? That it can't be addressed is clear: the solution is found on a different plane of activity. But I don’t want to exclude that the hysteresis can be illustrated in many ways, not with the purpose of addressing it in the intellectual space, but of evoking the motivation to break free from the old habits and address it on another plane. If only the testimonial language of inner experience is valid, then faith is required. Because the sensitivity to the thinking process necessary to grasp what’s meant by even the most simple pointer, like the 1-to-10 counting experiment for example, is simply not there in the first place. If the only way to speak to a materialist without pushing them into paralysis is to describe for them spiritual metamorphoses of experiential states, then the only viable way to connect with the testimony and take action (because that’s the requirement) on an unfamiliar plane is by faith. In this regard, I do have in mind this post, but I still tend to think that proposing “free” engagement in unfamiliar practices only on faith is too much. Especially in times when faith should cease to be an engine for inner transformation.

This said, I realize the deadly risks of inflating the intellect. And that this discussion is inevitably an abstract one, as you said before. I guess it will be a matter of gauging the particular situation every time, possibly making use of the deadly faculty of brain thinking, which, after all, is a crucial constituent of our humanness on Earth, deadly only for our material body. In a way, only transhumanists with their dream of immortality of the body should be really worried about dead thinking, from the other edge of it, because as long as they want to keep using it, their body is condemned to death. But looking above the level of dead thinking, one can accept that the sphere of dead thinking is, after all, the sphere from which freedom has to emerge, and freedom is required to take active steps on the spiritual path. It seems to be in that order: freedom --> spiritual rebirth in action. So I believe the main discriminator should be, in every situation, whether or not the prompt helps the intellect rise up above the level of its own necessity.

Federica,

I think we have pretty good 'data' on whether the hysteresis can be conveyed at the intellectual scale. Unlike me, Cleric has been consistent from Day 1 of this forum in using intellectual content only as introspective-meditative portals. That was most extensively demonstrated with Eugene, who was willing to engage in conversations and could logically follow the concepts and their associations quite precisely. I can recognize that he made a bit of progress recently, but at the same time, it's unlikely the hysteresis has been understood, let alone addressed. Now you might say, that's because the approach was 'too radical' and we needed more incremental steps. But if we go back through the conversations, we can easily see why the hysteresis wasn't addressed - it was precisely because everything communicated was translated into the familiar theoretical gestures of the intellect. The logical associations between the thoughts were felt and understood, but only at the intellectual scale. They weren't lived through. This quickly becomes a trap that is harder and harder to extricate from, as we have seen. The intellect becomes so convinced it is exploring the same meaning that is symbolized by the author's thoughts, and there is increasingly less motivation for it to adopt a new perspective on that meaning.

When you speak of the 'prohibitive invitation' of the phenomenological portals, you are intuiting the spiritual Catch-22 that we have mentioned many times before. This is indeed a fact that we all encounter on the inner path, but we need to recognize that it's rooted in the very structure of reality, and we don't have any choice but to navigate it through the soul forces of gratitude, wonder, reverence, prayer, faith, and so on. Faith should not cease to be the engine for transformation, rather, it should cease to be caricatured as 'blind belief' or a 'lack of knowledge' (something that only arose in modern times). We restore the deeper value of faith when we realize it is a precondition for higher knowledge and always has been (and we all have a latent store of faith from our prior incarnations and our childhood). Faith, prayer, and meditation have always been what drives evolution forward, what incarnates the potential of the higher Self into the Earthly curvatures.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA130/En ... 02p01.html

Naturally, it might be quite possible that people should want, for some reason, to dispense with faith, to throw it over. But just as a man is allowed for a time to play fast and loose with his health without any obvious harm, it might very well be—and is actually so—that people come to look upon faith merely as a cherished gift to their fathers in the past, which is just as if for a time they were recklessly to abuse their health, thereby using up the forces they once possessed. When a man looks upon faith in that way, however, he is still—where the life-forces of his soul are concerned—living on the old gift of faith handed down to him through tradition. It is not for man to decide whether to lay aside faith or not; faith is a question of life-giving forces in his soul. The important point is not whether we believe or not, but that the forces expressed in the word ‘faith’ are necessary to the soul. For the soul incapable of faith become withered, dried-up as the desert.

There were once men who, without any knowledge of natural science, were much cleverer than those to-day with a scientific world-conception. They did not say what people imagine they would have said: “I believe what I do not know.” They said: “I believe what I know for certain.” Knowledge is the only foundation of faith. We should know in order to take increasing possession of those forces which are forces of faith in the human soul. In our soul we must have what enables us to look towards a super-sensible world, makes it possible for us to turn all our thoughts and conceptions in that direction.

If we do not possess forces such as are expressed in the word ‘faith’, something in us goes to waste; we wither as do the leaves in autumn. For a while this may not seem to matter—then things begin to go wrong. Were men in reality to lose all faith, they would soon see what it means for evolution. By losing the forces of faith they would be incapacitated for finding their way about in life; their very existence would be undermined by fear, care, and anxiety. To put it briefly, it is through the forces of faith alone that we can receive the life which should well up to invigorate the soul. This is because, imperceptible at first for ordinary consciousness, there lies in the hidden depths of our being something in which our true ego is embedded. This something, which immediately makes itself felt if we fail to bring it fresh life, is the human sheath where the forces of faith are active. We may term it the faith-soul, or—as I prefer—the faith-body. It has hitherto been given the more abstract name of astral body. The most important forces of the astral body are those of faith, so the term astral body and the term faith-body are equally justified.

You are correct that rejecting the invitation is not a free act, it is born from ignorance and habitual avoidance of the unfamiliar. Yet, paradoxically (for the intellect), the only way to enter the sphere of free activity is through a free act. How is this even possible? That's where faith comes in and, again, it is the very structure of reality that prevents souls from entering the higher domains in any other way. If the intellect imagines it can find 'clever' ways of bridging the gap without faith, it is simply fighting against the structure of reality. Yes, leaps into the unknown are radical, in the sense that they are revolutionary. They are radical just like what Christ did, continues to do, and invites us to imitate. There is no rebirth without endurance, suffering, and death. When translated to the imaginative scale, this means existential uncertainty and a willingness to trust in the germs of inner experience, no matter how small or ghostly they begin (faith is like a mustard seed).

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

The counting example is a great one for how the only thing maintaining the Catch-22 is the intellect's doubt and cynicism, its demand for unassailable chains of evidence and proof before lifting a finger, its projection of temporary limits as universal conditions of reality, and so on. The counting exercise is foolishness in the eyes of man. Yet anyone who makes a slight leap into the unknown and tries on such an exercise, really devoting themselves to living the exercise out, will soon recognize its significance and that of spiritual science as a whole. The sensitivity is latent in every soul, but it won't ever emerge from logical chains of mental pictures, and the latter generally act to dull out that sensitivity unless they are fashioned as symbolic portals. From Day 1, Cleric has been presenting such exercises, and from Day 1, they have been mostly ignored. Did he change directions completely, did he capitulate to the intellect's lack of faith? No, that in itself would be unfaithful to truthful experience. What we can do is refine the presentation, come up with new examples and illustrations, new experiential angles, and so on. But we can't become impatient and tilt against the lawful structure of reality.

[Federica]

Ashvin,

I hope you have written about faith the way you have because it pleased you, not because you thought I meant anything other than blind faith, when I said that it should not be the engine of inner transformation in our time. I also hope I left no doubts that I recognize the meaning of cultivating a reverent and grateful sense for the divine.

Another note is: if speaking to the intellect meant to capitulate to the intellect's lack of faith and be unfaithful to truthful experience, then Steiner would have been countless times unfaithful to truthful experience, in public presentations. One example (among countless more) is this explanation of free will. He doesn't fail to add that full understanding comes through patient meditation, so the invitation is there, but in the meantime a bridge for the intellect is provided. He breaks it down brilliantly, in the most intellectually-friendly way:


"It may appear to you either presumptuous to want to talk about the future, or as an impossibility to be able to determine anything about the future of humanity. However, if you think about it a little, you will find that the idea that one can know something about the future is not entirely unfounded. All you need to do is compare these things with what the ordinary researcher, for example the natural scientist, can know about the future. He can tell you exactly that, if he mixes oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur together under any conditions, sulfuric acid will always be formed. You can tell exactly what happens when you catch rays through a mirror. Yes, this goes even further in relation to the things of external life; one can predict solar and lunar eclipses for indefinitely long periods of time.

Why can you do that? Because, and insofar as, one knows the laws of physical life. If someone now recognizes the spiritual laws of life, they can also use these laws to say what must happen in the future. It's just that people are usually troubled by one question. It is so easy to think that knowing in advance what will happen is in contradiction with freedom, with arbitrary human action. That is an incorrect feeling. If you bring sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen together under certain conditions, sulfuric acid is formed; this is due to the law of bringing things together. But whether you do it depends on your will. And so it is spiritually too.

A person will do what will happen of their own free will, and the higher the person develops, the freer they will be. One should not think that what a person will do in the future is already determined now because someone can foresee it. But most people have no real understanding of this question, and in fact it is one of the most difficult. Since ancient times, philosophers have struggled with the question of human freedom and the lawful predetermination of phenomena. Almost everything that has been written in this area is highly inadequate, because people usually cannot distinguish between foresight and predetermination. Looking ahead is no different than looking at distant points in space. If you look in space at a distant point, let's say at the street corner over there, and you see that one person is giving another person ten pfennigs, have you then brought about this action? Has any cause been given for it by your seeing it? No. You just see that he does it, and that doesn't compel him to act that way. Now, in a certain respect, it is the same in time, but people cannot understand it. Suppose you are embodied again in a few thousand years. You then do something of your own free will; This is just like the example of the ten pfennigs. The seer may see what will be done in the future, and this future action is no more determined by the present point in time than the gift of the ten pfennigs is determined by the point in space.

It is often said: "when you see that something is going to happen, it is actually predetermined". But then you confuse the future with the present. That wouldn't be foresight into the future if it were already determined. You don't see something that is already there, but rather something that is yet to come. You must clearly understand the concept of looking into the future. This must be practiced and cultivated in patient meditation. Only then will you find the opportunity to grasp these things correctly."

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I hope you have written about faith the way you have because it pleased you, not because you thought I meant anything other than blind faith, when I said that it should not be the engine of inner transformation in our time. I also hope I left no doubts that I recognize the meaning of cultivating a reverent and grateful sense for the divine.

Another note is: if speaking to the intellect meant to capitulate to the intellect's lack of faith and be unfaithful to truthful experience, then Steiner would have been countless times unfaithful to truthful experience, in public presentations. One example (among countless more) is this explanation of free will. He doesn't fail to add that full understanding comes through patient meditation, so the invitation is there, but in the meantime a bridge for the intellect is provided. He breaks it down brilliantly, in the most intellectually-friendly way:

I saw the discussion of faith as relevant to the theme of leaping into the unknown, which has been at the center of your objection (or hesitancy, or however you wish to characterize it) to start with the introspective-phenomenological-meditative invitation. In the last post, you wrote:

But giving pointers only by “opening introspective-meditative portals which invite the intellect to experience its destructive nature”, no matter how skillfully it's done, runs big risks of being a prohibitive invitation. It's like describing for a prisoner how you freely roam in the open... If the only way to speak to a materialist without pushing them into paralysis is to describe for them spiritual metamorphoses of experiential states, then the only viable way to connect with the testimony and take action (because that’s the requirement) on an unfamiliar plane is by faith

The counting example you provided was also quite clear. So I need you to assume for a moment that, after numerous posts describing similar objections and with similar characterizations of the introspective-meditative portals, I at least have some sense of what you are writing about. If, on the other hand, it is implied that every response I give is practically irrelevant to what you are writing, then we can't make any further progress.

The way I perceive the discussion at this point is,

A: Speaking to the intellect is obviously necessary in our time, and the way to speak to the intellect, such that it is given the opportunity to gradually invert its perspective, transform, grow into its deeper nature, and remain free, is through the introspective-meditative portals that we have been exploring on this forum.

F: Yes, that is the way for the intellect to transform and grow into the higher worlds, but there is something missing! There is no point of contact between the intellect's familiar gestures and what you are asking it to do through the phenomenology. The invitee simply cannot figure out what it means to introspectively observe thinking and why it is something worth doing. We need some other incremental steps involving physical-spiritual correspondences that 'soften the landing' for the intellect.

A: Right, but there is a risk in that incremental approach and it cannot be justified for X, Y, Z reasons. If we get injured playing a sport, like fracturing some bones in the ankle, we need to rest the ankle so the healing forces can work properly. If we become impatient and decide to run on the ankle anyway, it's not just that we set back the recovery by a day or two, but we intervene in the healing process in such a way that it may be permanently thrown off course, and the bones don't fuse back properly. Likewise, the abstract intellect is injured by default and needs to be 'put to rest' such that the imaginative forces can work properly, or it risks being thrown completely off course.

F: Yes, of course, there is a huge risk with the intellect continuing on its destructive path. I know all the reasons you have mentioned. Still, we don't need to go all the way to introspective-meditative portals. That requires the intellect to take action on faith (blind belief) and the latter can no longer be the engine for inner transformation.

Then came my next comment, which you felt wasn't directly relevant, but let's back up, and I will just ask a question:

Have you been speaking this whole time about something like what you quoted from Steiner? As you point out, it ends with - "You must clearly understand the concept of looking into the future. This must be practiced and cultivated in patient meditation. Only then will you find the opportunity to grasp these things correctly." From my perspective, that comment is an exact summation of what I have been trying to point attention to. The 'intellectual-friendly' break down of such topics means almost nothing, and is in fact counter-productive, if not simultaneously accompanied with the invitation to introspective observation (painting the metamorphoses of experiential states), which alone provides the opportunity for orienting to the concepts properly. Do you see it differently?

[Federica]

I saw the discussion of faith as relevant to the theme of leaping into the unknown, which has been at the center of your objection (or hesitancy, or however you wish to characterize it) to start with the introspective-phenomenological-meditative invitation. In the last post, you wrote:

But giving pointers only by “opening introspective-meditative portals which invite the intellect to experience its destructive nature”, no matter how skillfully it's done, runs big risks of being a prohibitive invitation. It's like describing for a prisoner how you freely roam in the open... If the only way to speak to a materialist without pushing them into paralysis is to describe for them spiritual metamorphoses of experiential states, then the only viable way to connect with the testimony and take action (because that’s the requirement) on an unfamiliar plane is by faith

The counting example you provided was also quite clear. So I need you to assume for a moment that, after numerous posts describing similar objections and with similar characterizations of the introspective-meditative portals, I at least have some sense of what you are writing about. If, on the other hand, it is implied that every response I give is practically irrelevant to what you are writing, then we can't make any further progress.

The way I perceive the discussion at this point is,

A: Speaking to the intellect is obviously necessary in our time, and the way to speak to the intellect, such that it is given the opportunity to gradually invert its perspective, transform, grow into its deeper nature, and remain free, is through the introspective-meditative portals that we have been exploring on this forum.

F: Yes, that is the way for the intellect to transform and grow into the higher worlds, but there is something missing! There is no point of contact between the intellect's familiar gestures and what you are asking it to do through the phenomenology. The invitee simply cannot figure out what it means to introspectively observe thinking and why it is something worth doing. We need some other incremental steps involving physical-spiritual correspondences that 'soften the landing' for the intellect.

A: Right, but there is a risk in that incremental approach and it cannot be justified for X, Y, Z reasons. If we get injured playing a sport, like fracturing some bones in the ankle, we need to rest the ankle so the healing forces can work properly. If we become impatient and decide to run on the ankle anyway, it's not just that we set back the recovery by a day or two, but we intervene in the healing process in such a way that it may be permanently thrown off course, and the bones don't fuse back properly. Likewise, the abstract intellect is injured by default and needs to be 'put to rest' such that the imaginative forces can work properly, or it risks being thrown completely off course.

F: Yes, of course, there is a huge risk with the intellect continuing on its destructive path. I know all the reasons you have mentioned. Still, we don't need to go all the way to introspective-meditative portals. That requires the intellect to take action on faith (blind belief) and the latter can no longer be the engine for inner transformation.

Then came my next comment, which you felt wasn't directly relevant, but let's back up, and I will just ask a question:

Have you been speaking this whole time about something like what you quoted from Steiner? As you point out, it ends with - "You must clearly understand the concept of looking into the future. This must be practiced and cultivated in patient meditation. Only then will you find the opportunity to grasp these things correctly." From my perspective, that comment is an exact summation of what I have been trying to point attention to. The 'intellectual-friendly' break down of such topics means almost nothing, and is in fact counter-productive, if not simultaneously accompanied with the invitation to introspective observation (painting the metamorphoses of experiential states), which alone provides the opportunity for orienting to the concepts properly. Do you see it differently?

About faith: yes, when I mentioned that the materialist needs to take action on faith when they read about the counting example and are invited to engage in a practice, I meant blind faith. It is blind because the counting example, for instance, is not easily understandable without some pre-work and without habit to certain inner stances, even if it seems so simple to you. Getting what it points to first, and then, on top of that, creating a new habit of inner work, out of that invitation, is a huge ask. In this sense, for the average curious and intelligent materialist, it would require some form of blind faith. Which the materialist, on top of all that, is not inclined to bring forth.

Other than that, your summary is quite accurate. The only thing I will add is, I don't mean it's plain impossible that your paintings of metamorphoses of experiential states and testimonial language of inner experience work as intended, but very unlikely, for someone who is not already familiar with sipritual science or phenomenology. Sometimes I wonder if it is possible that you (and Cleric), now that you have developed certain spiritual habits, have 'forgotten' how it is to think only intellectually, with a cautious and unaware (but well meaning) aspiration to take one reasoned step at a time, diligently building up layers of thought content. I don't know, but I have often wondered about that.

Now to the most important point - Steiners quote. Yes I see it differently. The reminder that one should do meditation is an empty (literally) reminder (in that case) dropped at the end, similar to the common reminders to go to this or that book to learn more. There is no painting whatsoever in that reminder. That sentence does not present anything at all.
And neither does the rest of the quote. There is no invitation to realize metamorphoses of inner states. In the most clear way, there is no testimonial language of inner experience there - no phenomenology. It is 100% an appeal to the intellect: a reasoning that has a chance to excite the intellect, to shake it a tiny bit, with insightful associations of thought pictures, thereby bringing it closer to accepting that perhaps there is indeed no contradiction between free will and the possibility to know something about the future. Every single sentence in that quote speaks 100% to the intellect, through sensical, puzzle-like assembling of thought-pictures. It contains zero guidance through experiential states, zero painting of inner experience, zero phenomenology or testimony. I think it is impossible to unsee this. Have you read it from top to bottom? Here it is again:


"It may appear to you either presumptuous to want to talk about the future, or as an impossibility to be able to determine anything about the future of humanity. However, if you think about it a little, you will find that the idea that one can know something about the future is not entirely unfounded. All you need to do is compare these things with what the ordinary researcher, for example the natural scientist, can know about the future. He can tell you exactly that, if he mixes oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur together under any conditions, sulfuric acid will always be formed. You can tell exactly what happens when you catch rays through a mirror. Yes, this goes even further in relation to the things of external life; one can predict solar and lunar eclipses for indefinitely long periods of time.

Why can you do that? Because, and insofar as, one knows the laws of physical life. If someone now recognizes the spiritual laws of life, they can also use these laws to say what must happen in the future. It's just that people are usually troubled by one question. It is so easy to think that knowing in advance what will happen is in contradiction with freedom, with arbitrary human action. That is an incorrect feeling. If you bring sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen together under certain conditions, sulfuric acid is formed; this is due to the law of bringing things together. But whether you do it depends on your will. And so it is spiritually too.

A person will do what will happen of their own free will, and the higher the person develops, the freer they will be. One should not think that what a person will do in the future is already determined now because someone can foresee it. But most people have no real understanding of this question, and in fact it is one of the most difficult. Since ancient times, philosophers have struggled with the question of human freedom and the lawful predetermination of phenomena. Almost everything that has been written in this area is highly inadequate, because people usually cannot distinguish between foresight and predetermination. Looking ahead is no different than looking at distant points in space. If you look in space at a distant point, let's say at the street corner over there, and you see that one person is giving another person ten pfennigs, have you then brought about this action? Has any cause been given for it by your seeing it? No. You just see that he does it, and that doesn't compel him to act that way. Now, in a certain respect, it is the same in time, but people cannot understand it. Suppose you are embodied again in a few thousand years. You then do something of your own free will; This is just like the example of the ten pfennigs. The seer may see what will be done in the future, and this future action is no more determined by the present point in time than the gift of the ten pfennigs is determined by the point in space.

It is often said: "when you see that something is going to happen, it is actually predetermined". But then you confuse the future with the present. That wouldn't be foresight into the future if it were already determined. You don't see something that is already there, but rather something that is yet to come. You must clearly understand the concept of looking into the future. This must be practiced and cultivated in patient meditation. Only then will you find the opportunity to grasp these things correctly."

[AshvinP]

About faith: yes, when I mentioned that the materialist needs to take action on faith when they read about the counting example and are invited to engage in a practice, I meant blind faith. It is blind because the counting example, for instance, is not easily understandable without some pre-work and without habit to certain inner stances, even if it seems so simple to you. Getting what it points to first, and then, on top of that, creating a new habit of inner work, out of that invitation, is a huge ask. In this sense, for the average curious and intelligent materialist, it would require some form of blind faith. Which the materialist, on top of all that, is not inclined to bring forth.

Other than that, your summary is quite accurate. The only thing I will add is, I don't mean it's plain impossible that your paintings of metamorphoses of experiential states and testimonial language of inner experience work as intended, but very unlikely, for someone who is not already familiar with sipritual science or phenomenology. Sometimes I wonder if it is possible that you (and Cleric), now that you have developed certain spiritual habits, have 'forgotten' how it is to think only intellectually, with a cautious and unaware (but well meaning) aspiration to take one reasoned step at a time, diligently building up layers of thought content. I don't know, but I have often wondered about that.

Ok, that is what I figured you meant, and I was trying to show how engaging the experience of the counting exercise does not require blind belief or, alternatively, how what you are calling 'blind belief' is an act of discerning trust that is made a necessary leap by the lawful structure of reality. 

I suppose the main question is, what is your source of confidence that it is a prohibitive ask? Is it rooted in your experience with presenting such exercises to others? From my perspective, based on many interactions with others, you have it somewhat backward. Of course, it depends on what we aim to accomplish with our interactions. If we aim to stimulate endless discussion about the nature of reality, the nature of humanity, the nature of the Divine, and so on, as is the standard on most intellectual forums, then the diligent building up of thought-content is a much smaller ask. I know of a few Discord servers where that's exactly what happens, and one can generate endless interest and conversation in that way. It's not shallow intellectual discussion, either, but it can go pretty deep. For example, someone recently pointed my attention to Max Scheler and his book, 'The Human Place in the Cosmos', in which he intuited the fourfold organization of humanity and many other things we are familiar with from spiritual science. Steiner also had positive comments about Scheler:

In recent times, however, there has been a very complicated view, which is held by all sorts of people. Perhaps the philosopher and psychologist Lipps could be cited as a characteristic personality among those who hold it. They are not aware when a person confronts them that they have a direct impression of his ego, but they say: When I confront a person, he has a face; it makes certain movements, and he says certain things, and from what he says and does, one should be able to conclude that there is an ego behind it. So the ego is something inferred, not something directly perceived. A new school of philosophy, however, which has Max Scheler as its most prominent representative, takes a different view. It has already made the observation that one can have an immediate impression of the ego of another person. And what has been written about the ego, more rigorously scientifically by Husserl, the philosopher, and then somewhat more popularly, especially in his more recent essays, by Scheler, shows that more recent philosophy is on the way to recognizing that direct consciousness can also know something of another consciousness.

Yet what I have noticed is that the intellect becomes completely enamored with those layers of thought-content, and if I start moving the discussion in the direction of intuitive thinking, there is deafening silence. So if that is our aim, then the incremental approach becomes a much bigger ask. It's like telling a little kid that they would be better off leaving the candy store and helping you chop vegetables. Good luck with that

We should be clear that, if we are talking about "materialists" as in hardcore materialists-atheists, who have convinced themselves reality is governed by mindless mechanisms and consciousness is an epiphenomenal illusion of some sort, then everything will be a huge ask. Indeed, asking them to consider any kind of physical-spiritual correspondences like those existing in the human organism will likely be rejected out of hand, not even worth the time to listen to. The phenomenological inquiry, on the other hand, at least has a slight chance of piquing their interest, since there is no suggestion of supernatural beings, laws, and so forth from the outset. It is at least resonant with the scientific method of exploring the lawful relations of experiential states. 

For all others who are "materialist" simply by way of living and conducting inquiries in modern intellectual thinking culture, I don't agree that the introspective-meditative portal is a 'prohibitive invitation'. For the reasons already outlined, I think it is the only kind of invitation that is not prohibitive. It opens a portal to a deeper scale of activity that experientially confirms the reality of its own significance and importance, whereas the scale of mental puzzles can only leave the soul in endless uncertainties and doubts, which build upon themselves and eventually make it impossible to reorient the cognitive perspective. The latter sucks the soul dry of any interest in the truly phenomenological approach, although the intellect will often convince itself it is doing "phenomenology", and it can never discover something that it imagines it is already doing.

Cleric and I can only write clearly about these intellectual habits and outcomes because we remember them well and have attained a higher vantage point on how they influence our mental states. From that vantage, it becomes easier to see why the intellect has been diligently layering thought-content for centuries now, some of it very insightful indeed, but the real-time thinking process has remained almost ubiquitously in the blind spot. We can see how that is not a bug but a feature of the intellectual gestures, it is what makes the latter so adept at building up its insightful (albeit horizontal) content. Personally, I can still easily relate to the habit of building up those layers and sometimes allow it to become the curvature of my intellectual movements, although the difference is that I now have the foundation to remain clearly conscious of what is happening. I have a more refined sensitivity to the oscillation between the spheres of intellectual movements, as we discussed before. 

Now to the most important point - Steiners quote. Yes I see it differently. The reminder that one should do meditation is an empty (literally) reminder (in that case) dropped at the end, similar to the common reminders to go to this or that book to learn more. There is no painting whatsoever in that reminder. That sentence does not present anything at all.

And neither does the rest of the quote. There is no invitation to realize metamorphoses of inner states. In the most clear way, there is no testimonial language of inner experience there - no phenomenology. It is 100% an appeal to the intellect: a reasoning that has a chance to excite the intellect, to shake it a tiny bit, with insightful associations of thought pictures, thereby bringing it closer to accepting that perhaps there is indeed no contradiction between free will and the possibility to know something about the future. Every single sentence in that quote speaks 100% to the intellect, through sensical, puzzle-like assembling of thought-pictures. It contains zero guidance through experiential states, zero painting of inner experience, zero phenomenology or testimony. I think it is impossible to unsee this. Have you read it from top to bottom? Here it is again:

My take on the Steiner quote is also quite different. If the intellect works with it in a literal way, without using the concepts as symbolic portals to reach any deeper scale of understanding, it is actually false. It is easy to see that our will to conduct the chemical experiment can also be attributed to various predetermined conditions, like all those factors that instinctively steered us toward the preference to work as a chemist and conduct experiments. Then we could say, if we had known all those other factors as well and quantized them in some way, we could calculate the likelihood of our will to conduct the experiment and conclude that the feeling of 'free choice' was simply an illusion (like Spinoza's rock that wakes up in its trajectory). I think most materialists would say something exactly like that to 'prove' that the example is flawed. It is similar to what Cleric discussed with the conservation law and the supposed holes in that law that can be explained away by the intellect.

The comparison is only valuable if it is taken more imaginatively and we can live into the experience of the will 'striking in' orthogonally to the direction of the sensory lawfulness, as in the Hueck diagram shared before. Then we gradually discover something that is experienced as free, independently of what theoretical explanations we give for that something's existence. It is the same with the subsequent examples. The intellect can easily dissect such examples and reveal how they are flawed - seeing the exchange of ten pfennigs may not cause the exchange, but certainly the intellect can trace the exchange to some other predetermined factors, and if all those factors were known by an omniscient agent, then the whole thing is practically predetermined by that agent. As long as we are weaving exclusively in the assembly of intellectual mental pictures, these examples can be easily explained away.

We only discover the meaninglessness of such a dissection when we are able to work with the examples in a more fluid and imaginative way, participating in the experience described and feeling out the contours of that experience, not much unlike the counting exercise. We need to be willing to place our imagination in the chemist or pfennig exchange scenario, and trust that there is something hidden in that experience that will gradually illuminate the principles at issue. In general, Steiner didn't intend any lectures to stand isolated from his whole body of work up to that point and their phenomenological foundations. He expected that the latter would always remain in the intuitive background of the intellectual content he crafted. I think that is easily confirmed from his own statements in various lectures. To characterize the meditation reminder as an "empty reminder dropped at the end" is not accurate. Rather, he is telling the listeners exactly how they need to work through the content that was presented. Following it once with shallow intellectual gestures isn't sufficient, Steiner is saying, but rather we need to go back through it (or some similar content) many times in meditative contemplation if we want to have any hope of properly orienting to the relationship of foresight and freedom that he is drawing attention to.

We can also note here how, at the mere intellectual level, this same argument has been used for centuries by the 'compatibilist' theologians, and other 'determinist' theologians remain unconvinced, unsurprisingly. Yet clearly something sets Steiner's use apart. What could that something be if not the phenomenological-meditative foundation?

One of the central distinctions in Simple Foreknowledge is the difference between God’s foreknowledge of future events and the idea that such knowledge causes those events. Just because God knows what will happen does not mean He causes those events to happen in a deterministic sense. This distinction preserves human free will while maintaining the omniscience of God.

[Federica]

About faith: yes, when I mentioned that the materialist needs to take action on faith when they read about the counting example and are invited to engage in a practice, I meant blind faith. It is blind because the counting example, for instance, is not easily understandable without some pre-work and without habit to certain inner stances, even if it seems so simple to you. Getting what it points to first, and then, on top of that, creating a new habit of inner work, out of that invitation, is a huge ask. In this sense, for the average curious and intelligent materialist, it would require some form of blind faith. Which the materialist, on top of all that, is not inclined to bring forth.

Other than that, your summary is quite accurate. The only thing I will add is, I don't mean it's plain impossible that your paintings of metamorphoses of experiential states and testimonial language of inner experience work as intended, but very unlikely, for someone who is not already familiar with sipritual science or phenomenology. Sometimes I wonder if it is possible that you (and Cleric), now that you have developed certain spiritual habits, have 'forgotten' how it is to think only intellectually, with a cautious and unaware (but well meaning) aspiration to take one reasoned step at a time, diligently building up layers of thought content. I don't know, but I have often wondered about that.

Ok, that is what I figured you meant, and I was trying to show how engaging the experience of the counting exercise does not require blind belief or, alternatively, how what you are calling 'blind belief' is an act of discerning trust that is made a necessary leap by the lawful structure of reality. 

I suppose the main question is, what is your source of confidence that it is a prohibitive ask? Is it rooted in your experience with presenting such exercises to others? From my perspective, based on many interactions with others, you have it somewhat backward. Of course, it depends on what we aim to accomplish with our interactions. If we aim to stimulate endless discussion about the nature of reality, the nature of humanity, the nature of the Divine, and so on, as is the standard on most intellectual forums, then the diligent building up of thought-content is a much smaller ask. I know of a few Discord servers where that's exactly what happens, and one can generate endless interest and conversation in that way. It's not shallow intellectual discussion, either, but it can go pretty deep. For example, someone recently pointed my attention to Max Scheler and his book, 'The Human Place in the Cosmos', in which he intuited the fourfold organization of humanity and many other things we are familiar with from spiritual science. Steiner also had positive comments about Scheler:

In recent times, however, there has been a very complicated view, which is held by all sorts of people. Perhaps the philosopher and psychologist Lipps could be cited as a characteristic personality among those who hold it. They are not aware when a person confronts them that they have a direct impression of his ego, but they say: When I confront a person, he has a face; it makes certain movements, and he says certain things, and from what he says and does, one should be able to conclude that there is an ego behind it. So the ego is something inferred, not something directly perceived. A new school of philosophy, however, which has Max Scheler as its most prominent representative, takes a different view. It has already made the observation that one can have an immediate impression of the ego of another person. And what has been written about the ego, more rigorously scientifically by Husserl, the philosopher, and then somewhat more popularly, especially in his more recent essays, by Scheler, shows that more recent philosophy is on the way to recognizing that direct consciousness can also know something of another consciousness.

Yet what I have noticed is that the intellect becomes completely enamored with those layers of thought-content, and if I start moving the discussion in the direction of intuitive thinking, there is deafening silence. So if that is our aim, then the incremental approach becomes a much bigger ask. It's like telling a little kid that they would be better off leaving the candy store and helping you chop vegetables. Good luck with that

We should be clear that, if we are talking about "materialists" as in hardcore materialists-atheists, who have convinced themselves reality is governed by mindless mechanisms and consciousness is an epiphenomenal illusion of some sort, then everything will be a huge ask. Indeed, asking them to consider any kind of physical-spiritual correspondences like those existing in the human organism will likely be rejected out of hand, not even worth the time to listen to. The phenomenological inquiry, on the other hand, at least has a slight chance of piquing their interest, since there is no suggestion of supernatural beings, laws, and so forth from the outset. It is at least resonant with the scientific method of exploring the lawful relations of experiential states. 

For all others who are "materialist" simply by way of living and conducting inquiries in modern intellectual thinking culture, I don't agree that the introspective-meditative portal is a 'prohibitive invitation'. For the reasons already outlined, I think it is the only kind of invitation that is not prohibitive. It opens a portal to a deeper scale of activity that experientially confirms the reality of its own significance and importance, whereas the scale of mental puzzles can only leave the soul in endless uncertainties and doubts, which build upon themselves and eventually make it impossible to reorient the cognitive perspective. The latter sucks the soul dry of any interest in the truly phenomenological approach, although the intellect will often convince itself it is doing "phenomenology", and it can never discover something that it imagines it is already doing.

Cleric and I can only write clearly about these intellectual habits and outcomes because we remember them well and have attained a higher vantage point on how they influence our mental states. From that vantage, it becomes easier to see why the intellect has been diligently layering thought-content for centuries now, some of it very insightful indeed, but the real-time thinking process has remained almost ubiquitously in the blind spot. We can see how that is not a bug but a feature of the intellectual gestures, it is what makes the latter so adept at building up its insightful (albeit horizontal) content. Personally, I can still easily relate to the habit of building up those layers and sometimes allow it to become the curvature of my intellectual movements, although the difference is that I now have the foundation to remain clearly conscious of what is happening. I have a more refined sensitivity to the oscillation between the spheres of intellectual movements, as we discussed before. 

Now to the most important point - Steiners quote. Yes I see it differently. The reminder that one should do meditation is an empty (literally) reminder (in that case) dropped at the end, similar to the common reminders to go to this or that book to learn more. There is no painting whatsoever in that reminder. That sentence does not present anything at all.

And neither does the rest of the quote. There is no invitation to realize metamorphoses of inner states. In the most clear way, there is no testimonial language of inner experience there - no phenomenology. It is 100% an appeal to the intellect: a reasoning that has a chance to excite the intellect, to shake it a tiny bit, with insightful associations of thought pictures, thereby bringing it closer to accepting that perhaps there is indeed no contradiction between free will and the possibility to know something about the future. Every single sentence in that quote speaks 100% to the intellect, through sensical, puzzle-like assembling of thought-pictures. It contains zero guidance through experiential states, zero painting of inner experience, zero phenomenology or testimony. I think it is impossible to unsee this. Have you read it from top to bottom? Here it is again:

My take on the Steiner quote is also quite different. If the intellect works with it in a literal way, without using the concepts as symbolic portals to reach any deeper scale of understanding, it is actually false. It is easy to see that our will to conduct the chemical experiment can also be attributed to various predetermined conditions, like all those factors that instinctively steered us toward the preference to work as a chemist and conduct experiments. Then we could say, if we had known all those other factors as well and quantized them in some way, we could calculate the likelihood of our will to conduct the experiment and conclude that the feeling of 'free choice' was simply an illusion (like Spinoza's rock that wakes up in its trajectory). I think most materialists would say something exactly like that to 'prove' that the example is flawed. It is similar to what Cleric discussed with the conservation law and the supposed holes in that law that can be explained away by the intellect.

The comparison is only valuable if it is taken more imaginatively and we can live into the experience of the will 'striking in' orthogonally to the direction of the sensory lawfulness, as in the Hueck diagram shared before. Then we gradually discover something that is experienced as free, independently of what theoretical explanations we give for that something's existence. It is the same with the subsequent examples. The intellect can easily dissect such examples and reveal how they are flawed - seeing the exchange of ten pfennigs may not cause the exchange, but certainly the intellect can trace the exchange to some other predetermined factors, and if all those factors were known by an omniscient agent, then the whole thing is practically predetermined by that agent. As long as we are weaving exclusively in the assembly of intellectual mental pictures, these examples can be easily explained away.

We only discover the meaninglessness of such a dissection when we are able to work with the examples in a more fluid and imaginative way, participating in the experience described and feeling out the contours of that experience, not much unlike the counting exercise. We need to be willing to place our imagination in the chemist or pfennig exchange scenario, and trust that there is something hidden in that experience that will gradually illuminate the principles at issue. In general, Steiner didn't intend any lectures to stand isolated from his whole body of work up to that point and their phenomenological foundations. He expected that the latter would always remain in the intuitive background of the intellectual content he crafted. I think that is easily confirmed from his own statements in various lectures. To characterize the meditation reminder as an "empty reminder dropped at the end" is not accurate. Rather, he is telling the listeners exactly how they need to work through the content that was presented. Following it once with shallow intellectual gestures isn't sufficient, Steiner is saying, but rather we need to go back through it (or some similar content) many times in meditative contemplation if we want to have any hope of properly orienting to the relationship of foresight and freedom that he is drawing attention to.

We can also note here how, at the mere intellectual level, this same argument has been used for centuries by the 'compatibilist' theologians, and other 'determinist' theologians remain unconvinced, unsurprisingly. Yet clearly something sets Steiner's use apart. What could that something be if not the phenomenological-meditative foundation?

One of the central distinctions in Simple Foreknowledge is the difference between God’s foreknowledge of future events and the idea that such knowledge causes those events. Just because God knows what will happen does not mean He causes those events to happen in a deterministic sense. This distinction preserves human free will while maintaining the omniscience of God.

Thanks, Ashvin. I am not sure a little kid should be encouraged to chop vegetables but I get your idea. I don’t have the forum experience you have and I didn’t present the counting exercise to anyone. I only try to identify with an emblematic materialist whom I infer and bring to life using my experience of all the various real life conversations I’ve had in time. I don’t mean the materialist philosopher, but rather the average person who moves with the consciousness of this time, perhaps even considering themselves not so materialistic, but open to spirituality, but who still submits to common scientism at various degrees, in variously composed areas of human action and understanding. At the very least, this includes the area of perception of matter, and its further understanding to be found in atomism - the most pervasive and seamless facet of materialism, I would say, working as an illusion of pinhole. Then I try to put myself in the shoes of this ’being’ to consider the counting example, or other phenomenological invitation. This seems not too difficult, since these are all more or less familiar stances I know directly as well, though they were always only passive in me, and I have been putting effort in infusing them with consciousness. So I can’t prove my sense that preliminary steps could help, and I may be wrong. But someone should do something to make it possible for people with qualities that can’t really find rightful expression, to push against their karma, and find a way of sublimating them. I often notice in people qualities that I will probably never have, but they are hampered by stale, cumbersome, unscrutinized mental attitudes. And I can’t imagine there’s nothing to be attempted to pull them out in the right way, so they can serve human progression.

Regarding the quote, well, we still disagree. I would have many more examples. Of course it’s only a stimulus for the intellect - an excitation, not a complete path. A finished path is not possible indeed, but the intellect is the clear, first-line target. The intellect is guided through a concatenation of thoughts. It can take the leap at any time, but this is not explicitly invited, as it is when the language is testimonial of inner experience. This is not a submission to the intellect. But not its dismissal either. Yes, I guess I am satisfied with this characterization for now. Steiners method in these occurrences is not a submission to the intellect - as it would be if esoteric layers of thought content were laid out, as if to provide a proof - and not a dismissal of the intellect - as it would be if only orthogonal invitations to turn to metamorphoses of inner states are given. For the vast majority, trust can only come when the intellect is first not dismissed.

[AshvinP]

Thanks, Ashvin. I am not sure a little kid should be encouraged to chop vegetables but I get your idea. I don’t have the forum experience you have and I didn’t present the counting exercise to anyone. I only try to identify with an emblematic materialist whom I infer and bring to life using my experience of all the various real life conversations I’ve had in time. I don’t mean the materialist philosopher, but rather the average person who moves with the consciousness of this time, perhaps even considering themselves not so materialistic, but open to spirituality, but who still submits to common scientism at various degrees, in variously composed areas of human action and understanding. At the very least, this includes the area of perception of matter, and its further understanding to be found in atomism - the most pervasive and seamless facet of materialism, I would say, working as an illusion of pinhole. Then I try to put myself in the shoes of this ’being’ to consider the counting example, or other phenomenological invitation. This seems not too difficult, since these are all more or less familiar stances I know directly as well, though they were always only passive in me, and I have been putting effort in infusing them with consciousness. So I can’t prove my sense that preliminary steps could help, and I may be wrong. But someone should do something to make it possible for people with qualities that can’t really find rightful expression, to push against their karma, and find a way of sublimating them. I often notice in people qualities that I will probably never have, but they are hampered by stale, cumbersome, unscrutinized mental attitudes. And I can’t imagine there’s nothing to be attempted to pull them out in the right way, so they can serve human progression.

Regarding the quote, well, we still disagree. I would have many more examples. Of course it’s only a stimulus for the intellect - an excitation, not a complete path. A finished path is not possible indeed, but the intellect is the clear, first-line target. The intellect is guided through a concatenation of thoughts. It can take the leap at any time, but this is not explicitly invited, as it is when the language is testimonial of inner experience. This is not a submission to the intellect. But not its dismissal either. Yes, I guess I am satisfied with this characterization for now. Steiners method in these occurrences is not a submission to the intellect - as it would be if esoteric layers of thought content were laid out, as if to provide a proof - and not a dismissal of the intellect - as it would be if only orthogonal invitations to turn to metamorphoses of inner states are given. For the vast majority, trust can only come when the intellect is first not dismissed.

I say let the little kids start wielding knives so they quickly learn the painful consequences of their inattentive activity

It's worth remembering that "someone should do something" has been the mantra of modern intellectual thinking across the board. The materialists imagine someone should do something in the field of technology to bridge the gap, the pious religious souls imagine God should do something to bridge it, the mysticists imagine that the event of death should do something, and so on. The point is that the intellect misses what has already been done when it keeps imagining that someone should do something to alleviate the vague feeling that the content we perceive and think about in the World is cut off from who we are and the nature of our existence, in their deeper essence.

As Steiner revealed, Christ became the Lord of karma after Golgotha and it is through our participation in the impulse he established that we push against it and find a way of sublimating it, so we are pulled out of stale mental attitudes and serve human progression. What does that participation look like? Precisely like the phenomenological-meditative method provided to the intellect by Steiner. Again - courage, faith, trust, the willingness to accept the invitation of 'big asks' - these are all synonymous with the Impulse. These are the soul forces that sublimate the obstinate mental qualities and habits. It is good that you say this:

Then I try to put myself in the shoes of this ’being’ to consider the counting example, or other phenomenological invitation. This seems not too difficult, since these are all more or less familiar stances I know directly as well, though they were always only passive in me, and I have been putting effort in infusing them with consciousness

Because it can help us see how it's always a question of our hesitancies, first and foremost. The fact that you are working through them and putting effort into infusing them with consciousness already answers the question of 'how to sublimate the qualities'. We don't need different answers for ourselves and for the hypothetical other souls. That's the reason why self-knowledge leads to World-knowledge - although the constellations of qualities may be uniquely expressed, we all basically share the same hesitancies, fears, shames, egotisms, and so on in relation to entering the supersensible domains consciously. When we know what works for us, we know what can also work for others, even if this isn't immediately obvious and it may take many iterations of interactions before this becomes evident. As mentioned before, the only souls I know who have encountered spiritual science in a living way - Cleric, you, Max, Angus, Ken (from Discord), and a few others - are those who took a keen interest in PoF phenomenology and worked through the meditative exercises, before getting too enomared with the layers of intellectual thought-content.

[AshvinP]

I came across an interesting quote on Facebook, which is focused on modern Biblical interpretation, but applies more broadly to how the modern intellect functions. Here is a relevant passage to the question of 'bridging the gap':


"Indeed, great philosophers have tried for centuries to wrap logic around metaphor, without success. Hence it comes as no surprise when analytic philosophers of the twentieth century (Barfield’s bêtes noires) declare figurative language to be instances of “deviant denomination” or “deviant predication.” For them, metaphor is a tumour that spreads within the healthy body of lexical meaning, a “disease of language” that only their logical surgery can cure. Any sense of meaning we might have is entirely illusory.

Barfield spent his life countering this baleful conclusion, and he was not alone. An equally important contribution was made by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, especially in his magnificent essay, “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling.” Ricoeur describes the metaphorical process as a suspension of ordinary referentiality leading to a semantic collapse, a cognitive ruin out of which a new “semantic pertinence” – a new meaning – is miraculously resurrected. Metaphor brings together two images, but they never coincide, or even touch. (Tellingly, in the Hebrew original of Isaiah 40:6, the word “is” – isn’t. There is no verb, just the juxtaposed images: “All the flesh the grass.”) We step into the mental space between the two icons, close our eyes, and something jumps the gap. We hear an “unspoken word,” which delivers the new meaning via the juxtaposition of the images. New meaning is not created from the bottom up, by rearranging the counters of the lexis; nobody makes metaphors by randomly juxtaposing images until something interesting happens. Rather, an otherwise ineffable meaning seeks a way of expressing itself, finds, and then brings together appropriate images. The new meaning is always already formed and always already in movement.

The making of meaning, the semantic resurrection, happens on the other side of the threshold, and we pull it back into normal consciousness.
Experienced students of anthroposophy will have begun to notice a striking parallel between this process and the meditative path described by Rudolf Steiner, leading from Imagination to Inspiration: juxtapose images (e.g., the Rose Cross) that do not refer to the sense-world, then meditate on them until they come alive. Once Imagination has been achieved, practice until one can erase these living images at will and enter into that gap. We experience emptiness; the ground is pulled out from under our feet; we hover over a void until Inspiration arrives as the unspoken words, the toneless music, of higher beings.

Steiner repeatedly stresses that this experience of Inspiration requires courage, and the same is true of its little brother, the search for meaning within the semantic void of true metaphor. If not the same degree, figurative language nevertheless requires the same kind of courage at the threshold as higher stages on the path of initiation. We have reached a moment of radical freedom – but at the cost of dangling over an abyss. Metaphor demands a trip through the eye of the needle, and that eye is, from the perspective of everyday referential consciousness, utter meaninglessness. No wonder so many balk."

THE SIN OF LITERALISM
Frederick Amrine
for Arthur Zajonc


Related to that theme, I was listening to a lecture by Steiner on how Christ incarnated in the epoch of the intellectual soul, which was the human member most incapable of grasping the significance of his deeds. In that sense, the 'gap' between what we currently perceive-feel-think and the full humanity we are to become was the widest at this time and, indeed, was intended to be established in this way by the wise guidance of evolution. There are many mysteries involved in this reality, even for higher knowledge, but one aspect may be that the gap acts as a kind of 'attractive lure' for souls to develop their virtuous soul forces and germinal higher capacities.This is also what Cleric pointed to in the essays and recently from a different angle. If this gap were to fully close, then we would merge back into the eternal, but without our fully human stature. Thus, the intellect doesn't realize that, by continually trying to close the gap through its incremental steps, it is actually trying to paralyze the evolutionary process.

Of course, this can start to sound quite abstract and theoretical, and we may wonder about the day-to-day realities 'on the ground' where intellectual-minded souls are in pain, suffering, confusion, alientation, and so on - how can we speak to these souls about gaps and lures when they have no ability to suspect what such concepts even mean or point toward? It is indeed a problematic situation and the sad reality is that there are divergent streams in humanity, as we know from spiritual science and probably our own experience. Such a divergence will only become starker in the following epochs and culminate in the War. This doesn't mean we can sit back and do nothing to share our inner wisdom with other souls, not at all, but we also can't expect to override the momentum of certain evolutionary curvatures with our efforts. What we can do is remain faithful to the wise evolutionary process and align our intents with it, expressing its inner dynamics as best as possible.


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA152/En ... 14p01.html

Let us now ask: Which of those epochs was least qualified to understand the Christ Being? Conceptions of the nature of man differed in all of them. The epoch least qualified to form adequate conceptions of the nature of Christ was the epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul, from the eighth century B.C. to the fifteenth century A.D. And the remarkable fact is that this is the very epoch when the Mystery of Golgotha took place!

If, to speak hypothetically, the Christ had appeared on the Earth in the days, let us say, of the holy Rishis of ancient India, there would have been widespread understanding of who He was. So too in ancient Persia, where men had been taught of the Sun Spirit. Had the Christ descended into a human body during that epoch men would have known that the Sun Spirit had come down into the body of a man on the Earth. And in the epoch of the Egyptian Temple Wisdom, something equivalent might still have been possible. But in the epoch when understanding of the nature of Christ was farthest from men’s reach—in that very epoch the Christ appeared on Earth.

It is not easy to add anything to this strange fact by way of illustration, for the conclusion to be drawn is that obviously hardly anything about the real nature of the Christ Being is to be found in the teachings formulated in that epoch and that understanding can therefore be expected only in later centuries.
...
We are on the threshold of a new conception of Christ. It will not be an intellectual understanding. People will certainly be able to grasp its meaning but it will be discovered through the more deeply lying forces of soul. When the eye of clairvoyance desires to have any prevision of the future of humanity in the next centuries, also of the next incarnations of individuals now living, it must be remembered that the forces operating on the surface of soul-life will become increasingly less effective. Mankind will feel more and more drawn to the revelations of the deeper forces of the soul.
...
Now, however, it has been realised that a great deal of what is reported of Jesus Christ would be impossible if He had been a mere man—especially the assertion made by Jesus that He himself was the Christ—therefore more than a man. Many contradictions were found. Then, more recently, God—an imaginary God—was again substituted for man. Christ Jesus became a phantom, a fetish—but a limited fetish. This was a truly remarkable state of things! For centuries men had eliminated Divinity from Christ Jesus and had made Him a man, and now the Divinity made the manhood an impossibility. Such arguments will go on ad infinitum and there is ample evidence that we are taking a path along which understanding is beyond the reach of the forces at the surface of human nature. To put it differently.—In the twentieth century men have attempted a kind of crusade in search of the historical Christ Jesus. And once again the answer will be: He whom you seek is not to be found here!—Those who seek in this way for the historical man Jesus will no more be able to find Him than could the women at the tomb or the Crusaders who thronged thither. The Crusaders could not find Christ because they were not seeking for Him inwardly; nor can the modern crusaders find Him because they do not seek with the inner forces of the soul by which alone Christ can be found.

Within the stream of spiritual life a deepening of the forces of soul-and-spirit is in process. And whereas the spiritual forces lying at the surface will deny the Christ more and more insistently, deeper forces of soul will rise up and seek for Christ.

[Federica]

a relevant passage to the question of 'bridging the gap'

Thanks! Yes, the problem with literalism - aversion to metaphors as valid vehicles for meaningful becoming - evokes well the typical attitude of the intellect, as it strives to avoid any leaps, sticking to the step-by-step approach: the current handle is not released until the next one is solidly at hand, which leaves many scales of progression entirely out of sight, let alone reach. Like the difference between crawling and running. This said, the idea that metaphor is a prototype for Inspiration sounds stimulating but also little far-fetched - though I can't judge, I struggle enough to maintain the Rose Cross and I can't even start to imagine what it's like to make it disappear, and if it's analogous to metaphorical becoming
Maybe it's not analogous, but simply... metaphorical? One could also notice: In a paradoxical sense, this parallel aims at bridging the gap between usual cognition and higher cognition. What do you think?

Related to that theme, I was listening to a lecture by Steiner on how Christ incarnated in the epoch of the intellectual soul, which was the human member most incapable of grasping the significance of his deeds. In that sense, the 'gap' between what we currently perceive-feel-think and the full humanity we are to become was the widest at this time and, indeed, was intended to be established in this way by the wise guidance of evolution. There are many mysteries involved in this reality, even for higher knowledge, but one aspect may be that the gap acts as a kind of 'attractive lure' for souls to develop their virtuous soul forces and germinal higher capacities.This is also what Cleric pointed to in the essays and recently from a different angle. If this gap were to fully close, then we would merge back into the eternal, but without our fully human stature. Thus, the intellect doesn't realize that, by continually trying to close the gap through its incremental steps, it is actually trying to paralyze the evolutionary process.

Of course, this can start to sound quite abstract and theoretical, and we may wonder about the day-to-day realities 'on the ground' where intellectual-minded souls are in pain, suffering, confusion, alientation, and so on - how can we speak to these souls about gaps and lures when they have no ability to suspect what such concepts even mean or point toward? It is indeed a problematic situation and the sad reality is that there are divergent streams in humanity, as we know from spiritual science and probably our own experience. Such a divergence will only become starker in the following epochs and culminate in the War. This doesn't mean we can sit back and do nothing to share our inner wisdom with other souls, not at all, but we also can't expect to override the momentum of certain evolutionary curvatures with our efforts. What we can do is remain faithful to the wise evolutionary process and align our intents with it, expressing its inner dynamics as best as possible.

The bold is not too clear to me. When you say that the gap can work as a (positive) "attractive lure" do you mean that the fact that the majority of humans today is stuck in intellectual cognition (a gap exists) acts as a stimulus on the few who feel called to develop higher cognition as a sort of competition trick? Conversely, if one is attracted by the spiritual worlds (as I believe it should be), not by the gap, what 'benefit' would there be in the gap being maintained, how can it be an attractive lure? Also: the intellect doesn't even know there is a gap, therefore it's not focused on bridging it, it only tries to walk its unaware path, with incremental crawling moves.


Lastly, as a comment to the sad reality of the two human streams, good and evil, I wanted to share what Steiner said about that sadness. Besides, I know this can certainly be read and understood upside down by a whole lot of people nowadays, but that's not my preoccupation here.

"The present epoch is preparing indirectly for the following one, so that we may say, our age of civilization will gradually pass over into one of brotherly love, when a comparatively small part of humanity will have understood the spiritual life and will have prepared the spirit and attitude of brotherly love. That civilization will then again divide off a smaller portion of human beings who will survive the event which will have such a destructive effect upon our epoch, namely, the War of All against All. In this universal destructive element there will be everywhere individuals who lift themselves above the rest of warring humanity, individuals who have understood the spiritual life and who will form the foundation for a new and different world in the sixth epoch.
...
You might now be inclined to say: Is it not an extremely bitter thought that whole bodies of peoples remain immature and do not develop their capacities; that only a small group becomes capable of providing the germ for the next civilization? This thought will no longer disquiet you if you distinguish between race-development and individual soul-development, for no soul is condemned to remain in one particular race. The race may fall behind; the community of people may remain backward, but the souls progress beyond the several races. If we wish to form a true conception of this we must say that all the souls now living in bodies in civilized countries were formerly incarnated in Atlantean bodies. A few developed there in the requisite manner, and did not remain in Atlantean bodies. As they had developed further they could become the souls of the bodies which had also progressed further. Only the souls which as souls had remained backward had to take bodies which as bodies had remained at a lower stage. If all the souls had progressed, the backward races would either have decreased very much in population, or the bodies would be occupied by newly incoming souls at a low stage of development. For there are always souls which can inhabit backward bodies. No soul is bound to a backward body if it does not bind itself to it."

[Federica]

Coincidentally, I am coming across a peer-reviewed International Journal for Critical Steiner Research that publishes, among other things, academic works in cognitive science that aim at verifying Steiner's PoF and, in general, Anthroposophy, through an experimental approach in line with current methodological practices in cognitive science. In other words, this is a very explicit attempt to build a bridge between spiritual science and mainstream science. The article I am browsing now by Johannes Wagemann - Bridging Anthroposophy and Cognitive Science with an Experimental First-Person Method - reports various results of a methodological approach called Task Based Introspective Inquiry (TBII) to bridge PoF and modern cognitive science.

To demonstrate that this method can serve as a bridge between Steiner and modern cognitive science, three aspects of Steiner’s method presented in his basic works shall be considered that are included in TBII.30 First, Steiner demands first-person observation be performed in an exceptional state of mind in which the observer’s attention is not absorbed by external objects and according thoughts, feelings, intentions, or actions but directs itself toward the mental processes and activities that lead to the former.31 This notorious blind spot in everyday consciousness ignoring its inherent cognitive processes needs to be addressed and clarified, which, as previously explained, can be achieved through an experimental task that requires subjects to invest their mental activity in a mindful and reflective manner. Therefore, in the first place, it is not about passively experiencing what shows up in the stream of consciousness but rather what must be done to succeed in the task – which, of course, does not preclude the observer shifting their attention intermittently to passively experienced aspects as well. This challenges participants to intentionally observe their mental efforts, forms of activity, and content-specific strategies that are not otherwise explicitly addressed in everyday situations.

The second point refers to what Steiner denoted as gaze direction, which means to motivate an observer (who can be oneself) to turn their attention in a certain direction of interest without making (pre-)judgments about what could be observed.32 In other words, the potential contents of observation must not be suggested, but attention is intentionally oriented to the general field of mental experience and performance in a specific task. Methodologically, this means that while research hypotheses are withheld to avoid cognitive bias, participants are explicitly instructed to observe what they do mentally to perform the task and what they experience in terms of thoughts, feelings, and their mental will.

The third aspect considers that, in principle, fine-grained observation requires persistent effort and repetition. On the one hand, this is self-evident in the context of spiritual development often extending over a lifetime;33 on the other hand, it is included in TBII to the extent that participants are instructed to repeat the task over one week, for example, on their own responsibility.

In practice, the experiments require participants to execute various cognitive and social tasks, while maintaining focus on their cognitive activity as much as possible, and then report on the kind of mental activity they noticed in themselves, while they were performing the tasks. The aggregate reports are shown as a proof that it's possible to collect valid "first-person-data" according to Steiner:

Implications for the actuality of Steiner’s approach in modern philosophy and cognitive science

After this condensed review of empirical studies, it must be noted that many details and contexts had to be omitted for reasons of space. Nevertheless, what matters most was to show that it is possible to acquire valid and reliable first-person data by reconciling the mentioned methodological aspects of Steiner’s approach to introspective or meditative self-observation with established cognitive science principles.

Needless to say, this whole approach of collecting and classifying participant's reported thought-pictures about their past mental activity doesn't come very close to Anthroposophical cognitive development and doesn't offer a valuable type of bridge for the intellect. In fact it leans strongly towards cognitive science, and stays firmly anchored to it. It never really bridges over, toward Steiner's approach, other than in stated intentions. This is not an example of the type of bridge I was trying to imagine. I was rather imagining the opposite approach: starting from a solid footing in spiritual science, to extend an arm in the direction of the intellect, even if it can't be a full bridge. A leap is still necessary (like in the free-will example) but the distance to cross is made the shortest it can be for the intellect. Surely much easier said than done, as this article probably confirms!