Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:47 pm
That's what people in many other spiritual traditions do as well, specifically Buddhists emphasize the importance of such practice.
But notice that all of those I mentioned (mystics of traditions, modern clairvoyants, NDErs, regression therapy patiente) would say exactly the same thing: ""It's not a belief, it's a direct experience." Yet they are all different
OK, Eugene, this is little scary for me but it really seems that you don't grasp the difference, which is at the very beginning of PoF where Steiner says:
"before anything else can be understood, thinking must be understood." Why? Because our normal human conduct consists of having all kinds of perceptions - doesn't matter if they are normal sensory perceptions, psychedelic visuals, Pentecostal trances, shamanic drumming trances, regressions - all of which are ultimately
thought about. Yes, the regress subject also has direct experiences of memories but these experiences are confronted by the intellect, which must form its ideas and decide what the experiences/phenomena/perceptions mean, if they are real or fantasies, if they are personal or from the collective vault, etc.
The development of humanity has led to a point where we can investigate the
forces that express themselves within thinking itself. And even though I know that the following very words will not be understood by you (not because you're not capable but because on some level you don't want to) I'll nevertheless say it again: when we raise into this higher level of consciousness, where we are the 'current' that in the ordinary state animates intellectual thinking, we no longer have psychedelic panorama, or regression memory images, or no-thoughts state, or any other altered state of consciousness that we have yet to confront with our intellectual thinking and decide what it means. Instead we live full consciously as a different spiritual being with higher degrees of freedom. When this higher order spiritual activity is forced to flow within certain restrictions, when it is phase-locked to linear patterns of sounds (verbal thinking) it becomes intellectual thinking and together with this the whole self-image changes. All of this is experienced from the continuous first-person perspective of the Spirit.
I don't know how I can make things more explicit:
1/ We have various practices that in some ways introduce different kinds of perceptions (phenomena) which however, even if during the time of the experience thinking is diminished (ego death, no-thought med., trance), then afterwards we still need to interpret, to divine and decide if they were real or hallucinations, if they mean something, etc. In other words, we confront all these states with our
intellectual thinking. They don't have meaning in themselves except the meaning that we find in them through thinking.
2/ Realizing the common thread in all the above kinds of states - that they are ultimately sum of perceptions interpreted by the intellect - and instead turn towards the actual spiritual activity that manifests in it. Through the methods that I often describe it is possible to break the shell of the intellect and instead of succumbing into no-thought or diminished trance state, we break into immeasurably more lucid state where we find ourselves as a spiritual being that, so to speak, moments ago had its hands tied, its mouth gagged. And here's the extraordinarily difficult place that modern man simply can't even conceive the direction of. And the reason is that this direction requires us to conceive of something that is greater than us, something that our intellectual thoughts can not fit because these thoughts live as overtones on top of the spiritual activity of that being that is our true self. Once we experience ourselves from this higher perspective, it is a direct experience of a different kind. I can question if my perception of red comes from the optical nerve or as a dream image but I can't question the fact that I'm thinking. I'm thinking both in the dream and in the sensory world, the difference is what ideas I attach to the perceptions. Similarly, higher cognition transforms spiritual activity in such a way that the higher order fully self-conscious and meaningful flow of the Spirit
contains within itself the overtones than when experienced without their living context we know as intellectual thoughts. You see, there are no perceptions here that we must interpret and wonder if they are true or illusions in the same way that our thinking is not a matter of interpretation - it simply is because it's the reflection of our own spiritual be-ing.
If the above 1/ and 2/ don't at least approximately hint at the
fundamental difference between the two, I don't think there's point to continue any further.