Eugene I wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 9:49 pm
Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:26 pm
It should be clear already that all four geometries exist only as eigen bases onto which the intellect can project its thinking. Reality doesn't operate through any such geometry.
OK, so, there is a “harmonious unity” of high-order Intuitive/Imaginative ideas that govern the reality ( including the sense-perceptory world) (the “time-domain ifdeas”), and there are lower-level abstract ideas formed by the intellect that attempt to describe the world but unable to do it properly due to its lower-level character (“Fourtier-tranfrom domain ideas”), and so the latter not belong to the “harmonious unity” of higher-order ieas. And Reason is a faculty of higher cognition that is able to attain clairvoyant insight into and the knowledge of the unity of higher-order world of ideas. I’m sure that this is clearly wrong and Kantian-divide dualistic because any non-initiate like me has no way to get it right, but I hope it at least roughly describes what you are saying.
Well, what to say? The attempts to know the ultimate truth has been humanity’s endeavor throughout all its history. Philosophy, science, religions, spiritual practices (dual or non-dual, Western, Eastern or Indigenous), poetry and art. Neither of them got it right, they all just spinned around in different areas of abstract ideas of lower cognition, all in vain, just rarely being able to get some intuitive glimpses of the higher-order meanings. Eventually, through the work of Goethe and Steiner a breakthrough was achieved into the realm of the unity of higher-order beings and harmonious ideas governing the world that we, lower-level beings, perceive through our senses. With our low-level cognition we can only intellectually speculate about the truths of that realm using abstractions, it’s only through the development of the faculties of Intuitive and Imaginative Reason-Thinking and through esoteric initiation attainable in the order of Anthroposophy where we can gain the true knowledge of these higher-order ideas. Goethe and Steiner were some of those initiates, Cleric is the other one.
But how do we know if the ideas they perceive actually are the true high-order ideas governing the reality and not a result of their self-intoxicating imagination or a manifestation of their personal or group sub-conscious beliefs? The adepts of SS will tell us that the only way to know it is to actually practice it, to develop the high-order Reason, Imaginative and Intuitive abilities and to know these ideas through direct perception by these higher-order faculties. Once you perceive the true high-order meanings, you will know they are true. OK, but are there any other criteria to somehow verify that this knowledge is actually relevant to reality and not just another product of human subtle self-confirming intuitive imagination? Well, let’s look at what knowledge Steiner brought us from the realms of higher-order ideas. There are plenty of them, for example, the knowledge about Atlantis, about ethnic supremacy of Arian and Germanic nations, about Zodiacs governing our life on Earth. Any other breakthroughs into the knowledge of the world of natural phenomena? Did he attain the knowledge about big bang or black holes, or elementary particles, or QM or GR prior to their discovery by science? Or could he explain why the natural phenomena always follow exactly the QM Shroedinger or GR equations? Nope, that’s too abstract, not for clairvoyants, they see much deeper. May be biochemistry, immunology, human biology? Sure:
I understand that SS and Steiner are hot topic, evoking emotions along the full range of the spectrum. That's why I've always tried to speak directly from experience, in the same way one can speak and others can
understand Pythagoras's theorem, without mentioning his name.
In order not to irritate people with n-page posts I'll try to be shorter, at the risk of sounding incomplete or even cryptic.
In situations like these it's of no use to try and convince anybody of esoteric facts. Unless the nature of thinking is grasped, it is all counter-productive. It'll just provoke throwing around mud, trying to connect SS with the Nazi agenda and what not.
I spoke in the previous posts about the obsession with proof. This is something that can be realized only if one is willing to
undo all preconceived ideas and see what is really
given. At what point the intellect became obsessed with proof? When it became locked into its own abstract loops. When it climbed on the tree and cut the branch. When it drew a chalk circle around itself and postulated that it needs proof for stepping outside it. The Greeks used thoughts but it would have been nonsensical for them to prove the reality of the soul (psyche). They were not naive, it was just that the soul was still reality for them. They argued whether the soul has its seat in the brain or the heart but didn't argue if the soul exists. That latter arguing began much later when the "I" was driven in the completely abstract layer of thinking. Now the "I" began to question everything - even its own existence. The "I" reduced itself to intellectual activity. Everything else is uncertain.
Once the "I" has driven itself into a corner it becomes possible to fall into the obsession with proof. But this is completely unwarranted. Anyone can verify this
if they're willing to. What is it in the given that gives us the confidence that the structure of reality should be derivable from combinations of abstract thoughts? This is the elephant in the room. The blind assumption on which the whole modern scientific endeavor rests. Man has become intoxicated with his own intellectual self-importance and now demands that the world should be derivable from abstract mineral concepts. It is as simple as that. And any attempt to explain it more than this, will simply obscure what is self-evident with thought-noise and provide hooks for the conversation to go astray into the non-essentials.
The given doesn't tell us anything about proofs, let alone that reality is created on basis of intellectual ideas. What we find in the given is thinking which lives in the harmony of the facts. Thinking reveals the musical consonances and dissonances of meaning. Thinking perceives meaning. The assumption that thinking, as we find it today, is in position to recreate the Cosmos from its abstracted concepts is something completely artificial.
Imagine that you receive your 'proof' of SS. Someone comes along and shows you something, I don't know what... apparatus maybe, and says "See, this apparatus can be explained only through SS". But this is simply nonsense. Immediately several people will provide mental models that can approximate the same behavior of the apparatus, without involving soul and spirit. They'll speak of energy, information, etc. Even further than this, it will be shown that all these models are equivalent because fundamentally everything can be reduced to universal computation. It will be the same if the model of reality is presented in lambda calculus, as a Turing machine, as string theory and so on. Ultimately everything remains abstract thoughts in the mind. No matter how ingeniously these thoughts are recombined, they remain within its layer.
As a matter of fact it would be catastrophic if someone would try to prove SS in this way. This would be precisely what we know from the scriptures as false prophets who through miracles mesmerize the masses. Make no mistake. A 'proof' will leave people exactly as they are. In fact, it will make them even more fanatical. Then they'll begin to fight in the name of their false prophet (because there will be many more than one). This would be the absolute negation of SS. It would the catastrophic abolishment of freedom. Actually this is the key to freedom - one attains to truth only by free activity. What is attained to through compulsion can never be the truth. And proof is compulsion. It is not the result of the spirit finding greater degrees of freedom but being forced into a framework. Proof tells you: you have no right to think in any other shape but in rectangles. That's what I tried to point out about PoF. One doesn't understand PoF if he feels that he's been provided a box in which he must enter and ignore all other boxes. We only understand it when we discover ourselves as a spiritual being which through thinking creates boxes and locks itself in them.
Think about it. Imagine that tomorrow you're presented with a proof that Christ exists and is the Lord of humanity. This wouldn't at all make you happy. In fact, it will be the greatest misery. You'll just shake your head and say "Well, what you're gonna do... I'll be a slave for all eternity. My dream for freedom has been proven impossible". See, such an external 'proof' would be the greatest curse. It won't lead to unity but to irreconcilable duality. The small "I" will forever carry the feeling of suppressed rebellion in its heart. We should be grateful that such a proof is not possible!
Truth is not something that can be attained to by intellectual thinking. Any proof is just a new arrangement of concepts that in themselves say nothing about the reality of the wider context. The only way we can move towards something that is principally different, is by exploring the forces that lie at the foundations of thinking. Only in this way we can break the vicious loop within the phantom layer.
These forces are not somewhere out there in a remote world to which only Initiates have access. There's only one world. The frequency domain is not somewhere out there. We're always in the middle. Ideas in the frequency domain, perceptions as the space-time domain. Thinking is the place where these meet. Higher cognition is not a privilege of the elite. In fact, it's practically free. It's immeasurably more expensive to go to Harvard. So it's useless to turn things around and make discrimination accusations. The only thing preventing us to understand our spiritual nature is we ourselves. Everything else is only excuse.
The intellectual ego has become intoxicated. It wants to feel as the top-level authority. This is why things are being misunderstood continuously. The intellect wants to deal only with things that are smaller than itself. When it thinks about planets and galaxies, it imagines them as marbles, such that they can fit in the mind. It wants to understand the Divine in the same way. It imagines that it can fit the Divine in its abstract concepts. This is really the great rebellion of the intellectual ego. It refuses to acknowledge that the phantom game into which it has become entangled is only a crystallization of a higher order process. This doesn't mean that one must throw away the intellect. Not at all. This is what the mystic does. As a result he loses both the intellect and the higher order cognition because he remains in the middle ground where the higher world can only be felt but not known. Thus the wait for death begins.
I'll finish by repeating that at the root of all hard problems is the fact that the intellect pretends to be a top-level knower. It wants to grasp everything, including itself only as marble-symbols which it can throw around. It abstracts itself from reality and wants to know the world and itself from a third-person perspective, which is above all. So the first step is humility. We must understand that we're always in the middle. What the intellect thinks is not its totally free and original creation. Unless we feel that we're flowing within streams of higher nature, the intellect will always pretend to be above all. This is additionally fueled by modern ideas of 'pure consciousness' and the like. This simply gives the ego carte blanche, to hide in the blind spot and feel as master of the universe. From that perspective it considers thoughts, feelings, desires and itself, only as marbles within consciousness, while the ego secretly fantasizes to be the container of all. Unless we realize that it's not enough to recognize the elements of soul life as marbles in consciousness, but instead our conscious aperture is being carried by these streams, we'll never attain to self-knowledge and the Guardian at the Threshold will remain hidden in the background.
Thinking is not restricted in the loops of the intellect. Thinking moves along the full spectrum. Thinking is humble. Thinking can address what is higher than itself and which cannot yet be grasped as a marble. To understand doesn't mean to dominate and enwrap marbles in the mind. Thinking can understand what is greater than itself but it needs virtually unknown in our days scientific attitude. It is humble openness towards that within which we exist. This has been said before: to approach higher cognition it's not a matter of inflating the ego in order to engulf reality as conceptual marbles. It's not what we think about the higher worlds but to experience
how they think us.