Observation, logic, folklore and presuppositions

[Jim Cross]

Jim said:

"I'm surprised by that. Who does beside Steiner?"

Anthroposophosits have rather viscous disagreements about which of them have achieved genuine clairvoyance. Of course this must be the case because nobody can verify so they simply latch onto teachers they trust and who say things in ways that seem wonderful and true. That said, Dennis Klocek is my favorite teacher from within that tradition. And he's a friend so I'm very biased.

Maybe higher cognition is like a unicorn. It might look good as art but nothing like it really exists.

[findingblanks]

When I created this post, I had forgotten that Steiner felt Shubert's face was attractive, unlike a Negros. But I can appreciate that he was honest about what kind of male faces he found attractive and the fact that he could speak in such general terms raises some interesting questions about what he took for granted when researching aesthetic matters.

“There is a biography of Schubert in which it is said that he looked rather like a negro. There is not a grain of truth in it. He actually had a pleasing, attractive face.”

— Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS: Esoteric Studies - Volume I (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972), VII.

I bolded one aspect of the quote because sometimes I am charmed by how authoritative Steiner can be with his 'objective' statements of fact.

[findingblanks]

Remember the guy who claimed that blue containers are what cause slugs to die? That's how I started this post

Now Imagine that guy's name is Vishna and I said:

"Some people say that Vishna looks like a black person. Not true at all! Vishna is very attractive!"

I bet, just like the mistake about the slug and bull, we can spot the presupposition in this one, too.

[AshvinP]

Jim said:

"I'm surprised by that. Who does beside Steiner?"

Anthroposophosits have rather viscous disagreements about which of them have achieved genuine clairvoyance. Of course this must be the case because nobody can verify so they simply latch onto teachers they trust and who say things in ways that seem wonderful and true. That said, Dennis Klocek is my favorite teacher from within that tradition. And he's a friend so I'm very biased.

Maybe higher cognition is like a unicorn. It might look good as art but nothing like it really exists.

Here is a clear example of what FB refuses to acknowledge might be happening here, even though it's obvious. Jim doesn't believe such a thing as "higher cognition" exists, and likely has no idea what is meant by imagination, inspiration, and intuition. What are the chances Jim can properly evaluate spiritual claims which are entirely rooted in an understanding of what those things mean and the concrete possibility they can be attained? ZERO chance. Jim is not the only one. Eugene, Ben, and Martin also don't understand these things. And, based on the exchange with Cleric on the other thread, I don't think FB understands it either, which would explain why he can't provide that context, despite being so familiar with Steiner's lectures. FB views higher cognition as just another set of abstract concepts which can be adopted or excluded without any practical difference in one's immanent experience or knowledge of spiritual evolution. That is why he feels the latter is completely irrelevant context for evaluating claims about the "integrating" or "absorption" of the Christ impulse over the next 1,500 years. That is why he thinks there is no possibility of ever "verifying" it. One does not need to be clairvoyant to see how such a feeling escapes all logic and reason.

[Jim Cross]

Ashvin,

It's been stated that you don't claim "higher cognition".

If that is so, then how would you know "higher cognition" exists? Anybody can make any claim but how would you evaluate one since it is, I assume, not subject to measurement?

Is there just "higher cognition" and not some "extra special cognition" or an "intermediate cognition"?

On what dimension are we ranking cognition? What makes some cognition higher and some lower?

Don't all differences in cognition disappear into the ontological primitive in the end anyway?

[Lou Gold]

Jim said:

"I'm surprised by that. Who does beside Steiner?"

Anthroposophosits have rather viscous disagreements about which of them have achieved genuine clairvoyance. Of course this must be the case because nobody can verify so they simply latch onto teachers they trust and who say things in ways that seem wonderful and true. That said, Dennis Klocek is my favorite teacher from within that tradition. And he's a friend so I'm very biased.

Maybe higher cognition is like a unicorn. It might look good as art but nothing like it really exists.

Here is a clear example of what FB refuses to acknowledge might be happening here, even though it's obvious. Jim doesn't believe such a thing as "higher cognition" exists, and likely has no idea what is meant by imagination, inspiration, and intuition. What are the chances Jim can properly evaluate spiritual claims which are entirely rooted in an understanding of what those things mean and the concrete possibility they can be attained? ZERO chance. Jim is not the only one. Eugene, Ben, and Martin also don't understand these things. And, based on the exchange with Cleric on the other thread, I don't think FB understands it either, which would explain why he can't provide that context, despite being so familiar with Steiner's lectures. FB views higher cognition as just another set of abstract concepts which can be adopted or excluded without any practical difference in one's immanent experience or knowledge of spiritual evolution. That is why he feels the latter is completely irrelevant context for evaluating claims about the "integrating" or "absorption" of the Christ impulse over the next 1,500 years. That is why he thinks there is no possibility of ever "verifying" it. One does not need to be clairvoyant to see how such a feeling escapes all logic and reason.

Thanks for leaving me out of your examples, Ashvin, but I'd like to bluntly add a beef of my own. The lingo of the Steiner approach is full of what I for one perceive as a superiority complex. "Higher Cognition" or "Spiritual Science" or "Clairvoyance" are full of the superiority vibe. Where is acknowledgement of other sophisticated spiritual technologies and the tremendous value of, for example, Buddhist meditation or indigenous shamanism or an enlivened modern animism?

Getting personal, when Ashvin says something like, "I've barely scratched 0.01% of 0.01% of what is to be known", I do not respond, "Maybe if you drank some ayahuasca you'd learn more." But when I report an interesting awareness that I've not yet stabilized as commonplace, Ashvin urges me to read Steiner as if it holds the Truth. I confess that this sounds both arrogant and disrespectful of the fact that I'm older, I've probably been around more spiritual blocks and I have gained a firm faith and some valuable grains of wisdom.

That philosophical discourse ends up being an adversarial and contentious argument between this-or-that way seems as the dualism Ashvin is pointing at as habitual. The way out of it seems to me not as more needing analysis or argumentation or assertions that the other "really doesn't understand" but to practice stepping out of separation mode in whatever way offers meaning in one's own process by appreciating and respecting and elevating a diverse multitude of other ways. In my view, we rise and fall together. Aho Mitakuye Oyasin.

[AshvinP]

Remember the guy who claimed that blue containers are what cause slugs to die? That's how I started this post

Now Imagine that guy's name is Vishna and I said:

"Some people say that Vishna looks like a black person. Not true at all! Vishna is very attractive!"

I bet, just like the mistake about the slug and bull, we can spot the presupposition in this one, too.

Let's take a step back and see what has actually happened here. Dana also posted a critique of Steiner on this thread. It referenced a quote he posted from Steiner about "negro novels" and it read as follows:

For the record, as you know, I've listened to an audio version of PoF, and explored parts of the online PDF copy, which for the most part I find resonates with the insights that I'd come to before ever reading it, and which both you and Cleric have helped to clarify in your own summaries. However, none of it changes the impression of Steiner that I've shared in the comment I made, in reply to Jim, previous to this one. So I'm curious what you make of those impressions, seeing Steiner as both brilliant and flawed, as brief as they may be?

Let's take a moment to appreciate the humility in this approach. It ends in a question! That is an endangered animal on the Meta-Kastrup forum these days. Although, some others have taken that approach, like Dave on the other JW thread and Martin once in awhile. It implicitly admits, "these are just my impressions from what I have read and I probably need a lot more context to make sense of them, but until that is provided, I will tentatively conclude that Steiner had this big racial blind spot in his time". That is a great approach! Assuming, of course, that one does actually consider any further context that is provided and seeks to understand that context on its own terms. One cannot take Steiner literally with the racial comments but dismiss all the spiritual context as superstitious nonsense, like Ben did with the "elementals", if the question is "what did Steiner mean when saying these things". That makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Cleric and myself are always trying to point to the core context for Steiner and for spiritual understanding in general, which is the concrete reality of our own Thinking activity which permeates all that we peceive, feel, and desire. Much of that activity is subconscious and can be revealed through our Self-knowledge, which of course comes by way of that higher Thinking activity. There is no dualism of intellectual reasoning and imaginative cognition here - they are continuous and unified in essence. But now I am already making it too abstract, so we need to constantly resist that urge and bring it back to a more concrete Center. It is the same "Divine Thinking" that Cleric wrote about recently, which is world-creating, i.e. it creates all that we call the phenomenal world, including genders, races, nations, cultures, and epochs (temporal experience itself), and is also responsible for unfolding those complex divisions back into an organic and integrated Whole.

Whether we agree with any of that or not, that is the underlying spiritual activity we are dealing with in Steiner, so that is the context we need to seek understanding of when evaluating his lectures. If we have no desire to seek understanding of it, then we should just admit that to ourselves and say no more. Or say more, but don't be surprised when I don't take anything you are writing seriously. Why should I? You have already admitted, either explicitly like Jim, or implicitly like FB (by way of ignoring all of Cleric's elaborations), that you do not seek to understand anything Steiner or we are writing about. FB is in a tough spot, because he simply assumes his decades of being around these ideas has given him superior insight into the inner workings of spiritual science, Steiner's brilliance and flaws, etc. So it's a tough spot that he is keeping himself in by way of his own assumptions. At the end of the day, we really need to contend with the concreteness of Thinking as spiritual activity and reality if we want any chance of understanding these things.

“The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite ‘I am’. The secondary. I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree and in the mode of its operation." - Coleridge

Do we read the above quote and feel, "that's a beautiful way of putting it...", or do we think, "what Coleridge is speaking of is what lives in me right now as I contemplate his words and what I can start making ever-more conscious right this moment!"?

[AshvinP]

Getting personal, when Ashvin says something like, "I've barely scratched 0.01% of 0.01% of what is to be known", I do not respond, "Maybe if you drank some ayahuasca you'd learn more." But when I report an interesting awareness that I've not yet stabilized as commonplace, Ashvin urges me to read Steiner as if it holds the Truth. I confess that this sounds both arrogant and disrespectful of the fact that I'm older, I've probably been around more spiritual blocks and I have gained a firm faith and some valuable grains of wisdom.

Lou,

All I can say is, read my post above. You clearly discount the possibility of ever experiencing Thinking as anything more than analytical intellect, so we will never see eye to eye in this lifetime. Our age in this particular lifetime has little to do with it.

[Cleric K]

I decided to begin a new thread in the Topic specific section:
viewtopic.php?t=687

I try to bring to attention a Central Topic which is continually being circled in these conversations but the centrifugal forces don't allow the center to be reached. Unless this core point is reached all talks about SS are bound to turn into confusion. I placed the thread in the topic-specific section because I really want to go straight to the center. I would like to see you there and really try to pinpoint that center, the misunderstanding of which, expands as fractal and produces thousand different centrifugal oscillations that keep the conversations in the non-essentials.

[Martin_]

Maybe higher cognition is like a unicorn. It might look good as art but nothing like it really exists.

Here is a clear example of what FB refuses to acknowledge might be happening here, even though it's obvious. Jim doesn't believe such a thing as "higher cognition" exists, and likely has no idea what is meant by imagination, inspiration, and intuition. What are the chances Jim can properly evaluate spiritual claims which are entirely rooted in an understanding of what those things mean and the concrete possibility they can be attained? ZERO chance. Jim is not the only one. Eugene, Ben, and Martin also don't understand these things. And, based on the exchange with Cleric on the other thread, I don't think FB understands it either, which would explain why he can't provide that context, despite being so familiar with Steiner's lectures. FB views higher cognition as just another set of abstract concepts which can be adopted or excluded without any practical difference in one's immanent experience or knowledge of spiritual evolution. That is why he feels the latter is completely irrelevant context for evaluating claims about the "integrating" or "absorption" of the Christ impulse over the next 1,500 years. That is why he thinks there is no possibility of ever "verifying" it. One does not need to be clairvoyant to see how such a feeling escapes all logic and reason.

Thanks for leaving me out of your examples, Ashvin, but I'd like to bluntly add a beef of my own. The lingo of the Steiner approach is full of what I for one perceive as a superiority complex. "Higher Cognition" or "Spiritual Science" or "Clairvoyance" are full of the superiority vibe. Where is acknowledgement of other sophisticated spiritual technologies and the tremendous value of, for example, Buddhist meditation or indigenous shamanism or an enlivened modern animism?

Getting personal, when Ashvin says something like, "I've barely scratched 0.01% of 0.01% of what is to be known", I do not respond, "Maybe if you drank some ayahuasca you'd learn more." But when I report an interesting awareness that I've not yet stabilized as commonplace, Ashvin urges me to read Steiner as if it holds the Truth. I confess that this sounds both arrogant and disrespectful of the fact that I'm older, I've probably been around more spiritual blocks and I have gained a firm faith and some valuable grains of wisdom.

That philosophical discourse ends up being an adversarial and contentious argument between this-or-that way seems as the dualism Ashvin is pointing at as habitual. The way out of it seems to me not as more needing analysis or argumentation or assertions that the other "really doesn't understand" but to practice stepping out of separation mode in whatever way offers meaning in one's own process by appreciating and respecting and elevating a diverse multitude of other ways. In my view, we rise and fall together. Aho Mitakuye Oyasin.

Amen. Thank you Lou.