Deeper reading, Steeper Art

[findingblanks]

For those observing Cleric's typical rhetorical moves:

Notice that he did sneak in a shift. After I pointed out that he was simple wrong in claiming I don't believe insights can be expicated, he said that he and I have a different way of understanding the idea of 'explication.'

Okay, for those of you who have the hang of this a little bit, meditate on why Cleric wouldn't start the conversation by simple saying something like, "I think we have a different understanding of what it means to 'explicate' an insight." Don't do this thing of assuming you are right. Just hold different possibilities of what could cause a person to miss everything and insist confidently upon the opposite. And, then, even imagine he is 100% right, consider what would make you begin a conversation in that way. It's rich.

I'm not claiming there is one simple answer to this. But I do think you'll probably get a grasp on why he started by, instead, saying that I actually denied the possibility. But just go back and forth between his opening claim and his subsequent statement that we have a different perspective, keeping in mind that he isn't reading my mind so these are his beliefs based on reading what I wrote. Yes, people can ask questions and be curious. And, yes, you hardly see that when somebody begins by declaring that you deny the possibility of what you just exemplified. I humbly suggest that we all have much to learn by simply becoming curious at his certainty and the subtle shifts. I'm not sure how much we can learn if we simply focus on the confident content and teachings.

[findingblanks]

Yes, have you noticed the way some conversation in this group go back and forth with people asking questions and being curious and sharing stories and ideas thoughtfully and humbly. Yes, did you see that he asked me to come out and say my thoughts in a way that he would recognize as plain and direct. Yes, did you see that I immediately did that? Yes, did you see that his first response was to teach me that I don't believe in explication. Yes, amazing.

No, you don't see me having this pattern with Lou or Jim or Starbuck or any of the other people who treat each other with basic kindness. Why? Because they grasp that we can simply speak to each other and ask questions. Why do I not just ignore Cleric and Ashvin when the insist on seminars and twisting words and always coming back to a grand teaching? Because I think there is value in trying to speak to them now and then. Maybe the value is only on a meta level. I simply don't know for sure.

[Cleric K]

Yes, have you noticed the way some conversation in this group go back and forth with people asking questions and being curious and sharing stories and ideas thoughtfully and humbly. Yes, did you see that he asked me to come out and say my thoughts in a way that he would recognize as plain and direct. Yes, did you see that I immediately did that? Yes, did you see that his first response was to teach me that I don't believe in explication. Yes, amazing.

No, you don't see me having this pattern with Lou or Jim or Starbuck or any of the other people who treat each other with basic kindness. Why? Because they grasp that we can simply speak to each other and ask questions. Why do I not just ignore Cleric and Ashvin when the insist on seminars and twisting words and always coming back to a grand teaching? Because I think there is value in trying to speak to them now and then. Maybe the value is only on a meta level. I simply don't know for sure.

FB, I have no intent to turn this into some kind of psychological game. I had a very simple point in mind and illustrated it here with the animal analogy.

I'm running out of metaphors here. We can imagine that we live on Earth under permanent cloud layer and very few claim to have pierced it. Schop says that above the cloud layers there's only unconscious darkness - blind will. This practically means the we can only asymptotically approach the cloud horizon beyond which we simply lose all consciousness. Steiner says that consciousness can cross the cloud layer, that above there's light of the Spirit, there's Sun, planets, stars. Now FB says that they are both having the same insight but only disagree on the wording.

All I'm saying is that the only way on Earth we can speak of them having the same insight is if we believe that what is above the cloud layer is neither blind will, nor spiritual consciousness but something else (or some strange mixture), and both Schop and Steiner only presented their cloud shape inspired interpretations of what might be the true reality above the clouds.

I don't see why it should be seen as politically incorrect or offending, when the above is stated black on white.

[Soul_of_Shu]

FB, I have no intent to turn this into some kind of psychological game. I had a very simple point in mind and illustrated it here with the animal analogy.

Yes, have you noticed the way some conversation in this group go back and forth with people asking questions and being curious and sharing stories and ideas thoughtfully and humbly.

I don't even know where to begin to address the cognitive disconnect that is happening in these exchanges. It's almost as if some explorer has somehow stumbled upon a tribe of Amazonian peoples who've managed to still avoid any contact with the modern world, whose only artifacts they are familiar with are the same ones they invented millennia ago. Now imagine that the explorer, despite an extreme language barrier, who as it happens has no modern artifacts available, nonetheless attempts to convey to these people the idea of a smartphone camera, with no concrete, objectified, phenomenal representation to point to as an example. How is that idea ever going to be anything other than a vague, incomprehensible notion in the mind of the one who has never encountered a smartphone camera? I suppose that insofar as the idea does not solely exist as a closed-off meme confined to a private mind, but can also exist within the collective Mind, then perhaps it could still be accessible through dreams, in some nebulous, shape-shifting way. But other than that it seems the cognitive disconnect would remain pretty much insurmountable.

[Cleric K]

I don't even know where to begin to address the cognitive disconnect that is happening in these exchanges. It's almost as if some explorer has somehow stumbled upon a tribe of Amazonian peoples who've managed to still avoid any contact with the modern world, whose only artifacts they are familiar with are the same ones they invented millennia ago. Now imagine that the explorer, despite an extreme language barrier, who as it happens has no modern artifacts available, nonetheless attempts to convey to these people the idea of a smartphone camera, with no concrete, objectified, phenomenal representation to point to as an example. How is that idea ever going to be anything other than a vague, incomprehensible notion in the mind of the one who has never encountered a smartphone camera? I suppose that insofar as the idea does not solely exist as a closed-off meme confined to a private mind, but can also exist within the collective Mind, then perhaps it could still be accessible through dreams, in some nebulous, shape-shifting way. But other than that it seems the cognitive disconnect would remain pretty much insurmountable.

This is a powerful metaphor and if followed carefully it can help us understand many things. Even if the explorer was to show the smartphone to the natives, there are so many things that must be in place if it is to be understood. The device in itself, as a physical object, only has its full meaning when placed in the right meaningful context. And this practically means that large part of the whole complicated dynamics of modern civilization must be understood.

It is no different with spiritual matters. When something like 'etheric body' is heard, one usually imagines that this is something which can be understood in isolation. For example, FB asks in the other thread if someone knows someone who has seen etheric body. But for most people this places things in very misleading context. It makes it sound as seeing an etheric body is like seeing additional color, some fluffy energetic cloud around living objects. This can in fact happen in certain cases but is not at all the ideal that we must be striving for. This would actually be spiritual regress, it would be a return to atavistic state. It would be like mathematically illiterate people seeing ∫integral. Yes, the outer form ∫ can be seen but to understand it, we need the whole meaningful context of many fields of mathematics. These concepts form interconnected living fabric. Even though we focus on just one concept, it would never have its meaning if all other concepts were not implicit in the background to support it. It's the same with everything - for example, the smartphone. It would never have for us the meaning it has if we hadn't unknowingly accumulated throughout our life all other knowledge which forms the implicit context where 'smartphone' fits only as the cherry on the cake.

Before we see etheric bodies in Nature we must 'see' them in ourselves. This seeing is not simply an additional visual layer. We begin to gain consciousness of our etheric body when we begin to recognize the 'shapes' of the thinking gestures that we perform when we think. Mostly we use combination of the etheric larynx and the etheric brain when we think our verbal thoughts. But we can think, for example, with our hands too. People born deaf think in sign language, they think with etheric hand gestures, instead of larynx gestures (verbal thoughts). So our own etheric body we don't simply see as something external but we probe with our spiritual activity from within. When we can feel our thinking in any part of the body, we gain some feeling for the etheric body. Every part of the body has its own gestures. Not everywhere we can assert our own will. Actually at our current stage, only in the larynx-head-hands system we have relative freedom to express our "I". In other parts of the etheric body our thinking confronts something that we can't easily subdue. In that case it's more appropriate to say that with the shapes of thinking we perceive the geometry of the etheric, while in the head we have more of a flexible space which we can shape through our own will. Thinking feels differently in the toe, in the liver, in the heart, in the hands, in the larynx and head. When thinking leaves the bounds of the body we can experience the thinking gestures in living Nature around us, as if our own etheric body has expanded and now is fused with that of Nature (there has never been hard boundary actually). In the same way we feel our thinking gestures in the larynx, we now feel thinking gestures of Nature in the expanded etheric body. These gestures don't proceed from our own will but we learn to resonate with them. So we see how different picture this draws in comparison to seeing colorful blobs.

The disconnect is not really insurmountable but it really requires certain effort to surmount. If there was such a hard boundary between levels of cognition it would never be possible for a baby to acquire language (which is shapes of thinking). There's so much we can learn from language acquisition.

The exciting thing is that in our age we don't need to resort to simply being irradiated with spiritual language until our thinking begins to grasp its higher order (although this also a perfectly valid method and works just as good as with babies). But the beautiful thing is that we can also approach this language in a much more conscious and certain way. The reason is that in our normal thinking we already have a point of overlap with the same spiritual activity which is used in the higher orders. In other words, we can find TCOTCT and gradually work our way, expanding into higher order spiritual gestures.

[Soul_of_Shu]

This is a powerful metaphor and if followed carefully it can help us understand many things. Even if the explorer was to show the smartphone to the natives, there are so many things that must be in place if it is to be understood. The device in itself, as a physical object, only has its full meaning when placed in the right meaningful context. And this practically means that large part of the whole complicated dynamics of modern civilization must be understood ...

... The disconnect is not really insurmountable but it really requires certain effort to surmount. If there was such a hard boundary between levels of cognition it would never be possible for a baby to acquire language (which is shapes of thinking). There's so much we can learn from language acquisition.

Thanks Cleric for the helpful elaboration. I can better understand how it may not be insurmountable. Or perhaps only so, if the explorer is taken to be a unwelcome purveyor of dangerous hocus-pocus, undermining the status quo ethos, upsetting the mindset, in which case the explorer may encounter the "how dare you!" trigger-effect ... then what ya gonna do?

[AshvinP]

This is a powerful metaphor and if followed carefully it can help us understand many things. Even if the explorer was to show the smartphone to the natives, there are so many things that must be in place if it is to be understood. The device in itself, as a physical object, only has its full meaning when placed in the right meaningful context. And this practically means that large part of the whole complicated dynamics of modern civilization must be understood ...

... The disconnect is not really insurmountable but it really requires certain effort to surmount. If there was such a hard boundary between levels of cognition it would never be possible for a baby to acquire language (which is shapes of thinking). There's so much we can learn from language acquisition.

Thanks Cleric for the helpful elaboration. I can better understand how it may not be insurmountable. Or perhaps only so, if the explorer is taken to be a unwelcome purveyor of dangerous hocus-pocus, undermining the status quo ethos, upsetting the mindset, in which case the explorer may encounter the "how dare you!" trigger-effect ... then what ya gonna do?

I think then it is very helpful to find comraderie with our fellow humans who have undergone and are undergoing this archetypal struggle since the dawn of self-awareness, like this Guy:

"My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil... My doctrine is not mine, but His who sent me. If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on my own authority. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. Did not Moses give you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill me?
...
I did one work, and you all marvel. Moses therefore gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath? Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

[Soul_of_Shu]

I think then it is very helpful to find comraderie with our fellow humans who have undergone and are undergoing this archetypal struggle since the dawn of self-awareness, like this Guy:

[findingblanks]

A study into sweet Cleric's mode of thinking:

I had just given over five examples of explicating an insight. Cleric said that I claimed explication is impossible. Then after I pointed out that this is a horrid reading, Cleric said:

"I'm not twisting anything but only pointing at the root cause. You made it perfectly clear previously that for you things like etheric body, Saturn condition and so on are uncertain. You said that you can as well imagine that none of that might exist."

Okay, so let's go back and see what Cleric had asked me about those spiritual phenomena. Cleric had said:

"do you think that, for example, he might have been completely wrong that there's such thing as Saturn condition? Or etheric body? Or soul organs? Or higher beings?"

Keep in might that he has now claimed, "You said that you can as well imagine that none of that might exist."

Okay, so when Cleric asked me I believed Steiner could have been completely wrong about those phenomena, did I say 'yes?' I must have said yes if I claim that they could be 100% non-existant. Here is what I said:

"No, not completely wrong."

End of part I of a deep dive into how steady and reliably Cleric pays attention. I do not believe he does this intentionally, by the way. I don't have time to respond to the other examples right now, but I will asap. Also, for whatever it is worth, I do not believe it is a waste of time to note these patterns.

Side note: I stand by my claim that I do not believe Steiner was 100% wrong about those topics.

[Cleric K]

"do you think that, for example, he might have been completely wrong that there's such thing as Saturn condition? Or etheric body? Or soul organs? Or higher beings?"

Keep in might that he has now claimed, "You said that you can as well imagine that none of that might exist."

Okay, so when Cleric asked me I believed Steiner could have been completely wrong about those phenomena, did I say 'yes?' I must have said yes if I claim that they could be 100% non-existant. Here is what I said:

"No, not completely wrong."

When I spoke about the above I had the following in mind from the same post:

Do any of the things listed [astral, etheric body, Saturn condition, etc.] feel as certain as the fact that you have thoughts, feelings and will? In other words, can you imagine switching on and off (true and false) the listed facts without this having any consequence for the way you experience your consciousness right now?

Yes, I can imagine that.

In all these dialogs I'm making a very simple point. To those who are not familiar with the nature of spiritual science, I can say that it builds upon direct perception of our inner life. That's why I asked above Do any of the things listed feel as certain as the fact that you have thoughts, feelings and will? This was not a random question. Practically these three soul faculties are our point of contact with the deeper strata of reality. I said many times that we're not some atomic being at the periphery of the physical realm - we're much more a slice of the full spectrum of reality (even though most of it is subconscious from the standpoint of ordinary daily consciousness). That's why when we deepen in self-knowledge it gradually turns out to be also world-knowledge. For this reason I asked if things like astral body, Saturn condition, etc. feel as certain as the existence of thoughts, feelings and will.

To say that any of these things can be switched on and off without any consequence for the way consciousness is experienced, simply shows that all of them are grasped only in completely abstract way. And that's fine. It's the only thing that I have pointed out in this dialog and furthermore, it is something which FB has said himself:

it means that that the whole body of spiritual science exists only as abstract thoughts.

Some of us believe there is no 'body of thought' that doesn't exist as abstract thoughts.

It's obvious that if we can say, for example "I can imagine switching thinking, feeling, willing, perceptions on and off and this wouldn't change anything in the way I experience consciousness", then we clearly have something quiet different in mind when we use these words. Our consciousness is weaved out of these soul forces, so it's obvious that it can't be the same if any of them were missing. If I can say that it would be all the same if any of them didn't exist, indicates that I'm speaking of something else and the words thinking, feeling, willing, are only abstract tokens in my mind for something outside consciousness.

It's the same with the terms of spiritual science. If we have penetrated into the reality of what is being spoken, then we begin to understand the spiritual world of which T, F, W are part and which we experience in our bodily life much in the way a sponge sucks in fluid from the environment. To say that it's all the same if there is or there is no Saturn condition is like saying it's all the same if there's such thing as will or not. In other words, the term Saturn condition is seen only as pure abstraction. And it is quite natural that when we hear these terms the first time we have no choice but stand before them as completely abstract concepts that may as well be pure fantasy. But the more we deepen our inner life, the more we discover the inner realities to which these words are only pointers, just as the word 'will' reflects something concrete from our inner experience.

All that has been stated here, ever since the PU thread, is that the only way one can claim that Schop and Steiner use different words for the same insights, is if all those words remain on the intellectual surface as pure abstractions. Because if we understand the depth of things, it's glaringly obvious that Schop and Steiner speak of diametrically opposite things. Schop sees the depths as blind unconscious World Will, Steiner says that the World Will is the fully conscious expression of higher spiritual beings, just like thinking is the fully conscious expression of our spiritual being.