Cleric and Eugene on "Thinking" and The Central Topic

[Soul_of_Shu]

...envisioning the complete arrangement of the elements in a dream. I seem to recall that the double helix structure of DNA also came in a dream. Those dream generating firing neurons are clever little buggers. Maybe it'll come to some neuroscientist in a dream how that works
But we digress.

No, I think that's relevant. It's often said how such inspiration comes after focusing on a problem for a long time, then letting it go so that the answer comes in when you've stopped intellectualising it. I've noticed this myself (nothing significant for humanity of course!).

Yes, I suppose it's relevant enough. Anyway, seeing as I won't pretend to preempt where this discussion is headed, big surprise, into Eugene's obsession with discrediting the clairvoyant Steiner as a fraud, and I guess, by extension, discrediting Cleric, as spewing pseudo-scientific nonsense, a position that both Jim and Eugene would share, that being followed by Ashvin in turn discrediting Eugene as anti-Thinking, as Thinking is presented in PoF, I suppose we're doomed to have it all echoed here again, even as I thought we'd established the ironic contradiction that Steiner could at once be utterly brilliant, and utterly fallible, hardly unique in that regard, as evidenced by some bewildering notion about the effect that negro novels can have on pregnant women, seeming the product of a thinking process that is the complete antithesis of what is presented in PoF. Frankly, I'm really tired of the beating of that dead horse, but on and on and on it goes.

[Ben Iscatus]

Frankly, I'm really tired of the beating of that dead horse, but on and on and on it goes.

Almost makes you want to retreat into emptifulness, eh Dana?

[AshvinP]

Why would spiritual science be necessary if physicalist secular science had already figured out the "meanings of human biology", i.e. "rich and intricate world of microbiological processes", and was heading in the right direction to discovering "much new knowledge and so many new meanings"??

Not sure about 'clairvoyance', or what the difference might be, but insights that come to 'physicalist' scientists in dreams have been the source of new knowledge and meanings, just one example being Dmitri Mendeleev, who created the periodic table foundational to our understanding of chemistry, after envisioning the complete arrangement of the elements in a dream. I seem to recall that the double helix structure of DNA also came in a dream. Those dream generating firing neurons are clever little buggers. Maybe it'll come to some neuroscientist in a dream how that works

But we digress.

Yes but those things do not by themselves tell us the essence of what we are dealing with, right? The periodic elements have no living qualities as inert standalone physical 'things". Same for DNA. They provide useful ontology only to the person who knows to treat them as mineralized symbols for living ideal processes which can never be derived from physicalist scientific method. That is the position of SS, at least, which Eugene has failed to understand this entire time while raging against it.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Frankly, I'm really tired of the beating of that dead horse, but on and on and on it goes.

Almost makes you want to retreat into emptifulness, eh Dana?

Well, at times one does feel like some exiled refugee from one's home state, somehow self-promoted to watch over the camp.

However, Steiner be damned, if we might dare to push on, I'll pose a question: how do such visionary dreams as mentioned above relate to Thinking, if in the sleeping state they seem to be bypassing what passes for thinking?

[Cleric K]

Yes, I suppose it's relevant enough. Anyway, seeing as I won't pretend to preempt where this discussion is headed, big surprise, into Eugene's obsession with discrediting the clairvoyant Steiner as a fraud, and I guess, by extension, discrediting Cleric, as spewing pseudo-scientific nonsense, a position that both Jim and Eugene would share, that being followed by Ashvin in turn discrediting Eugene as anti-Thinking, as Thinking is presented in PoF, I suppose we're doomed to have it all echoed here again, even as I thought we'd established the ironic contradiction that Steiner could at once be utterly brilliant, and utterly fallible, hardly unique in that regard, as evidenced by some bewildering notion about the effect that negro novels can have on pregnant women, seeming the product of a thinking process that is the complete antithesis of what is presented in PoF. Frankly, I'm really tired of the beating of that dead horse, but on and on and on it goes.

As I hinted above, we can learn from everyone's mistakes. I could elaborate on the novel controversy but I suppose it will turn into a nuclear war. The important thing is to realize if RS was simply full of hatred towards non-whites and was simply trying to insult them or he had something else in mind which alas was expressed in non-wise manner, seen today as inadmissible.

Leaving the concrete details aside, the first weeks of pregnancy are tremendously important. This is not only RS's claim, it can be found in other places too and will be confirmed more and more in the future. It's only because of the ruling materialistic conceptions of today, that it's dismissed that the ideas going through the aura of the woman have any effect on the growing baby. Today it's already clear that the emotional state of the woman has consequences because there's clear evidence for how this plays out on hormonal level, which of course directly affects the fetus in their common blood stream. The question about the ideas that the mother nourishes is not yet easily assessible and thus the woman is considered innocent until proven otherwise.

It's not necessary to focus on ethnographic novels. We can speak also, just as a random example, about something like Agatha Christie's criminal novels or Stephen King's horror works. They are clearly white-skinned. It's not about who made them but about what kind of ideas and feelings pass through the mother's aura as the fetus develops. We can symbolically picture this as the way wood year rings imprint the conditions of every season. Some authors call this spiritual galvanoplasty. Everything that the mother experiences during pregnancy - especially in the early weeks - has strong influence on the child's etheric body which forms the embryo. These effect may not be so strong such that they alter gene expression in very unusual ways but they certainly leave their imprint on the child's thinking and feeling substance. Reading criminal or horror novels during pregnancy won't remain without consequences for the growing baby. Imagine what it would be to experience growing of prenatal consciousness in an environment of horrific figures, subhuman desires and the likes. The baby really lives in this astral and etheric atmosphere, breathes it and it leaves its imprints for the coming life.

These are serious things. Now people will say "prove that!" Well, the proof is all around us. It's transparently clear that humans are weak, they can't control their thoughts, their feelings, their actions. The problem is that no one asks why, in the sense which alone can bring answers. All kinds of psychiatric drugs are sought to fix ADHD and what not. We can solve these problems only when we deepen our cognition and recognize how the human being if formed out the whole environment. Clearly, if we assume that the spiritual environment is behind the veil and it is our job to stay strictly on the inner side, it's obvious that problems for which the causes lie behind the veil are destined to perpetuate, while we imagine that to be God's will.

[AshvinP]

Why would spiritual science be necessary if physicalist secular science had already figured out the "meanings of human biology", i.e. "rich and intricate world of microbiological processes", and was heading in the right direction to discovering "much new knowledge and so many new meanings"??

Not sure about 'clairvoyance', or what the difference might be, but insights that come to 'physicalist' scientists in dreams have been the source of new knowledge and meanings, just one example being Dmitri Mendeleev, who created the periodic table foundational to our understanding of chemistry, after envisioning the complete arrangement of the elements in a dream. I seem to recall that the double helix structure of DNA also came in a dream. Those dream generating firing neurons are clever little buggers. Maybe it'll come to some neuroscientist in a dream how that works

But we digress.

Yes but those things do not by themselves tell us the essence of what we are dealing with, right? The periodic elements have no living qualities as inert standalone physical 'things". Same for DNA. They provide useful ontology only to the person who knows to treat them as mineralized symbols for living ideal processes which can never be derived from physicalist scientific method. That is the position of SS, at least, which Eugene has failed to understand this entire time while raging against it.

This also reminds me of a response I wanted to post to Cleric's comment on Gratitude thread, but I may as well post it here.

We can send our intentions like if saying "Living beings, I'm going to leave my home now. I'll be moving through you and I'll be making ripples within you. I'll meet many formless and formed of you along the way. Please accommodate my journey. Please help me not step on the flowers that you have sown. Help me to be awake and vigilant. Warn me if I'm going astray in whatever way you find appropriate. Point my attention to the things that I shall notice and learn from. Help me do something beneficial for the Garden we're all working on."

I know that the above will sound deeply disturbing to many. Most will think "Living beings? I'm not speaking to fantasies!" Yet this is the only way we can move from abstractions to reality.

All of us who have not evolved spiritual sight need to be honest with ourselves intellectually - this above is what we want to ignore the most. We have no problem speaking of spiritual beings as long as it remains intellectual theory about "angels, demons, daemons", this, that, and the other. Then when it comes to matters of "science", socieconomics, politics, culture, etc., we find ways of rationalizing to ourselves that these intellectual spiritual beings have nothing to do with it. And they do have nothing to do with it, but only from our particularly limited perspective. We cannot perceive their activities weaving through the physical plane, so then the rule becomes, "out of sight, out of mind" and out of all serious consideration. What Cleric just wrote above about mothers and pregnancy will once again sound like complete rubbish, or fanciful speculation at best, to the person who holds these things as only intellectual theories.

We do that to keep these things at many arms-lengths, comfortably removed from our daily experience of the world content. Dana, this is exactly where discovering our spiritual activity of Thinking fits in. It is about resurrecting our deadened intellectual concepts into their natural concrete life through that living Thinking. It is about allowing them to evolve within our living ecosystem of ideas, rather than remain flattened mineralized pictures we endlessly rearrange to convince ourselves we have great understanding of natural phenomena (secular science). We will never gain an understanding for these things if we are content to do that, to "leave well enough alone", which is really neither well nor enough for anyone who has concretized the soul-spirit activities we are always speaking of.

As I have made clear many times, I am also someone constantly at risk of lapsing into the above mentality if I don't continually put effort into perceiving something higher than myself, however dimly at first, so that I can evolve into something higher.

[Eugene I.]

Eugene, this is getting tiring for me. You asked many time and I always give answers but you're not looking for answers - you're looking for ways to refute the answers. And one can always find such ways, even if they are simple and flat out denial. I've spoken several times about the nature of Steiner's errors, for example here. I recently spoke about the obsession with proof and its completely irrational character. You keep throwing around few sentences which you even didn't discover through your own research in RS's work but simply copied when you googled 'steiner racism'. I can speak in details even about these things but it's of no use. The thing is that when we understand the principles of higher cognition we can understand also the nature of such contradictions. Then even Steiner's mistakes become source of knowledge in the exactly same way it is in normal science. When your electrical circuit malfunctions you don't tear your diploma and abandon science. You simply investigate and find the exact nature of the problem, which in itself leads to even more knowledge. I can get into very interesting details about the blood question which explain why he projected things in such a way. Without these insights we can never comprehend, for example, the nature of blushing or turning pale, which are obviously related to blood circulation and feelings that most strongly affect the "I". These things are completely inexplicable for the mystic. They remain part of the nebulous panorama of 'blending'.

Of course I was not asking about 100% proofs, they are impossible for anything. I was simply asking about any facts or evidences. Apparently there is none to support Steiner's clairvoyance, and the long tirade above is only about avoiding to accept this simple fact.

On another note, you are right that many practices focus on the passive meta-cognition (funnel) mode, and to attain a full degree of meta-cognition we need to also enhance it to thinking and willing, in other words, know our thinking and willing, think and will consciously.

But I'm still amazed how you despise the human form and human life labeling it "Divine misery" and "what is here to learn?", rejecting this amazing and beautiful place called Earth and amazing human form that opens so many opportunities to experience, learn and develop in so many dimensions - creative, agapic, esthetic, emotional, intellectual and others, in spite of and actually catalyzed by the presence of the "veil", and then integrate it and bring back to the noncorporeal levels. Listen to this music - don't you appreciate its unique beauty that could only be created and appreciated in human "veiled" form with human emotions? Of course human form involves a lot of misery, delusion and suffering, humans are very hard to deal with (me especially ), and many people hate it and want to escape even before they die, it is understandable. But would not it be better to actually learn how to use this opportunity to be a human four our development while we are still here in this human form instead of knocking on the "veiled" door and screaming "let me out of this terrible place!"?

[Soul_of_Shu]

As I hinted above, we can learn from everyone's mistakes.

I've little interest in dwelling on, or finding ways to spin-doctor Steiner's mistakes. Suffice to say he made some not insignificant ones. But again, having listened to what was offered in PoF, and finding it resonant with what I've eclectically gleaned before ever delving into Steiner, and that it even can augment what I've previously gleaned, and thus further benefit one's understandings, then whatever mistakes he made due to whatever fallible thinking he was still prone to, PoF notwithstanding, in no way changes that resonance or beneficence. Beyond that, I'm not inclined to delve much further into Steiner, and much prefer to grant Cleric the opportunity to carry on where my Steiner exploration left off.

[Eugene I.]

It's not about Steiner's mistakes, but about the fact that his method of "breaking through the veil" is a false promise and wishful thinking (and that is exactly why he made so many mistakes). But heck, there have been so many false promises in the human history, here is just another one for anyone who wants to fool themselves in believing in another fairytale. Notwithstanding, there is definitely a lot of value and useful insights in his PoF and practice. Meta-cognitive knowing of our own thinking and willing is definitely one of them.

[Soul_of_Shu]

It's not about Steiner's mistakes, but about the fact that his method of "breaking through the veil" is a false promise and wishful thinking (and that is exactly why he made so many mistakes). But heck, there have been so many false promises in the human history, here is just another one for anyone who wants to fool themselves in believing in another fairytale. Notwithstanding, there is definitely a lot of value and useful insights in his PoF and practice. Meta-cognitive knowing of our own thinking and willing is definitely one of them.

More and more I'm finding it hard to distinguish between the above comment and Jim's comments. To say that it's not about dwelling on the mistakes but about pointing out the original 'mistake' of positing that integral Thinking is the key to parsing the deeper meanings and ideations beyond the 'veil' of dualistic thinking, and that is why he made some mistakes, is just so contradictory as to make me doubt your own fallible thinking process. If anything, Steiner made some mistakes because, being fallible, he did not always live up to the ideal of what was presented in PoF. To which I can only add, yet again, however brilliant he was, the guy was still fallible, like the rest of us. Get over it.