Idealism, Materialism and Zen

[Eugene I.]

Thanks for your clarification James. By negation I meant that practitioners in Samadhi don't see any of those things as a separate thing, realising that every name or distinction is ultimately illusory.
The rest of what you wrote is in line with what I understand the Buddhist way to aim at: you are not interested in examining how the illusion works, you only intend to realise THAT it is an illusion. And I have no problem with that. My point is simply that the fact that you can realise that does not negate the fact that the illusion is there, and things happen/flow in an ordered manner. So why is it unreasonable to venture to also examine that aspect of existence? Why only be concerned with experiencing Being, and not look at what Becoming is and how it is taking place?

+1
Also to add, not all conceptual thinking (naming or making distinctions or having ideas) is always delusory, only some of it. It becomes delusory only if we take names and distinctions as representations of some "out-there" realities existing independently of those ideas, names or distinctions. In other words, if we realize that all names and distinctions are ideas and meanings only, then there is no problem with them. Thinking and ability to create and manipulate concepts and meanings is a beautiful and powerful ability of Consciousness, but it is also easy to misuse it, so we just need to learn how to use it properly rather than to run away from it in fear of getting delusional.

[AshvinP]

Thanks for your clarification James. By negation I meant that practitioners in Samadhi don't see any of those things as a separate thing, realising that every name or distinction is ultimately illusory.
The rest of what you wrote is in line with what I understand the Buddhist way to aim at: you are not interested in examining how the illusion works, you only intend to realise THAT it is an illusion. And I have no problem with that. My point is simply that the fact that you can realise that does not negate the fact that the illusion is there, and things happen/flow in an ordered manner. So why is it unreasonable to venture to also examine that aspect of existence? Why only be concerned with experiencing Being, and not look at what Becoming is and how it is taking place?

+1
Also to add, not all conceptual thinking (naming or making distinctions or having ideas) is always delusory, only some of it. It becomes delusory only if we take names and distinctions as representations of some "out-there" realities existing independently of those ideas, names or distinctions. In other words, if we realize that all names and distinctions are ideas and meanings only, then there is no problem with them. Thinking and ability to create and manipulate concepts and meanings is a beautiful and powerful ability of Consciousness, but it is also easy to misuse it, so we just need to learn how to use it properly rather than to run away from it in fear of getting delusional.

Let's be clear, this is the materialist/dualist position. It says that the qualities of meaning you experience when observing the world is "only idea", not to be mistaken for the objective reality "out there". And then it says, if the qualities of meaning relate to anything concretely spiritual, i.e. the sort of experiences expressed in ancient mythology, then it is automatically "delusional". There is no further logical reasoning of whether those spiritual facts are harmonious with the natural facts we observe. It is simply assumed that they cannot be harmonious under any circumstances. Actually, it is assumed they cannot "correspond" with the reality "out there", because the view from nowhere is employed.

Since you didn't answer my questions, I take it that you conceive intellectual concepts to be automatically more objective and "public" than imaginations, inspirations, and intutions, which are "mostly private". That is how you discussed them in your previous comment, and you responded nothing to indicate otherwise. We should also notice how this is the exact same inversion made by materialism/dualism. Western idealist philosophy has always recognized intuitions to be the most immediately shared ideations of human beings, including Kant. Our experience of space and time, for ex., are intuitions in that sense.

[JustinG]

When we imagine and cognize ideas that we sense and intuit from observing the world of forms, how do we know if they are not only our individuated or group ideas, but indeed have any relevance to the way these forms were created/manifested by those high-level beings who actually manifest them? This is an unresolved problem for SS, and Steiner himself failed in his application of SS many times because of this blind spot in the SS epistemological method (when he claimed his higher knowledge of some realities that in fact turned out to be only his own imaginations).

Eugene,

Do you think this could be a problem (or non-problem) which is not due to Steiner, but to the way he has been interpreted by Steinerians? I'm not familiar with the later Steiner so I don't know the answer, but some contemporary writers suggest this is a non-problem originating from many Steinerians reading Steiner too literally (https://www.routledge.com/The-Gnostic-W ... 0367733124):

Hudson wrote:
..Steiner offers his readers projective anthropology and projective cosmosophy, which, allied to appropriate practices, have the capacity to elicit and support significant changes to their physical and psychological organization. It follows, as he explains, that his spiritual teaching cannot be taken as literal information as if it referred to the physical world, even though many of his followers do take it in this way. Steiner insisted in many places that his esoteric teachings are spatial descriptions of spiritual realities. He also emphasized that his readers needed to suspend their natural tendency to regard such statements as ludicrous and fantastic because by doing so their thinking could become more “living” and “inwardly mobile.” Spiritual science, Steiner emphasized:

speaks to the will. Hence it is not understood by anyone who tries to grasp it by faith or as a theory. I have said to you that for anyone who reads my Occult Science as he would read a novel, passively giving himself to it, it is really only a thicket of words – and so are my other books. Only one who knows that in every moment of reading he must, out of the depths of his own soul, and through his most intimate willing, create something for which the books should be only a stimulus – only such a one can regard these books as musical scores out of which he can gain the experience in his own soul of the true piece of music. (Steiner 1949: 14)

In short, Steiner’s Anthroposophy is a body of material to be worked with, and not an independent mythology or a speculative metaphysics (Kühlewind 1992). The fact that the bodies Steiner describes are objects to be transformed by means of practices alerts the reader to the practical character of his teaching.

[AshvinP]

When we imagine and cognize ideas that we sense and intuit from observing the world of forms, how do we know if they are not only our individuated or group ideas, but indeed have any relevance to the way these forms were created/manifested by those high-level beings who actually manifest them? This is an unresolved problem for SS, and Steiner himself failed in his application of SS many times because of this blind spot in the SS epistemological method (when he claimed his higher knowledge of some realities that in fact turned out to be only his own imaginations).

Eugene,

Do you think this could be a problem (or non-problem) which is not due to Steiner, but to the way he has been interpreted by Steinerians? I'm not familiar with the later Steiner so I don't know the answer, but some contemporary writers suggest this is a non-problem originating from many Steinerians reading Steiner too literally (https://www.routledge.com/The-Gnostic-W ... 0367733124):

Hudson wrote:
..Steiner offers his readers projective anthropology and projective cosmosophy, which, allied to appropriate practices, have the capacity to elicit and support significant changes to their physical and psychological organization. It follows, as he explains, that his spiritual teaching cannot be taken as literal information as if it referred to the physical world, even though many of his followers do take it in this way. Steiner insisted in many places that his esoteric teachings are spatial descriptions of spiritual realities. He also emphasized that his readers needed to suspend their natural tendency to regard such statements as ludicrous and fantastic because by doing so their thinking could become more “living” and “inwardly mobile.” Spiritual science, Steiner emphasized:

speaks to the will. Hence it is not understood by anyone who tries to grasp it by faith or as a theory. I have said to you that for anyone who reads my Occult Science as he would read a novel, passively giving himself to it, it is really only a thicket of words – and so are my other books. Only one who knows that in every moment of reading he must, out of the depths of his own soul, and through his most intimate willing, create something for which the books should be only a stimulus – only such a one can regard these books as musical scores out of which he can gain the experience in his own soul of the true piece of music. (Steiner 1949: 14)

In short, Steiner’s Anthroposophy is a body of material to be worked with, and not an independent mythology or a speculative metaphysics (Kühlewind 1992). The fact that the bodies Steiner describes are objects to be transformed by means of practices alerts the reader to the practical character of his teaching.

Eugene and Justin,

Let's try to make these abstract claims more concrete to our living experience. Here is a claim that I can make (and I do make):

Claim: "We inhale meaning and exhale perceptions."

Metaphorical version: "breathing in and breathing out is a poetic image for integrating meaning and differentiating perception, which was used by ancient people and can still be used by us today, but we also know that's not actually what is happening and we shouldn't confuse the 'metaphor' for a literal claim."

Literal version: "my physical organism, with lungs, respiratory system, circulatory system, etc., is a partial reflective image of a spiritual being who inhales a 'substance' which we dimly know as 'meaning', transfigures it, and exhales it as forms that we perceive as physical things in the world around us".

If I am following your argument correctly, Justin, you conclude the literal claim is what "Steinarians" do, but not Steiner himself. The latter, in his early writing career, made such claims in the metaphorical way. Is that accurate?

[JustinG]

When we imagine and cognize ideas that we sense and intuit from observing the world of forms, how do we know if they are not only our individuated or group ideas, but indeed have any relevance to the way these forms were created/manifested by those high-level beings who actually manifest them? This is an unresolved problem for SS, and Steiner himself failed in his application of SS many times because of this blind spot in the SS epistemological method (when he claimed his higher knowledge of some realities that in fact turned out to be only his own imaginations).

Eugene,

Do you think this could be a problem (or non-problem) which is not due to Steiner, but to the way he has been interpreted by Steinerians? I'm not familiar with the later Steiner so I don't know the answer, but some contemporary writers suggest this is a non-problem originating from many Steinerians reading Steiner too literally (https://www.routledge.com/The-Gnostic-W ... 0367733124):

Hudson wrote:
..Steiner offers his readers projective anthropology and projective cosmosophy, which, allied to appropriate practices, have the capacity to elicit and support significant changes to their physical and psychological organization. It follows, as he explains, that his spiritual teaching cannot be taken as literal information as if it referred to the physical world, even though many of his followers do take it in this way. Steiner insisted in many places that his esoteric teachings are spatial descriptions of spiritual realities. He also emphasized that his readers needed to suspend their natural tendency to regard such statements as ludicrous and fantastic because by doing so their thinking could become more “living” and “inwardly mobile.” Spiritual science, Steiner emphasized:

In short, Steiner’s Anthroposophy is a body of material to be worked with, and not an independent mythology or a speculative metaphysics (Kühlewind 1992). The fact that the bodies Steiner describes are objects to be transformed by means of practices alerts the reader to the practical character of his teaching.

Eugene and Justin,

Let's try to make these abstract claims more concrete to our living experience. Here is a claim that I can make (and I do make):

Claim: "We inhale meaning and exhale perceptions."

Metaphorical version: "breathing in and breathing out is a poetic image for integrating meaning and differentiating perception, which was used by ancient people and can still be used by us today, but we also know that's not actually what is happening and we shouldn't confuse the 'metaphor' for a literal claim."

Literal version: "my physical organism, with lungs, respiratory system, circulatory system, etc., is a partial reflective image of a spiritual being who inhales a 'substance' which we dimly know as 'meaning', transfigures it, and exhales it as forms that we perceive as physical things in the world around us".

If I am following your argument correctly, Justin, you conclude the literal claim is what "Steinarians" do, but not Steiner himself. The latter, in his early writing career, made such claims in the metaphorical way. Is that accurate?

I'm not sure of how all the words in your literal version should be construed, so I'll differentiate with the following versions:

Claim: The mystic saw an angel

Metaphorical version: Whilst the mystic may have had visual apparitions of an angel and experienced a peak emotional state, we also know that's not actually what is happening and we shouldn't confuse the 'metaphor' for a literal claim.

Literal version: The angel is an objectively existing observer-independent entity and that is what the mystic saw.

Contextual version: The way of seeing structures what is seen, in the way captured by your quote from Kuhn:

In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved matrix of space...

Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world..

The mystic does see the angel but others do not, even though both are looking at the world.

My conclusion is that (following Hudson) many Steinerians follow the literal version and that the early Steiner follows the contextual version. I could be wrong on this issue, as I haven't investigated it much. I don't know about the later Steiner, but my reading of Hudson is that he thinks that the later Steiner also follows the contextual version.

[AshvinP]

I'm not sure of how all the words in your literal version should be construed, so I'll differentiate with the following versions:

Claim: The mystic saw an angel

Metaphorical version: Whilst the mystic may have had visual apparitions of an angel and experienced a peak emotional state, we also know that's not actually what is happening and we shouldn't confuse the 'metaphor' for a literal claim.

Literal version: The angel is an objectively existing observer-independent entity and that is what the mystic saw.

Contextual version: The way of seeing structures what is seen, in the way captured by your quote from Kuhn:

In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved matrix of space...

Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world..

The mystic does see the angel but others do not, even though both are looking at the world.

My conclusion is that (following Hudson) many Steinerians follow the literal version and that the early Steiner follows the contextual version. I could be wrong on this issue, as I haven't investigated it much. I don't know about the later Steiner, but my reading of Hudson is that he thinks that the later Steiner also follows the contextual version.

Justin,

I was trying to make it less abstract. "Mystic" and "angel" are still vague as to meaning, removed from our personal sense-experience. My claim was about our actual breathing process, inhaling and exhaling. I was writing about this recently in the context of VR essay, so I will post an excerpt here:

This inhalation of meaning and exhalation of perception is what we are literally doing to communicate an idea. Whether the meaning is exhaled as a word-form in sound (voice), a musical down-beat (which is also sound), or a visual beat-cube in the virtual environment, does not change the essence of what is occurring. The metaphors we come up with in language are used to point to this literal meaning, not the other way around. For example, we say that we are "gathering our thoughts" prior to communicating an idea. That is a metaphor for inhaling meaning prior to exhaling perception. The issue here is not the literality, but the idolizing of "inhaling" and "exhaling" into purely physical processes which lack a qualitative (meaningful) dimension. As discussed in the previous essay, the physical processes are only partial reflections of the meaningful ideational activity

The same thing is going on with the mystic seeing an angel. The problem is our own conflation of "seeing" things with a purely physical act of perception. That is how our intellect sees the world, so we assume Steiner or others are using "seeing" in the same way when speaking of perceptions in the spiritual realms. In that sense, Hudson is correct. But the confusion has nothing to do with what objectively exists and what is only "subjective". The angel, assuming it is not complete hallucination, does actually exist as a spiritual being. This is perfectly clear in Steiner's later writings which refer to earlier ones, even in the autobiography Cleric shared. The fact that we are always perceiving from first-person relational perspective does not negate the objective reality of meaningful constellations of qualities, best described by the intellect with the word "angel", which can be verified by others.

Re: Kuhn quote - it was pointing to the fact that the seemingly opposite paradigms of the two scientists can be harmonized at a higher paridigmatic level which is perceived, not by endless intellectual speculation, but vertical movment of Thinking to more integrated layers of meaning for the shared phenomena of experience. A paradigm shift always involves a movement of Thinking activity which we have no prior familiarity with. (which is not to say that activity didn't exist before, but we were not conscious of its existence).

[Eugene I.]

Eugene,

Do you think this could be a problem (or non-problem) which is not due to Steiner, but to the way he has been interpreted by Steinerians? I'm not familiar with the later Steiner so I don't know the answer, but some contemporary writers suggest this is a non-problem originating from many Steinerians reading Steiner too literally (https://www.routledge.com/The-Gnostic-W ... 0367733124):

I don't know enough about anthroposophy to make such judgement. But the fact is, Steiner himself, during his esoteric post-PoF period, made quite a few mistakes claiming high-cognition clairvoyant knowledge of some spiritual realities that turned out to be only his (or perhaps some collective) imaginations without critically verifying his claims (I gave some examples of it in other threads). This points to this epistemological flaw even in Steiner's own approach to SS.

[Jim Cross]

Eugene,

Do you think this could be a problem (or non-problem) which is not due to Steiner, but to the way he has been interpreted by Steinerians? I'm not familiar with the later Steiner so I don't know the answer, but some contemporary writers suggest this is a non-problem originating from many Steinerians reading Steiner too literally (https://www.routledge.com/The-Gnostic-W ... 0367733124):

I don't know enough about anthroposophy to make such judgement. But the fact is, Steiner himself, during his esoteric post-PoF period, made quite a few mistakes claiming high-cognition clairvoyant knowledge of some spiritual realities that turned out to be only his (or perhaps some collective) imaginations without critically verifying his claims (I gave some examples of it in other threads). This points to this epistemological flaw even in Steiner's own approach to SS.

Eugene,

I'm surprised you are still debating Steiner. I thought you had abandoned that. My impression of Steiner has been that he an unoriginal thinker who just mashed together a bunch of esoteric beliefs and Eastern philosophy (misunderstood in places) . Any claims of clairvoyant knowledge hardly anyone would take seriously. But I guess I can understand the appeal to some people. If I had to pick between BK and Steiner, it would be BK all the way.

[Ben Iscatus]

Hey Jim -happy new year! I love your provocative and combative contributions! Keep it up.

[AshvinP]

Eugene,

Do you think this could be a problem (or non-problem) which is not due to Steiner, but to the way he has been interpreted by Steinerians? I'm not familiar with the later Steiner so I don't know the answer, but some contemporary writers suggest this is a non-problem originating from many Steinerians reading Steiner too literally (https://www.routledge.com/The-Gnostic-W ... 0367733124):

I don't know enough about anthroposophy to make such judgement. But the fact is, Steiner himself, during his esoteric post-PoF period, made quite a few mistakes claiming high-cognition clairvoyant knowledge of some spiritual realities that turned out to be only his (or perhaps some collective) imaginations without critically verifying his claims (I gave some examples of it in other threads). This points to this epistemological flaw even in Steiner's own approach to SS.

Eugene,

I'm surprised you are still debating Steiner. I thought you had abandoned that. My impression of Steiner has been that he an unoriginal thinker who just mashed together a bunch of esoteric beliefs and Eastern philosophy (misunderstood in places) . Any claims of clairvoyant knowledge hardly anyone would take seriously. But I guess I can understand the appeal to some people. If I had to pick between BK and Steiner, it would be BK all the way.

It should be a wake up call that the most unabashedly physicalist thinker on this forum, who cannot understand this silly "idealism" stuff, also feels spiritual claims cannot be taken seriously under any circumstances. It's for exactly the same reason - everything that is physical, everything in the world of quantitative shadows, is taken as "objective" and "public" knowledge, while qualitative ideas - especially imaginations, inspirations, intuitions - weaved through our logical reasoning, is "private" and "subjective" wishy-washy speculations and fantasies. I think we can all agree that BK perceives this total inversion that physicalism makes very clearly. Our criticism is that he simply doesn't take it seriously enough - he doesn't continue logically reasoning to perceive how this same inverted logic is implicit in analytic idealism as well. But, at the very least, we can avoid lapsing completely back into physicalism and dualism, like our friend Jim here