I feel like Bernardo is getting carried away in a scary direction

[Shaibei]

I have the same "proof" of it as I do for anything I know - my exeprience and reason. The fact is, everything in our experience is 'counterfactual' and 'untestable' in the modern sense. The claim that I exist and experience the world is as well. Absolute proof is impossible - one can always speculate my existence is an illusion. Does this make my claim a mere belief rather than genuine knowledge? There is no view that can stand apart from the Cosmos, looking at it unfolding from frame to frame, and say "the external order matches up with my internal order". When we ask for proof in that sense, we are asking for something which has no relation to first-person reality, only to our own abstract conceptualization of it. That holds for any propositional claim to "truth".

What we actually do is seek out new ideas which harmonize the facts of observation more than our previous ideas. This is how we pursue everything from our daily activities to systematic philosophy and science and say we have gained genuine "knowledge" in the process. At any given time, new facts of observation could upend previous ideas and force them to adapt. So my idea that the order within my Willing-Feeling-Thinking is intimately connected with the Cosmic order I perceive is one reasoned from first-person experience. It is reasoned from the first-person perception of meaning which permeates all the outer and inner forms of that experience. New facts of experience will force my idea to adapt and evolve, IF I continue reasoning through them, but any reasoned ideas will not be completely dismantled if the Reality is, in fact, unified.

Otherwise, if I don't continue reasoning, my ideas will hit the "impenetrable" Kantian limit, which only exists and is impenetrable because my abstract intellect declared it to be. When you say "reason and meaning are not necessarily correlative", consider what is implied. It is implied that your conception of "reason" as abstract intellectual thinking is the full essence of Reason (and Thinking) as such. It is failing to account for the limitations of our own thinking, as you say. We assume our small "t" thinking has exhaustively conceptualized our higher Thinking and use that as the basis for denying the otherwise intuitive connection between Reason which discerns meaning. We try to substitute "willing" or "feeling" in the West, or "pure awareness" in the East, as the faculty which discerns meaning. These things happen really often. It is a mental habit we are so accustomed to, that it is very hard to notice. It becomes an implicit claim to God-like knowledge about the limits of God-given thinking.

When discussing the limitations or non-limitations of thinking there is more than one aspect to consider.
For example, our thinking is limited by the fact that we forget things. If there is anyone who claims to remember everything, he has the burden of proof.
In the context of idealism, a significant difference between our thinking and that of M@L stands out, in that our thinking does not create objects.

In your discussion, you touch on the point of contention between Steiner and Kant, but ignore other aspects, like the ones I mentioned.
If my thinking were to create objects I would a priori know the laws of nature and not have to synthesize between my thinking and what my senses perceive. This synthesis begets scientific theories and other scientific theories that refute the first. How do we know we have reached the last point from which we can declare "there is nowhere else to progress"? we don't.
The problem is less in science, because even if we offer a model that works but does not give the full description of reality, wecan get along with it. The problem starts when someone claims to "see" the meaning behind the events of reality and argues that his statement has inter-subjective importance.

I know, for example, one who claimed to be a seer and declared that Theodor Herzl's vision of the State of Israel is delusional. And why is that? Because the establishment of such a state did not fit with his anthroposophical narrative. Well, it happens that this State saved the lives of many during WW2 and this "seer" was stuck in his own subjective imagination. Therefore one should always be careful.

What is being ignored here is the depth structure. Thinking is not all or nothing, omnipotence or abstract representations. Rather it is an entire gradient of meaningful discernment. Thinking allows for the formation of memories. Every previous state of being becomes potentially accessible memory for our thinking faculty to access. So your objection above is, "thinking gives us memory but not totally conscious memory right away, so it's fundamentally limited". This ignores the fact that every skill is acquired gradually over time via discipline and effort. It isn't all or nothing. It reminds me of this quote from Ayn Rand channeling Nietsche.

"Even apart from the fact that Kant’s theory of the “categories” as the source of man’s concepts was a preposterous invention, his argument amounted to a negation, not only of man’s consciousness, but of any consciousness, of consciousness as such. His argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means and no others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is blind, because he has eyes—deaf, because he has ears—deluded, because he has a mind—and the things he perceives do not exist, because he perceives them."

The same goes for creation of objects and knowing the laws of nature (or creating them). We do know that there is an intimate connection between our thinking and the structure of the phenomenal world. Science has practically confirmed what Barfield called "figuration" and Coleridge called "primary imagination" which mediates between meaning and perception. We are not fully conscious of that object-forming capacity right now. That is no reason to forsake the possibility of ever becoming conscious of it.

Again, you are implicitly adopting the "view from nowhere" when saying we synthesize what we think with what we perceive. Thinking is a sense-organ which perceives meaning. We are not matching up thoughts to sense data which is already complete, but bringing that sense data to completion by perceiving the meaningful element. Same for asking how we know if we have reached the final knowledge. If we still experience time and perception, that means there is still more to know, because there is still deeper meaning to mine.

The fact that the entire subconscious has not been made conscious yet also isn't a logical objection to the nature or potential of thinking. Thinking is what gives us the very possibility of making the subconscious more conscious. And the anecdote about the "seer" has no relevance either. I know people who have claimed to use their eyes when making up stories about what they saw. Does that fact reflect on the very essence and limits of vision? This objection also presupposes Reason is not equal to the task of evaluating claims to knowledge, even though that is what it is always doing and how any field of knwoeldge advances. The conclusion you desire to reach about Reason is embedded in your assumption and you have traveled in a circle back to your own assumption.

You ignore the obvious, that our thinking as human beings can be wrong.
You set as a goal a different consciousness from what we know. Consciousness beyond time and space. We do not know such a consciousness, and it must be proved that it can be attained. As long as it is not attained it stands as an unproven ideal. You can say "I believe this kind of consciousness exists", but you choose to make unjustified use of words.
So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

[Hedge90]

So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

That's my main problem with Steiner. His lectures and writings seem coherent and I'd be really tempted to study him in detail, but the fact that he made several - in his view definitely true - statements that turned out to be factually wrong raise too much doubt in me. It's possible that he in fact (re)discovered much that is true, but in these matters it takes a single wrongly made claim allegedly reached via means of absolue knowing that result in the collapse of the system, there being no other means of verifying a claim than investigating it for yourself. And I haven't yet read an answer from Ashvin to resolve this problem in a satisfactory manner.

[AshvinP]

You ignore the obvious, that our thinking as human beings can be wrong.
You set as a goal a different consciousness from what we know. Consciousness beyond time and space. We do not know such a consciousness, and it must be proved that it can be attained. As long as it is not attained it stands as an unproven ideal. You can say "I believe this kind of consciousness exists", but you choose to make unjustified use of words.
So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

It should really go without saying the philosophical and phenomenological argument for the role and capacity (or lack of arbitrary limitation) of Thinking is independent of Steiner and his spiritual outlook or claims. The lack of logical connection there should be obvious. Plenty of thinkers have recognized the evolution of cognition over the last few thousand years, and how experience of spatial dimension unfolded through that evolution. Plenty of thinkers have recognized that spatial dimension is not fundamental, because that is a necessary conclusion of metaphysical idealism. It is also being confirmed by modern science is various ways. So the person who wants to challenge this entire depth structure of cognitive evolution, and the fact that abstract intellectual representation has only been with us for a few centuries, must contend with the substance of the arguments. That person cannot say, "this guy used his higher thinking to claim that and was wrong, therefore we must discard the possibility of higher cognition existing for our ancestors and for current humanity." We also can't say, "I can't personally understand how non-representational cognition functions, so it must not exist." It is solid conclusion of history and anthropology that our ancestors perceived Cosmos and Nature imbued with spirits and gods and fluid archetypal meaning. This fact must be contended with.

Besides that, there is a habit of referencing Steiner's spiritual claims without any context or any attempt to understand the overall spiritual framework in which the claim is being made and, therefore, in which the claim can only be evaluated. We can't deny spiritual reality, as Steiner understood it, and then evaluate his spiritual claims in a context devoid of that spiritual reality. A vision for a Jewish nation rooted in purely political and theological hopes has, in fact, proven to be impossible, or at least much more difficult than was naively imagined in the early 20th century. It has practically become a naive cliche to now speak of "peace in the middle east" precisely for that reason. The reason is the same as for all other Utopian visions - the concrete reality of spiritual evolution is ignored. The rational intellect and its knowledge of how to organize human relations is overestimated and idolized. People desire to maintain hard ethnic and racial affiliations while what is universal to the human soul needs to shine forth. Such endeavors will always result in disaster over time. If you are saying Steiner claimed a Jewish nation would never even form as a political entity for any amount of time, I would like to have a reference with the full context of the alleged claim.

[Shaibei]

You ignore the obvious, that our thinking as human beings can be wrong.
You set as a goal a different consciousness from what we know. Consciousness beyond time and space. We do not know such a consciousness, and it must be proved that it can be attained. As long as it is not attained it stands as an unproven ideal. You can say "I believe this kind of consciousness exists", but you choose to make unjustified use of words.
So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

It should really go without saying the philosophical and phenomenological argument for the role and capacity (or lack of arbitrary limitation) of Thinking is independent of Steiner and his spiritual outlook or claims. The lack of logical connection there should be obvious. Plenty of thinkers have recognized the evolution of cognition over the last few thousand years, and how experience of spatial dimension unfolded through that evolution. Plenty of thinkers have recognized that spatial dimension is not fundamental, because that is a necessary conclusion of metaphysical idealism. It is also being confirmed by modern science is various ways. So the person who wants to challenge this entire depth structure of cognitive evolution, and the fact that abstract intellectual representation has only been with us for a few centuries, must contend with the substance of the arguments. That person cannot say, "this guy used his higher thinking to claim that and was wrong, therefore we must discard the possibility of higher cognition existing for our ancestors and for current humanity." We also can't say, "I can't personally understand how non-representational cognition functions, so it must not exist." It is solid conclusion of history and anthropology that our ancestors perceived Cosmos and Nature imbued with spirits and gods and fluid archetypal meaning. This fact must be contended with.

Besides that, there is a habit of referencing Steiner's spiritual claims without any context or any attempt to understand the overall spiritual framework in which the claim is being made and, therefore, in which the claim can only be evaluated. We can't deny spiritual reality, as Steiner understood it, and then evaluate his spiritual claims in a context devoid of that spiritual reality. A vision for a Jewish nation rooted in purely political and theological hopes has, in fact, proven to be impossible, or at least much more difficult than was naively imagined in the early 20th century. It has practically become a naive cliche to now speak of "peace in the middle east" precisely for that reason. The reason is the same as for all other Utopian visions - the concrete reality of spiritual evolution is ignored. The rational intellect and its knowledge of how to organize human relations is overestimated and idolized. People desire to maintain hard ethnic and racial affiliations while what is universal to the human soul needs to shine forth. Such endeavors will always result in disaster over time. If you are saying Steiner claimed a Jewish nation would never even form as a political entity for any amount of time, I would like to have a reference with the full context of the alleged claim.

Since you continue to use the term "abstract thinking" like Steiner I see no reason not to address his claims. No one disputes the importance of thinking and the development of thinking, but you didn't prove thinking has no limits. The many debates in the forum are just one evidence of the limitations of thinking.
You are making an argument about a different kind of consciousness that we do not experience as if it were proof of something. An ideal is good, but acting as if you have already realized the ideal does not contribute anything, on the contrary. Science is advancing because it recognizes the imperfections of its models. But he who claims to "know" has nowhere to advance.
And if he claims he "sees" and "knows" we will check it through thinking. It seems to me it was inevitable that Steiner's controversy over Kant brought him to the place of "Mr. Knows All." The man does not know how to use the phrase "I do not know". There are all kinds of examples of this. For example, things he writes about the Bible. Or a lecture he has given on Kabbalah which clearly shows that he is discussing a subject with which he has no minimal acquaintance. He can't restrain himself, instead of admitting he does not know and saving himself embarrassment.

Silly ideas can be forgiven. Not when it comes to the fate of people. In retrospect, we understand how blind he was when he appealed to the Jews not to accept the "hallucinations" of Herzl and Nordau regarding a state for the Jews, which was a refuge for many in World War II. And so he writes in "'Die Sehnsucht der Juden nach Palästina' In 1897:
"I consider the antisemites to be harmless people. The best of them are like children. They want something to blame for their woes. ... Much worse than the antisemites are the heartless leaders of the Jews who are tired of Europe, Herzl and Nordau. They exaggerate an unpleasant childishness into a world-historical trend; they pretend that a harmless squabble is a terrible roar of cannons. They are seducers and tempters of their people"

[AshvinP]

You ignore the obvious, that our thinking as human beings can be wrong.
You set as a goal a different consciousness from what we know. Consciousness beyond time and space. We do not know such a consciousness, and it must be proved that it can be attained. As long as it is not attained it stands as an unproven ideal. You can say "I believe this kind of consciousness exists", but you choose to make unjustified use of words.
So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

It should really go without saying the philosophical and phenomenological argument for the role and capacity (or lack of arbitrary limitation) of Thinking is independent of Steiner and his spiritual outlook or claims. The lack of logical connection there should be obvious. Plenty of thinkers have recognized the evolution of cognition over the last few thousand years, and how experience of spatial dimension unfolded through that evolution. Plenty of thinkers have recognized that spatial dimension is not fundamental, because that is a necessary conclusion of metaphysical idealism. It is also being confirmed by modern science is various ways. So the person who wants to challenge this entire depth structure of cognitive evolution, and the fact that abstract intellectual representation has only been with us for a few centuries, must contend with the substance of the arguments. That person cannot say, "this guy used his higher thinking to claim that and was wrong, therefore we must discard the possibility of higher cognition existing for our ancestors and for current humanity." We also can't say, "I can't personally understand how non-representational cognition functions, so it must not exist." It is solid conclusion of history and anthropology that our ancestors perceived Cosmos and Nature imbued with spirits and gods and fluid archetypal meaning. This fact must be contended with.

Besides that, there is a habit of referencing Steiner's spiritual claims without any context or any attempt to understand the overall spiritual framework in which the claim is being made and, therefore, in which the claim can only be evaluated. We can't deny spiritual reality, as Steiner understood it, and then evaluate his spiritual claims in a context devoid of that spiritual reality. A vision for a Jewish nation rooted in purely political and theological hopes has, in fact, proven to be impossible, or at least much more difficult than was naively imagined in the early 20th century. It has practically become a naive cliche to now speak of "peace in the middle east" precisely for that reason. The reason is the same as for all other Utopian visions - the concrete reality of spiritual evolution is ignored. The rational intellect and its knowledge of how to organize human relations is overestimated and idolized. People desire to maintain hard ethnic and racial affiliations while what is universal to the human soul needs to shine forth. Such endeavors will always result in disaster over time. If you are saying Steiner claimed a Jewish nation would never even form as a political entity for any amount of time, I would like to have a reference with the full context of the alleged claim.

Since you continue to use the term "abstract thinking" like Steiner I see no reason not to address his claims. No one disputes the importance of thinking and the development of thinking, but you didn't prove thinking has no limits. The many debates in the forum are just one evidence of the limitations of thinking.
You are making an argument about a different kind of consciousness that we do not experience as if it were proof of something. An ideal is good, but acting as if you have already realized the ideal does not contribute anything, on the contrary. Science is advancing because it recognizes the imperfections of its models. But he who claims to "know" has nowhere to advance.
And if he claims he "sees" and "knows" we will check it through thinking. It seems to me it was inevitable that Steiner's controversy over Kant brought him to the place of "Mr. Knows All." The man does not know how to use the phrase "I do not know". There are all kinds of examples of this. For example, things he writes about the Bible. Or a lecture he has given on Kabbalah which clearly shows that he is discussing a subject with which he has no minimal acquaintance. He can't restrain himself, instead of admitting he does not know and saving himself embarrassment.

Silly ideas can be forgiven. Not when it comes to the fate of people. In retrospect, we understand how blind he was when he appealed to the Jews not to accept the "hallucinations" of Herzl and Nordau regarding a state for the Jews, which was a refuge for many in World War II. And so he writes in "'Die Sehnsucht der Juden nach Palästina' In 1897:
"I consider the antisemites to be harmless people. The best of them are like children. They want something to blame for their woes. ... Much worse than the antisemites are the heartless leaders of the Jews who are tired of Europe, Herzl and Nordau. They exaggerate an unpleasant childishness into a world-historical trend; they pretend that a harmless squabble is a terrible roar of cannons. They are seducers and tempters of their people"

For the life of me, I can't figure out why it's so hard to provide context for the alleged claims. You now reference other claims re: bible and Kaballah without any context whatsoever, or even a description of what the claims are, and still fail to provide a link or more context for the previous claim beyond 3-4 sentences. If this is from a lecture unavailable to public for the full context and what you have read on someone's blog, then you should not even be referencing it. This implies you already have carefully examined and contemplated the context in which it was made. I already know the claims re: Bible are considered "wrong" because you reject the discernable continuity of spiritual reality and physical world which informs scripture in concrete ways.

I already explained why we cannot "prove" there are no limits to thinking, just as we cannot prove we will still exist tomorrow. This is real simple. You are asking for something which is fundamentally impossible. It is the abstract intellect which started demanding that sort of "proof" and uses its unreasonable demand to argue nothing higher than itself exists, to fortify its own supremacy. You have completely ignored that explanation. You are employing a standard of "proof" which, if it was practically used in life to ascertain what knowledge can be trusted, would immediately lead to the cessation of all knowing activities. So it is a standard not used in life, but only in abstract intellectual arguments when the intellect wants to reject whatever conclusion it doesn't like.

And then again, you use the utility of thinking, i.e. the fact that this forum or any forum of communication would not exist without it, as evidence that it is fundamentally limited. Do you see how backwards that is? It is exactly as Rand said about Kant - "man is blind because he has eyes, and deaf because he has ears." Man cannot Think, in a way which reaches shared understanding, because he thinks in a way which doesn't always reach shared understanding, although reaching any understanding would be impossible without it. That is the full extent of the argument you have made so far.

[TriloByte]

You ignore the obvious, that our thinking as human beings can be wrong.

If the content of your thinking is correct or wrong doesn’t change the divine nature of Thinking, and that is the point that Steiner is making. Of course it is our responsability to try to make good use of thinking.

You set as a goal a different consciousness from what we know. Consciousness beyond time and space. We do not know such a consciousness, and it must be proved that it can be attained. As long as it is not attained it stands as an unproven ideal. You can say "I believe this kind of consciousness exists", but you choose to make unjustified use of words.

There are several mystics that describe their experience beyond what is our usual experience of time and space. And there are scientists that hold that time and space are not fundamental.

So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

They are two different kind of knowledge. The same can be said of zen masters. Suzuki, for example, was a nazi sympathizer. So what? Does that make zen buddhism a false narrative? The same with the current Dalai Lama, at last when he was young he was a nazi sympathizer. The same with Eugene Herrigel, author of Zen in the Art of Archery, he was a member of the nazy party.

It is a mistake to judge what is product of a spiritual practice or revelation on the basis of the sociological or political opinions of the persons that hold them because they correspond to different kinds of knowledge.

[Shaibei]

It should really go without saying the philosophical and phenomenological argument for the role and capacity (or lack of arbitrary limitation) of Thinking is independent of Steiner and his spiritual outlook or claims. The lack of logical connection there should be obvious. Plenty of thinkers have recognized the evolution of cognition over the last few thousand years, and how experience of spatial dimension unfolded through that evolution. Plenty of thinkers have recognized that spatial dimension is not fundamental, because that is a necessary conclusion of metaphysical idealism. It is also being confirmed by modern science is various ways. So the person who wants to challenge this entire depth structure of cognitive evolution, and the fact that abstract intellectual representation has only been with us for a few centuries, must contend with the substance of the arguments. That person cannot say, "this guy used his higher thinking to claim that and was wrong, therefore we must discard the possibility of higher cognition existing for our ancestors and for current humanity." We also can't say, "I can't personally understand how non-representational cognition functions, so it must not exist." It is solid conclusion of history and anthropology that our ancestors perceived Cosmos and Nature imbued with spirits and gods and fluid archetypal meaning. This fact must be contended with.

Besides that, there is a habit of referencing Steiner's spiritual claims without any context or any attempt to understand the overall spiritual framework in which the claim is being made and, therefore, in which the claim can only be evaluated. We can't deny spiritual reality, as Steiner understood it, and then evaluate his spiritual claims in a context devoid of that spiritual reality. A vision for a Jewish nation rooted in purely political and theological hopes has, in fact, proven to be impossible, or at least much more difficult than was naively imagined in the early 20th century. It has practically become a naive cliche to now speak of "peace in the middle east" precisely for that reason. The reason is the same as for all other Utopian visions - the concrete reality of spiritual evolution is ignored. The rational intellect and its knowledge of how to organize human relations is overestimated and idolized. People desire to maintain hard ethnic and racial affiliations while what is universal to the human soul needs to shine forth. Such endeavors will always result in disaster over time. If you are saying Steiner claimed a Jewish nation would never even form as a political entity for any amount of time, I would like to have a reference with the full context of the alleged claim.

Since you continue to use the term "abstract thinking" like Steiner I see no reason not to address his claims. No one disputes the importance of thinking and the development of thinking, but you didn't prove thinking has no limits. The many debates in the forum are just one evidence of the limitations of thinking.
You are making an argument about a different kind of consciousness that we do not experience as if it were proof of something. An ideal is good, but acting as if you have already realized the ideal does not contribute anything, on the contrary. Science is advancing because it recognizes the imperfections of its models. But he who claims to "know" has nowhere to advance.
And if he claims he "sees" and "knows" we will check it through thinking. It seems to me it was inevitable that Steiner's controversy over Kant brought him to the place of "Mr. Knows All." The man does not know how to use the phrase "I do not know". There are all kinds of examples of this. For example, things he writes about the Bible. Or a lecture he has given on Kabbalah which clearly shows that he is discussing a subject with which he has no minimal acquaintance. He can't restrain himself, instead of admitting he does not know and saving himself embarrassment.

Silly ideas can be forgiven. Not when it comes to the fate of people. In retrospect, we understand how blind he was when he appealed to the Jews not to accept the "hallucinations" of Herzl and Nordau regarding a state for the Jews, which was a refuge for many in World War II. And so he writes in "'Die Sehnsucht der Juden nach Palästina' In 1897:
"I consider the antisemites to be harmless people. The best of them are like children. They want something to blame for their woes. ... Much worse than the antisemites are the heartless leaders of the Jews who are tired of Europe, Herzl and Nordau. They exaggerate an unpleasant childishness into a world-historical trend; they pretend that a harmless squabble is a terrible roar of cannons. They are seducers and tempters of their people"

For the life of me, I can't figure out why it's so hard to provide context for the alleged claims. You now reference other claims re: bible and Kaballah without any context whatsoever, or even a description of what the claims are, and still fail to provide a link or more context for the previous claim beyond 3-4 sentences. If this is from a lecture unavailable to public for the full context and what you have read on someone's blog, then you should not even be referencing it. This implies you already have carefully examined and contemplated the context in which it was made. I already know the claims re: Bible are considered "wrong" because you reject the discernable continuity of spiritual reality and physical world which informs scripture in concrete ways.

I would happily bring you the article in English but I do not find it in the archive
. I recommend that you use Google Translate for the article in German:

http://anthroposophie.byu.edu/aufsaetze/l219.pdf

[TriloByte]

So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

That's my main problem with Steiner. His lectures and writings seem coherent and I'd be really tempted to study him in detail, but the fact that he made several - in his view definitely true - statements that turned out to be factually wrong raise too much doubt in me. It's possible that he in fact (re)discovered much that is true, but in these matters it takes a single wrongly made claim allegedly reached via means of absolue knowing that result in the collapse of the system, there being no other means of verifying a claim than investigating it for yourself. And I haven't yet read an answer from Ashvin to resolve this problem in a satisfactory manner.

My advise would be to keep studying what Steiner says in his spiritual philosophy. There is a lot valuable there.

[Shaibei]

You ignore the obvious, that our thinking as human beings can be wrong.

If the content of your thinking is correct or wrong doesn’t change the divine nature of Thinking, and that is the point that Steiner is making. Of course it is our responsability to try to make good use of thinking.

You set as a goal a different consciousness from what we know. Consciousness beyond time and space. We do not know such a consciousness, and it must be proved that it can be attained. As long as it is not attained it stands as an unproven ideal. You can say "I believe this kind of consciousness exists", but you choose to make unjustified use of words.

There are several mystics that describe their experience beyond what is our usual experience of time and space. And there are scientists that hold that time and space are not fundamental.

So I gave Steiner's example. The man claimed that establishing the State of Israel was a hallucination and history proved that he himself was hallucinating. He made a false presentation, apparently believing in it sincerely, that he "sees." But in fact his thinking was stuck in the subjective space and failed to penetrate the objective dimension. (The example I gave from the Prophet is exactly an example that can be examined. The prophet experiences the truth, but the people need to check that the reality does correspond to what the prophet experienced ...)

They are two different kind of knowledge. The same can be said of zen masters. Suzuki, for example, was a nazi sympathizer. So what? Does that make zen buddhism a false narrative? The same with the current dañai lama, at last when he was young he was a nazi sympathizer. The same with Eugene Herrigel, author of Zen in the Art of Archery, he was a member of the nazy party.

It is a mistake to judge what is product of a spiritual practice or revelation on the basis of the sociological or political opinions of the persons that hold them because they correspond to different kinds of knowledge.

If you read what I wrote again, you will find that I addressed these issues

[Lou Gold]

If the content of your thinking is correct or wrong doesn’t change the divine nature of Thinking, and that is the point that Steiner is making. Of course it is our responsibility to try to make good use of thinking.

And exactly the same may be said of the divine nature of Not Thinking. Indeed, every aspect of being can be seen as having a divine nature. Creation is both constructive and destructive and manifestation contains the potential for use or abuse in context. So search for balance in the paradox rather than getting lost in whether the dreamer is a man or a butterfly, whether Thinking or Not Thinking is the only singularly best way. My personal approach is to trust my intuitions, be skeptical of my interpretations and be humbly grateful for that which arrives as if by the Grace of God.

The Truth, it seems to me, rests on a three-legged stool of exemplar, doctrine and community. A weakness in any one leg does not obviate the others. It just makes the stool untrustworthy as dogma. The behavior of Steiner or Suzuki or one's own self matters in this latter sense.