Steiners thinking

[Cleric K]

But when it comes to answering Güney’s question - if this post wants to be specifically helpful to the very real person who is asking here - well, I doubt the post does that. It seems to me this writing is exceedingly complex and conceptually expansive for that. It also calls for pre-requisites, and is weaved with references. Now, I don't know Güney. I apologize for calling you forth, Güney, I realize it may look like I'm making unfounded hypotheses about you. Maybe Güney will soon confirm it all makes sense, and it all helps tackle the hurdle of the incomprehensible. I really hope this is about to happen, and that I am only projecting biased impressions. But as said, I am a risk taker, for reasons I consider worth it, to the best of my understanding, and here again my sense is, Cleric, that either you have reached a level where you have forgotten how standard cognition goes about trying to grasp stuff, and you expect too much from our understanding, or you remember exactly how it feels to read the specific PoF page Güney has been reading, but you are seizing the opportunity of the question to do something different in response. I admit I’m undecided between these two possibilities. But I do see a gap and two possible causes, and my strong feeling is, if it’s the former, you should perhaps simplify, and narrow your illustration, sacrificing breadth to tackle the exact pain-point, and if it's the latter, wouldn't it be relevant to be more explicit about it?

I agree with you, Federica. One of the reasons is that I went on my path in a rather chaotic way and as a result I didn’t get a good feel for what a gradual progression is. Nevertheless it has always been my interest to build this gradient of understanding that allows the intellect to grow in small and well understood steps towards the higher forces concealed within it. What I write here in the forum is not some premeditated theory. Every question here is like homework, something that demands new bridges to be built. For this reason I’m grateful to everyone here because what I have refined for myself in the last two years wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Even the blatant and irrational opposition only serves as material to be further worked upon and new levels of understanding to be found. In this sense, please excuse me when things are often presented with gaps too wide to close. With common effort and few iterations the gaps can be worked out and everyone benefits in the process.

[Federica]

Cleric,

The following reflection has been occurring to me for some time now. A while ago, I touched on it here, in the “This forum” thread. Now, as I am reading this new thread, the idea is once again making its clear impression. I will try to express it, hoping I’ll find the right words to say it right. I apologize for any inadequacies of my understanding that could make the following off-point and inappropriate. I know there’s a risk this can happen, still I am taking it with full knowledge, so with it, I am of course also taking unnuanced responsibility for it. It’s about meaning breadth versus its direction. I think the meaning illustrated in this post is useful and illuminating for some. Perhaps the primary intention of your post was just that, to provide a new illustration of the inner shift that needs to happen if one wants to open to an integral understanding of self, world, and the spiritual in them. To the one who is moved by such a query, even at the price of baring the self of all intellectual flesh and leaving it at the path's entrance, this post is helpful. For my part, I can only be thankful for yet another profound and graceful painting of that-which-can-be-called-by-many-names.


But when it comes to answering Güney’s question - if this post wants to be specifically helpful to the very real person who is asking here - well, I doubt the post does that. It seems to me this writing is exceedingly complex and conceptually expansive for that. It also calls for pre-requisites, and is weaved with references. Now, I don't know Güney. I apologize for calling you forth, Güney, I realize it may look like I'm making unfounded hypotheses about you. Maybe Güney will soon confirm it all makes sense, and it all helps tackle the hurdle of the incomprehensible. I really hope this is about to happen, and that I am only projecting biased impressions. But as said, I am a risk taker, for reasons I consider worth it, to the best of my understanding, and here again my sense is, Cleric, that either you have reached a level where you have forgotten how standard cognition goes about trying to grasp stuff, and you expect too much from our understanding, or you remember exactly how it feels to read the specific PoF page Güney has been reading, but you are seizing the opportunity of the question to do something different in response. I admit I’m undecided between these two possibilities. But I do see a gap and two possible causes, and my strong feeling is, if it’s the former, you should perhaps simplify, and narrow your illustration, sacrificing breadth to tackle the exact pain-point, and if it's the latter, wouldn't it be relevant to be more explicit about it?

Hi Frederica

,,But when it comes to answering Güney's question - whether this post specifically intends to be helpful to the very real person asking here - well I doubt the post does that,,


My question hasn't been answered for me, I still don't understand the core of pof and Steiner's thinking.
However, I am grateful for Cleric's time and effort.
It's probably too complicated and weird for my current thinking.
Steiner's writing still is also somewhat unusual.

Kind regards

Hi Güney,

Yes, I know the feeling of gratitude the post is inspiring you, I also feel that gratitude. I believe the feeling itself helps us understand the unusual Steiner writings, and PoF, which expands the gratitude even more! I am quite confident that this is true - the feeling of gratitude helps develop our understanding. Right now, I am reading another Steiner book, where he speaks of exactly that:


"It is not easy, at first, to believe that feelings like reverence and respect have anything to do with cognition. This is due to the fact that we are inclined to set cognition aside as a faculty by itself — one that stands in no relation to what otherwise occurs in the soul. In so thinking, we do not bear in mind that it is the soul which exercises the faculty of cognition; and feelings are for the soul what food is for the body. If we give the body stones in place of bread, its activity will cease. It is the same with the soul. Veneration, homage, devotion are like nutriment making it healthy and strong, especially strong for the activity of cognition. Disrespect, antipathy, underestimation of what deserves recognition, all exert a paralyzing and withering effect on this faculty of cognition."

[Federica]

(...)

Easier for anyone who takes it as a living idea, which I know that you do. But the main point being, often people will wonder, (...)

Exactly - easier for everyone who… people will wonder... - hence I was asking: is one talking to everyone and people, at the occasion of a question asked by someone, or is one speaking directly and personally to that one person who expressed an intimate pain-point? There is a Latin expression that renders exactly what I am trying to say. I don't know if it might help: intuitu personae. (Not to be read as a legal concept. It is much broader, and also deeper, than that).

The spiritual evolutionary approach is all about digging beneath the complexified layers of our current conscious activity to find the deeper reasons why we desire, feel and think the way we do, which will then naturally illuminate the meaning of unfamiliar spiritual concepts and relations between those concepts, because we are tracing back into the living thinking flow from which those concepts were formed.

You are defaulting back to generalities that have little to do with this conversation.

It sounded to me like you felt Cleric's journey from the inner perspective tied to the 'walking' concept to that of spiritual beings behind the phenomena of the plant kingdom was too complex and not so relevant to the question. Is that accurate?

I think, if you read this thread’s first post, then you read mine with Güney in mind, rather than ‘the question’ in mind, you would see exactly how this is not accurate.

Ultimately, it's about recognizing the gradient between our own personal experience of thinking in the physical world of forms, to that of archetypal spiritual Ideas which structure that experience and, therefore, the world of forms as well. And when we find this very difficult to fathom, it's usually not because the core idea is very complex - as Cleric mentioned, it's one of the first things the analytic idealist might wonder when learning his consciousness is integral part of MAL - but because the idea is asking to us to open our thinking, in a very real way, to the Cosmos at large.

Ashvin, what is illuninating, helpful and valuable to some might be not as helpful to someone else. As I already wrote, I immediately found the post in itself illuminating. I only doubted it was being immediately helpful to Güney's personal struggles specifically.


By the way, that these ideas are usually not very complex, and that a more simple way to address the issue can hardly be imagined, is contradicted by Cleric’s laser-sharp arguments in his last post to Güney today.

[AshvinP]

Ultimately, it's about recognizing the gradient between our own personal experience of thinking in the physical world of forms, to that of archetypal spiritual Ideas which structure that experience and, therefore, the world of forms as well.

One of the premises of the ontological argument for the existence of God declares that it is greater for something to exist in reality than as an idea in the mind. Of course there are many issues with this, but I wonder how one thinks about this from a SS perspective. As I understand things, the difference between a tree in my sense perspective and one formed purely in my mind is that the former is in the mind of higher beings which is subsequently constructed/rendered/reconstituted/completed through my thinking. The latter could in principle form part of a fractal world of my making of which other beings could inhabit (if I could hold my attention long enough and develop my imaginative faculties to a degree beyond where they sit at the moment). So the difference between the reality we experience and one created in my mind is one of fractal degree rather than one of substance. Or is there some fundamental difference between the capabilities of world-making-beings and the human mind apart from hierarchical locus?

Anthony,

Apart from the hierarchical locus - i.e. the Love, Wisdom, and Power behind the idea - I wouldn't say there is any fundamental difference. Of course, from an idealist ontological perspective, all is Spirit-Idea, so one could argue the difference between the hierarchical locus is as fundamental as we can get. It is the difference between Gods and men, recognizing that the destiny of men is to become Gods.

Imagination is not, as some poets have thought, simply synonymous with good. It may be either good or evil. As long as art remained primarily mimetic, the evil which imagination could do was limited by nature. Again, as long as it was treated as an amusement, the evil which it could do was limited in scope. But in an age when the connection between imagination and figuration is beginning to be dimly realized, when the fact of the directionally creator relation is beginning to break through into consciousness, both the good and the evil latent in the working of imagination begin to appear unlimited.

I think recent history is clearly bearing the above out to be true as well - if I can move a machine with nothing other than my idea/voice, so that it becomes objective manifestation on the physical plane and a 'fractal world' which other beings can inhabit with their ideas, then this is something of great significance in our creative evolution. What Barfield indicates above is that we are becoming more conscious of our participation in the world-forming process, which was previously taking place through us unconsciously. It is relatively easy to discern this from the dawn of human Culture and civilization, but harder for us to imagine this taking place for Nature as well. How did the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms come into being? Esoteric evolutionary science indicates this occurred by the Spirit working through human activity as well. So becoming the Gods is really a conscious remembering of our own primordial participation in the world-creative process. Of course, if we simply project our current atomized consciousness back into the primordial past, none of this will make sense. We need to gradually grow into these realities with higher, more holistic consciousness.

To tie this in with the other discussion here, it helps to remember what we generally refer to as our ideas or concepts are outer forms, like the sense-images, which house intuitive meaning. In human culture we have an interesting convergence of these conceptual forms and sense-perceptible forms. For ex., if we have an idea to build a church, this is both our idea and becomes an objective manifestation in the sense-perceptible world. But the structure of the church itself is not the Idea proper - the latter lives in the ideals, feelings, and desires of the congregation which indwells the building. The whole Idea of this congregation is greater than the sum of its parts - something genuinely new comes into Be-ing through our activity. It summons the activity of the Gods onto the physical plane. There is a precise science behind all of this which can be discerned. But, for our purposes here, I think it's important to recognize this isn't an abstract metaphysical argument for God's existence, but a precise scientific unveiling of the Gods within us, which doesn't need to rely on any a priori axioms.

With the ontological argument for God, we are simply proving the existence of our concept of God. That we project this idea out into some transcendent realm does not make it any less our limited concept. This is the greatest idolatry. Instead, as indicated above, we should understand our ideas-concepts, like the sense-world, as the outer forms in which the Gods can dwell with their world-creative activity, and the extent to which we become more livingly conscious of that activity within us, and therefore also through Nature and Culture, is the extent to which we also grow into Divinity.

[AshvinP]

(...)

Easier for anyone who takes it as a living idea, which I know that you do. But the main point being, often people will wonder, (...)

Exactly - easier for everyone who… people will wonder... - hence I was asking: is one talking to everyone and people, at the occasion of a question asked by someone, or is one speaking directly and personally to that one person who expressed an intimate pain-point? There is a Latin expression that renders exactly what I am trying to say. I don't know if it might help: intuitu personae. (Not to be read as a legal concept. It is much broader, and also deeper, than that).

The spiritual evolutionary approach is all about digging beneath the complexified layers of our current conscious activity to find the deeper reasons why we desire, feel and think the way we do, which will then naturally illuminate the meaning of unfamiliar spiritual concepts and relations between those concepts, because we are tracing back into the living thinking flow from which those concepts were formed.

You are defaulting back to generalities that have little to do with this conversation.

It sounded to me like you felt Cleric's journey from the inner perspective tied to the 'walking' concept to that of spiritual beings behind the phenomena of the plant kingdom was too complex and not so relevant to the question. Is that accurate?

I think, if you read this thread’s first post, then you read mine with Güney in mind, rather than ‘the question’ in mind, you would see exactly how this is not accurate.

Ultimately, it's about recognizing the gradient between our own personal experience of thinking in the physical world of forms, to that of archetypal spiritual Ideas which structure that experience and, therefore, the world of forms as well. And when we find this very difficult to fathom, it's usually not because the core idea is very complex - as Cleric mentioned, it's one of the first things the analytic idealist might wonder when learning his consciousness is integral part of MAL - but because the idea is asking to us to open our thinking, in a very real way, to the Cosmos at large.

Ashvin, what is illuninating, helpful and valuable to some might be not as helpful to someone else. As I already wrote, I immediately found the post in itself illuminating. I only doubted it was being immediately helpful to Güney's personal struggles specifically.


By the way, that these ideas are usually not very complex, and that a more simple way to address the issue can hardly be imagined, is contradicted by Cleric’s laser-sharp arguments in his last post to Güney today.

Federica,

I find these aspects of our conversation on the forum the least helpful to promoting shared understanding. I feel that we stray too easily into debating form rather than substance, and that's why I default back to generalities. I try to capture the method of response as an integral aspect of the substance we are dealing with. I think often Cleric anticipates a few steps ahead, where a certain line of questioning is really directed. That's why I feel his laser-sharp last post was not too different from the first one, only included much more elaboration on the core issues at play.

Anyway, I hope we can agree that my response to your criticism really didn't help and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, unless there is something of substance that I am missing our last comments.

[lorenzop]

Yes, it’s quite normal that any contemporary person would have trouble when hearing something like ‘thoughts are living spiritual beings’.

Not sure I understand the quoted above . . . but putting that aside, there are implications to this statement:

(1) if thoughts have a life of their own and are independent of thinking, then we don't really think, we don't create thoughts, we entertain thoughts from an existing pool of thoughts. For example the thought 'JFK was killed by a lone assassin' - this thought existed before anyone entertained the thought, before JFK was killed, before JFK was born. I realize you've written posts re 'time' so perhaps my use of the word 'before' is incorrect, but none the less, every thought, perception and feeling etc. ever experienced by any sentient being existed before that thought was 'thought'.
(2) There is no reality. For example I can have the thought 2 + 2 = 4 and I can have the thought 2 + 2 = 5 - - both of these thoughts exist as spiritual beings, they are equally valid. There can be no reality to modulate or coorespond with thoughts.
(3) We have no (free) will. I can have the thought to prefer thought A over thought B, or to make this choice over that choice, etc. These thoughts of preference, the act of choosing - - these thoughts of will also pre-exist and are independent of thinking.

[Federica]

But when it comes to answering Güney’s question - if this post wants to be specifically helpful to the very real person who is asking here - well, I doubt the post does that. It seems to me this writing is exceedingly complex and conceptually expansive for that. It also calls for pre-requisites, and is weaved with references. Now, I don't know Güney. I apologize for calling you forth, Güney, I realize it may look like I'm making unfounded hypotheses about you. Maybe Güney will soon confirm it all makes sense, and it all helps tackle the hurdle of the incomprehensible. I really hope this is about to happen, and that I am only projecting biased impressions. But as said, I am a risk taker, for reasons I consider worth it, to the best of my understanding, and here again my sense is, Cleric, that either you have reached a level where you have forgotten how standard cognition goes about trying to grasp stuff, and you expect too much from our understanding, or you remember exactly how it feels to read the specific PoF page Güney has been reading, but you are seizing the opportunity of the question to do something different in response. I admit I’m undecided between these two possibilities. But I do see a gap and two possible causes, and my strong feeling is, if it’s the former, you should perhaps simplify, and narrow your illustration, sacrificing breadth to tackle the exact pain-point, and if it's the latter, wouldn't it be relevant to be more explicit about it?

I agree with you, Federica. One of the reasons is that I went on my path in a rather chaotic way and as a result I didn’t get a good feel for what a gradual progression is. Nevertheless it has always been my interest to build this gradient of understanding that allows the intellect to grow in small and well understood steps towards the higher forces concealed within it. What I write here in the forum is not some premeditated theory. Every question here is like homework, something that demands new bridges to be built. For this reason I’m grateful to everyone here because what I have refined for myself in the last two years wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Even the blatant and irrational opposition only serves as material to be further worked upon and new levels of understanding to be found. In this sense, please excuse me when things are often presented with gaps too wide to close. With common effort and few iterations the gaps can be worked out and everyone benefits in the process.

Cleric,
I have to accept the evidence that I have been unable to make myself understood. That’s gravely inadequate, as it shows when it now makes you express excuses the mind can only give up trying to process in any way. For this inadequacy, I renew my apologies. For its consequences, I reaffirm my responsibility. I will only add that I never intended that there are often gaps too wide to close. But I will renounce taking new risks in trying to explain myself further.

[Federica]

Federica,

I find these aspects of our conversation on the forum the least helpful to promoting shared understanding. I feel that we stray too easily into debating form rather than substance, and that's why I default back to generalities. I try to capture the method of response as an integral aspect of the substance we are dealing with. I think often Cleric anticipates a few steps ahead, where a certain line of questioning is really directed. That's why I feel his laser-sharp last post was not too different from the first one, only included much more elaboration on the core issues at play.

Anyway, I hope we can agree that my response to your criticism really didn't help and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, unless there is something of substance that I am missing our last comments.

Ashvin,

There is indeed something of substance here, but - as I have said in my other post - I also recognize that, because I have not been able to explain myself so far, the chances that I will succeed now are very feeble, and I will not try again. I apologize for the discomfort this inadequacy has caused so far.

[Cleric K]

(1) if thoughts have a life of their own and are independent of thinking, then we don't really think, we don't create thoughts, we entertain thoughts from an existing pool of thoughts. For example the thought 'JFK was killed by a lone assassin' - this thought existed before anyone entertained the thought, before JFK was killed, before JFK was born. I realize you've written posts re 'time' so perhaps my use of the word 'before' is incorrect, but none the less, every thought, perception and feeling etc. ever experienced by any sentient being existed before that thought was 'thought'.

Lorenzo, you seem to ignore everything that is being written (including in this thread) about the nature of our spiritual activity, of which thinking is only the most crystalized form.

We can take another thought from the pool: "JFK lived a long life and died of natural causes". This is just as valid thought, isn't it? Then what makes it different from the one you gave?

(2) There is no reality. For example I can have the thought 2 + 2 = 4 and I can have the thought 2 + 2 = 5 - - both of these thoughts exist as spiritual beings, they are equally valid. There can be no reality to modulate or coorespond with thoughts.

Same thing. These thoughts are indeed equally valid when taken in isolation but when I take two apples and place them in a basket, then add two more, how many will I take out? You see, we need to continually seek the harmony of thoughts and perceptions, which weave the healthy Cosmic organism.

It is completely true that there are ideas that don't fit the harmony of the facts but in themselves are equally valid, such as the flat Earth. It is an idea which can't be reconciled with the facts, yet this doesn't prevent societies to be formed around it, books to be written, money to be made. Just as any lie, it can have its existence as long as it is kept in darkness. As with any deception and fraud, it feeds on reality but disguises this fact. As soon as it encounters the light of the more encompassing reality, it enters into conflict.

And these things are very serious. False ideas form whole islands in the soul (astral) world. For example, when 'flat earthers' (using it just as a placeholder here) die, they will feel special affinity to souls that shared in their ideas. This ideal aura is now their soul environment, like a placenta within which they are embedded and sustains the form of their consciousness. The placenta itself exists within the wider spiritual world, it is sustained by it, it cannot exist without it, yet turns into itself in a kind of tumorous growth. Sooner or later, the souls break through this sphere of tumorous soul life and are forced to confront the wider spiritual world. This confrontation is a kind of soul trauma (since the falsehood of the previous state is perceived) which, if everything goes well, will transform in the impulse of Truth-seeking in the next life. Then man will be much less inclined to feel comfortable in some limited sphere of ideas but will energetically seek the harmony of the facts in an ever expanding panorama of the living Cosmos.

(3) We have no (free) will. I can have the thought to prefer thought A over thought B, or to make this choice over that choice, etc. These thoughts of preference, the act of choosing - - these thoughts of will also pre-exist and are independent of thinking.

Even if they pre-exist, just as round and flat Earth both exist, it is not serious to say that the soul, by a flip of a coin, is simply dragged by one of the ideas and has completely no control over it. Up to some point it can be indeed dragged half-consciously along one of the ideas but when consciousness awakens nothing prevents it to encompass both ideas and seek how they contradict or align with the wider reality.

The moral of the story is that as long as we take thoughts simply as floating fragments with no connection to anything else, we'll inevitably reach some fatalistic mood, where nothing makes any difference. But if we take thoughts to be more like debris floating on living streams, then we see that it is up to us to integrate them and approach cognition of these higher order streams, instead of focusing on isolated particles and declaring that it's all the same and nothing makes any difference.

[lorenzop]

This may be an example of symantics - for example I use the term thinking and perception as being of the same category, not as two different things . . .
I find the explanation of thinking\perceiving as an activity modulated by reality, I find this explanation more useful. More so than thinking\perceiving as plucking already existing thoughts\perceptions from an existing pool of thoughts. This latter explanation does not require a reality or environment - or if we pluck thoughts\perceptions from a pool, but this 'plucking' is modulated by a reality - then suggesting that the thoughts already exist (as spiritual beings or otherwise) doesn't really gain us anything.