Re: Steiners thinking
Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2022 5:44 pm
No there is not.- and I don't see any advantage to adding this additional layer, even as a model or explanation.
No there is not.- and I don't see any advantage to adding this additional layer, even as a model or explanation.
That "seeing self that occurs in retrospect" exists, you are correct I think: after you have seen the object, you can think of the fact that you have seen it. And this is just another thought, as you say.lorenzop wrote: ↑Wed Oct 19, 2022 5:40 pm The phrase 'seeing a turtle' is not the same as 'I am a turtle' so I'm not sure where you are going with this.
When you see or think of a turtle are you also aware of a thinking or seeing self, or is the thinking and seeing self a something that occurs in retrospect?
For example, look at any object around you, there is the seeing of the object, is there also a line of seperation, and a second thing, a seperate thinking seeing 'I' as well.
OR, is the seperate thinking and seeing 'I' something one locates after, where the 'I' is just another thought.
I am proposing that the thinking "I" is just another thought.
lorenzop wrote: ↑Wed Oct 19, 2022 8:21 pm No I can not exclude such a possibility (of a Big Thinking, or pre-thinking wrapping around perception\thinking) . . . what am saying is that I conducted Cleric's experiment (in good faith) and I did not detect any Big Thinking.
Since I have no personal experiential evidence of this Big Thinking, I can only assume it exists if adding Big Thinking has explanitory power, or it's if reasonable to assume it exists. I don't see what mysteries, riddles or questions the addition of Big secondary thinking solves or answers.
lorenzop wrote: ↑Wed Oct 19, 2022 8:21 pm No I can not exclude such a possibility (of a Big Thinking, or pre-thinking wrapping around perception\thinking) . . . what am saying is that I conducted Cleric's experiment (in good faith) and I did not detect any Big Thinking.
Since I have no personal experiential evidence of this Big Thinking, I can only assume it exists if adding Big Thinking has explanitory power, or it's if reasonable to assume it exists. I don't see what mysteries, riddles or questions the addition of Big secondary thinking solves or answers.
Yeah, it's difficult to detect at first look. Because we only have one thinking agency, and while it's busy dealing with the perception, it cannot at the exact same time 'think' that it's thinking the perception... (but why are you calling it Big Thinking?)I conducted Cleric's experiment (in good faith) and I did not detect any Big Thinking.
Yes, in a way this sounds 'the best one can reasonably do'. But we can also ask: Why should we settle for less? We know that explanatory power is a tricky concept, and accepting a viewpoint only because it 'sounds reasonable' is not very satisfying, is it? We know that we are only making suppositions. They could be wrong, and we would never be sure!I can only assume it exists if adding Big Thinking has explanitory power, or it's if reasonable to assume it exists.
Güney27 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 8:29 pm I've been dealing with steiner for months now, sometimes more sometimes less.
However, there are some points that cannot be understood mentally.
For example: Our thinking does not name things that exist outside and without us (as a normal person thinks)
According to what I sometimes understand from Steiner, our thinking is an organ of perception like the ear.
It perceives concepts and ideas and does not invent them.
Steiner cannot tell us what concepts are.
I would say that terms are thought packages that describe the essential, the way something is.
In truth, these concepts are spiritual beings, which we perceive in a rigid form.
Our spirit connects through Thinking with the spiritual essence of the objects.
So in thinking we are in the spiritual world or connected to it and perceive it as such.
However, for every person who is not clairvoyant (like for me), a term is not a spiritual being, but a word that describes similarities and contains essential characteristics of a thing.
For the common man, a thought is a word that describes something of our perception that man produces.
Steiner says a flower connects to the concept in the human soul, but normal perception makes it appear that after seeing a flower we generate that concept.
Somehow Steiner becomes very incomprehensible to me at this point.
However, I continue to study his writings as I have the intuition to be on to something important.
But I can't grasp certain statements.
The Formative Power of the Concept
What spiritual practitioners really tend to experience, by means of disciplines, is the force by means of which the concept forms in consciousness. No concept manifests without such a formative power, but this normally remains ignored, since the ordinary rationalist is interested only in the dialectical use of the conceptual form. Instead, as spiritual practitioners, we take on the concept as a vehicle of the power of thinking. We go back to the formative power of the concept, independent of its specific meaning. Each concept presupposes such a power, insofar as it is the synthesis of a multiplicity that corresponds to a real entity as an original extra-sensory “type.”
As present-day dialecticians, we normally ignore the moment of synthesis. While we assume its power to be real, we effectively do not even believe in its existence. We fail to notice that, with the concept of “horse,” we refer to a single entity that lives in all horses and indicate it as something concrete. We do not know what we even do. We believe a “universal” to be real, whose existence we dialectically negate or ignore. Without knowing it, we tap the concept's formative power, or power of life. By means of concentration, we, as disciples, experience precisely the life element of which thought is normally deprived.
...
The concentration exercise restores realism to concepts. In effect, when we evoke a concept, we solicit a force that enables it to surface, but it immediately withdraws into the unknown of consciousness. It is the force of memory, which manifests in the thinking movement and immediately yields to the abstract-dialectical form at which level it becomes conscious. A concept remembered is an act of creation forever new, but the living moment of the mnemonic act continually escapes dialectical consciousness...
The force that enables the concept to surface in the mind when evoked is the same force at work in the original formation of the concept. In both cases, this force springs as a power, within an inner zone that escapes consciousness. In concentration, consciousness tends to make this power its own, which its movement continually presupposes.
We can therefore evoke a concept, because essentially we already possess it. We possess an indefinite series of concepts of things and entities, but, if we observe, never have we effectively operated with deliberate forces of consciousness in their formation. A higher force, in the form of a greater spontaneity, has acted in the thinking relationship with the object.
We consciously only have mental pictures of an entity. We end up having a concept of it, which, in itself, is a power of synthesis, but we have not directly worked upon such a synthesis through an act of determined consciousness. Nevertheless, we normally use the concept as if we possessed such a synthesis. It is as if by saying “horse” we have the perception of the entity that lives in each single horse, as its archetype. Concentration consists in consciously acquiring the dynamics of the archetypal process, which surfaces in the conscious mental sphere from the depths of the soul.
If we can experience the concept's power of synthesis, we enter a sphere of reality that is normally imperceptible, because it is vast and powerful for the conscious mental sphere. We enter a sphere of suprasensory powers, which we perceive as the absolute foundation of the sensory sphere. As free beings, we today have the power of proving to ourselves the reality of the suprasensory world.
...
Concentration on an object that we evoke essentially moves from its concept, that is, from its element that inside consciousness is a working power of synthesis, un-possessed. This power becomes objectified. The “I” lives with its own current of force within the soul, thanks to the fact that, through a series of mental pictures, the object is reconstituted as a concept, namely, as an original synthetic power.
So that it can allow itself to be perceived, this power, substantially woven of will, demands the insistence of the will in thinking. It becomes willed to such an extent that thought's determination and its willful content end up coinciding. The will is willed so intensely that it ceases to demand effort. It becomes a current of life that reconnects consciousness to the source of its force.
Scalifero, Massimo. A Practical Manual of Meditation . Lindisfarne. Kindle Edition.