Spiritual "science"

[AshvinP]

Before getting on to spiritual science It would be better to understand what is science?
Science has now reached a point where we need to really question science itself.
Understanding, experiencing and knowing are activities that happen in reality and science is not able to include them in the sylaabus.
We need to expand the word science to include existential reality of both material and the non material existential concept like
love ,relationship,trust etc.
We need to know them identify them and remove imaginary concepts like hate which is just absence of love and nothing in itself.

Do let me know if this sounds too complicated to comprehend and needs more explanation.
It would be real fun to try and help make this knowledge easier for people to understand.

While not trying to offer a comprehensive answer immediately, we could start with evidence which is the bedrock of science.

As Hume said, "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."

As the article on evidence from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes:

...a central function of evidence is to serve as a neutral arbiter among competing views. For it is natural to think that the ability of evidence to play this latter role depends crucially on its having an essentially public character, i.e., that it is the sort of thing which can be grasped and appreciated by multiple individuals. Here, the most natural contenders would seem to be physical objects and the states of affairs and events in which they participate, since it is such entities that are characteristically accessible to multiple observers.

This view of course in tension with introspective practices and observations derived from private states of consciousness.

'Private states of consciousness' can only have meaning for someone who feels their current ego-perspective to be fully theirs, as indicated in Cleric's last post. I hope this has become somewhat clear.

As Federica also indicated, the only reason to root 'evidence' in perceptions (physical objects, events, etc.) devoid of thought-out content is to avoid investigating the thinking tool through which that meaningful content arrives in our consciousness. Because such thought-free perceptions, if they existed, would be as close as we could get to 'private states of consciousness', while the thought-content which allows us to meaningfully interact and communicate with the surrounding world is clearly what is of 'public character'.

No one learns about the world, scientifically or otherwise, simply by looking at it, but by reasoning through its manifold appearances. It is the shared meaning of the fragmented perceptual structures which give them their 'public' character. Of course this all goes back to Goethean Science and PoF 101, which are tools that help us verify this immanent reality of the thinking-perception relation within our own experience. All we need is the ability to reason through the posts Cleric has been writing, in connection with our own first-person experience, or similarly a passage such as this one:

Scientific thinking must prove itself, step by step, to represent an overcoming of that dark form of reality which we have designated as the directly given, and to represent a lifting up of the directly given into the bright clarity of the idea. The method must therefore consist in our answering the question, with respect to each thing: What part does it have in the unified world of ideas; what place does it occupy in the ideal picture that I make for myself of the world? When I have understood this, when I have recognized how a thing connects itself with my ideas, then my need for knowledge is satisfied. There is only one thing that is not satisfying to my need for knowledge: when a thing confronts me that does not want to connect anywhere with the view I hold of things. The ideal discomfort must be overcome that stems from the fact that there is something or other of which I must say to myself: I see that it is there; when I approach it, it faces me like a question mark; but I find nowhere, within the harmony of my thoughts, the point at that I can incorporate it; the questions I must ask upon seeing it remain unanswered, no matter how I twist and turn my system of thoughts. From this we can see what we need when we look at anything. When I approach it, it faces me as a single thing. Within me the thought-world presses toward that spot where the concept of the thing lies. I do not rest until that which confronted me at first as an individual thing appears as a part of my thought-world. Thus the individual thing as such dissolves and appears in a larger context. Now it is illuminated by the other thought-masses; now it is a serving member; and it is completely clear to me what it signifies within the greater harmony. This is what takes place in us when we approach an object of experience and contemplate it. All progress in science depends upon our becoming aware of the point at which some phenomenon or other can be incorporated into the harmony of the thought-world.

Do not misunderstand me. This does not mean that every phenomenon must be explainable by concepts we already have, that our world of ideas is closed, nor that every new experience must coincide with some concept or other that we already possess. That pressing of the thought-world within us toward a concept can also go to a spot that has not yet been thought by anyone at all. And the ideal progress of the history of science rests precisely on the fact that thinking drives new configurations of ideas to the surface. Every such thought-configuration is connected by a thousand threads with all other possible thoughts — with this concept in this way, and with another in that. And the scientific method consists in the fact that we show the concept of a certain phenomenon in its relationship with the rest of the world of ideas. We call this process the deriving (demonstrating) of the concept. All scientific thinking, however, consists only in our finding the existing transitions from concept to concept, consists in our letting one concept go forth from another. The movement of our thinking back and forth from concept to concept: this is scientific method.
...
This gives us the means of further characterizing our scientific method. Every individual entity of reality represents a definite content within our thought-system. Every such entity is founded in the wholeness of the world of ideas and can be comprehended only in connection with it. Thus each thing must necessarily call upon a twofold thought activity. First the thought corresponding to the thing has to be determined in clear contours, and after this all the threads must be determined that lead from this thought to the whole thought-world. Clarity in the details and depth in the whole are the two most significant demands of reality. The former is the intellect's concern, the latter is reason's. The intellect (Verstand) creates thought-configurations for the individual things of reality. It fulfills its task best the more exactly it delimits these configurations, the sharper the contours are that it draws. Reason (Vernunft) then has to incorporate these configurations into the harmony of the whole world of ideas. This of course presupposes the following: Within the content of the thought-configurations that the intellect creates, that unity already exists, living one and the same life; only, the intellect keeps everything artificially separated. Reason then, without blurring the clarity, merely eliminates the separation again. The intellect distances us from reality; reason brings us back to it again.
...
If we have the following two perceptions: 1. the sun shining down and 2. a warm stone, the intellect keeps both things apart, because they confront us as two; it holds onto one as the cause and onto the other as the effect; then reason supervenes, tears down the wall between them, and recognizes the unity in the duality. All the concepts that the intellect creates — cause and effect, substance and attribute, body and soul, idea and reality, God and world, etc. — are there only in order to keep unified reality separated artificially into parts; and reason, without blurring the content thus created, without mystically obscuring the clarity of the intellect, has then to seek out the inner unity in the multiplicity. Reason thereby comes back to that from which the intellect had distanced itself: to the unified reality. If one wants an exact nomenclature, one can call the formations of the intellect “concepts” and the creations of reason “ideas.” And one sees that the path of science is to lift oneself through the concept to the idea. And here is the place where the subjective and the objective element of our knowing differentiates itself for us in the clearest way. It is plain to see that the separation has only a subjective existence, that it is only created by our intellect. It cannot hinder me from dividing one and the same objective unity into thought-configurations that are different from those of a fellow human being; this does not hinder my reason, in its connecting activity, from attaining the same objective unity again from which we both, in fact, have taken our start.

[AshvinP]

Before getting on to spiritual science It would be better to understand what is science?
Science has now reached a point where we need to really question science itself.
Understanding, experiencing and knowing are activities that happen in reality and science is not able to include them in the sylaabus.
We need to expand the word science to include existential reality of both material and the non material existential concept like
love ,relationship,trust etc.
We need to know them identify them and remove imaginary concepts like hate which is just absence of love and nothing in itself.

Do let me know if this sounds too complicated to comprehend and needs more explanation.
It would be real fun to try and help make this knowledge easier for people to understand.

While not trying to offer a comprehensive answer immediately, we could start with evidence which is the bedrock of science.

As Hume said, "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."

As the article on evidence from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes:

...a central function of evidence is to serve as a neutral arbiter among competing views. For it is natural to think that the ability of evidence to play this latter role depends crucially on its having an essentially public character, i.e., that it is the sort of thing which can be grasped and appreciated by multiple individuals. Here, the most natural contenders would seem to be physical objects and the states of affairs and events in which they participate, since it is such entities that are characteristically accessible to multiple observers.

This view of course in tension with introspective practices and observations derived from private states of consciousness.

'Private states of consciousness' can only have meaning for someone who feels their current ego-perspective to be fully theirs, as indicated in Cleric's last post. I hope this has become somewhat clear.

As Federica also indicated, the only reason to root 'evidence' in perceptions (physical objects, events, etc.) devoid of thought-out content is to avoid investigating the thinking tool through which that meaningful content arrives in our consciousness. Because such thought-free perceptions, if they existed, would be as close as we could get to 'private states of consciousness', while the thought-content which allows us to meaningfully interact and communicate with the surrounding world is clearly what is of 'public character'.

No one learns about the world, scientifically or otherwise, simply by looking at it, but by reasoning through its manifold appearances. It is the shared meaning of the fragmented perceptual structures which give them their 'public' character. Of course this all goes back to Goethean Science and PoF 101, which are tools that help us verify this immanent reality of the thinking-perception relation within our own experience. All we need is the ability to reason through the posts Cleric has been writing, in connection with our own first-person experience, or similarly a passage such as this one:

...

It occurred to me, after taking a flight and doing the crossword puzzle in a magazine, that this could be a helpful metaphor for the scientific method, as elaborated in the pervious Steiner quote, and also the difference between how it is normally pursued and how it can be pursued at the deeper level of spiritual science.





First we are confronted by a bunch of empty perceptual-conceptual slots, with hints for each row and column which point us to a certain meaning intended by the puzzle designer. This meaning, however, can crystallize through our conceptual activity into a vast array of different letters and word-concepts which fulfill the intended meaning. Not all of them will harmonize with the other letters and word-concepts which are embedded within the designer's holistic Idea of the puzzle. So how do we go about solving this puzzle, which is a metaphor for the deepest intuitive meaning of the supra-intelligent Cosmic Whole?





One approach, the standard secular one, is to take the first word-concept which crystallizes from the intuited meaning of a single hint, fulfilling that hint's intention, and fix it in the conceptual slot. We keep doing this for each hint we come across, going down the list one at a time. Then, as we realize that our first crystallized word-concepts do not harmonize with our later ones, i.e. other surrounding aspects of the holistic Idea we are investigating, we scratch out some letters and try to find a new word-concept which harmonizes with the surrounding ideal environment. This approach goes quickly at first, but only at the expense of coming to a complete standstill later. The lack of patience and discipline digs us deeper and deeper into a conceptual hole of our own making. It is really messy and will probably lead us to quit the whole endeavor 5% of the way through, if we make it that far. Under no circumstances can someone reach too far into the holistic Idea with this approach, assuming the Idea was designed somewhat cleverly (as should be clear from the Wisdom permeating the workings of our Cosmic Idea).

Another approach is to scan the hints for meanings which can only be crystallized into relatively few word-concepts, perhaps only one or two, to build a foundation. We search for the place where the formless intuitive meaning aligns very closely with our current conceptual forms (which, for archetypal Ideas structuring the phenomenal world, is in the observation of our own thinking). Once we get these situated, then we revisit the other meanings of hints and find the word-concepts which resonate with the ones we have already situated in the foundation with confidence. In this manner, we don't work on each crystallized concept piecemeal, hoping to blindly stumble backwards into the holistic Idea by cobbling together isolated word-concepts, but work on each one with an eye towards the harmony of the Whole at any given time.





With the second approach, once we get a solid foundation of the holistic Idea rooted in place through our interweaving word-concepts, the precise meaning of certain hints, which seemed impossible for us to crystallize into word-concepts before, will light up in our consciousness like Inspiration from on high. These are the higher-order concepts which normally escape the intellect's vision. Without the foundation, we could spend all day staring at the hints and never have a chance of verbalizing the intuited meaning in conceptual form. These inspirations, when breathed in by our thinking consciousness, provide a much higher degree of context for the remaining letter and word-concepts which need to be woven into the tapestry of the holistic Idea, fulfilling its intention at ever higher stages of completion. In esoteric science, these are concepts perceived by our thinking such as those related to our subtle bodies, previous incarnation, karma, and so forth. They help us discern deeper patterns within the puzzle which we could not even suspect existed before.

Unfortunately the reality of our situation is that, modern abstract thinking habits have degenerated so far, many people pursuing thinking investigations don't even remember they are working on a holistic puzzle Idea anymore (and certainly not one designed from the top-down, partly by their own activity). Instead they feel like there are standalone hints and word-concepts which can be solved and have no lawful relation to one another. Or they feel that the puzzle they are solving is only an illusory representation of a second 'puzzle-in-itself' which is forever opaque to their efforts on the only thought-puzzle they ever experience and know. The only thought-puzzle they have been working on since they acquired the capacity to think. Generally it is a combination of both, since one lower conditioned feeling reinforces the other.

In this process, they both get tired easily and quit after finishing barely 1% of the Cosmic puzzle. But they egotistically convince themselves that 99%+ of the puzzle has been finished, and that their puzzle-solving activity is working at 100% optimal performance. In other words, they reduce the size of the Cosmic puzzle to their current activity and to the limited number of word-concepts they have already acquired and declare everything else illusory, opaque, and inaccessible to puzzle-solving activity as such. Hopefully this metaphor also helps clarify why this egoic first approach is entirely self-imposed. It is like we simply desire to remain as children who can only go down the list in order and crystallize the first concepts which come to mind, etching them into our intellectual template. We don't want to consider the hints holistically and make the sensual/intellectual sacrifices necessary to patiently build the proper foundation which leads to previously unsuspected, unimagined Inspiration from on high.

[Wayfarer]

Hello all, new member here.

There is an ancient term, 'scientia sacra', which means 'sacred science'. Of course nowadays such terminology would generally be dismissed, but in the relevant domains of discourse it is a meaningful term. I think I first encountered it decades ago in Herman Hesse's books (for example the Glass Bead Game.) Traditionally it is used to designate the specifically intellectual (or noetic ) aspects within the religous traditions and in the perennial philosophy.

A snippet from the Wiki entry

Scientia sacra is not a new idea. It has its origins in the Islamic philosophical tradition, or, more broadly, in the traditional thought and culture. Asfa Widiyanto attributes the notion to Suhrawardi's theory of al-ilm al-huduri (knowledge by presence). Suhrawardi defined al-ilm al-huduri as knowledge that is self-evident, self-present, and self-objective – which indicates that consciousness and cognizable reality are one and the same. Such knowledge is acquired through intellection, which Suhrawardi defines as a sort of vision that allows humans to perceive archetypes in the imaginal realm (alam al-mithal, or mundus imaginalis in Henry Corbin's terminology). The notion of scientia sacra may also be traced back to Ibn Arabi's concept of "intuitive science", which he viewed as knowledge of the Truth, of the reality of all things. Ibn Arabi frequently refers to such knowledge as ma'rifa, which he connects with divine wisdom.'

...Seyyed Hossein Nasr has championed the concept of "Sacred Science," which has its roots first and foremost in the thought of French metaphysicist René Guénon, and then in authors who followed in his footsteps, such as, Frithjof Schuon and Titus Burckhardt.

It is elaborated considerably in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's book Knowledge and the Sacred .

What differentiates such concepts from today's natural sciences, is that the latter is grounded in the Galilean/Cartesian axioms of the separation of observer from observed, mind from matter, and 'primary' from 'secondary' attributes. Specifically modern science was birthed with the advent of an historically novel form of consciousness, marked by the self-conscious individual aware of him/herself as subject in a world of objects and forces. Whereas in earlier forms of consciousness (and so, cultures), as the world was felt to be the expression of the divine will, then the relationship was of a different nature - a more personalistic, 'I-thou' relationship, rather than 'subject and object'. Owen Barfield (who was, incidentally, an anthroposophist) is particularly good on that. As for Galileo and the origins of modern science, that is discussed in depth in Edmund Husserl's last book 'Crisis of the European Sciences'.

[Cleric K]

This is ‘special pleading’, you are asking for special consideration for ‘spiritual science’ because it sits on some higher plane. Perhaps Steiner justifies this claim philosophically/logically, but does he justify this claim scientifically?
To account for this claim scientifically he would have to account for all existing evidence (one can’t simply throw out prior data) and supply evidence he has at least found this higher plane, and he has a better explanation.
If he or anyone claims he has evidence but it is ‘special’, or only he and a few others can measure it, etc., that’s not science.
Also the meaning of evidence is not within the pervue of science.

Lorenzo, I hope you see how things jump from one extreme to the other. Usually we hear how thinking is an illusion, how everything is an illusion, and how any attempt to find deeper reality concealed in the forces of thinking is seen as simply sinking ever deeper into the illusion that feeds back on itself (what you call higher orders of FALSITY - the ultimate golden calf). Then the same people, as soon as they are presented with uncomfortable ideas, demand scientific evidence, as if the same these people didn't a minute ago scorn the illusionary cycles of the intellect.

An analogy has been given many times here but here it is once again. Imagine that you are dreaming at night, you become somewhat lucid (without yet remembering your waking life) and say "it is all a dream. These characters, these thoughts, feelings, it's all just a floating image". Then some dream character speaks of even deeper degree of lucidity in which we gain consciousness of our waking self and even discover that many aspects of our dream flow are entirely shaped out of unsuspected (from the dream perspective) fears, desires, ideas that our waking self knows in much more clear consciousness. For example, in our waking life we may have an upcoming exam which makes us anxious, while in the dream this may give rise to a whole saga with parts, chapters, events, characters, all driven by the atmosphere of anxiety, which however in our dream state is completely embedded in the background. For us in the dream, this is simply how the world works.

Now think about it. Is there any evidence in the dream world that can give you full proof that there's such a thing as waking consciousness and that your dreaming self is only its more hollowed out perspective? Evidence - such as contradictions and illogisms - can certainly fuel up your belief that there's more to the dream reality or you can even declare the whole dream reality to be an irrelevant illusion, but can it in any conceivable way prove to you that there's such a thing as a waking existence? Notice that even if some dream character comes as a great prophet and performs dream miracles, this may boost your belief to infinity but would the waking consciousness become any more real to you? Or it remains only something to be expected in the future? If you decide to approach the lucid state while still in the dream how would you go about it? Where would you seek that waking perspective? Where it is in relation to your dreaming self? How do the thinking of your dreaming and waking perspective relate?

[AshvinP]

This is ‘special pleading’, you are asking for special consideration for ‘spiritual science’ because it sits on some higher plane. Perhaps Steiner justifies this claim philosophically/logically, but does he justify this claim scientifically?
To account for this claim scientifically he would have to account for all existing evidence (one can’t simply throw out prior data) and supply evidence he has at least found this higher plane, and he has a better explanation.
If he or anyone claims he has evidence but it is ‘special’, or only he and a few others can measure it, etc., that’s not science.
Also the meaning of evidence is not within the pervue of science.

Lorenzo,

To add an additional consideration to what Cleric wrote - "Then the same people, as soon as they are presented with uncomfortable ideas, demand scientific evidence, as if the same these people didn't a minute ago scorn the illusionary cycles of the intellect."

Why do these ideas become uncomfortable? Imagine you are listening to a talk by Donald Hoffman. He says that the modern science has only been studying the relations of icons on the perceptual interface (the dream world of Cleric's metaphor) for the last few hundred years, ignoring the underlying layers of conscious agentic activity which give rise to the interface (the world of the waking self). Now, he tells us, that he is pursuing mathematically precise dynamics by which this depth structure of conscious agentic activity 'projects into' the perceptual interface, so that these underlying dynamics will 'give him back' the theories of evolution, GR, QM as they appear within the perceptual interface. Does listening to this talk make you uncomfortable? I imagine that most people on this forum would be quite comfortable listening to Hoffman give this talk, and would probably nod their heads in agreement the whole way through.

The spiritual scientific method of Steiner (and others) purports to do the exact same thing as Hoffman, albeit to already have made quite a bit of progress in discerning the conscious agentic relations which give rise to the dream world i.e. perceptual interface, in which our current philosophizing and scientific theorizing takes place. What makes this so uncomfortable, compared to Hoffman's talk, is that it's not an abstract mathematical theory which remains far removed from our own immanent experience of the World and our own identity in that World, i.e. which takes itself less seriously than it should. It asks us to include ourselves into this whole framework of deeper conscious agentic activity, to understand ourselves as completely embedded within it in every moment of our lives. To remain consistent and remember our previous conclusions about the dreamy perceptual interface in the very act of additional theorizing. Through this remembrance, we are led to find the deeper relations of the waking self who dreams the perceptual interface within the intimate workings of our own soul.

[Federica]

Haha Lorenzo, I have my answer ready to your 'special pleading' call out, but I guess you have enough reading for now, I'll let you first digest what Cleric and Ashvin have written

[AshvinP]

Hello all, new member here.

There is an ancient term, 'scientia sacra', which means 'sacred science'. Of course nowadays such terminology would generally be dismissed, but in the relevant domains of discourse it is a meaningful term. I think I first encountered it decades ago in Herman Hesse's books (for example the Glass Bead Game.) Traditionally it is used to designate the specifically intellectual (or noetic ) aspects within the religous traditions and in the perennial philosophy.

A snippet from the Wiki entry

Scientia sacra is not a new idea. It has its origins in the Islamic philosophical tradition, or, more broadly, in the traditional thought and culture. Asfa Widiyanto attributes the notion to Suhrawardi's theory of al-ilm al-huduri (knowledge by presence). Suhrawardi defined al-ilm al-huduri as knowledge that is self-evident, self-present, and self-objective – which indicates that consciousness and cognizable reality are one and the same. Such knowledge is acquired through intellection, which Suhrawardi defines as a sort of vision that allows humans to perceive archetypes in the imaginal realm (alam al-mithal, or mundus imaginalis in Henry Corbin's terminology). The notion of scientia sacra may also be traced back to Ibn Arabi's concept of "intuitive science", which he viewed as knowledge of the Truth, of the reality of all things. Ibn Arabi frequently refers to such knowledge as ma'rifa, which he connects with divine wisdom.'

...Seyyed Hossein Nasr has championed the concept of "Sacred Science," which has its roots first and foremost in the thought of French metaphysicist René Guénon, and then in authors who followed in his footsteps, such as, Frithjof Schuon and Titus Burckhardt.

It is elaborated considerably in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's book Knowledge and the Sacred .

What differentiates such concepts from today's natural sciences, is that the latter is grounded in the Galilean/Cartesian axioms of the separation of observer from observed, mind from matter, and 'primary' from 'secondary' attributes. Specifically modern science was birthed with the advent of an historically novel form of consciousness, marked by the self-conscious individual aware of him/herself as subject in a world of objects and forces. Whereas in earlier forms of consciousness (and so, cultures), as the world was felt to be the expression of the divine will, then the relationship was of a different nature - a more personalistic, 'I-thou' relationship, rather than 'subject and object'. Owen Barfield (who was, incidentally, an anthroposophist) is particularly good on that. As for Galileo and the origins of modern science, that is discussed in depth in Edmund Husserl's last book 'Crisis of the European Sciences'.

Hello Wayfarer,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your thoughts! Husserl's last work sounds very interesting and I plan to check it out. 
There is an interesting paper which compares Husserl's phenomenology of cognition-perception with that of Steiner:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... teiner.pdf

The assumption that all modes of being could be reduced to something analogous to objects of external nature was challenged in German philosophy at the turn of the century by two students of Franz Brentano: Rudolf Steiner and Edmund Husserl. Husserl is the better known figure, and his 1900 Logical Investigations (Logische Untersuchungen) begins the critique of naturalism known as phenomenology, developing an argument that the naturalistic experience of the world is but one of the guises in which being appears. The method of phenomenology, according to Husserl, provided a means to investigate these varieties of experience. A little earlier William James had developed his notion of “radical empiricism,” which bears certain similarities to the work of Husserl and Steiner. James was actually in communication with the former, and there could have been a cross-fertilization of ideas, although James does not appear to recognize the role of intentionality.

Steiner had developed his own critique of naturalism a few years earlier in his study of Goethe’s method: A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception (Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung), 1886; his dissertation: Truth and Knowledge (Wahrheit und Wissenschaft), 1892; and The Philosophy of Freedom (Philosophie der Freiheit), 1894. These works did not produce a new name or terminology, but like Husserl’s later attack, attempted to change the meaning of Erkenntnistheorie.

Historically one can view both figures as part of the development of German epistemological reflection that moves from Kant through Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. They also share a more immediate background. While there is no record that Husserl and Steiner ever met during their studies with Brentano in Vienna, it seems obvious that their philosophic concerns are related to those of Brentano, who must be given credit for focusing philosophic attention upon mental phenomena, and turning toward the act of thinking rather than the results. Both Husserl and Steiner share this turn.

Your tracing back of the 'sacred science', which indeed stretches back very far into the mystery schools of ancient civilizations, and right through the middle ages to our modern age, is also an important consideration - "Whereas in earlier forms of consciousness (and so, cultures), as the world was felt to be the expression of the divine will, then the relationship was of a different nature."

That is exactly right. What we now call the 'laws of Nature' were livingly felt to be the orderly workings of the Great Spirit, Brahma, Yahweh, God the Father, Allah, etc. In this way, Spirit and Nature were understood, in a living way, as two contrasting poles of our conscious existence. As Schelling put it, "Nature is visible Spirit and Spirit is invisible Nature."  Yet our modern age has especially brought into focus a third member of this polar relation which mediates between the two - the individual human being who has a will of his own, thereby attaining degrees of freedom in his intellectual soul which allow for the feeling of separateness and analysis from the subject/object perspective. But this 'will of his own', when made increasingly self-conscious through the katharsis of dispassionate logical reasoning (and eventually 'sense-free' thinking), reveals itself to be none other than the Will of the Divine-Nature. 

I am not asking on behalf of them alone, but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one— I in them and You in Me—that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have loved Me.

That glory is our individual ego-consciousness which allows for increasing creative freedom through self-conscious understanding of the Cosmic Will, as it reveals itself through Nature, Culture, and the workings of the Individual soul. In that sense, all of humanity's religious, philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic endeavors have been means of recovering the hollowed out intuitions of the Cosmic Whole in which it is embedded, even including the most seemingly abstract and prosaic formulations of modern science. By turning towards the creative impulses flowing through our inner conceptual and feeling life - the Kingdom of God within us - we may redeem these formulations so that they once again become expressions of the Divine Will, now united with the individual human will. 

[lorenzop]

Cleric,

The question in this thread is: 'Is Spiritual Science a science', I have been attempting to address this singular issue.
Your post while clear and beautiful, does not address the question. You are addressing questions such as 'is spiritual science reasonable, is spiritual science useful, can spiritual science be an adjunct to science and other endeavors, is it good for humanity, is it a good philosophy, etc.
Something is not a science because we want it to be so, nor is a something a science simply because there are compelling reasons for it to be a science.

[lorenzop]

Ashwin,

Just because an idea makes one unconmfortable, whether we nod our heads or not, doesn't make that idea science. Not sure why you made this 'argument'.

You used the expression 'spiritual scientific method of Steiner' . . . what does the word spiritual add to, or how does it qualify the scientific method? For example we don't use expressions such as 'biological scientific method', or 'physics scientific method', etc.

[AshvinP]

Ashwin,

Just because an idea makes one unconmfortable, whether we nod our heads or not, doesn't make that idea science. Not sure why you made this 'argument'.

You used the expression 'spiritual scientific method of Steiner' . . . what does the word spiritual add to, or how does it qualify the scientific method? For example we don't use expressions such as 'biological scientific method', or 'physics scientific method', etc.

Is what Hoffman is doing right now qualify as "science", according to you?

I don't think Anthony ever intended to make this a purely semantic debate about the dictionary definitions of the word "science", but rather to see in what ways investigation of the spiritual world (our inner world of activity) can be held to the rigorous and objective standards of inquiry that we find in the natural sciences. It seems he feels that isn't possible right now, i.e. there is some irresolvable discontinuity between investigating the objective lawfulness of the outer and inner worlds, which makes the former 'public' and the latter 'private', and I am not sure what your position is anymore.