Spiritual "science"

[Federica]

Great reflections! The above is a critical point to consider. This faith-based approach to our modern 'scientific' understanding becomes crystal clear as we cross the inversion horizon of the outer-inner threshold. There is the positive faith in all the shallow theoretical 'explanations' for various phenomena, and also the negative faith in the dogma that 99.9% of all phenomena we experience simply have no lawful explanation, will be explained in some indefinite future time (even though we can't currently imagine how this physical explanation may arise and are not making any progress towards it), or can only be explained vaguely with concepts such as, "it helped us survive millions of years of ago". We are all familiar with the big ones like the negative faith in the origin of life or consciousness, but we will also find this extends to practically every aspect of our soul experience. Most of that experience is simply felt as not needing any scientific explanation, for ex. how do we meet people and form various social relationships in life? It's really remarkable how little wonder and curiosity is left for these sorts of relationships which structure vast amounts of our daily experience.

Related to this faith-based approach to secular science, I was trying to remember where I had seen the Bayesian probability analysis employed before. Then it occurred to me that the religious fundamentalists also use it to 'prove' the historical events of the Gospels, such as the existence, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ Jesus! They use it to say that the most probable explanation for various isolated historical facts - like the women at the tomb, the conversion of Saul to Paul, the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to various people, etc. - is that they actually happened. So we see, inquiry into the Christ events has been sucked into the materialistic habit of thinking which cuts itself off from the depth structure of spiritual activity, just like the rest of modern world-conceptions. The only option is to then bring down Cosmic realities to the shape and size of intellectual thoughts and historical probability 'proofs', i.e. to recapitulate the Fall, rather than to lay hold of the Christ impulse towards the rebirth and ascension of intellectual thinking into its Cosmic reality, thereby redeeming and inverting the Fall. 

Just as Federica said, often we locate the dogmatic, faith-based thinking in everyone else but we never think to look for it in ourselves. We end up criticizing others as an unconscious means of expressing what we don't like about our own horizontal thinking and our own soul tendencies which reinforce it. These are very important soul dynamics for us to pay attention to and can really help develop our living thinking. We then realize that the atheists/skeptics/mystics criticize the fundamentalists and similar spiritualists when they are both playing the exact same dogmatic game by the same horizontal thinking rules. This was already happening in Steiner's day and he could anticipate how it must continue to develop further in times to come, especially within the sphere of Christianity. The below passage could have just as well been written by Anthony!

Because men are becoming more and more individual, an attempt should be made for anyone to describe his inner experiences completely freed from dogma to another, in such a way that the latter might also be able to develop his own free life of religious thought as an individual. It is a fact that dogmatic religion, the fixed dogmas of the religious confessions, will kill the religious life of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So that a fresh start from this age must consist in making it clear that in the first centuries of the Christian era this or that may have been adapted to man's development at the time, and that in the following centuries something different is needed. Also that there are different religions. We must try to make the essential nature of the different religions intelligible, to make clear different aspects of the Christ-conception. In this way we bring to every soul what it requires for its particular deepening. But we do not ourselves intervene in the moulding of the soul; we leave the soul, especially in the sphere of religion, its own liberty of thinking and scope to unfold this liberty.

...
So we find the clash of sharp conflict between germinating liberty of thought and the principle of authority which works into our times like a hang-over from the past. And there is a passion for dulling the consciousness and for self-deception where belief in authority is concerned. In our time putting faith in authority has become so great and so intensified that under its influence people are losing their power of judgment. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch they were endowed by nature with sound understanding; now they must acquire it, develop it, and their belief in authority holds them back from doing so. We are becoming bound hand and foot to our belief in authority. Only think how helpless human beings appear when compared to the unreasoning animal creation! How completely the animal is guided by instincts which lead it in a sound way even from sickness back to health; whereas modern man fights against sound judgment in this respect and submits himself entirely to authority. He has very little wish to acquire discernment for healthy conditions of living, although it is true that praiseworthy efforts are made in this direction by various societies and institutions. But these efforts need to be very much intensified; above all we must realise that we have increasingly to contend with our own trust in authority, and that whole theories are being built up which in their turn will become the basis of convictions only serving to uphold belief in authority.

In medicine, in law and in every other sphere people declare themselves from the outset incompetent to judge, and accept what science tells them. The complications of modern life make this understandable. But under the pressure of authority we shall become more and more helpless. And systematically to build up this force of authority, this habit of authority, is actually the principle of Jesuitism. And Jesuitism in the Catholic religion is only a special instance of other less noticeable performances in other directions. It begins in the sphere of ecclesiastical dogma with the tendency to uphold papal authority projected over from the fourth post-Atlantean period into the fifth where it can do no good. But the same Jesuitical principle will gradually transfer itself to other spheres of life. In a form hardly differing from the Jesuitism of dogmatic religion, we already find it in medical circles where a certain dogmatism strives after more power for the medical profession. This is typical of Jesuitical aspiration everywhere; and it will grow stronger and stronger. People will find themselves more and more tied down by what authority imposes upon them. 

Except Steiner doesn't only criticize dogmatic thinking but also illustrates methods to us by which we can liberate ourselves from dogma of all sorts, secular and religious, and start swimming with our thinking to the Center of the pool, where our innermost individuality can shine through our spiritual activity. Then we are not only on a path to liberation from the dogma which serves to justify our lower conditioning, but on a path of liberating the Christ within from that dogmatic conditioning as well.

Ashvin, it's hard to believe how you always manage to find not just a relevant quote, but one that speaks exactly to the ongoing discussion, bringing it a step further!
Indeed, this growing dependence on authority that Steiner mentions is an observable phenomenon in our societies. I think it's an attempt to alleviate responsibility, in every aspect of life. We are challenged by the anxiety of diminishing control over our thinking (we don’t understand) feeling (we’re victims of our sense-life and soul-life) and will (“things just exist around us, independently of our own activity” as you earlier said) and so we welcome authoritarian dogmatic profession and/or initiative to come to our rescue and relieve us from the pressure of our human responsibilities.
A linguistic example that reflects this tendency comes to mind. It might be limited to Swedish, not sure, however instead of saying “I have a condition, or illness” I am hearing people say more and more commonly: “I have a diagnosis”. This one refers to medical authority, but we can find equivalents in every domain of life, science at large, politics, law, finance, religion, education, grocery shopping...

[AshvinP]

Great reflections! The above is a critical point to consider. This faith-based approach to our modern 'scientific' understanding becomes crystal clear as we cross the inversion horizon of the outer-inner threshold. There is the positive faith in all the shallow theoretical 'explanations' for various phenomena, and also the negative faith in the dogma that 99.9% of all phenomena we experience simply have no lawful explanation, will be explained in some indefinite future time (even though we can't currently imagine how this physical explanation may arise and are not making any progress towards it), or can only be explained vaguely with concepts such as, "it helped us survive millions of years of ago". We are all familiar with the big ones like the negative faith in the origin of life or consciousness, but we will also find this extends to practically every aspect of our soul experience. Most of that experience is simply felt as not needing any scientific explanation, for ex. how do we meet people and form various social relationships in life? It's really remarkable how little wonder and curiosity is left for these sorts of relationships which structure vast amounts of our daily experience.

Related to this faith-based approach to secular science, I was trying to remember where I had seen the Bayesian probability analysis employed before. Then it occurred to me that the religious fundamentalists also use it to 'prove' the historical events of the Gospels, such as the existence, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ Jesus! They use it to say that the most probable explanation for various isolated historical facts - like the women at the tomb, the conversion of Saul to Paul, the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to various people, etc. - is that they actually happened. So we see, inquiry into the Christ events has been sucked into the materialistic habit of thinking which cuts itself off from the depth structure of spiritual activity, just like the rest of modern world-conceptions. The only option is to then bring down Cosmic realities to the shape and size of intellectual thoughts and historical probability 'proofs', i.e. to recapitulate the Fall, rather than to lay hold of the Christ impulse towards the rebirth and ascension of intellectual thinking into its Cosmic reality, thereby redeeming and inverting the Fall. 

Just as Federica said, often we locate the dogmatic, faith-based thinking in everyone else but we never think to look for it in ourselves. We end up criticizing others as an unconscious means of expressing what we don't like about our own horizontal thinking and our own soul tendencies which reinforce it. These are very important soul dynamics for us to pay attention to and can really help develop our living thinking. We then realize that the atheists/skeptics/mystics criticize the fundamentalists and similar spiritualists when they are both playing the exact same dogmatic game by the same horizontal thinking rules. This was already happening in Steiner's day and he could anticipate how it must continue to develop further in times to come, especially within the sphere of Christianity. The below passage could have just as well been written by Anthony!

Because men are becoming more and more individual, an attempt should be made for anyone to describe his inner experiences completely freed from dogma to another, in such a way that the latter might also be able to develop his own free life of religious thought as an individual. It is a fact that dogmatic religion, the fixed dogmas of the religious confessions, will kill the religious life of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So that a fresh start from this age must consist in making it clear that in the first centuries of the Christian era this or that may have been adapted to man's development at the time, and that in the following centuries something different is needed. Also that there are different religions. We must try to make the essential nature of the different religions intelligible, to make clear different aspects of the Christ-conception. In this way we bring to every soul what it requires for its particular deepening. But we do not ourselves intervene in the moulding of the soul; we leave the soul, especially in the sphere of religion, its own liberty of thinking and scope to unfold this liberty.

...
So we find the clash of sharp conflict between germinating liberty of thought and the principle of authority which works into our times like a hang-over from the past. And there is a passion for dulling the consciousness and for self-deception where belief in authority is concerned. In our time putting faith in authority has become so great and so intensified that under its influence people are losing their power of judgment. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch they were endowed by nature with sound understanding; now they must acquire it, develop it, and their belief in authority holds them back from doing so. We are becoming bound hand and foot to our belief in authority. Only think how helpless human beings appear when compared to the unreasoning animal creation! How completely the animal is guided by instincts which lead it in a sound way even from sickness back to health; whereas modern man fights against sound judgment in this respect and submits himself entirely to authority. He has very little wish to acquire discernment for healthy conditions of living, although it is true that praiseworthy efforts are made in this direction by various societies and institutions. But these efforts need to be very much intensified; above all we must realise that we have increasingly to contend with our own trust in authority, and that whole theories are being built up which in their turn will become the basis of convictions only serving to uphold belief in authority.

In medicine, in law and in every other sphere people declare themselves from the outset incompetent to judge, and accept what science tells them. The complications of modern life make this understandable. But under the pressure of authority we shall become more and more helpless. And systematically to build up this force of authority, this habit of authority, is actually the principle of Jesuitism. And Jesuitism in the Catholic religion is only a special instance of other less noticeable performances in other directions. It begins in the sphere of ecclesiastical dogma with the tendency to uphold papal authority projected over from the fourth post-Atlantean period into the fifth where it can do no good. But the same Jesuitical principle will gradually transfer itself to other spheres of life. In a form hardly differing from the Jesuitism of dogmatic religion, we already find it in medical circles where a certain dogmatism strives after more power for the medical profession. This is typical of Jesuitical aspiration everywhere; and it will grow stronger and stronger. People will find themselves more and more tied down by what authority imposes upon them. 

Except Steiner doesn't only criticize dogmatic thinking but also illustrates methods to us by which we can liberate ourselves from dogma of all sorts, secular and religious, and start swimming with our thinking to the Center of the pool, where our innermost individuality can shine through our spiritual activity. Then we are not only on a path to liberation from the dogma which serves to justify our lower conditioning, but on a path of liberating the Christ within from that dogmatic conditioning as well.

Ashvin, it's hard to believe how you always manage to find not just a relevant quote, but one that speaks exactly to the ongoing discussion, bringing it a step further!
Indeed, this growing dependence on authority that Steiner mentions is an observable phenomenon in our societies. I think it's an attempt to alleviate responsibility, in every aspect of life. We are challenged by the anxiety of diminishing control over our thinking (we don’t understand) feeling (we’re victims of our sense-life and soul-life) and will (“things just exist around us, independently of our own activity” as you earlier said) and so we welcome authoritarian dogmatic profession and/or initiative to come to our rescue and relieve us from the pressure of our human responsibilities.
A linguistic example that reflects this tendency comes to mind. It might be limited to Swedish, not sure, however instead of saying “I have a condition, or illness” I am hearing people say more and more commonly: “I have a diagnosis”. This one refers to medical authority, but we can find equivalents in every domain of life, science at large, politics, law, finance, religion, education, grocery shopping...

Yes for sure. It allows for our alleviation of responsibility, and also for us to have someone else to blame when things go wrong! For ex., I have many clients who will tell me they are victims of predatory lenders charging unseemly interest rates. If I respond, "well, you signed the contract with the terms spelled out in black and white", the response to that is often, "but I just trusted them and didn't read the contract before signing!" I am talking also about relatively 'sophisticated' clients who own multiple businesses. At the same time, I work not to adopt the attitude, "wow I can't believe these people think this way!", but rather identify how those same tendencies manifest through my soul-experience in different forms. I may not defer to government agencies, banks, and loan sharks when they tell me to sign a contract for some 'easy' money, but I may defer to my stomach when it tells me to eat something sweet.

I also try to remember, at the bigger picture level, we are dealing with very complex soul-spirit relations here, especially at our stage of evolution within the nested Time-rhythms. The perceptual-conceptual plane is really the outer physiognomy of the higher soul-spirit realms, where the latter use it as the instrument of holistic development and perfection just as our ego uses our physical body for its development. It could be the case that our higher Self intended to confront resistance in the form of certain soul tendencies at a certain stage of life, like deferral to authority, so they could be overcome through inner strengthening. The most potent inner strengthening can only come through such resistance. But, of course, that only works if we are also free not to overcome the resistance, instead remaining in a state of childlike or adolescent dependency.

[Anthony66]

In this sense it’s also a gesture of humility. It says: “I used to be proud of the sleek and fashionable intellectual framework, Bayesian or whatever. I used to express ideas in the form of these sharp silhouettes, and enjoy the intellectual high, feeling so evolved and self-complacent, but I now recognize self-indulgence in that, and I want to be more truthful to the authentic nature of this thinking force I am a part of.”

This is a very odd characterization. The reason this form of thinking is celebrated is because it is in harmony with the physiognomy (I like that word btw) of world appearances. A 0.5 mg dosage of Adrenalin can save a life; a 0.5kg dosage destroys. The Apollo 11 lunar landing required all manner of planar thinking, which if carried out without following the rigid contours of logical thought, would have spelt doom for the astronauts. Einstein's special and general relativity makes all manner of prediction via the thinking you have in your target. Of course the examples here could be continued ad infinitum.

Again, this is in know way meant to be an attack on Anthroposophy's depth thinking, rather a correction of the reasons given as to why the planar thinking with its attendant logic is so cherished today - it works within its own little sphere.

Back to our original question, we can say that Anthroposophy is not a cult. There’s no invitation to blindly surrender to revelations. If we can’t get all the fantastical claims of knowledge just yet, it’s for the same reason why I can’t grasp advanced mathematical theorems today. I haven’t studied the required materials, that’s why.

Of course few people have studied advanced mathematics. I have, but there is vast swathes of mathematics which I'm unfamiliar with. But I have a certain confidence in their soundness because I know the sort of thinking and the disciplines employed. Perhaps my cautiousness surrounding Anthroposophy is because it is advocating a type of thinking which I'm not familiar with for which I don't have the "runs on the board".

That spiritual science pursues knowledge along a third way makes sense, because it puts thinking at the center of inquiry, that very faculty we employ in all forms of knowledge attainment.

Yes it is this "third way" which has caught my attention and devoting significant time and energy into understanding.

We have been taught by Mainstream that scientific method is a good, objective, reliable, authoritative, and consensual approach to knowledge, while spirit is dubious, unverifyable, unreliable and ambiguous.

And this winds back to the motivation for my first post on this subject. Does SS have the markers of what is commonly understood by science? There is an agreement here that the depth aspect of reality is central, but can its investigations be verifiable, reliable and unambiguous?

Then, when it comes to the fantastical claims of Anthroposophy, we suddenly switch gears and become the most demanding skeptics. So there is a phenomenon of widespread, unassumed, faith in scientific method as a secure way to true knowledge in every pursuit, that we need to guard against, especially in fields of inquiry that span beyond the sensory spectrum.

And again the reason for this is that the scientific method employs a thinking which is familiar to us. Anthroposophy employs a form which is difficult to describe and harder to employ (particularly for scientists like myself).

I have been reading your words, trying to inhabit the perspective they come from, and here’s the impression I’m getting. You say “I hope the lights come on”, and earlier you spoke of “the plunge" one needs to take. There are thoughts of discontinuity in these words. You seem to believe that a remarkable, discrete event should happen, a plunge, or a change of state.

This is largely true although I must say there is an increasing sense of me seeing even in the mundane affairs of life an alternative way to thinking along the lines of Anthroposophy.

[AshvinP]

Sorry to interject here again, but I just want to focus on one particular point of emphasis which is critical. Anthony, it is great that you are experiencing changes in your mode of thinking, however slight they may be at first, so what follows should not be taken as any reproach. It is simply something which I feel we need to always keep in mind based on my own personal experience of advancing in understanding and then lapsing back on a regular basis. These oscillations will continue to occur and we can smooth them out by anticipating them and trying hard to make some of the foundational principles of 'thinking as spiritual activity', second-nature.

Perhaps my cautiousness surrounding Anthroposophy is because it is advocating a type of thinking which I'm not familiar with for which I don't have the "runs on the board".
...
And this winds back to the motivation for my first post on this subject. Does SS have the markers of what is commonly understood by science? There is an agreement here that the depth aspect of reality is central, but can its investigations be verifiable, reliable and unambiguous?
...
And again the reason for this is that the scientific method employs a thinking which is familiar to us. Anthroposophy employs a form which is difficult to describe and harder to employ (particularly for scientists like myself).

In these characterizations, we are not only acknowledging the efficacy of horizontal planar thinking in various domains, but presupposing reality itself consists in horizontal planar forms. When we say the depth structure of thinking is another "type" of thinking than the horizontal intellectual thinking, we are keeping them 'side by side' on the horizontal plane. We are only treating the former as another aspect of the outer physiognomy. It would be like standing in front of a mirror and saying, my horizontal thinking is represented by my familiar eyeballs and my depth thinking is represented by the unfamiliar, invisible nerve-endings and such which connect to the brain. But these are both still only picture-concepts experienced within the mirror-plane. The inner flow of depth thinking is the soul and spirit who is intentionally standing in front of the mirror, thereby creating the outer physiognomy of the image, including the concept of 'inner space with nerves and brain'. It is the soul's inner life and activity which intended to place a mirror there and stand in front of it to thereby investigate its own outer contours. 

So the term 'depth structure' is employed here to indicate that we are dealing with the living inner flow of activity which finally results in the horizontal thinking (mirror pictures) that we employ in modern culture. 1,000 years ago this flow of activity finally resulted in a different mode of thinking, with less degrees of freedom, and 1,000 years from now it will again result in a different mode of thinking, with more degrees of freedom. Our depth investigation is aimed at discovering the soul-spirit means through which these degrees of freedom come into existence and allow for varied expression of forms within the outer physiognomy, i.e. the conceptual-perceptual plane of philosophies, religions, arts, and sciences. It discovers how we are actually able to land humans on the Moon or save lives with certain dosages of substances. The horizontal thinking only knows that it can be done if it instinctively mirrors prescribed trains of thoughts, but it doesn't know where these trains of thoughts are coming from, how we are really active in that flow of thoughts, and it is therefore fundamentally limited in what it can accomplish. Depth thinking, when properly integrated, will allow humanity to achieve scientific-technological feats which are entirely unsuspected or simply presupposed as impossible. 

Let's say a painter is trying to perfect his craft. He has become a master at reproducing artworks of others with all the proper colors, shades, shapes, perspectives, etc. Now let's say he wants to perfect his craft even further by consciously resonating with the ideas and soul-experience of the artist which determined what, when, where, how, and why he would paint this particular work of art. He would not lose any understanding of his previous replicating painting skills in this process, or substitute that replicating skill for another 'spiritual' skill, but come to understand what he had always been doing in the process of replication, but which remained below the threshold of his consciousness since he was fully absorbed into only mirroring the content. When I replicate a painting or learn to play another's musical piece, this is only possible because I am resonating with the archetypal soul-spirit experience which gave rise to the outer physiognomy of the paintings or compositions, but I am normally unaware of that resonance. Depth thinking is doing consciously what the horizontal thinker does unconsciously. What if we can become conscious of exactly how we are able to think mathematically or artistically? That would be nothing less than becoming creative within the domain of mathematical or artistic thinking itself, rather than simply mirroring the pre-established rules of those domains. When certain Einstein-like individuals do this unconsciously or semi-consciously in modern culture, we call it "inspiration" or "genius". Depth thinking can do this fully consciously.

What you say about the unfamiliarity of depth thinking is certainly understandable and correct - horizontal thinking fixes itself in past world-conceptions and tools of knowledge which have been fully explored, while depth thinking seeks the phenomenology and tools of the unexplored future. It is on the leading edge of the imaginative paradigm shift in human consciousness. Even the horizontal thinking scientists implicitly acknowledge this fact. Let's say there is a rocket scientist who is trying to help plan a human mission to Mars. At the same time, there is a team of neuroscientists in the neighboring building trying to figure out what inner brain processes give rise to human consciousness-thinking. Would it ever occur for the former to consult the latter, so that their findings may inform his planning of the mission? It doesn't, because everyone implicitly realizes horizontal investigation of our inner activity or thinking faculty does not lead to actionable findings which would help us perfect that inner activity for use in all other domains of life. That is a great pragmatic test for whether we are actually comprehending the nature of depth/vertical investigation of spiritual activity, or simply confusing our horizontal concept of 'vertical thinking' for its essential nature. 

Although the inner exercises are vital, we must also try to comprehend the principles which give a logical foundation for why we are doing them. Comprehension is necessary for active spiritual perception on the higher planes, unlike the passive perception-conception on the mirror-plane of pictures which simply exist independent of our will. On the mirror physical plane, it seems we can only know what we first perceive. But on the higher planes, we can only perceive what we first know.

[Federica]

In this sense it’s also a gesture of humility. It says: “I used to be proud of the sleek and fashionable intellectual framework, Bayesian or whatever. I used to express ideas in the form of these sharp silhouettes, and enjoy the intellectual high, feeling so evolved and self-complacent, but I now recognize self-indulgence in that, and I want to be more truthful to the authentic nature of this thinking force I am a part of.”

This is a very odd characterization. The reason this form of thinking is celebrated is because it is in harmony with the physiognomy (I like that word btw) of world appearances. A 0.5 mg dosage of Adrenalin can save a life; a 0.5kg dosage destroys. The Apollo 11 lunar landing required all manner of planar thinking, which if carried out without following the rigid contours of logical thought, would have spelt doom for the astronauts. Einstein's special and general relativity makes all manner of prediction via the thinking you have in your target. Of course the examples here could be continued ad infinitum.

Again, this is in know way meant to be an attack on Anthroposophy's depth thinking, rather a correction of the reasons given as to why the planar thinking with its attendant logic is so cherished today - it works within its own little sphere.

Anthony, we agree of course that planar thinking “works within its own little sphere”. I was not at all suggesting that we should dismiss it. We can keep it, but the problem today is that we only want to stick to planar thinking, no matter if it’s to think about adrenaline dosage, about the place of our individual I-complex in the vastness of the cosmic void, or about no object at all. I was arguing that we tend to suppress non planar forms of ideal content that might present itself to our consciousness. We tend to be inhibited to fully recognize as legitimate part of our identity any thoughts that do not follow the logical blueprint of planar thinking.

If you doubt that, you could do an instant test. Try to come up with a metaphor for something, right now. Maybe a metaphor for this forum, or for this conversation, or for a life event, for Anthroposophy, for planar thinking, Apollo 11, or 13, whatever you prefer. Write it down in a couple of short paragraphs, so you can share it in your next post. If the exercise feels slightly odd, uncomfortable, disturbing, or even intolerable, if it makes you think that it has nothing to do with this conversation, and that it’s an annoying or cheeky suggestion, well, that’s precisely the point I was trying to make.
And if it doesn't, would you please share your metaphor?

Why do we experience such resistance in your opinion?
I am arguing that this aversion is a hindrance to our attunement to vertical thinking. The fact that planar, abstract thinking is an effective tool to deal with the physiognomy of natural phenomena (I like this word too) is one thing. Stating that its effectiveness in handling the sensory spectrum is the reason why it’s cherished today, is a much more hazardous statement. It’s as if I have two proven family recipes, one for yogurt cake and one for baked alaska, but I end up baking yogurt cake every single time. Why? Because it’s a recipe that works, you say. The recipe surely works, but could there be more to uncover about my baking choices?

Back to our original question, we can say that Anthroposophy is not a cult. There’s no invitation to blindly surrender to revelations. If we can’t get all the fantastical claims of knowledge just yet, it’s for the same reason why I can’t grasp advanced mathematical theorems today. I haven’t studied the required materials, that’s why.

Of course few people have studied advanced mathematics. I have, but there is vast swathes of mathematics which I'm unfamiliar with. But I have a certain confidence in their soundness because I know the sort of thinking and the disciplines employed. Perhaps my cautiousness surrounding Anthroposophy is because it is advocating a type of thinking which I'm not familiar with for which I don't have the "runs on the board".

Yes, lack of familiarity makes us cautious but eagerness to discover makes us daring. It’s all about which weighs heavier.

We have been taught by Mainstream that scientific method is a good, objective, reliable, authoritative, and consensual approach to knowledge, while spirit is dubious, unverifyable, unreliable and ambiguous.

And this winds back to the motivation for my first post on this subject. Does SS have the markers of what is commonly understood by science? There is an agreement here that the depth aspect of reality is central, but can its investigations be verifiable, reliable and unambiguous?

Yes, but ultimately we have to find such verification, reliability, and disambiguation in our own experience of thinking. Because that's what it’s all about, the first person experience of thinking, so in the end we will have to have the experience, in order to know with absolute certainty. We are not talking of an object that can be put under scrutiny and analyzed. The ‘object of inquiry’ is an indissociable mix of object and subject, so the only way to go about it is by… doing it, not by putting it under the microscope. In other words, there is no way the inquiry can be put in a model, and looked at from a neutral viewpoint. Why is there no way? Because the look itself, that we usually cast on the object, has to go in, too. We have to understand that part too, together with everything else. We cannot look from a neutral viewpoint and understand our inquisitive look at the same time. Therefore, instead of casting out look on an object, as we usually do in science, we have no choice but to bring the object to us, through us, so that we can understand everything in one single go, the look and the object, as they interact in us, as us, in one whole indissociable process.
Other than this little detail, yes, the claims are expected to be verifiable (by our individual findings) reliable (by the experience of repetition of the previous) and unambiguous (by virtue of maintaining a discerning and logic approach all throughout, to guard against unsubstantiated interpretations of the experience).

I have been reading your words, trying to inhabit the perspective they come from, and here’s the impression I’m getting. You say “I hope the lights come on”, and earlier you spoke of “the plunge" one needs to take. There are thoughts of discontinuity in these words. You seem to believe that a remarkable, discrete event should happen, a plunge, or a change of state.

This is largely true although I must say there is an increasing sense of me seeing even in the mundane affairs of life an alternative way to thinking along the lines of Anthroposophy.

Oh! Is there anything more that you would say about this alternative way? A metaphor would work well

[Federica]

Luckily you have answered Anthony’s post too, Ashvin. I think everyone can see the different level in your reply, and the benefit Anthony will get from it. I write down my thoughts to the best of my understanding, but we are fortunate that you and Cleric keep an eye on the threads, to say the least!

[AshvinP]

Luckily you have answered Anthony’s post too, Ashvin. I think everyone can see the different level in your reply, and the benefit Anthony will get from it. I write down my thoughts to the best of my understanding, but we are fortunate that you and Cleric keep an eye on the threads, to say the least!

I wouldn't say it is a different level, Federica, only a different angle on the same core issue, which you are pointing to in your own unique style and metaphors. And really, what I am writing, is only a synthesis of what was already expressed previously on this thread, which in turn were different angles on what has already been expressed on previous threads.

I hope Anthony doesn't see these posts as inundating him with brand new information to learn, but only as multiple angles on the same core issue of experiencing the living reality of our thinking activity before it crystallizes into the familiar conceptual forms which we use in standard philosophy and science.

[Federica]

Yes for sure. It allows for our alleviation of responsibility, and also for us to have someone else to blame when things go wrong! For ex., I have many clients who will tell me they are victims of predatory lenders charging unseemly interest rates. If I respond, "well, you signed the contract with the terms spelled out in black and white", the response to that is often, "but I just trusted them and didn't read the contract before signing!" I am talking also about relatively 'sophisticated' clients who own multiple businesses. At the same time, I work not to adopt the attitude, "wow I can't believe these people think this way!", but rather identify how those same tendencies manifest through my soul-experience in different forms. I may not defer to government agencies, banks, and loan sharks when they tell me to sign a contract for some 'easy' money, but I may defer to my stomach when it tells me to eat something sweet.

I also try to remember, at the bigger picture level, we are dealing with very complex soul-spirit relations here, especially at our stage of evolution within the nested Time-rhythms. The perceptual-conceptual plane is really the outer physiognomy of the higher soul-spirit realms, where the latter use it as the instrument of holistic development and perfection just as our ego uses our physical body for its development. It could be the case that our higher Self intended to confront resistance in the form of certain soul tendencies at a certain stage of life, like deferral to authority, so they could be overcome through inner strengthening. The most potent inner strengthening can only come through such resistance. But, of course, that only works if we are also free not to overcome the resistance, instead remaining in a state of childlike or adolescent dependency.

Yes, it ultimately comes down to maintaining will and actions in alignment with our understanding. I certainly feel that I have much left to overcome in this domain. Today the primary ‘battlefield’ where I can fight, or resist, my soul tendencies seems to have become inner development. Serious and methodical execution of all that has to be done for inner development certainly challenges me, because my will is not at the level where it should be. I am not resisting my tendencies enough, lack of discipline, going my own way, juggling too many things at once, fear of not being good enough, fast enough, etc.
But I am in the dark as for where other opportunities to strengthen determination and overcome soul tendencies may lie.
I can imagine that, with more work, this view would become clearer, but for now I am focused on the challenges of inner development first and foremost, while I find myself in a rather detached relation to soul tendencies in everyday life situations, as far as I can consciously see. Yes, I could defer to the authority of a sweet thing to eat, or to the one of a preoccupation about a possible event in the future, but much less than I used to, and I can't even claim that it's an achievement of my efforts. It's tempting to think there's a connection, but in fact I can’t recognize any link of causality.

[AshvinP]

Yes for sure. It allows for our alleviation of responsibility, and also for us to have someone else to blame when things go wrong! For ex., I have many clients who will tell me they are victims of predatory lenders charging unseemly interest rates. If I respond, "well, you signed the contract with the terms spelled out in black and white", the response to that is often, "but I just trusted them and didn't read the contract before signing!" I am talking also about relatively 'sophisticated' clients who own multiple businesses. At the same time, I work not to adopt the attitude, "wow I can't believe these people think this way!", but rather identify how those same tendencies manifest through my soul-experience in different forms. I may not defer to government agencies, banks, and loan sharks when they tell me to sign a contract for some 'easy' money, but I may defer to my stomach when it tells me to eat something sweet.

I also try to remember, at the bigger picture level, we are dealing with very complex soul-spirit relations here, especially at our stage of evolution within the nested Time-rhythms. The perceptual-conceptual plane is really the outer physiognomy of the higher soul-spirit realms, where the latter use it as the instrument of holistic development and perfection just as our ego uses our physical body for its development. It could be the case that our higher Self intended to confront resistance in the form of certain soul tendencies at a certain stage of life, like deferral to authority, so they could be overcome through inner strengthening. The most potent inner strengthening can only come through such resistance. But, of course, that only works if we are also free not to overcome the resistance, instead remaining in a state of childlike or adolescent dependency.

Yes, it ultimately comes down to maintaining will and actions in alignment with our understanding. I certainly feel that I have much left to overcome in this domain. Today the primary ‘battlefield’ where I can fight, or resist, my soul tendencies seems to have become inner development. Serious and methodical execution of all that has to be done for inner development certainly challenges me, because my will is not at the level where it should be. I am not resisting my tendencies enough, lack of discipline, going my own way, juggling too many things at once, fear of not being good enough, fast enough, etc.
But I am in the dark as for where other opportunities to strengthen determination and overcome soul tendencies may lie.
I can imagine that, with more work, this view would become clearer, but for now I am focused on the challenges of inner development first and foremost, while I find myself in a rather detached relation to soul tendencies in everyday life situations, as far as I can consciously see. Yes, I could defer to the authority of a sweet thing to eat, or to the one of a preoccupation about a possible event in the future, but much less than I used to, and I can't even claim that it's an achievement of my efforts. It's tempting to think there's a connection, but in fact I can’t recognize any link of causality.

What you wrote here is more or less where my challenges are as well. There are all manner of external and internal 'authorities' which are conditioning our current will, and we can often get overwhelmed by the sheer number of resources/exercises presented to us on the path. It's like nutritional advice today - everyone has a slightly different take on how best to balance our diet and there are endless 'health conscious' options. Whenever I hear about a new exercise, I start thinking, "maybe I should be focusing more time on that one!" But of course it's simply not possible to sample all the tasty items on the menu.

I will say that, in my experience so far, whenever I felt like I was not making too much progress, there eventually came a time when it dawned on me that I had been making progress but simply wasn't aware of how it was being integrated into my Be-ing, how various challenges and resistances were serving as preparation for further development. It is really remarkable how those two words, 'self-consciousness', really point to the whole essence of the path. The process and intensification of spiritual growth is simply becoming more conscious of how exactly we are always growing spiritually through the evolving World Process. Our exercises help us increasingly attune our attention to these ongoing soul-spirit processes which normally escape it.

There also does seem to be a certain art of surrendering our lower self to the higher "I" who already knows what is best for our individual development, not in any mystical or fundamentalist way, in which we weaken our ego-conscious will, but in a reasoned and experienced faith that His consciousness and ideals cannot be other than our own, since we only have our be-ing through His. I think what Cleric wrote to Guney on the other thread is very helpful for all of us to consider. We cannot really expect to free our Will from so many nested layers of conditioning on our lonesome, although our devotional depth thinking can invite the organizing forces which have been with us since the very beginning/end - "and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

[Federica]

What you wrote here is more or less where my challenges are as well. There are all manner of external and internal 'authorities' which are conditioning our current will, and we can often get overwhelmed by the sheer number of resources/exercises presented to us on the path. It's like nutritional advice today - everyone has a slightly different take on how best to balance our diet and there are endless 'health conscious' options. Whenever I hear about a new exercise, I start thinking, "maybe I should be focusing more time on that one!" But of course it's simply not possible to sample all the tasty items on the menu.

I will say that, in my experience so far, whenever I felt like I was not making too much progress, there eventually came a time when it dawned on me that I had been making progress but simply wasn't aware of how it was being integrated into my Be-ing, how various challenges and resistances were serving as preparation for further development. It is really remarkable how those two words, 'self-consciousness', really point to the whole essence of the path. The process and intensification of spiritual growth is simply becoming more conscious of how exactly we are always growing spiritually through the evolving World Process. Our exercises help us increasingly attune our attention to these ongoing soul-spirit processes which normally escape it.

There also does seem to be a certain art of surrendering our lower self to the higher "I" who already knows what is best for our individual development, not in any mystical or fundamentalist way, in which we weaken our ego-conscious will, but in a reasoned and experienced faith that His consciousness and ideals cannot be other than our own, since we only have our be-ing through His. I think what Cleric wrote to Guney on the other thread is very helpful for all of us to consider. We cannot really expect to free our Will from so many nested layers of conditioning on our lonesome, although our devotional depth thinking can invite the organizing forces which have been with us since the very beginning/end - "and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Thank you, yes I have read the post. I was thinking that forming "an Ideal about the direction one would like to see human evolution going", and praying that we may contribute to that Ideal through the activity of out whole I-complex, would be the way. I would think that the challenging things to do move back to deeds in earthly life, once the moral element falls into place and is fully integrated.