Cell Intelligence in Physiological & Morphological Spaces

[Federica]

These are great questions, Federica. In my path the question of biological life has always been a running thread. Even in my atheistic years I was deeply interested in the origin of life and all the amazing cellular machinery (of course in a purely materialistic way at that time). I often wonder what would Steiner say about all this. None of these incredible details were known at his time, except the basic things visible with a microscope - the nucleus, the division, etc.

Early on I was very eager to arrive at some more spiritual understanding of biology. Alas, in time I noticed that I always tend to some kind of mechanistic explanation. Only in recent years I really try to find understanding from the 'within' you speak of. I can't say that I have much success but at least now I recognize some of the stumbling stones for whatever may come.

In my opinion, one of the greatest obstacles is the inertia of the way we think about processes of any kind, which is of course the result of the intellectual mode of cognition. In our sensory life basically we can only create forms. The 'animation' of the forms is left to the laws of reality. This is the case with any technology that we presently know - from the primitive to the advanced. If we create a windmill, we create the parts and let the wind do the animation. If we create a computer, we etch the traces of the circuits and let electricity do the rest. We have the same approach even towards life.

In all of this we have to sense how we technologically create the forms (even artificially synthesizing DNA can be considered producing a form) and let Nature animate them. This polarity was at the core of the TCOTCT, where it was attempted to show that only in our spiritual activity we live in an actual temporal law which metamorphoses the forms through time.

I think that this is one of the most important things when we try to approach the within perspective. The life forces have to be found as something spiritual, as something that intends the metamorphoses of the forms, as we intend the metamorphoses of thoughts.

The second important thing is that most certainly these forces don't create the forms from 'the side', in the way we can perceive them (with microscopes or other imaging technologies). In that sense, biological life must be thought of much more as a kind of language in which the spiritual world thinks as it reaches into the decohering physical spectrum. An enzyme is a thought which somehow fits in the whole symphony. Yet one of the most interesting things for me is how that thought takes the form of a sequence of amino acids. Speculating intellectually, I think it must be some kind of filtering process, where all possible physical forms are in superposition, so to speak, and gradually only those sequences that can result into a protein that implements the idea, remain. This also suggests that the DNA and the proteins take form simultaneously, which only reminds us that time is experienced differently when the states of being are not forced to follow deeply decohered processes. Basically, we have to learn to think about superposition not only in space (which through quantum mechanics we have more or less accustomed ourselves to) but also through time. In other words, before our stage of mineralization is reached, in a more etheric form of existence, the cells are blurry not only about their contents but also about their processes through time. As an example, we may have a superposition of all processes that can satisfy the life-thought of growth. When this life-thought decoheres, the processes and contents become filtered out of the superposition and only certain concrete variants remain. That's how the pure etheric life becomes mineralized and constrained in physical biology.

These are only intellectual musings but at this time I feel they can give us certain guidelines about the kind of experiences we can expect in the within.

Thank you for these generous indications, Cleric! I am writing a few thoughts based on them.
In the meantime, I have a side note on what Steiner would say on the amazing cellular machinery. Through Kürten’s work - that I find so admirable and accurate in reconstructing the threads eclectically and sometimes cryptically developed by Steiner across lessons and books - I get the impression that Steiner may have said more on elementary kingdoms and formative forces than it appears.
Also, I have learnt from a Scaligero lecture that I’m translating, that a student of Steiner - Guenther Wachsmuth - wrote under Steiner’s close supervision a book called "ETHERIC FORMATIVE FORCES IN COSMOS, EARTH AND MAN - A Path of Investigation into the World of the Living”. Is anyone aware of this book? The book is sold out, but it’s downloadable from Academia.edu. I haven’t read it yet but I am hopeful it contains solid insights into Steiner’s detailed views on the forces of life.

[Federica]

I am sorry for the long text. I’m not entirely confident these thoughts are worth the amount of text, but I hope so.


LIFE ANIMATION (THE FORMATIVE FORCE OF LIFE) IS PART OF ANY IDEATION WE CAN THINK OF

one of the greatest obstacles is the inertia of the way we think about processes of any kind, which is of course the result of the intellectual mode of cognition. In our sensory life basically we can only create forms. The 'animation' of the forms is left to the laws of reality. This is the case with any technology that we presently know - from the primitive to the advanced. If we create a windmill, we create the parts and let the wind do the animation. If we create a computer, we etch the traces of the circuits and let electricity do the rest. We have the same approach even towards life.

Yes, the distinction between forms and animation of the forms has an exact reflection in Kürten’s illustrations: right now we are incarnated in the mineral Life round/Elementary Kingdom, and what we master is mineral form, we have consciousness of it and we approach everything at the level of mineral form, be it our physical body, all other manifested living and non-living phenomena, and also our thinking: we abstractify it to form, through the filtering operated by our brain. We don’t yet know how to understand etheric forces, beyond their sense perceptible mineral component that we study from without.

we have to sense how we technologically create the forms and let Nature animate them. ...This polarity was at the core of the TCOTCT, where it was attempted to show that only in our spiritual activity we live in an actual temporal law which metamorphoses the forms through time. ...The life forces have to be found as something spiritual, as something that intends the metamorphoses of the forms, as we intend the metamorphoses of thoughts.

This parallel between understanding life forces and our experience of willed thinking - that we have to will the living metamorphosis of form, similar to how we find ourselves able to do it in thinking, is so helpful. It sets the tone and the context. This too finds coincidence within Kürten’s picture of the seven-fold structure of Spirit land. Drawing directly from Steiner, he notices: when we think sense-free thoughts (ideate what is not already there in sense-perceptible reality) the activity is structured in the fourth region of Spirit land, that is, in the fourth Elementary Kingdom. where the formless thought-seeds of (pure) thinking itself shape the archetypal thought forms originating the spiritual-mental activity of man, that condenses into sense-free thoughts. So the ideation of a windmill that we find precipitated in thought form has its spiritual background process, its depth process, in this fourth Elementary Kingdom.

What I am getting at is: this fourth region of Spirit that we are currently traversing - where pure thinking makes it all the way down to perceptible (but sense-free) thought-images - brings inside it not only the shaping activity of its own beings, as described, but also the activities of the beings of the first three (higher) Kingdoms: the 7th (highest) providing the thought-seeds that shape physical form, the 6th, providing the thought-seeds of life forces to animate the forms, and the 5th, providing the thought-seeds of soul forces.

Therefore, I think that even in the windmill and in the computer - in all man-made manifestations of creative ideation - the forces of life are included. Because we are in the operating activity of the 4th region, that brings the forces of the first three Kingdoms (physical form, life form, and soul form) into the specifically human sphere of conscious thinking. And so the life formative forces are included here. Without these, the condensed thought-image of the windmill would not be possible.

So maybe, we could extend the above parallel between thinking animation (fully within our reach, with the vowel exercise for instance) and life animation (that we hope to internalize, instead of leaving it over to Nature). Could it be said that any process of transformation that we recognize as such has life? That any metamorphosis we are aware of has to incorporate the principles of life, even the windmill, the computer, and the ideation behind the cell simulation too. Any process that we expect to be animated once we put in the right forms, is ruled by life-like principles, because ideation is only possible once all four levels of thought-seeds (form, life, soul, and thought itself) are brought together from the top, and down, in condensable archetypes of the fourth region.

Another way to say it, from the opposite end, would be - with Steiner - that “man's ordinary forces of thought are refined formative and growth forces.” The wind that animates the mill realizes a process of transformation that in some sense is of growth nature, there is creation. We ‘only’ need to see it. It is a creation that descends into matter from the high-seated means of our ideation, through life and soul forces. The static, lifeless forms condensing from the highest (7th) region of Spirit are set in motion by the large spectrum interaction of all these forces. So probably even the failed cell simulation in itself is life-like? for the ideation it comprises, which would be impossible without the principles of life and growth operating in the background of it.

In short, life animation can’t be imagined in isolation. Its formative forces are part of any ideation we can think of. With Kürten: “The creative, shape-giving activity of the elementary kingdoms is thus the basis of all phenomena through which being comes into manifestation.”


“BIOLOGY” AS AN IDEA, IS NOT HELPFUL TO UNDERSTAND LIFE FROM WITHIN

In this perspective, biology - biological machinery and growth - in itself does not appear as a truly homogenous category of life, that requires to be understood as such (although it looks so). Just because our senses tell us there are similar cells in plants, animals and in man, and they all reproduce alike, it doesn't mean that what we need to understand is “cell”. Because life from within is different in every different kingdom of Nature: (so-called) life-less, plant, animal, man. Instead of focusing on cell and its components, the relevant distinctions are those given by the Spirit regions, the Elementary Kingdoms - physical form, life, soul, thinking. The highest Spirit region gives form to formless matter, down to the crystal. Formless matter responds to certain physical laws, but the more form is shaped, the closer we get to an inversion of those laws. Maybe we could say that, at the formless level, growth/animation only exists as a completely diffused principle of ‘life’. With the laws of nature applied to the formless, 'animation' is experienced as perfectly diffused in all reality. Then, at the level of mineral form (crystal), as opposed to formless mineral (fluid or gas) ‘proto-life’ begins to appear. We come closer to the second region, that of the formative forces of life. We break a crystal in two, and we have two integral crystals, not one broken crystal. It’s almost a meaningful reproduction. (For formless matter, it doesn’t even make sense to think in terms of any ‘reproduction’ processes).

Further, as we really enter the second spirit region, the thought-seed of growth/life is inflected differently for plant, animal and human existence (what we today call “biology”) through unique combinations with the other formative forces at play. From diffused ‘life’ of the formless, through the proto-life of crystals, life here gets internalized in individual beings at various levels of ‘intensity’ (unconscious life in plants, sentient life in animals, conscious in man), but, as you say, life is not added from the side onto these forms, as isolated ingredient. Rather, life forces are intertwined with the formative forces of physical form only (plant) or with physical form forces plus soul forces (animal) or with physical form forces plus soul forces and ego (man). On the material plane, what we perceive are precipitations of these different interferences.


TRYING TO FIND A MORE SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE

biological life must be thought of much more as a kind of language in which the spiritual world thinks as it reaches into the decohering physical spectrum.

I wonder if it could be said that biological life is a family of languages in which the spirit thinks as it reaches into the decohering physical spectrum. Because the combinations of forces expressed in plant, animal and man differ from one another, a plant cell would not reflect the same language as a cell of a human body, although the sense-perceptible, precipitated cellular processes may appear similar to one another. Again, we should maybe refrain from the convenient approach of dissecting the life forces, flattening them into the concept of biology. And we should refrain from identifying the lowest common denominator of life in the cell (or other sense perceptible sub-parts of cell). That would be the Ahrimanic bottom-up approach. Ahriman says: “Across the board, the cell is our blueprint leading to an understanding of all life.” Could we say that?


Life forces seem to me like primal, individualizing forces, and - in their physical-material effects - spatially differentiating forces, through growth/reproduction. Life forces bring temporal transformation from the level of formless diffusion, into the individualized sphere of the Earthly beings. In other words, life force brings evolution on the inner side of beings, operating from within their individuality, rather than only at the formless and diffuse level of the laws of nature.

- On the physical plane, life forces make the thought-seed of “growth/reproduction/evolution” spatially condensed within the existence of organized bodies.
- On the spiritual, spaceless plane, the individualizing and differentiating forces of life are in fact rhythmical forces that set the tempo of evolution.


In this perspective, life forces (EK 2) are always expressed in interaction with physical forces (EKs 1+2), sometimes with soul forces too (EKs 1+2+3), and sometimes also with ego forces (EKs 1+2+3+4). Therefore, they can’t be understood in isolation from the other formative forces. Trying to understand life forces from within, would then equal an attempt to understand the various interactions of forces. In our thinking, we experience the complete synthesis of all four levels, so we should have the means for that understanding from within.

And maybe an enzyme transformation, although it sense-perceptually looks consistent across the biological board, is the flattened material precipitation of different languages of transformative life that can’t be inferred from the mere observation-simulation of the enzyme transformation.
I have a metaphor for that. It’s as if someone composed an English verse, a German verse, and a French verse by mentally aligning all the letters of a Scrabble table game, and then read out the verses for us. We hear the three verses, without knowing any of the languages, and we are fascinated. We want to retrace their creation and to learn to compose verses in the same way. But even if we have full access to all the letter-pieces in the game, there is nothing in the letter-pieces themselves that can help us understand the making of the verses. Like an enzyme with respect to plant, animal and human life, the Scrabble letter “a” could be part of all the verses, as a decohered piece, "a" is common to all the verses, but there’s no way to become a trilingual poet, no way to understand how the verses were composed, only based on understanding the alphabet letters. Our only way is to learn the languages first. If we learn French, we can at least hope to grasp the French verse, and see how it comes about in terms of the Scrabble letter-pieces. Similarly, only if we understand plant life language, can we grasp plant growth from within, and then see how its precipitation may include enzymes. Those enzymes may be part of precipitated animal growth as well, but no chance to grasp animal growth from within without learning the animal-specific language of interactions. There is another metaphor for the same idea that I will borrow from Anthony:

projection is not a bijective function - there is not a one-to-one relationship between the domain and range. For example a 3-D point (1,2,3) may project to a 2-D plane as (1,2) but so may (1,2,4). From the 2-D point (1,2) one can't uniquely map back to 3-D - one can't determine whether to traverse back to (1,2,3) or (1,2,4) or to (1,2,5) for that matter.

Is the above enough of a foundation to say that biology as a concept is overestimated, misleading, and maybe even Ahrimanic, and that life forces are better understood as individualizing/differentiating/rythmical? I’m not sure, I hope so.

If the above makes sense, I would think that understanding cellular ‘selfless’ reproduction from within requires abandoning the bottom-up biological perspective of starting from the analysis of our mental pictures of cell, and cell reproduction. Because these pictures are only sparse alphabet letters that require knowledge of a different language depending on what verse the letters have precipitated from. And even if we were able to unconsciously come up with the correct words and verses, by AI-combining all available letter-pieces in all possible ways, we wouldn’t recognize the verses as meaningful, we wouldn't single them out of the series, if we haven’t internalized the language first. So I now think that understanding a cell from within actually doesn’t mean much. A plant cell may look similar to animal and human cells, but the language of life spoken by the Spirit through the plant being is a uniquely meaningful interaction of forces that has to be grasped in itself first, no matter how the condensation of that language on the sense perceptible plan may look and behave in material space.

Cleric, does any of these thoughts go along the lines you intended to indicate?

[Cleric K]

Thank you for these generous indications, Cleric! I am writing a few thoughts based on them.
In the meantime, I have a side note on what Steiner would say on the amazing cellular machinery. Through Kürten’s work - that I find so admirable and accurate in reconstructing the threads eclectically and sometimes cryptically developed by Steiner across lessons and books - I get the impression that Steiner may have said more on elementary kingdoms and formative forces than it appears.
Also, I have learnt from a Scaligero lecture that I’m translating, that a student of Steiner - Guenther Wachsmuth - wrote under Steiner’s close supervision a book called "ETHERIC FORMATIVE FORCES IN COSMOS, EARTH AND MAN - A Path of Investigation into the World of the Living”. Is anyone aware of this book? The book is sold out, but it’s downloadable from Academia.edu. I haven’t read it yet but I am hopeful it contains solid insights into Steiner’s detailed views on the forces of life.

I read this book some years ago. Guenther Wachsmuth was certainly one of the students of Spiritual Science who has gone more in depth. Thank you for providing the link! I didn’t know it was available. I had read it from photographs of the book’s pages. I’ll have to look through it to see how it sounds after these years.

...

Federica, thank you very much for all your thoughts above. I think they bring out very important points. I won't have the time now to comment point by point but here's something in general.

As you suggest, the first thing is that indeed we should remember that forms and life are not fundamentally different phenomena. That’s why we have tried to use various metaphors, for example with the sock metaphor or by saying that mineral forms are akin to stroboscopic phenomena that only illusively appear stationary. Underlying the forms there’s always the motion of the life/existence of the spirit.

I totally agree with your remark about the language. Life can’t be understood without these several folds, each of which is like a different level.

There’s one more thing without which we would never arrive at the proper perspective about these things. I think I have mentioned this before. There’s a cycle of lectures that had a great impact on me. As a scientifically minded person I’m always urged to seek the first principles and try to follow the unfolding of the myriad of phenomena from there. It turns out that starting with matter and biological life is already very far off equilibrium. The quote below discusses the vision of human evolution if the influence of A and L hadn't reached our present proportions:

It is strange but it is a fact. Man was intended to live in the environment of the earth. Suppose a man were living here (a) in the environment of the earth, then it was intended he should him-self produce on the earth his reflection, and only through this reaction ray back again his ego, and then he would say: “There below is my sign.” It was not intended that man should carry round about with him his man of bones and his man of glands, etc. — still less that he should pronounce the grotesque verdict: “That is I.” It should have happened quite differently. Man should have lived in the environs of the earth planet, and sunk a sign and symbol into the earth in the flashing up of form in blood, and he should then have said to himself: “There I drive in my stake — my sign and my seal, which gives me the consciousness of my ego. For what I have become, in that I have passed through Saturn existence and through Sun and through Moon existence — with that I can hover here outside in the World-All. It is the ego I must now add; and the ego I perceive by inscribing myself in the earth below, so that I can always read in the flashing of the blood what I am.” We were, therefore, not originally intended to walk the earth in bodies of flesh and bone as we do, but to circle around the earth and make records, as it were, down below from which we might recognise and know that we are that — that we are an ego. Whoever overlooks this fact has no true knowledge of the nature of man.

Then came Lucifer and brought it about for man that he should have not merely his ego for sense perception, but that he should feel his astral body, too, as his ego, all that he had acquired on the Moon as astral body — thinking, feeling and willing. The ego was thus no longer pure, something else was mixed with it; and this led to the necessity for man to fall down into matter. The expulsion from Paradise is the fall into matter. And immediately there followed the change in man's blood. For now instead of flashing up for a moment and then being received back again into spirituality, the blood becomes real blood substance; it drives right through and spurts up as blood substance. It receives the tendency to be as we know it to-day. And so this blood substance, which by rights should return into the spiritual in the very moment when it becomes material, now gushes up into the rest of man and fills his whole organisation, undergoing modification in accordance with the various forces in man. According, for example, as it penetrates into a preponderance of physical over etheric body or of etheric body over astral body, and so on, the blood turns into nerve substance, muscle substance, etc. Thus Lucifer compels blood to a greater materiality. Whereas blood has been designed to shoot up and immediately disappear again, Lucifer brought it into a coarse materiality. That is the one direct deed that Lucifer has performed in matter itself. He made blood into matter, whereas with other things he at least only brought disorder among them. Were it not for Lucifer blood would not be as it is at all, it would instead exist in a spirituality which comes only to the edge of materiality, only to the status nascendi, and then at once returns. Blood as matter is the creation of Lucifer, and since man has in blood a physical expression of the ego, man's ego is bound up here on earth with a creation of Lucifer.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA134/En ... 31p01.html

I still remember how transformative this particular lecture was for me. It really helped me see that the physical body as we experience it today is something quite different from what the physical body is in a spiritual sense.

For me, the easiest way to approach this question is by thinking about the physical body as the inner spectrum of color, sound, warmth, taste and so on. Today, because of the materialistic inertia, we still easily imagine that color, sound, etc. only inform us about the real world. But in reality, color and sound are the actual contents of the innerly experienced Cosmos (at least that’s how it appears at the stage of Imagination). Today when the scientist thinks, he imagines that the Cosmos is made of space, particles, fields, etc.. But the phenomenological approach that starts from the givens, soon reveals that such a Cosmos exists only as a concept within the intellect, while the only Cosmos that we know is weaved out of the inner experience of color, sound and so on.

These inner experiences metamorphose in certain lawful ways and our total grasp of this unity can still be called ‘body’ or maybe more appropriately ‘constellation’. Just like a story develops through stages - introduction, rising action, culmination, resolution, conclusion - so this inner experience transforms within the curvature of certain rhythmic processes which can be compared to growth and decline (bringing the condition for the next growth).

Without the influence of A and L we would reach our self-consciousness within this panorama of experiences and our evolutionary experience would be quite different. We would never look upon color and sound as something that informs us about an outer world but as impressions of spiritual intents.

With this influence, however, the metamorphoses of the Imaginative panorama were becoming more and more frictious and ossified. Biological life is really the compromise between ossification and immediate metamorphosis of the inner experience. It forms a gradient which allows mineral forms to still be entrained in the dance of metamorphosis.

All this fits well with everything you say. True life is the life of the spirit, which is nothing else but transformation through states of spiritual experience. Actually, from this perspective there’s nothing really miraculous about life. Life as we think about it (as biological life) is only a very peculiar consequence of making the metamorphoses of states of being more and more ‘bureaucratic’, frictuous. Thus you are right - life doesn’t ‘emerge’ from particles being animated by some spiritual life forces. We can only understand life if we envision that the actual life of the spirit is continuous metamorphoses of states of existence. Biological life is the solution which allows these metamorphoses to continue even though they become more and more constrained.

[Federica]

It seems like that understanding will come with the realization of the idea of growth from within. What does it mean to grow from within, through a fractal expansion in future memory layers? And maybe such understanding will blur the limit of our individuality, because when we really understand growth, we will see that it only can happen by going beyond oneself, like a cell does, by endlessly partitioning its whole being, and becoming more and more expanded into the collective.
Yes, I guess this could be a thought to explore: a cell sacrifices its whole being in reproduction, not that it gives birth to another cell, and lives on besides it. We have to understand that from within...

Federica,

I am traveling and dont have much time to comment, but I wanted to share this excerpt that fits nicely with your thought above and also what Cleric shared.

On the question of timing, I think we should keep in mind everything unfolds on a gradient and even the 6th PA epoch will experience significantly more conscious involvement with the etheric forces relative to where we are now.

You will remember that the most important substance that forms the basis everywhere of the organism, whether it be of plant, animal or man, is albumen. And albumen also forms the basis for the germ of a new plant, animal or human organism. From a fructified germ cell proceeds that which evolves into an organism, and the substance of the germ is albumen. In these days, instead of pursuing true science, men build up all kinds of imaginations, and they make a picture to themselves of this albumen as composed of substances in intricate chemical combination. It is composed, so they say, of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, and a trace too of phosphorus, all in complicate combination. And so the atomist comes to see in albumen the example par excellence of chemical combination. The atoms and molecules have to be thought of as arranged in a most complicated manner. And in the mother-animal or mother-plant arises this complicated albumen-molecule, or whatever you choose to call it; it develops further and the new animal comes to birth from it, arising, that is, purely through inheritance.

From the spiritual point of view, all this is sheer nonsense. The truth is that the albumen of the mother animal is not a complicated chemical combination at all, it is all broken up, destroyed and reduced to chaos. The albumen that is otherwise contained in the body is still to some extent organised, but albumen that forms the basis for propagation is distinguished by this very characteristic, that it is in a condition of complete disorganisation. The substances that are contained in it are reduced to chaos and are in no sort of combination, they are tossed and jumbled together to form a mere accumulation without order or proportion; and on this very account the albumen is no longer subject to the Earth. So long as the albumen can by some means or other be held together in inward cohesion, so long is it subject to the forces that work from the centre of the Earth. The moment the albumen is inwardly split up and destroyed, it comes under the influence of the whole sphere of the Cosmos. Forces work in upon it from every quarter. And then we have the tiny particle of albumen that forms the basis for reproduction. This tiny particle is an image of the entire Cosmos, because albumen substance has been split up, destroyed and reduced to chaos — converted, that is, into cosmic dust and thereby fitted to become exposed to the working of the entire Cosmos.

Of all this men have to-day simply no knowledge at all. They imagine the old hen has the complicated albumen. This is included in the egg, and thence arises the new hen. It is the albumen continued, it has gone on evolving. Then the germinal substance is developed once again; and so it goes on from hen to hen. In actual fact it is not so. Every time the transition takes place from one generation to the next, the albumen is exposed to the whole Cosmos.

On the one hand, therefore we have the earthly substances, subject to the earthly or central forces. But we can also imagine these earthly substances exposed in certain circumstances to the forces that work in from all quarters, from the farthest limits of the universe. The latter forces are the ones that work in the human etheric body. The etheric body is subject to the forces of the Cosmos. These are real conceptions of physical body and etheric body
...
We can actually find certain places in Nature where the physical forces of the Earth enter into the midst of the etheric forces that stream in from all sides. You may imagine albumen to begin with as a substance present in the physical Earth. So long as sulphur, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen are in any way chemically recognisable in it, the albumen is in fact subject to the earthly forces. But the moment it enters the sphere of the reproductive process, it is lifted out of the physical forces. The forces of the circumference of the Universe begin to work upon it in its disorganised condition. New albumen comes into being as an image of the whole Universe.

Thanks, Ashvin, this passage adds more insights to the question of understanding life forces from within.
Have a great travel!

[Federica]

Federica, thank you very much for all your thoughts above. I think they bring out very important points. I won't have the time now to comment point by point but here's something in general.

As you suggest, the first thing is that indeed we should remember that forms and life are not fundamentally different phenomena. That’s why we have tried to use various metaphors, for example with the sock metaphor or by saying that mineral forms are akin to stroboscopic phenomena that only illusively appear stationary. Underlying the forms there’s always the motion of the life/existence of the spirit.

I totally agree with your remark about the language. Life can’t be understood without these several folds, each of which is like a different level.

There’s one more thing without which we would never arrive at the proper perspective about these things. I think I have mentioned this before. There’s a cycle of lectures that had a great impact on me. As a scientifically minded person I’m always urged to seek the first principles and try to follow the unfolding of the myriad of phenomena from there. It turns out that starting with matter and biological life is already very far off equilibrium. The quote below discusses the vision of human evolution if the influence of A and L hadn't reached our present proportions:

It is strange but it is a fact. Man was intended to live in the environment of the earth. Suppose a man were living here (a) in the environment of the earth, then it was intended he should him-self produce on the earth his reflection, and only through this reaction ray back again his ego, and then he would say: “There below is my sign.” It was not intended that man should carry round about with him his man of bones and his man of glands, etc. — still less that he should pronounce the grotesque verdict: “That is I.” It should have happened quite differently. Man should have lived in the environs of the earth planet, and sunk a sign and symbol into the earth in the flashing up of form in blood, and he should then have said to himself: “There I drive in my stake — my sign and my seal, which gives me the consciousness of my ego. For what I have become, in that I have passed through Saturn existence and through Sun and through Moon existence — with that I can hover here outside in the World-All. It is the ego I must now add; and the ego I perceive by inscribing myself in the earth below, so that I can always read in the flashing of the blood what I am.” We were, therefore, not originally intended to walk the earth in bodies of flesh and bone as we do, but to circle around the earth and make records, as it were, down below from which we might recognise and know that we are that — that we are an ego. Whoever overlooks this fact has no true knowledge of the nature of man.

Then came Lucifer and brought it about for man that he should have not merely his ego for sense perception, but that he should feel his astral body, too, as his ego, all that he had acquired on the Moon as astral body — thinking, feeling and willing. The ego was thus no longer pure, something else was mixed with it; and this led to the necessity for man to fall down into matter. The expulsion from Paradise is the fall into matter. And immediately there followed the change in man's blood. For now instead of flashing up for a moment and then being received back again into spirituality, the blood becomes real blood substance; it drives right through and spurts up as blood substance. It receives the tendency to be as we know it to-day. And so this blood substance, which by rights should return into the spiritual in the very moment when it becomes material, now gushes up into the rest of man and fills his whole organisation, undergoing modification in accordance with the various forces in man. According, for example, as it penetrates into a preponderance of physical over etheric body or of etheric body over astral body, and so on, the blood turns into nerve substance, muscle substance, etc. Thus Lucifer compels blood to a greater materiality. Whereas blood has been designed to shoot up and immediately disappear again, Lucifer brought it into a coarse materiality. That is the one direct deed that Lucifer has performed in matter itself. He made blood into matter, whereas with other things he at least only brought disorder among them. Were it not for Lucifer blood would not be as it is at all, it would instead exist in a spirituality which comes only to the edge of materiality, only to the status nascendi, and then at once returns. Blood as matter is the creation of Lucifer, and since man has in blood a physical expression of the ego, man's ego is bound up here on earth with a creation of Lucifer.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA134/En ... 31p01.html

I still remember how transformative this particular lecture was for me. It really helped me see that the physical body as we experience it today is something quite different from what the physical body is in a spiritual sense.

For me, the easiest way to approach this question is by thinking about the physical body as the inner spectrum of color, sound, warmth, taste and so on. Today, because of the materialistic inertia, we still easily imagine that color, sound, etc. only inform us about the real world. But in reality, color and sound are the actual contents of the innerly experienced Cosmos (at least that’s how it appears at the stage of Imagination). Today when the scientist thinks, he imagines that the Cosmos is made of space, particles, fields, etc.. But the phenomenological approach that starts from the givens, soon reveals that such a Cosmos exists only as a concept within the intellect, while the only Cosmos that we know is weaved out of the inner experience of color, sound and so on.

These inner experiences metamorphose in certain lawful ways and our total grasp of this unity can still be called ‘body’ or maybe more appropriately ‘constellation’. Just like a story develops through stages - introduction, rising action, culmination, resolution, conclusion - so this inner experience transforms within the curvature of certain rhythmic processes which can be compared to growth and decline (bringing the condition for the next growth).

Without the influence of A and L we would reach our self-consciousness within this panorama of experiences and our evolutionary experience would be quite different. We would never look upon color and sound as something that informs us about an outer world but as impressions of spiritual intents.

With this influence, however, the metamorphoses of the Imaginative panorama were becoming more and more frictious and ossified. Biological life is really the compromise between ossification and immediate metamorphosis of the inner experience. It forms a gradient which allows mineral forms to still be entrained in the dance of metamorphosis.

All this fits well with everything you say. True life is the life of the spirit, which is nothing else but transformation through states of spiritual experience. Actually, from this perspective there’s nothing really miraculous about life. Life as we think about it (as biological life) is only a very peculiar consequence of making the metamorphoses of states of being more and more ‘bureaucratic’, frictuous. Thus you are right - life doesn’t ‘emerge’ from particles being animated by some spiritual life forces. We can only understand life if we envision that the actual life of the spirit is continuous metamorphoses of states of existence. Biological life is the solution which allows these metamorphoses to continue even though they become more and more constrained.

Thank you Cleric! There is plenty to explore in these connections, this is surely going to keep me busy for a while

[AshvinP]

Here is an interesting discussion between Levin and BK:





Based on his discussions with Iain McGilcrhist and now BK, it does seem like Levin's intellect is at least in the process of 'tricking' itself to encounter the first-person intuitive activity that animates it. He clearly is not satisfied with the standard explanations from evolutionary theory and material mechanisms to explain the novel, cognitive-like (or problem-solving) patterns that emerge from and feed back into the interwoven morphic spaces. It is clear that he remains fluid in his thinking and open to new unexplored possibilities, gradually ruling out all the standard ones. That he has encountered and is seriously considering idealistic philosophy surely can't hurt, especially since he is already quite immune to mystical reductionism. He knows that the 'hardware' through which consciousness expresses itself and improves upon itself is critical in the whole story. 

On the other hand, my sense is that if I were to take soundbites from his interviews expressing his ideas, put them side by side with quotes from Steiner that practically express the same thing in more spiritual-esoteric terms, and somehow bring it to his attention, it still wouldn't quite click for him. There would still be an instinctive refusal to go in that direction. I think it comes back to what Cleric expressed in his newly posted essay, that the thought-apple models need to be set aside long enough that one can phenomenologically encounter their intuitive thinking-tree that animates all the models before returning to the former as living symbols. In other words, the intellect is still too excited and enraptured by the possibility of expanding and refining its models (including through the synthesis with idealistic philosophy), with real practical and seemingly beneficial applications, to contemplate the possibility of sacrificing those desires, feelings, plans, and hopes for a while. 

Or put another way, if he somehow came to encounter Cleric's newly posted essay, what are the chances he would make the connection between livingly exploring the inner course of his spiritual activity and what he is thinking through conceptually with the morphic spaces? I don't know, but I think it would be quite exciting if we had the opportunity to find out! What his novel thinking, research, and experimentation in the domain of biological sciences could contribute to humanity's spiritual growth if channeled in a healthy direction is staggering to consider.

[Federica]

Such an apropos find, thanks, Ashvin. On the one hand, one may think - how encouraging that eventually someone, learning about ML's work, made a connection similar to the idea that resulted in the original post of this thread, noticing the philosophical potential in a work that particularly lends itself to overcoming the "shut up and calculate" mindset. But on the other hand, it's been kind of a painful watch - the unfolding of an almost archetypal situation: the scientist, brilliant and eager to find tools for a deeper understanding of what he’s doing, but relatively unused to explicit philosophical inquiry, being subtly seduced by the philosopher into his analytic idealist vision, though the appearance is that ML is leading the conversation. In my opinion BK shows impressive skills in how he goes about operating the seduction. But sparing you the psychological reading (though it’s really remarkable) ML says very interesting things, mostly between 07:00 and 18:10.

To the question: “Where do you think the observed top-down organizational principle comes from?” ML replies that evolution theory answers largely miss the mark, since the principle can be seen at work in organisms that were never naturally selected like a worm they made up with 2 heads, or with an eye placed on the tail that becomes immediately functional and taken over by the plasticity of life (these are novel life constructions made possible by this synthetic morphology they’re developing). So where does the principle come from? He says: “From wherever the truth of mathematics lives” adding that those made-up animals that function outside of evolutionary standard rationalizations, are “like periscopes” they are sticking into the mind space...

A few more surprising things:
“Neuroscience is not at all about neurons, but about much more profound principles”
“I’m trying to feel what it would be like if we had evolved with a direct sense of our organs, then we would be able to recognize our liver as an intelligent agent…”

As you say, one definitely wonders what he would think if he became aware of Cleric’s last essay, and views in general. This is actually the other, similarly painful half of being spectators of this ML-BK conversation, since the connection is not happening, and we are so few to benefit from these insights that many more people could beneficially resonate with, if they only came in contact with them...

[AshvinP]

Such an apropos find, thanks, Ashvin. On the one hand, one may think - how encouraging that eventually someone, learning about ML's work, made a connection similar to the idea that resulted in the original post of this thread, noticing the philosophical potential in a work that particularly lends itself to overcoming the "shut up and calculate" mindset. But on the other hand, it's been kind of a painful watch - the unfolding of an almost archetypal situation: the scientist, brilliant and eager to find tools for a deeper understanding of what he’s doing, but relatively unused to explicit philosophical inquiry, being subtly seduced by the philosopher into his analytic idealist vision, though the appearance is that ML is leading the conversation. In my opinion BK shows impressive skills in how he goes about operating the seduction. But sparing you the psychological reading (though it’s really remarkable) ML says very interesting things, mostly between 07:00 and 18:10.

To the question: “Where do you think the observed top-down organizational principle comes from?” ML replies that evolution theory answers largely miss the mark, since the principle can be seen at work in organisms that were never naturally selected like a worm they made up with 2 heads, or with an eye placed on the tail that becomes immediately functional and taken over by the plasticity of life (these are novel life constructions made possible by this synthetic morphology they’re developing). So where does the principle come from? He says: “From wherever the truth of mathematics lives” adding that those made-up animals that function outside of evolutionary standard rationalizations, are “like periscopes” they are sticking into the mind space...

A few more surprising things:
“Neuroscience is not at all about neurons, but about much more profound principles”
“I’m trying to feel what it would be like if we had evolved with a direct sense of our organs, then we would be able to recognize our liver as an intelligent agent…”

As you say, one definitely wonders what he would think if he became aware of Cleric’s last essay, and views in general. This is actually the other, similarly painful half of being spectators of this ML-BK conversation, since the connection is not happening, and we are so few to benefit from these insights that many more people could beneficially resonate with, if they only came in contact with them...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Federica. I agree, it is on the one hand exciting to witness how what we are exploring with spiritual insight is also being confirmed through meticulous scientific research, and on the other hand painful that so few people are in a position to consciously recognize this connection and therefore benefit from it. From the perspective of people such as Levin, there is a hope that such perspectives will awaken and see how what they are already so enthusiastic about doing with their thinking is actually of greater Cosmic significance than they could possibly imagine. Hopefully, he is astute enough not to fall into the Kantian trap that is so seductive in analytic idealism and postmodern philosophy. I think the comments on the 'meta-intelligence' of our organs, rather than their activity being the blind instinctive intelligence of MAL (which seemed to be what BK was suggesting), is an indication that he is avoiding that trap.

When he spoke of the intelligent nature of our organs such as the liver and the heart perceiving/regulating the chemical properties of the blood, which Steiner also spoke on at length, I was reminded of esoteric observations such as this:

Humanity depends on the spiritual hierarchies, just as the hierarchies depend on one another. The angels rescue humankind not only from a complete darkening of consciousness of life in the material realm, but also from the blinding of consciousness by the direct, unmediated light of spirit. The spirits of motion add the power of movement, or progress, to the cherubim’s eternal light. The cherubim radiate light into the dark material world—the light that flows from the eternal Trinity. The angels represent the light of the Holy Spirit at the ultimate end of its activity in relation to the confines of darkness; they are literally the “Sons of Twilight.”3 They represent the many nearby eyes of the spiritual world directed toward earthly matters. An eye of the spiritual world, one’s guardian angel, rests on each human being. No one is forgotten; the eye of God (to use the language of religion) really does rest on every human individual. And it is not just an observing eye; it is an enlightening, irradiating eye. The angels not only have the task of recording what they see of the minds and actions of human beings for the higher ones of the spiritual world, they must also bring word to humankind concerning the purposes and activities of the beings in the spiritual worlds. They are “messengers,” both for the world of the hierarchies and for the world of earthly humanity. They continually work to move the souls of earthly humanity in harmony with the great cosmic purposes; they try to bring the stirrings of human souls into consonance with the great cosmic impulses.

Tomberg, Valentin; Bruce, R.H.. Christ and Sophia: Anthroposophic Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocalypse (pp. 137-138). steinerbooks. Kindle Edition.

Simply becoming aware of such realities and how they connect with our investigations of the organic structure, even at the conceptual level, becomes a major impulse to steer one's research in a carefully deliberated, moral direction and guards against the constant temptations of our lower nature.

[AshvinP]

Here is another stimulating interview with Levin and Matt Segall. It gets into some ethical considerations of modern technological pursuits and it is refreshing to here that Levin is quite conscious of and concerned with these, although he is still probably too enthusiastic about 'fixing' everything without the proper depth of wisdom and insight. The whole thing is worth watching, but especially Levin's comment at about 45:30 is worth paying attention to and fits in well with this:

An important point here is that we shouldn’t arbitrarily limit the intuitive context to something that lives only in our personal head. We should maintain an open stance and be prepared that this intuitive context may coincide with the Cosmos itself and thus contain concealed within itself also the meaningful currents that give direction and shape of the dreamscape at large.

Levin speaks of this intuitive context as the 'cognitive light cone' and says the radius isn't limited to what we can think about (perceptions), but can potentially expand to encompass the soul-life of all other beings if we faithfully commit to the goal of pursuing the meaningful currents of the Cosmos concealed within the cone's unsuspected potential. He points out how humans are already unique from other Earthly creatures in that some of our pursuits can relate to ideals that won't be accomplished in our current lifetime. This points to the fact that our intuitive context does not only encompass what we experience as our 'past' states of being and capacities established on Earth, but also our potential states of being and capacities that exist throughout the whole Cosmic context. Our higher thinking development can become the loving art of focusing the increasingly more holistic intuitive context into concepts-ideas that transform our sense of be-ing and our contributions to redemptive goals.

To think, in this sense, means to artistically explicate the hidden nature of the intuitive context. What we can thus articulate depends on the way our state has evolved through time so far. In this sense, explicating the intuitive context doesn’t aim to simply build a static artistic form of some independent and well-formed intuitive background but continually feeds into our state in order to transform it. Hopefully this would make it more orderly such that even greater intuitive depth can be experienced, and so on in a rhythmic unfolding.

[Federica]

Here is another stimulating interview with Levin and Matt Segall. It gets into some ethical considerations of modern technological pursuits and it is refreshing to here that Levin is quite conscious of and concerned with these, although he is still probably too enthusiastic about 'fixing' everything without the proper depth of wisdom and insight. The whole thing is worth watching, but especially Levin's comment at about 45:30 is worth paying attention to and fits in well with this:

An important point here is that we shouldn’t arbitrarily limit the intuitive context to something that lives only in our personal head. We should maintain an open stance and be prepared that this intuitive context may coincide with the Cosmos itself and thus contain concealed within itself also the meaningful currents that give direction and shape of the dreamscape at large.

Levin speaks of this intuitive context as the 'cognitive light cone' and says the radius isn't limited to what we can think about (perceptions), but can potentially expand to encompass the soul-life of all other beings if we faithfully commit to the goal of pursuing the meaningful currents of the Cosmos concealed within the cone's unsuspected potential. He points out how humans are already unique from other Earthly creatures in that some of our pursuits can relate to ideals that won't be accomplished in our current lifetime. This points to the fact that our intuitive context does not only encompass what we experience as our 'past' states of being and capacities established on Earth, but also our potential states of being and capacities that exist throughout the whole Cosmic context. Our higher thinking development can become the loving art of focusing the increasingly more holistic intuitive context into concepts-ideas that transform our sense of be-ing and our contributions to redemptive goals.

To think, in this sense, means to artistically explicate the hidden nature of the intuitive context. What we can thus articulate depends on the way our state has evolved through time so far. In this sense, explicating the intuitive context doesn’t aim to simply build a static artistic form of some independent and well-formed intuitive background but continually feeds into our state in order to transform it. Hopefully this would make it more orderly such that even greater intuitive depth can be experienced, and so on in a rhythmic unfolding.

Oh I previously said that ML was relatively unused to philosophical inquiry. I was wrong, he's actually all over Youtube, in philosophical conversations. Thanks for highlighting this one, Ashvin. I haven't watched yet, I surely will. I appreciate the parallels you draw with the process of cognitive expansion we are tasked with, and its progressive character. That we aim to slowly transform our state through thoughtful work on our intuitive context, with no orthogonal rough twist, is a timely reminder!