Anthony66 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 15, 2023 1:24 pm
Steiner goes through various models of perception but as he wraps up he states:
As thought is brought to life, it emancipates the ego from a mere subjective existence. A process takes place that is to be sure experienced subjectively by the ego, but by its own nature is an objective process.
How do we understand his use of "objective" here?
Another angle to what Ashvin said.
This is most easily understood if we put our materialistic hat. In that case we conceive of an objective state of the world. Our subjective experience is how aspects of that state feel like (materialistic monism).
Imagine a computer analogy. The computer is the full objective world process, of which our brain is a part. For some reason our subjective experience grasps only some pixels of the screen. Nevertheless, these pixels can be what they are only when the workings of the whole computer are taken into account.
Today science believes that we can know the inner workings of the computer by building pixel-models on the screen (theories made of mental images) and correlate them with other pixels (those that we call sensory perceptions). It is clear that even if we make these theories by imagining ourselves to stand outside reality, these states of theoretical imagination are themselves still part of the objective state of the total computer. That is, we shouldn't confuse 'subjective' to mean 'independent of the world process'.
When we speak of the computer like this, we simply make more convoluted pixel arrangements on the screen. Thus we distinguish our mental
representation of the world computer on the screen from the computer-in-itself. The important point however, is that these subjective representations are nevertheless how the objective world process feels like (that is, they don't belong to some parallel subjective universe).
Today's science and philosophy believe that this is all we can ever do - arrange mental pixels in different configurations and correlate them with other pixels (sensory perceptions). But if some aspects of the objective world process feel like subjective experience, why shouldn't it be possible that if that process is harmonized in specific ways, even more of it could be experienced as coherent subjectivity? If aspects of the world process can be experienced as mental pixels, why shouldn't it be possible that, for example, the electric currents that energize the pixels and which are undoubtedly also part of the objective world process, could themselves be experienced as unique subjective qualia?
Through proper transformation of our spiritual conduct it is possible that the currents that energize the pixels, can also become part of the subjective experience (which leads also to novel DoFs of spiritual activity). They key here is that this expansion of consciousness is
not the inflation of a personal bubble where pixels reverberate but the experience of the
actual objective world process of the electric currents.
To put it simply:
1. Our subjective states are how the objective world/brain states feel like.
2. We have two options:
a/ to build more and more complicated structures of mental pixels which make models of the supposed objective state. This of course doesn't happen in a parallel subjective universe - everything is still how the objective world/brain feels like.
b/ to expand the subjective experience to include deeper processes of the objective world/brain.
This is why the experience is
subjective while at the same time this subjectivity is not a virtual bubble outside reality but is
the experience of the objective world state. Thus spiritual cognition doesn't create a bubble of fantasy but grows into the objective world process, such that more of that process can experience itself subjectively.