The source of the 'Hard Problem of Consciousness'

[LukeJTM]

In this respect, it might be a matter of simply synchronizing vocabulary, but I was having the following reflections:

The way to inner freedom is using introspection or meditation, becoming conscious of what is unconscious within ourselves (which is basically depth psychology).

I also understand PoF's way to freedom in terms of introspection and meditation (various types of thinking activity) however I think this is different from depth psychology, in that freedom according to Steiner is gained through the act and practice of self-exertion and self-development of our thinking (spiritual) 'muscles' rather than through an attempt to explore and verify a theory about how our psychological buildup happens, from birth, through childhood, to adulthood, as in Freud's conception, for instance. What do you think?

Hi Federica - I was referring more to practice of depth psychology rather than just the theory. I think uncovering the 'shadow' (coined by Carl Jung) is one such practice. So yes I think you are right that Steiner was suggesting actual practical work must be done to uncover our 'shadow' and other subconscious forces than just offering some theory that sounds interesting. This is something I have been trying to work with over time (I started before I was reading anything spoken about on this forum actually, such as Steiner's PoF), such as using meditation and journaling to delve into my psyche and heal what needs healing. I haven't had a consistent practice with this always, so that is something I am trying to change now.
However, it seems to me that this process, eventually, extends to far more reaches than just our personal minds. Do you think so?
Anyway I hope what I meant is more clear now.

Here I would comment that sensory observations (we could discuss further what we exactly mean by that ) and concepts are, rather than two ways to gain knowledge, two moments of a unitary cognitive process. Personally I found this short essay (largely discussed in the thread linked below) very useful in expanding understanding of this process. If you ever have the opportunity, I would be interested in your comments on it:

When I say sensory observation I mean observing something through the body senses, such as something happening in the material world. But I suppose a percept can also be something in the mind such as a stream of ideas, or an emotion.
I started to realize now that when we perceive things in the sense-world we also experience our concepts connected with those things, even if its subconscious.
If you have an understanding to contribute to this, feel free to do so.

I had a look through that essay. I'm finding some of the vocabulary a bit hard to follow because it is still somewhat unfamiliar for me. But I do like that there are explanations of the vocabulary in the replies. I wonder if this forum has a glossary somewhere
Also, I am a bit confused as to whether it is an entire essay, or just an excerpt from some other longer one.
I am doing a re-read of Steiner's PoF right now, so hopefully that will help me have a better understanding of the vocabulary and understandings which people have on this forum, because I don't have much else of value to comment on it just now. But in future I will come back to this.

[LukeJTM]

I would like to offer my own thoughts on that essay actually, section by section, to see if this will be of any value to the discussion. And maybe some feedback would be available from anyone interested in giving it. I do see its relevance to the discussion on "hard problems" in science and philosophy by the way, so I appreciate the link as a suggestion.

viewtopic.php?p=19458#p19458

THE human being—as an “I”—first, in a pre-conscious activity of destruction, strips reality of its coherence. This is not something he does so much as something he is. To wit, the human being is situated in the world in such a manner that he bifurcates and disintegrates its structure in the manner indicated above as a condition for his perception and cognition of it. Hence, the activity of his consciousness consists in an initial reduction of being to pure chaos and nothingness—to non-being.

We learn that we have slept not by sleeping, but through inference—by the fact of waking. Similarly, we know that we disintegrated the true being of the object of our perception by the fact of its manifestation to our consciousness.

So, looking through things as a whole, it seems the context is about examining our thought-life and how it shapes our perceptions of the world at large? Although I'm not sure what is meant by "stripping reality of its coherence" or "Hence, the activity of his consciousness consists in an initial reduction of being to pure chaos and nothingness—to non-being.". I am having trouble with the vocabulary. Is this meant to be saying how our percepts and concepts initially are divided, and there seems to be a dichotomy of self and world? And that the cause of this lies within our own inner organization, if that is the right term.

The initial annihilation of being proceeds by the extraction of (a) the concept from the wholeness of reality. This leaves (b) a field of percepts to which (a) the concept was lending coherence, organization, and intelligibility. The latter (b) instantaneously disintegrates into dust, like matter without life. The Book of Genesis depicts the function of the concept as soul:

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul…you return to the ground–because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (2:7, 3:10)

So what this is saying is that percepts, without the corresponding concept to imbue them with meaning, lack intelligibility or sense to us? It brings to mind Owen Barfield's "Saving the Appearances", and the "crisis of meaning" that has popped up in our modern times. As I tried to explain briefly in my initial post here (the first page), there is a type of unconscious process in us that terms raw sense-data into meaningful phenomenon, which is referred to further down in the essay. This same faculty allows us to reunite the idea and meaning with what we are perceiving in the world at large. Is that an accurate interpretation so far?

It follows from the above that there can be no “problem of knowledge” in the classical epistemological sense of Descartes and Kant any more than the meaning of the words I write is withheld from me. Certainly the words of others are opaque to my understanding in this way, to begin with, but only until I undertake this same process of death and resurrection described above in respect to them, at which point the speaker and I are one in spirit and I share in the meaning of what was expressed.

I like the analogy here. If I don't understand what someone else is saying, i.e. they speak a language I do not, it seems unintelligible to me, even if I know there is a meaning being conveyed by the words they use. Unless I try to learn the language they speak, and practice it, it will remain this way. So it seems to be a similar process with gaining higher knowledge. And in terms of abstract models, the solutions to the "hard problems" seem opaque because there is a 'language' we aren't aware of yet, and must learn to develop in ourselves.

The archetype of knowledge is creatio ex nihilo. Hence it is an imitatio Christi in identitatem Logos—“an imitation of Christ in his identity as the Logos”—for as it is written, “in the beginning was the Logos…All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1, 3) As Christ rose from the dust on the third day, so knowledge is the final moment following death and entombment.

The new Creation shimmers before the backdrop of non-being. It is perennially fresh because it has never existed before, like the virginal birth of Venus, who floats on the foam of chaos, born on the scallop-shell of consciousness to arrive on the shore of knowledge.

This is another area I am unfamiliar with the vocabulary. How are people here using the term "Christ" and "Logos"? As in, what is the meaning of these terms? Just so that I can get on the same page.

So we awaken in the perception of the thought-output (we perceive our thoughts) only after they have reached down to the world of senses, and not as they unfold within the cognitive process. This is despite the fact that we ourselves have full responsibility for the unfolding.
So the first point that becomes extra-clear reading the essay is that human cognition is the unaware designer and operator of a sort of ‘secret industrial facility’ that continually precipitates thoughts down into the level where they become sensible to us.

This description in the first commentary from Federica is clear. There seems to be a 'black box' between the conscious mind and the actual source of our conscious thoughts, feelings, etc. Similarly to how there seems to be a 'black box' between when we go to sleep and when we wake up (maybe we'll remember what we dreamed about). There is a stage between that normally is opaque (on a conscious level). This seems to be connected with why philosophers end up in labyrinths of complicated mental pictures of reality, and limitations of possible knowledge (e.g. Kantian dualism), or bottom-up material models.

And since this forum focuses on Bernardo Kastrup's idealism as well, I would like to bring up an interview he did with Richard Brown a few years ago which I believe is relevant to the discussion. It might seem off-topic but I think is still relevant to what is being discussed. Hopefully the link embeds.



Around 19 minutes into the video, Brown brings up an issue or a type of 'hard problem', which Bernardo responds to. Brown's point goes along the lines of: Why is that the thoughts of Mind at Large (MAL) should appear to us as the particular qualities of experience? Why should MAL appear to our 'dissociated consciousness' as the green of a tree? Why green; why not something else like red? The green of the tree seems arbitrary compared to the actual objective reality e.g. "the thoughts of MAL". This is a very tough objection of course. Bernardo tries to point out how a thought can influence emotions, because he wants to show that, whilst our dissociated minds may seem different from MAL, they are still of the same substance. So there isn't really any 'hard problem' here for how thoughts of MAL become what we experience as humans. Fair response. But here is his second response, which I think is worth examining further.
Bernardo's second response appeals to evolution by natural selection, where evolution has simplified or coded the thoughts of MAL into a kind of simplified dashboard for the sake of survival. The tree in it self (which is the thoughts of the universal Mind) appears to us as the qualities and physical properties we know such as green-ness, sounds, texture, solidity, extension in space, etc. It appears to us this way simply due to this 'dashboard' produced by evolutionary pressures.

I would be interested to hear what anyone reading this may have to comment on that. Because it does seem like it is a product of this 'black box' between our own mind, and the universal mind. The seeming 'black box' between our conscious thoughts and feelings, and their origins.
By appealing to evolution by natural selection, it sounds like it offers a solution that functions the same as materialism; where colour is reduced to something merely arbitrary; the concept is split apart from the percept (as Max's essay seems to be talking about). I wonder instead how this 'problem' could be explored instead with Steiner's epistemology (e.g. the first person approach). As I said, it is a very tough objection for Bernardo to respond to (especially for abstract theory), so I understand if his response is a bit limited or not really answering the 'problem' as deeply as Brown seemed to desire.

[Federica]

Hi Federica - I was referring more to practice of depth psychology rather than just the theory. I think uncovering the 'shadow' (coined by Carl Jung) is one such practice. So yes I think you are right that Steiner was suggesting actual practical work must be done to uncover our 'shadow' and other subconscious forces than just offering some theory that sounds interesting. This is something I have been trying to work with over time (I started before I was reading anything spoken about on this forum actually, such as Steiner's PoF), such as using meditation and journaling to delve into my psyche and heal what needs healing. I haven't had a consistent practice with this always, so that is something I am trying to change now.
However, it seems to me that this process, eventually, extends to far more reaches than just our personal minds. Do you think so?
Anyway I hope what I meant is more clear now.

Luke, yes it is clear now, thanks, and it makes sense. I definitely agree that introspection leads us beyond the limits of our personal mind. We were discussing it recently on the other thread. As Cleric put it, we should not imagine "spiritual vacuum" in between our minds:

we have to be careful not to imagine our own being as a self-contained 'device'. Otherwise the question, through our modern habits, reduces to something like: how the activity on my device generates network packets that are then propagated over the Internet and are decoded as messages/commands on a remote device. This is something that we must guard from. It feels natural only because of our modern sensory intuition of discrete bodies that influence each other across space. Yet it presents us with its unique challenges, for example - what is the spiritual space between agents? We more or less know what it means to be an atomic agent but how do we understand the 'spiritual vacuum' in between agents, where our 'network packets' propagate?

This can be counterbalanced with a view which is no less schematic but at least points as in a new direction. I have used this image before:



Here the idea is that our 'agent' is really a unique point of interference of the whole Cosmos. Thus the higher we reach through advanced cognition (towards the outer perimeter of the image), the more we understand the archetypal interferences that are common for all of us.

Steiner referred to our contemporary attitude to consider our minds as totally private and isolated - as you put it - in these terms: "The man of to-day lives almost entirely under the influence of the saying: ‘Thoughts pay no toll.’ That is, one may allow almost anything to flash at will through the mind. "

When I say sensory observation I mean observing something through the body senses, such as something happening in the material world. But I suppose a percept can also be something in the mind such as a stream of ideas, or an emotion.
I started to realize now that when we perceive things in the sense-world we also experience our concepts connected with those things, even if its subconscious.

Exactly - that's what I had in the back of my mind. We perceive the sensory world, but also our emotions and thoughts, in an usually unconscious act of matching percepts with concepts/ideas. This results in thought-pictures, or thought-perceptions as Ashvin says. In other words, the tangible results of intangible thinking activity once precipitated into perception.
(To be precise, I wouldn't exactly say that a percept can be a stream of ideas, in the sense that such streams are experiences taking place 'downstream' with respect to the (unconscious) matching of a percept, of thought type in this case, with appropriate concepts and ideas. When we become aware of that stream we have already connected the relevant concepts.)

I had a look through that essay. I'm finding some of the vocabulary a bit hard to follow because it is still somewhat unfamiliar for me. But I do like that there are explanations of the vocabulary in the replies. I wonder if this forum has a glossary somewhere
Also, I am a bit confused as to whether it is an entire essay, or just an excerpt from some other longer one.
I am doing a re-read of Steiner's PoF right now, so hopefully that will help me have a better understanding of the vocabulary and understandings which people have on this forum, because I don't have much else of value to comment on it just now. But in future I will come back to this.

Having a glossary would be too easy and also maybe too rigid, not only because we all have our preferred vocabulary, that one becomes familiar with after a little while, but also because we have to actively work out the meaning in the context of each discussion, as a creative process, in which the exact words do not matter that much, as long as they lead to the intended meaning. I realize this sounds slightly recursive, but well, you will see

I understand the essay by Max Leyf appears as an excerpt from a longer one. I actually don't know if it's the case! But yes, much of what we are discussing and quoting requires focused attention, and would benefit from multiple reads, especially PoF. I think Ashvin said that 5-10 re-reads of PoF are a reasonable amount to really make contact with its various layers of meaning! I am personally not there, but I regularly feel the need to go back to it, and I am sure I will continue to. I think, for most people, coming to the experience of living thinking is an iterative process anyway, certainly effortful, but also uniquely and warmly inspiring and uplifting.

[Stranger]

Bernardo's second response appeals to evolution by natural selection, where evolution has simplified or coded the thoughts of MAL into a kind of simplified dashboard for the sake of survival. The tree in it self (which is the thoughts of the universal Mind) appears to us as the qualities and physical properties we know such as green-ness, sounds, texture, solidity, extension in space, etc. It appears to us this way simply due to this 'dashboard' produced by evolutionary pressures.

Biological evolution is as real as the spiritual one and it would be silly to deny it. It has nothing to do with materialism notwithstanding the fact that the modern materialistic science claims to own the theory of biological evolution. That also aligns with Don Hoffman's evolutionary studies showing that the perceptual mechanism of biologically evolved species can only function as "dashboards" because they are shaped by fitness to survive and not by any motivation to perceive the reality as it is. Bernardo is probably referring here to Hoffman's studies. Biological evolution is not the whole story of what is going on in the Earth domain, and sense perception is not the only mechanism through which we perceive the reality, but the spiritual forces shaping the elemental and biological domains are still acting as natural processes, one of which is biological evolution, and the biological evolution shaped the human sense-perceptual mechanism.

[Federica]

Since this forum also is about Bernardo Kastrup, his idealism does seem guilty of using the idealist reductionism you are speaking of. I've noticed that his model, generally, doesn't seem much different from materialism in terms of how it functions. Because, he basically posits some blind Will force that creates the physical world, as well as experiences (it seems to function the same as blind matter honestly), and that our minds are something 'dissociated' from the cosmic mind until we die...not much different from how materialists consider minds to be something totally private or isolated from everything else, except that it's reduced to some 'dissociative boundary' rather than brain chemistry. And so on.

I wish I had this sort of clarity about BK's model when I arrived here! (through my interest in BK's philosophy)
So well expressed.

I want to circle back on this point, as I agree it is very well expressed and insightful. Spiritual science does reveal that while the visible manifestation of Thought is what we know as 'light', the visible manifestation of Will is what we know as 'matter' (or darkness). Most of us can grasp intuitively, or perhaps through some painful experience, that the phenomenon of weight/pressure, for ex., is the dimming of thinking consciousness. If that pressure gets intense enough, then we pass out and go unconscious.

Steiner has a great lecture on this topic, for those interested. It again points to the importance of a living understanding of polar relation which does not seek to reduce Idea to Perception, Spirit to Matter, etc. or vice versa. If we really pay attention and try to internalize these basic principles in our spiritual development, then we will greatly mitigate the risk of falling into the most common pitfalls along the way.


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA291/En ... 05p01.html

Ashvin, thank you for this highlight!
That's so beyond the limit of what I can imagine at this point, but hopefully not too much beyond it, because I do feel the meaningful attraction exerted by the content of this whole lecture from, well, the other side of my limit
Anyway, this looks very much like the next chapter, as Eugene called it, in the photon illustration started by Cleric on the other thread. Eugene - what do you think?


Unsurprisingly, I'll have to give this lecture more reading. But I realize this Light-Thinking relation expresses from another angle the idea of our thought-images as shadows, as deltas, as our imperfect attempts to match reality (meaning) through Thinking. The extent of the missmatch is what justifies the precipitated perception, preventing us from directly experiencing the pure meaning/pure spirit 'upstream'. So what we see (admitting that we really do) as light, is the delta that falls into the sensory spectrum, after we have tried to match the idea of 'full engine of reality' with the full thinking-spiritual nature of it. In other words, the physical encompassing perception of light - which is a very special perception, in that it is unlimited in space, not focused on any particular object - is the hollowed out idea of Spirit that remains, after we have attempted to read its meaning with our current, human understanding of Spirit.
Sorry I realize this is not very clear... All I mean is that maybe another angle to grasp this lecture could be to consider it as a large scale application af what Cleric has described here:

For example, we can try to fill the void with meaningful essence in the shape of a 'hexagon'. It's like saying: "this thing (we can't address it with its real concept because that would immediately fill the void perfectly and the perception would vanish) looks to me like a hexagon." The void sucks in our ideal nature into itself and we assume the meaning-shape of a hexagon. Yet, just like the pencil, the perception doesn't completely disappear because the idea that we experience is not a perfect fit. The hexagon fills the circle but there are six sectors of the circle that remain:

Now these sectors will continue to exercise suction on our essential being, which would suggest infinity of other shapes of meaning that could fill the sectors. If we imagine this process even further we can picture how a whole Universe of perceptions and meaning can sprout forth.

[LukeJTM]

Bernardo's second response appeals to evolution by natural selection, where evolution has simplified or coded the thoughts of MAL into a kind of simplified dashboard for the sake of survival. The tree in it self (which is the thoughts of the universal Mind) appears to us as the qualities and physical properties we know such as green-ness, sounds, texture, solidity, extension in space, etc. It appears to us this way simply due to this 'dashboard' produced by evolutionary pressures.

Biological evolution is not the whole story of what is going on in the Earth domain, and sense perception is not the only mechanism through which we perceive the reality, but the spiritual forces shaping the elemental and biological domains are still acting as natural processes, one of which is biological evolution, and the biological evolution shaped the human sense-perceptual mechanism.

Let me explain more clearly what I was aiming criticism at because you seem to have misunderstood me.

I was trying to criticize the treatment of qualities like colour as something arbitrary (and therefore meaningless). This is what I interpreted from that section during Bernardo and Browns discussion. I believe that it is regressing back into materialism if colour is considered arbitrary; because if all is mind then it doesn't seem to make sense to treat qualities like colour as something meaningless.
Imagine, for example, if the blueness of the sky were to be turned a bright pink suddenly, or the colour of the sun became a bright blue. Or if the night sky became a dazzling white. That would change the entire logic of the world. Therefore colour cannot be just arbitrary. There must therefore be a deeper meaning to even these ordinary perceptions like colours.

Again, it was a tough spot to put Bernardo in to ask what Brown did, so I don't want to come across as being too harsh on him.

[Stranger]

Let me explain more clearly what I was aiming criticism at because you seem to have misunderstood me.

I was trying to criticize the treatment of qualities like colour as something arbitrary (and therefore meaningless). This is what I interpreted from that section during Bernardo and Browns discussion. I believe that it is regressing back into materialism if colour is considered arbitrary; because if all is mind then it doesn't seem to make sense to treat qualities like colour as something meaningless.
Imagine, for example, if the blueness of the sky were to be turned a bright pink suddenly, or the colour of the sun became a bright blue. Or if the night sky became a dazzling white. That would change the entire logic of the world. Therefore colour cannot be just arbitrary. There must therefore be a deeper meaning to even these ordinary perceptions like colours.

Again, it was a tough spot to put Bernardo in to ask what Brown did, so I don't want to come across as being too harsh on him.

Sure, the colors will not change arbitrary because there are lawful forces in control of shaping the sense perceptions that precipitate as phenomenal experiences of colors in our personal experience. Through the actions of these forces the deeper meanings to the perceptions (colors) are being conveyed. I was only talking about the "perceptual filter" of the human sense perception that developed through evolutionary natural selection. But you are right, that part of conveying the meanings through the sense-perceptional filter is missing in Bernardo's explanation. That is because in Bernardo's model MAL is not actually conveying any meanings to us because, according to Bernardo, MAL itself is not metacognitive.

[AshvinP]

Bernardo's second response appeals to evolution by natural selection, where evolution has simplified or coded the thoughts of MAL into a kind of simplified dashboard for the sake of survival. The tree in it self (which is the thoughts of the universal Mind) appears to us as the qualities and physical properties we know such as green-ness, sounds, texture, solidity, extension in space, etc. It appears to us this way simply due to this 'dashboard' produced by evolutionary pressures.

Biological evolution is not the whole story of what is going on in the Earth domain, and sense perception is not the only mechanism through which we perceive the reality, but the spiritual forces shaping the elemental and biological domains are still acting as natural processes, one of which is biological evolution, and the biological evolution shaped the human sense-perceptual mechanism.

Let me explain more clearly what I was aiming criticism at because you seem to have misunderstood me.

I was trying to criticize the treatment of qualities like colour as something arbitrary (and therefore meaningless). This is what I interpreted from that section during Bernardo and Browns discussion. I believe that it is regressing back into materialism if colour is considered arbitrary; because if all is mind then it doesn't seem to make sense to treat qualities like colour as something meaningless.
Imagine, for example, if the blueness of the sky were to be turned a bright pink suddenly, or the colour of the sun became a bright blue. Or if the night sky became a dazzling white. That would change the entire logic of the world. Therefore colour cannot be just arbitrary. There must therefore be a deeper meaning to even these ordinary perceptions like colours.

Again, it was a tough spot to put Bernardo in to ask what Brown did, so I don't want to come across as being too harsh on him.

We should be careful here not to introduce parallel processes of spiritual evolution and biological evolution, as if they are two different things. Hoffman also points out how what we know as 'biological evolution' is itself a 'projection' of the spiritual reality into our sensory-conceptual interface, and that's a helpful way to approach it as long as we take it very seriously. We can't scientifically explain the sensory-conceptual capacity by referring it back to the projection, which itself is a result of the intellectual sensory-conceptual capacity. In other words, we can't imagine that our sense-perceptual 'mechanism' grew from the bottom-up over millions of years through mutations and 'natural selection' as we commonly understand those terms, even if we place some mental activity behind the processes. We can't say our perceptual capacity grew out of an impulse to survive which was independent of the actual rhythmic spiritual forces, which are unimaginable from the rational intellectual perspective, yet lawfully structure that perspective. All of this relates back to what we just discussed about the intellect inverting realities when it tries to encompass the higher spiritual forces with its current concepts.

That is where the error enters into Hoffman's theory - it is simply assumed that "truth" is an objective state of the 'world' which is lawfully disconnected from the inner impulses which help us to survive and grow to the point where we can then perceive and cognitively reflect on the whole process. Instead, through the phenomenology of spiritual activity, we can discern that our cognitive reflections embed the actual evolutionary process in the very activity which produces them - it embeds the 'magnetic field' which arranges the iron filings of the normal conceptual-perceptual spectrum. These are the nested spiritual rhythms through which we can actually make sense of how the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms came into being on the physical plane, rather than attributing it abstractly to 'chance mutations' and 'environmental selection'. Our current thinking is like the fruit of the plant which results from a lawful evolutionary process and contains the seed from which new forms can emerge and the evolution can continue, provided it is willing to sacrificially release that seed back to the soil of the Spirit and resurrect as something new.

This phenomenological approach actually leads us to the opposite conclusion of BK and Hoffman in so far as they hold percepts-concepts as a 'dashboard' concealing a reality of spiritual forces which the former orthogonally represent. Instead, the percepts-concepts are constantly being impressed by the spiritual forces like a stamp impresses its seal in the wax. Of course we can't take these analogies too rigidly, since they refer to spatial relations. But the point is that the 'dashboard' is the lawful outer physiognomy of the spiritual forces, and communicates to us the objective relations of these forces in proportion to how much we expand our cognitive resonance with the latter. Every person's 'dashboard' is slightly different and those who train for higher development can attain vastly expanded and enriched 'dashboards'. The normal intellect is like an instrument which is only loosely attuned to the vibrations of those nested relational forces. So, although the colors of the normal spectrum do relate objective spiritual meaning to us, the connection is so dim that both the materialist and analytic idealist feel safe writing them off as mostly arbitrary perceptions from which we can learn very little about 'reality'. Through higher cognition, however, we attune the thinking instrument more precisely and reveal the more expanded sphere of percept-concepts (including new colors) which make sense of the normal spectrum and fleshes out how that spectrum precisely relates to invisible spiritual forces.

We come to discern that it was human spiritual activity, working through the spiritual substance of the higher hierarchies, which has built up the Earthy kingdoms over the ages for its own development, physical, psychic, and spiritual. It is the same process the individual human organism engages in through the 'epochs' of its life - the first three (21 years) are devoted to body and soul development, mostly from without, and then the spiritual "I" can freely work from within through its thinking forces to spiritualize the soul and, ideally, the body as well. Most of these things will sound quite fantastical until we engage a thorough investigation of the living details, through our prayerful practice and study. But we can take note that this process often leads to the exact opposite conclusions about the evolutionary progression, which involve the spirit-soul-body as a whole organism, reached by the normal intellect left to its own reductive devices. That will have huge practical implications for how we orient ourselves in the World and its continued evolution, through our spiritual activity as individuals and collectives. That is why BK, for ex., is comfortable conceiving of MAL as an instinctive animal - it is simply the Darwinian view made more 'idealist'. Instead, we should aim to increasingly discern the Earth with all its kingdoms as a supra-intelligent living organism with its own body-soul-spirit (outwardly manifested as the kingdoms), in which we as individuals are embedded and through which we attain our spiritual freedom. Not even the tiniest detail of that organism is arbitrary or disconnected from the 'truth'.

[AshvinP]

I had a look through that essay. I'm finding some of the vocabulary a bit hard to follow because it is still somewhat unfamiliar for me. But I do like that there are explanations of the vocabulary in the replies. I wonder if this forum has a glossary somewhere
Also, I am a bit confused as to whether it is an entire essay, or just an excerpt from some other longer one.
I am doing a re-read of Steiner's PoF right now, so hopefully that will help me have a better understanding of the vocabulary and understandings which people have on this forum, because I don't have much else of value to comment on it just now. But in future I will come back to this.

Having a glossary would be too easy and also maybe too rigid, not only because we all have our preferred vocabulary, that one becomes familiar with after a little while, but also because we have to actively work out the meaning in the context of each discussion, as a creative process, in which the exact words do not matter that much, as long as they lead to the intended meaning. I realize this sounds slightly recursive, but well, you will see

I understand the essay by Max Leyf appears as an excerpt from a longer one. I actually don't know if it's the case! But yes, much of what we are discussing and quoting requires focused attention, and would benefit from multiple reads, especially PoF. I think Ashvin said that 5-10 re-reads of PoF are a reasonable amount to really make contact with its various layers of meaning! I am personally not there, but I regularly feel the need to go back to it, and I am sure I will continue to. I think, for most people, coming to the experience of living thinking is an iterative process anyway, certainly effortful, but also uniquely and warmly inspiring and uplifting.

In connection with the above, this passage may be of interest to contemplate. It is speaking of mostly those who wish to convey spiritual truths to others, but in my experience it is exactly as Federica says - the more we let these things work upon our soul, i.e. not only as isolated concepts but also connected with our archetypal feelings and noble human ideals, the more we will see how the fall into place, regardless of the terminology used. In a certain sense, we should entrust the terminology and lofty ideas we are not yet familiar with to the higher spiritual forces latent within our intellect and focus only on that which we can take responsibility for, which is focused thinking practice and study, soul purification of purely personal interests, and generally persistent and prayerful effort in all these things.

You will understand that in a movement founded upon spiritual wisdom, where the aim is to awaken deeper powers of the human soul to isolated awareness, mere curiosity about the worlds of spirit is not enough. This simply cannot be the motivation for spiritual enquiry at all. Instead what is needed is a sense of responsibility. Through this movement, future human capacities are drawn in advance into our time: a seed of the future is awoken that in general is not yet ripe. We must be aware of this; we must be careful and attentive in ensuring that, even if the soul remains fine and congenial within this spiritual movement, we must nevertheless remain alert to the dangers that threaten it, and awaken a sense of responsibility. When the soul approaches spiritual things without the required maturity, there is indeed a danger, and not everyone will notice it. Those who stand more deeply rooted in this movement will know, must know—if they are not to collapse under the unendurable—that they must always be careful to utter only things that have first passed a hundred times through their soul, and not just once or ten times. It is difficult when speaking of spiritual matters to formulate words in a way that is fitting. Within the whole circle of anthroposophists, a particular view must become current: the view that we require of those who represent the movement that they pay due heed to the truth in this sense. It should not be thought that someone can simply stand up and deliver a lecture every evening without repeatedly and continually allowing these truths to pass through their soul, so that the right words and formulations are found. One aspect of this is the difficulty we face in even opening our mouths to express spiritual matters. The other is that those who belong to such a movement must actually ensure that this feeling exists in those who represent the movement.

[AshvinP]

I wish I had this sort of clarity about BK's model when I arrived here! (through my interest in BK's philosophy)
So well expressed.

I want to circle back on this point, as I agree it is very well expressed and insightful. Spiritual science does reveal that while the visible manifestation of Thought is what we know as 'light', the visible manifestation of Will is what we know as 'matter' (or darkness). Most of us can grasp intuitively, or perhaps through some painful experience, that the phenomenon of weight/pressure, for ex., is the dimming of thinking consciousness. If that pressure gets intense enough, then we pass out and go unconscious.

Steiner has a great lecture on this topic, for those interested. It again points to the importance of a living understanding of polar relation which does not seek to reduce Idea to Perception, Spirit to Matter, etc. or vice versa. If we really pay attention and try to internalize these basic principles in our spiritual development, then we will greatly mitigate the risk of falling into the most common pitfalls along the way.


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA291/En ... 05p01.html

Ashvin, thank you for this highlight!
That's so beyond the limit of what I can imagine at this point, but hopefully not too much beyond it, because I do feel the meaningful attraction exerted by the content of this whole lecture from, well, the other side of my limit
Anyway, this looks very much like the next chapter, as Eugene called it, in the photon illustration started by Cleric on the other thread. Eugene - what do you think?

I'm glad you found it so meaningful, Federica. It does remain pretty broad and abstract compared to Cleric's approach on the other thread, so I think the latter will be more helpful. Of course approaching any of these topics from multiple angles and multiples scales of resolution always helps to kindle our intuition.

Unsurprisingly, I'll have to give this lecture more reading. But I realize this Light-Thinking relation expresses from another angle the idea of our thought-images as shadows, as deltas, as our imperfect attempts to match reality (meaning) through Thinking. The extent of the missmatch is what justifies the precipitated perception, preventing us from directly experiencing the pure meaning/pure spirit 'upstream'. So what we see (admitting that we really do) as light, is the delta that falls into the sensory spectrum, after we have tried to match the idea of 'full engine of reality' with the full thinking-spiritual nature of it. In other words, the physical encompassing perception of light - which is a very special perception, in that it is unlimited in space, not focused on any particular object - is the hollowed out idea of Spirit that remains, after we have attempted to read its meaning with our current, human understanding of Spirit.
Sorry I realize this is not very clear... All I mean is that maybe another angle to grasp this lecture could be to consider it as a large scale application af what Cleric has described here:

For example, we can try to fill the void with meaningful essence in the shape of a 'hexagon'. It's like saying: "this thing (we can't address it with its real concept because that would immediately fill the void perfectly and the perception would vanish) looks to me like a hexagon." The void sucks in our ideal nature into itself and we assume the meaning-shape of a hexagon. Yet, just like the pencil, the perception doesn't completely disappear because the idea that we experience is not a perfect fit. The hexagon fills the circle but there are six sectors of the circle that remain:

Now these sectors will continue to exercise suction on our essential being, which would suggest infinity of other shapes of meaning that could fill the sectors. If we imagine this process even further we can picture how a whole Universe of perceptions and meaning can sprout forth.

That was pretty clear to me! I think it was a great summary and you're correct that it aligns with what Cleric wrote in that quote. Of course embedded in the hollowed out intuition of Spirit, the physical Light which permeates space, is the Spirit itself. We can dimly sense that when focusing on what the Light means to us - it is the dawn of a new day, the awakening of many inhabitants of Earth, with visual clarity of the surroundings, new possibilities for learning and growing in knowledge-wisdom, a renewed moral sense of responsibility towards our fellow beings and the Earth organism (relative to our dreaming-sleep state), etc. Through higher cognitive development, we reach into the supra-intelligent spiritual forces continually responsible for and renewing these dim concepts-feelings-impulses, which are normally shrouded in our sleeping consciousness of Will-Darkness. Then we begin to comprehend the unsuspected ideational forces embedded in the latter, including our own higher activity.