Intuition, thinking and Antroposophy

[Güney27]

Hello everyone.
I have written down some of the thoughts I had about the epistemological approach of anthroposophy. I am in the process of developing an understanding of this myself and it helps me when I write about this topic.
There has been a lot of discussion lately about different spiritual paths. I couldn't contribute much on the subject as my knowledge is very limited and I really couldn't have contributed anything of value or depth. I think it's important to talk about the basics, because I could see for myself how quickly it takes an abstract theoretical direction when you deal with anthroposophy. I hope to trigger a small discussion about Steiner's epistemological part.
I would be grateful for criticism.
I didn't have any special structure when writing this text. I hope it is understandable.

Our thinking, from our everyday consciousness, is thinking about things that appear separate from us. We have our thoughts and perception on the other side.
Our thoughts about the object are placeholders for the perception outside of our being. They are finished objects when they hit us in our perception, over which we have no influence in the process of their creation. We are in a world full of apparently finished objects, where we cannot understand the metamorphosis and creation.
As Rudolf Steiner said: "But we can only grasp what we know how it came about." That is why science tries to explain the origin and metamorphosis of things. We try, through our thinking, in the abstract Thoughts to create a model that explains to us the tranformation and emergence of world content. The only thing that we can say with certainty that it doesn't seem finished to us and we are involved in the production is our thinking, our thoughts are finished products, but we know, e.g. when we think to answer a tricky question, that it was we who brought it into this finished form (we are not aware of the finer details, but we feel that we were active and formed the fixed thoughts in the end in order to be able to give an answer)


This is exactly where the important epistemological approach of goethe and steiner lies, instead of thinking about things in an abstract way, which can never completely quench our thirst for knowledge, we immerse ourselves in the world process, in which we renew the world content in our activity. The content (in us) then no longer only has a subjective character, but because we absorb the world content in us and allow it to develop, it has an objective character.
Thus, nature no longer seems alienated to us, but we penetrate it completely through our thinking.
Everything in nature is given to us, we only have to actively produce our ideas and concepts in order to perceive them and find them in the world.
For example, if we do the seed meditation, we let it become a plant, in our own activity. So we may perceive the true forces that are at work in the plant. Thus we can perceive the ideal part of the plant, called the idea or the primeval plant. This is an intuitive knowledge which can perceive a purely spiritual content.
It is important to understand the role of thinking in our cognition, for example without thinking we could never come to cognition. Because it is our thinking that gives form to what is given, so that we can study the world phenomenon systematically at all. One could say that the real world is perception permeated by thought.


When we look at the world content, the mind is already active, picking out details of our perception and then relating them to each other (e.g. in the case of a forest, the tree in relation to the whole forest).
Pure perception would be a disturbing image for us, full of shapes and colors with which we can do nothing.
It is thought that gives meaning to our perception.


In the philosophy of freedom, Steiner says that concepts and intuition belong together. It must be noted that the thought is only the outer form, which points us to an independent spiritual content, which we can call intuition and can understand through intuition.
The perception of spiritual content can be called intuitive thinking and is a method of cognition.
Thinking is often also referred to as an organ of perception, which is difficult to understand at first because our everyday thinking seems like a subjective (in us) description of the outer (objective) world. However, as we broaden our understanding of thinking, some things become clear. A special feature is that we have to be active ourselves in intuitive thinking and have to produce the content, but the content is not subjective, but carries its content itself.
Here you can also find the thread why Steiner often emphasizes that we are already in the spiritual world when we study humanities texts, for example. However, this does not mean that when we live spiritual scientific thoughts, like everyday thoughts, in the spiritual world, but only when we think intuitively.



A possible objection can be that if we ourselves produce all content, this is not objective but subjective.
As mentioned before, we must be clear that if we want to come to knowledge, instead of passively contemplating the given, we must make the given appear actively in our activity. However, the content must be objective, the content of which we do not add, but the content of which is self-determined. In our thinking we do not create the content of our thoughts ourselves.

This approach to generating knowledge is therefore a more lively and essence-oriented one than creating mental models. It is our activity that adds the ideal part to the given passive part of the world, however, as mentioned, the ideal part is not subjective, but has its own content, which can be perceived through intuitive thinking. Through such an oriented approach, epestemiology can become ontology, because this approach brings the realization that the essence of nature consists of ideals.
The approach of today's science should not be badmouthed, it also has its value. Nevertheless, it is one-sided and not well suited to answering deeper questions.
Today's scientist is also active spiritually, on the world's appearances. He thinks about phenomena, schematizes them and creates models. All of this can only happen because the human being makes it possible. It is his thought activity that allows him to do so, but this is forgotten to be taken into account and goes unrecognized. However, this is also due to the nature of thinking, that while thinking, the thinker perceives the object of thought, forgetting the activity.



Finally, I would like to add easily 2 observable phenomena related to the discussed topic that are interesting.

What I have observed about myself is that when I have understood something after a long period of thinking, I have a feeling of "enlightenment" (not meant in the sense of a mystical realization experience). It's like that suddenly everything is clear, it was just understood, but I can still experience this not explain with words, but only describe. From this intuitive understanding, if you can call it that, I can then try to articulate a sentence. So I press the intuition, the mental content, which can quickly disappear, into a certain form, which I can fix and hold on to longer.




(When we read a book on a subject that is new to us, we see the writing, understand the words, but the content remains obscure to us. If we remain passive, we will never understand the meaning contained in the book . What we have to do in order to understand it is to become active and to think through the content ourselves and even then to create the meaning of the text. )



PS I am writing part 2, which should deal more with the esoteric aspects. I don't know when I'll finish it and post it.

Best regards

[AshvinP]

Hello everyone.
I have written down some of the thoughts I had about the epistemological approach of anthroposophy. I am in the process of developing an understanding of this myself and it helps me when I write about this topic.
There has been a lot of discussion lately about different spiritual paths. I couldn't contribute much on the subject as my knowledge is very limited and I really couldn't have contributed anything of value or depth. I think it's important to talk about the basics, because I could see for myself how quickly it takes an abstract theoretical direction when you deal with anthroposophy. I hope to trigger a small discussion about Steiner's epistemological part.
I would be grateful for criticism.
I didn't have any special structure when writing this text. I hope it is understandable.

Guney,

Thanks for sharing these thoughts on phenomenology of thinking. I am sure you will get comments more specific to your points, but I wanted to first also share another angle which comes more explicitly from Goethean Science.

Knowing would be an absolutely useless process if something complete were conveyed to us in sense experience. All drawing together, ordering, and grouping of sense-perceptible facts would have no objective value. Knowing has meaning only if we do not regard the configuration given to the senses as a finished one, if this configuration is for us a half of something that bears within itself something still higher that, however, is no longer sense-perceptible. There the human spirit steps in. It perceives that higher element. Therefore thinking must also not be regarded as bringing something to the content of reality. It is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas. Idealism is therefore quite compatible with the principle of empirical research. The idea is not the content of subjective thinking, but rather the result of research. Reality, insofar as we meet it with open senses, confronts us. It confronts us in a form that we cannot regard as its true one; we first attain its true form when we bring our thinking into flux. Knowing means: to add the perception of thinking to the half reality of sense experience so that this picture of half reality becomes complete.

I find it very helpful in my considerations to regard thinking - whether normal, imaginative, inspired, or intuitive - as a sense-organ which perceives ideas-meaning. Furthermore, we could say our core thinking be-ing (the ego-"I") uses the physical senses of the eyes, ears, etc. as its instrument of perception. Through higher esoteric development, it can begin using the more inner senses as its instrument of perceiving higher-order meaning as well. We all have these inner senses in germinal state, and are always using them for our intuitive orientation in the world, but they must be actively shaped through our exercises before we can start consciously utilizing them. Our physical senses naturally develop (although there is still a learning curve there), but our more spiritual senses require us to actively seek their development.

When we perceive through the inner senses, the apparent gap between concept and percept begins to close. It becomes more and more evident that these are two polar aspects of the same underlying cognitive activity. The gap results because we have not yet awakened to our creative responsibility over portions of the Whole intuitive volume of meaning. Usually, in our normal consciousness, we call 'perception' anything which we don't seem to be responsible for with our thinking agency, and therefore approaches us from outside-in. Anything which we seem to be responsible for to some extent through our agency, and therefore approches us from inside-out, we call 'thinking'. That includes our will impulses and feelings, because we normally only know our thought-concepts of those experiences. Because we are only awakened to a small aperture of our creative responsibility for the Whole, we experience an 'outer world' set against the 'inner world'. This process of 'setting against' was necessary for our core thinking be-ing to become self-aware through an 'objective consciousness' of nested spiritual activity.

By developing our higher-order thinking which utilizes the inner sense faculties, we are able to resonate with more 'wavelengths' of meaning and therefore expand the depth, scope, and clarity of our intuitive volume. We enter into the real-time activity of our thought-perception and therefore become capable of perceiving more fluid spiritual forms before they fully condense into our familiar and rigid concepts-percepts. The former are more temporally dynamic forms in contrast to the normal spatial forms. These help fill in the gaps, so to speak, between our normally fragmented perceptions, so we gain true insight into their origin and purpose within the context of our individual and collective streams of becoming. All of the above is also found in PoF, but we are simply approaching from a slightly different angle with some different termionology which has been used on the forum. Perhaps it will also help with your Part 2.

[Federica]

Hello Güney,
Nice to see you back! It is always very useful to follow someone else's thoughts and review our own understanding in this way. Thank you for bringing your reflections and intuitions to the forum, making this exercise possible for us
Below, I have interspersed your reflections with mine. Like you, I am trying to develop a living understanding of reality, and what I have written is the image of my current perspective. I can't guarantee it's correct, I just hope the exchange can continue to spark thinking activity, and I look forward to the esoteric second part you are working at!

Our thinking, from our everyday consciousness, is thinking about things that appear separate from us. We have our thoughts and perceptions on the other side.
Our thoughts about the object are placeholders for the perception outside of our being. They are finished objects when they hit us in our perception, over which we have no influence in the process of their creation. Right, these finished objects of perception are called percepts by Steiner. We are in a world full of apparently finished objects, where we cannot understand the metamorphosis and creation. Yes, usually we only understand it as a sequence of spatial configurations of arbitrarily isolated objects.
As Rudolf Steiner said: "But we can only grasp what we know how it came about." That is why science tries to explain the origin and metamorphosis of things. We try, through our thinking, in the abstract Thoughts to create a model that explains to us the transformation and emergence of world content. The only thing that we can say with certainty that it doesn't seem finished to us and we are involved in the production is our thinking, our thoughts are finished products, but we know, e.g. when we think to answer a tricky question, that it was we who brought it into this finished form (we are not aware of the finer details, but we feel that we were active and formed the fixed thoughts in the end in order to be able to give an answer). Yes, we feel that thinking is our creation.


This is exactly where the important epistemological approach of goethe and steiner lies, instead of thinking about things in an abstract way, which can never completely quench our thirst for knowledge, we immerse ourselves in the world process, in which we renew the world content in our activity.
Yes, and it’s a big step summarized in these few words. We can, and probably should, explore the feeling of immersing ourselves in the world process, with reverence and openness, but the cognition of reality from within comes little by little, in a holistic progression that incorporates all of our various efforts, including the patience and acceptance that we are walking along a path and each of our steps must be willed and lived through. The content (in us) then no longer only has a subjective character, but because we absorb the world content in us and allow it to develop, it has an objective character. Yes, the interconnected nature of reality becomes more and more felt/understood/experienced, blurring the usual rigid comprehension of the world in terms of subject/object.
Thus, nature no longer seems alienated to us, but we penetrate it completely through our thinking.
Everything in nature is given to us, we only have to actively produce our ideas and concepts in order to perceive them and find them in the world. Maybe, instead of “actively produce” I would say “recognize”, and what we actively produce is the expansion of consciousness that incorporates them.


For example, if we do the seed meditation, we let it become a plant, in our own activity. So we may perceive the true forces that are at work in the plant. Thus we can perceive the ideal part of the plant, called the idea or the primeval plant. This is an intuitive knowledge which can perceive a purely spiritual content. I am not sure if this is an example of intuitive knowledge, but in any case, with this exercise, a first level of intellectual/perceptual segmentation of reality is bypassed, allowing us to witness the truth of biological life in its simplest manifestation (plant), the same truth that holds together a bunch of mineral elements from the periodic table, making it possible for them to form a meaningful and consistent unity, coming to life in what is known to us as our physical body.
It is important to understand the role of thinking in our cognition, for example without thinking we could never come to cognition. Because it is our thinking that gives form to what is given, so that we can study the world phenomenon systematically at all. One could say that the real world is perception permeated by thought. Mm... this is a delicate point, would you elaborate it more? I think it helps to remember that our thinking is an expanding and progressively coinciding activity that grows into the depths of the one Thinking, in a continuum that smoothly transpasses and blurs the borders of our individuality. So through aware connection with the spiritual activity of Thinking - that has ramifications in each of us - we progressively grow in the recognition of the totality of that activity, of the fully encompassing nature of that activity. Spiritual activity is also the same thing as reality. (As an experiment, we can try to conceive reality directly from that end, as spiritual in nature, instead of trying to come to this truth via our experience of perception). Of that Thinking activity, we are a tiny head, an individual instance of expression. And the more we realize that, the more we cover that internal ground that elevates us to the cognition of reality/truth. Through ourselves, we make true in ourselves, what is already true. We already are that, but we have to ‘do’ it, in order to know it. In other words, we become conscious of reality by the willed acts of bringing the outside inside, knowing it from within, until more and more of these two sides match with each other. Every little event of matching understanding cancels the outside-inside borders a little more. As we progress in this way, we find ourselves closer and closer to the radiating center, where there’s no more segmentation, no borders, but only coincidences, and every singular expression of truth shines in its complete meaningful connectedness, in full resolution.


When we look at the world content, the mind is already active, picking out details of our perception and then relating them to each other (e.g. in the case of a forest, the tree in relation to the whole forest).
Pure perception would be a disturbing image for us, full of shapes and colors with which we can do nothing.
It is thought that gives meaning to our perception. Yes, the pure perception we experience at birth, becomes progressively infused with meaning through thinking. It’s an initially unconscious process that we can become more and more aware of, like you were doing as you were writing down these thoughts.


In the philosophy of freedom, Steiner says that concepts and intuition belong together. It must be noted that the thought is only the outer form, which points us to an independent spiritual content, which we can call intuition and can understand through intuition.
The perception of spiritual content can be called intuitive thinking and is a method of cognition.
Thinking is often also referred to as an organ of perception, which is difficult to understand at first because our everyday thinking seems like a subjective (in us) description of the outer (objective) world. However, as we broaden our understanding of thinking, some things become clear. A special feature is that we have to be active ourselves in intuitive thinking and have to produce the content, but the content is not subjective, but carries its content itself. Yes, this is another way to say that we have to bring reality (or content) into awareness, and as we actively make it real for ourselves, we also know it as true. The difficulty is that our growth has to come simultaneously from two sides, the side of becoming conscious, and the side of taking action. There is no way around. We cannot figure out a step by step action plan, when we tick off one task at a time. We have to sustain the whole front of cognitive growth at once, maintaining both patience and vigilance as we progress and “broaden our understanding of thinking” as you say. Gratitude and reverence is what grants us patience, and thirst for knowledge is what keeps us open and vigilant at the same time.
Here you can also find the thread why Steiner often emphasizes that we are already in the spiritual world when we study humanities texts, for example. However, this does not mean that when we live spiritual scientific thoughts, like everyday thoughts, in the spiritual world, but only when we think intuitively.


A possible objection can be that if we ourselves produce all content, this is not objective but subjective.
As mentioned before, we must be clear that if we want to come to knowledge, instead of passively contemplating the given, we must make the given appear actively in our activity. However, the content must be objective, the content of which we do not add, but the content of which is self-determined. In our thinking we do not create the content of our thoughts ourselves. Yes, I think these words express the forming of the correct direction in you. Here it helps to remember that actively doing is one face, and recognizing-knowing is the other face of the same head. We have to trust that by putting our efforts simultaneously in both, and with the support of our feelings of reverence, gratitude and burning thirst, we will make sure progress.


This approach to generating knowledge is therefore a more lively and essence-oriented one than creating mental models. It is our activity that adds the ideal part to the given passive part of the world, however, as mentioned, the ideal part is not subjective, but has its own content, which can be perceived through intuitive thinking. Through such an oriented approach, epistemology can become ontology, because this approach brings the realization that the essence of nature consists of ideals.
Here I guess we must refrain from drawing intellectually satisfying conclusions, that would box and schematize the previously touched intuitions in too flattened ways. I am not sure we need to seal our progression in the airtight structure of abstract philosophical categories. I am saying that as a simple reminder, maybe there is no need, and I am over interpreting your words.
The approach of today's science should not be badmouthed, it also has its value. Nevertheless, it is one-sided and not well suited to answering deeper questions. It can be read and turned inside out through the light of living thinking. No expression is a dead end in itself. Everything encloses meaning, that will emerge once the right relations are set, so that meaning can shine through their intersections in a more and more continuous embrace.
Today's scientist is also active spiritually, on the world's appearances. He thinks about phenomena, schematizes them and creates models. All of this can only happen because the human being makes it possible. It is his thought activity that allows him to do so, but this is forgotten to be taken into account and goes unrecognized. However, this is also due to the nature of thinking, that while thinking, the thinker perceives the object of thought, forgetting the activity. Yes, because thinking is so very much coincident with us, we initially lack the inner maneuvering space to realize what we are doing (the activity) and we only see what we are manipulating by means of that doing (what we think about).



Finally, I would like to add easily 2 observable phenomena related to the discussed topic that are interesting.

What I have observed about myself is that when I have understood something after a long period of thinking, I have a feeling of "enlightenment" (not meant in the sense of a mystical realization experience). It's like that suddenly everything is clear, it was just understood, but I can still experience this not explain with words, but only describe. From this intuitive understanding, if you can call it that, I can then try to articulate a sentence. So I press the intuition, the mental content, which can quickly disappear, into a certain form, which I can fix and hold on to longer.
Yes, I understand what you mean When our efforts are rewarded and some intuitions come our way, and become perceivable, we can make an additional effort, recruiting our intellect to serve our intuitive understanding. We can transcribe the quickly disappearing intuition in words. We can press, as you say, or ex-press, the intuition in a certain form, that is more stable and can be shared in a forum, like you have done.

(When we read a book on a subject that is new to us, we see the writing, understand the words, but the content remains obscure to us. If we remain passive, we will never understand the meaning contained in the book . What we have to do in order to understand it is to become active and to think through the content ourselves and even then to create the meaning of the text. )



PS I am writing part 2, which should deal more with the esoteric aspects. I don't know when I'll finish it and post it.

Best regards

[Cleric K]

Hello everyone.

Hi Guney! Thank you for writing. This is really an important part of our own development. It’s not that different from school. Probably we all know how sometimes when we only read the material, especially true when looking at some mathematical solution, we think “I got it.” But then if we try to replicate the solution ourselves it turns out we don’t get it. So it is with PoF too. Everyone has to write their own unique PoF which is not simply a copy of the original book but explication of their own spiritual existence.

I just want to highlight two things which were somewhat touched upon already above by Ashvin and Federica. These are things that we have spoken about many times but I want to remind of them once again because they turn out to be serious stumbling blocks.

The first thing has to do with the nature of our thoughts and imagination. It turns out people today are especially prone to conceive higher consciousness as some kind of more powerful imagination. For example, taking the seed meditation, one can very easily conceive that by imagining the growth from seed to plant they do something similar to what a higher being is doing in order to manifest the real plant. But this would be very misleading. In fact, the human being is the only being in our present hierarchy of beings, which has such an external experience of a plant. Even an angel (the closest higher being to man) doesn’t have physical sight as we do. Thus we should remember that the power of these meditations is that they’re drawing us nearer to the inner forces that constitute the plant. A plant is something much more encompassing, we can only understand it by grasping the inner nature of a particular interplay of macrocosmic and elemental forces. For example, the most important macrocosmic archetype that we have to experience with the seed is the rhythm of growth and decay, and how through death a concentrate remains from which the new growth sprouts. These are patterns that are much more than some forces animating biological things within empty spiritual vacuum. Instead, these rhythms will be found to be like ‘carrier waves’ of our entire Cosmic unfolding.

If we neglect this, we end up in a kind of solipsistic view. It’s of course not explicitly solipsistic but it becomes implicitly so because we assume that our human consciousness (even if ‘non-dually realized’) already coincides with the so-called pure consciousness. This makes us feel that our intuitive sense for what consciousness and reality are, is already the fundamental perspective and all that’s left is expand it and fill the gaps within it. Such a position basically puts the lid on our development. With this attitude we can never find the reality of the plant because we secretly expect that reality to be added to the screen of our consciousness as some more subtle perceptions of thunderbolts or whatever, which shape the picture of the plant. All of this occurs for the sole reason that, consciously or not, we behave as if our consciousness already coincides with the supposed top observer of reality and it’s only that certain phenomena are presently filtered. In other words, we act as someone in a dark room who imagines the furniture and only expects the light to be turned on in order for the anticipated contours to be filled with more colorful perceptions.

The second thing is directly related to the above and it manifests when we try to grasp what meaning, concepts, ideas and intuition are. We more or less know what the experience of red is but what is the concept of red? Through metaphysical thinking we’re inclined to think abstractly about it and conceive concepts and ideas as some elements of reality. For example, today we imagine particles and antiparticles. We don’t perceive them directly yet we imagine some energetic dots zipping around. We can never approach the essence of PoF if we try to build a similar metaphysical picture where reality is made of perceptions and anti-perceptions (concepts/intuition), and we imagine these floating around and interacting within our pure consciousness. When we do that we unknowingly assume the top observer position and once again imagine that all reality can be beheld ‘objectively’ as some elements that float before our Divine gaze.

This turned out to be even more difficult to explain than the first point. People simply can’t help but imagine particles and antiparticles when they hear about perceptions and ideas. It’s just another metaphysical theory for them. This can be pointed out with the pictures that I’ve used so many times:



This is the secret perspective where we imagine that we’re the top experiencer/observer of reality and perceptions and intuition are imagined as things within consciousness. Note that both the mystic and the philosopher/metaphysicist (no matter if materialistic or idealistic) utilize this mode. This has to be contrasted with something like:



The point here is that whatever our state of being is, we’re always so to speak in between the manifested and the unmanifested. The tricky part though is that the unmanifested is not simply something which is as of yet missing from the screen of our consciousness and we expect its contours to be filled with color, as when we expect the furniture to appear with the light. Such an expectation leaves one important aspect completely unexamined. In the example with the furniture we implicitly assume that our spatial intuition of reality is absolute. Whatever we expect to be manifested, is already expected to fill with perceptual phenomena something of the spatial volume. To counterbalance this we have to conceive of something very different. It is as if our conscious experience is the point where consciousness (positive, conscious content) is inverted into negative consciousness (the intuitive spiritual world). This sounds incomprehensible only as long as we try to grasp things intellectually as in the first image, where we abstractly conceive of some consciousness and negative consciousness while secretly feeling as the top container of both of them. To grasp something of the real spiritual world we have to be ready that our whole intuitive sense of what be-ing is, will transform. And this transformation is not a one-shot event.

I know that I’m repeating myself above but it simply seems to me that these two points form the most substantial obstacles on the path to reality for modern man. I just wanted to emphasize them once more.

1. We shouldn’t imagine that our sense of having consciousness with imaginative contents is the same as the state of higher beings/Divine/One Consciousness. Otherwise we naively imagine that everything is created by imagining phenomena in the field of consciousness (for example a plant).
2. We shouldn’t imagine that we can ever find the essence of idea/intuition as some content within our consciousness, side by side with other perceptions. We can only approach this mystery if we’re willing to conceive that the world of meaning is akin to negative consciousness in respect to everything that we conceive as positive conscious phenomena – which includes also our thought perceptions as words, symbols, etc. This makes it challenging because in PoF we constantly have to think about meaning, ideas and concepts, yet we have to learn to feel that our perceptible thoughts are like the iron filings within magnetic field. The latter gives the meaningful dimension of our being, yet it’s not something that we can climb above and contemplate side by side with the filings.

[AshvinP]

Hello everyone.

In connection with Cleric's last post, perhaps this somewhat concrete example will also help. We can look at political ideologies and how they structure perception. In modern times, we have radical liberalism and radical conservatism at the extremes and then a gradient in between (in which it seems increasingly few people would locate themselves). It's clear that these are not simple concepts-ideas akin to anything in the content of our normal consciousness, such that we can easily label with a few words. A political ideology is the result of a whole array of nested forces, like our childhood upbringing, our character and temperament, our geographical location, our broader cultural sphere, the history of our nation, the history of human civilization, etc. I recently came across the following:

Among other things, the authors asked study participants identifying as “conservatives” and “liberals” (in the American sense) to indicate their spheres of primary moral concern. “Conservatives” tended to emphasise those spheres nearest to themselves – their immediate family, their more extended relatives, their friends – as bearing the greatest moral weight. “Liberals,” meanwhile, expressed the greatest moral interest in those spheres furthest from themselves – “all people on all continents,” for example, or “all mammals.”

Plotted as heat-maps on 16 concentric circles, where the first circle is “immediate family” and the sixteenth is “all things in existence”, the comparative results look like this:

So this simple image above represents to us an array of 'moral concerns', i.e. moral ideas, which are polarized and play into the political ideology. We often hear these days about how people under influence of these ideologies 'live in different realities', but it's probably not taken as seriously as it should be. They quite literally perceive facts and events in different, often opposite, ways. They will remember things completely differently. As a simple example, after the 2020 presidential election the radical liberals experienced the whole thing to be obviously free and fair while the radical conservatives experienced it to be obviously rigged and corrupt. Of course there are other influences involved here, like the reporting of the facts by news media and what news sources people paid attention to, but that also points to the pathways through which the ideologies manage to structure our perceptions-conceptions.

Although we may not be as influenced by radical political ideology, we all have various religious, political, or generally cultural opinions, beliefs, theories, dogmas, etc. which structure our normal consciousness. Although we can identify these things with certain word-concepts which act as tokens, we intuitively know that they stand in a very diferent relation to our normal experience than the concepts 'red' or 'blue'. Through higher development, however, we also begin to realize the latter concepts are not actually 'smaller' or more 'simple' than the political ideas woven of invisible forces related to our living history and our moral concerns. All concepts embed these meaningful spiritual forces of 'negative consciousness', as Cleric put it. These inner temporal forces constantly structure our perceptions but cannot be likened to anything we find in the spatial perceptual spectrum.

[Federica]

Although we may not be as influenced by radical political ideology, we all have various religious, political, or generally cultural opinions, beliefs, theories, dogmas, etc. which structure our normal consciousness. Although we can identify these things with certain word-concepts which act as tokens, we intuitively know that they stand in a very diferent relation to our normal experience than the concepts 'red' or 'blue'. Through higher development, however, we also begin to realize the latter concepts are not actually 'smaller' or more 'simple' than the political ideas woven of invisible forces related to our living history and our moral concerns. All concepts embed these meaningful spiritual forces of 'negative consciousness', as Cleric put it. These inner temporal forces constantly structure our perceptions but cannot be likened to anything we find in the spatial perceptual spectrum.

Ashvin,

I thought I understood negative consciousness (same as hollowed-out perception, our perception is the form, or handle, of archetypal meaning pressing onto us), but in your conclusion, something is escaping me. I get that we all have different perceptions due to our history, etc., but I don't get that the invisible archetypal forces infuse all concepts?


PS. The example is probably not the most intuitive for Europeans, because here liberal means something quite similar to conservative (in simplified terms). Moreover, the ideological spectrum itself, the gradient you refer to, from conservative to liberal, is becoming, or has become, more and more blurred and meaningless.

[AshvinP]

Although we may not be as influenced by radical political ideology, we all have various religious, political, or generally cultural opinions, beliefs, theories, dogmas, etc. which structure our normal consciousness. Although we can identify these things with certain word-concepts which act as tokens, we intuitively know that they stand in a very diferent relation to our normal experience than the concepts 'red' or 'blue'. Through higher development, however, we also begin to realize the latter concepts are not actually 'smaller' or more 'simple' than the political ideas woven of invisible forces related to our living history and our moral concerns. All concepts embed these meaningful spiritual forces of 'negative consciousness', as Cleric put it. These inner temporal forces constantly structure our perceptions but cannot be likened to anything we find in the spatial perceptual spectrum.

Ashvin,

I thought I understood negative consciousness (same as hollowed-out perception, our perception is the form, or handle, of archetypal meaning pressing onto us), but in your conclusion, something is escaping me. I get that we all have different perceptions due to our history, etc., but I don't get that the invisible archetypal forces infuse all concepts?


PS. The example is probably not the most intuitive for Europeans, because here liberal means something quite similar to conservative (in simplified terms). Moreover, the ideological spectrum itself, the gradient you refer to, from conservative to liberal, is becoming, or has become, more and more blurred and meaningless.

Federica,

What would be an example of a concept which is not impressed through the archetypal forces?

[Federica]

Although we may not be as influenced by radical political ideology, we all have various religious, political, or generally cultural opinions, beliefs, theories, dogmas, etc. which structure our normal consciousness. Although we can identify these things with certain word-concepts which act as tokens, we intuitively know that they stand in a very diferent relation to our normal experience than the concepts 'red' or 'blue'. Through higher development, however, we also begin to realize the latter concepts are not actually 'smaller' or more 'simple' than the political ideas woven of invisible forces related to our living history and our moral concerns. All concepts embed these meaningful spiritual forces of 'negative consciousness', as Cleric put it. These inner temporal forces constantly structure our perceptions but cannot be likened to anything we find in the spatial perceptual spectrum.

Ashvin,

I thought I understood negative consciousness (same as hollowed-out perception, our perception is the form, or handle, of archetypal meaning pressing onto us), but in your conclusion, something is escaping me. I get that we all have different perceptions due to our history, etc., but I don't get that the invisible archetypal forces infuse all concepts?


Federica,

What would be an example of a concept which is not impressed through the archetypal forces?

Ashvin,
Certainly there's no such example. I was wondering about something else, namely in which sense you meant that the invisible forces that weave our particular political ideas also weave all concepts, hence also our experience of, for example, colors, which concepts are not simpler than the ones weaving our political ideas. But maybe I misread you, and with "these meaningful spiritual forces" you were not pointing to the ones that weave political ideology in particular.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I thought I understood negative consciousness (same as hollowed-out perception, our perception is the form, or handle, of archetypal meaning pressing onto us), but in your conclusion, something is escaping me. I get that we all have different perceptions due to our history, etc., but I don't get that the invisible archetypal forces infuse all concepts?


Federica,

What would be an example of a concept which is not impressed through the archetypal forces?

Ashvin,
Certainly there's no such example. I was wondering about something else, namely in which sense you meant that the invisible forces that weave our particular political ideas also weave all concepts, hence also our experience of, for example, colors, which concepts are not simpler than the ones weaving our political ideas. But maybe I misread you, and with "these meaningful spiritual forces" you were not pointing to the ones that weave political ideology in particular.

Oh ok, got it. That's a pretty complex spiritual scientific question.

At a very broad level, I would say the political ideologies are woven mostly of forces related to our soul-spirit activity (including those of Ahr and Lu). These would associate with forces of the 3rd heirarchy, the one just above us. We can notice how the manifestations of our soul-spirit are relatively fragmented, political ideas being a prime example, although there are certainly archetypal tendencies we can point to, such as the temperamental dispositions which inform our views. When we get to more bodily forces related to life on Earth, we come into the realm of the 2nd hierarchy. We mostly drink the same water, we breathe the same air, we see by way of the same light, we absorb the same warmth. The 2nd hierarchy embeds the 3rd within it (as the last hierarchy of humans embed the lower Earthly kingdoms), but we can still make these distinctions since they 'delegate' spiritual activity, so to speak. Then we come to the 1st hierarchy, which relates more the fundamental forces of nature which are common to the entire Cosmos. Of course we should imagine all of these forces nested within each other and imbued with deeply spiritual (moral) intents. As we know, the forces themselves are not like anything we find in the perceptual spectrum as their manifestations and label with our dim word-concepts. The manifestations are heavily distorted-decohered by our soul-spirit activity.

So colors would fall within the domain of Light forces which are associated with the Spirits of Form (1st rank of the 2nd hiearchy). It is through weaving colors that the forms of the world we perceive take shape. These are the spirits most directly responsible for the first half of our Earthly evolution. They are spoken of in Genesis as the 'Elohim' - "Then [the Elohim] said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And [the Elohim] saw the light, that it was good;" If we were to 'trace back' the archetyal forces which impress as colors from our concept of 'red', 'blue', etc. through inverted spiritual activity, then we would arrive at these lofty Divine forces. In contrast, those which impress our political ideas are much more proximate, in so far as they relate to our personal or collective soul-nature. But it's also not that simple, because the entire gradient of forces is also at work in some way, shape, or form in every percept-concept-idea. Even our political ideas are informed by the lofty ideal of universal Love, for ex., although it expresses itself in rather grotesque ways when it remains subconscious and therefore abstract, simply a mirror of our decohered concepts rather than the living experience of the Sun-force.

[Güney27]

Hello Güney,
Nice to see you back! It is always very useful to follow someone else's thoughts and review our own understanding in this way. Thank you for bringing your reflections and intuitions to the forum, making this exercise possible for us
Below, I have interspersed your reflections with mine. Like you, I am trying to develop a living understanding of reality, and what I have written is the image of my current perspective. I can't guarantee it's correct, I just hope the exchange can continue to spark thinking activity, and I look forward to the esoteric second part you are working at!

Our thinking, from our everyday consciousness, is thinking about things that appear separate from us. We have our thoughts and perceptions on the other side.
Our thoughts about the object are placeholders for the perception outside of our being. They are finished objects when they hit us in our perception, over which we have no influence in the process of their creation. Right, these finished objects of perception are called percepts by Steiner. We are in a world full of apparently finished objects, where we cannot understand the metamorphosis and creation. Yes, usually we only understand it as a sequence of spatial configurations of arbitrarily isolated objects.
As Rudolf Steiner said: "But we can only grasp what we know how it came about." That is why science tries to explain the origin and metamorphosis of things. We try, through our thinking, in the abstract Thoughts to create a model that explains to us the transformation and emergence of world content. The only thing that we can say with certainty that it doesn't seem finished to us and we are involved in the production is our thinking, our thoughts are finished products, but we know, e.g. when we think to answer a tricky question, that it was we who brought it into this finished form (we are not aware of the finer details, but we feel that we were active and formed the fixed thoughts in the end in order to be able to give an answer). Yes, we feel that thinking is our creation.


This is exactly where the important epistemological approach of goethe and steiner lies, instead of thinking about things in an abstract way, which can never completely quench our thirst for knowledge, we immerse ourselves in the world process, in which we renew the world content in our activity.
Yes, and it’s a big step summarized in these few words. We can, and probably should, explore the feeling of immersing ourselves in the world process, with reverence and openness, but the cognition of reality from within comes little by little, in a holistic progression that incorporates all of our various efforts, including the patience and acceptance that we are walking along a path and each of our steps must be willed and lived through. The content (in us) then no longer only has a subjective character, but because we absorb the world content in us and allow it to develop, it has an objective character. Yes, the interconnected nature of reality becomes more and more felt/understood/experienced, blurring the usual rigid comprehension of the world in terms of subject/object.
Thus, nature no longer seems alienated to us, but we penetrate it completely through our thinking.
Everything in nature is given to us, we only have to actively produce our ideas and concepts in order to perceive them and find them in the world. Maybe, instead of “actively produce” I would say “recognize”, and what we actively produce is the expansion of consciousness that incorporates them.


For example, if we do the seed meditation, we let it become a plant, in our own activity. So we may perceive the true forces that are at work in the plant. Thus we can perceive the ideal part of the plant, called the idea or the primeval plant. This is an intuitive knowledge which can perceive a purely spiritual content. I am not sure if this is an example of intuitive knowledge, but in any case, with this exercise, a first level of intellectual/perceptual segmentation of reality is bypassed, allowing us to witness the truth of biological life in its simplest manifestation (plant), the same truth that holds together a bunch of mineral elements from the periodic table, making it possible for them to form a meaningful and consistent unity, coming to life in what is known to us as our physical body.
It is important to understand the role of thinking in our cognition, for example without thinking we could never come to cognition. Because it is our thinking that gives form to what is given, so that we can study the world phenomenon systematically at all. One could say that the real world is perception permeated by thought. Mm... this is a delicate point, would you elaborate it more? I think it helps to remember that our thinking is an expanding and progressively coinciding activity that grows into the depths of the one Thinking, in a continuum that smoothly transpasses and blurs the borders of our individuality. So through aware connection with the spiritual activity of Thinking - that has ramifications in each of us - we progressively grow in the recognition of the totality of that activity, of the fully encompassing nature of that activity. Spiritual activity is also the same thing as reality. (As an experiment, we can try to conceive reality directly from that end, as spiritual in nature, instead of trying to come to this truth via our experience of perception). Of that Thinking activity, we are a tiny head, an individual instance of expression. And the more we realize that, the more we cover that internal ground that elevates us to the cognition of reality/truth. Through ourselves, we make true in ourselves, what is already true. We already are that, but we have to ‘do’ it, in order to know it. In other words, we become conscious of reality by the willed acts of bringing the outside inside, knowing it from within, until more and more of these two sides match with each other. Every little event of matching understanding cancels the outside-inside borders a little more. As we progress in this way, we find ourselves closer and closer to the radiating center, where there’s no more segmentation, no borders, but only coincidences, and every singular expression of truth shines in its complete meaningful connectedness, in full resolution.


When we look at the world content, the mind is already active, picking out details of our perception and then relating them to each other (e.g. in the case of a forest, the tree in relation to the whole forest).
Pure perception would be a disturbing image for us, full of shapes and colors with which we can do nothing.
It is thought that gives meaning to our perception. Yes, the pure perception we experience at birth, becomes progressively infused with meaning through thinking. It’s an initially unconscious process that we can become more and more aware of, like you were doing as you were writing down these thoughts.


In the philosophy of freedom, Steiner says that concepts and intuition belong together. It must be noted that the thought is only the outer form, which points us to an independent spiritual content, which we can call intuition and can understand through intuition.
The perception of spiritual content can be called intuitive thinking and is a method of cognition.
Thinking is often also referred to as an organ of perception, which is difficult to understand at first because our everyday thinking seems like a subjective (in us) description of the outer (objective) world. However, as we broaden our understanding of thinking, some things become clear. A special feature is that we have to be active ourselves in intuitive thinking and have to produce the content, but the content is not subjective, but carries its content itself. Yes, this is another way to say that we have to bring reality (or content) into awareness, and as we actively make it real for ourselves, we also know it as true. The difficulty is that our growth has to come simultaneously from two sides, the side of becoming conscious, and the side of taking action. There is no way around. We cannot figure out a step by step action plan, when we tick off one task at a time. We have to sustain the whole front of cognitive growth at once, maintaining both patience and vigilance as we progress and “broaden our understanding of thinking” as you say. Gratitude and reverence is what grants us patience, and thirst for knowledge is what keeps us open and vigilant at the same time.
Here you can also find the thread why Steiner often emphasizes that we are already in the spiritual world when we study humanities texts, for example. However, this does not mean that when we live spiritual scientific thoughts, like everyday thoughts, in the spiritual world, but only when we think intuitively.


A possible objection can be that if we ourselves produce all content, this is not objective but subjective.
As mentioned before, we must be clear that if we want to come to knowledge, instead of passively contemplating the given, we must make the given appear actively in our activity. However, the content must be objective, the content of which we do not add, but the content of which is self-determined. In our thinking we do not create the content of our thoughts ourselves. Yes, I think these words express the forming of the correct direction in you. Here it helps to remember that actively doing is one face, and recognizing-knowing is the other face of the same head. We have to trust that by putting our efforts simultaneously in both, and with the support of our feelings of reverence, gratitude and burning thirst, we will make sure progress.


This approach to generating knowledge is therefore a more lively and essence-oriented one than creating mental models. It is our activity that adds the ideal part to the given passive part of the world, however, as mentioned, the ideal part is not subjective, but has its own content, which can be perceived through intuitive thinking. Through such an oriented approach, epistemology can become ontology, because this approach brings the realization that the essence of nature consists of ideals.
Here I guess we must refrain from drawing intellectually satisfying conclusions, that would box and schematize the previously touched intuitions in too flattened ways. I am not sure we need to seal our progression in the airtight structure of abstract philosophical categories. I am saying that as a simple reminder, maybe there is no need, and I am over interpreting your words.
The approach of today's science should not be badmouthed, it also has its value. Nevertheless, it is one-sided and not well suited to answering deeper questions. It can be read and turned inside out through the light of living thinking. No expression is a dead end in itself. Everything encloses meaning, that will emerge once the right relations are set, so that meaning can shine through their intersections in a more and more continuous embrace.
Today's scientist is also active spiritually, on the world's appearances. He thinks about phenomena, schematizes them and creates models. All of this can only happen because the human being makes it possible. It is his thought activity that allows him to do so, but this is forgotten to be taken into account and goes unrecognized. However, this is also due to the nature of thinking, that while thinking, the thinker perceives the object of thought, forgetting the activity. Yes, because thinking is so very much coincident with us, we initially lack the inner maneuvering space to realize what we are doing (the activity) and we only see what we are manipulating by means of that doing (what we think about).



Finally, I would like to add easily 2 observable phenomena related to the discussed topic that are interesting.

What I have observed about myself is that when I have understood something after a long period of thinking, I have a feeling of "enlightenment" (not meant in the sense of a mystical realization experience). It's like that suddenly everything is clear, it was just understood, but I can still experience this not explain with words, but only describe. From this intuitive understanding, if you can call it that, I can then try to articulate a sentence. So I press the intuition, the mental content, which can quickly disappear, into a certain form, which I can fix and hold on to longer.
Yes, I understand what you mean When our efforts are rewarded and some intuitions come our way, and become perceivable, we can make an additional effort, recruiting our intellect to serve our intuitive understanding. We can transcribe the quickly disappearing intuition in words. We can press, as you say, or ex-press, the intuition in a certain form, that is more stable and can be shared in a forum, like you have done.

(When we read a book on a subject that is new to us, we see the writing, understand the words, but the content remains obscure to us. If we remain passive, we will never understand the meaning contained in the book . What we have to do in order to understand it is to become active and to think through the content ourselves and even then to create the meaning of the text. )



PS I am writing part 2, which should deal more with the esoteric aspects. I don't know when I'll finish it and post it.

Best regards

Hi Federica,
Thank you for your thoughts and additions



,,Mm... this is a delicate point, would you elaborate it more?,,


I simply mean that our thinking is the meaningful element in our perception. Perception without thinking is incoherent and meaningless. I didn't want to go into the details of how our thinking coagulates from our spiritual activity because I can't say much about it.
It's the fact that was easiest for me to understand.
Our thinking gives structure and meaning to our perception through concepts.
I would like to ask you what you would say when it is said that concepts are nothing more than summarizing words for a thing and that they have no content of their own but are man-made.



,,Yes, I think these words express the forming of the correct direction in you. Here it helps to remember that actively doing is one face, and recognizing-knowing is the other face of the same head. We have to trust that by putting our efforts simultaneously in both, and with the support of our feelings of reverence, gratitude and burning thirst, we will make sure progress.,,



Can you explain exactly what you mean here?


,,Here I guess we must refrain from drawing intellectually satisfying conclusions, that would box and schematize the previously touched intuitions in too flattened ways. I am not sure we need to seal our progression in the airtight structure of abstract philosophical categories. I am saying that as a simple reminder, maybe there is no need, and I am over interpreting your words.,



I also agree with you here.
It would be pointless to understand these things in an abstract way. We have to bring these unconscious processes into consciousness.


,,Yes, because thinking is so very much coincident with us, we initially lack the inner maneuvering space to realize what we are doing (the activity) and we only see what we are manipulating by means of that doing (what we think about).,,


Yes, you are right and you put it in a very understandable way.