On Symbolic Ordering, Theology, and Hierarchical Mystagogy

[Federica]

I hope it's clear at this point why the distinction is really in your thinking. Or put another way, there can't be a distinction in your feeling with relation to the 3 categories that isn't at the same a distinction in your thinking.

Ashvin,

I try not to get frustrated but it’s not easy. I never said I experience a distinction in feeling with relation to the 3 categories, but only with relation to feeling for material objects of nature versus material objects manufactured by man. As I said, Scaligero distinguishes 3 categories that I don’t recognize as experiential categories. I am going to spare you an additional attempt to lay this out. I don’t even recognize what you wrote somewhere above that feeling equals the domain of culture, or “the Son”. There is so much more than culture in feeling, and vice versa. But let me try a last thing, maybe we can go back to the original point that I couldn’t agree with, the quote from Scaligero. It’s when he says:

Since the goal of concentration is to experience the synthetic element of thinking, normally alienated in the analytical-rational process, the object must be one whose meaning does not exert any influence upon the operation, since this operation demands only the arid a-psychic willful determination of thought. The original force of thinking lies within this willful determination. We only need to discover it. This force is itself in movement within the activity aimed at discovering it.

For this purpose, he recommends a man-made object. Now, we agree: experiencing the “synthetic element of thinking”, the “original force of thinking”, means dropping the content to approach the spiritual activity itself, right? The Y axis of the hysteresis, correct? So this is the same exact exercise, or practice, that you and Cleric have been writing about for at least as long as I have been on this forum, with the recommendation to pick a supersensible thought-image. But Scaligero recommends a man-made object, that in truth, as a category, spans from the supersensible realm to the material, and everywhere mixed in between. However, MS recommends to use a pencil and not a supersensible object.
Can we please come back to these basics? Without going into terminology issues between meditation and concentration that would only blur the simple question I am asking here. Let’s not put a label on this exercise. It’s indeed the same exercise, with the same exact purpose, agreed? What is the best object for this purpose?

[AshvinP]

I hope it's clear at this point why the distinction is really in your thinking. Or put another way, there can't be a distinction in your feeling with relation to the 3 categories that isn't at the same a distinction in your thinking.

Ashvin,

I try not to get frustrated but it’s not easy. I never said I experience a distinction in feeling with relation to the 3 categories, but only with relation to feeling for material objects of nature versus material objects manufactured by man. As I said, Scaligero distinguishes 3 categories that I don’t recognize as experiential categories. I am going to spare you an additional attempt to lay this out. I don’t even recognize what you wrote somewhere above that feeling equals the domain of culture, or “the Son”. There is so much more than culture in feeling, and vice versa. But let me try a last thing, maybe we can go back to the original point that I couldn’t agree with, the quote from Scaligero. It’s when he says:

Since the goal of concentration is to experience the synthetic element of thinking, normally alienated in the analytical-rational process, the object must be one whose meaning does not exert any influence upon the operation, since this operation demands only the arid a-psychic willful determination of thought. The original force of thinking lies within this willful determination. We only need to discover it. This force is itself in movement within the activity aimed at discovering it.

For this purpose, he recommends a man-made object. Now, we agree: experiencing the “synthetic element of thinking”, the “original force of thinking”, means dropping the content to approach the spiritual activity itself, right? The Y axis of the hysteresis, correct? So this is the same exact exercise, or practice, that you and Cleric have been writing about for at least as long as I have been on this forum, with the recommendation to pick a supersensible thought-image. But Scaligero recommends a man-made object, that in truth, as a category, spans from the supersensible realm to the material, and everywhere mixed in between. However, MS recommends to use a pencil and not a supersensible object.
Can we please come back to these basics? Without going into terminology issues between meditation and concentration that would only blur the simple question I am asking here. Let’s not put a label on this exercise. It’s indeed the same exercise, with the same exact purpose, agreed? What is the best object for this purpose?

No, Federica, not correct. I have already explained this you, but you chose to reject my answer because it didn't fit with your conclusion that MS must be mixing up the exercises. What MS is describing is the exact same exercise that Steiner laid out as 'control of thinking', that you identified previously, and that I also quoted here. Steiner says to use a pencil or a needle, i.e. a simple man-made object, like Scaligero. He also says the immediate content of the object that one chooses is not important to focus on, like Scaligero said. He gives examples of questions that direct us towards the object's cultural history, like Scaligero again. It's the same exercise! So it's not the meditation exercise in which we choose a supersensible object-theme. I even showed you that Scaligero has an entirely separate chapter for discussing that sort of meditation and quoted it for you. So you were simply mistaken that Scaligero and Steiner weren't speaking of the same exercise.

Of course, the important thing is not what distinctions these people tell us to make, but what we can intuitively discern in our own experience. You already established there is an experiential distinction between supersensible objects and natural ones. Now you have further discerned an experiential distinction between natural ones and man-made ones. There you have it - 3 categories.

[Federica]

No, Federica, not correct. I have already explained this you, but you chose to reject my answer because it didn't fit with your conclusion that MS must be mixing up the exercises. What MS is describing is the exact same exercise that Steiner laid out as 'control of thinking', that you identified previously, and that I also quoted here. Steiner says to use a pencil or a needle, i.e. a simple man-made object, like Scaligero. He also says the immediate content of the object that one chooses is not important to focus on, like Scaligero said. He gives examples of questions that direct us towards the object's cultural history, like Scaligero again. It's the same exercise! So it's not the meditation exercise in which we choose a supersensible object-theme. I even showed you that Scaligero has an entirely separate chapter for discussing that sort of meditation and quoted it for you. So you were simply mistaken that Scaligero and Steiner weren't speaking of the same exercise.

Ashvin,

What you have already explained is that I should have more devotion, more reasoned faith in the truth of these categories of experience, and more respect for Massimo Scaligero (MS). But on the specific, text-based arguments, I don’t feel you have explained anything precisely, beyond saying “what you have written sounds to me like a description of outer symptoms”.


I have to repeat that I haven’t decided to arbitrarily question MS’ approach on grounds of random preferences and dislikes, as you are suggesting. If I find that the 2 exercises are NOT the same, it is based on RS' and MS' writings. True, at the beginning I thought MS’ concentration exercise referred to RS’s first subsidiary exercise, because of the mention of a man-made object - giving MS the benefit of the doubt by that guess - though taking a closer look, this doesn't stand up.

But before concluding so, I have objectively considered the possibility that MS speaks of the "basic/subsidiary exercise control of thought” and simply calls it “concentration” for some reason - as you state - DESPITE the counter-evidence provided by the name MG gave the exercice. By the way, if you insist in your position, it's on you to explain why MS came up with the very strange and confusing idea to mix up the exercise names. A very unhelpful and perplexing choice, for an Anthroposophist par excellence. The obvious answer is: he didn't mix them up. A TON more confirmation that, by concentration exercise, MS intends the equivalent of Steiner's ...concentration exercise, is found in the textual descriptions in RS and MS. In Steiner, there are 3 distinct practices:

An introductory/subsidiary/basic exercise of control of thought, where “the pupil says to himself: now I start from this thought, and through my own inner initiative I associate with it everything that is pertinent to it.” The purpose is to “rid himself of the will-o'-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a very short time during the day”. So it’s a willpower exercise. The goal is to experience control and differentiation of thought from the everyday thousand random directions of our uncontrolled trains of thought. That’s it. NO MENTION IS MADE about any imaginative efforts in this exercise, no higher cognition, no touching the essence of pure thinking, NOTHING of what RS and Cleric have ever referred to with the practice of “concentration”. In concentration - as RS puts it - “the attention is directed to certain definite ideas and concepts connected with the secrets of the universe”, not with pins and pencils. These are obviously two very different intents and exercises. Thirdly, RS says, in meditation we live in “complete submersion” in the ideas of concentration. Ok.


Now, we are forced to notice that, in MS, what he calls concentration is NOT a replica of RS’ control of thought, only with a mixed-up name, although at first superficial look it MAY seem so (and I made that mistake) because of the common reference to a man-made object. Instead, the PURPOSE itself of the exercise is explained in VERY different terms. To be as respectful and as accurate as I can, I have now read from the beginning MS’ book from which you have quoted: The Meditation Handbook. It is very evident from the way MS sets up the argument, introduces the exercise, and then describes it, that he DOES NOT speak of the exercise of concentration in reference with, and parallel to Steiner’s first subsidiary exercise. It is crystal clear to me that MS intends the exercise of concentration in much more encompassing terms, in evident alignment to what Steiner calls (guess what?) ….. CONCENTRATION! Not AT ALL similar to what Steiner calls subsidiary exercise 1 of 6.

MS says: “ALL HUMAN MISFORTUNE, with no exclusions, is caused by the inversion of the right hierarchy I-soul-body [inversion in which instinctual and desires and personal inclinations rule over the thinking I] to which inversion there is ONLY ONE CORRECTIVE: the discipline of concentration, the exercise of concentration that I am going to suggest in this book.”
HOW CAN these words be the premise of an exercise equivalent of Steiner’s subsidiary exercise 1 of 6, by which the student is introduced to the very first feel of getting some rudimentary experience of willed control of thoughts, in discursive, associative form (as per RS word!) ? Answer: THEY CAN’T.

What MS is laying out here is the ONE corrective to THE ONE AND ONLY misfortune of modern man: that his I is submitted to the vagaries of his bodily and soul desires. Ashvin, please see that this cannot be the exact same exercise as the “Anthroposophy for dummies” type of exercise that the subsidiary exercise 1 of 6 is. Instead, this is evidently the equivalent of what Steiners calls the exercise of concentration in HTKTHW, where one connects with ideas that reach to the secrets of the universe. Still not convinced? Then LOOK AT THE NAME by which both RS and MS call this exercise! They both call it….. CONCENTRATION! Could that be for the simple reason that... it's the same exercise?

Now, why would an Anthroposophist par excellence, like MS was, decide to strangely and arbitrarily swap the name of the one core exercise of Anthroposophy - as you insist he did - from “Subsidiary exercise 1/6 control of thought” to “Concentration”?? Just to confuse the reader? No, of course not. He spoke of concentration because he was obviously speaking of the same thing RS referred to as the exercise of concentration. This is confirmed over and over again in the following excerpts from the book, that slightly precede your quotes above:

In this exercise, the I can operate through thinking on the astral body, and through it, on the etheric-physical body

It’s the most challenging exercise

Our thinking can perceive itself only if, through the exercise of concentration, it temporarily isolates itself from our psyche, our instincts, our feelings, our sensory perceptions, our intellect, and from any content that is not its pure being.

Through the exercise of concentration, thinking breaks free from the sensory element, and from its resonance in the soul and in the etheric. It becomes the vector of the I into the human.

Radical healing is the capacity of the I to reestablish the flow of force through the right concentration, i.e. through the lawful use of the centripetal force.

These are (some of) the terms in which MS speaks of the exercise of concentration.
I hope it’s clear enough at this point, that what I am doing here is NOT leaking a vagarious antipathy towards MS in post form. Although it shouldn’t be necessary that I state anything in this regard, I have no problem saying that I bear no antipathy towards him. Regardless, the above should be addressed directly by whoever wants to maintain that MS here is speaking of Steiner’s subsidiary exercise 1/6, after deciding to arbitrarily swap the name of the exercise.

Now, if instead it’s agreed that MS' concentration exercise expresses his understanding of RS’ concentration, it remains a point to explain: why did he decide to alter Steiner’s guidelines for the concentration image, to pick a man-made object? To my limited sensitivity this does not sound right, but you could probably explain that, from the new perspective that it's concentration of pure thought as a striving opening to higher cognition that MS presents here...

[AshvinP]

No, Federica, not correct. I have already explained this you, but you chose to reject my answer because it didn't fit with your conclusion that MS must be mixing up the exercises. What MS is describing is the exact same exercise that Steiner laid out as 'control of thinking', that you identified previously, and that I also quoted here. Steiner says to use a pencil or a needle, i.e. a simple man-made object, like Scaligero. He also says the immediate content of the object that one chooses is not important to focus on, like Scaligero said. He gives examples of questions that direct us towards the object's cultural history, like Scaligero again. It's the same exercise! So it's not the meditation exercise in which we choose a supersensible object-theme. I even showed you that Scaligero has an entirely separate chapter for discussing that sort of meditation and quoted it for you. So you were simply mistaken that Scaligero and Steiner weren't speaking of the same exercise.

Ashvin,

What you have already explained is that I should have more devotion, more reasoned faith in the truth of these categories of experience, and more respect for Massimo Scaligero (MS). But on the specific, text-based arguments, I don’t feel you have explained anything precisely, beyond saying “what you have written sounds to me like a description of outer symptoms”.


I have to repeat that I haven’t decided to arbitrarily question MS’ approach on grounds of random preferences and dislikes, as you are suggesting. If I find that the 2 exercises are NOT the same, it is based on RS' and MS' writings. True, at the beginning I thought MS’ concentration exercise referred to RS’s first subsidiary exercise, because of the mention of a man-made object - giving MS the benefit of the doubt by that guess - though taking a closer look, this doesn't stand up.

But before concluding so, I have objectively considered the possibility that MS speaks of the "basic/subsidiary exercise control of thought” and simply calls it “concentration” for some reason - as you state - DESPITE the counter-evidence provided by the name MG gave the exercice. By the way, if you insist in your position, it's on you to explain why MS came up with the very strange and confusing idea to mix up the exercise names. A very unhelpful and perplexing choice, for an Anthroposophist par excellence. The obvious answer is: he didn't mix them up. A TON more confirmation that, by concentration exercise, MS intends the equivalent of Steiner's ...concentration exercise, is found in the textual descriptions in RS and MS. In Steiner, there are 3 distinct practices:

An introductory/subsidiary/basic exercise of control of thought, where “the pupil says to himself: now I start from this thought, and through my own inner initiative I associate with it everything that is pertinent to it.” The purpose is to “rid himself of the will-o'-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a very short time during the day”. So it’s a willpower exercise. The goal is to experience control and differentiation of thought from the everyday thousand random directions of our uncontrolled trains of thought. That’s it. NO MENTION IS MADE about any imaginative efforts in this exercise, no higher cognition, no touching the essence of pure thinking, NOTHING of what RS and Cleric have ever referred to with the practice of “concentration”. In concentration - as RS puts it - “the attention is directed to certain definite ideas and concepts connected with the secrets of the universe”, not with pins and pencils. These are obviously two very different intents and exercises. Thirdly, RS says, in meditation we live in “complete submersion” in the ideas of concentration. Ok.


Now, we are forced to notice that, in MS, what he calls concentration is NOT a replica of RS’ control of thought, only with a mixed-up name, although at first superficial look it MAY seem so (and I made that mistake) because of the common reference to a man-made object. Instead, the PURPOSE itself of the exercise is explained in VERY different terms. To be as respectful and as accurate as I can, I have now read from the beginning MS’ book from which you have quoted: The Meditation Handbook. It is very evident from the way MS sets up the argument, introduces the exercise, and then describes it, that he DOES NOT speak of the exercise of concentration in reference with, and parallel to Steiner’s first subsidiary exercise. It is crystal clear to me that MS intends the exercise of concentration in much more encompassing terms, in evident alignment to what Steiner calls (guess what?) ….. CONCENTRATION! Not AT ALL similar to what Steiner calls subsidiary exercise 1 of 6.

MS says: “ALL HUMAN MISFORTUNE, with no exclusions, is caused by the inversion of the right hierarchy I-soul-body [inversion in which instinctual and desires and personal inclinations rule over the thinking I] to which inversion there is ONLY ONE CORRECTIVE: the discipline of concentration, the exercise of concentration that I am going to suggest in this book.”
HOW CAN these words be the premise of an exercise equivalent of Steiner’s subsidiary exercise 1 of 6, by which the student is introduced to the very first feel of getting some rudimentary experience of willed control of thoughts, in discursive, associative form (as per RS word!) ? Answer: THEY CAN’T.

What MS is laying out here is the ONE corrective to THE ONE AND ONLY misfortune of modern man: that his I is submitted to the vagaries of his bodily and soul desires. Ashvin, please see that this cannot be the exact same exercise as the “Anthroposophy for dummies” type of exercise that the subsidiary exercise 1 of 6 is. Instead, this is evidently the equivalent of what Steiners calls the exercise of concentration in HTKTHW, where one connects with ideas that reach to the secrets of the universe. Still not convinced? Then LOOK AT THE NAME by which both RS and MS call this exercise! They both call it….. CONCENTRATION! Could that be for the simple reason that... it's the same exercise?

Now, why would an Anthroposophist par excellence, like MS was, decide to strangely and arbitrarily swap the name of the one core exercise of Anthroposophy - as you insist he did - from “Subsidiary exercise 1/6 control of thought” to “Concentration”?? Just to confuse the reader? No, of course not. He spoke of concentration because he was obviously speaking of the same thing RS referred to as the exercise of concentration. This is confirmed over and over again in the following excerpts from the book, that slightly precede your quotes above:

In this exercise, the I can operate through thinking on the astral body, and through it, on the etheric-physical body

It’s the most challenging exercise

Our thinking can perceive itself only if, through the exercise of concentration, it temporarily isolates itself from our psyche, our instincts, our feelings, our sensory perceptions, our intellect, and from any content that is not its pure being.

Through the exercise of concentration, thinking breaks free from the sensory element, and from its resonance in the soul and in the etheric. It becomes the vector of the I into the human.

Radical healing is the capacity of the I to reestablish the flow of force through the right concentration, i.e. through the lawful use of the centripetal force.

These are (some of) the terms in which MS speaks of the exercise of concentration.
I hope it’s clear enough at this point, that what I am doing here is NOT leaking a vagarious antipathy towards MS in post form. Although it shouldn’t be necessary that I state anything in this regard, I have no problem saying that I bear no antipathy towards him. Regardless, the above should be addressed directly by whoever wants to maintain that MS here is speaking of Steiner’s subsidiary exercise 1/6, after deciding to arbitrarily swap the name of the exercise.

Federica,

I still think you are incorrect. I don't think it's rooted in antipathy for MS, but in a desire to avoid actually confronting the inner relations that are being spoken of by MS. If you can convince yourself that MS 'altered the guidelines' of Steiner, then you can safely ignore what he is pointing to with that exercise. None of this is being done very consciously, of course. The moment we lose sight of and underestimate these tendencies within ourselves is the exact same moment we fall prey to them. That you have given anyone the 'benefit of the doubt' in this discussion is also highly questionable. At the very least, we must hold completely different standards of charitable reading in this respect. The most charitable reading would be to simply ignore the presumed discrepancies and try to reach the essence of what MS is speaking of, regardless. 

Let's also not forget the Spirit of spiritual science, which is not to let outer word-forms and labels guide our reasoning, but to penetrate the inner essence. If we always got hooked by the outer forms, then we would end up concluding Steiner is altering his own guidelines because there are many places where he uses different labels for the same idea or the same label for different ideas. With prolific writers, especially those writing about spiritual realities, that is always the case. Cleric has also used all sorts of new names on this forum for ideas and exercises spoken of by Steiner, such as "inverse spiritual activity" or "aliasing" and so forth. Is that a reason to start arguing about whether they match each other and ignore the essential content? 

When we do the 'subsidiary' object exercise, are we not concentrating our forces of thinking? That alone should be enough to indicate why MS may have decided to go with the name "concentration" under a charitable reading. It could also be because he knew that he needed to discuss more advanced exercises in other chapters and it would make the most sense to distinguish this exercise with the name concentration in contrast to meditation and the names he uses for other exercises or components of those exercises, like "soul ataraxia". MS is clearly someone who doesn't feel obliged to use the same terminology as other esoteric writers, and in reading his works, it feels like he makes a point of not using that terminology or using it in a highly customized way. 

If we look at the chapters of MS' book, he clearly starts with what he feels are the most basic, prepatory, and accessible exercises and moves to more advanced ones. Since the book is called "A Practual Manual of Meditation", though, it is reasonable to assume that all of the exercises could fall under the general heading of "Meditation" in one form or another. 

The formative power of the concept
Concentration
Meditation
Profound Concentration
The spiritual practice of feeling
...
Pure Perceiving

How could the (not profound) concentration exercise be 'arid and a-psychic', or isolating itself from our feelings, if it involved concentration on a Rose Cross or one of the many spiritually-charged mantras given by Steiner in his esoteric lessons? That also makes little sense here. Clearly, all such exercises fall more naturally into what MS writes about in the chapter called "Meditation". 

The fact that it involves healing the inversion of the right hierarchy of our various members is only to be expected if we understand spiritual science concretely. There is no activity that we engage in that is not also a simultaneous interaction of our "I" with all our bodily and soul members, and whose relations we aim to dynamically reconfigure and harmonize through modern initiatory exercises. Of course, as mentioned before, all of these exercises overlap each other and feed their fruits back into each other, those fruits being the inner perfection of our organically interconnected body-soul-spirit members. What we gain through the control of thinking is absolutely essential to all higher development along the esoteric path, as are the other 5 'subsidiary' exercises. In addition to MS and Kuhlewinde who both speak highly of this control of thinking exercise and elaborate on its inner potential, here is Tomberg.

The first exercise is the control of thoughts. Here a person must develop the utmost strength of thinking in connection with an object that is uninteresting. This involves building up all the thoughts connected with this indifferent object—without the object in question itself summoning forth this power. Practicing this leads to the development of a “muscular strength” of thinking. This strength, this power, manifests itself in that gradually one not only feels one has one’s thoughts under control—so that one can place and order them at will—but one also feels a courage-like inner power streaming into oneself. A kind of courage for cognition is born.
...
Such are the six exercises. We can ask ourselves why these six exercises are fundamental and why they concern—and are indispensable to—beginners as well as advanced pupils. In order to answer this question, we will now consider the path a pupil must follow, above all from the point of view not of the stages of the path, but rather of the trials one meets on it. 

If one has been inwardly active at the stage of preparation and purification for a sufficient length of time, sooner or later there approaches the trial of the encountering the “Guardian of the Threshold,” which is also called the trial by fire. Consisting of shame, this fire is an inward expression of the awakening conscience. A person on the path must go through this fire. It is a matter of recognizing one’s own lower nature standing before oneself in undisguised form. This is the “double” that one has generated and expelled. To look in this way upon one’s own human double, undisguised, is a trial of courage. To pass through it, one must find the strength not to despair over oneself. One must find the courage not to despair over one’s karma. Inwardly one must find the courage to say to oneself: “You are this. This is how you are! Nevertheless, you will always strive to do all that you can to purify your lower nature, to transform it into good. Should it require thousands of years, you will do it—and be certain that you will be able to achieve it.” The task is immense. One can shrink back at the enormity of it. It may seem impossible that one could ever accomplish this task with human powers. Nevertheless, one must say to oneself, “I will do it, and I want to do it. I will bring it to completion.” 

Such strength does not arise from the view of what has stood there, confronting oneself. This strength can only be drawn from the power of the human I itself. No inspiration can be of help, nor can one derive help from thoughts and memories. One must find one’s own power of courage. This power has nothing to do with wishes and feelings, but is based solely upon the strength of one’s I. The I is strong because it is. No help is to be counted upon. The I must prove itself to be courageous. And this trial by fire is actually the test of courage. In the process, one does not merely go through a trial; one also goes through an experience—the experience of the birth of a high degree of courage, a courage of which one previously did not know. This courage is the power that gives rise to imagination. It is needed in order to “paint in spiritual space.” That is the reason one must develop courage for imaginative consciousness. The content of the trial—facing one’s own inner nature—makes it possible to distinguish imagination from illusion. One is then aware of the sources of illusions, and can exclude them.

...Thus we have a picture of the six trials, the six tests. Three lead into the spirit world and to the temple. Three involve the representation of the world of spirit in the physical world. If we return to the question which we raised earlier, the question of why the six exercises have such a fundamental significance for all pupils of the spirit, the answer is that each of the six exercises develops the particular inner strength that is needed later to successfully undergo the corresponding trial. The entire path of initiation is contained in these six exercises. Thus, the power that flows into one’s organization—developed through the control of thoughts—is the power that blossoms forth in the test of courage, in the trial by fire.
 
Tomberg, Valentin. Inner Development: 7 lectures, Rotterdam, August 15-22, 1938 . steinerbooks. Kindle Edition. 

Now, if instead it’s agreed that MS' concentration exercise expresses his understanding of RS’ concentration, it remains a point to explain: why did he decide to alter Steiner’s guidelines for the concentration image, to pick a man-made object? To my limited sensitivity this does not sound right, but you could probably explain that, from the new perspective that it's concentration of pure thought as a striving opening to higher cognition that MS presents here...

It's not agreed, but I hope we can actually, at some point, move back to the original departure from which Kuhlewinde and MS were referenced, and we subsequently went down this MS-Steiner matching trail (and forgot about Kuhlewinde), which was how our conceptual activity overestimates itself in various experimental domains as it intuitively experiences a differentiated structure of transparency. When our conceptual activity begins to observe itself through the evolution of the consciousness soul, as it does in modern philosophy (including materialism, unconsciously), mathematics, and many sciences rooted in mathematics or psychology, then it especially runs the risk of feeling like it has reached the grounds of reality because its own activity is the most transparent to itself. That is a major factor lying underneath the impulse towards systematic conceptualization in the modern age, across many fields of inquiry including esotericism, in contrast to using conceptual activity as an instrument for symbolic ordering.

[Federica]

Well, Ashvin, I guess there is not much more I can usefully add at this point. When you say that my thoughts are grounded in an unconscious motivation to escape from the experience of Scaligero’s exercises, it’s actually an unbeatable argument! It could be true, of course; Regardless, for the time being it perfectly delegitimizes any further comments I could make in this discussion. Sure we can go back to this new author, Kühlewind, whenever the sense of MS’ exercises will have appeared to me in more clear terms. Anyhow, it seems like the last viable thing I can say for now, which is sincere by the way, is that I hope I will somehow be allowed to make some of the invisible visible on my path!

[AshvinP]

Well, Ashvin, I guess there is not much more I can usefully add at this point. When you say that my thoughts are grounded in an unconscious motivation to escape from the experience of Scaligero’s exercises, it’s actually an unbeatable argument! It could be true, of course; Regardless, for the time being it perfectly delegitimizes any further comments I could make in this discussion. Sure we can go back to this new author, Kühlewind, whenever the sense of MS’ exercises will have appeared to me in more clear terms. Anyhow, it seems like the last viable thing I can say for now, which is sincere by the way, is that I hope I will somehow be allowed to make some of the invisible visible on my path!

Federica,

Most of our thoughts are grounded in unconscious motivations that we are hardly aware of. That doesn't make them per se illegitimate, or wrong, or not worth entertaining. Practically all the stories we tell ourselves about how we ended up thinking along certain lines and adopting certain worldviews is Maya - the real reasons reside in past incarnations and complex webs of karmic entanglement that we are scarcely aware of. That doesn't mean we can't work with the thinking and thoughts that we have, of course, only that we should pay more and more attention to how our thinking unfolds. And it means we should put more effort into inner investigation and loosening the intellectual mask, because it is only in supersensible thinking that we are beginning to operate beyond the domain of our karmic past.

None of that has any bearing on why I think Scaligero's concentration exercise is essentially the same as Steiner's control of thinking exercise. In addition to the reasons I mentioned already, a part of it is my respect for Scaligero as an Anthroposophical thinker. Like you, I cannot think of any plausible reason why he would say the 'wisdom' of Steiner's concentration/meditation can only be realized through man-made objects. I doubt there is any justification for that. So either Scaligero had no idea what he was talking about when publishing a book on meditation or... he did and there is a much simpler resolution that involves our lack of depth and insight. You made some good points about why MS was not speaking of the control of thinking exercise, but ultimately those don't offset all the other factors that suggest he was.

On the question of the distinctions between thinking directed towards different domains of experience, which is a very important question, the following from Steiner might also be helpful to consider. It's interesting how, through culture, the mathematical element meets the natural element. We don't really find pure forms of squares, triangles, and such anywhere but in man-made objects. Through culture, the supersensible idealized element meets the natural element and the latter can be increasingly spiritualized while the former can be increasingly concretized and enlivened.

It certainly cannot be denied that light, tones, colors, and sensations of taste are related to us differently from that which we could represent as subject to mathematical-mechanical laws. For it really is a remarkable fact, a fact worthy of our consideration: you know that honey tastes sweet, but to a man with jaundice it tastes bitter — so we can say that we stand in a curious relationship to the qualities within this realm — while on the other hand we could hardly maintain that any normal man would see a triangle as a triangle, but a man with jaundice would see it as a square! Certain differentiations thus do exist, and one must be cognizant of them... 

For that, you see, is one of the basic differences between the so-called subjective qualities of tone, color, warmth, as well as the different qualities of touch, and that which confronts us in the mechanical-mathematical view of the world. That is the basic difference: tone and color leave us outside of ourselves; we must first take them in; we must first perceive them. As human beings we stand outside tone, color, warmth, etc. This is not entirely the case as regards warmth — I shall discuss that tomorrow — but to a certain extent this is true even of warmth. These qualities leave us initially outside ourselves, and we must perceive them. In formal, spatial, and temporal relationships and regarding weight this is not the case. We perceive objects in space but stand ourselves within the same space and the same lawfulness as the objects external to us. We stand within time just as do the external objects. Our physical existence begins and ends at a definite point in time. We stand within space and time in such a way that these things permeate us without our first perceiving them. The other things we must first perceive. Regarding weight, well, ladies and gentlemen, you will readily admit that this has little to do with perception, which is somewhat open to arbitrariness: otherwise many people who attain an undesired corpulence would be able to avoid this by perception alone, merely by having the faculty of perception. No, ladies and gentlemen, regarding weight we are bound up with the world entirely objectively, and the organization by means of which we stand within color, tone, warmth, etc. is powerless against that objectivity.

...Now one stands before this phenomenon of mathematics as such. We comprehend mathematical truths. We proceed from mathematical phenomena to certain axioms. We weave the fabric of mathematics out of these axioms and then stand before an architectonic whole apprehended by the mind's eye [im inneren Anschauen]. If we are able by means of energetic thinking to differentiate sharply this inner apprehension from anything that can be experienced outwardly, we must see in this fabric of mathematics something that arises through an activity of soul entirely different from that which underlies our experience of the outer objects of sensation. Whether or not we arrive at a satisfactory comprehension of the world depends to a tremendous extent on our being able to make this clear distinction out of inner experience. 

[Federica]

Well, Ashvin, I guess there is not much more I can usefully add at this point. When you say that my thoughts are grounded in an unconscious motivation to escape from the experience of Scaligero’s exercises, it’s actually an unbeatable argument! It could be true, of course; Regardless, for the time being it perfectly delegitimizes any further comments I could make in this discussion. Sure we can go back to this new author, Kühlewind, whenever the sense of MS’ exercises will have appeared to me in more clear terms. Anyhow, it seems like the last viable thing I can say for now, which is sincere by the way, is that I hope I will somehow be allowed to make some of the invisible visible on my path!

Federica,

Most of our thoughts are grounded in unconscious motivations that we are hardly aware of. That doesn't make them per se illegitimate, or wrong, or not worth entertaining. Practically all the stories we tell ourselves about how we ended up thinking along certain lines and adopting certain worldviews is Maya - the real reasons reside in past incarnations and complex webs of karmic entanglement that we are scarcely aware of. That doesn't mean we can't work with the thinking and thoughts that we have, of course, only that we should pay more and more attention to how our thinking unfolds. And it means we should put more effort into inner investigation and loosening the intellectual mask, because it is only in supersensible thinking that we are beginning to operate beyond the domain of our karmic past.

Ashvin,

Yes. That was not self bashing. I was saying that the discussion becomes difficult when unconscious motives are said to be the real reason for the points one makes. Surely it leaves open all the possibilities of self inquiry and exercise. But it wouldn't be fruitful that I add any further thoughts to this particular question of Scaligero's concentration. So instead, I have done something else.
I have been following for a while the blog of a pupil of Scaligero, Piero Cammerinesi, who used to meet him regularly in the 1970s, towards the end of MS's life. Following our discussion, I have opened the blog in search of some inspiration and noticed an audio recording of the last lecture given by Scaligero two days before his death in 1980, with time stamps that reference the exercise of concentration, so I have listened. After a first section on the rise of tuberculosis, cancer and mental illnesses, MS starts speaking of concentration. I have transcribed everything he says from that moment onwards. Not that it clarifies our present question very much, but I thought it could be of interest anyway. He never pronounces the name of Steiner, but it's obvious that he refers to Steiner a few times during the lecture, reading some short excerpts. He simply calls him "Doctor" as an expression of respect.



Rome - January 23, 1980

(...)
Naturally, we could add that what really can help a young person who has a predisposition for tuberculosis are the exercise of concentration, and the exercise of the will, because these two exercises are the ones that grant feeling the possibility to finally express itself according to true soul balance, without dreadfully oscillating between attraction and repulsion. Thus the sick person really needs an edifying life of feeling. This is obtained through the energetic exercising of thinking, and the energetic exercising of the will. At this point we can ask the question [reading] “What is the goal of the exercise of concentration? What is necessary to do when the force of concentration gets lost in idle dream images?” Yes, this really is a current problem. Why is it so?

Because - for the same reason that tuberculosis is on the rise, for the same reason that cancer is soaring - the work of concentration is difficult, because the atmosphere is weighed down, filled with beings who hamper the activity of concentration. Thus, if previously a certain amount of strength was necessary, today a double amount is required. But there is no other remedy. And we shouldn't think that we have become weaker. Rather, we should notice that all around there are entities that obstruct this activity, and have acquired a remarkable might. Here, when it says “the force of concentration gets lost in idle dream images” we see those beings coming forth, as if they were saying “Don’t do it, distract yourself”. We can see these beings. And here the art is to realize that the spiritual world requires more strength from us. There is no other response. We have this strength, because we have a thinking that has a source that we can call inexhaustible, unlimited, in which the Logos flows. There’s everything there. Thus we can really ask thinking for this powerful gift. So it’s a matter of more rigor, more determination, and more “grit” - for those of you who are not from Rome, this word means more tenacity. We need some more tenacity. Naturally, this is until thinking becomes free. Afterwards, tenacity needs to be suspended to set the spiritual world free.

Let’s see… [reading] “The asceticism of the mystics, grounded in feeling, is not of our times anymore. The asceticism of spiritual science is grounded in thinking. It can be presupposed a future direct asceticism of the will, once the consciousness soul will be a realized reality.” Absolutely. Simply, we have to notice that the way of spiritual science calls forth all three forces. It starts from thinking, because thinking is the first conscious activity. The immediacy of consciousness appears in thinking. It’s inevitable that one moves from thinking. Thinking is the absolute a priori, because it’s the only activity that immediately connects us to the spiritual world, directly. It’s the lowest activity of consciousness and at the same time it’s the freest activity, the most retraceable, from Maya in which it manifests, back to its essence. We can let it appear as it does, with Maya. When we have the strength to make it appear, we find its essence.

However, when we do this work, its appearance escapes us, which is why we need to do the exercise of concentration. Actually when we do the thinking exercises, we essentially set the will in motion. This links back to what we have said a short while ago, that we appeal to thinking and to will, with the exercises of spiritual science. And we have also mentioned, speaking of tuberculosis, that thinking and will give us real strength of feeling, because feeling is the depth relationship between the will and thinking. Therefore, we need to practice in continuous harmony between thinking and will, so that feeling - the secret feeling, the most hidden feeling - can reawaken. Because in feeling lives Lucifer, and Lucifer comes from the side of the spirit, while Ahriman comes from the side of terrestriality, of corporeality. Thus we have a more direct grasp towards the sphere of Ahriman, through the senses, the bodily sensation, etcetera, while feeling is fluid, elusive, subtle. It dominates thinking, and thinking doesn’t realize it. In order to get a handle on feeling we should not head in the direction of feeling, but we should operate through the accord between thinking and will. Then, feeling feels the joy of its rhythmic function, because it’s feeling that harmonizes, feeling is the one that is called to accord the two forces. Feeling is the bearer of the music of the universe. It’s feeling that feels the Logos.

Feeling’s only task is to feel the divine. But it doesn’t feel it. It’s forced to not feel it, although its function is to feel the divine. And the fact that this function is taken away from it impoverishes feeling, and makes man little, and petty. It makes him petty in his feelings that become trivial, equivocal, transient, and subjective expressions. This is the unhappiness of feeling, and the reason why we start from thinking, not from feeling. Technically, it would be wrong to start from feeling. Technically, we would never reach the inner life of the soul, if we didn’t start from thinking, that is, from that within which the I really has a hold on our consciousness. But we have to harmonize thinking and will. Every exercise of concentration is an exercise of will. And when we say that Michael is the prince of cosmic intelligence, the regulator of thinking, we have to say: he is the regulator of the will. He acts within the will, in the will that thinks. For Michael, there exists no will without thinking, as much as there is no thinking without will. Thinking without will is dialectical thinking, it’s ideology, at the service of the enemy of the spirit. This is the tragic situation of thinking in our times, that it's truly devoid of the current of will. Therefore, the will through which it operates is not the will of man. It’s the will of the opposer of man. This is why all ideologies are anti-human. They really impede the evolution of man.

All occultisms, all their variations that are becoming plethora nowadays, bring those brilliant methods of yoga, etcetera, but none of them is aware of this tragic behind the scenes of the human condition. Hence they work against man’s liberation, against the possibility for man to clearly see what is happening. It is of paramount importance that feeling… When we say that feeling has to be redeemed, we refer to the Virgin-Sophia, to Isis-Sophia, of which our Doctor [Steiner] says that without her we cannot find Christ. It says [reading]: "We have the I. The I is already there. What we don’t have, what we have lost, is Isis-Sophia." This is when our feeling is imprisoned, compressed. It’s that feeling which makes us sick with tuberculosis. It’s feeling asphyxiated, feeling that young people would like to feel, but they don’t feel it anymore. There are some young people who brighten up when they are told something that kindles their feeling. So we see how brigandish is the activity of the schools, that leads them to abstract ideologies, to everything that is truly against that which illuminates history and nature, as power of inner life that only feeling can grasp. This is the responsibility that we have for those who approach us, for the young people. This is the most important responsibility, because young people are in search of that, but then they end up in some kind of maharishi... mahesvaari.. or brakmachari… [dark humour] etcetera, and they waste their time.

[Seemingly checking some written pages] We can say that we are following the thread…..
We can say that, by not experiencing living thinking, man cuts himself off from a relationship with the Logos, and for this reason he has to die. This death is a true one, because there are beings who don’t die any longer. It seems like they do, but they do not die, because they are alive in the immediacy of life. There are beings who, through death, reawaken to a new force. But when they have not found the connection with Logos they have to die. They have to go through the experience of death, and that experience educates them, because it’s a somber event, a moment when man knows the power of the abyss, that can be known through living thinking only during life on Earth, so that he can win over death while still alive. There is this saying of the Rosicrucians: “Who does not collapse before dying, will know the fall down after death” It goes more or less so, true? It means that, if one has not faced death before death, one will have to face it afterwards, and really feel the tragic moment of death. If you now read again the book “Initiation” by our Doctor, you will see, it’s entirely a track following which one can overcome death during life.

Then we can move up to more demanding questions. One is about the Guardian of the threshold. We can say that the Guardian of the threshold is a being who appears to us as a symbol of what we have left to overcome. But why does this happen? Because we deserve to know it. There are beings who would be terrified to see what they are. They delude themselves that they are good, helpful, generous, altruistic, fraternalistic, radical, etcetera, but they aren’t. The Guardian of the threshold is the moment on the spiritual path when man finally deserves to know what he has left to transform, to overcome. Naturally, this requires much courage of vision. This courage gives form to forces that, facing the vision of the Guardian, become positive forces. But relapses can happen, a fall back into the old nature can happen, in which case the Guardian becomes a very unpleasant being. It’s terrible, because he’s constantly there, admonishing us: “You have fallen back. That which you had expelled is reawakening in you”. This is a fight of crucial importance, where man prepares for initiation, prepares for a birth in accord with the spirit. It’s a level at which one is ready to encounter Christ.

I believe it is appropriate to add the following. It is expected in our present times an experience of the Guardian of the threshold for the whole of humanity. Not in a specific, precise sense, as described in “Occult Science”, but as an experience that brings every being on the brink of desperation, due to the fact that man has omitted to complete a task. This operation has to happen now, it should have already happened. That is, the transition from a rational-affective soul, to the consciousness soul. By various signs, it’s apparent that it hasn’t happened. It’s not happening. Therefore it’s inevitable that every being has a tragic experience, an experience in which it’s felt that there are no more human strengths coming to help. In this way, through pain, through darkness, there could be a blossoming of the forces that the spiritual world needs in order to help humanity. The spiritual world helps man, but it needs man to be free. It needs man to offer a sacrifice through an inner free act.

This unconscious experience of the Guardian, lived through by the whole of humanity transforms into something that operates on the path of freedom, by the activity of those who are aware of the behind the scenes we have discussed. In this way, the free activity of the real experimenters of the spirit allows the spiritual beings to take hold of this human spiritual gist and transform it in power of destiny, in order to prevent man from falling, from collapsing, in order to save our civilization, so that it can move forward without destructions and cataclysms. You can see how the course of history presents us with a panorama where there’s no respite. And the situation is becoming penned, encircled from all directions. And so where are the redeeming forces coming from, if not from a condition of inner tension through which man is led to intuit an inner activity that he owes the spiritual world? This is already visible in certain figures.

Now let's conclude with this thought, that I have saved for last. This could be the true comment on our discussion. It could help us understand the mistake in which we have sunk. [Reading] “We can call reality only that aspect of the world content, obtained through knowledge, in which are reunited two apparently separated elements, thinking and perception.” I have kept this question for last, because it’s a help. Presently, through the incontrovertible scientific thought, we only live in the world of perception. Thinking is excluded. You may say, how is it excluded? We have thought, we have the philosophy of science, we have epistemology…” Yes, but all this is at the service of the percept. The counterpart in terms of thinking is lacking, from all progress of physics, for instance. It’s a terrifying misunderstanding, by which we are not getting out of the OT, of the old moralism. We are unaware of the new forces of the consciousness soul.

As we have often discussed, the conquest of the incontrovertible truth of physics - which is true! - where the concept coincides with the object, really is the element that pleases everyone. However, it’s overlooked that this is simply the first moment of cognition. We have learned how there is a first moment in cognition, conditioned by the sensory world. This first moment of cognition is true. Inquired by idealists, it's considered a content of our consciousness, thus all subjective; inquired by materialists it’s considered a reflection of the external world, where thinking is nothing other than a sort of photograph of what happens, so we are done, reality is what it is, and we copy it, interpret it, and apply it - it's frightening!
But that is only the first moment of cognition, that idealism has shown to depend on subjective means of knowledge, to be integrated from the side of sense-free thinking. Because it’s thinking that has given us mathematical intuitions! What happens when this understanding is absent? It happens that we are stuck in a dualistic condition, in which the truth of science becomes dogmatic, omnipotent, dominant. We are all puppets, at the mercy of it, from technology, to income declaration. It’s a potent mechanism from which we can’t extract ourselves. True, there is a political mechanism of opposition, that you know very well. Those who are in power know very well how to go beyond the bankrupt economy.

But if Ahtens cries, Sparta doesn’t laugh. Everyone, in a way or another, suffers from the same sinking into the rational soul. We know that the rational soul is the expression of Ahriman, while the affective soul is the expression of Lucifer. So the rational-affective soul expresses itself in this science. When our Doctor tackles this question, he doesn’t argue that it’s a mistake. Rather, we need to discover up to which point it’s true, and where we have stopped. Because there is an initial moment of cognition, reached by science, that represents the relationship of thinking with the object. But nothing is known with regards to thinking. Nothing is known of the forces that really give origin to the contents of science. Science without thinking intuition would be nothing. Still, science denies it. If we look at technology and science, we can see that it’s all science of percept. The other part, the inner part, that has provided all the content - that is, thinking - is absolutely not there.

We can say that this is the consequence of the powerlessness of philosophy. Philosophy in the West has reached its culmination through idealism. In Germany, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. But also here, through Vico, Gioberti, Spaventa, Rosmini, down to Croce and Gentile. But none of these philosophers has intuited the force of knowledge. None of these has received the idea that the forces of knowledge that allow science to exist are experimentable. This powerlessness of philosophy has permitted what in “Truth and science” is called the advent of anti-philosophy. Philosophy has lacked the courage to recognize this trajectory. But when the forces of knowledge have not been cultivated, such courage is impossible. And we are paying the price of this situation. Because it’s this collapse of philosophy, the collapse of the minimally positive element brought by idealism, that has opened the way for the ideologies of matter to take over humanity. Because everyone believes in this ideology. It’s at this level that we are stuck. If we can’t find the level of sense-free thinking, we will not have a true economy. We will not have true psychology. We will not have true science.

Thus, the Guardian of the threshold is knocking at the door. What’s been evoked by our friend Leopoldo by saying “Then it’s death before death” is important. We are dead already, because we know nothing of what is happening, any longer. We don’t know the behind the scenes, although we have the fortune to have at our disposal all that is needed. You see - you are told this by someone who knows all the currents, someone who knows them in depth. There isn’t a current that I have not experimented with. I know them all, with all their deceits and pitfalls. I can tell you that the spiritual science of our Doctor is the gold of the Sun descended on the Earth. It’s the big venture of man, the path of liberation of man, because in it there is everything. And we have to be worthy of the realization of this impulse. It is a duty to others, a duty to our neighbors. Enlivened by love for our neighbor, we realize this life only if we are able to bring this principle in us, as instruments - though not worthy instruments - of the Logos.

[Federica]

On the question of the distinctions between thinking directed towards different domains of experience, which is a very important question, the following from Steiner might also be helpful to consider. It's interesting how, through culture, the mathematical element meets the natural element. We don't really find pure forms of squares, triangles, and such anywhere but in man-made objects. Through culture, the supersensible idealized element meets the natural element and the latter can be increasingly spiritualized while the former can be increasingly concretized and enlivened.

It certainly cannot be denied that light, tones, colors, and sensations of taste are related to us differently from that which we could represent as subject to mathematical-mechanical laws. For it really is a remarkable fact, a fact worthy of our consideration: you know that honey tastes sweet, but to a man with jaundice it tastes bitter — so we can say that we stand in a curious relationship to the qualities within this realm — while on the other hand we could hardly maintain that any normal man would see a triangle as a triangle, but a man with jaundice would see it as a square! Certain differentiations thus do exist, and one must be cognizant of them... 

For that, you see, is one of the basic differences between the so-called subjective qualities of tone, color, warmth, as well as the different qualities of touch, and that which confronts us in the mechanical-mathematical view of the world. That is the basic difference: tone and color leave us outside of ourselves; we must first take them in; we must first perceive them. As human beings we stand outside tone, color, warmth, etc. This is not entirely the case as regards warmth — I shall discuss that tomorrow — but to a certain extent this is true even of warmth. These qualities leave us initially outside ourselves, and we must perceive them. In formal, spatial, and temporal relationships and regarding weight this is not the case. We perceive objects in space but stand ourselves within the same space and the same lawfulness as the objects external to us. We stand within time just as do the external objects. Our physical existence begins and ends at a definite point in time. We stand within space and time in such a way that these things permeate us without our first perceiving them. The other things we must first perceive. Regarding weight, well, ladies and gentlemen, you will readily admit that this has little to do with perception, which is somewhat open to arbitrariness: otherwise many people who attain an undesired corpulence would be able to avoid this by perception alone, merely by having the faculty of perception. No, ladies and gentlemen, regarding weight we are bound up with the world entirely objectively, and the organization by means of which we stand within color, tone, warmth, etc. is powerless against that objectivity.

...Now one stands before this phenomenon of mathematics as such. We comprehend mathematical truths. We proceed from mathematical phenomena to certain axioms. We weave the fabric of mathematics out of these axioms and then stand before an architectonic whole apprehended by the mind's eye [im inneren Anschauen]. If we are able by means of energetic thinking to differentiate sharply this inner apprehension from anything that can be experienced outwardly, we must see in this fabric of mathematics something that arises through an activity of soul entirely different from that which underlies our experience of the outer objects of sensation. Whether or not we arrive at a satisfactory comprehension of the world depends to a tremendous extent on our being able to make this clear distinction out of inner experience. 

Ashvin,

I don't really understand the distinction made between weight, that we don't have to perceive, and other qualities of material objects. I thought that weight was perceived through the sense of touch, like colors are perceived through sight. Could you please give another example of weight, and why it doesn't leave us outside of ourselves?

[AshvinP]

Well, Ashvin, I guess there is not much more I can usefully add at this point. When you say that my thoughts are grounded in an unconscious motivation to escape from the experience of Scaligero’s exercises, it’s actually an unbeatable argument! It could be true, of course; Regardless, for the time being it perfectly delegitimizes any further comments I could make in this discussion. Sure we can go back to this new author, Kühlewind, whenever the sense of MS’ exercises will have appeared to me in more clear terms. Anyhow, it seems like the last viable thing I can say for now, which is sincere by the way, is that I hope I will somehow be allowed to make some of the invisible visible on my path!

Federica,

Most of our thoughts are grounded in unconscious motivations that we are hardly aware of. That doesn't make them per se illegitimate, or wrong, or not worth entertaining. Practically all the stories we tell ourselves about how we ended up thinking along certain lines and adopting certain worldviews is Maya - the real reasons reside in past incarnations and complex webs of karmic entanglement that we are scarcely aware of. That doesn't mean we can't work with the thinking and thoughts that we have, of course, only that we should pay more and more attention to how our thinking unfolds. And it means we should put more effort into inner investigation and loosening the intellectual mask, because it is only in supersensible thinking that we are beginning to operate beyond the domain of our karmic past.

Ashvin,

Yes. That was not self bashing. I was saying that the discussion becomes difficult when unconscious motives are said to be the real reason for the points one makes. Surely it leaves open all the possibilities of self inquiry and exercise. But it wouldn't be fruitful that I add any further thoughts to this particular question of Scaligero's concentration. So instead, I have done something else.
I have been following for a while the blog of a pupil of Scaligero, Piero Cammerinesi, who used to meet him regularly in the 1970s, towards the end of MS's life. Following our discussion, I have opened the blog in search of some inspiration and noticed an audio recording of the last lecture given by Scaligero two days before his death in 1980, with time stamps that reference the exercise of concentration, so I have listened. After a first section on the rise of tuberculosis, cancer and mental illnesses, MS starts speaking of concentration. I have transcribed everything he says from that moment onwards. Not that it clarifies our present question very much, but I thought it could be of interest anyway. He never pronounces the name of Steiner, but it's obvious that he refers to Steiner a few times during the lecture, reading some short excerpts. He simply calls him "Doctor" as an expression of respect.



Rome - January 23, 1980

(...)
Naturally, we could add that what really can help a young person who has a predisposition for tuberculosis are the exercise of concentration, and the exercise of the will, because these two exercises are the ones that grant feeling the possibility to finally express itself according to true soul balance, without dreadfully oscillating between attraction and repulsion. Thus the sick person really needs an edifying life of feeling. This is obtained through the energetic exercising of thinking, and the energetic exercising of the will. At this point we can ask the question [reading] “What is the goal of the exercise of concentration? What is necessary to do when the force of concentration gets lost in idle dream images?” Yes, this really is a current problem. Why is it so?

Because - for the same reason that tuberculosis is on the rise, for the same reason that cancer is soaring - the work of concentration is difficult, because the atmosphere is weighed down, filled with beings who hamper the activity of concentration. Thus, if previously a certain amount of strength was necessary, today a double amount is required. But there is no other remedy. And we shouldn't think that we have become weaker. Rather, we should notice that all around there are entities that obstruct this activity, and have acquired a remarkable might. Here, when it says “the force of concentration gets lost in idle dream images” we see those beings coming forth, as if they were saying “Don’t do it, distract yourself”. We can see these beings. And here the art is to realize that the spiritual world requires more strength from us. There is no other response. We have this strength, because we have a thinking that has a source that we can call inexhaustible, unlimited, in which the Logos flows. There’s everything there. Thus we can really ask thinking for this powerful gift. So it’s a matter of more rigor, more determination, and more “grit” - for those of you who are not from Rome, this word means more tenacity. We need some more tenacity. Naturally, this is until thinking becomes free. Afterwards, tenacity needs to be suspended to set the spiritual world free.

Let’s see… [reading] “The asceticism of the mystics, grounded in feeling, is not of our times anymore. The asceticism of spiritual science is grounded in thinking. It can be presupposed a future direct asceticism of the will, once the consciousness soul will be a realized reality.” Absolutely. Simply, we have to notice that the way of spiritual science calls forth all three forces. It starts from thinking, because thinking is the first conscious activity. The immediacy of consciousness appears in thinking. It’s inevitable that one moves from thinking. Thinking is the absolute a priori, because it’s the only activity that immediately connects us to the spiritual world, directly. It’s the lowest activity of consciousness and at the same time it’s the freest activity, the most retraceable, from Maya in which it manifests, back to its essence. We can let it appear as it does, with Maya. When we have the strength to make it appear, we find its essence.

However, when we do this work, its appearance escapes us, which is why we need to do the exercise of concentration. Actually when we do the thinking exercises, we essentially set the will in motion. This links back to what we have said a short while ago, that we appeal to thinking and to will, with the exercises of spiritual science. And we have also mentioned, speaking of tuberculosis, that thinking and will give us real strength of feeling, because feeling is the depth relationship between the will and thinking. Therefore, we need to practice in continuous harmony between thinking and will, so that feeling - the secret feeling, the most hidden feeling - can reawaken. Because in feeling lives Lucifer, and Lucifer comes from the side of the spirit, while Ahriman comes from the side of terrestriality, of corporeality. Thus we have a more direct grasp towards the sphere of Ahriman, through the senses, the bodily sensation, etcetera, while feeling is fluid, elusive, subtle. It dominates thinking, and thinking doesn’t realize it. In order to get a handle on feeling we should not head in the direction of feeling, but we should operate through the accord between thinking and will. Then, feeling feels the joy of its rhythmic function, because it’s feeling that harmonizes, feeling is the one that is called to accord the two forces. Feeling is the bearer of the music of the universe. It’s feeling that feels the Logos.

Feeling’s only task is to feel the divine. But it doesn’t feel it. It’s forced to not feel it, although its function is to feel the divine. And the fact that this function is taken away from it impoverishes feeling, and makes man little, and petty. It makes him petty in his feelings that become trivial, equivocal, transient, and subjective expressions. This is the unhappiness of feeling, and the reason why we start from thinking, not from feeling. Technically, it would be wrong to start from feeling. Technically, we would never reach the inner life of the soul, if we didn’t start from thinking, that is, from that within which the I really has a hold on our consciousness. But we have to harmonize thinking and will. Every exercise of concentration is an exercise of will. And when we say that Michael is the prince of cosmic intelligence, the regulator of thinking, we have to say: he is the regulator of the will. He acts within the will, in the will that thinks. For Michael, there exists no will without thinking, as much as there is no thinking without will. Thinking without will is dialectical thinking, it’s ideology, at the service of the enemy of the spirit. This is the tragic situation of thinking in our times, that it's truly devoid of the current of will. Therefore, the will through which it operates is not the will of man. It’s the will of the opposer of man. This is why all ideologies are anti-human. They really impede the evolution of man.

All occultisms, all their variations that are becoming plethora nowadays, bring those brilliant methods of yoga, etcetera, but none of them is aware of this tragic behind the scenes of the human condition. Hence they work against man’s liberation, against the possibility for man to clearly see what is happening. It is of paramount importance that feeling… When we say that feeling has to be redeemed, we refer to the Virgin-Sophia, to Isis-Sophia, of which our Doctor [Steiner] says that without her we cannot find Christ. It says [reading]: "We have the I. The I is already there. What we don’t have, what we have lost, is Isis-Sophia." This is when our feeling is imprisoned, compressed. It’s that feeling which makes us sick with tuberculosis. It’s feeling asphyxiated, feeling that young people would like to feel, but they don’t feel it anymore. There are some young people who brighten up when they are told something that kindles their feeling. So we see how brigandish is the activity of the schools, that leads them to abstract ideologies, to everything that is truly against that which illuminates history and nature, as power of inner life that only feeling can grasp. This is the responsibility that we have for those who approach us, for the young people. This is the most important responsibility, because young people are in search of that, but then they end up in some kind of maharishi... mahesvaari.. or brakmachari… [dark humour] etcetera, and they waste their time.

[Seemingly checking some written pages] We can say that we are following the thread…..
We can say that, by not experiencing living thinking, man cuts himself off from a relationship with the Logos, and for this reason he has to die. This death is a true one, because there are beings who don’t die any longer. It seems like they do, but they do not die, because they are alive in the immediacy of life. There are beings who, through death, reawaken to a new force. But when they have not found the connection with Logos they have to die. They have to go through the experience of death, and that experience educates them, because it’s a somber event, a moment when man knows the power of the abyss, that can be known through living thinking only during life on Earth, so that he can win over death while still alive. There is this saying of the Rosicrucians: “Who does not collapse before dying, will know the fall down after death” It goes more or less so, true? It means that, if one has not faced death before death, one will have to face it afterwards, and really feel the tragic moment of death. If you now read again the book “Initiation” by our Doctor, you will see, it’s entirely a track following which one can overcome death during life.

Then we can move up to more demanding questions. One is about the Guardian of the threshold. We can say that the Guardian of the threshold is a being who appears to us as a symbol of what we have left to overcome. But why does this happen? Because we deserve to know it. There are beings who would be terrified to see what they are. They delude themselves that they are good, helpful, generous, altruistic, fraternalistic, radical, etcetera, but they aren’t. The Guardian of the threshold is the moment on the spiritual path when man finally deserves to know what he has left to transform, to overcome. Naturally, this requires much courage of vision. This courage gives form to forces that, facing the vision of the Guardian, become positive forces. But relapses can happen, a fall back into the old nature can happen, in which case the Guardian becomes a very unpleasant being. It’s terrible, because he’s constantly there, admonishing us: “You have fallen back. That which you had expelled is reawakening in you”. This is a fight of crucial importance, where man prepares for initiation, prepares for a birth in accord with the spirit. It’s a level at which one is ready to encounter Christ.

I believe it is appropriate to add the following. It is expected in our present times an experience of the Guardian of the threshold for the whole of humanity. Not in a specific, precise sense, as described in “Occult Science”, but as an experience that brings every being on the brink of desperation, due to the fact that man has omitted to complete a task. This operation has to happen now, it should have already happened. That is, the transition from a rational-affective soul, to the consciousness soul. By various signs, it’s apparent that it hasn’t happened. It’s not happening. Therefore it’s inevitable that every being has a tragic experience, an experience in which it’s felt that there are no more human strengths coming to help. In this way, through pain, through darkness, there could be a blossoming of the forces that the spiritual world needs in order to help humanity. The spiritual world helps man, but it needs man to be free. It needs man to offer a sacrifice through an inner free act.

This unconscious experience of the Guardian, lived through by the whole of humanity transforms into something that operates on the path of freedom, by the activity of those who are aware of the behind the scenes we have discussed. In this way, the free activity of the real experimenters of the spirit allows the spiritual beings to take hold of this human spiritual gist and transform it in power of destiny, in order to prevent man from falling, from collapsing, in order to save our civilization, so that it can move forward without destructions and cataclysms. You can see how the course of history presents us with a panorama where there’s no respite. And the situation is becoming penned, encircled from all directions. And so where are the redeeming forces coming from, if not from a condition of inner tension through which man is led to intuit an inner activity that he owes the spiritual world? This is already visible in certain figures.

Now let's conclude with this thought, that I have saved for last. This could be the true comment on our discussion. It could help us understand the mistake in which we have sunk. [Reading] “We can call reality only that aspect of the world content, obtained through knowledge, in which are reunited two apparently separated elements, thinking and perception.” I have kept this question for last, because it’s a help. Presently, through the incontrovertible scientific thought, we only live in the world of perception. Thinking is excluded. You may say, how is it excluded? We have thought, we have the philosophy of science, we have epistemology…” Yes, but all this is at the service of the percept. The counterpart in terms of thinking is lacking, from all progress of physics, for instance. It’s a terrifying misunderstanding, by which we are not getting out of the OT, of the old moralism. We are unaware of the new forces of the consciousness soul.

As we have often discussed, the conquest of the incontrovertible truth of physics - which is true! - where the concept coincides with the object, really is the element that pleases everyone. However, it’s overlooked that this is simply the first moment of cognition. We have learned how there is a first moment in cognition, conditioned by the sensory world. This first moment of cognition is true. Inquired by idealists, it's considered a content of our consciousness, thus all subjective; inquired by materialists it’s considered a reflection of the external world, where thinking is nothing other than a sort of photograph of what happens, so we are done, reality is what it is, and we copy it, interpret it, and apply it - it's frightening!
But that is only the first moment of cognition, that idealism has shown to depend on subjective means of knowledge, to be integrated from the side of sense-free thinking. Because it’s thinking that has given us mathematical intuitions! What happens when this understanding is absent? It happens that we are stuck in a dualistic condition, in which the truth of science becomes dogmatic, omnipotent, dominant. We are all puppets, at the mercy of it, from technology, to income declaration. It’s a potent mechanism from which we can’t extract ourselves. True, there is a political mechanism of opposition, that you know very well. Those who are in power know very well how to go beyond the bankrupt economy.

But if Ahtens cries, Sparta doesn’t laugh. Everyone, in a way or another, suffers from the same sinking into the rational soul. We know that the rational soul is the expression of Ahriman, while the affective soul is the expression of Lucifer. So the rational-affective soul expresses itself in this science. When our Doctor tackles this question, he doesn’t argue that it’s a mistake. Rather, we need to discover up to which point it’s true, and where we have stopped. Because there is an initial moment of cognition, reached by science, that represents the relationship of thinking with the object. But nothing is known with regards to thinking. Nothing is known of the forces that really give origin to the contents of science. Science without thinking intuition would be nothing. Still, science denies it. If we look at technology and science, we can see that it’s all science of percept. The other part, the inner part, that has provided all the content - that is, thinking - is absolutely not there.

We can say that this is the consequence of the powerlessness of philosophy. Philosophy in the West has reached its culmination through idealism. In Germany, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. But also here, through Vico, Gioberti, Spaventa, Rosmini, down to Croce and Gentile. But none of these philosophers has intuited the force of knowledge. None of these has received the idea that the forces of knowledge that allow science to exist are experimentable. This powerlessness of philosophy has permitted what in “Truth and science” is called the advent of anti-philosophy. Philosophy has lacked the courage to recognize this trajectory. But when the forces of knowledge have not been cultivated, such courage is impossible. And we are paying the price of this situation. Because it’s this collapse of philosophy, the collapse of the minimally positive element brought by idealism, that has opened the way for the ideologies of matter to take over humanity. Because everyone believes in this ideology. It’s at this level that we are stuck. If we can’t find the level of sense-free thinking, we will not have a true economy. We will not have true psychology. We will not have true science.

Thus, the Guardian of the threshold is knocking at the door. What’s been evoked by our friend Leopoldo by saying “Then it’s death before death” is important. We are dead already, because we know nothing of what is happening, any longer. We don’t know the behind the scenes, although we have the fortune to have at our disposal all that is needed. You see - you are told this by someone who knows all the currents, someone who knows them in depth. There isn’t a current that I have not experimented with. I know them all, with all their deceits and pitfalls. I can tell you that the spiritual science of our Doctor is the gold of the Sun descended on the Earth. It’s the big venture of man, the path of liberation of man, because in it there is everything. And we have to be worthy of the realization of this impulse. It is a duty to others, a duty to our neighbors. Enlivened by love for our neighbor, we realize this life only if we are able to bring this principle in us, as instruments - though not worthy instruments - of the Logos.

Federica,

Thanks for transcribing that excellent lecture from MS! Yes, I think "Doctor" is clearly Steiner. When he speaks of the beings coming forth and saying "don't do it, distract yourself", that reminded me of something I had been contemplating lately.

In some ways, the secret of the esoteric path is that, through a flash of insight, an entire stream of distracted thought-flow can be illuminated and therefore redeemed to serve higher spiritual purposes. As soon as we come to know that flow inwardly, it no longer oppresses us as an external force of nature but begins to serve the steering of our I-force towards spiritual ideals. That is the main advantage we have over the average person who experiences the same highways and byways of thought-distractions that we do but has no opportunity to redeem them in the normal course of life (and must wait for periods of sleep/death), because they are simply merged into the normal course of thinking. One way I have started to think about these distactions is by looking at where I end up from the distracted flow of thought. In the spiritual world, there is a reversal from the normal course of events insofar as the final cause or telos structures the events that normally we experience as leading up to it in a linear way. That is a part of the reason we do the memory review exercise and that Steiner recommends other exercises that involve thinking through things in reverse, like the acts of a play or chapters of a novel or measures of a musical piece, so that our organism becomes more accustomed to this spiritual ordering of events. 

Meditate everything pictorially. The retrospect last. Look back at every little detail from the end to the beginning. Memory is the bridge on which we're led to the invisible Akashic record. In the retrospect we have streets, fields, flowers, rocks, etc. recalled through memory or we could really look back at them with our eyes. This takes place in the previous time order. But there's also another kind of looking back: as if time periods were in space. So-called memory is lost, but something higher is gained. In higher worlds everything runs from end to beginning; the pupil goes backwards to prepare for this

If we look at where we ended up from a certain flow of feelings and thought, we can get some dim intimation for the soul-entanglements that are structuring our stream of becoming. Did we end up blowing off spiritual exercises? Did we end up convincing ourselves to go to a movie so we can passively absorb sensory impressions and avoid creatively-willed thinking? Did we end up eating ice cream to dull our sense of displeasure with life? Steiner often mentions that we should pay attention to all the things that don't happen in the liminal spaces of our life because we made this or that decision, which is a similar exercise. It is in the liminal (temporal) spaces where the spiritual world is to be found. These are only very loose indicators when we are still thinking through them conceptually, of course, but they may at least start pointing us in the right direction and help prepare our organism for encountering the spiritual world when we have ripened for it. Many of the underlying reasons for distracting entanglements will be common to most modern humans.

- Fear of approaching intimate experience of the spiritual world (and all the rest can be considered a subset of this fear)
- Fear of letting go of certain habitual ways of being conditioned to the physical/social context
- Fear of unmasking the layers of persona that we have accumulated
- A mistrust of the human spiritual capacity and our own spiritual potential
- A sense of powerlessness to change ourselves inwardly and meet certain weighty responsibilities
- A desire to be outwardly perceived in a certain positive light
- A feeling that we need to grasp the mysteries of existence quickly.
Etc.

These are all certainly working beneath the surface of our normal conscious activity and each individual should work out in what constellation and measures they are pushing and pulling on their spiritual activity. One thing I noticed is how everything becomes less serious when intuitive realities are condensed into inner or outer speech. There is a concrete sense that everything then takes on an air of playing at a game or merely acting out a role, such as the role of "esotericist". It's like we are trying to talk ourselves into being humble, loving, noble, spiritual people. And we end up with exactly what MS speaks of in terms of trivial and transient feelings for the Divine. Then we also get a feeling of having truly understood whatever we are contemplating through the relative transparency of our concepts. When I was reading the paragraph that he wrote on the Guardian, for example, I started feeling, "yes, I know exactly what he is talking about", but I must remember that feeling is Maya. After we get a living feel for this continual masking activity of the intellect, we confront how far away we have managed to place ourselves from the genuine experience of the Divine. Then we really know why St. Paul wrote, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"

I love the phrase "the free activity of the real experimenter's spirit" and again "the forces of the knowledge that allow science to exist are experimentable". In my experience, along with humble faith in the mysteriously immanent Spirit, and a sense of loving duty towards our neighbors, that is also the courageous inner attitude that allows us to take our intuitive stream of becoming more seriously while also maintaining its sense of charm and wonder. We don't need to abandon the conceptual voice, but rather to fulfill its telos by consciously sacrificing it in healthy dosages. Through concentration and meditation, we can dwell in a more intimate communion with the Divine within us, relatively unmediated by the senses and normal conceptual activity. Then the sublimely moral impulses we draw from those liminal spaces can flow back out into our normal conceptual life, making it into a more solemn and redemptive affair.

When you, my sisters and brothers, let the spiritual life that streams into your soul live in you so that it reverberates in your meditations, you then have the right fruit. You should let what's received echo in your meditations. While you do that the spiritual powers of the world stream into you. The world is always flowed through by spiritual streams that proceed from the great masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings. The masters continuously pour streams of love and wisdom over humanity, but men's souls aren't always ready and open to receive them. But meditation words are magic words that open soul portals so that divine life can move in. That's why one shouldn't speculate with one's intellect about meditation words, but should open the soul for forces that are higher than merely intellectual ones. If one speculates about them with one's intellect then only forces that are already in one become active. But higher forces are supposed to awaken. One shouldn't want to solve riddles in one's meditation words, one should let them solve riddles, for they're much wiser than the intellect can ever be. That's why one should let them work on one and take in what they permit to flow into one's soul, let them live completely in one's soul.

Meditation words were born from the laws of the spiritual world and didn't arise through speculation. Something special lives in every vowel. Each of the vowels has a different sound value. And just as the soul feels the effect of sounds, so it should devote itself to the pictures that the words mediate to it. In meditation one should try to think as concretely as possible, and to be as far away as possible from abstract ideation.

[Federica]

Federica,

Thanks for transcribing that excellent lecture from MS! Yes, I think "Doctor" is clearly Steiner. When he speaks of the beings coming forth and saying "don't do it, distract yourself", that reminded me of something I had been contemplating lately.

In some ways, the secret of the esoteric path is that, through a flash of insight, an entire stream of distracted thought-flow can be illuminated and therefore redeemed to serve higher spiritual purposes. As soon as we come to know that flow inwardly, it no longer oppresses us as an external force of nature but begins to serve the steering of our I-force towards spiritual ideals. That is the main advantage we have over the average person who experiences the same highways and byways of thought-distractions that we do but has no opportunity to redeem them in the normal course of life (and must wait for periods of sleep/death), because they are simply merged into the normal course of thinking. One way I have started to think about these distactions is by looking at where I end up from the distracted flow of thought. In the spiritual world, there is a reversal from the normal course of events insofar as the final cause or telos structures the events that normally we experience as leading up to it in a linear way. That is a part of the reason we do the memory review exercise and that Steiner recommends other exercises that involve thinking through things in reverse, like the acts of a play or chapters of a novel or measures of a musical piece, so that our organism becomes more accustomed to this spiritual ordering of events. 

Meditate everything pictorially. The retrospect last. Look back at every little detail from the end to the beginning. Memory is the bridge on which we're led to the invisible Akashic record. In the retrospect we have streets, fields, flowers, rocks, etc. recalled through memory or we could really look back at them with our eyes. This takes place in the previous time order. But there's also another kind of looking back: as if time periods were in space. So-called memory is lost, but something higher is gained. In higher worlds everything runs from end to beginning; the pupil goes backwards to prepare for this

If we look at where we ended up from a certain flow of feelings and thought, we can get some dim intimation for the soul-entanglements that are structuring our stream of becoming. Did we end up blowing off spiritual exercises? Did we end up convincing ourselves to go to a movie so we can passively absorb sensory impressions and avoid creatively-willed thinking? Did we end up eating ice cream to dull our sense of displeasure with life? Steiner often mentions that we should pay attention to all the things that don't happen in the liminal spaces of our life because we made this or that decision, which is a similar exercise. It is in the liminal (temporal) spaces where the spiritual world is to be found. These are only very loose indicators when we are still thinking through them conceptually, of course, but they may at least start pointing us in the right direction and help prepare our organism for encountering the spiritual world when we have ripened for it. Many of the underlying reasons for distracting entanglements will be common to most modern humans.

- Fear of approaching intimate experience of the spiritual world (and all the rest can be considered a subset of this fear)
- Fear of letting go of certain habitual ways of being conditioned to the physical/social context
- Fear of unmasking the layers of persona that we have accumulated
- A mistrust of the human spiritual capacity and our own spiritual potential
- A sense of powerlessness to change ourselves inwardly and meet certain weighty responsibilities
- A desire to be outwardly perceived in a certain positive light
- A feeling that we need to grasp the mysteries of existence quickly.
Etc.

These are all certainly working beneath the surface of our normal conscious activity and each individual should work out in what constellation and measures they are pushing and pulling on their spiritual activity. One thing I noticed is how everything becomes less serious when intuitive realities are condensed into inner or outer speech. There is a concrete sense that everything then takes on an air of playing at a game or merely acting out a role, such as the role of "esotericist". It's like we are trying to talk ourselves into being humble, loving, noble, spiritual people. And we end up with exactly what MS speaks of in terms of trivial and transient feelings for the Divine. Then we also get a feeling of having truly understood whatever we are contemplating through the relative transparency of our concepts. When I was reading the paragraph that he wrote on the Guardian, for example, I started feeling, "yes, I know exactly what he is talking about", but I must remember that feeling is Maya. After we get a living feel for this continual masking activity of the intellect, we confront how far away we have managed to place ourselves from the genuine experience of the Divine. Then we really know why St. Paul wrote, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"

I love the phrase "the free activity of the real experimenter's spirit" and again "the forces of the knowledge that allow science to exist are experimentable". In my experience, along with humble faith in the mysteriously immanent Spirit, and a sense of loving duty towards our neighbors, that is also the courageous inner attitude that allows us to take our intuitive stream of becoming more seriously while also maintaining its sense of charm and wonder. We don't need to abandon the conceptual voice, but rather to fulfill its telos by consciously sacrificing it in healthy dosages. Through concentration and meditation, we can dwell in a more intimate communion with the Divine within us, relatively unmediated by the senses and normal conceptual activity. Then the sublimely moral impulses we draw from those liminal spaces can flow back out into our normal conceptual life, making it into a more solemn and redemptive affair.

When you, my sisters and brothers, let the spiritual life that streams into your soul live in you so that it reverberates in your meditations, you then have the right fruit. You should let what's received echo in your meditations. While you do that the spiritual powers of the world stream into you. The world is always flowed through by spiritual streams that proceed from the great masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings. The masters continuously pour streams of love and wisdom over humanity, but men's souls aren't always ready and open to receive them. But meditation words are magic words that open soul portals so that divine life can move in. That's why one shouldn't speculate with one's intellect about meditation words, but should open the soul for forces that are higher than merely intellectual ones. If one speculates about them with one's intellect then only forces that are already in one become active. But higher forces are supposed to awaken. One shouldn't want to solve riddles in one's meditation words, one should let them solve riddles, for they're much wiser than the intellect can ever be. That's why one should let them work on one and take in what they permit to flow into one's soul, let them live completely in one's soul.

Meditation words were born from the laws of the spiritual world and didn't arise through speculation. Something special lives in every vowel. Each of the vowels has a different sound value. And just as the soul feels the effect of sounds, so it should devote itself to the pictures that the words mediate to it. In meditation one should try to think as concretely as possible, and to be as far away as possible from abstract ideation.

Thanks for sharing some of your tips, Ashvin. Your way of processing distractive thoughts is making me realize that simply discarding those thoughts, the moment we become aware of them, is not ideal. Currently I feel I have become somewhat more able to detect these intrusions, and when I notice them, I simply discard them. Well, sometimes, after noticing them, I keep running the thoughts in parallel. I say to myself “Ok I will entertain this just a tiny bit longer, before I get back on track”, which is worse, I know. It’s probably exactly what MS is talking about. At best, I immediately discard them, but even better would be to call them out, not only discard them, but freeze them, and maybe highlight them in pictorial form, before tracing them back, so that they are redeemed and not pushed back into unconsciousness, to fatten the bulk of stuff left to transform. This is easier said than done.

But all this is helpful. I realize, very concretely, that counter-influences are there, and I have to manifest more 'grit' in these inner domains. Also not to externalize the fault, putting it on the back of external counter-forces. A little fact that happened yesterday made me think more actively about these influences, this time in relation to the exercise of will. I have recently resumed the basic exercise of control of will. I don't rely on an alarm for it, but I give myself the instruction to perform a small act that brings change within a habitual chain of action. For example, I have ended up having a very standardized chain of actions, that I execute almost automatically, every time I come back home from the gym. So yesterday I said to myself, that this time, immediately upon closing the door behind me, before doing anything else, I would put some oil in the diffuser in the entrance, and I really spent some time trying to consolidate the instruction in my mind. I didn’t want to risk failure with the exercise. I attached a big importance to the exercise, I wanted to be a good student. Later in the day, I was finished at the gym, collecting my things before leaving. I suddenly realized my mobile phone was not where I always put it. So I started to wonder, did I put it elsewhere this time? Did someone pick it? Did I forget it at home? So I hurried back home, trying to remember what to do in case the phone was lost. Closed the door behind me, found the phone (next to the diffuser) checked the messages, got into the usual chain of action, and only sometime later I suddenly recalled the will exercise…. When something similar happens again, I will try to trace it back to the origin of distraction. Maybe, as you say, from the shape of that path of distraction, I will get some insights on relevant soul entanglements, because, after all, I am the one who forgot the phone at home and sabotaged the will exercise, by setting up a special diversion, a diversion up to the “task”.

I definitely recognize what you are saying, that “everything becomes less serious when intuitive realities are condensed into inner or outer speech” but especially outer. This happens to me with prayer. I am divided by conflicting calls to action, with prayer, because in a way the words are useful attractors into the activity, like useful handles. But in another way, it would be better to only set free the impulse of prayer once a certain mood is attained, so that we don’t risk falling into role-playing. And I don’t know how to fight role-playing, because the least detection, or even suspicion of it, or check, immediately corrupts all authenticity by becoming an ugly thought-attractor. One solution would be to only rely on unverbalized feeling, but prayer is also formula. So it’s difficult to conform to formulation without spoiling it. This makes it even more clear to me how far I am from the balanced navigation across the seas of our soul currents, between the rational voice on one side and the contemplating and communing one on the other.

But I’m glad you found the lecture an interesting read! Listening to the audio version, it was touching because the lucidity of thought, the calm and generous presence, the very careful choice of words are tangible, but so is the wear and tear of the body, of the voice, at the approach of death, although in much more subdued perception. For completeness, here is the missing lecture opening:


What is the occult meaning of the massive reappearance of tuberculotic diseases, that had become almost a pale memory? We have sometimes touched on the occult meaning of that when we have discussed the asphyxia of feeling. In the beginning, it’s indeed during the Romantic period, with the last flashing of the sentient-affective soul, that tuberculosis was powerful. Afterwards, came a time of greater rigor of consciousness and thought, and the forces of the I have appeared. That period lasted a few decades, and at the same time some rather effective remedies were found. But deseases do not disappear because remedies are found. Rather, diseases have to disappear, and then the remedies start to work. Now, why is tuberculosis back? It’s back because there is no life in the median seat, there is no life in the seat of rhythm, and the forces of the heart are missing.

For example, we have previously recalled certain verses of the poem Dei Sepolcri, by Foscolo, in which there is the most solid lyric power, a Greek lyric power. There is also emotion, there is some romanticism, but it’s a firm, solid romanticism. There is rhythm, there is music. The poets of today make fun of this music. But they make fun of it at their own expense, at their own disadvantage, because they are no longer able to feel that music. That’s why they make fun of it. It’s not that we should have stopped at the music of Sepolcri, or the music of Carducci’s Barbarian Odes. No, we should have moved forward. Indeed, some have attempted the way of poetry, for example Onofri, but how many have understood him, or helped him? The truth is that young people are deprived of the forces of feeling, because everything that is proposed to them is a mockery of feeling, a mockery of all that is beautiful, poetic, esthetic, gentle. The impression is given that strength means absence of feelings, that it means to be brutal. And this makes these poor kids unhappy people, neuropaths.

At its beginning, this neuropathy takes various forms. Cancer, for example, is the last instance of this neuropathy, because cancer, as our Doctor says, is a nervous process taken to its extreme [sound glitch] a lateral development of a certain organ, a kind of sense organ, as it were. This happens in a strong being, while those who don’t possess that same level strength have to necessarily become tuberculotic, because the instinctive impulses that should be catched and harmonized within the median seat, to be then controlled and dominated - or even transformed in esthetic activities - reach directly into the head and paralyze the center of breathing. This matches a hysteric state. The principle of tuberculosis is a state of hysteria taken very far. In certain cases, the illness does not manifest, but it is there nonetheless. The tuberculotic type is the one who is always about to catch a cold, or a flu, feeling unwell at the least breeze. It means, the predisposition is there. Why?

Now, it’s not that I’m trying to give a lecture in medicine, still it’s a question that I can address, based on observations that I have been making for years. I have realized that there is a weakness of feeling that, in some, transforms into cynicism or hardness, similar to what we see in movies: there’s the brutal cowboy, everyone becomes tough, they don’t greet each other, because greeting with kindness is a weakness, and everything is rough, everything is forceful. There lies a great weakness underneath all that. And there is also the fear of appearing sentimental. Now, feeling can be said to be the most powerful strength possessed by man, as of today. And the belief that feeling should be overcome through cold detachment or roughness is the same thing as castration. It’s like chastity obtained by eviration. It’s the same thing. It is a really serious form of absence of feeling. The misunderstanding is to believe that fullness of feeling means to be weak. Feeling really is the strength of the strong ones, because it’s in feeling that eveything low - all that gathers the most telluric impulses in man - is balanced out, through the gathering of very different ideal impulses. Therefore, a balanced and strong being has to have a very harmonious life of feeling. A strong being also has to be able to continually intervene and facilitate all the work of thinking, because, in essence, the work of thinking leads us to a broader inner life, not through an intensified rationalism - rationalism is a sign of weakness, it’s a limit - but by enriching thinking with the immediate force from which it arises. The immediate spiritual impulse inside thinking is feeling.

Naturally, this has a correlate below, when man believes he thinks, but really is dominated by sentiment. Here we are in a lower domain. For this reason, in the classification of the various soul domains, a rational and affective soul is reported, not a purely rational soul. Because it has no content. Pure rationalism is simply a logical net, with no real existence. It always has feeling, immediately underneath its surface. It has no own strength. Therefore, certain mental, ideological positions are the result of feeling - a rather equivocal, low feeling. Indeed we have shown how there are mental positions, dialectical positions, that are not grounded in true thinking, but in the presence of a certain feeling energy of one’s race, family, constitution, and temperament. Such feeling is very close to animality, very egoistic, and it immediately finds its way to thinking.

On the contrary, true feeling is feeling that appears when thinking develops in intensity until it releases itself from the physical, until it finds itself as a movement originating from itself, without needing the cerebral organ for movement. And when thinking finds this intensity within itself, it immediately joins the highest feeling impulse, the immaculate but powerful force of feeling. This is the true force of man. Whatever activity man executes, with intents of perpetuity, with higher intents, he needs this force of feeling. Tuberculosis is back, and it will be a good lesson. It already is a good lesson, as it seems like it's on the rise - an unexpected rise. Thus, medicine will have to provide for that. Above all, spiritual medicine, because neuropathies, mental illnesses will increase, and tuberculotic diseases also will increase - not necessarily tuberculosis, but tuberculotic predisposition. Those who bear the predisposition, who are continually unwell, will maybe not get tuberculosis, however they will have to get treatment of the kind that is considered effective for tuberculosis. [it continues here]