Prospects for a Phenomenological Idealism

[Federica]

I am aware I am just repeating what Ashvin and Cleric have many times expressed. It's because your posts, as I understand them, seem to refute this necessity. Would you say that’s accurate, since you disagree with it being a necessity, or would you say that you are mindful of it, and it’s just me, misinterpreting your thoughts?

I don't deny the necessity of moving from rationalizing to experiencing if one wants to move vertically. But what if one's efforts to make that move constantly fail? For over 50 years I have known of the need to learn to concentrate, but for some reason my efforts dwindle away, and I am back to rationalizing. (Which might have been a good thing in the early years, since what I wanted back then was mystical escape.) But while one can't move vertically through reason, one can become aware that the vertical direction exists, and is necessary to pursue, even if it may not occur in this lifetime. To put it another way, through reason we can become aware that we are insane (and so stop living in denial), but also that there is a path to sanity, and that it is our responsibility to strive to become sane, even if we think ourselves unlikely to succeed in this lifetime. Which is more or less what I mean by 'anthroposopy lite'.

I am not ready to post my reply (that is, my subjective comment at the best of my current understanding). But I definitely think the image of wavefront in Cleric's last essay is one crucial missing piece that - like a real missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle - can powerfully increase clarity of what the necessity we mentioned is really made of, not to let ingested old imperatives remain indigestible imperatives.

[AshvinP]

Probably outside the conversational flow I offer my two cents that you've never been able to concentrate because you are attempting to concentrate on reason when you need to concentrate on faith. Without faith you will not recognize Grace. You'll pass it by without noticing or think that nothing is happening.

I don't think so. What I (try to) concentrate on is vowel sounds, or moving a point of light in a circle, or a pin.... Reasoning is a distraction (one of many).

Scott,

If I remember correctly, you are quite astute with mathematical thinking, so it somewhat surprises me the concentration is so difficult for you (although I do remember you had mentioned it before). Have you worked with the mathematical transformations that Cleric has suggested elsewhere, i.e. starting with a concentration on mathematical objects and then releasing the images to penetrate to the underlying thinking-gestures? The other thing is that, when we have difficulty concentrating, we should remember this is presenting us with a great opportunity to become conscious, however slightly, of underlying soul currents that push and pull our life of thinking. That is always happening, but now the meditation makes it more clear what is happening underneath the hood. We can try to notice patterns of thoughts and feeling that seem to frequently emerge and distract us from the meditation.

We should also keep in mind that the fruits of meditation are often not manifested during the meditation itself, but more during the course of our life in between meditations. It expresses as a gradual clarity of insight into our lives and the broad structure of the reality we are engaging. Even if we experience some living images, this may embed a whole series of transformations that we are yet to go through and therefore will have little meaning for us at first. For ex., if you can read through some of Cleric's lengthy posts here and follow their reasoning closely, then your intuitive orientation is already deepened more than most people. Even more than meditation, I am starting to get the sense that the sort of exercises he mentioned in the latest essay that Federica linked - the rhythmically zooming out to the intuitive context and zooming in to particular aspects of it - may be the most helpful thing to practice on a daily basis. Of course, if we can do both that is ideal, but if we have to focus on one or the other for a time, I would say to start with the latter.

The totality of perceptual phenomena is relatively easy to grasp. Here’s a simple exercise to exemplify this. We can observe the way we move our focus through the forms in our visual field. But we can also try to ‘zoom out’ from any particular form and try to expand our focus and include as much as possible also of our peripheral vision, such that our whole visual field feels like a holistic picture. Now we can try to zoom even further out, while trying to include all other senses in this perceptual panorama – hearing, touch, smell, taste, warmth and so on. Then we can also include our emotional state and finally we can include even the awareness that we’re doing this particular exercise. This is an easy and pleasant exercise and with little practice we’ll become so familiar with this expanded state of attention that we'll be able to move into it in one go, without having to build it up gradually.
...
Take a look at your current environment. If you are in a room, there will be many perceptions that you can focus your sight on – furniture, things on the desk, the computer screen, keyboard and so on. Try to find something in your visual field that you don’t know what it is. Not that easy, is it? Almost everything we perceive in our room, even if we don’t specifically think about it, even by just glancing over it, feels as something familiar. Try moving your gaze sequentially through several objects in your room. Try to resist thinking about them, don’t even search for their words. If we are observant, we’ll notice that even though we don’t seek the clearcut concept for the object, it still feels as if we know what we’re looking at. Then if needed we can focus on the concept, for example by anchoring its meaning to the word for the object. But would we say that the perception felt as some mysterious unknown up until we pronounced its word? Or is it rather that at the moment our gaze falls on the perception, on some more ‘blurry’ cognitive level we already have some general awareness of what we’re seeing, and bringing up the concept and word for the perception is similar to concentrating that general awareness into focus?

We usually don’t pay attention to our inner life in such details because most of it unfolds quite automatically.
...
Instead, every perception is also associated with temporal knowing, which is our understanding of how things function and how they are used. For example, when we see a chair, we don’t simply have static awareness of what a chair is but within that awareness we also have the potential for interaction with the object. We know that we can move towards the chair and sit on it. In this way our perceptual field is also a kind of palette for the possible actions we can undertake.
...
Let’s try for a moment to expand and feel the vast intuitive understanding and skills that have been developed throughout our life. Think about the different periods of our life and how each has contributed to what we are now. Think about all the physical and mental skills that have been developed, all that has been read, seen, learned. We can feel this only in a very nebulous way, only as background potential. Now let’s encompass the room we’re in with our sight. Notice how of the innumerable things that we know about everything, the perceptions of the room act as a kind of filter for our intuitive life. Of all the rooms that we have seen, all the places we have been, the knowing that we now experience has a completely specific timbre, we recognize it as we recognize the voice of a friend. The general intuition that we experience when we behold our room, is unique among the intuitions we would have for all other rooms (including alien dwellings). Then we can focus our gaze on some specific interior detail or object in the room. This further filters our intuition and we now know what the object is.

I know that, when I would first read passages such as above, I would simply follow them with my conceptual thinking and say, 'right right, that makes sense! great, let me keep going...' But as Cleric said, we really need to resist that habit and start swimming with our thinking through this inner investigation. These can be really powerful exercises to work with on a daily basis. Gradually we may start to feel like our thoughts and perceptions are no longer marching forward one by one, as discrete 'moments' in time, but that we are experiencing the metamorphosis of durations. As you may know, that was Bergson's term for moments experienced with temporal thickness. It's like we are carrying the whole past and future of Cosmic evolution with us in our transformations. Much of seemingly complex spiritual science can be understood as simply tracing the ways in which past and future stages of Cosmic evolution are embedded in the layers of our current experience. The whole mystery of the Cosmos is embedded within the layers of our current be-ing, but we need to start with humble exercises and gradually thicken our current intuitive experience out. Indeed, the faith that Lou mentions is critical, but we don't need to adopt it blindly - thickening the layers of our intuitive context will surely inspire it within us.

PS - I know this has strayed off the topic, so we can move any further discussion to Meditation if necessary.

[Anthony66]

If I remember correctly, you are quite astute with mathematical thinking, so it somewhat surprises me the concentration is so difficult for you (although I do remember you had mentioned it before). Have you worked with the mathematical transformations that Cleric has suggested elsewhere, i.e. starting with a concentration on mathematical objects and then releasing the images to penetrate to the underlying thinking-gestures? The other thing is that, when we have difficulty concentrating, we should remember this is presenting us with a great opportunity to become conscious, however slightly, of underlying soul currents that push and pull our life of thinking. That is always happening, but now the meditation makes it more clear what is happening underneath the hood. We can try to notice patterns of thoughts and feeling that seem to frequently emerge and distract us from the meditation.

Ashvin,

Where can we find the highlighted?

[AshvinP]

If I remember correctly, you are quite astute with mathematical thinking, so it somewhat surprises me the concentration is so difficult for you (although I do remember you had mentioned it before). Have you worked with the mathematical transformations that Cleric has suggested elsewhere, i.e. starting with a concentration on mathematical objects and then releasing the images to penetrate to the underlying thinking-gestures? The other thing is that, when we have difficulty concentrating, we should remember this is presenting us with a great opportunity to become conscious, however slightly, of underlying soul currents that push and pull our life of thinking. That is always happening, but now the meditation makes it more clear what is happening underneath the hood. We can try to notice patterns of thoughts and feeling that seem to frequently emerge and distract us from the meditation.

Ashvin,

Where can we find the highlighted?

Here is the post I was thinking of, Anthony - viewtopic.php?p=19042#p19042

Let’s try to approach this through a mathematical example. We see a triangular form. It impresses as perception and evokes certain intuition – that of ‘triangle’. Then we can turn away from the perceptions and summon a memory image of the triangle. Now we’re doing elementary geometry, our geometric intuition is being expressed into a thought-image of our own making. Here we already have something analogous to Imaginative cognition. The difference is that we’re expressing intuition that is frozen. It is as a fixed standing wave in an ideal world. Mathematical intuition is timeless. It consists of timeless relations. They have temporal character only insofar as we need to serialize these relations in thoughts. For example, when we think of the natural numbers, they are not subject to time. We need time to count through them but their relations are something timeless. Two is always between one and three – this is an eternal relation. This has nothing to do with Platonism. There’s no need to fantasize mathematical intuition as some exotic metaphysical realm. It is a simple fact of experience – when we move through mathematical ideas we simply experience their timeless relations in the meaning of our thoughts. Because of this frozen nature of mathematical intuition, when we’re thinking math we’re always alone. It is as if we walk through a frosty kingdom and any movement that we sense can only be our own, reflected in the ice crystals. The difference with Imagination in the wider sense is that in the latter we no longer feel alone. The reflections in our imaginative pictures are not only of our own movement but also of a kingdom teeming with life. It is as if we’re expressing in images intuitive life that continually changes underneath us on its own accord.

The next step is to turn attention to what we’re doing when we think the mathematical thought-images. For example, if we take the triangle, we can try to visualize it as if we trace its edges with our ray of imagination, as if it is the tip of a pencil. When we become familiar with this activity we can try to disregard the imaginative element and focus entirely on the experience of how we will our thinking gestures. It’s no longer about how our thinking gestures are perceived in imagination but how it feels to be the active force that propels them. This gives us a hint about Inspirative cognition, where we live not in images of the living kingdom but in the interference of thinking gestures that impresses in the images.

Finally, we need to relinquish even our thinking gesticulation and remain in the pure intuitive meaning of the triangle. This is exceedingly difficult to do without practice but in the end, the idea of triangle becomes the intuitive form of our “I”. We always live in such intuitions. They are present all the time as our intuitive background, as the meaningful context which gives us the feeling that our reality ‘makes sense’ and that we have a certain sense of orientation within it. To reach Intuitive cognition is to live entirely within this intuitive context, which is identical to our sense of what we are as a spiritual being. So when we think ‘triangle’, this is normally convoluted in several layers of inner life – the perception, the image, the thinking gesture – yet our sense of being is actually identical with the intuition of a triangle that we currently think.

The underlying principles of imaginative and higher meditation are, of course, the same regardless of what content we are using. We could replace 'triangle' with other geometric objects or even perhaps a mathematical 'proof' where we concentrate deeply on the logical steps of the proof, then release from the content into the thought-gestures we are making within the chain of reasoning. I have never tried such things because I have little familiarity with mathematical thinking. Here is another helpful observation on mathematical thinking.

The deeper aspect is that mathematics is the closest we can get to clean experience of the spiritual realm through intellectual thinking. In pure thinking (mathematics included) we are already living in the spiritual world. In mathematics we find thinking that supports itself, it's the object of itself, independent of sensory and other perceptions. The mathematical thoughts are determined through their inner relations. This is a prelude to what the ego secretly yearns for but has not yet the courage to approach - the wider spiritual world, of which mathematical thinking is only a rigidified instance. In our ordinary consciousness perceptions and concepts are somewhat orthogonal - we connect them together but we can't say that they are organically connected (except for the perceptions of our own thinking). That's the intuitive reason to assume our concepts are only representations of reality (the 'real' thing causing the perceptions). And this is natural, the concepts seem like inert mineral-like entities. It is only through our own thinking that they are set in motion and connected to perceptions. We have no reason to assume concepts/ideas as having some creative role.

[Federica]

First of all, thanks for being open with these questions, Scott. I think your attitude is helpful for everyone reading, and it’s helpful for me, since these are largely shared challenges. Reflecting on what you have expressed, here’s what I noticed:

through reason we can become aware that we are insane (and so stop living in denial), but also that there is a path to sanity

I think the above is possible, to a limited extent, but if one does not recognize that it’s the mode of consciousness itself that needs change, if one keeps pushing within the familiar direction of 'rationality as is', the awareness you speak of could remain empty, largely abstract, and the “Anthroposophy lite” type of knowledge you speak of could remain as pale as the experience we can get when we know an app exists, we know the look of its icon, but never downloaded it, not even in its lite version.

I noticed you've spoken of “the need to learn to concentrate”. I may be wrong, but it sounds like an added degree of separation from what needs happen. Our most pressing need is not 'to learn' concentration. 'The student’ is another role that has its definition and scope. It allows us to consider the ‘topic of’ concentration. But what really counts is that we can choose to instantly become the experiencer, through direct inner experiment, and I don't think we need to worry about success or failure. Not to make an “everything will be ok” sort of statement. We only need to notice the idea of gradient of progression, for example through Cleric's last essay. I don't think real progression manifests as 'going vertical'. Rather, we can familiarize ourselves with our inner movements and overcome our collective blind spots by degrees. It doesn't matter how much ‘successful concentration’ is in our records. By the way, I think that the only failed concentration is the one we haven't tried. It's only the compartmentalized mind who says: No output? No spiritual vision to report? According to definition, that's failure. As Steiner and Cleric illustrated, the problem is that we don’t know how to think. Worse, we don't know that we don’t know how to think. Before we train our thinking to think beyond the subjective, physical-mental constraints imposed on us by our particular and generational constitutions, we continually “bump into ourselves”, as Steiner puts it. Our traits are invisible to us, nevertheless they shape our thinking continually. We can’t get over them. But with the help of these essays, we can take action and progressively reset our thinking.

But that's not concentration. At least not to start with. It's becoming aware of the implicit patterns. On the essay thread, Lorenzo has provided a good example of those patterns, where he demonstrates how we might very ‘naturally’ get lost in abstract, mechanistic thinking: meaning is a definition, finding meaning is like searching up a word in the dictionary. I guess we can all sympathize with this sort of approach. We might not agree, but we follow, it’s a familiar approach. We tend to think through our fragmented, compartmentalized constitution and say: “That’s actually not meaning, what you are pointing to is called causation”. Another example: “I don’t see how the idea of triangle can be a living being, a being has another definition”. We want to be rational and rigorous, but we don't let the rigor of the given of experience shine through and warm up our thoughts, and feel safer in a sort of radicalized rationality, where our (collective) cognitive biases are seamlessly projected onto what we define the objects of reality.

If we philosophize like “reality is made of stones, mud and meaning”, then meaning is conceived simply as another kind of substance thrown in the mix. From what I see, this is also one of the major stumble stones for approaching PoF. The concept of Idea is seen as just another substance of which reality is made. For this reason, the main motivation of the essay here was to introduce a way to approach these realities with less chance of misconception. That’s why I tried to speak in terms of the intuitive context. Not as some abstract metaphysical substance of which reality is made but by directly appreciating the fact that we live in a certain sense of meaningful orientation, inseparable from our experience, embedded in the background of every state of existence as it were.

[Anthony66]

If I remember correctly, you are quite astute with mathematical thinking, so it somewhat surprises me the concentration is so difficult for you (although I do remember you had mentioned it before). Have you worked with the mathematical transformations that Cleric has suggested elsewhere, i.e. starting with a concentration on mathematical objects and then releasing the images to penetrate to the underlying thinking-gestures? The other thing is that, when we have difficulty concentrating, we should remember this is presenting us with a great opportunity to become conscious, however slightly, of underlying soul currents that push and pull our life of thinking. That is always happening, but now the meditation makes it more clear what is happening underneath the hood. We can try to notice patterns of thoughts and feeling that seem to frequently emerge and distract us from the meditation.

Ashvin,

Where can we find the highlighted?

Here is the post I was thinking of, Anthony - viewtopic.php?p=19042#p19042

Let’s try to approach this through a mathematical example. We see a triangular form. It impresses as perception and evokes certain intuition – that of ‘triangle’. Then we can turn away from the perceptions and summon a memory image of the triangle. Now we’re doing elementary geometry, our geometric intuition is being expressed into a thought-image of our own making. Here we already have something analogous to Imaginative cognition. The difference is that we’re expressing intuition that is frozen. It is as a fixed standing wave in an ideal world. Mathematical intuition is timeless. It consists of timeless relations. They have temporal character only insofar as we need to serialize these relations in thoughts. For example, when we think of the natural numbers, they are not subject to time. We need time to count through them but their relations are something timeless. Two is always between one and three – this is an eternal relation. This has nothing to do with Platonism. There’s no need to fantasize mathematical intuition as some exotic metaphysical realm. It is a simple fact of experience – when we move through mathematical ideas we simply experience their timeless relations in the meaning of our thoughts. Because of this frozen nature of mathematical intuition, when we’re thinking math we’re always alone. It is as if we walk through a frosty kingdom and any movement that we sense can only be our own, reflected in the ice crystals. The difference with Imagination in the wider sense is that in the latter we no longer feel alone. The reflections in our imaginative pictures are not only of our own movement but also of a kingdom teeming with life. It is as if we’re expressing in images intuitive life that continually changes underneath us on its own accord.

The next step is to turn attention to what we’re doing when we think the mathematical thought-images. For example, if we take the triangle, we can try to visualize it as if we trace its edges with our ray of imagination, as if it is the tip of a pencil. When we become familiar with this activity we can try to disregard the imaginative element and focus entirely on the experience of how we will our thinking gestures. It’s no longer about how our thinking gestures are perceived in imagination but how it feels to be the active force that propels them. This gives us a hint about Inspirative cognition, where we live not in images of the living kingdom but in the interference of thinking gestures that impresses in the images.

Finally, we need to relinquish even our thinking gesticulation and remain in the pure intuitive meaning of the triangle. This is exceedingly difficult to do without practice but in the end, the idea of triangle becomes the intuitive form of our “I”. We always live in such intuitions. They are present all the time as our intuitive background, as the meaningful context which gives us the feeling that our reality ‘makes sense’ and that we have a certain sense of orientation within it. To reach Intuitive cognition is to live entirely within this intuitive context, which is identical to our sense of what we are as a spiritual being. So when we think ‘triangle’, this is normally convoluted in several layers of inner life – the perception, the image, the thinking gesture – yet our sense of being is actually identical with the intuition of a triangle that we currently think.

The underlying principles of imaginative and higher meditation are, of course, the same regardless of what content we are using. We could replace 'triangle' with other geometric objects or even perhaps a mathematical 'proof' where we concentrate deeply on the logical steps of the proof, then release from the content into the thought-gestures we are making within the chain of reasoning. I have never tried such things because I have little familiarity with mathematical thinking. Here is another helpful observation on mathematical thinking.

The deeper aspect is that mathematics is the closest we can get to clean experience of the spiritual realm through intellectual thinking. In pure thinking (mathematics included) we are already living in the spiritual world. In mathematics we find thinking that supports itself, it's the object of itself, independent of sensory and other perceptions. The mathematical thoughts are determined through their inner relations. This is a prelude to what the ego secretly yearns for but has not yet the courage to approach - the wider spiritual world, of which mathematical thinking is only a rigidified instance. In our ordinary consciousness perceptions and concepts are somewhat orthogonal - we connect them together but we can't say that they are organically connected (except for the perceptions of our own thinking). That's the intuitive reason to assume our concepts are only representations of reality (the 'real' thing causing the perceptions). And this is natural, the concepts seem like inert mineral-like entities. It is only through our own thinking that they are set in motion and connected to perceptions. We have no reason to assume concepts/ideas as having some creative role.

Thanks Ashvin. I should have remembered that one as I found it most helpful. I do wish I had better retention.

[AshvinP]

Thanks Ashvin. I should have remembered that one as I found it most helpful. I do wish I had better retention.

I have started to revisit these posts often, so that is a big reason why I can remember them more easily. The way I see it, the path of evolutionary development rhythmically expands in concentric time-circles out from where we are, as we integrate into our current thought-organism more of the inner forces embedded within what is experienced as the 'actual past' and the 'potential future', the stream of memory and the stream of hope. That is one reason why I think that, very generally speaking, the communications of spiritual realities most proximate to us will be the most fruitful for our inner development, as they draw on collective representations that we can more easily resonate with. Certain individuals may, for some karmic reason, be more inclined to work with rather ancient wisdom, but speaking as the average modern person who grew up in the 2nd half of the 20th century, more recent scientific and cultural references will act as better compasses to orient our intuitive thinking flow.

There are no hard rules here and plenty of exceptions I'm sure. But I would encourage people to revisit much older threads and work back through some of the posts, perhaps taking the time to inwardly engage with the activity-experiences mentioned. On top of what we have outright forgotten, there is probably a lot that we only think we remember well but where we actually missed a lot of key points and lines of reasoning. It is the same thing with Steiner's books and lectures, of course, and perhaps to a much greater extent. He is also within our general temporal proximity and spoke with a specific intent to anticipate modes of being, feeling, and thinking in the near future of humanity. Once we orient ourselves to spiritual experiences through the analogical reasoning on this forum, we should find it much easier to also digest what we find communicated through the more rigorous channels of 20th century esoteric science.

[ScottRoberts]

Ashvin, Federica,

You've provided much to think about, so I will be off thinking about it. One thing that has occurred to me is that difficulty concentrating is not my basic problem, rather it is a consequence. The deeper (as far as my awareness goes) is a lack of self-discipline. Setting and keeping to times to do exercises -- that sort of thing.

[Federica]

Ashvin, Federica,

You've provided much to think about, so I will be off thinking about it. One thing that has occurred to me is that difficulty concentrating is not my basic problem, rather it is a consequence. The deeper (as far as my awareness goes) is a lack of self-discipline. Setting and keeping to times to do exercises -- that sort of thing.

Yes, I also struggle with self-discipline. I think there's only one answer: the free human being.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, Federica,

You've provided much to think about, so I will be off thinking about it. One thing that has occurred to me is that difficulty concentrating is not my basic problem, rather it is a consequence. The deeper (as far as my awareness goes) is a lack of self-discipline. Setting and keeping to times to do exercises -- that sort of thing.

Right, and it can become a catch-22, because the importance and urgency of disciplining ourselves may not become apparent until we have delaminated our own soul-life to some extent through spiritual exercises. When we start to experience the dark depths of our own soul-life, we also start to resonate with the dark soul currents that structure the current Earthly situation. We start to feel that working on ourselves is something that truly affects the entire course of Earthly evolution at a critical juncture, when it could still go either way - soaring into the heights or plunging into the abyss. We don't simply think about it with our concepts of 'corruption', 'fragmentation', 'war', and so forth, but experience how the impulses underlying those things also live in us and steer the oscillations of our becoming, and how our "I" actually has the unsuspected power to smooth them out and spiral them upwards.

I think Cleric mentioned recently that it helps to imagine that the eyes of the spiritual world are upon us when we meditate, in compassion and love for us but also in the hope that our full potential will blossom and we will take up our redemptive roles in the Cosmos. That is in fact the reality of the situation - as Steiner said, 'humanity is the religion of the Gods'. They look at us with wonder and awe at the courage and faith it takes to bumble and fumble through our isolated and convoluted existence without succumbing to complete nihilism. We work our way through the harsh world with no idea of the Cosmic symphony that is always flowing through our inner life. We get knocked down by the vicissitudes of life at every turn but keep picking ourselves back up. These archetypal feelings can really inspire us to remain faithful and double down on our efforts.