lorenzop wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 6:54 pm
Thanks for this . . . re 'ideational activity' . . . if one is an idealist of any flavor, one has to admit to reality being an ideation, the movement\transformation of consciousness. For me it is a leap to get from abstract ideational activity to a Plan. Perhaps I could admit to reality having a 'bias'.
On an intellectual level, world events appear haphazard - and I can't imagine anyone having sufficient intelligence to perceive any pattern. I would suggest 'seeing' any Plan is more of an intuition.
Lorenzo,
We should differentiate between our personal feelings about the ideational patterns, which we may feel are bad or unhelpful for some reason, and our ability to discern the logical progression of the patterns themselves, independently of our feelings. Plenty of idealistic thinkers (without any reliance on occult research) have done the latter over the last few hundred years, such as Goethe, Schiller, Emerson, Hegel, Schelling, Lessing, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Gebser, Barfield, and many others. And practically all of Steiner's spiritual science is an extensive discernment of these patterns that repeat themselves at higher and higher (more morally perfect) stages in nature, culture, and our individual lives as ideational beings. We know for a fact that our own lives consist of a stream of intentional plans, which are first those of the family and culture we are raised into and then become our own individual intentions to some greater or lesser extent. We are also continually steered around by forces of Nature and, if we regard these as ideational in character, then they must also be intentional. Our normal sense of intuition of a 'Plan' is nothing other than a dim resonance with these higher-order intentions of the Cosmos and Nature. It is true, however, that the details of this Plan intuition are still being worked out through our own ideational activity - every little detail isn't predetermined by the Plan - and we generally experience evil or suffering when the details
we have worked out don't resonate very well with the overarching intentions.
The main problem is, to begin with, we have stopped paying attention to the course of our own lives and how our decisions influence our states of being over various time frames. That is what our ideational capacity allows us to do - and it is presupposed in all domains of therapeutic significance such as nutritional science, psychology, stress management, and all similar fields - but the average person simply doesn't take advantage of this attentional capacity in any holistic way. We rely on the piecemeal research of other people and fail to lay hold of our own inner creative potential. If we start paying more attention to various daily decisions like what we eat, how much eat, when we eat, what we do before sleeping, what we do when awakening, what we expose ourselves to, how much screen time we have, what patterns of thinking and feeling and desiring that we indulge in, how we interact with other people in speech and deed, and a million other such factors, then we have the basis to start discerning patterns that are relevant to our states of being. Our intuitive organism is highly sensitive to these patterns if we give it the proper 'dataset' to work with. We will notice that many states of being throughout our day that we previously felt were determined by nature or random bad luck - up to and including states of physical illness - are actually directly related to our own intentions and manifestations of those intentions. Again, none of this requires heightened cognitive capacities to begin with, as Federica also said above, although the development of such capacities will awaken us even further to these rhythmic patterns that are
always there.
When we speak of the 'rhythms' of the Cosmos, of the Earth's seasons and the plant kingdom, of the migrations in the animal kingdom, of human culture in the domains of economics, politics, science, and so forth, these are all pointing us towards the patterns of ideational activity at various scales of existence. When we learn to heighten our intuitive resonance with the ideational patterns in our own life, through our attentional capacity, we will naturally start to discern them clearly in the outspread World around us as well. What we call "instincts" In the animal and human kingdoms are also ideational patterns that have been encrusted into automatic rhythms which have minimal creative potential since they remain within a narrow scope of self-interest, oriented only towards past forms of pleasure and pain. Intuition is simply instinct that has consciously expanded its scope of interest to encompass all beings and their harmonious development, oriented towards future potential qualities and capacities that can work creatively in the World. All instinct is in the intentional process of being transmuted to intuition, which is a re-awakening to its original essence, just as surely as the past flows into the present and future. The only question is how conscious of this flow we will be as it happens.
Seeing. We might say that the whole Omega Point of life lies in that verb - if not ultimately, at least essentially. Fuller being is closer union: such is the kernel and conclusion of this book. But let us emphasize the point: union increases only through an increase in consciousness, that is to say in vision. And that, doubtless, is why the history of the living world can be summarized as the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is always something more to be seen. After all, do we not judge the perfection of an animal, or the supremacy of a thinking being, by the penetration and synthetic power of their gaze? To try to see more and better is not a matter of whim or curiosity or self-indulgence. To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything that makes up the universe, by reason of the mysterious gift of existence. And this, in superior measure, is man's condition.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1930)
We have only one option: in examining the manifestations of our age, we must penetrate them with sufficient breadth and depth that we do not come under their demonic and destructive spell. We must not focus our view merely on these phenomena, but rather on the humus of the decaying world beneath, where the seedlings of the future are growing, immeasurable in their potential and vigor. Since our insight into the energies pressing towards development aids their unfolding, the seedlings and inceptive beginnings must be made visible and comprehensible.
- Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin (1949)
The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history. The use of the outer creation is to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance... This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; “Can these things be, And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, Without our special wonder?” for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle.
There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)