Intuition of the material world

[Güney27]

Ps: steiner himself really describes the occult realities, in a way that we understand them as sensory and space like phenomena.
How can he don't know that people will get it wrong?

For example:

"This is clear to straightforward observation as an inner experience, but for the Initiate the astral body can become an outer reality. The Initiate sees this third member of man as an egg-shaped cloud which not only surrounds the body, but permeates it. If we “suggest away” the physical body and also the etheric body, what we shall see will be a delicate cloud of light, inwardly full of movement. Within this cloud or aura the Initiate sees every desire, every impulse, as colour and form in the astral body. For example, he sees intense passion flashing like rays of lightning out of the astral body.

In animals the basic colour of the astral body varies with the species: a lion's astral body has a different basic colour from that of a lamb. Even in human beings the colour is not always the same, and if you train yourself to be sensitive to delicate nuances, you will be able to recognise a man's temperament and general disposition by his aura. Nervous people have a dappled aura; the spots are not static but keep on lighting up and fading away. This is always so, and is why the aura cannot be painted."

Or

Anyone who wants to know the nature of the etheric body by direct vision must be able to maintain his ordinary consciousness intact and “suggest away” the physical body by the strength of his own will. The gap left will, however, not be empty; he will see before him the etheric body glowing with a reddish-blue light like a phantom, but with radiance a little darker than young peach blossom. We never see an etheric body if we “suggest away” a crystal; but in the case of a plant or animal we do, for it is the etheric body that is responsible for nutrition, growth and reproduction.

If I didn't came across this forum, I would understand this in a total different way.

Guney, these are interesting questions you pose. I will just comment on this one for now, with a quote I recently came across:

In the purely spiritual state, we do not experience a physical and etheric human organism as belonging to us as we do when we are sleeping. We experience these organisms in a totally different way. We experience their foundations in cosmic worlds. We experience how these organisms evolve out of the spiritual cosmos. We behold a spiritual cosmos. This spiritual cosmos is the spiritual part of the germ of the physical earthly organism with which we will be united in future. When we speak of a germ in this context we are describing something that is the opposite of what we call a germ in the physical sense. Usually, when we speak of “germ” in this connection, we mean the minute physical beginning of a growing, expanding organism or structure. But the spiritual organism, made up of powers or forces, which one sees in one's pre-earthly spiritual existence in connection with one's essence, is huge and continually contracts, as it were, until finally it grows together with the physical germ. We use the terms huge and minute in this context, but we must always bear in mind that the events in the spiritual world are spiritual. Space in the physical sense does not exist there. The terms are therefore used only as images for something spiritual, entirely non-spatial, and purely qualitative.

We will find many similar comments throughout the lectures, but given the sheer volume of material, it will seem like they are few and far between. This just means that it is up to us to make the effort to remember the proper relation here - spiritual relations are non-spatial, purely ideal/qualitative, yet these relations clearly can be condensed into sense-like, spatial phenomena. Consider how we can take temporal events of our lives and condense them into a photobook of images, side by side in space. Or imagine how you could take purely inner states of emotions, desires, and ideas and record them in a journal over the course of time. Then you have access to these temporally extended inner states in space. It is a similar principle at work with the quotes you shared above.

Imagine if Steiner put this bolded caveat into every other paragraph of a lecture he was giving - then people would complain the lectures take forever to get through and are too repetitive! Furthermore, a major part of our spiritual development comes from working through the resistance of ingrained spatial thinking habits so we develop much stronger inner forces. Remember, this is the whole telos of spiritual evolution - that beings gradually perfect their inner forces, take up their productive roles in Cosmic evolution, and provide the ideal support for new waves of beings to awaken and develop. It is because these concepts can so easily be taken in the wrong way that they can also become so inwardly productive when we orient toward them properly.

I would also remind of this post - viewtopic.php?p=22825#p22825. Did it make sense for you at the time?

I notice that when I think about how my thinking is structured by deeper layers, it becomes incomprehensible to me how my physical nature (physical body) comes into being, since, like thought, it also reaches a crystallized level.

I think unconsciously in a dualistic way because I experience a difference between the inner world and the outer sensory world.

But I can't explain it exactly.

And I still have the tendency to understand this currents abstract, like something we see before or minds eye.

I didn't manage do get rid of it yet.

[AshvinP]

Imagine if Steiner put this bolded caveat into every other paragraph of a lecture he was giving - then people would complain the lectures take forever to get through and are too repetitive! Furthermore, a major part of our spiritual development comes from working through the resistance of ingrained spatial thinking habits so we develop much stronger inner forces. Remember, this is the whole telos of spiritual evolution - that beings gradually perfect their inner forces, take up their productive roles in Cosmic evolution, and provide the ideal support for new waves of beings to awaken and develop. It is because these concepts can so easily be taken in the wrong way that they can also become so inwardly productive when we orient toward them properly.

I have often thought about this. Something that I've been considering but haven't tried it yet, is to make certain clarification, say, something like Steiner's quote, and place it in a colored frame. Then later in the text when we want to emphasize the caveats, we simply color the text in the same color. Maybe this could be a less intrusive way to remind the reader that they need to watch out for the usual cognitive habits.

That's an interesting idea and could work well. Actually, some time ago I was re-reading one of your old posts about how we need a 'neon sign' to avoid the Kantian trap and remember there is only the first-person perspective. That inspired me to create this in Photoshop





Although I think repeatedly posting this image in the middle of text would be experienced as quite intrusive

[Cleric K]

I notice that when I think about how my thinking is structured by deeper layers, it becomes incomprehensible to me how my physical nature (physical body) comes into being, since, like thought, it also reaches a crystallized level.

I think unconsciously in a dualistic way because I experience a difference between the inner world and the outer sensory world.

But I can't explain it exactly.

And I still have the tendency to understand this currents abstract, like something we see before or minds eye.

I didn't manage do get rid of it yet.

Guney, I think you are struggling with a false assumption here.

We need to be very clearly aware that there is phenomenological distinction between sense perceptions and mental/memory images. If this wasn't the case we wouldn't even have different concepts for them in the first place.

I know that it is very fashionable today to say that reality is 'mental' but this only smears out the phenomenological facts. We're putting ourselves in an impossible situation if we imagine that the physical world crystalizes from our human thoughts and imagination. Nothing in the given suggests this. The sense that we're constrained in a physical world is not false. Our philosophies and theories about the nature of this physical world may be false but our sense of being submerged into something quite real, which constrains us in fundamental ways, is a simple fact of experience.

The first step is to simply differentiate the physical bodily sensations from our mental images. When we meditate we don't try to imagine that the physical body exists only in our thoughts. Instead we let the physical spectrum go. It doesn't disappear from existence but it becomes a periphery while we concentrate in the mental image. The true nature of this sensory spectrum is known only at the highest form of cognition - Intuitive. Only at that stage we can really understand the Cosmic sensory spectrum as reflection of ideal activity. This activity belongs, however, to the highest beings. It can be said that from the perspective of these beings, the sensory spectrum of the Cosmos does indeed feel like a reflection of their intuitive will. But this is not so for us Earthly humans. We find that reflection only in our thinking. Everything else - the soul, life, physical principles - are like something within which our existence is embedded. Thus, to reach true Intuition of the sensory spectrum we need to go well beyond our personal life, beyond the national and planetary, and into the Cosmic.

So the 'dualism' that you experience is in its right place. It will be resolved but not by just fantasizing that the physical world crystalizes from our human imagination. In fact, you should consider yourself fortunate that you feel in this way. It's much more challenging to take the physical world seriously once again, after one has put so much effort to completely desensitize themselves about the qualitative difference between inner imagery and sensory perceptions.

Thus, you may leave the physical world alone for now. You certainly won't have any success if you try to see it as condensing from your thoughts. It is healthy that you feel this to be impossible. As I tried to explain in the fist post here, the most conductive approach is to think not about the physical world as some space filled with substances but as the Cosmic spectrum of color, sound, taste, smell, etc. and the nature of the constraints that limit our flow of becoming. It is these constraints that we can intuit at the highest levels. But before we reach that point we need to grow from within outwards. If we can't intuit the soul curvatures which constrain our thinking life, how could we know the even deeper archetypal and universal curvatures, which are responsible for the life and sensory realms?

[AshvinP]

Ps: steiner himself really describes the occult realities, in a way that we understand them as sensory and space like phenomena.
How can he don't know that people will get it wrong?

For example:



Or



If I didn't came across this forum, I would understand this in a total different way.

Guney, these are interesting questions you pose. I will just comment on this one for now, with a quote I recently came across:

In the purely spiritual state, we do not experience a physical and etheric human organism as belonging to us as we do when we are sleeping. We experience these organisms in a totally different way. We experience their foundations in cosmic worlds. We experience how these organisms evolve out of the spiritual cosmos. We behold a spiritual cosmos. This spiritual cosmos is the spiritual part of the germ of the physical earthly organism with which we will be united in future. When we speak of a germ in this context we are describing something that is the opposite of what we call a germ in the physical sense. Usually, when we speak of “germ” in this connection, we mean the minute physical beginning of a growing, expanding organism or structure. But the spiritual organism, made up of powers or forces, which one sees in one's pre-earthly spiritual existence in connection with one's essence, is huge and continually contracts, as it were, until finally it grows together with the physical germ. We use the terms huge and minute in this context, but we must always bear in mind that the events in the spiritual world are spiritual. Space in the physical sense does not exist there. The terms are therefore used only as images for something spiritual, entirely non-spatial, and purely qualitative.

We will find many similar comments throughout the lectures, but given the sheer volume of material, it will seem like they are few and far between. This just means that it is up to us to make the effort to remember the proper relation here - spiritual relations are non-spatial, purely ideal/qualitative, yet these relations clearly can be condensed into sense-like, spatial phenomena. Consider how we can take temporal events of our lives and condense them into a photobook of images, side by side in space. Or imagine how you could take purely inner states of emotions, desires, and ideas and record them in a journal over the course of time. Then you have access to these temporally extended inner states in space. It is a similar principle at work with the quotes you shared above.

Imagine if Steiner put this bolded caveat into every other paragraph of a lecture he was giving - then people would complain the lectures take forever to get through and are too repetitive! Furthermore, a major part of our spiritual development comes from working through the resistance of ingrained spatial thinking habits so we develop much stronger inner forces. Remember, this is the whole telos of spiritual evolution - that beings gradually perfect their inner forces, take up their productive roles in Cosmic evolution, and provide the ideal support for new waves of beings to awaken and develop. It is because these concepts can so easily be taken in the wrong way that they can also become so inwardly productive when we orient toward them properly.

I would also remind of this post - viewtopic.php?p=22825#p22825. Did it make sense for you at the time?

I notice that when I think about how my thinking is structured by deeper layers, it becomes incomprehensible to me how my physical nature (physical body) comes into being, since, like thought, it also reaches a crystallized level.

I think unconsciously in a dualistic way because I experience a difference between the inner world and the outer sensory world.

But I can't explain it exactly.

And I still have the tendency to understand this currents abstract, like something we see before or minds eye.

I didn't manage do get rid of it yet.

Guney,

I was writing a response to this, but it is essentially similar to what Cleric responded. When interacting with people about these ideas regarding spiritual activity, a sure sign for me that they are not on the right track, but are conceiving things abstractly and mystically, is that they feel like it is all easily comprehensible. We have seen that many times on this forum. The only way these novel intuitions would be so quickly and readily comprehensible is if they have been reduced to sensory intuition, where the latter is projected to Cosmic dimensions. In other words, they haven't truly transformed their intuition of 'how reality works', only embellished the old understanding. This becomes a form of pathological solipsism when taken to the extreme.

In my experience, there is a stage of the path where I felt to be in 'no man's land', understanding the depth structure of spiritual activity at a conceptual level, and understanding that the normal 'explanations' for experience are entirely flawed, but not realizing how exactly the new orientation connects with the flow of living experience. In a certain sense, we will always be in such a transition between the old paradigm and the new, but it won't always be experienced as so isolating and perplexing. In fact, the consciousness that we are continuously transitioning to new ways of understanding the flow of reality, which includes the rhythms of our own soul-life, will be experienced as the greatest blessing.

[Cleric K]

That's an interesting idea and could work well. Actually, some time ago I was re-reading one of your old posts about how we need a 'neon sign' to avoid the Kantian trap and remember there is only the first-person perspective. That inspired me to create this in Photoshop
Although I think repeatedly posting this image in the middle of text would be experienced as quite intrusive

Another possibility is to utilize the large arsenal of modern emojis by placing them at key points.

[Lou Gold]

Thanks Cleric!

I would like to post one at my Facebook page to see how people might respond. Is it OK with you? If yes how would you like it to be credited?

Credited? You think you can get away with this by just crediting me? I want to be paid full royalties!

Please, Lou, use the images in any way you like, they are not 'mine' If someone's interested just point them to the website. But it might be a fun experiment to first post them without any mention and see if someone will guess their origin.

Cleric,

Thanks for the reference to Bing and the prompt.

I got stimulated by the flower image, skipped the AI adventure and made this one.

Thanks for the prompt of your comments.