Intuition of the material world

[Güney27]

What was just discussed in the other thread is very interesting for everyone who is involved in spiritual science.

People try to understand Ss topics by thinking through them in order to get a new picture of reality bit by bit.

Most of humanity sees itself as a being living inside a body, living in an objective world that is outside of oneself.

What is the world around us from a Ss perspective?
And what is our body in relation to it?

Symbolically, one could say that the external world is a reflection of the spiritual and our body, which symbolizes our individuality.


I struggle to properly understand the world and the human body (generally the material world) from a Ss perspective.

I think it is important, before talking about ancient Saturn, to have a reasonable intuition about the perceptual world in which we consciously think, and in which we want to understand our role.

[lorenzop]

Good question. I hope that those who post remember that old adage: “It takes few words to speak the truth.”

[Cleric K]

What was just discussed in the other thread is very interesting for everyone who is involved in spiritual science.

People try to understand Ss topics by thinking through them in order to get a new picture of reality bit by bit.

Most of humanity sees itself as a being living inside a body, living in an objective world that is outside of oneself.

What is the world around us from a Ss perspective?
And what is our body in relation to it?

Symbolically, one could say that the external world is a reflection of the spiritual and our body, which symbolizes our individuality.


I struggle to properly understand the world and the human body (generally the material world) from a Ss perspective.

I think it is important, before talking about ancient Saturn, to have a reasonable intuition about the perceptual world in which we consciously think, and in which we want to understand our role.

If we have to answer in few words, as Lorenzo suggests, then necessarily the few words would sound more like a riddle or a task for meditation, rather than an explanation. A perfect example is what Ashvin quoted in the other thread: “Your life between birth and death will become eye and ear for you, it will constitute your organs between death and rebirth.” Here’s a truth spoken in few words. But I guess this is not what people expect. So I’ll have to use a little more than a few words but still try to keep it minimal.


To understand the physical world we need to question our preconceived assumptions. Just like we can never solve the hard problem of consciousness if we a priori (and possibly quite unconsciously) accept that consciousness emerges from matter, so we can’t understand the physical world if we a priori accept it to be some premeditated arena into which our consciousness has been inserted.

If we understand PoF then we know that within the givens of our existence we have a metamorphosis of a spiritual state of being. This is the certain fact which is independent of anything that we may philosophize about its ‘explanation’.

Then the question is no longer ‘what is the physical world’ but ‘what are the constraints and laws within which my existential state metamorphoses.’

This does not imply that the world is simply imagined. The volume of our body which we experience from within is a fact of experience. When we spread out our limbs we have the intuition of space. This should in no way lead us to conclude that space is fundamental. Rather, we should again ask: what are the constraints that give the concrete form of my experience? For example, we can imagine the kinesthetic sense of our leg as some kinesthetic qualitative ‘pixels’ that we feel in that spatial configuration. Then we can ask “Why do these ‘pixels’ always feel in this configuration? Why don’t they jump from time to time and feel as if my leg is attached to my head or somewhere out in space?”

Part of the answer to these questions would come if we could conceive what would be the state of existence which is not yet constrained in such a way. And this is the reason why we talk about the ancient Saturn condition. Even though we call it ancient, it is still here within us. Without knowing, people today try to intuit this condition when they speak of ‘pure consciousness’ but since they are satisfied only by the most rudimentary intuition about it and stop any further investigation, unsurprisingly, the whole question of the physical world remains as enigmatic as ever. They best they come upon is something like "Well, pure consciousness just dreams the world." Like if this gives any better explanation compared to "God created the world in six days and had some rest on the seventh."

All this will be very simplified, but to get some intuition of this primordial condition we have to imagine color, sound, warmth and so on, as liberated from their present configurations. We should altogether forget about the outer world, bodies and so on. Existence in this state is purely spiritual. The Cosmos is an inner Cosmos. Not that there’s an ‘outer’ Cosmos at this stage, but this needs to be stated in order to avoid our automatic reflex to imagine things from the outside. The contents of our existence consist, as it were, of potential color ‘pixels’, sound ‘pixels’, kinesthetic ‘pixels’, etc. spread and superimposed everywhere, rhythmically pulsating. These colors are not perceptions of the ‘real’ world on the ‘opaque side’ of spiritual existence – this is what the contents of existence consist of. Of course, there are so many things that can be misunderstood here, and my answer is already much more than a few words, so let’s see what will happen if things are not substantiated from more sides.

I guess it should be obvious where this is going. Imagine a kind of ‘wavefunction’ or attractor such as what we discuss with Cosmin. Imagine that this Cosmos of superimposed color, sound and so on, is constrained in such a way that there’s ‘probability’ to find color pixels ‘here’, kinesthetic pixels ‘there’ in the shape of a leg and so on. This doesn’t mean that only the inner pixels of our own body exist. But for some reason this constellation of pixels is what is encompassed in our consciousness.

Now the whole question becomes – what is the nature of these constraints? We certainly don’t find them within the pixels themselves. In the pixels we only find the finished fact – that these pixels are indeed constrained. The few-words answer would be – to find the nature of these constraints we can only start by exploring the nature of the constraints within which the thought-pixels are constrained. If we gain intuition about the nature of the invisible ideal (of the nature of meaning) ‘wavefunction’ which makes one thought ‘more probable’ than another, when this path is pursued further and after we pass the region of constraints experienced as sympathies and antipathies, we’ll also reach what constrains our leg pixels, in a way similar to what constrains our thought-pixels.

[AshvinP]

What was just discussed in the other thread is very interesting for everyone who is involved in spiritual science.

People try to understand Ss topics by thinking through them in order to get a new picture of reality bit by bit.

Most of humanity sees itself as a being living inside a body, living in an objective world that is outside of oneself.

What is the world around us from a Ss perspective?
And what is our body in relation to it?

Symbolically, one could say that the external world is a reflection of the spiritual and our body, which symbolizes our individuality.


I struggle to properly understand the world and the human body (generally the material world) from a Ss perspective.

I think it is important, before talking about ancient Saturn, to have a reasonable intuition about the perceptual world in which we consciously think, and in which we want to understand our role.

Guney,

I will offer a more abstract consideration of your questions. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind we still aren't speaking of metaphysical 'essences' of the sensory world or body, but rather the constraints and possibilities for our metamorphosing state of being that Cleric mentioned. All of this is based on ideas already highlighted by Cleric before in various contexts.

You may remember the metaphors to convolutions, folds, etc., which are all a way of pointing to what SS calls the ancient stages of development - Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth. It's interesting to note how we find ourselves in a fourfold situation today in so many different ways - the four dimensions of spacetime, the four kingdoms of Nature (mineral, plant, animal, man) the four elements (fire, air, water, earth), the four ethers, the four cardinal directions, the four forces of our soul life (willing, feeling, thinking, sensing), the four sheaths (physical, etheric, astral, mental), and so on. We could go on endlessly with these. Fundamentally these all reflect the four stages of consciousness - intellectual (4th, sensing-thinking), imaginative (3rd, thinking-feeling), inspired (2nd, feeling-willing), and intuitive (1st, pure willing).

It is only at the intellectual stage that we experience an 'outer' spatial world in clear contrast to our "I" as an observer, as we do now. With each added dimension, we can say the purely ideal ('Subjective') existence becomes increasingly convoluted in life processes, soul processes, and sensory-thought processes. Again, we are speaking of these processes as phenomenological constraints on our metamorphosing state of being. Each new 'dimension' is like adding a mirror or another arm of a pendulum, which eventually results in our complicated spatial world where perceptions seem thin and flattened, and space seems to extend out to infinite distances. That is a direct result of being immersed in the 4th convolution (related to 3D perception). Prior to this, the 'dimensions' should be conceived as purely temporal constraints. For ex., if I want to transform my state from age 7 to age 21, I must first pass through the experiences of age 14.

As has been previously discussed, each convolution into a new 'dimension' of constraining processes embeds the previous constraints within it through the process of recapitulation. With each new layer of reflected activity, the pure Subject decoheres into frictional relations, cross-conflicting intents, that we finally experience as the 'sensory world' and 'physical body' which restricts our palette of possible states in not only temporal but also spatial way. It is at the 4th intellectual stage that all the prior stages are spatialized and thus we experience the sensory world as weaved out of these infinite fourfold relations. So each dimension wraps everything that has existed so far. This is critical to keep in mind because it also elucidates the relationship between the 'subjective life' and the 'objective world' we experience today.

What we call 'subjective inner life' from the perspective of the 4th fold (intellectual) are all the three prior folds (intuitive, inspired, imaginative) that are embedded within the 4th. In other words, it is these prior folds, that are higher-order Subjective perspectives, that make our objective sensory consciousness in the 4th fold possible. Since we are completely merged with the prior folds, we lose consciousness of them and simply make use of them to will, feel, think, and sense, which gives rise to the 'objective world' and all its fourfold relations. So the constraints of the Cosmic intuitive, inspired, and imaginative processes are what we experience as the objective 'sensory world' and 'physical body'.

From within the 4th sensing-thinking fold, our spirit finally gains the capacity to start creatively and morally working on loosening the higher-order constraints, which is also the process of re-spiritualizing (resurrecting) the whole sensory world and physical bodies. Something of the highest intuitive will forces has embedded itself in our thinking activity and from here we can leverage those forces to gradually elucidate the inner nature of the prior folds. This is all simply an abstract scaffolding that our intellect can use to gain a dim intuition of the process by which we got to our current physical-spatial experience. If we want to penetrate this framework with living thoughts, we also need to seek the experiential nature of the constraints that Cleric highlighted.

[Lou Gold]

Maybe it's like a virgin contemplating sex.

[Cleric K]

Here's something I've been playing with. I won't go into explanations now but just as something to contemplate (maybe in the sense Lou suggests )

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MfX3Df

[Federica]

Good question. I hope that those who post remember that old adage: “It takes few words to speak the truth.”

Lorenzo, I am afraid you are under the influence of - as Steiner would say - "the demon who loves the easy path".
You will admit it, it's quite convenient to rest on that old adage. Then it's fine to live from day to day and let life flow through us. Then we don't need to think too hard.

Don't you sometimes have the sense that we might have been given this opportunity of life on Earth in order to work with effort to discover the truth, rather than to be happy with few evocative words and call it a good life?

[Lou Gold]

Good question. I hope that those who post remember that old adage: “It takes few words to speak the truth.”

Lorenzo, I am afraid you are under the influence of - as Steiner would say - "the demon who loves the easy path".
You will admit it, it's quite convenient to rest on that old adage. Then it's fine to live from day to day and let life flow through us. Then we don't need to think too hard.

Don't you sometimes have the sense that we might have been given this opportunity of life on Earth in order to work with effort to discover the truth, rather than to be happy with few evocative words and call it a good life?

Perhaps, for one who by nature is a thinker the hard achievement way would be to stop thinking, and, of course the reverse for someone else.

[lorenzop]

Good question. I hope that those who post remember that old adage: “It takes few words to speak the truth.”

Lorenzo, I am afraid you are under the influence of - as Steiner would say - "the demon who loves the easy path".
You will admit it, it's quite convenient to rest on that old adage. Then it's fine to live from day to day and let life flow through us. Then we don't need to think too hard.

Don't you sometimes have the sense that we might have been given this opportunity of life on Earth in order to work with effort to discover the truth, rather than to be happy with few evocative words and call it a good life?

The enjoyment of a cup of coffee or a sunset is as easy as falling off a log, and apparently, so did Jesus think of his path.
To make any kind of spiritual progress, or to understand spiritual progress, should not require rigorous philosophical thinking, or intuitions outside of one's daily experience. It should be explainable to a child.
Steiner, Cleric and Ashwin use flowery fancy phrases to create the false impression that spiritual progress has a steep entry, and that spiritual progress requires skills beyond the authentic inclinations of the mind and heart. As I've suggested in earlier threads - Steiner (PoF) is about creating a perceived need for High Priests.

[Federica]

Good question. I hope that those who post remember that old adage: “It takes few words to speak the truth.”

Lorenzo, I am afraid you are under the influence of - as Steiner would say - "the demon who loves the easy path".
You will admit it, it's quite convenient to rest on that old adage. Then it's fine to live from day to day and let life flow through us. Then we don't need to think too hard.

Don't you sometimes have the sense that we might have been given this opportunity of life on Earth in order to work with effort to discover the truth, rather than to be happy with few evocative words and call it a good life?

Perhaps, for one who by nature is a thinker the hard achievement way would be to stop thinking, and, of course the reverse for someone else.

I think that in our epoch nobody is a "thinker by nature" in the type of thinking that is necessary today. Conversly, a vast majority of us has a tendency to primarily seek pleasure, just like our animal relatives enjoy doing, when life allow. And it's easy to feel entitled to do the same, overlooking that we have been given additional potential for a reason.