Cleric K wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 9:35 amYes, it all boils down to not confusing "ordinary, healthy human understanding" with "abstract mental modeling". For example, when we speak of Saturn warmth, it would be abstract if we think "This warmth is something that can only be known by clairvoyant consciousness. Until then, I'll use an abstract placeholder in my mind, something that I'll expect to find the corresponding reality for, only in the future." This is not what "ordinary, healthy human understanding" implies. There's nothing preventing us from focusing on the same warmth that the clairvoyant speaks of, in our ordinary consciousness. The difference is only that the latter experiences this element in greater purity, without being overlaid with continuously collapsing (in QM sense) thoughts. Yes, this doesn't mean that focusing on this inner element can happen without at least a little effort. It certainly isn't something that outer life has prepared us for. Yet there's nothing preventing us from doing so without losing the ground beneath our feet - that is, the support of our bodily environment. This holds true even when we read about the various beings. For example, when we read about Spirits of Form, instead of picturing some abstract mental images of the supposed beings, we can try to feel the forces of Intelligence that support the structure of the inner Cosmos. Just like our ideal intent to picture a cube, acts like lines of force around which our imagination coalesces, so we should conceive of non-local ideal intents that act like lines of force along which the inner dreamscape stabilizes. Of course, from a secular perspective there's nothing 'ordinary' in trying to conceive of such things. They even sound extraordinary, fantastic. Yet the fact remains that if we approach these ideas with open mind, there's nothing preventing us from aligning our normal thinking being with them. We may not have the sensitivity to discern the inner ideal life that manifests as such lines of force, but our thinking being can surely align with its intuitive curvatures. If we say that we can't understand it, and we are honest, we'll have to admit that we don't understand it simply because we don't allow ourselves to. We may have the most varied excuses for this: more data is needed, we doubt, it is not confirmed by the leading scientists, and so on. Yet none of this is a principle impossibility. These are only excuses to justify holding the communications as ghostly and abstract mental images. If we allow ourselves to, we can perfectly well understand what would it mean for a higher-order Intelligence to support the structure of the dreamscape. Not abstractly but in the same way the clairvoyant understands it. This understanding will need to be purified and refined, it will have to be cleansed from many anthropomorphic admixtures, but the fact remains that we can perfectly well comprehend it while still in the bodily context.Federica wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 9:39 pm What is meant by "ordinary, healthy human understanding" may be confusing. It reminds me of a recent discussion about "practical thinking", what Steiner meant by it. Here again, ordinary human understanding could be interpreted as the intellect, but it's not so, right? Maybe it could be said that one can practice concentration, phenomenology, study-meditation, and so realize the shape of one's soul nature and entanglements, learn how to exist consciously independent of the physical body, meet the Guardian, and be largely non clairvoyant in the sense Steiner uses the word here. Is this correct?
"Ordinary, healthy human understanding" shouldn't be mistaken for understanding that is grounded entirely in sensory concepts. The healthy human being is a spiritual being. As such, understanding the spiritual depth of reality is our innate capability. Thinking in concepts about the spiritual depth is just as natural as conceptualizing the contents of the senses.
Yes, it’s an inner ‘click’ in thinking mode that initially sounds mysterious, feels veiled. I believe those optical illusions in which two distinct images are concealed make for a good metaphor for that ‘click’. Most people naturally see one image, struggle to see the other, but can work it out, with effort. Maybe the thinking efforts, or gestures, that realizes what Steiner calls “healthy and ordinary human thinking” are comparable to the inner tentative stretches in unknown directions we have to engage to find the second image in such optical illusions. There, it’s very clear how our preferences and habits are challenged in an initially mysterious way. Still, it’s doable, and we know what it means when we suddenly break into the other mode, the one that’s required to discern the concealed image. There’s a sort of small ‘breakthrough’ into the world of the concealed image and we can feel how the effort literally consists in trying to put the thinking intention in various tentative shapes, literal ideal shapes. Eventually, we put our cognition in a form that matches the ‘data’, and feel the inner click. 'Data' can be the elusive image in an optical illusion, or the description of Old Saturn, to be comprehended through a similar thinking gymnastic.