Pictorial Thinking

[Federica]

Cultivating pictorial thinking

For example, you may have some plans for tonight. Usually we think verbally "When I get home I'll do this, I'll read that" and so on. You can try to make these plans entirely pictorially. Just picture yourself doing what you intend to do.

Great reminder, thanks Ashvin. I have tested the exercise, I’ve briefly pictured some minor actions I will take tonight. Has anyone else noticed a subtle, liberating feeling of relief coming with the directness of the pictures? It’s almost like any possible nuances of anticipation that may build up and charge the thought, are actually driven by the words, rather than by the pictures, or by the activity itself. It’s like pictorial thinking eliminates degrees of indirection, and gives more freedom, in terms of a more precise grasp on the future, and this precision/concreteness is of our own design.

Another thing I realize now, and didn’t notice when the exercise was initially shared, is that we can really do some unsuspected 'magic' with thinking, even when largely untrained. If thinking was simply a material process in a material brain, that could not be the case. Then, thinking would be flat, only submitted to physical laws, fully expected and non-willed. But since it’s a connecting process that continually flows through all embodiments of our extended presence across all Worlds, it is perfectly positioned to define our reality. The limit to this reality-creating capacity is not matter, but only the reality-creating capacity of other beings. Matter is a result of co-creative thinking, not its pre-condition.

So the pro-activeness we can inject in our perceptive flow of, say, our basic Sunday afternoon gestures in our living-room is a real experience. Feeling the weight of the imagined cup is a real experience, when we decide to do the exercise. If I can do it, everyone else can verify that the creativity of the gesture has the thickness of a choice, not the evanescence of a meta-cognitive layer that we may or may not cast over a supposedly pre-existing reality. The problem is that we're under attack by the current “ban on all thinking” and we may let our perceptual flow under the illusion that our thinking is (literally) only an after-thought.

[Cleric K]

Great reminder, thanks Ashvin. I have tested the exercise, I’ve briefly pictured some minor actions I will take tonight. Has anyone else noticed a subtle, liberating feeling of relief coming with the directness of the pictures? It’s almost like any possible nuances of anticipation that may build up and charge the thought, are driven by the words, rather than by the picture or by the activity itself. It’s like pictorial thinking eliminates degrees of indirection, and gives more freedom, in terms of a more precise grasp on the future, and this precision/concreteness is of our own design.

Another thing I realize now, and didn’t notice when the exercise was initially shared, is that we can really do some unsuspected 'magic' with thinking, even when largely untrained. If thinking was simply a material process in a material brain, that could not be the case. Then, thinking would be flat, only submitted to physical laws, fully expected and non-willed. But since it’s a connecting process that continually flows through all embodiments of our extended presence across all Worlds, it is perfectly positioned to define our reality. The limit to this reality-creating capacity is not matter, but only the reality-creating capacity of other beings. Matter is a result of co-creative thinking, not its pre-condition.

So the pro-activeness we can inject in our perceptive flow of, say, our basic Sunday afternoon gestures in our living-room is a real experience. Feeling the waight of the imagined cup is a real experience, when we decide to do the exercise. If I can do it, everyone else can verify that the creativity of the gesture has the thickness of a choice, not the evanescence of a meta-cognitive layer that we may or may not cast over a supposedly pre-existing reality. The problem is that we're under attack by the current “ban on all thinking” and we may let our perceptual flow under the illusion that our thinking is (literally) only an after-thought.

Great observations, Federica!

Let's also remind that the 'magic' goes to a whole new level when our thinking becomes prayer.

Prayer is something much more creative and interesting than the general conception of mumbling words addressed to unknown deity that may or may not be there. It's like picturing our tasks for the evening but also recognizing that there are so many things that are beyond our personal control. Thus the element of sacredness is added because we understand that things may not align with our possibly highly personal goals. We should always feel that we're picturing our becoming into a space of shared intentions and thus we always need the sense of musical harmony. To pray in the true sense we need also wisdom, we need to understand how reality works so that we can direct our energies in the best possible way, in harmony with the World's becoming.

Thus prayer is like pictorial thinking for the incoming flow but also with sacred feeling that our course may be corrected by deeper and wiser streams. Then this effect of experiencing calmness before certain events is even more pronounced. Even if they don't go in the way we expect, this inner flexibility, this sacred tolerance, very quickly allows us to fluidly reorient.

[AshvinP]

Cultivating pictorial thinking

For example, you may have some plans for tonight. Usually we think verbally "When I get home I'll do this, I'll read that" and so on. You can try to make these plans entirely pictorially. Just picture yourself doing what you intend to do.

Great reminder, thanks Ashvin. I have tested the exercise, I’ve briefly pictured some minor actions I will take tonight. Has anyone else noticed a subtle, liberating feeling of relief coming with the directness of the pictures? It’s almost like any possible nuances of anticipation that may build up and charge the thought, are actually driven by the words, rather than by the pictures, or by the activity itself. It’s like pictorial thinking eliminates degrees of indirection, and gives more freedom, in terms of a more precise grasp on the future, and this precision/concreteness is of our own design.

Another thing I realize now, and didn’t notice when the exercise was initially shared, is that we can really do some unsuspected 'magic' with thinking, even when largely untrained. If thinking was simply a material process in a material brain, that could not be the case. Then, thinking would be flat, only submitted to physical laws, fully expected and non-willed. But since it’s a connecting process that continually flows through all embodiments of our extended presence across all Worlds, it is perfectly positioned to define our reality. The limit to this reality-creating capacity is not matter, but only the reality-creating capacity of other beings. Matter is a result of co-creative thinking, not its pre-condition.

So the pro-activeness we can inject in our perceptive flow of, say, our basic Sunday afternoon gestures in our living-room is a real experience. Feeling the weight of the imagined cup is a real experience, when we decide to do the exercise. If I can do it, everyone else can verify that the creativity of the gesture has the thickness of a choice, not the evanescence of a meta-cognitive layer that we may or may not cast over a supposedly pre-existing reality. The problem is that we're under attack by the current “ban on all thinking” and we may let our perceptual flow under the illusion that our thinking is (literally) only an after-thought.

Thanks for sharing these observations, Federica. I agree with the feeling of relief you mention, although perhaps it's not as pronounced for me. In general, though, it is very relieving to pause the intellectual commentary as much as possible and weave in more supersensible currents of meaning. It is indeed magical how, a short time ago, this degree of freedom for using our spiritual activity to structure our perceptual flow would be completely unsuspected, mere dormant potential. Because of the self-imposed 'ban on all thinking', people go about feeling like many things simply happen to them spontaneously, randomly, etc., without realizing simple exercises such as these can invert that feeling and give a profound sense of creative responsibility within the perceptual flow.

I wanted to note here that, prior to the exercise, there were some important points made by Cleric about the vertical hierarchy of verbal thinking. Although we can pictorially express a relatively flat set of future tasks and goals, we can't easily express high ideals related to the virtues in the same way through ordinary pictorial thinking. For ex., if we want to picture the virtue of becoming more forgiving and generous toward others. For that, we would need to picture a whole series of interrelated events and intentions between beings, a mini legend or fairy tale of sorts. Verbal thinking allows the vertical degrees of freedom to abstract from the flattened interests into these higher-order layers of the spiritual hierarchy. That is related to what Cleric commented on the mood of prayer above. It is a way of integrating the two without collapsing the pictorial flow. Of course, that means we should have previously explored the vertical structure with our conceptual thinking, as Cleric noted.

That is what we also attain through Imaginative cognition. It's interesting how the latter moves from 3D perceptual representations to 2D, but by sacrificing that outer dimension, adds an inner dimension of meaningful depth to the otherwise flattened (in meaning) 3D pictures. Then we are weaving in images that relate to the whole vertical hierarchy of tasks to fulfill our incarnation.

[Güney27]

Today I spent some time in an exceptional state to get a feeling for my activity again.

The only thing I can say is that I can consciously produce thoughts, or even images, but I have no idea how.

I want to see a picture and it is there, but I don't know how it happens.


Does higher knowledge explain these details that I don't notice?

There has to be an intermediate step from intention to experience, right?

[AshvinP]

Today I spent some time in an exceptional state to get a feeling for my activity again.

The only thing I can say is that I can consciously produce thoughts, or even images, but I have no idea how.

I want to see a picture and it is there, but I don't know how it happens.


Does higher knowledge explain these details that I don't notice?

There has to be an intermediate step from intention to experience, right?

Guney,

I will comment briefly on this for now. In a certain sense, the whole rest of our Solar evolution will be unveiling the layers between our innermost intentions and our manifest experience. We could say that your intents, as you experience them now, are only the outermost circumference of this intentional sphere which emanates from a coherent Center. To put it in a semi-metaphor, let's say your individuality has the intention to incarnate on Earth so it can develop the capacity for concentration, the capacity to live in the exceptional state. Then it goes through many experiences of infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood - many pains and pleasures, sorrows and joys, heartbreaks and inspirations, failures and successes, careers and worldviews, etc. Finally, it stumbles into an esoteric resource and discovers the degree of thinking freedom to direct its forces back inwards and live in the exceptional state. In that sense, it is now experiencing something of its original intention in the concentrated state, but the whole depth of its journey and the true significance of that journey still remains in the subconscious.

The rest of the journey will be an entire gradient of exceptional states from the periphery back to the Center - spiritual activity coming to know more and more intimately the dynamics by which it involved itself in an Earthly stream of existence. But what does it mean 'to know'? It is exactly the experience of spiritual activity manifesting itself, to begin with in thought-images. To know, in the most intimate sense, is to manifest (think of how 'carnal knowledge' leads to new life). So we shouldn't expect 'knowledge' to come in the form of more detailed and subtle perceptions of the 'mechanism' by which our intents become thoughts (Eugene expressed a similar expectation in our previous discussions, for reference). We won't find any stepwise progression that we can perceive via higher cognition, that our spiritual activity traverses to become thoughts.

Rather, we come to feel more intimately involved in the ever-present depth layers of intuitive potential that are already manifesting our thoughts at the circumference. We awaken to how we already intended the events that led us into the vicinity and the act of doing concentration exercises. In so awakening, we also take greater hold of how the higher-order intents will continue to manifest in our lives. I know this is quite abstract and will seem like skirting the basic question of finding the details by which intent becomes manifest experience. But the first step in answering that question is deconditioning from expectations for answers that are simply impossible to find. We have to orient toward a new intuition of what it means 'to know'. In the intimate act of manifesting thought-perceptions within the exceptional state, you are already knowing the 'laws of reality' in a more direct way than any detailed theory of brains, quantum processes, dissociated alters, etc. could possibly provide. It is only a question of radiating that same sort of knowing into more expansive domains of the structured potential.

By the way, spiritual scientific research does provide what will seem like 'details' about the process of how intuitive intents become manifest perceptions, but if we always prioritize our life in the exceptional state, then these details will be found to be, not abstract descriptions of 'mechanisms', but natural testimonies for the living flow of inner experience we are already traversing with our spiritual activity. Remember what you discussed with Cleric in relation to the etheric body. As you explore those etheric degrees of freedom more, that is already deeper knowledge of the whole manifestation process. We should also explore these layers conceptually, in the study-meditate sense, to form 'future-memories' of the more holistic states. Even if we dont grasp all the details, the efforts will make the intuitive knowing process that much more enriched.

[Federica]

About the relevance of pictorial thinking, I would like to mention en passant a personal experience, to the attention of those who feel, like Lorenzo, that all these recurring discussions on the archetypal beings, the central role of thinking, the inner soul gestures etcetera, are just "unimpressive" philosophical speculations. Please know that - even in the case of someone like me, who is only at the very beginning of understanding the potential we are called to cultivate as human beings - these ideas have absolutely impressive potential, non only in purely introspective experience, but also in terms of physically observable, measurable phenomena. I have undergone a surgery today. In preparation of it, with the help of the many illustrations and encouragement offered in this forum, I have tried to imagine how I could seize the particular opportunity of this event and become more responsible of my perceptual flow, more present in the waves of meaning of existence, starting from mine, and more useful to the spiritual economy in which I am embedded. Something as rudimentary and small as the simple intention of doing my best, by creating some basic (surely feeble) first-person picturing, for example, not only has helped me feel more responsible and present, in a moment in which in general people wish for the opposite, but has also had some physical, objectively detectable effects. Of course, I'm not suggesting that it's worth paying attention to these ideas, so that we can extract some extra degrees of freedom in life, for our own egoistic benefit. I deem that such an attitude would destroy any true benefits and divert our trajectory in dark directions. I rather want to highlight that when we take thinking seriously, even only at the elementary stage of setting a trustful intention to show up consciously (as much as we can) in that collaborative (yes, Lorenzo) ideal work with higher beings, in which we are already embedded, then things change, in small but unmistakable ways. Not only in terms of thinking and feeling perceptions, but also in physical ones.
However, for those who are dominated by the thought that all this is not worth serious consideration, nothing of our very real interconnectedness with the higher intelligences will ever become clearer.

[AshvinP]

I would like to share a quote from Sergei Prokofieff that fits well with this pictorial thinking topic and what we have been discussing on the forum recently, in terms of approaching spiritual science with the inner gesture of 'study-meditate'.

***

In order to show how far the stage of study can lead us on the path of initiation, it is necessary to consider the following and to take a simple example -to begin with, an experience which most anthroposophists will remember, since it is connected with their first contact with Anthroposophy! One day a book of Rudolf Steiner's came into our hands, and we began to read, one page, two pages, or even twenty, until we came to a place which contained a thought or a picture which touched us so strongly that we were moved to the depths of our soul.

What does such an experience signify? If we ponder this question, it will emerge that in a deeper sense we already know what we have read here. In other words: at the moment of this experience we have the feeling that we already know what Anthroposophy is saying to us here, only that we have forgotten it for a while and are now beginning to recall it again.

This experience was also well known to Plato, who said that all knowledge is really a kind of remembering (amnesis).

That is the moment when the study of Anthroposophy begins to contain that quality which makes it the first stage of initiation. For we have now begun to realise that everything that one can find in Anthroposophy, the picture of man and of the cosmos, their evolution, human life on the Earth and after death in connection with the hierarchies, the laws of karma and reincarnation, and much more, all belongs to us. We already know these things, but through Anthroposophy we raise them to consciousness. This is an experience which can be compared with the kindling of an inner flame which suddenly illumines what already lies in the depths of our soul, albeit in an unconscious and forgotten form.

But what does study as the first stage of initiation signify from an esoteric point of view? Every true modern initiation has the task of leading the human individual into the spiritual world in full consciousness. And in the spiritual world there are no objects, no abstract forces or energies, but exclusively the spiritual beings of the ascending hierarchies. In this sense Rudolf Steiner spoke of how the second stage of initiation, that of Imagination, can lead to knowledge of, or a meeting with, the Third Hierarchy; the third, that of Inspiration, to a meeting with the Second; and the fourth, that of Initiation, to a meeting with the First or highest Hierarchy.¹

...

The fundamental experience described above of Anthroposophy as a kind of remembering sometimes stands in contrast to the difficulty that as the modern science of the spirit of humanity - it was initially given in a rigorously intellectual form. However, we come with time to realise that we should be deeply grateful to Rudolf Steiner for having given this knowledge in the objective form of pure thought, for only in this way can we remain wholly free as regards higher knowledge: thoughts do not compel.

...

If we study spiritual science and gradually learn to think in the way characterized above, we learn to think in a wholly new way, not only with our physical but with the etheric brain. For all anthroposophical concepts are connected not with physical but with supersensible realities. In this realm we are, to be sure, not as yet clairvoyant; but we are nevertheless already in the spiritual world if we no more than actively think Anthroposophy. In other words: if we use our ordinary thinking to understand not physical but spiritual realities, the possibility arises for the first time to leave our physical body in a fully conscious way. For by this means we attain what may be called sense-free thinking; and that is the surest and safest beginning of a modern path of initiation leading into the spiritual world, which we otherwise embark upon only after our death or unconsciously in sleep.

Nevertheless, even though the study of Anthroposophy has become an essential part of our life, giving us answers as to the deeper meaning of life and our destiny, answers without which we could no longer exist, we may still feel that our anthroposophical thoughts are of a somewhat abstract nature.

For Anthroposophy is on this level comparable to a new language which we endeavour to learn with all its difficulties. We first have to master the individual letters, then the words, grammatical rules and so on, before we are able to read the whole text which opens for us the gate into a completely new world.

Thus one may say: in Anthroposophy we learn a language whose words are hidden in all things of the world; they are the spirit sleeping in everything, which waits to be deciphered, understood and liberated by man's newly won knowledge. But in order to achieve this, we must at this stage as a first step take up Anthroposophy in a conceptual form before we can make the next step.

Then we must learn in a second step to experience Anthroposophy in an inwardly artistic way, that is, transform its thoughts out of our own strength into pictures and imaginations. In this way spiritual science becomes for us a great work of art, a mighty drama which embraces the whole world, which is far more magnificent than for example Goethe's Faust or Dante's Divine Comedy and which above all has the quality that we do not merely observe it on the stage as spectators in comfortable seats but ourselves fully participate in it and are, moreover, the principal actors. By experiencing Anthroposophy in this way, we become capable of passing through the entire fullness of feelings from joy and bliss to grief and despair. And if we have come so far along this path that each time that - in our devotion to the study of Anthroposophy - we are capable of transforming through our own soul-forces the thoughts of spiritual science into living pictures or imaginations which truly take hold of all our feelings and sensations, we shall gradually observe that a wholly new faculty is unfolding within us: the faculty of living in feelings which have developed in complete independence from our physical body.

-Sergei Prokofieff, The Heavenly Sophia and the Being of Anthroposophia

[Lou Gold]

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 1:49 pm
Cultivating pictorial thinking

For example, you may have some plans for tonight. Usually we think verbally "When I get home I'll do this, I'll read that" and so on. You can try to make these plans entirely pictorially. Just picture yourself doing what you intend to do.

Yup! And it be done in an auditory way with tones, rhythms and harmonies.

[Federica]

I would like to share a quote from Sergei Prokofieff that fits well with this pictorial thinking topic and what we have been discussing on the forum recently, in terms of approaching spiritual science with the inner gesture of 'study-meditate'.

(...)
-Sergei Prokofieff, The Heavenly Sophia and the Being of Anthroposophia

Thanks, Ashvin. Prokofieff's description of how we bring into consciousness the Anthroposophy that already lies in the depths of our soul reads like a heartfelt expansion on what Cleric condensed here:

To grasp the nature of Saturn, Sun, Moon conditions, the bodies and so on, is actually not so difficult. We only need to unlearn certain cognitive habits of our mechanistic age and approach the ideas without prejudice and with living participation. It's not so difficult because these fundamental realities are present in each one of us as our most immediate essence.

As a side question, I was wondering whether reading Prokofieff has been helpful to clarify the controversy involving Tomberg that we discussed in the thread On Symbolic Ordering, Theology, and Hierarchical Mystagogy, to reconcile their respective visions?

[Güney27]

I would like to share a quote from Sergei Prokofieff that fits well with this pictorial thinking topic and what we have been discussing on the forum recently, in terms of approaching spiritual science with the inner gesture of 'study-meditate'.

***

In order to show how far the stage of study can lead us on the path of initiation, it is necessary to consider the following and to take a simple example -to begin with, an experience which most anthroposophists will remember, since it is connected with their first contact with Anthroposophy! One day a book of Rudolf Steiner's came into our hands, and we began to read, one page, two pages, or even twenty, until we came to a place which contained a thought or a picture which touched us so strongly that we were moved to the depths of our soul.

What does such an experience signify? If we ponder this question, it will emerge that in a deeper sense we already know what we have read here. In other words: at the moment of this experience we have the feeling that we already know what Anthroposophy is saying to us here, only that we have forgotten it for a while and are now beginning to recall it again.

This experience was also well known to Plato, who said that all knowledge is really a kind of remembering (amnesis).

That is the moment when the study of Anthroposophy begins to contain that quality which makes it the first stage of initiation. For we have now begun to realise that everything that one can find in Anthroposophy, the picture of man and of the cosmos, their evolution, human life on the Earth and after death in connection with the hierarchies, the laws of karma and reincarnation, and much more, all belongs to us. We already know these things, but through Anthroposophy we raise them to consciousness. This is an experience which can be compared with the kindling of an inner flame which suddenly illumines what already lies in the depths of our soul, albeit in an unconscious and forgotten form.

But what does study as the first stage of initiation signify from an esoteric point of view? Every true modern initiation has the task of leading the human individual into the spiritual world in full consciousness. And in the spiritual world there are no objects, no abstract forces or energies, but exclusively the spiritual beings of the ascending hierarchies. In this sense Rudolf Steiner spoke of how the second stage of initiation, that of Imagination, can lead to knowledge of, or a meeting with, the Third Hierarchy; the third, that of Inspiration, to a meeting with the Second; and the fourth, that of Initiation, to a meeting with the First or highest Hierarchy.¹

...

The fundamental experience described above of Anthroposophy as a kind of remembering sometimes stands in contrast to the difficulty that as the modern science of the spirit of humanity - it was initially given in a rigorously intellectual form. However, we come with time to realise that we should be deeply grateful to Rudolf Steiner for having given this knowledge in the objective form of pure thought, for only in this way can we remain wholly free as regards higher knowledge: thoughts do not compel.

...

If we study spiritual science and gradually learn to think in the way characterized above, we learn to think in a wholly new way, not only with our physical but with the etheric brain. For all anthroposophical concepts are connected not with physical but with supersensible realities. In this realm we are, to be sure, not as yet clairvoyant; but we are nevertheless already in the spiritual world if we no more than actively think Anthroposophy. In other words: if we use our ordinary thinking to understand not physical but spiritual realities, the possibility arises for the first time to leave our physical body in a fully conscious way. For by this means we attain what may be called sense-free thinking; and that is the surest and safest beginning of a modern path of initiation leading into the spiritual world, which we otherwise embark upon only after our death or unconsciously in sleep.

Nevertheless, even though the study of Anthroposophy has become an essential part of our life, giving us answers as to the deeper meaning of life and our destiny, answers without which we could no longer exist, we may still feel that our anthroposophical thoughts are of a somewhat abstract nature.

For Anthroposophy is on this level comparable to a new language which we endeavour to learn with all its difficulties. We first have to master the individual letters, then the words, grammatical rules and so on, before we are able to read the whole text which opens for us the gate into a completely new world.

Thus one may say: in Anthroposophy we learn a language whose words are hidden in all things of the world; they are the spirit sleeping in everything, which waits to be deciphered, understood and liberated by man's newly won knowledge. But in order to achieve this, we must at this stage as a first step take up Anthroposophy in a conceptual form before we can make the next step.

Then we must learn in a second step to experience Anthroposophy in an inwardly artistic way, that is, transform its thoughts out of our own strength into pictures and imaginations. In this way spiritual science becomes for us a great work of art, a mighty drama which embraces the whole world, which is far more magnificent than for example Goethe's Faust or Dante's Divine Comedy and which above all has the quality that we do not merely observe it on the stage as spectators in comfortable seats but ourselves fully participate in it and are, moreover, the principal actors. By experiencing Anthroposophy in this way, we become capable of passing through the entire fullness of feelings from joy and bliss to grief and despair. And if we have come so far along this path that each time that - in our devotion to the study of Anthroposophy - we are capable of transforming through our own soul-forces the thoughts of spiritual science into living pictures or imaginations which truly take hold of all our feelings and sensations, we shall gradually observe that a wholly new faculty is unfolding within us: the faculty of living in feelings which have developed in complete independence from our physical body.

-Sergei Prokofieff, The Heavenly Sophia and the Being of Anthroposophia

Thank you Ashvin.

To have a concrete example, how would you picture karma or reincarnation?
Or the human being in the process of taming his animal (astral)?

There are many concept in Ss which are temporal, how should you flatten them out into pictures?


Aren't pictures in a sensory manner still coupled to the physical brain?

Why steiner didn't write poems instead, it would be an more artistic way of communicating higher truths.