Pictorial Thinking

[AshvinP]

So the exceptional state, little by little, will descend in the normal experiential flow and become less and less exceptional.

Exactly, unless our inner vision board becomes an Apple Vision Pro, then even normal sensory life will become an 'exceptional state'





Which is not to say such technologies can't be redeemed, only this guy is probably not going to be contributing much

[Güney27]

Guney,

These are productive efforts and thoughts because they at least help you discern where your thinking is bumping into obstacles in this domain of study. Notice how, if you simply didn't make any such efforts, you wouldn't have any feedback for the factors steering your thinking this way or that way. This is why all deeper understanding begins with active thinking, probing the contours of meaning with our thoughts. Before we even get to the factors of temperament, emotions, and such, we have the factors of beliefs, assumptions, and habits of thinking based on those.

The bold comments suggest you are assuming the 'astral body' must be referring to some substantial object, similar to a brain with neural activity, that is responsible for the life of feelings. If we approach esoteric science with such an unwarranted conception, it is no wonder that we will remain perplexed and feel it is speaking of mysterious things that are simply beyond our ability to perceive and grasp.

At this point, it is probably helpful to shift focus from Steiner and his terminology to first-person phenomenological experience completely independent of terminology. You have been making progress with this approach before.

For ex., reconsider what Cleric wrote here:





So you see, we first have to decondition from our assumptions of what it means 'to know' something. What does it mean to know the physical body, which we generally feel is the most obvious part of our experience? It is not to simply see it in our visual field such as in a mirror, or to think about legs, arms, hands, feet, head, and so forth. Rather, it is the very inner experience of sensations that transform in a lawful way in response to our spiritual activity. Get a good feel for this - walk around your room and notice how colors, sounds, textures, perhaps even smells, transform in response to your intended activity and feedback on that activity. If the color experience with the meaning of 'wall' manifests in response to your activity, then this provides a basis to steer your walking in another direction (unless you intend to bump into it). The totality of such lawful sensory experiences, the constraints and possibilities we intuit from them, is what we abstractly label the 'physical body'.

Once we orient to this way of 'knowing' our physical body, we can see how the same thing applies to all other bodies. We don't even need to call them 'bodies', they could just as easily be called A, B, C, D or 1, 2, 3, 4 or sensory constellation, thinking-memory constellation, feeling constellation, and willing constellation. The point is that, no matter how we conceive or label our lawful transformation of experience, it will always differentiate into at least this fourfold structure. Our thinking-memory feeds back on our spiritual activity in a different way than our sensory experience. Regardless of my intent, it will remain daytime or nighttime in my visual field outside. On the other hand, I can remember the experience of nighttime during daytime and vice versa. I find even more degrees of freedom if my imagination is not tied to the constraints of memory and simply explores feelings and thoughts related to day or night.

We can go much further with these sorts of considerations that stay entirely within the givens of our temporally extended flow of experience, but I will pause here. Does this make sense for you and perhaps elucidate a way to think more phenomenologically (inwardly) about the fourfold human organization?

Wow.

I never thought about my body in a phenomenological way like this.

But I would say that emotions, memory's or spiritual activity are feel like the take place in my body.

So it feels like emotions are felt in the stomach and breast area.
Thinking in the head (brain).
Willing is harder to say.

So this activities are the causes for bodily activities.

But why would I say that there is a 'Emotion world'
with beings in it, which don't have a physical body.

There are leaps of faith in steiners work, coupled with phenomenological thinking.

Ss speaks about how the current state we live in came into being.
It talks about the mineral which we can see trough our sense organs, which fills a phantom, about reincarnation, about the Christ-being acting trough hirachies of non physical beings..........

Spiritual science should be grounded in spiritual experiences, I don't had experiences now which confirm what steiners says.
May you had them, but if you haven't, then you should at least be open to the possibility, that there can be error in these view.

Guney,

I think it would be helpful to pause and consider the state of your spiritual activity when moving through these posts. When you considered the inner experience of the physical body, or the paths of experience that Cleric mentioned in relation to the astral body, perhaps you had an experience that could be represented by this image, even for just a moment or two.





Your inner space was cloudy concerning all these terms, it felt like they were all just floating concepts and pictures. Then, for at least a moment, the inner sun breaks through and there is a flash of illumination, a feeling that everything becomes a bit more clear and more intimate to your stream of first-person experience. You feel your spiritual activity moving in completely novel directions, not simply conjuring up fantastical explanations for your experience, but probing the very grooves through which that experience flows.

But then you continue to think about these concepts and it's like your inner train has switched tracks - you are now remembering various things you encountered in Steiner's lectures and these are experienced as floating concepts and pictures again, everything becomes cloudy. You can't connect these pictures to your phenomenological experience and you start to wonder what relevance any of it has for practical life. Perhaps you start to feel like Lorenzo where the concepts about 'archetypal beings' and so forth are just nonsense and any attempt to explain how they can be sensibly related to is only further nonsense. (I'm sure it's not that bad for you, but still somewhere on the gradient of that underlying mood).

Now the state of your spiritual activity could be represented as such:





We should stop and reflect on how this whole progression is exactly the phenomenological experience of spiritual activity and its constraints that we are speaking of. Instead of simply flowing our activity through these states, oscillating from brief moments of clarity to labyrinthian paths of confusion, we can try to distance our activity from the rhythm and reflect on it, as we are doing now. Then we begin to realize more and more that the maze-like obstacles are things we consistently put in our own way. We start to probe the soul space that we were secretly desiring to keep in the dark.

"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light."

How is it that we love the darkness? Well, every time we try to meditate we experience this up close. We can hardly focus our attention for a minute before we are distracted in a million different directions. Yet this doesn't only happen when we meditate. It also happens when we are thinking through spiritual ideas, gaining ground and clarity with the phenomenological approach, and then suddenly distract ourselves with all sorts of doubts and fears and second-guessing. It is one thing to be attentive to and questioning of the ideas presented to us, seeking a better orientation to them, but another to positively throw ourselves off the course that's working and into a maze of irresolvable conundrums.

I am not saying this is at all unique to you. I can only speak of these things because I have come into intimate contact with my own inner tendency to self-sabotage in various ways. It is very characteristic on a spiritual path to feel torn between our upper luminous nature and our lower clouded nature. Yet when we are fortunate enough to experience the former, we need to warmly embrace it and not take it for granted. It is when we truly love the Light more than the darkness that the flashes of intuition and inspiration become more and more, deeper and deeper. Things that we felt were completely beyond the purview of our experience start to feel much more intimate and even obvious, as if, even if we had never come across the characterizations of esoteric science, we would still know them inwardly at some level.

So I would ask you to reflect on these inner states. See whether you feel the burning desire to experience more of the luminous flashes which will gradually deepen your intuitive orientation and clarity. We don't need to seek immediate confirmation of the deepest spiritual secrets. And when we feel that need, we should at least remain conscious that it is our love of the darkness acting up, not the Light.

I understand the distinction between the 2 natures. I have often experienced how I prayed a lot and my thoughts and feelings were purer and I was more calm.
I often experience the opposite (darkness), and when things become light-filled, the bad thoughts and feelings come to the darkness on their own, but not the light-filled ones.

It seems to me like you're trying to say that studying Ss is supposed to bring you to self-knowledge.

What should we do with the deepest secrets? Look at them neutrally until we work our way through them?

So I would ask you to reflect on these inner states. See whether you feel the burning desire to experience more of the luminous flashes which will gradually deepen your intuitive orientation and clarity. We don't need to seek immediate confirmation of the deepest spiritual secrets. And when we feel that need, we should at least remain conscious that it is our love of the darkness acting up, not the Light

What should we do with the deepest secrets? Look at them neutrally until we work our way through them?

We should stop and reflect on how this whole progression is exactly the phenomenological experience of spiritual activity and its constraints that we are speaking of. Instead of simply flowing our activity through these states, oscillating from brief moments of clarity to labyrinthian paths of confusion, we can try to distance our activity from the rhythm and reflect on it, as we are doing now. Then we begin to realize more and more that the maze-like obstacles are things we consistently put in our own way. We start to probe the soul space that we were secretly desiring to keep in the dark.

Ok, we study our own activity, in the exceptional state, while we study Ss.

Why is it that people, themselves encased in bodies, separated from the rest of the world, are commentators on a physical world independent of them?

These things are assumptions that have arisen through thinking and are exposed as such through Steiner's works.

And what spiritual progress comes from a phenomenological view of reality?

[Güney27]

You feel your spiritual activity moving in completely novel directions, not simply conjuring up fantastical explanations for your experience, but probing the very grooves through which that experience flows.

What do you mean with that, could you explain it more detailed?

[Federica]

So the exceptional state, little by little, will descend in the normal experiential flow and become less and less exceptional.

Exactly, unless our inner vision board becomes an Apple Vision Pro, then even normal sensory life will become an 'exceptional state'


Which is not to say such technologies can't be redeemed, only this guy is probably not going to be contributing much

Ouahh....

This is disturbing content for me, it makes the soles of my feet tingle
Yes please, let's go redeem this technology as soon as possible
By the way, I guess the topic is pending since a while ago and I will have to get back to it soon.

[AshvinP]

You feel your spiritual activity moving in completely novel directions, not simply conjuring up fantastical explanations for your experience, but probing the very grooves through which that experience flows.

What do you mean with that, could you explain it more detailed?

When you expressed, "Wow. I never thought about my body in a phenomenological way like this.", it was a testimony that your spiritual activity had explored the same experiences but was moving in a novel, more vertical, direction. It was considering the same experiences from a higher vantage point by including its own activity in the perceptual flow. We should note that well - this is the same physical body you have lived with your entire life, the same sensations you have been experiencing, the same transformations that occur in response to your activity. So what changed to give you a little bit deeper insight into the inner nature of this body? It wasn't that some new perceptions were added to your visual field or you had a flood of etheric visions about the physical body, but simply that you actively moved your spiritual activity in a direction orthogonal to normal thinking habits, where real-time spiritual activity is left in the blind spot.

But this is uncomfortable for us at first, like doing new exercises at the gym that work muscles we haven't worked before. If you have tried the nightly review of the day in reverse, you probably have felt a similar sense of uncomfortable strain. Thinking about our experiences in reverse, or from the perspective of others, is entirely orthogonal to our normal thinking habit. Yet this is how we gradually build up tolerance and adapt our thinking organism to new inner conditions. It is the same thing with the supersensible members and rhythms of the human organization (or planetary organization, etc.). These aren't speaking of things we have never experienced before. Quite the contrary, they are symbols for the lawfully transforming layers of experience our spiritual activity is always flowing through and making use of to orient itself to, function in, and shape the World.

We simply need to keep resisting the normal habits by maintaining a certain intensity to our thinking, like when we want to resist scratching a really frustrating itch. Of course, concentration exercises are the best way to cultivate that intensity. One thinking habit we should pay close attention to is the one that externalizes its obstacles. Every limitation we meet on the inner path is an opportunity to reflect on our inner state and work toward attuning it more to the living flow of reality. We can't do that if we externalize the limitation, however. Then it is like we are saying, "someone has put up a boundary to my thinking activity and it has nowhere left to go except through the same labyrinth it has been stuck in." We convince ourselves our activity is incapable of moving in a certain direction, so unsurprisingly our activity doesn't move in that direction. We ask for better and clearer 'explanations' for our experience but forget that the explanations we are seeking are embedded within that experience. The more we can resist this externalizing habit and use our limitations as feedback on how to adjust our inner configuration, the more unsuspected passageways will open up for our spiritual activity.

[Federica]

(...)
Also thank you for giving a test ride of the visual cues . I think this has potential. While I was reading, the encounter of the symbol felt like protein structure:



Necessarily, our language takes sequential form, just like the primary structure of the protein consists of a specific sequence of amino acids. I believe this is how most of the writings here feel for many - just as an endless string of words, without beginning or end, that just go on and on without anything happening. This however, as we have explained many times, is only because it is unsuspected that the value of these words only comes if through them we grasp an ideal secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure of the Word. The speaker assumes certain ideal form with their "I" which is then sequenced into words. Those reading can reconstruct the ideal form if the string of letters is folded in the proper way.

When I encountered the symbol it felt to me like the hydrogen bond in the image above. Even though the words are far apart in their primary (sequential) form, in their folded ideal form, they are closely related.

This is another area which will be so interesting for our future [/b](and we can even now glimpse something of it). Our thinking and speech become much more volumetric[/b]. This is really the result of the expanded etheric space that we develop through inner organization. When our spiritual activity begins to scientifically and artistically weave in this space, we indeed feel like in the Minority Report scene. Our inner auric volume becomes the most incredible interface to reality.

Thanks for the new insights, Cleric, and I’m glad the post was interesting in some way!
I've actually been searching for those interesting glimpses of volumetric thinking and speech you have mentioned. I got two aspirant examples of language volumetry. Does any of these work?

Quotes - When we use quotes, not to actually cite, but to signal a larger or different nuance of meaning for a given expression, it’s as if we built a railway switch at that point in the primary sequence, that opens the way to a short segment of secondary rail. Then we're switched back into the primary string. This eases the passage of meaning by providing a larger, more balanced semantic support. Perhaps this is a hint of volumetric use of language, since the mechanism is encoded in that same word by the quote symbol, working like a mini hydrogen bond?

Ashvin’s semi-metaphor in the compilation thread - Maybe you have used this concept as well, I don’t remember exactly point blank. A normal metaphor tells: keep going on this string of words, just expect the rest of the words to constellate with the previous ones to form a nexus as in this other string you are already familiar with. But a semi-metaphor doesn’t only display meaning but also nests it, in accord with the nested (or concentric, or hierarchic, or contextual) quality of reality. It signals: this long string of words is not going to draw an extensive random shape from start to end. Rather, a simple pattern is recognizable in it (the semi-metaphor) and the rest of the string is made of various functional iterations of that pattern. It speeds up understanding by highlighting the concentric idea.

Everything that we now investigate scientifically is gone through with very diminished consciousness. For example, we speak of the anatomical parts but they remain as dim sensory pictures of fleshy organs. In the possibly not too distant future, when we open an anatomical book from, say, the 19th century, it will act for us as a shortcut for clairvoyant experiences. We'll look at the drawing of some bone and say "Hmm, let me see". Then we surf through the etheric forces, find the bone within ourselves and its story in the Cosmic evolutionary process.

Oh yes, I know the first-person perspective of that diminished consciousness I’ve recently been staring at anatomical representations, wondering precisely that: what is the meaning of this form; what I’m supposed to grasp from these seemingly functionally useless details that I’m not grasping; how can I DIY an understanding here? Gladly, I then remembered what you said many times about the role of prayer.

[Cleric K]

Thanks for the new insights, Cleric, and I’m glad the post was interesting in some way!
I've actually been searching for those interesting glimpses of volumetric thinking and speech you have mentioned. I got two aspirant examples of language volumetry. Does any of these work?

Quotes - When we use quotes, not to actually cite, but to signal a larger or different nuance of meaning for a given expression, it’s as if we built a railway switch at that point in the primary sequence, that opens the way to a short segment of secondary rail. Then we're switched back into the primary string. This eases the passage of meaning by providing a larger, more balanced semantic support. Perhaps this is a hint of volumetric use of language, since the mechanism is encoded in that same word by the quote symbol, working like a mini hydrogen bond?

Ashvin’s semi-metaphor in the compilation thread - Maybe you have used this concept as well, I don’t remember exactly point blank. A normal metaphor tells: keep going on this string of words, just expect the rest of the words to constellate with the previous ones to form a nexus as in this other string you are already familiar with. But a semi-metaphor doesn’t only display meaning but also nests it, in accord with the nested (or concentric, or hierarchic, or contextual) quality of reality. It signals: this long string of words is not going to draw an extensive random shape from start to end. Rather, a simple pattern is recognizable in it (the semi-metaphor) and the rest of the string is made of various functional iterations of that pattern. It speeds up understanding by highlighting the concentric idea.

Everything that we now investigate scientifically is gone through with very diminished consciousness. For example, we speak of the anatomical parts but they remain as dim sensory pictures of fleshy organs. In the possibly not too distant future, when we open an anatomical book from, say, the 19th century, it will act for us as a shortcut for clairvoyant experiences. We'll look at the drawing of some bone and say "Hmm, let me see". Then we surf through the etheric forces, find the bone within ourselves and its story in the Cosmic evolutionary process.

Oh yes, I know the first-person perspective of that diminished consciousness I’ve recently been staring at anatomical representations, wondering precisely that: what is the meaning of this form; what I’m supposed to grasp from these seemingly functionally useless details that I’m not grasping; how can I DIY an understanding here? Gladly, I then remembered what you said many times about the role of prayer.

Thanks Federica, I think these are great examples. As a whole, this area acts as a great temptation for me, because it feels so seductively palpable to the intellect. I know myself and know how there's still a strong incentive in me to grasp things in a nice, well-rounded intellectual form (it used to be far worse in the past). For this reason, at this time I only let these ideas incubate I purposefully don't try to concretize them too much. Yet I'm sure that the whole field of linguistics will be one of the first areas to be spiritualized, that is, we'll need to become clairvoyantly conscious of the whole process of thinking-language formation. Today we still think magically. We wish to express something, and the words simply arrange themselves. And once again, humanity has already explored this intellectually. Grammar, syntax, morphology, and so on, are only the shadowy conceptualization of spiritual processes, just like a bone is the crystallization of the life processes.

[Federica]

Thanks Federica, I think these are great examples. As a whole, this area acts as a great temptation for me, because it feels so seductively palpable to the intellect. I know myself and know how there's still a strong incentive in me to grasp things in a nice, well-rounded intellectual form (it used to be far worse in the past). For this reason, at this time I only let these ideas incubate I purposefully don't try to concretize them too much. Yet I'm sure that the whole field of linguistics will be one of the first areas to be spiritualized, that is, we'll need to become clairvoyantly conscious of the whole process of thinking-language formation. Today we still think magically. We wish to express something, and the words simply arrange themselves. And once again, humanity has already explored this intellectually. Grammar, syntax, morphology, and so on, are only the shadowy conceptualization of spiritual processes, just like a bone is the crystallization of the life processes.

As this thought lingers on - language and linguistics are the areas of human experience most proximate to spiritualization - I have come across the following, about the direct importance of sound in language:

we should let the words of meditation live in our soul without brooding about them; Rather, we should try to grasp the spiritual content of the words emotionally and completely penetrate ourselves with it. The power of these words lies not only in the thought expressed in them, but also in the rhythm and sound of the words. We should listen to it, and if we exclude anything sensual, we can say that we should revel in the sound of the words. Then the spiritual world resonates within us. Because the sound of the word is so important, you cannot easily translate a meditation formula into a foreign language. The meditation formulas we received in German were brought directly from the spiritual world for us. Every formula, every prayer has the greatest impact in its original language. If the Indian wants to give the highest expression to his reverence for the deity who reveals himself in the three Logoi, he summarizes his feeling in three three words that describe the effectiveness of the three Logoi. In German the words are as follows:

Primordial Truth, Primal Goodness, Immensity, O Brahma
Primal bliss, eternity, primal beauty
Peace, blessings, secondlessness
Aum, peace, peace, peace

But the fullness of spiritual power is only conveyed when the words are said in Sanskrit, the original language, especially when they are spoken aloud. Then you can hear how even the air resonates. These are the words:

Satyam jnanam anantam brahma
anandarupam amritam bibharti
shantam shivam advaitam
om, shantih, shantih, shantih.

It is the same with the Lord's Prayer. Spoken in German, almost only the underlying idea is effective. The Latin “Pater noster” works better, but the full power and fullness is only expressed in the original Aramaic language.

So we should listen completely to the sound of the words. But we should also stay away from all spatial ideas and rather stick entirely to the impressions that are directly linked to our senses. In ordinary life our ideas are so empty and without content. But we should bring life into our mental images. When it comes to the word “scoop” (schöpfen) for example, we should have an idea that is as sensual and vivid as possible, as if one were scooping from one vessel into another. All our thoughts should be as full of content and as pictorial as possible.

[Güney27]

Thanks Federica, I think these are great examples. As a whole, this area acts as a great temptation for me, because it feels so seductively palpable to the intellect. I know myself and know how there's still a strong incentive in me to grasp things in a nice, well-rounded intellectual form (it used to be far worse in the past). For this reason, at this time I only let these ideas incubate I purposefully don't try to concretize them too much. Yet I'm sure that the whole field of linguistics will be one of the first areas to be spiritualized, that is, we'll need to become clairvoyantly conscious of the whole process of thinking-language formation. Today we still think magically. We wish to express something, and the words simply arrange themselves. And once again, humanity has already explored this intellectually. Grammar, syntax, morphology, and so on, are only the shadowy conceptualization of spiritual processes, just like a bone is the crystallization of the life processes.

As this thought lingers on - language and linguistics are the areas of human experience most proximate to spiritualization - I have come across the following, about the direct importance of sound in language:

we should let the words of meditation live in our soul without brooding about them; Rather, we should try to grasp the spiritual content of the words emotionally and completely penetrate ourselves with it. The power of these words lies not only in the thought expressed in them, but also in the rhythm and sound of the words. We should listen to it, and if we exclude anything sensual, we can say that we should revel in the sound of the words. Then the spiritual world resonates within us. Because the sound of the word is so important, you cannot easily translate a meditation formula into a foreign language. The meditation formulas we received in German were brought directly from the spiritual world for us. Every formula, every prayer has the greatest impact in its original language. If the Indian wants to give the highest expression to his reverence for the deity who reveals himself in the three Logoi, he summarizes his feeling in three three words that describe the effectiveness of the three Logoi. In German the words are as follows:

Primordial Truth, Primal Goodness, Immensity, O Brahma
Primal bliss, eternity, primal beauty
Peace, blessings, secondlessness
Aum, peace, peace, peace

But the fullness of spiritual power is only conveyed when the words are said in Sanskrit, the original language, especially when they are spoken aloud. Then you can hear how even the air resonates. These are the words:

Satyam jnanam anantam brahma
anandarupam amritam bibharti
shantam shivam advaitam
om, shantih, shantih, shantih.

It is the same with the Lord's Prayer. Spoken in German, almost only the underlying idea is effective. The Latin “Pater noster” works better, but the full power and fullness is only expressed in the original Aramaic language.

So we should listen completely to the sound of the words. But we should also stay away from all spatial ideas and rather stick entirely to the impressions that are directly linked to our senses. In ordinary life our ideas are so empty and without content. But we should bring life into our mental images. When it comes to the word “scoop” (schöpfen) for example, we should have an idea that is as sensual and vivid as possible, as if one were scooping from one vessel into another. All our thoughts should be as full of content and as pictorial as possible.

If we look at how we use our activity in our normal life, we make Intentions to do things and then our states Metamorphose.
This is quite unconscious most of the time, but if we pay attention this becomes more clear.

What is the benefit of changing our activity to condensing meaning into pictures, instead of condensing it into words?

Is it that other parts of our spiritual organization are trained by it, or is it to get more deeply into meditation?

[Federica]

Thanks Federica, I think these are great examples. As a whole, this area acts as a great temptation for me, because it feels so seductively palpable to the intellect. I know myself and know how there's still a strong incentive in me to grasp things in a nice, well-rounded intellectual form (it used to be far worse in the past). For this reason, at this time I only let these ideas incubate I purposefully don't try to concretize them too much. Yet I'm sure that the whole field of linguistics will be one of the first areas to be spiritualized, that is, we'll need to become clairvoyantly conscious of the whole process of thinking-language formation. Today we still think magically. We wish to express something, and the words simply arrange themselves. And once again, humanity has already explored this intellectually. Grammar, syntax, morphology, and so on, are only the shadowy conceptualization of spiritual processes, just like a bone is the crystallization of the life processes.

As this thought lingers on - language and linguistics are the areas of human experience most proximate to spiritualization - I have come across the following, about the direct importance of sound in language:

we should let the words of meditation live in our soul without brooding about them; Rather, we should try to grasp the spiritual content of the words emotionally and completely penetrate ourselves with it. The power of these words lies not only in the thought expressed in them, but also in the rhythm and sound of the words. We should listen to it, and if we exclude anything sensual, we can say that we should revel in the sound of the words. Then the spiritual world resonates within us. Because the sound of the word is so important, you cannot easily translate a meditation formula into a foreign language. The meditation formulas we received in German were brought directly from the spiritual world for us. Every formula, every prayer has the greatest impact in its original language. If the Indian wants to give the highest expression to his reverence for the deity who reveals himself in the three Logoi, he summarizes his feeling in three three words that describe the effectiveness of the three Logoi. In German the words are as follows:

Primordial Truth, Primal Goodness, Immensity, O Brahma
Primal bliss, eternity, primal beauty
Peace, blessings, secondlessness
Aum, peace, peace, peace

But the fullness of spiritual power is only conveyed when the words are said in Sanskrit, the original language, especially when they are spoken aloud. Then you can hear how even the air resonates. These are the words:

Satyam jnanam anantam brahma
anandarupam amritam bibharti
shantam shivam advaitam
om, shantih, shantih, shantih.

It is the same with the Lord's Prayer. Spoken in German, almost only the underlying idea is effective. The Latin “Pater noster” works better, but the full power and fullness is only expressed in the original Aramaic language.

So we should listen completely to the sound of the words. But we should also stay away from all spatial ideas and rather stick entirely to the impressions that are directly linked to our senses. In ordinary life our ideas are so empty and without content. But we should bring life into our mental images. When it comes to the word “scoop” (schöpfen) for example, we should have an idea that is as sensual and vivid as possible, as if one were scooping from one vessel into another. All our thoughts should be as full of content and as pictorial as possible.

If we look at how we use our activity in our normal life, we make Intentions to do things and then our states Metamorphose.
This is quite unconscious most of the time, but if we pay attention this becomes more clear.

What is the benefit of changing our activity to condensing meaning into pictures, instead of condensing it into words?

Is it that other parts of our spiritual organization are trained by it, or is it to get more deeply into meditation?

I think Steiner does not mean that pictorial thinking is for meditation only. It is for extensive use in all moments of our life, as much as we can. The benefit is to get a more direct grasp and impact on our future flow of becoming. We can think our intentions into reality, interplaying with the constraints, instead of getting hit on the head by the constraints of transformation, from the back. We can create more, and attune our intentions more, within the experiential collective flow. Words are an encoded formalization of real outer and inner movements. There is a step of indirectness that favors abstraction, weakness of thoughts, third-person approach. With words, we can get away with having a doll doing the movement (inner or outer it doesn't matter) while we ourselves may remain inert in our being, detached from the phenomena of our flow. I am sure this post will give you a very clear sense of the relationship between pictorial and verbal thinking.