Re: Pictorial Thinking
Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2024 2:01 pm
Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 5:49 pm I noticed that I live in my normal 'mode' of consciousness, and can enter into a more 'phenomenological' mode.
But I only get in there if I think or write down what has been shared a thousand times in this forum by Cleric and Ashvin.
I must be active in concentrating that intuition in thoughts, to get in the phenomenological experience.
My question is how can I get to the point in which I live in this mode?
Is there any advice you can give?
Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 5:49 pm I noticed that I live in my normal 'mode' of consciousness, and can enter into a more 'phenomenological' mode.
But I only get in there if I think or write down what has been shared a thousand times in this forum by Cleric and Ashvin.
I must be active in concentrating that intuition in thoughts, to get in the phenomenological experience.
My question is how can I get to the point in which I live in this mode?
Is there any advice you can give?
Steiner, GA 212, L2 wrote:Whoever earnestly endeavors to ascend to spiritual knowledge will have vivid experiences of all I have indicated. Whatever one has accumulated in life by way of written notes can, like any possession, be comfortably taken home. And because in present day life comfort is much preferred to inner experiences of disquiet, all knowledge tends to be given a form that allows it to be written down and comfortably taken home. It is said, however, that anthroposophical lectures do not transcribe well, so one actually does not get much from what is written down about them and comfortably taken home.
But, you see, that is only a reflection of the experience of higher knowledge. When a university student today prepares for an examination he is really happy when he manages to store up some facts in his head. And when after three or four weeks the time comes for the examination he hopes to be able to pour it all out unchanged just as he crammed it in. One cannot set about acquiring higher knowledge in that way. Those who really develop higher knowledge are faced with spiritual perceptions that have a life of their own. Higher knowledge is perpetually alive. It will not permit itself to be so conveniently stored in notebooks as do the rigid concepts which today are kept as scientific records of the external world. These, though radically expressed, are real inner facts.
Take the case of someone who has attained supersensible cognition to a fairly high degree. Let us say he has at present certain spiritual perceptions; he can attain those experiences again later by means I have often described. He may experience them after three or four years; they have meanwhile gone through a life of their own. If he once more builds them up they burden his soul with uncertainty. One gradually learns that this is nothing exceptional. Supersensible knowledge in general, fills one with uncertainty when it develops further — when, as it were, it grows old. One has to attain certainty about it all over again. One experiences uncertainty already the following day even about the loftiest spiritual perceptions and must struggle to attain the knowledge once more. Only lower kinds of perceptions cease to be alive, and they become specters which reappear unchanged. The one who has them feels satisfied that he has attained some insight into a higher world. He grabs a notebook to make sure the experience is preserved. He would in fact like to have a kind of soul-notebook for the purpose.
Genuine spiritual perceptions act differently — they are living entities and must continually be created anew. One must go through the process repeatedly for already the following day uncertainty arises, especially about the loftiest experiences, and one must win certainty all over again. One must relate to spiritual knowledge as one relates in the physical world to what is reality and not image. A real process in the physical world is the need to eat: not many of you would refrain from eating today because you had a good meal a week ago. You would not say that the meal of a week ago is still in you nourishing you, so that there is no need to eat today. By contrast a soul content arrived at via the body remains and can be recalled unchanged in many respects. That is not the case with a spiritual soul content; this does not just fade; its very certainty is repeatedly shaken and must be regained ever again.
Guney, remember when we said that we can have a much more powerful experience when we focus on the supersensible experience that is close at hand, instead of pushing ourselves toward the experience that we don't even know how to conceive. Such a proximate supersensible experience is our thinking, for example.Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 5:49 pm I noticed that I live in my normal 'mode' of consciousness, and can enter into a more 'phenomenological' mode.
But I only get in there if I think or write down what has been shared a thousand times in this forum by Cleric and Ashvin.
I must be active in concentrating that intuition in thoughts, to get in the phenomenological experience.
My question is how can I get to the point in which I live in this mode?
Is there any advice you can give?
Today's thought of the day also speaks of this:
As the physical eye must be acquired in the pre-earthly life, so must the eye, for the perception of the spiritual world, be acquired here on earth through spiritual science, active spiritual knowledge. I do not mean through clairvoyance — that is an individual affair — but through the understanding, with healthy intelligence, of what is discovered by clairvoyant research. It is simply untrue to say that one must see into the spiritual world oneself in order to believe what the clairvoyants see. It is not so. […]
We need only be prepared to think the thing out, and feel it through and through. It is this recognition by healthy human understanding, of what is given out of the spiritual world — it is not the clairvoyance, but the activity of knowledge — which provides us with spiritual eyes after death. The clairvoyant has to acquire this spiritual eye just the same as other men. For what we gain by Imaginative Cognition, what we perceive in seership, falls away and vanishes after a few days. It only does not do so if we bring it down to the standpoint of ordinary understanding, and in that case we are obliged to understand it in the very same way in which it is understood by those to whom we communicate it.
In effect, clairvoyance as such is not the essential task of man on earth. Clairvoyance must only be there in order that the supersensible truths may be found. But the task of man on earth is to understand the supersensible truths with ordinary, healthy human understanding.
Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 5:49 pm I noticed that I live in my normal 'mode' of consciousness, and can enter into a more 'phenomenological' mode.
But I only get in there if I think or write down what has been shared a thousand times in this forum by Cleric and Ashvin.
I must be active in concentrating that intuition in thoughts, to get in the phenomenological experience.
My question is how can I get to the point in which I live in this mode?
Is there any advice you can give?
Cleric K wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 8:15 pmToday's thought of the day also speaks of this:
As the physical eye must be acquired in the pre-earthly life, so must the eye, for the perception of the spiritual world, be acquired here on earth through spiritual science, active spiritual knowledge. I do not mean through clairvoyance — that is an individual affair — but through the understanding, with healthy intelligence, of what is discovered by clairvoyant research. It is simply untrue to say that one must see into the spiritual world oneself in order to believe what the clairvoyants see. It is not so. […]
We need only be prepared to think the thing out, and feel it through and through. It is this recognition by healthy human understanding, of what is given out of the spiritual world — it is not the clairvoyance, but the activity of knowledge — which provides us with spiritual eyes after death. The clairvoyant has to acquire this spiritual eye just the same as other men. For what we gain by Imaginative Cognition, what we perceive in seership, falls away and vanishes after a few days. It only does not do so if we bring it down to the standpoint of ordinary understanding, and in that case we are obliged to understand it in the very same way in which it is understood by those to whom we communicate it.
In effect, clairvoyance as such is not the essential task of man on earth. Clairvoyance must only be there in order that the supersensible truths may be found. But the task of man on earth is to understand the supersensible truths with ordinary, healthy human understanding.
Yes, 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?