On Symbolic Ordering, Theology, and Hierarchical Mystagogy

[Federica]

That's a fair point. I was going off of the Amazon description of Prokofieff's book - "Prokofieff presents startling new research that, in his estimation, shows the hypothesis of Tomberg’s followers to be misguided. His key evidence is a letter (reproduced in the book) that was handwritten by Tomberg in 1970. Using this text, Prokofieff attempts to show that Valentin Tomberg condemned and dismissed Rudolf Steiner and his spiritual path."

And that is the letter addressed by the article, which adds additional context from other letters and publications. So that is why I felt it was unnecessary to read the book. But I do see he has another book about Tomberg and 'Jesuitism' which is 3x longer and probably contains a more in-depth consideration, which is however unavailable. In short, I am not evaluating Prokofieff as an esoteric thinker, but only his critique of Tomberg on the basis of that one letter.

Ok, I see. I haven't read Prokofieff's book either, but to be fair, in relation to the text you bolded, we have to notice that the first chapter of the booklet is titled "Three testimonies from Tomberg's own hand" (I was curious and clicked the look inside button).

Further, it is in my opinion insufficient that Tomberg's letter is addressed in the rebuttal article, in order to draw fair conclusions on Prokofieff's critique of Tomberg, when we are unaware of both Prokofieff's arguments, and of Tomberg's letter itself (I understand you didn't read it, please correct me if I'm wrong). Not saying that you should read the booklet and the letter, only that using an adverse article that addresses the question as the sole source of critique looks like a stretch to me.

[Federica]

That's a fair point. I was going off of the Amazon description of Prokofieff's book - "Prokofieff presents startling new research that, in his estimation, shows the hypothesis of Tomberg’s followers to be misguided. His key evidence is a letter (reproduced in the book) that was handwritten by Tomberg in 1970. Using this text, Prokofieff attempts to show that Valentin Tomberg condemned and dismissed Rudolf Steiner and his spiritual path."

And that is the letter addressed by the article, which adds additional context from other letters and publications. So that is why I felt it was unnecessary to read the book. But I do see he has another book about Tomberg and 'Jesuitism' which is 3x longer and probably contains a more in-depth consideration, which is however unavailable. In short, I am not evaluating Prokofieff as an esoteric thinker, but only his critique of Tomberg on the basis of that one letter.

Ok, I see. I haven't read Prokofieff's book either, but to be fair, in relation to the text you bolded, we have to notice that the first chapter of the booklet is titled "Three testimonies from Tomberg's own hand" (I was curious and clicked the look inside button).

Further, it is in my opinion insufficient that Tomberg's letter is addressed in the rebuttal article, in order to draw fair conclusions on Prokofieff's critique of Tomberg, when we are unaware of both Prokofieff's arguments, and of Tomberg's letter itself (I understand you didn't read it, please correct me if I'm wrong). Not saying that you should read the booklet and the letter, only that using an adverse article that addresses the question as the sole source of critique looks like a stretch to me.

I have now searched some information about Prokofieff in general. It seems he was controversial, he criticized various Anthroposophists, incuding von Halle, and was criticized in turn, so maybe this is the lager context you were taking into account, and I understand why.

[Federica]

True, the subconscious passions are the truly destructive force that eventually leads to death. These are embedded in our lower conceptual activity as well. That wasn't always a bad thing - the Spirit works against matter (including all manifest reality) and the price of suffering-death was the only way to provide the foundation for free spiritual activity. Through faith in Christ (understood in the deeper, active sense), however, we are able to purify the passions with reasoned ideals and thereby harmonize them with our living organism. Spiritual activity no longer needs to come at the expense of living processes, but can progressively become their defender and preserver at the individual and collective scales, first esoterically and then exoterically. The process of death is then progressively experienced as that of metamorphosis, with more and more continuity of consciousness.

I came across a really helpful passage that speaks to this issue of the gap between purely conceptual and imaginative modes of exploring spiritual reality. It is a refinement of the PoF understanding. The main issue is that we experience the concept as completely transparent to our understanding. Scott made a similar point before when speaking of mathematical concepts. We can't help but feel there is nowhere left to go from such pure concepts. The imaginative symbol, however, can preserve conceptual clarity while also maintaining the experience that there are deeper layers of meaning embedded within the concept, and these layers can only be unveiled by entering into the flow of thinking itself. The symbol maintains our interest in what we have perceived, outwardly or inwardly, even after we have grasped the perception in concepts.

Each of the three basic functions of consciousness—perceiving, thinking, and speaking (which are the basis also of other human faculties)—has a distinct character and is experienced differently by adults today. Perception, for instance, poses many riddles. The disjointed particulars of perception immediately provoke questions; they are not at all transparent or comprehensible to contemporary perceiving. The difference in the “givenness” of perceiving and thinking lies not only in that perceiving is mediated through the senses while new concepts, new thoughts, appear in consciousness through intuition; much more significant is the fact that thoughts and concepts are only wholly comprehensible and transparent to us when they are really thought. Though we can certainly say things we do not understand, we cannot possibly think anything we do not understand thoroughly. Nothing remains hidden in the finished thought; so there is nothing more to search for in it once it has been thought.15 Therefore, we are justified in taking a “naïve” point of view in regard to thinking. The logic and self-evident nature of thinking—its how—are given from the superconscious sphere, and, in this “givenness,” it is totally transparent and comprehensible. Indeed, anything we understand, we understand only when it is “explained” through thinking, through ideas. In the case of thinking, empiricism is sufficient. Attempts to become aware of the “how” of thinking through logic—which can never be sufficient—do not replace the necessity of entering into the living stream of thinking if we are to understand anything, even logic.
...
Though language appears to us as a perceptual phenomenon, it can be as transparent and understandable as thinking. Language consists of perceptible acoustic or optic signs for our understanding. Understanding (meaning) is the hidden part of language. It does not appear in the perceptual world but occurs—through intuition—in the human spirit. The reality or totality of language includes both the signs and their understanding; neither is by itself the reality of language. Language unites in itself the cognitive elements of perceptual reality that would otherwise appear separately. When we do not understand them, the “signs” are not signs but remain mere objects of perception that we can puzzle over. They are signs only when they mean something besides themselves. When we understand them, the meaning we comprehend absorbs the signs; as objects of perception, they become unimportant and uninteresting. Voices, words; the form, size, structure, and material of the letters—all these disappear as objects of perception: they are dissolved and read.

Kühlewind, Georg. The Logos-Structure of the World . Lindisfarne Books. Kindle Edition.

Thanks for your comments, Ashvin - they make me realize how much I hope I will be able to approach death with some progress done in the direction of pursuing a metamorphosis - and for the quote. I find the quote not so straightforward, especially the first part, maybe because I lack the larger context. Perceiving is first distinguished from thinking and speaking, but then speaking is given as a case of perceiving? And "Nothing remains hidden in the finished thought". Does not thinking remain hidden? How is it "totally transparent"? Probably the author uses thought and thinking slightly differently compared to how we tend to use them here with reference to Steiner, and that's why I am confused. But I do get the second part, on signs meaning something behind themselves, and that the meaning absorbs the perceptible form of the signs. I feel we discussed this in depth - the symbolic valence of language - even before you introduced Tomberg to the forum, and the idea of symbolic ordering.

[AshvinP]

That's a fair point. I was going off of the Amazon description of Prokofieff's book - "Prokofieff presents startling new research that, in his estimation, shows the hypothesis of Tomberg’s followers to be misguided. His key evidence is a letter (reproduced in the book) that was handwritten by Tomberg in 1970. Using this text, Prokofieff attempts to show that Valentin Tomberg condemned and dismissed Rudolf Steiner and his spiritual path."

And that is the letter addressed by the article, which adds additional context from other letters and publications. So that is why I felt it was unnecessary to read the book. But I do see he has another book about Tomberg and 'Jesuitism' which is 3x longer and probably contains a more in-depth consideration, which is however unavailable. In short, I am not evaluating Prokofieff as an esoteric thinker, but only his critique of Tomberg on the basis of that one letter.

Ok, I see. I haven't read Prokofieff's book either, but to be fair, in relation to the text you bolded, we have to notice that the first chapter of the booklet is titled "Three testimonies from Tomberg's own hand" (I was curious and clicked the look inside button).

Further, it is in my opinion insufficient that Tomberg's letter is addressed in the rebuttal article, in order to draw fair conclusions on Prokofieff's critique of Tomberg, when we are unaware of both Prokofieff's arguments, and of Tomberg's letter itself (I understand you didn't read it, please correct me if I'm wrong). Not saying that you should read the booklet and the letter, only that using an adverse article that addresses the question as the sole source of critique looks like a stretch to me.

I have now searched some information about Prokofieff in general. It seems he was controversial, he criticized various Anthroposophists, incuding von Halle, and was criticized in turn, so maybe this is the lager context you were taking into account, and I understand why.

Federica,

I actually ordered one of his books, 'The Occult Significance of Forgiveness', since it looks like it could be helpful for my development. It should also give me a sense of his quality as an esoteric thinker. I'm not really aware of his overall controversial orientation.

The other issue is that it seems his critique of Tomberg is rooted in arguing for some irreconcilable differences with Steiner and SS. Yet I have read Tomberg's writings carefully at this point, noticed the tensions with Steiner/SS, thought about them at some length, and concluded within my own inner forum of consciousness that they are not irreconcilable. I have even found the seeming tensions/differences between them to be greatly illuminating of SS when worked through in this way. So, in that sense, it doesn't really matter what Prokofieff's arguments are. That is even more true if they are rooted in Tomberg's personal correspondences rather than his official publications, as you pointed out before.

[Federica]

Ok, I see. I haven't read Prokofieff's book either, but to be fair, in relation to the text you bolded, we have to notice that the first chapter of the booklet is titled "Three testimonies from Tomberg's own hand" (I was curious and clicked the look inside button).

Further, it is in my opinion insufficient that Tomberg's letter is addressed in the rebuttal article, in order to draw fair conclusions on Prokofieff's critique of Tomberg, when we are unaware of both Prokofieff's arguments, and of Tomberg's letter itself (I understand you didn't read it, please correct me if I'm wrong). Not saying that you should read the booklet and the letter, only that using an adverse article that addresses the question as the sole source of critique looks like a stretch to me.

I have now searched some information about Prokofieff in general. It seems he was controversial, he criticized various Anthroposophists, incuding von Halle, and was criticized in turn, so maybe this is the lager context you were taking into account, and I understand why.

Federica,

I actually ordered one of his books, 'The Occult Significance of Forgiveness', since it looks like it could be helpful for my development. It should also give me a sense of his quality as an esoteric thinker. I'm not really aware of his overall controversial orientation.

The other issue is that it seems his critique of Tomberg is rooted in arguing for some irreconcilable differences with Steiner and SS. Yet I have read Tomberg's writings carefully at this point, noticed the tensions with Steiner/SS, thought about them at some length, and concluded within my own inner forum of consciousness that they are not irreconcilable. I have even found the seeming tensions/differences between them to be greatly illuminating of SS when worked through in this way. So, in that sense, it doesn't really matter what Prokofieff's arguments are. That is even more true if they are rooted in Tomberg's personal correspondences rather than his official publications, as you pointed out before.

Surely I understand, and I hope I'll come to similar conclusions one day, after reading much more of both Steiner and Tomberg.

I'm not really aware of his overall controversial orientation.

I was reading among other things Jeremy Smith's post "Sergei Prokofieff, Judith von Halle and the Representative of Humanity" that Max Leyf liked.

[AshvinP]

True, the subconscious passions are the truly destructive force that eventually leads to death. These are embedded in our lower conceptual activity as well. That wasn't always a bad thing - the Spirit works against matter (including all manifest reality) and the price of suffering-death was the only way to provide the foundation for free spiritual activity. Through faith in Christ (understood in the deeper, active sense), however, we are able to purify the passions with reasoned ideals and thereby harmonize them with our living organism. Spiritual activity no longer needs to come at the expense of living processes, but can progressively become their defender and preserver at the individual and collective scales, first esoterically and then exoterically. The process of death is then progressively experienced as that of metamorphosis, with more and more continuity of consciousness.

I came across a really helpful passage that speaks to this issue of the gap between purely conceptual and imaginative modes of exploring spiritual reality. It is a refinement of the PoF understanding. The main issue is that we experience the concept as completely transparent to our understanding. Scott made a similar point before when speaking of mathematical concepts. We can't help but feel there is nowhere left to go from such pure concepts. The imaginative symbol, however, can preserve conceptual clarity while also maintaining the experience that there are deeper layers of meaning embedded within the concept, and these layers can only be unveiled by entering into the flow of thinking itself. The symbol maintains our interest in what we have perceived, outwardly or inwardly, even after we have grasped the perception in concepts.

Each of the three basic functions of consciousness—perceiving, thinking, and speaking (which are the basis also of other human faculties)—has a distinct character and is experienced differently by adults today. Perception, for instance, poses many riddles. The disjointed particulars of perception immediately provoke questions; they are not at all transparent or comprehensible to contemporary perceiving. The difference in the “givenness” of perceiving and thinking lies not only in that perceiving is mediated through the senses while new concepts, new thoughts, appear in consciousness through intuition; much more significant is the fact that thoughts and concepts are only wholly comprehensible and transparent to us when they are really thought. Though we can certainly say things we do not understand, we cannot possibly think anything we do not understand thoroughly. Nothing remains hidden in the finished thought; so there is nothing more to search for in it once it has been thought.15 Therefore, we are justified in taking a “naïve” point of view in regard to thinking. The logic and self-evident nature of thinking—its how—are given from the superconscious sphere, and, in this “givenness,” it is totally transparent and comprehensible. Indeed, anything we understand, we understand only when it is “explained” through thinking, through ideas. In the case of thinking, empiricism is sufficient. Attempts to become aware of the “how” of thinking through logic—which can never be sufficient—do not replace the necessity of entering into the living stream of thinking if we are to understand anything, even logic.
...
Though language appears to us as a perceptual phenomenon, it can be as transparent and understandable as thinking. Language consists of perceptible acoustic or optic signs for our understanding. Understanding (meaning) is the hidden part of language. It does not appear in the perceptual world but occurs—through intuition—in the human spirit. The reality or totality of language includes both the signs and their understanding; neither is by itself the reality of language. Language unites in itself the cognitive elements of perceptual reality that would otherwise appear separately. When we do not understand them, the “signs” are not signs but remain mere objects of perception that we can puzzle over. They are signs only when they mean something besides themselves. When we understand them, the meaning we comprehend absorbs the signs; as objects of perception, they become unimportant and uninteresting. Voices, words; the form, size, structure, and material of the letters—all these disappear as objects of perception: they are dissolved and read.

Kühlewind, Georg. The Logos-Structure of the World . Lindisfarne Books. Kindle Edition.

Thanks for your comments, Ashvin - they make me realize how much I hope I will be able to approach death with some progress done in the direction of pursuing a metamorphosis - and for the quote. I find the quote not so straightforward, especially the first part, maybe because I lack the larger context. Perceiving is first distinguished from thinking and speaking, but then speaking is given as a case of perceiving? And "Nothing remains hidden in the finished thought". Does not thinking remain hidden? How is it "totally transparent"? Probably the author uses thought and thinking slightly differently compared to how we tend to use them here with reference to Steiner, and that's why I am confused. But I do get the second part, on signs meaning something behind themselves, and that the meaning absorbs the perceptible form of the signs. I feel we discussed this in depth - the symbolic valence of language - even before you introduced Tomberg to the forum, and the idea of symbolic ordering.

Federica,

We could substitute willing for perceiving and feeling for speaking. It is through our willed intents that the shared perceptual world arises, and it is through the life of feeling that our thinking intents condense into shared perceptual forms. It is probably best to get a sense of these things by testing them out in our first-person experience. We should seek the experience of our conceptual activity and resist overlaying that experience with more concepts via the inner voice. We can distinguish between 3 types of concepts, i.e. those relating to natural objects, those relating to man-made objects, and those relating to supersensible objects. All domains of experience require concepts to separate out particulars from an otherwise indistinguishable continuum of meaningful qualities. If we perceive a natural object to which we attach the concept of "tree", we can sense how there is still some lack of transparency, something hidden behind the concept. Namely, we don't have a clear sense of the functional intents behind the concept of "tree". We can describe its color, shape, size, and so forth, and encompass that with the "tree" concept, but its place within the intentional flow of our evolution is not at all clear. We should really practice looking at such objects and sensing how our conceptual activity is responding in comparison with other objects. 

When we perceive a man-made object to which we attach the concept of "table", that is relatively more transparent to us. We perceive a flat surface with legs and sense it was intentionally designed for holding up other objects and that is its purpose in our stream of evolution. For the most part, it becomes uninteresting for us to think about it any further. There is still some lack of transparency, however, because we don't clearly sense the whole constellation of ideal relations which intended the manifestation of the table, such as the chain of production materials, the chain of economic relations, etc. Most people lack interest in thinking through such things, just as they lack interest in thinking through the intention behind the tree concept, but on the esoteric path, we strive to make these intents more conscious by various methods such as the object concentration exercise. In that exercise, we seek to arrive at the functional concept that encompasses a broader sphere of intentional relations that go beyond our mere personal use of the table. Although that is theoretically easy for us to conceive, it is nevertheless difficult in practice to attain, which is why we have to persist in the exercises for a long time. 

When we picture in our mind's eye the form of an equilateral triangle, then there is practically complete transparency of the concept. We don't sense that there is any intentional relation hiding behind the concept other than our own. We simply intend the meaning of equilateral triangle and the form manifests as a seemingly perfect reflection of that meaning. There is no interest for us to go mining beneath the surface of this manifestation and, unlike with man-made objections, there doesn't even seem to be any opportunity to do so. So what is this transparency all about? It is our intuitive sense of how the concepts interrelate and transform. Even if we do not explicitly formalize these logical rules in our consciousness, they are implicitly transparent to us at our current stage of evolution. That is because the "I" lives in the morphic thinking space. Within that thinking morphic space, the "I" most firmly lives within the spiritual soul currently, at least for most people in the civilized world. That is why supersensible concepts are experienced as the most transparent. We are most intuitively attuned to the rules by which such concepts transform. These concepts are devoid of living relevance, however, i.e. of the feeling quality in speech. 

Speech (including all gestures) is the only place in our normal consciousness where sensory forms, audial or visual, that are shared objectively with others through the course of life are united with clearly experienced intents. There is hardly any 'gap' between them in the case of physical gestures or our native language. In the realm of nature, we hardly experience any intents underlying the forms (except dimly in the case of animals). In the realm of supersensible concepts, we only experience our own personal intents and these are not shared with others unless we engage in speech. Higher development could be conceived as expanding our capacity for perceiving and forming speech from the supersensible concepts into broader transpersonal spheres of be-ing so that all sensory forms, outer and inner, are experienced with their corresponding intents. Then we progressively awaken to the fact that all of Heaven and Earth is woven from Divine speech - the Speech responsible for our mathematical concepts is the same as that responsible for the kingdoms of Nature, which is why the former can so accurately model the latter. We only fail to experience that Speech-quality because our normal thinking consciousness imposes wide gaps between the sensory forms and their spoken intents.  That is why higher consciousness is often referred to as reading the occult script, akashic record, and so forth. Just as human speech can be recorded in the mineral element (or digital element), Divine speech is continually recorded in the ether, astral, and higher worlds. 

[Federica]

True, the subconscious passions are the truly destructive force that eventually leads to death. These are embedded in our lower conceptual activity as well. That wasn't always a bad thing - the Spirit works against matter (including all manifest reality) and the price of suffering-death was the only way to provide the foundation for free spiritual activity. Through faith in Christ (understood in the deeper, active sense), however, we are able to purify the passions with reasoned ideals and thereby harmonize them with our living organism. Spiritual activity no longer needs to come at the expense of living processes, but can progressively become their defender and preserver at the individual and collective scales, first esoterically and then exoterically. The process of death is then progressively experienced as that of metamorphosis, with more and more continuity of consciousness.

I came across a really helpful passage that speaks to this issue of the gap between purely conceptual and imaginative modes of exploring spiritual reality. It is a refinement of the PoF understanding. The main issue is that we experience the concept as completely transparent to our understanding. Scott made a similar point before when speaking of mathematical concepts. We can't help but feel there is nowhere left to go from such pure concepts. The imaginative symbol, however, can preserve conceptual clarity while also maintaining the experience that there are deeper layers of meaning embedded within the concept, and these layers can only be unveiled by entering into the flow of thinking itself. The symbol maintains our interest in what we have perceived, outwardly or inwardly, even after we have grasped the perception in concepts.

Thanks for your comments, Ashvin - they make me realize how much I hope I will be able to approach death with some progress done in the direction of pursuing a metamorphosis - and for the quote. I find the quote not so straightforward, especially the first part, maybe because I lack the larger context. Perceiving is first distinguished from thinking and speaking, but then speaking is given as a case of perceiving? And "Nothing remains hidden in the finished thought". Does not thinking remain hidden? How is it "totally transparent"? Probably the author uses thought and thinking slightly differently compared to how we tend to use them here with reference to Steiner, and that's why I am confused. But I do get the second part, on signs meaning something behind themselves, and that the meaning absorbs the perceptible form of the signs. I feel we discussed this in depth - the symbolic valence of language - even before you introduced Tomberg to the forum, and the idea of symbolic ordering.

Federica,

We could substitute willing for perceiving and feeling for speaking. It is through our willed intents that the shared perceptual world arises, and it is through the life of feeling that our thinking intents condense into shared perceptual forms. It is probably best to get a sense of these things by testing them out in our first-person experience. We should seek the experience of our conceptual activity and resist overlaying that experience with more concepts via the inner voice. We can distinguish between 3 types of concepts, i.e. those relating to natural objects, those relating to man-made objects, and those relating to supersensible objects. All domains of experience require concepts to separate out particulars from an otherwise indistinguishable continuum of meaningful qualities. If we perceive a natural object to which we attach the concept of "tree", we can sense how there is still some lack of transparency, something hidden behind the concept. Namely, we don't have a clear sense of the functional intents behind the concept of "tree". We can describe its color, shape, size, and so forth, and encompass that with the "tree" concept, but its place within the intentional flow of our evolution is not at all clear. We should really practice looking at such objects and sensing how our conceptual activity is responding in comparison with other objects. 

When we perceive a man-made object to which we attach the concept of "table", that is relatively more transparent to us. We perceive a flat surface with legs and sense it was intentionally designed for holding up other objects and that is its purpose in our stream of evolution. For the most part, it becomes uninteresting for us to think about it any further. There is still some lack of transparency, however, because we don't clearly sense the whole constellation of ideal relations which intended the manifestation of the table, such as the chain of production materials, the chain of economic relations, etc. Most people lack interest in thinking through such things, just as they lack interest in thinking through the intention behind the tree concept, but on the esoteric path, we strive to make these intents more conscious by various methods such as the object concentration exercise. In that exercise, we seek to arrive at the functional concept that encompasses a broader sphere of intentional relations that go beyond our mere personal use of the table. Although that is theoretically easy for us to conceive, it is nevertheless difficult in practice to attain, which is why we have to persist in the exercises for a long time. 

When we picture in our mind's eye the form of an equilateral triangle, then there is practically complete transparency of the concept. We don't sense that there is any intentional relation hiding behind the concept other than our own. We simply intend the meaning of equilateral triangle and the form manifests as a seemingly perfect reflection of that meaning. There is no interest for us to go mining beneath the surface of this manifestation and, unlike with man-made objections, there doesn't even seem to be any opportunity to do so. So what is this transparency all about? It is our intuitive sense of how the concepts interrelate and transform. Even if we do not explicitly formalize these logical rules in our consciousness, they are implicitly transparent to us at our current stage of evolution. That is because the "I" lives in the morphic thinking space. Within that thinking morphic space, the "I" most firmly lives within the spiritual soul currently, at least for most people in the civilized world. That is why supersensible concepts are experienced as the most transparent. We are most intuitively attuned to the rules by which such concepts transform. These concepts are devoid of living relevance, however, i.e. of the feeling quality in speech. 

Speech (including all gestures) is the only place in our normal consciousness where sensory forms, audial or visual, that are shared objectively with others through the course of life are united with clearly experienced intents. There is hardly any 'gap' between them in the case of physical gestures or our native language. In the realm of nature, we hardly experience any intents underlying the forms (except dimly in the case of animals). In the realm of supersensible concepts, we only experience our own personal intents and these are not shared with others unless we engage in speech. Higher development could be conceived as expanding our capacity for perceiving and forming speech from the supersensible concepts into broader transpersonal spheres of be-ing so that all sensory forms, outer and inner, are experienced with their corresponding intents. Then we progressively awaken to the fact that all of Heaven and Earth is woven from Divine speech - the Speech responsible for our mathematical concepts is the same as that responsible for the kingdoms of Nature, which is why the former can so accurately model the latter. We only fail to experience that Speech-quality because our normal thinking consciousness imposes wide gaps between the sensory forms and their spoken intents.  That is why higher consciousness is often referred to as reading the occult script, akashic record, and so forth. Just as human speech can be recorded in the mineral element (or digital element), Divine speech is continually recorded in the ether, astral, and higher worlds. 

Thank you for this new elaboration, Ashvin. Would you agree that the spirit of collection often characterizes your posts, emerges from them? Let me explain. One of my weaknesses is that I am still largely living in my personality. I am trying to work on that. For example here, when my personality relates to what you have just posted and finds it consistently irritating, I want to neutralize the irritation by making it a transitable feeling all throughout, hoping to make it usable as a sense organ, able to transmit some kind of perception, rather than as closed-end repository for arbitrary feelings. Not sure it is correct, but when I try this, what's impressed is selfless but eager pursuit of assortment and abundance.

[AshvinP]

Thanks for your comments, Ashvin - they make me realize how much I hope I will be able to approach death with some progress done in the direction of pursuing a metamorphosis - and for the quote. I find the quote not so straightforward, especially the first part, maybe because I lack the larger context. Perceiving is first distinguished from thinking and speaking, but then speaking is given as a case of perceiving? And "Nothing remains hidden in the finished thought". Does not thinking remain hidden? How is it "totally transparent"? Probably the author uses thought and thinking slightly differently compared to how we tend to use them here with reference to Steiner, and that's why I am confused. But I do get the second part, on signs meaning something behind themselves, and that the meaning absorbs the perceptible form of the signs. I feel we discussed this in depth - the symbolic valence of language - even before you introduced Tomberg to the forum, and the idea of symbolic ordering.

Federica,

We could substitute willing for perceiving and feeling for speaking. It is through our willed intents that the shared perceptual world arises, and it is through the life of feeling that our thinking intents condense into shared perceptual forms. It is probably best to get a sense of these things by testing them out in our first-person experience. We should seek the experience of our conceptual activity and resist overlaying that experience with more concepts via the inner voice. We can distinguish between 3 types of concepts, i.e. those relating to natural objects, those relating to man-made objects, and those relating to supersensible objects. All domains of experience require concepts to separate out particulars from an otherwise indistinguishable continuum of meaningful qualities. If we perceive a natural object to which we attach the concept of "tree", we can sense how there is still some lack of transparency, something hidden behind the concept. Namely, we don't have a clear sense of the functional intents behind the concept of "tree". We can describe its color, shape, size, and so forth, and encompass that with the "tree" concept, but its place within the intentional flow of our evolution is not at all clear. We should really practice looking at such objects and sensing how our conceptual activity is responding in comparison with other objects. 

When we perceive a man-made object to which we attach the concept of "table", that is relatively more transparent to us. We perceive a flat surface with legs and sense it was intentionally designed for holding up other objects and that is its purpose in our stream of evolution. For the most part, it becomes uninteresting for us to think about it any further. There is still some lack of transparency, however, because we don't clearly sense the whole constellation of ideal relations which intended the manifestation of the table, such as the chain of production materials, the chain of economic relations, etc. Most people lack interest in thinking through such things, just as they lack interest in thinking through the intention behind the tree concept, but on the esoteric path, we strive to make these intents more conscious by various methods such as the object concentration exercise. In that exercise, we seek to arrive at the functional concept that encompasses a broader sphere of intentional relations that go beyond our mere personal use of the table. Although that is theoretically easy for us to conceive, it is nevertheless difficult in practice to attain, which is why we have to persist in the exercises for a long time. 

When we picture in our mind's eye the form of an equilateral triangle, then there is practically complete transparency of the concept. We don't sense that there is any intentional relation hiding behind the concept other than our own. We simply intend the meaning of equilateral triangle and the form manifests as a seemingly perfect reflection of that meaning. There is no interest for us to go mining beneath the surface of this manifestation and, unlike with man-made objections, there doesn't even seem to be any opportunity to do so. So what is this transparency all about? It is our intuitive sense of how the concepts interrelate and transform. Even if we do not explicitly formalize these logical rules in our consciousness, they are implicitly transparent to us at our current stage of evolution. That is because the "I" lives in the morphic thinking space. Within that thinking morphic space, the "I" most firmly lives within the spiritual soul currently, at least for most people in the civilized world. That is why supersensible concepts are experienced as the most transparent. We are most intuitively attuned to the rules by which such concepts transform. These concepts are devoid of living relevance, however, i.e. of the feeling quality in speech. 

Speech (including all gestures) is the only place in our normal consciousness where sensory forms, audial or visual, that are shared objectively with others through the course of life are united with clearly experienced intents. There is hardly any 'gap' between them in the case of physical gestures or our native language. In the realm of nature, we hardly experience any intents underlying the forms (except dimly in the case of animals). In the realm of supersensible concepts, we only experience our own personal intents and these are not shared with others unless we engage in speech. Higher development could be conceived as expanding our capacity for perceiving and forming speech from the supersensible concepts into broader transpersonal spheres of be-ing so that all sensory forms, outer and inner, are experienced with their corresponding intents. Then we progressively awaken to the fact that all of Heaven and Earth is woven from Divine speech - the Speech responsible for our mathematical concepts is the same as that responsible for the kingdoms of Nature, which is why the former can so accurately model the latter. We only fail to experience that Speech-quality because our normal thinking consciousness imposes wide gaps between the sensory forms and their spoken intents.  That is why higher consciousness is often referred to as reading the occult script, akashic record, and so forth. Just as human speech can be recorded in the mineral element (or digital element), Divine speech is continually recorded in the ether, astral, and higher worlds. 

Thank you for this new elaboration, Ashvin. Would you agree that the spirit of collection often characterizes your posts, emerges from them? Let me explain. One of my weaknesses is that I am still largely living in my personality. I am trying to work on that. For example here, when my personality relates to what you have just posted and finds it consistently irritating, I want to neutralize the irritation by making it a transitable feeling all throughout, hoping to make it usable as a sense organ, able to transmit some kind of perception, rather than as closed-end repository for arbitrary feelings. Not sure it is correct, but when I try this, what's impressed is selfless but eager pursuit of assortment and abundance.

Federica,

I'm not sure if that's exactly how my posts emerge, but I do know what you mean. I often try to practice Cleric's suggestion of saying "thank you!" when 'misfortune' visits me, for example when I am feeling physically ill, or I injure myself playing basketball, or I stub my toe or bang my knee. It is quite difficult to resist the lower impulsive reaction of feeling victimized in some way and substitute the idealized feeling of gratitude and thanksgiving instead. Nevertheless, our intention to make that transmutation is what counts, and it is certainly better than doing nothing and simply indulging our lower personality and its habitual reactions. And this transmutative process is not arbitrary but rather is aligned with the intentional flow of evolution since the resistance of the lower personality is put on our path precisely for this reason of awakening our transpersonal spirit. In that sense, we are simply attempting to progressively harmonize our intentional moral disposition with the Truth.

[Federica]

Federica,

We could substitute willing for perceiving and feeling for speaking. It is through our willed intents that the shared perceptual world arises, and it is through the life of feeling that our thinking intents condense into shared perceptual forms. It is probably best to get a sense of these things by testing them out in our first-person experience. We should seek the experience of our conceptual activity and resist overlaying that experience with more concepts via the inner voice. We can distinguish between 3 types of concepts, i.e. those relating to natural objects, those relating to man-made objects, and those relating to supersensible objects. All domains of experience require concepts to separate out particulars from an otherwise indistinguishable continuum of meaningful qualities. If we perceive a natural object to which we attach the concept of "tree", we can sense how there is still some lack of transparency, something hidden behind the concept. Namely, we don't have a clear sense of the functional intents behind the concept of "tree". We can describe its color, shape, size, and so forth, and encompass that with the "tree" concept, but its place within the intentional flow of our evolution is not at all clear. We should really practice looking at such objects and sensing how our conceptual activity is responding in comparison with other objects. 

When we perceive a man-made object to which we attach the concept of "table", that is relatively more transparent to us. We perceive a flat surface with legs and sense it was intentionally designed for holding up other objects and that is its purpose in our stream of evolution. For the most part, it becomes uninteresting for us to think about it any further. There is still some lack of transparency, however, because we don't clearly sense the whole constellation of ideal relations which intended the manifestation of the table, such as the chain of production materials, the chain of economic relations, etc. Most people lack interest in thinking through such things, just as they lack interest in thinking through the intention behind the tree concept, but on the esoteric path, we strive to make these intents more conscious by various methods such as the object concentration exercise. In that exercise, we seek to arrive at the functional concept that encompasses a broader sphere of intentional relations that go beyond our mere personal use of the table. Although that is theoretically easy for us to conceive, it is nevertheless difficult in practice to attain, which is why we have to persist in the exercises for a long time. 

When we picture in our mind's eye the form of an equilateral triangle, then there is practically complete transparency of the concept. We don't sense that there is any intentional relation hiding behind the concept other than our own. We simply intend the meaning of equilateral triangle and the form manifests as a seemingly perfect reflection of that meaning. There is no interest for us to go mining beneath the surface of this manifestation and, unlike with man-made objections, there doesn't even seem to be any opportunity to do so. So what is this transparency all about? It is our intuitive sense of how the concepts interrelate and transform. Even if we do not explicitly formalize these logical rules in our consciousness, they are implicitly transparent to us at our current stage of evolution. That is because the "I" lives in the morphic thinking space. Within that thinking morphic space, the "I" most firmly lives within the spiritual soul currently, at least for most people in the civilized world. That is why supersensible concepts are experienced as the most transparent. We are most intuitively attuned to the rules by which such concepts transform. These concepts are devoid of living relevance, however, i.e. of the feeling quality in speech. 

Speech (including all gestures) is the only place in our normal consciousness where sensory forms, audial or visual, that are shared objectively with others through the course of life are united with clearly experienced intents. There is hardly any 'gap' between them in the case of physical gestures or our native language. In the realm of nature, we hardly experience any intents underlying the forms (except dimly in the case of animals). In the realm of supersensible concepts, we only experience our own personal intents and these are not shared with others unless we engage in speech. Higher development could be conceived as expanding our capacity for perceiving and forming speech from the supersensible concepts into broader transpersonal spheres of be-ing so that all sensory forms, outer and inner, are experienced with their corresponding intents. Then we progressively awaken to the fact that all of Heaven and Earth is woven from Divine speech - the Speech responsible for our mathematical concepts is the same as that responsible for the kingdoms of Nature, which is why the former can so accurately model the latter. We only fail to experience that Speech-quality because our normal thinking consciousness imposes wide gaps between the sensory forms and their spoken intents.  That is why higher consciousness is often referred to as reading the occult script, akashic record, and so forth. Just as human speech can be recorded in the mineral element (or digital element), Divine speech is continually recorded in the ether, astral, and higher worlds. 

Thank you for this new elaboration, Ashvin. Would you agree that the spirit of collection often characterizes your posts, emerges from them? Let me explain. One of my weaknesses is that I am still largely living in my personality. I am trying to work on that. For example here, when my personality relates to what you have just posted and finds it consistently irritating, I want to neutralize the irritation by making it a transitable feeling all throughout, hoping to make it usable as a sense organ, able to transmit some kind of perception, rather than as closed-end repository for arbitrary feelings. Not sure it is correct, but when I try this, what's impressed is selfless but eager pursuit of assortment and abundance.

Federica,

I'm not sure if that's exactly how my posts emerge, but I do know what you mean. I often try to practice Cleric's suggestion of saying "thank you!" when 'misfortune' visits me, for example when I am feeling physically ill, or I injure myself playing basketball, or I stub my toe or bang my knee. It is quite difficult to resist the lower impulsive reaction of feeling victimized in some way and substitute the idealized feeling of gratitude and thanksgiving instead. Nevertheless, our intention to make that transmutation is what counts, and it is certainly better than doing nothing and simply indulging our lower personality and its habitual reactions. And this transmutative process is not arbitrary but rather is aligned with the intentional flow of evolution since the resistance of the lower personality is put on our path precisely for this reason of awakening our transpersonal spirit. In that sense, we are simply attempting to progressively harmonize our intentional moral disposition with the Truth.

Ashvin,

I don’t get what the connection is with thanking for misfortune, but I surely do the same. I would say, for me this part is not the most difficult. While I did have some level of victimizing self-talk in the past, this has vanished completely today, because it used to come from ignorance, or better, from the painful awareness of it - ignorance of future, of why things happen, of the meaning of life. Today I am still very ignorant, of course, but the crucial difference is, I know ignorance can be bridged, and how. This is more than enough to fill me with a very concrete, not idealized, gratitude that is present at any moment.

But coming back to your previous post and the three types of concepts you pointed to: concepts of natural objects, of man-made ones, and of supersensible ones. I’m not sure what usefulness there is in this distinction. Firstly, where do we put the concept of, say, theory, or the concept of materialism, in this partition? Also, in the comparison you make between the concept of triangle, tree, and table, I feel they share all the same level of transparency, they are all portals - to refer to your recent elaborations on the nature of symbols.

I think what distinguishes them is that the concepts of sensory objects have to support and balance the multiplicity of a material phenomenology, shared with other concepts-beings too. It’s as if we compared the concept of hive and the concept of hexagon. Surely the latter is pure and simple, while the former is heavy with qualia, and entangled with other concepts. One is a bare fir, the other one is a Christmas tree. One is entirely spiritual, conceivable in pure imagination, the other one is intertwined with physicality in our perception.

When we picture in our mind's eye the form of an equilateral triangle, then there is practically complete transparency of the concept. We don't sense that there is any intentional relation hiding behind the concept other than our own.

But I believe the spiritual intents are equally hidden them all. They are all intentional cross-sections, and there should be interest in mining beneath the surface of the concept of triangle too - isn’t a triangle a symbol as much as a tree is?

On this basis, I don’t understand well what you intend by transparency:

So what is this transparency all about? It is our intuitive sense of how the concepts interrelate and transform. Even if we do not explicitly formalize these logical rules in our consciousness, they are implicitly transparent to us at our current stage of evolution. That is because the "I" lives in the morphic thinking space. Within that thinking morphic space, the "I" most firmly lives within the spiritual soul currently, at least for most people in the civilized world.

[AshvinP]

Thank you for this new elaboration, Ashvin. Would you agree that the spirit of collection often characterizes your posts, emerges from them? Let me explain. One of my weaknesses is that I am still largely living in my personality. I am trying to work on that. For example here, when my personality relates to what you have just posted and finds it consistently irritating, I want to neutralize the irritation by making it a transitable feeling all throughout, hoping to make it usable as a sense organ, able to transmit some kind of perception, rather than as closed-end repository for arbitrary feelings. Not sure it is correct, but when I try this, what's impressed is selfless but eager pursuit of assortment and abundance.

Federica,

I'm not sure if that's exactly how my posts emerge, but I do know what you mean. I often try to practice Cleric's suggestion of saying "thank you!" when 'misfortune' visits me, for example when I am feeling physically ill, or I injure myself playing basketball, or I stub my toe or bang my knee. It is quite difficult to resist the lower impulsive reaction of feeling victimized in some way and substitute the idealized feeling of gratitude and thanksgiving instead. Nevertheless, our intention to make that transmutation is what counts, and it is certainly better than doing nothing and simply indulging our lower personality and its habitual reactions. And this transmutative process is not arbitrary but rather is aligned with the intentional flow of evolution since the resistance of the lower personality is put on our path precisely for this reason of awakening our transpersonal spirit. In that sense, we are simply attempting to progressively harmonize our intentional moral disposition with the Truth.

Ashvin,

I don’t get what the connection is with thanking for misfortune, but I surely do the same. I would say, for me this part is not the most difficult. While I did have some level of victimizing self-talk in the past, this has vanished completely today, because it used to come from ignorance, or better, from the painful awareness of it - ignorance of future, of why things happen, of the meaning of life. Today I am still very ignorant, of course, but the crucial difference is, I know ignorance can be bridged, and how. This is more than enough to fill me with a very concrete, not idealized, gratitude that is present at any moment.

Federica,

Since you mentioned an exercise to purify the personality of lower reactive impulses, I was sharing a similar exercise. It seems to me that it would be easier for us to resist the reactive irritation we get from reading other people's ideas expressed through a certain style, tone, vocabulary, and so forth, than it would be to resist the reactive distress, frustration, anger, and so forth that arrives from physical illness or injury, even if the latter are relatively minor. Would you say that, in those circumstances, you don't have any sense of a reactive negative impulse at all?

But coming back to your previous post and the three types of concepts you pointed to: concepts of natural objects, of man-made ones, and of supersensible ones. I’m not sure what usefulness there is in this distinction. Firstly, where do we put the concept of, say, theory, or the concept of materialism, in this partition? Also, in the comparison you make between the concept of triangle, tree, and table, I feel they share all the same level of transparency, they are all portals - to refer to your recent elaborations on the nature of symbols.

I think what distinguishes them is that the concepts of sensory objects have to support and balance the multiplicity of a material phenomenology, shared with other concepts-beings too. It’s as if we compared the concept of hive and the concept of hexagon. Surely the latter is pure and simple, while the former is heavy with qualia, and entangled with other concepts. One is a bare fir, the other one is a Christmas tree. One is entirely spiritual, conceivable in pure imagination, the other one is intertwined with physicality in our perception.

When we picture in our mind's eye the form of an equilateral triangle, then there is practically complete transparency of the concept. We don't sense that there is any intentional relation hiding behind the concept other than our own.

But I believe the spiritual intents are equally hidden them all. They are all intentional cross-sections, and there should be interest in mining beneath the surface of the concept of triangle too - isn’t a triangle a symbol as much as a tree is?

On this basis, I don’t understand well what you intend by transparency:

So what is this transparency all about? It is our intuitive sense of how the concepts interrelate and transform. Even if we do not explicitly formalize these logical rules in our consciousness, they are implicitly transparent to us at our current stage of evolution. That is because the "I" lives in the morphic thinking space. Within that thinking morphic space, the "I" most firmly lives within the spiritual soul currently, at least for most people in the civilized world.

I would say that the multiplicity of material phenomenology that you reference is a symptom of the relative lack of transparency into the underlying intents. If we were to become conscious of the overarching intents that manifest the beehive, then the entanglement with other concepts would be experienced as more pure and simple. Likewise, if we became conscious that the concept of hexagon is structured by overarching intents besides our own, then it would be experienced as less pure and simple (transparent) in so far as it becomes symbolic for those overarching intents. It would be experienced as being entangled with many other geometric concepts, to begin with. So there is a relational determination in which we would discover a higher unity within the multiplicity of beehive concepts and a higher multiplicity within the unity of the hexagonal concept. The two would meet in the middle, so to speak, and it would be understood how the same overarching intents structure both (in a non-spatial way). After all, we perceive the beehive as having hexagonal shapes because we already have the supersensible concept of 'hexagon' which structures our sensory impressions.

It appears you are approaching from a more metaphysical angle rather than a phenomenological angle. We need the latter if we are to enter into the intuitive experience of our spiritual activity. The concepts truly become symbols when we experience the limitations and weaknesses they reflect within our spiritual activity that approaches the World Content, thereby motivating inner transformation. If we remain at the metaphysical level, then we might find all the proper characterizations of our spiritual activity and understand them as 'symbols', but we don't experience the burning need to transform that activity from the inside-out. I made a similar point to Guney on the other thread. We could assert that our core willpower (I-force) is also involved in the natural drive to eat or the cultural institutions surrounding driving, and that would be true because we do actually work on the natural and cultural spheres between death and rebirth, but this assertion doesn't help us enter into the most proximate point of contact with our I-force, which is in our moral decisions informed by conscience, such as the decision to help a stranger on the street instead of walking by or to sit down and meditate on spiritual reality instead of watching TV. We need to make these differentiations to clearly sense the gradient through which the superconscious has descended into symbolic ideation which has, in turn, descended into our personal conceptual activity and sensory perceptions, so that we can also retrace that descent through our inverted spiritual activity which becomes more and more transpersonal.

With that said, would you say there is any difference in your experience of perceiving the "tree" concept in comparison to your experience of perceiving the "hexagon" or "equilateral triangle" concept? If so, how would you characterize those differences? In other words, what does your experience of perceiving these concepts speak to you about the course and quality of your own conceptual activity that is seeking the intentional flow of evolution?