Saving the materialists

[Federica]

But we are not talking about the same way, because if we were, you wouldn't suppose that a higher being has mental pictures. Then I think it means you have not yet found that space. The etheric space where the body-brain and its sequences of mental pictures are left behind. Will you find it? I really hope you will. Cleric and Ashvin can help.

I read the whole series of the latest Cleric's essays (which are great), and I'm familiar with the space you are talking about. I do these kinds of meditations regularly. I did not say that higher beings would have a mental picture, I said that "higher-order being or a group of beings who with their imaginative-intuitive cognition imagine and manifest an intuitive pictorial idea". It's an idea on the intuitive level of cognition, but because a flower has certain visual shape, the intuition of the flower has certain "shapeness" to it, but not as a concrete mental visual picture that we humans have when we use our mental imaginative ability. I hope this is clear.

Ok, Eugene, I may have misunderstood your words, sorry.

[AshvinP]

But we are not talking about the same way, because if we were, you wouldn't suppose that a higher being has mental pictures. Then I think it means you have not yet found that space. The etheric space where the body-brain and its sequences of mental pictures are left behind. Will you find it? I really hope you will. Cleric and Ashvin can help.

I read the whole series of the latest Cleric's essays (which are great), and I'm familiar with the space you are talking about. I do these kinds of meditations regularly. I did not say that higher beings would have a mental picture, I said that "higher-order being or a group of beings who with their imaginative-intuitive cognition imagine and manifest an intuitive pictorial idea". It's an idea on the intuitive level of cognition, but because a flower has certain visual shape, the intuition of the flower has certain "shapeness" to it, but not as a concrete mental visual picture that we humans have when we use our mental imaginative ability. I hope this is clear.

It probably won't help coming from me, but the highlighted reiterates the same confusion as from the other thread, which Cleric has offered to help you get a better orientation to. I can only assume you have so far declined that offer because you feel these things are already perfectly understood, as you have also expressed to Federica here, and perhaps you feel somewhat insulted that Cleric would suggest otherwise. Perhaps you think that we are so stubbornly rooted in our SS framework that we continually fail to notice that you are speaking of the exact same things, and instead keep seeing discrepancies where they don't exist. Yet the whole line of questioning on this thread, as the above comment, reveals there are clearly discrepancies that cannot solely be due to our prejudiced way of reading your comments.

In any case, since you worked through the essays, we can already get a decent idea of how the highlighted is flawed. For example, the discussion of the scaled nature of human mental images:

We see that we as human beings, live consciously in a very narrow temporal band. Things that are too slow feel as the gradually morphing context of our existence, while things that are too fast are mostly missed because of our crude resolution in relation to them. This doesn’t prevent us from extending our intuition toward these regions but in the end, we can only symbolize it with mental images at our comfortable ticking pace. Additionally, even though we speak of a ‘band’, our inner experience doesn’t feel like a geometric band. Instead, it seems that our meso-scale sphere of conscious experience encompasses the micro-scale within it, yet most of it passes right through the openings of our conscious net, so to speak.

What kinds of experiences this narrow band consists of? To answer that we need to put aside our mental assemblies for a moment and concentrate entirely on our real-time bodily and sensory life. What we find is the movements of our body, the flow of visual and auditory perceptions, the production of verbal sounds, feelings like pain, pleasure, and so on. As we explained previously, our inner life wiggles out as a kind of ‘double vision’ overlaid on these raw bodily phenomena and we can then experience mental images representing past experiences or anticipating future ones. However, we would be able to do very little if our inner life was limited to only real-time reproductions of bodily experiences. Instead, we continuously resort to the scaling depicted above. We use the replicated images of our real-time bodily experiences as symbols for greater or lesser time spans of experience. For example, when we think in our mind ‘a year’, as far as the purely auditory content is concerned, this is a replica of a real-time verbal bodily experience at the meso scale. Producing the mental sound takes roughly the same time as the physical pronunciation of the word. However, the intuition that is anchored in this replica of bodily sound compresses (scales down) our intuitive sense of what one year of time is. We can only think about greater periods of time (memories of the past or plans for the future) if we shrink them to images at the scale of our bodily experiences. If we could remember our two-week vacation last summer only in real-time, it would take us two full weeks to do so. Instead, we grasp our overall intuition for the past period and we can anchor it in a symbol ‘my summer vacation last year’ which is a replica of real-time bodily speech. Now we can intuitively move through the landscape of these memories and condense more concrete images of the actual happenings, which in the end are also instances of real-time bodily experiences. We do something similar when we make a plan for our next summer vacation. We should get a really vivid feel for this. Consider how our verbal thinking can only flow at the pace of our physical speech and is indeed its replica, yet the words continuously focus intuitions that span greater or lesser, future or past time spans. When we think about greater periods we need to compress them. For example, when we look at a calendar we behold a real-time visual perception, yet we grasp it as a compressed symbol of our intuition for all the days in the year. When we think about faster periods – for example, the flapping of bee wings – we need to imagine them slowed down. Our real-time imagination looks like the physical perception of waving condor wings, however, we grasp that as a scaled-up image of our intuition for the rapid process. Today we also use technological aids to produce these compressed or expanded images. For example, we could hardly perceive the transformation of clouds before timelapse photography, nor the flapping of bee wings before slow motion video.

Our perception of a 'flower' is a scaled image in the same fundamental sense, except it clearly symbolizes temporally expanded intuition of curvatures that are more encompassing than our intended vacation. These curvatures feel like the much dimmer background intuitive context in which our lives take shape, much more so than any particular life events we have gone through. This is the "shapeness" you referred to except it can't be found as some more subtle imaginative picture or idea existing in the mind of some particular being that impresses it into the perceptual flow, just as our intuition of the 2-week vacation can't be found in that way either. If we work with the illustrations of these essays with the needed concentration, really trying to live through the descriptions, it should already be clear why the Cosmic painter's canvas is so misleading. We only need to adopt the inner stance that there is more to be learned, new cognitive paradigms that need to be grown into. This is why Christ said, "except ye become as little children..." The inner stance of "been there, done that, all is understood" is the opposite of that childlike stance and continually blocks our ability to open up to new sparks of intuition that can revolutionize our whole Self- and World-understanding.

[Federica]

So, what makes the ideal content real and true? Do they become real when higher-order beings implement these ideas in a harmony with the laws of the wholeness of the created structure? After all, they are simply the products of their intuitive-imaginative thinking, aren't they? Or do they become real when they are shared and not simply remain a part of the individual living experience? What is the criterion of "reality" and "truth" in the world of living thinking and of ideations that the living-thinking produces, whether individually or collectively?

By the way, I would like to expressed with new words what has been pointed to somewhere in older posts.
The Buddha was a special being, and I don’t dare to say much about him. However, the humans of that time did not have clear mental pictures like we have nowadays. Only in ancient Greece, close to the coming of Christ, man started to have some form of mental pictures, although way more dreamy and fluid than today. But before those times, the individual human being had a very different inner-outer organization. Since the etheric body was not so tightly and deeply in the grip of the physical body as it is today, the etheric space was much more readily accessible to them. Those humans didn’t have science yet, as we conceive it - our intellectual, clear, sequential, logical, constructive reasoning grounded in sharp mental pictures. Instead, they had a much easier access to their non-brain-based thinking in the etheric space. They knew the reality of the spiritual world for a certainty. They could experience it, naturally. And so the practices the Buddha initiated for them were ideal for a body-mind that had a much easier, almost automatic, not independently willed, access to spiritual realities.

Those men incarnated at the times of Buddha would never have pondered the burning questions you have been pondering for long, that you listed above! And the meditations and practices that were good for them are not good for us today!

Our physical body is much more of a tyrant with respect to the etheric body than theirs was. We are today at a peak of density and physicality: the physical body drags us down by default, when we let ourselves be inspired by ancient practices 'as is', without taking the necessary measures in order to loosen the etheric space. This situation is the price to pay for the scientific mindset we needed to acquire and develop, in order to move forward, and it was worth it. But it is absolutely mandatory to take all this into account. The breathwork that was beneficial for those times gets hijacked by the rhythms of the physical body if we try to replicate the same practices, instead of opening to the etheric space. The meditation prompts that worked for a man who was already ‘there’ almost automatically, end up being altogether insufficient, in terms of expressing the will, for the man of today.

That doen't mean that we can't cultivate a particualar connection, resonance, and reverence to special individualities and spiritual traditions of the past, and deeply benefit from that wisdom. But man evolves, and if we want to be at the forefront of this evolution, we have to develop the qualities that have most recently become evolutionary accessible to man, in accordance with the present relationships between our bodies in our inner-outer organization.

Now, tell me this doesn't make sense to you, Eugene...

[Stranger]

They could experience it, naturally. And so the practices the Buddha initiated for them were ideal for a body-mind that had a much easier, almost automatic, not independently willed, access to spiritual realities.

Our physical body is much more of a tyrant with respect to the etheric body than theirs was. We are today at a peak of density and physicality: the physical body drags us down by default, when we let ourselves be inspired by ancient practices 'as is', without taking the necessary measures in order to loosen the etheric space.

But man evolves, and if we want to be at the forefront of this evolution, we have to develop the qualities that have most recently become evolutionary accessible to man, in accordance with the present relationships between our bodies in our inner-outer organization.

Now, tell me this doesn't make sense to you, Eugene...

Well, that sounds to me rather like a de-evolution, don't you think?

Also, if the access to spiritual realities were so easy and automatic for ancient men, why the materialist philosophies were developed in ancient Greece (Leucippus, Democritus, Aristotle) and ancient India (Charvaka) ?

[Federica]

Well, that sounds to me rather like a de-evolution, don't you think?

It may seem so, if we keep a selective focus on only one aspect, the accessibility of the etheric (and astral) space. And, indeed, human evolution is not a strictly linear path. It can't be, since there are so many interrelated factors, time scales, external influences. But in the big (and I mean really big) scheme of things, a stronger entanglement in physicality - hence a more difficult access to the etheric space - was necessary. The reason is that man had to develop the "young" I. The I is the most recent addition to the human inner-outer organization, and needed to grow and acquire some independence. This is what we have recently developed, in particular from the 1500s, with the development of the scientific and intellectual mindset. This has been our opportunity to awaken to our independent, individual, I-thinking. The thinking that, among other things, allows us today to formulate and reason out exact questions like the ones you have listed above.

And now, our mission is to rediscover the etheric, astral, and further spiritual spaces, but not as an automatic capability, not as a built-in function, courtesy of the spiritual hierarchies, but as a responsible, willed capacity to be developed with cognitive effort, precisely through that scientific mindset - independent, willed, grounded in sound inquiry, through construction of mental pictures - that we have now as part of our toolbox. So even materialism was worth it. It has had its function in the evolution of man. But today that function per se is exhausted, and it's high time to use those fruits for the purpose of reconnecting with the etheric and further spiritual spaces, and generate a new unitary science, from the new impulse. The progress, the thing that tells us it's not a de-evolution, is that our spiritual quest today can and should be a fully conscious one. Different from ancient man, it shall happen from a responsible place of full awareness of what we are doing, and why we are doing it, and freedom. That's why Steiner called it so: Spiritual --- Science. That's why he wrote a Philosophy of --- Freedom.

Makes sense, right? Now tell us it doesn't : )

[Stranger]

Makes sense, right? Now tell us it doesn't : )

We can only hope that this downward path is coming to an end hopefully sooner than later. But I understand that it's an inevitable and necessary evolutionary stage to go through.

Still the fact that those materialists philosophies were developed in ancient times when people had such an easy access to spiritual world doesn't make sense.

[Federica]

Makes sense, right? Now tell us it doesn't : )

We can only hope that this downward path is coming to an end hopefully sooner than later. But I understand that it's an inevitable and necessary evolutionary stage to go through.

Still the fact that those materialists philosophies were developed in ancient times when people had such an easy access to spiritual world doesn't make sense.

Well it depends on our free choice to walk, or not walk, the path of phenomenological, willed spiritual development, whether the downward path will come, or not come, to an end. I mean that at the individual scale - every one of us freely choosing to exert this freedom, is meaningful, to the reversal of the downward path - we can do more than only hope.

Regarding the ancient impulses you refer to: granted that human evolution is not strictly linear (both temporally, and spatially, by geographies) the fact that historians and philosophers, a posteriori, rationalize and dub some ancient outlooks as materialist, doesn't necessarily make them akin in nature to the powerful wave of modern materialism we know - the inner quality of that impulse. I don't know Charvaka, but for example with regard to the Greek philosophers you mentioned, we can surely not compare their philosophies to those of modern materialism. It is true however, that Aristotle marks the very beginning of the evolution of our modern I-thinking, the very first ancestor of our rational-scientific mindset. It is a matter of digging deeper, going beyond the labels, which is objectively difficult to do without a proper overview, in proper relative time-scales and contexts, of the parabola of the evolution of man. It's easy to read "perception" "inference" "skepticism" with reference to those ancient civilizations, and understand the concepts through the lens of our contemporary language and philosophical understanding. So I would say that, to begin with, it's safe to hold us to the large, most clearly identifiable patterns. From this perspective, I think it would be hard to maintain that the case of a heterodox Hindu school like Charvaka, that we may moreover interpret through the lens of our present mindset, makes us doubt the reliability and spiritual significance of the macro trends of human evolution such as the birth of modern materialism and science (not to say that I for myself have achieved a fully satisfactory grasp of the arch of human evolution, but, as I said yesterday, it's a progressive endeavor).

[Cleric]

Also, if the access to spiritual realities were so easy and automatic for ancient men, why the materialist philosophies were developed in ancient Greece (Leucippus, Democritus, Aristotle) and ancient India (Charvaka) ?

It should be noted that these developments started to occur only around the first millennium BC, which is not surprising since the spirit was descending deeper and deeper in the physical spectrum. Additionally, these philosophies were still not what we today consider as materialism. If we have to compare it with something modern, probably the closest would be something like pan-psychism. Democritus, for example, considered the soul to be composed of soul (fire) atoms. Such a fact shouldn't be passed by lightly. Whatever the philosophies at these times were, if we read with deeper feeling, it is clear that for man of that age, the soul was still a tangible reality that couldn't simply be ignored. Only much later our inner life thinned out to such an extent that one could fantasize that inner experience could somehow emerge from non-experience.

In short, materialism of today can be expressed as "Only lifeless, mechanical matter/energy is real. Our inner experience is non-reality." While the ancient materialists would rather say something like "Only my spiritual existence within the constraints of the physical body and environment is real. There can't be conscious existence beyond this organization." In other words, these philosophers, because of their deepening entanglement with the physical processes, could no longer sense the holistic nature of the existential flow, thus they rightfully thought "It's logical that when this body decomposes, nothing of these inner experiences would be possible."

[Federica]

In that time, no conception at all existed as yet of what we call today “the laws of nature.” People did not think in terms of natural laws; everywhere and in everything they felt the forces of nature. When a man looked into his own being, he did not experience a soul that—as was the case later on —bore within itself a dim will, an almost equally dim feeling, and an abstract thinking. Instead, he experienced the soul as the bearer of the living Logos, something that was not abstract and dead, but a divine living image of God.

We must be able to picture this contrast, which remained acute until the Eleventh or Twelfth century. It was quite different from the contrasts that we feel today. If we cannot vividly grasp this contrast, which was experienced by everyone in that earlier epoch, we make the same mistake as all those historians of philosophy who regard the old Greek thinker Democritus of the fifth century B.C. as an atomist in the modern sense, because he spoke of “atoms.” The words suggest a resemblance, but no real resemblance exists. There is great difference between modern-day atomists and Democritus. His utterances were based on the awareness of the contrast described above between man and nature, soul and body. His atoms were complexes of force and as such were contrasted with space, something a modern atomist cannot do in that manner. How could the modern atomist say what Democritus said: “Existence is not more than nothingness, fullness is not more than emptiness?” It implies that Democritus assumed empty space to possess an affinity with atom-filled space. This has meaning only within a consciousness that as yet has no idea of the modern concept of body. Therefore, it cannot speak of the atoms of a body, but only of centers of force, which, in that case, have an inner relationship to what surrounds man externally. Today's atomist cannot equate emptiness with fullness. If Democritus had viewed emptiness the way we do today, he could not have equated it with the state of being. He could do so because in this emptiness he sought the soul that was the bearer of the Logos. And though he conceived his Logos in a form of necessity, it was the Greek form of necessity, not our modern physical necessity. If we are to comprehend what goes on today, we must be able to look in the right way into the nuances of ideas and feelings of former times.

The Origins of Natural Science

[Federica]

On the differences between our inner-outer organization now compared to Greek times, Steiner said in GA 127:

"…then came the Greco-Roman era, these remarkable people, the Greeks, in the middle of post-Atlantean times. In them was a kind of balance, in which in general the powers of the world of spirit flowed into the soul, and came to expression in corporeality [the etheric body was still in essence the ruler of the physical]. This gave the Greeks the remarkable Harmony between outward physicality - the beauty of their outward corporeality - and the beauty of their soul, this loveliness of Soul, since the soul was free of the physical body, it was in consequence capable of opening upward toward the hierarchies. There was an influx of the powers of the hierarchies coming to expression in the physical body and therefore the whole physical body of an ancient Greek was an expression of the beauty of his soul. Thus we find that, to a great degree, a transpersonal quality came to expression in the human body in the Greek era: a universal human quality, and this is the important thing to inscribe in our souls: this will change radically in future. The human physical body will assert itself more and more forcefully, it will chain astral and etheric bodies to itself. Only if we consciously approach the world of spirit absorbing ideas, concepts and feelings from it, as we are now beginning to do in the spiritual movement, can we then ourselves develop the powerful forces that formerly flowed into the physical and etheric body from the hierarchies. As the future approaches, we can only retain mastery of our physical body by consciously drawing strong powers from the spiritual world that can overcome the resistant energies due to the etheric body being bound up so closely with the physical body. We can put it like this: in ancient pre-Christian times, human beings were endowed with a natural capacity to act upon their physical body. In the future, people will only have this capacity if they themselves do something to ensure it."


The Son of God and the Son of Man