Cognition and the world as one developing organism

[Stranger]

I may be mistaking (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but my impression is that the Anthroposophy presents a dynamic view on the process of creating and unfolding the manifold of the world structure, but rather more static view on the High Cognition that creates the manifold of the world. The High Cognition that creates the manifold with its lawful curvatures, with its higher-order Beings as the agents of such Cognition, exists as something given, and the focus of the Anthroposophic quest is on the manifold itself, its creation process and how the lower beings like us develop, interact and integrate within the manifold with the higher-order Beings. However, we can look at it from another more global perspective – what if it is a mutually developing process in a sense that the Cognition develops the manifold of the world curvatures in order that it can itself learn and further develop its cognitive abilities, and by further developing cognitive abilities it can create even richer manifold structures with even higher-order meanings and layers of the manifold? In simple words, Consciousness continuously develops the world manifold within its own mind in order to further develop its own Cognitive abilities by interacting and learning from its own creation. The way it learns from the created manifold is by exploring and living through it from the first-person experiences of its own individuated instances (souls). These instances develop their own cognitive abilities and accumulate their experiences and knowledge by living and traversing their paths along the curvatures of the manifold, and then contribute their accumulated knowledge and cognitive abilities to the collective Cognition.

Another point to note here is that in these paradigms we are still distinguishing between the Cognition itself (as the ability to think on a hierarchy of cognitive levels from primitive instinctual to rational and up to higher intuitive levels, to imagine, to will and to create mental forms), and between the world-manifold as the product of the spiritual activity of Cognition. However, the abilities of Cognition are themselves the result of its own evolution, which in a way makes them a “product” of its own evolutionary development. In other words, both the world of mental forms, and the very ability to create and cognize the mental forms, develop together hand-in-hand in a mutually supporting and nurturing evolutionary process. In a way, even the demarcation between the Cognition as the ability to create and cognize, and the world content created by Cognition, becomes fuzzy and artificial, as the cognitive abilities themselves are inseparable from the world content they create and cognize. Thinking only lives and exists by thinking thoughts (thoughts in a very general sense as mental forms of any kind), and the thoughts cannot be separated from thinking. It would be like trying to separate fluidity from water, or heat from a hot object. Cognition and the world as a creation of cognition is really one inseparable continuously living, unfolding and developing organism on all levels.

[Federica]

I may be mistaking (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but my impression is that the Anthroposophy presents a dynamic view on the process of creating and unfolding the manifold of the world structure, but rather more static view on the High Cognition that creates the manifold of the world. The High Cognition that creates the manifold with its lawful curvatures, with its higher-order Beings as the agents of such Cognition, exists as something given, and the focus of the Anthroposophic quest is on the manifold itself, its creation process and how the lower beings like us develop, interact and integrate within the manifold with the higher-order Beings. However, we can look at it from another more global perspective – what if it is a mutually developing process in a sense that the Cognition develops the manifold of the world curvatures in order that it can itself learn and further develop its cognitive abilities, and by further developing cognitive abilities it can create even richer manifold structures with even higher-order meanings and layers of the manifold? In simple words, Consciousness continuously develops the world manifold within its own mind in order to further develop its own Cognitive abilities by interacting and learning from its own creation. The way it learns from the created manifold is by exploring and living through it from the first-person experiences of its own individuated instances (souls). These instances develop their own cognitive abilities and accumulate their experiences and knowledge by living and traversing their paths along the curvatures of the manifold, and then contribute their accumulated knowledge and cognitive abilities to the collective Cognition.

Another point to note here is that in these paradigms we are still distinguishing between the Cognition itself (as the ability to think on a hierarchy of cognitive levels from primitive instinctual to rational and up to higher intuitive levels, to imagine, to will and to create mental forms), and between the world-manifold as the product of the spiritual activity of Cognition. However, the abilities of Cognition are themselves the result of its own evolution, which in a way makes them a “product” of its own evolutionary development. In other words, both the world of mental forms, and the very ability to create and cognize the mental forms, develop together hand-in-hand in a mutually supporting and nurturing evolutionary process. In a way, even the demarcation between the Cognition as the ability to create and cognize, and the world content created by Cognition, becomes fuzzy and artificial, as the cognitive abilities themselves are inseparable from the world content they create and cognize. Thinking only lives and exists by thinking thoughts (thoughts in a very general sense as mental forms of any kind), and the thoughts cannot be separated from thinking. It would be like trying to separate fluidity from water, or heat from a hot object. Cognition and the world as a creation of cognition is really one inseparable continuously living, unfolding and developing organism on all levels.

I guess a comment from Ashvin or Cleric will serve you best here, and I only want to make a side note. I think that, in many cases, what slows down or buckles a balanced intuition of reality at large is what I may call a 50-50 intuition of humanity versus the higher worlds. What I mean is this: the newbie to spiritual awakening would start from a very understandable 100% focus on the world content: the physical body and everyday outer life on Earth. Then, as one somehow emerges in the awareness of the existence of ‘something else’, the proportion starts to change. That ‘something else’ grows from a speck of spirit into a more significant aspect or element in one’s understanding of reality, be that understanding philosophical, intuitive, religious, scientific, artistic, or other. Eventually, one comes to a point where the intuitive weight of all that is non-material becomes just as present, just as weighty, as the everyday world of senses, standard thoughts, and untamed feelings. So the 50-50 intuition is reached. And here many just stop, feeling relatively satisfied they have elevated themselves from the ‘100% below’ outlook. One may feel one has reached a well-rounded, well-balanced understanding and experience of the above too. But I think one should not stop there. Probably (I am not sure how accurate this is) the universe is a good metaphor for how things stand in relation to each other. The physical planet Earth weighs very little in comparison with the vast expanses of the universe, and just as little does our humanity weigh in comparison to the rest of the spiritual world, with all its families of beings of variously unfathomable natures, capacities, and interconnections. Our unique current intellectual quality of thinking - which leads us to our human, very peculiar dual stance within reality, that translates in perception of the world content based on sensations on one side, and concepts on the other - is the exception within the thinking (spiritual) quality of reality at large. Rather than a good half of the whole thing, I believe we are more like the platypus of reality at large

In this sense, it is my impression that the ‘50-50 intuition’ of the balance between humanity and the spiritual world is actually quite unbalanced, and may warp or limit spiritual perception. I am not sure what your outlook is in this respect, and perhaps this idea is off-topic in relation to your question. It’s only that for me this idea has been refreshed by your question, and so I thought I would post it. And whatever the appropriate spiritual pondering is in your view, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about that.

[AshvinP]

I may be mistaking (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but my impression is that the Anthroposophy presents a dynamic view on the process of creating and unfolding the manifold of the world structure, but rather more static view on the High Cognition that creates the manifold of the world. The High Cognition that creates the manifold with its lawful curvatures, with its higher-order Beings as the agents of such Cognition, exists as something given, and the focus of the Anthroposophic quest is on the manifold itself, its creation process and how the lower beings like us develop, interact and integrate within the manifold with the higher-order Beings. However, we can look at it from another more global perspective – what if it is a mutually developing process in a sense that the Cognition develops the manifold of the world curvatures in order that it can itself learn and further develop its cognitive abilities, and by further developing cognitive abilities it can create even richer manifold structures with even higher-order meanings and layers of the manifold? In simple words, Consciousness continuously develops the world manifold within its own mind in order to further develop its own Cognitive abilities by interacting and learning from its own creation. The way it learns from the created manifold is by exploring and living through it from the first-person experiences of its own individuated instances (souls). These instances develop their own cognitive abilities and accumulate their experiences and knowledge by living and traversing their paths along the curvatures of the manifold, and then contribute their accumulated knowledge and cognitive abilities to the collective Cognition.

Another point to note here is that in these paradigms we are still distinguishing between the Cognition itself (as the ability to think on a hierarchy of cognitive levels from primitive instinctual to rational and up to higher intuitive levels, to imagine, to will and to create mental forms), and between the world-manifold as the product of the spiritual activity of Cognition. However, the abilities of Cognition are themselves the result of its own evolution, which in a way makes them a “product” of its own evolutionary development. In other words, both the world of mental forms, and the very ability to create and cognize the mental forms, develop together hand-in-hand in a mutually supporting and nurturing evolutionary process. In a way, even the demarcation between the Cognition as the ability to create and cognize, and the world content created by Cognition, becomes fuzzy and artificial, as the cognitive abilities themselves are inseparable from the world content they create and cognize. Thinking only lives and exists by thinking thoughts (thoughts in a very general sense as mental forms of any kind), and the thoughts cannot be separated from thinking. It would be like trying to separate fluidity from water, or heat from a hot object. Cognition and the world as a creation of cognition is really one inseparable continuously living, unfolding and developing organism on all levels.

Thanks for this post, Eugene.

I think the 2nd paragraph is more aligned with the spiritual scientific understanding - the constellation of higher-order spiritual relations and the world content (including thoughts, feelings, etc.) co-evolve as a living organism, with growth and feedback processes and so on. For the 1st paragraph, the spiritual scientific understanding is also aligned with what is highlighted - there is no static process per se. That is what we discussed here, for example. Steiner often mentions that the hierarchical designations should understood as 'ranks' or 'posts', i.e. higher-order functions within the Cosmic organism, while the beings within those ranks - for example the Archangels known traditionally as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, etc. are continually evolving. Or another example:

After a certain number of epochs have elapsed, a Spirit of the Age has evolved further. We must picture this in the following way: when we die, having completed our present stage of evolution, our personality transmits the achievements of this Earth-life to the next Earth-life. The same holds good for the Spirits of the Age. In each Age we have one such Spirit of the Age, and at the end of the epoch he hands over to his successor, who, in his turn, hands over to his successor, and so on. The earlier Spirits, meanwhile, continue their own development. Then the original Spirit takes over again, so that in a later epoch, whilst the others are proceeding with their own evolution, he takes over again and infuses intuitively into mankind what he himself has acquired for his higher mission, for the benefit of the more developed humanity. We look up to these Spirits of Personality, to these Beings who may be characterized by the somewhat colourless term ‘Spirit of the Age’. Now we human beings pass from incarnation to incarnation; but we know for certain that, whilst we ourselves progress from epoch to epoch, when we look into the future, we see ever different Spirits of the Age determining events on Earth.

Nevertheless, these aspects of the higher-order inner landscape are relatively stable compared to our human-scale experience, just as the Zodiac is relatively fixed in the night sky compared to the planets, Sun, Moon, and those compared to the Earthly happenings. Or more phenomenologically, the moods we experience are relatively more stable than our buzzing thoughts during the day, the habits we flow through are more stable than the moods, the temperament that characterizes our approach to life is more stable than our habits, and we can imagine this extends into collective scales as well (or that those things are not strictly personal) - the linguistic structure of a given nation/people is relatively stable, the whole 'spirit of the age' that characterizes an epoch's essential 'themes' is more stable, etc. So there is spiritual relativity in that sense - certain relations may seem more 'static' depending on the cognitive observer's perspective.

Perhaps part of the confusion comes in if we imagine there are be-ings who have higher cognitive capacities (the latter imagined to remain static), instead of be-ing such capacities. The same holds for us too - we are not entities who have capacities, but a constellation of certain evolving capacities. What we know as Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition does not remain static, but is a resonant attunement with certain constellations of spiritual relations which are continually evolving. When we embody the new planetary incarnation, a capacity 'above' what we now refer to as Intuition will become accessible for humanity. It should be further stressed that every spiritual be-ing is a like a cross-section or 'slice' of the full organic Cosmic depth. Our total human phenomenal experience, for example, spans across many scales of inner activity, as we saw above with the thoughts, moods, temperament, language, etc.

[Stranger]

Thanks for this post, Eugene.

I think the 2nd paragraph is more aligned with the spiritual scientific understanding - the constellation of higher-order spiritual relations and the world content (including thoughts, feelings, etc.) co-evolve as a living organism, with growth and feedback processes and so on. For the 1st paragraph, the spiritual scientific understanding is also aligned with what is highlighted - there is no static process per se. That is what we discussed here, for example. Steiner often mentions that the hierarchical designations should understood as 'ranks' or 'posts', i.e. higher-order functions within the Cosmic organism, while the beings within those ranks - for example the Archangels known traditionally as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, etc. are continually evolving. Or another example:

thanks for the comment, Ashvin, this clarifies my question.

[Stranger]

In this sense, it is my impression that the ‘50-50 intuition’ of the balance between humanity and the spiritual world is actually quite unbalanced, and may warp or limit spiritual perception. I am not sure what your outlook is in this respect, and perhaps this idea is off-topic in relation to your question. It’s only that for me this idea has been refreshed by your question, and so I thought I would post it. And whatever the appropriate spiritual pondering is in your view, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about that.

Well, I would think we cannot definitely say what is balanced and what is not, it depends on the evolutionary stage of a particular ecosystem. For animals and lower organisms it is 100%, and it is perfectly balanced, natural and normal for them because that's their current evolutionary stage. For humans on average it is probably below 100% but still above 50-50. Those humans who are at 50-50 and even below are rather rare. On the cosmic scale you might be right that the majority of civilizations may be ahead of us and already on 50-50 or below.

[Cleric]

I may be mistaking (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but my impression is that the Anthroposophy presents a dynamic view on the process of creating and unfolding the manifold of the world structure, but rather more static view on the High Cognition that creates the manifold of the world. The High Cognition that creates the manifold with its lawful curvatures, with its higher-order Beings as the agents of such Cognition, exists as something given, and the focus of the Anthroposophic quest is on the manifold itself, its creation process and how the lower beings like us develop, interact and integrate within the manifold with the higher-order Beings. However, we can look at it from another more global perspective – what if it is a mutually developing process in a sense that the Cognition develops the manifold of the world curvatures in order that it can itself learn and further develop its cognitive abilities, and by further developing cognitive abilities it can create even richer manifold structures with even higher-order meanings and layers of the manifold? In simple words, Consciousness continuously develops the world manifold within its own mind in order to further develop its own Cognitive abilities by interacting and learning from its own creation. The way it learns from the created manifold is by exploring and living through it from the first-person experiences of its own individuated instances (souls). These instances develop their own cognitive abilities and accumulate their experiences and knowledge by living and traversing their paths along the curvatures of the manifold, and then contribute their accumulated knowledge and cognitive abilities to the collective Cognition.

Hi Eugene, glad to have you back.

I think the post above, and also the questions on the other thread:

Now, let's say I'm a mathematician imagining another intuitive visual idea of "something" that has never been imagined before (some kind of weird geometrical manifold). This is not yet a shared experience, no one else has ever experienced it yet. For now, this "something" only remains a part of my individual perspective and not yet part of Reality at Large. We may argue that "we can't tell if it's yet real or not". But when I share this idea with others and it propagates through the hierarchy to the higher-order beings, and they may even implement it into the structure of Reality at Large, then this visual idea now becomes a shared living experience. Will it make it more "real" or "true"?

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?

all lead to a fundamental need of the contemporary soul: we desperately need true experience and comprehension of what reality is to the higher beings (which means we need to find a path to the corresponding higher stages of consciousness in which the higher beings live, and which are also what our own evolution leads to).

By having the luxury of historical hindsight, it should be clear to most, that many of our scientific and philosophical problems (such as the various hard problems) occur simply because we set up a framework and expect an answer that fits in that framework. Such was the case, for example, with the wave-particle duality. Those who were overly confident in their framework would have asked "Just tell me - is light a particle - yes or no?" From today's perspective it's clear that the conversation can go no further as long as the other person doesn't even conceive that he needs to go 'meta' in respect to his cognitive framework.

We need not believe that the questioning person is simply ill-intended. These things are difficult because as long as we are fully merged with our cognitive grooves we simply don't recognize them - for us, this is the implicit way reality functions.

In a similar way, the question about higher forms of consciousness and existence is difficult. We either say "God's mind is inconceivable to mere mortals! You'll go mad if you even try!" or we tend to extrapolate our human stage of existence into the supposed higher stages.

Something of that sort is implicit in the above questions. There's a whole framework implicit in the questions. In a simplified way, this implicit view can be described as if we have a phenomenal screen of existence - like a Cosmic painter's canvas, and spiritual beings simultaneously draw on that canvas. In this view, a 'higher being' is simply a painter who somehow has more power over the general form of the painting, like a great master who paints the core of the composition while leaving the trivial details to the disciples.

In many cases such a metaphor can be used in a fruitful way (and we have done similar things before). But if the metaphor is taken too rigidly, we also trap ourselves in a variety of hard problems. Such is the question of real and unreal. This view conceives that in all cases an inner perception of a cat is a blob of paint on the canvas. Then we reason "What makes a blob 'real'? Is it simply due to the fact that many beings look at it and have a consensus that it should persist on the canvas? In a sense, there are too many paintbrushes on that blob and my own can't override them." We can philosophize a lot in this way but we should remember that even without consciously doing it, we still operate within certain general lines of understanding of reality. What if the framework needs to be outgrown?

...

These days I'm busier than usual and don't have much time for writing extensive posts, so if you have an inclination, I can offer to again try reaching shared understanding and experience of the higher stages of consciousness, by starting from our contemporary scientific milestones. I'll try to write shorter posts, probably one per day (if I can), and see if we are still on the same page after each bite. Needless to say, this will challenge the above implicit framework - the shared dream canvas and the blobs of imaginative paint. And, of course, if you feel that the above misrepresents the implicit view, you can sketch your understanding of what reality is to higher beings.

[AshvinP]

These days I'm busier than usual and don't have much time for writing extensive posts, so if you have an inclination, I can offer to again try reaching shared understanding and experience of the higher stages of consciousness, by starting from our contemporary scientific milestones. I'll try to write shorter posts, probably one per day (if I can), and see if we are still on the same page after each bite. Needless to say, this will challenge the above implicit framework - the shared dream canvas and the blobs of imaginative paint. And, of course, if you feel that the above misrepresents the implicit view, you can sketch your understanding of what reality is to higher beings.

Cleric,

I'm not sure if Eugene is interested in your offer or in sketching his own understanding, but if you already have something in mind and are still so inclined, I am sure it would be helpful for everyone on the forum to contemplate the posts and reorient further from our standard sense-based intuition of these things!

[Cleric]

Cleric,

I'm not sure if Eugene is interested in your offer or in sketching his own understanding, but if you already have something in mind and are still so inclined, I am sure it would be helpful for everyone on the forum to contemplate the posts and reorient further from our standard sense-based intuition of these things!

Actually, for some time now I wanted to collect something like a list of the most important transformations of contemporary scientific consciousness toward its spiritualization. I thought that here we could start doing that in a dialogue form since the questions that arise from the other side can only help highlight the essential points and the places where stumbling stones emerge. In one way or another we'll make that list in time