Kants Illusion

[Güney27]

This is a short part from an essay I’m writing right now. I find it is a really important topic to understand to understand spiritual topics, and to understand the limits of the intellect. Every feedback is welcomed.


The given nature of our existence, without any fundamental assumptions, should be the starting point of our investigation into the great questions. If we begin by building our foundation on prejudices, how can we then attain true knowledge? How can we come to understanding if we start with beliefs? How can we even engage with the question of how we can recognize anything at all, before we postulate abstract principles as the basis of reality? We seek the facts of our experience, which would still hold true even if it were to turn out that we are a butterfly dreaming of being a human, or living in a simulation. We are searching for a starting point that is free from any supposed knowledge. If we begin by asking what the relationship between subject and object is—how the world appears in our consciousness, or how thought recognizes the external world—we have already unconsciously incorporated an assumption into our supposedly assumption-free starting point: that there is a separation between subject and object. We must critically examine our thought processes for postulates that distort our search for the facts of our existence.

Edmund Husserl described the method of phenomenological reduction, in which one negates all assumptions about the world in order to study one's perceptions from an “ego perspective” free from bias. Our “ego perspective” is the only one we can ever truly know.

The Perception of the World
As mentioned, the only perspective we can truly know is our “I-perspective” (first-person experience). Nothing is more certain than our own experience of the world. I cannot be certain if I live in a representation of a hypothetical “thing-in-itself,” or if I am a butterfly dreaming of being a human, because perceptions do not reveal their essence through their sensory appearances; it is always thought that seeks their essence. Everything I can know, everything I can recognize, is always within my conscious “I-perspective.” What lies outside of this, if anything, I fundamentally cannot know, because everything that exists and of which I can have knowledge is solely and always within my own conscious perception. This is a fact, not speculation.

Is the world independent of any observer? If we wish to answer this question without prejudice, it must be said that a world that exists independently of conscious experience already leads us in the direction of assuming a separation between subject (consciousness) and object (the world). Everything we know, and can know, is always an immanent experience within our “I-perspective.” To speak of a world that exists outside and independently of this “I-perspective” is an unverifiable speculation, one that is fundamentally unprovable. If we claim that we live in a world of representations that emerge from the “thing-in-itself” (reality, which exists outside and independent of our representational world), we are essentially doing nothing more than highlighting speculations about our perceptions within our conscious “I-perspective” and then recognizing them as reality, which, again, happens within the “I-perspective.”

The fact that we cannot even know if we live in a dream is a testament to the inability of our intellectual thinking to find the ground of our conscious perception, which is all we can know. Everything postulated beyond our perceptions (and thus beyond consciousness, since these are inseparable) is fundamentally nothing more than speculation serving the intellect, creating a fitting story for the dynamic actions of perceptual phenomena. The story told about a reality outside of our perceptions is, in principle, unverifiable, because every test takes place within the immanent experience of phenomena. Thus, a noumenal reality can only be postulated, but never verified.

Through our conscious experience, we can know; without it, there can be no knowledge, no discourse on anything at all. Therefore, all knowledge of the world always goes hand in hand with it, and anyone who postulates something beyond it can do no more than create pure speculation. The intellect should remain silent rather than postulate things behind the only knowable existence: consciousness and its phenomena. Anyone who attempts to separate consciousness and its phenomena lives in unprovable assumptions, regardless of whether they acknowledge them as such.

I hope this brief passage has been sufficient to show that everything exists within our conscious “I-perspective” and that we do not live apart from, but in the world. Reality is not in a closed “thing-in-itself,” but right before our eyes. Therefore, the first point in our investigation is the realization of our real, conscious “I-perspective.” Everything that we think about as its cause arises within this perspective. Every concept of the noumenal is within it. We cannot escape it, and any attempt to do so is nothing more than a story within it. We should therefore ground ourselves in it and continue our investigation within it, rather than fleeing into illusory constructs of thought. The myths we call matter, the Big Bang, intelligent design, and so on, are no more than that: myths.

A fitting quote from Nietzsche: “It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be contested. We see all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; yet the question remains, what would still be there of the world if we did cut it off?”

[AshvinP]

Very well written, Guney!

The interesting thing is that Kant himself reached the boundary of this 'phenomenological reduction', where we are only left with first-person experience free of dogmatic metaphysical assumptions. In a certain sense, he was both the founder of the phenomenological method and its gravedigger for the 19th century, since he failed to perceive how first-person thinking experience could be expanded beyond the confines of our ever-receding mental pictures. At the same time, he intuitively felt that there must be some solid Divine foundation for morality, freedom, aesthetics, and so on, so he had to leave open the possibility of a 'noumenal realm' of 'things themselves', of which we can only have faith.

Thus all controversy in regard to the nature of the thinking being and its connection with the corporeal world is merely a result of filling the gap where knowledge is wholly lacking to us with paralogisms of reason, treating our thoughts as things and hypostatising them. Hence originates an imaginary science, imaginary both in the case of him who affirms and of him who denies, since all parties either suppose some knowledge of objects of which no human being has any concept, or treat their own representations as objects, and so revolve in a perpetual circle of ambiguities and contradictions. Nothing but the sobriety of a critique, at once strict and just, can free us from this dogmatic delusion, which through the lure of an imagined felicity keeps so many in bondage to theories and systems. Such a critique confines all our speculative claims rigidly to the field of possible experience; and it does this not by shallow scoffing at ever-repeated failures or pious sighs over the limits of our reason, but by an effective determining of these limits in accordance with established principles, inscribing its nihil ulterius on those Pillars of Hercules which nature herself has erected in order that the voyage of our reason may be extended no further than the continuous coastline of experience itself reaches—a coast we cannot leave without venturing upon a shoreless ocean which, after alluring us with ever-deceptive prospects, compels us in the end to abandon as hopeless all this vexatious and tedious endeavour.
—Immanuel Kant (KrV, A 395-396)

The reason that he couldn't imagine our thinking activity already living within this imperceptible meaningful domain of experience, however, was that he subconsciously imported the pre-critical assumption that "knowing" can only be a process of reproducing the 'outer world' (whether material, psychic, spiritual, etc.) inside a subject's consciousness. This is the assumption that still plagues so many thinkers today, especially those who consider their thinking to have moved "beyond Kant". It was hardly possible for people in Kant's time to fully appreciate that perceptual reality only comes into existence through the thinking "I"-perspective, since the means of attaining higher imaginative knowledge through the portal of concentrated thinking had not fully incarnated. It is only by experiencing our thinking that remains conscious without its sensory-intellectual support that we can learn to take seriously our continual participation and responsibility in both dividing and bringing back together the poles of reality.

[Güney27]

Very well written, Guney!

The interesting thing is that Kant himself reached the boundary of this 'phenomenological reduction', where we are only left with first-person experience free of dogmatic metaphysical assumptions. In a certain sense, he was both the founder of the phenomenological method and its gravedigger for the 19th century, since he failed to perceive how first-person thinking experience could be expanded beyond the confines of our ever-receding mental pictures. At the same time, he intuitively felt that there must be some solid Divine foundation for morality, freedom, aesthetics, and so on, so he had to leave open the possibility of a 'noumenal realm' of 'things themselves', of which we can only have faith.

Thus all controversy in regard to the nature of the thinking being and its connection with the corporeal world is merely a result of filling the gap where knowledge is wholly lacking to us with paralogisms of reason, treating our thoughts as things and hypostatising them. Hence originates an imaginary science, imaginary both in the case of him who affirms and of him who denies, since all parties either suppose some knowledge of objects of which no human being has any concept, or treat their own representations as objects, and so revolve in a perpetual circle of ambiguities and contradictions. Nothing but the sobriety of a critique, at once strict and just, can free us from this dogmatic delusion, which through the lure of an imagined felicity keeps so many in bondage to theories and systems. Such a critique confines all our speculative claims rigidly to the field of possible experience; and it does this not by shallow scoffing at ever-repeated failures or pious sighs over the limits of our reason, but by an effective determining of these limits in accordance with established principles, inscribing its nihil ulterius on those Pillars of Hercules which nature herself has erected in order that the voyage of our reason may be extended no further than the continuous coastline of experience itself reaches—a coast we cannot leave without venturing upon a shoreless ocean which, after alluring us with ever-deceptive prospects, compels us in the end to abandon as hopeless all this vexatious and tedious endeavour.
—Immanuel Kant (KrV, A 395-396)

The reason that he couldn't imagine our thinking activity already living within this imperceptible meaningful domain of experience, however, was that he subconsciously imported the pre-critical assumption that "knowing" can only be a process of reproducing the 'outer world' (whether material, psychic, spiritual, etc.) inside a subject's consciousness. This is the assumption that still plagues so many thinkers today, especially those who consider their thinking to have moved "beyond Kant". It was hardly possible for people in Kant's time to fully appreciate that perceptual reality only comes into existence through the thinking "I"-perspective, since the means of attaining higher imaginative knowledge through the portal of concentrated thinking had not fully incarnated. It is only by experiencing our thinking that remains conscious without its sensory-intellectual support that we can learn to take seriously our continual participation and responsibility in both dividing and bringing back together the poles of reality.

Thanks Ashvin!

The split between the noumenale and phenomenal reality is a problem, because we imagine reality on the other side of the cone. But it’s nevertheless a fact every one can comprehend that the only reality we can know of, is the our conscious perspective. So even a theory like the Big Bang or other ones which explain the universe are metaphysical in nature. They think of the universe as a material place, which exist independently of consciousness and without a conscious experience. It’s very ironically, because the people who seem so obsessed with proofs, doesn’t keep that attitude when it comes there axioms, which hover in the unconscious and limit their Thinking ability. I noticed that in my discussions with academic people, that their thinking is really restricted in a sense. If I try to explain them that their theories are of metaphysical nature, they become deaf and make fun of the arguments. Worldviews are always a very emotional topic for most of the people.


It’s important to remember that we are only really know our first person conscious experience, then we don’t see meaning as something of only subjective value, but as a part of reality. It’s only natural that we beginn to see passions, desires, emotions as something belonging to reality, something which controls and shapes the form we conduct willing and thinking, like sense perceptible phenomena. If we have established these facts of existence, and are successful in “decoding” our unconscious assumptions (beliefs), we can really begin to become humble and conscious, about the fact that we are not in control of reality, but are shaped by it. That can lead us into the feeling of devotion for that which is higher than us and leads us in certain directions. Then trough concentration or/and prayer, we can begin to work towards the ideal of theosis (purification of our emotion-body). This leads towards real self knowledge. That’s the heart of every spiritual teaching (of course there are certain streams of spirituality that doesn’t lead into that ideal and possibly are harmful). And maybe this purification is only a step, of a journey of greater length, but I think it’s humanities current task.


If Kant hadn’t postulated the unknowable existence of a noumenal “Thing in itself” he would maybe had really contributed much for humanity. I will have a conversation via zoom with JW today, and I think the topic we talk about mostly will be his understanding of Kant, that lead him into his path of thinking.

[Kaje977]

The interesting thing is that Kant himself reached the boundary of this 'phenomenological reduction', where we are only left with first-person experience free of dogmatic metaphysical assumptions. In a certain sense, he was both the founder of the phenomenological method and its gravedigger for the 19th century, since he failed to perceive how first-person thinking experience could be expanded beyond the confines of our ever-receding mental pictures. At the same time, he intuitively felt that there must be some solid Divine foundation for morality, freedom, aesthetics, and so on, so he had to leave open the possibility of a 'noumenal realm' of 'things themselves', of which we can only have faith.

Hello, Ashvin. Indeed, you nailed it.

To give a little more context to what is meant here by ‘faith’, one should take a look at Kant's ‘Critique of Practical Reason’. Interestingly enough, I dare say that Kant, without perhaps realising it himself, broke through his own barrier of his own mental pictures with his ‘as if’ concept: ‘Act as if the ideas were universally true’ (Practical Freedom - Transcendental Freedom, etc. etc.). This sounds quite close to ‘intellectual intuition’ (in the sense, that you no longer have a snapshot of something you reflect upon, but instead live within it and experience it immediately), but Kant limits himself again by compacting his thinking activity into a very strong archetype of ‘humility’. I think that Kant may well have sensed that man is capable of much more (as his ‘Opus Postumum’ proves, because there he also postulates an aether (not the physical, disproved, aether, but the supersensible aether, as Steiner conceived it, almost close to perceive the formative forces of the aether)), but certainly from a Catholic-influenced world view (especially in the circumstances of the time in which he was born, in which he certainly would have been ostracized) did not consider it decent to attribute such great power to man.

[AshvinP]

The interesting thing is that Kant himself reached the boundary of this 'phenomenological reduction', where we are only left with first-person experience free of dogmatic metaphysical assumptions. In a certain sense, he was both the founder of the phenomenological method and its gravedigger for the 19th century, since he failed to perceive how first-person thinking experience could be expanded beyond the confines of our ever-receding mental pictures. At the same time, he intuitively felt that there must be some solid Divine foundation for morality, freedom, aesthetics, and so on, so he had to leave open the possibility of a 'noumenal realm' of 'things themselves', of which we can only have faith.

Hello, Ashvin. Indeed, you nailed it.

To give a little more context to what is meant here by ‘faith’, one should take a look at Kant's ‘Critique of Practical Reason’. Interestingly enough, I dare say that Kant, without perhaps realising it himself, broke through his own barrier of his own mental pictures with his ‘as if’ concept: ‘Act as if the ideas were universally true’ (Practical Freedom - Transcendental Freedom, etc. etc.). This sounds quite close to ‘intellectual intuition’ (in the sense, that you no longer have a snapshot of something you reflect upon, but instead live within it and experience it immediately), but Kant limits himself again by compacting his thinking activity into a very strong archetype of ‘humility’. I think that Kant may well have sensed that man is capable of much more (as his ‘Opus Postumum’ proves, because there he also postulates an aether (not the physical, disproved, aether, but the supersensible aether, as Steiner conceived it, almost close to perceive the formative forces of the aether)), but certainly from a Catholic-influenced world view (especially in the circumstances of the time in which he was born, in which he certainly would have been ostracized) did not consider it decent to attribute such great power to man.

Hello Kaje,

Thanks for this addition. Indeed, I have seen Kant's thinking on the 'limits to knowledge' as more nuanced lately, and it seems he held the 'thing itself' in 'problematic status', meaning we cannot either affirm or deny its existence. That, in turn, opens the possibility for higher-order knowledge that reaches deeper than the spatiotemporal experience we are familiar with, but nevertheless, remains entirely within the dynamic structure and movements of immanent spiritual activity (does not appeal to any transcendental 'beyond').

As you may know, since you mentioned Steiner, that was the core of his epistemological-phenomenological method. Have you worked through Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or any of his other early philosophical works? If so, I'm sure we would all love to hear more of your thoughts about that. How do you feel about the possibility of immanently cognizing the formative forces that structure thinking, which also coincide with those structuring the natural world, and the resulting potential of a truly spiritual science?

[Federica]

To give a little more context to what is meant here by ‘faith’, one should take a look at Kant's ‘Critique of Practical Reason’. Interestingly enough, I dare say that Kant, without perhaps realising it himself, broke through his own barrier of his own mental pictures with his ‘as if’ concept: ‘Act as if the ideas were universally true’ (Practical Freedom - Transcendental Freedom, etc. etc.).

For Steiner, this philosophy of 'as if' is a philosophy of desperation:

"...much philosophical thinking has been concerned with concepts such as force and matter. Today this has gone so far that it was attempted to establish a philosophy of the 'as if'. That is, according to that philosophy, we cannot arrive at any clear enlightening concepts of force and matter and therefore we should continue our research in the wider field of phenomena of perceptions 'as if' such concepts corresponded to something real which we simply do not know, that is, 'as if' such concepts corresponded to a reality that one does not know, 'as if' they had some legitimacy. You will surely agree that this philosophy of the 'as if' is a desperate worldview, even though it seems plausible to many people in our time."

Bern, July 8, 1920

[Kaje977]

Hello Kaje,

Thanks for this addition. Indeed, I have seen Kant's thinking on the 'limits to knowledge' as more nuanced lately, and it seems he held the 'thing itself' in 'problematic status', meaning we cannot either affirm or deny its existence. That, in turn, opens the possibility for higher-order knowledge that reaches deeper than the spatiotemporal experience we are familiar with, but nevertheless, remains entirely within the dynamic structure and movements of immanent spiritual activity (does not appeal to any transcendental 'beyond').

As you may know, since you mentioned Steiner, that was the core of his epistemological-phenomenological method. Have you worked through Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or any of his other early philosophical works? If so, I'm sure we would all love to hear more of your thoughts about that. How do you feel about the possibility of immanently cognizing the formative forces that structure thinking, which also coincide with those structuring the natural world, and the resulting potential of a truly spiritual science?

Hello, Ashvin!
Nice of you to ask! So well, let's put it this way (I don't know how much you believe in MBTI or what you think of it), but I have realised that I am an INFJ (quite some time ago already). That is, I usually have a lot to do with my intuition primarily (Ni function). However, a big problem with this was that I hardly had a real ‘anchor’ in my everyday life, as I acted purely intuitively without really thinking about it. This had its advantages in empathic situations or in artistic writing (e.g. I could make some seemingly nonsensical scribble on paper as "notes" for stuff I was learning and even days later reproduce everything word for word that I had written down, and others just looked at me thinking that it just is, well, nonsensical scribble), but in other respects, i.e. logical reasoning, I had enormous problems. For example, it was not clear to me how one could proceed from the judgement,
Premise 1: ‘All humans are mortal’
Premise 2: ‘Socrates is a human being’
to => Socrates is mortal.

I can't describe it exactly, but my problem lies mainly in the fact that I somehow didn't have this anchor that I could hold on to. With Kant, I finally had an ‘aha moment’, so to speak. In truth, I already have the ability to reason logically. Before that, I was under the firm misconception that you had to learn ‘logical thinking’ first. But interestingly, before that I never asked myself how we actually learn to learn. However, when I asked myself this question for the first time, I realised very clearly that you can't learn how to learn, because you would need learning itself! It was only then that I really realised that it's not about ‘learning to learn’, but that I have to use the thinking tools I already have to try and train myself to use these thinking tools correctly. In other words, to somehow learn to translate the intuitive into something solid so that you can orientate yourself by it. Do you know what I mean? My intellectual abilities improved more and more as a result. Kant offers a kind of ‘system’, so to speak, in that he captures the individual phenomenological moments and presses them back into concepts himself. I realise, of course, that this simultaneously creates a loop or recursive problem that Kant could only solve by stating: „We are not to discuss it any further.“ Do not examine the recursion, because you will never truly capture the activity into a concept, because these forms are so fundamental, that they are conditioning themselves (when we reflect about them logically).

In short: the pure forms of judgement, e.g. of generality, are so fundamental to our thinking that we cannot determine their cause, as they themselves are already formative, so to speak. They are simply there, within us.

I can now use his system, for example, to constructively explain the entire structure of my intellect. For example, I can describe the cognition of a pencil as precisely as perhaps no one before Kant has ever done. This means that I can now put this phenomenological experience into something that I can orientate myself by. When I perceive a pencil, I simultaneously perceive the forms of judgement, the conceptual forms, the categories and the mathematical application of the logical moments ( = conceptual forms) to the pure forms of perception (time and space) and the construction of the terms/concepts made possible by them. So if I were to do it extremely precisely, I could theoretically write half an essay in which I could describe every single step of the pencil's cognition within me (sounds stupid and terribly trivial, but it works). Remarkably, it then corresponds extremely well with the phenomenological experience, even if it really doesn't completely capture it. This means that the system works. The problem only arises, however, when we go further and ask: Yes, where does this optical representation in front of my eye come from? Here Kant, like Locke, says that the pencil I see with my eyes is not the same as the body (the pencil) itself.

This is due to the fact that the optical representation can change its size by means of optical laws (telescope, microscope, binoculars, etc.) or even through sheer will. However, the body, the object itself remains unchanged. According to Kant, the optical representation does not reflect the true essence of the body, but it nevertheless follows certain mathematical laws and proportions. From the intersection of two observers, for example, I can determine approximately how far away the body is in space (the same way how both our eyes are responsible for depth perception). This is done, for example, when the distance to the moon is determined.

Now, for some reason, this optical representation appears in front of my eye and, what is remarkable, the optical representation is somehow off-centre, i.e. outside my eye, outside of my brain. Do you know what I mean? It’s hard to put into words. For example, the sensual representations of my senses of touch, taste and smell are somehow ‘inside’ me (as "within my body"), but the sensual representations of my senses of hearing and sight are somehow ‘outside’ of me, outside of my body. How the heck is this even possible?

And then I finally had to realise that no other explanation is possible (that doesn't contradict Kant's theory) except that there must be some kind of supersensible substance, an endless, continuous, all-pervading, but at the same time form-giving substance, an ‘aether’, which is not physical, but must be supersensible. Now it makes sense to me: The whole world is actually illuminated! This aether radiates everywhere, but we do not notice its existence, but only when it strikes an object that triggers a kind of vibration, a kind of aetheric vibration. I call it the "secondary" aether. We then have the optical representation in front of us. Since the aether radiates everywhere, this representation of light now also flows into us. Our optical organ of vision is then, apparently, conditioned in such a way that it can perceive such ‘secondary’ aether formations, but apparently not primary aether itself (i.e. pure ether) which is invisible to the physical eye (aka that what lies between the perceived object and the subject, the emptiness). But it is precisely here that something very strange happens: WHY does our eye perceive secondary aether formations at all? This gives the impression that it is not man who has adapted to nature, but nature to man. At the same time, however, it is a tangible fact that humans also adapt to nature. When we are cold, we dress warmly. When it is dark, we switch on the light to see. Evolution further proves this as well in regard to our optical faculties. Kant did also consider this kind of ‘antinomy’. The solution Kant had in mind was, classically, the following: Yes, man adapts to nature, and so nature adapts to man, but only if ‘nature’ itself is not experienced purely, in essence, but only as an appearance.

But here there still remains the secret conflict (not contradiction! contradictions only exist in logic), namely that despite everything there is somehow a kind of unity. In other words, transcendental-logically, we experience it as a unity, that both are coordinated (category of quantity). Logically, however, it can be divided into ‘subject - object’ and the mediation between the two is done through the "copula gnostica" (the "form of consciousness"). Kant thus discovered a kind of ‘gateway’ to the higher world through transcendental logic. Transcendental logic therefore deals with the question: ‘How does the content of my knowledge come about?’ and here Kant points out these instruments that we possess, so to speak. And these are, I would argue, complete. The only gap that Kant has here is that he assumes that our abilities to create or expand knowledge are themselves limited to the sensory faculties. (This is what Kant means by ‘synthetic’) So everything we already know can only be analytical in our thinking, which therefore does not presume to go beyond the "inner sense" (the ‘pure form of perception of time’). So if I want to make sure that a house is still standing in place A, I have to move my physical body there and prove it to myself of this through my senses. I couldn’t just claim it’s still there without having actually seen it. But what if, as we have just assumed, this primary aether is also part of us, and we are a part of it as well? What if the ‘secondary’ aether is perceptible after all without actually physically interacting with it through my physical body? Even Kant seems to have the right idea in mind, because he did not call this aether a „thing-in-itself“ at all. Then, theoretically, I can actually determine whether the house is still there without being physically present. That sounds nuts, right? That’s what I believed as well. Until..

I have tried a few experiments to do this: For example, I can actually ‘extend’ and expand my sense of touch. So I can touch objects from a distance. If I point my finger at a cup 5 metres away, I feel exactly the same sensory stimulus as if I were actually physically touching the cup with my hands. To make sure that I wasn't deceiving myself, I wore a blindfold accordingly and was in different places. I was significantly often correct. So is this a coincidence? I don't think so. This can only be possible because there really must be a gapless, undulating, all-pervading and overarching aether that makes this possible. I can grasp the aetheric through distance and then reconstruct it by means of my ordinary imagination (which we also use when we actually use our physical hands, for example). But this reconstruction is quite different from what we normally do. I receive, so to speak, the representation of the secondary aether (the ‘cup’) via the primary aether (through thinking) and force it to „vibrate“ to my nerves, which then cause stimuli and then deliberately construct the sensory stimulus in me. However, Steiner would not describe this as ‘supersensible’ (although this extension of sense of touch in correspondence to correctness of the physical object at hand always requires the supersensible), but rather as ‘extrasensory’. Therefore, I am sure that Steiner's understanding of ‘clairvoyance’ is different from what some others may understand. To perceive distant spaces from a point A without being physically present there is therefore not a ‘supersensible’ but an extrasensory (or „eccentric“) perception and must be based on that aether. I cannot think of a real name for this cognition. It is an ‘extrasensory vision’, but one that is physically and aetherically reconstructed without being physically present at the location. Steiner did talk about this, actually. That's where he seems to attribute most of the PSI abilities (telepathy, telekinesis, etc) that we heard of. Interesting indeed.

What does all of this mean? It means that our physical sensual faculties can be improved and extended (quantity), and they can be intensified (quality), in other words, they likewise fall under the categories. And to have them actually match the corresponding thing outside, we somehow must force the primary aether to „vibrate“ in such a way like the secondary aether (the „cup“) would vibrate to us when we physically interact with it. But this "forcing" only works if thinking is involved in this process, and it's an active process. Weirdly enough, I quickly seem to realize that there is actually not a "passive" thinking at all. Even when I touch an object with my hands, my mind literally does the same thing as if I would extend my sense of touch without using my hands. The difference is that, for some reason, my mind is so adapted to this way, that it feels like as if it was a passive process. So, sensual perception is, according to my experience, never passive. It only seems that way because we are so used to it, or maybe because our aetheric body (?) is usually not extended further than the physical body. I don't know. I have no idea. But I do clearly experience it.

And if Kant ever had managed to finish his „Opus Postumum“, attempted to train his sensual abilities, he would have indeed confirmed that extrasensory perception exists, that you can "see" things without being physically present there. However, I think that Kant would still have refused in assuming something like the „supersensible“ to exist, because unlike the extrasensory, the supersensible no longer falls under the senses. It’s sense-free thinking at this point. So, the extrasensory is still bound to the pure forms of perception of time and space, just in a more „free“ way. It’s no longer bound to my physical body alone, but it somewhat is still physical, I’d say. But, as I just showed, without active thinking, this extrasensory perception wouldn't have been possible. And since thinking and forming of concepts seem to rule over time and space as pure forms of intuition, the only necessary conclusion is that the supersensible does exist, and that we can access the thing-in-itself. If we go further along this phenomenological reality, I can only necessarily conclude that the "subject-object" division is completely artificial, yet still somehow useful to "make sense of the physical world" (quite literally!)

Interestingly, Steiner didn’t really elaborate much regarding the extrasensory (or as I’d call it „eccentric“ perception), his primary focus seems to have been the supersensory. And yes, you can do this with all the other senses. You can "smell" things from a far distance too. You can hear even things that are miles away. Fun fact, I once heard a door bell ringing that was approx. 20m away from me so clearly as if it was right in front of my eye. This happened when I woke up from a dream. I first thought that this was a coincidence, until I actually saw that someone was indeed ringing at the door and it was the very same sound. Back then I wasn't really capable of willingly extending my sense of hearing, but somehow waking up from my dream made that possible for a moment. I assume that something must happen with the aetheric body during sleepy time.

How do you feel about the possibility of immanently cognizing the formative forces that structure thinking, which also coincide with those structuring the natural world, and the resulting potential of a truly spiritual science?

I hope that answered your question As you can see, my answer is more pragmatic (through application) than theoretical. I haven't really invested full-time into PoF yet, but I did skim-read a lot of Steiner and understood his ideas. These are all my thoughts so far on this and my experience. What is still a kind of trouble to me is the "supersensible" (not the extrasensory), but I do have to admit that without something supersensible going on within me, I would not be capable of doing this extrasensory stuff. I kinda see though why "thinking" would definitely qualify as supersensible. I have yet to understand though what "clairvoyance" or "clairtangency" (supersensible touch) is. The "eccentric perception of touch" (or extrasensual touch) is purely sensual, but allows to touch things from a further distance, but I don't receive any other special information from that (or do I actually, just don't realize it? Because I think we all are clairtangent and clairvoyant, but we just don't seem to notice it). If I understood correctly, clairtangency would involve something even more than just mere touch, it would involve some kind of essential information. Is that correct?

What do you think of my answer? Do you know of any accounts of people with similar experiences like me? Especially "extending" sense of touch in such a way to touch objects from far away?

[AshvinP]

Interestingly, Steiner didn’t really elaborate much regarding the extrasensory (or as I’d call it „eccentric“ perception), his primary focus seems to have been the supersensory. And yes, you can do this with all the other senses. You can "smell" things from a far distance too. You can hear even things that are miles away. Fun fact, I once heard a door bell ringing that was approx. 20m away from me so clearly as if it was right in front of my eye. This happened when I woke up from a dream. I first thought that this was a coincidence, until I actually saw that someone was indeed ringing at the door and it was the very same sound. Back then I wasn't really capable of willingly extending my sense of hearing, but somehow waking up from my dream made that possible for a moment. I assume that something must happen with the aetheric body during sleepy time.

How do you feel about the possibility of immanently cognizing the formative forces that structure thinking, which also coincide with those structuring the natural world, and the resulting potential of a truly spiritual science?

I hope that answered your question As you can see, my answer is more pragmatic (through application) than theoretical. I haven't really invested full-time into PoF yet, but I did skim-read a lot of Steiner and understood his ideas. These are all my thoughts so far on this and my experience. What is still a kind of trouble to me is the "supersensible" (not the extrasensory), but I do have to admit that without something supersensible going on within me, I would not be capable of doing this extrasensory stuff. I kinda see though why "thinking" would definitely qualify as supersensible. I have yet to understand though what "clairvoyance" or "clairtangency" (supersensible touch) is. The "eccentric perception of touch" (or extrasensual touch) is purely sensual, but allows to touch things from a further distance, but I don't receive any other special information from that (or do I actually, just don't realize it? Because I think we all are clairtangent and clairvoyant, but we just don't seem to notice it). If I understood correctly, clairtangency would involve something even more than just mere touch, it would involve some kind of essential information. Is that correct?

What do you think of my answer? Do you know of any accounts of people with similar experiences like me? Especially "extending" sense of touch in such a way to touch objects from far away?

Thank you, Kaje, for this detailed phenomenological response. It helped me get a good sense of your orientation in this domain. Your observations spark many intuitions for me and I am hoping some other members here will also be inspired to share their thoughts.

It is very insightful of you to distinguish between extrasensory perception (telekinesis, teleplastic, telepathy, etc.) and supersensory cognition. Indeed Steiner doesn't devote much time to the former but he discusses it in a few lectures, here and there. For example:

Another kind of phenomenon confronts us when it is possible to perceive certain thoughts of certain people under conditions of time and of space which must undoubtedly be designated as abnormal. These cases are now being discussed quite seriously by modern scientists. Telepathy is a phenomenon of this kind. During certain psychic conditions, thoughts can be perceived through telepathy without the ordinary instrument of the senses; indeed these thoughts can even be perceived at a distance. One also speaks of telekinesis, or of certain forces proceeding from the human being which manifest themselves simply through influences at a distance, without the physical intermediary of the human being, so that it appears as if it were possible to unfold will-power and to transmit it into space without the medium of the body. In scientific circles experiments have already been made with the application of scientific methods, experiments falling under the category of teleplastic, in which phantoms and apparently physical forms appear in connection with a person, or in his close proximity. It is clearly evident that these forms consist of a fine substance, of an etheric substance, and' that plastically they are permeated by something rooted as plastic force in human thinking, by something existing in human thought.
...
If these phenomena are merely activities of the latter [physical-etheric body], they belong to that part which vanishes when we die, no matter how wonderful and extraordinary they may appear to us. For when we die, the part which remains behind on the bed during sleep, vanishes. What constitutes man's immortal, eternal being, that which abandons the physical and etheric body during sleep, as a rule also abandons the physical body when we are under some hypnotic influence, in the phenomena of telepathy, telekinesis and teleplastic. We must therefore say: These so-called wonderful phenomena cannot point to anything connected with man's eternal being; no matter how abnormal they are, they are connected with that part of his being which separates from him when he dies and which connects itself with the element of the earth. In that case they are only able to indicate a world which vanishes when the human being passes through the portal of death. (GA 79)

I like how you describe such phenomena as proceeding through the 'secondary aether', which implies we are still dealing with intellectual cognition of their significance. You are entirely correct that clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc. would involve, not just more intensified and abnormal forms of sensory perception, but deeper insight into the the lawful relations of our phenomenal experience. In the former case, we are still forced to weave together abstract explanations for why this or that occurs, to create theoretical models that attempt to quantify the dynamics as best as possible. We simply have more enigmatic perceptual content to cram into our models than the average person.

Higher cognitive development, however, leads not only to new perceptual content but to expanding intuitive orientation to phenomenal experiences, beginning with our ordinary flow of mental pictures by which we observe, remember, theorize, model, etc. As you say, it helps us recognize how we are always active in our thinking and participating in shaping the phenomenal flow. I think you are quite fortunate to have entered this extra-sensory domain through philosophical thinking (and I love how you pointed out that we don't need to 'learn to learn', but simply to dive into the organic thought-connections and trust our spirit to feel its way through their inner harmony), because that allows you to discriminate and evaluate the experiences and avoid common mystical-psychedelic traps when new perceptual content emerges. Often that content is treated naively like a 'reality itself' and the intellect confuses its preferred explanations of the content for spiritual revelations.

Steiner mentions the 'portal of death' above and that is essentially what we are seeking through supersensory cognition, to experience the lucid insight into our existence that we normally only attain after our spirit has departed its neurosensory coil. It is not insight into some theoretical 'nature of reality' that we contemplate as a detached observer, but insight into the constellation of our own being, true self-knowledge. We first learn more about how various soul factors like opinions, beliefs, preferences, desires, sympathies and antipathies, shape and steer our imaginative life and, therefore, the domains and scales of meaningful experience that we can potentially explore. For example, we may be able to extend our 'thinking-feelers' into early childhood experiences and sense how the national language and temperament into which we were born shape our current flow of thoughts, speech, and deeds.

There are many ways to approach this supersensory cognitive development, and Steiner's early phenomenological works are a critical foundation for all such ways. We also have quite a few essays on this forum that are rooted in that foundation, for example, these Phonograph essays by Cleric - viewtopic.php?t=1004. Such explorations help us stretch our thinking into novel domains of supersensible meaning, i.e. the inner constraints and possibilities of our cognitive perception and will, and reach deeper scales of cognitive life that are always implicit in the meaning we experience but are habitually obscured and ignored by our myopic sensual and intellectual life. Steiner characterized the general experience as follows:

People of today conceive of thinking as just a passive noting of phenomena and of the consistency—or lack of consistency—with which they occur. One simply allows thoughts to emerge from the phenomena and passively occupy one's soul. In contrast to this, my Philosophy of Freedom stresses the active element in thinking, emphasizing how the will enters into it and how one can become aware of one's own inner activity in the exercise of what I have called pure thinking. In this connection I showed that all truly moral impulses have their origin in this pure thinking. I tried to point out how the will strikes into the otherwise passive realm of thought, stirring it awake and making the thinker inwardly active.

Now what kind of reader approach did The Philosophy of Freedom count on? It had to assume a special way of reading. It expected the reader, as he read, to undergo the sort of inner experience that, in an external sense, is really just like waking up out of sleep in the morning. The feeling one should have about it is such as to make one say, “My relationship to the world in passive thoughts was, on a higher level, that of a person who lies asleep. Now I am waking up.” It is like knowing, at the moment of awakening, that one has been lying passively in bed, letting nature have her way with one's body. But then one begins to be inwardly active. One relates one's senses actively to what is going on in the color permeated, sounding world about one. One links one's own bodily activity to one's intentions. The reader of The Philosophy of Freedom should experience something very like this waking moment of transition from passivity to activity, though of course on a higher level. He should be able to say, “Yes, I have certainly thought thoughts before. But my thinking took the form of just letting thoughts flow and carry me along. Now, little by little, I am beginning to be inwardly active in them. I am reminded of waking up in the morning and relating my sense-activity to sounds and colors, and my bodily movement to my will.” Experiencing this awakening as I have described it in my book, Vom Menschenratsel,1 where I comment on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, is to develop a soul attitude completely different from that prevalent today. But the attitude of soul thus arrived at leads not merely to knowledge that must be accepted on someone else's authority but to asking oneself what the thoughts were that one used to have and what this activity is that one now launches to strike into one's formerly passive thinking. What, one asks, is this element that has the same rousing effect on one's erstwhile thinking that one's life of soul and spirit has on one's body on awakening? (I am referring here just to the external fact of awaking). One begins to experience thinking in a way one could not have done without coming to know it as a living, active function.

So long as one is only considering passive thoughts, thinking remains just a development going on in the body while the physical senses are occupying themselves with external objects. But when a person suffuses this passive thinking with inner activity, he lights upon another similar comparison for the thinking he formerly engaged in, and can begin to see what its passivity resembled. He comes to the realization that this passive thinking of his was exactly the same thing in the soul realm that a corpse represents in the physical. When one looks at a corpse here in the physical world, one has to recognize that it was not created as the thing one sees, that none of nature's ordinary laws can be made to account for the present material composition of this body. Such a configuration of material elements could be brought about only as the result of a living human being having dwelt in what is now a corpse. It has become mere remains, abandoned by a formerly indwelling person? it can be accounted for only by assuming the prior existence of a living human being.

An observer confronting his own passive thinking resembles someone who has never seen anything but corpses, who has never beheld a living person. Such a man would have to look upon all corpses as miraculous creations, since nothing in nature could possibly have produced them. When one suffuses one's thinking with active soul life, one realizes for the first time that thought is just a leftover and recognizes it as the remains of something that has died. Ordinary thinking is dead, a mere corpse of the soul, and one has to become aware of it as such through suffusing it with one's own soul life and getting to know this corpse of abstract thinking in its new aliveness. To understand ordinary thinking, one has to see that it is dead, a psychic corpse whose erstwhile life is to be sought in the soul's pre-earthly existence. During that phase of experience, the soul lived in a bodiless state in the life element of its thinking, and the thinking left it in its earthly life must be regarded as the soul corpse of the living soul of pre-earthly existence.

[Federica]

Now, for some reason, this optical representation appears in front of my eye and, what is remarkable, the optical representation is somehow off-centre, i.e. outside my eye, outside of my brain. Do you know what I mean? It’s hard to put into words. For example, the sensual representations of my senses of touch, taste and smell are somehow ‘inside’ me (as "within my body"), but the sensual representations of my senses of hearing and sight are somehow ‘outside’ of me, outside of my body. How the heck is this even possible?

I believe the answer to this question is in your own words: "I can only necessarily conclude that the "subject-object" division is completely artificial". If we can see the entire external world as kingdoms that we have progressively extracted out of ourselves and 'detached' during the course of evolution, it becomes more intuitive to consider the current senses as a gradation from core to external, that fluidly crosses the (supposed) boundary between subject-man and objects external, to (re)connect us with the rest of Nature in various interactive ways. From taste (the most core) it goes in a gradient all the way to sight, which is a sense of taste transformed towards the periphery of our organism and out, through a sort of I-upgrade.

As Steiner says, rather than looking at it in terms of "the optical representation is outside my eye" we can fruitfully see it the other way around: it's more like the eye is outside our physical organism really - etherically, soul-wise, and I-wise. It's only physically that we have them stick to our face, where they can be seen like points of constant, contained inflammation. In other words, the eyes are a scoarching protrusion of the external into the organism, which borders them at the bony eye sockets, so to say. If the external world is a sea, and our organism a water-rich land, the eye is like a gulf, by which the external extends itself in. From there, the sense is taken in, and transformed into our mental pictures, as inner sight.