On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[Federica]

Last year in this thread we had a long discussion on Steiner's views on heart function, and sensory and motor nerves. I feel that an important element was not mentioned then, which I believe brings something fundamental to what Steiner meant with his famous contention that motor nerves don't exist. I am not trying to reopen that discussion, I simply want to add this element for future reference. I think it makes an important difference.

As we said, Steiner meant that the physical correlate of soul activity is the entire physical body (no domino effects), however just as soul activity is differentiated in TFW, so its physical correlate is respectively differentiated in nerve function (T) rhythmic function of breathing and blood flow (F) and metabolism (W). Now, what we did not pointed to previously is that these three physical correlates are not to be conceived simplistically - respectively located in the upper, median, and lower body; working in parallel. Rather, they all extend to the entire body and they are continually intermingled, in all organs and systems. So we shouldn't think: "nervous activity=nerves".

In particular, the nerves are the locus of nervous activity 'proper', but also of metabolic and rhythmic activity (the physical correlates of will and feeling). And, Steiner considers that nervous activity proper (the correlate of ideation/representation) "cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation". This is because the only perceivable thing in representation is the reflection, the receding images, thus the activity that causes them to recede can't be observed empirically. Therefore, whatever can be natural-scientifically observed inside the nerves is not what Steiner means with 'nervous activity'. Those observations are rather metabolic and/or rhythmical activity taking place within the nerves.

Anatomy and Physiology must bring themselves to recognize that neural function can be located only by a method of exclusion. The activity of the nerves is precisely that in them which is not perceptible by the senses, though the fact that it must be there can be inferred from what is so perceptible, and so can the specific nature of their activity. The only way of representing neural function to ourselves is to see in it those material events, by means of which the purely psycho-spiritual reality of the living content of ideation is subdued and devitalized to the lifeless representations and ideas we recognize as our ordinary consciousness. Unless this concept finds its way somehow into physiology, physiology can have no hope of explicating neural activity.

Ch VII of Riddles of the Soul / The case for Anthroposophy

https://rsarchive.org

Moreover, motion as "effusion of the will" is not really a phenomenon of the organism, but of the interrelation of the organism with its environment. The only physical correlate of the will within the organism is not physical movement, which goes beyond it, but the will's metabolic correlate, including what experiments capture as measurable activity located within the nerves. The metabolic process in the nerve can be measured, the nervous function proper cannot.

Exerting volition, the life of the psyche overreaches the domain of the organism and combines its action with a happening in the outer world. — The study of the whole matter has been greatly confused by the separation of the nerves into sensory and motor. Securely anchored as this distinction appears to be in contemporary physiological ideas, it is not supported by unbiased observation. The findings of physiology based on neural sections, or on the pathological elimination of certain nerves, do not prove what the experiment or the case-history is said to show. They prove something quite different. They prove that the supposed distinction between sensory and motor nerves does not exist. On the contrary, both kinds of nerve are essentially alike. The so called motor nerve does not implement movement in the manner that the theory of two kinds of nerve assumes. What happens is that the nerve as carrier of the neural function implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will—in exactly the same way that the sensory nerve implements perception of what is coming to pass within the sense-organ. Unless and until neurological theory begins to operate in this domain with clear concepts, no satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life can come about.

Ch VII of Riddles of the Soul / The case for Anthroposophy

https://rsarchive.org/

PS: Also interesting to read Owen Barfield's note nr 3 to the quoted chapter VII of Riddles of the Soul, which he translated. Indeed, in neuroscience the foundation of the common theory, accepted to this day, is the so-called "neuron doctrine" developed in the late 1800s.

[AshvinP]

Exerting volition, the life of the psyche overreaches the domain of the organism and combines its action with a happening in the outer world. — The study of the whole matter has been greatly confused by the separation of the nerves into sensory and motor. Securely anchored as this distinction appears to be in contemporary physiological ideas, it is not supported by unbiased observation. The findings of physiology based on neural sections, or on the pathological elimination of certain nerves, do not prove what the experiment or the case-history is said to show. They prove something quite different. They prove that the supposed distinction between sensory and motor nerves does not exist. On the contrary, both kinds of nerve are essentially alike. The so called motor nerve does not implement movement in the manner that the theory of two kinds of nerve assumes. What happens is that the nerve as carrier of the neural function implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will—in exactly the same way that the sensory nerve implements perception of what is coming to pass within the sense-organ. Unless and until neurological theory begins to operate in this domain with clear concepts, no satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life can come about.

Federica,

I know you didn't share this with the intention of restarting the discussion, but there is still something I want to comment on that grabs my attention now, just as it did before in a different lecture context.

I think it is helpful to consider what the phrase "unbiased observation" might imply here. Most readers would probably take that to mean something like: if we carefully study the receding images within the focal plane, without adding theoretical assumptions, preferences, prejudices, and so on, it will eventually become evident to the reasoning mind that the distinction between sensory and motor nerves does not exist. We will arrive at the "clear concepts" that he refers to. All the findings based on neural sections, the pathological elimination of certain nerves, and so on, will be shown to prove the opposite of what the physiologists and anatomists imagine. The 'secure anchoring' of the distinction in contemporary physiological ideas will then evaporate.

Yet is that what Steiner is truly implying here? Can we ever observe and assemble our receding mental images within the focal plane in such a way that verifies the "nerve as the carrier of the neural function that implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will?" What exactly is the "inner perception of a particular metabolic process" in the context of ordinary empirical observation? As Steiner commented previously in the lecture, the neural function at issue is something that can never be perceived within the focal plane, i.e., with our ordinary consciousness. He states later that the metabolic process is one we remain completely asleep to, without higher cognition. And as he stated at the beginning, he aims to "place on record the results of a systematic spiritual investigation extending over a period of thirty years."

We can take a simple phenomenological example, such as looking at a uniformly white wall with our eyes and moving our gaze across it. It is clearly the case that we experience a distinction between receiving the impressions of the white color pixels and corresponding mental images, on the one hand, and intending to move our gaze across the wall and activating our eyeballs, on the other. At the same time, these two are closely related, since as we move our gaze across the wall, the color pixels subtly change, even if we don't notice it because of the uniform color. And if our gaze happens to cross a surprising patch of green as we progress our vision across the wall, we will probably move our eyes back toward it. In that sense, the movement of our eyeballs (or any limbs) is tightly linked with the process of perception and vice versa.

All of what Steiner is speaking about here makes more sense, from my perspective, if he is saying that this tight link points to a more unified experience of active perception at the Imaginative scale of steering. In other words, the process of perceiving living imaginations is, at the same time, an act of will that finds its physical correlate in metabolic processes of our eyes and limbs. That is also the case when we perceive our deadened perceptions and ideas, but because the relationship is so out-of-phase, we experience it much more distinctly. It feels like many impressions impinge upon our consciousness while we remain completely passive. We are completely insensitive to the fact that our eyes are constantly moving and the color pixels are correspondingly changing. That experiential distinction also finds its physical reflection in the differentiation of motor and sensory nerves within the eyeballs, which apparently serve different functions.

So why does Steiner keep insisting that this differentiation does not exist? That makes great sense if the primary concern is that the materialistic ideas attached to this differentiation serve to reinforce the habitual thinking that strives to understand the physiological relations by exclusively observing within the focal plane, as if it were a self-contained spectrum where all the relevant 'causal mechanisms' can be found. When understanding of the phenomenal facts is pursued in that way, it will naturally lead to erecting the entire psychic life on the foundations of the body, as the latter can be encompassed and observed within the focal plane. Then there can be absolutely no "unbiased observation", "clear concepts", or "satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life". All those things can only come about by expanding cognitive life through the focal plane into the volumetric dome of spiritual relations.

[Federica]

I think it is helpful to consider what the phrase "unbiased observation" might imply here. Most readers would probably take that to mean something like: if we carefully study the receding images within the focal plane, without adding theoretical assumptions, preferences, prejudices, and so on, it will eventually become evident to the reasoning mind that the distinction between sensory and motor nerves does not exist. We will arrive at the "clear concepts" that he refers to. All the findings based on neural sections, the pathological elimination of certain nerves, and so on, will be shown to prove the opposite of what the physiologists and anatomists imagine. The 'secure anchoring' of the distinction in contemporary physiological ideas will then evaporate.

Yet is that what Steiner is truly implying here? Can we ever observe and assemble our receding mental images within the focal plane in such a way that verifies the "nerve as the carrier of the neural function that implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will?" What exactly is the "inner perception of a particular metabolic process" in the context of ordinary empirical observation? As Steiner commented previously in the lecture, the neural function at issue is something that can never be perceived within the focal plane, i.e., with our ordinary consciousness. He states later that the metabolic process is one we remain completely asleep to, without higher cognition.

Thanks for your input, Ashvin. Yes, exactly as you say (bolded). I wrote above: Steiner considers that nervous activity proper (the correlate of ideation/representation) "cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation". What you point to here is part of what I intended to convey. For Steiner, nerve activity proper can't be perceived in ordinary cognition. I wanted to highlight that, because I don't think it came out of our discussion last year. "Proper" is key here, however, as I will try to illustrate in relation to the second part of your post.

This impossibility of perceiving neural activity on the focal plane is one of the "new concepts" science needs to somehow integrate. Otherwise, if we focus on so-called motor nerves and sensory nerves differences, we imply that we can capture nerve function by contemplating the receding images of the physical nerves and their behavior, but for Steiner that's intrinsically impossible. So the first new concept is that neurological findings can't demonstrate anything about nerve function proper.

However, what those findings can speak of are the secondary functions that take place in the nerves, yet don't constitute neural function proper. This happens because all three somatic functions happen everywhere in the body. So, in the nerves take place not only neural processes proper, but also metabolic and rhythmic processes. And these actually can be contemplated within the receding images. These are unconscious and semi-unconscious processes, but their correlates can still be observed in experiments. We can even say that for Steiner all that we can ever observe in nerves - the connecting electrical impulses and so on - are nothing other than metabolic (and rhythmic) activity, not neural activity.

We can take a simple phenomenological example, such as looking at a uniformly white wall with our eyes and moving our gaze across it. It is clearly the case that we experience a distinction between receiving the impressions of the white color pixels and corresponding mental images, on the one hand, and intending to move our gaze across the wall and activating our eyeballs, on the other. At the same time, these two are closely related, since as we move our gaze across the wall, the color pixels subtly change, even if we don't notice it because of the uniform color. And if our gaze happens to cross a surprising patch of green as we progress our vision across the wall, we will probably move our eyes back toward it. In that sense, the movement of our eyeballs (or any limbs) is tightly linked with the process of perception and vice versa.

All of what Steiner is speaking about here makes more sense, from my perspective, if he is saying that this tight link points to a more unified experience of active perception at the Imaginative scale of steering. In other words, the process of perceiving living imaginations is, at the same time, an act of will that finds its physical correlate in metabolic processes of our eyes and limbs. That is also the case when we perceive our deadened perceptions and ideas, but because the relationship is so out-of-phase, we experience it much more distinctly. It feels like many impressions impinge upon our consciousness while we remain completely passive. We are completely insensitive to the fact that our eyes are constantly moving and the color pixels are correspondingly changing. That experiential distinction also finds its physical reflection in the differentiation of motor and sensory nerves within the eyeballs, which apparently serve different functions.

So why does Steiner keep insisting that this differentiation does not exist? That makes great sense if the primary concern is that the materialistic ideas attached to this differentiation serve to reinforce the habitual thinking that strives to understand the physiological relations by exclusively observing within the focal plane, as if it were a self-contained spectrum where all the relevant 'causal mechanisms' can be found. When understanding of the phenomenal facts is pursued in that way, it will naturally lead to erecting the entire psychic life on the foundations of the body, as the latter can be encompassed and observed within the focal plane. Then there can be absolutely no "unbiased observation", "clear concepts", or "satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life". All those things can only come about by expanding cognitive life through the focal plane into the volumetric dome of spiritual relations.

I think this is an ingenious reading, but it doesn't take into account the whole picture. We have to put ourselves in Steiner’s shoes, in that phase of applied development of spiritual science - the last years of his life. Namely, he is not trying to speak a veiled language, implying that his points can only be really understood if we abandon the focal plane and put ourselves in the perspective of higher cognition. On the contrary, he is continually referring to physiological material. He wants to trace - starting from the soul - its correlates toward the physical. He speaks to scientists and doctors. His intention is to bridge spiritual and natural science. He says: “It is fully possible to substantiate these results with the scientific means available today.” He says he is “seeking the relation of the soul element to the bodily element”, seeking to bring clarity to bodily will. In this pursuit, as we noted, neural activity is the 'odd one', with regards to which “anatomy and physiology must arrive at the knowledge that they can discover nerve activity only through a method of exclusion” that is indirectly. However, will correlates and feeling correlates are perceivable directly in the physical body. His major concern in all this is to debunk the scientific prejudice that all soul activity is nerve activity. He absolutely wants to show that only perceiving and mental picturing have their basis in the nerves, but not willing, nor feeling. Getting this understanding straight is absolutely crucial for pathology and therapy, because if we suppose that all soul events manifest in the body through the nerves, and only through the nerves, we make it impossible to gain true understanding of any illnesses whatsoever. This is what he ultimately has in mind and is super concerned about. For example, in GA 312 (same period) he deconstructs the common, failed belief that hysteria is a nervous condition. He shows how it is instead a metabolic condition, and how in turn a hysterical predisposition is the real foundation for the development of tuberculosis. This is only one of countless examples that revolutionize medical understanding, to put it straight.

Now, if we believe in sensory nerves and motor nerves, we believe that nerve function is observable and differentiable in the nerves (which is not, as we have noted) and we have to mistakenly connect will, perception, mental picturing, and emotions too, to the nerves. The entire soul volume becomes, in the body, a matter of nerve activity! And that’s how we get all understanding of disease processes completely upside down, with zero cues on how to derive any therapeutic guidelines from pathology. Therapy was a completely tentative endeavor at his times (and today too) deprived of any logic and connection with pathology. Steiner absolutely wants to restore some rational understanding to the entire domain. Understanding how illness arises must at the same time give us insights on how to cure it!

These are the bigger questions he works with in those years. He has therefore in mind to trace and clarify the very physical implications of soul activity so that science, medicine, and psychology can advance. In the same years, he gives the medical lectures - in which he references “Riddles of the soul”. These cycles - especially GA 312 - are instructive to get a more dimensional sense of his overall line of work and views on nerves. In this sense, in the "Riddles of the Soul" quotes above, he is not laying the foundations of the nature of man and the interconnectedness of the sensible and the supersensible for esoteric students. Rather, he is speaking as concretely and materially as possible, with spiritual scientific applications at hand. However, as we said, when it comes to just nervous activity proper, this is not possible. Just nervous activity is not directly experienceable other than in higher cognition.

Steiner argues that motor nerves do not exist because it’s absolutely necessary that the life of will is recognized as autonomous, and independent of neural activity proper. “A realistic insight into physiological findings shows that willing as such must not be brought into relation to nerve processes but rather to metabolic processes.” This "realistic insight" means accepting that metabolic activities take place everywhere, including in the nerves, while proper neural activity is not perceivable through natural experiments. So, physiological findings must be read in this manner. Steiner says (paraphrased), the working will that permeates nerves (we call it motor nerves) must be seen as a bodily metabolic activity. In this very concrete sense he means that motor nerves do not exist. What we call so is simply metabolism taking place in neural location, not neural activity proper. In the same way, what we gather from experiments on sensory nerves, is also metabolic activity, not perceptual-representational activity. At the same time, neural function proper (perceptual activity, oriented inwardly or outwardly) takes place in all nerves, but remains unseen to natural scientific inquiry.

In other words, will permeates the nerves. We like to call that motor nerves. But the conceptual framework that we build in this way prevents a genuine understanding of man, fruitful for the evolution of the sciences. Thus we have to conceptualize the will-permeated nerves as an expression of metabolism (with all that this implies, in terms of what metabolic processes are and do). Further, we have to conceptualize will-permeated organs as metabolism in process, whatever the organ is, nerves or other. This, Steiner means, is the healthy conceptual foundation we need to create, for the sciences to progress into the future.

[AshvinP]

Thanks for your input, Ashvin. Yes, exactly as you say (bolded). I wrote above: Steiner considers that nervous activity proper (the correlate of ideation/representation) "cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation". What you point to here is part of what I intended to convey. For Steiner, nerve activity proper can't be perceived in ordinary cognition. I wanted to highlight that, because I don't think it came out of our discussion last year. "Proper" is key here, however, as I will try to illustrate in relation to the second part of your post.

This impossibility of perceiving neural activity on the focal plane is one of the "new concepts" science needs to somehow integrate. Otherwise, if we focus on so-called motor nerves and sensory nerves differences, we imply that we can capture nerve function by contemplating the receding images of the physical nerves and their behavior, but for Steiner that's intrinsically impossible. So the first new concept is that neurological findings can't demonstrate anything about nerve function proper.

However, what those findings can speak of are the secondary functions that take place in the nerves, yet don't constitute neural function proper. This happens because all three somatic functions happen everywhere in the body. So, in the nerves take place not only neural processes proper, but also metabolic and rhythmic processes. And these actually can be contemplated within the receding images. These are unconscious and semi-unconscious processes, but their correlates can still be observed in experiments. We can even say that for Steiner all that we can ever observe in nerves - the connecting electrical impulses and so on - are nothing other than metabolic (and rhythmic) activity, not neural activity.

We can take a simple phenomenological example, such as looking at a uniformly white wall with our eyes and moving our gaze across it. It is clearly the case that we experience a distinction between receiving the impressions of the white color pixels and corresponding mental images, on the one hand, and intending to move our gaze across the wall and activating our eyeballs, on the other. At the same time, these two are closely related, since as we move our gaze across the wall, the color pixels subtly change, even if we don't notice it because of the uniform color. And if our gaze happens to cross a surprising patch of green as we progress our vision across the wall, we will probably move our eyes back toward it. In that sense, the movement of our eyeballs (or any limbs) is tightly linked with the process of perception and vice versa.

All of what Steiner is speaking about here makes more sense, from my perspective, if he is saying that this tight link points to a more unified experience of active perception at the Imaginative scale of steering. In other words, the process of perceiving living imaginations is, at the same time, an act of will that finds its physical correlate in metabolic processes of our eyes and limbs. That is also the case when we perceive our deadened perceptions and ideas, but because the relationship is so out-of-phase, we experience it much more distinctly. It feels like many impressions impinge upon our consciousness while we remain completely passive. We are completely insensitive to the fact that our eyes are constantly moving and the color pixels are correspondingly changing. That experiential distinction also finds its physical reflection in the differentiation of motor and sensory nerves within the eyeballs, which apparently serve different functions.

So why does Steiner keep insisting that this differentiation does not exist? That makes great sense if the primary concern is that the materialistic ideas attached to this differentiation serve to reinforce the habitual thinking that strives to understand the physiological relations by exclusively observing within the focal plane, as if it were a self-contained spectrum where all the relevant 'causal mechanisms' can be found. When understanding of the phenomenal facts is pursued in that way, it will naturally lead to erecting the entire psychic life on the foundations of the body, as the latter can be encompassed and observed within the focal plane. Then there can be absolutely no "unbiased observation", "clear concepts", or "satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life". All those things can only come about by expanding cognitive life through the focal plane into the volumetric dome of spiritual relations.

I think this is an ingenious reading, but it doesn't take into account the whole picture. We have to put ourselves in Steiner’s shoes, in that phase of applied development of spiritual science - the last years of his life. Namely, he is not trying to speak a veiled language, implying that his points can only be really understood if we abandon the focal plane and put ourselves in the perspective of higher cognition. On the contrary, he is continually referring to physiological material. He wants to trace - starting from the soul - its correlates toward the physical. He speaks to scientists and doctors. His intention is to bridge spiritual and natural science. He says: “It is fully possible to substantiate these results with the scientific means available today.” He says he is “seeking the relation of the soul element to the bodily element”, seeking to bring clarity to bodily will. In this pursuit, as we noted, neural activity is the 'odd one', with regards to which “anatomy and physiology must arrive at the knowledge that they can discover nerve activity only through a method of exclusion” that is indirectly. However, will correlates and feeling correlates are perceivable directly in the physical body. His major concern in all this is to debunk the scientific prejudice that all soul activity is nerve activity. He absolutely wants to show that only perceiving and mental picturing have their basis in the nerves, but not willing, nor feeling. Getting this understanding straight is absolutely crucial for pathology and therapy, because if we suppose that all soul events manifest in the body through the nerves, and only through the nerves, we make it impossible to gain true understanding of any illnesses whatsoever. This is what he ultimately has in mind and is super concerned about. For example, in GA 312 (same period) he deconstructs the common, failed belief that hysteria is a nervous condition. He shows how it is instead a metabolic condition, and how in turn a hysterical predisposition is the real foundation for the development of tuberculosis. This is only one of countless examples that revolutionize medical understanding, to put it straight.

Now, if we believe in sensory nerves and motor nerves, we believe that nerve function is observable and differentiable in the nerves (which is not, as we have noted) and we have to mistakenly connect will, perception, mental picturing, and emotions too, to the nerves. The entire soul volume becomes, in the body, a matter of nerve activity! And that’s how we get all understanding of disease processes completely upside down, with zero cues on how to derive any therapeutic guidelines from pathology. Therapy was a completely tentative endeavor at his times (and today too) deprived of any logic and connection with pathology. Steiner absolutely wants to restore some rational understanding to the entire domain. Understanding how illness arises must at the same time give us insights on how to cure it!

These are the bigger questions he works with in those years. He has therefore in mind to trace and clarify the very physical implications of soul activity so that science, medicine, and psychology can advance. In the same years, he gives the medical lectures - in which he references “Riddles of the soul”. These cycles - especially GA 312 - are instructive to get a more dimensional sense of his overall line of work and views on nerves. In this sense, in the "Riddles of the Soul" quotes above, he is not laying the foundations of the nature of man and the interconnectedness of the sensible and the supersensible for esoteric students. Rather, he is speaking as concretely and materially as possible, with spiritual scientific applications at hand. However, as we said, when it comes to just nervous activity proper, this is not possible. Just nervous activity is not directly experienceable other than in higher cognition.

Steiner argues that motor nerves do not exist because it’s absolutely necessary that the life of will is recognized as autonomous, and independent of neural activity proper. “A realistic insight into physiological findings shows that willing as such must not be brought into relation to nerve processes but rather to metabolic processes.” This "realistic insight" means accepting that metabolic activities take place everywhere, including in the nerves, while proper neural activity is not perceivable through natural experiments. So, physiological findings must be read in this manner. Steiner says (paraphrased), the working will that permeates nerves (we call it motor nerves) must be seen as a bodily metabolic activity. In this very concrete sense he means that motor nerves do not exist. What we call so is simply metabolism taking place in neural location, not neural activity proper. In the same way, what we gather from experiments on sensory nerves, is also metabolic activity, not perceptual-representational activity. At the same time, neural function proper (perceptual activity, oriented inwardly or outwardly) takes place in all nerves, but remains unseen to natural scientific inquiry.

In other words, will permeates the nerves. We like to call that motor nerves. But the conceptual framework that we build in this way prevents a genuine understanding of man, fruitful for the evolution of the sciences. Thus we have to conceptualize the will-permeated nerves as an expression of metabolism (with all that this implies, in terms of what metabolic processes are and do). Further, we have to conceptualize will-permeated organs as metabolism in process, whatever the organ is, nerves or other. This, Steiner means, is the healthy conceptual foundation we need to create, for the sciences to progress into the future.

Thanks, Federica. I'm glad you provided this wider context of Steiner's general aim, with numerous examples, and I completely agree with the context you have described. There are tremendous implications if we mistakenly attribute the entire soul life to what can be observed as 'nerve activity' within the focal plane. At the end of the day, everything we discuss on the forum, whether in terms of a strict phenomenology of spiritual activity or in terms of understanding specific spiritual scientific revelations, revolves around shifting our perspective so that we become more sensitive to how the images within the focal plane testify to constraints that can only be spiritually known. That was Steiner's goal as well - it was not so much about describing the spiritual-somatic correspondences of the soul life and encapsulating them within a framework that we can rely upon indefinitely, but about helping his listeners and readers transform their soul lives by moving their imagination in unfamiliar ways and becoming more sensitive to how their imaginative flow fits within the overlapping constraints.

Then it becomes a question of honing in on how exactly that can be done, where there may be a few differences between us. As I see it, the more we imagine it is possible to attain the 'healthy conceptual foundation' through observations and reasoning confined to the focal plane, i.e., without the perspective shift mentioned above, the more we will be tempted to rely on that confined perspective for our spiritual understanding and for communications to others. I think this is exactly the danger that Steiner is generally warning us about in many places - he is saying the bridge between natural and spiritual science can never be found by extrapolating our familiar focal plane gestures further and further, in more and more 'clever' ways, such that we suddenly arrive at the 'realistic insights' he is referring to. Those insights can only be accommodated with a new cognitive perspective and gestures. With the latter, we can then see how the modern scientific research testifies to what is independently investigated through higher cognition. But for that testimonial experience to take root, the 'tipping point' in our thinking perspective must be reached.

In that respect, we should also keep in mind what was previously discussed regarding the significant degeneration of the intellectual soul since Steiner's time, due to excessive conditioning by sensory and sub-sensory influences. What could be accomplished in terms of attaining 'healthy understanding' through focal plane reasoning in Steiner's time is therefore a much more remote possibility in our time. In a certain sense, the modern intellectual soul has been thoroughly refashioned in the shape of its previous theories since the 19th century. Its entire content of imagination, feeling, and volition is closely shaped by sensory-constrained mental images. The average soul only experiences itself thinking, feeling, and willing what is intuitively compatible with that myopic set of pictures. In that sense, the conscious soul life is quite fully determined by the nervous system that is tied to mental picturing. That only further reinforces the tendency of the people who study these things to interpret the experiments they conduct and the facts they observe as supporting this reductive understanding. Steiner has pointed to this in various places as well, for example:

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA204/En ... 02p01.html
"What is the cause of this? It is in fact this: We have the soul-spirit being of man; we bear it within us. This soul-spirit being is the creator of the entire form of man's organism. It is therefore not surprising that here in the most complete and perfect part of the organism, namely the nervous system of the brain, the replica created by the soul-spirit being resembles the latter in every way. It is indeed true that in the place where man is most of all man, so to speak, namely in the structure of his nerves, he is a faithful replica of the soul-spiritual element. Thus, a person who, in the first place, must always have something the senses can perceive and is content with the replica, actually perceives in the copy the very same thing that is seen in the soul-spiritual original. Having no desire for soul and spirit and only concentrating, as it were, on the replica, he stops short at the structure of the brain. Since this structure of the brain presented itself in such remarkable perfection to the observer of the mid-nineteenth century, and considering the predisposition of humanity at that time, it was extraordinarily easy to develop theoretical materialism."

Within the focal plane, the differentiation between sensory and motor nerves certainly exists. Even if we say what we observe in their functioning is always traced to metabolic activity, there must be some differentiation between how that metabolism unfolds in what we call "sensory nerves" compared to how it unfolds in what we call "motor nerves". These form a quite obvious polarity within the focal plane, as further demonstrated by relevant experiments that we have discussed. Steiner says it is a distinction between perceiving will impulses in the external world as they permeate the 'inlets' of the sensory organs (sensory), and perceiving impulses within our organism as they flow back out into the world (motor). I see no issue with characterizing it this way, as long as we understand that "perceiving impulses within our organism" is something that can only be verified from the Imaginative perspective and, within the focal-intellectual plane, can also be characterized as "activating the muscles". We should keep in mind that the "mental picturing" associated with impulses within the organism unfolds entirely beneath the threshold of consciousness, unlike the mental picturing associated with impulses from the external world that come through the senses (which can be potentially recalled through our focal plane gestures).

"The body, within its own field, affords participation in its external world in two directions, in sensuous happenings and in motor happenings; and so does the spirit—in so far as that experiences the representations of the psyche imaginally (even in ordinary consciousness) from the one direction, while in the other—in willing—it in-forms the intuitive impulses that are realising themselves through metabolic processes."

Recognizing this polar differentiation by itself does not force us to connect will and feeling to the nerves, in the sense that we are forced to conclude the former are fully determined by the latter and have no relationship to the rhythmic and metabolic activities. It is precisely the conceptual framework that we erect on top of this observation, which is rooted in default thinking habits of seeking encompassing 'causal explanations', mechanisms, and so forth within the focal plane, that leads in this perilous direction, as you point out. These are all the common traps that Cleric has phenomenologically illustrated in recent essays, and the only way to avoid them is to intimately experience their existence and how they take shape within our imaginative flow. I can see no other way in which the 'healthy conceptual foundation' for the natural sciences can be attained and advanced further.  

PS - I asked Google AI to summarize the current research on differences and similarities between efferent and afferent nerves. Here is the link for anyone interested - https://share.google/aimode/3cXGkU9HEyPKVskSQ

[Federica]

Thanks, Federica. I'm glad you provided this wider context of Steiner's general aim, with numerous examples, and I completely agree with the context you have described. There are tremendous implications if we mistakenly attribute the entire soul life to what can be observed as 'nerve activity' within the focal plane. 

Thanks for keeping this exploration active, Ashvin, I appreciate it. Yes, and equally tremendous implications come from attributing the entire soul life to nerve activity conceived in its spiritual, supersensible dimension too. In other words, saying that nerves and only nerves are the physical basis for all soul activity, as a philosophical construct, is just as misleading. Brentano for example, held such a conception.

At the end of the day, everything we discuss on the forum, whether in terms of a strict phenomenology of spiritual activity or in terms of understanding specific spiritual scientific revelations, revolves around shifting our perspective so that we become more sensitive to how the images within the focal plane testify to constraints that can only be spiritually known. That was Steiner's goal as well - it was not so much about describing the spiritual-somatic correspondences of the soul life and encapsulating them within a framework that we can rely upon indefinitely, but about helping his listeners and readers transform their soul lives by moving their imagination in unfamiliar ways and becoming more sensitive to how their imaginative flow fits within the overlapping constraints.

Then it becomes a question of honing in on how exactly that can be done, where there may be a few differences between us. As I see it, the more we imagine it is possible to attain the 'healthy conceptual foundation' through observations and reasoning confined to the focal plane, i.e., without the perspective shift mentioned above, the more we will be tempted to rely on that confined perspective for our spiritual understanding and for communications to others. I think this is exactly the danger that Steiner is generally warning us about in many places - he is saying the bridge between natural and spiritual science can never be found by extrapolating our familiar focal plane gestures further and further, in more and more 'clever' ways, such that we suddenly arrive at the 'realistic insights' he is referring to. Those insights can only be accommodated with a new cognitive perspective and gestures. With the latter, we can then see how the modern scientific research testifies to what is independently investigated through higher cognition. But for that testimonial experience to take root, the 'tipping point' in our thinking perspective must be reached.

I agree, Steiner’s highest-level goal was to help his followers shift their perspective and transform their soul. Nevertheless, because this transformation - when it occurs - is typically a life-long process, and because meanwhile the universities inexorably cram into the students’ head materialistic conceptions that later make it 100 times more difficult for them to approach the applied sciences with an open and unbiased mind, Steiner was also eager to lay out a proper conceptual basis as such. Not a mechanical table of correspondences to be relied upon indefinitely, but a guiding glimmer, a first help in the darkness of conventional scientific education. Some listeners, even before having shifted perspective, can sense the truth in the conceptual framework, just like some can appreciate the truths presented in Occult Science even without the cognition to experience those worlds consciously.

In this sense, I think Steiner saw value not only in guiding the listener to a perspectival shift, but also in spreading a ‘mere’ conceptual foundation. In his view, this foundation would hopefully become the basis for a curriculum in higher studies and universities. We are adults and we have, as you say, no other choice than working to invert our perspective. But what an 18-year old university student needs - before a real esoteric training can begin - is an unbiased education, able to create favorable preconditions for open-minded, non dogmatic learning. For a young person, this is a first necessity, that later may or may not evolve into a spiritual-scientific path of development. Again, I think it is important to keep in mind Steiner’s educational purposes, which were central to his vision of the future of spiritual science.

In that respect, we should also keep in mind what was previously discussed regarding the significant degeneration of the intellectual soul since Steiner's time, due to excessive conditioning by sensory and sub-sensory influences. What could be accomplished in terms of attaining 'healthy understanding' through focal plane reasoning in Steiner's time is therefore a much more remote possibility in our time. In a certain sense, the modern intellectual soul has been thoroughly refashioned in the shape of its previous theories since the 19th century. Its entire content of imagination, feeling, and volition is closely shaped by sensory-constrained mental images. The average soul only experiences itself thinking, feeling, and willing what is intuitively compatible with that myopic set of pictures. In that sense, the conscious soul life is quite fully determined by the nervous system that is tied to mental picturing. That only further reinforces the tendency of the people who study these things to interpret the experiments they conduct and the facts they observe as supporting this reductive understanding.

Yes, we agree on the general intellectual degeneration. Concomitantly, a split has begun to form, between the overall degenerating group, and a smaller ascending group. I guess it’s inevitable to realize that any bridge building efforts, no matter how wonderfully conceived, would hardly speak to those who are descending into deeper materialism. Only those who in a way or another are already seeking some form of conscious expansion, will possibly seize the bridging opportunities.

Within the focal plane, the differentiation between sensory and motor nerves certainly exists. Even if we say what we observe in their functioning is always traced to metabolic activity, there must be some differentiation between how that metabolism unfolds in what we call "sensory nerves" compared to how it unfolds in what we call "motor nerves". These form a quite obvious polarity within the focal plane, as further demonstrated by relevant experiments that we have discussed. Steiner says it is a distinction between perceiving will impulses in the external world as they permeate the 'inlets' of the sensory organs (sensory), and perceiving impulses within our organism as they flow back out into the world (motor). I see no issue with characterizing it this way, as long as we understand that "perceiving impulses within our organism" is something that can only be verified from the Imaginative perspective and, within the focal-intellectual plane, can also be characterized as "activating the muscles". We should keep in mind that the "mental picturing" associated with impulses within the organism unfolds entirely beneath the threshold of consciousness, unlike the mental picturing associated with impulses from the external world that come through the senses (which can be potentially recalled through our focal plane gestures).

Here comes the most important part. And I think we have to be very careful. Steiner’s distinction between nerves that perceive the outer world via the senses and nerves that perceive will impulses pertains to neural activity proper, not to the metabolic activity permeating the nerves, activity whose correlates are observed in science. So, that distinction does not describe the unfolding of metabolic activity in the nerves. It only describes the essence of nerve function: perception of the outer world and of the motor will - a supersensible process. Conversely, what is sensible and observable in the nerves has not much to do with perception, but with metabolism. In other words, “metabolic” is not just a label, or a characterization, that Steiner uses to give the same thing a different name. Instead, the metabolism in neural location we speak of here is truly an expression of a different bodily process! If we say that Steiner describes metabolic activity in the nerves by distinguishing nerves which perceive this and nerves which perceive that, it comes down to saying that the distinction is one, and he is merely putting a “metabolic” label on something that still has to do with perception. But this is not the case. Metabolic and perceptual activity in nerves are two distinct functions. Here’s how I currently understand what Steiner says about that metabolic activity.

First, we are used to instinctively categorizing things in the intellect, and so we usually think: metabolism - digestive system - nutrition - building up of new tissues. However, the helpful concept here is to conceive of metabolism as taking place all throughout the entire human organism. Therefore, it is first a matter of releasing the mental habit of associating metabolism with mere digestion. Indeed, metabolism begins in digestion, with the overcoming of the laws that rule external matter (foodstuff) to transform it into human stuff (which responds to different laws). This is by the way difficult to fathom for a natural scientist who sees a substance in external nature being the same substance and following the exact same laws inside the human organism. Anyway, the nerve contribution to metabolism is that sensory nerves build up physical substance, and motor nerves combust it.

I know the following may sound absurd at first, but the bodily matter - the earthly part of the physical body that we renew about every seventh year - is not built out of transformed foods. That food only goes to build up the nervous system itself. But the substances in our tissues are built out of neural activity. That’s the neural metabolic activity Steiner speaks of. This is not perception, but a truly anabolic absorption and construction, where Cosmic forces of growth - the peripheral formative forces - become substance in the body. When a nail is clipped and then it regrows, the material of the new nail does not come from digested food, but from the action of sensory nerves, which absorb and materialize the Cosmic forces, through the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin,...) with the participation of the rhythmic system as well - respiration. In parallel, what the motor nerves do in their metabolic capacity (not their perceptual capacity) is combustion. They burn calories through bodily will. That’s the catabolic side of metabolic neural activity. Again, this distinction pertains to metabolism, not to nerve activity proper. In nerve activity proper, all nerves solely perceive. Which is why Steiner says, the distinction doesn’t exist.

So we see that metabolic activity in nerve location is something other than perception. It is the complete fulfillment of what we may call the metabolic activity proper - digestion. This driving of the process to its ultimate conclusion in the nerves results in the fact that foodstuff is transformed into nerve substance, and in turn the nerves transform cosmic activity into bodily tissues, and then burn them again through bodily will. Excrements are, as Steiner says, “nerve matter that has stopped processing halfway through”. Excrements metabolically processed to completion are nerve matter. Hence we can gather that metabolism proper - in the lower body - and metabolism in nerve location are polar opposites, driven primarily by the astral body, in the same way that flowers and roots are polar opposites in plants. For this reason, if flowers are the basis of a medicinal preparation, their effect remains in the lower metabolism, has an effect limited to that region, and then is excreted there. It doesn't find completion in neural metabolic activity. Whereas a remedy made from roots, goes up through the ‘zero point’ of the polarity - up to the head system - to enter nerve matter. From there, the metabolic effects then ray out in the entire organism, through metabolic nerve activity. So we can intuit that a concrete understanding of how the human metabolic function spreads throughout the entire body is essential for proper pathology and therapy.

I realize all this may sound very surprising. But does it make sense for you? Thanks also for the link, I checked it, but I guess the perspective I tried to describe above shifts the relations in a direction that makes the information usable only in a subsequent stage. Once the metabolic activity in the nervous system is clarified, one can then begin to trace its meaning to the refined observations current science is recording.


Relevant lecture: GA 314/9 - Dec 31, 1923

[AshvinP]

I agree, Steiner’s highest-level goal was to help his followers shift their perspective and transform their soul. Nevertheless, because this transformation - when it occurs - is typically a life-long process, and because meanwhile the universities inexorably cram into the students’ head materialistic conceptions that later make it 100 times more difficult for them to approach the applied sciences with an open and unbiased mind, Steiner was also eager to lay out a proper conceptual basis as such. Not a mechanical table of correspondences to be relied upon indefinitely, but a guiding glimmer, a first help in the darkness of conventional scientific education. Some listeners, even before having shifted perspective, can sense the truth in the conceptual framework, just like some can appreciate the truths presented in Occult Science even without the cognition to experience those worlds consciously.

In this sense, I think Steiner saw value not only in guiding the listener to a perspectival shift, but also in spreading a ‘mere’ conceptual foundation. In his view, this foundation would hopefully become the basis for a curriculum in higher studies and universities. We are adults and we have, as you say, no other choice than working to invert our perspective. But what an 18-year old university student needs - before a real esoteric training can begin - is an unbiased education, able to create favorable preconditions for open-minded, non dogmatic learning. For a young person, this is a first necessity, that later may or may not evolve into a spiritual-scientific path of development. Again, I think it is important to keep in mind Steiner’s educational purposes, which were central to his vision of the future of spiritual science.

As I'm sure you have surmised from our previous discussions, I certainly lack your confidence in the spreading of the 'mere conceptual foundation' at any level of education. As I see it, without the perspective shift, this spreading will only lead to further skepticism and ridicule of precisely described spiritual relations and their influences within the focal plane. As Cleric put it in the previous discussion: "Why is this important? Because it frees us from the inner obligation to seek in space (in the focal plane) something like the interruption of the nerves, or the dissolving comet... It is critically important to realize this in our age, because otherwise we risk making Spiritual Science into a laughing stock."

I believe that university students would be turned away from spiritual science by such unprepared contemplation of the deeper revelations (of what's going on with motor and sensory nerves, for example), because if I imaginatively place myself back in that position, I know that I would be instantly turned away. Even with a strong disposition and interest towards a deeper spiritual understanding of life, I think it would be nearly impossible to take such concepts seriously from the horizontal intellectual perspective. As the saying goes, "the wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of men." The university student would probably feed such a passage into an algorithm and receive the following response - https://share.google/aimode/h1qeR0Y7Y5JtnvHKu

At best, I think we would end up with an army of FBs who feel some general resonance with Steiner and Anthroposophy, but are constantly doubting its revelations and trying to poke holes in its claims from the ordinary empirical perspective, based on whatever strikes them as displeasing and inconvenient. That only changes when we have some phenomenological understanding of the spiritual concepts (which doesn't necessarily require higher cognition proper), so that we can relate them to our characteristic inner experiences of intuitively navigating the flow, or at least imagine a plausible path to attaining such inner experiences that we can have full confidence in. Only then do I think the types of relationships you are describing can be properly integrated without triggering the 'laughing stock reflex'.

Here comes the most important part. And I think we have to be very careful. Steiner’s distinction between nerves that perceive the outer world via the senses and nerves that perceive will impulses pertains to neural activity proper, not to the metabolic activity permeating the nerves, activity whose correlates are observed in science. So, that distinction does not describe the unfolding of metabolic activity in the nerves. It only describes the essence of nerve function: perception of the outer world and of the motor will - a supersensible process. Conversely, what is sensible and observable in the nerves has not much to do with perception, but with metabolism. In other words, “metabolic” is not just a label, or a characterization, that Steiner uses to give the same thing a different name. Instead, the metabolism in neural location we speak of here is truly an expression of a different bodily process! If we say that Steiner describes metabolic activity in the nerves by distinguishing nerves which perceive this and nerves which perceive that, it comes down to saying that the distinction is one, and he is merely putting a “metabolic” label on something that still has to do with perception. But this is not the case. Metabolic and perceptual activity in nerves are two distinct functions. Here’s how I currently understand what Steiner says about that metabolic activity.

First, we are used to instinctively categorizing things in the intellect, and so we usually think: metabolism - digestive system - nutrition - building up of new tissues. However, the helpful concept here is to conceive of metabolism as taking place all throughout the entire human organism. Therefore, it is first a matter of releasing the mental habit of associating metabolism with mere digestion. Indeed, metabolism begins in digestion, with the overcoming of the laws that rule external matter (foodstuff) to transform it into human stuff (which responds to different laws). This is by the way difficult to fathom for a natural scientist who sees a substance in external nature being the same substance and following the exact same laws inside the human organism. Anyway, the nerve contribution to metabolism is that sensory nerves build up physical substance, and motor nerves combust it.

I know the following may sound absurd at first, but the bodily matter - the earthly part of the physical body that we renew about every seventh year - is not built out of transformed foods. That food only goes to build up the nervous system itself. But the substances in our tissues are built out of neural activity. That’s the neural metabolic activity Steiner speaks of. This is not perception, but a truly anabolic absorption and construction, where Cosmic forces of growth - the peripheral formative forces - become substance in the body. When a nail is clipped and then it regrows, the material of the new nail does not come from digested food, but from the action of sensory nerves, which absorb and materialize the Cosmic forces, through the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin,...) with the participation of the rhythmic system as well - respiration. In parallel, what the motor nerves do in their metabolic capacity (not their perceptual capacity) is combustion. They burn calories through bodily will. That’s the catabolic side of metabolic neural activity. Again, this distinction pertains to metabolism, not to nerve activity proper. In nerve activity proper, all nerves solely perceive. Which is why Steiner says, the distinction doesn’t exist.

So we see that metabolic activity in nerve location is something other than perception. It is the complete fulfillment of what we may call the metabolic activity proper - digestion. This driving of the process to its ultimate conclusion in the nerves results in the fact that foodstuff is transformed into nerve substance, and in turn the nerves transform cosmic activity into bodily tissues, and then burn them again through bodily will. Excrements are, as Steiner says, “nerve matter that has stopped processing halfway through”. Excrements metabolically processed to completion are nerve matter. Hence we can gather that metabolism proper - in the lower body - and metabolism in nerve location are polar opposites, driven primarily by the astral body, in the same way that flowers and roots are polar opposites in plants. For this reason, if flowers are the basis of a medicinal preparation, their effect remains in the lower metabolism, has an effect limited to that region, and then is excreted there. It doesn't find completion in neural metabolic activity. Whereas a remedy made from roots, goes up through the ‘zero point’ of the polarity - up to the head system - to enter nerve matter. From there, the metabolic effects then ray out in the entire organism, through metabolic nerve activity. So we can intuit that a concrete understanding of how the human metabolic function spreads throughout the entire body is essential for proper pathology and therapy.

I realize all this may sound very surprising. But does it make sense for you? Thanks also for the link, I checked it, but I guess the perspective I tried to describe above shifts the relations in a direction that makes the information usable only in a subsequent stage. Once the metabolic activity in the nervous system is clarified, one can then begin to trace its meaning to the refined observations current science is recording.

There are many interesting ideas you describe in this section, and we can perhaps explore some of them further at a later time. In general, I feel that you are pointing to deeper intuitions of the spiritual dynamics, which can only be verified through higher cognition, but perhaps projecting them too strongly into what can be observed within the focal plane. I will only focus on the bold part for now. I want to make it clear, however, that I am open to the possibility that I am misunderstanding what you have expressed, and I am happy to receive clarification on your end.

We know, for example, that cognitive neuroscience is founded on the exploration of 'neural correlates of consciousness'. That would be meaningless if the neural processes observable within the focal plane had little to do with our supersensible life of perception, representation, memory, ideation, and so on. This is why Steiner says that the perceptual-ideational life is very faithfully replicated in the observable structure and processes of the brain and nervous system, to such an extent that it even provides a solid basis for theoretical materialism (when the facts are considered only from the standard perspective). That imaginative life of the soul body is what he refers to as the nerve activity that is not perceptible, but whose 'specific nature' can be inferred from what is perceptible. In a certain sense, our ordinary conscious experience of intuitive steering and the corresponding imaginative flow is condensed almost exactly into the structure and activity of the nervous system.

Of course, even standard natural science would agree that we find metabolic activity in these neural locations, but the supersensible relations reflected by these nerve structures and processes are much more directly related to our representational/ideational life than the deeper intuitive (will) processes responsible for metabolism. Furthermore, we can say that everything observable with ordinary consciousness, i.e., the receding images within the 'light pole' or 'focal plane', which form the basis of natural scientific inquiries, is mediated by the nervous system and our corresponding mental picturing. In that sense, all natural science investigates the affinities and relations of spiritual reality (our intuitive navigatory experience) when projected through the constraints of the nervous system (the flattened, fragmented, and sequentialized flow of mental pictures).

Conversely, the intuitive activity that finds its physical expression in metabolism is not very faithfully reflected in the images of our ordinary consciousness. We can't get a refined sense for that activity by exploring the output-to-output relations and trying to find it as somehow contained within the 'mechanisms' of those relations. That can only be attained by becoming increasingly united with the intuitive pushing that animates the metabolic process (or the 'inspired pushing' that animates the rhythmic life processes). This is also true for the imaginative activity reflected in neural processes, but at least in the latter case, a decent amount of indirect insight into the inner experience of mental picturing, memory, and so forth can be gained through experiments on the neural correlates of consciousness and related phenomena. Hardly any such insights into the archetypal intuitive curvatures can be gained by only focusing on the physical correlates that express rhythmic and metabolic processes. In all cases, however, these insights cannot be properly integrated into our intuitive context without the perspective shift that gradually faces toward the incoming flow.

[Federica]

We know, for example, that cognitive neuroscience is founded on the exploration of 'neural correlates of consciousness'. That would be meaningless if the neural processes observable within the focal plane had little to do with our supersensible life of perception, representation, memory, ideation, and so on. This is why Steiner says that the perceptual-ideational life is very faithfully replicated in the observable structure and processes of the brain and nervous system, to such an extent that it even provides a solid basis for theoretical materialism (when the facts are considered only from the standard perspective). That imaginative life of the soul body is what he refers to as the nerve activity that is not perceptible, but whose 'specific nature' can be inferred from what is perceptible. In a certain sense, our ordinary conscious experience of intuitive steering and the corresponding imaginative flow is condensed almost exactly into the structure and activity of the nervous system.

I will reply in detail to your entire post, but this catches my attention immediately. That the observable neural activity is metabolic and not perceptual was equally stated (not my idea, this is what Steiner says) in my previous post. And I understood that you were in agreement. You wrote: "...as long as we understand that "perceiving impulses within our organism" is something that can only be verified from the Imaginative perspective". If it can only be verified imaginatively, it cannot be verified physically. That is, it cannot be inferred physically! Because whatever verification we may try to do physically is never anything else that a mere inferring. Nothing more than inferring can be done, when we limit ourselves to purely physical analysis, in any case. So, inferring is precisely that which we cannot do when it comes to the perceptual capacity of nerves. That's what RS says, as I understand it. It's not my personal theory.

And, as I understand it, your last statement - that our ordinary conscious experience condenses almost exactly into the nervous system - is exactly what Steiner tells us not to do! Not to equate TFW (ordinary conscious experience) to the nervous system and activity!

Would you please clarify these points?

[AshvinP]

We know, for example, that cognitive neuroscience is founded on the exploration of 'neural correlates of consciousness'. That would be meaningless if the neural processes observable within the focal plane had little to do with our supersensible life of perception, representation, memory, ideation, and so on. This is why Steiner says that the perceptual-ideational life is very faithfully replicated in the observable structure and processes of the brain and nervous system, to such an extent that it even provides a solid basis for theoretical materialism (when the facts are considered only from the standard perspective). That imaginative life of the soul body is what he refers to as the nerve activity that is not perceptible, but whose 'specific nature' can be inferred from what is perceptible. In a certain sense, our ordinary conscious experience of intuitive steering and the corresponding imaginative flow is condensed almost exactly into the structure and activity of the nervous system.

I will reply in detail to your entire post, but this catches my attention immediately. That the observable neural activity is metabolic and not perceptual was equally stated (not my idea, this is what Steiner says) in my previous post. And I understood that you were in agreement. You wrote: "...as long as we understand that "perceiving impulses within our organism" is something that can only be verified from the Imaginative perspective". If it can only be verified imaginatively, it cannot be verified physically. That is, it cannot be inferred physically! Because whatever verification we may try to do physically is never anything else that a mere inferring. Nothing more than inferring can be done, when we limit ourselves to purely physical analysis, in any case. So, inferring is precisely that which we cannot do when it comes to the perceptual capacity of nerves. That's what RS says, as I understand it. It's not my personal theory.

And, as I understand it, your last statement - that our ordinary conscious experience condenses almost exactly into the nervous system - is exactly what Steiner tells us not to do! Not to equate TFW (ordinary conscious experience) to the nervous system and activity!

Would you please clarify these points?

There appears to be some mismatch between what we are speaking about. I am now not sure what you imply when saying observable neural activity is "metabolic" instead of "perceptual". I have previously taken that to mean that this activity has little do with human sensory perceptions and the corresponding life of thinking, and therefore observing that activity does not provide any insight into 'nervous function proper' as the basis of our representational thought life. Is that accurate or are you implying something else?

Within the focal plane, I think we can generally distinguish a polarity within the nervous system between those nerves that act as leverage points for our imaginative flow to condense into physical manifestation (which we experience as contraction of muscles), and those that convey imaginative feedback on our intuitive pushing as sensations and memory images. We could say the nervous system has been polarized into more active and passive parts, similar to the etheric cardiovascular system. With respect to what you quoted from me, I meant that the former can also be experienced as nerves that Imaginatively perceive impulses within the organism, which, however, does not refer to any conscious sensations within the focal plane (like kinesthetic senations or proprioception, which are still conveyed through the sensory nerves). The supra-conscious Imaginative perception of inner impulses is, in that sense, what we consicously experience as 'contraction of the muscles' within the focal plane. But we never experience the metabolic process in its 'pure' form with ordinary consciousness, only as mediated by our mental picturing correlated with the sensory nervous system.

[AshvinP]

And, as I understand it, your last statement - that our ordinary conscious experience condenses almost exactly into the nervous system - is exactly what Steiner tells us not to do! Not to equate TFW (ordinary conscious experience) to the nervous system and activity!

Would you please clarify these points?

By the way, this nice story that Steiner lectured about conveys the crux of what was meant above. We could say the aspect of nervous function proper that cannot be observed empirically, only Imaginatively, is that which helps us understand why the two researchers ended up with similar diagrams, as we begin to understand how the soul being builds up its bodily instruments in early life. Such an intimate process of intuitive steering can never be observed, inferred, verified, etc. exclusively within the focal plane.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA324/En ... 21p01.html

"Part of what imaginative perception discloses to us is the individual forms of the various human senses, as well as the gradual formation of the human nervous system.

There is something to add to this—I will explain with a short story. Once I was at a meeting of the society that at that time called itself the Giordano Bruno Association. The first to speak at the meeting was a stalwart materialist who elaborated on the physiology of the brain; by this he believed he had given sufficient explanation for the association of mental images and in fact for everything that takes place in mental life. He made drawings for the different parts of the brain and showed how they are assigned different functions—one to seeing, another to hearing, and so on. Then he tried to show how it might be possible, following the neurologist Meynert, to see the connecting paths as physical formations responsible for connecting the individual sensory impressions, the individual mental pictures, and so on. Whoever wishes to learn about this can read about these extremely interesting investigations by the important neurologist Meynert, for they are still significant even for the present day. Well, after this materialistically tinged but still quite ingenious explanation, in which the brain was presented not as the mediator but as the producer of mental life, another man stepped forward, just as stalwart an Herbartian as the man before him was a materialist. This man said the following:


Figure 1

Yes, I see what you have sketched, the various parts of the brain, their connections, and so forth. We Herbartians, the philosophers, could actually make the same diagrams. I could draw exactly the same thing. Only I would never intend it to represent parts of the brain and neuronal tracts. Rather, I would draw the mental images directly—thus, and the soul forces that are active in this picturing activity as they go from image to image. The drawing actually comes out the same, he said, whether I, an Herbartian, draw the psychic processes, or you, a physiologist, draw the parts of the brain and their connections. And it was truly interesting how one drew his diagram—I will draw it here schematically—and then the other drew his. The drawings were identical. The one drew to symbolize the life of the soul, while the other drew brain processes, which he also symbolized. In this way the two of them then disputed the matter—of course, without one convincing the other—but they actually drew two altogether different things in exactly the same way.

This is in fact a characteristic experience in the field of knowledge, because when one tries to illustrate mental pictures symbolically through diagrams, as Herbart did (it can also be done in other ways), one actually arrives at something very similar to what one gets when one sketches processes and parts of the brain. How does this happen? This is something that becomes clear only to imaginative cognition, when we see in the retrospective life panorama how the independence of the soul life develops. We see how the etheric body actually organizes—and, in fact, has already at birth to some extent organized—the brain. It permeates the brain in its organization. Then we are not surprised to find out that the brain grows similar in formation to the entity which permeates it. But we do not come to real insight in the matter until we are able to perceive that there is an activity of soul working on the organization of the brain. This is similar to when someone paints a picture and what he paints resembles what he is copying. It is similar because the image he has in his mind works on in his painting and brings about the similarity. In the same way, what is found in the brain—actually in the entire nervous system—as the consequence of a forming activity on the part of the soul, will be similar to the soul's forming activity, or to the soul content itself. But if we wish to understand the activity that works itself into the nervous system, we must simply say: in its origin and development, the whole nervous system is an expression of a reality that may only be viewed imaginatively.

The brain and the entire nervous system are, of course, external physical formations. But we do not really grasp them unless we comprehend them as imaginations that have become physical. Thus what the spiritual investigator generally calls imagination is not, as one might suppose, absent from the phenomenal world—it is indeed present, but in its physical image. This fact occasionally makes itself manifest in a striking way, as in the case of those two men, the one a physiologist, the other a philosopher, who portrayed two different things in the same way."

[Federica]

...

...

...

Thank you for developing!

Regarding the anecdote about the two researchers, I think you will agree that it points to the brain and its neural ramifications in the body (together, the head organization) being the physical image of the activity of perception-ideation, without including feeling and will in the picture. Only the thinking aspect of the conscious ordinary experience of thinking-feeling-will is included, since feeling and will arise in the soul independent of the head organization and are therefore physically reflected in it. This is important because, as I described here, such amalgam - the modern habit by which we are led to conceive all soul activity as nerve activity - leads us astray in our attempts to gain holistic understanding of man.

Now one could say: “Didn’t you just insist that nerves are the seat of metabolic and rhythmic activity too?” Yes I did. The subtlety that clarify why this isn’t a contradiction is this: each of the three parts of the human organization (head, rhythmic system, and metabolism + limbs) has its own function proper (thinking, feeling, and will respectively). In this differentiation we can identify the independent origin of the three activities of the soul. However, they are also totally interconnected with each other, and with the subtle bodies that cooperate to activate the functions. Thus we can say that the head organization - as described in the anecdote - is the only proper seat of perceptual-ideational processes, but we can also say that the head organization is a locus of will and rhythmic activities too. The spread-out nervous system (a primitive brain) happens to be primarily the physical image of the latter activities, while the brain (a more evolved spinal cord) is an image of the former one (ideation). So the brain, yes, it lets us infer the imaginative life of the thinking soul, but not the nervous system. The brain, in its salty parts, is indeed the physical image of ideation, because those few crystallized, solid parts are precisely ‘the mirror’ of living thinking. They are what grants us waking consciousness. It’s only because of those little earthly calcifications that we are awake in the outer world, by reflecting the living ideas in it. But the spinal cord and rest of the nervous system don’t do that. Their proper function (perception) is only grasped imaginatively, as we said. This also means that what they are an image of, physically, is their secondary, metabolic-rhythmic activity, as I tried to briefly convey in the last part of this post.


Regarding the confidence in the spreading of proper conceptual foundations in education, I agree with you. It’s difficult to imagine how it could work out in real life without causing confusion, mocking and rejection. In what I wrote I was conveying what I understand as Steiner’s intention, or at least general purpose, rather than my convictions. In defense of such purposes however, we can observe that Waldorf school is a concrete example of an education that (when conducted properly) doesn’t put a spanner in the works of possible future spiritual-scientific learning, without imposing it at the same time. And since it is clear that young people need not only a holistic primary school, but as they grow, also a scientific and/or artistic higher education before they can possibly begin any esoteric schooling (for age reasons), the question arises, from an anthroposophical perspective, of how to offer a higher education that is not too damaging and dogmatic in its conceptual approaches. I believe Steiner in his ideal line of work was planning to develop his educational initiatives beyond the education of the child, to extend the initiatives to higher studies. Personally, I don’t have the confidence you mention. I would have no idea where to begin. But Steiner certainly did, and I believe we should remain somewhat optimistic when contemplating the possibilities for Anthroposophy to offer less materialistic conceptual foundations to the uninitiated youth, even in our degenerating world.

I am now not sure what you imply when saying observable neural activity is "metabolic" instead of "perceptual". I have previously taken that to mean that this activity has little do with human sensory perceptions and the corresponding life of thinking, and therefore observing that activity does not provide any insight into 'nervous function proper' as the basis of our representational thought life. Is that accurate or are you implying something else?

Yes, that's accurate. I may be wrong, but this is my current understanding. The physically observable activity of the nerves has little to do with perception and ideation.