On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[AshvinP]

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. 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.

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.


A relevant lecture: GA 212/2 - Apr 30, 1922

Thanks for elaborating on that. We are certainly on the same page that the deeper life of feeling and will (beyond our mental pictures of those spectrums) are not explicitly reflected in the brain and nervous system, and that our intuitive state always transforms as something whole, i.e., there is no state of 'pure nervous activity' without rhythmic and metabolic activity, just as there is no mental picturing without feeling and will implicated in the meaning of those pictures. For example, if I simply imagine a triangle, my intent modulates not only the nerves in the brain, but also, to some extent, my breathing, blood circulation, and metabolism.

On the other hand, I am still quite unsure about all of the remarks in bold. For example, if I close my eyes, focus intensely, and push through tunnels of mental images of peaceful natural landscapes, I can modulate the heart organ and blood flow through the nervous system, which will feed back certain conscious sensations. These are nerves that extend beyond the brain and head region into the lower body. All of that could be physically detected as well. So I'm not sure, phenomenologically speaking, how we could say this nervous activity has little to do with the life of perception and ideation.

But perhaps you are still speaking about something different?

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.

Right, that makes sense to me. I suppose that the key goal of a Waldorf education is to instill the optimal soul and intellectual qualities, through a curriculum based on a deep spiritual understanding of the developmental phases of early life, so that the soul remains mostly receptive to the perspective shift in later life, no matter what field of inquiry it ends up working in and contemplating. I can see how a similar educational initiative could be extended to adolescence and early adulthood.