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.

[Federica]

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?

It’s not only that our intuitive state always transforms as something whole, but also that each of the three soul activities independently gives origin to each of the three bodily functions, or systems: head, rhythmic system and metabolism-limbs. As I tried to highlight, that’s an essential point.

We really would be separated in spirit and soul from one another if, when we meet, all our feeling and willing developed within our nerves, enclosing us completely within our skin. Modern people have that feeling, and the increasingly antisocial condition prevalent in modern Europe is a true representative of that feeling. (GA 301/2)

When I say that our ordinary conscious experience of intuitive steering and the corresponding imaginative flow is not condensed almost exactly into the structure and activity of the nervous system, I mean that, yes, feeling and will don't manifest in nerve function directly, but also - more importantly in this discussion - that in the physically observable spectrum the three functions take place one within the other, nevertheless, what is metabolic or rhythmic in nerves will always and only be the image of will activity or feeling activity respectively, not of ideation-perception.

Therefore, coming to your example (in blue), that's how I understand it. There is an intentional inner gesture that brings forth pictures of peaceful landscapes. That is, at the soul level, there is willed ideation and perception of thought pictures. As I see it, that such ideation generates muscle modulation and sensations through the nerves is not a phenomenological observation, but an abstraction based on natural scientific reasoning. You don’t have an experience that the path taken by your spiritual activity in the body goes through the nerves. Affirming that seems similar to what Steiner calls out here: “Look, for instance, at the effects of Herbartian psychology. It confines its attention exclusively to the process of representation, and regards feeling and willing merely as effects consequent on that process.“ (GA 21/7)

Only materialistic presupposition can relate the element of metabolism in the nerves with the process of ideation. Observation with its roots in reality reports quite differently. It is compelled to recognise that metabolism is present in the nerve to the extent that will is permeating it. (...) Neurology will never arrive at concepts that measure up to the facts, so long as it fails to see that the specifically neural activity of the nerves [that which correlates with representation and ideation] cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation. (GA 21/7)

What one really experiences is the intention to do the exercise, the beautiful mental pictures, and the pleasant feelings and pleasant bodily sensations, that measurements would probably correlate to muscle relaxation, including the heart muscle (similar to what happens in sleep). The tracing from soul activity to the organism could be described as follows. Your ego-astral organism decides to ideate the landscapes, minimizing connection with the sense organs at the same time (eyes closed). The conscious reflection of this activity takes place in the brain (mental pictures of landscapes). This process of conscious perception of the pictures is not traceable to physically observable neural activity, as we previously agreed. At the same time, as we also agreed, feeling and will are active. So, nervous activity proper (ideation and perception) takes place but is not measurable. At the same time, the feelings induced, or summoned, affect breathing - the rhythmic organization - hence blood oxygenation. In turn, blood feeds back rhythmically, up into the head and also down in the entire organism, creating the physical basis for a semi-conscious feeling of well-being and relaxation. Here, feeling and its independent action on breathing joins will and its independent action on metabolism. The will to execute the exercise eyes closed has the metabolic effect of slowing down the inflow of sense perceptions whose metabolic function is to (unconsciously) build the inner organs through the afferent nerves (anabolism, metabolic nerve function). As a consequence, catabolism (muscle activation, combustion) is also reduced, which the efferent nerves supersensibly perceive (in this, they operate in their proper capacity, parallel to their metabolic capacity). On the physical plane, they induce a reduced muscle activation (metabolic capacity of the efferent nerves) and on the non measurable plane, what they do is to testify to the reduced burning activity of all muscles (they perceive that metabolism).

Trying to bring together and understand Steiner’s perspective, this is more or less what I gather, and how I think he would treat your question. To summarize again, all begins with willed ideation, paralleled by semi-conscious feelings and unconscious will. All three activities independently descend in the three somatic functions. However, these functions, as they manifest physically, take place one into another within the organism, and can’t be neatly isolated. The feeling of well-being that you summon affects breathing, thereby blood oxygenation and flow, through the heart. The will that you form in your soul manifests as metabolism in the organism, in that the afferent nerves receive reduced sense perception/intake of cosmic forces, thus they slow down their organ-building activity. That is, anabolism slows down. Concomitantly, the efferent nerves meet the slower blood flow in the entire body, and adjust all muscle activity accordingly, including cardiac activity. Less is built up in the organs by the afferent nerves, and less is combusted in the efferent nerves and connected muscles as well. Everything slows down, coming closer to a sleeping state. Additionally, the efferent nerves take stock of the evolving state, in their connection with the muscles, as a token of the willed (but unconscious) metabolic modulation.

I don’t know exactly how the observable correlates of this exercise would look under measure instruments, but I think Steiner would say that what can be seen and measured in the efferent nerves is their metabolic action of regulating the pace of combustion, not their proper nervous function of perceiving the muscle activity.

The differentiation between sense and motor nerves is a most willing servant of materialism. It is a servant that could have arisen in materialistic science only because a cheap comparison could be found for it in modern times, namely, the telegraph. We telegraph from one station to another and then telegraph back. It is approximately a picture of the process of telegraphy that people use to describe how the sense and motor nerves communicate between the periphery and the central organ. Of course, this whole picture was possible only in an age like the nineteenth century, when telegraphy played such an important role. Had telegraphy not existed, perhaps people would not have formed that picture. Instead they might have developed a more natural view of the corresponding processes.

It may seem as though I want to trample all these theories into the ground simply for the sake of being radical. It is not that easy. I began to study nerves as a very young man, and it was very earthshaking for me when I noticed that this theory served materialism. It did this by transforming what is a direct influence of the will upon the metabolism into something merely physical, into an imagined physical strand of nerves carrying the will impulse from the central organ to the periphery of the human being to the muscles. People simply imposed material processes upon the human organism.

In an act of will, there is in truth a direct connection between the will impulse of the soul and some process in the metabolism. The nerve exists only to transmit the perception of this process. To the same extent, the nerve also exists to transmit the perception necessary when there is a relationship between the person’s feeling and a process expressed in circulation. That is always the case when we feel. Essentially, the basis is not some nerve process; it is a modification of our circulation. With any feeling, there is a process that does not exist in the metabolism, but in the rhythm of circulation. What happens in the blood, in the lymphatic system, or in the non-metabolic aspects of the exchange of oxygen (the exchange of oxygen is actually metabolic, and to that extent it is a part of the transfer of will)—to the extent that we are dealing with the rhythmic processes of breathing—belongs to feeling. All feeling is directly connected with the rhythmic processes. Again, the nerves exist only to directly perceive what occurs between the feeling in the soul and the rhythmic processes in the organism. Nerves are only organs of perception. (GA 301/2)

[AshvinP]

It’s not only that our intuitive state always transforms as something whole, but also that each of the three soul activities independently gives origin to each of the three bodily functions, or systems: head, rhythmic system and metabolism-limbs. As I tried to highlight, that’s an essential point.

We really would be separated in spirit and soul from one another if, when we meet, all our feeling and willing developed within our nerves, enclosing us completely within our skin. Modern people have that feeling, and the increasingly antisocial condition prevalent in modern Europe is a true representative of that feeling. (GA 301/2)

When I say that our ordinary conscious experience of intuitive steering and the corresponding imaginative flow is not condensed almost exactly into the structure and activity of the nervous system, I mean that, yes, feeling and will don't manifest in nerve function directly, but also - more importantly in this discussion - that in the physically observable spectrum the three functions take place one within the other, nevertheless, what is metabolic or rhythmic in nerves will always and only be the image of will activity or feeling activity respectively, not of ideation-perception.

Therefore, coming to your example (in blue), that's how I understand it. There is an intentional inner gesture that brings forth pictures of peaceful landscapes. That is, at the soul level, there is willed ideation and perception of thought pictures. As I see it, that such ideation generates muscle modulation and sensations through the nerves is not a phenomenological observation, but an abstraction based on natural scientific reasoning. You don’t have an experience that the path taken by your spiritual activity in the body goes through the nerves. Affirming that seems similar to what Steiner calls out here: “Look, for instance, at the effects of Herbartian psychology. It confines its attention exclusively to the process of representation, and regards feeling and willing merely as effects consequent on that process.“ (GA 21/7)

Only materialistic presupposition can relate the element of metabolism in the nerves with the process of ideation. Observation with its roots in reality reports quite differently. It is compelled to recognise that metabolism is present in the nerve to the extent that will is permeating it. (...) Neurology will never arrive at concepts that measure up to the facts, so long as it fails to see that the specifically neural activity of the nerves [that which correlates with representation and ideation] cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation. (GA 21/7)

What one really experiences is the intention to do the exercise, the beautiful mental pictures, and the pleasant feelings and pleasant bodily sensations, that measurements would probably correlate to muscle relaxation, including the heart muscle (similar to what happens in sleep). The tracing from soul activity to the organism could be described as follows. Your ego-astral organism decides to ideate the landscapes, minimizing connection with the sense organs at the same time (eyes closed). The conscious reflection of this activity takes place in the brain (mental pictures of landscapes). This process of conscious perception of the pictures is not traceable to physically observable neural activity, as we previously agreed. At the same time, as we also agreed, feeling and will are active. So, nervous activity proper (ideation and perception) takes place but is not measurable. At the same time, the feelings induced, or summoned, affect breathing - the rhythmic organization - hence blood oxygenation. In turn, blood feeds back rhythmically, up into the head and also down in the entire organism, creating the physical basis for a semi-conscious feeling of well-being and relaxation. Here, feeling and its independent action on breathing joins will and its independent action on metabolism. The will to execute the exercise eyes closed has the metabolic effect of slowing down the inflow of sense perceptions whose metabolic function is to (unconsciously) build the inner organs through the afferent nerves (anabolism, metabolic nerve function). As a consequence, catabolism (muscle activation, combustion) is also reduced, which the efferent nerves supersensibly perceive (in this, they operate in their proper capacity, parallel to their metabolic capacity). On the physical plane, they induce a reduced muscle activation (metabolic capacity of the efferent nerves) and on the non measurable plane, what they do is to testify to the reduced burning activity of all muscles (they perceive that metabolism).

Trying to bring together and understand Steiner’s perspective, this is more or less what I gather, and how I think he would treat your question. To summarize again, all begins with willed ideation, paralleled by semi-conscious feelings and unconscious will. All three activities independently descend in the three somatic functions. However, these functions, as they manifest physically, take place one into another within the organism, and can’t be neatly isolated. The feeling of well-being that you summon affects breathing, thereby blood oxygenation and flow, through the heart. The will that you form in your soul manifests as metabolism in the organism, in that the afferent nerves receive reduced sense perception/intake of cosmic forces, thus they slow down their organ-building activity. That is, anabolism slows down. Concomitantly, the efferent nerves meet the slower blood flow in the entire body, and adjust all muscle activity accordingly, including cardiac activity. Less is built up in the organs by the afferent nerves, and less is combusted in the efferent nerves and connected muscles as well. Everything slows down, coming closer to a sleeping state. Additionally, the efferent nerves take stock of the evolving state, in their connection with the muscles, as a token of the willed (but unconscious) metabolic modulation.

I don’t know exactly how the observable correlates of this exercise would look under measure instruments, but I think Steiner would say that what can be seen and measured in the efferent nerves is their metabolic action of regulating the pace of combustion, not their proper nervous function of perceiving the muscle activity.

Above, you say "feeling and will don't manifest directly in the nerve function," but then you also imply that the observable activity of the nerves can only be the image of its metabolic (will) process, rather than ideation/perception. That is part of my confusion on this topic, which, again, could possibly stem from my lack of understanding of what you are expressing and how you are expressing it. Some of the discrepancy seems to be rooted in this quote from Steiner:

"Neurology will never arrive at concepts that measure up to the facts, so long as it fails to see that the specifically neural activity of the nerves cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation. Anatomy and Physiology must bring themselves to recognise 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 devitalised (herabgelähmt) to the lifeless representations and ideas we recognise as our ordinary consciousness. Unless this concept finds its way somehow into physiology, physiology can have no hope of explicating neural activity."

This is something we also consistently express with our phenomenological explorations. The activity of thinking can never be found contained within the receding mental pictures of that activity, which arise as reflections of the nervous system. The latter are the fully finished results of thinking, which cannot be combined with each other in such a way that builds an understanding of 'neural function', but still provide a basis to infer the activity of thinking and its specific nature (many of its characteristic dynamics). In other words, we should see in these receded pictures a testimony to a higher activity of thinking, which can only be known experientially (not by analytically observing, combining, modeling, etc., the pictures of nerves and their behaviors), and which becomes our ordinary conscious experience of ghostly, sequentialized mental images when formatted through the nervous system. In that sense, we can't know the function of the nervous system as a mediator unless we have some intimate experience with the higher life of thinking that is being mediated. How could we have any real understanding of this mediation if we don't even suspect at least two inner spectrums of experience which exist in some relation to one another? All the major theoretical problems arise when we try to understand bodily perceptions and their relations from entirely within the focal plane, i.e. within a single spectrum of inner experience. Then we are practically forced to move toward reductionist explanations, which then forever blind us to the deeper inner dynamics.

We should remember that Steiner consistently emphasizes how closely the physically observable nervous system is related to the life of perception and ideation (and in the previous quote, he makes it a point to say "whole" and "entire" nervous system), whereas the deeper life of feeling and willing has almost no similarity to what is physically observable. We experience a conscious waking state only through this nerve mediation, whereas inner experiences mediated through the rhythmic and metabolic systems normally drop us into dream life or unconscious sleep. That is a big part of the reason why the whole soul life is ascribed to the nervous system and all other bodily processes are imagined as mindless mechanisms. And this makes great sense when we realize that what is physically observable in our waking state is always our thinking process mediated by the nervous system. To experience the life of this thinking, we need to ascend to Imaginative cognition, and only then do we truly understand the 'proper function' of the nervous system.

So I don't think we agreed that "this process of conscious perception of the pictures is not traceable to physically observable neural activity". I thought we had agreed, as Steiner also consistently emphasizes, that this life of conscious perception and ideation can be traced with great precision to the brain's neural structure and activity. It also seems to me that this fact is beyond dispute on empirical grounds, as evidenced by research on the neural correlates of consciousness. Do you agree with that?

From your posts, I gather that you feel something fundamentally changes when we descend into the efferent-afferent nerves of the lower body, and the life of perception and ideation no longer correlates strongly with what we can observe happening there. It certainly seems that the sympathetic nervous system is associated with a deeper life of perception-ideation that is hardly conscious. We experience this as instinctive perceptions and reactions to aspects of our environment that don't require conscious reflection, like when a loud, unexpected noise makes us jump back. This deeper nervous system still reflects living imaginations which are normally 'drowned out' by the cerebral nervous system, through which we experience our ghostly mental pictures as fragmented extracts of the living imagination. From that perspective within the flow, our deeper imaginative life is felt like the wise realm of instinctive perception and action. On the bodily side, it is represented as the formative forces of growth in the organism. If that's what you are pointing toward, then I fully agree. Steiner expresses it as follows:

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA055/En ... 25p02.html

"In the first instance, the sympathetic nervous system gives rise to the kind of sentient life just described. But a person's consciousness does not reach down far enough to experience the cosmic processes it mirrors. The surrounding cosmic world out of which the human being, as a living being, is created, mirrors itself in the sympathetic nervous system. There is in these nerves a dull inner life. If human beings could dive down consciously into the sympathetic nervous system, while the higher nervous system fell asleep, they would behold in a world of light the workings of the great cosmic laws.

Human beings once had a clairvoyant faculty that has been superseded. However, it can still be experienced, if through certain measures the function of the higher nervous system is suspended, setting free the lower consciousness. When that happens, the world is experienced through the lower nervous system in which the environment is mirrored in a special way. Certain lower animals still have this kind of consciousness. As explained, it is extremely dull, but provides a dim awareness of a far wider aspect of the world than the tiny section perceived by humans today.

At the time when evolution had reached the stage of the cosmos being mirrored in the sympathetic nervous system, another event occurred in human beings. The spinal cord was added to the sympathetic nervous system. The system of brain and spinal cord extended to the organs, through which contact was established with the outer world. Once their organisms had reached this stage, humans were no longer obliged to be merely a mirror for the primordial cosmic laws; the mirror image itself now entered into relationship with the environment. The incorporation of the higher nervous system in addition to the sympathetic nervous system denoted the transformation that had occurred in the astral body. Whereas formerly it participated dully in the life of the cosmos, it now contributed its own inner experiences.

Through the sympathetic nervous system, a being senses what takes place outside itself; through the higher nervous system, what takes place within itself. In individuals at the present stage of their evolution, the highest form of the nervous system is developed; it enables people to obtain from the highly structured astral body what is needed to formulate mental pictures of the outer world. Therefore, a person has lost the ability to experience the environment in the original dull pictures. Instead, individuals are aware of their inner life, and build within the inner self a new world of pictures on a higher level. This world of mental pictures mirrors, it is true, a much smaller section of the outer world, but does so much more clearly and perfectly."

[Federica]

Ashvin, thanks for your reply. I don’t want to state anything as definitive convictions. I surely struggle to apply myself to grasp what Steiner really means, bringing together the various bits and expressions under the guidance of the main ideas. I certainly don’t feel like the work is completed in any way. At the same time, I did gather something from these efforts and I do feel that the understanding you express is problematic, and that the points I try to communicate at every post do not make an impression on you. I think that the expressions “mediation of the nerves” and “through the nerves”, which you use abundantly, are tricky and don’t lead us in the right direction. If there’s something that nerve matter absolutely does not do is to let things pass through it. On the contrary, nerves are impenetrable. They reflect. I will soon add a few more comments but I am honestly in doubt whether it is really worth it or not to pursue this discussion, given that I can’t say I have a finished understanding of the matter.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, thanks for your reply. I don’t want to state anything as definitive convictions. I surely struggle to apply myself to grasp what Steiner really means, bringing together the various bits and expressions under the guidance of the main ideas. I certainly don’t feel like the work is completed in any way. At the same time, I did gather something from these efforts and I do feel that the understanding you express is problematic, and that the points I try to communicate at every post do not make an impression on you. I think that the expressions “mediation of the nerves” and “through the nerves”, which you use abundantly, are tricky and don’t lead us in the right direction. If there’s something that nerve matter absolutely does not do is to let things pass through it. On the contrary, nerves are impenetrable. They reflect. I will soon add a few more comments but I am honestly in doubt whether it is really worth it or not to pursue this discussion, given that I can’t say I have a finished understanding of the matter.

Sure, I will await your further clarifications if you decide to. In the meantime, I just want to be clear that everything I am referring to, such as the "mediation" of the nervous system, should be understood from a phenomenological perspective. I'm simply trying to highlight how it functions to format our deeper intuitive navigation within the soul-spiritual landscape. It could also be characterized as a mirror that reflects this inner landscape or, as Cleric illustrated recently, as a sort of dam that prevents us from flooding certain aspects of the inner landscape with our attention. In other words, all of this phenomenology of how our ordinary intuitive experience takes shape, which we have explored in many different ways on this forum, is intimately bound up with the nervous system and its function (at least the 'sensory pole' of the system). The sensations and corresponding memory images of the 'outer world' conveyed through the mediation of the nervous system are thus like negative images of the inner landscape. Our higher development is, in turn, intimately bound up with loosening the etheric-astral organism from this mediation, reflecting, damming, formatting, etc., of the sensory nervous system, and thus flooding the inner landscape with more of our holistic attention. Yet, as Cleric discussed in the recent essay, the cerebral nervous system is also the point of contact with the deeper landscape, and the loosening can only be attained through that point of contact. That is one of the main ideas that should always guide our thinking in this domain and help us orient toward the various bits and expressions, I would say.

[Federica]

Above, you say "feeling and will don't manifest directly in the nerve function," but then you also imply that the observable activity of the nerves can only be the image of its metabolic (will) process, rather than ideation/perception. That is part of my confusion on this topic, which, again, could possibly stem from my lack of understanding of what you are expressing and how you are expressing it. Some of the discrepancy seems to be rooted in this quote from Steiner:

"Neurology will never arrive at concepts that measure up to the facts, so long as it fails to see that the specifically neural activity of the nerves cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation. Anatomy and Physiology must bring themselves to recognise 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 devitalised (herabgelähmt) to the lifeless representations and ideas we recognise as our ordinary consciousness. Unless this concept finds its way somehow into physiology, physiology can have no hope of explicating neural activity."

With “will doesn't manifest directly in nerve function” I meant that metabolism works abundantly but indirectly in the nervous system. ‘Indirectly’ only means that such metabolic activity in nerves is not the manifestation of perception-ideation. In other words, just because it takes place in nerves, it doesn’t mean it’s a token of perceptual-ideational activity. The fact that it happens there depends on the physical intermingling of each function with the other two. Everything that’s metabolic still descends directly and independently from the will, but because the physical organ of the will - the metabolic system - is not a neatly defined unit with clear borders and a determined location in the body but is intermixed with everything else, then it operates in a spread-out fashion within the entire volume of the physical body. The three activities reach the physical body independent of one another, but in their physical manifestation they are completely intermixed. Does that solve the ambiguity?

This is something we also consistently express with our phenomenological explorations. The activity of thinking can never be found contained within the receding mental pictures of that activity, which arise as reflections of the nervous system. The latter are the fully finished results of thinking, which cannot be combined with each other in such a way that builds an understanding of 'neural function', but still provide a basis to infer the activity of thinking and its specific nature (many of its characteristic dynamics). In other words, we should see in these receded pictures a testimony to a higher activity of thinking, which can only be known experientially (not by analytically observing, combining, modeling, etc., the pictures of nerves and their behaviors), and which becomes our ordinary conscious experience of ghostly, sequentialized mental images when formatted through the nervous system. In that sense, we can't know the function of the nervous system as a mediator unless we have some intimate experience with the higher life of thinking that is being mediated. How could we have any real understanding of this mediation if we don't even suspect at least two inner spectrums of experience which exist in some relation to one another? All the major theoretical problems arise when we try to understand bodily perceptions and their relations from entirely within the focal plane, i.e. within a single spectrum of inner experience. Then we are practically forced to move toward reductionist explanations, which then forever blind us to the deeper inner dynamics.

This can also be seen from an evolutionary perspective: to develop forces of reflective thought (consciousness on the physical plane), man expelled from his organism that which morphs cosmic forces into organic growth (plants and lower animals) only to remain with a physical system (the NS) so poor in vital forces that it can’t grow as tissue - the growth forces can’t even penetrate it - but the NS reflects them as ghostly thought-pictures.

The life forces are prevented from becoming biological life because the NS acts as a reflecting barrier. The reflections are in a sense physical (constrained within the earthly sphere, within the skull) but also reminiscent of the deflected living impulse in that they remain inner, pictorial in nature. This process is not measurable or sense perceptible because nothing in it really completes a full descent into the physical spectrum: 1) the non local, cosmic, living forces are supersensible; 2) in their presence, the NS remains impenetrable, it doesn’t absorb them or materializes them (like a plenaria or any plant would do); and then 3) the ghostly reflections are of inner nature again - not a sensory experience. So nothing becomes material or measurable in this game. Yes, the pictures arise because of the salt quality of nerve substance but not through that substance. And the result is really of a hybrid type: the living forces do not become powerful biological life through the nerves, but they also don’t preserve their original holistic and living nature. They rather come to a stagnation, in a sort of in-between state which is the hallmark of our current earthly consciousness, in which growth develops as mental conceptualizations and associations, not as new tissues. Basically, earthly clear consciousness is poor in life both inwardly and outwardly, like a suspended parenthesis inserted crosswise in the harmony of the cosmic flow.

Therefore the correlates of consciousness measured by contemporary science in the NS cannot be the trace of the ideation process just described, which never really descend to the physical plane, since the brain does not integrate the cosmic forces. Ideation doesn't make itself traceable. It goes from cosmic intuition to intangible mental pictures and between the two there's a mere reflection, not a physical imprint. The only thing observable then is the matter itself that constitutes the NS and what it physically does. These observed NS events occur alongside the mental states. They are not their effect, and I think Stainer means that these correlates are fully metabolic phenomena. They don't capture how intuition becomes conscious perception of mental pictures. They correlate with what happens after the finished product/mental picture arises.

I do remember how Steiner speaks of the close relation between the NS and the life of perception and ideation. He speaks of replica, even. I think we should understand this as just described. The NS replicates living thinking - it mirrors it without integrating it. It’s a close relationship, however in its composition and physical activity (what science observes) the NS shows on the one hand the metabolism that produced it (digestion), and on the other hand the metabolism it effects, that is anabolism via the senses, and catabolism via the muscles. Steiner: "Nerve substance is metabolic substance taken to its logical conclusion” meaning that the nutrition process of digestion generates the substance of the nerves. Nerves are built out of what metabolism does of the foodstuff we eat. And: "In reality motor nerves are also sense nerves. They exist so that if I, for example, moved a finger, there is a direct relationship between the decision and the metabolism of the finger, so my will can exercise a direct influence upon the metabolism of the finger. The so-called motor nerves perceive this change in the metabolic process. Without this perception of a metabolic process, no decision of the will can follow, since the human being depends upon perceiving what occurs within himself. This is just like our needing to perceive something in the external world if we are to know things and participate in them."

We should remember that Steiner consistently emphasizes how closely the physically observable nervous system is related to the life of perception and ideation (and in the previous quote, he makes it a point to say "whole" and "entire" nervous system), whereas the deeper life of feeling and willing has almost no similarity to what is physically observable. We experience a conscious waking state only through this nerve mediation, whereas inner experiences mediated through the rhythmic and metabolic systems normally drop us into dream life or unconscious sleep. That is a big part of the reason why the whole soul life is ascribed to the nervous system and all other bodily processes are imagined as mindless mechanisms. And this makes great sense when we realize that what is physically observable in our waking state is always our thinking process mediated by the nervous system. To experience the life of this thinking, we need to ascend to Imaginative cognition, and only then do we truly understand the 'proper function' of the nervous system.

So I don't think we agreed that "this process of conscious perception of the pictures is not traceable to physically observable neural activity". I thought we had agreed, as Steiner also consistently emphasizes, that this life of conscious perception and ideation can be traced with great precision to the brain's neural structure and activity. It also seems to me that this fact is beyond dispute on empirical grounds, as evidenced by research on the neural correlates of consciousness. Do you agree with that?

Do the correlates of consciousness really trace the thoughts to their intuitive origin? Do they show a mediation? Do they show that something goes through the nerves? Steiner says they show a correlation between reflected thoughts and nerve activity - the metabolic nervous response. The real thinking process is past at that point. If the thought-picture is provoked by a sensory stimulus, the activity is anabolism (the nerve conveys light/warm/cosmic forces to build up bodily tissues). If the thought-picture is of the kind “I want to move my hand”, the nerve activity is catabolism (as the muscles in the hand combust matter, the nerve makes us conscious of the movement by effecting the process). If the nerve is cut the hand can’t move, not because the nerve mediates the will impulse, but because without a catabolic, destructive process no movement can take place and no consciousness of the movement can arise.

[AshvinP]

With “will doesn't manifest directly in nerve function” I meant that metabolism works abundantly but indirectly in the nervous system. ‘Indirectly’ only means that such metabolic activity in nerves is not the manifestation of perception-ideation. In other words, just because it takes place in nerves, it doesn’t mean it’s a token of perceptual-ideational activity. The fact that it happens there depends on the physical intermingling of each function with the other two. Everything that’s metabolic still descends directly and independently from the will, but because the physical organ of the will - the metabolic system - is not a neatly defined unit with clear borders and a determined location in the body but is intermixed with everything else, then it operates in a spread-out fashion within the entire volume of the physical body. The three activities reach the physical body independent of one another, but in their physical manifestation they are completely intermixed. Does that solve the ambiguity?

Thanks, yes, I think that resolves it.

This can also be seen from an evolutionary perspective: to develop forces of reflective thought (consciousness on the physical plane), man expelled from his organism that which morphs cosmic forces into organic growth (plants and lower animals) only to remain with a physical system (the NS) so poor in vital forces that it can’t grow as tissue - the growth forces can’t even penetrate it - but the NS reflects them as ghostly thought-pictures.

The life forces are prevented from becoming biological life because the NS acts as a reflecting barrier. The reflections are in a sense physical (constrained within the earthly sphere, within the skull) but also reminiscent of the deflected living impulse in that they remain inner, pictorial in nature. This process is not measurable or sense perceptible because nothing in it really completes a full descent into the physical spectrum: 1) the non local, cosmic, living forces are supersensible; 2) in their presence, the NS remains impenetrable, it doesn’t absorb them or materializes them (like a plenaria or any plant would do); and then 3) the ghostly reflections are of inner nature again - not a sensory experience. So nothing becomes material or measurable in this game. Yes, the pictures arise because of the salt quality of nerve substance but not through that substance. And the result is really of a hybrid type: the living forces do not become powerful biological life through the nerves, but they also don’t preserve their original holistic and living nature. They rather come to a stagnation, in a sort of in-between state which is the hallmark of our current earthly consciousness, in which growth develops as mental conceptualizations and associations, not as new tissues. Basically, earthly clear consciousness is poor in life both inwardly and outwardly, like a suspended parenthesis inserted crosswise in the harmony of the cosmic flow.

Therefore the correlates of consciousness measured by contemporary science in the NS cannot be the trace of the ideation process just described, which never really descend to the physical plane, since the brain does not integrate the cosmic forces. Ideation doesn't make itself traceable. It goes from cosmic intuition to intangible mental pictures and between the two there's a mere reflection, not a physical imprint. The only thing observable then is the matter itself that constitutes the NS and what it physically does. These observed NS events occur alongside the mental states. They are not their effect, and I think Stainer means that these correlates are fully metabolic phenomena. They don't capture how intuition becomes conscious perception of mental pictures. They correlate with what happens after the finished product/mental picture arises.

I do remember how Steiner speaks of the close relation between the NS and the life of perception and ideation. He speaks of replica, even. I think we should understand this as just described. The NS replicates living thinking - it mirrors it without integrating it. It’s a close relationship, however in its composition and physical activity (what science observes) the NS shows on the one hand the metabolism that produced it (digestion), and on the other hand the metabolism it effects, that is anabolism via the senses, and catabolism via the muscles. Steiner: "Nerve substance is metabolic substance taken to its logical conclusion” meaning that the nutrition process of digestion generates the substance of the nerves. Nerves are built out of what metabolism does of the foodstuff we eat. And: "In reality motor nerves are also sense nerves. They exist so that if I, for example, moved a finger, there is a direct relationship between the decision and the metabolism of the finger, so my will can exercise a direct influence upon the metabolism of the finger. The so-called motor nerves perceive this change in the metabolic process. Without this perception of a metabolic process, no decision of the will can follow, since the human being depends upon perceiving what occurs within himself. This is just like our needing to perceive something in the external world if we are to know things and participate in them."

We should remember that Steiner consistently emphasizes how closely the physically observable nervous system is related to the life of perception and ideation (and in the previous quote, he makes it a point to say "whole" and "entire" nervous system), whereas the deeper life of feeling and willing has almost no similarity to what is physically observable. We experience a conscious waking state only through this nerve mediation, whereas inner experiences mediated through the rhythmic and metabolic systems normally drop us into dream life or unconscious sleep. That is a big part of the reason why the whole soul life is ascribed to the nervous system and all other bodily processes are imagined as mindless mechanisms. And this makes great sense when we realize that what is physically observable in our waking state is always our thinking process mediated by the nervous system. To experience the life of this thinking, we need to ascend to Imaginative cognition, and only then do we truly understand the 'proper function' of the nervous system.

So I don't think we agreed that "this process of conscious perception of the pictures is not traceable to physically observable neural activity". I thought we had agreed, as Steiner also consistently emphasizes, that this life of conscious perception and ideation can be traced with great precision to the brain's neural structure and activity. It also seems to me that this fact is beyond dispute on empirical grounds, as evidenced by research on the neural correlates of consciousness. Do you agree with that?

Do the correlates of consciousness really trace the thoughts to their intuitive origin? Do they show a mediation? Do they show that something goes through the nerves? Steiner says they show a correlation between reflected thoughts and nerve activity - the metabolic nervous response. The real thinking process is past at that point. If the thought-picture is provoked by a sensory stimulus, the activity is anabolism (the nerve conveys light/warm/cosmic forces to build up bodily tissues). If the thought-picture is of the kind “I want to move my hand”, the nerve activity is catabolism (as the muscles in the hand combust matter, the nerve makes us conscious of the movement by effecting the process). If the nerve is cut the hand can’t move, not because the nerve mediates the will impulse, but because without a catabolic, destructive process no movement can take place and no consciousness of the movement can arise.

I'm not quite on the same page here because we need to remember the cerebral point of contact. If nothing of the etheric-imaginative process completed a full descent into the physical, particularly the cerebral nerve substance, then there would be no point of contact through which the dead mineralized substance could grow back into harmony with the living Cosmic forces, and thus ordinary Earthly consciousness could grow rich in life again. As we know, there was a time when the etheric head still protruded from the physical head, symbolically speaking, and thus the point of contact wasn't quite there. Then, Earthly consciousness was still of a living quality, but dull and dreamlike. (a lingering echo of that comes to expression in our time as forms of mental retardation). But now the point of overlap has been reached, so that Earthly consciousness can come alive again while maintaining waking lucidity. And that points us toward the future spiritual function of the NS, which will be more consciously integrated with the RS and MS.

It is certainly true that no physical images, whether of nerve activity or any other bodily or environmental process, convey how intuition becomes conscious perception. That is the primary thread running through many such discussions, both here and in the lectures. The only way of learning how that happens is by uniting our consciousness with the real-time intuitive process as it sublimates and condenses along the gradient. The NCC research certainly doesn't show how the mediation of our higher organization unfolds, just as no physical research possibly could. That is why it's consistently emphasized that no amount of intellectual manipulation of focal plane images will reveal how the motor nerves perceive will impulses rooted in metabolism rather than acting as leverage points that amplify and convey such impulses, for example. Likewise, it would never reveal how the whole soul life is related to the overlapping bodily systems. Such things can only be concretely intimated when the focal-plane images are viewed and leveraged more artistically, more symbolically, rather than used only to model their literal (quantifiable, measurable, etc.) content. And it is only possible to understand why such images should be viewed symbolically through a shift in perspective within the flow, such that we concretely sense that something is unfolding before we become conscious in our philosophical-scientific mental images and that 'something' is consciously accessible (but not through ordinary thinking habits).

What the cerebral nerve structure and activity do convey, however, is some characteristic aspects of the ordinary conscious faculties of perception, memory, reasoning, and so on. It's notable how much Steiner praised the scientific research of his time in neurophysiology, and things have progressed considerably since then through computer technology, brain imaging techniques, refinement of reporting methods, and so on. Hoffman often remarked, for example, that we have a great understanding of how visual perception (as an active faculty) correlates with the mathematically precise dynamics of the brain. Of course, relative to the upright stance and lucid insights that can be gained through higher cognitive research, modern psychology and cognitive science are like infants that are still babbling and crawling their way around the proximate inner landscape. They simply focus on examining and categorizing the individual letters of our ordinary mental flow, and rest satisfied with that myopic task, rather than learning to read the sentences and paragraphs they spell out, which would necessarily lead to a new form of first-person science that intimately investigates the Imaginative+ spectrums.

[Federica]

I'm not quite on the same page here because we need to remember the cerebral point of contact. If nothing of the etheric-imaginative process completed a full descent into the physical, particularly the cerebral nerve substance, then there would be no point of contact through which the dead mineralized substance could grow back into harmony with the living Cosmic forces, and thus ordinary Earthly consciousness could grow rich in life again. As we know, there was a time when the etheric head still protruded from the physical head, symbolically speaking, and thus the point of contact wasn't quite there. Then, Earthly consciousness was still of a living quality, but dull and dreamlike. (a lingering echo of that comes to expression in our time as forms of mental retardation). But now the point of overlap has been reached, so that Earthly consciousness can come alive again while maintaining waking lucidity. And that points us toward the future spiritual function of the NS, which will be more consciously integrated with the RS and MS.

It is certainly true that no physical images, whether of nerve activity or any other bodily or environmental process, convey how intuition becomes conscious perception. That is the primary thread running through many such discussions, both here and in the lectures. The only way of learning how that happens is by uniting our consciousness with the real-time intuitive process as it sublimates and condenses along the gradient. The NCC research certainly doesn't show how the mediation of our higher organization unfolds, just as no physical research possibly could. That is why it's consistently emphasized that no amount of intellectual manipulation of focal plane images will reveal how the motor nerves perceive will impulses rooted in metabolism rather than acting as leverage points that amplify and convey such impulses, for example. Likewise, it would never reveal how the whole soul life is related to the overlapping bodily systems. Such things can only be concretely intimated when the focal-plane images are viewed and leveraged more artistically, more symbolically, rather than used only to model their literal (quantifiable, measurable, etc.) content. And it is only possible to understand why such images should be viewed symbolically through a shift in perspective within the flow, such that we concretely sense that something is unfolding before we become conscious in our philosophical-scientific mental images and that 'something' is consciously accessible (but not through ordinary thinking habits).

What the cerebral nerve structure and activity do convey, however, is some characteristic aspects of the ordinary conscious faculties of perception, memory, reasoning, and so on. It's notable how much Steiner praised the scientific research of his time in neurophysiology, and things have progressed considerably since then through computer technology, brain imaging techniques, refinement of reporting methods, and so on. Hoffman often remarked, for example, that we have a great understanding of how visual perception (as an active faculty) correlates with the mathematically precise dynamics of the brain. Of course, relative to the upright stance and lucid insights that can be gained through higher cognitive research, modern psychology and cognitive science are like infants that are still babbling and crawling their way around the proximate inner landscape. They simply focus on examining and categorizing the individual letters of our ordinary mental flow, and rest satisfied with that myopic task, rather than learning to read the sentences and paragraphs they spell out, which would necessarily lead to a new form of first-person science that intimately investigates the Imaginative+ spectrums.

I believe your second and third paragraphs are fully compatible with mine, and I like how you depict the attitude of present-day science in contrast with the science of the future. That the structure and activity of the brain “convey characteristic aspects of the ordinary conscious faculties of perception, memory, reasoning" seems to be in alignment with how I expressed it: the correlates of consciousness show a correlation between reflected thoughts and nerve activity. So I will focus on your first paragraph.

With regards to the bold, we can notice that, in fact, the dead mineralized substance never grows back into harmony with the living Cosmic forces. It only goes to the grave, or the crematorium. What grows back into harmony is our free will. Yes, today it is possible for human consciousness to come alive again while maintaining lucidity, but notice that this achievement has to be pursued by leaving the physical body aside. The point of contact is found by an effort of relinquishing earthly thinking, that is, it must be found not in the reflections, but in the tiny leeway that exists today (and has to be augmented) between the physical body and the slightly larger etheric body. And the opening does not reside in the intersection, but in the 'etheric excess'. It is not possible today to be in a meditative state and go about the daily tasks at the same time. So what does it mean that waking consciousness is maintained then? I don’t know too well yet But I think it can only mean that the will remains present to itself. It can't mean that reflective consciousness is the point of contact.

In concentration, reflecting consciousness is subdued, like a dangerous individual is subdued by the police. We have to police the reflecting consciousness, immobilizing it in place by the force of the will, so that the Cosmic life can be found, not through the reflected picture, but in the volume that opens up (the etheric leeway) once and only once the picture is neutralized. By contrast, the will that we employ to immobilize the picture we can recognize as the same will that we exert in the rest of life. This is the point of contact. The will remains the same, while its range of motion expands. We thought our will was limited by the reflected pictures. But actually, when we subdue picture consciousness, another degree of motion becomes progressively available to its movements. So the waking, clear character of consciousness is not extracted from the concentration image, but from the 'continuity of will', who discovers a new operative space once ordinary activity is kept immobilized. To begin with, the free will (clear consciousness) knows itself only in ordinary consciousness, but when this is neutralized it knowingly discovers a whole new geometry. This is in line with Cleric’s description of the point of contact, in The Game Loop Part 7:

On the surface, it may look like concentration leads to a kind of paralysis of inner life. It is as if we press a single button on the gamepad and freeze in that posture for a prolonged time. Seen like this, it seems that we one-sidedly limit the manifoldness of our inner life and voluntarily stagnate into a single input. This analogy, however, implicitly assumes that we are already familiar with all available IO activities, which we forsake in exchange for keeping a single button pressed. Imagine that from the beginning of our life our hands have been fused to a game controller. The IO flows of our hands and the controller are entangled together, and we implicitly take the constraints of the controller elements to be the natural constraints of our will inputs. It would take some special effort if we are to differentiate the two flows. In this analogy, we should imagine that we can know our hands only through the sense of touch at our fingertips. If we simply let go of the controller, we ‘fall asleep’ – we lose consciousness of both the gamepad and our hand movements, since we can feel our hands only when touching something. In other words, maintaining the point of contact is crucial – it is only in this way that we have the conscious tactile feedback of what we are doing with our hands. So, we should imagine that we need to loosen our grip on the gamepad such that we subtly feel our finger touching the button, yet without losing contact altogether. Now we gradually develop finer sensitivity in our fingers. We try to experience the button-press so gently and attentively as if we try to feelingly differentiate to what extent the sensation is shaped by the geometry of the gamepad, and to what degree by our dim inputs. By not pressing the button habitually but gently gliding our finger over its surface, we become aware of the more intimate hand-flow, which has hitherto been forced to stream entirely within the riverbed of the controller.

"If we simply let go of the controller, we ‘fall asleep’ – we lose consciousness of both the gamepad and our hand movements" means, being interpreted: if we let go of our will (for example we deflect it by taking drugs or being practitioners of gut clairvoyance) we lose consciousness of both the everyday spectrum (the game pad) and the geometry in the leeway (our hand movements) only to be left with past pictures, once again. Therefore, the concentration picture is a door closed, not a doorway, or point of contact, because waking consciousness is not granted by it or through it, but rather by our firm intention to remain open to the existence of a new field of activity independent of the picture, once the latter is neutralized.