On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[Federica]

To put it rather abstractly, I think we are only safe when we recognize that the leeway is always opened through a harmonious interplay of both poles. We can't see only the point of contact in thought (reflected image) or the will (intuitive pushing), because the point is exactly where these two meet. Of course, we aren't speaking of any point in space that we can encompass and survey in the output flow, but rather of the spectrum of our experience, where they feel closely in phase when we concentrate our inner activity. It is when the continuously sinking focal image (which could be the point of attention itself) feels like a continuous testimony to what we are presently doing with our inner activity.

Yes, however the researchers of the neural correlates of consciousness - which is the origin of this part of the discussion - do speak of specific outputs and points in space within the head volume. So we come back to the same question of "traceability".

We can see that in Cleric's metaphor that you quoted. The controller is a metaphor for our mental palette of reflected images, rooted in the cerebral organism. The hand/finger activity is our invisible intuitive pushing. If we lose contact with the former, we fall asleep because there is no output feedback on our intuitive pushing. If we surrender (become absorbed by) the former and lose contact with the latter, we free fall as a pure observer of inexplicable phenomena. I think it becomes even more explicit here:

When we focus on a point within our phenomenal volume, it should feel as if it is placed within the full spectrum of the primary flow – that is, we’re not aiming to drift into fantasy (octants III, IV, VII, VIII) and lose all bearings of the bodily spectrum of the flow. We surely need to resist being sucked into the distracting sensory and somatic IO flows (octants I, II, V, VI), but we nevertheless have to feel the point of contact with their overall spectrum. In a sense, the point of concentration should feel ‘cerebral’, as if it rests within bodily head space.

Blue: yes, that's how I have interpreted the metaphor as well, only highlighting somewhat more that what's necessary for all this fine tuning to happen is ultimately the will. It can be seen more like a point of contact since it's the same will by which I clean the kitchen in the evening rather than the following day (most of the time). This is not the case for the reflected picture, or consciousness, which is engaged in a different way compared to ordinary consciousness. By the way, expecting that something has to happen through the picture itself is a mistake in which I remained stuck for quite some time. This is also part of the reason why I personally think it's unhelpful as an expression. Initially, I was focused on the details of the picture, and thought it was about having a particular way of seeing the picture so that something would finally happen "through it". As we know, this is not the case. There's nothing in the fabric of the picture that is more relevant than something else in it, or that should be engaged in a particular way. There's no hidden code to be found in the picture, so that some magic happens through the picture, or by mediation of the picture used for concentration. Another noticeable point is that many different pictures (or even no picture, as you say) can work. So this is also a fine question of vocabulary, and I agree that Cleric expressed it with great precision and efficacy in the essay. We surely need to protect ourselves from being carried away, as if by a dream, which equals saying that the felt point of contact has to remain within the physical volume of the head, so that we can survey what happens without becoming submerged in it (without losing all will power, as it happens in a dream).
We can say that we agree on the substance here, and I have a preference for avoiding the expressions "through the picture" or "mediated by the picture" for the specific reasons I have explained. It can be called a personal preference.

When we speak of the physical body, people usually imagine it in third-person mental images. These are the same mental images we combine in various ways to explore the nature of reality abstractly. Indeed, all such mineralized mental content is destined to fall away. But the body can also be understood as a constellation of inner forces that support our intuitive navigation and provide it feedback on its constraints and possibilities (which Steiner refers to as the Phantom, the Resurrection body that originally developed on Saturn, is now being progressively spiritualized, and will find its fulfillment on Vulcan). So if we focus not on the explicit content of our palette of mental images, but its inner function as gamepad support and feedback for our intuitive navigation, then it becomes clearer how it is instrumental in establishing the point of contact and thus the expansion of free will. In other words, our expanded degrees of freedom in the will do not come by disconnecting inner activity from the reflected palette and floating untethered into spiritual space, but from properly orienting our perspective on that palette as we navigate the flow (which is a perspective we normally only attain in a sustained way after death in the life review and so on).

As it happens, stimulated by a Facebook post, I was recently contemplating GA 215 and came across a few highly relevant passages. In general, a 'silver cord' should be maintained so that the soul can freely traverse the gradient from ordinary consciousness to higher consciousness. That is only possible when our concentrated state grows through the point of contact.


"Particularly, when we observe the way the soul-spiritual in pre-earthly existence relates to what a man bears as physical body in earthly life, we can arrive at the realization that one part of the soul-spiritual—a part that man also possesses in pre-earthly existence—is completely transformed due to conception and birth. While it is still present in pre-earthly life, it now actually disappears; it is the part out of which thinking has developed. It is there in pre-earthly life but disappears as a soul-spiritual element the moment man arrives on the earth. Traces of it remain in the infant, but gradually this part of soul-spiritual life disappears entirely. What has happened to it?

The part that here disappears has been transformed into the life and form of the human head organization. Now understand this correctly: It is entirely wrong to believe that the whole soul-spiritual configuration of man exists as such in pre-earthly life and then, on earth, it receives a kind of house by means of the body into which it enters and lives. It is quite wrong to think in this way about that part of the soul I now referred to above. That part fades and disappears; it is transformed into a really physical material thing, namely our head organization. The life and form of our head organization is a physical metamorphosis of a soul-spiritual element of our pre-earthly existence. Look at your head organization. I do not mean now merely the head that falls off when one is beheaded ( ), but the head with its whole inner content, with all the nerves running into it, and the blood circulation insofar as it is cerebral blood circulation. All this is a result of the transformation of a part of man's pre-earthly sojourn. This part of pre-earthly soul life disappears into the head organization. As a result of the fact that our head organization represents a real metamorphosis of what we possess in our pre-earthly life, and because we behold in the human head a true physical replica of our pre-earthly existence, this head is a real mirror for reflecting thoughts. This has come about because the head has formed and enlivened itself as a physical organism out of the experienced thoughts of the pre-earthly life.

... (different lecture)

On the basis of a perception such as I have described to you, man is really in a position to judge how the soul-spiritual in the human being relates to the corporeal-physical. Not until he can objectively survey the physical organization, the etheric body and the soul-spiritual by means of the imaginative as well as the subsequent methods of super-sensible cognition, can he perceive how the two parts conduct themselves in the various stages of life. It is therefore of immense importance to bear in mind that in the super-sensible perception of which I am speaking here man retains the ordinary consciousness he possesses in everyday, waking life alongside all the other perceptual experiences. Already in imaginative consciousness, when he confronts something of his past life—for instance, the manner in which certain traits appeared in connection with the processes of growth when he was still a child of nine or ten, how moral tendencies, etc., arose—he perceives all this because he has before him the unity of the physical and soul nature at age nine or ten. He observes what took place then in the organism. But at the same time, he must retain his everyday consciousness. This means that he must now have this view of the ninth or tenth year of his life which reveals something that otherwise remains entirely unconscious; on the other hand, at his own discretion, he must be able to bring to mind instantaneously the memories that he has in ordinary consciousness, which carry him back in the normal way to his ninth or tenth year. Man must always be able to compare the one with the other, the higher with the ordinary consciousness. In the same way that he usually passes from one thought to another he must pass back and forth between an experience in imaginative consciousness and one in ordinary consciousness.

This characteristic of the higher consciousness referred to here is especially important. Those people who judge anthroposophical research only from the outside frequently believe that what appears as imagination can be dismissed like the hallucinations of some visionary. But you must become aware of the radical distinction that exists between true imagination and a vision. A vision certainly conveys a pictorial content also, but man is completely bound up in his vision. While the vision goes on, his consciousness has transformed itself into it and he cannot go back and forth at will from the vision to his ordinary consciousness. In contrast, a person who experiences imaginative consciousness has not transformed his ordinary consciousness into a vision, he has enriched it with imagination. He has added what he already possesses in ordinary consciousness to what he has attained in imagination. A person with imaginative consciousness therefore firmly rejects the common visionary experience, but he can also discern the visionary's predicament in life. For, whoever has achieved the heights of perception indicated here can observe in detail how a soul is inwardly active, in what way it employs the physical organism so that the body can reflect the thoughts back to it.

This is the difference between a person who has imaginative consciousness and the visionary. The visionary immerses himself more deeply into his body's functions than one does in ordinary life, while in imagination man actually emerges out of the physical organization. But at the same time, the ordinary soul content in the physical organism is consciously retained. If the vital significance of this difference is not recognized, if imagination is not kept under rigorous control by ordinary thinking which is retained side by side with imagination, the latter will always be confused with visionary activity that has no accompanying control, for there a man simply descends further into his physical body, and what appears to him as his vision is perhaps only a passing indisposition of his liver or stomach which was already present in ordinary life, but into which he has now submerged himself."

Yes, the Resurrection body is a great way to illustrate the point of contact, thanks. Regarding the head being the result of the thoughts of the previous life, I must admit this idea is not very clear to me. I encountered it before. In some other passages he says that it results from the entire (as if beheaded) body in the previous life. I guess I will be patient with this question, trying not to force any rational explanation on it, for the time being. Same thing regarding the continual "back and forth" between higher and ordinary consciousness. I don't doubt that he was able to do it, but I don't have any concrete idea, even less experience, of what that really means, apart from what I already mentioned, that the will is present to itself. The consciousness is not dreamy, something in it is able to survey what's going on, with discernment. How this can become a back and forth between states I have not the least idea
Thank you, Ashvin, anyway, for being there and engaging in these discussions with such level of precision and clarity.

[AshvinP]

To put it rather abstractly, I think we are only safe when we recognize that the leeway is always opened through a harmonious interplay of both poles. We can't see only the point of contact in thought (reflected image) or the will (intuitive pushing), because the point is exactly where these two meet. Of course, we aren't speaking of any point in space that we can encompass and survey in the output flow, but rather of the spectrum of our experience, where they feel closely in phase when we concentrate our inner activity. It is when the continuously sinking focal image (which could be the point of attention itself) feels like a continuous testimony to what we are presently doing with our inner activity.

Yes, however the researchers of the neural correlates of consciousness - which is the origin of this part of the discussion - do speak of specific outputs and points in space within the head volume. So we come back to the same question of "traceability".

We can see that in Cleric's metaphor that you quoted. The controller is a metaphor for our mental palette of reflected images, rooted in the cerebral organism. The hand/finger activity is our invisible intuitive pushing. If we lose contact with the former, we fall asleep because there is no output feedback on our intuitive pushing. If we surrender (become absorbed by) the former and lose contact with the latter, we free fall as a pure observer of inexplicable phenomena. I think it becomes even more explicit here:

When we focus on a point within our phenomenal volume, it should feel as if it is placed within the full spectrum of the primary flow – that is, we’re not aiming to drift into fantasy (octants III, IV, VII, VIII) and lose all bearings of the bodily spectrum of the flow. We surely need to resist being sucked into the distracting sensory and somatic IO flows (octants I, II, V, VI), but we nevertheless have to feel the point of contact with their overall spectrum. In a sense, the point of concentration should feel ‘cerebral’, as if it rests within bodily head space.

Blue: yes, that's how I have interpreted the metaphor as well, only highlighting somewhat more that what's necessary for all this fine tuning to happen is ultimately the will. It can be seen more like a point of contact since it's the same will by which I clean the kitchen in the evening rather than the following day (most of the time). This is not the case for the reflected picture, or consciousness, which is engaged in a different way compared to ordinary consciousness. By the way, expecting that something has to happen through the picture itself is a mistake in which I remained stuck for quite some time. This is also part of the reason why I personally think it's unhelpful as an expression. Initially, I was focused on the details of the picture, and thought it was about having a particular way of seeing the picture so that something would finally happen "through it". As we know, this is not the case. There's nothing in the fabric of the picture that is more relevant than something else in it, or that should be engaged in a particular way. There's no hidden code to be found in the picture, so that some magic happens through the picture, or by mediation of the picture used for concentration. Another noticeable point is that many different pictures (or even no picture, as you say) can work. So this is also a fine question of vocabulary, and I agree that Cleric expressed it with great precision and efficacy in the essay. We surely need to protect ourselves from being carried away, as if by a dream, which equals saying that the felt point of contact has to remain within the physical volume of the head, so that we can survey what happens without becoming submerged in it (without losing all will power, as it happens in a dream).
We can say that we agree on the substance here, and I have a preference for avoiding the expressions "through the picture" or "mediated by the picture" for the specific reasons I have explained. It can be called a personal preference.

Thanks, I have a better sense of what you are pointing at now. Sorry for misunderstanding before. I probably should have been clearer on what was meant by "through" the receding image. What you say above is certainly correct.

It is perhaps helpful to distinguish between the inner stance we adopt in concentration, which is as you have characterized it (not expecting the puzzle piece to crack open and provide us with Cosmic insights), and the more objective spiritual process that unfolds. The latter is described by Cleric nicely here, for example:

"I would like to build upon the metaphor in order to remind how all this is to be alleviated. Meditation is really connected with the law of ‘shrinking’. If we go in the woods with a ball gown, we’ll get tangled in every branch and shrub. Similarly, while we have our inner authority spread over all phenomena, we get tangled in everything. The solution is to grow small. When we relax the moles in the periphery, they don’t tangle in our gown as much. This has nothing to do with the 'letting go' through which we become susceptible to hypnotic states. We only temporarily entrust our periphery to higher powers, while we concentrate in a tiny spot in the head that is mole free, like the eye of a hurricane.

If moles keep coming up even then, we simply need to be patient and keep going. This is a process that takes time. It’s not that easy to relax the fabric layers of our gown. Moles grow to titanic dimensions in respect to us yet we now easily pass through their 'intermolecular spaces', just like two galaxies collide, yet no stars ever hit each other. Of course all these references to scale and size shouldn't be taken in rigid spatial sense. We need to extract the living qualities from these concepts.

Then at some point we find that we grasp once again the periphery but now in a different way. It’s more like our whole environment is of thought nature. We have clothed ourselves in the thought-texture of the image of meditation. In normal cognition we need to see the mole and only then it evokes certain thought in us. Instead, now the thought-texture is more of a reflection of the ways our deeper intuitive activity weaves. We can once again sense the distractions but this time as a reflection of our intuitive life. In other words, while in normal cognition we experience in our thought-images, monolithic intuitions that feel fully ours, in the Imaginative state the thought-image expands to become our whole environment. In the thought-texture of that environment now reflect not only out atomic intuitions but our whole intuitive context is felt as highly differentiated and largely independent - our activity is only a contribution in that landscape"


In that sense, and as a general reminder, we should always be vigilant that we are not oscillating to another extreme, for example, from analyzing the image of meditation for its details to regarding the image as completely unimportant. Its main importance comes not in its explicit content (hence the sinking image could be the point of attention), but in the fact that, in its reflection, our intuitive activity experiences full wakefulness and lucidity. It is through that point of contact that we can grow into the intuitive context of our concentrated state with corresponding lucidity.

From my perspective, it is precisely the will that needs to be inverted in this meditative context. When we are cleaning the kitchen, for example, our will must necessarily be oriented to the contents of experience in a certain way, in which we clearly encompass and delineate those contents. Our attention should necessarily be dragged by those contents, for example, if a plate falls and shatters on the floor. If we aim to clean the kitchen proficiently, we should be highly interested in all of these clearly delineated contents and their feedback, micromanaging the flow of kitchen-cleaning as it unfolds. That desire/interest toward the contents of experience is what needs to be inverted in the meditative context, as described above, and then the inversion of our thinking perspective follows from that.

Yes, the Resurrection body is a great way to illustrate the point of contact, thanks. Regarding the head being the result of the thoughts of the previous life, I must admit this idea is not very clear to me. I encountered it before. In some other passages he says that it results from the entire (as if beheaded) body in the previous life. I guess I will be patient with this question, trying not to force any rational explanation on it, for the time being. Same thing regarding the continual "back and forth" between higher and ordinary consciousness. I don't doubt that he was able to do it, but I don't have any concrete idea, even less experience, of what that really means, apart from what I already mentioned, that the will is present to itself. The consciousness is not dreamy, something in it is able to survey what's going on, with discernment. How this can become a back and forth between states I have not the least idea
Thank you, Ashvin, anyway, for being there and engaging in these discussions with such level of precision and clarity.

I think we all have some experience of this traversal between higher and ordinary consciousness when engaging in phenomenology. We try to intuitively feel our inner states and their characteristic dynamics when navigating a chess puzzle, for example, and then condense these feelings into artistic (yet clearly delineated and precise) concepts. What unfolds in higher cognitive states is basically of this same nature, except in a more purified and expanded form. We could say that the traversal of the gradient unfolds more fluidly and immediately, in a certain sense.

Thank you as well, Federica, for continuing with these exchanges on important spiritual topics. I find it highly enjoyable and educational!

[Federica]

Thanks, I have a better sense of what you are pointing at now. Sorry for misunderstanding before. I probably should have been clearer on what was meant by "through" the receding image. What you say above is certainly correct.

It is perhaps helpful to distinguish between the inner stance we adopt in concentration, which is as you have characterized it (not expecting the puzzle piece to crack open and provide us with Cosmic insights), and the more objective spiritual process that unfolds. The latter is described by Cleric nicely here, for example:

"I would like to build upon the metaphor in order to remind how all this is to be alleviated. Meditation is really connected with the law of ‘shrinking’. If we go in the woods with a ball gown, we’ll get tangled in every branch and shrub. Similarly, while we have our inner authority spread over all phenomena, we get tangled in everything. The solution is to grow small. When we relax the moles in the periphery, they don’t tangle in our gown as much. This has nothing to do with the 'letting go' through which we become susceptible to hypnotic states. We only temporarily entrust our periphery to higher powers, while we concentrate in a tiny spot in the head that is mole free, like the eye of a hurricane.

If moles keep coming up even then, we simply need to be patient and keep going. This is a process that takes time. It’s not that easy to relax the fabric layers of our gown. Moles grow to titanic dimensions in respect to us yet we now easily pass through their 'intermolecular spaces', just like two galaxies collide, yet no stars ever hit each other. Of course all these references to scale and size shouldn't be taken in rigid spatial sense. We need to extract the living qualities from these concepts.

Then at some point we find that we grasp once again the periphery but now in a different way. It’s more like our whole environment is of thought nature. We have clothed ourselves in the thought-texture of the image of meditation. In normal cognition we need to see the mole and only then it evokes certain thought in us. Instead, now the thought-texture is more of a reflection of the ways our deeper intuitive activity weaves. We can once again sense the distractions but this time as a reflection of our intuitive life. In other words, while in normal cognition we experience in our thought-images, monolithic intuitions that feel fully ours, in the Imaginative state the thought-image expands to become our whole environment. In the thought-texture of that environment now reflect not only out atomic intuitions but our whole intuitive context is felt as highly differentiated and largely independent - our activity is only a contribution in that landscape"


In that sense, and as a general reminder, we should always be vigilant that we are not oscillating to another extreme, for example, from analyzing the image of meditation for its details to regarding the image as completely unimportant. Its main importance comes not in its explicit content (hence the sinking image could be the point of attention), but in the fact that, in its reflection, our intuitive activity experiences full wakefulness and lucidity. It is through that point of contact that we can grow into the intuitive context of our concentrated state with corresponding lucidity.

From my perspective, it is precisely the will that needs to be inverted in this meditative context. When we are cleaning the kitchen, for example, our will must necessarily be oriented to the contents of experience in a certain way, in which we clearly encompass and delineate those contents. Our attention should necessarily be dragged by those contents, for example, if a plate falls and shatters on the floor. If we aim to clean the kitchen proficiently, we should be highly interested in all of these clearly delineated contents and their feedback, micromanaging the flow of kitchen-cleaning as it unfolds. That desire/interest toward the contents of experience is what needs to be inverted in the meditative context, as described above, and then the inversion of our thinking perspective follows from that.

I understand what you are saying. Once the picture, instead of being contained in us as an ordinary thought, contains us, we have awakened to the living context “through” the picture. I see it can be expressed in these terms. The picture is like a lifebelt for someone who learns to swim, a tool that maintains agency and independence, while allowing us to recognize a new experience. Or like the money paid for a practical course. I can say that I learn through the lifebelt or through the monetary investment, although the quality of the lifebelt or the quality of money is not continuous in nature with the learning experience, like the reflection is not continuous in nature with the imaginative experience.

I understand less how the will is inverted. Given that the will is the invisible intuitive pushing and the thought-image is the output or feedback, the former should always have the same direction, always pursuing the “secret intention of making a more perfect image of the intuitive context”, to borrow an expression from the post you have quoted, no matter if it’s about cleaning the kitchen or meditating. Cleric wrote: “When we think ordinary thoughts we're doing the same, it's only that the thoughts are felt as fragmentary details within the Image and we easily lose the sense for the Gestalt”. In concentration, the interest in the contents of experience needs to shift, but how is this a shift of the will? As we often say, the intuitive orientation and its pushing are always there, and always point toward the future. We ‘only’ need to make our perception of them less fragmented and more holistic, by expanding sensitivity beyond the level of the fragmented output flow. And this looks like a task for thinking, through which the will finds a more cohered way to pursue the same overall direction pursued when cleaning the kitchen. Perhaps we could also say that it’s ultimately abstract and not necessary to conceptually isolate these polarities out of the unity of the thinking will?

[AshvinP]

I understand what you are saying. Once the picture, instead of being contained in us as an ordinary thought, contains us, we have awakened to the living context “through” the picture. I see it can be expressed in these terms. The picture is like a lifebelt for someone who learns to swim, a tool that maintains agency and independence, while allowing us to recognize a new experience. Or like the money paid for a practical course. I can say that I learn through the lifebelt or through the monetary investment, although the quality of the lifebelt or the quality of money is not continuous in nature with the learning experience, like the reflection is not continuous in nature with the imaginative experience.

I understand less how the will is inverted. Given that the will is the invisible intuitive pushing and the thought-image is the output or feedback, the former should always have the same direction, always pursuing the “secret intention of making a more perfect image of the intuitive context”, to borrow an expression from the post you have quoted, no matter if it’s about cleaning the kitchen or meditating. Cleric wrote: “When we think ordinary thoughts we're doing the same, it's only that the thoughts are felt as fragmentary details within the Image and we easily lose the sense for the Gestalt”. In concentration, the interest in the contents of experience needs to shift, but how is this a shift of the will? As we often say, the intuitive orientation and its pushing are always there, and always point toward the future. We ‘only’ need to make our perception of them less fragmented and more holistic, by expanding sensitivity beyond the level of the fragmented output flow. And this looks like a task for thinking, through which the will finds a more cohered way to pursue the same overall direction pursued when cleaning the kitchen. Perhaps we could also say that it’s ultimately abstract and not necessary to conceptually isolate these polarities out of the unity of the thinking will?

Right, although I would add that the continuous nature of the lifebelt reflection with the imaginative experience is realized through the inverted perspective, precisely for the reasons you mentioned in the second paragraph. We begin to realize that our reflected picture had always concealed the secret intention of creating a more perfect image of the intuitive context, but our perspective was too narrow and fragmented to recognize it. Certainly, the outer qualities of the reflected image at the horizon of consciousness expand and transform, yet the inner function (secret intention) of that image remains continuous along the gradient.

You are probably correct that it is more helpful to conceive of it as the unified thinking-will that needs to invert. And, in a more metaphysical sense, we could say nothing needs to invert because our will and thinking are always secretly guided by the intention to expand intuitive orientation within the flow. But practically speaking, we experience the progression as an inversion that allows the secret intention to become conscious. Conversely, the lack of consciousness of this secret intention inevitably undermines its goal of expanding orientation.

In my experience, the thinking-will orientation necessary to navigate the states of most ordinary life activities is very much the kind in which we feel it is natural to extend our inner authority over all contents of phenomenal experience. It is closely tied to what we desire to accomplish within the flow, and 'expanding intuitive orientation' generally takes a backseat to the more myopic goal states. The phenomenologically experienced will, of course, takes its characteristic shape through these underlying desires and interests. The states we are consciously pushing toward give the experienced will its texture and flavor, so to speak.

It is true that, once we experience the perspective inversion, it does not detract from our ability to perform ordinary activities proficiently. If we pause to feel how our operational gestures fit within the tactical and strategic flows of cleaning the kitchen, it will always be a helpful and enriching experience, bringing our ordinary and meditative life more closely into alignment. But the inversion of the thinking-will can only be gradually attained through our meditative efforts (including phenomenological explorations), in which our underlying desires and interests within the flow should shift toward what I metaphorically described as mastering the iterated set of all possible games. As a simple chess example, we could imagine being a calculating machine that dominates our opponents in a tournament. Yet if we went about it in a rather crude and discourteous way, we might find ourselves invited to fewer and fewer tournaments in the future. Thus, navigating the iterated set of future games invites us to shift our desire and interest within the flow of chess toward a more respectful and generous stance, which is a state that didn't seem quite necessary to steer toward from the perspective of winning particular games in the tournament.

[Federica]

Right, although I would add that the continuous nature of the lifebelt reflection with the imaginative experience is realized through the inverted perspective, precisely for the reasons you mentioned in the second paragraph. We begin to realize that our reflected picture had always concealed the secret intention of creating a more perfect image of the intuitive context, but our perspective was too narrow and fragmented to recognize it. Certainly, the outer qualities of the reflected image at the horizon of consciousness expand and transform, yet the inner function (secret intention) of that image remains continuous along the gradient.

Yes, well it shouldn't become a question of semantics, as Kaye would call it, but I used the word "nature" purposefully. There is continuity of function and intention (for the reasons already mentioned) but the nature, or quality, of the experience is discontinuous. I guess we are saying the same things but we don't use the same linguistic palette.

You are probably correct that it is more helpful to conceive of it as the unified thinking-will that needs to invert. And, in a more metaphysical sense, we could say nothing needs to invert because our will and thinking are always secretly guided by the intention to expand intuitive orientation within the flow. But practically speaking, we experience the progression as an inversion that allows the secret intention to become conscious. Conversely, the lack of consciousness of this secret intention inevitably undermines its goal of expanding orientation.

In my experience, the thinking-will orientation necessary to navigate the states of most ordinary life activities is very much the kind in which we feel it is natural to extend our inner authority over all contents of phenomenal experience. It is closely tied to what we desire to accomplish within the flow, and 'expanding intuitive orientation' generally takes a backseat to the more myopic goal states. The phenomenologically experienced will, of course, takes its characteristic shape through these underlying desires and interests. The states we are consciously pushing toward give the experienced will its texture and flavor, so to speak.

It is true that, once we experience the perspective inversion, it does not detract from our ability to perform ordinary activities proficiently. If we pause to feel how our operational gestures fit within the tactical and strategic flows of cleaning the kitchen, it will always be a helpful and enriching experience, bringing our ordinary and meditative life more closely into alignment. But the inversion of the thinking-will can only be gradually attained through our meditative efforts (including phenomenological explorations), in which our underlying desires and interests within the flow should shift toward what I metaphorically described as mastering the iterated set of all possible games. As a simple chess example, we could imagine being a calculating machine that dominates our opponents in a tournament. Yet if we went about it in a rather crude and discourteous way, we might find ourselves invited to fewer and fewer tournaments in the future. Thus, navigating the iterated set of future games invites us to shift our desire and interest within the flow of chess toward a more respectful and generous stance, which is a state that didn't seem quite necessary to steer toward from the perspective of winning particular games in the tournament.

About the bold: yes, but the thinking-will applied to expanding intuitive orientation is equally tied to what we desire to accomplish within the flow. If there were no desire, we couldn't pursue it. This is why I was saying that it's the same will. There is no necessary contradiction between the desire to clean the kitchen (or do other ordinary activities) and the desire to meditate and study spiritual science. The contradiction only arises to the extent that one is dishonest (in the sense recently given) and lets the temptations steer the ordinary flow. I think the alignment between ordinary and meditative life does not require higher cognition. Otherwise it would be an unsolvable conundrum, or an irreversible catch 22 situation. One would never find the thinking-will to engage in meditation and study in the first place. If, at the beginning of the path, one desires to develop intuitive orientation and acts correspondingly, this is already, in and of itself, the beginning of the aim to master the iterated set of all possible games - no perspective inversion required. It's similar to what I described in the other thread as "extending the sense of now", which means that we progressively become less myopic and tend to the perspective of iterated games to infinity - before the inversion happens, and even as a condition to make the inversion possible down the road.

[AshvinP]

About the bold: yes, but the thinking-will applied to expanding intuitive orientation is equally tied to what we desire to accomplish within the flow. If there were no desire, we couldn't pursue it. This is why I was saying that it's the same will. There is no necessary contradiction between the desire to clean the kitchen (or do other ordinary activities) and the desire to meditate and study spiritual science. The contradiction only arises to the extent that one is dishonest (in the sense recently given) and lets the temptations steer the ordinary flow. I think the alignment between ordinary and meditative life does not require higher cognition. Otherwise it would be an unsolvable conundrum, or an irreversible catch 22 situation. One would never find the thinking-will to engage in meditation and study in the first place. If, at the beginning of the path, one desires to develop intuitive orientation and acts correspondingly, this is already, in and of itself, the beginning of the aim to master the iterated set of all possible games - no perspective inversion required. It's similar to what I described in the other thread as "extending the sense of now", which means that we progressively become less myopic and tend to the perspective of iterated games to infinity - before the inversion happens, and even as a condition to make the inversion possible down the road.

I think it helps to clarify what is meant by "perspective inversion", which does not necessarily imply full-blown higher cognition. I tried to describe this in the post on the other thread as well, as a reference. It is basically what results from inner experimentation, whereby ideas and ideals become much more concrete aspects of reality for us, and thus our imaginative subflow feels like an inseparable texture or 'frequency band' of the wider primary flow. It allows us to suspect that there are 'buttons' on our gamepad that go beyond the palette of our familiar sense-derived imagination, and which allow us to 'extend the sense of now'. It also provides a concrete sense of why any of that is worth pursuing, as we feel our imaginative perspective embedded within a deeper and wiser soul-spiritual organization.

The 'contradiction' between our desire-orientation in ordinary activities and in meditation has also been characterized as a bistable condition. If we desire to manipulate our mental images to solve a math problem, we cannot simultaneously feel what we are doing inwardly to manipulate those mental images. When we are focused on calculating, we can't attend to the latter, and when we begin attending to the latter, the calculation ceases. We can imagine how this bistability comes to expression in other activities, like kitchen cleaning, as well. This is not some fundamental contradiction that can never be resolved, but the important point is that we need to develop the inner skill of fluidly morphing between these orientations to bring them into closer alignment and harmony. And I think that begins with clearly recognizing the initial huge gap between them in our default experience of the flow, which is only resolved through consistent inner experimentation and the corresponding perspective shift.

[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.

I have just come across this idea that connects to the heart and nerves physiology question I recently revived. At this point I don't know whether or to what extent it is correct. For future reference:

...
Doppler imaging confirms it in human bodies: blood moves as a longitudinal vortex.

At the center of that vortex is a void, a low-pressure vacuum that can occupy up to one-third of the vessel.

The blood pulls itself forward through suction, not pressure.

The heart and arteries twist spirally to enhance this motion.

The inner walls are rifled like a gun barrel, inducing spin.

The ventricle fibers run in spirals "like the twist of a screw."

The apex of the left ventricle is so thin you can pierce it with a finger. No pressure generator could be built that way.

Because it isn't one. It's a vortex tip, where the spiral reverses on itself.

Inside the spiral, blood organizes itself: red cells orbit the center, platelets ride farther out, plasma hugs the wall.

Each red blood cell spins on its own axis, with small vortices nested inside the larger one.

This is how blood threads through capillaries narrower than itself.

The narrower the conduit, the greater the vorticity. The greater the vorticity, the less the friction.

Nature doesn't push fluid through tight spaces. It spins it through.

Even temperature regulates through spin, with paired vortices rubbing against each other to generate heat.
...

Source
Moore, K.D. (2019). Nature's twist. Water and then spirals of life. Skellig Publishing

Book Summary
Nature’s Twist is an exploration of the world based on spin, and in particular, the vortex. It is perhaps a little-known fact that everything spins, from quantum states to galaxies. Nature likes to generate vortices and form all sorts of spiralling shapes because of a fundamental law of physics that requires all bounded energy to rotate. On top of this, electrodynamics tells us that any rotating object will also self-magnetise, which adds an electrical dimension to the humble vortex. This turns it into a ubiquitous and versatile form that exhibits unique and essential properties necessary for the evolution and expression of life. The occurrence of the vortex at the smallest scales may even be responsible for the emergence of space and time, which form through spinning out of a deeper level of reality. When water is included in the world of spin, another fascinating level of interplay reveals more extraordinary properties. Besides water’s ability to develop superfluidic or suctional properties, or to cleanse and re-energise itself through its spiralling motion, it can also form nano-structures and oscillating coherent regions that provide it with a unique ability to selectively absorb and emit energy, and information. This opens up new possibilities for understanding the latent potential and subtle capabilities of the human organism and for energy medicine in general. The vortex is a ubiquitous, dynamic entity that serves many functions on many scales. Spin is at the basis of all phenomena. Everything can be reduced to this simple flow of energy; a flow that forever twists, bends, and curls.

[Federica]

I think it helps to clarify what is meant by "perspective inversion", which does not necessarily imply full-blown higher cognition. I tried to describe this in the post on the other thread as well, as a reference. It is basically what results from inner experimentation, whereby ideas and ideals become much more concrete aspects of reality for us, and thus our imaginative subflow feels like an inseparable texture or 'frequency band' of the wider primary flow. It allows us to suspect that there are 'buttons' on our gamepad that go beyond the palette of our familiar sense-derived imagination, and which allow us to 'extend the sense of now'. It also provides a concrete sense of why any of that is worth pursuing, as we feel our imaginative perspective embedded within a deeper and wiser soul-spiritual organization.

The 'contradiction' between our desire-orientation in ordinary activities and in meditation has also been characterized as a bistable condition. If we desire to manipulate our mental images to solve a math problem, we cannot simultaneously feel what we are doing inwardly to manipulate those mental images. When we are focused on calculating, we can't attend to the latter, and when we begin attending to the latter, the calculation ceases. We can imagine how this bistability comes to expression in other activities, like kitchen cleaning, as well. This is not some fundamental contradiction that can never be resolved, but the important point is that we need to develop the inner skill of fluidly morphing between these orientations to bring them into closer alignment and harmony. And I think that begins with clearly recognizing the initial huge gap between them in our default experience of the flow, which is only resolved through consistent inner experimentation and the corresponding perspective shift.

Yes, it makes sense. Thank you!