Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 6:21 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 5:11 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 4:19 pm When Cleric writes for ex., "It is an interesting exercise to make this glow as intense as possible yet without resorting to noticeable muscle contraction.", this aligns with the inner experience of weaving intensely in soul movements that would normally result in noticeable speech (larynx movements) but without letting it get so far.

Yes - this is what I've also said. What this aligns less with, however, is the inner experience of refraining from inwardly formulating verbal thoughts, which is what Steiner refers to in the quoted larynx exercise. I think this has less to do with bodily will and more to do with working at the horizon of condensation of the intuitive context.

I think they all work with the horizon of condensation (technically this is the only place we can ever creatively work). It's just the scale of inner activity that varies, although I take Cleric's point that it's not simply a linear axis from 'easy' to 'difficult', or 'surface' to 'deeply intimate', but there are complex overlaps and interrelations. Steiner also gives an example of renouncing outer speech in that lecture:

Now you can say: A dull fellow indeed, going about practising silence in people's company, walking up to them and, instead of talking to them, just looking at them and remaining wrapped in silence. Well, I admit, my dear friends, that socially this would certainly be anything but pleasant; it could, however, actually prove exceedingly fruitful for spiritual advancement, and beneficial results could ensue if, for instance, one attended a party at which people, including oneself, were by no means silent as a rule, and if one now began to practise silence. One says nothing although one knows a great deal and, in giving freely of one's store of knowledge, has formerly always been a great talker. I say that one could do this, but one need not do it outwardly and, although it could be fruitful, it would not be so very helpful when aiming high; the idea is that the entire exercise, as I have described it, is carried out inwardly, that one is fully prepared to speak but has the ability to suppress the impulse inwardly.

If I imagine myself in that situation, assuming I was someone who was inclined to attend and be actively conversing at parties (not at all my inclination), I can sense how much inner strength I would need to pull it off for even a short while. Even without that inclination, it would be difficult, especially considering how the social circumstances would be constantly generating impulses to speak a little bit given the fear of how one looks in the eyes of others, otherwise. This requires a deeper modulation within the intuitive context, in my view, than guiding the condensation flow to condense Tetris pieces that only tingle the muscle fibres without contracting them.

On the other hand, similar to how hand gestures cannot convey the refined meaning of vocal gestures, the physical kernel ignition is more easily condensed according to our intent but does not convey refined meaning for me. It reminds me of an experiment I came across recently:


When we hear the sound of the feedback from her intent to move the arm, it really highlights how we are asleep in our will when conducted through the body - the feedback we receive is literally static noise. On the other hand, when we conduct the will through our imaginative being, the feedback we receive is mental pictures and thoughts imbued with intuitive clarity. We would need to expand our inner activity to the scale of the Saturn sphere to imbue the igneous sensation with that level of intuitive clarity. In that sense, our creative condensation seems quite limited with the physical ignition - we turn it either off or on, and then perhaps intensify the feeling when it's on. When creatively condensing at the level of speech impulses, on the other hand, we can receive feedback that is imbued with much more intuitive insight related to what is steering our existential flow.

"I think they all work with the horizon of condensation (technically this is the only place we can ever creatively work). It's just the scale of inner activity that varies"


Sure, we have one unified horizon of experience. Refraining from verbalized thought is surely on another scale, compared to igniting muscles, and it comes with the different scales that refraining from verbalized thought is more creative than refining a motor skill, as you also illustrate with the TED video. That's also what I expressed above, not very technically indeed.

Now, the new exercise you cite, to do at parties, seems to me like a new entry - a third case, on yet another scale compared to simply firing the speech muscles without talking, because it plays primarily into the feeling spectrum.

So, to summarize: to me, igniting the muscles of the body aligns with its particular case of igniting the speech muscles (both less creative, because operated on the wings of the unconscious motor will). It aligns so so with the party example, and it aligns not so much with refraining from verbalized thought, which is a more 'responsible' task, a more creative one.

Finally, I agree with you that the physical kernel ignition is more easily condensed according to our intent, but does not convey refined meaning. But I would leave a question mark on the hand/bodily gestures and their inability to convey as refined meaning as vocal gestures. Exploring this would lead into a phenomenology of gesture, sound, language. Maybe a topic for future posts.

Federica wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 8:49 pm Sure, we have one unified horizon of experience. Refraining from verbalized thought is surely on another scale, compared to igniting muscles, and it comes with the different scales that refraining from verbalized thought is more creative than refining a motor skill, as you also illustrate with the TED video. That's also what I expressed above, not very technically indeed.

Now, the new exercise you cite, to do at parties, seems to me like a new entry - a third case, on yet another scale compared to simply firing the speech muscles without talking, because it plays primarily into the feeling spectrum.

So, to summarize: to me, igniting the muscles of the body aligns with its particular case of igniting the speech muscles (both less creative, because operated on the wings of the unconscious motor will). It aligns so so with the party example, and it aligns not so much with refraining from verbalized thought, which is a more 'responsible' task, a more creative one.

Perhaps some of the original discrepancy came because you are framing it as igniting the muscles, whereas I was framing it as withholding a portion of inner will-feeling movements that normally express outwardly. In both cases (the 'new exercise' is the paragraph before the ones I originally quoted, so I would consider it all the same exercise that Steiner is speaking of), we are doing this to become more sensitive to the inner movements. The muscle tingling we get from the inner 'igniting' movement is what would become outer physical movement if allowed to carry further through the limbs/skin and exhaust its life in finished perceptual form, and finished verbal forms are what we get when inner speech movement is allowed to carry further through the larynx. By 'checking and preventing' that full outer gesture in either case, we become more sensitive to the inner gestures we are making. As Cleric expressed it:

We can do less strenuous experiments with our face. This is useful, first because our face is very sensitive and we can make very fine observations, second, because we are usually quite unconscious of the way we move our face, and trying to make conscious movements can provide us with unexpected insights into our inner life... unlike the ordinary usage of our will, the focus here is not on moving our body parts but on how we use our willing activity to ‘ignite’ the physical sensation.

In that sense, we withhold the will from carrying further through the muscles and thereby can focus more clearly on the continually replenishing inner igniting gestures. Steiner also elaborates on the withholding speech exercise in the next lecture:

But that sense of being firmly rooted in the spiritual world is experienced when by earnest striving man attains what I have called the “deep silence of the soul.” As regards the force which normally serves him as modified breathing-power, man must learn not to spend this power in the breathing-process for forming words of vocal speech but, as indicated in “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment,” to hold back what wants to pour itself into words. At the same time, however, he must strive inwardly to maintain that activity which otherwise finds its outlet in the spoken word. This is how he must achieve the inner silence.

It's worth mentioning the other exercise Steiner gives in that lecture for the inner activity of thinking, because I think that's closer to what you are speaking of with withholding any inner verbal commentary (normally tied to sensory experience). And I don't think is much different than the ignition exercise, except there is less refined meaning we can experience through the feedback of concentrating our willful intent on bringing our muscles to the threshold of contraction, compared to imaginatively drawing and moving a triangle for ex.

Of course you can draw a triangle on the blackboard. But is that a triangle, in reality? What you have on the blackboard is not a triangle but a vast number of tiny particles of chalk which stick to the board and could actually be counted if one had a sufficiently powerful microscope. That is no triangle! To think that the triangle is there on the blackboard is nonsense. You can have the triangle only in your mind, in the thought you form with the aid of these bits of chalk on the blackboard. But without the use of chalk and blackboard, when simply sitting or standing quietly without even moving a finger, when you have merely the idea, the thought of the triangle fixed in your mind, then you can picture to yourself—but always only in your thoughts—how you begin to draw a line here, then a second, then a third. Then you can live in this inner activity without doing anything externally. You can do more and more exercises of this kind, especially more complicated ones. For instance (it is being drawn on the blackboard): you have here a patch of red chalk and here one of green chalk. I draw it once again, and now you can, for instance, do the following.—What you have pictured before you in these two figures you are to do inwardly; now, as previously you drew the triangle in your mind, quickly imagine this: the red stretches over into the green as far as this, and the green pushes through beneath the red, so that this figure grows out of that, and that out of this, entirely in thought. There you have the red in the centre, the green around it. Now picture the red expanding, the green contracting, and then you get a green circle in the centre and surrounding it the red wheel; then reversed: the red moves inwards, the green expands, and you keep changing from one to the other in rhythmic sequence, an inner circle, an outer wheel: red, green; green, red; red, green; green, red ... You picture this to yourself without it being necessary to do anything outwardly. And you will gradually become aware that to think means doing something inwardly, just as one uses one's hands or arms outwardly. When you use your arm, you are aware of it. So now you must learn to be aware of the forces of thought. When aware of exercising your arms you experience your physical body. When you begin to exercise your thoughts in this way, you experience the Second Man within you, your etheric body, your body of formative forces. As soon as you have reached the point where you need only give yourself a mental push in order to transfer your awareness of arm-and-leg movements to an awareness of your inner forces of thought, you experience this Second Man within you, your etheric body, your body of formative forces. But you experience this Second Man as being woven entirely of thoughts.

That less refined meaning we get from the ignition exercise compared to the triangle exercise is the trade-off for getting a more solid anchor within the etheric flowing 'down' into the nervous-muscle system rather than the etheric flowing 'up' into the life of mental picturing. I would say in both cases we are flowing our inner activity through a narrow band of the etheric spectrum, but in one we flow down and in the other we flow up. With the former, our concentrated inner activity can rest on the bodily support, not to the extent it does with ordinary sensory life, but still to some extent, whereas with the latter, we try to let go of that support and are thus more prone to be "thrown into an inner chaos of thoughts and feelings" while working with the triangle. In that sense, I think Cleric is generally correct that starting with the former can be a very useful bridge to the latter. Getting exhausted by the 'inner storm' has been a huge obstacle for me in meditation, at least.

Federica wrote: Finally, I agree with you that the physical kernel ignition is more easily condensed according to our intent, but does not convey refined meaning. But I would leave a question mark on the hand/bodily gestures and their inability to convey as refined meaning as vocal gestures. Exploring this would lead into a phenomenology of gesture, sound, language. Maybe a topic for future posts.

Fortunately, Cleric already started on this phenomenology for us in Part IV I referenced it because I still had in mind his discussion of the phenomenon. It certainly checks out in my limited imaginative experience and reasoning.

Things become even more intimate when instead of our imagined hands, we explore the condensation of our imagined speech. Just compare how the expression of a certain intuition can be explicated in a much more rich and nuanced way through our speech compared to hand gestures. The modulations of our voice can convey emotional states like fear or excitement, which are more difficult to articulate in sign language. This, of course, is still possible to some extent – for example, trembling gesticulating hands can still be recognized as being in the grips of fear, but the possibilities of our voice are clearly much vaster. Nevertheless, in both cases we have our intuitive inner life that seeks to express itself in symbols – verbal, hand-movements, or otherwise. It is precisely this normally subconscious inner life that we begin to know more intimately through our meditative efforts. This happens because instead of simply allowing that life to flow directly into Tetris pieces in any way it may, we withhold the crystalization process and learn to know our inner being in these secret intuitive and feeling movements that can guide the condensation.

Cleric, these essays are simply brilliant; thank you. People complain that the wells of Anthroposophy are drying up, but if anyone wants to know where to find a living spring, it is on this forum.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 11:02 pm
Perhaps some of the original discrepancy came because you are framing it as igniting the muscles, whereas I was framing it as withholding a portion of inner will-feeling movements that normally express outwardly. In both cases (the 'new exercise' is the paragraph before the ones I originally quoted, so I would consider it all the same exercise that Steiner is speaking of), we are doing this to become more sensitive to the inner movements.

Yes, it’s probably that. It all depends on what level of panoramic view we decide to adopt. At the lowest level of granularity - or from the largest encompassing viewpoint - all we ever do for spiritual development can be said to aim at becoming more sensitive to the inner movements. I still have to read these two lectures - hopefully today - and I have no doubt about the consistency of the exercise within the lines of thought expressed there (as said before, I tend to struggle with short quotes where the context is markedly missing). When I separated the firing of the muscles form the subsequent expansion of activity, it was in the context of the inner space stretching exercise, which, for the sake of the possibly timid and not so spiritually trusting student, accentuates the step by step character of the progression by separating plateau-like stages, as described end of Part 6 and explicated here.

Ashvin wrote:It's worth mentioning the other exercise Steiner gives in that lecture for the inner activity of thinking, because I think that's closer to what you are speaking of with withholding any inner verbal commentary

The absolutely closest to what I am speaking of is in the Steiner original quote, in which he mentions the larynx, and by the way that mention is the only reason why I have spoken about the activity of refraining from inner verbalization in the first place. The new quote about red and green triangles is useful, and it’s about developing pictorial thinking too, but not specifically on verbalization of thoughts in linguistic form and its retention. In any case your image of trade-off between bodily support and meaning density seems to me a good way to express the gradations of intentional activity in relation to the degree of consciousness we can infuse/extract from them.

Ashvin wrote:With the former [ignition exercise], our concentrated inner activity can rest on the bodily support, not to the extent it does with ordinary sensory life, but still to some extent, whereas with the latter [pictorial thinking], we try to let go of that support and are thus more prone to be "thrown into an inner chaos of thoughts and feelings" while working with the triangle. In that sense, I think Cleric is generally correct that starting with the former can be a very useful bridge to the latter. Getting exhausted by the 'inner storm' has been a huge obstacle for me in meditation, at least.

As said above, I entirely agree that Cleric’s choice, in its ideation and layout, is completely worth the ‘risk’. But I think the way the preliminary body ignition steps can work as a bridge is first and foremost as a demonstration of the initially unsuspected depth of inner activity, for those whose soul constitution requires that, in order to have the trust and motivation to engage further. I also believe I noticed an attention to walk the more materialistic oriented reader to at least that sort of mini-awakening (in this respect, it reminded me of the first chapter of Occult Science). However, the exhaustion will be there anyway. I think it's unavoidable and should be embraced. Between step three and four, I would definitely expect exhaustion in any case. That is impossible to bridge. I also experience exhaustion. People often think of it as a relaxing moment, but meditation that exerts thinking activity is taxing. It shows us the embarrassing weakness of the “Second Man” in a continual trial and error. For my part, after starting the morning with some inner work and meditation, I often lie down and rest another 10 or 15 minutes before I can start the day.

Ashvin wrote:Fortunately, Cleric already started on this phenomenology for us in Part IV I referenced it because I still had in mind his discussion of the phenomenon. It certainly checks out in my limited imaginative experience and reasoning.

Well, he did, but I believe the question of gesture in speech remains very open. I think Cleric so far has repeatedly hinted (including in various previous posts) to one half of the question - namely, how we can navigate our flow 'upstream' and 'bypass' symbolic expression, to become directly conscious of the intuitive impulses before they become symbols - and has left the other half for later. This more future-oriented part, that has not yet been explored, is the way back, so to say: how symbolic expression could be transformed, when infused with new consciousness streaming back down into it from the other side, the side of the expanded intuitive context.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 1:17 pm I have finally made it through the final part. Bravo, Cleric! And thank you for such an exquisitely crafted inner exploration chock full of illustrations, metaphors, concrete examples, and very accessible philosophical lines of reasoning. It is evident that you have developed a deeper inner sensitivity to all the common mental obstacles we meet along the way when attempting to explore our intimate soul constitution, and you have addressed these obstacles in very intricate and practical ways.

I will, of course, be revisiting these essays many times in the coming months. I hope any others who come across them will feel similarly inspired to spend a lot of time with them and really commit to the imaginative/meditative effort. I could sense a good deal of hesitation within myself to work with the expanding spacetime spheres exercise, for example, because it seemed like a lot of 'moving parts' when just reading over the details the first time, but these things become much simpler when we work with them inwardly and start to flow our intuitive intents within their archetypal movements. It starts to feel like a quite natural axis of our imaginative activity.

Cleric wrote:Now we can retrace the steps so far.
We can start from the purely bodily experiences, how we have sensations, and how we will our movements.
We can gradually reduce the amplitude of movements and focus on the threshold where our willing intents are perceptible as a tingling glow in the physical kernel, yet without producing noticeable movement. Then we energize in this way our whole bodily space while we feel centered and naturally buoyant within this sphere of sensations.
Then we gradually recognize how in our imagination we can liberate a first-person ‘double’ of our bodily life. The images are reverberations of past bodily experiences but can also be shaped in novel ways. Usually, this imaginative double is fully sucked into the bodily kernel. For many people, the only place where to some extent the decoupling can be noticed more clearly is the inner voice. Here our imaginative double is freed from the bodily larynx (were that not the case we would only be able to think out loud in our physical voice). So just like we can withdraw our will from the larynx and will only imaginative speaking, so we can learn to decouple our will from the whole body and will the imaginative movements of a complete double of our bodily life.

The ignition of the physical kernel, as you guys have already started discussing, is a very interesting first stage and immediately reminded me of ancient yoga techniques as well. It seems, however, that we are not uniting our activity so fully/deeply with the bodily spectrum as we would through the breath, but remaining more on the 'surface' of that spectrum at the etheric boundary between the sensory life and our life of mental picturing, memories, thoughts. Thus it feels like a very natural and helpful way to anchor the gradual transition to body-free imaginative activity, a modern form of preparatory 'yoga' in keeping with our cognitive stage of development.

The energizing of the will but withholding it from physical movements and particularly from the movement of the larynx also reminded me of what Steiner discusses here, which I feel is an extremely powerful exercise (I think we have mentioned it before on the forum) and technically 'easy' (but as we know, the 'easy' is most difficult due to etched soul tendencies) to work with during the daily course of life.


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA084/En ... 20in%20the

You will understand better what I mean when I tell you, for instance, that in ordinary, everyday life one does not think in the true sense of the word. One does think in the field of mathematics if, for instance, one makes a mental picture of a triangle in the way I have described. One does some real thinking particularly when the mind is occupied with unusual things of a kind for which the language has no words. But when completely absorbed in the things which nowadays make up the content of current popular interest, one does not really do any actual thinking, for in this mental process the organs of speech constantly co-vibrate, albeit so quietly that one does not hear it. The mental activity of modern man, who so dislikes thinking about anything that is not to be found in the external world of the senses, is not real thinking. The mind is merely weaving in shadow-pictures of words..

You can test it yourself and you will find this weaving of the soul in the shadow-pictures of words to be a fact. When one can really bring the larynx inwardly into a state of complete rest while still maintaining that inner activity of the soul which normally animates the movements of the larynx, so that the escape from the spoken word remains an entirely inward exercise—if, in other words, one does with the activity of speech what one has previously done with the activity of thinking that is a transformed faculty of memory (where one pushes only as far as the nerve-endings, while now one exercises the activity of speech only as far as the larynx, just to the point where the latter is about to break into speech)—then gradually there will develop what in recent lectures I have called “the deep silence of the human soul,” because checking and preventing speech inwardly means developing the deep silence of the soul.

To get an idea of what this deep silence in the soul means, imagine yourself in a town, not Basle, perhaps, but in London or in a city even noisier still. You are right within this noise and turmoil. Now you leave the town and the noise gradually fades as you get further away. Presently you find yourself in the stillness and solitude of a wood. You say: All is quiet within and without. There comes a point when the stillness reaches the degree ‘nought.’ First the noise, then it grows quieter, then absolute stillness at point ‘nought.’

But now this can go further. And indeed this process of not only experiencing the quietness of a silent outer world and the soul at rest, but of passing into the deep silence, can be the direct result of abstaining from the use of words while maintaining that full inner activity which normally is bent on becoming vocal. One merely refrains from making use of the physical body. (I have described the various meditative exercises in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.”) Then one realises that there is something beyond the point ‘nought’ of stillness. In public lectures I have made use of a commonplace comparison. I said: Supposing someone with a certain amount of capital spends some of it and reduces his means; then continues to spend until finally there is nothing left; he has reached point ‘nought.’ But he goes on spending and runs into debt. Now he has less than nought; and so it goes on. Here the mathematicians have introduced the negative numbers: -6, -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. In a similar way you can also imagine how in the realm of sound the stillness at point ‘nought’ passes over into the negative, into a state that is stiller than stillness, quieter than quietness. You can establish the same conditions in the depths of your soul.

I don’t understand how this exercise should be done. Is RS saying that we should try to not move our larynx while we are thinking inwardly? If this is the case, I started to realize that our larynx is moving, when I’m thinking inwardly. Most of the time it’s quite unconscious, but I notice it when I try to think intentionally.

Max.Leyf wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2024 3:42 pm Cleric, these essays are simply brilliant; thank you. People complain that the wells of Anthroposophy are drying up, but if anyone wants to know where to find a living spring, it is on this forum.

Thank you, Max! It means a lot to me that I'm in the company of all of you, the few people here willing to forge together such new ways of expressing our intuitive flows. This reminds me of something Federica quoted:

RS wrote:Through experiencing the super-sensible together, one human soul is awakened most intensively in the encounter with another human soul. It wakes the soul to higher insight, and this frame of mind creates a situation that causes a real communal being to descend in a group of people gathered for the purpose of mutually communicating and experiencing anthroposophical ideas. Just as the genius of a language lives in that language and spreads its wings over those who speak it, so do those who experience anthroposophical ideas together in the right, idealistic frame of mind live in the shelter of the wings of a higher being.

to which I added:

Steiner's example is very exact, because we're indeed learning a new language (with quite new inner gestures, which do not produce only replicas of sensory sensations) capable of grasping the invisible. The group souls of nations are archangelic beings. Among other things, they also inspire the specific language. In this way souls who live united with that being, live in common thinking space. Until now, these relations with the group soul have been based on blood ties. Today a new kind of group soul is taking shape which is not based on blood ties but on complete freedom. We live under the wings of that group soul when we seek to find the common language through which we transcend the blood ties and senses, and express the reality of higher life. The being in the shelter of whose wings we live, which Steiner was referring to, is, of course, Michael. He presently Inspires the new common language through which we can have sharable experiences in the supersensible. The whole impulse of spiritual science manifests as this Michaelic Intelligence descending onto humanity.

So I hope that by finding such new ways of expressing and understanding each other we add small vibrations to the words of the Michaelic language that is our mission to consciously accommodate and in a sense co-create.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 11:02 pm

But that sense of being firmly rooted in the spiritual world is experienced when by earnest striving man attains what I have called the “deep silence of the soul.” As regards the force which normally serves him as modified breathing-power, man must learn not to spend this power in the breathing-process for forming words of vocal speech but, as indicated in “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment,” to hold back what wants to pour itself into words. At the same time, however, he must strive inwardly to maintain that activity which otherwise finds its outlet in the spoken word. This is how he must achieve the inner silence.

Ashvin, thank you for this quote. Few days ago I was experimenting in my meditations along the lines of what we speak of here (before it became a topic here). I was trying to get a feel for the axis of different ways of gesticulating our intuitive life. At one time I was doing some tests with producing vowels while physically inbreathing and outbreathing*. It's funny that I didn't recognize the significance of the fact that we are using breathing in speech. In a way, I was too preoccupied with the investigation of the kinds of gestures, and as such breathing was flattened on the same plane - it was just a gesture. However, when I read the quote above, it struck me how I hadn't paid attention that through breathing we are connecting a different rhythmic scale into the gesticulation and this makes it somewhat distinct compared to purely sign language (that is, it's not only that the larynx is more agile than the hands - it's also that a higher order rhythm passes through it).

BTW I was wondering whether people born deaf, who actually think in sign language, find it easier to innerly 'shut up' Is it easier to stop moving the etheric hands than the etheric larynx, and introduce the soul silence?


* If anyone's interested, more specifically, I was producing an unbroken tone while the breathing cycles naturally alternate. I found it quite difficult not to interrupt the inner sound when my breathing switches between the inbreath and outbreath or vice versa. The way I managed to do it was by smoothly slowing down on top or bottom, to a stop and very gently continuing in the other direction. It's interesting that with our physical larynx it is not easy to produce a vowel through inbreath, and even if we can, it sounds differently, closer to a form of gasping. Yet in our inner voice we can always produce a forward vowel irrelevant of the phase of our physical breath (even when holding our breath). Obviously, this is just the fact that the etheric body is independent of the physical. I don't think there's any special value in this exercise but I decided to share it as curious, nonetheless.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2024 5:36 pm I don’t understand how this exercise should be done. Is RS saying that we should try to not move our larynx while we are thinking inwardly? If this is the case, I started to realize that our larynx is moving, when I’m thinking inwardly. Most of the time it’s quite unconscious, but I notice it when I try to think intentionally.

Yeah, the larynx generally co-vibrates with our inner voice when the latter is tied to sensory-memory experience, as it almost always is. As Cleric indicated, initially our mental pictures (including verbal thoughts) wiggle out of the body as ghostly replicas of those bodily experiences, including speaking and hearing speech. As he mentioned in the last post, we can sense how our thinking-speech (outer and inner) is tightly linked to our breathing rhythm as well. Gradually, through our inner resistance/concentration efforts, we can learn to weave within intuitive meaning without such imitative reliance on bodily support. The first step is to inwardly notice the dependence, which you clearly have through active and intentional thinking (which itself is a kind of resistance of the usual passive curvatures we flow through while thinking on autopilot). Then, through sustained efforts, we become more sensitive to the implicit meaningful gestures that we are always weaving beneath the surface of our mental pictures. These relate most proximately to the soul curvatures, the elastic feeling tensions, through which we orient, understand, and interact with our environment. 

Such exercises are a means of cultivating intuitive independence through resisting the ordinary soul curvatures that carry the inner movements through the breath-larynx into inner/outer speech. It's not that we try to direct attention to the larynx and command it to stop moving, but rather we actively withdraw attention from bodily experience and center it within our intuitive movements through our well-rounded inner efforts (cognitive and moral). I briefly discussed this in one of the prior essays as well.

A key strategy in this respect is to resist bringing subconscious impulses to outer expression. It is that externalization process that crystallizes their fluid elemental energies into fixed and dead forms and, at that point, they are impossible to work with and transform until we are given another opportunity. Each externalization and refusal to take responsibility makes it more and more difficult to begin the necessary work, i.e. what we commonly refer to as ‘procrastination’. Speech resides at the threshold of the superconscious and the subconscious, between intuitive meaning and outer perceptions. It partakes simultaneously in our life of thinking, feeling, and will whenever it is actively attended to. For example, when we watch a sporting event, a political debate, or something similar, and some well-worn and emotion-based thought pops into our mind that we would normally blurt out, we can try to resist verbalizing it outwardly.

By actively resisting certain impulsive patterns of speech that overtake us when we remain passive, we become more sensitive to the subconscious patterns that are conditioning the experiential flow. This naturally makes us more vigilant and attentive as we discern impulses gradually ‘bubbling up’ from the depths that we can intercept and redirect. We gradually repurpose the elemental energies of these patterns into the archetypal forces that originally birthed them. Then we are no longer at the mercy of our habitual thoughts and emotions but have brought them within the sphere of our conscious activity. This can also be done when we have flashes of insight, for example, an insight about archetypal patterns of human history - we can resist the impulse to immediately verbalize the insight to ourselves or others and rather let it germinate as a seed within our intuitive consciousness until its fruits ripen.

Cleric recently gave a much more refined exercise to work with here. 

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2024 4:32 pm As said above, I entirely agree that Cleric’s choice, in its ideation and layout, is completely worth the ‘risk’. But I think the way the preliminary body ignition steps can work as a bridge is first and foremost as a demonstration of the initially unsuspected depth of inner activity, for those whose soul constitution requires that, in order to have the trust and motivation to engage further. I also believe I noticed an attention to walk the more materialistic oriented reader to at least that sort of mini-awakening (in this respect, it reminded me of the first chapter of Occult Science). However, the exhaustion will be there anyway. I think it's unavoidable and should be embraced. Between step three and four, I would definitely expect exhaustion in any case. That is impossible to bridge. I also experience exhaustion. People often think of it as a relaxing moment, but meditation that exerts thinking activity is taxing. It shows us the embarrassing weakness of the “Second Man” in a continual trial and error. For my part, after starting the morning with some inner work and meditation, I often lie down and rest another 10 or 15 minutes before I can start the day.

Yeah, I agree it's a key demonstration of unsuspected degrees of freedom when interacting with the phenomenal spectrum.

Certainly, the inner obstacles serve a critical purpose in strengthening our inner activity, and we shouldn't shy away from that. On the other hand, we will meet plenty of such obstacles no matter what we do, so it always helps to find ways of mitigating that at the initial stages. Once we start sensing some initial results from our efforts, then we are at least more motivated to meet the inner obstacles that will surely come.

One thing I have noticed on Discord recently is people (I assume mostly young people) complaining of things like aphantasia or ADHD/OCD. They feel it is simply impossible to concentrate on mental images. Perhaps the physical ignition could be really helpful for such people, provided they are given the full context so they discern how it is only a bridge to purely imaginative exercises. On the other hand, such people are usually the ones who won't put in the concentrated effort to discern the broader context of these exercises, but are likely to stick with whatever immediately works. Perhaps they just need time to grow out of such inner conditions and should focus more on subsidiary moral exercises in the meantime.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Oct 15, 2024 4:48 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2024 4:32 pm As said above, I entirely agree that Cleric’s choice, in its ideation and layout, is completely worth the ‘risk’. But I think the way the preliminary body ignition steps can work as a bridge is first and foremost as a demonstration of the initially unsuspected depth of inner activity, for those whose soul constitution requires that, in order to have the trust and motivation to engage further. I also believe I noticed an attention to walk the more materialistic oriented reader to at least that sort of mini-awakening (in this respect, it reminded me of the first chapter of Occult Science). However, the exhaustion will be there anyway. I think it's unavoidable and should be embraced. Between step three and four, I would definitely expect exhaustion in any case. That is impossible to bridge. I also experience exhaustion. People often think of it as a relaxing moment, but meditation that exerts thinking activity is taxing. It shows us the embarrassing weakness of the “Second Man” in a continual trial and error. For my part, after starting the morning with some inner work and meditation, I often lie down and rest another 10 or 15 minutes before I can start the day.

Yeah, I agree it's a key demonstration of unsuspected degrees of freedom when interacting with the phenomenal spectrum.

Certainly, the inner obstacles serve a critical purpose in strengthening our inner activity, and we shouldn't shy away from that. On the other hand, we will meet plenty of such obstacles no matter what we do, so it always helps to find ways of mitigating that at the initial stages. Once we start sensing some initial results from our efforts, then we are at least more motivated to meet the inner obstacles that will surely come.

One thing I have noticed on Discord recently is people (I assume mostly young people) complaining of things like aphantasia or ADHD/OCD. They feel it is simply impossible to concentrate on mental images. Perhaps the physical ignition could be really helpful for such people, provided they are given the full context so they discern how it is only a bridge to purely imaginative exercises. On the other hand, such people are usually the ones who won't put in the concentrated effort to discern the broader context of these exercises, but are likely to stick with whatever immediately works. Perhaps they just need time to grow out of such inner conditions and should focus more on subsidiary moral exercises in the meantime.

Yes, it's also my impression that those hindrances are growing, in parallel with a more and more medicalized life and ultra-processed nutrition, and that people are weakening their thinking activity even more, now that ChatGPT can be used to relieve the cognitive strain of ideating a research project, organizing ideas to write an article or essay, rephrasing texts, finding suitable metaphors, etcetera. It doesn't look very promising, but trying to remain positive, I believe the most useful thing for many of those who find it impossible to concentrate would be to study mathematics, topology, geometry and work with visualizations, moving ones, similar to the red and green triangles in the recent Steiner quote, but also mechanical visualizations, to build some agility in thinking without sensory support. What do you call subsidiary moral exercises?