Federica wrote: ↑Sat Aug 30, 2025 1:20 pm
As I tried to say above, neither of the two is what I mean. The contraction of the ventricle
is pumping, I see these as synonyms in this context. As you said, if the ventricle contracts, it ejects, that is it pumps, and there is no doubt it does that. I also don't have any reason or foundation to speculate that the contractions are not muscular contractions. But, as I asked before, why does the ventricle contract? The answer to this question could bring more clarity to the causes of circulatory dynamics. Are there any holistic (in the way you have explained) relations that not only can be conceived holistically, but also could be further traced into physical causal relations, to add more clarity to this process (in the sense intended in the homeopathic remedy example)? Since our scientific understanding of the physical world is not static - and since I don't know how the spiritual-natural science convergence will take shape going forward - doesn't it mean that we can't exclude that, in future understanding, it may become clear how the physical blood stands in causal relation with the physical heart? Also, I don't see why I should pre-constrain those possible new reasons for the blood leaving the ventricle, by expecting them to be minor. And, I would argue, even that they should be "additional" seems constraining. Although today, there is no doubt whatsoever that they could only be additional, I am not sure it is appropriate to constrain future scientific understanding of the physical within the paradigm of the current, as in "in future understanding of the material convolution, it will forever be given that the contraction of the heart is the primal cause of blood movement".
OK, this makes it clearer. I’ll mostly repeat what I said previously, but maybe recasting it in a new way can help.
At the beginning of the video, Cowan lists the three points that Steiner has said are major obstacles to the proper evolution of humanity. One is working for money, second, thinking that sensory and motor nerves are different, third, the heart-is-a-pump issue. Let’s look at the second, since I think it is directly related to the third.
Why would Steiner say such a thing? Yes, broadly speaking, they are both neural cells, but it is clear that they serve very different functions. One propagates impulses from the CNS toward the periphery, where muscle cells are activated, and the other takes the form of sensory cells at the periphery that send impulses toward the CNS. Is Steiner suggesting that we close our eyes to these obvious and quite diametrical differences (which were undoubtedly completely recognized in his time)?
Here’s how I see it. Once again, we can only understand these things if we seek the perspective from which he speaks. In the widest sense, this is our familiar Tetris or video feedback metaphor (only on the condition that we strive to experience it from within its first-person reality). We push with our fiery will towards the unknown, while at the same time the consequences of this pushing become the phenomenal contents of our existence – let’s call it collectively: light. These are the great poles, which we can know in the clearest way when we experience our thinking flow. We also know that the will has its reflection in the warmth of the blood, while the light-pole (the receding imagery) is more connected with the nerves.
Modern man, as he emerges from the crude materialism and conceives of himself as soul (or consciousness) that
interfaces with the physical body, is strongly predisposed to conceive that connection in the following way. The “I” knows from physical science that motion of the body is activated from the CNS, through the motor neurons, to the muscles. If we try to translate this knowledge to our deeper experience, the soul basically says, “I interface with the physical body through the neurons. I pour my essence into the motor neurons, and as a consequence, the muscles are actuated.” This way of picturing things is nothing more than a linear translation of our sensory experiences, where we operate tools and machinery. To operate a crane, for example, we need to push and pull the levers. When this is linearly transposed to our deeper life, we imagine that to operate the body we need to somehow, from within our soul life, push and pull the levers of the nervous system. This, however, is Maya. Anything that we imagine we can perceive and actuate is
already part of the receding light-flow. By imagining that our imaginative perceptions are the actual ‘buttons’ and ‘levers’ of the physical body, the will-pole remains completely in the blind spot.
I believe that this is the danger Steiner was trying to warn about. He practically says, “By imagining that movement originates from the motor neurons, you are turning things upside-down. Instead, your
inner experience of both the sensory and the motor neurons is already part of the receding light-flow. The true cause of motion can only be understood by the pushing with will toward the unknown.” Or, as we have given that metaphor many times, the danger consists in becoming through time with our back turned toward the future.
Now, what happens when we try to understand the unfolding of the physical processes? Let’s try to illustrate it:
The thick arrows represent our fundamental inner experience. The red is the willful becoming, the blue is the condensing phenomenal feedback. At this level, we can very confidently say that our willful push of becoming is the
cause of at least some aspects of whatever condenses in the light-pole. Our sensory experience of both the outer world and our inner bodily life is part of this receding condensate. Now we may reason, “The image of our bodily life is the receding shadow of our true spiritual experience. For this reason, we may expect that we should find reflected there the facts that we have from direct experience, namely, that our willful striving is the
cause of all manifestation. Thus, I should be able to trace how the images of the neurons exist in some causal relation (think domino train) with the images of my willing life, and the shadow of that life I’m seeking in the image of the blood. Thus, I have
blood (life of will) →
neurons → muscles.”
Notice that from within our polar spiritual experience, this chain is factual. In that case, we do not try to
see the cause; we must
be the cause. Difficulties arise when we try to see this chain fully reflected in the light pole. In other words, it’s like saying, “I know that when speaking of the inner experience, the fiery will causes the avalanche of events that lead to my hand moving. But I also want to see these facts reflected in the receding sensory spectrum. The real causal flow should have its image in the shadow, shouldn’t it?”
I believe that this pinpoints where we are presently in this discussion. The question is, “Shouldn’t we be able to somehow find the shadow of the fiery soul life within the image of the physical body and trace how these, as of now unknown, perceptions activate the neurons, which in turn activate muscles?” I think that this shows how the second and the third points are related. Since the heart is a muscle, actuated by neurons, we reach precisely your question:
“But, as I asked before, why does the ventricle contract?” Well, it contracts because the muscle cells are activated by the neurons emerging from the cardiac plexus. This is the easy part to follow. From thence, the question is as complex as asking why the neurons in the brain fire as they do. But in our case, we’re looking for a specific link. We’re looking for some, as of yet unrecognized, way in which certain physical dynamics of the blood somehow influence the firing of the neurons.
It is at this point that our expectations may mislead us. For example, we may expect that the activity of the blood, if we find that elusive element, will be traceable like domino trains that lead the neurons to fire. In the way I see it, however, this is a misleading direction.
I already illustrated previously how this willing life of the soul narrows down the potential, tips the neurons that are on the edge of balance, and the process is amplified through the constrained neural pathways and muscle actions. As said, the soul doesn’t affect only the neurons but the whole volume. The soul doesn’t live in ideas about what neuron to actuate, but in will and images of how the movie of existence is intended to unfold. So effectively, it is true that something also changes in the physical blood (or more generally, in the whole warmth body). Why can’t we follow domino trains from these changes to the firing of neurons, then? Is it because certain not-yet-discovered effects of physics are utilized? Or the effects are already there, in plain sight, but it’s not that easy to trace them? As explained previously, I’m in favor of the second variant. Here’s an example.
We may ask: What is the cause of a tornado? If we begin running the physical frames in reverse, we may see that the atmospheric particles collide and flow in a particular way just before the swirl. The further back we trace, however, the greater the volume that has somehow been in touch with the chain of events that finally swirl into the vortex. Thus, instead of encountering a single domino train that leads to a well-defined domino piece that is the cause of the tornado, we’re basically led to the whole Earthly atmosphere and all processes that are in touch with it. As such, it is not that there are some special unknown forces that cause the tornado. Everything is there in plain sight. It is only that, to our intellect’s dismay, we’ve been led not to a single, nicely identifiable domino piece that we can dub ‘the cause’ but practically to ‘everything’. Everything in the Earthly environment has had some causal role.
Now imagine that we have some supercomputer and the technology to gently tweak particles in the whole atmosphere. We decide that we want a tornado at place X after three months. Then we begin to tweak the particles very slightly everywhere on Earth. These tweaks are so small that they are indistinguishable from the Brownian motion that the particles perform anyway. From an outside perspective it is practically impossible to recognize that there’s something intentional going on. Yet, as the time closes in, all this careful tweaking yields fruit, the appropriate weather patterns emerge, and a tornado is born.
So, if we are looking for a physical image of the soul’s activity within the body, I think that this metaphor gives us the proper direction. The activity of the soul is so subtle and
non-local that it is below the ‘noise floor’. It is indistinguishable from the ordinary Brownian motion. This means that on the physical plane, the soul cannot directly impart momentum to the blood or anything else. This is confirmed by the fact that if our motor nerves are severed, the will alone cannot move the hand – at least not at our stage of evolution, at this density of existence. However, for those physical elements that are on the edge of chaos, which are balancing on a knife’s edge, so to speak, the tiniest global perturbations can make the difference between tipping on one side or the other, which is then amplified by the constrained biological machinery.
We should be careful, though, not to fall into the same danger once again. If we imagine that our soul actuates the particles, we’re basically at the same stage as imagining that we actuate the neurons. It is not the soul pushes the buttons of the particles, but it wills the becoming of the World state in a direction that is compatible with its intents. Thus, if it wills toward a tornado, or hand movement, it is as if the intent filters the compatible states of becoming, as if through inverse kinematics.
