Ashvin, thanks for bringing this to attention! It seems a very valuable work, I'll have to work through it. I see that it is freely available https://philarchive.org/rec/HUEEID (the Download button in the upper right).
Federica wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 7:04 pm The book you quote looks very interesting, thanks! This is very well said:
"The phenomena can be looked at only from the outside, but the forces causing them can be experienced internally, namely by identifying oneself with them, by ‘recreating’ the phenomena internally, so to speak. In every explanation of nature, therefore, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena as comprehensible as if one had created them oneself."
With the medicine lectures in mind, I would even go further: in every phenomenon of nature, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena comprehensible because one creates it polarically within oneself. The "as if" is indeed an actuality.
"Finally, concepts such as ‘life’, ‘development’, ‘type’, ‘chance’, ‘meaning’, ‘consciousness’, etc. are also deposited with inner experiences, but they are not so easily uncovered by simple spatial volitional movements. We will see later that such concepts are nevertheless based on inner experiences, but on experiences in thinking."
Here too I would perhaps go further: such concepts are based on inner experiences in thinking and, in a sense, these inner experiences (organic thinking) are also spatial volitional (but unconscious) movements, insofar as they are the fallout, or condensation, of formative processes whose manifestation require our human physicality to play out in space.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:19 pmFederica wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 7:04 pm The book you quote looks very interesting, thanks! This is very well said:
"The phenomena can be looked at only from the outside, but the forces causing them can be experienced internally, namely by identifying oneself with them, by ‘recreating’ the phenomena internally, so to speak. In every explanation of nature, therefore, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena as comprehensible as if one had created them oneself."
With the medicine lectures in mind, I would even go further: in every phenomenon of nature, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena comprehensible because one creates it polarically within oneself. The "as if" is indeed an actuality.
Right, but I suppose it is prudent to also qualify that human cognitive activity is more like an aliased perception of the symphonic activity of Cosmic Minds, for example, when contemplating the force relations of billiard balls, which we then weave together into 'laws of nature' that only capture the flattened quantitate dynamics of those relations. Our activity is not itself creating these force relations, but it certainly participates in those forces (is constrained and shaped by them) and mediates the way in which they are re-presented to lucid consciousness.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:19 pm"Finally, concepts such as ‘life’, ‘development’, ‘type’, ‘chance’, ‘meaning’, ‘consciousness’, etc. are also deposited with inner experiences, but they are not so easily uncovered by simple spatial volitional movements. We will see later that such concepts are nevertheless based on inner experiences, but on experiences in thinking."
Here too I would perhaps go further: such concepts are based on inner experiences in thinking and, in a sense, these inner experiences (organic thinking) are also spatial volitional (but unconscious) movements, insofar as they are the fallout, or condensation, of formative processes whose manifestation require our human physicality to play out in space.
I think Hueck is here drawing the distinction between concepts that are embodied as imaginative replicas of physical-sensory experience, such as 'forces', 'energies', etc., and those that are rooted in 'pure thinking' experiences. As we know, this is a critical distinction to make for higher cognitive development as we explore the lawful organic relations of supersensible processes, in contrast to the mechanical relations of sensory processes. The supersensible concepts are only revealed when we are able to observe the dynamics of the thinking process itself, rather than only the transformations of its finished products in our imaginative replicas.
Federica wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 3:42 pmAshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:19 pmFederica wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 7:04 pm The book you quote looks very interesting, thanks! This is very well said:
"The phenomena can be looked at only from the outside, but the forces causing them can be experienced internally, namely by identifying oneself with them, by ‘recreating’ the phenomena internally, so to speak. In every explanation of nature, therefore, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena as comprehensible as if one had created them oneself."
With the medicine lectures in mind, I would even go further: in every phenomenon of nature, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena comprehensible because one creates it polarically within oneself. The "as if" is indeed an actuality.
Right, but I suppose it is prudent to also qualify that human cognitive activity is more like an aliased perception of the symphonic activity of Cosmic Minds, for example, when contemplating the force relations of billiard balls, which we then weave together into 'laws of nature' that only capture the flattened quantitate dynamics of those relations. Our activity is not itself creating these force relations, but it certainly participates in those forces (is constrained and shaped by them) and mediates the way in which they are re-presented to lucid consciousness.
Yes, human cognitive activity is like an aliased perception of cosmic activity, but there is no reason to restrict understanding to cognitive activity. In our ordinary cognition we do capture the mere quantitative (and qualitative too) sensory dynamics of the billiard ball experience, but we do not only think in our head. Our entire organism 'thinks', we could say. Or, put another way, our brain-thinking is a kind of respiration, just as our lungs and liver functions are, for example. So our organism as a whole requires attention, in this reciprocal interplay of what happens in natural phenomena versus what happens in us. In this sense I said that, for the general sake of approaching comprehension of Nature from within, it is worth extending Hueck's insight beyond the limits of cognition-proper, to recognize that it is a literal, a real correspondence of forces that makes us up, and also makes up natural phenomena, in overall reciprocal fashion.
This being said, it was perhaps not relevant for Hueck to go there, at that point of his exposition, I have no idea. Mine was not a critique. It was only a seized opportunity to point to a relevant fact in the more general perspective of facilitating a correct scientific understanding of natural phenomena.
Yes, I think he was making such a distinction among concepts. Here as well, I was not criticizing but only expanding the observation. The more abstract conceptions we connect with, that are not direct replicas of physical experience, but are based on larger-spectrum ideas - are also indirectly traceable to some form of physical experience, insofar as they become condensed in thoughts in ordinary cognition. The classic example of this is the concept of Spirit - traceable to respiration, including etymologically, as Barfield noted. Now, the idea of, say, socialism, is not easily traceable to any particular or isolated physical experience, but I simply wanted to point to the completeness of correspondences. That in some even remote way, the full spectrum of our cognitive life has some form of interrelation with our spatial (and therefore volitional) life in our physicality as well. I do realize this was probably not relevant for Hueck, at that point of the expositon.
AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 5:12 pmFederica wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 3:42 pmAshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 2:19 pm
Right, but I suppose it is prudent to also qualify that human cognitive activity is more like an aliased perception of the symphonic activity of Cosmic Minds, for example, when contemplating the force relations of billiard balls, which we then weave together into 'laws of nature' that only capture the flattened quantitate dynamics of those relations. Our activity is not itself creating these force relations, but it certainly participates in those forces (is constrained and shaped by them) and mediates the way in which they are re-presented to lucid consciousness.
Yes, human cognitive activity is like an aliased perception of cosmic activity, but there is no reason to restrict understanding to cognitive activity. In our ordinary cognition we do capture the mere quantitative (and qualitative too) sensory dynamics of the billiard ball experience, but we do not only think in our head. Our entire organism 'thinks', we could say. Or, put another way, our brain-thinking is a kind of respiration, just as our lungs and liver functions are, for example. So our organism as a whole requires attention, in this reciprocal interplay of what happens in natural phenomena versus what happens in us. In this sense I said that, for the general sake of approaching comprehension of Nature from within, it is worth extending Hueck's insight beyond the limits of cognition-proper, to recognize that it is a literal, a real correspondence of forces that makes us up, and also makes up natural phenomena, in overall reciprocal fashion.
This being said, it was perhaps not relevant for Hueck to go there, at that point of his exposition, I have no idea. Mine was not a critique. It was only a seized opportunity to point to a relevant fact in the more general perspective of facilitating a correct scientific understanding of natural phenomena.
Well, there is every reason to restrict understanding to cognitive activity and experience. We can surely weave together mental pictures about how our middle-man (chest-rhythmic) and lower-man (limbs-metabolic) are also thinking-experiencing, but this by itself doesn't translate into understanding the nature of these biophysical processes from within. It remains an abstract reflection, like the 'laws of nature', until we expand our cognitive activity into those deeper 'spacetime' scales. Only through the portal of that expanded cognitive activity do we gain true understanding of what animates such processes. I think it's important for this to remain crystal clear in our phenomenological approach
AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 5:12 pmYes, I think he was making such a distinction among concepts. Here as well, I was not criticizing but only expanding the observation. The more abstract conceptions we connect with, that are not direct replicas of physical experience, but are based on larger-spectrum ideas - are also indirectly traceable to some form of physical experience, insofar as they become condensed in thoughts in ordinary cognition. The classic example of this is the concept of Spirit - traceable to respiration, including etymologically, as Barfield noted. Now, the idea of, say, socialism, is not easily traceable to any particular or isolated physical experience, but I simply wanted to point to the completeness of correspondences. That in some even remote way, the full spectrum of our cognitive life has some form of interrelation with our spatial (and therefore volitional) life in our physicality as well. I do realize this was probably not relevant for Hueck, at that point of the expositon.
There is perhaps a tension here in the way we are each understanding this point. I may actually reverse your example of spirit and socialism, saying the content of the latter is more easily traceable to a constellation of various physical and psychic experiences. On the other hand, we won't gain an understanding of the concept of Spirit if we only trace it to the physical process of inspiration. Rather, we must experience ourselves being active with our inner gestures, not focused on any content of physical experience, to attain an intimate understanding of the spirit concept. Another way to think about it is to ask what sort of concepts would survive the threshold of death, when we cast off the physical-sensory system? The concept of our spiritual gestures certainly survives, whereas the concept of socialism (like the concept of mechanical forces) eventually loses its meaning and relevance for our after-death existence.
Federica wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 5:26 pm Right - here again: I absolutely agree that we can't understand Spirit by focusing on any content of physical experience, obviously. My point was not in opposition with that, though. For the rest, I would have doubts that concepts as experienced while alive survive the threshold of death. And that the idea-being of socialism, capitalism, or other comparable large spectrum ideas lose meaning as mechanical foces. But that would lead us far away from the theme at hand.
Brentano writes that one must “differentiate between our activity of perceiving and its object, i.e., between perceiving and what is perceived” (“and these two differ from each other as certainly as my present memory differs from the past event I am remembering; or, to make an even more drastic comparison: they differ as much as my hatred of an enemy differs from the object of this hatred”), and Brentano adds that one sees this error cropping up here and there...
Actually, this “failure to recognize the most obvious differences” is no rare occurrence. It is based on the fact that our power of mental picturing can unfold the necessary attentiveness only for sense impressions, whereas the actual soul activity that is also occurring is present to consciousness as little as what is experienced in a state of sleep. We are dealing here with two streams of experience; one of these is apprehended in a waking state; the other—the soul stream—is grasped simultaneously, but only with an attentiveness as weak as the mental perception we have in sleep, i.e., it is hardly grasped at all. We must by no means ignore the fact that during our ordinary waking state, the soul disposition of sleep does not simply cease, but continues to exist alongside our waking experience, and that the actual soul element enters the realm of perception only when the human being awakens not only to the sense world—as this occurs in ordinary consciousness—but awakens also to a soul existence, as is the case in seeing consciousness. It hardly matters now whether this soul element is denied—in a crudely materialistic sense—by the condition of sleep (to the soul element) that accompanies our waking state, or whether, because unseen, the soul element is confused with the physical, as in James' case; the results are nearly the same: both lead to fatal nearsightedness. But it is not surprising that the soul element so often remains unperceivable, if even a philosopher like William James is unable to differentiate it correctly from the physical.6
With people as little able as William James to distinguish between the actual soul element and the content of what the soul experiences through the senses, it is difficult to discuss that region of our soul's being in which the development of spiritual organs is to be observed. For, this development occurs precisely where his attention is unable to direct itself. This development leads from an intellectual knowing to a knowing that sees.
Those who study the soul-spiritual1 life of mankind cannot make use of many of the concepts which are commonplace in every-day life and in our current way of thinking. One such idea which cannot be used is that of evolution or development – the idea that one thing, or better said one condition, arises from another. Now I don’t want to be misunderstood, so I should make it quite clear that I do not mean the concept of evolution is useless. Yesterday, for example, we made extensive use of it, when we needed the idea of evolution to speak about how soul-bodily life proceeds between birth and death. But we need quite different concepts if we want to talk about what soul-spiritual life really is.
...
As another objection, someone might say: “Yes, but in the end, what concerns me in all this is what happens here below! If we just use the concept of time seriously in relation to human development, or we gaze out from life into the sphere of eternity, then one can get by quite well, thank you very much”. You could say this if you remained in maya, and if you formed concepts from what is all mixed up; and yes, you can survive, you can of course continue to live albeit asleep by remaining only in the sphere of eternity.
But here my first point is this. If you form concepts like these, which are sharp and which can stand up to modern scholarship, then you can just about live with them, but really only just live. What you cannot do with concepts like these is die. Nobody can die with concepts like these. And as soon as one touches upon this mystery, the full import of spiritual scientific knowledge begins to dawn on one, because concepts which are formed without initiation knowledge lead after death into an unlawful ahrimanic region. And if you spurn forming concepts like those in initiation wisdom, then after death you will not arrive in the region of humanity to which you are really predestined.
In former times higher spiritual beings taught those people with an atavistic clairvoyant predisposition the concepts of initiation in supersensible ways. In those days, and essentially up until the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, there was a kind of supersensible instruction available to people, which made them not only fit for life, but also fit for death. However, since that time the human being has had to prepare his soul, through his own effort here on earth, with concepts so that he can cross the threshold of death in the right way.