Saving the materialists

[Federica]

I think you are mostly comparing apples to oranges here. We agreed to stick with discussing the phenomenological experience at the intellectual scale, where we work with imaginative replicas of bodily experiences. The whole question is in what ways we can leverage the verbal or pictorial replicas to scale the contextual hierarchy of meaning. But now you are speaking of the Imaginative scale of spiritual activity (the more holistic 'pictorial scenes') and comparing that to the intellectual scale of sequential gestures (words, pictures, physical, etc.).

Not at all, Ashvin. I have used the word “imaginative” in the same sense Cleric uses it in the quoted post - to refer to the a pictorial thought or scene - not to bring imaginative cognition in the mix. Sooner or later, it would be good to hear your answer to why, when Cleric uses the same word in the same sense (which is why I subsequently did that, notice) it’s all wonderful and sublime, but when I do it, as an adaptation to the previous, you assume I am comparing apples to oranges.


Another time, I'm happy to freely associate previous psychedelics discussions, Matt Seagall’s last post, your theories on my psychological problems, and whatnot. Here and now, however, I would prefer not to abandon the following precise questions. We can take as you prefer the lamp example (no imaginative cognition involved) or your pictorial future plans example (no imaginative cognition). Are you open to the possibility that:


1. The pictorial flow is upstream the verbal one?

2. Words are not already there in the pictorial flow?

3. Words are not always necessary in these flows?

4. It’s easier to let the words flow than to resist them, not the other way around?

5. Through pictorial symbols, language becomes "more volumetric" and this is promising for its future spiritualization?

6. Language (not sound) creates its own additional constraints for spiritual activity?

[AshvinP]

I think you are mostly comparing apples to oranges here. We agreed to stick with discussing the phenomenological experience at the intellectual scale, where we work with imaginative replicas of bodily experiences. The whole question is in what ways we can leverage the verbal or pictorial replicas to scale the contextual hierarchy of meaning. But now you are speaking of the Imaginative scale of spiritual activity (the more holistic 'pictorial scenes') and comparing that to the intellectual scale of sequential gestures (words, pictures, physical, etc.).

Not at all, Ashvin. I have used the word “imaginative” in the same sense Cleric uses it in the quoted post - to refer to the a pictorial thought or scene - not to bring imaginative cognition in the mix. Sooner or later, it would be good to hear your answer to why, when Cleric uses the same word in the same sense (which is why I subsequently did that, notice) it’s all wonderful and sublime, but when I do it, as an adaptation to the previous, you assume I am comparing apples to oranges.


Another time, I'm happy to freely associate previous psychedelics discussions, Matt Seagall’s last post, your theories on my psychological problems, and whatnot. Here and now, however, I would prefer not to abandon the following precise questions. We can take as you prefer the lamp example (no imaginative cognition involved) or your pictorial future plans example (no imaginative cognition). Are you open to the possibility that:


1. The pictorial flow is upstream the verbal one?

Then there is clearly a misunderstanding about that post, because when Cleric says:

"Gradually, by experiencing more closely this horizon at which our thinking words manifest, we begin to realize that our inner being always lives in rich dream-like flow... Our waking self normally lives only in the semi-automatic symbolic encodings of this hidden dream flow."

He is not speaking about our intellectual scale pictorial gestures where, for example, we picture our plans for the day. That is not what our waking self lives in as the 'hidden dream flow' (obviously our intellectual pictures and words are both meaningfully related to this dream flow). When he says "rich dream-like flow", this is quite literal. To the extent we can recall our ordinary dream life, our receded spiritual activity has become the immanent, animated, and concrete imagery in which our soul being explicates its existence and feels itself enmeshed. This scale of existence cannot be equated to our ordinary thinking in pictures.

Moreoever, we can only speak of this dream scale being 'upstream' in the sense that this dreaming in pictures 'precedes' (not in linear time) the crystallization of our spiritual activity that awakens in the intellectual scale gestures, mainly the inner voice. This sort of dreamy 'upstream' cannot be translated into "closer to the Word", in fact it's quite the opposite, as also indicated in Cleric's last post. The Word is the true essence of our "I"-force and the latter feels itself much more intimately when it vibrates the tones of the inner voice. It is much more awakened to its true Logoic nature than when it weaves in the more infantile/animalistic dream flow.

2. Words are not already there in the pictorial flow?

3. Words are not always necessary in these flows?

4. It’s easier to let the words flow than to resist them, not the other way around?

5. Through pictorial symbols, language becomes "more volumetric" and this is promising for its future spiritualization?

6. Language (not sound) creates its own additional constraints for spiritual activity?[/color]

I have already addressed all of these questions, but you have so far brushed aside the responses as irrelevant. Of course we can't build some rigid theoretical system where we simply seek a "yes" or "no" to the questions. Answering such questions requires us to explore our living experience from a variety of angles, integrating our intuitions from many different areas of spiritual scientific understanding. That is why Steiner says:

One can never look at the truths about the higher worlds from too many aspects. One should realize that from any one aspect it is possible to give only the poorest sketch. And when one looks at the same thing from the most diverse aspects, the impressions one receives in this way only gradually complement each other to form an ever more animated picture. Only such pictures, not dry, schematic concepts, can help the man who wants to penetrate into the higher worlds. The more animated and colorful the pictures, the more can one hope to approach the higher reality.

This is the true meaning of "pictures" in the higher sense, which we reach by living thinking through word sequences that artistically explicate the intuitive meaning we are exploring from many different angles. Our words themselves take on a more pictorial character the more we utilize them in this recursive way. It is easy to flow along with default thinking habits, whether in words or pictures (like we are watching a movie), and it is likewise easy to run away from one or the other as a means of 'spiritual development'. What is difficult is to rhythmically withhold and immerse our spiritual activity in both as a means of artistically explicating intuition and purifying our soul factors. In meditation we need to withhold the inner voice and eventually extinguish any pictures as well, but in the ordinary life we need plunge more deeply into these outer gestures to spiritualize them.

I see that you are trying to arbitrarily separate out "language" from "sound", simply to preserve your sub-cycle proposition. Yet language is actually sound that has been imbued with the life-ether that carries the depth of meaning. Obviously the deeper contextual meaning has been greatly aliased in the modern age, but this applies to all our intellectual scale gestures. It's equally obvious that, to begin with, language carries the only hope for most people intuiting the depth of curvatures through which their intellectual lives unfold, as we are continually doing on this forum. I am curious why you keep sidestepping this example of our use of language in the here and now, in order to even discuss the gradient?

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA122/En ... 18p02.html

Just as we go downward from warmth to air, and thence to water, so we can go upward from warmth to light, and from light to what is of the nature of sound, of chemical combination. And from water we can descend lower to earth. When we mount from the sound-ether we come to a still higher etheric condition, which also withdrew with the haschamayim. We come to the finest etheric state of all, which weaves within the chemical or sound-ether we have just been describing. If you turn your spiritual ear in this direction, you do not of course hear a noise in the external air, but you hear the tone which vibrates through space, the tone which permeates space and organises matter just as the tone produced by the bow of a violin organises the Chladni sound-figures. But into this condition brought about by the sound-ether is poured a still higher etheric mode. And this higher ether permeates the sound-ether just as the meaning of our thought permeates the sound which our mouth utters, thereby transforming tone into word. Try to comprehend what it is that transforms tone into a word full of meaning; then you will have some idea of this finer etheric element permeating the organising sound-ether and giving meaning to it—the Word which vibrates through space. And this Word, which thrills through space and pours itself out into the sound-ether, is at the same time the source of life, it is really vibrant, weaving life!

[Federica]

Maybe we can explore this topic by investigating a thought like "I am". Of course, not in an abstract sense but as the real-time contemplation of how we produce the words and how they reflect the affirmation of our existence. It seems to me that trying to experience this in a pictorial way or with sign language feels less intimate.

My first question here would be: if the task is to explore the nature of verbal thought versus pictorial thought, it may be confusing to start with a verbal thought that is so special, compared to all other verbal thoughts, and with the "I" word-symbol, different from all other word-symbols. But I see why you suggest it first, and so trying the “I am” exercise versus the wordless I-ness-thought, I can’t easily decide which one feels more “intimate”. The worded thought, on the one hand, feels more outer, more Earthly, more familiar, more grounded, more anchored to senses. In this sense, I may say it feels more intimate. The wordless thought on the other hand, feels more inner, more direct, more pure, more honest. Is this an after effect of the I-force having been radiated first through sound? I can’t tell from the experience itself. But, if the rationalization has to involve the various ethers, I can't help but think that the verbal thought can be both auditory and visual. The wordless thought can only be (but doesn’t have to) visual. I also would like to quote what Steiner said, at the end of his life, about the wordless experience of the thought “ich” versus the verbal one, since this matches quite exactly the exercise in question. As he expresses it, there is a eurythmic - thus visually picturable - form, a visual scene, that grows directly out of the meaning inherent in the sound combination:

Thus we must realize that, in declaiming a poem, or merely endeavouring to give a word its true proportion in a sentence, the reciter must instinctively, by means of his artistic feeling, develop this attitude towards the sounds of speech: Such or such is the relationship of a word to its whole content. I shall speak about these things in detail later. Now, however, I am trying to show how, on the one hand, words have the descriptive [primary structure] element, and how, on the other hand, there is the possibility of going beyond the word itself [secondary structure] and entering into the poem or sentence as a whole. We can see this best by taking definite examples. Let us first take a very characteristic type of word, the personal pronoun. Such words, in their very nature, place that to which they refer into some quite definite relationship, or—which is indeed much the same thing—they remove it right out of this relationship. We will take as an example the word ‘ich’ (I), and ask someone to express it in eurhythmy, standing still, (Frl. W, . . . will you do this ?) Now, in these movements for i and ch you have expressed the word ‘Ich.’
But to an unprejudiced observer there will be something lacking in these movements. In themselves they are quite correct, and certainly do express the word "Ich” in visible language; and yet there is something lacking. One has the feeling that here the ‘Ich’ is simply represented diagrammatically ; it is as if the only impression we had of a man were his portrait. Such a representation of the ‘Ich’ is not sufficiently living, for the spirit of man, which lies behind the manifestation of the ‘Ich’, is not fully expressed. What then is the spiritual essence of the word ‘Ich’? In this word there lies the pointing back to oneself, the concept of the self, but the concept of the self turned inwards towards the self. And if one wishes to express this backward turning into the self, it can be done excellently, not by standing still, but by moving. Let us suppose, therefore, that you take two steps forward and then two steps backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards.

Thus you will retrace your steps, going back over the same line and returning to your starting point. With the two forward steps do the "i"-sound, and with the two backward steps the "ch". In this way movement enters into the expression of the word ‘Ich’, movement which finds its way back again into itself, just as the Ich’ conception contains the feeling of turning back into the self. If you carry out the movements in this way, taking two steps forwards with the i and two steps backwards with the ch, you will enter right into the form (see diagram), and this form is of such a nature that it grows directly out of the meaning inherent in this combination of sounds.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA279/En ... 03p02.html

We can devise some exercises to investigate this. For example, we can imagine moving the beads of an abacus for some time. There's no need to do real calculations, only that for some time we completely suppress our inner voice and are engaged in picturing moving the beads. If then we produce a verbal thought, it kinda feels as if a part of us has been so far muted in the background. In other words, there's something of our "I"-ness that remained unknown until we spoke.

Yes, we feel we were muted, because it costs effort to refrain from verbalization. We are so used to it. I think this is the reason why it feels like a part of us has been muted. And, as a matter of fact, it has been muted. That is, the collapse of that function has been resisted. I wouldn’t necessarily translate that in terms of something of our I-ness remaining unknown. If so, wouldn't we have to also think of any act of spiritual resistance as something of our "I" remaining unknown, since resisting a collapse of potential always implies muting some materialization of phenomena pressing from the soul background?

As it has been established, both verbal and pictorial thoughts can flow dreamily and flatly. The point is that in our inner voice - others may disagree and share their experience but this seems to be mine - we feel our innermost activity expressing in a more intimate way. And it is not even so much about the words themselves but rather the experience of the "I"-activity in vibrating tone phenomena.

So in my experience, it is possible to seek this more intimate "I"-activity where the modulation of any sound can be experienced as a kind of "I am"-experience (for example the vowels exercise). When we begin to awaken more deeply in this innermost activity it becomes possible to experience even light and color phenomena as if we vibrate them into existence through our "I"-force (cymatics analogy). Probably one way to tread a middle ground between these experiences is to experiment with thoughts like "I am roundness", "I am squareness", etc., where it's not so much that we need to pronounce the words, but in a sense, we should feel that we support the shape of our inner being through the same "I"-force through which we vibrate our ordinary verbal thoughts.

As said above, I would agree that the inner voice feels more "intimate". But here's the point, in my perspective, which I have been trying to express for weeks now, and which I now find confirmed in your thoughts, though not explicitly. It has to do with the double nature of alphabetic language. In alphabetic language, there is the vibrating part, the sound and tone part, and there is also the combinatory part, the modular encoding part. In this latter lies the threat. And these parts are very different from one another. In this sense, the vowel exercise is very different from a crystallized, verbalized thought, encoded in words and sentences. In the former, there is only sound and tone. Nothing can go wrong when there is only the vibration of sound and tone. In the vibrating tone phenomenon, in that Angel, the "I" can recognize itself, and unite with the percept. Same in the ”I am roundness” thought. As you say, it’s not so much that we need the words. It’s about the vibration of sound and tone. I agree with that. That’s what I have been trying to say for so long! That sound/tone is the way to redeem verbalized, phrased language. However, what we have been discussing with Ashvin in the last posts is phrased thoughts. Ashvin meant that phrased thoughts, not the pure vibrations of sound ether, are: always present in the wordless ones, preceding them, always necessary, etcetera.

But in a nutshell, It seems to me that this is at the core of the debate here. We need verbal thinking because we can better find our "I"-force there which experiences itself in the modulation of tone, which is more intimate than light and warmth. But from then on, we can use that "I"-force to modulate also the pictorial aspects. Then, these aspects are clearly experienced as being radiated and supported through the same "I"-force through which we radiate speech.

Again, I think in this post you have shown that we need sound and tone, not necessarily that we need verbal thinking. I agree we need sound and tone. But this is not the same as verbal thinking. It's the redemption of verbal thinking! In this connection, I would like to know if you agree with that - or if you think we also always and necessarily need phrased thought - and how you relate these recent explorations with what you said here and here about the volumetric, H-bond power of pictorial thought, and about the pictorial scenes existing in the background of verbalized thoughts.


To summarize, my open questions are:


1. How do you fit Steiners idea that the dynamic, wordless, visual form of the "Ich"-thought grows directly out of the meaning that can be expressed in the word-symbol.

2. Do you agree on what I have described as the double nature of language, and that what you have shared here addresses its vibrational nature, its sound and tone nature - not its combinatory, potentially problematic, worded nature (and surely problematic in our times)?

3. How do you connect your last experiments with the past ones?

[AshvinP]

"Nothing can go wrong when there is only the vibration of sound and tone"


I don't think any direct comment from me on the above thought will be seen as too helpful, and I am sure Cleric will be responding since it is addressed to him. But since we are also speaking of the deeper meaningful gestures which live in the content of our words, and how such deeper gestures can be explicated pictorially, we can try to artistically sense that here. If we had to make a picture of that thought, what it would look like? How would this picture resonate with the Word impulse, which is also synonymous with spiritual courage? What beings do we know that only vibrate in sound/tone? Are they Angels or, something else?

This post from Cleric may also be helpful to revisit.

[Cleric]

But I see why you suggest it first, and so trying the “I am” exercise versus the wordless I-ness-thought, I can’t easily decide which one feels more “intimate”. The worded thought, on the one hand, feels more outer, more Earthly, more familiar, more grounded, more anchored to senses. In this sense, I may say it feels more intimate. The wordless thought on the other hand, feels more inner, more direct, more pure, more honest.

What feels intimate is not the sound of the word itself (in the sense that we may feel intimacy or familiarity with an object or a person) but the fact that our inner being is more exposed to itself, so to speak, when it recognizes itself in the voice. Of course, here we are speaking of ordinary consciousness. As explained, in Imagination and above, the spirit expresses in much more manifold ways.

Yes, we feel we were muted, because it costs effort to refrain from verbalization. We are so used to it. I think this is the reason why it feels like a part of us has been muted. And, as a matter of fact, it has been muted. That is, the collapse of that function has been resisted. I wouldn’t necessarily translate that in terms of something of our I-ness remaining unknown. If so, wouldn't we have to also think of any act of spiritual resistance as something of our "I" remaining unknown, since resisting a collapse of potential always implies muting some materialization of phenomena pressing from the soul background?

It is a different kind of resisting. The point of meditative resistance is not to paralyze and mute our spirit. What we resist are the forces that drag the spirit through the grooves of necessity. This comes through concentration and as explained many times, by 'shrinking', becoming 'smaller' than these forces (remember the gown and the twigs). Then we find a new kind of wiggle room in this point of concentration which exposes unfamiliar degrees of freedom of our "I"-force, which interestingly can fill the whole of inner space yet somehow pass through the 'twigs'.

To summarize, my open questions are:


1. How do you fit Steiners idea that the dynamic, wordless, visual form of the "Ich"-thought grows directly out of the meaning that can be expressed in the word-symbol.

As said, the "I"-force of the spirit that expresses itself is always the primary goal. Both the words and the eurhythmic gestures are such expressions. Steiner explains in HTHW how in the course of development, our center of being moves down toward the heart center. I tried to depict this before:



Now, it should be clear that the inner experience that we can try to convey in this schematic way and further triangulate with words, cannot be found as contained in the words. But it cannot be contained in such an image either. In the heart region we approach the activity of the Spirit Self, which acts by bending the flow of destiny. In our everyday life we need to decide how to move an object, or how to do something in order to achieve some goal, while from within the heart world, the Spirit Self pictures how our whole soul life should transform for certain higher goals to be achieved. Instead of moving a hand or a leg, it is as if it says "Here we need a little more Mercury forces, here we should diminish the Mars forces, etc." Of course, this is not in the least some mechanical adjustment but all these intentions are like subtle shifts of the Ls which draw a new fractal tunnel of destiny, within which our ordinary consciousness condenses (of course there are also other bendings that counteract those of the higher self and the angelic beings, and our "I" my snap into their grooves). Anyway... my point is that obviously when we experience Imaginatively such things as those just described, we are clearly beyond verbalization. We are beyond mere pictures of sensory happenings too. We live in expanded intuition about this deeper flow, yet to convey anything of it we need to sieve it down into concrete pictures. And clearly, word-pictures (we can call them that) offer great flexibility. I don't think I could convey what I just wrote entirely in a slideshow of visual pictures. Maybe we can do that if we already have some shared understanding of the deeper meaning of the pictures but then it will gradually become precisely a written pictographic language.

2. Do you agree on what I have described as the double nature of language, and that what you have shared here addresses its vibrational nature, its sound and tone nature - not its combinatory, potentially problematic, worded nature (and surely problematic in our times)?

Like, Ashvin, I'm not entirely sure why you try to separate language on such an orthogonal basis. In the way you describe it, it sounds as if as soon as we form a sentence, we drop down in the realm of combinatorics - horizontal, mechanical patching of words. But this is not so. Not only the sounds condense from the higher meaningful spiritual activity. Grammar originally condenses from higher-order dynamics, just like the formative forces of our bodies. For example, it would be combinatory if someone takes the picture above and says (like the bees example to FB) "Oh, I get this, I'll put a few more spheres here, here, and here, and get an even prettier picture." These abstract combinatorics are certainly a threat, but as established before, and as seen even from this example, we can lay down wordless pictures in an equally abstract and combinatory way.

So there's no argument that language and pictures, like for example the spheres above, should grow out of deeper meaning. Conversely, brooding over such images and words should lead toward that deeper meaning. However, language is no mere combinatorics on the physical plane. Language (at least originally) grows directly from the dynamics of the etheric (life) world. And as such, its redemption is not simply overcoming the usage of words but expanding consciousness in the formative forces that originally gave the structure of language and grammar. And yes, at that Imaginative level, these forces are known in much more manifold ways. Nevertheless, we still need to retrace language into its higher origins.

Here's a topic for meditation: in a certain sense, we can think of the origin of language as the way the formative processes in the etheric realm 'sound like' when we experience their effects in the tone ether. This in a way explains why language seems to be so complex even in the ancient literature. It's because language did not arise by distilling a few basic grunts and then gradually combining them into more complicated grammatical and phonetic relations. Instead, language appears directly as something complex, simply because it originally reflects the already complex processes in the whole etheric realm. The experience of a growing plant from within the formative spiritual gestures, when followed in tone, already 'sound like' a complex sentence with many words and complicated grammatic relations (which directly reflect the relations of the formative forces). Does this help? Thinking of original language not as abstract mapping that combines deadened tokens grown from living experience, but as growing from what the amazingly complex life-world 'sounds like' from within?

3. How do you connect your last experiments with the past ones?

I'm not sure about this question but I hope all the above is enough for now.

[Federica]

...

I can't say I can make sense of your post. It seems to me you have spent the majority of it rectifying things I haven't said. But I will try again tomorrow, I'm sure there's much to learn from it regardless.

[Cleric]

I am curious, have you noticed a significant change in the percentage proportion, outside of meditation (i.e. at the intellectual scale), that you rely on verbal vs. pictorial support for exploration of the supersensible throughout the years of inner development? I am sure the two have become much more intertwined for you over the years, and probably you have gradually learned to weave more in pictures when making plans and so forth. But if you are interested in exploring various concepts of spiritual science, do you often do this with wordless pictures, mostly words, or both, and has that proportion been evolving in a clear direction?

To be honest, I don't place this as a goal in itself (to think more in pictures rather than in words). It somehow comes by itself depending on what we strive to do. For example, when I meditate on a post or an essay that I need to write, there could be different phases. Sometimes my meditation hovers in the vicinity of what I need to explain and I live primarily in the verbal words because this is what should come out in the end. Other times, I specifically act in non-verbal ways, for example when doing certain exercises, like the imaginative stretching, and so on. Still other times, when I'm trying to understand something which is still nebulous, I simply formulate that as a prayer (it could be wordless, picturing what I want to gain clarity on) and then simply allow this unknown future object of the prayer fill the whole environment and in a sense silently concentrate and 'sun-bathe' in its aura. Not expecting that the answer will come immediately but having faith that little particles are set in motion that can, eventually through many other intermediary steps, lead to state where a the solution would be clear. It's important to pray that we are transformed, and not simply hope to find and fit the understanding in our present soul geometry. It's also very useful to seek unity with all the souls who think on these matters.

As far as ordinary life is concerned, like most people I dip down into bursts of dim daydreaming thinking flows, which mostly, I think, have verbal commentary. What has changed in the course of the years is that I keep awakening from these flows and then I need to consciously give direction of my thought flow. Here the possibilities are many, depending on what I'm doing. If I'm doing something physically, usually I try to make the mental movements fully in-phase and concentrated with the will. In other cases I simply think a few words, like "Love, Wisdom, Truth", some formula, short prayer, singing, a few breaths with words, and so on. In that sense I don't avoid verbal thinking. I only try to give it conscious direction. And to give it direction we need the sense of contextuality of our temporal existence, remembering our high ideal, the lifelong moral curvature. This is probably what has the most transformative effect on the general sense of being. Even though it requires only a mere thought, simply to try and feel our present thinking phrase as embedded into a deep contextual symphony, this brings a profound shift in the way we feel about reality.

Something that I experiment with in the last months is that when I notice what I'm thinking about, I try and feel the dream-like context flow from which the thought has emerged. This is usually easy because the context is already there anyway. It's not about spending time on explicating that context and analyzing it but simply momentarily expanding awareness to feel what we are flowing through, how our thought is placed within our daily flow, within our life's story, goals, desires, etc. It's not about trying to see these things from a higher and truthful perspective but simply to sense the context as it is. The results so far are interesting. It certainly heightens my awareness of the contextual flow.

[Cleric]

I can't say I can make sense of your post. It seems to me you have spent the majority of it rectifying things I haven't said. But I will try again tomorrow, I'm sure there's much to learn from it regardless.

We can focus on whether you think it is conceivable that language (as a living and dynamic spiritual process) has grown from a higher origin (and not only the individual tonal contents for which you say we can't go wrong with). Or as soon as we form a sentence - even if through it we try to explicate a deeper inner experience - its structure is already the result of combinatorics lying within the intellectual plane. Basically, at the end I asked if it seems plausible that the growth of a plant can be compared to a life process that when experienced from within can be likened to a progression through meaningful states with an overarching goal, not unlike the way we progress through word-states when we think in language.

[Federica]

Then there is clearly a misunderstanding about that post, because when Cleric says:

"Gradually, by experiencing more closely this horizon at which our thinking words manifest, we begin to realize that our inner being always lives in rich dream-like flow... Our waking self normally lives only in the semi-automatic symbolic encodings of this hidden dream flow."

He is not speaking about our intellectual scale pictorial gestures where, for example, we picture our plans for the day. That is not what our waking self lives in as the 'hidden dream flow' (obviously our intellectual pictures and words are both meaningfully related to this dream flow).

Ashvin,

From that post, I quoted what I understood, and still understand, as a normal cognition thought experiment: the lamp switch. In that description, which does not involve higher cognition (Cleric can say if I'm wrong) the word "imaginative" is used to indicate pictorial thinking. As I quoted before: "For example, when we look at the lamp we may feel something like wordless insight, the meaning of illumination. It may even be accompanied by an imaginative flash of illumination, as if we wordlessly intuit: "The lamp brings about light phenomena." And the imaginative element may be very dim or even non-existent."

In alignment with that, I've used "imaginative" in the same sense. But for some reason instead of seeing the obvious, you decide I am "comparing apples to oranges" and build paragraphs and paragraphs on that assumption, including theories of my lacking honesty, my psychological problems, plus the reminders you have decided I need to be administered again and again, in huge daily dose. Incidentally, this also allows you to zoom out of your theses on verbal thoughts (you already addressed these, no point in reconsidering them on ground of my replies). And now that your assumption has turned out to be just that, a mere assumption, you pretend I then must have misunderstood the quote. Doesn't matter if it turns out to be one more wrong assumption. In the meantime, it gives you another excuse to make your post about how failed my thoughts are, and what medicines I need, rather than on verbal language.

I have already addressed all of these questions, but you have so far brushed aside the responses as irrelevant.

How beautifully stated: you have already addressed all these questions, that is once and for all, and you are never open to the possibility that any of my precise comments may have any real relevance. That was already clear, but I am writing this post to point attention to this attitude explicitly.

[Federica]

"Nothing can go wrong when there is only the vibration of sound and tone"


I don't think any direct comment from me on the above thought will be seen as too helpful, and I am sure Cleric will be responding since it is addressed to him. But since we are also speaking of the deeper meaningful gestures which live in the content of our words, and how such deeper gestures can be explicated pictorially, we can try to artistically sense that here. If we had to make a picture of that thought, what it would look like? How would this picture resonate with the Word impulse, which is also synonymous with spiritual courage? What beings do we know that only vibrate in sound/tone? Are they Angels or, something else?

This post from Cleric may also be helpful to revisit.

After teaching me, you now quizz me
In a sense, I understand your logic

This gives an idea of man's relation to the Angeloi before the Mystery of Golgotha. Afterwards this relationship gradually changed. So what relationship does man have now to the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi? Now it is the case that, although we are not conscious of it, the Angeloi dwell in our sense perceptions between birth and death. When we open our eyes and look around at everything that surrounds us affecting our senses we are not aware that our Angel dwells in the sun rays which penetrate our eyes making objects visible. The beings of the Angeloi live in waves of sound, in the rays of light and color and in other sense perceptions. The reason man does not know he is surrounded by the Angeloi is because he transforms his perceptions into mental pictures and into these the Angeloi do not enter. It has often been emphasized in our lectures that the spiritual world must be visualized all around us and not in some far away cloud-cuckoo-land. The spiritual world is literally everywhere about us and it is possible to explain quite concretely in what sense it surrounds us as in this case in regard to the Angeloi. Yet no consciousness of the Angeloi enters our intellect between birth and death. By contrast man is at present very conscious of his relation with the Angeloi between death and new birth because then the Angeloi dwell in his intellect.

What I have just explained has significant consequences for human life. Let us go back for a moment to man as he was before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then the Angeloi, particularly his own Angel dwelt in his intellect; this made his senses in particular accessible to luciferic powers. In ancient times man's consciousness in general was accessible to luciferic influences. This has changed since the Mystery of Golgotha. As I have just explained the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi who weave and move—borne on rays of light and color and on wings of sound—do not penetrate our intellect. As a consequence our intellect is exposed to the attacks of ahrimanic powers during our life between birth and death. Whereas before the Mystery of Golgotha man was exposed essentially to the attacks of Lucifer; since the Mystery of Golgotha the intellect is particularly exposed to the influence of ahrimanic powers.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA176/En ... 14p01.html