On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[Federica]

Ashvin, you are misunderstanding me. Here again you keep on resetting the same generalities. I appreciate the effort, but don't you get tired of repeating the same things on and on and on?
I thought I had expressed myself clearly, but perhaps not so much, so I'll see if I eventually come up with better writing.

Federica, haven't you noticed that this entire forum is repeating the same things on and on and on? It is always various ways of approaching the central topic, or the center of the central topic, because that is what is habitually neglected in our time, and that is what the intellect continually tries to rationalize away with its 'other approaches', its 'other converging pipelines', and so on. That is why our essays always focus on the same cognitive methodology and its refinement, which we (and Steiner) perceive as the one and only way of advancing spiritual scientific understanding and thus improving practical outcomes.

Apart from that, I suppose it's not clear to me whether you understand why the arguments of Cowan, Moore, etc. (since these are the examples we have been working with) are so misleading? Do you see why introducing them into the discussion is not only generally unhelpful as bridges, but may actively preclude higher development? Entertaining these ways of thinking are not without consequence. They can lead to great confusion in our thinking and an inability to properly orient toward the higher modes of intuitive steering and how they come to expression in the physical domain. We may begin holding out hope for discovering new physical forces and facts that will eventually establish the higher realities communicated by spiritual science, just as materialists hold out hope for discovering new physical facts that will establish how specific neural activity leads to specific conscious experiences. That misplaced hope can only lead in pathological directions. Then we are once again trying to locate the reality of our intuitive navigation in the output flow rather than in the intimate experience of navigation itself.

Anyway, I have again expressed all the key considerations in this iteration of the discussion. You are free to come up with a different way of expressing your view, of course, but I doubt it will be any different from what has already been expressed, since we have been through this topic so many times.

Since you first 'ask' me a question only to answer it yourself in the same paragraph, how should one read your overall motives and intents with this post? Similarly, since you first say "correct me if I am misunderstanding you" but then signify that you anyway don't think this is happening, how should one understand your motives with this reply? Indeed, this is nothing new, but the open, real question I would like to ask you is, what soul configuration makes you proceed along this particular pattern in these replies?

[AshvinP]

Since you first 'ask' me a question only to answer it yourself in the same paragraph, how should one read your overall motives and intents with this post? Similarly, since you first say "correct me if I am misunderstanding you" but then signify that you anyway don't think this is happening, how should one understand your motives with this reply? Indeed, this is nothing new, but the open, real question I would like to ask you is, what soul configuration makes you proceed along this particular pattern in these replies?

Since you didn't try to correct me, nor did you dispute my answers to the questions, I will assume that my understanding is correct. Your writing isn't poor, Federica, and you can't perpetually rely on that to try to convince us that we are seeing mirages in your dozens and dozens of posts on this same theme. You have indeed expressed the same core points in many different ways. I think you have made everything very clear, and you really want your position on this topic to be justified, to have some merit. You want us to see that 'there is something missing', but you don't want to consider the possibility that what is missing is in your orientation to the higher cognitive modalities and what they imply. Until that is resolved, until the possibility is honestly acknowledged, there is no chance of elucidating this topic further.

[Federica]

Federica, haven't you noticed that this entire forum is repeating the same things on and on and on? It is always various ways of approaching the central topic, or the center of the central topic, because that is what is habitually neglected in our time, and that is what the intellect continually tries to rationalize away with its 'other approaches', its 'other converging pipelines', and so on. That is why our essays always focus on the same cognitive methodology and its refinement, which we (and Steiner) perceive as the one and only way of advancing spiritual scientific understanding and thus improving practical outcomes.

Apart from that, I suppose it's not clear to me whether you understand why the arguments of Cowan, Moore, etc. (since these are the examples we have been working with) are so misleading? Do you see why introducing them into the discussion is not only generally unhelpful as bridges, but may actively preclude higher development? Entertaining these ways of thinking are not without consequence. They can lead to great confusion in our thinking and an inability to properly orient toward the higher modes of intuitive steering and how they come to expression in the physical domain. We may begin holding out hope for discovering new physical forces and facts that will eventually establish the higher realities communicated by spiritual science, just as materialists hold out hope for discovering new physical facts that will establish how specific neural activity leads to specific conscious experiences. That misplaced hope can only lead in pathological directions. Then we are once again trying to locate the reality of our intuitive navigation in the output flow rather than in the intimate experience of navigation itself.

Anyway, I have again expressed all the key considerations in this iteration of the discussion. You are free to come up with a different way of expressing your view, of course, but I doubt it will be any different from what has already been expressed, since we have been through this topic so many times.

Since you first 'ask' me a question only to answer it yourself in the same paragraph, how should one read your overall motives and intents with this post? Similarly, since you first say "correct me if I am misunderstanding you" but then signify that you anyway don't think this is happening, how should one understand your motives with this reply? Indeed, this is nothing new, but the open, real question I would like to ask you is, what soul configuration makes you proceed along this particular pattern in these replies?

Since you didn't try to correct me, nor did you dispute my answers to the questions, I will assume that my understanding is correct. Your writing isn't poor, Federica, and you can't perpetually rely on that to try to convince us that we are seeing mirages in your dozens and dozens of posts on this same theme. You have indeed expressed the same core points in many different ways. I think you have made everything very clear, and you really want your position on this topic to be justified, to have some merit. You want us to see that 'there is something missing', but you don't want to consider the possibility that what is missing is in your orientation to the higher cognitive modalities and what they imply. Until that is resolved, until the possibility is honestly acknowledged, there is no chance of elucidating this topic further.

This is again a repetitive opinion and attitude that you at times hide, but always end up throwing out in very consistent fashion. Instead of playing this repetitive persona on and off and on, a simple answer to my question would have been both appreciated and helpful. If you become able to provide it at some point, I will still be interested:


"Since you first 'ask' me a question only to answer it yourself in the same paragraph, how should one read your overall motives and intents with this post? Similarly, since you first say "correct me if I am misunderstanding you" but then signify that you anyway don't think this is happening, how should one understand your motives with this reply?"

[AshvinP]

This is again a repetitive opinion and attitude that you at times hide, but always end up throwing out in very consistent fashion. Instead of playing this repetitive persona on and off and on, a simple answer to my question would have been both appreciated and helpful. If you become able to provide it at some point, I will still be interested:


"Since you first 'ask' me a question only to answer it yourself in the same paragraph, how should one read your overall motives and intents with this post? Similarly, since you first say "correct me if I am misunderstanding you" but then signify that you anyway don't think this is happening, how should one understand your motives with this reply?"

You should understand my motive with that reply as an attempt to help you develop a better orientation to what Cleric illustrated at length in response to this same topic previously, with respect to both the heart and motor nerve issues. Clearly, you didn't quite understand what was illustrated; otherwise, you wouldn't be rehashing the same points and claiming that something is missing. You wouldn't keep saying that Steiner must have been pointing to some dynamics that can be traced through our focal pipelines, and then reference Moore's book as support for that. But if you have foreclosed on this possibility, then anything I write will be seen as irrelevant, a misunderstanding of your perspective, repetitive generalities, and so on. That is the answer to your question, but if you don't like this answer or what it implies, I am sure you will ignore it or say that I have again avoided the question, misstated something, and so on and so forth. It all boils down to whether you are truly interested in improving your orientation in this domain. We all continually need that improvement. That is a huge reason why I write the essays and posts and keep circling around the same 'resetting of generalities', because it helps me consistently expose myself to the unfamiliar inner realities and gradually expand my intuitive orientation to them. Without that orientation, we will remain thoroughly confused about what Steiner indicates in his various lectures about the dynamics of human physiology and everything else, and we will eventually start seeking the "answers" to our questions about these topics in all the wrong places.

[Federica]

Since you didn't try to correct me, nor did you dispute my answers to the questions, I will assume that my understanding is correct. Your writing isn't poor, Federica, and you can't perpetually rely on that to try to convince us that we are seeing mirages in your dozens and dozens of posts on this same theme. You have indeed expressed the same core points in many different ways.

I didn't correct you to give you the benefit of the doubt, Ashvin.
Indeed, I think I was expressing myself about clearly, not too poorly, when I wrote: "only the development of higher cognition can offer a true understanding of the human organization."


Yet, your reply begins like this:
"I think much of the confusion arises when we insist that a rational and healthy understanding of the deeper processes in the human organization, that can transform therapy and so on, is possible without the perspective inversion and corresponding sense of higher cognitive modalities (the cognitive methodology you mention above)."


Do you see the point? What can one do in this situation? Did I express myself poorly? And if not, why did you state that I said the exact opposite of what I actually said (and built your entire reply on that)?


PS: sorry for the quoting/editing confusion, I have fixed it now.

[AshvinP]

Since you didn't try to correct me, nor did you dispute my answers to the questions, I will assume that my understanding is correct. Your writing isn't poor, Federica, and you can't perpetually rely on that to try to convince us that we are seeing mirages in your dozens and dozens of posts on this same theme. You have indeed expressed the same core points in many different ways.

I didn't correct you to give you the benefit of the doubt, Ashvin.
Indeed, I think I was expressing myself about clearly, not too poorly, when I wrote: "only the development of higher cognition can offer a true understanding of the human organization."


Yet, your reply begins like this:
"I think much of the confusion arises when we insist that a rational and healthy understanding of the deeper processes in the human organization, that can transform therapy and so on, is possible without the perspective inversion and corresponding sense of higher cognitive modalities (the cognitive methodology you mention above)."


Do you see the point? What can one do in this situation? Did I express myself poorly? And if not, why did you state that I said the exact opposite of what I actually said (and built your entire reply on that)?


PS: sorry for the quoting/editing confusion, I have fixed it now.

Ok, thanks for clarifying, and I apologize for attributing the idea that HHU can be attained without the perspective inversion to you. If that is not the case, then I still need more clarification on many of your previous statements, like this one:

"You say that “we need to engage in a phenomenology of spiritual activity, and only then do the observations and results of natural science become testimonies to the independently experienced research of spiritual science”. This seems like a monodirectional view. If this were true, then Steiner would have been dumb to lecture and write so widely about applied spiritual science. Even one single such lecture would have been like talking to a wall. This view excludes that the way the pipelines can be constrained can itself evolve. I think that, just like the game metaphor provides a particularly shaped pipeline that changes our focal perspective to facilitate convergence between scales, so the same artistic process must be possible so as to re-experience the focal plane in the light of Imaginative results, in applied fields of experience, such as for example human physiology."

The game metaphor, of course, is an example of the phenomenology of spiritual activity, which facilitates perspective inversion. You seem to be suggesting that our mental pipelines can take a different shape, distinct from this cognitive methodology, yet still change our focal perspective and facilitate convergence between scales. Is that so, and if so, how is that possible? Should our artistic pipelines resemble what we find in an author like Moore, or do you have something else in mind? (and I don't think we can appeal to Steiner's lecturing here, because I dispute that these lectures were ever intended as anything but facilitation of the cognitive methodology)