ScottRoberts wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 9:51 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 8:56 pm
Scott, how is your PoF Simplified going?
It's not, going, that is. I've run into a couple of problems I don't know how to deal with, so I've been preoccupied with thinking about them. One is "intuitive thinking", and how to present it in an esoterism-free way. Steiner defines "intuition" in PoF as "purely spiritual experience with purely spiritual contents". Which leads me to the second problem, that in English translations the words "spirit" and "soul" are used to translate "Geist" and "Seele". I don't know German well enough to tell if German usage of these terms is sufficiently like how anthroposophists use the terms, but it is a major problem for English speakers. "Spiritual" can be anything from church-going to ghosts to psychedelics, while "soul" can be "heartfeltness" or that part of one that survives death, and so on.
Now, as I have read some anthroposophy, I think I know what Steiner means by "purely spiritual experience with purely spiritual contents", but the only example I have for this is mathematical thinking. Which I value, but I fail to see how to get from that to moral intuition. As a math major I've known many mathematicians whose mathematical thinking is way more advanced than mine, but I can't say I've noticed any moral superiority among them, or that they are more "free". So something more is needed, and I'm not sure one can explain what it is without bringing in the esoteric. Which, as I see it, defeats the purpose. I wonder if there is anyone has read PoF and got headed in an anthroposophical direction who hasn't also been acquainted with Steiner's esoteric writings.
By "the purpose" I mean coming up with a text that provides a philosophical basis for anthroposophy free of any esotericism, but indicates a path to freedom. I think this can be done with the only requirement being that one accepts idealism. But one also needs to accept the distinction between thinking and thoughts, which, of course, is a major point of PoF Part I. Chapter I of Barfield's
What Coleridge Thought is, in fact, titled "Thinking and Thought", but Barfield points out, after discussing this distinction, that making this distinction is why Coleridge got a reputation for being obscure, so that's discouraging. I'm currently considering whether my arguments in my
Tetralemmic Polarity essay might help, but that's kinda obscure too.
Anyway, these are my somewhat incoherent excuses for giving up, for the time being at least, on trying to simplify Pof Part II.
Scott,
I wonder if your project should be reoriented towards summarizing/simplifying or otherwise collating, not necessarily PoF, but Cleric's various metaphorical illustrations on this forum, which themselves explore the PoF ideas but in different ways, from different angles. Very few of them reference Steiner or esoteric scientific concepts, and they provide a very modern language for us to conceptually explore states of higher cognition. For ex., on the question of intuition and 'purely spiritual experience of purely spiritual contents', you could work with the following post. I realize the reference to the first-person perspective of the 'Elohim' in this context is esoteric, but I think it would be relatively easy to work around such references.
(Federica, this post is also very relevant to our discussion on the other thread).
viewtopic.php?p=17123#p17123
Now the key to higher cognition is that this structured potential can be known in various degrees. This is evident even from the simple example above - if we recognize our affected stated, we already have grasped some of the curvature of the potential that we're forced to crystalize. From here it's a matter of inner work to find the degrees of freedom of our becoming through which we can navigate more freely the regions which are being narrowed down into perception. For example, if we manage to utilize our feeling degrees of freedom, we may be able to transform our pride and escape the clutches of affection. Then we're free to manifest other regions of potential, which would otherwise have been inaccessible while we were busy manifesting thoughts and feelings about the argument.
When this process continues it becomes possible to know even higher order curvature of meaningful potential. That's how it is possible for SS to speak about the past and the future. On a higher level it becomes evident that the states of Earthly life funnel in certain direction. We make plans based on our limited perspective but at the same time the macro-structure of the dream narrows down in certain direction and ultimately we're forced to manifest our states from within that potential. The points of conception and death are two poles within which our states funnel. This is quite self-evident also in the case of planetary motion for example. We may wish that our next state can be anywhere in Cosmic space but in reality all our states of being are narrowed down within a palette which is consistent with the perceptual content of the Earthly planetary environment.
This may seem fantastic but in reality this is what planetary motions really are. What we see with our eyes is only the crystalized manifestation of states. From higher order perspective, the gods don't see a planet moving into some orbit. Instead, their activity shapes the potential curvature which is hierarchically being narrowed down. From the perspective of the gods, their activity is also experienced as becoming, as manifestation of potential. This is very well illustrated in Genesis where it's said "And Elohim said, “Let light come to be,” and light came to be. And Elohim saw the light, that it was good." These are very deep things and they speak directly of this horizon of manifestation. So even the Elohim manifest their activity from within unseen potential and only as it crosses the horizon becomes perceptible. The difference is that for the higher beings, what they manifest is the 'shape' of potential which can be further narrowed down. In this sense, the Light that the Elohim create is not simply photons travelling in space through time.
We can imagine it in a simplified way thus. Imagine that you take the 'frames' of inner life from a whole year of your life and superimpose them one over the other. All colors, sounds, thoughts, feelings - everything is superimposed and builds a superposition, similar to white light. Yet this superposition is not absolute white light. There are many more states that are missing. For example, there are no states in this superposition which correspond to the inner experience of beholding the Mars environment. So it's structured potential. Imagine that (I repeat that this is oversimplification) the Elohim thinks the superposition of states of being which correspond to one year of time. The Elohim sees these superimposed states from the same first-person perspective, just like we do. This superposition is structured such that it contains all possible (first-person) states of being that humans can go through within a year time. Through the narrowing down of this potential, many relative perspectives become possible which are consistent with each other. From within this narrowed potential, the Elohim's activity is experienced in its time-decohered form.
So the intuitive state is like experiencing this superposition of all those sensory
qualities, stripped of all outer perceptual quantities and forms - it is reaching the completely
inner side of the physical sensory spectrum we flow through in our development, which is entirely intentional in its character (unlike how we normally experience it). It is entirely temporal patterns of ideated meaning. By becoming conscious of this underlying qualitative nature of our physical stream of becoming, via the higher stages culminating with intuitive thinking, we are able to more effectively align our will with its intentional structure and thereby manifest new degrees of freedom within its 'field of potential'. We gain more creative freedom in how the potential narrows down into our actual states. Even in our normal experience, we encounter many situations in which immoral (misaligned) thoughts-feelings-actions lead to physical laws conspiring against us and constraining our degrees of freedom, as Cleric also shows prior to the part quoted. I am reminded of this article I came across awhile ago in my fundamentalist days:
https://reasons.org/explore/publication ... ics-of-sin
God’s design of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, and thermodynamics yields this result: the more a person sins, the more work he must perform and the more pain he must experience. All of these laws contribute to the breakdown of a person’s body and the breakdown of everything he builds (e.g., a home, a relationship, or a career). Gravity results in increasing sag and stress over time. Electromagnetic radiation corrodes the surfaces of all structures. Nuclear laws cause change in the fundamental building blocks.
Because of their propensity to defy God, individuals need discipline. God’s act of ejecting Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to the world outside, where they had to plant their own gardens and deal, for example, with “thorns and thistles,” helped set in motion the discipline they needed to understand that God’s ways are best. The propensity to do things their own way (as opposed to following God’s wisdom), consigned Adam and Eve and their descendents to experience much more work and much more pain.
The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that whatever a man organizes, whatever he designs, and whatever information he accumulates becomes increasingly disordered. However, sin speeds up the breakdown. For example, if a man abuses his tools, they become less productive and wear out faster, leading him to experience more pain and more work when he uses them. If he abuses his animals, his employees, or a woman who might become his spouse, their response to the abuse causes him more work, less pleasure, and more pain.
God designed the laws of physics to gently but firmly encourage humankind to depart from sin. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, not all sins bring identical harm. Some sins defile more than others. The way God designed the laws of physics, the more defiling the sin, the more pain and/or work it generates. And the more sin an individual commits, the more pain and work he experiences. The laws of physics, unlike parents, teachers, and supervisors, allocate consistent and timely retribution. Moreover, physics discipline never misses, never forgets. By God’s design, it is neither too much nor too little.
I am also reminded of a similar question I used to ask myself: why are the foods that taste the best - the sweetest, the juiciest, and the most decadent - also the most unhealthy for our physical organism? Things are so structured that we are incentivized - assuming we are seeking higher ideals and reasoning properly - to turn away from immediate gratification in the sensory world and look for satisfaction in that which is eternal, so we are able to ascend back to our intuitive home and help lift others as well. We could think of many other such examples, such as the prevalence of STDs and broken homes in a sexually immoral culture. You may remember there is also a more mathematically oriented post
here, which perhaps fits better into your own line of thinking.
I would add that, in any version of the project you undertake, I would recommend keeping in mind that "
The [modest] goal here is to gradually learn to think differently", to quote Cleric from that post. None of these metaphors or summaries will produce understanding of higher cognitive realities out of themselves, but will instead help readers to loosen their rigid forms of sense-based thinking and gradually accustom their thinking organism to something supersensible and new. It will help form new habits of thinking and I think that goal is at the core of PoF.