Dear Friends,
It is my view, and I believe Steiner's as well, that one could practice introspection in a fully scientific way. This must mean, at least, that each individual can discover the same universal elements in their soul life.
I emphasize the term "universal", because experience has taught me that much of what we encounter through introspection is personal and individual, and needs to be distinguished from the universal. PoF then gives us langauge pointing to this universal structure, such as: percept, concept, mental picture, moral imagination, moral intuition and so forth.
If this is the case then, it seems to me that our language in these posts, to the extent that we wish to practice a "science" of introspection, must tend toward the same or similar language conventions, and become thereby a common language just as any other scientific discipline creates a common language. When, therefore, we diverge into other areas in such a way as to leave behind the necessary common scientific language of introspection, we have drifted away from the universal practices of PoF, and into our individual interpretations and interests.
We find, for example, in much of Carl's work, a strong impulse to divergence, away from the language conventions of PoF and into Carl's "theory" of conversation. We also have posts on all kinds of other matters, which while relevant in their immediate sense of being something meaningful to the person writing the comment or journal post, also in effect is a divergence. I place myself in this category as well.
Let us call the divergence into individual interests: "sharing", but not consider it "scientific" in the sense of PoF. This sharing is something like writing a letter, in a peer reviewed biology journal, about last summer's vacation with the kids. This is interesting as we get to know each other, but not on point with regard to the "science" of introspection.
What I would like to suggest, on the thread that may result from this journal entry, that we start to compile a list of terms that we believe are appropriate to a scientific inquiry into our inner life rooted in the practice of introspection. Also, that we do this carefully, and that we try to express (not define) what the term means to our experience (not our theory of introspection, but what happesn when we actually practice introspection).
Having proposed this, I also consider it a mutual work, not something someone can produce on their own and to which "authority" we should expect others to conform, but rather a careful and systematic examination of the universals of our soul life that seeks to find and use similar language conventions. We could also do this Chapter by Chapter, rather than leap ahead, keeping ourselves to basics - creating building block concepts out of experience.
So in Chapter One: Conscious Human Action, I find the following terms toward which I can also admit to having a relevant experience when I look within: want, desire, motive, mental picture, thinking. The rest of the discussion in this Chapter seems to consist of "thoughts" and chains of reason about these universal elements of our inner life, but cannot properly be called something "observed" to be there. Since my rereading of this Chapter was a bit quick and superficial, I may have missed a few other "facts" of experience as regards our inwardness, and I look forward to what others may want to add.
Want and desire, however, may be the same thing at first glance, but I think we can distinguish them by recognizing that both "want" and "desire" can mean the same thing in the sense of being outside my conscious will (thus the title to the Chapter: Conscious Human Action), but also these terms can mean something actually willed by choice. So, if we "want" a "science" of introspection, we might need to make a distinction between a natural urge or hunger that is a want, and something willed as a conscious want.
I hope to find some company for this journey.
warm regards,
joel
Chapter One Universals?
Hi Joel
This sounds like a great project, but I'm not sure how to begin participating. I looked over Chapter One and found all kinds of terms. How do you yourself distinguish between a more "universal" term such as desire, and what you call "thoughts" and chains of reason about these universal elements of our inner life? Can you give us an example of your reasoning process here?
For instance, is "necessity" a universal term? Is "reason" in the sense of being a faculty? What about "driving force?"
The distinction between a natural urge and a conscious desire is given in several different ways in the chapter. There's blind impulse, unconscious urge, animal passions, etc. on one side and on the other such terms as purpose, decision, conscious motive, etc. Are all these more like facets of the same ideas, and if so, can we give names to the facets or do we even need to?
reply to Lori on Chapter One Universals
Excellent questions, Lori.
let me try to deal with each term in turn
"necessity" is not so much, I believe, a universal aspect of our inner life, but a mode of relationship between our I and an inner or outer experience. I "relate" to something as a "necessity", do I not? The quality is not there as a "necessary given" (a term from Theory of Knowledge), that is as something independent as a percept or experience. Do I experience "necessity", or do I choose to "relate" to something as a "necessity".
now reason, that is an interesting phenomena of mind. normally we sleep through when we reason, unless we are writing or have some other discipline by which our "reasoning" is expressed outwardly where we can observe its consequences. so Carl's "reasoning" appears in a series of statements or principles - which is kind of modeled on reasoning from axioms (like Euclid). Once you accept the "true value" of your axioms, you can make logical inferences and this we sometimes call "reason".
Coleridge made an interesting observation of the soul, and found these qualities: sense/fancy/understanding/understanding/imagination/reason. Two kinds of understanding, which in my view recognized the difference between generalized concepts (created by us out of our sense experience), and pure concepts (which have an independent existence, like the famous "triangle"). so I believe here Coleridge had a very different experience of "reason" than perhaps Carl does.
If, for example, we practice following a theme via Kuhlewind, then we might notice after a time that individual concepts have "natural" relationships with each other. You can't have the concept "in" for example, without implying the concept "out". It can be an interesting (and enlightening) exercise to bring a multitude of pure concepts into "contact" with each other and see if they harmonize (are in sympathy) or are dissonant (are in antipathy).
So for example, Carl at a meeting talked about the "mechanism" of the spiritual world. Everyone got immediately upset, because he put in the same sentence two words, which for the listeners couldn't be harmonized. He does that a lot, and we "react" to what to us is a dissonance, and which may be to him just be a clumsy metaphor.
Now my explorations of the thought world suggest that it is filled with natural harmony when one is doing "pure" thinking. That is concepts belong together, and we can feel this "belonging" as an aesthetic experience, which is why we often overreact to someone elses words, who may not be using them with the same meaning for which we use them. If we used those words, our experience of the concepts in the sentence (the concepts being the "meaning" of the words) reflects disharmony, so we react antipathetically.
For example, there are things you probably can't "think" as a farmer, because the concepts repell each other, and you would call this experience: "it makes no sense". All of us have this experience all the time, and it is (as far as I can determine) largely an aesthetic experience of the relationship of single concepts to other single concepts. Let's call this experience: "feeling in thinking". Now if we could allow that we want to use the term "reason" to refer to such an experience, then I would say this is probaby then one of those universal characteristics. If we use the term "reason" to refer to logical inferences from axioms, then I would say that that is not an experience, but something we do.
Anyway, through experiences like this I came to see "reason" as the activity of bringing concepts into harmonious relations. Further, that in pure thinking the thought world (the garment of Beings) was itself naturally filled with "reason" or what I have come to call: the logos organism of the world of thought. if Christ is present in the ethereal, then His "presence" makes the higher conceptual experiences "reasonable" in the highest (most truthful, most aesthetic, most good) sense.
now, as to "driving force". here I think we have to do with our unconscious and the work of the shadow. say we have a tendency to indulge in a bad temper with our children when we are tired. we experience this "driving force" this compulsion to act or think or feel in a certain way, and further that it seems to lie outside our conscious will. so I think this "force" begins as an experience, a percept of our soul life, and as we learn about our soul it moves from something we experience to something we will, which is the distinction you noted above in the last paragraph - a transformation from something about which we are unconscious into consciousness, and thus an arena where we can learn to be free.
I don't know if I've helped, but please respond, you asked such good questions and made similarly excellent observations.
joel
To Joel on universals
Hi Joel
Beginning at the beginning, because there's so much to think about in what you just wrote, you say: "necessity" is not so much, I believe, a universal aspect of our inner life, but a mode of relationship between our I and an inner or outer experience. I "relate" to something as a "necessity", do I not? The quality is not there as a "necessary given" (a term from Theory of Knowledge), that is as something independent as a percept or experience. Do I experience "necessity", or do I choose to "relate" to something as a "necessity".
So I take this to mean, a universal aspect is not a mode of relationship? If I look at the terms you list as universal aspects, for instance, "mental picture," I can try to figure out the difference based on that. A mental picture can be perceived as a picture in my mind. Necessity, because it's a relationship, is a concept instead of a percept. Is that what you mean?
This is curious, because it would seem that one would directly experience "necessity" in regards to survival, and yet something else seems to happen instead. The person experiencing extreme dehydration or hypothermia doesn't know what it is he needs. Before conditions get to that extreme state, one experiences something in the nature of a desire for the necessary thing. But it's not as if Necessity ever really shows its face.
So, I can experience a mental picture or a desire as a percept but not a necessity. Does this mean that by "universals" you mean percepts? Not ordinary percepts, perhaps, but experiences that can be perceived, that aren't just relationships.
At first I couldn't figure out what there could possibly be that I couldn't think as a farmer, but then I realized that there is one thing, and pardon me if I say it by way of illustration. When someone says that "biofuel is a step in the right direction" or any other sentence that implies that it is good, I feel those two concepts repel each other with such a strong force that they almost end up on other sides of the universe. And it's true what you say, that it's because I can't possibly, as someone who knows something about the land, think that thought. Whereas the other person doesn't attach the same meanings at all to the two concepts, and is bound to connect them from his point of view.
So now, if I call this experience (of feeling offended when someone makes such a statement) "feeling in thinking", I can see how everyone might have such an experience about something, and that this is why we have such a hard time understanding each other. But is that really eligible to be called "reason?" I guess it might be, in the sense that for each of us there are probably statements that seem "against all reason." We perceive the absence of reason, in an almost threatening way.
So far so good?
Words clothe meaning
Joel, I appreciate the aspects in your initiative that are visible to me. I know there is more to uncover so I share these thoughts from a transitory position. I have no evidence to challenge the scientific approach to introspection.
You have written elsewhere about the creative use of words and this seems to be a necessary part of the graft and craft of clothing sense-free percepts in human language. I see that harmony and dissonance are both essential in the lyrical music of converse. Modern composers remind us that we live in a time where dissonances often outnumber harmonies, and that our ear for music hears harmony in intervals that juddered dissonantly in the souls of our forebears - and also in our own during our previous visits to embodiment. Carl is a Schoenberg in his field.
Developing our ability to stand in the fiery dissonance of contradiction transfigures and enables us to receive new meanings and to shift our state of being into other landscapes.
I have biographical excuses - short trousers as school uniform - for feeling uncomfortable about trying to fit meaning into a uniformity of word-labels. In using language I tailor my own style of clothing to dress perceived meanings in sculptural forms for sharing. While I have mixed feelings about the spread of jargonising and cliches, they can also be used creatively to style fresh meanings. Tom has contributed a post on the role of folk spirits in language recently, and I cannot dismiss the earthly social requirement for consensual word usage. Language shapes the soul and the soul shapes the embodied manifestation of the folk spirit. Thus the folk spirit develops along with us - or not. The image of lively thoughts being dressed in the short trousers of a uniform science of introspection stands as a barrier to wholeheartedly saying yes to your proposal. Standard Lego pieces do not a Venus di Milo make. Perhaps this is not my country.
From another side it is proposed by various observers that the script of spirit language is universal. Are we ready to embody the universality of such language into the consensual use of terminology for introspection? This is a regal and ambitious ideal indeed.
I am creatively challenged to explore the dissonances here. Will our language rise towards more spiritualised science or will conformity ground the archangelic winged ones? What is the moral discipline we need to speak and let live language in human freedom? Let us discover what music develops.
senses
Hi
I would say it is like the song (can't recall who sang it off hand ..John Denver?!)
You fill up my senses like a night in the forest
Like a walk in the rain
Like a field in spring time
Come fill me again
Maybe it is our senses get filled up (with love) and then it is what Paracelus says '... but we will speak only of those things which are difficult and not to be grasped by the senses, but, indeed, which are almost contrary to the evidences of the senses'
Maybe ...
Joel's challenge
Joel, it's taken ages for a reply to arrive to your challenge. I was sure that I would have a reply, but it didn't come.
I think that Lori revealed the problem that was blocking me. Almost every word has its own precise meaning in its individual context, leaving us with a big dictionary, rather than a tidy jargon list.
However, it came to me that there are just a few key words, and perhaps if we limited our jargon to these then perhaps your suggestion could take flight.
I think they are:
I there is agreement about that list, then perhaps we could work through definitions of each in turn?
S.
Joel's list
I think it is a great idea, Joel and I like the way you framed it a lot.
I'd be interested in reading people's inner observations of the tearing of Man that Steiner speaks of in Chapter 1:
unfortunately, we have torn into two what is really an inseparable whole: Man.
I also think that his use of "emerge" and "arise" are very interesting in the following section of text.
If without my co-operation, a rational decision emerges in me with the same necessity with which hunger and thirst arise, then I must needs obey it, and my freedom is an illusion.
You know how you can all of a sudden realize that you are hungry? Or how you can all of a sudden realize something you must do, something you might not have even been thinking about? I think this sort of "emergence" is a very important event to study phenomenologically. I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion of his quote, but I'm grateful that he put the question the way he did.
Finally, I would also want to include on our list "must" and "feeling" as used in the following:
That we are dealing here with one of the most important questions for life, religion, conduct, science, must be felt by anyone who includes any degree of thoroughness at all in his make-up.
Is this "feeling" the same kind he will define more explicitly in chapter 3, or is it more like the kind of feeling he will talk about in chapter 2? More importantly, it would be good to know how/if readers of PoF are conscious of this type of feeling in themselves. And then to differentiate the feeling itself from the "must" would seem to me to be very important with really getting at what he is saying here. I could imagine somebody having one without the other; feeling the intensity of the question but not assuming the "must", or assuming the "must" quite fiercly without really having had the "feeling" of the question....
Jeff
Ralph Emerson
Hi everyone
This is such a wonderful part of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Over-soul
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
and from Rudolf Steiner;
If the I is to perceive itself, it cannot surrender itself. In order to be conscious of its own being it must first use inner activity to lift its being up out of its own depths.
Just a few words this day.
Love.
Over-Soul
Thank you for this inspiration Caryn.
I had not found my way to this essay before. It is here in its entirety.
Nice Thread
This is great guys - thanks everyone!
weavings
Let me see if I can weave together the quite different expressions so far offered. Hopefully, I haven't too far misinterpreted what has been written, or overlooked something essential that was intended to be included.
I first suggested we look at Chapter One and see what within it could be seen as universal qualities of our inwardness. I nominated five: want, desire, mental picture, motive and thinking. Lori wondered about: necessity, reason and driving force.
I tried to nuance this with suggesting that it might depend somewhat on how your looked or related to something, such that reason in one instance might be a percept (experience), and in another not. Lori then rightly raised the question of whether a percept is a universal that can be observed in our inwardness. I had also developed the idea of harmony and dissonance in thought, to which John Ralph replied with the idea that dissonance also needed to be seen as a significant experience.
John Ralph also brought in the idea of a "spiritual language" which somehow means something more and asks this significant question: "From another side it is proposed by various observers that the script of spirit language is universal. Are we ready to embody the universality of such language into the consensual use of terminology for introspection? This is a regal and ambitious ideal indeed."
Then the circle of conversation seemed to move quite a distantance away, with Caryn Louise's post "senses", yet linking itself to the musical theme as well (John Denver's "Annie's Song"). She then turns us to Paracelsus and the question of what happens within when we try to grasp what the senses cannot (our search for inward universals?).
Sebastian then gives us a very concrete list: Thinking, Feeling, Willing ,Percept, Concept, Knowledge, Consciousness.
Jeff adds: emerge, arise, must and felt as objects for our attention. And Caryn Louise gives us some Emerson, and the idea that the soul is everything we see united in one, while Steiner says in order to experience the I we must lift it out of its own depths by inner activity.
Is there a whole here?
Perhaps not quite yet, but closer. Years ago, following an indication of Kuhlewind, I meditated for a time on the parts of speech: articles, nouns, adverbs, verbs, adjectives. prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. It appeared to me after a while that there was in these an order of higher and higher abstraction, seen from one point of view. An article, for example "a" can be felt in mediation is highly abstract, while a noun, such as "noun" (being a name) is very concrete. We also might perceive a kind of gesture of movement in the various parts of speech. Some are at rest "a", others more active "this", which is a kind of finger pointing, and then the prepositions such as "in" which are very dynamic and have to include their opposite ("out").
Terms or words then are filled with very simple qualities (for example I have come to give to thinking the following qualities with respect to the subject object relationship: thinking about, thinking with, thinking within and thinking as).
Words are what we have to use when describing to each other our experience, so with regard to introspection and the search there for universals ( a universal being something shared by all of us), we have above (if you will read through the various offerings) many nouns - that is names of "things" or objects of experience (want, desire, driving force), which yet often refer to something itself which is activity (emerge, arise). Some expressions concerned very narrow experiences (necessity) and others quite huge (consciousness).
In this discussion, we have not just written our thoughts, but the thoughts themselves reflect a variety of inner processes (association, concreteness, abstraction and so forth). What do we show of ourselves in these inner processes, and what of that which we show is itself representative of universals?
To not get too unfocused, I urge the next round to try to remain with what has so far been written, and to try to carry that further. Lori reflecting on Sebastion for example, and how that might connect to Caryn Louise or some such.
many thanks to those participating,
joel
Tangled in the Threads
I must admit I'm totally confused now. Originally I was drawn to the idea of finding "building blocks" of some kind in Chapter One. But I still am not clear on what "universals" are. I have a vague abstract knowledge of the term but that's not enough. In fact, vague abstract ideas bother me. (I think this may be the "dissonance" John speaks of.)
I was curious, in the light of Jeffrey's comment on "emerge" and "arise", what the German original said. To my surprise, the sentence is structured quite differently and there is no second verb. So this is the translator's creativity and perhaps really the two words are just an attempt to avoid repetition.
I like the idea of finding out what's really going on in this thread of comments, and if that's what we have decided to do, that's fine. John and Sebastian both brought up the idea of "jargon." I'm not sure how to think of this term in a positive light. I use it only negatively, to mean a kind of shortcut language that defines an in-group and excludes others. On the other hand Joel suggested we express what words mean, rather than define them. So I'm a little confused about that too. I don't think that words such as "desire" or "consciousness" are in any serious danger of becoming jargon anyway. They're too widely used.
Jargon!
Jargon is only excluding to those that don't know it. Those that do know it use it to communicate more efficiently and effectively. Jargon itself has no moral value, but the actions of people using it can have. If a group uses their jargon as part of imposing, maintaining and building their power then - as has happened - people have a negative experience of it and it develops a bad reputation. However, taking away the jargon would only cause the people involved to find a new way of asserting themselves. Jargon is a symptom of power abuse, not power abuse itself. My company has lots of jargon, but we have an induction process that allows new work colleagues, to learn the company's jargon, which gets them up to speed. However, its one of those things that is always chaning so we have to be vigalent to be aware of what our "now" jargon is - there is no point in teaching the old jargon.
Jargon is terminology that relates to a specific activity, profession or group. Much like slang it develops as a kind of shorthand, to express ideas that are frequently discussed between members of a group. In many cases a standard term may be given a more precise or specialized usage among practicioners of a field. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon
The thinking behind my contribution was to try to bring clarity to what we mean by certain words that we use in the context of POF that may well be very widely used, with many different meanings. Communication would be easy if it wasn't for the words!
S-)
Thanks, Sebastian. I'll
Thanks, Sebastian. I'll try to lose my negativity about that word. That is, I'll retain the antipathy, because that's just another bit of information, but not let it direct me one way or another, or cause me to break out in hives...
I suppose what we want to do is not so much to develop a specialized vocabulary as it is to develop a more precise understanding of what certain important words mean in order to accomplish what we want to do here. So that would be just as the Wikipedia definition says.
Lori, don't you spend gobs
Lori, don't you spend gobs of time in Santa Cruz? I lived there for 5 years. Has the word "consciousness" stopped being used as jargon? But I know what you mean. In terms of "emerge" and "arise", I'm assuming that Steiner wasn't needing those to be different words. I pointed to them because it think those words point to the least developed aspects of PoF study. I'm happy that he uses them up front in the book because it gives the reader an opportunity to sink into his or her own experience and really notice what "arising" is like. Many of the concepts Steiner use in PoF imply actions that work against my experiences of "arising", especially in regards to the arising and emerging of ideas, concepts and intuitions. The potential of the project Joel has laid out is that each of us could chip away at whatever lingering metaphysical ways of thinking we bring to the book. And, yes, in my opinion the book itself gives us the tools to chip away it its own less than phenomenological terms and phrases. That's one of the things I think is so special about the book. Here in Springfield the word "desire" is almost only jargon. With books like "The Laws of Attraction" teaching us how to use our desire to get everything we could possibily dream of....you constantly hear people saying things like, "I need to work on my desiring of that with more focus and intention" Boy, if you think I can annoy PoF readers by applying the book to itself, you should listen to the conversations I get to have up here with people who practice the Law of Attraction. I've stuided the main texts enough to apply the terms to themselves. I don't do it lightly. I actually think the Law of Attraction (if made consistent with itself) is a beauitful rendition of where PoF touches the manifest world. However, as it stand now, The Law of Attraction will need to stay in a distorted and highly egoic and exaggerated form to keep the books selling. Good day to you , Lori Jeff
What's the Buzz?
Hi Jeff
You're right about the word "consciousness " being used as a kind of new-age buzz-word. And something funny just struck me: somehow I can almost always tell (at least I think I can) how a word like that is being used, if it's being used as a buzz-word or a real word. My irritation meter is finely attuned to such things. "Spiritual" is another such word. I recall an incident when I first came to Santa Cruz many years ago. A fellow walked up to the bus stop where I was waiting and asked, "Do you have any sense of when the bus is coming?" I always thought that was a funny Santa Cruz story!
So perhaps I'm really confusing "jargon" with "buzz-words," when they may not be the same thing at all. Buzz-words, like "desire" as your illustration demonstrates, reveal where people are not thinking.
abstract thinking
Thanks for the full poem John, it is wonderful.
Hi Joel, how are you sir? Lori - hi there
If I may give my thoughts on the term 'abstract' thinking. Abstract thinking is really the language of the poets. Poetry talks to our souls and moves our souls towards life, light and love. Everyday slang terminology does not talk to our soul - however everyday conversation does have meaning and words said are not without purpose. General conversation might be called the music cue sheet and abstract thinking or conversation is the performance of the music. Carl posted writings both on conversational Art and Love. Both are abstract and can only be defined and experienced by individual perception. The story of the man asking 'have you a sense of when the bus is coming' I reckon is great! He is not talking to the time he is talking to the soul and the soul would leap up sniff the air and could say 'just about here'! Abstract thinking is also the language of the Spirits - Spirits removed from our earthly realm move in organic spheres and so maybe we could say abstract thinking is organic ...
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