Joel, thanks for waiting; i had to put off my questions here for a couple days, but now I'm ready. This post is an attempt to become more clear about your language. It's part of a more general interest I have which has to do with various kinds of conversations taking place in anthroland that aren't distinguished. I muddle through the first couple paragraphs but then I think my question gets more clear. Thanks:::::::::

In order to make my question clear it might be helpful to share a bit of the kind of experiencing from which I ask it.

I have experiences of normal thinking, day to day figuring things out, working on a particular problem or whatever. I also have experience aren’t normal. These latter thinkings are more fluid and while they require “me” to be there, the experience is that I am listening/watching more than “doing”. The former thinking mostly happens in bits whereas the latter thinking moves in wholes. I never want to assume a similarity between my experiences and others, but I might guess that this latter experience I am talking about shares qualities of what you referred to as your experience of a living thinking; it’s a very moving experience, to say the least.

This latter experience has a clarity (at times) that is dynamic and not reducible to the daily type concept. It can be spoken in daily concepts, but it often requires a reworking of these in a creative manner so that they can say something new, something fresh. My day to day thinking has the appearances of being “mine”, whereas this latter thinking is really something that comes through me yet requires my witnessing. I understand the point of PoF though this latter experience. It brings a conviction of my being (as no longer “me”) that has no need for dialectical reasoning yet is not at odds with the healthy role of that type of thinking either; in fact it depends upon dialectial modalities to incarnate in speech.

I share this because it is where I feel resonance with some of your descriptions of how you go about your particular field of study. I’ve told you this before, but often when reading your work on the social you are able to bring new life to old terms in a way that calls upon my own experience living thinking. When I am most understanding some of your social writings I notice that I am going down into that current of cognitive living that brings participated images and meanings.

There is conventional conversation; this is just two people talking about something.

And there is a different kind of conversation that has more to do with sharing research. In this kind one is putting one’s attention differently on what is being said and how it is being said.

If I am in a conventional conversation and I say to my friend, “I think that situation is like being on Mars”….that is ok that I’ve never been on Mars. It is not violating any hidden contract. In fact the metaphor might even be considered “accurate”…

However, to say that statement in a scientific context takes on a whole new meaning. Unless you can show that your use of “being on Mars” is not a metaphor, your statement will be considered, at best, interesting.

So I’ve loosely set up two types of conversations, each can treat language very differently; each is required to treat words and descriptions very differently.

Spiritual science is tricky. It gets really smart and creative thinkers to use words as if they are describing objects of perception. My concern is not in how Steiner’s lexicon has been absorbed it the conventional speech of those who admire and/or find inspiration in his spiritual stature and example. I’m concerned about the tricky area in which language is being used by those who speaking in a context that presupposes the words and descriptions were gained in experience.

If I read Joel say:

Our state of being in higher devachan, and the nature of our perceptions, is nothing like how we view matters from the point of view of earthly consciousness.

Is there any reason I should not take that at face value; as if you had told me what it is like in India or Missouri?

No child (star-spirit) incarnates to be abused because there is nothing in their experience at the Midnight Hour which makes such questions as to which parents and the like that has anything at all to do with such set of conceptions
("being abused").

If a regular scientist uses qualifiers such as “no” or “nothing” or “always” there is the assumption that he or she has so thoroughly researched that particular field under so many conditions that he or she is feeling safe making such a statement. In spiritual science this should be the same. I should read what you wrote and imagine that you (at least in your own mind) have studied the Midnight Hour experience, that you have studied a wide sample of pre-birth experiences and compared them to each other- so many that you can say no spirit incarnates to be abused….In normal science (which I am not elevating at all) you can (ideally) comfortably ask questions like, “What population were you studying to come up this that data”… When I read what you said above, I immediately became curious who your subjects were; who’s midnight experiences were you tracking? Where they contemporaries, were they taking place now or were they historical (perhaps you studied a series of your own midnight experiences)? I noticed that I felt uncomfortable asking you this…..why? It is just a valid question that a researcher would look forward to talking about. On the one hand, I’m sure you look forward to talking about how you came to know such things as The Midnight Hour (I’ve only read about it in Steiner) I realize that there is no reason spiritual science should be more obscure than normal modern science. I should feel freer to know about the ground floor of your statements. If you talk about social structures as objects of study, I have reference experiences. If you talk about Michael slaying the Dragon in 1879, I only have mental pictures I made while reading Steiner (or cultural mental pictures that I later associated with the Steiner dragon slaying mental pictures: like when after reading Steiner’s statements I then associate events in culture and science that took place shortly after 1879 with Steiner’s descriptions: Frege’s Logical Theory)

When I read your descriptions:

Now the details are also not so much in the consciousness of the incarnating spirit either. Communities of Spiritual Beings have, for example, during the excarnation process relieved the excarnating spirit of much of its burdens. Unredeemed astrality is left behind and held by these Beings so that at the Midnight Hour we are entirley free of any dross at all. Only on the descent into incarnation are various difficult tendencies added to the astral body that will later be reflected in karma.

Now I could say most of that from what I’ve read in Steiner, but it does not appear that you are having that kind of conversation. This is why it appears that you are inviting a whole other set of questions. I don’t need to limit myself to asking you to explain how Steiner saw trails of astrality happening if you research “astrality trails” on your own. I am also aware that I might be misreading your entire post; perhaps you are assuming that the reader knows you are combining Steiner mental pictures with a later point you want to make that IS based on your direct experience. This is most common in anthroposophy: a teacher has his or her own point and often sets it up or compliments it with mental pictures shared by Steiner; because the Steiner terms (Thrones, astral body, pre-birth experiences) make a kind of sense to the teacher, it can get fuzzy when they are unqualified. But if the context is not merely conventional conversation but a sharing of research, this fuzz is an important point to pause and get clear.

Joel, in the post to which I am responding, would you be willing to take some time and help me know the nature of the various kinds of factual claims you are making. This type of clarification would help me then re-read it in a manner that lets me stay in touch with your meaning as I go along, gulp