Dear Carl,

Ordinarily I ignore some of the more blatent and outrageous statements you make, which are clearly coming from some place of either cultivated or accidental ignorance.  Sometimes, however, the matter is so acute and central to the purposes of this website, that the confusions you spread have to be vigorously opposed.

For example, you speak of introspection as not real, yet (and this is surprising from one who claims to be quite familiar with PoF) you seemed not to have noticed that the subtitle to the book is: "some results of introspection following the methods of natural science".

You also in your most recent post above describe this path of PoF as intellectual.  This also is not true, although it would be easier to deal with if you didn't try to act like you know everything when you write.  If you were less certain in your pronouncements, it would be easier to forgive what seems to be simple ignorance rooted in a lack of experience.

PoF is actually a training of the will-in-thinking.  Proceeding step by step through the book, as Steiner asks us to, we face two kinds of tasks.  One task is that in order to actually understand the points being made we have to turn to introspection, because the content can't really be understood in the absence of the experience being described.  So in the beginning where he wants us to ask questions about whether we can want what we want, in order to really appreciate what is being said we have to pay attention to those inner processes of soul connected to desire.  Not everyone does this of course, and in skipping this step they do "intellectualize" the content of the book and miss out on the will training aspect.

The second task is kind of hierarchical in nature.  Each step is a bit harder than the one before, so that the will in dealing with the subject matter (actually thinking it both as to its meaning-concept and as to the actual experience we can have of the soul - an introspection of the inner percept), this will has to apply itself with ever greater clarity and (for lack of a better term) force.  Force is a difficult word to use here, because the will-in-thinking (the attention and the intention) do get stronger in a way, but this strength comes from changes in the quality of the will as expressed by the I.  It is a little bit as Tom points out above in quotes from Steiner about a gymnast exercising their limbs.  The will-in-thinking is a kind of spiritual limb, and by use it becomes able to do more as each chapter is fully worked out.  My own experience is that the will-in-thinking so trained is actually a kind of artist of thought, a kind of sculptor.

There are also pit falls that can be experienced.  The developments offered by PoF don't run in a straight line, as much as we might like.  For example, once we start to become introspectively awake to the influence of feelings on the content of our thoughts, a whole other set of problems appears.

Carl, if you continue in this vein (spouting clearly outrageous and erroneous material about PoF for whatever reasons you feel justify this activity), I will be asking the community to consider asking Tom to take away your privileges to post here.  This is a place of serious conversation about what is probably one of the most important books ever written in this phase of the Evolution of Consciousness, and someone who is so negative and mal-intented has to be seen as having given over something in their soul to the opponents of the advancement of human spiritual life.

That needs to be said to you for your own benefit; and, if you persist there have to be consequences (for the benefit of the naive that come here expecting - justly - some aid and illumination in their own spiritual striving.  As far as I am concerned you have crossed the line already, but perhaps you are not entirely asleep and willing to admit that you actually don't know what you have been pretending to know.

still your friend,

joel