What causes the experience of sensory perception?
Experiences from the anthroposophical path of spiritual knowledge.
The introduction of pathiaesthesia concept
According
to the current, prevailing neuroscientific paradigm, both the content of
consciousness and the level of consciousness are considered to be based on a
biological foundation. Pragmatically, assumptions that can be tested by the
scientific methods are favored in the layout of the questions. This model
states that the traditional concept of a separate conscious spirit in addition
to physical body, have been rejected. However, there is a long tradition of otherwordly
spiritual reality. The balance of the hard problem of the philosophy of
consciousness (1) has moved from dualism to monism ontologically. Each of us
begins and continues to conceive existence from the building blocks he has come
across in his life. In my youth, the undersigned has become familiar with a
dualistic – to be more specific, pluralistic - discipline, which is still being
supported, namely theosophy and the closely associated ideologies of Rosicrucianism
and Rudolf Steiner´s anthroposophy. These doctrines advise on how to learn to
perceive the supernatural spiritual world.
To begin
with, I'll tell about the theosophical world view from the viewpoint of perception.
Next, I’ll move on to the spiritual exercises described by Steiner in order to revive
the supernatural means to observe the spiritual world. I publish my own results,
the material of which has been gathered mainly about 50 years ago. I have not
previously published results in a written form. I have already analyzed the
results of the research when collecting the data of my introspection research
and shortly thereafter. The main conclusions have not changed over the decades.
In the reflection section, I’ll look at recent concepts of neuroscience concerning
conscious perception experiences and compare these concepts with my original
conclusions, as well as with rosicrucian and anthroposophical views. The
unrestrained development of the 21st century neuroscience has opened up new
perspectives for explaining the conscious perception.
It can’t be
taken for granted that someone should start and continue to study consciousness.
One has to have some reasons for this kind of enterprise. A reader of this article
presumably wonders the undersigned’s reasons. Although these reasons are beyond the scope of
the present topic, I want to mention one apparently deterministic item, namely the
intensive, overwhelming sense of being alive and experiencing the undersigned have
undergone repeatedly.
Dualism in Theosophy and Anthroposophy
According
to the theosophical and anthroposophical world view, the world of emotion and
thought are concrete and objective facts. We not only subjectively feel and
think, but our feelings and thoughts can also be the subject of other people's
observations directly. We can, under certain conditions, look directly at
others' feelings and thoughts, not just by deducting one's behavior or
listening to his speech or reading his writings. Directly, without the physical
means, the received information can be perception, "vibration", for
example sympathy or antipathy, hearing the "inner" voice or seeing with
the eyes of the soul.
Theosophy
and anthroposophy teach that we will develop new senses according to nature in
the future: clairaudience and clairvoyance in the far distant future. However,
we can develop these senses previously, even in this life, with active exercise
and ethical living. Many theosophical teachers have explained these exercises.
To my knowledge, Steiner's Book “The path of Spiritual Knowledge” has been
published in Finnish more than a hundred years ago in 1912. The undersigned
found Reijo Wilenius’ and Katri Sorma's Finnish version. The title of the book
is "How to achieve knowledge of the higher worlds" and it was published
in 1968, shortly before I bought it. The English translation can be found at attached
internet site (2). I began the experiment intensively, with enthusiasm and
excitement. I completely trusted the instructor's personal knowledge of the
item and his sincerity. The basic ethical conditions I kept in mind. In
addition to Steiner, these ethical terms were offered by other theosophical
literature and by Ernest Wood's "Yoga" book. The latter also deals
with meditation exercises I conducted according to the instructions given.
Steiner’s training instructions and the presentation of the supposed results of the training
Steiner
presents spiritual life and knowledge in three stages: preparation, illumination,
and initiation. Each stage includes exercises. I'll look at each step
separately in next chapters.
I.
Initially, at the preparation stage, he calls for our attention to be paid to
sprouting, growing and flourishing life and, on the other hand, to wilting, fading
and dying. These phenomena, he claims, are associated with a certain form of
emotion, spiritual lines and patterns that always appear in the same phenomena
in the same way and in the same way to different persons. The objects of these
observations are thus objective facts. In my opinion, the terms emotional form
and mental lines and patterns were difficult to understand as ideas. We are
used to the thought that a feeling is a feeling and it is not associated with a
concept in two- or three-dimensional world. In other words, the shape is a
visually perceptible part of two- or three-dimensional space, and it is not
associated with the basic concept of subjective emotion. In thoughts, of
course, we can create any kind of forms by the eyes of our soul. The end
product, the form, is mental or spiritual, but the form is an object and the
subject’s emotion is a separate concept.
As a
practical exercise, an object is examined visually, the idea of growing is
created in the mind, then one should be devoted to the feeling brought by the process
of growing, and then forms and lines should be observed. Thus, when we are
studying a concrete object, the process goes: first an experience of visual
perception → a thought → an emotion → an experience of visual perception. If I
have correctly understood, when studying an abstract case: first idea, which
does not have a shape → an emotion → an experience of visual perception. Thus,
the feeling is followed by a vision that is not a vision of the physical world,
but a vision of via the spiritual eyes. Steiner emphasizes that one should not ponder
a longer time about what this or that fact means, nor should one try at all by
speculative mind to find out what these things mean. Getting acquainted with
the higher worlds begins when the student is convinced of the reality of the feelings
and the thoughts.
II. The
pupil should pay her attention to the sounds. She should take a stand that the
voice brings knowledge from the outside world of the human self. She should put
her soul to what kind of emotion the producer of the sound expresses out of
herself. Observation concerns both living and inanimate nature. In The exercise
develops the auditory sense of the soul.
III.
Particular attention should be paid to the way in which other people are
listened to; one should refrain from criticizing and should lean on the audible
attitude. The practice awakens the ability to perceive the inner word. Higher
beings speak to the disciple precisely through the inner word that the physical
ear cannot hear. Thus, it is the transfer of ideas and thoughts from a higher
being to a human being. According to Steiner, internal words are not just
ideas, but also have power. He would mean that power is something that causes
something. Thus, the spiritual inner word can be divided into parts: idea and
power.
IV. During
the illumination phase, the pupil must compare a stone and an animal. How they
differ from each other in terms of the ability to move. The movement of an
animal is caused by desire, the shape of the stone is shaped by the power of
indifference. Such exercises should awaken emotional species that are different
in an animal and in a plant. These feelings can also wake up without an
external object. Such feelings, and thoughts associated with them, develop spiritual
eyes that add color to the shapes of observed during the preparation stage. The
term color indicates roughly the quality of the observation. From a stone flows
blue or purple, from an animal red or reddish yellow and from a vegetable
green, which turns into an ethereal rose. Color nuances appear on a large
scale. When one has attained the ability to see with the spiritual eye, at some
point he also encounters higher or lower beings that are not in the physical
world.
V. Take a seed
before you. You have to imagine its color and shape and imagine the plant growing
from the seed as an adult. Then you have to think that the imagined is
accomplished by the power of the earth and the light, but an artificial seed
could not accomplish the imagined, only a real seed. One has to create the idea
that the invisible becomes visible and remain in this thought. By this way, you
can feel by yourself a certain power, which produces a sensory-spiritual flame,
a bluish-red middle and a blue edge.
VI. Next,
focus on the flourishing plant and think it will die, but there is something in
the plant that prevents it from disappearing, it forms seeds. The prevention of
disappearing results in a feeling that turns into a new perception that
resembles physical coloration; a flame formation whose center is greenish-blue
and the edges are yellow-red. These exercises do not only see the present state
of the objects but also the beginning and the end state. One should not just
imagine the seeds and the plant, that is to say, create them yourself, but it
is essential that reality creates observations in me.
VII. The
next step is to think of a person whom you have sometimes found longing for
something. Attention must be paid to this desire at the moment when it is at
its most intense, and it is still uncertain whether the person would obtain the
object of his desire. When there is as much inner peace as possible in mind,
the image creates in the soul a feeling that grows in the soul to a force,
which in turn becomes a spiritual perception of the soul of another person. A
magnificent astral image rises in the field of view. The center creates a
feeling of yellowish-red and it looks reddish blue or bluish-red at its edges.
VIII. As an
addition to the exercise, you should pay attention to a person who has obtained
the object of his or her desire. In this case you will experience a spiritual
flame formation, the center of which feels yellow and the edges are greenish.
My results and critical comments
I tried my
best to understand and follow the instructions. Initially there is an object,
either a concrete object or an imagined object or an abstract concept. Then,
you should try to be just a receiving observer without your own emotions or
prejudices; let the object flow into you information that is expressed only as
emotion or lines and patterns, or in particular as a feeling of color. The
feeling of color is, to be precise, understood as seeing the color, and the
text often refers to seeing color. On the other hand, it could be understood
that the feeling is similar to the feeling that a particular color awakens in
us. Thus, we would compare the feeling of a matter in question with that of a
particular color; if we found it to be similar to, for example, a red-awakened
feeling, we would call the result red. In this case, we should have a really
wide range of different emotions that match different colors and their
intensities. However, I could not imagine myself - and hardly anything else -
to have the enormous scale of emotion needed and thus excluded this
interpretation. I concluded that the end result is experience of shape and/or
color. I practiced closely but I experienced no emotion or color or shape
perception.
I changed
the exercise so that I created the feeling I imagined the object should
generate. Even this training did not generate a color-form perception despite
numerous attempts. In the next step I imagined the color that should be
detected. In this case I was able to perceive, I could experience, I could see
just like by my physical eyes, the color, the color combinations and shapes I
had chosen. It is quite easy to combine a specific concept and an appropriate
color-form combination and learn to remember what color-form combination
appears when you think about the chosen thing. I increased to a thing or a
color-form combination, I have chosen, an emotion and the intensity of the color
increased amazingly. As a good example of the increase in intensity of colors
in physical world, one could say, for example, is the color saturation of a
planed wood board that emerges by the use of wood oil.
I was able
to attach to each idea what color, color intensity, shape and plastic movement
I just wanted. Sometimes I needed hardly a noticeable effort of will or an intention
of an effort of will, or it was enough to draw attention to an internal or
external object, to create an inner color experience. Eventually, the
color-shaped video could start completely spontaneously. Likewise, I could
learn, for example, the connection of certain red nuance to passion or pale blue
nuance to mental coldness, and the experience of color could be repeated when I
paid attention to that meaning.
In my own
meditation exercises, I tried to act either only as an insensitive receiver or as
an emotional receiver. However, I could not detect to appear information flow
that was different from information through physical senses; not from an
imagined or concrete object, not a type of sense perception or emotion or
meaning. I learned to listen to fellow people without preliminary appraisal or
prejudices, and tried to experience the experience of the speaker or the object
of my perception. I practiced both mere emphatizing or mere intellectual
analysis. The ability to experience empathy increased, but I found the negative
feelings and thoughts of others to be very strong and offensive and it was
difficult to subside back to a neutral state of the soul.
Color-form
films were not the only spontaneously occurring experiences, but I began to
hear the inner music that later evolved into a symphony music type. If the
music was over, it was only necessary to think of an instrument or a piece of
melody, and the musical performance continued. Both the color-form video and
the music were, in a sense, without referential meaning; wonderful performances
indeed, but no conceptual connection to the surrounding world.
Evaluation especially from neuroscientific viewpoints and discussion
In my
opinion, Steiner's way of using the power term is problematic; the feeling does
not become a force and further from force to spiritual perception. His text
implies conceptual confusion. Power refers to the concept that it changes
something to something but it does not change itself to some other concept.
Power, of course, can vary in magnitude. The feeling of power can certainly be
felt but it is a feeling and not a force. I do not know whether there is any
ambiguity in the terms of the original text or a blunder of translators. The
difficulty of defining the concepts and words used by Steiner and the deviation
from usual sense, blurs and makes it difficult to understand the things
presented, unfortunately.
Pekka
Ervast, a Finnish Rosicrucian, presents (Ervast 1960. Chapter VII, Värien ja
muotojen maalima,The World of Colors and Shapes) that the findings of different
clairvoyants from the same subject may be different. As an example, he mentions
that one clairvoyant can see red in the aura of a person and the other sees
green. Likewise, different clairvoyants may see the shapes in the aura of a
person differently. He interprets the differences in observations due to the
personal traits of clairvoyants; a person sees, hopes and admires something he
lacks. After a man has removed his personal feelings, he sees the right colors
and when he has cleansed his thoughts, he sees the right shapes. According to
Ervast, clairvoyance is about color and shape detection. The observation can
thus vary from a person to a person. Perceptions must be interpreted to
understand the significance of the observations. The interpretation must be
divided into the analysis of the properties of the object itself and, on the
other hand, the analysis of the observer's characteristics and, thirdly, the
analysis of the information transfer process. There is also a need for an
ontological (the doctrine of the ultimate quality of being) analysis of the
connection between feeling and color. Which one is primary, do they always
appear together, can there be a feeling without color, what is the emotional
and the color substance, etc.? Ervast argues that from one person flows
information to another person’s aura, the receiving person becomes conscious of
the information and the conscious interpretation of the information is color.
He does not clearly state whether the effect of the information is also a
conscious or unconscious feeling. If the effect is a conscious feeling, why is
color needed for interpretation? If the effect is unconscious, then the color
is more suitable for interpretation. But because color as such is not a
meaningful experience, it has to be transformed in consciousness into meaning
or feeling.
The
phenomenon of synaesthesia has been known in literature for centuries. The
phenomenon means perception in the area of one sense modality caused by
stimulation in the area of another sense modality. That is to say, for example,
hearing a sound, say C, causes the perception of blue. In synesthesia, a stimulus of single sensory
region (modality) is attached by a perception that has no counterpart in the
object. Additional perception may be within the same sensory region (modality)
or another sensory region. This kind of general form of synaesthesia is a color
that is automatically associated with a letter, number, day of the week, or
month. Traditionally, it has been thought that sensory stimulation produces a
perception that has no clear representation in the sensory object. More
detailed new studies have shown that this is not a so-called low-level
combination of perception experience, but rather a “higher” level idea theory;
discerning the idea, meaning, concept, intellectual state, event, thoughts,
moods, memories, or imagination in color. Mroczko-Wąsowicz and Nikolić have
published a scientific overview of semantic meanings in synesthesia (3). They
have come to the ideaesthesia theory that man is not a mechanical mirror, which
without distortion creates an image of an external reality. On the contrary,
the sensory sensation is subjected to the meaning experience that modifies the
sensory sensation. Numbers, letters, and time units are the most common forms
of synaesthesia. Such factors are, at least in Western countries, the first
truly abstract concepts a child must learn. In the learning process, in the
absence of a concrete object, the child creates an internal object - a color -
rather than a concrete object, when he has not yet learned thoughtfully
demanding abstract content. Thus, the synaesthetic integration facilitates the
transition from concrete thinking to abstract. Each synaesthetic has his own,
individual, usually quite narrow region of in the experienced world, idea-related
sense experience such as colors.
The main
purpose of my own research was to investigate, the perception outside physical
senses, about reality above material world. My meditation practice was designed
and performed for this particular purpose. In order to eliminate the effect of
a presumption on possible results, I did not initially read carefully or print
in my mind what color or shape should be observed. So the philosophical
bottom-up idea was that the object would produce a perception that would then
be given an interpretation. Because I didn't generate the observation, I tried
to imagine myself the concept-related observations. This way I came to
investigate the idea of synaesthesia, even though at that time I did not
understand I performed such research and I did not knew the whole concept. In
the ideaestesia, the philosophical foundation reverses the traditional from object
to observation model; in contrast the flow is from a concept to a perception.
In addition, according to an EEG-based study, the concept-based perception is
again interpreted as a significant new stimulus (8). I ended up with the same
interpretation as the ideaesthesia researchers, although I could not analyze my
findings very far. My crystallized conclusion was that I see what I imagine.
I am not the only one who has developed synaesthesic experiences. Adults can be trained to acquire synaesthetic experiences. A study published in 2014 shows how 13 university students acquired letter-color synestesia (9).
I am not the only one who has developed synaesthesic experiences. Adults can be trained to acquire synaesthetic experiences. A study published in 2014 shows how 13 university students acquired letter-color synestesia (9).
Activation
of the meaning of words or grammatical modifications can manifest as changes in
the saturation or luminosity of the experienced colors (3,4,5,6,7). The
undersigned experienced that color saturation and luminosity changed as a
function of intensity of emotion. Synaesthesia can be divided into a surface
projection, where the colors appear at the object and in the neighborhood
projection where the colors are located in the observer's immediate space. The
descriptions of Steiner and Ervast are about the surface projection, the
undersigned had both forms.
The
undersigned's studies deepened and made clearer concepts-based experiences of
phenomena, the perception of world, thinking and conceptualization. The title
of Steiner's book is strongly associated with the promise of knowledge of higher
world. I did not achieve the goal to get experiential knowledge of a higher
world in the sense the book means. The extent to which the failure to meet or
fail to comply with ethical terms have had an effect on the failure of
achieving the goal, has been excluded from the scope of this article. However,
I would like to mention that I tried to fulfill the conditions conscientiously.
Because I did not have enough references and I found the study as zero study
for I did not achieve the presumed results, I did not write my research report,
or even tell about my study. The new concept ideaesthesia combines my
experience with the experience and research of other researchers. For my part,
I would propose a new term to describe some of my own research results, namely
the term pathiaesthesia. The name is
due to the Greek words pathia,
feeling, and aesthesia, sensation.
Although the original goal did not materialize as described by Steiner, my
research, however, helps to grasp an understanding of how the biological system
can produce experience or how the monad of theosophy communicates with our
physical world and with the biological system. My study clarifies how the
conceptual network communicates with the sensory experience and figure out the
conceptual network’s role in the ability to be awake and act in the surrounding
world. The results did not reveal the actual transcendental world, as shown by
occultism, but they decipher the abstract world.
It is known
that sensory stimuli cause electrical impulses to the nerves. How impulses or
unknown parallels with impulses or independent unknown factors create consciousness
is still a big question mark. According to occultism, consciousness exists even
without the physical body. In contrast to Leibniz's windowless monads,
consciousness is considered, by occultism, also receiving information through
superphysical organs, and this information must be transformed in consciousness
into meanings, concepts and feelings. Certain mechanisms and laws must work in
this over-physical conversion process. In recent decades, the connection
between physical brain function and mental experiences, feelings and thoughts
has been explored in a variety of ways. Whatever the essence of the
"superphysical" brains is, philosophically the principle is the same
concerning physical and superphysical; an object triggers a stimulus, a
stimulus causes perception, in other worlds experience, and the higher form of
experience is the experience of meaning. In the case of ideaesthesia, the
situation is the opposite: the experience of meaning causes sense experience,
which can be mistakenly kept as a result of the stimulus created by an external
object.
As my
training progressed, the inner world, especially for sight and hearing
experiences, became very real. I could not doubt its reality. At best, the
inner world is more real and brighter than the physical world. I can very well
imagine that such intense experiences will entice you to interpret the cause of
the experience coming from the world around you, not from the experiencer self.
Faith, hope, and a firm belief in transcendental reality are capable of dazzle
other interpretations of the experience of the phenomenon. I looked at myself -
as today - as a seeker of truth, incorruptibly open to all interpretations.
With impartial, accurate observation and analysis, I became disappointed with a
different result than Steiner: my perception experience told me about myself,
not the outside world. In my view, the relationships of the connection of
colors and shapes to concepts described by Steiner and Ervast, can also be
explained by the ideaestesia.
Unlike the
interpretation of the synaesthesia researchers and the signer, Steiner and
Ervast consider visual perception to come from an external, supernatural object.
The interpretation of Steiner and Ervast can, of course, be correct but
sufficient explanation of their description, and from the findings of the
signer presented in this research report, is ideaestesia in which a person's
natural way to form concepts, the integral connection of concept formation to
sensory perception, modification of sensory perception, and the effect of
pre-assumption on sensory experience are essential. Although the phenomena
described by Steiner and Ervast are suited to the concept of ideaestesia, their
argument cannot be denied directly. My research did not support their understanding;
the interpretation remains open.
References:
Ervast, Pekka (1960). Salaperäinen ihminen. Ruusu-Risti
Helsingissä 1960. Hyvinkään Kirjapaino. Hyvinkää 1960.
Steiner, Rudolf (1968). Miten saavutetaan tietoa
korkeammista maailmoista. Suomalaisten Antroposofien Liitto. Helsinki. Vammalan
Kirjapaino Oy. Vammala 1968.
6. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01981.x?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&
8. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02103.x
9. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07089.pdf
9. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07089.pdf
