The Spiritual Science of Everyday Life
The Spiritual Science of Everyday Life
From our earliest years to our elderly years
Air
Fire
Water
Earth
Above
Below
F low of thinking and attention
Quality S olidifying, waiting, containing
Quality of directing, controlling, harmonising
F low of feeling and adaptability
A Western Magical Wheel
Mental/ thinking forces
Energy and growth
Place of the heart
Physical seeing within
East
South
West
North
A Native American Medicine Wheel
Carl Jung
Feeling is something ‘rationally’ weighed up – pleasant or unpleasant?
Thinking is to ‘rationally’ weigh up and link ideas, judge and understand
Intuition
Feeling
Thinking
Sensation
Intuition is perceived ‘out of the blue’ ‘irrationally’ as in no judging is involved
Sensation: the experience of our senses & ‘i rrational’ as in it just happens
mind
Rudolf Steiner
past future
memory
deep yearning
s o u l
enduring “I”
physical body
Inspirational body stream Formative body stream
judging
senses
intuition
past future
memory
deep yearning
s o u l
enduring “I”
physical body
Inspirational body stream Formative body stream
judging
senses
intuition
ARISTOTE LIA N PLATON I ST
LUCIFERIC
AHRIMANIC
0
7 14
21 28
#
35 42
49 56
63 70
77 84
1
8 15
22
# 29
36
# 43
50 57
64 71
78 85
2
9 16
#
23 30
37 44
51 58
65 72
79 86
3
10 17
2 4 31
38 45
52 59
66 73
80 87
4
11 18
#
25 32
39 46
53 60
67 74
81 88
5
12 19
26 33
40 47
54 61
68 75
82 89
6
13 20
27
34 41
48 55
62 69
76 83
90+
The Matrix
Nurtureculture
environment
Naturegeneticsheredity
v.
Behaviourists
Neuro-Cognitive
Quantum Mechanics
Psychodynamic
Social Constructionist
Biological-EvolutionaryHumanistic- . Phenomenological
Precise observation
Working of the brain
Interconnectedness
The unconscious
The world we live in
Evolution
The ‘self’
Memory in a Nutshell (1)“Encoding” what we sense
“Storage”
“Retrieval”
Sense impression>>>buffer>>>STM (usually less than 1 min.) >>>LTMnew/old----significance----brain health
Remembering – by recognition – by recall
Forgetting – the absence of “cues” confusion with another memory
displacement of information from STM repression / motivated forgetting
decay or “atrophy” of the memory “engram”
“buffer” “primarymemory”
“rehearsal” “compression”
“chunking”
“optimise “central capacity” executive”
“articulatory loop” “visuospatial sketch pad”
“audio-video information” “displacement”
“interference” “engram”
“Even though its common knowledge these days, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life –
all our feelings, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love life, our religious sentiments and even what each of us
regards as our own intimate private self – is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in your head, in your
brain. There is nothing else.”
Vilayanur S. Ramchandran, neuroscientist and Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, 2003 BBC Reith Lectures
“The events of inner experience become themselves explanatory causal constructs in their own right, interacting at their own level with their own laws and
dynamics.” Roger Sperry, 1981, Nobel Lecture
How do we explore the essence of memory, our thinking and consciousness – our activity of connecting the present with the past?
Who prompts ‘the brain into action’?
If things only exist when we observe them what happens to our memory when we forget? Does it not exist?
If we only become conscious of a memory when we experience it, where has it been hiding?
“How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality? Can human reason without experience discover by pure thinking properties of real things?” Albert Einstein, from Sidelights on Relativity, 1922
To discover the inner reality of memory, the mind, consciousness and “real things” –
as a spectator?
Or a player –
“I am involved in this.”