Sorry to be impolite again, but this does not seem right to me. I am no fan of mysticism spirituality but this seems a misrepresentation. I don’t know if you are going to publish this comment, but you said the other day that you read all the comments. I have written it only for you.
For years, I have thought that many of your posts are comments to «The Master and His Emissary » book. I really think that you would benefit immensely if you read it, because your ideas are similar. It is a long book but there are some summaries at the Orthosphere to begin with.
The book explains that there are two ways of understanding reality: the left hemisphere’s way is a view focused on logic, language, ideas, coherence, dividing the reality into pieces and analyzing it. This is what we activate in all these intellectual activities: such as reading, thinking about ideas, writing, etc. The inner monologue is part of this.
The right hemisphere sees reality in an non-linguistic, holistic way and focuses on correspondence instead of coherence between different ideas. Contemplating a picture or a landscape without inner monologue is an example. Listening to classical music without trying to understand it and analyze it. Mysticism. This can produce feelings (as logical thoughts do) but it is not a set of feelings.
Both hemispheres are part of the neocortex and are different from feelings which are mediated with more primitives parts of the brain – the limbic system (disclaimer: I am a dualist: I don’t think that mind reduces to the brain, but the brain influences the mind. I also think that I am giving a simplified view and there are a lots of caveats, but this is a combox, not a book)
The thesis of the book is that the right hemisphere was once dominant and the left hemisphere was called to solve intellectual problems. I see this in the old peasants of my country: they don’t think much, they contemplate a lot more.
But Western civilization has been the history of the coup d’état of the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. You see the increasing importance of the left hemisphere throughout the time. Aquinas is more brainy than St. Augustine, where you see the thirst for God but Aquinas reads like a textbook (he had personal contemplation before the Eucharist but he does not reflect this in his texts, so the two hemispheres are separated while they were more integrated in Saint Augustine).
Then, the left hemisphere separates itself from reality and the right hemisphere, rejects contemplation, creates a virtual world and thinks it is the real world. The so-called Enlightenment thinks «all men are equal», for example. Then, in our times, you can be labelled a hate criminal if you report what is before your eyes, instead of the virtual world created by the left hemisphere of our intellectuals, where gender is fluid.
Mysticism aims at disconnecting the left hemisphere for a while to enjoy the holistic perspective of the right hemisphere. It is like closing your eyes to concentrate on listening to music. This is more necessary because, in our lives, the left hemisphere has total control and it takes a lot of effort for it not to drown the perspective of the right hemisphere. It is not about feelings, although it can produce feelings, as ideas do. It is about the holistic understanding of reality.
For you, Steiner and me, who are «brainy» people, this is very difficult. I admit I find it very difficult to contemplate, to stop my inner monologue, my analyzing of things. I can maintain it only for a few seconds. I don’t know about you but your spiritual activity seems to be writing in notebooks, thinking about ideas, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but there are other ways to spirituality and we should not reject what we cannot understand or replicate.
Then, why is Eastern mysticism a support to our modern nihilistic materialism? The key word is «Eastern». If you want mysticism, you don’t have to travel to cultures that are the most alien to Western culture. You have mysticism in the Christian tradition. In the Middle Ages, we have several examples of Christian mystics we can rely on. Afterwards, we have Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross and more. Even the Sufi mysticism of Islam is closer to home than Eastern spirituality.
The reason is that Buddhism is nihilistic at core, the same way as materialism is. Buddhism rises in an age of decadence, like ours. Buddhism denies gods as irrelevant, does not think that happiness is achievable (so the only goal is the elimination of suffering), does not think that individual persons are real so the only goal is to flee from reality (which is not real) and stop existing in a nirvana. There is only one non-nihilistic concept, which is the Ultimate Reality, the Absolute, but everything else is nihilistic. The nihilism of Buddhism reaches its limits in Zen Buddhism, where the Ultimate Reality is Nothing.
Buddhism is simply a non-materialist nihilism. It is nihilism when you don’t believe in materialism. In fact, it is not compatible with our modern materialist nihilism, because of the difference of opinions in materialism. This is why it is adapted to Western modes of thought. If you have Buddhism and take the non-materialist doctrine, then contemplation goes FROM being a way to connect to Ultimate Reality TO being a psychological technique to get peace of mind. This is why Buddhism is converted into New Age thinking, mindfulness or other materialist adaptations to use it in our Western context. You never see Buddhism in pure form. «Eastern spirituality» used in the West should be called «Western materialist adaptations to Eastern spirituality».
But we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that Western materialist adaptations to Eastern mysticism are wrong and support materialism does not mean that every mysticism does it. This is why I think Steiner is wrong in this topic.