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.”