One practical first step toward the spiritual proprioceptivity you are describing is learning to recognize the characteristic tropes of AI-generated content before producing much of it ourselves. This applies to writing, image generation, music, video, design, research synthesis, and every other domain where generative systems now mediate human expression. For those already using these tools, it may require pausing long enough to study their habits more carefully, then returning to them with greater discipline.
Every generative AI system has default gestures. See https://tropes.fyi for a catalog of those most common to current LLMs. These signatures are the residue of systems optimized to satisfy at the mean of human preference. They are Ahrimanic in form even when the subject matter appears spiritual, organic, or humane to the untrained mind.
Someone who uses these tools without developing awareness of their tropological signatures risks losing craft, credibility, audience retention, and more. They begin laundering machine cognition through their own name and voice. Their aesthetic sense is often trained, very quickly, to accept electronic defaults as the norm of personal expression. Their judgment is softened by ease, titillation, and rapid dopamine hits. Their own work then reenters the cultural field and future training datasets as another piece of smoothed, derivative, machine-shaped material, further normalizing the cognitive habits they never learned to perceive.
This is why basic AI literacy now has to include trope recognition. We should be able to see the standard LLM essay structure, the synthetic image glow, the overdetermined symbolic collage, the bland cinematic prompt aesthetic, the statistically obvious chord resolution, the ersatz profundity. Many people already sense these signatures, with varying degrees of consciousness, and either engage such content differently or ignore it altogether.
If the hinge between AI-as-instrument and AI-as-substitute is the inner development of the person holding it, then recognizing the instrument’s characteristic deformations is a prerequisite for holding it consciously. The danger is that it will train people to stop noticing when their own expressive faculties have been replaced by the most Ahrimanic of defaults.
Great, first time I see someone who connects Lilly and Steiner. I did not know about SSE but he provided a model of the hierarchies with CCCC GCC SCC ECCO especially linking them to phenomena of synchronicity. Highly probable he knew Steiner. This Knowledge is desperately needed.
Think it’s probably important to expand on what Steiner was trying to explain with his Ahriman Lucifer Christ trinity. With the importance being on the Christ figure, the one you left out of this essay.
Moving through the different temptations of both Lucifer and Ahriman needs to be mediated (as you say) by learning our own proprioceptive spiritual centre, but Steiner would say that this process needs to be humble and conscious enough to be enabled and enacted by the figure of Christ and our knowledge of his deeds accomplished through his birth life death and resurrection, and his continuing presence and support through this intense process.
Only this path of Christ as mediator can dilute/titrate the effects of Ahriman and Lucifer.
"Money is only a problem to those who don't have it."
This quote is from the lips of Charlie Lutes when he was visiting Maharishi International University in the late 1970s while informally chatting with a bunch of my fellow classmates, outside during a break after his lecture. He was visiting the campus due to his (then) tenure as one of its trustees.
So, what does this have to do with this post?
Insight is only a problem to those who don't have it.
We, as humans, can't possibly know all the facts. So, we construct alien intelligence (which we have coyly renamed: artificial intelligence) so as to assess far more data than we could possibly access on our own. And we ask this alien intelligence for its answers. But what do we have to compare its answers with?
The answer, for most people, is dead silence. Our intuition is dead, for the most part, as a collective species.
Charlie has said, on some other occasion, that intuition is going to become so important in the future, that our very survival will depend upon it since we won't be able to keep up with the flood of information and technological innovation that will engulf us and, to a greater extent, the subsequent generations who follow after us.
So, rather than decry the present status of progress, I concede what is lacking (rather than complain what we have too much of): we lack insight -- intuitive insight capable of challenging whatever artificial intelligence presents to us.
Every time I dialogue with AI, I have to be on my guard: not due to the possibility of false information spewed forth from its bits and bytes (not that that doesn't happen from time to time), but to guarantee that AI doesn't contradict my gut instinct for what I feel is the truth -- whether or not I can independently view the facts regarding my vague but unmistakable feelings.
In other words, "I must feel my way through the facts which AI presents to me to ascertain the truth".
Or as Charlie would phrase it, "we must learn to think with our heart and feel with our mind".
A brilliant and desperately needed synthesis but, like a imperfect perfect human, I have quibbles.
I find this approach a little too pacifist for my tastes, to much like the Chinese proverb; when rape is inevitable lie back and enjoy it! I'm not of the calibre of the scientists and philosophers named, just someone who feels innately and intuitively that this rush to control and convenience is a version of Huxley's Brave New World administered with 1984 efficiency! My response is to resist and reject and trust my own body-felt sense of fear and alarm at something alien that amidst us slithers.
Ominous but acutely insightful. I really appreciated how the framework of the Trivium was expanded upon and can be intuitively applied to experiences as a way of assessing information and checking perception. Helpful. We are living in an electrified soup already, with the influence of 5G, 6G, EMFs and frequencies influencing humanity and our minds more than is being realized, and people more aware can be fallible. It is complex and layered and it is likely not enough to simply get it intellectually. It does seem the only way to go is growing through awareness and spirituality, retaining enough individualism not to be consumed by an increasing hive mind, AI dependency and quantum entanglement, which is becoming evident.
Frickin Aheiman. Always up to shenanigans. Don't worry, as soon as they finish building their data center, the sun will burp up a coronal mass ejection which will fry all the microchips and send us back to the bronze age.
Your work is inspiring to my level of embodiment of what you penned "spiritual proprioception". It is apart of my life's purpose to integrate this tangibly to the performing arts pedagogy. Thank you!
I have interests in many areas and the concern for SSE and the Spiritual mix along with data centers has been peaking in my consciousness for several months. My computer and educational training keeps me at a distance from AI and yet I am fascinated but dislike the energy, water and hyperfocus on its ability to dumb down people. Therefore, your article is now pinned to my Bluesky account and will now get a slow read to digest the more nuanced points you made.
Mankind is now faced with having to solve certain quite specific problems. This applies, above all, to something I have already spoken about, which is connected with today's much-admired technology — a consequence of natural science — which is also much admired by spiritual science. In the comparatively near future, this much-admired modern technology will reach a final stage where it will, in a certain way, cancel itself out. In contrast, something will come into being — I have mentioned it in passing here — which will enable people to make use of the delicate vibrations in their etheric bodies as a driving force with which to run machines.
This lecture has long fascinated me, especially the part about "technology cancelling itself". I don't think Steiner meant wokeism would shout down technology :). However, this single sentence of Steiner is also a remedy for much of the fearmongering that I sense is connected with AI not just in wider society, but also in anthroposophical circles. Michael is with us and has already subjugated Ahriman and with his forces so also can we, whilst also benefitting from how Ahriman makes previously impossible relationship possible in our world.
One practical first step toward the spiritual proprioceptivity you are describing is learning to recognize the characteristic tropes of AI-generated content before producing much of it ourselves. This applies to writing, image generation, music, video, design, research synthesis, and every other domain where generative systems now mediate human expression. For those already using these tools, it may require pausing long enough to study their habits more carefully, then returning to them with greater discipline.
Every generative AI system has default gestures. See https://tropes.fyi for a catalog of those most common to current LLMs. These signatures are the residue of systems optimized to satisfy at the mean of human preference. They are Ahrimanic in form even when the subject matter appears spiritual, organic, or humane to the untrained mind.
Someone who uses these tools without developing awareness of their tropological signatures risks losing craft, credibility, audience retention, and more. They begin laundering machine cognition through their own name and voice. Their aesthetic sense is often trained, very quickly, to accept electronic defaults as the norm of personal expression. Their judgment is softened by ease, titillation, and rapid dopamine hits. Their own work then reenters the cultural field and future training datasets as another piece of smoothed, derivative, machine-shaped material, further normalizing the cognitive habits they never learned to perceive.
This is why basic AI literacy now has to include trope recognition. We should be able to see the standard LLM essay structure, the synthetic image glow, the overdetermined symbolic collage, the bland cinematic prompt aesthetic, the statistically obvious chord resolution, the ersatz profundity. Many people already sense these signatures, with varying degrees of consciousness, and either engage such content differently or ignore it altogether.
If the hinge between AI-as-instrument and AI-as-substitute is the inner development of the person holding it, then recognizing the instrument’s characteristic deformations is a prerequisite for holding it consciously. The danger is that it will train people to stop noticing when their own expressive faculties have been replaced by the most Ahrimanic of defaults.
Well written and very insightful. Thank you.
Great, first time I see someone who connects Lilly and Steiner. I did not know about SSE but he provided a model of the hierarchies with CCCC GCC SCC ECCO especially linking them to phenomena of synchronicity. Highly probable he knew Steiner. This Knowledge is desperately needed.
Think it’s probably important to expand on what Steiner was trying to explain with his Ahriman Lucifer Christ trinity. With the importance being on the Christ figure, the one you left out of this essay.
Moving through the different temptations of both Lucifer and Ahriman needs to be mediated (as you say) by learning our own proprioceptive spiritual centre, but Steiner would say that this process needs to be humble and conscious enough to be enabled and enacted by the figure of Christ and our knowledge of his deeds accomplished through his birth life death and resurrection, and his continuing presence and support through this intense process.
Only this path of Christ as mediator can dilute/titrate the effects of Ahriman and Lucifer.
"Money is only a problem to those who don't have it."
This quote is from the lips of Charlie Lutes when he was visiting Maharishi International University in the late 1970s while informally chatting with a bunch of my fellow classmates, outside during a break after his lecture. He was visiting the campus due to his (then) tenure as one of its trustees.
So, what does this have to do with this post?
Insight is only a problem to those who don't have it.
We, as humans, can't possibly know all the facts. So, we construct alien intelligence (which we have coyly renamed: artificial intelligence) so as to assess far more data than we could possibly access on our own. And we ask this alien intelligence for its answers. But what do we have to compare its answers with?
The answer, for most people, is dead silence. Our intuition is dead, for the most part, as a collective species.
Charlie has said, on some other occasion, that intuition is going to become so important in the future, that our very survival will depend upon it since we won't be able to keep up with the flood of information and technological innovation that will engulf us and, to a greater extent, the subsequent generations who follow after us.
So, rather than decry the present status of progress, I concede what is lacking (rather than complain what we have too much of): we lack insight -- intuitive insight capable of challenging whatever artificial intelligence presents to us.
Every time I dialogue with AI, I have to be on my guard: not due to the possibility of false information spewed forth from its bits and bytes (not that that doesn't happen from time to time), but to guarantee that AI doesn't contradict my gut instinct for what I feel is the truth -- whether or not I can independently view the facts regarding my vague but unmistakable feelings.
In other words, "I must feel my way through the facts which AI presents to me to ascertain the truth".
Or as Charlie would phrase it, "we must learn to think with our heart and feel with our mind".
A brilliant and desperately needed synthesis but, like a imperfect perfect human, I have quibbles.
I find this approach a little too pacifist for my tastes, to much like the Chinese proverb; when rape is inevitable lie back and enjoy it! I'm not of the calibre of the scientists and philosophers named, just someone who feels innately and intuitively that this rush to control and convenience is a version of Huxley's Brave New World administered with 1984 efficiency! My response is to resist and reject and trust my own body-felt sense of fear and alarm at something alien that amidst us slithers.
Steve Friedman, West Kelowna, BC, Canada
Ominous but acutely insightful. I really appreciated how the framework of the Trivium was expanded upon and can be intuitively applied to experiences as a way of assessing information and checking perception. Helpful. We are living in an electrified soup already, with the influence of 5G, 6G, EMFs and frequencies influencing humanity and our minds more than is being realized, and people more aware can be fallible. It is complex and layered and it is likely not enough to simply get it intellectually. It does seem the only way to go is growing through awareness and spirituality, retaining enough individualism not to be consumed by an increasing hive mind, AI dependency and quantum entanglement, which is becoming evident.
Frickin Aheiman. Always up to shenanigans. Don't worry, as soon as they finish building their data center, the sun will burp up a coronal mass ejection which will fry all the microchips and send us back to the bronze age.
Your work is inspiring to my level of embodiment of what you penned "spiritual proprioception". It is apart of my life's purpose to integrate this tangibly to the performing arts pedagogy. Thank you!
I have interests in many areas and the concern for SSE and the Spiritual mix along with data centers has been peaking in my consciousness for several months. My computer and educational training keeps me at a distance from AI and yet I am fascinated but dislike the energy, water and hyperfocus on its ability to dumb down people. Therefore, your article is now pinned to my Bluesky account and will now get a slow read to digest the more nuanced points you made.
Very interesting article. Many thanks!
From GA 173, lecture 7:
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA173a/English/RSP1988/19161218p01.html
Mankind is now faced with having to solve certain quite specific problems. This applies, above all, to something I have already spoken about, which is connected with today's much-admired technology — a consequence of natural science — which is also much admired by spiritual science. In the comparatively near future, this much-admired modern technology will reach a final stage where it will, in a certain way, cancel itself out. In contrast, something will come into being — I have mentioned it in passing here — which will enable people to make use of the delicate vibrations in their etheric bodies as a driving force with which to run machines.
This lecture has long fascinated me, especially the part about "technology cancelling itself". I don't think Steiner meant wokeism would shout down technology :). However, this single sentence of Steiner is also a remedy for much of the fearmongering that I sense is connected with AI not just in wider society, but also in anthroposophical circles. Michael is with us and has already subjugated Ahriman and with his forces so also can we, whilst also benefitting from how Ahriman makes previously impossible relationship possible in our world.