How does Anthroposophy differ from Buddhism and other Eastern paths?

The central premise of Buddhism is that emptying of one’s desires is the key to personal salvation. This emptying involves the voiding of one’s personal will.

POF 13-11 Those who hold that moral ideals are attainable only if man destroys his own personal will, are not aware that these ideals are wanted by the human being just as he wants the satisfaction of the so-called animal instincts.

Moral ideals spring from the moral imagination of the human being. They are his intuitions, the driving forces which his spirit harnesses; he wants them, because their realization is his highest pleasure. He needs no ethics to forbid him to strive for pleasure and then to tell him what he shall strive for.

POF 9-1 Psyche-Physical Organization
The human organization contributes nothing to the essential nature of thinking, but recedes whenever the activity of thinking makes its appearance; it suspends its own activity, it yields ground; and on the ground thus left empty, the thinking appears.

The essence which is active in thinking has a twofold function: first, it represses the activity of the human organization; secondly, it steps into its place.

For even the former, the repression of the physical organization, is a consequence of the activity of thinking, and more particularly of that part of this activity which prepares the manifestation of thinking.

POF 9-10
Why should my action be of less service to the public good when I have done it out of love than when I have done it only because I consider serving the public good to be my duty?

The mere concept of duty excludes freedom because it does not acknowledge the individual element but demands that this be subject to a general standard. Freedom of action is conceivable only from the standpoint of ethical individualism.

POF 10-8 The moral laws which the metaphysician who works by mere inference must regard as issuing from a higher power, are, for the adherent of monism, thoughts of men; for him the moral world order is neither the imprint of a purely mechanical natural order, nor that of an extra-human world order, but through and through the free creation of men.

It is not the will of some being outside him in the world that man has to carry out, but his own; he puts into effect his own resolves and intentions, not those of another being.

Monism does not see, behind man's actions, the purposes of a supreme directorate, foreign to him and determining him according to its will, but rather sees that men, in so far as they realize their intuitive ideas, pursue only their own human ends.

Moreover, each individual pursues his own particular ends.

For the world of ideas comes to expression, not in a community of men, but only in human individuals. What appears as the common goal of a whole group of people is only the result of the separate acts of will of its individual members, and in fact, usually of a few outstanding ones who, as their authorities, are followed by the others.

Each one of us has it in him to be a free spirit, just as every rose bud has in it a rose.

Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine," writes Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of his new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate -- a sort of "long essay" to the faithful that deals with the matter of man's relationship to Mammon.

The Pontiff's emphasis on charity is consistent for the worldwide religious body whose adherents believe in divine love and the necessity to treat one's neighbors and even one's enemies as one wishes to be treated--Christianity's golden rule. In his new proclamation to Catholics, and to "all people of good will," the Pope calls on mankind to recall that "profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end . . ." However, he warns against profit as an exclusive goal.

The Pope examined globalization and the harm caused by rich countries exploiting poor countries and selected the ethical principle of charity to be the most important.

As the moral authority of millions his followers are encouraged to adopt this ethical principle of charity to economics. Then he supplies them with a moral imagination that applies this general principle of charity to specifically mean contributing a part of your business profits to charity.

POF 9-5 gives 4 levels of motives: 1. egotism, 2. moral authority, 3. moral insight, and the highest as 4. conceptual intuition. Those who accept the Pope's message as a command that must be followed because he is their authority operate at the second level of morality; moral authority. If you assume the Pope arrived at this leading moral principle by understanding that charity would do the greatest good for all humankind would put it at the third level: moral insight. It becomes a fixed principle to be applied to better the ethics of business. The Pope then puts his idea of "good" into a specific picture, a moral imagination of donating profits to charities.

The highest moral level is conceptual intuition which sees a certain value in all moral principles and always asks whether in the given case this or that principle is the more important. An ethical individualist would not be held to a fixed principle such as "doing the greatest good for humanity" but may select the principle of "the greatest good for myself". The particular moral principle would be selected for each single situation.

Lecturer the Sun pole while the audience is the Moon
What role does the lecture have in a Free Community? The lecture format makes the lecturer the sun pole, his audience the Moon which makes for an old fashioned top down form of spiritual authority. Didn’t Rudolf Steiner lecture? That was the beginning stage of anthroposophy. Have we advanced since then?

Conversation As Shared Contemplation
The Philosophy of Freedom encourages and celebrates each person’s unique spiritual being and unique treasure which can enrichen community life. A balance is sought between the sun / moon polarity of speaking and listening. Group discussion, with effort by the participants, can rise to the level of contemplative conversation, or rather pure thinking as a group experience that results in group insight, real relationship between person and person, and a powerful impulse to joint activism. Community, then, will more likely be an awakening experience.

The least honest are those who read The Philosophy of Freedom as they would any other book and then flatter themselves that they have really taken in the thoughts it contains. They’ve kept on reading strings of words without anything coming out of it that might be likened to the striking of steel on flint.  -Rudolf Steiner

When is an action free? Steiner answers this question by stating that it is free when it has its origin in pure thinking. At first glance, Steiner's philosophy of ethics may appear intellectualistic. In ethics we have to differentiate between motives which originate in the perception and those having their origin in pure thinking. In the first instance we cannot call the deed a free one, since this kind of action is prompted by our surroundings, by our feelings and our will, as well as by our personal nature. None of these is truly free. Only the action motivated by our thinking is truly free. For this kind of action is objective; it is not in the least connected with our I; the world of thinking is common to all of us.

Spinoza, the great Dutch philosopher of the 17th century, objected to the doctrine that man's actions are free by saying that if a stone thrown by someone were endowed with consciousness, it would also make the statement that it flies “freely.” To this Steiner replied that it is not the consciousness as such that builds up in people's minds the belief that they are free; rather it is the fact that man is capable of comprehending the rationality of his motives — provided they are rational. Only that action can be called free which has been determined by the rationality of its ideas.

But how does man materialize his rational motives? The answer is, by means of his moral imagination, which enables him to obtain his motives from the world of ideas. The unfree man is determined passively by the motives of his surroundings which also include his innate nature. The free man, on the other hand, acts according to his moral intuition which, though his own, nevertheless lifts him from the level of his limited ‘I’ to the objective world of thinking.  -Hugo Bergman

Rudolf Steiner, POF chapter 8 author's addition

Could it be that consciousness is the latest evolutionary innovation that, when applied to conversation, catalyzes a new form of social system, the conscious co-creative collective, the radiant network of deep community? I believe that conscious conversation is the path to what Thich Nhat Hanh imagined when he said: “It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and lovingkindness, a community practicing mindful living.”

The practice of conscious conversation has the potential to help us creatively engage with the overwhelming natural and human-generated crises we face today. In fact, it may be the only thing that can.

Become conscious of the power of conversation to change the world. Learn how the dynamics of conversation matter and use them. By learning to converse well and helping others converse well, you become a conscious agent of evolution.

Peggy Holman

The Art Of Goethean Conversation   by Marjorie Spock

REFLECTIONS ON COMMUNITY BUILDING  (Part 1 of 2) by Marjorie Spock
REFLECTIONS ON COMMUNITY BUILDING  (Part 2 of 2) by Marjorie Spock

The reading of The Philosophy of Freedom should not be a mere reading, "it should be an experiencing with inner shocks, tensions and resolutions".

“In writing I subdue to a dry mathematical style what has come out of warm and profound feeling. But only such a style can be an awakener, for the reader must cause warmth and feeling to awaken in himself. He cannot simply allow these to flow into him from the one setting forth the truth, while he remains passively composed.”

Shock: I have often experienced shock when recognizing the truths in POF in my own life as they awaken me to my one-sidedness or various false idols. It is difficult to read chapter 1 without your illusions of freedom being exposed. In chapter 2 I realized I remain fixed within the world of ideas "as if spellbound". In chapter 10 I was warned that my gurus were"human beings as weak as myself".

Tension: Reading with a desire to understand the book leads to many moments of tension as the connecting thoughts between views seem missing. Why is he now talking about this? What does this term mean? Each sentence becomes so rich with meaning that it becomes a strain to hold the various thoughts within a continuous thought process.

Resolution: Stopping and working with that difficult passage until it is resolved by an insight is very exciting and energizing. It becomes even more exciting when you return to the same passage over and over again with a fresh look and over and over new insights are harvested. The experience is as Steiner describes, "the striking of steel on flint" making me want to get up and walk around the room as the intuition continues to make connections within my knowledge like the expanding sparks from a fireworks explosion. You have to want to know, to insist on resolving the building tension from the reading, and be willing to work for it. And of course follow your own questions that you are excited about pursuing.
Tom

In one reference to his book The Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner stresses that, among other things, he had been concerned to clarify the experience of freedom in thought, in pure thinking emancipated from the senses.

“In thoughts which consciously arise in the human soul as an ethical, moral ideal, in thoughts which have the strength to influence the human will and to lead it to action, in such thoughts there is freedom.


We can speak of freedom when we speak of actions shaped by the human being’s own free thinking, when he reaches the point, through a moral self-training, of not allowing his actions to be influenced by instincts, passions, emotions, or by his temperament, but only by the devoted love for an action. Out of the ideal strength of pure ethical thinking --the devoted love of an action-- something can develop. This is really free action.”

Does conscious thinking always lead to good decisions and satisfactory choices?

According to consumer research, participants who chose their favorite poster among a set of five after thorough contemplation showed less post choice satisfaction than participants who only looked at them briefly. This research was then used to attack the overall belief in the value of conscious deliberation.

The consumer choice of your favorite poster to hang on your wall is a choice to experience the greatest amount of pleasure with the least amount of pain, in other words, amusement. This example is really only a study of choices made for the purpose of amusement and doesn’t reveal much beyond that.

Our characterological disposition (POF 9-3) gives us an immediate feeling reaction of pleasure or pain based on our past experiences. If we live out of our established character in the pursuit of pleasure then it makes sense that our immediate choice determined by an unthinking pleasure reaction would result in post choice satisfaction.

Our characterological disposition is the more permanent part of our decision making process. The research merely indicates that if our established character finds immediate pleasure from a wall poster it will likely continue to find pleasure in it later. The pure conceptual thinking advocated in The Philosophy of Freedom is free from the influences of our established character.

Amusement
(POF 13-10) If it is only a question whether, after the day's work, I am to amuse myself by a game or by light conversation, and if I am totally indifferent to what I do as long as it serves that purpose, then I simply ask myself: What gives me the greatest surplus of pleasure? And I shall most certainly abandon the activity if the scales incline towards the side of displeasure. If we are buying a toy for a child we consider, in selecting, what will give him the greatest happiness. In all other cases we do not base our decision exclusively on the balance of pleasure.

Other explanations for these research results?

There is an important difference between self-perception and self-definition.

POF 5-7 Self Perception, Self Definition
The perception of myself reveals to me a number of qualities which I combine into my personality as a whole, just as I combine the qualities yellow, metallic, hard, etc., in the unity "gold." The perception of myself does not take me beyond the sphere of what belongs to me.

This perceiving of myself must be distinguished from determining myself by means of thinking. Just as, by means of thinking, I fit any single external perception into the whole world context, so by means of thinking I integrate into the world process the percepts I have made of myself.

My self-perception confines me within certain limits, but my thinking is not concerned with these limits. In this sense I am a two-sided being. I am enclosed within the sphere which I perceive as that of my personality, but I am also the bearer of an activity which, from a higher sphere, defines my limited existence.

How do you perceive and define yourself? How do you perceive and define others?

The great virtue of philosophy is that it teaches not what to think, but how to think. It is the study of the principles underlying conduct, thought and knowledge. The reason philosophy is avoided today is because it is considered too abstract and disconnected to real life.

Rudolf Steiner lost all interest in abstract philosophy disconnected from experience, but found an enthusiasm for a philosophy that was based on inner experience. Philosophy based on experience becomes a description of that human experience which the reader can discover within themselves through introspective observation. The Philosophy of Freedom comes alive when understood as something experienced or as an experience the reader seeks.

POF 3-9 What is impossible with Nature --creating before knowing-- we achieve with thinking. If we wanted to wait with thinking until we already knew it, then we would never come to it. We must resolutely think onward, so that afterwords by means of observation of what we ourselves have done, we come to knowledge of it.

example of relating to the above quote as experience: I have observed that when I observe a past thought I “know” the thought already. This is different than a flash of intuition which comes with an immediate knowing, but also afterward I gain more knowledge about it and how it affects my other knowledge after it is created. Creating comes first followed by knowing.

How do you relate 3.9 to your experience?

Capitalist Magazine June 18, 2009) How do we motivate our children to learn? According to educator Lisa VanDamme in Motivation and Education, “a person is motivated when he has the drive or desire that incites action. It must incite the drive to acquire knowledge-and not just any knowledge, but that knowledge necessary for life as an adult human being.”

By life as an adult being she means life as an employee. “A motivated employee is one who is inspired to action consistent with the central goal of his job.”

She found that Waldorf School children were motivated because they participate in activities believed to be natural to their stage of development, such as finger-knitting, storytelling, and movement games. But she asks,

“These children are, in a sense ‘motivated,’ but motivated to do what?”

In other words, will they be motivated to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own purposes as adults? This business theory of education shows her lack of knowledge of the human being and motivation.

I suggest she study The Philosophy of Freedom. Then she will learn that the human being will only be truly motivated if they pursue their own ideals and purposes. They will want to pursue employment that meets their ideals, rather than the reverse.

POF 13-11 "Moral ideals spring from the moral imagination of the human being. Their realization depends on his desire for them being intense enough to overcome pain and misery. They are his intuitions, the driving forces which his spirit harnesses; he wants them, because their realization is his highest pleasure."