The Philosophy of Freedom Study Group
The Act Of Knowing The World
5-0) MOOD OF VOLUNTARISM (Mars)
[1] From the foregoing considerations it follows that it is impossible to prove by investigating the content of our observation that our percepts are mental pictures. Such proof is supposed to be established by showing that, if the process of perceiving takes place in the way in which — on the basis of naïve-realistic assumptions about our psychological and physiological constitution — we imagine that it does, then we have to do, not with things in themselves, but only with our mental pictures of things. Now if naïve realism, when consistently thought out, leads to results which directly contradict its presuppositions, then these presuppositions must be discarded as unsuitable for the foundation of a universal philosophy. In any case, it is not permissible to reject the presuppositions and yet accept the consequences, as the critical idealist does when he bases his assertion that the world is my mental picture on the line of argument already described. (Eduard von Hartmann gives a full account of this line of argument in his work, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie.)
[2] The truth of critical idealism is one thing, the force of its proof another. How it stands with the former will appear later on in the course of this book, but the force of its proof is exactly nil. If one builds a house, and the ground floor collapses while the first floor is being built, then the first floor collapses also. Naïve realism and critical idealism is related as ground floor to the first floor in this simile.
[3] For someone who believes that the whole perceived world is only an imagined one, a mental picture, and is in fact the effect upon my soul of things unknown to me, the real problem of knowledge is naturally concerned not with the mental pictures present only in the soul but with the things which are independent of us and which lie outside our consciousness. He asks: How much can we learn about these things indirectly, seeing that we cannot observe them directly? From this point of view, he is concerned not with the inner connection of his conscious percepts with one another but with their causes which transcend his consciousness and exist independently of him, since the percepts, in his opinion, disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from things. Our consciousness, on this view, works like a mirror from which the pictures of definite things disappear the moment its reflecting surface is not turned toward them. If, now, we do not see the things themselves but only their reflections, then we must learn indirectly about the nature of things by drawing conclusions from the behavior of the reflections. Modern science takes this attitude in that it uses percepts only as a last resort in obtaining information about the processes of matter which lie behind them, and which alone really "are". If the philosopher, as critical idealist, admits real existence at all, then his search for knowledge through the medium of mental pictures is directed solely toward this existence. His interest skips over the subjective world of mental pictures and goes straight for what produces these pictures.
[4] The critical idealist can, however, go even further and say: I am confined to the world of my mental pictures and escape from it. If I think of a thing as being behind my mental picture, then thought is again nothing but a mental picture. An idealist of this type will either deny the thing-in-itself entirely or at any rate assert that it has no significance for human beings, in other words, that it is as good as non-existent since we can know nothing of it.
[5] To this kind of critical idealist the whole world seems a dream, in the face of which all striving for knowledge is simply meaningless. For him there can be only two sorts of men: victims of the illusion that their own dream structures are real things, and the wise ones who see through the nothingness of this dream world and who must therefore gradually lose all desire to trouble themselves further about it. From this point of view, even one's own personality may become a mere dream phantom. Just as during sleep there appears among my dream images an image of myself, so in waking consciousness the mental picture of my own I is added to the mental picture of the outer world. We have then given to us in consciousness, not our real I, but only our mental picture of our I. Whoever denies that things exist, or at least that we can know anything of them, must also deny the existence, or at least the knowledge, of one's own personality. The critical idealist then comes to the conclusion that "All reality resolves itself into a wonderful dream, without a life which is dreamed about, and without a spirit which is having the dream; into a dream which hangs together in a dream of itself."
[6] For the person who believes that he recognizes our immediate life to be a dream, it is immaterial whether he postulates nothing more behind this dream or whether he relates his mental pictures to actual things. In both cases life must lose all academic interest for him. But whereas all learning must be meaningless for those who believe that the whole of the accessible universe is exhausted in dreams, yet for others who feel entitled to argue from mental pictures to things, learning will consist in the investigation of these "things-in-themselves." The first of these theories may be called absolute illusionism, the second is called transcendental realism by its most rigorously logical exponent, Eduard von Hartmann.
[7] Both these points of views have this in common with naïve realism, that they seek to gain a footing in the world by means of an investigation of perceptions. Within this sphere, however, they are unable to find a firm foundation.
Transcendental realism: For others who feel entitled to argue from mental pictures to things, learning will consist in the investigation of these "things-in-themselves." Match-up Quiz Practical Training In Thought Thinking Exercise #5 Right Decision |
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The mood of voluntarism
The mood of voluntarism, arising from the will. I'm not sure why this chapter, chapter 5, is the mood of voluntarism and not mysticism (the fifth of the seven moods in the presented order). You may have already explained this Tom, about how the moods for each chapter are determined and their rotation, but I'd enjoy better understanding it.
In allowing myself to play with this voluntary mood, I find myself drawn to the experience of thinking that this book requires one to have in order to realize what Rudolf Steiner is putting before us. Even in our basic intellectuality intuition must be present, or we'd be unable to immediately know that a chair is a chair. But at this intellectual level of thought the spirit is enchanted, trapped in the shadows. Yet we can apply to this dullness our life giving will, as when we drag ourselves to read another challenging section, the same way that exerting oneself can initially be such a bother, and yet I believe it is a common experience that our thinking thereby becomes more mobile, awakened, imaginative, and as we live in this more alive “willed-thinking” another experience is able to pierce through enlightening our gaze, filling us with an inspiration that is able to last a lifetime of being thoughtfully worked out; a real penetration into the spiritual realms. Throughout it all, intuition is present, acting as the alpha and omega, the origin and fulfillment of thought itself. But this entire experience is a self initiated deed.
If I become fixated with the potentially illusory quality of percepts and deny that thinking could be anything else, then I would have to agree with Fitche, that reality transforms itself “...into a dream which hangs together in a dream of itself.” I think back to my own apathetic adolescent days and how in many ways it was this view that ruled in me—absolute illusionism. I would only have disagreed with Fitche by wondering why anyone would have bothered with philosophizing about it all. What's the point?
But there is still one Critical Idealist left, the Transcendental Realist, who feels it is possible at least to infer reality, the one who senses that something lives in our will that cannot be denied, and seeks to find reality, even though we cannot know it directly—for so say the Critical Idealists—seeking for it by indirect means, postulating a hypothetical reality—the electro-magnetic energy field; that is the reality that is transformed by our arbitrary sense organs resulting in our deluded sense of color and sound. Yet by means of instruments, supposedly more reliable than our sense organs, we can gain measurements of this hypothetical reality; numbers that more closely touch upon it—angstroms and cycles per second of vibration, a supposedly more accurate way to describe color and sound. This is the view point of modern science. By our entering into the sole remaining Critical Idealists' viewpoint, it becomes clear that they are only shifting the quest for a real percept perspective to a more abstract location than the one we take for granted by conjuring a virtual reality rather than sticking to the more in-your-face way of addressing it all, by voluntarily applying our intuitional capabilities to our given observations and patiently coming upon the truth.
Mastering the Content approach to study
Your approach to the study of The Philosophy of Freedom in that you work hard to understand what is written is called by O'Neil "Mastering the Content".(hope to get this posted soon) This approach leads naturally to being able to work with the thought-organization or thought-organism, in this case the world-outlooks.
Your "willed thinking" take I think captures the Voulntarism mood. I saw the mood in the disatisfaction with the first imagined perceptions which lead to a deeper study into the causes (will element) behind things.
Under Mysticism it says: What help is there in speculations about the will? It merely leads us away from looking into the depths of our own soul, and into those depths one does not look when the soul wills, but, on the contrary, just when by surrendering itself it is without will.‿ It speaks of Mysticism as a surrending of will rather than an exerting of it.
Thank you
Thank you very much for addressng my question.
Voluntarism
Hi, Gerald
Looking at my notes from the first time I grappled with the question as to why this chapter would express Voluntarism, I see that I struggled with the abstract idea for quite a while. Then, in response to a question I emailed him, Tom said that the kind of thinking Voluntarism has associated with it is Critical Thinking. I thought about this in relation to Mars, the planet Steiner associates with Voluntarism. Positive energy and will, and also a lot of critical judgment. (I have a friend who shows all of these qualities, so I can relate to them quite easily.)
Then it struck me that the chapter expresses the will to fight our way out of the trap of our own representations. So, in 5.1, the will to waken from the dream.
The way the moods are arranged in Tom's view is that Chapter One starts with Occultism and moves toward Chapter Seven, Gnosticism. Then Chapter Eight is Gnosticism and moves out toward Occultism again in Chapter 14.
I really appreciate the way you're approaching this material with an open mind, ready to suspend disbelief for long enough to see if linking the different concepts together does anything for you. For me, it has made the study of PoF much more fun, because there are the HaCT concepts to bounce it off.
Thank you, Lori, for your
Thank you, Lori, for your comments on Voluntarism and also for giving me the mood rotation.
What We Think and Are
Last night, irritated at being unable to fall asleep, I began to focus my irritation on the introduction to Chapter Five and the difficulties I was having, trying to bring the abstract concepts to life in my thinking. What does Voluntarism have to do with everything that's being presented here?
If the Critical Idealist proof has already collapsed like a house with a make-believe foundation, why does Steiner go on to write this whole chapter? I mean, I know that it has a lot of necessary stuff in it, but trying to discover why he starts it by first showing that he's already demolished the whole logical foundation for CI, and then goes on as if the house hadn't collapsed at all, is an exercise in itself.
The clue is, of course, that he says, "The truth of critical idealism is one thing, the force of its proof another." Having demolished its proof, he now addresses those who believe that the the whole perceived world is only our mental picture.
I've heard it said that, no matter how logical and well-presented a philosophical argument is, the crucial thing for it to be accepted is that the person to whom it's presented must give it his ultimate assent. This is ours alone to give or withhold, and since we can withhold it from even the most airtight argument, it must be equally possible to grant it to an argument that's nothing but hot air.
We may assent to an argument at some point because it feels compelling to us at that time of our lives and, later on, if someone happens to demolish it with another argument, we may withhold assent to the demolition of something we believe in.
Having given our deep assent to an argument (or even more likely, to the worldview that grew out of that argument and is now all around us like the air we breathe), we may base our whole life on it. Then, even if we begin to feel hemmed in by it, and seek out some other philosophical idea to liberate us from it, and, on finding such an idea, assent to it with great enthusiasm, there's still our life to deal with. For it has already come to be based on that original argument, and just because we think we've changed all that by changing our intellectual clothes, it doesn't mean we have.
Last night I struggled to imagine a reason that Steiner would begin Chapter Five in this way, reminding us that the CI proof lies in rubble, but nonetheless taking CI up again, as if Chapter Four just didn't matter. I arrived at this thought: "It's about the will to understand the world, even if I can't perceive it directly. If all I've got is my own mental pictures, and can't be sure of anything else, then by god I'm going to do my best with what I've got."
The American philosopher Josiah Royce praised Kant for that kind of courage. Kant unflinchingly mapped out what he saw as the limits to human knowledge, and decided that, since we can never know that God exists, it is our highest moral duty to act as if He did. "...Kant's notion of our relation to spiritual truth; and Kant's piety, Kant's attitude towards religious problems, Kant's notion of faith in God, is in essence this heroic notion. He conceives here...that truth, in so far as we mortals can know it, is neither from innate ideas, nor from our experience. It comes to us because we make it. This determination of ours it is that seizes hold upon God, introduces into life something that is there only for the activity of the hero, finds God because the soul has wrestled for his blessing, and then has found after all that the wrestling is the blessing. God is with us only because we choose to serve our ideal of him as if he were present to our senses. His kingdom exists because we are resolved that, so far as in us lies, it shall come. In this sign we conquer. This is the victory that overcometh the world, not our intuition, not our sentimental faith, but our live, our moral, our creative faith." (The Spirit of Modern Philosophy 1892)
So I'll be looking for that kind of courage to be expressed somehow in Chapter Five, even if the ideas behind it are wrongheaded. But now I see that something else is going on here as well. Something in us that goes much deeper than our intellect is what gives or withholds assent to an idea or a philosophy. It's as if our intellect can say yes to changing, but the deeper part of our being might just go along as it always has, ignoring the big change we think we've made.
In Chapter Four, Steiner gave us what we need to satisfy our intellect that CI can't be logically proven. Now he starts to work on the rest of us.
Hi Lori. As normal, great
Hi Lori. As normal, great stuff!
5-0 strikes me as the moment before the batter swings the bat; staring hard at the pitcher, the batter holds the bat up high and often makes slight circling motions to keep the kenetic energy alive. That's 5-0. It's like he downshifted in order to get ready for the new track he's about to take us on.
5-1 is major because he chooses to stay in the analogy of "dreaming". He does not argue away that analogy but lets it stand and, of course, he swings hard in the last sentence (the last word) of 5-1.
This morning I came across a discourse by Bubba Free John (oh man) on Spiritual Science which I thought fit quiet well with PoF in general, but especially with the direction chapter 5 is moving in. Here it is:
Bubba:
"We are inherently one with the World-Process. We are only secondarily knowers about the World-Process. Therefore, if we adopt a form of relationship to the World-Process that is founded on separation, observation, and analytical knowing rather than on intuitive, self-transcending, and self-surrendering Communion or participation in our unity with the World-Process, then we will tend more and more to interfere with and even lose sympathy with our unity with the World-Process and with the Ultimate condition in which we are presently arising."
Thanks, Jeffrey
I like your comment about the "dreaming" in 5.1. I suppose that we are being called to will ourselves awake, and that last word "thinking" does come as kind of a shock.
Bubba's wonderful, isn't
Bubba's wonderful, isn't he?
The work from 69 to 78 is
The work from 69 to 78 is very rich, me thinks.
Even as Da Free John he produced some outstanding work, I think. After about 1986 he becomes a symbol of everything confusing, beautiful, hopeful, sad, brilliant and annoying for me. One of a kind.
I’m reading his essays on cultural evolution and science in “The White House Will Soon Announce Proof of the Existence of God” and “The Transmission of Doubt”. These were produced in the early 80’s.
Jeff
Yes, these are the ones
Yes, these are the ones I've kept. The later ones I've given to Good Will.
Bubba doesn't know everything
Rudolf Steiner, on more than one occassion, cautioned the West in more or less the following way: "If you do not find your way to that Spiritual Life appropriate to Western Humanity, now and into the Future, the Spiritual Life of the East will overpower the Cultural Forces of the West, and these will die."
Bubba Free John is a good example of the far too spiritual impulses coming toward the West out of the East. Because Lucifer incarnated in the East about 3001 BC, and became a teacher in their mystery schools, an appropriate for that time and place mystery wisdom arose in China, which we later come to know as Taoism and Confusionism. But this stream of the mysteries is now decadent - that is it is out of sync with the modern nature of the evolution of consciousness - and as a consequence it is particularly antagonistic to Western soul life.
I will next deconstruct Bubba's confusion, sentence by sentence. If you have a problem with this, then maybe you should rethink what you currently believe The Philosophy of Freedom is about. Each paragraph will begin with a sentence quoted from above.
"We are inherently one with the World-Process." First, this could mean almost anything, so we have to be really cautious as to letting ourselves think that if he uses such a term as "World-Process", he even comes close to what Rudolf Steiner might have meant using the same words. The question, in terms of PoF, is: What is the percept (experience) to which he has attached the concept (thought) to which those words refer? We also need to keep in mind just how abstract the language is in this quote. The tendency of the East is to become ungrounded, to leave behind the Earth, and reach only toward a pure state of Union with the Source - that is to give up self-identity. We also have to keep in mind that Eastern systems of "enlightenment" tend to not only be non-theistic (no Father God, no Christ, no Divine Mother etc.), but they consider what we might call the ethereal and astral worlds to also be illusions (besides and in addition to the maya of the sense world).
That said, what I suspect he means (his percept/concept) by "World-Process" is the purely spiritual Source behind everything, which has no name (can't be reduced to language). Lets now go to the next sentence, which is a really intricate abstract statement. This demonstrates one of the reasons I came to dislike the guru system so much, because they can be very unscientific, inexact, and so far away from being actually precise, that you can project onto their speech almost any meaning you imagine. It all sounds great, but is it real food for the soul of those of the Cultural West.
"Therefore, if we adopt a form of relationship to the World-Process that is founded on separation, observation, and analytical knowing rather than on intuitive, self-transcending, and self-surrendering Communion or participation in our unity with the World-Process, then we will tend more and more to interfere with and even lose sympathy with our unity with the World-Process and with the Ultimate condition in which we are presently arising.
Since the anthroposophical understanding of the "world-process" is the evolution of consciousness, then the state of speparation, observation and anaylytical knowing has been intentionally created (by those Beings with names, like Thrones etc.), if order for us to achieve exactly that condition of separation etc. The Gods kicked us out of heaven (the Source?) in order to make us free, and to leave to our freedom whether or not we choose to re-integrate ourselves (the Return of the Prodigal Son).
The way Bubba puts it implies that our fallen nature (the separation) is something wrong with us, when it is in fact something right with us.
If we skip past the sort of self-serving (see what I have done) words, like "self-transcending, self-surrendering" to the words "Communion or participation in our unity with the World Process", we can perhaps see that he is not talking about anything Steiner ever taught, but rather this decadent Eastern view, which believes the Earth has no meaning (in which case why did Christ become human and then die).
Valentin Tomberg, in his remarkable Meditations on the Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism, puts it this way (again I will paraphrase); The goal of the East is to abandon self and to surrender the personal self into the Greater Self, that is to take our "being" nature and unite it with the "Being" nature of the Cosmos. This leads to Compassion (or the identification with all sentient beings - thus the Bodhisattva Vow). Christianity, on the other hand, is not about Compassion, but about Love. For Love to exist, then essence must meet and know Essence. There has to be a Lover, a Beloved and the Love that is between them. Our little i-Am meets the archetypal I AM, essence meets Essence, and Love then becomes possible. Remember what Christ said are the greatest commandments: To love God with all our heart, and all our mind and all our spirit, and to love those close to us, as we love ourselves.
No guru teachers, just ordinary human beings struggling to figure out how to love.
love,
joel
Joel, you see I enjoy how
Joel, you see I enjoy how The Philosophy of Freedom can show exactly how you could do to it what you did to Bubba. This is way beyond disagreeing with you. It’s only to say that there is good reason you will read sentences just like that from Steiner and feel no personal need to take them apart.
We’ll do a test: if it can be done ethically: I’ll send you a few bubba quotes and you can deconstruct (it IS fun) them just like you did above. Then I’ll tell you which quote was really from Steiner. But we’ll let your deconstruction stand. You see, one of my main interests is how PoF has no problem with it being deconstructed (accurately) in the same way. In fact, gulp, if I were to tell you that I actually planted the quote, calling it a Bubba quote- tweaking a few words like “arising”- but it was really a 1921 quote from a lecture in Steiner’s cycle on boundaries of natural science…it’s not like that would invalidate your deconstruction of Steiner.
Again- let me stress- I’m making meta-commets on your deconstruction only because making any other type of statements would be impossible. I’m not sure you can do more than deconstruct strings of sentences like that when taken out of context. But it doesn’t mean it’s useless to throw those quotes out. I can enjoy an out of context Steiner quote almost any day of the week!
conversation on a log
Go ahead and print this on your printer and read it while doing business in the Oval Office or some other appropriate place in your house.
right, but when Steiner uses a word like self-transcending we don't have a problem. We let his use of the term mean something that fits our most current, and accepted, understanding of the subject. It's somewhat hard for me to imagine that you go through this type of thing when Steiner throws out abstractions. A statement immediately becomes less abstract when we can take in a context rich with the speakers other meanings. I'm a bit surprised, Joel, that you would go there. Regardless of your feelings for Bubba Free John (that is beside the point here) you know that we can find sentences in Steiner that have the same structure, that would contain phrases that would require much more elaboration in order for it to not sound like a verbal rorshack test.
Joel you shared something you could see from the the Bubba quote. You said:
"he {Bubba} is not talking about anything Steiner ever taught, but rather this decadent Eastern view, which believes the Earth has no meaning (in which case why did Christ become human and then die)."
You gave us a wonderful quote about checking ourselves and resopnses. Did you really understand Bubba's views on eastern paths from what he said there? I ask because Bubba talks a lot (too much!) about eastern paths in the same set of essays. He goes into it and has a party all night in the eastern/western polarities: Here are some sips (again, please let us not make this about if Bubba and Steiner are smart or good or better than each other; that kind of conversation has a different purpose). I'm really interested in what prompts these grand knowledge-responses. I'm happy to state up front that I find both men utterly interesting, confusing, clear and significant and that I would never wish to present myself as a spoke person for either. You got so clear so fast about Bubba from those views. My impression is that actually a mesh of associations came up for you and his quote- like almost any other- serves as a place in which to overlap your associations with various words and phrases from his quote. I think it is something like that).
Stuff Bubba said in that essay:
"Science and aggressive worldliness are the characteristic cultural solutions of Western Man to the primitive reaction to mortal experience.
Mysticism and passive other-worldliness are the characteristic cultural solutions of Eastern Man to the same primitive reaction to mortal experience.
The "oriental" and "occidental" methods and solutions of Man are equally founded in a reactive dilemma, and both are partial, specialized, emergency solutions that create an artificial or unreal environment for human adaptation.
The trouble with both the "oriental" and the "occidental' solutions of Man is that both ways are based on styles or methods of experiential knowing about the world of experience. Both ways are founded in a reactive dilemma via conventional knowledge- or the power to manipulate and control the conditions of experience. Both ways avoid the simple, original, radical, obvious, and direct path- which is the nonproblematic acceptance of and obilgation to live as the body in love."
Wait, Joel, STOP! Of course we can have a field day sputtering about how vague those last terms are, but...I mean, come on.....let's do that to Steiner. Or, let's give these guys some credit and let them take a breath while they write, accepting that they simply can't contexualize each and every term when wanting to make more general statements....they each are trying to say fairly intricate stuff in phrases with other terms and they each are changing the meaning of some very common ones and they each are creating new terms to help say the sense of their meaning. But, yes, we could even deconstruct the above quotes to show that Bubba was in favor of the "degenerate eastern" view. Same with Steiner or Barfield. None of these quotes are here to make distinctions that matter, but I am quoting at length for two reasons. Your response to Bubba's three sentence quote was so thick with interpretation that was not very naked (I wish you would let it stand nude sometimes!). You deconstructed something, but I doubt it was the meaning that Bubba Boy meant (that doesn't mean he is smarter than you or Steiner). I just have a feeling that if he had read your interpretation of those three sentences it would have proven much of what he wants to say about various snap-shot functions of the mind. And I quote at length knowing that it doesn't fit this medium very well, but feeling that it's ok to let larger chuncks of verbal expressions play themselves out here.
"One of the original absurdities to which the "occidental" structure of mind (and of Western Man) was predisposed was the invention of a God who is an explanation for the existence of the word and whose own existence needs to be proven. The "occidental" mind sees the world first and then calculates the existence of God. Therefore, to the Western or "occidental" mind, God (or the Living Reality) is not obvious. God must be thought about and invented or calculated into existence. Since God is inherently in doubt from such a point of view, God can only be tentatively believed or eternally sought. But the world is accredited with an overwhelming realness, such that it tends to be felt to exist in, of, as, and for itself.
In contrast to the conventional pattern of the "occidental" mind, the structures of the "oriental" mind (and of Eastern Man) are predisposed to the intuitive presumption of a God who not only needs no proof of existence (since that existence is tacitly obvious), but who is attributed with such overwhelming realness that the world and human existence are in doubt. (Therefore, "oriental" cultures tend to be weak in their orientation to the personal and moral reality of Man and to the evolutionary fulfillment of the conditions of the World-Process.)
hmmmmm....well.......Bubba said it again. He said "World-Process". That's what he said in the short quote that elicited your response. That's when you said:
"First, this {Bubba's World-Process} could mean almost anything, so we have to be really cautious as to letting ourselves think that if he uses such a term as "World-Process", he even comes close to what Rudolf Steiner might have meant using the same words."
not agreeing or disagreeing but trying to see how this type of response emerges.
Joel, I understand that you can take any sentence or term in PoF and contexualize it from the whole of your understanding. I think that goes for anybody who has made a specific arguement/practice the background of their approach. But, please, if you didn't have such respect for Steiner, you would love deconstructing how he uses the term world-process in his fundamental text. It's even more intense because Steiner uses the term in a book in which he is explicitly wanting to, step by step, unfold the meaning of each segment. Look at the seven or eight places he talks about the world process in PoF. Talk about amazing distinctions. Imagine if the quote from Bubba had said,
"in so far as I think, I am the all-one-being that pervades the cosmos."
You could play with those terms for 600 pages, Joel. "all-one-being"????? "pervades"??????? how are we using the term "cosmos" exactly???????
But when Steiner says things like
"in so far as we think, we are the all-one being that pervades everything. "
a combination of our conditioning and wider contextual interest/history stop us from panicing or needing to make a whole bunch of distinctionst that matter. I'm NOT NOT NOT suggesting that Steiner doesn't deserve to be shown as a not always that great writer. That might be a fine thing to do for some people.
In that quote Bubba said, "We are inherently one with the world-process". I probably don't have the writing skills to express how little I care if Bubba is correct in saying that or if Steiner is more correct in saying that "in so far as we think, we are the all-one being that pervades everything. "
I'm still on the topic of the fundamental nature of our responses. You wrote a strong post about responses, but I'm afraid that it is too easy to have clear terms that flow in these regards. We need to be naked more often.
Writing this post has included my judement and frustration towards you. I can guess that a hell of lot was going on when you read the Bubba quote that wasn't related to letting truth rain down into your soul and filter through some such process of conscious research. I'm not suggesting that that didn't happen as well. To get lost in either of these guys (Bubba or Steiner's) cosmologies would be an escape in this context. Yes, I wanted to quote Bubba on the eastern orientation to show you that it isn't quite so simple to read three sentences and be ready to teach us what this means about his views on Eastern Approaches (I didn't say Bubba is correct in critiquing the eastern, dissocative path), but mainly I wanted to stretch things out a bit.
It's not that you were suppose to read the Bubba quote and agree, Joel. But there are reasons why you responded like you did and I don't think you often address those. Should you. Obvously not.. But I know I would have benefited much more from reading an account of what was going on in your experience that had nothing to do with what you know about Bubba, Steiner or Bubba's commitment to a dissociative eastern path. It's not a mistake for us all to enjoy bits of knowledge about spiritual processes and paths and practices. But bits of knowledge are very different from the type of communion that can happen when we resist tendencies that so often exclude the core action going on in our guts. There are good reasons why you went at that quote the way you did and go after Steiner's simliar type quotes in different ways. There are good reasons why you didn't respond with many questions. I notice that I'm not either.
You said: The way Bubba puts it implies that our fallen nature (the separation) is something wrong with us, when it is in fact something right with us.
You see, I take just the opposite impression (but that is MY bias). I'm reading a book of lectures Bubba gave called "The Dreaded Gom-Boo: Or The Imaginary Disease that Religion Seeks to Cure"
His point is not that our sense of separation is a mistake or bad. He says it is just that, a sense. It's not a problem but it's not true to then presume from the sense of separation (the percept) that you are inherently apart from World-Process, Truth, Christ.....Bubba says that we shouldn't fight the sense of our separatness but we should watch all the ways it functions, both obvious and not so obvious.
"A myth has been circulating for many centuries now that mankind is diseased, that all beings are suffering from what I call the Dreaded Gom-Boo, also called sin, maya, ego, suffering, separated individuality, illusion, delusion, confusion, and indifference. We are all supposed to accept this diagnosis, realize how diseased we are, and submit ourselves to the local religious hospital, where a father or mother doctor will confirm our disease and require us to submit for the rest of our lives to various regimes for our hown healing and ultimate cure. This is the basic proposition of traditional religion, and it begins with the diagnosis of the dreaded disease.
Tradition has it that we are all, by birth, by virtue of our very existence, even now diseased, sinful, separated from the Great One. What a horror!!! Yes! df
I come to tell yoiu, as I stand in the midst of the priests of this horror, that not even one of you is suffering from the disease. It is an imaginary disease, a terrible disease, but altogether imaginary. No one has ever actually had this disease. Not a single being has ever had the Dreaded Gom-Boo"
He goes on to elaborate what he means by the Dreaded Gom-Boo. Basically he would identify any ideology that starts from the presumption of us having an inherent problem a myth, but he tires to show that it is our acceptence of this myth that drives us into dissociated patterns of science, culture, esoteric practices and the like.
I started reading early Bubba after coming across two essays he wrote about the role of a participatory science in the context of an evolution of consciousness. I was already on my kick about freedom being what is happening now but being unseen by our presumptions. Bubba might be looking at something similiar. I'm not all that sure. But, again, this is not- for me- about knowing the right terms and phrases. I'm interested in the inherent connection between human violence and real, active, non-mental masterbatory epistemology. The fact is- and I mean fact- that the handful of people who are considered to really grasp Steiner's epistemology are no less likely to mental/emotional attacks, exlusionary practices, and passive aggressve realtionship formation than any other spiriutal path. And we shouldn't imagine these people to be other than ourselves. It's not a big deal but you can just troll this sight and identify a very regular rhythm for how people get hurt and then try to hurt other's feelings. I've followed your converstations on other websites over the years and, as you well know, everybody talks for a bit of time about things they know, then they hurt each other's feelings with three-syllable words, always with love and in the light of Christ.
This is my journal tonight. No need for a response from anybody. If anybody wants to get into an intellectual type conversation with me then PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE help me out with my post called "is 3-0{2}: resolved in PoF?" in the "Randomized Entry" part of my journal....that's a good place to get caught up in the details of terms because we can keep the conversation very close to Steiner's text. Oh my Gosh to argue about the bizzarre nature of Bubba would be almost too wonderful for me to take!
He said:
"Oriental Mysticism: Sit up straight, take leave of your senses, and go out of your mind."
Occidental Realism: "Observe, think, choose, act attain, possess, know."
He said: "The Two Idea of Fear
The occidental mind fears death, or the loss of self.
The oriental mind fears attatchment to the self, or the lifetime of the self.
Those two habits of mind have traditionally dicated the two unique and opposite paths of mankind."
dear Jeffry, re conversation on a log
Dear Jeffry,
Everyone has their own experience, and each of us renders our individual experience into individual words. Some folks believe aspects of their experience are universal, so they write as if this was true. In many cases this probably is true. Bubba and Steiner frequently write this way, as do we.
First experience, then the act of cognition of experience (rendering it into concepts in the mind), and finally the incarnation of concepts into language on a page or in speech. This process can itself be experienced. Steiner in Occult Science says:
"One who wholeheartedly pursues the train of thought indicated in these books [Theory of Knowledge and PoF, ed] is already in the spiritual world; only it makes itself known to him as a thought-world."
Once we learn to enter frequently into this thought-world, we can discover that it has certain qualities. We can, for example, read another's text, struggle to consciously render it upward from speech or writing - from words - and into concepts. That is, we reverse the order of descent, and make it a path of ascent. If we carry these concepts into the thought-world (that is the spiritual world as can be experienced from travelling diligently the path of PoF), we can have another experience, which is more musical in nature. Concepts, in pure thinking, harmonize or not with each other. They attract and repell. They float away (too abstract) or sink (too concrete). Contemplative pure thinking can experience all of these phenomena in the "thought-world".
So when I write what I wrote, I am not at all playing with concepts, but I am taking that which has descended (incarnated) into words, and raising it up again into the world of pure concepts, and having an "experience" there. i then write about this experience, trying with words to communicate some of its nature. This is not easy.
Further, if we have understood the spiritual/moral dimension of PoF, then we understand quite clearly (agains as an experience) how the will-in-thinking is directed by our intention and attention during such a process as described (reading and then ascending). The more selfless our thinking (another kind of purity in thought), the more the world of inspiration participates with us. We are not alone when we think, and Steiner calls this: "It thinks in me", while Tomberg writes of the selflessness in thinking as: "learning to think on our knees".
Here there is also an experience connected to learning to be "poor in spirit" - or practice having a consciousness empty of thought. So in the ascending gesture we surrender the thought we are trying to develop out of the words on the page. This results in an experience I have called: "the delicate and subtle presence of Fullness and fullness of Presence".
Now it is possible during such processes in the soul to over-surrender to the impulses from above. When this happens we enter not the true thought-world, but a kind of Realm of the False Holy Spirit (Tomberg's formulation), or the Realm of Lucifer (Steiner's formulation). As an experience we become kind of intoxicated with our genius. We have lost the connection that comes from an attitude of washing the feet, and believe we should teach - be the guru (which is why in Zen they say: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" (or, if you think your are enlighted and are a teacher (Bubba Free John), kill that aspect of self). A sign of this intoxication is wordiness, excessive abstraction, long long books etc. Bubba seems to me to be one of those of the East (even though he seems to think his view is supperior), and Prokofieff (an anthroposophist) one of those of the West.
Now in saying this, I am not just looking at it from the outside, but have in mind quite definite life experiences of my own of such personal intoxication (being swept away by the presence of luciferic spirit). In Tibet (at least in the past), when someone became possessed of such spirits of intoxication (luciferic) or of power (ahrimanic), they walled you up in a cave for ten years until you got over it.
Anyway, none of us should make assumptions about the other, or the richness within. You like Bubba, you are free to do that. I think he's a dangerous trap for Westerners (most of what you quoted from him about the Western mind was entirely too superficial, and if that's true, then it suggests the same for what he said about the Eastern mind as well. Being glib and confident is no sign of true enlightenment, or initiation.
peace,
joel
so you don't think you
so you don't think you would misidentify clips of Bubba as Steiner or visa versa?
I think you would, but I don't think it would prove much of anything except that we do use knowledge-experience as consolations. That's fine. I don't think it is bad or dangerous or wrong.
I do like aspect of Bubba. But it's never as simple as you make it sound, and I like the complication of it all. I don't like what Steiner said about black people's faces. I love what Bubba says about different types facial structures. But so what!!! I enjoy how I react every time I read the couple lectures in which Steiner compares black faces to european faces. Heck, when I was attached to all my distinctions that mattered, I could easily show that there was not really a problem with him saying it and I could "prove" how progessive he was. Blah blah.
When I read what you wrote above, I'm not sure I have the experience you say is an instance of anthroposophically correct thinking. I can enjoy reading it when I remember that, in a way, you are being very vulnerable, that behind all of the objective sounding words you are really saying something like, "Hey everybody, sometimes when I think it's like music!!!!" And then I'm with you 100%
i get thrown off when I start believing you are writing a post like that as if it is a manueal or a map that needs to be understood and ratified. You don't say it should be seen like that, but I need to remember the boy in you that is just really excited to share your experience. Sometimes I have trouble thinking of it that way and start to imagine you are trying to teach or show a path that you hope others find their own unique ways towards.
Same stuff towards Bubba. Especially the more he left behind Bubba!!!! Being interested in what somebody has to say and how it relates to one's experience is far from making that person a guru in the unhealthy sense.
I think one area we just experience the world differently these days, Joel, is that i don't experience us as being as in jeopardy as you do. That said, i don't think the shit has even begun to hit the fan in a cultural sense. I think things are going to get a lot worse in so many ways, but not because people aren't understanding thinking the right way, not because too many people are reading Bubba instead of Steiner. I see Steiner as becoming less and less relavent as a form but increasingly relavent as oneinstance in what is emerging. But these are just opinions. Empirically I just search for the supposed place where the "self" is set apart from this love. i can't find it. But by going there, over and over, I just see increasingly how beautifully hard everybody is trying to get through. It amazing to see how even in those who have utterly given up (we might say they are joined with the evil spirits, possessed, whatever)....they are still trying just as hard "make it"......
And there is something equally beautiful in watching what can happen when people stop "trying" and accept what's really going on inside them at all times. I don't know how to describe it, but it's floods of love; a very calm yet passionate love. It's a love that doesn't feel pressed or scared or in crises, yet it also does not deny that- from valid perspectives- things are stinking around here. This love is uncultivated yet requires the our responsibility to accept, recognize and express.
At the end of the day, I just remember sitting down with you and the sound of your voice, Joel. I remember how comfortable it felt to swap stories and actually meet each other. Billions of concepts could be thrown on the moment we shared and essays could be written about which of those concepts are more likely to trap Westerners. But my interest is on the epistemology of the moment itself and how we can use language to always refer to what is wider and more living than the wonderful way language will enclose it.....
This love that I know is not related to all the changing experiences of "me" seems to be so patient and playful with all these conversations. I can only imagine it fading if it gets obscured by a mind taking its thoughts way too seriously.
On the 1500th incarnation of future jupiter ego will have brand new crises and battles with brand new dragons. Ego won't even spend a moment trying to remember these eye-blinks we call (what do we call this time period)...It will be dramatic on that plant and much will be at stake. but it's stunning to think that this love, right now, will still be making the same fundamental gesture towards ego even when ego has cool wings and has mastered etheric duplixtured contigagishy. I know this: the epistemology of this love can use language and can even love the percise use of language....but it never gets lost in the tense and noble work of warning the world who is to be avoided and who is to be understood. I really do think that is secondary to the core act of PoF.
If I had to ask you one question right now, Joel, it would be this: if you had to retitle PoF with something that has never been used...and you can't use the word "objective", "observation" or "inward"...what would you call it:????
Jeff
for jeff
Jeff wrote:
"When I read what you wrote above, I'm not sure I have the experience you say is an instance of anthroposophically correct thinking. I can enjoy reading it when I remember that, in a way, you are being very vulnerable, that behind all of the objective sounding words you are really saying something like, "Hey everybody, sometimes when I think it's like music!!!!" And then I'm with you 100%"
My problem as it were, is that your phrase above, attempting to restate what I wrote: "sometimes when I think its like music" is not accurate. Thinking, a pure thinking activity, which is wholly in itself and sense free, beholds a thought-world much the same way we behold a sense world. This thinking is perception, and the musical nature of the thought-world is objectively present. You dont' have to buy it, but I have to say what is true for me.
joel
I buy, it Joel, I totally
I buy, it Joel, I totally buy! I experience music as well. I didn't make myself clear if what I wrote suggested your experience was merely subjective. We are talking prior to the objective/subjective split. At least that's how i know it to be. I was just trying to say that when I listen to the way you hit some notes while typing about things, it's good for me to hear those notes in the wider context of a shared song. Sometimes the keys get hit harder than I would like and I lose the subtle and more intricate strands of your song. I think I'm pretty good at teasing apart my personal asthetic needs from the content of what somebody is saying. That's why I like going into writer's I am not very attracted to personally but who are listening to some damn fine music. Bubba has his belly and Steiner has his notions of race and jewishness and they each have ways of flaunting it. But, man, they've got some good songs as well.
When I said, "Sometimes when I think its like music", it was also just my way of acknowleding that you, Joel, have never gone around pretending that the objective musicality of thinking is something you are always experiencing. In fact, I think you've done a good job of distinguishing various states and experiences associated with objective introspection.
Jeff
Bubba's Language is Clear
I dunno Joel. Bubba's language is clear, and it flows. That's an important sign of someone with real knowledge.
Flowing Words
Hi Carl
How curious that you should say that, because I have a profound distrust of language that flows!
Smooth language
Yes, Lori,
Presumably you mean snake oil salesmen and politicians. I certainly agree that smooth language is not an infallible sign of someone worthy of respect and trust. I just mean that it's an important sign. Would you give your respect and trust to someone incapable of smooth language? Could you imagine an example?
Carl
what about a farmer who has
what about a farmer who has a very weak command of english but knows how to farm well and is trying to tell you why you can trust his suggestions about how to deal with a certain crop? You are able, barely, to follow his line of thought but it isn't easy. At the same time, you are aware of a deep sense of respect and trust you have for the help that this individual is going to provide you. I can think of others.....
Good one. But would you
Good one. But would you really trust him? Suppose something were at stake with the way you dealt with the crop. Suppose some Mafia type has sworn to hunt you down and kill you if the crop fails. Would you hang with this farmer, or would you go somewhere else, to some other authority?
Dude, I said he was a great
Dude, I said he was a great farmer not a black belt in Karate!!! Let me keep it simple:
The capacity to use words well is wonderful. I simply Don't link it inherently to morality or skill capacities. But, man, when they all line up together it's really something.
Jeff
Smooth Talkers
Actually I wasn't thinking of those guys at all. I was thinking about the river of language that flows beneath thought. Perhaps this has some other name in linguistics?
I trust and respect many people who don't normally speak smoothly. To me this gives evidence that they are honestly thinking as they speak. When someone always speaks smoothly I tend not to believe a word they say. I even think some people who habitually speak smoothly don't know the difference between a truth and a lie, since their words flow so well they don't even have to listen to themselves.
This is not to say I always disbelieve articulate people. I just take articulateness with a grain of salt.
The River of Language
The river of language beneath thought is the use theory of meaning, and was proposed by Wittgenstein around 1935. It's a very important viewpoint on what's going on all the time in human communication. When the Group on Goethean conversation gets going on this site, we can discuss it.
I also respect honesty. My point though is that if something is at stake, and other things being equal (both guys are equally honest, etc), we'll want to hear from the articulate fellow, not from the inarticulate one.
Equality
Even if it was the same fellow, being articulate one time and not being articulate another, I'd just as soon hear from him when he's not potentially being washed along in that river of syntax. Not sure we're talking about the same river, either. The one I know about isn't a theory.
Moods and theories
Hi Lori,
There are two points here, and it looks like I'm going to have to oppose you (creatively) on both.
On the first one, you seem to be saying that you prefer people when they are in inarticulate, non-communicative moods. It seems unlikely to me that that's true at times when it matters. If you needed a password to defuse a ticking bomb, you'd prefer the guy to be in an articulate mood. Generally, when it matters, we want our conversational partners to be articulate, and we want to hold them to standards of articulateness.
On the second one, you seem to be saying you know about a certain river but have no theory about it. This is philosophy of freedom material. The fact of the matter is that you can't know about anything, and thus have a stance of freedom toward it, without having a theory about it. Knowledge and theory are the same thing.
Why you make reference to 'equality' in this context escapes me.
All best,
Carl
Carl you wrote:"The fact