I'm out of town for a while and wanted to be able to contribute for this week--so, I've posted a bit early.

Within this section we begin to make clearer ourselves, our limitations, and also that inner being questing for the deeper truth about ourselves—the quest for the divine. 

The universal blessedness of the Word comes to Light as the Idea proclaimed throughout the World, most commonly by means of writing.  Without this most immediately accessible fact of our being, that we produce thought and are capable of coming upon the great thoughts of the world, our consciousness of self would tend to be limited perceptions: “I'm an American, a teacher, a resident of Sandpoint, Gerald, human being, animal, etc.”  What I truly am lies beyond these limitations and initially I'm able to come upon the spirit's vastness by means of this indwelling intelligence—my ability to think.  Universal thinking gets an individual quality when this spiritual activity is taken up from my unique soulful perspective/position in the world—from myself back again to the gods.  Each of us has something unique to offer the whole.  We come upon the greater workings of the hierarchies as we keep ourselves open to the inflowing abundance that streams from heaven to earth. 

The whole unfolding of who we really are, our baggage, our relationship to the whole, emerges in these sections.  Our whole journey before us lies in actively grasping reality as the blessed wholeness that it is—from one being to another.

Now here is a part of the book that I think needs revisiting again and again:

This thought is opposed by a common prejudice very hard to overcome. This prejudice prevents one from seeing that the concept of a triangle that my head grasps is the same as the concept that my neighbor's head grasps. The naïve man believes himself to be the creator of his concepts. Hence he believes that each person has his own concepts. It is a fundamental requirement of philosophic thinking that it should overcome this prejudice. The one uniform concept of "triangle" does not become a multiplicity because it is thought by many persons. For the thinking of the many is itself a unity.

In thinking, we have that element given us which welds our separate individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are single beings; in so far as we think, we are the all-one being that pervades everything. This is the deeper meaning of our two-sided nature: We see coming into being in us a force complete and absolute in itself, a force which is universal but which we learn to know, not as it issues from the center of the world, but rather at a point in the periphery. Were we to know it at its source, we should understand the whole riddle of the universe the moment we became conscious. But since we stand at a point in the periphery, and find that our own existence is bounded by definite limits, we must explore the region which lies outside our own being with the help of thinking, which projects into us from the universal world existence.

Firstly, "It is a fundamental requirement of philosophic thinking that it should overcome this prejudice.  The one uniform concept of "triangle" does not become a multiplicity because it is thought by many persons.  For the thinking of the many is itself a unity." 

What is Steiner saying here?  At a superficial intellectual level I can nod and say "yes, philosophic thinking must overcome this prejudice."  But it is by no means the case that every philosopher has "overcome this prejudice".  In Plato we find a very clear agreement with what Steiner is saying, for example.  But any number of more recent philosophers most definitely do not agree.  In fact, Steiner himself has described in great detail how this very point was at issue between the Nominalists and the Idealists in the Middle Ages, for example.

So what does he mean then?  If it is a fundamental requirement of philosophic thinking that it should overcome this prejudice then why does so much philosophy contradict this point, or pay it lip service but then really ignore it in its implications?

Perhaps it is because thinking that truly overcomes this prejudice touches a reality - it is no longer mere theory, it is a conscious living in a spiritual reality, one which incorporates and includes our own living, thinking being into a greater whole as described here.  I think Steiner is saying that philosophic thinking contains within itself the power to overcome or transcend its own apparent limitations.

I'm sure you're not surprised that I am a big fan of the question you are asking here. I think the following quote from the Steiner material you shared is the crux:

In thinking, we have that element given us which welds our separate individuality into one whole with the cosmos.

In my opinion, the barrier that prevents all types of people from re-cognizing their realiity- the reality of thinking- is the need for the "welding" to still include the entity of the individual. For all people this is the same barrier, i think, but it is especially tricky for people committed to a spiritual path that seems to place so much emphasis on the notion that the "welding" is really just an increasing expanstion and refinment of "self" into more subtle and spiritual realms of being.

It would be like wanting to accept Steiner's notion of "one triangle" while secretly hoping to maintain a somewhat separate and independent reality for the particular mental picture of "triangle" that you have.

This definitly gets into the paradox of what an "individual" really becomes in the light of re-cognizing Freedom. As you might know, I'm not at all convinced that Steiner followed through with the question of "I" in the book. But the entire point of PoF has major implications as to what "I" am in relation to the World-Process of which Steiner speaks. But it's all too theoretical unless the study of PoF is always taking place in the midst of one's own suffering and knowledge-drama (not "suffering" in the sentamental sense).

Thanks,

Jeff

I'm wondering about Steiner's use of the triangle here as a concept that is clearly its own thing, not easily confused as to whether or not people can have different concepts of it. Clearly they can't. But what about a bigger concept, such as "free speech?" If we start from the premise that "free speech" is a concept, with its own life independent of our understanding of it, then does the fact that so many people even on this website have a different view of it, mean that we don't really understand the concept?

If twenty people decided to make a hundred-foot triangle out of marbles, there'd probably be several different views as to how to do the project. That wouldn't mean they didn't grasp the concept "triangle", but rather than they each had a different idea on how to bring it about. And they also might disagree on just what their "triangle" that they were bringing into existence had to be. One might say, they'd have to get a laser in there to make the lines perfectly straight. Another might say that was a ridiculous waste of money, that lines of marbles that even just looked relatively straight would be adequate. A third might say, let's just avoid this fuss and space three marbles at the right intervals. Who would be right? (I know whose triangle I'd vote for!)

So my question is, there's the concept "triangle," and then there are ideas that people come up with on how to make one out of marbles. Are those ideas "concepts?" And are those concepts all individual? Are some "concepts" more universal than others?

Dear Lori,

The idea of how to make a triangle could be a million different ideas (with marbles, with beachballs, etc.)  but the concept triangle, the ideal that lives in spirit is the same for everyone.  Ideas can involve many different concepts (i.e. the concept of what is a marble, what is the material the marble is made of (gold), what is a ball (for outdoors near the ocean, or for indoor tennis), etc.).

Cheers,
patri

Hi Lori,

Thanks for the question as that actually drove me back to some old computer discs, which have some of my writings on PoF that I hadn’t looked at since writing them several years ago.   I really enjoyed reading them again.  If we think of an idea as being more fully saturated and wider concepts (RS’s words?), then an idea may hold a myriad of concepts.  It is possible for some people to have the same idea(s) and not know they share the idea with others.    I was recently looking at a lecture by RS titled “The Concept of Original Sin and Grace,” very interesting lecture.  In this lecture RS states “words such as ‘liberty’, ‘equality among men’, and the like. These words signify moral and ethical ideas, as in the first declared object of the Theosophical Society: ‘To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Man without distinction of race, creed, caste or sex.’ For us, as men of the modern age, this is an ideal.”  When I’m looking at what RS has stated here and thinking of the word (idea) liberty, what concept(s) does liberty conjure up: one would be “free speech,” as you spoke to, then free speech would be a concept and as such, would be an ideal picture that lives in the spiritual world and is concurrent to all. 

When we have a concept, an idea or thought, we cannot arbitrarily move from one thought to the next. (RS).  For me this means there must be an organic growing/evolving in the correct way one thought linking to another.

Lori, you stated: “If we start from the premise that "free speech" is a concept, with its own life independent of our understanding of it, then does the fact that so many people even on this website have a different view of it, mean that we don't really understand the concept?”  I think you nailed it here, there is the ideal concept “free speech” in spirit and then there are the many different experiences of “free speech” that evolve from the individual’s life pattern that color his/her understanding of “free speech.”  If we were to ask everyone on the website to state what a tree is, we would get myriad colorful explanations that may verge far from the pure concept “tree,” but would be the individual’s subjective understanding.  The ideal concept we all share, but if we have to speak to the concept, then that will be colored by our subjective personality.  That makes me think of great writing like "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky.  Perhaps what makes writing great is the writer is able to share many universal truths, concepts, and understanding of same that will ring true for the many. 

Cheers,
patri

Hi, Patri

At the beginning of Chapter 4, PoF, Steiner says, "Ideas do not differ qualitatively from concepts. They are but fuller, more saturated, more comprehensive concepts." So I'd say that "free speech" has the stature of an Idea. If it doesn't differ qualitatively from a simpler concept, then it must have its own ideal nature as you say, and if it's saturated, it must be saturated with sub-concepts as it were. So it's as if it had many conceptual facets, just like the concept "organism" has many facets. Then as individuals we each see different facets of "free speech", even though we're looking at the same multi-faceted thing.

Somewhere, I know, Steiner makes a statement to the effect that all there are, or ever could be, is percepts and the relationships between them, which we call concepts. Maybe it's in PoF, or in Truth and Knowledge, or in The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. I'm going to find it someday soon. In the meantime, I'm thinking of "free speech" as a relationship (between the even bigger Ideas of "freedom" and "speech") that really exists, so of course we can all learn to understand the relationship better. We each see different facets of it, but as Steiner says here, "...the thinking of the many is in itself a unity." Only I wonder in what sense he means that. Because it's obvious that the relationship of freedom to speech can't be limited to our thoughts about it, however many millions of us there may be thinking those thoughts. So it's the thinking that's the unity, the effort perhaps?

I love the idea that you mention here, that you can't move arbitrarily from one concept to the next. That's why I don't grasp wild flights of abstraction, because for me that would be moving arbitrarily.

Thanks,
Lori

1) As we leave these two sections to move on to the next, I can't help but remark that the viewpoints of Psychism and Pneumatism are very evident here. For the Psychist is concerned with self-perception and the feeling of independence, and needs to remember to reach out toward the universal, while the Pneumatist gets caught up in the All-One Being and needs to move on to the knowledge of the Hierarchies. Admitting the unique, two-sided nature of human beings is a step in that direction.

2) If we were to understand the whole riddle of the universe the moment we became conscious, we would have no hand in bringing that understanding about. For us to be able to watch the absolute come into being in the particularity that is us, is a great gift from the spiritual world, it seems to me.

3) I had a hard time grasping how, in an infinite universe, any one point can be "on the periphery," as Steiner says here, since there's no edge to inhabit. It would seem that any one point would experience itself as the center of the universe, as of course we normally do. It helped to imagine a universe made of an infinite number of particles like grains of sand. For some reason this made it seem like there could be no center except the complete unity of all those particles. The universe is its own center, in that case. And any one separate particle, since its separation makes it the polar opposite of that united center, is by definition peripheral.