The mechanical key to conversation is reproduction. When a speaker says something, what the speaker says is reproduced in the mind of the hearer. In general, it may be reproduced with perfect fidelity or with less than perfect fidelity.
In Goethean conversation, we want the contents expressed to be reproduced with universal fidelity. We want everyone to have the same content in mind from conversational moment to conversational moment.
When fidelity fails, conversation fails. When fidelity is refined and brought to new heights of precision, the conversation exalts and initiates the self-consciousness of those who participate.
That at any rate is the theory.
What we try to do in Goethean conversation, from moment to moment, is ensure by various cooperative techniques that the current content is reproduced universally. Call this:
(P2) The principle of universal reproduction
A Second Journal
Here is a second major principle in Goethean conversation. This one is somewhat easier than truth because it is basically mechanical. But we need to understand why it is central to the whole process of spiritual conversation.
Conversational Nuance
Imagine a group of anthroposophists, a eurythmist, an astrosopher, a psychotherapist and a logician, having a conversation. Suppose one of them says
(1) The unilluminated part of Venus, when it faces the earth, radiates a pale blue color which the plants on Earth take into their flowers from which they radiate different fragrances. These fragrances stimulate the insects, and the insects nourish the soil. In the future, human beings will take this color into their astral bodies and radiate music. Songbirds will respond to this music, and thus become human. Venus, which is a hot and inhospitable world, thus works like an erotic, phosphorescent resonance mirror on Earthly life, causing it to evolve.
If the anthroposophists are smart about conversation, they won’t argue about (1) very much. What they will do instead is to try to understand it by taking turns reproducing it. In a way, they will make love to it.
In Goethean conversation, when someone reproduces something that sounds true, one adds the nuance of one’s individuality to the pleasurable activity. One may be good with speech formation and gesture, another good with stars, another good with psychology, another good with common sense. One can even oppose something that was said by reproducing it. In that way, through its reproduction by different forms of the good will, the truth in what is said is brought out more exactly. The truth in what is said, thus amplified, will bind the conversation, and the fellowship of friends, into a substantial, living, psychic unity.
Many contents in such conversations will emerge as indifferently reproducibile. It won't matter who says them because everyone will sense them.
Reproduction, which is a mechanical form of truth, is the real principle of Goethean conversation.
Organic Origins
Okay! Carl you are helping to expand our minds in an evolutionary way and I think it is very progressive. You must be an air sign!
What I like about this train of thought it is fill of life. Once I had a dream (I know that sounds cliché … `I had a dream` and Steiner spoke quite a bit on dreams and there’s dreams and there are dreams) anyway I had this dream and I was somewhere and this somewhere had plastic people walking around – they where beautifully modeled almost like barbie type dolls – but they were plastic people! I think if Blavatsky was here she would have called it the plastic planet!
Conscious Conversation sounds organic to me. My question is when you say reproduce - in a mechanical meaning – and taking Venus for example. Does Venus not already exist and the reproducing part is in fact awakening the Venus which already exists – in us.
Although this might be the Truth part (Venus already exists) and the mechanical part is- it depends on what we make out of our relationship with Venus ... all the mechanics are already in fact existing, albeit progressing and evolving at the same time and it is up to us to create a connection with them and with this it is the quality of relationship we have with Venus.
Then if it is already created – your relationship and my relationship with Venus should be the same ie we see the same because of the pre-existence we have merely woken it up within us – the nuance is the degree of relationship or seeing between you, me and the common entity which in this example is Venus.
And as you say if / when we have the same content in mind - that is reaching the same level of the pre-existent truth - we can flow in a progressive manner?
C.
Alchemical Dreams
Yes, Caryn, these alchemical dreams are very impressive when they come. One is astounded by the intelligence that makes them up. It's an order of intelligence and anticipation that we just don't see in this world, but there it is in these dreams.
The conversational cycle - Preparing, Entering, Conversation, Sealing, Forgetting, Dreaming, Remembering, Preparing - is the basic life pattern (the basic life form) built around Goethean conversations. Eventually, one hopes, our real time conversations will develop some of the characteristics of these dreams. Let's acknowledge,
(P5) The conversational cycle.
Have you looked at the Journal on Causal Reference? I think probably when we bring up Venus in a careful Goethean conversation, in some sense we stretch out and actually reach Venus.
Roger Reproduction
Hi Carl,
I think this will be less controversial than the Truth "P".
I think it is certainly a crucial element in any conversation - makes me think of the old "Rogerian Therapy" where the therapist just reflects everything the patient says back at them:
Patient: I'm feeling very depressed
Therapist: So, you're feeling very depressed?
Patient: Yes, I just had an argument with my wife.
Therapist: So, you just had an argument with your wife?
Patient: Are you going to just keep on repeating whatever I say?
Therapist: So, you would like to know whether I am going to just keep on repeating whatever you say?
right intention
Hi Carl
Alchemical dreaming is a good word and does embrace thinking, willing and feeling. I did read Casual reference - thanks, thinking out of the box is always appreciated.
The word Casual and casual words might be the same as saying ‘a rose blooms without thinking why it blooms’ – for some reason the casual word needed to be expressed and bringing it to the surface it is freed.
I find when I am looking for an answer or further insight to something I am studying I set my intention on this particular subject and when I sleep I might receive an answer in my dreaming and then decipher the symbols of the dream. We might call this right intention or preparing as you say.
Yes, the order of super-intelligence which anticipates our questioning and makes available through love of wisdom in the right approach. Respect, love and acknowledging may be the right approach.
My respects to you.
Caryn
$100 Challenge
Here I propose a stepped-down version of Valdi's $10,000 challenge. I do this for the purpose of showing what is meant by the Principle of Reproduction. Here is the challenge:
$100 US to the first person to reproduce with universal acceptability, before October 21, 2007, Jeff's post from 9/30/07 entitled I doubt many. The money will be paid by me by a check drawn on a US bank.
The universal reproducibility of proposition p means two things. It means everyone is able to reproduce the current content, p, of the conversation in a way that everyone else can accept. It also means that the reproduction captures the motivation behind the content.
The way to reproduce p is to get inside the current expression and say or type what it must mean, given everything one understands about who said it and what the person said.
The way to verify the reproduction is to wait and see if everyone senses the reproduction to be true, and not to say anything else unless everyone senses that it is true.
I believe it is possible to do this in the present case, but I think it will prove to be surprising how much work it will take.
For heuristic purposes, we should bear in mind that only if we have a condition of universal reproducibility do we have a condition for anthroposophical conversation, and that generally, conversational offerings shouldn't demand a great deal of work of everyone else.
The Essence of Love
Does no one here have a sense for what conversational reproduction should be for a community?
Isn't it clear that conversational reproduction is the essence of human love?
Reproduction of What Jeff is Saying
Here's my attempt at reproducing what Jeff said in I doubt many...
All you need is love.
Did I win? :-) Who determines the universal acceptability?
A Better Reproduction of Jeff
Contractualism isn't anthroposophical. Contractualism is committed to idealism, and idealism is a form of emotional violence. Idealism and contractualism seek to remedy guilt, blame and wrongdoing by attributing a false reality to them. Wrongdoing is actually fine if we just allow it to be.
There is a kind of idealism that doesn't violently compel the "should." This is the idealism of possibility. Moving toward possibility is a form of love, and this form of idealism is ok.
If I am happy and free when I express my ideals and mental pictures, then these ideals and pictures are ok. If I am expressing a presumption of should, then the ideals and pictures are not ok.
Peace has to do with free and happy ideals and mental pictures. It also has to do with false ideals and false mental pictures cracking under the strain of their confrontation with reality.
Hellinger's approach appeals to people entertaining false ideals, although I don't really know. Steiner's PoF sees false ideals in the same way that I do.
Universal Acceptability
Yo, Tim,
Universal acceptability is determined by everyone who is committed to the conversation. It's a form of collective intelligence.
Unwillingness
This post has been up now for 32 hours, and no one has responded. What shall we make of this fact?
Here is a well-defined social technique to research the spiritual, but no one seems willing to use it. What explains this unwillingness?
Is the technique flawed? Are people unable to understand the technique? Are people afraid of the technique?
John? Tim? Sebastian? Joel? Jeff? Lori? Caryn? Others?
The child is not the parent
Carl – firstly you have continued to teach me what I already knew: a knee-jerk mechanical reaction is not the same as an intuitive flash. This response is founded on an undefined somatic dissonance and even after writing, I sense that it only premature tummy kicks. Silence is not invariably a sign of inactivity or unwillingness. I can reproduce silences but they are always unique, and the same holds true for language based interactivity. Saying the same thing twice is always subtly different in our temporal world. I can reproduce silences but they are always unique, and the same holds true for language based interactivity. See?
As you may have spotted elsewhere, Carl, I have been watching videos of Krishnamurti. Look at how David Bohm presses Krishnamurty in dialogue here: Krishnamurti & David Bohm - The Future of Humanity. It one in a whole sequence. It seems that the aim in their conversation is to find more general, or universally acceptable formulations. I cannot offer such a standard of engagement.
I wrote a long continuation in draft. Here I will reproduce the essentials.
A reproduction is a formulation, an expression of a percept/concept. It is not that percept/concept. The expression is the individualised progeny of that which cannot be named. Even in eurythmy this holds true. The reproduction can never be that which is reproduced. To reproduce and rethink is a progression from the original, so there will remain a generation gap.
Much of our language is not even a representation; it only points to what is beyond its grasp. Any one who parsed poetry in school will remember the horrific dissection to death of living beauty. Hence a ‘mechanical’ attempt, which is evidently valuable as an exercise in discipline, distracts from the shared aim of focussing together on the living spirit. Reproduction seems far too slow to catch the spirit butterflies and as everyone drops back into the body boundedness of evaluative analysis the situation is irrevocably altered. The testing through repetition destroys the ability to remain in touch with the objectives of the converse.
Universal acceptability is no test of truth. Consensus is only agreement and often only contractual for the sake of social economy. There are many prejudices that pass among our contemporaries as universally acceptable. For example: when you are dead you are not present. This is perceptibly inaccurate to a sensitive interior observer. Nevertheless it may test positive and universally acceptable in many a group conversation. The processing of the idea in the realm of the realities of life tests the veracity of both. It is in the free actions in life that the reproduction takes place. The principle of reproducibility is therefore only applicable to moral deeds, which are not mechanical by inherent definition.
This second version is much clearer than its predecessor. However, it has lost its connection to my experience of thinking and has become merely a construction.
The Construction of Moral Action
OK, John. Thank you for this post. Now I think we can make some progress.
The theory of reproduction is a formal theory. It states what the form of conversation already is, even in the degenerated versions we get when mere human beings attempt it. This is to say, we are executing reproductions of one another all the time, whether we like it or not. It is, it seems to me, our opportunity and our prerogative to take advantage of that given situation, and to make something out of it.
Of course a reproduction is not generally numerically identical with its progenitor, although among the angels it may be. It is a variation, a nuanced version, a child. But children are wonderful things, and in general are something to live for. People here see that, don't they?
In music, repetition of a motif is typically where the interpretive art enters. Consider Robert Plant's "Hey, girl," on Communication Breakdown. The second one expresses the first one perfectly, and something else as well. You get this device everywhere in music.
The "pointing to what is beyond its grasp" can be reproduced just as well as the hitting the nail on the head. In fact, when the nail is hit, there is generally no need to reproduce. When the nail is hit, truth has obtained. When the nail isn't hit, truth is pursued. Truth pursued is the point of my insisting, for example, that a reproduction of Jeff's I doubt many is not only instructive for those of us interested in spiritual research conducted socially, but actually necessary if we are going to raise the level of discourse on this website to anything beyond mere and perpetual self-indulgence.
The more slowly conversation is conducted, the more refulgent it becomes. Reproduction does not destroy contact with the objectives of conversation. It reinforces such contact. With a little thought, that truth should become obvious to people here.
Your point about universal acceptability looks somewhat unconsidered to me. In a world where everyone thinks the world is flat, the world is actually flat. This is Kant's point about objectivity and objective knowledge. Objectivity is a product of the mind, not the other way around. Sure there are examples of universal acceptance that we wouldn't want to subscribe to. Nazi Germany is an example. Maybe certain of us are trying to indulge in just such world-creation here on the PoF site, when, for example, we try to insist that ethical individualism has something to do with life in a bygone era in Montana or with life inside the head of a scared little guy in Springfield, Oregon.
Now at the end you do a little flip-flop. You say that the principle of reproducibility is correct for moral deeds. Well, that's the point. All human action, particularly social human action, is moral action. Why people here would be unwilling to explore the construction of moral action directly, as a means of spiritual research, is still unclear to me.
Flat
Carl, the Earth is not flat. This demonstrates the problem of shunting equality into the realm of spiritual freedom. No amount of reproduction changes the reality that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. The truth is something other than any amount of opinion or description. Consider how statistical analysis is applied to facts. It seems just a little bit too close to allowing democracy to become the arbiter of truth.
Some folk around my community are talking about the New Authority, meaning that truth of itself is an authority that can be the deciding arbiter. That can - and does - mean that everyone changes their mind occasionally. Yes, that is everyone present suggesting that they were wrong, and it starts by letting questions breathe.
Is there breathing space for this in your proposal here?
The Social Arbitration of Truth
John, in the future, human social activity actually will change the shape of the earth. The earth will become a star. This will be accomplished through the mechanism of moral and linguistic reproduction. By the mechanism of love. That at least is the theory.
We are not talking here about the earth outside the domain of any self-conscious perception. We are talking about the earth insofar as it is an objective feature of experience. Before we woke up to the fact that the earth is a cosmic sphere, the earth was in reality something quite different.
The same sort of thing extends to the process of waking up in the astral world. Before we know what the astral world is, the astral world doesn't exist.
The basic position here is called idealism. Do you think idealism is false?
True or False or ...
Carl, is this a trick question?
There is BIG STUFF here and I - as scatterbrained pilgrim - am in awe of it. Idealism is fine for idealists, and I love ideals. If an idealist thinks, "I want to live next to a swimming pool" it can come about through active deeds and the agency of others. If this idealist thinks that nothing further needs to be done and sits back waiting for it to happen, then this individual is trying to be a naive black magician. If the intention is selfless, then same may be white not black. The true magic is intention directed will. It is human will co-creating with divine will, which includes elemental will.
In the time that folk believed the Earth was flat, it was factually not flat. If we believe that our beliefs constitute living truth then we are naive. The facts may change because of our thinking in certain circumstances, but realism is also valid in its own orbit. Ok - in the future all will be different. In the now all is not yet different. If we act now according the principles of the future, what do we produce now? This is a variation of the process of reducing truth to dogma, and - hey presto - it is false.
Carl, you are surely not content with accepted truths, dogmas, limited philosophical positions or beliefs? Are you not interested in the living truth? The whole point of my meandering is that I am looking for a means to validate the directives of living truths that can galvanise good will activity. What kind of truths are you interested in? This could be a very basic misunderstanding between us in me.
Real Science
OK, it looks like I win the reproduction contest. What we have above is conceded, by consensus, to be what Jeff is actually saying in I doubt many.
Now notice a few things.
First, what Jeff is saying is false. It's not ok to let wrongdoing just be.
Second, this community has allowed that falsehood to stand. Now that we have evidence that this has actually happened, we might think that there are other falsehoods posted on this website. Undoubtedly those falsehoods here are inadvertent and basically harmless, but they are nontheless real, and they have a negative spiritual effect. We might look at this thread, for example. Reproducing this one will probably prove there are things in it that aren't well thought-out, and perhaps even false.
Third, it's informative that consensus in this case was accomplished by the mechanism of universal (or near-universal) attention averting. This subconscious mechanism is in fact how most social agreement and most social reality comes to be instituted. But most social agreement and most social reality is highly degenerate. We anthroposophists are supposed to be in the business of regenerating culture, not of allowing it to decay.
Fourth, this little exercise is an example of actual science. It is the adduction of real evidence in favor of a theory. I don't know exactly what Joel is talking about when he says his introspective method is scientific, but I do know the result we've got here is scientific. It's scientific because a social community can now look at a theory on the one hand and at certain evidence on the other and begin to make judgments about reality based on taking them together.
Truth and Objectivity
John, I'd have to rummage around in my books to find it, but Steiner is on record saying that heliocentrism is false. He appears to prefer the medieval geocentric picture.
How do we think about this? I think the only way to do so is to theorize that truth is a function of the social idiom. Our modern scientific social idiom is based on an experimental-deductive method, but its truth is constituted by the fact that everyone accepts it. If everyone accepts something different, as the Azande of Central Africa do (they don't accept modus ponens, the logical principle that says if Q follows from P, and if P is the case, then Q is the case), then something is actually different.
So I guess I'm committed to the position that when the earth was believed to be the center of the universe, in some sense it was true that "the earth" was the center of "the universe." What has changed since then, of course, is the objective status of the earth and the universe in human consciousness. But it's the objective status of things that matters for self-consciousness, for behavior and for moral judgment and moral action. It makes no sense to project our conception of the earth into other cosmic epochs. Truth and objectivity are functions of social idiom.
Idealism
Hi Carl,
You said:
Before we woke up to the fact that the earth is a cosmic sphere, the earth was in reality something quite different.
Now suppose a group of people is looking at a package. They all think it contains a box of chocolates. They open it and find a packet of jelly beans.
Applying the same logic, I could say, before these people woke up to the fact that the package contained a packet of jelly beans, it contained something in reality quite different (and what might that have been?).
Common Sense
Hi TIm,
Well, here we have to say that what the package really contained all along was jelly beans, and the people were massively wrong. They just didn't have an objective conception of what was in the package, although they thought they did. Generally, there's a great deal of common sense underlying socially constituted truths, but in your example here, there doesn't seem to be any.
I'm excited about this,
I'm excited about this, John. You seem to be looking, back and forth, at what takes place from one explication to another. To me this is where the action is and I find it infiniately amazing that we can actually notice directly the role that expericing plays in this production of explications.
I will be shying away from the term "reproduction" for technical reasons. It can be used in wonderful ways, but it carries the implication that representation is a primary goal of speaking and thinking. I will most likely be using "explication" or "articulation' because, for me, these don't necessarily imply the clunkier parts of "reproduction". But I think I am seeing how you mean it.
A room full of people have just heard a motivatioal speach about community service. The speaker was shining his points into the audience and many people were lit up with enthusiasm to act creatively in the community. As they listen to the speaker, somtimes they make eye contact with each other and know they are enjoying the same re-cognition. After the speech they meet in a room and decide they want to form a group that will act from this impulse. They spend three months trying to "reproduce" each other's attempts to form a mission statement. The more terms they throw out, the more they diverge, the more they question each other's sincerity or capacity to really "make things happen"...But they feel it is very important that they can find a list of statements that capture their intentions. Eventually, after much dissapation of energy, they put something together and serve a community dinner that goes ok.
In this senerio they acted from the presumption that the meaning needed to be "reproduced" liinguistically in order to be shared. Thank God they have a time machine that can take them back before they conditioned themselves with all the negativity that came with the stress of their confused attempts to share words. With the time machine we place them back to the moment the speaker was finishing his inspiring presentation. They are looking each other in the eyes, knowing that they are sharing this understanding. Now, we give them the simple instructions to get together and share. like children, what it was like listening to the speaker. As they listen to each other freely explicate their sense of the impulse, each feels his or her own impulse growing. They take turns.....Now we ask each of them to get in groups of two and just brainstorm 20 crazy ways this impulse might explode into the community. When they are done there are 150 bizzarely inspiring ideas. We ask them to go home and read through each idea and take notes...We ask them to make sure to stay connected to their felt-sense of the lecture and to track how the felt sense response to various ideas. Come back in two weeks and let's play some more.
It's not that I believe they were doomed to failure in their first attempt to produce a list of shared propositions about the meaning of their inspiriation. Some groups might pull that off. But, if it is pulled off at all the success is due to the fact they the group is staying with the felt-sense, with the felt-meaning that "contains" itself in all genuine explications. The explications do not represent or reproduce the living meaning; they "carry it forward". Gene Gendlin taught me this term and still helps me with it. I'm making it my own but, man, his explications have been very helpful.
http://www.focusing.org/gendlin.html
That is an essay that he wrote that goes into "carrying forward" and begins to show how that concept might help us better if our interest is in the actual experience of thinking, speaking. If you read the whole thing, you'll see how his work beautifully extends Barfield's radical flipping of what mataphors are...
I think it does wonders to realize that what we are trying to explicate is something that is only ever really right here, right in our chest and tummies to be referred to directly. When your words don't carry it forward, it rejects them, not you. Sometimes your explications my only kind of work. It (the felt-sense) is what let's you know that they are provisional symbols. Even when certain symbols do an amazing job of carrying forward the felt-sense, their very success in carrying it forward will be the exact success that makes them not appropriate in two weeks. Like when we FINALLY find the right words for our poem and the felt-sense opens and makes it clear, "Yes, that is exactly what I want to say there"....But that very YES has us going back to look at the poem. It's changes show us more deeply where more wants to be said differently earlier in the poem...these changes take away the space where the first YES came and now we find a whole new explication. If we think of explications as progeny (which I love), we can start to see how a family can grow huge in a short time. We can slightly change the metaphore based on the felt-sense I'm paying attention to now:
There is one Father (the directly referred to felt-sense) and One Son (whatever string of symbols is currently functioning to extend- carry forward- the Father). The Holy Spirit the Teacher who makes this process become a conscious and transparent communion.....
Anyway, if you ever have to time to read Gendlin's article I think you'd get a kick out of it.
Soon I am going to open my little PoF website. It will be a space in which I want to play with people in theory construction. I'll be using what I've taken from Gendlin's "Thinking at the Edge" to play with PoF type considerations. What I'm looking forward to is that it will be a place where I simply guide through a process; it won't be a journal like this where I think my idea responses in conversation. John, it would be so wonderful if you would be one of the first to play with "Thinking at the Edge" when I get my site up and going! pretty please!!!!
Jeff
Passionate
Carl and Jeff, in your amazing ways you are both passionate about what you write here. I am a relatively aloof northerner vigorously trying to feed the fires for spiritual envisioning. I often try too hard and get burned up in the trying.
Frankly, I find Carl's approach extremely difficult to work through. It is not his fault. It is what attracts me to persevere. I constantly find that I have misunderstood or not thought adequately before writing. There are such valuable lessons that I can use in my own work with others.
Getting it right is often not as useful to others as getting it transparently wrong.
I want to get a book on Thinking at the Edge because it makes a confusing experience fruitful. I would like to trace where the felt sense lives in the sentient soul and sentient body. In this way it can be further explicated in an anthroposophical context. I need to do this because I cannot describe why reproduceability feels to be looking in another direction to that which Carl sees. If I am wrong about it, I will find out and adjust. It will also feed into Carl's compost heap.
It is a hard task to adequately show why Goethean observation is at loggerheads with the analytical approach to assessing individuals with special needs. This wrestling with angels here on the site will serve others who will meet the outcomes in our lives.
Pandaemonium
John, it's super easy to work through my approach. One just tries it with a certain amount of good will and fortitude. I don't think it is at all necessary to run off and read a book in order to do so.
This actual act of moral good will is what people here, for some reason or another, are resolutely resisting. It's amazing to look at all of the irrelevant and distracting detritus that has piled up in this Journal devoted to the Principle of Reproduction. Almost none of it expresses this Principle.
This kind of anti-reproductive (and therefore anti-social) impulse and exhibition is commonly known as Resistance. Another word for it might be Possession. Pandaemonium is another apt and possible term for it.
Now, in keeping to the point of what has been framed here, I ask, is my reproduction of Jeff's I doubt many, which appears above as A Better Reproduction of Jeff, fair to his spirit and his actual capacity to express himself? Is it true, insofar as truth is within the grasp of this little social community? Does it, in other words, express recognition of and therefore love for Jeff?
So far, no one here has been willing to ante up and enter this game of actual recognition and love. It is true that no one has objected to my offering and tried to go me one better, but I suspect this has not occurred for the right reasons.
The right reasons for this community to accept this particular reproduction as definitive would be that it truly captures who Jeff is and what he typed when he typed it.
The wrong reasons would be the impulse to ignore, resist or otherwise obscure the moral factors of recognition and truth that should be in play moment to moment in all anthroposophical society.
I do not think any of this resistance is particularly surprising or particularly blameworthy, and some of it may be justified. After all, we should be careful when we are given a wholly new way to do anthroposophy and anthroposophical conversation. But I do think that this community can do better, and I think it should.
The Exhibition of Self-Control
Jeff, it's perfectly ok for you to reproduce yourself. You may want to do this if you sense that something essential about your words or your inner being is being missed by others.
Alternatively, you may decide to repudiate what you have said, to fess up and admit that it was better not said at all, and retract it. Either of these are entirely social gestures, and they keep the conversation going.
Changing the subject, gesticulating wildly on behalf of some inner process or otherwise distracting others from the work at hand are anti-social gestures. They undermine the conversation and the living, breathing social organism. These self-indulgences should be renounced as monuments to self-control.
Carl, I said I would
Carl,
I said I would only have "serious" conversations with you in the context of a game I would make up. I'm not sure it would be fun, but I promise it will not be mean. At worst it will contain some satire but the satire will include me as well. So I'm not going to try to win your money by showing how your conversation theory proves (with love) that my post was selfish and unnessary. I must say, however, your reproduction of my post did not come across as either. Work Harder! So I won't have that kind of "serious" conversation, but I'd love to create a context/game in which I would...But you reminded me of a story!
There once was a sensitive boy who made up his own game of marbles. He sat for hours by himself in his garage playing his new game. He could not believe how much great big fun it was to play his game. Even though his game needed many players, the boy was smart and used imagination to pretend many people were playing his game. But he wanted to share the fun with others. The boy cared great big deeply about the world and he knew that people could be happier. He knew his game would bring the great big sad world exactly what it needed. The boy became very excited to share the news.
So he went around the neighborhood and kindly invited others to learn his game. Quite a few children came over to his garage to play. He began to teach them his game. Some of the children couldn’t follow it and immediately said goodbye and went home. The boy didn’t want anybody to leave but he was happy that others were still listening. The boy wanted to teach the children step by step and so he had carefully thought out how to teach each step that would let the children have so much great big fun.
The game was quite complicated and completely original so the children began to ask questions. The boy was happy to answer questions. It was so much fun just getting to talk about his game and he just knew that soon they would all be playing it for real. He was happy that the children were asking him questions. It was almost as much fun as the game itself, but not really: the game was great big important.
Two kids got called to an early dinner and had to go home: the boy started to feel a little bit nervous at the great big smallness that his group of friends was becoming. He was just a kid, like everybody else, and so he started to get a little snippy at the questions. It was easier to get snippy than to feel the great big sad feelings that were starting to tap on his great big heart. Some kids got snippy right back! But snippy is not that great big deal of a deal, so the boy kept trying to teach his game.
One of the children started to feel real dumb because the boy was getting so frustrated at the questions. But this child didn’t like to feel stupid. It was easier to make the snippy turn into great big anger. This child called the boy names and said he should teach them nicer. The boy was not expecting to be called names and it made him feel great big sad, but it was easier to turn his snippy into anger than feel great big sad, so he said mean things back. The child and the boy each knew that the other was being either stupid or mean and so they went back and forth.
The child left angrily. And so did another. A few of the children left the garage because it was no longer any fun learning the boy’s game. But a great big small handful stayed there because they were still interested and it didn’t bother them that the boy found it easier to talk snippy and smart than to feel the great big sad alone sadness in his heart.
A boy named Gulp had been there most of the time. He liked learning the game a lot. He loved games, especially ones that people had made up by themselves. Soon after Gulp got to the garage he realized that this was not the type of game he was excited to play, but Gulp loved watching people learn games and he did think that maybe after everybody started actually playing the game, he could jump in and see what it was like. At first Gulp asked questions. The boy responded in ways that taught Gulp how different their ways of playing were. Gulp mentioned the kinds of games he liked to play but the boy said those games weren’t as special. That kind of hurt Gulps feelings. Gulp thought that maybe it was not ok to talk about other games right now. Gulp did not want to have the best game in the great big wonderful world but the way the boy was talking about games almost made Gulp forget that games were for happiness not unhappiness.
That helped Gulp because then he could simply remember that the boy just wants to have fun; all this snippy and anger really is just getting sidetracked. Unfortunately the boy was getting more and more upset and he said some really great big mean things to other people. They left too. The boy cried out once, “Why won’t everybody play the BEST game. You are all either being just plain mean or just plain stupid. I only want to give the world the happiness of my game!!! If you would just listen to me you would see why it is so much fun…” The boy really did want to help the great big whole world out of its sadness and confusion.
But after that he said more mean things to a little girl. She left. It was getting late and Gulp could tell that the boy didn’t want more questions, especially ones from him; at this point it was clear that Gulp simply could not learn the rules and that they were rules that he didn’t find playful. So Gulp said goodbye and that he would still want to play games with the boy but he could not figure out this game and did not like how upset everybody was getting in the boy’s garage. Gulp said that he would make up a fun game just for the boy and if the boy ever wanted to play he could just come over to Gulp’s house.
Gulp left the garage but he could still hear the sound of voices escaping up under the door. He heard the boy say, “Gulp is selfish and only wants to play selfish games. I have a game that will make everybody Happy but Gulp just wants to force people to play selfish games that don’t make sense and that don’t make people happy. He should never have even said those games ouloud!” It kind of made Gulp mad and it kind of made Gulp wish somebody would give the boy a great big hug.
One day Gulp was playing with other children on the side of the street and he quickly made up a game about words to play. The boy was in the car with his mother and they drove by just as Gulp was sharing his game. Later that day the boy shouted to many people that he would give his allowance to anybody who could use his game to show how boring Gulp’s game was. The boy screamed something like, “Gulp should never ever ever ever have made up that game about words and acted like it was fun. My game can show how his game isn’t as much fun!” But strangly, when the boy played his own game to show how unfun Gulp's game was, he ended up making Gulp's game look great big ok; He must not have been playing his own game that well.
Nobody tried to get the boy’s money. He shouted again that Gulp should never have acted like the word game was fun. "it's really selfish what you did", he shouted. He told Gulp that he would even give his allowance to Gulp if Gulp would play the boy’s game to prove that Gulp’s game wasn’t fun. It all got great big unfunny.
Gulp wondered what would happen next. He didn't like the way he was thinking of the boy whenever the boy talked about having fun. He wished something would change in the neighborhood. He wanted something more fun to happen. He agreed with the sensitive boy that the world was very upset and unhappy. He also agreed that good games could help a lot.
Gulp hoped that a whole bunch of really smart kids would move to the neighborhood and learn the boy’s game and make him great big HUGE happy because if the boy was great big HUGE happy then the world would be happier as well.
Mount Shasta
Jeff,
This is funny, charming and enjoyable. Thanks for going to all that trouble to frame it up and post it.
I plan to be at Mount Shasta this weekend. Have you got a way to get down there from Springfield?
Warmest good wishes,
Carl
PS, Others in the area are also invited, of course. Tom? Joel? Lori? Check out the scene at http://consciousconversation.com/retreats.html.
I'll be at my workshop in
I'll be at my workshop in Berkelely all weekend, but I'll honk each time I drive by my favorite mountain.
but until then....
One day the boy screamed out, "I did it. I did it. I won my own money because I proved that Gulp's games are not as fun as mine!!!!!!"
But nobody said anything....
"Hey," shouted the boy, "If you don't talk to me about my games then it PROVES that I'm right. It means you aren't as strong as me!"
But nobody said anything.....
"I AM NOT MAD. I AM ONLY RIGHT. NOT MAD, ONLY RIGHT. NOT MAD, ONLY RIGHT. NOT MAD, ONLY RIGHT!"
Silence from the neighborhood....
"I proved that Gulp's game is no fun. That means that mine is. Come back!"
But it was late.
Gulp heard the boy screaming but didn't know what to say. It didn't seem like the boy was really playing a game at all.
Truth as a Way of Life
Well, Jeff, that's true. Society isn't really a game. There are serious, non-trivial things at stake in society, and seeking to change or to better society can appear to affect those serious, non-trivial things. The people at the Steiner College in Sacramento, for example, depend for the College on their livelihoods. They can't be expected to embrace something like Goethean conversation right off the bat when it promises to change the way they do things with their social relations.
But still, something fresh and new is needed in anthroposophy. I'm hoping the people here, who aren't particularly invested in the established forms of anthroposophy, will show some imagination and some courage and start to ask whether and how it is actually possible to develop a cultural form based on truth.
Truth
'There is no religion higher than the truth' - a Theosophia saying
Truth is Within our Grasp
Thanks, Caryn., for this and the current posts.
It seems to me, with the principle of reproduction, that truth is culturally within our grasp.
Jeff is right; exercising that grasp is somewhat more than a game.
Constituting Truth
Are people here clear how truth is constituted through the formal technique of reproduction?
Are people here interested in truth?
how can we not be
interested in the truth - your contributions are appreciated Carl. :)
The Historical Record
Thank you Caryn. I think here we all are.
The problem we have with Truth is probably self-confidence and courage. What we are doing here in cyberspace, after all, is an historical record. People don't want to be judged by history as having been committed somehow or another to Falsehood.
We need to find a way to soften this situation, and to express tolerance for others' mistakes in a public manner. But we don't want to ignore mistakes or pretend they aren't there. There is a vast and immensely important social difference between Truth and Falsity in self-presentation, and that difference will make all the difference in our evolution toward the Higher Beings.
Universally acceptable self-presentation in the context of Truth is an art, and I confess I have not mastered it myself.
edge feelings
John, I’m going to start a new journal to ask you about special needs….
Gendlin taught an original class called "Theory Construction" at the University of Chicago for 15 years I think. He would invite anybody from any disapline. The only criteria was that they had a strong sense of knowing something they couldn't quite articulate in their field. I love that his class started from this place. He would then spend quite some time teaching them how to pay attention to that sense of knowing, how to take care of it and attend to it without conceptually squashing it. Then he would show them how to let that intuiting move its way "out" via language and how you can have the power of logic without losing the creative force of intuiting...When you read reports of what this was like for people, your heart sing. You find many people saying how blown away they were to learn that they could actually think...and how enlivening is!
It will be fun to play “Thinking at the Edge” with you. I should have my site up in two weeks at the most. Steiner came very close to creating an operational definition of felt-sense. In “Anthroposophy- A fragment” he describes how we not only judge our concepts but we sense them. He points to how we often know something exactly before we can locate words that carry it forward. I was delighted to see that he considers the sense of concept to be the inverse (inherently with) of the sense of life. This makes perfect sense and this explains why Gendlin always wants to point to the bodily nature of intuiting. The sense of life is that which can immediately give us an “update” on the state of our being. The sense of life is reporting to us the condition of how our organismic needs are being met. It makes sense that the felt-sense must also be registering in a similar bodily manner. After I started getting this, I began to find all the Steiner quotes in which he speak of his imaginative perceptions in ways that reveal he is still working from within felt-sensing. We can see that Imaginations are the symbols of this kind of thinking and that they have the same relationship to the function of experiential meaning as symbols that work on more “ordinary” states of consciousness. Steiner even reveals that at the level of Inspiration felt-sensing has the same basic function. PoF is about the third stage, Intuition, in which felt-sensing is at complete rest with its functioning. I could say that differently. Intuition is the always already unity with whatever is being isolated by perception.
Gendlin has three core texts that ground his process of “Thinking at the Edge”. The first was “Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning”….You can read that for free online but I recommend buying a used copy from Amazon. You can also read “The Presence of Feeling in Thought” in which he updates his terms but wonderfully elaborates the role intuiting plays in our experience.
Jeff
Essence
It seems that the confusion is rather how essential lovers relate to one another in freedom.
Don's recent post has led me to consider whether the kind of discipline in his essay would be a useful practice for us to work on together. I hesitate to express what he is saying - I am not going for a prize - as it is the first time I have encountered it.
He is bridging from human experience in the body to attested experiences in the spirit that are hard to attain. Is this a reasonable common ground for our common philosophising?
It is a good reason for us to share personal experiences that support our perception of ideas and the ideas perceived by others. It seems clear that the starting point remains the thinking experience.
I admit to being confused and often having chaos as a starting point.
starting point chaos vs abstract chaos
Good morning John,
Our ability to stay with and describe the qualities of that chaos is the starting point! It must be; you can only imagine other starting points. This starting point needs no other because it is that exact staying with that is always there, always active, always creative and open to receiving whatever spirit gives. We tend (always) to quickly place a conceptual schema in front of our eyes, even when trying to talk about the chaos. Steiner placed “given/not given” and “pure-percept” and the thinking-that-waits.
But we only need that chaos. It is far from the chaos that we imagine in Steiner’s Imagination Separation. We have IT. We can turn to it right now and describe what the turning is like. No matter how many special constructs the mind may want to usher in (angels, realms, cultivate…)we have the capacity to stay with the qualities and interact with them. This is how we study the actual process of concept formation without imposing pre-formed concepts upon it. And everybody can do this research!!!! Steiner said thinking is already clairvoyant, we just don’t notice it. Well, we can and we can stay in the noticing itself!
Individualised chaos
Good evening Jeff - it is another world here with you having another relation to the good mother's turning to the sun.
It seems that once we start doing exercises in Knowledge of Higher Worlds or elsewhere and become differently able to perceive more of the ordering behind the chaos, we can be easily misunderstood because we see the same thing even more differently. Without empathy and love, how can we communicate at all? I can understand why Carl may get frustrated at our inability to see what he sees. How can I help him to help me comprehend his comprehending? I am convinced that he wishes to do just that.
It seems to be quite addictive to write/read the posts on this site. If this activity does not find its way into my life and actions/deeds, then it is not serving the world. I am currently ploughing through the videoed lectures by Krishnamurti from the 70s. There are 4 hours and the first is in the video gallery here. He is saying exectly the same thing as you, Jeff and we all are. He is just trying to cut out the chaos through some over simplification, and we all love our chaos too much. The giant step for mankind is to accept our responsibility for our part in creating the chaos. Then we can start recreating instead of merely entertaining ourselves.
In reference to
In reference to Krishnamurti you say,
He is just trying to cut out the chaos through some over simplification
Could you say a bit more about this?
Thanks,
Jeff
Krishanmuri/PoF.....
When you speak of a path to truth, it implies that truth, this living reality, is not in the present, but somewhere in the distance, somewhere in the future.
Now to me, truth is fulfillment, and to fulfillment there can be no path.
So it seems, to me at least, that the first illusion in which you are caught
is this desire for assurance,
this desire for certainty, this inquiry after a path, a way,
a mode of living whereby you can attain the desired goal, which is truth.
Your conviction that truth exists only in the distant future implies imitation.
When you inquire what truth is, you are really asking to be told the path which leads to truth.
Then you want to know which system to follow, which mode, which discipline,
to help you on the way to truth.
But to me there is no path to truth;
truth is not to be understood through any system, through any path.
A path implies a goal, a static end, and therefore a conditioning of the mind and the heart
by that end, which necessarily demands discipline, control, acquisitiveness.
This discipline, this control, becomes a burden; it robs you of freedom and conditions your action in daily life.
Inquiry after truth implies a goal, a static end, which you are seeking.
And that you are seeking a goal shows that your mind is searching for assurance, certainty.
To attain this certainty, mind desires a path, a system, a method which it can follow, and this assurance you think to find by conditioning mind and heart through self-discipline, self-control, suppression.
But truth is a reality that cannot be understood by following any path.
Truth is not a conditioning, a shaping of the mind and heart, but a constant fulfillment,
a fulfillment in action.
That you inquire after truth implies that you believe in a path to truth,
and this is the first illusion in which you are caught.
Over simplifying
Jeff, I am over simplifying of course. As usual – I am doing what I say another person is doing. It is part of my kind of tangled chaos. I would not presume to judge Krishnamurti himself. He is clearly a significant, courageous historical figure.
As far as I can understand K’s unusual manner of delivering the speaker’s lectures, he suggests that his audience is able to banish fear for good in the course of attending to his second lecture. It is certainly an hour well spent.
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9085669421774443348
Krishnamurti demonstrates a great trust and enthusiasm for the human spirit. He examines the questions of fear. In doing this he appears to be convinced that this examination in thought alone is sufficient to banish them, if the audience thinks through the path that he treads with them. He hopes for what might be termed a breakthrough of enlightenment, and who knows? Members of the audience may well have left the hall changed forever.
To this video watcher, however, by following the thread of his ideas, which he calls the facts, it appears that the ability to transcend all one’s fears in the space of that lecture is an over simplification of what it takes to do so. It is only in the text that this simplification appears. It is extremely hard work to accompany the rhythmic speaking and simultaneously weave the ideas into to one’s own mental fabric. I have to take it in segments and pause the video to really accompany my inner processing.
I can think away the mannerisms of English public school education in Krishnamurti’s style of presentation because I have sufficient experience of them to recognise their characteristics. He appears genuine, in his concern for the audience to follow his talk, and in his confidence that fear can be overcome by means of inquiring into its derivation in the mind’s fragmented conceit of isolation. It really is a merry dance in thought. I am certain that the heart of the experience of Krishnamurti in person is not captured by the camera.
As I am pasting in this post I see that you have posted something interesting, Jeff. I look forward to reading it.
Hi John, At first I
Hi John,
At first I wondered what he was getting at as well. I actually thought he must be quite naive to think that people should be sharing his experience/understanding during the course of a lecture. He taught for over 60 years and you'd think after a while he'd learn it isn't really happening that way!
But then I got a new idea. The reason he says that it can happen right now is because that is the only time it can happen. It would be incongruent with his central point if he did not insist that what he was saying was happening. What I had first seen as naive, I began to see as a shining example of what self-sustaining means. I guess the reason it never mattered to him how many people "got it" was because he knew that he could only point into it right now and that's where it has always been found.
It's just like PoF. The book never suggests that what it is pointing to is in the reader's future. That is often an interpretation, but the book fully implies that it's insight is active in the reader's present moment. I think if PoF were talking to a group of people It would keep insisting that they pay absolute attention to what is happening. Here's a clip I like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZlydbNKFi8&mode=related&search=
As my experience deepens I begin to think of a cliff: PoF can be wonderfully described from the intellectual soul side of the cliff or from the consciousness soul side. The intellectual soul still places time and space first. The consciousness soul simply can't do this because it's primary experience is that they are secondary projections. When PoF is described from within those assumptions, it comes across as if thinking takes place in time and in space. This forces kinds of expressions that all use concepts working in that way. When PoF is described from the consciousness soul (which is so hard because all of our concepts still are structured with the other implications), it sounds like a bunch of paradoxes to our ears....because it simply can't share our most basic conceptual (and therefore experiential) assumptions.
The world is falling apart (and it shines in so many places) but it's not even close how bad it's going to get (and still progress in those wonderful ways). The anthroposophical society is falling apart (and it shines in so many places) but it's not even close to how bad things are going to get (yet still grand counter-examples will emerge). I honestly believe that our collective healing will come as more and more people become unable to live yet another incarnation as if PoF isn't the case. The anthroposophical movement will arise as something else while those who fixedly need the label continue to push PoF into the future. PoF is the movement and the movement only is happening when it is moving, therefore PoF is only real in situations in which it isn't being denied or sought after or prayed for....This is why Steiner was able to see PoF perfectly working in people who never spent a moment thinking about thinking. There are more moment in a day when PoF is happening than not, but we don't notice them because they are pre-filtered out by our conditioning, by the specific ways our mental pictures are counting on spiritual experience to "look" or "feel".
Just take ten seconds to notice what is actually happening:
There's a good chance that Ego simply could not accept that God is right now as present as She'll be 56 incarnations from now. We almost have to believe that this moment is not showing us what we are; it will after we've figured out the cosmos a bit more and gotten rid of more imperfections.
But there is always the option to stop what you are doing and notice exactly what is actually here. I just did that right now and felt how much I wanted it to be more...how there is a desperate part that won't accept that Truth ain't going anywhere...I guess I enjoy taking reassurance from that part when it generates mental pictures of a future filled with my strength and clarity and the world being shaped by others who have become more perfect. But, here? Now? NO WAY, it says.....It can't believe I would even think that this moment is exactly an expression of Truth..."notice how boring this moment is even compared to some of your more transendental moments and spiritual experiences, Jeff. You KNOW this it isn't happening now. Don't be stupid."
Krishamurti was a choleric and, as such, insisted that we place 1000000% percent of our attention on the whole of our experience right now. While I can respect how he builds certain types of logic, I doubt that had much to do with the utility of his teaching. To the extent that he was showing how one can form thoughts into steps and useful differentiations, I see his style of thinking as appropriate for our place and time. But, man, meeting people in the Krishnamurti circle who consider themselves inspired by him and consider themselves his students feels the exact same way as meeting people in the Steiner or Bubba or Adyashanti circles. They know that someday they will unlock the teaching and be free....They know how far they have to go. And they know that you don't get it. But they smile and joke and, occasionally, can have a great laugh about it all!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZlydbNKFi8&mode=related&search=
I think that link is the one I was talking about....
Jeff
Progress
Jeff, I think that when Krishnamurti says there is no process - see the quote in your post - he does not imply that the preparation for the enlightenment has no development for the individual. That seems to relate to individual karma. I do not know what his slant on karma might have been.
to reincarnate or not to reincarnate
if you watch the link I pasted into my post, you'll see his basic response to Karma/reincarnation stated quite well.
Teachers like Krishnamuri seem to only care that the listener is "developed" enough to be searching for the truth. As long as the person is developed enough to identify the self at the rational/egoic level, I think this type of teacher is ready to talk. I think Krishnamurti would get a kick out of my claim that there are only two types of distinctions: Amazing Distinctions and Distinctions that Matter; the latter of which being the origin of suffering (and must be re-cognized into amazing distinctions).
Krishanmuri seemed to think of "karma" as an amazing distinction, an incredible observation. But he taught freedom and, therefore, he was mostly around people who held karma as a distinction that matters. I think Krishnamurti would find joy in anything that is being observed; it could be that somebody is watching their past lives or they are studying their fingernail growth. The reason he was more likely to acknowledge his facination with fingernail growth is because people don't often use fingernail growth to feed their addiction to the search. But he was surrounded by people who said they wanted to experience the truth. So he would be sharp and provacative when they wanted him to talk about reicarnation. I'm sure that if he happened to live in a universe in which people thought that knowledge of fingernail growth would bring them closer to Truth, he would have been equally sharp about fingernails.
There are personal memoirs in which you can read how he spoke more comfortably about reincarnation as an amazing distinction.....
But I think if you watch the link I sent you, you get a taste of his approach with that specific notion...at the end of it....
Jeff
Responsibilty
Thanks, Jeff. I had to watch it a couple of times to get your point.
I suggest that we take Krishnamurti out of Carl's domain and into a separate thread if we continue to discuss his contributions. It is interesting to see how his message remained constantly alive, however often he reproduced it. He lived without choices.
However, to emphasise a link from the special K to what Steiner describes in Awakening to Community do watch this clip on human suffering and responsibility:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhFrZ4-nxa4
I'd be happy to take
I'd be happy to take Krshanmurti anywhere you want, John.
The clip you linked me to was one of the first things I ever actively watched of K's (he wrote his own name as "K" quite often and was fond of people doing so).
A few years ago it hit me like a ton of bricks....one of the first ways I knew how to explicate it was
Freedom comes First
My bones and guts saw that my freedom has always been prior to any other gesture in my awareness and that it is only clouded by everything else. I saw that my freedom wasn't something to be figured out and understood but to be re-cognized and allowed. It was huge for me. But it also came with the realization that all my strategy to "know" or "grow myself into" my freedom was actually the same type of irresponsibility as if I were smoking dope all day. For days, I was just quiety aware that I couldn't really accept what this meant. It faded as I tried to strategically "capture" it in formulations and whatnot...BUT
not to much later, I saw the very Krishnamurti clip you just shared. I loved it. I loved that he distinguised between the mental act of figuring somethng out and the visceral, bodily factoidinal re-cognition of what we are. And, of course, I resonated very deeply that he recognized this type of knowing as also a knowing of the origin of suffering. He became a friend! Of course, I just wanted to use him...but it becomes less and less confused as I simply notice the constant rejection of that knowledge....At first I felt so certain "responsibility" must mean my willed effort to maintain some kind of knowledge or state or activity. It is only as time unfolds that I begin to recognize that there is only one responsibility: to be this love. when that is not being taken care of, all I can do is notice...but, of course, in noticing that I have identified with un-love, I am already letting "myself" back in the window....
ok. let's end all talk of K in those thread!!!
see ya soon,
Jeff
Recognition
Jeff, I have the recognotion that you are wholly recognisable in a wonderful reproduction in this post. Thank you, and can I keep the 'photo' to remind me of you?
Time marches, and I will get round to your other journal. It is permissable in modern music to hit all the piano keys one can reach with one's arms at the same time. It does not work with a computer keyboard, yet. But, hey, I am idealistic... Maybe I can get 100 monkeys on the job!