Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is probably the most important influence on the consciousness soul of the present epoch. Descartes invented analytic geometry, which made the development of the differential and integral calculus possible, and argued forcefully for the existence of the thinking ego, a substance distinct from the body and capable of experience independent of it. The "I am" of Descartes underlies most of our attitudes toward space and time, toward our own bodies and toward one another, insofar as these attitudes acquiesce to the truths of scientific method.
Descartes believed that clear and distinct ideas, particularly geometrical ideas, are the basis for certainty about the existence of objects outside ourselves. Only when an idea of a sense object can be framed in terms of its geometry can we begin to feel that we really know something about it. What is primary for our intuitive knowledge of objects is not their sensory qualities, but the geometrical judgments we can make about them, for these alone are clear, exact and indubitable.
Eurythmy is a method by which we can begin to sense per se the geometrical properties of space and time, of other beings and of our own constitution. Eurythmy, of course, is based on choreographed movements of thought in extended spaces, supplemented by color, light and sculpture. Goethean conversation is a complementary method, by which alike we can sense geometrical properties in one another's thinking and judgment. Goethean conversation is based on free movements and moral impulses within intended spaces, supplemented by a choreography of rules or agreements between natural intelligences.
Both eurythmy and Goethean conversation can help anthroposophists appreciate the ontological significance of thinking as it strives to discover and to meet various objects in the cosmos, largely unknown and mysterious, over which the human being of the future seems destined to exercise a certain discarnate mastery and dominion.
Dynamic Geometrical Figures
Hi John,
Collective Intelligence is when everyone's mind is contemplating the same dynamic geometrical figures.
Carl
Eurythmy
Carl - can I quote your definition of eurythmy in the eurythmy conversation group? We have an open thread asking for definitions.
You suggest that eurythmy choreography is related to thought. How does that relate to tone eurythmy forms?
I wonder if you would gve a real life example of collective intelligence so that I can better undertand why a group would be contemplating dynamic geometrical figures together?
3 questions in 1 post; would you prefer that I separate them into their own post? oops, now its 4 questions...
Anthroposphical Insecurity
Yo John,
Sure, you can quote me.
I don't know how tone eurythmy works, so I can't answer that question. Presumably, when it is practiced, the eurythmist needs to make an inner effort of some sort, and presumably that effort involves thinking.
Collective intelligence is a happening thing. The people who have the best handle on it are Andrew Cohen's community. You can check them out at http://www.wie.org/collective/. This is a spiritual community working with an enlightened teacher. With the indications he has given, and with their hard work and years-long devoted practice, they've become capable of sitting together and producing a state change where everyone is suddenly aware that his (her) experience is being reproduced in everyone else's experience. It's a very new sort of event in human consciousness and human cultural arrangements, and Andrew's people are trying to figure out what to do with it. You might click on Chris Parish's interview with Craig Hamilton on that link to get a flavor of it.
I have experienced collective intelligence with anthroposophists once, at a meeting in 2004 of the Social Sciences Section in Marin County, California. Here we were able to fall into exactly the state that Andrew is able to get with his students. No one at that meeting understood how it had occurred, and no one exhibited sufficient courage to try to follow it up and say what it was, although I tried to get some of them to do so. Probably they prefer to think of it as Grace because they feel insecure in their own spiritual practice. This is the general problem with anthroposophists, and it may underlie some of the posturing we see in this online community. They just don't feel they have enough spiritual development to make positive, marketable claims for themselves or for anthroposophy. As a result, anthroposophy languishes.
A group contemplating dynamic geometrical figures would be a group in which everyone recognizes that everyone else's mind is in possession of the same inner object. This seems to be the actual mechanism. Minds generally are made up of dynamic geometrical figures. Goethean conversation is the way to get minds linked up in this way.
Magnesia
Hi Carl
I am thinking about Mercury in the collective, not traditional Mercury but Alchemical Mercury. When we look at traditional Mercury together with Alchemical Mercury it is interesting.
Mercury
Has rule over Gemini and Virgo. Mercury represents the ability to communicate with others and rules human speech. Mercury is an index of mentality, though it is concerned with the details, with short term reactions, with memory and with day-to-day problems, rather than with profound metaphysical thought, which is really the domain of Jupiter. The Mercurian personality is sensitive to the environment, and will tend to pick up influences from those around. Traditionally, Mercury rules the hands and arms of the human body, as well as the lungs. Mercury is a useful index of how the nervous energies will flow and manifest. Mercury rules the thyroid and the pulmonary system.
(italics mine)
Alchemical Mercury
The term Mercury is often used in esoteric and occult circles coterminous with astrology in a sense which does not refer to the purely astrological conception of Mercury. This alchemical Mercury is really the Hermetic Mercury, which figures in alchemical treatises under a variety of spagyric names. In the hermetic tradition, which informs exoteric astrology, Mercury is cold and moist, and therefore aqueous: it is therefore the Permanent Water, the vitalizing spirit of the body, and is linked with what the medieval occultists would call the Ens Veneni, the approximate equivalent of the modern Etheric. In this capacity, Mercury has been given many names suggestive of potent liquidity – Blessed Water, Virtuous Water, Philosopher’s Vinegar, Dew of Heaven, Virgin’s Milk, and so on. It is sometimes said that the whole alchemical art depends upon a true understanding of the nature of this Mercury, which is directly linked with the Quintessence.
my regards
Caryn
Yes love, this looks
Yes love, this looks right.
Paracelsus
... and it feels right!
'... but we will speak only of those things which are difficult and not to be grasped by the senses, but, indeed, which are almost contrary to the evidences of the senses' Paracelsus
Best regards
Caryn
The most famous quote
Carl, I wonder about about your view of Steiner's assertion that Descartes' most well known pronouncement is more truthfully stated as: I think therefore I am not.