Here, from my point of view, is the supreme principle of Goethean conversation:

(P7) The principle of the etheric child (the reversal of the orgasm).

(P7) is connected to several things we have discussed, the most salient being (P2) the principle of Reproduction, and to the general Spockian idea that a Goethean conversation is really a Womb or a Chalice where new beings are formed out of the intimate ideal contents people have within them, but that this world doesn't give them much chance to express, except in the usual way of falling in love and producing a physical child.

(P7) is a sobering principle. It forces us to express ourselves with continence and care, because any one of us can find himself (herself) suddenly responsible, through carelessness, clumsiness or undue excitement, for an abortion, and the unceremonious demise of an entire week's preparation and an entire evening's work. It also requires us to muster that which is best in us, to work with it in a continuity that we carry into our meditations and our dreams, and then finally into the real alembic of the actual conversation.

The process is indeed fraught with peril, such as personal embarrassments and the ordering of a social status which the dispossessed may resent, but it also has huge potential payoffs, such as a communal conscious life that extends daily, and nightly, into the cosmos itself. It promises, as nearly as I can make it out, to place new forms and figures of cosmic dimension and cosmic significance directly into the Earthly landscape, by means of the transcendental forces in the ideals of the human will.

Eurythmy is indeed a child of anthroposophy, a beautiful one, and there will be others.

Anthroposophy has injected new life into many activities and has given birth to new ones, such as eurythmy. The starting point has been: not I but Christ in you. This characterises Michaelic initiative.

Looking at Rudolf Steiner's example we see that he gave indications from the spirit in answer to questions and needs that were brought to him by other people. In the case of eurythmy the story unfolds from the situation where Steiner asked a person if she could dance the content of his lecture. He was opening the door to the question: how? The door did not open at that moment, only later when a need was expressed to work with movement, and thus the new art was born. I am not including all the details of the story here. The point I wish to emphasise is that it took two for the spirit to enter the world of active engagement. The one who could bring the seed waited for the karmic opportunity to implant it. The initiative was nurtured in the body and soil of human need.

So we can see that eurythmy is a response. It came into being in response to a question, a need, not as a personal initiative that was in search of a task. Eurythmy came when the call could be heard. In this way one can perhaps understand that eurythmy waits to be asked. Yes she is here, yet she does not find her way early in the new millenium where she is not needed. She finds her way in the Waldorf Schools where children need her contribution to their wholesome growing up. Eurythmy therapy finds its way where healing is required. I do not see that eurythmy is dying although there are others who do. These good folk may be impatient for eurythmy to grow up to adulthood.

On this forum the call for eurythmy classes has appeared. It is through such calls that eurythmy will develop and mature to take her place in the world. I am not convinced that the unfolding of eurythmy is solely in the hands and silks of eurythmists. We are prepared to respond to human need. We are working to be better prepared, and we are listening for the call from others.

Where is the call for eurythmy performances? Are we as yet deaf to a call that is already among us that will initiate the next stage of eurythmy development, simply not realising her potential?

I invite your contributions to the future of eurythmy.

How does eurythmy relate to thinking together? Does eurythmical choreography depend on group work? See this post from Carl Flygt on a neighbouring journal topic.

Carl's posting seems to cluster all kinds of eurythmy forms as geometric figures. Are all eurythmy choreographed forms - in that speech and music really 'rest' upon them - a dynamic geometry that can be expressed in geometrical terms. Do they conform to the dynamics of plant growth, where trees of the same species all strive towards recognisable overall forms, not only recognisable leaf shapes?

Is there a true and unique form for a sonnet or a fugue? Does the stork bring the shapes fully fully formed from the brow of Orpheus? Or do eurythmists just scribble as they go along, with a half an inner eye on the suggestions of Rudolf Steiner?

What do you know? What do you do?

Where do eurythmy forms come from? How do we find them?

Yo John,

It seems to me eurythymy forms (and Conversational Children) can only come from one place, a state of consciousness in the human being in which Sympathy and Antipathy are held in a sort of Suspension.

For these Forms to descend into consciousness we need to avoid the excesses of Sympathy to which we are sometimes prone, as when we try to coopt the will of someone else by projecting or amplifying our own out of proportion.

Likewise, we need to avoid excesses on antipathy, as when we form complete mental images in our minds in the presence of someone else, and thereby begin to relate not the that person, but to a mental image.

A group of artists cooperating intensively on a work of art generally strike this balance between sympathy and antipathy.

A group of people in Goethean conversation generally strike this balance, if their moral intuitions and intellectual ideas are up to it.

I find the topic here a useful contribution to our consideration of eurythmy forms. I hope readers will be able to cope with my synthesising tendency to connect to other journal threads.

It appears that we may not see the line traced by the movement, but we construct it as we see the progression of the moving object, whether it be stone or eurythmist. This challenges my own perception of my perception of movement.

When I have been too long in front of my computer screen - although it is the best I can afford, an LCD without perceptible flicker - I see moving eurythmists as flickering images like those produced by a stroboscope. No, not a hallucination, I watch real eurythmists sometimes.

Normally I perceive movement as a whole gesture without gaps. Modern neuroscience will tell me that the eye does not function like that; it replaces a still image with the next so quickly that I do not perceive it. Yes, I do not usually perceive any flickering, and that which I do perceive connects me to the concept of the gesture or form of the movement. Am I deluded?

I prefer to do eurythmy rather than only think about eurythmy. While moving I try to release my personal thinking into observing the thinking process that arises from the eurythmy. The movement is a real perception for me, not a construction of thinking, I think.

What is the truth of the perception of movement? Is it a perception through thinking or through the eyes and kinesthetic organisation? If it is only a perception of thinking then it is no wonder that eurythmy choreography is a mystery to so many...

I can go along with these statements. 

Movement is visible intent, will made manifest. 

Movement is not physical.

Movement is etheric and constitutes some kind of formative force.

One day all formative forces that relate to language and music may be codified as eurythmy gestures.

The etheric movement lives in my perception as much as it lives out there in the world.

I am not yet convinced that I know what I am writing about here. I do not know if I agree with Carl.

If the sensory perception of movement is not a reconstruction through thinking, as supported by Carl, then by what other means might we connect to it?

Resonance is perhaps a consideration, as Condon's research on synchrony suggests. If you do not know of Condon's work, a good half hour's Googling is in store for you! The search criteria are imbedded in the link.

Hello John and Carl,

Just to say I'm following this with interest having "done" Theoretical Physics in my earlier life.  As a result my starting point is a little different.

It is actually quite tricky for me to follow the idea or concept of "motion" or "movement" as it appears in physics and put it in context according to my understanding of PoF.  I am working on it but can only offer a few fragments at the moment:

If I follow the strict PoF line (my understanding of it of course) I would say that motion or movement (there is of course a qualitative difference in meaning between those two words which I will - conveniently - ignore for the moment) is recognised through my applying the concept "movement" to a percept or series of percepts.

For example, there is someone walking along the street.  I close my eyes for a few seconds, open them again and the person is still walking along the street.  I form the idea that the person was still in uniform motion while my eyes were closed - a reasonable assumption of course - and picture that to myself.

Now someone tells me "well actually, while your eyes were closed the person stopped, then ran a little bit and then started walking again just before you opened your eyes."  So I modify my mental picture of what took place.

Why do I mention this?  Because I think the question arising here is something like "what is motion really?  Is it really only a perception through the eyes or through thinking?" 

For the PoF point of view there are only the two polarities, percept and concept, to begin with.  The error I can see causing a little trouble here (from the point of view of PoF, I  have to stress again) is to assume that motion possesses a "thing in itself" or "ding an sich" ghostly existence which we can only speculate on.

So, what is the question being raised here really and how can we get at it?  John or Carl sees someone in motion in a Eurhythmy performance.  Then, through reflecting on how the illusion of movement is created in the cinema, television and so on, the question arises, "what if the motion I perceive in the external world is actually similar to what happens on a TV screen?  What if the underlying reality is just like a series of frozen moments or snapshots that my brain assembles into an appearance of motion."

This kind of thinking is analysed in great detail in PoF, for example during the dissection of critical idealism in Chapter 4.  To come at it here, we can perhaps ask ourselves, "well what do I mean by an underlying reality?  What am I picturing to myself when I think of it?" 

So perhaps then I realise I am picturing to myself that objects in the world that appear to be in motion don't "really" change continuously in the way they appear to.  They are "really" just manifesting in a series of frozen states and it is "only" my thinking organism that "perceives" motion where none "actually" exists.

But I can make a little progress here if I ask myself, how could this "underlying reality" which is "really" a series of snapshots present itself to me?  Only through the polarity of concept and percept, permeated with my thinking activity.

With a TV screen I could carry out experiments of one kind or another - for example, I could perhaps adjust the refresh rate in some way until I recognise a series of still images following one another rather than continuous motion. 

What would be the equivalent for the perception of movement in space?  Are we imagining motion perceived in the physically perceptible universe as a kind of projection of an "underlying reality" that is static? 

Are we just mentally picturing that "underlying reality" as a kind of copy of our experience in the physical world and thus creating multiplying difficulties of understanding for ourselves through inventing a speculative "ding an sich" that is only present in our imagination?

For me personally I can perhaps then come to see that there is little point speculating at this level as there's no way to escape from the web of my own thinking. I understand the concepts "motion" and "movement" and can apply them correctly in situations like the ones mentioned above where I was watching someone walking, and later when I changed the refresh rate on a TV.

But unless I can point to a percept where the thought that "what I perceived as motion is really only a series of frozen snapshots" makes sense to me in other contexts, I am just tying my thinking up in fairly useless speculation that never comes to an end because it is always putting its supposed end point out of reach.

In the case of the person walking mentioned above, I can quite happily correct my thinking according to the reality.  In the case of a general speculation about the "real" nature of motion in the physical world things are not so concrete and it is easy to get lost in abstractions.

Not to say that there isn't an important truth to be gotten at here, please accept this rather long post (if you persevere this far) in the spirit of just trying to clear some of the idealist "stuff" out of the way where it's not necessarily helpful...

A second train of thought would also follow from the example of the TV, somewhat as follows: If I know how TVs work, I know that the idea of displaying a rapidly changing series of static images to create the illusion of movement is actually embodied in the TV, the TV is a realisation of that idea in a sense.

Now how might that apply in our speculation on the "true" nature of motion?  Perhaps I imagine the "spiritual world" has "created" the "physical world" to present an "illusion" of movement to us. 

But what lies behind this thinking?  Presumably that a conscious being or beings in the "spiritual world" "knows" that "movement is only an illusion". 

But that begs the question which I could imagine myself asking, "dear spiritual being, what is motion really then?  Please explain it to me and show me what it really is.  As I have always found the concept "movement" very useful in my everyday life up until now.  Presumably you are not saying that the concept "movement" does not exist because I know it does from my everyday thinking experience, I would lose all respect for the spiritual world if you were to try and tell me that, is it perhaps what you are saying is that the concept "movement" has no meaning from your point of view?"

Take two line segments, one of some length, call it x, and a second of twice that length, call it 2x. These two line segments contain exactly the same number of points!

Take a square with one base x. The number of points in the base, x, is exactly the same as the number of points inside the area of the square!

Transform the square into a cube. The number of points in one of its edges is exactly the same as the number of points inside the volume of the cube!

The number these finite quantities have in common is infinity.

That result is going to be general. The number of points on a surface of finite area inside one's body, say a sphere around one's heart, will map point for point to a surface of finite area outside one's body, say the sphere containing the etheric body.

If one concentrates one's attention on these numerical relations, one notices a certain freedom in one's consciousness.

If one moves in the presence of these relations, the inner freedom is increased by an order of magnitude.

Connecting to our consideration comes this fragment from Tom's study course on PoF.

The key is the corresponding intuition.

I recognise that my lack of philosophic eldership here combines with my ignorance of physics to challenge my inner qualitative experience of movement. I cannot any longer speak of physical movement. Even the idea of potential energy as a property of a physical object seems to invite the notion that such energy is void of physicality.

I still do not know what I know about this, yet it seems to lead to some core issues of the role of eurythmy in the world.

Thanks for your help here Tim. This feels and thinks very real, not just going through the motions. In other words some of my assumptions about movement, gesture and eurythmy are dissolving. It feels good.

 PS Carl and I were typing almost simultaneously  - thanks too to Carl who is building more confidence into my thinking here.

Now I've got that off my chest I think I'm with you all here... 

Something I have wrestled with is the following "picture" of the "real world":

The world is made up of an almost uncountable number of tiny, tiny atoms, all of which are in continuous random motion, colliding into each other according to strict, unalterable laws.

All of life, feeling, humanity, life, love, morality, spirituality, everything that we experience is simply an illusion, a surface phenomenon arising from the "real" world of atoms that creates all of this.

This surely is the "Mother of All Ding an Sichs" - for who is the being that can possibly stand outside of the entire physical universe and view every single one of these imaginary atoms and know their velocities to infinite precision?

Put this way, the idea begins to seem absurd... yet I think it haunts much spiritual life in the modern world, and prevents us from giving proper value to those things that by their very nature cannot be totally concrete... morality, thought, art, feeling, life, love.  Most of all, it does not enable us to truly value ourselves, to recognise and value the human.

Steiner strove ceaselessly to place the human being back at the centre of things, and in PoF he shows us in a totally common-sense way how each one of us actually stands at the centre of all things, at their heart, at every moment of our lives, with every thought and every heartbeat.  It is just a matter of working to become more aware of it.

In mathematics one can learn that it is the drama that is the thing... the tension of the problem stated, the theorem to be proven, the connection to concepts that initially appeared unrelated... and arriving at the final proof, the solution, that is the relief.

But all too often we only see the end result, the theorem baldly stated as: x equals y squared, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the two other sides, and so on.  If we do not move on from that truth, apply it, re-derive it, bring it back to life, see it from a new perspective every new season, it becomes a dead weight, a thought that hangs around our necks like John's Le Guin archetypes or Coleridge's albatross.  Perhaps the karma of such things is the creation of these tyrannical "Ding an Sichs" that haunt any particular age.  I certainly feel this one is a powerful force in our age, more than just an archetype or a dogma or a set of assumptions or even an Ahrimanic being or some such.  It just is what it is and we have to wrestle with it like Jacob's angel.

I've just been reading a passage from Lord of the Rings and since I believe there is what Jung called Synchronicity working for good in our lives I'll share the image here:  It is during the battle of Pellenor outside the walls of Minas Tirith, when the chief of the Ringwraiths has just felled Theoden, king of the Rohirrim.  He is faced by a figure in armour who defies him and the Ringwraith tells the figure "no man can stand against me". 

Of course the figure declares "I am no man" because it is Eowyn, Theoden's niece, who has disguised herself in order to join in the battle.  At that moment the Ringwraith experiences uncertainty, but still attacks Eowyn, Merry the hobbit strikes from behind and disables the Ringwraith just long enough for Eowyn to strike the fatal blow.

Such pictures can be richer and fuller of truth than any theoretical framework:  perhaps we can see this as a picture of the reality that these ideas that are so hard to banish from the field cannot be defeated in the conventional way by proof and refutation, replacing one set of concepts with another... perhaps only by bravely coming onto the field and revealing our true selves can we eventually see the downfall of our enemy.

What I feel Steiner brought to the world was philosophy, theosophy, anthroposophy, spiritual science (pick the term you like most or even perhaps another field of human endeavour) as an activity or movement more than a body of belief, dogma, truth or a creed.  Through the spirit of what he brought to us, human life in all areas can be reenlivened.  Even physics and mathematics, eventually, though it will take a while.

So, as perhaps Carl is hinting, we can study Projective Geometry for example and see that it is totally real, totally rigorous but contains a subjective element (ourselves) which participates in a much more complete way than is possible in conventional purely head-based mathematics.  This applies to many other areas, e.g. religion, medicine, agriculture, teaching etc. that have been reenlivened in practical ways through Steiner's impulse.

A great contribution to our exploration of perceptible movement comes from Tim here.

The indirectness of direct sensory experience is unwrapped very clearly in the quoted section from PoF.

In considering Steiner's other assertions about sensory perception, I recall that he considers all of it to be will activity. We reach out through the physicality of the senses to grasp the world.

So ... can we consider the sensory process of movement perception to be a construction of sleeping WILL rather than a construction of unawakened THINKING?

Yes, great reading and lots to study - thanks everyone. When we consider the word Widerwille and we think how the sun and the planets travel in reverse order through the zodiac it does give further meaning to the word.  Possibly without Widerwille we would be complacement and not consider the meaning of life ...

During a conversation - once upon a real time - about eurythmical movement an elder spoke about the counter movement that acts in the reverse direction to movement. Through this countering resistance it is possible to sense/feel and recognise the inner nature of the gesture.

Somewhere - once upon a book - the good doctor tells us that sensory organs have a resistance to that which is sensed through that organ. I have thought about this for some time and have concluded that this is a vital aspect of our sensory abilities. I will try to keep it straightforward.

If a sensory organ is opaque and blocks out a stimulus then nothing is sensed. The inner ear does not sense light.

If same is completely transparent to a stimulus, that stimulus passes through unnoticed. The eye does not sense gravity - although the eye is not free from gravity.

So if there is no resistance there is no sensation. A force of antipathy is needed to register a sensation. There is some kind of reaction or change in the sense organ for it to function. The inside surface of the eye has cells full of chemicals that react to light and then, as quickly as possible, return to their original state.

If and when we wish to develop organs for the supersensible, then we must develop some antipathy for them to build enough resistance to perceive it. The same good doctor tells us that thinking is full of antipathy forces. That appears to make a good case for developing an understanding of the spirit before it becomes perceptible. Through thinking we may be developing a taste for the bitter medicine of spiritual experiences.

My assumption about movement that was rocked into dust  - hence the twist of the threads - imagined that the resistance to movement was what enabled me to sense movement. This appears to be flawed unless I can find a sense organ that has the requisite antipathy for movement paths or gestures. The parabolic path of a thrown stone would need to be echoed resonantly in my musculature or somewhere else for this to happen. It is not obvious to my mind that there is a mechanism - all sense organs are organic mechanisms - that is capable of producing the sensation of a parabolic path. So the hypothesis arose that sequential placements of the stone on its flight were compiled in some way to form a percept of the movement path. We seem to have reached a point where our will has been fingered as active in this process.

Modern science is still wondering about how sensations are experienced in consciousness as a result of the sensory activity in the body. The mechanisms and chemical processes are listed but then... who knows?

Many thanks for the great contributions so far. Now I must go and read Tim's recommended books...

Interesting John, thanks.  I can understand the need for antipathy to develop organs to perceive the supersensible worlds.  In my understanding the supersensible worlds are what we perceive after the ego has left the physical body.  We, while still in the physical body, develop these organs so we may see into the supersensible worlds.  When we pass over, although our perception in awareness may grow, we do not grow that is we do not become 'all knowing' what we develop while in the physical body is what we take with into the supersensible worlds. 

So if we look at 'a force of antipathy is needed to register a sensation' while in the physical and we look at this in relation to living in the supersensible worlds 'the force of antipathy does not come from a outside influence but from what a person has learnt while in the physical - this antipathy (or sympathy) registers a sensation in the human being.  Although now sensation is not the right word.  What thinking in the physical is becomes feeling in the supersensible worlds and from this feeling becomes willing through feeling imbued will which streams up within.  This is the first stages which is experienced after physical life.  Thinking, Willing and Feeling is what we take with us into the supersensible worlds :  Thinking (Salt) the sharp metallic desire in nature.  Willing (Sulphur) the anguish of the matter.  Feeling (Mercury) the mediator between thinking and willing.

Well bit of a random post not really replying exactly to yours but kind of!

Aha this must be one of those sub-standard posts I've been reading about here recently... anyway Caryn I liked it! :-)

I'm trying I'm trying!  :) Thanks for the balance

OK, these posts by John and Caryn are very good, it seems to me. I had missed the one by John on the 13th, but Caryn's from today has brought it to my attention.

Steiner's point seems to be that antipathy is necessary for consciousness (for sensation). The eye responds with antipathy to light, but not to gravity. The eye thus senses light, but not gravity. Very good.

Now what about movement? The organ here would appear to be the mind, or if you prefer, the brain. The mind (the brain) seems to have an antipathy to movement, but not to stillness. The mind (the brain) thus senses movement, but not stillness.

This would explain why it is so difficult to sit still in meditation or in conversation. The mind wants perpetually to detect movement, and to respond to it with a counter-movement of its own.

Eurythmy is practiced in such a way that the mind is prevented from developing its normal countermovements, but is required to replace its natural countermovements with a controlling picture of how the movement fits into a larger context, often with countermovements (astral currents) to which the mind is not habituated. The result is to set the etheric body in motion.

If we want to lift ourselves and the other Kingdoms of nature into a higher world, something analogous must take place in anthroposphical conversation and in anthroposophical society. We must make use of the occasions of antipathy that gathering with others always precipitates.

Hi Carl, how are you?

Thanks for this, I find obtaining stillness of the mind is an art and I can see how Eurythmy may offer the mind this stillness; as you say - set the etheric body in motion - resting the mind in spiritual movement.  It is as if the outside antipathy is silenced and the inside sympathy is active - active in a harmonious way.  I find meditating on writings (Rudolf Steiner's) reading them, absorbing them, getting into the words and letting the words go through the mind and from the mind into the whole body from the head down to the feet - stills the mind, although it is doing it's part, same as Eurythmy really.  I like the way you wrote it here. 

Carl, I think we had a Goethean moment yesterday (I meant to write 'I hope Carl saw this' - it is in retrospect we think of these things) John and I were thinking of - thinking, willing & feeling - at the same time and we wrote about it at the same time.  This is what I understand Goethean Conversation to be - tuning into the cosmic mind whom works in a flowing movement. Also I find if we are attentive we can see and feel the movement of the Zodiac Hierarchies in who the Sun is in at the moment.  It is wonderful, when I look at the map of the universe and see how small the Earth is, I get completely awestruck that we do make connection with the other Kingdoms.

Thanks.

In my slow progression from uncertainty to uncertainty I raise two questions.

Does movement perceived in the surroundings combine a sensory component (displacement of a stone) and a non-sensory component that calls a concept like 'parabola' to mind?

Does Carl's suggestion offer an explanation of the role of mirror neurons as a sensory organ?

I am still processing Carl's suggestion. I struggle with the idea of the brain as sense organ because of its apparent insulation from direct external stimuli. Witness open head surgery with local anaesthetics. Yet I am still unable to convince myself of the role of the newly discovered mirror neurons embedded in the brain that may be related to imitative learning.

Carl - are you simply hypothesising here, or have you some more perceptions/references that you could share? Help?

In response to my plea for help - synchronistically you understand - comes Chapter 6.