hullo , hope everyone is fine, and still interested in studying knowledge of the higher worlds.
Has anyone had any new experiences with this ? I was looking at a cat sleeping. and thought, yes we humans also sleep and wake like the animals, but of course the animals are different to us.
then I thought about the stone, and it seems as if it is asleep.or prehaps awake and asleep at the same time?
then I thought about the plant and it seems like it is only asleep in the seed, and then awakening and then going back to sleep.
a stone
Hi Jennyren
I can't help but think of Eckhart's saying here 'A stone is a stone precisely because it thinks it is a stone' and looking at what John wrote under - Source of external form and experience : In eurythmy, "inner experience and outer form come from the same source." What does this mean? What is the source? This seems to link together. I would say the source of the inner into the outer comes from what we think - via the heart - thus we are what we think, just as much as we are what we eat. And I love the way you bring in sleeping and waking here Jennyren - the sleeping is a inversion of the waking ...
Oh Jennyren I think you may
Oh Jennyren I think you may be awake...
I have nothing to add to what you wrote but it share that it made me feel happy.
Seeing and remembering
I have this problem... well let me start again: there is this phenomenon...
When I do the observations, such as jennyren has described, there are these ideas that magnetically appear. They go: look at that cat sleeping, it is just like a plant. Then I go: Hey! Rudolf Steiner wrote something like that. Am I seeing what he described?
Then I look again - doing this in imagination is quite another world. I look at the real cat and notice that it does not appear just like a plant; it looks different. Then I try to see what the distinctions are. It is a long game.
So the phenomenon that I am describing feels like a an interruption to my observing. Therefore I try to separate my observing out from what I remember, feeling that my observation is obstructed by such remembered thoughts. I feel that memories condition my observing, and this may have positive or negative effects on the task of cultivating inner organs of perception. This has been explored from another starting point with Jeff for a few days in the Special Needs and Goethe thread.
Does anyone have thoughts to offer about such internal processing in the context of awakening new organs of perception?
Thinking on the Shoulders of Giants
Hi John,
Two points that I think are relevant to your concerns:
Personally I do not reject a thought out of hand just because I know its source - when I was struggling at University many years ago to learn topics in Physics it would have been very counter-productive to repress the "artifical" thoughts that arose just because I had read them or heard them in a lecture. The thoughts were necessary for me to learn. Spiritual science is the same, it definitely does not ask us to repress the arising of thoughts and abstract lines of thought, however it definitely does ask us to train and develop this facility in ourselves to make it more practical and more humanly real by connecting in a new, more free way with feeling and willing.
I say that because I think we can develop - even in Anthroposophical circles - a kind of allergy to abstract thought or thought that is not "my own". This seems to be a cultural reaction going on very generally in society at the moment, still a little under the covers, that is nonetheless deeply felt and significant. But in this context I think we shouldn't forget that thought - including abstract thought - is a fact in itself as Steiner reminds us in PoF.
Steiner was always quoting other people, always entering into their thinking as fully as he could. He (fortunately) wasn't constrained to always quote a single source like Goethe, his path forced him to seek out the thoughts formed by many others.
Don't forget the quote from Isaac Newton (if I have seen a little further than others it is by standing on the shoulders of giants). It is not for nothing that another name of Anthroposophy is spiritual science.
Once a thought has arisen it is up to me to determine its usefulness - yes perhaps it is the case that I wasn't really focussing on the task at hand, yes perhaps I was pushing the real being away from me and rummaging in my memory automatically for the relevant Steiner quote. But on the other hand perhaps it was the right thought. I am the only one who can determine that for myself.
Having gotten that out of the way, my second point is that thinking is more than just a series of discrete concepts and images. It has a flow, a life of its own that relates itself to everything. If we work to experience this aspect of thinking we can start to have the confidence that thinking can lead us to knowledge, not away from knowledge when rightly practiced. Once that is done it includes what I would describe as an artistic aspect - we begin to know intuitively whether a particular concept, quotation or image (regardless of its apparent source) is the right one. The wrong thought, one that we have unconsciously introduced, will seem like a jarring note, something that is out of place. Musicians, poets, novelists and so on have always felt very free to borrow phrases etc. from other artists, in fact the greatest works of art always do this one way or another. Again, the shoulders of giants...
zig-zag thoughts
hi john ralph,
I have explored different religions and philosophies from krishna to khalil gibran, a catholic church, a synagogue and a mosque.........and even guru maharaji........and he said something I have never forgotten; "dont get into your head about it" and he always stressed how the MIND wants to take control and the MIND wants to have it,s way and it,s say.................so just ignore the mind and stay focused on your aim which is just to observe without annalysing as you rightly say, maybe observe with your heart and feelings...............you may notice no results......but after many such love filled observations you will slowly be developing organs of perception.................prehaps hum a tune, like winnie the pooh would do if he were observing this phenomena the tune for the plant would differ from the tune for the stone and the animal and it could become your mantra for this excercise.
One thing I havent forgotten that Rudolf Steiner wrote was that we have occult experiences daily but are usually not spiritually awake enough to realise this, also that there is karma that comes towards us, unavoidable karma and also karma that we create ourselves.
tick tock
thanks jennyren. There needs to be a time for the resting head that does not rest easy. But that time is not during observation. There can be a pendulum swing from the internalising of observations to the ordering of accumulated information. The world remembers itself in the observing heart.
In the last week I have felt much more comfortable with the idea that willed witnessing can lead beyond what the head has in store. There is then a time to relate the new with the old, and let the new review the old, not the other way around. The thinking of the heart does not judge, and it is the judging that interferes with observation.
Pause before thought
Thanks, Tim, that is very helpful.
When I am off and away I will spend time with the feeling that lives in me. This feeling, which Jeff was kind enough to help me explore tells me that there is a time not to think as well as a time to think. It is somehow clear to me that intellect can work vigorously against the development of spiritual organs that make spiritual science possible.
I will return to report on the progress of this feeling with thinking in a week.
Fair enough.
Hi John,
I think that there is something around putting off the moment of reaching for the thought.
I go with all the things that Tim says.
My experience of this sort of issue is that I often have two streams of thought going on at once. For instance:
I might work out what the right thing to do is, and then a part of me chimes up with "you're only doing that because it's the right thing to do and people will be impressed". Well I am hopeful that people will be impressed, but that's not the only reason.
You have this phenominal brain that delivers quotes and references on a plate with a side garnish. That's a gift.
You can be true to that gift without denying yourself the opportunity to reach for a thought that is harder to grasp.
You do this already John. Your gift supports the web site community and the web site community supports your striving.
Fair enough.
S-)
Timeless
thanks Sebastian.
I have a sense of the often timeless gestation process that looks for birth into form and writing. Sometimes it happens as a consequence of reading over some vague obscure meanderings in draft. Ever onwards...