 It is not my outer world actions that are crucial, but those actions that take place inwardly in my soul life, thus Steiner's indication that for English speakers, the book should be called: "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity". |
Dear Friends,
Recent posts by Carl and others have put foward various conceptions about the nature of freedom as contemplated by Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom (Spiritual Activity). It is easy, to a degree, to have ideas about what this means, but it is far harder to realize in practice (in experience) what Steiner meant. Consider, for example, the last sentence of the original preface: "One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage." These are the last words before the section of the book begins that has the title: "Knowledge of Freedom". Then follows seven chapters before we get to the next section: "The Reality of Freedom", which itself contains seven chapters. So, to summarize, we go from the Preface's last sentence:
"One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage" to
"Knowledge of Freedom" and thence to
"The Reality of Freedom".
These related general ideas have always suggested to me that the Freedom of PoF is not about freedom in the outer world, but freedom in the inner world of soul and spirit. My experiences, as a practioner of introspection for 35 years, have confirmed this view. It is not my outer world actions that are crucial, but those actions that take place inwardly in my soul life, thus Steiner's indication that for English speakers, the book should be called: "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity".
From another direction, we have Steiner in Occult Science: an outline, explaining that Knowledge of Higher Worlds takes one through the sense world indirectly toward spiritual experience, while PoF takes one directly into the spiritual world. In this light consider this symbolism:
sense world < soul < A/d < i-AM> L/d > soul > spiritual world
A/d is the ahrimanic double and L/d the luciferic. The i-AM is in between the sense world and the spiritual world, and has out of Steiner's work two basic paths of development: One in the direction of the sense world (and indirectly then toward the world of spirit), and the other in the direction of the spiritual world directly. The question then becomes, at a pragmatic and practical level: In which direction (toward the sense world or toward the spiritual world) do I direct my activity (my will)?
Throughout Steiner's The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity we are shown in various ways the nature of our relationship to phenomena of the spiritual world, as these appear first in the soul. To consider, for example, the questions of desires and wants, as is done in the Ist Chapter (Conscious Human Action), is to involve us directly in phenomena of the soul that is visible only to introspection. I can observe my own activity here, but not the activity of another. They can only observe their own activity, but not mine. Working in this invisible territory (which is really the path of the whole book) means to work directly in the spiritual right from the beginning, although this work is for a long time only taking place in the own soul, in the own inwardness.
Recent discussions here have suggested a confusion as to what it means to be a free or an ethical individual in how we act in the social world. The question also took the form of: Is my deed a free deed if it conflicts with others, or must the communty be able to judge it as a free deed. I believe such questions misconceive a basic teaching that lives in the book and is pointed to above.
My experience is that what makes any deed in the outer world free is a consequence of whether or not I am free first inwardly. Am I in bondage to the idea, or do I truly experience it objectively? What is the relationship between desire and want and my experience of an idea? Is the only thing I need to do, to claim I am an ethical individualist, that I form my own ideal of action? Or, do I have to do more? What about ideals of action for actions that only take place in the soul, and never appear outwardly as an action toward another human being? If my judgment of an outer world situation is based upon either an excess of antipathy or an excess of sympathy, is the ideal which I then engender done out of freedom? What is the relationship between feelings and ideas? Can I desire an idea (because it takes a shape the lets me do what I hunger to do)? Is an idea toward which I have hungered, and which is essentially a justification for an action that is otherwise not truly moral, a freely created ideal? Can a desire warp my perception of the ideas upon which I base my actions, outwardly or inwardly?
What is the experience of moral imagination? When I form such a mental picture, do I form it as a question, or do I bring it into existence in a such a way that my unredeemed and unrecognized desire or want forms it? What qualities of inner activity in the forming of a moral imagination truly lead to a moral intuition? How carefully have I observed my own activity in forming moral intuitions? Have I learned to form them free of want or desire? When I consider the problem of moral technique, how well do I appreciate the world of percepts which the technique means to effect? If the world of percepts in which I wish to apply a moral intuition is the world of my inner activity, how self aware am I of the dynamics of this soul world have I become in which I seek to apply this moral intuition?
What is a moral intuition that belongs only to my inner world of "spiritual activity"? How is this intuition different from one that is directed outwardly at the social world?
etc. etc. etc.
joel
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Ethical Individualism, inner and outer freedom
Dear Joel,
Thank you for sharing this. For me PoF has always been about developing inner freedom and then one’s deeds in the outer world will reflect one’s inner freedom (for the most part). Real freedom, per PoF, has nothing to do with whether others or the community are able to view a deed as free or not. Many of our social and civil laws came from free deeds that at the time were not understood or accepted by the general populace, but then the general populace will catch up and the deed will become their own (in their inner life). Steiner speaks to the point that if 12 people were able to live fully in true freedom this could change the whole world paradigm in many ways. Like in science, one person’s work will bring forth a scientific realization that was always living there in the spiritual world, once this is realized and released in the general world, others will be able to understand and live this truth also. If several people around the world were to be working on the same inner activity in their thinking, something that was of truth and something understood in their inner thinking, eventually this understanding (idea) would jump across the abyss and become known in the world through many people.
I imagine, if one has developed the inner freedom Steiner’s speaks to in PoF, one is not concerned if one is being readily understood (perhaps one is being understood by only a few), or if the deed one is performing in the world is readily accepted, because this deed is coming in reality from the spiritual world. When one has developed true inner freedom the spiritual world is able to work with and through that individual and many deeds that need to be directed to humanity for spiritual evolution will now come through that individual, (i.e. Rudolf Steiner). This is not saying that this is easy, events will become far more difficult (as they did for Steiner), but one has the inner experience of not being alone and an experience of being supported by the spiritual world (Steiner). Now, how does one know if this deed is really a pure deed working through the individual from the spiritual world, this would reflect how the deed lives in the world, and does it live in the world in love, and also in Steiner’s case it would be an inner knowing that he would take with him to his grave.
Love and best regards,
Patri
Working on Capacities
Many thanks for this Joel.
The possibility of recognising the free deeds of others is possibly enhanced through the exercise highlighted this week by jennyren on the KoHW group. I hope we can keep away from any it takes one to know one exclusivity in our converse on this site.
I believe that it is critical to understand the difference between the situation and capacities of one who has successfully worked through PoF, and one who has successfully worked through KoHW. Preferably one encourages folk to work through both.
I began to work with KoHW long before realising what I was - and largely still am - missing in PoF. I guess the need to keep working on one's capacities never ends.
just meandering along a riverbank with John (and you)
Hi John,
Most people around here know that I can somtimes get all wrinkled up and righteous in response to phrases like, "must work harder on developing".....I know that comes from some reactivity in me, old stuff related to growing up surrounded by grown ups who just knew that things could and should almost get better and better......So I say "hello" to the part of me that has that story to contend with.....If I don't turn towards IT, I tend to speak in the kind of logic that ignores the intricacy that I'm actually interested in exploring.
And then there are the intuitions and knowings that are associated with my interest in such phrases......
I'm probably also reacting to something I observed when I lived at Steiner College for two years. Something to do with the striving to develop higher capacities, both moral and cognitive. The striving, as you can well imagine, is fairly intense. There are always a few who are shining examples of improving and moving in that direction. The assumption, of course, is that they are striving hard enough and their practice is correct enough. I was one of those people during my first year there. At least in the eyes of my teacher (who I LOVE) and many classmates. This assumption that our growth is a result of the striving/correct practice duality is what I need to look at more in myself and the world.
It could be the other way around: it appears that somebody is growing due to the practice and striving, but the practice/striving is a result of their growth. Of course that must be true too, but I want to lean into that notion a bit...
The people who aren't "improving" often assume that same thing: that either they don't stive hard enough or they aren't practicing correctly. They might give up both or modify each until they sense improvement....
Any large room of kids will have a certain amount who's bodies, minds and souls are implying, implicitly, basketball. If we throw them into a strange community in which Basketball is THE way, that is, basketball is the path and the goal........if we put them into that universe and begin to raise and educate this large group of children, it would not surprise us if down the road the one's who make great strides in basketball are the one's who were already implying basketball before they ever met it.
But if we took the same kids to a universe in which the skills and activities of knitting are the path......i imagine that those who make the most progress will be those who already implicitly implied the activity of knitting.....
and on and on.....
I have no doubt that the kind of spiritual experiences that are associate with anthroposophy (both schools: the KoHW's clairvoyance and the PoF overcoming the split) are being implied within some people. Those people would do well to find teachers who open that up in them and help it grow.
My crunch is somewhere in here that I'm not quite able to say yet.....I'm makihng it sound much too simple with this analogy. What do I want to say...let me see.....
How do we teach our children to distinguish between striving that opens up their own implying from striving that closes it up? How do we notice this for ourselves: does anthroposophy give clear consideration to how an individual makes this exact distinction?
I know people from my Goethean studies class who now feel sad that they have not lived up to the great ideals that they learned in that class. They feel the weakness of their wills in regard to meditating and conclude that they lack something. One of them goes through bouts of trying to meditatte harder and, somtimes, "makes progress" but often falls back. His anthro mentor (a good person) keeps encouraging him in kind ways to relax and let his practice find him...this helps as well....
But you should see this guy work in his garden!!!!!! His body is implying something HUGE when he is in that garden! He knows intricate things that he's never even thought of cultivating into knowledge. He feels knowledge and responds to it in the garden in ways that are subtle but consistant. If he lived in a world that assumed the ultimate goal of the universe is to achieve a state of pure garden enjoyment, he would be far along the path of initiation....
I love that PoF (when I formulate it via Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit) is "demanding" that we locate what our body is implying. I love how PoF is asking each individual to notice that strange stuff that is already active and alive inside and how PoF suggests that just by learning to stay with that living edge, we are in spirit.
This post sounds too much like I am responding to what you said above about KoHW and PoF. Those were just little hooks that got me thinking. I know from you that you don't feel pressed into your path and I know that you enjoy the dance you are on....It shows in the grace with which you connect here. So, no, I'm not trying to subtly critique your words....They just got me wondering more about what this snag is I associate with how things are expressed in spiritual communities....
I'm in love with PoF, and it's rendition as TAE, because I think it provides the cure for what bugs me; it uses the language of "path" and "development' and, yes, there are ways to wonderfully talk about it in those ways....But it ultimately, to me, is revealing the nature of human experience before, during and after the explications of speech and thought. PoF is showing that we can already be in a very real contact with God/Reality/Truth/Freedom...in a way that we "know" and"feel", in a way that is always available to whatever we wish to study or contemplate, whether it be our kids, ants or social threefolding. Ok.....I'm getting closer to saying it!!! But now, work!
Reflection
I really tune to you here, gulp. When I look at how suffering stood between HEREIAM and THEREIWANTTOBE for such a long time, I realise that even now my language in the above post is sauced with something I have moved on from. Moving on is not a distancing, because look: that rucksack is still just as close as last week...
I am working on/in/through the here-and-now much more. If I now write could do better, then I am toppling backwards once more. What connects it all up is integrity of intention now. You remind me that my language has not changed in tune with my readjustment. Here is an old favourite that I have slowly grown with:
Every step you take is the goal you seek.
-- Jorge Louis Borges
The path grows with each step.
The seeing grows with each look.
The questions dance and pull faces.
Thanks for noticing that I slept through half of that post.
who's sleeping now
I didn't catch you sleeping.
The world is struggling. Our language/culture gives us such a small amount of available hunches to be cultivated. In the same way that your feelings were rejected by a NVCer, our Culture is currently rejecting the majority of our intuitions. We grow up inside of a language that can't recognize our very own intricacy and, therefore, we end up squeezing what we know-but-can't-yet-say into the public boxes that language/culture gives us. This squeezing flattens us out into entities that then STRIVE to cultivate intriacy that needs no cultivation; it needs to be turned towards.
A process like TAE or PoF shows us how to get back in touch with that which is already full, robust and alive....already worldly. This is getting closer to why I snag on "cultivate"....
I want "cultivating" to say supporting what is alive and well but just needs a "hello"......
I want "cultivating" to mean what we do when we are "inside" the place in which we know so much more than language is yet capable of expressing.
The following is not suppose to assign blame: I look back at my Goethean Studies class room and see all those squeezed souls, excited at the possibility of finding a new way. Our brilliant teacher revealed his intricacy (his experiential meanings) so creatively that it sparked ours!!!! This was a gift, for sure. But I wonder why so few have continued to "cultivate" this fresh new sense of meaning? It could be that they (we) tend to think that the forms were the source of the fresh new stuff that is arising. So we might subconsciously think that the creative exercises and teachings of our teacher were the primary cause of the experience; we go home and practice them; and so much good stuff often comes from just this. But
we don't go home and practice the intricicy itself...this, i think, can be why spiritual strivers so often go back into a squeeze after an initial boost. For those who have bodies (I use this in the gendlian sense) that already imply the intricacy of Steiner's form, they can spend a lifetime getting fueled by those forms and it doesn't matter that they've sort of misidentified the source of their fuel.
Perhaps the delapidation (my view) of the Anthroposophical Society is related to its inability to touch and help open what is already alive in those sniffing around the edges....It will keep inspiring those of us who already match (close enough) the way it's forms work....but it seems to me that what Steiner brought, PoF (not the book), could be leading individuals into their own ways of knowing.
People have asked me to speak at the Waldof school quite a bit. It can't be because I'm smarter than other folks in those towns. It can't be because I quote Steiner the most (although I used to, big time!)....I think it must be because they experience my description of anthroposophy as asking them to find anthroposophy in that murky visceral place that they never really take time to notice....Boy, that is a cool place to visit; that's where all my best ideas have ever come from, they say! And then we can show how Waldorf (when it's working) is trying to get your kid to go back into that exact place via math, geology, music, map-making, eurthmy, etc,....
We can let "anthroposophy" say the "place" we get our favorite ideas; the place where we often feel shocked when we see the world anew! This is something that all humans can relate to and be inspired by. Then we let them teach us "anthroposophy" by letting new words and phrases come from there.
Try to imagine 13 year old Steiner without a very active relationship to that, gulp
Reproducing insight
Gulp wrote: For those who have bodies (I use this in the gendlian sense) that already imply the intricacy of Steiner's form, they can spend a lifetime getting fueled by those forms and it doesn't matter that they've sort of misidentified the source of their fuel.
Gulp, I think you just rewrote (reproduced) the lines about how folk find (resonate with) anthroposophy through karma (having a resonant body) and then spend good time welcoming the blossoming of all that becomes them.
I'd listen to more like that in a Waldorf School because it speaks to what already stirs in the heart within me.
true
and why say "karma" in a room in which 12 people will feel distanced by that term if you can say the same thing in fresh language that invites actual contact with what you mean? It's not like the folk in the room who are ok with "karma" will be upset that you spoke freshly. In fact, I personally think that even though certain spiritual communities contain people who comfortably throw about terms like Karma, they are using the word to mean vastly different things. In fact, I have found that just saying "karma" tends to elicit such a wide range of mental pictures. I feel like I have begun to develop a practice that has some rules I haven't explicated...but they might be....."how would I say this thing I know if I had never read Steiner's (or whoever) words"...If forces me to dig underneath the ease of borrowing his term and finding how it needs to be individuated via me. How would I talk about the etheric body if I had never read that term from Steiner. I think Steiner was working this way when he tried to write "Fragment"....He was refusing to let the public meanings of words stand because he needed those words to say something new. In PoF he did not push so hard against the public meanings of words. But in later talks when he spoke of PoF's meaning, he was working the language in quite new ways. He spoke of language being increasingly able to say such things as the century unfolds and perhaps we saw this in his own development of terms.
I may very well have been saying exactly what you were! That's what you get for walking by the river with me. gulp
PoF vs. KoHW
At the 2005 Ann Arbor Conference, after I had spoken at the final plenum about the importance of PoF, several people wanted, as John Ralph seems to want above, to do both PoF and KoHW. I'd like next to speak to the assumptions latent in thinking this way.
The essential point to me is to realize that Steiner did not himself achieve his adult initiation (as against the atavistic clairvoyance of his childhood) on the path described in KoHW. Steiner's path was described (indirectly, and without personal references) in his books on the science of knowing (A Theory...; Truth and Science; and, PoF). If we wish to follow Steiner's steps, we follow PoF. Its quite clear (see the book Enliving the Chakra of the Heart by Florin Lowndes, last two chapters) that KoHW was written in large part because people were not taking up PoF, and/or finding it too difficult. KoHW was published 10 years after PoF.
KoHW is a modernization of Roscicrucian developmental practices leading to initiation. It does not lead to the New Cognition, about which Steiner stated that this New Cognition, when developed out of PoF, results in the thinker have an experience of the spiritual world as a world of thought. KoHW does not produce this effect, and does not provide the precision and exactness and SURETY of (scientific or PoF) thinking as does KoHW.
The exercises in KoHW consist of a series of moral admonitions, coupled with work on the imagination such that objects of sense experience become exercises to strenghten the picture thinking. Coupled together (for every one step in spiritual development, e.g. the exercises of the picture thinking, one needs to take three steps in character development, e.g.the moral admonitions) a basic metamorphosis of thinking does result, but it lacks certain qualitative characteristics only available through PoF
When Steiner in Occult Science says that the path of PoF is more sure and more exact, he is not making small talk. He always gave out his hints in a precise language, which was yet modest (no hyperbole or exaggeration). There is a surety and precision that results from scientific (objective) introspection, which KoHW does not foster. Since KoHW proceeds by processes of moral admonition for its "character" development, this leaves aside the full and direct encounter with the moral capacities of the spirit in the soul only made available by a thorough study and practice of moral imagination, moral intuition and moral technique (particularly, as this journal entry suggested, with regard to our inner soul/spiritual actions, not just our outer social actions.
Further, the problem of knowledge is not fully developed at all in KoHW. In large part we can experience this in the Society and Movement almost everywhere by just listening to what is emphasized. Hardly anyone (and this is sadly sometimes happening on this list - see the dialog following this comment) actually makes references to their introspective experience. They will throw around concepts they have acquired from reading (basically use language in a certain way), but little will we hear of their experience in the practice iof ntrospection out of PoF. This includes the most fundamental and simple distinctions, say between thought and experience or concept and percept.
It is possible, for example, to read or listen to an anthroposophical speaker or writer and know which path they are following, and quite a bit of how far they have gone on this path. The way they connect thoughts reveals a great deal about the qualities of soul that have been developed. In addition, we can look to the degree to which their thinking is independent of Steiner-thought. We can actually (if properly trained via PoF) recreate the thought stream living in the sentences in our own mind and "feel" certain qualities and characteristics of the spirit and soul that constructed that sentence and the related and following thought content.
There is everywhere in the Society and Movement an absence of clear (clair-) thinking. What is the consequence for anthroposophists that PoF is so neglected?
Horrible tragedy. For a sample of the problem here is a paper I handed out at a recent Branch Meeting where a certain awful book was being put forward as important. http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/counter-silicon.html
joel
The Exercises of KHW
I dunno Joel. This strikes me as an apology for not doing the exercises of KHW. The exercises of KHW, or their equivalents, are, it seems to me, essential for one to do if one is going to make any claims on anthroposophy at all.
Anthroposophy is about the development of clarivoyance, and the intellectual concepts that are commensurate with bona fide clairvoyance.
two directions
i know there is a chance that you and joel could have a productive dialog on this topic, but reading how you put your post (and knowing that one of your highest values is clear communication) I don't see it happening. i can't tell how conscious you are of what this type of statement you made to Joel looks like. here is a free reproduction (not in your sense entirely) of your post to joel in a manner that might actually be useful:
"I see the practice of KoHW as essential to anthroposophy. I think of anthroposophy as the development of clairvoyance and the intellectual concepts that speak to that development. My impression from what you wrote is that you don't see it this way. But I'm not sure I'm reading you correctly. I'd appreciate any comments you might have on this."
But your comment:
This strikes me as an apology for not doing the exercises of KHW.
Makes me think that a more accurate reproduction could be like:
"Joel, I don't think you know what you are talking about, but I read your apology and forgive you for not doing the KoHW exercises."
Maybe not, but, man, I say this because you often come across as surprised that more people aren't cultivating conversation with you. It's hard to believe that you really read Joel's comments as an apology to this website. Are you ok with receiving this sort of meta-comment on a post of yours before the person you addressed as responded? gulp
Carl, I read Joel's post
Carl,
I read Joel's post and I felt its thoughts. They coursed in to me and I felt their warmth. Their clarity shone like light.
The thoughts towards the end of the post carried pain. I thought about how long Joel has been working introspectively and I thought about how clearly he can see the importance and relevance of POF. I thought about how much frustration Joel must feel always meeting resistance from Steinerists. I thought about how Steiner would have felt with these thoughts coursing through him but seemingly unable to express them in a way that allowed other people to bring them to life in themselves.
There is something wrong with telling someone they are wrong, and yet, it is often so very tempting.
When I read your writing the thoughts that arrive usually hurt me, beat me up a bit - this post from you is a perfect example. It lurches in to me, barging through the door, slamming me to one side. Then they stand there inside me, holding forth. The door's still open - out, out, go on, get out!
At one level I don't want to throw your thoughts out. I will try to exercise my Will at that level.
The thoughts living in me that came from Joel's post are shocked and amazed at the thoughts in your post. They don't know how they can be mistaken for an apology. They think that maybe they can't be clear enough. I think that they are clear enough. These loud, brash Carl thoughts, they don't seem to want to talk to the Joel thoughts. They seem all agitated near them, unnerved perhaps. As if... as if Joel's thoughts would kill Carl's thoughts. As if Joel's thoughts were dangerous, deadly...
I don't think they are though...
S.
joel: PoF vs seeing astrality
The first little thing I would like to say is about the way "path" is used in anthroposophy. To me it makes a big difference as to whether we are talking about two separate paths or one path with two ways of walking it. My experience is that most anthropops think of KoHW and PoF walking the same path. When this is the assumption they take Steiner's claim of PoF as being more exact to mean that it is a more exact way to the same place or desination. I think this assumption works against the distinctions you are trying to make. I don't see you making this assumption, however.
My understanding is that PoF and KoHW can compliment each other, but have distinct purposes and consequences. I think one reason people don't share more about their experiences of cognition is that they assume (via mental pictures about "clairvoyance" and "living thinking", etc...) they aren't experiencing it unless it fits into some preconcieved form; in effect they are waiting to HAVE an experience of thinking. This makes logical sense, except I think the snag is that their waiting is actually a function of the mental pictures they are placing between themselves and the actual occurance of their thinking. They don't really have much to say because as long as they are using these mental pictures as their criterion, they will simply continue "practicing" until they have something to say. I can say this other ways, but I hoped you might see my point this way. A wonderful teacher like Dennis Klocek might not be in full agreement with other wonderful teachers like Khulewind or Ben-Aharon, but his skill is in creatively showing his students that they actually are having profound experiences, that they can let go of these sub-conscious and conscious mental pictures they are hoping to "achieve"....The student then becomes more interested in the play of his or her own daily experience than "matching" it to Steiner's words or anybody else's. I think the anthroposophical society is lacking teachers that generate this response. Even the very good teachers often inspire the sense that "people just aren't getting it correctly"....This, I think, is where the society can take wonderful forward steps. But it needs to make some basic distinctions. What do you think? gulp
Gulpie dances with PoF and KoHW
Hey Gulpie,
I think you may be on to something here. I think some people may be having profound spiritual experiences but would never express same to anyone in anthro circles, especially so-called teachers, from fear of being criticized and told their experiences are wrong. Also, there is the dilemma of should one share one's spiritual experiences or should one keep them to oneself? I get around this by sharing in a poetic fashion, or creating a story around the reality, that fits the reality but allows one to hide in the story.
All for now Gulpie.
Love,
Patri
How about NoHW after PoF?
Dear Joel,
Thank you very much for sharing this. Since your experience with the other side (which you don't remember now) your writing is more lucid and stellar than ever. I agree with what you say here. Steiner himself said that he wrote NoHW and Occult Science for those people who were not able to follow or work with PoF. From what I remember, NoHW and Occult Science are more from the feeling realm and they do not contain the thinking/cognizing stream that is necessary for clair-thinking. I did read NoHW before PoF and it meant very little to me and I found myself not particularly interested in practicing the exercises there. BUT, after working with PoF I am able to come back to NoHW in a new way and enjoy the book and practicing the exercises. I don't think this would have been possible for me if I had not the experience of working with thinking as I did with PoF. What do you think about coming to NoHW as a soul/feeling experience and understanding, after you have worked diligently with PoF?
Love to you.
Cheers,
Patri
I like this
I'm thinking about how distracted we can become....I'm thinking of various friends of mine. They work hard and live their lives. They are busy and sometimes sad and upset, but often happy. As their friend I can, of course, readily see what is whole and alive and vibrant in them. Some of them hardly see this in themselves, they don't believe in themselves and discount themselves. But that is only when they are thinking aboutthemselves or their actions.
In this sense, we can say that I observe their freedom much more easily than they do. When Sarah responds to the young children she takes care of, I get to watch her flexible and heart radiant attentiveness as the children speak to her. I get to see how she responds creatively the unique nature of the time and place of each interaction, how she loves the interaction and via that love is able to bring peace and joy into some very troubled lives.
When she comes over at the end of the day and I ask her how her day went; she slumps and shakes her head and, unless interrupted, slams herself into the wall with her imperfection. And yet that is just due to her placing her attention on confused thoughts of self. She would neve say she is acting in the radiant free way that I see. She would say, "No, I just do what anybody would do. It's nothing special and it's full of mistakes".....
I'm not trying to state in some PURE way that I observe her freedom....But I am trying to point to something that is very important to me in the context of many of our discussions on this list.
We use words and phrases. Some of these are expressed as observations of our experiencing....
I'm very interested in what it's like to observe somebody do something they love
Sometimes we use words and phrases that contain more logical connections:
I'm very interested in how action done in love IS an expression that can be observed from the outside
That statement stays in experiencing but steps into the land of logic and inference. Can you feel the difference in how you would be drawn to respond to each of these. And what if logical language usurps most of the phrase:
Freedom is always a function of how it is being observed by others
Logical stuctures have power, regardless of their truth value. I'm trying to get at what happens if we start our questions in a drenched logical form:
So we have a question of freedom being observed from outside or inside. What happens if we start by assuming the confines of these terms? You very quickly get camps or oppositions. Well, in this particular question, I don't think too many people will stand with the idea that Freedom is dependent on outer judgements. But what if we take Carl's statement out of the land of strict logic? I can't find his quote, but I remember it was a very logically formed statement which said something about how freedom depends (not the word Carl used) upon a community's judgement. Carl, forgive, me because I'm using your statement as an example and might poorly paraphrase the sentence I'm thinking of. Let's say it was:
"To be a free action it must be recognized as such by a community"
Here is my experience when I read that: it's like walking into a jail cell. I immiedately wish to refute it. I also immediately am struck by how limited it sounds and this makes me wonder why it is said with such force and this goes on and on and on...My experience is that even if I agreed with that statement it does not leave much room for experiencing the wider intricacy....
But now let's think back to my friend who brilliantly responds to the needs of the traumatized children. She is clear that she is not acting with an ounce of freedom, yet just watching her is likely to inspire the heart of any observer to find its own true roots....Now, my experience is that any logical phrasing is always functioning in a much wider experiential intricacy that can be directly referred to and "watched"....
Let's pretend that Carl has just said: "for a an action to be free it must be judged so by a community"
and then after saying it, he hold up his hand and says, "Excuse me: I want to take a second and let the sense of what I just said come before me....I want to hold off the power of that logic and notice the shape and feel of what all that means in me...."
Carl sits quietly and then says....rather slowly....
"there is a kind of freedom that might need the touch of the wider community in order to be born more fully into the world...." And then Carl turns towards me and says,
"Jeff, I'm thinking of your friend who hates herself yet acts with such grace and freedom when concentrated on her work with the hurt children. I can imagine that for her to see what you see in her, it might require the creative relationship with a wider community, that in being seen she might see..."
If Carl had let his original statement refer back into its own intricacy, I can imagine that a whole different kind of conversation may open up here. But, it's not just Carl (it's me and everybody else)....When one of us feels pushed into a jail cell by the strong bull of logic...we often come back in a reaction that also hides our cognitive intricacy: we start arguing in propositions and examples, mirroring the cause of what we didn't like in Carl's first logical structure. But if we said something like,
"Carl, the way you first put that left me needing more....hmmmm......There must be something very true in what you are saying but somehow it is leaving out much of what I know and value....I'm wondering if you have other ways of saying that that might help me see the experience it gets at for you....that might help."
Carl's brain and modes of expression work in certain ways and it surely isn't his responsibility to guess what our communication needs are. I'm not talking about the our needs related to feeling respected in conversation; that is another but related topic. This post of mine if focused on the more narrow topic of how simple logic can often press us into corners in ways that aren't necessary.
Logic is always in touch with the experiential intricacy but often seems to obscure this connection....I find it very helpful to remember that human beings can take any logical proposition and directly refer to the visceral intricacy that is growing it...we can ask each other to please go back into that place of direct reference and let it give a new type of birth. As speaker we can try to see if what we say next can carry along some of the intricacy this time.
When Carl says that Freedom MUST be that which is judged by others, I can find agreement if I go into the wider yet more precise intriacy of those words, but I can't find agreement if he is asking me to agree on the more flat surface of the logical expression.
I don't know if I'm making my point all that well, but I'm very sure it's in what I've said. So....catch!
gulp
The Categorical Imperative
How can an action of mine possibly have been free if it has left anyone else in my community feeling unfree?
Feeling free
Carl, I would say that this is possible. I often feel unfree, yet is that the truth of the matter?
I see that the personal mental image (the feeling of unfreedom in this instance) is not the spiritual truth.
Once any deed is enacted, it becomes a fact. How does a fact make me unfree? I am building on Joel's post that argues for freedom being an inner state/quality, not a fact.
It seems that a free deed has no parallel instance in fact, or possibility of reproduction, only emulation...
I would like to explore these ideas without taking up a position that needs defending.
The Biological Field
OK, John, here's how it works.
There's a field around and within the body. Call it the biological field (alternately, the astral/etheric body). This field has causal power. It causes the body to develop and to grow; it causes the phenomena of consciousness and clairvoyance; it , plus some other things, causes psychic contact between minds to take place. This is Rupert Sheldrake's M-field.
When I say or do anything, I radiate M-particles, and these M-particles impinge on other people, who then re-radiate their own M-particles and so on until the whole system (the conversation, the social milieu, the nation, etc) eventually settles into equilibrium and social contract. If what I radiated caused other people to react negatively, the whole system settles into a form that is a function of everyone's subjective feelings about themselves and about what is going on around them. That's the form of life everyone is stuck with as a result of the overall tone of the interactions.
If what I radiate causes no such creative adjustment in others, and no such bounce-back onto me, I and everyone else remain free for the moment.
The categorical imperative is thus a causal mechanism in human society directly responsible for our various experiences of freedom and non-freedom.
You see where this leads, right?
POF vs (which?) PSA
I like calling the book Philosophy of Freedom because I have fallen into the habit of referring to it as 'POF'.
If we start calling it The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity it will be very tempting for me to refer to it as 'PSA'.
Of course, if I start doing that, then I will have to snicker every time I do so.
As PSA is also an abbreviation for the standard blood test which screens for prostate cancer (the so called 'prostate specific antigen', or PSA)...
:)
J
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