for the posts to which this was a comment, see: http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/2366#comment-5229

Dear John Ralph,

Yes, our emotional life has very interesting effects on our consciousness.  Coming from deeper in the soul life, they influence thought in subtle ways, not always apparent.  In my own practice, I found that any crucial thinking, especially where I needed to form a moral intuition or do something particular in my social research, a cultivated feeling was first essential as a foreground out of which to ask the moral question, or the question of knowledge.

In a practical sense it became better to cultivate certain general attitudes of soul, because the wind (the holy spirit) comes when it wills, so often that a certain mastery  of the feeling life is a principle way in which what Steiner calls control of thoughts can quietly rest.  We need ultimately to manage our feeling life such that we mostly approach life out of love and gratitude, as a constant discipline.  This is not always possible, however, for life is full of challenges that pull at our feelings, and they can sometimes easily be moved away from where we would otherwise will it.

The most difficult moral questions are often not easy, but very hard.  It is not so much knowing what is right to do that is the problem, but that what is right to do asks of us something that disturbs our equilibrium.  Ahriman (through his double aspect) encourages us to love a life of moral ease, to not have to face difficult questions, questions which require courage, questions which put us at risk, physically or socially or emotionally.  Better, says the ahrimanic double, to not go into these troublesome places.

The Society's membership, as does the Circle's membership, as does every I on the planet, finds itself facing these kinds of trials in the Age of the Consciousness Soul.  In fact, as the film Pay It Forward so eloquently dramatized, the truest moral questions often require the greatest sacrifices.  Christ went to the Cross.  What crosses are we willing to carry?

The Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ are: washing the feet, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the carrying the cross, the crucifiction, the entombment and then finally, the resurrection.  If our soul is not being born out of such trials, we are probably traveling a path of moral ease.

For example, I was recentlyy at a Branch meeting were the most terrible kind of thinking was going on.  It was quite painful to experience - to take in thought that was essentially being given over to ahriman, albeit mostly sub-consciously. These people could even be seen as innocent in a way, for the didn't know what they were doing (Father forgive them for they know not what they do).  The Society membship, lacking the actual practical experiences of PoF, lives more in a vain Steinerism, or an intellectualization of the Cosmic Michaelic Intelligence than it does in the Way, the Truth of the Life.

The question for me in such situations is quite difficult, for it is a question of moral technique, the hardest moral question of all.  How do I oppose the lies living in the thoughts in the room, without attacking the individuals more or less innocently (often in good faith, for they follow what has been modelled for them by the leadership) trying so hard to be "anthroposophical".  For those with a glimpse of the meaning of this, for me it is an experience of "the crowning with thorns".  My thinking, in letting in the dark materialistic thoughts of the group, becomes penetrated and stabbed with these lies.  The world of thought which I have struggled to come into intimate contact with for 35 years, this ethereal substance to which my I always yearns to surrrender, is speared by these thoughts that I have to let in, because part of the work is to take in evil and transform it into love.  I have to let it in, before I can seek the healing thoughts and utter them into the circle of those present.

Often, as a result, I make an impassioned speech, for I wait sometime before responding.  After this speaking of the truth, in which I strive to find the right technique so as to not speak out of antipathy to the individuals present, then comes the counter attact.  Since what I utter often must contradict untruths, several in the group still take personally having their sub-conscious lies opposed.  The result then is a "scourging",  Harsh words are spoken to me out of antipathy, and sometimes this continues (as it did this weekend at a meeting of the Social Science Section where I had to counter lies about technology) even if I am silent, or if I reply.  Something that can take the appearance of an argument arises, but in reality it is simply poorly thought out thoughts being confronted by someone who has spend a lot more time thinking about the subject under discussion.

In both recent instances it was poorly thought thoughts about the Internet and its relation to human social life.  Most people don't understand organic thinking (goetheanism), much less spiritual (moral) thinking as is developed under the influence of PoF.  They don't know how to control their thoughts, much less have even an introspective glimmer of their feeling life so as to work on that influence in the soul (and certainly not the least idea of the influence of the threefold double-complex on the will-in-thinking, feelings and thoughts).

I was saying to Tom yesterday, that I am near to ready to simply retire to the country-side in New Hamshire, where a friend has a nice little apartment in her gargage that fits my social security.  Many anthroposophist are too asleep, and then get too angry when you ask them to wake up a little.  You disturb their moral comfort zone, and this releases their own doubles in an attack.  At the Branch meeting I so disturbed the Christian Community priest (a man for whom I have great affection by the way and have always treated with great respect) that he was shouting at me.  The saddest effect is later when it all goes forward as if the prior discussion never happened.   People seem to want to sleep as to the recent past, and then act as if a discussion, that ought to have resulted later in long careful dialogs, never happened.  To be ignored in this way is also very painful.  It is in fact highly likely that my anthroposophical writings (in fact a great deal of the work that has been produced) will simply be ignored (entombed).

The Society is a place of a great deal of moral ease when it comes to questions of the truth.  There is no scientific discipline, and no one really demands that people who write and speak actually know.  In spite of Steiner's requests not to be made into an authority, it is his authority in which nearly every idea is nested.  A clairvoyant friend once told me that in the ethereal Steiner can in Imagination be found standing, weeping and in chains.  He cannot speak.  He weeps for us.  The chains we make everytime we say "Steiner said".  However, in the astral world (Inspiration) he is a voice of warmth, and will speak to you (or so said my friend), for he remains our teacher and our guide.  These are the consequences for his immortal spirit in having joined his karma to ours.  Our karma is a huge weight, a cross he will bear for a long long time.  Every act we do that makes us independent of his thought, lifts a part of this weight.  Every act we do that moves anthroposophy forward, out of the forces of our own I, in its evolutionary sense, lets us share in the carrying of this load.

joel