Dear Friends,
Recent conversations with Tom have brought forward a deeper appreciation of a central riddle in connection with this book: Just why did Steiner want us to call it "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity" in English? Was this indication of his something superficial, or was it a quite essential matter of Steiner's perceptions of the nature of the souls of the West, that PoF be set forward in a context of spiritual activity instead of freedom? Is it possible that English speakers by thinking of the situation is terms of freedom will actually miss the point of the book?
Terry Boardman wrote in an essay called: The Idea of the Threefold Society at the Dawn of the Third Millennium
"In his lectures to the West-East Congress in Vienna 1922, Rudolf Steiner spoke of Europe-Asia as 'the problem' of modern times and Europe-America as 'the solution'. By this he meant that Europeans were preserving the dessicated remnants of an ancient Asian spirituality in the dusty abstractions of their intellectual, political, and religious systems. The future lay rather with the will to create out of nothing. And this willingness he saw in the youthful energies of the Americans"
Is this formulation an appreciation of this mystery of "spiritual activity" - the "will to create out of nothing"?
In thinking about this I tried to recollect my own relationship to this text. The first mental picture that arose was of me holding in my hand the book. The second mental picture was of me living life, and drawing from the riddles of my life the questions that the book was able to help answer. The book did not led to the questions, but rather my life led to the questions. The book then only served to help me answer questions from life. The questions from life came in my biography before I came to the book.
If I was to rewrite the book, this then would have to be its form. Questions from life would be drawn into some kind of fine shaping, some kind of artistic but finely tuned form. These questions would have to be organic though. Related to life, not related to philosophic inquirey.
Once I saw this, I was then able to relate to this picture what other studies had taught me - studies I had undertaken for years in which I tried to appreciate the nature and the differences between the soul life of Central Europeans, and the soul life of Americans. I have elsewhere characterized, for example, the Central European as living in the Ideal, and seeking from this inner view of the Ideal to incarnate it into themselves, and perhaps into the wider social order. The American, on the other hand, finds in life a sequence of nested problems. An American's thinking is then not about the ideal, but about how to pragmatically solve the questions brought to us by life.
An American seldom introspects (gazes at his navel), because the entire focus is on life and its riddles. It would only be when these riddles themselves raised questions that naturally led to introspection, that an American would take up such a path in order to solve the riddles of life. This also was part of my life's path, for my very first taste of being inwardly unfree was when I discovered myself containging a thought content that made me uncomfortable. I did not like the thoughts that arose in my soul, because they seemed at odds with how I wanted to live my life. The circumstances of the biography then created a necessity to look within in order to resolve what came in the form of an outer dilemma.
Is this experience the model that I would need to follow were I to try to revise PoF and update it for our time and for the soul gesture of Americans? I am in the present uncertain, except as regards the fact that this seems to be a quite excellent question.
joel
new thinking compared to lame thinking
The Philosophy of Freedom addresses classic riddles that are likely relevant for today but people may not recognize them without being put in a contemporary form. Chapter 1 looks at whether freedom is possible or not. Most people assume they are free even though scientific research is reporting a mounting amount of evidence that we are determined by genetics and a host of other factors.
The public seems to accept the research that shows we are not free and then go about life believing everyone is morally responsible for their decisions because we are all free to choose. Perhaps this contradiction goes unnoticed because of the superficial level of life normally experienced.
One way to awaken people out of indifference is the threat of danger. The Republicans use the awakening power of fear to control the masses through creating false enemies. Religious use the fear of hell. Fear is being generated over global warming that may get people to change.
What is the danger of not acquiring real inner freedom?
It has been suggested that a "new thinking" is needed to solve all the other dangers. That means we could use the threat that without this new thinking we won't be able to solve all the other threats.
Though this may be to theoretical. We have been warned about the environment all my life but nobody cared until they could see sense perceptible evidence like melting ice caps. Perhaps perceptible evidence of lame thinking could be assembled. But people hear about that everyday on the news.
Scare tactic and Occult Science
If you want to scare someone into action there is probably no better place to start than the last section of Occult Science.
Anyone who reads that (and believes it) and is not shaken is not paying attention.
Hi Joel,
Hi Joel,
Thank you very much for all your considerations.
I just want to say, that in my feelings as someone from the Central - Eastern Europe (and who actually lives in Arabian Peninsula) the word “freedom” can have a little bit different value for western and eastern people. I think that probably for people from America, who achieved social freedom for a long time, the “Spiritual Activity” term is more valuable, and then through the spiritual activity people can find a real freedom – inner freedom. For eastern people who are, in my opinion, mostly (but of course not all) very spiritual (in the common sense) and also historically and geographically always fought for freedom, the term “Freedom” becomes more magnetic. Anyway, western or eastern people, who start the Spiritual Activity and find a True Freedom, realize that both terms are equal.
With Best Regards
Olga
Spiritual Activity and Natural Philosophy
Thanks for this Joel,
What comes to mind for me after reading this is that science was once called "Natural Philosophy".
In my own spiritual path scientific thinking has always been very important. And the most important outcome for me of reading the Philosophy of Freedom has been to obtain a real, practical understanding of what is meant by "spirit".
That is probably one reason why Tom's project to recast the ideas of the book in something like the form of a science textbook interests me greatly. However I think there will need to be some flexibility in form and content as we work through this idea.