I
In Anthroposophical circles you often read the quotes from Steiner in which he mentions that it is the fear of the Christ that keeps us from experiencing our true nature. Is this dynamic mentioned in The Philosophy of Freedom?
Most students say no. They would say that PoF is not concerned with fear, especially as fear relates to experiencing the Christ Impulse. It is my opinion that PoF can not be understood outside of its teaching about the nature of fear. The following two sections of PoF are extremely powerful:
5-13{5}
7-13{2}
You do not see the word fear mentioned in those sections, do you? However I would contend that those sections make no sense until one has grasped directly the relationship between perception and fear. Of course they can be grasped intellectually, but they have such thin meaning if the understanding leaves out the role fear plays in the constitution of perception. In T-13.4{4} the Course says:
You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you.
Let me make it clear that "ego" is not being used in the way Joel inititally read it. The "ego" (in the Course) is THE opportunity to remember our nature; there is no way around it. Joel is absolutely correct that there are thought systems which treat the ego as if it is an actual entity torn from the Christ and devilishly working againt His impulse; there are plently of anthropops who treat the ego in this manner. The Course uses the metaphor of dreaming: a dream of being stabbed by your uncle is only a problem if upon awakening you treat it as real. But if you wake up and recogize it as a dream, you can study it, enjoy it, remember it, ignore it, whatever. In the above quote "the blackness of the ego's foundation" is refering to our perception of the ego AFTER we have forgotten it's actual nature, like when we think our uncle REALLY is trying to stab us. The Course will give horrible descriptions of "ego" but always in the context of viewing it as the perfect opportunity to discover our true nature.
Am I seriously suggesting that sections 5-13{5} and 7-13{2} of PoF relate to this passage about "the blackness of the ego's foundation and the love that is hidden there"? How could a passage from a book written by Steienr in 1893 relate to a passage written from a course in miracles in 1973? Well, all I can suggest is that you check each of the passages with your own experience. Steiner speaks of what the percept is trying to conceal. See what must happen in your experience to actually penetrate this reality of the percept. The moment you actually grasp what Steiner is saying in this section is also the moment you recognize how a fear of Love can be what ultimately generates and maintains the "split" (2-0{2}) that Steiner emphasizes in PoF. The only reason to fear Christ's Love (your nature) is because you have mistaken yourself for something else. What could that be? If ego can be experienced as the false image of what we are not, we can begin to see that "the percept" and "the ego" are not separate notions but are actually the very reality that we use to cover the reality of the Christ in us.
Jeff
source and word
It's not hard to find Steiner using ego in a highly "Luciferic" manner, and we can find him using it in many other ways**.  (see below); Ultimately, it matters not. I mean that it will only be each individual's thinking which gives any term its meaning. This is why the words Steiner chose in writing PoF must always be used but not abused. This is also why it is ok to recognize the areas of the text that don't fit that well together. Sara, as you are working in your workshop, you might be noticing how the more you let your research be guided by the thinking activity itself , the more aware you become of having to give new gestures to common words; this can cause what will appear to be contradictions. As I've already said, I see a contradiction between the point Steiner makes in PoF and his use of "The Separation Imagination". Fortunately, his point (the inherency of your own thinking) eventually helps see why he temporarily thought it was necessary to use that device. It also explains why he quickly abandoned it after 1900.
Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with source, for they must stand for something other than themselves. Their meaning cannot lie in them, but must be sought in what they represent. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the idea which they reflect. (T-19.IV-C,11:2-4)
In The Philosophy of Freedom Steiner does not provide a theory of language, but he does provide his take on perception to which language can be readily related. PoF goes hand in hand with the opening of the Gospel of John when we apply PoF's 5-10{26, 27} to language. What does this section have to say about the notion of words having separate meanings or, better yet, what does this section have to say about mutliple defintions of words. When I think about how this part of
5-10 applies to language, it is possible to see, directly participate within, the meaning of
"In the beginning was the Word"
This in NO WAY denies the functionality of each words in communication, but it simply does not lose sight of the source.
Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with source
The Course points out that a sign can mean anything or nothing. Look at how any group (spiritual or not) bickers over its source texts. Regardless of this flexibility, the source is unchanging and whole.
How does this relate to fear? Let's see......
Jeff
**I am not saying that Steiner's ultimate use of "ego" is "Luciferic". I am simply pointing out that if one applies Steiner's descriptions of how decadent Eastern paths understand "ego" to some of Steiner's characterizations, it is clear that he defines "ego" in this Eastern Way. I want to make it clear that I stand behind Joel's characterization of how somepaths characterize "ego" as if it is the source of evil, as if "ego" is detached from and no longer inherently united with the Father.
separate?
Hi Jeff--and Sara. I don't have much leisure to enter into your conversations, and I think you'd do better without me, but I want to ask a question, in the hope of following your explorations better.
Jeff, in regard to your words above:"...the notion of words having separate meanings..." I would like to know whether or not you and Sara mean to be using separate as if it meant distinct, such that, to realize that things are not separate is apparently to realize that things are not different or distinct in their being or nature. Sara even went so far (in the 'Freedom and Sin' journal entry) to say "...that cause and effect only appear different because of subjective factors..." (I know I'm lumping you two a bit, but I feel y'all will forgive me.) In my (always flawed) understanding Steiner did not intend to say cause and effect (for example) are not different, but that they are not separate. It is a very different matter, as far as I can tell. In doing thought-concentration on words, it is pretty clear that word-meanings are interpenetrated and entangled, implying and involving each other, but (again, as far as I can tell) word-meanings are distinct--and I mean in essence. If words, and things, lose their distinctity, not only of appearance but of being, then everything just dissolves, doesn't it, into a big cloud of cotton candy. I don't suppose God created everything just for that end. No real distinctities, no real unity, right? Just ask Coleridge.
Gene
Hi Gene, I'm a HUGE fan of
Hi Gene,
I'm a HUGE fan of distinctity. I want to go into your question using the kind of terms that you and I already share.
As you know, the work at the nature institute is what kicked everything off for me. It was reading Craig Holdrege's descriptions of animals that gave me the first big time experience of what The Philosophy of Freedom is pointing towards.
I don't know what Sara might say about this, but I want to say first: whatever else my statements about "separate" might mean, they MUSTalways include the recognition that "distinct" does not mean "separate."
When I use separate I mean the idea/perception that two things are fundamentally apart, that two things aren't already revealing their unity, that two things started outside of each other.
When I use distinct I mean the idea/perception that something is revealing itself in multiple ways, that the appearance of parts is the path into the reality of whole (you can tell I just read Sara's latest post), that the whole is gesturing and communicating.
In 5-10{26} Steiner says:
All isolating has only subjective validity for our organization.
So mainstream biology is clear that the lion has a tooth over here and a stomach over there. It isolates the tooth and the stomach, and then it expands the isolation by chopping each of those into separate parts that it "explains" by hypothesizing how the tooth was the result of this random event and the stomach from that random event. Steiner is not saying here that the scientist is not actually perceiving distinctions between the lion's tooth and his stomach, but Steiner is saying that the appearance has only subjective validity. He then says:
For us the universe divides itself up into above and below, before and after, cause and effect, thing and mental picture, matter and force, object and subject, etc...
Again, "before and after" has subjective validity. But the Goethean Science is suggesting something radical. Even though it appears that the lion's tooth and his stomach developed separately from each other and separately in terms of coming afterhis early cellular development (long before the appearance of tooth and stomach), the Goethean approach is saying that one can directly perceive that this before/after is only valid subjectively, that one can directly perceive that their reality as "lion" prior to any particular manifestation. Goethe was not saying this was a notion that could be thought about...He claimed it was a reality that could be directly apprehended.
before/after..........cause/effect.......
Yes, we can say that the development of a certain aspect of the lion's circulatory system is caused by the specific function of some other organ. And Steiner is saying here that this perception of "cause and effect" as divided is only valid subjectively. This is why modern science is so reluctant to fall in love with qualitative science: modern science is keenly aware of its ownvalidity while ignoring the FACT of its subjectivity. It has things reversed and, therefore, sees the Goethe's notion- that the Whole is living through the manifestation of its parts- as being subjective.
Sara don't read the following, please (at least wait until we talk about your latest workshop entry)
Perceiving is the subjective taking apart of reality**. What we see isn't real (it's false) because the idea that it represents is false. Modern science is strong and powerful, but the world it sees is not there! As Steiner says:
A thing cut off from the world-whole does not exist.
I'm fairly certain he means that literally (I do) because it makes literal sense within his theory of perception. More importantly, it is what we directly perceive in the moment of recognizing the self-sustaining nature of thinking. Modern consciousness does not yet even really recognize Steiner's "the world-whole" and, instead, sees merely the "things cut off".....Steiner does not say, "Well, those cut off things are really there we just need to understand how they are connected." He says they ain't there.
For me the hardest part has been what Goethean science is really saying about the nature of time. I didn't even realize I was avoiding this until many years after slowly taking first steps into Goethe's methodology. My unconsciously protected assumption, Gene, was that Goethe's insight took place within the framework of past, present, future. Again, I did not even say this to myself because it was already the very fabric of how I was needing to understand Goethe and Steiner. I imagined that the realization that PoF is pointing to is something that a little individual has while meditating in a chair
or staring at a strawberry. And this seemed obvious because even my early experiences of nature's wholeness (thanks to folks like Craig) then got to be interpreted as having taken place by me in time. But when I actually paid attention to my experience more closely, I felt a snag.
The snag was that time itself is valid only subjectively, just like before/after, cause/effect and all perception of separateness. I didn't say distinctness. As I said at the top, I reserve the word distinct to be applied to perceptions of difference that are already integrated into the wider perception of their unity.
By thinking we fit together again into one piece all that we have taken apart through perceiving.
I agree that words will often be perceived as distinct, although this perception doesn't have to imply separation. It implies separation to the extent that we leave words apart as if they each "contain" their own truth inside themselves and then get together to make up wholeness. As if the tooth and stomach of the lion first became themselves and then joined to make the lion. Of course in the backwards land of perception, I do want to hear each word you say...but only so that I can join you....and I can only join you because we share the same identity. For me that does not imply that the unique working of a word in a particular communication should be denied. In fact, I only ask that we see that the word's meaning is how it is working right now, although that will change the moment it is being used differently within the whole.
I'll end with words from Craig. I'll point out that Craig can "get back to the things themselves" only via his idea/perception of what is prior to the subjectivity that carves up appearances. If Craig and Joe Modern each lean forward to see the lion more closely, the difference between what they see will be in the distinctionbetween subjectivity (5-10{27}) and what actually is.
What forms an animal? A likely answer these days is "genes." Or perhaps: "genes and environment." Such high-level abstractions reveal how little we actually know and tend to discourage further inquiry. When I hear "genes and environment" I yearn for something more concrete, something I can mentally take hold of. And the only way I know to develop such saturated concepts is to get back to the things themselves—to look carefully at what nature presents and inch my way toward a more full-toned understanding.
** bottom of 5-10{26}
Hi Gene,
Jeff
part II: gene
I just wanted to save your final comments for their own space. You wonderfully said:
If words, and things, lose their distinctity, not only of appearance but of being, then everything just dissolves, doesn't it, into a big cloud of cotton candy. I don't suppose God created everything just for that end. No real distinctities, no real unity, right? Just ask Coleridge.
I love how you put it: doesn't everything just dissolve if a thing loses its distinctness?
I have to say yes and no. Look at what Steiner says about the cross-section of the rose in 5-5{11}. You could stare at that cross section all your life and never see the rose. From this perspective, you never go into the land of cotton candy because you are always staring right at that exact distinct perception. On the other hand, you could have a Goethean "Ah Ha!!!!" and see the rose (as whole) via that particular cross-section. Imagine that after that experience you move far away and never see a rose again; I don't think this means that you lose the sight of wholeness, the knowing perception. You may even forget the particular details over time of that cross-section and yet the ROSE is now working in your direct perception of other vegetation or cows or humans. The whole is inherent and can function (like a word) implicitly. In a sense, the moment you really saw the rose was also the moment you will begin to really see the cow or your fellow man.
In the beginning was the Word
My sense of this is not that The Word was there containing all other possible words secretly inside it. My experience of The Word is that it already meant what all words--- that came (in the subjectivity of time) via perception--- would point towards. We could imagine that The Word needed to study the meaning of each distinct word as it formed in some particular culture, but I think this type of imagination points to the dead end of using the kind of concept that implies separation-comes-first. If we realize that The Word never went anywhere, that "we" left (the prodigal son)...we can also see that the one true value of the billions upon billions of "new" words is how they each point back to Dad.
So I agree with, "no real distinctions, no real Unity" but I can't take that to suggest that the Unity is dependent upon the distinction. That would be the same as suggesting that The Word loses itself when a language goes extinct.
Steiner shows that all biological evolution is the evolution of the Human Being. This seems backwards until we realize how he reversing our most fundamental notion of what is Human. So, "no real distinction, no real Unity". I believe that regardless of how many millions of species have gone extinct and to which we have no access, the Unity is still directly perceptible. In fact, I think I'd even venture to say that the perception of the Unity (The Word) does not have a quantitative relationship to the perceptible forms of species. That is, I would not be shocked if somebody perceived the evolving archetype via finally seeing the rose and if somebody else got there via a detailed study of primates or ants or....
As long as we are seeing from the lens of perception, it will then obviously be VIA that lens that we grasp the Unity, but I don't think that implies that the Unity depended upon the previous perception. This gets into the assumption about "before/after" that Steiner talks about in 5-10{27}. Ok, always enjoy where you come from, Gene.
Jeff
p.s. the notion that the world, as we see it, was a creation of God (however we use that term) is an assumption that I think Goethean Science has much to say about. Again, this relates to what Pof means by "isolated parts are not real"....and what Barfield's work say about the "creation" of modern idolatry.
and this gets to my ONE reason for thinking PoF matters: the origin of violence. It can be argued logically that God created "sin" and "terror" and "violence" and then wanted us to choose freely against them, but I think the experience of thinking's inherency reveals a very different picture of their (un)reality. But that's a separate issue altogether :)
Hi Jeff and Gene, I need to
Hi Jeff and Gene,
I need to think about how "distinct" and "separate" are......distinct, but it's a great question.
Jeff I tried not to read what you said about time, but I couldn't....so sue me. It's actually ok becuase as I learn more about what's going on with this felt-sense I'm working with, it takes on a life of its own in a strange way. It's robust. The reason I think this TAE thing is exciting is that it showing me that it is already inside me and just needs a way of being attended.
With that said, I am very interested in this notion of time. I am slowly finding my way into my new question about cause and effect as it relates to what Steiner is saying in chapter 5. No, that isn't quite true. It is more true to say "as it relates to whatever the hell this knowing is in myself". But that sounds overly ambitious.
Here is what I find to be an enescapable paradox: The part of myself that is "choosing" the world projected by ego is also the part of my mind trying to imagine what "reality" actually is. It conjures up mental pictures that are STILL based in its basic assumption of parts-first. This creates notions of "peace", "eternity", "time", "love" and "self" that are these wierd sorts of
pseudo contrasts with the parts-first model. They don't really work but my mind thinks they stand for "truth".
The beauty of felt-sense is that now I have a way of being much more attuned to when I am leaving my experience for the effects of mental pictures. This is very new to me.
I will need to go back and read again what you said to Gene about before/after and cause/effect, but I can tell you this for certain. There is a part of me that NEEDS to perceive a world in which all insights continue to presuppose that they happen within time. But now I'm wondering if the nature of true insight isn't totally reversing "where" we stand in regards to time. This part of me is very busy these days fighting against my growing suspicion that eternity isn't something I'm not already aware of and living. When I show that last sentence to my friend I know she's going to insist we go immediately and watch a trashy movie. She is not the friend, obviously, who is aching to play with TAE. But she's a hell of a lot of fun!
Sara
Sara,I wanted to send
Sara,
I wanted to send you a few sections of the Course that one of my PoF groups will be working on next week. I have a PoF group in which we are exploring our hunches about the relations and snags that come up as we compare these texts. I'm also in a PoF group where we do the same looking at the relationship between The Philosophy of Freedom and Gendlin's Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning.
As my understanding and experience of PoF has changed, I've begun to think of Spiritual Science as the Forgiving Science. I'm wondering if the new perceptions of Goethean Science are instances of what the Course refers to as the happy dreams that reveal the reversal of perception. I find it interesting that both the Course and Steiner set up a dichotomy; they each begin with a fundamental split. In fact, they each even use the word "split". Steiner immediately establishes the massive significance of the split (2-0{2,3}) but never goes back to explicate it specifically (although his entire epistemology never abandons the role the split is playing in our day to day perception of the world). So the Course states over and over that it only serves one purpose; the teaching of forgiveness. PoF is about cognitively individuating- and thereby reversing- the I/world split.
I am now experierincing PoF's reversal of thinking as the Course's training in forgiveness. It is only through Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit that I've been able to not get lost in all the competing and contradictory conceptual schemas used by all these systems. They are only competing if we start with the assumption of separation-first (sara, you must be reading Process Model, the way you are finding that "first" distinction to be meaningful) and, therefore, "see" meaning as being contained inside each separated word-unit. (context for Sara: Gene and I have an ongoing discussion about meaning in relation to languaging it; at this point we still are using similar terms in different ways and different terms in similar ways, so it appears that we have a difference of opinion. From what I can tell our actual experience is the same.)
Notice the kinds of paradox that the Course offers here, especially in the last two sentences. This speaks to me of what you describe your mind doing above. Just so you know: we are working with the terms of the Course via TAE; rather than just let "Christ" or "time" take on its idolatrized public meaning, we keeping enriching it via our felt-sense of the edge it provides. From the perspective of the Course, when Goethe began to see plant morphology anew, he may have been starting to touch the "other" world, which is the only function of the miracle. In the study group I want to explore the use of "awake" in the following quotes with Steiner's use in 5-1{8}. When you get a moment, see how Steiner relates perception and thinking in that portion of the text and then see how that jives with the Coure's claims that Projection makes Perception and Ideas leave not their source. Those two claims, for me, are at the root of Goethean science as well. See ya. j
Now is the time of salvation, for now is the release from time. Reach out to all your brothers, and touch them with the touch of Christ. In timeless union with them is your continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. God's guiltless Son is only light. There is no darkness in him anywhere, for he is whole. Call all your brothers to witness to his wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me. Each voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of gladness and thanksgiving for the light to the Creator of light. The holy light that shines forth from God's Son is the witness that his light is of his Father.
There is a light that this world cannot give. Yet you can give it, as it was given you. And as you give it, it shines forth to call you from the world and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love which you have given it. And here will everything remind you of your Father and his holy Son. Light is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs in power so compelling, that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them.
And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. And you have followed them through all your nightmares, and have been faithful in your giving, for you were not alone. Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world for you when you awake. In your name he has given for you, and given you the gifts he gave. God's Son is still as loving as his Father. Continuous with his Father, he has no past apart from him. So he has never ceased to be his Father's witness and his own. Although he slept, Christ's vision did not leave him. And so it is that he can call unto himself the witnesses that teach him that he never slept.
Check This Out
Thank you Jeff. I have much to say but not the time now, so I'll just quickly point to this:
Those passages from the Course are very interesting in the context of our conversation. I just noticed something. The Course says (is this from Chapter 13 of the Text):
There is a light that this world cannot give. Yet you can give it, as it was given you
Now look at this part of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: 5-13(5):
When we realize this, we
open the way to the further insight that in thinking and through thinking
man must recognize the very thing to which he has apparently blinded
himself by having to interpose his life of mental pictures between the
world and himself.
The part that I'm noticing is "Man blinded Himself"!!!! This couldn't fit more perfectly with what I think the Course is teaching about the origin of our perception: "projection makes perception" and "ideas leave not their source" (can you show me where these are in the text, please) So of course the world can not give us the light that we are IF we insist on seeing/making a world upon the foundation of our self-imposed blindness.
I took a quick glance at 5-1(8) and I think I see what you are getting at. When I first studied PoF I always made "perception" mean something that wasn't yet the world. Now I see that Steiner can be read to mean that The World as I experience it directly is the segmented dream that can be contrasted with awakening into wholeness, into thinking. Is this what you mean about Goethe creating a forgiving science? Do you think Steiner had anything to say about how the Course is distinguishing between "projection" and "extention"?
Sara
"Man blinded
"Man blinded Himself"....I'll need to look more closely at that one, Sara. It's interesting that Steiner immediately mentions the Split and then only develops its effects and the Course has a few places where it speaks of the paradox of trying to grasp the origin of the Split:
The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you (C-in.4).
There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true (C-2.2:5-3: 1).
No matter how creatively you define evolution to prove that it has no inner coherence, it has inner coherence.
In terms of Goethean Scince being the forgiving science, I just mean that we can see in it's basic gesture it reflects everything the Course is calling the perception of the Holy Spirit. Goethean Science is gorgous, Sara. I don't know if you've read much from those who practice it like Craig Holdrege. It will look hoky until you let your mind begin to make the reversal that PoF (implicitly) and the Course (explicitly) are talking about. All of a sudden you are reading about a sloth or a lion and, yet, your heart is opening to reveal more of yourself (more of the human). The same happens when I read Steve Talbott's work on technology. From a certain point of view we can say that as you begin to really "see" you wipe away what was there before. I don't mean you actually stop seeing the animal but you do lose sight of it as an idol; it no longer serves as a "something" that reinforces the split mind's decision (delusional as it may be)to remain isolated. The Course says that forgiveness is the last illusion in that in forgiveness the gap between perception and knowledge (as the Course uses these terms) becomes so small that the final step can be taken easily. When I read Craig Holdrege's work I imagine that I am participating in the way vision changes as it begins to let in the light from the "real" world and lets go of its self-imposed darkness. I think the following quote gets at why it is so difficult to express the methodology of a Goethean Science:
We are therefore asked to use the symbols of the world of darkness, not because they are real, but only to proclaim [their] unreality in terms which still have meaning in the world that darkness rules (W-pI.184.10:3).
Thanks for the heads up on that quote. I'm going to look at that more closely when I have a moment.
Jeff
gene; next try on "separate"
I'm a big fan of Coleridge and Barfield's reminder that we can distinguish without separating. In fact, I'd say that is the starting point of goethean science.
I use "separate" (as in Steiner's 'Separation Imagination') to speak of when our language/experience/meaning implies that there is an ontological division at the starting point. It seems to me that Steiner tried to make his point about thinking's nature by using this assumption. We then see him abandon it completely but never explicitly address it epistemologically (except for his unfinished and "failed" Anthroposophy- a fragment) AND, there is no doubt that many of his later characterizations of PoF (in lectures) imply a radical re-footing of its starting point.
I'm all for the distinctity (GREAT WORD, Gene) of language. I'm well aware that we could get 1000 intelligent and diligent anthroposophists to spend three years meditating on the word "Therefore" and then have them each write 5 page essays going into the distinctity of their experience. We would then have 5000 pages of unique descriptions of "Therefore". And several books might be written on the value of those 5000 pages. This is all wonderful. I wouldn't be surprised if even the most articulate and phenomenological of those essays was written by somebody who treats people unkindly, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was written by a gentle soul.
But in terms of epistemology: it would only be to the extent that a reader of those description recognize "therefore" as the Logos that I would align their understanding with the point of PoF. Notice what I am not saying: I'm not saying that all the different insights related to the various meditations on "therefore" had no value. I'm not saying that each of those meditants were not having actual experiences (even if there resulting essays contradicted each other) I am saying that no matter how many creative ways you go into "therefore" and no matter how many wonderful ways you learn to explicate "therefore", there is always the possibility that you will re-cognize "therefore" as the Logos speaking itself as you. That latter possibility is not inherently interested in the apparent agreements or disagreements of the essays. The re-cognition of "therefore" as the Word does not deny any distinctions in my experience. I can still use "therefore" to help communicate ideas it has never been used to communicate. I can imagine it being a way of saying "I'm going to get you for that" whenever my daughter or I discover that we have been tricked by the other. Upon the discovery that she has tricked me, I pinch my eyes together in mock rage and slowly/spitefully intone, "Therefore". It would of course also be communicating the Logos more explicitly in that kind of use. But I can't imagine a use in which it isn't a doorway into the Logos. I don't think we lose distinctity in recognizing the meaning of meaning.
That insight (the unavoidability of the Logos in meaning) might be a bit like the cloud of cotton candy you mentioned Gene, however stripped of all the delicious form of that particular delicacy (yet infinitely informing).
Jeff
first try on next try
"I’m a big fan of Coleridge and Barfield’s reminder that we can distinguish without separating. In fact, I’d say that is the starting point of goethean science."
I would say so too. An undivided, undividable unity manifests in different ways through the different parts of an organism. That is what goethean science sees and works with, is it not so?
In my original post above (‘Separate’) I tried (poorly) to stand up for the idea that distinctions matter and against any airy, new-age-type attitude that would say that before and after, up and down, cause and effect aren’t real. (How they are real and what is reality is of course the issue.) I believe that the more complex a manifestation of unity one is dealing with, the less arbitrary and irrelevant the distinct parts are, the more essential they are, the more they are unities themselves. I suppose all unities are only relatively real, relative to the unity of unities (the logos), but that’s not a fruitful quibble here.
In your three posts to me here you seem to be stressing the idea that all the (yes, agreed, distinct) parts of language and of the world itself lead to and are the logos, and additionally that through any little part/aspect one can realize the logos, through ‘one’s own’ (let’s not argue that term right now) thinking or involvement in the knowledge process, and additionally that this is the point of PoF. I’m all for this; I would not argue against any of it–although I would point out that realizing this in thought does not really change one and is not the same as experiencing it (an experience which would be no-experience from the normal perspective). The ‘cotton-candy’ image I used did not refer to the insight into the unavoidability of the logos, an insight I am completely one with (heh, heh), but indicated a worry that this insight could lead to a devaluing of the process of distinction (in its widest sense). Distinguishing and uniting are a polarity (a dynamic polarity in Coleridge’s sense); each is the obverse of the other, and if either disappears, or if either is taken alone, then knowledge, consciousness, life and being all disappear.
By the way, I would hope that the one thousand intelligent anthroposophists would all write pretty much the same thing in their 5-page essays on ‘therefore’. The word, although difficult of explication (and such explication unavoidably goes toward abstraction), is recognizably itself, it is definite. If the essays were all so different, it would mean that those anthros were confusing the numerous ways the concept can be exemplified, and particularized (leaving aside how it might evolve) with the concept itself (the same concept in two minds is one concept, not two). The particularizing through a specific context is absolutely necessary for communication (a sentence for the word, a meadow perhaps for a plant), but so is the recognizable, intuitive being of the word itself (or the dandelion, say). This, I think, is Barfield’s ‘communicative expression vs. communicative accuracy’–also a dynamic polarity.
I think that in "recognizing ‘therefore’ as the logos" one would be recognizing ‘something’ that is the same in all things, and also recognizing unique being, because when the logos manifests, it manifests uniquely each time, or it wouldn’t be the logos. This polarity, the sameness (the unity in all) and the difference (the reproduction of uniqueness (relative uniqueness, relative to the logos ‘itself’)) is the logos.
Jeff,I hope to post the
Jeff,
I hope to post the latest result of my workshop later today, but in the meantime I can't help but respond to this journal. Obviously you are covering ground that's way associated with what's emerging in my workshop and I think that's cool. There is something startling about the way Steiner's message in 5-10{26, 27} is changing my whole way of thinking about human freedom. Three weeks ago I would not have seen how The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity could be directly connected to something like:
...the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you.
I understand what you are saying about the "blackness" of the ego. It is not that the ego is black in some ominous sense, but rather the blackness that simply represents lack of light. It is only from within the ego's thought system that this blackness could made into something terrible or sinful. The Christ is, and always has been (obviously), eternal, therefore as The Light Christ has always extended Himself infinitely. Only by accepting the illusions of ego can we think of light being some type of "battle" with darkness. Is that how you see it? I do. And it's so new to me. It recasts everything about human freedom, fear and the meaning of suffering. I want to say more but my boss just walked in.
Sara
Agreed, Sara: And
Agreed, Sara:
And everything we are saying is simply abstractions piled upon abstractions to the degree that we don't have experience to which it directly refers.
The beauty of PoF is that it bypasses all the pyrotechnics of Steiner's other works. An anthroposophist can come quite far in terms of various types of clairvoyant development and, yet, still be living on the "ego" side of the split.
(2-0{2,3}, 5-5{16}, 9-2{5})
PoF is only oriented towards recognizing and "healing" the split. This recognition/healing does not imply that we then overcome ego-consciousness. No, it simply is the integration of ego-consciousness. It's like how waking up from the dream immediatelyintegrates the dream into waking life. My experience of PoF has not changed the fact that I look out into a world which seems to be populated by billions of other "mes". Yet, the path of PoF, has utterly ruined my ability to actually see this fragmented, time-bound perception as fundamental in any sense. And, let me add quickly, I am constantly and often ONLY buying back into the split consciousness that denies reality by pretending that it takes place in time. In other words, Sara, I am constantly denying the Christ in favor of making "sin" real. So it becomes clear that PoF is the first epistemological work that teaches true forgiveness!!!!!
True forgiveness is NOT, in my opinion, the type that prokoffief (sp) teaches. It is not the forgiveness that one ego-consciousness "grants" unto an other ego-consciousness. No, it is the recognition of the prior unity (shared) in which "sin" never has taken place.
Many students of the Course don't like it when I state that PoF beat them to the punch, but that's how I see it. That said, PoF only contains this teaching in the actual experience to which it points. On the surface, PoF is simply another text with strings of memorizable sentences which redefine thinking. On the other hand, the Course does lay down epistemological, theological and psychological observations to teach this explicitly. But: Steiner first. Yea!
And, yes, i agree with you: the "battle" between light and dark is an egoic interpretation in that the Christ (you) has nothing to fear. This is not because Christ is stronger or has better weapons or has a stronger father. It's because "sin" is only real (only has power or force) within the dream of separation. Again, PoF is this teaching.
Jeff
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