John,

I think you are asking the most important question before the anthroposophical movement at this time.  While there is always a private and individual aspect of one’s association with Anthroposophy, your question speaks to what I consider to be a critical issue.  If this question were to be approached creatively and responsibly, I can imagine a HUGE  step forward being taken.  Obviously, I mean ‘huge’ from my perspective only.

John, in your following comments, what words of yours are you referring to? Your post as a whole or a specific aspect of it?

“Could I have written this more effectively? What does the reader feel? Do these words convey the message that I intended? Are my thoughts here purely an imitation or reproduction of Steiner's views?”

I’d like to respond to those questions, but am not sure to what you refer.

The silly way to make my point would be to say:

It’s all about relaxing and using common sense.

If you approached me and told me what an incredibly beautiful place Brattleboro, Vermont is in the fall, it would be perfectly ok for me to ask you more about your experience.  Let’s say you tell me something about a place and I am confused. What do I do if you say, “I went to Kukudaladala and found that the water there  isn’t as wet”.  It should be natural for me to ask you questions about what you are saying. It would, to me, be a sign of something unhealthy if I was just suppose to make mental pictures of what you are saying and privately mediate on them in order to make sense of what you are saying. 

Now, knowing you somewhat from this website my hunch is that you are more than happy to let me ask about your comment:

As our words open the door from individual to individual, so spirit truths open the door from humanity to other spirit beings.

Immediately, I am interested in your particular knowledge and perception of spiritual beings (if you described how a particular poem connected you to your uncle, I’d want to know about him, via your eyes, as well).  I always find it fascinating when Steiner describes his encounters with what he calls “spiritual beings” and it’s great that he doesn’t expect his listeners to simply rely on abstract statements.  Not counting you, John, I would say that a majority of anthroposophists would become somewhat defensive to be asked about what they are referring to (in their actual experience) when they speak offhandedly about how the spiritual world works/looks. Yet, they have no problem when you ask them about their blenders or cars; in fact, they might be more than willing to admit they have no clue about their blenders and cars, no actual experience-based knowledge. 

John in regards to the reviewers comments in which he said that there is a tendency in anthroposophy to state speculations as if they are facts, you wrote:

Does this ‘tendency’ only alienate others? Should we soften our expression of spiritual communications into the garden of personal belief or opinion? Or does such softening deny the essence of what we are standing for?

I’m not sure what you would mean by softening, but I assume you might be talking about if we were to be clear in our communications when we are talking about things we know/experience and things we think might be true.  What concerns me (as somebody madly in love with anthroposophy) is that this isn’t just natural.  But I have to look inward to see why I refused to ‘soften’ my statements.  And it wasn’t comfortable.  As much as part of me might delutionally believe that other people in the movement would do well to introspect on this topic, I recognize that their business is not mine.  All I can do is share what I have found.

I found that I was unwilling to make a clear distinction between when I was truly experiencing something and when I was being consoled by mental pictures.  This unwillingness was connected to a deeper anxiety that I simply refused to accept; therefore, I displaced it into a soaring enthusiasm and emotional hunger for Steiner lectures.  When I look back at things I wrote 8 years ago, I can now clearly see that I wasn’t aware of what lurked beneath the ‘positive’ feelings I associated with ‘knowing’ things about spiritual reality.  In fact, I only regarded such feelings as benign. I admit that I would become defensive when friends (who had no spiritual view) asked me to be specific as to how I knew what I was saying. I had enough mental dexterity to often mask the anxiety their questions provoked (even masking it from myself often; I was a big fan of how I explained my spiritual statements often).  

I think it would serve the anthro movement immensely if it became part of its culture to encourage individuals to cleanly distinguish hypothesis from fact and to carefully reflect that in language.  But that is a fantasy at this point.  At this point.  At this point it stirs up great anxiety to ask the average enthusiastic anthroposophist to justify his claims.  Yet, if the same guy says,

“Hey, they are selling free cars 5 hours south in Springfield”…you would have every right to ask how he obtained this information. Was he told by somebody else?  Did he already obtain a free car? Did he have dream about it? Did his spiritual guru tell him and, if so, who is his teacher?

A few nights ago I spent about an hour surfing on line and reading anthroposophical conversations.  If you take them at face value it would appear that there is a massive amount of anthroposophist who have first hand knowledge of most of the subjects Steiner lectured and wrote about.  They feel so certain of this knowledge that they will tenaciously argue about very subtle spiritual matters. They feel so certain that they will base huge political assertions upon rather highly esoteric events that Steiner described.  I know from experience that there is no use (most often) in trying to tease apart their actual experience from what they take for granted.  I end up sounding like a prick just trying to find out how to talk to them? But most people just consider such kinds of convictions odd and often fundamentalist.  

I’m not saying that somebody who has never spoken to an angel can’t have anything to say about angel communication; but I do think that he should be able to comfortable say, “This is what I think based on premises that I consider strong. I’m happy to discuss those premises. I have never spoken to or observed an angel.”

That kind of statement doesn’t have to be a sign of defeat. Just a fact.

You said:

In my experience the communication of spiritual knowledge works actively in the one who receives it, connecting me with its origins and drawing me closer to the realms of spirit. As a word connects us to the appropriate concept, so spirit truths connect us to spirit beings.

Now imagine that a college student is just getting turned on in his studies of Marxism.  He comes from a very wealthy and privileged fundamentalist Christian family and has never been exposed to Marx’s ideas.  He sees much truth in these new ideas and is growing very excited and hopeful that there are other approaches to understanding the mass poverty in his nation. He is now in a very lively Marx study group and enjoys the discussions and community being established around these ideas.  He writes to a friend:

In my experience the communication of Marx’s ideas is working actively in the depths of my heart, connecting me to fundamental human experience and drawing me closer to what it means to really participate in living. As his words connects me to his ideas, so spirit truths connect us to spirit beings.

I couldn’t figure out how to translate your last sentence into this young man’s voice, but I noticed that by keeping the disjunction it points to what I am trying to say.  Is there reason to believe that the experience of enthusiasm, hope, centering, inspiration, that this young man is gaining through Marx is qualitatively different than what your words refer to. I would say YES if when you write about being connected to spiritual beings there is a perceptual element that is contrasted with this young man’s deepening experience. But I wouldn’t know unless I asked you.  Do you see spiritual beings and, if so, is this seeing an essential aspect of what you experience as anthroposophy. You might not be sure if you experience spiritual beings.  I notice amongst my anthroposophical friends that whenever the hair stands up on their neck they basically “know” that they are in direct contact with a spirit…even when it’s just that I spiked their drink (kidding). 

My bias is that we lean more and more deeply into our actual experience and learn to speak from there. If I feel the hair on my neck stand up, I might notice all sorts of mental pictures come in related to what I “know” spiritually. But I think it is important that I notice the conditional nature of those ‘knowings’ and not conflate them with the highly intricate knowledge my body is actually giving me with its communication.

My suggestion is only relevant to a possible future in which the anthroposophical movement becomes increasingly able to comfortably communicate outside its own consoling circle of ‘knowledge’. It will require a great deal of courage to see why it hasn’t done so yet.  On the other hand, there is nothing written in stone that says the movement needs to be able to reach out and make such inner distinctions that can be cleanly communicated.  Look at all the different religions and churches and interesting sub-groups in the world.  I’m not against the simple function of having a feeling of unity within a particular group and I am well aware of how one way to have that feeling is to ‘build’ a unique vocabulary that is contrasted with what ‘other’ people know about.  I don’t place that on a moral lower level than if a group really gets serious about understanding their own tendencies to conflate mental pictures with experiential knowing.

And I appreciate when you say:

Yet spirit communications more often than not renovate soul-habit landscape quite radically before they settle down to inhabit my soul.  Spirit truths transform the quality of what I do, and thrive if I can act out of love of the other through love of rendering good service. 

I imagine a passionate, creative and socially productive atheist could agree fully with you as long as he did not let a few of your words get in the way.  He very well might lose sight of your meaning by getting stuck in the mental pictures he associates with your choice of “Spirit truths” or “spirit communications” or “soul-habit landscapes”.  Ironically he may have just written an email on an atheist blog saying:

Yet true material knowledge more often than not stirs up my prior conceptions before it settles down to inhabit my mind.   Truth transforms the quality of what I do, and I thrive if I can act out of love of the other through love of rendering good service. The I know, the more I can serve.

I would have no problem thinking that you and he are sharing the same experience (one triangle) and simply translating into your communities vocabulary. No argument or antipathy would be necessary unless you left the experience for the various ideologies that might get associated to it via mental picture-habits…Let me quickly say that, John, you’ve been one who I see has completely capable of not losing sight of the shared reality between you and the atheist.  It’s what Gendlin means when he says that we never argue about experiential intricacy (intuiting) only about the way our explications might seem to function. 

What do you think about this notion of ‘softening’ of expressions?

Thanks very much,

Jeff

Jeff – you are always so full of lively ideas. I will probably fail to satisfy the hunger of your well honed questions with my brief daubings in the limited time currently at my disposal. I have reverted to rough and ready or not in order to get at least something posted. Unless otherwise stated, please take my comments in the opening post as non-specific as feasible. How about applying the questions to all our output on this site? 
 
If I read something stated as a hard fact, how does that influence the way I relate to that something, and to that writer? What if the something goes like: That is an angel peering over your shoulder right now, Jeff...?  In regard to spiritual experiences, Jeff, have you had experiences that could possibly be interpreted as spiritual communication? How does such a perspective influence the contribution of such experiences to your life? What happens if such experiences are interpreted as not being spiritual, when they were spirit given?
 
The softening of spiritual hard facts – if I can use the word fact here without an avalanche of protest – may make some spiritual statements more palatable for some listeners. If your imagined atheist and I were to agree, would we be partly deluded about our apparent agreement?
 
Jeff, you wrote: I found that I was unwilling to make a clear distinction between when I was truly experiencing something and when I was being consoled by mental pictures.     
Yes indeed – even when the mental pictures offer no consolation. Most of my remembered experiences are still gift-wrapped in mental pictures. I forget the rest...
 
[Gendlin] says that we never argue about experiential intricacy (intuiting) only about the way our explications might seem to function.        
This may not be entirely true in my own experience. (No – not my soft way of saying nonsense! Just my uncertainty about whether I have understood your/Gendlin’s point.) I have been accused of masking judgements as experiences. For example: “You did not experience that. You made a judgement based on an interpretation of guesswork.” Or is that what Gendlin meant by the functioning of explications?
 
It will be week before I get back to my desk.  Thanks for keeping the embers burning.
 
 

Hi John,

When are you going to visit the west coast of North America?!!!!

I'll start backwards with the point that there is no argument in intuiting. I can argue about what you say about the structure of a cell or the structure of an angel's wing, but there can be no argument about the intuitive intricacy into which (and from which) your attention is drawing. Sure, I may have a whole set of other words to apply to the cell- words that may contradict sharply with yours- but the living activity in which you are participating (from which you are explicating) is a reality that I can also join you in. This is why Steiner was in love with all those thinkers he sharply disagreed with on the formal level. PoF is pointing not to the billions of distinctions and explications, but to the THE place of active, free, concrete and fully responsible love. There is no argument there. The “knowledge” that is PoF can easily express itself in 1000 philosophies that very well might not agree in how their terms function. Yet, a true penetration of the terms will show their precise agreement! This is why none of Steiner’s contradictions over the 40 years of teaching what PoF “meant” are really contradictions.  But the contradictions are only resolved by the thinking activity’s re-cognition of itself (in you) not by the the logical power of the various terms (on that level they might very well sharply disagree).

The reason a school counselor is good is because he is able to hear statements from the adolescent that he utterly doesn't accept but the counselor can listen to the intricacy from which the student is intuiting. A good school counselor has no need to argue (or get stuck or judgemental) because she recognizes the actual and real intricacy and is constantly finding ways to draw the student’s attention to his own living experiential intricacy. It's only when we get lost in the working of the explications alone that we need to argue or judge.

Many years ago I had a client who had recently found out his son was gay. He was having a very difficult time with this due to all sorts of conditionings (religion, past experience, subtle repressions, etc.,). He was in great pain at what he felt was the loss of his son. He would come to my office and spend many hours, week after week, sharing his ideas (explications, mental pictures…) about his son's sexual orientation. I could have gotten lost in the maze of explications. I could have taken up any thread of his articulations and tried to show how the thought didn't hold up or wasn't consistent. Instead, I dropped the chatter and surrendered to the only thing empirical I could actually know: (I can only offer words for the following that I think will take meaning on this website, but it can be said in ANY manner that carries forward the meaning) God is Love. As long as I didn't reject or dissociate from the Christ, He was there with his great Teaching (who needs my mental pictures!). It was simple, direct and utterly observed. It would have been clunky to try to say this to the man (and professionally inappropriate to some degree) but there was no need. In this freedom that IS the nature of our spiritual activity there is no conditioning. "I" as a little temporary body of a man in America born in the early 70s am pure conditioning, but the freedom of this ongoing intuiting is utterly inclusive of my temporary nonesense. In other words:

I saw the actual relationship between my"self" and Christ (Self) and, therefore, I "saw" that actual relationship between my client and his gay son. In this seeing/knowing there is only joy. That did not make me reject or minimize the pain he was feeling. It only meant that I could not be tricked by his explications (string of mental pictures) because I refused to lose "sight" of their actual source. The process of healing began with  his eventual fatigue of explicating (throwing!) His love away. Eventually, he became more interested in the calm, soft, engaged love he saw "in" me and became willing to ask new types of questions. In Gendlin's terms, he became ready to "dip back into the intricacy" that was always right there in his ongoing experience (it never really goes away; Christ never really goes away).

I knew that his love for his Son was unconditional. Many people will think that sounds arrogant or dogmatic of me. I would need to find new ways to talk to those people. But on a website like this I trust that each of us has our own reference experience of what such "knowledge" actually means, how it feels and the will impulses it inspires. I did not "teach" him to love his son again. My simple willingness to surrender to the only real freedom allowed him to "see" where he and i were already and utterly joined. At one point during a particularly beautiful session, he looked up at me with wet eyes and saw my joy at looking back at him (he had just been recounted deep shame he felt as a parent). In seeing that my joy was a function of his true self, he joined with me ("Whenever two or more are gathered in my name").

 In joining in this Freedom, he "found" his son again. He re-cognized his love. And HIS love. We only needed two more sessions after that and I am told that he and his son are enjoying a very happy father/son relationship.

He was an atheist. But that stuff exists only in our little explicated mind. When his eyes where wet and his heart was open, he had no religion or ideas about spirits or anything. He surrendered. In that gesture, he was saved. And, of course, that is only one context of his life among many others. How or if he generalizes that lesson to other relationships is a mystery and none of my buisness. The healing was not in any of the explications I just used, obviously. I used the word Christ because it can function here (this website) the way I intend for it to function. If I am on one of the other websites I participate, I would not use that word because it wouldn’t mean what it means here (but other words/phrases would mean “Christ” on those websites. At the end of the day IT is an actual and practical experience). It would get in the way of the Truth. Argument depends upon abandoning the living intricacy. The only way this man could not love his son was by "leaving" the Christ. Of course, he would need to say that in different words.

You ask:

If your imagined atheist and I were to agree, would we be partly deluded about our apparent agreement?

I think that you would be deluded to the extent that you based your agreement upon anything other than what you actually cognitively shared. If you two went off and wrote a book about how you agreed and then insisted on your terms (and mental pictures) as thetruth, we would see how all "agreement" can get lost by leaving the intricacy (cognizing). If the atheist came to you in pain and shared with you some letters he just wrote to his absent father, you might read those. In reading those letters you "see" the mightiness of this man's soul, the depth and generosity of his spirit and you realize that he is your Teacher in this moment. He looks and sees your re-cognition of himself and, thereby,  joins you there. For a (eternal) moment, at least, you offer him a mysterious- yet deeply concrete and practical- love and support. As there is only one triangle, there is only one re-cognition and billions of represenations of it.

Now: you two may take a few hours to bask in the the intricate beauty of what you have shared, not putting too many words on it at all; just walking by the river and sharing stories about your lives that have resurfaced due to the power of this healing event. BUT: the moment you both start trying to explain or account for the event in your own terms is the moment that you MIGHT need to argue or feel contractions arise in your heart. If you needed that experience to be about "spiritual doorways" or "soul whatever" or......and he needed it to be about primal conditioning or neural pathways.....you MIGHT notice that you no longer "hear" the Teacher.  We might playfully say that  the  experience of PoF is not about about:  PoF  is the living cognition that is is;  "About"  is a neccessary and  wonderful function of  the intellectual soul, whereas  the living -"is"  is  an inherent gesture of the consciousness soul in its cognizing of itself.

But the Teaching could care less about how it is clothed. It is only there to function as an ongoing and eternal sharing. (you can imagine how I would need to say that truth in other contexts!)

Anthroposophy is so many things! One thing it is is a "place" that offers certain types of conditioned people certain types of consolation. That is fine. It is also something that can utterly wipe clean all conditioning (in this sense anthroposophy itself is the inherently free aspect of the human being). In this "use" of anthroposophy it can become a "device" that encourages all individuals to find and live from the "freedom" (knowing, space, seeing...) where there is nothing to argue about, nothing to be divided about. We see these anthroposophists as the atheists, Quakers, agnostics, school teachers, milkmen, etc., who creatively and diligently teach the Teaching in their own contexts. They don't need the words that the other Teachers use because they have a specific way of brining "the" intricacy that is freedom into their specific context. Anthroposophy can be just another context in which people find ways of consoling each other. It can also be the spiritual scientific translation of freedom into any human context. To the degree that people who are self-identified as anthroposophists depend upon "knowing" mental pictures to which they have no actual reference, such a translation of actual Love will be an impossibility. That, however, does not mean that such anthroposophists have nothing to offer within their own limited community.

My preference is in exploring the roadblocks to freedom-translative type of anthroposophy.  This is why I have such interest in your question:

How can we best communicate spiritual truths?

Thanks John!

Jeff, in the HtKHW group you recently wrote:

I wonder if the formal anthroposophical movement will ever be one in which there is a rich, responsible and joyful sharing of the various individuations related to reading the occult script? I personally don't think it is at all necessary to the ultimate purpose of anthroposophy that such perceptual development is pursued, but I have no doubt that many within the movement strive for such development and expect it to become a more widely shared capacity within the anthroposophical movement.
(http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/2807#comment-5820)
 
In trying to pick up this thread on ALT002 it would be interesting to hear more from you about the sentence I have emphasised. It would help me tune into your earlier questions here.
 
 

Hi John,

It’s a complicated issue in my opinion, but a really interesting one.  There are many useful ways to ask the question, and I think they each will force a different type of answer, but right now maybe:

What must be happening for it to be anthroposophy? I will immediately agree with anybody who points out that my question has massive limitations.  So my answer will be highly qualified from the get go.  

Must an anthroposophical moment (experience/realization) contain perception?  If we look at stages of development and make a list of higher and higher types of perception, are we willing to say that the higher the perception the more anthroposophical?  For instance, would we say that the dude who can watch the etheric flow  of plants is having a less anthroposophical type of perception or moment than the lady who is watching Jesus talk to his mom via the Akashic Chronicle.  I’m putting it in working-class speech, but I do so purposefully.  From my experiences with anthroposophical communities, I notice that there is at least a tacit belief that we can create a sort of hierarchy of anthroposophical experience.  I think many are too sophisticated to say it in that manner, but one tiny metric would be to watch what happens when you tell a group about the experience of seeing somebody’s aura and then watch them when you tell about seeing somebody’s aura via the akashic chronicle.   My bet is that you will experience a very observable set of changes in the room depending on the kinds of “spiritual” perceptions people share. 

If Steiner’s current incarnation had minimal clairvoyance I think he/she would have a hard time being all too impressive to the current movement.  In fact, I might say that unless the Steiner incarnation is an “expert” on clairvoyance he/she will be forming a new type of follower/student.  No big deal.

You ask me about my quote in which I said that I personally don’t find perceptual development as a necessary component to Anthroposophy’s  mission. I think the proof of this assertion is already demonstrating itself all over the world, but without a big time love affair for The Philosophy of Freedom it is more of a head scratcher.  

And let me just say that I have no doubt that we will see some sort of a parallel development between anthroposophy and various kinds of perceptual development.  Individual development entails the natural emergence of human faculties stage by stage.  People who associate with Steiner perceptual-development methods and folks who use all sorts of other “higher” perceptual methods are springing up as humans, collectively, march onward. 

Steiner worked hard to share his methods because he wanted to correct the various one-sided developments that can and are taking place.  This was important to him and, undoubtedly, an important part of what he considered his mission.  I don’t want my assertion that healthy perceptual development is unnecessary to anthroposophy to minimize its inherent significance.  I, like most of us, want my clairvoyant buddies and researchers to have strong and helping heart muscles. 

But my opinion is that anthroposophy is ultimately  (always and moment to moment) about only the realization of thinking’s nature.  I used to have such a minimal “picture” of what this means, only associating it with those rather BIG experiences that come with the schooling of consciousness.  I’ve come to see that it was my error of identification that caused me to narrow the scope of my little-baby PoF realization.  The corollary was that my heart-seeing (as our dear Kloceck calls it) was, therefore, forced to the same restrictions that I was placing on my cognitive experience.  At that point I not only had the emerging experiences Steiner indicates with the path of cognitive development, but I also was fully conversant in the lingo; the latter isn’t much of an accomplishment for somebody already interested in philosophy and able to retain those types of terms.

But it was my presumption that limited the moment to moment realization of thinking’s essence.  It was my daily application of the crucifixion that caused me to remain relatively addicted to the mental pictures (conscious and subconscious) I was continually associating with my newly emergent experience.  I was creating the discomfort that seemed to obviously to be coming from outside my “self”. 

I see anthroposophy as being primarily the realization of our always-nature and secondarily as the various and highly individuated forms of perceptual development that may or may not emerge depending on all sorts of conditions.  The anthroposophical realization is of that which is unqualified and unconditioned and the play of our freedom is how that will translate itself into this land-o-conditioning.  “surrendering” to (or accepting) the actual realty of thinking’s nature (your “self” nature) must be distinguished with the highly creative ways it gets translated into material activites; Steiner’s “moral technique” (chap 10, maybe) is what happens in the translation of our PoF realization into whatever qualifications/conditions are presently arising.

It makes good sense to focus so much on this translation but, still, I think it can be extremely helpful to distinguish the translation-process from the actual and always "ongoing" nature of thinking’s self-sustaining activity.  It would be a misunderstanding of the PoF realization to assume that just because Steiner was having  a tired and less than stellar day giving a lecture, he was any less in full touch with thinking’s nature.  In fact, we can probably assume that it was this exact type of experience that helped him continually make the very distinction of which I'm speaking (how else could he?). 

So while I don’t find clairvoyant development necessary to anthroposophy’s purpose, it would make no sense to reject it or not see exactly why such development will more than  likely continue inside and outside anthroposophy.  In a certain way, anthroposophy distinguishes itself from almost all other emerging “spiritual” movements by not tying itself necessarily to various kinds of perceptions.

None of this is to deny importance of human development in any way. I’m only trying to show why I personally can see anthroposophical “development” independently of the various higher stages of cognitive/emotional/perceptual/social development.

Jeff

Thank you for clarifying your earlier writing Jeff. I was puzzled and tried to imagine whether I would have taken any interest in anthroposophy were it not for the methods that promise the opportunity to ‘see for myself’ rather than depend on the spiritual perception of others. This has developed into more hearing than seeing. I have experiences of inwardly hearing which are sometimes translated into English. Sometimes I have to frame the English myself. I then contemplate what I have received and apply some critical thinking. Who said that? I must take the responsibility for what I say and write in any case. Often the best approach seems to be to ask a question which challenges folk to apply their own thinking. Any two people may approach the thinking about an experience in different directions. I trust that we will both find our way to common spirit reality. 

One image of anthroposophy might be a fruiting tree. There are clearly limitations to this image. In my view it is a root of anthroposophy that we speak from our insight and experience as far as possible. The strong trunk of the anthroposophy tree is the disciplined rigour of thinking that brings scientific method to the spiritual observations. Not too woody, just supple enough to sway in the breeze without its roots being ripped out. There are a lot of leaves: books and lectures of shared insights. The fruits are the actions and conduct of those who endeavour to serve the evolutionary development of the whole in whatever modest capacities we are enabled. If we remain leaf-eaters and do not cultivate the seeds in the fruits within our souls, then the tree will remain the last of its species and wither away. If we swallow the fruits whole, without chewing, then a few of the seeds will spring up, but may then wither away.
 

So to my earlier question sitting in this image, which echoes the Parable of the Sower: how can we cultivate nourishing soil in the world that will produce a tenfold yield from the seeds of anthroposophy? I see the PoF Study Course as such an endeavour on this site. 

PS In catching up on reading recent posts, I noticed that Kristina has a good word that contributes relevance here: http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/2746#comment-5803 She reminded me of Gendlin's focusing work.

Hi John,

What a delectable image! It's really growing on me...Ok, enough with the puns, but seriously, great image!

question: in your imagination of the anthroposophy-as-tree metaphor, how would you translate the act of swallowing the fruit whole? I like that image so much and I am enjoying the thoughts of what such whole-swallowing might mean in human day to day life.

The rest of my post is the free writing I did in contemplating your metaphor.

..................

I see the tree as reality (the true being of the human) and it's existence (as already alive and whole regardless of what the tornado might do to it) as the will of God. I see the "anthroposophical movement" as one of those harmless cysts that develop on the truck, branches or leaves...a part that is somewhat confused out its relationship to the whole. Rather than submit itself to the Whole, recognizing it's false presumption, it struggles to develop it's "own" will; in other words it feels the need to grow the tree from within itself.

The tree itself is inherently healthy regardless of it's apparent eventual so-called death. In reality the tree has no cysts that eat away at its life force; the tree is whole and eternal, not at all dependent upon the way it may be perceived or "known" by various cystetic points of view.

The tree- full of cysts that suck it dry- is an mental picture produced by the tenacious alliance between Lucifer and Ahriman. They must work together and they can only create this mental picture if they can convince various "partss" of the tree that they are in some serious way separated from the tree and have need to reconnect. Once this presumption of separation (which has nothing to do with truth)** is accomplished, then Lucifer and Ahriman can "develop" this root-false-view into the apparent cysts. It is only after the so-called "part" sees itself as apart that the mental picture of a dying or needy or at risk tree of life can be "seen" and responded to. The image is really simply superimposed upon the real tree and distracts us from what is true and free.

There are billions of false images; some are of giant healthy trees that overcame and destroyed or transformed the cysts. Others are of trees on the verge of destruction, soon to be lost forever into a sad abyss of lost opportunity. But no matter how glorious, inspiring, terrifying or sad the mental picture of the tree is, the tree itself is simply reality. In this sense, anthrophosophy is the simple gesture of reconnection, which requires a laying down of all mental pictures seen by the "part" and a great allowing of the Whole to be what is always already the case. Lucifer and Ahriman "block" this gesture via ingenious "proofs" that our eventual reconnection is predicated upon the presumption of separation. Their genius is that they totally accept our desire and goal to reconnect. Lucifer and Ahriman even "encourage" us to accomplish our goals. They simply make sure that we accept their primary premise of "self"hood because as long as we start from their root-presumption, they are happy with our developmental efforts. They care not if we become clairvoyant, kind, powerful. They care not if we feel ourselves uniting with Christ or if we take pride in the new atheism. All they care about is that we "know" it is up to us to "get there", to "do it right", to "never give up".....they will say it in whatever words capture our fancy.

The new age message that says, "simply rest in your true being" and "do nothing because you are already perfect" can be seen as a Luciferic dish as long as it is being "believed" from within the root-presumption of separation. I live in a town full of folks who "know"they have no "self" and need not strive for moral development. Under their words, one can easily sense the terror they associate with their clenched (yet concealed) presumption of separation. My town is also filled with those who strive hard and "responsibly" on their path of development. They track their transformations and cultivate patience and humility, "knowing" that what they seek may be thousands of lifetimes away. The way you can tell if they have already accepted Lucifer and Ahriman's proposal is if they get worried, defensive or angry about the expression of certain ideas. In some cases you can find folks who have developed fairly high "powers" of concentration and understanding who will fairly easily "snap" at the utterence of a few words carefully strung together.

There are anthroposphical cyber-chats in which you can watch hard-working anthroposophists (some of who have gained various knowledge-pieces of wisdom via higher cognitions) duke it out and put each other in their place. They never talk about the terror deep down within that forces them to displace their attention onto the fascinating idea/perceptions/mental pictures for consolation. They talk about how, specifically, they are correct and why the anthro movement or the world at large needs some particular piece of knowledge or some particular aspect of inner work.

My "town" is obviously a metaphor for my inner life. In my town you can find all sorts of efforts that all presuppose "sin" as if it is an actual moral variable for which I must take responsibility. Even though the nature of Christ utterly destroys that notion of "sin", replacing it with the crisp clarity that sin is a "missing of the mark" in which we have, temporarily, dreamed that the Father is gone, destroyed, abandoned, angry, lacking, hiding........"Sin" is simply the way we act/experience when we dream this dream. Love of true knowledge or real freedom is simply what we experience/do when we wake up to our actual self-sustaining nature.

The western world has the tendency to place salvation in the world, searching for it in all sorts of idealizations that can "found" or "located" here. The eastern "world" tends to place salvation in the "up, up and away" tendency of transcendence: Go inside, get reeeeeaaaaaal quiet and merge with God. Each tendency is a picture of the polarity that IS the acceptance of the one false presumption. We dramatize our perceptions as if they reveal clues as to how we can find Union again. However, The Philosophy of Freedom (and Steiner's experience of your true Self) is the path of the only true path. It is the only real path because no matter how beautifully varied and distinct our lives are from each other, their purpose and their means are one:

the way you recognize your nature (the truth, freedom, wholeness) is only in the relinquishment of each and every self-identification. Unlike the eastern fantasy that this relinquishment is the merging into the cotton candy Whole of Bright White eternity, you still have to tie your shoes in the morning before you go for a jog. And unlike the western fantasy that this realization of freedom (truth, wholeness...) is the attainment of 'something', the "capturing" of some kind of knowledge/feeling object that "you" now, finally, have and can benevolently share with the rest of the cosmos, you actually will no longer "have" anything and the idea of a "you" having "attained" this freedom with provoke only generous and really happy humor.

And then there is the day to day: this is where I watch how I reject Christ via "knowledge" constantly and, slowly, I see that the Christ hardly (actually not at all) notices the rejection because the Christ "never" accepted the one-false presumption that L and A are selling in the market place of ideas and feelings.

And it is in the day to day that I will blame you (or you or you or that or that) for the effects of my act of crucifixion. My jogging shoes are tightly tied and I "know" who or what is to blame for my unhappiness, my unfreedom, my ignorance and pain. Yet, slowly, the willingness to simply watch this knowledge-drama decreases its opacity and, slowly, the rejection becomes less a painful trauma and more a playful drama, leaving me the opportunity to every now and then enjoy the Peace of God right there in the theatre of my own knowledge-drama. But the show "must" go on...

** other than being utterly sacred because it is OUR very starting point and, therefore, the sacred so-called barrier between "us" and the freedom we seek. I think that PoF has full circle "taught" me that this false-presumption is not a mistake. Even thought the Father and the Son have nothing to do whatsoever with the "creation" of this false-knot of pain and suffering, it is only via my re-cognition of Them (Him or IT) that the false is seen as false. Therefore, the work of L and A truly is a sacred gateway.

 
 
I know folk who will swallow whole just about everything they read by Steiner. Sadly they do not systematically take up his injunction to test everything out in life as a prerequisite, although they do celebrate such validating moments. Their belief is that we can accept the authority of the good doctor, despite his insistence that we don’t do this.  I would suggest that such blind acceptance flies in the face of Steiner’s own words, so it is blind and deaf acceptance. This feels like shallow soil for sprouting seeds. 
 
If we swallow information without interrogating it for what life and truth it embodies, it becomes a believed abstraction and infirmation. Remember that this year’s dry crunchy leaves compost too slowly to nourish next year’s seedlings. 
 
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The following quote, bringing back memories of Carl’s writings, appeared in The Camphill Correspondence. Does anyone know where it comes from?
 
Maybe one thinks that to be strong one should create a form. But it is much more relevant that a truthful relationship is established as a form. If one loves, one goes to those one loves, not to an empty form. It may be wrong even to look for a form. The point is that you come together, not because you agree, but because you love to be together. This is the healthiest form. – Rudolf Steiner