Tim recently posted this extract from Occult Science – an Outline: Chapter 1.
In the spirit and true sense of the word, no real scientist will be able to find a contradiction between his science built upon the facts of the sense world and the method by which the supersensible world is investigated. The scientist makes use of certain instruments and methods. He produces his instruments by transforming what “nature” offers him. The supersensible method of knowledge also makes use of an instrument. This instrument is man himself. This instrument, too, must first be made ready for higher research. The capacities and forces given to man by nature, without his assistance, must be transformed into higher capacities and powers. Man is thereby able to make himself the instrument for research in the supersensible world.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA013/English/AP1972/GA013_c01.html
I have come to ‘know’ Rudolf Steiner from reading his writings and lectures that have been translated into English. I have never met him face to face although I have seen photographs. He died before I was born. Do I really have any knowledge of the good doctor?
– Rudolf Steiner
i like it
my response: it's the kind of knowledge that can bring you closer to all kinds of people if it can be expressed in various ways from within its actual source. Or it's the kind of knowledge that will draw you very close to a community in which the "idea" of having Steiner's knowledge pour into you is very consoling. My experience of you is that you live according to the former gesture and expose all sorts of people to what lives within you. I'm a big fan.
Well said
Well said - I've never met Steiner, Christ, Hemingway or the force of gravity in the flesh but I find all of these are part of me and affect me profoundly.
I find Steiner's use of words like "forces", "influences" "divine powers" and so on in this context very freeing as it helps avoid the error I can fall into if I picture the spirit as an "old man in the sky" or something like that. As soon as I do that I am open to suffering, quite rightly, from all that modern scientific thinking can hurl against this way of relating to the world.
But on the other hand if I maintain this scientific way of thinking and carry it beyond its own apparent limits I am, even in some small way, consciously in the realm where the dead live, where time becomes space, where there are no limits to knowledge (to borrow a phrase from the Philosophy of Freedom).
Fulfilling the task of anthroposophy
Thank you for these contributions.
If we allow our hearts and minds to be influenced by Anthroposophy, this will be a means of educating humanity to be receptive to impressions coming from the spiritual world. If, therefore, Anthroposophy succeeds in making a real effect upon culture, upon spiritual life, influences will not only rise up from physical life into the spiritual world but the experiences undergone by the dead during their life between death and the new birth will flow back. Thus here again the gulf between the physical and the spiritual worlds will be bridged. The consequence will be a tremendous widening of human life and we shall see the purpose of Anthroposophy fulfilled in the creation of an actual link between the two worlds, not merely a theoretical conception of the existence of a spiritual world. It is essential to realise that Anthroposophy fulfils its task in the real sense only when it permeates the souls of men as a living force and when by its means we not only comprehend something intellectually but our whole attitude and relationship to the world around us is changed.
(Rudolf Steiner: Between Death & Rebirth Lecture 3 http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/BetDeaReb/19121203p01.html )
Pure Thinking
"If we allow our hearts and minds to be influenced by Anthroposophy, this will be a means of educating humanity to be receptive to impressions coming from the spiritual world." -RSteiner
Steiner's path of The Philosophy of Freedom is a path that develops pure thinking. True anthroposophical community requires the participants to also rise to an unbiased pure thinking in their conversations. The purification of thinking allows the spirit to reach us so we can become part of the larger work of spirit in the world. A community that is not controlled authoritatively and trains itself to gather together in pure thinking conversation can take action together out of spiritual impulse. It all requires the development of pure thinking which the Philosophy of Freedom is intended to develop. This isn't just an abstract thinking but a real connection is made with the spiritual world and spiritual beings. This pure thinking developed in POF is an advancement of scientific thinking that can penetrate deeply into Nature and other sciences to help solve the current world crisis on the many levels it exists on. It can solve the social divisions, the control by animal instincts, and on and on. The development of pure thinking as quickly and effectively as is possible with the thought-training in POF has positive consequences that are staggering.
POF 9-5
[24] Among the levels of characterological disposition, we have singled out as the highest the one that works as pure thinking or practical reason. Among the motives, we have just singled out conceptual intuition as the highest. On closer inspection it will at once be seen that at this level of morality driving force and motive coincide; that is, neither a predetermined characterological disposition nor the external authority of an accepted moral principle influences our conduct. The action is therefore neither a stereotyped one which merely follows certain rules, nor is it one which we automatically perform in response to an external impulse, but it is an action determined purely and simply by its own ideal content.
[25] Such an action presupposes the capacity for moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to experience for himself the particular moral principle for each single situation, will never achieve truly individual willing.