If Rudolf Steiner considered the purpose of human evolution to be the development of the mutually interdependent qualities of love and freedom, and expressed love as the “moral” sun of the world (“Love and It’s Meaning in the World,” lecture of RS, 17th Dec. 1912),[1] how does this apply to his “The Philosophy of Freedom”?Without the presence of love, can there be real freedom? If we divide the world into those we love and those we don’t love, and perhaps even allow ourselves to indulge in hate of the other, can there be real freedom for us in our own individuality? It is so easy to dismiss the other if they do not conform to our own view of the world, but does that kind of emotional antipathy allow us to achieve the real freedom that is spoken to in Rudolf Steiner’s “Philosophy of Freedom”? How do we understand what we view as wrong, or perhaps even evil, in the other, without indulging in the ugliness of hate within ourselves?
Our sympathies and antipathies say a lot about who we are as human beings. A lot of what we feel antipathetic about that we think we see in the other, may actually live within our self, the part of our self that we do not like, or have not overcome through meditation and understanding. Steiner shares that a Spiritual Science without love would be a danger for humanity. He speaks of a deed being free when we act in freedom out of pure love for the deed, and he speaks to “ethical intuitions” as that intuition that arises in our own soul through love.
In the Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner states:
”To live in love towards our actions, and to let live in the understanding of the other person's will, is the fundamental maxim of free men.” (chapter 9).[2] My favorite translation of this is:
“To live with love for the deed, and to let live in understanding the will of the other, is the fundamental attitude of the free human being.”
“While I am performing the action I am influenced by a moral maxim in so far as it can live in me intuitively; it is bound up with my love for the objective that I want to realize through my action. My action will be “good” if my intuition, steeped in love, finds its right place within the intuitively experienceable world continuum" (chapter 9). Does not our pure love for the deed come from our ethical intuitions warmed by love.
As anthroposophists or friends of spiritual science, holding in our hearts the support for PoF, do we not need to be careful that we not become bitter if things are not as we think they should be, which could be a sad story that may have nothing to do with esoteric striving and everything to do with achieving status. Is it not possible to express our disagreement with the other and still hold the other in respect and freedom. The grace of the Philosophy of Freedom resides in our understanding ourselves in truth that we may live in forgiveness and give the respect to the other that we would wish for our self.
“Ethical individualism builds on the foundation of man’s attainment of freedom as he transforms ordinary thinking into what The Philosophy of Freedom calls pure thinking, a thinking that lifts itself into the spiritual world and brings to birth from union with it impulses to moral action. It does this by spiritualizing the love impulse otherwise bound up with man’s physical body. In that moral ideals are drawn from the spiritual world by moral fantasy, they lead to acts as vital as their origin, becoming the energy of spiritual love.”
- The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1932.
The Philosophy of Freedom is not only the primal source of a new thinking, but of a new willing, issuing from that new thought. This gives rise to a willing that is love as well. Ethical individualism thus becomes the foundation of true social action.
- Otto Palmer.
- Otto Palmer.
Best regards to all,
Patri
[1] The lecture “Love and It’s Meaning in the World” by Rudolf Steiner, may be found at http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/LovWld_index.html
[2] The Michael Wilson translation of “The Philosophy of Freedom” (copyright © 1964, Rudolf Steiner Press, London), may be found on the Rudolf Steiner Archive at: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_index.html
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Patri, I appreciate how you
Patri, I appreciate how you put the question:
Without the presence of love, can there be real freedom?
I would say that the presence of actual love is the ultimate metric in gauging real freedom. My experience is that they are the same and when we cut away the wonderful complications of the various useful conceptual webs we may spin around all such chatter, we are left with their prior unity. This prior unity is our nature and is only what real love can ever be.
For me the biggest hang up has been the mind's insistence that IT have this love for itself, for it's growth, for it's path...yet, slowly but surely as understanding deepens, the need for there to be an IT at all dissolves via the action of this love...this calm yet passionate force (being, activity, realization, presence, moment to moment commitment).
I've come to appreciate why the teaching had to be differentiated via different people in the last century in very particular manners. Each of these great teachers was able to speak to the fact that the teaching thought itself through them individually. Each of these teachers (the ones who went public) had to deal with the inevitable students/followers that would cluster around the particularized form of this teacher's personality. And each teacher set his and her own specific cultural goals in relation to the teaching.
And the teaching, on its own, stands strong. It is free from the personalities that it utilizes and yet it loves the contact with each of us. And, I think, NEEDS the contact equally via us all.
Your question, Without the presence of love, can there be real freedom, is a beautiful summation of the teaching. It is sort of a modern Koan that can only be answered via thinking's nature itself.
The reason I argue against the conventional transformations-of-consciousness about which most of us spiritual seekers obsess, is because any transformation is shy of this love, this freedom, this eternal being. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with taking interest in all the ways consciousness can be modified (and one's karma will make sure that we taste exactly the modifications we "need"), but this freedom (POF) is of a different order than such changes. Any psychic shifts become secondary to the realization of the intuitive occurrence, and the realization is one's primary and eternal disposition.
There will be an increasing amount of teachings that have to do with valid changes of state. Some will help people develop useful new kinds of perception. Cultural clusters will inevitably (and sometimes usefully) form around those who demonstrate unique capacities. As is the human tendency, those who demonstrate such abilities will be hoisted up as salvation-objects (as I call them) and will be used as examples of the direction we "must" move in. There will be disagreements both within the groups themselves and between various other cultural clusters.
And the teaching will live in-but-not-of all of the comings and goings of these new changes in consciousness. The teaching will always be ready for realization by those who somehow are becoming increasingly disinterested (not via antipathy) with the content of new perceptions and conceptualizations. The teaching is modified via each of us, but is always the same: this love, this freedom. This action which is both moment-to-moment and yet not inherently of time. This teaching makes it clear why loving George Bush is no less difficult than loving your cousin and why we don't need details of personality to really love each other any more than we need a luciferic "ideology" of up-up-and-AWAY to bliss-out on some sentiment we end up calling love.
I honestly think that the process that we call "ego" is very upset by how simple freedom is, I think that is why in anthroposophy there is an inveterate tendency to make it complicated and only for the "higher-ups" and the well disciplined. This is the same tendency that has us constantly looking (in our mental pictures) towards a future in which freedom is actual, rather than recognizing it as the fundamental nature your very situation right now and now and now.
And I am struck silly by the beauty that it is ONLY because we can directly re-cognize the process that we name "ego" that we can realize the immediacy of our freedom. The process of dissociating from our real Being (which is the fundamental egoic gesture) is the very process that allows us eventually see our prior unity within the real truth, the real love, the real freedom. And rather than complicate these three strands into thousands of essays and future worlds, we simply bow to Him that lives in us and through us and as us...eternally .
Imagine how many intelligent and wise human beings would be reading these very words and knowing what isn't true about them. Imagine how widely we miss the point even in the wisdom of such knowings!
The teaching is the case. You only know it in the peace and play and seriousness of this love. No matter how "correct" we each are in the various disagreements we put forward, we also are simply always already united in the joy of who He is. And this Joy never worries about its so-called future, or if enough people will do something about it. It simply shines as it is. It is the case.
So we feed our kids, meet our neighbors, vote every now and then and either remain dissociated from our very nature, or not.
Anyway, I like very much how you put the quesiton, Patri:
Without the presence of love, can there be real freedom?
Thank you Jeffrey
Dear Jeffrey,
Much thanks, your response here was really beautiful, enhancing and shining more light on what is.
Love to you and yours.
Cheers,
Patri
speaking of what is
Are you doing anything special on the 4th today?
Great 4th of July
Hi Jeffrey,
I didn't notice your reply until now. I had a great 4th of July, lovely meal with family and friends, and watching the fireworks. I have always loved the 4th of July since I was a young girl. Eating great food in the garden or on the ocean with a picnic basket and then the fireworks over the water in the evening. WOW, could anything be better.
Love,
Patri
Love and freedom
Hello everyone!
Patri and Jeffrey,
Thank you for your beautiful words of truth about love - essence of freedom.
When we learn to develop our thinking we understand that love is the most important thing on the spiritual way of a human being.
Love and freedom cannot exist without each other. It is anthroposophy – wisdom living within each of us. And as Jeff said, it’s not complicated.
Love and Freedom are also closely connected with responsibility.
My Best Greetings to everybody on the occasion of the US National Day!
(sorry for the late).
Love
Olga
inherently together!
yes, it's to see how love and freedom really are each other. It can be so easy to get into all the helpful diagrams and conceptual constructs related to terms such as these...but then your realization of PoF comes along and brings you this one simple gift that was always right there with/as you and it's fresh, surprising and, oddly, familiar.
When we are free, we are loving perfectly. And when we are actually loving, how free we are! It becomes impossible to even imagine them apart. Like trying to imagine a "married bachelor".
Today my town is full of people enjoying the feeling of cool water splashing their skin. And some children are insisting on never leaving the water fountains! A man was laughing beautifully as he pulled his kids from the fountains.
Jeff