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Category: Exceptional State

Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa — Литературное обозрение

Steiner and Aurobindo on Learned Ignorance

November 10, 2023 /

Contents

Introduction

I want to draw together some threads from Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo, Goethe and Nicholas of Cusa. These threads seem significant and consequently I feel compelled to set finger to keyboard to clarify an idea that connects the above four people in a meaningful way to the notion of spiritual growth and the transcending of materialism. In abstract it could be described as an example of cosmic Hegelian dialectic searching for a sublimation of the opposites of spirit and matter. It also affords an interesting perspective on the theodicy problem, the problem of finding meaning in the existence of evil, a question that many more people are asking themselves today with renewed fervour.

Limits of human knowledge

Over the past month or so I have been imbibing the spiritual atmosphere of Europe in the 14th and 15th Century. Those familiar with the “human number 666” mysteries will understand the connection between that period and our current period. In the English speaking world two noteworthy titles are The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous and The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis. The other key ingredient was chapter 4 of Steiner’s Truth and Science, A Prelude to The Philosophy of Freedom, GA 04. More specifically when we are led to understand the consequences of Kant denying the possibility of “intellektuelle Anschauung” (intellectual seeing) for human beings.

Concepts and ideas alone are given us in a form that could be called intellectual seeing. Kant and the later philosophers who follow in his steps, completely deny this ability to man, because it is said that all thinking refers only to objects and does not itself produce anything. In intellectual seeing the content must be contained within the thought-form itself.

GA 4

This seemingly innocuous statement is profound in the context of epistemology, but in order to understand it, it helps to trace it back to its roots, namely to Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464)

Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa — Литературное обозрение

Nicholas of Cusa develops the central concept of learned ignorance. Steiner had many interesting observations on the importance of this idea and goes into some detail in GA 7, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age (RSArchive). In De Docta Ignorancia (1440) we are introduced to the idea of the limits of reason. I have also dealt with this topic from another perspective in another article on Steiner and Aurobindo called Destiny of the Individual and Ethical Individualism. The notion of learned ignorance was not a new idea as it was also discussed by the early church fathers and important thinkers like Scotus Erigena and Pseudo Dionysius. Essentially learned ignorance refers to the inherent incompleteness of human knowledge and the assertion that God, as an infinite and transcendent reality, cannot be fully grasped by human intellect. In the context of this essay God means knowledge of the spiritual worlds, the hierarchies all the way up to the Godhead. We can also insert here that Steiner might change this slightly to ‘cannot be fully grasped by the intellectual soul or mental representation’. Aurobindo in his language might say ‘cannot be fully grasped by Mind’ at the same time reserving this possibility for the Supermind. Nicholas of Cusa also leaves this opportunity open by asserting that both reason and supra-rational understanding are required to know the spiritual worlds. Here is a selection of some notable thinkers who have also tapped into this, at first seemingly, abstract notion since Nicholas of Cusa. The concepts of negative theology or apophatic theology are also intimately related to Cusa’s concept.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), John of the Cross (1542–1591), Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Paul Tillich (1886–1965), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Edith Stein (1891–1942), Thomas Merton (1915–1968), Jean-Luc Marion (1946-), Richard Kearney (1954-).

Predating Cusa we also have an interesting list of mystics who challenge the notion of the unknowability of the spiritual worlds.

Laozi (c. 6th century BCE), Rabia of Basra (c. 717–801), Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 5th–6th century), Beatrice of Nazareth (c. 1200–c. 1268), Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1210–c. 1282), Jacopone da Todi (c. 1230–1306), Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), Henry Suso (1295–1366), Marguerite Porete (c. 1250–1310), , Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381), Angela of Foligno (1248–1309), Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328), Julian of Norwich (1342–1416),

Nicholas of Cusa and Immanuel Kant

Let us now try to understand what learned ignorance has to do with intellectual seeing. This concept appears with Cusa in the form intuitus intellectualis. By this he meant that there is a higher form of perception or insight that transcends ordinary intellectual processes and allows for a more direct apprehension of reality, particularly in matters of spiritual and metaphysical nature. The term “intuitus” conveys the idea of a kind of intuitive vision or contemplative gaze, whilst “intellectualis” indicates that this form of seeing is related to the intellect, but it goes beyond the limitations of discursive reasoning. This too is significant in the context of Steiner and Aurobindo, because they also make clear that the spiritual worlds are knowable to human beings, but, as with Nicholas of Cusa, point out that mental representations and Mind respectively are insufficient for the task. Mind or mental representations have an important role to play in the education of the human being and gaining knowledge about the dead world of matter. However, they must be transcended if we seek knowledge of the Supermind or Spiritual-Self and its relation to the spirit worlds/planes.

It is also important here to address Kant’s position in this question. Kant was essentially motivated to investigate the limits of human knowledge. This was a response to Hume’s empiricism and skepticism about the validity of any knowledge whatsoever because it is rooted in sensory impressions. However, in his attempts to reconcile the conflict between empiricism and rationalism (matter and spirit) and thereby rescue knowledge from the clutches of Humean skepticism he also further ensnared and limited knowledge by denying human beings the possibility of a priori knowledge (knowledge independent of sense experience) in all fields other than in mathematics.

Thus, in Cusa’s notion of intellectual seeing we have an ability that transcends ordinary sense perception and discursive reason for arriving at knowledge. For Cusa the faculty of intellectual seeing is that which is required for insight into deeper spiritual truths. (Later we will address the question of how to develop this faculty according to Steiner and Aurobindo). Kant transcends Hume’s skepticism, but limits non-empirical knowledge (a priori) to the realm of mathematics and logic. The rest of existence is subsumed into the unknowable metaphysical construct of “Das Ding an Sich” (The thing in itself). In a curious way we can also see that Kant affirms certain aspects of Cusa’s assertions on knowledge, whilst denying other aspects because of his own dependence on discursive reasoning. One way to understand this curious development in the storyline of philosophy would to call it a Kantian reversion to scholasticism.

Learned Ignorance

Before moving on, let’s summarize the above so that we can better understand the contributions of Steiner and Aurobindo that will follow below. Human thinking, to the extent that it is bound to empirical evidence, feels a sense of certainty and connection to the reality of the senses. This is so because our conceptual life helps us to make sense of the impressions of the senses. However, the dominance of the senses, empirical evidence, tends to reject any experience that comes from outside that realm. An extreme expression of the this position is: “Seeing is Believing” or “”I’ll believe it when I see it.”. This rejection itself can be based in a fear of losing one’s certainty or even sense of self. Alternatively, this rejection may reflect in a healthy respect for the challenge of the immense task that faces every human being with regards to realizing one’s own learned ignorance and striving towards awakening an intellectual seeing.

Goethe

We need to introduce one further concept to the mix to facilitate the reconciliation of our cosmic Hegelian dialectic. In Goethe’s scientific writing we are confronted with the interesting concept of polarity and intensification (Polarität und Steigerung) which are important tools for reconciling what initially seem to be opposite forces.

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Polarity

At the heart of the concept of polarity is that the notion of a harmonious interplay between opposing elements. Consequently, opposites are not in conflict but rather complement and enrich each other. This is at the heart of Goethe’s experiments and exploration of the phenomena of light and darkness, which lead to a fundamentally different appreciation of what colour is compared to Newton’s, unipolar, theory of light. In the field of botany Goethe proposed that all plant organs are variations of the fundamental leaf form, a polarity, which is continuously in living transformation as a result of the Urpflanze (archetypal plant) interacting with the different physical environments. This ability to find unity in diversity, to see beyond the differences to recognize a higher unity is deeply characteristic of Goethe’s approach to science and is thoroughly investigated in Steiner’s works Goethean Science GA 01 (Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften) and The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception GA 02 (Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller”. Also of note is the statement that Goethe made to Schiller with regards to being able to see this archetypal plant, as this is in tone similar to the intellectual seeing that we looked at with regards to Nicholas of Cusa.

Philosophically, Goethe benefited far more from Schiller than from Kant. Through him, namely, Goethe was really brought one stage further in the recognition of his own way of viewing things. Up to the time of that first famous conversation with Schiller, Goethe had practiced a certain way of viewing the world. He had observed plants, found that an archetypal plant underlies them, and derived the individual forms from it. This archetypal plant (and also a corresponding archetypal animal) had taken shape in his spirit, was useful to him in explaining the relevant phenomena. But he had never reflected upon what this archetypal plant was in its essential nature. Schiller opened his eyes by saying to him: It is an idea. Only from then on is Goethe aware of his idealism. Up until that conversation, he calls the archetypal plant an experience for he believed he saw it with his eyes.

GA 1, chapter 11

Nicholas of Cusa was also familiar with this concept of polarity as understood by Goethe. He considered geometry as an excellent means of training the mind for considering how geometrical figures can be deformed and transformed and thus attaining a coincidence of opposites (Coincidentia oppositorum). Readers of Steiner will also be similarly aware of the significance that geometry played in his own development and which recounts in chapter 1 of his autobiography.

Soon after my entrance into the Neudörfl school, I found a book on geometry in his room. I was on such good terms with the teacher that I was permitted at once to borrow the book for my own use. I plunged into it with enthusiasm. For weeks at a time my mind it was filled with coincidences, similarities between triangles, squares, polygons; I racked my brains over the question: Where do parallel lines actually meet? The theorem of Pythagoras fascinated me. That one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself, entirely without impression upon the external senses – this gave me the deepest satisfaction. I found in this a solace for the unhappiness which my unanswered questions had caused me. To be able to lay hold upon something in the spirit alone brought to me an inner joy. I am sure that I learned first in geometry to experience this joy.

GA 28, chapter 1

Intensificaton (Steigerung)

Intensification in the context of Goethe means a detailed study of the phenomena of transformation that reveal other deeper hidden patterns. This process of intensification or gradual enhancement in turn leads to higher states of consciousness/existence. By focusing on the way in which polarities transform in a living way then becomes a means of knowing at a deeper level more about the spiritual being or archetype underlying the observed changes. Intensification with Goethe leads to a deeper understanding of the underlying unity of nature. This phenomenological approach is deeply characteristic of Goethe’s scientific method. If we enter into the essence of Goethe’s conceptual pair we might also like to describe as an experiential version of Hegel’s abstract philosophical dialectical model.

Aurobindo

LA FUERZA DEL ESPÍRITU (107) «LA TRIPLE TRANSFORMACIÓN». POR MADO SAUVÉ ...

The above was a long introduction to enable us to understand the significance of a specific aspect of what Aurobindo describes in chapter 25, The Triple Transformation in his work The Life Divine. Earlier in the book he has already tackled the reason for and the value of the limited knowledge of Mind in the context of an evolution of consciousness. In this chapter there is a greater focus on the methods or practices that can be undertaken to transcend mere Mind consciousness, which as he states below is the goal of Nature herself.

There is a will in her to effectuate a true manifestation of the embodied life of the Spirit, to complete what she has begun by a passage from the Ignorance to the Knowledge, to throw off her mask and to reveal herself as the luminous Consciousness-Force carrying in her the eternal Existence and its universal Delight of being.

The Triple Transformation

Here he is telling us that Nature has a plan for us, she intends for us to become the crowning achievement of her own creation. However, we are still far from reaching those heights, Nature has far from accomplished her goal. In us she has placed a seed which must be cultivated by the content of our soul lives so that in that soul awareness and then direct experience of our own spiritual and eternal nature will slowly reveal itself. He points to the necessity of the involvement of the will in this process.

But even so this evolution would be slow and long if left solely to the difficult automatic action of the evolutionary Energy; it is only when man awakes to the knowledge of the soul and feels a need to bring it to the front and make it the master of his life and action that a quicker conscious method of evolution intervenes and a psychic transformation becomes possible.

The Triple Transformation

Purusha and Prakriti

At this stage of a journey with Aurobindo we are 955 pages into his complex and profound exploration of the nature of reality and spiritual truths. This also means we are likely interested in learning about methods by which we might move beyond mere Mind to Supermind. Whilst some readers of Aurobindo might be satisfied with the mental challenge of understanding Aurobindo’s philosophical framework, others will inevitably ask the question. How do we intervene in this psychic transformation process? What practices might we consider to accelerate the process? How might we develop the intuitus intellectualis talked about by Nicholas of Cusa. How might we discern Goethe’s archetypal plant, The Urpflanze. He answers us in the following way:

One effective way often used to facilitate this entry into the inner self is the separation of the Purusha, the conscious being, from the Prakriti, the formulated nature.

The Triple Transformation

What can we say about this method? Quite simply, this is the process of polarization and intensification that we discovered at the heart of Goethe’s scientific method. We will also later see that it is at the heart of the Michaelic Yoga that Steiner talks about in several of his later lectures.

Aurobindo reminds us that by standing back from the activities the mind, letting them fall silent at will or alternatively observing them as a detached and disinterested witness we intensify the experience of the insight that we are pure mental beings, Purusha. Also by standing back from life activities, refraining from outer action, we furthermore intensify the direct experience that we are pure vital beings, Purusha. Thus by standing back from these activities it becomes possible to realise one’s inner being as the silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. In this experience we liberate our spirit from its confines, mental and physical.

The Ashtavakra Gita expresses this same idea somewhat radically in the following manner.

Janaka said: Master, how is Knowledge to be achieved, detachment acquired, liberation attained?

Ashtavakra said: To be free, shun the experiences of the senses like poison. Turn your attention to forgiveness, sincerity, kindness, simplicity, truth. You are not earth, water, fire or air. Nor are you empty space. Liberation is to know yourself as Awareness alone—the Witness of these. Abide in Awareness with no illusion of person. You will be instantly free and at peace.

Ashtavakra Gita

This liberation will, however, not lead to the transformation that Aurobindo is aiming for. Such a Purusha freed from the shackles that held it fast may leave Nature, Prakriti content to be a spiritual being that has no connection with the Earth, its inhabitants. The temptation will be strong to leave all worldly worries behind. Illness and suffering have no place in Purusha. This blissful state also has a dark side, it can lead to the most intense forms of egotism. This intensification of the ego is an inevitable consequence of spiritual development. The important question then becomes: Do I use this strengthened awareness of my god-like nature to bask in my own glory, to seek power in a Nietzschean like combat, to satisfy my own desires or do I use this new found awareness of my own divinity to consciously further the will of Brahman, Krishna or the Cosmic Purusha?

We are faced with the same question that Arjuna faced on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Krishna had initiated Arjuna into the essence of his true spiritual (Purusha) nature, the significance of karma and reincarnation. That question is: What is the point of living as I wake up to my own eternal unbegottenness and immortality. Why live on Earth and in the confines of Prakriti if I am spirit? Arjuna fought against the blood ties that would destroy him, he aligned himself with Krishna to fight against that which wanted to destroy him. Today, those forces are the death forces of materialism and the modern Arjuna fights for a society that lives in a conscious connection with those cosmic forces that promote Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Those forces that foster a thinking that longs for and engages itself in revealing Truth. Those forces that awaken in the feeling life a joy for what lives in the world. Those forces that will to act so that Good deeds are performed. These death forces must be spiritualized to create a heaven on earth for all. Thus the freed Purusha in us must choose to lovingly invite those forces, spiritual beings, into itself to be part of creating the grand vision of Brahman, Krishna or the Cosmic Purursha.

How do we become conduits for these forces? Aurobindo is also clear in this respect and repeats and clarifies what was expressed in the Bhagavad Gita. It is a concept that is found in all true religions, namely the conscious choice to serve the highest God, Divine Being, Brahman, Ishwara that created mankind in its image and wants nothing more than for that image to realize its true divine heritage. (N.B. the name is of less importance, of greater importance is what we mean when we use the name. What is its conceptual content?)

The method of detachment from the insistence of all mental and vital and physical claims and calls and impulsions, a concentration in the heart, austerity, self-purification and rejection of the old mind movements and life movements, rejection of the ego of desire, rejection of false needs and false habits, are all useful aids to this difficult passage: but the strongest, most central way is to found all such or other methods on a self-offering and surrender of ourselves and of our parts of nature to the Divine Being, the Ishwara.

The Triple Transformation

Thus we see that Aurobindo distances himself clearly from the idea of escaping from Maya, the great illusion of the physical plane. We have seen in other articles how he rejects Eastern streams of thought, especially some interpretations of Buddhism, that deviate from this Vedic understanding. The meaning of our life is consequently to re-connect in a conscious manner with the world from which we descended. If we connect consciously with the source of life we can bring its healing forces into our relationships and societal structures. If we fail to do so and continue to deny the spirit by adhering to materialism we will unconsciously introduce more destruction into the world. In this sense Aurobindo is reinforcing a central truth of Vedic wisdom. The Isha Upanishad expresses it in the following manner.

Behold the universe in the glory of God: and all that lives and moves on earth.

Leaving the transient, find joy in the Eternal : set not your heart on another’s possession.

Working thus, a man may wish for a life of a hundred years.

Only actions done in God bind not the soul of man.

There are demon-haunted worlds, regions of utter darkness. Whoever in life denies the Spirit falls into that darkness of death.

Isha Upanishad

Steiner

Michaelic Thinking

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We have seen how Aurobindo describes a path to take us beyond Mind. This leads us to the question: How does Steiner describe the path towards overcoming the limits of knowledge that are real for a certain type of thinking, a type of thinking that is a necessary pre-requisite for that one to be developed?

In GA 194, The Mission of the Archangel Michael, but also other lectures, Steiner goes into substantial detail regarding this question and my purpose here to highlight a couple of key ideas that are developed in this series of 12 lectures in Dornach 1919, 21 November to 15 December.

For Steiner, Michael’s mission consists in the spiritualization of thinking. One way of describing what this means is that humanity has the task of redeeming thinking so that it can learn to see again the underlying spiritual nature of reality, the one that is veiled by the experience of the senses. In the lecture from 14th December 1919 he also makes clear that within the true nature of thinking there is also a will force. Students who have worked with the Philosophy of Freedom will also understand the philosophical underpinnings to this radically un-Kantian understanding of what thinking is.

Let us then look at one line of thinking Steiner uses to develop the spiritualization of thinking. Let us consider the phenomena of magnetism, electricity and light and ask ourselves whether our senses can ever perceive these forces. A brief consideration of this question soon leads us to conclude that we never directly see neither magnetism nor electricity, instead we only ever see the effects on material bodies. The compass moves according to lines of magnetic force, yet we never see that force. Electricity passed through a wire may lead to heating, yet we never perceive the electricity itself. This is also the case with light if we move beyond superficial thinking. Light itself is invisible, it only becomes visible when it interacts with matter.

If we further develop this line of thinking and then consider what the human being is from a spiritual scientific perspective we can also describe in the same fashion, namely it as an invisible being that attracts matter to it. A magnet attracts iron filing according to a certain lawfulness and similarly the human being is an invisible being that becomes evident to the senses for the same reason. The same line of thinking can also be used to show that a plant is an invisible body of forces that structures elements of the mineral kingdom according to a lawfulness that doesn’t belong to the mineral kingdom itself. An identical line of thinking is also valid for considering the animal kingdom as the manifestation of invisible forces. In the lecture GA194, 23 Nov 1919 this is expressed thus:

To say this to oneself with full consciousness at every moment of waking life constitutes the Michaelic mode of thinking; to cease conceiving of the human being as a conglomerate of mineral particles which he but arranges in a certain way, as is also assumed of animals and plants and from which only the minerals are excepted, and to become conscious of the fact that we walk among invisible human beings — this means to think Michaelically.

GA 194

The thought of “walking amongst invisible human beings” that Steiner is forcing us to confront here is that our lives are filled with meetings with beings that would be invisible to us if we lacked the sensory equipment to perceive them. However, if we persist in this thought we also realize that unless we develop new forms of perception (in anthroposophy it is more common to talk in terms of other levels of consciousness) we can only ever have indirect awareness of these invisible beings. We are conscious of the mineral realm through our senses, but consciousness of the invisible realm of plant life requires a new consciousness. This is referred to as either imaginative or pictorial consciousness or etheric vision. To perceive and know the invisible beings of the animal realm requires inspirational consciousness or astral hearing. The invisible being behind the human being is accessible to intuitive consciousness.

These different levels of consciousness give the promise of deeper levels of understanding of those currently invisible realms as the human being evolves new higher forms of consciousness. However, the above fact also obliges us to recognize the possibility that there could well be beings not made present to the senses, not clothed in the cloth of atoms, but which nevertheless have both a real existence and real effects on the inner lives of human beings. Two central forces that are continually at play in the human being and can only be known indirectly, unless the required level of consciousness is developed, are the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces.

Concentration and meditation

Steiner talks on numerous occasions about how these invisible worlds can, through schooling, become directly perceptible to anybody prepared to dedicate the time and effort required. The most comprehensive books from this perspective are “Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, “Esoteric Science” and “Theosophy”, but it is worth pointing out this question is illuminated from dozens of other perspectives in different lecture series.

Nevertheless, we can still talk about a common denominator which will be immediately recognizable to anybody familiar with oriental thinking. Earlier I quoted the Ashtavakra Gita as essentially pointing to the same path. This involves first silencing the senses. Silencing thinking that concerns the events of the outer world and developing the ability to concentrate on a single and specific thought, image, phrase and to observe how the inner life is pulled this way and that by the life inherent in thinking. The pupil must use his will to prevent himself from being pulled hither and thither and instead focus on the chosen content of for his consciousness. By acting in this manner the pupil is taking control over the inner life by for a given period of time, being the sole determiner of the content of the soul. The pupil through his own inner strength brings the inner winds, gusts and storms that normally carry his soul life to an inner calm. After months, years or decades of practise, depending on the amount of practise and personal karma, these inner winds can be stilled completely. This is the same stillness of mind that allows us to fall asleep, however, in the case of the pupil who has attained a certain inner strength consciousness is not lost. In this state this inner space that has been created becomes an inner space in which pupil can enter into dialogue with a part of himself that transcends his normal consciousness. Whether this previously hidden part of the inner life is called the Self, Purusha, Higher-Self or other is of little importance. What is important is that this hidden aspect that occasionally revealed its activity in the dream life, in ideas and inspirations, in lucid moments of creativity and in understanding something at a new level (levelling up), this aspect becomes more integrated into the pupils own understanding of what he is. Socrates descriptions of his Daimon are a good example of someone who was conscious of a deeper being of wisdom that lived in him, but was at the same time not him.

Philosophy of Freedom

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Steiner tells us that all the fruits of the results of spiritual science that he developed in his life work can be found in seed like form in his book from 1894 “The Philosophy of Freedom” (also called Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path). The central argument in the books is that we can never talk about free human action unless we know the causes of our actions. However, before that investigation of the causes can even begin we have to thoroughly investigate the activity of thinking to understand what thinking is able to tell us about the world and ourselves. As we become clearer about the relationship of thinking to the inner and outer world, we are also waking up to a part of our soul that often remains unexamined. This deepening or individualization process can lead to ever deeper strata of understanding and participation in life. Indeed, it will lead to an ever deepening conscious experience of the eternal in man. This book allows us to find a region of soul that can become a well from which the human soul can always draw when it is in need of the water of life.

The fact that this deepening is the result of an increased clarity about an essential aspect of each individual’s being is extremely important. The importance lies in the fact that nothing need be believed on the basis of authority to attain this spiritual growth. A deepening of self-knowledge and the knowledge creating ability that lives within each human being, namely thinking, is the only pre-requisite for a spiritual awakening. This means no guru or master is needed in the process of self-awakening. This does not mean that gurus or masters cannot be useful in the process, it just means that they are not obligatory. The less we accept things on authority and the more they can be grounded in direct experience the greater the freedom acquired for our own being. Drawing another parallel with Socrates the assumption is made that an honest investigation in dialogue with oneself and others can lead to a spiritual awakening.

One of the fruits of reading the Philosophy of Freedom can be a crystal clear experience of how when seeing without thinking we are blind. We truly see with our thoughts! The role of concepts and ideas become far clearer in our own understanding of life and ourselves. Consequently, we also understand the importance of developing new concepts and ideas to make sense of the material, soul and spirit worlds that we inhabit. One of the chief challenges to be overcome on this path is to mistake the products of the activity of thinking for the activity itself. As we approach this activity time and time again, without being sucked into the vortex of specific thoughts, we experience a new dimension growing in ourselves. This is the seed of freedom.

Purification

Baptism of Pharaoh | Image of the purification of Pharaoh, k… | Flickr

One final important element that also needs to be mentioned here is that of purification. All religious streams in the world encourage the development of a healthy moral character. One that promotes forgiveness, sincerity, kindness, simplicity and truth. Egoism, selfish desires, mendacity and duplicity are all traits that potentially live in us and they must be brought under the control of the I-being so that they cannot have their poisonous effect on the world and our relationship with others. In the context of spiritual awakening such moral development is of extreme importance. This is so because the correcting aspects of normal life that oblige us to live with the results of our mistakes is lost. As we continue consciously down the path of spiritual development we learn how our own inner realities become the world we live in. We live increasingly as if in a mirror image brought to life. If I cultivate a life of forgiveness, sincerity, kindness, simplicity and truth then we will find that in the world. If on the other hand we let egoism, selfish desires, mendacity and duplicity be the dominant forces in our inner life then we also will find that in the world.

 

Sri Aurobindo Rudolf Steiner

The Destiny of the Individual & Ethical Individualism

June 19, 2023 /

 

Mankind as a Bridge

The Destiny of the Individual (The  Life Divine , Aurobindo, ch5) &

Moral Imagination (Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner, ch12)

In this article I want to explore some important convergences between ideas from Sri Aurobindo and Rudolf Steiner. These touch on the man’s place in the universe and the purpose of evolution. As we have seen before and will see in the 2 introductory quote, the language is radically different, yet the conceptual framework underlying these apparent differences is very similar.

Aurobindo

So strongly was this truth perceived in the ancient times that the Vedantic Seers, even after they had arrived at the crowning idea, the convincing experience of Sachchidananda as the highest positive expression of the Reality to our consciousness, erected in their speculations or went on in their perceptions to an Asat, a Non-Being beyond, which is not the ultimate existence, the pure consciousness, the infinite bliss of which all our experiences are the expression or the deformation. If at all an existence, a consciousness, a bliss, it is beyond the highest and purest positive form of these things that here we can possess and other therefore than what here we know by these names. Buddhism, somewhat arbitrarily declared by the theologians to be an un-Vedic doctrine because it rejected the authority of the Scriptures, yet goes back to this essentially Vedantic conception. Only, the positive and synthetic teaching of the Upanishads beheld Sat and Asat not as opposites destructive of each other, but as the last antinomy through which we look up to the Unknowable.

Steiner

This experience can only be the result of an observation, and is so, in the sense that we observe our will on a path of development towards the goal where it becomes possible for an act of will to be sustained by purely ideal intuition. This goal can be reached, because in ideal intuition nothing else is at work but its own self-sustaining essence. When such an intuition is present in human consciousness, then it has not been developed out of the processes of the organism, but rather the organic activity has withdrawn to make room for the ideal activity

 

I want to link what Aurobindo states here to a key idea that is developed in chapter 12 in PoF “Moral Imagination” Some friends and I also look specifically at Steiner in more detail here:

 

Both with Aurobindo and Steiner we are presented with a picture of the human being as a bridge connecting two worlds. I would like to use the image of a galaxy to clarify this bridge like nature of the human being as this essential nature becomes clearer when we contemplate how a galaxy comes into being and how it dissolves out of being in an eternal cycle[1]. Here I am using the process of galaxy formation as presented by Walter Russell[2]. When we imagine a toroid shape, we see at a galaxy level that all materialization happens in a horizontal plane. Exactly why this is so is still a matter of intense speculation amongst astrophysicists. Over a period of many months, I was fortunate enough to have an accomplished astrophysicist as a language tandem partner. She wanted to improve her English and I wanted to practice Spanish. One of my take-aways from these rewarding conversations was the amazing mental contortions such astrophysicists are capable of performing whilst stubbornly refusing to consider more elegant and parsimonious theories (electric universe) that would relieve them of so many mental acrobatic manoeuvres. But I digress, returning to our galaxies, as the matter moves further and further from the centre of the toroid it becomes more and more rarified so that at the edges of the galaxies all materializing forces cease and dissolution of matter, death of matter becomes the fate of all matter (Sat) (return to non-matter state). This non-matter (Asat) is then pulled back into the toroid, tracing the curves of this apple like structure and as this non-matter reaches the centre of the toroid again it becomes immanent and visible to the senses.

As human beings we are consistently converting non-matter into matter and this matter in turn feeds back into the non-matter. When we make plans to do something, they are born from an invisible realm (habit/memory or inspiration/intuition) and alight in our consciousness. When we realize a given plan or project the fruits of this are then internalized and can in the future inform us about the next stage of the project, the next plan of action. No matter where we look around, we see evidence of the obvious certainty of this truth in every single man made object. Every single one of those objects was preceded by a thought or series of thoughts. Those object were born, in the final analysis, out of non-being and will also return there in the fullness of time, at the time of the big crunch or big bounce as astrophysicists are fond of calling it, Eastern minds will feel comfortable with the word Pralaya.

What is true of material objects is also true of our own inner being. When we look at our moral actions, that is actions good or bad that have intent and are directed towards the outside world. Those moral actions too are also born out of non-being. Leaving to one side for the moment the goodness or non-goodness of these moral actions let us look more deeply into see how Sachchidananda [3] ,“Bliss-Existence-Consciousness”, is similar in essence to the relationship Steiner describes between moral intuition and moral action. With Steiner the I, when suitably strengthened and purified, becomes capable of receiving from the spiritual worlds knowledge and impulses from beings on higher planes of existence. These beings have plans in accordance with the plans of the Godhead/Brahman, yet they must work through human beings if these goals are to be achieved on the material plane. If God’s kingdom is to be created on earth, then human beings must choose to consciously receive and work with those impulses that work towards this goal. If human beings choose other impulses then these will lead earth towards different ends.

If we reflect solely on the above description of this process we soon see that despite the lofty nature of the subject matter, world evolution no less, we are at the same time talking about processes that are as common to everyday thinking as deciding what might be a better course of action with some menial task. Saving the world and planning a meal are from one perspective essentially identical processes, yet obviously radically different in scope and importance. When it comes to planning a meal I don’t tend to think in terms of needing to be inspired by the creative forces of the universe. However, the bigger the task the more I am likely to realize my own limitations and seek for inspiration from ever higher sources of power and insight.

Now, if I have done a sufficient job in explaining the bridge like nature of the human being with regards to representing that which is capable of making the transcendent immanent and understanding the relationship of anything immanent to the transcendent then it will make sense that I place also the human being at the centre of a toroid, where space becomes moral space. My moral deeds, my actions play out into the world and the world will forever bear witness to those actions. If those actions are good then the fruits of those actions will live on in the world and if they are bad then the same will also be true. I as a citizen of that world, through my actions, contribute to creating the world I live in. In religious thinking this idea can be rendered to “you reap what you sow”.

For Aurobindo man’s bridge like nature is expressed so: (ch 5)

We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or at most attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of  consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing.

In Steiner we find this relationship mirrored in the terms moral imagination, moral technique and moral intuition. (ch12)

Moral imagination and the faculty of having moral ideas can become objects of knowledge only after they have been produced by the individual. By then, however, they no longer regulate life, for they have already regulated it. They must now be regarded as effective causes, like all others (they are purposes only for the subject). We therefore deal with them as with a natural history of moral ideas.

And

This part of effective moral activity depends on knowledge of the particular world of phenomena with which one is concerned. We shall, therefore, look for it in some branch of learning in general. Moral action, then, presupposes, in addition to the faculty of having moral ideas (moral intuition) and moral imagination, the ability to transform the world of percepts without violating the natural laws by which these are connected.

 

 

Darwinism and Evolution

 

The remaining part of chapter 12 of Steiner develops what could be called a true theory of evolution for humanity, a Darwinism fully integrated with moral evolution based in the essential spiritual nature of the human being. What is striking about this is that this corresponds closely to an important topic developed by Aurobindo in chapter 7, ”The Ego and the Dualities”. To introduce this idea let us start with Darwinism as it is generally understood. Taking it purely at face value, neither believing nor denying, we are asked to imagine that at some distant point in the past a certain group of monkeys over vast periods of time became capable of doing things that were inconceivable for their ancestors.

It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present  associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances. We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive  arboreal life in primeval forests to conceive that there would be one day an animal on the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature

 

Both Steiner and Aurobindo are insistent that humanity is now and going into the future at a similar juncture to Darwin’s monkeys. However, there is a huge difference this time around. When considering those pre-historic times we are not invited to imagine that certain monkeys choose to develop for themselves those inconceivable new abilities. They were not capable of conscious individual choice at that stage. It was a “natural evolution” according to the theory and this was governed by the law of random mutation (ie absence of law). Steiner and Aurobindo both insist that this time round the step forward in evolution will be a conscious step. Humanity is the bridge between monkey thinking and a thinking based in a higher consciousness. Mankind is being invited to consider a relationship to life and the spiritual worlds which is inconceivable for certain parts of humanity, perhaps even currently large parts of humanity. The convincing power of materialism that has seized the world is the supreme obstacle for daring to believe this might be possible. However, some monkey minds will suspend disbelief and gradually initiate themselves into a radically different way of conceptualizing life. With Aurobindo this dynamic is developed in terms of the Mind (current intellectual thinking) becoming aware of its Supermind origins, a child of the Supermind that will, when it’s nature is not denied, attain to the consciousness of the Supermind. From chapter 14 “The Supermind as Creator” we see this expressed in the following way.

And since Mind too is created out of it, Mind must be a development by limitation out of this primal faculty and this mediatory act of the supreme Consciousness and must therefore be capable of resolving itself back into it through a reverse development by expansion. For always Mind must be identical with Supermind in essence and conceal in itself the potentiality of Supermind, however different or even contrary it may have become in its actual forms and settled modes of operation.

 

Elsewhere in Steiner’s lectures and books we see this topic of the evolution of consciousness developed in multiple directions. Here we will limit ourselves to understanding how Steiner connects Darwinism to a grander vision of an evolution of morality where the human being stands at the heart of earthly evolution as that being which is tasked with realizing its god like nature[4]. In Steiner’s terminology, a person who has achieved a certain level of clarity about the true nature of thinking, feeling and willing and how these faculties can connect him to the highest divine impulses has moved beyond thinking in mere mental pictures. Such a person practises ethical individualism by allowing moral imaginations and intuitions to live and work in his/her consciousness. He/she out of their own forces is capably of passing by lower egotistical impulses, lower moral imperatives of the family, state or religion to be inspired by ever higher benefactors of mankind.

Ethical individualism, then, is not in opposition to a rightly understood theory of evolution, but follows directly from it. Haeckel’s genealogical tree, from protozoa up to man as an organic being, ought to be capable of being continued without an interruption of natural law and without a break in the uniformity of evolution, up to the individual as a being that is moral in a definite sense. But on no account could the nature of a descendant species be deduced from the nature of an ancestral one. However true it is that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly developed out of those of his ancestors, it is equally true that the individual is morally barren unless he has moral ideas of his own.

This grand vision that Steiner and Aurobindo share of the true nature of the human being as a bridge between two worlds is radically different from Darwinism as interpreted by spiritless minds. Aurobindo and Steiner reconnect us to our true being and I am sure they would also recognize this same truth in the poetry of Wordsworth.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

For more on Wordsworth here is a past post:
https://waywithwords.se/2023/01/23/the-exceptional-state-wordsworth-perceiving-immortality/

[1] I could have also used similar imagery the describes how sub-atomic particles come into being out of the quantum field and to which they also return after their allotted time.

[2] https://the-formula.org/walter-russell-the-man-who-tapped-the-secrets-of-the-universe/

[3] Thus possessed of itself inwardly, it imparts also to its forms and modes the conscious delight of Sachchidananda. This becoming of the infinite Bliss-Existence-Consciousness in mind and life and body, — for independent of them it exists eternally, — is the transfiguration intended and the utility of individual existence. Through the individual it manifests in relation even as of itself it exists in identity.

[4] John 10:34 “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’?

Total Information War – Medical Industrial Complex

February 5, 2023 /

Martin Luther was the most prominent public face of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. One of the key factors that set this movement apart from previous religious movements was the use of information and communication as a means to undermine and weaken the incumbent power, the Catholic Church. He used information and  ideas to force a Christian endeavor, corrupted by the selling of indulgences, to cede ground and after 1000 years of hegemony the authority of the Catholic Church became an anathema in many countries.

In 1517, Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses, a list of criticisms and objections to the practices of the Catholic Church, and he nailed them to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. This act of public defiance was a direct challenge to the Church’s authority, and it was a clear statement that Luther intended to start a public discussion about the issues he saw with the Church. I wonder where might serve as a modern day Wittenberg.

Luther’s ideas quickly spread across Europe, thanks in large part to the new technology of the printing press. He and his followers produced a vast number of books, pamphlets, and broadsheets that carried his message to a wide audience. In this way, Luther was able to reach people who were previously unable to access information and ideas about the Church and its practices.

New technologies give us the possibility to awaken a larger segment of the population to the non-democratic and corrupt forces that have become increasingly powerful and more blatant in their attempts to crush society.  Whilst the evidence for this perversion of power has always existed it has over the past 2-3 years  become more pronounced than many people imagined would be possible. Regulatory capture, failure of journalism, psyops against citizens and censorship have all contributed to the current state of the information war.  Rudolf Steiner warned of the increasing threat of a medical papacy in several lectures. In lecture 8 of Disease, Karma, and Healing, GA 107: Spiritual-Scientific Inquiries into the Nature of the Human Being we can find:

People usually only concern themselves with disease, or at least with one or other forms of disease, when they fall ill in some way; and then they are mostly only interested in their recovery, in the fact of being cured. How they are cured is usually of very little interest to them, and it is even very agreeable to them not to have to concern themselves further with the nature of this recovery. Most of our contemporaries are happy to delegate the task of curing them to the people appointed to do so. In fact, a far more pervasive faith in authority holds sway in this field in our era than has ever held sway in the sphere of religion. Medical papacy, irrespective of what form it assumes in one place or another, has today become extremely prevalent and will go on taking stronger hold in future. Lay people are not in the least at fault for this state of affairs and its future increase. You see, people don’t give it any thought, don’t concern themselves with such things — not, at least, until they have first-hand experience of it, suffer an acute illness and need a cure. And for this reason a great majority of the population looks on with complete indifference as the medical papacy assumes ever greater proportions, worming its way into the most diverse fields — for instance, intervening extensively in children’s education, in school life, and staking a claim here to a certain form of therapy. People do not worry about the deeper underlying factors at work here. They stand by and watch as public ordinances are given some kind of legislative form. They have no real wish to gain insight into such things. By contrast there will always be those who, finding themselves in difficulty and discovering that ordinary, materialistic medicine — whose foundations they have no interest in — does not answer their needs, will seek help from practitioners who draw on an esoteric foundation.

What is the nature of this beast and how do we blunt its forces?

 

 

The Exceptional State: Wordsworth: Perceiving Immortality

January 23, 2023 /

This time I would like to approach the vista offered by the Exceptional State using the poetic imagery created by William Wordsworth, more especially “Ode to Immortality”

Wordsworth: Perceiving Immortality — Figure 1

On discovering the principle of mechanical leverage (law of lever and balance) Archimedes (287-212 BC) is reported to have said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”. In this simple image we can sense the enormous potential power of this simple principle. If we could find said lever and fulcrum, then the apparently impossible would be possible. The Exceptional State is a method of knowledge which leads to an experience of the self and the world and our relationship to it way beyond the current atomic paradigm. The fruits of this state are literally unimaginable for the matter bound mind. Instead it leads us safely and inexorably into a realm where many commonly held truths are seen from a different perspective.

One of the first hurdles that we have to overcome as we start on this path is a strong tendency in culture to treat the inner life as less real than that content given to us by our senses. Invariably and for understandable reasons what our eyes see, ears hear and other senses smell or feel is considered more real than fleeting inner impressions of light, sound or feeling. These experiences are all invisible to external observation and are often deemed less real. As we strengthen the inner life it dawns on us with gentle warming rays how the outer life is merely a stimulus to the inner life. This inner life finds itself based in truths beyond those of natural science and consequently lead to insights way beyond what is considered the leading edge of science. Christ told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). The Exceptional State is the healthy state whereby a person can consciously and with increasing ease move between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit. We can listen to people who have had near death experiences, mystical experiences or psychedelic experiences and realize that they are giving their own testimonies of what it is like to see life from the other side of the veil. Research in the field of NDE shows that such a strong and traumatic experience invariably leads to decades of inner work as the individual tries to reconcile living in a world where most people are afraid of the very thing they know is only the beginning of a new stage of life. There are lots of interesting scientists that examine the continuation of consciousness beyond life. Pim van Lommel is one of those voice and in his book Consciousness Beyond Life (https://pimvanlommel.nl/en/consciousness-beyond-life/ > ) collates a lot interesting and convincing data points from 20+ years of systematically studying the phenomena to give an overview of this field. The book also paints a very clear picture of the way in which a brush with death, perhaps counterintuitively for many, in the vast majority of case has a hugely positive transformative effect on people’s lives. Ervin Laszlo had this to say about the book.

“We have been confusing our radio receiver with the symphony on the air. When our receiver shuts down, the symphony continues on the air, only it’s no longer manifest to our ear. Pim van Lommel shows that the symphony of human consciousness does continue and also remains accessible in the non-ordinary states of consciousness that in our culture occur most frequently at the portals of death. His evidence is robust, and can no longer be ignored either by the science community, or by society at large.”

Concerning psychedelics the field is large, extremely large and I feel under qualified to say anything of substance other than to mention the interesting work of Rick Strassman as documented in “DMT: The Spirit Molecule”. Amanita dreamer (https://www.youtube.com/@AmanitaDreamer) is also an interesting cultural phenomena with her use of the agaric mushrooms to heal her own mental problems. I am not advocating this, only recognizing its existence. One thing is clear, when you listen to the testimonies these people it is obvious that the inner life has been intensified, but also that the results can often be confusing and difficult to reconcile with living a normal life (Whatever that might be). I recently heard it described as opening the door to the spirit worlds, but not knowing what it is that you have let in. The Exceptional State properly understood means opening this door in full possession of consciousness and being able to decide whether or not to let these influences, these beings, these active forces into our being. Research into the fields of multiple personality /
dissociative disorders as well as the voluminous research into the placebo/nocebo effect are also mentioned in passing here as they also provide evidence of the non-material nature of our soul lives.

There is nothing we know that is not the product of our thinking. This spiritual activity of thinking impacts our feeling and willing life, but even these inner activities can only be known through thinking. Thus it is no exaggeration to say that thinking is the essence of our being because it is that by which we know ourselves. We experience ourselves in feeling and willing, but only know ourselves through thinking. The thoughts we produce are a revelation of our essential nature.If we can recognize this central nature of thinking in our being we can also understand that by investigating this activity of thinking we can study its behaviour, its characteristics, its field of action and by doing so we are also increasing our self-knowledge. The exceptional state is nothing other than an investigation of that which lives and creates in us every waking moment of the day.

As I sit here writing these words I hear the rain pounding on the roof and the windows. With that sound I am drawn, by my thinking, out of the chair I am sitting and for a brief period of time I am the rain pounding on the tiles. My thinking can put me anywhere I am capable of imagining and this activity of thinking can be intensified to ever greater levels so that instead of being a momentary shadowy experience it becomes an experience where I feel the roof, I feel the rain. I feel the raw power of nature and live in the wind. Of course, my body never leaves the chair, but my consciousness was not in the chair, it was free of its body limits. For a short while consciousness forgot that it is usually tied to the body, just like happens when we fall asleep. Except that I can recall the experience and know the cause of it. In reviewing this activity of my thinking using my memory I am experiencing an aspect of myself which takes me beyond myself. As I consider the richness of this line of thought I am reminded of John Donne expressing this reality in the line

“It is the mind itself that make a heaven of hell and hell of heaven”.

Thomas Traherne expressed it like this “

“You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.”

To the best of my knowledge Wordsworth did not live briefly on a roof on a rain swept night, but he was with his intensified soul filled thinking able to wander lonely as a cloud floating high o’er vales and hills, at once see a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. However, a liberated thinking capacity does not need to limit itself to what is knowable through the senses. Thinking, like Christ, is not of this world, though it can shed its understanding light on this world. A liberated, intensified thinking can lead us to experience our essential nature in ways not possible if it remains tethered in slave like fashion to impressions originating in the physical body. In Wordsworth’s Ode to Immortality we can feel running through this poem a locus of consciousness which clearly, at least initially, feels itself unfettered.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45536/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollections-of-early-childhood >  

Wordsworth: Perceiving Immortality — Figure 2

Some literary critics may remain content with an interpretation that reduces this to an allegory or a metaphor for the loss of innocence. However, someone more familiar with the experiences to be attained through the exceptional state will sense how Wordsworth, simply by linking our birth to a state of sleep, has experienced something far more profound. He is telling us that he remembers a time when he was a being without a body. He knows that he left this state, he left this spiritual home, to sojourn in the world of the senses. Furthermore, his own personal experience was that during his infancy this state persisted for a while because in infancy he did not entirely forget his origins. He is also convinced that this is not unique to him because he speaks of our infancy, rising with us and our home.

Wordsworth: Perceiving Immortality — Figure 3

He then drops the use of we and us and replaces it with individual experience of a boy, who whilst still feeling connected is more conscious of his experience of self rather than in a universal we. As the impact of the life of the senses intensifies, so also the youth sees this inner life die away and superseded by common day experience. It is through inner work that we become capable of seeing the former glory from which we originate, yet also retaining individual consciousness. This aspect of not having to sacrifice individual consciousness is a large topic and will be left for another article.

Wordsworth: Perceiving Immortality — Figure 4

And so the poem continues like a pendulum alternating between reflections on the immensity of the inner life of the soul and the joy and the suffering to be found in this state of forgetfulness. This dual nature of reality is visible to the philosopher, the lover of wisdom and the true, but remains unseen by the blind until the eternal sleep which will again remind us of the eternal nature of the mind. Those who see truth in Wordsworth feel, like the Seer, blessed. This blessedness, as well as immense awe, is also one of the feelings that intensifies as we work more consciously on strengthening the inner life to experience in ever greater intensity the exceptional state.

🙌2

The Exceptional State – Dostoyevsky’s Double

January 23, 2023 /

 

The Exceptional State - Dostoyevsky's Double — Figure 1

As we dig deeper into the exceptional state we inevitably becoming more aware of how the content of our thinking directly impacts our experience of life. As Hegel tells us, thinking turns the soul, with which beasts too are gifted, into spirit. In TPOF we are reminded that thinking, in the conceptual life, is that which when added to perception restores a reality that was
sundered by our own organization.

Let us consider a wolf and a few of the concepts that we might connect with it (fur, speed, hunting, pack animal, vicious, dog like, Fenris, acute sense of smell, night vision, camouflage, cunning, intelligence etc etc). Unbiased thinking will recognize that all of these concepts that
describe the wolf are present in its being whether we are aware of them or not. Nature doesn’t care whether we know about the concepts that are active in her, that determine her content. However, when observing nature we complement observation with thinking we restore a unity that was only broken because of an insufficiency on our part. When we undo this sundering we feel the pleasure, a re-establishing of wholeness, that accompanies understanding something that previously was opaque and not permeated by reason.

But where does this thinking, this other half of reality come from? In the exceptional state it becomes a direct inner experience that concepts are birthed within us, we intuit them, some unknown being breathes them into us. We can show a dog a million ABC books, but it will never arrive at the concept of a letter, let alone what various arrangements of these letters are capable of achieving. The point here is that observation does not lead to concepts. Instead a concept must be intuited in us, born in our spirit through the activity of thinking. This concept is then recognized in the outside world. Our responsibility is to create a state in which these concepts can be consciously received. The concept lights up in our spiritual activity of thinking and completes what is observed with the senses

This intuition or birthing of concepts is something that becomes ever clearer to a person who practices entering the exceptional state. In this experience we catch glimpses of a being living within us which is of a purely spiritual nature. This point needs to be highlighted, we are not hypothesizing this being, but directly experience its being in our souls. I no longer merely believe in spirit because I experience it directly. In a similar way I don’t need to say I believe in tables because they are a direct experience. As this state is intensified we become less inclined to perceive ourselves as the creators of thoughts, but instead experience how a thought might live in us. We are inspired. We become less possessive of (our) thoughts. Thinking is experienced as the outflowing of a being and that being is your own I. The
exceptional state means that I observe what I previously created out of my own being. I can never observe this activity directly. Instead, it must occur within me and then using the power of will and memory this activity can also become the substrate which can become the new stimulus for thinking activity, ie deeper conceptual understanding. A deeper permeation of nature with truth and love.

It is useful to remind ourselves time and time again of the dimension that clear thinking and clear concepts add to our lives. The more personal examples we can think of the less we experience thinking as something abstract and merely theoretical and realer the experience becomes. With that in mind here is another example before proceeding to Dostoyevsky’s double. Let us imagine that we grew up around the Mediterranean and
we never learnt at school (or we imagine a time when humanity hadn’t even
conceptualized the idea) about tidal waters and never noticed that the level of
the sea regularly change by a few centimeters.

The Exceptional State - Dostoyevsky's Double — Figure 2

Life then leads us to live on the northern coast of Devon, England. Here, all of a sudden, we are confronted by a sea that behaves completely differently to everything we had previously experienced. Inevitably we are confused and astounded because here the height of the sea can vary at certain times of the year by 7-8 metres and several times a day. This lives as mystery in us for a long time and eventually we feel compelled to ask around and see if anyone can explain why the sea moves so much. We find such a person and we learn about lunar cycles, land formations and other key concepts that remove the mystery and allow us to understand why it happens and when the next high or low tide will be and its amplitude. Now imagine explaining all of that to a dog. I believe he will be as unimpressed as he was with our attempts to get him to learn his ABC. There is another fundamental difference worth pointing out here, namely that the dog doesn’t even know it doesn’t understand. The dog is blissful in its ignorance, human beings often experience this ignorance as painful or troublesome. The concepts that we birth in the inner activity of thinking not only act as a medicine against this pain, they also, concept by concept, remind us that the world is reasonable. The confidence in the potential of thinking is strengthened as we experience time and time again how life isn’t a product of random events and chance. There is order in the universe and thinking will reveal that order. This was the credo of the period of enlightenment, only later did it divorce itself from its Christian roots to become a materialistic science incapable of connecting the spirit with the material.

A disadvantage with the above example is that the reader is likely already familiar with the concepts that are described so can is forced to use the imagination. Therefore, I offer up a 2 part question and a point of departure which can, if followed some distance, lead to a picture of the solar system that goes way beyond the lifeless picture of the solar system so common in academic text books. The question is: Why is the surface of the sun hotter than its centre, which is the supposed source of the heat? What does this have to do with the end of the last ice age? Suggested point of departure https://www.youtube.com/@Suspicious0bservers. Enjoy the experience and feel the energy of rediscovering the world from an alternative vantage point, ie observing the world together with thinking. Learning about life is invigorating because the ideas that create in nature also become alive in us.

When we recognize that intuitive thinking is itself spiritual activity we can also follow the reasoning when Steiner tells us that using this spiritual activity to investigate itself will lead to a deepening of our understanding of our own spiritual essence. In this process navel gazing converts itself into a contemplation of the divine umbilical cord from which we cut ourselves when we were born. Wordsworth’s poem an Ode to Immortality receives an added dimension when viewed through this lens. In the appendix to the 1918 edition of TPOF (Steiner had suggested the English title “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”) he writes: “A living comprehension of what is meant in this book by intuitive thinking will lead quite naturally to a living entry into the world of spiritual perception.”

What though does this have to do with Dostoyevsky’s double?

The more we enter into contact with our own spiritual nature through living in the exceptional state the more we come to experience it as a real entity, instead of as just a thought or idea as it might expressed in everyday language.. Through the intensification of the experience of thinking we understand how through our own spiritual practise we have brought about a healthy split in our being. It is healthy because it is something over which we have conscious control. Schizophrenia would be an example of an unhealthy split. Due to the exercises we have an increasingly conscious relationship to the spiritual aspect of our being. We become increasingly adept at consciously connecting with our spiritual essence whilst not losing our connection with physical reality. The soul has learned though direct experience, rather than a given teaching, that it can choose and either turn its attention to the realm of the senses and the intellect or it can turn to the realm of the spirit and start taking its first baby steps to understand this new world. In the middle stands the soul, strengthened by the exercising.

In the Double we find Dostoyevsky encountering this question of the duality of the self. This meeting with a Dopplegänger describes what according to spiritual science is a truth of our human constitution. We have a lower and a higher self. When we seek to achieve goals we are at present not capable of we are already in touch with something higher than ourselves. The more we can connect with this state the more likely we are to achieve what is lacking. Conversely, when from this higher perspective we look at what we currently are we see a less perfect, less intelligent, less…… ( choose your adjective) being.

It was a little before eight o’clock in the morning when Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin, a titular councillor, woke up from a long sleep. He yawned, stretched, and at last opened his eyes completely. For two minutes, however, he lay in his bed without moving, as though he were not yet quite certain whether he were awake or still asleep, whether all that was going on around him were real and actual, or the continuation of his confused dreams. Very soon, however, Mr. Golyadkin’s senses began more clearly and more distinctly to receive their habitual and everyday impressions.

However, as the novel proceeds we realize that Golyadkin becomes increasingly incapable of distinguishing the real and actual with the inner life of his confused dreams. Dostyevsky’s magic consists, at least in part, in letting us live in soul of someone who experiences at a level far more intensely than the average person this split that lives in all of us. That which is and that which wants to be. Golyadkin understands that he is not well and seeks the help of Krestyan Ivanovitch Rutenspitz, Doctor of Medicine and Surgery. He is at a complete loss on how to help Golyadkin and it is no better 170 years later in your average doctor’s surgery. The best modern medicine can do is to dampen down the inner life so that the duality of the self is not experienced so strongly. The name Golyadkin (го́лый – naked, bare, unmixed, pure) could be taken to mean that in its naked state, the human being is a split being as was discussed above. This dual nature of the human being is a topic often explored in literature. What is so poignant in Dostyevsky is the starkness of its description and this is especially so for people interested in spiritual science, because according to this science we are moving towards a future where the experience of the double will become both more common and more intense for ever greater numbers of people.

Golyadkin is extreme in the sense that he experiences the truth of the dual nature of the soul in a way that many don’t. Let us again create an example of a phenomena that happens dozens or perhaps even hundreds of times a day in each and every one of us without us recognizing the dual nature of what is occurring. I am sitting on the sofa, my mind is focused on a train of thought. This inner life is interrupted by a soft scratching sound which reaches me through my ears (outer life). My inner life through the capacity of thinking adds to these sounds the picture of a door and cat’s paws and despite not being able to observe knows with 100% certainty that our cat is outside and wants to come in. 15 minutes later my ears hear a soft scratching sound. However, whilst similar it is slightly different. I listen much more attentively and my inner life tries to find an image or set of circumstances. This time the inner life is incapable of giving that 100% certainty. Even though I can’t see it I have located the origin of the noise spatially. It is coming from the hall. I get up slowly listening attentively. My thinking (inner life) begins to present more details. The hall, our dog, unusualness of sound. Before I have seen the cause (outer life) the activity of thinking (inner life) suggests that I don’t let my presence disturb what is causing the noise otherwise I might not find out that cause. I approach slowly and see our dog pawing at her rug in the hall. I have never witnessed her doing this before, but if at sometime she does this in the future my thinking (inner life) will add itself to the auditory sensation (outer life) and I will see the whole situation without actually seeing it with my eyes (outer life). These 2 simple examples are given only as concrete experiences of how the inner and the outer life are in continuous interaction, but often thinking inserts itself into our outer life without us being fully conscious of the fact that it comes from an inner life that is always active, always taking stimuli from the outside world and adding its own activity to add missing details.

The Exceptional State - Dostoyevsky's Double — Figure 3

In the picture we have in the outer world (red) which receives the inner life (blue). Through practice we come to experience that the inner activity is not caused deterministically by the outer. Instead the outer is merely a stimulus for this inner activity. The clearer we become about the separateness through direct experience the clearer becomes the duality of our character. We are soul beings, the crossover part in a lemniscate, who can direct attention to the outer world of the senses. Without the capacity to think we would never be able to say anything about this outer world. Conversely if we live exclusively in thinking we lack the sense of reality and form and appear to live in a dream. In this dream our ability to reason and act takes place entirely in an inner world of our own making, though how we make it and who we are, we have no idea. If our physical bodies were not there to wake us up, we would continually live in world of thought with little or no consciousness of self. Put in impossible (from a non-dreaming perspective) situations and left to experience them at an emotional level, ie with pain or pleasure, happiness or sadness, love or hate or frightening or inspiring.

A topic for a future article is how this duality can be confronted in a healthy way. Golyadkin was not able to find a centre that could hold the tension of these 2 polarities. Steiner, Nietzsche, Jung amongst many others pointed towards the forceful way in which the inner life can explode into outer life if it is suppressed, if it is not dealt with at a conscious level. The same is true at both a societal, group and individual level.

The Exceptional State - Dostoyevsky's Double — Figure 4

 

The Exceptional State – Walking in the forest with Dante.

January 23, 2023 /

Why is this concept so important in TPOF?

In this state the observed and the observer become one. In this state subject and
object are transcended and experienced in a living way. However, this is a
perspective that must be fought for, just like a person desiring to have a panoramic
or bird’s eye view must climb to the top of a mountain to gain this new, yet
fully justified, relationship between the self and the world, the inner and the
outer.

In natural science we study the forces that break down nature, they are the forces of entropy,
ie. that measurable physical property of disorder, randomness or uncertainty.
Yet we are also surrounded by living beings in which an opposite force lives. These
living beings create order and whilst living transcend the destructive physical
forces. They negate the universal laws of entropy for their allotted time, but
as soon as these life forces leave then the formerly living object submits to
the laws of disintegration. An oak for example manifests its order in the structure
of its leaves, bark, acorns, crown and root system. Each and every plant is
proof that life is something beyond the mere natural scientific laws.

In the exceptional state we are capable of directly experiencing an essential part of
our being that transcends itself. Initially this exceptional state is
experienced as something foreign to everyday life. It can be reasoned that thinking about thinking leads us away from life, distancing us from what is real. At a superficial level this argument is a valid description of the problematic relationship the exceptional state can appear to have with leading our lives. Some minds will judge it to be navel gazing with all the associated negative connotation. However, a more careful reading of the statement opens up at least 2 interesting
questions.

  1. Might something also be gained from leading us away from life?
  2. There is an assumption that thinking about thinking distances us from the real, but what is meant by the word real and how does it relate to thinking.

As can be intuited from these questions there is also a perspective which, far from
distancing us from life, can enrich life in a way that re-evaluates and redefines
the limits of reality in an expansive direction. This is so as all that was previously
held to be real is still real, yet in a context where it is not the only real.

It is a normal reaction to be somewhat cautious or even afraid of thinking about thinking. As already indicated arid thoughts hardly seem like an area where I might find a life enhancing transcendent state. This fear or trepidation can come from 2 general directions and one of them will be more dominant in each and every one of us.

  • People who have a rich inner life of feeling and or strong inclinations to act will often experience thinking as a weak barren soul faculty and feel a natural aversion to deepening this in the hope of finding something that transcends their current way of living. Let’s call these people Lovers of Lucy
  • People who have a strong desire for knowledge and understanding will often abhor the lack of certainty that accompanies leaving the world of the senses that has been enriched through a better understanding of it. They will feel as if the certainty and sense of order and control on which they based their lives is too valuable to warrant leaving it. Let’s call these people Adorers of Harry.

However, there are some people who “Halfway along the journey to life’s end find
themselves astray in a dark wood.”(Canto 1 1-2) At the beginning of the divine
comedy Dante similarly feels the understandable dread of Lovers of Lucy and Adorers of Harry yet also the allure of something light filled, inspiring and fear
squelching. He then encounters the leopard, angry lion and she-wolf, which he
recognizes “Just so inside my mind, which was still fleeing” (Canto 1, 25)  as aspects of himself, of his inner life, which will try to devour him before a path out of the dark forest can be found.

But when I came beneath a steep hillside –
Which rose at the far end of that long valley
That struck my stricken heart with so much dread –
I lifted up my eyes, and saw the height
Covered already in that planet’s rays
Which always guides all men and guides them right.
And then the fear I felt was somewhat less

(Canto 1, 13-18)

The Exceptional State - Walking in the forest with Dante. — Figure 1

Then suddenly, as I went slipping down,
Someone appeared before my very eyes,
Seemingly through long silence hoarse and wan.
When I caught sight of  him in that wide
waste, “Take pity on me,” I shouted out to him,
“Whatever you are, a real man or a ghost!

(Canto 1, 61-66)

Are you a real man or a ghost? These 2 terms viewed from a “common sense” perspective are
mutually exclusive. However, they don’t need to be so because as above the tricky
word here is the word real . How do we define what is real and not real?
This can only be done with thinking. We are still dancing around the concept of
the exceptional state here, but this is a useful process in creating clarity. If
we investigate further the “common sense” reasoning concerning the differences
between the real man and the ghost we realize that “real” means something that
can be seen by the common sense of sight. However, real does not need to be limited
to this feeble notion of reality. After all we would not deny gravity because we
cannot see it, nor for that matter radio waves, ultraviolet or infrared light. Again
normal reasoning would concur that whilst we cannot see these, we can infer
their existence because of their effects.

Now let us investigate this train of thought. Real things can be seen by the common sense
of sight. Somethings are real that cannot be seen, but we know they are real
because they cause something to happen that can be seen with the common sense
of sight. I.e. these real things are invisible to sight and indirectly perceptible
through their effects. Let’s stick with the electromagnetic spectrum for this example.
When we view the world without this concept, given to us in thinking, we become
incapable of explaining what the common sense of sight reveals to us (light,
the enabler of sight, itself is also a spectrum of frequencies that belong to
the entire electromagnetic spectrum). Another way of describing this would be
to say that an invisible concept given to us in the capacity to think is being
used to describe something else invisible yet that invisible something can be considered
real because it produces a visible effect. Following this line of reason if an
invisible ghost has the effect of assuaging and removing  “the pain…so terrible…. the terror coming from her sight, the loss of all hope”(Canto 1, 52-54) then why should this be
considered any less real. I am labouring this point, because anybody who considers
thinking to not be real can only do so by being completely asleep to forces in
the inner life, be they Lovers of Lucy or Adorers of Harry.

To defeat the she-wolf, the evildoer whose avid appetite is never slaked Virgil tells
Dante that:

This hound will not be fed with land or pelf,
But rather feed on wisdom, love, and valour.
He will originate in folds of felt.

(Canto 1, 103-105)

Wisdom imbued thinking, love imbued feeling and a valient willing can deliver him from the
dark forest. With the exceptional state the focus is initially on the thinking
aspect of this trinity, though as will be seen the life of feeling and will are
essential components of this path.

If we are to make thinking the object of our thinking then this cannot be done without
the active participation of the will and memory. Already here we stumble upon
facts that are deeply inconvenient for lazy people. There is nothing in outer
life that compels me to remember for example the train of thoughts that passed
through my consciousness whilst for example eating breakfast. However, it is
exactly this type of exercise that we need to perform if we are to get to know
this activity that is with us in every waking moment. Again we are presented
with a paradox here, because we are being encouraged to remember something that
is of no consequence for the rest of the world and also exert our will to do
something that seems in no way to contribute to the outer life. This all seems so
unreasonable, yet the promise of the exceptional state is that it will slowly lead
us to an experience of the inner life that is beyond the possible experiences
of the Lucys and Harrys of this world.

We need to start asking ourselves the question: What is it that is thinking in me? And then seek to experience this being and how it reveals it essential nature. Here we use
the scientific method of observing phenomena to build an increased awareness
and understanding of this being.

If we practice prayer, meditation, contemplation or concentration then we have to use
our will to hold a chosen thought, prayer or image. Also here we have a direct
experience of how something beyond me lives in me. Despite the efforts of our
will another kind of thinking seems to insert itself as a foreigner into our mental
exercises, distracting us from the chosen mental content. Through practice and
application we gradually become better at sticking with the chosen content,
though even this can fluctuate greater depending on what has happened during
the rest of the day, especially if it engaged the feeling life. This process is
similar to applying thinking to an everyday situation and allowing the
essential nature of thinking to illuminate it, improve understanding whilst not
being distracted by other thoughts presenting themselves to my consciousness in
what could be described as a weird type of attention competition. However, the exceptional
state refers specifically to submitting the process of thinking itself to the
activity of thinking to illuminate it and reveal aspects of its nature. As this
process matures we begin to sense the invisible rays of a light filled being. In
the exceptional state we can come to know the essential part of our being that
transcends itself and that is not subject to the entropy that ensues at the
time of death The spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner offers us the being of
Anthroposophia and a vision of the Etheric Christ in the astral worlds as
further stages along this path of development towards rediscovering the
universal I, the Logos in everyday experience.

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