Rudolf Steiner's Fifth Gospel by John David Ebert

[AshvinP]

This passage seems relevant here:

Thus, for monism, feeling is an incomplete reality... does not yet contain its second factor, the concept or idea. This is why, in actual life, feelings, like percepts, appear prior to knowledge... However, what for us appears only later, is from the first indissolubly bound up with our feeling. This is why the naïve man comes to believe that in feeling he is presented with existence directly, in knowledge only indirectly... He will only believe that he has grasped the pattern of the universe when he has received it into his feeling. He attempts to make feeling, rather than knowing, the instrument of knowledge. Since a feeling is something entirely individual, something equivalent to a percept, the philosopher of feeling is making a universal principle out of something that has significant only within his own personality. He attempts to permeate the whole world with his own self...

The tendency just described... is often called mysticism. The error is a mystical outlook based upon mere feeling is that it wants to experience directly what it ought to gain through knowledge; that it wants to raise feeling, which is individual, into a universal principle.

Steiner then goes on to apply the same logic he applies to "feeling" to the "will", which is clearly referencing thinkers like Schopenhauer. It's a very interesting take and challenge to the worldview of idealist thinkers such as BK.

[Cleric K]

Thank you, David, for the quotes.

That's not what I had in mind with "higher cognition" but I'll try to make it clear later.

[David_Sundaram]

Ashvin ... yes, to be clear, I read Scott's reference and found nothing in it to support the secondhand interpretations that David digs up, and while I'm quite sure that Scott is not cherry-picking, I'm just wondering if there are any passages whatsoever taken directly from Steiner's books that can be construed in such a way that would give credence to such secondhand interpretations.

That there's nothing in that which supports my assertion is 'conclusive' evidence? To anyone here who is curious enough to personally investigate 'the truth' about this matter: just type in "Rudolph Steiner racism" into your search engine to find a slew of pertinent information.

Just one example from my 'search': The following excerpted from a statement at this link (note: there a lot of other interesting stuff there) made by a person who had firsthand experience in this regard as a result of being hired to be a teacher at a 'Waldorf' school (said schools were 'founded' on the basis if Steiner's beliefs/philosophy):

"I read about Steiner’s “folk souls” — his theories about the hierarchies of human evolution — in order to see in Steiner’s own words what he thinks about the “black and yellow races,” and let me tell you, it’s revolting. He writes that humans are on an evolutionary journey through reincarnation and that as souls are refined and purified, they move “up” from the African to the Asian and finally to the European races:

Diagram 3 from Rudolf Steiner’s “The Mission of Folk-Souls”

The spot in Africa corresponds to those forces of the earth which imprint upon man the characteristics of early childhood. The spot in Asia corresponds to those which give man the characteristics of youth, and the ripest characteristics are imprinted on man by the corresponding spot in Europe. This is simply a law. As all persons in their different incarnations pass through the various races, therefore, although it may be argued that the European has the advantage over the black and the yellow races, we should not be prejudiced thereby. Here the truth may, indeed be sometimes veiled, but you see that with the help of spiritual science we really do come upon remarkable truths. — Rudolf Steiner

I read about Steiner’s rejection of Eastern philosophies and his prioritizing of Western European knowledge, which explains why many students at Waldorf schools still read a high-German medieval romance in eleventh grade rather than Toni Morrison."

[Soul_of_Shu]

David ... Ok, point made, that the notion of hierarchical soul development should be tied into corresponding racial categories is clearly problematic, and fraught with the potential for abuse by anyone believing that this is justification for subjugation/discrimination/elimination to be inflicted upon anyone considered to be lacking in such soul development. Notwithstanding, someone still may find, in a broader comprehensive examination of Steiner's ideas, other notions that they find resonance with, which does not mean that they are de facto apologists for white supremacists. Indeed, given that Hitler held Steiner and his overall theory in great contempt, my guess is that had Steiner lived to see how his soul development theory was propagandized and used to fuel the Nazi regime's genocidal agenda, he would have been horrified. Suffice to say that pretty much every anachronistic stage-specific ethos is in need of a serious upgrade if there's to be any chance of realizing the paradigm transition we are so urgently in need of.

[AshvinP]

Heidegger was an outright member of the Nazi party for a few years. It's absolutely inane to suggest we should discard his entire corpus because of that. Ironically it's usually those who believe they have superior 'soul-development' and therefore would never succumb to their darker tendencies who are the first to line up and cheer when the books start burning.

[AshvinP]

Heidegger was an outright member of the Nazi party for a few years. It's absolutely inane to suggest we should discard his entire corpus because of that. Ironically it's usually those who believe they have superior 'soul-development' and therefore would never succumb to their darker tendencies who are the first to line up and cheer when the books start burning.

Also, from the quote David posted:

"As all persons in their different incarnations pass through the various races, therefore, although it may be argued that the European has the advantage over the black and the yellow races, we should not be prejudiced thereby"

Are we just ignoring that part? Seriously, if he had just written "the European has a 'technological' advantage over the 'African' and 'Asian' cultures", we would think it is self-evident, at least in private where we aren't worried about being 'politically correct'.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Also, from the quote David posted:

"As all persons in their different incarnations pass through the various races, therefore, although it may be argued that the European has the advantage over the black and the yellow races, we should not be prejudiced thereby "

Are we just ignoring that part? Seriously, if he had just written "the European has a 'technological' advantage over the 'African' and 'Asian' cultures", we would think it is self-evident, at least in private where we aren't worried about being 'politically correct'.

Perhaps this was a conclusion that could be plausibly reached in Steiner's time. But it's of course so provisional and relative and stage-specific. Many technologically advantaged races have come and gone through the millennia since a spearhead was first fashioned out of stone. However, of what relevance is it in the 'www' global village on the verge of the integral age, when everyone can have the latest smartphone, and with it the power to expose the power-mongers, where the advantage will be in 'spearheading' the novel praxis to supplant the outmoded ones of the presumably doomed 'us-vs-them/nature-vs-culture' age? ... At least let's pray it's doomed.

[Cleric K]

I tried to raise the question of higher cognition because it is only in this way that one can understand why it has been at all necessary to say something about the races.

(Below I'm simply sharing my own direct experiences, so please don't consider I'm asserting beliefs to anyone)

The general view on enlightenment today is that as soon as the mind collapses the double mirror in the head and the I/Soul/Spirit/Ultimate Observer/Awareness/All-that-is/The One/Undivided Mind/Whatever, lives in the pure feeling of awe, mysteriousness, etc., it is considered that all the riddles of the Universe are solved.

It is perfectly true that in this state the intellect collapses - and with it, the sense of an I/ego thinking in concepts. Yet in this state we are still experiencing a point of view, so to speak. Hardly anyone versed in these experiences will claim that he has experienced the coming together of the Universe, how the galaxies, star systems are formed, how biological life is formed and so on. All of this is conveniently left to the authority of the Universe. Even though we claim to be one with the Universe in this state, we don't understand how the Universe produces all these things.

If one thinks things more thoroughly, he inevitably reaches a view similar to that of Schopenhauer - that the Universe is inherently unconscious. All that we can observe as Cosmos and biology has been reached by blind urges. Only at the end, the thinking self emerges at the apex of this structure and looks around. This view leads to the natural understanding that below the threshold of waking consciousness there's nothing but utter void, Cosmos of unconsciousness.

Yet this is an idea within the mind. And even that the feeling of awe and mysteriousness is a fact of experience, it is the final verdict of thinking to determine its relation to that feeling. The feeling stands as what it is, it does not force us to make anything out of it. It is our thinking that attaches one or another idea to it. The most common idea thus attached, is that the thinking mind says "From the unconscious void I have emerged, there I dissolve".

The mind emerges from the deep unconscious and by virtue of the Cosmic Unconscious becomes locally self-conscious. This is what every mystic agrees upon. From Lou's poem in the other thread:

I have created perception in you only in order to be the object of My Perception.
If then you perceive Me, you perceive yourself.
But you cannot perceive Me through yourself.
It is through My Eyes that you see Me and see yourself,
Through your eyes you cannot see Me.

It is my own experience (not pushing opinions to anyone) that once the fruit of self-awareness has been gained - and it is the Cosmic Unconscious, the big Me, that beholds this fruit - the big Me can go again below the surface, without losing the essence of the fruit - that is, without losing consciousness. The process described in the poem continues in the domain below the surface.

In other words (still speaking only of own experience) cognition does not end with the collapse of the double mirror. It is only necessary that the big Me learns to orient in this new environment, even if it still feels itself only as a locality within the All. And this environment is different in the most profound sense. Yet we are there, we are experiencing a fully conscious point of view, a perspective within the Spiritual Being of the All. We don't feel ourselves as the intellectual ego anymore. When I say "we are there" I don't mean the intellect. It is the same big Me, through whose eyes we perceive in both the ordinary and the higher state. The thing that changes is that the self-awareness of the big Me expands. Our new state of being within the higher realm represents a more developed comprehension of the big Me about Itself, just as in the ordinary state, when reading the poem, the big Me, understands itself as intellect (small me) thinking about itself as living by virtue of the big Me.

Not only that but we experience how this intellectual ego comes into being - we live and weave within the processes which precede intellectual thought. We can perceive how our beliefs, opinions, knowledge, inclinations, desires, prejudices, sympathies, antipathies - as independent living fragments, as pieces of our ordinary self, combine and interact. In our ordinary consciousness we simply sit on the tip of this iceberg and say "all mine!". That's why we use the word "higher". It is because our ordinary state can not understand the higher but from the higher we experience in full clarity how our higher spiritual activity is being rigidified in the lower thinking.

In this state we realize for ourselves that man is simply being arrogant when he reserves the fruit of self-consciousness only for himself, while declaring everything else blindly unconscious. This holds even when we read the above poem. Although we admit that our intellect is only the big Me, experiencing itself in polarized thoughts, we are interested only in collapsing the small me and live in the feeling of being gently carried in the maternal womb of the big Me. We implicitly deny the big Me the chance of being self-conscious. Why? Because we abolish self-consciousness within ourselves. If there's no more self-consciousness within the world content, how could we expect that the big Me can experience it, if we are one and the same? Simple - it can't. That's why we are practically declaring that the big Me can be self-conscious only through the dual intellect. The moment it collapses the mirrors, it sinks back to unconsciousness, from where it came. Or if we allow for it to be self-conscious, we place that self-consciousness on the "other side" of the gentle caress of the Cosmic Me - and so much for the non-duality...

The state of being where the dual mirror collapses but is nevertheless self-conscious, is the starting point of Spiritual Science. The path leading to the above state of consciousness is described in the greatest details.

From this state the investigation of what lies beyond the threshold begins. This state does not lead us away from reality. Even the earliest experiences show the opposite. As soon as our ego is deconstructed and spread before us, we already know that spiritual cognition doesn't lead us into the nebulous but what we experience there directly explains our ordinary state and its contents.

This process continues even further. It is in this domain that the causes of everything we can find through the senses is revealed. It is quite immaterial for the mystic why man has heart, liver, brain, etc. All this is considered simply result of the blind urges of the Cosmic Unconscious. Yet within the state of higher cognition, we find that there are living processes, living be-ings that are active at every moment and quite conscious. In fact, the spiritual realm is full of beings that far surpass our stage of evolution. The big Me in these beings experiences itself in a much more integrated and Cosmic way.

Higher cognition consist in the development of our soul and spiritual forces in such a way, so that when the dual mirror collapses, the big Me can still have consciousness of Itself. And not only "still have" but it has even greater, much more lucid consciousness of itself. This state of being is still relative - we do not become the big Me, it is still infinitely vaster than our current state, we're still experiencing only a locality, a small island where the big Me finds its higher but still limited reflection.

I say all this in order to hint at why Steiner had to say anything about the races. It is simply because one confronts these things within the higher realm. On the surface it seems quite random that there are such things as races - who cares, it's just an artifact of the blind All. Yet in the higher state we see that every such artifact is the result of specific spiritual processes, and we simply do not comprehend what we are perceiving, if these processes are not traced to their effects in the sensory realm. In that sense, the avoidance of learning something about these processes would be like saying "What's the point of knowing something about the interior of the human body? It lies below the surface of the skin in utter darkness. As soon as we are healthy and happy on the surface of the skin, the interior of the body is just an artifact of blind evolution." The trouble is that we can't be healthy and happy if we don't know something about nutrition, digestion, elimination, blood circulation, etc. Then, when we stumble upon sickness we simply say "Well, that's the unconscious will of the body. What can you do..."

Humanity is in a similar position regarding to knowledge of the deeper strata of reality. As long as we say "Let's just live in love and harmony - below the surface we are all a big unconscious One", we are staying at the skin level and wondering why the stomach revolts. We never consider if we might need to learn something about what's beneath the surface. And we can never even approach such knowledge if we are convinced that all cognition ceases below the surface.

The knowledge of the races is something that is an intrinsic part of the evolutionary process as it is revealed through spiritual cognition. And to be sure, one must be morally mature in order to comprehend these things. If a white man feels superior because of what Steiner said, while black feels discriminated, neither of them have found their inner spiritual core, that is beyond race.

To insist that one should not speak about the races is like insisting that an anatomist should not speak about the male and female reproductive systems. And please, read the signs of the times well - we are already moving in a direction where it'll be considered discriminatory to speak of male and female reproductive systems. I'll be considered offensive. Other words would have to be devised. This only makes the task of Spiritual Science so much the harder.

As I said, I speak here of my own experience. Not pushing anything to anyone. But things like these can at least be considered. If they are understood, it will be at least possible to have an idea why Spiritual Science has the form it has and why it speaks of the things it does. Whether one takes any of it seriously is completely different matter.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Cleric ... well said, and surely pointing out that we are still stuck in trying to use 'mental' stage cognition and concepts to come to terms with conceiving a novel 'integral' stage praxis, which until the lagging cognition gets up to speed, the phase transition is bound to seem chaotic as we gyrate through the collective shadowlands into the aperspectival nowhere.

[Lou Gold]

And, thusly, the never-ending Integral Stage process dances ever-onward in the muddling and blissful steps of both/and. Is it a march, a waltz, a mazurka, a tango, a forró, a ______? It's all of the above and the below.