One thing that might be good to contemplate is how the ascent bias that assigns evil or dark energies to "lower" (ex: animal or "instinctual") realms tends to obscure that these dark forces are also at play in the beyond realms and reach into corporeal realms to push, pull and guide actions. I'm reminded of the anthropologist Wade Davis asking the Vodun priest in Haiti if there exists both white and black magic, to which the priest responds, "Both exist. The difference between our culture and yours is that we know the difference." Mediums spend a lot of time helping people clear or release from unruly non-corporeal beings that have attached and caused suffering. It's not all rising up from a lower corporeal nature.AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 5:36 pmLou Gold wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 3:53 pm Your position surely expresses one imaginative version -- yes, a common usage dominant paradigm one -- of what words like "animal" and "passion" mean. For an expanded view of these core words, I would urge one to read "Becoming Animal" by the ecologist, anthropologist and philosopher David Abram as well as his previous highly acclaimed book "The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World " For a deeper understanding of the word "passion", there is probably nothing better than contemplating the Passion of Christ. Lighting the candles of those behind is surely the core Bodhisattva mission of one like Thich Nhat Hanh. As far as human will is concerned, I know that you offer, as well, a more spiritual version of many words. So much depends on how one chooses to place one's imagination and open the doors of perception. Then comes the discipline and work, which thankfully there are many ways to perform.
PS: I really like your current avatar image, which somehow expresses for me both Blake's aphorism, "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." and an instinctual urge to discover what's over the horizon. Did you create the image?
Actually, Lou, Mr. Abram and his modern animism has been running in the background of my mind in our recent dialogues, because I remembered you highlighted his work a few times before. It is exactly that mindset, as featured in someone like Abram, which is so dangerous for our times, mostly because it is born out of ignorance. Again, if you hold these things abstractly, then it might make sense to call the difference between an animal and a human "common usage dominant paradigm one" and change the meaning of "animal" as one sees fit. If one values a precise scientific understanding of life, on the other hand, which of course requires a higher-than-animal consciousness, then no such linguistic games will be played at the expense of the objective truth. It's not about valuing the animal lesser than the human or vice versa, but coming to actually understand the relation in precise detail. Only then can we orient ourselves properly and evaluate these modern animistic worldviews fairly.
Steiner wrote:We must now also consider the other side, and not overlook the radical distinction between what man performs with his soul, and the animal with its soul. As an example, we will start from a definite fact. Travelers have often noticed that if they kindled a fire because of the cold, after they left it the apes would come and warm themselves at it. They never observed, however, that an ape had fetched some wood, to keep the fire going. It cannot arrive at this combination, and that is eminently important. It can never, from its own spiritual powers, do anything new, such as stir up the fire, etc.
If we want to make clear to ourselves the animal soul, we must start with this difference from the human soul. A further difference between the animal and human soul is that you can write a biography of each human soul, but not of the animal. That is very important. If you ask yourselves about your interests in different beings, you will find that you bring the same interest to an individual man as in the case of the animals, to a whole group of similar ones. Think of a lion. You feel the same towards the lion-grandfather, father, son, grandson, etc., but this idea would appear to you nonsensical, if applied to human beings.
It says nothing when a dog owner perhaps maintains that he could write a biography of his dog. You could also write a biography of a pen, or the differences in the life of a pin and a needle. That is only an overdrawn distinction. Just as strongly as one whole animal species differs from another, does the single individual person differ from another.
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Soul life in the animals is graduated in many variations in the different animals because, in creating the organs, the spirit has in each case given them a particular stamp. But we see that the spiritual activity of creation — which is anchored in the astral body — expends itself in organic formations, in what the animal actually brings with it into the world. In creating these specific formations, the spirit expends itself. The animal brings with it into the world what it is able to bring and what existence allows it to experience. It can go very little beyond this. This is evidence that the spirit has spent itself, has poured itself out, in the fashioning of the organs. In the formation of the organs, however, the species of animal is revealed to us. Therefore to the question: “What is it that the animal enjoys and experiences in its life of soul?” we can answer: From birth until death the animals' experiences are determined by its species. — It experiences in its soul life, and from out of its own organism, what it has been given by the spirit to accompany it into existence.
Goethe was one who reflected deeply about the life of the animals and of man and he wrote these fine words: “The animals are instructed by their organs — so said the men of old. I add to that: men, too, but they have the advantage of being able to instruct their organs afresh."
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An important consideration in the study of human life is that from birth to death a man is capable of learning new languages, and what is equally significant is that if a man were to grow upon a distant, uninhabited island, he could not develop this faculty at all. The same applies to the faculty of forming concepts, and the development of the mental picture of the “I.” These are things which have nothing to do with heredity, and which cannot be transmitted by heredity, because they do not belong to the species or genus. In what does not belong to heredity, in faculties that remain capable of development beyond and apart form heredity, man has something that is not conditioned by the species or genus, but belongs to the individuality. And in the faculty of speech, in the possibility of forming ideas, and in the experience of the Ego concept, there lies what man himself so brings into the world that by means of it he instructs his organs afresh, teaching them what they have not yet received, but which they must acquire.
Now if the response to this careful observation and reasoning is, "well I'm not a philosopher or a scientist, just a storyteller... and I choose to tell myself the story that fits with what I (and Abram, etc.) desire to be true", then there is no further discussion possible. Then we are content with pure speculation while the real stakes at play from these living ideas which are at work in the world go ignored. I have little interest in such idle and counter-productive speculation.
You say, "Now if the response to this careful observation and reasoning is, "well I'm not a philosopher or a scientist, just a storyteller... and I choose to tell myself the story that fits with what I (and Abram, etc.) desire to be true", then there is no further discussion possible." This is an excellent example of the kind of strawmanning projection that leads to grave misunderstandings.
Steiner says about the animal soul, "Travelers have often noticed that if they kindled a fire because of the cold, after they left it the apes would come and warm themselves at it. They never observed, however, that an ape had fetched some wood, to keep the fire going. It cannot arrive at this combination, and that is eminently important. It can never, from its own spiritual powers, do anything new, such as stir up the fire, etc."
And yet modern science offers examples of animals that stir up fire to generate food. My careful consideration would want to acknowledge these behaviors.
BTW, I'm sincerely interested in your avatar image. Did you design it.