Anthroposophy as Fascio

[Federica]

We do and we will have disagreements because we do not know the Truth in its ultimate way, and because, due to the diversity in the world of Immanence, we approach it from different paths and perspectives. The difference is how we handle these disagreements - in the spirit of love and inclusion, or in the spirit of intolerance and exclusion. Oneness is in love with diversity and allows for the diversity of evolutionary paths/branches while being always One in its roots. So, when we point to the differences in our perspectives, it should be inclusive invitation to enhance our perspective and look at the reality from a different angle rather than an attempt to prove ourselves right and someone else wrong (and I confess that I'm guilty of that too).

And as we see all too often these days, the people who talk outwardly about "love" and "diversity" and "inclusion" the most, are the ones compensating for an inner lack of it. People figure it is much easier to signal these virtues and establish the pretense of 'agreement' and 'understanding' than engage the hard work of actually reaching that understanding through ongoing constructive discussions which gradually build a foundation for inner exploration. Every time a challenging issue is raised to think through, the labels of "intolerance", "exclusion", "tyranny" and so forth are brought forward. So then we see the people signaling these virtues outwardly are the most willing to 'cancel' others and exclude them from society altogether, in deed and practice. I'm sure everyone is already familiar with this:





JP is exactly right there - "in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive." If we want to gain any traction towards a shared understanding, we have to be willing to endure what is uncomfortable and unfamiliar, what pushes us towards new horizons of thought which we otherwise have an inclination to avoid. No one here has an inclination to avoid the claim that Reality is of Idea-nature and it is One. That is why we all ended up here in the first place. Now we are trying to do exactly what you say - point to new experiential angles from which to explore the Idealness and Oneness of reality, in all its living and evolving details. But that is exactly where the outer labels start surfacing again, the posts become abstract, circular, and repetitive, and the new horizon of exploration is never reached. Why does this keep happening?

That excerpt is excellent!


By the way, exactly because, as you say, there is no point in resorting to politically correct conversations, I have to ask: Is there anyone who has in mind the twists and turns of the forum exchanges over the last few months and is able to take this:

The difference is how we handle these disagreements - in the spirit of love and inclusion, or in the spirit of intolerance and exclusion. Oneness is in love with diversity and allows for the diversity of evolutionary paths/branches while being always One in its roots. So, when we point to the differences in our perspectives, it should be inclusive invitation to enhance our perspective and look at the reality from a different angle rather than an attempt to prove ourselves right and someone else wrong (and I confess that I'm guilty of that too).

seriously? And if yes, how?

[ScottRoberts]

The oneness that Steiner or you speak is not at all what Christ and Buddha and all nondual traditions point to. For Steiner, oneness is "the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another", and for you, instead of or in addition to, it is "a spiritual soup of existence without boundaries", but those kinds of "oneness" only have to do with the world of Manynes, with the "immanent", while we are speaking about the "transcendental" aspect of reality.

You frequently refer to "transcendental Oneness", but I haven't seen a mention of "transcendental Manyness". I've quoted this many times in the past, from Merrell-Wolff's Experience and Philosophy:

At the deepest level of discernible thought there is a thinking that flows of itself. In its purity it employs none of the concepts that could be captured in definable words. It is fluidic rather than granular. It never isolates a definitive divided part, but everlastingly interblends them all. Every thought includes the whole of Eternity, and yet there are distinguishable thoughts. The unbroken Eternal flows before the mind, yet is endlessly colored anew with unlimited possibility. There is no labor in this thought. It simply is. It is unrelated to all desiring, all images, and all symbols.

This sounds to me a lot like Cleric's "the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another", but you deny that this is the true meaning of Oneness. One might note that Merrell-Wolff's mystical experience was of "transcendental Oneness" but was followed a month later of an experience of "transcendental Oneness/Manyness" (or as he put it, that Nirvana is Samsara). Not that a claim of "My mystic is more transcendent than yours" is of any help. But isn't this what you are doing, in saying Steiner's/Cleric's Oneness is wrong?

[Cleric]

We do and we will have disagreements because we do not know the Truth in its ultimate way, and because, due to the diversity in the world of Immanence, we approach it from different paths and perspectives. The difference is how we handle these disagreements - in the spirit of love and inclusion, or in the spirit of intolerance and exclusion. Oneness is in love with diversity and allows for the diversity of evolutionary paths/branches while being always One in its roots. So, when we point to the differences in our perspectives, it should be inclusive invitation to enhance our perspective and look at the reality from a different angle rather than an attempt to prove ourselves right and someone else wrong (and I confess that I'm guilty of that too).

I really hope that the last few posts have helped elucidate something important. If we are completely honest and clearheaded we would have to admit that our intuition of Oneness with the Tree of Life doesn't in itself give us expanded knowledge of how we're placed in the World, where we come from and where we're going, what attractors work on us and the environment. This has been agreed upon many times. We agree that our sincere interest is to find our place in that Great Divine Tree of existence and use the spark of Divine Intelligence that has barely sprouted in the soil of our physical, life and soul bodies, in a way that is in full harmony with the Divinely intended World development.

But then disagreements arise. They always revolve around the questions what is our role here on Earth, what is worth doing here, what has significance and what is a waste. At that point a simple mistake occurs which results in the recurring quarrels about Oneness. The mistake is that certain knowledge is attributed to the experience of Oneness, which doesn't really proceed from there.

Time ago Ashvin wrote essays titled "How do "I" know?". This is a critical question anyone in our age should ask themselves. The descent into materialism serves a purpose. The isolation of the intellect, which made Kant develop his philosophy, makes us feel that we're alone with our mind and can only weigh facts, and eventually decide what to believe in.

Today this situation should make us feel real dread. The idea that in our thoughts we're isolated and can know something only by knowing our own thoughts about the true reality behind our conscious experience, should feel painful.

This situation tempts us to look back towards revealed knowledge of the past, ancient traditions and the words of the great initiates, the founders of world religions. We're even ready to consider the words of much lesser 'initiates' - channelers, average people gone through NDEs and so on.

But in the end, what is all this knowledge? It's all images in our soul. That's why the boundary of death remains as solid as ever. It's a simple fact that we feel isolated, dissociated - call it what you will - in our soul. All we know is sensory impressions and the images with which we decorate our inner environment.

The experience of Oneness provides an important step here. Through it a powerful intuition is kindled which says that our isolation is only apparent and temporary. The fact remains however, that besides these powerful moments of transcendence, we still live our life surrounded by sense perceptions and our inner decoration.

Now the basic mistake here is that the inexplicability of the mystical state is arbitrarily used as evidence for whatever we have chosen to decorate our interior with. At this point we have to ask with even greater intensity - how do I know?

Don't get this wrong. This is not meant to shaken our faith and turn us into materialistic sceptics. It's only about getting really serious about what it means to know. This is related with what Federica quoted in the other thread about how it is necessary not to fantasize anything about ourselves but soberly perceive our objective contribution to the world content. So it is here.

For example, let's take the green line once again. Is this line far away such that we'll be our atomic Earthly-scale self even after death? Or as soon as we cross the threshold we find out that our being is distributed over the World? These are the kind of images with which we decorate our soul interior. But how do we know what's the truth? The mystical state doesn't tell us anything in itself. It should cause us real dread if it is impossible to know. This is the healthy state for contemporary man. These things are supposed to cause us dread. Just like physical pain tells us that we have to do something, so this dread tells us that something must be done for our soul and spiritual life.

The only solution to such a dread could be if we find a way to know. Here to know doesn't imply intellectual curiosity, which would still be nothing but pictures on the wall. To know means to grow with our spirit into the Tree of Life. It implies going beyond ourselves, just like Joseph knows Mary. Our spirit breaks through the soul curtain and finds the states of being that correspond to that which we depict only symbolically with the line.

I'm not writing all this to advertise anthroposophy. I'm only trying to show how man has reached the present situation and how having only a story about the beyond should feel painful. It should feel painful that up until the moment of death we're simply holding on to a belief. This need to know should become as necessary for us as air. We should feel as if we suffocate if the most we can do is decorate our interior with pictures and seek seismic experiences that we've chosen to believe support our storyboard.

Whoever doesn't yet feel this need will have the greatest difficulty to understand why something like spiritual science has appeared on the scene of evolution. Conversely, those who feel that need will thirst for this possibility to grow beyond themselves, to know reality not only as a picture but by thrusting themselves into its living fabric. If there was no such thing as spiritual science these souls would be determined to discover it.

I hope in this way we can better understand the source of disagreements. It would be useful if next time we argue about Oneness or the multitude of paths that all lead to successful dying in their own ways, we ask ourselves "Do I at all want to know? Do I have the faith that it is possible to know? Or I'm completely satisfied with the storyboard on my soul's inner wall?"

[Stranger]

At the deepest level of discernible thought there is a thinking that flows of itself. In its purity it employs none of the concepts that could be captured in definable words. It is fluidic rather than granular. It never isolates a definitive divided part, but everlastingly interblends them all. Every thought includes the whole of Eternity, and yet there are distinguishable thoughts. The unbroken Eternal flows before the mind, yet is endlessly colored anew with unlimited possibility. There is no labor in this thought. It simply is. It is unrelated to all desiring, all images, and all symbols.

This sounds to me a lot like Cleric's "the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another", but you deny that this is the true meaning of Oneness. One might note that Merrell-Wolff's mystical experience was of "transcendental Oneness" but was followed a month later of an experience of "transcendental Oneness/Manyness" (or as he put it, that Nirvana is Samsara). Not that a claim of "My mystic is more transcendent than yours" is of any help. But isn't this what you are doing, in saying Steiner's/Cleric's Oneness is wrong?

You are right, this is where the confusion seems to be. This is how Cleric describes the "merging of thoughts":

As soon as we cross the threshold it is like the green line turns out to be a spiritual depth gradient. Then "the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another" is not simply that we perceive within our atomic monad some interference of other beings but the boundaries of our very monad become blurry - that's why we experience the merging of thoughts.

So, if I understand it right, when the boundary between two or more two beings become "blurry" they begin to merge into one another and their contents of ideas become shared and merged. Or it can even happen when we have telepathic experiences of shared ideas. When this process extends to the blurring of boundaries between all higher-order beings, then all ideal content becomes shared and merged into oneness of the World ideal content. In other words, it is integrating all the ideal content, all the world of Immanent, into a unified "collection" or "set" of ideas/forms as the World ideal content.

However, this is not what Merrell-Wolff meant (and I am on the same page with him): "Every thought includes the whole of Eternity", which means that every though (or any other form) is already inseparable from and already merged with Eternity (where "Eternity" is a pointer to timeless Oneness, the transcendental aspect or Reality). Or, in the words of the Heart Sutra, "a thought is no other than Eternity". So, this realization of Eternity present in every thought and every form is not contingent upon blurring of any boundaries, it happens in a different way and it is a different kind of realization.

So, to me it actually sounds like two different meanings and two different kinds of oneness, which is not to say that one of them is wrong, but to say that both are to be realized and embraced. But the key is that they are not the same and should not be confused with one another.

[Lou Gold]

The oneness that Steiner or you speak is not at all what Christ and Buddha and all nondual traditions point to. For Steiner, oneness is "the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another", and for you, instead of or in addition to, it is "a spiritual soup of existence without boundaries", but those kinds of "oneness" only have to do with the world of Manynes, with the "immanent", while we are speaking about the "transcendental" aspect of reality.

You frequently refer to "transcendental Oneness", but I haven't seen a mention of "transcendental Manyness". I've quoted this many times in the past, from Merrell-Wolff's Experience and Philosophy:

At the deepest level of discernible thought there is a thinking that flows of itself. In its purity it employs none of the concepts that could be captured in definable words. It is fluidic rather than granular. It never isolates a definitive divided part, but everlastingly interblends them all. Every thought includes the whole of Eternity, and yet there are distinguishable thoughts. The unbroken Eternal flows before the mind, yet is endlessly colored anew with unlimited possibility. There is no labor in this thought. It simply is. It is unrelated to all desiring, all images, and all symbols.

This sounds to me a lot like Cleric's "the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another", but you deny that this is the true meaning of Oneness. One might note that Merrell-Wolff's mystical experience was of "transcendental Oneness" but was followed a month later of an experience of "transcendental Oneness/Manyness" (or as he put it, that Nirvana is Samsara). Not that a claim of "My mystic is more transcendent than yours" is of any help. But isn't this what you are doing, in saying Steiner's/Cleric's Oneness is wrong?

Scott,

I wonder if visuals work for you? Often, when I can't get something into words, the feeling within pushes forth or births an image. I'll share one that is precious for me. It is not an attempt to model or represent Oneness/Manyness but rather a vision that came forth from a strong inner unitive experience or awareness of it -- yikes, how I stumble for the words! Nevertheless, the image was born. It has been very much with me at this Easter time. It's not logical but it helps me with notions like One-and/or-Many.

[Stranger]

I hope in this way we can better understand the source of disagreements. It would be useful if next time we argue about Oneness or the multitude of paths that all lead to successful dying in their own ways, we ask ourselves "Do I at all want to know? Do I have the faith that it is possible to know? Or I'm completely satisfied with the storyboard on my soul's inner wall?"

Right, the answer is "I do want to know". But that is why it is important to know the difference between two kinds of oneness (see my answer to Scott above). If a mystic says "I know Oneness in Eternity, and so there is nothing there left for me to know" they will put a stop to the further evolution of their cognition and stagnate in the mystical reductionism. If a spiritual scientist says: "I'm on the path to oneness through merging with all the ideal content relevant to the Immanent World, and this will be all for me to know and there is nothing else beyond that which I need to know", then they will also limit their evolution of cognition because, if they disregard the gnosis of Eternity-Oneness, their knowledge will be one-sided, limited and distorted. So, again, it is important to understand that we are dealing here with two kinds of oneness and that both of them need to be embraced.

[ScottRoberts]

At the deepest level of discernible thought there is a thinking that flows of itself. In its purity it employs none of the concepts that could be captured in definable words. It is fluidic rather than granular. It never isolates a definitive divided part, but everlastingly interblends them all. Every thought includes the whole of Eternity, and yet there are distinguishable thoughts. The unbroken Eternal flows before the mind, yet is endlessly colored anew with unlimited possibility. There is no labor in this thought. It simply is. It is unrelated to all desiring, all images, and all symbols.

However, this is not what Merrell-Wolff meant (and I am on the same page with him): "Every thought includes the whole of Eternity", which means that every though (or any other form) is already inseparable from and already merged with Eternity (where "Eternity" is a pointer to timeless Oneness, the transcendental aspect or Reality).

But he goes on to say "and yet there are distinguishable thoughts." Oneness is not the transcendental aspect of Reality. Oneness/Manyness is.

Or, in the words of the Heart Sutra, "a thought is no other than Eternity".

But also Eternity is no other than thoughts. And one might add that Eternity is not other than Time, and Time is not other than Eternity.

So, this realization of Eternity present in every thought and every form is not contingent upon blurring of any boundaries, it happens in a different way and it is a different kind of realization.

So, to me it actually sounds like two different meanings and two different kinds of oneness, which is not to say that one of them is wrong, but to say that both are to be realized and embraced. But the key is that they are not the same and should not be confused with one another.

Yes, two different meanings. In one (yours) Oneness (Eternity) is privileged over Manyness and Eternity over Time. In the other (mine) there is no "transcendent Oneness". There is only "transcendent (or immanent, for that matter) Oneness/Manyness".

[Stranger]

But he goes on to say "and yet there are distinguishable thoughts." Oneness is not the transcendental aspect of Reality. Oneness/Manyness is.

Right, so, to rephrase it, it is realization of Oneness-Manyness (Eternity-thought). In our mundane state we only know thoughts, so in order to realize that, we need to realize the Eternity "side" of the Oneness-Manyness, and that will bring together the Oneness-Manyness into Super-Oneness.

Yes, two different meanings. In one (yours) Oneness (Eternity) is privileged over Manyness and Eternity over Time. In the other (mine) there is no "transcendent Oneness". There is only "transcendent (or immanent, for that matter) Oneness/Manyness".

So again, no privileges here. I never privilege or prioritize Oneness, let's make it clear. But the point is, you can not realize Oneness/Manynes if oyu only know Manyness. You also need to realize Oneness and its inseparability from Manyness so that the fullness of Oneness/Manynes can be realized. We are just playing with the "transcendent" word here moving it between "Oneness/Manynes" and Oneness only. Yes, I agree that Oneness/Manynes is transcendental in the full sense.

[Federica]

Whoever doesn't yet feel this need will have the greatest difficulty to understand why something like spiritual science has appeared on the scene of evolution. Conversely, those who feel that need will thirst for this possibility to grow beyond themselves, to know reality not only as a picture but by thrusting themselves into its living fabric. If there was no such thing as spiritual science these souls would be determined to discover it.

I hope in this way we can better understand the source of disagreements. It would be useful if next time we argue about Oneness or the multitude of paths that all lead to successful dying in their own ways, we ask ourselves "Do I at all want to know? Do I have the faith that it is possible to know? Or I'm completely satisfied with the storyboard on my soul's inner wall?"

Cleric, this way to put it exactly highlights the stakes, I really appreciate it!
I believe the real counterforce to the painful thirst for knowledge, as possibility to grow beyond oneself, is that we also have a tendency to get used to, and familiar with, pain and fear. We settle down inside the world they delineate, and before we know it, we have adopted them as normal boundaries of our whole reality. "Do I at all want to know?"

Lou has answered your question long ago. He has a very stable answer. He is happy with the decoration. He even continually shows us pictures of the endless decorative backdrops, in all their entertaining diversity. The storybord really is the perfect epitome here.

Eugene is less stable. He also has tendency to succumb to the convenience of a fully furnished ‘solution’. Still, something used to bother him with the off-the-shelf decoration, and he seemed to have an interest in grasping the soul influences:

which brings us back to the issue so well described by St. Paul from Ep. to Romans that I quoted so many times. He described it as the "law of sin" in the "flesh", but at our current stage of knowledge what is our understanding of it, where does it resides, what are the lawful structures that support and maintain this "law of sin" running and acting? Modern psychology would say that it resides in "subconsciousness" and developed through early stages of child cognitive development, modern evolutionary biology would explain it by inheriting survival mechanisms from our ancestors. Buddhists would say that these are the karmic patterns residing in so-called "alaya-vijnana", which is a sort of collective subconsciousness giving rise to both sense perceptions of the world and our compulsive thought and feeling patterns. But do we now know any better where these compulsive patterns reside, how they act, and what are the practical ways to deal with them as we grow towards the higher levels of cognition?

Or, in terms of of understanding the “How do I know?”:

we do not have the direct conscious access into the "guts" of this creative process. I tried for years in my meditative practice and still could not penetrate into these guts of Thinking layers where these sense perceptions and thoughts are being produced. The best I could do is to become not identified with them but just to maintain mindful awareness of them.

So basically, on the higher level of cognition we can creatively participate in and experience the thinking process in its full cycle. Then we extrapolate this process to the Cosmic scale and make a proposition that we likewise should be able to integrate into the layers of creative Cosmic Thinking where the sense perceptions and thoughts are generated. This is a reasonable assumption to make, but is there any experiential evidence to support it?

As said, the problem is, he thought he could address the thing with the manifold methods of secular science he's familiar with. But since he understood that the game is to actually deep dive into his own soul’s inner wall, directly, first person, not by searching the archives for experiential evidence in research papers, he has progressively resorted back to “You know what, the storyboard subscription works very well after all, moreover I’m good at adding flowery semantic touches to the room decoration”. Soul does not want to know, soul wants to freely range, or rage, while keeping thinking busy with staging the decorated storyboard. And that's how soul rolls!

[Lou Gold]

Whoever doesn't yet feel this need will have the greatest difficulty to understand why something like spiritual science has appeared on the scene of evolution. Conversely, those who feel that need will thirst for this possibility to grow beyond themselves, to know reality not only as a picture but by thrusting themselves into its living fabric. If there was no such thing as spiritual science these souls would be determined to discover it.

I hope in this way we can better understand the source of disagreements. It would be useful if next time we argue about Oneness or the multitude of paths that all lead to successful dying in their own ways, we ask ourselves "Do I at all want to know? Do I have the faith that it is possible to know? Or I'm completely satisfied with the storyboard on my soul's inner wall?"

Cleric, this way to put it exactly highlights the stakes, I really appreciate it!
I believe the real counterforce to the painful thirst for knowledge, as possibility to grow beyond oneself, is that we also have a tendency to get used to, and familiar with, pain and fear. We settle down inside the world they delineate, and before we know it, we have adopted them as normal boundaries of our whole reality. "Do I at all want to know?"

Lou has answered your question long ago. He has a very stable answer. He is happy with the decoration. He even continually shows us pictures of the endless decorative backdrops, in all their entertaining diversity. The storybord really is the perfect epitome here.

Eugene is less stable. He also has tendency to succumb to the convenience of a fully furnished ‘solution’. Still, something used to bother him with the off-the-shelf decoration, and he seemed to have an interest in grasping the soul influences:

which brings us back to the issue so well described by St. Paul from Ep. to Romans that I quoted so many times. He described it as the "law of sin" in the "flesh", but at our current stage of knowledge what is our understanding of it, where does it resides, what are the lawful structures that support and maintain this "law of sin" running and acting? Modern psychology would say that it resides in "subconsciousness" and developed through early stages of child cognitive development, modern evolutionary biology would explain it by inheriting survival mechanisms from our ancestors. Buddhists would say that these are the karmic patterns residing in so-called "alaya-vijnana", which is a sort of collective subconsciousness giving rise to both sense perceptions of the world and our compulsive thought and feeling patterns. But do we now know any better where these compulsive patterns reside, how they act, and what are the practical ways to deal with them as we grow towards the higher levels of cognition?

Or, in terms of of understanding the “How do I know?”:

we do not have the direct conscious access into the "guts" of this creative process. I tried for years in my meditative practice and still could not penetrate into these guts of Thinking layers where these sense perceptions and thoughts are being produced. The best I could do is to become not identified with them but just to maintain mindful awareness of them.

So basically, on the higher level of cognition we can creatively participate in and experience the thinking process in its full cycle. Then we extrapolate this process to the Cosmic scale and make a proposition that we likewise should be able to integrate into the layers of creative Cosmic Thinking where the sense perceptions and thoughts are generated. This is a reasonable assumption to make, but is there any experiential evidence to support it?

As said, the problem is, he thought he could address the thing with the manifold methods of secular science he's familiar with. But since he understood that the game is to actually deep dive into his own soul’s inner wall, directly, first person, not by searching the archives for experiential evidence in research papers, he has progressively resorted back to “You know what, the storyboard subscription works very well after all, moreover I’m good at adding flowery semantic touches to the room decoration”. Soul does not want to know, soul wants to freely range, or rage, while keeping thinking busy with staging the decorated storyboard. And that's how soul rolls!

Federica,

The experience (for me) is artistic more than logical, more like Blake saying, "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." Satisfaction is more like knowing when a particular decorative product is done and can be released in order to continue to the next making -- like satisfaction with a process of ongoing creating performing living and dying as best as one can.