AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 11:47 pm ...let's take another quote from Steiner. The question here is simple - what is the purpose of Steiner mentioning these things below and do we gain a better understanding of these facts if we exert our thinking-will in a novel direction when washing our hands, or interacting with water more generally, or if we simply read them passively as interesting facts? When I put it this way, I am sure you will feel it is a silly question and say, of course, we should actively exert our thinking-will, without question. In which case, why do you see the hand-washing 'consecration' as something so different and 'arbitrary'?
Steiner wrote:Everything around us even if material, is a revelation of spirit. Matter has to be thought of in regard to spirit as ice is to water; matter is formed out of spirit. If you like you may call it consolidated spirit. Therefore if we come in contact with any substance, we contact the spirit in that substance. Any contact we make with substance, in so far as this is material, is Maya (illusion). In reality it is the spirit we encounter.
The way we come in touch with the spirit in water, when we wash our hands for instance, is seen — when life is observed with sharpened senses — to have a great influence on our whole disposition, however often we wash them. There are natures that have a certain preference for washing their hands, they must wash at once if they touch anything dirty. These natures are related in a quite special way to their surroundings. They are not restricted merely to what is material, for it is as if a fine force within the material substance begins to affect them, and that they have established the connection I mentioned between their hands and the element of water. Such people are even seen to possess, in an entirely healthy sense, more sensitive natures, finer powers of observation than others. They know at once, for instance, if they encounter anyone of a brutal or of a kindly nature. Whereas those others who endure dirt on their hands are actually of a coarser nature, and show by such ways that they have raised a wall between themselves and the more intimate relationships with the surrounding world. This is a fact and, if you like, it can be proved ethnographically. Pass through and observe the various countries of the world. You are then able to say: — “Here or there people wash their hands more.” Observe the relationship between such people, observe how different the relationship is between friend and friend, between acquaintance and acquaintance, in regions where hands are more frequently washed than in regions where walls have been raised between them owing to this being done less frequently.
Such things have the value of natural laws, Other connections can cancel them. If we throw a stone through the air, the line of its flight describes a parabole. But if the stone is caught by the wind the parabole is not there. This shows that we have to know the conditions before certain relationships can be observed correctly!
Whence does this knowledge come? It comes from clairvoyance, for it is revealed to this consciousness how finely the hands are permeated by soul and spirit qualities. This is so much the case that a special relationship of the hands to water is apparent, greater than in the case of the human countenance, and greater still than in respect of the surface of other parts of the human body. This must not be understood as an objection in any way to bathing and washing, but rather as throwing light on certain relationships. It is only to show how very differently man's soul and spirit-nature is related to his various members, and how differently this is impressed on them.
You will find it hard to believe, for instance, that anyone could suffer injury in his astral body through washing his hands too frequently. But this must be considered in its widest aspect. It depends on the maintenance of a healthy relationship between man and the surrounding world — that is, between the astral body of man and the surrounding world — through the relation-ship of his hands to water. For this reason excess in this is hardly possible.
If people think only in a materialistic way, clinging with their thoughts to what is material they say: — “What is good for the hands is good for the rest of the body.” Showing that they do not note the fine differences between them and the other members.
Yes - we should actively exert our thinking-will. I will try to reformulate the question about the hand-washing consecration.
As I already said, the activity as clarified by Cleric has solved the question:
Cleric wrote:The idea was simple - that everything in our sensory life can be seen through deeper meaning. Cleaning is something that we see everywhere in the living kingdoms. Even a single cell has to eliminate waste. But all these things also have their spiritual archetypes. So the exercise is more about connecting the physical action with higher meaning. There's no danger of falling into superstition here. We're just recognizing that the physical act is embedded into much more encompassing and meaningful inner life. We simply draw the parallel that just as our physical body can be purified, so the same is true for our psychic life. And not only that there's a parallel but in a sense the physical cleaning is the convoluted manifestation of the spiritual archetype. Thus by recognizing this we already work a tiny bit towards the spiritualization of the physical world, attuning it back to the higher flow.
If we call the above “consecration” - becoming aware of the pervasive connections between physical and spiritual through heightened attention to how we navigate our flow of transformation - I have obviously no issue with such activities.
Similarly, if OMA, or Cleric, or anyone else able to translate higher cognition into human concepts, were to tell me: “Know that the spiritual meaning of water that we know in the physical world is such and such, hence I recommend to pay attention to such and such gestures, and to recall such particular formula”, I also wouldn’t have any problem.
Now, based on how I understood the initial suggestion of consecration - again, this has been clarified since in satisfactory way, but because you keep asking me, I will refer to that again - what seemed problematic to me is if the student, while not understanding the nature of the said connections between, for example, physical water and the world of spirit, is invited to still work with the gesture, not simply by paying attention to water perceptions, striving to bring as much of the intuitive context as possible into consciousness (ceremonial exercise) but also by making up an arbitrary formula of his invention - a fantasy, really, in the sense Cleric uses this word - that formulates a wish for a certain effect ("may the water, or the grape, or the walk across the room, bring me such and such"), so not by freely entrusting the effect to a higher being (prayer, which would be ok) but by entrusting it under condition ("please, Spirit, such and such should come to me not by the mysterious ways of divine grace, but through my walk across the room, that I don't understand other than sensorily"). In other words, what I was concerned with was the risk for the student to end up formulating a fantasy and projecting it into will. Now, a fantasy projected into will is superstition, as I see it. This is the problematic aspect that came to mind when I first read that suggestion to consecrate perceptions (before Cleric clarified how he intended it).
To repeat, things would stand differently, if I knew - directly in higher cognition or through study, for example by studying an OMA lecture that proposes concentration and/or formulae for water - that my physical gestures with water, or my walking across the room, actually mean such and such, and so the experiences can be consecrated, and verbally reinforced, by a certain formula, or mantra, or prayer, that I would learn from someone who is conscious of the relevant connections. Then, I wouldn't see anything problematic (if I did, I should equally frown upon any mantra or prayer, which of course I don’t do).