Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[Cleric]

And just as Steiner realized over 20 years after writing PoF that he need to say explicitly that when he talks about 'thinking' he means 'willing,' I can imagine a similar clarification that Schopenhauer either made or would have made if given the right context. Would I be shocked if somebody who has read every word of Schopenhauer said that Schopy did indeed make clear (or clealry implied) that cognition was a special case of will? Nope. Some people thought they showed Steiner was wrong in PoF because he didn't explicitly acknowledge that his thinking is identical with a form of willing. And so, yeah, he decided to make clear that even though he never said that in PoF or any of his early works, it was implied in his core points. Fair enough. I think both guys deserve the same kind charitable and cautious readings.

To make this clear for everyone else, I'll quote what Steiner added later to PoF:

Author's addition, 1918
In the preceding discussion I have pointed out the significant difference between thinking and all other activities of the soul, as a fact which presents itself to genuinely unprejudiced observation. Anyone who does not strive towards this unprejudiced observation will be tempted to bring against my arguments such objections as these: When I think about a rose, this after all only expresses a relation of my “I” to the rose, just as when I feel the beauty of the rose. There is a relation between “I” and object in the case of thinking just as much as in the case of feeling or perceiving. Such an objection leaves out of account the fact that only in the thinking activity does the “I” know itself to be one and the same being with that which is active, right into all the ramifications of this activity. With no other soul activity is this so completely the case. For example, in a feeling of pleasure it is perfectly possible for a more delicate observation to discriminate between the extent to which the “I” knows itself to be one and the same being with what is active, and the extent to which there is something passive in the “I” to which the pleasure merely presents itself. The same applies to the other soul activities. Above all one should not confuse the “having of thought-images” with the elaboration of thought by thinking. Thought-images may appear in the soul after the fashion of dreams, like vague intimations. But this is not thinking. True, someone might now say: If this is what you mean by “thinking”, then your thinking involves willing and you have to do not merely with thinking but also with the will in the thinking. However, this would simply justify us in saying: Genuine thinking must always be willed. But this is quite irrelevant to the characterization of thinking as this has been given in the preceding discussion. Granted that the nature of thinking necessarily implies its being willed, the point that matters is that nothing is willed which, in being carried out, does not appear to the “I” as an activity completely its own and under its own supervision. Indeed, we must say that owing to the very nature of thinking as here defined, it must appear to the observer as willed through and through. If we really make the effort to grasp everything that is relevant to a judgment about the nature of thinking, we cannot fail to see that this soul activity does have the unique character we have here described.

The Philosophy of Freedom, III. Thinking in the service of Knowledge

In our day, one will hardly come across a published book of PoF presenting edition prior to 1918, so it's safe to say that the misunderstanding of will vs. thinking should not arise at all.

I may be speaking here on Ashvin's behalf but I believe that although the name of the thread is Schopenhauer vs. Steiner, the goal is not to confront the historical (and frozen in time) figures of these philosophers. Instead we're surveying what is living in us as stimulation from them but must necessarily go further. I say that in order to make clear that I'm not trying to defend the historical figure of Steiner but the living reality he was pointing to.

The above quote makes it clear that there's no some primitive confrontation of thinking vs. willing. Steiner was human after all. Things that were intuitively transparent to him turned out to be stumbling stones for others only when they confronted PoF. This forced him to refine further the arguments in order to address the objections. As he himself says, this addendum doesn't at all change the meaning of anything said before, it only clarifies it further.

At the core of the vs. topic is the fact that for Schopenhauer the Will was in its essence blind (unconscious). Only at some stage does it attain to inner reflection. Steiner points out that the only will we know is that which is imbued with idea. The most intimate example of this is thinking. The point is that postulating the World Will (which is unconscious except within human bodies) as the foundation, is an act of thinking. It is not a given fact. Actually it can never be experienced as such (this Ashvin elaborated in his essay). We can never know that blind will exists as the foundation because in its very definition it is not consciously (knowingly) experienced. This defeats the whole purpose of trying to bridge the Kantian divide in this way. Yes, we recognize the part of the will that has become self-conscious within man so Schopenhauer was on to something when he sought the unity of reality within the will but he again brings the unknowable thing-in-itself into the picture when he says that the World Will outside the human being is unconscious. He certainly brings it closer to our experiential world but nevertheless remains forever inaccessible in the domain outside man.

To relate this to Eugene's objection. No one is claiming that when we think we have the whole reality. The only thing to recognize is that in thinking we have a tiny foothold on reality. It's the only part of reality for which the cause lies within the thing itself. If we comprehend this we'll understand why our thinking is the seed point from which our exploration of reality can begin. Everywhere else we find perceptions which confront us in such a way that their causes are unknown. That's why they provoke our desire for knowledge - we feel that we must find the causes of perceptions in order to make them complete. In thinking we have the only place in the World Content where the perceptions are inseparably united with the causes. This cause turns out to be active ideation. Spiritual activity which is meaningful. And to be meaningful means that we propel the activity as expression of an idea (and not blind urge). Scott addressed this above. "But thinking is not the whole story, there are other aspects". That's fine. As said, we don't claim that in the intellectual cognitive activity we have the whole reality. The only claim is that if we are to move towards the unveiling of the Great Mysteriousness, we can only do that through the evolution of our thinking activity because it is the only place where reality is self-explanatory. In certain sense, in the course of evolution the Great Mysteriousness will turn inside-out as a torus, as a smoke ring, twisting through its hole. It will grow out as a self-explanatory organism out of the seed point (the hole of the torus) of thinking.

But if you are a curious person, would not you still wonder what is this "something" that experiences thinking and ideas? Isn't it who you actually ARE?

This again shows that thinking and ideas are seen as something 'external' to our spiritual core. It is precisely through spiritual cognitive activity that we can understand more and more of this 'something'. Not by creating intellectual model of the 'something' (which you seem to imply every time) but by penetrating the causes within the 'something'. For example, even if I have accepted that consciousness is all there is, I'm still a human being - I have my temperament, character, opinions, prejudices and so on. I only understand what I actually am when I penetrate more and more into the causes of these things and this means to lift them from the subconscious into the conscious. If I'm rude, I'm simply playing out unconscious processes. I don't know what I actually am if I simply have the general knowledge that I'm consciousness having experiences of thinking, feeling and willing. I know in general what I am (I may have even experienced this in a mystical state), but in practice I know only my surface (even if it is surface without any ripples - Scott's relative nothingness is very good way to put it). I only know myself when I reach the actual inner processes which shape my rude behavior. This I cognize not as something external and abstract but as the very organic fabric of my being. So yes, I'm very curious to know what I actually am, but I'm not satisfied with the general and nebulous knowledge that "I'm consciousness experiencing the coming and going of phenomena" - even if I have this as a clear fact of direct experience in meditation. If I stay at this level I must answer for all things with the default "this is what consciousness wanted to experience. I'm rude because consciousness wanted to experience what it is to be rude." For me this doesn't at all satisfy my curiosity, it simply provides a 'wildcard' answer to everything, just as the naively religious man explains everything with God. This doesn't explain anything, it simply delegates the answer "don't worry God/consciousness takes care of these things, your job is simply to live out what they have provided for you". The fact is that the rudeness of my character can be known in intimate detail, which reveal the organic spiritual structure of my being. Only now my curiosity finds satisfaction because I find the real causes of the phenomena on the surface. This must be repeated because it seems it simply isn't taken seriously - by finding these causes I don't build abstract psychological model of myself, 'mere thoughts' about my true being, which nevertheless miss the 'direct experience' of that being. The very fact that once we reach the domains with the causes within our psychic life we are in position to make changes and alter our inner and outer conduct, already shows that we've reached something substantial. I can't do that through the general idea that "consciousness is at the grounds of existence". This knowledge in no way explains why I experience the concrete inner and outer landscape that I have, let alone allows me to alter my spiritual structure. If I avoid getting into the deeper details, which are the causes of the landscape, I simply replace them with the wildcard "well, that's what consciousness wanted to experience". I never reach to the true causes within that consciousness, which reveal how the mountains, the rivers, the human body and my character come into being. All this is taken to be optional curiosity which only deters my attention from the fundamental fact that I am the consciousness. Actually, precisely these 'optional' details stand between me (as limited Earthly self) and the reality of my essential being. Without these details I only speak about the essential being but I never attempt to approach it in its reality. To focus on "I'm the One consciousness" in no way approaches to its essence. I'm simply dissolving into the feeling of my Cosmic egohood, repelling anything that may raise questions to that experience of generic be-ing.

[Eugene I]

If I avoid getting into the deeper details, which are the causes of the landscape, I simply replace them with the wildcard "well, that's what consciousness wanted to experience". I never reach to the true causes within that consciousness, which reveal how the mountains, the rivers, the human body and my character come into being. All this is taken to be optional curiosity which only deters my attention from the fundamental fact that I am the consciousness. Actually, precisely these 'optional' details stand between me (as limited Earthly self) and the reality of my essential being. Without these details I only speak about the essential being but I never attempt to approach it in its reality. To focus on "I'm the One consciousness" in no way approaches to its essence. I'm simply dissolving into the feeling of my Cosmic egohood, repelling anything that may raise questions to that experience of generic be-ing.

Excellent, so I'm saying again 101-th time: I never ever talked about or advocated knowing ONLY "One consciousness" and "dissolving" into it, in fact I am strictly against such escapist approach. I'm talking about INTEGRATING the experiential knowledge of One consciousness together WITH the knowledge of the deeper details of the ideal content and its relations by thinking. Knowing the ideal content AND ALSO knowing-by-experience the One consciousness is what brings the fullness of the knowing of the wholeness of Reality together: experiential together with thinking, formless together with forms, Western together with Eastern. I just don't understand what's wrong with that?

[findingblanks]

Just for quick clarifications in case there are significant differences. I think that many of Steiner's students (including myself) do not notice when very natural and nearly unavoidable equivications are taking place with words like 'will', 'thinking', 'attach', etc.,

"The point is that postulating the World Will (which is unconscious except within human bodies) as the foundation, is an act of thinking. It is not a given fact."

One could read the above quote to at the very least imply that you believe Schopenhauer simply posted the Will as a given fact. I doubt you would make that claim because you obviously know that Schopenhauer motivated that conclusions with dozens of converging lines of thought, many of them the result of grasping the activity of thinking despite the fact that he didn't formulate that explicitly (just as Steiner didn't formulate many aspect of what he thought should be apparent in PoF).

"We can never know that blind will exists as the foundation because in its very definition it is not consciously (knowingly) experienced."

This kind of logic suggest that you would also agree that we can never know that animals or young children are not meta-conscious because by definition it is not consciously grasped. This implies that it is only a dead abstraction that can say with certainty that the slug isn't abstractly aware of its senstions. I think this approach to how Schop or anybody can grasp an idea like 'blind will' is too scholastic and shoves past much of the intricacy of what Schopenhauer is doing. The same kind of shoving happens to Steiner all the time and we, his students, need to remind those folks that getting lost in the forms of expression of a certain philosophical period is a lost cause in itself. All this said, my hunch is that you don't believe that it is only frigid abstraction that can lead us to an objective conclusion regarding the unreflected experiencing at certain stages of development. I know that there is one stream of Anthroposophy that claims only an Initiate can know that a slug isn't mentally writing poetry about its sensations. I don't subscribe to that stream Neither did Steiner. Nor does anyone here, I'd assume.

"Schopenhauer was on to something when he sought the unity of reality within the will but he again brings the unknowable thing-in-itself into the picture when he says that the World Will outside the human being is unconscious."

I won't waste time here to show that in many lecture cycles Steiner makes absolutely clear that The Father (the ground-floor of existence) is not a self-conscious entity reflecting on its plans to create this and that, but, rather, The Father is a profoundly wise unfolding of it's very nature and that unfolding implies a 'begetting' of "Self" that 'becomes' increasingly self-aware. So when we say that Schopenhauer is wrong in claiming that his fundamental reality isn't self-conscious, I disagree. I am not a Schopenhauer scholar. But from what some scholars and serious students of his work have pointed to specifically IN his work (like Bernardo), I think that Schopenhauer did much more than simply claim a 'dark' thing-in-itself must be presupposed as fundamental reality. Yet, all this said, I understand what inevitably must happen in our discourse if we insist on reading Schopenhauer's insights ONLY within Steiner's terms and approach. Of course then, by noticing how he put things and what he didn't say explicitly, we will notice all the insights that Schop did not have. Again, people do the same thing to Steiner - read his works only from within their favorite set of terms and insights. Schopenhauer didn't simply infer from logical blocks that fundamental reality deductively must be a 'blind will'; he used logic, observations and intensely experienced thinking to realize that was the case. Yes, like Steiner, he would of course need to modify and update and reground such claims depending on audience and schema, but neither man should be seen as simply positing their claims inferentially.

"If we comprehend this we'll understand why our thinking is the seed point from which our exploration of reality can begin."

And we'll realize that Schopenhauer -- regardless of how hey chose to linguistically build and express his insights -- recognized the ultimate unity of fundamental reality (the Will) and the nature of knowing that reality. I'm not equating their systems of thought, but if we can't see the different parts of the elephant that they are patting, we will continue to believe they are describing entirely different organisms. Or, on a similar note, if we imagine that one of these men was eyeing the entire elephant and the other wasn't, of course we will then 'correct' that man who wasn't seeing the whole. I think the evidence shows that each of them was 'touching' the fundamental aspect but then needing to frame it and translate it via their own complex personal-historical contexts.

"Everywhere else we find perceptions which confront us in such a way that their causes are unknown."

The actual experience of this 'unknown' is caused by our activity of course. And careful attention shows us that the 'unknown' quality of a so-called 'object' is dependent upon very precise knowings that we are simultaneously bringing to 'it'.

"That's why they provoke our desire for knowledge..."

The so-called 'object' does not provoke our desire for knowledge. That desire precedes the 'objects' that fall into our sensory-perceiving (which of course is already cognitive) and it shapes how they appear and which aspects of them we find mysterious or worthy of questioning. You probably agree with this and might find it irritiating that i say it in response to how you are framing it. That's fair, but I can't simply assume we are on the same page and how I hold Steiner's work and my experience doesn't let me frame it as if perceptions provoke my desire for knowledge. They certainty become enveloped within it and help carry it forward but that is not the same thing as claiming 'perceptions' have some kind of property that 'provokes' the craving for knowledge.

"we feel that we must find the causes of perceptions in order to make them complete."

If our starting point (as many people's is today) is the dry observer-space of The Idols Of The Study, we will certainly think of 'things out there' as interiorless objects which we do not participate that 'have causes' which we must discover in our thought. In original participation this wasn't the case because those so-called 'causes' actually 'spoke' to us from within the participated interiority. And from a space of final participation, it also is not the case because we start from a direct experience of our participating the appearances, therefore they are not 'objects of perception' that need us to 'attach' a corresponding concept. But I agree enough with how you put it to say that as long as we are speaking from final-participation we can certainly agree that the discourse between ourselves and the so-called 'object of perception' is livingly 'incomplete' and constantly in a state of becoming.

"In thinking we have the only place in the World Content where the perceptions are inseparably united with the causes. This cause turns out to be active ideation."

Let's imagine that Goethe is grasping a new aspect about of the nature of plants. His 'grasping' this insight right now is dependent upon his activity, yes. He is grasping/knowing/seeing a way in which the plant before him expresses its inseparable unity with this living Idea/Archetype. His grasping in this very moment depends upon Goethe's own active cognition. But the Unity he suddenly grasps does not. When he now turns to his sandwich, that Unity -- that truth about the inseparability of the manifested plant and the archetype -- remains. Now some of us are sophisticated Anthroposophists so we might want to jump and say, "But Goethe ADDS something essential by his seeing and grasping this - this is the redemption of nature that the human must provide!" Sure, but we mustn't equivocate. The issue of the redemption of nature is related to but not the same thing as what we are talking about when we say that hummingbird's unity is 'torn apart' by how our organization 'divides' it into a perception and an idea. We hopefully won't get lost in the kind of equivocation that comes up by also knowing that Goethe is participation in evolution. That is true. And it is true that when he starts enjoying his lunch, the plant is still 'with' the living archetype.

And then your beautiful imagery of smoke-holes and evolution speaks, at least to me, very clearly to the insight that there is a process in which a Whole is moving ever-more towards a 'self-explanatory' multi-aspectual (and over time) experience via a slowly but surely evolving humanity.

"It is precisely through spiritual cognitive activity that we can understand more and more of this 'something'."

Yes, and one reason we might sometimes want to NOT refer to this knowing and this activity as 'thinking' is because we want to make clear that it has very little in common with what is often referred to by 'thinking', even that kind of fluid thinking in which a human is consciously active.

"The very fact that once we reach the domains with the causes within our psychic life we are in position to make changes and alter our inner and outer conduct, already shows that we've reached something substantial. I can't do that through the general idea that "consciousness is at the grounds of existence".

Yes, the same goes with the claim that 'thinking is the fundamental experience of spirit" (or whatever other way one frames the primacy of 'cognition). It is relatively useless as a general idea (it might get the ball rolling in a good, just as 'consciousness is at the ground..' can as well), but only my own unique active way of penetrating into some aspect of the 'living truth' will be truly meaningful. This makes me think of the few times that Steiner made clear that he much more often found that simple farmers who were uneducated were living and demonstrating what he was trying to say in PoF than active thinkers and social activists. We can easily misunderstand what Steiner meant with such ideas as 'penetrating to the actual causes' if we don't realize that the simple farmer's way of deeply understanding himself need not at all look anything like the 'deep' and 'powerful' penetration of cognitive activity that is often presupposed by certain personality dispositions. Of course if asked to 'explain' their 'insights' the farmer might scratch his head and say something very simple. It is the mistake of our own projections that would miss the way deep and penetrating insights need not have the structure that comes within philosophic frames.

"To focus on "I'm the One consciousness" in no way approaches to its essence. I'm simply dissolving into the feeling of my Cosmic egohood, repelling anything that may raise questions to that experience of generic be-ing."

This is an example of a very common kind of claim made by my fellow students of the good doctor. I think it is slightly correct but mainly based in forms of intellectual projection. Sure, of course, just as 'i'm one with consciousness' can be used to lead one into a soup of generality' so can any mantra taken from PoF or Khulewind. Of course a student of those guys will be more inclined to calibrate their use of the meditation in a way that hopefully avoids this...But that also goes for a student of Schopenhauer or Kastrup who is working meditatively to grasp the way in which their 'alter' is both distinct and unified with mind-at-large. We can easily cherry-pick to ensure that the other viewpoint is 'lacking' someting essential in this regards. But, yes, of course I'd agree that it is very unuseful to take up some mantra of fundamental reality in an imprecise way that leads one to mistake their dreamy experience for profound insight.

In my opinion Steiner did not accurately grasp or portray Schopenhauer. And from what I can tell about how Schopenhauer read other philosophers, I feel fairly confident that he would have made the same kind of moves against Steiner if he could have read PoF. He would have found simple phrases and sentences and used their 'logic' to show that Steiner had not build a solid ground-floor. Fans of each will most likely agree with how their teacher frames the other thinker's ground-floor. At the end of the day I guess this hardly matters, especially if one is aware that their teacher's texts are merely one means towards carrying forward their own precise inner work/path...rather than being a 'map' of reality itself.

[Cleric]

Excellent, so I'm saying again 101-th time: I never ever talked about or advocated knowing ONLY "One consciousness" and "dissolving" into it, in fact I am strictly against such escapist approach. I'm talking about INTEGRATING the experiential knowledge of One consciousness together WITH the knowledge of the deeper details of the ideal content and its relations by thinking. Knowing the ideal content AND ALSO knowing-by-experience the One consciousness is what brings the fullness of the knowing of the wholeness of Reality together: experiential together with thinking, formless together with forms, Western together with Eastern. I just don't understand what's wrong with that?

I know. I'm talking about escapism. But this is how things seem to look like every time When I begin to give concrete details you say that I'm prioritizing ideas and missing the permanent aspects. When I try to show the place of the permanent (general truths) within the world of concrete facts, you see that as projecting escapism.

Let's speak concretely. When I observe the sensory world it becomes richer, denser and more beautiful when the perceptions are weaved through with ideas. Without the ideas I have plain colors, forms, tones. With the ideas I read the sensory world. It is similar with the inner world, although much more difficult to demonstrate. Our thinking, feeling, willing are weaved out of habitual fragments. We can recognize them with our intellect but in higher cognition they become perceptible realities. This happens when we manage to concentrate our spiritual activity and penetrate cognitively the laminar soul flow mentioned earlier. Then this laminar soul flow receives depth-structure (ideal, not spatial). We don't have intellectual thoughts but we live within higher order soul processes, which are like carrier waves for the elements of our ordinary consciousness (the analogy falls short because in telecommunications the carrier and the signal are independent, while in our case the regular thoughts, feelings, etc. are fractally similar to the higher order processes, yet of different character). Here we can refer to Scott's relative nothingness, although I'm not speaking of nothingness but the soul flow (which is the experience of the soul/astral body/realm). For example, psychedelic users can forcefully experience the soul flow in the event of ego dissolution, which is nothing else but the capitulation of the intellect and surrendering to the flow of the astral body. Yet no one can make any sense of these experiences without spiritual-scientific training. Our ability to cognize within the higher order complexes of spiritual activity can be attained only gradually through fully conscious exercises. As explained many times, these soul processes are not comprehended simply as abstract concepts, they have temporal structure. They are like organs of our being that we grow together with, interact with. Our profession, our interests, our loves, fears, hopes, our philosophy - all of these are real spiritual complexes, pulsating, living, well defined, and in fact often quite independent of each other. In our ordinary state our spiritual activity fuses with that colony of living organisms and says "I". Further we find the interactions of human beings whose souls are intertwined with ours, something which we generally call karma.

With all the above I just wanted to give few examples of the way our spiritual experience grows and becomes richer as we gain self-knowledge. Please note that I'm not speaking of Freudian psychoanalysis, building of intellectual models of our soul life. These are real (as you call - direct) perceptions revealing meaningful relations, processes and beings. All of this not only doesn't deter us from the central truth that we're Consciousness experiencing the lower and higher contents but it fulfils that truth, it becomes more and more real. And these things are not only to satisfy our curiosity but they give us the Light of Wisdom such that we can conduct our activity in a much more comprehensive ways, with much deeper insight about the consequences of our actions and the way we can be useful for the unfoldment of the metamorphic process of the whole humanity.

In your view this is only one half - the ideal, Western side - while the nondual Eastern side is neglected. I don't see it that way because it is precisely through our growing spiritually together with the World organism that we better and better understand the contents of the One Consciousness within which everything exists. I tried to give concrete examples of this. The question for me now is what are the concrete things that you see missing from this? Why would you call it one-sided? I have a guess. I expect that you'll say that these things are interesting and there's nothing wrong in exploring them but we are also free to or not to take them in consideration. And this is certainly true - nothing can force us to take them in consideration. But nothing also excuses us when our actions trigger lawful responses in the Cosmic organism. Ignoring the Cosmic structure by expecting that is has influence over us only while in a body is a fully legitimate belief but it doesn't save us from consequences, just as a wall won't make an exception for us just because we believe that we can ignore it and walk through it.

[findingblanks]

"When I observe the sensory world it becomes richer, denser and more beautiful when the perceptions are weaved through with ideas. Without the ideas I have plain colors, forms, tones."

While I'd hope that most people could read that sentence and know what you mean in general terms, I feel that in this context it is important to say that the 'plain' experience isn't due to lacking ideas. It is 'plain' in exactly *because* of the kinds of ideas that are shaping it. We can call these ideas the "idols of the study" or whatever phrase captures our understanding of how it requires a specific kind of idea to deaden our experience as we look across a landscape.

Since this discussion board isn't about sharing general expressions, I hope this isn't taken as a nit-pick. It seems the main point of this thread is to be specific about what we are claiming to be the case about specific phenomena and causes.

But I certainly know what you mean about the experience of 'plain'. Within Steiner communities of thinkers and doers, there is a strong tendency to think of there being an ontological reality of 'bare' color, shapes, sounds that require an 'idea' or 'concept' to be attached to them in order to take on life. This is partly due to misunderstanding Steiner's point but also strongly due to the ways Steiner put his early ideas into words AND (this is the taboo part for many people) because Steiner hadn't yet clearly groked his own experiences. So part of my needing to dive in and say that the 'plain' experience is the result of a very specific kind of idea is because I spend quite a bit of time speaking to my Steiner friends and trying to make them see that they aren't actually attacking concepts to ontologically bare precepts. What they imagine as ontologically bare precepts are also the result of a very specific kind of idea functioning in their experience. Anyway, there you go.

[Eugene I]

In your view this is only one half - the ideal, Western side - while the nondual Eastern side is neglected. I don't see it that way because it is precisely through our growing spiritually together with the World organism that we better and better understand the contents of the One Consciousness within which everything exists. I tried to give concrete examples of this. The question for me now is what are the concrete things that you see missing from this? Why would you call it one-sided? I have a guess. I expect that you'll say that these things are interesting and there's nothing wrong in exploring them but we are also free to or not to take them in consideration. And this is certainly true - nothing can force us to take them in consideration. But nothing also excuses us when our actions trigger lawful responses in the Cosmic organism. Ignoring the Cosmic structure by expecting that is has influence over us only while in a body is a fully legitimate belief but it doesn't save us from consequences, just as a wall won't make an exception for us just because we believe that we can ignore it and walk through it.

"it is precisely through our growing spiritually together with the World organism that we better and better understand the contents of the One Consciousness within which everything exists."

Absolutely agree, and we should by all means keep developing towards that expansion and encompassing the richness of ideal content and relations, including all the minor details of it. There is no need to ignore anything in that richness. I'm not suggesting to neglect even a tiny bits from the Steiner's/yours PoF, it is all great and a way to go. I am ONLY saying that the overall encompassing knowledge of Reality can be only further enriched (without ignoring or neglecting anything) by also adding to that PoF the non-dual experiential and intuitive insight into the Oneness of Consciousness in its formless aspects (which comes from the Eastern traditions).

I expect that you'll say that these things are interesting and there's nothing wrong in exploring them but we are also free to or not to take them in consideration.

No, I will absolutely not say that! Even though we are free not to take them into consideration, I'm not suggesting that at all. We definitely should take them into consideration, but ALSO take into consideration the One Consciousness, so that our consideration will be more complete and encompassing.

[Cleric]

"When I observe the sensory world it becomes richer, denser and more beautiful when the perceptions are weaved through with ideas. Without the ideas I have plain colors, forms, tones."

While I'd hope that most people could read that sentence and know what you mean in general terms, I feel that in this context it is important to say that the 'plain' experience isn't due to lacking ideas. It is 'plain' in exactly *because* of the kinds of ideas that are shaping it. We can call these ideas the "idols of the study" or whatever phrase captures our understanding of how it requires a specific kind of idea to deaden our experience as we look across a landscape.

This kind of objection will only sound like a needless nit-pick to somebody who thinks this discussion board is for the purpose of having causal conversations. I know that the whole point of this thread is to be specific about what we are claiming to be the case about specific phenomena and causes.

But I certainly know what you mean about the experience of 'plain'. Within Steiner communities of thinkers and doers, there is a strong tendency to think of there being an ontological reality of 'plain' or 'bare' color, shapes, sounds that require an 'idea' or 'concept' to be attached to them in order to take on life. This is partly due to misunderstanding Steiner's point but also strongly due to the ways Steiner put his early ideas into words AND (this is the taboo part for many people) because Steiner hadn't yet clearly groked his own experiences. So part of me need to dive in and say that the 'plain' experience is the result of a very specific kind of idea is because I spend quite a bit of time speaking to my Steiner friends and trying to make them see that they aren't actually attacking concepts to ontologically bare precepts. What they imagine as ontologically bare precepts are also the result of a very specific kind of idea functioning in their experience. Anyway, hope that wasn't too annoying.

Thanks for this and previous responses. I don't have much time to write, otherwise I would respond in more details.

I agree with the above that we don't have bare percepts, there's always ideal content. Even if I observe some alien artefact which doesn't look as anything I've seen before, I'll still have some colorful blob perception which when penetrated with my attention (which is also a kind of spiritual activity) will be experienced together with a vague idea in the sort of 'strange thing'. The artefact will become richer in meaning when I begin to recognize its parts, functions and so on. It's similar with a book. If I don't know how to read, I see a book and enjoy the 'plain' letters which for me are only ink shapes but still they have some meaning (ideal content). Reading adds a whole new layer of ideal content. The visual perception hasn't really changed but the density and richness of ideal content has increased.

"Schopenhauer was on to something when he sought the unity of reality within the will but he again brings the unknowable thing-in-itself into the picture when he says that the World Will outside the human being is unconscious."

I won't waste time here to show that in many lecture cycles Steiner makes absolutely clear that The Father (the ground-floor of existence) is not a self-conscious entity reflecting on its plans to create this and that, but, rather, The Father is a profoundly wise unfolding of it's very nature and that unfolding implies a 'begetting' of "Self" that 'becomes' increasingly self-aware. So when we say that Schopenhauer is wrong in claiming that his fundamental reality isn't self-conscious, I disagree. I am not a Schopenhauer scholar. But from what some scholars and serious students of his work have pointed to specifically IN his work (like Bernardo), I think that Schopenhauer did much more than simply claim a 'dark' thing-in-itself must be presupposed as fundamental reality. Yet, all this said, I understand what inevitably must happen in our discourse if we insist on reading Schopenhauer's insights ONLY within Steiner's terms and approach. Of course then, by noticing how he put things and what he didn't say explicitly, we will notice all the insights that Schop did not have. Again, people do the same thing to Steiner - read his works only from within their favorite set of terms and insights. Schopenhauer didn't simply infer from logical blocks that fundamental reality deductively must be a 'blind will'; he used logic, observations and intensely experienced thinking to realize that was the case. Yes, like Steiner, he would of course need to modify and update and reground such claims depending on audience and schema, but neither man should be seen as simply positing their claims inferentially.

As a matter of fact I'm interested to see at least one of the quotes you mention, just to get a hint of the context (if it's not too much trouble). I'm not saying this to challenge what you say but because I'm truly interested.
We must remember that there's 'spiritual relativity'. In short, as you know, even though man was slowly growing in consciousness through the Saturn, Sun, Moon periods, at all times there were beings at the most varied stages of consciousness. So we can't say that the whole Cosmos began as unconscious Father-blob and it gradually moved towards consciousness.

The above has also relation to the fact how do we know that infants are not metacognitive. Actually we can know that through the higher forms of consciousness. We can even know what a crystal consciousness is like, even though within the crystal itself there's not yet "I" that can reflect the experience. But in a sense we can illuminate the crystals physical body with our higher bodies and experience what a crystal body reflects back to us as consciousness. It is similar with the infant. There is objective way to know what an infant can and can't experience.
This also holds true for the sea of Will. Once again I'll use Scott's term 'relative nothingness', I find it useful. In certain sense Schopy is correct to speak of completely instinctive will, because when this sea of chaotic will is experienced upclose the Spirit can't recognize its reflection there which we call unconsciousness. But at the same time there're other beings which sacrifice their being so that it can become the surging sea of will. They keep their consciousness but let go their substance, so to speak, such that it can become the arena for the development of other conscious perspectives. We have spiritual relativity again. From certain perspective we have nothingness and complete unconsciousness deep within the chaotic will substance but from another we have a fully conscious act of beings letting go of their orderly will-nature, such that it can be used as 'raw material' for new creations.
But this goes well beyond our immediate topic. In PoF we're talking about things that anyone can experience.

Let's imagine that Goethe is grasping a new aspect about of the nature of plants. His 'grasping' this insight right now is dependent upon his activity, yes. He is grasping/knowing/seeing a way in which the plant before him expresses its inseparable unity with this living Idea/Archetype. His grasping in this very moment depends upon Goethe's own active cognition. But the Unity he suddenly grasps does not. When he now turns to his sandwich, that Unity -- that truth about the inseparability of the manifested plant and the archetype -- remains. Now some of us are sophisticated Anthroposophists so we might want to jump and say, "But Goethe ADDS something essential by his seeing and grasping this - this is the redemption of nature that the human must provide!" Sure, but we mustn't equivocate. The issue of the redemption of nature is related to but not the same thing as what we are talking about when we say that hummingbird's unity is 'torn apart' by how our organization 'divides' it into a perception and an idea. We hopefully won't get lost in the kind of equivocation that comes up by also knowing that Goethe is participation in evolution. That is true. And it is true that when he starts enjoying his lunch, the plant is still 'with' the living archetype.

I'm not sure I could follow your argument exactly. I would say (probably what you meant) that it's again a matter of relative perspectives. The connection of the perception of the hummingbird with the concept of it has significance for our perspective and not for the hummingbird. It is a metamorphosis of our spiritual organization. These transformations can of course reverberate then to other beings. The mathematical concepts Newton connected with his observations affected the whole evolution of humanity. We must first redeem our own spiritual organization. It is we who are torn apart.

[Cleric]

No, I will absolutely not say that! Even though we are free not to take them into consideration, I'm not suggesting that at all. We definitely should take them into consideration, but ALSO take into consideration the One Consciousness, so that our consideration will be more complete and encompassing.

OK. Let's use me as example I accept the Oneness of Consciousness. Yet you say that I must "ALSO take into consideration the One Consciousness, so that our consideration will be more complete and encompassing." In other words, I'm puzzled because I take it in full consideration, but since you say that I must take it into consideration, clearly you have something more in mind. If you would have to give me practical and concrete advice, what would you suggest that I work on? What exactly you see missing which needs to be balanced out, in what way the Oneness of Consciousness is neglected?

[findingblanks]

"The artefact will become richer in meaning when I begin to recognize its parts, functions and so on."

We are on much of the same page, but I would need to say that maybe your experience of the alien object would become richer as you discovered what it did, but maybe not. Depending upon how you cognitively took it up as 'an alien object', it could become increasingly less rich if for whatever reason you aren't that into what it does. Where I'm sure we agree is that it changes as you discover aspects of its functioning; it becomes 'more meaningful' in that there is no a context in which you can place it and generate more questions. But a little thought experimenting can help us see that if somebody had blocked you from learning about the objects function, you may have developed much deeper insights into some aspects of the alien's society by simply dwelling on the form itself. By learning its function your attention could move away from something that was implicitly being 'noticed' as you examined the form itself. This seems like a small point I am making, but it is another instance of the larger point so I make it at the expense of being annoying.

Yes, until we know the language the book is written in, we have utterly no access to the messages it contains. We will want to avoid any forms of thought that incline us towards thinking we 'add' or 'attach' meaning so the shapes of what we will see as 'letters.'

"So we can't say that the whole Cosmos began as unconscious Father-blob and it gradually moved towards consciousness."

Because nearly all of my Steiner lecture cycles are boxed up in our storage from our recent(ish) move, I can't dive into the ones in which he speaks specifically of "The Father" or "Ground being" in relationship to all that is begotten from It. But if I have time later, I will do a little electronic searching to show that Steiner certainly had conceptions of an ontological primitive that conforms the to basic concept of a 'first cause' that causes all but isn't caused itself.

It wouldn't be a "Father-blob" because it would be the exact and-- you might say miraculous-- intricacy from which all is made possible and actual. It is the meaning of every true Word. It is the Word, spoken or unspoken. It would only appear 'blobby' from an outside and somewhat abstract perspective. But I get your gist.

In the context of our exploring Bernardo's-relatively-uninformed-take-on-Steiner's-relatively-uninformed-take-on-Schopenhauer's-3,000-page-take-on-the-nature-of-the-Will I'd rather not get into issues of what clairvoyant vision can tell us exactly about this or that. And I think we find support in refraining from those additions by the fact that Steiner felt that he could make his points absolutely clear regarding the nature of these core things to any careful reader of his time. I always find it precious to read the letters young Steiner wrote after publishing The Philosophy Of Freedom in hopes of it finding sympathetic readers. And I find it very touching that young Steiner even expected his book to change the minds of thinkers who he knew had diametrically opposed understandings. Of course, it didn't take young Steiner long to grow up a bit and feel great disappointment that he was misunderstood by many of the people he had most wished to influence. Along the same lines, we find examples of his claiming that certain readers grasped exactly the points he wanted to make (like his dear friend Rosa Mayreder. All to say, even if we deny higher visions and theories about Saturn/Moon/etc., we can stay very precise about the topic at hand.

Finally, my main point about the process of discovering the nature of reality is that we should refrain from thinking in terms of discovering 'the' concept of a thing and attaching it to the thing. At best this is a very clumsy shorthand for talking about the experience of discovery and at worst it is just incredibly wrong and misguided. And misguiding. . I actually believe that it is in Steiner constant adjustments to how he tried to describe this process that we learn the most about various snags and presuppositions he was struggling with very much unawares. But, as you said regarding some of what you wrote, that's another story. Good chatting.

[Eugene I]

OK. Let's use me as example I accept the Oneness of Consciousness. Yet you say that I must "ALSO take into consideration the One Consciousness, so that our consideration will be more complete and encompassing." In other words, I'm puzzled because I take it in full consideration, but since you say that I must take it into consideration, clearly you have something more in mind. If you would have to give me practical and concrete advice, what would you suggest that I work on? What exactly you see missing which needs to be balanced out, in what way the Oneness of Consciousness is neglected?

Cleric, I'm glad you are open to see the missing pieces. As I explained in my previous posts, the Oneness of Consciousness in its fullness can be realized only by embracing the formless aspects of Consciousness in addition to and together with the knowledge of the ideal content (forms). If we only know the forms (ideas, ideal content, ideal relations) with thinking, surely there is Oneness of Consciousness within the ideal content (exactly as you said), but if the formless is left neglected, such realization of Oneness is incomplete, because the full Oneness of Consciousness necessarily includes all aspects of Reality, including formless. It's like a coin with two sides: of course each side is no other than the coin, but that does not mean that if we only know on side then we know the whole coin. To know the whole coin, we need to look at both sides. Likewise, Consciousness has two aspects - forms/ideas and formless, they are both no other than Consciousness and are simply two aspects of it, yet each has unique qualities, and so, knowing only one aspect and neglecting the other would make such knowledge of the Oneness incomplete.

But the problem with the formless side is that, because the formless is not an idea, thinking can only make an approximate idea about the formless, but this knowledge of the formless by thinking is never the same as experiencing the formless. Any ideas of formless are usually quite inadequate when they are not based on the direct experiencing of formless. So, the only way to know the formless as it "actually is" is by direct experiencing it. Such experience also brings realization of the fundamental Oneness of Consciousness in its formless aspect. Because formless is the same in every form and every idea, it is like a "glue" that unites everything into oneness (in addition to the oneness of the ideal content through its inter-relations). Once it is experienced, thinking can "process" this experience and develop more appropriate ideal reflection of it to complement and complete its knowledge of Reality with all knowable aspects embraced. So, to know the formless, thinking alone is not enough, but pure "thoughtless" experience of formless without thinking is also not enough, so for the realization of formless both are necessarily needed.

As I said before, no miracles happen and we do not become omniscient and do not start flying when we experientially realize the formless. It's just that we start experiencing the oneness of everything, not only knowing it by thinking, and such experiencing brings harmony, peace and love and naturally dissolves our selfish/egoic unconscious patterns that are dissonant with the experience of oneness. Psychologically everyone can test it for themselves: if we only have an idea of oneness in our thinking, this knowledge is quite fragile because every time we are caught by egoic emotions, we immediately forget those beautiful ideas and start acting like selfish apes. But when we actually see the oneness as a fact of Reality, we do not get so easily disrupted (even though it still happens, but just less easily). So, such experience facilitates our development and growth from egoic half-monkeys into mature and stable spiritual personalities. But that does not cancel the importance of the development of thinking. Like the Reality has two sides (formless-form), likewise our development has two sides - progression in the knowledge of forms by thinking, and progression in the deepening of the experiential-intellectual knowledge of formless, with both sides complementing and facilitating each other.