GA 13 - Rudolf Steiner's "Secret Science in Outline"
Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2024 10:15 pm
I thought I would open a thread to collect thoughts specifically arising from this book, that I plan to read along with the online reading group Urphänomen (since I can't attend their Tuesday meetings).
Chapter I seems to have a continued introductory character. Now reading Chapter II - The nature of humanity - I have been slightly surprised by the affirmation that, for the new student of spiritual science, it's necessary to comprehend the nature of man, first by reading its narration, rather then by first working at developing the faculties that would allow to discover that same nature as direct supersensible experience:
Study-meditation is given as a precondition to develop supersensible knowing. Probably one way to see it is that, since myth creates language and not the other way around - as Barfield said - familiarizing oneself with our collective human 'mythology' (cosmology) that is our original, ever-present experiential flow, opens the way to the recognition of the language of that collective unfolding - the language (Logos) of ideal, concentrical interconnectedness whose alphabet is then progressively discovered in the practice of concentrative meditation.
Chapter I seems to have a continued introductory character. Now reading Chapter II - The nature of humanity - I have been slightly surprised by the affirmation that, for the new student of spiritual science, it's necessary to comprehend the nature of man, first by reading its narration, rather then by first working at developing the faculties that would allow to discover that same nature as direct supersensible experience:
The way man can attain such observation, so that the ‘hidden reality’ becomes as manifest to him as are the phenomena of the sense-world to his ordinary vision, will be dealt with in a later chapter. Here, the results of supersensible observation must first be described. As has already been pointed out, information about the path to the attainment of higher faculties of cognition can only be of value to a man when he has first made himself acquainted, through simple narrative, with that which supersensible research reveals. In this domain it is indeed possible to comprehend what one cannot yet observe. Nay more, the right path to seership is one that takes its start from such comprehension.
Study-meditation is given as a precondition to develop supersensible knowing. Probably one way to see it is that, since myth creates language and not the other way around - as Barfield said - familiarizing oneself with our collective human 'mythology' (cosmology) that is our original, ever-present experiential flow, opens the way to the recognition of the language of that collective unfolding - the language (Logos) of ideal, concentrical interconnectedness whose alphabet is then progressively discovered in the practice of concentrative meditation.