Re: GA 13 - Rudolf Steiner's "Secret Science in Outline"
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 1:21 pm
Thanks for this synopsis, Federica.
I would only emphasize here that the ray of spiritual activity can partake in the etheric restorative nature insofar as it is strengthened, enlivened, and infused with moral ideals. So if by 'sharper' we mean it is simply more intensely fueled by passions and mechanical intellectual activity, then yes it will exhaust and deplete our physical-etheric nature more quickly. Yet it can also be sharpened in the higher sense, when it then rediscovers its living essence through the Imagination (made possible by the sacrificial deeds of Christ). Steiner alludes to this in a passage that I think was quoted recently, where he mentions how we can think imaginatively without it ever exhausting us - that curvature of our being has an infinite supply of ideal energy.
It seems to me the above can be related to this:
Here he is speaking of how the imaginative life penetrated more into the waking life in personalities such as Goethe and Schiller for karmic reasons. This allowed them to notice many aspects of their surrounding environment that are aliased from the average person with normal waking consciousness. Yet it can also carry people away from otherwise important vocations that plant the seeds for future evolution, as he referenced for Schiller. I'm not saying Bushnell was in the same situation, I have no idea, but I think there is a similar principle at work insofar as one becomes convinced that it is doing more for the Palestinian people to self-immolate in protest than to gradually transform oneself and one's environment from the inside-out. The way that the latter would benefit humanity can only be discerned by living thinking that perceives the spiritual threads weaving through the Cosmic evolutionary process, linking seemingly 'trivial' tasks on Earth to even the furthest reaches of Solar evolution.
Federica wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 12:19 pm However, if I am getting it right, these are two different destructive processes taking place in the human organization. On the one hand, the destructive nature of the chemical elements that make up our physical body - evident in the human corpse, the condition in which it is isolated from the restoring action of the life body - keeps us blindly true to the mineral nature of our current planetary incarnation, which is the densest; on the other hand, the destructive nature of our conscious activities, by which our entire organization is exhausted and consumed by the light of consciousness (and the sharper its ray the more exhausting the effect at the end of each day) is more like a sacrifice, not a blind destruction. By spending our mineral capital, we actually learn to deal with the light of consciousness, nurturing it and enlivening it. So this latter destructive process is our only means to honor and realize our human nature, instead of wasting it. And to the extent that we are not fully in control of it, bits and pieces of our activity fall back down at the level of our physicality, to increment and enlarge the first, blind process of destruction. In this way, whatever part of our activity is not enlightened and not fully mastered by the ray of our conscious activity - all the non-concentric, unconscious, uncontrolled or immoral thoughts, feelings, and actions we flow into - sink into our physical body and facilitate and accelerate its blindly self-destructive nature, by means of illnesses and accidents.
I would only emphasize here that the ray of spiritual activity can partake in the etheric restorative nature insofar as it is strengthened, enlivened, and infused with moral ideals. So if by 'sharper' we mean it is simply more intensely fueled by passions and mechanical intellectual activity, then yes it will exhaust and deplete our physical-etheric nature more quickly. Yet it can also be sharpened in the higher sense, when it then rediscovers its living essence through the Imagination (made possible by the sacrificial deeds of Christ). Steiner alludes to this in a passage that I think was quoted recently, where he mentions how we can think imaginatively without it ever exhausting us - that curvature of our being has an infinite supply of ideal energy.
Federica wrote:Steiner wrote:So, then, we find in the human being still another process: we see how out of the whole organism the so-called higher feelings and emotions emerge again in the soul. What is the characteristic of these? Whoever deals with this question without prejudice, but also without false asceticism, without false piety and hypocrisy, will say: What we may call the higher moral feelings and those moods in a man which develop into enthusiasm for all that is good, beautiful and true, for all that brings about the progress of the world, this is alive in us only because we are able, by the disposition of our heart and soul, to rise above everything originally implanted in us by instinct; so that, in our spiritual feelings, in our spiritual enthusiasm, we raise ourselves above all that the bodily organism alone can arouse. This can go so far that he whose enthusiasm is in his spiritual life, sets so much store by the object of it that it is a light thing for him even to give his physical life for the sake of what has inspired his higher moral and aesthetic feelings.
The bolded has brought to the forefront of my thoughts a question I've been pondering over the last two weeks, namely: how to understand a fact such as this.
It seems to me the above can be related to this:
Steiner, GA 172 Lecture 3 wrote:Schiller was also an important poet who dreamed much in the way I have described. Just imagine, however, that all those who in their youth were trained like Schiller to become doctors had given up the practice of medicine as he did and later, thanks to an extensive patronage, had been appointed “professor of history” without any real preparation or serious study of history! As a matter of fact, Schiller did deliver interesting lectures at the University of Jena, but his students did not get from them what they needed to learn. He also gradually stopped giving these university lectures and was happy when he did not have to give them anymore. Imagine that things would be the same with every professor of history or every young physician! Obviously, everything that is good also has its dark side. The world must be protected, so to speak, from standing still. It seems trivial to say this, but it is nevertheless a profound mystery-truth: not all people can dream in this way. The forces with which they dream must first be applied in the external world to something different so that through it a foundation may be created for a further evolution of the earth. It would come to a standstill were all men to dream as I have indicated.
Here he is speaking of how the imaginative life penetrated more into the waking life in personalities such as Goethe and Schiller for karmic reasons. This allowed them to notice many aspects of their surrounding environment that are aliased from the average person with normal waking consciousness. Yet it can also carry people away from otherwise important vocations that plant the seeds for future evolution, as he referenced for Schiller. I'm not saying Bushnell was in the same situation, I have no idea, but I think there is a similar principle at work insofar as one becomes convinced that it is doing more for the Palestinian people to self-immolate in protest than to gradually transform oneself and one's environment from the inside-out. The way that the latter would benefit humanity can only be discerned by living thinking that perceives the spiritual threads weaving through the Cosmic evolutionary process, linking seemingly 'trivial' tasks on Earth to even the furthest reaches of Solar evolution.