Philosophical Speculations

Since JP was mentioned so often on this forum I ordered his book „we who wrestle with god“ (the German version, I hope the translation is a good one) . I watched a couple more of his lectures and I’m really impressed. He seems to be a deep thinking individual, who doesn’t try to answer a question directly, when it comes to topics like Theology or philosophy. Besides that I’m currently re-reading PoF and since I became more interested in philosophy, I’ll read riddles of philosophy. Is there anyone who has read it and if so is it a good and solid introduction to history of philosophical ideas ?

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:49 pm Since JP was mentioned so often on this forum I ordered his book „we who wrestle with god“ (the German version, I hope the translation is a good one) . I watched a couple more of his lectures and I’m really impressed. He seems to be a deep thinking individual, who doesn’t try to answer a question directly, when it comes to topics like Theology or philosophy. Besides that I’m currently re-reading PoF and since I became more interested in philosophy, I’ll read riddles of philosophy. Is there anyone who has read it and if so is it a good and solid introduction to history of philosophical ideas ?

The Riddles of Philosophy (both parts 1 and 2) have been of the greatest value to me. They are very dense but at the same time everything is cohered within the context of the evolutionary history of humanity. In other words, it's not some dry and fragmentary summary of different individualities and their philosophies but a fluid journey through the evolution of consciousness in the last few millennia. This higher-order flow is the main thing. Then, from that perspective, we begin to grasp the philosophers and their ideas as temporally developed milestones of the overall evolution of consciousness.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:49 pm Since JP was mentioned so often on this forum I ordered his book „we who wrestle with god“ (the German version, I hope the translation is a good one) . I watched a couple more of his lectures and I’m really impressed. He seems to be a deep thinking individual, who doesn’t try to answer a question directly, when it comes to topics like Theology or philosophy. Besides that I’m currently re-reading PoF and since I became more interested in philosophy, I’ll read riddles of philosophy. Is there anyone who has read it and if so is it a good and solid introduction to history of philosophical ideas ?

I agree with Cleric, it's important to approach Riddles of Philosophy in a way that we can survey the archetypal movements of consciousness that have developed in the modern age. Steiner will dedicate chapters to certain themes of modern philosophy and focus on particular philosophers within those themes, but it's really interesting how he will also jump back and forth between various personalities and their philosophies within those themes, comparing and contrasting. This is a clear sign that he is inviting us to exercise our imaginative muscles at a more integrated level than the typical linearized 'history of philosophy'.

Actually I have been reviewing those texts recently and some of the quotes I have shared recently (like Hegel) were drawn from them. Here is another great one from Schelling which reveals a preliminary intuition of the spiritual scientific method that would emerge (except the part of the "highest and last reflection" being man):

The necessary trend of all natural science is to proceed from nature toward intelligence. This, and nothing else, is at the bottom of the tendency to bring theory into natural phenomena. The highest perfection of natural science would be the perfect transfiguration of all laws of nature into laws of imagination and thinking. The phenomena (the material element) must completely vanish and only the laws (the formal element) must remain. This is the reason for the fact that the more the law-structure in nature, itself, emerges, as if it were breaking the crust, the more the covering element vanishes. The phenomena themselves become more spiritual and finally disappear. The phenomena of optics are nothing but a geometry, the lines of which are drawn by the light, and this light, itself, is already of an ambiguous materiality. In the phenomena of magnetism, all material traces have already vanished. Of the phenomena of gravity, which, even according to natural scientists, can only be understood as a direct spiritual effect of action into distance, nothing is left but their law, the application of which is the mechanism of the celestial motions on a large scale. The completed theory of nature would be the one through which the whole of nature would dissolve into intelligence. The inanimate and consciousless products of nature are only unsuccessful attempts of nature to reflect itself, and the so-called dead nature is, in general, an immature intelligence, so that the intelligent character shines through unconsciously in its phenomena. The highest aim of nature—to become completely objective to itself—can be reached by it only through the highest and last reflection, which is man, or, more generally speaking, what we call reason, through which nature returns in its own track and whereby it becomes evident that nature originally is identical with what is known in us as the intelligent and conscious element.

JP is another such thinker like Fichte, Hegel, or Schelling, although obviously drawing on the modern scientific research that has unfolded since then. Of all the current non-Anthroposophical thinkers who explore existential questions in books, lectures, interviews, and discussions, I think you will mine the most meaningful orientation from him. It was JP who re-sparked my interest in philosophical-scientific thought and led me to BK's idealism and this forum, as well as to Owen Barfield since there was great overlap in their evolutionary views of consciousness.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 2:07 pm

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:49 pm Since JP was mentioned so often on this forum I ordered his book „we who wrestle with god“ (the German version, I hope the translation is a good one) . I watched a couple more of his lectures and I’m really impressed. He seems to be a deep thinking individual, who doesn’t try to answer a question directly, when it comes to topics like Theology or philosophy. Besides that I’m currently re-reading PoF and since I became more interested in philosophy, I’ll read riddles of philosophy. Is there anyone who has read it and if so is it a good and solid introduction to history of philosophical ideas ?

I agree with Cleric, it's important to approach Riddles of Philosophy in a way that we can survey the archetypal movements of consciousness that have developed in the modern age. Steiner will dedicate chapters to certain themes of modern philosophy and focus on particular philosophers within those themes, but it's really interesting how he will also jump back and forth between various personalities and their philosophies within those themes, comparing and contrasting. This is a clear sign that he is inviting us to exercise our imaginative muscles at a more integrated level than the typical linearized 'history of philosophy'.

Actually I have been reviewing those texts recently and some of the quotes I have shared recently (like Hegel) were drawn from them. Here is another great one from Schelling which reveals a preliminary intuition of the spiritual scientific method that would emerge (except the part of the "highest and last reflection" being man):

The necessary trend of all natural science is to proceed from nature toward intelligence. This, and nothing else, is at the bottom of the tendency to bring theory into natural phenomena. The highest perfection of natural science would be the perfect transfiguration of all laws of nature into laws of imagination and thinking. The phenomena (the material element) must completely vanish and only the laws (the formal element) must remain. This is the reason for the fact that the more the law-structure in nature, itself, emerges, as if it were breaking the crust, the more the covering element vanishes. The phenomena themselves become more spiritual and finally disappear. The phenomena of optics are nothing but a geometry, the lines of which are drawn by the light, and this light, itself, is already of an ambiguous materiality. In the phenomena of magnetism, all material traces have already vanished. Of the phenomena of gravity, which, even according to natural scientists, can only be understood as a direct spiritual effect of action into distance, nothing is left but their law, the application of which is the mechanism of the celestial motions on a large scale. The completed theory of nature would be the one through which the whole of nature would dissolve into intelligence. The inanimate and consciousless products of nature are only unsuccessful attempts of nature to reflect itself, and the so-called dead nature is, in general, an immature intelligence, so that the intelligent character shines through unconsciously in its phenomena. The highest aim of nature—to become completely objective to itself—can be reached by it only through the highest and last reflection, which is man, or, more generally speaking, what we call reason, through which nature returns in its own track and whereby it becomes evident that nature originally is identical with what is known in us as the intelligent and conscious element.

JP is another such thinker like Fichte, Hegel, or Schelling, although obviously drawing on the modern scientific research that has unfolded since then. Of all the current non-Anthroposophical thinkers who explore existential questions in books, lectures, interviews, and discussions, I think you will mine the most meaningful orientation from him. It was JP who re-sparked my interest in philosophical-scientific thought and led me to BK's idealism and this forum, as well as to Owen Barfield since there was great overlap in their evolutionary views of consciousness.

Interesting, I ordered the book and will start reading it besides the other books. I sense that I have a better grasp of ideas, if I’m in a state of flow of different ideas, meaning that I read a couple books at a time in a circular pattern. I don’t really read one book at one time, although sometimes that would be better.

I don’t have good experience with anthroposophical books that came after Steiner. I find Georg kühlewind is a good option, but the early epistemological works (GA 1-4) are only really intelligible for me when I read Steiner and/or Clerics essays. After I have read more philosophical books, I’m fascinated more then before reading PoF. In chapter 2 Steiner really talks about the heart of all philosophical problems in the field of metaphysics. I thought JW would resonate with it, since he is a „heideggerian“ and he came to similar conclusions.


JP is really fascinating in certain aspects. I watched a very good lecture about phenomenology by him.
I’m exited to read his book on Christianity. It is interesting to see someone like Jp because he can be seen as a instance of the evolution of thinking. He is a very big public speaker so he and his audience can be seen as a representation of the „now“ of evolution. From what I have seen so far he seems to be influenced from the last century thought and tries to think it further and combine it into a new understanding of Christianity that is more real and living (and esoteric too in the sense of the meaning „inner“). His reputation isn’t the best, there are many memes about him for example the propositions he makes in this video are often laughed at and criticized. I think it comes trough a huge misunderstanding of the meaning he tries to share. Atheist/sceptics try to drag him into a understanding of god, that is in accordance with there presupposition about matter. God is a „thing“ existing outside of the black box with all the stars in it, and somehow magically create black boxes. I like it that he doesn’t hesitate with answering such questions. But his book will hopefully deepen my understanding of his view points.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 6:17 pm Interesting, I ordered the book and will start reading it besides the other books. I sense that I have a better grasp of ideas, if I’m in a state of flow of different ideas, meaning that I read a couple books at a time in a circular pattern. I don’t really read one book at one time, although sometimes that would be better.

I don’t have good experience with anthroposophical books that came after Steiner. I find Georg kühlewind is a good option, but the early epistemological works (GA 1-4) are only really intelligible for me when I read Steiner and/or Clerics essays. After I have read more philosophical books, I’m fascinated more then before reading PoF. In chapter 2 Steiner really talks about the heart of all philosophical problems in the field of metaphysics. I thought JW would resonate with it, since he is a „heideggerian“ and he came to similar conclusions.

That's great - I experience a similar thing when revisiting the same writings of Steiner or Cleric as my intuitive orientation strengthens. I think to begin with, this is the most profound evidence of our inner cognitive development, as we begin to feel like we are encountering brand new content and corresponding intuitions when revisiting these works, harmonizing many facts of experience through them. Thus we begin to intimately realize the perceptual spectrum truly embeds inexhaustible depth of meaning that can be liberated through our ever-expanding and ever-deepening inner activity.

JP is really fascinating in certain aspects. I watched a very good lecture about phenomenology by him.

Yes I really appreciated his personality lectures as well. I think his clinical background and his focus on the Biblical narratives helps him concretize the phenomenological philosophical method to a large extent. This is exactly what we need to flesh out our intuitions of spiritual principles of experience - a wide spectrum of living experiences (at least living through them in our imagination to begin with) so that we can easily locate how the intuitive curvatures of meaningful activity are structuring and steering our first-person perspective and rhythms of experience. This is why I think JP would very quickly understand how the supersensible ideas of esoteric science elucidates the ordinary flow of living experience, if he ever had the opportunity to encounter it through Steiner's phenomenological framework.

After all this time it seems to me that there are certain things that with great certainty predict whether one will find their way toward the spiritual depth in this incarnation. In the crudest sense, it has to do with Flat vs. Deep MAL. JP actually gives an example that leads right in this direction:


(26:52 - 28:17)

This is a very simple illustration but can be used as a kind of self-test. Unless one is willing to perceive their existence within such contextuality - even if completely intellectually in the beginning - there's simply no way to approach spiritual reality.

Being willing to understand our existence in such a contextual manner by no means guarantees that one will persist on the path to reality, but it is certainly a necessary condition.

Without the sense of such contextual, one inevitably reaches some kind of flat spirituality. So far JW gives much more indications for the latter (for example through the dichotomy of the reduced and conscious state vs the incomprehensible aesthetic/Cosmic) but let's how things will go.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2024 6:40 pm

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 6:17 pm Interesting, I ordered the book and will start reading it besides the other books. I sense that I have a better grasp of ideas, if I’m in a state of flow of different ideas, meaning that I read a couple books at a time in a circular pattern. I don’t really read one book at one time, although sometimes that would be better.

I don’t have good experience with anthroposophical books that came after Steiner. I find Georg kühlewind is a good option, but the early epistemological works (GA 1-4) are only really intelligible for me when I read Steiner and/or Clerics essays. After I have read more philosophical books, I’m fascinated more then before reading PoF. In chapter 2 Steiner really talks about the heart of all philosophical problems in the field of metaphysics. I thought JW would resonate with it, since he is a „heideggerian“ and he came to similar conclusions.

That's great - I experience a similar thing when revisiting the same writings of Steiner or Cleric as my intuitive orientation strengthens. I think to begin with, this is the most profound evidence of our inner cognitive development, as we begin to feel like we are encountering brand new content and corresponding intuitions when revisiting these works, harmonizing many facts of experience through them. Thus we begin to intimately realize the perceptual spectrum truly embeds inexhaustible depth of meaning that can be liberated through our ever-expanding and ever-deepening inner activity.

JP is really fascinating in certain aspects. I watched a very good lecture about phenomenology by him.

Yes I really appreciated his personality lectures as well. I think his clinical background and his focus on the Biblical narratives helps him concretize the phenomenological philosophical method to a large extent. This is exactly what we need to flesh out our intuitions of spiritual principles of experience - a wide spectrum of living experiences (at least living through them in our imagination to begin with) so that we can easily locate how the intuitive curvatures of meaningful activity are structuring and steering our first-person perspective and rhythms of experience. This is why I think JP would very quickly understand how the supersensible ideas of esoteric science elucidates the ordinary flow of living experience, if he ever had the opportunity to encounter it through Steiner's phenomenological framework.

This is why I think JP would very quickly understand how the supersensible ideas of esoteric science elucidates the ordinary flow of living experience, if he ever had the opportunity to encounter it through Steiner's phenomenological framework.

That is the interesting part. His phenomenological and psychological study got him to a similar perspective of PoF (PoF is maybe more explicit but there are very big similarities), from where he know can gain a broader understanding of religious and occult ideas. He is intuiting higher order curvatures and probing their meaning. It is interesting to observe how he is influenced by thinkers of the last century who began to studied higher order spaces of „being“ trough phenomenological study (like cg Jung and Heidegger ). Now he focuses on Christianity which is very interesting. I’ll start to read his book tomorrow and I’m sure there is much to learn. I’ll share my thoughts on the book.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2024 3:01 am That is the interesting part. His phenomenological and psychological study got him to a similar perspective of PoF (PoF is maybe more explicit but there are very big similarities), from where he know can gain a broader understanding of religious and occult ideas. He is intuiting higher order curvatures and probing their meaning. It is interesting to observe how he is influenced by thinkers of the last century who began to studied higher order spaces of „being“ trough phenomenological study (like cg Jung and Heidegger ). Now he focuses on Christianity which is very interesting. I’ll start to read his book tomorrow and I’m sure there is much to learn. I’ll share my thoughts on the book.

Yeah, and related to what Cleric said, I think what really helps is that he approached the Christian faith through a phenomenological exploration, similar to how Barfield's philological exploration led him back to the evolutionary foundations of Christianity (which was then independently confirmed, reinforced, and deepened through his engagement with Steiner). I think if JP encountered Steiner, we would at least get another Barfield.

On the other hand, if one starts from the Christian faith without the phenomenological foundation, it can become an obstacle. There are many reasons why, but I was thinking recently about the case of Jonathan Pageau. He is very similar to JP in his thinking except he began from Christianity and his Orthodox theological foundation. We can see how he similarly intuits and probes the higher-order curvatures for ex. in this video.





Yet as I was watching this video, I started thinking about how the intellect and its familiar gestures can still feel quite comfortable with these images and the Gospel narratives. As we know, that is the whole essence of the Christ impulse in its initial stages that have unfolded for the last 2k years - it liberates the human spirit from atavistic clairvoyance and develops degrees of thinking freedom first from within intellectual gestures. When the latter gestures are combined with devotional feelings, they can feel like they provide quite powerful and profound understanding and insight into reality. That is why many commentators are correct to link Christianity with the rise of the scientific age and materialism. Steiner has pointed out how the latter, if understood from a higher vantage point, is the best intellectual proof of the Gospel narrative, i.e. that the Cosmic Spirit incarnated and united with the physical plane and brought about the means for the latter to be resurrected through human thinking which restores the ideal coherence of sensory appearances.

Yet that presents a unique obstacle for Christians in our time who intuit the contextual depth but are still struggling to imagine how one could be spiritually active within that depth. They rightly discern that we should not go back to ancient practices for atavistic clairvoyance, but in the process they sort of discard all the ancient wisdom and mythology as well. They remain singularly focused on the post-Christian era and, although the mode of consciousness was still quite different for the first 1,000 years or so, the cognitive outputs feel very similar to our own. For example, it's much easier to feel how the ancient Egyptian pictorial script and rituals must have been born from a different mode of consciousness than our own. And if we livingly study those things, we may start to intuit how our own spiritual activity can grow into similar strata from which those images and practices were born. With Christian theology, liturgy, literature, art, icons, and so on, it's much easier to convince ourselves that they can be adequately understood and practiced from within the intellectual scale of gestures.

Again, from the spiritual scientific perspective, it is certainly true that we need to first work on perfecting the intellectual scale and cultivating those deeper Christian feelings before ascending to higher cognitive scales, but we also see this as as stepping stone to bring the fruits of the intellect into the latter such that we can more directly illuminate and participate in the realization of Christian ideals. For someone like Pageau, on the other hand, any movement toward the higher cognitive scales is automatically seen as a regression toward atavistic states and practices. I don't know if he has encountered Steiner, but he has commented on occult Christianity as essentially a dangerous journey into black magic, trying to work with the elemental forces through practices that were condemned by the Old Testament and the Church. He simply doesn't suspect that the spirit can grow on the other side, so to speak, into the archetypal ideal currents that help us more effectively align the concentric layers of our be-ing with the high Christian ideals, to experience the risen Christ himself just as the apostles and St. Paul did and prepare the next evolutionary stage of the Christ impulse on Earth.


PS - Merry Christmas and Holy Nights to all on the forum!

Cleric wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2024 7:43 pm After all this time it seems to me that there are certain things that with great certainty predict whether one will find their way toward the spiritual depth in this incarnation. In the crudest sense, it has to do with Flat vs. Deep MAL. JP actually gives an example that leads right in this direction:

Here is a new lecture from JP that displays astounding sensitivity to Deep MAL. In this particular section, we can see the great overlap with phenomenology of spiritual activity as Steiner and we have discussed it on this forum. It also focuses particularly on the 'word-layer' of cognition which is 'sandwiched' between the mysterious microcosmic and macrocosmic domains of meaning, thus where our ordinary thinking is most in focus. While listening, I was reminded of this old graphic from Cleric:






It is also heartening to see there are thinkers like JP out there seeding this intuition of contextual hierarchy of meaning amongst so many young people in colleges and universities!

I’m right now reading Charles Taylor’s sources of self and I can highly recommend it. He tries to explain the evolution of the self in human history. Nicholas smith from Substack introduced me into him and I’m really impressed. It seems to be a big point for our future evolution, to understand how our thinking is metamorphosing and conditioning the way we see the world. It’s beautiful to see that there isn’t only Steiner in the academic world who seems to recognize these things