Anthroposophy for Dummies

[Federica]

Ashvin,

I recognize that you are right in the main principle expressed here. I understand that one can only proceed case-by-case and rigid, in-bulk rejection of experiences should be avoided. But there’s one question I want to highlight. It has to do with “our” versus “my” in:

every manifest phenomenon that has been imploded through our spiritual activity into the karmic organism will also be redeemed through that spiritual activity as it is continually being enlivened and ennobled. In that sense, I don't want my spiritual activity to miss the opportunities for those possibilities to manifest because I have shuffled some manifest phenomena off the redemptive gradient altogether.

Because the consequences of our activity in the world are always collective to some extent, how do you ponder the chasing of redemption opportunities for your spiritual activity with the effects on others who are less developed, when it comes to making decisions in the areas you have control over? In the example of this forum, my understanding is that for some, the chances they will start walking on a path leading to the truth of reality are very low anyway, but for others - I consider myself part of this second group - the possibility to use the remainder of this incarnation to bring about some improvements is at hand. Don’t you think there could be a risk of harsh divide, when certain challenges can lift the spiritual activity of a very small few and at the same time make the way ahead more impervious, or inaccessble, for those who are motivated, but not quite stabilized in their progression yet?

In other words, if we take your example of GPT test, it’s not that I fear that it would become sentient and take over the forum. It’s not that. Rather, I feel there is right now a small open window to allow for some level of ‘scale up’ in spiritual development, so that it can touch slightly more people. Progression has now become possible for a little larger group of motivated seekers, since Cosmic conditions on one side, and our increasing thirst for rediscovering the spiritual on the other side are operating positively, opening up some breaches into the thick veil of materialistic mindset. This is evident nowadays in science, in philosophy, and in society at large. Concomitantly, though, the adversarial forces are also scaling up their offensive, by deploying means such as generative AI, for instance, with the evident goal to close up that window by impairing thinking activity, the only ‘vehicle’ through which we have a chance to extend consciousness through the real fabric of our shared becoming. This push will rapidly increase in magnitude and extension, of course.

So the window is rapidly closing under the presure of those forces, because the general longing and opening towards the spiritual world is a much slower and more diffused process. It's a much bigger and slower gear. For these reasons, my feeling is that it’s crucial to do everything in our power right now to get as many of us through this small window now, when it’s still open, even if it means a temporary sacrifice, and some temporarily missed possibilities of redemption, for those very few who have enough sight to trust their redemptive abilities completely.

What you recently said regarding the general way Cleric’s posts are received, will only become worse under the ongoing attacks against free thinking. We can be sure it will. You said:

This is practically how everyone feels when encountering the posts here, especially Cleric's. They know there is something of immense value embedded within the posts, that the metaphors and so forth speak to something essential to our living experience, and do so in surprisingly imaginative ways, but we also sense the effort to progressively uncover that value will stretch our familiar and comfortable beliefs and habits too far from 'neutral' position.

In comparison, generative AI will look even more appealing than it already does. In this exact moment, there's still hope since we can still benefit from the impulse towards freedom developed through the scientific era, whilst we are also moved by a longing for the rediscovery of our true self, our full fledged, spiritual self. So we are living through a lucky moment, in which some of us are able to pursue the latter impulse by redirecting with some focus the forces of the former, that still have some strength to them. But our freedom is being jeopardized by adversarial forces from multiple directions. As Cleric wrote today, spiritual freedom is being dangerously understood as ‘easy freedom’ as “license to pursue and experience anything that passes like a storm of desires through the soul”:

The human “I” wants to be free. It wants to undress all taboos, all norms, and experience unrestrained freedom. What philosophy could be better suited for this, than the idea that at its core, our self is something completely undetermined, we’re an absolutely free spirit, who can live its fantasies in the senso-spiritual matrix?

This attack against our freedom that leverages our soul nature, adds up to the direct attack against free thinking. Thinking should be easy and seamless, with the help of AI, and that's how the open passage towards higher development with be soon closed. In this sense, I understand and agree when you say that “we need more trust in our living and creative spiritual activity to deal with things on a case-by-case basis”, but I also think that too many of us have not yet reached the sort of break-even point where enough visibility has been gained to generate and support that trust. So maybe the urgent priority is to try and keep that passage towards higher development open a little longer, by sacrificing part of the gradient, so that a few more can make it to the beginning of the right path before the window is shut on humanity, to cut off an immeasurable majority of it. What do you think?

Federica,

Right, these are good questions to contemplate. We should be clear that we are wading into the mysterious depths of karmic flows and there is no rational calculation we can do to figure out the best course of action. That is more true of spiritual experience more broadly, but especially when we speak of the divergent streams of ascending and descending spiritual evolution. 

Through the mysterious workings of destiny, it is safe to say that the descending stream will be lifted back up precisely through the future spiritual activity of the 'select few' who manage to continue raising their heads above the flows. These things are hard to comprehend from our myopic perspective, which is why we need the humility to know what we don't know and a certain amount of faith in the wise workings of the Cosmos. We can only control what is within the proximate sphere of our own spiritual activity, including how that activity relates to and influences our fellow beings. We surely can and should inform that activity with a more general picture of World evolution and the forces at play. But I would again caution against making this the exclusive factor by which we evaluate our case-by-case decisions toward the high ideals. 

The broader karmic flows are simply beyond our control and purview. Unfortunately, it is safe to say significant portions of the population will succumb to the forces that seek to externalize spiritual activity. These are ticking time bombs whose fuses were lit long ago and cannot be easily snuffed out, if at all. That doesn't mean we should give up trying to help people, but we probably need to approach it in more subtle ways than we are normally used to. We simply can't wage a war against the adversarial forces on all fronts, neither in our personal life nor our collective life. Yet, at the same time, we can have trust that, when we focus on our inner work, the opportunities for broader redemptive transformation will become ripe. I saw a movie some time ago with a great imaginative rendering of the Christ impulse. 

The plot is basically that some people go searching for the 'fountain of youth' in a cave, yet when they descend into the cave something interesting happens. They look back through the opening at the surface and see the sky is alternating very rapidly between light and dark. Not only that, but they see the Sun appears to be moving in one direction, from east to west let's say, and then back in the same direction from west to east. So they eventually conclude that every second they spend down there, entire days, months, seasons, years, and decades are going by at the surface. As they make their way further into the cave, the Time-decoherence becomes even greater, more frictious and sluggish. They encounter various historical segments of humanity along the way, eventually encountering the most primitive men. All of that is of course an image for the spiritual involution into the Time-decohered sensory spectrum. It is also interesting how, in this way, all the historical segments of humanity can be imaged 'side by side' in space, which also reflects the reality of our situation - many streams of evolution exist side by side within us and across the World as a whole.  

Then something very mysterious happens:





There are many interesting spiritual ideas presented here. Most clearly, the Time-ladder is the Christ impulse that bridged the higher and lower worlds and continues to progressively unfold from various perspectives. Because of the differentiated Time-flow, the surface progressed so far that humanity (perhaps in connection with alien intelligences) developed new technology that could serve the purpose of the ultimate rescue mission for those still stuck in the decohered temporal depths of the cave. We could say Cosmic Ideas and Earthly perceptions were brought completely in-phase, which then instantiates the Time-ladder of cognition through which humanity climbs up and Cosmic intelligence reaches down to meet us. I would remind here of Cleric's post on the 'stroboscopic' flashes of intuition that we experience in our ideas. As we climb the ladder, these flashes become more lively, more consistent, and more encompassing.  This also reminds me of the saying, "the night is darkest before the dawn", which points to a real intuition of how the lowest is bridged with the highest.

Everyone is going through this evolutionary process, yet how conscious we are of the true nature of the higher world and our connection with it determines how we experience it unfolding. At first, the woman experiences it as a very frightening experience, with alien hands grabbing at her. Eventually, those hands put the oxygen mask on her and she realizes they were only interested in her well-being the whole time. The adversarial forces can't stop the Time-ladder that has already been won through the Christ impulse, so they try to obscure our consciousness of what's actually happening. There are also people climbing up and through the portal one at a time, so each person who ascends then continues to work in the higher world to support the rescue mission of their friends who remained below.  This is an image of the great rescue mission we are all involved in, and I would say this is the superordinate principle of World evolution that should be kept as the foundation stone of our intuitive context when evaluating decisions to be made on the physical plane.

It is a rhythmic process by which we continually bring the light of these overarching principles to bear on particular circumstances - neither pole of the Time-ladder should take undue priority in our stream of experience. We can't presume to know how exactly the Time-ladder is manifesting in future circumstances or what role we will play. For me, the GPT question we are discussing here simply stands in for the whole inner landscape we need to cultivate in order to work more harmoniously with the mysterious higher worlds, both during life (waking life and perhaps sleeping life too) and after death. We don't need to make any broad rational calculations about how to rescue the most people in the shortest amount of time, because those things are already being worked out through higher-order logic by departed souls and angelic intelligences. As we do the inner work and resonate more and more with these intelligences, our flashes of intuition will convey their messages to us, but for that we need to remain completely and humbly open to the fact we don't already know what the messages are.

The other thing to briefly mention and contemplate - what does it mean to "sacrifice part of the gradient"? If we are naturally inclined to delve into mechanical technologies and use them to relieve our thinking effort, i.e. most people prior to entering the initiatory path, then yes it could be called a sacrifice to take a hard line and avoid that tendency. Yet once we are on the intuitive thinking path, and we have committed to developing our thinking forces in freedom, I think we should reflect on whether it is more of a sacrifice to take the hard line or to remain fluid and open to the redemptive possibilities inherent in all new circumstances? The former gives us a ready-at-hand rule to impose on such circumstances, relieving us of any further thinking effort, while the latter requires us to be continuously attentive and creative in our thinking. It is no easy or convenient thing to work out redemptive uses for rapidly developing mechanical technologies.

Ashvin,

Thank you for providing this large intuitive overview. I see it would help to consider future concrete situations, though there's not much I can probe at the moment. Regarding your last paragraph, what I mean by “sacrificing part of the gradient” is on a case by case basis. It's not an a priori decision, but the recognition that there could be situations where the free, conscious decision is to wait, rather than go all into the 'object of redemption'. Then, the possibility to "miss" something is not given, as long as the decision is free, even if "we can't presume to know how exactly the Time-ladder is manifesting in future circumstances or what role we will play", because action (activity) is to be engaged anyway.

Maybe another take on this same question would be to look at the balance between case-by-case approach and principles. You are for a case-by-case approach here, and I agree, to avoid "ready-at-hand rule to impose on such circumstances, relieving us of any further thinking effort". But one could ask, what other than that does a principle - the principles we search for and extract from the indistinct conglomerate of reality, like gold nuggets that we then elevate above time and space, by seeing in them morphological paradigms, structures? As soon as we extend, or reuse a principle (which is just about the only thing one can do with a principle) we are also relieving us from any further thinking effort in a sense?

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

Thank you for providing this large intuitive overview. I see it would help to consider future concrete situations, though there's not much I can probe at the moment. Regarding your last paragraph, what I mean by “sacrificing part of the gradient” is on a case by case basis. It's not an a priori decision, but the recognition that there could be situations where the free, conscious decision is to wait, rather than go all into the 'object of redemption'. Then, the possibility to "miss" something is not given, as long as the decision is free, even if "we can't presume to know how exactly the Time-ladder is manifesting in future circumstances or what role we will play", because action (activity) is to be engaged anyway.

Maybe another take on this same question would be to look at the balance between case-by-case approach and principles. You are for a case-by-case approach here, and I agree, to avoid "ready-at-hand rule to impose on such circumstances, relieving us of any further thinking effort". But one could ask, what other than that does a principle - the principles we search for and extract from the indistinct conglomerate of reality, like gold nuggets that we then elevate above time and space, by seeing in them morphological paradigms, structures? As soon as we extend, or reuse a principle (which is just about the only thing one can do with a principle) we are also relieving us from any further thinking effort in a sense?

Federica,

Certainly, the free and conscious decision to wait is going to be the most wise one in many situations. For one thing, we need time to develop a truly penetrating insight into mechanical technologies and their relations with human soul life. We shouldn't just leap into messing around with such technologies without that insight. I have only been cautioning against putting our thinking in service of preconceived rules, even when the latter are considered very spiritual rules. The case-by-case approach doesn't dictate in advance how our thinking should react to each set of circumstances, i.e. what moral intuitions it should draw upon and how. I agree that often the proper intuition will be 'first do no harm', i.e. wait, pray, contemplate, and develop deeper insight.

The CbyC approach is a striving for exactly the intuitive balance between archetypal principles and particular circumstances you speak of - it is the same approach that Steiner lays out in PoF in terms of the free spirit making 'first-hand decisions'. The principles are moral intuitions that are more intimate, living, and dynamic than the cultural 'rules of conduct' we are used to. They are the living ideas that originally inspired the rules of conduct but are not identical to them. Those rules served as a useful bridge from instinctive morality to our current task of developing fully conscious morality, but they left little room for freedom and creativity. Of course, we still need them to some extent, but especially in the domain of spiritually redemptive goals, we need to wean off of them.

We can already sense that in how, whenever Steiner discussed Ahriman, he went to great pains to introduce the details and nuances of his functions in World evolution and to repeatedly caution against taking his indications as strict guides for how to avoid various technologies for ex. It seems to me that, with every new development of technology in the modern age, from the printing press onwards (and perhaps even before that), there is a segment of more spiritually minded people who feel it is practically the darkest depths, a sign of the 'end of the world'. We simply can't imagine how things could get worse than this new device or how it could be redeemed. That was also the case with cinema, which Steiner criticized, yet it turns out he also felt it could be redeemed through creative spiritual activity that used it as a medium of depicting the living dynamics of karma and reincarnation.

I am reading a book on that called 'The Future Art of Cinema'. I think we can take efforts such as those expressed below and find inspiration that even the most cold, externalized, mechanical of our creations can be resurrected to a new life through the proper moral orientation and creative thinking. The more widespread the adoption of such creations becomes, the more important becomes the redemptive task to follow.

Most films made in recent years are profoundly inhuman. While questions about the meaning of film for human beings and the intrinsic nature of the cinematic experience still figured in the early history of cinema, in general film production has pushed such questions ever further into the background. Technical possibilities have been used without reflection, and the standard of quality is held to be the power of film as spectacle, its sensory effect on the mass of viewers...

Countering this materialistic cultural stance, which has taken almost exclusive hold on the cinematic means of production, a current will now gradually emerge within the history of cinema that focuses on ensouling film as opposed to rendering it demonic (through coldly calculating, impersonal and power-seeking tech- nology). The film camera and the microphone will come into the hands of people who are moved by heartfelt moral impulses, and who love film for its as yet scarcely tapped capacities to depict inner realities. Technical aids will lose their coldness, camera and microphone will become extensions of our sense organs, screen images will render visible the living soul in its primary activities, and image sequences, montage, will reveal a pattern woven from spiritual imaginations, that bear the stamp of an artist (not of a computer), whose organic logic will resemble that of a rose or a lion.

[LukeJTM]

Yes! Scott is working on a concise summary of PoF. It's linked in this post.

I actually found a summary of PoF on YouTube the other day. It's excellent! It's just under 2 hours long.

[Federica]

Yes! Scott is working on a concise summary of PoF. It's linked in this post.

I actually found a summary of PoF on YouTube the other day. It's excellent! It's just under 2 hours long.

Thanks, Luke! This is one of those small channels that are difficult to discover, so thanks for sharing.
I have started watching, it's very detailed, a paragraph by paragraph summary! For my part, I will have to watch further to get a sense of this overview.

PS: Have you noticed the wall in the background? At the beginning the wall is bare, but towards the end of the video, it appears on it a poster of Raffaello's painting The School of Athens

(The painting and its symbolic and imaginative values have been discussed before on the forum, for example here, and by Steiner, here)

[AshvinP]

Yes! Scott is working on a concise summary of PoF. It's linked in this post.

I actually found a summary of PoF on YouTube the other day. It's excellent! It's just under 2 hours long.

Yeah, thanks Luke, this is a great find! I find his summary to be amazingly precise and helpful. If anyone asks for a commentary on PoF, I would definitely refer them to this first.

[Federica]

To whomever may be interested in live discussions of Anthroposophy through Steiner's books, one by one, I've come across this study group, and they have just started a cycle on An Outline of Occult Science:

[AshvinP]

To whomever may be interested in live discussions of Anthroposophy through Steiner's books, one by one, I've come across this study group, and they have just started a cycle on An Outline of Occult Science:

Thanks for sharing. I would just mention a word of caution with respect to the channel in general. I have come across Matt Segal's work before, which now includes a significant interest in Anthroposophy. But we can see there is also some discussion around the topic of 'Steiner and racism' and it is practically taken for granted that this racism is present, but can be worked around or rectified in various ways. We also have experience on this forum with that same sentiment.

I'm not exactly sure why it happens, but I suspect it has something to do with clinging to a 'liberal' ideological narrative that weakens the ability to remain objective and really struggle with the lectures and statements in question, seeking the spirit of what is being communicated and what was embodied in Steiner's approach to esoteric science. Such ideological commitments can become huge obstacles to concretely understanding the flow of spiritual evolution we are involved in and becoming ever-more responsible for.

These accusations have been used by various secular and religious groups with a bone to pick against esoteric science for a long time, but it is particularly troubling when it seems to emerge within groups otherwise committed to studying Anthroposophy and Steiner. That being said, I have no idea to what extent, if any, this influences their discussion of his works on the channel. I haven't listened to any of them yet.

Also, I came across an interesting publication a little while ago that discusses this topic, for anyone interested.

With regard to the accusation of racism and anti-Semitism against Rudolf Steiner, the situation is paradoxical. There was hardly a writer, speaker, and social activist in Germany in the second and third decades of the twentieth century who spoke out as clearly, farsightedly, and vehemently as Steiner did on the abysmal danger of contemporary thinking in categories of racism and anti-Semitism, eugenics, racial hygiene, and selection—and pointed out concrete alternatives to these. Steiner’s statements in this regard and corresponding anthroposophic initiatives—from the founding years of anthroposophic education and medicine, Demeter agriculture, anthroposophic curative homes, and the movement for “social threefolding,” etc.—are at least partially known to most of the hostile critics of anthroposophy, but they wisely leave them unexamined or at least underemphasized. The same applies to Steiner’s warnings against the dangers of a “purely scientific” or rather iatrotechnical* approach to medicine in an authoritarian state—warnings that also leave nothing to be desired in terms of clarity and have a special significance against the background of the later Nazi medicine that Steiner saw coming. Rudolf Steiner and the physician Ita Wegman began anthroposophic medicine precisely not in a sanctified and hypocritical refuge of “occult” alternative medicine for circumscribed, well-heeled (bourgeois to upper middle-class) sect circles of “Aryan” descent, and far from science in the sphere of herbs, stars, and “elemental spirits”—as this was propagated, for the effect of publicity, by Helmut Zander and others—but rather as a contoured answer to current and future dangers and in the sense of what is today called “personal” medicine of humanistic orientation. However, it is difficult, and in no way opportune (also generally forbidden in “academic circles”), to grant Steiner’s statements—or even his extended understanding of science and modernity—topicality and relevance, or methodological independence and far-sightedness in terms of content, right up to his anticipation of later historical developments. Because of this, all that will be discussed below falls by the wayside in the vast majority of publications about him (“conceal, omit, suppress”).79 Instead, particular sentences from Steiner’s lectures on the history of culture, religion, and humanity, which have been quoted for decades—and deliberately taken out of context and partially alienated from their meaning—are assumed as “evidence” for “obscurantism,” “racism,” and “radical anti-Semitism.” Such sentences or fragments of statements, reproduced in isolation, are intended to irritate and alienate; and they do so,80 just like other partial statements on minerals or colors, on eurythmy or on mistletoe, which, taken out of their context, seem superficially to prove sectarian “irrationalism.”

Selg, Peter. Anthroposophy and the Accusation of Racism: Society and Medicine in a Totalitarian Age (pp. xxvii-xxix). SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.

[Federica]

To whomever may be interested in live discussions of Anthroposophy through Steiner's books, one by one, I've come across this study group, and they have just started a cycle on An Outline of Occult Science:

Thanks for sharing. I would just mention a word of caution with respect to the channel in general. I have come across Matt Segal's work before, which now includes a significant interest in Anthroposophy. But we can see there is also some discussion around the topic of 'Steiner and racism' and it is practically taken for granted that this racism is present, but can be worked around or rectified in various ways. We also have experience on this forum with that same sentiment.


I'm not exactly sure why it happens, but I suspect it has something to do with clinging to a 'liberal' ideological narrative that weakens the ability to remain objective and really struggle with the lectures and statements in question, seeking the spirit of what is being communicated and what was embodied in Steiner's approach to esoteric science. Such ideological commitments can become huge obstacles to concretely understanding the flow of spiritual evolution we are involved in and becoming ever-more responsible for.


These accusations have been used by various secular and religious groups with a bone to pick against esoteric science for a long time, but it is particularly troubling when it seems to emerge within groups otherwise committed to studying Anthroposophy and Steiner. That being said, I have no idea to what extent, if any, this influences their discussion of his works on the channel. I haven't listened to any of them yet.


Also, I came across an interesting publication a little while ago that discusses this topic, for anyone interested.

With regard to the accusation of racism and anti-Semitism against Rudolf Steiner, the situation is paradoxical. There was hardly a writer, speaker, and social activist in Germany in the second and third decades of the twentieth century who spoke out as clearly, farsightedly, and vehemently as Steiner did on the abysmal danger of contemporary thinking in categories of racism and anti-Semitism, eugenics, racial hygiene, and selection—and pointed out concrete alternatives to these. Steiner’s statements in this regard and corresponding anthroposophic initiatives—from the founding years of anthroposophic education and medicine, Demeter agriculture, anthroposophic curative homes, and the movement for “social threefolding,” etc.—are at least partially known to most of the hostile critics of anthroposophy, but they wisely leave them unexamined or at least underemphasized. The same applies to Steiner’s warnings against the dangers of a “purely scientific” or rather iatrotechnical* approach to medicine in an authoritarian state—warnings that also leave nothing to be desired in terms of clarity and have a special significance against the background of the later Nazi medicine that Steiner saw coming. Rudolf Steiner and the physician Ita Wegman began anthroposophic medicine precisely not in a sanctified and hypocritical refuge of “occult” alternative medicine for circumscribed, well-heeled (bourgeois to upper middle-class) sect circles of “Aryan” descent, and far from science in the sphere of herbs, stars, and “elemental spirits”—as this was propagated, for the effect of publicity, by Helmut Zander and others—but rather as a contoured answer to current and future dangers and in the sense of what is today called “personal” medicine of humanistic orientation. However, it is difficult, and in no way opportune (also generally forbidden in “academic circles”), to grant Steiner’s statements—or even his extended understanding of science and modernity—topicality and relevance, or methodological independence and far-sightedness in terms of content, right up to his anticipation of later historical developments. Because of this, all that will be discussed below falls by the wayside in the vast majority of publications about him (“conceal, omit, suppress”).79 Instead, particular sentences from Steiner’s lectures on the history of culture, religion, and humanity, which have been quoted for decades—and deliberately taken out of context and partially alienated from their meaning—are assumed as “evidence” for “obscurantism,” “racism,” and “radical anti-Semitism.” Such sentences or fragments of statements, reproduced in isolation, are intended to irritate and alienate; and they do so,80 just like other partial statements on minerals or colors, on eurythmy or on mistletoe, which, taken out of their context, seem superficially to prove sectarian “irrationalism.”


Selg, Peter. Anthroposophy and the Accusation of Racism: Society and Medicine in a Totalitarian Age (pp. xxvii-xxix). SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.

Ashvin,

You surely have your reasons to think so about Matt Segall. I don't know him well either and I'm certainly not here to defend him. I can say that I came to know his work through this short, 6 year-old video on the Gothean approach to phenomena, that seemed quite good to me.





His interest in Anthroposophy is not a new one as it seems, based on his video list on the channels. As for the session on Steiner's Occult Science yesterday, he actually didn't say much apart from a short intro and outro. The rest of the time was comments by participants - all sorts of profiles, from both sides of the Atlantic, from a carpenter to a computer science teacher, to a retiree, to Max Leyf, who appears to be a regular participant, on and off. Anyone who wants can actually sign up and participate in these open discussions. In this sense, I think the initiative is remarkable and genuine.


I see, as you say, that there is a 9-month old video on the channel called "RS and racism". I haven't watched it, but now I will try to. Maybe I can get a more concrete idea of Segall's approach to the question and possible ideological commitments. I would think, though, that even if his position is as you describe, there should be a deeper way to explain it, without resorting to categorizing it in terms of 'liberal' political orientation. Regarding your quote - yes, I am aware of these unfortunate tendencies.


Speaking of political orientation, and "liberal" (in its American meaning) versus "conservative", I really appreciated this substack from The Consciousness Soul - John E Rollinson:

The Spirit of Political Movements - Political Stereotypes are Fallen Archetypes

It is becoming more and more clear that a decision has to be made as to whether the current president can continue at his post or not. Like his policies or not, the special investigator appointed by his own administration determined he should not be charged with his alleged missteps because the state of his memory made him less than competent to stand trial. Real questions about a change in leadership? And the election in November? All the stops are being pulled out. Accusations, prosecution of political opponents, even attempts to disqualify candidates from the ballot.


If there’s any time to keep your eyes open, it’s now. This is a level of real division, on the ground, which is not just talk. The US is already edging into a Constitutional crisis on just these three areas.


Is there a higher perspective? Can we look at the deeper origin of political parties? In other countries there are three, four, five parties, and their philosophies are somewhat individual, but there is still a strange pressure to put them all on the “political spectrum”, meaning just a scale of left to right. Liberal and Conservative - that’s what there is - and even Independents are just people who get to choose to be left or right on a given topic.


You may ask, why so black and white? Isn’t there more? If your politics are a rule book for how to live, what are we doing to ourselves if we have only two choices? If you’re one you are for immigration, transgenderism and the president; if you’re the other you are against those? It wasn’t so long ago, you could say what you thought without people thinking you were a jerk…


If you follow the conservative and liberal philosophies (as practiced) further and further to the right and left, they eventually meet again. It was once taught in school! Too far left becomes Communism, too far right Fascism, which are both totalitarian, oppressive forms and are hard to tell apart. Here’s another thought: Everybody agrees killing people is wrong. However, if you’re far enough to the right, you might believe in capital punishment. If you’re far enough to the left, you might be for assisted suicide and abortion. To put it a little crassly, one guy says, oh no, I don’t believe in killing people, I only do it with their consent; the other guy says, oh no, I don’t believe in killing people, I only do it to those who really deserve it.


If we go far enough from the center, we start finding reasons why it’s ok to kill people.


This is not what the essence of the true philosophy of either Conservatism or Liberalism is. I’ve been forced to delve into it quite deeply the past few years. What we usually see on the surface is the stereotype, the caricature, not the true archetype. What is it that is above, beyond the stereotypical appearance of a cultural-political movement?


The archetype is something that’s always good, always has a higher purpose. The stereotypes are like shadows, fallen archetypes.


The Conservative spirit wants to protect. If that becomes stagnant, it is a keeping things the same, and that’s where the (stereotypical) moralism comes from.


The Liberal spirit wants to innovate. If that becomes inflamed, it wants to get rid of all structure, and that’s where the (stereotypical) lack of morals comes from.


The higher Conservative impulse of protecting has at its core the gesture that the human being should be given the responsibility to make their own decisions. A person is to be seen as responsible, self-reliant, able to care for themselves, and able to make good choices and act in a proper way. That’s how they are to be treated until proven otherwise, and it is our duty to give them the space to unfold freely who they are, and how they want to to exist. The Archetype wants to protect the spirit and will of the human being, wants to free us for a higher evolution.


The opposite of this gesture, the belief that people are inherently unable to do what is right and need a controlling force to keep them behaving and happy, is not the Liberal spirit; that is the shadow of it. This is important.


Socialistic ideas, which distort the human being’s natural impulse to share and look after others by making it mandatory, are the shadow of the Liberal archetype. That higher spirit has the gesture of compassion, of sharing to help others and of giving away what you have, of making sure everyone is ok. The archetype wants to enliven the soul and life of the human being, wants to raise us up for the same higher purpose - making us more human.


The apparent opposite of the Liberal gesture, wanting to keep everything for oneself, and putting private interests above common resources like the environment is not the Conservative spirit; it is its shadow. This is important.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

You surely have your reasons to think so about Matt Segall. I don't know him well either and I'm certainly not here to defend him. I can say that I came to know his work through this short, 6 year-old video on the Gothean approach to phenomena, that seemed quite good to me.


His interest in Anthroposophy is not a new one as it seems, based on his video list on the channels. As for the session on Steiner's Occult Science yesterday, he actually didn't say much apart from a short intro and outro. The rest of the time was comments by participants - all sorts of profiles, from both sides of the Atlantic, from a carpenter to a computer science teacher, to a retiree, to Max Leyf, who appears to be a regular participant, on and off. Anyone who wants can actually sign up and participate in these open discussions. In this sense, I think the initiative is remarkable and genuine.


I see, as you say, that there is a 9-month old video on the channel called "RS and racism". I haven't watched it, but now I will try to. Maybe I can get a more concrete idea of Segall's approach to the question and possible ideological commitments. I would think, though, that even if his position is as you describe, there should be a deeper way to explain it, without resorting to categorizing it in terms of 'liberal' political orientation. Regarding your quote - yes, I am aware of these unfortunate tendencies.

To be clear, I'm not saying anything about Matt Segall or his understanding of spiritual science, because I simply don't have any familiarity with it. Once I saw the videos on the racism issue, I decided to put aside the channel and focus on other commentators. Maybe it's time to revisit. The initiative does seem like a potentially productive way for people to orient their intuition to these supersensible realities through active discussion with others.

I started listening to the Occult Science first session. I see that Max initially confused Ashton with me

I suppose session 2 will get more into the substance since the introductions are out of the way. Do you plan on participating or just watching along? It may be difficult for me to fit into my schedule, so I may just watch for a while.

[Federica]

To be clear, I'm not saying anything about Matt Segall or his understanding of spiritual science,

I think your previous post is clear enough,

because I simply don't have any familiarity with it. Once I saw the videos on the racism issue, I decided to put aside the channel and focus on other commentators. Maybe it's time to revisit. The initiative does seem like a potentially productive way for people to orient their intuition to these supersensible realities through active discussion with others.
I started listening to the Occult Science first session. I see that Max initially confused Ashton with me

...but I'm glad you're now open to revisit that... for whatever reason this is happening

I suppose session 2 will get more into the substance since the introductions are out of the way. Do you plan on participating or just watching along? It may be difficult for me to fit into my schedule, so I may just watch for a while.

I teach a class on Tuesdays at that time, otherwise I would have read the relevant book chapters, and considered it. I may consider it for future cycles.