Observation, logic, folklore and presuppositions

[Jim Cross]

Jim, you said:

"I'm interested in seeing Ashvin responses to this since it would be a strong indication either that Steiner was wrong or that he (Ashvin) could not possibly possess higher cognition."

Ashvin acknowledges that he has no higher cognition.

I'm surprised by that. Who does beside Steiner?

I lost my higher cognition on one too many trips. After I'd touched the Divine so many times, it became kind of Ordinary.

[findingblanks]

Regarding the 'negro novel' comments by Rudolf Steiner:

"Recently I went into a bookstore in Basel and found an example of the latest publishing agenda: a Negro novel, just as the Negroes in general are entering into European civilization step by step! Everywhere Negro dances are being performed, Negro dances are being hopped. But we even have this Negro novel already. It is utterly boring, dreadfully boring, but people devour it. I am personally convinced that if we get more Negro novels, and give these Negro novels to pregnant women to read during the first phase of pregnancy, when as you know they can sometimes develop such cravings, if we give these Negro novels to pregnant women to read, then it won’t even be necessary for Negroes to come to Europe in order for mulattoes to appear. Simply through the spiritual effects of reading Negro novels, a multitude of children will be born in Europe that are completely gray, that have mulatto hair, that look like mulattoes!" (Rudolf Steiner,lecture in Dornach December 30, 1922, in Steiner, Über Gesundheit und Krankheit, Dornach 1994, p. 189)

“Fear, Collapse, Pregnancy” then later “Fever versus Shock. Pregnancy”
December 30, 1922, Dornach, GA 348


Guess what. I think Steiner was wrong in about 32 different ways here. Look at the 7 or 8 core presuppositions he is making for starters. Now, do you think we can prove him wrong.

Oh and I read the book he was talking about. In its historical context it is very fascinating. But Steiner was an initiate so maybe he knew better.

Also, Steiner said that to even take the first steps towards being an initiate, you must utterly overcome the capacity to become bored. Isn't that interesting?

[Martin_]

Hi Martin,

To be clear, Steiner isn't merely correlating skin color to spiritual capacity.

Steiner is explaining why non-white skin ONLY appears when the Christ cannot be integrated. He doesn't just say this tangentially. No, Steiner goes into great detail to explain why for the next 1,500 years ONLY WHITE PEOPLE can integrate and absorb The Christ. Steiner does not merely imply or state these things. He explains why all non-white 'races' must wait another 1,500 years before they can be 'impregnated' by White Humanity only IF white people fulfill their spiritual mission.

I think it is very important to distinguish when Steiner merely indicates something he thinks in general and when he explains his theory as to why something is a fact (that he believes is a fact).

yeh, whatever. At the moment I'm only interested in making sense of Ashvin's statement about Steiner never saying skin color being the cause for spritual lagging , contrasted with a specific quote.

[findingblanks]

By the way, the 'negro novel' that Rudolf Steiner believed was so dreadfully boring that it could cause white babies to turn gray was called entitled “Batouala” and was published by René Maran in 1921

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Maran

[findingblanks]

Jim said:

"I'm surprised by that. Who does beside Steiner?"

Anthroposophosits have rather viscous disagreements about which of them have achieved genuine clairvoyance. Of course this must be the case because nobody can verify so they simply latch onto teachers they trust and who say things in ways that seem wonderful and true. That said, Dennis Klocek is my favorite teacher from within that tradition. And he's a friend so I'm very biased.

[findingblanks]

This might not be hard science, but I don't agree with Steiner implication about what kinds of faces tend to be less attractive:

“There is a biography of Schubert in which it is said that he looked rather like a negro. There is not a grain of truth in it. He actually had a pleasing, attractive face.”

Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS: Esoteric Studies - Volume I (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972), VII.

[AshvinP]

Hi Martin,

To be clear, Steiner isn't merely correlating skin color to spiritual capacity.

Steiner is explaining why non-white skin ONLY appears when the Christ cannot be integrated. He doesn't just say this tangentially. No, Steiner goes into great detail to explain why for the next 1,500 years ONLY WHITE PEOPLE can integrate and absorb The Christ. Steiner does not merely imply or state these things. He explains why all non-white 'races' must wait another 1,500 years before they can be 'impregnated' by White Humanity only IF white people fulfill their spiritual mission.

I think it is very important to distinguish when Steiner merely indicates something he thinks in general and when he explains his theory as to why something is a fact (that he believes is a fact).

yeh, whatever. At the moment I'm only interested in making sense of Ashvin's statement about Steiner never saying skin color being the cause for spritual lagging , contrasted with a specific quote.

This whole thread has become reminiscent of recent political campagins where the lowest common denominator criticisms are the loudest. I mean, these are just dreadful ways to present a critique of anyone, let alone someone as prolific and uncommon as Steiner for the de-spiritualized modern age. FB claims to care about context but provides NONE of it in his posts. He is not explaining even a single thing about how Steiner envisons the next two epochs of human evolution or the next three stages of Earth's evolution, where the physical body is gradually transfigured back into its spiritual essence. Don't you think these 'little' details might be important to consider when trying to understand what any of that stuff you are writing above means? Everyone here who has no idea what I am even talking about should seriously reflect on that fact before evaluating and reaching conclusions on anything that has been quoted here, if they want to remain intellectually honest with themselves. If they have no such desire, then so be it... it's not me who is losing anything.

[Cleric K]

I see, so you just strip the "elemental" of its subtlety and supposed independent existence, of how it flies out to influence someone it is directed to and then returns to sender, and all the rest of it... in this way, you'd do a super job of dumbing Steiner down to the point where he pretty well ceases to be there.

I expect you'd say he'd need to be introduced gradually....a bit at a time....until someone's ready....to be taken over!!

Ben, you missed the whole point. It was that if people today can't experience something spiritually real in thinking - in fact, the most spiritually real thing we can ever experience at our stage of development - then it's simply impossible to speak of anything spiritually real.

Anyway, things are getting emotionally charged here that I don't think anyone really reads what others write. I'm not complaining because I asked this thread to be opened and I was aware how it would go.

What I wrote to Ben wanted to make a simple point. Before we can have meaningful conversation about spiritual things, we must first make sure we know what 'spiritual' refers to. And from what I see, I don't think this is very clear. The general conception is something like "Instead of imagining the world as being made of atoms and vibrating energy, we imagine that it is created of some mystical spiritual stuff". The other thing is that 'spiritual' is almost universally equated with 'religious'. In other words, spiritual things are question of belief. The real world is what we see, spiritual things are only one of the possible explanations of the world, competing with other explanations such as super strings.

We can't make even the tiniest step forwards if we don't recognize that in thinking we deal with something spiritually real. Not religiously real, not something that we believe it's made of energy vibrations but as direct fact of experience in which we are spiritually active. In order to speculate if the world is made of atoms of elementals, if it is a dream or naive reality, we must think. Thinking precedes the speculation.

Does this make sense? If we can't settle on this, it will be very difficult to understand anything else.

[Soul_of_Shu]

In direct response to your point above, I have no idea whether that quote is genuine or what context it is in. I searched for "negro novel" on the archive and found nothing. Do you have a link?

It was taken from this paper(page 15), with the following added in the end notes, apparently verifiable ...

74: Rudolf Steiner, Über Gesundheit und Krankheit [On health and illness]
(Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1994), 189:

"Neulich bin ich in Basel in eine Buchhandlung gekommen, da fand ich
das neueste Programm dessen, was gedruckt wird: ein Negerroman, wie
überhaupt jetzt die Neger allmählich in die Zivilisation von Europa
hereinkommen! Es werden überall Negertänze aufgeführt, Negertänze
gehüpft. Aber wir haben ja sogar schon diesen Negerroman. Er ist
urlangweilig, greulich langweilig, aber die Leute verschlingen ihn. Ja, ich
bin meinerseits davon überzeugt, wenn wir noch eine Anzahl Negerromane kriegen, und wir geben diese Negerromane den schwangeren
Frauen zu lesen, in der ersten Zeit der Schwangerschaft namentlich, wo
sie heute ja gerade solche Gelüste manchmal entwickeln können—wir
geben diese Negerromane den schwangeren Frauen zu lesen, da braucht
gar nicht dafür gesorgt zu werden, daß Neger nach Europa kommen,
damit Mulatten entstehen; da entsteht durch rein geistiges Lesen von
Negerromanen eine ganze Anzahl von Kindern in Europa, die ganz grau
sind, Mulattenhaare haben, die mulattenähnlich aussehen werden!"

This passage was omitted, without indication, from the authorized English
translation of the book. See Rudolf Steiner, Health and Illness, vol. 2 (Spring
Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1981); it would have appeared on page 16. The
passage was also excised, without indication, from the second English translation
of the book See Rudolf Steiner, From Comets to Cocaine (London: Rudolf Steiner
Press, 2000); it would have appeared on page 160. The “negro novel” Steiner
ridicules was Rene Maran’s award-winning Batouala. For background see Brent
Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003),
70–106, 171–79; and Femi Ojo-Ade, Rene Maran, the Black Frenchman
(Washington: Three Continents Press, 1984).

[findingblanks]

"This whole thread has become reminiscent of recent political campagins where the lowest common denominator criticisms are the loudest."

I do not notice many people not screaming and being specific. But we can cherry-pick when and how to engage. And, more to the point, we also explain why we refuse to engage. If somebody feels everybody is screaming and shouting and not being reasonable, sure, they might not wish to chat.

But I see at least four people who have been speaking specifically and without making profoundly dark claims about anybody in the conversation or even about Steiner himself.