Re: observtiton, logic, folklore and presuppositions
Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2021 11:14 am
First I would like to thank FB for sending me the above quoted lectures months ago.findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:08 am So we can appreciate that Steiner is very emphatic that he can explain with his clairvoyance why red is the cause for the bull's wild reactions. And he can also use his clairvoyance to assure us that white skin can not appear when the Christ Impulse is being rejected. Both are claims that all of us can approach with our own experiences. Or not. We can also pop away into justifications for why Steiner's bull comments were really about X and Y and his comments about non-white skin don't really imply that this must wait for another 1,500 years.
The ways he could be shortsighted and the ways his clairvoyance could be applied to his wrong assumptions (red/bulls or skin color/Christ) are very worthwhile subjects of contemplation and mediation. And worthwhile conversations amongst his students who might think there are other emerging Anthroposophical paths. Over the last ten years these alternative students have been slowly but steadily growing in really interesting ways. Of course there will always be a stream that defends him as being only misuderstood or treated with ill-will. But when you love and respect Steiner you sort of know it. You can't make a person from another very different stream 'feel' or 'know' it. But one possible sign of maturity is if you can see that even a stream you have serious concerns about is acting from an honest place within their hearts. I see the old and original stream as being very very earnest and trying their best to preserve what they think is being damaged. And that's a true impulse. And important.
As it may be imagined, even at the time of Steiner, it was impossible to speak of certain topics without someone being offended. After the lecture which FB quoted, understandably people began whispering and talking. These things, of course, reached Steiner so he was forced to address the issues again. I'll provide here the beginning of the next lecture (after the one FB quoted) and hopefully see in wider context what things are really about.
Even if we don't understand everything written, even if we don't find Steiner very agreeable, I believe that anyone who reads without prejudice can feel that the striving has always been towards the human universal. And actually this is also the reason why these things are rejected. Because tribes, social movements seek the universal only abstractly. They seek it in order to justify the fundamental difference of national feelings, racial feelings, gender feelings and so on. In other words they start with fundamental division and then try to build a kind of purely abstract conduct of tolerance.Steiner wrote: Stuttgart, 14th February, 1915
I can easily imagine that someone may have drawn the conclusion from yesterday’s lecture that those people who belong to the national groups are only to receive their special mission in the sixth culture-epoch - because, as we saw yesterday, they belong to a time in which evolution takes a descending line, - are of less account than those who belong to groups in an ascending evolution. I repeat - I can easily conceive of someone's drawing this conclusion. In other words: I can easily imagine that from certain statements made yesterday someone draws conclusions as to values, impelled to do so through all sorts of emotions and feelings. This would be an example of just what I pointed out, namely, that what was especially said about these things at one place must be misunderstood in other places. Not that it is coloured in any way to suit a special place or people, but because it is not understood with the necessary objectivity, but with strong feelings and all sorts of national aspirations. Someone might then say that I had only used words to flatter Central European culture and that they who belonged to the Eastern European culture felt themselves deeply injured by what had been said. Well, my dear friends, if such a judgment is formed it only shows the entry of something that I discussed yesterday. I sought yesterday to point out how purely theoretical, abstract thinking must be transformed into direct experience, how what has formerly been only a matter of knowledge must be imbued with feeling and real experience. If someone were to form the judgment that has just been indicated he would only be judging theoretically, abstractly. For how would a concrete, living judgment sound in such a case? It would recognise that if what had been explained was true, then we were approaching a time when those who want to follow the advance of civilisation must no longer merge in merely national life. The peculiarity of the fifth cultural epoch was such as allowed of the fact that its members merged into a national feeling and again personally struggled out of it. The sixth and seventh culture-epochs will be of such a nature that those who wish to be merely national will lag behind the tasks of humanity. But this is just the reason for presenting the world conception of spiritual science, namely, that humanity struggles out of merely national feeling, out of what is not common human feeling. The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, from yesterday’s remarks is something quite, quite different. It is that the Central European national cultures have impulses in them that coincide with the great mission of the post-Atlantean culture, but that then cultures come which make it necessary for men to grow out of national impulses. And that it does not do for those who are the vanguard of later cultures to merge completely in their national experience, even in an exaggerated way, as is the case with the population of Eastern Europe. In other words: since this living in their nation shows that they have not yet comprehended their mission, they are directed to take into themselves what has been created as spiritual science, and so grow out beyond the national. Living understanding is also necessary there.
At the present time, however, so beset with passion and prejudice, one will have difficulty in finding what is necessary in order that men can take their full stand on the ground of spiritual science and its striving for true objectivity, for the purely human. We pursue spiritual science precisely in order to spread something over the whole earth that transcends all differences. Those therefore who come from all nations to spiritual science should be able to gain an objective understanding for the things set forth in the Lecture-cycle "The Mission of Folk Souls"; it should be studied by all anthroposophists. It has a special significance, too, for it was given years before this war (World War I) and cannot therefore be accused of originating from the atmosphere of this war. The point is not that what has been said in various places did not contain generally valid truths, the point is that one must comprehend that these truths are not tolerated everywhere. When I spoke here some months ago I pointed out that it is more or less easy for us in Central Europe to be objective, easier than for others. Why it is easier for us is set forth in that Lecture-cycle. All the deeper teachings received from our grave events show us that something must develop from all the various substrata of our present civilisation throughout the world that coincides with the aims of our spiritual science. In a certain respect one can say that these earnest events are a powerful pointer to the necessity of spiritual science in the world. They prove that this life of spiritual science must come. Naturally, therefore, the immediate feelings of a place can only be of secondary importance for us; our actual task is to bring into our soul-experience something that can be understood everywhere without causing offence, although there is prejudice in so many fields.
What we learn from spiritual science about the universally human in man is also a preparation for an objective view of all the conditions in which we are placed through earthly evolution. For the conditions in which we are placed is the soil, as it were, out of which we grow, and what brings about our growth are the impulses we receive through spiritual science. As a matter of fact we live in these differentiations extended over the earth with only half of our being, with our- physical and etheric bodies. We leave these behind on the earth when we enter another condition of consciousness that we can describe as sleep. With the ego and astral body we are then in the world which man otherwise enters when he goes through the portal of death, in the world where all earthly differentiations cease, in the world into which spiritual science teachings are to introduce us. Initiation knowledge protects us from giving any special preference to one or other of the Folk Spirits.
It is very indicative that in the above quote it is mentioned that we're dual beings - with our physical and etheric bodies we belong to the world order, where we belong to a race, nation, family. With our more spiritual part we belong to a higher order where we are outside the worldly divisions.
In the other thread FB said that notions of etheric, astral body and so on are antiquated. He seeks something different which practically should explain away all these things as mere artifacts of imperfect perception. I hope those that are able to lift themselves from prejudice and least for a minute, can see how it is precisely this purely abstract intellectual attitude which flattens all spiritual depth and practically ensures that nothing can ever be solved. And this is so clear. FB awaits for something to happen in the world, something which should unveil the truth in a more perfect way but he doesn't even conceive as a possibility that penetrating the depth behind thinking, which leads to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, may have anything to do with it. Actually he expects new kind of knowledge, which will explain higher cognition as distorted visions. It's the same thing Eugene does. He said that he believes there's spirit time-depth behind our "I"/eye but he doesn't believe that it is anywhere near of the character that SS speaks of. So what do we do? Nothing. We just sit and wait in our abstract bubble for the next messiah to come and rescue us. Well, the messiah has already done what was needed - it's now our part. And even if he were to come again, those who wait for him will most likely crucify him when they hear a teaching that is hard to bear.
Without true depth-understanding of the human being we can never understand that there are two natures within ourselves which are sometimes opposed to one another. One is which belongs and identifies with the national, racial, cultural, religious feelings. The other is which seeks the human universal - the Spirit, which alone can bring the moral integrity needed for lifting above the forces that put souls within the layers of conditioning into opposition.
We must realize that every one of us is submerged in different degree in these layers. When it's said that the ascending line of evolution in such and such epoch is carried by such and such culture this is not to cause separation. Steiner makes it perfectly clear above. Whoever feels offended, simply identifies with the lower nature - with that which belongs to race, culture, nation. Whoever finds the spirit in him that thinks, no longer identifies with these layers but sees in them fertile soil which must be worked upon. So let that be clear. Those who rebel the most when it's said that the Christ impulse will be adopted only gradually in humanity and see that as a kind of discrimination, will be the first to reject that impulse when they understand what it is really about. At no point in history something new has been adopted overnight by the whole world. This is simply not how things work in evolution. It's an objective fact. The problem is that we're now at a point where we can be fully conscious of these processes, we must understand them. Thus we must understand that not everyone will embrace the impulse of freedom. But the key point is that this impulse will be rejected because of antipathy and not because they want it but Steiner has said that they're not eligible.
Let me put it thus: it's not possible that one could say "I want to seek my higher nature but those and those say that because of my skin color or my nation, or my background, I'm ineligible to do so". This is nonsense. There's nothing which stands between us and our higher being except we ourselves. Those who won't seek their higher nature won't do it simply because they don't want to. Either they will say it is impossible (all thinking is conditioned and there's no such thing as thinking spirit). Or they'll have their own interests which simply don't coincide with the idea of human universal. Or they believe that from the level of the spiritual world, souls come in fundamentally different 'interest groups' and as such would reject the human universal. We see, there are many different reasons why people will reject to deepen their self-knowledge and none of them have anything to do with "I want it very much but I'm not eligible".