The realm of the Demiurge

[Stranger]

Your link goes back to Cleric's old comment. You did briefly answer that one, but not his comment after that.

Oh, thanks for pointing, somehow I missed it.

Once our moral-cognitive aperture begins to expand and encompass the higher individuality which passes through many incarnations, and which locates the source of all cultural and natural change within the supra-sensory planes, we don't place so much important on what seems to be happening on the physical plane within a timeline measured by years.

Sure, we should still keep hoping and do our individual inner work regardless

[AshvinP]

Your link goes back to Cleric's old comment. You did briefly answer that one, but not his comment after that.

Oh, thanks for pointing, somehow I missed it.

Once our moral-cognitive aperture begins to expand and encompass the higher individuality which passes through many incarnations, and which locates the source of all cultural and natural change within the supra-sensory planes, we don't place so much important on what seems to be happening on the physical plane within a timeline measured by years.

Sure, we should still keep hoping and do our individual inner work regardless

I would also point you towards your own earlier comment on the evolutionary structure of paradigmatic scientific shifts. These are qualitative jumps which are never anticipated from the perspective of the older, past forms of thinking. Just as the older generations never seem to understand the younger ones. Yet the jumps nevertheless occur lawfully like clockwork. The same holds true for the aesthetic and moral spheres of archetypal activity. The lawful forces of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness work into the manifest world from the spiritual fields of potential. What is natural is always being pushed out, or transmuted, by what is spiritual. So it's not a matter of mere hope - these transmutations are built into the very archetypal structure of the Cosmos. We must only consciously take hold of this ever-present, evolving structure if we want to participate.

[Federica]

I think most of our misunderstandings come from differences in language and conceptual apparatus since we approach the same subject from somewhat different backgrounds with different linguistic terms to describe the same spiritual reality and its processes.

(...)

That hierarchy definitely exists, out whole structure from human personality up to the system of a variety of human beliefs and socio-economic structures is hierarchically built on the foundation of these subconscious erroneous perceptual cognitive mechanisms where the dualistic perception occurs and where the subconscious belief in the realty of "separate self" resides, upon which a whole hierarchy of egoic desires and behavioral-cognitive patterns is built in the subconscious levels of each person psyche, as well as in the collective subconscious . It is a futile attempt to rebuild the "branches" of the structure without diving into its roots, because similar branches will grow from the same roots again. That is why social experiments and restructuring on the society scale never fully work because the egoic core in each member of the society remains intact.

My only skepticism is based on the observation of how exceptionally rare are the individuals that are willing to dive into the depths of their psyche to discover and practically work on unrooting these egoic structures and the dualistic perception. It means that we should not expect any noticeable changes on the mass scale of the society coming from such deep transformation any time soon. I'm still always hopeful, but try to be realistic.

And my other skeptical comment is on Anthroposophy in particular, and I think Federica agreed on that. Steiner's philosophy and esoteric system is written in a style and language that is almost impossible to comprehend for an average human person. Even for people with philosophical, spiritual-practical and scientific background (like me for example) it is a big challenge to understand. The writings of other Anthroposophists, like you, Klocek or Cleric for example, are no less challenging. You can see how often other members of the forum complain that they simply do not understand what these writings are saying. From that perspective, IMO, Anthroposophy remains an esoteric system for intellectual elite, and because of that, it is unlikely that it will make any impact on the level of society at large.

That we will learn to comprehend writing which seemed complex and unapproachable before is actually the most superifical transformation which will occur for us on the path of inner growth. Everyone starts off with this view of spiritual scientific writings, including me. We are dealing with entirely new evolutionary impulses here, new forms of cognition and perception and understanding. The language centers around what is mostly supersensible. But with inner effort and persistence on the path, the whole situation inverts. The philosophical and religious analysis which used to seem very straightforward and 'concrete' is revealed in its prosaic abstractness, its consistent hand-waving, although we can even better comprehend how seemingly disparate theories/models are derived from the exact same old habits of thinking. On the other hand, we get an increasingly better intuitive orientation for how spiritual science gives us the language for the very inner archetypal core of our ceaseless becoming. Of course you can dismiss this as partisan explanation, but I am reporting to you my own concrete experience in the last 2 years. And it doesn't matter if its Steiner's 'system' or someone else's or noone's at all - we will learn to encompass them all with increasing ease through the inner transformation, because all outer forms are physiognomic expressions of these inner forces we are integrating.

I think you are misconstruing Federica's position as well. She may have great difficulty with the texts currently, but the key is that she knows it is due to her own current state of development and she has a very concrete sense of how the situation evolves over time, based on her experiences so far. That's all it takes - an inner disposition towards 'repentance' or metanoia and a consistent diet of inner effort, and the rest unfolds of its own accord. If we are still measuring the potential progress of humanity by its current state of cognition and the purely outward facing aspects of society, then we are still missing that the path of higher cognition draws on impulses not yet actualized for inner transformation. We expect the egoic structures and the dualistic habits to fade away for ourselves within a few years and for humanity in the course of our lifetime, and when it looks like this isn't happening, we conclude there is some immutable law which prevents individuals from consciously steering their intuitive becoming. That unreasonable expectation is not humanity's limitation, but our own. Once our moral-cognitive aperture begins to expand and encompass the higher individuality which passes through many incarnations, and which locates the source of all cultural and natural change within the supra-sensory planes, we don't place so much important on what seems to be happening on the physical plane within a timeline measured by years.

Likewise, it really makes no difference the quantity of people who take up an interest in this inner transformation to begin with in its earliest stages, but the quality and enthusiasm of the few people who do. That is how the spiritual future comes to concrete manifestation.

“To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade.”

***


Ashvin,
If I may add something to this part of your exchange:

And my other skeptical comment is on Anthroposophy in particular, and I think Federica agreed on that. Steiner's philosophy and esoteric system is written in a style and language that is almost impossible to comprehend for an average human person.

I think you are misconstruing Federica's position as well. She may have great difficulty with the texts currently, but the key is that she knows it is due to her own current state of development and she has a very concrete sense of how the situation evolves over time, based on her experiences so far.

I do have difficulties with texts, while knowing that if I persist the situation will evolve, but I think Eugene was referring to the following thing I wrote a few days ago, so I believe he was not misconstructing:

One can agree with what Eugene said that, sadly, many would shy away from, or stumble upon, a book like PoF. From my recent experience I can say that I have not succeeded once in the few attempts I've made to get another person to read anything av Steiner.

Regardless, what you have written in this post seems to me like a luminous concentrate of time-wisdom! It achieves the seemingly impossible, by making things not only evident, but self-evident.

[Stranger]

The lawful forces of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness work into the manifest world from the spiritual fields of potential. What is natural is always being pushed out, or transmuted, by what is spiritual. So it's not a matter of mere hope - these transmutations are built into the very archetypal structure of the Cosmos. We must only consciously take hold of this ever-present, evolving structure if we want to participate.

That is definitely true, and therefore nothing can stop the unfolding of these spiritual forces on the Cosmic scale, even though there may be temporary local stagnations or some evolutionary line dead ends (like dinosaurs or neandertals).

[AshvinP]

I do have difficulties with texts, while knowing that if I persist the situation will evolve, but I think Eugene was referring to the following thing I wrote a few days ago, so I believe he was not misconstructing:

One can agree with what Eugene said that, sadly, many would shy away from, or stumble upon, a book like PoF. From my recent experience I can say that I have not succeeded once in the few attempts I've made to get another person to read anything av Steiner.

Regardless, what you have written in this post seems to me like a luminous concentrate of time-wisdom! It achieves the seemingly impossible, by making things not only evident, but self-evident.

Thanks for the clarification, Federica. I suppose the key point is that, regardless of what happens within our personal sphere of pointing towards the Wisdom in any given texts, we know this has no bearing on the reality and capacity of our Earthly spiritual evolution. Not because of blind hope or faith, but because we can carefully reason out how evolutionary change unfolds in all domains of experience, including our own progression from childhood onwards. This key point is also in PoF:

Evolution is understood to mean the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. In the organic world, evolution is understood to mean that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have developed from them in accordance with natural laws. The adherents of the theory of organic evolution ought really to picture to themselves that there was once a time on our earth when a being could have followed with his own eyes the gradual development of reptiles out of proto-amniotes, had he been able to be there at the time as an observer, endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. Similarly, evolutionists ought to picture to themselves that a being could have watched the development of the solar system out of the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula, had he been able to remain in a suitable spot out in the cosmic world ether during that infinitely long time. That with such mental pictures, the nature of both the proto-amniotes and the Kant-Laplace cosmic nebula would have to be thought of differently from the way the materialist thinkers do, is here irrelevant. But no evolutionist should ever dream of maintaining that he could get the concept of the reptile, with all its characteristics, out of his concept of the proto-amniotic animal, if he had never seen a reptile. Just as little would it be possible to derive the solar system from the concept of the Kant-Laplace nebula, if this concept of a primordial nebula is thought of as being directly determined only by the percept of the primordial nebula. In other words, if the evolutionist is to think consistently, he is bound to maintain that later phases of evolution do actually result from earlier ones, and that once we have been given the concept of the imperfect and that of the perfect, we can see the connection; but on no account should he agree that the concept attained from the earlier is, in itself, sufficient for evolving the later out of it. From this it follows for ethics that, though we can certainly see the connection between later moral concepts and earlier, we cannot get even a single new moral idea out of the earlier ones.

As you probably know, Steiner really anticipated how spiritual science would flow out into the world, as also evidenced in many of his lectures. So we only need sound judgment to discern that metamorphoses on Earth always arrive from the spectrum of 'future' potential (spirit worlds), and what we perceive in nature and culture right now, at any given moment, is the afterglow of already accomplished intents. Even with ordinary reasoning, we can decondition from this past-oriented fixation by taking the more macroscopic view of evolutionary arcs. We can discern that its not so much the content of the forms we see around us which is relevant, fixed in space and time, but the supra-sensory skills/forces which are latent in those forms and which have worked and will continue to work across many epochs. Then we aren't so mentally attached to only the outward-facing events and consequences which unfold in months and years, which no one can deny are often troubling.

On another note, it is indeed diffiicult to get people motivated to put the inner effort towards that which is still unknown and unfamiliar to them, but when Karma brings such people along our path, such as yourself, it is a fantastically rewarding experience! I recently had my day brightened by this comment on another forum:

Thank you for pointing me to Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom. I needed extra perspectives to open it up for me (especially Deleuze's Difference & Repetition), but it holds wisdom that's hard to find anywhere else... Maybe QRI? Maybe process-relational stuff (Whitehead, Deleuze, Sloterdijk, Bard & Söderqvist)? But like ... in terms of readability and practicality, PoF is just a more sensible place to start. The second to last chapter, "The Value of Life (Optimism and Pessimism)" is maybe the only place I've seen someone make connections between desire and pleasure (e.g. D&R ch. II & V), willing and freedom (D&R ch. I & II), and ideas and ideals (D&R ch. I, IV, & V) in an accessible & usable way.

[Federica]

I suppose the key point is that, regardless of what happens within our personal sphere of pointing towards the Wisdom in any given texts, we know this has no bearing on the reality and capacity of our Earthly spiritual evolution. Not because of blind hope or faith, but because we can carefully reason out how evolutionary change unfolds in all domains of experience, including our own progression from childhood onwards. This key point is also in PoF:

Evolution is understood to mean the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. In the organic world, evolution is understood to mean that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have developed from them in accordance with natural laws. The adherents of the theory of organic evolution ought really to picture to themselves that there was once a time on our earth when a being could have followed with his own eyes the gradual development of reptiles out of proto-amniotes, had he been able to be there at the time as an observer, endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. Similarly, evolutionists ought to picture to themselves that a being could have watched the development of the solar system out of the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula, had he been able to remain in a suitable spot out in the cosmic world ether during that infinitely long time. That with such mental pictures, the nature of both the proto-amniotes and the Kant-Laplace cosmic nebula would have to be thought of differently from the way the materialist thinkers do, is here irrelevant. But no evolutionist should ever dream of maintaining that he could get the concept of the reptile, with all its characteristics, out of his concept of the proto-amniotic animal, if he had never seen a reptile. Just as little would it be possible to derive the solar system from the concept of the Kant-Laplace nebula, if this concept of a primordial nebula is thought of as being directly determined only by the percept of the primordial nebula. In other words, if the evolutionist is to think consistently, he is bound to maintain that later phases of evolution do actually result from earlier ones, and that once we have been given the concept of the imperfect and that of the perfect, we can see the connection; but on no account should he agree that the concept attained from the earlier is, in itself, sufficient for evolving the later out of it. From this it follows for ethics that, though we can certainly see the connection between later moral concepts and earlier, we cannot get even a single new moral idea out of the earlier ones.

As you probably know, Steiner really anticipated how spiritual science would flow out into the world, as also evidenced in many of his lectures. So we only need sound judgment to discern that metamorphoses on Earth always arrive from the spectrum of 'future' potential (spirit worlds), and what we perceive in nature and culture right now, at any given moment, is the afterglow of already accomplished intents. Even with ordinary reasoning, we can decondition from this past-oriented fixation by taking the more macroscopic view of evolutionary arcs. We can discern that its not so much the content of the forms we see around us which is relevant, fixed in space and time, but the supra-sensory skills/forces which are latent in those forms and which have worked and will continue to work across many epochs. Then we aren't so mentally attached to only the outward-facing events and consequences which unfold in months and years, which no one can deny are often troubling.

On another note, it is indeed diffiicult to get people motivated to put the inner effort towards that which is still unknown and unfamiliar to them, but when Karma brings such people along our path, such as yourself, it is a fantastically rewarding experience! I recently had my day brightened by this comment on another forum:

Thank you for pointing me to Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom. I needed extra perspectives to open it up for me (especially Deleuze's Difference & Repetition), but it holds wisdom that's hard to find anywhere else... Maybe QRI? Maybe process-relational stuff (Whitehead, Deleuze, Sloterdijk, Bard & Söderqvist)? But like ... in terms of readability and practicality, PoF is just a more sensible place to start. The second to last chapter, "The Value of Life (Optimism and Pessimism)" is maybe the only place I've seen someone make connections between desire and pleasure (e.g. D&R ch. II & V), willing and freedom (D&R ch. I & II), and ideas and ideals (D&R ch. I, IV, & V) in an accessible & usable way.

Thank you for this new layer, Ashvin. Even if the previous one felt so crystal-clear, the latter is naturally very helpful too, because after one step of realization is completed - and even if it feels as self-evident as it can be - it's a progression, and there are always new shades of meaning to permeate and expand into.

And also for sharing the glimmer of light from the other forum! It's the joy of discerning in the outer events a tiny but appreciable bit of the unfolding of our spiritual scientific future.