Meditation exercise on "separate me"

[Federica]

Ashvin, Cleric,

Thanks, I appreciate what you've done
As it turns out, you have both spent so much effort trying to convince me of the obvious. I see that I still haven't been able to compel you enough / you still haven't really looked at what I'm saying. Naturally I can be wrong, but the problem is, you have not demonstrated I am wrong. You have rather iterated your vision, interspersed with caveats just in case. I will try again tomorrow, I have a few ideas.

[Federica]

(...)

(...)

Cleric, Ashvin,

I'll try to point out with new words the discrepancy I see between your shared vision of freedom and the anthroposophical idea of freedom as spiritual activity. My current best way to articulate it is:

Freedom, or free will, is the outpouring of knowledge - truth of reality made true by love - flowing through the prism of individual agency, and so becoming timely enterprise. By “timely” I mean 'having a time quality'. Agency means individuality ready to act. I remember this word from Leyfs essay, and it fits perfectly here. So, Cleric, freedom for me is only, and rigorously, "freedom to". My brain is on the brink of falling off of my skull, asking me permission to suicide, when I try to figure out how thankyou you could come to the conclusion that I have been more engaged with "freedom from”.

As I see it, “freedom from” is the exoteric idea of freedom connected with temptation, that you both have showed adhesion to. It reminds me of that old hit, that you may be too young to remember: “Freed from desire - mind and senses purified - freed from desire - na-na na-na na-na-na na-na-na na-na”. Voilà. That’s about it, for the meaning of “freedom from”.
For me, the true polarity of freedom is not from-to. The crystal-clear polarity of freedom is karma! How could it not be so. Thus freedom has an intrinsic character of action in timeflow. You are on top of the idea of Time, and yet, strangely, you conceive freedom as if estranged from the timeflow. You flatten it out on a hypothetical sort of 'time-neutral plane' on which you put the dot of the-right-thing-to-do, alongside many other dots, the less-right things, the wrong ones, the evil ones. All these alternative dots stand “there” (where?) alongside each other, as you claim. You call them temptations, more-than-one-way-to-do-things, etcetera.

Imagine a bouquet of flowers. I think your error is the same error one would make by trying to put it in a vase flowers first, instead of stems first. As Max Leyf wrote - have you carefully read his essay? It doesn't look like you did - freedom must be grasped in its dynamism. If you envision the movement of putting a bouquet of flowers in a narrow vase from the stems, versus from the flowers, and what it does to the bouquet in both cases, you will maybe get what I’m trying to say. And if you don’t like the bouquet of flowers, you could think of your (Cleric) recent metaphor of the tunnel of glyphs. As you said there, we can imagine that we move through the tunnel backwards, and what we perceive on the walls is our course of (mental, hearty, and physical) action, perceived through memory. That’s our awareness of our flow of becoming. So we can steer the flow through our free agency, to the extent that we let knowledge inflow it, from the future (in the metaphor, from the back). In the metaphoric context of the tunnel, we could picture the growing, free steering activity as our prism-body becoming a bigger, taller prism, as it walks backwards. In this way, more knowledge hits the prism of our individuality, and we can project on the walls more and more of the right glyphs, thanks to greater and greater free agency.

Now, in your vision of freedom, based on “more than one way to do things”,“temptation always arises”, etcetera, it’s as if you pretended to be moving in multiple tunnels at the same time! You pick one of the tunnels, you look at the glyphs on that one, and say: “these glyphs are an alternative solution”, or “here it is, a temptation arises”. But this doesn’t make sense! Really, you are looking at ‘hypothetical past glyphs’, but you are calling them potential, or temptation. No way... There is only our own tunnel, and our own glyphs on one side, including our errors, to learn from, and, on the other side of the tunnel, there's our free activity of better and better incorporating knowledge from the future (behind our back), better and better refracting it on the tunnel’s walls through our brighter and brighter prism quality. Freedom is expressed in our prism-quality that projects glyphs on the walls. Freedom is not expressed in alternative sets of glyphs that could hypothetically be found on a variety of diverse tunnels. Do you understand?

In Max Leyfs words:

how could it ever be factually discerned whether I or someone else “could have done otherwise” when any presumptive evidence could only ever be, in principle, counterfactual, if not by appeal to my own intuitive experience of agency? And if I have finally apprehended the latter, why should I need any ulterior justification for the reality of free will?

In Steiner's words:

The impulse toward conduct lies, not without us [temptations, more than one way to do things, ... ], but within us. (...)
Our philosophy is, therefore, in the highest sense a philosophy of freedom. It shows first theoretically how every force which controls the world from without must fall away in order to make man his own master.

Of course I don’t disregard the “opposing forces of evolution”. I don’t “avoid Lucifer-Ahriman”. The knowledge of these forces is part of the inflow that hits the prism of our free agency. But these forces challenge our understanding, not our conduct. If they challenge our conduct, it’s because we have capitulated against them first in our understanding.
What these rebellious beings manifest with their rebellion, is not freedom, but lack of freedom. They were led to rebel by their insufficient free development, which didn’t let them have the full view that’s required to do the right thing. There is only one engine of reality, and we express freedom as an effortful intention to steer our becoming as a result of a merger with it (true reality). Again, in anthroposophical sense, how could freedom have anything to do with executive choices, alternative ways to do things, or arising temptations?

Temptation arises exactly because each new stage of free spiritual activity comes with a corresponding degree of creative responsibility for exercising that spiritual activity.

This needs to be turned around: as spiritual activity expands, and responsibility proportionally expands, temptation diminishes. Temptation never “arises”. It can only diminish, as it is turned inside out. Because what is temptation? It’s the flip side of knowledge at every stage, the wisdom that we still lack, the love that has not yet touched us, and we turn it inside out by learning, including from our errors. As we evolve our individual perspective, temptation never “arises”. It starts from being the immersive medium of life itself. Then, through spiritual development, it progressively dissolves, through the expansion of knowledge. This applies at every step of development. We decode ignorance into knowledge, and freedom consists of such spiritual activity impressed in the flow of becoming with the stamp of our individual agency. It can only go in this direction, from ignorance to knowledge. If the work is not done, ignorance and temtaption remain, and we fall into them. For the fallen angels I guess it’s the same. They followed a deceptive course of action while truth was obscured from their sight.

To be clear, our experience of error or temptation should not be projected up into the spirit worlds.

Error and temptation are two very different things. Only when neglecting the time dimension of freedom, they land on the same platter. Error is recorded in our memory and we can build on it. Temptation is... an hypothesis.

What we experience as those things when expressed in the fourth Earthly convolution is something of a vastly different nature when expressed in the higher worlds. But, at the same time, our failure to comprehend that higher expression should not cause us to reach premature judgments as to the absolute nature of 'freedom' and to marginalize all facets which don't seem to immediately fit into those judgments.

Well... the judgment contained in this statement is irrefutably more real than the one it claims to expose. It’s true that I don’t have a clear idea, only an intuition, of what freedom will be made of for future man. It was the starting point of this whole conversation. However, I do have a clear enough idea of what freedom is now, and this idea is far from “absolute”. The effortful, continuous work of transmuting the inflow of knowledge into the right outflow of glyphs, through the individual prism of our agency, can only happen as trial and error progression. Quite exactly the contrary of absolute, abstract freedom.

[AshvinP]

Federica,

I think it is clear you are focusing on the 'freedom from' pole, which has been reemphasized in this latest post. Generally it is being characterized as a freedom from ignorance - "through our brighter and brighter prism quality" (which presumably entails freedom from lower passions and unconscious Karmic patterns which habituate our activity) - which also translates into a freedom from error and temptation (I use two different words because I acknowledge they are two different concepts - error is more associated with Ahriman working in the intellectual soul, and temptation more with Lucifer in the sentient soul). If your brain is still about to explode from your skull because of this remark , then consider the following comments. The 'expanding palette' concept is exactly the 'freedom to' pole.

So if this is correct, one could doubt that for the future man "freedom at that stage will be connected with the fact that within the volume of potential which would result in a healthy unfoldment, there are nevertheless very many different possibilities which could be mutually exclusive"
...
And this illustrates the point I was trying to make: how many alternative options to choose from we will have, is not relevant, it has no impact on how much freedom we’ll be able to express!
...
Yes, but not through the fact that we will have any “greater palette” of alternatives.
...
I don’t know how exactly we will grow into the higher spheres. This being said, I think we should refrain from thinking in terms of “greater palette”.
...

I would point out here that freedom in our current stage should encompass the bold as well [the possibility to alternatively act impulsively and follow our lower instincts, for example, or an egoistic motive, and err]

I disagree! And that’s the crux of the matter, that I have been trying to discuss - fruitlessly - in this thread. Thank you for at least being ready to discuss it. Basically you are saying: resisting temptations is part of what makes us free. I say: no. Only knowledge and truth make us free.

Temptation arises exactly because each new stage of free spiritual activity comes with a corresponding degree of creative responsibility for exercising that spiritual activity.

This needs to be turned around: as spiritual activity expands, and responsibility proportionally expands, temptation diminishes. Temptation never “arises”. It can only diminish, as it is turned inside out. Because what is temptation? It’s the flip side of knowledge at every stage, the wisdom that we still lack, the love that has not yet touched us, and we turned it inside out by learning, including from our errors. As we evolve our individual perspective, temptation never “arises”. It starts from being the immersive medium of life itself. Then, through spiritual development, it progressively dissolves, through the expansion of knowledge. This applies at every step of development. We decode ignorance into knowledge, and freedom consists of such spiritual activity impressed in the flow of becoming with the stamp of our individual agency. It can only go in this direction, from ignorance to knowledge. If the work is not done, ignorance and temtaption remain, and we fall into them. For the fallen angels I guess it’s the same. They followed a deceptive course of action while truth was obscured from their sight.

We need to lift out of our limited aperture of experience to try and glimpse the practical ways in which freedom manifests through spiritual activity for our trans-incarnational being. What you wrote sounds good 'on paper', but it fails to explain certain key facets of our stream of becoming. That is why I mentioned the black magicians before. At the extreme level, these are people who know more about the spiritual dynamics than we could ever hope to know in our current incarnation. They know exactly where we have come from and where our spiritual evolution is heading, yet they consciously oppose the Christ impulse and seek to distract us from the second coming, which they know is taking place. They oppose it in ways that we can hardly imagine. Their temptation to egoism, pride, greed, vanity, etc. is so powerful that they are not only willing to risk their current lives to satisfy it, but also their eternal soul. Their hearts have fully hardened.

You are entirely correct to point to the force of Love here, because it is only Wisdom infused by Love which can soften our hearts, and Love requires continual acts of sacrifice and dedication. It is certainly true that an expansion of living spiritual knowledge inspires us to perform these acts over and over again, but it never compels us. The choice is always free. We can't say the possibility of temptation simply evaporates at some point, because that would negate our freedom. This is a very intuitive idea for us. The exoteric idea of freedom is not 'wrong', but it is incomplete and becomes a problem when that incomplete idea is idolized. We don't do it redemptive justice by idolizing the other side of the freedom polarity instead. We can say that spiritual freedom is a gradual freedom from Karmic necessity ('work against nature'), but we also need to recognize the pole opposite to that, which is the freedom to shape our Karmic potential (or the 'new nature'). These rhythmically feed back on one another and that's what we call 'spiritual evolution'. That brings us to a more complete view of freedom which, of course, should also not be idolized.

To be clear, our experience of error or temptation should not be projected up into the spirit worlds.

Error and temptation are two very different things. Only when neglecting the time dimension of freedom, they land on the same platter. Error is recorded in our memory and we can build on it. Temptation is... an hypothesis.

Again, I use two different words with "or"/"and" because they are two different concepts. Actually your argument here applies more to error, which indeed fades away as we grow into the higher worlds (in the sense of judging facts inaccurately), than it does to the temptation for rebellion against the Divine guidance, which as we saw from the Steiner quote, is still a force to be recokened with all along the gradient of higher hierarchies (there are Luciferic spirits in every hierarchy). Of course all of these facets are also bound up with ignorance of Truth vs. living Self-knowledge - no one is disputing that. But freedom always preserves a choice to re-enslave ourselves to ignorance, no matter how high we have climbed on the path of knowledge, and that is ultimately a matter of the Heart. It is the Heart which decides whether we are going to abuse our freedom at any given stage or express it in furtherance of what is best for the Cosmic organism. And there may even come a time when the Heart must decide to sacrifice its freedom for the Cosmic organism - the freedom to sacrifice freedom. These things obviously get quite paradoxical for the intellect, which is another reason to proceed with caution and flexibility.

[Federica]

Ashvin,
My brain just wanted to jump off, no explosions. Looks like it has left office without notice. Now I'm free-from and free-to, fully free through and through

[Federica]

Overall, I don't see how we can grow into the higher spheres of potential and simply trade off possibilities for manifesting the Spirit. Certainly the nature of that manifestation will transform radically from what we are now used to, but it will generally expand

I’m not saying we will simply trade off possibilities. I don’t know how exactly we will grow into the higher spheres. This being said, I think we should refrain from thinking in terms of “greater palette”. There’s an underlying idea of ‘gearing up the control tower’ that seems misleading to me. Super-powers (that we can only name as such by comparison to our current organization) will probably meet super-responsibilities that will probably dissolve any sense of greater palette.

Your response above already contains the reason why the objection doesn't hold. Considering the expansion of the palette of pathways through which we can manifest our high ideals, a critical facet of our free-ing spiritual activity, is only objectionable if we caricature it into the superficial understanding of gaining superpowers. It's as if we imagine the advanced initiate or the Angelic being thinking, 'wow I have gained the capacity to participate in shaping the destiny of the Cosmic organism by forming images in the astral bodies of these lower beings... this is amazing!' But as you correctly point out, that ignores the fact we are inwardly transforming at the same time that we grow into the higher spheres of potential. Our entire understanding of who we are and how we exist in the Cosmic context is changing, as we grow into new creative responsibilities with every higher step we take.

So if we resist the urge to caricature it in that way, then we have a clear intuitive sense of the expanding pallette, even if we don't know all the intricate details yet. Our expanding pallette will form the environmental basis for the spiritual evolution of lower life waves who have yet to go through their 'human' stage. That is integral to what it means to take on greater creative responsibility in correspondence with our increasing freedom, or put another way, the two cannot be properly understood in isolation from each other. At this point, I want to stop and ask whether this reformulation has greater resonance for you with the 'greater pallette' facet of freedom? Ultimately, it is all expression of our 'I'-dentity with the Divine Origin, and increasing living knowledge of that alone makes us free, but if we want a deeper view of how that concretely manifests in our stream of becoming over ages to come, or I would argue even over the course of two incarnations, I think we need to explore these other facets.

It’s noticeable how often it happens that I go in a certain direction as a result of following the precise thread of one of your ideas, often down to borrowing the same words, or words that to me epitomize your thoughts (yes, because I do that, instead of departing for lateral reasonings and playing games, in general I try to stick to the points) only to end up taken aback for being out in that field, that actually was your field!

Here you are criticizing me for caricaturing superpowers… it’s incredible, because the only reason I made the comment in the first place is because I felt you were speaking about that future leeway, and the greater palette with excessive assurance, and so I went there briefly. Moreover, I noticed you were using that excessive confidence in "the greater palette of possibilities to choose from” as a reinforcement for that idea of freedom as having multiple ways to do things that I criticize, and so you were concluding: greater palette = greater freedom. That’s the only reason why I made the comment! I wanted to give a heads up on that. I didn't have any need for myself to express original ideas about how that future leeway will evolve or feel. And now I have to read that I am caricaturing superpowers! I have not the least idea how a future man on Jupiter will feel about having a certain leeway, and I don't want to be criticized for caricaturing that. Still, and even if I have no idea myself, I thought it was over-confident of you to express such certainty that it will feel in a certain way, unless you say it comes from direct spiritual research, in which case I would believe you, of course.

[AshvinP]

I’m not saying we will simply trade off possibilities. I don’t know how exactly we will grow into the higher spheres. This being said, I think we should refrain from thinking in terms of “greater palette”. There’s an underlying idea of ‘gearing up the control tower’ that seems misleading to me. Super-powers (that we can only name as such by comparison to our current organization) will probably meet super-responsibilities that will probably dissolve any sense of greater palette.

Your response above already contains the reason why the objection doesn't hold. Considering the expansion of the palette of pathways through which we can manifest our high ideals, a critical facet of our free-ing spiritual activity, is only objectionable if we caricature it into the superficial understanding of gaining superpowers. It's as if we imagine the advanced initiate or the Angelic being thinking, 'wow I have gained the capacity to participate in shaping the destiny of the Cosmic organism by forming images in the astral bodies of these lower beings... this is amazing!' But as you correctly point out, that ignores the fact we are inwardly transforming at the same time that we grow into the higher spheres of potential. Our entire understanding of who we are and how we exist in the Cosmic context is changing, as we grow into new creative responsibilities with every higher step we take.

So if we resist the urge to caricature it in that way, then we have a clear intuitive sense of the expanding pallette, even if we don't know all the intricate details yet. Our expanding pallette will form the environmental basis for the spiritual evolution of lower life waves who have yet to go through their 'human' stage. That is integral to what it means to take on greater creative responsibility in correspondence with our increasing freedom, or put another way, the two cannot be properly understood in isolation from each other. At this point, I want to stop and ask whether this reformulation has greater resonance for you with the 'greater pallette' facet of freedom? Ultimately, it is all expression of our 'I'-dentity with the Divine Origin, and increasing living knowledge of that alone makes us free, but if we want a deeper view of how that concretely manifests in our stream of becoming over ages to come, or I would argue even over the course of two incarnations, I think we need to explore these other facets.

It’s noticeable how often it happens that I go in a certain direction as a result of following the precise thread of one of your ideas, often down to borrowing the same words, or words that to me epitomize your thoughts (yes, because I do that, instead of departing for lateral reasonings and playing games, in general I try to stick to the points) only to end up taken aback for being out in that field, that actually was your field!

Here you are criticizing me for caricaturing superpowers… it’s incredible, because the only reason I made the comment in the first place is because I felt you were speaking about that future leeway, and the greater palette with excessive assurance, and so I went there briefly. Moreover, I noticed you were using that excessive confidence in "the greater palette of possibilities to choose from” as a reinforcement for that idea of freedom as having multiple ways to do things that I criticize, and so you were concluding: greater palette = greater freedom. That’s the only reason why I made the comment! I wanted to give a heads up on that. I didn't have any need for myself to express original ideas about how that future leeway will evolve or feel. And now I have to read that I am caricaturing superpowers! I have not the least idea how a future man on Jupiter will feel about having a certain leeway, and I don't want to be criticized for caricaturing that. Still, and even if I have no idea myself, I thought it was over-confident of you to express such certainty that it will feel in a certain way, unless you say it comes from direct spiritual research, in which case I would believe you, of course.

It is certainly from direct spiritual research, Federica. Every aspect of spiritual science indicates that is the course of future human and Earth evolution. I didn't just state "greater palette of possibilities" as some vague concept, but gave examples of it too. I referenced the way in which our greater living knowledge now works back into our psycho-physical capacities in a subsequent incarnation. I also quoted Steiner again about the creative power of human speech which will manifest in future epochs. That is exactly the sort of thing which the average person, and probably most idealists, would caricature as superhero, superpower fantasy. In fact, everything from modern superhero stories is a dim, physicalized imagination of real spiritual capacities which have existed, exist now, or will exist.

None of this is tangential or marginal to the course of evolving within and towards freedom of spirit-soul-body, at the indiviudal and collective scales. It all needs to be paid attention to and accounted for. As usual, it's not about convincing anyone of some conceptualization of 'freedom', but gradually accustoming our whole organism to new ways of thinking through these unfamiliar issues. It's no problem if we are uncertain about them, but the issue is if our uncertainty leads us to discount or ignore these facets of our evolutionary stream. And right now, above and beyond the fact you called it 'marginal' and a 'slap in the face" to even try and focus on it, that's the only reason I can discern why you felt Cleric's characterization of freedom in the Jupiter stage could not be reconciled with the 'anthroposophical idea of freedom'.

[Federica]

Your response above already contains the reason why the objection doesn't hold. Considering the expansion of the palette of pathways through which we can manifest our high ideals, a critical facet of our free-ing spiritual activity, is only objectionable if we caricature it into the superficial understanding of gaining superpowers. It's as if we imagine the advanced initiate or the Angelic being thinking, 'wow I have gained the capacity to participate in shaping the destiny of the Cosmic organism by forming images in the astral bodies of these lower beings... this is amazing!' But as you correctly point out, that ignores the fact we are inwardly transforming at the same time that we grow into the higher spheres of potential. Our entire understanding of who we are and how we exist in the Cosmic context is changing, as we grow into new creative responsibilities with every higher step we take.

So if we resist the urge to caricature it in that way, then we have a clear intuitive sense of the expanding pallette, even if we don't know all the intricate details yet. Our expanding pallette will form the environmental basis for the spiritual evolution of lower life waves who have yet to go through their 'human' stage. That is integral to what it means to take on greater creative responsibility in correspondence with our increasing freedom, or put another way, the two cannot be properly understood in isolation from each other. At this point, I want to stop and ask whether this reformulation has greater resonance for you with the 'greater pallette' facet of freedom? Ultimately, it is all expression of our 'I'-dentity with the Divine Origin, and increasing living knowledge of that alone makes us free, but if we want a deeper view of how that concretely manifests in our stream of becoming over ages to come, or I would argue even over the course of two incarnations, I think we need to explore these other facets.

It’s noticeable how often it happens that I go in a certain direction as a result of following the precise thread of one of your ideas, often down to borrowing the same words, or words that to me epitomize your thoughts (yes, because I do that, instead of departing for lateral reasonings and playing games, in general I try to stick to the points) only to end up taken aback for being out in that field, that actually was your field!

Here you are criticizing me for caricaturing superpowers… it’s incredible, because the only reason I made the comment in the first place is because I felt you were speaking about that future leeway, and the greater palette with excessive assurance, and so I went there briefly. Moreover, I noticed you were using that excessive confidence in "the greater palette of possibilities to choose from” as a reinforcement for that idea of freedom as having multiple ways to do things that I criticize, and so you were concluding: greater palette = greater freedom. That’s the only reason why I made the comment! I wanted to give a heads up on that. I didn't have any need for myself to express original ideas about how that future leeway will evolve or feel. And now I have to read that I am caricaturing superpowers! I have not the least idea how a future man on Jupiter will feel about having a certain leeway, and I don't want to be criticized for caricaturing that. Still, and even if I have no idea myself, I thought it was over-confident of you to express such certainty that it will feel in a certain way, unless you say it comes from direct spiritual research, in which case I would believe you, of course.

It is certainly from direct spiritual research, Federica. Every aspect of spiritual science indicates that is the course of future human and Earth evolution. I didn't just state "greater palette of possibilities" as some vague concept, but gave examples of it too. I referenced the way in which our greater living knowledge now works back into our psycho-physical capacities in a subsequent incarnation. I also quoted Steiner again about the creative power of human speech which will manifest in future epochs. That is exactly the sort of thing which the average person, and probably most idealists, would caricature as superhero, superpower fantasy. In fact, everything from modern superhero stories is a dim, physicalized imagination of real spiritual capacities which have existed, exist now, or will exist.

None of this is tangential or marginal to the course of evolving within and towards freedom of spirit-soul-body, at the individual and collective scales. It all needs to be paid attention to and accounted for. As usual, it's not about convincing anyone of some conceptualization of 'freedom', but gradually accustoming our whole organism to new ways of thinking through these unfamiliar issues. It's no problem if we are uncertain about them, but the issue is if our uncertainty leads us to discount or ignore these facets of our evolutionary stream. And right now, above and beyond the fact you called it 'marginal' and a 'slap in the face" to even try and focus on it, that's the only reason I can discern why you felt Cleric's characterization of freedom in the Jupiter stage could not be reconciled with the 'anthroposophical idea of freedom'.

Ashvin,

To be precise, I called it marginal not in absolute terms, but relative to the turn the discussion had taken, where I felt it was urgent to make clarity about the various points I had brought forward about the present idea of freedom (which I still can't discern and still burns) rather than keeping on chasing intuitions about future man. And that's also what felt like a slap in the face, not the idea to focus on the greater palette in itself. I think this is fairly clear when one reads the discussion.
Anyway, I try to remember that eagerness should be balanced with patience. Besides, this whole question make me feel like a sort of guinea pig now, but I guess, because it's for the sake of (spiritual) science, it should be OK

Our expanding pallette will form the environmental basis for the spiritual evolution of lower life waves who have yet to go through their 'human' stage. That is integral to what it means to take on greater creative responsibility in correspondence with our increasing freedom, or put another way, the two cannot be properly understood in isolation from each other. At this point, I want to stop and ask whether this reformulation has greater resonance for you with the 'greater pallette' facet of freedom?

Not easy to answer a question that at first feels to me like arm twisting. But if I try, I can say this: in the perspective of taking greater creative responsibility in the cosmos' 'economy', I have difficulties conceiving the greater command of faculties, or greater palette, as freedom, in the way I currently intend freedom. I would definitely consider an expression of freedom the formation of the environmental basis for other beings, because it comprises the element of agency, and the element of integrating and transforming knowledge in unique ways. These two aspects, seem to be a constitutive, necessary part of creating the proper environment for the development of animal life, or whatever other part of the cosmos it might be. So I gladly associate that creative responsibility with freedom. But when it comes to the fact itself of having this greater palette at hand, I can't conceive it as freedom. It's more like a preset condition within which the individual has to find a proper way to express freedom. It's as if you asked me if I consider my given human organization today as my freedom. I would say no. My freedom is to consciously choose to develop it, to express its potential, to do what has now, since recently, become possible to do with our human organization. But the organization itself, with its current capabilities, is to be taken as it is. I don't see it as an expression of my freedom. Similarly, for future man, I can't see those future superpowers as freedom. This being said, I can certainly imagine that, because of the greater clairvoyance future man will have, a more transpersing vision of how the superpowers themselves came about could allow for a more expansive idea of freedom in which the state itself of the organization will be seen as the result of more conscious preceding evolutionary efforts.

[AshvinP]

It’s noticeable how often it happens that I go in a certain direction as a result of following the precise thread of one of your ideas, often down to borrowing the same words, or words that to me epitomize your thoughts (yes, because I do that, instead of departing for lateral reasonings and playing games, in general I try to stick to the points) only to end up taken aback for being out in that field, that actually was your field!

Here you are criticizing me for caricaturing superpowers… it’s incredible, because the only reason I made the comment in the first place is because I felt you were speaking about that future leeway, and the greater palette with excessive assurance, and so I went there briefly. Moreover, I noticed you were using that excessive confidence in "the greater palette of possibilities to choose from” as a reinforcement for that idea of freedom as having multiple ways to do things that I criticize, and so you were concluding: greater palette = greater freedom. That’s the only reason why I made the comment! I wanted to give a heads up on that. I didn't have any need for myself to express original ideas about how that future leeway will evolve or feel. And now I have to read that I am caricaturing superpowers! I have not the least idea how a future man on Jupiter will feel about having a certain leeway, and I don't want to be criticized for caricaturing that. Still, and even if I have no idea myself, I thought it was over-confident of you to express such certainty that it will feel in a certain way, unless you say it comes from direct spiritual research, in which case I would believe you, of course.

It is certainly from direct spiritual research, Federica. Every aspect of spiritual science indicates that is the course of future human and Earth evolution. I didn't just state "greater palette of possibilities" as some vague concept, but gave examples of it too. I referenced the way in which our greater living knowledge now works back into our psycho-physical capacities in a subsequent incarnation. I also quoted Steiner again about the creative power of human speech which will manifest in future epochs. That is exactly the sort of thing which the average person, and probably most idealists, would caricature as superhero, superpower fantasy. In fact, everything from modern superhero stories is a dim, physicalized imagination of real spiritual capacities which have existed, exist now, or will exist.

None of this is tangential or marginal to the course of evolving within and towards freedom of spirit-soul-body, at the individual and collective scales. It all needs to be paid attention to and accounted for. As usual, it's not about convincing anyone of some conceptualization of 'freedom', but gradually accustoming our whole organism to new ways of thinking through these unfamiliar issues. It's no problem if we are uncertain about them, but the issue is if our uncertainty leads us to discount or ignore these facets of our evolutionary stream. And right now, above and beyond the fact you called it 'marginal' and a 'slap in the face" to even try and focus on it, that's the only reason I can discern why you felt Cleric's characterization of freedom in the Jupiter stage could not be reconciled with the 'anthroposophical idea of freedom'.

Ashvin,

To be precise, I called it marginal not in absolute terms, but relative to the turn the discussion had taken, where I felt it was urgent to make clarity about the various points I had brought forward about the present idea of freedom (which I still can't discern and still burn) rather than keeping on chasing intuitions about future man. And that's also what felt like a slap in the face, not the idea to focus on the greater palette in itself. I think this is fairly clear when one reads the discussion.
Anyway, I try to remember that eagerness should be balanced with patience. Besides, this whole question make me feel like a sort of guinea pig now, but I guess, because it's for the sake of (spiritual) science, it should be OK

Our expanding pallette will form the environmental basis for the spiritual evolution of lower life waves who have yet to go through their 'human' stage. That is integral to what it means to take on greater creative responsibility in correspondence with our increasing freedom, or put another way, the two cannot be properly understood in isolation from each other. At this point, I want to stop and ask whether this reformulation has greater resonance for you with the 'greater pallette' facet of freedom?

Not easy to answer a question that at first feels to me like arm twisting. But if I try, I can say this: in the perspective of taking greater creative responsibility in the cosmos' 'economy', I have difficulties conceiving the greater command of faculties, or greater palette, as freedom, in the way I currently intend freedom. I would definitely consider an expression of freedom the formation of the environmental basis for other beings, because it comprises the element of agency, and the element of integrating and transforming knowledge in unique ways. These two aspects, seem to be a constitutive, necessary part of creating the proper environment for the development of animal life, or whatever other part of the cosmos it might be. So I gladly associate that creative responsibility with freedom. But when it comes to the fact itself of having this greater palette at hand, I can't conceive it as freedom. It's more like a preset condition within which the individual has to find a proper way to express freedom. It's as if you asked me if I consider my given human organization today as my freedom. I would say no. My freedom is to consciously choose to develop it, to express its potential, to do what has now, since recently, become possible to do with our human organization. But the organization itself, with its current capabilities, is to be taken as it is. I don't see it as an expression of my freedom. Similarly, for future man, I can't see those future superpowers as freedom. This being said, I can certainly imagine that, because of the greater clairvoyance future man will have, a more transpersing vision of how the superpowers themselves came about could allow for a more expansive idea of freedom in which the state itself of the organization will be seen as the result of more conscious preceding evolutionary efforts.

Federica,

Thanks for responding to that comment. I think the issue is pretty clear now. To start off abstractly, I would say the reality of freedom is rooted in a continual polar rhythm of Wisdom-Love. In the way you currently intend the idea of freedom, I believe the second 'leg' of that rhythm - Love - is being discounted. That is evidenced by certain comments in addition the latest one (emphasis mine):

Basically you are saying: resisting temptations is part of what makes us free. I say: no. Only knowledge and truth make us free.
...
If we have attained and achieved knowledge, we will fear no evil and no black magic. The possibility to err is scary as long as we lack sufficient contact with knowledge and truth, and freedom means establishing that contact.
...
In other words, freedom is experienced when we produce moral intuitions. Moral intuition is our free way to ‘refract out’ the one knowledge as applications, in the world, through the prism of our individuality. Once the moral intuition is gained, our freedom has found its full expression.
...
Then, it remains to energize its unfolding, keeping the will focused and the execution sharp, so that we don’t get sidetracked by lack of implementing skills. But that’s a 'downhill' section of the path. Freedom has already come to full expression, for that course of action.

What you are calling a 'downhill section of the path', I am saying is integral to any realistic idea of our freedom. There are generally two places where the Spirit is found in our current experience - 1) thinking, 2) love. For #2, it is mostly in the form of physical love and social love, where we pour our being into another being in the most intimate ways. It is easy to see how both of those relate to 'creative responsibility'. But for the lower forms of love to raise itself to the level of spiritual love, it must spiral together with #1. In a certain sense, we develop a love for spiritual activity, irregardless of what immediately results from that activity. We have a loving interest in the Spirit for its own sake. That is also a key to meditation, in that we aim to devote our concentrated thinking activity to the meditation and the spirit worlds without any expectation of compensation/reward.

It is through spiritual love - the spiraling together of #1 and #2 (which I would also say corresponds to the 1st and 2nd halves of PoF, respectively) - that we find our individual freedom and set on a path to more fully manifesting that freedom within broader and broader spheres, which is not only acquiring freedom for ourselves but also the capacity to free others. I have been reading a great book by Valentin Tomberg, who was an Anthroposophist and also the author of Meditations on the Tarot, and he writes the following (also, we can associate Sophia with Wisdom and Christ with Love):

After the night of wrestling with a Messenger of God, he [Jacob] triumphantly turned the stream of his life in a new direction. Freedom of spirit was the new direction that Jacob gave to the history of Israel. We can understand this because Jacob had absorbed much of the luciferic impulse [to Wisdom]. He had not fallen victim to it, but absorbed and transformed it. Jacob’s spiritual conflict with the Messenger of God was mainly an opposition, or rebellion. But how did this conflict end? “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (Genesis 32:26). These are the last words of the struggle. And the Messenger of God blessed Jacob; he expressed his recognition that the luciferic impulse in Jacob had been transformed. The conflict between the divine hierarchies and the luciferic impulse does not involve overcoming the latter by force; it leads to inner transformation. The beings of the divine hierarchies accomplish sacrifices that compel Lucifer’s wondering love. Through the example of sacrifice, the luciferic impulse is overcome; through the love that compels him to sacrifice, he is transformed inwardly.

The words “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” show that the luciferic impulse has been transformed. The essence of luciferic transformation is the love of the Spirit that will not surrender until the Spirit accepts it. After that fateful night of spiritual conflict at Ford Jabbok, Jacob followed the Spirit in freedom, compelled neither by inner nor by outer necessity. From that time forward, he followed the Holy Spirit out of love.

Tomberg, Valentin; Bruce, R.H.. Christ and Sophia: Anthroposophic Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocalypse (p. 39). steinerbooks. Kindle Edition.

We can relate these sacrifices which attain loving inner transformation concretely to the fact that we have a given human organization and environment in which to express that organization, which then makes possible our spiritual striving. It is only through spiritual acts of sacrifice that the physical world and the soul strata of humanity has been built up. Through living knowledge of how loving sacrifice has brought us to where we are, we can be inspired by gratitude to our own loving spiritual activity to carry forward evolution. It is activity which is inspired to make good on old debts without any expectation of future reward. That is how the creation involves and evolves into ever-new forms without compulsion of the spiritual beings working through it. So it is critical to understanding our freedom. As an even more esoteric example, Tomberg also writes:

Every being bears the mystery of its individuality within itself, and it is conscience—the inner creative source—that gives individuality to all beings, even to the beings of the hierarchies. Individuality exists only insofar as it can add something to the cosmic life around it that could not manifest without assistance. The hierarchies of cosmic good are not automata, even though for them there is no question of a choice between good and evil. They serve the good by seeking in their conscience ever new and more perfect deeds of sacrifice. There is no limit to the moral imagination of goodness; the beings who serve the good are distinguished by the acts of sacrifice they choose. They freely renounce the rights they possess in the cosmos in order to achieve by sacrifice, on a higher level, something greater than they could have attained had they remained within their rights. Something like this is also true of a certain group of human souls who, in the disembodied state in Devachan, make decisions concerning the next earthly life that awaits them.4 For example, a human soul may have a karmic right to a harmonious life of sunshine, surrounded by friends and in a milieu congenial to its character; this is the right of that soul. But it may happen that, after examining the life before it in the light of conscience, this soul may freely renounce the destiny offered by karma. The conscience of such a soul may say, “I have before me the possibility of a harmonious life on Earth. I will not need to expend my forces in conflict and pain. Meanwhile, however, humanity will go through trials in which I will not actively share. My help in the fight for truth is more necessary to humankind than my happiness.” Such a soul may choose a mission involving a very different course of life from that to which it had a right. The consequence of this may be that that soul is placed by destiny in the middle of a conflict on Earth and may never meet success during a whole lifetime. Here it is not a question of a choice between good and evil, but between good and better.

Tomberg, Valentin; Bruce, R.H.. Christ and Sophia: Anthroposophic Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocalypse (pp. 71-72). steinerbooks. Kindle Edition.

The 'greater palette' concept can be equated with that of 'seeking in their consience ever new and more perfect deeds of sacrifice'. At the Jupiter stage, we could say this disposition of soul will be perfected among the progressive stream of humanity. The bringing forth of spiritual love into the Cosmos is the mission of the Earth evolution. Then we will be taking on a creative responsibility for lower life waves in ways which we can scarcely imagine at present. I think the main difficulty, as usual, is to keep both legs of the evolutionary rhythm (wisdom-love) in view as much as possible, without prioritizing one over the other. It gets pretty complex when we are talking about rhythms within rhthyms at the various scale-relative domains of existence, from the most personal to the most archetypal. So yes, patience and displine in tackling these issues is key. As always, we are not simply discussing 'freedom at the Jupiter stage' to satisfy curiosity about remote realities, but to find concrete, thoughtful ways to more perfectly embody our living destiny.

[Federica]

Thanks for the insights above, Ashvin. I think about the Christ impulse, and how we owe everything to it, but it's true that I don't primarily connect those ideas and feelings with freedom. Earlier today I was reading from the lecture "From Jesus to Christ":

We must be quite clear that no human feeling is capable of realising the intensity of love that was needed for a God to make a decision — a decision He had no need to make — to work upon earth in a human body. Thereby, through an act of love, the most important event in human evolution was brought about. And when men grasp this act of love by a God, when they try to grasp it as a great ideal in contrast with which every human act of love can be but small, then, through this feeling of utter disproportion between human love and the Divine Love needed for the Mystery of Golgotha, they will draw near to the building up, to the giving birth within them, of those Imaginations which place before our spiritual gaze the momentous Event of Golgotha. Yes, verily, it is possible to attain to the Imagination of the mount on which the Cross was raised, that Cross on which hung a God in human body, a God who out of his own free will, out of Love, accomplished the act whereby the earth and humanity could reach their goal.

If the God who is designated by the name of the Father had not at one time permitted the Luciferic influences to come to man, man would not have developed the free Ego. With the Luciferic influence, the conditions for the free Ego were established. That had to be permitted by the Father-God. But just as the Ego, for the sake of freedom, had to become entangled in matter, so then, in order that the Ego might be freed from this entanglement, the entire love of the Son had to lead to the Act of Golgotha. Through this alone the freedom of man, the complete dignity of man, first became possible. For the fact that we can be free beings, we have to thank a Divine Act of Love. As men we may feel free beings, but we may never forget that for this freedom we have to thank this Act of Love. Then, in the midst of our feeling, the thought will arise: ‘You can attain to the value, the dignity, of a man; but one thing you may not forget, that for being what you are you have to thank Him who has brought back to you your human prototype through the Redemption on Golgotha.’ Men should not be able to lay hold of the thought of freedom without the thought of Redemption through Christ: only then is the thought of freedom justified. If we will to be free, we must bring the offering of thanks to Christ for our freedom. Then only can we really perceive it.

which indissolubly relates freedom and Love, and also brings in the counter element of evil powers you mentioned before. It seems to complement well the excerpts from Tomberg.

[AshvinP]

Thanks for the insights above, Ashvin. I think about the Christ impulse, and how we owe everything to it, but it's true that I don't primarily connect those ideas and feelings with freedom. Earlier today I was reading from the lecture "From Jesus to Christ":

We must be quite clear that no human feeling is capable of realising the intensity of love that was needed for a God to make a decision — a decision He had no need to make — to work upon earth in a human body. Thereby, through an act of love, the most important event in human evolution was brought about. And when men grasp this act of love by a God, when they try to grasp it as a great ideal in contrast with which every human act of love can be but small, then, through this feeling of utter disproportion between human love and the Divine Love needed for the Mystery of Golgotha, they will draw near to the building up, to the giving birth within them, of those Imaginations which place before our spiritual gaze the momentous Event of Golgotha. Yes, verily, it is possible to attain to the Imagination of the mount on which the Cross was raised, that Cross on which hung a God in human body, a God who out of his own free will, out of Love, accomplished the act whereby the earth and humanity could reach their goal.

If the God who is designated by the name of the Father had not at one time permitted the Luciferic influences to come to man, man would not have developed the free Ego. With the Luciferic influence, the conditions for the free Ego were established. That had to be permitted by the Father-God. But just as the Ego, for the sake of freedom, had to become entangled in matter, so then, in order that the Ego might be freed from this entanglement, the entire love of the Son had to lead to the Act of Golgotha. Through this alone the freedom of man, the complete dignity of man, first became possible. For the fact that we can be free beings, we have to thank a Divine Act of Love. As men we may feel free beings, but we may never forget that for this freedom we have to thank this Act of Love. Then, in the midst of our feeling, the thought will arise: ‘You can attain to the value, the dignity, of a man; but one thing you may not forget, that for being what you are you have to thank Him who has brought back to you your human prototype through the Redemption on Golgotha.’ Men should not be able to lay hold of the thought of freedom without the thought of Redemption through Christ: only then is the thought of freedom justified. If we will to be free, we must bring the offering of thanks to Christ for our freedom. Then only can we really perceive it.

which indissolubly relates freedom and Love, and also brings in the counter element of evil powers you mentioned before. It seems to complement well the excerpts from Tomberg.

That's a great quote, Federica, thanks for sharing it.

Yes, it does generally seem like an odd fit (the love by and of Christ, and freedom). Especially with our confused notions of 'love' today and our equally confused notions of 'faith'. The dualistic thinking habits are so ingrained today that it's hard for us to see how the poles of love and truth work through each other to ground our freedom. I think this is especially a problem for modern religious people, whether Western or Eastern, theistic or mystical. What is called 'love' is actually a Luciferic 'pity' which is driven only by passionate feeling and basically shuns knowledge of the Spirit in clearly contoured concepts and ideas. We also see that permeating many leftist ideological movements today. The Love of Christ, however, is that which descends to humanity as His potential equal and desires for us to realize our full human potential and reach back to the Father through ennobled, enlivened thinking and Self-knowledge. Here is a great passage on that difference from Tomberg.

This naturally leads to a question: In the second study, the “fall of the angels”—the luciferic rebellion—was represented as a result of emotional compassion; here, arrogance or presumption is alleged as its cause. How can these two explanations be reconciled? Compassion is not really the right word to express precisely the reason behind the defection of Lucifer from the gods. The appropriate term is not contained in the English, French, or German languages. The Russian word shalostj, by contrast, gives an exact idea of the essential cause of Lucifer’s rebellion. It means pity for a being who is felt to be too weak to free itself from a painful situation. This feeling is distinct from compassion (which in Russian is sostradanie), because compassion may also be felt for someone who is respected, whereas the feeling intended here is a contemptuous pity. It contains within itself a hidden scorn for the being for whom this kind of compassion is felt.

This feeling—as well as the ideology it evokes in most important human affairs—becomes intelligible when we read the chapter about the Grand Inquisitor in Feodor Dostoevsky’s book The Brothers Karamazov. There, more clearly than anywhere else, the difference between the love of Jesus Christ and the love of the Grand Inquisitor is shown. Whereas Christ, by his action, shows the greatest possible respect for humankind—not working by miracle and power, but by sacrifice (the temptation in the wilderness)—the Grand Inquisitor, on the other hand, is convinced that humanity is incapable of coming to Christ in freedom; Christ’s error must be remedied through those who are prepared to bear the cross of guardianship and assume sole responsibility for humankind. The Grand Inquisitor does not love humankind as Christ does; he feels a burning but contemptuous compassion for human beings. Freedom, he is convinced, should be reserved for the few chosen ones; but the mass of humanity should be led. And if Christ were to appear again, it would be the Grand Inquisitor’s duty—even though he had recognized him—to imprison him as a dangerous heretic, whose coming would bring confusion to the masses of humankind under his tutelage; the specter of freedom would arise again and destroy his work of compassion.

This chapter of Dostoevsky’s work helps us understand, deep in our heart, the reasons for the luciferic opposition to the divine purposes. This understanding of the heart shows us that luciferic compassion in its true form is nothing but arrogance and overweening pride; it is based on a low esteem of humanity, of which Lucifer was to assume the guardianship. Hence, it is no contradiction to say that Lucifer rebelled against the gods out of pride, while at the same time he pitied humanity. What the soul experiences as luciferic compassion is overweening spiritual pride.

Tomberg, Valentin; Bruce, R.H.. Christ and Sophia: Anthroposophic Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocalypse (p. 61). steinerbooks. Kindle Edition.