This is a good description of the PoF approach, which is a misnomer because it is essentially a philosophy of idealistic Fascio . The word "fascism" originates from Italian Fascio literally meaning "a bundle" or "a sheaf", and figuratively "league". The core view of every Fascio ideology is the primacy of objective and collective and rejection of everything subjective and individual. The individual freedom is only understood as a choice either to comply or not to comply with the collective. In case of Anthroposophy it is idolization of the objective ideational World Content and rejection of any ideational content related to subjective individuated spiritual activity. Fascio is rooted in the view that anything related to individuated activity is always and necessarily essentially egoic and therefore inferior with respect to the collective (=objective). The word "fascism" has a bad stigma associated with German Nazism, but in fact many social systems in the human history were essentially fascist to some degree, including religious states such as Byzantine Empire, almost every Islamic state, communist countries, most of the totalitarian regimes, etc. Many of them were and are relatively functional and are by far not as bad as the German Nazism.AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 11:54 pm Just to add a few thoughts on this issue of subjective (or man-made) vs. objective meaning. We could say what really makes the difference between perceived meaning which is 'subjective' and that which is 'objective' is the extent to which the perception of meaning is conditioned by our personalized opinions, interests, preferences, ideologies, etc. To the extent we can deidentify our thinking organism with those merely personal factors, our perception of meaning becomes more archetypal and 'objective'. Since most people aren't even aware that these personal factors influence their thinking perception, or how they influence it, which can only be illuminated through enlivening our thinking consciousness, they live in very subjective thoughts-perceptions. When they move rigorously through the World Content with logical reasoning, they temporarily lift from the subjective to the more objective perception of meaning. But when formulating beliefs and theories about the WC, the thinking snaps back to its subjective conditioning. The conceptual-perceptual spectrum is ordered so that it fits into a pre-packaged narrative which is desired, and everything which doesn't fit is ignored or marginalized in some way. The modern idealists/mystics also realized this limitation of modern thinking, but declared that, since they experience the WC subjectively, everyone else must as well and there's no way out. As Schopenhauer said, but failed himself to internalize, "every man mistakes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the World."
The personalized perspective which perceives the meaning of the WC in this way is itself objective content. If we can deepen our thinking consciousness into the forces which animate that perspective, through our shared soul-tendencies, then we are moving towards the archetypal. We gradually differentiate our core be-ing from that personal perspective, which is not to say we aim to abandon it, but rather to livingly understand how it arose and what role it serves in our spiritual evolution. Then we can participate in fulfilling the objective intentions for the personality - we spiral our personal intents into harmony with the Cosmic intents. We are tasked with bringing something truly new into the world, not through endless combining of the subjectivized content of our thinking, but through the new relationships we build between ourselves and the objective archetypal content we perceive in thinking, between ourselves and other beings. We can only fulfill this purpose of creating new relationships if we become increasingly self-aware of how that objective content manifests itself in our experience. And to do that we must sacrifice the personalized interests which condition our thinking perception. It's easier said than done, since we all start pursuing knowledge of reality exactly for personal comfort, pleasure, status, satisfaction in various ways, even if we often hide these motives from our surface consciousness.
That is why the various paths of modern initiation involve a purification of the personal soul-life. Federica shared a method from a Steiner to pursue this purification with regards to outer nature on the other thread. A phenomenology of thinking such as PoF is also a means of catharsis. It is sort of a two for one combo - through it we can purify the personal interests while also contemplating and experiencing the nature of our intimate spiritual activity. There are other methods oriented more towards the life of Feeling, which generally involve devotional practices and prayer. That was the approach of the medieval Christian mystics. The Rosicrucian initiation integrates the two approaches.
Every Fascio ideology, anthroposophy included, has its good reasoning. Every human individual on Earth (with the exception of a very few souls) lives in a dualistic state of consciousness, which means that by far most of their subjective content indeed originates from the sense of separate self and its ego-complex and therefore is in fact mostly egoic. It is easily observed that usually secular liberal and humanistic views that give too much freedom for individuals and too much value to the individual and subjective often lead to hedonistic and egoic values, views, lifestyles and behavior and becomes a source of problems and conflicts on both individual and collective levels. In the realm of collective there is a polarity of two organizational systems and two systems of values that can be called Individualistic vs. Collective (or Liberal vs. Fascio ), both having their pros and cons. The dynamics of their opposition can be seen in human history of states and various social groups and their beliefs. This polarity and this dichotomy are inevitable in the realm of the dualistic state of consciousness.
The only way to resolve this dichotomy is to transcend the dualistic state. In the state of Oneness there is no opposition between individuated and collective spiritual activities and their ideational content, and instead, there is a full harmony of them. The individuated spiritual activity is not rooted in the egoic state of separate self, and therefore it is not based on any personal interests related to the individual self and disconnected from the interests of the collective. Any individuated spiritual activity and content is always in harmony with the collective, and any collective activity and content is always inharmony with individual. Such harmony does not hinder the freedom of the individuated spiritual activity. Consciousness continuously creates new ideational content through both collective and individual spiritual activities, where the results of the individual activity contributes to and becomes shared with the collective. Both collective and individual are equally valued and there is no more opposition and polarity between them.
