Great Lakes Waldorf Institute

Spring 2013










Transformational Thinking:
A New Look at Looking
with your hosts
Nancy Kresin-Price
and Seth Miller

Main Text:
Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
(The Philosophy of Freedom) by Rudolf Steiner

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

CH 1-2 Reading Discussion: Introduction, Conscious Human Action &
The Fundamental Urge for Knowledge .................................................. 1
CH 1-2 Exercise: The Fresh Impression (EARTH) ............................................. 3

CH 3 Reading Discussion: Thinking in the Service of Understanding the World ......... 6
CH 3 Exercise: Exact Sensorial Imagination (WATER) ....................................... 7

CH 4 Reading Discussion: The World as Percept ............................................. 9
CH 4 Exercise: Non-Objective Rendering: The Activity Behind Manifestation (AIR) .. 10

CH 5 Reading Discussion: The Act of Knowing .............................................. 12
CH 5 Exercise: Distilling the holographic principle in the other ESSENCE
(FIRE/WARMTH) ........................................................................... 13

CH 1-6 Reading Discussion Review/Summary: Percept & Concept & Thinking ........ 15
CH 6 Exercise: Perceiving Perception ........................................................ 27

CH 7 Reading Discussion: Monism and the Limitlessness of Knowing ................... 29
CH 7 Exercise: Awakening to the difference between PERCEPT, CONCEPT, and
MENTAL IMAGE ............................................................................ 31

CH 8 Reading Discussion: The Factors of Life .............................................. 34
CH 8 Exercise: Thinking, Feeling, and Willing .............................................. 37

CH 9 Reading Discussion: The Idea of Freedom ............................................ 40
CH 9 Exercise: Distinguishing Driving Forces: Instinct, Feeling, Practical Experience, Pure
Thinking, or: Getting to Know Your Particular Characterological Disposition 101 ........ 43

CH 10-11 Reading Discussion: Freedom-Philosophy and Monism & World Purpose
and Life Purpose ........................................................................... 44
CH 10-11 Exercise: Performing a Free Act .................................................. 50

CH 12 Reading Discussion: Moral Intuition, Imagination, and Technique .............. 52
CH 12 Exercise: Poetry and Moral Imagination ............................................. 53

CH 13 Reading Discussion: The Value of Life ............................................... 54
CH 13 Exercise: Values ......................................................................... 58

CH 14 Reading Discussion: Individuality and Genus ....................................... 59
CH 14 Exercise: From Genus to Individual .................................................. 62

Closing Reading Discussion: Preface/Appendices .......................................... 64
Page 1 of 67

CHAPTERS 1-2 READING DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
Introduction, Conscious Human Action &
The Fundamental Urge for Knowledge


THE INTRODUCTION

I hope that you found the introduction written by Gertrude a helpful overview of what
is to come. I return to it time and again to gain a sense for the whole of this book when I
am not actively engaged in reading it. This is a suggestion for a way to work with that
content.

CHAPTER ONE

We will work further with ideas from chapter one in the Transformative Exercise
section.

CHAPTER TWO

In our week's reading discussion, we will focus on creating artistic impressions of
different and varying perspectives on human and earthly life as described in chapter
2. This week we will consider a chosen phenomenon through four lenses using an
artistic depiction to enter into each perspective.

Your first task is to consider a human/earthly process - maybe something really juicy
like the conception or gestation of a baby, or the process of human growth and
development anywhere along the cycle, or it could be something you do every day like
sleeping, digestion, or breathing or anything else you can think of. Imagine one of
these processes, focus in on it from the differing perspectives explored by Steiner in this
chapter - for your convenience, some of the ideas are reiterated below.

As you consider each point of view, draw, paint, sketch, sculpt or otherwise depict
through a visually artistic medium how each of these lenses might envision your
process. When you have created your artistic piece, photograph it and post the pictures
in the threaded discussion area below by clicking "REPLY".





Page 2 of 67

THE FOUR LENSES

A monistic view - Monism directs its gaze exclusively to unity, and seeks to deny
or erase the opposites, present though these are. Steiner mentions 3 "solutions"
attempted by monisim,

1) "...either it denies spirit and becomes materialism;

2) or it denies matter, seeking salvation through spiritualism;

3) or else it claims that matter and spirit are inseparably united even in the
simplest entity, so that it should come as no surprise if these two forms of
existence, which after all are never apart, appear together in human beings."

4) A dualistic view - Dualism directs its gaze solely to the separation that human
consciousness effects between the "I" and the world. Steiner says, "Dualism sees
spirit (I) and matter (world) as two fundamentally different entities, and therefore
it cannot understand how the two can affect one another. How could spirit know
what is going on in matter, if matter's specific nature is altogether foreign to
spirit? Or, given these conditions, how could spirit affect matter so that intentions
translate into deeds?"

Page 3 of 67

CHAPTERS 1-2 EXERCISE DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
The Fresh Impression (EARTH)

In chapter 1, Steiner, in that brilliant way he has, sets up the argument using several
philosophical sources, showing how each one is flawed when considering the subject of
human freedom. One of the most important concepts for me in the chapter 1, comes
near the end as he begins to discuss the heart coming into its own as motives are
permeated by thought. In this process, he says, "The way to the heart goes through the
head" and we develop a "sensitivity" for things. It is this sensitivity that I wish to
discuss in our first week.

The Geman word for this sensitivity is Gemt and it has no satisfactory English
equivalent. It points more to the totality of man's inner being than "heart" does. It refers
to a blending of thinking, willing, and feeling that one can feel with one's whole being,
but is centered in the region of one's heart. Elsewhere Steiner provides a more poetic
translation, "the mind warmed by a loving heart and stimulated by the soul's
imaginative power" and a more intellectual one, "the soul in a state of unconscious
intuition arising from the working together of heart and mind." The following verse
may come to mind:

IN THE HEAD THE POWER OF FAITH
IN THE HEART THE MIGHT OF LOVE
IN THE FULL HUMAN BEING ALL-SUSTAINING HOPE

As you move into the Transformative Exercise for the week, you will work more deeply
with this concept in a very personal way.

Introduction

When we are familiar with someone or something, we often take its many complexities
and characteristics for granted. This week, we will work to refresh our ability to notice
anew even if we see someone every day.

One scientist describes this act of seeing anew in the following way:

The aim is to make conscious the moment of first contact with a phenomenona
moment when ones sensibilities are most alive and open. Everyone has a first
impression when experiencing something new, but this encounter is usually quickly
Page 4 of 67

forgotten as the thing becomes familiar and ordinary. Goethes approach suggests that
we can consciously carry this impression throughout the course of the research process
and allow it to develop and become more clear."
-Nigel Hoffman, 1998
PART ONE:

Observation Exercise:

If you are a teacher, it will be easy for you to try this with one of your students. If you
are not currently working with children, try it with a colleague, friend, or family
member. If the person is new to you, this will be very easy. The rest of us must think
back to our first meeting with this person. Choose one or two people on which to focus
for this week's exercise. Take a few minutes to jot down your first impressions of the
person.

REMEMBER TO USE SOME CODE NAME OR PSEUDONYM AND NOT THE
PERSON'S REAL NAME

Give yourself 3-5 minutes per person and try to capture the essence of what you noticed
in that first meeting. It will be best to jot down a few notes when you are present in the
room with that person.

Try to avoid making judgments or drawing conclusions, but instead employ the use
of discernment. (This is tricky but here is an example: JUDGMENT-"She has beautiful
hair"; DISCERNMENT-"She has long, silky, sandy-blonde hair that falls in loose ringlets
around her shoulders." See the difference? Exact descriptions without value provide a
clearer and more accurate picture.)

Only record the easily observable characteristics that are as free from judgment as
possible. This description might include such things as hair color, eye color, facial
features, height, gender, the sound of that person's voice, what they were wearing, their
frequency of attendance or engagement, time of engagement, and other things you
notice. These are the "earth" elements present in your encounter. Provide as many
details as you can but in a very short amount of time. Your goal is not to be exhaustive,
but exacting!

In other words, describe in as much detail as possible the "cover of the book", but don't
judge it! Share your observations in an initial posting below by clicking "Reply".
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PART TWO

Introduction
We sometimes make quick judgments about people that we meet as soon as we begin
our work with them. We begin trying to "figure them out" right away. Often, once we
have come to some initial conclusions, we think of a person in that same light each time
we consider them, their work, or their capacity for growth.

Unless we bring to consciousness that we are actually doing this, we will continue to
have superficial relationships. By considering some of the types of relationships we
create, we can begin to change the way we relate and allow room for transformation.

THREE SIMPLE THINGS:
1. Maybe we really like a person and find them very easy to get along with.
2. Maybe we find it hard to get to know someone, they are quiet or don't reveal much
about themselves, and then we don't feel we know them at all.
3. And then there are the "difficult" people. These are the ones that get to you,
frustrate you, and always seem to be stirring up trouble in some way.

Transformative Exercise:

Take some time to consider an example person. Find one that fits each of the 3
categories above.
Visualize them one at a time. First, the "easy" person, then the "puzzling" person,
then the "difficult" person .
Say aloud and send towards each person in turn the following thoughts:

"I wish you peace.
May you experience true joy.
May you flourish in your life."

Share your experiences in a second posting below. Comment on the posts of others if
you feel called to do so, or simply let this week's postings stand without comment - an
earthy thing to do.

Page 6 of 67

CHAPTER 3 READING DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
Thinking in the Service of
Understanding the World

Steiner's third chapter explores what he calls the "exceptional state" of the observation
of thinking. He has much to say about the elements that are required in this process as
well as the chronology of how the elements unfold to create the process.

This week you will work in groups to accomplish three tasks with regard to the
reading:

1. You will work through the text to decide upon what you think the elements of
the process actually are.
2. You will decide upon the chronological order in which you believe the
elements of the process proceed as they allow the process of the observation of
thinking to unfold.
3. You will note any other important aspects or elements that your group feels
must be mentioned in regard to this "exceptional state".

Group assignments are listed below.
You will find your group discussion rooms by clicking in the left hand menu or by
clicking the Groups tab in the blue menu bar at the top of the screen. When you get
there, make sure that you are in the correct group by looking at the "About" section for
your group where all the members are listed.
Be careful when you go into the Groups area, because this will take you outside of the
classroom space. To reenter, choose "Classes" from the blue menu bar at the top of your
screen and come back to class.
You can discuss together online in your group specific "Forums" discussion (you'll find
that tab in the left hand menu of each group section once you move into your group
area). You can post your thoughts and questions for the rest of your group members, or
you can arrange to call or skype each other.
I'll check in with each group to see if there are any needs. When you have decided on
what to post for all 3 tasks above, you should choose a member of your group to make
the post for your whole group in the assignment/discussion space below by clicking on
the first "Reply" button beneath these instructions.
This post should be made no later than Thursday to allow for full class discussion of the
group postings through the end of the week.

Page 7 of 67

CHAPTER 3 EXERCISE DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
Exact Sensorial Imagination (WATER)

Introduction
This week, your observations will help you to re-create the image of a person inside of
your picturing consciousness. Goethe called this activity, exact sensorial
imagination. This observational mode asks you to focus on the relationships between the
empirical characteristics noted last week and on the time sequence in which they
unfold.

When seeing a plant through such a technique for example, one comes to realize that
the growth process is the relationship or connection between the contiguous plant
organs we have been observing. The particulars dissolve inside the fluidity and flow of
one movement that is the metamorphosis of the whole seen in our imagination. We
cannot usually see the growth process itself with the organ of our eyes. Likewise, the
flower or fruit is not present during the first stages of growth and so is initially invisible
to our view. In order to view the relationships between each successive phase of
development, we must bring the previously detailed observations of phenomenon into
our imagination to re-create the image there. From a process of imaginative thinking,
the concept of the plant, including its growth processes and relational aspects, is brought
forth from within us through our own inner activity. During this phase, our own inner
world of thought has penetrated the outer world; that which is perceived by the senses
in the way that water can penetrate the earth.

PART 1:
Observation Exercise:

This week's work asks that you recreate the outer vision of a person within your
picturing consciousness. Stay with one of the people from last week's observations. Go
deeper with the phenomena.

Now, begin to imagine a process of metamorphosis taking place. Imagine the person
back in time. Imagine how this person got to the current phase of development. What
came before? Imagine a much younger version of him or herself, as a young child, as a
baby. Then, imagine them forward in time again, to where you see them
today. Continuing on, imagine them into the future as far as you can. What will that
sly smile turn into at middle age? How will the hair change? How will the voice be
different? How will the spark in the eye manifest as an older person?
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If, in your imagination of the person, you find parts are missing, place something
there. If you don't know how tall they are, you get to decide. You have this power, and
many others, as the creator of the imagination. Simply the intention you carry in
performing the exercise as well as the detail with which you can achieve it, holds
transformative elements for your relationship.

PART 2:
Transformation Exercise:

This week's exercise will assist you in strengthening your inner organs of
perception. The exercise is analogous to the work you are doing with other people
during the observation exercise. This exercise can be done over and over again. It can
be done while you are waiting for a bus, driving in traffic, or sitting in the doctor's
office. It will help you to develop new organs for perceiving deeper qualities and needs
in others and perhaps even in yourself.

Here are the steps:
Imagine that you are holding a seed in your hand. You should decide what type
of seed it is, and be as specific as you are able.
Imagine planting it.
Think about all the elements that it needs in order to begin to grow into a healthy
plant.
Provide these elements in your imagination.
See the plant sprouting, growing, and finally flourishing.
Imagine the plant moving backwards from the flourishing seed-bearing blossom
gradually back to the seed itself.
The seed is again in your hand.

Post reflections about how this worked for you and any revelations you may have had
as a result of working with this image. Click "Reply" below to make your post and to
read and respond to the posts of others.

Page 9 of 67

CHAPTER 4 READING DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
The World as Percept


After reading chapter 4:

1. Describe briefly, the problem with Critical Idealism relative to the processes we
are studying.

2. Describe even more briefly, the problem with Nave Realism in this same regard.

3. Look at the work your group produced last week: Review the elements and
order of steps in the process as your group described it last week to see if there
are any elements you would like to add, subtract, or change in light of any new
understanding you now have, and in order to account for the new element of
PERCEPT.
(You may do number 3 as an individual or you can go back in your group discussion
space to discuss and decide together whichever you find easier.)

Page 10 of 67

CHAPTER 4 EXERCISE DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
Non-Objective Rendering: The Activity Behind
Manifestation (AIR)

Observation Exercise:

Introduction
What was originally objective, clearly separate and outside of the observer, now begins
to take up residence on the inside of the observers consciousness.

Observation Exercise
1. Bring one of the people you have been observing into your mind's eye. This person
has many outer characteristics that you have been noticing. Review some of those now.

2. Review the person's quality of movement - is it choppy, fluid, or
determined? Review the personal energy they exude. Review the way they
speak. Using a few adjectives, how would you describe the quality, which seems to
inspire this person's way of being? These should be based strongly on your
observations of outer phenomena, not your judgments, but your observations of actual
movements, spoken interactions, and the way you have experienced the energetic
presence of this person.

3. Work only with one or two of these adjectives and let go of the outer
characteristics. Write down the words you choose. Are they exactly what you mean? If
not, adjust them. Now you have distilled one or two simple words as a description of
certain energetic qualities of the person you have observed.

4. Take these words into the transformative exercise for the week.










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Transformative Exercise:

Introduction
As the observer moves more deeply into the specific phenomenon of the organism, he
finds that both the outer physical object and its hidden inner workings arise very clearly
inside his thoughts, feelings, and imaginative life.

Transformative Exercise
First, prepare yourself and your space with your favorite art materials - pen,
paper, pencil, paints, colored leads, crayons, clay, whatever you like.
Begin with the word(s) you have decided upon as a result of your observations of
a particular person in this week's observation.
Consider only the words you have chosen. Go deeply into these words. Repeat
them inwardly to yourself. Allow color, shape, form, movement, depth, space,
feeling, and emotion to arise before your mind's eye.
When you have immersed yourself in this experience for a time, use your art
materials to express some of what you have visualized. These images should
be non-objective - they are not of specific people or objects but show only qualities.
Allow your creative inspiration to lead you. Do not judge what you are
doing. Let yourself go with these qualities and do not impose too much thinking
or cognition on your results
Photograph and post the images you create. Post the words you chose along
with the images.

Page 12 of 67

CHAPTER 5 READING DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
The Act of Knowing

Now, let's boil it down. Let's try to find the essence of this very complex chapter of interwoven
ideas. Write only ONE SENTENCE on one of the topics listed below. Let's try, as a group, to
create an essential picture of what Steiner is telling us in this chapter. Choose only one of the
ideas listed below. Try to choose one that has not been done yet, but if you have to duplicate,
explain the same idea differently than the original person has done. Make sure you indicate
which of the items you are working with early in the week (I've included this in blue) and then
again as you post your sentence.

Remember - ONLY ONE SENTENCE ALLOWED for each!!!

CRITICAL THINKING
MENTAL PICTURE DREAM
RELATIONSHIP OF THINKING TO PERCEPTION
WORLD PRODUCES THINKING
PROCESS OF BECOMING
INDIVISIBLE EXISTENCE OF CONCEPT WITH PERCEPTION
ISOLATING SECTIONS OF THE WORLD TO UNDERSTAND IT
SELF-PERCEPTION VS. SELF-DEFINITION
UNIVERSAL THINKING
PRINCIPLE OF WORLD UNITY
TWO SIDES OF "TOTAL REALITY"
UNIFIED WORLD OF INTUITION
CONCEPTUAL CONNECTIONS OF PERCEPTS
OBJECTIVE PERCEPTI

AND THE LAST WORD FROM STEINER AS HE CLOSES THE LESSON

Only one thing can prevent our mental pictures from interposing themselves between
us and the world and that is thinking. When thinkers confront an external thing the
conceptual intuition that corresponds to the observation appears.
Page 13 of 67

CHAPTER 5 EXERCISE DISCUSSION: (NANCY)
Distilling the holographic principle
in the other ESSENCE (FIRE/WARMTH)

Observation Exercise:

Introduction
Scientist Henri Bortoft describes the phenomenon behind the holographic
principle: When a holograph is shattered, the entire image is contained within each
individual piece. When looking at a fragment, we do not see only that portion of the
holograph that has broken away from the whole, but the entirety of the image
contained in each part.

Similarly, as we carefully observe other individuals, our observations reveal
patterns and truths about the entirety of the whole and contain a microcosmic window
into the inner and outer structures of the observed.

Outwardly, we experience warmth through heat, but inwardly we sense the
warmth of identification that one feels when he or she has made contact with another
living beings inner impulse. Such investigation requires several pre-requisites, such
as respect, gentleness, and humility on the part of the observer.

Observation Exercise
This week, we move deeper into the phenomenological characteristics of the other to
find something of the "essence" of this person. Below are a few guidelines to hold in
mind during your observations:

As we look for the "being(ness)" of the other, we strive not to generalize or build
an abstraction, but to notice that which is living at once in the whole, as well as in
each and every one of the parts, themselves reflecting also the whole.

What makes this person uniquely himself and unlike anyone else?

When observing that which is "characteristic" of this person, also notice
the essential quality or inner gesture that permeates his or her entire
"being(ness)"?

Record and discuss your impressions in the space below.
Page 14 of 67

Transformative Exercise:

Introduction
As the observer moves more deeply into the specific phenomenon of the organism,
he finds that both the outer physical object and its hidden inner workings arise very
clearly inside his thoughts, feelings, and imaginative life.

Transformative Exercise

Looking again at the world of nature, consider
a blue spruce tree and an apple tree.

You know that there are many aspects that make each tree distinct, recognizable
as itself and not the other, and different from any other sort of tree. You dont have to
know very much about trees to realize this truth.

Think of all the distinctions you can. Many are apparent by just looking or
remembering trees youve seen. Consider the characteristics that you can observe
outwardly, but also imagine others that reside on the inside of the tree. Now you must
enter into the being of each tree. You must imagine the experience of being inside each
of them. Below are a few questions you can contemplate on this journey - but there are
an infinite number of others.

What do you imagine about the sap?
When and why do the leaves fall or not from the tree?
What is the gesture of the each of the leaf forms as related to the gesture of
the entire tree?
Consider the fruit of each tree, its shape, size, texture and relationship to
the rest of the tree.
How long do you think it takes a blue spruce to grow to maturity?
What about an apple?
Describe each trees relationship to the earth, to water, to the air.
What is the relationship of each tree to the element of warmth?

Dont look anything up. Just contemplate these questions and then post your
thoughts about each tree. Your thoughts can include drawings, pictures, poetry, music,
video or anything else that helps you to convey what you have learned about the
essence of these two beings.

Page 15 of 67

CHAPTERS 1-6 READING DISCUSSION REVIEW/SUMMARY: (SETH)
PERCEPT & CONCEPT & THINKING

There outside stands a tree
What I add to things by this awakening is not a new idea, is not an
enrichment of the content of my knowledge; it is a raising of
knowledge, of cognition, to a higher level, on which everything is
endowed with a new brilliance. As long as I do not raise my cognition
to this level, all knowledge remains worthless to me in the higher
sense. Things exist without me too. They have their being in
themselves. What does it mean if with their existence, which they
have outside without me, I connect another spiritual existence, which
repeats things within me? If it were a matter of a mere repetition of
things, it would be senseless to do this. But it is a matter of a mere
repetition only so long as I do not awaken to a higher existence within
my own self the spiritual content of things received into myself. When
this happens, then I have not repeated the nature of things within me,
but have given it a rebirth on a higher level. With the awakening of my
self there takes place a spiritual rebirth of the things of the world.
What things show in this rebirth they did not possess previously.

There outside stands a tree. I take it into my mind. I throw my inner
light upon what I have apprehended. Within me the tree becomes
more than it is outside. That part of it which enters through the portal
of the senses is received into a spiritual content. An ideal counterpart
to the tree is in me. This says infinitely much about the tree, which
the tree outside cannot tell me. What the tree is only shines upon it
out of me. Now the tree is no longer the isolated being which it is in
external space. It becomes a part of the whole spiritual world living
within me. It combines its content with other ideas which exist in me.
It becomes a part of the whole world of ideas, which embraces the
vegetable kingdom; it is further integrated into the evolutionary scale
of every living thing. -Rudolf Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the
Modern Age, Introduction

Creative Thinking
Truth is not, as is usually assumed, an ideal reflection of something
real, but is a product of the human spirit, created by an activity which
is free; this product would exist nowhere if we did not create it
ourselves. The object of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form
something which already exists, but rather to create a completely new
Page 16 of 67

sphere, which when combined with the world given to our senses
constitutes complete reality. Thus the human being's highest activity,
his spiritual creativeness, is an organic part of the universal world-
process. The world-process should not be considered a complete,
enclosed totality without this activity. Man is not a passive onlooker in
relation to evolution, merely repeating in mental pictures cosmic
events taking place without his participation; he is the active co-
creator of the world-process, and cognition is the most perfect link in
the organism of the universe. -Rudolf Steiner, Truth And
Knowledge, Preface

I'd like to give some context and discuss a little bit about where we are at and where
we are headed. We are at a very juicy point. We are all a bit confused with Steiner.
THIS IS GOOD. If you are not confused you are almost certainly not reading beyond a
superficial level. This is hard stuff.

Despite it explicitly being a work of philosophy, you CAN'T read The Philosophy of
Freedom only as a work of philosophy. We have to engage with the ideas
experientially, we have to expand our thinking, and expand the ways our soul moves
when we think, so that we think in NEW WAYS, not just with new content.

Nancy has laid out the basic idea of this book: to be free means to fully and consciously
penetrate the motives of our deeds; the extent to which the sources of our deeds is
opaque to us is the extent to which we are not free. How can I be free if the source of
my action is obscured to me? I could be acting out of some unrevealed necessity or
unconscious compulsion that drives my action without my conscious agreement or
acceptance.

The Philosophy of Freedom (intuitive thinking as a spiritual path) gives Steiner's picture
of the background for why this is the case and how we can address it.

His solution is an attempt at showing how human beings can become free. He presents
his solution in the context of the philosophy of his day, which was dominated by
Immanuel Kant and his idea that all human experience already comes in a structured
way, leading him to propose that whatever the "real" world is, it is not fully accessible
to the human mind. It is NOUMENOUS, lying somehow outside of our possible
experience. This is the whole thing that Steiner is referring to in the book when he
talks about the "thing-in-itself" -- the thing in its complete reality as it exists beyond the
human being's limited modes of apprehension, which always diminish or distort the
thing-in-itself because we are required to have our experience through the filters of
time and space. Our experience is local and dependent upon the specifics of our
organism, so whenever we encounter the world we are "really" encountering ourselves,
our own organization. This is the critical idealism we have been discussing, the idea
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that the world is somehow my mental picture of it, because I can never get beyond or
through the way the specificity and locality of my organization constructs the world for
me.

This Kantian philosophy is one of the most prominent and influential philosophies in
history; it presents real challenges to our picture of ourselves, how and what we can
know, and our place in the universe.

Steiner tries to show that the whole idea that we can't know the "real" world is based
on a naively realistic point of view with respect to the human organism. That is, in
order to accept the critical idealist position, we have to take AS A GIVEN two things: 1:
that there is an independently existing reality that lies forever beyond our reach (the
numinous thing-in-itself) and 2: in every attempt to grasp this thing-in-itself our
organism distorts it so that we never really have it completely. Steiner shows that the
first point is simply a false postulation, not a necessary one, and that it is a result of
naively accepting point #2. He then shows that critical idealism rests on the naively
realistic assumption of the human organism, which (if CI were to be consistent with
itself) would ALSO be "merely" another set of mental pictures. But this would be to
make a category error: if CI wants to show that the world is really only my mental
pictures, it can't rely upon a presumed "real" body that distorts reality. Steiner shows
us how point #2 is (only) partly true; it is true for the vast majority of experience, but
not for all of it, because there is a place within experience that has the characteristic of
NOT being merely a mental image (which is always distorted somehow by our
organism), but which is rather SELF-REVEALING.

THIS IS THINKING.

Thinking is the ONE place in experience where we have the possibility of NOT being
fooled by our organism, because thinking can become transparent to itself. That is to
say, while in every other realm of experience we can be fooled about the sources of the
experience, we can be completely awake to the source of thinking. Once you can
(really, not superficially) think through 2+2=4, or why every triangle has angles that
add up to 180 degrees, you see exactly why it must be the case. The content of the
thought is transparent to you; nothing is interposing itself in between 2+2 and 4 that
may mislead you into believing that 2+2=5 today, or for this part of the country, or
because I am sick and my senses are distorted. Nope. You know that a line that
crosses two parallel lines in a plane makes opposing internal angles that add to 180
degrees because you can think all the necessary thoughts that together make that
conclusion self-transparent; nothing is "hidden" away somewhere beyond your thinking
that could change that conclusion. Yes, you can change the situation (put the parallel
lines on a non-planar surface, for example), but again thinking can penetrate the new
situation with equal clarity. The point is not that thinking yields certain THOUGHTS that
are correct, but rather that THE PROCESS OF THINKING ITSELF (and ONLY thinking)
carries this potential for self-transparency, because of its nature. In other words, it is
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the ONE place in our experience where we can grab hold of the "one world process" in
its deepest sense, un-modified by the limitations of our local, embedded, always-partial
organism. This doesn't mean that "truth" independently exists "out there" somewhere,
just waiting to be found by thinking; the situation is more complex. Truth is
the result of what thinking does, not the container in which thinking operates more or
less skillfully. This is important because it bears on the whole thrust of the book: that it
is through our thinking that we can experience free-ness.

A brief aside:
I have used examples from math and geometry because those are areas in which it is
the most easy for thinking to find its way towards that experience of self-transparent
clarity. We have to work for this experience, it is not a given. Trying to penetrate with
thinking all that is necessary to have a self-luminous understanding of what happens to
my lunch when I eat it is far beyond us at this time; we are not free with respect to our
digestion. Here we are almost totally asleep with our consciousness. We are more free
with respect to our feeling life, but because half of our feeling life is embedded in parts
of our organism that our thinking cannot yet penetrate with full clarity and
completeness, it carries a dream quality, and we are never sure about the sources of
the arising feelings that come over us. But when thinking directs itself to the ideal
realm, such as that of mathematics, logic, and geometry, we don't have to worry (so
much) about our organism. The extent to which we can fully penetrate in our thinking
a geometric idea is the extent to which we are perceiving the spiritual world. This is
the quality that Steiner refers to as "sense-free thinking" -- thinking that is not
conditioned by our organism and thus is capable of being self-revealing in its entirety,
i.e. thinking that is free. This is why he can say something like: "That one can work out
forms which are seen purely inwardly, independent of the outer senses, gave me a
feeling of deep contentment. I found consolation for the loneliness caused by the many
unanswered questions. To be able to grasp something purely spiritual brought me an
inner joy. I know that through geometry I first experienced happiness."

Or more to the point: "When a man reaches the stage of being able to think of other
properties of the world independently of sense-perception in the same way as he is able
to think mathematically of geometrical forms and arithmetical relations of numbers,
then he is fairly on the path to spiritual knowledge." (If this aside piques your
interest, read this amazing and very short letter to the Anthroposophical Society on
mathematics, which is very easy to read and takes this further, having some real gems
of ideas.)

So: human beings are unique on the planet, because we have the potential to become
free in our thinking, and this is all wrapped up in learning to perceive through the
phenomena of our daily lives into the sources of their becoming, i.e. into the spiritual
world. And here we run into these tricky ideas that take up the bulk of the first half of
the book: percept, concept, and their relationship. I'd like to look more deeply into
these two terms because much hinges on how we understand them.
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So: take a look at this image, a sort of schematic of the last few chapters -- but first,
not that BOTH of these images are "wrong" in the sense that they are only suggestions,
crutches for your thinking, rungs on the ladder, but not the destination... they are
excuses for further thinking of your own, and are only meant to stimulate that thinking,
not simply reproduce my thoughts in you, which are only presented here for you to take
hold of and then work forward from in your own way.


IMAGE 1:


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This image represents one way of working with the book, specifically with respect to
percept and concept. Let's call this way the "PC" version, for highlighting the
"Percept/Concept" division, but also maybe for "partly correct" and "potentially
confusing". The way that Steiner speaks about percepts and concepts can make it
seem that they are quite divided and different from each other. We can get the
impression that "Reality" has two aspects that the human being has access to: its
perceptual side and its conceptual side: for example Steiner states that: "It is not due
to the objects that they are given to us at first without their corresponding concepts,
but to our mental organization. Our whole being functions in such a way that from
every real thing the relevant elements come to us from two sides, from perceiving and
from thinking." (p. 67 in the Wilson translation, p. 81 paragraph 15 in the Lipson
translation).

We can feel the split here between the perceptual and conceptual sides of the
world. "The percept is thus not something finished and self-contained, but only one
side of the total reality." This sets us up for his idea about how it is the recombination
of the percept and concept that makes for a complete reality; that reality is what
happens when percepts meet with the "right" concepts through our activity of thinking.
Steiner calls this the "task of knowledge" -- to unite the outer world, given to us as
percepts, with the inner world, the world of ideas.

So still looking at the first image, observation is the faculty by which percepts come to
us, while intuition is the faculty by which ideas and concepts come to us (Steiner
mentions that an idea is richer and more complete than a concept). And in addition to
percepts OF the outer world (for example percepts of trees and people and the sky), we
also have percepts of ourselves. Steiner does something cool here. He shows how
objectivity, and the sense of the world as filled with objects of perception, arises only
because we have the direct perception of ourselves as a subject. What becomes
"objects" and "objective" for us does so because we ourselves appear as percepts to
ourselves: we perceive ourselves as a subject. Thus, if a further perception appears to
be external "to the percept of myself as subject", we call it an object. Why is this
important? Because the whole thing is that Steiner is trying to point not to the division
between subject and object, but rather to the fact that THINKING is what is "doing" all
of this work. Percepts appear to observation, both percepts of ourselves (subjective
percepts) and of "the world" (objective precepts). These percepts are simply "given" in
Steiner's view, and the only question is what are these percepts for THINKING? It is
thinking that makes of these percepts a world of objects and subjects; they are not
"already" that way somehow, before thinking does its thing, as if we only "discover"
them. No, we are part of the innermost way in which reality becomes, because of
THINKING.

So we have the "mental image" which arises as the modification of the perceptual
subject just discussed (ourselves). The mental image is what is left to us when what
thinking has just identified as an object is no longer present for us. Look at a table: we
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have the objective percept (the faculty of observation yields the percept of a table; the
percept of myself as subject is separated by thinking from the percept of the table as
object; I perceive the table as an object; THESE ARE SIMULTANEOUS, it is ONE
process, not a sequence).

Now take the table away and close all your senses but call up the sensation of looking
at the table, inwardly: now we have the subjective precept (the faculty of observation
yields the percept of myself as subject, now modified inwardly by the past presence of
the table; that is, in calling up my mental image of the table I am observing the change
in myself as a subject -- this "myself" is a percept, just like that of the table, and is
available for thinking to make something of it).

But I'd like to point out that this bit about having the mental image doesn't stop when
we open our eyes and look at the actual table. Not at all -- this process by which I
observe the changes in myself as subject continues even when I am actively looking at
the table -- mental images are continually being formed, and I can perceive them as
changes in the percept of myself as subject, even while I am viewing the table in front
of me with my eyes. It is only because we can will our attention towards just those
("subjective") percepts which are not being directly triggered by our major senses (i.e.
we can quiet down or ignore our "objective" percepts) that we can notice how the
"subjective" percepts stand out from the great wall of sensation as modifications of our
own self without the benefit of external sensation. The process of mental image
formation is occurring all the time simultaneous to the process of observing these other
("objective") percepts.

This week you will see more about just what this mental picture is, specifically with
respect to what "feeling" is in the larger context. But I'll let that stand for now. The
thing I really want to point out at this moment is that all this talk about reality that
presents itself to us on the one side as percepts and the other as concepts, so that the
task of the human being is to unite them back together to get the full reality is... well,
misleading. This is one of Steiner's earliest works, and he was trying his best, in the
context of his time, to bring forward these ideas which were radical enough in his day,
and are radical today still. He was searching for how to make his experiences clear,
and in so doing used the idiom of his time, and language structures which all-too-easily
leads to the impression that perceiving is over there and thinking is over there and we
get to bring them together to make reality; yay! But this is too simple. This is one way
to read Philosophy of Freedom, but if we take it in this way we may be missing a more
subtle and much more interesting line of thought, which he gets at in his 1918 additions
to the text. The fact that he felt the need to include these later additions is significant;
and they show how he continued to struggle with these ideas himself and how to
express them. More importantly, there is a bit of a shift in the additions that starts to
reveal a different way of thinking about the main text, and which puts a different 'spin'
on the thrust of the whole thing. It is to this second way of reading, which for the
moment we can call the "OT" view for "ongoing thinking" or "out of thinking" or
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"omnipresent thinking" or maybe "other totality" that I want to turn to now, with the
second image:







IMAGE 2:


Now, this is a bit more complicated and subtle, but let's see if we can tease out the
relevant differences.

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So in this view "reality" (in black) is a subset of the one world process. It is not exactly
the same as the entire rainbow background, but is potentially there anywhere within
it. In other words, unlike in the first drawing, where reality was somehow still "out
there" and thus carried with it (perhaps) a sense of "needing to find our way back
there" by uniting percepts and concepts, in this second view it is implicit through the
whole diagram. However, in this case, reality is what WE make out of the one-world
process through the activity of thinking (hence the word is embedded within the large
orange "thinking" arrow).


This is why this version is harder -- the goal in this reading is to never lose the
"ongoingness" by falling into the trap of thinking of reality as somehow "already there"
independently of our activity. "Reality" requires US, in the sense of that part of us
which connects to and IS this ongoingness of thinking. The old view of reality (such as
that championed in most of physics at least until some versions of quantum theory) as
precisely that which does NOT require us is the naive realism we have already
encountered. Steiner is good about saying we can't be naive realists about OBJ ECTS
but really we can't be naive realists about the IDEA of REALITY either. J ust like critical
idealism is not the answer for objects (the perceptual side of our activity), it is ALSO not
the answer for our THINKING (our conceptual activity). In other words, we can't just
say "no" to a naively realistic view of the existence of IDEAS but then turn around and
say "yes" to critical idealism with respect to them. And here is the main difference:
percepts and concepts don't ALREADY exist, "out there" to be perceived or thought
separately and then brought together by thinking. Rather, both percepts and
concepts arise through the activity of thinking; thinking is what "makes" (allows us to
"have") both percepts and concepts. Both these terms involve a root meaning of "to
take in or have": perceiving is a having THROUGH (per-) and conceiving is a having
TOGETHER (con-), and this having of percepts and concepts is only possible because of
the nature of thinking -- not the nature of its products (such as the division of the one
world process into concepts and percepts), but the nature of its ongoingness, it's
producing. Ideas don't exist out there in the "conceptual world" completely
independently of the activity of thinking; it's not like there is a static world of ideas that
thinking then searches through like a database, pulling out one idea after the next like a
piece of clothing to try on the percept to see if it fits. A person holding such a view
would be a naive realist about ideas. On the other hand, if we take the view that ideas
are "only ideas" that have no basis in the one world process (which is not really a good
term because it still traps thinking into projecting something of itself outside itself in
order to move forward) then we have become critical idealists with respect to ideas and
find ourselves back in the same dilemma Steiner just pointed out with this view. So the
point is not to fall into either of these views but to develop a middle-ground, where we
don't naively believe in a "reality" out there, nor do we completely discount the whole
idea of reality, but rather find -- by turning phenomenologically toward our experiencing
-- how it is specifically in thinking that we can experience the way that reality shows up
for us, for example as percepts and concepts. But even more importantly, it is not
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THAT we have some idea of percepts and concepts and their relation, but rather
that thinking turns itself to its own activity.

The one world process (the colored rainbow background in the second drawing) is the
un-separated multiplicity which "THINKING" takes a hold of and makes into percepts
and concepts, which it can then fiddle with and unite or whatever, in order to have the
kind of experiences we have. J ust as "there is no" subject and object without thinking,
so too there is no concept of thinking vs. perception without thinking. This term we
use, thinking, to describe what is happening that takes the unity of the one world
process and makes of it our experience, is the real "meat" (and "meta") of the issue.

Observation, in this sense, then, is something (almost) like the inverse of thinking; it is
the reflection of the thinking activity; it is what reveals for experience the results of the
thinking activity; but again this is only possible because of thinking (hence the
"observation bubble" in the second image is penetrated by the gray "thinking" arrow
from the right). Thinking (the orange arrow) takes a hold of the one world process and
makes of it a dis-unity, a particularity, which can be a concept, a subjective or objective
percept, or whatever. These then are available for observation, which reveals the END
of what thinking did. We don't observe the process of thinking as it happens but only
after the fact; our observation reflects the activity of thinking as it has become, making
it available for consciousness. HERE is where, within our experience, we find that we
are directed beyond what we are observing (the results of the thinking activity) to
whatever process was at work to allow those particular observations to arise. That is,
our observation points us towards THINKING, as the activity that directly grasps the
one world process and makes of it all those things that we can then experience. So
then we can say that thinking = (can be confused with) experiencing, and observing =
experience. This is the difference between first and second-order levels, that between
process and product. But additionally, because percepts are never found "alone" and
are always permeated by thinking, our thinkING, we have the additional confusion of
thinking = experience. In other words, the second-order activity of thinkING is in
recursive relationship with itself; it is the process that yields the product that allows it to
turn back on itself.

Thus in the drawing we have thinking coming out of the "one world process", both as a
creating/distinguishing of percept and concept (orange arrow), but also as what grasps
the results of that process and pushes through what observation yields (gray/white
thinking arrow moving through the observation bubble), so as to meet the reality from
which it came and is, but now newly for having gone through the transitioning from
process to product to process again.

So Nancy says that "Steiner points out that it is futile to seek the basis for manifestation
from outside of our own experiential senses and powers of reasoning unless an
observation of something within our experience directs us to look beyond experience to
the activity or influence which lives behind it."
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YES -- and it is only by thinking that we move from the observation to what "lives
behind it". But this doesn't mean we should parcel up the world into observations on
one side and the processes on the other: they are ONE happening, and it is thinking
that is always present throughout this whole. Experience itself leads to the quest for
experiencING, it's a move from first to second order. But we don't get OUT of the
process; we can't posit a world beyond experience that is more real than experience, as
if the happening NOW is "only" derivative (this would be another form of naive
realism). We can't be naive realists about the spiritual world either. The
happening NOW is itself a part of the one world process, and we can see in that
happening (anywhere we care to look) the signature of the activity of thinking doing its
thing; making of the unity of the one world process a multiplicity, particularity,
specificity... including all this about ego's and "I beings" and spiritual beings and
kidneys and dogs and helicopters and sensations of red.

This is sort of the "big" mystery; which Steiner gets at in the main exercise (if you are
familiar with that) with the "IT THINKS" portion in relation to the Holy Spirit; this IT
THINKS (or rather, IT IS THINKING/THINKING IS IT) is the SAME thinking that we
"have" -- there is only ONE triangle; there is only ONE thinking. We are literally a part
of that on both the microcosmic and macrocosmic scale; human beings now (and not all
hierarchies in their respective past "human" stages) are the ones that are at the edge of
this process by which thinking (in its cosmic, all-one sense) is starting to turn around
and see where it came from, to look at its own origin through the lens of the
particular human being. We are, in this sense, in our thinking (the kind that Steiner
wants for us), the very eyes of the Holy Spirit, gazing on the source of all the
manifestation without simply being the manifestation. That is, we have the capacity for
freedom in a higher sense, BECAUSE we engage with the ongoingness of thinking AS
thinking, that is, at a second-order level of its coming-into-being rather than its having-
been. It is as this level that we can see "through" the thoughts to the thinking that
produces them, and then become awake to all the ways that the thinking gets
conditioned into its products. Hence Steiner's famous "pen exercise" meditation --
asking "how does this pen get here?" and thinking through all the possible thoughts
related to the origin and use of the pen is a training that has the benefit of using the
physical world as a crutch; it is a training for thinking to pattern itself after the activity
of attending to how an object comes into being, because that same process applies to
every THOUGHT. So then thinking can start to make of itself new forms (percepts and
concepts) whose observation is designed to point towards the ongoingness of the
thinking activity. It fashions a mirror so that it can view itself, and in order to do that it
makes US of us; we are that fashioning.

SO: The point of all this is to try to re-orient how we deal with The Philosophy of
Freedom so that we don't make of it simply a set of ideas that we either agree or
disagree with. Steiner indicates in the 1918 addition to chapter 5 with respect to naive
realism and critical idealism that we must live through these thoughts inwardly so that
we can arrive at the insights that allow us to move beyond them. This applies to
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Steiner's work as well. We must not make a dogma of the division of percepts and
concepts, but must actively live through the thoughts to the thinking at work in them,
the same thinking that makes subjects and objects makes percepts and concepts. Thus
Steiner himself ends the 1918 addition to chapter 5 with the idea that
"inside everything we can experience by means of perceiving, be it within ourselves or
outside in the world, there is something which cannot suffer the fate of having a mental
picture interpose itself between the process and the person observing it. This
something is thinking."

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CHAPTER 6 EXERCISE: (SETH)
PERCEIVING PERCPTION:
The Setup:
For this exercise you will need a piece of fruit. Place it in front of you where you can
comfortably observe it in a space and time free from distractions.
The goal of this exercise is to go as deeply as possible into the process of
perceiving as possible and to explore the nature of HOW you perceive. Let me be
clear: the goal is not to go deeply into the PERCEPTION, but into the process of
perceiving. This requires noticing your perception, but only so that you can
notice through your perception to its arising.

Part 1: Obj ective Percept
Observe the fruit. Use all your senses. While you are observing the fruit, observe
your observing. Move your attention into, around, through, and over your
observing. Get a feeling for your observing process. Try to use your attention like a
magnifying glass that can focus in on changes in your observing. Pay particular
attention to one such shift that you identify. Try to magnify that one shift; try to
recreate it again, and penetrate it more fully with your awareness. Sink yourself into
that one shift in your observING of the fruit.

Part 2: Subj ective Percept
Now, place the fruit in front of you again. Close your eyes and remove all your senses
from the fruit, so that you are moving towards a quiet, calm, empty state. Relax into
yourself. Now call up inwardly the sensation of the fruit. Make it vivid. While you
are calling up the image of the fruit, observe your observing. Move your attention so
that it follows the changes in the subjective percept of yourself as you remember
sensing the fruit inwardly. Try to track how your perceiving changes now that the
fruit itself is not present to your sensory organism directly.

Part 3: Resisting Obj ective Perception
Open your eyes and come back to your space. Now, while your senses
are open, actively try to suppress any perceptual process whatsoever. WHAT?
Yes. With your senses active, try NOT TO PERCEIVE. You may want to focus first on
just vision; or perhaps touch. While looking at the fruit, try to NOT SEE what is
available for your vision. Withdraw your attention from your vision completely, but
keep your eyes open. By changing your attending, can you resist the process by which
your physical sense organs press into your awareness?

Part 4: Resisting Subj ective Perception
Now close your eyes and senses. Now try to resist the arising of any subjective
perception. Don't let any mental images arise. Try working with your attention in
different ways to see if you can find a way of extending the time between the arising
of inner sensations. Don't fall asleep with your attention; keep it awake; just don't let
it grasp any percepts. Keep it self-enclosed.

Sharing:
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In the discussion space below, share any insights you may have about these
exercises. What did you notice? Do you have a new sense of what "a
percept" is? Where was thinking in all of this? What stood out the most about the
differences between these four parts?

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CHAPTER 7 READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
Monism and the Limitlessness of Knowing

A preface:
I just want to draw your attention to the difference between the main text of this
chapter and (again) the 1918 additions. The language which Steiner uses to talk
about the percept/concept split in the main text tends towards its own <ahem> naive
reification. You may sense this in the hilarious statement that "Monism never finds it
necessary to ask for any principles of explanation for reality OTHER THAN PERCEPTS
AND CONCEPTS." Fine fine fine. But in the 1918 addition he starts to speak
differently:

"Whatever senses man might possibly have, not one would give him reality if his thinking did
not permeate with concepts whatever he perceived by means of it. And every sense, however
constructed, would, if thus permeated, enable him to live within reality."

"Added to this is the further realization that thinking leads us into that part of the reality WHICH
THE PERCEPT CONCEALS WITHIN ITSELF."

Let us take this statement now in conjunction with the one from the addition to
chapter 5, shortened for effect:

"INSIDE everything we can experience by means of perceiving ... is THINKING."

This shifting of how he speaks about percepts and concepts is (I think) vastly
important for keeping the underpinnings of Steiner's philosophy from decaying into
some old German B.S. If we take the "old" reading, we can end up thinking about
reality as the "sum" of percepts and concepts, like it's a simple math equation: Reality
= Percepts + Concepts. Whee! Umm, not really. Remember how "=" can be read "is
confused with"? Well we are seeing here a little movement towards a confusion of
percept and concept, not in the sense that they are completely interchangeable, but
that they are not nicely divisible from each other in a simple way. Much modern
philosophical work is actually aiming at just the ways in which percepts and concepts
arise together out of the total experiencing, in ways that are compatible with the
"newer" reading of Steiner but not so much the "old", which would posit a "world of
percepts" and a "world of concepts" in a more naive way. Okay, with that caveat now
sufficiently dealt with:

PART 1:
This chapter may be a bit annoying to some of you. We have to remember that
Steiner is working in a philosophical environment that is dominated by
Kantians. Steiner therefore takes his time in showing why the Kantian assumptions
are not tenable, and why both naive realism and the more sophisticated metaphysical
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realism are not appropriate positions one we understand the whole bit about thinking
and perceiving that he has laid out for us. However, amidst the detailed refutation of
these positions, Steiner drops some little nuggets, often simply by just re-phrasing
what has come before or summing it up newly.
So for this week's discussion I'd like you to find your OWN "little nugget" from the
chapter and display it all to us (quote it) with the addition of your comment. Some
suggestions for guiding your comments (if you need any):

What is striking or unique about this passage?
How does it allow you to experience something newly about Steiner's meaning?
Does it throw a new or different light on any of your previous questions or ideas
about or in this book?
Does it give you a sense of where he is going with all of this or why?
Does it connect to some part of your life or experience?

PART 2:
The main question for this week is "WHY ARE THERE NO LIMITS TO KNOWING?"
Try to compose an answer to this question that touches on the roles of thinking,
perceiving, and mental imaging. Bonus points if you can succinctly tie in how the
answer to this question also gives the grounds for a refutation of naive realism and
metaphysical realism.


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CHAPTER 7 EXERCISE: (SETH)
Awakening to the difference between
PERCEPT, CONCEPT, and MENTAL IMAGE

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT:
"... to work one's way into the world of concepts through one's own activity, is an
entirely different thing from experiencing something perceptible through the senses."
(RS from the 1918 addition to this chapter)

Now, all of this talk about percepts and concepts and mental images and reality and
naive realism and dualism and monism and so forth won't amount to much of anything
if we don't actually DO something that brings about a shift -- or at least the possibility
of a shift -- in our actual lives. I will be the first to grant that just really seriously
actively reading Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path IS a transformative exercise, but
this is very hard (particularly only on a first, second or third reading...), so we can
benefit from alternate modes of dealing with the content.

So the goal of this week's exercise is to -- within the context of your daily life -- try to
become aware of the differences IN YOU, PHENOMENOLOGICALLY, between the
processes of perceiving, thinking, and forming mental images. Everyone has a
different flavor for how they think, perceive, and make mental images. We could say
that each person has a fairly well-established set of gestures to their thinking,
perceiving, and mental imaging. These are patterns that we have come to rely upon
in our daily life, and which -- if we are unconscious of them -- will almost certainly
limit the flexibility of these processes, and it is flexibility of these processes that this
book is about. Steiner wants us to become free, creative human beings, and this
means we can't simply continue to unconsciously rely upon the default modes of
interaction that we are used to (because they have served us well--something we
shouldn't forget). We don't need to give up our default patterns, we simply have to
make them optional. And in order to do that we have to become aware of these
patterns.

WHY ALCHEMY IS YOUR FRIEND:
The alchemical tradition has long understood that a substance can't be transformed
unless it goes through a process that allows the untransformed aspects to come into a
new relation. This requires the separation of the various parts of the substance so
that they can be purified and brought into a state that allows them to "marry" again in
a newly reconstituted -- and transformed -- whole. This is called a "spagyric process"
-- and we need to do it with our (initially naive) experience: we can separate out in
our total experience the PERCEPTUAL PROCESS, the CONCEPTUAL PROCESS, and the
MENTAL IMAGING PROCESS. By making these distinctions (with thinking!
remember thinking is always active), we can then learn to change how these
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processes relate to each other to form our total experience. We can purify -- a better
metaphor is actually from electronics: to rectify -- these processes so that they
operate in phase with each other, and so that one or the other doesn't act like it owns
the place all by itself.

When we train our attention to be sensitive to the differences in our total
experiencing with respect to the role that perceiving, thinking, and mental imaging
play, we begin to free ourselves of the default patterns by which these are already
linked (tangled) in us through our body, soul, and spirit. In other words, THIS IS YOUR
BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT ON ALCHEMY.

OK FINE THE ACTUAL INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Choose a person that will be the "object" of this week's exercise. It
needs to be someone you will have direct contact with sometime
during the week (preferably the first part of the week). Ideally you
would be able to use one of the people that was part of the first four
week's of exercises; choose the "difficult person" if you really want to
bring the point of this exercise home.

<<If you have the opportunity to do this exercise more than once
with the same person, it may be much more fruitful. Ultimately
rhythm makes this work, not power, so this is mostly to introduce
the exercise, not to expect you to be able to do it "completely" or
"successfully".>>
2. When you encounter this person, hold a portion of your attention in a
warm, open, "witnessing" space. This part of your attention will not
judge the person, it will not make any conceptualizations, it will
simply actively be present to what is occurring in the
situation. There is a bit of a sense of reverence for the "IS-ness" that
goes with this; whatever it is, it is! Try to be as awake in particular
to what is going on in you during the encounter, because this is the
"substance" that is under consideration for transformation...
3. If you can, immediately after the encounter, take a few minutes to
reflect on the following; or if you have time you can really try to go
into it, otherwise maybe just take some brief notes so you can try to
go more deeply later in the day when you have a protected time and
space.
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4. Mentally run through the encounter (drawing on your witnessing
space) and identify a moment of the encounter that seem "juicy" or
"rich" or "hard" or somehow calls to you. Now try to extract the three
components of your perceiving, thinking, and mental image forming
for this part of the encounter. That is, try to use your attention like
a surgeon's scalpel to tease apart this specific moment in your
encounter so that you can really get a sense of JUST THE PERCEIVING
process, JUST THE CONCEPTUALIZING, and JUST THE MENTAL
IMAGING, separately from each other. Work your consciousness
forwards and backwards through this moment, trying your best to
allow each of these processes in you to stand out from the others.
5. Once you feel you have done what you can with this, relax your
attention and simply replay the encounter like a movie in your mind,
not focusing on anything in particular, but letting the whole play out
as a whole. At the end of this inwardly thank your "partner" for their
cooperation and give yourself a few moments of silence. Record any
insights, questions, or images that come to you.

Some potential tips/questions that may help once
you have done the exercise:

How are you telling the difference between mental imaging and thinking?

Can you imaginatively place in your body the activity of the three processes -- can you
feel WHERE you are "having" your perceiving, thinking, and mental imaging?

What is the hardest of the three processes to distinguish?

Which of the three processes was easiest to separate?

HOW did your attention shift between the different processes? Did you notice any
tendencies? (For example, "I seemed to get the perceiving bit pretty easily and could
just concentrate on that, and then I would try to move to just experiencing the
thinking component, but would immediately get caught in mental imaging..." or some
such.)

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CHAPTER 8 READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
The Factors of Life

So this week we have a very short chapter, a mere 8 pages and that includes the 1918
addition. Steiner thinks he has sufficiently put forward the central elements of his
philosophical "grounding," and now he is going to sum it all up for us in this chapter so
that he can move on to his larger task which he introduces in next week's seminal
chapter 9.

Now you may be a bit sick and tired of talk about percepts and concepts, naive and
metaphysical realism, and the nature of thinking... but it is only if we really dive
deeply into what Steiner is getting at that we can begin to really grasp how it is the
case that he can say something like
the essence of thinking is the power of
love in its spiritual form

Let that soak in for a minute.

...

...

We really have to take Steiner seriously when he says that "no other activity of the
human soul is so easily misunderstood as thinking," and you can see that by "thinking"
Steiner is not referring to what we might call thinking in a more colloquial manner,
but to something that literally has a COSMIC significance and origin. The whole point
of this book is to try to get us not just to have a new set of ideas about thinking, but
to THINK DIFFERENTLY. The "closer" we read, the more we must open ourselves to
the possibility of a new experience of thinking -- a thinking that is "warm, luminous,
and penetrating deeply into the phenomena of the world."

In this chapter, Steiner wraps up the whole first half of the book with the first clear
distinction of thinking from feeling and willing. He has mentioned them before but
now he can say something about their relationship to each other and to the kinds of
(one-sided) worldviews that result when we take either the position that feeling or
willing is what gets us most directly into contact with reality. As many of you already
know, the division of the human soul into willing, feeling, and thinking components
goes back at least to Plato, who clearly distinguished them from each other:

The rational soul (mind or intellect) is the thinking portion within each of us,
which discerns what is real and not merely apparent, judges what is true and
what is false, and wisely makes the rational decisions in accordance with which
human life is most properly lived.
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The spirited soul (will or volition), on the other hand, is the active portion; its
function is to carry out the dictates of reason in practical life, courageously
doing whatever the intellect has determined to be best.
Finally, the appetitive soul (emotion or desire) is the portion of each of us that
wants and feels many things, most of which must be deferred in the face of
rational pursuits if we are to achieve a salutary degree of self-control.

Notice that for Plato, both feeling and willing are--or should be--subordinate to the
role of thinking; they are meant to operate in service of thinking. In his Phaedrus,
Plato uses a stark metaphor: thinking is a charioteer, being driven by two unruly
horses, feeling and thinking, which want to go their own ways but must be literally
reined in by the directing activity of thinking. Steiner takes Plato further by showing
the cosmic role of thinking, both on the grandest scale and down to the individual
scale in our own daily experience. He wants us to see how in thinking is something
precious, something special, something that can do what feeling and willing cannot do
either alone or even together, and that is to AWAKEN TO REALITY in its fullest
sense.

For Steiner, there is a kind of directionality to feeling, from object --> subject.
Feeling is "what the world is for ME."
There is also a kind of directionality to willing, from subject --> object.
Willing is "what I am for the world."

Thinking is not bound in this way; or we could say that it is bi-directional, or maybe
omni-directional. Thinking connects our individuality to the reality of the wider
cosmos; it leads the individual to the universal, and allows us to be a part of the
reality of the cosmos that transcends our individuality. But it also connects the wider
cosmos with our individuality, and leads the universal into the individual, allowing the
universality of thinking to awaken to itself as "MY" thinking. The I-being is kind of the
result of the confluence between the universal and particular.

I want to point out that Steiner slips something amazing into the first part of this
chapter that may not be too obvious. He says that "What is obtained by perception of
self is ideally determined by this something in the same way as are all other percepts,
and is placed as subject, or "I", over against the objects. This something is
thinking." What Steiner is intimating here is that thinking is an ontologically and
epistemologically primary part of the cosmos, and it is this universal aspect of
thinking that then makes of certain percepts a "SELF" or "I" that can then be a locus of
its continued activity, but now in a way that allows for the subject-object division to
be realized. Remember how the orange arrow in the second drawing went straight in
from the one-world-process to the individual? That's because thinking is more
primary, both ontologically (in terms of its existence) and epistemologically (in terms
of the process of knowing) than "self", which is a result of what thinking does
(considered in the "larger" way that Steiner is indicating). We only need to look at
how experience of self actually buds and grows and flowers in the course of child
development.
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This point is important: it is through the percept of our self (when thinking directs
itself to the observation of the self) that thinking reveals itself to us in a
phenomenological way -- at first. But because it is the universal thinking that is at
work in this very activity of seeing itself as SELF, something much more than "mere
subjectivity" as occurring. This comes back much later in the course of esoteric
development as the foundation for seeing myself IN THE OTHER, and the other IN
MYSELF. This is only possible because of the universal cosmic nature of THINKING, as
Steiner describes it. In other words, one of the highest of all human capacities can be
seen as a natural outgrowth of the subtle and amazing picture that Steiner is painting
of thinking, when taken up as a part of esoteric development. This is why Steiner is
writing this "foundational" book, and why he continually throughout his life referred
back to it in this way. It isn't dry philosophy, it is an invitation to begin working with
the most high mysteries of potential human development in the context of the
spiritual world!

So, the task for this chapter's discussion, then, is to grasp what makes thinking
so special vs. feeling and thinking, and why Steiner pins everything on it.

** Why does he implicitly admonish us not to become mystics (the philosophy of
feeling)?

** Why does he likewise want to steer us clear of thelism (the philosophy of
willing)?

** And why is he steering us toward what he is calling his "monism"? How does
Steiner's view avoid the pitfalls he identifies in the other two views, and what
does this have to do with "reality"?

Please use these questions as spurs for discussion, but also feel free to bring
forward what you think is most important or fascinating about this chapter or the
whole work up to this point. We are really at the turning point here, so let's see if
we can all get to a place of feeling like we could individually summarize the
essence of what has been presented up to and through this chapter. If you can
post that summary, awesome!!, but at least try to take a moment or three and
give it a go, so that you know where you will need to pay extra attention the next
time you read through the book. ;-)


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CHAPTER 8 EXERCISE: (SETH)
Thinking, Feeling, and Willing

Okay, this week we are going to try to further our alchemical surgery skills, this time
with the operative distinction being thinking, feeling, and willing. Last week you did
a similar exercise trying to tease out thinking from perceiving and mental imaging,
and you did that with yourself as the subject. This week you are going to observe
someone ELSE, and try to tease out the thinking, feeling, and willing components
of their experience. For those of you who are teachers, this can be a very useful
meditative activity that you can do about ("with" is better, but you doing this on your
own) a student.

A. This week, LET YOUR SUBJECT IDENTIFY YOU. This simply means don't try to
actively choose a specific person. Rather, reserve a tiny fraction of your awareness
this week for paying attention to your daily encounters with people. At night, just
before falling asleep, hold a warm, questioning intention in your mind about the
potential subject of the exercise, and release it to the cosmos. Let all expectations
about receiving any answer go. Upon waking, take a moment to check in to any
images or thoughts or feelings that come to you, and allow them to work on you
during the day. It may take a few days of doing this for you to have the feeling that
one particular subject is "right". If nothing seems to happen by the time you get too
stressed out to continue the process, make up a random rule that will result in the
selection of an individual. For example, "the third person I see after walking through
this door" or "the first person that says hello to me today" or some such. Form a
strong intention to follow the rule, and then see what happens. You may end up using
the person chosen for you in this way, you may not; but it gives you a way to do so if
needed, and which still allows the world's own processes to play a part.

B. Now that you have your person identified, allow a specific encounter with this
person to be the event you will consider. You may go into the event ahead of time
knowing you have identified the encounter to come as the one to be used for the
exercise, or you may identify the encounter after the fact. Thus for some of you
instructions 1 and 2 will be simultaneous; you'll know the person by virtue of the
encounter itself.

C. Now, when you have a few moments to yourself, consider the
encounter. Remember that this is an imaginative exercise; you are going to have to
fill in with your imagination aspects that you don't have direct access to. Accept this
and recognize the limitation. Now, bring up the encounter before your mind's eye
and pay close attention to the other person. Try as much as you can to LIVE INTO the
other person's experience. Imagine you are taking on their bodily positioning and
movements, their facial expressions and gestures, their tone of voice and
words. Imaginatively run through the encounter looking out from their eyes, feeling
their feelings, doing their doings. Give this about 5 minutes, then come back to
yourself and consider:
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1. WILLING. How is their body positioned? How are they moving? What is the scale
and sequencing of their motions, gestures, and facial expressions? How are their
words imbued with their will? What is the character of this will? What does this will
feel like? What is its aim? How is it directed?

2. FEELING. What is the quality or qualities living through their movements? Move
your soul inwardly in such a way that you try to match what you imagine the other
person is feeling. What is this person feeling? How is their feeling expressed in their
words, in the way they move their eyes, in the time they take between words, in the
silences between motions? What are the possible mental images that this person is
having? How do these mental images express their individuality?

3. THINKING. You will have a tendency to go towards imagining their mental
images... but resist this temptation and try to work towards the purely conceptual
content present in the experience. What are the thoughts that this person is
thinking? What are the principles, the ideas and ideals that are at work in their being
in this encounter?

X. Once you have tried to live into the differences in this one person and one
encounter between thinking, feeling, and willing, imagine approaching the exact
same encounter, but now newly, and this time from the perspective of the other
person. Imagine what is living in this person as they meet you... and allow the
encounter to unfold with you playing the role of the other; what would you-as-the-
other say, do, or otherwise express in order to feel completely understood by you-as-
you? How might the encounter have gone differently if you-as-you were aware of
what was happening with you-as-other?

Y. Okay, don't go too far out there. Come back to yourself and simply run through the
encounter again as a whole, briefly, this time as yourself. Be open to seeing
something new, to feeling differently about the encounter, or to an impulse to be
differently.

Z. Thank your partner for their participation, and send them some free gratitude.

Write in the dialogue space below your reflections on this
exercise (you don't have to explicitly write up each point).
What needs to be said?

I'd like to leave you with a short set of verses that deal with the various relations
between the human and the world (for world, you can also read: "other') from the
perspective of this triune division:


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The innermost being of the world awakens in my thinking.
My thinking sleeps into the outer being of the world.

The World Soul dreams in my feelings.
My feelings dream into the Soul of the World.

The outermost being of the world sleeps in my willing.
My will awakens in the innermost being of the world.

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CHAPTER 9 READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
The Idea of Freedom

OKAY, I just wanted to take a second to tell you all that I am very impressed with
the amount of engagement that you are having with this class. It's really fantastic
to see how everyone's various posts all contribute to the larger whole, making
something that is really quite amazing and precious. This is a picture of how
technology can serve a higher good, when the kind of attention and intention that
we have with its use is borne not out of duty or the impulses of our lower
organism, but by love for the deed!

(You like that tie-in with this week's reading?)

All right! This chapter is a seminal chapter in the book, because it is here that
Steiner can first illustrate the PRACTICAL consequences of his philosophical insights
that he spent the first half of the book building up. This is the first chapter where we
can really start to experience the consequences of the nature of thinking for the rest
of LIFE. It is also the first place where Steiner is really clear that the nature of
thinking is SPIRITUAL; so that he can say that intuition (a capacity of thinking) is the
conscious experience -- in pure spirit -- of purely spiritual content.

He is actually laying out the groundwork here for some really radical ideas in the
realm of "consciousness studies" that are pretty amazing; indicating in no uncertain
terms that the organism is NOT responsible for the essential nature of thinking. This
is COMPLETELY opposite to almost all current views on the subject, which say that
WHATEVER thinking is, it is a CONSEQUENCE of the organism; i.e. thinking IS biology
in action. There is some serious, detailed, experimental, and phenomenological
evidence for this biological view; it is not seriously doubted except perhaps by a few
rogue philosophers. STEINER UNDERSTANDS THIS, because our current view on the
matter is really just a technical modification of ideas that were already current 100+
years ago. We have simply found much more detailed ways of evaluating and testing
them.

So when Steiner, who was extremely well-read and kept up with the current science
of the day, is so adamant that the essence of thinking is independent of the organism,
he isn't saying this as some kind of woo-woo proto-new-age wannabe, because he
wants to somehow be "spiritual"; he is saying this with full force directly in the face of
the best modern science of the day. If you want to read more about the place from
which Steiner is making this statement, you can look into the unfinished book,
Anthroposophy: A Fragment, which is one of the most potent and amazing and
difficult and important of his works. But I just want to point out here that Steiner
really is a RADICAL, he is thinking about thinking in ways that require us to really
suspend our normal habits of thought if we are to follow him through and to see how
"the organism recedes whenever the activity of thinking makes its appearance; it
suspends its own activity, it yields ground; and on the ground thus left empty, the
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thinking appears." (Notice how the whole beginning of this chapter, up to page 139 in
your edition, was revised/added in 1918... again you can get the sense of his different
focus and style...)

When you understand that by THINKING Steiner is talking about THE SPIRITUAL
WORLD, you can start to get a sense of the relationship between the spiritual world
and the physical world as he describes it; we are not talking about ethereal beings
floating around somewhere that is just like here but less substantial, contained in
well-defined spaces like our own bodies, and full of individual desires and
agendas. This is projecting the results of what our physical organism provides for
perception into realms that are beyond that perception. And part of Steiner's point is
that this projecting is just a normal part of the situation right now -- and that if we
want to avoid the mistakes made in the projecting we have to get in touch with the
actual activity of thinking itself, we have to develop our own intuitive thinking
capacity, because it is only in that way that we will actually BECOME able to
experience FREEDOM.

So this whole chapter is in a way a delving into the consequences of taking the nature
of thinking seriously. He showed us how thinking is not feeling or willing in the last
chapter, and he spent many chapters working out how thinking relates to observation
and how it acts to connect percepts with each other, something that the percepts
alone could never do. But if thinking is independent of the organism, how the heck
does it relate to US individually???

THIS IS THE CENTRAL QUESTION OF THE CHAPTER.

And it is a big question! And in order to answer it Steiner has to make a distinction
between "the REAL 'I'" and "ego-consciousness" ("I-consciousness" in your version),
pointing out how the ego-consciousness is a consequence of the organism and our acts
of will (and feelings too). This ego-consciousness is what we NORMALLY think of as
"ME", the consciousness of self that is filled with everything I do, my feelings, my
mental images, and the specific intuitions that I have. So the question about how
thinking relates to ME individually ends up being a question of how thinking relates to
my "ego-consciousness." We have THINKING on one side, with its luminous self-
transparency and universality, and on the other we have the human organism, with its
particularity and specificity and non-universality on the other. The "darkest" part of
the human organism -- with respect to what is available to conscious reflection -- is
OUR WILL. We are totally asleep with respect to HOW our will works (while we dream
in our feelings and are awake in our thinking). Right in the middle between thinking
and willing, considered in this way (along the polarity of universality to individuality),
is the "ego-consciousness" -- and the task of this chapter is to illuminate this middle
ground, where all the action takes place.

So this is the setup. We have thinking's universality on one hand, and willing's non-
universality on the other, with the "ego-consciousness" in between, having been BUILT
out of the organism from which the will came, arising like the froth on the waves of
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the will's activity, but also being capable of becoming independent of that very
organization through its being "taken up into thinking" in order to share in "thinking's
spiritual being". That is our inheritance, our drama, and our promise, all in one.

OKAY, the task for this week's reading is to discuss and try to understand:

1. what Steiner means by the word "freedom"

2. how this concept of freedom relates to the individual

3. what all this means with respect to how we actually act in the world

There are SO MANY amazing "nuggets" in this chapter that I can't help but
ask that if one or two struck you in a profound way, to post them here as
well.


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CHAPTER 9 EXERCISE: (SETH)
Distinguishing Driving Forces: Instinct, Feeling, Practical
Experience, Pure Thinking, or:
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR PARTICULAR CHARACTEROLOGICAL DISPOSITION 101

The exercise for this week is to pay attention to your driving -- I mean, to pay
attention to the various ways in which WE ARE DRIVEN and the various ways that we
DRIVE; not your car, obviously, but your whole being. That is to say, the question for
this week is "WHERE DOES MY WILL COME FROM?" in the context of your actual daily
life.

Steiner distinguishes as driving forces in the human INSTINCT, FEELING, PRACTICAL
EXPERIENCE, and PURE THINKING.

Here we can see the elemental patterning at work:

Instinct is Earth; where our will is triggered automatically by a DIFFERENCE in our
perceptual world.

Feeling is Water; where our will is triggered by the WAY WE CONNECT with our
percepts.

Practical Experience is Air; where our will is triggered now on the basis of the
habitual way in which our mental imaging has resolved PAST POLARITIES.

and Pure Thinking is Fire: where our will is triggered not on the basis of ANYTHING
BUT ITSELF in its own self-contained wholeness.

So while you are about your week, pay attention to the driving forces of
your actions. What actions are instinctual? Which are driven by feeling?
Which are carried out because of practical experience? And are any of
your actions driven solely by pure thinking?

Try to really LIVE INTO THE PHENOMENOLOGY of the various driving
forces behind the will. Sink into the driving forces of an actual specific
behavior that exemplifies each type. What is it like? How is it different
than actions carried out with a different driving force? What do you
notice about the relative abundance of actions that are triggered through
one means or another? What patterns do you discern? Do you notice if
the driving forces behind your will change depending upon what time of
day it is? How hungry you are? How awake you are in your thinking? What
is your particular characterological disposition with respect to the
triggers for your will?
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CHAPTERS 10-11 READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
Freedom-Philosophy and Monism & World
Purpose and Life Purpose
Okay; chapter 9 is behind us, but it won't disappear -- rather, we are going to flesh out
the context for it more deeply. In chapter 10, Steiner plays his usual game of setting
up alternate views in order to show how they don't work, and why his does. (You can
make a decent case that he is actually using a straw-man argument, but even if that is
true it doesn't change a think about what he himself is trying to put forward; it merely
changes the context in which he is attempting to present his ideas and how they
connect to the intellectual milieu of his time).
So again he argues against naive realism and metaphysical idealism, and is trying to
show that his view (which he is calling monism, although that word is really too general
for his view, as there are multiple types of monism) gives a different way to think about
morality. Basically Steiner is trying to straighten out the conversation about morality so
it isn't confused. He wants to CUT THROUGH THE CRAP and go right to the heart of
the matter.
And he set up that "heart" in the last chapter (9), and now will build on that. Now we
have to be really clear here, that underneath all this seemingly philosophical talk Steiner
is being VERY RADICAL in his thinking, and we need to pull out the major points so this
becomes apparent.
He again works with the polarity between the extremes of materialism and spiritualism,
placing his view, monism, right in the middle, straddling the line, as it were. It is
important that we recognize Steiner's extremely serious committment to doing justice to
the material world -- he's not off in some new-age faerie land looking with disdain upon
the world of matter. Okay, he may at times be off with the faeries, but he always
comes back, and integrates what he finds with the rest of what he knows about the
physical world. In more formal terms, Steiner is less of a gnostic and more of an
alchemist. He is firmly aware that transformation doesn't happen piece-meal, but
rather is about the WHOLE shebang; all the way into the deepest parts of the material
world... and all the way out to the highest heights of the spiritual world. That's what
anthroposophy is; the middle space of "that work".
Okay, back to the text. So Steiner's view of monism places it in such a position that it
looks for the source of morality not in the outer world given to us through our percpts
(naive realism and particularly its materialistic form); nor does he find the source of
morality in the ABSTRACTED view of the transcendent principle(s) that are assumed by
metaphysical realism. In other words, the source of morality is NOT in some
transcendent realm of GOD or THE GODS, which we access and then try to follow. No
burning bush, no 10 commandments, no coalition of the wise, no circle of elders, no
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personal revelation, no chats with god, no intellectually agreed upon principles, no
"because my parents raised me this way", no "because of tradition", no "because I
WANT to", no no no no no. None of that will count for the highest source of moral
action, although they ALL count on the spectrum of sources of moral action; we don't
have to abandon all these sources of morality, but we do have to be really clear that
there is ONE spot that gives us an ACTUAL freedom in our moral action, and this is in
the intuitive thinking of the human being.
Do you see the radicality of this view? THE HIGHEST SOURCE FOR MORAL ACTION IS
ONLY THE FREE INTUITIVE THINKING OF HUMAN BEINGS.
Period. End of story.
This means that ANY sort of guideline or commandment given from "on high" or even
in a mystical revelation from above is NOT the highest source of morality, and in fact
CAN'T be. The highest source for moral action can only be found when the
INDIVIDUAL human being -- when that human being is FREE.
This is a HUGE caveat. The WHOLE POINT of the previous 9 chapters was to be able to
give us the right footing so that we can understand this. In chapter 10 Steiner makes it
very clear: for the most part human beings are NOT free. Indeed, we are rarely free,
because the vast majority of the time our actions and feelings and mental images are
not imbued with the warm, luminous, self-revealing element of free thinking, but are
rather derived from other mental images, other actions and feelings that DRIVE us in
some way or another. This is why it is so important to understand what Steiner means
by freedom being a state in which one acts without any kind of compulsion but simply
through the love of the deed itself, in the context of that deed being illuminated by the
light of living thinking. We are not talking about loving donuts and so eating tons of
donuts because we love the deed of eating donuts. We must not fool ourselves about
our own motives (and this is REALLY HARD, and is why we have been doing all these
exercises that are geared towards separating and becoming individually aware of the
different levels of our being). We have to be fierce, courageous, and clear
thinking. The operative question in this case is: "HOW DO I KNOW ... (the sources of
my actions, feelings, and thoughts)?" This is the 'practical' aspect that we all have to
grapple with, and it is the GRAPPLING that is important. As Steiner indicates, monism
doesn't consider the human being as ALREADY free, but as POTENTIALLY free; freedom
isn't something we ever "have" -- it is only something that is made real in the act of its
accomplishment; it is a CAPACITY, and like any capacity it is only latent until an act
makes it real.
THIS IS DIFFERENT than EVERY OTHER CAPACITY. You can build the capacity to play
the piano, and you can then play the piano without having to really be present anymore
-- you can just kind of let your brain do the work without your conscious awareness
interceeding at each moment. But for FREEDOM, it is reversed; it ALWAYS requires the
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most direct and immediate and potent consciousness in our thinking; we are ONLY free
when we ACTUALLY are performing an action in this way, on the basis of the freely
realized intuition for its own sake -- at all other times we can't rightfully say we are
free.
So you see this is also very radical from that perspective, because we have to earn our
freedom through our own individual development, and there is no guarantee
whatsoever that we will accomplish this. So much for chapter 10, except the 1918
addendum, which brings out two very subtle and interesting points. The first hints at
some characteristics of experience that will help you realize when you are "getting it",
with respect to how to live with the seeming contradiction between the universality of
thinking on the one hand and the individuality of morality on the other. It is ONE and
the SAME process which occurs which has this unity on the one side and particularity on
the other. This point is subtle but philosophically deep, and it shows Steiner's
committment to the actual phenomenology of the experience of freedom, and that this
experience is a "complex unity", not a "simple unity" -- a point that is visually and
philosophically made by the famous Yin-Yang symbol.
The second point is even more subtle, and is even MORE applicable to our present
time. Here Steiner indicates that lip service to something beyong the purely materiality
of existence isn't enough; there are plenty of people who would say "well, I admit that
there is more than J UST the physical world, so I have room for spirituality and
such!" But Steiner goes deeper; he says to such a person: "You are actually
unknowingly deceiving yourself into thinking that your thoughts ABOUT having room for
the spiritual world ACTUALLY make that room. On the contrary, if the TYPE of thinking
that you are using is only appropriate to material processes, then even if the CONTENT
of your thought is about the spiritual world, you won't get very far towards experiencing
the ACTUAL spiritual world. And if you really thought it through you would see that the
type of thinking (the mode, the process-level) is materialistic; what is needed is a NEW
TYPE of thinking. We probably all have the experience of people who give lots of
outward, explicit signs that they are "spiritual" but whose thinking processes are bound
to all the various modes that make it UNFREE. If you believe in healing crystals or
disembodied spirits or MATH because someone you consider an authority does, or
because a part of you WANTS it to be true, or because having that belief satisfies some
part of your soul, then you are not thinking FREELY. Remember that bit about being
fierce with ourselves? Yeah.
So much for chapter 10.
In chapter 11, we see Steiner introduce the idea of PURPOSE, and in typical Steiner
fashion does so in a way that may seem a little bizarre at first. This is again because
Steiner is working out of a whole constellation of experiences that are not explicitly
contained in this book but which directly inform its content (and method). Didn't you
find it bizarre that he says that "true purposefulness really exists only if, in contrast to
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the relationship of cause and effect where the earlier event determines the later, the
reverse is the case and the later event influences the earlier one"?? How can we
understand this?
Steiner gives us the way: by utilizing the very important distinction he has labored to
produce earlier in the book between percepts and concepts. He shows us that while
the PERCEPT of the cause will always come before the PERCEPT of the effect, the
REVERSE is true in the conceptual world. In fact, it is ONLY in the conceptual realm
that an effect can influence a cause. How does it do this? BECAUSE THINKING IS NOT
BOUND BY SPACE AND TIME. It is spaceless/timeless. Or rather, it is FREE from the
bounds of space and time. Think of the laws of a triangle; they don't have anything to
do with time, and although they are ABOUT space, the RELATIONS that ARE the laws
are not THEMSELVES bound by space (this is a subtle point). Did you know that this is
also true for the laws of physics -- they are also spaceless and timeless. Indeed,
physicists have NO BASIS for decided which way all the equations go; they all can be
run either forward or backwards! The LAWS are not "in" time; they are purely spiritual,
and thus accessible from ANY time. For example, even if we all lived on a non-
Euclidean surface (say, a hyperbolic surface, where the interior angles of a triangle
DON'T add to 180 degrees, but less than that), we could STILL discover the laws of the
triangles in Euclidean space, because thinking is FREE, as the most direct expression of
the spiritual world, it is not bound in its own realm by any physical processes or
percepts. When Steiner says thinking is (at least potentially) FREE he really means it!
So the point of this chapter is to show that just as there is only one FREE source for
human moral action (intuitive thinking), so too there is only one place in which we can
rightfully speak of PURPOSE, and that is in the context of an individual human being
who (through intuitive thinking) grasps an IDEA (a content from the spiritual world) and
makes it his or her own, setting it before him/herself as an IDEAL. This setting forth of
an idea before ourselves takes place in our MENTAL IMAGING. In this process, the
potential of the future deed acts on us in the present, causing us to act. So we have
here a future action ("effect") influencing the present ("cause") through the
intermediary of the mental image. But remember what the mental image is: it is
an individualized concept. And remember what Steiner just said in the
addendum to the last chapter; it is ONE process that grasps the idea in its
universality and ALSO makes it the individual source of moral action. Is it
coming clearer now? See how this all fits together?
The only place in which a future deed influences a present mental image through its
connection with an ideal element (law) IS IN HUMAN BEINGS. This "future deed" is
really none other than the CONCEPT OF THE FUTURE EFFECT. We can speak of
lawfulness in nature, but not purpose; to speak of purpose requires more than the fact
of a concept that links two percepts (cause and effect). Rather, it requires that this
concept becomes the driving force and motive (re: chapter 9, how these two become
united in intuitive thinking!) of our present deed, i.e. the "cause".
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This is what makes us special in the grand hierarchy. This is why "purpose" in Steiner's
view is STRICTLY a human affair, because it is what happens when a human being, on
the basis of a freely realized intuitive idea, makes that intuitive idea an ideal for one's
own action. Purpose is what OCCURS when we do this. Thus the only purposes that
exist in human life are those we create for ourselves, in the moment of their creation
(and re-creation, and re-creation and ... again the "work" has to be done every time if it
is to exist; otherwise we are abstracting a piece of ourselves as an "authority" that then
is taken to be "external" from us in just the same way as if it were any other
authority! The purpose -- to the extent that we have one -- only exists in the actual act
of setting the idea before ourselves as an ideal. No one said this would be easy!!)
OKAY!
The task for this week's discussion is thus:
1) Reflect deeply upon your actions that you take in your daily life. Intuitively choose
three actions from your week that carry a moral quality and which will be the subject of
this exercise. Briefly describe the three actions. (Use the following format: Action#1: ...
Action #2 ... Action #3. You will add things to this and just post a single final list... see
below)
2) Take some time meditating on all the various sources at work behind these three
actions. Pull out as many individual sources of motivation as you can. List them in a
very straightforward manner (Earth), with no judgment. J ust add them to your list, one
per line below each action. When you are done, realize that you are probably missing
some. Go deeper. (Use the following format: 1a ... 1b ... then 2a ... 2b ... etc. for each
separate identifiable motivation).
3) Okay this is slightly ridiculous but it will force you to try to come to grips with the
process: On a scale of 1 to 10, rate each individual source of motivation in terms of the
extent to which it is a FREELY INTUITED IDEA MADE INTO YOUR IDEAL (10 is
"completely free, thank you very much!" and 1 is "not at ALL free in any way; I was
completely compelled in this respect". J ust add this as a number after the description
of each in 1a, 1b, etc.)
4) Now for each source of motivation that is not free, imagine the same scenario in
which you did the particular action, but this time WITHOUT that motivation. Remove
motivations one by one until you are just imagining the deed J UST AS A FACT, without
any motivation at all... like you are just watching a video of the event (but a video that
can capture all the aspects; sights, sounds, smells, feelings, emotions, thoughts, the
whole bit... but just FACTUALLY, like you are just watching it all play out). Now try to
place into the stream of the event the single motivation of LOVE FOR THE DEED
ITSELF. In order to do this 'successfully' you will have to intuitively find something in
the ideal realm (a concept) that can support and allow this love to flourish authentically,
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so that it is not forced for the sake of the exercise. Dont' worry if you can't do this
successfully -- the point is to do your best, and to fail, so that we can see by HOW we
fail something about what may be possible for our own development. Post, after your
single consolidated list, something about what this experience was like.
So your post will have a form like this:
"Action #1: <description of action>
1a: <motivation a> <Rating from 1-10>
1b: <motivation b> <Rating from 1-10>
1c: <motivation c... and so on> <Rating from 1-10>
Action #2: <description of action... and so on, following the pattern>
<Response to #4...>
OF COURSE, please also post any reflections and ideas about the actual readings
themselves; feel free to make a separate post if you wish, or combine it all.

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CHAPTERS 10-11 EXERCISE: (NANCY)
Performing a Free Act

Hello Everyone! I'm back from my little break. I've been checking in periodically to see
that you are all deeply engaged in the course content. There were some really great
posts and discussions too. You are all awesome.

In fact, you are soooo awesome, that Seth and I thought that this week, you could find
your own exercise and post about it online. Its meta-purpose will be to enhance and
embody the understanding you are gaining of Steiner's idea of freedom. Here are the
criteria for your exercise.
1. Identify a task that you will perform with as great a degree of freedom (the kind
Steiner is talking about) as possible.
ONCE YOU IDENTIFY AND PERFORM THE TASK, POST THE FOLLOWING:
2. Tell us what your task is/was. This can be something in which you are already
engaged, but the key idea is that whatever you are doing, it is being done in
freedom not because we told you to do it or because you HAD to do it for this
class.

3. This free deed has a purpose. What is the idea that you are trying to embody
that lives behind that purpose? Post about what you believe it to be.

4. How did you do with the task and with understanding the idea behind its
purpose? Were you successful? Was it a terrible failure? Or something in
between or otherwise?

5. How do you see your task, its purpose, and the idea behind it, as connected to
the whole of human destiny and striving?

TO AID YOU IN YOUR CONSIDERATIONS: A LITTLE SECRET (shhhhhh)

"Behind each single member of the evolving College of Teachers we see his Angel standing. He
lays both his hands upon the head of the earthly Man entrusted to him. And with this bearing
and this gesture he enables strength to stream forth. This strength endows the work to be done
with the Imaginations that are needed. The Angel stands behind each single one to awaken
creative Imaginations full of strength.

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If we raise our gaze, we see a group of Archangels sweeping along above the heads of the evolving
body of teachers. As they circle around and return, they carry from one individual to the other
what is coming to birth through the spiritual meeting of each individual with his Angel. They
then bring back to the single member the strength which has been enhanced through uniting
with all the others.

Within this circling, which works like a spiritual sculpturing, a chalice is formed above the heads
of those who are united in a common striving. This chalice is composed of a very special
substance: it is fashioned out of courage.

At the same time, the circling Archangels who unite the teachers, allow creative forces of
Inspiration to stream into their moving and shaping. They open up the springs, whence the
Inspirations we need for our work well forth.

If our gaze is raised to penetrate still further, it reaches up into the sphere of the Archai. These
do not present themselves as a totality, but from out of their sphere--the sphere of light--they
allow a drop to fall into the chalice of courage. We can become aware that this drop of light is
given to us by the Good Spirit of our Time, who stands behind the founder and the founding of
this new school. In this gift of light creative forces of Intuition are at work in order to awaken
the Intuitions needed for our new educational tasks.

In this way, the Third Hierarchy--bringing gifts of strength, courage, and light--takes part in
what has now been founded. These Beings have the will to unite themselves with our earthly
deeds, working through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition."



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CHAPTER 12 READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
Moral Intuition, Imagination, and Technique

Okay! This week I'm going to do less summarizing; I'm only briefly going to set the stage for the
work that you will do.

In chapter 12 we see Steiner coming at the basic idea of freedom from a slightly different
perspective (this is his modus operandi -- describing the same thing from multiple points of
view). Here he is placing it in the context of thoughts about EVOLUTION. He wants to show
that his view, which he calls ethical individualism, is in no way incompatible with "standard"
evolutionary theory. He wants us to see how freedom is compatible with evolution, and how
ethical individualism actually follows from evolutionary theory.

In order to do this Steiner has to come to grips with a basic thing about evolution, which is the
premise that later organisms arise through changes in previous organisms. In other words, that
what is here NOW is a consequence of what is PAST. But this would seem to go directly against
everything he is saying about freedom, which requires that the source of our actions NOT be
determined by anything in the past, but ONLY by the finding -- RIGHT NOW -- of the moral ideal
in the spiritual world through intuitive thinking and making that the basis for action.

YOUR FIRST TASK for the reading this week is to discuss and try to understand how Steiner
resolves this conflict.

1) How can ethical individualism (the science of freedom) be compatible with the science of
evolution?

Also in this chapter Steiner attempts to get very practical. He importantly distinguishes
between MORAL INTUITION, MORAL IMAGINATION, and MORAL TECHNIQUE.

YOUR SECOND TASK for the reading is to discuss:

2) What are the distinctions between these three things?
3) How do they relate to each other?
4) Why does Steiner see it as necessary to make these distinctions? What is his motivation
for doing so?




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CHAPTER 12 EXERCISE: (NANCY)
Poetry and Moral Imagination

YOU ARE INVITED TO A POETRY READING

BY YOU


In preparation for our Skype call next weekend, your exercise task is
simple but profound. We would like each of you to create a work of
poetry as inspired by the reading from this week on Moral Imagination.
No other specific requirements - you have freedom in what and how you
choose to work. Our Skype call will be a poetry reading. Each of you will
have a few minutes to read your work. We might make comments about it
or ask questions of you, but each of you will have a time to share.

The call will last for one hour. If we have time after the readings, we can
have a live discussion about anything you like related to the course and
your work within it. Time is still TBD - but we'll post an announcement
when it's determined. Seth will initiate the call.

If you can't make the call, post your poetry here. We can all post so that
everyone can at least read what we've written. There is something about
hearing the poet read in his/her own voice that brings this work to life in a
special way. Don't worry about "I've never written poetry" - your
willingness and engagement are the two most important aspects of this
week's exercise.

If you haven't weighed in about the call time on the forum or haven't
posted your Skype name, please remember to do so.


ABOVE ALL
Love the deed and have fun!

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CHAPTER 13 READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
The Value of Life

This week's reading is a little different. Steiner just finished talking about more practical
matters in regards to morality, with the distinction between moral intuition, moral imagination,
and moral technique. Now he wants to look at how we value life itself, or rather how, given
what he has laid out, we should think about the valuation of life.

To be honest, this chapter was the most annoying in the book for me, because here Steiner's
thoughts are developed mostly by virtue of contrasts with views that were current at his time
but which are less so now. It is also one of the longest chapters, so a lot of time is spent
rebuffing the alternative vision that is less relevant (although not completely so) today. It reads
like a pretty straightforward piece of late 19th / early 20th century German philosophy, and is
even very Socratic in its implicit structure. In other words, not the most exciting reading!

Additionally, and some of you may find this strange, the bulk of the chapter deals with various
thoughts having to do with measuring quantities of pain and pleasure, which Steiner is very
adamant is possible. For someone who so clearly in almost all his works demonstrates
adherence to his own principle that quality is more important than quantity (at least in most
cases), this may be seen as an odd departure. But we shouldn't let this annoyance obscure
what Steiner is trying to get at here, which really is working naturally from his beginning points
early in the book to a summary and application at a higher level.

It may help to understand that at the time and place Steiner was writing this, the influence of
figures like Schopenhauer and Hartmann was felt very deeply (and with respect to Hartmann,
felt even more so by Steiner in particular). Schopenhauer, who was really the first major
Western philosopher inspired by the Vedic texts of the East, found much in the doctrine of
annihilation (nirvana). He felt that the world's ground was an irrational will blindly trying to
resolve itself, and that this happened endlessly. His view, along with Edward von Hartmann,
created quite a stir at the time, and were both "pessimistic" views which require evil and
suffering as an essential part of the actual EXISTENCE of the world. What this means is that the
only way to get rid of suffering is to CEASE EXISTING. Now you understand why this is called
pessimism!

We can already very easily state, without even having to read this chapter in its entirety (but do
so anyway!) how Steiner will respond, because we understand the basis that he has laid out in
the book up to this point with respect to thinking and morality. The pessimists say that there
isn't an intrinsic value to life, or that its value is eclipsed by the pain that necessarily goes along
with it. Steiner says that the value of life cannot be found abstractly in this or any way for all
humans, resting on a metaphysical assumption, but rather can only be determined in EACH
INDIVIDUAL CASE, BY THE INDIVIDUAL. Just as a moral action can only be one that the
individual has come to without reference to outside authority or any motive that is not chosen
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freely by the individual, so too the value of life (of our experience of life) can only be found
through the actual living itself, in the context of the specifics of the individuals development.

The question -- and where the rubber meets the road -- is not about abstractly weighing up
pleasure and pain, but rather about HOW we ACTUALLY find, integrate, and carry out what our
intuitively developed thinking finds in the spiritual world. In other words, it is about the extent
to which we CAN actually set for ourselves our own goals that are based upon the ideals we
intuitively discover in the spirit. The valuation of life flows from the extent to which we have
moral intuitions that are the basis for our actions, whether we can take those intuitions and
translate them into rich mental pictures that individualize the concepts, and whether we have
the resources and skill to carry out actions that lead to the implementation of those mental
pictures, and thus the ideals. The actual value of life depends upon the extent to which all of
this actually happens; we find experienced value in life when we achieve the realization of
actions that have been discovered through our intuition and integrated into our being through
mental imaging. Each must discover, take in, and try to realize the moral principles for
oneself. The extent to which this is done gives value to life.

Steiner acknowledges the vast differences in situation and capability for human beings. We are
not all alike; spiritually we are each like an individual species unto ourselves, and thus have
quite different starting points for our journey here. This means that not everyone is capable of
penetrating equally deeply into the spiritual world through intuitive thinking to discover for
oneself the basis for moral action, in the form of ideals. This is why characterological
development is FIRST ON THE LIST for anyone who wants to be a free human being. This is why
Steiner spent time in this book discussing in detail the sources of motivation and the driving
forces behind action, the difference between perceiving, mental imaging, and thinking, and the
difference between willing, feeling, and thinking. All together these ideas lay the deep
framework for just these sorts of questions about value, and you can see how EVERYTHING
hinges around the central pivot point of the entire book, which is Steiner's concept of thinking
as the spiritual activity seeking purely spiritual content. Everything else in the book flows from
this one central insight about the nature of thinking. From that, Steiner is really and seriously
trying to give a FOUNDATION that can be USED by each individual to actually implement and
carry forward in one's own life the principles that lead to FREEDOM, which are the basis and
prerequisite for moral action and any valuation that accompanies moral action. Steiner shows
us that by UNDERSTANDING all of this, we place ourselves in a better position to actively work
with and realize the principles in our own lives. We can certainly stumble towards freedom and
find success in this or that action, but Steiner is addressing those of us who wish to take self-
development into our own hands and be proactive about becoming free human beings.

SO. What is the task for this week's reading?

First of all, you need to make sure you understand the above, and more generally, how Steiner
contextualizes questions of valuation. Let's assume you've done that. :-)

Your task for this week is a group activity. You need to get into your already-established groups
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(click "Groups" in the TOP navigation and choose the group you are in), then go to the forums
for your group (click Forum at left after you are in the group area).

NOW HERE'S THE SCENARIO:

A 5th grade teacher has a student that is bullying other students, particularly those in lower
grades. For example, the teacher saw the child teasing another child who was having difficulty
accomplishing a simple physical feat involving some shoveling. The teasing ramped up and
harsh interaction occurred that made the student being teased cry and leave in shame. The
teacher has observed that the child is very keen on situations in which weakness is displayed;
the child's bullying seems to get triggered in situations where an interaction occurs where some
definite signs of weakness are present. The teacher has also noticed that the mother is often
late in bringing the child to school, and doesn't seem to proactively inquire about her child's
progress and behavior in the school. When approached about the tardiness, the mother was
very dodgy in her attitude, and made excuse after excuse. The teacher had a strong feeling that
the mother might be the subject of some abuse of her own at home, because the father didn't
seem to be in the picture very much -- he never came to school functions and would only
occasionally pick up the child from school. The mother never hears much about the father from
the mother, except what she judges to be rationalizations: he's always at work, he has other
commitments, etc.
YOUR TASK:

In your group, each person will take on the perspective of ONE of the following individuals:

teacher
mom
student who is bullying
student who is bullied
student witnesses of the bullying

If you have more people than characters in this scenario, double up as you see fit, or come up
with another relevant party and take that position.

Now that you know who you are 'playing', your task is to live into the situation of this person
from their perspective, and to make the distinctions about the following:

1. What, if any, moral intuition is at work with this character? What is the IDEAL (or IDEALS)
intuited? What is the moral principle or principles that motivate this character?

2. Imagine how this moral intuition gets translated into the specific individuality of your
character in the form of mental images in one's moral imagination. What mental images
is this person likely experiencing? That is, what kinds of 'thought scenarios' run through
this person's head as they picture the various events and consequences and emotions and
so forth? Don't get carried away too much; pare it down to the most relevant (YOU judge
this).

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3. Finally, what are the OPTIONS for realizing some specific actions -- what are the moral
techniques that flow from the need to act upon the mental images that occur for this
person in moral imagination? What specific actions are likely to follow from the moral
imaginations?

Post these answers/speculations to your small group and use it as the basis for a discussion
about the scenario. Try to come to an agreement about how this situation should/could be
handled, and make a single post in the main/normal discussion room for the week. The floor is
then open for a full discussion amongst the group.


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CHAPTER 13 EXERCISE: (SETH)
Values

So this week's exercise is short and direct:

WHAT ARE THE VALUES THAT YOU HOLD WHICH HAVE ORIGINATED SOLELY OUT OF YOUR
MORAL INTUITION?

Why is this an 'exercise'? Because in order to answer this question you need to go deeply into
yourself to find those places where your values arise not out of any external authority, not
because your culture implies them, not because your family was such and such, not because
you want to be perceived of or thought of in a certain way, not because it is convenient, and
certainly not because God wants you to think or be this or that. To KNOW those values as
those that you have freely chosen through your moral intuition to be your ideals is an
extremely powerful thing. This is something given to human beings that even the highest
hierarchies cannot take away, and it thus carries a real spiritual power.

Once you have found a few values (or values that get as close to meeting the criterion as
possible), recall a time in your life when those values were 'tested' in some way. See if you can
go back into the scenario and experience for yourself the moral intuition itself, then the various
mental images that arose through moral imagination, and any actions you took in regards to
the intuition (moral technique). Try to parse out the three aspects with respect to the
particular event. The point of the exercise is to try to get a sense of your OWN capacities for
moral intuition, and to see HOW you translate it into moral imaginations and moral
techniques. Each of us does this differently, and has strengths and weaknesses; being aware of
our own patterns gives us a basis for a second-order way of working with situations that call
upon your moral intuition, imagination, and techniques, where you can change the sets of
alternatives that you experience; you can change the sets of alternatives that EXIST, because
your free moral intuition is CREATIVE.

Post what you feel comfortable with that follows out of the above instructions, and use it as the
basis for reflecting on how this week's content sits with you.




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CHAPTER 14 READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
Individuality and Genus

Alas! I know you were all so sad to see this moment come -- the end of the book!
Let's jump in...

In chapter 14 Steiner elaborates the consequences of his philosophy for the question of
individuality. You can see this chapter actually as a kind of example of the whole book, where
Steiner utilizes his own intuitive thinking with respect to the concept of individuality, when
taken in the context of his previous discussions on the nature of freedom. He finds the idea of
individuality and makes it an IDEAL, which he then translates into his own specific mental
images that have to do with his time and place and circumstance, and then acts on those
mental images, in this case by writing us this last chapter.

He shows us that a human being is an individual only inasmuch as he or she is free. He speaks
about emancipating our being from what is given to us, either by nature (our bodies,
physiology, basic capacities, feelings, etc.), or by our culture (family, race, social institutions,
religion, etc.). The vast majority of life is full of what is "given" in this way, and these factors all
serve to make our being general, in the sense that these factors are EXTERNAL to the part of
ourselves that has the potential to become uniquely ours from the INSIDE. One can look at all
that makes a human being not a SPECIFIC individual human, but a member of the totality of
humanity in general, or a member of one sub-group, culture, family, race, and so forth. These
factors are all precisely those that are SHARED between various groups of humans. Yet, we do
not have to be determined by all of this alone, because we are capable of becoming
INDIVIDUALS and not just members of this or that group. Steiner would also extrapolate to say
that it is not by virtue of any unique combination of external factors that we become individual
-- for example if there was only one person on the planet who was both a member of an atheist
society and a member of a Baptist church. Even though such a person would be unique by
virtue of the combination of these factors, because the factors THEMSELVES remain
generalizable (categorical), they cannot constitute the basis for true individuality.

Steiner makes this point very strongly, and in a way that wasn't very popular at the time, with
respect to gender. He very clearly shows how his ideas about freedom and individuality entail
the equality of women as INDIVIDUALS, not as part of the category "female." He would make
the same argument about race, sexuality, nationality, belief system, or any other general
grouping; such groupings are never the basis of free moral actions, precisely because to have a
motive with roots in only one group or another means that one's action is necessarily limited by
virtue of the specific characteristics of the group and NOT the individual's free moral intuition.

Thus individuality and freedom are inseparably intertwined. True individuality can only arise
when we become FREE; the extent to which we are not free is the extent to which we are
members of some other GENERAL grouping -- whether that be biological (we have two arms),
or cultural (Canadian). The sources of our actions when we are not free can be traced to some
combination of these general groupings, but not to our individuality. Indeed, our individuality
is ITSELF DEVELOPED precisely by virtue of freeing itself from the generalized limitations that
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make up any categorical grouping. Steiner knows that "no man is all genus, none is all
individuality" -- we are all hybrid beings, sometimes free, sometimes not. But the extent to
which we can realize freedom (in the sense laid out in this book) is the extent to which we are
INDIVIDUAL, even if our action and the principle behind it are shared. The point is not the
NUMBER of people that form a grouping, but the PROCESS by which one becomes a member of
that group. If the process is one that is FREE, then we are individuals; if not, then not. We can
even feel this directly -- the difference between when we act out of freely discovered moral
ideas that we then set before ourselves as the basis for our action feels very different inwardly
than when we act out of our physiology, out of ideas given to us by others, whether our family,
faith, government, or even our past self.

This is a very fierce position, because "only that part of our conduct that springs from our
intuitions can have ethical value in the true sense." Yup -- if you behave in a way that is
outwardly following some moral code, but not because you have freely penetrated the idea of
that code with your intuitive thinking and chosen to adopt it for yourself in a given action, then
that action isn't really ethical, even though everyone else would label it that way. We are not
talking here about RESULTS, but about PROCESS -- it's about HOW we are, not WHAT. You can
see this throughout the book, which (despite all its overt content of thoughts) is really meant to
indicate a path of development. Steiner would be the first--and most vehement--in calling us
UNFREE if we were to adopt his own system of thinking about freedom without ourselves
DOING THE WORK of the intuitive thinking required to fully grasp the content for
ourselves. "The individual must get his concepts through his own intuition." This, then, is
"ethical individualism": the joining of freedom and individuality as a spiritual action.

Steiner says many times that the whole basis of anthroposophy is presented in this one book --
that all the basic principles are there, upon which we can build a foundation for our own
discovery and development. So despite all the other crazy and amazing things Steiner says in
his lectures, he's given the most important secret already in this work: an invitation to both the
WHAT and the HOW of intuitive thinking. His book "Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its
Attainment" is the sort of "companion how-to guide" that takes a more practical approach, but
following what he says there is made much more efficacious when we understand where it
comes from, which is this book. It's a book you can return to again and again and again, being
on the one hand the most "basic" (fundamental) book, and the most "advanced" at the same
time. The more you read it the more you will have a real sense of what is happening not in
what is being said overtly, but in HOW it is said, and what is left out, implied, or avoided. It is in
these spaces in between the words that the work will come alive for you and begin to be like a
companion that you can consult, disagree with, challenge, and otherwise use to propel yourself
forward in your own development.

THIS WEEK'S READING TASK:

As you read this week's content, what I'd like you to do is to come up with your own questions
for discussion. The questions can be from this week's content or from the whole book. This is
an opportunity to consolidate what we have learned and to take it further, and to tap into the
considerable group wisdom represented by all of us here. (You'll notice I didn't summarize the
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chapter on monism... I expect there may be questions from that short but very intriguing
chapter!) I encourage everyone to post at least two questions, and to attempt to address at
least one other student's question in some way. This is kind of a free-form way of allowing us
to mull and explore a bit in this very unique space we have all created together.

GOOD LUCK!


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CHAPTER 14 EXERCISE: (NANCY)
From Genus to Individual

And now for a little story:
Once there was a student teacher. She was very conscientious and had planned out
her block meticulously. She chose a school with lots of diversity in which to carry out
her student teaching because she was drawn to diversity, and was herself, quite
diverse, even if she didn't "look like it" on the outside.

This teacher was doing a fabulous job. The host teacher and other faculty were
impressed with her work. She had undertaken some serious self-transformation over
the time she'd been engaged in teacher training, and everyone agreed that her ability
for self-reflection was amazing. It gave her deep insights into how she could relate
better in the classroom.

She was with the students all day long. She observed specialty teachers with them,
though she didn't have to do so, she wanted to learn from watching more experienced
staff and experts in various subjects bring lessons to the group. She began to really
bond with the students.

One day, when she was almost done with her block, she was observing a movement
lesson and noted a few girls fooling around, not listening to the teacher. This tended
to be a repeated pattern with these girls, and so the student teacher approached the
group of girls to say that it was important to listen to the teacher and carry out the
movement exercises being brought by her rather than ignoring her and teaching each
other different movements during the class. That could be saved for recess or
another time. To bring her point home, she asked one of the girls to take a few
moments to sit out, rather than to continue disrupting. Once a few minutes had
passed, she instructed the girl to rejoin the group.

The girl went home and told parents that she was told not to dance a certain way, a
way that parents perceived to be an expression of the girl's African American
heritage. They felt the girl should be able to express herself in this way at any
time. The next morning, the mother of the girl insisted upon a meeting with the
student teacher and the Administrator during the normal main lesson time. She also
insisted that the 11-year old girl be there to state her point of view. After the
student teacher was brought to tears, the mother seemed to be satisfied.

After school, the student teacher took it upon herself to introduce herself directly to
the father of this girl. She wanted to meet him face to face and human being to
human being. The father was very angry and verbally attacked the teacher. He
stated that perhaps she should take herself to another school where diversity would
not be such an issue for her. He continued to berate her there in public during the
dismissal process with both his daughter and her friend looking on in amusement.
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When he suggested that his daughter actually join the conversation, the student
teacher walked away and looked for help from other staff members.

The father tried to make the point that he'd never heard of a school or a teacher who
would not allow a child to dance and to express a feeling for her heritage. He felt his
child's self-esteem had been damaged and that the teacher owed her an apology. He,
not so subtlety, accused the teacher of racism and told her that he was "Not
interested in meeting her as one human being to another." He was blind to
individuality, to the circumstances, and to the teacher's honest attempt to reach
out. What he didn't know was anything about the student teacher's background,
racial heritage, or experiences with diversity in her own life, nor was he interested in
finding out.

What was important to him was that his daughter be allowed to express herself as a
member of a particular racial/cultural group - a genus. He was unwilling to look at
the individual circumstances of the class disruption she was part of. He was unwilling
to accept the student teacher as an individual - or even as a teacher. He was
interested in imprisoning the student teacher within an assumed genus of his own
making - without ever making an individual connection to express his feelings. He
was ready to write her off without question, without true meeting, without human
communion.

What story do you have where either you and/or someone else was
imprisoned within a genus, unable to act from an individual position?
How do you think this could have been shifted to disarm that
positioning?
How can we prepare ourselves, as teachers, to act as individuals even
where someone else would like to hold us captive within a purely
genus-driven story?






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CLOSING READING DISCUSSION: (SETH)
Steiners Preface and Appendices

The last week is here, and we are wrapping things up with two very short appendices (in the
Wilson translation the first appendix is actually at the beginning of the book as the "Author's
Prefaces"), in which Steiner says some things that reinforce his basic message.

I'd like to point out the amazingly wise way in which Steiner deals with the problem of
KNOWING. He re-orients knowledge away from external sources -- he doesn't discount external
sources, but he wants to re-humanize the process of knowing in a very personal way that is
specific to EACH INDIVIDUAL. Knowledge that is "given" from outside sources is not like
knowledge that we earn through our own experience, and it is to "our own experience" that
Steiner is constantly trying to re-orient how we think, feel, and act in the world. Indeed this
even goes so far that it can be seen as detrimental to fostering human freedom to RELY upon
authority for knowledge, because it takes away the very ROOT and SOIL within which and out of
which human freedom grows: our actual individual experience.

"From anyone who is not driven to a certain view by his own individual needs, we demand no
acknowledgement or agreement. Even with the immature human being, the child, we do not
nowadays cram knowledge into it, but we try to develop its capacities so that it will no longer
need to be compelled to understand, but will want to understand."

Is this not the kind of view that is so systemically lacking in our modern (essentially industrial)
modes of education, which place such great emphasis on standardization (i.e. NON-
individualization) and abstract forms of accountability that, because of the need to measure (in
order to control things such as funding, resource allocation, access to materials and so forth)
de-humanize and de-individualize the experience of education -- for both the children and the
teachers??? How different would our society be -- as a whole -- if we were able to take to heart
this perspective that Steiner so clearly offers over a century ago! By re-orienting from
PRODUCT to PROCESS (the main conceptual move of the book), Steiner is inviting us into a
much more personal, living, exciting, dynamic, and UNCERTAIN world. It is a world that in
which human knowledge is not arbitrarily limited, and becomes a realm in which individual
responsibility is front and center. The task of the teacher, then, is not to teach FACTS, but to
literally "educate" -- to LEAD FORTH, which is to say: to prepare a PATH, not to provide a
destination. Re-orienting education in this way is a fundamental shift that as a society we have
not yet taken, but it is the kind of r/evolution that will support the overall human struggle
towards freedom (in Steiner's sense).

To help us on the way, Steiner plays this tune for us as a kind of meta-game in the form of the
content of the book itself, in which he lays out the PATH to the PATH, so to speak. He not only
describes the path and shows us what it looks like, but the way he communicates this is
designed so as to lead us forth -- to educate us towards freedom -- so that we can discover the
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path for ourselves. He wants us not to just be able to admire the scenery along the way, but to
become artists ourselves of our pathmaking. He wants us to be artists in the realm of concepts!
And here he leaves us with a meditative predicament the consequences of which we see all-
too-prevalently in our society today:

"One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its
bondage."

Steiner exhorts us to develop our faculties of thinking so that we can not only be artful creators
in the conceptual realm (the spiritual realm), but because the extent to which we do NOT do
this work is the extent to which we unknowingly limit our own freedom. The ideas of which we
are unconscious, the ideas we have not penetrated and experienced for ourselves directly, are
precisely those that can influence us without our knowledge or consent. The most basic picture
of this is with the laws of physics, for example, gravity. We are all subject to gravity, but by
knowing the law by which it operates, we can gain a certain mastery over it. We can use our
knowledge to accomplish real deeds that would be impossible otherwise (such as going to the
Moon). In this way we are no longer merely subjects of the law of gravity, but co-participants in
its unfolding -- we work WITH it, in accordance with the purposes WE set for ourselves.
So much for the first appendix (/preface).

The second appendix also contains some amazing pieces; in particular he deals directly with
what is known in the philosophy of mind as "the problem of other minds" -- i.e. how and if we
can know the contents of another's thought. This question is dealt with by Steiner in a way that
points beyond the material of the book as such, being an extension or extrapolation of it. If you
have read his (unfinished) "Anthroposophy, a Fragment" you will see some parallels in how he
speaks here. Remember way back in the beginning of the book where he characterizes
thinking, pointing out how, because thinking is precisely that which we ourselves produce that
we have difficulty observing it (because we more readily observe just those things that we
ourselves DON'T produce, because they confront us as OBJECTS)? In the second appendix that
comes back into play, but now instead of observing our OWN thinking, we are in the position of
observing ANOTHER'S thinking, and the same basic rule applies! So we have difficulty
KNOWING that we are thinking another's thought because we have united ourselves with it in
just the same way that we are united with our OWN thought in the process of thinking. But in
this case, when our own thinking unites with another's, we don't experience our own
consciousness any longer -- we don't have TWO consciousnesses happening simultaneously, but
just ONE.

It should probably be said that this is not an all-or-nothing proposition; it is a gradient. We can
'sort-of' awaken in the other while 'sort-of' sleeping to our own consciousness. What is
interesting is that the ability to perceive another's thinking rests not simply upon our own
capacity for thinking, but rather upon our capacity for PERCEIVING the other. We must ATTEND
to the other in order to grasp their thinking, and this can't be done abstractly, but must be done
actually. The way in which the percept of the other is digested and turned into thinking in me
lays down the path that my thinking has to follow -- IN REVERSE -- in order to enter into the
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thinking of the OTHER. This is a great mystery that Steiner is barely even glossing over
here. What it means is that WE HAVE TO PENETRATE OUR SENSE-LIFE WITH THINKING. This is
THE TASK of contemporary humanity in the 'grand' scheme -- this is where the 'leading edge' of
conscious evolution is happening in the widest sense for humanity. It is through this activity
(which is implicated in the book anywhere a phrase discussing the "meeting of percept and
concept" occurs) that the main spiritual drama is playing itself out for humanity.

Steiner wants us to enter this drama as skillful actors; he wants us to be artistically engaged
with these processes. He wants us to become artists of our own freedom.



This final conversation area for the
course is now open to you.

The content will be precisely what you make it.

There are no rules, only a space for enacting the
purposes that you set for yourselves.

What is living in you that wants also to live in the group?
What do you wish to bring forth?

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