Cosmos Café: Discussing “The Evolution of Consciousness as a Planetary Imperative: An Integration of Integral Views" [4/3]

Commons Cosmos Café
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You are quite right, Steiner has been working behind the scenes in very direct ways, but unnoticed, for a long time. I suppose it is only natural that a new generation of scholars – many of whom have been forged in the CIIS-smithy – are starting to tenderly – archaeologically – uncover the sediment of obscurity and are allowing – or at least providing the opportunity for – him to shine forth on his own.

Still, I don’t imagine huge leaps forward for a while yet. Anyone who still has issues with consciousness as anything other than an epiphenomenon or as a strictly brain-based phenomenon will have a difficult time dealing with a lot of what Steiner has to say and offer. Like Gidley pointed out in one of her footnotes: Steiner was (a) prolific (and that’s putting it mildly, as you have also reiterated … the German version of his complete works is 340 volumes), (b) is unindexed and without tables-of-content, and (c) is unedited (read: unstructured) overall (though some of that is being done as part of producing the complete works, but they still have a long way to go), leaving him still rather inaccessible in many regards. Slowly but surely, I suppose.

I was wondering, though, is there anything that you have read from Steiner that you found particularly enlightening or insightful or thought-provoking or whatever? I have a couple of his “standard” texts (like his Knowledge and Rosicrucian texts, I referenced in another post or his Theosophy and Outline of an Epistemology (the latter two in German)), but if you had a suggestion, I’d be up for taking a look at it. I’m always on the outlook for recreational reading, y’know.

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Just as an aside … FYI:

I know most of you young whipper-snappers (except for Mark who most likely outranks me agewise by a couple of months) have few problems reading long texts online, but I thought I’d at least let you know that I’m PDFing the Benedikter article, “Postmodern Spirituality”, that Gidley references in her paper. I started reading it online, find it worthwhile and am interested in reading it all (maybe taking some marginal notes along the way). It will be 75 or so pages long in the end.

I’ll post it when I’m finished (it needs some editing as well – misspellings, typos, etc.) which I hope will not be in the too distant future.

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Thank you Ed! I did skim the 5-parter after you mentioned him in the Cafe.

Placing this quote from Part 2 in my Elder Files:

Question: Well, observing, for example, how we treat our elder people… We treat them like if they were nothing. We treat them if they were trash. Fundamentalists, in my opinion, are right to say that we are wrong with that.

RB. Of course, they are right in this. But they are not right because they are fundamentalists. Ageing is one of the greatest – and most profound - mysteries ever. In a men who is aging, there is, in the deepest silence of the most profound sphere of the will of his most individual daimon or genius, a conjunction of Eros and Pathos. It is a sort of unio mystica of Eros and Pathos, of inspiration and imagination. The suffering, Pathos, in ageing is winning the overhand; but Eros is not retiring absolutely from the scene, but he slips slowly into Pathos, with his whole power of caressing and touching, retiring into the reign of Pathos. Eros and Pathos merge, when you grow old. Slowly and silently; and out of that surfaces the dignity of the aging men. That are concepts we need to understand the inner processes of ageing better. But unfortunately, we have thrown over board these concepts – which already the Greeks gave us to think more precisely, to observe with greater activity and humility, what really occurs in kósmos through the passion of mankind.

I had not examined the connection between fundamentalism/the questioner’s declaration that fundamentalists are identifying treatment of our elders as a reason for their rage (and the nationalistic waves we see forming for that matter) with the elder project. Love RB’s response.

Pages 171-176 of John Martin Haase’s thesis below are a nice sort of summary of Benedikter:
https://www.sats.edu.za/userfiles/Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh%20(2).pdf

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Here it is, as promised:

Benedikter_2005_Postmodern spirituality.pdf (921.8 KB)

And thanks for the cross-reference. I found it interesting that the review was part of a ThD dissertation. From what I’ve skimmed elsewhere (looking for info on Benedikter), he’s not a man short on strong views of things. And I don’t know if there is more than one Roland Benedikter, but the one I keep stumbling across is very active politically where I would not necessarily have expected it, but I haven’t had time to take a closer look at what I was looking at.

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I am a bit confused, too, at this Janus Benedikter. Seems to be the same guy :smile: but don’t want to assume…

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I acknowledge his influence but admit I dont quite understand him I imagine he was a really dynamic public speaker, he packed in audiences, and held them spellbound. As a young person I read Christianity as Mystical Fact and was blown away by it without understanding any of it. But as I have gotten older and had lots of direct experience I can view Steiner differently. He was in many ways a yogi. He provided the Idealists with what they were missing, an actual program, for the western mind. What I am reading now is Nature’s Open Secret an early work and an introduction to Goethe’s scientific writings. Arthur Zanoc has written a good book on Steiner’s exercises for developing the imagination which I have been using. I have just started Fred Amrine’s Goethe and Steiner. I enjoyed this talk by a lovely elder who tells some good stories about Steiner.

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This is a very sensible assessment of post-modernism and why it has been such a disappointing dud. I lived next to the NYU campus, where much of the postmodern was produced, back in the 80’s . I listened for hours to drunk frat boys quote Foucault and Derrida. I loathed it. Now that there has been a clearing, which happened after 9/11, we can see what a mess they made. I wonder were they operating out of the decadent mental structure or the deficient Integral or a little of both? I resist labeling and dismissing people but I find that period wasted a lot of talent. The deconstructing French professors were an arrogant lot, they wore their turtle neck sweaters too tight. I do enjoy reading Deleuze, however, he was just a quick witted guy. I think Benedikter’s diagnosis is correct and look forward to reading the entire piece. Thanks for sharing this, Ed, and this deepens our conversation considerably.

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Would that be Meditation As Contemplative Inquiry by any chance? If not, what is the title, I’d like to look into that myself. I could use somone/something grabbing me under the arms (as the Germans say), at the moment.

I think one of the things that makes Steiner “difficult” (and I use that word casually, not assessively) is that his scope is so grand. I just got to the lectures on the evolution of human consciousness in his Theosophy of the Rosicrucian and what he is describing is cosmological evolution in which humans play a role similar to the one they have in Young’s model, but, again, on a far grander scale. Of course, if one is not willing to at least entertain the idea that there might possibly be more in the heavens and on earth than are dreamt of in one’s own philosophies, then he hasn’t got a chance of being even tolerated. One of the key notions that I learned in my own hermeneutic training is suspension of disbelief, and this is particularly crucial when reading someone like Steiner. Interestingly enough, at the time he was most active publicly – turn of the 20th century, before (just as an example) the behaviorists drove consciousness into exile – one could openly speak of such matters without suffering the scorn of one’s neighbors. Let’s face it, Steiner’s public lectures were not only well attended, he made a deep impression on some very sophisticated thinkers, many of whom you’ve already mentioned here, but there are many more that one wouldn’t immediately suspect as well (Zajonc being one of them … I read his Catching the Light and never suspected his anthroposophic ties).

What is more, what an absolutely charming interview. Karla is a grandmother I would have liked to have had around as a kid. Nothing against the ones I had – loved them dearly – but they had very different interests, that’ for sure.

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I agree, and those sophisticated thinkers, are still with us, working perhaps in the shadows, but I sense that they and we can drop the expectation that the academe will create a movement on our behalf. Most of humanity is not disenchanted and could care less what Derrida thought. I think the postmodern was a small contingent of critics in literature departments who kept the tempest in the teapot going for a decade but they finally pooped out and have it appears gone back to business as usual. And the huddled masses, yearning to be free, who chopped wood and carried water, while the professors sank into their self-generated aporias, continued to chop wood and carry water.

Having recently read Gary Lachman’s bio on Steiner, I get the impression that he caused quite a stir. The split between him and the theosophists was a public feud. Large crowds came to hear him. Annie Besant couldnt shut him up so he broke with her and created his own movement. He was a tremendous overachiever and probably died at the age of 64, from exhaustion. The number of fields that he touched is astonishing. And a hundred years after his death, Waldorf schools are popular and in my neighborhood, there is a center, where workshops are conducted on all kinds of topics and people are still reading him. Like me. Like you. Like Gidley. We are not alone. A hundred years from now will anyone be reading Derrida?

I have yet to read Theosophy of the Rosicrucian but am drawn to that title as I recently saw a book by Frances Yates on the Rosicrucians in a used bookstore for $ 2. What a bargain. Intuitive book buyers who scan the basements of good used bookstores for a good deal, it is they who are are working to make this world a better place, not those who teach at Harvard Business School. Alternate ways of knowing happen at the periphery not at the center and we need to pay attention to that shifting periphery, which Steiner was so good at. The first title you mentioned by Zanoc is a basic manual for applying Steiner’s Imaginal Yoga. I find that without a practice most yoga makes little sense. And that is especially true of what happens in Academia, where fast talking left brain abstraction makers continue to drive a bus that is running out of gas. We need those slow deep rhythms to coordinate Mind-nature. People who make stuff with their hands, who touch the world with their minds. Many of the Romantics knew this.

As a gay person, raised in the deep south, witnessing a lot of stuff no one should witness, when you have no evidence to support you but a deep feel you must explore the deep feel and trust that you will find the way. Ignore anyone who tells you to face reality. Reality is in many ways, up for grabs. And with all of that pseudo science and disenchantment that the academics promote, what do we want to have happen?

I would say train the imagination, act upon what you know to be true, and act ‘as if’ it is true. I have found this a strategy that works with the magical mind quite well and activates those unpredictable emergences that our planet is so famous for. Our planet’s atmosphere has a habit of stabilizing ambiguities and that is where life emerges from. If we fuck with that we are in big trouble as the science of the Modern era has demonstrated. If stabilizing ambiguities in the atmosphere is so important, can our social and cultural worlds be that different from the air that we breathe?

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Agreed.

Yates does an excellent job of showing what was bubbling in the cauldron of 16th century Europe. The Gallileos, Keplers, and Newtons that are paraded before us in school are more like the Western heroes of our youth (the TV versions of Wyatt Earp, etc), namely fake cardboard cutouts of the real personalities behind the names. Yates helps put all of that into a much more realistic, reasonable perspective without too easily latched upon demytholigization that the (post-)Enlightenment wanted to impose.

Truth be told, Steiner’s version of the notion is much broader and deeper than what you normally find in RC circles for it doesn’t rely on any particular (modern RC) school of thought. The symbol of the Rose Cross itself is a very powerful one, and one that permeates many – maybe most – esoteric and mystical organizations still functioning today. It was perhaps the most central symbol in the whole occult revival in late 19th-century French-speaking world (irregular Masonry, Martinism, the magicians) which spilled over into the Anglo-speaking world (Golden Dawn in the UK, Pike’s version of Masonry in the US) which presented a rollicking flip-side to what Freud was doing to his academic colleagues.

This is probably something to keep very present in mind when we get to Aurobindo later this year. I don’t think it has to be his particular discipline, and maybe some of the other potential participants may have their own preferences that might be worth reflecting upon in one of the side threads that are sure to arise from the sheer volume of input that will be forthcoming.

Succinctly and poignantly stated. That ambiguity stabilizing you speak of doesn’t come out of nowhere, though it is nowhere the physicalists are inclined to go. Of course, as I learned a long time ago, there are lots of things that are true whether I believe them or not. And the important truths don’t depend on my, or anyone else’s believing, to begin with.

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:rewind: :sunglasses: “His first thought is that it is a law created by higher powers than himself and his race and he says with the ancient poet that he knows not whence these laws sprang, but only that they are and endure and cannot with impunity be violated.” Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, p. 152

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