The following is my response to a recent article by Eugene Schwartz entitled “Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education: The Web as Will and Idea”, which is Eugene’s response to an article by the renowned anthroposophist Sergei Prokofieff, who wrote a remarkable article entitled “The Being of the Internet”, in which he argued that the digital media are carriers of such darkness that they are unredeemable. The following will make the most sense if Eugene’s article (and ideally Prokofieff’s as well) is read first, but can still stand on its own as my opinion.
Eugene has written a timely and well-considered article. As someone who has “grown up” (at the time of this writing I’m currently 33) watching and participating fully in the birth of the internet (I had an email address years before the world wide web existed), I am disheartened when anthroposophists shy away from what I consider to be an important task: the appropriate usage of these new kinds of technology.
By appropriate, I mean utilizing the technology as a means of furthering a progressive human development. Of course what constitutes “progressive” or “development” can be hotly debated, but for me this involves not just empowering people through providing access to information of an esoteric nature that they might not otherwise have, but in providing the context for the shared creation of meaning in ways that are dynamically capable of leading towards real transformation.
The ahrimanic nature of the internet lies primarily in the way that supports the decontextualization of meaning-making from the soul lives of its human participants. It allows us to abstract too easily, to decontextualize parts of ourselves in ways that challenge a healthy development. But at the same time the internet is the potential carrier of both luciferic impulses (getting willfully lost in online environments, expressions of rage, rampant self-satisfaction seeking opportunities, etc.) and Christ impulses as well.
As always, the Christ-like impulses are a bit more subtle, a little less oriented towards appearing with a particular veneer, but no less powerful for all that. I am speaking of how the internet is used to help bring groups of people together in ways that fosters both community and action, and which promote love and change. This occurs not merely through sharing information, but in the literal creation of an in-between space which can be filled with the soul-activity and spirit-light of individual wills. This, I think, is what it looks like to “redeem” the internet. It happens when people are given tools to become active participants in the dynamic creation of meaning that fosters transformation and love.
The challenge, as with the bringing into one’s heart of any Christ impulse, is that it occurs not by default, and not by control, but through a conscious surrendering of one’s will to a higher will, which is experienced both as a suffering and a redemption. Ahriman, I imagine, would like us to use the internet to manipulate and control so that we forget the much greater power available through this kind of conscious suffering, while Lucifer would be happy if we continued to use the internet to satisfy our desires and create infinite personalities for ourselves.
The alchemists understood that nothing could go untransformed if the magnum opus is to be achieved. Their saying “As above, so below; as below, so above” was not an academic one about correlation; it meant that in order to reach the highest potential available to us, we had to transform our lowest aspects. This applied too to the outer world: nothing could ultimately go unredeemed, and if we ever decide to “write off” some aspect of reality as beyond hope, beyond action, and beyond transformation, then the forces of darkness will claim a victory.
We must work together to build the world we wish to live in. It is a horrible mistake to try and divorce technology from morality, and to claim that “it’s all in how it is used.” Some technologies are more evil than others, but the internet is not an atomic bomb. The development of the internet, although beginning as a defense-oriented technology (not incidentally as a technology to help counter the potential effects of nuclear weapons), almost immediately was taken up and used for other means; primarily education. There are countless ways in which both the development and usage of the internet fosters healthy development of human beings–in ways not completely without strings, of course, but also not in ways that make its usage “unredeemable.”
What we cannot do is let the regressive impulses have their way with the internet and co-opt the minds and souls of human beings for their own uses without a Michaelic challenge, a challenge for the creation of spirit-based groups of individuals (which are different than just ‘groups’), a challenge to permeate the spiritual spaces of the internet with transformed will, with conscious sacrifice, with love of transformation and a transformation of love.
This longer essay summarizes the basic elements of the spiritual-cosmological worldviews of two of the most important modern, integrative spiritual thinkers: Rudolf Steiner and Sri Aurobindo. Upon this foundation a brief comparison is made between the two systems and the two men.
Thanks to John Elwyn Kimberfor pointing me to this webpage where Pavitra, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, records her meetings with him (see pages 4 and 5 specifically). Pavitra and Aurobindo both say that they know some theosophists, and know of Steiner, and by Aurobindo’s responses I get the sense that he at least knew something about Steiner specifically. However, it seems that he is being treated primarily in the same vein as theosophy (which would make sense from the “outside”), and the references are pretty quick so there is no way to gauge from this site how deeply familiar he was with Steiner specifically, but it is good to have confirmation that he at least knew of him. Also in this text, Aurobindo states his sense that his vital plane corresponds with the theosophical astral plane, and gives his general impression of theosophy.
Embracing Reality offers two things, something of a semi-biographical contextualization of the development of Wilber’s thoughts and writings, and a series of more-or-less detailed summaries of those same works. For anyone who is not familiar with the different phases of Wilber’s thought, this is a nice reference work, and was most edifying for its picture of the development of Wilber’s thinking. I appreciated the detailed descriptions of some of his personal influences and struggles, but I couldn’t quite get over a kind of sticky feeling about the author’s undisguised near-worship of the man. It felt like the whole book was kind of an apology for Wilber’s work. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, (particularly if the author presents it in this way, which isn’t the case here) but it doesn’t give me the feeling that I’m getting a balanced perspective on his work, as there is little to no criticism of him or his ideas in the whole book.
To help remedy this, if anyone is interested, here is a lengthy and equally unbalanced criticism of Wilber’s work by a very outspoken critic of his work, available as a free PDF download at http://www.normaneinsteinbook.com/ . These two offerings certainly don’t add up to a balanced perspective, but at least it fleshes out the field a little, and gives an idea of the kind of interactions that Wilber seems to spark, for any who wish to get involved in such a thing. Honestly for me, having skimmed and read about 2/3 of the Norman Einstein book, I’m both grateful for an alternate perspective and frustrated by the seeming lack of ability for coherent critical dialogue to take place between Ken Wilber and his critics.
On the one hand, and this characterizes what seems to be a pattern in general, I find acrimonious and personal criticisms between Ken and critics that is full of what strikes me very clearly as quite non-enlightened and non-integral type of communication from both sides. On the other hand it seems there are some criticisms that are simply ignored for whatever reason.
In any case, when I really try to get a sense for the gestalt of both Wilber and the communities that he inspires (both as ‘followers’, critics, and others), I am met with quite a variety of perceptions and feelings that it is hard to integrate into a coherent vision.
A few things stand out, however (all of these I completely accept as my personal experiences, which obviously reveal as much or more about me as they do of Wilber):
1) Wilber is unabashedly intellectual. Not a bad thing, by any means, in and of itself, but I actually mean this in part as a criticism. Something happens when one’s intellectual ideas move beyond themselves, and flow out naturally into the rest of the natural aspects of a human life: the feelings and the will. Try as I might, I have yet to find much evidence that satisfies my purely personal sense that this is the case for Wilber; I experience him much more as an enlarged head sitting atop a less developed torso and even less developed limbs, with some kind of blockage at his neck which both grants him great capacity for intellectual speech while stifling its ability to be infused with a balanced and integrative flow of feelings and a truly holistic basis in action. His actual physical visage reinforces this sensation, with his bald head, thick neck, prominent brows and thin lips, along with a physically well-developed lower body. Rudolf Steiner, whom I hold in the highest regard, mentions something very apropos to this point about the dynamic interrelationship between different aspects of the human being undergoing esoteric development, (from his book How to Know Higher Worlds, available free at http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/English/GA010_c01.html):
“In all spiritual science there is a fundamental principle which cannot be transgressed without sacrificing success, and it should be impressed on the student in every form of esoteric training. It runs as follows: All knowledge pursued merely for the enrichment of personal learning and the accumulation of personal treasure leads you away from the path; but all knowledge pursued for growth to ripeness within the process of human ennoblement and cosmic development brings you a step forward. This law must be strictly observed, and no student is genuine until he has adopted it as a guide for his whole life. This truth can be expressed in the following short sentence: Every idea which does not become your ideal slays a force in your soul; every idea which becomes your ideal creates within you life-forces.“
I get the sense from Embracing Reality, which describes Wilber’s voracious appetite for intellectual works, as potentially problematic in leading to an overdevelopment of intellectual forces at the expense of a more coherent and balanced progression of all aspects of the human being. Of course, all this is meant in full awareness that the content of Wilber’s intellectual works (to some extent ironically, I feel) describe a somewhat similar perspective to the one Steiner mentions above.
2) Wilber seems to have a very large number of ‘followers’, many of whom emulate Wilber’s style and mannerisms, physically as well as in speech and patterns of thought. Emulation, as I understand it, does not fit very well into a path of esoteric development except in a very strict devotional type situation (which is increasingly rare, requiring the relinquishment of one’s ego in totality to a teacher, and which — I would argue — does not at all describe the vast majority of not all of Wilber’s followers, who tend to (with much variation) have very strong personal egos).
3) Perhaps because of this element of ego-enhancement (again, recognizing this as a personal judgment, on the basis of my interactions with a variety of people who to a greater or lesser extent embodied this characteristic, as well as through the admittedly not terribly comprehensive research regarding Wilber that I have done in my master’s program at JFKU and PhD program at CIIS (in both places there is no shortage of Wilber fans)), Wilber makes himself available to, and even incites quite strongly, polarization and criticism from a number of fronts, with equally staunch ‘defenders’. In the midst of the ensuing debates, because of the tendency for an increased need for interdifferentiation and the drawing of intellectual lines in the sand on behalf of both ‘sides’ (which will just get blown away by the first strong wind anyway), the pattern seems to be one that easily slides into confrontation, even actually inviting such. My sense is that some not insignificant portion of Ken’s ideas stem from the ongoing development of these types of confrontations, i.e. I get the feeling that definite portion of his thinking arises out of the smoldering ashes of a combative, polarizing milieu. I am, obviously, suggesting that the way in which a thought content comes to be represented in a human soul is not capable of being separated from the content itself. The process of the thinking that produced the thought has consequences for the thought itself. One could even, perhaps, speak of karma here, in the sense of actions which have lasting effects both in the world and for oneself.
4) I deeply admire Wilber’s principle that every system and perspective is “true but partial”. But this, in the context of the above criticisms, seems to lead him into a difficult situation (because true integration is generally born through suffering, it seems) where, lacking (I am open to discovering otherwise as I continue engaging with his work) a very… hygienic interdevelopment of the whole personality along with its capacities, he seems forced to rely upon the basis from which is strengths have flowed. For Wilber, this again lies squarely in the intellectual domain. It seems that the major path forward is one of continuous distinction and differentiation between and among concepts from the widest possible sources — but it keeps the flavor of distinction that remains powerful primarily in the conceptual realm due to the (relative) absence of a comprehensive integration of the feeling and the willing aspects with the intellectual.
These are difficult things to speak of, and who am I to make such sweeping judgments? I can only say that I am open to discovering otherwise, and that I feel that I am able to make this kind of criticism in part because Wilber is explicitly speaking about precisely the types of issues I am raising here (in Wilber-speak this would refer to lines, levels, states, stages, transcend/include, quadrants, etc.). As a willingly public figure who addresses the breadth and depth of material that Wilber does, and on the basis of the strength of various claims he makes (particularly in the realm of esoteric development), he expressly places himself in a position of inviting discussion of the extent to which he has directly and actually embodied the very principles he is espousing.
Reynolds takes some pains to provide what I consider to be a weak response to this criticism, which he brings up as variations on a single theme, (paraphrased): ‘Ken has meditated for x number of years and thus isn’t merely thinking about these things; he has experienced them directly’, i.e. his oft-cited satori event, his living in the continuous awareness of the non-dual, etc. I do not doubt the sincerity of his practice, or even (okay, I actually do have some doubts here, I’ll admit) his personal claims concerning his enlightenment experiences. However, this simply has no necessary bearing on the content of Wilber’s ideas. The question is whether or not, when the ideas were formed, and when they were written down, was the activity present in Wilber’s being one that was permeated through and through with the quality of the enlightenment experiences which are supposed to form the ‘practical’ foundations for his intellectual claims? The moral strength, in addition to the actual professed content that provides the bedrock out of which his thinking flows, changes dramatically as a result of the answer to this question.
My experience of concepts which flow dynamically from a human being who is in the midst of direct experience of the more subtle, spiritual worlds, is that their content serves the activity of their realization. That is to say, enlightened words about enlightenment serve to enlighten. I would even venture to say that with regards in particular to esoteric concepts, how the concepts come into being, and how they are communicated speaks more directly to their truth than their explicit content, which is the least important part of the whole interaction, taken from a spiritual perspective. Spiritually, the actual form of the words, and the concept itself, exists in us as a corpse of the living activity of the thinking that produced them. The very job of some paths of esoteric development is precisely to learn how to re-enliven these dead, outer concepts into concepts with awaken within is in a way that is directly imbued with the same spiritual source out of which the oringinal concepts were born. It is upon this basis that it becomes possible to evaluate their contente in a non-trivial way.
There is plenty more to say, including much praise for the synthesis of traditions that Wilber has done, along with the popularization (always a double-edged sword for non-exoteric content, but a double edged sword that nevertheless must be swung… just hopefully with skill) of integral concepts and at the very least a furthering of the discussion/thinking and actions based on an underlying idea of spiritual progress, inclusion of all levels of reality, the need to make distinctions in realms that often and easily turn into a new-age, unpalatable mishmash of ideas and practices from various places that dilute their potential effectiveness when taken so radically out of context. But this is already quite long, for which I apologize!
This lecture presentation was given at the East Bay Waldorf School in 2007 (see flyer below). It explores the Matrix trilogy of movies from the perspective of spiritual science. Close attention is paid to the actual events in the “text” of the movies, with an eye towards illuminating features concerning the major characters and plot elements in a coherent, symbolic, and mythological perspective. In particular the movies are shown to be uniquely understandable from the perspective of Steiner’s anthroposophical insights concerning human evolution.
The video is based upon this essay, but (particularly because of some very astute questions from the audience) also contains a number of details that I was unable to put into the original paper.
Frank Chester (find out about his initial work here, and read reviews of his work here) has just returned from a very well received presentation of his research on the Chestahedron at SunbridgeCollege in Spring Valley, New York. Many in the audience expressed disappointment afterwards that they had not notified their friends to attend these lectures because they did not realize that they would be witness to such an astonishing presentation.
Frank will be repeating these lectures this week in Fair Oaks at the Anthroposophia Conference as listed below. For those who wish to attend single lectures apart from the rest of the conference, the charge is $10 for students and $20 for adults
This is a good time to invite your friends and associates if they would like to hear about his discoveries, because Frank is planning on cutting back on his lecture schedule after this week so he can return to his research. You may download an attachment to this email, which provides some written information that may be helpful towards understanding what Frank’s work is about.
Frank will be presenting his work on the following dates:
Goethean phenomenology acts as a transformative bridge between the researcher and a topic of inquiry. The method is unique not in that it attempts to work through the subject/object split, but rather in the WAY it attempts to do this.
Doing Goethean phenomenological research requires that one be completely open to what presents itself, while at the same time recognizing that one’s perceiving is an active force with regards to the topic of inquiry; the topic changes researcher, and the researcher change the topic.
The Goethean phenomenological method (GPM) asks that one address the topic in a complex way; it must be approached from many angles in order to gather as much potentially relevant data as possible. The data are continually taken inward and addressed, particularly with attention to the sequencing, timing, and subtle morphological differences. The goal is in part to be able to re-create, inwardly, an exact sensory imagination that moves with the same gesture as the phenomenon when observed ‘outwardly’.
Normally, one takes as an ‘object’ of inquiry some outer phenomenon such as a plant species, a location, or a natural form or process. This restriction is not required, however addressing the alternative does require the researcher to change somewhat the way in which the method has heretofore been conceptualized and practiced. It is possible to begin with a topic of inquiry that is not phenomenologically perceptible to the outer senses: love, for example, or relations between imaginary numbers. All the same methods are used to work with the phenomenon, but different challenges arise when taking an ‘inward object’ as the focus of inquiry.
The primary challenge arises due to the unequal stages of development of our outer and inner organs of perception. My eyeball provides visual information in a way that is highly correlated with the way in which your eyeball provides you with visual information. Despite the variety of potential sensory differences, on the whole physical human sensory capacities share a high degree of correlation, especially when compared with more subtle (non-physical) senses.
This is not as problematic as it may seem, because implicit in the GPM is a continual oscillation between the subject and the object, and likewise between conceptual and perceptual experience. In fact, part of the goal of the GPM is to create the capacity (we could call it what it is: a soul-capacity) that allows our soul to move with the gesture of the unfolding phenomenon, as if from the inside-out… and then to come ‘back’ to oneself in order to become aware of that experience in a way that is not available when you are ‘in it’. Dennis Klocek, a practitioner of this method, calls this process “soul-breathing.” which is a very accurate description of what is occurring. Indeed, the process of working phenomenologically in this way provides the very training necessary to develop one’s soul-capacities in a way that is commensurate with the phenomenon. The practice of Goethean phenomenology is thus recursive; its practice changes how one can practice it. This recursivity forms a conceptual and perceptual loop which forms the basis for the development of the soul-organ of perception that is keyed to the particular phenomenon in question.
Goethean phenomenology, as Goethe himself stated, is “delicate.” because the role of the inquirer is paramount in the endeavor; one cannot simply follow an established external protocol and expect results. Rather, results arrive through a process of mutual interactivity between one’s own development and the simultaneous ‘unfolding’ of the phenomenon in question.
This method, in many ways, embodies principles from participative inquiry, in that the method actually takes the ‘object’ as a ‘subject’, and treats it accordingly. The researcher is not the ultimate authority on the phenomenon, but rather attempts to give the phenomenon voice. We could actually say that the role of the researcher is to place him or herself in service to the unfolding nature of the phenomenon in all its complexity, so that it can live in an imagination that is exact with respect to the movement, transformation, and unfolding of the phenomenon (which is inseparable from the movement, transformation, and unfolding of the researcher); this allows the researcher to ultimately ‘speak for’ the phenomenon. In a way, the researcher’s agenda is to give up the agenda in favor of the unfolding of the phenomenon. This can only happen when the researcher becomes capable of perceiving in a way that is generally opposed to the dictates of normal human day-waking consciousness, which lives primarily in a constructed boundary called the “self” through which all experience is filtered.
Goethean observation softens this boundary, makes it a semi-permeable membrane, and allows part of our soul to live through its inner movements into the unfolding of the other. In this way, a real ‘dialogue’ begins to take place between the researcher and the phenomenon (rather than a purely self-relating inner dialogue where two aspects of oneself face each other, i.e. a monologue disguised as a dialogue). It truly feels like one is dialoguing with the phenomenon, just as one would with another human being, but through an expanded language of gestures, tones, and subtle feeling-movements, rather than explicit words. This allows for the creation of a shared ‘language’, consisting of inner soul movements that take the form of metamorphosing inner pictures (not simply visual, but tonal, gestural) which are exact analogues to the processes that the chosen ‘object’ of study move through.
In this way, Goethean phenomenology requires and precipitates the transformation of the researcher. Indeed it is only through transformation that a researcher can learn to hear the continual whispering of what Goethe called nature’s ‘open secrets’.
Following on the last posts about language, I’m just going to go way out on a limb here and re-present a picture that Rudolf Steiner gives which, when you really take it in, can transform your whole sense of language. It is this:
Steiner points out how at the present time, humanity can only tap into the deep formative forces of creativity in an unconscious way, or in a sort of caricature of what is possible. So to give birth to another human being requires a certain kind of process in which our consciousness plays only a tiny role — all the ‘work’ of creation is done unconsciously (for US — quite consciously for… other beings).
Speech in Motion – Eurythmy
The place in the human being where we are beginning to find an entry into the realm in which this kind of creation–conscious creation–is possible can be found in the human larynx. Now, if you have a sense that there is a relationship between creative forces and the motions of the sounds that underlie speech, you begin to see that what speech is primarily today is only the merest possible shell of what is possible with regards to creation.
The sounds that I produce (or that you implicitly imagine, even unconsciously [MRI studies show this] if you are reading this) are capable of calling up within you an image, a picture… a feeling, evoked by my words. Not just the structure and grammar and so forth, but the actual sounds themselves are a part of this, and are not arbitrary (as I mentioned in the previous post).
Sounds are movement, and the larynx does what it does only as a mobile, dynamic organ of self-transformation. The larynx is doing a little dance, putting form into movement through time and interval. Alchemically this is all working with the Air element — reversal/polarity. The oscillations of the air itself happens through the polarity of compression and rarefaction, but even more: in order for my words to call up an image in you, you cannot remain the same — you must change. The way that you can allow my words to allow you to experience what lies behind the words — the experience of the one speaking — is only by going through a microcosm of a microcosm of a macrocosm.
The macrocosmic level is the process of life–>death–>life (i.e. reincarnation). The microcosmic process is awake–>sleep–>awake. The further microcosmic process is speaking—>listening—>speaking. In this last process, a part of you must go to sleep in order to dream through my words. Just as the continual process of dreaming is overshadowed by the entrance of day-waking consciousness, so too your ability to meet the images contained within the words of another’s speech is overshadowed by the holding on to and expression of elements of oneself and the temporary identity with one’s own images.
You must dream into my words as I actively speak them, just as I must do the same if I am to hear you through your words. Now, that’s all just background.
The real image is that in the future, rather than reproducing by the unconscious means that are the only ones presently available to humanity, we will learn how to reproduce consciously, and this will take place through the further development of what is now the human larynx, where we have the greatest connection to the creative forces–which now take the form of the ability to call up in another’s soul images that are produced in one’s own.
I hope the sense of this connection is clear. I recognize that this probably seems WAY out there, but I’d just like to share that such a way of thinking is possible, and that from a perspective that isn’t forced into materialistic boundaries, but which can consider the movement of processes in a wide variety of scales, such an imagination has considerable import.
This is all linked up with morality and how, as Bonnie points out, our speech is, in fact, a creative vehicle by which the world comes into being… So you can imagine that what we are doing right now in the exchange of ideas through words is a kind of proving ground and developmental platform on which we are expanding our ability to tap into something of the radical (root) nature of the creative forces, which are normally relegated to an unconscious realm.
One can, if one wishes, find this thread about speech all through the ages, as far back as you want to go. It is the root of the idea concerning the magical power of words; words as creative actions that are connected with the deepest sources of the universe.
The following is my response to a recent article by Eugene Schwartz entitled “Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education: The Web as Will and Idea”, which is Eugene’s response to an article by the renowned anthroposophist Sergei Prokofieff, who wrote a remarkable article entitled “The Being of the Internet”, in which he argued that the digital media are carriers of such darkness that they are unredeemable. The following will make the most sense if Eugene’s article (and ideally Prokofieff’s as well) is read first, but can still stand on its own as my opinion.
