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.
My general impression of this work was that Chaudhuri was writing in a very philosophical style about a topic which is far more than philosophical. The extent to which he took pains to delineate some various philosophical perspectives so that he could present the viewpoint of the integral yoga surprised me; I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I kept feeling like I was back in my undergraduate philosophy program, reading and comparing different works. The intellectualism that accompanies the philosophical world has some excellent and unfortunate consequences.
In the case of this book, I felt that on the one hand it provided a strong case for the philosophical underpinnings of the integral yoga, which can be useful for those who work through and towards the difficult topics he discusses in an intellectual way. By doing this, it can be possible for the intellect to contextualize the various meanings and approaches to things like the Divine, to the Non-dual, Being, the Absolute, and so forth, in such a way as to allow the rest of the human being to begin to find a way of moving with the material at a different level. I find that sometimes the intellect, lacking this context or ability to engage, results in either an over or under-attachment to the real content that is attempting to be addressed through philosophical language. In other words, the philosophical nature of the presentation calls forth the part of ourselves that is capable of dealing with the concepts in a direct, wakeful, conscious manner, which helps to mitigate either sympathetic or antipathetic reactions which may otherwise arise in its absence.
On the other hand, presenting material like this through a philosophical standpoint also lessens its potential impact by restricting itself to a style of address whose major target is the mental part of the human being. This is true even if the content of the words include ideas like love, goodness, and so forth; what comes across is often only the shell of an experience, rather than words designed for the immediate evocation of the experience. This is not so much a criticism as just how things like this often go, because we can only write and express so much through words without seeming almost schizophrenic. It seems that Sri Aurobindo, the major synthesizer of Integral Yoga (in concert with The Mother) worked on both sides of this issue, writing both intellectually and poetically as the need arose.
In reading Being I felt like I was assuming the posture of a bird in flight, soaring over a vast landscape and beneath an even vaster sky. I had the sense of swooping down occasionally towards the Earth, or of straining my wings to fly ever higher… but never did I feel either truly connected to either the Earth or the Heavens, but rather somehow suspended in between, almost as if in a strange form of limbo. I really wanted Chaudhuri’s discussion to find much more direct and explicit contact with experiences and realities of daily life. There were a few moments where he began to speak along such lines, but I felt that he continually abandoned routes that would have put him in real connection with the “world”. This is to say that his language had a tendency to be either vague, general, or simply descriptive of classes (or classes of classes) rather than elements of classes. Take almost any paragraph as an example; these are pulled from a random 5 second search:
(Tending towards Heaven:) “Spiritual nondualism is inspired by the concept of the Absolute as supermind. The supermind is the sovereign dynamism of ultimate reality. it is the creative light of Being. It is the all-embracing consciousness, nondualistic in structure.” (p.60)
(Tending towards Earth:) “Immortality is an attribute of enlightened consciousness. All men therefore have the potentiality of immortality by virtue of their consciousness. When the personality of an individual is harmonized and integrated, he attains enlightenment. He gains insight into his existential oneness with the all-encompassing Being. The veil of ignorance and separative consciousness is lifted from his eyes. Feelings of fear and insecurity, anxiety and personal unworthiness, are overcome. There is an enlargement of Being and joyful participation in the life of the Infinite. In one word, an individual experiences immortality here and now.” (p. 139)
In the first case we have what may be the normal limit of intellectual presentation: pointing at the moon. Were he to go further he would likely need to adopt a completely different style, and for the purpose of a survey work, this may be too much to ask. In the second case, although Chaudhuri is speaking about experiences that concern the transformation of the human being from existing in an ‘everyday’ state to one that exists in constant transformation and unfolding in the light of the Divine, he never gives much more detail than is apparent here. It’s hard to describe, because it is difficult to have clear and exact words about vagueness, but I get the feeling that almost the entire bottom foundation of the integral yoga is just missing from this book. How exactly does one practice integral yoga? What does the student encounter along the way? What exactly is happening to the student when his or her consciousness begins to transform, from the perspective of the multidimensionality of the human being, and how does this relate to advancement along the path? In other words, having read this book, I do not feel I have any clear answers to these questions.
Not knowing the context around the genesis of this book, it’s hard to know why he chose to approach it as he did, but he must have had a particular audience in mind. I keep having to remind myself that this was written around 1967; I wonder how he would have approached the same central task today? Nevertheless, as a philosophical outline it succeeds admirably, and this is ostensibly (given the title) its major purpose, so I would definitely call this book a succes.
A friend of mine pointed out that Chaudhuri puts forth a certain strength in the presentation of ideas about things which are more than ideas, given an impression that “this is how it is”, with no room for argument. I have a sense of how this happens (although whether this describes Chaudhuri’s case I have no idea, I’m only providing this perspective as my own). It’s not so much that the often absolutist tone of the presentation is meant to discount or override any alternate conception so much as it is an expression of the minds inability to fully conceptualize the extent of the topic that it is dealing with. This results in the mind reaching its limits; our words too, reach their limits. The experiences that lie beneath the philosophical considerations, and which give rise to them, although having a ‘word-like’ nature (logos), are not words in the normal sense. Thus all philosophical expression, when placed in service of what lies forever beyond it, can only be a sort of veil that covers what is otherwise unknown. But in the process, the veil assumes a certain shape, and certain tendencies for motion, as it falls lightly or heavily across the Mystery. Good philosophical discourse will be like a supple silk, capable of shifting delicately in response to its wearer (the Divine, or Being in Chaudhuri’s case) without either falling off, being too transparent and thus difficult to see, or too thick as to obscure what lies beneath — all while remaining self-connected, strong, and breathable.
But once a fabric is chosen, certain limits are necessarily adopted. In other words, getting into the frame of mind in which the human being is pouring attention into the intellectual contextualization of spiritual topics leads the mind into areas that it would not otherwise go; it is creating a space and exploring it at the same time, on the one hand coming up against its own limitations while discovering its own movements through a kind of self-necessity (in the clearest cases, this is expressed as “logic”). (Re: p.48, “Thought is not a mere process of mirroring. It is a creative function. In distinguishing definable features of reality, it also creates them in a profound sense.) Once certain choices have been made as regards to the style of approach, much of the rest ‘falls out’ in a way that is unavoidable; when standing within the perspective it seems directly and manifestly obvious that specific conceptions require a certain kind of expression. It just seems natural. So we end up with things like: “[Ideas] are not unalterably fixed truths.” (p. 49) and “The truth is that Being is multidimensional.” Each statement is formed and expressed from a perspective which gives rise to the necessity of each, while taken together they indicate that the chosen approach is self-limited (for those of you that are familiar with Goedel’s incompleteness theorem, this is an example of how it occurs linguistically).
This post is already too long, but this gives some general impressions. There are many details that I have comments or questions about, but I’ll leave these aside. I can add in closing that the philosopher in me found this work engaging, and it invites much in the way of philosophical discussion. For example, he has a tendency to simply state, almost by fiat, that such and such divisions or dualisms expressed elsewhere are overcome or united within integral nondualism… but the philosophical details he gives to back up his claims are far less detailed and clear than I would like them to be. I suspect this also may be due to the introductory nature of the work, and he has others which hopefully fill this gap.
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 post is about bringing forth a different way of speaking about ethics, which is usually bogged down with a load of ridiculously unquestioned Western philosophical THOUGHT baggage, which keeps ethics locked nicely away in principles which themselves are never acted, only known.
For this reason, Varela’s idea that perception is based in ACTION is profound. Passive perception is not possible – we are not capable of being ‘only’ receivers; we are always embedded in our perception through its enactment. This enactment helps co-create the very world that is perceived through its selection — through recurrent sensori-motor feedback loops — out of the infinitely vast number of possible ways to perceive.
THEN: Thoughts are not divorced from the world either, but arise from the recurrence of sensori-motor feedback loops — the very same loops that constitute the enactment of our perception and the (re/co)discovery of the world, now not only perceptually, but CONceptually. The ability to perceptually guide action leads to the formation of CONCEPTS. !?!?!? “The cognitive self is its own implementation: its history and its action are of one piece.” (p. 54)
Hence: “experience both makes possible and constrains conceptual understanding across a multitude of cognitive domains.” (p. 16)
This provides the lynchpin by which Varela connects cognitive science to ethical know-how. The coupling between self-world-percept-concept that occurs within our sensori-motor feedback loops provides a habitual basis for our future interactions with ourselves and the world. We are autopoetical morphisms arising spontaneously in a given environment out of the evolving background of previous sensori-motor-cognitive couplings. We continually enact our enactment… Varela calls these microworlds and microidentities, because they are completely context-dependent; the type of action, the mode of thinking, the quality of sensation: all these are predicated on their past instantiation.
For this reason it is not enough to ‘think about’ ethics, for ethics can never be divorced from the acts which constitute it. Each microworld calls forth something new (or something old) from our microidentities, just as our microidentities uniquely call forth new microworlds. But to speak of microworlds and microidentities is too reifying. There are no such things, as Varela well knows.
Nevertheless, ethics requires cultivation. We are gardens in which seeds for ethical know-how must be planted and grown with care; we cannot depend solely upon the coupling strategies we have inherited from our own past. Cultivating ethical know-how is synonymous with the dispersal of our reliance upon these very couplings through the realization of their emptiness. We move from unknown knowing to known knowing, and onward to unknowable knowing. To get there (where there IS no there), requires practice. Not practice of injunctions, but of their essential dissolution into the same emptiness that the self no longer occupies.
How does this relate to ethical action? By allowing it to make its appearance out of the uniqueness of the moment. When we are full of everything that we have been, we obscure what we might be; because we always encounter more in the world than we have put there ourselves, it is not enough to remain oneself. By practicing the pattern of patternlessness, we become keyed to the unfolding of the uniqueness of the moment. It is a paradox: we must habitute ourselves to ahabituation, we must practice not practicing…
Every conversation can lead to conversion; to a new context, a different way of perceiving, a step out of habitual patterns of thinking that we unknowingly carry with us or alternately identify as self. As one who attempts to live with Morin’s “new way of thinking”, one is never converted; one can only be continually in conversion, or rather, in continual oscillation between stasis and motion. Once we see things from a new vantage point, it is not enough to simply adopt that vantage point, for every vantage point is only a brief resting place from which we cast off again into the unknown.
((When I was 12 years old, and lived right at the exact place where the dusky plains of Colorado met the surging foothills in a meeting of two geographical worlds, I would come home from school and occasionally foray into what seemed to be the wilderness to my young mind. There was one particular mountain, which I dubbed Coyote Mountain for the small coyote den tucked in some rocks at its base, which had been calling out for climbing. I had spied out my route over the previous hours by looking at its face through my bedroom window. Once I was on the mountain things were different. After a steep and breathless climb I sensed I was nearing the summit, as I could see only sky above where the mountain rose in front of me a few hundred yards away. My focus was increased and I rushed to the top… only to realize that I had only made it halfway up! The major portion of the mountain lay ahead of me, having been blocked by its lower half; a situation that of course only happens when one is ON the mountain. From my perch at home it seemed the whole thing was laid out neatly before me, but I was unable to account for what it would really be like once I was actually “in conversation” with the mountain directly, and not surveying it from afar. Now, I realized that a whole new part of the mountain was available to me, and in a completely new way that reorganized my previous knowledge. It was possible to see in a new way.))
But conversion is not linear, it doesn’t proceed nicely. It retroacts upon itself, so that one’s new perspective modifies the way in which we used to perceive; our perception becomes perceived, and is thus modified in the act. ((On the mountain I learned something not just about the mountain; I learned something about my perception, and saw the same world in new ways.))
Not only this, but one does not merely experience conversion passively; for one’s movement is also the movement of the other, i.e. one converts and one is converted, simultaneously. We cannot escape that our change is also a change in the world, available to the world for new conversation. And likewise this converting is also retroactive; it too, changes how we perceive our own perception, because we see that our perception is not merely passive, but active as well. It thus becomes impossible to say what “I” think or perceive (if, following Bohm, thinking is a complex order of perception), because I am in the world, and the world is in me. To claim that such and such a thought is “mine”, or that “this is MY pain”, is a form of totalitarian hubris, for we do not know very much about what this “I” is, or rather where it has come from or where it is going. The “I” is constantly stymied by the fact that it cannot find its own boundaries. All boundaries of the self, when approached by the self, recede as a horizon, a limitless limit. In George Spencer Brown’s calculus of distinction, the “I” is the space within the mark, which makes the mark in order to be what it is, but in so doing necessitates the space outside the mark, the unmarked, which is to the mark as the horizon to a traveler. In this case, the unmarked is precisely that which is not available to the “I” – the infinite pleroma.
There are always more horizons to explore. We could also say there are more verizons to explore as well, which lead us not outward so much as upward, and from which our perspective of the horizon, as in leaving the Earth, recedes into its own circle. This circle of the Earth is now perceivable in its entirety as Brown’s mark, but from a new vantage point. Now, a completely new set of horizons become apparent, of a different order than the initial horizon; yet all horizons are as equally unreachable as they are infinitely approachable.
All of these are conversations, all are conversions. Transdisciplinarity is the art of staying in the conversation. It is the art of living constantly between horizons, as if on the boundary of a fractal. The fractal is always a temporary horizon, never an absolute place to rest. It is living always with the question: does this point on which I stand lie inside or outside the form? This question is never resolved if we stay on the boundary; its solution can only occur if we abandon the never-ending process of iteration, of self-recursion, and then the answer is always trivial. Just as the answer to Ramana Maharshi’s entreaty to live ever on the boundary through the continual asking of the recursive question “Who am I” is equally trivial: it is “I”. The point is not to answer the question, but is rather to keep from ever answering it!
Thus, transdisciplinarity is in the unfortunate position of having been identified as such. To the extent that this is the case, it has stepped off the boundary. We see transdisciplinarity outside our window and we survey it, we think we see a path, and we make plans. Then we step foot on the soil and now we must walk what hitherto we have only thought. The order of our plan meets the disorder of the real environment; if we have fixed our view of transdisciplinarity, we cannot reach the summit. Our view of transdisciplinarity, as Morin points out, is “antagonistic, concurrent, and complementary.” We must continually be able to stay in communication, in a dialogic relationship, so we can continually recontextualize, globalize, and re-globalize again our relationship with transdisciplinarity.
In this way, our view of transdisciplinarity becomes transdisciplinary. The cause acts on the effect, and the effect acts on the cause. Our emergent view continually alters the emergence of our view, which thus emerges anew. This is transdisciplinarity not squared, but circled. But the marking of the circle is never permanent. We must learn both how to make the mark and to unmake it. This always occurs through the making of a new mark, a new distinction, which itself calls out for unmaking. Transdisciplinarity is the art of this making and unmaking.
((Sitting in my room, I now see the mountain anew. It is both more and less than before. I am both more and less than before. We are both more and less than before.))
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.
