WC Quote of the Day 1
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 10:57 pm
Subject: WC Quote of the Day
Maybe we should start a tradition here like
"WC Quote of the Day." I picked up a couple of pearls
by DD from his message to Jacob:
About shit and scholarship:
I don't owe you shit, Jacob.
This is a discussion list, not a scholarly journal. Peter Staudenmaier
is a scholar with the patience of a saint. I'm neither scholar
nor saint."
- Dan Dugan
About hostility:
I think a little hostility
is quite in order when busting a system of institutionalized
racism.
- Dan Dugan
Cheers,
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
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From: Steinerhead
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 12:00 pm
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] WC Quote of the Day
In a message dated 12/15/03 6:59:06 AM, anthrouncle
writes:
Maybe we should start a tradition here
like "WC Quote of the Day." I picked up a couple of
pearls by DD from his message to Jacob:
That I think is a great idea. I also think
that DD's massage to Jakob tells it all, as to the general attitude
of most of the critics -- A neurotically absolute cynicism that
probably stems from a chemical imbalance in the brain. Or maybe
it's a psychological problem: they could be using Steiner and
Waldorf as a vent for there pent up frustrations about there
own neglected childhood (justifiable bad experiences aside of
course).
In the latter case I would recommend some
primal scream therapy. I did some myself and I can say that I
felt much better. For the chemical imbalance I would recommend
a diet that promotes the production of seritonin in the brain.
This I have also done and again, I feel much better.
Therapy and healthy diet
Mike
...................................................................................................................................
From: dottie zold
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 12:06 pm
Subject: Re: WC Quote of the Day
Michael wrote:
For the chemical imbalance I would recommend a diet that promotes
the production of seritonin in the brain. This I have also done
and again, I feel much better.
Hey Michael,
Can you reccommend a good book on a diet that
promotes this seritonin? I have quite a few young people with
this chemical inbalance and it is leading to nowhere fast. I
have not made concrete time to search this out and my young people
battling drug use could use a little help with a diet in this
regards.
Thanks,
Dottie
...................................................................................................................................
From: Steinerhead
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 8:43 pm
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] Re: WC Quote of the Day
In a message dated 12/15/03 8:27:01 PM, dottie_z
writes:
Hey Michael,
Can you reccommend a good book on a diet that promotes this seritonin?
I have quite a few young people with this chemical inbalance
and it is leading to nowhere fast. I have not made concrete time
to search this out and my young people battling drug use could
use a little help with a diet in this regards.
Thanks,
Dottie
Hi Dottie:
You should check out this web-site:
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/depression/treatment/alternative/food_moods.asp
These ideas worked wonders for me and many
of my friends. Amino acid therapy has helped many an addicted
person as well.
Good Luck
Mike
...................................................................................................................................
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:35 am
Subject: WC Extra!
This is good. DD has lost it. Not only does
he misspell my name in this fresh post of his, but he makes me
webmaster for Sune's website in Sweden! He repeats his error
repeatedly throughout his message!
I tell you, these
guys can't even tie their own shoes!
And heeeeeeeere's the QUOTE:
[Percedol]
The one to be irritated here seems to be DD.
[DD]
You got that right!
-Dan Dugan
Percedol, if you're reading this, don't waste
your time in that dump. Come over here, it's a lot more fun.
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 2:49 am
Subject: From our WC Notebook
WC Quotes of the Day:
About Steiner, blondes, and the Nazis:
"Steiner stood up on
a stage in 1922 and proclaimed that intelligence was linked with
blond hair and blue eyes. Ipso facto he helped build the foundation
for the Holocaust."
- Dan Dugan
About Tarjei, Peter Staudenmaier, and libel:
"Targei Straume's page
containing libelous statements about Peter, he's lucky Peter's
not litigous".
- Dan Dugan
(DD has corrected himself by spelling my name
right and attributing the webpage in question to Sune. But that's
not the point. The fun part is about Peter S. and libel.)
Cheers,
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Thu Dec 18, 2003 3:03 am
Subject: WC Quote of the Day
Percedol:
Did your friends involved
in spiritual practice try to meditate some contents of A.?
Walden:
I should ask my friends
to meditate on racist quotes? You think I'm nuts?
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Sat Dec 20, 2003 10:00 am
Subject: WC Quote of the Day
About Steiner's 'sharp rejection of esoteric
principles':
Steiner's 1894 book The Philosophy
of Freedom is integrally related to the following six years of
his life and teachings. Steiner remained a rationalist and an
individualist until his conversion to Theosophy in 1901. From
that point on, however, everything he taught was based squarely
on the esoteric principles that he had sharply rejected in the
1890's.
- Peter Staudenmaier, 11.09.03 - http://makeashorterlink.com/?I34C54CD6
Cheers,
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
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From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Mon Dec 22, 2003 5:14 am
Subject: WC Quote of the Day
Date: May 21, 2001
Thread: "RE: Norwegians and Nazis and
blood, oh my"
[Tarjei]
Real historians and real
researchers don't write polemical and rhetorical propaganda like
that.
[Peter Staudenmaier]
You and "Maniac"
ought to bridge your differences and write a new intro to historical
methodology; I guarantee you it would be quite a departure from
the existing literature. But I have to admit that you've got
a point here, for once. My articles on anthroposophy are indeed
polemical.
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2003 7:41 am
Subject: WC Quote of the Day
We can judge Steiner's reports
of his experiences as being fantasies, delusions, or fabrications.
He's a good example of why you shouldn't do mind-emptying meditation!"
- Dan Dugan, Dec 27, 2003
[Tarjei comments: PLANS is a cult of ghostbusters
dedicated to the pursuit of empty shadows.]
Tarjei Straume
http://www.uncletaz.com/anthrocritics.html
"The worst readers are
those who proceed like plundering soldiers: they pick up a few
things they use, soil and confuse the rest, and blaspheme the
whole." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2003 12:06 pm
Subject: Re: WC Quote of the Day
--- In anthroposophy_tomorrow@yahoogroups.com,
Tarjei Straume wrote:
We can judge Steiner's
reports of his experiences as being fantasies, delusions, or
fabrications. He's a good example of why you shouldn't do mind-emptying
meditation!
Bradford comments;
Hmmm Sauron speaks. It is time to understand
the insanity of Saul who became Paul. Paul's experiece at Damascus
is psychotic clinically termed schizophrenic. We have sent in
our best arm chair quarterbacks of Freudian psychology to rip
Paul off his pedastal all in the name of hypocrisy. We call this
guy who thought he was Saul, sheriff of Hebrew tradition and
the hanging judge, the stoning judge, converted to a new name,
a name change, called Paul. It was obviously because Paul could
get more money with his revised and negotiated contract with
the Dead Guy Jesus than he could from the Jews. Thus started
a whole world of people who suddenly, on some whim change their
name from Jane to Sun Beam.
A statement Nietzsche had said, a statement
that shook Steiner, that Ahriman dictated to Nietzsche, was that
Jesus was Insane. Well you can imagine how this hit Steiner.
He saw the Spin and future name game and open scissoring, back
stabbing and god awful Ethnic cleansing nightmares that would
come down the pike, all in the name of branding a person with
insanity.
We should praise the foresight of Christ,
who saw that the biggest attack dogs that would be thrown at
humanity in the future, after Paul, would be to declare that
anyone with in an inner world or sees into the Spiritual World
is insane. Paul was Christ's chess move on the board to checkmate
Ahriman. Paul was astonished at the role he had to bear. Look
into this, wise Karmic move from a Being who had just been tortured
and crucified, to have the balls to see ahead into the future
where Ahrimanic Critics would call Paul Schizophrenic and Jesus
insane. This would be the critical frontier of the entire Michael
School. The Michael School better be logical, medical, and provide
such explanations like how the ATomic Table is a relation of
musical tones arising out of the Devachan. That Electricity is
decayed Light. That the Plant stands upside down with its roots
as the thinking of the Seasons of the Earth. Oh yes, the challenge
for Paul was to make Ahriman's attacks mute. Cut Ahriman off
at the pass.
When a child, their children, our children
come to parents and say, as Louis MacNeice has said, 'I Am Not
Yet Born, Preserve me"..we see the fangs of the Intellectual
Wolf dismissing Steiner/Paul as insane, delusional and obviously
in need of medication. There by, all Steiner's insights, are
swept away in one Nietzschean swat. Thereby the parents who hear
this, run to Ridlin and medication to numb the actual spiritual
world where from these little accumulated materialistic haphazard
combination of cells, called children,they can be safeguarded
in the world of the sane according to the Ring Wing and WC version
of sanity. This is nor personal this is global Ahrimanic spin.
The same Worm Tongue is behind these observations
and the same stamp of soul that has painted Paul into a corner.
It is interesting to see how the WC has invited Ahriman to be
the guest intellectual speaker to attempt to thwart what it fears
most. That there is a Spiritual world, only humans are safer
in not knowing this. There are Gods, not just little Fundie,
Dashboard Jesus delusions. It is better not to know that Ahriman
walks through the thought world. It is better to think that the
clever knives thrown at the face of Saints condemns them all
to some psycho ward in the Swiss Alps.
For us it is better to praise the Ahrimanic
efficiency mustered in the world today and his inspiration as
he unconsciously works his usual magic in cunning people. Cunning,
is that they attempt to defy the Gods themselves. Steiner and
many others are the last defense adults and children have against
the assault teams of Ahriman. Because Steiner gave us the tools
and exact description of Ahrimanic Symptomology because he knew
that they would be gunning and coming after all who have experienced
the Spiritual World or remember.
It is safer to medicate our children, cut
off the opportunity of chronic depression, manic depression that
arises without a Spiritual World View, so that Death, is Death,
and family values are family values. I am surprised that so many
of you all go in to tangle, and perhaps to see for yourself,
exactly what inspiration arises in the souls of those, determined
to call Ahriman King and Paul insane. It surprises me that Ahrimanic
inspiration of that sort is not seen for what it is. We do this
because we respect the echo of cunning in the arguments and envy
we continue to learn exactly what this or other types of symptomolgy
means.
For it follows as Night follows Day that if
Steiner is nuts, delusional, all of Pauline Christianity is delusional.
It follows that Christ was a hallucination. It requires a kind
of maturity, that Steiner showed as he went into the sitting
room with the nesting vipers and eggs of Ahriman, in Nietzsche
brain. One has to have a vast solid foundation of experience
and soul to see the humor in calling Christ or Jesus, insane.
Calling Paul a Schizo and STeiner, a much easier target, just
a local nut. It is bright sense of humor that is an easy argument
because of the obvious Ahrmanic taint it was said with.
What we need is to not walk around in naive
stupidity in regards to the Ahrimanic Archai speaking out of
the WC and the Michael Time Period we live in. It is Trench combat,
Tarjei does so well and is so clear in sifting the grains of
truth, I applaud you and many on this list for their balanced
and clear thinking. But let us not be afraid to take the Michael
School into the meaning of psychiatry and the twisted halls of
Worm Tongue that passes as Rumor Mill and Ahrimanic Spin. Get
to know, without illusion, Ahrimanic Spin. This is not the human
soul speaking but the overshadowing of Ahriman in the Intellectual
and sentient soul. Anti-Global brotherhood is the continued infection
into the Consciousness Soul and anti- cosmopolitanism serves
Ahriman well.
When Steiner dealt with Schizophrenia he dealt
with the Sphinx and Oedipus in the most profound way. Steiner
knew he would and we would be attacked with the same weapons
of Ahriman and believe me they are the same weapons that Caiaphas
used, at the time Steiner described something which I have often
brought to the attention of friends. Steiner described how an
accumulated Ahrimanic Shadow projected out the Double, will begin
to arise and walk next to the human.
Regarding this insight, I brought attention
to John Nash and "A Beautiful Mind". If you know and
certainly we can pull these lectures out, you will see that there
is an accumulated Right Wing- Nominalistic shadow that is rising
in a large portion of humanity that Steiner knew would become
solid. Out of this solid and nursed shadow, carried through incarnations,
naturally they will try to numb and medicate what has been created
by our failed education. Here is where WC wishes to Stand and
attack the wonder of the Waldorf Model of Education. Steiner
warned that many in humanity will be eclipsed by this long cultivated
Ahriman-Double and that it would begin to appear exactly where
the human is in danger from the full impact of the tangible Ahrimanic
Shadow. It would become a medical problem and people who speak
sanely would be considered delusional because they were able
to see the roots of where this problem has arisen.
But our failure to Study our culture and integrate
deeper insights into psychology or linking, shaping and concerning
ourselves with Ahrimanic Symptomology, allows us to miss the
reference to John Nash's schizorphrenia and Steiner's sanity,
which all hinges on St. Paul does it not? Nietzche, and I don't
have to remind Tarjei of any of this, but Nietzsche was a true
martyr to knowledge because Ahriman finally came out of the box
and wrote. He wrote with the insight that confirms what Steiner
knew. That slandering Jesus and "Thus Spake Zarathustra"
was the rightful response from the ancient God that took over
Nietzsche's hand. Like the wonderful example Tarjei wrote about
the hand and the pen of John writing the Gospel and Revelation
on Patmos.
In the concepts of Racism, the Super Race
and the Spin of Ahriman in human brains the Ring Wing, psychiatry,
the medical community and public education see no difference
between Steiner and Nietzsche. This is the same street warfare
of spin that dominates Rush Limbaugh and the Bush Adminstration
and the current bid for Ahrimanic Imperialism over the whole
globe. This is all the same breed and we must put our foot down
on the head of the snake. We must understand the immense motives
to imprison the thinking, soul and spiritual development of mankind
within technology, medical science and cowardly fear because
we have not studied how Steiner battled to keep freedom open
for the human soul.
There is a wonderful tale about Kvasir and
how the dwarfs stab Kvasir with their steely knives and steal
his blood, that is the mead of the gods. These steely knives,
reminds one of Hotel California, they stick it with their steely
knives but they just can't kill the beast. In this case, in our
Time, as students of Spiritual Science, we are all Kvasir's and
we must not be naive about betrayal, and the steely knives that
are used against someone like Steiner and St. Paul and fruits
and research of Spiritual Science.
http://www.echoedvoices.org/Oct2002/Mead_of_Poetry.html
The story of the Mead of Poetry
begins with the Aesir and the Vanir making a pact of peace after
a lengthy war, which neither side was winning. The myth describes
how the gods and goddesses spat into a vat, and how a man named
Kvasir was created from that spit.
Following the creation of
this man, who is in essence the repository of all the knowledge
of all the gods and goddesses, they sent him out into the world
to share his knowledge with the people. He meets with two dwarf
brothers, who kill him, drain him of his blood, and make mead
from it. They fall afoul of some Giants, and the Giants eventually
claim the Mead for themselves. Odin finds out that the Giants
have this mead, and sets out in disguise to claim it for himself.
In the process of doing so, he kills nine thralls working in
the fields gathering grass, works a season for Baugi, and tries
to convince Baugi to get him a drink of the mead, much to Suttung's
displeasure. Eventually, Odin manages to get Baugi to bore into
the earth down to the cave where Suttung's daughter Gunlod sits
guarding the mead. Odin seduces her and steals the mead, flying
off in the form of an eagle toward Asgard with Suttung chasing
him.
...................................................................................................................................
From: Daniel Hindes
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2003 1:35 pm
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] WC Quote of the Day
This one is a classic. You really should do
a web page of these, a "Hall of Fame" as it were. You
can really tell a lot about a person by such statements, and
I think neutral readers would read him differently in light of
this and similar statements.
Daniel
"We can judge Steiner's
reports of his experiences as being fantasies, delusions, or
fabrications. He's a good example of why you shouldn't do mind-emptying
meditation!"
- Dan Dugan, Dec 27, 2003
[Tarjei comments: PLANS is a cult of ghostbusters
dedicated to the pursuit of empty shadows.]
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Sun Dec 28, 2003 11:38 pm
Subject: The Transparent Child
In Occult research we have to learn to bring
various seemingly unrelated items together, to view them more
carefully. This is extremely enlightening and inspiring when
you can actually see the connections.
The first connection was:
"An Individuality of extraordinary spirituality
was incarnated in this child. It was necessary, in this case,
for a process to be enacted which will never be repeated in the
same form. The following does not describe a typical Initiation
but is an altogether exceptional happening. It was necessary
for this child to be removed from the environment into which
he was born and to be placed in the care of the Twelve at a certain
place in Europe. But it was not the external measures adopted
by the twelve wise men that are of essential importance; what
is important is the fact that the child grew up with the Twelve
around him, and because of this, their wisdom was able to stream
into him.
One of the Twelve, for example, possessed
the Mars-wisdom and therewith a definite quality of soul - a
mood-of-soul tempered by the form of culture standing under the
influence of Mars. The forces of the Mars culture endowed this
soul with the faculty, among others, of presenting the occult
sciences with fiery enthusiasm and ardour.
Similar planetary influences were also at
work in other faculties distributed among the Twelve. The development
of the child's soul proceeded harmoniously under the influences
pouring from the twelve wise men. And so the child grew up, under
the unceasing care of the Twelve.
Then, at a certain time, when the child had
grown into a young man of about 20, he was able to give expression
to something that was a kind of reflex of the twelve streams
of wisdom - but in a form altogether new, new even to the twelve
wise men. The metamorphosis was accompanied by violent organic
changes. Even physically the child had been quite unlike other
human beings; he was often very ill and his body became transparent,
as though filled with light."
The Second connection we can draw is:
There is a wonderful tale about Kvasir
and how the dwarfs stab Kvasir with their steely knives and steal
his blood, that is the mead of the gods. These steely knives,
reminds one of Hotel California, they stick it with their steely
knives but they just can't kill the beast. In this case, in our
Time, as students of Spiritual Science, we are all Kvasir's and
we must not be naive about betrayal, and the steely knives that
are used against someone like Steiner and St. Paul and fruits
and research of Spiritual Science.
http://www.echoedvoices.org/Oct2002/Mead_of_Poetry.html
The story of the Mead of
Poetry begins with the Aesir and the Vanir making a pact of peace
after a lengthy war, which neither side was winning. The myth
describes how the gods and goddesses spat into a vat, and how
a man named Kvasir was created from that spit.
Following the creation
of this man, who is in essence the repository of all the knowledge
of all the gods and goddesses, they sent him out into the world
to share his knowledge with the people. He meets with two dwarf
brothers, who kill him, drain him of his blood, and make mead
from it. They fall afoul of some Giants, and the Giants eventually
claim the Mead for themselves. Odin finds out that the Giants
have this mead, and sets out in disguise to claim it for himself.
In the process of doing so, he kills nine thralls working in
the fields gathering grass, works a season for Baugi, and tries
to convince Baugi to get him a drink of the mead, much to Suttung's
displeasure. Eventually, Odin manages to get Baugi to bore into
the earth down to the cave where Suttung's daughter Gunlod sits
guarding the mead. Odin seduces her and steals the mead, flying
off in the form of an eagle toward Asgard with Suttung chasing
him.
Bradford comments;
Steiner describes twelve streams, and from
these twelve streams the evolved Rishis and post Atlantean Initiates
create a new body for the TWelvefold Initiate Christian Rosenkreutz.
WE follow the mysterious reality and history of this actual earthly
personality that was Initially Initiated by Christ. WE follow
hidden history through the 13th century Initiation, The immense
Spirits of Form and Archai potential is streamed into this frail
and sick child to become the higher model for all humanity.
We are looking at actual individuals. Rishis
from Atlantis through India and god knows, Egypt and Rome. We
are tracking, with Spiritual Science the things that are important.
We follow the capacity of people the heart and tenor of soul
of individuals that really existed but are described as myth.
But these are real facts. Where is the delusion and illusion
in how some approach reading and understanding these things?
Kvasir is made from the combined spittle,
spit of the twelve streams, hidden in the twelve streams is the
culminating Thirteenth and this must be clearly reckoned with.
In human blood and body weight a human being is in a cosmic ratio
of 13 to 1.. The Cow is in a ratio of body weight to blood as
12/1 and contains, as a Cow and why mad cow is an intersting
issue, the cow contains the twelve cosmic streams to produce
the bone support system for the Blood. Twelvefold represent the
streams of any and all zodical seed forms. But the 13th is always
there at the round table or the Last Supper or the Lamb of the
Zodiac. Inside the Skeletal twelvefold structure, is the blood
in the marrow of the bones.
Shall we grind up the bones of sheep and cattle,
pigs and chickens and feed them back to the cows themselves?
What would even stop us grinding up the reamins of humans? Cannabalistic
tribes end up having this spongy brain disease that has infects
the brain, spine and bones of beings trained to be cannibals
of their own species. This is wrong.
Kvasir is molded and imbued with all the wisdom
of the Gods and his blood is mead. By mixing honey with this
blood the Dwarves that Kill HIm make "The Mead of Poetry".
Blood, the Rose, the Red of Mars and the Gold of the Sun along
with the nectar and plant sweetness of the Sun Gold honey in
the blood, indicates a potent mystery. It is the mystery of Science
and Poetry, this thinking is required to be actively working
in the Michael School.
We look into the Golgotha Blood, that literally
arose at the 11th hour of the 3 year incubation of the Christ
Being in Jesus. We know, we should know, that a Fission of the
Thrones compressed the blood of Jesus so he actually sweated
blood from the mighty inward thrust of the Father forces or Seraphim,
Thrones, and Cherubim that fused down to the bone marrow in the
blood substance of Jesus. From this elixir of Devachan imbued
blood the golden immortal fire cooked in the compression chamber
of the Jesus Being was enough to heal Planet Earth and light
the ignition fire of the new science of Immortality. Note Science
not myth. Not Dashboard Jesus and a Fundie mind set.
When this blood dripped from the wounds and
splashed to the Earth at Golgotha, we have, for Science to look
at, a re-fissioning of the XY Chromosomal structure, because,
contrary to Dottie, it is Men that have XY female and male bridge
to the higher Resurrection Body. It is an odd fact of science
that the xx of women cannot serve the dual male and female blueprint
as well. But someone had to become the new Earth miracle model
of the Christ direction pulling the Earth towards the Seraphim.
Science tells us where, when, how and for what reasons this was
done. Do people get it? No. They are missing large chunks of
the Michael School in their thinking.
The remaking of the human being is what the
whole Chymical Wedding is all about. Here you can read for yourself
a Secret in plain sight and very few tend to see it. We tend
in our Intellect to disgard myth for all the blistering coolness
of factoids. We fail to see that we are talking about history
and science and that the deepest mysteries can be unriddled.
But the Chymical Wedding arose after the twelve
streams had made the sickly transparent child, let John tell
you, Sweetness that is bitter to the belly when you Eat the Book.
EAting the Book is to become the Initiated Reprsentative or Financial
officer to the Tree of Life. This is also what the Chymical Wedding
was about.
Putting related Initiation pictures together
brings some startling things to light. One, is history, actual
history of real events. Two is that myth has had to be used to
even imagine what truly has happened around the whole events
of the Gods. Myth and History equals a new Science of the Spirit.
It requires a new type of rich thinking that very few can handle.
We need all those who can handle it without letting their ahrimanized
or luciferic tendencies muffle the work that Steiner gave us
to contemplate. Real Science.
Bradford
...................................................................................................................................
From: winters_diana
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2003 3:02 pm
Subject: Re: WC Quote of the Day
Although, as usual, I am not really sure exactly
what Bradford's post is about, I am commenting because it seems
to have been inspired by a quote from Dan Dugan that was reproduced
here, suggesting Steiner was delusional, and it later refers
to the "WC," and immediately thereafter refers to parents
putting their children on Ritalin (I presume this is what is
meant by "Ridlin") . . . implying, if I understand
correctly, some sort of connection between posting on the Waldorf
critics list and being eager to see children take Ritalin. I'd
just like to note that, in my experience on the critics list
for several years, I don't recall the topic of putting children
on Ritalin even being discussed. This is not something that PLANS
takes a position on. I would say that, in a very general way,
parents coming out of Waldorf, just like parents going in, tend
to be wary of medication. In general, former Waldorf parents
still have more in common with current Waldorf parents than they
do with the larger culture. Bradford is perhaps not aware of
this; he seems to have a rather grisly image in his mind of who
the people are who leave Waldorf schools disillusioned. They
are, to state the obvious, Waldorf parents. I don't know what
Ahriman's position on Ritalin is, or Sauron's, and actually I
don't know Dan's either, but even if Dan is in fact Sauron, he
isn't out pushing medication for children.
Bradford wrote:
Thereby the parents who hear this, run to Ridlin and medication
to numb the actual spiritual world where from these little accumulated
materialistic haphazard combination of cells, called children,they
can be safeguarded in the world of the sane according to the
Ring Wing and WC version of sanity. This is nor personal this
is global Ahrimanic spin.
The same Worm Tongue is behind these observations
and the same stamp of soul that has painted Paul into a corner.
It is interesting to see how the WC has invited Ahriman to be
the guest intellectual speaker
<snip>
It is safer to medicate our children, cut
off the opportunity of chronic depression, manic depression that
arises without a Spiritual World View,
<snip>
I am surprised that so many of you all
go in to tangle, and perhaps to see for yourself, exactly what
inspiration arises in the souls of those, determined to call
Ahriman King and Paul insane."
For the record, I haven't heard anyone over
on critics call Ahriman King either. I personally am no more
interested in Ahriman than any other gods. He sure generates
a lot of interest here.
For it follows as Night follows Day that
if Steiner is nuts, delusional, all of Pauline Christianity is
delusional.
It doesn't follow "as night follows day"
for the millions of people who do, in fact, follow Pauline Christianity,
and don't follow Steiner.
the Ring Wing, psychiatry, the medical
community and public education see no difference between Steiner
and Nietzsche. This is the same street warfare of spin that dominates
Rush Limbaugh and the Bush Adminstration and the current bid
for Ahrimanic Imperialism over the whole globe. This is all the
same breed and we must put our foot down on the head of the snake."
Hey Bradford, I don't like the Bush administration
either. But it's when you start talk about putting your foot
down on the head of the snake that you start to scare me. From
what I have gleaned from your posts, it appears you believe that
I (by virtue of criticizing Waldorf) worship someone called Ahriman,
and I am bad, the same way the "medical community"
and "public education" are bad (I don't know what the
"Ring Wing" is; I thought it said Right Wing at first,
and I was about to inform you that the medical community and
public education aren't, generally, right wing; but I see I am
over my head here). Anyway you need to put your foot on my head
to stop me? You wonder why some people think anthroposophy is
creepy?
Diana
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2003 4:10 pm
Subject: Re: WC Quote of the Day/Diana
--- In anthroposophy_tomorrow@yahoogroups.com,
winters_diana wrote:
Dear Diana;
You are right, I didn't spend a lot of time
correcting that post. Ring Wing was Right Wing and Ridlin wasn't
anything to do with Riddles, nor was Ring Wing anything to do
with the Ring Lords. It was Ritalin and thanks for catching those
unedited errors.
As to, "The Devil made me do it"
from the Church Lady of our Lady of Innocence SAturday Night
Live or the Rod Serling version of,
"We're normal people, people with ordinary
jobs and families and a variety of religious affiliations (and
some not) and we do things like go to the movies, have family
holiday get togethers, play with our kids, volunteer in the community,
coach sports, help at our kids' schools. We do not serve gods
of darkness. Grow up, Bradford."
But that is what we all do. In such pretty
subdivisions and standing as protectors to our children's future
with are warm little hopes and dreams, we all try to think this
thing through. My children went through Waldorf Education and
as you I find many faults in certain specifally run schools and
certain attitudes that have evolved from the school of "Steiner
Said".
But such carboard cut outs of any normal person
is to say, as I have many times, that when it comes to a paycheck
I could more easily trust people who weren't connected to Spiritual
Science. I have nursed the horrible disappoint, on the otherside
of my consciousness that "certainly if people knew the right
thing to do, they would gladly do it". We all learn to see
where our errors in thinking lead to. For some people, as you
well know, they still beileve that Saddam had something to do
with 9/11.
It has been said many times, that I would
actually like G.Bush, guy to guy, if I sat down and talked with
him, and do as I do with everyone else, file my discerning Michael
Eye and Ear away and merely let the cowboy in us both have a
smoke and a long talk. We'd all see eye to eye and part of my
soul would like the guy. Well that is probably true. But the
other part of the equation is also true, that my discerning ear
and eye is watching the better part of America disintegrate under
this Administrations blatant forked tongue.
So not to over simplify the dualistic nature
of knowledge it is easy to see we can all sit down at a table
and be civil with each other. We can eat hotdogs and talk about
our war stories in education, public and private, and yet there
are, as you have wisely pointed out, areas in my soul that I
consider worth defending.
My Education in Christianity has come through
Spiritual Science and having had a grandmother who was a Lutheran.
My wife was a wonderful Jewish girl and we shared the adventure
of our lives at the Goetheanum. The Christ Being has taken on
deeper and deeper context to me, along with the Being of Michael
and measuring what an Angelic Being is. Say, as an example, how
Buddha was able to come to the point where he no longer had to
incarnate on Earth. Which isn't to say I am in any hurry to get
off this rock. I am keenly interested in what part of the soul
is transformed in this process and how fairs it with Saints,
the Church and me, myself and I? But most importantly, did Steiner
describe in his pattern of change of teeth, through the seven
year rhythms of biography, Soul map changes that are objective?
Was he ahead of Jung and everyone else? YES! YES! Is he Making
all this stuff up? NO.
What Beings, beside good ole human Beings
in flesh and blood, can I detect with my cognition? Are there
other beings or should I remain rather bland about all this and
stick with Mick's and Milton's "Sympathy for the Devil"?
Cognition and discernment have to be grown.
It is all well and good that you just want us to admit, for the
sake of argument that the 'good doctor' was wrong sometimes.
And this, with the mountain of what he was right about, compared
to the rest of human research, means what to you? That you win
some prize? That you can walk away from Spiritual Science and
Waldorf Education and say, you survived and have a 'T' shirt
to prove it?
Please allow me to introduce
myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
And I was 'round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around st. petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached bombay
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
'cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down
Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame
...................................................................................................................................
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Mon Dec 29, 2003 12:06 pm
Subject:
01 Oct 2001
Tarjei
With this background, your reference to your own work as "historical
scholarship" is a pompous hoax and an embarrassment to the
profession.
Peter Staudenmaier:
I don't see how it could be an embarrassment to professional
historians, since I'm not one.
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: Joel Wendt
Date: Tue Dec 30, 2003 9:24 am
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] Re: WC Quote of the Day
Dear Diana,
I want to thank you for coming to this list,
and if you wouldn't mind I'd like to try to express to you the
essential problems I have with the WC list, and have you reply
to those you believe you have something to say concerning. I'll
list them by numbers, and try to give examples.
1. Disrespect for the life work of others.
It is one thing to have a disagreement over
someone's "ideas", and another thing to not be willing
to acknowledge accomplishment. For example, Dan has always trotted
out his "weird science" stuff, among which he lists
the idea of the threefold form of the human being.
For years I tried to get him to read W. Schad's
book Man and Mammals, and when he finally did, he dismissed it
with a couple of lines. Now Schad isn't some weird science thinker,
but an accomplished biologist, who not only mastered his field
of interest, but also the anthroposophically oriented work as
well. Not only that, but Schad was not just an academician, but
an excellent observer in the field, having devoted his life to
this calling, spending years in mastering the literature, and
in the field making first hand observations of countless mammals
in their natural habitat.
But it is not convenient to Dan's world view
to admit that such accomplishment exists or to honor the life
that has been devoted to learning something about which Dan can't
even be considered an amateur.
Peter F. likes to put down anthroposophical
medicine, especially the homeopathy aspect. But he is not a doctor,
and has not taken up the responsibility to master this art of
healing. Dan likes to call anthroposophical doctors quacks, which
again is extremely demeaning, and has no justification at all.
Anthroposophical doctors are not sellers of
useless patent medicines, but people devoted to helping others
with their illnesses. These doctors not only have to master medical
practice and get licensed, but then add to that study and accomplishment,
further work of a most difficult sort - work neither Peter F.
nor Dan has even begun to consider.
I have a dear friend, a woman, who went to
medical school at a time when this was very hard for a woman
to do. Just becoming board certified in internal medicine is
quite an accomplishment. Yet, as her practice grew, like many
physicians today, she became disenchanted with commercial medicine,
and found that there were other ways of seeking to heal that
were more effective for the patient, although not enriching of
her own pocket book. She now runs a practice which is called
"simple care", and has open hours (no appointment necessary,
just show up with your need). She opted out of insurance with
all its huge and needless paperwork, still pays horrible mal-practice
insurance costs, and provides care to hundreds of folks who come
because what she does works, and her patients are always recommending
others into her care.
She frequently adjusts her fees to fit the
patients needs (at her own expense) and gives away as much medicine
as she sells. She is well respected in her community and among
her allopathic (regular medicine) peers, to whom she makes referrals
when her patients needs require that kind of care.
But do Peter F. and Dan honor this work, this
accomplishment which is beyond them to do? No.
Now Peter F. loves to make references to research
that seems to suggest that homeopathy doesn't work. I recently
read a report on such research, which undertook to examine the
effectiveness of echinacea. Here is some comments by a physician
who follows this problem:
Finally, a word should be
spoken about the problem with biased research against natural
medicine and the uneven playing field/double standard whereby
natural products are criticized unfairly in the medical / scientific
press. For example, the immune enhancing effect of the echinacea
plant was maligned in a recent study at University of Washington.
What happened here? Well, anyone doing research on Echinacea
should know that different parts of plants feature different
potencies of medicinal value. For example, the part of Echinacea
that is considered medicinal is its ROOT. Bear that in mind as
you read the conclusion of the study (funded by your tax dollars)
which finds that Echinacea was not helpful. Yet, what part did
the scientist use? The blossom!
Then there is the criticism of my work by
Peter S. and Walden, wherein my "racist" remarks are
pointed out, over and over and over again. Nothing is said about
the research of years, nor is the point of the paragraphs even
accepted within its context, which was all about pointing out
to the anthroposophical movement that in order to understand
America, one had to appreciate and honor the First Nations Peoples.
And, this point was itself buried inside a much larger piece
about totally other matters.
Now neither of the above gentlemen has walked
in my shoes, or done the years of research that stands behind
that article. I doubt they have the capacity or the talent, or
the desire to understand or work toward understanding the root
questions that I have devoted myself to trying to unravel. For
example, "historical necessity" is a well known concept
for true students of history (something Peter S. most assuredly
is not) This means nothing to them, except that they can take
some words of mine, twist their meaning and then score points.
This leads us to problem number 2.
2. The falsification of meaning, by refusing
to acknowledge that the writer or speaker may have meant something
other than what the listener heard or the reader read (and quite
likely wanted to hear or read).
There are sciences of language, and plenty
of works that can be read about the problem of meaning in the
use of words to communicate from one person to another. The amateur
thinkers that Dan and Peter S. are, could, if they cared to do
a righteous job, undertake to make the acquittance of these disciplines
regarding meaning and language. But such work is inconvenient
to the point of view being sold on the PLANS website, and advocated
endlessly on the Critic's List.
Many of the flaws in Peter S's arguments are
flaws of learning about meaning in general, and also flaws of
logic. Yet, the temper of the list is such that anything that
can be used against Steiner and anthroposophy, has to be used,
and real learning and rationality are to be ignored in favor
of finding support for prejudice, preconception and bias.
Any competent historian, and certainly any
true student of language, knows that you cannot not export the
meaning of terms from the present, as a means of evaluating the
meaning of words used in the past. One must (MUST!), investigate
the meanings of words as they were used in the past, and master
not only that, but the cultural context in which those terms
are embedded. Otherwise one clearly falsifies the meaning, essentially
inventing a meaning that has nothing to do with what the speaker
said.
This is so basic and well known, that it is
really quite remarkable that Dan and Peter S. are allowed to
get away with it over and over again, by supposedly "educated"
people who come to the list.
Then there is the ignoring of what Steiner
created as a context in which he spoke. There are two typical
kinds of problems here.
The first and foremost, is that he began his
life's work by focusing on the problem of knowledge - how do
we know what we believe we know? He wrote three books (Truth
and Science -1881, A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's
World Conception - 1886, and The Philosophy of Freedom -1894).
This is not some silly problem, but was rather the main issue
of the time (the 19th Century) for the whole of the scientific
impulse.
Everything Steiner later said in his many
lectures and books was based upon the conclusions to which one
is led who undertakes to master not just the ideas of those books,
but more centrally, the personal experiences evoked.
Peter S. and Dan basically pretend this part
of Steiner's work doesn't exist, and as again this is very inconvenient
for their world view, whenever they can they dismiss this with
out really considering it, or acknowledging the incredible accomplishment.
The real problem for them is, of course, that they are unwilling
to risk the personal journey, for they know instinctively that
the world view to which they hold on to for dear life would not
stand if they faced the reality of their own inner life and what
"thinking" as a human activity really means.
That is the foundational problem, but there
is a second problem as well. This is the one that Sune has worked
with, and which Peter S. and Dan ignore as much as possible.
Steiner was a pioneer, and he did research
and asked questions of a quite different sort than most of his
contemporaries. His material on race, on the evolution of consciousness,
and on history in general was far outside the main stream of
his day, or even still today. This required that he use all manner
of common words to try to convey quite different ideas.
He did not use the term race in the way we
mean today, and nothing could be clearer in his writing. But
this fact is again inconvenient to Peter S. and Dan. So heaven
forbid we take Steiner's meaning, instead lets invent our own
version of it, for with that invention - that lie - we can vilify
him in a most horrible way, by finding his work causally related
to the worst evil of this century.
Then there is the cute, but quite illogical,
spin that is used, whereby Peter S. says that an idea can be
racist, but the speaker who uttered the idea would not be a racist.
In the science of logic this is called a distinction without
a difference. It is a childish play with words, whereby meaning
is strangled and replaced with fantasy. To accept such an idea,
one has to stop thinking in a rational way entirely.
Now to problem #3.
3. The abuse of logic, true learning and reason,
and the disrespect for the accomplishment of others, actually
harms and undercuts all the quite legitimate and fully justified
problems with Waldorf Education toward which a more rationally
oriented PLANS and WC-list could contribute.
Former Waldorf parents, such as yourself,
could do a great work toward the improvement of education in
general for all parents and all children, if this work of looking
with an intelligent and critical eye at the Waldorf School movement
was not so confused with the above excesses.
Anthroposophy, being a human enterprise, clearly
has failures, one of the main ones being the taking over of the
Waldorf impulse by Steinerism, a dogmatic and un-anthroposophical
religious-like (I won't say cult-like because that is patently
untrue) belief system.
Further, in the bringing forth of Waldorf
in America several terrible mistakes were made, two of the main
ones being the allowing of two middle European men to dominate
the training of the backbone of Waldorf trained women that have
come to be leading lights in so many schools. These two men did
not know what they were doing, and never questioned their ability
to understand the soul life of Americans or their expertise in
a land to which they came as "spiritual imperialists".
In addition, Waldorf succumbed to the fear
of many parents concerning public schools, expanded far too fast,
and let too many people, entirely unsuitable for the teaching
of young minds, become teachers.
The above, coupled with the excesses of Steinerism,
meant that when parents had legitimate questions, no one competent
on a social level was there to answer them. This might not have
happened, but in the late 1970's, when the teacher training center
that became Rudolf Steiner College was being born, and then taken
over out of the over-reaching of European influences (spiritual
imperialism), the companion piece - a center for the study of
the social question in America - was destroyed. Thus, teachers
began to be trained, without the wise social intelligence that
was meant to have been their counterpart.
But PLANS (principally Dan, who now has attached
to this work an entirely inadequate faux scholar, Peter S.) is
more bent on destruction than creation. Instead of being the
wise and critically intelligent partner it could be, by seeing
the real potential in Waldorf, and then working to cure its defects,
PLANS/WClist instead seeks out the destruction of that impulse,
tearing down and throwing out the good with the bad, all in a
hubris of a self indulgent self important mission to rid the
world of anthroposophy, something Dan has not actually seen or
understood.
To the tragedy of Steinerism, PLANS adds its
own excesses, and it will really only be the children and the
parents, who want to find desperately something wiser than government
(and now more and more business) run public education, who suffer.
warm regards,
joel
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Tue Dec 30, 2003 11:12 am
Subject: Re: WC Quote of the Day
--- In anthroposophy_tomorrow@yahoogroups.com,
Joel Wendt wrote:
Dear Joel;
Masterful and balanced. I loved "Spiritual
Imperialists" nice. If you keep writing like this we may
have to make you into Cosmopolitan Treasure.
Even today, the Orin Hatch crew, have waited
to start to attack Organic remedies with new FDA scares to start
dismantling remedies like echinacea. Great reporting on how the
perverted science seeks to gain a foothold over the market of
remedies by distorting true research with spin then taking over
their market share.
Point to Point you did a Masterly job walking
through complex issues, I thank you.
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Wed Dec 31, 2003 12:13 pm
Subject: Historical fair treatment
--- In anthroposophy_tomorrow@yahoogroups.com,
holderlin66 wrote:
Rudiments of Educational Perspective:
learn to read what
silent love hath writ,
to hear with eyes
belongs to love's fine wit.
Bradford wrote:
education see no difference between Steiner
and Nietzsche.
When Steiner is included in the historical
development of western thought, and not assassinated, a great
deal of insight can be drawn. I offer this interesting research
work as Exhibit A:
http://differnet.com/experience/sec6c.htm
Though Nietzsche tilted at
the windmill of the future, his knightly armour sparkled and
creaked with his own time's apparatus of the sciences, even while
a great deal of his challenge unfurled to pointedly mock the
history of 'civilized institutions'.
Rudolf Steiner, by contrast,
was nothing like a lone knight; he put his life together more
in responsible relation to friends and followers than on the
basis of Nietzsche's self-conscious intention to make it difficult
for the future to lose him once they had found him.
The Anti-Christ titles one
of Nietzsche's later works.
Because Nietzsche was more
'the Anti-Kant' than The Anti-Christ, he felt obliged to sum
himself up and brand himself upon what he took to be the German
people with more of their own medicine.
Steiner never admitted that
suicidal narrowing into national identity as his land's fate
accompli; he found sufficient diversity and aptitude for what
he tried to teach as 'supersensible perception' among the people
who sought him out, to dedicate his life to them. Steiner made
use of the cultural potencies at hand to give his practice social
effect. So unless we can begin to recognize the scope of Steiner's
intentions, the means he brought to bear might make his work
seem nearly antithetical to the advance of thinking, might even
suggest that he was involved in a confused (and confusing) conglomeration
of atavisms.
As a 'renegade', a thinker
involved in transformative practice, Steiner leaves us no culminating
type of synthesis which can picture us the order and value of
his thought, though anyone who observes a healthy Waldorf school
might have from Steiner something better than such a picture.
Here is one way Steiner has sent himself toward the future -
through the children as a favor to them. One wonders what it
says about our time that such a result of thinking could remain
so little acknowledged for so long.
The amorphousness of Steiner's
legacy is compounded not only by the instrumentalities of its
dissemination in his time and additionally its mediations in
our own, but also by the nature of the direction in which he
was fundamentally turned. Steiner surely stood at the other end
of the boat from Whitehead and Nietzsche as it crossed into the
twentieth century, looking not toward the unknown land looming
in advance but into the homeland vanishing aft.
Steiner's work, like Dilthey's
and Husserl's in its prodigiality, embodies a response to the
Romantic position that Mind's foundations and its capacity for
truth belong first to Mind's productivity - to use Goethe's word
in Faust, its deeds.
Steiner's six-thousand-odd
transcribed lectures are mostly staged on the basis of what most
thinkers would take as mythological content, and within those
lectures Steiner works to call forth apprehensions whose meanings
employ such 'mythic' frames of reference. Even by late nineteenth
century standards, when the study of myth seemed to be of preeminent
importance for coming to terms with the origins and destiny of
humanity, Steiner's approach constituted the breaking of taboos
for many of the thinkers of his time. Not just because he could
be seen as the focus of a 'cult', but even more because instead
of using myth as a subject for conceptual analysis, he asked
for a kind of participation in typically mythic distinctions
which could not be reduced to objectifying relations: Steiner
said that he meant to teach Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition.
These words signified faculties
offering insights and relations in reality which were not susceptible
to capture in externalizable ideas. Their truth was characterized
as a function of the concrete reality whose gathering together
constituted their occasion. Such truths belong to their moments
as incarnations for awareness and can not be well used as building
blocks for systems of concepts.
Steiner's choice of the lexicon
of myth for teaching such faculties WAS in accord with the general
sense of the relevance of myth in the later half of the Nineteenth
century: in different ways both scholars and seekers reached
toward the spiritual forms of the past as holding things decisively
missing from their own time. Most came to concur that mythical
awareness was the earliest and most fertile ground of human meaning.
The scholars felt obliged
at least to show how their own 'more advanced' ways of thinking
had developed from these origins, and some even maintained that
without characterizing the seminal status of mythic awareness,
more developed kinds of thought were doomed to crucial self-misunderstandings.
Ernst Cassirer emerged as
the most eloquent of these thinkers. The seekers of that time
went farther: What had been left behind in mythic awareness for
them either contained more truth than what had replaced it, or
its seminality needed to be recaptured in the context of modern
thinking. As I see it, Rudolf Steiner assigned himself to this
latter task.
In contrast to Cassirer's
'mainstream' approach to giving status to the role of myth in
human awareness, Rudolf Steiner taught practices working to draw
directly on mind's vital roots in mythic awareness. His teachings
suggest that thinking without its mythic foundations is like
mind without body - a fiction suitable mostly for testing the
limits of partial premises. Steiner's attempt to rejoin thinking
to its foundations antedates both Cassirer's picture of mind's
past and our time's emphasis on what is called 'unconscious mind'.
Unlike the latter, Steiner's teachings were not framed by intentions
of intellectual leverage to pry into mind's underlying strata:
More often than not he rather ended up telling stories meant
to subtly evoke participation in the vast reservoirs of mythic
meaning. It is hard to elsewhere find plausible parallels with
these stories - though the potent role of stories in the education
of children, for example in potentiating thresholds of learning
between waking and dreaming, perhaps suggests something of how
Steiner expected HIS stories to function for adults.
Modern thinkers should be
prepared to recognize that insofar as Steiner resolutely worked
to 'mind in time', logical relations cannot adequately characterize
most of the distinctions he employed. Further, as James and Whitehead
point out, where entitites are conceptualized as including duration
in their boundaries they must be understood not only as nested
(as in the logical relation of class membership) but also as
overlapping. Nevertheless, when Steiner repopulates the 'spiritual
world' with waxing and waning mythologically recognizable beings
and so evicts many of philosophy's 'timeless ideas', it may come
as something of a shock - even if it can be seen that these terms
conform not only to an interpretation of previously characterized
historical and formal philosophical requirements, but also to
the world we observe where indeed beings are made of other beings,
stories of other stories, in ways that defy the strictures of
class hierarchies.
Even allowing, however, that
Steiner's recapture of mythic awareness offers contemporary thinking
a more concrete and inclusive kind of mind, it remains crucial
to point out that the stories by which Steiner predominantly
works to bring us toward such capacity are at pains to avoid
inviting atavistic involvements in mythic awareness. For Steiner
the modern sense of self-experience is an advance not to be relinquished
or even suspended; his turn toward the foundations of human awareness
calls on subtle courses of discrimination based on processes
of observation inclusive of one's own apprehending activity.
These to some extent parallel the methods characterized within
the Husserlian phenomenology, and perhaps reflect his studies
with Franz Brentano.
Steiner's turn toward the
past, like Cassirer's, was from a modern perspective, an effort
to assure we do not lose the breadth and latency of our human
inheritance and so imperil our human future. Both were driven
to exhibit the wholeness of the universe of human meaning even
through its roots in earlier modes of experience.
Both carried into their work
Kant's questions and the way Kant had revised philosophy's basic
distinctions, even while looking to Goethe as an exemplar of
wisdom in description and observation. Most of all perhaps, their
respective intensive studies of Hegel shaped their narrative
dynamics and their explanatory use of Reason, though for Steiner
the spells cast by riddles substitute for the demands made by
contradictions. And while a sense for the past dominates the
content of their works, both labored to clear space for what
the future was bringing.
Steiner's thinking, though,
unlike Cassirer's, is committed to transformative practice. As
did Nietzsche, whose work Steiner characterized as fraternally
linked with his own‡, Steiner brought thinking into time
through his life's challenges and retrospectively gave voice
as best he could to the organic connections, found through living
presence, of past and future. And so, while Nietzsche's glossolalia
of transvaluations continues to awaken us to what is actually
and just now still coming to us, Steiner's tales of worlds past
hold a door ajar to where mind sleeps in dreaming the world it
wakes to think within.
Like Cassirer, Steiner recognized
that meanings drawn from the foundations of the life of the mind
were immanent in their occurence and not transportable into conceptual
systems. Moments of such meaning - fully engaged with their embedding
contemporary world- process - Steiner called supersensible perceptions.
For Steiner, unlike Cassirer, the qualities of such occasions
are not summary intensities of concentration and identification,
but occur in a modality resembling but not to be confused with
remembrance; on a ground more kin to duration and absence than
one of extension and presence. Here Steiner anticipates not only
Bergson's previously cited distinctions, but also Heidegger's
methodological immersion of thinking in temporality.
Moreover, Steiner's accounts
of supersensible perception example a kind of movement of transcendence
distinct from those identified above. While the insistence of
experience's conceptual elements offer a transcendence whose
temporality is futural, and the submission to mind's constitutive
activities brings transcendence into presence, it is held here
that on the basis of experiencing metaphor transcendence opens
toward the past. Though Paul Ricoeur in our own period does explore
metaphor's centrality for mind, and Steiner has left extensive
records of his travels in such regions, the type of transcendence
which opens for experience through metaphor on its own terms
remains terra incognita for most secular thinkers.
But metaphor is the single
door that opens onto everything AND nothing. Its function relies
on the past's essential equivocation between what is and what
is not. While concepts give form, and perceptual activity sense,
it is metaphor - as Cassirer saw - that is the wellspring of
meaning. And it is meaning that we feel as mind's embodiment.
Much remains undone for illuminating such transcendence, Steiner's
breakthroughs notwithstanding. We will largely limit our subsequent
treatment of this area to symbols, but these, by holding worldly
form, leave us outside of much of metaphor's significance.
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