A thinking path to spiritual perception - exploring 'living thinking'

The thinking path to spiritual perception

This is a personal exploration and articulation of the core ideas of Rudolf Steiner, and the Goethean epistemology upon which his praxis is founded.

A key question one encounters when reading his work, is ''what is this spiritual perception and exoteric terminology all about?'' ''What is this 'esoteric training', and should I be doing it?''
To the latter question I'd suggest finding out for yourself is the only way, but here I am sharing my thoughts both as a person who was born into the Steiner (Anthroposophical) world, and as someone who has studied the matter of integrity around what we espouse, and what we do, my whole adult life - and most of all, as someone who has experiences that verify what Rudolf Steiner (as well as other integral thinkers such as Jean Gebser and Sri Aurobindo) lays out in his works. The issue with Steiner is that his 6000+ lectures and numerous books on the surface, appear to often contradict one another.

A key question seems to be around different 'paths' to development. By far the most popular and advocated-for, is the path of esoteric training, whereby one diligently practices exercises and meditations in order to attain clairvoyance and 'living thinking'. But if one starts with his first books, a totally different way seems to emerge - what can be called 'the thinking path'.

Whilst diligently doing the exercises described for Rudolf Steiner’s ‘esoteric path’ and studying Anthroposophical texts and ideas is one viable way to develop oneself so as to be a genuine contributor to creating a better world, there is another path that Steiner laid out, in some ways before he described a path of ‘esoteric training’ that came later. I define our development results in terms of our actions (and their underlying intentions), and not as gaining supersensible knowledge or insight (although this most certainly helps if that is one’s true intention).

The moral guidelines laid out in the first sections of his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (KOTHW) and the points made that are re-emphasised throughout the book, should lead to the same kind of emphasis drawn around the esoteric training path (to higher knowledge) as is found through studying the Philosophy of Freedom (in my humble opinion).
I can also say that it is very clear to me that the ‘six basic exercises’ (rightly) seen as essential by many Anthroposophists, are inherently connected with what is articulated in PoF - there appears to be another way of reaching the same goal of realising ‘living (or ‘pure’ sense-free’) thinking’.

The path I am referring to can be called ‘the thinking path’ (as laid out primarily in the Philosophy of Freedom) in that the journey is through getting to know one's thinking, living it into everything one does, and finding connection to the universal and the spiritual through authentic embodied enactment of the fruits of insights gained from time and effort spent thinking, and resultant doing. This is very different to academic study (although it also necessarily entails doing a lot of that!) - one has to literally walk the talk that one is becoming ever more familiar with. And this of course leads to shadow, and the importance of working to redeem it.

This is what I did, for years. I read KOTHW at 19, and when I got to the part where he basically says ‘many are called, few are chosen’ (paraphrasing) ‘take a good look at yourself, and consider all that I have said thus far regarding esoteric training, and consider if you are truly ready for it. If you don’t feel you are, my suggestion is to take as much as you can from what you have read up to here, put the book down and go and live your life with as much integrity as you can find in yourself’
It literally took me a few seconds to assess myself, close the book, and go off into life, getting as far away from anything Anthroposphical as I could for a decade, but carrying with me many gems from the book that remain clear in memory to this day, and a deep need to gains some true and real understanding of the most crazily mixed-bag of an experience being raised an Anthro kid was in the 80’s and 90’s.
Only after coming back to work for a Steiner-influenced organisation did I come back to the Anthro world. And once again - mixed bag - but this time oh so much more in my face, and as I was an adult, these were experiences I could begin to (try to) understand.
This lead me to academic study (organisational development), and the course literally catalysed (along with some very important other factors) a torrent of understanding. I had been unofficially studying for those 10 years - mainly Integral and related theories - and I am forever grateful for what that whole set of worlds brought me!
It was here that my interest in the Philosophy of Freedom really came to the fore - I had known for a long time that I needed to read it. I’d previously tried but not gotten far.

My studies and reading it worked together beautifully, and in 2013 I had a spiritual experience of unity, followed by torrents of self-understanding, self-acceptance, and a bubbling of intimations of things regarding the world and cosmos, that have taken me a further 10 years to begin to make proper sense of. Since that moment (and all that lead up to it, especially the study), I have (been gifted) new cognitive abilities (such as the ability to string long and complex thoughts together, and to remember certain things with clarity - both things I really struggled with in my life up to then). Reading Steiner lectures I used to find very difficult, now I easily concentrate on his ideas.
This experience lead me to finally pick up KOTHW again, and reading the rest of the book was starting to answer some burning questions that were arising.

I was the most skeptical person regarding Anthroposophy (you’ll probably not be surprised to hear that…), but when I actually read Steiner, I felt something completely different. ‘Do not take a word I say as truth unless you have verified it from your own experience’. When I saw that, I was like “ok, I can listen to this guy’’. But this also meant I tested - everything.
Beneath this skepticism (which I morphed into critical thinking through university), was a lifelong respect for what Steiner was and is about.

I lived my exploration of moral ideals with 100% ‘skin in the game’ - in some ways I don’t feel like I had any other choice (although of course sometimes it took me a long time to see something important, which is an everpresent danger). I gave blood sweat and tears to my work, and was burned.
But this lead to growth in the university as a lecturer, another world of influence I am forever grateful for. I even got as far as getting a funded PhD scholarship to apply Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom to contemporary discussion on leadership. But, I felt other things calling, and here I am, happily feeling my way into freelance work, doing quite a few different things.

Here is a summary of the thinking path, my own words influenced from

Philosophy of Freedom.

Understanding the reality of freedom

‘An action is felt to be free in so far as the reasons for it spring from the ideal part of my individual being; every other part of an action is unfree

Tapping into the ideal part of our being is the only way to develop freedom. This ultimately involves basing the foundational impulses for one's actions on love - ‘I do it because I love it, not because I am compelled by either internal or external desires and dictums’.

Cultivating pure thinking
This means developing the ability to think free of preconceptions (which first involves the painful process of getting to know them), and to become comfortable taking multiple perspectives on a given situation or phenomenon, being able to argue others’ positions as one’s own. Being able to see one’s ideology and put it to the side when making evaluations and judgements. Stepping out of group-experience (and belief and thinking). In these endeavours, the ‘Human and Cosmic Thought’ lecture series by Steiner is highly recommended. Another thing that is extremely potent, is travel, and living with other cultures. This can enable us to look back and see, first the cultural shadows, and then in time, the hidden gifts of our own culture, while along the way gaining the even more powerful gift of being able to look at a phenomenon through a completely different perspective (provided you allow the other culture(s) to speak to moral imaginations - see below).
Post graduate study, especially in applied fields such as organisation development also leads one on the journey of research methods, which at this level involves getting right to the core of one’s philosophical underpinnings, and their underlying assumptions - I was warned that academic study is ‘Ahrimanic’ and that I should be careful. In some ways this is true (which is part of why I left) - but as Steiner emphasis, it is important to get to know the Ahrimanic, and very important not to allow fear be a guiding force in developing one’s moral framework and/or cognitive outlook (the two are of course, parts of one).
I also was able to confirm my suspicion that one can actually enact spiritual science, Anthroposophy, in an Ahrimanic manner. If the metaphysics are used as a measure of everything out in the world (out as in apart from Anthroposophy), then it will not be possible to get to pure thinking.

Self Transformation
This is around moral development and ethical striving. The ability to think independently (post-conventional morality) whilst embodying universal moral principles (not dictums). Morality is neither deontological (e.g. rules for all situations, e.g. Kant) nor teleological (outcome focused, e.g. utilitarian), it is an evolved form of character ethics, whereby the spiritual worlds are brought into the picture. It’s the skin in the game part, where shit gets very real. It’s where the focus has to shift from what comes in from outside in terms of world events (focus on, not awareness-of…) - or that which is from our ‘circle of concern’, to focus on what is within our agency - our behaviour, which lies within our ‘circle of control/influence’.

Action needs to come out of moral imaginations and intuitions, rather than compulsion through either drives/instincts/desires, or other people's moral and ethical dictums (e.g. ideology) - this is not an easy thing to do, and it takes a lot of time and effort to unpick all what we have picked up, from parents. education, community, society and so on, from what we truly believe and hold ourselves to.

To develop our own individual moral imaginations we need the ability to be super-aware of context, and how our chosen ideals ‘translate’ through and into them (obviously, lots of reflection time needed, and study of other thinkers and perspectives is extremely beneficial and useful). A theorist from my masters examined the gap (both organisationally and individually) between our ‘espoused theory’ and our ‘theory-in-use’ - they are very often not the same, or incongruent. In short, closing this gap is the way to both organisational and individual ‘effectiveness’ (whatever ‘ness’ one is trying to affect, whether profit or regeneration).

We equally need to work with shadow, and the influence (‘baggage’) we pick up from difficult experiences or relationships, as these influence us through compulsions. The body keeps the score.

Over time we can begin to sense moral intuitions - the underlying spiritual realities that underlie moral judgements (a side note - we become categorically aware that we are completely unqualified to be the moral judges of anyone besides ourselves).

Intuitive perception and supersensible knowledge
Through working on the previous, one begins to develop the ability to perceive aspects of the universal through thinking, and perhaps one is even gifted moments of actual experience of a tiny crack through the curtain…

There is of course a lot more in that book! This is just a summary of the essential with regards to paths to higher knowledge.

Goethe’s Phenomenology

This is an exerpt from my master's thesis (2018), explaining the Goethean approach that Steiner took up and developed with his work.

Goethe’s phenomenology appears to be gaining attention in contemporary journals in wider applications, including recognition as a methodology suited to experiential learning and organisational contexts. In the Sage book of action research, Bradbury-Huang (2015) suggest Goethean approaches offer: “a credible investigative method that can be used by action researchers, encouraging the inquirer to open themselves diligently to the phenomena around them, so that their qualities might be accessed and appreciated pre-interpretation, before moving to sense-making” (p396).

Shotter (2005) states that his method, far from arcane is: “a deliberately extended version of this kind of withness-understanding – an anticipatory form of practical understanding that gives us a direct sense of how, in Wittgenstein’s (1953) terms, to ‘go on’ with the others and othernesses around us in our daily lives.’’ (p132). This enables the researcher to: ‘’consciously and responsibly switch between epistemologies in full awareness of their respective perceptual blind-spots" which “will help us to integrate reductionist knowledge and holistic wisdom.’’ (Wahl, 2005, p75).

In addressing the blind spot of positivist/reductionist knowledge, Goethe saw theory as a way of better understanding the interconnectedness of phenomena, not as a conceptual theory into which phenomena fit: “He recognizes, of course, that science cannot proceed without hypotheses, but he regards them as a scaffolding which should be taken down when the building is completed, and which must not be mistaken for the building itself” (Heineman, 1934, p68). Bortoft (2012) elaborates: “the organising idea in cognition comes from the phenomenon itself, instead of from the self-assertive thinking of the investigating scientist” (p 240). And further: ‘’When we think materialistically of the world as being ‘made up’ of separate and independent entities, which are like building blocks, then we really have got the world backwards; The attempt to rationally construct the world out of a collocation of ‘bits’ contingently related to one another is as futile as the attempt to appreciate a symphony by sounding each note in isolation and then imagining a relation among them.’’ (Bortoft 2014, p27).

However, Goethe did not seek to disprove or deny conventional science led by Hegel’s constructive historical universalism (Bortoft, 2012), rather he sought to shine the light of the scientific process into the realm of experience, and to unearth the ‘Ur-Phenomena’ that he suggests underlies nature and the physical world (Bortoft, 1996, 2012, Heineman, 1934, Schroer, 1884). ‘’In sharp opposition to the belief which, through the influence of Descartes, has become the ruling principle of modern thought, namely, that it is the task of science to substitute quantitative descriptions for qualitative ones, he puts the antithesis: "It is a false notion that a phrase or a mathematical formula can ever take the place of, or set aside, a phenomenon." "A phenomenon that cannot be measured still remains a phenomenon." This does not mean that the mathematical method is dispensed with. On the contrary, it is treated with the greatest respect; it is even extolled as the model of scientific method. What is denied is simply its claim to be the sole instrument of scientific knowledge” (Heineman 1934, p69).

’Goethe’s “gegenständliches denken” (objective thinking) rests in the fundamental unity of the observer and the observed – the fact that ultimately subject and object are not two, but participate in a wider process that unites them into mutual dependency. Cartesian objective thinking on the other hand assumes mind and matter, self and world, as well as subject and object belong to mutually exclusive dualistic categories. The Goethean epistemology is built on a way of thinking objectively that is based on the experience of our fundamental unity with nature. Whereas the Cartesian epistemology is built on a way of thinking objectively that is based on the assumption of our fundamental separation from nature. Both are valid epistemologies and can provide useful knowledge about reality. To integrate these two ways of knowing is the next great challenge in the evolution of human consciousness.’’ (Wahl, 2005, p71). Steiner emphasises this integrative aspect: “To effect thinking intuition one must be capable of thinking idealistically with the idealist, and materialistically with the materialist” (Steiner, 1973, Preface to the 1923 edition).

Goethe invites the researcher to participate with the phenomena, yet at the same time become aware of subjective biases: “Goethe does not project his own verbal or pre-verbal conceptions onto the phenomenon under consideration. Rather, it is participatory in the sense that it flows from an intimate engagement with the phenomenon under study” (Dean-Robbins, 2006, p5).

This differs from introspection in that it draws attention from what is experienced, to the experiencing, which is distinct from focus on the experience, allowing the phenomena to ‘speak’ for themselves, rather than applying preconception (Bortoft, 2012). In other words, we are searching for an objectively visible hidden order of things, by discovering how phenomena naturally connect in archetypal ways through our subjective experience of them - a way of inquiring that “celebrates the subjective and relational as a route to perceiving the whole” (Whitelegg, 2003, p311).

The essential difference is a dynamic view of process unfolding, as opposed to static ‘snap-shots’ of contextually bound partial truths: an “ontological participation of thinking in the phenomenon” (Bortoft 1996, p242) rather than a correspondence between an idea of the mind, and the phenomenon under investigation: “for Goethe knowledge is an element of being, so scientific truth is ontological and not representational as it must be for subjectivism” (p242). An ontological experience, as opposed to a (pre)conceived truth-claim, with awareness shifted to ‘upstream’ aspects of what we perceive - from the (automated) impulse behind the reductive act of distinction in knowledge-making, to the ‘happening’ - the appearance of distinction in its primacy, to how things relate in their distinctions (Bortoft, 1996). He suggests that distinction is a ‘’dual movement of thinking which goes in opposite directions simultaneously’’ (Bortoft, 2012, p22). “Distinction and separation happen ‘upstream’ of our perception of separateness. No object or thing is separate as something existing only in terms of itself - ‘’every distinction, in order to be a distinction, is necessarily a unitary act of {differentiating/relating} – it is one movement which goes in opposite directions simultaneously. Thus difference without relation is actually unthinkable, although we usually don’t notice this and fall into the error of believing that we can think of distinction as just difference, because we begin at the end with what is distinguished instead of with the act of distinction itself.’’ (p26).

It is through this cultivated awareness of our thinking, we gain insight into our relation between our individual experience, and the outside world:
“The external stimuli that we must always presuppose in the case of an external object are not present in the case of thought. It is to these stimuli that we must ascribe the fact that sensible phenomena appear to us as something already existent; it is to them that we must ascribe the genesis of these phenomena. As regards a thought, I have the assurance that this genesis is not possible apart from my own activity. I must work through the thought, must re-create its content, must live through it even in its least details, if it is to have any significance for me whatever.” (Steiner, 2012, p VIII, my italics)

He is suggesting that by gaining a sense for the archetypal nature of concepts through training perception of our thinking itself, we can link our experience to the objective world: “Only as long as we think of the law and order that permeates and determines the percept as having the abstract form of a concept, are we in fact dealing with something purely subjective. But the content of a concept, which is added to the percept by means of thinking, is not subjective. This content is not taken from the subject, but from reality. It is that part of the reality that cannot be reached by the act of perceiving. It is experience, but not experience gained through perceiving. (Steiner, 1916, p164).
And further: “Thought is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle which holds together both these sides of reality. The contemplative act of thought is a cognitive process which belongs itself to the sequence of real events. By thought we overcome, within the limits of experience itself, the one-sidedness of mere perception. We are not able by means of abstract conceptual hypothesis (purely conceptual speculation) to puzzle out the nature of the real, but in so far as we find for our percepts the right concepts we live in the real” (p164).

Key messages from

Knowledge of the Higher Worlds

There are a number of things Steiner said that stayed with me, and became keystones for my development. These are paraphrases as I remember them.

‘One must learn to distinguish the essential from the non essential’
This has been a driving force in my thinking ever since I read it, and keeping this in mind really helps to keep the mind moving, searching for the archetypal, and how it uniquely manifests through a given moment and context.

Every idea that becomes ones ideal engenders life force in the soul, and every idea that does not, hinders one’s progression’

This obviously relates to the moral development, but it is a very potent lesson, and points straight to the heart of the matter of how to purify our thinking

‘Integrity is where I get my power from’
This is the distillation of a key insight I was able to crystallise during the study. When I am living close to that ideal, I gain ‘powers’. I mean such as clarity in thinking, confidence, creativity and insight.

I can however also very clearly see how these ‘powers’ could enable me to become more destructive should I stray to the ‘dark path’ (where one is ruled by ego and not love for all beings).

Reverence for developed individuals

Steiner suggests that we should cultivate feelings of reverence for those individuals who (we feel in our inmost soul) warrant it. This is a tricky but powerful ideal to enact. I got burned along the way learning how to truly discern ‘what is essential’ in determining character, but it was very worthwhile nonetheless. An easy way to say it in terms of what to look out for, is, ‘it’s in the behaviour’. Does a person’s walk match their talk? What is their energy like? Do they hold me to unsaid expectations? Do they base their views upon a negative (e.g. always talk in terms of materialism)

Connection with nature and study of life and what is living vs what is dead
He gives a thought exercise to get us to think about what is I think one of life's most fundamental questions - what is life.
This is a lifelong question that in university fuelled the development of critical thinking, and I think it is one that a materialist cannot actually answer to any kind of satisfactory degree (unless they stray out of the bounds of their paradigm).

Another set of ideas by Steiner that I think is incredibly helpful, is Steiner's lecture series

Human and Cosmic Thought

12 worldviews

Here Steiner describes 12 different worldviews that can lay claim to speaking about reality. These are partial perspectives - the part that a perspective can see it can speak truthfully of. E.g. materialism cannot speak about spirituality or idealism with authority, but it can very clearly talk about the laws of physics or biology. Empiricism can speak about what happens/has happened, but not of the ideas or consciousness behind what is happening (idealism).

7 soul moods
There are then 7 soul moods with which these perspectives can be inhabited. These can be thought of as ‘epistemological dispositions’ - our ‘penchant’ for how we approach towards identifying truth.

3 psychic tones

These are the underlying ways in which we approach the world

The resounding initial 'lesson' I took from this lecture series was to be 'ontologically (and epistemologically) humble' - when wanting to gain understanding of a person, situation or phenomenon, one has to try and consider at least 12 different kinds of perspectives (with infinite variety in how they can be expressed), and the 7 different soul moods or dispositions that can inhabit them, as well as the three psychic tones that underlie how a person approaches the world.

Materialism

Materialism, which is quite clearly a, if not the, dominant worldview of our time (and therefore often demonised and feared), is simply one of 12 different ways to view the world (with a further 7 soul moods which influence how we come to truth within our particular set of perspectives, plus a further 3 psychic tones that are our foundational stance to life).

The issue is that in today's world, materialism has become 'king', or the 'one ring' that binds them all. If you examine this, you can say that one of the 12 becomes ruler of the others (in our psyches) - everything is referenced, and validated, through the one (or two) perspsectives. It extrapolates itself to make claims for things that it cannot, and will never be able to see. For example materialism claims that there is no spirit, yet it cannot even really make this claim, seeing as it simply cannot see it - it could perhaps measure the evidence of it (but it would have to ontologically accept that it cannot know for sure either that there is, or is no, spiritual dimension to existence).

The interesting thing I observed growing up as an Anthroposophical kid, is that many Anthroposophists do the same thing, with the spiritual worldview. IT becomes the one ring - everything is measured on whether it is Spiritual or not (or Materialistic). It cannot see things outside of its perspsective either - and there are many useful and important insights that come from a materialistic view (not to mention the others - the other two core ones being idealism and realism).

"To effect thinking intuition one must be capable of thinking idealistically with the idealist and materialistically with the materialist. For only thus will the faculty of thinking intuition be awakened."

Rudolf Steiner The Riddles of Philosophy, Preface to the 1923 Edition

The resounding insight then is that it is only by connecting differing (and sometimes disparate) perspectives, can we hope to solve issues with thinking that is not the same as that which created them.

Notes on the 12 worldviews:

TWELVE MOODS

Rudolf Steiner

• TYPES OF THOUGHT

• IDEALISM (Aries)

• Material world devoid of meaning unless progressive tendency in it. There must be a realm of ideas and ideals within the world process.

• RATIONALISM (Taurus)

• Grants validity only to ideas one discovers outside oneself,

• not those that come through intuition or inspiration

• MATHEMATISM (Gemini)

• Recognizes as valid only what can be treated mathematically; admits nothing beyond mathematical formulae. Draws threads from one observation to another. Denies superstition.

• MATERIALISM (Cancer)

• Recognizes material world and its laws. Denies spiritual world. Nothing exists except what manifests itself through sense impressions.

• SENSUALISM (Leo)

• Peels off from phenomenalism everything that comes from understanding and reason and allows validity only to the impression itself.

• PHENOMENALISM (Virgo)

• Recognizes how world appears to one. Cannot say it is the real world, only that it is a world of phenomena.

• REALISM (Libra)

• Recognizes external world around one. No reason fon for admitting or denying spirit. Restricted to what one seed around one. 'Forces' are superstition.

• DYNAMISM (Scorpio)

• Cannot concede that existence is made of beings. Recognizes all is ruled by forces.

• MONADISM (Sagittarius)

• Abstract spiritualism. Describes spirits as entities, having varying powers of perception. No unitary spirit.

• SPIRITISM (Capricorn)

• Material is only manifestation of spiritual.

• Matter is only illusion. Recognizes spirits of the different hierarchies.

• PNEUMATISM (Aquarius)

• Beings who have ideas must also be active; accepts Spirit or Spirits of the world; Universal Spirit.

• PSYCHISM (Pisces)

• Enhanced idealism. Accepts ensoulment of the world.

• There must be some sort of beings in whom the ideas can live.

The perspectives in relation to the planets

RAM V

Arise, O shining light,

Grasp thou the growth essence,

Grip thou the weaving force,

Ray forth, being-awakening.

In hindrance be thy gaining,

In stream of time thy waning,

O shining light, abide!

BULL R

Brighten, thou being's glance,

Feel thou the growing force,

Weave thou the living-thread,

In essencing world-existence,

In sensible vision-unfolding,

In brightening being-beholding,

O, being's glance, appear!

TWINS H

Disclose thyself, sun-being,

Move thou the rest-impulse,

Encircle the striving-urge,

To mighty life-wielding,

To blissful world-knowing,

To fruitful ripe growing,

O, sun-being, hearken!

CRAB F

Thou slumbering glance of light,

Create thou life-warmth,

Warm thou the soul-life,

To powerful self-proving,

To spiritual interweaving,

In slumbering light-outstreaming,

Thou glance of light, grow strong.

LION T D

Stream through with meaning-power,

The worn and old world-being,

The feeling creaturehood,

With willing being-resolve.

In streaming of living-shine,

Impinged on by growing pain,

With meaning-power, arise!

VIRGIN B P

Behold the worlds, thou soul!

The soul take hold of worlds,

The spirit grasp the essence,

Out of living forces be active,

In willing-aliveness bide,

In the blossoming world confide,

O soul, know thou the beings!

SCALES T S

The worlds uphold the worlds,

In creature lives the creature,

Being encircles being;

And creature works on creature,

To further a deed-deploying,

In slumbering world enjoying,

O worlds, bear up the worlds!

• SCORPION S

• Existence consumes the essence,

• But in essence is held existence.

• In doing vanishes becoming,

• In becoming conceals itself doing.

• In avenging world-enwielding,

• In chastening self-rebuilding,

• The essence upholds the being.

• ARCHER G K

• Becoming attains to being-power,

• In being withers the growing-force,

• Attainment resolves the striving-urge,

• In pervading life-willing-strength.

• In dying matures the world-creation,

• Formation vanishes in formation,

• May being feel the being!

• GOAT L

• The future repose upon the past.

• The past enfeel the future,

• To powerful present existence.

• In inner life-withstanding

• Must strengthen the world-being-tower,

• Must blossom the life-working-power.

• The past upbear the future!

• WATERMAN M

• The bounded be sacrificed to the unbounded.

• What lacks a boundary may found

• In depths for itself a boundary;

• May it raise itself in the stream,

• As a wave outflowing, selfholding,

• In becoming, to being unfolding,

• Bound thyself, O unboundedness!

• FISHES N

• In the lost may find itself the loss.

• In winning may lose itself the winning.

• In the grasped may seek itself the grasping,

• And uphold itself in upholding.

• Through becoming to being uphoven,

• Through being with becoming enwoven,

• May the loss be a win in itself!

• Translation by Virginia Brett.

References:

Books and lectures:

Philosophy of freedom https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_c01.html?fbclid=IwAR2eajmGTOqnTCOgEJomQ09rX_fC-vaFtPuafD1Rhu6rqZhwcpMdClX4MK0

Knowledge of the higher worlds https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/English/RSPC1947/GA010_index.html

Human and cosmic thought https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA151/English/RSP1961/HuCoTh_index.html

Concepts:

Circle of concern vs control https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/taking-control-your-circle-influence-vs-concern-katherine-quiroz#:~:text=What%20are%20these%20Circles%3F,how%20you%20react%20to%20things.

Theory-in-use vs espoused theory https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/espoused-theories-theories-in-use-paul-waweru

Post conventional morality https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html#:~:text=Postconventional%20morality%20is%20when%20people,society%20tells%20them%20to%20do.