John Dunn

Echoes of Spinozism

Thursday, 12 September 2024 at 20:26

Baruch Spinoza

Echoes of Spinozism

The world spirit, or cosmic fulness, is being presented by Steiner as a presupposition to which we, as fully human individuals, must ultimately return. We can make as much effort as we like into achieving individuation, shunning ‘all the welter of customs, legal codes, religious observances, etc.’ as Steiner describes them, only to find that we must remain true to what was there all along, that which was there ‘in the beginning’. Are there not echoes of Spinozism here? Are we not back to the great presupposition - the Substance - with that which was there ‘in the beginning’?

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Taking stock

Wednesday, 11 September 2024 at 20:54

Rudolf Steiner

Taking stock

Let us take stock here. Has Steiner answered the question? Who am I? I am a cosmic mediator according to Steiner, Logos incarnated, the manifestation of cosmic fulness, that which was in the beginning. Found!The meaning to life! Answered! The Grail question! Is this not enough? We keep coming back to this - the divine status of man, a creator in the image of God - the incarnation of the second coming resonates in the work of Dante, Fichte, Coleridge, Gentile and now in Steiner. But if manifestation of the spirit is not a creative act, but rather a revelatory act, are we not confronted with a severe curtailment of man’s freedom, however vast the leap we have made with Steiner?

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

To be a cosmic mediator?

Tuesday, 10 September 2024 at 22:19

Cosmic Mediator by Leonard Rubins

To be a cosmic mediator?

It was on the point of Logos that Gentile was beginning to penetrate through to the truth, but fell short. Steiner seemed to offer me a way forward. By being the cosmic mediator, man is the manifestation of cosmic fulness, i.e. the Logos incarnate, that which was in the beginning. But more than being merely a cosmic mediator, I am, to use Steiner’s own words, ‘the unified world of ideas which reveals itself through this organism’.

Is this not enough? To be a cosmic mediator? Is this not finally the answer to the great Grail question. I could never have dreamt of such a response when I first asked the question. And yet - the question remains- does something emerge from intuition that was not there before? Is man free to create?

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

In the beginning

Monday, 9 September 2024 at 20:37

Another way of saying that the free Steinerian individual is intuiting the thought pool, or Logos, is to say that the individual is thought incarnated, or even reincarnated. Has the exemplar of such a free individual ever walked the earth? ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.’ (John 1:1-4). It is universally accepted that ‘Word’ in these opening lines from John’s Gospel is coterminous with ‘Logos’, and that the ‘Word’ or ‘Logos’ is a reference by John to the Jesus of the gospels.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

This cosmic pool

Sunday, 8 September 2024 at 21:47

This cosmic pool

It was by arguing that the individual must develop the capacity to gain access to the ‘unified world of ideas’, this cosmic pool of thoughts, a realm of pure spirit, detached from objects perceived through the senses, that Steiner rationalised himself into esotericism. He gave us permission to consider the occult as a means of answering the Grail question - ‘who am I?’ He also permitted us to make a cosmic reversal - to upturn Spinoza and Marx - by establishing the working principle that matter originates in spirit.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Vague capacity

Friday, 6 September 2024 at 21:40

Vague capacity

It is the intuitive capacity that enables the ‘unified world of ideas’ to emerge. Steiner is vague about where this capacity comes from, arguing that it is something that resides deep within us. Nevertheless, it is the essential component of freedom.

Only let us not assert that such a man can rightly call his actions his own,seeing that he is driven to them by an external force. But in the midst of all this network of compulsion, there arise free spirits who in all the welter of customs, legal codes, religious observances, etc., learn to be true to themselves. They are free in so far as they obey only themselves; unfree in so far as they submit to control. Which of us can say that he is really free in all his actions? Yet in each of us there dwells something deeper in which the free man finds expression.(Steiner)

Pictured: Rudolf Steiner

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Unified world of ideas revealed

Thursday, 5 September 2024 at 22:07

Unified world of ideas revealed

Let us at this point consider this ‘reality’. Steiner was not referring to the everyday reality of the things around us to which we respond with instinct and feeling. If the conceptions we formulate are merely responses to these things, then we are most certainly not individuated and not free. The free individual me, according to Steiner, is not the body that I occupy. Non-material ideas, he would argue, cannot simply emerge from matter as though secreted from a thought gland in the head and brain:

The individual element in me is not my organism with its instincts and feelings, but rather the unified world of ideas which reveals itself through this organism. (Steiner)

Pictured: Rudolf Steiner

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.