John Dunn

Prometheus enchained

Sunday, 22 September 2024 at 22:03

Nicolas-Sébastien Adam's Baroque marble sculpture Prometheus Chained

Prometheus enchained

In the Grail quest and all the apparent life journeys, there is always an obsession with ‘return’ and, in particular, a return to wholeness, whereas this is the very opposite of what it means to be human. To be human is to be a disrupter, an over-turner of equilibria. The human mind does not abide by the laws of nature - Dante recognised that much. This is the very mystery of mind.

With Steiner, I had finally read myself into a black hole. I realised that the road, in my case the very long road, to individuation was nothing other than Spinozist. Paradoxically, individuation is the ultimate goal of Spinozism. It is the fulfilment of Tikkun. Individuation on the one hand, and re- assimilation into the original Substance on the other hand, appear to be contradictory standpoints, but they are not. They are one and the same thing. It is as though Prometheus kept re-chaining himself to the rock.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Lost solipsistic self

Saturday, 21 September 2024 at 21:30

Julius Evola

Lost solipsistic self

Gentile may have been right to insist that the pure act must be an act of creation in itself, reflective of first creation. To this extent ‘reality is a tale told by a thinker,’ but perhaps it does not signify everything after all. There is a flaw in the argument and Evola felt uneasy with it, in the same way that I had identified the kabbalism in Hegel.

It seems to me that this solipsism, this stage of individuation, this conflation of the 'transcendental I' with the Creator God, had to be reached repeatedly before the reintegration of the soul became possible.We had to establish that it is active, creative thinking that defines the individual as human, as opposed to the passive thoughts that accompany arbitrary and externally driven sub-human activity. But this ‘truth’, this ‘gnosis’, found within the human individual, is in danger of being treated as the very Substance that Fichte, Gentile, Steiner et al sought to escape, but in which the solipsistic self ends up losing itself.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Cosmological individualism

Friday, 20 September 2024 at 21:54

Giovanni Gentile

Cosmological individualism

The Creation was not the one-off event which kicked off time. Such nonsense is the scientific language of the Big Bang, a conjuring trick based on the ‘rabbit in the hat’ deception that something now exists that did not exist before. Creation is Logos ‘is now and ever shall be’. And Gentile knew at least that creation is now in thinking. We ask ‘what is the meaning of life?’ as though the answer were held outside of us, in the mind of a priest or guru, when all the time we are the meaning. We draw upon the cosmic pool of thoughts as Steiner said, but that cosmic pool was not a one-off creation event in some infinitely distant past to which only a clairvoyant can reach back. Rather, the cosmos is ‘now and ever shall be’, in thinking. ‘Who am I?’ It seems that I am not determined by the world, but am rather a determiner of the world and even the cosmos. God is in me. I am deified in some way. Elevated to one of the Trinity - there from the beginning. Here is the cosmological individualism with which to oppose the mind-forged manacles of Lurianic Tikkun and Spinozist determinism.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Alpha and Omega

Thursday, 19 September 2024 at 22:05

Alpha and Omega

In giving man a fulcrum status to the future of the cosmos Steiner is conflating, or confusing, purpose with meaning. In being granted this necessary purpose, man becomes an adjunct to cosmic evolution, a mere ‘apparatus’. Steiner is in danger of returning man to the passivity of serving Spinozistic ends.

Given the times in which he lived, it is hardly surprising that Steiner was smitten withthe notion of evolutionary progress. Even if he had rejected Darwin in favour of the morphogenetic principles of Goethe, progress across time was central to Steiner’s cosmography. The ‘elevation’ of man to an instrument of evolutionary progress is purposive. It might nudge us towards an answer to the question - ‘who am I?’, but if we are to discover meaning, it will not be in purpose.

I am brought back to Giovanni Gentile because the notion of evolutionary time as a progression, linear time, in Gentile’s terms, is an abstract (or presuppositional) rather than a concrete truth. I am also brought back to the Gospel of John for timeless expressions of the cosmic truth.That which was ‘in the beginning’, the ‘Word’ or Logos in John 1:1-4 recurs in Revelation 22.13.

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

To counter the diminishment of man

Tuesday, 17 September 2024 at 21:32

Vladimir Vernadsky

To counter the diminishment of man

Steiner sought to counter the diminishment of man in the necessitarianism inherent to his philosophy by boosting the cosmic proportions of man’s significance. He argued that man must exist, for without him there would be no further evolution. There are portents here of what was to appear later in the work of Vladimir Vernadsky i.e. the evolutionary emergence of man’s mind in the Noosphere as an intervening and guiding force of new evolution. Whilst Vernadsky’s schema worked from the biosphere upwards so to speak, Steiner operated from the spirit world down, but they coincided on the point that man was an active participant in the evolutionary progress.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Consciousness, not blind creativity

Sunday, 15 September 2024 at 22:15

Steiner's interpretation of man

On the one hand Steiner offers us a Spinozist interpretation of man who is utilised for a purpose, which is to make manifest the thought pool of the cosmos. This would make man a mode of existence of that which was there ‘in the beginning’ - the Substance. On the other hand, Steiner offers us the ultimate divination of man. The gospel mystery and drama of the incarnation is now located and consummated in humanity, which becomes its living carrier. It is as though man has been accepted as one third part of the Trinity.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Messiah socialised

Saturday, 14 September 2024 at 21:38

Rudolf Steiner

Messiah socialised

In Steiner’s schema, humanity co-partners with the Divine so as to complete the creative act of God’s Incarnation. Instead of the Incarnation being through one man, the Jesus of the gospels, in our current day it is taking place through all of humanity. The modern-day coming of the Messiah is through the transformed and awakened consciousness of humanity as a whole. In a very real sense, we are the very Messiah we have been waiting for. ‘By a strange paradox,’ according to Steiner, it is ‘through the forces of evil’ that ‘mankind is led to a renewed experience of the Mystery of Golgotha’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.