Rudolph Steiner doesn’t need me to vouch for him, and even he did, how would I know when he was right or wrong? All I can say is that this quotation seems to me entirely compatible with what Rita has been saying. Note, particularly,
“The world does not consist of single “I’s”, each one isolated from the rest; the world is really one great unity and brotherhood”
The Law of Karma: Each one need not bear the consequence of his own actions
I have long intended to write of Henry Thoreau as a pioneer of post-industrial man, but in 45 years I haven’t made much progress! It occurs to me, here is a chance to deliver my master’s thesis to a somewhat larger audience, which may find it not only enlightening, but oddly pertinent. However, I find it only in PDF mode, so it may take a while to figure out how to convert it. This is the kind of penetrating thought that suffuses his writings:
[Thoreau journal entry, July 24, 1852, age 35:]
“It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which the world tolerates is the perception of the truth of the most ancient revelations, now in some respects out of date; but any direct revelation, any original thoughts, it hates like virtue. The fathers and the mothers of the town would rather hear the young man or young women at their tables express reverence for some old statement of the truth than utter a direct revelation themselves. They don’t want to have any prophets born into their families, — damn them! So far as thinking is concerned, surely original thinking is the divinest thing. Rather we should reverently watch for the least motions, the least scintillations, of thought in this sluggish world, and men should run to and fro on the occasion more than at an earthquake. We check and repress the divinity that stirs within us, to fall down and worship the divinity that is dead without us. I go to see many a good man or good woman, so-called, and utter freely that thought which alone it was given to me to utter; but there was a man who lived a long, long time ago, and his name was Moses, and another whose name was Christ, and if your thought does not, or does not appear to, coincide with what they said, the good man or the good woman has no ears to hear you. They think they love God! It is only his old clothes, of which they make scarecrows for the children. Where will they come nearer to God than in those very children?”
This comment by Kristiina on today’s conversation with Rita seems to me too productive to leave as a mere comment where it might be missed.
[Kristiina:]
The field of non-ordinary perception opens best when there is less words or no words. Conversation easily blankets the less loud perception. So quietness inside, a practiced quietness helps. There is a sort of pushiness in the ordinary perception. I have started to notice little points of time where I have a possibility to ease on the pushing action, that seem to make space for more porous perception, that lets also the quieter dimensions come forth more. A bit like the Gurdijeff practice of stopping. But it is an inner prompt, in situations where I may be rolling on automatic, running the stairs, for example, and mid-step I realize I can just let the momentum of the automatic ease, and so find a space that lets me have a different perception of the moment.
What I am working on right now in myself is speaking/words. How can I get the same kind of quiet quality in the flow of text or talking? Especially talking tends to have that momentum of automatism, pressure to roll into the goal, even just the goal of finished sentence is enough to make the view from the path almost impossible. Would it be possible to let go of the sentence structure in mid-sentence? So that the view from that particular place of mid-sentence could interact with the me-person doing the expressing? Making the expression more of a joint effort, the non-ordinary flowing through the ordinary in conscious synchronicity. How to lay out the words and segue the sentences, line up the muscles that push the words through the speech and song-making system? So that fullest participation is facilitated.
This quotation from Rudolf Steiner seems to see the process of development as a reciprocating process, in the way that Rita told me that sometimes to understand A you have to understand B, but to understand B you have to understand A. That sounds like just what he is saying here.
https://rudolfsteinerquotes.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/self-knowledge-and-world-knowledge-2/
Albert Einstein once called the concept of nationality an adolescent disorder, “the measles of mankind.”
The Rudolf Steiner site keeps coming up with quotations that are immediately pertinent to what we are doing.
https://rudolfsteinerquotes.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/materialism-and-the-church-2/