I’ve just found the following piece of work at
http://www.doorstodialogue.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/doors-to-dialogue2.pdf that seems to be an excellent beginning in the exploration of Dialogue. It is written by an Anthroposophist and I would like to clarify that I don’t consider myself to be one or that Rudolf Steiner was the one and only Teacher of his times like Anthroposophists often do. If what Steiner himself seems to have stood for was that it is no longer one man but all men and women or human beings who hold enough of a mature I to be, it must also be true that he was as valuable as so many other of his contemporaries. I find great value in the following work because of the succinct synthesis that he gives us of our recent philosophical history and the clarification of the issues in question. Many aspects presented here are worth exploring in more detail further on. I realize this is long but it is just a glimpse at our recent spiritual history. If he misses Gurdjieff’s System, it is not surprising but we know better than to ignore it! In the Introduction to this event, even Gurdjieff is included.
http://www.doorstodialogue.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/doors-to-dialogue2.pdf that seems to be an excellent beginning in the exploration of Dialogue. It is written by an Anthroposophist and I would like to clarify that I don’t consider myself to be one or that Rudolf Steiner was the one and only Teacher of his times like Anthroposophists often do. If what Steiner himself seems to have stood for was that it is no longer one man but all men and women or human beings who hold enough of a mature I to be, it must also be true that he was as valuable as so many other of his contemporaries. I find great value in the following work because of the succinct synthesis that he gives us of our recent philosophical history and the clarification of the issues in question. Many aspects presented here are worth exploring in more detail further on. I realize this is long but it is just a glimpse at our recent spiritual history. If he misses Gurdjieff’s System, it is not surprising but we know better than to ignore it! In the Introduction to this event, even Gurdjieff is included.
I’m also including this text in the Art of Dialogue because it is easier to understand it if we can already place our selves where these men leave us.
Questions arise: If we human beings can now perceive our selves objectively can we not now deal with the world objectively? Now that we have “killed” our essence in cults and survived, can we not begin to perceive not only our selves but our lives objectively? Rather than “escape” out of “life” and “illusion” can the other dimension not penetrate beyond the illusion? Is life itself not the microcosmic picture of the heavens traditionally revealed to us by tragedy? Is it not possible to “incarnate” our will in the silk threaded hands of everyday life?
Now that we ARE, what can we “do” but “live”? “Live” objectively?
If we ARE, is life not a constant recreation of our selves? Is life not the dialogue between our selves and the world? And is such a dialogue not a consistent re-generation of “life”? Logos?
Now that we ARE, what can we “do” but “live”? “Live” objectively?
If we ARE, is life not a constant recreation of our selves? Is life not the dialogue between our selves and the world? And is such a dialogue not a consistent re-generation of “life”? Logos?
Would “pure thinking” not express itself in “pure action”? And pure action not be the incarnation of being? a regenerative process per se?
Far still today from all that beauty, but not as far as yesterday!
Anthroposophy and post-modern philosophy in dialogue. Observations on
the spiritualization of thinking7
the spiritualization of thinking7
Dear Friends,
firstly I would like to say what a great pleasure it is that I am able to be here with you, and to
add also that this is the first working visit that I have made to France. But strangely enough
though I don’t speak or read French I have always been closely following the developments of
French cultural-spiritual life in the twentieth century and also today. And particularly I am
engaged for many years with French thinking and Philosophy. And I would like in this lecture
to make you aware of the role that French thinking plays in the invisible spiritual drama of
our time.
I referred to what took place in the 20th Century behind the curtains of world events in
my books about The Spiritual Event of the 20th century and The New Experience of the
Supersensible, now translated also to French. Both books were written at the beginning of the
90′ of last century. There I described my spiritual-scientific research on the esoteric, super-
and sub- sensible realities graspable only by means of modern spiritual scientific research
methods. Until the 60′ very little light was created on the earth at all- and so much darkness.
Not that the darkness producing forces and events have diminished since then; on the
contrary, they increase exponentially; but the good news are that in all walks of life, thought,
science, art and social life, new forces of hope started to flow in the 60′ and in my books I
described the hidden sources out of which these spiritual forces are flowing. And some of
those rare and precious rays of light emanated from French creativity in the second half of the
last century.
During the whole European catastrophe of the 20th Century, before, between and after
the two world wars and during the cold war, there took place right here in France a very
intense and vital intellectual, but also cultural and political debate. The forces at work in
thinking, with all their ingenuity, were not yet strong enough to penetrate social and political
firstly I would like to say what a great pleasure it is that I am able to be here with you, and to
add also that this is the first working visit that I have made to France. But strangely enough
though I don’t speak or read French I have always been closely following the developments of
French cultural-spiritual life in the twentieth century and also today. And particularly I am
engaged for many years with French thinking and Philosophy. And I would like in this lecture
to make you aware of the role that French thinking plays in the invisible spiritual drama of
our time.
I referred to what took place in the 20th Century behind the curtains of world events in
my books about The Spiritual Event of the 20th century and The New Experience of the
Supersensible, now translated also to French. Both books were written at the beginning of the
90′ of last century. There I described my spiritual-scientific research on the esoteric, super-
and sub- sensible realities graspable only by means of modern spiritual scientific research
methods. Until the 60′ very little light was created on the earth at all- and so much darkness.
Not that the darkness producing forces and events have diminished since then; on the
contrary, they increase exponentially; but the good news are that in all walks of life, thought,
science, art and social life, new forces of hope started to flow in the 60′ and in my books I
described the hidden sources out of which these spiritual forces are flowing. And some of
those rare and precious rays of light emanated from French creativity in the second half of the
last century.
During the whole European catastrophe of the 20th Century, before, between and after
the two world wars and during the cold war, there took place right here in France a very
intense and vital intellectual, but also cultural and political debate. The forces at work in
thinking, with all their ingenuity, were not yet strong enough to penetrate social and political
7
This is the original text of a lecture to the French Anthroposophical Society, held in Colmar 1st June, 2007.
This is the original text of a lecture to the French Anthroposophical Society, held in Colmar 1st June, 2007.
17
realities. While many believed to be so “revolutionary” and radical they could never really
break through to new social ideas and social formations. Nevertheless, in the field of
Philosophy this was different. Here some true creativity took place which was indeed striving
to break new grounds.
The last century had enormous task coupled with the most grave and fateful results for
good or ill. This task can be described of course in various ways. However, for our purposes
tonight, because we are approaching this task from the point of view of the development of
thinking, we can, generally speaking, call it: the spiritualization of consciousness or more
specifically: spiritualization of the intellect (and thinking).
There is an expression used often by Rudolf Steiner. His whole impulse, the outmost
exertion of his will and love was poured into this deed. And his life long hopes and were that
free humans will do what he himself was striving to do: to transform themselves truly! He had
sincerely hoped that this will be achieved at least by a limited number of people already at the
beginning of the 20th century, that it would then be taken up by ever more people during the
course of the whole century, to reach a certain intensive culmination at the end of the century
and in a transformed manner will powerfully enter the global scene of the 21st century as
world-changing creative power.
It is not enough nowadays that one person does something alone even if he is the
greatest initiate, because others should no longer be simply led or pushed in his steps – unless
we are speaking of impulses of evil. The good can only spring forth from the depth of free
human hearts and minds, working together in mutual help and understanding. And if you look
at the world situation today, Anthroposophy included, from this point of view, you can surely
say: well, then, we are definitely only at the very beginning! We are all therefore kindly
invited to begin again, anew; if we understand truly what was said above, we are asked to see
ourselves as real beginners. Ever more people should understand that the Zeitgeist is now
seeking new beginners, and is quite loathsome and fed up with so many “knowers” that are
constantly creating such havoc in our social, spiritual an economic life.
This spiritualization of the intellect is the first and unavoidable step needed as
foundation for further transformations of human nature and society. It is the precondition for
the spiritualization of our social, cultural, political and economic life. This is our main entry
point, simply because we have become thinking beings in the last centuries; everything we do
start from thinking and wrong thinking is immediately a source of moral-social destructive
forces, and truthful thinking a building and healing power. For this reason Steiner referred to
18
break through to new social ideas and social formations. Nevertheless, in the field of
Philosophy this was different. Here some true creativity took place which was indeed striving
to break new grounds.
The last century had enormous task coupled with the most grave and fateful results for
good or ill. This task can be described of course in various ways. However, for our purposes
tonight, because we are approaching this task from the point of view of the development of
thinking, we can, generally speaking, call it: the spiritualization of consciousness or more
specifically: spiritualization of the intellect (and thinking).
There is an expression used often by Rudolf Steiner. His whole impulse, the outmost
exertion of his will and love was poured into this deed. And his life long hopes and were that
free humans will do what he himself was striving to do: to transform themselves truly! He had
sincerely hoped that this will be achieved at least by a limited number of people already at the
beginning of the 20th century, that it would then be taken up by ever more people during the
course of the whole century, to reach a certain intensive culmination at the end of the century
and in a transformed manner will powerfully enter the global scene of the 21st century as
world-changing creative power.
It is not enough nowadays that one person does something alone even if he is the
greatest initiate, because others should no longer be simply led or pushed in his steps – unless
we are speaking of impulses of evil. The good can only spring forth from the depth of free
human hearts and minds, working together in mutual help and understanding. And if you look
at the world situation today, Anthroposophy included, from this point of view, you can surely
say: well, then, we are definitely only at the very beginning! We are all therefore kindly
invited to begin again, anew; if we understand truly what was said above, we are asked to see
ourselves as real beginners. Ever more people should understand that the Zeitgeist is now
seeking new beginners, and is quite loathsome and fed up with so many “knowers” that are
constantly creating such havoc in our social, spiritual an economic life.
This spiritualization of the intellect is the first and unavoidable step needed as
foundation for further transformations of human nature and society. It is the precondition for
the spiritualization of our social, cultural, political and economic life. This is our main entry
point, simply because we have become thinking beings in the last centuries; everything we do
start from thinking and wrong thinking is immediately a source of moral-social destructive
forces, and truthful thinking a building and healing power. For this reason Steiner referred to
18
his so-called “non-Anthroposophical” book, The Philosophy of Freedom, as his most
important spiritual creation.
By means of this book, he said, if properly understood and practiced, each person can
begin without any former spiritual knowledge or belief; from her or his daily thinking
consciousness, daily perceiving consciousness, daily moral activity and social experiences.
Each can start here from where one stands in real life. And I have made the experience early
on with myself and now also with friends and students in Israel, that with the Philosophy of
Freedom, if you take it in the right manner, it is indeed the case that it gives us powerful
means to realise this spiritualization and bring it to consciousness.
And now this was my own spiritual scientific way of development from my 21st year of
life until my 35th. After starting from Steiner’s general Anthroposophical work I then
concentrated specifically on his philosophical-social work. For the building of the Harduf
community, on the one hand, and for my spiritual research on the other, I searched for the
hidden stream of becoming of Anthroposophy, for its living supersensible continuation. How
can Steiner’s starting point for thinking be continually updated, brought into the stream of the
developing Zeitgeist? This was my burning daily problem. I was also aware of the retarding
forces at work also inside his legacy. So I was conscious early on that I must create my own
way as I go alone and that it is not simply given out there. And when you search in this way
you have to find Michael’s foot steps in history and in present day spiritual, cultural and social
life. This is the reason why I was intensively following the new developments in the sciences,
arts, social life and also in thinking and philosophy in the course of the whole 20th Century.
Then I found, through life itself, through my work itself, that – this applies for my own
experience, one cannot generalize – that whenever and wherever I looked for a way to
continue after 1925 – after Steiner’s death – the way that would lead to a further development
of thinking and the spiritualization of the intellect, it was leading to the abyss opened with
the last two German thinkers- the (converted) Jew Edmund Husserl and his National Socialist
pupil Martin Heidegger, through the ruins of European culture in the second world war, and
into the 50′ and 60′ as I mentioned above. (You can read about my knowledge struggles in this
regard in the introduction I wrote to the German translation of my book: The New Experience
of the Supersensible.) And it was in this following in the tragic steps of Husserl and
Heidegger that I came to French Philosophy, because the French thinkers were the most
ardent and receptive pupils of German thought. Therefore, in order to introduce some central
19
important spiritual creation.
By means of this book, he said, if properly understood and practiced, each person can
begin without any former spiritual knowledge or belief; from her or his daily thinking
consciousness, daily perceiving consciousness, daily moral activity and social experiences.
Each can start here from where one stands in real life. And I have made the experience early
on with myself and now also with friends and students in Israel, that with the Philosophy of
Freedom, if you take it in the right manner, it is indeed the case that it gives us powerful
means to realise this spiritualization and bring it to consciousness.
And now this was my own spiritual scientific way of development from my 21st year of
life until my 35th. After starting from Steiner’s general Anthroposophical work I then
concentrated specifically on his philosophical-social work. For the building of the Harduf
community, on the one hand, and for my spiritual research on the other, I searched for the
hidden stream of becoming of Anthroposophy, for its living supersensible continuation. How
can Steiner’s starting point for thinking be continually updated, brought into the stream of the
developing Zeitgeist? This was my burning daily problem. I was also aware of the retarding
forces at work also inside his legacy. So I was conscious early on that I must create my own
way as I go alone and that it is not simply given out there. And when you search in this way
you have to find Michael’s foot steps in history and in present day spiritual, cultural and social
life. This is the reason why I was intensively following the new developments in the sciences,
arts, social life and also in thinking and philosophy in the course of the whole 20th Century.
Then I found, through life itself, through my work itself, that – this applies for my own
experience, one cannot generalize – that whenever and wherever I looked for a way to
continue after 1925 – after Steiner’s death – the way that would lead to a further development
of thinking and the spiritualization of the intellect, it was leading to the abyss opened with
the last two German thinkers- the (converted) Jew Edmund Husserl and his National Socialist
pupil Martin Heidegger, through the ruins of European culture in the second world war, and
into the 50′ and 60′ as I mentioned above. (You can read about my knowledge struggles in this
regard in the introduction I wrote to the German translation of my book: The New Experience
of the Supersensible.) And it was in this following in the tragic steps of Husserl and
Heidegger that I came to French Philosophy, because the French thinkers were the most
ardent and receptive pupils of German thought. Therefore, in order to introduce some central
19
figures of French Philosophy I will have to briefly summarize the decisive turning point in
German spiritual history.
German spiritual history.
A German excursion
The first German thinker that was acutely aware that the time of German idealism and
Goethe’s time has gone forever and cannot be revived literally became mentally ill and lost his
mind in his efforts to find new, unforeseen venues to spiritualize thinking. This was of course
the great and tragic Nietzsche. And this is significant as historical symptom and clue to the
gathering storm leading to the German tragedy that precisely in those years – the end of the
80’s of the 19th century – Steiner was working on his philosophical dissertation Truth and
Science as basis for the Philosophy of Freedom. When the latter was publish in 1894 he
wrote to his close friend, Rosa Mayreder, how greatly he regrets the fact that Nietzsche can no
longer read it, because – so Steiner – “he would have truly understood it”. Now, Edmund
Husserl (1859-1938) was a contemporary of Steiner; he also studied philosophy in Vienna
under Franz Brentano one or two years after Steiner studied there probably in the winter
semester 1881\2. They almost met in Brentano’s classes, as it were. And as a matter of fact,
Karma couldn’t have spoken more clearly, because Husserl was striving to develop
Brentano’s thinking further and created his Phenomenology in the direction of Steiner’s
Philosophy of Freedom. But Husserl’s radicalism was not radical enough; he didn’t overcome
the deeper limits of traditional Kantian philosophy. This left a yawning gap, and abyss, in
German thinking before, during and after the First World War, which was the most decisive
time for European and German history. Now came the year in which German destiny and with
it Europe’s was to be decided: 1917. During this year Lenin is smuggled by Luddendorf in the
sealed train carriage from his exile in Zurich to Moscow to organize the Bolshevik revolution
in the East and the US enters the war from the West. Middle Europe’s fate was on the scales,
tipping rapidly to the worst and Steiner initiates social threefolding as last rescue effort.
Now Brentano dies in 1917; Steiner publishes a Nachruf to Brentano in his book Von
Seelenrätseln in which Philosophy, Anthropology and Anthroposophy are brought together
for the first time in fully modern and scientific way, without any Theosophical residues. (e.g.,
free from traditional occult conceptions and formulations). This book stated clearly: Steiner is
now ready to start his real life task as modern spiritual scientist and social innovator. But all
his new initiatives collapsed one after the other until his death in March 1925. The rest is
already external history…. After Steiner’s death Max Scheler, original and free pupil of
20
The first German thinker that was acutely aware that the time of German idealism and
Goethe’s time has gone forever and cannot be revived literally became mentally ill and lost his
mind in his efforts to find new, unforeseen venues to spiritualize thinking. This was of course
the great and tragic Nietzsche. And this is significant as historical symptom and clue to the
gathering storm leading to the German tragedy that precisely in those years – the end of the
80’s of the 19th century – Steiner was working on his philosophical dissertation Truth and
Science as basis for the Philosophy of Freedom. When the latter was publish in 1894 he
wrote to his close friend, Rosa Mayreder, how greatly he regrets the fact that Nietzsche can no
longer read it, because – so Steiner – “he would have truly understood it”. Now, Edmund
Husserl (1859-1938) was a contemporary of Steiner; he also studied philosophy in Vienna
under Franz Brentano one or two years after Steiner studied there probably in the winter
semester 1881\2. They almost met in Brentano’s classes, as it were. And as a matter of fact,
Karma couldn’t have spoken more clearly, because Husserl was striving to develop
Brentano’s thinking further and created his Phenomenology in the direction of Steiner’s
Philosophy of Freedom. But Husserl’s radicalism was not radical enough; he didn’t overcome
the deeper limits of traditional Kantian philosophy. This left a yawning gap, and abyss, in
German thinking before, during and after the First World War, which was the most decisive
time for European and German history. Now came the year in which German destiny and with
it Europe’s was to be decided: 1917. During this year Lenin is smuggled by Luddendorf in the
sealed train carriage from his exile in Zurich to Moscow to organize the Bolshevik revolution
in the East and the US enters the war from the West. Middle Europe’s fate was on the scales,
tipping rapidly to the worst and Steiner initiates social threefolding as last rescue effort.
Now Brentano dies in 1917; Steiner publishes a Nachruf to Brentano in his book Von
Seelenrätseln in which Philosophy, Anthropology and Anthroposophy are brought together
for the first time in fully modern and scientific way, without any Theosophical residues. (e.g.,
free from traditional occult conceptions and formulations). This book stated clearly: Steiner is
now ready to start his real life task as modern spiritual scientist and social innovator. But all
his new initiatives collapsed one after the other until his death in March 1925. The rest is
already external history…. After Steiner’s death Max Scheler, original and free pupil of
20
Husserl who met and appreciated Steiner converts to Catholicism in 1927, in which Martin
Heidegger’s influential book Being and Time is published. Heidegger embodies in his destiny
as the last German thinker the destiny of his people. He could neither rest content – justifiably
– with phenomenology nor open to the new impulse working in the direction of the
Philosophy of Freedom. Therefore, he transformed Husserl’s phenomenology backward
instead of forward, to create a powerful and highly suggestive intellectual Umstülpung
(reversal inside out) of the Philosophy of Freedom in German intellectual life.
Between Husserl and Heidegger the tragedy of German spiritual life plays itself out in
the late 20′ and 30′, until Heidegger delivered his infamous Antrittsrede (rector’s address) as
newly elected Rector of Freiberg’s university in 1933, presenting himself as enthusiastic Nazi.
(He also later supported the excommunication of his aging teacher according Nuremberg’s
denaturalization racial laws from 1935; fortunately for him Husserl died in 1938). The
decision that fell already in 1917 was now made fully visible and with it the fate of Germany
and Europe as a whole.
Since Nietzsche’s and Steiner’s time it is rather a strong either\or situation: thinking can
be either with the spirit of the time or be strongly against it, and Heidegger forcefully
mobilized his unquestionable greatness to oppose humanity’s development towards freedom.
But only an abstract intellectual or a fanatic religious believer would believe that he knows in
advance the difference between truth and falsehood nowadays. (And Anthroposophy is also
taken is this manner sometimes). Practically speaking precisely the case of Heidegger
demonstrates the real difficulties one faces when one strives through real experience to
discern the difference between the two, especially where they reflected and deflected by the
threshold. If you take the threshold level as mirror surface then one would appear as a sub-
threshold and polar brother-even twin- turned really upside down to create a counter-picture, a
mirror-opposite of its upper-threshold origin!
Here I would like to point your attention to a very significant fact that served my work
very well through the years: by struggling with present thinking in various fields one
discovers that one is highly rewarded not only by finding true Michaelic inspirations, but also
through the painful uncovering of adversarial streams; they can teach us also a great deal- and
first hand- concerning Michael’s true intentions precisely thanks to the fact that they strive to
do the very opposite!
Now when we look at it also from this point of view we may begin to understand this
great riddle, namely, why Heidegger became perhaps the most influential philosopher in 20th
21
Heidegger’s influential book Being and Time is published. Heidegger embodies in his destiny
as the last German thinker the destiny of his people. He could neither rest content – justifiably
– with phenomenology nor open to the new impulse working in the direction of the
Philosophy of Freedom. Therefore, he transformed Husserl’s phenomenology backward
instead of forward, to create a powerful and highly suggestive intellectual Umstülpung
(reversal inside out) of the Philosophy of Freedom in German intellectual life.
Between Husserl and Heidegger the tragedy of German spiritual life plays itself out in
the late 20′ and 30′, until Heidegger delivered his infamous Antrittsrede (rector’s address) as
newly elected Rector of Freiberg’s university in 1933, presenting himself as enthusiastic Nazi.
(He also later supported the excommunication of his aging teacher according Nuremberg’s
denaturalization racial laws from 1935; fortunately for him Husserl died in 1938). The
decision that fell already in 1917 was now made fully visible and with it the fate of Germany
and Europe as a whole.
Since Nietzsche’s and Steiner’s time it is rather a strong either\or situation: thinking can
be either with the spirit of the time or be strongly against it, and Heidegger forcefully
mobilized his unquestionable greatness to oppose humanity’s development towards freedom.
But only an abstract intellectual or a fanatic religious believer would believe that he knows in
advance the difference between truth and falsehood nowadays. (And Anthroposophy is also
taken is this manner sometimes). Practically speaking precisely the case of Heidegger
demonstrates the real difficulties one faces when one strives through real experience to
discern the difference between the two, especially where they reflected and deflected by the
threshold. If you take the threshold level as mirror surface then one would appear as a sub-
threshold and polar brother-even twin- turned really upside down to create a counter-picture, a
mirror-opposite of its upper-threshold origin!
Here I would like to point your attention to a very significant fact that served my work
very well through the years: by struggling with present thinking in various fields one
discovers that one is highly rewarded not only by finding true Michaelic inspirations, but also
through the painful uncovering of adversarial streams; they can teach us also a great deal- and
first hand- concerning Michael’s true intentions precisely thanks to the fact that they strive to
do the very opposite!
Now when we look at it also from this point of view we may begin to understand this
great riddle, namely, why Heidegger became perhaps the most influential philosopher in 20th
21
Century’s European Philosophy and French Philosophy in particular, and why Levinas said –
and he was a close personal student of Heidegger in Freiburg: “we must admit, we were all
unfortunately Heidegger’s students”. (This isn’t the place to enter into Heidegger’s Philosophy
in any detail. This could provide however an interesting and timely study).
and he was a close personal student of Heidegger in Freiburg: “we must admit, we were all
unfortunately Heidegger’s students”. (This isn’t the place to enter into Heidegger’s Philosophy
in any detail. This could provide however an interesting and timely study).
The French philosophical century
As was said above, since the twenties and thirties, between the wars and during the cold war
and later, we find the beginning of a great series of French thinkers that always begin by
assimilating German Philosophy. The most recent philosophical food supply for French
thinking comes from the great German fourfold Gotterdämmerung stream: Hegel, Nietzsche,
Husserl and Heidegger. Let us now invite and introduce shortly few of them. But kindly be
reminded that this introduction can only be episodic, sporadic and fragmentary, a flitting-
momentary inscription marked on a narrow and rapidly vanishing path….
Perhaps one beginning can be made with another born Jew, Henri Bergson,
contemporary of Steiner, resurrected from oblivion by Deleuze that used especially his early
book “Matter and Memory” from 1896 (two years after The Philosophy of Freedom) as one
of his major starting points. And then – more or less in the same generation – we have the
great phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty whose book The Phenomenology of
Perception is a fine study of sense-perception and perceptual consciousness, who latter was
increasingly pushing the limits of perception into the supersensible, striving to transform
sense-perception and body experience into spiritual experience. Then somewhat at the other
pole you can take the “dark” Maurice Blanchot whose writings on The Space of Literature
exerted strong fascination through the century, and then we are already with the greatly
influential Sartre!
Sartre transformed the fundamental ontology of Heidegger into phenomenological
existentialism and wrote his main work, Being and Nothingness during the war as reply to
Heidegger’s Being and Time from 1927. Just read for example the chapter on “the look of the
other” in this book, and you will find a most exact and brilliant phenomenological research of
the perception, being and relation of the other that is without precedent in the history of
philosophy or science. After the war we see the emergence of the stream of French
structuralism with among others Levi-Strauss and his school. They had a significantly fruitful
influence, right up until our times, in Anthropology, Sociology, myth study and ancient
cultures. But this was all prologue, setting the stage to what, since the 1960’s, will become the
22
As was said above, since the twenties and thirties, between the wars and during the cold war
and later, we find the beginning of a great series of French thinkers that always begin by
assimilating German Philosophy. The most recent philosophical food supply for French
thinking comes from the great German fourfold Gotterdämmerung stream: Hegel, Nietzsche,
Husserl and Heidegger. Let us now invite and introduce shortly few of them. But kindly be
reminded that this introduction can only be episodic, sporadic and fragmentary, a flitting-
momentary inscription marked on a narrow and rapidly vanishing path….
Perhaps one beginning can be made with another born Jew, Henri Bergson,
contemporary of Steiner, resurrected from oblivion by Deleuze that used especially his early
book “Matter and Memory” from 1896 (two years after The Philosophy of Freedom) as one
of his major starting points. And then – more or less in the same generation – we have the
great phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty whose book The Phenomenology of
Perception is a fine study of sense-perception and perceptual consciousness, who latter was
increasingly pushing the limits of perception into the supersensible, striving to transform
sense-perception and body experience into spiritual experience. Then somewhat at the other
pole you can take the “dark” Maurice Blanchot whose writings on The Space of Literature
exerted strong fascination through the century, and then we are already with the greatly
influential Sartre!
Sartre transformed the fundamental ontology of Heidegger into phenomenological
existentialism and wrote his main work, Being and Nothingness during the war as reply to
Heidegger’s Being and Time from 1927. Just read for example the chapter on “the look of the
other” in this book, and you will find a most exact and brilliant phenomenological research of
the perception, being and relation of the other that is without precedent in the history of
philosophy or science. After the war we see the emergence of the stream of French
structuralism with among others Levi-Strauss and his school. They had a significantly fruitful
influence, right up until our times, in Anthropology, Sociology, myth study and ancient
cultures. But this was all prologue, setting the stage to what, since the 1960’s, will become the
22
truly exciting 30 years – 60’s, 70’s and 80’s – in which one next to the other you see the
appearance of shining, most brilliant stars over the intellectual horizon of France, now world
renown, but then it was all beginning; I am sure you are all familiar with those remarkable
names…. names like?…. names like….? (No answer and laughter in the hall)
First let us name another Jew-born; yes, they are still all over the place despite some
efforts…. I mean Jacques Derrida, an Algérian borne French. He is now the rather famous,
but not always truly understood, founder of a philosophical stream that he called
deconstruction. Derrida was Foucault’s opponent, though more at friendship – from rather far
away – with Deleuze. His effort was directed towards deconstructing and dismantling the
centralistic-centralizing father-god, monotheistic forces working in past and present
philosophy and literature, not as a goal in itself, but as means of uncovering the peripheral
forces working in language and writing. He discovered and described some of the formative
strategies of decentralized, peripheral forces that in spiritual science are called “etheric
formative forces” and revealed the texture of the text, the weaving of the text through the
wrap and wool of language’s art of tapestry. The late Derrida is increasingly influenced by
Levinas and turns his attention to ethical, political and religious investigations, studying the
problems of radical alterity, the transcendental otherness of the other as unbridgeable
difference. He died in 9 October, 2004 and has an ever growing circle of influence extending far
away, for instance, he is felt strongly in the Americas. Derrida is one of few philosophers of
the 20th century that became known as cultural figure outside the philosophical milieu.
The concept of “postmodernism” is articulated for the first time as a philosophical
concept in Jean-François Lyotard’s The Post Modern Condition – A report on knowledge
from 1979. Inspired by Kant’s idea of the experience and cognition of the sublime (part of
Kant’s Critique of Judgment), he tried to create a non-positivist “eventful” concept of
knowledge and art and apply it to social and political thought.
We could have named here other names, for example, the truly brilliant Paul Virilio,
original thinker of modern and post-modern technology, military and urbanism and
architecture, whose writings have influenced many fields. And then how can we not mention
Jean Baudrillard who died last March, a sharp-minded observer and critic of electronic
communication and globalized media and TV, that also wrote a short and remarkable text on
the Spirit of Terrorism after the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York at 11th
September, 2001.
23
appearance of shining, most brilliant stars over the intellectual horizon of France, now world
renown, but then it was all beginning; I am sure you are all familiar with those remarkable
names…. names like?…. names like….? (No answer and laughter in the hall)
First let us name another Jew-born; yes, they are still all over the place despite some
efforts…. I mean Jacques Derrida, an Algérian borne French. He is now the rather famous,
but not always truly understood, founder of a philosophical stream that he called
deconstruction. Derrida was Foucault’s opponent, though more at friendship – from rather far
away – with Deleuze. His effort was directed towards deconstructing and dismantling the
centralistic-centralizing father-god, monotheistic forces working in past and present
philosophy and literature, not as a goal in itself, but as means of uncovering the peripheral
forces working in language and writing. He discovered and described some of the formative
strategies of decentralized, peripheral forces that in spiritual science are called “etheric
formative forces” and revealed the texture of the text, the weaving of the text through the
wrap and wool of language’s art of tapestry. The late Derrida is increasingly influenced by
Levinas and turns his attention to ethical, political and religious investigations, studying the
problems of radical alterity, the transcendental otherness of the other as unbridgeable
difference. He died in 9 October, 2004 and has an ever growing circle of influence extending far
away, for instance, he is felt strongly in the Americas. Derrida is one of few philosophers of
the 20th century that became known as cultural figure outside the philosophical milieu.
The concept of “postmodernism” is articulated for the first time as a philosophical
concept in Jean-François Lyotard’s The Post Modern Condition – A report on knowledge
from 1979. Inspired by Kant’s idea of the experience and cognition of the sublime (part of
Kant’s Critique of Judgment), he tried to create a non-positivist “eventful” concept of
knowledge and art and apply it to social and political thought.
We could have named here other names, for example, the truly brilliant Paul Virilio,
original thinker of modern and post-modern technology, military and urbanism and
architecture, whose writings have influenced many fields. And then how can we not mention
Jean Baudrillard who died last March, a sharp-minded observer and critic of electronic
communication and globalized media and TV, that also wrote a short and remarkable text on
the Spirit of Terrorism after the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York at 11th
September, 2001.
23
And then we come to Emmanuel Levinas (we mentioned him above in connection with
his teacher Heidegger). A Lithuanian born Jew that became after the war an orthodox Jew and
remained observant of the commandments and Tora for the rest of his life, is beside Derrida
the most widely known French –Philosopher of our time, and his influence is steadily
growing also now. He introduced innovatively and radically the concept of “the other” not
through phenomenology as developed by Husserl, Heidegger or Sartre, but through such
remarkable concepts as “the face of the other” and “the mortality of the other” to which I am
primordially responsible. This way, so Levinas believed, is the only way to create a contra-
Cain force, which is the true mission of Judaism that was suppressed by western philosophy,
Christianity and middle European culture. He sought to resurrect Abel and find the answer to
Cain’s primordial brother’s murder, which he experienced as repeated on European and Global
scale in the 20th century, especially in the annihilation of the Jews (original Abel’s sons) by
the German (modern Cain’s sons), and in every and each persecution of the weak wherever
they are. This constitutes the essence of his thought: I am my brother’s keeper! In this manner
Levinas tried to bring a new religious- moral impulse into the philosophical and cultural-
political discourses and consciousness of the post-Holocaust world.
And perhaps the last of these great figures to be mentioned now, because our time is
short, would be Alain Badiou who still lives and works today, a militant Leninist (actually
Maoist-Leninist), that begun as disciple of Sartre and the French philosopher-guru of
psychoanalysis, Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan, and was grooming himself to become life long
contender of Deleuze. He is the rather lonely and last star still shining in the twilight zone of a
truly wonderful French philosophical century. Badiou wrote an excellent students’
introduction to his thought called Ethics: An essay on the understanding of evil, and just to
give you an example of his varied fields of interest, he wrote the best book on St. Paul that I
read in recent literature; yes, this belongs to the strange and audacious symptomatic of our
time: A French non-repentant Maoist-Leninist writes best book on St. Paul!
And these are only the more clearly marked names in history which are but the more
strongly visible planets shining on the background of a whole spiritual-cultural European and
French historical constellation, caused by the destruction of Europe in the last century and the
vacuum created by the disappearance of German thinking. These are some of the more visible
representatives of dozens of creative and original thinkers, artists, and scientists in the 20th
century that lived in France. But now there was the one who was so daring and inspiring in
his originality that in a way he really towered them all, so much so, that Deleuze said: The
24
his teacher Heidegger). A Lithuanian born Jew that became after the war an orthodox Jew and
remained observant of the commandments and Tora for the rest of his life, is beside Derrida
the most widely known French –Philosopher of our time, and his influence is steadily
growing also now. He introduced innovatively and radically the concept of “the other” not
through phenomenology as developed by Husserl, Heidegger or Sartre, but through such
remarkable concepts as “the face of the other” and “the mortality of the other” to which I am
primordially responsible. This way, so Levinas believed, is the only way to create a contra-
Cain force, which is the true mission of Judaism that was suppressed by western philosophy,
Christianity and middle European culture. He sought to resurrect Abel and find the answer to
Cain’s primordial brother’s murder, which he experienced as repeated on European and Global
scale in the 20th century, especially in the annihilation of the Jews (original Abel’s sons) by
the German (modern Cain’s sons), and in every and each persecution of the weak wherever
they are. This constitutes the essence of his thought: I am my brother’s keeper! In this manner
Levinas tried to bring a new religious- moral impulse into the philosophical and cultural-
political discourses and consciousness of the post-Holocaust world.
And perhaps the last of these great figures to be mentioned now, because our time is
short, would be Alain Badiou who still lives and works today, a militant Leninist (actually
Maoist-Leninist), that begun as disciple of Sartre and the French philosopher-guru of
psychoanalysis, Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan, and was grooming himself to become life long
contender of Deleuze. He is the rather lonely and last star still shining in the twilight zone of a
truly wonderful French philosophical century. Badiou wrote an excellent students’
introduction to his thought called Ethics: An essay on the understanding of evil, and just to
give you an example of his varied fields of interest, he wrote the best book on St. Paul that I
read in recent literature; yes, this belongs to the strange and audacious symptomatic of our
time: A French non-repentant Maoist-Leninist writes best book on St. Paul!
And these are only the more clearly marked names in history which are but the more
strongly visible planets shining on the background of a whole spiritual-cultural European and
French historical constellation, caused by the destruction of Europe in the last century and the
vacuum created by the disappearance of German thinking. These are some of the more visible
representatives of dozens of creative and original thinkers, artists, and scientists in the 20th
century that lived in France. But now there was the one who was so daring and inspiring in
his originality that in a way he really towered them all, so much so, that Deleuze said: The
24
author that wrote The Archaeology of Knowledge makes it possible for us to hope that true
philosophy will again be possible. And he meant Michel Foucault.
“Foucault is closer to Goethe than to Newton”, Deleuze writes (in his fine book
Foucault) because as for Goethe “the light-being is a strictly indivisible condition, an a priori
that is uniquely able to lay visibilities open to sight and by the same stroke to the other
senses”, so is Foucault’s new concept of language and thinking: their essential being is the
imperceptible force that make all discourse visible and possible at all. And this is the reason
why Foucault could prepare and open the way for the truly most significant French thinker of
the 20th century, namely, Gilles Deleuze himself. Even the otherwise careful and rather
restrained Derrida, speaking at Deleuze’s funeral, exclaimed: “The author of Repetition and
Difference (one of Deleuze’s main books) is the sublime philosopher of the event”. Like a sun
which outshines all the intellectual French stars but also contextualizing them, giving them
their historical formation and placing thinking on its way in the trajectory and direction of its
future cosmic destination and constellation, Deleuze fully deserves Foucault’s statement: “the
whole philosophical 20th century will one day be called the Deleuzian century”. And
elsewhere: “…a lightening storm was produced which will bear the name of Deleuze: new
thought is possible; thought is again possible”.
It was Deleuze, alone and together with his collaborator and co-author Felix Guattari,
that actually pointed out philosophy’s future role and task, in all his writings. Aphoristically
speaking, let us pick one statement which can be inscribed – from the point of view presented
in this lecture – as symptomatic signpost in the evolution of philosophy. We find it in his last
book, written together with Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?. There we find this statement:
“The sole purpose of philosophy is to be worthy of the event.” This powerful transformation
of the role of philosophy by Deleuze is a result of a common project, to which each of the
above mentioned thinkers contributed, starting with Heidegger who was the first to thematize
the “event” as a central philosophical concept. Because of our limitations here suffice it to say
that with this concept Deleuze expresses a complicated and multi-levelled happening, which
he described and varied repeatedly in his works during three decades.
Translated somewhat into our words this “event” will be understood as pulsing systole
and diastole, a breathing of immanent life, the always occurring incarnation and excarnation
process in every single element of matter, space time and consciousness. Deleuze conceived
life and sensibility as existing everywhere in nature, culture and cosmos with and without
organic-bodily or material foundations. If we rephrase his statement in this sense we may
25
philosophy will again be possible. And he meant Michel Foucault.
“Foucault is closer to Goethe than to Newton”, Deleuze writes (in his fine book
Foucault) because as for Goethe “the light-being is a strictly indivisible condition, an a priori
that is uniquely able to lay visibilities open to sight and by the same stroke to the other
senses”, so is Foucault’s new concept of language and thinking: their essential being is the
imperceptible force that make all discourse visible and possible at all. And this is the reason
why Foucault could prepare and open the way for the truly most significant French thinker of
the 20th century, namely, Gilles Deleuze himself. Even the otherwise careful and rather
restrained Derrida, speaking at Deleuze’s funeral, exclaimed: “The author of Repetition and
Difference (one of Deleuze’s main books) is the sublime philosopher of the event”. Like a sun
which outshines all the intellectual French stars but also contextualizing them, giving them
their historical formation and placing thinking on its way in the trajectory and direction of its
future cosmic destination and constellation, Deleuze fully deserves Foucault’s statement: “the
whole philosophical 20th century will one day be called the Deleuzian century”. And
elsewhere: “…a lightening storm was produced which will bear the name of Deleuze: new
thought is possible; thought is again possible”.
It was Deleuze, alone and together with his collaborator and co-author Felix Guattari,
that actually pointed out philosophy’s future role and task, in all his writings. Aphoristically
speaking, let us pick one statement which can be inscribed – from the point of view presented
in this lecture – as symptomatic signpost in the evolution of philosophy. We find it in his last
book, written together with Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?. There we find this statement:
“The sole purpose of philosophy is to be worthy of the event.” This powerful transformation
of the role of philosophy by Deleuze is a result of a common project, to which each of the
above mentioned thinkers contributed, starting with Heidegger who was the first to thematize
the “event” as a central philosophical concept. Because of our limitations here suffice it to say
that with this concept Deleuze expresses a complicated and multi-levelled happening, which
he described and varied repeatedly in his works during three decades.
Translated somewhat into our words this “event” will be understood as pulsing systole
and diastole, a breathing of immanent life, the always occurring incarnation and excarnation
process in every single element of matter, space time and consciousness. Deleuze conceived
life and sensibility as existing everywhere in nature, culture and cosmos with and without
organic-bodily or material foundations. If we rephrase his statement in this sense we may
25
formulate it therefore thus: The sole purpose of philosophy is to be worthy of the ever
pulsating, breathing, vibrating movement of universal immanent life.
*******
Gilles Deleuze threw himself to his death out of the window of the third floor of his house as
he lay on his death bed on the evening of the 4th of November 1995. This happened just an
hour or two after another tragic event, that for us in Israel marked an important and painful
moment of self-knowledge, that is, the shocking murder of Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin;
Rabin and Deleuze passed-on together on that very same bitter evening of November 4th
1995, which added yet another sobering mark to the 20th century otherwise already to darkly
marked calendar of events!
Two almost simultaneously occurring events: In Israel a political murder, that put an
end to the last great attempt for peace – in the very narrow limits, of course, as the politicians
today understand the term peace, but nevertheless, it was subjectively a truly honest move on
Rabin’s part – to establish a so-called peace in Israel-Palestine; and then the suicide of Gilles
Deleuze after a prolonged illness. The end of the last “peace” attempt and the end of the last,
and greatest, philosophy of the 20th century came so strangely together, though of course
externally speaking they are totally unrelated to each other.
And yet, for me, I mean now personally, from my individual point of view at that time,
I couldn’t but experience these two events as inwardly related; this is not interpretation, no
speculation was at all involved; therefore I say emphatically that this was an experience. I
experienced that in a yet unknown manner both are connected to each other. However, this
would be going too far today to develop what came out when in the course of time I could
have researched the nature of the relationships between the two events, which would have
taken us into the esoteric-political direction, while today we are mainly occupying ourselves
with the fate of thinking and its spiritualization.
pulsating, breathing, vibrating movement of universal immanent life.
*******
Gilles Deleuze threw himself to his death out of the window of the third floor of his house as
he lay on his death bed on the evening of the 4th of November 1995. This happened just an
hour or two after another tragic event, that for us in Israel marked an important and painful
moment of self-knowledge, that is, the shocking murder of Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin;
Rabin and Deleuze passed-on together on that very same bitter evening of November 4th
1995, which added yet another sobering mark to the 20th century otherwise already to darkly
marked calendar of events!
Two almost simultaneously occurring events: In Israel a political murder, that put an
end to the last great attempt for peace – in the very narrow limits, of course, as the politicians
today understand the term peace, but nevertheless, it was subjectively a truly honest move on
Rabin’s part – to establish a so-called peace in Israel-Palestine; and then the suicide of Gilles
Deleuze after a prolonged illness. The end of the last “peace” attempt and the end of the last,
and greatest, philosophy of the 20th century came so strangely together, though of course
externally speaking they are totally unrelated to each other.
And yet, for me, I mean now personally, from my individual point of view at that time,
I couldn’t but experience these two events as inwardly related; this is not interpretation, no
speculation was at all involved; therefore I say emphatically that this was an experience. I
experienced that in a yet unknown manner both are connected to each other. However, this
would be going too far today to develop what came out when in the course of time I could
have researched the nature of the relationships between the two events, which would have
taken us into the esoteric-political direction, while today we are mainly occupying ourselves
with the fate of thinking and its spiritualization.
Riddles and problems of the spiritualization of thinking
Above we brought Guattari & Deleuze revolutionary restatement of the meaning and essence
of philosophy. Over against this newly assigned role of philosophy we will place now some
of Steiner’s statements. He says for example: now that the role of philosophy was fulfilled
(meaning at the end on the 19th century), “we must have the courage to let the lightening of
the will strike directly into thinking through the wholly singular being of the individual
person”. This will element can fire thinking and release it from its bodily fetters, freeing its
26
Above we brought Guattari & Deleuze revolutionary restatement of the meaning and essence
of philosophy. Over against this newly assigned role of philosophy we will place now some
of Steiner’s statements. He says for example: now that the role of philosophy was fulfilled
(meaning at the end on the 19th century), “we must have the courage to let the lightening of
the will strike directly into thinking through the wholly singular being of the individual
person”. This will element can fire thinking and release it from its bodily fetters, freeing its
26
wings to soar and ascend into the open cosmic etheric universe. Then it will no longer be the
same “I” who thinks, but it will be the stream of cosmic thought that flows through my
transformed being. “IT thinks in me” will become a truthful experience and real supersensible
event. But precisely this remarkable spiritual achievement, namely, the “IT thinks” poses
serious problems of epistemology, identity, and of course ethics, which cannot be resolved by
means of present day philosophy and science.
The main problem here is, as a matter of fact, this: When IT thinks in me, who is this
“me” in and through which IT thinks? In the night, when IT really not only thinks in me but
builds and shapes the foundation of all my existence, my ordinary self-consciousness totally
withdraws and is wholly absent; I become unconscious in order to allow IT to take my
existence over, because my ordinary self cannot yet at all fulfill in spiritual self consciousness
the needed maintenance of my whole being. Therefore in the night, and also unconsciously
during the day, I am given to IT’s cosmic guidance and healing forces and beings.
I hope I succeeded in making this problem perhaps a little more problematic and
concrete for you: how can this depersonalization and over-personalization process be
experienced consciously? How does the one self- the ordinary-go out, and the other – the
Higher Self – come in, and who is the “one” (now already two but it will be multiplied greatly
the more the spiritualization process advances) that mutually recognizes, organizes, brings the
two- and the many- into harmonic composition? And in what sort of Self-consciousness
would this “IT thinks” become conscious?
The same problem can also be expressed in this manner. Steiner said that he regards
Descartes’ famous statement “I think therefore I am” as nothing less than “the greatest failure
in the evolution of modern thinking… because precisely there, where I think, I am not…
because ordinary thinking is mere empty picture, image, representation, and is bereft of any
real, substantial being”. Now this statement characterizes an essential existential as well as
philosophical experience of postmodernism as a whole and especially of the above mentioned
French philosophers.
Now what postmodern thought could achieve to a certain extent and in various ways
and different degrees, is part of this first aspect, namely, the “cosmization” of thinking and the
realization of “the thought of the outside” and the IT thinks inside (Foucault-Deleuze); but it
felt that it must sacrifice the reality of the subject, the individual, to achieve this. But with this
complete sacrifice we cannot concur; however, we must also admit, as was pointed out above,
that apart from Steiner’s own lived initiatory example, we don’t have other first-hand
27
same “I” who thinks, but it will be the stream of cosmic thought that flows through my
transformed being. “IT thinks in me” will become a truthful experience and real supersensible
event. But precisely this remarkable spiritual achievement, namely, the “IT thinks” poses
serious problems of epistemology, identity, and of course ethics, which cannot be resolved by
means of present day philosophy and science.
The main problem here is, as a matter of fact, this: When IT thinks in me, who is this
“me” in and through which IT thinks? In the night, when IT really not only thinks in me but
builds and shapes the foundation of all my existence, my ordinary self-consciousness totally
withdraws and is wholly absent; I become unconscious in order to allow IT to take my
existence over, because my ordinary self cannot yet at all fulfill in spiritual self consciousness
the needed maintenance of my whole being. Therefore in the night, and also unconsciously
during the day, I am given to IT’s cosmic guidance and healing forces and beings.
I hope I succeeded in making this problem perhaps a little more problematic and
concrete for you: how can this depersonalization and over-personalization process be
experienced consciously? How does the one self- the ordinary-go out, and the other – the
Higher Self – come in, and who is the “one” (now already two but it will be multiplied greatly
the more the spiritualization process advances) that mutually recognizes, organizes, brings the
two- and the many- into harmonic composition? And in what sort of Self-consciousness
would this “IT thinks” become conscious?
The same problem can also be expressed in this manner. Steiner said that he regards
Descartes’ famous statement “I think therefore I am” as nothing less than “the greatest failure
in the evolution of modern thinking… because precisely there, where I think, I am not…
because ordinary thinking is mere empty picture, image, representation, and is bereft of any
real, substantial being”. Now this statement characterizes an essential existential as well as
philosophical experience of postmodernism as a whole and especially of the above mentioned
French philosophers.
Now what postmodern thought could achieve to a certain extent and in various ways
and different degrees, is part of this first aspect, namely, the “cosmization” of thinking and the
realization of “the thought of the outside” and the IT thinks inside (Foucault-Deleuze); but it
felt that it must sacrifice the reality of the subject, the individual, to achieve this. But with this
complete sacrifice we cannot concur; however, we must also admit, as was pointed out above,
that apart from Steiner’s own lived initiatory example, we don’t have other first-hand
27
descriptions of a successfully carried out experiential solution of this dilemma. Therefore we
may say: postmodern philosophy did develop in original and new manner some aspects
related to the spiritualization of thinking, but stopped at the threshold in relation to the deeper
problems of the “I”. Now, as we will see later in greater detail, the celebrated- though little
understood- statements of Foucault on the death of the subject, author, etc. can only be
understood as symptoms pointing to this unresolved problem.
Let me summarize briefly the first main stages in the process of the spiritualization of
thinking and then indicate the full meaning of Steiner’s understanding of “the sole purpose of
philosophy”. If the transformation of thinking through the “direct lightening of the will” takes
place and thinking becomes a singular event, when I have come thus far with spiritualizing
my own thinking, as a matter of fact I have caused nullification and emptying of my ordinary
soul and mind contents. Now because my ordinary experience of my self is nothing but the
sum-total of these contends, when they disappear, my ordinary self disappears as well. I
forget my subjective inner life; It goes as it were to sleep; but in its stead IT thinks flares up;
IT flows into the empty self-less place and IT thinks through this place as a wholly other, alter
Self. Now next the following may occur as a result: IT jolts now my otherwise unconscious
real Self – not the subjective conscious personal self that is already obliterated – out of the
physical body; and this real Self finds His self swimming and flying on the waves and in the
currents of the real world-wide-web, spread out and mingled with infinitely multiple and
diverse non-organic living cosmic forces, events, and beings. (The elementary precincts of
this world Deleuze called the realm of non-organic, immanent, infinite life; He explored it in
great detail especially in the second of the two volumes he coauthored with Guattari, the first
being Anti-Oedipus from 1972 and the second, Thousand Plateaus from 1980; both are
subtitled Capitalism and Schizophrenia).
In the words of the Philosophy of Freedom the same experience can also be described
from another aspect. When the thinker becomes one with the stream of “love in its spiritual
form that flows through thinking” he realizes and individualizes this experience as a “moral
intuition’, conceived freely out of the spiritual worlds, and brought down to earth through
individual deeds of love. This second side of the spiritualization of thinking has to do with the
free love to the earth, humanity, and physical life as a whole. But because of this, it must find
a connection between the two selves: the Higher Self experienced outside the body, and the
personal self, that receives the moral intuition, and whose role would be to protect it and make
it real on the earth.
28
may say: postmodern philosophy did develop in original and new manner some aspects
related to the spiritualization of thinking, but stopped at the threshold in relation to the deeper
problems of the “I”. Now, as we will see later in greater detail, the celebrated- though little
understood- statements of Foucault on the death of the subject, author, etc. can only be
understood as symptoms pointing to this unresolved problem.
Let me summarize briefly the first main stages in the process of the spiritualization of
thinking and then indicate the full meaning of Steiner’s understanding of “the sole purpose of
philosophy”. If the transformation of thinking through the “direct lightening of the will” takes
place and thinking becomes a singular event, when I have come thus far with spiritualizing
my own thinking, as a matter of fact I have caused nullification and emptying of my ordinary
soul and mind contents. Now because my ordinary experience of my self is nothing but the
sum-total of these contends, when they disappear, my ordinary self disappears as well. I
forget my subjective inner life; It goes as it were to sleep; but in its stead IT thinks flares up;
IT flows into the empty self-less place and IT thinks through this place as a wholly other, alter
Self. Now next the following may occur as a result: IT jolts now my otherwise unconscious
real Self – not the subjective conscious personal self that is already obliterated – out of the
physical body; and this real Self finds His self swimming and flying on the waves and in the
currents of the real world-wide-web, spread out and mingled with infinitely multiple and
diverse non-organic living cosmic forces, events, and beings. (The elementary precincts of
this world Deleuze called the realm of non-organic, immanent, infinite life; He explored it in
great detail especially in the second of the two volumes he coauthored with Guattari, the first
being Anti-Oedipus from 1972 and the second, Thousand Plateaus from 1980; both are
subtitled Capitalism and Schizophrenia).
In the words of the Philosophy of Freedom the same experience can also be described
from another aspect. When the thinker becomes one with the stream of “love in its spiritual
form that flows through thinking” he realizes and individualizes this experience as a “moral
intuition’, conceived freely out of the spiritual worlds, and brought down to earth through
individual deeds of love. This second side of the spiritualization of thinking has to do with the
free love to the earth, humanity, and physical life as a whole. But because of this, it must find
a connection between the two selves: the Higher Self experienced outside the body, and the
personal self, that receives the moral intuition, and whose role would be to protect it and make
it real on the earth.
28
Now if taken from both sides, namely, from the cosmic experience of a Self as part of
non-organic world of life forces and beings, and as a source of moral intuition to be realized
on earth, Steiner following statement may be appreciated in its full weight. He says (in Oslo,
1912) that philosophy’s future purpose will be “to save human self-consciousness” in order
that self-consciousness will be at all remembered as humanity advances further in the course
of its present and future spiritualization process. If not, the spiritualization process will
continue, because the evolutionary time for this is due; however, it will lead humanity away
from its true Self and its true mission on the earth and in the universe. This means that
philosophy has truly something to be “worthy about”: the salvation and redemption of self-
consciousness for all future stages of spiritualization of humanity, without which human
consciousness will not be able to enter in healthy way into the spiritual worlds.
In Deleuze-Guattari’s vein we can now finally paraphrase the above statement from
their book What is Philosophy?. To the statement quoted above we may from our own side
reply: The sole task of philosophy is to be worthy of the event of spiritualization of self-
consciousness and remembering of the true “I”. (A detailed treatment of these problems is
the basis of my book The New Experience of the Supersensible).
non-organic world of life forces and beings, and as a source of moral intuition to be realized
on earth, Steiner following statement may be appreciated in its full weight. He says (in Oslo,
1912) that philosophy’s future purpose will be “to save human self-consciousness” in order
that self-consciousness will be at all remembered as humanity advances further in the course
of its present and future spiritualization process. If not, the spiritualization process will
continue, because the evolutionary time for this is due; however, it will lead humanity away
from its true Self and its true mission on the earth and in the universe. This means that
philosophy has truly something to be “worthy about”: the salvation and redemption of self-
consciousness for all future stages of spiritualization of humanity, without which human
consciousness will not be able to enter in healthy way into the spiritual worlds.
In Deleuze-Guattari’s vein we can now finally paraphrase the above statement from
their book What is Philosophy?. To the statement quoted above we may from our own side
reply: The sole task of philosophy is to be worthy of the event of spiritualization of self-
consciousness and remembering of the true “I”. (A detailed treatment of these problems is
the basis of my book The New Experience of the Supersensible).
The absent great dispute
Our characterization of philosophy’s “sole purpose” resounds strongly to meet Deleuze’s
challenge as a warning and admonition from the side of the Michaelic stream. This warning is
truly not given to foster pedantry and intellectualism but on the contrary, to balance the true
and real, but one-sided impulse of the postmodern spiritualization of thinking. It is precisely
because the spiritualization of thinking does advance further and becomes real, because
thinking has truly begun to merge with the stream of cosmic forces, that from Michaelic
spheres resounds this message, encouraging the thinker not to forsake the mysteries and
problems involved in the extremely complicated and contradictory relations between the
ordinary earthly subject and personality and the Cosmic Ego (also called the Christ) or Higher
Spirit Self. This task is something wholly new in human evolution and perhaps the most
crucial and immediate present and near future impulse, namely, to create a self-conscious
bridge between the earthly self and supersensible consciousness.
Philosophy understood in this way will offer the only means “to save the self-conscious
‘I’ – self consciousness as such – for supersensible consciousness”. In other words, when the
clairvoyant achieves true spiritual consciousness he must be able to look back and remember
29
Our characterization of philosophy’s “sole purpose” resounds strongly to meet Deleuze’s
challenge as a warning and admonition from the side of the Michaelic stream. This warning is
truly not given to foster pedantry and intellectualism but on the contrary, to balance the true
and real, but one-sided impulse of the postmodern spiritualization of thinking. It is precisely
because the spiritualization of thinking does advance further and becomes real, because
thinking has truly begun to merge with the stream of cosmic forces, that from Michaelic
spheres resounds this message, encouraging the thinker not to forsake the mysteries and
problems involved in the extremely complicated and contradictory relations between the
ordinary earthly subject and personality and the Cosmic Ego (also called the Christ) or Higher
Spirit Self. This task is something wholly new in human evolution and perhaps the most
crucial and immediate present and near future impulse, namely, to create a self-conscious
bridge between the earthly self and supersensible consciousness.
Philosophy understood in this way will offer the only means “to save the self-conscious
‘I’ – self consciousness as such – for supersensible consciousness”. In other words, when the
clairvoyant achieves true spiritual consciousness he must be able to look back and remember
29
– in the first stage of spiritual development – his “I”, and this saving of self-consciousness can
only be achieved through spiritualized thinking in the direction indicated by the Philosophy of
Freedom.
Now, as we indicated above, it is precisely in connection with the concept of the “I” that
post-modern thinking has the greatest difficulties, because this problem cannot be addressed
by means of pure thinking alone, be it as spiritualized as possible. The “I” problem must be
approached from a polar and opposite side; and this side marks the place of real absence also
in Deleuze’s thinking, though, of course, as with so many aspects of Deleuze, also his absent
“I” is much more alive then many dead and frozen concepts concerning this “I”!
From this point of view I would like to turn your attention to the potential possibility of
a remarkably fruitful spiritual battle (concerning the problems of the “I”) and dialogue
(concerning pure thinking) that could take place, provided that Anthroposophical thinking has
advanced so far that such problems becomes its true living problems. I have as I said above
greatly benefiting from conducting this battle now for the last 30 years. And I would like to
try and ignite also in you perhaps also a little spark of enthusiasm for true spiritual battle, true
dialoged, of the spirits, minds and hearts.
Here a richly rewarding mutual “disjunctive synthesis” (to use Deleuze unique phrase)
could have taken place, but it never did, because what could traditional Anthroposophy bring
authentically to this field? Only true individual achievement, in the above sense, can stand
truthfully up to this challenge and face the real power of such postmodern achievements. Self-
transforming Anthroposophy benefits greatly from engaging postmodern philosophy (together
with the arts and sciences of course). This is so because this philosophy grapples rather
unconsciously with the same problems that one encounters if one really begins to realize the
first actual steps in developing supersensible consciousness.
In accordance with the medieval manner of discourse- that was much more civilized
(e.g. truthful) that ours, we may use the term “dispute” for the rare and unique combination of
dialogic battle or battled dialogue, namely, for a true combat of the spirits. It was the greatest
spiritual battle that was preordained but never fought in history, because the spiritual battle of
the 20th century, as I mentioned above, was decided for the worst early on. When at the
second half of the century and especially towards its end the great culmination of
Anthroposophy should have taken place, only the other stream was culminating, rather alone,
without meeting its true opposite; it was simply not present out there to fight, because its
decisive Michaelic battle was lost already in beginning of the 20th century.
30
only be achieved through spiritualized thinking in the direction indicated by the Philosophy of
Freedom.
Now, as we indicated above, it is precisely in connection with the concept of the “I” that
post-modern thinking has the greatest difficulties, because this problem cannot be addressed
by means of pure thinking alone, be it as spiritualized as possible. The “I” problem must be
approached from a polar and opposite side; and this side marks the place of real absence also
in Deleuze’s thinking, though, of course, as with so many aspects of Deleuze, also his absent
“I” is much more alive then many dead and frozen concepts concerning this “I”!
From this point of view I would like to turn your attention to the potential possibility of
a remarkably fruitful spiritual battle (concerning the problems of the “I”) and dialogue
(concerning pure thinking) that could take place, provided that Anthroposophical thinking has
advanced so far that such problems becomes its true living problems. I have as I said above
greatly benefiting from conducting this battle now for the last 30 years. And I would like to
try and ignite also in you perhaps also a little spark of enthusiasm for true spiritual battle, true
dialoged, of the spirits, minds and hearts.
Here a richly rewarding mutual “disjunctive synthesis” (to use Deleuze unique phrase)
could have taken place, but it never did, because what could traditional Anthroposophy bring
authentically to this field? Only true individual achievement, in the above sense, can stand
truthfully up to this challenge and face the real power of such postmodern achievements. Self-
transforming Anthroposophy benefits greatly from engaging postmodern philosophy (together
with the arts and sciences of course). This is so because this philosophy grapples rather
unconsciously with the same problems that one encounters if one really begins to realize the
first actual steps in developing supersensible consciousness.
In accordance with the medieval manner of discourse- that was much more civilized
(e.g. truthful) that ours, we may use the term “dispute” for the rare and unique combination of
dialogic battle or battled dialogue, namely, for a true combat of the spirits. It was the greatest
spiritual battle that was preordained but never fought in history, because the spiritual battle of
the 20th century, as I mentioned above, was decided for the worst early on. When at the
second half of the century and especially towards its end the great culmination of
Anthroposophy should have taken place, only the other stream was culminating, rather alone,
without meeting its true opposite; it was simply not present out there to fight, because its
decisive Michaelic battle was lost already in beginning of the 20th century.
30
However, this was only the first century of Michael’s present Age- the first great battle
among three major once, and so many smaller once in-between! Presently we are humbly
striving to prepare some suitable starting points for the second great battle- the battle of the
21st century. Now in the moment that we are seriously working on self-transformation and
with it on true spiritualization of the intellect, we are strongly attracted to our rivals or their
legacy, because our living striving is asking for a true dialogue\battle, without which it cannot
at all thrive and develop further. And we will have then Deleuze’s leading being and the
beings of his colleagues as strongly awakening, reminding, truly challenging warning, as stark
temptation as well, at our side, so that we may realize on the earth now and in the next future
the great supersensible battle raging in the spiritual worlds closest to us between Michael and
his hosts and the adversarial – but always also helpful – spirits.
among three major once, and so many smaller once in-between! Presently we are humbly
striving to prepare some suitable starting points for the second great battle- the battle of the
21st century. Now in the moment that we are seriously working on self-transformation and
with it on true spiritualization of the intellect, we are strongly attracted to our rivals or their
legacy, because our living striving is asking for a true dialogue\battle, without which it cannot
at all thrive and develop further. And we will have then Deleuze’s leading being and the
beings of his colleagues as strongly awakening, reminding, truly challenging warning, as stark
temptation as well, at our side, so that we may realize on the earth now and in the next future
the great supersensible battle raging in the spiritual worlds closest to us between Michael and
his hosts and the adversarial – but always also helpful – spirits.
Some personal remarks
So we can say: Gilles Deleuze went farthest along the way to fulfil this task – the
spiritualization of thinking, but he accomplished it in a strongly one sided way. With
Deleuzian thinking we have before us at the end of the 20th century the best example how far
one could have travelled in the end of last century to bring this goal to a certain temporary
culmination. So that I have always said to myself, as I continued to study the development of
consciousness through the scientific, political, artistic, and philosophical together with the
Anthroposophical developments of last century, I had to say to myself again and again at the
end of the century – this was particularly strong in the nineties –the following: I said to
myself: here we have this wonderful line up of characters, thinkers, as well as artists and
scientists, throughout the whole of the century, so brilliant, so shiningly original, who strive
strongly to bring thinking further. Then I looked at my own efforts and I said to myself: in
order to develop my own Anthroposophical thinking further, I had to go through these schools
of thoughts, I really had to delve very deeply, without prejudice, into the work of many
individual thinkers, and I really had to struggle in order to transform each stage, each person’s
thinking, each decade, to arrive at what these developments, as part of the stream of the
ongoing spiritualization of the intellect could offer, enrich, challenge, also tempt and mislead.
I must confess that I experienced myself pretty much alone in this battle. I couldn’t find
anybody even amongst thinking anthroposophists, who, in that sense – I mean explicitly in
that sense – wished to engage with this struggle. This is why I say in that sense. There were
of course always those eager to refute each other, and were also eager to refute post-modern
31
So we can say: Gilles Deleuze went farthest along the way to fulfil this task – the
spiritualization of thinking, but he accomplished it in a strongly one sided way. With
Deleuzian thinking we have before us at the end of the 20th century the best example how far
one could have travelled in the end of last century to bring this goal to a certain temporary
culmination. So that I have always said to myself, as I continued to study the development of
consciousness through the scientific, political, artistic, and philosophical together with the
Anthroposophical developments of last century, I had to say to myself again and again at the
end of the century – this was particularly strong in the nineties –the following: I said to
myself: here we have this wonderful line up of characters, thinkers, as well as artists and
scientists, throughout the whole of the century, so brilliant, so shiningly original, who strive
strongly to bring thinking further. Then I looked at my own efforts and I said to myself: in
order to develop my own Anthroposophical thinking further, I had to go through these schools
of thoughts, I really had to delve very deeply, without prejudice, into the work of many
individual thinkers, and I really had to struggle in order to transform each stage, each person’s
thinking, each decade, to arrive at what these developments, as part of the stream of the
ongoing spiritualization of the intellect could offer, enrich, challenge, also tempt and mislead.
I must confess that I experienced myself pretty much alone in this battle. I couldn’t find
anybody even amongst thinking anthroposophists, who, in that sense – I mean explicitly in
that sense – wished to engage with this struggle. This is why I say in that sense. There were
of course always those eager to refute each other, and were also eager to refute post-modern
31
philosophy. This was always there. I wasn’t interested in refuting anything or anybody, I was
too occupied with trying to grapple with the deeper spiritual impulses at work through these
thinkers, which either corresponded to our time spirit or fought against it, or mixed the two in
so many bizarre ways. There I could find some important and hidden footsteps and clues that
guided me on the way of the spiritualization of thinking. And of course the same non-dispute
happens all the time also on the other side. One could not discover any wish to be even
slightly aware of Steiner’s contribution in those thinkers that I have mentioned: a conscious
un-knowing served well by the absence of presently engaged anthroposophists!
That was, and still is today, a strange situation. I always said to myself: what’s
happening here? It is as if I am observing a strange dramatic performance. The stage is set and
some players are busy performing; they speak and act wholly unaware of the grotesque
situation. They are not aware that the other players, their counterparts, aren’t even there! I
then understood that what I see is only a half-play, a spiritual dramatic piece cut in twain. I
observed that the real script isn’t played and that what is played isn’t the real script at all! I
said to myself, this should have been a whole scene of battle, but what we have is only a half.
The other group is not even there! It is playing no role what-so-ever in the script that they
themselves wrote; They wrote it bravely in spirit… with the strength given to them in the
supersensible Michaelic school in the sun sphere by the Michaelic beings, but on the earth
they ignored, also forgotten and in that sense also betrayed, the roles that they appointed for
themselves before birth.
I thought to myself, really that’s how it should have been from the beginning of the
century to its very end. A perpetual huge battle, most fruitful dialogue – because spiritually
seen a true, sincere dialogue is also a battle, a real brotherly dispute should take place between
thinkers deeply connected to Anthroposophy and those thinkers that I have mentioned above.
This was growing most clear the more the end of the century drew near.
This dispute was well prepared – as we shall presently see – in the middle Ages and was
predestined to take place in the 20th century. But we live in the age of freedom, in which all
former scripts are easily changed by the present decisions of the preset players! But some 800
years ago, in completely different spiritual and social conditions, this battle did take place,
namely, in the high Middle Ages. It would again be only briefly possible to indicate the
connection between these two disputes: the absent 20th century dispute, and the real one from
the middle ages. Let me briefly touch upon this particular historical as well as karmic
background, in order to outline also the present and future battles that face us now…
32
too occupied with trying to grapple with the deeper spiritual impulses at work through these
thinkers, which either corresponded to our time spirit or fought against it, or mixed the two in
so many bizarre ways. There I could find some important and hidden footsteps and clues that
guided me on the way of the spiritualization of thinking. And of course the same non-dispute
happens all the time also on the other side. One could not discover any wish to be even
slightly aware of Steiner’s contribution in those thinkers that I have mentioned: a conscious
un-knowing served well by the absence of presently engaged anthroposophists!
That was, and still is today, a strange situation. I always said to myself: what’s
happening here? It is as if I am observing a strange dramatic performance. The stage is set and
some players are busy performing; they speak and act wholly unaware of the grotesque
situation. They are not aware that the other players, their counterparts, aren’t even there! I
then understood that what I see is only a half-play, a spiritual dramatic piece cut in twain. I
observed that the real script isn’t played and that what is played isn’t the real script at all! I
said to myself, this should have been a whole scene of battle, but what we have is only a half.
The other group is not even there! It is playing no role what-so-ever in the script that they
themselves wrote; They wrote it bravely in spirit… with the strength given to them in the
supersensible Michaelic school in the sun sphere by the Michaelic beings, but on the earth
they ignored, also forgotten and in that sense also betrayed, the roles that they appointed for
themselves before birth.
I thought to myself, really that’s how it should have been from the beginning of the
century to its very end. A perpetual huge battle, most fruitful dialogue – because spiritually
seen a true, sincere dialogue is also a battle, a real brotherly dispute should take place between
thinkers deeply connected to Anthroposophy and those thinkers that I have mentioned above.
This was growing most clear the more the end of the century drew near.
This dispute was well prepared – as we shall presently see – in the middle Ages and was
predestined to take place in the 20th century. But we live in the age of freedom, in which all
former scripts are easily changed by the present decisions of the preset players! But some 800
years ago, in completely different spiritual and social conditions, this battle did take place,
namely, in the high Middle Ages. It would again be only briefly possible to indicate the
connection between these two disputes: the absent 20th century dispute, and the real one from
the middle ages. Let me briefly touch upon this particular historical as well as karmic
background, in order to outline also the present and future battles that face us now…
32
The great medieval dispute
In the high scholasticism of the Middle Ages, beginning with the Platonic renaissance of the
12th Century but then developing in the 13th and 14th Centuries, there was a huge, enormous
philosophical, spiritual battle, also again mainly in this country, mainly in Paris and its
university. Here the great scholastics were mightily striving to unite Christian theology with
Aristotelian philosophy, under the leadership of Thomas von Aquinas and his older teacher
Albertus Magnus and their extended circle of students that belonged to the Dominican order.
They were engaged in fierce struggle on several fronts among which for our purposes here we
shall briefly name only one and also this will be only indicated in outline. One powerful
stream opposing comes from members of the Franciscan order. This order presents a series of
outstanding religious and philosophical teachers. In the 13th century they were headed by
“Doctor Seraphicus” as St. Bonaventura (born John of Fidanza) was called because of his
ecstatic religious-mystical devotion and temperament. He was personally initiated through a
miraculous cure at the hands of St Francis of Assisi himself. Bonaventura was a contemporary
and powerful opponent of Thomas’s effort to unite and thereby transform Christian theology
with his renewed Aristotelism. However for us the most interesting personality isn’t a
contemporary of Thomas but a thinker and theologian that was born shortly before Thomas
died and developed this thinking career in the wake of Thomas’ absence (Thomas died 1274
and he is allegedly born in 1266). He is also not such clear-cut opponent; He is even
considered to be a unique Realist in the scholastic traditions, and he considered himself, in
opposition to the main Franciscan tradition, as an independent pupil of Thomas and Aristotle,
more of an innovative successor than his enemy. And indeed in many original ways he
diverged and contradicted Thomas on important theological and philosophical matters that we
cannot afford to discuss now. I mean here the truly brilliant and original philosopher Johannes
Dons Scotus, also known as “Doctor Subtilis” because he enjoyed synthesizing varying and
opposing elements in surprisingly untraditional assemblages, and who is considered to be one
of the most important philosophers of the middle Ages as a whole.
Let us first mention some of the customary differences between the rivalling streams.
However let me immediately point from that if we would have the time for such study, I
would have turned your attention to the fact that many traditional differences must be
significantly modified, because especially in the case of Dons Scotus they are blurred and
made far more complicated – and very interesting indeed. (Let me also remark in parenthesis
33
In the high scholasticism of the Middle Ages, beginning with the Platonic renaissance of the
12th Century but then developing in the 13th and 14th Centuries, there was a huge, enormous
philosophical, spiritual battle, also again mainly in this country, mainly in Paris and its
university. Here the great scholastics were mightily striving to unite Christian theology with
Aristotelian philosophy, under the leadership of Thomas von Aquinas and his older teacher
Albertus Magnus and their extended circle of students that belonged to the Dominican order.
They were engaged in fierce struggle on several fronts among which for our purposes here we
shall briefly name only one and also this will be only indicated in outline. One powerful
stream opposing comes from members of the Franciscan order. This order presents a series of
outstanding religious and philosophical teachers. In the 13th century they were headed by
“Doctor Seraphicus” as St. Bonaventura (born John of Fidanza) was called because of his
ecstatic religious-mystical devotion and temperament. He was personally initiated through a
miraculous cure at the hands of St Francis of Assisi himself. Bonaventura was a contemporary
and powerful opponent of Thomas’s effort to unite and thereby transform Christian theology
with his renewed Aristotelism. However for us the most interesting personality isn’t a
contemporary of Thomas but a thinker and theologian that was born shortly before Thomas
died and developed this thinking career in the wake of Thomas’ absence (Thomas died 1274
and he is allegedly born in 1266). He is also not such clear-cut opponent; He is even
considered to be a unique Realist in the scholastic traditions, and he considered himself, in
opposition to the main Franciscan tradition, as an independent pupil of Thomas and Aristotle,
more of an innovative successor than his enemy. And indeed in many original ways he
diverged and contradicted Thomas on important theological and philosophical matters that we
cannot afford to discuss now. I mean here the truly brilliant and original philosopher Johannes
Dons Scotus, also known as “Doctor Subtilis” because he enjoyed synthesizing varying and
opposing elements in surprisingly untraditional assemblages, and who is considered to be one
of the most important philosophers of the middle Ages as a whole.
Let us first mention some of the customary differences between the rivalling streams.
However let me immediately point from that if we would have the time for such study, I
would have turned your attention to the fact that many traditional differences must be
significantly modified, because especially in the case of Dons Scotus they are blurred and
made far more complicated – and very interesting indeed. (Let me also remark in parenthesis
33
that the philosophy of being of Scotus, specifically his teaching on the categories and
meaning, was the subject of Heidegger’s Habilitation dissertation in Freiburg1915; for the
esoteric-karmic undercurrent running through our lecture this is also a symptomatically telling
fact).
The Aristotelians, or Dominicans, are known as Realists. What does it meant to be a
realist in the middle ages? It meant to still be able to experience thinking as part of cosmic
intelligence, on the one hand, and on the other – the Aristotelian side – to experience it
strongly connected with the human soul and spirit, with the thinking individual. The
Dominicans with Thomas at their head could still capture the last remnants of spiritual
content and substance, that came from the spiritual worlds in earlier epochs, but now they
were striving to grasp it firmly with their thinking as its becomes earthily and human. Above
all they were struggling with what already became a problem to Aristotle almost 2000 years
before: the riddle of the spiritual nature of the human being and the problem of his
immortality. Now in the high Christian Middle Ages the problem was formulated thus:
Religion promises the hope of salvation and immortality through faith in the revealed Divine
message of the Bible, but would it also possible to think and in thinking not only logically
prove or disprove but actually experience and realize the immortality of the individual human
soul?
Now their Franciscan opponents belong to the so-called Nominalism, because they
could no longer experience thinking’s true spiritual-universal being. And as an outcome of
this inability those of them that were trying to gain knowledge of spiritual matters- apart from
established religion- were searching it in more mystical-ecstatic ways. An interesting
corollary of this turn was the fact that precisely this avoidance of thinking in matters
pertaining to the deeper spiritual quest adorned it with a peculiar mystical and intuitive
brilliance, and endowed it with a lustre of the supersensible that – for more spiritually
inclined persons – temptingly surpasses and outshines the conscientious, painstaking and
seemingly dry labour and technique of thinking developed by the Dominicans, whom Steiner
refers to as at heart truly loyal to the cosmic intelligence ruled by Michael.
Another interesting trait of some of the leading figures among the more spiritually
inclined Franciscans was their effort to bypass Aristotelian-Platonic ideas with the help of the
otherwise marginalized Stoic traditions. The stoics have assimilated a rich and diverse
mixture of philosophical and religious elements right before and after Christ, taken also from
Gnostic and pagan traditions. Before neo-Platonism they were already keenly attentive to the
34
meaning, was the subject of Heidegger’s Habilitation dissertation in Freiburg1915; for the
esoteric-karmic undercurrent running through our lecture this is also a symptomatically telling
fact).
The Aristotelians, or Dominicans, are known as Realists. What does it meant to be a
realist in the middle ages? It meant to still be able to experience thinking as part of cosmic
intelligence, on the one hand, and on the other – the Aristotelian side – to experience it
strongly connected with the human soul and spirit, with the thinking individual. The
Dominicans with Thomas at their head could still capture the last remnants of spiritual
content and substance, that came from the spiritual worlds in earlier epochs, but now they
were striving to grasp it firmly with their thinking as its becomes earthily and human. Above
all they were struggling with what already became a problem to Aristotle almost 2000 years
before: the riddle of the spiritual nature of the human being and the problem of his
immortality. Now in the high Christian Middle Ages the problem was formulated thus:
Religion promises the hope of salvation and immortality through faith in the revealed Divine
message of the Bible, but would it also possible to think and in thinking not only logically
prove or disprove but actually experience and realize the immortality of the individual human
soul?
Now their Franciscan opponents belong to the so-called Nominalism, because they
could no longer experience thinking’s true spiritual-universal being. And as an outcome of
this inability those of them that were trying to gain knowledge of spiritual matters- apart from
established religion- were searching it in more mystical-ecstatic ways. An interesting
corollary of this turn was the fact that precisely this avoidance of thinking in matters
pertaining to the deeper spiritual quest adorned it with a peculiar mystical and intuitive
brilliance, and endowed it with a lustre of the supersensible that – for more spiritually
inclined persons – temptingly surpasses and outshines the conscientious, painstaking and
seemingly dry labour and technique of thinking developed by the Dominicans, whom Steiner
refers to as at heart truly loyal to the cosmic intelligence ruled by Michael.
Another interesting trait of some of the leading figures among the more spiritually
inclined Franciscans was their effort to bypass Aristotelian-Platonic ideas with the help of the
otherwise marginalized Stoic traditions. The stoics have assimilated a rich and diverse
mixture of philosophical and religious elements right before and after Christ, taken also from
Gnostic and pagan traditions. Before neo-Platonism they were already keenly attentive to the
34
awakening inward, individual soul life of the human personality and the growing darkens
surrounding its fate on earth and after death.
Steiner described this unsolvable problem for example in one of his Karma lectures. He
recounts a discussion between younger and older Dominicans. He speaks movingly and
intimately when he describes this event! The younger Dominican spoke to his older teacher:
look master, the ancient spiritual power- originally Michael’s- that still inspired the thinking
of Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Scotus Erigena, is dying out. People in the future will not
be able to experience it any more. And he said further: if things continue as they are, then
people will lose all spiritual substance and truthfulness in their thinking in the future. And this
thinking, the heavenly intelligence, which streams from Michael to the earth, will all fall pry
to Ahrimanic-demonic spirits that will use it to drag humanity into the abyss of materialism
and corruption. Michaelic cosmic intelligence, still administered by the gods in ancient time,
will be transformed into increasingly Ahrimanic thinking in the not so far future.
He went on to say that something has to happen now on earth through us, in the human
soul itself, to prepare a seed for future transformation that will be available when Michael
starts his new epoch; This seed must be prepared now in order to sprout to life in an age in
which otherwise only materialistic-intellectual thinking will prevail. He said: For now we
must hold apart the powers of faith and of thinking; but in the future this separation will no
longer serve humanity; and the new seed must be there at that future time to enable at least
few humans to spiritualize in their hearts and minds the fallen intelligence and connect it
again with true spiritual reality.
So we see how the great rival of the Nominalists, the “silent ox” (as Thomas von
Aquinas was nicknamed because of his outstanding bodily dimensions) tried with all his
strength to prove that when a person thinks through the Nous Poeitikus, the active intellect,
not the Nous Pathetikus, passive intellect, he may unite his soul so intimately with real spirit
substance that he may rightfully believe that after his death, though he will be carried to
Heaven on the wings of Christian salvation, he may find his individuality again endowed with
full self-consciousness, similar to the consciousness of intensive, active human self-
consciousness on the earth. But all this could only be hoped for, believed in, not yet fully
experienced in the individual soul. Individual immortality could become self-conscious
experience neither before nor after death. It wasn’t yet possible to experience that through the
actualization and realization of living, intuitive thinking, human individuality is transformed
and immortality become a reality as supersensible experience, and the human “I” can live as
35
surrounding its fate on earth and after death.
Steiner described this unsolvable problem for example in one of his Karma lectures. He
recounts a discussion between younger and older Dominicans. He speaks movingly and
intimately when he describes this event! The younger Dominican spoke to his older teacher:
look master, the ancient spiritual power- originally Michael’s- that still inspired the thinking
of Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Scotus Erigena, is dying out. People in the future will not
be able to experience it any more. And he said further: if things continue as they are, then
people will lose all spiritual substance and truthfulness in their thinking in the future. And this
thinking, the heavenly intelligence, which streams from Michael to the earth, will all fall pry
to Ahrimanic-demonic spirits that will use it to drag humanity into the abyss of materialism
and corruption. Michaelic cosmic intelligence, still administered by the gods in ancient time,
will be transformed into increasingly Ahrimanic thinking in the not so far future.
He went on to say that something has to happen now on earth through us, in the human
soul itself, to prepare a seed for future transformation that will be available when Michael
starts his new epoch; This seed must be prepared now in order to sprout to life in an age in
which otherwise only materialistic-intellectual thinking will prevail. He said: For now we
must hold apart the powers of faith and of thinking; but in the future this separation will no
longer serve humanity; and the new seed must be there at that future time to enable at least
few humans to spiritualize in their hearts and minds the fallen intelligence and connect it
again with true spiritual reality.
So we see how the great rival of the Nominalists, the “silent ox” (as Thomas von
Aquinas was nicknamed because of his outstanding bodily dimensions) tried with all his
strength to prove that when a person thinks through the Nous Poeitikus, the active intellect,
not the Nous Pathetikus, passive intellect, he may unite his soul so intimately with real spirit
substance that he may rightfully believe that after his death, though he will be carried to
Heaven on the wings of Christian salvation, he may find his individuality again endowed with
full self-consciousness, similar to the consciousness of intensive, active human self-
consciousness on the earth. But all this could only be hoped for, believed in, not yet fully
experienced in the individual soul. Individual immortality could become self-conscious
experience neither before nor after death. It wasn’t yet possible to experience that through the
actualization and realization of living, intuitive thinking, human individuality is transformed
and immortality become a reality as supersensible experience, and the human “I” can live as
35
consciously eternal being in the spiritual world right here and now and therefore also after
death.
Steiner adds that it was not possible actually to achieve this at that time; he says that
indeed only the preparation for this could have been made. And that Thomas von Aquinas
died with this burning question, with this huge problem; he died with it because he could not
resolve it in his time. And Steiner formulates this question of Thomas thus: how can thinking
be redeemed? How can the Christ impulse (the spiritual “I” power) enter into thinking?
But what indeed is the so-called Christ impulse? What is this spiritual “I” power? It is
the power of transformation, the power of metamorphosis working in the individual human
soul, reaching also into thinking, leading it, transformed, from within, back to the spiritual
worlds, but in such a way that the eternal nature of the “I” will be realized in the process. If
the “I” is to become immortal, in other words, it must become so first here on the earth,
through human free activity. This is what is truly meant by “the Christ impulse”. This Thomas
couldn’t do in the 13th century, but Steiner realized and actualized this task at the end of the
19th century, when the new age of Michael begun. He expressed this self-realization in The
Philosophy of Freedom and all his subsequent spiritual-scientific work.
This may allow us to have a glimpse at what is working behind the curtains of human
history, and how karma works from one age to the other. The 20th century was supposed,
among other things, to become again a fruitful time of a great new dispute between the reborn
Dominicans (together with their more platonically inclined colleagues from the school of
Chartres) and the reborn Franciscans, that already in the 13th and 14th centuries experienced
thinking as fallen earthy-human element, and searched for redemption through other venues.
death.
Steiner adds that it was not possible actually to achieve this at that time; he says that
indeed only the preparation for this could have been made. And that Thomas von Aquinas
died with this burning question, with this huge problem; he died with it because he could not
resolve it in his time. And Steiner formulates this question of Thomas thus: how can thinking
be redeemed? How can the Christ impulse (the spiritual “I” power) enter into thinking?
But what indeed is the so-called Christ impulse? What is this spiritual “I” power? It is
the power of transformation, the power of metamorphosis working in the individual human
soul, reaching also into thinking, leading it, transformed, from within, back to the spiritual
worlds, but in such a way that the eternal nature of the “I” will be realized in the process. If
the “I” is to become immortal, in other words, it must become so first here on the earth,
through human free activity. This is what is truly meant by “the Christ impulse”. This Thomas
couldn’t do in the 13th century, but Steiner realized and actualized this task at the end of the
19th century, when the new age of Michael begun. He expressed this self-realization in The
Philosophy of Freedom and all his subsequent spiritual-scientific work.
This may allow us to have a glimpse at what is working behind the curtains of human
history, and how karma works from one age to the other. The 20th century was supposed,
among other things, to become again a fruitful time of a great new dispute between the reborn
Dominicans (together with their more platonically inclined colleagues from the school of
Chartres) and the reborn Franciscans, that already in the 13th and 14th centuries experienced
thinking as fallen earthy-human element, and searched for redemption through other venues.
In the 13th century Nominalists and Franciscans said: thinking is only a human-earthly
faculty; thinking can only give names to sense-perceptible objects and to man-fabricated
concepts; If there is pan-or universal intelligence (and many of them did believe it) it doesn’t
enter human thinking; human thinking is as sinful as the whole human being and cannot
partake in the grace of having an actual, presently real, heavenly origin; Divinity in its real
essence is wholly transcendental; it is totally beyond human cognition; with his thinking no
human being can grasp supersensible reality nor find there his eternal individuality. Today
they say: the human subject, the earthly personality, has no significance; they proclaim the
death of the subject as in the Middle Ages they denied the immortality of the “I”; today the
very meaning of human personality as such is deemed unreachable and unknowable; Then the
36
faculty; thinking can only give names to sense-perceptible objects and to man-fabricated
concepts; If there is pan-or universal intelligence (and many of them did believe it) it doesn’t
enter human thinking; human thinking is as sinful as the whole human being and cannot
partake in the grace of having an actual, presently real, heavenly origin; Divinity in its real
essence is wholly transcendental; it is totally beyond human cognition; with his thinking no
human being can grasp supersensible reality nor find there his eternal individuality. Today
they say: the human subject, the earthly personality, has no significance; they proclaim the
death of the subject as in the Middle Ages they denied the immortality of the “I”; today the
very meaning of human personality as such is deemed unreachable and unknowable; Then the
36
spiritual-universal reality of thinking was denied; today they deny that thinking can even
produce real single names…
The great dispute of the middle ages, then, was taking place in the 13th century between
Realists and Nominalists, but externally-historically, the Realists fought a seemingly lost
battle; inwardly, however, they prepared the ground for what is to come to light in the new –
now present – age of Michael. And we are still there at this beginning, though we are well
into the second Michaelic century! Nowadays ordinary humans like us must find the courage
to become again true beginners, try humbly but sincerely to take the first, and most
elementary step in this direction: Can we release the imprisoned heavenly intelligence and
transform it in our hearts so that thinking can break through to a genuine spiritual reality? Can
it become real event? Can we produce a real spiritual “I” in this process, and individual-
singular being? And what does it really mean to become neither single-private personality nor
abstract-general universal being, but truly “singular” being?
produce real single names…
The great dispute of the middle ages, then, was taking place in the 13th century between
Realists and Nominalists, but externally-historically, the Realists fought a seemingly lost
battle; inwardly, however, they prepared the ground for what is to come to light in the new –
now present – age of Michael. And we are still there at this beginning, though we are well
into the second Michaelic century! Nowadays ordinary humans like us must find the courage
to become again true beginners, try humbly but sincerely to take the first, and most
elementary step in this direction: Can we release the imprisoned heavenly intelligence and
transform it in our hearts so that thinking can break through to a genuine spiritual reality? Can
it become real event? Can we produce a real spiritual “I” in this process, and individual-
singular being? And what does it really mean to become neither single-private personality nor
abstract-general universal being, but truly “singular” being?
Return to the future
Returning to the future, let us now first go back to the end of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th century, to which we referred to earlier. Now Steiner publishes the
Philosophy of Freedom in 1894 as individual-singular- spiritual achievement, unaccepted and
unrecognized by general middle European culture. This was inauguration event, laying the
foundation stone on which the future spiritual life of humanity will be build. A first human
being was individually capable for the very first time in human history to realize in and
through the spiritualization of the intellect, in and through pure thinking, an actual production
and creation of the eternal, moral, spiritual substance of a human individuality as genuine
self-conscious spirit-reality. And he could achieve this remarkable deed as a free and modern
human being, without depending on any given mystical or atavistic supersensible
consciousness and esoteric traditions: A free deed of actualization and realization of new
selfhood through cosmic thinking. The power of transformation, transubstantiation,
metamorphosis, was so strongly individualized in the Middle Ages that an answer could have
been given now to the unresolved riddle and problem with which Thomas Aquinas died: How
can thinking be redeemed and with it and through it the human self? This is also, as I said
before, the main theme of my work published in 1995 with the title: The Modern Experience
of the Supersensible which I subtitled: the knowledge drama of the second coming. At the
beginning of the book I placed three quotations which for me summarizes the drama of the
Returning to the future, let us now first go back to the end of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th century, to which we referred to earlier. Now Steiner publishes the
Philosophy of Freedom in 1894 as individual-singular- spiritual achievement, unaccepted and
unrecognized by general middle European culture. This was inauguration event, laying the
foundation stone on which the future spiritual life of humanity will be build. A first human
being was individually capable for the very first time in human history to realize in and
through the spiritualization of the intellect, in and through pure thinking, an actual production
and creation of the eternal, moral, spiritual substance of a human individuality as genuine
self-conscious spirit-reality. And he could achieve this remarkable deed as a free and modern
human being, without depending on any given mystical or atavistic supersensible
consciousness and esoteric traditions: A free deed of actualization and realization of new
selfhood through cosmic thinking. The power of transformation, transubstantiation,
metamorphosis, was so strongly individualized in the Middle Ages that an answer could have
been given now to the unresolved riddle and problem with which Thomas Aquinas died: How
can thinking be redeemed and with it and through it the human self? This is also, as I said
before, the main theme of my work published in 1995 with the title: The Modern Experience
of the Supersensible which I subtitled: the knowledge drama of the second coming. At the
beginning of the book I placed three quotations which for me summarizes the drama of the
37
century’s end, the culmination of the struggle to achieve, even if only an individual minuscule
seed of this vast human task. To these three I will add tonight also a quotation from Deleuze.
The first quotation is from Heidegger, celebrating man’s life-onto-death as expressing
the essence of his being; the second is Foucault’s famous statement concerning the
disappearance of the human being as we know it; the third demonstrated Deleuze’s real
struggle with the legacy of his Franciscan forerunners, trying mightily to solve the riddle of
individual immortality. The fourth is taken from Steiner’s last words written on his death bed
as concise future directive. The passages are arranged in a certain ascending order- from a
profound denial of everything that the Michaelic impulse of our time is striving for
(Heidegger), through the two greatest representatives of French postmodernism, Foucault and
Deleuze, to Steiner, who was there first in time but is and will be always the last one to be
understood by our culture.
century’s end, the culmination of the struggle to achieve, even if only an individual minuscule
seed of this vast human task. To these three I will add tonight also a quotation from Deleuze.
The first quotation is from Heidegger, celebrating man’s life-onto-death as expressing
the essence of his being; the second is Foucault’s famous statement concerning the
disappearance of the human being as we know it; the third demonstrated Deleuze’s real
struggle with the legacy of his Franciscan forerunners, trying mightily to solve the riddle of
individual immortality. The fourth is taken from Steiner’s last words written on his death bed
as concise future directive. The passages are arranged in a certain ascending order- from a
profound denial of everything that the Michaelic impulse of our time is striving for
(Heidegger), through the two greatest representatives of French postmodernism, Foucault and
Deleuze, to Steiner, who was there first in time but is and will be always the last one to be
understood by our culture.
Being held out into the nothing, as Dasein is … makes man a lieutenant of the nothing.
We are so finite that we cannot even bring ourselves originally before the nothing
through our own decision and will. So profoundly does finitude entrench itself in
existence that our most proper and deepest limitation refuses to yield to our freedom
(Martin Heidegger, What is Metaphysics? 1929)
We are so finite that we cannot even bring ourselves originally before the nothing
through our own decision and will. So profoundly does finitude entrench itself in
existence that our most proper and deepest limitation refuses to yield to our freedom
(Martin Heidegger, What is Metaphysics? 1929)
It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only a
recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge,
and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form.
[... ] Then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand
at the edge of the sea. (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, 1966)
recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge,
and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form.
[... ] Then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand
at the edge of the sea. (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, 1966)
Every event is like death, double and impersonal in its double…every mortal event is a
single event… it is this mobile and precise point, where all events gather together in one
that transmutation happens: this is the point at which death turns against death; where
dying is the negation of death, and the impersonality of dying not longer indicates only
the moment when I disappear outside of myself, but rather the moment when death
loses itself in itself, and also the figure which the most singular life takes on in order to
substitute itself for me. (Gilles Deleuze, “The event”, in Logic of Sense, 1969)
single event… it is this mobile and precise point, where all events gather together in one
that transmutation happens: this is the point at which death turns against death; where
dying is the negation of death, and the impersonality of dying not longer indicates only
the moment when I disappear outside of myself, but rather the moment when death
loses itself in itself, and also the figure which the most singular life takes on in order to
substitute itself for me. (Gilles Deleuze, “The event”, in Logic of Sense, 1969)
If this were all, freedom would light up in the human being for a single cosmic moment,
but in the very same moment the human being would dissolve away … We are here
pointing to the abyss of nothingness in human evolution which man must cross when he
becomes a free being. It is the working of Michael and the Christ-impulse which makes
it possible for him to leap across the gulf. (Rudolf Steiner, January 1925)
but in the very same moment the human being would dissolve away … We are here
pointing to the abyss of nothingness in human evolution which man must cross when he
becomes a free being. It is the working of Michael and the Christ-impulse which makes
it possible for him to leap across the gulf. (Rudolf Steiner, January 1925)
38
In 1929 Heidegger named the human being as the Stattshalter des Nichts – a commander of
nothingness. And he said: the whole human existence is founded only on death, on finiteness.
That was the first “statement” through which the whole reversal of human history was made
philosophically conscious and politically and socially realized in so much ending and
annihilating of human lives. There can scarcely be a more profound Anti-Philosophy of
Freedom formulation than this one. Kindly remember what I said at the beginning:
Heidegger’s influence is arguably the most significant one in 20th century philosophy – at
least until Foucault prophecy would have been fulfilled (“the 20th century will one day be
called Deleuzian century”).
Now when Foucault writes 33 years after 1933 he says: the human subject, the “I” as
we know it is a momentary phenomenon, caused by the evolution of consciousness in the 19th
century, and is rapidly disappearing. This is somewhat better statement then Heidegger’s!
First, because Foucault isn’t speaking about the essence of the human being as being finite, as
Heidegger does; and second, because for him human essence is exactly this: the process of
open-ended becoming, of transformation, and in this sense not finite at all. He says: our
understanding of the human subject changes, it will be different in the future then today; so
he really means: the death of the 19th century concept of the subject is occurring in the 20th (he
never meant to announce the end of the human being). And this is a fact that can also be
supported from Anthroposophical perspective as I indicated above.
The third passage is a typically suggestive passage from the post-modern thinker who
experienced perhaps more than any other thinker in the last century that we are crossing the
threshold, that great eventualities await us on the other side, nay more, he knew very well that
we have already crossed and are living on the other, wholly unforeseen and uncharted and
infinite new frontiers. This one is Gilles Deleuze.
In Deleuze we find wonderful descriptions of what one can experience and express in
concepts and words, if one has spiritualized one’s thinking to a certain extent. One
experiences the essence of life: “We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and
nothing else. [...] A life is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete
power, complete bliss.” The same experience has a flip twin, an “other” side that comes
organically woven with it. If one has come so far as to experience the essence of pure life, one
has begun at the same time also to lift into consciousness the unconscious and real, that is,
living, death processes that underlie ordinary thinking; death begins to rise to consciousness
39
nothingness. And he said: the whole human existence is founded only on death, on finiteness.
That was the first “statement” through which the whole reversal of human history was made
philosophically conscious and politically and socially realized in so much ending and
annihilating of human lives. There can scarcely be a more profound Anti-Philosophy of
Freedom formulation than this one. Kindly remember what I said at the beginning:
Heidegger’s influence is arguably the most significant one in 20th century philosophy – at
least until Foucault prophecy would have been fulfilled (“the 20th century will one day be
called Deleuzian century”).
Now when Foucault writes 33 years after 1933 he says: the human subject, the “I” as
we know it is a momentary phenomenon, caused by the evolution of consciousness in the 19th
century, and is rapidly disappearing. This is somewhat better statement then Heidegger’s!
First, because Foucault isn’t speaking about the essence of the human being as being finite, as
Heidegger does; and second, because for him human essence is exactly this: the process of
open-ended becoming, of transformation, and in this sense not finite at all. He says: our
understanding of the human subject changes, it will be different in the future then today; so
he really means: the death of the 19th century concept of the subject is occurring in the 20th (he
never meant to announce the end of the human being). And this is a fact that can also be
supported from Anthroposophical perspective as I indicated above.
The third passage is a typically suggestive passage from the post-modern thinker who
experienced perhaps more than any other thinker in the last century that we are crossing the
threshold, that great eventualities await us on the other side, nay more, he knew very well that
we have already crossed and are living on the other, wholly unforeseen and uncharted and
infinite new frontiers. This one is Gilles Deleuze.
In Deleuze we find wonderful descriptions of what one can experience and express in
concepts and words, if one has spiritualized one’s thinking to a certain extent. One
experiences the essence of life: “We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and
nothing else. [...] A life is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete
power, complete bliss.” The same experience has a flip twin, an “other” side that comes
organically woven with it. If one has come so far as to experience the essence of pure life, one
has begun at the same time also to lift into consciousness the unconscious and real, that is,
living, death processes that underlie ordinary thinking; death begins to rise to consciousness
39
and with it death begins to reveal its true being, namely, the (veiled) gate to eternal cosmic
life.
When one is so far on the path that thinking becomes an experience of life in death and
death in life, one can experience truly that “this is the point at which death turns against death;
where dying is the negation of death”; And when, moreover, one experiences with one’s
released etheric body the cosmic, impersonal non-organic life forces, one knows also that “the
impersonality of dying not longer indicates only the moment when I disappear outside of
myself”, that means, consequently, if we turn the negative way of speaking to its positive
sense: The impersonality of dying indicates the moment in which the true I AM appears
outside my ordinary self. One comes then closest to the spiritual-scientific mystery of the “I”,
and only a hair breadth – grace’s breadth – separates one from being granted this experience.
While the mental-image, the Vor-stellung, of the “I” disappears, as we pointed out
above, and the IT, the impersonal life-forces of cosmic thinking begin to think through me,
the real “I” is resurrected and comes to consciousness in and through the impersonal cosmic
stream. This real “I” is a being of resurrection, and one can experience its reality at this stage
only through a gift of grace, neither through cosmic thinking nor through personal volition. IT
is the vehicle, or chalice, not the giver of the grace; the giver of the true “I” can only be the
being of humanity’s “I”, the Higher Self (the Christ).
And Deleuze, with everything that he brings with him from former life, can advance so
near – but “only” so near – to the cusp of this moment, to the threshold of this grace. And as a
matter of fact it is so, when one has really spiritualized thinking that far, so that one can
experience impersonal cosmic thinking, I really mean experience, not merely think the
abstract concept, then one really doesn’t find there again the mental-pictures of the ordinary
self, the subjective subject that thinks and therefore “he is”. In this moment, he is nothing, and
the IT is all; and therefore Deleuze could also not find it in his authentic experience of
crossing the threshold of life\death. But how close he stands there, on the threshold, facing
boldly the being of death and experience how death dies, but he doesn’t see into what really
death dies; he cannot produce enough fire to concoct and conduct the alchemical combination
that alone can fuse entirely – annihilating any difference in-between – absolute pure
immanent life with absolute death; he therefore doesn’t see what, or better who, faces him;
what happens at that very moment, which event takes this sacred place of time; he cannot
experience what he has at hand, namely, how “through the grace of the real ‘I’ life become
death and death become life” (In Christo Morimur; we die into the fullness of life). But how
40
life.
When one is so far on the path that thinking becomes an experience of life in death and
death in life, one can experience truly that “this is the point at which death turns against death;
where dying is the negation of death”; And when, moreover, one experiences with one’s
released etheric body the cosmic, impersonal non-organic life forces, one knows also that “the
impersonality of dying not longer indicates only the moment when I disappear outside of
myself”, that means, consequently, if we turn the negative way of speaking to its positive
sense: The impersonality of dying indicates the moment in which the true I AM appears
outside my ordinary self. One comes then closest to the spiritual-scientific mystery of the “I”,
and only a hair breadth – grace’s breadth – separates one from being granted this experience.
While the mental-image, the Vor-stellung, of the “I” disappears, as we pointed out
above, and the IT, the impersonal life-forces of cosmic thinking begin to think through me,
the real “I” is resurrected and comes to consciousness in and through the impersonal cosmic
stream. This real “I” is a being of resurrection, and one can experience its reality at this stage
only through a gift of grace, neither through cosmic thinking nor through personal volition. IT
is the vehicle, or chalice, not the giver of the grace; the giver of the true “I” can only be the
being of humanity’s “I”, the Higher Self (the Christ).
And Deleuze, with everything that he brings with him from former life, can advance so
near – but “only” so near – to the cusp of this moment, to the threshold of this grace. And as a
matter of fact it is so, when one has really spiritualized thinking that far, so that one can
experience impersonal cosmic thinking, I really mean experience, not merely think the
abstract concept, then one really doesn’t find there again the mental-pictures of the ordinary
self, the subjective subject that thinks and therefore “he is”. In this moment, he is nothing, and
the IT is all; and therefore Deleuze could also not find it in his authentic experience of
crossing the threshold of life\death. But how close he stands there, on the threshold, facing
boldly the being of death and experience how death dies, but he doesn’t see into what really
death dies; he cannot produce enough fire to concoct and conduct the alchemical combination
that alone can fuse entirely – annihilating any difference in-between – absolute pure
immanent life with absolute death; he therefore doesn’t see what, or better who, faces him;
what happens at that very moment, which event takes this sacred place of time; he cannot
experience what he has at hand, namely, how “through the grace of the real ‘I’ life become
death and death become life” (In Christo Morimur; we die into the fullness of life). But how
40
movingly close does he come to unravel His secret, when he experiences “the moment when
death loses itself in itself, and [becomes] the most singular life … in order to substitute itself
for me”.
The moment when this substitution occurs is the most sacred that one can experience
after ordinary death. The beginner-Initiates that we can become today may be granted the
grace of this sacred moment in the midst of physical life. They may truly grace-fully die…
and may experience in full consciousness exactly how this “most singular life” – the Higher
Self – “substitute itself for me”. Only in this manner can the battle of the middle Ages that
truly took place, and the battle of the culmination of the 20th century that remained almost
only virtual, be still realized in the course of the 21st century. This is indeed our humble
elementary mission.
Now what makes freedom into reality, not intellectual reality, but into moral-human and
at the same time supersensible achievement? It is precisely this moment that the Franciscans
say is principally impossible. In Deleuze’s case we can even see how this becomes manifest in
his individual – very personal – karma: Look at his fingers! And compare them with
Brentano’s hands that Steiner described as “philosopher’s hands” and then with Steiner’s own
hands. Hands and fingers do not reveal primarily past karma (as the head does) but especially
karma-in-the-stream-of becoming! – If your contemplate Deleuze’s fingers what would have
you experienced? He had to let his fingernails grow very long because he couldn’t stand the
physical sense of touch with his fingers; it was for him too painful! (What do the fingers
experience deeply, unconsciously when they touch? They sense our becoming and also
experience constantly the fire that burns at end-of-our-becoming, the so called second or soul
death; the fingers live and move and become, in other words, all the time beyond the
threshold, where our spiritual stream of karma weaves and shapes our present life out of
future lives).
But the leading Dominicans that knew that true freedom is indeed only temporarily
impossible have laboured hard to prepare this seed through their loyal and faithful devotion to
Michael’s future impulse. And this seed can now begin to take root and sprout from the earth
upward in the beginning of the second Michaelic century. Steiner went ahead and pioneered,
all alone, this individual deed through his sacrifice and toil for humanity. We are invited to be
as beginners as he was when he conceived and wrote this humble book, the seed for the
spiritualization of thinking, consciousness, and humanity and the earth in the future: The
Philosophy of Freedom. He made it possible. And even despite the fact that not his but
41
death loses itself in itself, and [becomes] the most singular life … in order to substitute itself
for me”.
The moment when this substitution occurs is the most sacred that one can experience
after ordinary death. The beginner-Initiates that we can become today may be granted the
grace of this sacred moment in the midst of physical life. They may truly grace-fully die…
and may experience in full consciousness exactly how this “most singular life” – the Higher
Self – “substitute itself for me”. Only in this manner can the battle of the middle Ages that
truly took place, and the battle of the culmination of the 20th century that remained almost
only virtual, be still realized in the course of the 21st century. This is indeed our humble
elementary mission.
Now what makes freedom into reality, not intellectual reality, but into moral-human and
at the same time supersensible achievement? It is precisely this moment that the Franciscans
say is principally impossible. In Deleuze’s case we can even see how this becomes manifest in
his individual – very personal – karma: Look at his fingers! And compare them with
Brentano’s hands that Steiner described as “philosopher’s hands” and then with Steiner’s own
hands. Hands and fingers do not reveal primarily past karma (as the head does) but especially
karma-in-the-stream-of becoming! – If your contemplate Deleuze’s fingers what would have
you experienced? He had to let his fingernails grow very long because he couldn’t stand the
physical sense of touch with his fingers; it was for him too painful! (What do the fingers
experience deeply, unconsciously when they touch? They sense our becoming and also
experience constantly the fire that burns at end-of-our-becoming, the so called second or soul
death; the fingers live and move and become, in other words, all the time beyond the
threshold, where our spiritual stream of karma weaves and shapes our present life out of
future lives).
But the leading Dominicans that knew that true freedom is indeed only temporarily
impossible have laboured hard to prepare this seed through their loyal and faithful devotion to
Michael’s future impulse. And this seed can now begin to take root and sprout from the earth
upward in the beginning of the second Michaelic century. Steiner went ahead and pioneered,
all alone, this individual deed through his sacrifice and toil for humanity. We are invited to be
as beginners as he was when he conceived and wrote this humble book, the seed for the
spiritualization of thinking, consciousness, and humanity and the earth in the future: The
Philosophy of Freedom. He made it possible. And even despite the fact that not his but
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Heidegger’s concept of the human triumphed over Europe and the whole globe today,
Steiner’s deed made it possible that in the historical moment in which “freedom [lighted] up in
the human being for a single cosmic moment…”, it will not be lost, and that, in face of the
fiercest evil of annihilation, brought about by so many “commanders of annihilation” all over
the earth in the course of the whole 20th century, “…in the very same moment the human
being would [not any longer only] dissolve away…”. And therefore, indeed: “We are here
pointing to the abyss of nothingness in human evolution which man must cross when he
becomes a free being. It is the working of Michael and the Christ-impulse which makes it
possible for him to leap across the gulf.”
And though on the much hoped-for large scale this battle didn’t take place at the end of
the 20th century, I wanted to tell you that it still may become a fruitful and joyful seed of new
life in each of our hearts. This was the sole purpose of my sharing tonight, “to make
philosophy worthy of this event”. I wanted to inscribe it here in my first working visit to
France, Colmar and Alsace: to share with you some of my experiences in the last decades of
the last century, in order to encourage you too to begin and become beginners of the now
beginning new Michaelic century.
Steiner’s deed made it possible that in the historical moment in which “freedom [lighted] up in
the human being for a single cosmic moment…”, it will not be lost, and that, in face of the
fiercest evil of annihilation, brought about by so many “commanders of annihilation” all over
the earth in the course of the whole 20th century, “…in the very same moment the human
being would [not any longer only] dissolve away…”. And therefore, indeed: “We are here
pointing to the abyss of nothingness in human evolution which man must cross when he
becomes a free being. It is the working of Michael and the Christ-impulse which makes it
possible for him to leap across the gulf.”
And though on the much hoped-for large scale this battle didn’t take place at the end of
the 20th century, I wanted to tell you that it still may become a fruitful and joyful seed of new
life in each of our hearts. This was the sole purpose of my sharing tonight, “to make
philosophy worthy of this event”. I wanted to inscribe it here in my first working visit to
France, Colmar and Alsace: to share with you some of my experiences in the last decades of
the last century, in order to encourage you too to begin and become beginners of the now
beginning new Michaelic century.
Thank you very much!
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