A flower grows in a particular environment in nature. The natural thing for it to do is to bud, flower and die. It is “connected” with the external world in perfect harmony. A “normal” human being is also a very natural phenomenon and being born, living and dying is perfectly natural. People are influenced by the external cultural world just like plants are affected by the natural surrounding. In a normal human being life flows like a river down a stream! This does not mean that life is necessarily good or bad, filled with joy or with sorrow; it simply means that the direction in which it flows is coherent with the current it is receiving.
In our times, the culture of consumerism has rendered the average human being addicted to trying to find in the external world a stimulus for his internal life. T.V. through childhood provides a myriad supply of emotions in which the individual is making no effort. Television is already a “no effort” activity with a tremendous assault of emotional uproar but the fact that it implies no effort, renders the viewer a passive dweller of the experience. The lack of will involvement in the experience disconnects or weakens the I or ego of the viewer while continuing to allow the emotional discharge but we could affirm that the stronger the emotional discharge, the more the I is weakened. In other words, the I is weakened inversely proportionately to the emotional discharge.
Are you understanding me? I believe you need to have a clear understanding of the division of the human being between the functions and the I. Steiner is much deeper and has a great deal more experience in relation to the functions than we ever achieved in the Work but in the work the understanding of the I and its states is more accessible. While in Steiner it has been practiced as an external experience, in the Work one comes to it from inside. They are two sides of the same coin and I’ve been struggling to put them together for a long time but I’m still very ignorant about anthroposophical knowledge of centers and it is immensely beautiful
In a plant, the process of dying is similar to a human being’s experience of getting old in which the individual gradually disconnects from the strong identifications with life that s/he had in their youth. The gradual relaxation of the flower falling petal by petal to the ground as it dies is similar to the gradual loss of identifications that the human individual gives up as he grows older. All this happens naturally in both flowers and human beings.
What we can observe about the human being of our times is that there are very few aspects of “naturalness” in “modern life”. The economy is a never-ending drive towards buying and selling things not because people need them as much as because they produce money for the producers and superficial satisfaction for the buyers. Millions of useless, unnecessary things are being produced for millions of consumers for whom the “drive” is not “having” the object and looking after it but consuming it, getting rid of it and getting another one. In some cities the extent of the practice is such that people no longer need to have plates because they throw the plate out after eating and this getting rid of things as soon as they are consumed is the ideal situation so that the person doesn’t have to make the “effort” of washing the plate. The “ideal” of capitalism is that people make no effort and keep buying things that will make them more useless!!! (ha, ha!) This status quo of consumerism without effort is analogous to the television experience in which people watch, consume, suffer and enjoy, without effort. Their “I” or that quality of the I known as “will” does not become involved in the act, rendering the individual weaker each time. The lack of involvement of the will is proportionate to the ensuing depression of the I. Depression is an aspect of the disconnectedness with the rest of the world.
Eating is another area in which the same pattern can be observed. The disproportionate eating behaviour in American society follows the same addictive behaviour that we can observe in television and drugs but also the whole of social life is geared towards the same passive consumerism. The majority of people work in factories making millions of things that in them selves have practically no connection with their lives. They work to make money not to live or develop as human beings. The “million dollar factor” of no matter what activity has made all of culture a consumerism without meaning.
The disconnectedness of society from the life of individuals is such that there is nothing surprising about the fact that the individual is increasingly disconnected from society. We live in a squizofrenic society in which each of its activities is disconnected to the other with people pulling from no matter where trying to make personal gains at no matter who’s cost. If “that” is the condition of the external world we live in, why would we be surprised by the fact that people are growing up increasingly disconnected from their own self? The child internalizes the madness of society and reciprocally externalizes his/her madness on society as s/he grows up. An “inhuman” society develops “anti-social” individuals: sociopaths, psychopaths. The individual that goes mad is then put in jail or in sanatoriums while the inhumanity of the society continues to produce more lunatics! In cults, the pathology is taken to its extreme: the members become addicted to the guru, condition the centers to predetermined behavior loosing freedom in the functions and systematically act against themselves and each other. Both the individual and the community meet their destiny in mass suicide.
In the drug addict we can observe much clearer the same pattern of behaviour as in the previous examples. The addict’s contact with the external world is enhanced by the overdose but AGAIN at the cost of his own will, which becomes “consumed” in the experience. The recovery from addiction involves the recovery of the “will to be” and for that to happen the “connection” between the individual and his world needs to be renewed. HOW are we doing that? As anthroposophy has shown, every activity an individual does reverts to a particular aspect of his inner world. Each activity develops or thwarts an aspect of his inner world. The activity itself will tend to “sculpt” the inner world of the “patient” but the degree of success is probably determined by the capacity of the patient and the therapists to “involve” the will of the patient. The experience has undoubtedly a circular self-feeding structure in which the more an activity is mastered the more “TRUST” the individual experiences on his own abilities. Trust and confidence. The more trust and confidence the less depression. The less the depression the more capacity for joy and gratitude. The more gratitude the more connectedness with the world. The more connectedness the more love, the more consciousness.
This is an external process to work on self-remembering as I’ve experienced it. In it the individual literally sheds the leaves and the flowers of his/her being and keeps only the trunk, so to speak! Sheds the identifications with centers while remaining connected to the “I”. “Dies” Sheds “desire”. This “drops” the identification with aspects of the external world and consciously “connects” the world or makes an “internal” connection with the world in which there is no separateness. All forms of addiction are aspects of desire gone beserk! Identifications consuming the self. “Matter” consuming Spirit.
In the Fourth Way, the option is to not “die” to life by isolating one’s self from society but to allow life to develop itself out in one’s self as much as in the community one belongs to! To regenerate through action rather than be consumed by identification with action. To become the intermediary between spirit and life. I hope falling as many times as one did when one was learning to walk is as valid while learning to be a more humble human being!
Each of these ideas must be expanded but I needed to look at the general outline.
