the Path of Self Education

The human mind seems capable of much. But it is not free from the possibility of error. Our passions often seem to misguide us, yet we are not human without them. The world confonts us with riddles, and we may well sleep before them, rather than be awake and acknowledge our puzzlement.

In this age of Science, human reason is offered as the only path through such dilemmas. Otherwise, or so it is thought, without the discipline of the scientific method, the mind is too subjective and thereby lacks the capacity to find the truth.

We have had 400 years of science, and since the 19th Century such technological advances as if wizards had been at work. Just in the last twenty years, the scientific changes have been far beyond our ability to predict.. But for all this, to reason, the human heart is still a mystery. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, wife and child abuse -- evil seems to rule the social-political world, and science is no more closer to understanding the mystery of evil then are palm readers and crystal ball gazers.

Oh, certainly there are valiant attempts, e.g. the new science of evolutionary psychology. But a careful reading of these disciplines shows that they have little insight to give to our decisions makers. Human beings still make war, and greed and avarice and the will to power still seem to rule the world.

If we but step back a bit, and not take our scientific presumtions too seriously, it becomes possible to consider alternatives. This last is crucial, and deserves some amplification.

A human being is not just a creature of reason. Certainly reason is a great gift, but if we isolate it, as if it was the only path to all our needed answers, then we deny our own history and make fey dreams and myths where the truth would better serve us.

Today, reason is a power that rules, at least in the sense that most of our ideas about the world are derived from this aspect of our being. This scientific world view, which enthrones itself as the high priest of understanding, has only been in ascendency in our time. But such is our over-reliance on it, that it makes us act as if we only knew how to use one limb, and must thereby let all the others atrophy. Yet, a human being is much more than mere reason, and we will never understand evil from reason alone.

Even so, who is to teach us otherwise, for our schools and universities are committed to the enthronement of reason in one sense, and to the enslavement of reason in another. Consider what it means today to become educated.

If one has the temerity to choose a liberal education (to pursue the classics and the cannon), one acquires no skills the market will reward. As a result then, reason is enslaved to the needs of commerce, while at the same time it is elevated as the final arbiter of what is true and what can be known.

To place this problem more starkly before us, just imagine what would have been the result if those statesmen who founded the American democratic experiment had been educated in modern universities, rather then having pursued the self education characteristic of their time. The mind can hardly encompass such a tortured picture of history -- a picture without passion or insight, and based solely on bookeeping and the ambitions toward greed and power.

Let us leave then this cold country and look again in wonder at ourselves, seeking to discover what else we are besides mere reason and logic.

C.P. Snow understood the beginnings of this question, when he posed the problem of the Two Cultures, in the 1950's. He showed quite clearly that the culture of science and the culture of the liberal arts did not even begin to speak the same language, much less discover the same world. Yet even the attempt to penetrate this aspect of the problem was weak, for Snow left out something of equal importance. There is not only a culture of science and a culture of the liberal arts, but a culture of religion as well. Human beings are scientific, artistic and religious (spiritual), and somehow we must remember this or create thereby a pretend world view that has nothing to do with human reality.

Yet, many look at themselves and say: "I am not artistic or religious, so what has this to do with me?"

Well, of course you are not, precisely because your education, both formal and informal, having been deformed toward the elevation of reason over all other human capacities, has not unfolded within you your capacites for imagination and devotion. Not all the limbs of your soul and spirit have been developed, and thus lamed we can hardly perceive the realities before us, or, and more essentially, the realities within us.

Each aspect of our soul recognizes its counter part in creation. That which is reason within us understands most clearly the truth that exists in the world. That which is imagination within us understands most clearly the beauty that exists in the world. And, that which is devotion within us understands most clearly that which is goodness that exists in the world. Reason, imagination and devotion -- truth, beauty and goodness -- science, art and religion.

The capacities of reason, imagination and devotion did not arise in the human being out of nothing. Only reason on its false throne insists that creation is an accident. But to know that -- to know that we are a mirror image of the foundation of creation, in the same way that we know most of what we consider to be true, is not easy. It being the case that reason stands mostly alone, what then is the individual human being to do, so as to recover and bring to health what modern education and life have lamed and made useless? How to we move from reason, on the basis of reason (for we are mostly justified in our confidence in reason), to the restoration of imagination and devotion? Moreover, how do with do this without trampling on reason's proper sphere, or without eroding our sense of freedom of thought, and self confidence in our own minds?

There is, of course, only one way. Imagination and devotion must be used, otherwise they will continue to sleep. Only the individual can reactivate these latent capacities. But to do this requires some inward perception, some degree of introspection in order to see these capacities and to explore their dynamics in that individual free way which is central to their reawakening.

This being the case then "self education" is more than the mere acquisition of knowledge, but rather, and more crucially, the self realization through the of unfolding of capabilities, of not only latent and sleeping qualities of soul, but in fact the giving birth to new capacities.

Some may disagree, and consider that they contain within themselves high degrees of imagination and/or devotion. I cannot fault such a view, because each alone can only judge what is true within their own soul. Yet, I will caution thusly: Reason knows the danger of assumptions and the blindness that comes with false beliefs. Further there is nothing to fear by reexamining and requestioning what has been thought. In fact, such reconsideration of self understanding is a necessary and essential food for all growth in the soul.

In this series of interrelated essays, given the overreaching title: The Path of Self Education, it is my hope to share with the reader some matters which may have not yet come to their attention, matters of crucial importance to modern humanity. Having been by Grace given access to ideas and practices unheard of in the halls of the academy, it has been my good fortune to discover, in an entirely rational way, all that I am about to relate about the soul, and the significance of this knowledge in the future of the world.

Make no mistake. Humanity progresses, or falls into sleep, slavery and animality, on just this: The quality, in practice, of the answers to these questions: What is the soul and from whence comes good and evil? Don't think so? Just look again at your daily newspaper. We live in the midst of the chaos produced just by our practical ignorance to these very questions.

There is but one rule on the path of self education -- freedom. This may never be violated. No one is, or can, be compelled to develop. It all comes from individual initiative and choice. True self development is built out of freedom, and any development that is coerced is not evolution but devolution.

Thus, what is said below is only about what the author knows could be done, but not in any sense of the word, must be done.

We all have an inner life, a life of mind, of soul and spirit, which is invisible to others -- a kingdom which is ours and no others. Thoughts, feelings, impulses of will, cravings, desires, dreams, aspirations, obsessions, dark ideas, opinions, points of view, prejudices, and so forth -- a cornicopia of inner experiences, which as a total collection is unique to ourselves. We share in common the having of this inner life, but its content and its totallity for each of us is entirely individual.

This inner world, in conjunction with the content of our sense experience - our consciouness in its totality, is our soul. The ascendency of reason has tried to teach us otherwise, by labeling much of this inner universe a thing of useless subjectivity. But this is a false view, and this falsity can be confirmed by anyone who is willing to call forth from the soul the necessary self discipline.

This is why to the ancient Greeks, the path of self education was called the path of self knowledge, and was coupled with the admonition: Oh Man, Know Thyself!

In our time, the time of so much seemingly senseless evil, the only path to the understanding of evil is through the gate of introspection or self knowledge and education. We can never understand evil in the world until we unmask it within ourselves.

All over the world there are systems for the exploration and disciplining of inner life. Each major religion has its esoteric partner, for example: Buddhism, the religion, has Zen and Tibetan Buddhism; Islam has Sufism; and, Christianity has the hardly known: Christian-Rosicrucian Path of the Seven Stages of Christ's Passion, which appears in both Anthroposophy and Christian Hermeticism. Hinduism has Yoga. Judaism has Kabbalah.

I will not go into details here, because this is not a course in comparative esoterics. The point being made is that disciplined introspection of human inner life is very old. Human beings have always and forever wandered into these realms in search of the deepest truths. It is only a self-deluded reason which believes itself superior to the other capacities of the soul.

It might surprise some readers of this essay to consider the possibility that inner life itself evolves, that the inner life of the Greeks might be considerably different from our inner life. If this is the case, and I certainly have found it so, then inner disciplines must themselves evolve to meet the new conditions of soul life.

I was certainly surprised, during my thirties and forties, when I made a mature exploration of these various disciplines, to discover, in spite of the new age cliche', not all paths lead to the same goal. Moreover, there now are coming into the open disciplines which never existed before historically. It is as if the soul flowers ever anew its wisdom, never stopping in one place to rest, but always questing onward toward that which it has yet not become.

It is now my pleasure to introduce these new inner disciplines to the reader, in a small way, for my knowledge of them is of someone who is still a journyman, yet in this very effort (the creation of the pharaoh foundation) producing the final art which will establish me as a true master. Consciousness -- the soul -- has evolved, and in this evolved state has found champions, who, understanding what lived fresh within them, have manifested that with all the rightousness of which they were capable.

For myself, I have obviously thought to organize the most fundamental capacities of the soul into these terms: reason, imagination and devotion. Let me begin with what has appeared new concerning the faculty of reason.

The seer Rudolf Steiner, at the early age of twenty-three found the need to write a book which he called: Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. It was published initially in 1886. In this book he solved a riddle which has caused great difficulty to many minds during this age of science: What is the nature of the relationship between thought and experience?

He did not solve this riddle by logic, or by reason, although he used reason to show the way to its solution. There was no argument, no sets of axioms, nor propositions and proofs. For the riddle cannot be solved by any of these common tools of reason. It can only be solved by the objective inner perception of the act of thinking. Thinking must become aware of itself.

Before one can solve the riddle of the relationship between thinking and experience, one must make thinking itself an experience. It is the first experience. This is necessitated, understood Steiner, because all experience is mediated by thinking. Therefore (here we reason), we must know thinking itself, as an activity, in order to understand the implications of all that follows from it (thinking).

One can read these words, and read this book, yet never ever understand at all what is being talked about, because the matter is not found in words upon any page, or in any idea, but only in that act by which thinking becomes conscious of its own nature as an activity. The truth is not on this page, it resides only in your own soul.

Once the true nature of the act of thinking is understood, many implications are grown from this fact. Let me share one of the most essential, in Steiner's own words: "It is really the genuine, and indeed the truest, form of Nature, which comes to manifestation in the human mind, whereas for a mere sense-being only Nature's external aspect would exist. Knowledge plays here a role of world significance. It is the conclusion of a work of creation. What takes place in human consciousness is the interpretation of Nature to itself. Thought is the last member in a series of processes whereby Nature is formed." (emphasis added).

Within the Creation, the human being is the thinker -- the cognizer. To the Creation the act of thinking, the act of cognition, is the final act. Creation is only known to creation, when the human being completes the act of knowledge by forming the concepts through which Creation is known. The human being is not an accident of creation but the vehicle by which creation knows itself. The human being is the direction creation has always been heading toward, because only with the human being, and human cognition, does Nature know Itself.

Now one can argue with such an idea, endlessly. However, one can only argue if one has failed to know thinking as an experience.

Properly understood, this causes great possibilities and duties to fall within the sphere of human activity. Our search for knowledge, the great challenge of science itself, comes to be seen in a new light. Just in science is this hidden yearning of nature to know itself made manifest in all is driven glory.

The problem comes when thinking (reason) is assumed to be the sole means of finding true knowledge.

We all possess a capacity to make inner pictures. We dream, as an aspect of sleep, in pictures. We have an inner life, richer or poorer in individual cases, which includes fantasy, and daydreams. Students of the mind and of creativity have become more and more aware that the very best creative people think in pictures. In the inventor Thomas Edison's notebooks, the first act which proceeds a new investigation leading to a new invention, is a drawing. Edison apparently, using the imagination, sees the final result, before finding a way to reason to its creation.

The romantic poet S.T.Coleridge made a special study of his own soul, in particular with regard to the problem of imagination. It would be well worth the reader's efforts to make special acquaintence with these ideas: c.f.What Coleridge Thought, by Owen Barfield.

Now the obvious concern is that if mind is capable of subjectivity, certainly the imagination is even more subjective. Nothing being said here denies this obvious fact. However, students of the use of the imagination, in practice, have discovered how to overcome this problem.

As is discussed briefly in Steiner's Theory of Knowledge (see above), in Goethe's scientific works special mention was made of the powers of the imagination, in particular, in that form Goethe called exact sensorial phantasy. For Goethe the imagination was not used for the mere purpose of subjective individual creation, but rather for the purpose of re-creating in the mind, in an exact fashion, the forms in which Nature displayed itself. For example, Goethe made a special study of the Plant, and in the process of this study, spent a large amount of time re-creating in his own imagination, in as exactly a way as possible, the series of leaf forms individual plants went through over the course of their development from seed to flower.

What Nature had written as form in the world of Plants, Goethe re-created in the mind. Nature sang to the senses, and Goethe sang back with the images in his mind. Should we be surprised if a dialogue then arose between the Being of Nature and the spirit of Goethe?

The imagination is a power of the soul we hardly have begun to understand. The whole next phase of the future evolution of consciousness depends upon waking up to this newly emerging capacity in the soul.

We could ask the question: how do I develop the imagination in a way free of the tendencies to subjectivity, free in such a way that I have the certainty my reason requires?

The evolution of consciousness does not appear in human history in fits and starts, but rather much like a living organism, unfolding itself first in seed form, then putting forth stem and leaf, until finally it manifests in full flower. One of the seeds of the current stage in the evolution of consciousness was born in the field of mathematics with the development of synthetic or projective geometry.

Some workers in this field have been influenced by the work of Steiner and Goethe, by the ideals of the new thinking and the new use of the imagination. As a result there has come into existence books for the study of this new geometry, which do not rely on abstract algebraic symbol systems, but upon drawing and the use of the imagination directly. These individuals have made it possible for the ordinary human being to come to appreciate the truths of projective geometry, using the imagination directly.

The result is that the imagination, through the study of projective geometry, wakes up to itself with completely self-conscious exactness -- an exactness equal to all that we find in mathematics and which makes mathematics such an important tool of modern science. To be able to follow with the picturing faculty of the soul the transformational metamorphosis from point through line to plane; from the plane at infinity to the projected structure of a crystal; from the unfolding of seed through leaf to flower; from the bones of the spine to the structure of the cranium; to be able to behold in the imagination the basic laws of all organic development, laws far grander and more beautiful then mere organic chemistry and DNA research can imagine -- this is to begin to discover what is yet latent in the imagination, and which will draw us thereby into contact with that Mystery we see in a beautiful sunset and all the other soul opening vistas with which Nature gifts us.

Here are just a few of the available texts: Physical and Ethereal Spaces, George Adams, Rudolf Steiner Press. Projective Geometry, Creative Polarities in Space and Time, Olive Whicher, Rudolf Steiner Press. The Plant Between Sun and Earth, George Adams and Olive Whicher, Rudolf Steiner Press. The Field of Form, Lawrence Edwards, Floris Books.

Certain we know at least a little of the act of devotion in the religious sense. We seem to forget that a laborer at his work, or a mother at hers, are devoted as well. Devotion is a quality of the will, a never ceasing effort directed at a selfless goal.

We should be cautious not to confuse devotion with obsession. In obsession the will is possessed by a parasitic thought form, which extinguishes the individual will. Devotion is otherwise. It cannot be habit or automatic in any sense. It must be willed anew each time it is called forth. The baby cries for its food and comfort in the night. Its cries can be ignored, or one can give into them out of guilt or other negative emotional state. But to be devoted, truely devoted, is to offer, without thought of reward, sacrifice.

A scientist can be devoted to the pursuit of truth, and never realize the quality of goodness latent in this passion. Karl Popper wrote in his Realism the Aim of Science, pp. 8, Rowan and Littlefield, 1956: "...I think that there is only one way to science - or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and to fall in love with it;...".

Or as we might restate it: "...to meet a problem (reason), to see its beauty (imagination) and to fall in love with it (devotion),..."

Devotion is a deep well, that can be drawn from in ways many today do not imagine. If one wished to know more of this, then they might well want to make the acquaintence of the discussions of poverty, obedience and chastity in the book: Meditations on the Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism, author anonymous.

These then are a few words introducing the Path of Self Education, a transformation of the self through an integrated exploration of new relationships to old capacities of soul -- thinking, feeling, willing; reason, imagination, devotion; truth, beauty, goodness; and, science, art and religion.