Here are some keys that I have created to transition from our normal consciousness (where my ego merely associates mental images, carries out an inner monologue and flips through subjective ideas) to moral intuition (where I self-create a free space in the spiritual world from which to create and organize moral-concepts). Dr. Yeshayahu (Jesaiah) Ben-Aharon taught this approach to participants in the Independent School of Spiritual Science beginning in 2009. But he did not create the keys for us. Each one must free herself. You will have to make your own keys (as I have described clearly in my recent books), but these keys below may give you an inspiration to help you find your way through the rich maze of the mighty 'Philosophy of Freedom' by Rudolf Steiner. It is alive and it will always be alive, because it is a spiritual creation. Can you become alive enough to reach it? To blend with it?
Key 1 - Quote - Preface to First Edition (1894, revised 1918) - CONFRONT EVERY IDEA
"One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage."
Two other effective lock-picks:
a. "We do not want any knowledge of the kind that has become frozen once and for all into rigid academic rules, preserved in encyclopedias valid for all time. Each one of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest at hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe."
b. "Philosophy is an Art. All real philosophers have been artists in the realm of concepts."
Key 2 - Quote - Preface to Revised Edition (1918) - INTUITION, which perceives the inner essence of the free human being in active thinking, IS NOT REMEMBERED
"Everything to be discussed in this book is oriented toward two root questions of human soul life. One question is whether a possibility exists of intuiting (anschauen) the essence of the human being in such a way that this intuition proves to be a support for everything else which, through experience and science, approaches him but which he feels cannot support itself and can be driven by doubt and critical judgment into the realm of uncertainty. The other question is this: is man, as a being who wants and wills, justified in considering himself to be free..."
"The intuition (Anschauung) under discussion here with respect to both these questions presents itself as one which, once gained, can itself become a part of active soul life. A theoretical answer is not given which, once acquired, merely carries with it a conviction preserved by memory...No such fixed and final answer is given, but rather a region of experience of the soul is indicated, in which, through the inner activity of the soul itself, the question is answered anew in a living way at any moment."
Key 3 - I AM CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING.
Advice - Adopt and think through all of the ideas, approaches, contradictory positions, and paradoxes in each Chapter. Take the opponents of Steiner just a seriously as Steiner's statement of his own position. You cannot create the space for your own free experience by merely making a mental picture, and subjective idea out of Steiner's activity (but each person must bitterly experience that this is precisely what you believe 'thinking' actually is). You must transform your consciousness to experience moral intuition; then freedom is self-created. Experiencing Steiner's 'answer' as a mental image is never enough. Such an approach is just replacing what Steiner DID with your own dead mental picture. You have to MEET HIM in the act of creation.
Quote - Spinoza's Letter in Chapter 1 - He 'proves' that we are not free (because only God is free):
"Suppose that during its motion the stone thinks and knows that it is striving to the best of its ability to continue in motion. This stone, which is conscious only of its striving and is by no means indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free, and that it continues in motion for no other eason that its own will to continue. But this is that human freedom which everybody claims to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men are conscious of their desires, but do not know the causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that he is free when he desires milk..."
Some thinking strategies to get to intuition of the monist sensible-supersensible wholeness, which demonstrates in the moment the limits of any representation, and also Spinoza's representation:
A. Anything absolutely new does not arise because of the previous linear causes. Intuition is absolutely new. Do you experience thinking which is absolutely new in the moment?
B. The stone is not actually separate from the environment; the human is not separate from the environment, thus I am not separate from the creative source of thinking. Can I experience the way my thinking is linked to the whole world?
C. Spinoza says that only God is free because only He creates all substance (and his own substance). But! Intuitive thinking also creates its own conceptual garment. It is therefore free. But do you experience the creation of concepts in intuition?
Steiner's Keys (but they must be enlivened; they are not true is they are merely grasped with subjective association of mental images, brain thinking and so on, i.e. normal consciousness) -
1. A man consciously forming his motives is free.
2. Knowing the reason for one's action is ultimately intuition; it is both free and moral.
Bonus Key from Chapter 1 - Quote: "Between us and the place where the causes are active there is the skull of the donkey." (Paul Ree)
The Key Itself - You must experience your skull as the real boundary between living thinking and dead mental representations. You must experience the donkey in you which turns all of Steiner's words, whether Anthroposophical or Philosophical, into mere words and forms that are stored in your brain, and merely give your ego greater subjective strength. In other words, you must confront the beast or the donkey in your thinking which is ill. Only then can you find Intuition.
"The way to the heart is through the head." RS, end of Ch 1.
KEY 4 - SEE THE OTHER BEINGS IN YOU; I am Inside Nature and Outside Nature; The human and the World are not 1 and are not 2. Intuit the Pulse.
Chapter 2 - Find the 3 souls in your heart. One seeks matter (Ahriman), One seeks escape (Lucifer), One meets the essence of nature in intuitive, creative self-world knowing (C...).
Chapter 2 unfolds in a subtle way. Steiner does not lay out things in linear way. Many things are only hinted at. Of course his thought is absolutely penetrating, and the style of his writing is artistically sound. The dramatic unfolding of the text, however, has a different purpose than explicitly showing a way to the door of freedom. He is hiding as much as he is showing. Why? Because he knows that stringing together subjectively grasped mental pictures or words will not get you out of the maze. He is weaving a web of thoughts and positions to see if the astute student can enter into this web, maze, or labyrinth and get out again. He is trying to show the student the landscape of the labyrinth, so that the student can learn how to get out on her own. He is showing us that we can learn much from Ahriman and Lucifer. But we have to self-create our own door to get out. Nobody can become free who merely has the mental image of freedom. And nobody can create the intuition of freedom for someone else. Intuition is individual. Of course, we can help each other to wake up to the universal source of thinking's terrain, in which we all are swimming. And spiritually, our souls, life, love, warmth, and spirits are woven together.
Note Carefully - RS shows us the limits of dualism, monism, Fichte's Intuition of the I, Lange's Spiritual-Materialism, and hinting that Goethe gives us a clue to Reality (Schelling is also present behind the scenes, let us say). Does RS later identify himself as a monist who uses ethical individualism? If so, why are the failures of monism shown here? Does a representation that I know that monism is the 'right answer' create the self-intuition of free thinking? Or not?
Quote to Pick Locks With - "We can only understand nature outside us when we have first learned to recognize it within us. What within us is akin to nature must be our guide...We shall not speculate about the interaction of nature and spirit. But we shall penetrate to the depths of our own being, there to find those elements which we took with us in our flight from nature. Investigation of our own being must bring the solution to the riddle. We must reach a point where we can say to ourselves: Here I am no longer merely 'I,' here I encounter something which is more than I." (end of Chapter 2)
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