Our Essential Being

In times like these, we may look around us and think what a long way we have to go. We may become despondent about the massive challenges the world faces and the forces working aggressively against each other to address them. It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. Yet here we are, and we have our work to do and our lives to live. In quiet moments, we may wonder why.

A significant why is that evolution is happening; it’s not just something that already happened. We are evolving, as is the earth and everything else. At one time, long ago, we lived under the direct guidance of the world of spiritual beings. Because we needed to become free beings, direct contact with the spiritual world became increasingly difficult until we reached a point about five or six hundred years ago when we could question whether it even exists. Today we have evolved enough that our intelligence is sufficient to reunite with that world by using it toward that aim.

We still have a period of grace from birth until around the age of 3, when we are in direct contact with the higher worlds. Most of us do not have memories that stretch back to our birth but begin at a point before we learn to say “I”, so we are never aware of that direct contact. That state of grace, the ability to have direct contact with the spiritual beings, is the goal toward which we must consciously strive.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

What we bring with us at birth contains something that is better than anything we can make of it in later life. In early childhood, the luciferic and ahrimanic forces have only a limited influence on our being. Essentially, they are active only in what we make of ourselves through our conscious life...

Our passing through successive incarnations is significant for the overall evolution of our essential being, which has undergone successive past lives and will continue to go through future lives. The evolution of the earth runs parallel to our own. At some point in the future, the earth will have reached the end of its course; then the planet earth, as a physical entity, will have to separate from the totality of human souls—just as when we die the body separates from the spirit, and the soul, in order to live on, enters the spiritual realm between death and rebirth. From this point of view, our highest ideal must be the striving to make all the fruits to be gained in earthly life truly our own before we die.

By the time the earth separates from humanity, we must have advanced to the point of giving over our whole being to the forces that presently work on us only in childhood. Only when we have reached this level can we claim to have attained our goal. Thus, through successive earthly lives, we must gradually make our entire being, including our consciousness, an expression of the forces that work on us under the guidance of the spiritual world in early childhood. This is the purpose of evolution.

After such considerations, the realization that we are not alone takes hold of our soul. This realization imbues us with humility, but also with a proper consciousness of our human dignity. We realize at the same time that something lives in us that can prove at all times that we can rise above ourselves to a self that is already surpassing us and will continue to do so from one life to the next. As this realization assumes a more and more definite form, it can have a very soothing, heartwarming effect and, at the same time, imbue the soul with the appropriate humility and modesty. What lives within us is truly a higher, divine human being, and we can feel ourselves pervaded by this being as by a living presence of whom we can say, ‘This is my inner guide in me.’

Given this, the thought easily arises that we should strive in every way possible to achieve harmony with that part in us that is wiser than our conscious intelligence. Thereafter, our attention will no longer be directed to the conscious self but will be focused instead on an expanded self, and from this perspective we can then combat and eradicate all our false pride and arrogance.

Excerpt from: The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity, Lecture 1 by Rudolf Steiner given June 5, 1911, in Copenhagen.

Steiner tells us that “what we bear within us is not a higher self that has to be developed gradually, but one that already exists and that often leads us to rise above ourselves.” We already know which are the healthy and unhealthy choices; our true self doesn’t make the unhealthy choices. When we listen to that self, our own wise self, we rise.

We do have a long way to go. We do have a lofty goal. Each one of us. If we accept our own strenuous path forward, our own struggle to first find and then listen to our higher self, perhaps we will have compassion for others as they struggle with their own journey. ‘Tis the season for love and compassion toward our fellow humans. Happy holidays!

Temper, Temper

Let’s imagine a building with people inside; the doors are locked and the windows are shuttered. Four separate people at different times want to get in.

The first marches up and knocks loudly. No one answers. She pounds on the door and still gets no answer. As her fury rises, she decides to break one of the windows to get in. The second is lightly jogging by and notices the door. Always curious, she knocks. Getting no response, she looks away, notices a butterfly, and immediately pursues it. The third trudges up to the door and waits to see if someone opens it. Eventually, she sits down nearby and waits to see what will happen. The fourth, lost in her thoughts, looks up and sees the door; after weighing the possibilities, she knocks and backs off. When no one answers, she is convinced the people inside don’t want her inside; head lowered, she sadly walks away.

This story, which has many variations, serves as a way for us to understand the four temperaments and thus understand ourselves and others better. Galen of Pergamon (129 AD – c. 216) named these four temperaments choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic. We can compare them to the four elements, choleric = fire, sanguine = air, phlegmatic = water, melancholic = earth.

Steiner found in his spiritual research that these four temperaments synthesize our incarnating spirit with its line of heredity. He says, “Temperament strikes a balance between the eternal and the ephemeral.” We each have all four temperaments, but one usually predominates over the other three and one is often barely evident. Mastering or balancing our temperaments is one of the many tasks that gives purpose to our lives.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

How does the spiritual-psychic stream, of which a human being forms a part through reincarnation, unite itself with the physical stream of heredity? The answer is that a synthesis must be achieved. When the two streams combine, each imparts something of its own quality to the other. In much the same way that blue and yellow combine to give green, the two streams in the human being combine to yield what is commonly known as temperament…

Cholerics come across as people who must always have their own way…

Sanguines surrender themselves in a certain sense to the constant and varied flow of images, sensations, and ideas…

Phlegmatic(s) are preoccupied with their own internal processes. They let external events run their course while their attention is directed inward…

Melancholics (experience pain that) continually wells up within them…

When we consider that the temperaments, each of which represents a mild imbalance, can degenerate into unhealthy extremes, we realize just how important this is… for in every temperament there lie two dangers of aberration, one great, one small.

One danger for young cholerics is that they will never learn to control their temper as they develop into maturity. That is the small danger. The greater is that they will become foolishly single-minded.

For the sanguine the lesser danger is flightiness; the greater is mania, induced by a constant stream of sensations.

The small danger for the phlegmatic is apathy; the greater is stupidity, dullness.

For the melancholic, insensitivity to anything other than personal pain is the small danger; the greater is insanity.

In light of all this it is clear that to guide the temperaments is one of life’s significant tasks… By filling ourselves with practical wisdom such as this, we learn to solve that basic riddle of life, the other person… Spiritual science makes it possible that when two souls meet and one demands love, the other offers it. If something else is demanded, that other thing is given. Through such true, living wisdom do we create the basis for society.

Excerpt from: The Four Temperaments, Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 4, 1909.

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I found this temperament chart on Pinterest. Click to enlarge. Sources are listed above.

Steiner gives specific guidance to teachers in the first Waldorf School with ways to recognize the temperament of a child and the methods that will be most effective in working with each one. For example, these teachers know that the choleric child needs to respect the teacher’s expertise while the sanguine child needs to love the teacher’s personality; that the melancholic child needs to know the teacher has experienced suffering and the phlegmatic child needs the help of friends to find things interesting. Waldorf teachers incorporate these principles in every aspect of their teaching.

If we go back to our story at the beginning, we will probably recognize the predominate temperament in ourselves and in the people we know. Understanding each other’s behaviors based on this significant underlying reality allows us to better communicate with each other and to better meet each other’s needs. We can also understand why natural leaders are often cholerics, why every social gathering needs at least one sanguine, why the calm heads in a crisis are often phlegmatics, and the people who will have thought with precision through every course of action are often melancholics.

We can gain a deeper understanding of the four temperaments in a simple Google search as the far-ranging strengths and weaknesses of each temperament cannot be included here. You can also listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG8AihZyOlg where you will find the excerpted lecture above in full.

Balance

Work-Life Balance is one of the Topic pages of the Harvard Business Review indicating its importance along with other more traditional topics such as Managing People, Communication, and Technology. Lots of us are demanding that the “work” side of the balance be lightened, and employers are taking notice by offering their employees incentives like playful workplace environments, flexible hours, the chance to work off-site, etc. The “life” side of the balance—travel and adventure, scaling mountains or skiing down them, time with friends and families, eating good food, reading good books—comprises experiences that more and more of us consider to be essential to life.

Creating a healthy work-life balance requires us to think about which experiences we want to have and how to prioritize them, knowing all along that the experiences we choose now will vary over the course of our lifetimes due to circumstances, both inward and outward, that will change. We can think about our lives in this way because we are conscious beings who can act purposefully to create the experiences, both inward and outward, that we wish to have.

Back in the third post, Seeing Red, we explored how the outer world is perceived through our senses and how our thinking attaches meaning to that which we perceive; this is consciousness. If we couldn’t attach meaning to our perceptions, we wouldn’t be human. Steiner says that what we feel about our experiences belongs to our soul, and what we learn from our experiences belongs to our spirit. In other words, we are spiritual beings because we have experiences, we feel something about them, and we learn from them.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

The soul nature of man is not determined by the body alone. Man does not wander aimlessly and without purpose from one sensation to another, nor does he act under the influence of every casual incitement that plays upon him either from without or through the processes of his body. He thinks about his perceptions and his acts. By thinking about his perceptions, he gains knowledge of things. By thinking about his acts, he introduces a reasonable coherence into his life. He knows that he will worthily fulfill his duty as man only when he lets himself be guided by correct thoughts in knowing as well as acting… Nature subjects man to the laws of changing matter, but he subjects himself to the laws of thought. By this means he makes himself a member of a higher order than the one to which he belongs through his body. This order is the spiritual.

The spiritual is as different from the soul as the soul is from the body. As long as only the particles of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen that are in motion in the body are spoken of, we do not have the soul in view. Soul life begins only when within the motion of these particles the feeling arises, “I taste sweetness,” or “I feel pleasure.” Likewise, we do not have the spirit in view as long as merely those soul experiences are considered that course through anyone who gives himself over entirely to the outer world and his bodily life. This soul life is rather the basis of the spiritual just as the body is the basis of the soul life. The biologist is concerned with the body, the investigator of the soul—the psychologist—with the soul, and the investigator of the spirit with the spirit. It is incumbent upon those who would understand the nature of man by means of thinking, first to make clear to themselves through self-reflection the difference between body, soul, and spirit.”

Excerpt from: Theosophy, Chapter 1: The Essential Nature of Man, 1904 by Rudolf Steiner.

Natural science still hasn’t found the answer to human consciousness. David Chalmers*, who coined the phrase “hard problem” when referring to the question of consciousness itself, wants to understand what experiences are. Thus far, looking at the operation of the brain and trying to find out how and why it would create an experience out of perceptions and concepts, hasn’t yielded any results. In fact, Chalmers, who has been looking at this hard problem for decades, is now proposing that consciousness may be a fundamental like time and space; that maybe it isn’t brain-based. This is radical thinking for natural science, but it will be spiritual science that provides the means by which we will understand human consciousness and how it evolves.

Immanuel Kant recognized the soul; he simply said we can never know about its origin. Steiner says we can. Not through some kind of blind faith, and not through a materialist science, but through a spiritual science that develops our consciousness to perceive the whole world, not just the material one. Imagine the work-life balance we might achieve if we expanded our consciousness? If you want to know more, you can read Steiner.

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* David Chalmers is a philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University, and a Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He is also well-known for introducing the "hard problem" of consciousness, which has sparked immense discussion and research in the philosophy of mind, psychology, and neuroscience.

“Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

“How do you explain consciousness?”

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_chalmers_how_do_you_explain_consciousness/discussion?c=62080#t-272575