I recently watched an episode of Know Thyself podcast (121) where Andre Duqum interviewed Rupert Spira. A segment of the conversation went like this:
Andre: “do you feel that there is any inherent meaning to life outside of our own projections?”
Rupert: “from the point of view of the finite mind yes, there’s a meaning to life”
Andre: “and that would be?”
Rupert: “in one way or another to be divested of its limitations and, to stand revealed as it essentially is, eternal the infinite. Then to express the fruits of that recognition in everyday life and share it with humanity”
I love what Spira said and it clearly stuck with me, because ever since listening to that podcast I have been having very clear realisations around projection and perception. Perception in many cases, if not most, is a projection of our own minds mirrored back to us in what we see in the outside world. However, this perception is vested (versus divested) with the stories of our lives, pleasant or painful, we largely see from the perspective of our conditioning, whether that be cultural, religious, familial, societal or just the kind of day we are having. Beneath all of our conditioning however lies our essential nature and discovering this essential nature is the purpose of life. This then begs the question, ‘what would the world look like if we knew our essential nature and instead of seeing through the lens of our conditioning, saw with our spirit?
More than 100 year ago Rudolf Steiner (1861 – 1925) wrote his seminal work, The Philosophy of Freedom. Steiner held a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Rostock in Germany and his life was dedicated to what it means to be human, thus, the meaning of human life. Looking at the fundamental point Steiner was making in The Philosophy of Freedom, in relation to the above and what Spira is saying it could be said that Steiner was saying something similar. In The Philosophy of Freedom Steiner looks at thought and puts forward the argument for the existence of pure thought. Pure thought, he asserts, arises from within and is not dependent on sense perception. Pure thinking to Steiner is our ability to draw from the world of thoughts that which lives within and without us.
He argues that thought is not ‘caused’ by our sensory perception of the objects we see in the world, rather, it (our perception) is attached to the sense objects of the world in the way of concepts and thus translates the world. What exists out in the external world is recognized by me through my ability to join it with a concept. I can pull concepts from the world of thought through my silent inner perceptions and then match them to the world outside. In other words, Steiner held to the notion that thinking in its purest and essential nature is not due to sense perception, my seeing something, or hearing something or touching something. For Steiner thinking in its purest sense is the impetus for creation and thus a deeply spiritual activity which is not dependent on the senses. According to Steiner, when pure thinking is awakened through inner peaceful vision it becomes a creative and free spiritual activity. It is a spiritual activity which unifies humanity with the cosmos.
In a rigorous and absolutely logical way Steiner shows, (in The philosophy of Freedom), how it is through the activity of pure thinking that humanity brings to life the universe we live in. Not only in our subjective minds, like that kind of thinking which is merely a projection for example, but in a reality. For Steiner the activity of pure thinking, receiving the true essence of the cosmos, divested from our projections, allows for the seeing and experiencing of the spirit that exists in that which is being observed. The relationship between my pure thinking – my ability to receive the nature of what I observe – and that which lives in the world is the process of awakening the universe in me and me in the universe. The activity of this form of thinking is heart thinking. Heart thinking, is not bound by time and space, in fact, heart thinking is unattainable if we are trapped in the illusion that consciousness is born out of the physical.
“I rejected the path of knowledge that tries to break through to reality by means of sense-observation. I wanted to intimate that reality is to be sought by entering more deeply into the inner being of the soul, not by attempting to break through the outer world. . . . As man perceives the world through his senses, he sees an illusion. But when, from his own inner being, he adds sense-free thinking to sense perception, the illusion is permeated with reality: it ceases to be illusion. Then the human spirit experiences itself within man and meets the spirit in the world; the latter is no longer hidden from man behind the physical world; it weaves and moves within it. To discover the spirit in the world . . . will come about when man advances through self-development from experiencing the physically perceptible to experiencing sense-free thinking.” Rudolf Steiner
