To all:

I've been e-away for some time now, but I have
not been entirely idle, Anthro-wise.  I have
produced a piece of writing, which I will post
immediately following.  It could stand alone, I
suppose, but I will offer a few words to explain
my absence from these lists, if nothing else --
perhaps also to serve as an introduction to my
following post, hopefully to make it a little
more comprehensible.

My offline life during recent months has given
me even less time online -- less, that is, even
than I have been wont to complain about.  I have
sometimes not gotten any time online for weeks
at a time, even once for a month at a stretch. 
And even when I have gotten online, it hasn't
been for long . . . . my usual complaint, only
more and more so. -- So, I haven't read much of
what has transpired on these lists; sometimes I
have just skimmed and not much more.  And I must
apologize to those who have sent me stuff to
read; I have read hardly any of it. 

My offline life has been, and still is,
something that I might, optimistically and
hopefully, consider to be a "trial".  But less
optimistically and more realistically, I must
confess that I am not doing very well with my
"trial".  I sometimes feel as though my life is
going down the toilet, and I am losing control
of myself in ways that I had thought that I had
long outgrown.  I am in a jumble of runaway
thoughts and emotions, and I am being harried,
hurried, harassed, and my buttons are constantly
being pushed.  I am being forced to realize how
little progress I have made along the Path of
Knowledge as given by Steiner.  I am repeatedly
breaking almost every rule in *KoHW*, and I keep
losing my temper, even though I try not to.   
It's sometimes almost as though I am watching
someone else acting badly.  And it's about the
most I can do to get through a few days without
cussing; if I do, it's only because I hadn't
been especially provoked for a few days.  When I
am provoked, my mouth might launch efbombs all
over the place before I can catch myself. 
Sometimes I have launched serial salvos of
efbombs involuntarily while I am thinking:  "I
shouldn't be doing this; I shouldn't be doing
this."  And the Gay Liberation Front might be
glad, and surprised, to be informed that there
are as many CSers as I have named on the
highway.  But at least I don't run off at the
mouth this way within the hearing of others, as
far as I know.

So it goes.  I haven't even been able to pull my
mind together enough to read much more of
Bondarev's *PoF* book.  I am one of the few
people in this world to be privileged to have a
good deal of Graham Rickett's English
translation, and still I haven't done much with
it.  And I can't use lack of time as my only
excuse; it isn't due only to lack of time, but
also to lack of self-application, and probably
also to lack of smarts.  I fear that I will
sprout wings and fly over the Moon before I will
understand this book.  (And truth be told, I
haven't managed well even the little time that I
have had.)

But I haven't failed altogether in this regard;
I am still trying to work further into the core
idea in Bondarev's book:  the 7fold dialectic. 
Around the time of my last post I was starting
to gather material and thoughts for another
attempt at 7fold parsing.  But then I ran out of
energy for the project and dropped it, even
though I had a little money invested in it.  I
couldn't work myself up to doing more of the
same kind of stuff that I had already done.  I
had done some 7fold parsing, some fairly
difficult, and I felt that the time had come for
me to take the next step forward.  But I didn't
know what that next step might be, other than to
try to think 7foldedly myself.  I hadn't done
well with that previously, but I was about ready
to try again.  As I said before, there was that
promise I made to myself that I would at least
learn how to *think* in this incarnation.  And
if real thinking be 7folded, then I must learn
how to do it 7foldedly. 

So, I set about to try to solve a problem
through 7fold thinking, as best I understood
Bondarev's exposition of that procedure.  But I
didn't want to approach just any problem, and
especially not one that Steiner had already
solved for us, at least not one that he had
solved to my knowledge.  So, I chose a problem
that I had within myself about one of Steiner's
own deeds, a problem that really bothered me. 
Something bothered me about Steiner's approach
to and recommendations for agriculture. -- And
my attempt to solve that problem through 7fold
thinking is the substance of my following post.

This attempt has stretched over almost half a
year, off and on, a lot more off than on.  And I
am still not entirely satisfied with the result,
but after so much time I feel that it is high
time to bring it to some kind of conclusion,
however imperfect it might be.  I have stared at
it for so long that I can hardly even see it
now, much less judge it objectively enough to
improve it much.  There were long stretches when
I hardly worked a lick on it, and there were
times that I hardly even cared whether thinking
was 7folded, or 14folded, or 98folded, or
whatever; I just wanted relief from my inner
misery.  And I remembered that sometimes
objective thinking had done that for me, and
that was mainly what I wanted then from
thinking.  Still, after a while, I always pulled
myself together and got back around to my
attempt. -- I hope that even a flawed result is
better than no result at all.

There are some reasons why I am bringing this
attempt before this little e-public.  Ideally, I
would like to have a discussion with some co-
workers.  But my situation is such that I could
hardly take part in this discussion, even if I
could find some co-workers.  Even so, I invite
comments and suggestions for improvement; but be
forewarned:  I might not get around to
responding to such.

Still, I allow myself to hope that my launching
this 7fold attempt into e-space might inspire
other people to make their own attempts.  And I
think that more people making more such attempts
are needed; as far as I can see, there aren't
many now.  (Granted, I don't see very far, even
in English cyberspace; hopefully, some are
already "out there".)  As Bondarev says, the
general culture has reached the point, a crisis,
where this kind of thinking must become a
general possession of Mankind, if culture is not
to decline into a new barbarism.  This kind of
thinking must become exoteric as the foundation
for "the New Cultural Epoch".  And for this vast
undertaking we need an army of 7fold thinkers,
and I am trying to recruit volunteers for this
army.  Maybe my example, however weak and clumsy
it may be, will inspire others to enlist.

I have written my attempt so that, I would like
to expect, the reader, if he read closely
enough, can almost see me at work.  I have shown
much of my own process, including almost raw
notes (*almost*, with a little clean-up and
redaction).  And I have asked myself how much of
my personal struggle I should make public.  It
is a basic requirement, as taught by Steiner,
that the esoteric student shouldn't "chatter"
about his inner experiences; if he does, he
loses whatever incipient abilities that he talks
about.  But I have considered:  what I am
talking about here isn't really esoteric; as
Bondarev says, it can and should become very
exoteric.  It has some tenets in common with
esoteric work, but it is still not so deep as
the esoteric.  Anyway, in my following post I am
talking about nothing more exotic than mental
imagery and deep feelings.  (And anyway again, I
am leaving out the really personal stuff.)

Probably the esoteric, or quasi-esoteric,
principle that has been most powerfully
impressed upon me during this 7folded attempt is
the need for the soul-quality of *reverence*. 
Reverence doesn't come easily for me, but it
seemed that the only way I could make any
progress at all with my attempt was to work-up
some, somehow.  I found that I could not "think"
7foldedly in anything like the usual frame of
mind:  I had to "repent", as the Baptist (or his
English translators) said; I had to change my
state of consciousness.  Certainly I had to
follow the thoughts where they wanted to go,
rather than trying to think as I might please --
but this principle is required for any kind of
objective thinking; this practice alone will not
get one beyond a certain point, beyond to the
next level.  To get further, it seemed, I had to
change my whole soul-mood; I had to enter a
deepness, a solemnity, an earnestness that isn't
at all usual for me.  I suppose that this is a
fundamental principle, perhaps the most
important, in common between 7fold thinking and
esoteric training as taught by Steiner.  In the
beginning of *KoHW* RS says that the esoteric
student must *begin* with a habit of reverence
and that without this the student won't get very
far at all.  And so it seems to be also with
7fold thinking; I couldn't get very far without
getting myself into a mood of, for lack of a
better word, "reverence".  And for someone such
as myself, *reverence* is usually hardly more
than a foreign word; I hardly knew what it
meant.  I had been working at it somewhat for
years, as for years I had been trying, not very
well, to be an esoteric student -- but now I had
to work at it all the more, sometimes
desperately, and probably contemplating
Steiner's own actions was a good training for
me.  Steiner himself lived and worked in a state
of deep reverence that is hard for most of us,
probably, to imagine, and the only way to
understand Steiner's actions is to get oneself
into an at least similar mood.  Not easy to do;
it's work, sometimes painful.

And really, understanding Steiner, as we all
know, isn't easy.  It takes work, and not just
any kind or work, but work upon oneself.  This
is a "process" in the psycho-therapeutic sense
of the word:  one must gain in awareness of
oneself, bring the subconscious into
consciousness, and change oneself so as to live
in accordance with Reality.  Such a "process" of
change usually entails some pain of some kind,
and who wants to inflict the real pain of self-
change upon oneself? -- Sometimes during my
hiatus I have glanced over into the WC e-group,
to reconnoiter enemy activity, as it were.  Of
course, I didn't have much time for that, just
enough to scan some of the blurbs and skim some
the posts that looked interesting.  And this did
help to inspire me, or shame me, to work upon my
attempt at 7fold thinking:  the enemies of
Anthroposophy were getting their "work" done,
such as it is, but I wasn't getting my work
done; so I'd better get to work. 

Anyway, the point I'm getting at here is what I
perceived to be the utter lack of real thinking
over there in The Snake Nest; there's plenty of
cleverness, to be sure, and plenty of busyness,
but no real work in the sense I am talking
about, and no real thinking.  I might say (with
only a little exaggeration) that the basic
"thinking" over there consists of what I might
call "dancing the WC Three-step":

1.  Steiner said such-and-such.
2.  Such-and-such conflicts with my beliefs
and/or feelings and/or wishes and/or fears
and/or world-view and/or ideology etc. etc. etc.
3.  Ergo, Steiner had his head inserted into his
lower alimentary orifice.

Now, even the slightest acquaintance with
genuine thinking informs one that this "dance"
is not a process of thinking but only one of
reacting.  If one *thinks* at all, one must
realize that one's own beliefs etc. have no more
inherent, *a priori* claim to truth than any
conflicting proposition.  Even to *begin* to
think one must consider one's own beliefs and
conflicting assertions evenhandedly,
objectively; one must act in accordance with the
principle that the Truth is true whether or not
it is agreeable to one's subjective attitudes;
one must act, through one's thinking, in
conformity with the realization that one's own
beliefs are no more *inherently* true than any
contrary beliefs. -- This general principle is
so obvious that few, if any, would deny it
outright.  (Well, there are some so-called
"philosophers" who deny the reality of objective
truth, but I suppose that they are "few" as
compared to the human race upon the Earth.) 
However, it is easy to say as a principle yet
hard to do in practice.  To really *do* it in
practice one must, first of all, do one's own
thinking objectively; one must follow the
thinking itself where it wants to go, not where
one might want it to go.  It is hard to realize,
really, that thinking has a "will of its own",
at it were.  And to follow in one's own thinking
the "will" of the thinking one must exert one's
own will to suppress one's own usual beliefs,
habits, opinions, etc.  The first, most
necessary task of such exertion is to stop one's
own mind from running in its usual channels; one
must stop one's own mind from determining one's
"thoughts" (which are then really pseudo-
thoughts) and instead force one's own mind into
conformity with the (real) thoughts themselves. 
That is, one must bring oneself from a state of
inner passivity to a state of inner activity. 
(Most of us, most of the time, are passive in
relation to our inner habits, wishes, fears,
opinions, etc.) -- This general principle, of
course, is the first big lesson that Steiner
taught in *PoF*.  And again, it is easy to say
but hard to do; it is especially hard to do for
one such as myself who has mental traits that
might add up to what is now called *attention
deficit disorder*.  (I would guess that, if the
increasing prevalence of this diagnosis is a
valid indication, then real thinking is becoming
harder and harder for more and more people,
despite that fact that we live in the
"Consciousness Soul Epoch", when World-Evolution
should be making such real thinking possible for
more and more people.  We truly live in an era
and environment of conflicting upward and
downward forces.)

If one can achieve this kind of thinking, then
one might enter the third stage of the Hegelian
dialectic:  "synthesis".  Here one considers
objectively what can be said for and against
both of the first two stages ("thesis" and
*antithesis), what truth and falsity each
contains, and what "higher", more complete truth
can be drawn from such consideration.  And to do
this one must have, first of all, a little "good
faith", that is, a willingness to follow the
Truth even when and where "the truth hurts". 
(It seems to me that such "good faith" is
especially what is lacking over in the WC, but
The Snake Nest is a special, extreme case where
Steiner-thought is concerned.  All that might be
the subject of other, long posts, and I have
already made some of them.  But I feel that
pursuing that thread here and now would take
this discussion too far afield.)

Still, if one has such "good faith", one also
needs to have some inner energy and strength,
for it takes *work* to get control of one's own
mind and to force it into conformity with
objective Truth, to think objectively.  And I do
have a lot of trouble gathering up such energy
and getting myself to *work* consistently at a
line of thought.  This is so, even though I know
from experience that real thinking, if sustained
long enough, usually suffuses me with a healing
balm for my soul.  Well, the literal definition
of *addiction* is *continued behavior despite
adverse consequences*; I suppose that I, like so
many others, have my own addiction.  My
addiction is to inner sloth, even though I know
that it has adverse consequences for me.  That
is my problem, but I strongly suspect that
plenty of other people have the same problem.

-- What all this means for the prospective 7fold
thinker is that good faith, inner exertion, and
objective thinking can get one as far as the
classic Hegelian dialectic goes.  But to go
further, to enter into the specifically 7folded
dialectic as described by Bondarev (and as I
understand him), one needs to employ still other
mental faculties.  The fourth stage, according
to Bondarev, is that of "beholding"
(*Anschauung*), and as I understand it, this is
a quasi-visual experience.  And Steiner, I
think, talked about this (or something very
similar) in *PoF*.  There he called it *moral
fantasy*. And RS did say it in his
autobiography:

(from *The Story of My Life*; XX)

"I spoke at that time of 'moral fantasy' as the
source of the moral in the isolated human
individuality. I was far from any intention of
referring to this source as to something not
wholly real. On the contrary, I wished to point
out in fantasy the force which helps the
spiritual world in all its aspects to break
through into the individual man. Of course, if
one is to attain to a real experience of the
spiritual, then it is necessary that the
spiritual forces of knowledge should enter into
one – imagination, inspiration, intuition. But
to a man conscious of himself as an individual
the first ray of a spiritual revelation comes by
means of fantasy; and we observe, indeed, in
Goethe the way in which fantasy holds aloof from
everything fantastic, and becomes a picture of
the spiritually real."

I note that the German word *Phantasie* does not
have the negative connotations that the English
*fantasy* does; the German merely refers to the
faculty of creating vivid mental images, not
necessarily to a wish-driven escape from
Reality.  Such image-crating "fantasy" might not
be quite "Imagination" with a capital *I*, but
it can be the way to get "the first ray of a
spiritual revelation".  (And neither does
Bondarev, if I understand him, intend the 7fold
dialectic to be the esoteric "Imagination", but
to be an exoteric development which must come
into the whole culture.)

If such "fantasy" is to become "beholding",
then, I think, it must indeed become a "ray" of
"spiritual revelation".  But the "spiritual" is,
in reality, an assortment of *beings*; if one is
to get a revelation, it must come as a gift from
a being or beings.  A real, true revelation can
come only from the Good Beings.  And the Good
Beings will give such gifts only to the pure in
heart.  Ergo, if one is to achieve "beholding"
in Bondarev's sense, then one must be pure in
heart. -- Now, this fact might present an
impasse for most of us; surely for one such as
myself.  I have enough self-awareness to know
that I am not pure in heart, and therefore I
might give up the attempt right here.  But I
could not allow myself, after all that I had
gone through over many years, to just quit; I
felt that I had to move forward.  At this point,
it seemed, realistic honestly with myself might
slide into dishonest excusing of my sloth.  I
came to a thought, an attitude, such as:  "OK,
Robert; stop making excuses and *get pure*." 
And I was desperate enough to try to get pure,
even if only for a few minutes at a time.  And -
- miracle of miracles -- apparently even a few
minutes of inner purity was enough to allow me
to indeed move forward.  I did "get" some mental
images that did seem to be relevant to a
solution for the problem that I had set for
myself.

This fourth stage, this "beholding", is the
crucial point where the 3-step Hegelian
dialectic makes the leap into a higher realm. 
It is true that the mental imagery might become
a stream of meaningless (or seemingly
meaningless?) junk.  How then to "get", and then
to recognize, pictures that are meaningful and
relevant to a solution for the problem at hand?
-- I don't know any answer to this question
other than to be purely unprejudiced:  earnest .
. . and more, reverent . . . even desperate.

Once in that higher realm, I tried to keep
moving forward, into the fifth stage, which
Bondarev calls *perceiving of the Idea*.  I
don't believe that I came to "see" the core Idea
in the same way that, for instance, Goethe "saw"
the Archetypal Plant, but I did get what seemed
to be a visual clue to the Idea -- which I then
had to "think out" in much the usual way.

The sixth and seventh stages turned out to be
the most difficult and time-consuming for me; I
did most of that work after I was already into
the write-up.  And I will let that that write-
up, my following post, stand as an display of my
work-process.  (It seems that the latter four
stages were, in a way, a recapitulation and
expansion, on a higher, more "seeing" level, of
the third stage, which was "thought out" in much
the usual way.)
 
-- That's about all I have to say in this
introductory missive.  The reader will have to
judge whether my attempt was a success or a
failure, or something in between.  I think that
it was at least a partial success; in the end,
apparently, hopefully, the thought-problem that
I had set for myself did actually get solved. 
Maybe my 7fold thinking was somewhat ragged and
artificial; I wasn't "just thinking" but trying
to make my thinking conform to a template, such
as I understood Bondarev's concept to form.  And
maybe I was straining to bring my thinking to a
7folded conclusion.  OK; maybe I'll do better
next time, if there be a next time.

But here's the thing:  at least I did step up to
the plate and take a whack at it.  And I hope
that my attempt, however skilled or inept, will
inspire, or provoke, others to step up also.  As
I said, I believe that we need an army.  You may
say that you're not pure enough . . . well,
neither am I; the pure in heart are in short
supply.  But:  "Ya do the best ya can with what
ya got."

A final note:  When I could work myself up to
it, objective thinking did in fact provide me
with some relief from my inner misery, and it
still does; it does when and if I can sustain it
long enough.  If I could put this stuff in
bottles and sell it, I'd be a very rich man. 
But Steiner already, long ago, taught it in
*PoF*, and it's not something one can "drink"
passively; one has to *do* it.

Robert Mason

(The reader will encounter a possibly confusing
mixture of tenses.  This mixture derives from
the way in which the following text was
conceived and written.  I first thought through
the basic sequence of ideas [up to a point],
making only sparse notes at the time.  I later,
two months or so, started to expand and "write
up" these thoughts, trying to make them
readable.  As I was doing the write-up I was
thinking through the thoughts again, sometimes
modifying them.  The past tense usually
indicates what I was doing and thinking the
first time around; the present tense usually
indicates what I was thinking during the write-
up.  Sometimes the present tense indicates an
attempt to bring the past process into the
present for the reader.  And sometimes the
present tense indicates something that I was
thinking the first time around but still
considered to be true during the later write-up. 
The sixth [somewhat] and especially the seventh
stages I pretty much conceived and thought out
during the write-up. -- Robert Mason)

(Most of the quotations are from the eLib.)

>>1 -- THESIS:  Rudolf Steiner in his teachings
on agriculture (which came to be called the
"Bio-Dynamic" [BD] method) recommended the use
of "preparations" which depend upon
manipulations of slaughterhouse products, e.g.
bovine horns, internal organs, etc.<<

>>2 -- ANTITHESIS:  But such methods are
atrocious; they involve, and require, the
deliberate, methodical infliction of pain and
death upon animals which are under human control
and are threatening no-one.<<

This antithesis is a reaction, a thought, that
immediately comes to my mind and won't let it
go.  It appears at first that Steiner was just
flat wrong, morally wrong, in his actions,
however "right" he might have been about the
effectiveness of such agricultural methods.

That was my reaction, not the only one, but one
that is prominent in my mind and continues to
bother me, no matter how much respect I have for
Steiner's abilities and deep knowledge.  But if
I do not rest with that reaction, if I press
forward and try to *think* about this problem,
then I must follow where the thoughts themselves
lead.  And as my self-imposed assignment, I am
trying to think 7foldedly, as that form was
described by Bondarev. 

The third stage of thinking, according to
Bondarev (as with Hegel) is the "synthesis" of
thesis and antithesis.  So I ask myself:  What
can be said for and against both of these two
particular opposing thoughts under consideration
here, and what thought (or thoughts) might
result from the interworking and combination of
these thought-forces?

A first thought that came to mind:  Rudolf
Steiner was well aware, better than I, of the
depth of the pain and suffering of animals, and
of the far-reaching consequences of cruelty to
animals.  Yet, he did, in this instance,
recommend practices that entail cruelty to
animals.  If I presume, as I do, that Steiner
was a pretty smart guy, a morally upright one,
and one with a highly-developed self-awareness,
then I must presume Steiner had some overriding
considerations that led him to advocate the BD
methods even though they entail some cruelty to
animals.  So, I must ask myself what those
considerations might have been.

Maybe:  the real, practical choice that Steiner
faced was to let the soil die, agriculture fail,
and consequently civilization go to ruin -- or
to do what was necessary to save agriculture --
and that the one thing that was both available
and necessary was the BD method, with all that
entailed.  So maybe:  RS had to consider that
the suffering, including that of animals, would
have been greater if agriculture and
civilization failed than if BD methods were
widely used -- and that consequently RS chose
the path that, in the real world, entailed less
pain and suffering for animals than the amount
entailed by BD methods.  And maybe RS had to
consider that animals were being slaughtered
anyway, that he had no way of stopping that --
and that the slaughterhouse products used in BD
were really by-products that were not being
otherwise used and that would not increase the
economic demand for slaughter?

But the thought also arises:  maybe it would
have been better to let agriculture and
civilization collapse than to participate in the
atrocities of animal "husbandry" and slaughter? 
Maybe civilization deserved to fall if it could
be saved only through such atrocities?  Maybe
that fall really wouldn't have been the "lesser
evil"?

Yet again:  I presume, judging from his
"fruits", that RS was a wise, far-seeing man,
and that he could calculate the "lesser evil"
far better than I can; really, I can't calculate
it at all.  I hypothesize that RS had his
considerations, and I must wonder what they
were.

And RS must have "seen" things to consider that
I can't see at all.  Such as:  the true nature
of the experience of the animals.  Indeed, I
hardly even know what an animal is, really; I
know of the "group spirits" only from Steiner; I
don't see them or communicate with them myself. 
Etc., etc.

And yet again, I must presume that RS knew more
and thought more deeply than I can.  This line
of thought isn't really answering any questions
for me; it is only impressing upon me the extent
of my ignorance in comparison to Steiner's
knowledge.

-- So I want to try a different approach, to
find a way to move forward.  I go back to the
original problem; I take another look at the
"antithesis" than embodied it.  It depended upon
the concept of the "atrocious".  I ask:  what
does that mean and why does it seem to be in
opposition to Steiner's actions?

I observe that I don't have a clear *concept* at
all; I don't know where the "opposition" comes
from; it isn't conscious for me.  It seems that
the opposition is mainly emotional; it is a
*reaction* that comes from the subconscious.  It
is hardly even a thought; it is mostly an
emotion of horror; the word *atrocious* is
mostly a cover for the emotion.  If I try to
think through, objectively, why the supposed
"thesis" and "antithesis" should be in
opposition, I hardly know how to begin.  So it
does seem that the problem for me was, in the
first place, more one of feeling than of
cognition.

I might try to consider what the BD methods and
their necessarily entailed pain for some animals
are, objectively, for the whole world.  But I
don't know even how to begin to answer that
question.  I can't calculate such things; I am
in ignorance.  But I'm likewise ignorant about
almost everything, and I don't get so worked up
about most of those.  So, again, it seems that
my original "problem" was more emotional than
cognitive.

Still, it must be at least partly cognitive:  I
am in puzzlement; I don't understand something. 
This non-understanding is a cognitive problem,
and I can approach it only by trying to think it
through. 

The dictionary (Webster's) defines *atrocious*
as "extremely wicked, brutal, or cruel".  Purely
descriptively:  slaughter, and all that leads up
to it, if indeed "brutal" and "cruel"; *wicked*
is more an ethical term than an emotional one. 
So it does seem that the process of BD preps
does entail "atrocities", but this mere
description hardly amounts to an "antithesis" of
the thesis under consideration.  The
antithetical nature derives not from a
description, but from something like an
emotional or moral revulsion.

Is it that somewhere in the back of my mind
lives the question, or assertion, that Steiner
was doing "evil" by advocating the BD preps that
required slaughterhouse products?  *Evil* and
*good* would seem to be objective, cognitive
terms, but if I try to say what they mean, to
define them, I can hardly do so, except to
define them by equally obscure terms, such as
*right* or *higher*, etc. -- I simply wasn't
asking a clear question, or stating a clear
"antithesis"; some kind of "opposition" was
struggling to come up from my subconscious, but
it was not clear exactly what the "opposition"
was.

-- At this point my mind reached an impasse.  It
would be embarrassing, and probably tedious, to
relate here all the ways my mind floundered and
all the directions in which it groped while
trying to find a way forward.  Suffice it to say
for now that I had reached an impasse; this was
about as far as "reflective" thinking could get
me.  I could come up with a lot more "thoughts",
but I couldn't really move forward toward a
solution to the original problem.  So, perhaps,
the "synthesis" that I had reached might be
formulated as follows:

>>3 -- SYNTHESIS:  I had not asked a clear,
cognitive question in the first place; I had
mostly reacted emotionally and in conceptual
and/or moral befuddlement.  I must presume that
RS was better able than I to raise the kind of
objections to the BD methods that I might raise,
but the fact is that he did nevertheless
recommend the BD methods, and so I must presume
further that he had some overriding
considerations which I don't know about.  And
indeed I don't *know*; at best I can only
"speculate" and "presume" -- at this level of
consciousness.<<

So:  I want to make progress on this problem,
therefore I want to move to a higher level of
consciousness.  Bondarev says that the next
level in the thought-process is "beholding". 
And I desperately want to get beyond this
impasse; it seems that the only way I might move
forward is to get into this state of
"beholding", but how?

Bondarev says about "beholding":  it marks the
transition to higher consciousness, and to reach
it "We must do the same when we are considering
a thought-content. We remain intellectually
passive, dispassionate, and wait to see what can
come towards us from a certain 'other' side."

More, in "beholding" "we do not think, but we
still remain within the thought-element. We
renounce all thoughts, judgments, logical
conclusions."

This, to me, seems to imply that maybe I'm
"trying too hard", that I can't "go out and get
it" but must wait until "it" comes to me, if it
comes to me -- I must be passive and receptive,
but still conscious.

"At the fourth stage we refrain from bringing
into movement the will which we have developed
in the three previous stages. . . . the will
begins to transform the organ of thinking into
an organ of ideal perception."

And still more, this "beholding" is not quite
"thinking" as I ordinarily do it; as the word
itself suggests, it is a kind of "seeing", a
perceiving, an observing:

" . . .. [to] think in 'beholding' - i.e. in
perception, not reflecting, but receiving the
ideas from the objects of perception - whether
they be of a sensory or an ideal nature."

"The process [of thinking] gone through on the
fourth level is identical with the experience of
observation. It consists in the act of ideal
perception, to which the ideal, essential core
of the object under examination must reveal
itself on a higher level than its manifestation
as concept in the element of synthesis."

But this passivity cannot be merely a dull
inertness; it must be somehow suffused with
reverence, with "love":

[Beholding] "is achieved on the basis of love
for the object of cognition".

-- Bondarev is getting at something, and it's
not enough for me only to read about it, or
"understand" it in an theoretical way; I want to
*do* it, and I'm desperate enough to try, to
"learn by doing", even if I fall on my face in
the effort.

Therefore:  I tried to "behold", in picture-
consciousness, with reverence; waiting, praying
for insight to come *to* me, rather than trying
to "think it through" for myself conceptually. 
I was trying to make, or rather pay attention
to, mental pictures without creating them
myself.  Even if the pictures might have seemed
to be meaningless, I tried to pay attention to
them without making my own judgments and
conceptualizing.  Then, maybe, hopefully, the
meanings would find their way into the pictures?

-- I visualized, with the question in mind,
making myself ready to "see", then watching as
the pictures came to me:  old men with long,
white beards; a star over a steeple; a giant
squirrel and other animals watching me;  Rudolf 
Steiner seemed to be present; and myself
kneeling, asking reverently, yearning for
guidance and Truth -- then, I was seeing the
scene as from above, soaring, with ethereal,
expansive feelings . . .

. . . then the thoughts came:  Maybe the
consciousness of the animals is not so Earth-
bound as I might suppose?  Maybe they (or the
group spirit-egos?) experience the atrocities
from without?  A later thought:  Maybe the
animals experience slaughter as does a human
trauma victim in so-called "dissociation"?

More thoughts followed, rushing on:  I don't
really know how the animals experience things;
maybe I wrongly project human, earthly
experience onto the animals?  Maybe really "the
mind is kind" to them?  Maybe RS knew this and
took it into consideration?  And maybe my "job"
here is to practice "Goetheanism", to "picture
without judging"?


A lot of thoughts flowed, with a lot of
*maybes*.  More questions and no definite
answers.  But it does seem that a corner has
been turned; something new had been injected
into my internal "debate".  There was a change
in viewpoint; I was seeing from a different
"angle", and I was feeling the whole quandary
differently.

Perhaps all this is a kind of "beholding"?  I
did indeed "see" something, but its meaning is
far from clear.  The most meaning I can get is
just a "new" possibility:

>>4 -- BEHOLDING:  Perhaps the animals do not
experience slaughter as painfully as I might
suppose.  Perhaps "they" (the group-spirits
really) experience the trauma in "shock",
somewhat as a human trauma victim in
"dissociation" does:  looking on from "outside",
serenely even, not quite "within" the pain. 
And, as Steiner says, the animal Ego isn't ever
really "in" the body as a human Ego is,
anyway.<<

This is hardly a solution to my original
problem, just a glimmer on a possible solution. 
But I did feel that, at last, I had made a step
forward . . . maybe to "beholding"?  (I wonder
whether Bondarev would agree.)  And so then I
did have more hope that I might be able to think
through this problem with the kind of 7fold
thinking that Bondarev says is the natural,
fully-developed mode of thinking.

Thus, I allowed myself to hope, to try to move
forward to the next stage, which Bondarev says
is the "perceiving of the Idea".  But how?

Bondarev, it seems to me, does not make a clear
distinction between this "beholding" and
"perceiving"; he says, for instance:

"We set up conditions under which we will
'behold' the content of the synthesis. Like the
object of a laboratory experiment, we subject
this content to conditions under which it can
reveal its secret more readily and quickly than
is the case with analytical, logical thinking. 
And when the idea appears, this is already the
fifth stage the fifth element of that new
logical cycle in which we are striving to ascend
from reflection to the supersensible perception
of the ideas. . . . It represents a holistic,
though not complete, manifestation of the ur-
phenomenon . . . ."

As far as I can tell, the distinction between
the forth and fifth stages is fuzzy, at best --
but it does seem clear enough that Bondarev
means by *idea* the "Platonic Idea", that is,
the "archetype" that includes, even creates, all
its "instances".  According to Steiner (in
*Theosophy*, III.3) in the "Spiritland" live the
Platonic Ideas as "thought beings" which are the
"archetypes" for all things in the physical
world: 

". . . . the thought that makes its appearance
through a human brain [is] related to the
[thought] being in the spiritland that
corresponds to this thought. . . . In this
[spiritual] world are to be seen, first, the
spiritual archetypes of all things and beings
that are present in the physical and soul
worlds. . . . As soon as the clairvoyant rises
out of the soul world into the spirit world, the
archetypes that are perceptible become
'sounding' as well."

With such considerations in mind, I had the idea
that to move from the fourth to the fifth stages
of the 7fold dialectic I would have to "listen"
and "hear" as well as "look" and "see".  But I
was disheartened by the thought that this
problem under consideration must involve a
multitude of Ideas, even immeasurably profound
Ideas behind all Creation.  I found this thought
to be somewhat confirmed by Steiner, thus:

"Often innumerable archetypes work together in
order that this or that being in the soul or
physical world may arise."

I felt that I had a daunting task before me; 
the problem was so deep, so complicated that I
almost quailed before it.  But I was so
desperate that I somehow pressed forward. -- I
reviewed and recapitulated the four stages that
I had already worked through, and, with as much
concentration as I could muster, waited
receptively for whatever might "come".  And
then, eventually, with, as it were, a "ringing
in the ears" I "saw" mental pictures, among them
an Oriental Buddha statue.  That particular
picture led to thoughts:

"The Buddha taught the Noble Truth about
suffering and its origin:  that suffering is a
consequence of DESIRE.  So the question arises: 
'Where does desire come from?  etc.' -- Possible
answer:  desire is what moves animals; it is the
essential thing that makes animals and plants
not-yet human; animals (in themselves) are moved
not by free will and reason, but by compelling
force, i.e. desire.  Without desire there would
be no animals in the first place; the demand
that animals not suffer is therefore the demand
that animals not exist?"

-- Such thoughts as those immediately followed
from the mental picture of the Buddha statue. 
It seemed to me that this event might have been
the turning-of-the-corner into the fifth stage
of the 7fold dialectic:  perception of the Idea. 
(I doubt that the "ringing" was anything very
meaningful; I have heard such ringing many times
before.  Probably the most that it meant was
that I was withdrawing into myself and paying
attention.)  Apparently, the root "archetype"
behind this whole complex question of the
justification of the use of slaughterhouse
products for the BD preps (that is, the main
archetypal Idea among the many creatively
involved and working together) is that of desire
being the effective, essential cause of
suffering?  And that Idea was most famously
proclaimed by the Buddha.

One might explore, by ordinary means of research
and "reflection", how this Noble Truth might be
the overarching Reason behind the suffering of
animals, and hence the solution (how?) to the
problem about the BD preps. -- I came up with
such "research material" as this:

The Buddha's Four Noble Truths are well enough
known.  Steiner states them thusly
(*Metaporphoses/Soul One*: Lecture 8: "Buddha
and Christ"; 2nd December, 1909; Berlin; GA0058
[from the eLib]):

". . . . the four noble truths, as the Buddha
called them, are:
  Knowledge of suffering
  Knowledge of the causes of suffering
  Knowledge of the need to end suffering
  Knowledge of the means to end suffering"

Knowledge of suffering:  "Birth is suffering,
old age is suffering, illness is suffering,
death is suffering. All existence is filled with
suffering. That we cannot always be united with
that which we love — this is how Buddha himself
later developed his teaching — is suffering.
That we have to be united with that which we do
not love, is suffering. That we cannot attain in
every sphere of life what we want and desire, is
suffering. Thus there is suffering wherever we
look."

Knowledge of the causes of suffering:  "If there
is suffering everywhere in the world then man is
bound to encounter suffering as soon as he
enters this world of suffering. Why does he have
to suffer in this way? The reason is that he has
an urge, a thirst, for incarnation in this
world. The passionate desire to pass from the
spiritual world into a physical-corporeal
existence and to perceive the physical world —
therein lies the basic cause of human
existence."

Knowledge of the need to end suffering: 
"Release from the sufferings of existence — that
is what Buddhism puts in the foreground, above
all else. . . . 'true existence' can be achieved
only if a man passes beyond everything he
encounters in the outer sense-world. . . .
Buddhism is a religion of release from existence
. . . . Buddhism sees release from earth-
existence in terms of rising to Nirvana . . . .
Buddhism can see its Nirvana, its state of
bliss, as attainable only by withdrawing
from the ever-repeated cycle of lives on earth .
. . Buddhism, tells us that the world is a
source of suffering and that we must get away
from it into another world, the quite different
world of Nirvana."

Knowledge of the means to end suffering:  ". . .
. there is only one way to gain release from
suffering: to fight against the thirst for
existence. And this can be done if we learn to
follow the eight-fold path, in accordance with
the teaching of the great Buddha. This is
usually taken to embrace correct views, correct
aims, correct speech, correct actions, correct
living, correct endeavour, correct thoughts, and
correct meditation. This taking hold of life in
the correct way and relating oneself correctly
to life, will gradually enable a man to kill off 
the desire for existence, and will finally lead
him so far that he no longer needs to descend
into a physical incarnation and so is released
from existence and the suffering that pervades
it."

Of course, these Noble Truths are mainly about
human suffering, but to me it seems that they
also apply to animals insofar as they are
creatures that suffer:  they suffer because they
are led by desire.  The Eightfold Path might not
be possible for them, but the root cause, the
archetypal Idea, of their suffering is the same
as for people.  (Most of us, I presume, already
know the Eightfold Path as the Anthroposophical
way of developing the sixteen-petalled "lotus
flower", not as a means for avoiding
incarnation.  But I think that a discussion of
this [these] path[s] would be off the subject
here; it seems to be mostly irrelevant to the
suffering of animals.)

-- But *why* is suffering an inevitable
consequence of desire?  Not only the Buddha, but
also Steiner spoke profoundly on "the origin of
suffering".  In an effort to understand *how*
the Noble Truths about suffering might be a clue
to the Platonic Idea behind my original problem,
I consult some of what Steiner said about the
"origin of suffering".

Fortunately, we have what seems to be a good
stenographic transcript of a significant lecture
that Steiner gave on this subject.  Remembering,
of course, the standard *caveat* about such
uncorrected transcripts, I proceed.  The lecture
I mean is:

"The Origin of Suffering"; 8th November, 1906:
Berlin; GA0055 -- some relevant excerpts:

"The origin of suffering is found where
consciousness arises out of life, where spirit
is born out of life."

"Only from Consciousness does Self-consciousness
arise."

"Consciousness, or conscious spirit, is that
force which out of death, which must be created
in the midst of life, eternally makes life arise
again."

"Out of pain consciousness is born."

"All that gives rise to consciousness is
originally pain."

"Consciousness must result from destruction of
life."

"In what does this fine destruction [by light of
living tissue in a simple organism] (for it is
destruction) manifest? In pain, which is nothing
else than an expression for the destruction."

"Consciousness *within matter* is thus born out
of suffering, out of pain."

". . . . pain at the basis of all conscious
life."

"If the living could not suffer, never could
consciousness arise. If there were no death in
the world never in the visible world could
Spirit exist."

-- So, it seems to me that Steiner's first
"noble truth" about suffering is that "pain" is
necessary if and when consciousness arises
within the physical world.  If no pain, then no
consciousness.  Perhaps for us this truth is
more "uncomfortable" than "noble"?

Usually we want pleasure and don't want pain. 
But a further "uncomfortable truth" is that, in
general, pleasure can exist only if pain has
existed first:

"If pain arises in life it gives birth to
sensation and consciousness. This giving birth,
this bringing forth of a higher element, is
reflected again in consciousness as pleasure,
and there would never be a pleasure unless there
had been a previous pain."

"Creation is based on desire and pleasure.
Pleasure can only appear where inner or outer
creation is possible. In some way creation lies
at the base of every happiness, as every
unhappiness is based on the necessity of
creation."

If, from unwise compassion, we want a world that
has pleasure and happiness but has no pain and
misery, then we are demanding the impossible. 
So, if we have a "desire for existence" (in the
physical world), then, whether we know it or
not, we thereby demand that pain should exist. 
And if we desire pleasure and happiness (in the
physical world), we likewise, in effect, demand
that there should be pain and misery.

-- And more:  Steiner's "noble truths" continue: 
not only pleasure, but all that is "higher" in
human life -- love, knowledge, purity -- can
exist only if suffering has first existed:

". . . . in some way suffering is connected with
the highest in man."

"Just as we create a higher consciousness out of
the pain stimulated through an external ray of
light and overcome by us as living being, so a
creation in compassion is born when we
transform the sufferings of others in our own
greater consciousness-world. And so finally out
of suffering arises love. For what else is love
than spreading one's consciousness over other
beings?"

"In an initiate nothing must be inter-linked
unconsciously; he is a compassionate man out of
freedom and not because something external
compels him to be. That is the difference
between an initiate and a non-initiate."

"Knowledge flows from our suffering as its
fruit."

". . . . out of suffering grows knowledge."

". . . . the origin of purification, the lifting
up of human nature, lies in pain."

The immediately aforementioned "truths" of
course apply to mankind more directly than to
animals.  But the animals do also have, even if
not so much the "higher" soul-qualities, 
consciousness, and they "earn" this
consciousness only through pain:

". . . . the words: In all Nature sighs every
creature in pain, full of earnest expectation to
attain the state of the child of God. — You find
that in the eighth chapter of Paul's Epistle to
the Romans as a wonderful expression of this
foundation of consciousness in pain. Thus
one can also understand how thoughtful men have
ascribed to pain such an all-important role. I
should like to quote just one example. A great
German philosopher says that when one looks at
all Nature around one, then pain and suffering
seem to be expressed everywhere on her
countenance. Yes, when one observes the higher
animals they show to those who look more deeply
an expression full of suffering. And who would
not admit that many an animal physiognomy looks
like the manifestation of a deeply hidden pain?"

So, the Buddha's "Noble Truth" about the cause
of suffering does indeed apply to the animals --
and perhaps even more so than to people, for, as
Steiner teaches, mankind is able to attain the
"higher" qualities only because in evolution we
have "pushed down" the animals.  A fuller
treatment of this line of thought might take
this discussion too far afield, but I take the
important point here, in the context of
"Buddhist" truths, to be that Earthly
consciousness, even and perhaps especially,
animal consciousness, must be founded upon pain
and suffering.  This is *the* inescapable "fact
of life".

Now, to continue the consideration of the "Noble
Truths":  the next is "Knowledge of the need to
end suffering".  The crucial point that Steiner
makes about this particular "truth" is that the
original Buddhism advocated the avoidance of 
suffering through the prevention of Earthly
incarnations (and through uninterrupted life in
"Nirvana") -- while, in contrast, (esoteric)
Christianity encourages Earthly incarnations and
accepts the suffering that they entail.  I
resume quoting from Steiner's "The Origin of
Suffering":

"Thus the spirit of Buddhist teaching aims at
diverting attention from the visible in order to
get beyond it, and it denies the significance of
anything visible."

"While Buddhism sees release from earth-
existence in terms of rising to Nirvana,
Christianity sees its aim as a continuing
process of development, whereby all the products
and achievements of single lives shine forth in
ever-higher stages of perfection, until,
permeated by the spirit, they experience
resurrection at the end of earth-existence."

"For Christianity starts from a recognition that
everything in an individual life bears fruits
which are of importance and value for the
innermost being of man and are carried over into
a new life, where they are lived out on a higher
level of fulfillment."

"[In Christianity] The incarnations are not to
cease in order to open the way to Nirvana; but
all that we can acquire in them is to be used
and developed in order that it may experience
resurrection in the spiritual sense. Herein lies
the deepest distinction between the non-
historical philosophy of Buddhism and the
historical outlook of Christianity."

". . . . Buddhism never truly connects . . .
[Earthly incarnations] with any idea of
historical development."

In sum, Steiner sees (and by implication
accepts) the Christian view that Earth-life (and
by implication suffering and pain) have value
that would be wrong to discount and neglect. 
This Christian view does not (it seems to me)
disagree so much with the Buddhist view about
the causation of suffering and its avoidance,
but with Buddhist values and ethics.  In
essence, the Buddhist negates the value of
material Creation, while the Christian affirms
it.  (This is only my rough approximation of
Steiner's "noble truths"; the lecture really
deserves to be read in whole.)

Throughout his "esoteric teaching" in public,
Steiner said much about the reasons why the Gods
created the material world, too much to treat
here fully.  Basically, to my understanding, the
existence of a material, Earthly world is
necessary for the attainment of goals that could
not be attained without a material world.  Thus,
the existence of the physical world is "good",
and the undervaluation of the physical world is
"bad", a rejection of the good work of the Gods. 
The central value of the material world is that
it is the necessary scene for the attainment of
"manhood" in the deepest sense. -- I'll give
here just a couple of Steiner-saids, out of many
possible:

"Here on earth, we have as religion everything
that transcends man; in the spiritual world, we
have the Ideal Man himself as religion.  We
learn that the various Beings of the various
spiritual hierarchies permit their forces to
work together in order that man may gradually be
produced in the world, in the manner described
in my book, Occult Science.  The aim of the
creative activity of the Gods is the Ideal Man. 
That Ideal Man does not really come to life in
physical man as he is at present, but in the
noblest spiritual and soul life that it is
possible through the perfect development and
training of aptitudes which this physical man
has within him.  Thus a picture of Ideal Man is
ever present to the mind of the Gods.  This is
the religion of the Gods.  On the far shore of
Divine existence there rises before the Gods the
temple which presents the image of Divine Being
in the form of man, as the highest divine work
of art, and the special thing is that while man
develops in the spirit-land between death and
rebirth, he gradually matures so as to be able
to see this temple of humanity, this high ideal
of humanity."  (*Inner Nature of Man*: Lecture
2: "The Vision of the Ideal Human Being"; 10th
April, 1914; Vienna; GA 153)

"That is precisely the mission of Earth-
evolution! The purpose of Earth-evolution is
that there may be implanted into the
evolutionary process as a whole, powers which
could otherwise never have come into existence:
Wonder, Compassion and Conscience. . . . It is
so superficial and foolish when people say: 'Why
was it necessary for man to come down from the
worlds of Divine Spirit into the physical world,
only to have to reattain them? Who could he not
have remained in the higher worlds?'; Man could
not remain in those worlds because only by
coming down into the physical world of Earth-
evolution could he receive into himself the
forces of wonder, love or compassion, and
conscience or moral obligation."  ("The Mission
of the Earth"; *Earthly and Cosmic Man* VI)

-- I'll try to precipitate from the foregoing
discussion a statement of the "archetype", the
Platonic Idea, behind the suffering of animals,
suffering that is necessarily involved in the
making of BD "preps".  Here is the fifth stage
of Bondarev's schema of the thought-process,
such as I am able to attain this stage now.  For
me the crucial seed was the mental picture of a
Buddha statue, a picture that seemed to come in
response to my questioning.  And this mental
picture seemed to me to have relevant meanings 
as I have related immediately above.  The sum of
these "meanings" in this context seems to me as
follows:

>>5 -- PERCEPTION OF THE IDEA:  Animals do
inevitably suffer in Earth-life; such pain and
suffering is necessary on Earth for both Man and
animals.  This Earth-life and its entailed
suffering are consequences of "desire", or
"thirst for existence".  Buddhism teaches the
cessation of suffering through the extirpation
of desire and the avoidance of Earthly
incarnation.  But Christianity sees such
avoidance as a denial of the true value of
material Creation and affirms Earth-life, and
hence accepts its necessary pain and
suffering.<<

-- The next stage of Bondarev's 7fold dialectic
is the "individualization of the Idea".  In
trying to bring my attempt to this stage I asked 
myself:  "How is this Idea (the Noble Truths,
etc.) individualized in this case?"  I reasoned
that, since my thought-problem, my "antithesis",
arose in relation to Rudolf Steiner's teachings
on agriculture, the "individual" in this case is
Steiner himself.  So, with the goal of finding
out how this Idea was individualized in Steiner,
I came up with the scheme of trying to "back-
engineer", as it were, Steiner's own process
through which he came to give those agricultural
teachings.

I recalled (from various readings) that in 1924,
and the preceding years,  Steiner was faced with
an ethical decision.  The story is told, in
part, in Ehrenfried Pfeiffer's preface to an
edition of Steiner's "agriculture course".  Some
excerpts:

"In 1922/23 Ernst Stegemann and a group of other
farmers went to ask Rudolf Steiner's advice
about the increasing degeneration they had
noticed in seed-strains and in many cultivated
plants. What can be done to check this decline
and to improve the quality of seed and
nutrition? That was their question."

"A second group went to Dr. Steiner in concern
at the increase in animal diseases, with
problems of sterility and the widespread foot-
and-mouth disease high on the list. Among those
in this group were the veterinarian Dr. Joseph
Werr, the physician Dr. Eugen Kolisko, and
members of the staff of the newly established
Weleda, the pharmaceutical manufacturing
enterprise.

"Count Carl von Keyserlingk brought problems
from still another quarter. Then Dr. Wachsmuth
and the present writer went to Dr. Steiner with
questions dealing particularly with the etheric
nature of plants, and with formative forces in
general."

"Shortly before 1924, Count Keyserlingk set to
work in deal [sic] earnest to persuade Dr.
Steiner to give an agricultural course. As Dr.
Steiner was already overwhelmed with work, tours
and lectures, he put off his decision from week
to week. The undaunted Count then dispatched his
nephew to Dornach, with orders to camp on Dr.
Steiner's doorstep and refuse to leave without a
definite commitment for the course. This was
finally given.

"The agricultural course was held from June 7 to
16, 1924, in the hospitable home of Count and
Countess Keyserlingk at Koberwitz, near
Breslau."

"[Steiner] said to me, 'Spiritual scientific
knowledge must have found its way into practical
life by the middle of the century if untold
damage to the health of man and nature is to be
avoided.'"

Thus, in the early 1920s, Steiner was virtually
besieged by people asking "Parsival questions"
about agriculture, and he knew that the
situation was indeed dire, in ways both more
obvious and less obvious:  for the Earth's
healing and for human ability to realize ideals
in action.  During the Agriculture Course
Steiner stated the problem starkly -- for
instance:

"[If BD pest-control methods were not used] . .
. agriculture would go from bad to worse in
civilised countries. Not only intermittent
periods of local starvation or high prices would
occur, but these conditions would become quite
general. Such a state of affairs may well be
with us in a none too distant future. We have
thus no other choice. Either we must let
civilisation go to rack and ruin on the earth,
or we must endeavour to shape things in such a
way as to bring forth a new fertility. For our
needs to-day, we really have no choice to stop
and discuss whether or no such things are
permissible."

This shows that Steiner had a clear, deep
understanding of the world-emergency connected
with the sad state of agriculture.  Moreover, he
had profound understanding of the dire
consequences of cruelty to animals; a relevant
quotation:

(from "Karma and the Animal Kingdom';
*Manifestations of Karma*; LECTURE 2:)
"Thus the animals have the astral body in common
with us, and are therefore able to feel pain.
But from what has now been said we see that they
do not possess the power to evolve through pain
and through the conquest of pain, for they have
no individuality. The animals are on this
account much more to be pitied than us. We have
to bear pain, but each pain is for us a means to
perfection; through overcoming it we rise
higher. We have left behind us the animal as
something that already has the capacity to feel
pain but does not yet possess the power to raise
itself above pain, and to triumph by means of
it. That is the fate of the animals. They
manifest to us our own former organisation when
we were capable of feeling pain, but could not
yet, through overcoming the pain, transform it
into something beneficial for humanity. Thus in
the course of our earthly evolution we have left
of our worst to the animals, and they stand
around us as tokens of how we ourselves came to
our perfection. We should not have got rid of
the dregs if we had not left the animals behind.
We must learn to consider such facts, not as
theories, but rather with a cosmic world
feeling. When we look upon the animals we should
feel: 'You animals are outside. When you suffer,
you suffer something of which we reap the
benefit. We men, however, have the power to
overcome suffering while you must endure it.
Having received suffering we have passed it on
to you, and are taking to ourselves the power to
overcome it.' If we develop this cosmic feeling
out of the theory, we then experience a great
and all-embracing feeling of sympathy for the
animal kingdom. Hence when this universal
feeling sprang from the primeval wisdom of
humanity, when mankind still possessed the
remembrance of the original knowledge which told
each one by a dim clairvoyant vision how things
once were, there was preserved with it sympathy
for the animal kingdom also, and this to a high
degree. This sympathy will come again when
people accustom themselves to take up Spiritual
Science, and when they again see how the karma
of humanity is bound up with the world
karma....It was natural that one should cease to
feel the connection between man and animal; and
in those parts of the earth where it has been
the mission to hide the spiritual knowledge of
this connection, replacing it by a consciousness
concerning itself only with outward physical
space, man has paid in a strange fashion his
debt to the animals. He has eaten them. These
things show us how world conceptions are
connected with the human world of perception and
feeling. The latter are the consequences of the
former and as the conceptions and ideas change,
the perceptions and feelings of humanity also
change. Man could not do otherwise than evolve.
It is due to this that he had to push other
beings into the abyss so that he could rise
higher himself. He could not give them an
individuality which compensates karmically for
what the animals have to suffer; he could only
give them pain, without being able to give them
the karmic compensation. But what he could not
give them before, he will give them when he has
come to the freedom and selflessness of his
individuality. Then he will consciously
apprehend the karmic law in this realm and will
say 'It is to the animals that I owe what I have
now become. As the animals have fallen from an
individual existence to a shadow existence I
cannot repay to them what they have sacrificed
for me, but I must make this good, so far as is
possible, by the treatment I extend to them.'
Therefore with the progress of evolution there
will come again through the consciousness of
karma a better relationship between man and the
animal kingdom than there is now, especially in
the west. There will come a treatment of the
animals whereby man will again uplift those he
has pushed down....."

And Steiner tells us that the karmic
consequences have already started and will
continue into the far future, in ways that must
be surprising and gruesome to the ordinary human
mind:

". . . . in the course of evolution man has
always inflicted pain on the animals, that he
has killed the animals. One who learns to know
the Karma of human life often finds it highly
unjust that the animal, which does not
reincarnate, should suffer, should bear pain,
and even, in the case of the higher animals,
should go through death with a certain
consciousness. Should no Karmic compensation
take place here? Naturally, the human being has
to make a Karmic compensation in Kamaloka for
the pain which he inflicts on animals, but I am
not speaking of this now; I am speaking of the
compensation for the animals. Let us make one
thought clear: If we consider human evolution,
we see how much pain man has strewn over the
animal kingdom and how many animals he has
killed. What do these pains and these deaths
mean in the course of evolution? . . .

"These animals on which pain has been inflicted
will arise again, though not in the same form;
but that which feels pain in them, that comes
again. It comes again in such a way that the
sufferings of the animals are compensated, so
that to every pain its complementary feeling is
added. These pains, these sufferings, this
death, these are the seed which man has sown;
they return in such a way that to every pain its
contrary feeling is added in the future. To use
a concrete example: When Earth is replaced by
Jupiter, the animals will not appear in their
present form, but their pains and sufferings
will awaken the forces for the feeling of pain.
They will live in men, and will embody
themselves as parasitic animals in men. Out of
the sensations and feelings of these men, out of
their pains, the compensation will be created.
This is the occult truth, which can be stated
objectively and unadorned even if it is not
pleasant to the man of today. Man will one day
suffer this, and the animals will have, in a
certain well-being, in a pleasant feeling, the
compensation for their pains. . . .

"Why are men plagued by beings which are really
neither animals nor plants, but stand between
the two, by bacilli and similar creatures, which
feel a well-being when man suffers? They have
brought this upon themselves in earlier
incarnations through inflicting pain and death
on animals. For the being, though not appearing
in the same form, feels this across time and
feels the compensation for its pains in the
suffering which man must undergo. Thus all the
pain and suffering in the world are positively
not without consequences. It is a seed from
which proceeds what is caused by pain,
suffering, and death. There can be no suffering,
no pain, no death, without causing something
which springs up later on."
(from the lecture of 17th April, 1912;
Stockholm; GA 143:  "The Three Paths of the Soul
to Christ"; Lecture II)

And more:  cruelty to animals has severe effects
upon the soul-spirit of the perpetrator. 
Consciousness of these effects makes the
perpetrator into a black magician; even if he be
unconscious of these effects, serious
consequences remain.  And these effect reach
even into the whole evolution of the Earth:

(*Foundations of Esotericism*; Lecture XIX:)
"When an animal is tortured, the amount of pain
inflicted on it recoils immediately on the
astral body of the human being. Here certainly
it is reflected as its opposite; hence the
sensual pleasure in cruelty. Such feelings bring
about a lowering of the human astral body. When
a person destroys life, this has for him a
tremendous significance. [Gap in text ...]. In
no way can one so readily assimilate destructive
astral forces as by killing. Every killing of a
being possessing an astral body evokes an
intensification of the most brutal egoism. It
signifies a growing increase of power. In
schools of Black Magic therefore, instruction is
first given as to how one cuts into animals.
Cutting into a definite place, accompanied by
corresponding thoughts, induces a certain force,
in another place it induces another force. (What
corresponds to this in the case of the White
Magician is meditation.) Something comes back to
the physical plane when it is accompanied by
physical thoughts; without thoughts it comes
back to the Kamaloka plane."

(*Foundations of Esotericism*: Lecture XX:)
"Something else that we can meet with in astral
space is the black magician with his pupils. In
order to train himself to become a black
magician, the pupil has to go through a special
schooling. The training in black magic consists
in a person becoming accustomed, under
methodical instruction, to torture, to cut, to
kill animals. This is the ABC. When the human
being consciously tortures living creatures it
has a definite result. The pain caused in this
way, when it is brought about intentionally,
produces a quite definite effect on the human
astral body. When a person cuts consciously into
a particular organ this induces in him an
increase in power. Now the basic principle of
all white magic is that no power can be gained
without selfless devotion. When through such
devotion power is gained, it flows from the
common life force of the universe. If however we
take its life-energy from some particular being,
we steal this life-energy. Because it belonged
to a separate being it densifies and strengthens
the element of separateness in the person who
has appropriated it, and this intensification of
separateness makes him suited to becoming the
pupil of those who are engaged in conflict with
the good powers. For our earth is a battlefield;
it is the scene of two opposing powers: right
and left. The one, the white power on the right,
after the earth has reached a certain degree of
material, physical density, strives to
spiritualise it once again. The other power, the
left or black power, strives to make the earth
ever denser and denser, like the moon. Thus,
after a, period of time, the earth could become
the physical expression for the good powers, or
the physical expression for the evil. . . .

"There are black adepts who are on the way to
acquire certain forces of the earth for
themselves. Were the circle of their pupils to
become so strong that this should prove
possible, then the earth would be on the path
leading to destruction."

(from * An Esoteric Cosmology*; "The Astral
World"; Lecture IX; 2-6-1906:)
"The black magician has the urge to kill, to
create a void around him in the astral world
because this void affords him a field in which
his egoistic desires may disport themselves. He
needs the power which he acquires by taking the
vital force of everything that lives, that is to
say, by killing it. That is why the first
sentence on the tables of black magic is: Life
must be conquered. For the same reason, in
certain schools of black magic the followers are
taught the horrible and diabolical practice of
gashing living animals with a knife at the
precise part of the body which will generate
this or that force in the wielder of the knife.
From the purely external aspect, there are
certain points in common between black magic and
vivisection. On account of its materialism,
modern science has need of vivisection. The
anti-vivisection movements are inspired by
deeply moral motives. But it will not be
possible to abolish vivisection in science until
clairvoyance has been restored to medicine. It
is only because clairvoyance has been lost that
medicine has had to resort to vivisection. When
man has regained conscious access to the astral
world, clairvoyance will enable doctors to enter
spiritually into the inner conditions of
diseased organs and vivisection will be
abandoned as worthless...."

-- This discussion establishes clearly that,
again, Steiner had a deep, profound
understanding of the effects of cruelty to
animals.  But he was faced with the ethical
decision of how to answer the questioners
besieging him about agriculture, while he had a
also had great understanding of the desperate
state that agriculture was then in -- and still
more -- while he had great insight into the
calamitous consequences of a continuing failure
of agriculture.

He was faced with the question of whether to
intervene, and, if so, how?  And he did also
have profound discernment about the whole
complex of questions surrounding the
cosmological causes of suffering, so profound
that he was able to pinpoint the mistake that
the great Buddha made in his teachings of the
"Noble Truths".  Adding here to the previous
quotations, I illustrate this mistake by some
incidents that Steiner told about the "lost
years" of Jesus.

(from *The Fifth Gospel*; translation: Frank
Thomas Smith:)

(Lecture IV; Oslo, October 4, 1913:)

". . . . [the Zarathustra] Jesus heard that the
Buddha [in vision] said something like this: 'If
my teaching, as it is, is completely fulfilled,
that all men on earth must be like the Essenes.
But that cannot be. That was the error in my
teaching. The Essenes can only progress if they
separate themselves from the rest of humanity;
other human souls must be there for them. The
fulfillment of my teaching would mean nothing
but Essenes. But that cannot be.'"

". . . . Jesus of Nazareth had observed
something noteworthy. When he came to a place
where imageless Essene gates were, Jesus of
Nazareth couldn’t pass through those gates
without again having a bitter experience. He saw
those imageless gates, but for him there were
spiritual figures on the gates. To him appeared
on both sides of those gates what we have
learned to know from many spiritual scientific
explanations under the names Ahriman and
Lucifer. . . ."

"One day after an important conversation in
which many sublime spiritual themes were
discussed, as Jesus of Nazareth was leaving
through the gates of the Essenes' main building
he encountered the figures who he knew were
Lucifer and Ahriman. He saw them fleeing from
the gates of the Essene monastery…and a question
entered his soul, not as though he asked it
himself, but a strong elemental force instilled
in his soul the question: Where are Lucifer and
Ahriman fleeing to? For he knew that the
sanctity of the Essene monastery had caused them
to flee. But the question remained: Where to?"

(Lecture 5 ; Oslo, Norway; October 5, 1913:)

"Then he [Jesus-Zarathustra] spoke [to his
mother] of the third important thing, which had
come to him during his visionary talk with the
Buddha: Not all people can be Essenes. Hillel
was right when he said: Don’t separate yourself
from society, but live and work within it. For
what am I if I am alone? That’s what the Essenes
do though; they separate themselves from the
people, who are then necessarily unhappy. Then
he told his mother about his experience after an
intimate conversation with the Essenes. As he
was at the gate leaving, he saw Lucifer and
Ahriman running off. Since that moment, my dear
mother, I knew that the Essenes protect
themselves by means of their way of life and
their occult teachings to the extent that
Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates.
But they send Lucifer and Ahriman to others in
order to be happy themselves."

-- This seems to me to be the crucial point, for
the present discussion, of what Steiner reveals
as coming from the interactions of Zarathustra-
Jesus with the Buddha and with the Essenes:  The
original teachings of the Buddha were wrong, as
the Buddha Himself later recognized, to advocate
a withdrawal from "normal" society (and *mutatis
mutandis* from Earth-life), for such a
withdrawal by the relatively "enlightened" only
leaves the remainder of society (and the Earth)
in a worse state, and easier prey for the
Opposing Spirits; in order to really help
society and the Earth-life the relatively
enlightened must "get their hands dirty" by
involving themselves in "normal" Earth-life.

So:  In the early '20s Rudolf Steiner was faced
with an ethical decision.  He was being asked
for help with agriculture.  And he understood,
better than his supplicants, the dire state of
modern agriculture and the grim consequences of
that dismal situation.  More, he had knowledge
of methods which would improve agriculture, but
these methods would entail, even perhaps only
tangentially, some cruelty to animals.  And
still more, he had deep, deep understanding of
the horror of such cruelty and its far-reaching
consequences.  Yet, he also had profound
understanding of the "noble truths" about pain
and suffering in Earth-life, and of the Buddha's
original mistake of promoting withdrawal from
Earth-life as a means of ending suffering. --
Thus, it would not only be impious, but also
ignorant and/or unintelligent, for anyone to
criticize Steiner for being inattentive or
inconsiderate of the entailed animal pain
involved in his BD methods.

I took this situation that Steiner faced as the
relevant instance of the "individualization of
the Idea":  how did the individual Rudolf
Steiner realize the Idea (i.e. the Noble Truths
about suffering) in practice?  (That is, in the
"practice" of revealing and advocating the
methods that raised my original conflict of
thesis-antithesis.)  I sought to "get inside"
Steiner's mind and "back-engineer" his decision,
trying in my mind to consider such great
knowledge as Steiner had, as illustrated by the
quotations above.

But to do this from the outside (of Steiner's
mind) it seemed to me, would ultimately be just
speculation; to really answer it I needed to get
an "inspiration" from "the other side".  I
needed a revelation, a grace from Steiner
himself -- or I thought that I needed at least
his consent to speculate on this theme.  I
thought that I needed to have not only the kind
of compassion for the animals that I supposed
(or would have liked to have supposed) to have
instigated my "antithesis"; Steiner already had
more of that than I had, and deeper, more
painful and poignant understanding too.  I
needed to have compassion for Steiner himself;
he must have suffered greatly with his ethical
decision:  heroic pain (the "pearls" of his
wisdom) endured, suffered, voluntarily and
profoundly.  His suffering was deeper and more
in need of compassion than that of most people,
if only because he is seen as a "great" man and
not as "needy" as ordinary people.  I surmised
that Steiner was wiser because he suffered more
("wisdom is crystallized pain":  the "pearls") -
- and therefore his pain should be approached
only with reverence.  The muddy feet of impure
hearts cannot tread this holy ground; his ways
are higher than our ways.  But my feet were
muddy and my heart was impure; those were the
unavoidable facts.  Still, under the
circumstances, what could I do but try anyway
and plead for mercy?  Maybe my asking would be
acceptable only on the condition that any
information that I gained would be given out to
other people for their betterment?

-- I was stuck at that point almost a week,
trying to have a breakthrough and not getting
it.  I had plenty of mental pictures, but none
seemed especially meaningful.  Finally, I had
the mental picture of Rudolf Steiner, in his
black garb, just looking at me with those eyes
of his, but I didn't gather any conceptual
communication from him.  And so I came to the
thought that I was on the wrong track.  Later, I
came to surmise that this thought came to me
because somewhere in the back of my mind was
simmering Steiner's discussion in Chapter Nine
of *PoF*:  The free human being does not work
out whether an action is good or bad; it will be
good if it finds it right place in the world;
bad if not; he does the action because he loves
it, because he has found a moral label, a
particular moral principle, a moral intuition;
etc., etc.

So, perhaps Steiner was silently looking at me
to say:  "It's up to you.  My decision was mine
only, based on my situation and my individual
moral intuition.  Your decision is yours only;
it must be based on your situation and your
individual moral intuition.  The same goes for
anyone; that's what 'moral individualism'
means." -- ???

Anyway, after deeming that I was on the wrong
track I decided to pose the question
differently:  "If anyone grasped the Noble
Truths about suffering and who bore in mind
Steiner's elucidations and corrections of them,
how would he relate to the ethical questions
surrounding the BD preps and their entailed
suffering of animals?"  Steiner himself, I
presumed, took into account all such as I have
quoted, and, for all I know, may have had other
reasons also -- but I wasn't seeing into
Steiner's mind, and I didn't have leave to
speculate further about his ethical decision. 
So I asked the question relating to any ethical
decision for anyone who had *that* kind of
information at hand.  And I suppose that this
*anyone* would refer to myself first and
foremost.

Asking myself the question in this way, and
thinking it through conceptually, not waiting
for mental pictures as "gifts from the other
side", I got such thoughts as the following: --
No agriculture is completely harmless; even a BD
agriculture without the preps from slaughter
would cause pain to some creatures:  plowing
their fields, clearing their forests, keeping
them from eating the crops, etc.  [Steiner also
recommended the making and use of "peppers" from
killed living organisms.  (See Appendix 2
below.)  And he defended this practice with
considerations much along the same lines as
those I have indicated in the present
discussion.  And, though I do not go deeply into
the question here, I surmise that it could be
treated in much the same way as I am treating
the main question above.]  Indeed it seems that
*any* life on this Earth must cause some pain,
some harm to some creatures.  It seems that no
Earth-life could be *absolutely* harmless.  (???
Compare that Jains' prayer [see Appendix 1
below])  Seemingly, the only way to be
completely harmless would be to withdraw from
the Earth altogether, to not incarnate.  But
even for those very few who might be capable of
such withdrawal (most of us still have much
Earthly karma to work out), the question
becomes:  "What then happens to the Earth if I
withdraw from it?  The earth would then be
deprived of the good works that I might bring
in, and the field would be left more open to
those who might not be so well-intentioned. 
Remember RS's story of Lucifer and Ahriman
fleeing the 'gates of the Essenes'?  The rest of
the world is worse-off because of the Essenes'
withdrawal into (relative) harmlessness.  So, it
seems that if one is to have real, more
effective compassion for the Earth, then one
must get one's hands dirty and get involved in
Earth-life, with the inevitable guilt that this
entails."  (???  Is this true:  does the noble
truth about the cause of suffering imply that no
one could live harmlessly???)  -- So:  The
Buddha seems to effectively deny the goodness of
Earth-creation and its goals; he withdraws, 
Steiner, as a Christian, affirms the Earth-life
and goals as "good" -- and gets his hands dirty,
gets involved, and tries to move the evolution
toward the better, even though some harm is done
in the course of working for the greater good
(e.g. BD preps and plowing) and in the process
of moving Earth-evolution forward, toward the
Gods' goals.  (?? Suffering and pain are not
necessarily "bad", but allow the creation of the
greater good??)

-- And I thought further:  Such questions touch
upon the Holy Mysteries, and can be considered
only with the deepest earnestness (raised to the
Nth degree) and with deep sorrow and grief, in
knowing and compassion for the pain to those
creatures hurt.  And for the Initiate, even more
so, for he has knowledge of the profound, far-
reaching  consequences of inflicting pain.  One
simply cannot approach such questions in the
usual frame of mind; but only with the deepest
reverence and seriousness and selflessness.  The
fact is that one cannot *think* as one pleases,
but has the sacred task of following the
thinking wherever IT leads.  A revolution in
ones' soul is required; one cannot proceed
further while being "the same person" as one
used to be.  (??? Must one "hit bottom" before
changing???)

(As a rough and ready definition of *harm*:  the
infliction of undeserved pain and/or damage --
and for animals, it seems, no pain could be
deserved, for animals are not free moral
agents.)

Later, I considers some follow-up questions:

But is it true that no life on Earth could be
*absolutely* harmless? --  As far as I can
reason, the fact that Earth-life in general
necessarily entails suffering does not logically
imply that no human life on Earth could be
harmless; for all I know, some very advanced
people might be able to live in such a way as to
cause absolutely no harm to any creatures. 
(It's hard to imagine how; really, I can't
imagine it.) -- But as a practical matter, I
don't see how people with anything like the
abilities that are normal now could live without
causing some harm, somehow.  Perhaps the
Essenses approached such a way of life, but even
they, I presume, must have caused some harm to
some creatures, even if only because the Essene
houses must have denied space to various small
creatures, and because their agriculture might
have denied free range to some creatures.  And
even their ability to have lived so relatively
harmlessly must have depended upon the fact that
that region had previously been cleared of
dangerous animals.  And so on.  But, the
paradoxical fact was also, as Jesus-Zarathustra
divined, that their very harmlessness, in the
way it was lived out, did do harm to the greater
society, in that Lucifer and Ahriman had that
society as more of an open field for their
activities.  And Jesus Christ, did enter into
that wider society; He "came eating and
drinking", and so participated, even if
peripherally, in the ambient harmfulness --
though, as we are told, He remained without sin.

But the real, practical situation in the world
today is this:  People need to eat, and to eat
they need, at a minimum, agriculture of plants. 
Most, probably, could get along without eating
meat if they tried, but many or most people are
not even at the stage of development that they
want to try.  But even agriculture for vegans is
not absolutely harmless; it must at least deny
the use of land (or sea) to the creatures that
would use it otherwise.  So, the real, practical
question, for the vast majority of people, is
not of pure harmlessness versus harmfulness, but
of relative quantities and qualities of
harmfulness.  And it seems to me that the only
real option for those few, very advanced human
beings is to try to guide the larger Earth-
evolution, and hence the larger society, toward
the lessening of harmfulness and the increase of
spiritual culture.

-- And what about the "slippery slope" argument? 
If we must do some harm no matter what, then
where to draw the line, or why draw a line at
all?  If we must hurt animals by plowing and
cultivating, then why not just kill and eat
them?  And if we kill them to eat, then why not
kill them for fun?  Does the bull in the
bullfight really have a worse life and death
than the animals raised and slaughtered
routinely?  And if we kill them for fun, then
why not for science?  And if we hurt them enough
to kill them for science, then why not hurt them
more if we could thereby learn more?  And so on
and on . . . . -- Perhaps the difference in
which way this slope slants is just the
difference between honesty and dishonesty,
between good faith and bad faith???

-- Maybe suffering and pain are not necessarily
"bad", but allow the creation of the greater
good? -- This seems to be one of Steiner's
"noble truths":  nothing good comes into the
world except through some kind of pain.

-- Must one hit bottom before changing? -- I
must wonder whether a truism regarding addicts
must apply literally to everyone.  But for
myself, it does seem that in order to make much
progress I must be fairly desperate in an inner
way, even if not outwardly starving and freezing
in the gutter.

. . . . A lot of question that could lead off
into many directions, and spread this discussion
all over the place.  But I will now try to bring
this long discussion to a focus, to the sixth
stage of Bondarev's 7fold dialectic:  the
individualization of the archetypal Idea. -- The
Idea was the necessity of pain and suffering in
Earth-life, and the overall "goodness" of the
Earthly Creation that includes this necessity,
and hence of the "wrongness" of withdrawal from
Earth-life, for such withdrawal in effect denies
and impedes this goodness.  And the question
that I came to was essentially this:  "How would
anyone, such as myself, understanding as much as
Steiner taught publicly about this Idea apply it
in his ('anyone's') behavior toward BD
agriculture, if he were in Steiner's position
around 1924?"

>>6 -- INDIVIDUALIZATION OF THE IDEA:  Without
the widespread use of such agricultural methods
as "biodynamics", as a practical matter, great
harm would come to individual Men, to society,
and to Earthly Nature.  Therefore, the question
is:  whether or not, to avoid this great harm,
BD methods had to be taught to the few who were
asking, and later to be spread to the wider
culture.  Perhaps the pain and suffering
entailed by BD methods was only minimal and
peripheral (e.g. the use of slaughterhouse by-
products does not increase the demand for
slaughter), and was far less than would follow
if BD methods were not taught and used.  So, in
this case, would aloofness by the one who knows
entail, realistically, more harm than would his
"involvement"? -- It seems that the course that
someone facing this question would want to take
would be the path of least harmfulness and
greatest promotion of forward evolution.  And
the fact is that aloofness, or the avoidance of
immediate, direct harmfulness would not
necessarily be the least harmful in the long
run; on the contrary, as the stories about the
Buddha and Jesus-Zarathustra show, it probably
is that aloofness or withdrawal from direct
involvement would not be the least harmful path
in the long run.<<

But I am not Steiner, and realistically,
logically I could not face the same ethical
decision that he faced.  And the same holds for
anyone else; only Steiner could have faced
Steiner's decision regarding agriculture in
1924.  Such, to my understanding, is "ethical
individualism" as outlined by Steiner in *PoF*: 
for the free spirit no general rules of conduct
can apply; the individual is irreducably unique
as are the ethical decisions that he faces.

-- And so:  what is the "upshot" of all this?  I
approach the seventh stage of Bondarev's
dialectic by asking:  "What really is BD to the
world, now and in the past?  Did Steiner make
the "right" (the least harmful and most
evolutionary) decision in 1924?"

And more:  to approach this question objectively
it seems that I must consider the contrarian
hypothesis:  "Suppose that Steiner made the
wrong decision, made and ethical mistake.  If
even the great Buddha could have made a mistake
regarding such questions in general, why not
Steiner also, in a particular situation?" 

But, how to answer such a question?  Seemingly,
I would have to calculate the sum of the
resulting harmfulness and harmlessness in all
the Universe over all time, as against the
results that would have followed had Steiner
done differently.  But I simply don't have the
knowledge and the ability to make this
calculation; only God could.  So:  can I answer
this question at all?  Maybe I could try another
tack, pose the question this way:  "Is BD
agriculture objectively good or bad for the
world; was Steiner's deed in 1924 good or bad?"

In *PoF* Steiner's definition of a "good deed"
is this:  "My action will be 'good' if my
intuition, steeped in  love, finds its right
place within the intuitively experienceable 
world continuum; it will be 'bad' if this is not
the case." (Wilson's translation) -- But this
definition seems to me circular, at best.  It
doesn't explain much; the concept *right place*
is no more clear than is the concept *good*.  If
*right place* means *more helpful than harmful*,
then I am again faced with an impossible
calculation.

Another definition, or semi-definition, that
Steiner gives in *PoF* is this:  "What we call
*good* is not what a man *must* do but what he
will *want* to do if he develops the true nature
of man to the full." -- But again, I don't find
this statement very helpful here (and I am
presuming that Steiner here used the "editorial
*we*").  The concept *true nature* isn't much
more clear than is the concept *good*.  If, in
the context of *PoF*, I assume that the "true
nature of man" is that of a "free spirit", then
I still don't know whether Steiner is giving
*good* as an equivalent term for *free*, or
whether he is saying that a "free action"
necessarily "finds its right place within the
intuitively experienceable  world continuum". 
If the former, conjuring up a tautology isn't
very helpful; if the latter, I am again faced
with an (for me) impossible calculation, which,
as far as I know, Steiner nowhere works out for
us.

-- But in fact, we do not need to make such
impossible calculations in order to act morally,
and I do not believe that Steiner was asking us
to.  And I similarly doubt that Steiner would
expect us to make such calculations in order to
judge the objective worth of the actions of
others (or of ourselves).   If the term *good*
is to have not merely a subjective, emotive
meaning but an objective meaning, then it must
be connected to a "Platonic Idea" of The Good. 
(And, ultimately, this Idea is a being.)  And
therefore, we can understand this Idea much as
we can understand any other Idea, through what
Steiner calls *intuition*.

(In passing, I note that even within the
typically nominalistic British philosophical
milieu, a similar proposition seems inescapable,
if any objective reality at all is to be
acknowledged in morality.  For example, the
influential Twentieth Century Cambridge
philosopher GE Moore came within a hair's
breadth of affirming the existence of the
Platonic Idea of The Good.  Only, as I presume,
he, being a good British Empiricist, did not
admit the existence of a "universal", an Idea,
but said that the good is a "non-natural
quality".  And, Moore did actually use the term
*moral intuition*, though perhaps not quite in
Steiner's sense.)

One might object, I guess, that different people
have so many differing, conflicting judgments
about "goodness" that The Good could not be an
objective Platonic Idea as, for instance, is The
Triangle.  But a Steinerian might reply that all
that this sociological fact proves is that
people generally are too emotional and
subjective to think as objectively about
goodness as they do about triangles, and that if
they did think objectively, then they would be
in as much agreement about goodness as they are
about triangles.

Still, it seems that we, most of us,
individually and *a fortiori* collectively, are
far from being able to think with "mathematical
clarity" about goodness, in general and
especially in particular instances which are
controversial.  And yet, in practical
experience, it does not seem that we are
therefore bound to be "moral idiots"; we do, or
at least can, make moral decisions (at least the
obvious ones) and carry them out.  How is this
fact possible, given that we don't (usually)
think clearly about goodness?

I propose that this fact is possible because we
have an elementary, elemental capacity to grasp
the reality of moral facts about goodness,
despite our lack of clear, systematic thinking
about it.  As a comparison, we might consider
our normal apprehension of the reality of the
material objects around us; we don't "prove"
their reality through clear, systematic
thinking, but still, somehow, we do (usually)
grasp their reality.  Even a slight brush with
"philosophical" literature informs us that
manifold doubts and objections can be raised
against our knowledge of "external objects";
indeed, whole library shelves can be filled with
such literature.  But we do in fact perceive, in
thought and action, the external objects around
us, and usually correctly.  How is this
possible?

I might again allude to the philosophical
example of GE Moore.  Rather famously (within
the little world of English language
philosophical academia) he "proved" the
existence of an external world simply by
pointing to his left and right hands as obvious
examples of external objects:  since at least
these two external objects exist, ergo an
external world exists.  Moore averred that any
philosophical doubts and objections against
these obvious facts are less plausible than the
"common sense" awareness of their reality.  (See
the Wikipedia article on GE Moore.)  Or, as I
might say, the belief is *more real* than the
doubt.

And likewise I might say that in some cases, in
very many cases, the belief in the goodness or
badness of some action is simply, factually,
*more real* than any thought-out doubts about
it.  To deny this fact is honestly *unreal*.  To
lack a thought-out rationale for this fact is
not to lack a real apprehension of it. -- If one
does want to "think it out", one might go down
the philosophical road that affirms that we, in
such cases, come into an intuitive relation with
the intelligible being of the "objects". 
(Compare the discussion of Thomas Reid in Ernst
Lehrs' *Man or Matter*.)

And my proposal is that our intuitions about
moral facts are very comparable:  we do come
into intuitive relations with the Platonic Idea
of The Good, in many cases.  And in the case
under discussion is about the objective, real
goodness, or lack of it, in BD agriculture.

Now, back to the question:  what is BD
agriculture to the world?  How to go about
answering it? -- We are already given the key:
ye shall know them by their fruits.  So, what
are the "fruits" of BD agriculture?

I am hardly the right person to answer this
question; for an A-pop, I am poorly informed
about BD agriculture.  But I seem to be the
person that I am stuck with.  So, apparently, I
must draw on my small store of information, look
around for more, and do what I can. -- Due to my
very limited knowledge of the subject and to the
limits on my ability to research, my treatment,
by customary methods, of this question must be
quick and somewhat superficial.  Plenty of
people know far, far more about this subject
than I do.  I encourage the readers to take some
of the leads indicated below, google around, and
educate themselves.  I will show only a few
lines on inquiry, before turning to other means
of investigation.

-- Offhand, it would appear that the "fruits" of
BD agriculture are, at best, slight, when
compared to those of conventional agriculture. 
Comparatively, the acreage under cultivation and
the food produced by BD are miniscule.  One
might be tempted to say that the fruits of BD
approach zero.  But this is a superficial
reaction; we need to look deeper.

We can't answer the question in the way that is
usual today.  In BD agriculture the emphasis is
on quality, not on quantity.  To judge the
fruits of BD we can't simply count things up and
weigh them, or even analyze them in the usual
chemical ways.  No, we must judge them by their
*qualities*, and this is a very hard thing to do
in the normal consciousness of the present. 
(BTW, some "qualitative" methods of measurement
actually have been developed, e.g. by the
Koliskos and by Pfeiffer, but such methods,
though many years old, still have not found
their ways into general scientific use.)

For food, the primary qualitative "measurement",
as it were, is probably taste.  And it is well-
known, within a small population, that BD foods
do indeed taste good.  Just a couple of 
testimonials:

". . . . according to Sebastian Parsons, chair
of the Biodynamic Agricultural Association, you
can taste the difference in biodynamic produce.
. . ."

"David Motion, owner of The Winery in London's
Maida Vale, used to be a biodynamic sceptic,
until he tried a similar taste experiment with
wines. Motion, whose shop specialises in German
wines, is now a convert and stocks a range of
biodynamic vintages (look for the tiny green dot
on his shop labels).

"'A root day won't make a good wine taste bad,
but on a fruit day the wine is almost leaping
out of the bottle and singing "ta-dah!" he says.
. . .'"

(from "Is biodynamic the new organic?" -
Telegraph;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/6230162/
Is-biodynamic-the-new-organic.html)

More importantly, the question of "fruits" goes
far beyond mere taste; it goes to questions of
real nutrition, and beyond those, to questions
of the health of society and of the Earth
itself.  And again, nutrition and health are
very hard to quantify, they are more matters of
quality. 

Pfeiffer says:  "We live not only from substance
(matter), we also need energies (life-giving and
life-maintaining).  It is the aim of the
'Biodynamic Method' or 'Concept', to establish a
system that brings into balance all factors
which maintain life."

Indeed, a subtle aspect of nutrition was a key
consideration for Steiner as a motive for his
promulgation of BD in the first place.  Dr.
Pfeiffer tells the story:

". . . . a conversation I had with Dr. Steiner
en route from Stuttgart to Dornach shortly
before the agricultural course was given. He
had been speaking of the need for a deepening of
esoteric life, and in this connection mentioned
certain faults typically found in spiritual
movements. I then asked, 'How can it happen that
the spiritual impulse, and especially the inner
schooling, for which you are constantly
providing stimulus and guidance bear so little
fruit? Why do the people concerned give so
little evidence of spiritual experience, in
spite of all their efforts? Why, worst of all,
is the will for action, for the carrying out of
these spiritual impulses, so weak?' I was
particularly anxious to get an answer to the
question as to how one could build a bridge to
active participation and the carrying out of
spiritual intentions without being pulled
off the right path by personal ambition,
illusions and petty jealousies; for, these were
the negative qualities Rudolf Steiner had named
as the main inner hindrances. Then came the
thought-provoking and surprising answer: 'This
is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is
to-day does not supply the strength necessary
for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A
bridge can no longer be built from thinking to
will and action. Food plants no longer contain
the forces people need for this.'

"A nutritional problem which, if solved, would
enable the spirit to become manifest and realise
itself in human beings! With this as a
background, one can understand why Dr. Steiner
said that 'the benefits of the bio-dynamic
compost preparations should be made available as
quickly as possible to the largest possible
areas of the entire earth, for the earth's
healing.'"  (from *The Agriculture Course*
Preface)

I don't see any easy way to decide by
"measurement" whether BD foods are successful in
solving this nutritional problem.  It seems one
would have to measure the manifestations of
spirit-in-action in those people who eat only BD
products and compare those manifestations to
what they would have been without BD foods, all
other things being equal.  But spirit can't be
quantified; the what-if question is inherently
unanswerable; and it is never the case that all
other things are equal.  Real life is too
complex to be reduced to a controlled laboratory
experiment. -- Again, apparently, this is a
question of quality.  Or, at least it is a
question that will not yield to ordinary methods
of cognition.

And not only the health of human beings was a
consideration; Steiner spoke of the health of
the earth.  Some aspects, such a soil erosion,
seem fairly obvious.  Pfeiffer again:

"To restore the most beneficial environmental
conditions (forests, wind protection, water
regulation), has been an important aim of the
Biodynamic Method from its earliest years.  Had
the method been accepted before 1930, it can be
truly said that no soil conservation agencies
would have been needed later on, in 1935 and the
following years."
(from BIODYNAMICS: A  SHORT  PRACTICAL 
INTRODUCTION)

But the quantity of soil preserved is obviously
not the whole story; BD is concerned with the
health of the soil, and not only of the soil,
but of the whole environment:  plant, animal,
human, even social.  And yet again, health is a
hard thing to measure. 

The Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association
outlines the aims of BD agriculture:

"Common-sense practices include striving to be
self-sufficient in energy, fertilizers, plants,
and animals; structuring our activities based on
working with nature's rhythms; using diversity
in plant, fertilizers, and animals as building
blocks of a healthy operation; being
professional in our approach to reliability,
cleanliness, order, focus on observation, and
attention to detail; and being prompt and up-to-
date in doing one's job.

"The concern with the uniqueness of a particular
landscape includes developing an understanding
of the geology, soils, climate, plant, and
animal life; human ecology; and economy of one's
bioregion.

"Biodynamic agriculture is a way of living,
working and relating to nature and the vocations
of agriculture based on good common-sense
practices, a consciousness of the uniqueness of
each landscape, and the inner development of
each and every practitioner. Common-sense
practices include striving to be self-sufficient
in energy, fertilizers, plants, and animals;
structuring our activities based on working with
nature's rhythms; using diversity in plant,
fertilizers, and animals as building blocks of a
healthy operation; being professional in our
approach to reliability, cleanliness, order,
focus on observation, and attention to detail;
and being prompt and up-to-date in doing one's
job.

"The concern with the uniqueness of a particular
landscape includes developing an understanding
of the geology, soils, climate, plant, and
animal life; human ecology; and economy of one's
bioregion." (from "What Is Biodynamics?")

-- A subtle, insightful view of the "health" of
a BD farm is given by Hugh Lovel:

"With biodynamics the idea is to achieve a
bounded, living, harmonious system where nothing
is fighting anything else, all components are in
resonance, dancing like the patterns of sand on
a suspended metal plate vibrated by a violin
bow—very well-organized with minimal effort
needed to make the pattern sing and dance.
Within this living, coherent system biodynamic
practitioners modulate the mix and the flavour
of their operations with the way they use their
preparations. The better they achieve this, the
more syntropic (rather than entropic) their
property becomes—instead of going downhill and
continually having to be pumped back up with
inputs.

"It is establishing the boundaries of each
garden or farm and seeding it with the already
coherent biodynamic preparations that sets up
patterns compelling everything within those
boundaries to hum along in unison. The garden or
farm as a whole becomes alive, and the momentum
builds as the biological activity starts running
up instead of running down. Everything dances to
the same rhythms, to the same conductor, like
the players in a symphony orchestra. As the
organization builds, what the gardener or farmer
thinks, he grows. We should consider,
organization is the basis of life. We are living
organisms. With biodynamic agriculture a high
degree of organization gradually emerges, and
the garden or farm starts singing back at its
workers—or with them—like a gigantic choral
ensemble, wending its way through page after
page of musical scores."

(from QUANTUM AGRICULTURE - Introduction by Hugh
Lovel)

-- So, it seems to me that BD agriculture, in a
qualitative way, despite its (apparently)
miniscule quantitative actuality, has brought
something very healthy and unique into the
world.  (I say *apparently* because one cannot
rule out large-scale homeopathic effects over
the whole Earth from the relatively tiny amount
of actual BD agricultural practice.) 

And more:  the effects of Steiner's BD teachings
are not finished, nor are they limited to
farmers merely carrying out his teachings
without improving upon them.  For instance,
another BD preparation, the "horn clay", has
been developed; it was not taught explicitly by
Steiner, but it is nevertheless apparently
effective.  Hugh Lovel states:

"Working with Greg Willis of AgriSynthesis we
found that in traditional biodynamic practice
there was one biodynamic preparation missing.
Biodynamic Horn Clay."

". . . . horn clay—a preparation Steiner
apparently meant to include in his lectures but
for one reason or another glossed over. This
mediates between the activities of the horn
manure that work into the soil and the
activities of the horn silica that work into the
atmosphere. Thus horn clay provides stronger sap
pressure and nutrient uptake by day, leading to
more abundant root exudation at night. This too
is supported by the seven herbal preparations,
particularly the nettles."

(from THE INTEGRATING, MEDIATING EFFECT OF
BIODYNAMIC HORN CLAY and "Biodynamics:  On the
Cutting Edge")

-- And still more:  Others, Hugh Lovel in
particular, have carried BD principles into the
realm of "radionics" (following up especially
the work of T. Galen Hieronymus).  Ways have
been found to get the BD effects without the
physical techniques taught by Steiner, but by
radionic techniques that Lovel calls *quantum
field broadcasting*.  Lovel explains:

"Field broadcasting is an economical, effective
way to apply all the biodynamic preparations all
the time to one¹s land. This makes biodynamics
do-able for everyone.

"By broadcasting the resonant, fractal patterns
of homeopathic potencies of the biodynamic
preparations directly into the organizational
energy fields of soil and atmosphere these
patterns are applied night and day 365 days a
year."

(from "Biodynamic Field Broadcasting Comes of
Age!")

Yet more:  very importantly for the main problem
under consideration here, Lovel has found that
the BD effects can be obtained without using
organic materials, including slaughterhouse
products, in the preps at all.  Satisfactory
results can be obtained by using geometrical
patterns instead.  Lovel again:

"Over the years it has proven generally
inadvisable to put crude, raw materials such as
lime, fertilizers or BD preps in our
broadcasters as reagents. It has proven far more
reliable to use homeopathic potencies of these.

"However, one of the problems long experienced
with homeopathic potencies is that variations
and inconsistencies creep in . . . . In
searching for something better we found that
clear and consistent results were obtained using
Malcolm Rae geometric cards which involve
patterns of seven concentric circles. With
geometric cards and a reader the card is
inserted, the desired potency is dialed and the
medium (such as sugar tablets) gets that potency
built or patterened on it. These are the most
reliable reagents we know of."

(Lovel wrote this about ten years ago.  I would
presume that his research has progressed even
further since then.  Now, apparently, he is in
Australia and applying the BD/radionic
principles to conditions there.)

(In his preface Pfeiffer explains that, around
the mid-Twentieth Century, many of Steiner's
agricultural recommendations had been put into
effect widely, but in diluted, materialistic
ways.)

-- I can now back up and return to my immediate
sub-questions.

What are the fruits of BD?  The fruits are
something now, and have not ended; they are
already growing into even better fruits:  e.g.
"quantum field broadcasting".

Objectively, what is BD agriculture to the
world? -- It is something better than what was,
better than what generally now exists, and is a
transition to something even better in the
future.  And that "something even better" would
hardly have come if BD had not been there first. 

Backing up further, I can reconsider Steiner's
ethical decision in 1924.  And again I go to
Lovel:

"Steiner’s agriculture course was his final,
desperate effort to introduce a new impulse that
might remedy the root causes of our social
problems. The more effectively the preparations
are used, the more they will make our land and
our crops thrive in a complete and balanced way.
Only if this occurs will food impart sufficient
forces for uniting our wills with our
imaginations and making us whole. Unless this
happens on a large scale and soon, the earth
will lose its ability to support life."

BD agriculture is not now merely what Steiner
taught; many others have made it what it is now,
and is still becoming something even better. 
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer learned from Steiner and
carried the work further.  Likewise Peter Escher
learned from Pfeiffer and taught Lovel.  The
Koliskos contributed valuable discoveries; some,
such as Glen Atkinson, have developed their work
further in the direction of homeopathic
applications of biodynamic principles.  And many
farmers put their lives into the work. -- But
none of this would likely have happened had
Steiner not given the original impulse in 1924. 
So:  did Steiner make a mistake? -- The "good"
that has resulted, and might well result more,
seems rather obvious.  (This is not a
calculation but an apprehension of the Platonic
Idea of The Good applied to this case, I hope.) 
But to consider the "bad" results I must again
look at the use of slaughterhouse products (and
the killing of some animals for the "peppers"). 
These are in themselves negatives, but they must
be considered not only in themselves but also in
relation to the negatives that would have
followed had Steiner not acted as he did.  The
slaughtered animals would have been slaughtered
anyway; the horns and so on were only by-
products and, I would presume, did not increase
the demand for slaughter.  (And the harm to
animals killed to make "peppers" was far less
than would have followed if the animals pests
had instead been killed *en masse* by the usual
means.)  And one must also consider the good
that the world as a whole would have missed had
Steiner not acted as he did:  BD would not have
come into the world and would not be developing
further as it now is.  And, who knows, maybe
general agricultural collapse and mass
starvation would already have set in, had not
the tiny BD farming practice acted quasi-
homeopathically to heal the earth?  Even today,
despite (or because of) the chemical and "trans-
genetic "hot-wiring" of mass agriculture, food
prices are rising and food riots are springing
up around the world.  The game is not over, and
BD is needed now as much as, or more than, ever.
I don't believe that Steiner made a mistake. 
From where I sit, his decision looks right --
despite the regrettable cruelty involved.  And
really, this is more than regrettable; it is a
profound sorrow.  Yet again:  I must presume
that it was a deep heartache for Steiner
himself; he knew far better than most of us the
profound atrociousness of the entailed cruelty. 
-- This is about as far as I can get into the
seventh stage through "thinking it out".  But I
am not satisfied that this (7th stage) question
has thus far been answered as the 7fold
dialectic truly requires.  According to Bondarev
(if I understand him), in the 7fold dialectic
the thinking after the third stage is not
thought-out at all in the usual way; it must
come through a higher process.  And the 7th
stage should be a unification of the Platonic
Idea and its particular individualization in the
case under consideration. 
In this case (following from the original
conflict of "thesis" and "antithesis") the main
Idea was that of the inevitability, and the
rightness, of the existence of pain and
suffering within Creation.  And the
individualization was the problem of acting
ethically with this realization and facing the
problems of modern agriculture.  But there are
many Ideas, which are really beings, involved --
and they cannot be "reached" by ordinary
"thinking-out"; the question cannot be brought
to a conclusion by thinking it out.  And perhaps
more importantly, my heart is not satisfied by
such a "conclusion".  The original question
sprung from my heart, and mere thinking in the
ordinary sense, no matter how cogent, simply
does not give my heart what it wants.  The heart
want something more, something more real.
I said that I had not asked a clear, cognitive
question in the first place (in the original
antithesis).  The question had some cognitive
content, but the strongest energy behind it was
emotional:  a matter of feeling.  The cognitive
considerations about the necessity of suffering,
the impracticality of withdrawal, and so on,
mollify my feelings somewhat, but not entirely. 
Something yet remains unanswered; some more
elemental answer is still needed.
How to come to a resolution of the whole 7-
folded question?  I struggled with
considerations such as these:
The seventh stage according to Bondarev is the
All-Unity of the General Idea and the Particular
Instance.  But there are so many Ideas, that is,
Beings, involved in this present question. 
These are Beings that I must, apparently,
converse with:  the Being of Rudolf Steiner, the
Being of Goodness, the Being of Suffering, the
Being of Incarnation, the Being of the Necessity
of Eating, the Being of Earth-Evolution, the
Beings of the Animals, the Beings of the Plants
. . . all, all in the aching and yearning of my
heart -- for a resolution, for a solution, for a
reconciliation, for a fulfillment and
justification of my own life. . . . . This is
not possible merely by doing anything like what
is ordinarily meant by the word *thinking*. 
This must be something much, much more
substantial and passionate and desperate and
heart-wrenching and soul-searing.  One can't do
this on the cheap; only the pure in heart can do
this -- and only if they throw themselves into
the effort, altogether, completely, desperately. 
This is not a mere puzzle-solving; this is a
Drama, a real-life, an all-in, life struggle --
an extreme situation, like a life-and-death
battle.  Superficiality and even frivolity are
impossible here.

-- With such considerations in mind, I tried to
bring this question before the Thought-Beings
involved in this 7fold dialectical attempt.  But
I hit the block:  how can I commune with theses
Beings when I am effectively deaf and blind,
when I can't hear or see them?  Perhaps in what
RS calls *Phantasie*?  Not "fantasy" exactly in
the English sense of wish-driven escapism, but
in the sense of creative visualization
(artistic?).

Anyway:  I got (somehow) the mental image of a
Pietà like Michelangelo's.  I noted that this is
an archetype, which in Wolfram's *Parzival* was
given as the picture of Sigune grieving over the
dead Schionatulander; I noted further that the
historical person behind the legendary
Schionatulander is reputed to be a previous
incarnation of Rudolf Steiner.  The archetype is
the mother, or the virgin, holding the dead son,
or young man, in sorrow and grief. -- Further, I
got a similar image of a girl-child cuddling a
bunny in a green, summery meadow by a running
brook. -- I faced the question:  Is this, or are
these images somehow meaningful for this, my
attempt at the 7th stage of thinking?  But, if
so, I couldn't see how.

The next day, pursuing this *Phantasie* further,
I "saw" the girl who was holding the bunny
getting younger and younger.  I had the thought: 
if the Pietà scene represents Mother Nature
grieving over her tortured and dead Son (the
Earth? the creatures of Earth-Evolution?), then
what is the Young Girl?  Innocent, blooming
Nature? -- Perhaps, working from the Pietà
image, I might see the seventh stage of *this*
dialectic as this proposition:  BD agriculture
is good and loving, but still painful and
sorrowful. -- And then what about the young girl
hugging the bunny in the Spring/Summer meadow? 
Does this mean that the hurting of the innocent,
trusting heart follows in the course of *any*
hurting of the animals?  If so:  how could BD be
in any sense "good"?  Except if, the hurting of
innocent hearts can *somehow* turn out to be
good in the long run?  Would a truly innocent
heart lose faith if it were hurt, or would it
continue to trust? -- Maybe the message is:  a
truly innocent heart would see no "antithesis"
(as I did) in the first place; it would continue
to trust, knowing that in the care of the loving
God(s) "all things work together for the good" .
. . of the good spirits in this striving for
forward evolution? . . . ?  Does all this add up
to the conclusion the fact that I saw a
contradiction in the first place, was really
bothered, shows that my heart was impure?

These questions led me the next day to further
questions and considerations: -- Why does the
girl in the imagery keep getting younger and
younger?  Is it:  "Except ye become as little
children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom
of heaven"?  Perhaps the little girl hugging the
bunny is already in Heaven, that the green
summery scene is the "Summerland" of the
"spiritualists"? . . . And that she is pure and
faithful, and she has no "problem" with
Steiner's BD preps; her faith is not shaken; she
is always assured in the love and goodness and
protection of the World Order:  She always knows
that "all things work together for the Good";
the BD preps don't make her anxious and doubtful
about that?  (Just as the real evil and pain the 
world don't make her doubtful about that [the
ultimate working of the Good]?)  She knows, and
an epistemology that says that she doesn't know
is FALSE? -- OK, maybe; but that's about her
child-ness; what about her femininity; what does
that mean?  "The Eternal Feminine draws us
upward"?  There is surely, specifically,
inherently, a feminine aspect of the Divine, and
I don't understand it; I don't know why it is
so.  But what does that have to do with BD
specifically???  Is it that the Feminine, the
Receptive, accepts the pain and sorrow, and
"turns them into Love"?

More consideration on the symbology of my images
followed: -- The Feminine is the archetypal
image of the SOUL, the feelings.  The purified
soul (astral body) is the Manas, the Spirit
Self, the Holy VIRGIN Sophia:  WISDOM, loving,
trusting, vulnerable, innocent. -- Is the
message, the solution of this whole 7fold
thinking exercise that I need to be "converted
and become as a little child" to approach this
and suchlike problems? . . . that to "get"
Wisdom I must be as the Feminine Holy Virgin
Sophia, in trust and in painful sorrow? 
(compare the Pietà, the Mater Dolorossa) . . .
for, "wisdom is crystallized pain". -- Without
pain there is no wisdom:  a Mystery. 

(Ravenscroft:  the archetype:  Pietà, Sigune-
Schionatulander = Isis-Osiris.  "Sigune . . .
represents the widowed human soul." [*The Cup of
Destiny*; "The Divine Fool"])

(Scionatulander = Steiner [who died in the place
of Parzival = Mani])

(The Male as the symbol of Spirit?)

(Purification [of the Soul, Feminine] comes
through the FIRE of Pain.)

(The innocent Child-Soul:  what I am *not*!)

-- Such were the thoughts I had soon after
"getting" this imagery, trying to understand it. 
Perhaps they were coming too fast and wandering
too widely.  I will try to bring them to a
focus. 

Are there two conclusions; one cognitive and one
emotional?  One re the objective atrociousness,
one the subjective? -- No; really, true emotion
*is* objective, that is, it is a subjective
experience in harmony with objective Reality. 
And, as RS taught at the very beginning of
*KoHW*, emotions, feelings, are food for the
soul, and the soul must have good food in order
to be healthy enough to achieve true cognition. 
Verily, in a sense we must be "converted" and
become as little children in order to answer
this, or any other, question.

>> -- UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GENERAL: 
Judging by its fruits, BD is apparently good and
healthy, and is becoming more so.  This goodness
and health would not have come about had not RS
done as he did in giving out the essentials of
BD.  And judging with an innocent, child-like
soul, BD is good but sorrowful, and the sorrow
itself does not contradict the goodness but
enhances it.<<

***

Appendix 1:

(Jainism - Wikipedia:)

Jainism acknowledges that it is impossible to
discharge one's duties without some degree of
himsa/violence, but encourages to minimise as
much as possible. For example: A common man may
need leather belt or shoes (this is himsa) so
he/she may minimise vilolence by purchasing only
one pair of shoes instead of 10 pairs or he/she
may use plastic slippers or he/she may choose to
wear those leather products which are not
obtained by killing animals (rather obtained
from a naturally dead animals). Jains usually do
not consume root vegetables such as potatoes,
garlic, onions, carrots, radishes, cassava,
sweet potatoes, turnips, etc., as the plant
needed to be killed in the process of accessing
these prior to their end of life cycle. In
addition, the root vegetables interact with soil
and therefore contain far more micro-organisms
than other vegetables. However, they consume
rhizomes such as dried turmeric and dried
ginger. Brinjals are also not consumed by some
Jains owing to the large number of seeds in the
vegetable, as a seed is a form of life. Strict
Jains do not consume food left overnight because
of contamination by microbes. Most Jain recipes
substitute potato with plantain.

(Ahimsa - Wikipedia:)

Jains also make considerable efforts not to
injure plants in everyday life as far as
possible. Though they admit that plants must be
destroyed for the sake of food, they accept such
violence only inasmuch as it is indispensable
for human survival, and there are special
instructions for preventing unnecessary violence
against plants.[64] Jains go out of their way so
as not to hurt even small insects and other
minuscule animals.[65] For example, Jains often
do not go out at night, when they are more
likely to step upon an insect. In their view,
injury caused by carelessness is like injury
caused by deliberate action.[66] Eating honey is
strictly outlawed, as it would amount to
violence against the bees.[67] Some Jains
abstain from farming because it inevitably
entails unintentional killing or injuring of
many small animals, such as worms and
insects,[68] but agriculture is not forbidden in
general and there are Jain farmers.

Though, theoretically, all life forms are said
to deserve full protection from all kinds of
injury, Jains admit that this ideal cannot be
completely implemented in practice. Hence, they
recognize a hierarchy of life. Mobile beings are
given higher protection than immobile ones. For
the mobile beings, they distinguish between one-
sensed, two-sensed, three-sensed, four-sensed
and five-sensed ones; a one-sensed animal has
touch as its only sensory modality. The more
senses a being has, the more they care about its
protection. Among the five-sensed beings, the
rational ones (humans) are most strongly
protected by Jain ahimsa.

***

Appendix 2

(Biodynamic agriculture - Wikipedia:)

. . . . pests such as insects or field mice
(Apodemus) have more complex processes
associated with them, depending on what pest is
to be targeted. For example field mice are to be
countered by deploying ashes prepared from field
mice skin when Venus is in the Scorpius
constellation.

Weeds are combated (besides the usual mechanical
methods) by collecting seeds from the weeds and
burning them above a wooden flame that was
kindled by the weeds. The ashes from the seeds
are then spread on the fields, then lightly
sprayed with the clear urine of a sterile cow
(the urine should be exposed to the full moon
for six hours), this is intended to block the
influence from the full moon on the particular
weed and make it infertile.

***

Appendix 3

(from "The Attainment of Spiritual Knowledge";
20th September, 1922)

". . . . one cannot reach this Intuitive
knowledge, this submerging in outer things,
without passing through intense suffering, much
more intense than the pain of which I had to
speak when I characterized Imaginative
knowledge, when I said that through one's own
efforts one must find the way back into one's
sympathies and antipathies — and that inevitably
means pain. But now pain becomes a cosmic
experiencing of all suffering that rests upon
the ground of existence."

"One can easily ask why the Gods or God created
suffering. Suffering must be there if the world
is to arise in its beauty."

"That we have eyes — I will use popular language
here — is simply due to the fact that to begin
with, in a still undifferentiated organism, the
organic forces were excavated which lead to
sight and which, in their final metamorphosis,
become the eye. If we were still aware today of
the minute processes which go on in the retina
in the act of sight, we should realize that even
this is fundamentally the existence of a latent
pain."

"All beauty is grounded in suffering. Beauty can
only be developed from pain. And one must be
able to feel this pain, this suffering. Only
through this can we really find our way into the
supersensible world, by going through this
pain."

Dear Members,

      One of the unique things about anthroposophy is that rather than just being
a philosophy, experienced only in the head, it can be taken in to your artistic
and feeling life. The meditative path was not only described in books, but the
experiences of people as they meditate have been portrayed on the stage in Dr.
Steiner's 4 Mystery Dramas, in which we follow a group of people as they gain
insight into who they were in past lives and how this influences their present
life and makes it comprehensible.
      Last year thousands of people went to the world headquarters in Switzerland
to see performances of all 4. Aside from that special center in Europe, it's a
rare thing to be able to see one performed--- but next month, Steiner's second
Mystery Drama will be put on the stage in the US, in New York.
     "The Soul's Probation" will be performed twice at the Threefold Auditorium
in Chestnut Ridge, New York (about 30 miles north of NYC). You can either come
to see just the play itself (tickets are as little as $35), or see it in
sections over several days as part of a several-day-long conference interspersed
with lectures on the play and discussion groups you can join.
       The conference will be Aug. 17th-20th, the play by itself Aug. 20th, 2011.
Make plans to come, and tell everyone who might be interested!
-starman