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Conversation with Tom Mellett on his lifelong interest in Anthroposophy, Rudolf on the races, the selfless self, & the mediating Christ between the impersonal forces of Lucifer & Ahriman.
Part One: Cooking in the Ether (0 – 34 mins)
Back to Steiner, iron deficiency, cancer diagnosis, a Platonic day, Michaelmas, The Spear of Destiny, Rudolf vs. Adolf, Karl Stegman’s mission for the US, Hitler in 1933, eco-fascism, Steiner’s love life, a split in the Anthroposophist society, the Steiner hagiography, Rudolf Hesse’s wife, reading Steiner, racial controversy, the deeds and suffering of light, peach blossom skin, group soul consciousness, predicting a race war.
Part Two: The Lucifer-Ahriman Thermostat (34 mins – 1 hr 5 mins)
The “racism” question, fundamental differences, true liminality, the balance between Lucifer-Ahriman extremes, Michael Chekov theater, the opposite of courage, virtue as knowing the extremes of vice, the right temperature, the etheric body, a homeostatic reaction, possessed by cleverness, Icarus, chiasma, Lucifer’s moral automatons.
Part Three: Doubting Thomas (1 hr 5 mins – 1 hr 36 mins)
Emerging from Anthroposophy, Tom’s heretic phase, the spirits of personality, Rudy the straight-shooter, listening to the critics, a suppression agenda, a Christianized Theosophy, evolving consciousness, the appeal of reincarnation, Steiner’s previous incarnations, the Platonists & the Aristotelians, transparency, an original incel, mothers for wives, sexuality & the lower forces, Swedenborg’s limit, the Steiner sex file.
Part Four: Dynamic Homeostasis (1 hr 36 mins – end)
Alone in a room, thinking about thinking, the 1st level of clairvoyance, the I am consciousness, the liminal ego, vesica piscis, the self of selflessness, the body as subject, psychosomatic balance, the centerpoint of matter & spirit, a turning inside out, projective geometry, a mediating element, a new wrinkle to the incel, reality on the inside, an image of the body, Narcissus’ error, positive destruction, Ahrimanic correction of Luciferic anthroposophy.
Songs: “Primitive” & “Chasing Time” by Joy Zipper; “Bad Kiss” by Terry Allen; “Morning Star” by Art of Flying; “Patiently” by Jenny Mahood.
Hi Tom,
re: The Hard Problem… yes, I agree with Steiner’s take, as you articulate near the end of this podcast.
Though the HPC is more usually understood as a difficulty relating conscious, subjective experience to mere processing, so I don’t know that Steiner was really predicting the conflict that Chalmers later articulated. Rather he is giving a non-dual type interpretation of thinking and mental selfhood that could be used as such.
What I personally find interesting is that the easiest way out of the HPC, for materialists, is yes to bring up the artificial way that thinking reinforces subject-object relationships – the apparent self-other aspect of existence. But few materialists, being hard science types, want to go there. It smacks too much of Eastern mysticism for them.
A division between genuine scientists, and the more widespread fans of “scientism” is created.
Rudolf Hess –
https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/scottish-field-wreckage-hess-plane-be-sold-1535469
Hi Jasun,
Great interview, please pass on well wishes to Tom. I had a similar thing eighteen months ago, I had a cancerous lung removed, I’d not thought of it as an initiation, but yes I can see that now.
With love and warm regards, Elizabeth.
The conversation (for me at least) really went to the heart of things in the last segment. The highlight for me was Jasun’s spontaneous statement that ended in “the divine spark” (barely averting blurting “the G word”).
it def. picked (& warmed) up in the last stretch
“God bless us, every one!”
Then the absence of thought the subject/object are not known, or are known only through thinking; novel idea. Thinking becomes a prior to everything.
But thoughts are symbols (language) as such, they were/are transform from a another substrate somewhere else.
It occurred to me on the second listening, The
‘somewhere else’ maybe it’s abstract painting’s borrowed and shared like the alphabets , strung together to form paragraphs ,between friends,
that’s thoughts symbols replaced by something else.
And by and by they too are replaced by something more complete , more compelling..
…and it may all start with hyperspace “language” deciphered/recoded by John Dee (for example).
Flights of fancy; what symbols transformed could be.
Definitely not tightly defined – like it’s this and no other.
.,..Then the absence of thought the subject/object are not known, or are known only through thinking; …..
Subject-object distinctions will exist without thinking. They are behaviourally configured into most life forms. Neuroception is the product of natural selection, so moving towards food and away from danger happens regardless.
But the distinction must be reinforced by thinking, I figure.
Semi-colon…I like that description ! Good luck with the surgery & best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Five years ago, I had an abdominal tumor that cost me the right side of my colon and a kidney. It was quite the experience. Anesthesia is incredible; 8 hour surgery and it felt like a blink of an eye.
Speaking for myself, the surgery wasn’t too bad as the body begins to recover and heal very quickly. Each day is an improvement. The more challenging part was the follow up with radiation therapy to ensure that no cancer remained. Exact opposite experience where you begin feeling normal but as it wears you down, each day gets worse. By the end of radiation, I really felt that I was staring at the abyss of death.
Eventually I recovered from the radiation too but it was a long slow and uneven recovery. The fatigue would come & go and it was a difficult sense of weariness to explain.
At any rate, good luck to you.
Jasun,
Thank you so much for being such a good interviewer — the 2 hours went by in a flash for me. And thanks to all the commenters so far. I do want to answer each one of you individually, but right now, the karmic crunch of my coming initiation has really intensified.
My life partner, Annalea, who is in middle stage dementia from Alzheimer’s, took a fall last Friday, landing on her right hip. Today is her 78th birthday and my only gift to her was to give my consent to the surgery she will be having at 2 PM today to replace her ball joint. I’m not able to visit her and probably will not see her again until well after my own surgery in 9 days.
She will enter a skilled nursing facility for rehab and then possibly may not return home here, at least not during the month it will take me to recuperate.
I am spared the burden of caring for her as I prepare for my own surgery, but I do miss her terribly and I’m also feeling the added grief of having already lost her over the past year that she had descended to her child-like level of dementia consciousness.
All of this embedded in the wider context of COVID, which seems to draw us all together in some form of compassion, in its literal meaning of “sharing suffering.”
Tom
I really hope things work out for you, Tom. Discussion is just discussion at the end of the day.
Very best wishes to you and your wife, Tom.
Greetings Jasun & all Liminalistas world-wide! I come bearing good tidings about my colon surgery! It was a great success! I am healing up so much faster than I and my surgeon thought possible for my age. I am so overwhelmingly upbeat and relieved that I believe that she performed an exorcism rather than a mere surgical excision. Out demon colon!
My nephew and daughter are still here caring for me but they are leaving tomorrow as I am now ready for prime time. I documented my progress on Facebook and even discovered a cute cherubic face looking up at me from the vertical gash above my navel (Axis Mundi!) I turned it into this experience:
VATICAN AGHAST! FACE OF BABY JESUS APPEARS ON TOM’S WOUND!
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2921301508194789&id=100009449043808
And to get back on Steiner topic, a German friend stated that “JvH would be aghast, too!” You see, for the last 15 years or so, there has been a genuine “Stigmata Girl of Anthroposophy” by the name of Judith von Halle. Here’s my response:
Well, my stigmata is a lot sexier than hers! And I’m happy to show it off to everyone because I am a transparent anthroposophical exhibitionist and she is not. Thus I exhibit true modesty while she is an immodest hypocrite for keeping her stigmata under wraps, thus giving her an undeserved “air of mystery.”
(For those who do not know anything about JvH = Judith von Halle, here is an article I translated about her in 2012.)
https://southerncrossreview.org/86/judith-von-halle.html