This was a really fun conversation with Formscapes (check out his content on YouTube).
The dialogue begins with Whitehead’s ideas on hybrid prehension and how they might relate to Steiner’s cultivation of higher organs of spiritual perception. Whitehead appears to have been open to esoteric ideas, based on some evidence that he tried contacting his deceased son through mediums via the Society for Psychical Research. Whitehead’s metaphysics seems compatible with the exploration of realms beyond normal perception.
Steiner went further in articulating a layered ontology of etheric, astral, and spiritual planes. His spiritual science aimed to develop new faculties like imagination, inspiration, and intuition to perceive these realms directly, not just conceptually. Language currently limits this, since we can only describe spiritual worlds in physical terms until new percepts give rise to new concepts.
The conversation then turns to cultural histories and their shaping of identity. Different folk souls respond uniquely to historical inflection points. The French and American Revolutions expressed different inflections of “freedom” — the French more communal, the American more individualistic and capitalistic. But both stem from Christianity’s secularizing influence in modernity.
We critiqued reactionaries who romanticize premodern eras, noting you can’t put the modern freedom genie back in the bottle. The challenge is reconciling individual autonomy and social cohesion. America exemplifies excessive individualism, contributing to civilizational clashes. Beyond abstract liberalism, we need a concrete universal sense of shared humanity.
The discussion explores how science and the metaphysics of money shape political possibilities. With cracks forming in the standard cosmological model, our self-understanding may shift in healthier directions. Rethinking money creation could also spur new social arrangements, like Steiner’s ideas about diversified currencies and social threefolding. Corporations rightly form human associations, but need changed values beyond profit alone, serving human flourishing holistically.
We both concurred that secularization remains a profoundly Christian process. There is no neat boundary between religious, political, economic, and scientific spheres. To be fully human means participating in all domains spiritually, culturally and politically.
Jean Gebser’s structures of consciousness are invoked to analyze patterns of cultural regression and inversion. Hegel’s brilliant sense of dialectical movement through contradiction allowing new forms of consciousness to emerge via mutual recognition is relevant, but we can’t passively rely on the dialectical process. Conscious human freedom must now initiate change.
In conclusion, the dawn of integral consciousness and the time freedom it promises will require East and West to meet in mutual transformation. This could happen violently or consciously. But one way or another, a new integration of human potential is imminent.
Our conversation weaved together many philosophers and spiritual thinkers to paint a picture of humanity’s crossroads. Outdated modes of thought shake under science and technology’s own revelations. At the edge of history, both darkness and light call to the human spirit. The choice ahead hinges on realizing integral consciousness. This means wedding social harmony to individual freedom. Philosophy and spiritual practice can guide this journey beyond abstractions into wisdom and compassionate action.