From Normal to Healthy: Paths to the Liberation of Consciousness

I believe that our central problem is that we do not know what or who a human being really is. We lack this knowledge because we have no valid picture of the human WORD, no image of human language, of words in general. This is why we have such trouble with words, why we hit upon the right word so rarely. Everything we do to, for, and against each other is speech of some kind, or ought to be. Yet we are interested in anything but words, these very words by means of which we do everything else. Because we don't know what words are we don't know what humans are. -Georg Khlewind How much practical time do we usually devote to the general art of being human? This practical guide to the self-healing of consciousness-it is both a spiritual psychology and a contemporary manual of the inner life-begins by laying out very clearly the unhealthy, unfree nature of today's consciousness. Methodical self-observation leads to discovering the key to the liberating consciousness from its habitual blind spots and automatisms: the realization of the universal primacy of cognition and the universal availability of its ground, the free attention. Through attention, a person who practices the author's exercises begins to expand the range of his or her possibilities of understanding and doing. The exercises-based on the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path and Rudolf Steiner's cognitive spiritual path-lead to a new life in which superconscious intuitions gradually take the place of superconscious formations. This new life is a universal human life of improvisatory, living thinking: a life of presence, pure joy, which is health for human beings.

In this practical guide to consciousness work — it is both a spiritual psychology and a manual of spiritual practice — the author of Stages of Consciousness and Becoming Aware of the Logos begins by laying our very clearly the unhealthy nature of contemporary consciousness, its blinders and automatisms. He then demonstrates how, starting with the free attention available to all, a person may begin to expand the range of his or her possibilities of understanding and ability to act.