Experiencing the ‘I’ through the senses

The Humanities Section and the Medical Section are studying sensory experience as ‘I’ experience in the digital age.

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Is it not astonishing how quickly we have got used to digital communication because we had to? We spend hours, even days, in front of a screen in order to keep in touch with the world and with colleagues and friends. We know it is a surrogate, but are we still aware, given that this medium is no longer alien to us, how different it is to our normal sensory experience of others and of the world around us?

Awakening in the world

The research Rudolf Steiner described in his book Anthroposophy (A Fragment) (GA 45) is devoted to exploring the activity of the individual senses rather than just listing them up. The danger of sliding into ‘sub-nature’ – into the mechanical, purely earthly realm of technology – has often been pointed out. According to Rudolf Steiner, we can counter-balance this by raising ourselves as high above nature as we have sunk beneath it into sub-nature (GA 26, Leading Thoughts 183 to 185 and the letter ‘From Nature to Sub-Nature, March 1925).

We find an indication to this in the study of the senses: “For what is natural law – in colour, tone, etc. – has entered the earthly realm from the cosmos.” (GA 26, From Nature to Sub-Nature). When we deepen our sensory experience, we separate it from the earthly realm and reach with our ‘I’ into the cosmic realm; for all sensory experience is in fact ‘I’ experience, and nothing earthly is mechanical. A puzzling chapter in the Fragment is devoted to this fact.

Even when we are sleeping deeply, we are ‘swimming’ with our ‘I’ in the cosmic realm. But because our senses are no longer accessible to us, our everyday ‘I’ loses consciousness. Through the senses we awaken to the world, but also to our self, as we become self-aware. We don’t usually pay attention to this self-awakening through the senses. We could say, however, that, due to the way the senses work in the earthly world, we are placed into a life of self-awareness from the start. But in remaining with our self even though we live on earth, we begin to develop the higher soul organs of the ‘I’ as soon as we consciously perceive our sensory activities. We realize from this how the digital world reduces our sensory experience to an illusion (because our mind constantly has to add to it). How does sensory experience as a heavenly image relate to this fact?

Laboratory of continued humanization

How does the ‘I’ work and awaken through the senses? Could it be that the ‘I’ needs all twelve senses in order to develop healthily, or for us to keep developing as adults, to form soul organs on the basis of ‘I’- awareness? If we know how the ‘I’ achieves consciousness of both the world and itself, the path is clear for us to move from a self-awareness that experiences itself as separate from the world to the forming of new senses. If our sensory experience of the world becomes mechanical, on the other hand, this path is obstructed. Anthroposophy (A Fragment) (GA 45) contains the seeds for a study of the ‘I’ through the senses. While it is a challenging text, we can also see it as a compact laboratory of our continued humanization.

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