{"id":59947,"date":"2024-09-11T13:22:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T11:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=59947"},"modified":"2024-09-11T13:22:42","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T11:22:42","slug":"when-one-is-dealing-with-spiritual-science-humor-is-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/when-one-is-dealing-with-spiritual-science-humor-is-necessary\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen One Is Dealing with Spiritual Science, Humor Is Necessary.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marginalia from the life and work of Rudolf Steiner.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In his lecture of July 11, 1916,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Rudolf Steiner described in detail how he met the Austrian mathematician and professor Oskar Simony (April 23, 1852\u2013April 6, 1915) of the Institute for Soil Cultivation [Institut f\u00fcr Bodenkultur<\/em>, today part of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences]: \u201cWe encountered each other one time (I know it as if it had been yesterday) on Salesianergasse\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0in Vienna. I knew him by sight; I had never spoken to him. He didn\u2019t know me at all; we just met as two people walking past each other on the sidewalk. At that time\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0I was a young pup of twenty-six, twenty-seven years old.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> So, Oskar Simony peered at me, remained standing (I\u2019m just telling you a fact), and started a conversation with me about all sorts of things about spiritual science, then took me to his house and gave me his latest publication on an extension of the four types of arithmetic, which he had published in the old Academy of Sciences at the time.\u201d<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Published in 1885, [Rudolf Steiner kept his copy of] this small work On Two Universal Generalizations of the Basic Algebraic Operations<\/em>, which bears the inscription: \u201cTo Mr. Rudolf Steiner, in friendly esteem, the author.\u201d<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have Ernst M\u00fcller to thank for the more exact knowledge of how Oskar Simony once addressed Rudolf Steiner. He probably confided these words to M\u00fcller in person, which he had used at the time to address Steiner: \u201cYou are an occultist.\u201d<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> And Emil Bock added that he had said: \u201cI would like you to come to my house with me, for I have an important question for you.\u201d This important question was: \u201cIs there reincarnation?\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Dimensions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Rudolf Steiner characterized Oskar Simony as a person \u201cwho, in every way, tried to live into the spiritual realm.\u201d Friedrich Eckstein (1861\u20131938), who was a close friend of his, tells us how Simony\u2014a hulk of a man\u2014went on many excursions and tours throughout his life, collecting plants and butterflies. Like Eckstein, he was also an enthusiastic alpinist, and the two met by chance on a mountain tour and became friends. Their conversations immediately turned to higher mathematics. Simony was interested in \u201chigher manifolds and spatial dimensions\u201d and had thus \u201ctaken special notice of the works of the famous Leipzig astronomer Friedrich Z\u00f6llner, who, in his Scientific Treatises<\/em> [Wissenschaftlichen Abhandlungen<\/em>], had expressed bold and often very fantastic ideas on this subject.\u201d Z\u00f6llner increasingly occupied himself with spiritualism and worked for some time with the American medium Henry Slade. Eckstein reports: \u201cAmong the spectacular phenomena that Slade had produced in Z\u00f6llner\u2019s presence, it was especially the mysterious tying of knots in a closed loop, bound together and sealed at the ends, that caused Z\u00f6llner the greatest excitement.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Simony\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. now began, in his own way, to deal in-depth with the problems of interlacing ribbons and knot formations, and after endless efforts he succeeded in bringing in a completely new systematic order into this world of shapes and concepts. What he found in his many years of work, however, was not so much empirical proof of the existence of higher spatial dimensions or of beings inhabiting them, but rather an entirely new geometric-topological approach to the problems of prime numbers and their law of formation.\u201d In 1881, Simony published a booklet about his studies titled: Generally Understandable and<\/em> Easily Controllable Solution to the Problem:<\/em> \u201cTo Make a Knot in a Closed Ring-Shaped Band\u201d and Curious Related Problems<\/em>.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Rudolf Steiner met Oskar Simony, he recalled it was the time \u201cwhen the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf, together with Archduke Johann\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. were concerned with the unmasking of a medium<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and with such things in general. That is why there was a lot of talk about such things in Vienna\u00a0at that time\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d Simony was also once invited by high authorities to take part in a spiritualist meeting with the aim of unmasking the medium. The host then asked him for his judgement as a physicist. Simony replied by comparing \u201c\u2019the emergence of occult phenomena with the formation of crystals from a saturated solution.\u00a0\u2026\u00a0[H]ere, the forming of beautiful shapes requires the necessary duration, warmth, darkness, and complete stillness. \u2026 But, when one \u2026 agitates a salt solution with a rod, then no crystals can form.\u2019 After this conversation, Simony was no longer invited there, and none of this was very conducive to his career.\u201d<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Above and Beyond the Pain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When Eckstein once asked him along which paths was he able to penetrate such depths of thinking as his mathematical discoveries required, Simony explained that he had been brought up by his father from an early age to endure physical pain with a certain equanimity: \u201cWell, there are few things that hurt as much as intense contemplation, when it is driven beyond a certain point. This is the moment when most give it up. But, the ability has been instilled in me to endure this kind of pain, and so, at times, I get above and beyond the point at which others throw everything away in order just to find calm. But, the new insights often lie just a small step above and beyond this point.\u201d<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Oskar Simony \u201cwas indeed occupying himself\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. with these things, very scientifically,\u201d according to Rudolf Steiner. In his mathematical research, he was above all interested in that which concerned the transition \u201cfrom the three-dimensional to the four-dimensional.\u201d<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> He described Simony\u2019s book To Make a Knot in a Closed Ring-Shaped Band<\/em> as \u201cvery interesting.\u201d<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> At the teacher\u2019s faculty meeting on December 18, 1923, Rudolf Steiner recommended it for working with a pupil. The phenomenon of \u201ctwisted strips of paper” was unknown to the teachers, so he showed them \u201chow a strip of paper pasted together to form a closed loop crossed itself in the middle when twisted one, two, or three times.\u201d<\/span>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span>: \u201cOne twist resulted in a large ring; two twists resulted in two rings, one within the other. With three twists, the result was a ring knotted in itself.\u201d According to Ernst Lehr, Rudolf Steiner used his Swiss Army knife and cut the strips of paper \u201cin complete silence,\u201d even though it was around two o\u2019clock in the morning: \u201cWe looked at the strips afterward and discovered that they had been cut in a completely straight line exactly in the middle.\u201d<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> All the while, he talked at length about his encounters with Simony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humor as Mobility of the Spirit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Looking back on the encounter with the mathematician, Rudolf Steiner especially emphasized his remark about humour: \u201cWell, while we were thus talking, he [Simony] made a pause in his remarks and said, \u2018Oh, when one is dealing with these things, actually a lot of humor is needed!\u2019 And truly, it is necessary, especially when one goes into the depths of spiritual science, that one does not unlearn humor, that, in other words, one does not feel continuously obliged to wear a tragically elongated face. And I am even convinced that Oskar Simony had lost his sense of humor in the last period of his life before he reached his tragic end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a lecture given in 1913, Rudolf Steiner explained in more detail what is meant by \u201chumor.\u201d Simony \u201csaid, \u2018When one is a serious researcher dealing with spiritual science, humor is necessary.\u2019 This does not mean clowning around, but rather mobility of spirit, which, indeed, can sometimes be quite uncomfortable for those people who swear by principles.\u201d<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Side and the Hereafter<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In a conversation with the Viennese mathematician and anthroposophist Ernst M\u00fcller (1880\u20131954) in Munich in 1913, Rudolf Steiner made some remarks about Simony, \u201cnot about his knot experiments, but about his generalization of algebraic operations. Dr. Steiner, indeed, saw in the forms of operation as modified [by Simony], the means of mathematically approaching suprasensible processes\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d<\/span>16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In response to this indication from Rudolf Steiner, M\u00fcller wrote to Oskar Simony in the spring of 1914. At that time, Simony was already very hard of hearing, but M\u00fcller communicated with him quite a lot until he was called up for military service: \u201cInstead of allowing me to meet him, he trudged up to my apartment himself with heavy steps. I drew his attention to Steiner\u2019s lectures, which, in a curious way, he had indeed already known. He behaved evasively and, in his stormy manner, refused to read the theosophical lectures, slamming one of the books [R. Steiner\u2019s Theosophy<\/em>] on the table and declaring that he only wanted to discover what would happen after he died.<\/span>17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Even so, he took the whole thing so seriously that he crudely inscribed the Statutes of the Society verbatim in his diary, which I was given a glimpse of after his death. The deeper reason for his rejection, as could also be seen from his diary, was that as a young man, he had been severely attacked in public by Prof. [Moriz] Benedikt by way of his interest in spiritualistic phenomena. Strangely enough, he also had a conversation with my father during one of his frequent visits and promised him to dissuade me from anthroposophy.\u201d<\/span>18<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One year later, Simony\u2019s life came to a tragic end. After a stroke, he (already severely hard of hearing) was now also paralyzed on one side. Notwithstanding his practice of enduring physical pain since childhood, he was unable to cope with his severe physical limitations and threw himself out of a window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marginalia from the life and work of Rudolf Steiner. In his lecture of July 11, 1916, Rudolf Steiner described in detail how he met the Austrian mathematician and professor Oskar Simony (April 23, 1852\u2013April 6, 1915) of the Institute for Soil Cultivation [Institut f\u00fcr Bodenkultur, today part of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences]: \u201cWe encountered each other one time (I know it as if it had been yesterday) on Salesianergasse\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0in Vienna. I knew him by sight; I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9190,"featured_media":30037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11473,8846,8847],"tags":[11550,11551,11478,8814],"class_list":["post-59947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-rudolf-steiner","category-history","category-portrait","tag-2020-31-32","tag-english-issue-37-2024","tag-marginalien-zu-rudolf-steiners-leben-und-werk-en","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}