CRIME TO THE SOUL/SENSE DEPRIVATION

Portrait - 'Kasper Hauser'

“The Enigma of Kasper Hauser” a film by Werner Hertzog

In Herzog's own words, the film "tries to define what we are as human beings as if a pure human being had fallen from outer space to this planet and come into existence here fully grown up." Far from being representative of man in his natural state, however, Hauser was the product of highly abnormal circumstances. He suffered sixteen years of solitude, anguish, and sensory deprivation. Those sixteen years were highly negative experience for Hauser, but they were nevertheless sixteen years of formative experience. Therefore, Hauser's circumstances provide no genuine basis for either affirmation or negation of science, religion, or logic as the "natural" state of man. 

Moreover, the science, logic, and religion that Herzog finds wanting, in relation to Hauser, were the early nineteenth century varieties of each.

Science, in particular, is constantly evolving, religion and logic less so. The science that exists today is far different than what existed in 1824. Science, as an epistemology, understands itself to be always incomplete and in flux. None of the so-called experts of Hauser's time served him adequately, but science, at least, keeps building upon itself and, as a result, its capacity to benefit people gradually expands. Hauser's most "natural" propensities were an inherent goodness toward others and an appreciation of the beauty of music.






A song about KASPER HAUSER by Suzanne Vega
“Wooden Horse”

I came out of the darkness
Holding one thing
A small white wooden horse
I'd been holding inside

And when I'm dead If you could tell them this
That what was wood became alive
What was wood became alive
In the night the walls disappeared
In the day they returned

"I want to be a rider like my father"
Were the only words I could say
And when I'm dead
If you could tell them this

That what was wood became alive
What was wood became alive
Alive
And I fell under
A moving piece of sun

Freedom I came out of the darkness
Holding one thing
I know I have a power
I am afraid I may be killed

But when I'm dead
If you could tell them this
That what was wood became alive
What was wood became alive
Alive




It may not be uninteresting to close this sketch with the consideration of a point of law raised
by Feuerbach in connection with the subject. It will be recollected that he calls his book "Kaspar Hauser. An Example of a Crime against the Life of Man's Soul." The crime committed against Kaspar Hauser was, according to the Bavarian code, twofold. There was the crime of illegal imprisonment, and the crime of exposure. And here Feuerbach advances the doctrine, that it was not only the actual confinement which amounted to illegal imprisonment, but that "we must incontestably, and, indeed, principally, regard as such the cruel withholding from him of the most ordinary gifts which Nature with a liberal hand extends even to the most indigent,—the depriving him of all the means of mental development and culture,—the unnatural detention of a human soul in a state of irrational animality." "An attempt," he says, "by artificial contrivances, to seclude a man from Nature and from all intercourse with rational beings, to change the course of his human destiny, and to withdraw from him all the nourishment afforded by those spiritual substances which Nature has appointed for food to the human mind, that it may grow and flourish, and be instructed and developed and formed,—such an attempt must, even quite independently of its actual consequences, be considered as, in itself, a highly criminal invasion of man's most sacred and most peculiar property,—of the freedom and the destiny of his soul. …In as much as the whole earlier part of his life was thus taken from him, he may be said to have been the subject of a partial soul-murder."

- JUDGE ANSELM von FEURBACH

http://www.feralchildren.com/en/pager.php?df=feuerbach1833

CRIMES TO THE SOULS/SENSE OVERLOAD

LILIPOH: Can we actually perceive anything spiritual in the senses?

RR: Definitely. When we look at a bunch of real flowers, even if we don't know it consciously, in the colors we can sense the sunlight that gave its energy to create that beauty in the first place. In fact, that points to one of the biggest problems nowadays—more and more we are moving into an artificial reality. In one year the food industry spent more than 1.5 billion dollars on artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. These artificial additives fool us into thinking that we are eating one type of food when in fact we are not. A purchased apple pie that needs to be reheated at home may hardly have an apple in it, but since it is flavored with the chemical ethyl-2- methyl butyrate, it will smell of fresh apples wafting through the house.

LILIPOH: How come we don't know when enough is enough?

RR: It really is a matter of training. Think of a small child that has to be put to bed and quieted down because, in spite of being completely exhausted, he will not know how to stop and may actually go until he collapses. In school, children need to learn how to value quiet time and the activity of the thoughts as opposed to merely outer amusement, instruction or command. The problem with not knowing when to switch off is that a lot of the sensory inputs become undigested islands in the soul life.

LILIPOH: What can we do to heal ourselves?

RR: I believe that ideas coming from Anthroposophy are very helpful. As you know,
Rudolf Steiner distinguishes between 12 senses, not just the five that are related to a very confined bodily experience. We actually have a sense for the ego. Just like we can see colors in the outer world, we can sense thoughts, words and so on. One healing activity that we can engage in is to consciously pay more attention to the seven senses that are balancing the five that we are commonly engaged in. Another extremely helpful activity is to periodically make a conscious effort to immerse ourselves in “true” sensory inputs that are coming from nature and have not been artificially created by man. Lastly, I would like to remind all of us of an original exercise that Rudolf Steiner gives whereby every evening we should review our day in reverse. For example, if, through the day, I went first to work, then grocery shopping, then sat down to relax in the evening—I should now imagine and see myself first sitting down to relax, then doing grocery shopping, then going to work, etc... There is a wonderful digesting activity in this.



..extract from:

ISSUE #40 | HEALTH & THE SENSES

Sensory Overload
An Interview with Ross Rentea, M.D.
LILIPOH #40 - Summer 2005: HEALTH & THE SENSES