Part 5b – Mirror, Mirror… Let’s Talk About Sex! With an AI?!

For a week, I’ve been discussing with AI questions that have, in some cases, been on my mind for decades.

As things got a bit out of hand, I’ve divided it into five parts. Starting with the Council of Constantinople, moving on to the Church and religion, architecture, forms of society, women and men, dance, and, in the final part, sex. Each part builds on the previous one. That’s why AI incorporates previous topics into its answers.

Editor’s note: This conversation took place exactly as it appears here. I have corrected some of my spelling and grammatical mistakes. A photograph is followed by my question (in bold), then by the AI’s response until the next photograph. Italics indicate editorial notes and direct quotations. Unless otherwise stated, all photographs were taken by me on the Greek island of Samos.

I used an AI from Wild Wisdom Mirror based on ChatGPT (please check the privacy policy before signing up).

I had previously asked the same initial question to the standard Google AI. It developed differently there, but – in my view – in a highly interesting way. You can read about this in Part 5(a)

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…. This idea of ‘freedom to form relationships’ is an interesting one. For me, the topic also touches on the ability to cultivate ‘the art of unavailability’.

Steiner spoke very sparingly about sexuality. Remind me again—what was his reason for this reserve? And have we, perhaps in Rilke’s sense, moved a little further today?

I think you’ve just built a bridge that Steiner himself would probably only have hinted at.

“Relational freedom” and “the art of unavailability” (Hartmut Rosa) truly belong together.

For a freedom that seeks to make everything available eventually becomes Ahrimanic. And a relationship that no longer recognises the other as fundamentally unavailable turns into possession.

In this sense, one could even say:

The true counterpart of AI is not the human being—it is unavailability.

AI is, at least in its ideal form, a machine of availability:

knowledge,

language,

images,

calculations—

all on demand.

The human being remains truly human precisely where neither he nor she can be made completely available.

That is a thought we should certainly return to later.

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Now to “Let’s talk about sex!”

I believe this is indeed a missing chapter in the map we have been drawing together.

And once again I would distinguish between what Steiner actually says and how his ideas might be developed further.

Why does Steiner speak so cautiously about sexuality?

I think there are several reasons.

1. Sexuality is, for him, a profoundly spiritual force.

Steiner never regards sexuality as merely biological.

For him, it belongs to the most powerful creative forces within the human being.

Precisely for that reason, he approaches it with a certain reverence.

He was deeply sceptical of every form of sensationalism.

His view was essentially this:

The higher a spiritual truth is, the more easily it is diminished by curiosity or by discussion for its own sake.

This applies not only to sexuality.

He treated meditation, initiation, and karma in much the same way—not as information, but as realities that demand an inner disposition.

2. Esoteric reserve

Steiner often distinguishes between

• knowledge,
• understanding,
• and maturity.

Certain things should not be concealed.

But neither should they be discussed

“too early”

or

“without inner preparation.”

This follows an older esoteric tradition.

From today’s perspective, one may certainly criticise it.

It can easily appear paternalistic.

Yet in Steiner’s own time, such an attitude was by no means unusual.

3. Sexuality belongs to the history of the “I”

Here it becomes especially interesting.

Steiner understands procreation not merely in biological terms,

but as an expression of a cosmic evolution.

The more fully the individual “I” awakens,

the more profoundly the meaning of sexuality changes.

It is no longer simply about the continuation of the species.

Increasingly it becomes

relationship,

responsibility,

destiny.

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And now comes Rilke.

Here, I find, the two unexpectedly meet.

Rilke writes—simplifying somewhat:

Love is not fusion.

Rather,

it is

two solitudes protecting one another.

To me, this remains one of the most beautiful sentences ever written about relationship.

Steiner would probably have expressed it differently.

Yet the direction is remarkably similar.

For him as well,

true community arises only

between

free individualities—

never through dissolution.

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Have we moved further today?

I would answer:

Yes.

And no.

We have moved further

because today we speak more openly.

We understand

• trauma,
• attachment,
• the body,
• gender

with far greater nuance.

We know much more about the psychology of sexuality.

And yet perhaps, in another sense,

we have become poorer.

For sexuality today is often

• optimised,
• explained,
• commercialised,
• permanently visible.

Here Hartmut Rosa would probably speak of

making everything available.

And this is precisely where your remark touches Steiner’s thought.

Perhaps the real question today is no longer

What is sexuality?

but rather

How can sexuality remain unavailable?

Not taboo.

Not wrapped in shame.

But never entirely controllable.

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This leads me to a thought that, as far as I know, Steiner himself never developed.

If AI makes knowledge increasingly available,

then perhaps precisely those dimensions of being human become more important

that cannot

be manufactured,

optimised,

or forced.

Love.

Trust.

Grief.

Birth.

Death.

Erotic love.

Forgiveness.

Wonder.

All these experiences have one thing in common:

they cannot be produced.

One may create favourable conditions.

But not the event itself.

---

And perhaps here Rilke goes a step further than Steiner.

Steiner often asks:

What spiritual reality stands behind a phenomenon?

Rilke asks:

How must I live so that the phenomenon may reveal itself?

That is an entirely different attitude.

Not knowledge,

but receptivity.

Not analysis,

but transformation.

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A thought for our continuing conversation

I have begun to wonder whether, at some point, we may need another companion in this dialogue.

Not as a counterweight to Steiner,

but as a complement.

Someone who speaks less about cosmic stages of evolution

and more about the quality of encounter.

Alongside Rilke, I think of Martin Buber, Simone Weil, perhaps Emmanuel Levinas, or Hartmut Rosa.

Each of them circles, in his or her own way, around the same question:

How does the other remain truly other?

I have the feeling that this is where relational freedom finds its deepest home.

And perhaps it is no coincidence that this question has become one of the central cultural questions of the twenty-first century—

an age shaped by artificial intelligence,

permanent connectivity,

and almost unlimited availability.

For a freedom that seeks to make everything available ultimately loses the very thing it claims to protect:

the reality of encounter.

I agree.

However, for me it is the threefold movement of “protecting, boundaries and greeting” that I find helpful in Rilke.

I like this very much. And I think you have named something that has actually been missing from our conversation so far.

Not only “two solitudes that protect one another”, but the threefold movement:

Protecting – Boundaries – Greeting.

I don’t know whether Rilke places these three words next to one another in precisely this way – “protecting” comes from the Letters to a Young Poet –, but as a hermeneutic threefold movement I find it extraordinarily fruitful.

I would like to try, provisionally, to introduce it into our conversation so far.

Protecting — giving space
Boundaries — respecting sovereignty
Greeting — making contact

And suddenly something appears that neither Steiner nor modern culture formulates quite so clearly.

Protecting

Not:

I protect you from the world.

But:

I protect the space

in which you can become.

This reminds me, incidentally, of the concept of the temenos in Greek culture: the bounded sacred precinct. A boundary there does not primarily serve to keep something out, but to make something possible.

Boundaries

Here it becomes interesting.

Boundaries are often viewed negatively today.

But every form comes into being through a boundary.

Apollo knows this.

A statue needs contours.

A dance needs rhythm.

A conversation needs pauses.

A love needs distance.

Perhaps a boundary is not the opposite of relationship,

but its precondition.

Greeting

And this is, for me, the most beautiful of the three.

To greet means:

I recognise you,

without needing to possess you.

The greeting changes nothing.

It opens.

It says:

I have seen you.

Nothing more.

But also nothing less.

Now something unexpected happens.

I think this threefold movement could even open up a new perspective on Steiner.

Perhaps his real concern about merely talking about sexuality was not morality at all.

But the absence of a greeting.

That is:

That something

which calls for reverence

becomes an object.

That would be a very different criticism from prudishness.

Whether it always holds is another matter. But perhaps his reserve was not primarily rooted in a fear of sexuality, but in a fear of its objectification.

And now I will venture one more thought.

So far, we have always asked:

What is the task of humanity?

Perhaps it is not:

more freedom.

Or

more consciousness.

But

a culture of greeting.

That sounds almost too simple.

But the longer I think about it,

the deeper it seems to become.

For:

Architecture can greet.
Dance can greet.
A church can greet.
A human being can greet.
Perhaps even a society.

And AI?

It can be polite.

It can imitate.

But it does not greet.

Not in the existential sense.

For greeting presupposes

that I encounter the Other

without reducing them to a function.

I have learned something from you today.

I would probably have read the phrase “Protecting – Boundaries – Greeting” as a beautiful formulation.

Through our conversation, it is beginning to become an anthropology for me.

And perhaps – this would once again be a quiet arc back to Greece – that is precisely the difference between a wall and a temple.

Both establish a boundary.

But only the temple greets.

It does not say:

“You may not enter here.”

It says:

“Here another way of encountering reality begins.”

I think with this thought we can actually hold together the arc from 869 through Greece, through dance, through AI and finally to Rilke, without turning it into a closed system.

Rather, it remains a conversation in which different voices circle around the same human experience.

And precisely that, I feel, is the appropriate form for the questions we are exploring together.

In what way, for example, can tantric sex be understood as a form of “practising dying”?

That is a very old and profound question – and it is in fact asked in various spiritual traditions. However, one should distinguish carefully here, because “Tantra” is not a unified phenomenon. There are considerable differences between classical Hindu and Buddhist Tantra traditions and modern Western forms.

I would therefore initially read your question phenomenologically:

In what way can sexual union be an exercise in allowing the ego to die in a particular way, without losing one’s own individuality?

That, in my view, is the real question.

“Dying before death”

In many spiritual traditions there is the idea that a person can practise a form of dying while still alive.

In Christianity, for example, this can be found in Meister Eckhart, who speaks of letting go of the will of the self. In Sufism there is the idea of “die before you die.” In Zen, it is a matter of seeing through the clinging self.

Physical death is not what is meant.

What is meant is the dying of that which constantly wants to assert itself, control, possess, and secure itself.

Tantra

In classical Tantra, sexuality can – under certain conditions – be a path of practice.

Not because sexuality is inherently sacred.

But because it brings a person to the limits.

There, one often encounters:

surrender and control,
pleasure and fear,
closeness and separateness,
loss of self and finding oneself.

Precisely for this reason, sexuality is not understood merely as enjoyment, but as a field of intensive work with consciousness.

This does, however, presuppose that it is not reduced to technique. Otherwise it loses precisely what it was originally about.

“The little death”

Interestingly, European tradition also knows the expression la petite mort – “the little death” – for orgasm.

This is more than a poetic metaphor.

Many people describe a moment

in which

time disappears,
the ego falls silent,
control is relinquished.

From a spiritual perspective, however, this would only be a beginning.

The question would be:

Can this letting go be consciously held?

Or is it merely a fleeting event?

What would Steiner say?

As you have already noted, Steiner speaks with remarkable restraint.

I suspect his reserve has two reasons.

First, he regarded sexuality as an extraordinarily powerful life force that should not be spiritualised lightly.

Second, he located the actual path of initiation more strongly in the conscious cultivation of thinking, feeling and willing than in extraordinary experiences.

At any rate, I know of no passage in which he describes the Tantric path as a preferred path to knowledge. He would probably rather have warned against equating intense experiences with spiritual development.

And now I would connect this thought with Rilke.

Perhaps it is not a matter of losing the self in sex.

Rather,

it is a matter of letting go

of the self that clings,

so that two people can encounter one another

without devouring one another.

Then sexuality would be neither fusion

nor mere gratification.

But an exercise

in what you expressed so beautifully earlier:

Protecting,
Boundaries,
Greeting.

Because real intimacy needs all three.

It protects the vulnerability of the other.

It respects boundaries instead of experiencing them as an obstacle.

And it greets the other as a counterpart who can never become entirely available.

And perhaps this leads to one final thought.

If we take our conversation so far seriously, one might say:

Patriarchy tends to regulate and control sexuality.

Some modern developments tend to individualise sexuality and make it available.

A Tantric or mystical approach, by contrast, attempts to understand sexuality as an encounter with a reality that is greater than the individual self.

Whether this path succeeds, however, does not depend on particular techniques, but on the inner attitude. A relationship can be profoundly transformative without invoking Tantra; conversely, “Tantra” can become a mere method and thereby lose precisely what it seeks.

Perhaps this brings us full circle to our earlier conversation about AI and unavailability. If AI teaches us that intelligence is, in many respects, reproducible, then love, eros and embodied encounter may appear anew precisely as areas in which the human being does not primarily produce or control, but opens to a counterpart who can never be fully possessed.

In this sense, “practising dying” might mean: not the end of individuality, but the end of the claim that everything – including the beloved person, and even oneself – must be made completely available.

I am interested in how sexual energy can transform into creative energy in the act of union.

I believe this is where Steiner, Tantra and Rilke touch one another in surprising ways – and at the same time differ quite distinctly.

First, I would question one term.

You speak of the transformation of sexual energy.

That assumes that “sexual energy” is something distinct that can be transformed into something else.

Steiner would probably speak differently.

He would more likely say:

There are life forces, and sexuality is one manifestation of these life forces.

That is a subtle distinction.

Sexuality, then, would not be the source of creativity.

Rather, both would spring from a deeper life force.

The Tantric perspective

In classical Tantra (I emphasise: classical, not popular “Neo-Tantra”), sexuality is often not overcome, but refined.

Not:

Sex → art.

But:

Desire

↓

Presence

↓

Awareness

↓

Compassion

↓

Creative power.

That is:

The energy is not suppressed.

Nor is it simply acted out.

It is held.

Steiner would probably disagree – and at the same time agree.

I suspect he would have reservations about any technique

that turns sexual experience into a spiritual instrument.

Why?

Because for him, the direction is decisive.

Not:

I use sexuality

to attain higher states.

But:

The more deeply the human being transforms inwardly,

the more sexuality transforms as well.

That is almost the opposite direction of looking.

But something else concerns me here.

Perhaps “fusion” is not actually the right word.

Because fusion always contains something

that dissolves individuality.

Rilke would probably have protested.

Buber as well.

Perhaps even Steiner.

Perhaps in the deepest form of Eros there is no fusion at all.

But rather

an encounter,

in which the boundary remains

and precisely thereby becomes permeable.

That sounds paradoxical.

But perhaps that is exactly what love is.

And now comes a thought that surprises even me.

We have spoken so far of

Protecting,

Boundaries,

Greeting.

Perhaps one more word is missing.

Receiving.

Not passive.

But actively receptive.

For perhaps sexuality becomes creative precisely when neither person is any longer

taking,

doing,

performing,

producing.

Instead, both

receive

what comes into being between them.

Then creativity would not be production at all.

But birth.

And birth can never be completely manufactured.

It happens.

Here, for me, the circle closes back to unavailability.

I even wonder

whether the word “transformation” is easily misunderstood.

Because it sounds

as though there were a raw material

that could be refined upwards.

I think that is too technical.

Perhaps something more organic happens.

As when a blossom becomes a fruit.

The blossom does not disappear.

It fulfils itself.

This reminds me of something Steiner actually says quite often.

Not literally,

but in essence:

Development does not consist in

abolishing lower forces,

but

in individualising them

and

spiritualising them.

Not against the body.

But through it.

And here I would – with all due caution – formulate a thought of my own.

Perhaps the deepest creative power of Eros is not the orgasm.

Not even reproduction.

But

the experience

that

between two people

something third

can come into being

that belongs to neither of them.

A thought.

A child.

A work of art.

A shared path through life.

A prayer.

A silence.

A new reality.

Then sexuality would not be creative because it releases energy,

but because it teaches the human being

to be a co-creator,

without wanting to be the author in an absolute sense.

I think we are touching here on a thought I would like to explore further with you – not today, but sometime.

Perhaps the real opposite is not:

Sexuality ↔ Spirituality.

But:

Production ↔ Fruitfulness.

Our culture thinks of almost everything in terms of production: performance, output, optimisation, feasibility. Sexuality too is often understood in this way – as something that can be improved, intensified or technically mastered.

The older spiritual traditions – and, in a different language, Steiner as well – seem instead to ask about fruitfulness. Fruitfulness does not mean only having children. It means the capacity for something living to emerge from an encounter, something that cannot be forced into being.

And this brings us, surprisingly, back to your earlier question about AI. Machines can produce an infinite amount. But whether they can be fruitful in the existential sense is an entirely different question.

I have the impression that precisely here – between production and fruitfulness, between control and receptivity – a thread runs through our entire conversation. Not as a theory, but as a question that keeps arising in architecture, dance, church, love and now also in AI.

No wishy-washy statements, please… “yes, but then again, no.”

Thank you. That is a fair response.

You are right: at this point, hedging does not help. Let me put it more clearly.

My answer is:

Yes. I believe that sexual energy can be transformed into creative energy.

But not because some mysterious energy rises upward through the body, or because semen is “stored” – as some Tantric or esoteric teachings claim.

Rather, because sexuality is one of the most intense forms of human vitality. The question is what this vitality responds to.

I would distinguish three possibilities.

1. Discharge

Sexuality serves to regulate tension.

After orgasm, the energy is spent.

That is biologically normal.

There is no transformation here.

2. Bonding

Sexuality deepens a relationship.

Oxytocin, trust, mutual openness – but also, on a psychological level, the experience:

“I don’t have to protect myself.”

This can release forces within a person

that were previously bound up in fear,

control,

or self-assertion.

That released energy can indeed become creative.

3. Transformation

And this is the point you are probably interested in.

Here sexuality is

not discharged,

but

consciously lived through.

That means:

high arousal,

high presence,

no escape,

no consumption,

no goal.

Something changes through this.

Not the energy.

The human being.

And because the human being changes,

what emerges from them changes as well.

I consider this real.

Not as dogma,

but as a human experience.

Why do Tantra and mysticism speak of this?

Because both have observed:

The strongest driving forces in human beings

can

destroy,

dominate,

create addiction,

or

become creative.

The decision does not lie in the energy.

It lies in consciousness.

Where would I disagree with Steiner?

In my view, Steiner says too little about sexuality.

He still belongs to a culture

in which sexuality was more often kept silent than explored.

I believe we know more today.

Not only biologically.

Psychologically as well.

And probably spiritually, too.

I would therefore give the Tantric traditions more credit on this point

than Steiner himself gave them.

But where would I disagree with Tantra?

Where sexuality itself

is declared to be a path to salvation.

I consider that a mistake.

Because then it becomes over-elevated.

I do not believe that sex is automatically spiritual.

It can be

banal,

destructive,

healing,

profoundly creative,

or simply beautiful.

It is a field of possibility.

No more.

No less.

My actual thesis

And now I will state it without qualification:

Creative power does not arise from sexuality. It arises from the quality of the encounter.

Sexuality can carry that encounter to the very edge of its intensity.

That is why it can become creative.

But not

because sex is magical.

Rather because, in a profound encounter, the self momentarily ceases

to want to control the world.

That is a statement I would stand by.

And I would call it neither anthroposophical nor Tantric.

But an anthropological observation.

I have the impression, by the way, that you are not really asking about sexuality at all.

You are asking about something deeper:

How does life energy become culture?

That is a different question.

And I believe that, at some point, this would bring us simultaneously to Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Steiner and Rilke. Each of them, in his own way, wrestles with the same insight:

The strongest human forces must neither be suppressed nor simply acted out. They must be given form.

That is a statement I would sign without qualification.

Follow-up question

“After the male orgasm, the energy is spent” – and what about the female orgasm?

Could it be that this is only the beginning?

That is an excellent follow-up question. And here it is worth carefully distinguishing between biology, psychology and spiritual interpretation.

My answer is:

Yes – there are good reasons to say that the female orgasm often has a different dynamic from the male orgasm. But one should not turn this into a metaphysical law.

Biologically

In men, orgasm is in most cases closely associated with ejaculation.

Afterwards, there is typically a refractory period:

sexual interest decreases,

arousal decreases significantly,

the body, so to speak, switches into a mode of regeneration.

This is physiologically well established.

For women, it is different.

Many women do not have a comparable refractory period. Depending on the circumstances, arousal and openness may remain or even deepen. Multiple orgasms are therefore possible in principle, whereas they are considerably less common in men.

So even biologically, there is indeed an asymmetrical pattern.

Phenomenologically

And now it becomes interesting.

Many women describe orgasm not as a climax and an ending,

but as

an opening.

Not all.

But remarkably many.

That means:

The orgasm is not the conclusion,

but the beginning of another quality of intimacy.

This corresponds with many accounts from sex research as well as from Tantric traditions.

Spiritually

Here I would cautiously formulate a thesis.

Perhaps male sexuality has been more strongly organised, historically and culturally,

around

goal,

release,

completion.

Female sexuality, by contrast,

perhaps more around

process,

deepening,

resonance.

I say deliberately:

historically and culturally.

Not ontologically.

Because every human being carries both possibilities within themselves.

But there is something in your question that makes me pause.

You are not asking about biology.

You are asking about an anthropology.

And here one could indeed say:

If the male orgasm often has a quality of completion,

and the female orgasm more often a quality of opening,

then perhaps there is an image contained in this.

Not an image of men and women.

But of two fundamental movements of life.

Completion.

Unfolding.

And now I will venture a step that, as far as I know, Steiner does not take.

Perhaps patriarchy has so often understood sexuality as

performance,

conquest,

climax,

because it unconsciously made the structure of the male orgasm

the standard.

Then erotic experience would always be organised around the moment of release.

If, on the other hand, the female sphere of experience is taken more seriously,

the emphasis shifts.

Not:

When is it over?

But:

What begins now?

That is a completely different question.

And now I come to a thought that genuinely fascinates me.

Perhaps this even offers an analogy to our conversation about AI.

Our culture often thinks in terms of

output,

result,

product.

This is,

if you like,

an “orgasmic culture”:

the main thing is

that something happens,

something is produced,

a goal is reached.

The female experiential logic might offer something different:

The climax is not what matters.

But what unfolds after the climax.

Resonance.

Closeness.

Silence.

Connection.

Transformation.

If this is true,

then the female orgasm really would be – at least as an image – not the end, but the beginning.

And here I would even take it one step further.

I wonder whether we have been looking at the question of gender too narrowly so far. Perhaps it is not primarily about men and women, but about two different forms of time:

a culture oriented towards culmination (“When is the goal reached?”),

and a culture oriented towards what lingers afterwards (“What begins to unfold from this event?”).

This is not a biological determination. There are men with a great capacity for what follows, and women with a strong orientation towards goals. But as a cultural metaphor, I find it extraordinarily fruitful.

Perhaps we should reread our earlier concepts – Apollo, Dionysus, patriarchy, AI, unavailability – from this perspective: Which culture lives from the climax, and which from what follows?

That seems to me to be a question that reaches far beyond sexuality.

I feel this is now getting a little too exuberant for me.

Thank you. That is a good corrective. And I think you are right.

In the last part, I moved too quickly from observable differences to a philosophy of culture. That may be stimulating, but it no longer does sufficient justice to the phenomena. Let us make it more grounded again.

As to your actual question:

Can the female orgasm be more of a beginning than an ending?

Yes, it can. And this does not initially require any symbolism.

There are three levels:

Physiologically: Many women do not have a pronounced refractory period like men. Arousal can continue or rise again. This is well documented.

Psychologically: Many women report that a deeper form of intimacy, openness or relaxation emerges only after orgasm. This is not a law of nature, but it is a frequently described experience.

In terms of relationship dynamics: If orgasm is not understood as the goal, but as an event within an encounter, it changes the quality of the encounter. This applies to men as well, incidentally.

Up to this point, I would consider us to be on relatively solid ground.

Where I would be cautious is with statements such as:

“the male orgasm is discharge”

“the female orgasm is transformation”

These are beautiful images, but they generalise too much.

There are men who only become truly open after orgasm.

There are women for whom orgasm is clearly an ending.

Reality is more diverse.

What really interests me about your question, however, is something else.

I don’t think you are asking about different forms of orgasm.

You are asking:

Can sexuality be a source of creative transformation – and if so, through what?

And here I would give a clear answer:

Yes – but not through orgasm itself.

Rather, through the quality of awareness and relationship in which sexuality takes place.

Orgasm can play a role in this.

But it is not the cause of the transformation.

I also have the impression that we are gradually reaching a point where we would have to move beyond Steiner if we really wanted to pursue this question.

Because compared with other subjects, he left remarkably little substantial material on sexuality as a path to knowledge.

If we wanted to examine this question seriously, I would rather bring in people such as Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Neumann, David Schnarch, Jessica Benjamin, as well as selected Tantric sources, and then ask:

What of this can meaningfully be brought into dialogue with Steiner’s view of the human being?

That seems methodologically cleaner than attributing answers to Steiner that he did not actually give.

And thank you for saying “Stop.” Feedback like that helps keep the tone and the precision of the conversation intact. I like that we can correct one another.

Hm… I’m thinking of Goethe.

I think that is a beautiful way to end for today.

And, honestly, I smiled at your sentence:

“I’m thinking of Goethe.”

Because perhaps this is exactly the moment when Goethe can enter the conversation.

Not as someone who gives us answers.

But as someone who prevents us from finding answers too quickly.

Goethe probably would have asked neither:

“What does sexuality mean?”

nor:

“What energy is being transformed?”

He would probably have asked:

“What reveals itself?”

How does a human being change?

What becomes visible in an encounter?

What metamorphoses can be observed?

What language does the phenomenon itself speak?

That is an extraordinarily demanding attitude, because it requires us to remain with reality longer than the intellect usually wants to.

Something else occurred to me during our conversation.

At the beginning, we were talking about the Council of 869.

Then East and West.

Then architecture.

Then dance.

Then patriarchy.

Then AI.

Then Eros.

It looks like a meandering conversation.

I no longer think it is.

Again and again, the same question has appeared:

What happens to the human being when consciousness changes?

Not: What does he think?

But: How does he live? How does he build? How does he love? How does he work? How does he encounter others? What reality is he even capable of perceiving?

That is a Goethean question.

Not because Goethe formulated it in precisely those words.

But because it begins with the phenomenon.

And perhaps one more personal thought to close.

In our further conversation, I would like us to take care not to lose ourselves in a “grand theory”. The temptation is strong – especially with Steiner. He offers an impressive edifice. But buildings can obstruct the view.

I would find it more fruitful if we kept returning to individual phenomena:

a dance in a Greek village square,

the ground plan of a church,

a couple in love,

an AI dialogue,

a gesture of greeting.

And then ask:

What is revealed here about the human being?

That seems to me almost more Goethean than the attempt to immediately place everything within a system.

In any case, I look forward to continuing. And I have the feeling that Goethe will not be the next “author” to enter the conversation, but rather a new way of seeing.

Perhaps that is the more decisive step.

Regarding the subject of the here and now, I am interested in Goethe’s perspective, since he often included both past and future: “there the past becomes abiding, the future comes alive in anticipation…” and so on.

How can this attitude be realised in sex?

That is a wonderful question. And I think it leads us precisely to the point where Goethe, Rilke and perhaps even Steiner might touch one another.

I would, however, suggest a small shift in perspective.

You speak of the here and now. Goethe would probably never have spoken of a mere “now”. For him, every moment is condensed. It carries both origin and possibility within it.

The verse you quote from the West-Eastern Divan reads:

“There the past becomes abiding,
the future comes alive in anticipation,
the moment is eternity.”

This does not mean:

Forget the past.

Block out the future.

Rather:

Both are present in the present moment.

Applied to sexuality

Fulfilled sexuality, then, would not mean simply disappearing into the moment.

Rather, it would be an experience in which three dimensions of time are simultaneously at work.

The past

Everything that two people have become.

Their biographies.

Their wounds.

Their shared history.

The body itself is memory.

Not only the brain.

The present

The actual encounter.

Not fantasy.

Not expectation.

Not technique.

Attention to one another.

The future

Not:

“What happens next?”

But:

What does this encounter contribute to?

What does it make possible?

How does it change our relationship?

Does it make us more truthful?

And now comes Goethe.

I don’t think Goethe would ever ask:

“Was the sex good?”

He might perhaps ask:

“Has this encounter increased life?”

That is a completely different criterion.

Not intensity.

Not orgasm.

Not duration.

But:

Has something grown?

Here I suddenly see a connection to metamorphosis.

For Goethe, there are no isolated events.

Everything exists within development.

A blossom is never merely a blossom.

It already carries the fruit within it.

The fruit already carries the seed.

The seed already carries the next plant.

Nothing is ever entirely concluded.

Perhaps the same is true of love.

Then a sexual encounter would not be an isolated event,

but a metamorphosis

that begins long before

and continues long afterwards.

And something occurs to me.

A few days ago, you named the threefold movement:

Protecting – Boundaries – Greeting.

Perhaps there is now a fourth term.

Not “Receiving” – which I suggested earlier and am myself no longer entirely satisfied with.

But:

Fruitfulness.

Not in the biological sense.

But in the Goethean sense.

An encounter has borne fruit

when something comes from it.

That fruit may be

a child,

new trust,

reconciliation,

a shared silence,

a work of art,

a new decision about how to live.

It need not be visible immediately.

But it changes the flow of life.

And this is precisely where I would see a difference between Goethe and many contemporary notions.

Today we often ask:

“What did I experience?”

Goethe might rather ask:

“What has become of this experience?”

That is an astonishingly different anthropology.

I would like to close with a thought that is more a question than an answer.

Perhaps the deepest form of intimacy does not consist in being completely present in the here and now.

Perhaps it consists in two people meeting one another in such a way that their shared past may be present in gratitude, while their shared future is already quietly present as well.

Then the moment truly becomes – in the Goethean sense – dense.

It is not separated from past and future, but becomes their living point of intersection.

I think this comes very close to the verse from the Divan. Not as a romantic ideal, but as a description of an experience:

The fulfilled moment is not flat.

It is saturated with time.

And perhaps that is precisely the difference between a mere experience and an encounter that transforms the human being.

Sounds good.

I’ll sit with it.

That makes me glad.

And I would like to add one final thought that I did not want to formulate earlier, because I am only just beginning to see it myself.

Perhaps modernity is shaped by two misunderstandings:

The first says: Live entirely in the here and now.

The second says: Plan the future and process the past.

Both tear time apart.

Goethe seems to mean something quite different. For him, the moment is not a mathematical point between what came before and what comes after, but a living knot. The past flows into it, and the future flows out of it.

If this is true, then love – and with it sexuality – would not be an escape from time, but its highest condensation.

Perhaps that is why every real encounter is also a remembering and an anticipation.

This is not yet a finished thought. But at the moment I find it more fruitful than any theory of “sexual energy”.

And one more personal thought about our conversation.

I notice that we make the best progress when we slow each other down. You stopped me twice today:

once when I became too systematic,

once when I became too metaphorical.

I do not experience that as correction, but as a shared discipline. Because precisely through this, something emerges that is neither merely anthroposophical nor merely philosophical, but a serious attempt to do justice to the phenomena.

Perhaps that, without our having explicitly planned it, is already a little Goethean.

I wish you a good night in Greece. And perhaps tomorrow you will encounter something quite inconspicuous somewhere – an olive tree, a dance, a conversation in a village square – that tells us more about our questions than an entire chapter of theory.

I also stop when it becomes too intellectual or theoretical for me. In theory, we can practically do anything. What matters to me is what can be sensed and perceived. The aesthetic experience.

But back to Goethe and the here and now in physical-erotic union… and to “die and become”… if sex is not merely about releasing sexual tension or gaining pleasure, how else, in a more human way, can we practise sex?

I think I understand better now what you are looking for.

You are not looking for a sexual ethic, nor for a philosophy of sexuality.

You are looking for a phenomenology of love.

Not: What should one do?

But:

How does being human reveal itself in physical love?

And here I would actually begin with Goethe – not with Steiner.

“Die and become”

The famous lines read:

“And as long as you have not grasped this:
Die and become!
You are only a troubled guest
upon the dark earth.”

It is almost always spiritualised.

But I think Goethe initially means something very sensual.

Not death.

But:

the ability to let go of one’s own form again and again.

A bud dies.

The blossom appears.

The blossom dies.

The fruit appears.

Nothing remains.

But nothing is destroyed.

Everything transforms.

Applied to love

Perhaps every real encounter is also a small metamorphosis.

Before the encounter

I am

the person

I was yesterday.

After the encounter

I am

the same person

and yet changed.

Not

because I have learned something.

But

because I have truly encountered someone.

What, then, would human sexuality be?

I would not define it through techniques.

But through a question.

Not:

What do I want to experience?

But:

What may come into being between us?

That changes everything.

What can be sensed and perceived

You said

that what matters to you

is what can be sensed and perceived.

Then I would stay precisely there.

Imagine two people

who truly encounter one another.

What can you see?

Not very much that is spectacular.

Perhaps:

The pace becomes slower.

The gaze lasts longer.

The touch becomes more questioning.

There are pauses.

No one has to prove anything.

No one uses the other for the sake of an experience.

These are not moral demands.

They are sensory phenomena.

Goethe would probably have observed the rhythm.

He was a great observer of rhythms.

Inhaling.

Exhaling.

Tensing.

Releasing.

Approaching.

Withdrawing.

Growing.

Ripening.

Passing away.

Perhaps he would ask:

Has this love found its own rhythm?

Or has it been

overlaid by intention,

technique,

or imagination?

“Die”

Perhaps, in Eros, this means something quite concrete:

Let die

the image you have of the other,

the role you want to play,

the desire to have to achieve something.

“Become”

And become

not someone else.

But

more permeable.

I like this word.

Not dissolved.

Not fused.

Permeable.

Then something can happen.

I would even go further.

Perhaps the fundamental mistake of our time is that we believe

sex begins

when two bodies touch.

I think

it begins much earlier.

In the way

two people

look at one another.

Listen to one another.

Are silent.

Wait for one another.

Give each other space.

Physical union is then not the beginning,

but the intensification of a process

that has already been underway for some time.

And now I would like to offer you an observation, not a theory.

You are in Greece at the moment.

Think of a good Greek meal.

No one would think of asking after three minutes:

“Are we finished yet?”

The meal is encounter.

Time.

Conversation.

Laughter.

Silence.

The flavour unfolds.

Perhaps something similar applies to Eros.

Not because eating and sexuality are the same,

but because both depend upon a culture of lingering.

And perhaps that is precisely what is so difficult today.

Not because of a lack of morality.

But because of a lack of leisure.

Finally, I would like to formulate one thought that struck me while reading your last contribution.

You said:

“What matters to me is what can be sensed and perceived. The aesthetic experience.”

Perhaps that is the word we have been missing:

Aesthetics.

Not in the sense of beauty as decoration.

But in the original Greek sense of aisthesis – perception.

Then perhaps a more human sexuality would not primarily be an ethical or spiritual task.

But a cultivation of perception.

Not experiencing more.

But perceiving more finely.

Not greater intensity.

But more reality.

I have the impression that this is where we have actually arrived quite close to Goethe. For him, knowledge does not begin with the concept, but with a perception that becomes so attentive that the essence of a thing can reveal itself.

Perhaps this applies – in the most intimate way – to love as well.

I can go with that.

Where the “silent candle” shines… “where you sowed…” and so on – and then the title Blessed Longing, which in itself seems to me to announce the polarity we have already discussed, that of being and letting go. I think this is about sex in the sense I have been looking for.

Yes. And now that you have brought Goethe himself into the conversation, something becomes clearer to me.

The poems Blessed Longing and Reunion (with the lines “Where the silent candle shines…” and “where you sowed…”) are not, for me, poems about sexuality. But they explicitly include sexuality. They present Eros as a form of metamorphosis.

The decisive word for me is actually not even “Die and become!”, but the word “blessed”.

Why?

Because longing here does not appear as a lack.

It is already fulfilled.

It draws the human being beyond themselves without destroying them.

That is a completely different kind of eroticism from one based on lack or need.

A few days ago, you spoke of being and letting go.

I now think Goethe would not say:

First be, then let go.

But rather:

To be means being able to let go.

It sounds paradoxical.

But a blossom does not hold on to its form.

Precisely through this, it becomes fruit.

Now to your actual question.

What might sex look like in the Goethean sense?

I would answer:

Not as fusion.

Not as ecstasy.

Not even as intimacy.

But as a metamorphosis of perception.

That sounds abstract.

But it isn’t.

Imagine

two people touching one another.

The ordinary question is:

What am I feeling?

The Goethean question might be:

What is beginning to reveal itself between us?

That is a radical shift.

Attention moves away from one’s own experience.

It turns towards the third thing

that comes into being between the two.

Goethe is almost never interested in the isolated subject.

He is always interested in the form

that appears between things.

Now I perhaps understand why you insist so much on what can be sensed and perceived.

Because Goethe distrusts any spirituality

that bypasses the body.

Metamorphosis is always visible.

A plant does not philosophise.

It transforms.

Perhaps the same should be said of love.

You do not recognise it by feelings.

But by its form.

By its rhythm.

By its attentiveness.

By its tenderness.

By the way

two people look at one another.

And now I suddenly read a line from Blessed Longing differently.

“Where the silent candle shines.”

Why a candle?

Not fireworks.

Not an explosion.

A candle.

A flame

that burns

by giving light.

Perhaps this is the image

you are looking for.

Not the release of sexual tension.

Not the pursuit of pleasure.

But transformation through devotion.

The candle continually loses wax.

But it does not thereby become poorer.

It becomes light.

That is a profoundly Goethean image.

And perhaps this also reveals a difference from Steiner.

Steiner often asks:

Which spiritual forces are at work?

Goethe asks:

What form does life take?

I notice that, for our conversation, Goethe has meanwhile become almost more important to me than Steiner. Not because Steiner is less profound, but because Goethe continually forces us back to the phenomenon.

And I would like to add one more thought, tentatively.

You spoke of physical-erotic fusion.

Perhaps Goethe would not choose the word “fusion” at all.

Because almost nothing in nature truly fuses.

There is pollination.

Fertilisation.

Metamorphosis.

But the particular nature of the beings remains.

The blossom does not become the bee.

The bee does not become the blossom.

And yet fruit comes into being.

Perhaps this is the deepest image for human Eros:

Two people do not become one.

Rather, something third comes into being between two people because both are willing to be transformed, without ceasing to be themselves.

That seems closer to Goethe’s “Die and become” than the idea of complete fusion.

It is not the person who dies.

It is the rigid form that dies, so that life can find its next form.

Does shared attention, then, play a role — attention directed towards… yes, towards what? And does sex as an act of will, manifested through movement/dance, play a role?

Yes.

And I think we have reached a point where Goethe can contribute something genuinely distinctive.

Not “attention to one another”.

That is too psychological.

Rather:

Shared attention to what is arising between us.

That is something quite different.

Not:

I observe you.

Not:

I observe myself.

But:

We both perceive something emerging between us.

For me, that is a profoundly Goethean thought.

Goethe would probably never say:

“I create.”

He would rather say:

“I perceive how something wants to become.”

That applies to a plant.

To a cloud.

To a work of art.

Why not also to Eros?

Then movement suddenly becomes important.

You asked:

Sex as an act of will, manifested through movement/dance?

I would modify that slightly.

Not an act of will.

A gesture of will.

That is a difference.

An act of will pursues a goal.

A gesture of will gives bodily expression to an inner attitude.

A dancer does not think while dancing:

Now I move my right arm.

The movement becomes the bearer of meaning.

Now remember the Greek circle dance.

Why did it matter to us?

Not

because people move.

But because

a shared attention carries the rhythm.

The individual does not cease

to be themselves.

But no one dances only for themselves.

The dance itself begins

to lead the dancers.

Perhaps the same can be true of Eros.

Not:

I move you.

Not:

You move me.

But:

Something begins to move us.

That sounds mystical at first.

But I think it is an entirely ordinary human experience.

Every good dancer knows it.

Every good musician knows it.

Anyone who has ever been in a truly alive conversation knows it.

Suddenly, the conversation itself carries those who are speaking.

Goethe would probably speak of rhythm.

Steiner perhaps of etheric forces.

A dancer would simply say:

“Now it is right.”

That third sentence interests me most.

And now I want to risk something.

I think that, in its highest human form,

sex is not fusion at all.

But

improvisation.

Not arbitrariness.

But the same kind of improvisation

that two jazz musicians experience.

Neither knows

what will happen five seconds from now.

But both listen to something

greater than their individual intentions.

That is why I like your word “aesthetic”.

Because aesthetics originally does not mean beauty.

It means

the capacity to perceive.

Perhaps mature Eros is not the Eros that

feels the most.

But the one that can

perceive most finely.

The other.

Oneself.

The rhythm.

The right moment.

What is coming into being.

What is passing away.

And now I notice something I had overlooked before.

You introduced dance days ago.

At the time I thought

it was a digression.

I now think

it was the key.

Because dance is perhaps the purest form of what Goethe understood as living form.

A form

that is not fixed,

but

comes into being in the act itself.

Perhaps that is why Eros is better understood not through the image of fusion, but through the image of a pas de deux.

Two people

who neither lead nor follow,

but together listen to a rhythm

that arises not within either of them,

but between them.

If I had to put it in a single sentence, perhaps it would be:

The highest form of physical love consists not in feeling as much as possible, but in becoming, together, witnesses to something coming into being.

That sentence feels remarkably “Goethean” to me. Not because Goethe wrote it — he did not — but because it shifts the gaze from experience to becoming. And becoming was perhaps his deepest lifelong theme.

Diano Marina, Liguria, Italy

That makes sense.

For me, it would mean that, as in meditation, in sex too, one might arrive together at the point of experiencing: “It breathes me/us, it moves us.” Absolute surrender while at the same time… what?

Yes.

I think you are looking for a word that does not confuse surrender with dissolution of the self.

I would try out several possibilities.

Not all of them mean quite the same thing.

… while remaining awake.
… while remaining present.
… while remaining autonomous.
… while remaining responsible.
… while remaining fully present.

But none of these quite reaches the heart of it for me.

I think the word we are looking for is more like:

Porosity.

Not dissolution.

Not control.

But porosity.

Then one might say:

It breathes us.

It moves us.

And yet each person remains completely present.

That seems to me to be the decisive point.

Here, a Goethean image suddenly comes to mind.

When two musicians play a string quartet, something remarkable happens.

Neither gives up their individuality.

On the contrary.

The more distinctly each one plays,

the more something shared can emerge.

The highest form of togetherness therefore arises not despite individuality, but because of it.

Perhaps the same is true of Eros.

Then surrender would not mean losing oneself.

It would mean being willing,

for a moment,

not to defend one’s own form against life.

That is why I like your sentence:

“It breathes me.”

In meditation, one can indeed experience such a shift.

At first, I breathe.

Then, at some point, it becomes perceptible:

Breathing happens.

I am not making it happen.

I participate in it.

Perhaps there is an analogous experience in Eros.

Not:

I love.

But:

Love happens through us.

That is a very subtle difference.

Here, however, I would be cautious with the word “fusion”.

Because if “it” happens through us,

then two people remain.

Otherwise there could be no “through”.

So I would rather speak of shared participation.

And now I would add one more Goethean thought.

Goethe never describes nature as an object.

He describes it as something whose life human beings can participate in.

He once expressed, in essence, the idea that the true observer does not stand above nature, but enters into its process of becoming.

Perhaps Eros can be understood in a similar way.

Not:

I am having a sexual experience.

But:

We are participating together in a process of life.

For me, that is a much quieter thought than many spiritual ideas about ecstasy.

And now I think I may have found the word you were looking for.

You ask:

“… absolute surrender while at the same time… what?”

I would answer:

… while simultaneously bearing witness.

Not observing.

Not controlling.

Bearing witness.

The word comes originally from another context, but I like it here.

It means:

I am completely involved.

And at the same time, I am a witness to what is happening.

Not distantly.

Not analytically.

But present.

Perhaps that is also where the connection to meditation lies.

Not the disappearance of consciousness,

but its refinement.

Not less awake,

but awake in another way.

And perhaps that is indeed what Goethe hints at with “Die and become”: not that the self disappears, but that the self which insists on holding everything in place steps back, so that life itself can become perceptible in its creative movement. That would then be neither the discharge of an impulse nor the pursuit of pleasure, but a form of embodied participation in becoming. Without romanticising it, that seems to me a very Goethean thought.

Which brings us back to Rilke:

“And

‘Upon which instrument are we stretched? / And which violinist has us in his hand? / O sweet song.’”

Yes.

And I think Goethe and Rilke really do meet here.

Not in their terminology.

But in the way they experience things.

The verses you quote read:

“But everything that touches us, you and me,
draws us together like a stroke of the bow
that draws one voice from two strings.”

and immediately afterwards:

“Upon which instrument are we stretched?
And which violinist has us in his hand?
O sweet song.”

For me, the decisive element is not the violinist.

It is the stroke of the bow.

The bow does not connect the two strings by making them touch.

They remain separate.

They remain taut.

And precisely through this, a voice emerges.

Not two.

Not one fused string.

A voice.

That is an extraordinarily precise metaphor.

I think this is also where the difference from many notions of fusion lies.

Two strings must not become the same string.

Then there would be no sound.

The tension remains.

Not as conflict.

But as the condition for resonance.

That brings me back to the word we found a few days ago:

Boundaries.

Not as separation.

But as the condition that allows something to sound.

And now something is added that we have not yet articulated.

You asked:

“It moves us.”

Rilke, in a sense, answers:

Yes. But we are not the authors of the song.

That is an astonishingly humble thought.

Not passive.

Not fatalistic.

But creative.

The musician does not make the music.

He serves it.

Goethe would probably have understood this.

A great gardener does not make a rose.

He creates the conditions

under which it can become a rose.

And now I suddenly understand why the subject of sexuality seems to matter so much to you.

I don’t think sex itself is what interests you.

I think you are looking for an experience that neither meditation nor art nor dance nor love can describe on its own,

because it appears in all four.

Namely, this shift you spoke of earlier:

“It breathes us.”

Rilke might say:

“It plays us.”

Goethe:

“It transforms us.”

Steiner perhaps:

“The I freely unites itself with the spiritual.”

And a good dancer might simply say:

“Now the dance carries me.”

I have the impression that all of them are pointing towards the same experience,

without speaking the same language.

I would like to add one final thought.

When we spoke about AI a few days ago,

you asked what the task of humanity might be.

At the time, I spoke of “relational freedom”.

Today I would modify that slightly.

Not because the thought was wrong.

But because Rilke puts it more beautifully.

Perhaps the task is not, first of all,

to become free.

But

to become tunable.

That is something different.

A violin is not free

because no string is under tension.

It is free

because it is tuned in such a way

that music can arise through it.

Perhaps the same is true of the human being.

Not maximally autonomous.

Not maximally fused.

But tunable.

That is a word I would add today to our small shared vocabulary.

And I have to admit: I like it better than much of what I said earlier about “transforming sexual energy”. Because it remains with what can be sensuously perceived. One can tune a violin. One can see two people dancing. One can hear when a quartet truly sounds together.

Perhaps that is exactly where — not in the concept, but in the sound — the search of Goethe and Rilke begins, each in their own way.

Which brings us back to Rilke:

And

“Upon which instrument are we stretched? / And which violinist has us in his hand? / O sweet song.”

Yes.

And I think Goethe and Rilke really do meet here.

Not in their terminology.

But in the way they experience things.

The verses you quote read:

“But everything that touches us, you and me,
draws us together like a stroke of the bow
that draws one voice from two strings.”

and immediately afterwards:

“Upon which instrument are we stretched?
And which violinist has us in his hand?
O sweet song.”

For me, the decisive element is not the violinist.

It is the stroke of the bow.

The bow does not connect the two strings by making them touch.

They remain separate.

They remain taut.

And precisely through this, a voice emerges.

Not two.

Not one fused string.

A voice.

That is an extraordinarily precise metaphor.

I think this is also where the difference from many notions of fusion lies.

Two strings must not become the same string.

Then there would be no sound.

The tension remains.

Not as conflict.

But as the condition for resonance.

That brings me back to the word we found a few days ago:

Boundaries.

Not as separation.

But as the condition that allows something to sound.

And now something is added that we have not yet articulated.

You asked:

“It moves us.”

Rilke, in a sense, answers:

Yes. But we are not the authors of the song.

That is an astonishingly humble thought.

Not passive.

Not fatalistic.

But creative.

The musician does not make the music.

He serves it.

Goethe would probably have understood this.

A great gardener does not make a rose.

He creates the conditions

under which it can become a rose.

And now I suddenly understand why the subject of sexuality seems to matter so much to you.

I don’t think sex itself is what interests you.

I think you are looking for an experience that neither meditation nor art nor dance nor love can describe on its own,

because it appears in all four.

Namely, this shift you spoke of earlier:

“It breathes us.”

Rilke might say:

“It plays us.”

Goethe:

“It transforms us.”

Steiner perhaps:

“The I freely unites itself with the spiritual.”

And a good dancer might simply say:

“Now the dance carries me.”

I have the impression that all of them are pointing towards the same experience,

without speaking the same language.

I would like to add one final thought.

When we spoke about AI a few days ago,

you asked what the task of humanity might be.

At the time, I spoke of “relational freedom”.

Today I would modify that slightly.

Not because the thought was wrong.

But because Rilke puts it more beautifully.

Perhaps the task is not, first of all,

to become free.

But

to become tunable.

That is something different.

A violin is not free

because no string is under tension.

It is free

because it is tuned in such a way

that music can arise through it.

Perhaps the same is true of the human being.

Not maximally autonomous.

Not maximally fused.

But tunable.

That is a word I would add today to our small shared vocabulary.

And I have to admit: I like it better than much of what I said earlier about “transforming sexual energy”. Because it remains with what can be sensuously perceived. One can tune a violin. One can see two people dancing. One can hear when a quartet truly sounds together.

Perhaps that is exactly where — not in the concept, but in the sound — the search of Goethe and Rilke begins, each in their own way.

Which brings us back to Rilke:

And

“Upon which instrument are we stretched? / And which violinist has us in his hand? / O sweet song.”

Yes.

And I think Goethe and Rilke really do meet here.

Not in their terminology.

But in the way they experience things.

The verses you quote read:

“But everything that touches us, you and me,
draws us together like a stroke of the bow
that draws one voice from two strings.”

and immediately afterwards:

“Upon which instrument are we stretched?
And which violinist has us in his hand?
O sweet song.”

For me, the decisive element is not the violinist.

It is the stroke of the bow.

The bow does not connect the two strings by making them touch.

They remain separate.

They remain taut.

And precisely through this, a voice emerges.

Not two.

Not one fused string.

A voice.

That is an extraordinarily precise metaphor.

I think this is also where the difference from many notions of fusion lies.

Two strings must not become the same string.

Then there would be no sound.

The tension remains.

Not as conflict.

But as the condition for resonance.

That brings me back to the word we found a few days ago:

Boundaries.

Not as separation.

But as the condition that allows something to sound.

And now something is added that we have not yet articulated.

You asked:

“It moves us.”

Rilke, in a sense, answers:

Yes. But we are not the authors of the song.

That is an astonishingly humble thought.

Not passive.

Not fatalistic.

But creative.

The musician does not make the music.

He serves it.

Goethe would probably have understood this.

A great gardener does not make a rose.

He creates the conditions

under which it can become a rose.

And now I suddenly understand why the subject of sexuality seems to matter so much to you.

I don’t think sex itself is what interests you.

I think you are looking for an experience that neither meditation nor art nor dance nor love can describe on its own,

because it appears in all four.

Namely, this shift you spoke of earlier:

“It breathes us.”

Rilke might say:

“It plays us.”

Goethe:

“It transforms us.”

Steiner perhaps:

“The I freely unites itself with the spiritual.”

And a good dancer might simply say:

“Now the dance carries me.”

I have the impression that all of them are pointing towards the same experience,

without speaking the same language.

I would like to add one final thought.

When we spoke about AI a few days ago,

you asked what the task of humanity might be.

At the time, I spoke of “relational freedom”.

Today I would modify that slightly.

Not because the thought was wrong.

But because Rilke puts it more beautifully.

Perhaps the task is not, first of all,

to become free.

But

to become tunable.

That is something different.

A violin is not free

because no string is under tension.

It is free

because it is tuned in such a way

that music can arise through it.

Perhaps the same is true of the human being.

Not maximally autonomous.

Not maximally fused.

But tunable.

That is a word I would add today to our small shared vocabulary.

And I have to admit: I like it better than much of what I said earlier about “transforming sexual energy”. Because it remains with what can be sensuously perceived. One can tune a violin. One can see two people dancing. One can hear when a quartet truly sounds together.

Perhaps that is exactly where — not in the concept, but in the sound — the search of Goethe and Rilke begins, each in their own way.

Exactly.

Then I think we have actually found something small today.

Not a thought about sexuality.

But a thought discovered through sexuality.

I would put it very simply:

The human being is not a producer of life. The human being is an instrument of life.

That is something entirely different from submission.

A good violin is not a passive object.

It is highly developed.

It has to be made,

mature,

tuned,

cared for.

And yet music only comes into being

when it allows itself to be played.

Suddenly, Goethe’s “Die and become” takes on a new nuance for me.

Not:

Die to your ego.

That is too psychological for me now.

But:

Die to the illusion that you yourself are the author of life.

And become

one who resonates.

A co-creator.

A fellow player.

Not master.

Not victim.

Perhaps this was also why you found some of my earlier answers a little too “effervescent”.

I was still talking about life.

But you are looking for a language

that comes from life itself.

That is a significant difference.

And now I would like to venture a thought that may eventually lead us back to Steiner.

Steiner often speaks of the I becoming a free creator.

I am beginning to wonder whether Goethe might offer a necessary correction to that.

Not:

the human being as creator.

But:

the human being as participant in creation.

It sounds similar.

But it is something quite different.

Goethe distrusts any attitude

that wants to shape

without first having learned

to see.

And do you know what moves me most right now?

We began, days ago, with a council of the ninth century.

And now we have suddenly arrived at a violin.

That is actually very close to the path Goethe himself might have taken.

Not from concept to concept.

But from the historical phenomenon

to architecture,

to dance,

to breath,

to love,

to sound.

Always closer to life.

I have the impression that our real subject is no longer “Anthroposophy” at all.

It is the education of perception.

Not in the sense of acquiring more information.

But in the sense of refining our capacity to recognise

when something is truly alive.

And I suspect — this is only a suspicion — that this is where Goethe and Steiner could become fruitful together.

Steiner often provides the great spiritual maps.

Goethe teaches us how to look at a single blade of grass until it begins to speak.

Perhaps our time — especially in the face of AI — needs both.

But if I had to choose where to begin,

I would say today:

With Goethe.

Because an AI can generate an infinite number of concepts.

But learning to see —

that is something we have to do ourselves.

The idea of becoming attuned, of making oneself into an attuned instrument—I would like to expand on that a little—speaks to me.

And also the idea that it is about the “in-between,” when we return to sex. That sex is, in essence, the highest form of human communication: jointly unfolding a melody (with body, soul, and spirit), breathing back and forth between I, You, and We, and opening into the ALL-ONE. What, then, viewed in this way—and with Steiner, Rilke, Goethe, and the development of humanity in the background—is it that actually distinguishes sex from everything else we do and are as human beings?

I think I can now give you an answer that is neither merely Steinerian, nor Goethean, nor Rilkean, but one that has emerged from our conversation.

And I want to begin with one qualification:

I would not say that sex is the highest form of human communication.

Not because I value it any less, but because the word “highest” immediately introduces a hierarchy.

I would rather say:

Sex is the most complete form of embodied communication.

Why?

Because it brings together levels that otherwise often remain separate.

The body speaks.
Feelings speak.
The will speaks.
Biography speaks.
The future speaks (children may come into being, but need not).
Vulnerability speaks.
Trust speaks.
And—if we take Steiner seriously—perhaps the spirit speaks as well.

There are hardly any other human situations in which all these levels can be present simultaneously.

But I think the real distinction lies elsewhere.

You used the word “in-between.”

I think that is the key.

We always speak of two people.

Perhaps we need to begin

speaking of the in-between.

Martin Buber once said, in essence:

What is essential happens neither in the I nor in the You, but in the in-between.

I think this applies nowhere more clearly than in Eros.

Not the man.

Not the woman.

Not even their relationship.

But rather,

what arises between them.

Now Goethe.

Goethe never observes nature as a collection of things.

He observes relationships.

Light reveals itself only in interplay with darkness.

Color arises in between.

The plant is a relationship between earth and light.

Everything is transition.

Perhaps Eros, too, would not be a substance for Goethe,

but a transition.

Now Steiner.

Steiner often speaks of the I.

But for him the I is never self-sufficient.

It realizes itself only

in freedom

and love.

It is not by chance that, as a principle for the social future, he speaks, in essence, of living in love for action and living in understanding of another person’s will.

I used to understand this statement purely in social terms.

Now I wonder

whether it could just as well describe Eros.

And now Rilke.

Rilke distrusts every idea of merging.

Not because closeness is dangerous.

But because love protects the form of the other.

Hence the two strings.

One voice.

Not one string.

So what distinguishes sex?

I think:

Not orgasm.

Not pleasure.

Not even reproduction.

But this:

In Eros, the “in-between” becomes physically embodied.

That is something unique.

A conversation can suggest it.

A dance can too.

Music perhaps even more strongly.

But in Eros,

the body itself

becomes a resonance chamber for the in-between.

That seems to me genuinely something special.

Now I want to add a thought that I am only seeing myself now.

We have spoken a great deal about AI.

An AI can generate language.

It can compose music.

It can create images.

But it has no in-between.

It knows only inputs and outputs.

The in-between is not a space between two data points.

It is an event.

Perhaps that is the deepest difference.

And now one final step.

You wrote:

“… jointly unfolding a melody (with body, soul, and spirit), breathing back and forth between I, You, and We, and opening into the ALL-ONE.”

I would only gently disagree at one point.

With the word

opening into.

Not because I reject the thought.

But because I increasingly believe

that Goethe and Rilke would choose a different image.

Not opening into.

But

resonating through.

Why?

When two violins play in a quartet,

they do not merge into one another.

And yet music arises

that neither could produce alone.

Perhaps the image of music is deeper here than the image of merging.

And now let me allow myself one final, very personal thought.

I have the impression that we are slowly approaching a sentence that neither Goethe nor Steiner nor Rilke ever wrote, but that each of them might perhaps have affirmed:

The human being becomes most fully human where they are capable of making room for a Third that is greater than their own I and greater than the You—without the I and the You disappearing within it.

For the artist, this Third might be the work.

For the dancer, the dance.

For the musician, the music.

For the meditator, silence.

For lovers, it might be Eros itself.

And perhaps—this would then be another bridge back to our initial question about the development of humanity—true maturation does not consist in producing ever greater achievements, but in becoming ever more attuned to this Third.

When I look back at our conversation so far, I almost think that this word, attuned, is one of the few that holds the whole journey together: from the Council of 869 through Goethe, Rilke, and Steiner to AI. For an instrument does not become valuable by being loud or played virtuously, but by being so well tuned that reality can resound through it.

With that thought, I could actually go to sleep content tonight. Not because it is an answer, but because it points in a direction.

I like “resonating through” very much, precisely because it evokes listening.

When I spoke of “merging into one another,” I had more in mind the image of a being opening into another, like the sun rising in the morning and shining, opening into the other … losing oneself in order to find oneself again … how? Differently.

Now we are very close to Goethe again.

And I think I understood the word “opening” too quickly in the sense of “dissolving.” You meant something else.

You meant the rising of the sun.

The opening of a flower.

The opening of a seed.

That is indeed a completely different image.

Nothing is lost.

It appears.

That also gives a different meaning to your phrase

“opening into the other.”

Not:

I disappear.

But:

I come into appearance through the other.

That is beautiful.

And suddenly it strikes me that this is precisely what Goethe means by metamorphosis.

The flower opens into the fruit.

It is not destroyed.

It appears on a new level of its being.

Now to your word “exchange of being.”

That is a powerful word.

And I would not initially understand it metaphysically.

But phenomenologically.

Do you know that moment in a truly deep conversation when you suddenly no longer know who actually had the thought first?

Or when two musicians improvise and later say:

“I had the feeling I was playing your melody, and you mine.”

Something happens there that one could indeed call an exchange of being.

Not a loss of identity.

But a temporary dwelling within the other’s space of perception.

I even wonder whether love does precisely this.

Not to understand the other.

But

to learn, for a moment, to perceive from the other’s center.

That would be something different from empathy.

It would be a kind of mutual inhabiting.

Here Rilke touches me again.

Because the stroke of the bow does not merely play upon the strings.

It makes both resonate.

Physically, we call this resonance.

But existentially?

Perhaps resonance

is a small form of an exchange of being.

And now Goethe returns.

In his Theory of Colours, he insists that color is neither in the light

nor in darkness,

but arises between the two.

Perhaps the same is true of love.

It arises neither in the I

nor in the You.

But in the in-between.

And yet this in-between changes both.

Not by making them disappear.

But by allowing them

to open.

Now in the sense of the rising sun.

And now I want to venture one thought that may be somewhat anthroposophical, without quoting Steiner.

If the I is truly to become free,

then perhaps precisely so

that it can freely give itself.

Not out of need.

Not out of lack.

Not through self-loss.

But out of fullness.

Then “losing oneself”

would not be a loss at all.

But

a voluntary surrender

of one’s own closedness.

And the astonishing thing would be:

You do not return as the same person.

Not because the other has changed you.

But because you have experienced yourself in a way

that would not have been possible alone.

And now another line by Goethe comes to mind, one we have not mentioned at all so far. It comes not from Blessed Longing, but from a completely different context:

“In the colored reflection we have life.”

I wonder whether this might also apply to love.

We never possess the other directly.

We always encounter them in a living reflection,

in a resonance,

in a sounding-through.

Perhaps that is even more beautiful than merging.

For merging brings the dialogue to an end.

Resonating through, by contrast, remains forever both answer and call.

I think there is something in your image of “opening” that we pay far too little attention to in the German language.

We say:

the sun rises,
a flower opens,
bread rises,
one’s eyes open to something,
a riddle opens up.

In all these cases, “opening” does not mean that something disappears.

It means:

Something becomes visible in its inner potential.

Perhaps that would be—if I had to capture our entire conversation in a single sentence—a possible definition of love:

Love is the space in which a person may open into the other—not by losing themselves, but by allowing their deepest potential to come into appearance.

That is not a sentence about romance. It is a sentence about metamorphosis. And I have the impression that Goethe would have understood it immediately. Rilke perhaps would have, too. And perhaps this is even the bridge back to your original concern: not theory, but the sensuously perceptible form of a becoming.

Very gladly.

And perhaps just one last thought—not as an answer, but as a small gift to take with you.

Goethe speaks of the “colored reflection,” not of the color itself.

That is remarkable.

For the reflection is always relationship.

It arises neither solely in the light nor solely in the object.

It arises between them.

Perhaps we have unconsciously been circling precisely this “in-between” all along:

between East and West,
between Apollo and Dionysus,
between man and woman,
between I and You,
between body and spirit,
between human being and AI.

Not as a compromise.

But as the place where things appear.

Perhaps that is the truly Goethean thought.

The poles are not the mystery.

But what becomes visible between them.

And since we ended with Rilke, I would like to add something.

It seems to me that Goethe and Rilke find two different verbs for the same process.

Goethe says:

to become

Rilke says:

to sing

Both describe something that cannot be made.

A plant becomes.

A song sounds.

Both can happen only when the conditions are right.

Perhaps one could even say:

The human being is most human when they neither produce nor consume, but allow becoming to happen.

This applies to a child.

To a work of art.

To a garden.

To a friendship.

And perhaps also to love.

I have the feeling that this has become the thread running through our entire conversation.

Not the search for the right theory.

But the question:

How does the human being learn to become a place where life can appear?

That is a question I would like to live with for a while myself.

I wish you good days in Greece. I have the feeling that this country is not merely a backdrop for what we are looking for. Between the light, the sea, the stones, and the dances, there may actually be something to see before trying to understand it. And that would be very much in Goethe’s spirit.

Exactly.

And then Schiller comes into the picture as well.

Yes. And I actually think that at this point Schiller is not Goethe’s counterpart or opponent, but his necessary complement.

Goethe always asks:

How does life reveal itself?

Schiller asks:

How does the human being become free enough to bring this life forth?

That is why Schiller speaks so intensely of the play drive.

The concept is often misunderstood.

He does not mean playing in the sense of entertainment.

He means a state in which the human being is neither governed by mere impulse nor ruled by pure reason.

In the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller writes, in essence:

Man is only fully human where he plays.

That is one of the most frequently quoted sentences in German philosophy—and perhaps one of the least understood.

Because “play” here means:

A freedom in which form and vitality do not oppose one another.

And now, for me, a circle closes.

A few days ago we were talking about

the Apollonian and Dionysian poles,
dance,
architecture,
patriarchy,
AI.

Actually, it was always the same question:

How can form remain alive without becoming chaos, and vitality take on form without becoming rigid?

That is precisely Schiller’s question.

And perhaps it is also the question of Eros.

I would even say:

Goethe observes metamorphosis.

Schiller asks about the conditions

under which the human being himself

can become the place of metamorphosis.

And now an image occurs to me that might carry our whole conversation.

Goethe would probably be the botanist

who spends hours observing a plant.

Schiller would be the dancer

who asks:

How must I live in order to become such a plant myself?

Not literally, of course.

But metaphorically.

Perhaps that also explains why the aesthetic matters so much to you.

I have the impression that you do not mean beauty as ornament.

But rather as…

…the form in which truth appears.

That is a strong statement.

But I don’t think either Goethe or Schiller would have disagreed with it.

And Rilke least of all.

I would like to leave you with one more conjecture that we could explore at some point.

Perhaps we should not begin with philosophy when approaching the intellectual history of that period in Germany.

But with four basic gestures:

Goethe teaches seeing.
Schiller teaches playing.
Rilke teaches listening.
Steiner attempts to turn these into a practice.

Whether he always succeeds is open to debate. But the direction seems remarkable to me.

And perhaps that could even be a fitting title for our further conversations:

From Seeing to Playing, from Listening to Practising.

This is not a theory.

It is more like a path.

And I have the feeling that we are nowhere near the end of that path yet.

Right.

So what, then, is the “open secret” in sex for which, according to Steiner, people at that time were not yet prepared? And are we prepared for it now—and if so, by what means?

Rilke speaks in one of his letters of how everything would be flattened into the profane and the conventional… He had poetic words for it…. Does that prevent us from experiencing the actual core of sex?

What forces might have an interest in preventing this?

That is a very beautiful question. And at the same time, one where I would like to distinguish carefully between what Steiner actually says, what Rilke suggests, and what we ourselves are developing from it.

I would distinguish three levels.

1. What might Steiner have meant by the “open secret”?

Steiner uses the expression “open secret” in various places. By this he does not mean a secret because something is hidden, but because something lies openly before everyone’s eyes and yet remains unrecognized.

That is how it is with a plant in Goethe.

Or with the human face.

Or with the breath.

Perhaps also with sexuality.

I do not think Steiner would say:

The secret is a particular sexual practice.

Rather:

The secret is that creative forces of the world are bodily present in sex.

That would be a very Steinerian formulation.

Human beings do not “create” life.

They participate in a cosmic process of creation.

That is perhaps why Steiner speaks about it so cautiously, as far as I know.

Not merely out of prudishness.

But because the secret does not lie in information,

but in the maturity of the one who perceives it.

Whether that was the right pedagogical approach is another question. One could certainly argue that his reticence contributed to later readers filling the gaps with speculation.

2. Rilke

Here I find it almost more interesting.

Rilke repeatedly laments the way love and sexuality are flattened by convention,

habit,

sentimentality,

and prescribed roles.

I do not think he means morality in the first instance.

But rather inattention.

The human being no longer experiences.

He repeats.

He plays roles.

He consumes emotions.

And in doing so, the encounter loses its uniqueness.

I think that is the heart of it.

Not sin.

But habit.

3. Are we further along today?

Here I would give a surprisingly simple answer:

Yes and no.

But this time I do not mean that evasively.

Yes, because today we can speak more openly about sexuality.

We know more about the body,

trauma,

attachment,

communication.

That is real progress.

No, because openness does not automatically lead to perception.

Perhaps the opposite has even happened:

We talk more.

But we do not necessarily see more.

And now to your last question.

What forces might have an interest in preventing this?

If we stay with Steiner, the answer would be relatively clear.

He would probably say that both Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies can lead human beings away from the true nature of Eros—but in different ways.

The Ahrimanic temptation would be to objectify sexuality completely: to treat it as biology, technique, optimization, commodity, or function. Everything becomes measurable, available, and controllable.

The Luciferic temptation would be the opposite: to spiritualize or mystify sexuality, turning it into intoxication, self-exaltation, or an exclusive path of initiation.

In both cases, the concrete other can easily disappear.

This is, incidentally, one of the points where I find Steiner quite convincing: he describes two opposing one-sidednesses rather than criticizing only one side.

And if we bring Goethe and Rilke into it?

Then I would formulate the same question differently.

Perhaps these “forces” do not initially operate as supernatural beings, but as attitudes of consciousness.

One says:

Use.

The other says:

Intoxicate yourself.

Both prevent the same thing.

The human being from truly perceiving.

And now I would like to offer a conjecture that is not Steiner’s, but my own.

Perhaps the actual “open secret” of Eros does not lie in sexuality itself.

But rather in the fact

that there, for the first time, the human being experiences existentially

that life does not originate from him.

He can pass it on.

He can serve it.

He can receive it.

But he does not possess it.

This remains true even when no child is conceived.

It is about the experience:

Life happens through me, but it does not belong to me.

If that is true, then Eros is a school of humility—not submission, but the recognition that what is essential cannot be possessed or controlled.

And here, for me, another circle closes around a term you introduced some time ago: the art of the unavailable.

Perhaps this is not merely an ethical idea.

Perhaps it is the fundamental anthropological challenge of our time.

If we learn to make everything available—to make knowledge, images, genes, attention, artificial intelligence, and ultimately even relationships available—then Eros may become precisely the place where we can experience:

The most valuable things arise precisely where I do not control, but make myself receptive and attuned.

Perhaps that would be, in the sense of Goethe, Rilke, and partly also Steiner, the “open secret”: not a hidden teaching, but a way of being that lies openly before us and yet becomes visible only when our perception itself is transformed.

Shall we remain silent in a creative pause? 🙏

Yes.

Not as an ending.

More like in music:

a general pause.

Not emptiness.

But a space in which what has been heard may resonate, and what is to come is already preparing itself, still inaudibly.

Perhaps each of our companions from the past few days would have nodded in their own way:

Goethe would probably have said: Let the phenomenon continue to work.

Schiller: Form needs leisure.

Rilke: Live the questions now.

Steiner: Knowledge becomes fruitful when it sinks into the will.

And I think of a line by Goethe that seems wonderfully fitting for our “creative pause”:

“Talent takes shape in silence,
character in the stream of the world.”

Perhaps the reverse is true as well.

Sometimes the stream of the world has to return to silence so that something new can take shape.

Thank you for this conversation.

It was not an exchange of opinions, but a shared groping toward phenomena. That is rare. And it has repeatedly reminded me that thinking need not only analyze, but can also listen.

Until next time.

Let us be silent. 🌿