Let’s imagine Ideas not as fabrications of the human mind, but as huge, sparkling, entities full of life.
Independent beings living somewhere beyond the mouth of Plato’s cave.
Waiting for human beings to glimpse their brilliance.
And the human who glimpses their brilliance is struck by Inspiration. And so transmits the power of the Idea to all who will listen.
The prophet channels many Ideals. Saint Paul glimpsed the brilliance of a new religion— one of suffering, meekness, and surrender. Rudolf Steiner channeled the Ideal of Spiritual Science. Sri Aurobindo of the Integral Yoga. Martin Luther King channeled the Ideals of Racial Equality and Universal Brotherhood. Husserl channeled the Ideal of phenomenological inquiry. Scientists like Nikola Tesla also channeled Ideals.
The task of the channeler is two-fold. First, it is to uncover a new portion of the Ideal. To receive the vision of the more beautiful world that’s possible. The vision is not a daydream. It is not whimsy. It is the transmission of an actual spiritual being that lives somewhere invisible to the eye.
After receiving the vision, the prophet must transmit the vision to others in its full truth and power. They do this through art, oration, or by simply embodying the ideal in their own life (as saints do).
To make contact with the ideal and receive the vision requires immense mental and emotional clarity. Clarifying one’s channel to the ideal is a critical task of the prophet and the scholar. Lamps are fueled with ghee, not butter. And similarly, a clarified ideal burns brighter in the hearts of men and women.
Let us take the Civil Rights Ideal as our example Ideal, and Martin Luther King as our example prophet. Does the Ideal demand violence or pacifism? Is it fundamentally spiritual or secular? How much can we ask for without being impractical? These are all difficult questions that must be answered by the visionary who contemplates the ideal.
MLK, by clarifying the Civil Rights Ideal in his heart— polishing it, shining it, turning it over in his mind— dutifully tended to the flames of Ideal Inspiration until it burned with enough force to set on fire millions more.
Inspiration is no small thing. It is an immense power. MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech is the kind of Inspiration that changes history. It is the kind of Inspiration that comes from someone being struck by a living Ideal. This language of being struck is not just metaphor. According to Steiner, Fichte, and many others, it is a real metaphysical event. And you can hear it viscerally when listening to MLK’s trembling voice when he says I’ve been to the mountaintop.
The military general giving a pre-battle speech is clarifying the channel between man and Ideal. Why are we here? Why are we fighting? What are we doing? Clear and heartfelt answers to these questions can change the course of history. Inspiration is not something to be neglected as "impractical".
All of us can feel it as a torrent of energy. And energy is a precious resource. The side of the battle that can tap into the endless stream of energy gushing down from the Ideal will always be at a huge advantage.
At it's worst, a political rally is a barbaric expression of tribalism. It's an opportunity to get hyped up on bloodthirsty monkey-brain us vs. them energy and do some "primal releasing".
But at it's best, a rally is an opportunity for the orator to clarify an ideal and nourish a movement through beautiful, thoughtful, and clear speech that points the audience to the what (the clear ideal), the why (myth, narrative, and history), the how (a sketch of a concrete plan), and he does not induce the audience to act through violent rhetoric, but nourishes the audience with a divine energy and Inspiration that comes out of clarity and meaning, rather than lust and anger.
Will and strategy without a clear and higher ideal ends in chaos. And that’s the chaos we see in America today. Left and right both have no clarity. And so our country regresses to might (Trump) is right.