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American Anthroposophy
- an introduction -
a celebration of the American Soul's unique
ability to contribute to the future of Anthroposophy,
and to the future of world culture
by Joel A. Wendt
social philosopher...and occasional fool
"...one can say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy
in a spiritual way; the American develops it in a natural way..."
Rudolf Steiner, from a talk to the workmen
at the Goetheanum, Dornach, March 3, 1923
cover art bead-work by the author
Dedication
This book is dedicated to you, immortal spirit, who were
at one time known as Rudolf Steiner, and without whose presence on this
Earth for about 64 years, the essays in this book could not have been
written. I am grateful to you for wearing that name and bearing
the burden of being thought of as a great initiate. Thank you old
friend and may you continue to sail on to ever greater wonders and
delights, with as little suffering as necessary. Hopefully, the
content of this book may over the years of the future, serve to break
the chains by which great aspects of your spirit are currently bound to
the Earth, due to your having chosen to join your karma to ours.
In all our names, I beg your forgiveness for our many
errors and numerous follies connected to our having misunderstood much
of the essence of your teachings. With greatest affection and
love, your pupil, Joel A. Wendt
the Contents of this Book
introductory
materials
forward by the author - what is meant by American Anthroposophy?
preface for the neophyte - for the readers to whom Anthroposophy is quite new.
an apology (of sorts) - to the more experienced anthroposophical reader
introduction
the main
themes of this book
The Challenge
American Anthroposophy begins to come to
maturity in the situation of a given place and a given time. The
dominant characteristic of this time, outwardly,
is the Incarnation of Ahriman. As a
consequence the first essay concerns Ahriman's Incarnation:
Outrageous Genius - Discovering the in-the-Present
Incarnation of Ahriman in America through the Signs of the Times (Michaelmas* 2007) part 1: Honoring the Teacher and the
Teaching; part 2) The Wise-Earth as
Counter-force to Ahriman's Incarnation; part
3) Brother What
Ails Thee?; and, part 4) Waking the American
Anthroposophical Society and Movement for their true tasks in the 21st
Century.
*[The dates of writing here and below are
the time at which the original essay was produced out of the
spiritual-thinking activity described in the essay: In Joyous Celebration...]
Orientation
The dominant characteristic of this time, inwardly,
is the True Second Coming of Christ.
"From the kingdom served by Michael himself Christ
descends to the sphere of the Earth, so as to be there when the
intelligence is wholly with the human individuality. For man will then
feel most strongly the impulse to devote himself to the power which has
made itself fully and completely into the vehicle of intellectuality.
But Christ will be there; through His great sacrifice He will live in
the same sphere in which Ahriman also lives. Man will be able to choose
between Christ and Ahriman. The world will be able to find the
Christ-way in the evolution of humanity." R.S. Anthroposophical
Leading Thoughts.
The Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the
Consciousness Soul (winter - spring 2006)
In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of
Discipleship (late summer 2006)
The Methodology Necessary for a New Social Science - a
brief introduction (written for this book
during the Season of Michaelmas, 2007)
The Natural Transformation of the Anthroposophical
Society in America (Michaelmas 2007)
The Mystery of Macro and Micro Evil: the relationship of
the Shadow (the threefold double-complex) to the American Soul (Michaelmas 2007)
Encountering the Mystery of America
What
distinguishes the now emerging natural Anthroposophy of the American
Soul,
from the anthroposophical work of the Twentieth Century
Present Day American Culture - four archetypal
personalities (after the Holy Nights, 2008)
Recollecting the True Roots of the American Soul - America's aboriginal
Peoples and the Hopi Prophecy (after
the
Holy Nights, 2008)
Anthroposophy and the Russian Soul - a lesson from life:
instruction for all three world-aspects of Anthroposophical activity,
in the West, the Center and the East - (written
over Christmas Eve and Day 2006)
The New, and profoundly human, Mysteries of the Earth (written in the remaining Holy Nights just after
Christmas 2006)
Rudolf Steiner's Own Path - The Philosophy of Freedom or
Spiritual Activity - a brief re-imagination (written
for this book just after the Holy Nights 2007-8)
a letter to a young anthroposophist (2003)
The Redemption of Eros: - Seeking Comfort and
Companionship in a time of increasing Social Chaos - or, Sex and the
Individual Anthroposophist (Michaelmas 2007)
The America Soul - an evolving synthesis at its moment of
birth: - much has
been written above - here a small effort at a summary, with a few
additional insights offered as the concluding theme. (written in the Season of Easter, Spring 2008)
End Stories
America: The Central Motif (by Patrick Dixon)*
*reprinted
with permission, and with a great deal of gratitude that this exists...
Bicycles: a Children's Christmas Story
for Adults
some final
verse: the Gift of the Word
***************************************
Ultimately,
all questions of truth and goodness come down to the application of
individual art and imagination - that is the creation of beauty.
It isn't so much that the Universe has or is an answer that we
seek and struggle to find, but rather that the Universe is an
unfinished symphony in which we are one of the creative sources.
Each individual i-AM is a song - continually knowing itself only
in the moment of its becoming...
***************************************
forward by the author
- what is
meant by American Anthroposophy -
To place the modifier "American" in front
of the noun Anthroposophy, may seem to some a rather curious, perhaps
even defective, construction. What about Anthroposophy,
apparently authored by Rudolf Steiner and mostly taught in Europe,
could ever be called American? Even so, the problem comes in
large part from Steiner himself, who said a great deal about America,
including suggesting this very idea - that there is to come an American Anthroposophy. Having gathered* together much of
what he wrote and spoke about America, I'll just start with some of
this material and basically leave it to Dr. Steiner himself to help us
start to understand why there could be something quite real about an American Anthroposophy. I'll also weave among the comments
of Steiner various other materials as seems appropriate [these will be
in brackets so as to not confuse anything].
*[with the help of the America Steiner
library in New York, ask them for their list]
One last introductory point...
There is an excellent question as to what
is truly America and/or American, given that there is a North and South
and Central America of which we routinely speak. I would say in
general that most of what is indicated by Steiner, and explored more
deeply by me in this book, refers principally to the United States of
America. To look at the wider questions has not really been
attempted here, although in the appendix in Patrick Dixon's essay: America:
the Central Motif, an introductory
perspective on some of these wider questions is given. Hopefully
- in the future - others, native to these wider regions of the Western
Continents, will be inspired by what is here to add their insights and
their voices, for no one should doubt that all the Peoples of the
Western Continents have a great deal to offer to the world.
*
here now, from Dr. Steiner...
"...America is the place at which races or civilizations die." R.S. The
Mission of the Folk Souls, lecture 6.
[This phenomena is discussed more fully
in an essay below.]
"The Indians then took over with them to the West all that
was great in the Atlantean culture. What was the greatest thing
of all to the Indians? It was that he was still able dimly to
sense something of the ancient greatness and majesty of a period which
existed in the old Atlantean epoch, in which the divisions of the races
had hardly begun, in which men could look up to the Sun and perceive
the Spirits of Form penetrating through a sea of mist. Through an
ocean of mist the Atlantean gazed up at that which to him was not
divided into six or seven, but which acted together. This
co-operative activity of the seven Spirits of Form was called by the
Atlanteans the Great Spirit...He clung firmly to the Great Spirit of
the primeval past." R.S. Lecture 6
above.
[While we might think that the Native
Americans have a degenerate spirituality as a consequence of this, it
would be a mistake to take this view. A Mohawk healer (a woman
friend of mine) is also a seeress, and it is clear to her vision that
when she holds a healing circle it is Christ in the form of an Angel
who does the actual healing. Another Native acquaintance of mine
described her first experience of a most sacred ceremonial enacted by
her Chief and spoken in the Cherokee language. In this ritual he
had used the word Christ several times, and she asked him following
this ceremony why he had mixed that particular word in with the
Cherokee in this way. His reply was that Indians had always known
there was an Earth Spirit, but now they know His Name.
The Saturn (Native American) Mysteries
still produce initiates (as it were), whose development takes a course
similar in kind to the Symbol in Tarot of the Hanged Man. Their visionary capacity comes from having given
over their will (which is why the Hanged Man is pictured upside down)
to the Celestial Influence. It is a spiritual capacity based upon
voluntary obedience to the Sky People (the ancestors and spirit guides of
the Native Americans) before whose judgment the seers, Chiefs and
healers tend to place all crucial questions of life. It is not a
blind obedience, but something more on the order of recognizing that
the Sky People have a superior vision of matters, and that as a result
their wisdom is to be given great weight in reference to all
significant questions.
By the way, many anthroposophists treat
Steiner in the same way, and with the same potential dangers to our
personal and individual development of inner freedom, so it perhaps
should suggest to us that we not cast stones.
The potential marriage, within the free
choices of the individual American Soul of this veneration of all that
was great in the primeval past of Atlantis with the New Sun Mysteries
(in its initial form as Anthroposophy) is very important for the future
(for details see the essay below: Recollecting
the True Roots of the America Soul - America's aboriginal
Peoples and the Hopi Prophecy).]
America was discovered in order to
provide a counter-balance to the Asian Great Spirit (luciferic
lightness). America leads man to heaviness and materialism.
(R.S. paraphrased from Lecture 2, Inner
Impulses Working in the Evolution of Mankind)
"...American civilization, on
account of the special organization of its people, is particularly
exposed to the temptation offered by what the eagle speaks (1)....Central
Europe...is particularly exposed to what is uttered by the lion (2)...Oriental civilization is preeminently exposed to what is
uttered by the cow (3)."
(1) "I give thee the power to create a universe in thine own head"
(2) "I give thee the power to embody the universe in the radiance of the encircling air."
(3) "I give thee the power to
wrest from the universe measure, number and weight." R.S. Lecture 8, Man as a
Being of Sense and Perception
[Not surprising then the importance of
the Eagle as a symbol both to Native Americans and the United States of
America.]
If European and American civilization
retain their present character, a materialistic cosmogony will cover
over the Christ Event. (R.S. paraphrased from lecture 9, Man as
Hieroglyph of the Universe.)
[The antidote to this is the Christ
centered cosmogony presented in my book: the Way of
the Fool: the
conscious development of our human character and the future* of
Christianity - both to be born out of the natural union of Faith and
Gnosis.]
The past brings fermentation that leads "Europe to the brink of the
Abyss, which will array Asia and America against each other." R.S. Lecture 3, The
Mission of Archangel Michael
Emigration to America is greater than all
other movements of peoples. (paraphrase, R.S. Lecture 4, Mystery
Centers)
[The People of Peoples (the Beacon of
Hope) continues to draw the world to itself, even during times of great
distress (witness Latino movements in the present, and Asia movements
following the Vietnam War).]
The Anglo-American victory over Europe in
WWI will lead to a domination of European spiritual-cultural life in an
external fashion. (paraphrase R.S. lecture 3, The
Mysteries of Light, Space and Earth.)
The threefold social order is needed in
order to overcome the influence of Anglo-American secret societies
(paraphrase lecture 4 above).
"...I believe that in the future my book [The Threefold
Social Order] should be read in the West and in Russia, but that it has
no chance of becoming effective in Germany. The West, for
instance, can learn much from this book, for in a non-utopian manner it
simply states how the three spheres co-exist and should interact.
For the West the moment in time does not matter, for much is still to be done
for the right interaction of the three currents, the spiritual life,
the economic life, the political-legal life."
R.S. Threefolding as a Social Alternative. [emphasis added]
In 1924, for a time, some in America showed that stars were hollowed out spaces (paraphrase, R.S. lecture 3, The Evolution of Earth and Man and the Influence of the Stars)
Following the American way of thinking,
an attempt was made to extend the mechanical over human life itself.
It will be an American Mystery to make use of the magnetism of
the Earth, its double-ness. (paraphrase, R.S. lecture 12, The
Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric.)
"Europeans prove, Americans affirm"
R.S. lecture to workmen 3 March 1923.
When the sun is in Aquarius: "only then will the true
American Civilization come." (same lecture).
"We in Europe develop Anthroposophy out of the Spirit.
Over there they develop something that is a kind of wooden doll
of Anthroposophy. Everything becomes materialistic." (same lecture)
"But for one who is not a fanatic, there is something
similar in American culture to what is anthroposophical spiritual
science in Europe. Only everything there is wooden, it is not yet
alive. We can make it alive in Europe out of the spirit, those
over there take it out of instinct..." (same
lecture)
"The time will one day come when this American woodenman,
which actually everyone is still - when he begins to speak. Then
he will have something to say very similar to European Anthroposophy*. One can say that we
in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American
develops it in a natural way." (same lecture,
emphasis added)
*[here is where I told you that Steiner
clearly suggested there would come to be an American Anthroposophy.]
"The American is a young materialist...So too will the
American's blatant materialism sprout a spiritual element." (when the Sun rises in the sign of Aquarius). (same
lecture)
[As to the Sun rising in Aquarius, its
actual date is mostly anyone's guess. I asked an astrosopher, and
he suggested any where from 2376 to 3575, with lots of if ands and buts
and complicated details - I tried to get an exact answer, but sorry,
none could be had. Wikipedia says 2600, and if you get on Google
you can find just about anything. As we know, popular American
culture thought that this was happening in the 1960's (This
is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius...
from the rock musical Hair). If we accept the role of spiritual inspiration
in the arts, then perhaps we can see that while Steiner referred to the
Sun rising in Aquarius, a dawning is something that
signals the coming rising of the Sun. I would place this book in
that category - the previously dark sky is gone, the stars recede from
sight, and bands of light illuminate the horizon, even though the Sun
has yet to fully appear. A transition of this kind, as is also
clear from Steiner's indications regarding the various epochs of the
post-Atlantean Age, is a gradual development that takes place over many decades if not a few
centuries. No fixed date has any real
meaning. The present then in America is a dawning, but the Sun has not yet risen.]
"But genuine Americanism will one day
unite with Europeanism, which will have taken a more spiritual path." (same lecture) [emphasis added].
[I have spent some time contemplating
Steiner's use of the adjective wooden in describing the
American's instinct for Anthroposophy. Clearly he could have used
an even more material metaphor, such as crystalline. That he did not, but chose instead to us a term
from the world of plants, particularly of the higher plant which is the
tree, can give us something to help our understanding. The tree,
while rooted in the earth, in making its wooden pillar makes the earth itself into a living form which
then raises the tree's leaves and blossoms much further in the
direction of the cosmos than those plants that remain nearer the earth
on the forest floor.
Our physical nature, as Americans, is of
the earth, and to the extent that we remain instinctive, so is our soul
life captured by this earth bound existence. Thus our
thinking is also earthly and material, unless we spiritualize it,
unless we bring moral forces into it consciously. The more our
native goodness penetrates our thought life consciously (instead of
instinctively), the more we do what the tree does when it spreads its
leaves and blossoms (on its way to bestowing its fruit for our benefit)
into the air far above the earth. Here is what I wrote in the
essay below on conscious thinking out of the American Soul (In Joyous
Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship): The
purified will (an appropriately moral intention and attention) creates
heart warmth in the soul-soil of feeling, out of which the light and
life filled flower of thought is born. ]
Subterranean forces possess the American
body - a geographical force, not a spiritual force. They chain
man to the earth. Something from the human head streams toward
magnetic and electric currents, neutralizing them - this is the human
will. What overcomes these dependencies, which are part of karma,
so that our inner life (if not our outward form) can come to freedom?
The answer: the Mystery of Golgatha. (paraphrase of R.S.
long discussion lecture 1, Anthroposophical
Life Gifts.
*
Not everything Steiner taught about human
inner life applies to Americans, and here again is what Steiner said
indicating the existence of something that has to be called American Anthroposophy: "The time will one day come when this American woodenman,
which actually everyone is still - when he begins to speak. Then
he will have something to say very similar to European Anthroposophy. One can say that we
in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American
develops it in a natural way." [emphasis
added].
Steiner was a very precise and exact
thinker, and as a consequence we can look carefully at his words,
expecting such characteristics. Here he has predicted a time when
the American would speak, and say something very similar to European Anthroposophy - not the same, but similar. He also points out that we develop anthroposophy
in a natural way, while the European develops it in a spiritual way.
What precisely and exactly does that mean?
We should not expect to answer such a
question by looking to Steiner, however. The answer to this
question is not his to give. The American has to speak the truth
and beauty and goodness of this question out of his own soul, and this
book is one American's answer to that riddle. American
Anthroposophy is similar to European Anthroposophy, but different,
because our basic soul gesture and relationship to the world is
fundamentally different. It will do no good to compare the two,
but all manner of good to struggle to see how these two approaches to
Anthroposophy fit together, for harmonize they do. Please keep
this in mind as you read the text below: to look not for the contrast
with what Steiner has offered, but rather to appreciate how what is
offered seeks to complement his work.
This in general can be added here.
The American is more of the Earth than any other people.
His youthful culture is also of the future, whereas the mature
European culture is mostly of the past (see the images of the Elder and
Younger Brother in the Hopi Prophecy essay below). Their
individual limitations may be overcome in the present by their mutual
respect and cooperation. At present, unfortunately, the spiritual
potential of the American Soul is not even decently respected in the
circles of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement here in America.
How then can the two work together without first raising into the light of consciousness the true soul
and spiritual nature of the American?
This condition of self-ignorance,
tragically fostered in anthroposophical circles, is strongly encouraged
by Ahriman through our unredeemed shadow nature, for
no people is more dangerous to his future plans than is the American.
Whatever my personal flaws that have influenced this work, I
offer it in full knowledge that Christ wishes for the American to find
his way to his own true nature, and from out of that discovery to
become, as is our task: the most formidable, spiritually endowed,
leader of the social healing gesture needed to counter the terrible
coming consequences of Ahriman's earthly reign.
Jessiah Ben-Aharon did not write his book
on America (America's Global Responsibility: individuation,
initiation and the threefolding) on a lark.
Nor did Rudolf Steiner point to this place, this people and this
time, in any kind of superficial way.
In the end, we come upon a second riddle
to add to the one of just what it means to come to Anthroposophy in a natural way. At its core, Anthroposophy is an act of
service to others. Who then is American Anthroposophy to serve?
Our instinct, which even Emerson would find correct had he known
formally of Anthroposophy, has so far been to be devoted to Rudolf
Steiner and to the cultural forces streaming from Europe.
We understand through Rudolf Steiner that
in this moment in Time the cultural Center of the world is weakened,
the two poles of East and West are too polarized, and as a consequence
the whole is unable to find their right inter-relationships precisely
because the attack on the Center in the 20th Century has been so
successful. Out of our freedom as Americans then we can continue
to follow our instinct in support of the spiritual insight pouring over
humanity from the Center. At the same time, however, we need to not do this while living in a state of confusion as to our
own yet unrealized soul forces and potentials. If Americans want
to truly foster Anthroposophy as a working partner in a threefold
world, they have to come to far greater self knowledge than is
presently the case. This book seeks to serve that effort.]
a preface for the neophyte
- for the
readers for whom Anthroposophy is quite new -
If you are new to Anthroposophy, or if
this is one of the first books related to Rudolf Steiner you have
picked up, then you need to realize that in certain degrees the book
you hold in your hand was written mostly for serious students of Rudolf
Steiner, and further that it represents a view of Anthroposophy not
common among most anthroposophists. At the same time this book
might be quite useful, for it hopes to restore the essential
foundational impulse to anthroposophical spiritual science from the
confusion into which it fell in the 20th Century, after its founding
spirit had died - had crossed over into the world of pure spirit.
As a consequence, each essay below will
have its own brief introduction for the neophyte, by which words I hope
to make it more accessible to those to whom most of anthroposophical
thought is new. For example, the term Anthroposophy is a kind of
unnecessary affectation - given that what it refers to it could
possibly be expressed using many different words. Generally
speaking if we look at the root meanings we have anthropos (man) and sophy (wisdom), thus: the wisdom of man.
Among Steiner students this itself has
been poorly understood, and as many new to this discipline may have
already discovered there is a certain kind of unnatural worship, among
the members of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement, of all the
Rudolf Steiner said and wrote. The fact is that Steiner was not
(ultimately) grounding Anthroposophy in the results of his research
into spiritual reality, but instead referring to a latent capacity
potential in all human beings. We
could, therefore, also speak of Anthroposophy as the new cognition, for it refers to what happens when any individual, with
a more or less intact mind, seeks to transform, through
their own will,
their given cognitive ability. With our will we take hold of our
cognitive faculty and cause it to undergo a profound metamorphosis, not unlike the transition from caterpillar to
butterfly. Our ordinary or given capacity for thinking, seemingly
bound to the brain and to physical causes, can out of our own
inner-will-activity become transformed into a capacity for direct
spiritual knowledge - what at one time was called: gnosis.
This is why Rudolf Steiner, near the end
of his life, wrote a summary of his work which was called: Anthroposophical
Leading Thoughts. In this work the very
first Leading Thought begins (as it should
have): "Anthroposophy
is a path of
cognition from the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the
universe." [emphasis added]
Anthroposophy then is a spiritual Way, rooted in the will of the
individual, yet when well understood it (the path or Way) is entirely
empirical and objective (scientific). The main text for this science of the new cognition is the book called: The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom), and the neophyte will find the significance of this
book discussed extensively below.
Now among the various translations of the
First of the Anthroposophical
Leading Thoughts you will find that German
word Erkenntnis often translated as knowledge, not as cognition.
This has led to great confusion, for many today in the movement
mistake this indication as one connected to the requirement in Knowledge
of Higher Worlds for study. Thus the unceasing study of Steiner's writings,
rather than the objective and scientific introspection of one's own
mind, soul and spirit - that is: the reading of Steiner's works is
erroneously assumed more necessary and significant than the thinking
about thinking or the cognition about cognition.
This also means that in that
Anthroposophy is also the wisdom of man, it is
not a content given forever by Steiner to
which everyone must owe allegiance (thus the mistaken impulse to over
emphasize the study of this content), but rather a
method of active and awake thinking-cognition
that shows each individual how to be wise. Would that the leaders
of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement better understood this in
practice, which lead us next to....
an apology (of sorts)
- to the more
experienced anthroposophical reader -
It is possible that certain portions of
what is in this book might be seen as potentially critical of
individual efforts within the Anthroposophical Society and Movement.
Such is not really the mood in which this book's essays were
written. My principle studies and research have concerned the
social world, and in support of this it became necessary to learn, from
Steiner's writings on the science of objective philosophical
introspection (A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom), how to properly discipline my soul and spirit in order
to achieve the best results for this research goal. At the same
time, the Anthroposophical Society and Movement are systems of
complicated and multiple social forms, and so it was natural for me to
look at them out of the impulses connected to my social research.
In addition, it became obvious over the years of these studies
that very few in the Society and Movement had penetrated deeply into
true introspective life. The absence of success in that endeavor
has enormous consequences for the ability of the Society and Movement
to incarnate the New Mysteries via the New Thinking.
Here is Steiner himself, from Awakening
to Community (lecture three), on the
consequences of failing (which has happened) to take up The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom): "The way it should be read is with attention to the fact
that it brings one to a wholly different way of thinking and willing
and looking at things....The trouble is that The Philosophy of Freedom
has not been read in the different way I have been describing.
That is the point, and a point that must be sharply stressed if
the development of the Anthroposophical Society is not to fall far
behind that of anthroposophy itself. If it does fall behind,
anthroposophy's conveyance through the Society will result in its being
completely misunderstood, and its only fruit will be endless conflict!"
Let me make this last a bit more explicit
with a little symbolism (only partially presented), based on my 35
years of introspective self observation:
sense world < soul < A/d (i-AM) L/d > soul > spiritual world
human double
(or karma of wounds)
I have kept in the threefold Shadow
elements (the double-complex):
< A/d L/d >
human double
(or karma of wounds)
as it is very much an aspect of American
Anthroposophy to need to face the Shadow in a fully objective fashion.
A/d above refers to the ahrimanic double and L/d to the luciferic
double. Steiner describes the reason for this in Lucifer
and Ahriman, at page 21: "...the very purpose of our
Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that man should become increasingly
conscious of what takes
effect through him in earthly existence. [emphasis added]
What this means is that the opposing
forces enter into the social world of humanity only through the human soul, which then makes it such that
the real struggles involved in the Mystery of Evil take place within our souls, and only indirectly in the outer world.
Our souls are also the doorway through which the Good enters the
social world, and understanding this reality and our related freedom on
the Earth, in practice, is a core necessity for the future development
of Anthroposophy in the 21st Century (as to the exact manner of the
entrance of the Good, see the essay in this book: The
Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul).
Rudolf Steiner has made it clear that
there is a considerable difference between his personal path (The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, or Freedom), and the path outlined in Knowledge
of Higher Worlds. In the latter we make
our passage toward the spirit through the sense world [sense world < soul < A/d (i-AM)]
, and in the former we enter
directly into the spiritual world [(i-AM) L/d > soul >
spiritual world], through a highly
disciplined introspection. In the practice of a scientific
objective philosophical introspection, we begin already in the
soul/spiritual world as an active spirit.
Both the New Thinking and the New
Mysteries are extraordinary treasures much needed by humanity.
Because of this reality, it becomes necessary to ask how well the
Society and Movement are doing in bringing to incarnation the New
Mysteries and the New Thinking, given that only a very few are actually
seriously and successfully following the path of cognition (The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom) that Rudolf Steiner himself discovered and followed: [(i-AM) L/d > soul >
spiritual world]. Does this mean
something is being missed?
Here is Steiner on some of the
differences between the two paths (indirectly through the sense world
and directly through the soul/spiritual world), from near the end of
the 5th Chapter of his book Occult
Science: an outline:
The path that
leads to sense-free thinking by way of the communications of spiritual
science is thoroughly reliable and sure. There
is however another that is even more sure, and above all more exact [emphasis added, ed,]; at the same time, it is for
many people more difficult. The path in question is set forth in
my books The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception
and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. These books tell what
man's thinking can achieve when directed not to impressions that come
from the outer world of the physical sense but solely upon itself.
When this is so, we have within us no longer the kind of thinking
that concerns itself merely with memories of the things of the sense;
we have instead pure thinking which is like a being that has life
within itself. In the above mentioned books you will find nothing
at all that is derived from the communications of spiritual
science. They testify to the fact that pure thinking,
working within itself alone, can throw light on the great questions of
life - questions concerning the universe and man. The books thus occupy
a significant intermediate position between knowledge of the
sense-world and knowledge of the spiritual world. What they offer
is what thinking can attain when it rises above sense-observation, yet
still holds back from entering upon the spiritual, supersensible
research. One who wholeheartedly pursues the train of thought
indicated in these books is already in the spiritual world; only it
makes itself known to him as a thought-world. Whoever feels ready
to enter upon this intermediate path of development will be taking a
safe and sure road, and it will leave with him a feeling in regard to
the higher world that will bear rich fruit in all time to come.
It is because of the practical
understanding from experience, of this quality of surety and exactness
in the thinking developed along the following of Steiner's own path,
that I urge the reader (if they have not already) to renew their
interest in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom. Also, as a result of the practice of this
discipline on the nature and quality of thinking, when I turn my
attention as a spiritually oriented social scientist to the status,
nature and structure of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement,
certain difficulties become apparent. Some of these observations
enter into the work below.
All that said, this should be made clear. While some of what is here can be interpreted (and will be by some) to be negative and against this or that, the fact is that what is in this book is not against anything. It is for the truth about the history of the Society in the 20th Century. It is for the truth about our real tasks as regards inner development. It is for understanding the Love which surrounds us in earthly social existence. It is for preserving Rudolf Steiner's true legacy. It is for helping American anthroposophists find freedom of spirit in the soul. It is for illuminating the Mystery of America. And, mostly it is for moving the Anthroposophical Movement forward toward its real potential role as the serving-the-Thou source of the New Thinking and the New Mysteries so desperately needed by humanity.
Then, in being for
and in serving, we are on our way to becoming one with the Good.
*
*
*
[those very few readers of the previous
edition of this work, which bore the title "Dangerous
Anthroposophy", will by now have noted that
there have been substantial changes. These changes are due in no
small part to the many thoughtful comments I received during the early
stages of the publication of this book, such that I reconsidered a
great deal of that material and made significant changes. Because
I am self-publishing this book (which is only printed when ordered
on-demand), it was then possible to update the file and make many
corrections. I here want to thank those who were so generous with
their observations of various weaknesses and excesses in the original
text (and I am grateful for the many kind things that were said, as
well). A new edition of Dangerous
Anthroposophy, with a slightly different
emphasis and edge, will be published in the next few months after this
present book is released.]
introduction
I must begin by confessing that I don't like the way that Dornach and the Councils in America model Anthroposophy (for the most part, the Central Regional
Council in America is an exception, but seems not properly supported by
the rest). Don't like is of course a sign
of antipathy, but not all antipathy is unredeemed, some comes from
discernment. Recently, in conversation with a friend (Tom Last)
concerning observations of Rudolf Steiner in the lectures collected
under the title: Awakening
to Community, I came to understand that
Steiner had seen that significant differences existed at that time and
would continue among the members and friends, which led him to
providing us with a metaphor to aid our understanding. I have
interpreted it to mean today that we should think of each other as
sister souls, finding it necessary to travel different but parallel
paths, hopefully toward the same end: the bringing alive for the future
the New Mysteries and the New Thinking.
At the same time, I am confronted by a
peculiar moral dilemma, one that was faced by Irina Gordienko, when she
wrote her book: Sergei O.
Prokofieff: Myth and Reality. First,
after carefully presenting her version of the same argument as above,
concerning the significance of Steiner's science of knowledge
(objective philosophical introspection), she said next in her Author's
Forward:
"When a false or non-proven assertion appears in the
scientific press, this is taken as a signal for the opening of a
scientific debate, which continues until the matter is resolved, even
if further research has to be carried out. It is quite a
different situation in the Anthroposophical media. There one can
write whatever one likes, provided no interests are put at risk and the
familiar terminology is used. Any
attempt to criticize such printed assertions is condemned out of a
false ethical principle: tolerance towards a person is confused with
tolerance of his mistakes. The ideal of brotherly love comes to mean little
more than the maintaining of 'diplomatic relations' with ones neighbor,
while remaining indifferent to his spiritual destiny.
"This is, in our opinion, by no means a sign of
irresponsibility - this is only secondary - but is rather the
expression of a materialism that is deeply rooted in the unconscious [the Shadow, see above and below, ed], inclining one to experience
inter-personal relations in the present as absolutely real, while the
working of the counter-forces which stand behind every lie is ignored
or is at best passed off as an abstract theory, about which one can
hold clever discussions, but which, as soon as one returns to the
reality of life, will be forgotten. ' "An
incorrect result of research in the spiritual world is a living being.
It is there; it must be resisted, it must first be
eradicated"[R.S., ed.] ' (22.10.1915, GA 254)"
[emphasis added]
The consequence for me then is this: If I
discern flaws (errors of thought) in the work of the Society and
Movement, what is my obligation toward that work and toward those
personalities who make such errors of thought? This has been made
all the more acute by the fact that during the period in which several
people had opportunities to review the earlier version of this work, it
was common to hear expressed some form of: Don't you think you need to
treat in a more kind way, those who. in your opinion, have made errors
of thought.
The consequence of such a "materialistic" (as suggested by Gordienko) approach is twofold: First,
we collectively deny that Anthroposophy has anything to do with science
- that is, there is no real meaning for us to exactness and rigor in
the processes of cognition, and certainly not in holding each other to
such standards. And second, that we actually do each other a
kindness by treating so politely each others statements that clash with
our own understanding, particularly when such statements are publicized
throughout our communities as the expression of those presumed authorities, who hold positions of trust in our institutional social
forms (Dornach, the Councils in America and so forth).
When I first read this in Gordienko, I
realized that she was emphasizing the Truth
as the sole ideal, which is understandable given that she was a
practicing mathematician. I even wrote in that moment in the
margin of my copy of her book this question: What about Beauty and Goodness?
It is my view that the latter ideals, in practice, do justify temperance with regard to how we treat each other when we find ourselves convinced of an error of thought living in the other. In terms of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom, we enter here the realm of moral technique - that problem which follows after we have practiced moral imagination and moral intuition. This comes down to: What do we actually say (or write or do - what is the moral art or our technique), when we are convinced our brother or sister in Anthroposophy is in error? In some places in the above book, Steiner used the term tact as an indicator of the social technique of incarnating a moral intuition.
There is an aphorism from the
Middle-East, as follows: There are three gates to speech: Is it true?
(truth) Is it necessary? (beauty) And, is it kind?
(goodness) Where below I have felt it necessary to concern myself with the errors of thought in others,
I have tried to tactfully follow this advice.
Now suppose, for example, that I correctly discern that what is encouraged among the membership, by those in leadership positions, is a misleading (erroneous) path. Suppose that the general direction of the Society, in how it understands and practices Anthroposophy, is weak, lame and mostly inadequate. Suppose the practices that are encouraged cause us to miss our real tasks. Suppose that the Society got so far off the track during the 20th Century that we are not even close to truly bringing alive the New Mysteries.
Let us pause for a moment and consider
what I mean by the above term: lame. In a nutshell it
comes down to this: Those who do not know, cannot teach what they do
not know. If the vast majority of those in leading
anthroposophical positions do not know what lives within the experience
that comes from truly penetrating the meaning and significance for our
inner life of a proper study of The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom - of Rudolf Steiner's own Path (see essay far below),
and, if in this sense they don't know, again as an experience, true and exact living thinking (the New Thinking), then
they cannot teach that which can be learned in no other way.
Further, if they do not know that, then they logically also do
not appreciate what the absence of that knowledge will mean for their comprehension of the rest of what
Steiner gave to us.
Let us repeat this last point, in a
slightly different way. Steiner's books on the science of
objective philosophical introspection lead to knowledge of the inner life of the human being that cannot be
obtained in any other way. Certainly one can travel such paths
without these books, but to acquire the near mathematical precision and
exactness of introspective knowledge that Steiner himself developed
through "...introspective
observation following the methods of natural science", means something those who have not succeeded at this
cannot imagine or understand. There are considerable consequences
to the thinking of any individual not self-trained in this fashion,
which consequences will often lead to errors of thought.
The reader here is perfectly entitled to
wonder, that if the author of this knows all that much, where is the
evidence. Certainly not just saying things like the above can
count for much. To the extent possible, the essays that follow
are the evidence, are the demonstration - the product as it were - of
the New Thinking. Ultimately, of course, the reader will have to
form their own judgments.
Steiner gave us what he gave out of his
having himself first achieved the goal he sets before us in The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom and A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. These are not books about some matter that has
nothing to do with Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science. On the
contrary, these books are the foundational heart and soul of everything
Steiner later did in his life. They are the Key to the Kingdom of
the New Thinking. In the absence of knowing the experiences to
which these books point, we simply cannot truly and fully understand, or appreciate, all the rest.
That failure then lames (in different degrees) all our work since Steiner crossed over. We stumble
around in an inner darkness of soul, that only the science of objective
introspective philosophy can illuminate. We do not know ourselves
as knowing doers, the first and
essential goal of spiritual development which enables it to be scientific. [In the essays in this book, the details of these
problems will be laid out from a number of directions and within a
number of different contexts.]
Where this leads is to the necessity of
our recognizing that the Shadow forces have been having their way with
us (from inside our own souls, via the threefold double-complex), while
we've been trying to pretend that all the opposition only comes from
the outside. And, we also need to realize that this state of
being is exactly where karma was meant to lead us - to a fallen
condition. Rudolf Steiner crossed over, the Vorstand fell into
conflict, and the various National Societies took sides and split away
from the General Anthroposophical Society. Even though this split
was healed in a kind of political way on the horizontal plane of social
existence following the second Great War, it was not healed in a
spiritual - vertical - way.
Here is Ben-Aharon, from the forward to
his book on the Second Coming, The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century: "...those forces of hindrance
that brought about Rudolf Steiner's premature death in the first third
came to an outward victory in the events of the twelve years 1933-45, both
in the Anthroposophical Society and the world at large."
[emphasis added]
Since this seemingly negative view is not being said by those who organize
events, and run around the world giving lectures or writing big long
books (none of which activities are socially permitted to be publicly
and critically examined), it would appear that what I discern seems
completely off the mark. Everyone acts as if what we are doing is
just fine, while over here in the corner, mostly ignored, Wendt (and
others - such as Gordienko, and Ben-Aharon) are saying things like: Wait a minute guys, this is
all wrong. Isn't it really possible that we are failing our
Teacher, we are failing humanity and we are failing Christ?
Couldn't be true, right?
Clearly people are trying to do the right thing. Or so it seems, if we put
the best face on it. Most of our publications are self
congratulatory, and my experience is that when you suggest they should
be otherwise (critically honest and scientific), people get very
defensive. And, of course, Christ does forgive us; and our
Teacher, well he joined his karma to ours, so that must mean something,
must it not? Then there is that famous near magical (and
fantastic and probably false) semi-consciously shared mental picture of
the Meaning of
the Christmas Conference we all speak of as
if in a dream, so we can't be all bad, can we? As for
humanity...well all kinds of folks are bringing their kids to Waldorf
Schools - that must count for something, yes?
Lets try this. Imagine Rudolf Steiner in front of you and ask him if he thinks that its all peaches and cream in the Society and Movement, nothing is wrong, everything is perfect and there is no room for improvement. If you really believe he will answer yes to this question, then don't buy or read this book.
If you know in your heart that he'll have
to say no, its not all right, its not fine and somebody needs to wake
up, then ask yourself: How do we know what next right thing to do is? Maybe this book can provide some of the answers to
that question, or if not that, then at least some better questions.
* *
*
Let me begin this part of the
introduction by returning for a moment to an appreciation of what has
been and is being done. It is entirely possible and reasonable to
look at almost everyone working in the Society and Movement and find a
struggling and striving human being, often one full of a great heart,
who gives and bears much (something one can find all over the world in
many people, not just anthroposophists).
For example, all we have to do is to
think of the many Waldorf teachers, who work for so little for such
long hours. Everywhere in the Society and Movement we see much
that justifies our confidence and trust.
Yet, we are also required to cultivate
the ability to look at ourselves as a stranger (Knowledge
of Higher Worlds). Do we in the Society
and Movement practice such objectivity about our own activities?
Part of the purpose of this book is to do just that. I may
completely fail in such an effort, but not for want of trying.
Let me conclude by adding two
considerations to what I am certain are major matters of spiritual
import that are not yet clearly seen by our leadership and therefore
not brought as strongly as is necessary to our attention. These
are in addition to the errors that arise because so few have penetrated
to the kind of self knowledge only possible through an objective study
of the own soul based on the science of knowing as developed by Steiner
(A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World
Conception, and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom).
The second matter (besides the above
introspective activity and books), left in the dust heap of our
confusions following the split in the Society, and what followed in the
20th Century, was the Reverse
Cultus. It was not that this was
presented to us by Steiner as an off hand remark, by the way. It
came about this way. Almost immediately following the Burning of
the Goetheanum, Steiner began giving a series of lectures (starting
January 23rd, 1923) in Dornach and Stuttgart, which has been collected
under the title Awakening
to Community.
In Lecture VI, he takes up a significant
subject, which he begins to approach by discussing the need for
religious renewal that was to be met through the creation of the
Christian Community. He then paraphrases Dr. Rittelmeyer, who had
recently said that the development of community in the Christian
Community is potentially one of the greatest threats to the
Anthroposophical Society possible.
Steiner then describes how a rite (and
certainly this includes the Rite of Consecration of Man that is to be
celebrated in the Christian Community) brings down into those present
in the Rite (cultus) a spiritual presence: "a shared comprehensive memory
of spiritual experiences". This, he goes on
to say, is a powerful community building force.
Steiner then adds: "The Anthroposophical Society
also needs just such a force to foster community within it". He then elaborates the underlying spiritual
principles that lead to the necessity for the Society to learn to enact
a reverse cultus, in which spiritual presence does not descend via the
Rite into the community, but the community learns instead to rise up
toward spiritual presence through a
rite of its own, in the nature of its groups
and their cultivated feeling life and qualities of conversation.
Now an honest (as of a stranger)
appraisal of the Life of our Society reveals that in comparison with
the community feelings one can sometimes experience in Christian
Community social gatherings, the Society has not achieved the same
level of fellow-feeling. In fact, most of the goals Steiner set
for us in his collection of letters written to the Society members in
1924, and published as The Life,
Nature and Cultivation of Anthroposophy, have
not been achieved.
As a place where one can find deeply felt
warm fellow-feeling, the Christian Community often succeeds where the
Society does not, and the danger to the Society predicted by Dr.
Rittelmeyer almost a century ago has come to pass. What is worse,
in my view, is that the priests of the Christian Community, at least
among their leadership, ought to have known this and apparently have
done nothing about it. In fact, it began to greatly disturb me
about 10 years ago, when I found more and more people in the Society
who had never even heard of the reverse
cultus or of this most crucial problem for
the community life of the Society.
Now this error of thought (not
recognizing the need for the reverse
cultus) is in a very few places now being
overcome (the Central Regional Council in American is trying, for
example), but at the same time its significance has to be brought into
the foreground over and over again, until we understand our loss, and
our potential.
In addition to the loss of the
reverse cultus, there is a further difficulty
for which Steiner had given warnings (sorry, I can't put my finger on a
quote at the moment, but most readers should be able eventually to
appreciate this). This danger is the intellectualization of the
Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence.
When Steiner wrote and lectured,
Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence lived into the room. Where he was,
It was. But once this Intelligence entered the minds of his
readers and listeners, a difficulty was encountered over which Steiner
had little control. This Living (experienced) Wisdom dies when brought into incarnation in words, and this death
can only be overcome by the inner activity of the reader and listener.
We have to meet what he offered in the right way, and he spoke of
this directly and indirectly over and over again (see the introductions
to both Occult Science and Theosophy).
If we look honestly back upon the work of
the 20th Century in the Society and Movement and see how it is
developed into its present form, we will not find this living
Intelligence, but mostly its lifeless intellectualized corpse.
Anthroposophy (the Wisdom of Man, which discovers how to
encounter and work with the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence) has become
in far too many souls mere Steinerism, a philosophy (world view)
attributed to the authority of the Great Initiate and Genius, Rudolf
Steiner. Over and over again, in conversations with others (deep
sincere people) and on Waldorf websites etc. one finds something
similar to this form of expression (here taken from an actual Waldorf
website): Anthroposophy
is a spiritual philosophy that reflects and speaks to the basic deep
spiritual questions of humanity, to our basic creative needs, to the
need to relate to the world out of a scientific attitude of mind, and
to the need to develop a relation to the world in complete freedom and
based on completely individual judgments and decisions.
What could be wrong with this?
Well, its not true in a living way, although it is more or less intellectually (materialistically) accurate. The flesh has been
stripped away, and all we have is the bones. Recall now what
Steiner wrote in the First Leading Thought:
"1. Anthroposophy is a path of cognition*, to guide the
Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It
arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it
can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He
alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what he himself in
his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be
anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and
the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and
thirst."
*[As previously noted, this is generally translated as knowledge, but it appears that the better English word for the German word Erkentnis or Erkennen is cognition.]
The two quotes above almost seem the same
don't they? But the fact is instead of quoting what Steiner
himself wrote, the mind of the writer on the Waldorf website
intellectualized the meanings, and lacking a connection to his own
feelings on this matter, then subtly and thoughtlessly took away the
heart of it, probably completely unconsciously and in connection with
how the corpse of this once Living Wisdom is taught among us
today.
Like any error of thought, the whole
misstep starts right at the beginning, where "Anthroposophy is a path of
cognition..." becomes "Anthroposophy is a spiritual
philosophy...". Something that I do out of my will and feelings and needs (a path I walk), has become, as a consequence of the
intellectualization, a mere point of view - something that I study in books and learn as a content (a spiritual philosophy).
The core difficulty is rooted (as the
reader now should understand) in the absence of an appreciation in
practice of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom. For example, a scientific introspective life
comes to recognize that there is a considerable difference among those
activities of spirit that lead in the soul to such states as: belief, understanding and knowledge. In the
essay below: Anthroposophy
and the Russian Soul, I go into a number of
details as regards this problem.
The consequence of this
intellectualization of the once Living Michaelic Cosmic Wisdom has led
to the displacement of the Living element of this stream of Wisdom,
away from the Society and Movement (what Ben-Aharon, in his remarkable
Imagination of the Second Coming: The
Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, calls
the conscious Michael Community to what Ben-Aharon calls there the
unconscious Michael Community). When I write in the essays
below on such themes as Civil Society, the Hopi Prophecy and the
Bioneers, it is this displacement to which I am referring.
The Anthroposophical Society and
Movement, having lost a connection to The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom and the reverse
cultus, failed to find their own way to the
Living Spirit and thus to true Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence.
Since the movement among humanity of forces of the Living Spirit
is not defeated by our failures, this wind or
breath of [holy] spirit (see the Gospel of John) moved elsewhere.
Mainly It abandoned the institutional
structures of the Society and Movement where the Living Wisdom had been
intellectualized, and entered into humanity at the level of the social
commons, which is why we can still sense Its Presence in our own anthroposophical communities, not from the
top down, but rather from the social below upward (a general trend in
all social forms in the present, by the way, not just the Society).
We actually come into contact with It when we participate as individuals in what the larger society is doing in such activities as the environmental movement or in political struggles (see the work of Ben-Aharon and Perlas). For details, read Ben-Aharon's book: America's Global Responsibility: individualization, initiation and threefolding.
How do we once more become a truly
conscious Michaelic Community on the Earth, carrying forward the tasks
set before us by our teacher, Rudolf Steiner? How do we overcome
the intellectualization of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence (the
reduction of acts of will in the soul, to the mere study of Steiner
books)? We do this through re-awakening interest in the New
Thinking (The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom) and the New Mysteries (the reverse
cultus). Hopefully this book will also
help point the way.
To come at this from a slightly different
direction, it can also be pointed out that most of Steiner's books and
lectures (except when he could lecture in England) had to be put in the
language of the Intellectual Soul. His basic European
audiences were by education and cultural influences not yet in the
Consciousness Soul, and as a consequence Steiner found it necessary to
use certain forms of language and to often speak indirectly or
metaphorically as his listeners lacked the capacity (at that time) to
observe the needed soul phenomena of the Consciousness Soul.
This book you hold in your hand, dear
reader, is for example written entirely in the language of the
Consciousness Soul, which in fact in many instances had to be invented
in order to express Consciousness Soul experiences (see The
Meaning of....for example). This
is why there will be for some readers an apparent disconnect between
what Steiner said and what is said here. This is not a disconnect
at the level of the truth, however, but entirely a consequence of the
fact that only now is it possible to write so openly concerning that
which Steiner had to approach indirectly and often with a great deal of
circumlocution.
*
Lets wind up this discussion in the
introduction with a picture of the situation in America with respect to
Anthroposophy.
America is a battleground of the spirit.
It is where there is more individualism presently than anywhere
else on the planet. This makes possible both Light (the Life
Forces of Christ entering through the thinking of the heart) and
Darkness (the Shadow forces out of the threefold double-complex).
Both will be present, in spite of the New Age dream of an Age of
Light.
The actual battleground is within the soul and only indirectly in the outer world.
And, at this time only Anthroposophy truly understands this
(there are a few whispers out there, but they could use our support).
In America, from the Cultures of the
East, comes mostly decadent and luciferic spirit ways, wearing the
seductive guise of the mysterious (thus all the more lucifericly
attractive) satori or sudden enlightenment. From the Culture of
the Center, via scientific materialism, comes the ahrimanic to join
with the natural materialism of the youthful American culture.
But also from the Center comes an Ideal of the new Life of
Christ in the New Thinking and in the community work of the reverse
cultus (the New Mysteries).
At the same time, the American Soul has
unique (nowhere else in the world) forces, and these must be awakened
and applied within the soul - in the battleground between latent and
natural Christ forces of the heart (the true American Spirit) and the
mostly decadent spiritual life of the Cultural East, which has been
coupled to the excesses of the Ahrimanic Deception (materialism) given
birth in the Cultural Center at the heights of Western Civilization in
the 19th Century.
The American Soul stands as a mediating
soul-space between a luciferic ungrounded spirituality of the
East, and the ahrimanically rigid belief in scientific materialism born
in the Center. While the Society and Movement are focused on the
Center, in a social-spiritual sense this Center failed (in the same way
an overstressed beam fails) during the crisis events in the 20th
Century. Recall Ben-Aharon above: The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century: "...those forces of hindrance
that brought about Rudolf Steiner's premature death in the first third
came to an outward victory in the events of the twelve years 1933-45, both
in the Anthroposophical Society and the world at large."
[emphasis added]
This book seeks to illuminate that
battleground of the American soul-space, and the special role
Anthroposophy can play in its future resolution. In
particular, we have to begin with the Challenge presented by the fact
of Ahriman's actual incarnation in America, in the present. For out of this incarnation the battle has now
become fully joined, and as in much else the membership of the Society
and Movement are here far too asleep.
I noted above how the Spiritual World's
chosen displacement of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence meant that It became a spirit breath weaving mostly among the
awakening social commons (the millions* of souls Steiner is said by
some to have hoped would be anthroposophists by the end of the 20th
Century - alas a dream that was apparently not to be).
Nevertheless, it is in this awakening social commons that
instinctive consciousness soul processes have burst forth within our
declining civilization among Civil Society, the environmental movement
and so forth.
*[see the essay below: The Natural Transformation of
Anthroposophical Society in America, for a
discussion of the so-called Michaelic millions]
Many anthroposophists find a kinship with
these social gestures. In them, for example, has begun the
opposition to Ahriman's incarnation so necessary at this time.
Yet, what about the Anthroposophical Movement and Society?
Is it to do something different than that which is
happening in Civil Society?
Yes!
We hold the keys to the kingdom of the
New Thinking (in the Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity) and the New Mysteries
(in the form of the reverse
cultus), matters never before possible on the
Earth. While these are appearing instinctively everywhere today,
only anthroposophists have been given (at this time, if we don't catch
the bus now it is gone!) the opportunity to foster in the School and
Society a scientific spiritual life. At present, the main thrusts
of the spiritual life in the planetary culture are unable (again, in
the moment) to connect to the true nature of the Sun Intelligence
living inside Natural Science. If you will recall from Steiner's
biographical statements, he was only able to enter the Sun Sphere of
the Spiritual World after he had brought deeply into his soul the real impulses
underlying the scientific enterprise.
If we, as anthroposophists, are unable to
make the core of our practices scientific, we will leave the greatest
of Steiner's gifts orphaned. He said, as we all know, that the
future would know him more for The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom, than any other deed. Why?
Because, in this book of Steiner's is the
process by which a human being becomes freely awake as a knowing doer of the spirit in a scientific way. If we drop this ball, the present may lose
sight of it, which then means the future will have to wait for another
time, perhaps even another age, to discover this sublime treasure.
Rudolf Steiner's greatest legacy is in our hands. What are
we going to do?
The Challenge
American Anthroposophy begins to come to
maturity in the situation of a given place and a given time. The
dominant characteristic of this time, outwardly,
is the Incarnation of Ahriman
[A
brief introduction to the neophyte: For some
it will come as a strange surprise (perhaps quite off putting) to find
this book begin with the following discussion concerning the present
day incarnation of a spiritual Being of whom they have perhaps never
heard anything. Ahriman is apparently first known to outward
history as a figure in Persian religious myths. Rudolf Steiner
discussed this Being in great detail, and represented both human nature
and the general structure of the social world as being threefold in its
most universal all-human characteristics. As represented
artistically in Steiner's sculpture: the Representative of Humanity, we
find above was Lucifer, who stood between the human being and his
experience of the divine spiritual worlds. Below was Ahriman, who
stood between the human being and his experience of the world of the
senses. In the Middle, as the balancing gesture, stood Christ as
the Representative of Humanity (what our true higher nature is to
become, as St. Paul had noted: Not I, but Christ in me).
This arrangement should be viewed as something not easy to
understand and as something that needs to
be approached carefully and without succumbing to any temptations to
sensationalize or exaggerate the real nature of Mystery of Evil, the
main structural Mystery surrounding humanity in the present.
This much should be recognized. The
social world consists of two parts, the first of which is an outer
structural aspect - a Stage Setting, the maya of nature, history
and social-political facts and processes. Here in this outside structure Ahriman is a main feature. More
essential is the inwardness, what is not visible to the senses. All our outer
actions (and inner actions) have a consequence for our soul and spirit.
This inwardness is not maya, but truth. But to arrive at
truth requires a rite
of passage. The governor of this rite of passage is Lucifer. As we progress in inner development,
we come to learn that the real essential aspect is Christ. He is
the predominant feature of the truth of the inner world (Lucifer
commands an inner world of temptation and illusion, while Christ is the Way, the Truth and the
Life - what receives our approach (the Way), in the middle becomes the
means (the Truth) leading us through this rite of passage to its
culmination (the Life).).
As the essay below progresses, certain
facts about this structural Mystery will be illuminated, and other
related facts will come forward as the reader gets deeper into the rest
of this book. The neophyte, who wants to go further into this
Mystery - particularly what is called: the opponents, may want eventually to read Steiner's works on the
subject of Lucifer and Ahriman very carefully.]
Outrageous Genius - Discovering the in-the-Present
Incarnation of Ahriman in America through the Signs of the Times
first, some
necessary preliminary considerations
Honoring the
Teacher and the Teaching
"And, just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer in the
flesh, and as there was an incarnation of Christ in the flesh, so will
there be, before
even a part
of the third post-Christian millennium will have passed, an actual incarnation of
Ahriman in the West: Ahriman in the flesh."
[emphasis added] R.S. lecture, 1 November, 1919
"The thing that will matter, though, will be for people in
the age of Ahriman to know that John William Smith* is only what
appears before them outwardly, and that inwardly Ahriman is there; they
must know what is happening and not succumb to any deception in the
drowsiness of their illusions." [emphasis added] R. S. 28
December 1919 [*a name Steiner made up]
The first and essential thing to realize
is that in thinking about the Incarnation of the near-god Ahriman, as a
human being on the cusp of the change from the 2nd Millennium to the
3rd, we must not conceive of this as an incarnation of Evil. What
Rudolf Steiner has called the "opponents" play a necessary and
ordained role in the Creation. They are the density and weight we
are to meet and learn to carry (in both the inward heavenly realm as
well as the outward earthly realm), otherwise our own incarnations
would be too easy, and we would never really learn anything. Macro Evil
(the opponents) are different from the Beast from the Abyss, or collective and conscious micro (human) evil.
The tempters and confusers tempt and confuse, they sow seeds of
fear and doubt and judgment and cynicism, but they do not bring
true evil into the social world. We
do that when we give into their urgings,
instead of the wise (though challenging and often difficult) promptings
of our own hearts. The more consciously we choose the dark, the
more the Beast
from the Abyss has free play in human social
existence. The more we consciously seek and choose the Good, the
more evolution moves forward in a balanced and harmonious
direction.
"...the very purpose of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is
that man should become increasingly conscious of what takes
effect through
him in earthly
existence." [emphasis added] R.S. Lucifer and
Ahriman, lecture II, 2 November 1919.
Some anthroposophists create pictures
within their inwardness, in which they view the opponents as more or
less extremely powerful, and thereby capable of overwhelming humanity
(especially in connection with the hardly spoken of Soradt - the Sun
Demon - and the Asuras). Simple logic refutes such an assumption,
for if these Beings had the power some anthroposophists believe they
have, progressive evolution would already be over. The fact is
they are constrained, principally through the office of the Divine
Mother, whose golden realm is found on the other side of the Eight
Inner Spheres of the Earth (the Spheres of the Fallen Hierarchies).
As we more and more become able to do research into the Feminine
Mysteries (something Steiner could only hint at in order not to get
caught up in the web of the Mary Cult of European Catholicism), we will
discover that there is not only a male trinity (Father, Son and Holy
Spirit), but also a feminine trinity (Mother, Daughter and Holy Soul).
Steiner could only point out to us a few facts about this golden realm, and also the significance of the return of the
Imagination (the Holy Sophia) and as well the significance of
Anthroposophia. Some of the best present-day research on the
Divine Mother can be found in Tomberg's Meditations
on the Tarot, in the 11th Arcanum: Force.
It is through Hell to the realm of the Holy Mother
(the Eight Inner Spheres of the Earth) that Christ descended on the
Saturday following His crucifixion, whereby he obtained the forces
necessary for resurrection. [See Proverbs viii, 22-30 for some
hints.]
More detail will be developed on this
problem in my essay below: The Mystery of Macro and Micro Evil: the relationship of
the Shadow (the three-fold double-complex) to the American Soul, wherein knowledge of the Shadow obtained after 35 years
of introspection will be described. This much can be said
presently: Ahriman and Lucifer enter directly into human affairs through us - through our giving into the Shadow, the three-fold
double-complex. We are the gate by which the effects of the
opponents enter the world social order. In a like fashion, it is
also only through
us that Christ (and the Divine Mother - but
that is, as noted above, a whole other theme) can directly enter into
the social order.* The Fifth Cultural Epoch (the Age of the
Consciousness Soul) is the era in which greater and greater aspects for
the responsibility for earthly social affairs falls to human beings.
*[Obviously, both Christ and the Divine
Mother appear sometimes to make a physical contact with individuals in
various forms. This is one of the means through which they
influence a particular time, but still this is always done with great
respect for human freedom, and still keeps to the same rule: the
influence enters the social world through us. The recipient of such effects is not made into
a passive tool in any sense of that word.]
Ahriman in reality is a gift to humanity,
a two-edged gift to be sure, but a real treasure. His very
onesidedness teaches us, and this is teaching we need to face squarely,
for it not only teaches us about ourselves, but also about an essential
aspect of the real nature of the Creation. We all contain within
our souls the ahrimanic potential, the possibility to be calculatingly
cold and heartless, and if we are as brutally self honest as our
conscience would encourage, we have all made and will make judgments
that have such a quality - that are, from a human perspective, callous
and indifferent.
Do we not walk through the world turning
a blind eye away from all manner of suffering and pain, fully aware
that we do this in order to preserve our self interest, our comfort and
our far easier lives?
To fill out this picture, think on
Nature. In tooth and claw, in flood and earthquake, in all that
seems as powers of death and radical sudden change, we see in the
processes of Nature what appears as an absence of either compassion or
love. The Natural World (as against the Social World*) is a world
of profound and complicated laws, which seem in their results to have
not at all the same consciousness that one human being might bear, out
of compassion and love, toward another. In this indifferent power
of Nature and nature's lawfulness, lives Ahriman as he manifests as an
aspect of the sense world.
*[From another point of view this
distinction, separating the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms from the
human kingdom, does not work. But we have different purposes
here, if the reader will accept that reality (as Steiner himself
pointed out) is frequently paradoxical. Our bodies are of this
Nature, but our Spirit, in its freedom, stands outside those rules.
See Owen Barfield's remarkable book Worlds
Apart to explore some of the logical problems
here in a deeper way.]
Yes, Nature (as meant here) contains
beauty - it is a divine work of art, but in its processes and laws it
is basically finished, fixed and complete. It is essentially
done. That human beings may in the future have the possibility of
lifting Nature up out of this fixed and finished condition is a whole
other story. That Anthroposophy can yet teach humanity mysteries
of Nature unimagined by today's mankind is a necessary step in laying
the groundwork for this lifting up. Humanity must learn to truly
see, and it is a mission of Anthroposophy to enable this seeing.
All the same, Nature is Created (past tense), in which the last
act was the arising of thought. "Thought is the last member of a series of
processes by which Nature is formed"
[emphasis added] R.S. A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. This is why the path of Anthroposophy is a path
of cognition. To see the real secrets of Nature requires the
metamorphosis of thinking, a task not as well advanced as it should be
in anthroposophical culture (more later). What we haven't truly
understood in practice, we cannot teach.
Our social-political world has almost
completely emancipated itself from Nature. As we more and more
developed, we more and more separated away from Nature, so that today
the Social World is a world essentially all of its own, in which
callous indifference and compassion and love operate along side each other.
The Social World has out of instinct come to sit astride the
Natural World, using it for our egoistic benefit. We can now
choose whether to continue that course, whether to continue to
embody dominion
over or to transform and metamorphose that
into communion
with (see my book the Way of
the Fool). We can go to sleep and let raw
animality (callous indifference and appetite) rule us (instead of us
ruling it), or we can wake up.
Ahriman in entering into our world
confronts other powers than those which would be normal to his realm -
his usual place in the Creation. As a human
being he now enters this world of choice, not
of essentially fixed processes and laws.
Part of what bothers us, and will bother
us about this Cosmic Being, now to be seen as a human individual, is
not how much he has done that we see as wrong, but how much he is just
like a certain part of us. For example, many people have and will
in the future like and admire this individual. Even so, as a
human being, to the extent that he does evil, he does it as a human
being. Elements of his cosmic powers are restrained by being
incarnated, just as are ours.
In addition, recall that Rudolf Steiner
explained how our antipathy to another really acquires its strength and
passion from the fact that we semi-consciously know just how much we
ourselves are like that which we observe in others as failings.
Ahriman incarnate is a mirror to a common human failing, a
failing to which everyone living today in the world is prone. If
we want to avoid this, we must strive to know the true nature of our
heart, and at the higher levels of inner development, think our way to
an experience of the Ethereal Christ. This requires us to work
properly and consciously at soul metamorphosis, and not just whine and
complain about how awful the world is, and about how much everyone but
us is wrong, evil and dumb.
It is also important to realize that
Ahriman incarnates in a specific place and time in order to accomplish
something as a more or less ordinary human being (with extraordinary
intelligence - one-sided spirit-thinking) he can only achieve at this
specific place and time. Outside the social world of incarnate
human beings, the cosmic power Ahriman can only do certain limited
things, and these mostly indirectly through our Shadow (the three-fold
double-complex). Inside
the Social World, when with us as a human being, he can do directly
things he was unable to do before.
All the same, to act directly on the
world, as a member of the social order, he must still surrender some of
his capacities - some of his genius, that is operate as a extremely
gifted human being, not as a nearly divine power incarnate (what in
ancient times might have been called an avatar).
In this, Ahriman's teaching is harsh - it
is not for wimps, and his influence on our social existence is
necessarily profound, regardless of how dark we may be tempted to seek
to portray it. A cosmic power is on the earth living as a human
being, and this is a power that can only be called Outrageous
Genius.
Ahriman also belongs to America (the true West), in the same way Lucifer belonged to the East and Christ to the Center. American anthroposophists need to recognize that he is ours. Our materialistic society, mostly of our own making through our choices in terms of comfort and appetites, is ahrimanic because we opened the door to his influence and have benefited from it. For example, we have computers and all that goes with this electronic world, because of him. The genius of cold heartless calculation provides many gifts, and we have had to become awash in it - buried up to our necks in it - so that we will soon be forced to decide whether or not we really want it to rule us, or us to rule it.
Our task then in coming to knowledge of
this power is to recognize a part of ourselves in its nature, and to
also understand how fine and exact is the shape this power seeks to
give to our social life. This shape, crafted by outrageous
genius, can tell us a great deal. In so doing it reveals to us,
we who would foster the good - that is we who would be balanced instead
of so extremely one-sided - just what we need to do and how we need to
act in the social world to bring into that world just the healing that
is needed. Ahriman would overbalance the world in a certain
direction, and it will be up to that portion of humanity, willing to be
awake to him consciously, or instinctively, to strive to restore this
balance.
In a peculiar sense, he also points
directly at the true Second Coming, as began in its initial ethereal
world dynamics in the years 1933 to 1945, by pointing so strongly away
from it. He (Ahriman) comes to distract us, to move us away from
our true heart, and this is his temptation - to cause us to loose
ourselves in the world of the senses, and never look within at the own
soul and discover what lies there, for as Christ told us in Luke: "the kingdom of heaven is
within you". Ahriman would have
us be so absorbed in the Stage Setting, that we never notice that the
real battlefield is within - that is: It
is within this inner battlefield of soul that we as individuals act
most powerfully as creative authors in the Play.
Yet, by this very distraction and its
strength, he points the other way. He speaks into our lives and
says to us: go here, for you will like it, for all your lower impulses
will find there their satisfaction. He wants to pull us down into
too much self-gratifying gravitas. Even the excess of seriousness
in anthroposophical circles tends to have this ahrimanic character.
We have to engender the counter-levity out of our selves.
We have to overcome the cold-hearted and calculating
materializing lower senses tendency in our soul that otherwise remains
sub-conscious, and replace that with the ethereal forces of consciously
moralized thought. Only our wills can do this, and we have
incarnated just in this time precisely to learn this lesson and to
accomplish this task, which Rudolf Steiner has called: the unfolding of
the Consciousness Soul.
Moreover, if we learn to perceive the
real dynamics of social existence correctly, we will see that already,
in spite of Ahriman's incarnate activities, we have been instinctively
engaged in much that is already transforming the worst that he would
accomplish were we not to learn to understand his teaching.
We are learning even
now from this teaching how to make its
countering healing gesture. Everywhere there is a waking
up, and now it is time for Anthroposophy to step forward and find a way
to serve the world's hunger to wake up all the way. However,
first we need to rouse ourselves by facing the mirrored shadow of our
worst qualities as these manifest not just in American and World
Culture, but more importantly, as an absolutely necessary crucial first
step, in American (and world-wide) Anthroposophical Culture.
Were we simply to look at the outer
culture, without first looking inwardly and squarely at ourselves, we
will fail utterly. We must meet the Shadow in ourselves or we
will be nothing but the hypocrites to which Christ referred when he
said in Matthew 23: 25-28:
"Woe to you canon-lawyers and Pharisees, you fakes, for
cleaning off the rim of your cup and saucer while on the inside you're
bursting with greed and wild appetites. Blind Pharisee, wash out
the inside of the cup and saucer first, if you want the outside to end
up clean! Woe to you canon-lawyers and Pharisees, you fakes, for
being like dusty monuments that look pretty on the outside but on the
inside are full of the bones of corpses and all kinds of rot. You
likewise from the outside appear to the world to be decent, but inside
you're full of hypocrisy and ways around the law".
It is the thesis of this essay then that
Ahriman incarnated in the West in the latter part of the 20th Century,
and that his activity as an incarnated human being can be found in
various phenomena of social existence. He leaves/left a trail, as
it were, in events that mark his passage, and this paper means to
discover that trail, and mark that passage, so that we know who he
is/was and what he did, and can then begin to counter-balance this
influence. Not erase it, or eliminate it, but consciously
counter-balance it. Moreover, we must start to look also at its
examples that are nearest at hand in our Society and Movement (a great
deal in the collection of essays that follows does this). We look
outwardly to understand it, and then inwardly to correct it; for we
have nothing to teach anyone about this if we have not first understood
it, and mastered it within ourselves and within our own circles.
Anthroposophists are faced in this trial - of coming awake to Ahriman's Incarnation - by the problem of the mote and the beam on a very large scale (See Matthew: Chapters 5-7).
Those wanting to consider more details,
as regards the indications of Rudolf Steiner, are encouraged to read
and ponder the essay in the appendix to the book: The Future
is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium,
which appendix was called: When did Rudolf Steiner Expect the Incarnation of
Ahriman? by Hans-Peter van Manen. This
is, of course, in addition to the obvious books Steiner wrote
specifically on Lucifer and Ahriman.
In order to fully appreciate this
incarnation of a near-god, we have to have a proper inner picture of
modern existence - to learn to perceive that Earth Events also have
Cosmic Meaning. What can seem to some, to be merely historical
confusion and social evil, has to be perceived by the anthroposophical
living picture thinking as Divine Drama, in which certain unusual
Actors enter Stage Left, cross the Stage, and leaving behind their
Effects exit Stage Right. I use the term Actors, because Ahriman
does not incarnate alone - many others are drawn to this place and time
precisely because of the unique characteristics Ahriman has stamped
upon it.
We also need to ask good questions about
where to look. Do we look in the Cultural Sphere that is:
Religion, Art or Science, or in the Economic Sphere (Production,
Distribution and Consumption), or in the Life of Rights (State, Media,
People)? Where would Ahriman work?
I am going to suggest the Life of Rights, because if we read Steiner's The Inner Aspect of the Social Question, we will come upon the understanding that while the Cultural Sphere and the Economic Sphere have spiritual world counterparts, the Life of Rights is completely Earthly. It is our Earthly existence to which Ahriman wishes to bind us (while Lucifer would take us to a world of unearthly and illusory spirit). Nonetheless, nothing here should be taken to confine the reader to coming to a different understanding.
Why the Life of Rights?
Humanity now possesses considerable
freedom with respect to the happenings in the human social life of the
Earth, as well as with regard to our relationship to the natural world.
We can build bombs that we believe make a small sun of death inside a
city. We can alter biological life in ways we can't predict out
of an almost cultivated arrogant ignorance (callous indifference).
We can consciously spread horrible diseases, perhaps killing all
human life, all animal life, all plant life.
We can also control the economy by the
hidden secret levers behind the issuance and management of currencies,
and then using the power that this concentrated wealth can buy, the
holders of these hidden levers subvert politicians and media outlets so
as to hold great temporal power in a few hands, which hands cannot be
challenged or often even named. A secret cabal tries to rule
mankind, and seems to direct through money (stones into bread) most of the scientific research of our great
industries. All this inside a world view dominated by ideas and
concepts that make little or no room for the reality of Spirit.
All to what end?
At this climatic point in world history,
one Nation State is behaving as if it is the main center of political,
economic and technological power - the United States of America.
The entire social and natural spheres of earth existence are
spread out before this power like live prey waiting to be devoured
(Americans literally consume far far more than a fair share of the
world's wealth). Since the United States Government is a nexus of
these powers, those who seek to rule from out of the economic and
financial circles still must work through the Life of Rights.
If then someone were to be inside this
nexus of power conduits, they would be able to sit astride all those
flowing streams of power running from the economic, and the cultural
(as in that which is controlled by corporations - television and movies
etc. and also the dangerous oversight of the State in education) in and
through the Life of Rights - the middle Sphere of the emerging
Threefold Social Organism.
Recognize also that of the threefold
nature of the Life of Rights (State, Media, People - see my essay Waking the Sleeping Giant:
the Mission of Anthroposophy in America http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/wkslg.html),
these streams of power are currently dominated by the State alone.
We could place then Ahriman's human
incarnation right inside the current Bush II Administration and not be
far off the mark in our efforts to see if some kind of heartless
calculating force is/was radiating from there outwards into the
political life of the United States, tilting it and the world in
certain directions. We should also expect that Ahriman will not
incarnate alone, but will bring with him (or along side him) those who
have some karma to work out with respect to such Genius. His cold
calculating genius does not need to be perceived as just localized in
him, but needs to be seen as distributed - as spread out
among many many individualities around or near him (and also throughout
the world).
We also need to recognize that there will
be those intimately within these circles (although more will be
outside), who oppose him and these tendencies. Christ is the Lord
of Karma, and through His Art as the arranger of the relationships of
all human biographies, He has allowed in the circles around Ahriman not
merely his closest allies, but also those who have the remarkable
strength needed to thwart much that he would otherwise like to achieve.
Michaelic warriors will be right next to those who have chosen to
be the Dragon's earthly spawn.
Moreover, Ahriman has no need to hold
directly any reins of temporal power, for the use of such power is not
his genius. His genius is to see how number relationships can be
gripped and thus give an excessive strength of fixed-like order to the
normal living and fluid nature of social existence. He knows
better than anyone, human or divine, what power lives in number, and
earthly temporal power has no attraction to him at all.
second, a
presentation of the relevant context in the form of a contemplation on
the social organism
The Wise
Earth* as Counter-force to Ahriman's Incarnation
*c.f. Paul
Hawken's http://wiseearth.org/
We need now to revisit the above themes,
but from an even higher and more picture-like level. It is
important for the reader to realize that our conventional conceptual
frame of reference as regards political-social themes, in particular
the Life of Rights, does not adequately take account of the related
spiritual reality. To speak or think of the political-social
using the same terminology as conventional media is to "materialize"
our mental pictures, concepts and ideas. In this next section I
will endeavor to help the reader overcome these habits of mind.
First, we should step back a little, and
see if we can see earthly events in the more mythic or imaginative
form. Events in the social organism are also a story, or perhaps
better said a Cosmic Tale as it were. Just like nature speaks in its
appearances, so does the logos nature of Christ speak into social
events, which He artistically arranges through His role as Lord of
Karma (see my essays below: The Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the
Consciousness Soul; and, The Methodology Necessary for
a New Social Science).
Picture the surface of the Earth sphere, that narrow spherical physical band in which unfolds all the visible phenomena of human lives and cultures. Literally, dear reader, consciously form this picture of a huge spherical band, perhaps only twenty miles in height, that at its upper limits is airless space (beyond which we cannot breath), and at its lower limit solid near impenetrable rock. Six billion plus people spread over the surface of the Earth, all held dear by the Divine Mystery. Waves of change move through this sphere of social existence, which in the 20th Century became truly global economically, at the same time it became more self-aware globally (via the Internet). In fact, if we think away the mental pictures we have of this world that are derived from the senses, and begin to substitute more imaginative, more fluid and dynamic pictures of the social world as the interplay of downward and upward flowing will forces of Cosmic Beings, in which the human being moves through fields* of thinking, feeling and willing born in the hierarchies, we will come closer to the truth. The apparently material earth sphere, in which the social world seems to have emancipated itself from Nature, is in fact a nexus of dynamic and inter penetrating cosmic spiritual activity. Rudolf Steiner gave us a very necessary picture of this activity, when he said that "man was the religion of the Gods".
There is a reason so much activity is directed from the Cosmic
Spiritual Heights and from the Earthly Spiritual Depths, at this in between center - at this narrow material-like spherical band
where human beings unfold their biographies. The Hierarchies
conceive of us as their religion, because inside us, in the i-AM, that
is the human spirit, exists something that can't be found anywhere
else. Rudolf Steiner wrote of this in his youth, in A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception:
"Man is not behaving in accordance with the purposes of
the Guiding Power of the world when he investigates one or another of
His commandments, but when he behaves in accordance with his own
insight. For
in him
the Guiding Power of the world manifests Himself. He does not live as
Will somewhere outside of man; He has renounced his own will in order
that all might depend upon the will of man."
[emphasis added]
*[See the lessons of the First Class of
the School of Spiritual Science.]
We are the father and mother of
all human action.
Within the consciousness of these many
billions of human beings, whose true mystery we are hardly ready to
acknowledge, exists struggles, which we call in general the Evolution
of Consciousness. In the current phase of this evolution, which
we call the time of the Consciousness Soul, the I seeks to awake in the
encounter with other I's. Within the soul, moral challenges appear out
of these encounters, as each biography confronts its necessary karma
and destiny. First, as if radiating outward in waves from the
Western Democracies (where individualism is most fully developing),
while at the same time appearing homeopathically in smaller communities
world-wide, the Consciousness Soul begins its unfolding. From out
of the totality of the invisible inner world of humanity the I faces
both outer and inner challenges (for the most part lost from the
insight of our thinking in an inner darkness of coagulated concepts,
such as rigid and arid religious beliefs, or a spiritless materialistic
natural science, or even to the Anthroposophical Society and Movement
via the intellectualization during the 20th Century of the Michaelic
Cosmic Intelligence).
Meanwhile, unknown to most, the Christ
works in between. He is able to work in between because having
arranged our karma - our integrated and finely interrelated
biographies - to the extent that our social relationships are informed
with moral qualities (even the most tentative impulses of the heart),
these moral acts in the Epoch of the Consciousness Soul also amount to
an encounter with the Eternal. In that we seek the Good, and draw
even a weak tea intuition of it into our social relationships, Christ
can be present precisely because of that qualitative vertical inner
gesture we make in our souls in order to seek knowledge of the Good in
the dramas of the moral challenges in modern life. (For every one step in
spiritual development, we must take three steps in character - moral -
development)
In the outer stage setting, which we
believe we know through our materialized conceptions of present world
history, itself a kind of polar opposite to the inner world of
spiritual awakening and moral challenge, gestures of change seek to
warp the slowly unfolding threefold social organism to their own uses
and needs. A Dark Prince of the World seeks to dominate the
Stage, while the Lord (Artist) of Karma weaves the biographies into a
musical-like harmony of inner conscious spirit evolution. The I,
under the influence of Christ, tends to become We. While we,
under the influence of Ahriman, are pushed to remain only I. [The
Rastafarians - a mostly now Jamaica based religious impulse - speaks
interesting enough of the idea of I 'n I - we - as something different from the idea of I and you. The idea of I and you comes from the devil,
according to their instinctive wisdom, while the truth is that we are
both I's - that is we are the same, "I 'n I".]
Ahriman divides communities into smaller
and smaller groups, ultimately to become isolated I's. Christ
unifies I's into communities through His in between support of the healing resolution of our karmic moral
challenges.
Let us look for a moment closer at the
threefolding of the social organism of the world social order.
Many in anthroposophical circles will
tend to believe threefolding is something we have to create and is not
the present condition of the social world. This is partially
true, but at the same time we need to recognize that the dynamics of
social life have been active in the history of civilizations for
thousands of years, and the slow evolution of the social organism has
been set on a progressive course for a long time. For example, in
the third cultural age the Cultural Sphere (the ancient Mysteries)
ruled the social order. In the fourth cultural age, a Rights
Sphere impulse was added at the foundations of Greek and Roman
civilization in the idea of the State on the one hand and of the
Citizen on the other. As the fifth cultural age emerged from the
fourth, the rights life itself threefolded (State, Media, People - or
citizen), just as the cultural life had already threefolded into
Science, Art, and Religion. At the same time that the on-looker
consciousness appears (as did the deepest aspects of the Ahrimanic
Deception, namely materialism in all its aspects), so began the birth
time of the economic life, which now struggles to differentiate into an
inner threefolding of producers, distributors and consumers.
Clearly we live in a time when the
concept of the threefold social organism had barely begun to be present
and was at the same time never more needed. Threefolding
manifests itself instinctively, but if we are to properly birth it in a
healthy social way, we have to know the Idea of it consciously. as well
as choose to embrace it consciously. Here again is a
teaching task which anthroposophists may fail entirely to bring into
our shared social life.
With Ahriman's incarnation, powerful
dividing forces entered into the nature of the Stage Setting - the
stream of historical events and its structurally embryonic threefold
relationships. America (as a political power ruled by an
essentially unelected elite) under this influence isolated itself on
the world Stage, taking the attitude that it could stand alone
(Ahriman's attitude). Within America, groups were set against
groups, communities against communities. Hate and mistrust was
fostered, for to some at least this was seen as an advantage.
This we know from the News, but other impulses were
simultaneously at work.
At the same time that this isolating gesture pushed against the instincts of the human spirit for community, the instinctively developing consciousness soul produced its counter-gesture. People did not really want separation, and felt in their hearts the social poverty of this tendency. As this situation ripened, it brought with it a certain developments in technology, which also contained both potentials - one for isolation and one for community building. This was woven into the the whole world's social fabric - a means of connecting across previously disconnecting boundaries. Someone in China could now meet and work with someone in Sweden, instantly in the moment.
Out of the earth, human intelligence,
guided in part by Ahriman's genius, raised up from the world of
metallic substances a network, perhaps a spider web of
inter-connectivity. A great power oozed out of its previous sub-natural
condition and took on form in metal and plastic, spreading its arms all
over the world.
Yet, Ahriman was not the only inspiring
genius, and other impulses from human beings took hold of this
transformation of substance and sub-nature and gave it higher potential
uses. It was after all capable of being only a tool, and the real
meaning of this tool was in the hands and hearts of those who created
how to set it to work.
One kind of work was the turning of human
beings into number. Everything that could be counted was being
counted and every fact that could be converted to data was being
converted. Human beings became capable of being known as mere
cyphers. As a result, when Ahriman incarnated, he could take hold
of this number meaning of human beings and use that tool to create a
top down driven political power machine, filled with the callousness of cold calculation exactly
in the center of the social organism: the Life of Rights.
A kind of social heart attack was created
in the instinctive relationship of Americans for the Consciousness Soul
(English speakers
are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights - R.S. The
Challenge of the Times). Just when the
most egregious terrorist attack of modern times shattered the world's
divisions and united them in a shared sense of loss and tragedy
(remember the Towers were centers of international financial activity), the political power elite of
America turned away from this warm-hearted world-wide joining, and used
this situation in the most callous and calculated fashion.
Centered in the most powerful Nation State in the history of
humanity, this heartless thinking flowed outward as a political foreign
policy out over the world, encouraging division and in the lie of all
lies, everywhere (domestically and internationally) suppressing freedom
in the name of freedom.
But, again as we have already seen,
Ahriman had not incarnated with only his minions as companions.
Michaelic warriors, some very aware but most only instinctive,
entered into incarnation as well. At their insistence and from
their genius, the tool of metal, plastic and sub-natural forces was put
to other uses. Reacting, the Consciousness Soul took on a
world-wide social form in thousands upon thousands of new kinds of
communities of association, something it had been slowly preparing to
do for a long time. Civil Society was born, and the tool -
the Internet - was placed in the service of heart-warmed thoughts.
In so doing we need to emphasize that this Sphere of
heart-centered activity (the Wise Earth) tended to arise on the
Internet as individual expressions of community service. The I's
sought out other I's and many kinds of We's were born.
The same tool Ahriman used to create a
social machine for the manipulation of political power in America, was
used by others to create a living organism of communities world-wide in
scope, while at the same time concentrated in America and active on all
political fronts. Above, in the top of a now decadent elite
political hierarchy, Ahriman worked, while below, spread out across the
social commons, the Consciousness Soul - the Wise Earth - spoke back.
In the Wise Earth impulse all manner of
spiritual voices are heard. The excesses of the Ahrimanically
driven assault via the Life of Rights on social order and individual
freedom has become so plain and obvious, that communities of opposition
are everywhere being formed. As a prime incarnate opponent, Ahriman does his duty, driving individuals toward the
necessary moral dilemmas and challenges. You could say that one
of the aspects of the Ahrimanic Incarnation is a kind of heating up of
social chaos - an inflaming of disorder. This engenders in
morally awake human hearts the will to do battle. The dragon
forces circle social life everywhere, and the knights of Michael,
themselves no doubt students of the spiritual world Michael School
before incarnation, take up their earthly social tasks. (see the book Blessed
Unrest, at: http://www.blessedunrest.com/)
Ahriman's teaching is harsh, and the I
must stand up within itself and in relationship with others, or succumb
to soul failures it would otherwise be unwilling to tolerate in what we
call: good
conscience. Inwardly, in the deepest
aspects of the soul, invisible to outer sense experience, the presence
of Christ in the Ethereal (the realm of human thought) is met with a
hunger to know the Good on the part of the I. This moral need for
knowledge of the Good (in order to know what is right to do in the face
of challenges forced upon humanity by Ahriman's intensification of the
heat and pace of social crisis) - this moral need instinctively hungers
for the Eternal, the experience of the Consciousness Soul.
There, inside the soul, this hunger for knowledge of the Good, coming
in the time of the Second Coming, leads to a Second Eucharist - a
communion of the I with the Being of the Good (for details see the next
essay: The
Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul).
What an amazing teacher and teaching is
this Outrageous Genius, we know as Ahriman, forcing us to awake to the
Good by driving into the Center Stage of social existence, in the
principle nation state in the world, obviously powerful impulses of
callous and calculated indifference to human suffering and need.
third, an entry more into the material, in the sense
of ordinary
political and social language
Brother What
Ails Thee ?
In the following discussion it is very
important to keep in mind that we are now mostly using a quite
materialized way of speaking and writing about something whose true
essence remains entirely spiritual in its most
significant meaning.
Such a personality as Ahriman incarnate,
in my view, can be found just here then in the American Life of Rights
(working from there upon the whole world), for after all these
preliminaries we must begin to name him. The question for us, however,
is: Will we recognize this "human" being as a brother?
Karl Christian Rove (birth name), was
born December 25th 1950. Karl's biological father abandoned him
early on, his adoptive father left home when Karl was 18, and it later
became known that this second father was a homosexual. His mother
committed suicide when he was 30. Karl described himself in high
school this way: "I
was the complete nerd. I had the briefcase. I had the pocket protector.
I wore Hush Puppies when they were not cool. I was the thin, scrawny
little guy. I was definitely uncool" [facts
and quote from Wikipedia].
[There will be a few quotes below about
Rove-Ahriman (hundreds could easily be provided). The reader
should realize that Rove has had such a strong influence (which
Outrageous Genius certainly would) that while Google only shows 630,000
entries for him and about 8 million for George W. Bush (and 1.5 million
for Dick Cheney), all that is said about Rove recognizes that his
influence from behind the scenes is the real dominant feature of the
Bush II Administration. He is the riddle and puzzle that many
have commented on seeking to penetrate his real nature and activity in
order to understand the policies of the Bush II White House. His
hand prints are everywhere, and no historical political figure has ever
inspired such interest, both positive and negative.
We could also keep in mind this idea from
Rudolf Steiner. In the lectures published under the title The Fall
of the Spirits of Darkness, he presents the
following for our understanding. Just like what happened after
the mid-point of the various ages of Atlantis, we in this the
Post-Atlantean Epoch are past the mid-point as well. Spiritual
capacities and impulses that are up-building and progressive in the
first half of an Epoch become in the second half forces of
degeneration. Decay sets in and the course the Evolution of
Consciousness takes must be unfolded in the context of this decay.
In addition, with the Battle in Heaven between Michael and the
Dragon, which Michael had won by 1879, the Spirits of Darkness were pushed down into the realm of the Earth.
These spirits have to be recognized as
being everywhere, in particular working with the dead and with the
various occult brotherhoods. So when we recognize in social
phenomena the prevalence of human evil, we have to see that the
tendency for this immorality to dominate social existence cannot be
avoided. In fact, our ability to properly work with the times,
requires we not be asleep and have fantastic visions of unrestrained
potentials for utopias. Our thinking has to root itself in
reality, and social reality cannot in our Age be forced into an
illusion of some kind of universal domain of freedom and happiness.
These facts then all the more call to us, who receive Spiritual
Science, to develop our own soul life so that we will be able to find
the down to earth healing social ideas that can actually be brought
into incarnation.]
Now we must tell a more detailed story of
certain changes in social life that have come at the same time as this
incarnation entered deeper and deeper into a core aspect of the Life of
Rights in America. Let us begin by considering certain changes in
law and other governmental emphasis that have accompanied the 7 plus
years so far of the Bush II administration (at the time of writing
these paragraphs). While doing this we need to keep in mind how crucial
is this moment in the Evolution of Consciousness. A great deal is
being decided by individual human beings just now, and we cannot blind
ourselves by assuming that the struggles for the future of America, and
as a consequence the whole World, are simply passing and insignificant
moments in history. These events are profound in the deepest sense of
that concept.
Not only that, we, living today, are in
the middle of them. It is no accident we too have incarnated in
the Time that Ahriman is to be discovered as our most significant
outer-world teacher. What Ahriman could not do, while excarnate
through the Shadow - the three-fold double-complex, he could now do as
a human being having incarnated just in this time into the heart-center
of human social life: the Life of Rights, and giving birth there not to
heart-warmed thoughts, but rather the most cold and calculated
conceptions possible.
Over the course of activity of this
Administration, several structural changes have occurred, which changes
by the way are not just confined to the time of the Administration, but
were authored further in the past, and then matured and polished off in
the time since the 2000 election, the election, remember, at the cusp
of the New Millennium. Let us list a few of those.
The Executive Branch, mostly through the
exercise of raw power has been able to achieve a certain freedom from
restraint by the other two Branches (the Legislative Branch and the
Judicial Branch). This breaking down of the threefold balance of
the U.S. Constitution gives to the will force, of those addicted to
power, extraordinary latitude in its conduct (this is how we must see
Cheney and Bush, as addicts to the most addictive temptation of all -
earthly power). This executive power has become so freed of any
restraint that it neither must feel (the significance of the
Legislative Branch - the People's House) nor be wise (the import of the
Supreme Court). The American Government, during Rove's strongest
period of influence, had no wise head, nor any open heart. Nor
would it do to see this as a reflection of just the Republican Party.
The Ahrimanic confusion and the influence of the Spirits of
Darkness is everywhere, and we have now mostly raw will forces owning
the Executive Branch of the dominant Nation State on the Earth, which
from there radiates out into the whole world social organism heartless
cold and calculating thought and will.
The Bush II administration's definition
of the meaning of the War on Terror has taken hold of the political
consciousness of both major American political parties. No major
candidate currently running for President wants to appear weak in the
War on Terror (a complete illusion by the way, once critically examined
as is being done out of the social commons by the Wise Earth appearance
of Civil Society).
Thus also has torture become officially
permitted in the conduct of self-interest by the U.S. government (using
the identical language of the Third Reich in its justifications for
torture). Included in this are the powers to remove any claim of
citizenship of a natural or naturalized Citizen. Anyone anywhere
in the world (including Americans in America) can be kidnapped and
taken anywhere anytime to places of prison and torture (extraordinary
rendition). To call these Imperial Powers, akin to that of Rome
at its most decadent, is to severely understate the case, for the
United States has far greater powers than ever Rome could dream of.
There is a quote, falsely attributed to
Alexis de Tocqueville: America is great because she is good, and if America ever
ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
While it turns out the great French thinker never wrote this, the
fact that it is constantly quoted in public life suggests that it
nevertheless has deep meaning for Americans.
Civil liberties, once taken for granted
in the United States have been neatly and nearly castrated. Since
there is nothing to require the government to admit to even possessing
the body of a single human being (habeas corpus exists as a rule, but
is consciously ignored and obstructed by the Bush II administration at
every turn), we have no idea how many have disappeared into the hidden
bowels of this out of control will. This is all the more
problematic if we recognize that to a certain extent America is very
much a cradle for future spiritual development, so that the unopposed
emasculation of major components of the Life of Rights in America is a
significant victory for Ahriman.
The power radiating out from the
imbalance in the State (the out of control Executive Branch), has been
joined by an ahrimanic corporate control of the Media (the heart of the
heart of the social organism). Thus it has come about that the
threefold social organism's inner core (the Life of Rights), itself is
out of balance such that (or so it appears) that the polar opposite to
the State - the People - is completely dominated through so much fear
and hopelessness, that many of the People have come to believe
themselves to be completely powerless.
"He [Rove] could carve up
constituencies with the best of them, and divide the country as easily
as columns on a spreadsheet -- and with no more thought" diarist "Hunter" DailyKos Aug.2007.
Yet, here is where the counter-pole
begins to appear, for recall that Rudolf Steiner spoke in a lecture
collected in The
Challenge of the Times: English speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness
Soul in their Life of Rights. Ahriman's
incarnation arouses the Consciousness Soul to action. Rove, by
pushing forward the callous and indifferent to consequences unconscious
will forces of Cheney and Bush II (and others), stimulates in those who
strive to follow their political conscience the opposite reaction.
This administration has made of the lie
an art never dreamed of even in the time of National Socialism (see
Steiner's The Karma of Untruthfulness).
They have lied so successfully that large portions of the People
of America have bought elements of it for years, and still buy into it
(polls still show that large numbers believe Iraq was connected to
9/11). Granted the culture of the lie is everywhere, from daily
advertising to individual human biographies, nevertheless the callous,
calculated and repeated nature of these lies offered by a United States
government is staggering. The only matter more staggering is how
much they have managed to simultaneously hide from view.
The art of secrecy is equally adept in
this government. No one knows what it is doing, and so clever has
been the manner of this hiding, that it is carefully layered such that
even if you think you have caught them out, they have a backup plan -
lies within lies, as it were. As time has gone on, and various
members of the administration became more publicly vulnerable, they
have easily blocked every effort to have them removed from office
(Rumsfeld and then Gonzales, for example), until it was time to cut
them loose and then install an even better buffer in between public
interest and the truth. For example, nearly every military
general officer who would not spin and lie about Iraq has been
systematically removed until all that is mostly left in positions of
power are career military general officers who are themselves
essentially politicians and sycophants.
The pure outrageous nature of the nerve
of this administration is extraordinary. They lie, and then
they act, and then even when caught out, continue to lie and lie.
Holding powers stolen from the other Branches (and to which these
Branches acquiesce) there is no motive to come clean in any fashion,
for almost no human heart forces are really present in this home in
which Ahriman created for himself and his priests to incarnate.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when
we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that
reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other
new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort
out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do" Senior white house
official, assumed by everyone to have been Karl Rove, summer 2002. [An
earthly social-political act comparable to materialism - a kind
of political-social Ahrimanic Deception.]
"The great majority of mankind are satisfied with
appearances, as if they were realities"
Machiavelli
At the locus of this center of power of
Earthly streaming forces, he has come to rest, with his aides, in order
to imprint with his nature, the most earthly aspect of the potential
and unfolding threefold social organism: the Life of Rights.
One of Ahriman's qualities is hardening.
He desires that things become fixed, immobile.
This means that one Party in the United
States strives to achieve continuous dominance. Not only was a
world dominating power to radiate from the United States as a center,
but it was to have within itself a loss of what had been an otherwise
self-correcting fluidity - that more than one Party would hold power,
which would mean that no longer could any Ahrimanic excess of the Right
be balanced out through the pendulum swing by any Luciferic excess of
the Left . So it was desired that this swing of the balance be stopped
for a while, especially at a particular Moment in Time; AND, if this
unbalancing gesture was to take into itself an also rigid and arid
religious impulse, then the knowledge of the social effects of Christ's
True Second Coming could be hidden, if not completely blocked for
centuries, in that the otherwise good effects on the social world of
humanity, this Second Golgotha offered, were obscured and interfered
with.
Consider: Already, the Anthroposophical
Movement and Society had been eviscerated from within, and led in its
centers into great confusion (any honest rendering of our history in
the 20th Century shows this - for details see the essays below), so
that basically unopposed and unknown Ahriman could now undertake the
task to boldly assert temporal powers as an obstacle to spiritual
inspiration [for example, the New Freedom Act which enables the
government to test all for mental illness and require medicine to be
given to those who fail this examination]. In addition, granting
political power to an arid and rigid religious cult, calling itself
Christian, could do much to convince the world that Christ and
Christianity had nothing to offer. So drawing this already
decadent religious impulse deeper into politics does a great deal which
is far more than just to secure votes at a crucial moment, for whatever
the outer world press sees of the effects of this genius that radiates
out of the White House, you can bet this outer world press is
completely clueless to what is truly at stake.
The ahrimanic Christianity of the
Religious Right hates all that it judges (all beam and no mote), and
speaks into world culture in such a way that more and more the world is
pushed to hate such Christianity back. What better way to turn
minds away from the true Second Coming, than to raise up a such a false
and foolish alternative, that seemingly* rational people cannot but
think of the idea of Christ and the Second Coming as some kind of
insanity. How do we bring into such a world, a true appreciation
of Christ's Second Coming, and the related Second Eucharist, when
ahrimanic Christianity has gained such temporal power in the Bush II
administration to the dismay of so many intelligent people.
Ahriman is clever beyond our imaginations.
*[See Sam Harris's The End of
Faith; Christopher Hitchens' God is not
Great: how
religion poisons everything; and, Richard
Dawkins' The God Delusion, where what
are called the New Atheists have taken (hopefully briefly) center stage
in the public dialog on religion and Christianity.]
Craig Unger*, In an interview with Amy
Goodman, mid-November 2007: Well, LeHay** is one of the founders of the Council for
National Policy. Now, this is a not-very-well-known group, but it's an
umbrella group that oversees dozens of Christian Right groups, like
Focus on the Family, which is James Dobson's group. The Moral Majority
was part of it, and so on. And
within it was a much smaller group called the Arlington Group, of about
fifty religious leaders. Now, they were in regular contact with Karl
Rove. And what
you have in the Christian Right is as many as 80 million adult
evangelicals. You have about 200,000 pastors, and they operate almost
as precinct captains did in the labor unions for the Democratic Party.
So this is a vast populist movement that operates as part of the
Christian Republican Party, and they have regular contact with the
White House. [emphasis added]
[*author of: The Fall
of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized
the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils
America's Future. **one of the authors
of the Left Behind series of novels on
Armageddon.]
Christianity is not alone in being so
publicly compromised by the materialization of religion.
"The grim truth is that when George W. Bush declared "a
global war on terror", he was really announcing a jihad of his own - a
struggle to convert the whole world to American-style capitalist
democracy....Here lies the peril for the future. For how can "the Axis
of Evil" and "the Great Satan" negotiate a businesslike compromise on
the basis of live-and-let-live?" from the
article: Bush the Jihadist: How the world was plunged into an
apocalyptic war, by Correlli Barnett, Daily Mail, Sept. 2007.
"...these ahrimanic powers are present wherever disharmony
comes about between groups of people..." R.S.
lecture, 2 November 1919
Another matter to recognize is that after
9/11, the ahrimanic forces radiating out of the temporal power center
that is Washington, were able to bring about a Crucifixion of the
Imagination of America as a Beacon of Hope for the poor and
disenfranchised the world over. Previously America (which is at
root itself a Mystery) stood in the imaginations of the world's
downtrodden as the place of dreams, where one could go and find freedom
(spiritual-religious, as well as political and economic). So
Rove-Ahriman not only created and encouraged a debased Christian
Meaning in the World, but also cast down the single most important
aspect of the American Mystery in the present - its meaning as a Beacon
of Hope.
Let us now take a necessary but small
side trip here, and fit in two of Ahriman-Rove's chief allies: George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Both are addicted to power, but in two
entirely different ways. At the same time, let us keep in mind
the title to this section: Brother
what ails thee?. These are flawed (as
we are all flawed) human beings, placed by the Lord (Artist) of Karma,
in their biographies into very special places in relationship to all of
us. Like Ahriman-Rove, they participate in the creation of the
heating and speeding up of social chaos - conditions necessary for the
development of the Consciousness Soul through the I's necessary
encounters with real existential moral crises.
Bush appears to be what is called a dry
drunk. That is, while he is not actively drinking or drugging (we
assume) he still displays all the behaviors of a serious alcoholic or
addict: bouts of extreme anger (kept mostly secret from the public, but
well known to West Wings staffers), coupled with a psychological need
to never admit he is wrong - the problem always lies with someone else.
In taking up the outward (fake) posture of recovery, he adopted
the attitude of someone who has been saved by Christ. No doubt
encouraged by Rove (all the way back in Texas), Bush courted the
Religious Right, and here found fuel for his own (hopefully
sub-conscious) megalomania - a religious conviction which included him
as being an active and dominant world player in the End Times fantasy.
So rigid is his faith, as he constantly demonstrates by his
unchanging behaviors, that only this mega-illusion has meaning - the
truth has been banished from his consciousness.
"Mr. Greenspan described his own emotional journey in
dealing with Mr. Bush, from an initial elation about the return of his
old friends from the Ford White House - including Mr. Cheney and Donald
H. Rumsfeld, secretary of defense - to
astonishment and then disappointment at how much they had changed."
New York Times book review describing Alan Greenspan's (former
chairman of the Federal Reserve) book: The Age of
Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
"...much to my disappointment, economic policy making in the Bush
administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.” He was clearly referring to
the political team led by Karl Rove at the White House. Mr. Rove was a
neighbor of Mr. Greenspan in a leafy enclave near the Potomac River,
but the two men almost never had a conversation."
[emphasis added]
"Rove's method is to plot out elaborate strategies well in
advance of the campaign, and stick to them vigilantly. John Deardourff,
Rove's media consultant for races in Texas and Alabama, says, 'This rap
Bush has of never changing his mind and never admitting a
mistake-that's Karl! That's where it comes from.' It is a tribute to
Rove's strategic skill that he is so often right." Joshua Green Atlantic Monthly 2007.
Already long before his incarnation,
Ahriman-Rove had cultivated the illusory religious impulse that has at
least captured the sub-conscious of Bush, probably through the help of
Lucifer's legions, for in its rigid End Times world picture and rigid
and fixed morality, it has hardened all that was once Life in these
aspects of Christianity, and turned that Life into a fixed and vain
system of beliefs in the soul.
The fixed nature comes from Ahriman, and
the vanity (pride of belief in ones moral righteousness) comes from
Lucifer. Both these, however, arise indirectly in the soul
through the three-fold double-complex (see the essay on the Shadow
below).
Then comes Cheney. Already a hard
line cold-warrior, well connected and supported by the elites of
industry and banking throughout his political career (Cheney won his
spurs here, while Bush was born into these circles), Cheney (again no
doubt encouraged by Rove) became Vice President, and having an
intellect of far more depth than Bush's, discovered that the child of
privilege had little interest in actually understanding and wielding
the reins of governmental power (Bush loves to playact as president).
These then fell by default to Cheney, and gave to his addiction
more temporal power than any human being has had in history, and of
such a nature that as a behind the throne power he could do much that
was unseen and thus experience as all the more delightful its private
pleasures (the addictive payoff). Think on it! No one could
really oppose his actions always taken in secret. He could tell
any lie he wanted and change them at will for everyone else was asleep.
Every urge and impulse to dominate his political enemies and
reward his rich friends could be immediately indulged. Nothing
stood in the way of this will to excess, while at his side, and in his
aid was the most clever of minds ever, able with just a word or two to
encourage Cheney's every desire, and at the same time to likewise with
silver tongue encourage the child of privilege to believe he was god's
chosen to stand in the world just in this time. [Recall Tolkien's
character Wormtongue in the Lord
of the Rings!]
So then we have around Rove, two
personalities, the one lost in a luciferic dream of egoistical
historical place, and the other, given the opportunity to wield
enormous earthly temporal powers, becomes instead the creature of those
very powers - possessed by them. Recall from above Greenspan's
dismay to discover the changes in his old friends.
Rove's truest and more profound contributions, however, are of a
whole other kind, even though he played a significant role in the
transformation of a child of privilege, from out of the culture of
Texas oil and wealth, into a public persona that doesn't actually bear
any relationship to the underlying human personality*. See: "Bush's
Brain: How Karl Rove made George W. Bush Presidential" by Wayne H. Slater and James C. Moore.
*[To appreciate this even more, just
consider how frequently it is now observed that Bush seems so often
inappropriately happy as his term of office nears its end (or
culmination?). A President, who honestly bore the necessary
wounds of leading American into such a state as it is today, should be
gray headed, careworn and full of melancholy.]
At the same time, we have to remember the
title to this section: Brother what ails thee?
It is essential (as will be discussed in later essays) to
recognize in such personalities that we are observing wounds of soul. Certainly there can be venality, and even
conscious choosing of evil, but if we were to be able to live through
the details of the biography of such men as these, and see how their
inner life developed over this long period of a lifetime, we would
discover how the soul has been wounded by life experience.
We all bear such wounds. It would
go too far here to go into details, but the question Brother what ails thee? is directed exactly at discovering the mystery of the
wounds that lie behind choices and actions, so as to be able to perhaps
help heal our brothers and sisters in life. With this thought in the background, let us continue our
examination of what has flowed out of the center of the American
government, and into our shared public life.
In order for a single Party to dominate,
certain possibilities inherent in our Time in relationship to
technology have become applied to the political process.
Computers are turned into ballot boxes. The striving for
power, which had taken possession of the Republican Party, found a
crucial inspiration in all that Ahriman had prepared before his
incarnation, and in all that he was about to accomplish during his
incarnation. Win at any cost is the goal, and the corruption of
the ballot box by electronic means provides an easy tool in a war in
which number is to play such an essential role.
Data is accumulated, not just State by
State, or city by city or neighborhood by neighborhood (voting precinct
by voting precinct), and when possible individual by individual.
Profiles are created showing, through the accumulation and use of well
tracked commercial purchases, just what attitudes each individual who
is potentially a voter is likely to possess. The out-of-strict
oversight computer powers, of the United States intelligence community
(and willing corporate allies), is through secret process turned on its
own citizens, and further data accumulated, such that there now is in
place and in the hands of a single party, exactly which voters to
encourage, and which to discourage in order to place in power and keep
in power a single political party as the dominant political force in
America, itself (at a crucial time) the dominant Nation State in the
World.
Nor is this done with any sense of the
individual itself, as an I. It is only their general
characteristics as a set of numbers on a spreadsheet that matter.
One young woman, who had worked with Rove, the human incarnation
of Ahriman, described in a televised interview how remarkable it was to
watch him pick up a newly generated spread sheet from a computer,
glance at it and then immediately begin to issue instructions, down the
well oiled machinery intended to coerce an election effect, from the
inside of the White House out into a neighborhood and then surrounding
an individual home.
In addition was perfected what became
called: the Republican talking points. Spreading
out from the political center of the West Wing of the White House, a
well controlled and perfected set of lies and spin was distributed
throughout Party officials (elected and otherwise) and among the
cooperative media, such as Fox News and the widely listened to
conservative radio talk shows. If one listened across this
spectrum, as well as to the President himself and his chief spokesman
the White House Press Secretary, the same reality was presented.
Remember that Rove's idea of the power of deception is
remarkable. Set the agenda, set the tone of what is to be claimed
to be true. Create our own reality (an earthly political
ahrimanic deception), and never ever give an inch.
Radiating from the imbalanced and
unhealthy will force of the Executive Branch had been created a huge
manipulative mechanism for coercing the vote, precinct by precinct,
drawing certain voters in, keeping certain voters out, and all the
while ignoring places, neighborhoods and communities that could be seen
by this cold calculating genius as having no meaning or worth at all.
Coupled with this was an enormous publicity machine, never seen
before, creating in that Nation State that believed itself most
virtuous to have unlimited free speech, a propaganda mechanism quite
beyond that known even in the time of National Socialism or Communist
Russia.
This lie machine is all the more devious
(and clever) for it was accomplished in what thought of itself as a
non-totalitarian state. In the center of the Life of Rights, this
calculated number driven process came into existence, in which data
streams about voters were turned into numbers on a spreadsheet. and
false ideas about social reality merely items on a sheet of talking
points. What genius created such a work!
"President Bush's powerful adviser is one part
spreadsheet-carrying, vote-counting political wonk, and one part
no-holds-barred, brass-knuckled political operative" Dan Froomkin.
"I'm looking at 68 polls a week. You may be looking at
four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally,
but that do not impact the outcome -" Karl
Rove in a radio interview late October 2006. "You may end up with a
different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to the math." same interview. [emphasis added]
In all this, the Legislative Branch was
compliant. Even so far as to pass legislation requiring all
States to issue common-in-nature drivers licenses, that individual
States could then require be presented in order to vote. This
process of making voting more and more difficult was another part of
the grand scheme, which then makes it possible to eliminate those most
inclined to vote for the Party that is not to dominate - namely the
Party whose fundamental traditions connected it to the poor and
disenfranchised. Remember, Ahriman incarnated with a community of
like-minded, already disposed through all his preparations to their own
weakness and self-interested heartless cold calculating judgments.
All he had to do was enter into the center of these streams of
downward radiating powers, take hold of the number relations, and
polish off the machinery that was to permit a solidified rule from the
top down, during one of the most significant moments of emergence of
the Consciousness Soul (the Dawn of the Third Millennium), with its
natural impulse to bring in social reform out of the social commons -
out of the social below.
Now in this work, he was not unopposed.
As a human being, his will was bound by many earthly laws.
He could not force those around him serve his will. He
could only, with extreme cleverness, encourage their weaknesses and
inclinations, thus the personality changes that can be observed in
those he influenced while in (and on his way to) this center of
temporal power (from which he himself recently resigned, which is, of
course, just an appearance - another kind of clever lie, his influence
is undiminished).
At that same time as all this ahrimanic
success, we need to come to understand that his very genius in its
one-sided nature was also a blindness. This blindness came to the
fore in the 2006 general election in America. Rove fully expected
to win, his spreadsheets told him so. However, human beings are
in fact not numbers, and not really predictable at that level.
Rove's numbers told him only of general characteristics, which
were all based on specific assumptions. When many of these people
walked into the polling booth, something happened (and will continue to
happen) which can't be reduced to number. People, when they vote,
are faced with what to them is essentially a moral choice (English speakers are
instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights).
This righteous impulse, invisible
to number driven perception, expressed itself
strongly in the 2006 election, reacting in large part to all that was
being experienced as the callous indifference radiating from the White
House, and as political impotence, corruption and incompetence in the
Legislative Branch. The Democrats won the House with far more
seats than expected by any pollster (whose immature science suffers the
same perceptual limits as Ahriman), and further won the Senate as well,
something not expected by either Party. Since this victory gave
the chairmanship of the various House and Senate committees to the
Democrats, a very large shift in power occurred in the Life of Rights
in the United States of America (in the People's House especially, with
it role as regards "feeling"). While such a shift of power
is not able to manifest in a rapid fashion (in spite of the hopes of
the Left), this expectable time-delay has enabled the White House to
continue to act out its disdain for the People, treating them as
number-cyphers instead of as real human beings.
"Rovism is not simply a function of Rove the political
conniver sitting in the counsels of power and making decisions, though
he does. No recent presidency has put policy in the service of politics
as has Bush's. Because tactics can change institutions, Rovism is much
more. It is a philosophy and practice of governing that pervades the
administration and even extends to the Republican-controlled Congress.
As Robert Berdahl, chancellor of UC Berkeley, has said of Bush's
foreign policy, a subset of Rovism, it constitutes a fundamental change
in 'the fabric of constitutional government as we have known it in this
country.'"Neal Gabler The Los Angeles Times
Sunday 24 October 2004.
"The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and
extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack." Rove campaign memo from the early years in Texas.
"Rove is the greatest political mind of his generation and
probably of any generation. He not only is a breathtakingly smart
strategist but also a clever tactician. He knows history, understands
the moods of the public, and is a visionary on matters of public
policy. But he is not a magician." Fred
Barnes, conservative commentator, editor The Weekly Standard.
"Dubbed the “architect” and “Bush's brain”, Rove plotted
the rise of George W Bush and departed the White House after the
disastrous 2006 mid-term elections. Successful punditry is a
combination of real political experience, intellectual nimbleness, a
provocative turn of phrase and a coherent point of view. Rove, a Fox
News commentator and contributor to Newsweek and the Wall Street
Journal, has all these qualities.
"Democrats may protest that they would rather see him in
jail than on their television screens but they can't help noting what
he says. Whether outlining what the Democrats should do or outlining
John McCain's rocky path to victory (and McCain has followed his advice
almost to the letter), Rove's take is important and often surprising.
Expect the name Rove to come up frequently on the campaign trail - and
in coverage of it." Comments in the
British newspaper The Telegraph, who ranked Rove (since leaving the
White House) as
the number one (of the top 50) pundits in U.S. Politics, Friday, May 2nd, 2008.
Ahriman-Rove's genius is seen by many,
and his incarnate influence is far from over. He has left the
realm of the State now, and is taking up his mature biographical
position in the real heart of the Life of Rights: Media. From
here he can continue his influence, for his very success is attractive.
Because of the influence of the ahrimanic shadow on people, many
will succumb, for that same callous and calculated indifference toward
which they are inwardly tempted, will now reside in those aspects of
Media open to making such views widely known and justified.
It is not an accident that Rove now works for two major Rupert Murdoch Media companies, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Many will read him, and his clever genius will guide and teach, all who will listen, into a life without any moral center at all - only the cold calculus of intellect, and its anti-human world views and impulses of will.
Ahriman-Rove has now risen to the
celebrity heights of the social world as a Media personality, respected
and trusted by many, for he reflects back to them all the
justifications they need for their own ahrimanic tendencies.
A quite neat fit, if you think about it. The Shadow
of Ahriman within, and the Stage setting influenced by Ahriman without.
Even so, the individual I in the Age of the Consciousness Soul would
chart its own course. His very presence arouses something in the
I that needs just that presence as a goad to its own awaking.
*
finally, a
look at the challenges to the role of the Society and Movement as a
consequence of recognizing Ahriman's present day incarnation
Waking the American Anthroposophical Society and Movement
for their
true tasks in the 21st Century
The above then is what happened on the
macro scale of modern human history. What then on a micro scale
has happen in the internal makeup of the Anthroposophical Society
and Movement? Were we somehow free of this influence? Did
Ahriman incarnate and just ignore us in the process? I think not,
and in the next essays it will be unfolded just what needs to happen
within our circles in order for us to be able to speak first honestly
among ourselves, before we can earn the moral authority to truly bring
Anthroposophy further into world incarnation. The greatest
potential for leading the instinctive Consciousness Soul into full
awakening lies in Anthroposophy, and by implication in the Society and
Movement. But these problems are not simple and many of the
essays below are required of anyone wanting to really learn what is
needed to be learned in order to meet the Challenge of Ahriman's
Incarnation on the Cusp of the New Millennium.
We have one last task,however, which is
most essential. Having discovered Ahriman's incarnation, how are
we to treat the living man, now and into the future? Ahriman-Rove
has a family - a wife and a son: should they think of him as evil?
Of course not, he is a genius, he is a cosmic power incarnate,
who will at the final judgment weep at the feet of the Mother and beg
forgiveness for all that he had, out of his given nature, the
responsibility to author.
Those seduced by Ahriman-Rove are to be
pitied. Our problem then is not to assume evil and seek to rub it
out, but to see clearly the
social processes so that we, who would do the
good, can discover how our work can be applied in the right places.
Many already are working in such ways, albeit instinctively, and
others will want to hate Rove, Cheney, Bush and their friends.
Should we follow such an example, or create another? How do
we redeem what Ahriman-Rove has done and properly honor it?
We are also frustrated by the scope of
the debacle - Ahriman-Rove has spread chaos in the world in a huge way,
and this is not yet finished, for much worse may yet be done by those
who have succumbed to his influence. This Ahrimanic Impulse,
living throughout the social world of humanity, has pushed that world
toward its breaking and fracture points in a quite precise fashion
through the influence of Ahriman-Rove within the excesses of the Bush
II administration. The whole social order of Western Humanity is
breaking down. Wherever we look, whether at global warming, the
crisis in the food supply, the corporate theft of the water supply, the
spreading of technological means of biological destruction, the
machinations of those in the banking and finance industries and the
interference with the genetic code itself, - all stands on the brink of
even further decay, while the political life by its everywhere pursuit
of dominance, engages all structure in war, at
a time when in order to survive humanity needs instead of war to
develop the greatest skills at cooperation.
One of the worst effects, as previously
noted, is the crucifixion of American Dream. All over the world,
that which had once been a Beacon of Hope to many people living amidst
poverty and despair, has now been tarnished, perhaps beyond repair.
Is this not then the next goal for America, to discover how to
restore what has been defiled? Who will lead here? Who will
understand this need for the imagination of the downtrodden the world
over to have once more a Beacon of Hope? Can there be a
resurrection of what was crucified? What kind of moral forces
could bring this about?
We are also right to be concerned whether
the political machine that has been created will live on into the future
inside the core of the America Government. Already, many wonder
whether the Democrats will roll back some of what has been done, should
they win the White House in 2008. A lot of people believe many of
the worst of the changes introduced by Rove and friends will be
permanent.
All kinds of debris live as the
after-effects of Ahriman-Rove's incarnation. The situation and
consequences will not go away, but reverberate on into the future, and
we have to not just come awake, but must learn how to stay awake.
Into the world the power, the tone, the
sound of number, and the searing light of geometry incarnated, with its
naturally given mission to draw downward the heart of the developing
social organism into rigid form and lifeless brilliance - what Rove
called "the math". Here too was "mission accomplished", because while the Anthroposophical Movement and
Society lost themselves in a massive forgetting of the true
significance of Steiner's scientific introspection (The
Philosophy of Freedom, and A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception), and in ignoring the beauty and potential for community
life given by Steiner in Awakening
to Community as the Reverse
Cultus, we also took the living Michaelic
Cosmic Intelligence given to us by Steiner through Anthroposophy and
converted it to dead intellectualized content, without any life at all:
the Steinerism displayed constantly in the excesses of Steiner-said.
There are no redeeming powers in
Steinerism, such that without The
Philosophy of Freedom (Spiritual Activity)
and the Reverse Cultus, with which to
meet the deeper spiritual after-effects of Ahriman's incarnation, the
Movement and Society are impotent. At the same time, American
Anthroposophy (which this book seeks to illuminate) offers just those
needed antidotes and inspiration for all of Anthroposophy world-wide.
The American Soul must awake now, and the best leaders for this
will be those American Anthroposophists who have the will and the
courage to find the truth of who they are, as a separate but equal soul
force in the threefold world.
For example, Ahriman accomplished a great
deal during the weaknesses of the 20th Century into which the Society
and Movement fell, such that all kinds of wisdom was lost and buried in
Ahriman's "preserving
jars", locked up either in books stashed in
libraries, and in books allowed to go out of print.
Hundreds of significant works, by early students of
Steiner, have been allowed to go out of print, while the
anthroposophical publishing houses reprinted again and again Steiner's
lectures, erroneously leaving aside all the work done by others during
the 20th Century.
Let me take up just one other theme left
in the dust heap of the 20th Century, along side The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and the Reverse
Cultus: namely Projective Geometry.
Nothing else has quite the ability to give to the Life of the
Mind the forces necessary with which to meet Ahriman's one-sided:
"...power, the tone, the sound of number, and the searing light of
geometry incarnated...".
Let us begin with an obscure out of print
essay by George Adams Kaufman: Space and
the Light of Creation: a new essay in cosmic theory. Just in the Chapter headings of this essay we can
feel/see the redemptive force of the new thinking as it penetrates the
very realm of Ahriman and lifts it free through the art of thought of
the tendency to an excess of gravitas: Chapter I: Radiation of Space; Chapter II: Music of Number; and, Chapter
III: Burden of
Earth and Sacrifice of Warmth.
One of the tasks of American
Anthroposophy will be to rediscover and ingest the art of others
besides Steiner, which has been given to us by European
anthroposophical endeavors during the 20th Century. This is
something far beyond what Steiner had provided, but which he certainly
inspired. In the essay far below: a letter to a young
anthroposophist, you will find details.
Olive Whicher's book: Projective
Geometry: Creative Polarities in Space and Time,
should never be out of print, and ought to be on the same shelf with
every anthroposophist's copy of The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Awakening
to Community. By the way, little or no
abstract thought is called for in this way of study - as all that is
essential is taught through drawing.
The significance of Projective Geometry
can be found here, quoted by Olive Whicher in her introduction to
Adam's remarkable Physical
and Ethereal Spaces: "Confirmed by Rudolf Steiner
in the knowledge that the quality of thought prevailing in the new
geometry is in reality indispensable both to the scientist in his
quest of world-reality and
to the individual on a path of spiritual development..."
[emphasis added].
The living (heart) thinking, to which
many anthroposophists today aspire (but believe comes far easier than
it actually does), needs to remain scientific and picture-like in all
its qualities. Nothing aids this need better than the study
through drawing of Projective Geometry, which teaches the I how to move
and weave living pictorial thought, through and from one metamorphosis
to the next, all the while never losing the exact and precise quality
of scientific thinking.
To truly meet and contain Ahriman-Rove,
we also need a living spiritual social science, whose scientific
qualities can only be found through pictorial thought trained in the
disciplines of Projective Geometry and Goetheanism (A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception). We meet his powers, with those of our own.
Then out of this soul training, the I can hear the World Song in
which is contained the logos speaking of the Christ
into the social world of humanity (as the Lord - the Artist - of
Karma). Just as Goethe learned to listen to the speech of Nature,
we must now learn to listen to the speech of the social world, and then
out of our own forces of art and story telling, render this logos speaking into pictures we share with each other.
Let me end by bringing forward one last
matter, which in its details can be found below in the discussion of
the true soul roots of the Mystery of America. This will be there
developed much more fully - here I only want to hint at its dimensions.
The roots of the American Soul, by the
way, are not found in Europe, but in America's Aboriginal Peoples.
The soul is determined by two main influences of which the most
earthly is the local geography, while the most heavenly is the
incarnating spirit. Spirit and place interact, and the soul is
born.
Among the various Nations of Indians,
there is one who has a very special relationship to the whole: the
Hopi. All the Elders of the other Nations recognize this.
It is from a Hopi that we received the idea in the 1990's: we are the people we have
been waiting for.
The Hopi Prophecy anticipates the arrival
from the East (from the rising Sun), of the True White Brother. This influence is to come at a time
when the Nations of Indians will be in dire need, for world conditions
will have brought about their near destruction. Only one or two
individuals may still be alive that are true to their deepest
teachings. In the most crucial words of the Prophecy we find this
statement: "This
third event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command,
setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of
the Sun."
You can find details below, but let me
just render my best interpretation of this phrase in the language with
which anthroposophists are familiar (it will be well worth repeating in
greater depth later).
At the time of great crisis, the World
will be three times rocked into War. It is the last, the third
event, which is the most crucial. The outcome of this third
event (Ahriman's Incarnation) will depend upon the Red Symbol, or the People of the Rose-Cross. These People of
the Rose-Cross, the True White Brother (true in the
sense of also being awake to the living Being of the Earth Mother and
the Father in the Sky, as once were all Aboriginal Peoples), will then take command, setting the
four forces of nature in motion. These
are the forces of the Four Directions (honored in the Pipe Ceremony of
the Lakota Sioux), or the Cosmic Ethereal Forces (and their elemental
servant beings in Nature), which even Steiner recognized when he laid
the Foundation Stone for the original Goetheanum in the Earth, and then
later the Foundation Stone Meditation in the hearts of those who
attended the Christmas Conference.
All this for the benefit of the Sun. To understand this all we need to remember is
that the Hopi Prophecy originated in a People who remembered Atlantis
(see below). At the time of Atlantis, where was Christ? He
was in the Cosmic Sun Sphere! What then does all this come
to mean, especially given that the Prophecy also recognizes that this
needed work of the True White Brother can fail to
manifest?
The outcome of the Third Event - the third time the World is rocked into War (Ahriman's Incarnation) depends upon the People of the Rose-Cross bringing forward a scientifically based knowledge of the Ethereal Cosmic Forces, not just in the living aspects of the sense world, but in the life of thought itself. Moreover, all this in service to the Christ, by announcing His True Second Coming in the Ethereal, with all its majesty (a Second Crucifixion, a Second Resurrection, and a Second Eucharist).
Are anthroposophists up to such a task?
Apparently that remains to be seen.
Orientation
The dominant characteristic of this time, inwardly is
the True Second Coming of Christ
"...one can
say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the
American develops it in a natural way..." R.S. lecture to the Workman at the Goetheanum, March 3,
1923 GA-349
[For the neophyte: Ahriman's incarnation
as Karl Rove in the social-political world, really only effected the
Stage Setting, which serves as a background to our individual
biographies. Granted this Stage Setting is far more realistic
than the cardboard and paint of a theater, nevertheless the
relationship, between our individual lives and the historical backdrop
in which those lives unfold, is captured quite neatly by the Bard's
metaphor of Stage Setting and Actors in a Role. Ahriman is a
significant ruler of the characteristics of the Stage Setting, but as
regards the soul and spiritual element of the human being (our inner
world and life), Ahriman, through his influence via our Shadow (the
double-complex), is but a small though significant part, while we
ourselves can be the Star.
Ahriman is also not the Author of the
Play, Christ is - Christ as Lord (Artist) of Karma, and we as free
choice makers. Just as the East sometimes talks of there
being something that might be called (in the human being) a Buddha
Nature, so we in the West can speak of a similar characteristic of
being human - the Christ Impulse. Out of the Buddha Nature
of the human being comes Compassion, and out of the
Christ Impulse of the human being comes Love.
So the two combine: Christ Himself as Lord (Artist) of Karma, who
works with our freedom, so that we can out of that freedom ourselves
author human love in the form of the Christ Impulse.
In this realm (the inwardness) Christ can
have far more influence if we know how to choose to make that possible.
The inwardness belongs to our will (we know this instinctively),
but for the individual I to become the proper steward of all the
potential capacities hidden in this inwardness does require that we
wake up there and begin to be active. In this next essay I lay
out just how Christ has made himself available to us directly when we
strive to be moral - that is when we seek to know and do the Good (or
as Rudolf Steiner would say: become knowing
doers).
As such the essential lesson from the
story of Ahriman's incarnation can be seen in that his activities push
many people in the direction of such soul pain that they are confronted
by a choice as to whether to remain asleep or actually wake up to the
conditions of inflamed social chaos and insane speed of life.
Modern existence, for all its seeming unnecessary difficulties is
actually a blessing. Just as physical illness is a transformative
blessing, so are today's illnesses in the social existence of humanity.
Of crucial importance is to keep in mind
what was mentioned above, in that religious fundamentalism
(Christianity forced into arid and dead doctrines and dogmas, by the
influence of the ahrimanic double) acted in the world in recent years
in such a way that made a mockery of the True Second Coming.
Nothing Ahriman has accomplished is a potent as this
misdirection, which has made people shy of the promise Christ made to
come again. This essentially fake Christianity is simply a modern
version of what a similar impulse among the Hebrew people accomplished
at the time of the Incarnation - that is: People in that time were lead
away from the truth by those who sought to maintain their own power and
stature as religious leaders, rather than understand that Love begins
with Service to the Thou (washing the feet), and then leads ultimately
through trials to Love as a total Sacrifice of self for other.
We live in a time in which a similar
gesture permeates the Christian world. Religious leaders
tend to prefer themselves over others, and being in more in love with
their own thoughts of what is the truth, they keep their flocks (and
those who hunger for spiritual enlightenment) from knowledge of the
True Second Coming. In the essay below (and those that
immediately follow) I offer to the reader precise instructions as to
how to experience the True Second Coming, first as a Sacrament in the
Soul - a Second Eucharist in the Ethereal - in the world of thought,
that arises when we authentically seek to know the Good, or what I also
call: discovering the experience of Love Engendered
Free Moral Grace as that arises out of the spiritual activity of the
own I.]
This next
essay was abstracted from my book, the Way of
the Fool, in
order to submit it to the Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in
America in the winter-spring of 2006, where, as is typical of my
offerings there, it was ignored. For this book it has been
carefully rewritten, with entirely new material added in certain
places. By the way, the Way of
the Fool is, at
its core, the beginning of a courtship between that reality referred to
by the terms esoteric and exoteric Christianity - between Gnosis and
Faith (Kings and Shepherds), and this essay is the final
thought-picture in the main body of that book.
The Meaning of Earth Existence
in the Age of the Consciousness Soul
*[John 16: 12-15 "I have much more to say to
you, but you can't bear it just yet. But when the other comes,
the breath of truth, he will guide you in the ways of all truth,
because he will not speak on his own, but will speak what he hears and
announce to you what's coming. He will glorify me, because he
will take of what is mine and announce it to you. Everything the
Father has is mine: that's why I said he will take of what is mine and
announce it to you."]
*
from the
book: the Way of the Fool:
There yet remains a small effort to make
a synthesis this work - to make a whole out of seemingly disparate
parts. I will try to be brief.
A principle aspect of the great Mystery
of our Time is the Mystery of Evil, both outwardly in the structural
backdrop to the shared social world of humanity, and inwardly in the
depths of our own souls. I have tried above to point out how it
is that the essential matter is not the outer social world, but the
inner soul world, and the trials and education of the i-AM,
in the biography. The context, which we need to call the maya
of history and current events, and which is receptively
held everywhere from below by the Dark
Mystery of the Divine Mother, all passes away, and only what is
Eternal, that is what becomes an aspect of the developing i-AM,
continues; and, this inner realm (the whole Inwardness of the Creation,
which includes human souls and spirits) only exists because of the Heavenly Mystery of the penetrating
thoughts of the Father, while the whole (the
outer social maya and the eternal inner mind) is created, loved, overseen and
mediated (wherever two are more are
gathered...), in all its Grace filled and
Artistic interrelationships, by the Earthly [new Sun] Mystery of the sacrifices of the Son.
We (humanity) now begin to move out of
our spiritual childhood, and in making our way through the Rite of
Passage that is Life as it leads us toward our spiritual maturity we
need to take hold of the complex of the doubles and the karma of
wounds, as these thrive within our souls, and which encourage human
evil through temptation and inner prosecution. Even so, this task
of meeting the Mystery of Evil within the soul is not as heavy as we
think, for through the Shepherd's Tale [Charles
Sheldon], the
King's Tale [Rudolf Steiner], the Healers' Tale [the community-created Twelve-Steps] and the Sermon on the Mount, we have all the practical instructions that we need.
In seeking to understand in ourselves
these three: moral
grace, freedom and love [each of these is
elaborated in great detail in the book], we set before ourselves what
is required to be learned in this Age and it is with these three
naturally unfolding capacities that we are Graced and strengthened so
as to be able to meet with courage the Mystery of Evil. If we do
dare this path, and seek for the deepest instruction in Christ's Sermon
on the Mount, then will come to us a change in the nature of our
biography, such that it more and more takes on the pattern, described
in the John Gospel, as the Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ (the washing of the feet; the
scourging; the crowning with thorns; the carrying of the cross; the
crucifixion; the entombment and the resurrection) (for a careful exposition of these Seven Stages, see
Valentin Tomberg's [anthroposophical] book: Inner
Development).
Whereas Christ lived this in an
apparently mostly physical way, those, who truly follow In His
Steps [the name of Sheldon's book,
as well as a critical phrase** in Ben-Aharon's The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century - a profound Imagination of
the True Second Coming], will in the main
feel these trials in their souls, as aspects of the joy and suffering
in the human biography.
**["Now when they identified
themselves with the situation of earthly humanity, the souls who
remained true to [Archangel] Michael prefigured, in their
planetary Earthly-Sun life, the great Sacrifice of Christ. They
walked again in His
steps [emphasis added] as they did in former
earthly lives, only now the order of following was reversed. They
went before Him, showing Him the way, acting out of free and
self-conscious human decision, and He followed in
their steps [emphasis added] only after they fully united themselves with the divided
karma of Earth and humanity. Only then could He offer His
sacrifice as the answer to the new, future question of human existence:
the question concerning the mission and fate of evil." Jessiah Ben-Aharon, The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century.]
These trials may seem difficult, but the
truth is they are merely human. It was Christ becoming human that
went to the Cross, for how could He place an example before us we could
not do out of our own humanity (just as Sheldon wrote in In His
Steps). [something written by a Shepherd (a
pastor) in America, at the same time Steiner (a King) was writing his The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom)]
It is the human in Christ that asks in the Garden of Gethsemane
that the cup be taken from him, but if not, He accepts the Father's
will. While later it is the even deeper human in Christ that says on
the Cross: "My
God, my God, why did you abandon me?".
Who among us, in the trials and sufferings of life, has not
uttered these same thoughts? [That Steiner teaches an esoteric meaning
for the end of life statements of Christ, in no way contradicts their
exoteric meanings, which are also true.]
It is here that Christ's teachings
strongly diverge from the Wisdom of the Buddha, for the Buddha would
have had us overcome suffering by learning not to know it (one version
of the third Noble Truth of the Buddha reads as follows: " ...concerning the Cessation
of Suffering; verily,it is passionless, cessation without remainder of
this very craving; the laying aside of, the giving up, the being free
from, the harboring no longer of, this craving.",
whereas Christ asks us to embrace our human pain so that we can pass
through the Narrow Gate of suffering to then know our deepest self, the
true i-AM, and then through this burning trial of knowledge of the
true-self, ultimately come to Him. If we would follow In His
Steps then we too must take on ourselves the
errors (sins)*** of the world, and the tasks of forgiveness and love,
for every love
engendered free act of moral grace takes up a
small part of Christ's suffering, so that we too participate in the
deepest creative acts of the Seventh Day of Creation - the transformation of evil
into love. [This is for
anthroposophists the teaching attributed to Mani, but the reason such a
personality even knows this is because the transformation of evil
into love is modeled for us in the deepest
felt actions of the Divine Mother and the Son. When we know
intimately these actions of the Divine Mystery, we know the true
spiritual meaning of the Mystery of Evil, and that this Mystery is
Itself the real source of the earthly doctrine connected to it that is
sometimes called Manichaeism.]
***[The word sin does not appear in the
original Greek, from which the Gospels were translated into the other
languages. The Greek word hamartia, misused to indicate sin, actually means "missing the mark" (it is a term from archery). See in this
regard the Unvarnished
Gospels by Andy Gaus.]
Is this foolish? Of course, but we
need not fear this Way of the Fool, for our Faith
in Christ's Promises will always be fulfilled, as we ourselves can
learn to become the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Yes,
this Way is full of trials, but whoever has lived life, and reflected
upon their experience, knows that in the meeting of our biography's
trials with courage we discover what it truly means to be human: to struggle, to fall, to get
up and to learn - and, through this process, gently and humbly, begin
to take up along side and with Him, Christ's kind and light, Yoke of
Love.
Having said all this, it becomes
necessary to make one last picture for the reader, for clearly, in that
we read the news and hear of the horrors of man's continuing inhumanity
to man, we ourselves face a terrible trial. How are we to
understand a world seemingly so filled with Evil?
Picture, for a moment, the surface of the
Earth. Below dense matter and fiery substance, while above,
airless space. Humanity lives out its Earth Existence only in
this narrow spherical band of Life, whose diameter is just under 8,000
miles (and whose height is just three to four miles, because above
15,000 feet above sea level, the atmosphere starts to not contain
enough oxygen to support our breathing). The total surface area
of the Earth is 196 million square miles, and the habitable land area
43 million square miles Six billion plus human beings must
find all that they physically need, which when we consider actual
available arable land (land that could be cultivated for food, and
other necessary resources), means that each individual only has a
square 161 feet on a side from which to grow what they need. This
then is the
physical spacial aspect
of the social organism of the whole world.
Yet, we know that this spherical space is
itself often unwisely distributed, for human social arrangements,
whether rooted in dominance and selfishness (dominion over) or generosity and sharing (communion with), these social arrangements seem to determine this
social order. This stream of moral gestures (choices), of good
and/or of evil, moves out of and through human beings, organizing the
physical one.
As to this moral aspect
of the social organism of the whole world, it has reached in this Time a kind of climax of development,
and it will be important to appreciate the true nature of the logos order in which Christ has set modern human existence, through
His creative powers as the Artist (Lord) of Karma (the precise and love
based placement of individual biographies in relationship to each
other). Here is something Natural Science cannot do, for
the meaning of
existence is beyond the weaknesses of their
yet fanciful and spirit-empty images. This will also help us to
understand why so many (falsely, but with some degree of reason)
believe we live in the End Times.
In the Twentieth Century the world was
woven together into a single social organism, not just via the
globalization of economic matters, or the personal interconnections
offered by the Internet, but most centrally by the Media. At the beginning of the 20th Century, few knew
what went on elsewhere the world, in any detail or with any immediacy.
At the end of the 20th Century, at the same time that the
returned Kings' were unfolding the New Revelations of Christ [the
story of the 20th Century involves a return of the meaning-essence of
the Three Kings of the Gospels - that is a return of the knowledge of
Gnosis, hungering to be woven again into a single whole with true Faith
- an event which clearly had to accompany the True Second Coming], the
world itself was woven into a whole in the sense that no macro social
event was not to be almost immediately known everywhere the same day
(if not the same hour) that it happened.
We live in a time when has arisen a
Culture of Media - a kind of knowledge commons, in which vast resources
are used to create for us pictures of the meaning of the world and of
events. The more developed the country, the greater our daily
experience can be saturated with the messages coming from this Culture
of Media.
Moreover, great effort and expense is
gone into by those who would force us to believe what they want us to
believe. Between advertising, political propaganda, outright
lies, weak or lame reporting, and other similar failures to reach the
truth, this saturation of the soul by the Culture of Media would seem
to fail to offer us any service at all. What is not appreciated is that
the Christ is far wiser than even the deepest believers imagine.
Every evil is eventually turned to good, and next we will explore
the prime example for our time.
Recall what has been pointed out many
times now, that the
individual biography is the central reality of life on the Earth. What happens inside us as we experience life is
much more important and enduring than the outer events which surround
us. That Stage Setting (all the world's a stage....) is
but epiphenomena to the reality of the life of the soul. To help
us appreciate this then, let us explore these matters from the point of
view of the individual biography.
In this time, there are over six billion
plus of these biographies woven into the tapestry of the social
organism of the whole world. Six billion lives held delicately
and exactly within the Love and Divine Justice of the Mystery.
Within these biographies, all the individual i-AMs
experience that precise and personal instruction that hopes to lead
them to the realization of their own divinity and immortality of
spirit. [The epoch (rite of passage) of the Consciousness Soul is 2100
years long, going from the time of the beginning of the on-looker
separation (and the creation of Natural Philosophy - Science) in the
1400's, until the years around 3500 AD.]
To understand this we need to think it
from the inside out, and not from the outside in. The Culture of
Media only provides context, never essence. True, life is hard,
even harsh, even terrible. The naive consciousness wants to turn
away from this suffering, and cannot understand how God (the Divine
Mystery) could allow such things as torture, child abuse and the
genocidal acts which are dumbed down by the terms: ethnic cleansing.
The reality is that what the Divine
Mystery does is to allow for freedom. This most precious gift is
essential to the immortal spirit during its Rites of Passage we are
calling: Earth Existence. Moreover, the Mystery also makes
certain there is a true Justice through the post-death passages of
kamaloka and lower and higher devachan, in a manner no human social
structure can provide. Christ has told us this in the Sermon on
the Mount: "to what sentence you sentence others, you will be
sentenced". All this should be kept in mind as we proceed.
As a single ego, I wake in the morning.
From the night I bring the remainder of yesterday, perhaps worked
over. Surrounding me, as I live the day, are the lives of those
with whom I have a karma of wounds - with whom I have a debt of meaning
to creatively work over. This we carry together, each bearing a
part, each bearing their own wounds. These are wounds from
the past, from the present and from the future.
To observe the world of today, as we walk
the walk of our lives, is to observe trials of fire and suffering -
rites of wounding and being wounded. But not just this, for also there
is healing. Where we let love thrive, wounds become healed.
Thus flow all our days, often too fast to
even notice the beauty and wonder of the sea of personal relationships
and shared trials. Yes, there is misfortune, and evil deeds.
But do we really imagine Christ and the Divine Mother lets this
evil happen without recourse or justice? We may not know this
directly through Gnosis, but we also can have Faith.
Gnosis without Faith
is empty of Life; and, Faith without Gnosis is empty of the Truth. Only when we join
them together, do we get: the Way (the Mystery of living the Good), the Truth (the Mystery of knowing the Good) and the Life (the Mystery of union with the Good).
This then is the wonder of the outer and
inner biography, for often the wounds are not visible. Yes,
sometimes the wounds are visible to our eye or ear for we see people
too fat, too thin, too lamed in body, too poor, too physically or
mentally deficient. Often, however, so many of us suffer in silence that we really do not know the nature and personal
meaning of their wounds - only our own are visible to the eye of our
heart, unless we first learn to exercise and unfold certain powers of
soul and spirit.
Amidst all this visible and silent
suffering, we find ourselves woven into the Culture of Media.
Images and sounds flow around us, pictures of a world on the
verge of chaos and madness. Yes, we have the intimacy of our
personal biography, but through the Culture of Media we are drawn into
the painted backdrop of the whole world - a backdrop we all share.
War in Iraq. Global warming. Governments out of
control. Pandemics waiting in the wings. Local economic
recession, and even world-wide depression.
What lives in this painted backdrop - in
this Stage Setting - in the wise relationship of the Culture of Media
to the unfolding of our personal biographies?
The answer is this: the mirror of our own inner darkness
and light...
Inside us the double-complex - our
feelings of judgment, our temptations, our addictions and our sense of
failure. Inside us the darkness that belongs personally to us, and
outside us, carried to us by the Culture of Media, the mirror of that
darkness. But also inside us the Good that we would author.
Think on it. Do we not experience
the images and sounds brought to us by the Culture of Media as
something that is filled with what we like and we dislike? We
live our biographies and the Culture of Media confounds our souls with
pictures of dark and light to which we all respond individually.
The great masses of humanity do not make the News. The
great masses of humanity experience the News.
What is News? News is exactly what
the reporters and television personalities call it: stories. The Culture of Media provides us stories (tales)
of the world, which are often presented as if these stories are true,
something most of us have come to know they are not. News stories
reflect all kinds of bias, and in some cases the bias is deliberate.
Moreover, news stories reflect conditions of commerce living in
the agency reporting them.
For example, it is well understood that
in the last third of the 20th Century in American television the news
divisions of the major networks disappeared, and the entertainment
divisions took over the responsibility for the news. The
opportunity to inform and educate the receivers of news stories became
secondary to the need to keep them interested so as to be able to sell
commercial time and make a profit. In addition, the stories are
mostly about dire and tragic events, and little is investigated or
reported that is about the positive and the creative.
We are right then to wonder sometimes
about the News, about its harsh nature and artless excessive attention
to the dark deeds of many. Humanity in general bears within it
the beam that is not seen, while the mote
is exaggerated. But the world itself is not this beam, is not
this darkness. The greater part of darkness is inside us - in our
own souls, and from there projected onto the world. The Culture
of Media exaggerates this darkness further, at the same time it gives
us much that also arouses our own unredeemed antipathies and sympathies.
Once more for emphasis...
The world in its reality is not this
Media generated excess of darkness (so out of balance with the light
that is also everywhere present), which we all project from within the soul - the beam. Yet, in
the Culture of Media this whole processes of dark projection is
exaggerated so that the mirroring nature of the social
world itself begins to bother us. This logos order of the social world is complex and rich, and worth a
deep study.
Pictures of a distorted and untrue
meaning of the world abound, and while we share these pictures, we make
personal and individual our reactions. Just as the intimate
events of our biographies have a personal meaning, so does the shared
stage setting have a personal meaning. In a more general sense,
for example, many Christians today are confronted, via the Culture of
Media, with pictures of individuals whose actions as self-proclaimed
Christians either inspire us to imitation or cause us to turn away in
shame. The same is true in Islam. The terrorist who frightens us
in the West, also causes many ordinary Muslims to turn away in horror.
Everywhere fundamentalism rises, to continue the example, the
great mass of humanity, that are not so tied to such arid rigidity,
shrink away in antipathy. Do we not assert quietly, inwardly to
ourselves: this
is not me, I am not that - I will not be that!
In our biographies then, we are
confronted in the intimacy of our personal relationships with what are
sympathetic and antipathetic reactions to that which we would choose to
admire and imitate, and that which we would shun and refuse to be like.
Via the Culture of Media, we are met with that which approaches
us in the same way, yet on a larger scale. Just as we as
individuals have a Shadow (a double-complex), so nations, religions and
peoples have a Shadow, and the Culture of Media puts in our faces these
pictures and meanings with which we can identify or from which we can
turn away, often in shame.
Christ has arranged, in this particular
moment in time (the cusp of the 20th to 21st Centuries, which is also
the Dawn of the Third Millennium) to place in the dying away
hierarchical social forms of humanity, those biographies which do two
main forming gestures within that history. This is all connected
to a process in which social chaos arises in order to cause these old
hierarchical [third cultural age] social structures to let go their no
longer valid hold, and in many instances be eventually replaced with
new social form arising out of the social commons [fifth cultural age].
In the first instance, these biographies
living in the decadent social hierarchies (such as government,
corporate and church organizations) portray strong images, via the
Culture of Media, to which we react equally strongly out of our likes
and dislikes. For example, one of America's wise women, Doris (Granny D) Haddoch, has said that we should be grateful for such
as George W. Bush, because he causes us to awake from our sleep as
citizens. As a consequence, in our individual biographies we
react to the extremes of these dominant religious, business, cultural
and political personalities, and this brings about in us as individuals
certain inner judgments and calls to action.
The second effect of those biographies
unfolding in the now decadent institutional social hierarchies is to
drive the social order further into a needed condition of chaos,
something all 6 billion plus biographies require in order to birth the
moral dilemmas necessary for the Age of the Consciousness Soul.
This social chaos sweeps traditional moral authority aside,
and forces us as individuals into situations where we must rely on the
own I in order to properly face the moral crisis. In that human
beings are incarnating in massive karmic communities in order to have
these sometimes shattering moral experiences, this causes the present
world social organism to have the strong tendency to completely
dissolve into a condition of near total social conflagration [thus my
website: Shapes in the Fire].
The moral
aspect of the logos ordered social organism of the world requires crisis in order for the individual biographies
to live, not just intellectually, but fully and dynamically and
existentially into dilemmas of moral choice. Only true moral
choice can awaken in us what is offered in this Age to the development
of the Consciousness Soul.
Nothing in the world is not touched by
the Art of Christ, who as Lord of Karma - Lord of the Satisfaction of
Moral Debt and healer of karmic wounds, arranges in majestic harmony all the biographies so that even from the smallest detail to
the grandest historical event, meaning is put to the service of our development - the leaving
behind of our spiritual childhood followed by our birth into spiritual
adulthood.
The world historical crises of this time are a complex and rich Stage Setting, against which 6 billion plus souls live out the dramas of their individual biographies.
Thus, in this birth from spiritual
childhood to spiritual adulthood, the Time - the Age of the
Consciousness Soul - is a Rite of Mystery, a Baptismal Mass for all of
humanity, just as was told to us by John the Baptist. [in Matthew 3:11]
"Now I
bathe you in the water to change hearts, but the one coming after me is
stronger than me: I'm not big enough to carry his shoes. He
will bathe you in holy breath and fire."
(emphasis added)
Consider now more closely what happens inside
us as we experience the intimacy of our
biographies, and the shared pictures that come via the Culture of Media.
Choice confronts us. Do I be
like that, or like this? From what place inside do I choose?
In a time so filled with chaos that rules no longer apply, I
discover that I can rely only on myself. Out of myself I must
author the Good in response to the world of meaning that surrounds and
confronts me. So powerful, in its personal immediacy, are these
experiences, images and meanings, that we cannot turn away from them.
It is as if the World itself is on Fire, wanting to burn and burn
and burn until we run from it in terror, or stand up to it and give the fullest of our participation
to its moderation and its healing.
Yet by Grace, I contain the means to know
the Good that my biography and membership in the shared fate of
humanity draws out of me. What I source becomes a part of the
world, and I know that this is so. I know my freedom to
enact the moral grace that my heart comprehends in its deepest places.
Deep inside my soul my very own heart hungers to sing: Love will I give. Love
will I create. Love will I author.
So now we think away the physical - the maya
of the sense world, and let our picture thinking gaze only upon this
inner, invisible to the physical eye, moral act. An act more and
more emerging everywhere, for while in America, and the Cultural West,
the Consciousness Soul is first widely appearing, it will and
must appear everywhere that human beings let the world touch their
wounds, while they seek to share with others the trials by fire of
their biographies.
Invited by the Love and Art of Divine
Circumstance to look within and to reach into the depths of our own
being in order to source and author that Good which we know to be
right, we touch something spiritual and are Touched by something
Spiritual. In this time of the True Second Coming, in the
inwardness of our souls and invisible to all outer seeing, a Second
Eucharist is being enacted - the Good offers Itself - Its own Being - to us (Moral Grace). For the
Good we know is not just known in the soul as what we tend to think of
as a mere thought, but if we attend most carefully, it is true Spirit,
just as the John Gospel writer told us that Christ spoke: [John 3:6-8] "What's born of the flesh is
flesh, and what's born of the breath is breath. Don't be amazed
because I told you you have to be born again. The wind blows
where it will and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it
comes from or where it goes; its the same with everyone born of the
breath."
[The existence of a Second Eucharist, to
accompany the Second Coming, in no way means to diminish or change the
Original Eucharist. On the contrary, we will find that via the
Second Eucharist our understanding of the meaning of
the Original Eucharist (the transubstantiation of matter) will deepen.
See in this regard, the small pamphlet: Radiant
matter: Decay and Consecration, by Georg
Blattmann. From the transubstantiation of matter we are being led
onward to learning how to participate also in a transubstantiation of
thought.]
Thus we are being truly and continuously
born again today (each act of moral grace is another Second Ethereal
Eucharist and birth), from out of our spiritual childhood and into our
spiritual adulthood, baptized outwardly by the fires of the times in
our biographies, and by holy breath within - a Second Eucharist where
Christ gives of His own Substance that biblical knowing of the Good -
His own Being. For us to truly know the Good, requires we join
our own soul to the Good. Our yearning to author the Good out of
ourselves is how we participate in the Baptism of being truly born again, and how we participate in the sacrament of
the Second Eucharist. Christ also participates by giving to us,
out of Himself, this very Good - this Moral Grace. When having
received within ourselves this sacrament of the Second Eucharist, an
act that only arises because we seek it and form its actual
application, we remain free - we create moral law - we author the
fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Given to us within by
Christ as a capacity, we then author its incarnate nature and pass it
on to the world of our biographies, - from out of us thence into the
outer world (or into the inner world), do we then ourselves author this
Good: love
engendered free moral grace.
But how does Christ do this? Is
this Good offered to us in this Second Sacrament as if it was a thing,
passed by hand from one to another?
No. Christ as holy breath breathes
upon the slumbering burning embers of our own good nature, just as we
breath upon a tiny fire in order to increase its power. He
sacrifices His Being into this breath, which gives Life to the tiny
ember-like fire of our moral heart. The holy breath becomes
within the soul of each human being who asks, seeks and knocks a gift
of Living Warmth that enlivens our own free fire of moral will.
The Narrow Gate opens both ways, making
possible thereby the intimate dialog and conversation of moral deeds
and thoughts that is woven between the i-AM,
the Thou and the Christ (wherever two or more are gathered...),
which intimate conversation leads ultimately to the consecration - the character development - of the soul.
In this way our thinking can now behold the Meaning of Earth
Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul:
A macro-cosmic Rite, a Second Ethereal Eucharist, in which we give
birth out of ourselves in the most intimate way possible, knowledge of
the Good, not as mere thought, but as Life filled moral will, breathed
into greater power by the sacrifice of the true ethereal substance of
Christ's Being in the form of holy breath.
The outer world is but a seeming, and
what is brought by the Culture of Media mere pictures of the Stage
Setting for the World Temple that is home to our biographies.
When we think away this outer seeming - this logos formed and
maya based sense world, and concentrate only on the Idea
of the moral grace (Life filled holy breath) we receive and then enact
out of the wind warmed fire of individual moral will - as individual
law givers, as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets - we create this Meaning of Earth Existence. Every act of moral grace, given greater Life
within in the deepest intimacy of our life of soul, is an ethereal
communion with Christ, even though we may only experience it as what to
us is a mere thought of what is the Good at some moment of need in the
biography.
Christ gives us this Gift, by Grace,
freely out of Love, and with no need that we see Him as its Author.
We hunger inwardly to know what the right thing to do is, and
when this hungering is authentic, we receive Christ's Holy Breath.
This does not come so much as a thought-picture of the Good in
response to our questing spirit, but rather as the contentless breathing substance of Christ's Being. We are
touched (inspired) by Love, and at this touch we shape
that Breath into the thought that we then know. The nature of its
application and form in which we incarnate this thought is entirely our
own. We shape the thought completely out of our own freedom - our
own moral fire of will, for only we can apply it accurately in the
individual circumstances of our lives.
As the Age of the Consciousness Soul
unfolds accompanied by this Second Eucharist, the Social World of human
relationships begins to light and warm from within. For each free
act of moral grace rests upon this Gift of Christ's Being to us - an
ethereal substance received in the communion within the Temple of the
own Soul, freely given in Love whenever we genuinely: ask, seek and knock during
our search for the Good. Our
participation in this Rite, this trial by Fire leavened by Holy Breath,
leads us to the co-creation of new light and new warmth - the delicate
budding and growing point of co-participated moral deeds out of which
the New Jerusalem is slowly being born.
This co-creation is entirely inward, a
slowly dawning Sun within the macro Invisible World of Spirit.
Moreover, we do it collectively (as humanity). While each
of us contributes our part, it is our collective conscious celebration
of the Second Ethereal Eucharist (creating the Good) that begins the
transubstantiation of the collective (presently materialized and
fallen) thought-world of humanity into the New Jerusalem.
Thought is real, and it is as equally
real as is matter. The Original Eucharist transforms the already
divinely given now-dying substance of earthly matter into Life-filled
Spirit through our ritual invitation of the active
Grace of the Divine Mystery; and, our participation in the Second Ethereal Eucharist transforms dead thought
into living ethereal Substance, through the mystery of our individual
spirit's active and embryonic grace, that becomes united into the
collective co-creation of humanity.
In the Invisible World of Spirit, we
co-participate, out of the own moral fire of will, in the Dawn of the
New Sun that is to become the New Jerusalem.
Let us now slow down here for a moment,
and take a deep breath, for these last thoughts above may seem almost too big - too idealistic - to be
easily contemplated. To ease our understanding and gently ground
it, let us consider this situation once again in it most ordinary
aspects.
The world of our biographies places each
individual into the fires of experience.
These are remarkable gifts that lead us toward moral questions -
often deep and troubling. We yearn to know what to do, and in
this circumstance we may ask, seek and knock. What
has been called earlier in this book Moral Grace is available to us,
yet the mystery of this practice of inner activity is where we ourselves
create moral law - where we become the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.
In the King's Tale, we saw that Rudolf
Steiner's book The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity showed how
to come to this knowledge through the practices of Gnosis - to knowledge - in the form of moral imagination, moral intuition and
moral technique. In the Healers' Tale, we saw how the 12 Steps
helped us to master the soul through the elevation of the spirit, and
in this way come to know God's Will as we understand it.
Finally, in the Shepherd's Tale we came to understand that by
asking What
Would Jesus Do out of Faith, we could also
come to the needed individual moral beliefs.
Three different paths (among perhaps many
more) all leading to those individual invisible depths that each of us
must uniquely experience, which we have now seen must be properly
called: the
Second Eucharist of Holy Breath. So we
come now to perceive the Time - this Age of the Consciousness Soul -
where, if we seek it, we have made ourselves available to be baptized
with Fire and
Holy Breath, just as John the Baptist us told
Christ would do, 2000 years ago.
Even so, we
still have to truly want to know the Good - to authentically ask, seek and knock.
***************************************
[For the neophyte: So far we have
seen how with Ahriman's incarnation, humanity was driven deeper into
moral crisis - the opposing beings, by trying to create a world in
which evil triumphs, also create a tension in the social reality that
causes people to resist. Refusing to submit to this pressure,
human beings reach into their own depths and draw out of those depths
previously hidden capacities. Life makes a demand, and some fold,
and some stand up. This is nothing new in human existence, except
that in this instance we have come to see how, even though the Prince
of Earthly Dark can incarnate in a human being, and from that place in
the center of our social existence create all kinds of troubles, many
people refuse to bow down to this Prince. Instead, they turn to
their own inner resources and to each other, bringing out of the secret
aspects of their own will moral qualities perhaps they didn't even know
they had. If we start to look around us, we will see that more
people do this - reach to the deep inside - than those who fall deeper
into the dark. Who does this? Who stands up? Blessed
are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. The salt of the
earth refuse to stand by and let evil prevail. In them the seed
of the Father resides, and this mystery we will take up next.
Below is an in depth look at one of the
possible processes by which our own thinking can be changed in profound
ways, through the application of moral grace to our own inner activity.
Instead of just acting in the outer world, we wake up and become
an actor in our inner world. It is this transformed thinking that
enabled me to come to the knowledge that stands behind my ability to write the above two
essays. Many who read this will recognize that much of what is
described they already do, to some extent or another.
Recall that the American Soul as an natural instinct for
Anthroposophy and for the Consciousness Soul, such that every time a
reader of this says to themselves: I try to do this, you are recognizing this healthy instinct.]
In Joyous Celebration of the
Soul Art and Music of Discipleship
- a moderately serious introductory sketch unveiling
a mostly
American way of understanding the New Thinking -
first some necessary context
Recently in the News for Members of the
Anthroposophical Society in America (late 2005), was published a
wonderful lecture given by Dennis Klocek, elaborating the alchemical
foundations living in Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific work.
The essay below means to be something from just one voice out of
another of the streams that seeks to find its home within the
Anthroposophical Society and Movement - the stream of discipleship, of those who are karmically related to the original
Twelve and the direct participation in certain aspects of the Mystery
of Golgotha. [See the essay above (The Meaning...) for why I write in this way.]
In the essay that follows, it might help
the reader to understand that it is mostly written for, and out of, the
American Soul. About this Soul, Rudolf Steiner spoke in different
places and in the following ways, which I will paraphrase: The
American comes to Anthroposophy naturally. English speakers are
instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights.
There is a hidden and unique form of Anthroposophy that is to
develop in America in the future, and one should look to Emerson and
his circle of friends to appreciate it.
The reader, of whatever Soul background
and gesture, who would seek inner stimulation from actively
engaging this essay, should understand that for the American Soul much
of what is described below is already instinctively present. This
instinctive relationship to the art and music of discipleship appears
first in the American Soul in the dominant tendency to be directed
outwardly toward the world, fully engaged in social reality, and
sometimes (often more frequently than appears on the Evening News)
seeking to heal the social world's wounds. Part of the hidden
mystery of this Soul is that it is possible to take what is so present
instinctively, and awaken it by gradual degrees into full
consciousness. This task may turn out to be far easier for the
American Soul, than has so far been imagined within Anthroposophical
circles.
To fully inaugurate this gradual
awakening, however, does require turning from the outer world and its
worries and wonders for a bit, and to look within - to practice
introspection. When looking within becomes a normal part of soul
life, American anthroposophists should not be surprised to find that
they already live instinctively in their wills in ways with
considerable kinship with the path of discipleship - the path of moral action in
the world through renunciation and love.
With the addition of this introspective looking within, we add to
the thinking we already do about the field of outer-world social moral
action, a complementary and much needed thinking about the soul-field
of inner moral action. Outer world thinking and action are
enhanced by everything we learn from the practice of looking, thinking
and acting within.
By the way, it is not the point of this
essay to encourage any divisive distinction, such as might be assumed
because of the emphasis on matters American. Nor is it being
suggested here, for example, that Americans are any better at
Anthroposophy in any way. On the contrary, we are just different. Each Soul gesture in the Threefold World has
unique gifts to offer, and this essay means to serve the potential
freeing of those yet untapped American gifts from a kind of child-like
imitation of things European. This tendency, to model our soul
practices on a kind of European anthroposophical idealism of the soul,
was a natural impulse connected to our admiration of the work of our
European brothers and sisters. It is time to grow past this
however, to discover our far more earthly and pragmatic way to the
Spirit. And, to do this not only for the benefit of the
American Soul Itself, but also for the benefit of the Anthroposophical
Movement world-wide.
There are then two themes, which while
related are also quite separate. The relationship of the
Alchemical stream and the Discipleship stream is one theme, and the
relationship of the American Soul to the wider world is another.
The point of intersection, between the Discipleship stream and
the instinctive capacities of the American Soul, shows only that the
Rosicrucian and Manichean streams of the Old World, and their
connection to Initiation, does not quite have the same meaning for the
American Soul as does the natural Christ Impulse inspired in Americans,
and revealed by their relationship to the outer world of social need
(in part a consequence of the fact, that due to its rampant
individualism, the Consciousness Soul is developing faster here - See
Ben-Aharon's "America's
Global Responsibility: individualism, initiation and threefolding").
The Alchemical stream is a stream of
studied spiritual knowledge and of initiation. It is more of the
Kings and of Gnosis than of the Shepherds and of Faith. The
Discipleship stream is more related to that moral work in life that
comes from following the Teachings of Christ, and thus is more of the
Shepherds than of the Kings. The disciples, who were meant to be
fishers and shepherds of human beings, were not (in general) of the old
mystery streams as were the Kings. The Shepherds belong to what
was being newly created - to the future Mysteries that are to arise
from the social commons. These future Mysteries are not to flow
out of the old, now impotent and dysfunctional hierarchically organized
Mystery Centers, but from finely and homeopathically distributed
Branches and Discussion Groups - that is the New Mysteries are to be
born out of and in ordinary social life where groups of individuals
draw together (wherever
two or more are gathered...).
At the same time, while the America Soul is more naturally of the Shepherd stream, - of the discipleship stream, because of its orientation to outer world moral action, it can by turning inward and seeking a pragmatic introspective life, begin to draw from the wisdom-well of renewed European spiritual life. Rudolf Steiner, in his works on objective philosophical introspection ("A Theory of Knowledge Implicit In Goethe's World Conception"; "Truth and Knowledge"; and "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity") gives us a quite useful generalized map to this introspectively investigated inner territory - a territory that for the American Soul has many different and unique characteristics. With Emerson, we get a similar map, not as exact and scientifically rigorous, but one which nonetheless is more in harmony with the actual landscape of the American Soul.
We can then read Steiner to initiate us
into our introspective soul voyages, in the most objective and
scientific fashion; and, read Emerson for that travelogue, which is
more attuned to the unique scenic beauty to be actually found there,
given that the American Soul, like the other soul-gestures of the
Threefold world, is differently oriented in its fundamental nature.
I have tried here to distinguish two
problems that ought not to be confused. This article is not
saying that the American Soul and the Discipleship stream are
identical, only that there is a definite kinship. What is also
being said is that for those in this discipleship stream (of which
there are no doubt many - Americans and otherwise - within the Society
and Movement, and for whom this article also aims to provide greater
self-understanding), they will tend to be less attracted to exercises
aimed at spiritual development, and more called to moral action in
life, which incidental to its true deeds, produces the after effect
called: character
development.
"For every one step in spiritual development, there must be three steps in character development". Rudolf Steiner: "Knowledge of Higher Worlds and How to Attain It".
[Keep in mind, when thinking about
character development, this question: To what aspect of character
development do we relate a good sense of humor, laughter, foolishness
and dance? Please also note that at one time the word silly
meant to be possessed by the sacred.]
This is not to suggest that specific
spiritual developmental exercises are unimportant, but rather just to
point out that if the moral (character) development lags behind, it
more and more becomes a danger that spiritual experience will come
toward us in a one-sided way. Further, we need to understand that
true heart thinking is almost entirely a consequence of the extent to
which the
will to do the Good
(that is to be moral) is the foundation for all feeling and thinking
activities.
To make some of this a little more
concrete, we might notice that it would not be uncommon for those drawn
to the Discipleship stream to find that their biography involves a need
to encounter the 12 Steps of AA, or to have to undertake some similar
deep moral-Trial work. Challenges to character development
are common in biographies with a strong kinship with the discipleship
stream. Which thought then leads us to the essential point.
Moral or character development does not result from spiritual
exercises, but only from inner and outer actions in the biography, and
their related moral dilemmas. The practice of exercises builds capacities in the Soul, while moral actions, both inward and
outward, apply these capacities in life (which then purifies the Soul). Christ puts it this way: Blind Pharisee, wash out the
inside of the cup and saucer first, if you want the outside to end up
clean [for the whole theme, see Matthew 23:
25-28]
Let us review a bit: From a certain
point of view, the Alchemical stream is very European, and thus has a
tendency to put forward the incarnation of an Ideal as a goal, leading
to the emphasis on spiritual exercises, knowledge and initiation.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to face the social as a
problem to be solved through moral action. This is very
pragmatic, for it is not the purity of an ideal that matters as much as
being able to do something to help others. In this sense, the
stream of Discipleship is more natural to Americans because, in harmony
with our engagement with and in the world, as social helpers,
discipleship is rooted in moral action - in doing the Good ("...and
crown thy Good, with Brotherhood...").
[Isn't this Brotherhood also partly related to our ability to help each other experience the katharsis of laughter, especially under dire circumstances. Conversation does have a higher function than light, but then what about a well encouraged giggle? The Shadow cannot abide humor, and runs away when we make fun of it.]
In a sense, the idealism of the European
anthroposophist has blinded the American anthroposophist, first by
suggesting there is only one way to be anthroposophical (a European
soul idealism), and second by failing to appreciate that the American
Soul is considerably different. The result is that instead of
coming to true self knowledge, we (in America) have been pursuing what
is at best a temporary illusion (a goal we really can't achieve),
instead of our developing, more consciously, the earthly (including
humorous and joyous), socially oriented and pragmatic instinct that is
our given nature.
I hope the above has not been too
confusing. Mostly I just wanted to point out certain contextual
themes, and leave to the reader's own thinking precisely what to make
of these ideas. In what comes next, where we get more deeply into
the pragmatic and the concrete, I hope then that these contextual
matters will, as we proceed, begin to make a more practical, and a less
abstract, sense.
*
[a brief biographical note: My
interest in introspection began around 35 years ago, in 1971, as a
result of a kind of spontaneous awakening in my 31st year. I
didn't call it introspection at that time, but I had become quite awake
inwardly, and was only able to orient myself to these experiences using
the Gospels. Seven years later, in 1978, I met the work of Rudolf
Steiner, and gravitated to his writings on philosophy, particularly A Theory
of Knowledge..., and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. I
also became very interested in Goethean Science, projective geometry
and all the Steiner material on the social problem, which was my own
main outer-world interest. It was over 25 years later, in 1997,
that I wrote my first effort at describing what I had learned about the
moral nature of the Soul under these two influences: the Gospels and
Steiner's writings on objective philosophical introspection.
That essay was called "pragmatic
moral psychology" and can be found on my
website . At that time, however, I did not yet know enough about
the Shadow, and only now, almost 10 years later, can I write the
immediately below with some confidence in my appreciation of the
intricacies of these problems in the light of an intimate experience of
the threefold double-complex.]
substance, or better yet,
selling water by the river*
*[The river of the soul lies inward in
everyone. To teach, as it were, about the soul, is to sell water
by the river, to give to someone something that is already right in
front of their own true face. In spite of all that exists, for
example in our home libraries of Steiner texts etc., there are really
only two essential books for the study of the soul: the Book of Life,
and the Book of our Own Soul. Learn to read those, and you'll
know the core of what you need to know. A text, even this text,
can at best be a word-map describing a territory you'll only really
know by direct experience, however many other books you ever read.
The reality
of matters spiritual is, however, not found in reading, but only in
action. We can acquire a lot of
concepts by reading, but we need experience (the consequences
of action) more.]
We should keep in mind as we begin, that
what is described below is essentially very human and very ordinary.
It is one possible descriptive word-map, as it were, of the soul
engaged in the dynamics of inner awakening via the path of
discipleship. As a map, it will be somewhat abstract and defined.
The actual territory is something else altogether - human, messy,
inconstant, prone to emotional ups and downs - that is all the wonders
of ordinary consciousness. All a word-map tries to do is to point out
various significant features. Look out for these mountains,
notice those valleys. Here is a pure spring, there is a hard and
dangerous rock wall. It is my hope that the reader will find
below some guidelines which will help them to chart their own path
through the pristine forests and dark swamplands of the soul.
Keep in mind it takes courage to explore there, but at the same
time there is no other adventure quite like it.
Recall then what Dennis Klocek gave in
his lecture to the 2005 AGM, and then published shortly thereafter in
the News for Members (or if you didn't hear or read it, try
to find a copy as soon as you can): On the blackboard a mandala:
a circle, expressing a series of alchemical relationships: earth
(freedom); water (phenomenology); air (silent practice) and fire
(dialog). The circle form suggests a return to earth (freedom) at
some new or higher kind of level. But before considering that,
first some deep background.
If, from a certain point of view, we
think of the above four elements in Dennis Klocek's lecture as notes in
a rising scale, we could also find that in between each note is an interval. While the note is in itself more of a step
in spiritual development supported by spiritual exercises, the use
in life (the interval) of the acquired spiritual skill/capacity is more of a
moral act - an aspect of the process of character development.
The soul is fallen - it is an out of tune instrument, yet we
hunger to return, to rise up and to experience reintegration, and to
give voice to the joy of coming Home, which the Story of the Return of the
Prodigal Son tells us leads to celebration
and feasting.
Because the spiritual development
exercises are so well known, and so completely covered elsewhere in
Steiner's basic books, as well as Dennis Klocek's books, I will not be
discussing them here. This essay assumes a general knowledge of
that work, and some practice in their use. Here we are looking at the
development of the Soul solely with regard to its struggles with the so
very messy, personal and human moral questions of the
biography.
In case there is some confusion here, in
Steiner's Knowledge of Higher Worlds, the
moral is approached mostly through a series of admonitions, encouraging
the student to orient him or her self in life in certain ideal ways.
Only in The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, with the
discussions of moral
imagination, moral intuition and moral technique, did Steiner confront the moral problem directly and
exactly.
The details that follow I have derived
from my own (naturally messy and human, stupid and silly, and when I
really get serious - pretentious) introspective investigations of the
moral dimensions of the soul, but it should be kept in mind that while
it is prudent to describe these phases and Trials as if separated in
time in the soul, they are much more likely to be layered over each
other - and often simultaneous in a variety of ways. It also
needs to be clear that what is to follow wishes only to add another
dimension - another view from a different direction - to what Dennis
Klocek gave, and not to contradict it in any way whatsoever.
It is particularly crucial to note here
that we are mostly discussing those moral acts that take place in the Soul, not those in the outer biography. There is a
relationship to be sure, but it will help to understand that we are
moral in both worlds: the outer world of our biographies, and the inner
world of Soul practice and art.
I emphasize the word Trial
to add another quality to our understanding. Moral development
takes place in the biography through Trials. These challenges to
the life of soul and spirit are meant to be difficult. We become
deeply engaged in our karma of wounds with others in
these Trials. Moreover, these are called Trials precisely because
there is great pain, suffering and effort (as well as not enough fun)
connected to them, and because the Shadow plays such an important and often decisive role.
Furthermore, various aspects of the Seven Stages of the Passion
of Christ (as described in the John Gospel)
are enacted in the Soul via these biographical Trials: the Washing of the Feet, the
Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the
Crucifixion, the Entombment, and the Resurrection. There is nothing abstract about these difficult
processes of soul transformation, and this should be kept in mind
as we go forward, namely that: every time I use the word Trial I am
speaking of quite human, difficult and sometimes years long
life-crises.
There is, in this regard, something of a
kind of spiritual law involved. Just as the world of the senses
has its laws of gravity and color, so the soul world has its laws.
The ones to keep in mind here are the karma of wounds in the
outer biography, as well as the outer and inner moral Trials to be
faced there, which bear an exact and direct interrelationship. To
face a challenge in life, to face a Trial, means to engage in just that
personal teaching which belongs specifically to our individually most
needed for the development of our character.
Consider a marriage for example, or the
children to be raised there. These relationships are not trivial
distractions to any spiritual development, but rather are precisely
those riddles and mysteries of life belonging particularly to our own
ego's character developmental needs. One can read all kinds of
spiritual books, practice all manner of spiritual exercises, and still
not advance because the biographical tasks are ignored. To begin
to awaken within, and to appreciate that we are surrounded in our
biography with just those moral tasks and Trials we individually need,
is to recognize just how precisely and miraculously has Christ, as the
Artist of our karma of wounds, woven us into the world of personal
relationships. So when Christ advises that unless we become again
as little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, He is, among
other matters, telling us precisely who our deepest spiritual teachers
in life often are.
This world of personal relationships, and
their corresponding moral Trials, whether of family or work, or even
wider world challenges, is also very elastic in a sense. We are
quite free in it, and it has a quality that can respond rather exactly
to only those tasks which we choose to take up. Part of
true Faith is to accept what comes to us as challenges, yet at the same
time to recognize that our freedom also allows us to choose at every
juncture, which way to turn, what burden to carry and when to laugh at
ourselves.
For example, the interval from earth
(freedom) to water (phenomenology) involves the skill: thinking about.
This skill we receive as a natural aspect of living in this age,
in that we are inwardly free to decide what to think; and, in accord
with the Age of the Consciousness Soul, we are also becoming more and
more able to form individual free moral ideas as well.
The Consciousness Soul really just means
that if we inwardly wish to know the Good, in any particular moment of
moral demand, crisis or need, we can in fact know what the Good is.
Yet, in order to have this knowledge, we first have to ask, seek and knock. We have to inwardly form the question, and
struggle there to let ourselves answer from the higher nature of our
ego. The Good is what we make it to be, and as this essay
proceeds, we will get deeper and deeper into this Mystery. This
is why my book (found for free on line at
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/twotf.html or which can be purchased at
www.lulu.com) "the Way of
the Fool" calls this capacity to know the
Good: Moral Grace.
[As an aside, for those more familiar
with Steiner's terminology, you should keep in mind that by necessity
he was required to cognitively form his research and understanding into
the language of the Intellectual Soul, as that was the condition of his
audiences. In this book we are writing out of the language of the
Consciousness Soul itself (something toward which American's are
instinctively gifted). So, for example, when in the opening
lecture of the book The
Challenge of the Times Steiner speaks of the
need for people to work out of an experience of the threshold, he is
using Intellectual Soul terminology. In the essay above, where I
have elaborated carefully on the Second Ethereal Eucharist experience,
this has been a quite concrete and exact picture of human intercourse
across the threshold in the language of the Consciousness Soul. I
also mean to suggest here that it is quite possible to take many of
Steiner's works and translate them from
Intellectual Soul language into Consciousness Soul language.
The attentive reader of this text, who takes to heart the
suggested practices, will in fact eventually find themselves able to do
this translation process themselves. Once able to do this, the
reader will be able to confirm not only their own experience, but all
that is written here in Steiner themselves, for nothing here is
contrary to what Steiner offered.]
Now in this thinking about
there is the object of our interest, in relationship to which we are
the subject. As subject, we think about
this object. This thinking is also essentially (and initially)
discursive to our inner experience. We appear to inwardly
talk to ourselves. Our spirit seems to inwardly speak that
which our soul then hears.
It is with the skill thinking about
that we first enter on the problem of the Water Trial of phenomenology.
Thinking about naturally contains something of the shadow forces of the
soul, in that our feeling life is, in the beginning, dominated by
antipathies and sympathies. These natural likes and dislikes of
our individualized soul color all that we think about.
Through them what we think about
acquires an individualized (non-objective) meaning for the spirit - the
i-AM, in the soul.
[The use of this form of the term "i-AM",
is meant to lessen the emphasis on the being
nature of the ego - its noun-like aspect, and to place more emphasis on
the action nature - on the verb-like aspect of the ego. The being
nature of the ego tends to be more related to the teachings of the
Buddha, while the action nature of the ego tends
to be more related to the teachings of Christ.]
In the light of Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, the
experience (the percept) is, in the beginning, distorted in its meaning
(the thought, the concept) by the shadow elements lingering in the yet
unredeemed antipathies and sympathies. By the way, the reader
should be clear that only their own personal introspective observations
can adequately discern what is going on within ones own soul. We
have little business believing we can make such determinations about,
or for, another.
Noticing these excessive and unredeemed
aspects of antipathy and sympathy will give us our first vague
perceptions of the work of the threefold double-complex, the Shadow in
the Soul. Thought
is a flower rooted in the soul-soil of feeling, and filled from within
by the blossoming life of the will-in-thinking.
Where an excess of unconsciousness infects this soil and this life, the
Shadow is given free play.
In order to
progress properly through the life passages that comprise the Water
Trial, we have to learn to renounce the unredeemed antipathy and
sympathy. This is the central moral act
that makes possible the transformation via the Water Trial from
thinking about to thinking with. We enter the Water
Trial knowing how to think about, and we can leave the
Water Trial knowing how to think with.
The essential moral nature of this Trial is outlined in the
Gospels in the Sermon on the Mount, in the teaching concerning the mote
and the beam. In the biography, when we learn to struggle with
the covering over (or painting in thought via the unconscious Shadow
driven creation of mental pictures) of the persons that we meet with
our individual unredeemed antipathies and sympathies, we are learning
about the beam in our own eye. We see not the person, but our own
soul as that lives in our projected sympathies and antipathies.
To learn to see past the beam, to meet the true phenomena of the
other, to learn to think with them rather than about
them, this is the moral craft to be discovered during
the Water Trial.
The biography gives us just those experiences that challenge this learning. The spouse, the child, the co-worker, the boss, the neighbor, the relative, or the stranger-other, all will evoke the beam, the unredeemed mental pictures. We must learn how not to paint our experience with this already unconsciously given thought-content, and instead learn to let the experience itself speak into the soul, and to become consciously active as a creator of the free thought in relationship to the experience.
Again, one way to banish the Shadow
influence here (when we discover our thinking to be possessed by the
beam) is to laugh at ourselves - to see the essential silliness of our
dark inner depictions of others, as well as those depictions which are
too sympathetic (that is where we raise another up to the level of a
kind of minor deity, such as how too many view Rudolf Steiner - and
others - out of a soul mood of ungrounded and unrealistic admiration).
Sobriety, for all its virtues, must be
balanced with play, otherwise the soul becomes an arid desert.
So, for example, when we look at another
person and recognize that they are, in themselves, not just that which
we observe in the moment, but rather that they are their whole history
- their whole biography (in fact a sequence of biographies), and when
we learn to consciously set aside the reactive feelings of antipathy
and sympathy, only then can we start to think with
who they truly are, and not just about
them. Our folk wisdom calls this learning to walk in another's
shoes.
This thinking with
can of course be applied to anything living, anything that has a life
element to its nature, not just human beings, plants or animals.
This includes the history (the story) of a social form, such as a
family, or even an Anthroposophical Branch. When we recreate in the
imagination, free of antipathy and sympathy, the story-picture of
something, we are then learning to think with the object of our thought.
Goethe taught himself to think with
the plant, and to this organic way of thinking Rudolf Steiner later
gave the name: Goetheanism, which is a thinking that leaves behind the discursive
aspect of thinking about, and replaces that with a
thinking with - a qualitative characterizing picture thinking
(Tomberg's formulation). We do this by learning to make inner
images (mental pictures) consciously. We still retain the ability
to think discursively about these inner images -
thinking about does not disappear, but remains a skill which can be
applied when we choose and where we feel it is appropriate (which is
why I wrote earlier of the layered nature of these soul phenomena).
Two additional aspects of soul phenomena
need to be understood here - the attention and the intention and their
relationship. The moral act of renunciation is more related to
those actions of the will-in-thinking that
determines on which particular object we focus our attention.
When we are lost to the beam in our own eye, part of our
attention is unconsciously focused on our own soul's reactive feelings
of antipathy and sympathy. To the act of renunciation of these
interfering aspects of our attention, we need to join the intention to
love the object of this phenomenological (story-picture) thinking.
After subduing the impulse to live imprisoned and in the thrall
of the beam in our own eye (reactive feelings of antipathy and
sympathy), we use our first stage (necessarily awkward and tentative)
understanding of how to love the other in such a way so as to redeem
them in thought. We
consciously create a new picture to replace the old unconscious and
reactive one.
As part of the Water Trial, we don't just
set aside the reactive feelings, but we learn how to create in the soul
cultivated feelings. We create freely chosen cultivated moods of
soul - that is intended feelings of reverence, wonder and so forth,
which then have a salutary effect on the thought content that is to be
produced according to where we let our attention come to rest.
This is an example of where the exercises bear fruit. If we
have practiced these exercises, this will be a great help when we then
need to apply the newly learned ability to form cultivated moods of
soul, as a prelude and foundation for thinking with
someone in a new way.
With a cultivated feeling we transform the soul-soil from which the thought is born and then flowers (which is also why the ideal is expressed as: thinking with the heart).
In a certain sense, what is renounced,
love replaces. What is given up, becomes transformed. What
is dark, is turned to gold. What is evil - our dark habits rooted
in the unconscious fear and mistrust of the other - the Thou, are
beginning to be transformed into love. And, best of all, what is
too sober, particularly in our Self, can - as is necessary - be made
silly.
The renunciation of unredeemed antipathy
and sympathy does not, however, mean their elimination. The will
acquires the capacity to master this somewhat base song of the soul.
We cease attending to it unconsciously, and turn that attention
(and the related intention) elsewhere. We master the unconscious
soul gesture that leads antipathies and sympathies into the forefront
of the soul, and like a good choir director, silence it so that we can
concentrate on other instruments of soul potential, other voices.
Transformed and conscious feelings of antipathy and sympathy
become a valid means of discernment. But we need to be awake to
the arising and becoming of these feelings, if we wish not to give the
shadow element free play.
The
will-in-thinking (an awake and more and more morally pure intention and
attention) fills the thought with life (which is why I add to the
ideal of thinking with the heart, the ideal also to will the good).
In this way we also refine the gold that
is latent in antipathy and sympathy - their capacities for discernment
and truth are enhanced, because we apply them with more consciousness -
a more awake attention and intention. In the teaching on the beam
and the mote, Christ, in Matthew 7:5, ends it this way: You fake, first get the log
out of your own eye and
then you can see
about getting the splinter out of your brother's eye.
Again, one of the best ways to eliminate
the log is to learn to laugh at it. The log arises from the
Shadow side of soul life, and in the light and warmth of our learning
to laugh at ourselves, the Shadow's hold dissolves.
In Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, we are
taught the importance of the moral basis for our actions, whether
outwardly in the sense world, or inwardly in the soul. Only that
action, which is preceded by a self-determined moral reason
(intention), is truly free. Even so, no one should be surprised
to discover that they are already trying to do these activities in some
fashion or another. Emerson said this: In self trust all virtues are
comprehended. The purpose of this essay
- this word-map - is to help us raise out of the realm of instinct,
step by step into full consciousness, our already existing natural
goodness.
[Another brief biographical note: As I
shared previously, I underwent a kind of spontaneous awakening at age
31, and one of the by-products of this inner infusion of light, was
that I became hyper-aware of judging people. I could see myself
putting them into various boxes and categories, and being now awake to
this beam in my own eye, I could also see that this was not right - it
violated conscience, so that I struggled to learn how to not do it.
That said, learning how not to do it, does not mean that we
always apply this newly learned moral craft. On the contrary, I
often fell back into old ways many times over the years, although there
did slowly dawn a kind of sensitivity, that let me see that I had been
again in thrall of the beam. Stepping outside the prison of the
beam does not become automatic - a habit, but must always be applied,
in the moment, consciously, with intention and attention (the
will-in-thinking).]
After we have learned to renounce
(consciously and for specific and individually freely chosen moral
reasons) our soul gestures of yet unredeemed antipathy and sympathy, in
order to learn how to think with that object of thinking
which we are learning to love, do we then move out of the Water Trial,
via more necessity, to the life passages of the Air Trial. This
movement from water (phenomenology) to air (silent practice), which
before (at the entrance to the Water Trial) began with thinking about,
now begins with the newly learned craft of thinking with.
We start with that which we have now discovered as a spiritual
development in the course of the Water Trial, and then apply that new
level of moral craft (capacity of the will) of renunciation and love to
the Air Trial. The will-in thinking, which has
learned to master the unredeemed aspects of feelings of antipathy and
sympathy, and to replace these with thoughts born out of cultivated
moods of soul, is
now strengthened. It is this strength that then lends itself to the life lessons of the Air
Trial.
Dennis Klocek described the Air Trial as
a learning to think backwards - of unraveling, or unrolling, the
thought content produced by thinking with.
The Discipleship stream sees it from a slightly different direction,
one which, however, is not in opposition, but which instead is once
more intended to be complementary.
Via the Water Trial we have learned how
to think with, and that has produced a thought content in the soul.
It is this
content that must now be renounced in the Air Trial. When Steiner wrote of this he called it: sacrifice of thoughts. We learn how, again in meeting people, to not
have a thought content at all. We become inwardly silent.
Strong forces of will are needed in order to subdue the already
achieved thought content, which we have wrapped around another person
(or any other object of thinking), even if this content now lives free
of unredeemed antipathies and sympathies. We can also renounce,
during the life passages of major aspects of the Air Trial, those
thoughts produced only by thinking about.
Further, in the feeling life there live attachments to the thought content. We have, after all,
produced it. It is our creation, and we like it (most of the time
- where the Shadow has unconsciously produced the thought content, we
can learn to relate to this soul phenomena out of a healthy antipathetic
discernment - we can come to not liking it
that we have such a thought). Sometimes, however, we can't even
separate our own sense of self from this thought content.
Nonetheless, to traverse the Air Trial we need to renounce our
collection of mental pictures (thoughts). Remember, the self
development that accompanies the sequence of alchemical Trials is not
just related to spiritual exercises, but also to moral or character
development; the chief features of which are acts of sacrifice - acts
of renunciation, and acts of love (the beginnings of: Not I, but Christ in me).
Steiner also calls this attachment to our
thought content, in certain circumstances: being in bondage to the
concept "One
must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will
fall into its bondage" (The
Philosophy of Freedom, last sentence of the
original Preface). It can be a savage inner struggle - this Air
Trial - to learn to forcefully set aside our favorite pictures of the
world, a seemingly negative artistic act, sometimes taking months to
accomplish. At the same time, their essential nature does not
disappear, for the very same qualitative aspects of our true nature -
our true i-AM - can once again call them forth. Thought does not
disappear, it only becomes latent and goes into a kind of pralaya (the state of being uncreated, unformed). The
will-in-thinking is strengthened by this act of renunciation, and when
we choose to think again concerning this same object of our thought,
the penetrating new powers of the will-in-thinking (attention and
intention) can call forth from this pralaya an ever deeper understanding of the underlying meaning
and truth of that about which we have chosen to think.
[another biographical note: I first
explored this process during my many long years of the Water Trial,
which really began when I discovered that I had become captured by a
psychological paradigm, or world picture. I had come to view
everyone, after a time, through the lens of this psychologically based
world picture. I discovered that the best way to become inwardly
free of this capture, was to undo any relationship to this paradigm, an
activity that took several months. A year or so later, I let
myself be captured by a similar world picture, this one connected to
Tibetan Buddhism. Again, many months were needed to become
inwardly free - to break the chains of the teaching - to be able to
only experience these thoughts when and if I consciously called them
forth. Subsequently, upon encountering Anthroposophy, I gave
myself wholly to it - became intoxicated with it in a way, and spent
three years drinking in all that I could manage, eventually once more
finding myself inwardly lacking the spiritual freedom before the
concept that I knew by then was essential.
Only after many months of work at
sacrifice of thoughts, was I able to stand in relationship to the
massive and marvelous thought content of Spiritual Science, inwardly
free. Through this activity of sacrifice of thoughts, I
eventually stood in relationship to concepts, acquired from Steiner, in
such manner that they only appeared in my consciousness when called
forth. From this free perspective (which I was then able to
survey as a whole), I then could see that Anthroposophy was not a
thought content at all, but rather just the method of awake, and fully
conscious (intended and attended) free thinking I had been
instinctively seeking for many years.]
As the shadow elements (unredeemed
antipathies and sympathies - Water Trial, and emotional attachments to
our self-created thought content - Air Trial) are being let go, we now
begin to have another experience connected to the Gospels. This
is again related to the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the
beatitude: "blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".
The rolling back, the sacrifice of, the
renouncing of the previously created thought content, makes the soul
inwardly poor in spirit. As we empty out the soul, we begin to learn a new
spiritual activity, which might be called thinking within. The Air Trial passages of life are taking
us from thinking with toward thinking within. This opens us to
the delicate first stages of the conscious experience of the kingdom of heaven as It begins to appear with greater clarity out of the general
background noise of the soul, and on the wings of our natural instinct
for the embryonic New Thinking. The Air Trial is developing
that which is meant to take us upward and onward to the Fire Trial, or
dialog. When we are poor in spirit, empty of the previously given
thought content (and master of silent practice), then we can, to a
degree, experience directly the
inside of the object of our thought. In
personal relationships, this is the capacity for the beginnings of true
empathy.
In a sense, the base elements of
unredeemed antipathy and sympathy are a foundation in the soul. They
are of the earth. In the Water Trial, we rise to a more subtle
and plastic condition in the soul. To think with,
to know the phenomenology of the object of thought, is to bring the
thinking into movement with its object. The
earth aspect is more solid and crystallized, while the water aspect
more fluid and more mobile. The discursively produced thought is
dead (the instinctive living element necessary for any thought remains
in the unconscious), while the consciously created picture-thought is
more living. With the air element, the soul becomes more
expansive. Thought that is renounced in the Air Trial dissipates,
disperses and dissolves into the general spiritual background of the
soul - the previously noted pralaya (uncreated, unformed) condition.
The will-in-thinking does not any longer call it forth, nor does
it let the thought call itself forth. When we are in bondage to
an idea, it calls itself forth, and the Air Trial teaches us to break
the chains by which we have let our unconscious feeling attachment tie
us to the concept/idea. We break these chains of feeling by
dissolving them, and Dennis Klocek's metaphor of rolling back the
thought is quite apt. We untie it from its attachment to the
soul, and without doubt the practice of the spiritual exercise of the
Ruskshau is a great help here.
Only then, when we are truly empty, can
thought, in the sense that it is the true inside of our object of
thinking, come toward us. The true idea of the object moves
toward us, as we learn to open ourselves to it, such that it then thinks in us. As Christ says in Luke 17: 20-21 "Asked by the Pharisees when
the the kingdom of God was coming he answered: "The kingdom of God
doesn't come with the watching like a hawk, and they don't say, Here it
is, or There it is, because, you know what? the kingdom of God is
inside you."
Steiner writes at age 25, in "The Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception", published in 1886, that: What takes place in human
consciousness is the interpretation of Nature to itself. Thought
is the last member in the series of processes whereby Nature is formed.
While Emerson writes at age 33 in the
essay "Nature"", published in 1836, 50
years before Steiner wrote the above: Nature is the incarnation of
a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas.
The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever
escaping again into the state of free thought.
Thus, having mastered (to a degree)
silent practice (learned how to be poor in spirit), we are at the
beginning of the Fire Trial, and similar in kind to our previous
renunciations, the soul now begins to discover how thinking can be in
deepest kinship with its object, by abandoning the Self - by no longer
seeing ourselves as the center of the universe. Instead we begin
to love the object of thinking more than we love ourselves. This
deepening intention to love, in that our own i-AM
learns to stand out of the way, allows the i-AM
of the other more room in the soul - we begin to see them not just from
their inside - true empathy or thinking within, but as them, united with them.
Again, anything living that can be thought empathically, can also
be even more deeply known when we learn to unite with it in thought.
But this requires more than our own action. The art of true
empathy, or thinking within, now, as we let go our
own centrality of being, becomes the chalice in which It can think in us - and the life passage of Fire Trial
begins to unfold.
This is the fruit of the Air Trial now
carried further - the spiritual developmental capacity to have dialog
with the realm of the invisibles, for true empathy free of self
importance and rooted in inner silence, now lets the inner being of the
other - the Thou - speak. Having understood how we become in
bondage to the concept, and emotionally attached to it, we no longer
repeat those actions, with the result that thought tends not to come to
rest in the soul, to coagulate there. Instead, thought now passes
through the soul - flows like a living stream.
[In 1999, seven years ago, I wrote this:
My method
basically now consists (when life circumstances allow it) of sitting at
my desk and writing descriptive passages of social and political
realities. Inwardly the experience is analogous to looking at a
clear stream. The surface of the stream results from my inner
activity in sacrifice of thoughts, fact gathering, picture forming and
artistic expression (more or less done simultaneously). At the
same time as my thinking sees this clear surface, I can perceive that
there arises, on the other side of that surface, activity which does
not belong to my own will, but which appears there spontaneously of its
own accord. The clear surface is then a product of two activities
acting in concert. With my writing I record what appears there.]
With this art (thinking within), which was earlier
merely a skill (thinking about)
and then a craft (thinking with), we now are in the midst
of the Fire Trial. But before discussing this Trial more deeply
from the point of view of Discipleship, we need to look ahead a bit and
understand what lies on the other side of the Fire Trial. We need
to have a picture of what happens in between - in the moral interval
between fire (dialog) and the new earth (new freedom), as the circle gesture spirals
around in a kind of completion, before moving on to a new level of
experience.
[a bit more biography: the material next
to be presented, regarding what can happen after the life passage of
the Fire Trial, is a little bit speculative on my part. While I
have had quite definite experiences of the kind: Imagination,
Inspiration and Intuition (mostly by Grace from Above), I am neither naturally clairvoyant nor an initiate. I
am not even sure most of us need anymore to strongly seek such a goal,
at least certainly not in a single lifetime. When I get deeper
into the Fire Trial material itself (below), especially given the
layered nature of the soul capacities and experiences of all the
Trials, and as well the true mystery nature of ordinary consciousness,
why I encourage a consideration of the more modest goal of a kind of sacramental thinking (as against initiation) especially for Americans, will
be made more plain.]
This culmination of the Fire Trial is
described in Steiner's John Gospel lectures, in lecture twelve, as: The Nature of the Virgin
Sophia and of the Holy Spirit (when reading
this lecture, keep in mind that it was addressed to the Intellectual
Soul, not the Consciousness Soul). The previous spiritual
developmental tasks, interwoven with the moral and character
developmental intervals, or Trials, produces a katharsis, or purification
of the astral body, such that the Rite of
Initiation may now be enacted, and the seed organs of clairvoyance may
now be impressed on the etheric body. I emphasize the term may,
because while a great deal of the development leading to this stage is
rooted in our own actions - our own will-in-thinking, as the Fire Trial
progresses we become more and more interdependent with the will
activity of the invisibles.
We do not, as I understand it, so much
initiate ourselves, but instead are initiated in a cooperative dance
necessarily involving Another.
On the other side of the Fire Trial, if
initiation is to be the result, we have acquired new faculties of
perception. The spiritual world is now there to be experienced
directly, and the soul has fully developed that spiritual freedom,
which The Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual Activity) contemplates, for we have renounced unredeemed antipathy
and sympathy, we have renounced our emotional attachments to a given
thought content and we have renounced even the significance of our own i-AM
in relationship to others; all the while learning to love ever more
deeply the objects of our perception (beholding) and thinking.
[From this point onward, I will be often
using the term beholding instead of perception (in certain cases) and for this
nuance I am grateful to Clifford Monks, who provided this in a recent
conversation between the two of us.]
Now before us stand new objects of inward beholding. The world of Imaginations is faced with this new freedom, but it stands inwardly over there, as it were, such that once more we have something which we think about, only this time it is not a sense object but a spiritual object. Moreover, the perceptual element of an Imagination has required our co-participation; and, the thought content produced by our cognitive capacity, during the experience of the supersensible, arises simultaneously with the experience. Contrary to a sense object, which has as an aspect of its nature what Steiner called the necessary given, a spiritual Imagination as an object of clairvoyant beholding does not exist independently of our own will-on-fire in thinking. We have authored and sourced (for this language, grateful thanks to Harvey Bornfield) it in cooperation with spiritual beings.
Our new thinking about has participated in the
creation of the Imagination. We experience the Imagination in
infinite internal space (ethereal and peripheral space) as an object,
whose existence comes about because our own activity is coupled with
the by Grace activity of higher beings. The intention and
attention are involved in a Parsifal question* to which the Imagination
is an answer (producing a kind of wordless knowledge). Subsequent
in time to this wordless knowing experience (which includes a
conceptual element), cognition then produces the word forms, either
written or spoken, in which the living Imagination dies into a
crystallized word-picture, such as what is given to us in many of
Steiner's lectures and writings. When we actively (not passively)
read these word-pictures, recreating them in our own picture-thinking,
the soul harmonizes with the Imaginative aspect of the world of spirit,
creating out of this harmony a rudimentary chalice in which later
spiritual experiences can arise.
[*A Parsifal question is a question that
if we didn't ask it when we could have, we may have to wait a long time
to later receive an answer.]
So we begin then to repeat at a higher
level the previous Trials, but this time facing experiences we have
never before had. We travel once more around the mandala of the
circling spiral of soul metamorphosis, learning in new ways to think about
(Imaginations), then on to new thinking with
(Inspirations) and finally to new thinking within (Intuitions). [There would seem to be here a great
mystery, about which I have not (yet) any experience, but at the same
time a great curiosity: do angels etc. tell jokes or laugh and dance?]
This full new thinking, however, is itself at a higher stage. It is thinking transformed into willed creative and participatory beholding. The normal thought content, which we know as an aspect of our original state of consciousness (earth and freedom, in discursive thinking about), only arises in the soul after the clairvoyant thinking perceiving/beholding. This thought content falls out, as it were, during the period of time the spiritual experience is fading away. The spiritual experience does not continue in earthly memory, but at the same time, the thought content produced (that is, how the experience was initially cognized as it fades away) does remain in earthly memory.
Let us now return to a deeper
appreciation of the life passages we are calling: the Fire Trial.
All the work we do, through the various
Trials and passages of our biography, more and more purifies the soul,
making it ready for clairvoyant spiritual perception. At the same
time, there is constant spiritual music in the soul - the song of the
wind and of the breath - even as far back as when we are only being
newly born out of the first Trial of earth and freedom.
Ordinary consciousness is already full of
spirit. Our problem is how do we pick the gold out of the dark
shadowy and leaden dross of the soul, normal to its given fallen state
of earth and freedom. Two factors are clues. These are
discovered during the early stages of introspection in the idea of
needs and the idea of choices. The wind - the breath - the living
river of thought - blows through the soul constantly, but always in accord with need
and most often in accord with other-need,
that is the needs not of the Self, but of the Thou. To live into
this Grace given always present intuition-like breath, we need to
choose. When we
do choose service to other-need, then true, good and
beautiful intuitions flow on the wind of Grace into the soul, even in
its ordinary and fallen state of consciousness.
How else are we to understand the natural and harmonious state of grace always potential in such relationships as: mother and child, comrades at arms and lovers.
Other-need also helps keep our ambitions in check. One of the
temptations that the Shadow offers to us is to let us believe we can,
for example, out of reading a Steiner text speak with authority about
matters concerning which we have had no other experience than the text.
Absent the real experience - the percept - true thought (the
concept) cannot arise. Only in conjunction with actual
clairvoyant experience can we, in full conscience, speak of such
matters with the same confidence as did our Teacher, Rudolf Steiner.
Yet, in the face of other-need, and our choice to devote
ourselves to this need, spiritual contact (experience) does appear in
the soul. The
spiritual percept (experience) arises within the soul as a response to
the Parsifal question which our intention and attention have created
out of our relationship to other-need; and, the modest nature of our choice to
serve this need makes our soul a suitable chalice to receive that
thought content which then serves this need.
For example, we have no need (besides a
vain curiosity) to know who was the 20th Century Bodhisattva
incarnation of the future Maitreya Buddha. Yet, on the other
hand, there is a deep need to know how to love those intimate others in
our biography, so that we can learn to heal our shared karma of wounds.
With this in mind (and also keep in mind
the layered nature of soul development, as against the one-sided idea
that it is a mere linear progression) let us look at the Fire Trial,
which Dennis Klocek has described also as: dialog; and which he related to meeting with the dead, who come
to us through our encounters with others. From the standpoint of
the Discipleship stream, this is once more perceived a bit differently,
yet again in a complementary fashion.
Having passed through the previous
Trials, our will-in-thinking now possesses certain capacities, certain
inner arts, the essence of which are moral in nature. The self
development spiritual exercises are secondary to, but supportive of,
the character (moral) developments. We have learned in the Water
Trial to renounce unredeemed antipathies and sympathies and to replace
those with a redeemed thought-content produced in a chalice of freely
chosen cultivated feelings - that is we have learned to think with
the object of thought. In the Air Trial we have renounced as well even
this self-produced thought-content, in order to live in the silence,
that is poor in
spirit - thus beginning the experience we
have been calling: thinking within.
In Fire Trial, which begins with its
capacity of thinking within won in the Air Trial, we
now enter into dialog on the wings of a renunciation of self
importance. That which is not-Self is to become more important
than that which is Self. Love of the other fills the
attention and intention, and the work toward Not I, but Christ in me
matures. In this case, the dialog
element for the Discipleship stream is more accurately characterized as
Steiner's "it
thinks in me", albeit this form of expression
is lacking a certain artistry (Intellectual Soul, not Consciousness
Soul). A more beautiful phrase would be: the delicate and subtle
presence of Fullness and fullness of Presence (Holy
Breath).
[another biographical note: I learned,
over many years of hard experience, that the essential matter was the
Parsifal question - the deeply felt question, coupled with the absence
of personal ambition in this question. The knowledge I seek must
be consciously intended to serve others, not to serve my vain
curiosity. In fact, my success in my researches into the social
(see other essays in this book), seems to have been entirely related to
my renunciation of the possibility of initiation in order to more
deeply be led to an understanding of the social, an act which occupied
my prayer life for a number of years in the mid-'80's. As a
consequence, I began to experience this wind, this delicate and subtle
presence of Fullness and fullness of Presence in response to my
Parsifal questions concerning an understanding of the social, which I
had sought in order to serve other-need. My biography led me to
working, from my mid-thirties onward, as a member of the working poor.
I cleaned toilets, washed dishes in restaurants, worked in mental
hospitals, and the last three years of my work life (59-62), I worked
in a factory. This led me to not only a personal, but a shared
experience of the suffering in the world due to the Age of Materialism,
which has led the i-AM not to appreciate itself or the causes of its suffering,
and which gave me such pain of soul that the only way I could think to
alleviate this was to seek, via the New Thinking, the ability to tell a new story of the
world and of human meaning. This was my
Parsifal question in its broadest form, and the wind would come at
anytime It choose as I lived out these experiences, so that I had
to learn to be sensitive to this wind,
and to serve It, even by pulling off the road when driving and taking
notes, or getting up from bed at night and writing when called.
The success of this inner work also made me on more than one
occasion, an obnoxious moral nut case, filled with excessive moments of
grand hubris - my own Shadow intoxicated and inflamed.
Fortunately, the Trials would knock me down whenever I got too
drunk with the seriousness of any luciferic fantasies of having a
mission.]
The moral art of thought not only comes to
the truth of the object of thinking, but also knows its goodness and
its beauty. In intimate relationships, where we learn to love the
will of the other - the Thou, and to see the beauty, not of their
physical appearance, but of their deeds - in this selfless perception
we then start to live in their true Fullness and Presence.
Thinking within, as it traverses the Fire Trial, begins to experience
the spiritual world as a thought world, via a pure thinking, which is a
cooperative art - Grace will be present. This purity is
three-fold. It is pure in the sense that it is only thought -
that is it is sense free. The attention is so focused only on
thought, that the outer sense world recedes far into the background of
consciousness. That is one aspect. The second kind of
purity is moral in nature. The soul is pure in its intention and
attention. The intention and attention are chaste, as it were.
Modest, or moderate. Without ambition of any kind.
Not even seeking initiation or enlightenment. Insight
increases in the soul, but each time as a surprise - as a wonder.
The third kind of purity is as regards
the thought - the concept itself. It is only
pure concept or idea and in this it is thought as Being, as Presence
and Fullness. Our earthy grasping of
the thought, which in the beginning tends to render it into mere mental
pictures or generalized concepts, has been gone beyond. We have
sensed thought unconsciously in this beginning, and caused it to fall
into our earthly and darkened consciousness from out of its original
living environment. When we learn how to return thought to its
true realm and nature, then our sense-free thinking, and the purity of
our intention and attention now lets the pure nature of the Being of
the Thought think
in us (dialog).
At the same time, this conversation has
what seems at first blush an odd quality to it, in the sense of our
freedom. As discussed in the essay above, on The
Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul, just as Christ gives his Being to our need for
knowledge of the Good as an act of Grace in such a way that the thought
of the Good is entirely ours to shape, so also that which thinks in us does not answer our knock with any authority whatsoever.
This Holy Spirit (the wind in the soul spends (exhausts) Its will into us in a way. Its participation with our i-AM
in the nature of the thought's form is such that, while the
Holy Spirit elevates our perception of truth, we remain the final
author and source. The Holy Spirit's participation is also a gift
and becomes the wind to the wings of our soul. Borne on this wind we see from
whatever height, depth or breadth that must be there for other-need. We serve the Thou and the Holy Spirit serves us
both.
The soul is now grateful for whatever
wills to dialog with it, and has no need for anything other than the
occasional, but profoundly nourishing, experiences of Grace, all of
which it had already begun to know, even coming in the beginning in the
wonderful mystery of ordinary consciousness, and in accord with other-need and choice.
Yet, in this same beginning, the karma of
wounds, and the unredeemed aspects of the astral or desire body move us
forward in life, and we are guided by the Shadow into and toward our
necessary biographical experiences. In the processes of the Fire
Trial, we learn to let go these drives, to move with and within the
stream of Providence in Life. The soul now tends to want only to
be content and at rest, no longer driven. We love the necessity
that Providence brings us, and devote ourselves to that task,
recognizing that the Great Whole of Life is in Other and far more
competent Hands (Christ's Love).
There can be, by the way, either (or
both) an outer necessity and an inner necessity. Self observation, with an evocation of
conscience applied to the question of whether we are being truthful to
ourselves, will
reveal whether an inner necessity is to have the same weight as an
outer one. This essay, in fact, was
very much produced out of an inner necessity in connection with the
delicate and subtle presence of Fullness and fullness of Presence,
brought into the stream of Time, because of a Parsifal question that
occurred to me regarding the pending conference on Ben Franklin (August
18-19, 2006), where I lived in Fair Oaks, California. Yet, even
in this work, I encountered Fire Trial elements, for latent and
unredeemed ambitions limited and distorted my first versions of this
essay. Only after I had recognized these ambitions and laughed at
myself for them, did matters begin to acquire a satisfactory to
conscience moral clarity.
We need to keep in mind that we remain of
the earth, even when the wind - the kingdom of heaven - is blowing
through the soul. In our earthly dialogs, one with the other, we
need to learn to just listen and not to always impose our own opinions
upon the others freedom of thought (for parents of children and others
in a teaching necessity, this will be different, sometimes). We
can let the soul rest in wonder at what the Thou will say and do.
So also with the invisible other-presence in the soul. In this way the outer biography and
the inner biography more and more consciously harmonize their naturally
interwoven music.
Life itself -
the biography - will demand of ordinary layered consciousness, and in
harmony with the necessities of our karma of wounds, those experiences
to be faced in which other-need and choice appear. If
we think with the heart and will the good, Grace will come in the form
of those other-needed intuitions - the deepening consciousness of what
other-presence wants to say into our inwardness, in concordance with
our slowly growing and developing capacities, as is necessary for
service to the Thou.
This is the essence of the Fire Trial - a
burning away purification of self for other. Just as in the Air
Trial we set aside attachment to a given thought content, so in the
Fire Trial we give away our attachments to our own meaning - we
dissolve the self descriptive concepts with which we previously adorned
our i-AM, as if wearing a costume. Instead, we just are.
In all our actions and choices, we are (if we think on it)
always: "In the
Beginning...".
We no longer are this or that, but just
are (i-AM). Each favorite self-name: father, mother,
anthroposophist, alchemist, lawyer, ditch digger - all these names of
self are let go, using the craft and art acquired in the Air Trial.
We do this in order to get ready for the first part of Not I, but Christ in me - the Not I part. We burn away
the I concepts, which by their very nature are limiting and mark us as
not-free and are a beam in our own eye-inside, directed at ourselves.
We don't have to think of ourselves as a
father or mother, for example, since the necessity of the biography
places those tasks before us already. The inner biography too,
with its ambitions, hopes, dreams and wishes, pulls us forward as well.
There is as yet no traditional clairvoyant spiritual perception - the astral body is still being purified during the Fire Trial. What was the lower ego, or that which begins its path accompanied by the Shadow or threefold double-complex, has more and more merged and identified itself with the higher ego - the self-participated aspect of conscience.
When we live purely in Parsifal questions
(that is, poor
in spirit), in the artistic mastery of our
antipathies and sympathies, having set aside self-importance and
attending to the object of thinking with the intention to love, then
thinking is meet with other-presence, as needed.
This is the quite definite inner experience of the delicate and
subtle presence of Fullness and fullness of Presence, which is
described in the John Gospel as follows: What's born of the flesh is
flesh, and what's born of the breath is breath. Don't be amazed
because I told you you have to be born again. The wind blows
where it will and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it
comes from or where it goes; it's the same with everyone born of the
breath John 3: 6-8
This Fire Trial is all the more painful, because we have become exposed via the previous layers (stages) of spiritual and character development, to a much deeper introspective understanding of our own desire body - our own astral body. We can now not only think within the other - the Thou, but also we can now think much deeper within our own soul - we are naked before our own introspective clarity of perception. That which remains unredeemed, and still yet outside the full and completed Fire Trial of purification, lies inwardly exposed to us. The descending conscience (like the descent of the dove in the Gospels) meets the rising lower ego, both seeking union and marriage; and this light from above, a kind of deep moral Grace, illuminates and warms all that is yet shadow in the soul. Emerson has put the bare bones of it like this in his lecture, The American Scholar: "For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds..."
*
Just as we learned to think about, with and within the other - the Thou, so we learn to think about, with and within ones own soul. Each skill, craft and art of thinking emerges from its corresponding Trial.
The Earth Trial is a given, it is where most of us start.
The Water Trial requires our first struggles with renunciation
and the beginning, and delicate, expressions of love. The Air
Trial takes us even further, to the abandonment of our favorite
thoughts. Then we also renounce our excessive sense of Self, in
the process of facing the Fire Trial. There we are also most
exposed to our own other-Self, - the Shadow - which is now fully
illuminated - no secrets whatsoever.
Let us consider, briefly, some hints on
the encounter with the Shadow, from the point of view of the
Discipleship stream.
When Valentin Tomberg was writing as an anthroposophist, he described in his book "Inner Development", three aspects to the Shadow: a luciferic double, an ahrimanic double and a human double. Later, in his profoundly Christian "Meditations on the Tarot: a Journey into Christian Hermeticism" he wrote of the tempter, the prosecutor and of egregores - that is of self-created psychic parasites in the soul (Steiner called these latter creatures, in Man as Symphony of the Creative Word: cancers or tumors of the soul).
When we think discursively - talk
inwardly to ourselves, the unconscious works into the soul. That
is, both the higher and the lower unconscious are present. No
true thought, for example, can arise in the soul except for its having
come to us via the living stream of thought (see Kuhlewind here).
But, because in ordinary and fallen soul consciousness, we are
bound (intentionally by the Gods so as to give us true freedom on the
earth) into an inner darkness of spirit, we only can know thought as it
falls out and down into the soul from its original living element.
In discursive thought the living element has died.
Conscience, another higher element of the
unconscious, also speaks into the soul via discursive thought, as that
whispering still small voice.
At the same time, the Shadow is active
here as well. When we struggle with our own temptation or
tempt others (the luciferic double), or when we hurt ourselves, or
others (prosecute ourselves) with mean thoughts (the ahrimanic double),
these too come from the unconscious into discursive thinking.
When we fall, over and over again into temptation such as
addiction or alcoholism, part of the soul becomes excessively free of
the ego, for the ego is weak in many ways. This part can be
called an egregore or a tumor of soul.
However, since all manner of bad habits
(an ill temper, an abusive tongue) are also connected to tiny tumors of
soul, I have began to feel that this language lacks what art and a
sense of beauty needs to give to our conceptions, so above I wrote only
of wounds, of our karma of wounds. In the
case of egregores or serious tumors or cancers of the soul, we can call
these self-generated
wounds.
What the life passages of the Trials give
to us is ever greater consciousness. We draw out of the
unconscious, through a more and more awake intention and attention,
not only its lower elements, the Shadow and darkly cold side of
temptations, prosecutions and wounds, but also the Light and heart
warmed side, the stream of living thought and participated conscience.
So, in facing the Water Trial of the mote
and the beam we begin the work of discipleship, the work of seeking
reintegration and reunion with the Divine Mystery Itself. So also
with the Air Trial and the Fire Trial. Bit by bit we perceive and
then let go what is dark in the unconscious, thereby separating and
drawing into the light the gold of our growing will-in-thinking.
The fruit of each Trial remains with us,
and at each passage becomes deeper. The soul becomes a rich
texture of layers of inner song and music in the form of ever unfolding
capacities of will, in the corresponding creative cultivation of
sublime elements in the feeling life, all interwoven with the arising
and passing away of the breath-stream of living thought.
The purified
will (an appropriately moral intention and attention) creates heart
warmth in the soul-soil of feeling, out of which the light and life
filled flower of thought is born. And,
because we are first born into this process out of the Earth Trial of
freedom, our whole passage in these Life Trials goes forward in
freedom. It all evolves out of our choices. Recall Emerson:
In self trust all virtues are comprehended.[emphasis added]
Nothing renounced has disappeared, but
rather the soul becomes an instrument, which the i-AM
in freedom learns to play. The notes and intervals become primal
dynamic expressions of soul forces and capacities, many generated out
of spiritual exercises. Just as we must practice the use of
a material musical instrument, so we must practice the capacities of
the soul. At the same time, many forces and capacities (if not
more) have a quality that comes only from the moral tone of the soul.
We purify the instrument of the soul as much as we learn how to
use it. Both are needed, both are necessary. The spiritual
exercises, that is the how as in technique, has more
kinship with the teachings of the true Alchemists - the stream of the
Kings, while the moral purity of the soul has more kinship with the
teachings of Christ - the stream of the Shepherds.
Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is the
modern transformation of the Christ-in-me moral essence of
the John Gospel, while Knowledge
of Higher Worlds is the modern transformation
of the Rosicrucian Ideals of spiritual developmental exercises.
While the latter has more kinship with the soul nature of
Central Europe - the seeking to incarnate the Ideal, the former
has more kinship with the soul nature of the American - the need to act
morally in the world. Both are present everywhere in the world,
it is just the mix and their proportions that vary from one soul
gesture to another, in the wonder and mystery of the Threefold World.
Let us now seek to make a whole.
We become more and more inwardly free as we renounce and transform sympathies and antipathies,
then as well the very thought content itself, until finally we
sacrifice our own importance. Each act of renunciation is
accompanied by a corresponding and deeper capacity to love. Each
act of love, beginning with the most simple appreciation of the other -
the Thou, creates inner purity: inner light and warmth. We are in
the process of learning to make of the soul a temple, and to fill it with created and cultivated feelings of
reverence and wonder at not only the world of nature, but also the
world of social community - the stream of karmic wounds and free
destiny meetings with our companions in life.
Ultimately, this inner and outer moral
work leads us to becoming fully inwardly naked to ourselves in the Fire
Trial (where there is no longer the possibility of escaping the
Shadow), and as well fully and consciously naked to the other-Presence (the kingdom of heaven is within you). But even in
the face of the
other-Presence we are nevertheless completely
free. The nature of the breath (the other-Presence) is to bring
not only a new depth of comprehension, but ever more freedom, for we
never stop being the principle willful agent of the thought-content
that arises in the soul. Overtime we become even freer and more
creative - a true artist in thought.
The creation of a human thought content
is the sole province of the 10th Hierarchy. Only in us, and
through our love, does the Cosmos know Itself in the beauty of human
thought. We were told this as long ago as Genesis 2:19-20, with
the symbolic picture that unto Adam is given the power of naming every
living creature. We name the world, give it its human meaning, with every thought we source and author.
Here we can now come to understand more
deeply the truth, beauty and goodness hidden in Christ's comments in
response to the question of what is the most important commandment: He
said to them, "You
are to love your lord God with all your heart and all your spirit and
all your mind. That is the important and first commandment. [love other-Presence] The second one is similar:
You are to love those close to you as you love yourself. [love the Thou, the companions in life] All the law and the
prophets hang from these two commands" .
Matthew 22: 37-40.
What we really learn is to participate
sacramentally in the arrival of the thought-content in the soul, which
becomes then ever new each time we truly think. We are, in this,
inwardly born again and again and again. This living thinking is a perpetual rebirth of thought, which comes
into being and dies away - a constant dying and becoming. We
learn to unite with this living stream of thought, the living stream of
breath within. We give ourselves over to it, in a participatory
Rite - an artistic soul dance of sacred-heart thinking, and then
discover the true secret of the Fire Trial, which has been hidden out
in the open in the Gospels, just in this: Now I bathe you in the water
to change hearts, but the one coming after me is stronger than me: I'm
not big enough to carry his shoes. He will bathe you in holy
breath and fire. John the Baptist:
Matthew 3:11
leading us, through His Grace (holy breath within)
and His Love (as Artistic arranger of the Karma
of the Fire of Trials in our biographies), to:
Not I, but Christ in me.
********
[As I was going through a final revision of the whole text of this book, the following statement appeared in an essay, by Michael Howard, in the News for Members:
"This brings
us to see another primary reason why Rudolf Steiner gave such emphasis
to the role of the arts. In Rudolf Steiner's view, the
fundamental discipline for each art has to do with learning to perceive
the moral qualities inherent in each artistic medium. The same
discipline can be surmised from Rudolf Steiner's view of spiritual
development as serving the transformation of the human astral body into
Spirit Self. Here too is an avenue for cultivating another
dimension of the art of the spirit, what we might call the Art of the
Spirit Self. This Art of the Spirit Self precedes all others
because the art of building community, the Social Art, and the art of
balancing and harmonizing all dimensions of the living earth, the
Ecological Art, depend on the art of self-metamorphosis.
"The
Anthroposophical Society will find new life and purpose insofar as it
fosters not only the Science of the Spirit, but also the Art of the
Spirit and its different dimensions: the Art of the Spirit Self, the
Social Art, and the Ecological Art.
"For the Art
of the Spirit is the Art of the New Mysteries."
It is my hope that this essay, In Joyous
Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship, has made a contribution to this vision.]
*************************************
[For the neophyte: Having examined
briefly the essential moral nature of inner work, following on our
appreciation of how it is that the Stage Setting, while managed by
darker forces, is not the essential meaning of Earth Existence (itself
a moral communion with Christ), we now begin to get more into the
concrete thinking skills necessary for the right perception of human
social life in general. As we saw in the first three essays,
conventional thinking does not bring to us the spiritual reality
underlying our shared social existence. In addition, since
anthroposophists are members of a Society and Movement, that is they
are involved socially with each other and as a community with the wider
social world, it becomes prudent think with more depth about this
Society and Movement itself. Yet, in order to do that with
conscientiousness, we must first consider how it is that the new thinking can objectively create a new social science, so
that our considerations concerning the social in general, and the
social in the Society and Movement in particular, are grounded in a
true knowledge-seeking discipline and not just vain opinions.]
The Methodology Necessary for a New Social Science
- a brief introduction -
(written for this book in the
Season of Michaelmas, 2007)
One of the potential capacities, of those
who seriously follow in the footsteps of Rudolf Steiner, involves the
ability to give birth to the New (Living) Thinking. However,
merely reading Steiner, or joining the Society, does not bring about
this birth. Moreover this birth, when accomplished, does not just arise
in the abstract, but realizes its deepest self-awareness when this
Living Thinking is applied to a specific field of knowledge. In
fact, the New Thinking very much needs earthly application in order to
have a proper moral grounding. In this earthly connection a kind
of training occurs, which has the consequence that when a will thus trained enters on spiritual experience, it brings
with it capacities not otherwise obtainable.
Now within the anthroposophical movement,
the dominant field of knowledge in which an embryonic version of the New Thinking has appeared is what is
called Goethean
Science. We also find its mature birth in the works produced by such individuals as Owen
Barfield, Georg Kuhlewind, Bruno Abrami (a member of the overlooked
Italian School) and Jesaiah Ben-Aharon.
Thus, in the Goethean Scientific work of
such as Schwenk (Sensitive
Chaos: the
creation of flowing forms in water and air);
Schad (Man and Mammal: toward a biology of form;
Grohmann (The Plant vols. 1 and 2) and
the related institutions, such as the Nature
Institute
[http://www.natureinstitute.org/index.htm] featuring Craig Holdrege,
the goetheanistic application of the embryonic version of the New
Thinking is slowly taking its proper place in the world. The
methodology of such a science is developed in its basic form and
structure in Ernst Lehrs' book: Man or
Matter:
Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of
Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought.
Rudolf Steiner unveiled these first
(embryonic) steps of the path of a knowing doer of the spiritual in Nature, in his book: A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. We also owe to Steiner the revival of an interest
in Goethe himself, and in particular Goethe's scientific works such as The
Metamorphosis of Plants and A Theory
of Color. Anyone wanting to develop
their thinking, such that it can be prepared to work within a New
Social Science, will want to become well acquainted with all these
books, but in particular with A Theory....
In moving from the embryonic aspect of
the New Thinking, to its maturity via The
Philosophy... there appears a boundary
condition, which this New Thinking can encounter during its
development. This is where the phenomena being studied lacks a
definite physical sense world existence. Thus, Goethe's idea of exact sensorial phantasy (the use of the imagination to recreate inwardly in the
soul a sensory experience as it occurs over time) can reach a limit
when the phenomena sought to be studied is only available in the soul
as a purely abstract mental picture or concept and has no corresponding
appearance in the world of the senses.
This is a problem that Owen Barfield
certainly had to meet in his studies of language, which he clearly
thought about imaginatively and in movement over time (see for example
his remarkable: Speaker's
Meaning, as well as his World's
Apart). Once we no longer have a sense
world necessary
given (see Steiner's A Theory
of...), thinking acquires an additional
responsibility, for the object of its considerations now only arrives
in the soul out of our own activity in the creation of mental pictures
and the apprehension of concepts.
In a proposed answer with an apparent
awareness of this problem, the anthroposophical mathematician Lawrence
Edwards, in his book Fields of
Form, suggested that in addition to a kind of
Goethean thinking, there is a thinking which needed to be called:
polar-Goethean thinking. As this essay proceeds, I'll be trying
to develop such ideas in a deeper fashion, so that the reader can find
their way to understanding the kind of thinking needed in order to be
able to behold the living and spiritual elements of human social
existence, in all its dynamic expression (see my The
Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul, for a demonstration).
One last point of reference concerns the
study of projective or synthetic geometry. This geometrical
discipline will be very helpful to anyone wishing to find their way
into the New Thinking. Working with this geometry exercises
our inherent picture thinking qualities in such a way that we can
behold and transform mobile imaginative pictures without losing any
quality of exactness. The development of this geometry among
anthroposophists (by such as George Adams Kaufman, Lawrence Edwards and
Olive Whicher - to name just a few) is very much a consequence of the
polar-Goethean thinking to which Edwards pointed, and this as well
needs to be appreciated. The best book, in my view, (which is, of
course, out of print) is Olive Whicher's: Projective
Geometry: Creative Polarities in Space and Time.
The reader interested in projective
geometry should also know that its study in the above book is not done
through abstract proofs, but entirely through drawing. We
discover the rules of projective geometry with a piece of paper, a
ruler, pencil and our own imagination.
As a cautionary tale, so as to not forget
that is possible to follow paths that can lead to errors of thought, we
will also here take a look at what has been called (among
anthroposophists) symptomatology, which is a well intended effort to apprehend with the
thinking the deeper aspects of the social and historical, but has
(alas) led instead to much confusion.
And finally, we need to recognize that it
is Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Freedom, that resolves the dilemma posed by the transition from
working directly with sense experience, to working solely with mental
pictures and concepts (abstractions) that have no definite exact
reference in the world of the senses. This resolution is made
available when we understand the practice of pure thinking.
Let me remind the reader here of the
threefold nature of pure thinking as described
above in In Joyous...
First the thinking is essentially sense
free, which mean that the consciousness is focused on the thinking to
the exclusion of sense experience (as much as possible). Second
the thinking is selfless, that is pure in the moral sense. Third,
the thinking is only of concepts and mental pictures themselves.
* *
*
As we begin to get into details, I want to share with the reader that what is to be written here was not by me understood in the beginning. I wandered in many strange places and down a number of false paths, before I slowly came awake to the real inner processes and activities. If there was a guiding light, it was that as I proceeded thoughts would arise in my consciousness that clearly revealed a deeper than before understanding of my riddles (the social). In effect, I would have small successes, and this would lead me on.
I say this here so that the reader will not think that they have to have arrived at some kind of inner state first, before taking up their riddles. It is clearly true that it is the riddles themselves that guide us on our personal path to the discovery of the secrets of the New (Living) Thinking. We hunger to know, and are thus drawn forward into the adventure that awaits.
I will also below have to make
additional references to my previous essay: In Joyous
Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship, in which I have laid out certain moral arts that I
found it necessary to develop in order to acquire the capacities to
enter more deeply into a contemplative picture-thinking of the social.
These capacities first arose as a consequence of learning how to
think more consciously about my fellow human beings, but the polished
development of these capacities was in the work of seeking answers to
my riddles. In that essay I placed human relationships in the
foreground, but at the same time everything said there can be applied
to problems of knowledge in general, as will be made more clear as we
proceed.
*
Lets begin with the riddles.
We have an experience that we want to
know something. We may also have the experience that knowing what
we want to know might be a bit harder than we think. This latter
experience usually comes in the biography in the form of failures.
We think we know, only to discover from experience that we do not
know.
After a time we might come to understand
that the seeking of knowledge comes to our consciousness first in the
form of a question, or a riddle. In its higher sense we can
sometimes think of this as a Parsifal Question - a question that if we
don't seek to answer it when the answer is nearby and available,
results in our having to undergo trials that may have been unnecessary
and avoidable. What we are likely to discover over time is that
these riddles really present themselves as a series of nested questions. We move deeper into our riddles by
moving from question to question, following a trail in the world of
thought.
At the same time, the above books can
help us understand from various directions this inner process, its
dimensions and how we can find our way into the world of pure thinking
in a scientific fashion. At least a few scientists understand
this is possible, because (in particular) of the nature of pure
mathematical thinking. At the same time their understanding of
the art of thinking itself is weak. It was Rudolf Steiner in his A Theory
... that laid out the basic rules underlying
this discipline of the soul by the spirit, which was later revisited
with another and deeper emphasis on the moral element in The
Philosophy....
For example, the mathematician Roger
Penrose, in his book The
Emperor's New Mind, makes this remarkable
admission: "...I
cannot help feeling that, with mathematics the case for believing in
some kind of ethereal, eternal existence, at least for the more
profound mathematical concepts, is a good deal stronger..." (pp. 97). There is other evidence that Einstein
and Godel (as well as Penrose) are considered by some to be modern
Platonists, because of their views on the independent existence of ideas (see Incompleteness:
the Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel, by
Rebecca Goldstein).
Once we understand that the thinking process is drawn forward by riddles and nested questions, then we can take a more careful look at some aspects of thinking itself.
Generally thinking has an object, in
relationship to which we are the thinking subject. In
Joyous... above, I wrote of a moral process
connected to renunciation and love (Tomberg speaks of learning to think on your
knees), wherein thinking about
gave birth to thinking with, which in turn gave birth
to thinking within, and then that to thinking as.
In this slowly unfolding process (about > with > within
> as), the relationship between the object
of thinking, and our subjectivity slowly becomes more intimate - the
separation narrows. Eventually "it thinks in me",
and the subject object nature of the conversation can disappear.
Now in A Theory... Steiner takes us carefully toward organic thinking and then through that toward spiritual thinking. Lets look at the problem of organic thinking first, which is more accessible in a way.
Sometimes this thinking is called phenomenology, and above I have
called it thinking with. This is a kind of
thinking very suited to coming to knowledge of the living or organic
aspects of existence, which is why this process of Goetheanism gives birth to works in the field of Goethean Science.
For Goethe, the matter concerned the
world of perceptions (the sense world), which Barfield sometimes called
the world of appearances (see Barfield's Saving the
Appearances: a study in idolatry).
Goethe discovered that the world of appearances, which Natural
Philosophy (science) was at that time beginning to dismiss (it was
thought the truth had to be found somehow and somewhere other than the
realm of the senses), could be read. He called it: reading the Book of Nature.
For example, using microscopes and telescopes led Natural Philosophers to realize that there was enormous detail not apprehended by the therefore limited human sense organs, which then suggested to them that the unaided senses would not lead to the discovery of the truth. Goethe thought otherwise, which was a kind of act of faith.
Goethe's researches led him to conclude
that the sense world spoke, and if we studied it in
the right way (various rules of thinking discipline needed to be
applied - see Man or
Matter above), then Nature Herself would
teach all that we needed to know. My work has shown to me that
not only does the natural world speak,
through its phenomenal appearances, but so also does the social world.
There is not only a Book of Nature, but also a Book of the Social World.
For those who would like a bit of explanation for this, you might consider the following: Picture that the Creation has come to rest in a living equilibrium. Although it is true from a spiritual-historical view that the senses experience a world of maya - an illusion. A more modern view (Goetheanism),which has arisen since the Incarnation, realizes that this maya is not disorganized. What appears to us as the illusion reveals its own nature, because the Word Itself is embodied in it. The Word has clothed Itself in the Creation, and when thinking wakes up in its true nature, the speaking of the Word in the appearances becomes capable of being beheld within human consciousness by the I ("it thinks in me"); or as Steiner has pointed out in The Philosophy...: knowledge (the speaking of the Word through the Creation) is the union of percept (experience) and concept (thought).
As said above, Steiner put it this way in
A
Theory...: "Thought is the last of a
series of processes by which Nature was formed".
Or Emerson, in his essay Nature: "Nature
is a thought incarnate, and turns to thought again as water becomes
vapor and then gas. The World is mind precipitated, and the
volatile essence is forever escaping into the state of free thought".
If there is a caveat, it is this.
We must be active inwardly. Our thinking needs to become
disciplined - ordered in a way, yet remain artistically open. Our
will-in-thinking needs to awaken. Only the I can bring about this
metamorphosis in the soul, which leads the thinking from its given
state, through an organic qualitative picture-thinking, to an awake and
pure (living) thinking.
Let us return once more to the subject / object aspect of thinking.
What Goethe discovered was that if he
recreated the gestures of Nature, particularly of the Plant, in his
imagination in as exact a fashion as possible, that which was within the appearances made itself known to his inward
picturing. This is why we are introduced to such disciplines in
the contemplation of changes in leaves over the becoming cycle of a
particular plant. We collect or draw the various kinds of leaves
made by a plant over the course of its life, and then recreate inwardly
with our imagination, this series of form gestures the plant has made
over time. We think with the plant's expression in
the sense world.
In doing this thinking with we open ourselves up to that which stands within the different forms that arose over time, but which was
all the while continuously living behind each individual form.
Such work is, however, merely an appetizer for the real work,
which is why I encouraged the reader to become well acquainted with
such books as Sensitive
Chaos. From such reading we can come to
understand how much detail can be gone into while exploring this
relationship between ourselves as thinking subject and the
objective world of changing form.
A major aspect of the needed discipline
involves realizing that we must hold back our own gesture of thinking
in that it tends to want at once to bring a ready made concept (a
thought) to our experience. We instead give our consciousness
over to the experience - live in the perception and let It speak - and then will arise the true related thought.
We do not want to impose an already thought thought or mental
picture or concept on the phenomena, but wait, holding back the
cognitional gesture, until the phenomena Itself leads us to the
thought-concept.
Only practice, which is carefully
self-aware, will understand this. Learning this is something that
can't really be known as a mere thought from reading a text. We
must develop the tools of introspection, so that we can make inner
observations of our own activity. We not only study the
phenomena of the sense world, but the phenomena of the own soul as well.
There is a bit of a trick here, in that
when we are thinking, we can't self observe. What makes
self-observation possible is that our inner activity leaves behind it a
kind of fading away impression in the soul, such that after a certain
inner activity, we can for a time observe this slowly disappearing
mirror image of our own activity. Again, this is an experience
which must be gained directly, and cannot really be understood as a
mere thought from reading.
Now when we move from thinking about
sense world objects (or other kinds of the necessary given), to the pure thinking in mental pictures or concepts of
objects which have no necessary given, a certain
problem arises. How do we trust the mental picture or concept
which we have abstracted from our experience? The necessary given aspect of the sense world is obvious, but when we think about,
with or within a non-sense world object (such as the concepts:
biography, community or family), there is no true sense percept (no
true sense experience). The abstract concept has already been
taught to us by our culture. In fact, our ordinary consciousness
has many such abstract concepts, for which there is no sense world
percept.
The solution to this is to understand
something which is part of the discipline of Goethean Science, namely
to learn to be purely descriptive. So we can then ask: What is a
biography, a family or a community? (to continue the examples).
These are such simple abstract concepts
that we have no problem at all with them. We were raised
(most of us) in a family. Aspects of our biographies are lived in
communities made up of many families. We can say all manner of
things about biographies, families and communities in general, and in
particular, out of our own experience. We also know that such a
term (word) as family can be used metaphorically, as in: the family of man. Or, a community of related types of plants. Or even the biography of a social form such as a Branch of the
Anthroposophical Society.
To help us further understand this, let
us next look briefly at two kinds of errors which arise in thinking in
relationship to social questions, one of which is mostly part of the
anthroposophical movement (symptomatology), and the other mostly part
of conventional social science.
The error in conventional social science
arises in the tendency to emulate the past of physics, a problem true
also in conventional economic theory. This is the tendency to
reduce complex phenomena to number, and then to seek to find laws of
the phenomena in the number relationships (statistics).This was not
always the case (and is still being resisted in some quarters),
witness, for example, C. Wright Mills: The
Sociological Imagination, but there lies a
whole other story. In Goetheanism, that is in learning to Listen
to the World Song, or to behold the speaking of the Book of the Social
World, we live into the appearances, and do not try to analyze for some
kind of hidden behind-the-appearances rule or law.
Instead of seeking number relationships among large populations for our understanding of the social, we carefully practice description (for more, see below).
The error in symptomatology (as done by
anthroposophists) is as follows: First, one studies Rudolf Steiner, and
acquires from Steiner certain concepts. Then one looks at the
social-political world as if it presented symptoms, to which we attach
the already thought concepts we acquired from reading Steiner. In
the last phrase just above we come to the problem. There is in
this activity no phenomenology and the social-political world is not
allowed to speak, for we already have the concept (borrowed from Steiner)
which we attach to the contemporary historical phenomena.
In addition, our experiences of the
social world may be driven by unconscious feelings of antipathy and
sympathy. Any thought arising out of an unconscious (shadow
driven) feeling has lost its objectivity. Such that when an
anthroposophist, who is trying to work with symptomatology, is reacting
unconsciously out of antipathy to the phenomena being observed, this
further distorts away from any objectivity the falsely practiced
joining of the pre-thought Steiner thought that is now being attached
erroneously to the social phenomena.
Thinking in this case is then not
listening, but instead is a bringing to the phenomena of social
existence a pre-thought thought, which has the effect inwardly in the
soul of placing a ghost (Barfield called these idols)
in between our thinking and the phenomena. Similar kinds of
things exist in contemporary social science as well, when certain
points of view are elevated to near-eternal verities (dominant world
views), and are then used to interpret all social phenomena in accord
with that particular view. Here, for example, we see today the
use of Darwinian evolutionary theory, especially in the form of
evolutionary psychology, as a main interpretive meaning given to understanding humanity's social life in the
modern world.
In both cases, whether it is the
application of pre-thought concepts borrowed from Steiner, or from
modern theories of human nature, the result is the same.
The phenomena are not experienced - not heard. Only
the pre-thought ghost (the idol) is known in the soul.
So then, what is the incipient, striving
for the new (living) thinking, social scientist to do?
Describe!
No theory, no conclusions, no idols, no
ghosts. Simply pure description, which is not
an easy craft at all by the way.
About 12 years ago, I went through old
files, and made a throw-away pile on the floor of my bedroom/office of
years of descriptive writings set down on loose leaf notebook paper.
The stack of individual sheets of paper was higher than my knee.
Of course at that time I was only
guessing as to method. I had discovered that when I carefully
described, new perceptions of the social would arise, which new
thoughts led me on (nested questions and riddles). I also had the
advantage of a deeper introspective life, such that when thinking about
the outer and inner aspects of social existence, my sense of the inner
was more accurate and less confused by contemporary and false
conceptions of the nature of mind, assumed by modern social scientists
to stand behind human behaviors.
I also held back on publishing, such that
I had, by the time I threw out that stack of paper, offered for
publication (to the Threefold Review) only one paper: Threshold
Problems in Thinking the Threefold Social Order
[http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thpts.html]; and self published another Song of
the Grandfathers:
real wealth (wisdom) and the redemption of social and political
existence (civilization) [http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/sggfr.html].
The first was written in 1991 or so, the second in 1995) and both
remained basically unpublished until 1997 when I begin to construct my
own website. After being available for a time on that website,
the Threshold essay did receive some recognition on anthroposophically
oriented aspects of the Internet. I have been, during my
biography, mostly a father (five children, two marriages) and a member
of the working poor (but never an academic), so my offerings never
really had a chance of receiving much recognition in traditional ways,
and the research was always being done in fits and starts.
At the same time this was a blessing, because I didn't have to fight against the tide of contemporary thought. I share this, by the way, so as to encourage others to do such work in whatever circumstances of life they find themselves, knowing that it is the questions and riddles and work that has the most meaning, not success or achievement or notoriety.
Some may recall that Steiner held back on
publishing his research about the threefold form of the human being for
17 years! Much can be gained by letting our work in the world of
organic and pure thinking mature over time.
Let us go forward now, continuing our
examples with the biography, the family and the community.
Using the imaginative faculty, and our related carefulness with regard to the fact that we are working with what can become an idol (an illusory abstraction), we make descriptive pictures of each over time. Here I'll be brief, but many texts by social anthropologists contain important data, just not yet developed in full consciousness in a Goethean fashion.
At the same time we need to keep clearly
in mind that these themes being described here take the form of pure
abstract concepts, and not anything that exists as a necessary given in
the sense world.
Let us begin with the biography. We
each have one, and this itself can be something to carefully
contemplate, for it contains both individual and universal phenomena.
While a great deal of understanding given to us by Rudolf Steiner
can illuminate certain details, it is actually unnecessary to borrow
his concepts, when instead we can carefully observe and describe, using
quite ordinary language, the nature of a biography.
We are born, we die. We are raised
and educated. We come into a specific time and place, as well as
language and culture. We make choices and have meetings of
destiny (spouses, work situations and so forth). We suffer
illnesses and meet all kinds of challenges.
If we look within at our own soul life,
we will come upon a world view that belongs to us, but was/is strongly
influenced by all the above factors. We also have emotional
habits and strong desires. The more detail we go into in our own
biography, the greater will be our ability to recognize not only the
universal elements of all biographies, but even more important the
individual nature of this organism - our personal Tale (the biography as a thing in itself).
We also have significant tendencies that
arise in the personal nature of our thinking, but which are due to
outside influences. If we are willing, we can through
conversation with others, become more deeply aware of how they too have
such characteristics as do we. Emerson wrote this as pointed out
above, for his Harvard lecture, The
American Scholar: For the instinct is sure,
that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then
learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has
descended into the secrets of all minds...
This picture can then be made...
From my self as a center, I peek out at a
world of sense experience. I interpret this world according to
those experiences that arose during my biography, and while the details
of those interpretations of the meaning of my experience are rich, they
often represent influences I have not worked over on my own. My
world view is shaped by family and community (in its widest sense).
These influences also determine the conceptions by which my self
conceives of my inner life. My I swims in a sea of meaning I may
have had little influence determining on my own, and I also seem to be
the tail wagged by the dog of emotions over which I have little control.
These are the general or universal
characteristics of the biography. What is also crucial to realize
is that the individual characteristics result in each biography being
essentially unique. This observation is a little harder to
obtain, because one of the influences to which we may have submitted
has shaped our thinking to perceive others only by their general
characteristics and not their individual and unique natures. I
have to actually strive to learn to "walk in another's shoes", that is
to see their biography from its inside, rather than from the outside
(to think with and within them, instead of just about
them).
Next, let us take up the family...and
simultaneously, the community. Here again we have general or
universal characteristics, and when we get into the fine details, quite
individual and unique characteristics. Remember we are also going
to work with this as something in movement over time.
Take an old world village, perhaps about
500 years ago (at the beginning of the Age of the Consciousness Soul),
for example. Many large families. Often a dozen births for
each mother, not all of them live. Many relations, as well.
An old world village might contain any number of large extended
families (a few grandparents, many parents and several dozens of
children and related cousins). Rules as to marriage across these
complicated lines of blood existed for very practical and obvious
reasons.
Such a village (community) would often have one language, one general culture, one religion and social political structure. Different villages in different locales in Europe would have differences of language, culture, religion and social political structure, but all would have large extended families as the dominate basis of the community.
Everyone would know most everyone else.
Children born into such families would have destinies almost
fixed in nature (the son becomes like the father, the daughter like the
mother). No one violates social norms without severe
consequences. Individualism is generally unheard of. People
almost do not have a thought outside the standard and shared point of
view. Most are uneducated, and few can read and/or write.
Now let us jump forward a bit - say New
York City in the mid to late 19th Century.
Here we have neighborhoods. Large
extended families continue, but not as large or as extended as an old
world village. As immigrants, parts of families were left behind
in the Old World. It is harder now to keep tradition alive.
Religions, cultures and languages butt up against each other,
often in conflict (mirroring in a small way the frequent wars in Europe
rooted in the same differences). Children are less inclined to
follow in the footsteps of the parent. Marriages across lines of
religion, language and culture are frequent. Individualism
increases, and the ability of the community (now fractured from within,
and attacked from without) to cause conformance to its dominate values
lessens.
During the transition from the older
isolated villages to the neighborhoods in the great cities, two
important changes have appeared - natural science and
industrialization. Religion, as a family and community cohesive
forming force, is weakened by natural science; and, the family and
community by the industrial revolution (the father is driven from the
home and into the factory, along with many of the children, as people
leave the villages to find work in the growing cities).
Flash forward now into the present - Los
Angeles 2007.
An inner core and an outer rim.
Mere vestiges of neighborhoods, mostly racial ghettos in the
inner core, with smaller families. Better education, similar
poverty. In the outer rim, a different racial mix, tiny (nuclear)
families. In neither place does a coherent community exist as
once did in the Old World village.
A staggering increase in homelessness.
None of these individuals has a place to call home. Even
the family has fractured into individual splinters. The I is alone even
there (c.f. Riesman's The Lonely
Crowd). Children wouldn't think of
following in their parents footsteps. Individualism triumphs and
the old world cohesive nature of community and family is near dissolved.
What happens in our consciousness when we
move these pure abstractions through time? What happens when we
recreate in the imagination the gesture of social form over the last 500 years in Western Civilization?
In addition, what happens if we add to
this social form movement an understanding of the evolution of
consciousness, or at least the pictures we have made of the biography?
This is something hardly known to the ordinary social scientist,
and while indicated by Rudolf Steiner it was proved in three books by
Steiner students: Lehrs' Man or
Matter (a history of science), Barfield's Saving the
Appearances: a study in Idolatry (a history
of language and meaning) and Richter's Art and
Human Consciousness (a history of art).
In each instance a phenomenological examination was made, which
shows that the phenomena themselves (history of science, language and
art) reveal that consciousness itself was not static, but in movement.
We discover that not only was outer
social form in movement, but so was human consciousness in the
biographies. Social reality has not just a mobile developing
outside, it has a transforming inside as well.
One of the things that becomes apparent
is that we begin to see that something from the inside of the human
being is driving these changes. Yes, there are huge
transformations of outer circumstance, but individuation is itself a
force moving from within outward into social existence, transforming it.
Now this idea is not entirely new (its
obvious to some degree to many ordinary social scientists), but a
Goetheanistically oriented organic and pure thinking begins to
behold something which ends up speaking of the death and the becoming
of civilizations. A great metamorphosis at the level of social order is in process.
However, to pictorially
think this transformation requires that we
combine, in a single whole, a variety of individual threads, including
not only the kinds of general trends we can observe in changes in
biographies, families and communities, but wider social phenomena as
well. One such is the arrival of what seems to be a tendency to a
post-literate culture, that is the loss of interest in books among the
young. Another is the frequency with which artists of various
kinds create novels and films of a post-apocalyptic near future, such
as the 1992 novel by P.D. James that later became the basis for the
2006 film Children of Men.
Once we have become sensitive to these
kind of phenomena, we discover they are everywhere. In
addition, not only is there phenomena reflective of the breaking down
or a descent into social chaos, we can also find phenomena indicative
of the emerging new civilization. Tragically, while our
dreams are haunted by visions of darker times, they remain (in many
circumstances) yet absent any sense that redemptive powers are also at
work.
One of the early ways I wrote of this logos speaking of the world
song, was that as the loss of social form
increased (family and community becoming less coherent) such was
necessary for moral freedom to arise. The outer social form had
previously coerced the I into conforming to social values, and as the I
pressed itself outward from within, it reached a point where it had
overwhelmed the morally coercive effect of the family and the community
(the family-community nexus itself disabled by natural science and the
industrial revolution), enabling the I to act as an individual
determiner of what was moral (this has been called by some - who
understandably could only think in a finished and fixed way instead of
an organic way - moral relativity, the family values crisis and the
culture wars).
A number of social phenomena reveal this
- I'll just point to one. In the 1950's in America, it was not
unusual for a parent to say to a child: you should do what is right,
with right meaning the shared value of the community. As the
transition through the 1960's to the 1970's took place, do the right thing became do your own thing.
Now above I used the phrase: logos speaking of the world
song. I had years ago (1984) written a
first version of: Listening
to the World Song. In these last years,
as my thinking penetrated more deeply into this Song, I began to behold
inwardly that Christ was the Author of this situation (in which He told
us in Matthew 10:34-40: "Don't think I came to cause peace across the land.
I didn't come to cause peace, I came to wield a sword..." In some of the essays below (or above) you
will see such language in the newer pieces, while the older ones do not
have it. The culmination of my research via pure living thinking
was, of course, published in the essay The
Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul.
At the same time that a degree of social
chaos was necessary for the inducement of the opportunity for moral
freedom, this moral freedom itself has become productive in social
existence in the form of the various Civil Society and culturally
creative movements all over the world. In these latter phenomena
will be found the up-building and renewing processes of the new
civilization that is emerging from this long term metamorphosis. We need, however, to keep in mind that this is a
process spread across centuries, and that what appears on the surface
as social and political phenomena is simply symptomatic of far deeper
currents (see Steiner's lecture cycles: The
Challenge of the Times, and From
Symptom to Reality in Modern History).
Let me offer one final picture, to
reemphasize certain matters suggested above.
When we think the social world, it is
crucial to think it from the individual biography outward, and not from
the Stage Setting inward. That is, our picture of the Logos
Speaking of the World Song needs to move from where Christ's Love
focuses on each individual, instead of seeing the world as consisting
only of the horrors of current history and politics.
We need to have clear in our minds the
difference between the context in which the biographies are embedded,
and the essence of that biography, which is the development of the
individual i-AM. The context serves this development, and is
itself, in its higher nature, another expression of Christ's Love.
Each individual, of the six billion plus
now incarnated, has their own karma, fate and destiny. Christ,
being outside of Time and Space, has eternity in which to focus on us
one at a time. In support of this is the whole symphony of the
spiritual world's incredible variety of communities. Down and
into the finest details of our day to day existence, creative powers
pour their love. The i-AM swims in a sea of love
that crafts for each individual a unique and individual biography,
physical body, astral body and ethereal body. The poor farmer in
deepest despair in South Korea is just as important as the struggling
striving head of the pedagogical section of the School of Spiritual
Science.
Each of us bears individualized concepts
through which we interpret the meaning of the world, which concepts are
precisely and exactly those concepts which we need in order to
experience our biographies. Each of us has just those
individualized bad and good habits and unique configuration of
temperaments, that play their necessary role in our karma and fate.
Not only this, but the living nature of the Logos Spoken World
Song is malleable. It constantly adjusts, stretches and
contracts, moves and dances in accord with our free destiny decisions
that are made moment to moment.
Our conceptions of linear time and fixed
space are maya. The real social world is far more dynamic.
It is a living womb to the song of the becoming of each unique
individual i-AM.
*
Above I have tried to indicate, through
both ideas and a minimal level of demonstration, the existence of
certain questions, about the thinking processes and observational
process of a new science of the social, such that stands behind my
research work on the social. I fully expect the above to be
inadequate, and that others, who in following their own riddles and
nested questions, are likely to discover much that I have overlooked.
Hopefully the above will provide an adequate beginning.
Most of the details that have been hinted
at above will be found scattered throughout my writings in many places.
When opportunities permit I expect to publish in book form my
essays on various themes that can be found on my website Shapes in
the Fire. The main reason for this
brief introduction was to make explicit certain aspects of method, while in the other essays it was much more important to
bring forward the product produced by the method.
After all, the resulting thought content
is the reason for the activity of thinking in any event.
*********************************************
[For the neophyte: The Society and
Movement contain a number of different, often conflicting, ideas and
actions flowing from members and friends as regards how it should move
into the future. Here, as a first look, is an effort to highlight
one of these dimensions and perhaps show how its present-day ill
effects can be redeemed. This essay is an application of the
thinking (both organic
and
pure), as described above, to the general social situation of the Anthroposophical Society in America.]
The Natural Transformation of the Anthroposophical Society
in America (Michaelmas, 2007)
Some, who take an interest in the future
of the Society in America, generally have an idea about what it should
become. Some ideas could be called "continuing to develop matters
along more traditional lines", and other ideas could be described as
"taking the development of matters on more progressive lines".
The use of neither of those terms here is meant to suggest
anything fixed, but rather represents an endeavor to point out
something that can be observed in the patterns of the
thought-background, as it were, of the concepts being advocated by
others. Such a pattern would not necessarily appear on a specific
page of text, or in a lecture itself, but would hover in the contextual
structure of concepts of the whole of any writing or lecturing
concerned with the themes of development or change.
The recent article in the News for
Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America, based on material
created by former Vorstand member Heinz Zimmerman, was actually a
fairly good representation of the kinds of ideas coming from both a
traditionalist and progressive direction. Zimmerman gave us an
intelligent summation of both sets of concerns. That Zimmerman
couldn't really arrive at any conclusions or answers to questions, he
himself posed, is also significant. To borrow a term from
astrology, the direction of the Society might be called, in the way
that he expressed it: void of course - that is absent
clear direction.
To come at this from another direction, I'd like to share something from an experience I received by Grace during a group contemplation (from about 20 years ago), where a member who had just died was being remembered. The perception given to me was as follows (I have worked with it since that time, and this understanding is the most current):
There were basically two dominant soul
gestures in the Society. The larger gesture (in terms of numbers
of members) focuses mostly on a kind of golden past, on the great
heights to which the Society had risen during Steiner's lifetime, and
with respect especially to the Christmas Conference. Everything in the
present in the Society is seen by this thinking as though through a
kind of highly sympathetic haze colored by this spirit recollection of a golden past.
The second basic gesture of soul, but
smaller in number of members, was from those who imagined a future.
Their inner perception was not focused on the past, but on the
possible future - the potential they experienced as latent within the
Society. This spirit vision was then the
point of view out of which they experienced the present, and by this
vision the present was antipathetically judged.
The former I would call the traditionalists, and the latter the progressives. The traditionalists tend to want and urge preservation, while the progressives tend to want and urge transformation. Sympathy says this is good, let us hold to this. Antipathy says this is not good, we must change. Of course, no single individual or small group (such as a Branch) is wholly in one gesture or the other, so here we are just trying to delineate the patterns of thought that can be observed and their general nature and direction.
This essay hopes to place itself inside neither pattern, that is, to see the present not out of spirit recollection or spirit vision, but with spirit mindfulness.
* * *
As beginner spiritual social
scientist, I strive to perceive what is actually happening in the world
and within the Anthroposophical Society. An essential matter, or
at least a reasonable place to start, is a certain somewhat
controversial theme which concerns the so-called Michaelic Millions. A long essay researching this theme was written by Joel
Kobran and published in the
Threefold Review for the Fall, 2000.
On the surface, that article represents a
kind of traditionalist criticism of a kind of progressive point of
view. Kobran took exception to the discussions ongoing
among some anthroposophists as regards the concept that Steiner had
suggested there were to be in the world six or seven million
anthroposophists at the end of the 20th Century, who had been within
the supersensible Michael School before incarnating.
In his descriptions of the history of
this concept, who is using it, what statements of Steiner's or others
can serve as a reference point - in general as something requiring a
great deal of careful research, Kobran's article is superb. All
that needs to be kept in mind is that he did conclude that the use of
this idea, of there being many members of the Michael School presently
incarnate who were not yet members of the Anthroposophical Society and
who were instead members of what is called Civil Society - a view taken
by both Perlas, Ben-Aharon and their co-workers in the Global Network
for Threefolding, - the use of this idea was (according to Kobran)
defective in several different ways.
I'll not go into details here, but I just
wanted to note the existence of this thorough research by Kobran and
the existence of the views of others, such as Ben-Aharon's reflections
in his The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century concerning the existence (or not) of an large
unconscious or instinctive Michael community among humanity (whose
language we don't yet know how to speak), as
well as a much smaller more conscious Michael community.
To remain within observable social
phenomena of the Society a bit longer, I'd like to comment a little bit
on a recent discussion among a few of the members of the Social Science
Section in America, at a meeting I attended in Berkeley, California in
late summer 2007. An initiative was there proposed that certain
actions be taken via the creation of a website, on which would be
various articles and other materials, provided by anthroposophists (and
vetted by some kind of committee) that might serve as a support out of
Spiritual Science for the work of many non-anthroposophists, who are
engaged in creative social work in the world. It is not the
details of this proposal that matter to us here, but simply the fact
that such a discussion took place and was seriously considered.
In a similar vein, a group was formed, by
Society members in the Berkeley area more than a year before, that
sought to engage in outreach. If one does an Internet search for the terms
"anthroposophical" and "outreach", many hits turn up. We could
say that in the Movement and Society, all over the world, there is a
common will to connect to others outside of anthroposophical
communities, and to participate in the great issues of the day.
There was even a book published in 1999, by Temple Lodge,
offering many essays on such questions: The Future
is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium.
As a social scientist, it has been a part
of my work to seek to observe in the phenomena of the social world
facts representative of the appearance of the Consciousness Soul, which
according to Steiner is the Soul transformation that is to be the
signature development of the evolution of consciousness from around
1400 to 3500 AD. Various observations I have made of the activity
of this Soul can be found throughout this book. I would like the
reader to take it as a given, that once one learns to really appreciate
in the own soul the real nature
of the Consciousness Soul, it becomes clear how much of an instinctive
Consciousness Soul activity is present in the world. It is
everywhere, and if it remains unseen to any reader of this book, I urge
them to make more careful observations of their own free moral life,
and where in the world they see others expressing this free moral life.
There is no free moral life, without a corresponding moral
intuition of the Good (see my essay The Meaning of...), which moral intuition of the Good fits exactly
Steiner's description of the Consciousness Soul in his book Theosophy:
"By causing the self-existent true and good to come to
life in his inner being, the human being raises himself above the mere
sentient-soul. A light is kindled in her which is
imperishable. In so far as the soul lives in this light, she is a
participant in the eternal. With the eternal she unites her own
existence. What the soul carries within herself of the true and
the good is immortal in her. Let us call that which shines forth
in the soul as eternal, the consciousness-soul."
For those who wonder about the true, and
who may accept that large portions of humanity could be finding their
way toward free moral intuitions of the good, I suggest that you
consider that the perception of the true necessarily has to be preceded
by an ability to perceive the good. If people, for example, are
to have at least two incarnations in the epoch of the Consciousness
Soul, then it is my view that the first (our present) will bring
forward the good, which then becomes a basis for the soul's reaching
for the true. In the discussion that follows, I'll try to develop
this further, and especially the possibility that in this present time
one can do both, as long as it is the good that is understood first.
The social phenomenological observation is, however, that people
are in the present finding the good more easily than they are finding
the true.
For the moment, let me suggest this.
Part of knowing the true is rooted in the inner ability to
distinguish the true from the false. The inner organ in the soul,
for making such a distinction in a conscious way, is founded on the
ability to intentionally ask ourselves inwardly whether what we think
we know as the true, we do in fact know to be true. We must place
before the eye of our conscience, by asking that express question, the
matter of our relationship to knowledge of the true. To ask such
a question is to take a moral point of view regarding our own inner
actions, that is to first be living out of the good. It is the
goodness in our hearts that enables us to honestly consider whether or
not we do in fact know something to be true. The more conscious
we are of how to know the good, the better will our soul and spiritual
life be able to form a right relationship to the knowledge of the true.
*
To round out our discussions, I'd like to
add another nuance - this concerning the lectures of Steiner called: Awakening
to Community, in which the concept can be
found called the
reverse cultus (see lecture 6).
In Awakening
to Community (also in lecture 6) Steiner
remarked about a conflict then living in the Society between oppositely
disposed groups (those who had duties to continue the past, and those
who felt no relationship to such an impulse). Steiner then stated
that it might be better if the Society divided itself into two
organizations, and that these organizations would then see themselves
as sister-souls, taking different paths toward reaching what was
essentially the same ideal goal. A recent conversation with a
friend gave rise in me the following archetypal imagery in connection
with the above distinction between what I am calling the
traditionalists and spirit recollection, and the progressives and
spirit vision, yet which also seems related to what Steiner described
in Awakening to Community as the
sister-souls.
My friend thought that the two sisters
could be visualized as being in the same relationship as Martha and
Mary as revealed in the Gospels (search the Internet for "Gospels Mary
and Martha"). Martha, the older sister, saw the world out of
tradition and in action took care of the household, while Mary, the
younger, pursued freedom and a devotion to the spirit. One writer
calls Mary the active gesture, and Martha the contemplative gesture.
Now lets not make too much of this, or too little. I do
believe, however, that we can find here something very important.
In different places Rudolf Steiner spoke
of the Mystery of Golgatha as being an enactment of a central Cosmic
Mystery taking place on the Earth in a kind of earthly tableau.
All the events connected to this moment are not just unusual
historical events, but are rather a kind of Divine Speaking in which
great mysteries are represented through the many actors and dramas in
this Play.
For example, Christ's death and
resurrection, to my thinking, could be seen as the Great Archetype of
dying and becoming that moves among all that is living in earthly
existence, such that when Goethe discovers the principle of
metamorphosis of plants he is finding a reflection of this Great
Archetype as it expresses itself across time in all manner of
phenomenal existence, both cosmic and earthly .
In a like fashion, I suggest the
relationship of Martha and Mary is an archetype, one which we find
folded and blended into the very nature and living structure of the
development of the Anthroposophical Society. Nor is what I am
suggesting an entirely new thought. The sometimes conflicting
impulses between preservation and initiative are common everywhere and
others have written of them in regards to our Society.
What I am trying to suggest is that these
sister-soul impulses, which manifested in a conflicting way in the
article by Kobran that had criticized the work of Perlas and
Ben-Aharon, are both healthy and needed. The meeting place then of
those who on the one hand take seriously the duties that evolve from an
emphasis on spirit recollection (and are drawn inward into
contemplation), and of those who take seriously the duties evolved out
of spirit vision (and are drawn outward into action), can be
reconciled. The two can learn to understand each other, and to see in the other a necessary part of
the whole, which understanding may then lead to the Natural Transformation of the
Anthroposophical Society in America (and by
implication world-wide).
With this background, let us come at this
from a slightly new direction, following out more carefully the
concept: natural.
Recall that Steiner said, which I
paraphrase: the
American develops Anthroposophy in a natural way.
I cannot say that I have experienced all
that is anthroposophical in America, but I do not doubt that my
experience (of now almost 28 years) is broad enough to give me a
representative phenomenal picture. Everywhere in America there
are traditional institutional social forms, such as Branches, study
groups, Waldorf Schools, Camphill Communities, Eurythmy Schools,
teacher training facilities and on and on and on.
In such Centers of activity (which would
also include many conferences), the practices are traditional in the
best sense of that word. What is done is mostly what has been
recognized as the best practices born out of our experience of the
past. In these Centers of anthroposophical activity members draw
inward to meet each other as a community, and then afterward go back to
their very busy lives.
At the same time, in many of these busy
lives, the moral freedom and individuality consciously fostered as a
member of the Society and Movement leads people into action as
participants in the wider non-anthroposophical life. In the
Center, we are concentrated together, at the Periphery we have no edge,
but are dispersed and interwoven with all that is happening in the
wider world.
In the Center we recognize each other as sharing an unusual common interest, focused on Rudolf Steiner's personality and teachings, and at the Periphery we are one with the rest of those in humanity that seek to heal their shared karma of wounds and move thus progressively forward into the future. In American, in particular, with its special soul characteristics, we find that while few know of Steiner, many yet live instinctively out of the individual moral freedom (English speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights - R.S.). Whether it is just a natural foods co-op, or a political group such as the Greens, or reading of and giving money to causes such as Doctors without Borders, many anthroposophists fully participate, as brothers and sisters, with those seeking the progressive advancement of the human condition, out of less conscious - that is instinctive - free moral activity.
When we draw inward into our Centers, we
are glad to have the comfort provided by the Martha Impulse, to have a
sense of coming home. And then, when we breath outward into the
larger society, we join with the naturally arising Mary Impulse which
can be found everywhere, in both conscious and instinctive forms.
Yes, I know, for many in our circles this is not true. The last thing many of those, who are more filled with the Mary Impulse, want to do is hang out with the Martha folk. Meanwhile, many of the Martha Impulse find that what the Mary folk do is incomprehensible and a violation of all the rules of tradition (particularly anything Steiner said).
Now one of the rules of polarity, that
can be studied in may places where life processes provide organization,
is that in the inside of one pole is its opposite, as a small but
concentrated essence. This means that the Martha folk have
a Mary Impulse in their core and that the Mary folk have a Martha
Impulse in their core.
As a consequence, the traditionalists in
their contemplative gesture must naturally always seek to actively
deepen it. Our inner developmental tasks we always recognize as
incomplete, although the outer form of our activity tends to remains
constant (traditional). For the progressives, their
transformational gesture must naturally always seek order, or an
unrestrained urge to constant change will lead to chaos.
Activists are always building social new form, so that the
community of the Mary Impulse has a well formed structure or social
foundation from which to act.
In the Society confusion arises when the
Mary Impulse wants to change the traditional form in the Center, or
when the Martha Impulse criticizes the inner work of the activists on
the Periphery as not properly grounded in Steiner. The Mary
Impulse in its own field of activity has to move beyond Steiner and
traditional Anthroposophy (so as to be compatible with the wider
world), while the Martha Impulse has to maintain in the Center its
concentrated devotion to Steiner.
Sister-souls, sharing the same ideal
goal, is what Steiner indicated in Awakening
to Community. What is this goal?
I suggest it is the furthering of the life of the spirit in humanity, which act of furthering is rooted in a new Way, a Mystery Way made compatible with natural science.
The Martha Impulse preserves the Steiner
core, while the Mary Impulse has to forge allegiances with that which
does not, and need not, recognize Steiner. In this sense, I
believe Ben-Aharon is right in his conception of two communities, a
conscious Michael community and an unconscious (instinctive) Michael
community. At the Periphery of anthroposophical activity, where
the Mary Impulse has to integrate itself with the wider world,
brotherhood and sisterhood means that one cannot stand apart on the
basis of doctrine, but must find real inner compatibility. For
the Mary Impulse this is done in recognizing the free moral nature
(Consciousness Soul) instincts in others, and that this inner free
moral nature can be shared across any fancifully imagined division of
doctrine or path.
From the Center, in the natural realm of
the Martha Impulse, Kobran was correct to suggest that, to the extent
the Perlas Ben-Aharon group seemed to see the Consciousness Soul only
in Civil Society and not in the world of banking, politics or corporate
life, this view had to be false. Thus, the Mary Impulse can be
aided, out of the work of the Martha Impulse, to struggle to see more
deeply into the World, and perhaps observe that an individual's
membership in any group cannot be used to define the state of their
inner moral freedom (which observation includes the Anthroposophical
Society and Movement - membership in either or both is not necessarily
a sign of the achievement of ethical individualism).
The contemplative gesture can inform in a
good way the active gesture. Of course, in order to really do
this, the contemplative gesture will find its help ignored if it is
rooted in a non-objective criticism; and likewise, the active gesture
will lose something very precious if it removes itself too far from the
Mother Source carried more strongly by the contemplative core.
The Kobran article, in its criticism of
the Perlas Ben-Aharon idea of where are the so-called Michaelic
Millions, also was concerned with the question of whether it was
accurate to see Civil Society as a cultural gesture of threefolding in
the world social organism. This dispute then would suggest
that a rethinking on the part of both the Martha core and the Mary rim
needs to be done as regards the state of threefolding of any new
cultural life in the wider world. As this is a significant
question, I'll try to contribute to its resolution next. It is,
in addition, my view that learning to perceive these aspects of modern
social existence will be very helpful for everyone in Anthroposophy,
whether they more strongly identify with the Martha or the Mary
Impulses.
The basic intuitions of the Mary Impulse as regards threefolding are represented quite strongly in Ben-Aharon's remarkable (and quite important for Mary Impulse anthroposophists) book: America's Global Responsibility: individuation, initiation and threefolding. A part of this view could be stated briefly as follows:
In the course of the 19th and 20th
Centuries, the general condition of human societies encouraged greater
human freedom and individuality. As a consequence, out of this
freedom non-governmental organizations arose and became after a time
more effective in delivering aid to those human needs that governments
were becoming less and less able to provide. The State
(that is one aspect of the political-legal sphere) was not able any
longer to be devoted to goodness out of freedom, and into this vacuum
stepped a Consciousness Soul response that was world wide: Civil
Society.
At the time then of the arrival of the
global economy, with its huge raw forces and influences, a counter-pole
came into being as a necessary balance - a new cultural impulse (the
Wise-Earth, see first essay above). So effective was this
counter-pole, that the institutionally supported and hired minds of
those seeking to rule economic life recognized it long before most
thinkers on threefolding in the anthroposophical Society and Movement
recognized it. Civil Society, a free moral (Mary Impulse) gesture
that organized social forms for the purpose of solving humanity-wide
social problems, represents to such thinkers as Perlas and Ben-Aharon
the coming into being of a world-wide transformation of the Cultural
Sphere of humanity. Kobran seemed to disagree, and I am certain
he is not alone.
The difficulty lies not, in my
experience, in one or the other being more correct in their views, but
in the fact that the Martha Impulse tends to think about the threefold
social order through a different inner process than does the Mary
Impulse. Since the method (or gesture) of thought is different,
the resulting thoughts and conclusions will of course be different.
One of the phenomena that can be observed
in the anthroposophical Society and Movement is that there are two
major and quite different paths of development: the Knowledge
of Higher Worlds path, and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity path.
In several essays in this book I make reference to this, and I
will not be repeating myself here about this in any great detail (all
of which can be found elsewhere).
A major characteristic of the former is
that it seeks the spiritual indirectly through the world of the senses,
that is through the world were Ahriman has a certain influence, both
within the soul and outside it in sense reality. The latter seeks
the spiritual directly, through self observation (introspection), and
here encounters the realm of Lucifer, again inside the own soul and
then at last at the Threshold.
Both paths influence the development and
awakening of more conscious thinking. As the Society and Movement
developed over the 20th Century, the inner core of Martha folk (who are
far more numerous) became quite involved with Knowledge
of Higher Worlds. Those who followed The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity tended to
the edges, and thus we find such as Barfield, Kuhlewind and Ben-Aharon
on the Periphery of the Society, where the Mary folk are gathering.
The thinking, as practiced and modeled in
the Center, tended toward a kind of European idealism of the soul.
While on the Periphery there was an instinct for a more pragmatic
(almost American) introspective life. The Martha folk looked at
threefolding as an ideal to be incarnated, and the Mary folk as a
phenomena of social existence to be perceived (a division rooted in the
difference between the Aristotelians and the Platonists?). So we
find Kobran, for example, carefully reading Steiner, and vetting any
thoughts about world threefolding development against the ideal of
threefolding given out by Steiner. On the other hand, such as
Perlas and Ben-Aharon tried to live into the phenomena of social
existence and listen to that social-forming spirit speak into their
thinking.
Where this takes us next is something we
have to be very careful about understanding.
The knowledge that comes into thinking,
from that which we have called a kind of progressive spirit vision
process, is out of the future. While the knowledge that comes
into thinking, from that we have called a kind of traditionalist spirit
recollection, comes from the past. The former pulls us forward,
and the latter anchors us to our necessary roots. It is only
through spirit mindfulness, in the present, that we can meld the two
poles together into their natural unity and harmony. Too much
sympathy for the past make an idol in the present, and too much
antipathetic measuring of the present against a vision of the future
ungrounds us.
Paradoxically, the threefolding idealists
are living in that aspect of the Mary Impulse which is the core inside
of the Martha folk. So to perceive the ideal of that which is not
yet fully incarnated is to have a vision of the future. While the
threefolding phenomenologists, fixed in their thinking on the present,
are really only seeing the past in the present - what has already
become, for that which is living (changing) in the present is not fixed
in form, but is rather invisible or hidden as it were. Their
inner core of the Martha Impulse tends to fix the views being developed
by the Mary folk.
At the same time, those on the edge, in
meeting the rest of humanity at the Periphery of anthroposophical (the
conscious Michael community) activity have to set aside the Steiner
idealism in presenting threefolding. The unconscious Michael
community has no use for what would appear to them as a dogma, so the
Steiner given idealism in the conception of threefolding has to be
stripped away, otherwise its presentation will be sterile (see the work
in the world of Gary Lamb for a healthy example of this). What
the Martha folk want to present out of traditional Anthroposophy has no
use for the wider world, and Steiner even pointed this out in
suggesting that when Anthroposophy truly entered social life it would
disappear.
The movement from the Center, out of the
contemplative Martha aspect of the sister-souls, outward toward and
through the Periphery and as a gift to humanity through the actions of
the Mary aspect of the sister-souls, involves the disappearance of
Anthroposophy, at least as presently conceived. The Martha folk
conceive of Anthroposophy as the substance and content of Rudolf
Steiner's works, which need (correctly) to be preserved and kept linked
to his name. The Mary folk conceive of Anthroposophy as the
method of cognition, the will to spirit in the soul that leads to
living thinking. Such living thinking is not owned by Rudolf
Steiner by the way, who was only one of those who discovered it (for
example, Coleridge and Emerson discovered it before him).
Christ is the creator of the human
potential for living thinking, and its major co-participant when we are
able to engender it out of ourselves. At the Periphery of the
Society and Movement, where the rest of humanity is encountered, it
will be Christ who is ultimately linked with this living thinking, for
it is Him that is the Life that comes into us when we learn to think in
this new way.
It would be possible to say then that the
Martha folk would view the current world conditions as lacking
something of the ideal as represented by Steiner in his books on the
social organism. The Mary folk would view the world of social
phenomena as a logos speaking of macro threefolding (the appearance of
Civil Society) into a cultural dynamic as an opposite pole to an
economic dynamic (Elite Globalization). However, if you read
carefully what Ben-Aharon has written in his book on America's Global
Responsibility, his presentation is a bit weak on certain levels.
As this is important I am going to take up this subject next.
That is we are going, for a time, to look at the present day
threefold conditions of the social world out of spirit mindfulness,
rather than out of spiritual recollection or spirit vision.
*
Years ago I wrote of this theme and
offered an article on it to the Threefold Review which choose not to
print it. Several years later I was able to publish it on my
website, where aspects of it drew the attention of the English
anthroposophist Terry Boardman, and he wrote of these ideas in an essay
called: The Idea
of the Threefold Society at the Dawn of the Third Millennium, which was first published in the book referred to
above: The Future is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium.
Here is some of what Terry Boardman wrote:
"In his lectures to the West-East Congress in Vienna 1922,
Rudolf Steiner spoke of Europe-Asia as 'the problem' of modern times
and Europe-America as 'the solution'. By this he meant that Europeans
were preserving the dessicated remnants of an ancient Asian
spirituality in the dusty abstractions of their intellectual,
political, and religious systems. The future lay rather with the will
to create out of nothing. And this willingness he saw in the youthful
energies of the Americans. It is no surprise therefore to learn that it
is an American anthroposopher, Joel Wendt, who has articulated best
this need for Anthroposophy to enter the belly of the Media. Wendt has
written: (13)
"What else have politicians, terrorists,
single interest groups, businesses etc. been fighting to control and
manipulate? Within Media the People come to common (equalized) self
knowledge and mutual understanding. Within Media the idea of the State
and of the rights and duties of citizenship come to common form. Media
shines light on the activities of the State, and media personalities
(with varying degrees of consciousness and moral integrity) believe
they act thus for the People. However we turn our thinking, if we
remain pictorially descriptive of the dynamics of social life as these
actually play themselves out in the political-legal sphere we will come
to the perception of the threefoldness of State-Media-People.
"It is a risk, Wendt says, to enter this realm, but a risk
that should be taken, a nettle that should be grasped if the Media
serpent is not to continue merely to slide in the dust.
"Media, if its present condition is
clearly understood, is young; i.e. it is still undergoing formative
developments, and functions today with a kind of moral or spiritual
immaturity. In this sense Media may take one of two different courses
of future development. It may become a kind of moon center, rigid,
arid, not light originating, but rather only able to reflect those
impulses which come to it from the outside. Or, it may become a sun
center, a source of warmth and understanding, a medium of creative
forces flowing into the social order and carrying both in deed and in
word a true image of man as a being of soul and spirit. I imagine then,
Media becoming a sun, a true heart of the heart of the social organism,
so that the common understanding of the People will find a renewed
vision of the State. In Media a song can yet be heard, the song of the
truly free man, the moral man. In this way the rigidification, the
mechanization, the image spell-binding of the word will be overcome,
and a true understanding given to Western civilization of the Idea of
the Threefold Social Organism as a dynamic social form already latent
in human social existence in the West....There is of course no
predicting how events will proceed, yet it seems clear to me that this
historic moment is pregnant with certain kinds of potential. Just as
there is great risk of a further fall into materialism, so as well
there is much possibility for spiritual transformation. If we do not
blind ourselves with a kind of threefold dogma (for example, that the
first need is to free the spiritual cultural life), but instead truly
perceive the actual dynamics. Then as far as I am able to hold in
pictorial thought, the ripe moment lies in bringing moral
trans-formative forces to the thinking active within the Media - to
bring a song to life just here in the heart of the heart of the social
organism.
"Here speaks
a true American voice - a voice of idealism and the will to courage."
Leaving aside Mr. Boardman's kind words,
let us consider then the concept that during the development Western
Civilization, a kind of natural threefolding occurred in the newly
being born Life of Rights (which arose when the Greeks and the Romans
began to see the State as one pole of the Life of Rights, and the
Citizen as the other pole). During the course of this unfolding
of the Life of Rights, it threefolded within itself, not unlike the
natural threefolding of the Cultural Sphere into Science, Art and
Religion (or what is latent in the Economic Sphere: production,
distribution and consumption). Only with the Life of Rights we
have a natural threefolding into: State, Media and People (or Citizen).
This makes Media to be the heart of the
heart of the social organism. Since the middle realm of a
threefold organism (such as the human being, which is the Archetype of
the Social Organism) is, in part, a melding together of the two poles,
yet which seeks to be the selfless servant of both, we can see in
modern media the struggle between economic and cultural impulses.
Like the rest of the social organism, Media is dominated today by
the cold calculations of profit and power seeking motives. Yet,
this is the outer Media and it is now being enriched deep in its
interior core by that free moral spirit currently inhabiting the
Internet.
The Internet is to a great degree that
natural anarchy in which is hidden beneath the surface Steiner's
instinctive Consciousness Soul idea of ethical individualism. We
find this individual and natural anarchy in the Open Source
communities and their various services given away for free to the
Internet, and in the struggles between the free exchange of ideas and
art that is giving fits to those who cling to the old Roman idea of
property rights under the current term: intellectual property rights
(which wants to own the products of spirit, by the way - but that is a
whole other story). In any event, between the millions of blogs
and millions of individual websites, the Internet is an extraordinary
development of a free Media process as it works deeply within the
middle of the threefold nature of the Life of Rights: State, Media and
People.
This was the means, as was noted by
Ben-Aharon in his book on America, that enabled Civil Society to defeat
the introduction of a horrible attack on the economic life of the world
social organism in the guise of a treaty called: the Multilateral
Agreement on Investments, which would have turned all economies world
wide into prey for the concentration of wealth among speculators and
huge financial capital institutions. The Internet has become the
physical apparatus of living social reality: free Media, which is the
free moral heart of the heart of the social organism, and was
absolutely necessary for people to become informed of this attack (and
essential to the use this same resource - free Media - in repelling
this attack). The whole confrontation, against the Multilateral
Agreement on Investments by Civil Society, would have been impossible
without a truly free Media in its current form of development.
If I was to point toward the most special
place for the Mary Impulse to work, it would not be so much in Civil
Society itself, but within free Media on the Internet. This free
Media is the beating heart of the lifeblood of the community of wisdom
that is Civil Society, or the instinctive Michael community. This
heart is built up out of the streaming intelligence, from below and
above, yet is that one place were the opposing nature of these streams
can be mediated.
We confuse ourselves if we turn away from
the Internet because it is based on an ahrimanic tool, the computer.
It is the uses this tool is put to that are
important.
From above, out of a somewhat luciferic
Civil Society comes those ideals and dreams that represent an active
and instinctive free moral intelligence, while from below, out of the
ahrimanic economy, with its technological excesses comes the tool - the
Internet. Somewhere some people have to be wise enough to
consciously serve this confluence of downward streaming wisdom as it
intersects with upward streaming wisely authored earthly formations.
Here is the point from which to alter the world conceptions of the
community of human beings meeting on the Internet. At the same
time, it is not the Martha Impulse that will function best here, but
the Mary Impulse.
The ideal (but unpracticed) living
thinking, cultivated in the contemplative core where the Martha Impulse
struggles to nurture the Mother - Anthroposophy, has to move out
through the Mary Impulse into the beating heart of free Media, and from
there into the social periphery where the instinctive Consciousness
Soul of humanity can come to collective self-consciousness. Only
in free Media can the living nature of social threefolding, of the
reverse cultus, and of a scientifically based new gnosis come to
conscious world-wide understanding. Here, in this periphery,
lives Christ. In the interactions on the Internet, world-wide in
scope and crossing all former barriers of culture, race, language and
religion, the Michael gesture predominates. Human beings seek
each other as human beings, no longer as Jews or Arabs or Americans or
Chinese. Then, in the interweaving exchanges, carried by a human
created physical structure no less significant than the cosmos created
physical structure which is necessary for speech, Christ lives in
between. All is, of course, crude and barely workable, but even
so, if we look at the drivers behind much of the human activity on the
Internet, it's use is forged by hundreds of thousands of human
intentions to create bonds of contact across former boundaries, which
ultimately leads to face to face interactions (from the world's Social
Forums such as FaceBook to Moveon's American meet ups, to individual
love affairs and marriages).
Let us look a little more closely at one
very odd, yet quite compelling Internet phenomena: YouTube.
YouTube is a website where anyone anytime can post home-made
videos. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people
world-wide go daily there to look at these individually created picture
stories born frequently in the impulses of instinctive consciousness
soul activity. Whereas mainstream culture, such as television and
movies is mostly dominated by corporate culture and impulses of greed,
YouTube, a representative phenomena spilling upward out of the social
commons, lets everyone be a TV producer or film-maker. Short films to
be sure (some less than a minute), but if it strikes a cord, in a short
time it can be viewed by millions.
What if the creative arts and selfless
thinking of anthroposophists, as individuals, were to join in this
world-wide artistic community dialog. Instead of thinking (as the
Martha folk tend to) that people should come to us, we (as the Mary
folk are inclined to do) go to them - to
where they are.
Far too many anthroposophists are so
focused on the rightness of what they are doing, that they often miss
what the rest of the world is doing. In case the reader of this
doesn't want to be asleep, they should read; Blessed
Unrest by Paul Hawken; and, World
Changing: a user's guide for the 21st Century,
edited by Alex Steffen, Forward by Al Gore.
*
Let us now weave back in a previous
theme: Steiner is the one, who in The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity found the
way to this living thinking through the application of the methods of
natural science to the processes of introspection. That deed will
remain linked to him for a very long time. In a certain sense, the Mary
folk are the mediating principle between the inner core of
anthroposophical tradition and Steiner study held dear by the Martha
folk, and the wider world of humanity. Martha strives to keep the
treasure house pure, while Mary tries to distribute the treasure freely
to all, humbly and without need for credit, just as Christ gives
Himself away without needing any acknowledgment.
As American anthroposophists (and perhaps
others in the world) wake up to this conception of the sister-souls and
their natural relationship, this waking up may foster in both realms
impulses toward a greater clarity of activity. For the Martha
folk this may arrive in the form of a desire to deepen their
relationship to Anthroposophy by taking up more firmly the inner work
of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity - that is to approach the spiritual more directly
(instead of indirectly) through a scientifically based introspective
activity. For the Mary folk this may bring about in them the
desire to deepen their practices of the reverse cultus, for they will
find that not only does the wider world have an instinctive
relationship to free moral action, but also to deeper group practices
rooted in the spirit.
After a century of anthroposophical work,
it seems to be the time in which the belief, that The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is too hard,
has to be overcome; and, that Knowledge
of Higher Worlds, while a quite definite path
to the spirit, has to be seen as Steiner saw it, as lacking the same
surety or exactness as The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (see
Steiner's remarks toward the end of the fifth Chapter of Occult
Science: an outline). Out of such a
change of emphasis in its contemplative directions, the Martha Impulse,
in the core of the Society and Movement, will find itself able to
achieve much that before was impossible. They will, by such an act,
remove from the dust heap of the 20th Century the most important work
Steiner created, and return it to its throne as the true ruler of
anthroposophical spirit activity, since it represents Steiner's own
path of development (which Knowledge
of Higher Worlds does not).
At the same time, the reverse cultus too must be rescued from that same dust heap into which
the understandably spiritually immature activity of anthroposophists in
the 20th Century discarded it. Let me create for the reader an
Imagination of such a Rite in action, as an aid to appreciating what
has been lost. For this Rite - the reverse cultus - is the Queen of the New Mysteries, just as The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is the King.
* * *
The Circle
gathers, with one shared intention - to consciously work with the
spirit. No member of the Circle is more important than any other
member. First in silence they recall what Steiner taught about why
Judas had to kiss Christ. The truth at that time in Palestine was
that when crowds gathered to hear teaching, the teaching came from all
those in the circle around Christ. The Christ spirit spoke
through all, first one and then another. For this reason
Judas had to kiss the One who was the center, otherwise the Centurions
would not know whom to arrest.
After this
mood is engendered, in which each recognizes in the other a true source
of spirit presence, the members of the group begin to speak. What
they offer is not a pre-thought theme, about which one may be more
expert than another, but rather the simple feelings of their hearts in
the moment. These heart-felt concerns are the sharing to each other
that opens the hearts to each other. The Circle meets each other
in this art of coming to know each others deepest concerns, which can
(and often will) be entirely personal. This knowing of each other
is a great gift to give and to receive.
In this brief
sharing will begin to emerge the spirit music latent in the coming
conversation, for the co-participating spirit presence knows the truth
of our hearts, and is drawn to these concerns out of the darkness
represented by the Threshold and into the light and warmth of the
sharing. Thus, in acknowledging each other in silence as also true
speakers of the spirit, and then in sharing the true matters of the
heart as exists for each at that moment in time, the Chalice is born in
the Ethereal - in the mutually shared world of thought.
Now comes the
Art of Conversation, the Royal Art.
Here too no
one is better than another for as Christ is quoted in the John Gospel:
"What's born of the flesh is flesh, and what's born of the breath is
breath. Don't be amazed because I told you you have to be born
again. The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of it,
but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes; it's the same
with everyone born of the breath".
The breath of
spirit blows where It wills, not where we will It.
The Royal Art
is deep indeed and begins (as Tomberg expressed it) by learning to
think on our knees. At the same time, these inner skills of
thinking and listening will have little effect on where the wind blows,
and while the study of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity may make us
individually more awake inwardly, the will of the spirit presence in
the conversation belongs to that spirit presence, not to us.
So the
conversation proceeds in the heart-warmed Chalice of the shared
experience of the world of thoughts. Each contributes what is
thought in them. Together a weaving of a whole is sought, but no one
can judge whether anyone else's contribution is a needed thread or not.
Often, for example, something, which on the surface seems
antagonistic or oppositional, is precisely what is needed in the moment
to stimulate another in the offering of their part of the whole.
It is
possible then for this circling weaving conversation to rise, in the
nature and the substance of its overall meaning, nearer and nearer to
spiritual other-presence. It will not do, however, to believe
that as the conversation of the members of the group draws near this
other-presence, that It will tell us what is true and good.
That would violate our freedom. The true touch of the
wind in the soul is otherwise in its nature.
In each soul
lie latent embers of spirit recollection, spirit mindfulness and spirit
vision. We are already as thinking spirits, in the spiritual
worlds. What is fostered in the Chalice is something rooted in
the teaching of Christ: Wherever two or more are gathered in my name,
there I am.
He is with us.
Moreover, He
is very interested in what we choose to think, not in our obedience to
Him. Our obedience we owe to our higher self, not to Him - that
is to the Not I, but Christ in me. He loves everyone in the
Circle equally, and observing the latent embers of recollection,
mindfulness and vision within each separate soul, He aids our communion
by breathing on these embers. He gives to each, according to that
individual need, that aspect of His Life which is His Breath - what
John the Baptist in Matthew 3:11 called holy breath. ["Now I
bathe you in the water to change hearts, but the one coming after me is
stronger than me: I'm not big enough to carry his shoes. He
will bathe you in holy breath and fire."]
With His
Breath, during the communion that is the conversation in the Chalice,
the latent embers of our own soul are given Life. Within the
thoughts of each arise that which belongs to each, but which is also
seen by the Love of Christ, and enthused with His Life. We rise
on the moral quality of our will in recognizing the spirit presence in
each other, and in the sharing of the concerns of our hearts; and, as
we do this, the weaving of the thoughts into a whole - still resting on
our own insight and will - is given Eternal Life, in the form of the
good and the true.
Thus
revealing the truth that: "I am with you every day, until the
culmination of time." Matthew 28:20
* * *
What does this mean for the sister-souls,
the Martha Impulse and the Mary Impulse?
In the Center, where the Martha folk
strive to keep the work deep, in addition to their renewed studies of The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, can be
added a renewed interest in the reverse cultus. At the Periphery, where the Mary folk strive to
integrate with the wider world, they will find everywhere, just as they
had previously observed an instinct for free moral action, an equal
striving for the spirit in conversation. Whether it is in a
formal setting such as the striving in 12 Step Groups or the study of
Non-violent Communication, the instinctive path of spiritual communion
through conversation is everywhere - for again: Wherever two or more are
gathered in my name, I am there; and, I am with you every day,
until the culmination of time. Christ
does not make a distinction between anthroposophist and
non-anthroposophist, nor from a certain perspective should we.
The Martha Impulse recognizes the
treasures that Rudolf Steiner spent his life forces to give to
humanity. The Mary Impulse recognizes the need to meet people
where they are. Turning everyone into anthroposophists is not the
mission of Anthroposophy.
The deeper is the contemplative core
(Martha Impulse) of the conscious Michael community, the richer and
more practical will be the realization of what Steiner taught,
especially in all the daughter movements. The more other (thou)
directed is the active rim (Mary Impulse) of the conscious Michael
community, the more will the wider world be able to receive the dying
into becoming of Anthroposophy as that metamorphosis of spirit is
transmitted from the Center, through the mediating Periphery thence
into service in the world.
There is a direction of movement in the
horizontal social, from left to right:
>Center-Martha
Impulse <(Michael)> Periphery-Mary Impulse
<(Michael-Christ)> World>
which as a social impulse (in the
horizontal) eventually loops around (a cross within a circle) and pours
itself into the individual biographies, from within (this, from the
vertical-spiritual), or: Fires in the Biography, upward and
downward.
holy breath
/\
\/
free moral activity (instinctive and conscious)
/\
\/
reverse cultus groups (instinctive and conscious)
/\
\/
sharing of trials in the group creation of the chalice
(instinctive and conscious)
/\
\/
trials by
fire in the biographies
where it once again spreads out in the
horizontal-social, the whole inwardly a lemniscate gesture on the one
hand, and outwardly a circle-cross gesture on the other. This
creates in the in
between, where Christ lives, the spiral-like
gesture of development of which we all should now be well aware.
It is in the fires in the trials of the
biographies that the outer gesture of our baptism by holy breath and
fire appears. Outwardly we are baptized in trials by fire in our
individual biographies (through Christ's Art as Lord of Karma), and at
the same time we are inwardly baptized by the Living Christ via holy
breath.
Thus does the future and the past, via
Anthroposophy both in its concentrated form (conscious Michael
community - the sister-souls of Martha and Mary) and distributed form
(unconscious Michael community), homeopathically pollinate the present
social world of humanity in a natural way. Through the shared gesture
of free moral activity, and conscious conversation (whether fully
awake, instinctive or somewhere in between) humanity is united in
spiritual communion with and via Christ.
For anthroposophists, this creates
significant responsibility. If they fight among each other,
unable to recognize the value of the different Impulses, they will
cripple their own work. Only by walking side by side, each
honoring the other, may the two gestures - the sister-souls -
accomplish the work that neither can do on its own.
The Class, the School of Spiritual
Science, the work of the Sections, the work of Branches and Group - all
this concentrated Steiner focused activity, essentially contemplative
in nature, is one kind of work. It supports and enables the other
kind, the active in the world work - the work of outreach. Some will
prefer to limit their work to one sphere, and others will move back and
forth. All that is really needed is for the two to understand
each other, instead of judging each other. On the success of that
seeking after understanding, a great deal depends.
For the real challenge in the end is
whether the Martha folk and the Mary folk can combine their ideal
intentions in such a way that humanity is served - such that something
begins to come to light in free Media - that is Anthroposophy leaves
the Society and Movement and dies into the living world social organism
as a fully awake and conscious gesture of service. We are not
meant to create a new philosophy or a new sub-group of spirit
practitioners - that is to spread the idea of Anthroposophy - but to
instead purely and simply serve the needs of humanity through the practice
of Anthroposophy.
[As I was going through my final review
of the whole text of this book, the following is a second statement
(the first is above at the end of In Joyous Celebration....) that appeared in an essay, written by Michael
Howard, in the News for Members: "A crucial aspect of the
Social Art is the question: how do communities and institutions
metamorphose? If the Anthroposophical Society is to play a
leading role in the cultivation of the Social Art, then what better
starting point than for the members of the Society to take up action
research regarding the ways the Anthroposophical Society will
metamorphose." On reading this
statement I had the hope that the essay above, written some time
before, might make a contribution to this riddle.]
********************************************
[for the neophyte: we enter here a great
and central mystery of our Age. We have touched this previously,
but now it becomes necessary to look at this more closely and with a
certain personal intimacy. We are to look at the dark within,
discover its real meaning and significance, and begin to learn how to
master it.]
The Mystery of Macro and Micro Evil
and the relationship of the Shadow
(the threefold double-complex) to the American Soul
[warning
for all readers...facing the fact that we are
the door through which evil enters the world can sometimes be a
shattering experience, for often our general attitude of mind is that
evil is in the other, not in ourselves. This is why the teaching
of Christ on the mote and the beam is so crucial. Below the
reader will be led directly into some of the deepest aspects of the
beam in their own eye. At the same time there is a danger that we
will apply this beam in judgment of ourselves - we will be tempted and
encouraged by the double itself, to look upon this fact (that we have a
shadow being so intimately within our souls) as a defect or flaw.
This is not the case. As was
pointed out far above in the discussion of Ahriman's Incarnation, the
opposing beings are a gift and a treasure. Further, in our
biographies we are watched over by the Divine Mystery at all times, and
whatever our state of soul - whenever we are in the deepest despair and
pain, that is the time when we can turn to the Mystery in prayer.
The 23rd Psalm is a quite exact description of our real condition
in any given moment of time in our biographies, and even harsh
conditions of soul pain and despair are as much a part of our
development of any other experience we are to meet in life.
Rudolf Steiner advised us, and experience itself proves, that the
hardest experiences are the most fruitful, even though we may not like
them at all. To labor in an inner trial of life is to do a
spiritual developmental work that can be accomplished in no other way.
The opponents and the shadow beings are a gift, and the Divine
Mystery is always ready for and open for us to surrender, just as was
captured by Michelangelo in the Pieta. The not I but Christ in me will in these trials go though passages much like death,
as the trials strip away from us our excesses of egotism.
When the unredeemed aspects of the soul dies through
these experiences into a new becoming, we are always held in such
moments by the Mother, exactly as is depicted in this remarkable work
of art: the Pieta.]
*
I recently had a discussion with a
leading anthroposophical doctor, who was also many years a leader in
the Society as well, and who on the question of the Shadow said to me
that it was his view that I could not speak of such things, without
first discovering and mastering everything Rudolf Steiner said about
the Double and about (I believe) Lucifer and Ahriman.
I found this to be a most incredible
statement, for it seemed to assume that if one was to take up any
subject Rudolf Steiner spoke about, the first path to knowledge of the
matter had to go through him. Since Steiner himself had urged us
again and again to not make him into any kind of authority, I wondered
just what was being said to me by this doctor who has been seen for
many years to be a deep anthroposophist. I found this all the
more peculiar in an anthroposophical doctor, for at the end of the
lecture cycle Spiritual
Science and Medicine, Steiner was asked by a
doctor/student what should one do with Paracelsus, whom Steiner had
recommended be studied. Steiner replied that one should think out
things for themselves first, and then go to Paracelsus for
confirmation. My view has been that this is a good approach to
Steiner as well.
This doctor's attitude was also not
something new to my experience, for I had run into similar views many
times during my 25 plus years as an anthroposophist. Basically
this view was that all that we could think, had to be tested against what Steiner had said.
This is, of course, logically impossible.
If taken to the extreme of what it implies, it would suggest that
no one can have a thought about anything since Steiner incarnated.
Further, it represents a view that imagines thinking to be
incapable of having its own direct spiritual connection, independent of
Rudolf Steiner, while at the same time assuming that Steiner never made
an error, never could make an error and ought not ever to be
questioned. (At a recent Branch meeting, a Christian Community Priest
said to me: we
are never to doubt Rudolf Steiner.)
Given the logical absurdity of the
doctor's statement to me, what was in fact living in this point of
view? I would say that it was in fact the Shadow itself speaking
to me, trying mightily to rise out of the doctor's sub-conscious soul
on streams of anxiety and doubt and thus to keep its nature hidden.
The Shadow cannot not bear the light of reasoned examination, or
the true heart-warmth of genuine humor, and will trick us at every turn
whenever we let ourselves sleep inwardly. But this is getting
ahead of ourselves.
Where did the doctor's unconscious
anxiety come from? It came from the fact that he did not know me,
and even though he had read some of my writings, had no basis in his
experience to have confidence in me. But he was asleep as to this
lack of confidence, otherwise that is what he would have said. He
would have said, that if I was to write of the Shadow, I needed to
explain how it was that I felt qualified to speak, for people (such as
himself) would need to be able to have some trust right from the
beginning, otherwise they will believe that all that is said is theory
and Steiner-said - everything but something actually grounded in direct
experience.
This then is where I will begin - with my
experience.
I have practiced introspection for over 35 years now, ever since at age 31 when I underwent a remarkable, unexpected and spontaneous change of personality. From one evening on going to sleep to the next morning on awakening, a light - a new small flame of self-awareness - awoke in my soul that had not been there before, such that I began to see inwardly (into my own inwardness) where previously all had been enfolded in the normal darkness of ordinary consciousness. Lest one think this was a godsend, let me set the record straight, for it separated me from my fellows and has since lead to all kinds of troubles and challenges. To be awake where others are sleep is not always a good thing.
Fortunately, the personality that I was
before the change was grounded in a kind of simple faith, and so in the
beginning I turned to the Gospels in order to understand the meaning of
what I began to observe in my inner life as a consequence of this
spontaneous inner and brighter self awareness.
Seven years later, I met Rudolf Steiner's
writings, and became attracted almost at once to his works on the
science of objective introspection (A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity).
Already naturally introspective (inwardly awake to the processes
of my soul), I now found the way to make this very alone journey with
the aid of scientific thinking. The main trouble that followed
(these things never take a straightforward course), was that among
other anthroposophists, I found almost no one that was as inwardly
awake and as carefully studying their soul life out of the impulse of
an introspection following the methods of natural science.
Oh, people did read the books on
epistemology, but mostly they absorbed the concepts from the books,
such that they thought about the content of their souls through the
lens of the indications of Steiner, and did not in fact actually look
to their own souls as a book itself that can be studied. Slowly over
time I found myself again at odds with what I had assumed were my
fellow students in Anthroposophy, because we were not actually studying
the same material. I was studying my soul and they were reading
books.
About ten years ago, I ran into a wall in
these studies. I knew a great deal in practice and had written
about it in my essay pragmatic moral psychology (see
my website), but I had not yet met the double (in any kind of obvious
way such that I felt any confidence in describing it as experience that had become
knowledge in my soul). I had read much about
the double, and had all kinds of concepts, but no adequate experience.
I even stopped completely writing a book I was writing at that
time because I did not know what clearly was the next thing to know.
I wasn't even sure that introspection, for all that I had learned
there, could provide this experience, which seemed to require actual
clairvoyant perception.
In this I was wrong. The fact
is that my experience was full of evidence of the double, but this had
eluded me because I had made certain assumptions about what I was to
experience as an aspect of introspection, such that a matter that was
the most intimate aspect of my inner life - the introspective
experience of the Shadow, I had assumed to have one quality, when it in
fact possessed another entirely.
This quality was hidden in the process we call our inner voice, or sub-vocalization, or which others call discursive thinking (the spirit speaks, the soul hears). The plain fact was that unless I was consciously directing this inner speaking (the throat chakra), the unconscious (in part the threefold double-complex) was using it. To experiment here, simply count inwardly to yourself up to 23, and then stop and go on to some other activity, possibly involving movement. While you are doing this other activity, this inner speaking (the mental chatter we mostly conceive of as thinking) will continue on its own. There is a kind of endless commentary about everything that is going on, and unless we are consciously directing this inner speaking, it is speaking out of itself, or more precisely out of the presently hidden sub-conscious and super-conscious elements of soul life.
For someone to whom this is a new idea,
and has little experience with introspection, let me add this concept.
We all know how it is that we can place iron filings on a piece
of paper, underneath which is a magnet. The filings will form
patterns on the paper to line up with the influence of the magnet's
magnetic field. In a like way the double-complex and other
aspects of the soul, both sub-conscious and super-conscious, make
patterns in soul phenomena - patterns that can be observed. When
we think about these patterns, after a time it is this thinking
reflection itself which sees (recognizes) the meaning of the various
phenomena as described in this essay.
Now this unconscious soul life is not
just the double-complex (the sub-conscious), for the conscience (the
super-conscious) speaks here as well. In addition, what the John
Gospel calls the
wind (the Holy Spirit) also speaks into our
thinking (recall above the essay: In Joyous Celebration of the
Soul Art and Music of Discipleship).
The whole soul is in fact a kind of inner mystery temple*, and
requires that we pay attention to it (be scientific about our
introspective experiences), otherwise we will miss a great deal that
can be observed in the soul. As another example, just notice the
next time someone seems to have made you angry. Up in intensity
goes this inner chatter, which then tends to take the character of all
kinds of thoughts which are unkind and destructive. If we act out
of these thoughts, we will usually make a mess of things.
*Once we recognize the soul as an inner
mystery temple, we can approach it with the care and art that we might
make with regard to a physical temple. How often do we clean it?
How often do we air it out? What rites to we celebrate
there? These are just a few of the dozens of questions we can
take up, once we orient ourselves toward our soul in this way.]
If we think it through, we will now
recognize why Steiner so frequently spoke to us about learning control of thoughts. Our will needs to awake in this realm, so that
the unconscious influences become more conscious, the access to our I
by the Shadow is reduced, and our ability to consciously co-participate
with the Holy Spirit (the wind) is able to emerge out
of the general background noise in the soul, because thought is no
longer allowed to be driven out of the hidden depths
(instead becoming a conscious act of the own I). This then
is a basic and essential task in achieving the Living Thinking or what
is sometimes called heart thinking: control of thoughts.
Some will have good instincts about
holding back this endless mental chatter (which the Tibetans call: the oscillation of the citta). We will also here come to a sense of the
difference between the lower ego and the higher ego. That which
appears to introspection in ordinary consciousness as the seemingly
endless flow of mental chatter is a phenomena of the soul. I am
not, by the way, in the immediate above trying to solve all of the
relevant problems. Instead I am simply pointing directly at soul
phenomena that if studied objectively will lead to experiences of the
threefold double-complex in the soul.
All that said, let us now step away, and
come at this more abstractly for a while, instead of so intimately, for
this outer view, with its generalized mental pictures, is needed in
order for us to have a context in which to place the meaning of why we
need to have such an intimate inner companion, the shadow or
double-complex, who appears to be able to use our own inner voice as a vehicle for
temptation and prosecution and other problems, while at the same time
the conscience and the wind have a similar access
to our deepest inner soul realities. In the sense of the soul as
an inner mystery temple, while it has many general characteristics,
this temple is also quite distinctively individual and unique.
Also, keep in mind that once we obtain to a certain degree of control of thoughts (the will-in-thinking) it then becomes possible (again see my essay In Joyous...) for us to begin to learn how to perceive inwardly the voice of temptation - egotism (the luciferic double), the voice of inner prosecution - lies (the ahrimanic double) and the influence of the self-created egregorial beings (or better said: the self-generated wounds) in the soul (these wounds by the way, can so weaken the I that it becomes permeable for the influence of the Asuras). Further, the lower ego (the I surrounded by the threefold double-complex) becomes able, via the will-in-thinking (control of thoughts), to begin to consciously co-participate with the conscience (the higher ego - which is itself never really separated from the Mystery).
Here is a diagram from my book the Way of
the Fool:
Christ Jesus
Guardian Angel
i-Am
[sense world < soul (A/d) < i-AM > (L/d) soul > spiritual world]
human double
(Asuras)
the Divine
Mother
Here is another diagram, isolating part
of the first one for special attention:
i-AM
(A/d) < i-Am > (L/d)
human double
We need to keep in mind that the symbols
(the map) is not the territory.
The first diagram represents our general
experiential relationship to the worlds, both inner and outer.
The second diagram represents the structural nature of the
lower and higher egos as they sit within this world of experience.
From within our biographies we experience
the world, mediated on the sense-world side by the ahrimanic double and
the sensory parts of the soul, and mediated on the
spiritual-world side of experience by the luciferic double and the
higher inner perceptual parts of the soul. We are far more awake
to the former (in the sense-world) in this stage of the evolution of
consciousness than we are to the latter (the spiritual-world).
This is an important point, and one of
the reasons the study of Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is far more
important for the future of Anthroposophy than the study of Knowledge
of Higher Worlds. Only via actual
introspection following the map that is Philosophy do we begin directly with an encounter in the spiritual
worlds. In KoHW our approach is indirect, through the sense world
(a world more informed by Ahriman, who is, in a way a stronger opponent
than is Lucifer).
Further, not one of the spiritual powers,
whether it is Christ, the Divine Mother, Ahriman or Lucifer have direct
access to the social world of the tenth hierarchy. Their only
access is through us. "...the very purpose of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is
that man should become increasingly conscious of what takes effect through him in earthly existence." R.
S. Lucifer and Ahriman [emphasis
added]. This both insures our freedom and our capacity to in the
end master the influence of the Shadow forces, as these pour out of
ourselves onto the shared social world of humanity. As pointed
out above in my article on Ahriman's Incarnation, his power in Nature
no longer quite influences us as directly as before, for the social
world has emancipated itself from the natural world. [It could come to
pass that this situation will change as Western Civilization passes
through its death and then toward a rebirth - such that humanity could
find itself once again deeply integrated with the natural world, albeit
one badly damaged by our excesses.]
The main thing that goes on in the social
world is the biographies of six billion plus human beings. These
are artistically arranged by Christ as Lord of Karma, so that each of
us lives our biographies in the company of those with whom we have
special and very much needed shared striving. Once we incarnate
into the social world of humanity, we are set free of direct
spiritual-world influence, except for the fact of partial excarnation
every night during sleep. This is where needed adjustments can be
made to keep us on track with regard to the goals we have agreed to
experience in our biographies. Here is a great mystery, and
everyone should really only make a judgment about what this means for
them individually, and not concerning any other person.
The threefold double-complex plays a
special role here, for much that the double does is needed in order for
us to experience our karma, fate and then eventually (perhaps) to form
our free destiny. We need the Shadow in earthly life in the same
way we need a physical body. Granted aspects of the
double-complex are similar in kind and nature to immense spiritual
powers, yet Steiner also describes this as a hierarchical structure of
gloves within gloves within gloves - a stepping down of the original Power into something much smaller and
more in balance with the real I. While the double is like Ahriman
and Lucifer, it is ordained to be in a kind of harmonious relationship
to the ego, for the freedom of the I is the essential matter.
In the heart-center of the soul is a
realm the double cannot touch.
In the last Lecture to the John Gospel
cycle, Steiner also speaks of the result of properly passing through
the trials of The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (becoming
able to reproduce the meaning content of that book out of our own
thinking, feeling and willing) as producing a condition of katharsis
(or purification) in the astral body. This purification is what
makes the soul (the astral body aspect) more permeable to the Light and
to the Life, and this forms the necessary basis out of which the Rite
of Initiation can later be enacted.
Every incarnate human being is thus
accompanied in the biography by a relevant Shadow (threefold
double-complex), which is rich and just in its essential nature (the
justice element comes from Christ's influence as the Lord of Karma).
We can begin to observe the field of play of these beings by studying (with scientific objectivity) our own
inwardness, especially the phenomena of discursive thought.
Because of the laws of karma and reincarnation, the astral body
also contains (in addition to the ahrimanic and luciferic doubles) the
human double, we will explore this in more detail next.
In my writing I used to speak of the
human double as various kinds of egregorial beings. This is an
ancient term, and refers to a kind of self-generated psychic parasite
in the astral body or world (the heroin addict calls it: the monkey on my back - a quite suitable imagery). Many times these
beings are formed collectively by a group, but they also can be formed
individually as well. Such artificial beings are created by our
giving into a prompting of either or both of the ahrimanic and
luciferic doubles, except that the egregore requires an almost rite
like-repetition for its creation. The ritual by which the heroin
using shots up is one such rite.
The result of the rite is a kind of
forbidden pleasure (the payoff to the rite), and a kind of separation
occurs in the astral body such that the egregorial being becomes more
and more independent of the will of the I as the rite is repeated.
Steiner hinted at such beings in the last lecture of the cycle
called: Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, where he called them cancers or tumors of the soul.
I have taken to dropping the term
egregore, and replacing it with self-generated wound. I believe this is more accurate if we want our
conceptions about such matters to not only be true, but also good and
beautiful. Steiner also referred to such beings somewhat
indirectly when he described the processes of excarnation and
incarnation (in between death and a new birth) in a way that suggested
that as the astral body expands (excarnates) into the cosmos, it leaves
behind pieces of itself, which later during the following incarnation
process are picked up once again.
Now such beings are of varying degrees of
harm. Many of us will have had the experience of driving on a
freeway, and because there was little traffic we let our minds go into
a kind of reverie, such that 20 miles down the road our ego
consciousness (our attention) returns from the day-dreaming with a kind
of shock that we did not at all notice what we did as a driver for the
lost time. Who drove the car while our conscious ego attention
was participating in the experience of reverie? A modern thinker,
using computer terminology, might speak of a sub-routine, which is not
entirely inaccurate since a sub-conscious habit
was driving the car.
We have many such sub-conscious habits
(physiologists also speak of muscle memory, as if the physical body
itself could self-direct its complicated activities). What else
is the training for certain dancers, gymnasts and others, but the
creation of a whole community of sub-conscious habits. Experience
in fact teaches us that many such activities require of the ego that it
not over-think the activity, otherwise we become awkward and clumsy.
Also, if we come to understand that the ego is much more than
where our I directs our attention at any given moment, we can see that
in the sub-conscious and super-conscious of the will are rather
remarkable capacities.
It is really only in thinking that the activity of the will can become the most
conscious (see again In Joyous...).
Now as we know, the more dangerous and
problematic self-generated wounds (addiction, alcoholism, etc.) have in
the 20th Century become more treatable. A great aid came into
existence at the beginning of the most intense period of the Second
Coming of Christ in the Ethereal in 1933, when Bill W. was visited,
while detoxing in the hospital for the umpteenth time, by Christ in the
form of an angel, and the impetus was given for the later community
development of the 12 Steps. There is no present day spiritual
discipline better suited for healing self-generated wounds than the 12
Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'll not lay out the Steps here in
detail, but I will do a kind of overview, and point out their threefold
nature. The beginning gesture of the Steps is one of surrender.
We recognize our powerlessness before the self-generated wound
(the monkey on my back, my disease, demon rum etc.), and we turn to the
Divine Mystery (as we individually understand this - our spiritual
freedom remains fully intact) for help. Here is some Novalis
which touches this process quite directly:
The heart is the key to the world and of life.
We live in our helpless condition
in order to love, and be obliged to others.
Through imperfection we become ripe for the influence of others,
and this outside influence is the aim.
In illness we must be helped by others and only others can help us.
From this
point of view, Christ surely is the key of the world.
What actually happens in a spiritual
technical sense is that by our act of surrender the forces of the
Divine Feminine (which oversee, from the other side of the Eight Inner
Spheres of the Earth, the hierarchies of the left) are able to enter
for a time into the soul and stand in between the I and the
self-generated wound, as well as in between the I and the ahrimanic and
luciferic doubles as these through inner prosecution and temptation
encourage the flaw in our character that has led to the self-generated
wound. We surrender to our helpless condition, and in so humbling
ourselves make it possible for the soul to have enough embryonic purity
(humility) that the Mystery can come to our aid.
In the middle elements of this 12-Step
process we enter into community. We confess to another.
We admit our flaws to the Divine, and we get ready to make amends
to those we have harmed. We start to shoulder, on our own, acts
of purification rooted in the slowly unfolding of this practice of true
humility.
In the final elements of this process we
then act in the social community world so as to transform our character
flaws, and build out of this a conscious spiritual practice that keeps
us awake in the moment to our next potential fall from grace. As
we do this it becomes less necessary for the Divine Feminine to provide
direct inner support, as long as we can remain on the path of humility
and service to others. The ego is strengthened in the very best
way (beginning with and remaining in: washing the feet). This process, which I call the elevation of the
spirit for the mastery of the soul is as follows: 1) surrender;
2) entrance (naive membership) in the community of like-wounded; and,
3) then becoming a self-transforming example and actor (through
service) in this same community.
Lets now look a little more deeply at the
ahrimanic double and inner prosecution - lies (we hear in our inner
voice the repeating tape of: you are such a loser!).
This is not all the ahrimanic double does, for it is a kind of
cold and calculating intelligence. In fact, precisely because it
is so cold and calculating it has (in a way) a higher order intellect.
Heart-warmed thoughts are wise and generally far less clever in
making life decisions. Further, heart-warmed thoughts often
selflessly involve us with others, such that they can often lead to
troubles and difficulties (see the film Pay it
Forward), whereas clever thoughts are quite
selfish and enable us to avoid more easily messy life situations.
Now in extremis, inner prosecution is
often accompanied by what we tend to call depression, using conventional psychological terms. We have
lost ourselves in self-negative feelings, and out of this inability to
control our life of feelings, the inner prosecutor (the lying
ahrimanic-double) is given a kind of free reign to provide us with
negative thoughts (remember from above the need to learn to control
thoughts). Here the problem involves the mastery of feelings.
The Shadow during much depression is in charge of the feeling
life (yes, there are physically based physiological problems that can
lead to depression, but we need to learn to work within our own soul
first, before we turn to a pill. The pill can weaken the I,
because it fails to wake up within and then face the Shadow-in-the-soul
out of the I's own forces.
By the way, do not go around giving
advice to any of your depressed friends, unless you have clearly
mastered the following practices yourself, and they (your friends)
already have a general spiritual understanding of their own life of
soul and spirit. What is being said here requires that it remain
within its necessary context, and if abstracted out of that context it
will lead to harm.
In effect in much depression we are in
the grip of the ahrimanic double. Our life of feeling is not
mastered, nor are our thoughts within our control. Also remember that
this being is very clever, so one must begin by recognizing (as in
the 12 Steps) our fundamental helplessness. The best advice I
have ever practiced in this regard, apparently came from Dennis Klocek
(indirectly attributed to him through another), and involves taking
hold of our inner voice, and saying inwardly: Who are you? This
should be repeated two or three times, with the accompanying thought
(remember that context) that we are waking up in the realm of soul and spirit
and speaking to a being
in the still somewhat inner darkness of
ordinary consciousness.
This being
cannot give us its name, and is compelled, upon being asked to provide
its name, to withdraw from its activity as a contributor to the state
of depression. Part of what is going on is that during depression
we are experiencing a related paralysis of the will. When we
activate the inner will by asking the question, we take from this being
a power it has tricked us into allowing it to have, which power really
belongs to us.
Don't expect immediate relief. Feelings linger, and the depression (especially if quite strong) will not fly away (unless a higher being intervenes, an experience I have also had, but which requires petition - prayer - followed by grace from above)*. Sometimes we just need to lie down, ask the question a few times, and then rest. The being must withdraw and the depression will lessen. At this point, however, we are not yet done.
*[The best time I have found for petition
and prayer is on going to sleep. We pray to the Holy Mother for
help with our depressed state, and in the morning on waking, there
should be a kind of small gap between our I and the shadow presence.]
Just as in the 12 Steps, when during
surrender there arises a gap in between the I and the self-generated
wound, so the question (who are you?) creates a gap between the I and
the ahrimanic double (the inner prosecutor). Into this gap now we
must assert further inner activity. The best activity I have
found is to then consciously create a mental picture of this being
and its cohorts. I make a picture of three such beings (really
seeking thereby to effect the whole threefold double-complex, for these
tend to cooperate), imagining them being somewhat like the character
Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but instead of being rounded in shape as
in the film are actually quite angular with very sharp features as
described in the early lessons of the First Class.
We imagine these beings kind of gleefully
dancing, holding hands, and moving in a circle. Then to this
picture we add something humorous. Perhaps we picture cold maple
syrup pouring over these beings, making them slippery and causing them
to pratfall. We, of course, don't want to imagine harm coming to
them, but we do need to make an inner picture in which their activity
is seen as quite silly and ineffectual. Maybe we picture that
they get depressed and then start to eat all kinds of ice cream until
they get sore of stomach because of the excess.
By this activity we have first dismissed
the being by asking the question of their name, and then second made a
counter picture to those negative self images the Shadow has been
urging on us. The final (or third step) is to become physically
active. We rise from the sofa or bed where we have lain down, and
take up some activity (cleaning is good, if we otherwise because of
weather can't go for a walk). Nature is certainly a good
experience here, or if we are housebound for some reason, then music,
made by ourselves (singing, playing a recorder, or listening to a CD).
Something like the Gregorian Chant music that was popular some
years ago is also helpful. Whatever choices we make, it is
movement that is essential.
The depression has paralyzed the will,
and now after we have first asserted the will inwardly by asking the
question and then developed it further by creating the humorous
counter-picture, we must then press this will gesture all the way into
the physical body and into movement. With the state of depression
lifted, the more harmonious thoughts that we need will come to us, and
we can return to life.
On the basis of a picture from Tomberg's
book Inner
Development, I have also taken to imaging my
will working from the crown of my head downward, pressing the ahrimanic
double out through the soles of my feet. This is the last act
before rising from rest (or from inner meditative activity) to begin
movement. I also try to image this being not having the capacity
to enter another, or cause harm there, but once pressed out it has to
return to the realm proper to it in the Eight Inner Spheres of the
Earth.
Experience, by the way, shows that this
being does not leave us completely in the beginning. We are
learning to exercise a certain capacity of soul, and the threefold
double-complex remains present until we have accomplished all that we
need to develop in the soul, through the activity of our own I.
Just as there is no instant mastery of the physical body,
there is no gain without pain in the purification of the temple of the
soul.
Next lets look at temptation -egotism, a
principle arena of the activity of the luciferic double. Again,
this temptation comes to us via our own inner voice, which we have,
mostly by habit and lack of development, allowed a kind of independence
from the I. Our attention is on listening to the tempting inner
voice to our egotism, and not on control of thoughts or mastery of
feelings. At the same time we need to keep in mind that the
luciferic double is also a voice of a kind of wisdom. We
sometimes need this wisdom in life, even though it will tend to be a
bit ungrounded. Luciferic wisdom takes us off the Earth, while
Ahrimanic cleverness drives too deep into a mood of gravitas.
Keep in mind also, that Steiner has said that often the cure for
Ahriman is Lucifer, and the cure for Lucifer is Ahriman.
Essentially the same problems as above
apply, except that we are not generally depressed (although often in
states of depression we are more easily tempted). The root of the
temptation is generally a mood of soul. So lets come at this from
the problem of mastery
of feelings (something a bit different from control of thoughts). Obviously the six supplementary exercises are an
essential preliminary support here as well.
There is some imagery from the
middle-East, Persian or perhaps Sufi, which I have found useful in
understanding this problem. The soul and spirit can be described
as consisting of a charioteer, a chariot and a horse. The
charioteer is the I. The chariot is the self constructed mental
world - our collection of ideas and concepts which we use to travel
through life. And, the horse is our feelings or emotions
(e-motions).
The charioteer is most in balance when he
has consciously created and maintained his chariot, and is able to tame
and direct the energies of the horse (the mastery of feelings).
As regards the chariot, we have the need to control thoughts, and
to not be in bondage in the experience of an idea (unable to
distinguish our I from an idea). As regards the horse, we have to
be able to step aside from unredeemed (sub-conscious) feelings of
antipathy and sympathy, and develop the ability to be able to replace
these with cultivated feelings (such as reverence, equanimity etc.).
A temptation is generally a selfish
(egotistical) desire (which Steiner speaks about from many directions
in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity). It is a want, perhaps experienced as a need:
sex, hunger, revenge, etc. Lets just work with hunger and sex, to
keep things simple.
Hunger is often a need of the body, as is
sex. The I experiences the need, and in fact often identifies
with it, having already identified itself with the body. We
feel/think: I need food or sex (when it is really the body). In the Philosophy Steiner has put the question this way: Can I want what I
want? Can a desire be an act of will, or am I powerless before it?
His answer is that we can will what we
want, if we put before the want a
self-chosen moral intuition. We put in front of the want, a
self-determined because. Not after the want, in front of the want.
Just like with depression, the first step is actually to create
the gap in between the want (the temptation) and the action. And
the same rules can apply. We experience the want, the temptation,
which will often appear in discursive thought as if our own inner voice
was saying: oh
boy, I was so good today with what I didn't eat at lunch, I can take my
dinner hunger and satisfy it with ice cream
(a friend of mine humorously calls this an ice crime).
If we notice the temptation, and then we
can say: Who are you? There is also an old folk remedy from
Europe, where we cross ourselves three times and spit over our left
shoulder.
Of course there are all kinds of
temptations and desires, this is just an example. Lets look at
sex as well, since there is a lot in common with other inner soul
gestures that can make these questions of soul management (control of thoughts and
mastery of feelings) stand out.
Generally with sex and hunger we also
deal with inner pictures, and also the lower chakras. These
images are not insignificant. Further, our culture through
advertising is constantly stimulating desire. This (sex) is a bit
of a different problem for men than for women. The temptation for
men is to see a women just as a women and not as an individual. A
man just wants to get laid (is the cliche), and is often
in-discriminant about who is the object of his desire. The
temptation for women is more of one toward immodesty in dress and
action.
The man is stimulated by the culture to
make women into sex objects, and the women is stimulated by the culture
to dress provocatively, forgetting that (or asleep to the fact that)
men are intoxicated by such stimulation (intoxication being a kind of
surrender of the I to the aroused passion). No one in these
circumstances is free, because they are in fact in bondage to the idea
(the related mental pictures), and mastered by the feelings (the
passion) instead of being their master.
So the first problem, as noted above with
depression, is to awake to the situation, in this case the temptation.
The second problem is to create a gap in between the desire and
the action, so that before it sparks across that gap, a freely chosen
moral choice can be inserted in the front of the desire. Willed
thinking can do this in accord with the teachings contained in The
Philosophy of Freedom. [With this
understanding we also get an idea of the deeper nature of the Freedom
contemplated by this book.]
Again, since the chariot - the mental
construct - is relevant, we can create an alternative mental picture to
the one prompting the desire. We can shift from a picture of an
ice crime, to one of another food choice, which our thinking helps us
recognize as more healthy. We can also try to self observe the
feeling life which has prompted the desire. We can then ask,
where did this mood of soul come from, and how can I substitute another
mood (take the reigns of the horse through the conscious willed
creation of a cultivated feeling).
The most significant matter is to have in
our world view of our inner life a quite concrete and accurate
understanding of the relationship of the Shadow (the threefold
double-complex) to the I. With this understanding we now shift
the battle with evil into that realm were we are most able to meet it.
We understand that evil (and the good) enter into the world through us, and since this is the case, we are then able to meet
it, and more and more slowly render it impotent out of the own
developing I. We don't change the world, we change ourselves.
As a corresponding element of this
understanding, we also need to recognize (as pointed out in the essays
above on the mote and the beam) that what we observe in the outer world
(the Stage Setting) is more beam than mote. Yes, we can in the
outer world oppose evil, but first we must master the beam ("You hypocrite, first you must
get the beam out of your own eye, before you can help your bother with
his splinter" Christ Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount).
Another thing the tempter (luciferic
double) can do is cause us to live too strongly in fantasy and reverie.
This is a use of the imagination (picture making capacity)
that wastes its energies in the realm of illusion. A
fantasy is not real, and when we give into this day-dreaming
sub-consciously, we retreat into that inner realm which the luciferic
dominates. At the same time, there is a great deal that the
imagination can do, if we but give it the lightest direction and
guidance.
Here the artistic impulse finds a great
source for its work. The question that is helpful to ask
ourselves is: Toward what purpose has my I directed my assent into
inner reverie? Recall, for example, that in The Philosophy of
Freedom a crucial step involves a moral imagination. The impulse to Goetheanism also finds its powers
in the use of the picture thinking. We routinely rehearse our
coming conversations with people in order to be ready for what is to
happen there. All of this kind of inner picturing activity can be
lightly directed by the I along directions that are less and less
illusory, and more and more lending themselves to real spirit vision.
Day-dreaming takes only a little nudge
from the I to become meditation and thinking contemplation.
Reverie is a step that lets us calm the soul, especially when
outer events may tempt us to anger and away from peace. Picture
thinking is strong in us today precisely because the Sophianic impulse
lays there, and wants to find itself in our souls once more. If
we feel a need to understand better someone who is disturbing our calm,
what better soul quality do we have than the capacity to strive, using
the picture thinking, to see the world from their point of view.
The opportunities to grace the temple of our soul with new inner
pictures are ever present, if we but wake to them.
Let us now return to the consideration of
Macro Evil, for one of the characteristics of the Stage Setting (the
cultural historical background to individual human biographies) is that
because the relationship between the opponents (Ahriman, Lucifer etc)
takes the shape of gloves within gloves within gloves, giving thus a
common and general yet specific nature and character to the threefold
double-complex, a whole culture (even a Civilization) can be turned in
a certain shared direction because each individual double expresses to
a small degree the same time-related impulses originating in its
Hierarch (or ruler, such as Ahriman).
For example, scientific materialism (an
aspect of the Ahrimanic Deception) arises in Western humanity in large
part because the individual doubles are able to be coordinated, and
consists (in part) of inner temptations and prosecutions designed to
cause natural scientists (natural philosophers at the beginning of the
scientific age) to make the same (common) error of judgment. The
whole of Western Civilization pivots in the direction of a spiritless
(all matter no spirit) world view because most all the threefold
double-complexes are moved in sync with this basic impulse* originating
in the realm of the hierarchies of the left.
*[For a discussion of certain details of
the some of the more common errors of thought induced into this period
of development, see Barfield's World's
Apart, and Cruse's Evolution
and the New Gnosis.]
William Blake called the effect of this
generalized confusion: "single vision and Newton's sleep".
The natural scientist lost confidence in his senses (which Goethe
said never lie, only the judgment - discursive thinking moved from out
of the sub-conscious - lies), and so the natural scientist believed he
could only find the truth of the world through instruments and
mathematics. Thus arose a spiritless world-view, which while
itself seems a terrible thing, was actually turned toward the good by Beings more powerful and wise than Ahriman and his minions.
In the stream of earthly world events, a
central theme is the evolution of consciousness. Humanity evolves
by being offered precise tasks in each cultural age. While not
every biography achieves what is offered it, at the time it is offered,
the possibility is always there. In terms of the evolution of
consciousness, the Ahrimanic Deception enabled humanity to become (more
or less) free of the Gods. The human being was to feel
spiritually alone, until bearing a hunger for a return to the spirit,
it awoke enough to begin to strive once more for reintegration.
Even faith was to become arid and dead (thus the appearance of
spiritual materialism everywhere as a kind of rigid - ahrimanized -
dogmatic fundamentalism).
As we saw above in the essay on Methodology, that the processes in the social that gave rise to the
potential for moral freedom (the development of individualism and the
loss of the cohesive nature of the family and community), were
accompanied in large part by the effects of natural science and the
industrial revolution. The social effects of Ahriman's
character, as stamped on present day civilization, served the good -
the evolution of consciousness, by causing the I to have to stand on
its own (leave its childhood behind), and begin to draw from the deeper
inner wells of its nature a true - self-created - knowledge of the
Good, or moral freedom (see also above: The
Meaning of...).
Christ even told us to expect this
effect, when He said in the Gospels, Matthew 10:34-40: "Don't think I came to cause
peace across the land. I didn't come to cause peace, I came to
wield a sword, because I came to divide a man against his father and a
daughter against her mother and a bride against her mother-in-law, and
to make a man's servants his enemies. Whoever prefers father or
mother over me is not worthy of me; and whoever prefers son or daughter
over me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take his cross and
follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever found his life will
lose it, and the one who lost his life because of me will find it.
Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me,
receives my Sender."
Rudolf Steiner called aspects of this
effect of the Christ Impulse: the loss of the blood ties that at one
time bound us into various forms of group soul.
This then is how we need to see (from
this point of view) the Mystery of Evil. Macro-evil, the Stage
Setting, is one aspect of the living and evolving social organism of
the whole world. It is context, not essence. Essence is
micro-evil, which occurs in individual human biographies in the nature
of the relationship of the I to the threefold double-complex - the
Shadow. The counter to the Shadow is the own I. We are the
key to the Mystery of Evil, for real evil (along with the good) only
enters the world through us. By unfolding within ourselves the
Christ Impulse (free moral grace via the Second Eucharist), we start to
learn to tame evil and subdue it at the only point it has through which
to enter the social world.
We will also gain something by noticing
from Lecture Five, of From
Symptom to Reality in Modern History, a hint
from Steiner about the Mystery of Evil, where he says that what we
think of as evil is a secondary effect of something that is more
important and part of the Good. He uses there the metaphor of a
train and the rails that train travels upon. The train engine and
the direction it travels are important, but the indirect effect of this
travel is that it wears out the rails. When all we notice is the
wear and tear on the rails, this is the human conception of evil.
Yet, this concept misses the main point, which is that the engine
and its direction are an important and necessary part of human
development and existence.
In the essay below on sexuality, we'll
come at this again, but let us here just notice that without sexuality
and desire there is no procreation, no stream of heredity.
Without physical bodies there is no earth existence for our
development. Without the hunger for food there are no
forces for that same body's use. In the so-called lower chakras
are the true Mystery of Evil, the engine that takes us where we need to
go. That this conscious and semi-conscious giving into appetite
wears out the body and wounds the soul, through leading us to excesses
of temptation and addiction, this is a side effect of the true purpose
of what we, in human terms, call Evil.
Again, and to conclude: "...the very purpose of our
Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that man should become increasingly
conscious of what takes effect through him in earthly existence." R.
S. Lucifer and Ahriman [emphasis
added] As well: You hypocrite, first you must get the beam out of your
own eye, before you can help your brother with his splinter.
*******************************
Encountering The Mystery of America
- what distinguishes the now emerging natural Anthroposophy
of the American Soul, from the anthroposophical work
of the
Twentieth Century -
[For the neophyte: The social world
of humanity can be divided into three general regions of soul activity
(observable with the own thinking, and indicated by Steiner).
These are East, Center and West, and mostly can be observed in
concrete form in the nature of the general cultural influences that
emerge from these somewhat distinct soul characteristics. Below
in various places I will go into details. For the moment we need
only be concerned with this general observation. Central
Europeans tend to live in the ideal in their thinking, and in that they
seek to effect the social, attempt to incarnate this ideal into social
reality. In the West (England and America), and particularly even
more so in America (what I call the true West), the soul lives more in
the outer circumstances of life, and desiring to be a helper there, and
then uses thinking to discover how to practically and pragmatically
solve social problems.
In the one case the soul lives more in
the vertical (thus Steiner's indication that Europeans come to
Anthroposophy in a spiritual way) and in the other
the soul lives more in the horizontal (social), and comes thereby to
Anthroposophy in a natural way - as a product of
its engagement and desire to be a social helper. If we couple
this with Steiner's indication (which again can be confirmed through
observation of the social) that English speakers are
instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights (their striving in the great political-social issues of
the day leads them to moral choices), then we can see even more clearly
this distinction between Center and West.
Sadly, my experience of European
anthroposophists is that when you seek to point this out, they won't
have any of it. It seems beyond their capacities (in not all
cases) to recognize that another's inwardness is fundamentally
different. As a possible help for this, let me digress for a
moment into the following...
The American is said to wear his heart on
his sleeve (something connected to his instinct for brotherhood - more later). This is also connected to America
being a product of Western Civilization, in the sense of being the womb
of the successor civilization. Western Civilization is dying into becoming (a metamorphosis), and in America we find the youthful
(and raw) organism of the new civilization (the dawning of the Age of Aquarius). For example, in Central
Europe (in Germany in particular), social life is more formal (they do
not wear their hearts on their sleeves). So in German there are
two words for you: sie and du (you and thou). The
first is more formal, the latter far more intimate.
As a necessary consequence, in
anthroposophical circles in America, the European wants to remain
formal, and the America can't bring himself into a social setting where
he cannot wear his heart on his sleeve.
In any event at the beginning of this
section I am going to undertake to reveal some of the unrecognized
depths of the American Soul. This is made especially crucial by
another tragic fact, which is that in anthroposophical activity in
America, not only is there the general tendency (common all over the
world) to walk backward into the future (lean far too much on
Steiner-said, and thus be blind to huge aspects of the present*),
American anthroposophists are almost universally ignorant of their own
culture and can't seem to put together a conference which doesn't
consist of equal parts worship of the past and worship of the culture
of the Old World (all in full ignorance of the American Soul's rich
evolving cultural achievements. Below in various places I'll
write more directly on the details of this problem.
*In spite of all that Steiner indicated
on this subject, it seems to never really penetrate anthroposophical
consciousness that the world of spirit and of inspiration does not rest
or remain fixed in its nature, such that there has come to be an
unconscious assumption in our circles that everything Steiner said is a
written in stone vision of the activity of unchanging spiritual beings.
The spiritual hierarchies evolve constantly, and as humanity
struggles, they too adapt and change so that fresh and vital spiritual
impulses are constantly made available to us if we can get out of the
way in our minds of this excess of past Steiner said (too much spirit recollection and not nearly enough
spirit mindfulness or spirit vision - see the Foundation Stone
Meditation).
First some observations of America that
are of the present...]
**************************************
Present Day American Culture
- four
archetypal personalities -
Some years ago, I was in a conversation
at a small anthroposophical conference, and I used the term: American culture. The European anthroposophist sitting next to me
snorted, and clearly looking down his long nose at us poor
unenlightened Americans, offered this terse commentary: What culture!?!?! Shall we see? Keep in mind that this which
is being described is youthful and raw, as against the mature (but
dying) European Culture, which had clearly reached remarkable heights
of achievement in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.
*
I'd like to start with someone who is
certain to raise a lot of antipathy in those who haven't bothered to
think about these things: Clint
Eastwood. Here is a man, not only
associated primarily with movies, but with violent movies.
Clearly movies are not great literature or opera or symphonies of
the masters. Worse, Steiner has indicated certain problems that
can arise when one sits and views cinema. It is a singular
experience, often passive and lacking in all the greatness and natural
co-participation of the high arts of Western Civilization. All
the same lets see what can be observed if we do not automatically close
our minds right from the beginning.
Born in 1930, Eastwood begins his career
in television, and is most often remembered by the older American
generation as a character in a television series called Rawhide, centered around the practice of driving cattle to
market in the West in America and set in the late 19th Century.
Subsequently he is tapped by the Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone
for three operatic Westerns that essentially made Eastwood into a Hollywood
star. As a star Eastwood then makes a number of Westerns,
as well as a series of police detective films (the dirty Harry films), which if we use our imaginative faculties are
really just Westerns set in modern times. These
observations lead us to asking the question: Just what is the
significance of the Western for the American Soul, for it once
dominated film and television, has its own special place in American
literature, and still (as can be seen by recent films such as the
remake of 3:10 to Yuma) captures the
imagination of the American Soul.
We know that in the background of
European and other world cultures there are Myths, often profound in
nature and quite revealing of the character of the people whose myths
are being studied. For the New World and for the American Soul,
the Western is our Myth - our archetypal story that reveals a great
deal about our character. Now this Myth is rich, deep and wide.
It encompasses, for example, a quite dramatic change overtime in
how Native Americans are depicted. Early Westerns took the more
European view that Native Americans had no culture and were primarily
savages. Steiner even uses that term (savages) in a lecture.
Eventually, beginning with such films as Little Big Man, Jeremiah
Johnson and then Dances with Wolves the whole bigoted view of America's aboriginal peoples
begins to be stood on its head.
In this rich field of activity - the
story telling of the primal Myth of the American Soul, Clint Eastwood
emerges not only as its master, but in such films as Pale Rider and Unforgiven he uncovers in the
former film quite spiritual dimensions, and in the latter the incipient
reflections of the Consciousness Soul.
Consider now the basic aspects of this
Myth: Evil takes hold of a community, and fear paralyzes the members of
this community. Then comes the individual, the one (whether a
member of the community or a stranger-other) who has the courage to
face down evil, even when the community itself (out of its fear) stands
in his (or her) way. In the early years these themes were painted
in stark contrasts of black and white, even to the color of the hats
the bad guys and the good guys wore. As the Myth is worked with
over the years, the stories become more and more sophisticated, and at
a certain point the same Myth gets transferred into literature in the
genre of detective fiction. The hard boiled detective, often
himself an anti-hero (as are many Western film characters), has to
wander in the dark underbelly of society in order to right a wrong.
The Western writer Zane Gray begins to
include spiritual elements in his works, but is mostly yet unknown
outside small circles of fans. It is really Eastwood who starts
to explore these aspects in the more popular art of film, first in the
movie: High
Plains Drifter (1973). In an interview
years following the film, he offers in his laconic way of speaking,
that he thought that his character could either be played as an
avenging spirit come to this town, or as a dead man brought back to
life in order to right the wrongs committed in the community.
Later, in the film Pale Rider (1985) [Revelation
6:8: "And I
looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was
Death...")] which Eastwood directed and
starred in, he plays a dead man brought back to life (there is a scene
were another character sees this man, who has come to town wearing a
priestly collar, with his shirt off, and his back is covered with a
half dozen scars of gunshot wounds).
In fact, the opening sequence of Pale Rider has a young girl, who is burying her dog that the evil
doers killed in a raid on the community, praying to god for an avenging
angel to come. Needless to say, the Eastwood character kills the
bad guys, saves the town and so forth.
As Eastwood matures, both as an actor and
a director, he finally creates his Western masterpiece: Unforgiven (1992). The film wins four Oscars, with Eastwood
receiving two: as best director and for best film. The main
character is a former killer and drunk, now widowed, who in the
beginning (in order to make some money) leaves his small children alone
(they are perhaps ages 10 and 6) and goes off to kill (as in paid to
commit revenge) a couple of cowboys who had badly cut up the face of a
whore. Nobody in this film is a mister good guy. Everyone
is wounded and troubled. None of the moral questions (which are
fundamental to the films themes) are unambiguous.
Eastwood has here instinctively found the
core of the questions being faced by the Consciousness Soul (moral
dilemmas in an age of ambiguity, which force the I to rely fully on its
own inner resources). Yet, he continues to mature and more
precisely understand and observe human beings, and the next two
significant films are modern and face the Consciousness Soul questions
squarely (it is unnecessary in any Epoch of the Evolution of
Consciousness for those participating in it to use the terms Steiner
created. They only have to see the core of the human questions,
and then portray them in their art).
The first of these is Mystic River (2003), based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, and directed
by Eastwood. The film wins two Oscars for its principle actors
(Sean Penn and Tim Robbins), and Eastwood is again nominated for Best
Director and Best Film.
The story begins with a flash back to a
time when two young boys watch a third (they are friends in Boston) be
abducted by a unknown man who subsequently abuses the third. Then
we come to many years later, and the three become involved in a
horrible crime (one's daughter is killed - he is a local petty
criminal, another is the lead detective in this homicide, and the third
(the abuse survivor) becomes - erroneously - a principle suspect.
Every character (including the wives and friends of the
principles) confronts moral questions, each unique to their personal
biography. Few make what might be good choices in the abstract
(idealistic), but between the novelist's vision and Eastwood's film
rendition, the confusion and moral ambiguity seeps out of every corner
of the film and almost every scene. Nothing ends with clarity -
no nice wrapped up package. It is all too real, and the audience
well knows that this is a slice of life they themselves have faced at
one time or another at least in part.
Then Eastwood directs and stars in: Million Dollar Baby (2004). The film wins four Oscars, Best Film, Best
Director and two best acting awards for two of the principles (Hillary
Swank and Morgan Freeman, besides Eastwood, who was nominated but did
not win best lead actor).
Eastwood's character, a boxing coach,
becomes faced with a horrible moral choice, one that most of us would
hope never to have to face. He is also a practicing Catholic, who
goes to Mass almost everyday, although he constantly fights with his
priest about whether any of this religious stuff means anything
anymore. Based on a short story by F.X. Toole, the film leaves
behind the multiple moral dilemmas of Mystic River and focuses precisely on one character and one principle
question. The character eventually denies his Catholic
background, makes his own choice (clearly making a Consciousness Soul
decision) and afterward goes on into (for the movie goer) a kind of
unknown limbo which we can only imagine never leaves this character for
the rest of his last few years of life (he is quite mature).
Not content with these triumphs, Eastwood
next takes on the issue of war, in a time of the Iraq war, and directs
two more wonderfully related films: Flags of our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. In
the first we see the Battle for Iwo Jima from the side of the
Americans, and in the second the same battle from the side of the
Japanese. Letters sees Eastwood nominated (but not winning) for Directing
and for Best Picture once more, while Flags
is less successful in that department. Since Flags
actually tells a story about the American military in the Second World
War, that is not heroic in its nature, the movie is not so easily
popular. In both, Eastwood once more highlights moral questions
and their resolution, and most interestingly in Letters we see the struggle between the group soul and
individualism portrayed, as a couple main characters try to step
outside Japanese military tradition, and make in the moment individual
moral choices.
Eastwood is, of course, not the only
director in film to deal with Consciousness Soul questions, but he is
easily one of the most gifted and focused (again never needing to do
anything more as an artist but see the human world in which he lives).
*
Next lets look at the work of Neal
Stephenson. Stephenson is a novelist,
and a genius. Born in 1959, Stephenson is mostly seen as writing
science fiction, about which he says: The science fiction approach
doesn't mean it's always about the future; it's an awareness that this is different. [emphasis added, ed.]
Coming from a hard science background
(family and early college), he makes a name for himself with
imaginative novels of a unique character (Snow Crash, the
Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon) and is nominated for and wins several awards in this
field. The latter, Cryptonomicon, actually explores a whole new field of literature (he
is basically inventing this), which while unique, is still not yet
recognized for what it contains and what it portends.
Cryptonomicon is part novel, part exploration of code cyphers and
computers, part real history and part imagined history. It is
over 900 pages long and actually succeeds in being quite educational.
In this novel we get a glimpse of the later works, which do
something with history that so far has only been imagined.
Owen Barfield, a significant
anthroposophist and researcher into the mysteries of language (and what
they can say about the Evolution of Consciousness) once remarked about
the works of R.G. Collingwood (author of The Idea
of History), suggesting that Collingwood was
onto something special when he (Collingwood) said that all history is a
history of thought. It is, according to Collingwood, not so much
that a certain event happened at all (such as Caesar's crossing the
Rubicon), but more crucially what Caesar thought when doing this that
the historian must discover. Steiner's spiritual science gives us
much of this kind of history, and Steiner himself suggests that in the
future individuals will be able to do this - that is give us a history
of what was thought - of the insides, not just a usual history of
events - of outsides.
It is my view that Stephenson is able to
do this instinctively, although no one really yet recognizes the
significance of his genius in this regard. Now I could try to
demonstrate this with long quotes from his books, but sadly they really
must be experienced (just as Eastwood's films must eventually be
experienced). All I can do here is present the idea of this kind
of new instinctive cognition as regards the representation of history,
and suggest that Stephenson is able to do this. It will be up to
the reader to engage his works, in particular those I go to next, in
order to satisfy themselves as to how successful Stephenson has been.
Stephenson, after Cryptonomicon,
took on the subjects of certain aspects of the history of the world, in
particular mostly Europe, during the time (about 1670 to 1730) when
Newton and Leibniz were arguing quite fundamental questions, whose
resolution was essential to the future of physics and scientific
materialism. While this scientific debate was ongoing, there were
also struggles among bankers and traders and buyers and sellers of
financial instruments (stocks etc.), concerning the real nature of
money, of trade, of currencies and the relationship between government
and private individuals as to finance and banking. A great deal
that lives in modern civilization was being given birth in those years,
and Stephenson has written six novels, collected in three volumes, for
a total of 2700 plus pages, in which he recreates an imaginative
picture of what
was thought by the principles (real and
fictional) regarding these and related questions.
Called the
Baroque Cycle, the three volumes are also
rich in story-telling, adventure, passion, secrets, plots and
counter-plots. Where a particular question might puzzle the
reader, Stephenson invents fictional dialogs of explanation. For
example, a young princess (a real historical figure), travels by horse
drawn coach for several weeks across much of central Europe in the
company of Leibniz and another, who in response to the naive questions
of the young princess are required to explain the nature of the
arguments among the savants (the leading natural philosophers of the
day).
In one such dialog, we find a fictional
character and Leibniz explaining the significance of the counter ideas
over the nature of matter (Leibniz wants to have his monads have consciousness, and Newton wants to have his atoms
be mere things without consciousness). In a later dialog they
recognize in this moment that the course science takes as a result of
these dialogs among the leading savants, will have enormous
consequences for the future. This later dialog is remarkable, and
deserves some detailed hints as to its contents (it can be found
beginning on about page 672 of the last novel: The System
of the World).
The Hanover princess Caroline (a
historical figure) brings to her drawing room in England two other
historical figures (Newton and Leibniz) and a fictional character,
Daniel Waterhouse. She sets them the task of trying to settle a
certain argument of which she has become aware (during the processes of
education in her youth), concerning the relationship of matter and of
spirit, or in another way: what is the nature of substance and what is
the nature of free will. Both of these were significant questions
of the time among the leading thinkers, and Caroline is portrayed as
being concerned with what kind of cultural future is to be born out of a resolution of these
questions that leans too far in one direction at the expense of the
other.
The ensuing dialog is delightful - that
is it is a pleasure to read, and makes the modern arguments between
such ideas as evolution and intelligent design (for example) seem lost
and confused, because they have failed to keep in mind the more
fundamental questions as Stephenson has so ably recreated them for his
readers. Steiner, of course, has not lost sight of this question,
for his The Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual
Activity) fully embraces the question of free
will in the spirit of natural science.
The same methods of illumination are
applied by Stephenson to finance, trade and the creation of money.
At various places fictional characters interact with real
historical figures, and the underlying principles of these matters
(which effect us now greatly) are examined in quite plain and clear
language (something we have a hard time getting today).
In addition, the reality of the times and
places are portrayed starkly. The lives of the poor are not
whitewashed to any degree. We get to attend hangings outside
London, wars in the fields of Europe. slave ships prowling the
Mediterranean, parties at the Chateau of Versailles, arguments in the
English Parliament, what it means to be a soldier for Kings of all
kinds, what Cairo was like at that time, what the Alchemists (including
Newton) were pursuing, how women had to dress during the winter in
order to keep warm at the French Court, and on and on and on.
The world of Europe (and elsewhere) is so
fully realized, in all its rich detail, that we can't help but feel we
are there. The novels are never boring (as history often can be),
and over and over again we find language used in such a way that we go:
oh, that's where that word came from that we use today.
There will no doubt be those modern
historians or cultural anthropologists who want to argue with
Stephenson, but they will really be jealous, for he makes us live in
the time, intimately know the times, and most importantly understand
the thinking (just as Collingwood suggested was necessary for history)
that was giving birth to the world we live in today.
Most significant is that because of what
Stephenson had been writing, and who his readers most ofter were and
are, we can come awake to an instinctive Consciousness Soul teaching
and teacher. Stephenson cares about his subjects and his readers.
He has mastered all manner of questions and historical details,
and then rendered for his readers (often the very geeks we recognize as
responsible for the best in modern technology and advanced green
biology) a true living history of the world in which we stand
today.
Consider the titles to the three volumes,
which should not be seen as arbitrary in any sense: Quicksilver (not only does he here recognize the strange world of
early chemistry, but also the mercurial nature of the changes going on
at this time in history; The
Confusion (everything has become indefinite,
unformed, ready for new form); and, The System
of the World (the questions are resolved, and
science and finance and much else has now to move forward based on the
questions asked, and then answered, during this period of European
history (whether correctly or not).
Those familiar with the lifeless sense of
the history that stands behind our present world conditions, will be
graced with a great gift in these books, which are always entertaining,
always informative and always intellectually engaging in the highest
sense of those terms. A lapse in conventional education
regarding recent history, which had probably confused many young minds
today, is in these books overcome. To read them is to become more
awake to the world that surrounds us.
*
Let us now take up another novelist, this
time a woman, Ursula K.
Le Guin, born in 1929, a half year before
Clint Eastwood. She has written so much and for so long, that it
is almost impossible to categorize her work. Much, as with
Stephenson, seems to be in the realm of science fiction and fantasy,
but as with Stephenson this is really a field of literature (relatively
new) where one can invent stories in which to clothe
ideas. For example, rather than writing a philosophical treatise
on the nature of gender sexuality, Le Guin writes an award winning
novel (The Left Hand of Darkness - 1969) in which she creates an imaginary world through
which she can not only raise the issues, questions and ambiguities, but
demonstrate, through the imagination, how these matters might play out
in life.
Here is some Steiner and Tomberg on
social life and images and pictures: From Rudolf Steiner's Education
As A Force For Societal Change: In the future, social life
will depend upon cooperative support between people, something that
happens when we exchange our ideas, perceptions, and feelings.
This means that we must base our general education not just upon
ideas taken from science or industry but upon concepts that can serve
as a foundation for imaginative thoughts. As improbable as this
may seem now, in the future we shall be unable to interact in a
properly social way if we do not teach people imaginative concepts.
In the future, we shall have to learn to understand the
world in images.
From Valentin Tomberg's Anthroposophical
Studies of the Old Testament: At the present time, the
mission is different (the mission being the method correct for the
average student of mystery wisdom in a particular epoch). It
consists in a thought knowledge endowed with vision achieved through
the development of the forces of the conscience in order then to live
powerfully in the creative word.
Remember, here we are coming to know American's who arrive at Anthroposophy naturally, and who are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their life of rights.
In Le Guin we have another instinctive
Consciousness Soul artist, who examines the depths of human existence
and potential using the imagination. Now some may suggest that
the classic novel, or even the modern more ordinary novel does this
well, but in those cases we have a kind of spirit recollection (past
looking gesture) coupled with a bit of spirit mindfulness (present
oriented gesture). It is human nature seen most often as fixed,
settled and unchanging that novels outside the fields of science
fiction and fantasy often consider. In Le Guin (and others) it is
spirit vision that is significant, as well as the ability to illuminate
the present by changing the context imaginatively.
Similar in a way to Owen Barfield, Le
Guin loves language. She not only employs it with profound grace
to render her thought into pictures (stories), but many of her stories
focus on the significance of language itself (such as The Telling - 2000). Moreover, she is quite interested in the
spiritual dimensions of existence.
For example, while her Earthsea stories and novels seem to be about wizards and magic,
in fact they are morality tales. Her question often is in these
works: what do you do with power and why do you do it. The power
can be the great power of a king or a wizard, or the simple power of
gossip and lies in a small community. In The
Farthest Shore, the old mage tells the young
man, who doesn't know he is about to become a king (and thus have a lot
of power), more or less as follows: The important thing to
recognize is the
balance:
When you lift a rock, while the ground underneath is lighter,
your hand is heavier. If you change the weather here, the weather
elsewhere is also changed. Every act has consequences far beyond
what seems to be immediately true.
Would that modern day political leaders had such an education!
In the world of Earthsea, the fundamental power comes from knowing the true name
of something. Names are important, and this is a theme of
significance throughout Le Guin's works.
In what I consider her greatest
achievement (she might disagree but like The Left Hand of Darkness it won several awards), the
Dispossessed: an Ambiguous Utopia (1974), she creates two contrasting worlds that are
neighbors to each other. One world is the large moon of the
other, a planet. This moon is not airless and bears life.
At some time in the past, a group of people, in disagreement with
the direction of the main planet's cultures. were asked to leave and go
live on this stark and hardly habitable moon. There they
consciously created a society of anarchists (what would be a natural
consequence of Steiner's ethical individualism). To do this,
their leader (a woman) invented a whole new language. Taking the
power latent in naming, she sculpts a new language that can not only
carry their political ideals, but also the quite naturally more awake
soul (psychological) realities of ethically free human beings.
Now Le Guin only instinctively does this
herself, but as she just imagines that it can be done, she then works
out bits and pieces of what this new language might be able to do.
Mostly she works with her characters, making the vision she has
of a society - of people trying to raise children to be ethical
individualists - live in the reader through her depiction of their
thoughts and actions.
She is also, like Steiner and Barfield, a
quite subtle thinker. Consider the title, for example: the
Dispossessed. The world she imagines
has a very definite set of ideas concerning the relationship of human
beings to things - to personal property. In fact, a common epithet
in this community of free individualists is to call another a: propertarian - that is someone who sets more store in things, than in
relationships. Further, as children are raised, they are
encouraged to be more other-directed by being
challenged as egoizers or committing the act of egoizing - that is
being self-centered.
In essence, as conceived by her, this community finds some degree of its freedoms by becoming dis-possessed - free of possessions. In the first chapter, the main character - a man from the Moon, says this to someone who is from the home planet: "You see, I know you don't take things, as we do. In your world, in Urras, one must buy things. I come to your world, I have no money, I cannot buy, therefore I should bring. But how much can I bring? Clothing, yes, I might bring two suits. But food? How can I bring food enough? I cannot bring, I cannot buy. If I am to be kept alive, you must give it to me. I am an Anarresti, I make the Urrasti behave like Anarresti: to give, not to sell...".
As a genius at story telling. Le Guin
also tells her tale by alternating chapters from one world to the next.
In the first chapter, her main character is leaving to go to the
planet-world from which his fellow anarchists once fled (200 years
before). There, as the novel unfolds, we get to see what he sees
of what is essentially our modern culture, but from the point of view
of someone raised in an entirely different fashion. In the
alternating chapters on the moon, we get the back story, to who he is
and why he went on his journey.
Using the contrast between the two
worlds, and the awake consciousness and moral sensibilities (not always
certain at all, but quite ambiguous just as the Consciousness Soul age
requires) of her main character, Le Guin not only comments on our
contemporary society and its many flaws, but also on a possible ideal
society and its many flaws (remember it is an ambiguous utopia). Also, at the core of the whole thing she puts
the problem of language and of meaning. A great question arises
here, for we are confronted with the idea of what could we do if we
changed our language itself. How could we take hold of our
communities and our cultural life if we took a firm grip on the
fundamentals of the meaning of words, and instead of letting their
development take place sub-consciously, we intentionally craft all of
it anew.
In this envisioning, Le Guin has shown us
just what we might be able to do if (as I suggest), Western
Civilizations is dying, and we are on the transition from a literate
culture to once more an oral culture. This may seem for some a
degeneration, but if we take hold of this transformation and introduce
into it new stories, stories carrying the true spirit of our age (as
born out of Anthroposophy), we might just discover how to be far more
creative than we yet imagine in our application of the new
picture-thinking.
Le Guin has done this for us to a degree,
albeit instinctively, for she has set the past and the future along
side each other (the old no longer socially vital planet-world and the
new more socially vital moon-world) enabling us, by this contrast, to
see both with greater clarity and not too much vain idealism. Yes
it is utopian in its hunger, but ultimately human and ambiguous in its
true nature.
If I was to teach a course on Steiner's
threefold social ideas, I'd include, as necessary reading, Le Guin's
social masterpiece: the
Dispossessed: an Ambiguous Utopia. Why? Because while Steiner's threefolding ideas are
quite significant, they are too ideal for the American Soul, with its
quite practical down to earth need to solve problems. Le Guin
isn't advocating an ideal utopia, but she is imagining the concrete and
human reality of such a social experiment (as ethical individualism),
in a remarkably wise fashion.
*
Last, I want to introduce David E.
Kelley, a writer of television scripts, who I
call: America's
Shakespeare. Of the four, he is the
most fully awake to the Consciousness Soul. He is the principle
writer (and later producer) of several television series: L. A. Law; Picket
Fences; Chicago Hope; Ally
McBeal; The Practice; Boston
Public; and now Boston Legal. In Picket Fences (about 1995), for example, he
actually has a character say (the sheriff) at the end of a hard and
morally ambiguous day for everyone: "you know, there are no rules
anymore, we are all on our own". It would be hard to imagine a non-anthroposophist more
clearly characterize the human question at the center of the Age of the
Consciousness Soul.
Kelley is a former lawyer turned
Hollywood TV writer, and first comes to public attention in the late
1980's (1986-1994) as a major writer on L.A. Law. When that show had a special 100th episode (it
was extremely popular and won many awards) instead of a drama, this
episode consisted of cast and crew interviews. Richard Dysart, a
lead actor, was asked about being in a drama where there weren't just a
couple stars anymore, but rather a large ensemble cast. His reply
was surprising. He said, in essence, that the actors were not the stars
of the series, but the scripts. It was the ideas in the scripts
that made the show what it was. There was also a brief interview
with Kelley as a principle writer, and he talked as follows about his practice: I like to go into a room, alone, with a lot of legal pads
and pencils, so I can be there undisturbed with my characters.
This bears some thinking about so as to
not miss the special nuances. Those who read this who write
fiction will know this better, but when one is living dynamically in
the imagination, the plot and the characters (when this art is at its
best) take on a life of their own. We write and record what
passes before the eye of the imagination, but are frequently surprised.
Yes, we do some work in the beginning setting up the situation
and the structural context, but once we set them free the characters
begin to take on a life of their own. The more we set them free,
the more human they become and the more real.
It is also important to realize that most
television writers might pen four to eight scripts a year and feel
quite productive. It is not uncommon for Kelley to do twenty to
thirty, sometimes writing (or supervising) personally all the scripts
for a series. When Ally McBeal and The Practice were running simultaneously on two different major
networks for a time, it was thought that in one or two of those years
he wrote over forty scripts personally.
Three other characteristics of Kelley's
work need to be noted. One is how much actors like to play his
characters. Not only do they win all kinds of awards (for
example, the lead female - Kathy Baker - in Picket Fences won a best actress Emmy for three of its four year
run; a major supporting actor - Ray Walston - won twice in the same
series, which ran from 1992-1996. In more recent times, James
Spader has won three Emmys - 2004, 2005 and 2007, playing the same
character - lawyer Alan Shore - in two series, The Practice and then when that had finished out its 7 year run, in Boston Legal), and you can actually see their love of this work as
they get to speak the words Kelley has given them to speak.
The second characteristic, and probably
the most important, has to do with an indication of Steiner's where he
said that: English
speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of
Rights. Kelley, as a former lawyer and
an artistic genius, as he developed his craft more and more placed his
characters in courtrooms. Picket Fences, for example, frequently
spent the first half to two thirds of its plot setting up a court case,
where the moral and legal issues being dramatized could be discussed
both legally and philosophically.
Lest we think Kelley is advocating a
point of view (which he is not afraid to do), in the 100th episode of L.A. Law referred to above, it was described of him how he was
able, through his characters to see every side of an issue. No
point of view was overlooked, or weakly presented. Often the
judges who had to rule (which is why Ray Walston as Judge Bone in Picket Fences won two supporting actor Emmys) could come off as modern
day - yet quite human - Solomons (or as needed, Falstaff-like fools).
Consider a plot line from Picket Fences, with which the third or fourth year of the series
began. The town in Picket Fences, Rome Wisconsin,
is a basically white rural community not too far from a large urban
city. A black federal judge in this large city decides to bus 400
inner city youth to Rome for the purposes of desegregation. Kathy
Baker, playing the town doctor, who has recently been elected mayor,
decides to resist. This crisis, and its implications for all the
characters in Rome (as well as for the judge) is given four episodes to
work itself out, with the final episode mostly consisting of the judge
and the mayor, sitting in her jail cell (the judge jailed her for
resisting his order), arguing (with great intelligence and passion) all
the underlying moral and legal issues.
The third major characteristic of his
work is his fascination with comedy as well as drama. In Picket Fences he would often weave humor into the opening set-up
leaving the serious matter for the courtroom at the end. For
example, in one story he had the town sheriff and doctor (who were
married in the series) discover that outside town was a farm where cows
were being used as surrogate wombs for human babies. A little
scifi (and certainly funny), but with Kelley one can justly assume he
read somewhere about this being considered as possible (all his writing
is very contemporary, and very sound in its understanding of the
technical background to any story - of course his success lets him no
doubt hire all kinds of research people). In any event the
embryos in cows is played broadly and a bit for laughs, until we get to
the human question of what to do. That decision lands on judge
Bone's shoulders, for the issues of do we let them get to term and so
forth are not simple questions.
When Ally McBeal and The Practice were on the air at
the same time, he split the comedy off into the former and the drama
off into the latter. Both involved law firms, and Ally
would often deal with somewhat silly legal issues, but mostly with sex,
love and just plain strangeness (a supporting character in Ally had
tourette's syndrome - the one where one can't stop from swearing in
public, and/or other uncontrollable nervous tics and gestures).
The main character in Ally (the Ally McBeal) often
saw strange visions and had a love life that had more ups and downs
than a yo-yo. While The Practice took on every
serious issue of law it could, but mostly concentrated on what it means
to defend criminals (rapists, drug pushers and all the worst our
society produces). Getting people off for murder (especially one
they committed) requires of a lawyer a very odd moral character.
None of these questions were down played, and many of them had
serious consequences.
For example, different lawyers at
different times in the series, were attacked physically by clients
(sadists, crazies, you name it) and often in the hospital and near
death. The relationship between lawyers and prosecutors was
explored over and over again, as well as with judges. People had
affairs, got married, got divorced. One lawyer's teenage son got
caught dealing drugs. Another main character, whose lawyer wife
was being stalked by a crazy sadist, hires a former client (a murderer)
to intimidate the crazy, but instead the crazy gets the client to
murder him, so that the lawyer himself now gets charged with murder for
hire.
At the same time, no social issue that
can be made a legal drama is ignored. Law suits are filed to stop
pollution, to reform political processes, to force corporations to do
the right thing. In one remarkable episode, a woman is arrested
for resisting the police when they try to remove her from her place of
protest at a political event, and make her go to one of these free
speech zones that have become so common in America as a way of keeping
protesters' activities away from the television coverage of
politicians.
This woman, not a liberal by the way (her
issue is more tangible and less ideal), is also somewhat foul mouthed
and unlikeable. She is something like a waitress who lives
in a trailer (or some such job and life). She actually punches
out the officer who tries to force her to move from the place where she
is holding her sign. All this as a set up for her to be
able to say from the witness stand, with great passion and clarity: "I thought the whole country
was a free speech zone!!!"
In the final couple of seasons of The
Practice, Kelley finally invents his most unusual character, the lawyer
Alan Shore, played by James Spader (and winner so far of 3 Emmys for
best leading actor in a dramatic series, as noted above). This
character is so significant a creation, that when The Practice ended as a series, the character became a member of the
law firm in the successor series: Boston Legal (currently still on the air).
Shore is whimsical and seldom serious of demeanor (even in court). He finds the ethical rules of the legal profession often at conflict with his own moral sensibilities (a classic Consciousness Soul question). He is also flawed and troubled and a bit oversexed. His office repartee with the female lawyers is frequently bawdy, but more clever than coarse.
Spader plays him with an out thrust lower
jaw, and a posture that represents his aggressive willingness to say
and do anything to make a point or win for a client. If you get
him as your lawyer, you are getting a thunderbolt inside a jar, who
cracks jokes to show up legal hypocrisy. If he needs to open it
in court, out it comes, and judges, other lawyers, witnesses and juries
beware. At the same time, he is very very smart (or written that
way, we should say). He won't get angry, but intense and pointed.
Since legal ethics doesn't hold him down, he skirts the edges of
those rules all the time, and when he can get away with it (usually out
of sight) he ignores them.
[see, for example, the fictional speech
Shore gives before the United States Supreme Court, that can be found
on YouTube, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GG7sj2APpc ]
He is, oddly enough, an ethical
individualist in training, who still lacks all the self knowledge that
is possible, but is not unwilling to learn. Kelley has also given
him, in the actor (a ham getting to play a ham) William Shatner - what
is essentially Shore's Fallstaff - lawyer Denny Crane. So we have
the prince - Alan Shore, who can't quite always figure out what the
right thing to do is, and who can't quite tame his own impulses in many
instances, but who if you have him on your side, will die for you.
Then as a partner in crime and sometimes in weirdness unimagined,
Denny Crane, outrageous in sexual behavior, loves a good drink, a good
cigar, and a good gun (plays a parody of a conservative to Shore's
parody of a liberal).
The two fall in love. Not sexual
love, but the deep brotherly love of men for men which is seldom
explored so openly in dramas, and certainly not so obviously as Kelley
has these two do (they have sleepovers). Shatner, by the way,
wins an Emmy as well.
Having only one series on at this time,
Kelley has both comedy and drama mixed together, and the usual
collection of strange characters. At least one legal issue in
every episode is socially aware. Nothing going on in the current
political climate of America is ignored, and Shore (and other lawyers
or characters) is often given remarkable speeches to make (during
summation to the juries) in which the basic moral issues of war,
politics and their social consequences are examined. As well, the
other side's view is equally represented and cogently expressed.
The only problem lies with the fact that a lot of what
constitutes politics today is based on lies and tricks, so it is hard
to write something that makes these lies and tricks sound not quite
like what they really are.
Part of what Kelley teaches us is that if
politicians were forced to give their speeches in a court of law, where
rules of proof and logical coherence were required and examined, most
of what is said today would fail those obvious rational tests. He
is also, by the way, beginning to be fed up, for the amount of time
devoted to commercials has expanded since he first began to write for
television, and he has publicly stated that if this goes much further,
he will not be able to write in such a restricted time environment.
I suspect he loves his characters too much to continual cut them
down in order to abide by the rules of commerce.
*
So now we have examined four American
personalities - four artists working in the youthful unpolished dawn of
American Culture: Clint Eastwood, Neal Stephenson, Ursula K. Le Guin
and David E. Kelley. They all use the imagination with
instinctive consciousness, and moral intention, and demonstrate for us
precisely what Steiner had in mind when he said that Americans develop
anthroposophy in a natural way. Hopefully the reader will now
begin to see that these are but the tip of an iceberg, and that if
anthroposophical institutions in America do not begin to turn toward
and study what is going on in American Culture, we will not discover
the deeper truths of our own souls as Americans.
***************************************
[for the neophyte: Having started with a few observations of modern American Culture (so as to see its present dynamics a little bit), we next need to step back quite further in time, for the Mystery of America finds its true roots in the Saturn Mysteries, and these should be our next theme if we wish to penetrate to the essence of the Mystery of America.
What are the Saturn Mysteries?
Rudolf Steiner called the Red Indian peoples the Saturn Race, in
his discussions of the meaning and significance of the hereditary line
of physical bodies (which must be distinguished from the more
significant line of incarnations of individual spirits in these
different physical streams, otherwise we will evoke a false racism).
In this he meant to suggest that this was the oldest racial line,
which he linked to the Saturn Incarnation of the Earth (a very ancient
period of physical and spiritual evolution - see Occult
Science: an outline). Those of us doing
research on the Wisdoms of the Peoples of this most ancient line of
bodily inheritance, have taken to calling these Wisdoms: the Saturn
Mysteries. There is more that can be discussed here, but it would
take us too far afield. Anyone wanting to begin this deeper
research should go to my webpages, to the work of Stephen Clarke
there: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/clarke4.html]
Recollecting the True Roots of the American Soul
- America's
aboriginal People's and the Hopi Prophecy -
Part of this story is very personal in
nature, so I hope the reader will not mind if I include certain aspects
of my biography as these are an important aspect necessary for
appreciating the Saturn Mysteries.
I grew up in central Montana. In
the late '40's and early '50's I went to the movies a lot, a staple of
which was the Western [recall Eastwood above, and the Western as the
American Myth]. Indians were to us savages, as portrayed in these
films. Ill spoken, prone to violence, the enemies of America's Manifest Destiny.
Tribal peoples were nearby, but they
lived in a quite separate slum, a collection of shacks out in the open
on "hill 57". We were told that at one point the town (Great
Falls) as a gift had installed indoor plumbing in this shanty-town,
only to discover it had been shortly thereafter taken out, sold for
scrape and converted into money for liquor. To the extent
"Indians" made the local news, it was as drunks involved in motor
vehicle accidents, and as petty thieves, prostitutes and murderers.
There was one native American girl in my
high school class (our town was then about 50,000 people and my senior
class was about 400 plus). She wore the same black skirt and
white blouse to class everyday, which she probably hand laundered and
ironed every night. Mostly she was ignored socially. She
left school a couple of months before graduation, and the rumor that
followed her was that her grandfather had made her leave school and go
to work to support the family.
As the '60's emerged from the '50's,
these images, of America's aboriginal peoples within American culture,
began to change, albeit quite slowly. Books started to appear
that began to celebrate Native Culture, for a culture-wide spiritual
awakening was in process, and the Native Americans were being
recognized has having much to teach.
In the mid '70's I read for the first
time the book Seven
Arrows, by Hyemeyohsts Storm. I was not
prepared for this experience, and as I entered through this beautiful
book deeply into the spiritual teachings and Native Cultures of the
Plains Indians - the Indian Peoples that lived in and around Montana,
whose names were familiar to me - I was stunned to tears by the tragedy
of our crimes against these Peoples and these Cultures. A great
lie had been planted in my soul, and now it was being torn out through
a process that required a lot of pain and a profound experience of
guilt.
No doubt others had discovered the truth
of Native Culture and Wisdom before me, but this was for me the time of
a significant wrenching of my soul into a new healing orientation
toward something that had been infecting it since my childhood. I
actually broke into sobbing tears and grief multiple times while
reading this book.
Thus began a long journey to struggle to
find a true relationship to these Peoples who had lived so gracefully
in the American Landscape for millennia before the white races came and
nearly destroyed them. It was in this mood of searching that I
first came upon the stories then circulating about something called:
the Hopi Prophecy. Soon I found a little booklet, which contained
an original talk given in January of 1970, by Hopi Sun Clan Chief, Dan
Katchongva, and then originally published in 1972 under the title: "From the
Beginning of Time to the Day of Purification".
In the late '70's, not too soon after first reading this booklet,
I subsequently discovered the writings of Rudolf Steiner and began the
journey of Anthroposophy.
Among the ideas contained in the Hopi
Prophecy is an expectation that at a time of deep crisis, the True
White Brother would appear to the Hopi, from the East, from the
direction of the rising sun. Eventually in 1984 I was to write in
the anthroposophical study letter (fostered by Carl Stegmann) America in
the Threefold World a short essay: Anthroposophy and the Hopi
Prophecy of the True White Brother.
Subsequently, over the Easter weekend of 1985, at the insistence
of a Native American woman studying Waldorf Education at Rudolf Steiner
College, I actually went to the Hopi Mesas in northwestern Arizona were
I met and spoke to a Hopi Elder named Grandfather David Monongye.
This is a quite sad but revealing story, so I will tell it next.
It took some time upon reaching the Hopi
Mesas to find Grandfather David's home. I was a white man, and so
suspect right from the beginning. There were in this brief rite
of passage some interesting adventures, but nothing as significant as
this short meeting, which took place the late afternoon of the Saturday
of that Easter Weekend. [When I shared these stories with the
woman in Fair Oaks who had sent me, she said: You learned in three hours
what it takes most white people three years to understand." I don't attribute this, by the way, to myself,
but to the spiritual - Easter - character of the three days journey
(Friday, Saturday and Sunday) within which these events were nested.]
When I finally found the right "house" (a
flat roofed multi-room cinder block structure, sharing common walls
with a number of other such structures, not at all resembling a
conventional American house), there were two little boys playing
outside in the dirt with metal cars. Upon explaining myself, they
jumped up and ran inside shouting for their Grandfather that he had a
visitor. They also invited me in.
In the cool of the house there were two
people. A older man was lying down on a short bench, and beside
him sat a much younger Hopi (I assume), who was dressed in jeans,
western shirt and cowboy boots and hat. The younger man stood up
and stepped between myself and the older man, who also was now standing.
For the next five minutes I was
cross-examined by the younger man, who would speak Hopi to the older
man, and then turn back to me and speak in English. Why did I
come? What was my interest in the Hopi Prophecy? Was I
writing a book? Did I expect to make money from this book?
Who sent me?
Apparently my answers were more or less
satisfactory, and the young man stepped aside and I walked up to the
older man who extended his hand toward me. After I took it to
shake it, he did not let go, but gently insisted we remain in contact
through our hands, for he was (as I knew before coming) 106 years of
age and blind in both eyes.
Somehow Grandfather David ended up sitting back down on the bench, I was kneeling, and he was talking to me in English. We were still holding hands, and like some blind people do he was rocking side to side a bit. Just then, however, the room began to fill up with people, some native some white. A public Hopi Ceremony had apparently just finished, a younger native woman was scurrying around making a baking tray filled with pigs-in-a-blanket (hot dogs wrapped in pastry dough), that was soon in the oven.
I knew then that I had but just a few
minutes to make my point, so after a short silent prayer and a big hope
for the necessary courage, I said first to Grandfather David (and of
course the whole room heard me): "I think I know who the True
White Brother is". At this he became
quite still and the whole room became silent. I then said
something like the following (I don't remember my exact words):
"Native
Americans know that the Earth is a living being. Western Science
has decided not to believe such a thing is possible. I am
associated with a spiritual movement that comes from Europe, from the
East, from the Rising Sun, and we are showing the way to rediscovering
that the Earth is a living being, while at the same time doing this out
of the true principles of natural science."
What happened next was quite shocking,
and it was years before I understood the full implications of this act.
The young woman stepped in between myself and Grandfather David, broke the connection of our hands, and said to me in a tone of voice that would brook no opposition:
"I don't need
you disturbing this old man's dreams. You are to leave.
Now."
Which I did. I returned to my car,
drove off the Hopi Reservation, parked that night behind a road sign on
the Navajo Reservation (which totally surrounds the Hopi lands) and
went to sleep. I woke at dawn on Easter morning, and began the
long 1100 mile drive home.
Some points to ponder. She didn't
have faith in the Prophecy or the Hopi Religion anymore (she was
essentially a materialist). This much was obvious. It took
me years of further encounters with Native cultures to realize how
tragic was the reality of her act of disrespect to her Grandfather,
however. That was really unforgivable. Never, if she
had been fully traditional in the best sense, would she have interfered
with a conversation an Elder was having with someone else. I have
since wondered what might have happen had I been more fully awake to
their culture, and been able to face her down, and call her out on her
disrespect in front of everyone else (yet in a proper way). On
such small acts turn consequences we cannot imagine.
I could have stood and said to him: "Grandfather David.
Someone has forgotten something important. Perhaps you
would be so kind as to go outside with me, or if possible to the kiva,
and if you are willing, I can continue to speak to you, a Hopi Elder,
on such important matters for both our ways of life.
I am sorry I am in the way here at dinner time, and if you wish it as
well I will leave.
It would be important not to criticize
her directly (someone), or even clearly describe the absence of respect.
It would be enough just to glance at her quickly and then away,
and remain focused on Grandfather David, leaving to her own conscience
a sense of what would have been right. By suggesting we go
outside, I take the matter also from her well understood traditional
domain (the home is under the woman's stewardship, while males care for
the outer world), and take our conversation to a place that belongs to
the Elder and myself, while still recognizing that she does have the
right to manage that home environment. By bringing in the kiva
- the prayer room - I emphasize the religious/spiritual aspect, and by
using the terms "if
possible" I have not asserted any right of
mine to go beyond where I have been invited.
With the last sentence as an apology
(again indirectly related to the young woman and her domain
responsibilities), I have also shifted the matter to Grandfather
David's realm. I respect his role as Elder. I should also
have brought a gift to Grandfather David, perhaps some tobacco.
Now in making this alternative picture I
am not so much trying to do over what had been done, but to suggest how
little non-natives understand traditional culture, or know how to
properly behave in its contexts. You also should not expect that
the above revision is right behavior on my part, either. I'm not
a good source here, but I have learned enough over the years to realize
how ignorant one can be, and how important it is not to be such a fool
if it can be avoided.
I will go deeper into the Hopi Prophecy
later in this essay, but next I want to write more about the path that
led me to an appreciation of the Saturn Mysteries.
One of the strange aspects of being an anthroposophist, and an American, was running into the writings of European anthroposophists explaining America to me. There is Carl Stegmann's The Other America: the West in the light of Spiritual Science; Detrich V. Asten's America's Way and then F. W. Zeylmans van Emmichover's America and Americanism. If you look to anthroposophical literature, these were what for a long time you would mainly find - Europeans explaining America to Americans and others.
Now a peculiar aspect common to all three
above books (and pamphlets) is the dismissal of Native Americans as a
factor of any significance for the understanding of America. For
these assumed deep thinking European anthroposophists, America really
doesn't begin until Europe invades, thus continuing that same bias and
assumptions that led originally to the near genocide of the Native
Peoples. Except in this case it is a kind of cultural genocide
that European anthroposophists seem to favor. Culture to the
European is what they do, and the rest of us can at best be poor
imitations (recall what I wrote above about the European who asked me "what culture", when I spoke about American Culture at a conference).
The only counter to this I discovered
that was in anthroposophical literature in America (besides my piece on
the Hopi Prophecy, although I am sure there are others hidden out
there), was a little paper written by one Sylvester M. Morey: American
Indians and our way of life. This was
an address given in a Waldorf School in 1961, not published until the
end of the '60's.
Morey essentially brings forward (and
describes) this remarkable observation: Most of the general
characteristics of Americans (as to character and tendencies) are not
found in Europeans, but in Native Americans. That is, we
Americans are more like the Aboriginals in many ways, than we are like
our principle blood ancestors, the Europeans.
Rudolf Steiner would have no problem
understanding this, for in his lectures he is clear that while the
hereditary line of the body follows the blood relations, the influence of the body on the
soul follows the geographical relations.
The body is born in a region of specific geographic earth forces
and powers (which vary considerably from one place to another on the
Earth), and where we are born is a major influence on our general
characteristics of soul. Steiner also says this, which is quite
significant for our purposes: "...America is the place where races or civilizations
die..." Mission of
the Folk Souls, lecture six.
Now both these observations can be
confirmed by clear and thoughtful considerations of American History.
As Europeans came to America and became Americans, they shed
their cultural history. This did not happen all at once, but even
in our language we speak of first, second and third generation
Americans, because we recognize that with this passage of time, as the
new generations were born in the land, the cultural traditions lost
their hold. Even today, the anti-immigration sentiments of many
come from people who two or three or four generations before were
Italians, Germans, Swedes and the like.
America has been called "the melting pot", and some resist this image as inadequate and want to
substitute "mosaic" instead. Both are true and
false, for a more accurate rendering of the process would show that the
immigrating peoples actually edit their culture. This
shows us that the culture (or civilization) had certain characteristics
in the land (geology) of its origin, such that then in America these
have all undergone a metamorphosis. This metamorphosis is both a
result of the influence of the land (the influence of the geography on
the souls of second etc. generations), and the influence of the
individuality which chooses to maintain certain cultural values of the
family, itself something that erodes over the coming generations.
In addition, the blood and hereditary
lines dissolve through intermarriage - something that is accelerated by
the close proximity of different races offered by America. Races
and civilizations do die (disappear) in America.
We can add another quality to this by
recognizing that the phenomena of social life in America, and its
cultural icons support another of Steiner's observations. In this
case his description of the threefold nature of the world, with an
emphasis on the East being more alive in the Cultural Life, the Center
in the Life of Rights and the West in the Economic Life. This
arose because the general soul characteristics of the East involved freedom, in the Center equality and in the West fraternity or brotherhood.
In America, the deepest poetic song is: America the Beautiful, whose refrain in the first case goes: and crown thy good with brotherhood. We can circle around again to Native Wisdom, and
find in Seven Arrows that the Plains
Indian's mystery wisdom was also called: the Brotherhood Way (as well as the Way of the Shields, and the Medicine
Wheel Way), for its purpose was to reach across the distinctions of
Nations and find a spiritual means by which the Cheyenne, the Crow and
the Sioux (whose true names are the Painted Arrow, the Little Black
Eagle and the Brother People).
Here we see, as Morey noticed, that Americans are more akin to the Aboriginal Peoples in their general characteristics than they are to Europeans. Add to that Steiner's indication of one of our tasks being connected to brotherhood (the underlying virtue of the Economic Sphere), which in combination with the above suggests something of the Mystery nature of America in that in the heart of America (the great Western Plains which extend from the Rockies on the West to and across the River systems that join into the Mississippi) the most modern spiritual way was also know as the Brotherhood Way. Also, that the Sioux, whose Pipe Ceremony in Celebration of the powers of the Four Directions is echoed in Steiner's ceremony in the laying of the Foundation Stone for the first Goetheanum, and in the Foundation Stone Meditation - this Sioux Nation (which was forced by the European invasion to travel at various times all the way from the Eastern Forests to the Western Rockies) is in their language called the Brother People.
In this and many other ways, once we have
understood this key, we can begin to see that the Mystery of America
goes in an unbroken line from the Native Peoples that lived here for
uncounted generations before the invasion of Europeans all the way
toward a distant future Epoch - the Epoch of the triumph of the
American Soul - which Steiner called Philadelphia (itself a word
meaning from the Greek: brotherly love!)
America then is one constantly
struggling-to-incarnate Ideal, extending from Native
Wisdom (the
Brotherhood Way, the Brother People) then
through the founding spiritual impulses of America, captured in poetic
verse in crown
thy good with brotherhood, all the way to the
future Epoch of Philadelphia or brotherly love. Should we be surprise then that we are going to
discover that the Hopi Oral History and Prophecies remember Atlantis,
and speak of two migrations one by a younger brother going to the West, and the other by the elder brother who disappears into the East, only to return at a time
of great crisis, then to be known as the True White Brother?
Perhaps we should. Perhaps we
should be amazed in fact, that we live in a world were such Mystery
enfolds our ever striving modern natures and struggles. In the
present, we only have a glimpse of these struggles to realize
brotherhood, but clearly they are there in the modern social problems
of race and immigration.
Something is in the process of being
born, and we as American anthroposophists have the potential to
contribute to this, with perhaps far greater awareness of the real
spiritual foundations and issues than most of our contemporaries.
Sadly, we must soon explore whether the Society and Movement is
actually facing this so very important task. First, however, let
us unfold the Hopi Prophecy in full, so that we can then see far deeper
into the Mystery of America.
There is a lot of detail that could be
gone into here, but I will just reveal some highlights. The
reader can find a number of these details in my essay: The
Mystery* of the True White Brother - an interpretation of the
meaning of the Hopi Prophecy by a member of the Elder Brother People [* sacred rite of initiation]
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/eldbr.html]. This, however,
should be kept in mind in reading any versions of the Hopi Prophecy:
There are a number of differing versions
of the Prophecy. The Hopi themselves are divided, into different
Clans and Villages. It is clear from reading several of
these versions (including the main one I rely upon) that modern events
have polluted the language being used. Like any myth holding
culture, making its prophecies fit current circumstances is not
uncommon, something well know to ethnographers. It also should be
understood that any essentially oral history is going to undergo what
might be called drift
of meaning over time. As one speaker
passes to the next speaker the stories, the meaning will not remain
stable.
If we were to only rely on the Hopi memory (as it were) we could not come to any useful conclusions. But we have a second source for factual information, Rudolf Steiner. Now we don't precisely have to accept as knowledge all that he taught as someone doing research into the spiritual, but we can still bring those teachings into contact with the Hopi Oral History and Prophecies, and in this way find our way to that higher meaning which emerges when the two visions are brought into contact with each other.
Earlier I had said that the Hopi
remembered Atlantis - lets start there.
Obviously they didn't remember Atlantis
by that name. What their oral history tells us is of having to
flee a land that was being destroyed by the acts of evil two-hearted
people. Here is some language from the Oral History, concerning a
time deep in their past: The inventive ones, clever but lacking wisdom, made many
destructive things by which their lives were disrupted, and which
threatened to destroy all the people.
We have heard through Rudolf Steiner a similar story about Atlantean times. Then later in the Oral History we find: "The Kikmongwi gathered the high priests. They smoked and prayed for guidance toward a way to solve the corruption. Many times they gathered, until finally someone suggested that they move, find a new place, and start a new life."
As Steiner has told us, various priests
of the Mystery temples in Atlantis led the migrations to the East and
the West from Atlantis. We could go on into this in greater
detail, but here I only wanted to suggest how we can combine the two
pictures: one an Oral History carried for perhaps thousands of years,
and the other the research of a modern spiritual scientist, an activity
Steiner engaged in many times in resurrecting the true meaning of many
ancient myths.
Another part of the Oral History speaks
of two brothers, who were given different stone tablets. Before the first people had
begun their migrations the people named Hopi were given a set of stone
tablets. Into these tablets the Great Spirit inscribed the laws by
which the Hopi were to travel and live the good way of life, the
peaceful way. ... The older brother was to take one of the stone
tablets with him to the rising sun, and bring it back with him when he
hears the desperate call for aid. His brother will be in a state of
hopelessness and despair. His people may have forsaken the teachings,
no longer respecting their elders, and even turning upon their elders
to destroy their way of life. The stone tablets will be the final
acknowledgment of their true identity and brotherhood. Their mother is
Sun Clan. They are the children of the sun.
In myths we recognize the existence of
imaginative pictures or symbols. At best, my thinking regarding
the meaning of this aspect of the Oral History suggests that the stone
tablets refer to their wisdom. It may also be literally true in
the sense that some of their traditions are written in symbols on rock.
We know
certain people are commissioned to bring about the Purification. It is
the Universal Plan from the beginning of creation, and we are looking
up to them to bring purification to us. It is in the rock writings
throughout the world, on different continents. [This is from further ahead in the Prophecy. Later
we will come back to the idea of the Purification.]
The stone tablets, this symbol of wisdom,
is connected to a story concerning two
brothers. While the Oral History perhaps seems to confuse this,
from Steiner we get the idea of migrations from Atlantis to the West
and to the East. My view is that the story of the two brothers in
the Oral History refers to this which Steiner has related. In a
sense the Hopi remember (after a fashion) that, as Steiner tells it,
two kinds of destiny and consciousness migrated from Atlantis, leading
to two different evolving patterns in the evolution of consciousness.
One form (my interpretation) had a
destiny to mainly live connected to the world of the senses, and to see
in the world of the senses the speaking of the divine through nature.
Thus we have one of the common elements of much of the Aboriginal
teachings of the Americas - a traditional recognition of the Spirit
manifesting through the Natural World. This then is the younger
brother, and we can find in these traditional wisdoms something that
perhaps has been lost to the destiny of the elder brother - the brother
that went to the East. We will revisit this a little later.
Those who went to the East, of this the
Oral History knows nothing. The elder brother is simply
understood to be waiting for the time when the younger brother needs him.
Only from Steiner are we given a picture of the work of the elder
brother - those who went to the East out of Atlantis - and thus of the
founding then of all the post-Atlantean civilizations, first in the Far
East, and then the Middle East, and finally Europe and England, until
the time comes when the Americas are rediscovered.
The civilizations of the elder brother had a different task and a different kind of consciousness. They more and more sacrificed the traditional connection to nature over time (which Taoism remembers as: be at one with nature), eventually becoming able to give birth to individualism (the end of the group soul) and materialism. The evolving (physical and then ethereal) Incarnation of Christ needs this stream of consciousness in which to express its primal birth as the Christ Impulse in the world in a certain way.
If we think into modern life in the right
way, we will see that individualism comes at the expense of community
(recall the essay above on Methodology, and the pictures
there of the development of individualism in relationship to family and
community). In order for freedom to arise for the individual, the
traditions of community and family had to dissolve, a process
developing for a long long time in Western Civilization.
Among the traditional peoples of the
Americas, this has unfolded at a much slower pace and with quite
distinct characteristics. Just in reading the whole of the little
booklet From the Beginning of Time to the Day of Purification, one can find in the language and the descriptions a way
of seeing the world fully at odds with the invading white races.
Yet, for all this the Prophecy expects that the Elder Brother
will still be Hopi:
"The older brother was to take one of the stone tablets with him to the rising sun, and bring it back with him when he hears the desperate call for aid. His brother will be in a state of hopelessness and despair. His people may have forsaken the teachings, no longer respecting their elders*, and even turning upon their elders to destroy their way of life. The stone tablets will be the final acknowledgment of their true identity and brotherhood. Their mother is Sun Clan. They are the children of the sun.
"So it must
be a Hopi who traveled from here to the rising sun and is waiting
someplace."
[*recall what Grandfather David's
granddaughter did when he and I were speaking together.]
Here is what the idea of a person who is
Hopi means, according to the Oral History: "Hopi means not only to be
peaceful, but to obey and have faith in the instructions of the Great
Spirit, and not to distort any of his teachings for influence or power,
or in any way to corrupt the Hopi way of life."
If we synthesize these ideas, we will
come to realize that the Prophecy expects the elder brother to have a
deep spiritual kinship with the younger brother, and to have the wisdom
(the stone tablet), or life plan for the future. This is what it
will mean, in terms of the Prophecy, for there to be a True White Brother - this spiritual kinship.
Now let us turn to the meaning of the Day
of Purification. Here is a lengthy element of the Prophecy:
"We have
teachings and prophecies informing us that we must be alert for the
signs and omens which will come about to give us courage and strength
to stand on our beliefs. Blood will flow. Our hair and our
clothing will be scattered upon the earth. Nature will speak to
us with its mighty breath of wind. There will be earthquakes, floods,
and strange fires in different places causing great disasters, changes
in the seasons, and in the weather, disappearance of wildlife, and
famine in different forms. There will be gradual corruption and
confusion among the leaders and the people all over the world, and wars
will come about like powerful winds. All of this has been planned from
the beginning of creation.
"We will have
three people standing behind us, ready to fulfill our prophecies when
we get into hopeless difficulties: the Meha Symbol (which refers to a
plant that has a long root, milky sap, grows back when cut off, and has
a flower shaped like a swastika, symbolizing the four great forces of
nature in motion), the Sun Symbol, and the Red Symbol. Bahanna's [the White race's] intrusion into the Hopi way
of life will set the Meha Symbol in motion, so that certain people will
work for the four great forces of nature (the four directions, the
controlling forces, the original force) which will rock the world into
war. When this happens we will know that our prophecies are coming
true. We will gather strength and stand firm.
"This great
movement will fall, but because its subsistence is milk, and because it
is controlled by the four forces of nature, it will rise again to put
the world in motion, creating another war, in which both the Meha and
the Sun Symbol will be at work. Then it will rest in order to rise a
third time. Our prophecy foretells that the third event will be the
decisive one. Our road plan foretells the outcome.
"This sacred
writing speaks the word of the Great Spirit. It could mean the
mysterious life seed with two principles of tomorrow, indicating one,
inside of which is two. The third and last, which will it bring forth,
purification or destruction?
"This third
event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command, setting
the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of the Sun."
In the above you can see how the Prophecy
was adapted to events in the 20th Century, linking the Meha symbol
to Germany and the Sun symbol to Japan. This is understandable,
and not necessarily accurate (or perhaps it is accurate - take your
choice). Since we do not know whether or not the Clan leaders
actually have stone tablets with symbols on them and what those symbols
are in fact, it is difficult to appreciate what might or might not be
the truth here. At the least this picture is given: There
will be three great events (wars?) and at the last great event (another
war?) this will happen: "This third event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which
will take command, setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion
for the benefit of the Sun.".
Earlier in this book I wrote about this
last phrase, interpreting it as follows (quoting myself):
"You can find details below, but let me just render the my
best interpretation of this phrase in the language with which
anthroposophists are familiar (it will be well worth repeating in
greater depth later). At the time of great crisis, the World will
be three times rocked into War. It is the last, the third event,
which is the most crucial. The outcome of this third event
(Ahriman's Incarnation) will depend upon the Red Symbol, or the People
of the Rose-Cross. These People of the Rose-Cross, the True White Brother (true in the
sense of also being awake to the living Being of the Earth Mother and
the Father in the Sky, as once were all Aboriginal Peoples), will then
take command, setting the four forces of nature in motion. These
are the forces of the Four Directions (honored in the Pipe Ceremony of
the Lakota Sioux), or the Cosmic Ethereal Forces (and their elemental
servant beings in Nature), which even Steiner recognized when he laid
the Foundation Stone for the original Goetheanum in the Earth, and then
later the Foundation Stone Meditation in the hearts of those who
attended the Christmas Conference.
"All this for the benefit of the Sun. For this, all
we need to remember is that the Hopi Prophecy originated in a People
who remembered Atlantis (see below). At the time of Atlantis,
where was Christ? He was in the Cosmic Sun Sphere!
What then does all this come to mean, especially given that
the Prophecy also recognizes that this needed work of the True White Brother can fail to
manifest?
"The outcome of the Third Event - the third time the World
is rocked into War (Ahriman's Incarnation) depends upon the People of
the Rose-Cross bringing forward a scientifically based knowledge of the
Ethereal Cosmic Forces, not just in the living aspects of the sense
world, but in the life of thought itself. Moreover, all this in
service to the Christ, by announcing His true Second Coming in the
Ethereal, with all its majesty (a Second Crucifixion, a Second
Resurrection, and a Second Eucharist).
"Are anthroposophists up to such a task? Apparently
that remains to be seen."
To sum up...
When we unite the Hopi oral history and
prophecies, with the indications of Rudolf Steiner (as well as the
various observations regarding the evolution of consciousness as
described in several of the first essays of this book), we come upon a
quite exact description of present day times. Native American
culture (the same in most of the Americas as well) is nearly destroyed.
The people live, while huge aspects of the culture are nearly
lost.
Great changes prowl the world. If
we look both at the stage setting and the invisible inner world of
soul, we can see that intense transformations are unfolding in
everyone's life - in all biographies. These transformations take
the form of trials of fire, and the result can be an encounter with the
Second Eucharist as people seek within to know and do the good.
Thinking can perceive that this condition will only deepen
and become richer in the sense that more and more we will not be able
to live comfortable existences. Life will demand more.
This is the future we now enter, which
the Hopi call: the
Day of Purification.
Will the people of the Rose-Cross find
their way to doing what is right? How many will it take?
Just one or two? Will they find the one or two Hopi (Native
Americans) still practicing the deepest traditions? Who will
choose to appreciate and understand just what true spiritual
brotherhood is really about?
Is it possible to understand the Mystery
of America, and the role of service Anthroposophy is supposed to play
in this regard, without appreciating the Hopi Prophecy? How can
it be that in America, where brotherhood is to develop, that
anthroposophists mostly only know how to talk to each other about these
deep spiritual questions which all of us share?
**************************************
[To the neophyte: we have so far examined
the roots of the American Soul as that can be found in the Native
Peoples. We have also discovered the existence there of a well
known Prophetic Tradition, that would seem to strongly suggest that
Anthroposophy (the True White Brother) was expected to arrive in America just at the time of
gravest crisis, not only for the Hopi, but for the whole world.
What graver time could there be than the time which follows the
earthly work of Ahriman's incarnation?
The whole world lies on the brink of
social chaos, a process greatly accelerated by Ahriman himself.
What is it that anthroposophical spiritual science is to do in
the face of this almost overpowering social catastrophe?
In order to answer this question, it will
help if we first make an honest assessment of what skills
anthroposophists already possess that might be of use. Let me
remind the reader here of the tasks that were not accomplished in the
20th Century, and thus remain undone. Perhaps they show the
direction we can take. There were three major problems: A failure
to appreciate and practice the teachings of Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (also known
as the New Thinking); a failure to appreciate and practice the teaching
of the Reverse Cultus (also known
as the New Mysteries); and, a failure to notice that these other
failures have led to an intellectualization of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence - the creation of a weak tea spiritual philosophy most
aptly called: Steinerism.
Before trying to move forward, let us
first probe deeper at these defects, for the better we understand them,
the easier it will be to correct them. This leads us then to:]
Anthroposophy and the Russian Soul
- a lesson from life: instruction for all three world-aspects of
Anthroposophical activity, in the West, the Center and the East -
introduction
This is a another essay that wanted to be
written just for this book. I should not have been surprised, but
I was. In fact, it was on the evening of my 66th birthday, that
it became my choice to rise or not from bed and write. Having
trusted such impulses now for many years, how could I refuse. So,
with a cup of hot chocolate for company, and in the quiet of the
midnight hour on December 23rd - 24th, 2006, I wrote the first words of
this essay.
While this essay was originally set in
the section of the earlier version of this book (Dangerous
Anthroposophy) in the section on Critical Anthroposophy, it would be an error to assume that in any way
antipathy is involved here. The only authentic motive for
writing any of these essays has always been the same - love. Love
for the object of the thinking, whether it is earthly personalities,
Anthroposophy itself, America, Rudolf Steiner, or any aspect of the
Divine Mystery - the motive is the same - love.
It is not a pleasure, however, to have to
write words that some are certain to consider an unkindness. Love
is not always easy, as the reader will know. It often requires of
us difficult tasks. It frequently requires courage, and without
doubt a willingness to appear foolish, or even to expose ones own being
to another's excesses of antipathy. However, there are acts that
must be done, or the soul loses something of itself that in the
beginning we can only call self-respect, and in the end we will have to
recognize as a love of the true and the good, at whatever cost to the I.
main body
In other places I have written concerning
a man that has to be considered a giant in our work: Sergei O.
Prokofieff. His genius as a reader of Steiner, and his efforts to
re-ignite our appreciation for the Christmas Conference are graces of
soul well deserving of our admiration. But, as he himself said to
me at the Ann Arbor Conference in August 2005, when I spoke to him for
several minutes regarding the Gordienko book, as well as my own
thoughts concerning his work: "None of us are perfect".
Now this can be both a self-serving
observation (an excuse), and something wise as well. I had asked
him if he was knowledgeable and practiced with regards to certain texts
and aspects of soul life, and instead of directly replying, he offered
his comment. In effect, it appears he was saying no in answer
to my question. Even if we just assume this, we still have the
wise observation that each of us can be discovered to have holes in our
character, for he didn't say "I am not....", he said "None of us are perfect."
Anthroposophy is something with which we
all strive, but will probably never fully attain in a single life time;
and, the questions next to be addressed concern grave matters of
direction in our Movement and as regards the future of the
Anthroposophical Society. Given the seriousness of the problem
and the need for the greatest discernment, I ask the reader's
forgiveness for whatever human errors enter into the following
discussion. I would be wrong not to address these matters, and just as
wrong to assume that I will get all of it right.
In order to place some context around the
theme of this essay, I have broadened it beyond Prokofieff, and set out
to include a number of those who work out of the Russian Soul in their
contributions to the Life of Anthroposophy. Some readers will
perhaps not consider this important, but Steiner certain did, for his
considerations of the threefold nature of the world were numerous and
extensive, sometimes involving whole lecture cycles. In fact, if
there is a finger pointing to this, it can be found not in the presence
of deep and wise considerations of the different primary soul gestures
in the world in modern anthroposophical literature, but rather in the absence of their discussion among modern anthroposophists.
These matters are hardly ever discussed in our circles, which
relegates their perception into the sub-conscious, a soul place that
frequently subverts our best intentions. It is time to be honest
and forthright about the fact that not only are none of us perfect, but
we are quite different in fundamental soul nature, whether we are of
the East, the Center or the True West.
In America in particular, we still suffer
greatly from confusion in our circles where Central Europeans and
Americans work side by side. We remain asleep to the soul
differences and are unable thereby to effect the consequences of those
differences. Strife arises, errors of judgment are made,
assumptions practiced. Many Europeans, living strongly in the
soul gesture which seeks to incarnate the Ideal, as a consequence don't
actually perceive the soul life of their American brothers and sisters,
who do
not live in the same soul gesture.
When Americans imitate this gesture, harm
arises for all of anthroposophical work, for the American is not a
European. What is sometimes worse, is the habits European
anthroposophists have fallen into of explaining the spiritual nature of
Americans to Americans. They are fascinated with us, and have
thought about us, and written about us (I mentioned above: Carl
Stegmann's The Other America: the West in the light of Spiritual
Science; Detrich V. Asten's America's
Way and then F. W. Zeylmans van Emmichover's America
and Americanism.) To really appreciate
this, we have to consider what it would feel like to Central Europeans,
for example, for Americans to go there and lecture them on their folk
soul characteristics, and the meaning of their lives. Clearly
this would not be tolerated, for how could someone who doesn't have
such a soul, really appreciate its depths or its cultural expressions.
At the same time, we do know that as
individuals, we learn a great deal about ourselves from others, and
perhaps this principle has some meaning in terms of folk soul and
cultural characteristics. It is useful for the American that the
European wonders about us and expresses his wonder.The reverse should
also be true. So we should be cautious and not assume that it is
a black and white situation, for as much as it helps Americans to find
their reflection in the thoughts of others, we must also deepen our
self understanding to levels far more penetrating than done so far.
In fact the whole of this book tries to deal with this kind of
problem from multiple directions. Here, in this essay, we come at it
from one more point of view.
The Anthroposophical Movement and Society
have encountered a number of Russian Souls, of which I will refer to
four: Valentin Tomberg, Gennady Bondarev, Sergei O. Prokofieff and
Irina Gordienko. Each has their following among anthroposophists,
and each is controversial, some more than others.
It is my observation that the Russian
Soul loves tragedy. I don't mean this in the sense that this Soul
seeks out tragedy and encourages it, but rather that this Soul finds
earthly existence to be a veil of tears, which one should not only
expect, but to a degree embrace. In a way, this Russian soul -
this soul of the East - is the opposite of the American Soul, with its
endless romantic belief that all problems have a solution (all movies
must have a happy ending), and its heart on its sleeve efforts to
solve, pragmatically and practically, social problems.
Even the most cursory examination will
reveal that pain of soul when engaged in life is celebrated in Russian
literature and poetry. This Soul of the East is not yet very
awake to the Consciousness Soul (toward which the American Soul has far
better instincts), but bears within and behind its outer tragic
countenance the dreaming seeds of the Spirit Self - of the 6th Cultural
Epoch. This embrace of expected suffering builds a camaraderie
which will ultimately form the basis for that aspect of the Spirit
Self, which is to find that it can not feel whole unless it forges true
empathy with the suffering of others.
This dreaming tragic Soul of the East
then encounters in the Center: Anthroposophy. The Russian Soul's
deep yearning for the Christ Mysteries (themselves partially Mysteries
of great suffering) cannot but lead it to the flame of new spiritual
Life being born in the Center. A powerful hunger to not only
understand, but to embrace and meet, fills this Soul, and Anthroposophy
becomes the object of its spiritual passions.
Tomberg, to begin the examples, arrives
in Dornach (in the early 1930's) where the premature death of Steiner
has led to the serious internal strife on the Vorstand (which was
ultimately to lead to the split among the national societies).
Here is spiritual tragedy on a grand scale. Gifted inwardly
with remarkable genius, Tomberg pours his whole soul into a striving to
contribute to the struggling Spiritual Scientific Impulse. His
passions, however, are too much for many in the Center, who had lived
for a long time with Steiner's, relatively speaking, more restrained
force of personality. As a consequence, Tomberg makes enemies,
and by 1939 has been encouraged to leave the Society, which he does.
Ultimately he finds a place for his genius and his passion in
what he calls: Christian Hermeticism, yet still carries with him a
whisper of anthroposophical tragedy, for many in the Movement and
Society refuse (wrongly) to accept his later work as spiritually valid.
Because Tomberg is the more successful in
his spiritual endeavors, it is likewise more difficult to perceive his
real weaknesses with respect to Anthroposophy. In his book Meditations
on the Tarot: a Journey into Christian Hermeticism, we can find his love of tragedy, as regards
Anthroposophy, further developed into a serious blindness. He
does not see or recognize in that book Steiner's achievement as regards
objective philosophical introspection (for details see the next essay).
Nor does he in this book appreciate Goethe's scientific works or
the follow on Goethean Science being developed out of Anthroposophy
(Goetheanism). This is not all he does not see in Anthroposophy,
and it would seem that his sense of tragedy regarding the fall of the
Society and its capture by an excess of fascination with the
hierarchies of Evil (a whole other story) has blinded him to the real
meaning of Anthroposophy in the world. For all the breadth of
Tomberg's observations of the riches of the spiritual life in the
Center (as laid out in this book), he was unable (or unwilling) to
really include in his survey of Western spiritual life the full nature
of the positive developments of Anthroposophy.
But Tomberg is not the main lesson here,
so we must move on.
Many years later, Bondarev follows the
flame of Anthroposophy, and absorbs Steiner's writings as if he has
spent the early parts of his life in a spiritual desert. He too
has genius, and becomes a master of Steiner-thought. Yet,
his Russian Soul finds the world following the second great war to be
full of tragedy and evil, and applies his anthroposophical learning to
the task of painting word pictures of this evil in the world on large
canvasses - books full of anthroposophical terminology. He
mistakes his passions in a number of cases for truth (not having
mastered and transformed in his soul the impulses to antipathy and
sympathy), and offers such a critical view of the Jews and of the
Holocaust, that the Anthroposophical Society is eventually forced to
officially reject him.
Not to long thereafter comes Prokofieff,
who as a youth too senses a great tragedy in the Anthroposophical
Movement in the form of a general failure of the members to appreciate,
with his
same passion, the Christmas Conference.
He too has genius, and like Bondarev absorbs the writings of
Steiner to a degree few would consider possible. But this
striving is rooted in a great flaw, to which we will later return.
Finally comes Gordienko, who is not only
a contemporary of Prokofieff, she is also rumored to have been
romantically attached to him. The tragedy that calls to her
is her perception of Prokofieff's fall from grace, and using her
youthful genius of spirit (she is a mathematical adept in the field of
topology), she writes an astoundingly detailed book (Sergei O.
Prokofieff: Myth and Reality) criticizing
Prokofieff's works, and the Society and Movement in general as failing
to understand what it means for Anthroposophy to be a science. Shortly after its publication, she dies alone on
a mountain road, apparently struck by a vehicle that did not stop.
This then is the movement from the East, from the Russian Soul, as it pours forces perhaps not yet fully in the Consciousness Soul into and onto the Center - the Anthroposophical Movement and Society mostly as it is configured in Europe. Deep passion and openness to the tragedies of life burn in this Soul and direct its light.
What are we to make of this, if we wish
not to be asleep ourselves to the truth being written here?
Consider for a moment an approach of Goethe, who looked at certain phenomena of nature as representing an archetypal instance worth a thousand - a single gesture of nature which explains much deeper and more general conditions. In this light then let us consider Prokofieff. It is not his personal flaws that are to help us understand something, but rather that particular flaw which is so typical of the Movement and the Society, that in understanding how this arises in Prokofieff, we acquire great insight into the deepest weaknesses of our shared work. His genius makes this typical flaw not only very visible, but the flaw itself becomes a remarkable teaching, and we should be grateful that: "None of us are perfect".
In becoming aware of this, we also become
aware of how a certain law of karma reveals itself to us. Many
biographies, in that they stir us to excesses of antipathy or sympathy,
are in that instance a sacrifice - a gift. The more public and
outstanding the flaw, the greater the lesson to those who learn to
observe its truths. Prokofieff, in this sense, then displays his
flaw (which normally in biographies are usually private) on a grander
scale, as perhaps a sacrifice chosen before birth, so that not only do
we learn from each others genius, but we can also learn from each
others mistakes.
In this way the Russian Soul then gives
us not only its genius out of its fascination with life's suffering,
but as well the sacrificial example of its own tragedies and failings.
What then does Prokofieff teach us out of this sacrificial and
public display of his own (and our) imperfections?
First, of course, he teaches this lesson
itself - that grand errors made in biographies also teach. There
are many public figures in the world toward whom we feel antipathy (or
an excess of sympathy), who have made similar sacrifices. [See the
latter part of the essay earlier in this book: The Meaning of...., as well as the discussion concerning Ahriman's
incarnation and the role of his helpers.]
Second, he confronts us with a personal
question, as to whether we can receive such a lesson without making the
compounding error to turn his natural feet of clay (which we all have -
"None
of us are perfect", which by the way has to
include Steiner) into a reason to question all the rest that his life
has given. There is a deep challenge here to practice discernment
- to distinguish the true from the false, the essential from the
non-essential - in such a way that (to borrow a horrible but apt
cliche) we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
What then is Prokofieff's flaw that
teaches, in that it is a weakness so very typical of far too many
modern day anthroposophists?
It is the failure to have taken up the
objective philosophical introspective practices of Steiner's The Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom), with the consequence that we do not
know how to distinguish in the soul the
difference between belief, understanding and knowledge. [Lest someone
believe there is no basis for this conclusion, Gordienko's book
carefully examines the evidence for whether Prokofieff knows
the philosophical material, whether he knows
Goetheanism or whether he knows the Consciousness Soul.
The result of her examination is that he does not know any of
these quite important matters of soul life. In addition, during
my conversation with him in Ann Arbor, I specifically asked him if he
felt he knew these matters. I explained Gordienko's views, and my
own views (made on the basis of reading his book on Tomberg).
After which I asked him directly if he knew these three (the
scientific philosophical introspection, Goetheanism and/or the
Consciousness Soul), to which question he replied: "None of us are perfect".]
When this confusion about the difference
between belief, understanding and knowledge is coupled with the
ongoing idolatry (excess of sympathy) regarding Steiner-said, the
result is a religion of Steinerism, full of dogmas that
are never questioned and seldom even understood. Prokofieff then
becomes, as far too many also have become, a mere theologian of Steinerism, and not a true practitioner of Anthroposophy (the New
Thinking) or the New Mysteries, both rooted in the highest impulses of
science.
Many anthroposophist have devoted hours
upon hours (totaling perhaps years of their lives) to the reading of
Steiner's books and lectures. Few appreciate, however, the
consequences for the soul of filling it to the brim with the thoughts
of a single individual, without developing the conscious ability to
stand in relationship to such a enormous world view in an independent
(free) and objective fashion. The soul drowns in such a excess of
concepts, and the I is unable to breath freely in such an atmosphere,
flooded as it is with almost nothing but undigested and weakly
understood words from Steiner. This is not to suggest at all that
we not pay attention to Steiner. On the contrary, we need to pay
the most careful attention, but at the same time recall that Steiner
said in the last sentence of the original preface to The
Philosophy of Freedom, that we can end up in
bondage to an idea.
What is worse is that this defect in the
introspective discernment of our own soul activity causes our work to
acquire an excess of either of what we ourselves call the luciferic or
the ahrimanic. Prokofieff, already full of Russian passion for
tragedy, writes frequently out of luciferic flights of fantasy and a
vague mysticism, such that the gold he does produce is buried under a
burden of excesses of concepts - flocks of ungrounded thoughts (long
long books), when what might have been much more useful was a few tight
lines of verse (his best book by far, on Forgiveness, is quite short).
Some others in our Movement, suffering
the same inability to distinguish belief, understanding and knowledge, reduce Steiner to
rigid rules of conduct, giving to the public face of Anthroposophy the
ahrimanic tendency to dogmatic moral judgments, such that drives others
to think we are nothing more than a fundamentalist cult.
Yet, such gestures within the Movement
and Society are not without their higher purpose, for the Russian Soul
calls out to the American Soul - the East calls across the Center to
the true West. This then brings forward that earthly pragmatic
Consciousness Soul sensibility of Americans, as the right
counter-balance to the dreamy, mystical and somewhat premature
flirtation with the Spirit Self that Prokofieff unwisely promotes.
[This essay and this book may more be
read in America than elsewhere. If American Anthroposophists take
up these indications, then much will be set right in the Movement and
Society as the 21st Century continues to unfold.]
Even so, we now need to address what it
means that so many do not appreciate in practice the difference between
belief,
understanding and knowledge, for this is the
typical state of soul of most anthroposophists, for which Prokofieff is
being offered as the archetype. [the following was written Christmas
Morning, 2006, when I found time to return to this work]
The core question is to what extent do we
have self knowledge of how concepts arise in the soul. If this
self knowledge were easy to come to, it would not have been necessary
for Steiner to write his books on objective (scientific) philosophical
introspection. At the same time, there is an initial decision
that has to be taken, and that is the decision to self-observe.
Merely reading the books, A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception or The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom) is
not enough. We
have to be willing to become objective as we look within.
For the human being to have knowledge, they must be able to unite in the soul two elements of
soul life: the experience (the percept) and the thought (the concept).
In the absence of the experience (the percept) there is no knowledge. To read about Michael, or Christ, is quite
different from having an experience of either.
Reading may lead to understanding, but only experience can lead to knowledge (in the sense Steiner
has used this term).
The true study and practice of The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom) is
to lead to a practical appreciation of monism, not just its idea.
[Monism in the sense being used here means that for every
experience there is an Idea - a Being. Gravity, for example, is not an
abstract force due to mass, but rather the will of Cosmic Beings.
On the simplest level this means that for every object of
experience there is a corresponding complex of concepts or an Idea. Experience and thought are two sides of one coin.]
The 19th Century left behind a strong
residue of materialism in philosophical thought, such that it was held
that the human being could not know "the thing in itself".
Steiner showed how to discover in ones own
experience, that thought bears within itself the inside of its object. Thought can know
"the thing in itself." But this does not happen automatically.
It is not a given aspect of thought, but comes only into being if
the I itself calls it forth, and this calling is an inner act that is essentially moral in nature
(thus The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity speaks
so exactly of moral imagination, moral intuition and moral technique).
Most of what is read by those reading
Steiner produces only concepts (thought), without the related percepts
(experience). This means that when we read, for example, about
the various incarnations of the Earth in Occult
Science: an outline, we do not acquire knowledge, as we lack the relevant experience. It is also
possible we have not intensely enough read the material, or worked it
over, so that the concepts we do create out of reading the text are a
kind of weak tea in relationship to the concepts we could create were
we to be more active inwardly.
If we are sufficiently active inwardly
(consciously awake to our recreation of the pictures, instead of
passive) during the concept formation process of reading, the deeper
will these texts (such as Occult
Science: an outline) give us understanding. If we read carefully the introductory material to both Occult
Science: an outline and Theosophy (for example) we will find there that Steiner repeatedly
uses the term understanding and never uses there the word knowledge. Only in the books on objective philosophical
introspection does he use the word knowledge in the particular way a practical monism requires.
With the fall from grace of the Society
and Movement that followed Steiner's death and then the internal wars
on the Vorstand leading to the split in the Society, it slowly became
an unquestioned habit of soul for many to act as if the reading of a
Steiner text gave knowledge. People began to treat the texts as a source of
spiritual knowledge, such that recently I heard a lecture given by the head
of the pedagogical section of the School of Spiritual Science that had
this phrase: "We
know through Rudolf Steiner that...".
This sentence cannot be true. It could be said: "we might understand through
Rudolf Steiner that...", but not that we know.
Real knowledge never comes through another, but only out
of our own activity such that we are able to unite experience (percept)
and thought (concept), which is a major reason why Steiner repeatedly
insisted we not use him as an authority (the other major
reason is that we are not to make our thinking dependent on him,
otherwise we are not free).
What this social process (the almost universal
assumption that a reading of a Steiner text provides knowledge) means is that not only have we failed to appreciate the
true value of these texts for enlivening our understanding, but we may have allowed this material to enter the soul
as mere belief. In this way then the teachings of Spiritual
Science become in the soul religious - not scientific,
which is why I have been forced to use the term Steinerism to describe this system of beliefs.
This process also has led to the intellectualization of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence given by Steiner,
but that is a theme better related elsewhere.
This problem is exacerbated by the habits
of conduct within the institutional social forms of the Society and
Movement, wherein the books about objective philosophical introspection
are read, but not practiced (if they were practiced, we'd get a whole
different kind of activity out of the Vorstand and Councils).
Instead people seem to concentrate on the Six Exercises and Knowledge
of Higher Worlds. This substitution
will not achieve the same inner result. It is the Vorstand itself
that tolerates the fall from grace that has made of Spiritual Science a
system of beliefs. And it is Prokofieff, with his Russian mystical
passions who has made vast aspects of Spiritual Science into Steinerism in his soul and released it over our Society and
Movement filled with a hypnotizing beauty and power not unlike that of
Lucifer.
So that we may be clear about this, let
me state it quite plainly: Much of what Prokofieff writes and teaches
is not true, not knowledge and not based on understanding. Those
who read his works and treat them in the same way they already treat
Steiner, have just added another layer of mere belief (Steinerism has
become Prokofieffism). For details, as to what Prokofieff
misrepresents that Steiner wrote and spoke, read Gordienko's book.
Absent the profound, necessary and
intimate understanding of his own soul-life through introspection,
Prokofieff teaches a Lucifer-like visionary Steinerism (a near ecstatic system of mere beliefs), and has set himself up as its chief theologian.
This is what Gordienko discovered, which is why she criticized
anthroposophists in general for their failure to be scientific, and
Prokofieff in particular in that his luciferic visionary and mystical
mixture of beliefs
and understanding that falsify what Steiner actually
taught. [Gordienko, by the way, demonstrates considerably more
self-understanding via introspection, than did her countryman,
Prokofieff, which is what enables her book, Sergei O.
Prokofieff: Myth and Realty, to be so
essentially sound. This is evident from the descriptions of her
approach in her book.]
This problem is made all the more
difficult, in that much of what Prokofieff gives is filled with some
degree of understanding (but seldom, if ever, knowledge), which is why it resonates so strongly with the
membership, who share this confusion of understanding mixed with belief. With all of them
lacking the needed deep introspective knowledge of their own souls, the
result is that the vast majority of the Society and Movement are unable
to distinguish that which in Prokofieff's theological teachings of Steinerism is true from that which is false in the understanding, or to separate out what is mere belief.
Some may assert to themselves: I
understand myself. I know myself, Wendt is a nut job!
Obviously I cast a wide net here. At the same time,
thinking which has come to know itself, also recognizes
when such thinking is absent in another, or when our institutional
leaders speak and behave in ways that essentially demonstrate they do
not know, in a practical fashion, what is to be learned by a many
years practice of the science of objective philosophical introspection.
The proof is not to be found in any ones assertions.
It only appears in deeds. The New Thinking leads to
inner and outer action, and is not a mere thought-content.
As Steiner predicted, karma will hold sway. What was sown in the 20th Century is now being reaped. Further, as he also predicted in The Challenge of the Times, there would come a time when the East would come to discover and to regret its own tragic failures in that its over-reaching into the Center actually harmed the spiritual life of that Center.
Is it the point of this essay to blame
Prokofieff for this? Not really. He entered an
anthroposophical social environment which had already fallen away from
its scientific principles. He was taught an unscientific standard
of the practice of Anthroposophy, as this unscientific standard had
already taken possession of the Society and Movement. When he
offered his first work (Rudolf
Steiner and the New Mysteries) in his late
twenties, he was not met with the same skeptical resistance as was
Tomberg, whose first offerings were at age 31-33. In Tomberg's
case, Marie Steiner had insisted that Tomberg violated a spiritual law
(attributed to Steiner) that said one could not teach original contributions to Spiritual Science before age 42.
In the case of Prokofieff, this assertion seems never to have
been made, perhaps in part because so many are unconsciously confused
as to what in Prokofieff's writings is original and what is derivative. I doubt even
Prokofieff could separate out his beliefs and understandings that are rooted
in what he has read in Steiner, and those original thoughts that arose in his own soul. There is no evidence
he has produced his vast corpus of work with the necessary degree of
self awareness.
Another way to appreciate this, but which
requires some self observation, is to recognize in our own minds the
nature of associative thinking. This is a kind of thinking that
is normal and characteristic of our time, in which we (without any
discipline) allow concepts to move more or less of their own accord
into various new groupings. For example, one can read something
on one Steiner book, and then another thing in a different text.
Following this we join these two (beliefs, or weak tea
understandings) together, that is we bring about their association.
Because we do this without any real self
awareness or discipline, we don't notice that the product of bringing
these two concepts into association is a third concept, the result as
it were of a kind of conceptual intercourse. In forming this
association, rooted in two different experiences, in two different
texts, of concepts drawn from Rudolf Steiner, we have made something
that can be entirely fictional.
The joining (the association) makes sense
to us, because our associative activity does function with a kind of
instinctive logic and intelligence, but this satisfaction of our
instinct cannot be a basis for believing the resulting associative
thought is true. We will hear each other express this in our
group work, where someone says something on the order of: "I imagine that ...". This is a sign to us that the speaker has made a
semiconscious association of two or more separate facts understood or
believed from the works of Rudolf Steiner. Were a natural
scientist to speculate in this fashion, they would be soundly
criticized.
We find a lot of what is written and said
in the Society and Movement, and certainly in Prokofieff, to be rooted
in this unscientific associative speculation. Prokofieff (and us)
simply cannot author sentences about higher spiritual realities solely
because we read something in Steiner. We have no experience which
justifies us in pretending to this higher knowledge.
Also with respect to Prokofieff's works,
just consider and contrast that work with the work of Jessiah
Ben-Aharon, as appeared one after the other in the book: The Future
is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium.
First in order in this book, was
Prokofieff's essay, The End of
the Century and the Tasks of the Anthroposophical Society. This essay was largely confusing and rambling,
with its main focus a kind of self justification for Prokofieff's
already favorite theme, The Christmas Conference. Again and again
Prokofieff urges us to believe what he believes, namely that from the
spiritual world one can hear today (suggesting he himself hears) "...this call of the Guardian of
the Threshold, this voice from the land of the spirit sounding to us
from the entire esoteric essence of the Christmas Conference..." such that this "...leads a person to actually laying the Foundation Stone
in his heart, ...". Without doubt
a most wonderful sentiment, but is it the truth?
Clearly these thoughts are the result of
loose associative thinking propelled by Prokofieff's semi-conscious
Russian mystical passions. Moreover, these are typical of a kind
of religious, unscientific thinking common in the Society and Movement.
Contrast this then with Ben-Aharon's
essay that immediately followed : The Global
Situation at the End of the Century.
Here we read that a true development* of the "...way to higher worlds,
brings one to the time-place in which Rudolf Steiner and the
anthroposophical work was striving to enter rightly into world
evolution in 1922/3/4/5. This place-of-time, this very specific
sought-for entrance (though not, of course, the eternally relevant content of the First Class) is
wholly past. Its place has been taken by subsequent esoteric and
exoteric history".
*[Ben-Aharon established his
developmental credentials with his remarkable The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century, a
most amazing three panel Imaginative Cognition of the Second Coming, as
well as his book The New
Experience of the Supersensible.]
One says turn to the Christmas Conference
and follow me for I know its value for the present, and the other
clearly says that "This
place in time...is wholly past. Its place has been taken by
subsequent esoteric and exoteric history."
We could ask ourselves whether the Christmas Conference, shortly
to be followed by the death of Steiner and then the Vorstand's descent
into disarray, can in any way have the same esoteric significance for
the 20th Century as the Second Coming of Christ in the Ethereal.
Prokofieff writes and writes and writes
huge long books preaching the Christmas Conference as the main
spiritual and esoteric heart of the 20th Century, becoming a star in
the tiny firmament of the Anthroposophical Society, while Ben-Aharon
writes very little, and does far more in the contemporary world of
activists and members of Civil Society, living his life in the quite
dangerous world of Israel. Who do you think knows more about the
esoteric truth of the 20th Century?
It is a fair question to ask how I know
what is asserted here, concerning the nature of belief, understanding and knowledge. The simple
fact is that the confused mixture of belief and understanding (as well as the
problem of loose associative thinking) was also taught to me by the
social environment through which I meet the Society and Movement.
My own soul, in its efforts to imitate what it assumed was a
healthy anthroposophical practice, eventually found itself lost and in
prison - captured by the excess of not-experienced (percept-less)
concepts. Further, I had also assumed (incorrectly) that my
fellow anthroposophists took the science of objective philosophical
introspective teachings seriously. As a result, I had to learn to
untangle this confusion of belief, understanding and
knowledge (as well as undisciplined
associative thinking) on my own, for the Society and Movement knew
not this problem or its significance. Otherwise, we would be
taught these dangers from the beginning, instead of being feed the
so-called basic
books, and have modeled for us in lecture
after lecture the approach that essentially teaches that Steiner has
given us knowledge.
As a result, Prokofieff is as much a
creature of the anthroposophical community that accepted uncritically
his youthful Russian passions, as he is the victim of those same
passions. The two unscientific impulses, one social and
surrounding and the other inward and unfolding, married each other,
with the result that the Vostand accepts and supports beliefs mixed in a confusing fashion with understanding, all the while ignorant of the real necessity for knowledge. [The following was written after attending Mass
late on Christmas Day. Why do I go to Mass, by the way? Am
I another anthroposophist seduced by Tomberg into joining the Church? I
go there, every once in a while, because Christ is always there (as He
told me He would be - see my book the Way of
the Fool), and it is a wondrous experience to
open the soul in prayerful meditation in the social environment in
which the Mass is celebrated.]
Is there a way out for anthroposophists as regards the problem of learning to distinguish in the soul mere belief, from true understanding and both of these from real knowledge?
Oddly enough the way out is Faith.
The soul is not meant to only be of the Kings and of Gnosis, but
also of the Shepherds and of Faith. We are entitled to have Faith
in the New Revelations of Christ given to us in the form of
anthroposophical Spiritual Science as taught by Rudolf Steiner, as long
as we are conscious of this acceptance and do not mistake, as an
experience and activity within our own souls, what is mere belief for true understanding or either of
those for real knowledge.
What does this mean in practice for both
the individual and the group?
For the individual this requires of us an
introspective observation of our own soul life, in order to with almost
brutal self-honesty admit that we are acting as if we know
something, when in fact we may only believe it, and/or may not entirely understand it. We have to carefully and with discernment,
tease apart the collection of concepts we hold concerning the spiritual
and its relationship to the material. We have to honestly ask
ourselves: What do I in fact know? What do I have that
is both concept and percept (experience and thought) united?
What cannot pass that first test, which
for most will be almost everything they ever read in a Steiner text, we
have next to more carefully examine. Of this large collection of
concepts, we then need to ask what do I hold as mere belief (all of which should be held at a distance from the I,
in order to not be imprisoned by the concept: "One must be able to confront
an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage." R.S. The
Philosophy of Freedom), and what then finally
remains that I can honestly say I understand of what Steiner gave. This then we can draw nearer,
and contemplate carefully. Yet, in this last category there again
may well be little, for understanding in the sense that
it was offered to us by Steiner requires inner activity and not mere
passive reading.
As to the
group, when we do this it will also become necessary to change the
social environment of the Society and Movement itself. We need to introduce into our
shared vocabulary these three words: belief, understanding and knowledge. We need to speak in
this way to each other with modesty, and admit that this which we have
read I believe, this which we have read I understand, and of this which we have read I do or do not have knowledge.
Only in this way will Prokofieff's
sacrifice, so as to model our most fallen ways, serve our need.
It is not Prokofieff who needs change as much as us. The
fallen nature of the Society and Movement cannot be redeemed by those
in the institutional hierarchies, but only from below out of the social
commons where the New Mysteries are meant to be practiced in the Branch
and Group work (via the reverse cultus).
*
Let us finish this contemplation by
adding one more nuance. As we have come to understand, real
knowledge, as conceived by Steiner and as is potential in the soul,
requires the union of experience (percept) and thought (concept).
Yet, in the literature of Anthroposophy, in part as a result of
certain necessities faced by Rudolf Steiner and today as often
practiced (especially by Prokofieff), we have an excess of concepts for which we have little real experience.
This excess of concepts really needs to
become grounded in experience, otherwise it floats free of the earthly
element of life (becomes luciferic).
In the East, where the ancient mysteries
of Light were produced, the soul finds its more natural state above the
Earth. Gautama Buddha sought and achieved Nirvana - the Way of
Enlightenment - the leaving behind of the cycle of reincarnations for
the surrender of ego to the experience of the heights. The East
elaborates its intercourse with the Divine via this Enlightenment into
profound pictures of Cosmic Existence, which then have slowly become
remarkable systems
of belief. For the East, the belief in
Cosmic Truth alone is the center of the spiritual element of earthly
existence, while freedom from the wheel of karma is the ultimate goal.
The Russian Soul bears an aspect of this impulse within, thus its
tendency to religious mysticism.
In the Center, where the ancient
mysteries of Man found a home in the social life of Western
Civilization, the striving to fully leave behind earth existence is
tempered by the Way of Initiation, which seeks to bring down from the
heights into earthly social life, via Art, an understanding of the Divine
Mystery. Here the Ideal is sought to be comprehended, and then to
the extent possible, incarnated. All is to be made into Beauty. (which is why so many of Steiner's lectures and books
are really works of art, with some of the deepest truths rendered into verse
- the Calender of the Soul, and drama
- the Mystery Plays.) Think also of the remarkable Statue of the
Representative of Humanity.
In the true West, under a whispering
influence of very ancient mysteries of the Earth (the Saturn
Mysteries), social life is most fully sought to be realized in
practical ways. Science as a means of knowledge takes root quite easily here. Enlightenment and
Initiation are less important, and the center of earthly social life is
found in character, which is what becomes the founding ideal impulse of
the United States of America - the citizen as incarnated Virtue, or Goodness.
So we have then in the poetic vision of
the song America the Beautiful, a
profound truth expressed in these words: "...and crown thy good with
brotherhood...". It is out of this
striving for earthly virtue that union with all other humans flows as
an impulse into earthly social existence, first appearing most strongly
in America, and now reaching across the Center, from the true West, and
toward the East. In spite of the wanderings and flaws of
politicians, the true West wants to Love the Center and the East, yet
only out of its own - pragmatic and earthly - genius; that is: because
of the Goodness of such Love. It is in this spirit that this essay
was written. [For hints on the New (as contrasted with ancient) Mysteries of the Earth, see the next essay.]
*****************************************
[for the neophyte: let us continue on
this theme of deepening our understanding of anthroposophical work in
practice, looking now more toward the future.]
This essay, was written just for this book during the Holy Nights,
2006-2007,
after Christmas had passed.
The New, and profoundly human, Mysteries of the Earth
Many years ago, in 1919 to be exact,
Rudolf Steiner gave some lectures on the Cosmic New Year, in which he
elaborated on three somewhat ancient mystery streams: The Mysteries of
Light (from the East via Greek civilization); The Mysteries of Man
(from the South via the Egyptian civilization) and the Mysteries of the
Earth (from the North via the Scandinavian Peoples). These three
mysteries combined in a way in the social order of Central Europe.
[An significant discussion of this can be found on Bob and
Nancy's Waldorf website (bobnancy.com), by going to their section on Anthroposophy, and then within that section to the translators corner and there to the essay: Kraft, the
Passive Voice and the Three Mystery Streams.]
Since the time in which Rudolf Steiner
gave those lectures something new happened - the
Second Coming. The older mystery
streams had come into being via an older initiate consciousness and in
hierarchical (top down) social form, but with the
Second Coming and the deepening of the Age of
the Consciousness Soul, the moral authority of the individual is
beginning to discover its sure capacity for creating new
social form. Something is surging upward from the social commons,
albeit stronger and sooner in America. On a world-wide level,
Civil Society has entered into world affairs and begun to successfully
challenge the hidden aristocracy of concentrated wealth.
Might it be possible, perhaps even necessary, to speak of New Mysteries of Light and of Man and of the Earth? This essay means to suggest this, without forcing the matter. The reader, who wants to know, should weight this question in their own active soul [for a better sense of this term - active soul, see the quote from Emerson in the next essay.].
I have thought, for example, that it
would be wise to think of Rudolf Steiner's work as fostering in the
Center the New Mysteries of Man. Such that as these impulses radiate out into the
world, the East will out of its own intuitions foster the New Mysteries of Light, and the true West (the Americas) would foster out of
its own intuitions the New Mysteries of the Earth.
Steiner sometimes called Anthroposophy the wisdom of man. He also created books such as The Study
of Man and Man as
Symphony of the Creative Word. Most
crucially, he begins the panels of the
Foundation Stone Meditation: "Soul of Man!"
America, as expressed earlier in this
book, is to have its own version of Anthroposophy, as remarked by
Steiner in his lectures to the workman at the Goetheanum. What
could be meant by such a statement? What could be meant by the New Mysteries of the Earth?
I have suggested in previous essays the
need in America for the New Sun Mysteries to marry the very ancient
Saturn Mysteries. This is not marriage in the sense we think of
as a social form created of two separate individual human beings, but
marriage in the sense of individual inward mystical union. Those
who have read Ben-Aharon's The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century (the
Imagination of the Second Coming), will be aware that this Event is
described as the birth of a New Sun in the Earth.
In my essay on The
Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul, I described the moral act leading to individual human
knowledge of the Good as an ethereal Eucharist - a second Eucharist, which begins that process of creating the New
Jerusalem, the future ethereal Jupiter incarnation of the Earth.
The Hopi Prophecies conceive (from their
point of view) of this marriage of Sun and Saturn Mysteries as a
meeting between two once separated brothers - two bearers of what was
once a united wisdom, leading to the inauguration of what they
call: The Day of
Purification.
I have also suggested that Anthroposophy
was to take its mostly earthly social form in America.
As the reader should now be able to see, there is a common tread weaving in all of these themes, or perhaps a central idea, seen from many different perspectives.
The American finds himself on the Earth
faced with trials of a social nature (a call from the surround of his
biography) requiring moral actions in the world. As the
Consciousness Soul Age moves through the present birth trial of the
beginning of the 21st Century, an increasing chaos in the social will
force moral choice upon almost everyone in Western Civilization.
As this transformation spreads throughout the world it will seek
to dissolve the remaining social traditions throughout that same
world still binding the I to the group soul.
This does not mean that there are no
Consciousness Soul gestures in the wider world, only that more people
are coming to this sooner in the Western Democracies. At the same
time in the wider world, especially where we see Civil Society and the
like, we see the Consciousness Soul emerging.
Most social forms will expire, under the
pressure of the still increasing chaos (it will end after a time, when
the metamorphosis of Western Civilization reaches a new steady-state).
During this process, communities will either dissolve completely
or collapse into some seed-like form, and this includes all those
social forms in the Anthroposophical Society and Movement. Social
tradition will be of no avail. Deep will then be the hunger for
new social form - for wise social form - for new and more conscious
understanding of the nature and structure of community in this Age
(this hunger too can be found emerging everywhere). The egotism
of the I is to be made to face its choices to accept moral trials (or
not) as an individual; and, to be offered the opportunity to join with others in
new ways. These possibilities and potentials are given to us by
Christ as the Artist (Lord) of Karma through the manner in which
individual biographies are woven into communities.
Recall once more what Christ said in
Matthew 10:34-40: Do
not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to
bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against
his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those in his own
household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more that me is not
worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not
worthy of me. He
who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake
will find it. He who receives you receives me, and he who
receives me receives him who sent me. [emphasis
added]
On the other side of this process, of the
breaking down of traditional community all the way into the family, we
will have the choice to form new bonds (new social forms) as free
individuals.
Some anthroposophists will seek to root
such new social forms in Steiner's ideas about threefolding.
While this gesture is not entirely unworthy, it assumes there is
a power to be found there that factually cannot be found there.
Social life is immensely complicated, and we are far from even
knowing what the best questions are, much less drawing near to
discovering useful and practical answers.
But a wise Providence does not ignore our
need. The Saturn Peoples of the Americas were not only stewards
of the lands on which they lived lightly, but they have also kept
faithful care of deep and profound wisdom regarding social forms and
needs. The humanity went to the East from Atlantis had slowly
sacrificed its ancient social wisdom in order to produce a new partial
wisdom (natural science and the flirtation with the forces of death -
see Steiner's From
Symptom to Reality in Modern History) leading
to the birth of individuality and ego consciousness. The humanity
that remained in the true West of the Americas, sacrificed that same
potential for an early individuality and ego consciousness, in order to
preserve their partial aspect of the deepest social wisdom.
Recall what was written earlier about the broken stone tablets in
the Hopi Prophecy - two parts to the ancient wisdom - one going to the
East from Atlantis, the other to the West.
In order not to confuse what is being
said here, the suggested mystical union between the ancient Saturn
Mysteries and the New Sun Mysteries takes place in the individual soul,
not in an institutional sense. It is entirely a consequence of
individual free spiritual choices. No one commands such work be
done, nor can any group or individual insist it not be done. Only
the individual, out of their work in the social commons, can author and
source this union in their individual way.
Just as those coming to the New Sun
Mysteries have read Steiner and met with many of the Daughter Impulses,
so the ancient Saturn social Mysteries can be read of and met.
Throughout Civil Society, for example, the influence of
aboriginal peoples is seen everywhere. The union of the New
Thinking with the ancient social wisdom, as it takes place in
individual souls, produces something new, and is already active where
people are waking up.
The influence already of that ancient
social wisdom on the American Articles of Confederation and the U. S.
Constitution is well known. And, when we look at the poetic
inspiration of the song America
the Beautiful, we
arrive at: "...and
crown thy good with brotherhood...".
The moral freedom of the fully developed ego consciousness of the
human being is now bringing about the ability to unite the I within the
soul with the eternal - that is with the Good, while at the same time
this reaching for goodness is meant to be the soul and spirit
foundation for true brotherhood - for the new healthy social life.
It is no accident of history that America
exists, or that the roots of the American Soul are in the Aboriginals
here. It is no accident of history that the individualism that is
the ripe fruit of Western Civilization has emerged most prominently
where the memory - where the spirit recollection - of the oldest social
truths has left its mark. It is no accident of history that the
Hopi Prophecy exists to help point the way.
Nor, sadly, is it any accident of
history that the vain spiritual imperialism of an idealistic shadow
captured European spiritual life seeks to impose its personal karma of
wounds in opposition to this potential. This is not, by the way,
a consequence solely of Europeans. This spiritual imperialism is
the semi-conscious, shadow driven, effect of flaws of both European
anthroposophists and American anthroposophists. Ahriman wants to
keep Anthroposophy in American lame, and works from within outwards,
through the shadow, toward this goal.
Europeans contribute to this process by
assuming their soul idealism is common to other souls in the threefold
world. Americans contribute by their worship of European culture,
while ignoring American culture. Both contribute by their
absorption in the three basic flaws of the 20th Century: the failure to
grasp the personal significance of The Philosophy of Freedom, the
failure to grasp the community significance of the Reverse Cultus, and
the common descent into the intellectualization of the Cosmic Michaelic
Intelligence.
The needed Marriage of the New Sun
Mysteries and the Ancient Saturn Mysteries is vehemently opposed by
that Spiritual Power, which would define the world of human meaning
through continuing the Ahrimanic Deception beyond its true place in the
evolution of consciousness. This Power would also seek to rule
the coming social order out of a corrupted American military and
economic might. This battle, between the European soul idealism
and the pragmatic natural spirituality of Americans, within the
Anthroposophical Society in America, is as a result profoundly relevant
to world events and decisions. In a very real sense, this battle
here to free the American Soul to find its true inner calling is at the
very heart of future world events.
The world economy, under the forces we
call globalization, has reached a certain stage of development.
At the same time, with the dawning of the first century of the
Third Millennium the Lords of Finance* - the
aristocracies of concentrated wealth - are having an increasingly
difficult time ruling the world with the same degree of license as they
had for most of the 20th Century.
The American People are central to the
next steps to be taken in world historical events, which is why
Ben-Aharon wrote: America's
Global Responsibility: individuation, initiation and threefolding.
The Dark Powers went out of their way at
the beginning of the 21st Century to bring about the crucifixion of the
American Dream in the minds and hearts of the world's peoples. It
was important to these Powers to falsely represent America more and
more as a deranged and degenerate society, and to accomplish thereby as
much as possible the ruination of this needed imagination of the Beacon of Hope in the minds of the poor and disenfranchised the world
over.
These same Powers, by also encouraging a
shadow driven European spiritual imperialism, have also lamed the
American Anthroposophical Society. They want to hold at bay the
new Life Forces of Christ from entering into the course of world events
in the way it is possible for them to do if the awake Marriage of the
New Sun Mysteries and the Ancient Saturn Mysteries can be brought about
in individual souls. They also desperately need to keep the
future development of the world economy from being confronted in
America by these same new goodness-filled Life forces of Christ - Life
forces seeded directly in the yet unrealized potential of the New (living heart) Thinking and the New Mysteries
(the reverse cultus).
This potential power of individual moral
freedom is the gravest danger to an emerging new form
of ahrimanic group soul via the demands for Corporate allegiance, which
seeks to ensnare the moral nature of the I by seducing that I with
extraordinary material (sense world) rewards. It is this that
stands behind all the effort expended to repress this moral Life's
emergence, through the very subtle inner misdirection of the
Anthroposophical Movement in America. This misdirection does not
come from without, but from within, through our failures to recognize
and practice: the New Thinking; the true Nature of the New Mysteries
(the reverse cultus); and, the slow and necessary mastery of the
reality of the threefold double-complex and its influence on our shared
spiritual life.
While it is true that this Marriage of ancient Saturn Mysteries and the New Sun Mysteries is already instinctively happening in Civil Society, and in such groups as the Bioneeers, here we must be concerned with the very sleepy American Anthroposophical Society, whose task it was to bring in these new Life forces of Christ in a more awake way.
In the face then of these awesome and
crucial challenges in the present conditions of the world, what will
the anthroposophists in America, and world-wide, do? They are supposed to know of the New Thinking, of the potential for the
New Mysteries out of the Social Commons of Branch and Group work via
the Reverse Cultus and of the returning understanding of the need for
human beings to take up the personal battles with the Shadow in the
Soul. This is dangerous knowledge, for it is
a truth at odds with present day social norms, especially secular
humanism, scientific materialism and religious fundamentalism. In
a time when certain secular humanists attack Waldorf Pedagogy and try
to equate Steiner's folk soul teachings with National Socialism, and
when Science and Religion fight over the meaning of evolution, and when
humanity hungers and needs new insight and revelation, one has to
wonder where the needed Michaelic Courage, to present to the world this
dangerous
knowledge, is hiding out.
The Anthroposophical Society and Movement
seem to be sitting on the sidelines, watching its collective navel,
while the great issues of the day are decided by others. This
does not have to continue. However, for it not to continue
requires a series of choices, choices that begin with brutal self
honesty about the real history of the Society and Movement in the 20th
Century, about the nature of the Mystery of America and about how well
we are moving forward in the tasks set before us by Rudolf Steiner with
regards to the New Thinking, the New Mysteries and the shadow forces in
the soul.
But we anthroposophists are individuals.
Even our social forms are in decay. So who will act?
Who will choose? Who will find deeds out of which to
incarnate the Good that Lives in Anthroposophy? Those choices,
those deeds, birth for the future something that can come in no other
way; and, these are social deeds that I can only think to call, in that
they are meant to emerge from the social commons: The New,
and profoundly human, Mysteries of the Earth.
America is uniquely placed to be able to
step into the social life of humanity carrying the essential nature of
the New Mysteries and the New Thinking in the Branch and Group work.
Profound premonitions of the reverse cultus exist here. The ancient social wisdom here rooted
itself in numerous circles of conversation among equals, in kivas
and around campfires. The Transcendentalists intuited this theme
in their deep recognition of the meaning of friendship. Circles
of Care arose in Boston in the mid-1800's, birthing the first sense of
the need for a different approach to the care of the developmentally
disabled. In 1933, under the inspiration of an encounter with the
ethereal return of Christ, the impetus was given to the founding, out
of a circle of friends, of the profound work with the shadow forces via
Alcoholics Anonymous. In the last half of the 20th Century we saw
the birth of the group work called: non-violent communication, born in the American Soul and becoming world-wide in
scope.
Yet, in the American Anthroposophical Movement, the American Soul is held captive, its major prison built by us in our own souls out of the hard and rigid stones of Steiner-said, coupled with an excessive admiration of things European. American anthroposophists carry now a special capacity and potential, which can be lost if not exercised. Dynamic living spiritual communities hover over our work, waiting. Recall from above these remarks from Ben-Aharon's Imagination of the Second Coming:
"Now when they identified themselves with the situation of
earthly humanity, the souls who remained true to [Archangel] Michael
prefigured, in their planetary Earthly-Sun life, the great Sacrifice of
Christ. They walked again in His steps
[emphasis added]
as they did in former earthly lives, only now the order of following
was reversed. They went before Him, showing Him the way, acting
out of free and self-conscious human decision, and
He followed in their steps only after they fully united themselves with
the divided karma of Earth and humanity. Only then could He
offer His sacrifice as the answer to the new, future question of human
existence: the question concerning the mission and fate of evil." Jessiah Ben-Aharon, The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century [emphasis
added]
The communities of spirit related to
Michael and Christ wait on our choices. They have committed
themselves to trusting human beings. We know the reality of
earthly existence in a way they do not, and to us they look for
leadership in this time. They honor our freedom above all else,
and this makes our choices ever more acute and poignant. I too
wonder: What
will my fellow anthroposophists do?
Well, I do have three wishes, if you have
read that essay on my website, so let us end this with that, for these
are really simple matters.
1) That we create a true history of our
movement's activity in the 20th Century (spirit recollection); 2) that
we take an deep interest in the Mystery of America as it comes toward
us out of the future (spirit vision); and, 3) that we stop saying: Steiner said (a gesture only possible out of memory), and instead
begin to share our own in the moment heart thoughts (spirit mindfulness).
These are not difficult acts, and I can
promise you that where they are carried out, the Opposing Powers will
back away, forced to make room for the Life forces of Christ as these
flow into human beings via the Moral Grace that is the Second Ethereal
Eucharist. Small acts of courage are asked for in these wishes, acts which are much
needed in the Branches and Groups - the social commons of the Society
and Movement. Small acts of rebellion are these as well, against the sleepy social traditions
in which we dream and from which we need to awake. Small acts,
coming from ordinary people, in celebration of the mystery of ordinary
consciousness. Small acts of individual first steps toward the
new heart thinking, birthing in the only way possible the New Sun
Mysteries as the New,
and profoundly human, Mysteries of the Earth.
More than anything, these small acts of
moral courage are the most profound spiritual power that can enter our
circles. It is not inspiration from above we need as much as
inspiration from out of the social commons of a shared struggle to
birth the New Thinking and the New Mysteries in the Chalice
of the Reverse Cultus.
Visualize now, for a moment, Raphael's
Madonna and Child. Here obviously portrayed is a truth not yet
well known or understood. The Christ is held
in the bosom of the Mother. The moral order of the social world,
in which Christ works out of and through freely chosen human
moral deeds, is held in the bosom of the Earth - the Mystery of the Divine
Mother. Christ in us is the Flowering Heart of the social world,
but the Mother is the Root, Stem and Branch of the social world.
And where is this Root, Stem and Branch most remembered, most
spirit-recollected in America? In the ancient Saturn Mysteries,
that's where - among those who knew Her directly - and spoke of Her as:
the Earth as
Mother (Mother Earth and Father Sky).
Down to the Root of the social world we
must go, deep into the Mysteries of the Americas. Down, down into
the dark moist of Earth, through the spheres of lies and evil, to the
other side where waits the Golden Realm of the Divine Feminine.
Like Christ on the Saturday of His crucifixion we must descend
into Hell, and through Hell to Her. This is the work of
confronting the Shadow in the Soul, which as a social or community
process has been best practiced to date in the group work centered on
the Twelve Steps.
As He told us: "he who loses his life for my
sake will find it". Visualize next the
Pieta. Christ dead, yet held by the Mother. We die into the
Mother - we surrender, we give up, we put down our burdens, our woes,
our karma of wounds, our despair. The soul dies to its
collections and attachments to the past, whether old thoughts or old
feelings or old impulses of will.
We actually do this every night when we
go to sleep. Every night!
What are little children taught in many
places to pray? Isn't it some version of: Now I lay me down to sleep, I
pray the Lord my soul to keep. But if I die before I wake, I pray
the Lord my soul to take.
We surrender to the Mother every night in
prayer. We sleep and cross the threshold. We die the little
death. Then we are reborn each morning, new. At which
point, if we wish to awake to the Second Ethereal Eucharist, we begin
each day seeking Moral Grace, seeking to practice Love - to take up
Christ's kind and light Yoke of Love.
The changes we seek to inaugurate out of
our freedom can be very small, very much our own to author, and very
human. Like the great oak that grows from the tiny acorn,
remarkable spiritual changes can flow out of the simplest of deeds.
What is called for then is simple and
dangerous rebellion against illusions living in the worship of things
European, and the homogenization of thought in the Branches and Groups
in America. One must have a hunger, a need that must have freedom
from the mental chains of Steiner-said. But best of all, a
recognition that the heartfelt thoughts of the own I are exactly and
precisely what needs to be uttered in our work for the New Mysteries to
appear. Into the Branches and Groups we
pour ourselves - a small, but very
great, deed.
We are not being an anthroposophist when
we quote Steiner. Only our own thoughts, which are rooted in soul soil of the seeking
for the Good, can have Life. And that Life can be, in the social context, filled from within by
personally authored and sourced goodness, beauty and truth. And,
because it can appear superficially at odds with its social
surroundings (while in its reality it gives deepest healing to these
same social surroundings), this Life has to be called in the 2nd Century of anthroposophical
endeavors, not just dangerous Anthroposophy, but American
Anthroposophy.
***********************************
[For the neophyte: It has been mentioned
above that most of those in the Anthroposophical Movement and Society
concentrate on the study of Knowledge
of Higher Worlds to the exclusion of The
Philosophy of Freedom. Knowledge
of Higher Worlds is not representative of
Steiner's own path. In this next very
brief essay I will endeavor to shed some
light on Steiner's own path as an aide in understanding this matter,
and as well the light it can shed on certain other problems we have
been addressing above.]
Rudolf Steiner's Own Path - The Philosophy of Freedom
or Spiritual Activity - a re-imagination
(written for
this book after Epiphany, 2008)
Rudolf Steiner wrote only very limited
commentaries on his inner life. We know facts of his biography
and certain indirect things he said about his inner experiences, but in
the main he did not put that aspect of his personality forward.
We have hints, and from some comments in other circumstances we
can (like a detective in a murder mystery) infer certain particulars.
For example, he spoke of inner trials
having come at certain points in his inner work, but did not elaborate
or describe. He often spoke in a way that suggested that language
could not even carry the reality of spiritual experience, which
provides a further reason for an understandable reticence on his part.
I am not, by the way, trying to rewrite
his biography, for others have already done that with great skill.
It is just that in listening to various anthroposophist speak and
write over the years, it is fairly clear that many have not given much
thought to his real experience (we know what he thought about his experience, but not
the experience itself). It is after all
a sublime and mysterious world of experience in which Steiner often
lived, and unless one themselves knows such experience, it is often
difficult for someone unfamiliar to really appreciate what is involved.
An Internet friend of deep experience once said that just as one
could not give to a virgin any idea of what making love was really
like, it was impossible to describe for others (who have never had such
moments) the real nature of spiritual experience. With this
essay I hope to shed some light on this as well.
I am also going to contradict somewhat
the general consensus on certain aspects of Steiner's life, but given
what has already been written by me, this should come as no surprise.
My views here will try to show exactly on what they are based,
but the reader should expect that I will be saying things not generally
said in Steiner biographies, and perhaps left out of his own as well.
To give a concrete example, let us begin
with the clairvoyance of his youth, which most biographies tend to
portray as having arisen around his eighth year and continued from
there on, to and through the rest of his life. If we look at other
things he has said about the subject of these kinds of clairvoyant
experiences (those which arise naturally in young people), he often
used the term atavistic, meaning apparently something that was of the past of
the soul and not related to its the present potential.
Clearly, if we think it through, Steiner
did not earn this youthful clairvoyance in his
current biography in the same way he spoke of when he said on other
occasions that even initiates have to re-earn that achievement in every
life - it does not come automatically. We can perhaps imagine all
kinds of causes for his youthful clairvoyance, but that speculation
will not serve us. Instead then, let us simply maintain these
questions of whether: a) the early clairvoyance was atavistic; and, b)
whether it did continue throughout his life (or did something else
happen)?
Another clue for us can be found in the
last verse of the John Gospel, wherein it is said: There are many other things
that Jesus did, such that if they were written down one by one, I don't
think there would be room in the world for all the resulting volumes.
There is in this verse something that can
be applied analogously to Steiner, in that we hardly know at all this
inner life of his, and what deeds arose there. In Steiner we have
someone who has been having spiritual experience throughout most of his
life. We also know of (but these are apparently not yet
published) the existence of many many notebooks Steiner created over
the years, in which can be found material additional to the books and
lectures already published. What deeds stand behind the
production of these notebooks?
Recently in thinking-meditation I
realized that Steiner did more than lecture when he spoke to an
audience. I was re-reading the first of two lectures collected
under the title Geographic Medicine (given in St. Gallen, November
15th, 1917). It was a curious lecture after a fashion, for
it kept circling around and repeating its basic themes. When I
recalled the lecture during thinking-meditation (a way to increase ones
understanding of Steiner's offerings), I was suddenly struck with the
fact that he was not just speaking to the audience, but simultaneously
to the dead then also present before his spiritual vision.
This lecture takes place around the end
of WWI, and the themes being repeated in it are basically two: 1) when
one dies a sudden violent death in youth, in the next biography around
the middle of that life, a gift is received; and 2) many of the dead,
having taken in an excess of materialistic thought, have a great deal
of difficulty finding the spiritual world (the afterlife), for these
materialistic thoughts bind them to the earth, but if they can find
other thoughts, then this binding can be overcome.
With this insight it all of a sudden
occurred to me that almost any lecture might have just such components,
for before his spiritual vision almost anything could be happening.
Years ago, for example, I had been reading a lecture and found
therein a thought quite personal to me. Upon re-reading the
lecture later (several times I tried this) I could never find the
thought there in words. Is it possible on occasion that Steiner
saw through the veil of time to future readers, and spoke not just to
the audience but to these future readers whose intense interest in what
he was writing and saying may have bridged across time as well? I
have heard it said that he would sometimes speak to quite specific
members of the audience, able to see that everyone else was essentially
asleep but this one person.
I write these things because I want us to
look upon his work and recognize that it contains Mystery. Even
though much is rendered into seemingly fixed conceptual structures,
there is more going on there than we can imagine, for even if I could
not bridge time, who is to say my angel cannot, and that he spoke to
angels as well the dead when he lectured.
We need to keep in mind that Steiner was
doing something that the other nine hierarchies could not do, which is
to render into human concepts the truths of their realms. Some of
you will have heard something on the order of: The stars once spoke to man,
and now it is time for man to speak to the stars.
Next I want to take up an important
subject, that is certain to be controversial. I did not, by the
way, invent this material on my own, but first heard these ideas on an
Internet discussion list where individuals of deep wisdom were gathered
together. This is the story that eventually became told over
time, as I have come to understand it with my own thinking. Also,
in the brief narrative below don't pay too much attention to the
suggested ages. My thinking finds the general nature of the story
to be true, but just exactly during which years of his life this story
unfolded, and the precise character of the details, this I do not know.
Here is the story:
In his teens, as Steiner was becoming awake to his own thinking, and to
the philosophical views of the 19th Century on the problem of
knowledge, he came to realize that his present clairvoyance had certain
weaknesses and limits, and so he consciously (perhaps with some
guidance) set out to destroy this youthful atavistic (in the blood)
clairvoyant ability. He did this by beginning in his late teens
to regularly, on a daily basis, drink alcohol. As we understand
from his indications, alcohol causes a separation of the ego or warmth
body from the blood, so we can see just how this might work.
Once then freed of the atavistic
clairvoyance, he undertook to apply his will to thinking in a new way
(a risky step into the unknown - one no doubt of many which we have not
appreciated), and to see what can be accomplished there. He
already knew spiritual experience was possible, but the question was
what might happen if thinking was developed out of its own forces.
As a result of this activity he achieved, sometime between
perhaps age 19 and 22 his real modern initiation, apparently over the
Holy Nights.
[To those who may know more details here,
please understand that it is simply not possible (or even desirable) to
read everything, so you need to appreciate that I already know
that what I have written may be elsewhere elaborated in a far better
fashion.]
We also know that Steiner was by nature
cautious. He kept a great deal to himself, and did not offer
something to the world until he had worked it over many times. In
addition, he would step outside the personal element of his spiritual
experience, and seek to behold it objectively (as if he was a stranger
to himself). As a consequence we get what was achieved first as a
direct experience by Steiner on the cusp of his adulthood, but worked
over again and again until it was ripe enough to be presented to us in
his book The Philosophy of Freedom.
He actually says quite clearly that the book was written in the
order that follows exactly the path that he had taken. So when we
read this book, we should also realize that the problems he has been
discussing in that book, came before his thinking conscious experience
many years earlier, in precisely the order in which they are presented
in that book.
First he has the experience. Then
he works on it, finally taking out the personal elements and
objectifying it. This is consistent with everything he wrote
about the problem of knowledge, namely that first we have the
experience, and then we exercise the cognitive faculty. We know
too that in The Philosophy of Freedom there
is no mention at all of his later spiritual research. Yet,
whenever necessary he reminds us that the book is the foundation for
all the later work - without the training of the cognitive faculty,
with the exactness and precision available through introspection
following the methods of natural science, it is not possible to take
sublime spiritual experience and render it into the language needed for
the modern Age. [See Ben-Aharon's first chapter in his book The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century, for
more details.]
Understanding this then gives us a key
for realizing that what he speaks of later often tells us indirectly
something of what actually happened to him personally earlier, such as
likely occurred during the period of his real modern initiation.
For example, in the last lecture of the John Gospel series,
Steiner writes of how The
Philosophy of Freedom path leads to a purification (katharsis) of the astral body,
preparing it for the initiation experience. We need to realize
that he is not here speaking of his theory of initiation, or out of
something seen imaginatively (or told to him by spiritual beings), but
rather directly
from his own experience, and now separated
from the personal and objectified.
Further, when he suggests in the same
lecture that the student of this book should at a certain point begin
to think (with the developed cognitive capacity won through the own
introspection) on the first 14 verses of the John Gospel, he is again
relating something he knows from direct experience. Having
followed Steiner on this path now for many many years, and come to an
experience of the living thinking, I can confirm his indication as
regards the thinking-meditation on these verses, having had recently my
own Holy Nights (on Epiphany) experience after working intensively with
these verses for some time (which as an experience was by the way
completely different from anything I had even imagined - speculated -
it might be like).
Part of what I am suggesting here is that
we can find, sprinkled throughout Steiner's writings and lectures,
objectified statements actually derived from his personal meditative
and spiritual experiences. As a final example, let us take
up just one set of lectures, which are collected under the title The
Fifth Gospel.
We should know by now the care with which
Steiner offers his findings, and that for him to apply such a name to
this material (The Fifth Gospel), is not something to be taken lightly
at all. Here I only want to ask a question: What cost, in
terms of pain of soul and trials, did Steiner have to pay in order to
acquire the ability to give such an intimate report on the conversation
between Jesus and his mother?
We could think that the so-called akashic
record is out there in spiritual space somewhere in a kind of condition
where one can pick it up like part of a encyclopedia in a library and
read what one wants. We should not do this. We could also
think that Steiner has these meetings with various spiritual Beings and
they tell him stories which he can then relate to us in his lectures
and writings. We should not do this either.
The encounter with a Cosmic Spiritual
Being (and I speak here from experience) shakes you to the roots of
your own nature. You are stripped bare of all pretension, and all
sense of ones self as a person of accomplishment. While we like
to talk of Steiner's great deed, and of him as being a great initiate,
we really have no idea how small one becomes in the face of Cosmic
Spiritual Beings.
Now oddly enough it is not the we are
diminished in any way, or even made less free. It just
becomes impossible to think of ones self in a human comparative way
anymore. We know, for example, that while Christ Loves us, we are
just one of billions that are the object of such Love. The
English rock group The Moody Blues have a wonderful bit of verse in one
of their songs:
"With the eyes of a child
You must come out and see
That your world's spinning round
And thru life you will be
A small part of a hope of a love that exists
In the eyes of a child you will see."
(Eyes of a child by Moody Blues,
1969) [emphasis added]
The reader would be surprised, for
example, how essential failure is as a preparation for spiritual
experience. One can find people in the Society and Movement who
want to think of Steiner as somehow morally perfect, never realizing
not only that no one human being is morally perfect, but that it is as
someone incomplete, a failure, weak, ignorant and otherwise all too
human, that we are best prepared to meet Higher Beings. So when
Steiner speaks or writes of trials, he is not referring to
something that is easy, or which one comes through by some kind of
superior mastery.
The Cross has a vertical axis and a
horizontal axis. The vertical axis has an upward gesture, and a downward gesture. We travel in our life of soul
both up and down. Christ dies on the Cross and descends through
Hell to the Mother's Realm on Saturday, before the Resurrection can
occur. When we die the many little spiritual deaths that lead to
various soul transformations through trials, we also travel down,
before we can go up - not once but many times.
Remember, it is the purification of the astral body that must arise on the path to initiation. Nor is Crossing the Threshold the end of purifying necessity. All that initiation means is that one not only now struggles in earthly conditions rife with the possibility of failure, but now also in spiritual realms where the same possibilities of temptation and failure exist.
We also need to realize that while
Steiner gives us an incredible conceptual content, and demonstrates
remarkable intellectual faculties of his own, none of these qualities
of being have any meaning in trials of purification. What is the theme as stated by the Alchemists?
We are purified in a crucible! The dross is
burned away in fire.
I have hoped with these words to suggest
a somewhat richer picture of Steiner's path, trying to connect it in
particular to the thinking-initiation, and also to what he himself on
more than one occasion tried to remind us - processes of soul pain are
required. In effect, we need to embrace our trials and to realize
that in them lies a richness otherwise unobtainable. The
Christian-Rosicrucian Path of Initiation is described as following
Christ's path as laid out in the John Gospel: the washing the feet, the
scourging, the crowning with thorns, the carrying the cross, the
crucifixion, the entombment and the resurrection. Does any of that sound pain free?
For a wonderful contemplation of
Steiner's life in relationship to this path, one should read Tomberg's
anthroposophical Inner
Development, especially the last sections
where he expressly takes up Steiner's path as an example of the
Christian-Rosicrucian Path of Initiation.
So also we must view Steiner's life and
recognize, as has been suggested by Ben-Aharon in The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century,
that we ourselves need to take responsibility for many of Steiner's
trials, and for the fact that his life ended early. When he
joined his karma to ours, the possibility of error by his students,
also became a responsibility he accepted. This is a two way
street.
This question then remains: If we truly
wish to see ourselves as students of Rudolf Steiner, how can we not
follow his path - the path of The
Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual
Activity)?
******************************
[for the neophyte: this is probably
something quite important for those new to Anthroposophy - those not so
new either know this, or have ignored it.]
a letter to a young anthroposophist
this essay
was written in the spring 2004, and is self explanatory
I received an e-mail the other day, from
a young anthroposophist. As I contemplated my answer, I found
living in my soul certain ideas and ideals wanting to be pointed out to
many such young people. These then have found expression in
this essay.
Here we have a classic situation in a way
- the young seeker in her early twenties, asking something from a
virtual stranger, who it turns out is passing beyond age 63, supposedly
no longer quite so strongly subject to karma. What can be said
across such boundaries? My life, in the sense of most of its
experiences, is past. Not only that, most of what I have
experienced will not be something this young person will experience at
all. What I lived in the 1950's, '60's, '70's and so forth, for
example, during my late teens, twenties and thirties, are not what the
young person of today will experience. The times are vastly
different. What is even more true is that my imagination really
can't take hold of the life the young are to live in the next decades.
The beginning of the 21st Century, coupled as it is to the Dawn
of the Third Millennium after Christ's Death and Resurrection, will
certainly be a time of great change, and great challenge, all joined to
the potential for even greater folly.
The author of the e-mail that prompted
this essay was responding to a poll I had written over seven years
before, and published on the Outlaw (rebel) Anthroposophy
portion of my main website: Shapes in the Fire. The
poll was an addendum to a two essay journal, that I had created and had
had distributed at an anthroposophical conference in Ann Arbor in the
summer of 1997, which journal was called: Outlaw
Anthroposophy - the journal. While the
main two essays were quite serious, the poll was a bit tongue-in-cheek,
for I wanted to leaven the previous material (the serious essays) with
something containing a hint of levity. Of the dozen or so folks
that have responded to the poll over the intervening years, however,
most have treated it seriously, as did this young anthroposophist.
This has made me believe my sense of
humor is a bit too subtle. In any event, in what follows this
poll should be considered part of the background context. The
poll and the other essays can be found on-line at:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/oajnr.html
There yet remains the question: does a 63
year old man have something to say to a young anthroposophist?
Well, there would be little point to this essay if I were to
answer this question no, so let us assume that such might be possible,
and I will indulge myself in what comes next with the writing down of
such thoughts and feelings as arise in the soul in contemplation of
such a question.
*
Between 1861 and 1925 Rudolf Steiner
lived, mostly in Europe. He was, by any standard, an unusual man.
The terms genius, great initiate, and scientist of the invisible
have been spoken regarding him. He also has his detractors (see
for example: the Waldorf Critics). He left behind a vast corpus
of works: over 30 written books and 6000 lectures, the majority of
which were recorded and have since been published. In addition,
he founded, or inspired, several social movements which live on beyond
his death: Waldorf Schools, Biodynamic Agriculture, Goethean Science,
Camphill Communities, The Christian Community, the Anthroposophical
Society (with its international and national groupings), to name
but a few. Many of those who study his life and works have themselves
become quite productive - some rather famous (Saul Bellow, and Owen
Barfield, for example).
Many others, who take in some of this
work (both Steiner's and those who follow his lead), stand in awe of it
and for good reason. I am one who stands in such awe. The
plain fact is that much of what I have been able to accomplish in life,
particularly my studies of the social and political aspects of human
existence, would not have been possible without Rudolf Steiner's
influence and mentoring (as well as the work of many of his students).
I owe him (and them) a great debt, and to honor this debt is (and
has been) one of the main motives in much of my work since my late 50's.
At the same time, there is One who stands
above us all, and Who cannot be ignored if any sense at all is to be
made of Steiner's life, my work, or a great deal else that appears in
modern times that is progressive in a spiritual sense. This is:
Christ Jesus. The natural scientist and the secular humanist may
not appreciate this, but those who have had the kinds of direct
experiences of Christ, available in the present Age, are forever
changed, and can in no way forget to acknowledge that Encounter.
To aid those seeking such an Encounter is
the whole point of the modern spiritual work that Steiner created and
fostered. Yet, the Anthroposophical Movement, which Steiner founded,
has fallen on hard times and fails anymore to wisely promote this
possibility, so that it then becomes the unavoidable responsibility of
those who understand this to outline, for the younger people who are
drawn to Steiner, the realities and complexities of this dilemma.
And, at the same time, we must live our
own biographies. Neither Christ or Steiner mean or want to live
our lives, but rather know full well that we must live them and make
the choices there to be found. Whether to seek an Encounter with
Christ, or to become a student of Steiner's - these too are choices we
must make and for which we must accept personal responsibility.
What I write here is, as well, my own
choice.
History teaches us that spiritual movements often suffer a kind of decay when the founding genius dies. This is true also of the Church founded on the Rock that was Peter, and defined by the Heart that was Paul. Everything that is human must endure the forces of the Fall (that is, become Earthly), before they can rise again and realize their deepest possibilities. Such are the rules of existence (including our own biographies), and the Anthroposophical Society and Movement are not free of these same realities.
Anyone who reads a true history of the
Movement and Society following on the death of Steiner knows this to be
the case.
History also teaches that what Falls can
become lifeless, and its institutional forms rigid, dogmatic and
sectarian. As the counter to this, individuals arise within such
institutions who bring the forces of resurrection - who bring new life
and new inspiration. So it has been with the Church (St Francis,
Luther, and so forth), and so it has been with the Anthroposophical
Society.
At the same time, these forces of renewal seldom find sure purchase in the main institutional body, which really only tolerates them, for the institution itself becomes more of a home to bureaucrats and theologians (spiritual bean counters and theorists) than it does to true creative genius. So we can see in the Anthroposophical Society and Movement a succession of personalities that come by, but yet find no true connection to the main institutional structures (Tomberg, Barfield, Kuhlewind, and Ben-Aharon to name but a few).
Yet, the fire of genius that created the
original impulse lives on in such as these, far more than it does in
the institutional forms and its favorite personalities. Those
young anthroposophists, who want to become current on such matters (as
of 2004, the time of the writing of this essay), need to read Irina
Gordienko's book: Sergei O.
Prokofieff: Myth and Reality, for the heart
center of the institutional form of the Anthroposophical Society in
Dornach is currently possessed with a cult of personality. Filled
then with bureaucrats and anthroposophical theologians, Dornach cannot
provide either the life giving spiritual inspiration that young
anthroposophists need, nor can the light of true anthroposophical
insight flow out from there to take its right place in the wider world.
This last is a great tragedy, in a time
of great tragedies.
[So that understanding can be clear, let
me illuminate what I mean by the bureaucratic and theological impulses
as they live in Dornach (and other places in the anthroposophical world
were institutional processes dominate). The bureaucratic impulse
sees great value in preserving all that Steiner said and wrote - it
focuses on the past, and influences the institutional structures in
such a way that what ought to be living and vital becomes dead and
empty tradition (things are done in the present mostly because they
were done in the past). Even the smallest acquaintance with life
processes would suggest that social forms should also evolve, live and
die, and undergo metamorphosis. But the bureaucratic impulse
holds tight to what was done, and thus strangles that inspiration that
might come from a truly living breath of spirit.
In a somewhat analogous fashion the
theological impulse takes what Steiner said and elevates it to Eternal
Truth. Once elevated to this illusory state, the masters of
Steiner-thought then comment endlessly on the great teacher's insights
and indications, strangling in this way all current and future insight
living outside the corpus (bible) of what are called the basic books.
Someone such as Prokofieff then buries his own mystical
interpretations within long recitations of Steiner-thought, that become
to the reader and listener a kind of sorcerous enchantment of their
minds. Where the bureaucrat kills the social forms with rigid
traditions, the anthroposophical theologian kills the living spirit of
their readers and listeners by promoting the idolatry of a worship of
Steiner through an endless repetition of Steiner-thought.
Here is some Emerson that is fully
relevant: from his lecture at Harvard in 1837: The
American Scholar:
Books are the
best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the
right use? What is the one end which all means go to
effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better
never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my
own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one
thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man
is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost
all men obstructed and as yet unborn. The soul active sees
absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is
genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound
estate of every man. In its essence it is progressive. The
book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop
with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they - let
us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and
not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in
his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux
of the Deity is not his; cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet
flame. There are creative manners, there are creative actions,
and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no
custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own
sense of good and fair.]
What then, given the empty
spiritual-calorie nature of institutional Anthroposophy, is a young
anthroposophist to do?
Live your biography. The moral
heart of spiritual development is only found there. Life itself
is the greatest gift and the greatest teacher, for in every meeting
between ones own I-am, and the I-am of the Thou lives the potential for
the presence of the Third (wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there also
I am). Christ is found most directly in
life, in between I and Thou; and, in seeking to meet our biography, out
of our own moral insight, we do the essence of the great work of
spiritual development. No text, or written work, nor the words of
any teacher, can give us what is to be learned in our own biography.
Yet, if you want the best of what is
written that Christ can give at this stage, then read the Gospels and,
most crucially, work at applying them in practice in life.
There is no better understanding of the center of moral
life than that found in the Sermon on the Mount (e.g. Matthew, Chapters
5-7)
If you want the best that Steiner can
give in aid of our soul nature (consciousness soul) in these times then
read and practice the works on objective philosophical
introspection: The Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception; Truth and
Science; and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom).
Self-knowledge in our time depends upon serious and brutally self
honest introspection. We must come to know both the universals of
our own minds (soul-spirit nexus), and the particulars in which can be
found the expression of our individuality.
What is involved in the act of thinking
is one of the great mysteries of our time, and the path to that mystery
lies entirely within our own work at self-knowledge. Moreover,
this cannot be rushed. We don't learn what needs to be learned
reading the books which Steiner wrote. We only learn it by
looking within - that is by reading the book of the own soul.
We read then two books: the book of life,
and the book of our own inwardness. There is no substitute for
this work, and that this is not said from Dornach, over and over again,
reveals clearly how little has been learned there or is taught there.
In support of such work is this admonition also from Ralph Waldo Emerson: In self trust all virtues are comprehended (also from his lecture: The American Scholar).
For those who feel a need to read more
than just the books of their own life and mind, and who like a book you
can hold in your hand, here are some other works and their relevance.
Inner Development by Valentin
Tomberg. Here we find, among much else, a discussion of the Seven
Stages of the Passion of the Christ, as outlined in the Gospel of John
(washing the feet; , the scourging; the crowning with thorns; the
carrying of the cross; the crucifixion; the entombment and the
resurrection). The more we live a self-determined moral life in
our biographies, the more the biography takes the shape of a
mini-version of the Seven Stages of the Passion of the Christ.
What Christ lived during Holy Week, we will live out in the
course of our many incarnations, blessed in that we only have to endure
that smaller degree of suffering which arises more gently because it is
spread out in these multiple lives, thus reducing the intensity of any
particular experience. This consciously chosen moral life then
becomes an alchemical crucible of development that takes the same shape
as the Passion of Christ.
[For some people, Valentin Tomberg is a
controversial figure. S.O. Prokofieff has even written a critical
book about him (The Case
of Valentin Tomberg). The problem has
to do with a book that Tomberg wrote and which he had published
anonymously after his death: Meditations
on the Tarot: a Journey into Christian Hermeticism. This book, besides looking favorably on the
Catholic Mysteries, and taking a quite different approach to spiritual
development than Anthroposophy, was also critical (in a way) of certain
aspects of the anthroposophical movement. Critics comparing the
two approaches, from an anthroposophical viewpoint, found Meditations wanting in many regards. In my view this criticism
failed in that it was a comparing of apples and oranges, or to put the
matter more directly, Steiner's teachings were meant for one group of
human beings, for whom reason (thinking) was more important, while
Tomberg's final work was meant for an entirely different group, for
whom devotion (willing) was more important than cognitive work. I
could say more, but here I only wanted to acknowledge that for some
Tomberg is not liked, which in my view is not really justified, this
disliking being based upon a false assumption. What Christ hopes
for humanity cannot possibly be carried by just one teacher and just
one stream. His Love is too profound. At the same time, it
needs to be remembered that Inner
Development was written at a time when
Tomberg was a practicing anthroposophist.]
Becoming Aware of the Logos: The Way of St. John the
Evangelist by Georg Kuhlewind. Another,
but beautifully different, look at some of the same problems by someone
who also (as was Tomberg) is able to speak from authentic spiritual
experience.
The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century by Jesaiah Ben-Aharon. This book serves two clear
purposes. Early on in our biography it gives us an imaginative
picture of the Return of the Christ, as that has already occurred in
the years 1933 to 1945 - something with which we very much need to
become acquainted. As we ripen in our development (which only
occurs over time), this same text can then begin to serve its truer
purpose, which is as a set of instructions for meditation practice that
is meant to lead us to our own direct experience and participation in
this Event. Yes, that is right: participation. This Event,
being Timeless, is always ongoing. As more and more people learn to
actually develop their thinking in the way pointed to by Steiner, this
thinking then transcends its time and space limitations to become
capable of becoming part of the Event. The Light that is there
then becomes richer and richer over time, as each of us learns to
transcend time and offer our own thinking-light to the Event, which not
only reveals the Return of the Christ and the Second Golgotha, but also
reveals the participation of humanity in its unfolding. Yes,
there is a paradox here, but it is not something about which we need
worry.
These then are books which help us orient
our inner development within the current stage of the stream of the
evolution of consciousness. Yet, as we all know, our moral life
requires our participation also in the shared social life of all
humanity. We only develop that moral character in life, in
conjunction with how we meet and deal with each other, and how we met
and deal with the life of nature upon whom our own existence depends.
In support of this outer social development, here then are some
other texts, which might serve to help orient us in our understanding
of our shared social existence.
In approaching this we need to keep in
mind the modern folk wisdom found in this saying: think globally, act
locally. We need to understand the whole (think globally), in
order to see how to play our part (act locally).
America's Global Responsibility: individuation,
initiation, and threefolding by Jesaiah
Ben-Aharon. Clearly the modern social political world is
dominated by something that has found a center and an entrance into
humanity's affairs that is most strongly localized in America.
Here is an excellent consideration of modern social conditions,
with some historical background. If you want to think globally,
this is a good start.
Saving the Appearances: a study in idolatry by Owen Barfield. Here is a study concerning the
nature of natural science, its historical background and the place of
all of this within the ongoing evolution of consciousness. Just
as we need to appreciate the outer historical context in our thinking
globally, we also need to understand how the history of ideas, and the
evolution of consciousness play into that social context.
In addition, Barfield's Speaker's
Meaning is a most remarkable small book, one
which I have read many times given the wonder of its understanding of
language, meaning and their significance for appreciating the current
condition of scientific materialism.
Also the books of Dennis Klocek should be
considered. Here is a link introducing his writings:
http://www.steinercollege.org/consciousness.html , and one should also
seek on Google a link to Doc. weather, an important
website he created and maintains.
I am next going to refer to my own work.
In defense of the obvious charge that this is somewhat egoistic,
I can only offer this: It is a poor artisan who doesn't
appreciate the true nature of his or her own skills and craft.
Being human, my work is flawed (as no
doubt are others' efforts), but nonetheless there are some valid
questions I have asked (and struggled to answer), and while my work is
often incomplete, here are two whose structure is intended to
illuminate our inner and outer social present.
My main website is Shapes in the Fire, and basically concerns the death, and the resurrection, (the metamorphosis, the dying and becoming) of Western Civilization.
The Way of the Fool:
Along side the general tendencies regarding the metamorphosis of
civilization, there is also an ongoing metamorphosis of Christianity,
wherein the previous top down hierarchical form of the Church is
passing away, and the next stage of development of Christianity is to
appear bottom up and individualized in the Body of Christ, born out of
the work of individual practitioners of Christ's Teachings. In
this next stage (there will be several more), the once separated Ways
of Faith and of Gnosis will re-unite within the I-am itself, as it
begins to realize itself in individual acts of moral grace, freedom and
love.
Here also is a recent essay of mine on the new thinking: In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship (found at the beginning of this book).
While the young anthroposophist will
naturally find their own matters of interest and concern (and related
books and teachers), there are some additional matters, developed by
the healthier parts of the anthroposophical movement, that ought to
have some attention addressed to them.
In his autobiography, Steiner pointed out
that he was not able to move from the Moon Sphere of clairvoyant
research onto the Sun Sphere until after he had formed an appropriate
relationship to modern natural science. While natural science is
materialistic in its fundamental paradigms (points of view), it remains
essentially moral in its recognition that one should only offer to
another as true, that for which one can also offer the means to
discovering it for ones self. In the age of the consciousness
soul, truth must come to us accompanied by the appropriate means by
which we may ourselves replicate its discovery. This is why, for
example, Steiner's works on objective philosophical introspection, with
their emphasis on a careful and methodical introspective practice, are
so crucial.
For this reason, those works out of the
anthroposophical movement dealing with natural science and extending it
(sometimes called Goethean Science) are very important. I
recommend the following: Man or
Matter: Introduction
to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method
of Training Observation and Thought by
Ernst Lehrs; The Plant (vols I and 2) by Gerbert Grohmann; The Nature
of Substance by Rudolf Hauschka; Radiant
matter: Decay and Consecration by Georg
Blattmann; Man and Mammals: Toward a Biology of Form by
Wolfgang Schad; Sensitive
Chaos: The
Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air by
Theodor Schwenk; and Weather
and Cosmos by Dennis Klocek. These are,
of course, but a few of what could be studied, but to which I add the
following collection of essays: Evolution
and the New Gnosis: Anti-establishment Esssays on Knowledge, Science,
Religion and Causal Logic by Don Cruse with
Robert Zimmer, as these essays concern a detailed study of the errors
in reasoning and logic which lead to those processes by which
scientific materialism (especially in the form of a theory of
evolution) as a paradigm, was enchanted into our shared world view.
I don't use the word enchanted merely as
metaphor by the way. The young anthroposophist will find, as they
grow into a deeper understanding of the natural and social worlds, that
enchantment is a very accurate word for exactly that means by which
much that exists has come to be.
One last encouragement: Rudolf
Steiner led us forward in our development with his scientifically based
teachings on objective philosophical introspection, wherein we are
shown how to have an exact and reproducible means to this deep
philosophical question of introspective self knowledge. But
philosophy is itself incomplete, without an appropriate mathematics in
the sense that number ratios and the like as stand behind the aesthetic
in nature. This means even that a true earthly vision of higher worlds
perhaps can even be found in music, and in the often strange and
paradoxical ways in which human social and political processes
transform over time. For us to learn to appreciate this, we need
to add to our self education - to what Steiner points out for us in his
philosophic studies - the study of projective geometry.
The mind (soul-spirit nexus) knows first
of itself through an introspection that is coupled with a philosophic
discipline. But the mind only knows part of its whole through
such means. Thomas Taylor, in his wonderful 18th Century text, The
Theoretic Arithmetic of the Pythagoreans,
tells us of his distress that the teaching of young minds has begun to
exclude the theoretic aspects of natural numbers, and is replacing that
study with what only concerns itself with accounting and surveying - no
true theory, only the practical. This is unfortunate to Taylor,
for he says that the arithmetical cannot be found in nature, and is
therefore, in that it exists to our minds, only a product of our soul
and spirit. This being the case, what we then find in mathematics
and geometry that is of the sublime and the beautiful is really a
reflection of the true nature of the mind itself. This means that
when we study projective geometry we study that higher element of our
self in which true beauty arises.
Not to make my tale longer, but again to
help the young anthroposophist appreciate the importance of this, let
me add the following story. Abraham Lincoln is said, upon
deciding to take up his own education, to have spent many many hours,
days and months in the study of Euclid's
Elements, the basic building blocks of the
older geometry. He thought thereby to train his thinking, and
give it discipline.
We today have an even greater opportunity
with the study of projective geometry, for here the true mathematics of
life can be seen, and thus that within the mind (soul-spirit nexus)
that is akin itself to life, comes before us in geometric forms and
movement (if you know of the work of the American Frank Chester, you
will have some familiarity with potential results). We need
greatly to step beyond mere abstract concepts, to the living forces
within ourselves and the natural and social worlds. Here then is
the first step: the study of projective geometry.
The best book, in my view, is currently
out of print, but is worth being sought out and photocopied endlessly
until those responsible get off their sorry behinds and return this
text to general availability: Projective
Geometry: Creative Polarities in Space and Time
by Olive Whicher. Here we engage the study of projective
geometry, not by the dry methods of abstract symbolism and proofs, but
by the living processes of drawing and inner imagination. There
is no better training for our thinking than this study, with its exact
and precise disciplines regarding the free and metamorphic movement of
form in space and time.
If this is not to be found, then one can
substitute Physical and Ethereal Spaces by
George Adams Kaufman. This is very introductory, but it will do
in the absence of Whicher's book.
A few final words...
Everyone is engaged in spiritual development, and we dare not let ourselves suppose we know better what another person should do. I really do not know what is best for the young anthroposophist, but rather have simply indulged myself, in the way an older man wants, in the giving of advice to the young.
The most important matter here, however,
is to understand that I am a product of the 20th Century, and the young
anthroposophist will find that their lives will be fully engaged in the
21st. At the best the above may be a bridge from the one Century
to the next.
Even so, I am very grateful for the
e-mail correspondent whose questions led me to such expression, for it
is entirely possible that one or two matters presented here might be
useful for this or that person. And, that is all the
justification such an exercise needs.
**************************************
[For the neophyte: As it is my view that
we can have in the Society and Movement an excess of ahrimanic gravitas
(as well as some luciferic ungroundedness) , I am approaching the end
of this book with an item that is to a degree meant to be more in the
vein of levity. Not exactly humorous, but done for fun, as it
were. Life is meant to contain joy, and certainly sex is
something that we do because we enjoy it - because it gives us
pleasure. Eros (something far more complicated than the mere act
of sexual intercourse) is in fact an very high art - an art best
expressed for the love of its doing.
Another way to see this is to appreciate
that the American, being firmly of the Earth, is likewise by necessity
placed in a situation where his most earthly appetites and desires need
ultimately to become spiritualized by thought.]
The Redemption of Eros
- Seeking
Comfort and Companionship in a time of increasing Social Chaos; or, Sex
and the Single Anthroposophist -
Those carefully observing modern social
processes will have become well aware that an era of increasing social
chaos has been with us for some time. These are necessary
developments arising as a consequence of the current stage of the
Evolution of Consciousness. In order for human beings to
confront, in their biographies, the needed moral dilemmas belonging to
their individual consciousness soul development, a degree of social
disorder is required. This has two effects. One is that it
further weakens the ability of the social order to require conformance
to moral rules, whether rooted in social tradition or religious
instruction. The second is that the I is meant to be thrown onto
its own resources as much as possible. It is not to be able to
rely for its moral determinations on community support, or any
outside set of rules, but only on its own intuitions.
This process can be very isolating.
Such isolation, however, is not necessary if the I is a member of
a community that recognizes the significance of individual moral
choice. The Anthroposophical Society and Movement are meant to be
one such community, but it is clear from what is written and said today
in anthroposophical media that this situation is little appreciated or
understood within our circles. We simple fail to honestly observe
our own activity, and treat it instead with a kind of happy talk
illusory conceptual process that lives mainly in denial of the real
events in everyone's lives.
An appreciation of the rhythmic elements
of time, as this increasing social chaos intensifies, suggests that one
peak will be around 2012 (the end of the first third of the first third
of the 21st Century, as well as the end of the current great cycle of
the Mayan Calender). Anyone following the news is well aware of
how fragile the world social order has become, and that there are far
more ways in which this increasing disorder can intensify, than there
are ways in which it can moderate. Students of complex systems
are aware that such systems occasionally undergo massive
transformations, which generally take the form of increasing disorder
until a kind of condition of chaos* ensues, after which a new
equilibrium emerges. Such is what the near future of the social
organism offers to all, including anthroposophists.
*[A proper understanding of the ancient idea of chaos is that it represents the unformed, the uncreated state, from which everything that is to have form must eventually emerge.]
While this transformative chaos serves
the needs of the developing consciousness soul, that aspect of this
process which leads in the direction of isolation is really meant to
make us more aware of our need for community. We suffer the
isolation precisely in order to appreciate all the more the
accompanying loss of the old and tired traditional community, such that
we may then find within ourselves the will forces out of which to
engender new community. Such a creative process is, however, far
more difficult that we imagine, for the I has to forge the new
community out of freedom, and this leads to all kinds of challenges.
Among the social traditions that have
fallen into distress, because of the increasing individualism, is the
institution of marriage. While the Christian Community tries to
maintain to a degree the Sacrament of Marriage, it is not really yet
able to provide true community building forces outside its own circles,
and this includes the Branches and Study Groups which are the core
social element of anthroposophical life (in fact the Christian
Community is destructive of community building in the Society and
Movement- see Lecture Six: Awakening
to Community). We all know this.
Marriages. and other long term relationships, everywhere
increasingly fail, following which people are unable to provide for
themselves the natural spiritual-soul-physical intimacy that belongs to
a healthy psychological (or soul) life. The whole of Western
Culture exhibits stress and fracture lines just in this realm, and if
we are to consider ourselves to be true bearers of new wisdom, then
certainly we ought to be able to address these issues.
What did Christ mean when He said in
Matthew 19: 3-5 that husband and wife are to become one flesh and cleave? How can we bring this, in a living way, into
modern life and the language of the Consciousness Soul?
Lets approach this in a deeper way by
first engaging in spirit recollection and remembering some recent
history.
In the 1950's in America, there arose
what was soon to be called the sexual revolution (aided considerably by
contraception in the form of the pill). This had many
positive and negative social effects. Women's liberation emerged
from this transformation, and ultimately gay activism. These were
social and political challenges to the status quo of Western Culture,
that were feared by many and embraced by many. Social dancing
changed, such that erotic movements became more in style, which today
in the commercially driven Pop and Rap Music Culture can be seen to
have achieved a kind of level of clear excessive absurdity. There
is no Art in these dances, only an excess of individual expression and
animal energies. In my book the Way of
the Fool, I have called this social
condition, that dominates our culture: Fallen
Eros.
The true significance of that aspect of
love, which was once understood as Eros, has become culturally degraded
in the extreme. For more about the basic four aspects of love
[selfless human love (Agape), nurturing love (Storge), brotherly and
sisterly love or comradeship (Phileo) and erotic and sensual love
(Eros)], that discussion will be found in the book the Way of
the Fool.
Following this sexual revolution there
arose a period in which sexual activity increased, with many people
frequently engaging in many casual sexual encounters. As might be
expected, this led to an increase in sexually transmitted disease, one
of which has reached epidemic world-wide proportions: AIDS. The
excessive freedom of casual sex in the 60's and 70's became in the 80's
a place of grave danger. People had to think more carefully (if
they cared to) about casual sexual encounters.
Something new came into the world with
the generation born in the later years of these changes. Where in
the 1950's, the focus was on going steady and monogamous relationships,
by the beginning of the 21st Century young people incarnated with a
different ethos. They stayed away from forming couples and began
to go out in groups. They recreated casual sexual encounters, but
gave it a new name: hooking up. Protective devices against sexual
transmitted diseases were encouraged, as well as a great deal of birth
control. Prompted by a backlash from traditional Christian
sources, abstinence and virginity become an ideal for some.None of this
was, of course, perfect by any means. Even so, something had
changed. The social aspects of the sexual revolution engendered a
period of chaos (the 1980's), which appears to be seeking to find a new
equilibrium in the emerging ethos of the young.
In the wake of this, more mature people
still carried some baggage from the past. Tradition demanded
couples, casual sex was dangerous, and in terms of the soul needs, the
idea of a relationship and commitments remained dominant. If one
needed physical intimacy and touch (being held, or nurturing love often was only available through the rite of passage
into a sexual relationship), there were few clear social rules, and
much confusion. Television and film dramas express these social
phenomena quite well (c.f. Ally McBeal, Sex and
the City or Desperate
Housewives). What woman or man could
ask a different sex friend to come over for the night just to hold each
other and be comforted (cleave), as a healthy
psychological response to enduring the stress of modern life (something
common in the marriage bed, but unavailable to single people)?
The need to be nurtured by touch could only be met through
casual sex, often too much in the thrall of Fallen Eros.
In point of fact, among both women and
men there is a great deal of confusion about the true significance of
the erotic and sensual aspects of our human nature. Eros has
fallen far indeed. It is just here in our self understanding of
our more primal natures (the lower chakras: when we think about all our
issues with food and nutrition, rampant obesity, and various addictions
for example, we are quite involved in these lower chakra dilemmas, not
just when we think about sex) that our civilization exists in a chaos
of confusion and essentially bad information about what it means to be
a woman or a man. One could say that this is also necessary for
the development of the I, via the consciousness soul, but in the
absence of new wisdom in the culture nothing here will turn out to the
good. While Rudolf Steiner had a great deal to say in many areas
of life, about this he clearly avoided the issues (no one was then
ready).
Steiner, by the way, had a few troubling
problems with the questions of Eros. His basic response was to
hide from assertive feminine energies in marriage. Not that these
were especially personal problems, but it was not an easy subject to
take up in the culture in which he was teaching (see in this regard the
essay by Catherine MacCoun: "Work on what has been spoiled"
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/ktmc1.html (It is well worth reading,
but not for the faint hearted.). Can you imagine him trying to
deal with American women in the early 21st Century, after the sexual
revolution and women's liberation? Maybe you can.
Here is Steiner himself on the problem of the differences between higher development and more ordinary social interaction (as quoted in Catherine's article above):
"The force that enables us to understand the spiritual
world belongs only in the spiritual world; this same force causes all
kinds of harm if it is directly and thoughtlessly transferred to the
physical plane. For what is the nature of this force? It consists in
making ones thinking independent of the physical plane. When this
capacity is applied to the physical plane itself, it turns into deceit
and dishonesty. Thus, people who were called upon to disseminate
spiritual science have always seen great danger in doing so, because
what is needed for understanding higher planes of existence is harmful
when applied directly to the physical world."
Steiner also writes quite explicitly of
sexual desire in The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and I've
included a great deal of what was expressed there, below (including a
few comments of my own).
Anyway, here is the problem as I see it.
As anthroposophists, with our increasing individuality and moral
freedom, we have seen (as has the greater general social order)
difficulty in maintaining relationships, whether in marriages or
outside a marriage. The elements of desire, the nature of love,
the significance of Eros and sensuality, - a thousand questions can
bloom once we start to ask them; and, in our Society we have many many
single people, all of them with various emotional and physical needs.
What makes this matter harder for us is that we are deeply
involved in our spiritual Way, and this is so important to us that
forming any level of intimate relationship with another person, not of
the same Way, becomes quite difficult (many do, but many more do not).
We also live, as we have seen, in a quite
over-sexualized culture (Fallen Eros). Everything is sexually
stimulating (from the obvious advertisements to the more subtle curves
of many commercial products, for example), and women are in constant
states of undress (much immodesty), or wearing clothes that are too
tight fitting. Men generally don't understand themselves as
sexual beings, and probably most women as well. There is more bad
information than good out there about our sexuality.
We naturally seek partners in life,
someone who is both attractive and interesting to us, and whose soul
life is on the same page as our own. Yet, we also often seek sex
when what we really want is to receive nurturing touch (comfort) and
other related physical intimacies. Something indefinable, called
"the relationship" is frequently a goal, when our actual needs are
otherwise.
At the same time, the Way of
Anthroposophy, even our quite individualized version of it, reaches
deep into our souls and touches almost every aspect of how we live
life. In Waldorf, for example, we know of many there who as parents
have lost the marriage to disagreements over Waldorf and/or
Anthroposophy. As socially responsible human beings, struggling
to form communities with each other, can we any longer fail begin to
have conversations with each other in which we seek together for
wisdom, for new ways of being human with each other in regards to our
most intimate needs and passions?
Presently we have to go outside our
circles for such conversation, to therapists or to the priests of the
Christian Community, all of whom may be quite skilled and many of whom
can no doubt help us with problems. But what if our questions are
not about problems, but about just being I'm okay and you are okay too?
Don't we get to come at this from a position of just plain folks
and adequacy instead of having to define ourselves as having a problem
first?
Perhaps our Branch life has not kept up with our human needs. Perhaps we need more purely social gatherings were individuals can meet each other, especially single individuals can meet single individuals. Perhaps we need to take these kinds of questions out of the closet of our fears and anxieties, and put them squarely in front of us in the realms of social (horizontal) conversation, where we share our hearts with each other, and seek together for inspiration to move within our circle so that something we cannot think of alone, we might be able to think of together. This social (horizontal) conversation is not meant, by the way, to be the same as the reverse cultus (a vertical conversation).
This, however, brings once again the
mystery of the quote above:
"The force that enables us to understand the spiritual
world belongs only in the spiritual world; this same force causes all
kinds of harm if it is directly and thoughtlessly transferred to the
physical plane. For what is the nature of this force? It consists in
making ones thinking independent of the physical plane. When this
capacity is applied to the physical plane itself, it turns into deceit
and dishonesty. Thus, people who were called upon to disseminate
spiritual science have always seen great danger in doing so, because
what is needed for understanding higher planes of existence is harmful
when applied directly to the physical world."
What does this mean in practice?
Here is a very good starting question for conversation, for who
among us can give a concrete example of this force which Steiner has
only represented in the most vague fashion.
Who then has the courage to begin to
explore these questions of the rite of passage that comes prior to
adult play and intimacy. Yes the details are private, but doesn't
the community have an interest in the psychological health of the lives
of its members? How do we as a community foster a healthy human
environment where people can learn to understand themselves and each
other; and, where people make those first steps leading to getting
their intimacy needs met as single people, and yet remain involved in
the wonderful anthroposophical life of personal development and
freedom? Does anyone reading this think that we are all supposed
to be celibate, and that sex is only for marriage? If there is a
rule - a moral rule - that some think should apply to all, where is our
human freedom?
Here are two more paragraphs from
Catherine's article:
"Now the great initiate, if he wishes to avoid being
pestered night and day with such questions, would be wise to shrug and
respond, "Beats me." But Steiner, it seems, never met a question he
didn't like. The shrug was not in his repertoire. He complained
repeatedly that members of the Society were failing to take initiative,
that they were wearing him out by insisting on his participation in the
most trivial administrative matters. He had become an esoteric
micro-manager, unable to delegate even when he wanted to. And this can
be traced to the fact, that despite his avowals, there was no
horizontal matter that he or his students regarded as strictly
horizontal.
"In the social life of a spiritual community, a strict
separation between the horizontal and the vertical cannot be
maintained. Community life is moral life, and the moral is the meeting
point of vertical and horizontal. While failure to conceptually isolate
one dimension from another is a cause of much craziness, failure to
bring them together is a cause of stagnation. Healthy spiritual life,
both for the individual and for the community, is a matter of
circulation - fluent movement from one dimension to another, and within
each dimension according to its own laws."
I can only compare our weak approach (to
these significant elements of community life) to those amazingly
healthy traditional approaches in Native American communities. If
we were to discover how to listen to this sometimes still living
wisdom, one yet deeply rooted in its own spirit recollection, we will
notice that as their children mature into adolescence, a number of
social processes of initiation into the mysteries of adult
responsibilities and behaviors are undertaken. The community has
a deep interest in there being healthy soul (psychological) life among
all its members, and to ignore that we are beings of sensuality and
erotic impulses is to ignore reality.
Granted a strong remnant of the group
soul clings to these traditional social and community ideas/ideals, but
if we trouble ourselves to listen carefully, we will find in the
community wisdom of the Saturn Mysteries (the younger brother's half of
the stone tablet) a quite valuable resource. There is a soundness
to this ancient wisdom, and while we have to update it for the
situation of human freedom, it has much to teach us. The secret
here is to turn the tradition into a question. For example, the
ideal of the Five Nations Peoples (the Iroquois Confederacy) is that
there is only one law, which is the seven generations law - otherwise
all is dependent upon individual freedom.
This self perception of modern Natives
overlooks the social coercive effect of community living in the need of
the individual to be liked and accepted, but other than that freedom is
the ideal. For us, who want to engage in the marriage of the
Ancient Saturn Social Wisdom and the New Sun Mysteries of Love
Engendered Free Moral Grace, we take this social law, of keeping in
mind what will be the consequences of our actions unto the seventh
generation, and we turn it into a question. Instead of a law, we
have a question. I'll give another example later, concerning the
idea of dominion and surrender in the marriage relationship.
*
I have often felt at anthroposophical
meetings that there was an undercurrent of sexual energies, repressed
and unacknowledged, that would burst forth as such energies do, into
tiffs and minor arguments between individuals that are attracted to
each other, but have chosen (for reasons of karma, or out of just plain
confusion) to join a spiritual community that wants to remain asleep to
fundamental human impulses and needs.
These are not matters for some book, by
the way, or some lecture, but rather correctly and acutely belong to
any community that wants to bring conscious wisdom to its human
relationships. Steiner has suggested strongly to us that social
difficulties have to be solved in site - in the actual community
concerned, from out of its internal resources, not from the outside.
The whole outer society of Western culture has been in dialog for
decades now on these issues, but where among anthroposophists, in the
clear light of shared conversation, are they addressed?
the problem
of desire as seen from the point of view
of The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
Next are some quotations from Steiner's The
Philosophy of Freedom (Spiritual Activity),
which then could form the background for our shared considerations of
these so very important matters. Steiner has attempted to face
these matters squarely and there is here much food for thought.
All the same, if we vainly believe that
he has said everything, and that there is no room for any other thought
that could be truer or wiser or more beautiful, then it would seem that
the Gods have made a very strange error in letting anyone else, after
Steiner-said, think. If Steiner is to be the authority to which
all other minds must bow down, then why do the rest of us have minds at
all?
Out of such an obvious impulse then, I
urge the reader to look at what is below with two additional thoughts
in mind: 1) Christ loves us, whether we are unfree or not, filled with
desire or not, and He has artistically woven together our mutual karma
fully aware of the nature of appetite and desire*. 2) the Divine
Mother, who rules the dark of humanity from below, has placed in the
powers of sexual attraction the grace and gift of procreation.
Eros overcomes moral/ideal resistance all the time, precisely in
order to make it possible for the stream of heredity to create the
bodies needed by everyone (EVERYONE!) to incarnate. Below, where
Steiner seems to have had to forget this (and other aspects of
horizontal existence), I have inserted a few comments in [brackets].
*[While this was mentioned above, we
should return once more to this theme... In the lectures From
Symptom to Reality in Modern History (Lecture
Five), Steiner writes of the Mystery of Evil in such a way that he
suggests that what we as human beings see as evil is a secondary effect
of spiritual forces, whose primary purposes are not the production of
evil. He doesn't elaborate, but my own work with this question in
meditation suggests that perhaps it is the spiritual forces behind
desire and appetite, whose primary purpose is procreation and the
maintenance of the human physical body - that is giving us earthly
bodies in which to incarnate and thus unfold that development that can
only take place on the Earth. These forces (which seem to produce
pain avoidance and pleasure seeking) then have a secondary effect, in
that we are free to engage in excess, such that evil can be a result.
The metaphor Steiner has used in this lecture is that of a train
engine that incidentally to pulling the train to its destination wears
out the rails. The wearing out of the rails (evil) is not the
primary purpose of the engine (desire and appetite?), which Steiner
below often characterizes as an instinct. What is the true
purpose of the lower chakra forces? Why does the I remain their
potential victim? Could Steiner have spoken more plainly
about these questions? Certainly in the Age of the Consciousness
Soul, where the book The
Philosophy of Freedom encourages us to learn
to place in the front of the impulses of desire and appetite a freely
chosen moral ideal, we find our way toward this Mystery in a more sane
fashion. Perhaps only American Anthroposophy can accomplish the
necessary synthesis of Steiner thought and earthly human experience
that enables us to comprehend this. As noted in the
introductory materials to this book, Steiner was required to render
much of what he taught in the language of the Intellectual Soul.
Perhaps the language of the Consciousness Soul, which this books
hopes to inspire in our circles, we will find the next steps to take.]
From Chapter 1:
"On no account should it be said that all our action
springs only from the sober deliberations of our reason. I am very far
from calling human in the highest sense only those actions that proceed
from abstract judgment. But as soon as our conduct rises above the
sphere of the satisfaction of purely animal desires, our motives are
always permeated by thoughts. Love, pity, and patriotism are driving
forces for actions which cannot be analyzed away into cold concepts of
the intellect. It is said that here the heart, the mood of the soul,
hold sway. No doubt. But the heart and the mood of the soul do not
create the motives. They presuppose them and let them enter. Pity
enters my heart when the mental picture of a person who arouses pity
appears in my consciousness. The way to the heart is through the head,
Love is no exception. Whenever it is not merely the expression of bare
sexual instinct, it depends on the mental picture we form of the loved
one. And the more idealistic these mental pictures are, just so much
the more blessed is our love. Here too, thought is the father of
feeling. It is said that love makes us blind to the failings of the
loved one. But this can be expressed the other way round, namely, that
it is just for the good qualities that love opens the eyes. Many pass
by these good qualities without noticing them. One, however, perceives
them, and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. What else has
he done but made a mental picture of what hundreds have failed to see?
Love is not theirs, because they lack the mental picture."
[If I have a need for physical intimacy,
what saves my seeking that from being merely bare sexual instinct?
It would seem that I can actually admire the spirit of the person
with whom I am to dance the dance of the rite of passage from casual
social intercourse into a more intimate sensual and erotic experience,
and thus remain free (not driven by my appetite). I do this by
consciously forming a mental picture of the truth of who they are - see
really what they will - not how they look. If I live in a
community that develops a vocabulary and an understanding of such free
social processes between individuals, then how much healthier is my
soul life, my psychology? If the community has discussed what is
a healthy relationship and what is not, yet without attempting to
create standards or coerce our freedom, that discussion becomes a basis
in the life of the community for honest and straightforward verbal play
among adults who discover consciously that they are seeking a same or
similar intimacy, whether just a single night of emotional satisfaction
and shared comfort, to something more in the nature of courtship
perhaps leading to marriage and children.
"The healthy social life is found when in the mirror of
each human soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in
the community the virtue of each individual can live". Observation of community building processes
reveals that as people in any community have conversation with each
other, they create a shared vocabulary of meaning. Right now in
anthroposophical circles this process remains semi-conscious, resting
then far too much on our instincts (and Steiner-said). In the
time of the Consciousness Soul it becomes important to take a more
active interest in this process of shared meaning creation, keeping in mind the need to balance the community and
individual impulses. Steiner's social motto above contains that
ideal. Realizing that ideal in practice, particularly in America
where the basic social gesture is not to incarnate the ideal (the
European gesture), but to solve immediate social problems in a
pragmatic fashion, will take some effort and care.]
From Chapter 9:
"The first level of individual life is that of perceiving,
more particularly perceiving through the senses. This is the region of
our individual life in which perceiving translates itself directly into
willing, without the intervention of either a feeling or a concept. The
driving force here involved is simply called instinct. The satisfaction
of our lower, purely animal needs (hunger, sexual intercourse, etc.)
comes about in this way. The main characteristic of instinctive life is
the immediacy with which the single percept releases the act of will.
This kind of determination of the will, which belongs originally only
to the life of the lower senses, may however become extended also to
the percepts of the higher senses. We may react to the percept of a
certain event in the external world without reflecting on what we do,
without any special feeling connecting itself with the percept, as in
fact happens in our conventional social behavior. The driving force of
such action is called tact or moral good taste. The more often such
immediate reactions to a percept occur, the more the person concerned
will prove himself able to act purely under the guidance of tact; that
is, tact becomes his characterological disposition".
[Not to make to much of it, but this
commentary made me wonder whether Steiner was a virgin. I don't
mean this in a critical way, just that without actually having had
sexual experience, how could he not see that precisely one element of
desire is necessarily the letting go of thinking in the direction of a
state of not thinking at all. Of course, I have heard and been
told that Steiner was sexually active. He certainly was married.
But did he know how to be a lover? Did he understand the
nature of sensual abandonment? What would seem necessary, in
order to remain morally free, is that one enter this rite of passage
seeking intimate companionship with a great deal of wide awake
conversational play, in which an agreement is reached, without one
person invalidating or dominating the other*. This agreement is
one of ultimately and mutually surrendering into the abandonment of
almost any and all restraint rooted in thought. At the same time,
we all know (who are not virgins) that thought never really leaves us.
The truth is that we are more like the rider of a horse, who more
and more gives free rein to this animality, yet never actually stops
paying attention - never loses conscious awareness of what is
happening. Yet, without frank adult conversations, how are we to
learn from each other that necessary vocabulary that enables us to meet
each other in the pursuit of sensual and erotic experience, which
satisfies many emotional and intimacy needs quite beyond the mere
moment of the so-called climax - the moment of presumed deepest
surrender. What I think he is doing above is actually laying the
foundation for a healthy social life in which human sensual and erotic
desire is seen as fully capable of being moral, yet he had to go at
this from such a round about set of circling phrases and sentences,
that we almost lose the true train of thought. He lived among
people who were not in any sense sexually liberated, nor were the women
seen as more than subservient to men. In such a social
environment, circumlocution is essential in order that the heart of the
message not get lost in some sensationalism connected to a particular
(though significant) detail. This sense then of "tact", or "moral
good taste", is the insight leading to the how that speech and gesture in ordinary social intercourse
can lead to that agreement and consent to move beyond verbal flirting,
into verbal foreplay, and then into the sensual and erotic on the basis
of a true encounter with Unfallen Eros. By discussing this in a
community, we enable the male and female natures - the active and
receptive gestures, which are not actually confined to physical gender
- to express their practical sense of such tact and good taste.
We teach each other something very important and needed by all.
Until we take up such a task, it remains undone, and we remain in
social darkness and confusion.
*Obviously the use of intoxicants, can
render us essentially unconscious, due to the effect of many of them in
causing the ego to loose its hold on the blood. All that I have
written here assumes a state of normal (un-intoxicated) consciousness.
Although love making is an intoxication of its own kind.]
From Chapter 9:
"There are many who will say that the concept of the free
man which I have here developed is a chimera nowhere to be found in
practice; we have to do with actual human beings, from whom we can only
hope for morality if they obey some moral law, that is, if they regard
their moral task as a duty and do not freely follow their inclinations
and loves. I do not doubt this at all. Only a blind man could do so.
But if this is to be the final conclusion, then away with all this
hypocrisy about morality! Let us then simply say that human nature must
be driven to its actions as long as it is not free. Whether his
unfreedom is forced on him by physical means or by moral laws, whether
man is unfree because he follows his unlimited sexual desire or because
he is bound by the fetters of conventional morality, is quite
immaterial from a certain point of view. Only let us not assert that
such a man can rightly call his actions his own, seeing that he is
driven to them by a force other than himself. But in the midst of all
this framework of compulsion there arise men who establish themselves
as free spirits in all the welter of customs, legal codes, religious
observances, and so forth. They are free in so far as they obey only
themselves, unfree in so far as they submit to control. Which of us can
say that he is really free in all his actions? Yet in each of us there
dwells a deeper being in which the free man finds expression."
[Again, it is obvious is it not, from our
vantage point, that custom is not to restrain free men and women
(ethical individualists) from understanding their carnal nature - the
gifts woven into having incarnated in a physical body. The
problem, as seen from the point of view of The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, is that we
learn how to ride the horse of desire in a manner in which our
conscious free moral intention never forgets that it is holding the
reins of the lower impulses, and can direct them out of higher motives,
thus redeeming what seems merely animal and making it something that can justly be
called human. In the Age of the Consciousness Soul we are
challenged to face all of carnal desire and inform it from out of the
own I with freely chosen moral goodness]
From Chapter 13:
"By a very different argument von Hartmann attempts to
establish pessimism and to make use of it for ethics. He attempts, in
keeping with a favorite tendency of our times, to base his world view
on experience. From the observation of life he hopes to discover
whether pleasure or pain outweighs the other in the world. He parades
whatever appears to men as blessing and fortune before the tribunal of
reason, in order to show that all alleged satisfaction turns out on
closer inspection to be illusion. It is illusion when we believe that
in health, youth, freedom, sufficient income, love (sexual
satisfaction), pity, friendship and family life, self-respect, honor,
fame, power, religious edification, pursuit of science and of art, hope
of a life hereafter, participation in the progress of civilization -
that in all these we have sources of happiness and satisfaction.
Soberly considered, every enjoyment brings much more evil and misery
into the world than pleasure."
[This last sentence - as well as most
before it - would seem to be von Hartmann, not Steiner - in any event
the reader is cautioned here.]
Again, from Chapter 13:
"I can speak of pain only when desire runs up against the
impossibility of fulfillment. Even when an enjoyment that I have had
creates in me the desire for the experience of greater or more refined
pleasure, I cannot speak of this desire as a pain created by the
previous pleasure until the means of experiencing the greater or more
refined pleasure fail me. Only when pain appears as a natural
consequence of pleasure, as for instance when a woman's sexual pleasure
is followed by the suffering of childbirth and the cares of a family,
can I find in the enjoyment the originator of the pain."
[Is Steiner here giving the counter
argument to von Hartmann? This is a chapter on pessimism, and von
Hartmann would seem to be a pessimist, such that Steiner is showing us
how carnal desires and pleasures, even though they can in excess lead
to moments of pain, the pleasure remains itself. Read the first
sentence above again, especially the word: only.]
More from Chapter 13:
"Anyone who follows fairly closely the line of thought of
such thinkers as Eduard von Hartmann may believe it necessity, in order
to arrive at a correct valuation of life, to clear out of the way those
factors which falsify our judgment about the balance of pleasure and
pain. He can try to do this in two ways. Firstly, by showing that our
desire (instinct, will) interferes with our sober estimation of feeling
values in a disturbing way. Whereas, for instance, we ought to say to
ourselves that sexual enjoyment is a source of evil, we are misled by
the fact that the sexual instinct is very strong in us into conjuring
up the prospect of a pleasure which just is not there in that degree at
all. We want to enjoy ourselves; hence we do not admit to ourselves
that we suffer under the enjoyment. Secondly, he can do it by
subjecting feelings to a critical examination and attempting to prove
that the objects to which our feelings attach themselves are revealed
as illusions by the light of reason, and that they are destroyed from
the moment that our ever growing intelligence sees through the illusions."
[Again, is Steiner agreeing with von
Hartmann, or disagreeing, especially in the last sentence where Steiner
writes: attempting
to prove. I believe Steiner is
disagreeing, but again in the style of circumlocution necessary to not
losing the main message in something that others might sensationalize.
We are the judges of our pain and pleasure, and the eventual
masters (out of freedom) of our choices in this regard. To argue
that carnal (bodily) pleasures are illusions is to mistake the medium
for the message. Illusions abound, but they are not without
meaning, for everything that is maya instructs us, and gives us
choices. If there is any comment that needs to be brought here,
it is this (and it is from Tomberg in his book Meditations on the Tarot). Tomberg there makes the observation that
pleasure, pursued for itself, is sterile. That is it is
unproductive. I suggest this is an excessive judgment on his
part. It is true that pleasure for itself's main flaw is that you
have to go back to it again and again. It does not remain.
Yet, the physical body we are told is the most perfected of all
aspects of our organism. Not seeking the pleasure potential in
the carnal body would justly seem insane. Again, here is a point
of view, if we leave it unexamined, that would make of all of us
perpetually chaste monks and nuns, such that no children would come
into the world, and there would be no bodies in which people could
incarnate and seek out their karma. Tomberg has hidden in his
judgment a moral ideal to which he seems to think all should agree.
Has Steiner in his book on Freedom done anything similar?]
From Chapter 14:
"It is impossible to understand a human being completely
if one takes the concept of genus as the basis of ones judgment. The
tendency to judge according to the genus is at its most stubborn where
we are concerned with differences of sex. Almost invariably man sees in
woman, and woman in man, too much of the general character of the other
sex and too little of what is individual. In practical life this does
less harm to men than to women."
[Is this here the seed of understanding
out of which was to be grown women's liberation? We are led then
to wondering what would happen today, in anthroposophical circles,
where adult women are liberated, and the adult men more sensitive (and
I say both of those with a bit of irony - understanding that such is
only partially true), we took up among ourselves frank discussions of
that which general human culture has been debating for years.
Without dialog, all remains unspoken and potentially prey to the
Shadow out of the unconscious. This essay is much more of a
warning, than it is an advocacy of some kind of sexual excess in our
Society and Movement. My experience is that we are more in danger
from the consequences of repression - of keeping such matters in the
closet, than we are in danger from the consequences of enlightened
conversation. Individual members of the Anthroposophical Society
and Movement - that is members of our social community - have, for
example, on occasion mistreated members who were gay men and women, in
circumstances where unredeemed antipathies and sympathies were allowed
to lash out at particular individuals. We have a long way to go
as a community, and once more this essay merely seeks to suggest that
it is time to take the bull by the horns and get on with it. It
will be messy in any event, but the longer we wait, the more likely
that something of these carnal forces and powers will join together
with the Shadow and make of our work something far more chaotic than
any of us need.
Years ago I discovered a principle.
I found that I had created whole piles of undone deeds, because I
saw them as difficult and set them aside for later. Doing only
the easy matters first, I soon had too much of the hard and difficult
ones on my plate. Then I began to look at any day, and select for
the first deeds of the day the most difficult or otherwise
uninteresting. I soon found that these were quickly done, and
that their apparent terror (in the form of anxiety) was greater in my
mind than in the doing. Moreover, the rest of the day was much
easier, for the hardest tasks had been cleared away, and I was no
longer bothered by them. In our social and community life as
anthroposophists, we face similar problems - not only mistaking much
that is non-essential for the truly essential, but also never doing the
truly essential because it appears to be too difficult.]
{an aside: many thanks to Tom Last for
providing me with the Steiner quotes from The
Philosophy of Freedom. Tom knows
this book better than anyone I know, and his website at
http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/ is easily the most significant
Internet source for the study of this book}
One last comment here, before going
onward...
We ought to keep in mind the precise
nature of Steiner's thinking, and realize that in his mode of
expression above he took great pains to speak on animal desires on the
one hand and human choices on the other. Elsewhere in his
spiritual research he was careful to speak of what we share with the
rest of Nature, such that the animal kingdom, especially the mammals
(see Shad's Man and Mammals, please) is
described as bearing a physical body, and ethereal body and an astral
body, just as do we. It is no wonder then that materialistic
science describes us as the human animal, without perhaps recognizing just what that phrase
actually means.
Clearly, in that we have an I (which the
lower animals do not) means that we bear the capacity to rise above and
rule that which is animalistic in our corporeal nature.
This is, by the way, not meant to demean or suggest we
experience shame, with respect to the necessity of our lower impulses
and chakras in that they contribute out of their perfection to our
experience of earth existence. I suspect, in fact, that we must
not only learn to rule these passions, but also more importantly, come
to understand them. Only through such understanding will we be
able in the future to reach down into the animal kingdom, recognize the
sacrifices made there for our benefit, and then discover how to raise
our brothers and sisters there up to the human level of existence, as
is our potential destiny.
Let us now
come at this from another direction entirely...
There is much confusion in the
Anthroposophical Society in America, far more that people would
imagine. The main source of this confusion is because we live so
strongly under the influence of Ahriman here. This comes to us
through our three-fold double-complex - we are very ahrimanic out of
the influence of the double. Now the form this takes is very
interesting, and somewhat obvious at the same time. What American
anthroposophists tend to do is to take in the teachings of Rudolf Steiner in
such a way that makes them quite comfortable. We can
take these ideas into us and make a kind of very comfortable world view
out of them.
For example, we may
see various kinds of aspects of modern social life that will evoke in
us a kind of horror. We see these terrible things, and then we
explain them away by seeing that these horrors arise because of the
work of the opponents. We have explained that which we have
observed away and actually not made much contact with it at all.
Now not everyone does this. Some, who are of the Mary Folk
(see the essay above: The Natural Transformation of the Anthroposophical
Society in America), react more strongly, are
more disturbed in their feeling life and find they have to enter into
the wider social world process more directly. But for many
others, they have this explanation using the opponents-idea, and this
makes them comfortable.
A similar kind of thing happens when
anthroposophists look at our Society and Movement. Here the
gesture for comforting thoughts is more powerful. All our media
are full of happy talk about the Society and the leadership of the
various Councils in America and about Dornach, as if everything was
wonderful, and there were no problems at all. So our thinking
experiences our own social life and makes these very comfortable inner
pictures. Yes, we say to ourselves, nobody is perfect, but at the
same time everything is just fine. We are well led and nurtured
from our institutional leadership. They give us all the right guidance (when of course they should give us no guidance at all,
for that harms us).
Of course, one has to fail to notice
there is no growth in the Society - the number of new members more or
less equals the number who drop away out of disinterest, and few young
people are drawn into the work. We have less membership today
than we did five years ago. We have to fail to notice that
Waldorf in America is falling apart socially (the schools are full of
social problems), or that Anthroposophical Medicine is held entirely at
bay - no growth at all in America.
Those who criticize, as this quote from
Emily Dickenson reveals - "Assent, and you are sane; Demure; - you're straightway
dangerous and handled with a chain", are
ignored, their thinking put in the chains of don't listen to him, he is
dangerous. Don't bring us bad news says the comforting voice of
the ahrimanic double, we don't want to be troubled by the prospect of
any kind of failings.
That is just one part of it, for the
other is the luciferic influence. We have this very dreamy
relationship to what Steiner taught. We follow it like some kind
of old favorite story-book play of which we never get tired. Our
Society walks backwards into the future, and has yet to even get on the
ground in America. Among the most recent major sponsored
conference events here (in the year 2007) were remembrances of something Steiner did a hundred years ago (the Arts
Conference), and what the Templers did 800 years ago. We are
trapped in a cul de sac of spirit recollection, a very luciferically
fascinating study of everything Steiner every did and said. But
the spiritual present, what the spirit wants to show us today, to that
we don't yet know how to listen. We can't hear this inwardly
because we have woven around ourselves this world of rigid (old)
comfort that is disconnected from any thought that might make us wake
up in the present and really begin to take responsibility for the
spiritual future.
We also have lost to the present a great
deal of what was healthy and done in the past - in the 20th Century, by
anthroposophists other than Steiner. Over and over again
Steiner's books are republished, while the books of genius by others,
who where inspired by Steiner, are allowed to go completely out of
print. How often does a Study Group take up one of those books,
instead of something by Steiner?
Most anthroposophists actually don't know
how to experience the world directly into our thoughts. Instead
we dip into memory - what did Steiner say we ask ourselves. I had
a very brief discussion this last summer (2007) with a leading
anthroposophical doctor about the double (I mentioned this above in the
essay on the Shadow). He said to my face that I couldn't say
anything about the double until I had read and mastered everything
Steiner said about it. It didn't seem to occur to him that
someone was sitting across the table from him who had spent ten years
working on this question of the shadow and who had a rich inner life
full of experiences. He believed everyone he met in Anthroposophy
thought like he did, and had to rely on Steiner. What an easy way
to dismiss another, by comparing them to a dead authors words from 100
years ago as if the spirit spoke only once to only one man and never
had anything original or true to say to any other human being.
Of course, for me to speak to an
anthroposophical doctor about the double was challenging to him, albeit
probably unconsciously. Steiner had pointed clearly at the double
and its relationship to health (see Geographic
Medicine), and if one asks anthroposophical
doctors about this subject, we find that, in all of the 80 or 90 years
since Steiner and Wegman began this work, no new knowledge about the
double and illness has susequently come forward. There are just
some hints, but no research. Moreover, the double is hardly
spoken of at all in the medical literature out of anthroposophy.
Now what's the point here. Well, if
we read Steiner (and there are a lot of reasons to read Steiner for
inspiration) we will come upon the idea in his writings on Lucifer and
Ahriman, that the cure for the luciferic is the ahrimanic, and that the
cure for the ahrimanic is the luciferic. This idea is then what
stands behind this essay on sex, and which is almost the end of the
main text of my book on American Anthroposophy, because we here are on
our way now to coming nearer the earth.
In order to overcome the unground
luciferic tendencies in the Society here (the walking backwards into
the future in this dreamy way - too much spirit recollection), we take
up in the social the encounter with the sensual. We begin to meet each
other in the social as beings who have lower, sense oriented (pleasure
and pain) chakras, not just higher (dreaming luciferic) chakras.
We have appetites. We celebrate the life of desire by
seeing its oh so very human qualities and their necessity (what Steiner
called the train engine, and the Sufi's the horse). We make the
journey down the vertical axis into the Realm of the Dark (the Realm
ruled by the Divine Feminine by the way). We think together about
what it means to be beings of desire and appetite. When is the
last time, for example, that an anthroposophical group in America had a
backyard barbecue or a cocktail party - that is something typically
American as a social gathering. Too much of our social life is
ruled by ungrounded idealistic European assumptions that are never
questioned.
To cure the ahrimanic, the world of rigid (old) comforting thoughts we have woven around our conceptions of our work as if it was all right and everything was perfect, we have to consciously dream (imaginatively seek spirit vision). We have to embrace luciferically imaginative pictures of what we could be if we were truthful about our real state of being as a Society. We seek visions of the future from a point of view that is honest about the present. How do people think the future arises? It comes from the dreamers, the ones who trouble themselves to be discontented (not comforted) with the present. We have to be first discontented with the Society, in order to properly dream its betterment.
I am, by the way, not advocating lecture
courses at Branch meetings where the learned hold forth on their views
of sexuality, or other aspects of the lower chakras. This would
not be a healthy social environment - it would be too formal.
Much better would be small groups, such as a study group,
gathering together in a social way - over food and in a relaxed
atmosphere. We want to avoid too much gravitas.
Imagine as follows: the study text has
been set aside (our usually weekly diet of anthroposophical thought),
and once a month we are just social. At the same time our
conversation takes a more intimate and earthly turn. Everyone can
share stories from life here, and as you'll see next below there are
principles from the Twelve Steps that can be fruitful.
We can, of course, remind ourselves of
the very first questions of Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom). Can I want what I want? Am I
the prisoner of my desires, or can I be free before them? Can the
higher chakra's rule the passions of the lower chakra's, without
disabling the real and necessary functions of appetite and desire?
Can my conscious spiritual activity, in seeking to place in front
of any action a self determined moral reason (a sacrament of the Second
Eucharist in the temple of my own soul), grant me that ideal state of
true human inner freedom toward which Rudolf Steiner's every deed pointed?
men and women
as sensual beings
The next material is offered as
inspiration and stimulation for conversation, not to set out great
truths to which one must bow down. All of this material can be
found repeated in different degrees in my little book: Seven Dates - erotica transcending.
That book represents an attempt at the art of erotica, yet at the same time informing it with what wisdom
about love I have been able to acquire in my life. Below I will
just cover certain basic principles in a somewhat linear fashion, as
are expressed more fully in Seven Dates, and surrounded there by an imaginative story. You
could, if you want, think of Seven Dates as my version of a mystery play, only this time it is
about the mysteries of Eros, that which in the human being is of the
dark moist earth, and the life of passion, mutual sensual and erotic
intoxication, and submission.
Starting with the obvious: men and women
are different. The individual spirit that inhabits the male and
female bodily forms is even more different - uniquely individual in
fact. However, the spirit is influenced by the body, and of
course by culture and upbringing. As a consequence there are
patterns which we share that can and ought to be called: general
characteristics (what Steiner in The
Philosophy of Freedom called genus).
Steiner spoke often of these matters from different perspectives, and
in the book: Sexuality,
Partnership and Marriage, by the Christian
Community priest Wolfgang Gadeke, Gadeke describes the male as
attracted to the female by his physiology (an impulse originating in
the gonads apparently) and the woman attracted to the male by her
recognition of something in his soul. The male is drawn to the
physical and the woman is drawn to the soulful (to put it in perhaps a
too simple way). Yet, Gadeke seems to suggest that this attraction is mostly semiconscious. My experience
confirms this observation, to a degree (the differences in our points
of view are significant, however).
For example, introspection often reveals
things others have not yet understood. While beauty is in the eye
of the beholder (which Steiner referred to above when he talked about
the mental picture we have of the spirit of the other), there is to my
self-observation a sense related experience common to men, and which is
rooted in the aesthetic of the female form. Steiner has given us
to understand that the male form is more incarnate and the female form
less so. To my experience, the shape and curves of the female are
akin in their expression to that art and craft of the Divine Mystery as
expressed in the beauty of Nature. That this is a common
experience of men is stamped all over our culture of Fallen Eros, which
culture is itself dominated by men. A whole book could be written
about pornography for example, which earlier ages just considered erotic art of a high order (it seems to some recent analysts that
the Victorians created the idea of pornography, and that in many
cultures there is no shame at all attached to the creation or
experience of erotic art). To me the instinctive drivers of the
attraction of the male to the female (in the sense of genus,
disregarding for the moment individuality) are far more complicated
than Gadeke's observations. The reader should understand here
that I haven't said even a part of all that could be said.
Gadeke does point out that sexual
gratification for gratifications sake is ultimately fruitless
(Tomberg's notion of the sterile nature of pleasure).
People can become lost in what Steiner describes as animality
(meaning, as I have suggested, that which we share with the kingdom of
nature just below us, in that we have carnal bodies).
At the same time, social reality is far
more complicated in fact, and we have to be very careful about our
generalizations. For example, last evening (of the morning I
first wrote these paragraphs) I watched an HBO special on the
pornography industry of Southern California (11,000 full and part time
sex workers, billions of dollars in income). The women sex
workers (not all are as exploited as critics of this industry like to
imagine) described that the main danger to their careers (incomes of $8,000 to $10,000 a month were normal) was
falling in love. Once you fell in love, the ability to engage in
the art of sexual expression before a camera, became a moral problem.
Those exact words were used: moral problem. Here, of course, is again a consciousness soul
phenomena in the individual biographies of people working in an
industry that folks with too much beam in their eyes look down upon.
Anyway, to return to men and women as
sexual beings, keeping in mind the danger of over-generalizing...
In the Age of the Consciousness Soul, in
America, there is a general instinct for seeking the good, for acting
out of ones personal moral compass. While there is everywhere the
stimulation of Fallen Eros, there is also the return of UnFallen Eros -
mostly in the form of a renewed interest in romance. The woman, having an instinct and a hunger for a
soul to soul and spirit to spirit relationship, wants men to be
sensitive to their needs. A man who approaches a potential lover
today, solely for his own gratification, will only be received by a
similarly imbalanced female nature. A great deal of this is also
connected, no doubt, to karma.
Our language talks of what are called: chick flicks - movies where one is stimulated to feelings of sympathy,
and in which the male/female dynamic is one of dreamy hope and
passionate completion. If we step back from this, and similar
cultural phenomena, we might be able to see that, in spite of the
sexual revolution, much remains semiconscious. We grope toward
something higher, having a sense of it, but can't quite find our way.
What is this higher?
Eros!
Yet, Eros is a partnership - the man bears within himself one aspect of this
Mystery, and the woman another. They can only find its deepest
truths together, and that only in the selfless adoration of the other -
the Thou. My little book, Seven Dates - erotic transcending, could be a help to couples who read it to each other.
Not as something to imitate, but as something to stimulate and
inspire their thinking. Here are a few of its basic thoughts,
although they are here expressed in isolation (in a linear fashion
absent a needed imaginative context).
Men don't understand their own sexuality,
for Western Civilization and culture is full of bad information.
Women don't understand themselves either. What they don't
understand is not the same thing, however. The general
characteristics of misunderstanding are different, yet related.
From Native Americans we might find the
idea of dominion
and surrender. While this is a Saturn
Mystery - a spirit recollection of a prior time when individuality was
less important and the group soul more normal, this idea is still
useful to contemplate for the questions it raises are significant.
In this idea in the marriage, the woman gives the man dominion over her body, and surrenders to his expression of passion and erotic intoxication.
He's the active principle, she the receptive. They are in a
way the archetypes of the Father Creator and the Mother Creator.
He is the spreader of seed from above, and she the dark earth
into which the seed is received and then nurtured. Father Sky and
Mother Earth.
There is a reason I make a distinction
between the sensual and the erotic. The man is more drawn to the
sensual in a certain respect, and the woman to the erotic. The
male lives strongly in his earthly senses, while the female lives
strongly in her emotional experiences. The senses give us
sensuality, and the emotions eroticism.
Again, keep in mind that this is a
generalization, and that each partner in love making bears something of
the needs and wants of the other in the deepest aspects of their
individual being. A woman, properly loved emotionally,
experiences and feels her sensuality all the more strongly, while the
man properly loved sensually can experience his feelings more deeply.
What Seven Dates goes into is that
idea that woman tend not to understand very well how to be good lovers
to men, to the same degree that men do not understand how to be good
lovers to women. The film Don Juan
Demarco is a wonderful examination of how a
man can be a lover of a woman, yet our culture lacks a corresponding
expression of how a woman can be a good lover of a man, taking hold of
his real sensuality and so strongly giving him what he hungers for
there, that his feelings, carried on the winds of her erotic passions,
open him up emotionally in ways he never knew possible.
Women need to stop thinking that men
should be like them. The main male character in Seven Dates teaches the woman about his own nature, which
instruction invites her to instruct him as well. It took me ten
years to begin to unravel my own confusion as a man (a process that is
always ongoing), due to the bad (immature) information in my culture (a
project that was inspired in me by a meeting with a Native American
woman).
In order to appreciate these matters it
is useful now to add some vocabulary. Here I am going to borrow
from other sources. First, from Catherine MacCoun's remarkable On
Becoming an Alchemist, we can find the idea
that one way to view spirit is as energy, but that to appreciate its individualized nature we
need to add the idea of style. Steiner spoke of
energy in this sense as enthusiasm, and MacCoun has added the idea of
the individual expression of this energy of spiritual enthusiasm as
being reflected in style. Each of us has our
own unique style of being, from the way we dress and walk and speak, to
the art of our biographies and on into the finest details of our lives.
This will include our sensual and erotic expressions.
Consider Tomberg's Meditations
on the Tarot - a
journey into Christian Hermeticism, in the
discussion in Arcanum Eleven: Force. Here Tomberg introduces two ideas (not particular
his own words, but certainly he has unfolded the surrounding
explanations in a quite original style):
Bios and Zoe. Bios we might see (in the context of our human
sexuality) as the electrical
chemistry of sexual attraction or those arts
connected to getting
turned on, for the man mostly in the physical
plane and for the woman mostly in the soul/spiritual plane. Zoe
is (in the erotic realm) the emotional merging and bonding
made possible by the process we call: getting to know each other. Now both Zoe and Bios are far more complicated
and actually penetrate all of existence (see Tomberg's discussion for
details, it is very enlightening), but here I just wanted to apply the
general idea to the subject of our discussion.
The male carries more the mystery of
Bios, of the electrical chemistry of attraction in his hunger for
dominion, which is expressed in his seeking out the woman in an active
way, and in his effort to turn her on. The female
carries more the mystery of Zoe, of the emotional merging and bonding,
which she expresses in surrender and receptivity, but also by erecting the rite of passage of
getting to know each other.
The secret for both (in a situation that
is not animalistic - i.e. where the raw sexual hunger is ruled from out
of the human I) is the: getting
to know each other. The female will
make an error if she assumes that what the man wants is for her to get
to know him in the same way that she wants to be known; and, the male
will make an error if he assumes that what the woman wants is for him
to get to know her in the same way he wants to be known. The male
wants his efforts to turn on his partner to be met by her efforts to
turn him on, all leading to physical intimacy. While the
female wants to have her interest in being known intimately emotionally
to be met by an equal interest in sharing from the side of her partner
(she wants him to express his feelings too*).
*[See, for example, the climactic
emotional scenes in the movie As Good As
It Gets, starring Helen Hunt and Jack
Nickelson. What ultimately melts her resistance - the rite of
passage - is his finally expressing and confessing what she means
to him.]
The solution to this dilemma, in
practice, is found in (what for some is a very odd place) the Fifth
step of the Twelve Steps of AA, which reads: "5. Admitted to God, to
ourselves, and
to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."
[emphasis added]
This practice of mutual confession, inspired by the Second Coming of Christ in conjunction
with the gradual re-emergence of the Feminine Mysteries (as noted in
the essay on the Shadow, the Steps begin with the creation of a
profound mood of surrender, then go on to a journey through their social heart -
which is community confession ["hello, my name is
Joel, and I am an addict"] - thence to their fruit, which is service), takes away from the excesses of Roman Catholicism a
quite profound human spiritual art. No longer is an ordained
priest, ruled from above by a hierarchical social structure, to be seen
as the only place in which confession and absolution (divine
forgiveness) can arise.
In my book the Way of
the Fool, I described the potential social
future as having the individual home as a Temple of Love, in which the
bedroom is a Temple of Eros. In the Temple
of Eros, this place of profound physical and
social intimacy, the core practice can be mutual confession. We
share the deepest places inside ourselves with each other through confession, and receive from each other this gift: listening without judgment. If we do this while recognizing the presence of
the Third, of Christ, then the basis for forgiveness is ours.
We also prepare the ground for this in
our anthroposophical social-community practices, which rooted in the
ideal of the social motto* also lead us right into the Reverse Cultus.
What is a first principle of the Reverse Cultus, as elaborated by
Steiner in Lecture Six of Awakening
to Community? The sharing of each to
the other of our heartfelt concerns of the moment.
*[The healthy social life is found when in the mirror of each individual soul the community finds itself reflected, and when in the community the virtue of each one is living.]
Now not all our most intimate secrets are
or ought to be the subject of community knowledge, but at the same time
all of us need at least one place where we can have moments of some
degree of deepest mutual confession and to be received into the arms of
one offering us, at the least, nurturing love. Who can really
deeply confess, and not sometimes need to be held.
And, if we idealistically (and falsely)
confine this gesture in the Temple of Eros only to the marriage bed, we
create great psychological harm. Not all of us are to be so lucky
as to find just that one person with whom to form a partnership leading
to marriage. For the rest, there is no reason to assume we have
to be denied that physical and spiritual intimacy our true soul health
needs. Thus, the somewhat tongue-in-cheek part of the subtitle to
this essay: Sex
and the Single Anthroposophist.
Years ago, a friend of deep instinctive
spiritual life, spoke to me of the movement from more ordinary social
relations to one of deepening emotional and physical intimacy as a rite of passage (as noted above). This concept is, I believe,
crucial. There is little possibility of renewing this art - of
redeeming Eros - without some shared intimate discussion among friends
in a social setting. For men and women, who are also
anthroposophists, to gather and share with each other their thoughts
and feelings about this rite of passage, inside and
outside of marriage, can become a very profound socially creative deed.
A larger community (such as a Branch), in which there are a
number of little gatherings engaged in seeking such human
understanding, will soon see, in its wider social relations, the
presence of a vivifying life, born out of both Bios and Zoe as these
become the natural and conscious expression of the individual human
beings of which that community is formed.
That the male tends to be naturally more
gifted with Bios energies, and the female tends to be naturally more
gifted with Zoe energies, simply means that the order and organism of
social existence, as Created, reflects also the higher order Cosmic
relationships within the Divine Mystery.
It might be useful, to make this all a
bit more concrete, to conceive of it this way. When two
individuals find themselves at the cusp of both wanting deeper
intimacy, there are three paths (see my Seven Dates). The starting point is to be awake in the moment,
and to share what is wanted and desired. To hold the
passion at bay for a moment and make sure that which path taken is one
that is mutually agreed upon.
The path of Bios alone is the path of
mutually turning each other on (intentionally moving forward on the
chemistry of the attraction). The path of Zoe alone is the path
of deeper mutual confession. In Bios, for example, we are
physically touching and undressing - getting rid of any physical
barriers to intimate physical contact. In Zoe, to continue the
example, we are touching and caressing with words, perhaps even lying
down fully clothed and talking to each other, but with a physical gap,
all in order to pass through the normal psychological barriers to
intimate emotional contact.
The middle way lies in awake conversation, and moving from one to the other. Some Bios and some Zoe, with the conversation mediating in between.
What is crucial is that each partner
recognize in the other - the Thou - the fact that the
dominant need is other. Just as one is male and one is female, the drive
for intimacy is also polar, different yet mutually bonded - one a key,
its urge to penetrate obvious; the other the lock, its secrets hidden
and needing to be coaxed cautiously and carefully into revealing its
inward depths. Neither alone is complete. Both together are
a miracle.
Welcome, dear friends, to the upward and
downward gestures of the vertical axis of the Cross, the dark moist
Earth, Fallen Eros and the Realm of the Shadow, all to be healed by the
Zoe of the Feminine Mysteries of the future through spiritualized conversation (The Redemption of Eros), in
collaboration with the Second Coming of Christ, the Second Eucharist in
the Ethereal and the dawning of American Anthroposophy.
"I reason, earth is short,
And anguish absolute,
And many hurt;
But what of that?
"I reason, we could die:
The best vitality
Cannot excel decay;
But what of that?
"I reason that in heaven
Somehow, it will be even,
Some new equation given;
But what of
that?"
So writes Emily Dickinson,
but what of that? What indeed.
********************************
The America Soul -
an evolving synthesis at its moment of birth:
- much has been written above -
here is a small effort at a summary, with a few
additional
insights offered as a concluding theme
An interesting point to note at the start
here is to consider that the American Soul is a work in progress - it
appears not to be finished in any way similar to other soul gestures in the world.
The processes that are forming this soul have barely begun, would
be one way to look at it. To think carefully about this, however,
requires that we think first about the soul itself, how it arises, and
in what way can it be observed. We also have to reflect on the
term "folk soul", something Steiner mentions.
While I have referenced a few of
Steiner's indications throughout the text, my main effort has been to
remain phenomenological: that is, to discover the characteristics, and
past and future nature, of the American Soul indirectly though the
observation of various social phenomena. If I succeeded in this
endeavor, the reader should expect to have a lot of good questions, but
only a few definite answers. This will hopefully leave to the
reader the task of forming their own conclusions, or perhaps even
better, their own questions.
*
First, let us recall some aspects of the
themes as laid out above.
Steiner expected America to have its own,
yet similar, version of Anthroposophy, which he characterized as
initially wooden (plant like and dreaming), but nonetheless natural and
instinctive. He also expected Ahriman to incarnate prior to
the 21st Century, and that he should be discovered and named.
This then is where this book began, with the questions as to what
would this American Anthroposophy be like, and how that might be influenced by the
Challenge of Ahriman's incarnation.
Steiner also thought that the
counter-force to the too earthly aspects of the physical organism of
Americans would be from the head, and in the form of knowledge of what
he called: the Mystery of Golgatha - a Mystery that is always ongoing.
This we took up in learning of the Second Eucharist in the
Ethereal - the inward baptism of human beings by Christ through holy
breath (the Holy Spirit - the Mystery of the Three in One) and fire, where out of our freedom we come to
knowledge of the Good.
But the problem of freedom is not simple,
so next we took up the question of method, of how we create the
metamorphosis of thinking called for by Steiner in his books: A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, and The
Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual
Activity). Here we discovered that
Americans have a natural and instinctive affinity for the stream of
Discipleship - the stream of the Shepherds, and are less drawn to the
stream of Rosicrucianism and Alchemy - the stream of the Kings.
We are drawn into the social world as social helpers, and this
call for moral deeds in the world reflects deeply on the nature of our
souls.
We deepened this understanding of moral
inner work by learning to apply the new thinking to the general social
conditions of humanity, not just in the specifics our our individual
relationships. This methodology of a new - cognitively spiritual
- social science then enabled us to take a profound look at the
institutional expressions of our mutual work, and at the Martha and
Mary impulses to be found there. But this was not enough, so as a
last open secret of our understanding of The Mystery of Golgatha in
practice, we took a look at that most intimate aspect of our soul life:
the Shadow - which work begins with the problem of the mote and the
beam.
Now we had the tools with which to
counter the Challenge of Ahriman's Incarnation.
It then became our task to deepen our
appreciation of the Mystery of America itself. First by
recognizing with spirit mindfulness the remarkable spiritual
creativeness of our youthful culture in the work of four contemporary
living artists.
Second, we then went down into the roots
through deep spirit recollection, to discover not only a previously
unrecognized relationship to the First Nations Peoples here, but also
how, via the joining of Steiner's research and the Hopi Prophecy, we
can create a picture of the extraordinary task this Mystery of America
faces - the trials of creating true brother and sisterhood, not in an
idealistic way, but down in the crucible of life, in issues of race, of
immigration, and ultimately across the fundamental differences between
men and women.
Along the way, we looked briefly at the
threefold soul nature of the social world, at positive and negative
aspects of East, Center and West. We also tried, through spirit
vision, to get a glimpse of the future Mysteries, particularly the New
Mysteries of the Earth and their relationship to America.
All of this was woven together, as much
as possible, in a way that made these themes companionable with
Steiner's fundamental legacy and work. American Anthroposophy ought to complement all that Steiner did, which we have
inherited, and for which we are now the stewards (The Philosophy of Freedom, i.e. the New Thinking-Cognition; the Reverse Cultus, i.e. the New Mysteries of Community; and, through these
two means we discover how to restore the missing Life forces of Christ to the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence which needs to flow
through all the Daughter Movements born so far in Anthroposophy).
What then is the American Soul?
*
The Soul arises as a mediating principle
in between unique conditions of the Earth, and the Immortal Spirit or i-AM,
on its path to earthly incarnation. In the ancient traditions of
the East, for example, only the undifferentiated Ocean of Spirit is
thought to be real, while all astrality, all ethereal forces, and all
earth existence and karma are but illusions. In the true West,
however, matters are far different - in fact, as might be expected,
completely opposite or polar to that of the East.
In the true West, where there is a
remarkable natural talent for Cosmogony, the so-called world of Maya
is/can be known here to be the Creation, the product of the sacrifices
of the Son, in which He has embodied Himself - in which He has come to
rest in living equilibrium. Thus has arisen the profound Mystery
of the Christ as the organizing principle which Goethe discovered
Speaks in Nature, and which we are learning to realize also Speaks in
the Social World. The Word is made Manifest in such a way that
our imaginative faculty can learn to hear/perceive all the Creation as
symbol - as the Logos Speaking in images, what one science writer
(David Bohm) called implicate order.
This manifestation is not only outside
and surrounding us, but more crucially is to be found inside us, for
thought also is of the Creation. We too are the Word made
Manifest. The Kingdom of Heaven is within, and in all that can be
discovered there inside us, through scientific introspection, we will
also experience the Logos Speaking. No one comes to the Father
except by me, and so as we learn to
experience the Good, the Holy Breath of Christ within, we begin the
journey through the Narrow Gate to the core of the Divine Mystery
Itself.
In the prologue to the John Gospel, it is
there written: And
in the darkness the light is shining, and the darkness never got hold
of it. This is our condition today.
Where once (out of spirit recollection, via Steiner's research,
we have come to understand that) the inner world was light filled, and
the outer world dim, the condition today has evolved into its polar
opposite. The outer world is now light filled, and the inner
world is dark. We even assume, because of this, that the inner
world is less important, so fascinated have we needed to become with
the world of the senses.
Thus the basis of our freedom, for the
Fall has brought us to a very special state of consciousness.
Coming to Earth has turned us inside out, as it were, enveloped
us in a world of physical sense experience just so that we would feel
ourselves to be lost to the gods. If we turn around inside
ourselves and away from the sense world, when we struggle to birth the
scientific introspection of our own inward gateway to the spirit, all
that we experience there is dark - or so it seems.
Without our own activity in the mind - in
the soul, via our spirit - there is no sound, no light, no being, no
meaning. The Christ Impulse, the Word within the i-AM, in
thinking brings this missing light. We bring this missing light. All introspection, all
looking within, shines light where first there was darkness. We
are that light - our will is that light. Even in ordinary
discursive thinking, the inner speaking which our naive consciousness
knows as first stage thinking, is a sounding in the darkness within.
For example, if we sit quietly in
meditation, simply observing the flow of mental images that pass before
our concentrated attention and intention, there will be a rising and
falling away of pictures we do not create, but only observe.
Yet, from what mystery comes the light by which these are
seen by the inner eye of the spirit? Our own I is the source of
that light. By our attention and intention in the inner world we
created the light that is there, and which illuminates the mental
picture.
Materialism - that is the Ahrimanic Deception - causes us to believe that this inner nature - our Soul - is bound to the brain, confined to the head, and cut off from the life and light filled world of outer and inner nature, as a subject never to know the truth of its object. The sense world enchants us, and we are fascinated with all its pain and pleasures.
Yet, in The
Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual
Activity), Steiner provides a map to the
narrow gateway to heaven within. Wake up here, he sings.
Look within, scientifically. Objectively. Shine the
light of Reason, the own Logos Nature - the own Word - in that darkness
the Ahrimanic Deception would have us believe is a dead end.
Sense Free Thinking. Pure Thinking.
By these disciplines we then know out of our own willed action
(Emerson's active
soul): And in the darkness the light
is shining, and the darkness never got hold of it.
Soul of Man!
*
Races and civilizations come to die in
America because America is the womb of Philadelphia - of the ultimate
brother and sisterhood of all human beings. There is no American
Soul in the same way there has been a French Soul or a Russian Soul or
a Chinese Soul. The American Soul is basically a void, unformed
uncreated chaos waiting that form to be given to it not by beings of
the hierarchies of Folk Souls, but by the own i-AM itself.
What the world experiences of the
American Soul is the latent force of the unformed, the
uncreated - of individuality unleashed. The American is perceived
as different because he is not like that which perceives him. The
French do not recognize themselves here, nor the Germans, although many
would like to do just that. It would be far more comfortable for
many to see in the American a mirror of what they believe to be their
own highest natures. The unformed can be made to do that,
precisely because it is unformed. In a like fashion many will see
in us that which they most despise, even in their own souls.
At the same time the unformed is
receptive. It amalgamates that which seeks to impress itself upon
it. Thus, we so easily take in European Anthroposophy and imitate
it. We hunger for spirit, and sensing the high idealism there we
pull it in - water for a dry sponge. It is our youth that does
this, the same way the child imitates its parents and then its
teachers. Ultimately however, this is not enough, for precisely
because we are essentially unformed (no real folk soul characteristics
in the Americas in the same sense as the rest of the world - races and civilizations die
in America), we now bear within our individuality a special capacity with respect to the Christ Impulse.
We would will the Good, out of our own I.
*
the temple within...
Waking up to the Narrow Gate, and the
truth of our own spirit activity within, we come upon a temple, half
built, with dusty cobwebbed corners, many windows empty of art and
color, and locked boxes of thoughts, feelings, impulses of will - all
contained by the prison-like nature of our previous unconscious and
sub-conscious states of soul.
Yet, wherever our heart has touched this
temple, there the dross is made into gold. In this temple we seek
the Good, and on the altar of our heart-felt thoughts born naturally
and instinctively in the Sacrament of the Second Eucharist in the
Ethereal, we know/are/create the Good and then manifest it in the
Creation, both outwardly and inwardly. Out of us flows the Good
into the shared Social World, the shared womb of evolution for all of
the billions of i-AMs. Where we love, we add our love to that of Christ.
We take up along side and with Him Christ's kind and light yoke
of Love (Matthew 11: 28-30).
Yes, this is not easy. It is a Path
full of dangers and sidetracks and pitfalls. We can be too serious (an
excess of gravitas), and/or too ungrounded (not concrete enough in our
thinking). The Soul moves from one excess through the heart
center and then to the next excess, for we must never forget just how
human we are. Even Prokofieff has this right: "None of us are perfect."
All the same, the American Soul has something unique to offer, something in the Art of the Social, the Royal Art. To find this we must clean up the temple, open some of the locked boxes, and let in the fresh air of our own thinking. We can also find a great deal of important inspiration in other places than just the books of Rudolf Steiner...
The Shakers, an ecstatic Quaker
community, had this as a song, from their American Elder Joseph
Brackett in 1848:
Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
to bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we
come round right.
which tune was used by the English Quaker
poet Sydney Bertram Carter, to write his The Lord of the Dance in 1963:
I danced in the morning when the world was begun
I danced in the Moon & the Stars & the Sun
I came down from Heaven & I danced on Earth
At Bethlehem I had my birth:
Dance then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said He!
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said He!
(...lead you all in the Dance, said He!)
I danced for the scribe & the pharisee
But they would not dance & they wouldn't follow me
I danced for fishermen, for James & John
They came with me & the Dance went on:
I danced on the Sabbath & I cured the lame
The holy people said it was a shame!
They whipped & they stripped & they hung me high
And they left me there on a cross to die!
I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black
It's hard to dance with the devil on your back
They buried my body & they thought I'd gone
But I am the Dance & I still go on!
They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the Life that'll never, never die!
I'll live in you if you'll live in Me -
I am the Lord
of the Dance*, said He!
*[Or, as Steiner (and I)
would like to put it, not having quite the same poetic inspiration as
Carter: Christ is Lord (artist) of Karma]
Last here, a more modern American (and
unique voice): Harvey Bornfield*
*[Harvey was born into this veil of tears
Friday May 4th, 1945, called back to the
Source, Sunday January 8th, 2006, passing unnoticed by the world
which had no place for him, except in the smallest of ways among
family and friends. Here is what I wrote in my collection of his
prose/poems from many years of e-mail discussion groups, to be called: Silent
Passage: " - imagine
what might happen if the Sufi poet-mystic Rumi, and the deaf composer
Beethoven, decided to write together (as dance partners) some
seeming prose as an organic (spontaneously alive and
evolving) sequence of jazz riffs -"
Harvey's works are best felt in the heart
when
read aloud, with occasional trills of passion. The
collection Silent Passage should be
available on my website for free, and in book form on lulu.com for
cost, at the end of Summer, 2008.]
RONDO
Name is but clothing, Thought's the weaver
and I but Footprint, a moment of snow
Let the River write the book, make us her sailors
She our voice, We her words
so upon her ways shall we widen, join tide,
and singing, soar like flame.
All these are stairs, thinks he,
Upon such rungs are fairy tales spun
the same that ancestor the nations,
and straightaway the Nomad set sail upon a Swerve of Wave
and was silver-seated atop crown and swell of diamond
crests.
Spearless, robed in white and swim of winter verse
He descended into the roar of the world
Fire, Air, Earth, Water
welcomed him to this Theater of Chameleons
dressed him in reach of Sun and swelling Wind,
in Floor of
Rock and Sprawling Sea
He donned the glove of the elements
Chaste of Presence, dare not even hover
Even silence was louder, grass loftier than he
for he had no flowering song
no floating dream, no piercing deed
to bestow
upon the planets.
And when he had made such stairs his food
was made chameleon,
diverse with fractures, quilted in shadow
he thinks, Song is but travel, man her flute
and I but
mirror, a moment of sun
Thus downstream he wove a tale
And it was as bedrock,
undetected, the same on which worlds glide ropeless round
The Owl ushered him into glowing night
loaned him his talons, his Branches of the Dark
the Dove, Her Kingdom of Breathless Poem
Inlaid like the rungs of a ladder
between molten core and icy rim was he.
Fire, Air, Earth, Water orphaned him in camouflage of seasons
made him
volatile, delivered him into a cradle of war
Along the way
he met the Carver of Rivers
Saw her pouring strands of hair
Sweep down from crisp perch to swallowing valley
Like a caress of unoutspoken waterfall
downstream stretches forth, stretches out her lute strings,
offering her
crystal braids to the thumbs and fingers of the wind.
Hears her tremble, hears her whisper in some unpaved dialect
“Now the Father of Ballads, the Author of Chords may strum me!”
for Name is but Mask, Thought's the Jailer,
and I, your
Locksmith, a Century of Sand.
Downstream of Sky, somewhere between dust and flight he dwelled,
and at long last, sailed into salt sorrow
for along the way he chanced to meet the Mother of Mysteries
Named her the sea, for mermaid-green she was
spacious and
unrelenting, large of mercy, cruel of justice
Saw her ferocious claws of tide
ribbon the cliffs in chains of bursting tears,
while all the while she kneeled like a psalm,
for he was Uncrowned, Hollow of Presence,
Even Mirror was more announced than he.
for he had no flawless Dream, no Flaming Deed
to leave
behind where worlds glide ropeless round.
Into broad lanes of sea he was wove,
held fast as a star in a cave
and lived in the caress of a sword
The Dolphins clothed him in crevasses
outfitted him in the husks of the world,
obscured him in an alphabet of atoms,
For Name is but tread, life's the whirlwind,
and He the
dancer, a shadow of the Sun
Till, when he drowned and was as jewel kissed,
summoned into raging dark
unmentioned, unknown even to Fable,
sunk to a place none could find him,
saying 'Now no longer shall I be orphan, be island
Then Mother of Mystery sings to him,
Her showers steal away his Shadows,
Then she choreographs him in leap, Knights him a River
and doubtless outposts him at the far corner of a distant rim
in a Morning Kingdom
Where I believe on the spine of a diamond's eye
he spins well-woven songs, rising dreams, and searing deeds
For life is but street, thrilled by a star
and I am but
cirrus, a moment of Swan.
Harvey Bornfield, Keams Canyon, Arizona, December 11, 1994
****************************************
"Are we having fun yet?"
the American cartoonist Bill Griffith's character
Zippy the Pinhead, expressing the core riddle of the Zeitgeist
****************************************
end stories
1) America: the Central Motif;
2) Bicycles: a Children's Christmas Story for Adults
and the poem:
3) the Gift of the Word
first
America: the Central Motif (by Patrick Dixon)*
*reprinted with permission, and at the same time with
a great deal of gratitude that this exists...
1.
It could be said that the American Dream
has lived within and accompanies the generalized westward motion of
those civilizations that are collectively known as the Post Atlantean
Epoch, comprising seven cultural ages (from 7227 BC 7894 AD)
The impulses for the Post-Atlantean
(Aryan) Root Race were taken east; and from a region in the Himalayas
the sowing of the seeds of those cultures that would begin their long
westwarding sun-following journey was brought about by the Seven
Rishis; who were the bearers of the seven Higher senses, as I'lands
that would descend upon an arising humanity in the future.
The five Islands sunk as the five senses
became immersed in the physical plane and the human being began to rise
above the sea of pre-individual clairvoyance; to see the Promised land
of ego-based consciousness. This condensation of and separation between
the watery and aerial mantles of the Earth (this fall of the sea out of
the sky) paralleled the fall of the Etheric body of the human being,
into closer proximity with the densifying physical body that was rising
into differentiation as the less defined etheric body was sinking. This
division between the water and air elements reverberated deeper and
higher, both densifying the earth as a receptacle for the more
gravity-bound water and dividing further the sub- and super-
terrestrial fires. Levels that were clearly defined to higher beings
then began to form into the Jacob's ladder that would be experiencable
to beings bound to a sense world losing consciousness of its
supersensible origins.
The great sequence of civilizations that
unfolded as the Post Atlantean moved generally in a westward direction,
focusing and converging towards the Incarnation in the Middle East. The
voyaging of the Sun against the eastward turning motion of the Earth's
material body was a reflected image of the Solar Logos as it moved
across the Earth, both entering more and more deeply into matter,
whilst also becoming more and more committed to strive against it and
transform it. This reached a climax in the event of the Incarnation, in
a body so constituted that it would be able to lead the newly formed
Ego being of humanity out of the dark severance into which it had
fallen.
The western experience (for people on all
landmasses) became archetypally associated with the setting of the Sun.
This picture has several meanings, one being the sinking of
consciousness down into the dark unconscious region of the Will, deeper
than the feeling realm of the heart, into a place from where there can
arise either the light magical acts of an awakened being, or the
nightmarish deeds of the self-darkened self. The dawn is a daily
remembrance of the time when the Sun left the Earth, just as dusk is a
presentiment of that future state when with all its transubstantiating
powers it shall rejoin our planet; and that which has poured light into
the eyes of physical sense shall dawn out of new eyes as a Spiritual
and soul Sun, new eyes that shall become one I that shall bestow life
and consciousness on all that it shines upon.
For this 'all seeing eye' to become an
all being I' it must set into the darkest, most separate place, die to
itself as the seed in the soil, give itself to the deepest purpose of
all, then by a mysterious alchemy, the Will of all shall surrender to
the one, and there shall arise a type of human being who will perceive
the Universe as being an Individual while they and other human beings
are experienced as being universes within themselves.
2.
The landmasses of Eurasia and Africa
extend from the Arctic to well south of the Equator but the greatest
area of land unfolds in an east west direction. The northern Hemisphere
is the one dominated by dry land; the southern is more fluid, womblike
and feminine, as the metabolic region of the body; and like the
interior depths of the body, it lives below the perception of normal
sense faculties or thought.
The dry land of the north was a basis for
the development of objective consciousness (the dryness of thought
rising as a continent above the seas of feeling). The Afro-Eurasian
landmass spoke of the Eastern past and of the Western future; it
neither completely remembered the one nor foresaw the other. The
Americas are the arriving at the future and the returning of the past
out of it.
The Americas stretch from pole to pole
linked by an almost continual belt of mountains. In Central America it
could be said the Eastern Pacific overreaches itself to almost touch
the Western Atlantic as it flows into the Caribbean. In this place the
meeting of the great eastern Water and the great western Sea and the
touching of the Northern Continent and the Southern landmass describe
an immense planetary cross of the earth and water elements. Here, also,
there rise in the chain of mountains many that are firetopped instead
of snowcapped, and blowing to and fro across these and up and down
their length are winds from every quarter It is a heart formed by the
rhythms that pulse into it, and like the heart in the human being it
receives and passes on influences from the upper to the lower pole and
back; and like the heart, it is located above the planetary, bodily
centre of gravity of the Equator. It could be called a dynamic centre
of levity.
The North polar ice cap, like a skull
enclosing, frozen over the more fluid brain, or, in another way, like
thought crystallized out of feeling, carries its cold conditions south
by way of the high spine of mountains that reaches down through the
Americas; and in this one can see how two conceptions of height and
upwardness are united, the upper pole of the Earth with its drier nerve
sense extremity, and the polar conditions that are found above a
certain height on all mountains. Special influences are received by the
Arctic from the constellations that are above it; the condition of the
water beneath the ice cap is highly receptive to cosmic influences
because it is far removed from the rapidly turning Equator and its
burgeoning life; these waters like a finely tuned instrument pass tones
of infra- and ultra- sonic frequency that are received by the myriad
fish and marine mammals that disperse down into the warmer waters; also
along the spinal cord of metals and minerals that are contained within
the backbone of mountains that straddle the Earth through the Americas
are passed magnetic forces and resonances not detectable by present
instrumentation; these are those received by the Poles from the Cosmos,
that advance and retreat, according as to whether the Pole is tilted
away from or toward the Sun.
At the other, Southern Pole, it is not an
enclosing of fluid, rather it is a rising out of it by solid land, just
as the solid bones of the limbs descend out of the soft fluidity of the
metabolic abdominal region. the cold of the upper pole is in a
spiritual sense the cold of thought, withdrawn and aloof, the cold of
the lower pole is the cold of the will that goes its own way that
separates and asserts itself against life; it is a cold that denies and
rejects the existence of others. The Antarctic is colder, stormier and
more desolate than the Arctic; in human and spiritual terms it could be
said that one is as an inner cold of the self, the other a far more
dire and active cold that spreads beyond the self and makes all others
as itself.)
The primary polarity of the poles to the
Equator is again divided in itself into a secondary polarity as to the
unique qualities of the North and South; in the great land bridge of
the Americas and along its length cross and mingle the currents of
these opposites. America was to be the place where human beings would
be able to bring harmony and equilibrium between the pole of Thinking
and that of Will and this made possible through the development of the
Heart center of Feeling. The longitudinal alignment indicates that no
longer journeying toward the Promised Land of reconciling these
extremes into a new conscious balance, the American will have arrived.
This is the real American dream, where each either attains mastery over
and harmony between the opposing tendencies of human nature, or is torn
to pieces by the conflict between them.
3.
Now we must enter upon a dark passage in
American history, that has cast its spectral shadow over all levels of'
manifestation, a tunnel that had no light at the end of it, which could
have brought the Fifth Epoch to a dead end. It takes a special light to
see in this darkness, but see in it we must, if we are to illuminate
with new understanding many of the difficulties and trials that America
has had to and still will have to face.
In Central America at the time when the
Solar Logos was incarnated in the Middle East there arose as a counter
Mystery of the heart, the practice of human sacrifice expressed in the
ritual of cutting out the heart and sometimes the stomach, and there
was also widespread ritualized decapitation; these practices vanished
and reappeared from then on in Central America right up to the time of
the landing of the Spaniards. However they were initially inspired and
for a very specific purpose at the turning point of Time (c.1-33 AD).
The being that instigated these dark mysteries knew full well that
anti-spiritual and materializing forces flowed most powerfully from
West to East; an attempt was made to sacrifice, remove the hearts, and
shed the blood of as may human beings as had been involved in the lines
of descent of the Hebrew people up to the Incarnation; and this
quantity of murders had to be performed within a limited amount of time
if they were to have the desired effect, for the initiator of this was
diabolically attuned to the Divine Mystery that was unfolding itself in
the Middle East, and through this was holding, as it were, a shadowy
mirror up to those events that would bring forth a reversed image of
all that was purposed in the deed of Christ. If this Adept of the dark
path had been able to work unhindered and deflect all the light
streaming from the acts of Christ into the reversing mirror, the
humanity of the future would more and more have become a shadow, a
benighted reflection, an inverted image of itself, where all good
intentions would be twisted, polarised outwards and manifest as actions
of evil effect.
However this being was hindered and
caught in his own mirror and all the intended effects were reflected
back upon their initiator, for another, a forerunner of those humans of
the future who will balance all the sides of their nature and solve the
equation of the Poles came with the Great Dream and with that fought
the American Nightmare so that the Dream could be realised in the
prophesied American Awakening.
Advancement on the sinistral path means
the decision to avoid self sacrifice, and the evasion of this,
inevitably leads to the sacrifice of others, for the giving out of what
has been developed inwardly is a process essential for the evolution
and movement forward of all systems. The primal aim of these rituals
was to prepare, through deliberate desecration, a climate, location and
milieu in which the Ahrimanic entity could work its purposes most
powerfully; this Being destined to incarnate and by this we mean, to
bring together in embodiment on the surface of the Earth, members of
its being that had previously been separated and formerly worked out of
different spheres; this incarnation would act as a lens that would
bring into focus the unified beam of its Will and its Intellect. But
there was one great obstacle to this, and that was the phenomenon of
human Feeling which at the time of the Incarnation of the Solar Logos
was to receive an irresistible strengthening. So the realm of Feeling
had to be cut out, removed from the inner Sanctum from where it was
ordained to bring about the transformation of the external world from
the Soul outwards. The heart is destined to 'come out' of the body when
it has evolved from its present physical objective noun state, in which
it is subjected to all the pressures and oscillations that work upon it
from the terrestrial and sub-natural planes, when it has again become
etheric, no longer bound by a physical form, but then become a
spiritual force, a verb, as it were, able to subject the world of dead
objects to its own ensouling powers that will raise the Physical
condition of Form and Mineral condition of life into higher states of
conscious communion.
Had the light hierarchies only been
involved in our evolution, the internal organ systems of animals and
particularly of human beings would never in their finished work-state
have been revealed to outer perception, but it was the activity of the
Luciferic that caused an enclosing away from and separating out of life
forms from their cosmic origins, and also a turning of the senses
outward while sealing off the organism from consciousness and vision of
what Divine cosmic Beings were bringing about within. Therefore it
became increasingly difficult for humanity to live in the lap of the
Gods, to bathe in the creative light by looking within; the consequence
of this was that the hierarchies began their withdrawal, sacrificing a
part of their being to become the foundation principle of the more
deeply incarnated human body. The ensuing opacity brought forth that
severance inherent in a physical and materialized condition of there
being one dimension that was visible and one that was invisible;
cutting in to, or bringing to the light of the human senses that
interior physical world (which can only be safely done by Christ
consciousness), removing it from its hidden matrix, meant endangering
or bringing to an end the life of that beingness. Exposing the Life
pole to the untransformed Consciousness Pole would bring about a
divisive death impulse, the converse exposure would bring about madness
arid chaos. Wherever there is confusion, order has been taken away;
wherever there is death, life has been taken away, somewhere else,
stolen into another realm that has no legitimate order or life of its
own. One of the signatures of the Adversaries is that they interfere
with the rhythmical time aspect of World development. And so, the heart
was taken out prematurely in a material state not brought forth in due
time as a redeemed power by individuals from within themselves, but cut
out by an entity outside themselves. This was so that the sacrificers
could grasp hold of the organ which had come to a completion as far as
the Higher creative Beings were concerned. Because these latter had
withdrawn, leaving the fruits of their Wisdom in its structure, the
Lords of the Dark Face knew that now was the time to unseal it, to tear
it out, before it was too late, before it changed from being an organ
of Cosmic Divine Wisdom to being one of Human Divine Love.
The after-effects, echoes and reverberations from these blood rites have been many and varied and will continue to work so long as we do not bring any heightened awareness to bear upon them: first, the removal of a rhythmical integrator; then, a closing of the gap left, the creation of a Ring of power so that, in the present world, the atavistic clairvoyance of an earlier state of feminine oneness (which the Mexican Mysteries wished to preserve in the Solar Plexus of the Amazon to the south) and the premature onesidedness of masculine intellectuality, as found in the modern United States, would have no mediating influence that would heal them both into a new relationship. Rather the head pole would impose its rigidifying logic of the inorganic upon the life pole; and that, in answer, would react with natural catastrophes and disasters, diseases of the Earth's metabolism.
The Middle East above the Equatorial
midline, was the place for the initiating of the evolution of the Heart
as being the heart of Evolution. Central America was the location where
the Heart won for itself, after a fearful attack had been launched upon
it, that magical capacity for reconciling the polarities that is the
essence of being human. Although the battle for the heart has been won
for the light, the preparation for the Incarnation of Ahriman goes on,
and though the full intention behind the Ritual murders was not
realised, many things were achieved through them, that can be felt in
every aspect of contemporary life.
4.
The history of North America and its
peoples reveals initially a tremendous activity of the Will in the
pioneers, but a will asserting itself against Mother Nature, and then a
correspondingly great activity of Thought, to devise the sciences that
would enable the imposition of the technological over the biological
and natural.
America is also the story of different
Races and how they have all been subject to the American Nightmare, how
they have all lived in the Dream and shall all participate in the
Awakening. It is a building with many stories and they are all
interconnected; it is the story of the Metals, how as Atlantis was
sinking, the Etheric essence of the seven planetary Oracles was taken
East, and the seven related metals sank further into a physical
condition in the West. The way cosmic forces were transmitted through
the planetary oracles of Atlantis reappears as the physical properties
of electricity and magnetism, which are residues of cosmic powers from
earlier times that have fallen under the influence of matter and
gravity.
America is a Nation of Races at the
present time. Before the arrival of the European, America was a Race
with many nations. The situation of a Nation overarching different
Races (some of which are again under different Folksouls) marks the
beginning of the end of the present Races: each can play their part in
attuning to the new moral and social imaginations that are proceeding
out of the Second Manifestation of Christ. The Red Indian, the Saturn
Race, in living closely within the cycles of Nature, helped to insulate
North America, from many of the harmful residual influences, that
worked northwards out of the darker Mexican Mysteries: when the white
Man came and largely displaced the Indian and their relation to the
land, these influences could begin to infect North America more
strongly: some of the Folksouls of the Black Race, in a gesture of
sacrifice, allowed their peoples to be enslaved, and as it were to be
inserted between the newly forming Nation of North America and these
Mexican forces: the Black Race absorbed these in being subject to
slavery; and like a new string in the great instrument, did much to
heal the damaged rhythmic system of the Continent.
The Indian Folksouls loosened a part of
their being from the physical Plane, sacrificing their oneness with
nature, and rose - transforming into a Time Spirit, that now and into
the future, will bring to all the Earth, in full wakefulness, the
harmony in which they lived as in a dream in a part of the Earth. Now
in the Happy Hunting grounds, they seek as the Spirit of the Echo -
Logos, awakened echoes in the Ego-sphere, awakened Egos in the
Ecosphere.
5.
There are certain events and phenomena in
the American story that are as it were templates that have already and
will further appear in other parts of the world; there is now a kind of
eastward flowback of social and consciousness forces of the American
Experience. The activities of souls, who are open at this threshold of
the West and East that is California, will occur as human acts of light
and darkness in the future all over the Earth. The American state goes
beyond its Western margin, and via the state of Hawaii closes its ring
of power through its influence upon Japan. On a deeper level the war
that involved Japan was brought about as part of the Adversary's plan
to permeate and inoculate the Orient with those Institutional, Social
and Economic structures that would later facilitate the incarnation of
a World Government. On a profounder level, this plan is merely part of
a much vaster one: the world Unity expressed in one Legal system, one
Currency, one Language, one Military, provides those things that
Ahriman shall attempt to enforce upon humanity prematurely from the
outside, having first created the world situation that seems to justify
those measures. This imposing of future forms prematurely (on a smaller
scale the introduction of intellectual abstract thinking into the
education of very young children) is actually initiated to prevent the
integration of the Ego into the Human Being within those rhythms of
development that alone make it possible for the person to come to
self-possession and responsibility to others. One language and Religion
would have within it a reemergence of Ancient Egypt; one Legal and
Military would recapitulate the Centralized power of Rome; one Currency
would replay the Hebrew and Mosaic Laws of property and the Babylonian
application of Number and work which on a small scale was used in
connection with slaves.
Before the Incarnation all humanity was
in a sense becoming enslaved to the Physical plane, and the enslaving
of others was the turning outwards of the idea of work. Both the
receding of consciousness of the spiritual behind Nature and the
darkening and hardening of substance turned work from being led by and
inspired by semi-Divine Beings, to being something that was enforced by
beings becoming demonic: from inspiration to perspiration. Yet this
slave-driving and wringing of sweat from large groups of people had its
place, because through this suffering and toil the astral body was
purified and was prevented from either falling asleep on the physical
plane or becoming completely diverted by it. This pain drew the I
closer to the embodied state and prepared the house to receive its
dweller. After the Incarnation, the idea of work was to become more
structured, more differentiated and individually chosen. Under the
influence of the Second Manifestation of the Logos we can expect the
meaning of work to evolve again to an understanding of the individual's
place in the Great Work. Outer work will become in the sphere of
Agriculture, Architecture, Chemistry and Medicine and many other areas,
both the conscious transformation of the self, and of the planet, into
higher conditions of Form and Life. The work of one incarnation will
also be remembered and picked up in the next; the sense of purpose and
fulfilment will extend beyond the limits of one lifetime and expand
beyond the bounds of one dimension; work will become being, inner and
outer work will become one in a way, as never before; and so masculine
and feminine, work and recreation will unite in joy and this Joy is the
seed that will be contained within the Love that is the fruit of this
Earth-incarnation of the Earth, this fruit to be formed on the Tree of
Wisdom that grew out of the living soil of the Old Moon state of our
Planet; the seed is the Joy of those human beings who will have
mastered the forces of Life and Death, and out of this seed will arise
the joyful creation of Jupiter.
The mission of the Earth-incarnation of
the Earth is essentially to bring about a harmony between Thinking,
Feeling and Willing; the basis of what would later manifest as human
Will being laid down upon the Ancient Saturn incarnation of the Earth,
that of Feeling upon the Old Sun embodiment and that of Thinking on the
old Moon, these three stages also laying down successively the germs of
the Physical, Etheric and Astral Bodies. This triangle and the other
ones of Goodness, Beauty and Truth; Religion, Art and Science; and
Bull, Eagle and Lion, represent principles that once balanced and
attuned will turn what is now being composed, into a living symphony of
Love that will be received into the Cosmos as a new Music of the
spheres; out of the great Pralaya, into which the Earth's planetary
body shall be carried by a Humanity changing its Earthly Form into a
Universal Force, the Planets, their solid body being leavened, being
spiritually potentised as it expands into the sphere of what was its
orbit, (this being the result of human beings loving in full awareness
across the threshold of Death), so the spiritual worlds shall become as
full of conscious human individuality as the Earth existence is imbued
with spiritual Community. There will come a point when the veil shall
be lifted and we shall see clearly where we have come from and where we
are going; physical sensations shall become soul experiences, all
subjective states shall be seen objectively for what they are, and all
that was previously the immovable dead world of outer objects shall be
subjected to an inner life so powerful that it will raise them to a
living inwardness in which there will seem to be No-Thing, nothing but
Being, no things only Beings. This will be a Pralaya of the second
order: this will be the womb out of which the Jupiter incarnation of
the Earth will be born.
The preparation of this distant future
state is active now and asks that we wake up more and more and
participate in it.
In this preparation, the purpose of pain
is partly to draw our consciousness to a certain area of our body or
being because that part needs healing, which means transforming; for
whenever we are healed, at whatever level, our condition is not simply
returned to what it was but returns on a higher curve of the spiral; we
re-cover, closing ourselves to the Healing activity of others (again
able to take up the full responsibility for our own health); we
re-cover processes that must remain hidden until our consciousness is
strong enough to enter into them and take them over. The premature
uncovering of certain soul and bodily faculties before they have truly
become our property, that is before we have awakened to the seeds
within us and how they should be nurtured, allows these seeds to be
taken and grown for other purposes.
This prematurity is one of the hallmarks
of America, having found the wealth of all the world, before having
found one's own soul America jettisoned the old forms of Church and
State and growing synchronously with the new forms of Technology, the
steamboat, railways and telegraph, it proceeded westward at an ever
increasing rate leaving first villages, then towns, and finally cities
in its wake. This first great wave determining the pattern of the next,
the establishing of trade routes, the arrival of the internal
combustion engine, the laying of roads, the American Engine shifted
into a faster gear: mineral resources from one part of the country were
freighted to another involved in manufacturing some product; this was
transported to a third place; the endless never sleeping circulation
had begun. The question of how to do things overtook the question of
why they should be done; it seemed unnecessary to ask why any more,
that was of the Old world. The New world knew what it had to do and
only asked of itself how it should be done. A tide of humanity was
surging in from the East; half of Europe seemed on the move. As if in
anticipation of this, the West had to be opened up. Forests had to be
cleared. The Indians had to conform or be fought. The coming of
motorized transport, mass production, aviation and the manifolding
power of Electricity spun the web into completion; the nerves of the
State now reached into all the muscles of the Nation; but what of the
land? Did it have and was it having surgery performed on it? Were its
vital organs being removed? Was its heart being cut out to make room
for a transplant from another part of the World? Modern America was now
embodied, as a new vehicle constructed, a new house built, but would
something try to steal that vehicle and drive it off the High-way of
evolution, into a cul-de-sac for humanity; some landlord take over the
house, and demand a rent the tenants could not afford to pay? The voice
of the Land, the Red Indian, was not heeded or even heard amidst the
noise of the accelerating drive of the New America. If it had, it would
have sounded a warning: to transplant the living heart forces from one
part of the Earth to another may be possible and necessary, to bring
about new life, but to remove the Heart of a land, then manufacture one
of materials that have not evolved within a body and implant it as an
artificial heart, will bring about either the rejection of that heart
or the death of the body into which the organ is introduced or both.
A great image of the desecration of the
land can be seen in much that has been done in the name of agriculture;
the deforestation of much of the broad-leaved deciduous forests that
stretched for hundreds of miles westwards from the Appalachians,
similar to the cutting down of the larger part of Europe's deciduous
temperate forests; this did much to the rhythmic system of North
America.
The natural zones that traverse the
landmasses of the Northern Hemisphere appear in belts or rings that
modify effects and influences that proceed up and down between the
poles and the Equator. This is seen very clearly in the Continent of
America with its pronounced North-South axis. The Arctic Ice cap and
Ocean yield to the Permafrosted Tundra; this surrenders to the
coniferous Taiga which in turn capitulates to great Plains, Evergreen
rainforest to the west, wooded hill country to the east; then into what
was the vast wooded region of the Forest Indians; this area then bows
down along all its varied front, gradually defeated by the vast tracts
of scrubland and semidesert to the west and the warm temperate wood and
grassland to the east, this region falls away through Mexico giving in
to the superior power of the Tropics, and running up and down through
all these changing zones, rise the mountains, varying in their
foothills as they stride from north to south, but little changed in
their heights on their peaks. From these serene and lofty heights a
vision of Eternal America may perhaps be beheld, a deep gaze and a high
seeing, that could stretch from the time of the American Sleep when it
lay beneath the sea of seeing before it rose to become a Land of Being,
through the American Dream, unperturbed, through the American
Nightmare, to the American Awakening when all gold that is trapped,
stolen out of the life into material darkness shall be dematerialised
and rise up as an inner Sun force dawning out of the transformed hearts
of human beings.
6.
Now we must descend again from such
poetic elevations, to the present time and those broadleaved forests.
Their partial removal has meant that cold air from the Arctic has been
able to descend further south less warmed than it should be and warm
air from the Caribbean has been able to go further North, less cooled
than it could be; though the great plains are a band that stretch
almost from the edge of the Boreal forests to the coastal plains in the
South, the grasses of the Eastern plains are generally taller and more
luxuriant. This factor like the Broadleaved forests of the East,
moderates movements of air and temperature within the day and night and
seasonal cycles. The interference with these is an afterworking of the
Dark Magician of the Mexican Mysteries; where the unmodified effects of
one Pole, the cold, are brought inappropriately and prematurely into
relationship with the hot Pole. This has definitely enhanced the
activity of what is known as Tornado Alley, (where approximately 700
tornadoes swirl annually, collectively equal to the power of one
hurricane).
The tornado is an external image of the
way in which forces work in the human being, when the modifying
activity of the heart-lung system is unable to relate the inner with
the outer and that which is below with that above, in the normal
balanced way. The tornado is a kind of meteorological heart-attack,
also stroke with the heat of the Metabolic system spiralling upwards on
one side and the cold of the Nerve sense system spiralling down on the
other; this, transferred within the human being, is similar to what
precipitates a heart attack*. The conception of the heart as being
merely physical, has the effect of taking it out of the soul rhythms;
this makes the middle system more subject to external temperatures and
pressures and the oscillations of the Earth's electromagnetic fields
which start to affect it adversely. And this is intensified by removing
the life cover of the outer environment, forests and such like, which
through the Etheric connect the Earth with the Cosmos. The drive
towards the denudation of the life realms of the Planet's surface, is
part of the Adversary's plan to bring about a uniformity of environment
causing a withdrawal of the Risen Ethers and a corresponding exposure
and surfacing of the fallen etheric matrix, which compels all organism
towards mechanism, denying the threefold lemniscatory movement which
socialises the innate antisocial tendencies of both the Metabolic and
Nerve sense Poles.
This polarity is expressed in two of the
most recent developments in technology, that of Nuclear Fusion and that
of Superconduction, the one needing tremendous heat, the other
requiring intense cold. Superconduction through the use of newly
discovered materials with certain impurities is getting warmer: Fusion,
it was recently claimed, was getting colder (this has temporarily been
denied - it may yet be achieved).
What is the significance of this? It can
be described as a convergence towards the temperature of human blood,
the two poles of a Being coming towards incarnation. The incarnation of
Ahriman focuses and compresses into one body and one locality. The idea
of Fusion and Superconduction are part of the American archetype in
many ways. Through the activity of Christ we are all participants in
the great Fusion programme, the fusing of the indestructible
individualities of humanity into a new Spirit of Form, a Cosmic
Pralayic chrysalis, out of which the imago of future states will arise.
All these self-important programmes of scientific endeavour, to draw
more energy out the material world for material purposes, are only
caricatures, parodies compressed into the mode of substance and
mechanism, of those nearly silent mighty processes of evolution through
which the superstances of Higher Beings are drawn upon by the inner
work and moral development of human beings for the transformation of
the Earth. The Sun is silent and yet without it there would be no
Music, no Sound, and no noise on this Planet.
*(the seed of the spiritual heart wishing
to open, meets the resistance of the Adversary, that aims to hold it
back, out of the stream of evolution, so that it remains bound in the
physical condition of Form & Mineral Condition of Life. It is this
meeting of the stirring seed, with the present conditions, that is
behind much Heart Disease)
7.
The fourth Occultism can really be called
that of the Musical (the Mechanical being more connected with Saturn,
Hygienic with Jupiter and Eugenic with the Moon respectively of the
West, the Central and the East). The Musical is of the Sun, and is of
the whole world harmonising the other three. And it was this Occultism
from the Sun Lodge (transformed from the Sun Oracle of Atlantis) which
held the mysteries of the Etheric body and its transformation into the
Life Spirit. It was this knowledge that lived in Vitzliputzli, Sun Hero
initiate of the sixth degree. In growing up he would have learned to
attune himself to the experience of the soul as music within the body,
and how out of the being of humanity there would arise that which would
raise the Americas into a mighty monochordal instrument, strung and
fretted with mountains, forests, plains and rivers, in which and across
which resounded the Elementals orchestrations of air, water and light;
how the Sun plucked the different zones into motion as it moved daily
from East to West and yearly North to South; in a fusion of the mystic
and the ecstatic he learned to hear the Music of the Spheres echoing
both in the depths of his inner self and in the elementals behind outer
Nature.
This Echo Logos (who was able to be and
echo the deed of Christ) would bring a tone to the Americas, that would
be sought in the Vision Quest of the North American Indians; and arise
again in a materialised form as the modern superhero, bringing harmony
to a society out of tune.
The human being as a bridge and a
conductor between the elementals and nature Devas and the creator
Beings of the Hierarchies, this was Vitzliputzli. Christ was the bridge
for the human soul back to the Spirit; the future mission of
Vitzliputzli could never be realised without the deed of Christ coming
to fulfilment, so the Light Magician of Mexico was drawn in to ensure
the success of Christ's task.
The deed of Vitzliputzli in overcoming
the Dark Magician, was one preeminently of timing, that is of Music.
Christ said not my will but Thine, and sacrificed Himself into the
discords of the whirling sympathies and antipathies of the Whirled and
stepped into the rhythm of the Passion in Harmony with the Father
Force. Vitzliputzli communicated this stupendous performance, to "the
dance of the elementals."
The Dark Magician tried to tap into the
discords of the Sixth interior Sphere of the Earth, which is connected
with the Earth's volcanism. Volcanoes in the Tropics, particularly in
Central America (because of the prevailing wind system patterns), have
a property unlike volcanoes in higher latitudes, of spreading the plume
of their effluvia over the entire Earth. The aim was to excite such an
intensity of hatred, such an outpouring of human selfishness, that this
would have reacted upon the sub-physical Fire Earth of the sixth
interior level so that this would have answered with a massive volcanic
eruption that could have cast a mantle, a pall of dust and debris,
around the entire globe. This would have been the dwelling place of
dark elementals, cutting out the Sun and the Cosmos, and making it
impossible for human beings to become anything but expressions of what
had existed in the interior of the Earth, but now enclosed it.( When
the first Atomic Bomb was tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the same
being was at work, constrained then and for the rest of Earth's
evolution to work through human minds benighted by Materialism; both
Nuclear winter and the words of the Revelation that speak of the Sun
being darkened are all related to this.)
What happened in Mexico was one great
attempt at this: the Aztecs feeding of the Sun with human blood was
brought about by a fear of the Sun going out if it was not nourished.
This fear was kindled by the Dark Magus - "the De-sol-ator"; in a
counter mystery of the Etherisation of the Divine Blood given by the
Solar Logos as eternal nourishment for humankind. The False Prophet,
another name for the Magician, through causing this new Atmosphere to
rise out of the interior of the Planet would also have gained for
himself, a new sphere-encompassing sheath to his body.
Vitzliputzli, through the presence of
Christ on Earth, was able to Orchestrate the elementals of earth, air,
fire and water, and the Devas of the mountains, the forests, the rivers
and the plains, and the Guardians of wood and metal to resound together
and subdue the sixth interior Sphere.
The anti-Christian feelings that
surrounded the Solar Logos during the Passion were to be the fuel which
from the Sixth Sphere, would have enabled Ahriman to have been sucked
out of and blasted through the Mineral Sphere, coming to power, in
turning the world inside out. The many murders performed by the
desolating One" had enabled him to project and incite such a blasphemy
of hatred, half away across the world in the Middle East. This power
and the knowledge of its use had been gained through a long established
pact with Ahriman.
The supreme moment had arrived, between
the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, before the entrance of Christ
into the planetary Etheric. It was then that the Earth's dark Shroud
was intended to come forth from the interior: but as in all suspenseful
drama, at the last minute of that eleventh hour, such a chorus
resounded from the Poles along the mountains, setting in motion chords
resonating through the great rings of forests, plains and metals, along
the mountain spine, (as notes of changing pitch moved the Devas linking
North and South, East and West, inspiring the sylphs of the rivers and
streams, and of the rising and falling airs), that the mighty American
Cross of the Elements reverberating through the Being of Vitzliputzli
as Echo-Logos for an eternal moment set into vibrant sympathy the Rings
of Mineral, Plant and Animal, elemental being and Deva around the
entire Earth, the Rings that remembered the encircling of Cosmic
Creator Beings, as they were whirling the World into being, the whirled
into seeing, (because of the fall, the landmasses had separated the
rings had broken, the peoples consciousness had fallen apart into
locality). This moment was both a memory, of the time before the One
Song had fallen into the many Languages, and also a prophecy, of a time
when the Rings shall again be reforged, by a world-encircling human
Imagination; when the broken rings shall be united and human feeling
shall girdle the Earth, as it did then in Vitzliputzli; when human
awareness shall encompass the sphere, and the Suffe-ring become a
spiral.
The power of the creator beings flowed
through him into their estranged offspring, the Elementals, and these
answered with a music that in its composing brought about the
decomposition of the Dark Magician's plan, so that what would have been
the terrible noise, which could have finally deafened the world, and
brought the Deaf-end of the planet, in which the Music of the Spheres
might never have been heard again, instead became the glorious hymn of
the Resurrection.
It was the love of Vitzliputzli for the
elementals and Nature spirits (this love made possible through the
Being of Christ) that brought to these Beings the idea of sacrifice and
heroism, which enabled them to participate with a human being, as they
would with all who would rise to a true Ecology in the future.
*
America struggles with its shadow and
dark reflection: this landmass was rediscovered, settled and
established synchronously with the descent from the higher worlds of
the great dispensation of Music that is based upon the interval of the
Third; this an image of the Devachanic descending to the Earth. The
transformation through Bach into Beethoven offers a kind of Memory of
the deed of Vitzliputzli; and a foretelling of the higher human being
of the future, who will bring Harmony between the rhythms of world
communities and the Melodies of Eternal Individuality.
**************************
second
BICYCLES
- a
Children's Christmas Story for Adults -
This story is
dedicated to Gabriella, Catherine Rose, Ross Gregory, and Adam, who
were on my mind Christmas Eve, 1996, as their fathers (of which I must
confess I was one) were absent from home for the Season. It was written
the following Christmas Morning.
There once was a girl, who found herself
weeping in the dark, alone in her room.
This is nothing unusual. Many people, not just children, can be found weeping, alone with their pain in the dark of the night.
But there was a difference. Although it
was not a difference as infrequent as we might imagine.
And the difference was this. While she
was weeping an Angel appeared, sitting quietly at the end of her bed.
It was quite a while before the girl
noticed the Angel. Yet, this did not bother the Angel, who had been, if
we do not mind, created out of patience and joy.
After a time the girl stopped weeping,
and the two simply looked at each other for a while.
Finally the Angel reached out and touched
the girl on the shoulder, and asked: "What is troubling you child?".
Now it is true that the Angel already
knew the answer to this question, but the Angel also knew that the girl
needed to talk about her grief.
This was the girl's answer.
"It is Christmas Eve." she said, "My
father and mother have quarreled and my father is not here. I don't
even know when, or if, he is coming home."
At this the girl, who was at that very
awkward age between being a child and being a young woman, began to
weep again, even more deeply then before.
After a while she stopped, looked at the
Angel and asked: "Why?" and, then began weeping some more.
Now you may wonder why the girl wasn't
troubled or confused by someone being in her room at night. The fact is
that when you meet an Angel there is no question about what is
happening. No doubt, no confusion. Angels aren't like anything else
except Angels.
This is how the Angel answered the girl.
"Are you ever bad?" asked the Angel.
"Yes", she said, a bit hesitantly.
"Are you ever bad on purpose, knowing you
are being bad?"
"Yes", she said, almost whispering now.
"Are you ever bad by accident, not having
thought about what might happen?"
"Yes", she said, a little more confident.
"Do bad things ever sometimes happen even
though you were trying as hard as possible to do something good?"
"Yes", she said, back to herself finally.
Then they sat together for a while. She
was thinking and the Angel just was.
"O.K.", she eventually said. "Mother and
father aren't trying to hurt me, and I didn't do something wrong."
"Right", said the Angel.
"But", she said, having just reinvented
philosophy, "Why is the world such a terrible place?"
After a very long pause the Angel said,
"It's because of the bicycles."
Now this was said with a straight face,
as much as an Angel can be said to have a straight face, their normal
countenance being filled with patient joy.
Even so, the girl's dark mood broke and
she laughed, and then caught in this odd feeling she tried to stop and
ended up almost falling out of bed because she was giggling so much.
Again there was a passage of time, so that the girl could ask her next question without breaking up. It actually took several attempts before she could get the question out.
"What do you mean by "it's the
bicycles"?" she said, pulling up the hem of her nightgown, as much to
distract herself as to dry the tears of both suffering and mirth.
"Well", said the Angel, "As you have
guessed the bicycles are invisible, being made out of ideas and dreams,
hope and despair, all stuck together with bits of conscience and just
plain stubbornness.
"Everyday people wake up and ride around
on their invisible bicycles, forgetting the bicycles are there and then
because they have forgotten them, people just keep banging into each
other.
"Soon all the bicycles are in great
disrepair. Some with flat tires, some with crooked wheels, and some
without even handlebars to steer by.
"It takes a great deal of courage for
people, for mothers and fathers, to get up in the morning and ride
their bicycles out into life each day. A great deal of courage."
Then the Angel was quiet again and so was
the girl.
After a while the girl, having graduated
from philosophy to theology, asked: "Why does God let this go on? Why
doesn't he fix the bicycles or make people learn how to ride them
without banging into each other?"
"Hmmm." said the Angel
Now before you imagine the Angel is
pausing to think, I should tell you that is not what was happening.
Angels do think, but when they do something happens. For Angels
thinking creates. The reason the Angel said "Hmmm" was so the girl
would first reflect a little about what she had said, before the Angel
answered her.
"Do you ever talk to God?" asked the
Angel.
"I think so," said the girl, tentative
again, and rightly so.
"You should you know.", said the Angel.
"You can't interrupt him, or bother him when he's doing something else.
He always listens. Always. And when you talk to him he never interrupts
you, never tells you he's heard it before or done it himself or knows
more than you. You couldn't ask for a better listener. And when you're
done he doesn't give advice, or tell you what to do, or criticize what
you've done or tell you, you aren't adequate. He just listens, and
accepts you and loves you, whatever you have to say."
Then the Angel asked another question.
"Do you ever get angry at God?"
"What!" exclaimed the girl. "Get angry at
God !?!"
"Of course." said the Angel. "God loves
you and wants your love. People who love each other get to be angry
with each other. It's a way to care. God doesn't mind your anger. Now
your indifference? That's another matter."
"O.K." said the girl, now a little more
in touch with her own frustration. "But you still haven't said anything
about repairing the bicycles or giving lessons on riding them."
"Didn't need to" said the Angel. "All
kinds of excellent repair and riding manuals already out there. There's
the Bible, and the Vedas, and the Torah, and the Koran, and the Sutras,
and the..."
"O.K.. I get it." she said, interrupting
the Angel, who didn't mind at all. Then she paused and thought a little.
"All right." she said. "This is what
you've said. The reason the world is so difficult is because we all
have our own ideas and dreams and conscience and stubbornness, and when
we go out and ride these "bicycles" in life we bang into each other, or
ride over each others feet, because we have forgotten about these
invisible things. But if we want riding lessons and repair instruction,
that information is already there. We just have to use it. Right?"
"Right." said the Angel.
"O.K." said the girl, after a very deep
sigh, "Just one more question."
"Granted God is the best listener in the
world, always available and never critical. But how come he never
answers me?"
This last was spoken with a great deal of
anguish, as only the very young can feel at the impossible burdens they
sense when they contemplate growing up and being really free and
responsible for themselves.
Again the Angel waited for a while, as
silent and beautiful as a starry winter night.
"How well do you listen?" the Angel
answered. "He always answers you, always. You just don't always hear
him. He answers in many ways. With the continued breath of life, or
with a fading sunset. With the touch of a breeze on the cheek or a
crash of thunder. In the most quite place inside yourself he whispers
to you. More softly then the endless beat of your heart he sings to you
in the voice of the dancing colors that delight the eye. You eat his
answers for breakfast and when you walk barefoot through the dew wet
grass his answers touch your feet.
"Do you have eyes, ears? Or if not even
these, you have the thoughts you choose. You believe or not. Is that
not a great gift itself? To have faith or not, hope or not, charity or
not, according to your own will. God does answer. With life, with
freedom. And yes, with sorrow and with pain. Are these not gifts as
well?"
Again there was a harmony of silence
between the two of them. Then the girl smiled and looked mischievously
at the Angel.
"Do you have a bicycle?" she asked.
Then the Angel laughed. And outside the
girl's window the birds sang to greet with joy the first hints of dawn
on Christmas morning.
**********************************
third
"the gift of
the word" very much wants to be read aloud, with some passion and the
occasional rush of words. It also likes to have someone read it
to us, so that we may concentrate only on "hearing" it.
the gift of the word
Speech, / Words, letters, sounds, / heard by both the inner ear and the outer.
Letters, sounds, words, / linked invisibly to ideas and thoughts.
Ideas, thoughts, letters, sounds, words, / a woven tapestry of meaning,
carried by Speech, / sometimes with grace, / but most often just carelessly.
Meaning, / a weaving of thoughts, sounds, words, letters and ideas,
spoken into the air and left there, / abandoned.
Words, spoken and heard. / Meaning intended. / But what is heard?
That which is heard is also intended. / Two intentions, two purposes, two meanings.
How difficult then communication, / suffering as it does the contrary pulls of multiple intentions, purposes and meanings.
I speak, you listen. / I mean, you grasp. / Somewhere in this delicate dance of words, sounds, letters, thoughts, ideas and purposes; / understanding is sought after.
Perhaps. / Sometimes.
Voice. / Speech reveals the unspoken. / Anger, fear, pride, arrogance, true humility.
The ear of the heart hears what is hidden in voice.
Posture, gesture. / Speech is more than sound. / The eye hears things the ear cannot, just as the ear sees things the eye cannot.
One mind. / Two minds. / Speech a bridge of woven light between two minds, and sometimes, although rarely, / between two hearts.
Speech, rich and full of flavor, / a light bridge, / joining two separate beings.
Speech denatured, / No sound, no gesture, no posture, no voice.
Speech reduced to lines of dark on light. / Written. / A treasure map in code spilled across a page
Words, letters, ideas, thoughts, sounds, / reduced to marks upon a parchment. / Speech dying.
Yet, / even in death, murdered by pen or pencil mark, / some essence of Speech still.
Meaning embalmed. Understanding buried. / Until read.
Reading. / Words, sounds, letters, thoughts, ideas, meaning, purposes, intentions,
Speech resurrected in the silence of another mind.
Speech. / Light bridge dying into print, / reborn when read in the inner quiet of another soul.
Speech, / The Spoken Word. / Writing, / The Word entombed. / Writing read, / The Word resurrected.
That this is so, / that human beings live in such an exalted state having Speech, this is Grace.
The spoken word, the written word. / Things so ordinary, so taken for granted, so pregnant with possibility.
The emptiness between two souls is always
/ chaste, virgin, pure, / waiting for Grace, for the bridge of light, /
for Speech.
The Gift of the Word, originally called Speech, was written on
Epiphany, Jan. 6, 1997, in the evening, in about a third of an hour.