West and East

or Wendt’s “critique” of Osho’s critique of Rudolf Steiner



<{ "this and that", my reflections on the four noble truths }>

A lot of confusion exists in the Cultural West due to the penetration of that culture by the religions and spiritual teachings of the Cultural East.  Rudolf Steiner gave a whole lecture cycle on some of the related questions: West and East: contrasting worlds (Vienna, 1-12 June, 1922).  Near the front of that book we find this language (which I assume was meant to be attributed to Steiner, but does not clearly say so: “The will of the West must give power to the thought of the East; the thought of the West must release the will of the East.

In the material below a small step is hoped to be taken on such a journey.

A great deal depends upon the point of view we take, which point of view can and should vary.  So, for example, from a certain (and necessarily limited) point of view the incursion of Eastern thought into the stream of American Culture could be seen as a kind of pollution of that Culture.  American Culture, from this same point of view, could also be seen then as a battleground between the so-called Wisdom of the East and the Scientific Materialism of the Center.

Already just with this language I have confused two things that will be better understood as distinct on the one hand, yet part of a whole on the other.

A careful reading of Steiner reveals that he (from one point of view) divided the World into East and West (as in the lectures above), and from another point of view he divided the World into East, Center and West.   Why?

Humanity has a spiritual evolution, which can be differentiated from its soul evolution.   The spiritual evolution is more concerned with our understanding of the nature of the I or the ego, and the soul evolution is mostly concerned with those powers of the soul Steiner pointed to with the ideas of thinking, feeling and willing.  It is the spiritual evolution that seems to divide the spiritual and religious history of humanity into the Cultural East and the Cultural West.   It is the soul evolution (of consciousness) which divides the world into East, Center and true West (the Americas).

It will help to back up a bit.   In my book American Anthroposophy I bring together Steiner’s teachings on the Fall of Atlantis with some of the content from the Hopi Prophecy of the Coming of the True White Brother (Recollecting the True Roots of the American Soul - America’s aboriginal Peoples and the Hopi Prophecy).  The Hopi oral history remembers this time (the Fall of Atlantis), and discusses this in its ideas of the younger and the elder brothers, with the younger going to the West (from a land that was being destroyed), while the elder was to go to the East, there to wait until a call for help came from the younger brother, because the younger brother’s way of life was almost completely destroyed (this is essentially true now for all the aboriginal peoples of the Americas).  In this time of great crisis according to the Hopi  Prophecy (which coincides with the time period marked by the  end of a Great Cycle of the Mayan calender), the True White Brother may/will come from the geographic East to aid the younger brother, carrying with him the life plan for the future.

As Rudolf Steiner tells this same story he mostly emphasizes the journey East of certain communities from Atlantis to an area near the Gobi Desert, from which then all the civilizations of the East are generated, and which grow and develop over those periods Steiner describes, as the first four post-Atlantean epochs. Then 2000 years ago when the Creator God (or an aspect of the same, depending upon one’s theological point of view) Incarnates and, in the process of sacrificing its divinity to become human, goes through the gate of death.   This deed changes a great deal in the fundamental nature of reality, but we still need more back story before adventuring that understanding.

The mystery developments in the East were not all of a kind.   While the Seven Holy Rishis gave birth earlier to Vedanta and subsequently then to the Hindu religion, it was some millennia following that, around the year 3100 B.C., that a certain change occurs when (according to Steiner) Lucifer incarnates in China and then is brought into one of their mystery schools.   One later and slowly maturing effect of this incarnation (supposedly climaxing around 600 B.C.) is the appearance of the Confucian impulse as well as the inspiration for the work of Lau Tzu.

In Confucianism we find the tendency in the social to fix the  incarnation of the group soul through the ideals of the spiritual importance of filial and other relationships.  The still evolving ego’s moral choices are starkly and strictly delimited via Confucianism.  At more or less the same time, in the Way of the Tao (Lau Tzu), we find the idea of the superior man - the sage*.  For the Chinese this degenerates after a while into the Han religion and the role of the Mandarin (the superior man or sage as the social leader).  If we read current history, as being made in China today, these degenerate (aging and sclerotic) ideals of the Han religion and the Mandarin seem to be experiencing a resurgence.

*[The sage controls without authority, And teaches without words; He lets all things rise and fall, Nurtures, but does not interfere, Gives without demanding, And is content. From the Dao de Jing]

In Tibet, in the Bon religion as it developed there thousands of years ago, we have the remains of Atlantean magical knowledge, and the creation of a long lasting theocracy as the primary means of social order.  The Tibetan Lama was/is both a secular and a religious leader - a spiritual adept who rules society.  With the incarnation of Gautama Buddha, also around 600 B. C., we have the beginning of a modernization of all those impulses, radiating  out from India, as all of the East over time assimilates these profound Buddha teachings.  Then when the Chinese invade Tibet in 1949, this pushes out onto the World (and particularly into the spiritual West) some aspects of these very ancient magical teachings and traditions, which had been somewhat remodeled through the influence of Gautama Buddha.

Steiner had already noted the influence on the soul Center of the world in the arriving in Central Europe of the Bhagavad Gita in the late 18th Century.  While this is somewhat later in time, it is also a kind of parallel cross-infusion of East and West that began as far back as when Alexander the Great spread Hellenism to the East.   Even the Christian Gospels note some of this ongoing and complex intercourse between the two basic world Cultures when they describe at the Birth: wise men came from the East.

But spirit and soul evolution cannot be inhibited (although they can be missed out on by individuals), and with the Incarnation of Christ (as an aspect of the Creator Being), even Gautama Buddha was changed (though no longer incarnate).   As a consequence of the Incarnation of Christ, the Buddha subtly altered the nature of his spiritual influence so that there eventually came to be the Bodhisattva Vow, where instead of the modern Buddhist seeking to get off the Wheel of Life (seek Nirvana), this Buddhistic Impulse now pledges to not seek to leave the Wheel of Life until all sentient beings can be enlightened.

 

Obviously, in its details, this is all very complicated, and the above therefore a perhaps dangerous oversimplification ... the reader should do their own detailed research.

To turn to Osho ...

One of the religious ideas of the Cultural East is the teaching of self-development as a thing in itself.  In this we find a remnant of the idea of the superior man - the sage.  The guru - the spiritual teacher - has accomplished something we have not, and now we are to study under him (or her) in order to learn to develop our own spiritual perfection.  Thus we find the Zen Masters, the Tibetan Lamas, and the Yoga Masters and all the other similar spiritual teachers, including those Westerners (particularly Americans) who have anointed themselves as teachers of enlightenment or yoga or Buddhism after traveling for a time in the East (such as Andrew Cohen).

Now such as Osho have a very peculiar condition, which is that while they want to speak of their particular Way as overcoming the limits of mind (and of ego), they cannot teach without using language.  Just in this fact, mostly not noticed in their teachings, they reveal the presence of a kind of thinking-mind, for there is no speaking/thinking via modern consciousness without forming cognitive conceptualizations of that concerning which we desire to speak.  Not only that, most of these teachings are rooted in ancient systems, and thereby in ancient conceptions buried in the language by which the tradition is transmitted from one guru to the next.  Owen Barfield in his book Saving the Appearances: a study in idolatry, describes the core of this kind of thinking as figuration* and distinguishes it from the far more conscious kind of thinking we call theorizing and reflection.

*As regards figuration: By the time we leave the comforts of home for the school (and/or life) we possess language, and language exists in us most semi-consciously in figuration, which is our recognition of all the familiar objects in our lives (both internal and external), without our having to name them.   We just semi-consciously know what these objects are and what they mean.  In its details, figuration varies all over the world according to cultural and language differences, as well as individual biographical differences.

If we are of the Cultural East, and we at a certain point in time enter more deeply into one or another form of religious or spiritual life there, we find (and are taught) a way of seeing the world consistent with our early childhood figuration capacities, particularly those related to religion.  We fit into this matrix of language and meaning, which our cultural influences have already embedded in our consciousness through the very meaning of most of the words in our language, our developing religious or spiritual understanding as that is being transmitted to us by our guru.  Of special import are the words and concepts concerning our interior life.

At the level of this semi-conscious figuration what the words mind and ego mean in the Cultural East is completely different from what the words mind and ego mean in the Cultural West.  You could say that the conceptual-meaning baggage attached to each matrix of meanings in both West and East are entirely at odds with each other.  All languages are interdependent with their culture, and the complexities of these interdependencies are significant.  Moreover these complicated interdependences of meaning are seldom noticed in dialogs concerning the modern intercourse between Eastern and Western cultural thought.  Even the idea of differences of religious traditions hardly touches the underlying psychological reality.  East and West do not see the same sense world, nor do they see the same interior world, via the underlying differences in the processes of language acquisition resulting in a specific cultural figuration.

The reader may now understand why I described above (from this point of view) the incursion of Eastern thought into American Culture as a kind of pollution.  To accept the ideal of enlightenment (of the the superior man - the sage/guru) requires of the real ego-nature of a highly individualized human being in the Americas (the leading edge of the evolution of  individualization) that it deny its own spiritual heritage/meaning.  This means, for example, that a person raised in America religiously as a Christian or a Jew, will in adopting and adapting to Eastern thought mostly sleep through the aggression this does toward that aspect of their soul that is rooted deeply in our religious feelings, from when we are young.

If we discuss carefully with them the religious thinking of such individuals, we find that they have Christianized (for example) their Eastern religious conceptions because of the underly dynamic in the feeling life left over from their upbringing.    The soul does not tolerate disharmony easily, and will instinctive bring East and West together in how it views the world.

This same natural religious heritage from our upbringing is also placed in conflict, via education, within modern individuals in the Americas through the incursion of the concepts of scientific materialism, including the idea that the human being is only matter and never spirit.  In America (the USA), and the Americas to a slightly lesser degree, there is a battle going on between the spiritual ideas of the human being out of the East, the spiritual ideas of the latent aboriginal younger-brother spiritual life, and the underlying materialistic pollution* of Western languages with such concepts as there is no mind or self, but only a material physical brain, which conceptions mostly began their rise to dominance during the late 19th Century in the soul Center of the world.

*[See Barfields’s History in English Words.]

While some may find this next concept disagreeable, as an aside we have to consider to what degree the aboriginal spiritual life of the Americas is still vital (living) enough to confront either the sage-Wisdom of the East, or the materialism of the Center.  The Hopi Prophecy expected that there would have to come something from the outside - the True White Brother with the life plan for the future, otherwise the spiritual life of the younger brother peoples would succumb.  Does this mean there is no value to aboriginal (Earth- centered) spirituality?  No.

With the perception of this battle we can now perhaps perceive that from another point of view, the ideas of the Cultural East represent (at this moment in time) a kind of saving grace, for they are powerful in their opposition to scientific materialism (all is matter there is no spirit).  Here we see this then - Steiner’s view: The will of the West must give power to the thought of the East ...

However, like most central Europeans, Steiner overlooks the significance of the spiritual life of the savages* in the Americas.  *[His choice of words on at least one occasion.]

Americans, in consenting to embrace Eastern thought (while not noticing that what they mean by the same words - ego and mind - is not what is meant by the gurus) give power to something that inhibits scientific materialism  - our will takes the spiritual thoughts of the East as a sword and shield against the further incursions of materialism.  This is part of the reason Steiner used the language of Theosophy with its strong tendency to Eastern meanings.

At the same time, in the Americas aboriginal teachings also have a strong influence, and are not to be discounted.  These too serve to resist scientific materialism.

Osho didn’t understand  any of this, or the significance of Rudolf Steiner in leading us through the difficulties of this battle.  Osho, being imprisoned in the figuration (semi-conscious thinking) of his own psychology, is not able to realize that Steiner’s The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is a solution to a problem most thinkers today don’t even recognize exists.  Mind and ego have evolved since the time of the Holy Rishis, and are full of potentials that most traditional mind sciences of the Cultural East do not even imagine lie latent within.  Not only that, most aboriginal teachings in the Americas are similarly limited.  Why?

The central matter is time.  Systems of wisdom have a birth, age, and then die.  No tradition is meant to last forever.  This the Hopi Prophecy recognized - their way of life would be on its last legs when the True White Brother came.  Most of the teachings of the East do not seem to have understood this about themselves - they act as if their truths are eternal (and this to shall pass is the real wise stance). 

In order, in our time, to discover the real nature of mind and ego in its present evolved configuration in the modern human being, in whatever region of the Earth where we choose to explore our own psychological and spiritual biography, we must become a scientist of the own mind.   This is the path shown by Rudolf Steiner.   Science did not exist at the time of the Holy Rishis, or even at the time of Gautama Buddha, and certainly not when aboriginal teachings were first fostered.  Scientific objectivity is a brand new capacity of human nature in terms of the evolution of consciousness (the onlooker separation).  When Steiner placed the quest for individual freedom inside the scientific enterprise with his book (originally translated as The Philosophy of Freedom), he did not even mention spirit (although in the criticized 1918 revision he changed this).   The original (pre-1918 edition) is all about the practice of scientific introspection without any linkages to the later Spiritual Science - and through the inspiration of this book we can become scientists of our own inner nature, and have no need whatsoever for Guru’s (superior men/sages/gurus) of any kind (even such as Steiner).

The Cultural West in its most recent past and on into the  future is instinctively avoiding the teaching of self-development as a thing in itself (although the Anthroposophical Society seems confused on this question).  With the Creator’s modeling of the washing of the feet, the superior man disappears and the self-sacrificing servant of all arrives (the Christ Impulse).   The servant, while engaging in developing his capacities, does this for self-chosen moral reasons (see The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity).  His freedom is entirely creatively interdependent with his growing and developing conscious free moral autonomy (three steps in character development for each step in spiritual development).  A by-product of this freedom is the capacity to create new thought - concepts never before thought, and therefore there arises through this means not just the overcoming of all tradition, whether of East or of West, or even aboriginal, but also the specific overcoming of the limits of scientific materialism.

Let me elaborate this idea a little bit ...

While we can look at Steiner as a teacher of self-development, the primary reality of his work was educational - he added to human knowledge on a scale few individuals ever accomplish.  Teaching about self-development was secondary and necessary in the sense that people would need to know how  to do what Steiner did, should they wish to do this themselves.  In this he modeled for us the Western Way (we could say).

People follow this, so that Barfield adds greatly to human knowledge, as did George Adams Kaufmann, Dennis Klocek and many others inspired by Steiner.   Before Steiner, even the Romantics such as Coleridge, and the Transcendentalists such as Emerson, basically added to human knowledge.

This, the sage/superior man/guru does not do.  They fundamentally teach their religious ideas of individual self-development and liberation from the mind and the ego, but nowhere take up the task in this scientific age of adding to universal human knowledge.   As Tomberg points out in the last article in the book Early Articles: Indian Yoga and Christian Occultism: the choice [is] between ... “self-liberation” and “Washing the Feet”

The free man uses his own free* cognition to liberate all of us by adding to our universal (scientific) knowledge, without placing his own being (as a teacher) in the center of his life’s work.  Even the evolving News for Members of the Anthporosophical Society in America, called: Being Human, is noticing the importance of what it calls spiritual-scientific research.  Hopefully in the future certain needed precise distinctions will be added to that work, so that present confusions being pointed out by the little book (Manure etc.) can be overcome.

*[One must be able to confront and idea and experience it, otherwise one will fall into its bondage.  R.S. last sentence, original preface, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity]

The free man dies into his creativity, and into his individuality, revealing thereby deep aspects of this Mystery from Christ’s teaching:

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*. Matthew 10: 34-40 The Unvarnished Gospels, by Andy Gaus.

*[the meaning, hidden here in the last two sentences above, can be stated in another way: The I is the true seed of the Father.  No one gets to the Father except by me (Christ).  I (Christ) and the Father are One.  Not I, but Christ  in me, is how the human being takes hold of self-ness and transforms that seed toward is full potential, following through the Christ in me to the Father seed hidden in the deep will of the own I.]

 

At the same time a certain problem remains, and must be acknowledged.

The pollution via the Guru remains active in the true West, as well as elsewhere.  Even in the East this approach has begun to outlive its usefulness.  The evolution of consciousness is everywhere on its way to fostering individuality, as a necessary step for the coming into being of moral freedom (or ethical individualism).   The core problem is hidden in the figuration - the semi-conscious concepts of inner and outer reality born in our acclimation to our own languages.  Like scientific materialism in the Cultural West, the Cultural East carries in its figuration a whole set of “idols” buried in the meaning of most of its words (its collective representations - Barfield). 

As part of the longer term evolution of the spirit (of the ego or I) this conceptual prison in which the I finds itself exists precisely to be overcome.   Only through waking up to this prison born in language (One must be able to confront an idea ...) do we engage in the next steps necessary for our future development in freedom.  Christ’s Incarnation actually changed the nature of the ego, setting it on the course of its present development where even external spiritual paths will be lost, and the individual biography becomes a fully individual Way all in itself.  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ... anything: including particularly a priest, or sage or guru or initiate or shaman seeking to telling me how to be me - this sage/guru relationship is to die, so that only my own i-AM (the verb that lives) determines all.

Yet, the Guru remains seductive as a possible teacher.  Why?

Since the East has yet no true science of the soul* (only a very ancient tradition), it lacks an appreciation of certain aspects of the modern nature of this inner territory needed for the present-day journey toward being fully awake and free, and confusion is present everywhere, mostly because everything has evolved since these traditions first formed their teachings.  Mostly the East holds the view that the soul (the astral or desire body) is part of maya, and one overcomes it (becomes liberated from it) by ignoring or disregarding it on the way to disregarding even the I.  Even Gautama Buddha taught this.

*[That once ancient territory of the reality of the soul and spirit is no longer well mapped, except by Steiner via GA 2, 3, and 4.   After which, if we succeed at that task, we then graduate to Anthroposophy - a fragment*, where the newly born organic and pure thinking capacities of the I are turned to the study of the gateway to the macrocosm -  the microcosm: in the form of the Ten Senses - plus two boundary conditions, and the Seven Life Processes) - see http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/afragment.html]

Also present in the Eastern traditions is a strong memory picture from the farthest ancient times of human spiritual and soul evolution, which Steiner describes as a time when human beings were still united directly with the world of spirit, although more in a state of dreaming than the full intensity of modern I consciousness.  Barfield calls this: original participation.

This memory picture does not contain the idea that the ego evolves, nor does it contain the idea that the world of pure being (Steiner’s spiritual world) evolves either.  In writing about this and the next ideas I am giving examples of: the thought of the West must release the will of the East.

The East then lies in bondage to these no longer valid memory pictures.   As a consequence the superior man (the guru) teaches that self-development needs to take the course that the ego is to be abandoned, as well as the mind - the believed to be illusory soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing.  The tradition bound beliefs of the East hold that only through these ancient paths will the being-nature hidden in the human being find its way back to the original remembered source (seeking an atavistic return to original participation). 

Osho, like many other Gurus, in entering into the background semi-conscious being nature which Barfield has called figuration also finds there a connection to Lucifer.   In the West, Steiner tried to bring us awake to the double - to the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman in the own soul.  Unfortunately, the Anthroposophical Society in the present has so far failed to seriously take up Steiner’s indications here, with potentially grave consequences for the next phase of spiritual history for the whole world.

For teachers of Eastern wisdom, when they let go their ego and seek to rise into the pure essence Being of all Existence, they have to travel through what in the West is called the Realm of the False Holy Spirit, or Lucifer’s Realm.   Lacking a scientifically clear map of this territory, and bound up with all kinds of ancient and atavistic traditional ideas of these realms, teachers of the East often find themselves caught up in the unearthly wisdom world of their luciferic double via an identification with this aspect of the lessor Guardian of the Threshold.   The Guru, believing still in the ideal of a higher knowing (the superior man), stands as regards his or her students in the same prideful place as does Lucifer.  As a result they give the appearance of a teacher of wisdom, when in fact they are basically selling the luciferic point of view, which was already laid deeply into the Eastern cultural part of the world following Lucifer’s incarnation.

Clearly this is not true of all guru-like teachers - this identification with the luciferic double.  Yet, the fact remains that in the thought-world, the guru-like teacher has a strong tendency to draw forth concepts that are themselves atavistic - old and no longer valid for modern conditions of the ego (spirit) or the mind (the soul’s thinking, feeling and willing).  Chogyam Trungpa, a very popular Tibetan Lama in America (who fathered the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado), speaks in the lectures collected under the title Meditation in Action: “There is no I, there is no am.

A similar event is taking place in the Cultural West (and flowing all over the world), although in this case it involves Ahriman’s incarnation and the seeming triumph of scientific materialism.  The ahrimanic double influences our Culture in the West very strongly (and through us the entire culture of the planet).  Ahriman wants to bind us eternally to matter and the earth (such as by making us believe we will be able in the future to move our consciousness into a computer in a robot and live forever).   Lucifer wants to bind us in the opposite way - prematurely to a purely unearthly spiritual existence (the atavistic memory of original participation labeled by the Buddha: Nirvana).

Both would have us sleep through the influence of Rudolf Steiner’s teachings as the John the Baptist figure of the true Second Coming - the voice crying in the wilderness of scientific materialism, pointing toward this truth: and the Word became thought and dwelt within* us.

*[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.” [emphasis added]

If we appreciate the underlying aspects of the ongoing evolution of the spirit (the ego or  I), and the ongoing aspects of the evolution of the soul (thinking, feeling and willing), we can come to an appreciation of what a few students of Steiner call: the onlooker separation.  With the birth of natural philosophy (science) in the Cultural West (and soul Center) in Europe, the I transformed fully its original connection to the spirit.   We stepped out of the atavism of  original participation, and entered into an intermediary state.  This rite of soul passage is available to be experienced all over the world as we go into the future. 

It can be the world-destiny of Anthroposophy to model and provide (over the next 300 years) that understanding which lets all religious and spiritual views find their way to this truth, without abandoning the richest elements of their own traditions.  But this cannot be done by telling this story and relating it to Rudolf Steiner as an authority.   We must live it and demonstrate it through processes that advance universal knowledge, without making self-development or religious intolerance* the center of the work.  We serve (communion-with).   We do not determine (dominion-over).

*[It is subtle and dangerous religious intolerance that lives among anthroposophists whenever any kind of exclusionary or exclusive thought or impulse is but forward, as Prokofieff does, for example, when he suggests that only we have the true path to Michael - see Appendix Two below.]

The next phase, on whose threshold we now stand, is what Barfield called; Final Participation, which is the conscious reunification of the I with the world of spirit, and without a surrender of individuality.  What was earlier characterized as a battlefield in America is also an encounter, which carries the possibility of healing.  To appreciate this we need to keep in mind Steiner’s observation that in many instances the cure for an excess of the ahrimanic is the luciferic, and the cure for an excess of the luciferic is the ahrimanic.  In the collision of the atavistic somewhat luciferic wisdoms of the Cultural East, as well as the too earthly aboriginal wisdoms of the Americas,  and the ahrimanic scientific materialism of the Cultural West in America, even though all are tending to onesidedness, their meeting can bear great fruit, although this process may take many centuries to accomplish.

The accomplishment manifests if the individual finds their way to Anthroposophy, in the sense of Anthroposophy being a path of cognition (a method of spiritualized thinking, and not a content  such as the teachings of Spiritual Science).  Factually, as individualism proceeds on its course, all human beings can become natural anthroposophists, for Anthroposophy is not a doctrine but a human potential.  When we are on our Path, and recognize our Way, we can then take hold of the underlying spiritual power now latent in the ego or I.  But we could use the help provided if some kind of idea or concept of this Path can become present in newly being created world-wide cultural figuration (the end of one civilization and the founding of another).

Further, we can realize that since the Path and Way are individually ours, we are always right where we need to be.   There is no something (such as the superior man etc.) that we have to become.  We, in our own biography, are just fine.  Whether we ourselves want to change something, that is up to us. Life, in fact, does change us.  Life is the great teacher, and being of and from Christ the Creator (... in it (the Word) was life and the life was the light of the world ...), we (as pointed out above) need never want.

Much is at stake, much is at risk, and as is said: fortune favors the bold.  The I itself must understand and then act.   No one will do this to us from our outside, although perhaps in the future the figuration of yet to be created cultures and languages will contain just what is needed to support the eventual possible full spiritual maturation of all individuality (what the bodhisattva vow presently calls the enlightenment of all sentient beings). 

The ongoing tragedy of the Anthroposophical Society is, however, that it does not yet fully understand and appreciate this task and may as a result fail to bring to light the real significance of Anthroposophy for the Third Millennium.  Steiner’s true legacy - the awakening to our true cognitive potential - may disappear into a kind of cultural formless and uncreated state and thus be lost for a thousand years or more.  If this happens then scientific materialism will dominate the Third Millennium, retarding general human spiritual progress on all levels.

Its not just Osho that doesn’t understand Steiner, but far too many of the members of the Anthroposophical Society don’t understand Steiner either.

Joel A. Wendt*

in the Season on the cusp of Easter and St. John’s Tide, 2011

*author of The Art of God: an actual Theory of Everything