See Know Evil

We can easily discern in the world today that which most of us would call evil. Evil seems to be everywhere around us in various forms in varying degrees. In the coming months, we will explore those spiritual forms of evil behind the happenings in the outer world and in ourselves. We will try to examine them as they exist on either side of the balance we discussed in June 2021 (Hanging in the Balance). In taking up the discussion of evil, today we will focus on how it exists inside of each one of us.

Various practitioners advocating for our healthy inner lives steer us away from acknowledging our own complicity with evil. But at the end of the day, none of us buy that we are blameless for the bad things we’ve done in our lives. We are haunted by them, and we are scared to confront the worst of them. We want to believe we are good people—and we are—but we also aren’t.

Evil may be a concept we are encouraged to avoid when we consider our own selves, but acknowledging our own goodness is just one aspect and can in no way be considered a complete picture of who we are. As we’ve pointed out in the past few blogs, we humans are infinitely complex. Evil exists in the world we live in, and one of the many places it exists is inside us. We need to find the right tools to think about it.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

…It is surely not too far-fetched to think that important questions, such as that about the origin of evil, have not been able to be answered for the very reason that people were so reluctant to go beyond the kinds of knowledge and perception which depend upon these senses and this sense-bound reason; and so were unable to attain a different sort of knowledge…

It is perhaps legitimate to ask what results we are likely to obtain if we really try to pursue this path of spiritual research—which I have frequently described, and which is presented in detail in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Of particular interest to us today is the way in which what we normally call evil relates to this path.

When the spiritual researcher elevates himself to higher worlds… then all that he looks back on and recognizes as evil, or even only incomplete in his life, provides the greatest obstacle and hindrance to his path of development. The greatest obstacles are formed by those aspects which he looks back on and sees are unfinished or imperfect.

I certainly don’t wish to sound arrogant by suggesting that only perfect people can develop the capacity to perceive the spiritual world. All I am saying is that the path to spiritual perception involves a certain kind of martyrdom; for the moment we begin to be participators in the world of spirit, we look back on our life with all its imperfections and realize that these follow us like the tail follows a comet. We realize that we must carry them on with us into other lives, will have to try to resolve them, balance them out in the future; that all we blithely ignored previously and were as unaware of as the ground under our feet, now lies clearly before us as an inevitable task we must get to grips with.

It is this somewhat tragic realization, this perception of the nature of our ordinary, everyday selves, which hampers us when we try to ascend into the world of spirit. If it does not hamper us, if we do not feel burdened by the more ponderous, earnest aspects of life, we can be sure that we have not found a real path to the spirit. And even if we do not manage to get any further, this one realization is of great value, this infinitely clear and vivid perception of the evil and imperfection within ourselves. So, we can see that our very first steps of ascent into the world of spirit are accompanied by an experience of evil and imperfection.

Excerpt from: Evil Illumined through Science of the Spirit; Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, January 15, 1914.

All serious paths toward enlightenment require courage. Really? Why? It is because the first step of all of them is to know ourselves. In this blog, we have looked at various ways to know ourselves in these past years, but to progress on the spiritual path, this first step must be taken. It is inevitable. Few of us want to admit, let alone examine carefully, what evil lurks in the depths of our souls, a truly honest assessment of ourselves, so most of us do not start on the path to enlightenment.

How we manage this knowledge is painful, humbling and, ultimately, freeing. We can adopt a mood of genuine inquiry. We can focus on the motivation behind the deed, the motivation that lies deep within us. That is different than remembering the deed itself. Once we’ve thoroughly accepted that this or that inclination exists in us, we can focus our intention to rid ourselves of it.

Then it is natural to look honestly at those times when we’ve done good in the world, when we had nothing to gain for ourselves, but just did the right thing when it was in front of us. We must recognize the inclination which lies behind that, too.

Where do these inclinations come from? How do they get there? Why is there evil in the world? These are the larger questions we will be considering moving forward.

A Matter of Life and Death

Would we suffer in anguish when a loved one dies if we knew what awaited them in the spiritual world they are entering? Would we be inconsolable if we knew that they still exist, outside their physical bodies and that we will be reunited with them when we ourselves die?

When we study the human being using our methods of natural science, we have come so far that we can see the moment of conception when the sperm penetrates the egg, and we can see the moment of death when the last breath is exhaled. What natural science cannot see is where the human being is before its conception or after its last breath. Natural science has its limitations, and scientists and philosophers have all come up against the boundaries of our ability to penetrate these realms. With knowledge gained through spiritual science, however, we can experience the facts of our life before birth and after death, and when we open ourselves to the possibility, we can learn these things – we can know these things – so that this larger perspective grants us immeasurable solace.

We restore our reverence for life by understanding the life between death and a new birth. (See links below.)

We have discussed sleep and death, karma and reincarnation, heredity and destiny in several previous posts that provide much more detail than is being provided today. Today, we offer an overview, a framework, of a human life.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… Sleep is a helpful image for death because during sleep we are also withdrawn from the realm in which our destiny awaits for us. While we are sleeping, events in this realm continue without us, and for a while we have no influence on the course they take. Nevertheless, how we live the next day still depends on the effects of what we did the day before. In reality, our personalities are reembodied anew each morning in the world of our actions. It is as if what we were separated from during the night is spread out around us during the day. The same holds true for the actions we carried out in earlier incarnations. They are bound to us as our destiny … a human spirit can live only in the environment it has created for itself through its own actions. The ongoing course of events sees to it that when I wake in the morning, I find myself in a situation that I myself created the previous day. Similarly, my reincarnating spirit’s relationship to the objects in the surroundings sees to it that I enter an environment corresponding to my actions in the previous life.

From the above, we can form an idea of how the soul is incorporated into the overall organization of a human being. The physical body is subject to the laws of heredity. The human spirit, on the other hand, must reincarnate over and over again, and its law consists in having to carry the fruits of previous lifetimes over into the following ones. Our souls live in the present, although this life in the present is not independent of our previous lives since each incarnating spirit brings its destiny along with it from previous incarnations, and this destiny determines its present life.

What impressions our souls will be capable of receiving, which of our desires can be fulfilled, what joys and sorrows will be our lot, what other human beings we will meet—all this depends on what our actions were like in earlier incarnations of the spirit. People to whom our souls were connected in one lifetime will necessarily encounter us again in a later one because the actions that took place between us must have their consequences. Souls that have once been associated will venture into reincarnation at the same time. Thus, the life of the soul is a product of the spirit’s self-created destiny.

The course of a human life within the framework of life and death is determined in three different ways, and we are also therefore dependent on three factors that go beyond birth and death. The body is subject to the laws of heredity; the soul is subject to self-created destiny, or to use an ancient term, to its karma; and the spirit is subject to the laws of reincarnation or repeated earthly lives. The interrelationship of body, soul and spirit can also be expressed as follows: The spirit is immortal; birth and death govern our bodily existence in accordance with the laws of the physical world; and the life of the soul, which is subject to destiny, mediates between body and spirit during the course of an earthly life.

Excerpt from: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos by Rudolf Steiner.

Until we are able to experience the spiritual world, we are confined to the limits of our senses. However, within these limits, we are able to elevate our thinking to understand the concepts of the spiritual world revealed by the initiates who do experience it. Rudolf Steiner is such an initiate; he was especially adept at putting into words what he experienced firsthand in the spiritual realms. He was extremely prolific with more than 6000 books, lectures and essays contained in his complete works.

Below is a list of posts that focus on the questions of sleep and death, karma and reincarnation. Reading the excerpts from Dr. Steiner’s work in each post gives us a glimpse into the processes which are invisible to us but nevertheless exist as facts of life.

Sleep:

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/while-you-were-sleeping;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/more-sleep;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/the-stuff-of-dreams;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/the-final-sleep;

Karma and Reincarnation:

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/love-fate-relationship;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/causeoreffect;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/time-after-time;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/our-last-moment;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/panorama-of-life;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/not-so-very-instant-karma;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/you-cant-always-get-what-you-want;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/burning-desires;

https://www.whoareyou.blog/blog/our-karma-ourselves;

Know Thyself

At the beginning of his book, How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, Steiner says, “A person rich in feeling and deep of soul who passes through a beautiful mountain landscape will have a different experience from one whose inner life is poor in feeling. Inner experience is the only key to the beauties of the outer world. It depends upon the inner lives we have developed whether, when we travel across the ocean, only a few inner experiences pass through our souls, or we sense the eternal language of the world spirit and understand the mysterious riddles of creation.”

Most of us would like to sense the world spirit; we would like to understand the mysterious riddles of creation. Point the way, right? Steiner goes on to say, “To develop a meaningful relationship to the outer world we must learn to work with our own feelings and ideas. The world around us is filled everywhere with the glory of God, but we have to experience the divine in our own souls before we can find it in our surroundings.”

In other words, we won’t understand the world without first understanding ourselves and what it means to experience the divine in our own souls. In today’s blog, Steiner offers an argument for getting into details rather than settling for generalities. For example, we can appreciate a beautiful plant out our window for its beauty alone. If we can name it, we will appreciate it more. If we understand how earth, water, air, and light/warmth work on a seed growing into all its component parts, we will appreciate the plant even more. We can go further: what are the components of the earth where the plant is located? Of the water? Of the air? What natural laws are in effect here? Very soon we realize how much there is to know and how little we actually do know. Then, at what altitude, in what season… We can go on and on and on.

Now visualize that the plant and all the components of its life and death have spiritual aspects, too. We can imagine how our appreciation for all of it would grow.

Being human is hard work, and it’s challenging to try to understand it, but try we must. Today we will take another look at a profound spiritual reality. A year ago, we discussed the seven members (subdivisions) of the human being. Rather than explain them again, please refer to this link and read the Steiner excerpt: https://www.whoareyou.blog/seven-members. This time, Steiner explains why it is important to know about them.

These are the seven subdivisions:

1. Physical body

2. Life body

3. Astral body

4. The “I” as the soul’s central core

5. Spirit self as transformed astral body

6. Life spirit as transformed life body

7. Spirit body as transformed physical body

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

It may seem that the subdivisions of the human constitution are based on purely arbitrary distinctions between parts within a monolithic soul life. To counter this objection, it must be emphasized that the significance of (the subdivisions above) is similar to that of the appearance of the seven colors of the rainbow when light passes through a prism. What a physicist contributes to our understanding of light by studying this process and the seven colors that result is analogous to what the spiritual scientist does for our understanding of the makeup of the human soul. The soul’s seven members are not abstract intellectual distinctions any more than are the light’s seven colors.

In both cases, the distinctions rest on the inner nature of the things themselves, the only difference being that the seven constituents of light become visible by means of an external device while the seven components of the soul become perceptible to a method of spiritual observation consistent with the nature of the human soul.

The true nature of the soul cannot be grasped without knowing about this subdivision, because the soul belongs to the transitory world by virtue of three of our constitutional components—physical body, life body and astral body—and has its roots in eternity through the other four constituent parts.

When the soul is seen as a unity, its transitory and eternal aspects are indistinguishably bound up with each other, but unless we are aware of the differentiations within it, we cannot understand its relationship to the world as a whole.

Let me use another comparison. Chemists separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, two substances that cannot be distinguished when they are united in the form of water. However, each of these elements has an identity of its own and can form compounds with other elements. Similarly, at death our three lower constitutional components unite with the makeup of the perishable world, while our four higher members unite with the eternal. Refusing to consider this differentiation within the soul is like being a chemist who refuses to learn about decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Excerpt from: Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner. 9th edition: 1918.

When our “I” acts on the astral body to purify it, our “I” is building the Spirit Self, our next higher soul level. Obviously, becoming the master of our desires and passions instead of letting them rule us is a good thing; we don’t need to know more than we already do to become a better person. But ponder for a moment what it means to know how our soul works. Through the knowledge we gain by understanding the details of our soul, we begin to see the divine laws working. We begin to “experience the divine in our own souls” as a fact rather than just a feeling. We begin to grasp the components of our own light and see how they interact with the light of the world.

The source for today’s blog, Steiner’s book, Theosophy, is widely available, so is How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation.

Basic Attitude

What if we read the news without immediately developing an opinion? Or if we met someone without immediately judging them? We are quick to define things by our opinions of them, but unless we do some real soul searching, we don’t know the source of our opinions or why we find it so important to have them. It may be in our best interest to think deeply about these questions. Steiner says that our opinions and judgments are effective barriers to progress in spiritual knowledge. Yet, if we don’t know how to open ourselves to new ways of thinking, we will never even venture toward spiritual science in the first place.

For example, spiritual science shows that human evolution is much longer than most of us think because most of us think of the human being as a physical manifestation rather than a spiritual being currently going through its physical phase. This basic premise of spiritual science is not common knowledge now, and many of us could find it easy to either ignore it or refute it. If we entertain that idea, though, we can imagine vast periods of time preceding our physical bodies and vast periods of time proceeding into a future wherein we will no longer need our physical bodies. In order to learn about the evolution of humanity and the earth and even our cosmos, “we must begin with a certain fundamental attitude of soul. In spiritual science this fundamental attitude is called the path of veneration, of devotion to truth and knowledge. Without this attitude no one can become a student (of spiritual science.)” Veneration and devotion are not characteristics of our modern culture, so where do we start?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Our civilization is more inclined to criticize, judge, and condemn than to feel devotion and selfless veneration. Our children criticize far more than they respect or revere. But just as surely as every feeling of devotion and reverence nurtures the soul’s powers for higher knowledge, so every act of criticism and judgment drives these powers away. This is not meant to imply anything against our civilization—our concern here is not to criticize it. After all, we owe the greatness of our culture precisely to our ability to make critical, self-confident human judgments and to our principle of “testing all and keeping the best.” Modern science, industry, transportation, commerce, law—all these would never have developed without the universal exercise of our critical faculty and standards of judgment. But the price of this gain in outer culture has been a corresponding loss in higher knowledge and spiritual life. Therefore, we must never forget that higher knowledge has to do with revering truth and insight…

In an age of criticism, ideals are degraded. Reverence, awe, adoration, and wonder are replaced by other feelings—they are pushed more and more into the background. As a result, everyday life offers very few opportunities for their development.

If we wish to become esoteric students, we must train ourselves vigorously in the mood of devotion. We must seek—in all things around us, in all our experiences—for what can arouse our admiration and respect. If I meet other people and criticize their weaknesses, I rob myself of higher cognitive power. But if I try to enter deeply and lovingly into another person’s good qualities, I gather in that force…

Each moment that we spend becoming aware of whatever derogatory, judgmental, and critical opinions still remain in our consciousness brings us closer to higher knowledge. We advance even more quickly if, in such moments, we fill our consciousness with admiration, respect, and reverence for the world and life. Anyone experienced in these things knows that such moments awaken forces in us that otherwise remain dormant. Filling our consciousness in this way opens our spiritual eyes.

Excerpt from: How to Know Higher Knowledge: A Modern Path of Initiation, Chapter I: How to Know Higher Worlds by Rudolf Steiner.

Though a simple concept to understand, feeling respect and reverence for the world and life is challenging. Nevertheless, this is a preliminary requirement regardless of the spiritual path we choose. The excerpt below from The Inner Development of Man, directly pertains to what we’ve been discussing here.

It is difficult to attain an uncritical attitude, but understanding must take the place of criticism. It suppresses the advancement of the soul if you confront your fellowman immediately with your own opinion. We must hear the other out first, and this listening is an extraordinarily effective means for the development of the soul eyes. Anybody who reaches a higher level in this direction owes it to having learned to abstain from criticizing and judging everybody and everything. How can we look understandingly into somebody's being? We should not condemn but understand the criminal's personality, understand the criminal and the saint equally well. Empathy for each and every one is required, and this is what is meant with higher, occult “listening.” Thus, if we bring ourselves with strict self-control to the point of not evaluating a fellow human being, or the rest of the world for that matter, according to our personal judgment, opinion and prejudice and instead let both work on us in silence, we have the chance to gain occult powers. Every moment during which we become determined to refrain from thinking an evil thought about a fellow human being is a moment gained.

Dr. Steiner often reminded his audiences and readers to keep an open mind when he introduced new findings. We will be moving forward this year with spiritual topics that will necessitate the openness of mind we’ve been discussing today.

Unbounded

“This spiritual science is not trying to found either a new religion or a new religious sect of any kind. It hopes to be able to fulfill the tasks required spiritually of our contemporary culture.”

– Rudolf Steiner, July 13, 1914.

Even though religious tradition is the impulse behind our holiday celebrations, it is no longer the focus for many of us. There’s a reason for this: as human consciousness evolved, we lost the shadowy clairvoyance of earlier times, clairvoyance that allowed us some experience of the spiritual worlds as Dr. Steiner reminds us below. That kind of consciousness was gradually replaced with scientific thinking, which is strictly dependent on physical perceptions.

Religions no longer satisfy some of us because much of what they profess doesn’t make sense to our cognitive reasoning, even though we may get comfort from some of the remaining religious rituals.

Scientific thinking is an essential development for humankind in the cosmic scheme of things. It gave us our independence: we are, each of us, our own person. What we are not, however, is finished. We are constantly evolving. Our current earthly consciousness isn’t our final state. That may not be obvious now, but even the most earthbound materialists will understand it once they cross the threshold and find themselves still “alive.” How much we see and understand once we’ve crossed over into that realm, however, depends very much on what we think, feel, and do during our lifetimes.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

The ideas we have gained through sensory perceptions and the brain-bound intellect will be of no use to us when it comes to giving effective power to the part of our feeling and will which does not come to birth during life. The impulse and impetus we shall need after death can only come from ideas that do not relate to outward reality but make us turn to higher things and look up to a world of the spirit.

… When we take in ideas of the supersensible, these are not merely ideas based on knowledge but something which will be active after death—which means that now, when we are in a physical body, people who refuse to give any thought to active principles of this kind will laugh about them and, being materialists, reject them. But if they do not let ideas of the supersensible enter into them, their power to bring the unborn elements in the feeling and will to development will be crippled.

… In earlier times, the Imaginations, Inspirations, and Intuitions which are veiled by the world perceptible to the senses, were given to human beings as religious faith and belief, in order that they might not lose all impetus for the time after death and might have something in the inner core of the soul that would keep them alive once they had laid aside their physical bodies…

 It is sheer prejudice of the intellect and the senses which makes people consider the ideas relating to the supersensible world which are presented by spiritual investigators to be nonsense and figments of the imagination. If we accept these ideas, they will give impetus to the inner core of our beings, so that in all future ages it will find its way in the cosmos.

Investigation of the contents of the spiritual world is only possible if one has achieved esoteric development; but to have knowledge of these contents, to work through them inwardly in consciousness and have ideas and concepts of them, to make them our own and know for certain that the soul exists in the world of the spirit—this is something human beings will need more and more as essential nourishment for soul and spirit.

Excerpt from: The Inner Nature of Man and Our Life Between Death and Rebirth, Lecture 5 by Rudolf Steiner. April 11, 1914, Vienna.

In the quote at the top of the blog, Steiner refers to tasks required spiritually of our contemporary culture. What are the spiritual needs of our contemporary culture? We need to have spiritual concepts, spiritual ideas formed before we die so we’ll have the energy to find our way in the cosmos after we die. This energy is no longer given to us as a gift from the gods, we have become independent as we have evolved. It’s up to us now to find out for ourselves about the spiritual world outside us and inside us.

Steiner encourages us not simply to believe him, but to do the meditative and contemplative work to elevate ourselves to the levels where we can experience spiritual realities. It won’t hurt, in the meantime, to learn as much as we can from the scientists of the spirit, of which Steiner is one of the most prevalent.

We are often reminded of humankind’s ideals during the holidays. Love, goodwill to all, peace and harmony, selflessness, devotion, compassion—these all have their roots in our spiritual selves. Let us rededicate ourselves to exploring the vast consciousness of which we are a part.

Insecure

The National Institute of Mental Illness says on its website that 1 in 5 US citizens suffer from mental health issues every year. So, those of us who experience these maladies are definitely not alone. Out of the 332 million people in the US, that’s 66 million. Wow. One of the most prevalent mental illnesses is diagnosed as General Anxiety Disorder or GAD. GAD and depression top the list.

Some of the symptoms that can occur for GAD are listed on the Mayo Clinic website: persistent worrying or anxiety about a number of areas that are out of proportion to the impact of the events; overthinking plans and solutions to all possible worst-case outcomes; perceiving situations and events as threatening, even when they aren’t; difficulty handling uncertainty; indecisiveness and fear of making the wrong decision; inability to set aside or let go of a worry; inability to relax, feeling restless, and feeling keyed up or on edge; and difficulty concentrating, or the feeling that your mind “goes blank.” Of course, there are physical signs like fatigue or trouble sleeping, among others. The two main treatments for GAD are psychotherapy (especially cognitive behavioral therapy) and medications. Many people self-medicate with alcohol or drugs.

What is going on? Rudolf Steiner points to a root of these issues: we have forgotten that we are spiritual beings. In fact, many of us actively reject this core truth of being human. The symptoms listed above are not from bacteria or viruses, they are soul issues that are actively disrupting our lives. The traumatic world humanity has created for us to try to live in may be the catalyst for GAD, but underneath that is the eradication of what we know about the whole human being and its place in the universe. We’ve lost our birthright. If we look at the symptoms once again, we may realize that each one would disappear if we had a sense of security in life, if we knew how we got here and why. We can know this.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Souls without a rudder, souls without a firm grip on life who feel they do not belong, are numerous in our time. They are for the most part souls who, out of an instinctive need, long for something different from what traditional values can offer, souls who have been searching without finding anything which could give them a feeling of security, of belonging. So, what is lacking, what is it that man needs? What does man need to find a secure path through life?

What he needs above all is a consciousness of belonging within the world. Weakness and inner discontent come from the soul’s feeling of isolation. Life’s greatest question is in fact: Where and how do I fit into the world?

When we turn to natural science to reach a satisfying answer to the question: Where, as a human being, is my place in the world? then, at best, the natural-scientific world view will tell him where his physical body belongs within world evolution as a whole. But the natural-scientific world view has absolutely nothing to say about how man’s soul, let alone spirit, fits into world evolution… (Spiritual science shows) how we are related to the primordial warmth pervaded through and through by the individual beings of the Hierarchies who are still about us. We are placed within a cosmos filled with soul and spirit.

Spiritual science shows our soul and spirit to be part and parcel of a universal all. It is a science that can describe the universal all in detail. Thus, spiritual science alone can give the human soul a context without which it feels annihilated. The dissatisfaction and insecurity felt by modern man reflect modern thinking. This thinking disregards the soul and declares that only the human body exists within the cosmic all. Another aspect is that the soul feels it has nothing to relate to, and that prevents it from finding inner strength. To reach inner strength of soul one must have attained concepts and ideas which depict the cosmic all as containing man as a being of soul and spirit; just as natural science depicts physical man as part of the physical evolution of the universe.

Excerpt from: Karma of Materialism, Lecture II by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin Aug. 7, 1917

We should not abandon natural scientific thinking but rather permeate it with spiritual thinking. Without going into details about society’s ills, which seem impossibly complicated and hopeless, we can imagine that a kind of thinking imbued with spiritual science would prove a crucial alliance to natural science in all our endeavors. Try to imagine the world-changing impact of scientists, doctors, teachers, economists, farmers, etc., whose thinking embraces our place in the spiritual world.

Try to imagine the life-changing impact this thinking would have for each of us. We owe it to ourselves to recognize that being human is so much more than being a physical body. We are soul/spiritual beings residing in human bodies. We can know little about ourselves if we refuse to recognize that fact. The soul ailments we suffer can be cured by the spirit, but to know the spirit, in addition to studying spiritual science, we must quiet our minds daily… not an easy task, but it is a way to open the door to the spiritual world.

Not that long ago, meditation wasn’t taken seriously in Western cultures, but it is now. Just last week (Nov. 9, 2022) a study found that a daily mindfulness meditation practice is as effective as escitalopram, the “gold-standard” drug used in treating anxiety... and meditation is free.

Mental Health Statistics >

Mayo Clinic: Generalized Anxiety Disorder >

All Hallows Eve

Clairvoyant consciousness does not charm anything new into being; it merely brings up into consciousness what is present all the time in the spiritual world. All of you are in constant communication with the dead.

Skeletons, witches, devils and demons, ghosts, spider webs, black cats and bats, costumes, pumpkin patches and apple-bobbing, and so on. These are our symbols of Halloween in America. Over 2000 years ago, the Celtic people celebrated Samhaim, their New Year on November 1. They believed that on its eve, the line between the dead and the living was blurred and the ghosts of those who were dead returned to create mischief. And here we are, 2000 years later, celebrating Halloween each year with general spookiness all about us.

Halloween as it is now celebrated, besides being great fun, may also be our way to trivialize that thing that scares us most, death. In some cultures and religions, All Hallows Eve precedes the day in which we honor our dead; a day in which we attempt to communicate our love by bestowing gifts and prayers for those we love who have died. A day to follow the havoc of Halloween when these dead are back where they belong and no longer “wandering the earth”. A day we return with relief to our normal lives where the firm boundary between the living and the dead exists, or so we imagine.

When we pray for the dead or honor the dead, do we imagine that they can hear us? What if they could? And what if we could hear them?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Today, people think: When a human being has passed through the Gate of Death, his activity ceases so far as the physical world is concerned. But it is not so, in reality. There is a living and perpetual communication between the so-called dead and the so-called living. Those who have passed through the Gate of Death have not ceased to be present, it is just that our eyes have ceased to see them. They are there, nevertheless. Our thoughts, our feelings, our impulses of will are connected with the dead.

People today still find difficulty in acquiring knowledge of the spiritual world…

One way of becoming acquainted with the spiritual world is relatively easy to attain by those who have enough perseverance, along the path described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment and in other writings… The other is what may be called concrete direct communication with beings of the spiritual world that is possible between those who are still on Earth and the so-called dead.

Think of your own biography. You consider the course of your life always with interruptions; you describe only what has happened in your waking life. Life is thus broken: waking-sleeping; waking-sleeping. But you are also there while you sleep; and in studying the whole human being, waking life and sleeping life must be taken into consideration.

Besides waking life and sleeping life, there is a third state, even more important for communication with the spiritual world than waking and sleeping life as such. I mean the actual act of waking and the actual act of going to sleep, which last only a moment, for we immediately pass on into other conditions. If we develop delicate, sensitive feelings for these moments of waking and going to sleep, we shall find they shed great light on the spiritual world.

… In our whole life there are no single moments of falling asleep or of waking when we do not come into relation with the dead.

Excerpt from: Lecture: The Dead Are With Us by Rudolf Steiner. Nüremberg, February 10,1918.

Since the dead, those we have known and loved, are communicating with us anyway, why try to make this communication conscious? Steiner says that the so-called dead have important information to share with us about ourselves, and they have important questions for us that only we can answer. Remarkably, we are already communicating with the dead, but we don’t know it. For example, maybe we’ve found ourselves pondering something at night before falling asleep and when we wake up, we have the answer. It may seem like we figured out something for ourselves while we were asleep, but Steiner indicates that is only the way it appears; we’ve actually received guidance in those transitional moments between waking and sleeping.

As a side note, it is said that Thomas Edison used to nap in a chair with his arms at his side holding a steel ball in each hand. When he fell asleep, the balls would drop, and he would wake up with answers to huge problems. Though scientists have come up with names to explain this, if we look closely, we see these names explain nothing. One may well wonder why Edison kept this a secret for most of his life. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-naps-inspire-a-way-to-spark-your-own-creativity/.

We can start by simply taking notice of the moments when we are falling asleep and waking up. We can practice calming our minds before falling asleep and opening ourselves to the quiet thoughts that come. Some of us pray. We can even pose direct questions at that time. When we wake up, we can refrain from checking the news or our texts and see what thoughts are coming to us in the quiet of those first waking moments. As time goes on, we will become more sensitive, more aware.

Meanwhile, Happy Halloween!

Fighting the Dragon

Dragons are certainly popular these days. Books, cartoons, television shows, movies, they’re featured everywhere. Why dragons? For that matter, why were the villagers in stories dating back hundreds of years required to sacrifice a daughter to the dragon terrorizing them?

We know actual dragons don’t exist on earth; we have no evidence that they ever did. Yet, we all seem to know that great courage and strength is required to conquer them, and that, if captured, they are very hard to train. Let’s take a look at a specific dragon from a specific story.

The Archangel Michael (pronounced in three syllables), who is celebrated each year on September 29, has everything to do with the dragon we will talk about today. But first, let’s look at Raphael’s painting depicting Michael conquering the dragon.

Why was this battle a subject for so many artists? We can learn from studying spiritual science that long ago, when humankind still possessed an innate spiritual vision, cosmic images of spiritual realities explained the heavens and the earth to humankind. The knowledge imparted by these cosmic images is the basis of our religions, and though mankind had lost access to direct knowledge of the spiritual world, the artists of the Renaissance like Raphael and Michelangelo kept painting these images.

The paintings by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, for example, depict the cosmic images revealed to the writer of Genesis. Is God an elderly white man with a flowing white beard? No, of course not. And dragons as a species aren’t a thing. So, when we look at these paintings, we must keep that in mind. To refresh this kind of thinking, please refer to the blog from October last year. (https://www.whoareyou.blog/invisibility).

Why are we talking about any of this? Because a cosmic truth is revealed when we understand that a being depicted by the dragon was cast out of his milieu by Michael and found its new residence within us. We don’t see the dragon, but we see the results within us in the form of many evils to which we succumb in our lives. When we contemplate the image of Michael conquering the dragon, we need to understand that the Dragon, cast out of the heavens, is now an earthly problem; a problem each of us must attend to. Why? Because as human beings we need to cultivate courage and strength to fulfill our destiny.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

When we turn our gaze back into earlier times of human evolution, we are inevitably struck with the change that has come about in our conceptual pictures of nature and of spirit. Nor do we need to go back very far to observe this change occurring. As late as the eighteenth century the forces and substances of nature were thought of in a much more spiritual manner than they are today, while spiritual things were conceived more in pictures taken from nature. It is only in quite recent times that ideas about the spirit have become so utterly abstract and ideas about nature have become based on matter that is devoid of spirit and so impenetrable for human thought and vision. For present-day human understanding, nature and spirit are sundered from each other; there appears to be no bridge leading from one to the other.

It is for this reason that images of a sublime worldview, which in past times had great significance for the human being as he sought to comprehend his place in the universe, have passed completely into the realm of things deemed to be no more than airy fancy—to which man could only give himself up so long as an exact science was not there to forbid him. One such cosmic image is that of Michael fighting with the Dragon.

The picture of the fight of Michael with the Dragon expresses a strong awareness that man himself must give to his inner life of soul the direction and guidance that nature cannot give. Our present-day thinking is inclined to mistrust such an idea. We are afraid of becoming estranged from nature. We fear to lose ourselves in all kinds of fantasy should we allow the spirit that transcends the perception of external nature to play a part in our striving for knowledge about the true nature of the world…

Excerpt from: The Festivals and Their Meaning. Article: Michael and the Dragon, Das Goetheanum, Sept. 30. 1923.

That last sentence bears repeating: “We fear to lose ourselves in all kinds of fantasy should we allow the spirit that transcends the perception of external nature to play a part in our striving for knowledge about the true nature of the world.” We are afraid of accepting spiritual truths. Yet, once we do, we recognize the inadequacy of the purely materialistic understanding of life, the universe, and everything.

Maybe we could try to embrace this image of Michael conquering the Dragon. Maybe we could set it before our mind’s eye, and through it accept that a real battle with a real dragon is occurring inside us. We need to emulate Michael. We need to find the courage to recognize the dragon’s influence within us and the strength to conquer the evils to which we’ve fallen prey.

Our Karma, Ourselves

We all make mistakes, and we more than likely learn something from them. Even if no one else is aware of what we did, we suffer a bit; we hope to put it behind us; we hope no one ever finds out; we hope to avoid punishment. We cannot imagine that we would ever need to answer for every single little thing we do wrong.

Justice, both personal and cultural, often fails to manifest during our lifetimes. Sometimes, people who have done horrible things avoid punishment and people who hurt no one suffer the most. Life, examined even superficially, makes no sense in this regard; the seemingly haphazard dispensation of justice is one of the appalling aspects of being human. But an understanding of karma and reincarnation shows that no one “gets away with” anything.

Rudolf Steiner, a modern initiate, tells us that in the life after death, we face the good and bad, the wise and foolish of everything we’ve done in our lives. Ultimately, as we begin to prepare for the next life to come, we help to create the circumstances which can lead us toward our purest self. It turns out that we will embrace any suffering gladly because it helps us reach that goal. Knowing this now allows us to accept our fates with deeper understanding and equanimity.

Steiner spoke often about karma and reincarnation. We can study the things he has said while we work on ourselves to gain access to the spiritual world for ourselves. Today we will discuss one of the basic principles of karma referenced above: that we answer for absolutely everything in our lives.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

In earthly life… we do not like to suffer from our own foolish mistakes. We wish we had not made the foolish decision. But this really only applies to the one earthly life, because in effect, between the foolishness of the decision and the punishment we suffer in experiencing its consequences, only the self-same earthly life is intervening. It all remains continuous.

But between one earthly life and another it is not so. For the lives between death and a new birth are always intervening, and they change many things which would not change if earthly life continued uniformly. Suppose that you look back into a former life on earth. You did something good or ill to another person. Between that earthly life and this one, there was the life between death and a new birth. In that life, you cannot help realizing that you have become imperfect by doing wrong to another human being. It takes away from your own human value. It cripples you in soul. You must make good again this maiming of your soul and you resolve to achieve in a new earthly life what will make good the fault. Thus, between death and new birth you take up, by your own will, that which will balance and make good the fault.

Or if you did good to another person… you see it clearly in the life between death and new birth. If you have helped another person, you realize that he has thereby attained certain things which, without you, he could not have attained…

… It will never happen, under any circumstances, that a real insight into your karma will lead you to be dissatisfied with it… for, in the last resort, we ourselves are our karma. What is it that comes over, karmically, from our former lives on earth? It is actually we ourselves.

Excerpt from: Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies. Volume I, Lecture 3 by Rudolf Steiner. Dornach 1924.

We are eternal beings that keep evolving throughout our many incarnations as well as the time we spend in the spiritual world between our incarnations. Learning about karma gives us an impetus to keep working on ourselves in earnest long before death takes us across the threshold. With humility and gratitude, it is possible for us to learn to accept responsibility for ourselves while we are still living in this lifetime. We cannot erase the past, but we can create a better future for ourselves and everyone we know.

All the World's a Stage

“They’re going through a stage,” we hear parents or teachers saying about younger people, though we say it about each other, too. Social scientists and psychologists often describe our lives as occurring in stages. Piaget refers to four stages from birth to adolescence. Rudolf Steiner describes our lives in 7-year cycles beginning at birth. Learning these frameworks gives us ways to make sense of our lives, ways that help us understand ourselves and others at every age.

In spiritual science we begin to look beyond the single life into previous lives. We begin to grasp that the history we learn is about us and our contemporaries in previous lives. We’ve evolved from our caveman days, and we will continue to evolve in our future lives. We aren’t the only beings evolving. The spiritual beings of the Third Hierarchy that we’ve been talking about this past year—the angels, archangels, and archai—are evolving, too. So are the beings in the Second and First Hierarchies. What causes evolution? Steiner says that evolution comprises different stages of consciousness.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… It makes little difference whether a person takes his stand on Darwinian materialism or whether he speaks about the Gods in a more or less religious sense. It is much more to the point to become livingly aware that we ourselves have ascended from lower stages of existence and have yet to ascend to higher stages. We must realize that we have a relationship both with what is below and what is above.

Instruction about the Gods was first systematized by Dionysius the Areopagite, the pupil of the apostle Paul. It was however not written down until the sixth century… The Akashic Chronicle teaches that Dionysius actually lived in Athens, that he was initiated by Paul and was commissioned by him to lay the foundation of the teaching about the higher spiritual beings and to impart this knowledge to special initiates. At that time certain lofty teachings were never written down but only communicated as tradition by word of mouth. The teaching about the Gods was also given in this way by Dionysius to his pupils, who then passed it on further. These pupils in direct succession were intentionally called Dionysius, so that the last of these, who wrote down this teaching was one of those who was given this name.

This teaching about the Gods, as given by Dionysius, encompasses three times three ranks of divine beings. The three highest are: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. The next degree: *Dominions (Kyriotetes), Mights (Dynamis), Powers (Exusisai). The third degree: Primal Beginnings (Archai), Archangels, and Angels… After the Third Rank follows the Fourth Hierarchy: Man, as the tenth in the entire sequence.

The names of the Hierarchies do not refer to individuals but to certain stages of consciousness of the great universe, and the Beings move from one stage to another. Eliphas Levi perceived this clearly and laid stress on the fact that with these names one has to do with stages of development, with Hierarchies.

*Names in parenthesis have been inserted for this blog.

Excerpt from: Foundations of Esotericism: Notes of Thirty-one Lectures by Rudolf Steiner. Lecture 13, October 8, 1905. Berlin.

Recognizing that there are individual angels, for example our own guardian angel, we now see that the term angel refers to a level of consciousness. In the same way, we recognize that there are individual archangels, some of whom we’ve named in previous posts, but the term archangel refers to a level of consciousness different from angels, and so on. Thus, we come to see that we are all different human beings, but the term human refers to a level of consciousness.

As we advance in our consciousness, we become a more ideal human being. When we don’t evolve according to “our time” we become less and less content with ourselves and the world we live in because we aren’t developing and using the spiritual tools we’ve been given that are appropriate for our time. By studying spiritual science and by taking just a few minutes a day to meditate, we are choosing to put in front of us the ideal human being we are meant to become.

Hydration

Angels exist whether we believe in them or not, according to Steiner. Certainly, people of old experienced them as we can surmise from the many artifacts of antiquity that would otherwise make no sense. The realms of the angels of the Third Hierarchy, which we’ve discussed over the last year, can be referred to by the names we know from long ago: Angels, Archangels, and Archai. Steiner refers to them using many names.

He sometimes refers to Angels as Sons of Life or Sons of Twilight, to Archangels as Spirits of Fire, and Archai as Spirits of Personality or Time Spirits. As we learn more about these higher Beings, we see how these other names are fitting.

We no longer have direct experience of the angels and many of us no longer believe in them—or the spiritual world—at all. We are thus unable to fully understand ourselves or the world. Steiner says one way we can see ourselves is that our physical body is just 1/3 of us and our soul and spirit comprise the larger percentage, the other two-thirds. Yet, we toil away serving the physical world day in and day out for approximately 2/3 of every 24-hour period. Then we spend the remaining 1/3 of that time unconscious. Huh. What would our world look like if we spent some of our conscious time contemplating and working on our soul and spirit?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Look at the modern, materialistic world with all its commotion of people hurrying to and fro from morning till night, judging and measuring everything in terms of material worth: they do not suspect that, behind all this, the spirit lives and weaves. People go to sleep of an evening, never imagining that they are anything but unconscious and that they will wake to another day on the physical plane. People go to sleep, oblivious, after another rushed working day without considering life’s meaning. The spiritual seeker who has heard the word of spirit will know something that is not theory or doctrine: they know that they are given soul warmth and soul light. They also know that, during the day only to take in images of physical life, their lives would become desiccated and barren and any gains would perish. When you lie down to sleep at night you enter a world of spirit, diving down with all your soul powers into a realm of higher spiritual beings, towards whose stature your very being is intended to grow. On waking, you return, newly strengthened from a spiritual world and—consciously or unconsciously—divine spiritual vitality spills out over everything you receive from the physical plane. Out of eternity do you every morning rejuvenate what is temporal in your existence.

We transform the word of the spirit into the feeling we can have at evening: I am not only departing into unconsciousness, but I am immersing myself in a world where the beings of eternity dwell and among whose ranks my own being is intended to belong. I go to sleep with the feeling: Onwards into spiritual worlds! And I awake with the feeling: Forth from the spirit! We will then be filled with the feeling into which spirit word is transformed when tended here from day to day, from week to week, in a life dedicated to spiritual knowledge. Then will the spirit become life in us, then will we go to sleep and wake up differently.

Excerpt from: Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, Dec. 21, 1909, Berlin.

The words Steiner uses above—desiccated and barren—are ominous. These words call forth images of the cracked and lifeless earth of former lakes and rivers; they are the very words that refer to drought. We know we cannot survive without water, so these images rouse a fear for the future. Fortunately, some people are creatively working on this problem by collecting rainwater, using drip irrigation, and harvesting water from the air using solar power that could produce water even in desert climates. We didn’t always need to do this, but we must meet the reality of a changing world.

Spiritual science reveals that the human being is also changing, and what once met our spiritual needs in prior times is no longer sufficient. Steiner wants us to see that the drought in our spiritual lives needs to be addressed, not ignored; he says that it is urgent that we do so. We may not feel the urgency of this spiritual drought yet, especially with all our compelling distractions. Once we set aside these diversions though, we are faced with the state of our own spirit; our subconscious thirst for spiritual renewal suddenly becomes manifest.

As we learn about the many beings and laws of the spiritual world in earnest, we will be surprised how even our initial efforts are transformational, like water to a parched throat or an arid land. We need to hydrate.

Time Spirits

Most of us can easily recall with gratitude a person who positively influenced our life. We honestly don’t know where we’d be without them; they led us in the right direction. We might also feel gratitude for someone who influenced our whole nation of people to become better. The study of the angelic hierarchies explores the influences of those beings we cannot see. When we learn about these beings, when we actually acknowledge their work, we feel gratitude towards them, too.

Every time we fall asleep, we commune with our Guardian Angel—we enter that realm of angels which is closest to the human being. (See March and April 2021.) Every time we are born, we enter the culture of our birthplace, we are influenced by the Archangel of that people. (See March 2022.) The realm of the Archangels is higher than that of the Angels; whereas Angels guide individuals, Archangels guide groups of people, even nations. We are also born into a specific time, an Age, and this period that lasts over 2000 years is guided by the realm above the Archangels, the realm of the Spirits of Time, historically called the Archai.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

In addition to the evolution of the peoples and all that is associated with their evolution, a progressive evolution of mankind takes place. Whether we consider one particular civilization to be superior to another is of no consequence.

In every age there is something that transcends the Folk Soul (Archangel), which can bring the various Folk Souls together, something that is more or less universally understood. This is the Zeitgeist or Time Spirit, the Spirit of the Age, to use an unfortunate term which is in common usage. Each epoch has its particular Zeitgeist; the Zeitgeist of the Greek epoch is different from that of our own age. Those who understand the Spirit today are drawn towards Spiritual Science. It is this Spirit which, reflecting the Spirit of the Age, transcends the individual Folk Souls…

Thus, for every epoch we can discover the Spirit of the Age (Archai), which is something that permeates the activity of the Archangels. To the materialist of today, the Spirit of the Age is an abstraction, devoid of reality; still less would he be prepared to accept the Spirit of the Age as an authentic entity. Nevertheless, the term ‘Spirit of the Age’ conceals the existence of a real Being who is three stages above man. It conceals the identity of the Beings, the Archai…

We are here dealing with exalted Beings, and the contemplation of their attributes might well overwhelm us. They are the Beings who might be described as the inspirers—or if we choose to use the technical expression of occultism—the “intuitors” of the Spirit or Spirits of the Age. They work in such a way that they take over from one another and mutually support each other. From epoch to epoch, they pass on their mission to their successor. The Spirit of the Age who was active in the Greek epoch handed on his mission to his successor, and so on…

These Spirits of Personality, these inspirers of the Spirit of the Age, are of a higher order than the Archangels. In every epoch one of these Spirits is predominant and sets his seal upon the whole epoch, assigns to the Archangels their specific tasks so that the whole spirit of the epoch is determined by the special or individual characteristics of the Archangel. Then, in the following epoch, another Archai takes over.

Excerpt from: The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls, Lecture: Angels, Folk Spirits, Time Spirits: their part in the Evolution of Mankind, Oslo, Norway, June 7, 1910.

Understanding of the idea of a Spirit of the Age is easier when we recognize that we have an overarching idea about Ancient Greece or Ancient Egypt or Ancient India. In a lecture that follows the one excerpted above, Steiner tells us, for example, that “Kepler, Copernicus and Pericles could not possibly have lived in any other age or under other circumstances” than the epoch into which they were born. Our current Age began in the early 1400s and will end in the late 3500s, so we have a way to go before we reach the goals for humanity of this epoch.

What is the stamp of our Age? One hint is that meditation in our time is becoming ubiquitous. In education, in healthcare, in science, in business, in sports, meditation is being touted as a benefit to everyone. We human beings are recognizing that we have to make an effort to connect our earthly consciousness to our spiritual consciousness—a goal of our epoch—in order to live healthy lives. We are being inspired by the Spirit of our Age to do so.

Knowing ourselves is impossible without acknowledging that we are spiritual beings evolving in a world of other evolving spiritual beings. Learning about these spiritual entities is essential to learning about ourselves.

Looking Back

Seven months ago (Why Bother, Sept. 2021) we noted a time when humankind experienced spiritual beings as a matter of course, as part of their everyday life. In other posts, we’ve talked about angels and archangels as those beings in the spiritual hierarchies that are closest to us. Somehow, though, accepting the idea of karma and reincarnation has been easier for many of us than the idea of beings who exist outside our physical senses. What changed?

All cultures have origin stories. No culture was godless at its roots. Why? Though we may be tempted to call the people of our ancient past childlike or gullible, if we focused only on their achievements in astronomy, we would have to admit someone was thinking albeit quite differently. We were those people back then, and we changed. Over the course of centuries, our pursuit of knowledge stopped aiming toward the spiritual world and focused almost entirely upon the natural world we can observe through our senses. Since the spiritual world cannot be experienced with our senses, we lost our connection with it.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… We must turn our gaze again and again to the particular mental condition of civilized mankind which began with the blossoming forth of the Natural Sciences and reached its climax in the nineteenth century.

One should place the character of this age vividly before the soul’s eye, comparing it with that of preceding ages. In all ages of the conscious evolution of mankind, Knowledge was regarded as that which brings man to the world of Spirit. To Knowledge, man ascribed whatever relationship to Spirit he possessed. Art and Religion were none other than the living life of Knowledge.

All this became different when the age of the Spiritual Soul* began to dawn (1400s). With a very great part of the life of the human soul, Knowledge now concerned itself no more. Henceforth, it sought to investigate that relation to existence which man unfolds when he directs his senses and his intellectual judgment to the world of ‘Nature.’ It no longer wanted to concern itself with that which man unfolds as a relation to the world of Spirit, when he uses—not his outer senses—but his inner power of perception.

Thus there arose the necessity to connect the spiritual life of man, not with any living present Knowledge, but with Knowledge gained in the past—with Tradition.

The life of the human soul was rent in twain. On the one hand there stood before man the new science of Nature, striving ever onward and unfolding in the living present. On the other side there was the experience of a relation to the spiritual world, for which the corresponding Knowledge had arisen in the ages past. All understanding of how the Knowledge, corresponding to this side of human experience, had been gained in ages past, was gradually lost. Men possessed the Tradition, but they had lost the way by which the truths of Tradition had been known—discovered. All they could do now was to believe in the Tradition.

A man who had consciously reflected on the spiritual situation, say about the middle of the nineteenth century, would have been bound to admit: mankind has come to a point where it no longer feels itself capable of evolving any Knowledge beyond that science which does not concern itself with the Spirit. Whatever can be known about the Spirit, a humanity of earlier ages was able to investigate and discover, but the human soul has lost the faculty for such discovery.

But men did not place before themselves the full bearing of what was taking place. They were content to say: Knowledge simply does not reach out into the spiritual world. The spiritual world can only be an object of Faith.

Letter from: Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts: The Apparent Extinction of Spirit-Knowledge in Modern Times, by Rudolf Steiner, March 25, 2025. Dornach, Switzerland.

For years now, those who accept a spiritual world, a world they can accept on faith alone, are seen as misguided if not pathetic by many of their peers. Yet faith and tradition play a big role in science, too. For example, cosmology assumes that the speed of light and the laws of gravity are constants throughout the universe, so we make all sorts of theories based on these assumptions. But what if they aren’t universal? Maybe all our ideas about the natural world are theoretical.

At our current stage of evolution, we need to pursue knowledge of the spiritual world once again purposefully—out of freedom—to understand ourselves as whole human beings. “What in earlier times was known instinctively must now be acquired by conscious effort.” (Steiner) This knowledge, once acquired, will augment what we have learned in all fields of the natural world.

In future posts, we will continue to investigate the other beings inhabiting the spiritual world including those beings who are determined to lead us into error. We need to realize we are not alone, and now more than ever it is necessary to understand who we’ve been, who we are, and who we may become.

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*Spiritual Soul is a stage of human development preceded by that of the Sentient Soul (our lower soul nature) and then the Intellectual Soul (higher soul nature). We will talk more of this in subsequent posts. Or, if you can’t wait, please read the book: Theosophy, Chapter entitled: The Essential Nature of the Human Being.

Our People

Each man on earth has his own fate,
Each one his highway wide:
This one builds up, that one lays waste,
And that casts greedy eyes
O’er all the globe, to find somewhere
A land not yet enslaved,
Which he could conquer and then bear
With him into the grave.
From “A Dream” by Taras Shevchenko

Many Ukrainians interviewed since Russia’s attack say that the people of the country are united as never before. Many of us can recall similar responses when national tragedies or disasters struck our own countries. Even those of us who criticize our country’s policies and actions and feel various levels of discomfort at its aggressions and failures, will feel outraged when it is attacked by an outside force. Suddenly, we feel united with all our fellow citizens.

What is the source of this feeling? Why does the country in which we were born matter to us so much?

A few months ago, we discussed the work of the angels, especially that of our own guardian angels. Rudolf Steiner reminds us that humans are spiritual beings in physical bodies and that we are not alone in the spiritual world. Our physical body is our lowest aspect (as discussed last month) and our second aspect, the etheric body, is the lowest body for angels. Our third aspect, the astral body, is the lowest body of the archangels. So, only when we gain sight on the astral plane will we see archangels. Just as angels devote themselves to individual human beings, archangels devote themselves to groups of people – some of them to nations.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

“[Angels] are directly connected with the individual human being. They lead or guide him in so far as he needs guidance, from one earthly life to another and are his Guardians, his Protectors, whenever and wherever he needs their protection. Therefore, supersensible though they be and imperceptible to earthly sight, the Angeloi are directly connected with mankind's evolution.

In the next immediately adjacent spiritual realm, the Beings whom we call the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, the Archangels, unfold their activity. The Archangeloi have to do with much that also plays a part in the evolution of humanity. They have to do, not with the individual human being, but with groups of human beings. Thus, as I have said in many anthroposophical lectures, the evolution of the peoples is under the rulership of Archangelic Beings.”

Excerpt from: The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls. Lecture I: Angels, Folk Spirits, Time Spirits: their part in the Evolution of Mankind. June 7, 1910, Oslo, Norway.

Let’s try to understand a little of what our relationship as a people is to the archangels from the work of Adam Bittleston (1911-1989).

“As the Angel gazes upon the development of an individual soul, the Archangel indwells the development of a nation. But just as a man may look at an event as one of his successes while the Angel may see it as a misfortune distracting him from his real task—so what seems a victory to the people of a nation may be a spiritual defeat for its Archangel. What the Archangel wants for his nation is not power, but ways of life which serve the great purposes of humanity. He works above all among the artists, the thinkers, and the reformers among his people… Just as a man’s pride in his own genius is a great hindrance to his Angel, national pride blocks the work of the Archangel, produces indeed an appalling caricature of it. Human beings do not support the spirit of their country by trying to be French, or Italian, or English, but by working for justice, or the freedom of the oppressed, or beauty in the arts and in the environment. The Archangel wishes to see what is achieved or hoped for by individuals pass over into general habits and customs which enrich life.” (Bittleston, Our Spiritual Companions.)

The truly frightening world confronting us today with war, poverty, disease, inequality, and on and on, can make us feel helpless, even hopeless. What can we do about any of these things? We need to prepare ourselves for our contemporary world by embracing a larger perspective of knowledge. We need to accept that the material world is just one part of the world not the whole world. We need to think more deeply than the words shouted to us from all sides (or one side). We need to think for ourselves. What would it mean to replace nationalism with a sense of what one can do within a nation for the good of all humankind? How does the culture of my people contribute to the good of the world? How do I contribute to the good of my people? If we look closely, we will see the people around us who are already responding to this question. After all, nations are built of individuals.

In our highest quest to “know thyself” we need to contemplate what belonging to a nation means to us and why. Certainly, the Ukrainians are doing that. And the war? And the wars yet to come? They will be fought until we wake up.

Seven Members

Back in the 1980s, Herbert Benson, a Harvard cardiologist, investigated the abilities of Tibetan monks to change their metabolism (see link below). The monks he saw were apparently working on their seventh member.* In the lecture excerpted below, Rudolf Steiner discusses this aspect as the most difficult to achieve for human beings, a capacity he attributes to the Adept, one who has developed his seventh member. As a result of our evolution in consciousness, we have already begun to develop our fifth member. (It should be noted that altering our breath is no longer a viable method to reach spiritual knowledge; we must do so through our intellect.)

We’ve talked before about the physical, etheric, astral bodies and ‘I’ of each human being, especially in connection with sleep and death, but today we will review them from a new angle: Steiner’s description of what the spiritual researcher sees when looking at a person. Many of you will recognize these descriptions from other sources. We will also look briefly at the three members that are “above” the ‘I’.

The description below is just a brief review. We must acknowledge that whole libraries could be written about each member that makes up every human being. Think about all that has been written about our physical bodies or just specific body parts; here the physical body gets one sentence.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Man has a physical body in common with the mineral kingdom and an etheric body in common with the plant and animal kingdoms. Ordinary observation can confirm that. But there is another way in which we can prove to ourselves the existence of an etheric body, although only those who have developed their higher senses have this faculty. A very definite form of higher perception is needed to understand this principle of life, growth, nutrition, and propagation.

Anyone who wants to know the nature of the etheric body by direct vision must be able to maintain his ordinary consciousness intact and ‘suggest away’ the physical body by the strength of his own will. He will not, however, be left with an empty space, but will see before him the etheric body glowing with a reddish-blue light like a phantom, whose radiance is a little darker than peach blossom…

Animals can feel pleasure and pain, and thus have a further principle in common with man: the astral body. The astral body is the seat of everything we know as desire, passion, and so forth. This is clear to straightforward observation as an inner experience, but for the initiate the astral body can become an outer reality… The initiate sees this third member of man as an egg-shaped cloud which not only surrounds the body but permeates it. Within this cloud or aura the initiate sees every desire, every impulse as color and form in the astral body. For example, he sees intense passion flashing like rays of lightning out of the astral body. In animals the basic color of the astral body varies with the species… but in human beings the color alters from person to person…

But man is distinguished from the animal in another, further way. This brings us to the fourth member of our being, which comes to expression in a name different from all other names. I can say ‘I’ only of myself… Hebrew initiates spoke of the ‘inexpressible name of God’, of the God who dwells in man, for the name can be uttered only by the soul for this same soul… This attribute makes man superior to the animals… This again presents itself to the seer in a peculiar form. When he studies the astral body, everything appears in perpetual movement except for one small space, shaped like a somewhat elongated bluish oval, situated at the base of the nose, behind the brow. Just as the empty center of a flame appears blue when seen through the light around it, so this empty space appears blue because of the auric light streaming around it. This is the outer form of expression of the ‘I’.

Every human being has these four members… A refinement of the moral nature produces finer colors in the aura; an increase in the power of discrimination between good and evil also shows itself in a refinement of the aura. In the process of becoming civilized the ‘I’ has worked upon the astral body and ennobled the desires. The higher a person’s moral and intellectual development, the more will his ‘I’ have worked upon the astral body. The seer can distinguish between a developed and an undeveloped human being.

Whatever part of the astral body has been thus transformed by the ‘I’ is called Manas. Manas is the fifth member of man’s nature. We have just so much of Manas as we have created by our own efforts; part of our astral body is therefore always Manas… In the same way that we can raise ourselves to a higher moral level we can also learn to work upon the etheric body and what we have transformed in this body by our own efforts is called Buddhi. This is the sixth member of man’s nature…

The highest achievement open to man on this earth is to work right down into the physical body. That is the most difficult task of all… [we] must learn to control the breath and the circulation, to follow consciously the activity of the nerves, and to regulate the processes of thought… A man who has reached this stage is called an Adept; he will then have developed in himself what we call Atma. Atma is the seventh member of man’s being.

Excerpt from: Founding a Science of the Spirit, Lecture 1: The Being of Man, Stuttgart, Germany, August 22, 1906, by Rudolf Steiner.

Usually, these monthly posts point to some action we may contemplate taking to become more responsible human beings. This time, we focused on descriptions of the seven members of the human being. From these descriptions, however, we may consider becoming the artist of our own astral body, consciously choosing the beautiful colors and forms that will manifest when we begin creating Manas for ourselves.

https://mindmatters.ai/2019/09/tibetan-monks-can-change-their-metabolism/

*Note: It is hard to avoid thinking of a “body” as anything other than physical substance; the word “member” avoids this assumption. Both words are used in this post.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43408247_Buddhist_Brains_A_Case_Study_in_the_Reenchantment_of_the_Brain_Sciences

Temper, Temper

Let’s imagine a building with people inside; the doors are locked and the windows are shuttered. Four separate people at different times want to get in.

The first marches up and knocks loudly. No one answers. She pounds on the door and still gets no answer. As her fury rises, she decides to break one of the windows to get in. The second is lightly jogging by and notices the door. Always curious, she knocks. Getting no response, she looks away, notices a butterfly, and immediately pursues it. The third trudges up to the door and waits to see if someone opens it. Eventually, she sits down nearby and waits to see what will happen. The fourth, lost in her thoughts, looks up and sees the door; after weighing the possibilities, she knocks and backs off. When no one answers, she is convinced the people inside don’t want her inside; head lowered, she sadly walks away.

This story, which has many variations, serves as a way for us to understand the four temperaments and thus understand ourselves and others better. Galen of Pergamon (129 AD – c. 216) named these four temperaments choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic. We can compare them to the four elements, choleric = fire, sanguine = air, phlegmatic = water, melancholic = earth.

Steiner found in his spiritual research that these four temperaments synthesize our incarnating spirit with its line of heredity. He says, “Temperament strikes a balance between the eternal and the ephemeral.” We each have all four temperaments, but one usually predominates over the other three and one is often barely evident. Mastering or balancing our temperaments is one of the many tasks that gives purpose to our lives.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

How does the spiritual-psychic stream, of which a human being forms a part through reincarnation, unite itself with the physical stream of heredity? The answer is that a synthesis must be achieved. When the two streams combine, each imparts something of its own quality to the other. In much the same way that blue and yellow combine to give green, the two streams in the human being combine to yield what is commonly known as temperament…

Cholerics come across as people who must always have their own way…

Sanguines surrender themselves in a certain sense to the constant and varied flow of images, sensations, and ideas…

Phlegmatic(s) are preoccupied with their own internal processes. They let external events run their course while their attention is directed inward…

Melancholics (experience pain that) continually wells up within them…

When we consider that the temperaments, each of which represents a mild imbalance, can degenerate into unhealthy extremes, we realize just how important this is… for in every temperament there lie two dangers of aberration, one great, one small.

One danger for young cholerics is that they will never learn to control their temper as they develop into maturity. That is the small danger. The greater is that they will become foolishly single-minded.

For the sanguine the lesser danger is flightiness; the greater is mania, induced by a constant stream of sensations.

The small danger for the phlegmatic is apathy; the greater is stupidity, dullness.

For the melancholic, insensitivity to anything other than personal pain is the small danger; the greater is insanity.

In light of all this it is clear that to guide the temperaments is one of life’s significant tasks… By filling ourselves with practical wisdom such as this, we learn to solve that basic riddle of life, the other person… Spiritual science makes it possible that when two souls meet and one demands love, the other offers it. If something else is demanded, that other thing is given. Through such true, living wisdom do we create the basis for society.

Excerpt from: The Four Temperaments, Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 4, 1909.

View fullsize

I found this temperament chart on Pinterest. Click to enlarge. Sources are listed above.

Steiner gives specific guidance to teachers in the first Waldorf School with ways to recognize the temperament of a child and the methods that will be most effective in working with each one. For example, these teachers know that the choleric child needs to respect the teacher’s expertise while the sanguine child needs to love the teacher’s personality; that the melancholic child needs to know the teacher has experienced suffering and the phlegmatic child needs the help of friends to find things interesting. Waldorf teachers incorporate these principles in every aspect of their teaching.

If we go back to our story at the beginning, we will probably recognize the predominate temperament in ourselves and in the people we know. Understanding each other’s behaviors based on this significant underlying reality allows us to better communicate with each other and to better meet each other’s needs. We can also understand why natural leaders are often cholerics, why every social gathering needs at least one sanguine, why the calm heads in a crisis are often phlegmatics, and the people who will have thought with precision through every course of action are often melancholics.

We can gain a deeper understanding of the four temperaments in a simple Google search as the far-ranging strengths and weaknesses of each temperament cannot be included here. You can also listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG8AihZyOlg where you will find the excerpted lecture above in full.

Listening

How willing are we to try to understand each other? How willing are we to listen to a person who holds an opinion about God or politics or society that differs from our own? How do we move towards peace and love – the ideals celebrated at Christmastime?

For the past three years, we have discussed our souls and spirits. We see that the smallest aspect of ourselves is our current physical body. We realize that we existed before birth and will continue to exist after death. We know that we accrue and pay off karma in every lifetime. These are basic truths of spiritual science and knowing them helps us practice a love and peace that can hold all of humanity.

If we decide to begin on the path toward initiation knowledge (see April 2020 post: Primary Source) in earnest, we must accept that it will require dedication and will and courage. We will need to clean up our acts. Toward the middle of his book, How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, Rudolf Steiner gives seven requirements for spiritual training. They are sobering, to say the least, requiring an honesty with oneself that initially seems impossible. The seventh one tells us something about loving each other. (If you want to know about all of them, please get the book.)

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… To believe in and love humanity is the basis of all striving for the truth. Our striving must be built upon trust and love for humanity—although it does not begin there. Rather, it must flow out of the soul’s own forces. And this love for humanity must gradually expand into love for all beings, and indeed for all existence…

Simply listening to what others say with reverence and devotion, rather than immediately opposing it with our own opinions, need not lead to our becoming slavishly dependent on them. Those who have achieved something on the path to knowledge know that they owe everything to patient listening and assimilation, not to their own obstinate personal opinions. We must always remember that where we have already formed a conclusion, we cannot learn anything. If we desire only to judge, therefore, we can learn nothing… our willingness to learn should be unconditional. It is far better to withhold our judgment on something we do not understand than to condemn it. We can leave understanding until later.

How to Know Higher Worlds, Chapter 5, by Rudolf Steiner.

Learning to listen requires the trust that we will not lose ourselves in the other’s opinion. We may have observed that this seems particularly difficult with the onslaught of today’s media blitz on every aspect of our lives. But how we listen is a vital key to peace and love. Steiner addressed this in a lecture he gave around the same time he wrote the book quoted above:

It is our duty to enter into what another person says; we need only make it clear to him that we value him at that stage of truth where he now stands. Everyone must learn for himself, and knowing this, we shall become tolerant towards every form of truth. We come to a better understanding of things; we do not battle against people but seek to live with them...

Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another, the most varied opinions can be reconciled. Hence it is deeply significant that in Anthroposophy no religion is attacked, and no religion is specially singled out, but all are understood, and so there can be brotherhood because the adherents of the most varied religions understand one another.

This is one of the most important tasks for mankind today and in the future: that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of spiritual development is empty.

At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 11, September 1, 1906, by Rudolf Steiner.

Christmas occurs near the winter solstice, a time celebrated for thousands of years. The return from the shortest day of the year; a return to the light. Let us connect the idea of light with love. Let us see that light is related to knowledge and understanding. Love and understanding will lead us to peace… starting within ourselves.

Enchanted Flowers

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour …

It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the world we safely go

Joy and Woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

Fom Auguries of Innocence by William Blake.

Imagine all the joyful occasions like weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and so on without any flowers. Or, on the other side, the difficult occasions like funerals or hospital visits that would seem so barren without the beauty of flowers to offer hope.

In our day to day lives, flowers decorate our homes and yards, and cities with parks and botanical gardens are considered more desirable. And lest we forget, without flowers, we would have no fruits and far fewer vegetables. Flowers fulfill physical needs and psychological needs; what an amazing breadth of service flowers perform.

For our part, we make sure the plants for which we are responsible have all the earth, water, air and sunlight they need to thrive, but do they need anything else from us? We might wonder since everything physical has its spiritual counterpart—something invisible—what lies behind the flowers and plants we see. We might wonder if that spiritual part requires something besides the four elements.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

One who simply grows up into our modern civilization observes the things of the outer world: he perceives them, forms abstract thoughts about them, possibly derives real pleasure from a lovely blossom or a majestic plant; and if he is at all imaginative, he may even achieve an inner picture of these. Yet he remains completely unaware of his deeper relation to that world of which the plant, for example, is a part. To talk incessantly about spirit, spirit, and again spirit is utterly inadequate for spiritual perception. Instead, what is needed is that we should become conscious of our true spiritual relations to the things around us. When we observe a plant in the usual way, we do not in the least sense the presence of an elemental being dwelling in it, of something spiritual; we do not dream that every such plant harbors something which is not satisfied by having us look at it and form such abstract mental pictures as we commonly do of plants today. For in every plant there is concealed—under a spell, as it were—an elemental spiritual being; and really only he observes a plant in the right way who realizes that this loveliness is the sheath of a spiritual being enchanted in it—a relatively insignificant being, to be sure, in the great scale of cosmic interrelationships, but still a being intimately related to man.

The human being is really so closely linked to the world that he cannot take a step in the realm of nature without coming under the intense influence exercised upon him by his intimate relations to the world. And when we see the lily in the field, growing from the seed to the blossom, we must vividly imagine—though not personified—that this lily is awaiting something…

All about us are these elemental spirits begging us, in effect, Do not look at the flowers so abstractly, nor form such abstract mental pictures of them: let rather your heart and your Gemüt (heart, mind, soul) enter into what lives, as soul and spirit, in the flowers, for it is imploring you to break the spell.

Excerpt from: Michaelmas and the Soul-Forces of Man, Lecture 2, by Rudolf Steiner, September 28, 1923.

Steiner says quite specifically that the elemental beings of flowers are released to advance their spiritual lives when we human beings perceive them fully. It’s hard to imagine, right? It’s hard to believe that we are so connected to all that exists, right? And even harder to believe how deeply runs our responsibility to all of earth, of nature.

If we think about the help we receive from our guardian angel and other spiritual beings, we may get a sense of the relationship we are considering today between us and these elemental beings of flowers. We, too, are instruments of divine forces. Maybe we will look differently at the flowers attending our feelings of joy and woe knowing that when we do, we help to free them.

As we work in this our third year of the blog, we will continue to uncover specific spiritual realities such as this one… even though it won’t be “easy” to believe them. But if, additionally, we take up the work of acquiring spiritual sight, none of this will seem so fantastic; we will see all of it for ourselves.

Invisibility

The power to become invisible is a fascinating idea explored in many works of fiction. In his book, The Invisible Man, H. G. Wells’ main character is an optics expert who develops a procedure that makes him invisible. A magical ring makes its wearer invisible in The Lord of the Rings books and a magical cloak makes its wearer invisible in the Harry Potter books. Like these characters, we might enjoy the obvious advantages of being invisible. However, none of us would be happy if the people we know and love were invisible to us.

So, as we’ll see, it takes a moment to get used to the idea that they are.

We need to create new ways of thinking about the human material/physical body—the visible body—because the more comfortable we become with the premise that what we are seeing is just the material vessel of the people around us, that who they really are is invisible, the more we might actually “see” them. Of course, we are invisible too, so if all we focus on when we think of ourselves is our physical body, we are missing what matters the most, our invisible self.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

When you encounter a fellow human being today, your conscious impression is really an entirely materialistic one. You tell yourself (not aloud of course, and perhaps not even as a conscious thought, but on a deeper level of awareness), “This is a person made of flesh and blood, composed of earthly substances.” And you say the same of animals and plants…

Let us take the most extreme case, human beings… What your physical eyes perceive is the mineral element that fills out the structure. You see whatever the person has absorbed from the external mineral world. You do not see the being who did the absorbing, who united with the mineral element. Hence, when we encounter another human being, we speak correctly only if we say to ourselves: “What stands before me are material particles that this individual’s spirit-form has stored and gathered, thereby making something invisible visible.”

Actual human beings are invisible, truly invisible. All of you sitting here listening to this lecture are invisible to physical senses. But a certain number of shapes with a certain capacity to attract particles of matter are sitting here, and these particles are visible… the real individuals sitting here are supersensible beings, hence invisible.

Excerpt from: The Mission of the Archangel Michael: Revelation of Essential Secrets of the Human Being, Lecture 3 by Rudolf Steiner, November 23, 1919, Dornach, Switzerland.

Steiner calls the above thought experiment “Michaelic thinking”. Who is Michael?

As described in Historic UK, “St. Michael (pronounced Micha-el) is one of the principal angelic warriors, protector against the dark of the night and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels.” Rudolf Steiner has written and lectured extensively about the Archangel Michael as the bringer of light, an exalted being who is the ruler of cosmic intelligence. Michael is one of seven archangels who, one after the other, guide humankind throughout time; he is now once again overseeing humanity. His wish is to guide us toward a conscious experience of the spiritual world, to make the invisible visible through the light of spiritual knowledge. We, however, must do the work of preparing ourselves to meet him.

One of the ways we can prepare ourselves is to acknowledge that we, and everyone else, existed before our birth and will continue to exist after our death; we are eternal beings. Another way of preparing ourselves is by reminding ourselves every morning that everyone we see as we walk through the day is invisible. When we can accept that, we will learn to accept that there are other beings that exist who are not in physical bodies at all, who are completely invisible to us. We need to know and acknowledge these beings too.

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Michaelmas/

Why Bother?

Not everyone walks into an art museum with the same enthusiasm, but almost all of us will find at least one painting we think is beautiful. We may even recognize it from somewhere. We will spend a minute or so in front of it, enjoying its colors and forms whether we understand what the artist is trying to express or not. And then we move on.

Let’s say a docent walks up while we are standing in front of our favorite painting and starts to explain it. We may learn about the artist, the painting’s composition, its historical context, etc. Now we see the painting differently; it is more beautiful than it was before. The painting didn’t change, we did. And from now on whenever we see a piece of art, though we may immediately recognize its beauty, we know that it is also filled with mysterious meaning we can’t see until we understand what we’re seeing.

For all of time, humanity has searched for meaning to the mysteries of life.

Why not be satisfied with a feeling? Why bother to understand?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… All an investigator of the spiritual world is doing is simply recalling to people’s memories something they have forgotten.

Now imagine that during life on earth you come across another person with whom you remember experiencing something 20 years before, but which he has completely forgotten. By talking with him, however, about the incident which you yourself remember clearly, you can bring the other person to recall it also. It is just the same process, though on a higher level, when I speak to you about the spiritual worlds, the only difference being that pre-earthly experiences are more completely forgotten than those of earthly life.

Now people might say: ‘Why should we be asked during our life on earth to take on this extra task of concerning ourselves with matters which, in accordance with cosmic ordering or, one might say, with divine decree, we experience during life beyond the earth?’ There are those, too, who ask: ‘Why should I go to this trouble before death to gain knowledge about the supersensible worlds? I can very well wait until I am dead. Then, if all these things really exist, I shall come face to face with them.’

All this, however, arises from a total misunderstanding of earthly life. The facts of which the spiritual investigator speaks are experienced by human beings in pre-earthly existence, but they are not then the subject of thought, and only during life on earth can thoughts about them be experienced. And only those thoughts about the supersensible world that have been worked upon during earthly life can be carried with us through the gate of death, and only then can we understand the facts we experience between death and rebirth.

… At this present stage of human evolution people’s lives are extraordinarily hard if, during life on earth, they give no thought to the spiritual world. For having passed through the gate of death they can no longer acquire any real knowledge of their surroundings. They are in the midst of what is incomprehensible to them. An understanding of what is experienced after death has to be striven for during life on earth… it was different for people of earlier ages. But, at the present moment of humanity’s evolution people will have to rely more and more on acquiring here on earth an understanding of what they are going to experience in the supersensible world between death and rebirth.

Excerpt from: The Evolution of Consciousness, Lecture 3: New and Old Initiation Science, August 21, 1923, in Berlin.

Consciousness evolves. Spiritual knowledge, once our birthright, once innate, must now be attained through our thinking. Spiritual awareness disappeared so that our thinking could develop freely, and now we need to lift the power of our thinking into the spiritual realms to understand what we will experience between death and rebirth. Until we can acquire this knowledge firsthand, we need a docent. We have the many works of an initiate, Rudolf Steiner, to provide us with this knowledge. We have much to learn before we cross the threshold.