Un-easy

It’s hard to think amidst all the distractions we have in our lives. The levels of media disturbance we accept in our own homes are exacerbated when we live within the unceasing hum of a city. No wonder so many of us abandon efforts to meditate after a few attempts; we neglect to pursue our own thoughts, let alone thoughts of higher knowledge. Yet connecting with our spiritual nature has never been more important.

Why? Because it’s our time to do it; we are at that point in our evolution. Just as once people lived among the spirits of nature in a dreamy consciousness and then lost that capacity four to five hundred years ago in order to acquire scientific reason, we are now able to find our connection to the spirit again with this hard-won intellect and reason. If we continue to live without a foundation in the spirit, rooted in materialism, we will sink ever deeper into egotism and despair. We will lose our moral grounding. Sound familiar?

The trouble is, we have to exert ourselves to acquire this connection to the spirit. Steiner says, “It belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing or another, but of how you take it in… To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul…”

Of course, we can choose to disregard the call to spirit. We are, after all, free in this regard.

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

Human beings will only attain the kind of connection they need to be truly human if they seek it in their inner life, if they delve so far down into the depths of their soul that they reach the forces that connect them with the spirit of the cosmos, out of which they were born and in which they are embedded, but from which they can be separated…

Only by penetrating into the depths of their own being will they find the connection with divine spiritual beings that they need for their salvation, the spiritual hierarchies that are progressing along a straight path. This connection with the spiritual hierarchies from which we were actually born, in the spirit, this living connection with them, is made difficult to the highest degree by the saturation of the world by modern technology. Human beings are dragged away from the spiritual-cosmic connections, and the forces which they should be developing to maintain their link with the spiritual-soul being of the cosmos are being weakened.

A person who has already taken the first steps in initiation will therefore notice how the mechanical things of modern life penetrate into man’s spiritual-soul nature to such an extent that a great deal of it is smothered and destroyed. Such a person also notices that the destruction of these forces makes it particularly difficult for him really to develop those inner forces which unite the human being with the ‘rightful’ spiritual beings of the hierarchies.

When someone who has taken the first steps in initiation tries to meditate in a modern railway carriage or on a modern steamer, he makes a great effort to activate the necessary forces of vision to lift him into the spiritual world, yet he notices the ahrimanic (spiritual beings desiring materialism) world filling him with the kind of thing that opposes this devotion to the spiritual world, and the struggle is enormous. You could call it an inner struggle experienced in the ether body, a struggle that wears you out and crushes you.

Other people who have not taken the first steps in initiation also go through this struggle, of course, and the only difference is that the student of initiation experiences it consciously. Everyone has to go through it; the effects of this are experienced by everyone.

It would be the worst possible mistake to conclude from this that we should resist what technology has brought into modern life, that we should protect ourselves from Ahriman (See: Here Know Evil) by cutting ourselves off from modern life. This would be a kind of spiritual cowardice. The real remedy is not to let the forces of the modern soul weaken and cut themselves off from modern life, but to make the forces of the soul strong so that they can stand up to modern life. A courageous approach to modern life is necessitated by world karma, and that is why true spiritual science possesses the characteristic of requiring an effort of the soul, a really hard effort.

Excerpt from: Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, Lecture 1, Technology and Art, by Rudolf Steiner. Dornach, December 28, 1914.

No one seems to be very happy with the current state of the world. Wars on all continents, political strife between families and friends, poverty, injustice, famine, you name it. Will we be able to address any of it with our established lines of thinking? Will we be able to penetrate to any truth with the shifting stories told through the lenses of deceit, arrogance, greed and malevolence we can witness every day in front of us or in the news? What if these maladies are recognized as evidence of a humanity that needs a perspective, a new voice? What if we could understand it all with spiritual insight?

We just won’t know unless we make the effort over and over again. Effort, by definition, isn’t easy, but then, neither is witnessing the world as it is today. Finding our own spiritual self could be the most important work we do in this lifetime.

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.

Primary Source

For those who are new to Dr. Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, two questions often arise: Where did Steiner get this knowledge? and Why has “no one” ever heard of him? To address the second question, we may start by asking ourselves if we can name any German philosophers of the early 1900s. During Steiner’s lifetime, though, he was well-known and drew crowds sometimes numbering in the thousands for his lectures. His work in organizing the Goethe and Schiller archives in Weimar prompted Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister to invite Steiner to visit her brother, the famous philosopher, as he lay on his deathbed. Steiner died 95 years ago on March 30, 1925, and his name, at least for the general public, has faded.

Albert Schweitzer, a household name not so long ago, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, said, “My meeting with Rudolf Steiner led me to occupy myself with him from that time forth and to remain always aware of his significance. We both felt the same obligation to lead man once again to true inner culture. I have rejoiced at the achievements his great personality and his profound humanity have brought about in the world.” Not very long ago, one would say of a greedy man: “He’s no Albert Schweitzer,” yet who in our time has even heard of him?

More recently, Willi Brandt, former Chancellor of Germany and also a Nobel Peace Prize winner said, “The advent of the Waldorf School was in my opinion the greatest contribution to world peace and understanding of the century.” And Victor Navaski, editor of The Nation for over 30 years, said in his 2005 memoir, A Matter of Opinion, that Rudolf Steiner was “light years ahead of the curve.” As Frederick Amrine (see linked site) has pointed out, the genius of Aristotle was lost for a millennium, J.S. Bach was rediscovered by Felix Mendelssohn, and Van Gogh sold but one painting in his lifetime. Will we one day look back on the relative obscurity of Rudolf Steiner as surprising?

Addressing the first question, we need to understand that Steiner isn’t the first to have gained spiritual enlightenment. Since the beginning of civilization, direct spiritual knowledge has been available to a few, mainly arising from initiation schools. In some mystery schools of yore, to reveal any of the knowledge therein would result in death, which is why so much of what we do know about the ancient mysteries from historical documentation is, at best, conjecture. Some mystery schools you might recognize include: the Pythagoreans, the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Mithraists, and the Eleusinian Mysteries.

These mystery schools offered a path of development, marked by various levels of attainment, to those students who were deemed ready. Over the course of long years of arduous training and purification, the student strove to observe in the higher worlds—strove toward “initiation” the term used for the student who has crossed the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The seven levels of initiation known as Raven, Occultist, Warrior, Lion, Persian, Sun-hero, and Father were sought within the Mithras mysteries popular among Romans from the 1st to 4th century CE. (https://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/iranian/Mithraism/m_m/pt8.htm) Once a level was achieved, these students were called Initiates of that degree. Some initiates and their work in the world are completely unknown to us; others are.

Those initiates, who “soared above the lower stages of the human capacity for knowledge” shaped the major religions and philosophies and cultures in all ages. Edouard Schuré, in his book The Great Initiates, names Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato and Jesus. Sergei O. Prokofieff, in his book Rudolf Steiner and the Masters of Esoteric Christianity, names Manes, Zarathustra (Master Jesus), Scythianos, Gautama Buddha, the Maitreya bodhisattva, Novalis, and Christian Rosenkreutz. Each of these Initiates had a purpose that was necessary for humankind’s advancement, a message that they imparted using a means and method appropriate for their time and culture.

Both Schuré and Prokofieff recognized Rudolf Steiner as an Initiate. Steiner’s mission was to share the revelations of the spiritual world without all the secrecy practiced in the mystery schools and without our needing to become initiates ourselves to understand. Dr. Steiner wrote 28 books, hundreds of articles and essays, and gave over 6,700 lectures. Thus we can appreciate the enormity of Steiner’s gift to us.

We are familiar with Buddha’s Eight-fold path and the Cabala. We can find information about the path to initiation taught in the Rosicrucian Order, in the Freemasons, and others. All of these practices point to methods of study that lead to enlightenment—to knowledge of the spiritual world that is universal; however, Steiner’s method, is the first one to use modern scientific thinking as a path toward knowledge of the spiritual world. Steiner’s path is detailed in his book: How To Know Higher Worlds.

Rudolf Steiner, as all other Initiates, was not looking at ancient texts and deciphering them in order to share them with us. He was an initiate who saw for himself what every initiate has seen after traveling the arduous path toward enlightenment. He then applied his knowledge to the ancient texts in order to show us how they should be interpreted with the mental faculties we possess today.

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

“I was not setting forth a doctrine (in Philosophy of Freedom), but simply recording inner experiences through which I had actually passed. And I reported them just as I experienced them. Everything in my book is written from this personal angle, even to the shaping of the thoughts it contains. A theoretical writer could cover more territory, and there was a time when I might have done so. But my purpose was to write a biographical account of how one human soul made the difficult ascent to freedom. In such an ascent one cannot spare any attention to others in the party as they try to negotiate cliffs and precipices, so preoccupied is one with getting up and over them oneself. One’s longing to reach the goal is too keen to consider stopping and pointing out the easiest way ahead to other climbers. And I believe I would have fallen had I attempted any such thing. I found my own way up as best I could, and then, later on, described the route that I had taken. Afterwards, I could have found a hundred other different ascent-routes that other climbers might have followed. But at the time I had no desire to write about any of these alternative paths. My method of getting over many a chasm was an individual one, deliberately singled out to be such. I struggled through thickets in a way peculiar to myself alone. And only when one reaches the goal does one realize that one has actually made it…”

Letter to Rosa Mayreder, dated November 1894. (Rudolf Steiner on his book The Philosophy of Freedom: arranged and annotated by Otto Palmer, 1975.)

Steiner’s work is published, but it isn’t easy to read, which is one reason it isn’t exactly popular. His path to enlightenment isn’t easy either; even the very first step is daunting. We have all the access to Steiner’s work that we could want, but it’s challenging, like most things worth doing. The good news is that reading Steiner’s work is, in itself, a preparation – a beginning on the path toward enlightenment. (See links below.)

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The Creative Genius of Rudolf Steiner https://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/Rudolf_Steiner_Biography.php

Discovering a Genius: Rudolf Steiner at 150 by Frederick Amrine
https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/articles/amrine_steiner.pdf

How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, by Rudolf Steiner. Most recent edition: Anthroposophic Press 1994.

Testimonials about Waldorf schools:
https://www.steinerwaldorf.org/steiner-education/does-it-work/what-others-say/

On my site: focus on biodynamic agriculture
https://www.whoareyou.blog/about-rudolf-steiner

2018 Documentary about a farm using biodynamic principles: The Biggest Little Farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDTM4JxHl8

Michael Chekov: one of his pupils — Marilyn Monroe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiuB_6Zj05A
https://anthropopper.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/marilyn-monroe-and-rudolf-steiner/

Prove It

In January of 2017, the news was everywhere that scientists had discovered a new organ, the mesentery, in the human body. Located in the abdominal cavity, what had been thought to be a segmented series of structures, was found to be a continuous structure.

In February of 2018, a new technology called “cryo-ET” that can zoom in on individual cells that have been frozen and capture them in 3D, revealed a previously unseen microscopic, left-handed helix structure that exists at the tip of the sperm tail.

The rock crystallized about 20 kilometers beneath Earth’s surface 4.0-4.1 billion years ago. It was then excavated by one or more large impact events and launched into space.

In January of 2019, NASA scientists reported the discovery of the oldest known Earth rock (about 4 billion years old) on the moon. A fragment from one of the rocks returned by Apollo 14 astronauts contained quartz, feldspar, and zircon, all common on the Earth, but highly uncommon on the Moon.

Scientists continue to examine our natural world with ever more advanced technology. Most of us will readily accept the evidence of new findings like those cited above and will incorporate this information into our body of knowledge. But what actually constitutes evidence that we can trust?

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

We do not all have to become chemists for the findings of chemistry to be useful for us, and we do not all have to be astronomers to benefit from the findings of astronomy. By the same token, there need only be a few spiritual researchers, and yet everyone can understand the results of their research with ordinary, sound common sense...

But that is exactly what many people deny. They take the reports of the spiritual researchers as nothing more than beautiful fantasies and proceed to dissect and analyze them logically... These people usually admit they have not yet trained themselves to develop their capacities for higher knowledge.

We can agree on what the chemists and physicists are saying because, if we become chemists and physicists ourselves, we will clearly see that they were right... We have to undergo training as chemists to judge the findings of chemistry or become physicists to evaluate the results of physics. By the same token, we have to become spiritual researchers to assess the insights of spiritual science. However, unprejudiced people with sound common sense can understand it... Many prejudices and preconceived ideas will have to be overcome before spiritual science can take its rightful place in modern life.

Excerpt from Social Issues: Meditative Thinking & the Threefold Social Order, Lecture 1, Basel, Switzerland 5/01/1920 by Rudolf Steiner.

If we lack sufficient training, or, having that, we lack access to the necessary technology, we will be unable to prove the theories or conclusions of our natural scientists. Yet most of us acknowledge that the dedicated training and the appropriate tools scientists possess qualifies them to analyze and confirm their work. We believe the evidence they report.

Acceptance of the findings of spiritual science requires the same acknowledgement. If we lack sufficient training, if we haven’t yet developed our organs of spiritual perception, we can nevertheless read about the findings of spiritual science in an effort to understand that world using the same scientific method with which we are all familiar. Dr. Steiner, after all, was a scientist in both spheres.

What is it, though, that drives any of us to learn? The source of our curiosity and the subsequent drive for knowledge are part of what the study of spiritual science can reveal. If we want to know more, we can read the Steiner lecture quoted above, which is found in the book by the same name.

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“Religion and Science: Conflict or Harmony?”
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/05/04/religion-and-science-conflict-or-harmony/

“Why should we trust science?”
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/why-should-we-trust-science/40511/

“The Relationship between Science and Spirituality”
https://upliftconnect.com/science-and-spirituality/