Our Essential Being

In times like these, we may look around us and think about what a long way we have to go. We may become despondent about the massive challenges the world faces and the forces that are working aggressively against each other to address them or obscure them. It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. Yet here we are, and we have our work to do and our lives to live. In quiet moments though, we may wonder why we are as such peace seems so far away.

A significant why is that evolution is happening; it’s not just something that already happened. We are evolving, as is the earth and everything else. At one time, long ago, we lived under the direct guidance of the world of spiritual beings. Because we needed to become free beings, direct contact with the spiritual world became increasingly difficult until we reached a point about five or six hundred years ago when we would question whether a spiritual world even exists. Today we have evolved; our level of intelligence has become sufficient to reunite with that world by using it toward that aim.

Unbeknownst to us, we still have a period of grace from birth until around the age of 3, when we are in direct contact with the higher worlds. Most of us do not have memories that stretch back to our birth but begin at a point before we learn to say “I”, so we are never aware of that direct contact. That state of grace, the ability to have direct contact with the spiritual beings, is the goal toward which we now must consciously strive. 

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

What we bring with us at birth contains something that is better than anything we can make of it in later life. In early childhood, the luciferic and ahrimanic forces have only a limited influence on our being. Essentially, they are active only in what we make of ourselves through our conscious life... 

Our passing through successive incarnations is significant for the overall evolution of our essential being, which has undergone successive past lives and will continue to go through future lives. The evolution of the earth runs parallel to our own. At some point in the future, the earth will have reached the end of its course; then the planet earth, as a physical entity, will have to separate from the totality of human souls—just as when we die the body separates from the spirit, and the soul, in order to live on, enters the spiritual realm between death and rebirth. From this point of view, our highest ideal must be the striving to make all the fruits to be gained in earthly life truly our own before we die.

By the time the earth separates from humanity, we must have advanced to the point of giving over our whole being to the forces that presently work on us only in childhood. Only when we have reached this level can we claim to have attained our goal. Thus, through successive earthly lives, we must gradually make our entire being, including our consciousness, an expression of the forces that work on us under the guidance of the spiritual world in early childhood. This is the purpose of evolution.

After such considerations, the realization that we are not alone takes hold of our soul. This realization imbues us with humility, but also with a proper consciousness of our human dignity. We realize at the same time that something lives in us that can prove at all times that we can rise above ourselves to a self that is already surpassing us and will continue to do so from one life to the next. As this realization assumes a more and more definite form, it can have a very soothing, heartwarming effect and, at the same time, imbue the soul with the appropriate humility and modesty. What lives within us is truly a higher, divine human being, and we can feel ourselves pervaded by this being as by a living presence of whom we can say, ‘This is my inner guide in me.’

Given this, the thought easily arises that we should strive in every way possible to achieve harmony with that part in us that is wiser than our conscious intelligence. Thereafter, our attention will no longer be directed to the conscious self but will be focused instead on an expanded self, and from this perspective we can then combat and eradicate all our false pride and arrogance. 

Excerpt from: The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity, Lecture 1 by Rudolf Steiner given June 5, 1911, in Copenhagen.

Steiner tells us that “what we bear within us is not a higher self that has to be developed gradually, but one that already exists and that often leads us to rise above ourselves.” We already know which are the healthy and unhealthy choices; our true self doesn’t make the unhealthy choices. When we listen to that self, our own wise self, we rise. 

We do have a long way to go. We do have a lofty goal. Each one of us. If we accept our own strenuous path forward, our own struggle to first find and then listen to our higher self, perhaps we will have compassion for others as they struggle with their own journey.

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/

Balance

Work-Life Balance is one of the Topic pages of the Harvard Business Review indicating its importance along with other more traditional topics such as Managing People, Communication, and Technology. Lots of us are demanding that the “work” side of the balance be lightened, and employers are taking notice by offering their employees incentives like playful workplace environments, flexible hours, the chance to work off-site, etc. The “life” side of the balance—travel and adventure, scaling mountains or skiing down them, time with friends and families, eating good food, reading good books—comprises experiences that more and more of us consider to be essential to life.

Creating a healthy work-life balance requires us to think about which experiences we want to have and how to prioritize them, knowing all along that the experiences we choose now will vary over the course of our lifetimes due to circumstances, both inward and outward, that will change. We can think about our lives in this way because we are conscious beings who can act purposefully to create the experiences, both inward and outward, that we wish to have.

Back in the third post, Seeing Red, we explored how the outer world is perceived through our senses and how our thinking attaches meaning to that which we perceive; this is consciousness. If we couldn’t attach meaning to our perceptions, we wouldn’t be human. Steiner says that what we feel about our experiences belongs to our soul, and what we learn from our experiences belongs to our spirit. In other words, we are spiritual beings because we have experiences, we feel something about them, and we learn from them.

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

The soul nature of man is not determined by the body alone. Man does not wander aimlessly and without purpose from one sensation to another, nor does he act under the influence of every casual incitement that plays upon him either from without or through the processes of his body. He thinks about his perceptions and his acts. By thinking about his perceptions, he gains knowledge of things. By thinking about his acts, he introduces a reasonable coherence into his life. He knows that he will worthily fulfill his duty as man only when he lets himself be guided by correct thoughts in knowing as well as acting… Nature subjects man to the laws of changing matter, but he subjects himself to the laws of thought. By this means he makes himself a member of a higher order than the one to which he belongs through his body. This order is the spiritual.

The spiritual is as different from the soul as the soul is from the body. As long as only the particles of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen that are in motion in the body are spoken of, we do not have the soul in view. Soul life begins only when within the motion of these particles the feeling arises, “I taste sweetness,” or “I feel pleasure.” Likewise, we do not have the spirit in view as long as merely those soul experiences are considered that course through anyone who gives himself over entirely to the outer world and his bodily life. This soul life is rather the basis of the spiritual just as the body is the basis of the soul life. The biologist is concerned with the body, the investigator of the soul—the psychologist—with the soul, and the investigator of the spirit with the spirit. It is incumbent upon those who would understand the nature of man by means of thinking, first to make clear to themselves through self-reflection the difference between body, soul, and spirit.”

Excerpt from: Theosophy, Chapter 1: The Essential Nature of Man, 1904 by Rudolf Steiner.

Natural science still hasn’t found the answer to human consciousness. David Chalmers*, who coined the phrase “hard problem” when referring to the question of consciousness itself, wants to understand what experiences are. Thus far, looking at the operation of the brain and trying to find out how and why it would create an experience out of perceptions and concepts, hasn’t yielded any results. In fact, Chalmers, who has been looking at this hard problem for decades, is now proposing that consciousness may be a fundamental like time and space; that maybe it isn’t brain-based. This is radical thinking for natural science, but it will be spiritual science that provides the means by which we will understand human consciousness and how it evolves.

Immanuel Kant recognized the soul; he simply said we can never know about its origin. Steiner says we can. Not through some kind of blind faith, and not through a materialist science, but through a spiritual science that develops our consciousness to perceive the whole world, not just the material one. Imagine the work-life balance we might achieve if we expanded our consciousness? If you want to know more, you can read Steiner.

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* David Chalmers is a philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University, and a Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He is also well-known for introducing the "hard problem" of consciousness, which has sparked immense discussion and research in the philosophy of mind, psychology, and neuroscience.

“Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

“How do you explain consciousness?”

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_chalmers_how_do_you_explain_consciousness/discussion?c=62080#t-272575