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.