Once we lived with the gods of our mythology; the gods spoke to us, guided us, rewarded and punished us. Most of us believe we’ve outgrown such nonsense; however, the stories of these times were based on real experiences, experiences we had as part of our nature, part of our lives. Those capacities allowing us to know the spiritual world have since faded away from our consciousness as our scientific reasoning developed into our new ideas and eclipsed those of yore.
Rudolf Steiner tells us that in our time, we have spiritual powers that are waiting to be called into consciousness; powers that we may sense and yearn for but that lie hidden deep in our souls. No longer freely given, we need to work on ourselves to access those spiritual powers.
We gain strength for life when we begin to understand the concepts of spiritual science. The ideas discussed in the blog over these past years have given us concepts to ponder about waking and sleeping, birth and death, karma and reincarnation, our four bodies: physical, etheric, astral and ego “I”. We can bring the unsettling chaos of life into perspective when we begin to understand these concepts. The advantages to obtaining this knowledge are obvious to all who have begun on a path leading towards it. We might wonder if any disadvantages exist for ignoring this knowledge during our lives
What if what we don’t know can hurt us?
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
The human being of the present time needs a different relationship to the world than that which the human soul could have in past times in order to find inner satisfaction, calm in the stream of existence. Spiritual science shows us that in the human souls of the present time a certain sum, a kind of fund, of spiritual powers rests hidden within us. These spiritual powers want to emerge from this human soul so that they do not remain hidden. These powers wish to step forth into human consciousness so that people not only feel them as an inner urge, as an inner compulsion, but can place them in their world of ideas, in their world of concepts.
In these deep foundations of the human soul rests a whole sum of forces, which, when brought up into human consciousness, show for the first time what moves us inwardly, what inspires us inwardly. Truly, we are richer and more full of content than we often imagine.
There is now a law, an important essential law, which will gradually be recognized as governing all of existence: that which can be beneficial in one state can have a destructive effect when it asserts itself in another state, as it were in another place.
In what remains hidden from our material consciousness, invisible supersensible forces rest. They rest in what we release into the spiritual world when we sleep, and bring insecurity to us in our behavior, in a lack of direction in life. When these forces are brought up into consciousness, when they are transformed into conscious knowledge, concepts and ideas, then they become beneficial, then they become healing, then they give the person direction and purpose, peace and security in life. It is a peculiar law, and it must be admitted, a difficult law to understand.
But it is true nevertheless: spiritual science gives the spiritual knower deep satisfaction when it enters consciousness, it is an unsettling element, an unsettling force, if it rests below only, unconsciously, in the dark regions of the soul. If it rests unconsciously in these regions, which spiritual science wants to raise to clear knowledge, then it remains without influence on the human ego (“I”); then it surges and billows in the subconscious, then it cannot have any influence on what the person experiences in terms of happiness and pain, of successes and failures. Then we can bring only that part of our nature into successes and failures, into happiness and pain, which goes along with happiness and pain in such a way that the soul loses itself in happiness or sinks in pain, becomes numbed by its successes, filled with pain by its failures. Then the soul goes everywhere with us, then it rocks and floats in the stream of life.
But when the soul’s powers of knowledge about the spiritual world which lie dormant down there in the dark regions are brought up into the ego so that this ego can take the spiritual knowledge with it when life smiles on us in happiness or challenges us in suffering and pain, then the “I” no long rocks and swims in happiness and unhappiness in the stream of life; then it carries a strengthened inner being into happiness and unhappiness, into pain and suffering, and happiness and pain are then experienced differently.
Excerpt from: From a Fateful Time, Lecture 6: Intuitive Insight in the Happy and Serious Hours of Life. By Rudolf Steiner. Berlin. January 15, 1915.
Steiner goes on to explain that we experience happiness and pain differently once we have learned some of the ideas of spiritual science. In a nutshell, we slowly gain control over these emotions. We still experience happiness in all its fullness and joy, but we don’t lose ourselves in it. The same goes for pain. We still suffer just as fully as before, but we don’t lose ourselves in it. We are no longer avidly pursuing more and more happiness, nor are we scared to explore or try to avoid the depths of pain.
Some unintended consequences of staying unaware of our spiritual souls were stated clearly in the excerpt above: insecurity in our behavior, lack of direction in life, losing ourselves in our emotions. The forces trapped in our unconsciousness create disturbances in our waking lives. When spirit flows into our consciousness, we become masters of our own lives. Our destiny shines before us, and the hindrances begin to fall to the wayside. For our own good, we should begin the work.