Someone Besides Me

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
– Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness.

As we look toward the holidays at this time of year, some of us choose to celebrate our religious beliefs. Others do not. Either way, most of us want to share the holidays with our family and friends. Yet this year, all around the world, we are being cautioned to forego gathering together, which seems antithetical to celebrating at all. How can we celebrate with those we care about if we aren’t going to be with them?

Let’s consider a basic tenet of spiritual science. Steiner tells us that we need to recognize that “thoughts and feelings are as important for the world as actions.” He tells us that, for the world, it is just as destructive to hate people as it is to hit them. The inverse, of course, is that the world “benefits as much from pure feelings and thoughts as from good deeds.” As unlikely as this idea may seem to us – physical proof is more compelling – perhaps we can think about seasonal words like love and peace and compassion and goodwill to all and what they might mean for us if we embodied them.

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

“Those who go heedlessly through the world do not regard compassion as having any great mystery about it; but to the thoughtful, compassion is a great and mysterious secret. When we look at a being only from the outside, impressions come from him to our senses and intellect; with the awakening of compassion we pass beyond the sphere of these impressions. We share in what is taking place in his innermost nature and, transcending the sphere of our own “I”, we pass over into his world. In other words: we are set free from ourselves, we break through the barriers of ordinary existence in the physical body and reach over into the other being. Here, already, is the Supersensible – for neither the operations of the senses nor of the reasoning mind can carry us into the sphere of another’s soul.

The fact that compassion exists in the world bears witness that even in the world of sense we can be set free from, can pass out beyond ourselves and enter into the world of another being. If a man is incapable of compassion, there is a moral defect, a moral lack in him. If at the moment when he should get free from himself and pass over into the other being, feeling, not his own pain or joy but the pain or joy of that other – if at that moment his feelings fade and die away, then something is lacking in his moral life. The human being on Earth, if he is to reach the stature of full and complete manhood, must be able to pass out beyond his own earthly life, he must be able to live in another, not only in himself…

… Another telling fact points to the significance inherent in the concept of love and compassion. At a certain point in the evolution of humanity, and among all the peoples, something is made manifest which, while differing in many essentials, is identical in one respect all over the Earth, namely in the adoption of the concept of love, of compassion… It is of the highest significance that, six centuries before our era, Lao-tse and Confucius should have been living in China, the Buddha in India, the last Zarathustra (not the original Zarathustra) in Persia, and Pythagoras in Greece. How great the difference is between these founders of religion! Yet in one respect there is similarity among them all; they all teach that compassion and love must reign between soul and soul! The point of significance is this: six centuries before our era, consciousness begins to stir that love and compassion are to be received into the stream of human evolution.”

Excerpt from: Earthly and Cosmic Man: Lecture VI. Given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin, 1912.

We typically observe a moment of silence when someone has died. In the United States, it’s actually a public law to observe two minutes of silence on Veteran’s Day. Also in the U.S., a bill was just passed for public schools to observe a moment of silence for 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Many of us observed a national moment of silence that lasted eight minutes and 46 seconds for George Floyd.

How do these moments make any sense unless thoughts are real? They are inspired by feelings of shared love and compassion. It is significant that we believe we are accomplishing something by doing this.

Those of us who are separated from our friends and family for the holidays this year may want to consider what can be accomplished by a mutual ceremony celebrated at the same time in each household. Maybe we could all read the same story or poem or light a candle, separate from the phone calls and facetiming, etc. These moments are so very powerful.

And, while we’re at it, we might try to love people with whom we disagree and feel compassion for all who are suffering in these challenging times regardless of their beliefs. Maybe the differences of religion or politics won’t matter so much as we soar above them on the wings of love and compassion. Too much? Well, we won’t know until we try. We should try.

Happy Holidays!


Burning Desires

In Dante’s Purgatory, the second part of The Divine Comedy, we read about the various levels of purgatory, which correspond to the seven deadly sins. Dante has arranged these seven levels with the lowest level being the worst sin and each level in turn above representing a less terrible sin.

Thus, Dante has lust as the worst sin occupying the lowest level, with gluttony, avarice, sloth, wrath, envy and pride following. Maybe the fact that we are still aware of the work of this thirteenth century poet is an indication that he was onto something.

Dr. Steiner speaks of seven different levels of Kamaloca, with the desires of the lowest level – the first level we reach – being the “coarsest, lowest, most selfish desires of the physical body.” We do not have the option of entering this “region” once we’ve crossed the threshold of death. Just like physical laws of nature, we are subject to spiritual laws. They operate whether we believe in them or not; whether we are conscious of them or not. Our freedom as human beings is that we can work to harmonize ourselves with these spiritual laws while we’re alive or wait until we face ourselves after death.

As we embark on our third and final exploration of Kamaloca, we may wish to refresh our memory of last month’s post. In October, we recognized that in addition to assessing our relationships with others, we need to relinquish our earthly desires so that our spiritual journey can continue. Now we will look with more detail into the first “region” of Kamaloca, the lowest, and ask ourselves what affinity we may have for this level in which we cleanse ourselves of lust.

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

The lowest region of the soul world is that of Burning Desire. Everything in the soul that has to do with the coarsest, lowest, most selfish desires of the physical life is purged from the soul after death in this region… (because) now the desires aim at physical enjoyments that cannot be satisfied in the soul world. The craving is intensified to the highest degree by the impossibility of satisfaction. Owing to this impossibility, at the same time it is forced to die out gradually. The burning lusts gradually exhaust themselves and the soul learns by experience that the only means of preventing the suffering that must come from such longings lies in eradicating them.

During physical life, satisfaction is ever and again attained. By this means the pain of the burning lusts is covered over by a kind of illusion. After death in the “cleansing fire” the pain comes into evidence quite unveiled. The corresponding experiences of privation are passed through. It is a dark, gloomy state indeed in which the soul thus finds itself. Of course, only those persons whose desires are directed during physical life to the coarsest things can fall into this condition. (Those who possess) natures with few lusts go through (this region) without noticing it because they have no affinity with it. It must be stated that souls are the longer influenced by burning desire the more closely they have become related to that fire through their physical life. On that account there is more need for them to be purified in it.

Such purification should not be described as suffering in the sense of this expression as it is used in the sense world. The soul after death demands its purification since an existing imperfection can only thus be purged away.

Excerpt from: Theosophy, Chapter III: The Three Worlds: The Soul in the Soul World After Death by Rudolf Steiner. 1904.

Though the quote above is dense, as we read over it, we discern that the soul which has already rid itself of the baser desires while still living in its earthly body no longer has any affinity for this first realm. In other words, if we don’t have that problem, we don’t need to fix it. Steiner describes six more “regions” in which the soul cleanses itself so that it may move into the higher realms of the spirit world.  Each soul that had desires in one or another of these regions, stays within that region until the soul is cleansed. Souls not feeling an affinity within a region go on without feeling the effects of purification necessary in that realm.

Ages ago, these ideas of purification of the soul were common to humankind and formed the basis for lives lived in privation within the various religious sects. Seven various virtues were listed beside each sin that would guard against that sin. Today, we can rely on our own intellects to observe our lives objectively. We can figure out ways to resist succumbing to our own worst natures and determine whether we need help from others or not.

It is no longer appropriate to remove ourselves from society in order “cleanse” ourselves. Today, the appropriate response is for us to work on ourselves within our normal daily lives. If we meditate, if we practice mindfulness, the work begins. Dr. Steiner spent his life trying to show us the necessity for this work and the means by which to do it.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Sometimes we just need a hug. We’re distraught or tired or lonely or hurt or scared or, hey, we just need a hug. Our feelings, including the desire for the hug that would assuage them, reside in our astral body. After we die, we still retain our astral body once we’ve laid aside our physical and etheric bodies, as discussed in the two previous posts. What happens with our desire for a hug when we no longer have a body to receive it?

The answer lies in the period referred to by Dr. Steiner as Kamaloca, which means Place of Desires in Sanskrit. In last month’s post we explored a process occurring during the Kamaloca period wherein we experience the karmic relationships of our previous life. This month we will discuss another aspect of Kamaloca: our habits and desires.

What we want in life initially matches our basic needs, but our desires soon reach beyond what we actually need. Food, clothing and shelter, though influenced strongly by economics and culture, are also influenced by our individual choices. The way we satisfy both our needs and our desires during life has an influence on what we encounter in Kamaloca. Once we’ve crossed death’s threshold, we must let go of all these things we’ve enjoyed while residing in our physical body. The more deeply immersed we are in the material world, the more arduous is the task of letting go.

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

After death there follows for the human spirit a time during which the soul is shaking off its inclinations toward physical existence in order to follow once more the laws of the spirit-soul world only and thus set the spirit free. The more the soul was bound to the physical, the longer, naturally, will this time last. It will be short for the man who has clung but little to physical life, and long for the one whose interests are completely bound up with it, who at death has many desires, wishes and impulses still living in the soul.

The easiest way to gain an idea of this condition in which the soul lives during the time immediately after death is afforded by the following consideration. Let us take a somewhat crass example—the pleasure of the “bon vivant”. His pleasure is derived from food. The pleasure is naturally not bodily but belongs to the soul. The pleasure lives in the soul as does the desire for the pleasure. To satisfy the desire, however, the corresponding bodily organs, the palate, etc., are necessary. After death the soul has not immediately lost such a desire, but it no longer possesses the bodily organ that provides the means for satisfying it. For another reason, but one that acts far more strongly in the same way, the human soul now experiences all the suffering of burning thirst that one would undergo in a waterless waste. The soul thus suffers burning pain by being deprived of the pleasure because it has laid aside the bodily organ through which it can experience that pleasure. It is the same with all that the soul yearns for and that can only be satisfied through the bodily organs. This condition of burning privation lasts until the soul has learned to cease longing for what can only be satisfied through the body. The time passed in this condition may be called the region of desires, although it has of course nothing to do with a “locality.”

Excerpt from: Theosophy: Chapter III: The Soul in the Soul World After Death. Germany, 1904.

This may sound pretty scary and awful, but our spirit wants more than anything to advance on the path toward perfection. To do this we must first cleanse the astral body of all passions and desires connected with our physical body because the only way to get to the next level is in purity. Our spirit wants this and willingly undergoes the suffering it takes to liberate itself. We choose this.

What if we started earlier? If we realize that we will, ultimately, take full responsibility for the choices we make that bind us to the physical world, we might look at our desires differently. We might adjust the degree to which we placate ourselves each time a desire arises. We might start exercising some self-discipline. That’s one way to change the world.


Not So Very Instant Karma

When somebody has done something that hurts another person, it has a certain effect on his whole life. Any action of man that hurts another being or creature or the world in general, hinders the doer in his development. This is what the pilgrimage of life means for me, that the primary force of the soul, as it goes from incarnation to incarnation, is set for further development. – Rudolf Steiner

What comes next in our journey after we’ve crossed the threshold? In the last two posts we discussed the moment of death in Our Last Moment, and the retrospective of our life in Panorama of Life. Now we come to the next phase: Kamaloca. We may remember discussing karma and reincarnation previously; now we will find how we recognize the need for karmic justice in our lives. During Kamaloca, a term Dr. Steiner uses from the Sanskrit meaning Place of Desire, we review our lives going backwards from our last moment before death to our first moment at birth. This process occurs over a period of time that lasts roughly 1/3 of our lifetime, so that a person who dies at age 60 would experience Kamaloca for approximately 20 years. (You may have noticed how this corresponds with the period of time we spend asleep during our lives.)

We can imagine that this thorough life review will show us the effect we had on the people we encountered while we lived. However, we do not merely observe our effect on others, we actually feel exactly what they felt from their encounter with us. The good and the bad, all of it. As we go backward through our entire life and finally arrive at our birth, we will have experienced objectively our entire life on earth. How, then, do all these feelings resolve themselves into karmic action?

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

You experience objectively in the spiritual world everything you yourself did in the external world, and in the process, you acquire the strength and the inclination to compensate for the pain in one of your future incarnations. Your own astral body tells you what it felt like, and you realize you have laid an obstacle in the way of your further development. This has to be cleared away, otherwise you cannot get beyond it. This is the moment you form the intention of getting rid of the obstacle. So when you have lived through the Kamaloca period, you arrive back in your childhood filled with the intention of getting rid of all the hindrances you created in life. You are full of intentions, and it is the force of these intentions that brings about the special character of your future lives on earth.

Let us suppose that in his twentieth year B hurt A. He now has to feel the pain himself, and resolves to recompense A in a future life, that is, in the physical world, where the injury was done. The force of this good resolution forms a bond of attraction between B and A and brings them together in the next life. That mysterious force of attraction that brings people together in life springs from what they have acquired in Kamaloca. Our experiences there lead us to those people in life whom we have to recompense or with whom we have any kind of connection.

Now you will realize that the Kamaloca forces we have taken into ourselves for the righting of wrongs in life can by no means always be worked out in a single life. It can then happen that we form connections with a great number of people in one life, and that next time we are in Kamaloca we have the possibility of meeting them again. Now this depends, too, on the other people, whether we meet them again in the following life. That spreads itself over many lives. In one life we correct this, in another life that, and so on. You must certainly not imagine that we can immediately put everything right in one life. It depends entirely on whether the other person also develops in his soul the corresponding bond of attraction.

Excerpt from: The Being of Man and His Future Evolution, Lecture 6: Illness and Karma, by Rudolf Steiner. Berlin. January 26, 1909,

If we just step back a bit, we can see what a miracle we are contemplating now: the true justice, the harmony, of the universe and our place within it. We are always making progress, moving forward, becoming better human beings. We aren’t punished in the afterlife for the wrong we’ve done by some external and imperious judgment; we ourselves—our highest selves, our spiritual selves—are consciously resolving to right our wrongs by fully realizing them. As a result of our time in Kamaloca, we are filled with good intentions that bring us back into our next lives. These good intentions brought us back into the life we’re living now. All of us.

Recognizing that everything done has karmic consequences, however, does not mean that we get to sit idly by while injustice or pollution or hunger or poverty or any of the evils still exist in the world. We must resolve to change all these things for the better within our power to do so. Every gift of love and service we give to the world is a movement in the positive evolution of us all.


If you would like to know more about Steiner’s work as it is applied today, please take a look at this site:
https://appliedanthroposophy.org/overview, especially the Introductory Course. The faculty members are inspiring; it is exciting to see them all in one place.



Panorama of Life

“… and then I saw my whole life flash before my eyes!” With those words alone, we know the speaker has experienced either a horrible fright or a brush with death. Why does this happen? In previous posts, we’ve explored sleep, dreams, altered consciousness, and even the moment of death. Now we will look at what happens during our first few days after death.

Thousands of cases of near-death experiences (NDEs) have accrued over the last 45 years since the phrase was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody. Many of these documented accounts include survivors who have said that “they re-experience in vivid detail the events of their lives in a sort of holographic, full-color panorama.” Spiritual science tells us that this is very close to the truth of what we experience shortly after we die. The observations of the spiritual scientist recounted in a previous post (More Sleep, September 2019) show us that during sleep, our astral and ego bodies leave our physical and etheric bodies behind, but in death, our etheric body also leaves the physical body. Because we retain our etheric body along with our astral body and ego in these first days after death, we experience the life tableau. *

In the context of our study of reincarnation and karma, we must look at this initial life review as an important part of our experience between death and rebirth. Last month we saw that immediately after we die, we are filled with great joy. We recognize the body we just left behind as the means by which we know ourselves to be a unique individual. Then we begin our life review. What does it mean?

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

We know that our next experience is a kind of retrospective memory that lasts for days… This retrospective memory… resembles a tableau, or a panorama, woven out of all we have experienced during our past life. It does not, however, rise up in the same way in which an ordinary memory rises up in our physical body. You see the memories that live in our physical body... rise up in the form of thoughts; through the power of memory we draw them out successively within the stream of time. But the retrospective memory after death is of such a kind that everything that occurred during our early life now surrounds us simultaneously, as if it were a panorama. Our life-experiences now rise up in the form of imaginations. We can only say that we now live, for whole days, within these experiences. What we experienced just before death and what we experienced during our childhood stand before us simultaneously in powerful pictures. A panorama of our life, a life-picture, stands before us and it reveals, simultaneously, in a “fabric” woven out of the ether, what normally occurs successively within the stream of time…

We feel, above all, that we are now surrounded by something that is alive. Everything within it lives and weaves. And then we experience that it resounds spiritually, that it shines forth spiritually and gives warmth spiritually…

We know that this life-tableau disappears after a few days. What makes it cease and what is its essence?

In regard to the physical world, we have the impression that our physical body falls away from us when we die; in a similar way we now have the impression that our etheric body too falls away from us after a certain number of days… It becomes interwoven with the whole universe, with the whole world. It lives in the world and stamps its impressions upon the whole world while we are experiencing our life-tableau.

An excerpt from the lecture: The Moment of Death and the Period Thereafter by Rudolf Steiner, Leipzig, Germany, February 22, 1916.

This panoramic view of our whole life gives us a chance to assess the value of the life we’ve lived; the people who filled our world and with whom we had relationships. After we’ve lived within this life tableau, our etheric body falls away, just as our physical body fell away a few days before.

What we see in the mystery of our after-death experience of the life-tableau is that, ultimately, we share our whole lives with the universe. When our etheric body is released, everything we’ve thought and experienced in the course of our life from birth to death is finally given to the wide world. And the whole world is enriched by each of us.


A modern definition of the etheric body (and the difference between sleep and death) by Dr. Adam Blanning:
https://denvertherapies.com/the-etheric-body-the-foundation-of-a-dynamic-clinical-lens/

Near-Death Experience as a Probe to Explore (Disconnected) Consciousness:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31982302/
and:
https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(19)30312-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1364661319303122%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Getting Comfortable With Death & Near-Death Experiences: Near-Death Experiences: An Essay in Medicine & Philosophy by Raymond A. Moody, MD, PhD
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179873/
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/10/3/60/htm

If you would like to know more about Steiner’s work as it is applied today, please take a look at this site:
https://appliedanthroposophy.org/overview, especially the Introductory Course. The faculty members are inspiring; it is exciting to see them all in one place.



Our Last Moment

What if we were immortal? What if we could continue to learn and grow forever? If we could have time to do everything we needed and wanted to do? If we could stay with our loved ones forever?

Always, the promise of never-ending life entices us. Ironically, our lack of understanding death is exactly what is preventing us from knowing that we already are immortal. The presumption that we exist only within our bodies between birth and death keeps us from understanding the very basis of what it means to be human: that we are spiritual beings who occasionally occupy physical bodies before returning to our spiritual existence.

In these days of the pandemic, our focus has been turned to the death of thousands of people across the globe, and for some of us, a particular person we have known and loved. It’s a lot to take in. We may find some comfort in studying the moment of death itself. Direct knowledge of this moment, however, can be communicated to us only by a spiritual scientist who, as a result of extraordinary effort over the course of time – or lifetimes, has been initiated (see previous post Primary Source, Apr. 2020). Because fear of the unknown is natural for us; learning about the moment of death may help us look at it with more equanimity.*

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

The moment of death is of extraordinary significance. Death is something that most distinctly has two totally different aspects. Regarded here from the physical world it certainly has many sad aspects, many painful sides. However, here we really see death only from the one side; after our death we see it from the other. It is then the most satisfying and most perfect occurrence that we can possibly experience, for there it is a living fact. Whereas here death is a proof of how frail and transitory the human physical life is—when seen from the spiritual world it is actually a proof that the spirit continually wins the victory over everything non-spiritual, that the spirit is ever the life, the eternal, ever-unconquerable life.

Excerpt from: Spiritual Life Now and After Death: Forming Our Destiny in the Physical and Spiritual Worlds. Lecture on November 16, 1915, Berlin.

And:

From this side of life, death appears to be a dissolution, something in face of which the human being has a ready fear and dread. From the other side, death appears as the light-filled beginning of experience of the Spirit, as that which spreads a sun-radiance over the whole of the subsequent life between death and a new birth; as that which most of all warms the soul through with joy in the life between death and a new birth. The moment of death is something that is looked back upon with a deep sense of blessing. Described in earthly terms: the moment of death, viewed from the other side, is the most joyful, the most enrapturing point in the life between death and a new birth.

Excerpt from: The Problem of Death. Lecture I by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, February 5, 1915.

If we accept that the moment of death is profoundly different for those going through it than it is for us, we will be able to let them go with peace of mind. Of course, we will still feel the anguish that comes with the loss of people we know. Their passage from this world still has very real and lasting consequences for us. We may yet be filled with sorrow, but those who have died are immediately filled with joy.

In our next posts we will be exploring together the three days immediately following death and then the period of time in the spiritual world that lasts about1/3 of the time of our lives – the same amount of time we will have slept during our lifetime.

*Though out-of-body experiences during a near-death trauma have been reported by many (see previous post and links: Dying to Know, Jan. 2019), these reports are made, after all, by people who have returned from the moment of death. While these reports give evidence of our consciousness continuing after signs of life have ceased, we must rely on the reports of spiritual scientists such as Rudolf Steiner for answers about death itself.

If you have never heard of Rudolf Steiner or his work, you may find this film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKSSBHTLzU, featuring people who at the time (1991) were leaders working out of Steiner’s ideas within many disciplines such as science, mathematics, dance, architecture, education, bio-dynamic agriculture, etc. This work continues today.


Point of Anger

“A loving hand is seldom one that has never been clenched in response to injustice or folly. Anger and love are complementary.” – Rudolf Steiner

“If the sight of injustice or folly were not to kindle a noble anger in us, the events in the outer world would carry us along with them as an easy-going spectator…” – Rudolf Steiner

The recent death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police sparked a noble anger in people that spilled from all 50 of the United States to other countries of the world. Right now at least, it seems that fewer people are comfortable being easy-going spectators to the violence and injustice that has flourished right under our noses since the first colony, Jamestown, had 20 or so West African slaves brought to our shores in 1619. So much has been and is being written and said about this fact that we should all be moved to educate ourselves; we should not assume we know anything of significance without availing ourselves of these manifold and comprehensive resources.

We do not need to condense or transcribe any of such resources here. We will instead focus on the fact of anger itself. Briefly, let’s first look at Steiner’s concept of Ego. When Steiner refers to the human Ego, he is indicating the “I” each of us refers to only when we are talking about ourselves. The Ego is what continues on from one life to another to fulfil its evolution. Through our Ego, we go about “remedying defects of former lives” while at the same time we work in the world to remedy its defects. In other words, we can’t simply work to improve ourselves, but we must, with each enhancement of personal growth, utilize our capacities selflessly to improve the world as a whole… a long, hard road in both directions.

The tools our Egos use enable us to inch ever closer to humanity’s ideals, universal ideals such as honesty, kindness, courage, compassion, etc. One such tool we use to develop ourselves is anger. Surprised?

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

No one does better at acquiring an inner capacity for sound judgment than a person who has started from a state of soul in which he could be moved to righteous anger by anything ignoble, immoral or crazy. This is how anger has the mission of raising the Ego to higher levels. On the other hand… anger can degenerate into rage and serve to gratify the worst kind of egoism. But we must not fail to realize that the very thing which can lapse into evil may, when it manifests in its true significance, have the mission of furthering the progress of man. If we were not enabled by anger to take an independent stand in cases where the outer world offends our inner feeling, we would not be selfless, but dependent and Ego-less in the worst sense…

Life shows us that a person who is unable to flare up with anger at injustice or folly will never develop true kindness and love. Equally, a person who educates himself through noble anger will have a heart abounding in love, and through love he will do good. Love and kindness are the obverse of noble anger. Anger that is overcome and purified will be transformed into the love that is its counterpart. A loving hand is seldom one that has never been clenched in response to injustice or folly. Anger and love are complementary…

Transmuted anger is love in action. That is what we learn from reality. Anger in moderation has the mission of leading human beings to love; we can call it the teacher of love.

Excerpt from Metamorphoses of The Soul / Paths of Experience, Volume I. Lecture 2: The Mission of Anger, Munich, 5 December 1909 by Rudolf Steiner.

The human ego has the responsibility of educating itself, becoming ever more enriched by the concepts and ideas we gain through experience. But at the same time, we must not become egotistical and selfish by simply acquiring knowledge and experience for our own benefit. We must relate everything we have gained internally to meet that which presents itself in the world. To that end, we can see that anger has a necessary role to play on the path toward becoming enlightened human beings.

Anger is a means to an end; staying in anger’s grasp is destructive. To make anger constructive, we must act with courage to eradicate injustice and folly. If we fail to use our anger as a means to right the injustices in the world, we fail not just the world but ourselves. Steiner says anger and love are complementary; we can see the fact of this every day. We have lots of work to do. Let’s get busy… in both directions.

Trevor Noah, The Daily Show
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1266523374207057922?s=20

https://goodblacknews.org/2020/06/04/acknowledging-your-privilege-and-becoming-an-ally-a-guide-to-resources-for-white-folks/

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi


Home Remedy

What can we say now that hasn’t already been said about the massive social changes we are weathering as Covid-19 has spread around the world. Some of us live in hotspots with thousands of people dying and others don’t, but never before in our lifetimes have we shared a crisis affecting everyone on the planet. Whether or not we know someone who has suffered or died from their susceptibility to the virus, we have certainly felt compassion for those victims and their families.

We have been amazed by the dedication of all those people who are serving on the front lines. And we’ve probably felt confusion and fear about our own safety and the safety of our loved ones. What happens to our soul—the bearer of our emotions, our passions—under the stress of these biproducts of the pandemic? We know that when we allow fear and anxiety to infiltrate our soul, our physical well-being is affected, too. Is there a remedy for these soul ailments?

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

We have only to remember that feelings and sensations, fear and anxiety of the unknown future, gnaw at our souls. Is there anything that can pour some certainty about the future into our souls? It is what we may call the feeling of devoted acceptance of (that which) enters our souls from the hidden future, and it can only work properly if it arises as an attitude of prayer*. Let us avoid misunderstanding. We are not praising what here or there is considered to be acceptance, but a definite form, an acceptance of what the future can bring forth. If we look to the future with fear and anxiety, we strangle our development and hamper the free unfolding of our soul forces. Nothing so obstructs this development as anxiety about what may come to the soul from the future. Only actual experience, however, can judge the results of the right feeling of acceptance of the future. What does such devoted acceptance mean?

In its ideal form it would be the sort of soul attitude that would assure us that no matter what might come, no matter what the next hour or day might bring, were it unknown to us, we could not alter it by fear or anxiety. We should wait for it, therefore, in complete inner peace and utter tranquility…

If we develop (a) feeling of submission in regard to all that may come to us from the future, we shall find that we meet everything in the external world with the same certainty and hope. This we have gained from our submissiveness. We know that in everything it is the wisdom of the world that shines before us… Through our submission, we see how the feeling arises in us that all the wisdom of the world shines through what we long for and desire as the highest. Thus, it is hope for illumination of the entire world that comes to us in the devotions of prayer. When darkness encloses us within ourselves and narrowness and confusion surround us even in the physical, when we stand in the gloom and black of night, we feel when morning comes and we meet the light as if we are placed beyond ourselves.

* A true prayer can give everyone something. Even the simplest person, who knows nothing more than the mere prayer, can still feel its effect, which calls forth the power to raise him ever higher. But whatever height we may have achieved, we are never finished with a prayer. Our souls can always be raised higher.

An excerpt from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin, February 17, 1910

We are living in an extraordinary time, yet we have no choice but to see that some of us become better, stronger examples of what it means to be human while others let fear manifest in hatred, distrust, and judgment toward others. The choice of the kind of person we wish to be is a choice only we can make. And we make that choice best when we are in a state of equanimity as the future approaches us. We can pray for this inner strength.

A Verse for Our Time

We must eradicate from the soul

All fear and terror of what comes towards man out of the future.

We must acquire serenity

In all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity

To everything that may come.

And we must think only that whatever comes

Is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age,

namely, to live out of pure trust,

Without any security in existence.

Trust in the ever present help

Of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do

If our courage is not to fail us.

And let us seek the awakening from within ourselves

Every morning and every evening.

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.)


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/

Time After Time

We’ve discussed sleep, death, and even life after death in previous posts, but as we explore the law of karma further, we need to take a look at the other side of our life—our birth. We all know that who we are when we’re born is a result of genetics and enumerable other things: where we are born, our culture, education, religion, race, sexual orientation, economic status, whether or not we’re healthy or beautiful or intelligent, etc.

Already at birth—or conception—we are given some opportunities and denied others. Then, with these birthrights, we step-by-step go out into the world and build our biographies—we become who we become. The inherent advantages and disadvantages of our birth, though, appear to be arbitrary—the luck of the draw.

Believing the circumstances of our birth and our ensuing life’s advantages (or lack thereof) to be the result of random chance is not a satisfactory explanation for many of us. It doesn’t make sense because it isn’t fair—from conception and birth on we enjoy benefits or suffer deficiencies for which we seem to have no control. Karma can be the key to understanding the causes of things that seem beyond our control.

To understand karma, however, we need a larger view of life and death. Steiner’s view is larger. He shows us that not only do we continue to exist after death, but we exist before conception and birth. Our “I” is eternal. Karma works out because we were alive before this current life and we will live again after it. Yes, we are talking about reincarnation. In an effort to keep an open mind—

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

What a man did yesterday is today still present in its effects. A picture of the connection between cause and effect is given in the simile of sleep and death. Sleep has often been called the younger brother of death. I get up in the morning. My consecutive activity has been interrupted by the night. Now, under ordinary circumstances it is not possible for me to begin my activity again just as I please. I must connect it with my doings of yesterday if there is to be order and coherence in my life. My actions of yesterday are the conditions predetermining those actions that fall to me today. I have created my destiny of today by what I did yesterday. I have separated myself for a while from my activity, but this activity belongs to me and draws me again to itself after I have withdrawn myself from it for a while. My past remains bound up with me; it lives on in my present and will follow me into my future. If the effects of my deeds of yesterday were not to be my destiny of today, I should not have had to awake this morning, but to be newly created out of nothing.

The human spirit is no more created anew when it begins its earthly life than a man is newly created every morning. Let us try to make clear to ourselves what happens when entrance into this life takes place. A physical body, receiving its form through the laws of heredity, makes its appearance. This body becomes the bearer of a spirit that repeats a previous life in a new form. Between the two stands the soul that leads a self-contained life of its own. Its inclinations and disinclinations, wishes and desires, minister to it. It presses thought into its service. (It) receives the impressions of the outer world and carries them to the spirit in order that the spirit may extract from them the fruits that are permanent.

It plays, as it were, the part of intermediary.... The soul is really that part of a man through which he belongs to his earthly life. Through his body he belongs to the physical human species; through it he is a member of this species. With his spirit he lives in a higher world. The soul binds the two worlds together for a time.

Excerpt from: Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner, 1910 (1986 edition.)

Because we think logically, because we reason, we try to create order out of chaos, we want the answers to the larger questions of life and death to make logical sense. When we contemplate the unjust and apparent randomness of life and fail to find order, we can choose either to accept that answers are impossible or look for answers in new directions. If we are able to open our minds to the idea of returning again and again to work out karma, to become better and better at being a human being throughout several lifetimes, the inequities of life begin to make more sense.

Each of us has lived in other times, in other places, in other bodies. When we think of all the qualities mentioned at the beginning of the post and imagine ourselves within circumstances entirely different than those of our current life, we can perhaps imagine how the law of karma creates the ultimate fairness. We can think about how much of the life we lead now is contingent on the qualities given to us at birth and imagine that, in the spiritual realm between death and a new birth, we chose these circumstances of life in order to best work out our karma.

Karma stretches out behind us and in front of us; we are resolving old karma and making new karma every day. Owen Barfield, a friend to C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote in an article entitled, Why Reincarnation?, “If the majority of people were to become convinced of reincarnation, as I have just outlined it as a fact (see attached article), what an enormous difference it must make to many of the discords that are at present threatening to tear our civilization to pieces!”

A short bio of Owen Barfield:
https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/authors/owen-barfield/

Why Reincarnation? by Owen Barfield.
https://owenbarfield.org/why-reincarnation/


Cause—or—Effect

What if we “deserve” everything we get? What if we’re neither lucky nor unlucky, imagined states that seem random and unfair, but are actually living within a law—the law of karma? When we are trying to attach some kind of meaning to the course of our lives, learning more about karma enhances our efforts.

Although the suffering we experience in life comes from many causes, some of it comes directly from our own decisions. Most of us will try to accept the suffering that results from a bad decision because it makes sense—we clearly deserve it. Because doing so will affect future decisions, connecting suffering to the bad decision preceding it is an important step in gaining mastery of our lives. In fact, people who are unable to do this are considered unhealthy. The cause and effect nature of karmic law is easy to comprehend because we naturally look for the reasons why things happen in our lives.

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

“… Only methodical observation will lead us to the recognition of the law of karma; and therefore, if we want to study the law of karma, we must make these methodical observations in the right way.

Let us start, then, with the study of the karma of one special person. Fate deals a man in his twenty-fifth year a heavy blow, which causes him pain and suffering. Now, if our observations are of such a nature that we merely say, ‘This heavy blow has just broken into his life and has filled it with pain and suffering,’ we shall never arrive at an understanding of karmic connections. But if we go a little further and observe the life of this person in his fiftieth year… we shall perhaps come to a different conclusion which we might be able to express thus: ‘The man whom we are now observing has become industrious and active, leading an excellent life.’

Now, let us look further back into his life. At 25, this trouble came upon him, and had he not met with this blow we may now say that he would have remained a good-for-nothing. In this case, the severe blow of fate was the cause that at the age of 50 we now find him an industrious and excellent man.

Such a fact teaches us that we should be mistaken if we considered the blow of fate at the age of 25 was merely an effect. We cannot just ask what caused it and stop at that. But if we consider the blow not as an effect at the end of the phenomena which preceded it, but place it rather at the beginning of the subsequent events, and consider it as a cause, then we learn that we must entirely and essentially change the judgments we have formed by our feelings and perceptions with regard to this blow of fate. We shall very likely be grieved if we think of it only as an effect, but if we think of it as the cause of what happens later on, we shall probably be glad and feel pleasure over it.

So we see that our attitude is essentially different in so far as we consider an event in life as cause or as effect… Thus the law of karma itself may be a source of consolation if we accustom ourselves to set an event not only at the end, but at the beginning of a series of events.”

Excerpt from: Manifestations of Karma. Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Hamburg, May 16, 1910.

Not all suffering comes as a direct result of a decision we make, but with a little imagination, we can look at this simple example of karma and extend it outwards toward suffering that comes to us seemingly unbidden. Eckhart Tolle says, “Every person on Earth will experience some difficulty that they cannot change. This fact can either imprison you or enlighten you. When you encounter difficulty, accept it as if you had chosen it, experience it and figure out what you can learn from it.” Accept it as if you had chosen it. Suffering can be a starting point and a teacher.

This first idea of karma is just scratching the surface. For example, it does not address why we make the decisions that lead to suffering in the first place. Nor does it address the suffering that comes from without, from the death of a loved one to that from natural disasters, war, accidents, etc. Steiner gave more than 100 lectures about karma, so we can anticipate explorations of these questions and many more as we delve deeper into the study of karmic law next month.


Love/Fate Relationship

Why do we love the people we love? It isn’t always due to common interests because sometimes we are drawn to people before we even know what their interests are, and we certainly aren’t drawn to everyone who shares our interests. Conversely, sometimes we know right away that we don’t like someone. We might say we have a gut feeling, but do we understand the origin of such a feeling? Probably not. So what’s going on?

Love-Fate-124788237_s.jpg

Perhaps the whole phenomena is like consciousness itself: unable to be explained within the confines of our rational mind but rather must be considered with spiritual ideas.

Maybe it’s fate or karma that draws us to those we love. We are all familiar with the word karma; it’s an old Sanskrit term dating back before 1500 BCE and recognized as a universal law in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Karma connotes both action and result. We use it mostly when we consider good deeds that result in good fortune or the opposite, bad deeds that result in less favorable results. We will try to use this word more broadly to consider what it is that attracts or repels us from the people we feel strongly about.

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

Necessity and freedom interweave in our destiny… We meet some human being. As a rule, the fact that we have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet, their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the life of the one, say the twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular place, with the other. The same will be true of the twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to that meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be revealed by studies of this kind, but human life is infinitely enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished without it.

If we begin to think about our relationship to some human being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him, ever since we were born into this earthly existence… and as a matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to believe that something to which one pays no attention is non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to observation.

There is, however, a significant difference between what takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of the other’s existence. After the meeting the mutual influence continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the beginning of something extremely significant… What occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free relationship and behavior.

Excerpt from: Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. VI, Lecture given in Berne, Switzerland, January 25, 1924 by Rudolf Steiner.

The above passage from Steiner’s lecture on karmic relationships asks our acceptance of the idea of karma in terms of our relationships to others. If we can entertain such an idea, we must ask whether all karma is just personal? Do we deserve to meet our soul mate – interesting term – or to meet an arch enemy? Based on what? What does Steiner mean by iron necessity guiding us toward certain people? Questions such as these expose us to some of the deep mysteries of our lives.

When we contemplate the people we know in our lives, we can easily recognize those with whom we feel a deeper (karmic) relationship, whether it’s good or bad, and those with whom we feel but a passing relationship. We can trace the events that brought us into the lives of those we care about. We can marvel at the multitude of decisions we (and they) made that resulted in our meeting each other. Enjoy the beautiful complexity of our lives as a welcoming first step toward understanding the bigger picture of karma.

* See Having an Openness of Mind in sidebar.

“Is Love at First Sight Real?”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/201801/is-love-first-sight-real?amp



’Tis the Season

Today, most religions have a festival in the month of December. We share feelings of hope and gratitude with our families and friends. We reach out to others in charity - in our expressions of giving to those less fortunate than we. Why December?

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

How many people are there today who, as they walk through the streets at this season and see all the preparations made for the Christmas Festival, have any clear or profound idea of what it means? How seldom do we find evidence of any clear ideas of this Festival, and even when they exist, how far removed they are from the intentions of those who once inaugurated the great Festivals as tokens of what is eternal and imperishable in the world! …

Christmas is not a Festival of Christendom only. In ancient Egypt, in the regions we ourselves inhabit, and in Asia thousands and thousands of years before the Christian era we find that a Festival was celebrated on the days now dedicated to the celebration of the birth of Christ.

Now what was the character of this Festival which since time immemorial has been celebrated all over the world on the same days of the year? Wonderful Fire Festivals in the northern and central regions of Europe in ancient times were celebrated among the Celts in Scandinavia, Scotland and England by their priests, the Druids. What were they celebrating? They were celebrating the time when winter draws to its close and spring begins. It is quite true that Christmas falls while it is still winter, but Nature is already heralding a victory which can be a token of hope in anticipation of the victory that will come in spring — a token of confidence, of hope, of faith — to use words which are connected in nearly every language with the Festival of Christmas. There is confidence that the Sun, again in the ascendant, will be victorious over the opposing powers of Nature. The days draw in and draw in, and this shortening of the days seems to us to be an expression of the dying, or rather of the falling asleep of the Nature-forces. The days grow shorter and shorter up to the time when we celebrate the Christmas Festival and when our forefathers also celebrated it, in another form. Then the days begin to draw out again and the light of the Sun celebrates its victory over the darkness. In our age of materialistic thinking this is an event to which we no longer give much consideration.

In olden times it seemed to men in whom living feeling was united with wisdom, to be an expression of an experience of the Godhead Himself, the Godhead by Whom their lives were guided. The solstice was a personal experience of a higher being — as personal an experience as when some momentous event forces a man to come to a vital decision. And it was even more than this. The waxing and waning of the days was not only an expression of an event in the life of a higher Being, but a token of something greater still, of something momentous and unique.

This brings us to the true meaning of Christmas as a Festival of the very highest order in cosmic and human life. In the days when genuine occult teaching was not disowned as it is today by materialistic thought but was the very wellspring of the life of the peoples, the Christmas Festival was a kind of memorial, a token of remembrance of a great happening on the Earth. At the hour of midnight the priests gathered around them their truest disciples, those who were the teachers of the people, and spoke to them of a great Mystery. This Mystery was connected with the victory of the Sun over the darkness...

The great ideal of Peace stands there before us when at Christmas we contemplate the course of the Sun. And when we think about the victory of the Sun over the darkness during these days of Festival there is born in us an unshakable conviction which makes our own evolving soul akin to the harmony of the cosmos — light over the darkness had always been commemorated. And so Christianity is in harmony with all the great world-religions. When the Christmas bells ring out, they are a reminder to us that this Festival was celebrated all over the world, wherever human beings knew what it signified, wherever they understood the great truth that the soul of man is involved in a process of development and progress on this Earth, wherever in the truest sense man strove to reach self-knowledge…

Throughout the year we fulfil the common tasks and duties of daily life, and at these times of Festival we turn our attention to the links which bind us with eternity. And although daily life is fraught with many a struggle, at these times a feeling awakens within us that above all the strife and turmoil there is peace and harmony…

The Immortal and the Eternal, the spiritual Sun will flood the soul with light at the great Festivals which will remind man of the divine Self within him. The divine Self, in essence like the Sun, and radiant with light, will prevail over darkness and chaos and will give to his soul a peace by which all the strife, all the war and all the discord in the world will be quelled.

Rudolf Steiner: The Festivals and Their Meaning, Chapter I: The Christmas Festival: A Token of the Victory of the Sun. Berlin: December 24, 1905.

We can always step back to see if the way we are celebrating aligns with our purpose for celebrating in the first place. Overall, though, what matters to most of us is that we have this opportunity to be grateful, to be charitable, and to consciously long for peace and goodwill to all humankind while so many others are doing the same.


The Final Sleep

(the last in a series of four posts on sleep)

Christopher Hitchens, a well-known atheist, was interviewed by the BBC in 2010 after his diagnosis with terminal cancer. He said that he was not afraid of death, but of dying. Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, celebrated atheists, converse about death and dying, but they do not offer any enlightenment about the subject of death itself. Intellectually self-satisfied, they see their own lives as products of random chance, a miraculous blip in time. The religions they rail against also fail to provide scientific answers about the nature of death; their faith in an afterlife is devoid of specifics.

Without understanding death, aging is seen as disease that, like other terminal diseases, must be conquered or at least postponed. From cryogenics to life-enhancing genetic manipulation, to organ replacement, to memories preserved on computers, one can imagine that life can be prolonged indefinitely—that death itself can be averted. Yet these efforts, too, fail to provide any insight into death as a phenomenon. Death remains a mystery – and a tragedy.

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

When a man falls asleep, whereas his astral body is released from his etheric and physical bodies, the latter still remain united. Not so in death. In death the physical is severed from the etheric body. Left to its own unaided forces, the physical body will now inevitably disintegrate… For the etheric body is now united with its astral body, and the physical body is no longer with them. The fact is that the etheric and astral bodies do not separate immediately after death. They hold together for a time… Man sees his past life from birth to death in a vast series of pictures, simultaneously spread out before him. During his earthly life, memory is only present while—in the waking state—man is united with his physical body. Moreover, it is only present to the limited extent the physical body permits. Yet to the soul herself nothing is lost; everything that has ever made an impression on the soul during this life is preserved.

During the life between birth and death a severance of the etheric body from the physical only takes place in exceptional cases, and then only for a short duration… When a man undergoes an altogether unaccustomed shock or something of that nature, a severance of the etheric may ensue for a brief space of time over a large proportion of the body. This happens if he is brought very near to death, as on the point of drowning, or when in imminent danger of a fall in mountaineering.

What is related by individuals who have had such experiences comes very near the truth. Supersensible observation confirms it. They tell how at such a moment the whole of their past life appeared before them in a vast tableau of memory.

From: An Outline of Esoteric Science, Chapter III: Sleep and Death. 1910.

Observing one’s life as a vast tableau happens immediately when the etheric body loosens from the physical body. This “vision” ends when the person is brought back to life, and just as our dreams end when we wake up, sometimes we remember and sometimes we don’t. As we discussed back in January (see post Dying to Know), many more people are having and remembering near-death experiences because medical science has advanced; people who have “died” are being brought back to life every day now. Scientists are actively investigating rather than merely discounting the reports of people who’ve been brought back to life from the brink of death; the number and similarity of reports is just too great to ignore.

If we allow ourselves to contemplate that our selves do not stop once we die, that we continue to have experiences as suggested by the reports of those who have returned from death, then we must entertain the idea that, if not brought back to life, we nevertheless continue on in another state of being. We may want to consider with greater tolerance, if not open-minded curiosity, the cultural ideas going back for millennia professing life on the other side of the grave.

Did a different consciousness live in the people of yore who took for granted an afterlife? Could they see things we cannot? Can we acquire a consciousness now that will reveal these mysteries to us? Steiner says we can. Such a consciousness exists and, in addition to giving us the tools to attain it, he has written extensively about what we will learn when we get there.


Christian Hitchens dies at 62
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16212418

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett On Death
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVm8bdJNyMA

The Stuff of Dreams

The Wizard of Oz, released way back in 1939, tells the story of Dorothy, a girl who is carried off by a tornado that strikes her home in Kansas. She finds herself in a new and magical land where she is given a quest by a mighty wizard. She makes friends and encounters adversaries, whimsical characters all, as she pursues her quest. Eventually, she fulfills the quest and is able to return home. The last scene of the movie reveals that Dorothy’s amazing adventure was just a dream. She wakes up at home in Kansas recognizing that the imaginative characters of her dream are the people she knows in waking life who had been transformed.

This is an epic dream.

dreaming-girl.jpg

The ones we usually have, if we remember them at all, tend to lack this kind of detail. When we do recall a dream, though, we may remember some high drama or intricate plot that changed fluidly and consequently made no sense. People we know show up in unexpected places or play roles that don’t fit them. We can be ourselves one moment and become our best friend the next. We can be the student who asks the question and the teacher gives the answer. The “I” we know ourselves to be in waking life is hard to pin down in our dreams.

Most of us are curious about our dreams and what they mean. If we weren’t, many a business and whole psychologies based on dream interpretation would not exist. Steiner, too, is interested in dreams, but he indicates that it’s not the events that we should focus on, but the emotions that the dreams evoke. For example, since terror is such an intense emotion, we often remember our nightmares. Understanding that we are afraid is the point. We need to figure out the source of our fear, which probably is not of being attacked by wolves or losing our locker combination.

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

Dreaming is an intermediate state between waking and sleeping. To thoughtful consideration, dream experiences consist of a colorful intermingling of images in a world that conceals an element of regularity and lawfulness within it, although at first glance this world seems to reveal an often confusing ebb and flow. In dreaming, we are released from the laws of waking consciousness that fetter us to sensory perception and to the rules that govern our power of judgment.

… We dream, for example, about driving off a dog that is about to pounce on us. We wake up to catch ourselves in the unconscious act of throwing off the covers where they were weighing on an unaccustomed body part and starting to bother us. Our sleeping life allows what our senses would perceive in the waking state to remain fully unconscious for the moment, but it does hold fast to one essential thing—the fact that we are trying to get rid of something. It spins a pictorial process around this fact. The images as such are echoes of our daily waking life, but there is something arbitrary in the way they are borrowed from it. We have the feeling that although the same external provocation might also conjure up other pictures in our dream, these would still symbolically express the sensation of wanting to get rid of something. Dreams create symbols; they are symbolists… The dream makes an image out of what sense-perception would offer if we were awake.

We see that as soon as our sensory activity comes to a halt, something creative asserts itself in us. During dreams, [the astral body] is separated from the physical body in that it is no longer connected to our sense organs, but it still maintains a certain connection to the ether body. That we can perceive the astral body’s processes in image form is due to this connection. When it ceases, the images immediately sink down into the darkness of the unconscious, and we have dreamless sleep.

Excerpt from: Occult Science: An Outline, Lecture III: Sleep and Death. 1910.

Dreams, both those resulting from physical occurrences intruding into our sleep and those resulting from emotions caused by current or previous life events, tell us about ourselves through imaginative pictures. Perhaps one way to begin understanding our own dreams is to identify the symbolism within them. We can isolate the physical cause that woke us and contemplate the symbolism our dream created to explain the event. We can reflect on the events that make us feel afraid or vulnerable and learn to see ourselves with more understanding and compassion.

Dorothy felt misunderstood; she was afraid and angry. She felt lost and desperate. And then the cyclone hit. The symbolism of The Wizard of Oz can be seen as the human path toward development, and the various characters as symbols of the emotions and values with which Dorothy, and all of us, struggle. The Yellow Brick Road, the Emerald City, the Scarecrow longing for a brain, the Tin Man wanting a heart, and the Lion wanting courage, are all powerful elements of being human. And all of those elements were inside her.

Maybe we don’t need outside dream interpreters as much as we need to look at our inner lives more closely. Not that we should dismiss the stuff of our dreams, but we could allow them to tell us about our waking struggles. If nothing else, the message that is clear from The Wizard of Oz is that we already possess everything we need to “walk the path” just as the Scarecrow obviously had a brain, etc. We just need to understand the lessons that both waking life and dreamlife are trying to teach us, and that takes a lot of effort over a lot of time.


Brian Gray lecture: Sleeping and Dreaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhdvd1_bNek

Seth Miller: http://elements.spiritalchemy.com/articles/SleepAndDreams.html

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the novel by L. Frank Baum. (Project Gutenberg)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55/55-h/55-h.htm

Phyllis Goldfarb, Teaching Metaphor, USC:
https://gould.usc.edu/why/students/orgs/ilj/assets/docs/20-1%20Goldfarb.pdf






More Sleep

A children’s prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake; I pray the Lord my soul to take. We might wonder why anyone would send children off to sleep with a prayer this dire. Yet something about sleep is revealed by contemplating this simple prayer: the fact that in sleep (and in death) our soul is released to the spiritual world. Did praying at bedtime once carry a reverence for the soul’s nightly sojourn that we have since forgotten?

Steiner says that spiritual research is living consciously into the world which normal people live into unconsciously every time they go to sleep. As we further explore what is happening when we go to sleep, we need to become acquainted with the way spiritual science views the human being: body, soul and spirit. In our contemporary culture we keep looking for answers to the complexities of life in the physical realm observable through our senses, but believing that our physical body is the sum total of who we are will never explain what happens while we sleep, let alone how we can say “I” to ourselves and know what that means.

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

… [The] complete human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body or body of formative [healing] forces, the astral body, and the ego.

In the part of man perceptible to the outer senses … we have first, according to spiritual science, only a single member of the human being, the physical body, which man has in common with the mineral world. That part which is subject to physical laws, … the sum of chemical and physical laws, we designate in spiritual science as the physical body.

Beyond this, however, we recognize higher super-sensible members of human nature which are as actual and essential as the outer physical body.

As first super-sensible member, man has the etheric body, which becomes part of his organism and remains united with the physical body throughout the entire life; only at death does a separation of the two take place… During the entire time between birth and death this etheric or life body continuously combats the disintegration of the physical body… *

The third member of the human being we recognize as the bearer of all pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, impulses, passions, desires, and all that surges to and fro as sensations and ideas, even all concepts of what we designate as moral ideas, and so on. That we call the astral body.

Thus we already have three members of the human being, and as man’s highest member we recognize that by means of which he towers above all other beings…: the bearer of the human ego, which gives him in such a mysterious, but also in such a manifest way, the power of self-consciousness.

Man has the physical body in common with his entire visible environment, the etheric body in common with the plants and animals, the astral body with the animals. The fourth member, however, the ego, he has for himself alone… We recognize this fourth member as the ego-bearer, as that in human nature by means of which man is able to say “I” to himself, to come to independence.

Excerpt from: The Mystery of the Human Temperaments, Public lecture, Karlsruhe, January 19, 1909.

In Steiner’s sketch of the human being, we are asked to grasp in clear terms the larger part of ourselves that cannot be proved by natural science. If we can allow this idea to enter at all, we can also imagine that dreaming, dreamless sleep, transitions between the various stages of sleep, all occur because our four bodies are in a different relationship with each other than when we’re awake. Spiritual science tells us that when we sleep our physical and etheric bodies stay behind in bed while the astral body and ego enter into spiritual realms. When the etheric body leaves the physical body along with the astral and ego bodies, we die.

If we remember the Steiner quote from Occult Science, Chapter III: Sleep and Death in last month’s post, we may now understand a bit more about his references to the astral body returning to the spiritual environment when it is freed from the body. We fall asleep as the astral body and ego leave our physical and etheric bodies and awaken when they return. Our dream pictures, taken from ordinary life, arise in these transitions. We will discuss dreaming in next month’s post.


*A modern definition of the etheric body (and the difference between sleep and death) by Dr. Adam Blanning:
https://denvertherapies.com/the-etheric-body-the-foundation-of-a-dynamic-clinical-lens/



While You Were Sleeping

We should get between 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night, but that is often impossible; we just don’t have the time. In fact, we use coffee and energy drinks to wake us up in the morning and keep us awake long enough to get everything done. And then, when we finally do lay down, we’re still buzzing from the caffeine, or we’re interrupted by cell phone and computer notifications, or plagued by circular thoughts about personal problems or endless to-do lists; we just can’t get any peace.

sleeping woman in clouds-bw.jpg

These stressors are just a few of the factors that can exacerbate our struggle to achieve a decent night’s sleep. According to the Stanford University Research Center, there are 84 different sleep disorders that can affect people of all ages—from infancy to old age. 84!

We get it. We know it’s important to get enough sleep. If we don’t, we know we’ll have less energy and motivation all day; we also know that we’ll likely be more sensitive, more easily frustrated, quicker to anger. Sleep experts say that if we continue to get insufficient sleep, our outlook on life itself begins to suffer.

That’s why sleep trackers, sleeping pills, white noise, recordings of natural sounds, etc., are so popular now. We know we’re our best selves if we’ve slept well, and we’re willing to take significant measures to get the sleep we need. It’s hard to fathom, though, that “enough sleep” is about 1/3 of our lives; that if we live to be 75, we will have spent roughly 25 years sleeping or as a 30-year-old we’ve already slept for 10 years. On the surface, that seems like a huge waste of time. Why can’t we just rest instead? What, exactly, is going on while we’re unconscious?

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

Just as the physical body receives its food, for example, from its environment, so during the sleep state the astral body receives the images from the world about it. It lives there actually in… the same universe out of which the entire human being is born. The source of the images through which the human being receives his form lies in this universe. During sleep he is harmoniously inserted into it, and during the waking state he lifts himself out of this all-encompassing harmony in order to gain external perception. In sleep, his astral body returns to this cosmic harmony and on awaking again brings back to his bodies sufficient strength from it to enable him to dispense with his dwelling within the cosmic harmony for a certain length of time. The astral body, during sleep, returns to its home and on awaking brings back with it renewed forces into life. These forces that the astral body brings with it on awaking find outer expression in the refreshment that healthy sleep affords. (Occult Science: Chapter III: Sleep and Death)

The peculiarity of our waking life is that it does not participate in our constructive processes, in the creation of our own being, but that it shows symptoms of fatigue, and that, after all, it constantly consumes us. The waking life of day is in fact a process of destruction, and any unprejudiced observer will note that sleep is the very opposite: it is a creative process which restores, reorders and creates anew that which the waking life destroys.

… This creative process within us that takes place during sleep concerns us directly, yet we cannot know anything about it because immediately before this creative process arises, we lose our consciousness so that we cannot penetrate knowingly into spheres within our being where creative processes take place. But this leads to the immediate conclusion that if only we were able to maintain our consciousness beyond the point where torpor sets in, we could take hold of the creative phenomena in nature and the universe.

… There is no other path leading to a knowledge of things lying behind the sensory world that that of transcending our ordinary consciousness and penetrating into a creative process which takes place within us.

Excerpt from: Occultism and Initiation, Public lecture, Helsinki, April 12, 1912

We do have some evidence that our souls are having experiences while our bodies are sleeping. Sometimes we remember our dreams, but they usually don’t make much sense until we begin working consciously on them. Sometimes we wake up with answers to questions that seemed unsolvable the day before. And sometimes we have premonitions that disturb us throughout the coming day, especially if they come true.

Obviously, the body and the soul are replenished and fortified by sleep whether we are conscious of the experiences we are having during that time or not. But we don’t have to stay in the dark about this significant portion of our lives on earth. The hidden meaning of our sleep life will unfold when we begin our journey on the path toward spiritual knowledge.* It will make sense because the spiritual world that the soul experiences during sleep is a world as real as the physical one that our soul experiences during waking life.


*Imbedded in the letter below is a link to the six basic exercises given by Rudolf Steiner as a path toward spiritual awakening.

Letter from the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society >

The Anthroposophical Society in America (ASA) supports and furthers the work of Rudolf Steiner in the United States. We are an open membership organization that fosters self-development and inspired social engagement.

Anthroposophy is a discipline of research as well as a path of knowledge, service, personal growth, and social engagement. Introduced and developed by Rudolf Steiner, it is concerned with all aspects of human life, spirit and humanity’s future evolution and well-being.



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.


* 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

Mind Over Matter

When Neo, in the movie The Matrix, decides to swallow the red pill in Morpheus’ right hand rather than the blue one in his left, he is choosing the truth of the world he’s living in rather than the dream he’s been living in thus far. This truth reveals that his body, along with the bodies of nearly all “surviving” human beings, is being used as an energy source for an alien culture. Neo’s soul, his thinking consciousness, is living a life within a thoroughly convincing and complete world, a computer matrix, that has enslaved humanity within a total illusion.

“The Matrix” Image © Warner Bros.

Though we are horrified by the scene in The Matrix showing rank upon rank of “human batteries” dreaming away, we somehow easily grasp the idea of a thought life separate from our bodies. The fact is, for decades now physicists have been suggesting that we must broaden our ideas of consciousness as existing only within the bounds of our brain matter. Max Planck*, the father of quantum mechanics, said quite a long time ago, “There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”

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

No doubt there are people who quite honestly believe in the annihilation of the soul on the extinction of the life of the body, and who arrange their lives accordingly. But even these are not unbiased with regard to such a belief. It is true that they do not allow the fear of annihilation, and the wish for continued existence, to get the better of the reasons which are distinctly in favor of such annihilation. So far, the conception of these people is more logical than that of others who unconsciously construct or accept arguments in favor of a continued existence because there is an ardent desire in the secret depths of their souls for such continued existence.

And yet the view of those who deny immortality is no less biased, only in a different way… Their view of existence leads them to the conclusion that the conditions of the soul’s life can no longer be present when the body falls away. Such people do not notice that they have themselves, from the very first, fixed an idea of the conditions necessary for the existence of life, and cannot imagine a continuation of life after death for the simple reason that, according to their own pre-conceived idea, there is no possibility of imagining an existence without a body. Even if they are not biased by their own wishes, they are biased by their own ideas from which they cannot emancipate themselves.

Excerpt from A Road to Self Knowledge. First Meditation, 1918 by Rudolf Steiner.

 In The Matrix, we see that Neo makes the choice to live within reality no matter how “real” the life he’s been living outside of his senses seems to him. Either way, though, Neo is still Neo. He doesn’t become someone else when he wakes to reality. In the movie Avatar, we see the world from a different angle. Here, the protagonist, Jake Sully, leaves his “real” body to inhabit the genetically engineered body of a Na’vi, an endangered native population on another planet. And yet, Jake is still Jake. Both movies indicate that consciousness isn’t sense-bound. Both men, given a free choice to accept new circumstances, do so. Neo reclaims his body and regains the use of his own senses; Jake rejects his own body and adopts the avatar’s senses. But who they are is a constant.

 Why do we readily accept plot ideas of consciousness being free of the body, yet continue to discount the implications of this acceptance? Do we have, on a gut level, an understanding that we are not our bodies but rather that we inhabit them? We may see that the body is indeed a vehicle that we use; it belongs to us for the duration of our lives. Perhaps it isn’t such a big leap to imagine that when we die, our consciousness survives when we leave our bodies behind. Isn’t it time we begin to investigate the mind behind the matter? If you want to know more about this, you can read Rudolf Steiner.

           

*Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, (born April 23, 1858, Kiel, Schleswig [Germany]—died October 4, 1947, Göttingen, Germany), German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918.

 Max Planck: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Max-Planck

 The Matrix movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix

 Avatar movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)

Know It All

The vault of the blue sky arching over snowcapped mountain peaks in the distance invites the soul to expand out to meet the beauty we behold. The sound of a rushing stream that accompanies the visual complexity of water flowing over boulders and cascades fills the soul with feelings of abundance. We are alive and present in the moment. We may begin to notice the tiny flowers sparking the green banks with a multitude of colors. What are they called? How did they get there? We move naturally from our observations to our thinking.

The first of the six steps of the scientific method states: “Make an observation or observations.” This presumes that we possess the faculties and abilities necessary to observe the world around us. Every further step presumes that we possess a rational mind—that we can think. It is thinking itself that is implicit and fundamental to the scientific method. The scientific method, formalized by Francis Bacon back in 1621, is still the way we do science. Rudolf Steiner uses this method as his means for investigating and reporting on the spiritual world.

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

In sequence of time, observation does in fact come before thinking. For even thinking we must get to know first through observation... Everything that enters the circle of our experience, we first become aware of through observation. The content of sensation, perception and contemplation, all feelings, acts of will, dreams and fancies, mental pictures, concepts and ideas, all illusions and hallucinations, are given to us through observation.

Excerpt from: Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter III: Knowledge of Freedom revised edition: 1918.

Critical thinking is essential to the five remaining steps of the scientific method. A definition for critical thinking formulated by Michael Scriven and Richard Paul reads: “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

 Back to Dr. Steiner:

When we consider the significance of natural science in human life, we shall find that this significance cannot be exhausted by acquiring a knowledge of nature, since this knowledge can never lead to anything but an experiencing of what the human soul itself is not. The soul-element does not live in what man knows about nature, but in the process of acquiring Knowledge. The soul experiences itself in its occupation with nature. What it vitally achieves in this activity is something besides the knowledge of nature itself: it is self-development experienced in acquiring knowledge of nature. Occult science desires to employ the results of this self-development in realms that lie beyond mere nature. The occult scientist has no desire to undervalue natural science; on the contrary, he desires to acknowledge it even more than the natural scientist himself. He knows that, without the exactness of the mode of thinking of natural science, he cannot establish a science. Yet he knows also that after this exactness has been acquired through genuine penetration into the spirit of natural-scientific thinking, it can be retained through the force of the soul for other fields.

Excerpt from: Esoteric Science: An Outline, Preface to the 1925 edition 10/01/25 by Rudolf Steiner.

Natural science can tell us what type of flower is growing by the stream and how it probably got there. We can investigate its physiology, structure, genetics, ecology, distribution, classification, and economic importance. Natural science struggles to explain, however, why the flower gives us joy; why the sky, the mountains and the stream invoke the feelings they do.  We need to further science into those realms as well—the realms beyond what we can perceive through our senses. We believe that understanding botany is a worthwhile endeavor; shouldn’t we pursue the science of the spirit with equal vigor?  This is what Anthroposophy does. Reading books like The Philosophy of Freedom (also translated as Philosophy of Spiritual Activity) can be a good first step.