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.

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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.

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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.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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Pico Iyer: The Value of Suffering, New York Times, 7 Sept., 2013 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/the-value-of-suffering.html?pagewanted=all

https://www.yogabycandace.com/blog/2013/9/10/lessons-from-suffering

Brene Brown: https://brenebrown.com/blog/2018/05/24/the-midlife-unraveling/?fbclid=IwAR3ZPcgNA48de6KzCxAZov1F7uEG_w2orw3a3oUGKDVnNsO_ixYcXtSCHgw

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?

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