In 1984, when I was in my 33rd year, I was at a point of crisis in most areas of my life, including work, marriage and other relationships. It was at this very low ebb of my life that I took a decision that was to change my future direction. I went to spend two weeks in the Findhorn Foundation in the north of Scotland.
I suspect if I had known more about Findhorn at that time I wouldn’t have gone, as I would have dismissed it as a nest of dippy hippies with weird ideas. But for whatever reason, I felt a pull towards Findhorn which in retrospect I think was coming from my higher self. So I enrolled myself in an Experience Week (the orientation programme that all newcomers to Findhorn have to do before they can take part in workshops or courses) and also signed up for the following week, which was Findhorn’s Spring Arts Festival.
During the Experience Week, participants spend the mornings in group work and the afternoons with one of the work departments such as Kitchen, Dining Room, Gardening, Housecare etc. When you arrive, you are asked to attune to which work department is the right one for you. I’m a keen gardener and of course had heard about the wonders of the Findhorn garden with its giant vegetables grown in little more than sand; and so I had thought that I would ask to go to the garden department. But no, try as I might to change it, an inner voice told me that I needed to join the housecare department. So I did, and was put to work cleaning bathrooms and windows. Now I hate housework at the best of times (which is perhaps why I had to do it) but strange to relate, I began to find a certain satisfaction in taking care of bathrooms and making them clean and shiny. At Findhorn, each of the bathrooms has a name and even a kind of personality, which seems to be brought out through the care and attention that it receives and the little touches, such as houseplants or other simple enhancements.
The Findhorn garden
While cleaning bathrooms, I learnt the truth of Peter Caddy’s advice that to make the best of any situation you should love where you are, love who you’re with, and love what you do. This actually works, as it changes your consciousness towards any task, however mundane or tedious. Resentment at having to do menial jobs can be transformed by starting to care about what you’re doing and seeking to do it as well as you can. It helps you to feel better about yourself and your situation and also brings a certain sparkle to those objects with which you are interacting!
The mornings spent in group work with around twenty people from around the world and led by two facilitators from the Findhorn community, were sometimes exhilarating and sometimes challenging, as you are brought up (very gently) against your own areas where further growth or development is needed. The American author Paul Hawken, who in the 1970s wrote a book called The Magic of Findhorn, has described Findhorn as being like a greenhouse that accelerates the growth of people, which in my experience is quite true. There were times when I was thrilled and uplifted to be there and other times when for two pins I would have packed my bags and left. It was at one of these dark times when I went into the woods behind Cluny and leant against a tree, wondering why I had come and asking myself whether I should leave. Suddenly a voice came into my mind, which I knew was not from my own thoughts – it was somehow quite distinct and authoritative. There were two sentences, answers to the questions I had been asking: “This (ie Findhorn) is not for you, though it is good for you to see it.” And then: “The yeast is in the dough, let it work in its own time.” These two sentences gave me the courage and resolution to stay with the process and see it through, which I was able to do – and I stayed on for the second week, the Spring Arts Festival.
The Universal Hall at Findhorn (photo via the Findhorn Foundation)
The main venue for concerts, talks and performances during the arts festival was the Universal Hall, an extraordinary building which was constructed by community members. I read somewhere that, after it had been completed, an expert in sacred geometry asked the community whether they had worked consciously with the principles of sacred geometry as it was a perfect demonstration of how such a building should be made. The answer was that none of them had any knowledge or experience in this area but had simply done what seemed to them was needed.
It was in the Universal Hall that I found myself listening to a talk by Sir George Trevelyan, who during his lifetime was often called by journalists “the Father of the New Age.” Sir George was a craftsman furniture maker and adult educationalist who had been born into an aristocratic family with a penchant for radical thought and public service. His uncle was the historian and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, G. M. Trevelyan, a friend and contemporary of Bertrand Russell, another radical and outspoken aristocrat and grandson of the Victorian Prime Minister Lord John Russell. Sir George himself had had to relinquish hopes of inheriting the family property of Wallington in Northumberland when his father, who had been a Labour MP and minister in Ramsay Macdonald’s government, left it to the National Trust.
Sir George Trevelyan – photo via gala communications.co.uk
I can’t from this distance recall the subject of Sir George’s talk but in a sense it doesn’t matter because his subject was always the same whenever he spoke: he was advocating spiritual renewal, which was not a religious revival, but an awakening that is available to those of all religions and those of none. What I do remember very well, though, is that during his talk I found myself thinking: “This man is mad, mad – and what’s more you’re mad for sitting here and listening to him.” At the same time, however, another part of me was saying: “Yes, yes, yes…” I date my own spiritual awakening to this talk. It’s interesting to me also that I’m writing this account 33 years afterwards.
I discovered subsequently that there was a strange parallel here with Sir George’s own spiritual awakening. In 1942, he attended a lecture given by Walter Johannes Stein, who was one of Rudolf Steiner’s pupils. He said later that, as Stein introduced the ideas of Steiner one by one: “Everything in me said yes, yes, yes.”
As Ruth Nesfield-Cookson observed: “Although the work of Rudolf Steiner was what led George into an interest in the spiritual he searched for the truth far and wide, in the work of Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake, Hopkins, the romantic poets etc., and also in the works of more modern thinkers including Teilhard de Chardin, Wellesley Tudor Pole, Grace Cook and the White Eagle teachings etc. And from his close link with Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, the leader of the Sufi movement in this country, he saw that the fruits of Eastern as well as Western thinking had to be considered and represented. He knew there were many routes up the mountain and no one route was right for everybody. However he never doubted that, to quote his own words ‘It is Cosmic Christianity we are about’ “.
Eileen and Peter Caddy with Dorothy Maclean (photo via rejteyekszigete.com)
In later years, I got to know Sir George a little better; his talks had the same awakening effect on thousands of people that I had experienced in 1984 and his book Operation Redemption is still well worth reading. I also met Peter Caddy, who with his wife Eileen and their friend Dorothy Maclean, were the three founders of Findhorn. In my view, both Findhorn and anthroposophy are deeply Rosicrucian impulses and both in their own way are interlinked with positive forces of change in the world. They have set into world consciousness, albeit in homeopathic doses, what will one day lead us away from disaster.
Anthroposophy, in what I call applied anthroposophy, offers many young tendrils of growth for a different and kinder future for us all, while Findhorn continues to offer a new story or narrative of how the world could be. Whether we as human beings will have the courage or imagination to make the necessary changes is not easy to foresee. I suspect that we are going to be brought right up to the brink of chaos and catastrophe before meaningful change can happen.
anthropopper 
Jeremy, it is wonderful you mention Sir George Trevelyan. I have his publication which he co-wrote with Edward Matchett in 1976 “Twelve Seats at the Round Table”. The writings are centered round the Attingham Mosaics; a project Sir George conceived in creating twelve stained glass mosaic panels of the Zodiac to be set in a circular room in Attingham Park. They were designed by Jasper and Molly Kettlewell and made as a group craft project by students at the Attingham Adult College.
The publication contains photographs of the twelve panels and, although they are printed in black and white (except Aquarius on the cover of the book), they are stunning. I should imagine seeing them in the circular room with the light shining through the mosaic coloured glass must be a sight to behold.
The fruition for the panels came from a conversation with Mary Caine concerning her work with the Glastonbury Zodiac and it was suggested that the Round Table of King Arthur might well have been a place of learning and initiation at which the knights experienced twelve conditions of being, each of which gave to them different strengths and sensitivities. It was further suggested that Glastonbury may have been a world centre for acquiring such experience and knowledge long before the reputed visit of the young Jesus with Joseph of Arimathaea.
Beautiful Britanni history.
Sir George Trevelyan and Edward Matchett’s publication is very dear to me. Thanks for the inspiring story Jeremy it sounds like you had a special time and it is a lovely memory to have.
Caryn
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Thank you, Caryn. I knew Mary Caine slightly and once went on a tour of the Kingston Zodiac with her, but I didn’t know that she had had an input into the Attingham Mosaics.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Now there is a thing 🙂 I have not heard of the Kingston Zodiac before … I believe the contemplation of Britain’s history would take more than one lifetime.
Brutus! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds
An island which the western sea surrounds,
By giants once possessed, now few remain
To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.
To reach that happy shore thy sails employ
There fate decrees to raise a second Troy
And found an empire in thy royal line,
Which time shall ne’er destroy, nor bounds confine.
— Geoffrey of Monmouth, 1,11 History of the Kings of Britain/Books 1, 11
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In the last paragraph Jeremy writes the following:
It is not supposed to be easy to foresee. That in a nutshell is the challenge humanity has largely avoided. Has spent vast sums of money and wasted countless tons of aviation fuel to avoid.
I want now to embark on my standard theme: what we cannot see or perceive. It takes courage to develop the kind of imagination Rudolf Steiner spoke of – and because it is our imagination, nobody else can do it for us. However, they can help by pointing the way. Nevertheless, for one individual, that is insufficient: the time for gurus is long gone – but the time for many helping hands has never been more pertinent.
But one does need the courage to engage with them if one is to learn anything. In a world dependent on iPhones for comfort, the challenge has become the greater, because one now has to become conscious of one’s dependency on the iPhone (or my iMac) and grasp rather prickly nettles.
This goes for all of us. Those who have the most courage will be those who are most ready to converse in a situation where conversation is least easy. For me it was the challenge of meeting someone as we were about to leave the train we were both travelling on. If one has honed one’s ability to listen and discern the thinking patterns of the other, it is relatively easy to take their thinking another step forward. The problem here is that they will have needed to take that initial, courageous step of conversing with a stranger.
And the respect this demands if they are not to dismiss me as a fifty-something frump. But then, the lack of respect is just another way of saying the person lacks courage… once you can see the processes, it is amazing how these attitudes all ‘hold hands’.
If you have been able to appreciate what I have said here, it means that if a person cannot converse with another on an equal basis – which is rare, for most people will, for whatever reason, either assume an authority that is not theirs, or a submission that means they don’t have to strive. Sulphur, Salt and Mercury – if you have the wit to perceive this in the last paragraph. The point is that it is all too tempting to assume one knows, or knows nothing. The challenge is to know what one does know, and compare it to that which other people express. If, that is they can express it consciously, which most cannot – this is where only the conscious person can learn something.
The point here is to expand on what Jeremy said, and I repeat his words:
This in itself tells me that the author has work to be done. The catastrophe he speaks of is unfolding all around us, yet people are utterly unaware of it. Humanity had their chance in the early years of the last century, and Rudolf Steiner himself gave no few warnings. The challenges Rudolf Steiner spoke about are always too subtle to put into words – and now, such challenges will awaken one to the very things I behold around me. That in itself is enough to make anybody recoil – yet we must all cross the Abyss.
The real problem here is that meaningful change needs to happen before a person meets the brink of chaos – because otherwise they won’t have the time to work out what is going on as the brink is passed and chaos floods their lives with terror.
My public blog speaks of this using the kind of language Rudolf Steiner used, that is to say, consciously veiled. After all, these things are too subtle to put into words, a conscious veil is the best one can do to point to them. Those people who have a future will be able to read something of what is written there, and may take what they will if they wish to work with themselves and so prepare for the unfolding chaos that will consume us all.
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Gemma wrote:
“The real problem here is that meaningful change needs to happen before a person meets the brink of chaos – because otherwise they won’t have the time to work out what is going on as the brink is passed and chaos floods their lives with terror.”
Personally, I see Jeremy as one who is filled with hope and light, and the reason that he gave us this bit of biography from 1984 is that it showcases just how much the world situation has changed in nearly 33 years. I have a corresponding biographical entry which is much the same in seeking a greater spiritual identity in my life at that time. Yet, this was still two years before I even heard the name, Rudolf Steiner.
No, chaos and catastrophe have already inflicted the European continent with the two world wars of the 20th century. According to Steiner, it was a matter of the “karma of European necessity” that these wars took place. As well, there were driving spiritual forces of destruction at work at that time, ref. GA177.
Recently, it was told how this European karma occurred by way of the rather quick reincarnation of the Native Americans as present-day Europeans. Thus, they bring the same desire for establishing territorial boundaries as before. The short-term duration in the higher worlds is insufficient to alleviate this force of nature, and it simply transfers itself to the European theatre. The history of Europe, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, is one of warring nations, just as it was when the American colonies were formed in the 17th century. The American Indian Wars is a very important chapter in learning why the so-called, “New World” was explored and made the subject of European conquest.
Today, in the 21st century, we need countries that work together. Europe, after the travesty of the 20th century, is striving in this direction. France, Germany, Russia, Britain, Turkey, China, are not overt enemies of each other as they once were perceived in the former century. So, the chaos and catastrophe is really only owing to what is arising out of the west as the so-called “war on terror”, which began on American soil on 9/11/2001, and continues to make for a possible another ‘Hundred Years War”, c. 1337, which stamped Soradt’s second evolutionary phase.
That is why it is not without significance that in 1998, the two African embassies were bombed, and then in 2001, the attack on the World Trade Center. Then, on March 3, 2003, the POTUS, George W. Bush, declares war on Iraq, which officially starts World War III.
Vincent Bugliosi, a renowned prosecuting attorney, wrote a book in 2008 entitled: The Prosecution of George W.Bush for Murder, in which he gives clear evidence that Bush’ preemptory war against Iraq, in all violation of UN sanctions, was not only illegal, but also cost some 2300 American lives, not to mention the thousands of lives of Iraqi soldiers/civilians in order to claim that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. They didn’t, but the war wanes on; maybe for a hundred years. Who knows but those in control 😉
Steve
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Steve Hale,
whilst you criticise what I say, you present no answer.
I am well aware of the realities that exist in modern Europe – which as you suggest is the result of three hundred million Native American Indians being reborn as Europeans. But this information leads to nothing if one is not aware of the processes that people unconsciously engage in.
Because America is creating dissonance in the world; the reasons are clear to those who have an understanding of the nature of the modern human being and the economics that arises from their collective activities.
Knowing this will tell you why America needs to bomb third world countries that cannot defend themselves, and will tell you why Americans need to do it.
If you could only see the processes running underneath the above paragraphs, the solution would be immediate. Rudolf Steiner spoke often of how it is possible to train oneself to see these processes, and those who can are those who see their karma as the challenge it is intended to pose. The Second World War was the karmic outcome of the inability to deal with the karmic challenges that led to the First World War, just as America’s need to bomb others is a refusal to deal with the challenges of their own karma – and thus it is foist on the innocent.
And Europe who have problems enough of their own, without having to deal with war-crazed Americans leering at Russia.
But we still need solutions, and if you cannot see what Rudolf Steiner meant when he asked Anthroposophists to see the processes underlying the outward realities, then you are not doing what was intended for Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is the solution, but only when it is engaged in properly.
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Yup, egotistic politicians who assume that they have the right to sit in Solomon’s Seat while intentionally making unjust decisions which affect generations to come whilst in the background they are making business deals with their grubby hands and feeding tainted money from their illicit corporations into their trust accounts. They are the epitome of wormwoods interfering in the legal-rights realm for their own personal monetary gain.
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Caryn. [Off Topic]
Those who make unjust decisions are those who cannot see the truth, what’s more, they are likely to balk at the truth if they should hear it. The Americans are in a bubble where all they can hear is their own voice.
Which gives an enormous advantage to people with a little more intelligence, and the reserve that goes with it:
Because the Americans in their bubble of self-satisfied egoism are unaware of the dangers they now face, should they make the mistake of taking on Russia. Russia is not Iraq and it is not Syria.
It just goes to show that the most powerful weapon on the planet is the ability to gauge your enemy in the light of clarity.
All quotes from Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/beware-what-you-wish-for-russia-is-ready-for-war/5526836
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Dear Jeremy,
I very much enjoyed reading your positive account of your experiences at Findhorn and the importance it had for your later development. Although I never attended any courses there I visited a few times and was always moved by the special feeling of potential and hope that lived there.
I have one question for you.
What interest do Lucifer and Ahriman have in bringing about chaos and catastrophe?
It seems to me that Lucifer and Ahriman will always wax more powerful when people are lulled by comfort and ease, when individuals don’t feel challenged to delve into their soul depths – to ask themselves the difficult questions, such as “Does life have meaning over and above the obvious?”.
In my experience of hospice work it is the people who suffer who are most likely to seek for a meaning for what is happening to them.
Thank you for sharing this bit of your biography.
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THS
Have the people helping those in the hospice suffered enough to bring these meanings to consciousness? After all, this is the point of having an earthly life: to become aware while there is time enough to employ it to good use.
The clarity that arrives with the departure of the doppelgänger is a terrible thing, for those few weeks are too short a time to do anything. Especially in a world where nobody is interested in the truths that clarity brings.
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Here is what struck me most. When Tom says:
“What interest do Lucifer and Ahriman have in bringing about chaos and catastrophe? It seems to me that Lucifer and Ahriman will always wax more powerful when people are lulled by comfort and ease, when individuals don’t feel challenged to delve into their soul depths – to ask themselves the difficult questions, such as “Does life have meaning over and above the obvious?”.”
Tom, do you remember when I spoke about the fictional figure of the anti-representative of man? This figure has to be imagined because Steiner only elaborated its representation in Christ as the medium between Lucifer and Ahriman. As such, Lucifer and Ahriman are brought down through the loving consort of the Christ. Any uplifting could only be the cause of the anti-Christ, who indeed imbues these fallen figures as items of temptation and allurement in the human nature. They have no other function.
So, when Gemma speaks of the departure of the doppelganger in the human soul just before death, it has nothing to do with what you are referring to, but rather how the Lord of Karma has already made amends. The real issue is where you think that L & A make for a kind of comfortable accommodation, rather than the stark confrontation with chaos and catastrophe. They don’t. Your own conscience has stated it. It is you that worry’s about the present state of affairs. That is why this thread harkens to the previous one. Conscience is our own.
Steve
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Dear Gemma,
My answer to your first question would be, ‘Some have and some haven’t’. There are people working in the hospices who may not be able to ‘bring these meanings to consciousness’ but they have other qualities which are valuable to the sick and dying. For example through their touch, or the sound of their voice, they can bring comfort and courage.
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Tom Hart Shea,
you are right about the hospice workers.
Steve Hale.
“Any uplifting could only be the cause of the anti-Christ, who indeed imbues these fallen figures as items of temptation and allurement in the human nature. They have no other function.”
Both Ahriman and Lucifer play vital roles in creation. If you dismiss them, you dismiss your own task in life, for it is for each human to redeem their own Ahrimanic and Luciferic selves. Without that, they cannot pass through the gates of heaven – hence the departure of the doppelgänger.
Either you work consciously with them and transform them, or you deny your place as a complete being in heaven.
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Dear Tom,
I’m sorry it has taken me a little while to reply to your question but to tell you the truth, I don’t quite see what the connection is with Lucifer and Ahriman. What I think was implicit in my post was the suggestion that we human beings only seem to be able to learn and alter direction when we are brought right up against intolerable pain and suffering. This is perhaps because the status quo, however uncomfortable and unsustainable, is at least familiar, while the unknown and the necessity of change hold unspoken terrors for us. Steiner said that it was Lucifer who introduced selfishness into our astral bodies, so to that extent he is implicated in all of this. Chaos and catastrophe are by-products of humans falling prey to Luciferic and Ahrimanic deceptions, no doubt, but the main interest of those two is in engendering fear, selfishness, materialism and atheism in human beings and thus diverting us away from our true ultimate destiny.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Jeremy.
You upbraided me for making sweeping assumptions about people. I would like to bring you something of that quality now. When you say,
You say ‘perhaps’ for something that is quite certain in our world. Anybody – and that is literally everybody – who has not worked with their antipathies will use a conditional (just as you used ‘perhaps’) to say something that is actually a thoroughgoing fact. That uncertainty lies within the person speaking (or writing) because they are not in possession of clarity.
Clarity arrives when one has consciously worked with one’s antipathies, and is striving to deal with one’s sympathies (which are FAR harder to deal with). It allows one to speak directly, which, sadly, unsettles those who have not dealt with their antipathies. The problem is that because they are unconscious of this, they don’t know why it unsettles them…
Catch 22 had nothing on Ahriman!!
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Gemma,
As always, you misunderstand me and you make assertions on the basis of no evidence that I can see. When I used the word “perhaps” in the sentence you quote, it was to indicate that there could be other explanations; I am leaving room for other points of view. You do not leave any room for other people to have additional points of view. While in some ways it must be comforting to have your sense of infallible insight, such an approach (and here I use the word again) perhaps leaves you more isolated than you need to be.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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You employed a conditional adverb in the following statement:
“This is perhaps because the status quo, however uncomfortable and unsustainable, is at least familiar, while the unknown and the necessity of change hold unspoken terrors for us”
There are no other explanations. What you said was the absolute and veritable truth.
Yet, within what you said is a whole panorama of human emotion that underlies a myriad human deeds. It is here that the ‘perhaps’ enters in, in asmuch that one may not be aware of all the facts pertaining to the situation. It is here that other points of view have their rightful place.
There are no rightful points of view about an etheric process. They exist, and exist in the form they take – and cannot be misinterpreted.
Even so, if you fully comprehend the dynamics of what you said, it is remarkable just how accurate one’s estimation of such situations can be. (And here I use the conditional in its proper sense: if something has not happened, one cannot guarantee that it comes to pass – hence, ‘if’ and ‘perhaps’ are entirely valid here).
You go on to say: “While in some ways it must be comforting to have your sense of infallible insight, such an approach (and here I use the word again) perhaps leaves you more isolated than you need to be.”
If one can comprehend the processes of the etheric, this is not something to be derogatory about. It might leave me isolated amongst those who cannot comprehend them, and there are many. Too many. But they make for poor company – and indeed, those I meet, many of them complain that they are lonely. But then, if they lack the ability to express themselves, they are going to find it difficult to make contact with others. What goes around, comes around.
You will never find me complaining of being lonely.
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Jeremy,
it is the task of anthroposophy to recognize the truth when you see it, but also to have the courage of your convictions to express it as such.
What else are we striving for? Without this courage, what value is one’s striving if it can only be expressed in a way that implies doubt?*
(*The use of the conditional implies the person doubts their own judgement – which you agreed with by stating that there could be other explanations. That in itself is a statement of doubt, and one that implies you still have some striving to do).
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Gemma, while I have no doubt that I have more striving to do, I find your assertion that there is only one truth to be arrived at to be entirely at odds with my understanding of anthroposophy. How do you reconcile your certainty that there is one correct judgement to be reached with, say, Steiner’s statement that there are 12 world outlooks, each of which can be rationally and logically justified in its own terms? The courage you speak of in the rightness of your own conclusions is the same courage and conviction that leads to ISIS, tyranny and dictatorships. Or have I misunderstood you? Are you saying that you take into account all of these world outlooks and then arrive at a synthesis which leads to one true conclusion? If so, I take my hat off to you as you must be a very advanced soul indeed.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Jeremy,
when you say “How do you reconcile your certainty that there is one correct judgement to be reached with, say, Steiner’s statement that there are 12 world outlooks, each of which can be rationally and logically justified in its own terms?”
Steiner was also the prophet of Christ in the etheric – the one and only Logos. Understand where those twelve outlooks point to, and they can only point to the one truth: that of the Logos.
Understanding creation – the Logos – is not hard. It just takes a little patience and no small amount of tolerance for the views of others. Some of whom are right, some wrong; but even those who are wrong, can clarify another aspect of the truth by mirroring it, as it were. But only if – and it is a big if – one has worked with one’s own antipathies to a sufficient degree.
As to ISIS, how many times have I had this thrust at me? It is what I call a “standard argument” – the quality is the same, but I know of at least two other cases of the person using ISIS directly. What should be crystal clear to the objective mind is that ISIS have not dealt with their antipathies – their intolerances. Just look at the things they do if you don’t believe me! Blowing up people, livelihoods and all manner of things because they find it distasteful – all the while they steal and pillage.
Now tell me, is this Islam or is this merely barbarity???
Now:
This is why Rudolf Steiner wrote the Philosophy of Freedom. If you have understood it properly, then the above is what one will be able to do. Put better, strive for.
It’s the only striving that has any worth.
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Thank You, Jeremy. it was just a thought about the roles of Ahriman and Lucifer.
You say, ‘Chaos and catastrophe are by-products of humans falling prey to Luciferic and Ahrimanic deceptions, no doubt, but the main interest of those two is in engendering fear, selfishness, materialism and atheism in human beings and thus diverting us away from our true ultimate destiny.’
I fully agree that they want to divert us from our true destiny.
I guess my point, (which was badly expressed), would be that when people are comfortable, not suffering too much except the inconveniences of daily life, as many of us are in Europe, then human beings have little inclination to question deeply or to challenge the underlying thoughts, feelings and assumptions which pervade our souls. I think this agrees with what you expressed above. People are fearful of change.
I agree Ahriman wants to engender fear, selfishness, materialism and atheism, but s/he also wants control. S/he needs humans who are under her control. I was thinking that chaos and catastrophe work against that. Similarly with Lucifer. Lucifer wants to be worshipped, to be adored, and needs enchanted humans to worship him. I would suggest that chaos and catastrophe can work against that also.
In Soloviev’s prophetic story of the Anti-Christ, Ahriman appears as a great saviour, someone who can solve all the social problems afflicting humanity, someone who removes pain and suffering.
You said, ‘we human beings only seem to be able to learn and alter direction when we are brought right up against intolerable pain and suffering.’
And again I would agree wholeheartedly. So if Ahriman and Lucifer want to us NOT TO LEARN where our true destiny lies then it is not in their interests to allow too much pain and suffering to happen to us, they need us to be LAZY and COMFORTABLE.
This all sounds rather abstruse trying to re-think it a week later! The conclusion of my line of thinking is that if there is to be chaos and catastrophe it may in fact be the the result of the activity of the ‘good’ spiritual powers.
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Gemma Laming wrote:
“I am well aware of the realities that exist in modern Europe – which as you suggest is the result of three hundred million Native American Indians being reborn as Europeans. But this information leads to nothing if one is not aware of the processes that people unconsciously engage in.”
I never gave an exact figure of how many Europeans today were formerly the Native Americans who were once subjugated by the original colonists, who felt impelled to suppress and otherwise exterminate and segregate these original peoples of America. I only wanted to allude to the possibility that a so-called “European karma” could be related to this fact, and why the wars of the 20th century were inflicted on Europe. Now, in considering the forces that would inflict these wars, it only seems most apparent that they would come from those very European descendants of the original colonists, as you previously suggested.
Yes, today people are quite unaware of what is going on. They are most living in subconscious, and even unconscious domains. This is understood by us helpers who would rather not be known as authority figures, i.e., guru’s, and yet, we have to take a stand much along the lines of Rudolf Steiner himself, who would have wanted this kind of vigorous continuation of his work.
Our problem goes back to where you questioned my first input that crossed your mind. You saw it as a mere readership, when it was much more than that. Remember? The Human Heart is a centre of activity, which even extols the Thinking activity, which is able to express how it is.
Now, today, we have arrived at the fundamental issue. What is it?
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Steve Hale.
“Now, in considering the forces that would inflict these wars, it only seems most apparent that they would come from those very European descendants of the original colonists, as you previously suggested.”
Is this why the Americans funded Hitler? These European descendents are rather nasty stuff, don’t you think? Sending fuel out to the U-Boats in mid-atlantic, so they could in turn sink Allied vessels to the north? Nice people!
“Yes, today people are quite unaware of what is going on. They are most living in subconscious, and even unconscious domains.” – Could you elucidate on how these people are to meet this challenge?
After all, this is the very one you complain of me bringing up!
What is more, so far, I have not received anything but demurrals and obfuscation by way of a response from you.
So I will ask again: how can you – the you that is Steve Hale – discern your subconscious. Given that you cannot see it within yourself (hint). I will add that your responses so far have centred on your being able to discern such things within yourself.
Now, can you please explain what you mean by “You saw it as a mere readership, when it was much more than that.” Your imagery is far from clear. Without that, your fundamental issue could be one of several things.
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“Is this why the Americans funded Hitler? These European descendents are rather nasty stuff, don’t you think? Sending fuel out to the U-Boats in mid-atlantic, so they could in turn sink Allied vessels to the north? Nice people!”
Wall Street funds anything that looks to be a good investment. Isn’t that how the Nazi war machine was built by a country deep in debt already, even before the Great Depression.
Subconscious unfoldment into conscious awareness is a technique afforded when epistemological coordination occurs in regard to the subconscious content of knowledge/experience. Thus, spiritual science provides the intellectual reference-points for previously held material experienced ontologically within the subconscious. I lived for 24 years with a particular content of knowledge which I would work over on a subconscious level, and knowing that I could never reveal it until it became a matter of conscious apprehension. Then, an event occurred 36 years ago which entailed a search for identity. This search began the process of the conscious unfoldment of this previously held subconscious matter.
As such, it continually goes on, and therefore I am keenly aware of the processes involved in the psychology of consciousness. One technique is to wake up in the morning and remain within the twilight state in order to retain the impressions of the sleep-dream state before it sinks into the subconscious. Even by turning to the outer world with the senses and the logic that pertains, as long as spiritual science is the standard bearer in daily life, the subconscious is always readily unfolding into consciousness.
This is my consistent experience.
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“Both Ahriman and Lucifer play vital roles in creation. If you dismiss them, you dismiss your own task in life, for it is for each human to redeem their own Ahrimanic and Luciferic selves. Without that, they cannot pass through the gates of heaven – hence the departure of the doppelgänger.”
But, you see, these vital roles are completed. They stood in relation to the etheric body and the astral body, respectively, and further elaborated into the Intellectual Soul, and the Sentient Soul. With the Consciousness Soul, the issue now is to battle the Asuras, which influences the Ego, and makes for the snarky personality seen so much today.
Steiner sculpted the “Representative of Man” with this in mind: Lucifer and Ahriman have served their respective functions, which go back to that point in the Lemurian epoch when “The Lord God made earth and heaven”. With the entry of Christ into earth evolution, He replaces their former efficacy as the True Light, and now they can be brought down in order to reside in the sub-earthy (where they do).
An “Anti-Representative of Man” has to be imagined pictorially, as it has never been sculpted, but does, indeed, exist. Everyone can imagine the face of Soradt. Placing him in the middle, as the ‘anti-man’, opposed in every respect to the concept and function of the Universal Human, it is not difficult in further imagining an uplifting and resurrection of Lucifer and Ahriman in order to do the dirty work of Soradt. This they do, but out of the sub-earthly, where Christ placed them.
Thus, our task is much more to recognize this present-day fact, and especially the fact of the Second Coming as an experience in the etheric body. This solves the problem of the double.
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Steve Hale.
If you understand the process that underlies this sleep-dream state, you will know that whilst it can bring revelations. It does me, for I employ this too. Yet, on account of the process that underlies it – which Rudolf Steiner termed ‘nibbling’*, it cannot broaden one’s perceptions.
If one is to do this, it has to be a fully conscious act. It is also a very simple process, as are all the steps on the twelve-fold path.
(*If you need the quote, go to the archive and do a google search. The process is so simple that you shouldn’t need the wearisome task of having to look up the appropriate passage each time. It’s not as if people need to refer to the manual when stopping their cars at a red light, is it?)
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Steve Hale,
“But, you see, these vital roles are completed.”
If Ahriman’s work of destruction was completed, then how is it that we are not knee deep in insect bodies?
Indeed, without death, which is Ahriman’s gift to us, there would be unbridled creation and the atmosphere would be choked with insects all over the place.
Ahriman’s work is, like that of all heavenly (or ex-heavenly) beings, ongoing and moreover, necessary.
The reasoning behind this is quite clear to anybody who has thought through the processes that underlie that which occurs in our world. When one has done so, it is extremely easy to establish what is going on, and why. Being able to see the process is what Rudolf Steiner called ‘imaginative thinking’. If one is unable to see the processes, then one is still within the limitations of the intellect.
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One could say two abysses, thresholds or poles exist in man: the future one is experienced in ‘unconscious imagination’, the passed one in ‘unconscious inspiration’ (GA 67_10 (1918), not translated; cf. Study of Man, GA 293_02). Besides courage and (moral) imagination one needs wisdom (pure thinking) and inspiration.
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So here we have the theory.
Shall we start with something more practical? (But I warn you, these things are personal; that means you have to do it for yourself).
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Gemma,
Of course this is only theory, when one doesn’t try to live in the present moment, submerge in the middle, in stead of living in the past or in the future alone. Steiner (1918) called this third and deepest human abyss: ‘unconscious intuition’ and free action (Supersensible Man, GA 67.351).
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What then for the practicalities of the issue? Rudolf Steiner didn’t write these things – or give the lectures – for people to theorize over.
After all, that kind of action led to the burning down of the Goetheanum.
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Controlled imagination and inspiration are first and foremost necessary, for example:
Goethe completed his colour wheel by recognising the importance of extra-spectral magenta (wiki/Theory_of_Colours). But illustrator Eric Carle (Hello, Red Fox) seems to have confused ‘Purpur’ (magenta, red-purple) in Goethe’s Colour Wheel with ‘red’.
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Ton Majoor,
when you say “Controlled imagination and inspiration are first and foremost necessary”
All you can do is give an example of someone who got confused. The point is not to get confused – or worse, think that the abstract, intellectual realm is all there is (here it is important to note that the individual concerned would not be aware of this).
The answers are simple, but require imagination if one is to proceed. Otherwise one will fall into the trap of imagining things that are not true… but then again, the same rule applies: it is important to note that the individual concerned would not be aware of this.
How then can one become aware of what one needs to become aware of, and not become aware of things that do not exist?
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Didn’t I persevere with your practical example of Goethe, who described a colour wheel with opposite colours? Goethe combined abstract pre-conceptual laws (contrasts) with vivid seminal sensory imaginations (colours), without getting confused, cf. Steiner GA 293_02 and GA 322_07. Goethe’s colour wheel even contained an extra-spectral ‘red’ (i.e. peach blossom, magenta), the existence of which apparently even people like Carle (gemmasponderings.wordpress.com/tag/color-wheel/) are not fully aware. For Goethe’s colour wheel, compare: http://www.amazon.com/Goethes-Theory-Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe/dp/B000BTPUAU
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Firstly, I meant Eric Carle, not you. After all, you spotted it.
When you say “Goethe combined abstract pre-conceptual laws (contrasts) with vivid seminal sensory imaginations (colours), without getting confused”
These are not abstract pre-conceptual laws. They are laws that have more force and meaning than anything that can be found on earth. My point is that Goethe understood the true nature of colour – and it is this understanding that answers the seeming paradox of why there is a difference between electric light and natural light. Though they both appear to shine brightly.
As to the magenta, one can demonstrate it quite easily with a prism, in the way Goethe did. I usually keep one in my handbag for occasional use (albeit that it is perspex and is thus more prone to prismatic errors).
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The pathological nature of the will o’ wisp becomes vividly apparent to us.
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Pathological nature?
How do you work this out?
After all, emotions are fleeting – as the will o’ the wisp. If your thinking is powerful enough to picture the fleeting moments that are emotion, you will find a poweful consistency there.
Only to the intellectual soul are such illogical things as emotions ‘pathological’ – dead.
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The threshold that sharply divides the sense world from the super-sensible world must be respected absolutely; the soul must observe the requirements of each of the two worlds, adapting and conducting itself differently on this side and that. We have emphasized repeatedly that the peculiarities of the super-sensible world must not unlawfully be carried over when one comes back into the sense world. If I may put it more plainly, one has to understand how to conduct oneself in both worlds; one may not carry over into one world the method of observation that is right for the other. (GA147)
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Caryn,
I think your quote above, which comes from Steiner’s course, Secrets of the Threshold, is quite pertinent, and why I would like to extend this recent remark that Gemma made:
“Both Ahriman and Lucifer play vital roles in creation. If you dismiss them, you dismiss your own task in life, for it is for each human to redeem their own Ahrimanic and Luciferic selves. Without that, they cannot pass through the gates of heaven – hence the departure of the doppelgänger.”
Can this assessment hardly be true, especially since we know that Christ came to replace Lucifer as the true Lord of Karma? Yes, Lucifer was once the Lord of Karma, but only because of the need for a premature “light-bearer” prior to the Christ as the true Source of Light. Ahriman’s role is similar in that it dwells in the dust of the ground and makes man toil by the sweat of the brow. This is why we continue to “turn stones into bread’ as an economic necessity, even today.
Steiner would go on to describe in the very next lecture-course, ref. GA148, how Christ in the 40 day temptation could easily surmount Lucifer, as well as Lucifer and Ahriman together. But, when it came to Ahriman alone, who had by that time already established the condition of earning bread by the sweat of the brow, i.e., metal money, Christ knew that this consequence would have a long life before being defeated.
But, how is it possible that anyone could be excluded from entering the spiritual worlds at death, and especially if Christ is Lord of Karma? Does Gemma subscribe to Catholic/Jesuit theology here, because in no way could it be affiliated with the central core of Anthroposophy.
Anthroposophy teaches that death, regardless of faults, is the reborn birth into the higher life where reality truly dwells. Christ Himself made that possible on the scaffold of Golgotha some nearly two thousand years ago.
Steve
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The proclamation rings out clearly and with the glow of warmth in the Gospel of St. Luke:
“The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the Heights and its answering reflection from the hearts of men brings peace to all whose purpose upon the evolving Earth is to unfold good will.”
In the study of spiritual science, out of respect for fellow members, an extract from the lecture that is been referenced is expected. Gemma, in the following statements you have made please supply extracts from the lectures wherein the below statements are referenced together with lecture titles and GA numbers:
1. Both Ahriman and Lucifer play vital roles in creation. If you dismiss them, you dismiss your own task in life, for it is for each human to redeem their own Ahrimanic and Luciferic selves.
2. Without that, they cannot pass through the gates of heaven –
3. hence the departure of the doppelgänger.
4. The clarity that arrives with the departure of the doppelgänger is a terrible thing, for those few weeks are too short a time to do anything.
Sincerely,
Caryn
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Apologies Steve I did not put the lecture title GA147 – Perceptions of the Elemental World. From this it is likely to be a sub-nature case and the indications of a dimmed consciousness are becoming obvious. Remember how in depth we discussed the Edgar Cayce somnambulistic case.
Caryn
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Caryn,
you are asking for references to your Guru, am I correct?
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A side-note to the moderator: Caryn did ask for the GA numbers, thus asking for confirmation from her preferred guru.
I trust you will publish the above comment, if for the only sake that it was what she was asking for. I can understand if it might – just might – be a little offensive to her. But the truth is often a bitter pill to swallow.
That is why so few anthroposophists actually strive beyond moving their eyes from left to right and back again.
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I thought of what Jeremy had said in this post “Whether we as human beings will have the courage or imagination to make the necessary changes is not easy to foresee.”
Those who have taken the time to develop imaginative thinking have no problem seeing whether human beings will have the courage to make the necessary changes.
This was sent to me by a friend just today, and expresses what I feel when it comes to meeting people who ought to have the courage:
Initiation is easier than falling off a log, and like my friend it baffles me why so few people can see it. All you need is a little patience.
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Well, think about trying to apply yourself in finding out how your knowledge is off course. It is entirely up to you.
Caryn
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All things considered, that is a very interesting response.
By the way, did you read all of the comment?
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Personally, I find it not only efficient but edifying in citing Steiner’s reference-points. For example, in citing Steiner’s words in the course, “World Economy”, Gemma brought forth some great thoughts on the issue of the economic order and how it should fit in properly as an independent initiative within and amongst the rights sphere, and the cultural sphere.
Caryn, in citing briefly from GA147, Perceptions of the Elemental World, which is the third lecture in the course, Secrets of Threshold, brings to bear a very important issue about tampering with the elementary world, which has an increasing bearing on world technology, and global dominion coming from out of the west. Steiner predicted much of what is coming to pass today in the course, GA200, The New Spirituality and the Christ Experience in the Twentieth Century, given in October 1920.
One of the considerations was how an American karma was developing much in the same way that the European karma had to play out in the world wars. America’s karma related to Japan, and how America and Japan would one day fight a war in the Pacific theatre. Of course, this did take place. Steiner reveals here that America is now the home of the Soradtic migration having come from the East all the way over to the West. All is orchestrated out of the western powers who pull the puppet-strings of every leader and nation in the world.
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Gemma wrote:
“That is why so few anthroposophists actually strive beyond moving their eyes from left to right and back again.”
This is quite an opinionated statement, as it constitutes more of the fatal flaw in seeing anthroposophical discourse as mere wordsmithship. No one in all sincerity and honesty, and especially on this blog which is dealing with important and timely issues, should be able to get away with saying such nonsense as: “so few anthroposophists actually strive beyond moving their eyes from left to right”. This is blatant boilerplate stereotyping Gemma, and is only warranted because you were asked to define your own personal declarations to the relevant literature. Seeing the inconvenience and impossibility of doing so, you choose to retaliate instead, and make such a global charge as seen above.
You have used this tactic before, and it is not convincing, There is no such thing as “natural anthroposophy”, and initiation-science by way of mere common-sense thinking. If that were true, then 360 volumes of spiritual science would never had needed to come into existence; and, Rudolf Steiner was just “spinning his wheels” in a wasted effort of personal egoism.
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Good morning, Steve Hale.
When you say “There is no such thing as “natural anthroposophy”, and initiation-science by way of mere common-sense thinking.” – that is precisely what Rudolf Steiner spoke of. He said, time and time again that anthroposophy would arise out of the human soul because it is part of its nature.
Then you say, “If that were true, then 360 volumes of spiritual science would never had needed to come into existence” – why then did Rudolf Steiner ask, time and time again, for his lectures not to be transcribed?
You will see, time and time again the canon of lectures saying “unrevised by the author”.
The problem with Anthroposophy is that too few have studied Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom sufficiently, and have not arrived at the clarity of thinking that the work brings.
It was Jeremy who said “Pfeiffer felt that he was making little progress with the exercises from Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and asked Steiner why this should be so, expecting to be told that he wasn’t working hard enough at them. Instead, Steiner said: “It’s because of the quality of the food you eat.” ”
As to my boilerplate stereotyping,* this was something that Caryn had stated in a comment to me. So if it was my stereotyping, it is therefore, also hers.
[*Will the moderator please note that he has allowed this comment to pass, where he denies me the same right. An adult should be able to express their response in an adequate manner. Grown people should be autonomous and not need sheltering in the way infants do.]
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“why then did Rudolf Steiner ask, time and time again, for his lectures not to be transcribed?”
The issue was not the transcribing of lectures, but rather, how they should be distributed. Taking the lectures down, first by note-takers, and then a professional stenographer, was always a part of the plan. The agreement was established at the infamous “Chrysanthemum Tea”, on November 17, 1901, when Marie von Sivers asked the important question about extending a spiritual-scientific movement throughout Europe. Steiner agreed, as long as it gave him the freedom to speak with complete independence of his approach to spiritual research.
Thus, the agreement entailed spreading spiritual science by the oral tradition which traces back to ancient Greece. The caveat concerning “unrevised by the lecturer” involves the inevitable errors that Steiner simply did not have time to correct. When the lectures began to find their way to the opponents even before the intended anthroposophical listening audience, Steiner said they should be made available to all. This rationale is covered in his autobiography. as well as in one of the statutes of the Christmas Conference of 1923.
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Steve Hale,
you have an innate ability to take something simple and add a layer of complexity.
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Gemma wrote:
“Steve Hale, you have an innate ability to take something simple and add a layer of complexity.”
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
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Well now. It is one thing to have a philosophy.
It is quite another to imagine things to be philosophy that not there.
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For the departure of the double, see wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0178/19171116p01.html:
“And a brother of his, who is not composed Ahrimanically but Luciferically, is the creator of all neurasthenic and neurotic illnesses, all the illnesses that are not really illnesses but only nervous illnesses, hysterical illnesses as they are described.”
In a multipolar world Russia with its modern czarism and Pan-Slavism (cf. GA 200) likewise exists besides a retreating Amerika and a confused Europe. The Kremlin elite constitutes a clan, an inner circle of oligarchs and power brokers around the president, once called the Family.
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Here is the secret. While there is no retreating Amerika today, for obvious reasons, and a confused Europe (no disagreement), behind the so-called, “Kremlin elite”, is a developing culture for the future Spirit-Self age. Read on for a fuller depiction.
“What is so remarkable about the Russian character is that as it evolves something will emerge which is different from what has emerged in the rest of Europe where mysticism and intellectuality exist, as it were, apart. In Russia a mysticism will appear which is intellectual in character and an intellectuality which is based on mysticism. Thus it will be something quite new, intellectual mysticism, mystical intellectuality and, if I may put it so, quite equal to its task. This is something that is not understood at all. It is there nevertheless, though hidden within the chaos of Eastern Europe, and will emerge expressing the characteristics I have briefly indicated.”
“..the Russian is by nature mystically inclined, but this mystical inclination is at the same time intellectual. What meets us here is intellectual mysticism, or mystical intellectualism; that is, an intellect that expresses itself mystically. And that is something which never existed in the rest of Europe. It is something quite new, new in the same sense as a child is new when compared to an old man, perhaps his grandfather, whom he will come to resemble. It is so important that modern man wakes up and recognizes these things instead of passing them by in a state of sleep. To understand the polarity of Western and Eastern Europe is in particular for Central Europe a pressing necessity. Unless attempts are made to understand it, the chaos that exists at present will not be overcome.”
Ref. Aspects of Human Evolution, lecture 4 & 8, respectively.
“Now, if we take a closer look to the East, at Russian man, we recognize his peculiar trait; his soul, upon passing through the gate of death, carries an ether body that dissolves in a relatively short period of time. That is the difference between the West and the East. When the ether bodies of Western Europeans are separated after death, they tend to maintain a certain rigidity. What the Frenchman calls “Gloire” is impregnated in his ether body as a national Gloire. He is condemned for a long time after his death to turn his spiritual sight onto this ether body, and to look at himself (The Russian, however, looks little at himself after his death.) Through all this, Western European man is exposed to the ahrimanic influence because his ether body has been infected by materialistic thinking.”
“I have frequently emphasized in several lecture series that in November 1879 the spiritual being we call the Archangel Michael had reached a special stage of development. Michael had become, so to speak, the leading spirit who is now preparing the event that has to take place in the twentieth century. This is alluded to in my first mystery play as the appearance of the etheric Christ on earth. It will come to pass that at first a few, and gradually more and more souls will know that the Christ is really here, is again on this earth, but as an ether body and not as a physical body.”
“Michael has to fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute something to the diffusion of these rigid ether bodies from Western Europe. To accomplish this task, he must take the ether bodies from the East, which strive for diffusion, and join with them in a struggle against the West. The result of this is that since 1879 a violent struggle has been in preparation between Russian and Western European ether bodies and is now raging in the entire astral world. This furious battle between Russia and France is indeed going on in the astral world and is led by Michael; it corresponds to the war that is now being waged in Europe.”
Ref. Christ in Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman (all)
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That’s fine, Steve. And what about czarism (Peter the Great) and the new czars (Lenin, Putin) that I referred to?
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Ton, my comments were made with your referrals in mind. As such, they all contained a spiritually-oriented reference point. What is it? That the Russian Folk Soul has a future destiny with the Spirit-Self, which will be foreshadowed in the very next cultural epoch, following the one now proceeding as the Consciousness Soul. Thus, the present dynamic is one involving the American Folk Soul vs. the Russian Folk Soul.
Steiner gave two private lectures to the Russians with the two Helsinki lecture-cycles given in 1912 & 1913. Finland, at the time, was the only way possible for Russians to hear Steiner directly. He had wanted to go to Saint Petersburg in order to give the lectures, GA136, but his visa was refused by the Russian authorities, and Finland was the closest possibility in order to involve the Russian influence in anthroposophy.
His two private lectures are quite revealing of the situation, both involving the absolute necessity for the close study of anthroposophy as the basis for the future, ref. lecture of April 11, 1912, as well as the forecast of a battle for supremacy between the United States and Russia as the two super-powers at the midpoint of the 20th century, ref. lecture of June 5, 1913.
Steiner asserts in both lectures that this pressure could cause an advance-guard of the so-called “Spirit-Self Age” to arise in order to meet the challenge. This did occur, and why I made specific referral to the lectures previously cited, ref. GA176 & GA159. Yes, the Russian Folk Soul was brought forth in order to engage an important spiritual-scientific effort in 1915.
From a more outer-external standpoint, the work of Antony Sutton is vitally important. He is a scholar that worked for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University in the early 1970’s, and wrote several important monographs concerning how the western powers created the so-called “Bolshevik” concept for the Russian Revolution in 1917, and then went on to describe how western technology was given to Stalin in the pre-war years in order to prepare for ‘Operation Barbarossa’ in which the German assault against Russia was defeated by the forces of western military technology and weaponry. This is why the Stalin purges took place. President Roosevelt sent an envoy, an ambassador of sorts, over to Russia in 1936, three years before Germany invaded Poland, in order to inform Stalin of how the strategic plan of WWII was going to be carried out. This forced Stalin’s hand, and why he had to execute so many of his own military staff. They, as Russian men, refused the dictate from the west, and died. This explains the Stalin purge of his own military, which has never made sense before. It is because the American ‘godfather’ made Stalin an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Now today, it is all about the war on terror, and refugees into middle Europe, and so forth. So, who is responsible for that? That is the pressing issue, and not Peter the Great, or Peter III, or Catherine, or Lenin, or even Putin, who is the smallest peg in the lunacy orchestrated out of the west; yes, the United States!
I live here in order to attest to the fact that the U.S. has a sinister history of intervention in the affairs of the world going back even to the 17th century, and the first colonial initiative into the New World. They came to call it, ‘manifest destiny’, and it has spread out since then. Just look at the Japan initiative in 1852, and what became of that. Even allies can become enemies if it suits the purpose, and this is what remains hard to understand. Yet, if Soradt makes for the final migration from east to west, then we have the answer to the lunacy, don’t we?
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Wasn’t Stalin himself responsible for the purge of his army? The convicted officers didn’t “refuse the dictate from the west”. Their conviction was based on torture and forced confessions.
Steiner described that, what he called, ‘Russianism’ strives to use the Slav element as its tool (GA0173_03). Anglo-Americanism is another pole: spreading a network of inventions and technology over the world (GA 174b_07, not translated; GA 93a_28).
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If you understand what fear is, and what it leads to, you will realize why Stalin committed so many murders.
He also emasculated his entire army as a result, and in so doing, endangered his own wellbeing. He was only saved by the vastness of Russia and the profound freezing of their winters. Stalin had room to flee his enemy.
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“Wasn’t Stalin himself responsible for the purge of his army?”
Did I not say that clearly enough? We are dealing here with secret diplomacy in 1936, three years before Hitler invaded Poland. The Russian alliance in 1939 was short-lived, and this had already been forecasted, i.e., worked out in advance by the strategic planners of the west. The Mission to Moscow, Joseph E. Davies sent by FDR, was a mission involving secret diplomacy of the kind that Stalin simply could not refuse. The Stalin purges were the act of a man who could not allow any resistance from his general staff in carrying out the plan that would eventually break the back of the German army. Western technology was infused into Russia in preparation for this eventual confrontation. Sutton’s book eventually got him dismissed from the Hoover Institute. The good news is that we have the evidence, and don’t need to re-create it. Wall Street has driven the economics, including military build-up for both wars of the 20th century.
Stalin was Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1943.
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How amazing, Jeremy! Do you realize that both you and I have the same Anthroposophical Grandfather? Why, that makes us cousins! And since he is German, let’s call him “Opa” shall we?
Of course, I am referring to Opa Walter Johannes Stein! Just as you were awakened to anthroposophy in 1984 by Sir George Trevelyan, I myself was awakened to anthroposophy in 1976 by Trevor Ravenscroft when I read his occult best seller The Spear of Destiny. Both our Anthro “daddies” trace their own Anthro-inception right back to WJ Stein, yours in 1942 and mine in 1957.
Now I am well aware of the, uh, shall I call them, “legitimacy issues” around the “siring” of Ravenscroft by Opa Stein, (it’s possible they never met in person), but I did become good friends with a legitimate protegé of WJ, namely René Querido, whom I got to know in 1980 when he was President of Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento, CA and I was a Waldorf Teacher trainee there.
Indeed, René’s chief rival as “Top Dog” of Waldorf Teacher training in the USA, was yet another protegé of WJ Stein, Werner Glas, who directed the Waldorf Institute of Mercy College in Detroit, Michigan, (later relocated to Spring Valley, NY as the present Sunbridge College)
Anyway, cousin Jeremy, thank you for providing this glimpse into your biography as it explains so much of how you relate to anthroposophy on this blog, which issue I will address in the next comment.
your devoted Yankee Anthro-cousin in LA-LA-Land
Hollywood Tomfortas
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Hello Jeremy,
Let me first quote the excerpts from the Sir George Trevelyan blog as written by B.J. Nesfield-Cookson about Sir George’s relationship to anthroposophy — including my highlights that gave me great insight into your own relationship to anthroposophy and what you write here as the Anthropopper.
http://www.sirgeorgetrevelyan.org.uk/mem-steiner.html
“George invited those he called his “heroes from the Anthroposophical Movement” to lecture at Attingham — including Dr. Lehrs, Dr.Stein and Dr. Karl König — but found that the central European approach, coupled with a terminology peculiar to Steiner’s Spiritual Science, did not find the resonance in the course participants for which he had hoped.
In this connection, George wrote in Exploration into God. He said, “I had to find ways of presenting these new ideas in a generally acceptable English idiom”.
[…]
As an educationalist who sensed that it was vital to meet half way the variety of groups of people he spoke to and wrote for, George delved into and learnt from spiritual disciplines other than that presented by Steiner. However, as he wrote at the end of the Preface to A Vision of the Aquarian Age,
“Here at the outset I should make it clear that one cannot possibly, even in a work far longer than this, do justice to the immensely broad movement of spiritual awakening that characterises our age. One must speak out of one’s own frame of reference, one’s own background, one’s own experience and study. In my case these were profoundly influenced by the work and writings of Rudolf Steiner.”
===================
So, Jeremy, it is clear to me now that you have internalized Sir George’s attitude toward anthroposophy — that it contains great wisdom, but also is only one of many valid spiritual paths and therefore, it is not an exclusive path to the spirit. But of course, that marks you out as being called, I suppose, a “moderate Anthroposophist,” and thus distinctly differentiates you from the extreme and exclusive Fundamentalist wing of the movement.
And that explains my initial shock from 6 weeks ago when I first read your posting about Rudolf Steiner’s reprehensible racist comments about the French language and the blacks in France threatening the purity of the French blood in 1923. I had you wrongly pegged as an extremist or Fundy Anthroposophist, and so I suffered much “cognitive dissonance” when I had to face the fact that you were actually calling Steiner on his nasty racism and even admitting he made mistakes and was working at times from his lower self and not his higher one.
So thank you for resolving my previous cognitive dissonances. Now if only you could solve your “moderate” problems with Fundy Anthros! ;=) just as easily, but alas, I’m afraid that’s the karmic burden you must still bear as the Anthropopper. (More on that later.)
Cousin Tom
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Hello Tom,
Yes, I’ve been sadly misunderstood by you and Gemma, among others. I’m really a very moderate moderator. But how very clever of you to turn my slight biographical sketch into an opportunity for sowing division where none exists! The “fundy anthros” are no doubt already battening down the hatches.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Jeremy,
when you say “I’ve been sadly misunderstood by you and Gemma, among others. I’m really a very moderate moderator” – I’m sure you are. But this isn’t the point. In that you are unaware of your antipathies, this means that your moderation follows (for the part where your antipathies hold sway) a path that you cannot see.
This leads to moderation that is somewhat erratic. One day you will publish content that the day before you would not.
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As Baudelaire said: “Am I inconsistent? Very well then, I am inconsistent!”
Tant pis pour vous!
Jeremy
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It is one thing to be unwittingly consistent. It is quite another to accept one’s human shortcomings in full consciousness of them.
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Gemma wrote:
“It is one thing to be unwittingly consistent. It is quite another to accept one’s human shortcomings in full consciousness of them.”
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
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If one thought Ahriman passes through to heaven one would not be in heaven because it would be surrounded in darkness-
The teaching of Zarathustra proceeded from two principles – the principle of Ormuzd, the beneficent Being of Light, and Ahriman, the dark Being of Evil.
Let us picture the facts told by Zarathustra to his chosen pupils. He spoke to them of Ormuzd or Ahura Mazdao, the mighty aura of the sun translated as “The Great Wisdom” to distinguish it from the little wisdom evolved by men today, who dwelt spiritually behind the sunlight, and said: ‘Behold, behind the sun is something not yet united with the earth, but which will one day stream forth into earthly evolution and descend to earth.’
Thus in speaking of Ahura Mazdao, Zarathustra referred to the Being known later as the Christ; the great Sun Spirit who is to guide humanity back from the external physical to the spiritual plane. (The Gospel of Matthew)
Over the course of time the principal of Darkness (the principle of all that was evil arose through a form which was good in one age, continuing on into a later age, instead of adapting itself to change. Gospel of Matthew) established his footing in the Intellectual Soul. Lucifer, who lost his kingdom and seeks to establish everything in his own light, (Man in the light of occultism, lecture 10) anchored himself in the sentient soul.
These are the three members with which man was endowed before his earthly existence. The foundation of the physical body was laid on Old Saturn, the ether-body on the Old Sun, the soul or sentient body on the Old Moon. On the Earth was added the sentient soul — which is actually a transformation, an elaboration carried out unconsciously, of the sentient body. Lucifer anchored himself in the sentient soul; and there he remains. Through the unconscious transformation of the ether-body, the intellectual soul came into being, a more detailed description of which is contained in the book entitled The Education of the Child. It was in this second soul-member, the intellectual soul — the transformed part of the ether-body — that Ahriman established his footing. From there he lures man to false conceptions and judgments of material things, leads him to error, to sin, to lying — to everything that originates in the intellectual or mind soul. In every illusion that matter is the sole reality, we must perceive the whispered promptings of Ahriman, of Mephistopheles. (The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers, GA107)
Our intelligence is spiritualised in Christ (GA) throughout the study of Anthroposophy-
Those who are not cowards know Christ is always revealing Himself; therefore, we may accept what He revealed in the form of anthroposophy as a true Christ-revelation. Members have often asked me how they can establish a relationship with Christ. This is a naïve question; for everything we strive for, every line we read of our anthroposophical science, is an entering into a relationship with Christ. In a certain sense, we really do nothing else. (Toward Imagination, Steinerbooks 1990)
In the course of the Earth-period man will cast away all the evil brought to him by the Luciferic Spirits together with the blessing of freedom. The evil brought by the Ahrimanic Spirits can be shed in the course of karma. (The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers, GA107)
The phantom body (doppelgänger) is the form of the physical body prototype. The Lucifer influence entered the phantom body and this made the form of the physical body visible otherwise it would have remained invisible. Yet due to the Lucifer influence in the phantom body it caused disorganization of the phantom body of the physical body and this caused death known as the fall. The physical body is in fact perfectly transparent, crystal clear. It is the phantom body that is laid aside at death. (GA0131, Lecture 6)
The perfectly transparent, crystal clear physical body – Spirit Man
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
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Rudolf Steiner
Theosophy of the Rosicrucian
The Ninefold Constitution of Man
The First Trinity
Physical Body
Ether Body
Astral Body
Interwoven
Sentient Soul
Intellectual Soul
Consciousness Soul
Interwoven
Spirit Self
Life Spirit
Spirit Man
Three times three interwoven with one another in such a way as to become seven.
1. Physical Body
2. Etheric Body
3. Sentient Body …… Sentient Soul
4. …………………………… Intellectual Soul
5. Spirit Self …………. Consciousness Soul
6. Life Spirit
7. Spirit Man
Only when we look at the present stage of mankind’s evolution does the four appear, which is really a secondary number.
The members of the whole man
The spiritual human being is linked into a unity. In this unity the spirit man lives as life spirit in the same way that the ether body forms the bodily life basis for the soul body.
The physical body is linked with the sentient soul in the soul body.
The consciousness soul and spirit-self form a unity. In this unity the spirit-man lives.
A. Physical Body
B. Ether or Life Body
C. Soul Body
D. Sentient Soul
E. Intellectual Soul
F. Consciousness Soul
G. Spirit Self
H. Life Spirit
I. Spirit Man
Soul body and sentient soul are a unity in the earthly human being. In the same way consciousness soul and spirit self are a unity.
1. Physical Body
2. Etheric or Life Body
3. Sentient Soul Body
4. Intellectual Soul
5. Spirit filled Consciousness Soul
6. Life Spirit
7. Spirit Man
In the soul the I flashes forth, receives the impulse from the spirit.
Thus man is rooted in the physical world through his physical body, ether body and soul body – and through the spirit self, life spirit and spirit man he comes to flower in the spiritual world. The stalk, however, that takes root in the one and flowers in the other is the soul itself.
When the I saturates itself with the spirit-self the astral body is transmuted from within the soul.
When the life spirit is received into his I. The life body then becomes transmuted, penetrated with life spirit.
When the I receives the spirit man, it thereby receives the necessary force to penetrate the physical body.
Man as he first appeared on Earth:
1. Physical Body
2. Etheric Body
3. Astral Body
4. I
Attainment in the course of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan conditions:
1. Physical Body
2. Life Body
3. Astral Body
4. I, as Soul Kernel
5. Spirit Self as transmuted Astral Body
6. Life Spirit as transmuted Life Body
7. Spirit Man as transmuted Physical Body.
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Caryn, here is a compact statement that helps support the above, and might make the necessary impression on the one who needs to reprove your assertions. Steiner made it very evident with this:
“In the beginning was the Logos which was the archetype of the physical human body, the foundation of all things. All animals, plants and minerals appeared later, for the human creature alone was present upon Saturn. In the Sun Period, the animal kingdom was added, in the Moon Period, the plant kingdom and upon the Earth the mineral kingdom appeared. Upon the Sun, the Logos became Life and upon the Moon, it became Light; then when the human creature became endowed with an ego, the Logos as Light confronted him. But he had to learn to know the nature of the Logos and learn in what form It eventually would make its appearance. First there was the Logos which became Life, then Light, and this Light lives in the astral body. Into the human inner being, into the darkness, into the ignorance, the Light shone. And the meaning of life upon Earth is this: — That men should overcome this darkness of the soul, in order that they may recognize the Light of the Logos. The first words of the Gospel of St. John are incisive, although, perhaps, very difficult to understand.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA103/English/AP1962/19080519p01.html
Of course, primary antthoposophical literature today is taken as an offense to the so-called “natural anthroposophy” of those who see a medium much like the atheists and the agnostics. They see a worldview much like the present-day battle for a true European Union.
And so it goes.
Steve
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Gemma wrote:
“Well now. It is one thing to have a philosophy. It is quite another to imagine things to be philosophy that not there.”
Gemma, here was the idea in citing Hamlet’s words to Horatio. Spiritual evolution has been made complex, which means that what was once envisioned as occurring in the beginning was changed, and a revised plan of earth evolution took place instead. The original fourth hierarchy was cast down into the human kingdom in order to make a complete descent into the physical-mineral element.
Thus, when Rudolf Steiner was given the mission of Christian Rosenkreutz in the 20th century, it had to do with making public what had been sequestered previously as secret wisdom. As such, it was meant to be written down for posterity, and came out to some 360 volumes of work in describing the spiritual science of, and for, the future.
Does that make sense? In other words, everything was meant to be transcribed in order that the complexity of the whole arrangement could be described. Otherwise, a so-called “natural anthroposophy” could be construed by those who would find it easier to make it up as they went along, much as the present-day atheists and agnostics.
Gemma, this was the reason for the remark from Hamlet. If you think 360 volumes of spiritual science were produced in opposition to Steiner’s wishes that his words should not be taken down, then please explain. Your candor might help prove how simple Steiner wanted to make his revelation without the written word. Yes, this would have entailed the “natural anthroposophy” that you envision, and yet people felt it important that it be written down for some reason. Maybe for the future generations, which seems the likely idea, but transcription was always the intent of conveying Steiner’s words.
As much as you think you are an initiate of the post-modern age, it hardly helps in improving the need for the grasp of spiritual-scientific concepts, and how three-folding continues to fail to be understood as the necessary imperative. In my country it is easy to be seen as the needed elimination of the lobbyists from the governmental process. Yet, you see economics and the political/rights order needing to join hands. Wrong. This relation will never find the true balance. Government must only deal with human rights and freedom, and throw the lobbyists, like the NRA (National Rifle Association) out of its chambers. This is the bane of American government, i.e., the lobbyists, and their entirely commercial interests.
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Steve, what is prickling me and the reason why I specifically mentioned Edgar Cayce, the so called “sleeping prophet” is a while back now (about four years or so) I saw an insert on RT about how Edgar Cayce, in his somnambulistic state in the 1930’s, said Russia is the future age.
Prior to this viewing on RT and when you and I were discussing Edgar Cayce I mentioned the reference where Cayce had consulted with Woodrow Wilson.
Our alarm bells must surely ring out at this. A medium in a somnambulistic state speaking with politicians?
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/OccultMove/19151018p01.html
“This devilish plan-for here we have indeed to do with the devil-was put into effect by Lucifer and Ahriman when it had occurred to occultists to endeavor to accomplish something through mediumship. Lucifer and Ahriman inspired the mediums through whom they arranged the whole business, in order that people might be guided to the realm whence the dead were alleged to be speaking.”
The false light of Lucifer, wanting to establish everything in his own light, together with the darkness of Ahriman.
We understand through Spiritual Science the 6th Age will be known as the “Russian Age” however; we are only 603 years into the Germanic Age with 1557 years to go before the 6th Age. 1557 years is a long time to go and what we are seeing happening now before our red eyes is a premature instilling of the consciousness soul without Man being in full understanding of his spiritualised intelligence in Christ.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181016p01.html
“This is in line with the invariable practice of the Beings who are the enemies of the Gods who love mankind. What the good spiritual Beings desire to bring about at a later time, these other Beings want to bring forward to an earlier period, before mankind is ready to receive it. What should rightly come about only in the middle of our own epoch of 2,160 years — that is to say, not until 1,080 years after A.D. 1413, in the year A.D. 2493 when man’s own personality should be consciously within his grasp — this was to be inculcated into men in the year A.D. 666, through Ahrimanic-Luciferic Powers. What was it that these Beings desired to achieve by these means? They wanted to give to man too soon the Consciousness Soul, whereby they would have instilled into him a nature making it impossible for him to find the further path to the Spirit- Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man. These Beings would have cut man off from the path to his future destiny and would have claimed him for a quite different kind of evolution.”
And also: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA184/English/RSP1965/19181011p01.html on the pre-mature attempt.
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Caryn, I can’t remember what RT is, although I do remember talking about Cayce’s form of etheric clairvoyance, which required the trance state, or somnambulism in order to effectuate. Of course, his readings fell far short of Steiner’s clear clairvoyance because Ahriman’s domain is the etheric, which can easily be made suggestible when trance is induced.
Concerning the Russian Folk Soul, and its destiny relationship with the Sixth Cultural Epoch, c. 3573 AD, please remember prior input concerning the Michael Impulse, which called forth the Etheric Body of the Russian Folk Soul in the early stage of WWI in order to help ameliorate the etheric bodies of the young French soldiers who were thrust across the threshold due to death in the Battle of Marne. The Astral World was strewn with the vibrant etheric bodies of the young soldiers who had died bearing the image of Joan of Arc in their hearts. This is an important image that Rudolf Steiner invoked with his lectures beginning on September 1, 1914, GA157, in which he began to say the prayer for the soldiers fighting in the war, and those that had crossed the threshold in sacrificing their lives to the cause.
So, in fact, an advance guard of the Spirit-Self age did arise in 1915 out of Russia, and conducted a spiritual-scientific system owing to the Michael Impulse. They conveyed it from east to west because they were driven out of Russia in 1917 with the Bolshevik revolution, and had to make their way west, to Constantinople, France, England, and eventually New York, when WWII nearly drove their work into the dirt. Being of Michael origin, it concerned battling the dragon that invades the human etheric body, and rooting it out. Thus, practitioners know full well what it means that Ahriman invades and controls the etheric body/Intellectual Soul.
Our Consciousness Soul Age needs all the help it can get. From Christ to Michael it needs every bit.
Steve
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Steve Hale,
when you say “which required the trance state, or somnambulism in order to effectuate.” – when you understand what memory is, you will come to understand what such un-conscious trespassing across the threshold lead to, and why.
“Of course, his readings fell far short of Steiner’s clear clairvoyance because Ahriman’s domain is the etheric” – Rudolf Steiner could only do this because he knew how to deal with all aspects of his own Ahriman, and thus draw new perception out of his own sub-conscious. Not just a scattering of neat ideas, illuminating as these may be. Drawing out new perceptions requires more than just morning sleepiness.
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Caryn, here is the remarkable feature of your comments above from GA184. When Soradt first arose as the anti-Christ in 666 AD, in Babylon, it was to inoculate a kind of premature consciousness soul that would have made the Intellectual Soul ineffectual. This was a real threat at the time. But something had already been foreseen by the wise guiding spiritual powers that oversee the spiritual evolution of the earth. It was the element of “Faith”, which was brokered in with the various revelations that descended on the so-called “early church fathers” of the various religious orders of the world, including Mohammed, whose close association with the Arabic element at the very time of the Academy of Gondhi-shapur, had the effect of “skimming the cream off the top” of what Soradt had intended at the time via the Academy.
Thus, Mohammed’s own account of the Arabic stream of evolution, in contrast to the Hebraic stream that we find in the Old Testament had the effect of rendering Soradt’s initial attempt a nullity. This was the Koran. Thus, the mechanism of faith became the brake which allowed the slow forming of reasoning power to evolve in spite of Soradt’s attempt to prematurely inoculate mankind with the future consciousness soul.
Now, in our time today, the exact reverse is true. Soradt, after having successfully migrated from east to west in the iterations from 666 to 1332 to 1998, which spanned the westward movement to North Africa, and across the Rock of Gibraltar into Europe, and eventually across the Atlantic Ocean to America, c. 17th century, seeks at all cost to undermine the advancement of the Consciousness Soul by keeping the human intellect at the level of the previous Intellectual Soul, which had been duly won out of the aforesaid mechanism of “Faith in Reasoning”.
And that is why the Spiritual Science of Rudolf Steiner is so vehemently opposed today, as it was in his own time. Steiner wanted to cultivate the Consciousness Soul in its own due time, which is now, and based on a fully developed Intellectual Soul, which forms its foundation. Thus, a body of new knowledge exists today which is being actively resisted, either through mere ignorance, or active opposition for some reason. Only the opponents can answer to why they actively resist its message in today’s needy time.
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Goodness, you do like opening cans of worms, don’t you?
When you say:
When Rudolf Steiner was editing Goethe’s works, one thing became clear to him: what Goethe was saying about colour. Lightness darkened and darkness lightened as two distinct processes – and the third process, that which comes between darkness and light (you can work out what this is from first principles – truths – which is easy if you have understood what Goethe was saying to the young Steiner).
This is Anthroposophy.
No more is needed save to understand the nature of lightness darkened and darkness lightened and that which comes between. Anything Rudolf Steiner speaks about can be reduced to a synthesis of these three principles (processes).
Anthroposophy really is that straightforward. Indeed, it is so straightforward that many incarnated souls work out of these principles on account of their activities in past lives. They are always a joy to meet, for all their unawareness of why they engage in such a way; nevertheless, they are developing their consciousness soul, and this in itself will bring them to the realization they were at least striving.
That is because they did not (a) work with his “Philosophy of Freedom and (b) failed to comprehend lightness darkened, darkness lightened and that which comes in between.
A thorough understanding of these three principles will bring the kind of revelations that Rudolf Steiner had himself. The kind that are only describable in the broadest terms* or in terms of imagery, the like of which implies a degree of work with one’s consciousness soul – which is only possible if one has at least an inkling of what lightness darkened is all about.
(*and thus open to dissection by the intellectual mind, just as you have.)
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“Goodness, you do like opening cans of worms, don’t you? (*and thus open to dissection by the intellectual mind, just as you have.)”
Indeed, I do. But, it also gives you the opportunity to retort in order for others (including myself) to ponder the efficacy and accuracy of your input. Personally, I see a great deal of the nature of a biased opinion here, and which would like to have Steiner’s occult science reduced, and even eliminated, in favor of Goethe’s scientific writings, and PoF. Remember, these efforts occurred before 1900, and if it weren’t for Steiner’s own Master advising his further endeavours, he would have rested content with this accomplishment alone. Alas, his karma entailed much more, and why the shift into theosophy occurred. Of course, being Rosicrucian from the outset, and having the mission of Christian Rosenkreutz for the 20th century to make esotericism a public matter, it was only inevitable that the early works on the Theory of Knowledge, Truth and Science, and Philosophy of Freedom, would be expanded into full-blown Occult Science. And this fact had to be recorded for the simple reason that it takes time to develop exact clairvoyance, which is the goal of the present Consciousness Soul age.
Working from out of the Intellectual Soul in the direction of the spiritual needs the written word as an incentive as well as a motive for moral conduct. Nothing of any kind of natural order could serve the purpose of cultivating what the soul needs in today’s present circumstances, and that includes the aforesaid, Theory of Knowledge, Truth and Science, and PoF. These were merely preparatory works for Steiner’s true mission in life, which was to bring forth Occult Science at the outset of the 20th century. So, studying the relevant esoteric literature, including the nearly 6000 lectures will always stand the test of time regardless of those that would rather have it be reduced to these earlier intellectual works prior to 1900.
So, the only can of worms opened here is the self-revelatory can which reveals dedication to personal limits owing to intellectualism and a kind of sentient affiliation. True striving for the Consciousness Soul means diving right into the esotericism, which Caryn has been reciting for a certain effective reason. This is music to the ears of those that can listen. Why? Because it is sublime, and far beyond the typical rattle of the intellect which wants to make the case for why Steiner’s words should never have been written down. Sheesh, Gemma, we already went over why. Try to accept that there is a greater reality than what you want to think and believe. Steiner wanted his material to be studied for a long time. Why? Because in large respects it is for the future time in which human beings will be looking for it much in the same way our culture looked for the Renaissance and Enlightenment beginning in the 15th century.
Thus, the future is the can of worms today.
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“Sheesh, Gemma, we already went over why. Try to accept that there is a greater reality than what you want to think and believe.”
What can be more exact, more panoramic, in deed greater than… than the light of heaven itself dimmed that we might perceive it and the darkness of the void made visible?
To the soul who needs words, this is but a sentence.
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To Steiner (1910) these two anthroposophical paths were safe, but different paths:
“The path is absolutely safe upon which the communications of spiritual science lead us to sense-free thinking. There is, however, still another path that is safer and above all more exact, but it is also more difficult for many human beings. This path is presented in my books, A Theory of Knowledge Based on Goethe’s World Conception, and Philosophy of Freedom.” GA013_c05-03 (cf. GA 322_07)
For the fundamental relation of the isolated consciousness soul to the senses, see GA 127_03 (not translated).
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These are good reference-points because it can be shown that PoF leads to those efforts of intensified thinking that produce self-substantiating knowledge, which can then be corroborated by its continuance within the domain of occult science. Thus, sense-free thinking, which can be done with the kind of discipline involving specific episodes of meditation, or even better, the early morning exercise upon awaking, wherein the outer-external world is eschewed in favor of remaining within the twilight state. One can adequately meditate for hours if possible before turning to the instruments of the senses and the logical apparatus.
As combined, we have indeed, two paths to perception and cognition of higher worlds. Occult science, based on the content of spiritual revelations revealed and passed down, serves to help the process of elaborating new creative results from our own personal efforts. This is the area that needs to be recognized today. Steiner gave indications that he only hoped and encouraged for further explication by his direct followers, and those who would come to be practitioners of the path of spiritual science.
We are 116 years into this process, and yet, it seems that a great deal of resistance still prevails against accepting these further findings of the science of the spirit. Steiner’s mission was to make the Rosicrucian wisdom a matter of public disclosure for the first time. By the time of the first World War, it became a matter of making the original Manichean stream a renewed item of effort. Thus, the third phase of anthroposophical development, which invoked Michael as the Time-Spirit of our age, was one that involved the so-called, “Battle for the Cosmic Intelligence”, which extended into a second World War, and still remains the clarion call today, some 16 years into the third millennium.
So, any reasonable review of the history of the 20th century from a spiritual-scientific standpoint easily reveals the continuance of the ‘fable convenue’ wherein a fabricated and false story is told of why events take place. In 2016, it is a pathetic story to be told, and yet gaining ground because the academics and other scholars feed a line of lies and other superficial assessments to their students, and the general populace.
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Steve Hale,
when you say
If you could understand why those academics think they are telling the truth you would be able to crack the code. The rest is simplicity itself.
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Gemma, you wrote:
“Rudolf Steiner could only do this [exceed Cayce’s etheric clairvoyance] because he knew how to deal with all aspects of his own Ahriman, and thus draw new perception out of his own sub-conscious. Not just a scattering of neat ideas, illuminating as these may be. Drawing out new perceptions requires more than just morning sleepiness.”
Steiner’s spiritual investigations had nothing to do with his own sub-conscious, or dealing with all aspects of his own Ahriman. This is pure “imaginative thinking” out of the reservoir of your own clever and self-creative thinking apparatus, and its power to ‘wordsmith’ a kind of rationale for the Steiner enigma/phenomenon. In truth, Rudolf Steiner was a very high initiate who had a Master above him and guiding his life from the beginning. Thus, his own few references to this Master are designed to show that his work was one of careful preparation in order to reach the point of actual spiritual communion with the Beings of the Higher Worlds. This is how spiritual research is conducted. It has nothing to do with wrestling with the subconscious, or our own personal ahrimanic struggles, which is our own separate matter, and true enough, indeed.
No, Rudolf Steiner bore a particularly unique condition in life wherein his astral body and Ego were enlarged to the extent that they could not be fully contained within his physical body and etheric body. Thus, he bore the power to extend into the higher worlds in order to engage the necessary spiritual communion, which particularly took the “World of Archetypes”, or 5th higher world as its point of emphasis. This is because what streams through this fifth higher world is everything that pertains to the conditions of higher consciousness, i.e., Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition.
When the fire occurred that burnt down the Goetheanum, Steiner’s struggle to remain on earth in order to fulfill his mission caused these extended members, i.e., astral body and Ego, to draw down into his physical-etheric bodies, and he began to undergo the aging seen in 1923. As well, as he himself would report to his close associates, Frau Steiner and Dr. Wegman, his whole perceptual field changed after the fire. He no longer could stand free and independent at the lectern, secure in his physical body with his astral body and Ego protruding outside, but now had to have the same supports we receive at night when we sleep in order to enter the higher worlds for his investigative efforts. This also had the effect of changing how he looked out upon his listening audience.
Before, when his astral body and Ego stood out larger than his physical and etheric bodies, and protruded into the higher worlds, he could view his entire audience as a group-soul configuration, and see the demands of the group as a folk that needed especially to hear a particular theme/subject, and this then made for this lecture emphasis,. After the fire, and his struggle to remain on earth, his perceptual field changed, and he could only look into individual souls amongst his general audience. But this afforded a new insight. This was the “Being Anthroposophia”, who now could be perceived as working among the individual members as the invisible spirit-being that had descended upon the anthroposophical movement, and would be working for the cause until a few thousand members could become a worldwide movement of a million souls.
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Steve Hale,
All of which implies he had worked with his innner Ahriman.
It’s what his Master will have instructed him in – and would have spoken to many who said they had already done it and didn’t need to listen to someone like him.
For all we know, Rudolf Steiner’s Master could have been the driver of a horse-drawn omnibus. Great cover for a true Master in that only those people who could respect the truth would respect the wisdom coming from the mouth of a common driver.
Those people with less respect for the truth need established authorities to base their thoughts upon.
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Gemma,
“For all we know, Rudolf Steiner’s Master could have been the driver of a horse-drawn omnibus. Great cover for a true Master in that only those people who could respect the truth would respect the wisdom coming from the mouth of a common driver.”
Steiner’s Master was in the spiritual world at the time, in the unborn state. Human emissaries were used to guide Steiner’s life for the express purpose of facilitating his clairvoyant faculty to completion. Two significant helpers were Felix Kogutski, the herb-gatherer, who Steiner met on the train into Vienna when he was eighteen, and attending the Vienna Technical College, and then, Karl Julius Schroer, who saw the keen mind that could edit and essay Goethe’s scientific writings when he was twenty-one. In 1900, two specific experiences were prepared by the Master for the purpose of gaining insight into the destiny of Folk Souls. Both involved following individualities across the threshold at death. Vladimir Soloviev, the Russian philosopher was the first, and a month later, Friedrich Nietzsche was followed across the threshold. This is how the Russian, and German, Folk Soul destinies were first assessed, and this became the catalyst which led Steiner to theosophy.
Steiner would inform the Russians of this in April 1912, when he gave the first of the two private lectures in Helsinki. He characterizes Soloviev as the exemplar of the Russian Folk Soul in the fifth cultural epoch, who would have turned to anthroposophy if he had lived.
The Master is an Individuality who was in the spiritual world at the time of Rudolf Steiner’s birth, which was an out-of-due time incarnation; a premature birth. Thus, by being premature, greater plasticity inhered in the body of formative forces, and this allowed the incoming naïve clairvoyant faculty (which we all bring into the world and possess in early childhood) to be retained and developed for the destiny that was to be Steiner’s life mission. The Master’s role was to be a kind of weigh-station into the higher worlds wherein specifically coordinated communions/meetings were set up in order to derive the research that could then be effectively expressed in words that obviously fell far short of the actual experience. Steiner often commiserated over how paltry his word descriptions necessarily had to be.
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“Steiner’s Master was in the spiritual world at the time, in the unborn state.”
So why did Rudolf Steiner travel to the Hague in order to meet this man, if he was in the spiritual worlds?
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For background on Koguzki and Schroer, see Thomas Meyer (Milestones, 2015, books.google TE6rCgAAQBAJ). Documents of Barr in GA 262 (not translated).
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Ton wrote;
“For background on Koguzki and Schroer, see Thomas Meyer (Milestones, 2015, books.google TE6rCgAAQBAJ). Documents of Barr in GA 262 (not translated)”
Ton, the Barr document has been translated for many years now, as well as the letters between Steiner and von-Sievers throughout their respective careers in furthering the anthroposophical movement. One of these letters, written on January 9, 1905, conveyed to Marie how it was due to the Master that he (Steiner) had been brought into theosophy, when if it had been a matter of his own dictates, he would have remained within the domicile of literary commentary and philosophical review. This was even after his own PoF had failed to find a listening audience.
Here is a relevant passage from the Barr Document, first installment, in which Steiner refers to the Master:
“I did not meet the M. [the Master] immediately, but first an
emissary who was completely initiated into the secrets of the plants
and their effects, and into their connection with the cosmos and
human nature. Contact with the spirits of nature was something self-
evident for him, about which he talked without enthusiasm, but he
aroused enthusiasm all the more.
Officially I studied mathematics, chemistry, physics, zoology,
botany, mineralogy, and geology. These subjects offered a much
firmer foundation for a spiritual conception of the world than, for
example, history or literature, subjects which German academic life
at that time provided neither with a specific methodology nor with
significant perspectives.
In my first years at college in Vienna I became acquainted with Karl
Julius Schroer. Initially I attended his lectures on the history of
German literature since Goethe’s time, as well as his lectures on
Goethe and Schiller, the history of German literature in the 19th
century and Goethe’s `Faust’. I also took part in his `Practicals
in the Spoken and the Written Word'”
So, yes indeed, this Master of Steiner is hardly understood, even today where we see so much conflict in the telling. At the time, it was rather straightforward as Steiner brought it forth.
Steve
.
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Fine, “The Barr Document” online in:
Correspondence and documents 1901-1925 (books.google 1RX1f4n9WpwC, 1988), and in New Essential Steiner (udpbosCy4bkC, 2009).
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Well, Jeremy, I rest my case in re: the phenomenon of moderate Anthros (like you and Tom Hart Shea) vs. “totalistic” or Fundamentalist Anthros (like guess who!)
6 weeks ago on your Jeremy Paxman post, you noted my glee over “dissension in the Steiner camp.” Now you deny the existence of dissension and even blame me as the agent who is responsible for creating such dissension. Well, clearly, you are right! (You get no argument from me, who bills himself here as AAfA = Ahriman’s Advocate for Anthroposophy.)
Yet now I must confess to even greater glee over your present dilemma — which has nothing to do with me at all! Thus my “Cup of Schadenfreude” runneth over for thee, Jeremy, because, as a moderate Anthro, you are now forced to moderate the comments of the wonderful Fun and Fundy Dynamic Duo, Steve and Gemma — not because of anything untoward they may write, but because they “suck up all the oxygen,” as it were, of the blog with their ceaseless and monomaniacal vying to one-up the other to determine which one is the more worthily perfected Anthroposophist bound for Jupiter Evolutionary Glory.
But take heart, Jeremy! As a fellow father, I know you’ve had to do your share of toddler day-care, so that experience will serve you well now as you host: The Steve and Gemma Show on the Anthropopper blog.
Father Tom, Judas Priest,
(now Earnest Sower of Dissent)
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You are a very naughty man, Tom. What karma you must be piling up for your future lives!
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Gemma wrote;
“So why did Rudolf Steiner travel to the Hague in order to meet this man, [his Master] if he was in the spiritual worlds?”
This likely needs explanation, and hopefully is forthcoming. You do realize, Gemma, that taking the time to be precise in terms of clarity and accuracy is a God-given gift that some use and some abuse. On a blog like this one, i.e., the Anthropopper, it would be most worthwhile to take the time to describe the Hague travel of Steiner, and how it somehow relates to meeting with this man, who could be another excellent example of being another emissary. Didn’t we cover this element? So, by all means be candid, and not coy, if you know what that means. Please take all opportunity to express yourself as if it was your last words.
In other words, Steiner at the Hague involved meeting his Master again. How did this occur in your research? It is most important to contribute to the cause, and I love the timeliness of response, which is lacking in others. Yet, it is easy to write vacuous words like your sentence above and hope that it gets a kind of dissention, but why would you want to do that? This is the Steve & Gemma show, which means that we should be aligned 😉
Steve
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Steve Hale
By all means, these ‘nibbles’ are informative, and why effectively positive communication should be a goodwill offering where judgment is lacking in the sense of making false assumptions. Indeed, Professor Schroer was an emissary of the Master, as was the herb-gatherer, Felix Kogutski, when the young Steiner needed to align with a mind similarly acquainted with nature wisdom. The Master was particularly concerned at this point to keep Steiner on track with the entry into the mature phase of his gaining clairvoyance with exact precision. Thus, Schorer’s love of everything “Goethe”, and yet lacking himself the intellectual acumen to personally tackle the scientific works, gave Steiner the pivot-point that would lead to the discovery that Goethe’s whole style of thinking was the reflection of a Greek soul. This is the secret that stands behind the book, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception, c. 1886.
Karl Julius Schroer was very intuitive, and yet, could not affiliate with theosophy. Steiner recalled when a phrenologist announced to his professor that he had an “uncultivated theosophy bump on his head”, and this helped in understanding the sudden remark of “Nero” at hearing the news that Crown Prince Rudolf had committed suicide; the heir to the throne of Austria. Further understanding came with the karmic revelation that his professor and mentor had been the renowned Plato, who had admired a particular young Athenian in old age. This was Goethe in his former life in Greece at the time when Aristotle had left Plato’s Academy after twenty years, c. 347 BC. As such, he would follow Aristotle rather than remain with Plato, who was now 80 years old. Eventually, he would succeed Aristotle as the leader of the Lyceum and Peripatetic School for some 35 years.
Thus, for Rudolf Steiner to meet a man with such profound karmic connections as Professor Schroer, whose love of Goethe’s work would find a place for young Steiner’s pivotal accomplishment is noteworthy of the role of a spiritually-guided emissary. A further mission would take Steiner to the Hague in 1913 for the lecture cycle, GA145. This led to the laying of the Foundation Stone in Dornach, September 1913. These were all Master-driven events.
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Steve Hale.
What is quite clear from your comment is that you do not understand the process that underlies the nibble.
Because if you had, you would have realized the significance of the unconscious help that Professor Schröer gave to Steiner had a quintessentially different quality to it than the conscious, direct help given by Felix the gardener.
Again, it is of note that Felix was the kind of person many people would simply look past because of his lowly status. I have remarked on this before and it is extremely important: if a person is to progress, they cannot do so if they need authorities to base their ideas on.
The first requirement for an initiate is that they respect every human they meet – even if this is by way of issuing them challenges. Rudolf Steiner’s morning verse speaks of this: “in den reinen Liebe zu alle Wesen estrahlt die göttlichkeit meine Seele”.
In the case of Felix, he was a lowly gardener who many upstanding citizens could easily ignore because he did not hold a position of authority in the way Schröer did.
Yet Felix’s authority was there for all to see – put better, all those who could see. This was rather more more than Rudolf Steiner’s need to “align with a mind similarly acquainted with nature wisdom”. Your statement here shows clearly that you have not yet comprehended how the eternal glistens in the temporal sphere that sustains us all through our life.
Which is the point: most people confuse the temporal with the eternal. Which isn’t so surprising when they cannot see the underlying processes (such as the nibble), and so cannot perceive the difference between the conscious link between Felix and the Master and the unconscious link Schröer had with the hierarchies.
Rudolf Steiner will have recognized the worth of both.
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Excuse me, but is it not I that is attempting to draw these links between the various emissary figures in the life of Rudolf Steiner? How could I be so deficient in a subject which I have created myself? These nibbles, as you suggest, are really much more substantive in that Steiner devoted a whole biographical account in naming them.
Thus, any attempt to differentiate between Kogutski and Schorer in their respective influences on the young Steiner, is only one of abstract logic residing within the domain of present-day thinking occurring now in this disputation. In reality, both figures were equally influential at their respective times; Kogutski, because the young and naïve Steiner wanted to find his way into the social life of Vienna and the college, after years of living all alone on the outskirts, and then, Schorer’s influence because Steiner had been saved by Kogutski for his higher purpose in editing Goethe’s scientific works. Do you see the dynamic here, which you would have be the unconscious working with the conscious, and whereby Steiner’s self-conscious apprehension is the result?
Yes, this is true, and I take no opposition to your assertions on the matter. Yet, I have to ask please: Why do you take such opposition to my main assertions, which really only want to gain a kind of organic recognition of what we are dealing with in the life of Rudolf Steiner?
If it is because the Master remains out of bounds, I understand. Remember, Steiner was born “out-of-due-time”, which means premature. And this is how spiritual science came into being earlier than it was supposed to have occurred. Steiner’s father always wondered why he had a son so curious about modern technologies, like the railroad, mill, and factory. That is why he got the idea that his son might make a good railway engineer, and so decided to send him to the ‘Realschule’ in Wiener-Neustadt across the Rubicon into Austria, from Neudorfl in Hungary, which was his home. So, for some eight years, Rudolf Steiner crossed the frontier, involving the river Leitha, in order to broker the “new frontier”.
The identity of Rudolf Steiner’s Master will continue to escape the recognition of those who either ignore its meaning, or those that contest its validity. Gemma is noteworthy for having some kind of notion, whilst everyone else chooses to remain ignorant. She has the idea that sustains this conversation, and would otherwise die a natural death. Thus, her conscious motive could be likened to Kogutski’s influence on the train into Vienna. Of importance is Steiner’s remembrance for posterity.
Steve
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Goodness, Mr Hale.
When you suggest that “but is it not I that is attempting to draw these links between the various emissary figures in the life of Rudolf Steiner?” – I beg your pardon, but that is precisely what you did do. Perhaps it is not for you to see?
Then you go on to confuse the issue: “These nibbles, as you suggest, are really much more substantive in that Steiner devoted a whole biographical account in naming them.” If you did understand the nature of the ´nibble´, you would understand why Steiner devoted a whole biographical account in avoiding such illusions.
“Thus, any attempt to differentiate between Kogutski and Schorer in their respective influences on the young Steiner, is only one of abstract logic residing within the domain of present-day thinking occurring now in this disputation” If you could think in any other way than mere logic, you would see what I was thinking. Because you go on to say something quite true, but equally, to miss the point entirely: “ In reality, both figures were equally influential at their respective times”. Again, if you understood the Ahriman that dwells within you, the quality of these relationships would become crystal clear.
Instead of being mere “abstract logic.”
You go on to state “Do you see the dynamic here, which you would have be the unconscious working with the conscious, and whereby Steiner’s self-conscious apprehension is the result?” This is a confusion of the first order: it was not Rudolf Steiners unconscious we are dealing with here, but Schroers! Good grief.
Now: “Why do you take such opposition to my main assertions” because half of them are illusions and half of them are truths. Your problem is that you cannot tell the difference between them.
“If it is because the Master remains out of bounds, I understand.” Do you? Really? From what you have already said, I doubt you do understand.
“The identity of Rudolf Steiner’s Master will continue to escape the recognition of those who either ignore its meaning, or those that contest its validity” Well then, who is he? Was he a driver of omnibusses in the Hague? Who? This has nothing to do with his effect on the young Rudolf Steiner, nor does it have any relevance to its meaning or validity. I am surprised you should think in such a manner.
“Of importance is Steiner’s remembrance for posterity.” Remembrance, eh?? Rather this than do as he asked of you!
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Dear Jeremy,
If we look at your latest blog-post on “Operation Redemption”, as it reasonably follows the previous post concerning the European dilemma, which is a huge issue that is up for vote soon, it is also worth considering other ancillary input coming from the German side in this overall matter.
Peter Staudenmaier has written a recent post in order to further exclaim how the so-called Swiss darling of anthroposophy, Daniele Ganser, is stirring up the pot of anthroposophical conspiracy, and how it relates to the western-most outpost in which Ahrimanic control rules the world. Apparently, Staudenmaier, of the Marquette University, finds Ganser’s work offensive, even as he himself researches an archive for some evidence of the past in old Munich. Here is Staudi’s post from WC, and I and many others here would love to hear your response to it. Coming in these pressing days, it could prove to be a watershed moment, Here is the remark, which I would call insipid at the least:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/waldorf-critics/conversations/messages/31020
Maybe Staudi sees his opponents as being German, who he cannot forgive for the Holocaust, which proves his scholarly American expertise today, but the global theatre is still striving for the truth. If America had a hand in the two world wars, then that has to be explained, and some of it has already taken place. Staudi wants to tell the sanitized story in which America is the great savior of the world’s afflictions in the name of democracy, but fails to tell how Soradt made its way finally to the west, i.e., America.
Exhaustion sets in at this moment as Daniele Ganser makes his mark. Of course he knows what the truth must say. Even in the west it has been said already.
Regards,
Steve
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Hello Steve,
I’m afraid I know nothing about Daniele Ganser and having struggled with Google Translate to understand the links you cite, I’m still little the wiser. So I regret that I can’t add anything useful.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Would you like a swift translation?
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That’s a very kind offer, Gemma – thank you, but I think I managed to get the sense of the newspaper article. What I meant was that, even if I had a perfect translation, I still don’t know anything about Ganser or what Staudenmaier is saying about his conspiracy theories. And, to tell you the truth, I’m not very interested in finding out more either, because life is already too full. Staudenmaier may have a point about Ganser, I don’t know – there are some strange people who call themselves anthroposophists; but what you will never hear from Staudi is that the vast majority of anthropops are good, decent human beings trying to do their best in difficult times to make a better future for the world. It would be helpful if he could acknowledge this occasionally.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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No problem.
Now if they did as Rudolf Steiner suggested to Ehrenried Pfeiffer, and ate better food, they might find themselves being able to behold the subtleties that Pfeiffer wished to perceive. It isn’t hard – but does take doing, rather than just reading.
Yesterday I met a man at an art gallery and he cottoned onto the idea of Goethe’s colour theory in the time it took me to explain it. His ready ability to converse was key to this, and it was a delight to meet him.
The point here is that if anthroposophists sought to understand what Rudolf Steiner beheld in Goethe’s Farbenlehre, there would be a lot of discussion, even argument – but far less pickiness and dissent. They would also have the confidence that arrives with the ability to understand the underlying processes, and thus no longer need to base their ideas on passages of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures.
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Jeremy,
I have written to the GAS in Dornach in order to get their viewpoint concerning Daniele Ganser, and whether they are actively sponsoring him into the Vorstand, which would be a highly uncharacteristic move coming from a very conservative society since Steiner’s death. Here is what I wrote, and hopefully I will get a response:
Greetings,
There has been some discussion in anthroposophical circles that Daniele Ganser is revered by the Vorstand of the General Anthroposophical Society, and is being “groomed to fill the vacuum left by the death of Sergei Prokofieff.” Also, that he has a growing following amongst right-wing anthroposophists, who lean heavily to conspiracy theories, and see him as a leader for the cause of anthroposophy in telling the truth about the real history, and underlying symptoms of recent catastrophic events on the world scene.
Other than being a Waldorf School graduate, I find nothing in Daniele’s biography to indicate any affiliation, personal or professional, with Anthroposophy, or the General Anthroposophical Society. I am writing to attempt to clear this up with those persons who are making charges that he is the ‘new darling’ of anthroposophy in the post-modern age. One of these allegers is the Professor of Modern German History, Peter Staudenmaier, of Marquette University, who often asserts that Ganser is leading the front amongst the right-wing radicals of the anthroposophical movement.
Is there any truth to these assertions? Mr. Ganser’s work appears to be entirely unaffiliated with anthroposophy, and these charges are groundless. I doubt that he needs any more abuse than he already has from his opponents. The General Anthroposophical Society has proven wise in keeping a necessary distance from these matters, and a change in position from the Vorstand would be considered a veritable “paradigm shift” to the previous, and current conservative posture since Rudolf Steiner’s death 91 years ago. Does Mr. Ganser now warrant a strong advocacy coming from the GAS in bringing him into the fold in replacement of Herr Prokofieff?
Sincerely,
Stephen Hale
ref: https://www.danieleganser.ch/biographie.html
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Hello Jeremy,
Here’s some info about Daniele Ganser with links to articles in English by and about him. He is something of a “native son” or a “favorite son” to many Anthroposophists in Dornach because he is a “Waldorf Lifer” i.e., K-12 graduate of the Basel Waldorf School. He is also being groomed to fill the “Superstar” vacuum left by the death of Sergei Prokofiev.
First of all, he has a pretty substantial wiki page in English:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniele_Ganser
Ganser is best known for questioning the official narrative of 9/11 and here I quote from the opening paragraph of his article for the 9/11 Journal
Click to access 2014GanserVol39May.pdf
Historians today and in the coming years face a challenging task: they must write the history of the events of September 11, 2001. What they write will be taught in history classes. But what will they write? Will they write that Osama Bin Laden sent 19 Muslims to launch a surprise attack on the U.S.? Or will they write that the administration of President George W. Bush was responsible for the attack, either constructing it or deliberately permitting it in order to shock the U.S. population and to create a pretext for increasing military spending and attacking Afghanistan and Iraq?
Of course, there is also a significant backlash against the Vorstand’s adulation of Ganser among many other Anthroposophists. Yesterday, I informed a group of German-speaking Anthroposophists on my Facebook page about Peter Staudenmaier’s experience of “Gansermania” in Munich.
I received this response from Wolfgang von Dechend, who lives in Basel and has been a devoted member of the Society for decades. Wolfgang is a musician and composer by profession and recently had a composition of his performed at the Goetheanum. But now he’s “singing a different tune,” as it were.
Unfortunately but not actually surprisingly Ganser seems to be on a “Siegeszug” (triumphal march) through Anthroposophistan at this time. Actually the anthroposophist community’s growing admiration for people like him was the final reason for me to leave the AAG (General Anthroposophical Society)
A few months ago, Jeremy, you lamented the sorry state of the present Anthroposophical Society and its dwindling– or at least not growing — membership. Wolfgang offers you a glimpse of why good members are deserting the ship. There is no leadership from the Vorstand anymore. If I may say it, the Anthroposophical Ship of State, i.e., the “Good Ship Anthropop,” is simply “dead in the water” yet drifting along the dangerous social current of conspiratorial right-wing extremism as Peter Staudenmaier describes and Wolfgang confirms.
Tom Mellett
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Thank you Steve H and Hollywood Tom for the posts relating to Daniele Ganser it has clarified something that has been disturbing me recently. I will briefly elaborate.
I not an Anthro but a close friend of mine is. A couple of weeks ago we were talking and I’m not entirely sure how the subject came about but she said something along the lines of we cannot be sure of everything we know because governments hold back information (true enough) and then gave 9/11 as an example of us not knowing what really happened. A pet hate of mine is conspiracy theories particularly when they are not grounded in reality and go against evidence to the contrary. I explained that we actually do know what happened, the rise of bin Laden and Al-Quaeda is extremely well researched: Yes, governments will keep certain information under wraps, this is always the case, but to allude that the US Govt deliberately murdered thousands of people to enact a foreign policy objective is simply deranged.
I was puzzled from where she got this idea as she is not interested in politics, history or current affairs, but I had my suspicions! I then this week bumped on Peter Staudenmaier’s comment and now the recent posts here, and it all falls into place. I think this garbage is being peddled to Anthro country representatives from senior Anthros. Why I have no idea as I cannot see it has anything to do with Anthroposophicy. Maybe it is the Anthro love of things that run contra to orthodox opinion, but I would have thought there is enough within Steiner’s teachings to last for several lifetimes without the need to add more.
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Here is something you need to understand, which will serve to inform you of your present ignorance. Steiner gave certain biographical sketches to Eduard Schure in 1907. This was the second installment:
“In the early part of the fifteenth century Christian Rosenkreutz
went to the east to find a balance between the initiations of the
East and West. One consequence of this, following his return, was
the definitive establishment of the Rosicrucian stream in the West.
In this form Rosicrucianism was intended to be a strictly secret
school for the preparation of those things which would become the
public task of esotericism at the turn of the 20th century, when
material science would have found a provisional solution to certain
problems.
These problems were described by Christian Rosenkreutz as:
1) The discovery of spectral analysis, which revealed the
material constitution of the cosmos.
2) The introduction of material evolution into organic science.
3) The recognition of a differing state of consciousness from
our normal one through the acceptance of hypnotism and suggestion.
Only when this material knowledge had reached fruition in science
were certain Rosicrucian principles from esoteric science to be made
public property.
Until that time Christian-mystical initiation was given to the
Occident in the form in which it passed through its founder,
the `Unknown One from the Oberland’, to St. Victor, Meister Echkart,
Tauler, etc.
Within this whole stream, the initiation of Mani, who also
initiated Christian Rosenkreutz in 1459, is considered to be of
a `higher degree’; it consists of the true understanding of the
nature of evil. This initiation and all that it entails will have
to remain completely hidden from the majority for a long time to
come. For where even only a tiny ray of its light has flowed into
literature it has caused harm, as happened with the irreproachable
Guyau, of whom Friedrich Nietzsche became a pupil.”
So, your friend, likely is seeing the more peasant and naïve perspective, without the intervention of abstraction and its resulting cynicism and skepticism, and sees the actual real-world situation, which you (of course) can’t fathom. Aren’t you the one that can’t even imagine an etheric body, for God’s sake?
How about if we give a presentation that proves something beyond a shadow of a doubt. Will it mean anything in the offering? Likely not, because you have a fixed and rigid position based on the “official story”, which makes any further communication impossible. Why you would thank me for my input is nothing short of disingenuous, Truth Seeker. Your mind, as already proven, has been made up. Thus, it stands for nothing in this matter.
Unless, of course, you can accede to another viewpoint. This remains the question, and the opportunity.
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You speak of a friend who, like many anthroposophists, needs to dissect modern historical happenings – just as Steve Hale demanded that I dissect 911 for him on my blog, wanting that very counter-orthodoxy you mention.
Such things are not anthroposophy any more than the American newspapers are the bearers of the truth of such situations.
GA177
I include this passage because few anthroposophists can see what I speak of. Most demand the very things you mention: the earthly happenings, and the earthly perpetrators. Everything has to be earthly, the quotations, the passages, their guru. Look at a comment made just this morning: Rudolf Steiner has to be remembered as a historical figure!! Has to be remembered, emphasis on the “has”, the demand that he is a figure of state to the Princelet* of Anthroposophia.
Is it any wonder that anthroposophy has problems when they look at Rudolf Steiner as their arch librarian?
(* Princelet is a term used by Hungarians to describe the fragmented state of Germany up until 1871. There were nearly 1500 states in Germany, one of which, Prussia, took up half the territory! Some states were little more than villages.)
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“Steve Hale demanded that I dissect 911 for him on my blog, wanting that very counter-orthodoxy you mention. Such things are not anthroposophy any more than the American newspapers are the bearers of the truth of such situations.”
I made no such demand, but only a friendly and brief offering as an introduction and precursor to further dialogue in the spirit of equal and effectively positive communication. This was rejected in the manner that is typical of the presentation style seen here on this blog. Anthroposophy is by all means concerned with solving the problem of evil, and its existence in the world, in the same way that the Christ solved the problem of death. That is why Michael leads the way in this Manichean stream, as we picture ourselves wielding the triple-edged sword of Meteoric Iron in the battle for the Cosmic Intelligence. Soradt would squander it all if he could, and make all of humanity dim-witted fools, having all potential completely stripped away. Remember, America is the bearer of the anti-Christ, Soradt, which manipulates all world events, and lies effectively through its news media.
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“in the spirit of equal and effectively positive communication” – in that it was completely out of keeping with the tenor of the rest of my blog, such a statement has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
The reason for my subsequent actions was as a result of your inability to perceive the subtler aspects of the very evil you speak of. In speaking of Soradt, you had better keep your attentions for Ahriman: whilst less of a problem for the individual, without having met his challenge directly, Soradt has complete power.
You have still to even come close to describing how one deals with the Ahriman that dwells within us all. You have said many things, imagining them to be true – yet not one of which points to the key issue in dealing with Ahriman.
You cannot hope to follow Michael if he is veiled by your Ahriman. If you wish to follow Him, you must first cleanse yourself of the latter. That is my challenge to you, which has, as mentioned, you have yet to answer in any meaningful way.
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Gemma wrote:
“Look at a comment made just this morning: Rudolf Steiner has to be remembered as a historical figure!! Has to be remembered, emphasis on the “has”, the demand that he is a figure of state to the Princelet* of Anthroposophia. Is it any wonder that anthroposophy has problems when they look at Rudolf Steiner as their arch librarian?”
For the record of accuracy, my comment was this: “Of importance is Steiner’s remembrance for posterity.” This comment was made at the end of a long post wherein Steiner had made his early influences known via the Schure notes in 1907, and then his autobiography, beginning in late 1923. Thus, “Steiner’s remembrance for posterity” exists because someone strongly encouraged him to write his own biography, which he had no intention to do, and that way the facts could be expressed without undue distortion coming after his death. Therefore, he began to serialize his own life history in the journal, Das Goetheanum, beginning on 9 December 1923.
Steve
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In his Manicheans-lecture (1904) Steiner discussed the authority principle in relation to Mani, opposing the church:
“Everything that comes from him [Manes] is a call to the Divine-Spiritual Light of the soul, a rebellion of the soul against everything which has not come from out of the soul itself. ‘You must strip off everything that is external revelation, everything that external authority has transmitted to you. Then you must become ripe to behold your own soul.’” Etc. http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0093/19041111p01.html
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Steiner’s pivotal lecture concerning Mani is this one from 31 August 1909, in which he describes the situation at the midpoint of the Fourth Cultural Epoch, c. 333 AD. Thus, Mani is aware that the anti-Christ is close, and wants to establish a system that will serve to protect and advance the Christ Impulse in the world. His own effort of some 40 years duration, having been dashed by the priest Kerder of the orthodox zoroasterian faith in 277 AD, he was determined to renew it along more secretive lines, which required a supersensible presentation involving the other avatars.
‘There is a fourth individuality named in history behind whom for those who have the proper comprehension, much lies hidden — an individuality still higher and more powerful than Skythianos, than Buddha or than Zarathustra. This individuality is Manes, and those who see more in Manichaeism than is usually the case know him to be a very high messenger of Christ. It is said that a few centuries after Christ had lived on the earth, there was held one of the greatest assemblies of the spiritual world connected with the earth that ever took place, and that there Manes gathered round him three mighty personalities of the fourth century after Christ. In this figurative description a most significant fact in connection with spiritual development is expressed. Manes called these persons together to consult with them as to the means of reintroducing the wisdom that had lived throughout the changing times of the post Atlantean age and of causing it to unfold more and more gloriously in the future. Who were the personalities brought together by Manes in that memorable assembly? (It should be remembered that such an event can only be witnessed by spiritual sight.) He called together the personality in whom Skythianos lived at that time, and also the physical reflection of the Buddha who had then appeared again, and the erstwhile Zarathustra who was wearing a physical body at that time. Around Manes was this council, himself in the centre and around him Skythianos, Buddha and Zarathustra. And in that council a plan was agreed upon for causing all the wisdom of the Bodhisattvas of the post-Atlantean time to flow more and more strongly into the future of mankind; and the plan of the future evolution of the civilisations of the earth then decided upon was adhered to and carried over into the European mysteries of the Rosy Cross. These particular mysteries have always been connected with the individualities of Skythianos, of Buddha and of Zarathustra. They were the teachers in the schools of the Rosy Cross; teachers who gave their wisdom to the earth as a gift, in order that through it the Christ Being might be understood. Hence in all spiritual Rosicrucian schools the deepest reverence is paid to these old initiates who preserved the primeval wisdom of Atlantis; to the re-incarnated Skythianos, in whom was seen the great and honoured Bodhisattva of the West; to the temporarily incarnated reflection of the Buddha, who also was honoured as one, of the Bodhisattvas; and finally to Zarathustra, the reincarnated Zarathustra. These were looked up to as the great Teachers of the European Initiates. Such presentations must not be taken in the sense of external history, although they elucidate the historical course of events better than any external description could do.”
The East in the Light of the West, lecture IX, 31 August 1909
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA113/English/RSPC1940/19090831p01.html
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According to Cyril of Jerusalem, Scythianus (see: wiki) was an Aristotelian writer and Manes’ teacher:
“There was in Egypt one Scythianus , a Saracen by birth, having nothing in common either with Judaism or with Christianity. This man, who dwelt at Alexandria and imitated the life of Aristotle , composed four books, …” etc. (www.newadvent.org/fathers/310106.htm)
Cf. also Prokofieff (1993) on Scythianos (google _y3nDzXvcB8C).
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I agree with Truth Seeker that there are enough things in Steiner to suffice for several life times. But Steiner also organizes much of his presentation of history up to his own times around conspiracies and hidden pullers of strings behind the curtains. Why should someone who is not disposed to read Steiner critically be skeptical of conspiratorial thinking? People like Ganser and Boardman extrapolate from Steiner to current events. That is beyond and separate from what Truth Seeker says about a predisposition to Anthroposophy almost inevitably requiring a love of things that run contra to orthodox opinion.
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Indeed, what people seem to revile as “conspiracism” today was a most necessary development for understanding when WW I began. As previously stated, the outbreak of fighting between France and Germany caused Steiner to invoke Michael and the so-called “battle for the cosmic intelligence” as the third phase. This entailed a specifically Manichean emphasis to begin wherein the nature and problem of evil working in the world needed responsible action to explain. Thus, Steiner addressed the driving forces of destruction because the war could not be explained in any other way. Today, the Manichean stream of Spiritual Science continues this emphasis, but it is far less attractive than the Rosicrucian stream which prevailed up until 1914. This is why the Esoteric School had to be suspended. If there had been no wars, this Esoteric School would have endured for the entire length of the twentieth century.
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Dear Anthropoppers:
I have received a response from Daniele Ganser to my inquiry of his affiliation with anthroposophy. I wrote him yesterday in much the same words as previously sent to the GAS. Here is his response in brief:
“My research is not based on Rudolf Steiner in any way. Nor am I a member of the Anthroposophical society. I am not a member of any political party either. I am just an independent Swiss historian, that’s it.
Many try to attack my research because I questioned 911, and specifically only the collapse of WTC7. I asked: was it controlled demolition, or fires? I don’t answer this question, but asking it has stirred up a lot of trouble, also inside Waldorf circles it seems. Some think it’s good and important that I ask this question, others don’t.
That’s really the issue I think. The same phenomenon has also happened at ETH Zurich, where I was teaching, and at Basel University. Nobody there was a Waldorf graduate. So really it has nothing to do with Steiner nor Anthroposophy.”
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Ganser’s repeated ‘neutral’ presentation and question (was it controlled demolition, or fires?) is deceptive, because WTC building 7 was hit by the large perimeter columns of the Tower collapse. It was 400 ft away but the Twin Towers were more than 1300 ft tall.
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Ton,
The Twin Towers were dustified, which means that they fell into their own footprints, and leaving the damage to drift into the atmosphere from west to east. Thus, WTC 7 was a pure demolition coming later that day, without any warning. Your interpretation, i.e., “hit by the large perimeter columns of the Tower collapse”, is pure nonsense. Why believe it?
You see, the columns were the only thing left after the towers went up in dust. Therefore, they could hardly have effected the destruction of WTC 7. No, here is the real issue. If the 1300 foot towers had actually come down by way of jet engine fuel collapsing the buildings, or by controlled demolition, it would have left a ten-story remains of rubble, which did not exist because the buildings were turned into dust with the collapse, and went into the atmosphere and not into the ground.
9/11 was an event wherein a WMD, i.e, weapon of mass destruction was employed in order to bring down two superstructures in a manner that had never occurred before. They were literally turned into dust by way of a process of molecular decomposition, which occurred in order to prove that high-energy particle physics could replicate the issue of how matter and anti-matter collide in order to see the result. This all relates to the Tevatron particle-collider in Illinois, which began its second run armed with the near Higgs-Boson particle, or God’s “Big Bang”, which became a matter of experimentation on a specific target selected as the WTC complex.
It also served to start the war on terror, which is its lasting result, but experimentation in the hands of Soradt in order to test God’s creative power, must come first. Latter-day particle physics has made that test possible.
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Well, not “pure nonsense”: http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm.
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Well, not “pure nonsense”: http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm.
If you want to believe that reason for bringing down WCT 7, try expressing it in your own words like I have. Referring to a site that claims something without conveying your own words and reasoning is weak. Isn’t truth the most important factor? The west harbors the Soradtic initiative, in which war is the best means to justify unleashing hugely destructive forces that exist in the sub-earthly domain of the asuras, or negative third-force energy. Particle-physics is the logical extension and means of conducting collider experiments between protons and anti-protons. Tevetron II began in April 2001 and contained the power to demonstrate what happens when matter meets anti-matter. This has now been proven as to how the towers came down. All the rest is the stuff of conspiracy and maintaining various notions of confusion designed keep it under control. WTC 7 is the best example that proves how easily people can be duped. Thanks, Ton. You uphold that fact very well.
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Good result, Steve – has there been any response from Staudi or his acolytes?
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Gemma wrote:
“In speaking of Soradt, you had better keep your attentions for Ahriman: whilst less of a problem for the individual, without having met his challenge directly, Soradt has complete power. You have still to even come close to describing how one deals with the Ahriman that dwells within us all. You have said many things, imagining them to be true – yet not one of which points to the key issue in dealing with Ahriman. You cannot hope to follow Michael if he is veiled by your Ahriman. If you wish to follow Him, you must first cleanse yourself of the latter. That is my challenge to you, which has, as mentioned, you have yet to answer in any meaningful way.”
Well, I think I have addressed the matter most adequately, especially with Michael’s call to the Etheric Body of the Russian Folk Soul in 1914, which Steiner addressed directly in the lecture from 18 May 1915. This had the effect of bringing in the advance-guard of the Russians for the future, which meant a spiritual-scientific system in which the Ahrimanic influence was assaulted from all sides. You have yet to even remotely acknowledge what it is. For some of us it is a daily standard-bearer, while you characterize yourself as a “fifty something frump”, who likely has to drag it out of bed in the morning in order to irrigate the crops in the garden.
It’s all good, Gemma, and we should interact cordially if that matters. Maybe it is the diet on your side that is not working, although I would never want to imply that your intake is wrong in any way. Please allow for a possible continued correspondence here, and especially if Jeremy, the biodynamic gardener, sees it fit. I wonder sometimes why Jeremy lets these contentious discussions between us continue without the pause of rightful conduct. I have an input to make, which is only meant for cordial response and informative data, which also extends to the other participants here. As such, its scope is much wider and larger than your trivial irritations, which I must apologize for, it seems, for some reason.
Steve
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If my irritations are but trivial to you, then you are doing yourself a disservice when you say “I think I have addressed the matter most adequately”.
“who likely has to drag it out of bed in the morning in order to irrigate the crops in the garden” – that is how most people viewed Felix Kogutski when he travelled by train to Vienna. But that is how materialists are: they can only see the external circumstances.
Remember this: those who have the courage to tell you the truth are your friends, Steve Hale. For those who “interact cordially” may not even know they are lying to your face, for all their smart clothes and high ranking positions in society.
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I am puzzled by the way Gemma and Steve Hale address each other on Anthropopper. So I would like to address the following comments to them.
Both of you have something you wish to say, but I often feel it is interspersed with judgements of the other person and the occasional direct insult. For example, however Gemma chooses to describe herself it made me feel sad when Steve used the same language to insult her.
This sort of dialogue troubles me, I feel uncomfortable and as if something is being defiled. I cannot find a relationship to what you say because of the tone of the language you use and the way I feel that you pass judgement on each other.
I assume because you are posting on Anthropopper that you wish to speak about spiritual matters but I feel spiritual matters cannot be spoken of without reverence. I feel that if there is a kind of verbal combat going on there is no reverence.
I would like to be able to engage more fully with what you both have to say.
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Tom,
My attempt is to simply allow all communications to come through without attack. If you think that I am guilty of something in this endeavor, then you haven’t been paying attention, except for the one shallow remark which was designed for a specific purpose. You act like a typical lurker sticking its nose in while never acknowledging the important stuff. I have never done anything except express spiritual science in a positive manner, and if you think I am equally liable in assaulting the comments that come my way than it only proves that you care little for the real content. My real attempt is to get Jeremy to see that our respective efforts in expression deserve to be allowed without undue derision. Gemma takes it to the extreme in derogatory remarks, and yet, you somehow see that I am doing the same. This is not true. An easy review will prove it, Tom, if you want to make that effort. Otherwise, please don’t make me equally guilty just because I care enough to speak about Steiner and anthroposophy.
Steve
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Steve, when you re-read your reply to Tom Hart Shea, does it occur to you that your words may come across as rather hostile and aggressive? That is how I read them, anyway. Tom was making some perfectly reasonable points about the effect on him of the interactions between you and Gemma. I might add that from my perspective there are just too many comments from the two of you, many of which seem, to me at least, fairly obscure and way off the original topic. I’m also wondering whether the sheer proliferation of comments from you two is off-putting to others. I’d be grateful if you and Gemma would reflect on this.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Jeremy, let me point you to a specific comment which demonstrates what I am talking about. My comments to Tom are not meant to be taken as hostile, but merely a direct representation of the situation. If it comes out otherwise, so be it, and my apologies.
https://anthropopper.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/operation-redemption/#comment-1360
Now, here is a good example of how line by line my input is excoriated without any beneficial value to anyone. You need to encourage that comments are allowed without undue attack. That way, this blog doesn’t get sabotaged and made a place where no one cares to speak. I find your place very encouraging, with many worthwhile essays and comments. Again, I apologize for likely being too detailed, but having studied spiritual science for 30 years, and seeing how much it is opposed today, I tend to defend it with even greater fire and enthusiasm.
Steve
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Jeremy,
I reflect on every conversation I have – it’s called the ‘evening review’. As such it is the very least an anthroposophist should engage in.
If a person does not have the courage to engage with another – for whatever reason – this is clearly a point at which they need to examine their own abilities to think and speak. When meeting someone for the first time, it is their ability to speak and listen that interests me. There are more subtle traits that they can engage in that will stop a conversation dead; the most common one is when a person listens to the things they want to hear rather than the things that are said to them.
Most of the time I am saved this trouble because the person has judged me on material grounds, rather than spiritual ones. I will add that it is this kind of person who lacks courage, because their kind of courage comes with disseminating the things other people have said, rather than thinking their own thoughts.
In short, if they lack the courage to speak, they lack the ability to think for themselves. Please do not tell me that this is tarring everybody with the same brush, for the processes underlying their lack of courage are very simple. Rudolf Steiner gave exercises and verses for this particular purpose; it still amazes me that anthroposophists prefer quoting him to striving.
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Remember this: those who have the courage to tell you the truth are your friends. For those who “interact cordially” may not even know they are lying to your face, for all their smart clothes and high ranking positions in anthroposophy.
If you can tell when someone is lying and they don’t know it, then you have the key to finding the truth about the spiritual worlds.
Without it, you are bound to materialism: head, feet and hands.
Watch out for the likes of Felix, one of them might be a high initiate. But you would not know by looking at them, and they will be very quiet if told that he was the kind of person who had to drag himself out of bed in the morning to water his garden. I doubt if Mr Hale has ever dragged himself out of bed at such an hour, because the library doesn’t open until nine, so there’s no point, is there?
Yet there are times when it is a delight to spring from one’s bed to savour the delights of a midsummer sunrise and the mercurial dewdrops that bejewel the tips of the rye. Or the crisp frost underfoot and the air that tightens your lungs at midwinter.
My karma as a fifty something frump means that people rarely accept me as an authority, and for that I am truly glad. Because those who can accept wisdom will accept it from whatever source it arises, be it frogs or frumps. However, they are few and far between, but all of them possess the ability to think things through for themselves. Which is the key to the entire puzzle.
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Comments are now closed on this particular posting. Between now and the next posting, I will do something which I have resisted so far, and that is to introduce a moderation policy. With thanks and best wishes to all,
Jeremy
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What an interesting post Jeremy, thank you, I enjoyed reading that, it was educational as well as interesting.
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