Dear Steiner fans,
One-sidedness always harms. Reality is not one-sided, … it is multi-sided.
The reliance on Rudolf Steiner’s words is a classic one-sidedness. There is no way to opening/have a dialogue/debate with a dead man, or his unquestioning acolytes.
In the writings of those I have read, who admire Steiner – when the questions of the nature of “electricity”, or “subnature”, or the “moral”, or “Ahriman” comes to the fore – there seems no question as to whether or not the common shared understandings/ideas/concepts related/connected to those words is a representation of the true nature of reality.
Collectively Steiner-speakers weave an illusion, that will harm the future if they do not wake up to the “problem of knowledge” as solved by Steiner in GA-2, GA-3, and, GA-4.
The relentless passion toward the words of a dead man is not healthy for anyone. But, someone might ask: what about Christ? Don’t we rely on His words?
In practice, no. Here is what He said near the end of the Sermon on the Mount:
2 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
The key words are “does” and “do”. What happens when Steiner-sez lovers don’t do what Steiner said to do in their development of the new “living thinking”. In fact, when the mind turns to Steiner-said, it turns to memory, not to the present moment in thinking which lives.
Steiner cautioned against the “intellectualizing of the cosmic Michaelic Intelligence”. Steiner-sez speakers do exactly that … they move the memory of Steiner-thought into their intellect, conceptualize it, and from there treat these concepts as if they truly represented the underlying spiritual reality.
This is made worse by the fact that the error of intellectualizing became so widespread among Steiner’s students, that these folk – for decades now – have been taught to do just that when they meet anthroposophical thought. When it is presented as a system of thought, we are no longer teaching Anthroposophy, but rather a religion of Steinerism.
Now I could challenge, for example, Andrew Linnell and Rosemary McMullen to a discussion/debate on the truth value of much of what they suggest as true, but we all know that will never happen. In fact, it has become clear to me that my presence – in certain venues on Facebook – is avoided if at all possible. Nobody likes to be challenged on their pet theories. Yet, if we are doing Spiritual Science, then where are the discussions and debates that are characteristic of scientific activity?
For example, outside of their reading Steiner, I’ve seen little or no evidence they actually study directly the phenomena of “electricity”, or “subnature”, or the “moral”, or “Ahriman”, or “social threefolding”. They just take their conceptualizations as the truth, and go from there.
That said I will next offer a few other kinds of words to provide some help on those themes, from other parts of the multi-sided reality.
Electricity: After the creation began, from the moment of a realized “material” state, the Father rested, but did not cease participation. What we have come to call the realm of electricity and magnetism, and which modern physics recognizes as fundamental forces, is something that is not made up of parts.
It is/was/and always will be a whole, and a manifestation of the Father resting (nested in the loving arms of Christ’s Mother). To struggle to form in the imagination this picture of electricity and magnetism everywhere being a Unity, just the One, is a real cognitive yoga.
“Sub-nature”: The Realm of the Mother has nothing whatsoever to do with evil, nor it is the opposite of “supernatural”. Why Steiner didn’t get this right could be debated, but since one cannot debate a dead man, there is little recourse for those of us who know his wonderful and human imperfections.
“Moral”: this is a problematic term, given how many different ways folks use that concept/idea, and how often it is not the same from one person to another. Nevertheless, the underlying assumption of “moral technologies” is that there is both a right way to be found, and that it will be the best way for ourselves and others.
Steiner in GA-2: “Man is not behaving in accordance with the purposes of the Guiding Power of the world when he investigates one or another of His commandments, but when he behaves in accordance with his own insight. For in himthe Guiding Power of the world manifests Himself. He does not live as Will somewhere outside of man; He has renounced his own will in order that all might depend upon the will of man.“
“Ahriman” One of the effects of the “intellectualization” is to write and think as if Ahriman is outside, in a mysterious there, somewhere “spiritual”, and that is the source of our technological worries/problems.
In the current phase of the evolution of consciousness, each biography is faced with choices, designed just for them. A kind of rite of initiation is in each life, not just those who define themselves as spiritual seekers. Most of the modern world will not hear of Steiner, and nor be harmed from this lack.
All of us bear an “Ahriman” within, … essentially those moments when the intellect’s calculating view is not tempered by the heart. In Lucifer and Ahriman Steiner writes: at page 21: “…the very purpose of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that man should become increasingly conscious of what takes effect through him in earthly existence.”
“through”,“through”,“though” We do it to ourselves, it is not something done to us by some imaginary dark god.
“social threefolding” means what? There are basically two questions that can be asked about the social. The one Steiner’s friends are most aware of is the question: What is the best Way (or star) by which to move the social organism into a more balanced and harmonious condition.
The other question has to do with asking, of the living social phenomena themselves, what are you doing? Not what I think you (social life) should do, but what are you actually doing?
I spent over three decades working that riddle, and was greatly helped by learning of Goethean science, and through reading the writings of those who practiced those arts. It was after my spiritual graduation ceremony (meeting the Lesser and Greater Guardians of the Threshold), which takes months to unfold by the way, that I was able to create a spiritual social science text: “The Art of God: and actual theory of Everything.” In Steiner speak, an initiate wrote that text, based on years of research into the phenomena, which activity I called: Listening to the World Song.
Now I have a great deal of affection for those working the riddles of the Mysteries of Technology. Been doing that myself, for a long time. Yet, we seem at cross purposes, although this was not to be unexpected, given that Steiner warned folk of the Culmination, and the return of the Platonists, incarnating at the same time as Aristotelians were incarnating. Karma Steiner called it.
A Platonist is a pagan, although that is a mean word, invented by the Church, to disparage the Goddess religions, which the three patriarchal monotheisms sought to control. Celebrants in modern goddess religions are devotees of the Mother. That’s what a Platonist, in the sense of anthroposophical jargon.
Consider the beauty of this “karma”: Devotees of Christ, in the esoteric sense (that is Aristotelian anthroposophists well aware now of the Return of Christ) needed to be reintroduced to Christ’s Mom, by initiated/shamanistic folk into Her deeper Mysteries (aka: magic and mysticism). As with Christ, She never went away, She was just lost sight of as scientific materialism became the leading religion of the humanity.
For the Mystery of Technology folk, I offer a prize, which is a writer to read whose Way is total immersion in the field of tech, and elevating (redeeming) that world via the gifts of a story-teller. I wrote this for my blog, …
Want to know – in a healthy imaginative way the social future, read his book: Snow Crash. Want to see a redeemed picture of nano-technology, read his book: The Diamond Age.
In community, your friendly neighborhood white-privileged, Christian, son of Montana, American citizen, shaman, and professional heretic.
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