TThis is a work of spiritual scientific investigation, American style. The writer confesses to being a Platonist, which means – fundamentally – a pagan, a shaman and an initiate in the Mysteries of the Mother. That said, the affirmative proof follows:
Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science posits as basic truisms: Reincarnation and Karma. This means, fundamentally, there is (for most of us at least) no true death. Instead, an afterlife with trials, and houses of mirrors of deeds we might otherwise wish not to have done.
What, then, about Climate Change?
Certainly our lives
are well ordered, to the extent possible. Most of us die when its
our time (or so the folk wisdom sez). Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis,
wars, pestilence, … the four horseman serve the Holy Mother, who
catches all of us at the end, just as captured by Michelangelo’s
Pieta.
Yet, our world is filled with displaced people, as
well. Some unsettled by so-called natural catastrophes. Others by
wars, and drug cartels, and dictators, and oligarchs, Oscar awards,
and other strange turns of biographical weather.
Sometimes
we watch the news, see what seem to be endless horrors, and dancing
clowns holding political office. Trump is President of the good old
US of A, and England seems to be even more loony that usual.
The
News fails to grasp the fundamental narrative. In a certain sense
all News is fake, given the tendency to imagine that what is
important, is actually what news readers can be manipulated to say is
important. In the Epoch of the Consciousness Soul there are no
accidents, yet the whole of existence reeks with dangerous choices.
“By
causing the self-existent true and good to come to life in his inner
being, the human being raises himself above the mere sentient-soul.
A light is kindled in her which is imperishable. In so far as the
soul lives in this light, she is a participant in the eternal. With
the eternal she unites her own existence. What the soul carries
within herself of the true and the good is immortal in her. Let us
call that which shines forth in the soul as eternal, the
consciousness-soul.”
RS: Theosophy.
Without conflict in the personal&individual
biography, there are no choices. Billions making daily choices, and
by far – and with certainty – many are the choices Thoreau
described this way: “The
mass of men lead lives of quiet
desperation.”
Couple
that with the Buddha’s First Noble Truth: “Life is Suffering”.
Parents parent. A task of no little difficulty. Children grow up, if they didn’t incarnate where starvation is the name of the day. People age, and get cranky. Teachers teach, too often supplying all necessities. Doctors cross borders. Prisoners wait. Politicians lie. Bankers steal everything, including souls if they can find a market for one.
Moral conflict is everywhere, everyday, for everybody. What varies is the level of drama, the length of the journey before rest is won, and how awake one is when making course corrections.
It is not unreasonable to describe the passage from the 2nd to the 3rd Millennium, this way: the Dying and Becoming of Western Civilization. In some distance time, a historian might try to write of a period of 133 years during which the collapse happened, and the Unsettling reached a crescendo. Might take someone a few hours to read about it. We, however, are living the Unsettling one moment/tweet/vote at a time.
Where does Rudolf Steiner, and the Anthroposophical Society fit within this riot of social chaos?
There will be disputes, of course, winners will write histories. Still, there are deeds not yet done, and perhaps not even yet conceived that they could be done.
For
example: It is possible today to prove scientifically that the
Planet on which we course through Cosmic Space is a living being,
always known as the Mother to the most ancient religions: Father Sky,
Mother Earth. Prove/affirm
… without a doubt.
The means to do this flowed from the
inspiration of Steiner, and appeared in Goethean scientific
works of amazing beauty and wisdom. Anthroposophists, however, have
done an excellent job of ignoring this work, in favor of reading
Steiner
lectures,
given that … well, science, that’s too
hard,
isn’t it?
So is Steiner’s science of knowing, expressed in GA-2 to GA-4. … hard. These go together, by the way. The science of knowing and Goethean science.
So we live in an Age of Unsettling. Order is decreasing, or as RS puts it: the post Atlantean Age was an advancement, until in its “middle” it began to decay. Christ sez this: “I come not to bring peace, but a sword … “ The Hopi Prophecy names this Age: the Day of Purification. Also Yeats: “ … things fall apart; the Centre cannot hold; and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, … ”
And She? The Mother? She’s got the Whole World in His Hands. Love adores every biography equally. Love loves from Eternity – outside of time and space.
When a flood – such
as recently just about everywhere – takes hold of a geographic
“place”, sometimes people die. She catches them. The survivors
often cannot return home, there is so much destruction. The habits
of their lives are trashed. Families become even more separate, the
ties of blood weaken, and yet, … inside of ordinary people lives a
potential, … RS called it the Christ Impulse. People choose to
selflessly help each other, which makes – in a Way – the
aftermath of disaster have a communal and sacramental nature.
We
learn the hard way, just how badly we need each other.
In
modern Arts, such as films and television, we have more and more
stories of heroes. All kinds of folk want to save the world. Who is
the archetypal Savior? While some might say Christ, the world has
been caught up in the many films coming from the genius of Stan Lee,
and his friends at Marvel Comics. Tales of wonder, of ancient gods,
of modern dreams, an education in film of what? Of the way the world
of spirit was imagined by the ancients, peopled with Gods (Asgard,
Thor, Loki, Hela, and even a tale of Ragnarok: a series of disasters
that include the death of some of the Norse Gods).
In the
first half of the climax of a twenty-film story arc, The Avengers:
Infinity War, a Being appears who exemplifies abstract thinking over
heart thinking. In this film, a character named: Thanos analyses
sentient existence, and after acquiring god-like magic powers, he
fixes the situation – of not enough for everyone, because there are
too many – by killing – in an instant – half the sentient beings in
all the galaxies. [ “THANATOS
was the god or personified spirit (daimon)
of non-violent death. His touch was gentle, likened to that of his
twin brother Hypnos
(Sleep).
” https://www.theoi.com/
]
In
the 133 years of the collapse, how many will die, in the suffering of
quiet desperation?
RS characterized our time in connection with the physical incarnation of a very unusual near-cosmic Being. Heartless abstract thinking (the raw unbound intellect), in the form of scientific materialism (aka: the anti-Christ spirit, which denies the Father and the Son), … this brain bound thinking, produces something which RS called: the Ahrimanic Deception, although I prefer the more poetic Ahrimanic “Enchantment”.
Magic and Mysticism are paths to the Mother, and if we are listening to the World Song, we will hear everywhere a reawakening to the most ancient Ways. At the same time, RS found something new, which he named Anthroposophy. A latent potential in thinking,
“Noticing these excessive and unredeemed aspects of antipathy and sympathy will give us our first vague perceptions of the work of the threefold double-complex, the Shadow in the Soul. Thought is a flower rooted in the soul-soil of feeling, and filled from within by the blossoming life of the will-in-thinking. Where an excess of unconsciousness infects this soil and this life, the Shadow is given free play.” …
“With a cultivated feeling we transform the soul-soil from which the thought is born and then flowers (which is also why the ideal is expressed as: thinking with the heart).” …
“The purified will (an appropriately moral intention and attention) creates heart warmth in the soul-soil of feeling, out of which the light and life-filled flower of thought is born. And, because we are first born into this process out of the Earth Trial of freedom, our whole passage in these Life Trials goes forward in freedom. It all evolves out of our choices. Recall Emerson: ‘In self trust all virtues are comprehended.’”
[Quotes above from my: In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship – one of the essays in my book: Sacramental Thinking].
Next, … a near-magical idea, needing much appreciation: In the future RS will be seen as the John the Baptist figure of the Second Coming of Christ – the voice crying in the wilderness of scientific materialism.
Will he carry that cross alone? Can we graduate from being believers in Steinerism, to practitioners of the New Mystery of Thinking? Will people choose to stand in the world and talk about the Planet as a Living Cosmic Being? The science is there for those who want to study it.
At the edges of Faerie lies a land too long forgotten. In the dreamtime of the collective imagination there can be communion, where I’ve learned to hear the song of a Mayan scribe, as he teaches me to see what is right in front of my me’s.
Night and Day. The many lights and the one light. Father sun, Sister moon. Consciousness everywhere.
Only the ignorant arrogance of the abstract intellect can conceive of a world of outsides without insides. Father/One – Mother/Many. Existence & Experience are Speech. Learn to listen to the World Song, for the Divine can not but reveal Itself in all that there is.
As the Great Unsettling proceeds, industrial civilization will fail. The only real question is what to do about the garbage everywhere. Look to the returning Wild, for there the Master Alchemist Herself works miracles everyday. Faeries know unimaginable stuff beyond even the dreams of the latest scientific (spiritless) explanation.
Justice
requires a small caution: that this return to the Moon wisdoms
demands understanding the nature of surrender, for any relationship
with Nature needs to be a love affair, and an I & Thou
partnership.
As to the wider world, … ? Steiner’s
dreaded third force is “magic”. Magic is the laws of the
creation in the light of the secrets of the elemental kingdoms.
Talents in the application of these arts&crafts will be sought to
be “captured”, by the remains of the gray brotherhoods, the ones
who believe their destiny is control/management of a system that
rewards them many necessary wonders for such service.
The world is, for them, a kind of breeding program to enable the development of our avatar bodies along certain lines (mechanical, hygienic, and eugenic). But true magic is of the wild and untamed, and cannot really be controlled, although legend sez bargains can be made. Our children will know&do in ways we cannot imagine
None
of our present day Ways of doing stuff, from agriculture, to banking,
are sustainable. Mind the signs of the times, and notice how many
extremely rare minerals are necessary for the technological
infrastructure on which we’ve become dependent. Pockets of
technological sophistication will continue to exist, among vast
fields of scarcity and hunger. Folks will survive by walking away
from failing cities, back into the farm lands, and from thence into
the wilds of the long ago when before.
The Unsettling
means to give us an opportunity to choose to honor our Mother and
Father, with head and heart and hands. Only in chaos can true change
be born.
And Steiner-folk?
We hold keys to kingdoms of knowledge needed for the generations that seek to know the truth of the spirit; and, need/want to find it without violating the moral tenants of natural science. That’s not a bad hand to hold in a real game of Thrones, Powers, and Principalities.
We are all wizards and wiccans, priests and priestesses. All are.
Every [Groundhog] Day has routine.
Routine is Ceremony&Rite
Movement and Magic
Thought&breath
flute&drum
don’t seize the day, seize the moment
Fake Ancient Alien Theorist Foolishly Visits the Collective Imagination 