The Knowledge of Reality by Henry T. Laurency
6. ANTHROPOSOPHY — STEINER'S SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
6. ANTHROPOSOPHY — STEINER'S SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
1This account is not intended in the first place as a critique of Steiner's anthroposophy, but as a general orientation in the problems of superphysical knowledge, which is more badly needed. The literature that can be gathered under the heading of mysticism lacks a theoretical basis of knowledge and will not be considered here. Emotion is no source of knowledge, no basis to build upon, for the problems of world view. Emotionality is of significance for life view. How little people have learned from mysticism, however, can be seen from the fact that they cannot even distinguish between love and hatred in their various manifestations of life.
1The formulator of the thought system called anthroposophy, or spiritual science, was born in Austria. He studied natural science and the humanities and assimilated the essentials of the learning of his day. He used it all, as in his day did the omniscient philosopher, Hegel, with whom Steiner can be compared in constructive imagination.
2Dr Steiner (1861—1925) was a hyperintelligent, superior, and dominating character, the obvious chairman of the many intellectual societies to which he belonged both in Vienna and in Berlin.
3As is the case with many people on the borders between the stages of mysticism and humanity (48:3 and 47:5), he remained an indefatigable seeker until he had recovered the conception of reality of the stage of development he had attained in his previous incarnation.
4Throughout his intensive and thorough studies he was always convinced that the outstanding scientist or thinker he was studying at the time had found "he philosopher's stone" had arrived at the correct conception of reality in his domain.
5As a rule the opposite applies; in the beginning students, feeling superior, criticize everything they read even before they know what it is about. In this way they counteract that penetration of the subject which is possible only through the intensity and devotion of one's interest.
6Those who, like Steiner, are always convinced that the author is right, only see that in which he is right. The others only see that in which he is wrong. As a rule the enthusiasts are regarded as uncritical and unscientific by their companions. When eventually it is apparent that they abandon one mental position after the other, and are as intensely convinced of the correctness of another authority, they are blamed for academic fickleness.
7Their detractors are unable to see that intensity and temporary conviction increase understanding and facilitate orientation. The deepened knowledge leads beyond the principle thinking in the disciplines and ruling idiologies, and thereby to liberation from dogmatic thinking, that obstacle to further research and wider outlook on existence. The whole of mankind's path of development through the ages is marked by thousands of thought systems, formulated and abandoned. Anyone who stops at a system will remain on the level of development attained.
8Steiner, who was continually abandoning one mental position after the other, was therefore accused by contemporary criticasters (typical dogmatic thinkers) of continually changing his opinion. In the autobiography Steiner wrote in his sixties, he degenerated into that manifest wishful thinking of rationalization which seeks to discover the main thread running through the seemingly planless. To deny roving is a sign of weakness. Roving is part of the training of the ability of research in those who will follow the path of research in the future. In the new incarnation they are to feel their way forward through the labyrinth to what they have instinctively been seeking. The more intensively the research-worker has lived himself into the fictional systems, the easier it will be for him later to see their fictitiousness.
9Dr Bruno Wille, the German writer and thinker (an old genuine gnostician), had many discussions with Steiner who eagerly defended his authority at that time, biologist Ernst Haeckel. Wille found it all the more extraordinary that Steiner later tried to excuse himself for having held such views. Wille confided to the present author his surprise that a man who had so ridiculed everything superphysical could later assert that he had always had a special sense of it. His autobiography is a very untrustworthy opus.
10It is typical of the intellectually superior that they easily acquire an unlimited confidence in their own capacity of judgement amounting almost to presumption. They make statements on matters they know nothing about, forget that judgement requires a knowledge of facts. That is the reason why the intellectual elite have seldom had any prospects of being initiated into esoteric knowledge orders. Their acuity and profundity entice them into substituting their own fictions for the missing facts. Then they are passionately convinced that their interpretation of the symbols is the only correct one.
11In the following will be examined the very basis of knowledge of Steiner's system of thought. The detailed examination of his spiritual science must be left to the esoteric research of the future, if any esoterician would think it worth the labour.
12There would have been no need for the criticism if the anthroposophists, headed by Steiner's widow, had not availed themselves of every opportunity of exalting their apostle at the expense of theosophy. The intention is to force an objective examination of the whole complex of esoteric knowledge. There must be an end to the unreliable and irresponsible parroting of ignorance. The author is no "heosophist" but an esoterician, more accurately a hylozoician or Pythagorean, and has no interest in defending "heosophy" as such. But fair is fair.
1During the years 1902—1912 Steiner was the secretary general of the German section of the Theosophical Society. Prior to this he had studied thoroughly the existing books on theosophy by Blavatsky, Sinnett, Judge, and Hartmann. His subsequent scornful dismissal of Blavatsky shows how little he understood.
2This chapter should really be entitled "Steiner and the Theosophists" for Steiner never was a real theosophist. He did not know that the theosophists had received their facts by the planetary hierarchy, but believed that they had obtained them from "Indian yogis". He never realized that no human being has any possibility whatsoever of ascertaining these facts. Nor is it realized by the writers on superphysical quasi-knowledge who in great numbers flood the literary marked more and more with their products.
3What caused the break between Steiner and Besant, the president of the Theosophical Society, and caused Steiner to be discharged, was Steiner's attitude to the Bible as being a divine authority and his imaginative interpretation of the Golgotha symbol. You have a right to your own opinion, but not to call it theosophy.
4Strangely enough, Steiner never admitted his debt to theosophy, although it had provided him with all the correct facts about the superphysical to be found in his books. Instead, he alleged that he had obtained them from the Rosicrucian Order. This is a matter to be taken up again further on. Nor did he ever mention all the ideas he had taken from the theosophists perhaps because he rehashed them beyond recognition.
5Once Steiner was separated from the Theosophical Society, a necessary move, he reduced everything he had got from the theosophists to insignificance. Luckily, he christened his misconceived theosophy anthroposophy, so that posterity can avoid it more easily. Eventually a number of accusations were advanced by Steiner's widow obviously originated mostly from her husband and idol.
6What made Steiner so misrepresent the conception of the theosophical leaders is an enigma that is for the psychologists to solve. In so doing, he helped to discredit theosophy itself, which had already been condemned by religious, philosophic, and scientific authorities and parrots of all sorts, as well as by authors on quasi-occultism. It is especially typical that they all disagree on everything but on this matter. This propaganda of lies has been allowed to go on unchallenged all too long. It is, one supposes, inevitable that the journalists, who shape public opinion, should thoughtlessly parrot the current authorities without examining it for themselves. But it is alarming that writers, who are being shouted out as authorities on the superphysical, are equally irresponsible. For example, Rene Guenon, invoked as a sovereign authority by Dr Kurt Almqvist (in his Den glomda dimensionen), terms theosophy a pseudo-religion, thereby showing his true level. Against such stupidity even the gods will fight in vain.
7Steiner's criticism in vital respects will hereby be answered.
8The contention that the theosophists do not base their conception on objective facts is patently absurd. On the contrary, it was the theosophists who tried to make Steiner see that all research, physical and superphysical, consists in ascertaining facts. They also insisted that no man can solve the problems of existence by his own thinking. But Steiner professed to know better. He was certainly right in saying that the theosophists' "approach to spiritual reality was quite unlike" his own.
9It is not true that the theosophical leaders were interested in spiritism and obtained their knowledge through "spirits". In this matter Blavatsky's sharply formulated view was decisive. But, on the other hand, to examine the reality content of spiritism, as some theosophists did, is the duty of everyone who sets up to be a researcher.
10It is not true that theosophy identifies itself with "Indian mysticism" though, according to its programme, it examines the reality content of all religions, philosophies, world views and life views.
11It is not true that the theosophists deny the existence of esoteric knowledge in Europe in ancient times. They knew much more about Pythagoras, Platon, gnostics, the genuine Rosicrucian and Maltese Orders than did Steiner.
12It is not true that the theosophists regard the yoga method as the only correct way of activating higher kinds of consciousness. On the contrary, they consider it unsuitable for Westerners.
13It is not true that the theosophists are out of sympathy with the scientific outlook. On the contrary, they eagerly follow all new discoveries and rejoice at the way these confirm the theosophists' facts.
14It is not true that the theosophists regard all religions as being essentially equivalent. They regard them as adjusted to mankind's different stages of development.
15Among the theosophical writers, Sinnett, Judge, and Hartmann possessed far too few facts to be able to make a satisfactory presentation of the esoteric knowledge. The greatest capacity and the most successful in systematizing the facts available before 1920 and making it possible to interpret the esoteric symbols, was C. W. Leadbeater. Of course, he was duly "neutralized" by the moralists. The best summary of the facts of theosophy was made by A. E. Powell in five volumes.
16Theosophy is a summary of facts that used to be imparted in the esoteric knowledge orders. The term theosophy came into being when the term gnostics was changed because the quasignosticians of the third century A.D. had begun falsely publicizing their quasi as esoteric gnostics.
17These are the facts that constitute theosophy. Beyond them, the views of the various theosophical authors are not theosophy. It is high time that people learned to distinguish between theosophy and the mass of unintelligent theosophists who, unfortunately, were not put under a vow of silence until they had learned to see what theosophy was.
18The original mission of the Theosophical Society was to proclaim universal brotherhood. Mankind, however, is not yet ripe to realize the principles of tolerance, freedom of opinion and expression. The Society has split up into several sects, all disputing about what they believe to be theosophy and which "facts" are hypotheses or facts from the hierarchy. Their dependence on authority shows that they have not understood, just believed that they understand.
19The esoteric facts that have been given out after 1920 have not been communicated through the Theosophical Society.
1Steiner alleged that he had been initiated into the Rosicrucian Order and that he had obtained from this order all facts about the superphysical which he had not been able to ascertain for himself.
2There is, then, reason to dispel once and for all the darkness surrounding this order, the name of which has been used for more then enough mischief. This name can be eliminated without loss.
3The Rosicrucian Order was instituted in 1375 by Christian Rosencreutz, as he was assigned by the planetary hierarchy. What is common to all such orders is that nobody can be initiated into them by anybody else than the original institutor, who always remains the Order's supreme head. No initiate reveals to outsiders that he belongs to the Order. He can admit to having heard of, but cannot himself bear witness to, its existence. Only essential selves are permitted to institute orders, but no new ones will be instituted for another 200 years.
4Another rule applied in these orders is that they cannot be dissolved as long as any initiate remains in the fourth natural kingdom. Once an initiate, always an initiate (the monad is initiated, not the perishable envelopes) with the right to have this knowledge revived (nowadays unnecessary). New neophytes have not been accepted since 1875 (all that is permitted to be made known is already public), unless the knowledge is banned by the authorities and the esotericians are persecuted. At mankind's present stage of development anything is possible.
5Originally instruction in the Order was oral, until Saint Germain had the knowledge system elaborated, three copies of which were lent to members of the Order only.
6The existence of the Order became publicly known through a work published by an arrangement of Saint Germain, a work that contained the symbols of the Rosicrucians. A new edition of this book was published many years later by the theosophist, Dr Franz Hartmann.
7The man who did the most to draw attention to the Order's existence, was the greatest novelist the world has ever known (now, of course, forgotten), Bulwer-Lytton (18031873), who was himself an initiate and in London in the 1850's gathered a number of Rosicrucians around him, including Regazzoni (who gave the scholars of all Europe headaches and enraptured the German philosopher, Schopenhauer, by his magical experiments), and Eliphas Levi, author of a number of books on "kabbalistic alchemy". That was all that was to be made public at that time.
8Through such good advertisement for this "sacred brotherhood" its name acquired a "pleasant ring". Thus, it is not to be wondered at that all sorts of fantasts pretended to be Rosicrucians. More and more societies occupying themselves with occult problems adopted the name. In order to uphold their claims they fabricated writings to prove that only they were of the right stamp.
9A pamphlet about the Rosicrucian Order Amorc (Malmo, Sweden, 1938) gives a fair idea how this was done. In this pamphlet there is not one true fact apart from data already known from profane history.
10If you follow the development of these quasi-orders, you will find that the original statements nowadays are changed without further ado as more esoteric facts are permitted to be published through the agency of the planetary hierarchy.
11What these quasi-sects taught was on the whole a concoction of kabbalism, quasi-gnosticism, neo-Platonism, and all sorts of mysticism, with misunderstood yoga philosophy mixed in. The clever jargon was well calculated to impress the ignorant.
12Steiner was initiated, it is true, but into one of these sects, not into the genuine Rosicrucian Order. He was never in touch with the present incarnation of the Order's head. In this order they were taught that it is impossible for an individual in the fourth natural kingdom to solve the problems of existence, that emotional clairvoyance (the highest kind possible for man) does not provide knowledge of reality, that the so-called akashic records do not contain the history of the planet, that individuals in the emotional world cannot explore this world or acquire knowledge of reality. How strict the training was is clear from the fact that all the right knowledge which the individual could not ascertain for himself was to be regarded as hypothetical.
1The original yoga methods were elaborated by "rishis" in Lemuria and Atlantis. It is clear from Steiner's statements that he did not possess the requisite understanding of their importance, and so a brief account of yoga will be given.
2Of the five methods of development most widely known, two are direct: physical hatha yoga (a risky forcing-house method that has claimed countless victims) and mental raja yoga. Three are indirect: gnana yoga (development of reason), bhakti yoga (ennoblement of emotion), and karma yoga (devoted service).
3Hatha yoga was the Lemurian method of perfecting the organism and automatizing the sympathetic nervous system. Modern hatha is an atavistic phenomenon having quite the opposite effect: all the organs of the body require constant supervision if they are not to cease functioning.
4Bhakti yoga was the Atlantean method.
5Karma yoga seeks to overcome passivity, the result of the doctrine of karma misinterpreted. People did not dare to act, neither eventually to feel or think, out of fear of making mistakes. They did not see that omitting to activate physical, emotional, and mental consciousness is an even greater mistake, and that the motive (egoistic or altruistic) is the essential thing in activity.
6The Lemurians led a half-dreamlike life of consciousness on the border between the physical and the emotional. It took millions of years to mentalize the brain. As the senses gradually became sharpened to physical reality, emotional attention decreased and, with it, the ability of living in two worlds simultaneously.
7The Atlanteans were physicalists of repulsive emotionality and were given opportunities to cultivate attraction.
8Steiner thought that Indian yoga was an attempt at artificially substituting the natural clairvoyance of the Atlanteans that "had been lost as a result of the Fall". But this "loss" amounted to a step forward, since the requisite qualities can be acquired only in the physical world, and clairvoyance would be an obstacle to this.
9There are seven kinds of emotional subjective and objective consciousness. Mankind of today has the four lower subjective, the mystics have the five lower.
10Experts must not make the mistake that Steiner did, of confusing the Krishna of Bhagavad-Gita (the legend from Atlantis) with MaitreyaKrishna (who died on the 4th of April in 3102 B.C.).
11Steiner thought that this emotional clairvoyance was of a kind quite different from that of the raja yogis. But both have objective consciousness in the four lower molecular kinds (48:4-7), although in different ways.
1The conversation that Steiner had with Edouard von Hartmann, the philosopher, is interesting. The latter considered that "he knowledge of the real is buried in man's impenetrable unconscious, and for ever out of reach of his concepts".
2According to esoterics, the unconscious is partly subconsciousness, partly superconsciousness. The subconscious is the latent memory of past experiences. The superconscious consists of a long series of domains of consciousness as yet not conquered. If one is to speak at all of knowledge being "buried" it can only be knowledge which man has once had and lost, but has a possibility of remembering anew. It is amazing how philosophers can unwittingly touch on reality.
3Steiner started as a philosopher, but soon came to see that the philosophers are unable to solve the problems of reality. He saw that the facts of natural research provide knowledge of the composition of physical matter, but do not explain the nature of matter or the origin of motion (forces of nature).
4In theosophy he found confirmation that this insight was correct. All knowledge consists of facts put in their correct contexts. There is a superphysical reality and there is a possibility of ascertaining facts in it.
5The principle is correct. But Steiner never saw how much is required to be able to ascertain facts in a kind of matter totally different from the physical.
6The old philosophy is doomed. It was the imaginative speculation of acuity and profundity. The same fate will befall the new philosophy a la Bertrand Russell and all systems which are not based on facts from the planetary hierarchy.
1The theosophists Steiner studied had mentioned the existence of seven successively higher worlds and seven envelopes of the individual. But ideas as to their nature were then still vague. Besant, in particular, avoided discussion of the matter aspect of existence, not least out of consideration for the philosophic subjectivism prevalent both in India (Advaita) and in the West (so-called idealism).
2Steiner thought that the physical world was the only material one and that all worlds of higher kinds were of a "spiritual" nature. It was a current stock-phrase of the theosophists that matter was the lowest form of spirit and spirit the highest form of matter. Steiner never grasped that what was meant was more and more refined kinds of matter, due to lesser and lesser density of primordial atoms.
3Steiner interpreted the ancient apparent antithesis of spirit and matter as meaning that spirit must be something like immaterial matter, whatever that might be. In actual fact, the ancients meant by spirit the same as consciousness and they held that all matter has consciousness.
4As regards research into the physical and emotional worlds, Steiner realized that research consists in ascertaining facts. But when it came to the superemotional worlds, to which he did not have access, since he lacked the ability of higher kinds of objective consciousness, he departed from this the only correct and possible principle and reverted to subjectivist speculation.
5While studying Goethe's writings on the natural sciences, Steiner had the brain-wave that was to have a decisive effect on his further speculation on the theory of knowledge. He thought he had noticed that when studying nature, Goethe had not arrived at his conclusions through reflection, but that "he ideas rose up inside him during his concentrated observations, as though they were the soul's pictures of the realities behind nature". That Goethe did not continue along this path was, Steiner thought, because "Goethe was afraid of losing himself in abstractions".
6This mistake, so unfortunate for Steiner himself, shows that Steiner was ignorant of the fact that Goethe was an initiate of the (genuine) Rosicrucian Order and amused himself by applying in his own research what he had been taught. Goethe was certainly not a fantast.
7When faced with insuperable obstacles in attempting to explore reality by ascertaining facts, Steiner would remember his favourite hypothesis about Goethe. Add to this the admiration he had always had for Goethe's contemporaries Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel with their conceptual romanticism.
8Thus he formed his own theory of knowledge, in its way just as preposterous as that of the transcendentalists:
9"If you live in thoughts and ideas and regard them as realities, this life in thought soon turns into that direct spiritual experience of the spiritual reality in which thought and experience are one. Thoughts are the means through which the realities of the spiritual world make themselves felt to the human consciousness. Man's concepts appear as reflections of spiritual realities."
10In this train of thought one recognizes a new version of the old German conceptual romanticism and subjectivism. Of course, it is not a matter of the usual kind of unphilosophic thinking, but of an especially fine philosophic kind of thinking. One recognizes the legerdemain of Kant's "pure apperception" Fichte's "intellectual outlook" and Hegel's "absolute thinking".
11Another excellent example of what will happen when consciousness ventures out on its own into the world of imagination without the objectivity and logical corrective of the matter aspect.
12Just as little as one will be able to explore reality by thought or solve the problems of existence through meditation, as little one is able — as the esoterically ignorant at times imagine — to revive what is latent in the subconscious by being absorbed into oneself. Knowledge previously acquired is reacquired through studying anew the same subject-matter in new incarnations. The new brain knows nothing of what the old brain knew, but must be impregnated anew with mental molecules. The brain cannot apprehend ideas from a totally strange domain without previous study. In order to receive the idea atoms, the brain cells must be prepared by mental vibrations, which are easily volatilized unless the cells incorporate the molecules and preserve them. On the other hand, it is a fact that those who have latent knowledge find it increasingly easy to acquire that knowledge in new incarnations.
13According to Steiner, "hought is the gateway to beholding the spiritual world" man can by "pure" thinking acquire "knowledge that goes beyond thought but arises out of it" man can himself explore the universe and "ransform his earthly thinking into the higher level of divine wisdom".
14If it were as simple as that, mankind would have solved all its problems long ago.
1Clairvoyance is the popular term for higher kinds of sense: the ability of observing objective realities in a world invisible to the normal individual (most people).
2Reason is subjective consciousness, sense is objective consciousness.
3Physical sense is the ability of apprehending objectively the objective material realities of the "visible" physical world. During his physical incarnation, man lives in five different material worlds, since he has material envelopes in all five. It remains for the normal individual, in the course of development and during thousands of incarnations, to acquire objective consciousness in all his five envelopes, thus beside physical sense to acquire also physical etheric, emotional, mental, and causal sense. There are thus four main kinds of "superphysical" sense. Each world is composed of a series of different molecular kinds (states of aggregation). Each molecular kind has its own characteristic kind of consciousness, which in man's envelopes is perceptible by special organs of perception (chakras). The physical sense organs have their counterparts in the centres of perception and activity (atoms of special kinds, Sanskrit: chakras) in man's aggregate envelopes.
4It is by means of the chakras that man is able in his organism to perceive subjectively the vibrations in his higher envelopes and thereby experience feelings and thoughts, etc. In order to acquire objective consciousness through these chakras special methods of activation are required. Some of these methods are known.
5The raja yogis can by their methods acquire objective consciousness in the etheric envelope of the organism and also in the emotional envelope, but not in the mental or causal envelopes. Nor did Steiner succeed. He acquired sense (objective consciousness) in the lowest physical etheric kind (49:4) and in the four lower emotional molecular kinds (48:4-7).
6There are various methods of activation and objectivization, some better suited to Indians, others better suited to Westerners. The general instructions have to be individualized, however, so that every clairvoyant has his own method. Those esoteric methods, which lead rapidly and without risks to causal objective consciousness, remain the property of the planetary hierarchy. Knowledge of the pertaining methods was given only to those who had acquired subjective causal consciousness after 1925: essential consciousness and thereby reached the limit of what man can achieve. They then know that emotional and mental sense do not give real knowledge, but intensify emotional illusoriness and mental fictitiousness. In man's molecular worlds one does not get to know the worlds of the planetary hierarchy, or the atomic worlds penetrating everything, nor does one acquire the reality concepts, which make it possible to understand the realities within the solar system.
7To understand the difficulties of the philosophers and mystics, one must at least know of the interdependence of the emotional and mental envelopes and the relation between the six emotional and four mental molecular consciousnesses.
8During incarnation the emotional and mental envelopes coalesce so as to form, as it were, one single envelope from the functional point of view. Since the emotional is incomparably more developed, it completely dominates the mental. A prerequisite of liberating the mental from the dependence on the emotional is that the coalescence be discontinued. This also results in mental objective consciousness. The method will remain esoteric until mankind has become humanized. Until then, the lowest mental (47:7) can at best dominate the two lowest emotional ones (48:6,7) and the two lowest mental ones (47:6,7) the four lower emotional (48:4-7).
9At mankind's present stage of development, the philosophers have not attained the highest mental but one: perspective consciousness (47:5), which relativizes contradictory principle thinking. On the other hand, the mystic in his incarnation as a saint does attain the highest emotional consciousness (48:2,3).
10From this it follows that the highest emotional is inaccessible to the mental, that imagination becomes sovereign and is liberated from the logic of common sense. As a rule this is unfortunate, because by this begin the uncontrollable excesses of imagination. Without the knowledge of reality, the individual imagines he comprehends everything, understands everything, knows everything, is able to do everything. The mystic is absorbed in the cosmos, god, the absolute, etc., or in nirvana, Brahman, etc., associates with superior beings of all sorts, etc. Belief in all such things is strengthened when the mystic in his states of ecstasy succeeds in touching on (but not entering into) the essential world (46) and has a foretaste of its bliss with a feeling of absolute reality.
11It should be clear from the following that Steiner was both a philosopher and a mystic; that he was an objectivist as to the physical and emotional worlds, but a subjectivist as regards the superemotional.
12The objective emotional consciousness that Steiner acquired afforded him no knowledge of reality and life, no knowledge even of the nature of the emotional world. What should be said of anyone who without the knowledge of chemistry, physics, geology, etc., were to express opinions about the physical make-up of our planet? Research in the emotional world requires a knowledge that Steiner did not have, did not even know existed. He did not even realize that the emotional world is a material world with its own characteristic kinds of material compositions.
13The untaught see organisms and physical material forms, but therefore do not know that organisms consist of cells, and minerals of molecules. It is not enough to see the form of matter in order to understand what matter consists of.
14It is meaningless to warn other clairvoyants, as Steiner did, not to trust their "revelations". They all do who have not realized the theoretical impossibility. How much he himself understood can be seen from this: "hat the self, which is itself spirit, lives in a world of spirits was a thing that I could observe." Self-consciousness in the emotional envelope in the emotional world Steiner called: "he self as a spirit in the spiritual world".
15There are several ways of acquiring clairvoyance. If the prerequisites are there, everybody will develop his own method. Like everyone else, Steiner regarded his method as the only correct one. The method Steiner used was one of the oldest. One observes, say, a flower until one can picture it in imagination as clearly as though one were looking at it. If the pertaining exercises are continued persistently and systematically, it may happen that one will become aware of, first, the flower's etheric envelope and, later, also its emotional envelope.
16Considerably simpler, but also riskier, is the method of activating consciousness in the chakras of the etheric and emotional envelopes. The correct method of doing this is not taught, however, and the attempts of the ignorant usually result in tumours forming in the organism. But, as usual, warnings will not help: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread".
17Steiner is one of the countless examples (Swedenborg is another well-known one) of the truth of the esoteric axiom, "no self-tutored seer ever saw correctly". Steiner was his own tutor. Is it necessary to say that it must be a tutor from the planetary hierarchy?
18The first lesson in emotional chemistry is to learn to distinguish between two fundamentally different kinds of matter: primary involvatory matter (the product of the process of composition of primordial atoms from the highest atomic kind to the lowest molecular kind) and secondary involutionary matter. Nobody can do this without a competent teacher. What Steiner saw were the phenomena that are formed out of involutionary matter, and those material forms (with the exception of envelopes of living beings) are the products of man's formative emotional consciousness. Emotional matter forms itself immediately at the slightest hint from consciousness. The untaught takes these forms for enduring realities. The whole of emotional involutionary matter is being re-formed eternally in accordance with the wishful thinking of its inhabitants. This is the source of all the mistakes the untaught makes, which has made possible the legends of the Christians' heaven and hell, the Greeks' Hades and Elysian Fields, the Red Indians' happy hunting grounds, the spiritists' summer land, etc.
1Our planet's emotional world, which extends half-way to the moon, consists of six more and more composite molecular kinds (states of aggregation), forming six regions with different radii from the centre of the earth. The different regions appear to those in the emotional world as so many different worlds, ever higher "spiritual" worlds. The emotional atomic world, which provided the original material for the different molecular worlds, exists in them all, but cannot be apprehended by human consciousness.
2All matter has consciousness and memory. In addition, every atom in the molecules has a common collective consciousness with the atoms in its molecular kind. It is in this collective consciousness that the different worlds have their respective collective memories, which can be read by those who have acquired objective consciousness in the respective molecular kinds. In the emotional world there is, beside the only exact collective memory (inaccessible to man) of the atomic world, six different kinds of collective molecular memories.
3Steiner had objective consciousness in the four lower molecular kinds and thus the possibility of studying four different collective memories. Steiner warns the ignorant not to believe what they might happen to see in the emotional world. This shows that he apprehended several collective memories. The lower the kind, the less reliable they are in all respects. But even the highest that Steiner could study does not provide knowledge of the past, but only of what people believed about the past, just as our world history is what the historians think about the past.
4Only the collective atomic memory of the emotional world is the one that cannot be falsified, but reproduces exactly past events of the emotional and physical worlds, but not of the higher worlds.
5What collective memory Steiner stopped at, calling it the "akashic record" is uncertain, since there are many indications that sometimes he mixed up the memories in the third and fourth counted from below (that is, 48:4 and 5). "he akashic records" besides, is a very unfortunate term, adopted via Eliphas Levi's alchemist terminology. According to the planetary hierarchy, akasha is world 44 (the submanifestal, or paranirvana), not world 48. As usual, ignorance has used that word in many contexts except the only correct one.
6The planetary hierarchy has repeatedly warned against the use of emotional or mental clairvoyance. What one gets to know in the emotional world is not the knowledge of existence, reality, and life. Like the mental world, it is intended to be a sojourn of rest pending a new incarnation. It is only in the physical and causal worlds that man is able to ascertain real facts, not in the emotional and mental worlds. In these worlds one cannot know whether what one sees is nature's enduring reality or not.
7In the emotional world one has confirmation of all one's illusions and fictions, one's hypotheses and theories, and all other fancies.
8In the emotional world the Brahmanists meet Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva; the Buddhists their Buddha, and the Christians the Jesus of the Gospels. According to 45-self D.K., there is an emotional replica of him formed by emotional devotees; the warning is explicit. The whole Bible is there as though recorded on a film. Those who loved Cervantes' Don Quijote, or Dumas' Musketeers, or Dantes' Commedia, or some other literary masterpiece, can enjoy these in various versions.
9The "akashic records" provide knowledge of what people thought, believed, loved, and worshipped. If they provided knowledge of reality, Steiner would have recognized the atomic structure of the superphysical worlds. If they provided knowledge of the past, Steiner would not have made such disastrous mistakes as to history.
10As a rule, the collective memory of each region corresponds more or less to its habitants' average conception of reality (determined by the level of development). If there is anyone in the emotional world having real knowledge of reality, it is those who live there in order to try to help others orient themselves, comprehend, and understand, with very little prospect of success. Just as in the physical world, everyone is convinced that his very misconception is the only correct one and that "nobody is to come here and pretend to see and understand more". There is no possibility of acquiring knowledge of a world or region on one's own. It is seldom that anyone learns anything new in this world, but one goes by illusions and fictions acquired in physical existence. Since the matter of the emotional world puts up no resistance, "one sees what one already knows" and has no reason to change one's opinion. The collective atomic memory of the emotional world remains inaccessible to the individuals of the fourth natural kingdom.
1Steiner formulated his own theory of knowledge, his own philosophy, his own superphysical system, his own history of religions.
2He defended his views by invoking the following four sources of knowledge accessible to him:
the ordinary scientific method of research
imagination
inspiration
intuition
3By imagination Steiner meant his emotional clairvoyance, not knowing the esoteric axiom that "no self-tutored seer ever saw correctly".
4Inspiration is the most misleading method, which the esoteric saying makes clear: "angels whisper but lies"; illusions and fictions telepathically received.
5The definition of intuition shows that Steiner was ignorant of the fact that intuition is causal consciousness, access to the world of Platonic ideas. It is by no means, as Steiner asserts, "identification with a higher being". Nobody in the whole cosmos can identify himself with a higher being, only with a lower one, which has not always been very fortunate.
6As has already been pointed out, nobody can explore any world by "pure" thinking, a meaningless term (borrowed from Kant who constructed a pure reason devoid of content).
7According to Steiner, man lives in three worlds ("he physical, etheric, and astral") and consists of "he organism, etheric body, astral body, and the immortal nucleus of his existence, his self, which belongs to the eternal spiritual world".
8"he very self is most closely linked to the astral or soul-body, the seat of consciousness." These bodies are not material, but consist of "etheric life-force" and "astral consciousness force".
9"When thought is concentrated there rises up in consciousness emptied of physical pictures a world of supersensual beings and events. Every possibility of self-deception is precluded."
10Steiner obviously did not know that man in incarnation has five envelopes, that it is the highest (fifth) envelope (the causal envelope) that is called the soul-body, that all these five envelopes have their own kinds of consciousness, that force is a finer kind of matter, that the individual in the human kingdom cannot attribute his self-consciousness to that monad in the causal envelope which is the true self. The "hree worlds" he mentions are those he knows of from his own experience. But without his mental envelope in the mental world man has no possibility of thinking. This he ought to have known.
11Steiner speaks of the "cosmic-planetary" not knowing that the planet is not in the cosmos, but in a solar system, and that the solar systems are regarded as globes of their own in the cosmos, just as the planet is a globe in the solar system.
12Steiner's criticism, correct as such, of traditional mysticism was not at all based on his own findings. Long before Steiner it had been pointed out that reason is the only corrective of the excesses of emotional imagination, and that the mystic's contempt for mentality (as an obstacle to union with god) is due to lack of insight.
13According to Steiner, his teachings were "based on immediate and direct observation of superphysical realities" only his system is "a logical system that makes rational thinking possible".
14In his books one continually comes across the statement that he had arrived at his views through his own observations and that these views are the only correct ones. By his bold assertions he instilled into his (one-sidedly oriented) adherents the belief that it was he who had made all these "spiritual discoveries". One is continually being told that "Steiner revealed an important fact" (immemorial esoteric), or that "spiritual science throws a fresh light on ..." or "Steiner's doctrine of reincarnation ..." "o his revelations of the objective reality of the supersensual world ... Steiner gave the name of anthroposophy".
15The fact that Steiner's disciples insist on his priority surprises nobody who has followed his development. He had that faculty, frequently seen in those suffering from a superman complex, of remembering everything he learned but forgetting how he learned it. Bur should anyone be surprised at scientifically educated people uncritically swallowing everything without a thorough examination of the enormous literature on the superphysical, ut just shows his unfamiliarity with scientific credulity, which also exists. The tenable facts found in Steiner existed "before Steiner".
16Steiner's mistake was that he would not be content with the esoteric facts then existing and to try to make a system out of them, but to complement facts with his own subjectivist vagaries. Steiner's merit was that at a time when all authorities accepted by the majority in the West were denying the possibility of superphysical knowledge, he dared to stand up and maintain that there was a knowledge of a "higher world". In addition, he made praiseworthy contributions in various fields of research.
1If by esoterician is meant someone who in a previous incarnation was initiated into an esoteric knowledge order, one instituted by a member of the planetary hierarchy, who thus has the knowledge of reality latently, and who in subsequent incarnations will not accept any world view and life view that do not agree with the esoteric knowledge, then Steiner was not an esoterician.
2But if by esoterician is meant one who accepts a superphysical knowledge system of any kind, then one can call Steiner an esoterician.
3Since almost all attempts at superphysical systems nowadays are termed esoteric, a term increasingly vitiated, one has to make a definite distinction between those who, like Steiner, use their own constructions to complement the facts of reality, and those who base their systems solely on facts from the planetary hierarchy.
4Esoteric systems, then, are those knowledge systems that were elaborated in symbolic form in the different knowledge orders. They were adapted to the ability to comprehend reality of the different nations during the last 45,000 years. Some of these systems were summarized by Blavatsky in her work, The Secret Doctrine. The interpretation of these symbols requires esoteric facts. From 1875 (when certain parts of the system were permitted to be published) until 1920, the planetary hierarchy's facts were given out through the Theosophical Society and after that period through other organs ("Rosicrucians" or anthroposophists are not among these).
5An esoterician has no difficulty in determining which alleged facts are also real facts. Only those who have never understood dispute about these, ask "who said that?" They are content blindly to rely on some authority.
6Steiner was never initiated into any order recognized by the planetary hierarchy. This is most clearly shown in the way he treated the facts he received. The few esoteric facts there are in his anthroposophy have all been taken from the theosophists.
7Steiner did not know the following fundamental facts, necessary to a correct conception of reality:
the three aspects of existence
the atomic structure of the cosmos
the 49 cosmic atomic worlds
the 42 molecular kinds in the solar system
the fifth natural kingdom
the planetary hierarchy
the planetary government
the solar systemic government
the cosmic organization
the seven successively higher divine kingdoms
1Steiner himself quoted the akashic records as his source of historical knowledge and the only reliable one. The failure was thus inevitable. One will find in them (as Swedenborg, as so many others did) merely a confirmation of one's preconceived opinions.
2The correct historical facts to be found in Steinerian historiography were known "before Steiner".
3In Hamburg, May 1831 1908, Steiner gave twelve lectures on the Gospel of John; in Basel, September 1524 1909, ten lectures on the Gospel of Luke; in Bern, September 112 1910, twelve lectures on the Gospel of Matthew; and in Basel, September 1524 1912, ten lectures on the Gospel of Mark. If Besant had known the content of these, Steiner would have been promptly discharged.
4These lectures did not deal so much with the Gospels as with historical fictionalism, Biblical exegesis in general, and the philosophy of history in accordance with Steiner's akashic records.
5It proved easy to have these printed and translated into several languages.
6There is no disputing the fact that Steiner acted in good faith. People with sufficient power of imagination always do. It is also inevitable that the anthroposophists, who rely absolutely on the infallibility of their prophet, believe as he did. It will be the task of future research to furnish the overwhelming evidence as to who was right and compare the different versions and statements. If one does not know it is in such matters better being a doubter than a believer.
7When Steiner found that the theosophical leaders refused to regard the Bible as a divine authority, he lost faith in the capacity of these leaders. The theosophists had seen the justness of Buddha's warning "not to believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor in traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor writings by sages because sages wrote them;" etc. Mankind has not yet seen the wisdom of this advice.
8It is, of course, out of the question to go into details of all the absurdities of Steiner's interpretation of history. It should suffice with a few examples of what imagination unbridled is able to achieve. To esotericians these examples are at any event sufficiently informative, deterring proofs of the unreliability of the akashic recorders.
9We are told of the Atlanteans: "In the days of the old Atlantean development, one could through a certain astral-etheric clairvoyance see into the divine spiritual foundations of existence". Looking up into the divine worlds through physical etheric and lowest emotional clairvoyance one could well call a miracle.
10As for the Egyptians, Steiner would have it that they "embalmed the bodies of their dead so that men of the fifth epoch (ours) should have the strongest possible personality consciousness". He actually wrote this!
11His research into the Bible Steiner conducted on different principles. As it suited his constructive imagination he interpreted the scriptures literally, historically, or symbolically. In Goethe's Faust the expression is found: "Blood is a special sort of sap". Steiner made this a problem that he solved in a profound way. But without the facts of reality it became, as it always will: an imaginative construction.
12The history of the Hebrews became largely a "lesson in the significance of the blood, its heredity through the generations, and its specialization in order to make the spiritual possible".
13"he awakening to a historical outlook originates in the ancient Hebraic world view; the first impulse towards a historical view."
14In Steiner one will repeatedly meet with the expression "he Essenes were the first to teach".
15According to esoterics, the Essenes were not the first in anything. All their teaching was either borrowed or fictitious. The Essene Bible was the Jewish Kabbalah, which was their revised version of the Chaldean Kabbalah, the latter being some 30,000 years older. The revision consisting in replacing the esoteric symbols that they did not understand with their own attempts at symbols, which corresponded to their fictions.
16The following quotations from Steiner — they could be multiplied — need no comment. They are sufficiently informative to those orientated in esoterics.
17"While men in the Atlantean age everywhere found the divine out in the world, the Jews found it within themselves."
18The Jewish people were able "o form the divine-spiritual of the Atlanteans bodily in their being".
19"he great world-god had now become the God of the Hebrew people." That is correct. It was the Jews who made out of the cosmic divinity a personality and their peculiar god.
20When reading this and suchlike, one has no difficulty in understanding that Besant could not any longer regard Steiner as a theosophist. Esoterics agrees wholly with theosophy in accepting Buddha's statement that there are no, will never be permitted to be any, scriptures so sacred that the individual is not to use his common sense when interpreting them.
21In theosophical literature Steiner found the term initiation. Since he trusted to his intuition always to interpret everything correctly, he as usual did not find out the correct meaning of that word. He obviously did not know that facts are required also for intuition.
22In one sense, initiation is the ceremony one passes through when entering an esoteric order.
23In another sense, initiation means self-acquired objective consciousness in a higher world (physical etheric, emotional, mental, causal, essential, etc. world).
24In theosophical literature Steiner found a description of an Egyptian initiation (first sense, in the Cheops pyramid) and thought that this was what always happened. But the neophyte is by no means always physically unconscious for three days and nights. Sometimes he is not unconscious at all. Sometimes he can be in that state for a couple of weeks. The ancients held initiations (first sense) in connection with the great religious festivals in which the entire people took part and thus all the brethren of the order were assembled. That was a suitable occasion thoroughly to instruct the neophyte in his new world, teach him to distinguish between the many different kinds of matter, regions, phenomena, etc.
25Then Steiner came across that expression, the "seven" initiations. Not suspecting that this expression had a special meaning, he thought that it meant the subjective experiences of Christian mystics in the seven regions of the emotional world. Esoterically, it stood for self-acquisition of objective consciousness in the seven atomic worlds (atomic as distinct from molecular) of the solar system.
26Steiner considered that clairvoyance was a prerequisite of insight into and understanding of his anthroposophical spiritual science. He was ignorant of the fact that the higher worlds are no more spiritual than the physical world, that emotional and mental clairvoyance do not afford any knowledge of existence, the meaning and goal of life. or the past of the planet, that human clairvoyance only reinforces the illusions and fictions of the ignorance of life.
27Thus Steiner could assert that "he ancient Indian method of initiation" (which never existed) "was a result of our ancestors' longing for the lost power of clairvoyance". The neophyte of an esoteric knowledge order was expressly warned against any kind of clairvoyance until he had acquired full consciousness in his causal envelope and thus had succeeded in activating consciousness in the crown chakras of the etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes.
28Since Steiner was never admitted to an esoteric knowledge order, but only to a number of quasi-orders through the ages, it eventually became pretty awkward to know so much more than the theosophists about things of which he could of course know nothing. To make all initiations superfluous he resorted to the mystery of Golgotha, which would explain everything.
29According to Steiner, the self, once initiated (what now is the use of that?), is able during sleep not only to "survey our earth" but also to "float out in the cosmos". Steiner, at any event, could not. (The emotional world extends only half-way to the moon.)
30Steiner considered that after the mystery of Golgotha the initiations became perfectly superfluous. Up to then the knowledge of reality had been taught in secret orders. "hrough the mystery of Golgotha what had been taught in these orders was revealed to mankind." "hrough the mystery of Golgotha powers have become generally available which previously could only be obtained in connection with the powers of initiation into spiritual seership." Through the mystery of Golgotha "initiation as a historical event was thus discontinued ... was now as a non-recurrent event enacted before all mankind ... the end of the old world was given ... the beginning of a new age was come". The mystery of Golgotha is "nothing but the emergence of initiation from the depths of the mysteries onto the plan of world history. Of course, there is a very great difference between any kind of initiation and the Mystery of Golgotha."
31If the mystery of Golgotha made all knowledge orders superfluous, one will perhaps wonder why the Rosicrucian Order and the Maltese Order were instituted after the mystery of Golgotha.
32Steiner was ignorant of the existence of the planetary hierarchy, the planetary government, the solar systemic government, and the cosmic organization. The few isolated facts he received about the Indians' bodhisattva, besides, were calculated greatly to stimulate certain sides of his character: his tendency towards mysticism, towards constructive imagination, his inclination to accept vagaries as higher inspirations, etc. It is no wonder that none of his statements about bodhisattvas, buddhas, etc. had any correspondence in reality.
33As all esotericians know, the word bodhisattva is the Indian term for the "world-teacher" the head of the second department (department of education) of the planetary hierarchy. The present world-teacher is ChristosMaitreya, who succeeded to his office when Gautama became Buddha (and thereby as a 42-self passed to the second divine kingdom). Gautama had then been the world-teacher for some 50,000 years, during which time he had instituted esoteric knowledge orders in India as Vyasa (some 45,000 years ago), in Egypt as Hermes Trismegistos (some 40,000 years ago), in Persia as Zoroaster or Zarathustra (29,700 B.C.), and in Greece as Orpheus (7000 B.C.).
34Thus Hermes lived more than ten thousand years before the first Zoroaster and, consequently, cannot have received anything from him. Steiner says that "in order to help mankind" Zarathustra gave his etheric body to Moses when the latter lay in the reeds, and his astral body to Hermes Trismegistos. This is impossible, however. The etheric envelope belongs to the organism and cannot be transferred except in connection with the organism.
35The following will perhaps interest esotericians who are unfamiliar with the Steinerian Buddha tale.
36"he Bodhisattva Gautama was able to become a Buddha because there existed now for the first time such a body." Evidently Steiner was ignorant of the fact that there have been three buddhas before Gautama.
37 "If one had clairvoyantly observed a body ensouled by Boshisattva, one would have seen that the Bodhisattva lived simultaneously in a spiritual body and in a physical body." Steiner does not tell us what he means by "spiritual body". According to the esotericians, the bodhisattva has, when appearing in the physical world, a total of seven kinds of material envelopes of the atomic kinds 43—49. Steiner added to this the somewhat astonishing information: "hus Boshisattva never left the spiritual world altogether."
38Buddha "hovers in the spiritual worlds" and his task is from there "o intervene in all that happened on earth". Apparently, Steiner did not know how else to get rid of him. Besides, that after the mystery of Golgotha Buddha should have to intervene undoubtedly seems a bit unnecessary.
39This Buddha tale can be suitably concluded with Steiner's information that it was Buddha whom the shepherds in Bethlehem saw in the shape of the angel surrounded by heavenly hosts.
40Did Steiner see all of this in the akashic records or was it his "inspiration" or "intuition"?
41Finally, we are told that "we must now develop in such a way that we educate the faculties ... which appeared in Buddha".
42When we have succeeded in that, we shall have entered the second divine kingdom (worlds 36—42) and from being 47-selves we shall have become at least 42-selves.
43Steiner's interpretation of history shows how risky it is to set about interpreting the symbols of the ancient mysteries without knowing the facts. That is what Steiner thought he could do. And the result was grotesque.
44For example, theosophical literature mentions "he great cosmic sacrifice". At once Steiner would know that this termed the mystery of Golgotha. It means something different. It refers to the great sacrifice (cosmic indeed) that a supreme divine collective makes when it decides to form a new cosmos in order to make it possible for the primordial atoms in the chaos of primordial matter to acquire omniscience and omnipotence. This is the cosmic work of salvation.
45The four Gospels were selected from among some fifty written by gnostic monks in Alexandria. Consequently, they can be interpreted correctly only by those initiated into esoteric gnostics. Steiner took these accounts as descriptions of historical events, since he found them reproduced in the akashic records.
46Steiner did not even know that "crucifixion" is a symbolic term for incarnation: the envelopes of incarnation (etheric, emotional, mental, lower causal) nailed upon the four spokes of the spinning wheel of existence. The organism belongs to the animal kingdom.
47That Steiner was a typical mystic is obvious from his interpretation of the Bible and the Gospels generally, and of the mystery of Golgotha particularly. On this mystery he built up his fantastic fable of the entire history of our planet. He said that he "had always believed that true knowledge must be in harmony with religion". What people believe always results in subjectivization of seemingly objective ideas. Then what you mean by religion (possibly a certain form of it) is another matter.
48"He meditated in the most profound wonder and awe before the great, central mystery of Golgotha. Christ's death on the cross explained the whole of history before and after" one of his disciples said.
49Steiner himself: "Standing spiritually before the mystery of Golgotha was the most heartfelt, most serious solemnity, and became decisive for the development of my soul."
50"Jesus Christ's life and death and resurrection is the central event in history, both cosmic and earthly. The moral power released through this occurrence was to endure throughout the following history of the earth and development of mankind."
51"When the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ on the cross all conditions on earth changed."
52"hrough his divine action on Golgotha he sowed a seed of life that saved mankind's spiritual future."
53"... right until the time came for the Mystery of Golgotha, man's soul was not at all adapted to allow the realm of the heavens, the supersensual worlds, to enter the self ... to unite with the self."
54"Only after Golgotha have people become self-conscious. Before, they thought collectively, after, individually, as will be increasingly evident."
55The quotations referring to the "great cosmic mystery of Golgotha" could be multiplied. It was on this that Steiner based his entire interpretation of history. Steiner's widow has summarized her husband's philosophy of religion thus: "he decisive turning-point between the descent of the spiritual into matter and its reascent, the greatest act of deliverance, the central point of historical becoming, is when the Solar Deity (Ahura Mazdao) descends into a human body and passes through death in the mystery of Golgotha."
56Steiner did not know that this mystery was a gnostic symbol, created some three centuries before our era. Like all genuine gnostic symbols it has remained an unsolvable mystery to the uninitiated.
57After all mischief done with this symbol of human evolution, the planetary hierarchy has found it advisable to give out the correct interpretation of it.
58The three crosses on the gnosticians' altar were intended to symbolize: the planetary government (the middle cross with the saviour of the world) the planetary hierarchy (the repentant thief) mankind (the unrepentant)
59Another gnostic symbol was the "prodigal son". It symbolized that part of mankind which "yearned to return to the father's house" (become self-conscious in the causal envelope in the causal world).
60The following excerpts, selected at random from Steiner's lectures on the four Gospels, are intended to inform esotericians as to the reliability of Steiner's akashic records.
61In the Gospel according to Matthew we are told that "Zoroaster was protected by Ahura Mazdao, the great solar spirit, who was to unite with the earth and appear in mankind's history as Christ" that "Jesus was an incarnation of Zarathustra" and that "he life of Jesus is the greatest event in the existence of the earth".
62In his Gospel according to Mark, Steiner reveals that the young man who fled (Mark XIV:51,52) was not a man, but "he cosmic element of Christ, which from that turning point on was incorporated as an impulse in the evolution of the earth". It was this same young man who later sat beside the grave (XVI:5,6), which shows "hat we are dealing with a cosmic occurrence".
63"he Gospel according to Luke contains the true spiritual substance" of Buddhism, but "in a more sublime form". Buddhism appears in a new shape, "in a form easy to grasp for the simplest intellect".
64"Christ's cursing of the fig tree is symbolic of the old tree of knowledge being replaced with a new one, the fruit of which matured out of the mystery of Golgotha."
65It is thanks to Christ that man has only now begun to explore the physical world.
66To Steiner, Christ appearing to his disciples after his death is "proof of the truth of resurrection". Evidently, he did not know that "resurrection" was the term of the ancients for reincarnation. One is reborn when the old incarnation envelopes are disintegrated and the self requires new envelopes in order to activate anew its consciousness in its lower envelopes, until it has acquired the ability to activate consciousness in still higher envelopes.
67Not knowing that the planetary hierarchy is engaged in preparing for the appearance in visible form of the world-teacher (bodhisattva), Christos, Steiner declared that "it is a nuisance to speak of Christ in the same way as of the Bodhisattvas ..." "It should be self-evident that any speaking of Christ's reincarnation must stand out as absurd." "Christ is the spirit of the earth and the earth is Christ's body or garment." "Christianity does not emanate from a personal teacher, but from the very mystery of Golgotha, from a fact of world history, from death and resurrection."
68And, finally:
69Man will find "he great wisdom when he has become aware of the spirituality of the sun, the great solar aura".
1The following facts are given to those who do not have previous knowledge of the different material worlds that constitute the cosmos.
2
1—49 the cosmic atomic worlds 43—49 the atomic worlds of the solar systems 46—49 the atomic worlds of the planets
3Solar systems are formed out of the seven lowest cosmic atomic worlds and the planets out of the four lowest. All the higher atomic worlds penetrate all the lower worlds.
4
1—42 constitute a series of 6 ever higher divine kingdoms 43,44 are the worlds of the sixth natural kingdom the worlds of the planetary hierarchy 45,46 are the worlds of the fifth natural kingdom 47—49 are the worlds of the four lowest natural kingdoms (man's worlds)
5In solar system and planets, the atomic kinds are the original material for 42 molecular worlds (states of aggregation), 6 in each atomic world. The figures put after the atomic kinds indicate molecular worlds.
6The following table refers to the worlds of man. In each world man during incarnation has one envelope of each kind of matter respectively.
7
49:5-7 the "visible" physical world (the organism) 49:2-4 the physical etheric world (the etheric envelope of the organism) 48:2-7 the emotional or "astral" world (the emotional envelope) 47:4-7 the mental world (the mental envelope) 47:1-3 the causal world, or world of Platonic ideas (the causal envelope with the human monad)
8The causal envelope is man's only permanent envelope, which has the monad always enclosed within it. It is the causal envelope that incarnates. When incarnation is terminated and the lower envelopes have disintegrated, the monad, asleep in its causal envelope, awaits the opportunity of a new incarnation. When man has acquired the highest causal consciousness (47:1), he enters into the fifth natural kingdom and acquires envelopes of the kinds of matter of these worlds.
9All matter has consciousness (spirit). Every molecular or atomic kind has its characteristic kind of consciousness. The meaning of existence is the consciousness development of the monads in the consciousness of the ever higher kinds of matter of the ever higher natural kingdoms.
The above text constitutes the essay Anthroposophy: Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Science by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book The Knowledge of Reality by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1979 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.