"The entire created universe has been brought into being

so that the human being might come into existence."

— Dr. Ronald E. Koetzsch

THE CENTER

Micro/Macrocosmic Mistakes

I. 

Rudolf Steiner claimed that we can find universal truth — knowledge of the cosmos and the spiritual realm — by gazing inwardly. But how can this be? How can we learn about the universe outside ourselves by looking within ourselves? 

Simple. We are microcosms; we contain within ourselves a miniaturized version of the macrocosm or universe [1]:

“[W]e find a remarkable correlation between human life, the Microcosm, and the forces working in the great cosmic clock, driving the several planets round the Sun in the Macrocosm.

“In very truth the world is infinitely more complicated than is supposed. Our human nature is comprehensible only if we take account of its kinship with the Macrocosm. Knowing this, spiritual researchers in all epochs have chosen corresponding designations for the Great World and the Little World — the latter being the seemingly insignificant bodily man enclosed within the skin.

“[There are correspondences] between the Microcosm (man) and the Macrocosm (the solar system) ... [M]an is born as a Little World, a Microcosm, out of the Great World, the Macrocosm.” [2]

Anthroposophists often assume that Steiner’s doctrines consist primarily of his own original discoveries. The “temperaments” are one example — Anthroposophists sometimes credit Steiner with discovering the four “humours” that supposedly describe all human beings: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic. [3] The concept of the interlinked microcosm and macrocosm are another such case; Anthroposophists sometimes assume that Steiner came up with this insight on his own. But in the words we have just read, Steiner himself suggested that the idea came from ancient times (“spiritual researchers in all epochs have...”), and in this he was correct:

“Microcosm (from Greek mikros kosmos, 'little world'), a Western philosophical term designating man as being a 'little world' in which the macrocosm, or universe, is reflected. The ancient Greek idea of a world soul (e.g., in Plato) animating the universe had as a corollary the idea of the human body as a miniature universe animated by its own soul. The notion of the microcosm dates, in Western philosophy, from Socratic times (Democritus specifically referred to it) — i.e., from the 5th century bc.” [4]

The notion that we are microcosmic copies of the vast cosmos was widespread throughout the Middle Ages; people in those days also believed in the four humors. The Middle Ages are sometimes, quite appropriately, referred to as the Dark Ages. Steiner’s doctrines often threaten to extend the darkness into our own time.

II. 

Anyway, according to Steiner, we contain it all — everything outside ourselves is reflected inside ourselves. Moreover, we are, in a sense, central to it all. The solar system — physical reality, the universe — pulses in and out of existence for our benefit. Steiner said there will be seven of these great pulses, during each of which we and the solar system emerge into physical existence and then return to the spirit realm. We have been through three pulses already — called Old Saturn, Old Sun and, and Old Moon. We are currently in the fourth pulse, our life on Earth. In the future, there will three more pulses: Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. [5] 

We evolve during this process, in accordance with a plan prepared for us by benevolent spiritual beings. Here we see the enormous human self-aggrandizement that lies at the heart of Steiner’s doctrines, “Anthroposophy,” the knowledge of man. We are terribly important. The solar system is here for us; in a sense, everything is here for us. Indeed, to find truth, we should study ourselves (the knowledge of man) instead of God (Theosophy, the knowledge of God, or the gods, or the divine). Steiner did not take human chauvinism entirely over the top — he acknowledged the importance of the many spiritual beings who are more advanced than we are — he said that many of these, indeed, had passed through their own “human” stages and then gone up higher. They are above us. Still, we are in their train; they focus many of their efforts on us; and one day we will equal the best of them. We’re pretty darned hot stuff.

The “correspondences” between ourselves, as microcosm, and the great beyond, as macrocosm, show themselves in many ways, Steiner said. During our earthly lives, our very thoughts link us to the spirits above us, and they convey down to us the impulses of these spirits. In a sense, we create them; in a sense, they create us. You can’t really separate us from the central cosmic powers; we are divorced from them while we live in material reality, but not really. "Archetypes” that exist as real beings in the spirit realm inform our minds, just as our minds inform them. 

Here is Steiner discussing what happens to us when we rise into “spiritland” (the level of spiritual existence consisting of pure thought). We do this, sometimes, while we still live on Earth — we can do it during sleep, sort of — and then we do it more profoundly following our deaths on Earth:

“In the first region of spiritland man is surrounded by the spiritual archetypes of earthly beings. During life on earth he learns to know only the shadows of these archetypes that he grasps in his thoughts. What is merely thought on earth is in this region experienced, lived. Man moves among thoughts, but these thoughts are real beings. What he has perceived with his senses during life on earth acts on him now in its thought form. The thought, however, does not appear as the shadow hiding itself behind the things. It is, on the contrary, the life-filled reality producing the things. Man is, as it were, in the thought workshop in which earthly things are formed and fashioned, because in the land of spirit all is vital activity and mobility. Here the thought world is at work as a world of living beings, creative and constructive. We see how what we have experienced during the earthly existence is constructed. Just as in the physical body we experience the things of the senses as reality, so now, as spirit, we experience the spiritual, constructive forces as real.” [6]

III. 

OK. We contain the universe. Perhaps even more exciting, we create the universe, in a sense. Our heartfelt thoughts rise into the spirit realm and become real beings there — or, at a minimum, true thoughts reverberate back and forth from the astral plane to the Earthly plane, each reflecting and creating the other, in a manner of speaking.

This is, for example, what Shakespeare achieved — his characters, emerging from his imagination (which was informed by the archetypes) live as real beings in the spirit realm. Other, lesser playwrights also create characters that have real existence in the spirit realm, but sometimes only as puppets, sacks of straw, or corpses. We ordinary mortals participate in the creation of these Thought Beings On High when we stage various dramas (if we do it right):

“When you make Shakespearean characters living in that sense [i.e., by staging them correctly], you can raise them into the supersensible world where they remain living. Of course, they do not do in the higher worlds what they do on the physical plane, but they remain alive, nevertheless, and they act there ... If you take one of Hauptmann’s dramas into the spiritual world, all the characters die. They become simply wooden puppets. The same is also true of Ibsen’s characters. Even Goethe’s Iphigenia does not completely live at the astral plane.  Shakespeare’s characters move about there and do things in the same style, so that it is possible to rewrite a Shakespearean play. We [Waldorf teachers, Anthroposophists] could actually rewrite them all. [7] ... Sophocles and Aeschylus characters, like Prometheus, live in the astral plane. That is also true of Homer’s characters, the figure of Odysseus. The Roman poets are not alive in that way. The French poets, Corneille and Racine, they melt away like dew and simply exist no more. [8] ... Seen from the astral plane, Schiller’s characters, Thekla and Wallenstein are like sacks stuffed with straw ... [E]ven Shakespeare’s most incidental figures are all alive because they arose out of a true desire of the theater. Things that imitate reality no longer live upon the astral plane. Only what arises from emotions and not from the intellect. Vulgarly comical things come to life immediately on the astral plane as they are not created in order to imitate reality.“ [9]

The nature of our thoughts affects what happens and survives in the spirit realm, so we must take care. If we have vulgar thoughts, they spring to life up above, causing who knows how much disruption. We have to take even more care when coming up with truly wicked ideas, such as modern technology. The evil we think up here on Earth causes the emergence of evil up there. If we create an overly mechanized, soulless civilization here, the effects with reverberate throughout the universe:  

"That is the terrible law of the sounding in unison of vibrations which would be fulfilled if the alluring call of the cow would so decoy the orient that it would then be able to penetrate in an absolutely convincing way into the unspiritual, purely mechanistic civilization of the west and centre; and thereby it would become possible to conjure up on the earth a mechanistic system fitting exactly into the mechanistic system of the universe. Through this everything connected with the working of air, with the forces of the circumference, and everything connected with the working of the stars, would be exterminated from human civilization. What man experiences, for instance, through the cycle of the year, what he experiences through living together with the sprouting, budding life of spring, with the fading, dying life of autumn — all this would lose its import for him. Human civilization would resound with the clattering and rattling of the vibrating machines and with the echo of this clattering and rattling which would stream down upon the earth from the cosmos as a reaction to this mechanisation of the earth." [10]

IV.

Perhaps we should step back and try to take in the big picture. To assist us in doing this, I will offer a series of illuminating quotations from MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM, a book that presents eleven of Steiner’s lectures touching on the issues we have been considering.

“All Spiritual Science is based upon the assumption that underlying the world normally known to us, there is another — the spiritual world. It is in this spiritual world underlying the world of the senses, and in a certain respect also the world of soul, that we have to look for the actual causes and conditions of what takes place in those other worlds.” [11]

Here Steiner speaks of an “assumption” when what he really means is a rock-solid spiritual fact. (He has trouble keeping his ideas straight, sometimes.) He also speaks of “the spiritual world,” which is the macrocosm. However, again apparently somewhat confused, he quickly mentions a second such world, the “world of the soul,” and then he ends his little paragraph by speaking of “other worlds.” He means that there are a number of worlds above ours, as we can easily see in the title of his groundbreaking book HOW TO KNOW HIGHER WORLDS. [12]  Anyway, the world(s) above us — including, perhaps confusingly, the world around us (what materialists call “reality") — constitute the macrocosm. Little ol’ us are the microcosms that contain all of that, as it were. (I love to use Steiner's weasel words. He continually qualifies his statements with little confusion-makers such as "as it were.")

One way to know the macrocosm is through the state of ecstasy — which, of course, is easier said than done. Actually, there are two such ways, since there are two kinds of ecstasy. Sadly, however, neither form of ecstasy is good for us.

“There are two experiences which actually enable us to break through the film covering the outer world and the resistance in the inner world. Something like a membrane is pierced and we are able to enter the world hidden behind the veil of the sense-perceptions ...  This experience is one that is decidedly not beneficial for human life as a whole ... There is also a form of ecstasy in which a man is not only surrounded by dense darkness, but this darkness becomes filled with a world hitherto quite unknown to him ... [T]his ecstatic condition can be induced by natural means only if what the man in question calls his Ego, his strong, inner self, through which he holds all his separate experiences together, is, as it were, extinguished ... [I]n ecstasy a man cannot distinguish whether he is having to do with mirage or reality — for on that the Ego alone can decide.” [13] 

We need our Egos, and to some extent we need our sense impressions, so ecstasy is harmful. 

Another approach to the macrocosm is available in bed, at night, when we are asleep. 

“What is it that we do in sleep? In sleep we do exactly the same, in a certain respect, as we do in the abnormal state of ecstasy described above ... [T]hrough forgetting his own existence on going to sleep man passes out into the Macrocosm. Every night he passes over from his microcosmic existence into the Macrocosm and becomes one with the latter ... [H]is consciousness ceases the moment he passes into the Macrocosm. That is why it has always been said in occult science that between life in the Microcosm and in the Macrocosm lies the stream of forgetfulness. On this stream of forgetfulness man passes into the Great World, when on going to sleep he passes out of the Microcosm into the Macrocosm.” [14]

Going to the macrocosm at night is helpful in some ways — you return recharged, as it were: You bring back solid knowledge that the macrocosm exists, and you bring energies that help you get through the next day in the drop, dreary physical world. Still, sleep is not the best way to ascend into the macrocosm. The best way is to follow the steps Steiner outlines in the aforementioned HOW TO KNOW HIGHER WORLDS. The drawbacks and limitations of ecstasy and sleep consciousness can then be avoided — you become a spiritual initiate. I discuss initiation in “Inside Scoop”, so we don’t need to divert ourselves by thinking about them now. Our mission, here, is to understand our marvelous centrality, to wit, understanding the ways we are the microcosms of the great macrocosm.

A note before we pass on: If you think that ecstasy sounds pretty good — if you wouldn’t mind having a little ecstasy in your life, from time to time — or if you think that when you are asleep you have dreams — that is, if you think your sleep consciousness is all illusion and nonsense — Steiner would urge you to think again.

V.

Our relationship with the macrocosm is astrological. Yes, Steiner believed in astrology. The planets and other orbs in the macrocosm constitute a sort of giant cosmic clock, and we can learn to read the portents and other meanings displayed by this clock.

“[O]ur solar system, with the planets in their different positions and mutual relationships, gives expression to certain macrocosmic powers. From this timepiece of our planetary system we can pass on to contemplate the great spiritual relationships. The position of every planet will become the expression of something lying behind and we shall be able to say that there are reasons for the various relationships in which, for example, Venus stands to Jupiter, and so on. There are actual reasons for saying that these conditions are brought about by divine-spiritual Powers, just as there are reasons for saying that the cosmic timepiece is constructed according to a definite plan. The idea of the planetary movements in the solar system then becomes full of significance.”  [15]

Steiner does not, at this point, discuss horoscopes — he leaves that subject to other times. (See, e.g., "Wise Words".) His point here is that the forces driving the planets and other orbs are the same as, or at least similar to, the ones that drive us.

“The force which in the Macrocosm drives Mars around the Sun is similar to the one that sends us to sleep. The force in the Macrocosm which drives Venus around the Sun is similar to the one which regulates the Sentient Soul by day. Far-off Saturn, with its slight influence, seems to resemble those weak forces that work, in special cases only, upon the Consciousness-Soul [the lowest part of our “soul nature”] in people who are sleep-walkers. And the rotation of the Moon around the Earth is due to a force similar to that which regulates our conscious deeds in waking life ... If we consider, quite superficially, that Saturn is the most remote planet and has accordingly the weakest effect upon our Earth, this can be compared with the fact that the forces of dark Saturn have only a slight effect upon the sleeping human being. And similarly, the force which drives Jupiter around the Sun can be likened to that which penetrates comparatively seldom into our lives, namely, the dream-world.” [16]

There are several points of interest in this passage. There are errors, such as saying that “Saturn is the most remote planet.” In reality, Uranus and Neptune are more distant (as are Pluto and the other minor planets, if we want to count them). Steiner should have known this, even if astronomers didn’t — he was, after all, clairvoyant. Steiner also says that different forces drive the various planets, when in fact they all move in accordance to the laws of celestial mechanics and the force of gravity, which are the same throughout the solar system (although Steiner denied that gravity really exists). [17] At least Steiner here speaks of the planets revolving around the Sun, something he denied at other times. [18]

The point of all this, Steiner says, is that “we shall learn to recognize not only the planets as the hands of the great cosmic clock but also the actual Beings who have brought the whole solar system into movement, who guide the planets round the Sun and prove to be akin to what goes on in the human being himself. And so we shall come to understand how man is born as a Little World, a Microcosm, out of the Great World, the Macrocosm.” [19]

VI.

I mentioned that our universe pulses in and our of physical existence. We need to take care using words like “physical” and “material.” According to Steiner, our existence didn’t include truly materialized substances until we lived on the lost continent of Lemuria, and it it will cease being recognizably material in the none-too-distant future. Prior to Lemuria, we and our universe were less dense or hardened than we became later; and in the future, we and everything around us will grow less hard again. It all centers on us — or, if you bridle at that description, we can say that, according to Steiner, the evolution of the macrocosm and microcosm are tightly bound to one another. The macro can’t move any faster that the micro.

Various spiritual Beings shepherded macro and micro into being. They led us through the stages called Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon:

“Old Saturn issued directly from the spirit. [sic: emphasis by Steiner] Therefore we can understand the origin of our Earth by going back to the spirit — not to a cosmic nebula, but to the spirit, and by picturing how the beginning of Earth-evolution originated from the combined work of spiritual Beings.

“With this in mind we can understand why it is said in my book, OCCULT SCIENCE, that certain Spirits, the Spirits of Will, let their own essence stream forth. [An alternative explanation is that Steiner’s book says this because Steiner wrote it that way.] The Spirits of Personality and then other spiritual Beings worked with them. Read what is said in that book of spiritual Beings who let their deeds flow together in the Macrocosm and through these convergent streams Old Saturn came into existence. We see here that questioning ceases to have meaning when the point is reached of explaining how the physical originates from the spiritual. For if we want eventually to behold the spiritual Beings who confront us, we no longer ask, ‘Why?’ in the ordinary way. A lover of abstractions can go on asking ‘why?’ ad infinitum ... [W]hen great cosmic truths are presented, questioning ceases to have meaning at a certain point. [Steiner often stressed this: Stop asking questions, especially about spiritual origins; conveniently for Steiner, this means we should stop questioning Steiner.]  ... Facts widely dispersed in the Macrocosm have been brought together and we have seen how in a far distant past man himself, the Microcosm, developed through the stages of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon. On the Earth he has reached a provisional termination in his present development.” [20]

At each stage in this evolution, the entire solar system pulses back out of “material” existence after we have evolved as far as we can during that stage. 

Once we got to Earth, we passed through a couple of rather nonmaterial stages before entering the Lemurian stage. There, minerals or physical substances developed, and we thus were able to have physical bodies for the first time. “[W]hen we descend as far as to the physical body we come upon the mineral kingdom and pass into it. Not indeed into the mineral kingdom as it is now, but as it was at the time when it came into existence in the ancient Lemurian epoch.”  [21]

The process through which we and the solar system assumed hard material embodiments will reverse before long, and everything will slowly soften and evaporate, returning to a purely nonphysical existence. Much of this process will depend on ourselves, since we are the only guys who can annihilate matter in this neck of the woods:

“In man alone is matter cast out by pure thought. That matter which is actually cast out of the human being by pure thought is also annihilated, it passes into nothingness. [sic: emphases by Steiner] In man therefore is a place in the universe where matter ceases to exist ... Here is the earth, and on the earth, man; into man passes matter. Everywhere else it is transmuted, transformed. In man it is annihilated. The material earth will pass away as matter is gradually destroyed by man. When, someday, all the substance of the earth will have passed through the human organism, being used there for thinking, the earth will cease to be planetary body.” [22]

This passage is a bit thick. What (if anything) does Steiner mean? We will absorb physical reality, annihilating it — or part of it, anyway, a fairly large part: the entire Earth. But the rest of the physical universe, beyond the Earth, will continue to exist, perhaps, but that will be no affair of ours. Here’s how one expert Steiner interpreter has put it. Speaking of the coming Seventh Epoch of our evolution, Richard Seddon explains:  “This epoch completes the physical condition of form of the earth [i.e., the physical existence of the Earth], which must then be entirely transmuted into astral form [i.e., it become incorporeal]. But only in human beings is matter annihilated. So it must all be absorbed by us — we must not despise matter, but unite with it. Lemuria, when matter first solidified, is thus redeemed.” [23]

Bearing in mind that for Steiner, the universe is generally equivalent to the solar system, and that the solar system is generally equivalent to stages of our own evolution, Lemuria may be redeemed big time. We may wind up absorbing an awful lot of matter. Whether "matter" will continue to exist beyond our scope is beyond our scope.

VII.

Steiner’s conception of humanity was grandiose in the extreme. We constitute one of ten celestial powers; and we will give rise to two more:

“At the beginning of the Christian era there was an esoteric School which adopted the following names for the Spiritual Beings corresponding to the zodiacal constellations: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai, then Archai (Primal Beginnings or Spirits of Personality), then Archangels and Angels. The tenth category is Man himself at his present stage of evolution. These names denote ten ranks. Man, however, develops onwards and subsequently reaches stages already attained by other Beings. Therefore one day he will also be instrumental in forming an eleventh and a twelfth category. In this sense we must think of twelve spiritual Beings.” [24] Steiner did not always use the names listed here, but he affirmed the existence of this hierarchy. [25]

In our evolution, we will ascend higher and higher into the macrocosm — upward through higher and higher worlds. There is almost no limit to our future capacity (although it may exceed Steiner’s powers of description):

“The Beings, the spiritual Hierarchies, their correspondences with the zodiacal constellations ... all this is presented in detail in the chapter on the evolution of the world in the book OCCULT SCIENCE — An Outline, and we can now understand the deeper reasons for that chapter having been written in the way it has. It describes the Macrocosm as it should be described. Any real description must go back to the spiritual Beings. I tried in the book OCCULT SCIENCE to give guiding lines for the right kind of description of the World of Spirit — the world entered when there has been an actual ascent into the Macrocosm.

“This ascent into the Macrocosm can of course proceed to still higher stages, for the Macrocosm has by no means been exhaustively portrayed by what has here been said. Man can ascend into even higher worlds; but it becomes more and more difficult to convey any idea of these worlds. The higher the ascent, the more difficult this becomes.” [26]

Our ultimate destination is almost inconceivably stupendous:

“In individual human beings there lives a drop of divinity, and we are evolving towards the divine level, on the way to expressing our deepest, innermost nature. Once we have brought our deepest, innermost nature to expression we shall have gradually achieved the transformation of our own being into what is called in Christianity ‘the Father.’ What lies hidden in the human soul, the highest goal that lies ahead of us, is ‘the Father in Heaven’.” [27]

This is perhaps the best summary of Steiner’s view of human nature. Each of us is a microcosm because each of us has, deep within, a drop or seed of divine nature. This seed contains, in rudimentary form, all the essence of the macrocosm; when the seed is cultivated and germinates, the whole macrocosm grows within us. As we evolve, manifesting more and more of the macrocosm at greater and greater levels of spiritual profundity, our divinity expands exponentially — we become gods, like all the gods that are above us in the macrocosmic hierarchy — and then we will evolve upward through the divine ranks until we become God the Father.

How about that?

People of faith may find Steiner’s vision difficult or impossible to reconcile with their own beliefs. Secularists may consider it phantasmagoric, self-aggrandizing nonsense. But there it is, take it or leave it.

VIII.

Are we, in fact, microcosms? Is everything out there contained, in miniature form, inside ourselves? 

To attempt an answer, we may need to differentiate, again, between various points of view. For most people who subscribe to a monotheistic faith, God is the center; He does not depend on us, in any fashion; He certainly is not what we will become; He is the center, and all else depends on him. In some sense some of His essence may be within us (“the god within”), but by no means is all of His essence or all of His creation within us. God and His creation exceed our understanding and our nature.

Most people who subscribe to polytheistic faiths would say the same, more or less, except that they would substitute a plural noun, gods, for the singular noun, God.

For secularists, the matter is more complicated. For us, it is too soon to reach a conclusion — we simply don’t have enough information to give a firm answer. Science has not yet learned enough about the universe as a whole, and it hasn’t even learned enough about human nature. Perhaps someday science will produce enough information so that a firm answer will be possible, but until then all we can say with confidence is that we don’t know. A significant corollary, however, is that probably R. Steiner did not know enough, either. 

In one, probably limited sense, we do have deep ties to the cosmos around us. The materials out of which we are made, and the laws of physics that affect us, are — so far as we know — identical to material and laws that exist elsewhere in the cosmos. Astronomer Carl Sagan famously said: “The fate of individual human beings may not now be connected in a deep way with the rest of the universe, but the matter out of which each of us is made is intimately tied to the processes that occurred immense intervals of time and enormous distances in space away from us. Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic materials we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interiors of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.” [28]

But this is a long way from claiming that we contain within ourselves everything that exists outside ourselves. The physical substances that were cooked inside some sun and then were hurled outward into space when that sun went nova — these are the substances that make up our bodies now. But was that sun typical of the entire cosmos? Did it contain within itself everything outside itself? Probably not, especially if by “everything” we want to include spiritual qualities.

We can say with great confidence that, purely in terms of cosmic geography, we are not at the center of anything. We are not at the center of our solar system, or our galaxy, or the “local group” of galaxies, or the entire multitude of galaxies that constitute the visible universe. The total number of galaxies is incalculable, but it is absolutely gigantic — perhaps much greater than the number of stars in the Milky Way. One authoritative estimate is that there may be 500 hundred billion galaxies [29], compared to 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. [30] The Milky Way, our own galaxy, is about 100,000 light years in diameter. [31] A light year is about 13,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles [32]; so the Milky Way way is about 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. We occupy a small planet circling a small star in an out-of-the way arm of the Milky Way. We are about 21,000 light years from the center of the Milk Way. [33] We live far out in the sticks.

But numbers are just numbers, quantities. What about qualities? Was Steiner right that we human beings have spiritual qualities that tie us to the ultimate central essence of the cosmos? In important ways, this question may be unanswerable. But we can take a stab by noticing that Steiner merely reframed a claim that humans have long made: We are special, we are the plum, the crown of physical creation, and we are far superior to the lowly beings who share our planet, the mere animals. We are, in brief, the micros of the macro. But there’s a contradiction built into this claim: If we contain all essences, we should contain animal essences, so there might not really be much difference between ourselves and the “lower” animals. But for time out of mind, humans have insisted on the distinction between our wonderful selves and all other Earthly life forms. We have been so very insistent about this, one might almost conclude that we don't feel very confident about it. Perhaps we doth protest too much?

Our efforts to prove our elevated nature have not been particularly successful. At various times, we have argued that of all beings on Earth, only we can fashion and use tools, or think, or have emotions. One by one, each of these claims has been disproved. [34] One of the last hopes for our perhaps desperate attempts at self-aggrandizement lies in the claim that our brains are incomparably better than the brains of any lower animals. Steiner taught that the difference between humans and animals is great. He said that most animals were created by human beings ridding themselves of animal essences: “At a particular stage in their earthly development, human beings, to develop further, needed to rid their nature, which then was much different than it is now, of the higher animals." [35] This was his conception of Earthly evolution: The animals were cast out of our essence; we certainly did not evolve from the animals.

When we had rid ourselves of any trace of animality, we stood alone, with our big, fine brains. Steiner placed only limited importance on brain functions such as logical thought, but still he said that our human brains are quite wonderful. “[T]he human brain, indeed the whole system of nerves and senses, is a replica of an Imaginative element [i.e., a divine or divinely human Thought]. We completely grasp the wonderful structure of the human brain only when we learn to investigate Imaginatively [i.e., using clairvoyance]. Then, the human brain appears as a realized human Imagination.” [36] This is yet another example of how, according to Steiner, our own thoughts create realities: Our own thoughts create our brains, as it were. If we think that we think with our brains, this becomes a chicken-and-egg paradox. But remember that Steiner said that real cognition doesn’t occur in our brains but in our “organs of clairvoyance,” so the problem is resolved.

Whether or not we think with our brains, there can be little doubt that — judged by certain our own standards — we humans are much smarted than any other earthly creatures. But if “intelligence” is defined in ways that do not automatically flatter humans, the issue becomes quite interesting. Let’s briefly consider the structure of our brains as compared to the brains of whales and dolphins. By some accounts, these creatures have brains that are not only larger than ours but more complex in various ways. “By far the most striking characteristic of the structure of the dolphin brain is the organization of the neocortex ... It is the part of the brain generally understood to be responsible for higher cognitive functions including ... reasoning, thinking, planning, and so on. The human neocortex is highly convoluted, or folded on itself ... Dolphins actually have more wrinkles in their neocortex than humans do.” [37]

Please don’t misunderstand. In offering this quotation and others (see "Whales"), I am not arguing that whales and dolphins are smarter than we are. But the absolute difference between us and them may be much smaller than we like to pretend. Whales and dolphins often do very stupid things, such as beaching themselves for no good reason (or no good reason that we can understand, anyway). But consider human history. How many times have we done extremely stupid, self-destructive things? A better question might be, how often have we refrained from doing extremely stupid, self-destructive things? 

I’ll conclude this way: We are great. We are wonderful. But our species chauvinism — our insistence on our own marvelousness — may not be quite as justified as we think. Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that someday a starship arrives, piloted by super-smart creatures from some distant planet. [38] Now imagine trying to explain human history and knowledge to them. They would grasp our bloody history, presumably — all our wars and genocides and atrocities. But they would probably be aghast. As for our sciences, they would probably grasp them easily — although they might be surprised at how backward we are. Now, imagine trying to explain Anthroposophy to them. Imagine trying to explain to them that we are Microcosms, on our way to becoming God the Father. After they stopped laughing, they would probably pat us on the head and then fly away, still looking for signs of intelligent life in this corner of the universe. As for us on our little, rocky world, they would probably chalk us up as delusional primitives, perhaps worth investigating again in a few millennia.

---

Hubble photograph, NASA.

There are billions upon billions of galaxies.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way,

is a perfectly fine little galaxy,

but it is just one of the many billions of galaxies.

An important lesson each child learns is that s/he is not the center of the universe. We don’t like this lesson; solipsism is more attractive to the human ego. I, me, my. ME!!!

Parents must lovingly help each child learn that it isn’t all about you. Or me. Each of us is precious; life is wonderful. But we aren’t the center of the universe.

Humanity as a whole has had to learn the same lesson. The Earth is not the center of the solar system. The solar system is not the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is not the center of the universe. That’s how it is. We want to be the center, but we are not.

Humanity is wonderful. Our lives are rich; our potential is great. But we are not the center of the universe. Humanity has learned this lesson, grudgingly, gradually. But we have learned it. We no longer burn at the stake iconoclasts who deny that the Earth is the center of everything. We’ve grown up.

Most of us have, anyway. But not Anthroposophists. Steiner’s fairy tale, Anthroposophy, insists on the ancient, ignorant belief that we are central. This is a medieval fallacy, a pathetic lie, a delusion. It is benighted. It is Anthroposophy.

---

"[T]he human being is not an accident, the chance product of an impersonal, mechanistic evolutionary process. We are not the descendant of lower primates, not just a hairy [sic] ape. The human being is the crowning jewel of creation. The entire created universe has been brought into being so that the human being might come into existence." [Ronald E. Koetzsch, Ph.D., "Anthroposophy 101". Koetzsch is an Anthroposophist connected with the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.]

Dr. Koetzsch's statement is a nice summary of the Anthroposophical view, or at least one version of one part of it. His statement also allows us to recognize the deep human desire behind such a view. None of us wants to be an accident. None of us wants to be a mere "hairy ape." (I suspect Dr. Koetzsch meant hairless ape, but the point is unchanged — we don't want to think of ourselves as apes, hirsute or otherwise.) We would all love to think we are the "crowning jewel of creation" and that the "entire created universe" was made for our benefit. We all know what it means to our egos to have these wishes. The question, however, is whether these are more than mere wishes.

I recommend reading "Anthroposophy 101", by the way. Click on the link I've provided. The essay is a pretty good summary of the face Anthroposophists often want to put on their creed. The essay is benign, vague, and evasive — it says much to make Anthroposophy seem as attractive as possible, while omitting most of the particulars, especially particulars that may strike most people as bizarre and/or deplorable. But read it, and contemplate. Note, for instance, the unresolved problems. Dr. Koetzsch says, for instance, that there is a "single creator God," but after enumerating the hierarchies of spiritual beings above us (these are gods, according to Steiner), Dr. Koetzsch says that "the human being is a creation of this cosmos of spiritual beings." Well, then, does Anthroposophy recognize a "single creator God" or a plethora of creating gods? Steiner was actually quite clear on this point. Monotheism is false, he said; it is an ideal we may evolve toward, but we live in a universe of many, many gods. “Monotheism or monism can only represent an ultimate ideal; it could never lead to a real understanding of the world, to a comprehensive, complete view of the world.” [Rudolf Steiner, THE MISSION OF THE FOLK SOULS (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2005), p. 115.]

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AFTERWORD

Like many German philosophers and thinkers, Steiner placed great emphasis on the will or willpower.  He said it is a faculty that must be strengthened. It is the reflection of Atma, the spark of divine creativity (i.e., the “Godhead”) within us. By developing the will, we develop our ability to freely choose to lose ourselves in the Godhead. Our centrality then will reach its ultimate expression.

“That which becomes the force of Atma is, in so far as it is a force emanating from the Godhead, of a volitional nature. If you pause to reflect upon your own power of volition, upon your will power, then you have a pale copy, a pale reflection of that which proceeds from the force of Atma, from the Godhead. Will is the power or force which is least developed to-day. The will, however, has the potentiality to grow increasingly in strength until a time will come when it reaches its maximum potentiality, when it will be able to attain its goal, which the religions call the ‘Great Sacrifice’.” [39]

We give up ourselves in order to realize ourselves, our potential, our godliness.  We perform an act of creation like that which is usually credited to God. The “Great Sacrifice” is “the great offering, signifying the will-power to sacrifice oneself completely, not merely in the driblets we are capable of giving away with our present puny feelings and will forced, but to sacrifice our whole being, allowing it all, right down to our material substance, to flow away [40] 

“You get an idea of what is meant by this great sacrifice, the highest expression of will in divine nature, if you picture it like this. Imagine yourself standing in front of a mirror in which your image looks back at you. The image is an illusory picture resembling you completely. Now imagine yourself dying by sacrificing your own existence, your feeling, your thought, your very being into that image, so as to make it into what you yourself are. This phenomenon of sacrificing oneself and giving one’s life to an image is what spiritual science of all ages has called the ‘outpouring’, the ‘emanation’ ... When the will has reached this level of being capable of making the great sacrifice it creates a universe, great or small, and this universe is an image whose mission is given it by the person who has created it.” [41]

Our willpower affects our physical behavior and motions; it is directly tied to our limbs. The following is a bit hard to comprehend, but according to Steiner a person’s willpower moves the limbs which, in that person’s next incarnation, will become the head, and the willpower will then become the thoughts in the head. Putting this in perhaps more sensible terms, we create our future mental reality through the acts of willpower we perform in the present.

“[T]he organization of the human head is constructed in such a way as to be specially capable of taking in thought from the world. It is formed indeed from thought. It points at the same time to our previous existence on earth. We know that the head is really the result, the metamorphosed result of the previous life, while the organization of the human limbs points to a future life on earth. Roughly speaking, we have our head because our limbs have been metamorphosed from the previous life into the head. The limbs we now have, with everything belonging to them, will be metamorphosed into the head we shall carry in our next earth-life. At present, in our life between birth and death, thoughts function in our head. These thoughts, as we have also seen, are the reshaping of what functioned as will in our limbs in our previous existence. And again, what functions as will in our present limbs will be reshaped and changed into thoughts in our next life on earth.

“The will thus appears as the seed, as it were, of thought. What is at first will becomes thought later on. If we look at ourselves as human beings with heads, we must look back to our past, for in this past we had the character of will. If we look into the future, we must take into account the character of will in our present limbs and must say: This is what in future will become our head: thinking man. But we continually carry both these in us. We are created out of the universe because thought from a previous age is organized in us in conjunction with will, which leads over into the future.” [42]

Will creates our future, the universe we inhabit in our next life. Specifically, it creates our next physical reality. “[M]atter is the outer side of will. Within, matter is will, as light is thought. From outside, will is matter, as thought is outwardly light. For this reason I pointed out tin former addresses: If man dives down mystically into his will-nature, then those who only toy with Mysticism and really only strive after a sensuous experience of their Ego and of the worst egoism, believe they will find the spirit. But if they went far enough with this introspection, they would discover the true material nature of man's interior. For it is nothing less than a diving down into matter. If you dive down into the will-nature, you will find the true nature of matter. The scientific philosophers of today are only telling fairy-stories when they talk about matter consisting of molecules and atoms. You find the true nature of matter by diving down mystically into yourself. There you find the other side of will, and that is matter. And in this matter, that is in Will, is revealed finally the continually beginning, continually germinating world.” [43]

During our earthly lives, we exist in the physical world, obviously, but we also exist in other worlds. Our “etheric bodies” exist in the elemental world, the realm of elemental beings or nature spirits. Other portions of our being exist in higher realms. In order to keep our wits in other worlds, we must strengthen our will.

“The soul that has become clairvoyant may say to itself within the spiritual world: ‘In the physical world I am confined to what my physical body allows me to observe; in the elemental world I am limited by my etheric body; in the spiritual world I am restricted by finding myself, as it were, upon an island in the universe and by feeling my spiritual existence bounded by the shores of that island. Beyond them is a world which I should be able to perceive if I were to work my way through the veil which is woven before the eyes of my spirit by the actions of living thought-beings.’ Now the soul is indeed able to work its way through this veil, if it continues to develop further and further the faculty of self surrender which is already necessary for its life in the elemental world. It is under the necessity of still further strengthening the forces which accrue to it from experience in the physical world, in order to be guarded in supersensible worlds from having its consciousness deadened, clouded, or even annihilated. In the physical world the soul, in order to experience thoughts within itself, has need only of the strength naturally allotted to it apart from its own inner work. In the elemental world thoughts, which immediately on arising fall into oblivion, are softened down to dreamlike experience, i.e. do not come into the consciousness at all, unless the soul, before entering this world, has worked on the strengthening of its inner life. For this purpose it must specially strengthen the will-power, for in the elemental world a thought is no longer merely a thought; it has an inner activity, or life of its own. It has to be held fast by the will if it is not to leave the circle of the consciousness. In the spiritual world thoughts are completely independent living beings. If they are to remain in the consciousness, the soul must be so strengthened that it develops within itself and of itself the force which the physical body develops for it in the physical world, and which in the elemental world is developed by the sympathies and antipathies of the etheric body. It must forgo all this assistance in the spiritual world.” [44]

In one — and perhaps only one — sense Steiner’s teachings on these matters are true. We will “see” what he wants us to see only if we will ourselves to do so; only by willfully bearing down all obstacles of rationality and clarity can we have the fantastical visions he offers us.

— Roger Rawlings

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For more about our central role

and august destiny,

please see "Tenth Hierarchy".

---

---

Some illustrations on each page are closely connected to the essay on that page; others are not — they provide general context. 

---

 “You look upon the plant and say to yourself: I am a being of which on the earth I see only a reflection. The more I turn my gaze to the stars, the more do I see the true being up there. Nature only reveals itself to me in its wholeness when I look up from the earth to the stars, when I see the earth as one with the cosmos. Then I look back at myself as a human being and say to myself: That in the plant which reaches up to the sky is what here on earth I have in me compressed together. As a human being I bear within myself the physical, the soul, [and] the spiritual world."  [Rudolf Steiner, BLACKBOARD DRAWINGS 1919-1924 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2003), p. 163. R.R, sketch, 2009, based on Steiner's. Whether Steiner's illustrations clarify his words is a matter of personal interpretation.]

 

---

The center,

the mandala,

the heart,

the flower,

the microcosm.

[R.R., ~1964-5.

This is the only drawing I still possess that I created

while a Waldorf student or immediately thereafter.]

---

"To grasp the world, look into your inner self.

To grasp the human being, look into the world."

[Rudolf Steiner, BLACKBOARD DRAWINGS 1919-1924 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2003), p. 54.

My sketch of Steiner's sketch, 2009.]

T = thinking

F = feeling

W = will

blue spirals = universal knowledge of the past

orange spirals = universal knowledge of the future

---

Waldorf student art

reflecting the relationship of the small

to the large, the micro to the macro.

[Courtesy of PLANS.]

---

"Most educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria and amoebae." — Martin Reese, the Astronomer Royal, 2006.

---

Steiner taught that, as the central beings of the universe, we have occult links to everything else in the universe.

Here is a non-Anthropsophical variation of this notion.

"CHART SHOWING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HUMAN BODY AND THE EXTERIOR UNIVERSE.

"From Kircher's Œdipus Ægyptiacus.

"The ornamental border contains groups of names of animal, mineral, and vegetable substances, Their relationship to corresponding parts of the human body is shown by the dotted lines. The words in capital letters on the dotted lines indicate to what corporeal member, organ, or disease, the herb or other substance is related. The favorable positions in relation to the time of year are shown by the signs of the zodiac, each house of which is divided by crosses into its three decans. This influence is further emphasized by the series of planetary signs placed on either side of the figure."

[Manly P. Hall, THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES (Forgotten Books, 2008), p. 134.]

(I present such material from outside Anthroposophy to place Steiner's doctrines in their occult context

and to facilitate comparing and contrasting Anthroposophy with other occult and eosteric systems. - RR)

---

Here is the Anthroposophical take:

"Not only do these human and cosmic rhythms coincide, but the physical structure of the human beings is, according to spiritual science, actually a mirror of the universe. Each region of the zodiac can be looked upon as the home of particular spiritual beings and a centre of forces. There are 12 signs of the zodiac and 12 corresponding parts of the human organism ... While the forces of the zodiac correspond to the human physical structure, the planets and their forces are mirrored in the internal organs ... Thus for example: Sun: Heart : Aurum (gold); Moon: Genitals: argenum (silver); Mercury: Lungs: Cinnabar (mercury)."

[Roy Wilkinson, THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF STEINER EDUCATION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996), pp. 46-47.]

[R.R. sketch, 2009, based on sketch on p. 48.]

---

---

It all makes sense — it all hangs together.

Or so Steiner said, drawing on astrology

and others untruths.

[http://www.fromoldbooks.org/.]

---

 [R.R., ~ 1975, using MORE ALTAIR DESIGN (Pantheon, 1974).] 

“Our present Earth-evolution emerged from the Old Moon evolution, this from the Old Sun, the Old Sun from Old Saturn. Then consider everything which had to be brought together to carry this planetary evolution forward to the Earth stage, and you will say: throughout the whole cosmic process man is never absent. He is involved in all of it. All the forces and happenings of the cosmos are focused on man — that is how we must conceive it. In a conversation between Capesius and the Initiate, in one of my Mystery Plays, I have specially tried to show what an impression it must make on anyone if he realises that all the generations of the gods, all the power of the universe, are summoned to the task of placing man in the centre of their creative activity.” [Rudolf Steiner, INNER ASPECT OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974), lecture 1, GA 193.]

---

"People on earth have all kinds of religions, but all these religions have one thing in common: that man looks up to higher beings, the gods, and worships them. But these higher beings, the gods, also have a religion: they too look up to something in awe and reverence. What is this religion of the gods? What is it that the gods revere? It is man. Man is the religion of the gods." [Rudolf Steiner, quoted by Charles Kovacs, THE SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND TO CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS (Floris Books, 2007), pp. 72-73.]

"It is for the the sake of this ultimate end, for the sake of this perfect man, that the whole universe and all there is in it has come into existence, it so for the sake of that perfect man at the end of time that the whole world has been created." [Ibid., p. 73.] 

 

---

Steiner taught that we humans are exceptional beings. Someday — far, far in the future — we will attain almost inconceivable heights, and our apotheosis will fulfill our own free choices. "[A]the end of his evolution he [man] will bear within him only what he has gained through his own efforts, not what he was given, but what he has created out of nothingness.” [Rudolf Steiner, THE BEING OF MAN AND HIS FUTURE EVOLUTION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981), lecture 9, GA 107.] This is salvation, Anthroposophy-style.

It's going to take us  a while to get there, of course. And note that the "nothingness" out of which we will create ourselves is actually a tremendously long, careful observance of the divine cosmic plan created by the gods. Over a span of millennia, we will have been conditioned to be what the gods want us to be — which, paradoxically (or, worse, impossibly) means being free of the gods and their plan. Still, this is what Steiner has promised us. We will be perfected; we will become God the Father; we will take charge; we begetting ourselves.

We might ask ourselves why Steiner offered such an astonishing vision. What need in his followers was he trying to address?

Steiner spoke of “[T]he longing human soul in its yearning, tormented emptiness” [Rudolf Steiner, THE SPIRITUAL HIERARCHIES AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), p. 224]. Like Buddha, he offered his system as an antidote to suffering: “[W]e may point to spiritual science as a bearer of the redemption of human longing ... spiritual science now provides what tempestuous but also woeful human beings have sought for a long time.” [Ibid., p. 231.]

Steiner sought to assuage the emptiness that so many people feel — the sense of inferiority, worthlessness, self-loathing that gnaws at innumerable human hearts. Do our lives have meaning? Does the universe give a damn about me? Why am I here?

In his doctrines, Steiner emphasized the "I" — the sense of self. He celebrated it, and he promised a wonderful ultimate fulfillment. Your lives are not meaningless. You are central to the entire universe, and one day you will stand at the absolute pinnacle of all creation. You will be God!

What a vision! What a promise! If you can take it seriously, that is.

Of course, there is an alternative, one that we can take perfectly seriously. Instead of plunging into occultism hoping for a grandiose, fantastical payoff bordering on megalomania (an enormous over-compensation for our self-doubts), we could set our feet on the ground, open our eyes, and gain authentic self-respect in the real world by treating one another well. Morality and rationality could take us a long way, here and now, if we'd care to give them a try.

It's just a thought.

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ENDNOTES

[1] The “universe,” for Steiner, is often confined to the solar system, although he acknowledged that many celestial orbs exist outside the solar system.

[2]  Rudolf Steiner, MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1985), pp. 44-45.

[3] See “Humouresque”.

[4] "microcosm." ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. 2009. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 28 Aug. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/380333/microcosm>.

[5] See “Everything” and “Steiner Static”.

[6] Rudolf Steiner, THEOSOPHY (Anthroposophic Press, 1971), GA 9, chapter 3.

THEOSOPHY is an early work, from the period before Steiner split and set up his own system, Anthroposophy. But Steiner said that his later truths built upon his early truths — there is no contradiction between early and late. He had been right all along, in other words, although he became righter as he progressed. “The outline ... has in no way been shaken ... [E]verything that I have since been able to adduce becomes a further elaboration of the original picture.” [Rudolf Steiner, OCCULT SCIENCE (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979), p. 12.] Steiner wrote the words on Jan. 10, 1925, not long before he died.

[7] Rewriting Shakespeare seems dicey, but what Steiner meant is that people with profound spiritual insight could restore Shakespeare’s plays to their original form, by looking within their own souls, where the plays as Shakespeare wrote them are imprinted, since within us we have the imprint of the spiritual realm, where Shakespeare’s character reside.

To give an even more august example, “[T]he initiate is no longer dependent on the Gospels ... he would be capable of writing the Gospels himself if they had not already been written.” [Rudolf Steiner, SPIRITUAL SCIENCE AS A FOUNDATION FOR SOCIAL FORMS (Anthroposophic Press, 1986), p. 20.]

It’s all inside us and/or imprinted on the Akashic Record, which Initiates can read.

[8] French poets such as these use a dead language to portray unreal characters, characters that cannot exist in the spirit realm. Remember, “Use of the French language quite certainly corrupts the soul." [Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 558.]

[9] Ibid., pp. 336-337.

[10] Rudolf Steiner, MAN AS SYMPHONY OF THE CREATIVE WORD (Rudolf Steiner Press), GA 230, lecture 2, October 20, 1923.

[11] MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM, p. 11.

[12] Rudolf Steiner, HOW TO KNOW HIGHER WORLDS (Anthroposophic Press, 1994.)

This book is also known, in a different translation, as KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS AND ITS ATTAINMENT (Anthroposophic Press, 1944 and 1947.)

[13] MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM, pp. 13-15.

[14] Ibid., pp. 19-23.

[15] Ibid.,pp. 40-41.

[16] Ibid., p. 44.

[17] “The best would be if you considered gravity only as a word.” [FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 29.] 

[18] “[W]e can certainly speak of a daily motion of the Earth around her axis, but by no means of a yearly motion of the Earth around the Sun. For the Earth follows the Sun ... Were the Earth revolving round the Sun, we should expect her axis ... to point in the direction of different fixed stars during this revolution. But it does not!” [Rudolf Steiner, MAN - HIEROGLYPH OF THE UNIVERSE,  p. 85.]

[19] MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM, p. 45.

[20] Ibid., pp. 196-197.

[21] Ibid., p. 93.

[22] Rudolf Steiner, THE MYSTERY OF THE UNIVERSE (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2001), p. 212.

[23] Richard Seddon, THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH AS FORESEEN BY RUDOLF STEINER (Temple Lodge Publishing, 2002), p. 83.

[24] MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM, p. 109.

Note the connection to astrology.

[25] Steiner’s version of the Great Chain of Being is this: below the triune Godhead, in descending order, are Seraphim, Cherubim, Spirits of Will, Spirits of Wisdom, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Form, Zeitgeists or Archai, Archangels, Angels, Men, Animals, Plants, and Minerals. See “Rankings”.

[26] MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM, pp. 110-111.

[27] Rudolf Steiner, THE LORD’S PRAYER (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2007), p. 17.

[28] Carl Sagan, CARL SAGAN'S COSMIC CONNECTION (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 190.

[29] http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html.

For fun, I’ve used a NASA site intended for children: This is all elementary-school stuff.

[30] http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/MarissaWager.shtml.

[31] http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980317b.html.

[32] http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980317b.html.

[33] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center.

Wikipedia is unreliable, but because Anthroposophists seem fond of it, I thought I’d use it here.

[34] See, e.g., the books by Temple Grandin.

[35] Rudolf Steiner, THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), pp. 69-70.

[36] MATERIALISM AND THE TASK OF ANTHROPOSOPHY (SteinerBooks, 1987), p. 25.

[37] Kathleen M. Dudzinski and Toni Frohoff, DOLPHIN MYSTERIES (Yale University Press, 1008), p. 94.

What uses do whales and dolphins make of their big brains? One is navigation through echolocation in the murky depths. [Ibid., p. 94.] This is something no human can do — by whales’ standards, we are awfully dumb. But what else might they use their brains for? Lacking hands, they cannot be builders like us. So, are they dreamers? Are they musicians, myth makers, story tellers (what is the content of their long, elaborate “songs”)? Are they possibly philosophers? Theologians? Probably not; probably none of these. But we don’t know. Which goes to show the limits of our own intelligence.

One additional speculation: Man fell. We were expelled from Paradise. Have the whales and dolphins been expelled, or do they still live in their own version of Paradise? Do they spend their time doing what we dream of doing in Heaven: Singing, playing, praying, praising the Creator, and enjoying pleasant meals and love? Probably not. But we don’t know.

The major problem in their “paradise” is, of course, us. What do they think of us, the “smart” species that hunts them and pollutes their environment? Do they understand that we are potentially driving them, and many other life forms on Earth —  including ourselves — to extinction? Do they judge us? Do they forgive us?

[38] Are we alone in the universe? We don't know, but the case for life on other planets, far away, grows stronger yearly. (I'm speaking here of physical beings in the physical universe, not the sorts of planetary spirits Steiner claimed to see clairvoyantly.) 

“We are fairly certain of more than 300 ‘exoplanets’ [planets orbiting distant stars] ... The exponential vastness of the universe tells us — if we apply reasonable, conservative inference — that there have to be billions more exoplanets ... Simple back-of-the-envelope arithmetic will demonstrate the new inconceivability of our being the only intelligent beings in the universe ... [H]umankind’s sense of itself here on Earth has yet to undergo the sea change suggested by the facts.” [Thomas Mallon, “Across the Universe”, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, May, 2009, p. 60.]

[39] Rudolf Steiner, “The Structure of the Lord's Prayer” (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1971).

[40] Various translations of Steiner's work offer varying indications of his meaning. You have to navigate these shoals carefully. One alternate translation of the sentence we have just seen gives it an almost opposite construction: “In future time he will have developed the strength to sacrifice his whole being by letting it flow directly into material substance.” [Rudolf Steiner, THE LORD’S PRAYER, Anthroposophic Press, 1970.] If we accept this construction, then put Great Sacrifice is directly comparable to Christ's.

[41] Rudolf Steiner, THE LORD’S PRAYER (Rudolf Steiner’s Press, 2007), pp. 8-9.

[42] Rudolf Steiner, COLOUR, lecture I, “Thought and Will as Light and Darkness” (Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, 1935).

[43] Ibid.

[44] Rudolf Steiner, THE THRESHOLD OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD  (Book Tree, 2003), pp. 89-90.