EVERYTHING

He suffered from hallucinations — he was mentally ill. That’s one possibility, anyway. Another possibility is that Rudolf Steiner never had a “vision” in his life, but in order to be considered a great and wise spiritual leader, he lied, claiming to possess clairvoyant powers. Or, of course, there is a third possibility. Perhaps Steiner actually was psychic and, fully sane, he really saw what he claimed to see. 

Steiner said he was a “spiritual scientist” who objectively investigated the “supersensible” spirit realm — phenomena that we cannot study with our normal senses or with any of the usual equipment of science such as telescopes, microscopes, and the like. In other essays, I have argued that Steiner’s claims are hollow; his “visions” are useless to us, since they are utterly divorced from reality. Steiner critic Anthony Storr has made the same point, writing that Steiner’s “so-called ‘thinking,’ his supposed power of supersensible perception, led to a vision of the world, the universe, and cosmic history which is entirely unsupported by any evidence, which is at odds with practically everything which modern physics and astronomy have revealed, and which is more like science fiction than anything else.” [1]

But let’s not be too hasty. To give Steiner’s visions an airing, I’d like to discuss OCCULT SCIENCE - AN OUTLINE, the book in which Steiner lays out his visions more completely than anywhere else. [2] First published in 1909, OCCULT SCIENCE is one of Steiner’s early spiritual works, but the author revised it repeatedly during the subsequent years, preparing the final version just months before his death. By Steiner’s own account, the book’s revelations were always correct, and they only become more completely correct with each revision. For the 1925 edition, he wrote “OCCULT SCIENCE - AN OUTLINE, now to be published in a new edition, is after all an epitome of anthroposophical Spiritual Science as a whole ... The outline as presented fifteen years ago has in no way been shaken. Inserted in its proper place and context, everything that I have since been able to adduce becomes a further elaboration of the original picture.” [3] The revisions Steiner made over time are actually larger than he admitted, but nonetheless Steiner assures us that the book conveys the real cosmic lowdown. So let’s take a look.

◊◊◊◊

◊ Direct Experience ◊

Steiner insisted that everything he said about the spirit realm came from his own direct clairvoyant experiences, not from the occult texts he had read. “As to whatever I might formerly have read ... I was able to eliminate such things completely while engaged on supersensible research.” [4] Early in OCCULT SCIENCE, Steiner spends a great deal of time repeating words such as “research,” “science,” and — especially — “supersensible,” as if this will convince us that his work is a serious investigation of extremely important matters. But he leaves a great deal unexplained and unproven. Centrally, he never establishes that the invisible “Spirit-land” actually exists, and he never establishes that clairvoyance (or “supersensible perception” or “supersensible observation”) works. To read the book favorably, you have to get past these problems. (If you are religious, you may believe that the spirit realm exists, as Steiner claimed. But realize that Steiner’s version of the spirit realm is extremely different from anything you will find in the Bible or Qur'an or most other texts accepted by major religions. We’ll return to this point.) 

Steiner said he had his first spiritualistic experience when he was a young boy. [5] The spirit of a dead relative appeared before him and asked for his help. Maybe this happened; maybe not. A sympathetic interpretation is that Steiner saw spiritualistic visions all his life, and as an adult he was drawn to mysticism because he found in it an explanation of the unworldly experiences he had undergone. Gary Lachman, among others, takes this line. [6]

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◊ Your Dog Doesn’t Remember You ◊

Here’s what may seem to be a small point, but it occurs fairly early in OCCULT SCIENCE, so I’ll deal with it early. 

“To attribute memory to animals is an error ... It is natural enough to think of memory when a dog recognizes its master ... Yet in reality the recognition depends not on memory ... Surely, one might [think], since the dog grieves when its master goes away, it must retain some memory of him ... [But] the animal’s behaviour implies the absence of all memory.” [7] Steiner taught that of all earthly beings, only humans have the spark of self-aware divinity called the “I” or “ego” (although by “ego” he didn’t mean what the word usually means). Lacking “I”s, animals are extremely limited and low. Indeed, I’ll point out how, for Steiner, “animal” was virtually a synonym for wicked.

Overlook the biological fact that we humans are animals. Steiner insisted that human beings occupy an exalted place among creation. He called his ideology “anthroposophy” to accentuate the significance of humanity (anthropos: Greek for human being). We are the spiritual hub around which the whole Earth turns. To underscore the utter difference between humans and animals, Steiner asserted that your dog can’t remember who you are, s/he just takes some vague pleasure in your presence just as s/he would enjoy warm sunlight or a juicy steak.

The evidence to support Steiner’s view about the minds and biological processes of animals would undoubtedly be very interesting, except that Steiner produced none.

◊ Only I Am “I” ◊

“It is only to himself that any being can apply this name [“I”]. ‘I am an I only to myself; to every other being I am a you, and every other being is a you to me.’” Steiner often didn’t realize how foolish he sounded. But, to continue: “The real being [i.e., essence] of the I is independent of all external things and for this very reason no external thing or person can call it by its name. Hence those religious faiths which have consciously maintained their connection with the supersensible world speak of the I as the Unutterable Name of God.” [8] 

Steiner’s teachings are explicitly gnostic. Gnosticism holds that salvation can be obtained only by acquiring secret or mystery knowledge of the divine (gnosis: Greek for knowledge). This is what “occult science” is intended to achieve. The salvation Steiner offered is nothing immediate: It will be attained only after a long series of reincarnations during which we gradually evolve to higher levels of spiritual development. Distinctly unbiblical, reincarnation is a basic Anthroposophical tenet. Steiner taught that human beings live alternately in physical reality and in Spirit-land. Each time a human dies, s/he goes to Spirit-land for a considerable period of time, and then s/he is reincarnated in a new physical body. If we live well, each reincarnation can represent another upward evolutionary step. But for this to happen, we need to know and act upon occult, gnostic secrets that are hidden from most other humans. (One of the appeals some people find in occultism is the self-aggrandizing notion that, as insiders, they possess stupendous secrets.)

Like many spiritualists, Steiner taught that a divine spark is present inside each real human being. Steiner called this spark the “I” — the god, or portion of a god, within us. It is an entity having independent existence (“the real being of the I...”), and it is gnostic, hidden, mysterious (“the Unutterable Name...”). Steiner taught that Jesus had this spark, and we can follow Jesus by emulating his enactment of the “I.” In one sense, Jesus was a messenger, bringing us gnosis or knowledge. Jesus may also be considered to be the Word, the message itself. Then again, according to Steiner, Jesus is a Sun Being, a spirit who dwells on the Sun. We’ll dig into these matters as we proceed. [9]

◊ Looking Around in Spirit-land ◊

“The science of the supersensible can at most give pictures in attempting to describe what happens in this ‘Land of Spirits’ ... [I]n Spirit-land ... the Ego [the “I,” which can journey to Spirit-land] will experience a kind of colour ... a world radiant with colour ... Needless to say, since the manner of their origin is so very different, the colour-experiences of the spiritual world differ in character from those we enjoy in the world of Nature.” [10] Spirit-land is a place of colors, but not colors as we know them. We might wonder, then, what Steiner means by the word “color” (or “colour”) in this context. Nothing specific, actually. Steiner pulls this trick often: He uses a word — “color” or “Saturn” or “ether” or (fill in the blank) — and then he informs us that he doesn’t mean what the word means, he means something else. This is a clever way of claiming that he’s talking about very, very deep stuff while simultaneously protecting himself from criticism. We cannot subject his teachings to rational examination or analysis, he often said. [11]

The “pictures” we form of the spirit realm must necessarily be vague, he said, but forming them is the central to “the science of the supersensible.” Although the spirit realm lacks clear definitions and forms, we can develop hazy imagined images for our edification. Steiner repeatedly expressed the need for “imagination” as a means of grasping spiritual truths. A skeptic might respond that no truths can result from making misty pictures of that which cannot be pictured. [12]

“Spirit-land” is Theosophy-talk for the spirit realm — Steiner was a Theosophist before he created Anthroposophy. Steiner also used the term “spiritland” to mean something rather different, stages of evolution. His use of language really did leave something to be desired. (To be fair, Steiner wrote and spoke in German, so we can assign some of his verbal gaffes to translation problems. However, having tackled some of Steiner’s work in his native tongue, I can attest that translators have generally improved his prose.)

◊ Karma ◊

“In this relationship of law and causation between an earlier and a later life [reincarnation] we have to recognize the real Law of Destiny ... the law of ‘Karma.’” [13] When you die, your deeds follow you into “Spirit-land.” There, you learn what you did right and what you did wrong. During your next earthly life, you must try to build on what you did right and atone for what you did wrong. You will get many, many chances to get things right, since you will have many, many lives both in the physical universe and in “Spirit-land.” But you must not waste your lives. Evolution will proceed, and if you fail to keep abreast, you will be left behind, which would be a huge mistake. The ultimate fate of non-evolvers will be horrific.

Several threads of Steiner’s thought come together at this point. The basic structure of cosmic history is a process of evolution, but not the sort of evolution that you’ll find in biology books. The essence of our evolution is spiritual, an ascent to higher forms of consciousness. We and many other spiritual beings gradually ascend from near-comatose insensibility to universe- encompassing Wisdom. Along the way, we continually shed “lowly” aspects of ourselves. Animals are not only beneath us, but some of them are actually the embodiment of characteristics that we had to cast aside in order to evolve properly. During our evolution, we will also need to rid ourselves of lowly racial characteristics. We will examine these baleful doctrines in due course. 

◊ In the Beginning ◊

“The material [Earth] evolve[d] out of the spiritual; until then, the spiritual alone existed ... the Earth-planet has evolved out of a cosmic spiritual entity.” [14] The Bible says God created the heavens and the earth — God and the universe He created are separate things. Steiner’s version is a bit different. The Earth, he says, “evolved” out of a “spiritual entity” — and, underneath, the Earth is the same as the spiritual entity. Steiner offers this helpful analogy: “[I]t is very much as though we might be looking at a vessel [i.e., a glass or a bowl] filled with water, where by a finely regulated cooling process, lumps of ice were gradually taking shape. We see the ice condense out of what was water ... Similarly ... material things, events and entities condense, as it were, out of a previous existence which was spiritual....” [15] The water stays water, even though it changes from liquid to solid. Same for the Earth, it is a condensed form of the spiritual entity — the proto-Earthish spirit. At their core, the Earth and its originating spirit are the same. It is also worth noting how Steiner’s account omits all mention of God per se. Take that, Book of Genesis.

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[R.R., ~ 2000.]

◊ Where He Gets It ◊

“[I]f we are able to raise our faculty of perception [i.e., clairvoyance] and look through the visible world to the invisible, we arrive at length at a point where we have [i.e., see] before us what might be compared to a mighty spiritual panorama ... These abiding traces of all spiritual happenings may be call the ‘Akashic Records’....” [16] The Akashic Records are a celestial encyclopedia written on a universal ether (akasha: Sanskrit for sky or ether). If you become psychic like Steiner, you too can read these records. They actually contain everything ever, since physical stuff is spiritual stuff, deep down, so “spiritual happenings” include all physical happenings as well as all emotions, thoughts, dreams, and so on. Everything.

In reading Steiner, you may occasionally find yourself bridling. You may doubt, for instance, that a cosmic encyclopedia written on ether really exists. Certainly you may doubt that clairvoyance is a real faculty. These are the sorts of hurdles one must jump across to follow Steiner. Anthroposophy is a mystic’s version of the ultimate goal of modern physics: producing a theory of everything, a set of laws that account for all phenomena. Steiner tried to hammer almost all occult phenomena into his worldview. Some people believe in goblins; okay, include them in the paradigm. Some people believe in guardian angels, so include them; the Akashic Records, include them; magic, alchemy, sorcerers, conversations with the dead, Odin, Thor, Loki — include them, include, include. [17] But the result is a grotesque jerrybuilt contraption, a set of doctrines lacking fundamental coherence. At the end of this essay, I’ll offer a few suggestions on how to evaluate Steiner’s amazing claims.

◊ Prehistory 201 ◊

On other pages on this Web site, we have looked into Steiner’s account of the distant past. Let’s examine some of these matters more deeply now. We’ll start with the first stage of human evolution, which is Saturn (bearing in mind that Steiner generally denied that in using words like “Saturn” he meant what the words mean): “If we would form an idea — pictorial, but approximating to reality — of the conditions during Saturn evolution [i.e., our evolution “on” Saturn], we must bear in mind that of the things and beings now belonging to the Earth ... virtually nothing was in existence then ... Of the beings of the Earth which are physically perceptible to-day [sic] man alone was present at that time, and of him only the physical body.” [18] Steiner taught that human beings were the first life forms on Earth, and back during our Saturn phase, humans were the first to develop physical bodies. At that time, we were surrounded by spiritual beings whose “activity upon the scene of Saturn resulted in the subsequent evolution of man.” [19] Other spirits surround us now, also affecting our development.

Our original physical bodies were completely unlike what we have today: “[T]he physical body on Saturn is [i.e., was] a delicate, tenuous, ethereal body-of-warmth.” [20] To understand this, you have to wrestle again with Steiner’s bizarre use of language. The “warmth” “on Saturn” was a physical substance like a gas or a liquid; specifically, it was a “finer substance than gas.” [21] Calling warmth a substance has no recognizable meaning, but don’t let that trouble you. The deeper “truth” Steiner is conveying is that humans materialized during Saturn, but we did not yet have the qualities that make us human (“man alone was present at that time, and of him only the physical body”). To become fully human, we had to evolve. And the process continues. According to Steiner, we actually aren’t fully human even now.

What proofs does Steiner offer for any of this? “The proofs are derived in every case from spiritual research” which boils down to Steiner exercising his “powers” and telling us what he says he saw, nothing more. [22] Be strong.

◊ Indeterminacy ◊

Being human isn’t a matter of genetics. Indeed, being human is not unique to our species. It is a stage of evolution that we are now passing through and that other beings have passed through before us. On Saturn, “the Spirits of Personality are [i.e., were] at the stage at which the human being is today. They are [i.e., were] going through their ‘human’ epoch.” [23] Spirits of Personality are beings that find their blessedness through the expression of personality, although “personality itself is not there on Saturn, but only its mirrored image — as it were, the shell or husk of personality.” [24] There are also Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Will, and others. The vagueness of Spirit-land the overlapping of their actions. “Altogether, no hard and fast line can be drawn between the activities of the several groups of Beings ... The spiritual Beings themselves undergo evolution in the process.” [25]

The process of evolution clearly implies a starting point. We began as something and evolved into something else. But inquiring into origins is useless, Steiner said. “In a purely intellectual way it is possible, of course, in the case of every given origin, to ask again after its origin ...[But in doing this] we only prolong questioning, as it were, mechanically ... [T]he facts themselves will put a natural end to questioning.” [26] The problem, obviously, is that Steiner’s “facts” are supported by nothing except his unratified say-so.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (among other faiths) don’t have trouble with the question of origins. God is eternal; He has no origin; but He is the origin of everything else. For science, the origin is the Big Bang. How that event occurred is still open to debate, but scientists are working on it — which they do by mainly asking questions. Questioning is the very essence of science. I’m talking about real science, not “occult science.”

◊ Sunny Days ◊

After our Saturn stage, we went to the Sun stage of evolution. “The second of the great evolutionary periods — the Sun stage — uplifts [i.e., uplifted] the human being to a higher level of consciousness than he attained on [i.e., during] Saturn, although compared to man’s present consciousness, his condition on [i.e., during] the Sun might still be called unconsciousness.” [27] 

When we reach the middle of the Sun evolution, the Spirits of Personality peel away: “It is the time when the Spirits of Personality, who reached their human level upon Saturn, rise to a higher level of perfection, thus transcending the stage of humanity.” [28] Someday in the distant future, when we become fully human, we too will be able to climb toward superhuman status.

Archangels moved into their human stage on/during the Sun, while toward the end of Sun evolution we humans arrived at a somewhat equivocal condition: “The human being now continues [i.e., continued]his evolution in an inner life which, in its manifestations to consciousness, may be likened to an inward sensation of smell.” [29]

It is worth pausing over Steiner’s continual use of the word “on.” We were “on” Saturn and “on” the Sun. Steiner said he didn’t mean it, yet his language seems to insist that were actually were on these celestial spheres. His defender Gary Lachman says that Steiner really did mean that we really were on these spheres, in some sense. [30] Anything is possible, I suppose.

◊ Moony Days ◊

When he describes our next stage of evolution, Moon, Steiner repeats his denial that his words mean what they mean: “The planetary being emerging now [i.e., then] in its new form shall be designated ‘Moon’ — but we must not confuse it with that fragment of it which constitutes the present Moon, the satellite of the Earth.” [31] OK? Planets are not the same as “planets” or “planetary beings,” and the Moon is not the “Moon,” although it is a remaining part of the “Moon.” 

On the Moon, we repeated some of what we’d already done: “The physical life of man passes [i.e., passed] in recapitulation through the stages of Saturn evolution, but under altogether changed conditions.”[32] One of the basic rules of cosmic history, as Steiner describes it, is that we must constantly recapitulate prior stages of our development, although each time we return to a previous stage we do so in a new way. Our evolution is an excruciatingly long process in part because of this constant need to go back over previous ground.

Our bodies on the Moon were different from our previous bodies. On Saturn, our bodies were “warmth.” On the Sun, they were “air” (although of course Steiner doesn’t mean air). On the Moon, they were “water” (although of course...): “This new state may be designated ‘water,’ meaning however not our present water ... The human physical body comes now to gradually assume a form composed of three organic structures ... The densest is the ‘water body’.....” [33] The “Moon man’s consciousness” is pretty much like dreaming for us today, although not exactly. On the Moon, our “dreams” became real, so to speak: “The mental pictures of Moon consciousness being not copies but symbols of the outer things, their influence on the inner life of the human being was on this very account all the greater ... He [i.e., the human] became, so to speak, the image of his own processes in consciousness.” [34] We formulated ourselves through our dreams of ourselves, so to speak.

Perhaps I’m quibbling too much about evasive language, but surely we can ask why Steiner insisted on using the wrong words for things. If the “water” on the moon was not water, why call it that? It is perfectly possible to coin a new term or a descriptive phrase, such as “spiritual fluidity.” Steiner’s decision to misuse language seems to have been a conscious choice intended to befuddle.

◊ Confession ◊

I’d like to pause here to make an admission I’ve made before, elsewhere. Steiner’s description of the universe might be correct. This is, just barely, possible. Contrary to my quibble, above, perhaps the spirit realm is really so strange that the only right way to talk about it is to use the wrong words. And perhaps cosmic history is so strange that there was once a stage which we might as well call Moon that later left behind a bit of itself which became the Moon. That is possible. Indeed, if we want to completely relinquish our grip on reality, anything at all is possible. Possibly we were not created by God Almighty, and we have not evolved as Steiner said, but we are now and always have been and eternally will be precisely what the Norse god Odin intended us to be. (If not Odin, pick any other name out of a hat.) Possibly the name for Odin’s divine cosmic plan is Newt Gingrich (although of course we do not mean Newt Gingrich). Possibly the gnostic meaning of Odin’s own name is the anagram “No i.d.,” which psychic research interprets as ... whatever. Looked at this cockamamie way, there is no way to rule out any fantasy as a possible “truth.” But, fortunately, our troublesome rational minds sometimes interfere and ask what possible reason we have for believing any particular “truth.” It is well to keep asking ourselves this question as we proceed.

◊ Down to Earth ◊

After living on or during Saturn, Sun, and Moon, we started our life on (or during) Earth. Something big happened before we reached the Earth stage, however. “[B]efore this, an important event takes [i.e., took]place. Out of the fire-air Earth [i.e., the early, vaporous Earth] an independent heavenly body splits off, which will in its further course become the present Sun.” [35] This bears no relation to what science tells us about the formation of the Sun and Earth, but that’s occult science in a nutshell — it repeatedly twists meaning and reality beyond recognition.

After the Sun left the Earth, the Moon did the same: “At this juncture, an event took place which gave to the whole of evolution a new turn. Everything that could conduce to a permanent hardening of the solid substance of the Earth was eliminated. This was the time when our present Moon left the Earth.” [36] This comes a bit closer to reality in that, according to science, the Moon was indeed formed partially by material drawn from the Earth. The rest came from a huge planetesimal that collided with the Earth. This object was probably the size of Mars. Steiner overlooks this minor episode. [37]

◊ More About Animals ◊

Because Steiner did so at about this point, let’s take a brief detour back to the realm of animals. Steiner taught that the higher animals descended from human beings, [38] but more generally, animal life came about this way: “Forms [call them bodies] began to appear [on Earth] in which human souls were not incarnated ... This, then, is how the animals originated; and they had souls which could not dwell in the single creature ... Animals that are in the main descended from a single form [i.e., animals of one type], have one soul together ... [I]t is in this sense that in spiritual science we speak of specific (or generic) [sic]souls, or ‘group souls’ of the animals.” [39] All animals of a single type — tigers, whales — share a single soul. Thus, if there are a million whales, then each whale has one one-millionth of the whale “group soul”. I thought you’d like to know. But let’s get back to human beings:

◊ Paving the Way for Races ◊

When we started our lives on the Earth, our bodies still bore little resemblance to the bodies we have now. Nevertheless, we began down the path toward racial differences, Steiner said. “The human bodies were like wraiths, like shadows. Distributed as they were over the whole Earth, they came under different kinds of Earthly influence at different parts of the Earth’s surface ... [D]iversity began now to appear among the human forms. Thus the way was paved for what afterwards showed itself in variety [i.e., differences] in race.” [40] Anthroposophists usually reject out of hand the charge that their guru was a racist. But Steiner talked about race interminably. Indeed, he saw indications leading to “variety in race” even at this very early stage of our history. 

According to Steiner, the condition of each human body reflects the state of a person’s soul, and this was true way back then, too. A person’s “inner soul-condition could be seen in his external, bodily form ... [N]ot all earthly men were alike in form and figure.” Some had better limbs, “the variation depending on their dwelling-place on Earth.” Some proto-people had good limbs, and others who were more mature and harmonious “were now able to develop more perfectly the beginnings of the head.” Among a third type of human, the “feeling they had of belonging to the spiritual world was slight....” So some humans were more advanced while others (two out of three) lagged behind. [41]

Let Steiner’s words sink in. Beginning long ago, humans diverged in important ways — a few were more advanced while most others lagged behind. Of course, there is variation among human beings today, and there may well have been such variation long ago. But notice that Steiner immediately links variation to the beginnings of race, and he stresses the importance of bodily differences — they reflect the states of peoples’ souls. Here we see early signs of the deepest evil in Steiner’s thinking. [42]

◊ Planetary Migrations ◊

After introducing the concept of race, Steiner describes an extraordinary type of human segregation. As time passed, the process of physical reincarnation became impossible for some humans. “Their form was much too hardened, and under the influence of the Moon forces had grown all too unlike the human figure to be able to receive the soul. This meant that certain human souls no longer found it possible to return to Earth.” [43] These “hard” humans went instead to other planets. “These were transplanted for their further evolution to another planet ... Jupiter.” [44] 

Try not to get confused. We lived on Saturn, etc., although not really. In the future we will also live on Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan, although not really. Meanwhile, during life “on” Earth, some of us had to quit Earth for other “planets.” “Here we are speaking of heavenly bodies and planets, and of their names, in precisely the same way as was customary in a science of former times. The meaning will be clear from the context ... The physical Earth is but the physical expression for an organism of soul and spirit, and the same is true of every other heavenly body.” [45]

Bearing this “clarification” in mind, you should know that “It was thus on Jupiter that such souls continued their evolution.” And that’s not all. “Later on, when the Earth was inclining still more to the solid state, another dwelling place had to be created for souls who, though able for a time to inhabit the hardened bodies, could no longer do so when the hardening had gone too far. For these, there arose in Mars a dwelling suited to their further evolution.” [46]

Humans who, during our Earth stage of evolution, spent time “on” the other planets eventually were able to return to Earth. They did this by entering new, more receptive Earth bodies. “Humans now began to multiply again on Earth ... For the way in which the Earth-Moon forces were now working enabled the human bodies to take such shape as adapted them perfectly for the embodiment of human souls. Now therefore the souls, formerly translated to Mars, Jupiter, etc., were guided once more to the Earth ... Thus it came about that among the progeny of men [and women, obviously], there were some with souls coming from outside [i.e., the other planets] — appearing again on Earth for the first time since the primeval ages of its evolution — and others with souls that were now reincarnating.” [47] So humanity consisted of those who had left the Earth for other “planets” and those who had left only for the proper process of reincarnation, going from Earth to Spirit-land and back. After this, “for long periods of time the human race still consisted of two kinds of human beings.” [48] Actually, Steiner has already delineated more than two types, but sometimes he had trouble keeping his own doctrines straight.

[R.R., 2009.]

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◊ Higher and Lower Humans ◊

Different human souls were formed under the influence of different “planetary” spirits. The following is hard to follow, so here’s a synopsis: The highest humans were those who matured under the influence of the benevolent higher spiritual beings headquartered on the Sun. But other humans fell under the influence of lower spirits on other “planets,” and thus they did not evolve as much. The “leader” of any planet is the highest spiritual being “on” that planet. The “higher Egos” that humans acquire under the influence of planetary leaders are shared spiritualities (sort of like animals’ group souls, but not exactly — and definitely not the same as Freudian superegos). Some higher Egos, such as the one on the Sun, were quite high, while others were lower. Humans who were “on” Jupiter and then returned to Earth gave rise to inferior human breeds. Some actually had subhuman or animal strains in their lineage.

“Jupiter became the habitation of Beings [i.e., spiritual powers] who had not matured to the level of the Sun ... As [i.e., just as] the leader of the Sun evolution became the higher Ego ... of the human beings who had remained on the Earth, so did the Jupiter leader become the higher Ego which passed like a common consciousness through other human beings ... who traced their descent to a mingling of the offspring of the men who had remained on Earth with those who had ... gone off to Jupiter ... They were those human descendants who in that ancient time had still been receiving [i.e., had received] human souls — souls, however, that ... were between the human and animal kingdoms.” [49]

The intermingling of Earth humans with humans returning from other “planets” led to the existence of “Jupiter men,” “Mars men,” and “Saturn men.” [50] (These humans lived on Earth — they were descended from humans who had been to the various “planets” but they were Earthlings.) Below the sci-fi trappings of these doctrines is some real nastiness. Steiner was basically saying that some groups of humans were higher than others, even in their spiritual capacities. The differences between humans was a matter of lineage. Descendants of humans who all stayed on the Earth were fine; but humans produced by interminglings between Earth humans and unearthly humans were inferior. Indeed, some unearthly humans came from semi-animal stock, implying that they were to some degree subhuman.

This is rank garbage, but Steiner meant it. The lower humans were prone to fall under Lucifer’s power, he taught, while the higher humans resisted. “[I]n the lower kinds of human beings the life-body was after all too little protected, and could not sufficiently resist the encroachments of the Luciferian nature.” [51] The Luciferian nature is the spirit of Lucifer. The “life-body” is the etheric body, the lowest of the three nonphysical bodies that Steiner said real human beings have. (The others are the “astral body” and the “I.”) Inferior humans were influenced by inferior and even demonic spiritual beings.

The passages we have just seen are not explicitly racist. Arguably, the racist’s horror of miscegenation peers out from the comment about mixed matings, and the entire idea of groups being separated by their lineage certainly suggests racial discrimination. The word “race” does not occur in these sentences, however, so we must tread lightly. But Steiner will soon return to the subject of these planetary migrations, and then he will make the racial import of his doctrines plain.

◊ Hallucinations ◊

As I suggested at the start, it’s possible that Steiner suffered from hallucinations; maybe he was crazy as a coot. I don’t take this view — I think he was quite sane and intentionally spun mystic webs that brought him a fairly wide following in traumatized Germany following the calamitous end of World War I. But I wouldn’t rule out the other possibility, if you want to push it: His sanity is certainly open to question.

In my opinion, OCCULT SCIENCE is, at best, a scam. The book is needlessly disorganized and incoherent. The language in cloudy, referents are often uncertain, subjects are raised (and dropped) out of sequence — it is full of explanations that explain nothing and statements that state nothing. Madness? Perhaps. Or cleverness. Steiner strove to make “mystery knowledge” as mysterious as possible. The only real mystery is that some readers are willing to believe him. But hucksters and con men would easily crack the mystery. They know the power of double-talk and blizzards of beguiling verbiage that promises the moon but delivers zilch.

◊ Our Epochs and Divisions ◊

Steiner taught that human beings on Earth have passed through four great ages prior to the present. The oldest Earth age is called the Polarian Age, followed by the Hyperborean, the Lemurian, and the Atlantean. Our own age is the Post-Atlantean. [52]

In accordance with the Theosophical practice of gathering myths from around the world and trying to hammer them into a consistent whole, Steiner equated the Polarian Age with the Garden of Eden. “In Biblical tradition the time before the entry of the Luciferian beings is referred to as the time of Paradise, and the [human] descent on to [sic] the Earth — man’s entanglement in the world of the senses — as the expulsion from Paradise.” [53] Only by a considerable suspension of disbelief can we agree that Steiner was describing “Biblical tradition.” He tried to make his scheme appear to be at least superficially consistent with some elements of Biblical lore, but he generally failed. The “Luciferian beings” are injurious spirits in Lucifer’s power — call them little devils. We humans may become their victims and, in a sense, we may even merge with them. “The ancient Persians ... were in danger of merging altogether into the Luciferian beings.” [54] As we have seen, the dangers of Luciferic control are greatest among “lower” humans. 

The Polarian age was Eden, the Hyperion age was the Fall. Mankind next moved to the Lemurian age — Lemuria being a human habitation somewhat comparable to Atlantis. Then came Atlantis itself, where extremely important events transpired. “It was during the evolution in the region of Atlantis that the actual separation of humanity into the men of Saturn, Sun, Jupiter and Mars took place.” [55]

Since Steiner momentarily drops the subject of human divisions at this point, I will too. But we will not be able to escape it for long.

◊ Christ and Gnosis ◊

Steiner taught that the various “planets” house “oracles,” which he defined as “place[s] where the intentions of spiritual Beings are perceived.” [56] Humans who gain the knowledge provided by the oracles are “Initiates.” The highest oracle, heeded by the most spiritually mature humans, is on the Sun; the other oracles provide less accurate spiritual knowledge. “Other Oracles were called into life by the members of Saturn, Mars and Jupiter humanity, whose Initiates carried their vision no farther than to those Beings who could be revealed to them....” [57] That is, Saturn humans and the others only knew what their lowly oracles could teach them.

The oracle of the Sun is centered on Christ. Steiner’s conception of Christ is intricate. Certain humans were able to gain knowledge of Christ long before His birth in Bethlehem. They learned that He is not really Christ, as such, but “Christ.” “[T]hese human beings ... could learn[about] the sublime Being who had been the Leader in the severance of Sun and Earth, and through whom the understanding for [i.e., of] the ‘Christ’ was subsequently revealed to man.” [58] Note the quotation marks Steiner put around “Christ.” Steiner did not believe in Jesus Christ as such but in a gnostic conception of a Mystery. 

High mystery knowledge could be obtained from “a special sanctuary which shall here be named the Christ — or the Sun — Oracle.” [59] This knowledge was beyond the reach of all except Sun humans, the people who had matured under the influence of the Sun Leader. The others “were not able, even in their more advanced states of consciousness, to reach through to the Christ Revelation.” [60] The Initiates among the Sun humans, on the other hand, knew Christ long before He was born in Bethlehem.

Steiner was working out of the gnostic tradition of Christian mysticism, according to which Christ is the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” [John 1:1] An orthodox interpretation of this passage is that Christ is the fulfillment of the eternal Word of God [61], but as a gnostic, Steiner viewed “Christ” as the Word itself, that is, as the essence of mystery wisdom. When Christ was eventually born in the flesh, he embodied the Sun’s mystery plan for future human evolution. “With Christ there appeared in human form and figure what the high Being of the Sun had prepared as the great pattern for humanity ... Hitherto this wisdom had existed only to enable man to bring himself into a state of soul where he could behold the realm of the Sun Spirit ... From now on, the wisdom contents of the Mysteries [i.e., mystery knowledge, occult wisdom] had a different mission; they had to make man capable of recognizing Christ-become-Man....” [62] Before Bethlehem, the purpose of mystery wisdom was to help men learn from the Sun; after Bethlehem, it has been to recognize the real meaning of “Christ” in the flesh. 

The question becomes whether Steiner understood Christ’s real meaning. I address this in the essay “Love and the Universal Human” at this Web site.

◊ More Planets ◊

Earth gave birth to the Sun, the Moon, Saturn, and so forth. This includes planets we haven’t yet mentioned, such as Venus [63] and Mercury. [64] Steiner skipped Uranus and Neptune, but — in a move bound to shake our confidence — he included Vulcan, a planet that scientists once thought might exist but that we now know is entirely fictitious. Somehow, Steiner’s high consciousness didn’t tip him off. “There was moreover a further class of human beings who had absorbed most of all of the Luciferian influence. They ... may be called adherents of the Vulcan Oracle.” [65]

Steiner’s blunder about Vulcan is related to numerous other bloopers and foul-ups we can lay at his door. Anyone unconcerned about Steiner’s heresies may be troubled by Steiner’s simple ignorance about history, science, medicine, and other real-world subjects. [66]

◊ Calamity ◊

Life on Earth has been punctuated by disasters. One came with the destruction of Lemuria, Steiner said. Another came when Atlantis suffered a similar fate. It was our own fault. “Towards the middle of the Atlantean period of evolution, a great calamity began gradually to overwhelm mankind. The secrets of the Initiates should [sic] have been carefully protected ... [But] men were coming into the realm [or influence] of lower spirit-beings who were themselves unable to partake in the regular evolution of the Earth and therefore worked against it ... Nor was it only the ordinary run of human beings, but some of the Initiates too succumbed to the temptations of lower spirit-beings ... Mighty and ominous powers of Nature were thus let loose by the deeds of men, leading eventually to the gradual destruction of the whole territory of Atlantis by catastrophes of air and water. Atlantean humanity — the portion of it, that is, which did not perish in the storms — was compelled to migrate ... Europe, Asia and Africa on the one hand, and America on the other, began gradually to assume their present shape. Vast numbers of human beings migrated to these countries [sic].” [67] According to Steiner, the migrants from Atlantis became the races that we know today: the white, yellow, black, and red races. Because there are two “yellow” races, Steiner said, the great racial groupings became the Aryans, Mongolians, Malayans, Negroes, and Red Indians. [68]

Steiner simply could not drop the subject of race. “We have described the conditions under which the evolution of mankind has been going forward since the re-population of the Earth in the Lemurian epoch [i.e., since humans returned from the other planets]. We saw how the human beings have to be traced back in their soul nature to diverse beings who, coming down from other worlds, incarnated in the bodily descendants of the old Lemurians. The varieties of race are a consequence of this.” [69] Returning to his surreal notion of planetary migrations, Steiner explicitly associates them with his racial theories. Humans who went to other worlds developed different “soul natures.” Returning to Earth, they all entered similar bodies (“bodily descendants of the old Lemurians”), but deep down they were “diverse,” and the diversity involved “race.”

Here is the appalling consequence of such thinking. We currently live in the fifth or Post-Atlantean age, when — according to Steiner — human races must go to battle against one another. “White mankind is still on the path of absorbing spirit more deeply into its essence. Yellow [or colored] mankind is on the path of preserving the period when the spirit is kept away from the body, when the spirit can only be sought outside of the human-physical organization [or body; that is, the bodies of colored humans do not harbor true spirit]. But the result will have to be that the transition from the fifth cultural epoch to the sixth cultural epoch cannot happen differently than as a violent fight between white mankind and colored mankind in the most varied areas ... You see, we stand before something so colossal that, if we regard it through the diverse perceptions of spiritual science, we will in the future recognize it as a necessary occurrence.” [70] The necessary occurrence, according to Steiner, is race war.

◊ Initiation ◊

Chapter Five of OCCULT SCIENCE deals with the directions Steiner spelled out for how to become an Initiate. I deal with this topic in the essay "Inside Scoop" on this Web site, so I will skip it here.

◊ Next Stop, Jupiter ◊

The stages of evolution we have been through — Saturn, Sun, and Moon — are now properly called Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon, to distinguish them from future stages that will recapitulate them in new forms. Our immediate future will be a “new cosmic entity into which Earth will be metamorphosed, even as [i.e., just as] Old Moon was metamorphosed into Earth. [paragraph break] The future evolutionary form may be named the ‘Jupiter’ condition” although of course by “Jupiter” ... [71]

Steiner’s descriptions of the future are not, according to Steiner, mere predictions. They are objective clairvoyant accounts of how things will be: “We are therefore beholding what our earth is destined to become.”[72] The chief benefit of the successive evolutionary stages is that we attain progressively higher forms of consciousness as we move along. On Jupiter, we will have sort of an inverse version of Old Moon consciousness.

Steiner gets awfully vague, even by his own standards, when looking forward. The future is knowable (to him) but it is generally indescribable. Note that according to Steiner, he was not limited to the same level of consciousness as the rest of us. “Supersensible consciousness [sic]can thus attain some knowledge of the events and processes of Jupiter evolution. Yet the beings and events seen in this field are not of a kind to be perceived by outer senses ... All we receive of them are the impressions of purely spiritual sound, spiritual light and spiritual warmth” (bearing in mind that by “sound,” “light,” and “warmth” he doesn’t exactly mean...). [73] Skeptics may suspect that Steiner was hiding his own ignorance in these clouds of obfuscation. In any event, Steiner stressed that thinking is useless for the kinds of things he discusses (but we already knew this): “These things cannot be — nor are they meant to be — discovered by dint of reasoning and reflection.”[74] “Occult science” is indeed poorly suited to reasoning and reflection.

Jupiter consciousness will be a form of imagination allowing us to perceive both exterior and interior realities simultaneously: “With this consciousness one sees a man in outline and in forms, as in day-waking consciousness [i.e., ordinary wide-wake consciousness], but one sees at the same time what lives in his soul....” [75] This heightened consciousness will become available to one an all on Jupiter, as long as we are real, upward-evolving humans, not subhumans or demons of any sort. “On the planet which will replace the Earth, the whole of humanity will have this psychic-consciousness or Imagination, the ‘Jupiter’ consciousness.” [76] Waldorf schools often stress the value of imagination, without explaining that for Steiner this term had occult meaning. Imagination is akin to clairvoyance, and on Jupiter we will attain a high, pure form of it (capital I: Imagination).

◊ Wrapping Up ◊

After Jupiter, we will move along to Venus, which will be an inverse recapitulation of Old Sun. “[B]eings and entities become perceptible which are the further-developed forms of what was present during Old Sun evolution. They are now at such a lofty level of existence as to elude a power of perception whose range is limited to the Old Moon and to the forms deriving from it [i.e., Jupiter].” [77] Venus consciousness will build on Jupiter consciousness by adding the wisdom of dreams. Designated “Inspiration,” this consciousness “will unite [#1] the present day-consciousness, [#2] the psychic-consciousness known only to the initiate, and in addition [#3] all that man sleeps away today.” [78] Notice how Steiner’s vision of the future takes man farther and farther away from rationality. By the time we get to Venus, we will be using psychic powers and sleep-state powers, giving them t least equal weight with waking consciousness.

From Venus, we will ascend to Vulcan, not so much to find Spock as to finish out the evolutionary pattern. “Vulcan is in like [i.e., the same]relation to the Saturn evolution as Venus [is] to Sun and [as] Jupiter [is]to Moon.” [79] Your eyes may be glazing by now, but we’re nearly through. “The seventh state of consciousness [i.e., Vulcan consciousness] is the ‘spiritual consciousness’ or Intuition, the very highest, when man has a universal consciousness; when he will not only see what proceeds on his own planet, but in the whole cosmos around him.” [80] Intuition will be the ultimate state of imaginative/clairvoyant/psychic consciousness. On Vulcan, insight and wisdom will be present in your consciousness as if by magic — thinking things through rationally will be like a long-forgotten bad dream.

◊ Good Humans, Bad Humans ◊

 
Just as life on Earth has included troubles, so will our future unearthly evolution be troubled. Prior to Jupiter evolution, there will be “a cosmic time when, side by side with human souls who have attained this high level of development, others will be living who have turned into a path leading towards evil. These backward souls will have burdened their Karma with so much of error, ugliness, and ill-doing as to constitute a special group of their own, subject to aberration and evil and bitterly opposed to the progressive community among mankind.” [81] The evil humans will be segregated a “distinct [i.e., separate] kingdom” [82], a sort of spiritual ghetto. 

When the good humans move on to Jupiter, they will do what they can to lift the bad from their ghetto: “[T]he descendants of the good humanity will constitute a human kingdom on a higher level. This is the human kingdom proper, and a great part of its work will be to influence and ennoble the souls who have fallen into the other group....” [83] Steiner here offers, in effect, his understanding of the White Man’s Burden, [84] which is for high humans to supervise low ones. 

Presumably Steiner meant well. Influencing and ennobling downtrodden people can be a noble cause. But much depends on how one goes about the process. Passing judgment on large groups, declaring them low and evil, is the opposite of true kindness. Yet Steiner did this often. At an earlier stage of our spiritual journey, he taught, certain extremely wicked people were sent to the "abyss" where they will revert to animality: “[O]ut of the ugliness of their souls they will again develop the animal form man possessed in former ages. The evil race, with its savage impulses, will dwell in animal form in the abyss.” [85]. Something rather similar awaits the evil humans who still manage to exist outside the abyss at the end of time. Here is what Steiner says about these reprobates, the wrongdoers who resist the kindly efforts of the highly evolved good humans: “From Venus [i.e., during Venus evolution], at a certain stage, a separate celestial body becomes [i.e., will become] detached. This — as it were, an ‘irreclaimable Moon’ — includes all the beings who have persisted in withstanding the true course of evolution. It enters now [i.e., will enter then] upon a line of development such as no words can portray, so utterly unlike is it to anything within the range of man’s experience on Earth.” [86]. 

The irreclaimable ones in their forlorn "moon" will undergo a fate that "no words can portray."  We are given the distinct impression that irreclaimability is a severe condition, but otherwise we are left uninformed. As for the good people, they will naturally enjoy a more pleasant fate than their unfortunate brethren, but on this topic, too, Steiner is unprepared to offer a description: “The evolved humanity on the other hand, in a form of existence utterly spiritualized, goes forward to the Vulcan evolution, any description of which would be beyond the compass of this book.” [87]. Steiner's silence is more than anticlimactic. The entire pattern of human evolution, the whole subject “revealed” by occult science, culminates here, and yet Steiner says it lies outside the scope of his book. He undercuts the rationale for the entire enterprise — vague all along, he leads us to a conclusion that has no shape or content.

◊ Waldorf ◊

Still and all, reading Steiner can confer benefits. Some parents think Waldorf schools sound like pleasant places where the “insights” of a kindly fellow named Rudolf Steiner have some sort of undefined influence. Learning what Steiner’s “insights” are can be a useful corrective. As Anthony Storr said, Steiner’s vision is like science fiction, floating without factual support of any kind. We could dismiss it out of hand, except that Anthroposophists — including many teachers in Waldorf schools — actually believe it. And we cannot easily dismiss the racism we have discovered in Steiner nor the likelihood that his “insights” may draw students away from rationality and reality.

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Student art, Waldorf-style.

[http://waldorfcritics.org/active/artgallery.html]

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OCCULT SCIENCE - AN OUTLINE

has been published under other titles, some of them

quite similar, such as 

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ENDNOTES

Concerning Christ and the Sun: “[A]t a certain point in the earth's evolution, a sublime Sun being, the Christ, did not remain on the sun but came down from the sun to the earth....” [Rudolf Steiner, REVERSE RITUAL (Anthroposophic Press, 2001), p. 170.] 

[10] OCCULT SCIENCE, pp. 82-83.

[38] “If the evolution of the Earth did not include human beings, then most animals would not exist. A major portion of the animals, particularly the higher animals, rose within earthly evolution only because human beings needed to use their elbows (of course, I speak here only pictorially). 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.” [Rudolf Steiner, THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), pp. 69-71.]

[39] OCCULT SCIENCE, pp. 179-180.

[40] Ibid., pp. 165-166. Trying to make Steiner’s presentation a bit more coherent, I have moved backwards a few pages.

I do not mean that Steiner explicitly referred to this poem. In fact, I’m trying to let Steiner off the hook, slightly, by signaling that his sort of racism was common in his time. Like Steiner, Kipling thought that European or white civilization was greatly superior to that found elsewhere, so whites needed to “help” the lower races to climb the ladder. Steiner’s rankings of civilizations is, as I reported earlier, Indian, Persian, Egypto-Caldean, Graeco-Roman, and contemporary European. Modern white civilization owes a debt to all previous civilizations, he taught; but moving from one civilization to another is literally an evolutionary process. The ancient Indians were not simply less culturally advanced, they were actually less evolved than modern whites. Anyone who, today, clings to an old civilization is similarly stuck at a lower evolutionary level.

[85] UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN BEING, p. 103. For more on the subject of the abyss, see the essay, "Evil," on this site.

[86] OCCULT SCIENCE, pp. 309-310. In other translations, "irreclaimable" is given as "irredeemable" [AN OUTLINE OF OCCULT SCIENCE (Anthroposophical Literature Concern, 1922), p. 398] and "unredeemable" [AN OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC SCIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1997), p. 394].

[87] Ibid., p. 310.

Sometimes Steiner gave a peek beyond Vulcan, declaring that there are actually twelve mega-stages of evolution, which he sometimes referred to as Stages or “Conditions” of Consciousness: “After the Vulcan stage, man will develop yet further, and will ascend to still higher levels of consciousness. As the external eye looks into misty gray distances, so the inner eye of the seer looks upon five more forms of consciousness, as far off as distant spirits, of which a description, however, is quite impossible. In all, one can speak of twelve stages of consciousness.” [COSMIC MEMORY, p. 166.] His powers of description failed pretty often, actually. He can’t describe Vulcan, and he can’t describe what lies beyond it.

[88] Rudolf Steiner, AN OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC SCIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

[89] Clopper Almon, A STUDY GUIDE TO AN OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC SCIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1997). 

[90] Ibid., p. 9.

[91] FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 118.