Truth (Waldorf Watch)

TRUTH

Mystical Thinking, Realistic Thinking

I’m aware that my thinking may seem shallow to mystics. I display what Steiner called mere materialist thinking. Instead of reaching deep into the unconscious or clairvoyant depths of my soul, I emphasize clarity and reason. Steiner’s universe is a dense, complex spiritual aggregation of innumerable beings and layers. Anthroposophists would argue that my view is simplistic and, therefore, untrue.

I understand the appeal of mystical thought. For most of my life, I embraced it. And I’m still prone to it, a bit. Walking in a woods, for instance, on a sunny summer day, I may come upon a scene of such powerful natural beauty that my heart swells, and I have a sense of magical powers at work, transcendence, glory.

But these days I know such feelings for what they are — wonderful fulfillment caused in the real world by the workings of a real physical body and brain, mine. I love to experience such moments, and I sometimes go in search of them. But I no longer mistake them for anything but desirable subjective experiences that cause me to be grateful for my life, and — at best — lead me to see my life in context, playing itself out in an astonishing universe that was here long before I was born and will persist long after I am dust.

Mystical thought can feel profound, but it is often profoundly wrong. A friend of mine died recently. Since that day, I’ve been having an experience I’ve often had when someone close to me has died. I keep thinking of my friend as if he were still alive. I have to catch myself and remember that I cannot share with him the thought that has just flown through my mind, an idea that I know would interest him. I cannot drop by for a visit, I cannot expect a return visit. He no longer exists, and my mind can't quite grasp this reality. Death is, at some deep level, unimaginable to us. My own death, although inevitable, seems to me utterly incredible. This, I think, is an ingrained attitude given us by evolution: Those of our ancestors who could not accept the thought of death were strengthened — they kept striving, working, pressing on, as if they and all their achievements would not eventually be wiped away. Those of our ancestors who brooded on their coming deaths were weakened — they tended to feel that struggling against the inevitable is pointless, so they tended to give in and become passive. As a result, the genes of the defeatists tended to be winnowed away, while the genes of the strivers (who may have had a less clear vision) survived and were passed on to us.

Denying death leads directly to mysticism. If we can scarcely believe that our dead friends and loved ones are really deceased, lifeless, then we tend to think of them as still existing somewhere. Their bodies don’t still exist, and none of their essence seems to exist here — so we place them, in our imaginations, in some other place, invisible to us — we imagine the dead surviving there without their earthly bodies but still, at a spiritual level, retaining their identities. So without consciously realizing the process, perhaps, we begin to think of souls living in a spiritual realm of some sort, and we begin to dream up theories to account for such visions — theories that easily become religions. Yet all of this may simply be our subjective, irrational natures at work — it has no objective truth than we can ascertain. God may exist. Heaven may exist. But we don’t know these things. We simply wish them to be true, because the alternative runs against our grain.

II.

Consider a specific form of mystical thinking, Steiner’s. Here is Steiner’s criticism of Isaac Newton, the genius whose work undergirds modern science. Steiner said that Newton stood “at the starting point of modern science ... [he] was the first to completely mathematize and separate space [i.e., the physical universe] from man [or man’s spiritual nature] ... Newton had torn nature asunder into space and man-who-experiences-space.” [1] Steiner’s point is that Newton disregarded the spiritual when he created a mathematical, materialistic description of reality. Newton's theories do not speak to our spiritual natures, they are un-heartfelt and, therefore, both shallow and wrong.

For mystically inclined people (which probably includes almost everyone in the world, to one degree or another, for the reasons I gave above), there seems to be a core of good, solid sense in Steiner. It may seem self-evident that a true description of nature must include spirit. Mere dead matter could not have evolved into life, surely. Our world cannot be merely a random assemblage of atoms running through mathematically described courses. Surely there is a spirit realm behind or imminent within the physical realm. Surely our lives have meaning, extending beyond the grave.

We all incline toward such thinking. But if we are to live rationally, with our eyes open in the real world, we need to resist it. All of the mystical statements I made just now may be true, but we have no proof. For all that we know (as opposed to all that we feel or wish) all of these mystical statements are wrong. The only reasonable attitude for us to take — hard as it is, rubbing us the wrong way — is to suspend judgment. We know what we know, and we don’t know what we don’t know — and, sadly, the latter category is quite large. We know far more than our ancestors knew, and in the future people will presumably know far more than we know now. But we are stuck in our age, able to know only the information that has been obtained up to this point in human history.

Steiner pretended to know far more than anyone of our modern era can know (or, if Steiner wasn’t pretending — if he believed all that he said — then he may have been insane). Appealing to our innate desire for spiritualism, and borrowing from many sources, he conjured up visions of a fantastic universe teeming with spiritual beings. Some people find his vision extremely attractive. But none of it is knowable; all of it is almost certainly nothing but fantasy. Steiner gained his “knowledge” of the spirit realm by using a faculty that does not exist: clairvoyance. Everything he said, arising from his claimed powers of clairvoyance, is little more than poppycock.

Even Steiner's criticism of Newton is disconnected from reality. Newton was, in fact, a spiritual man. He had deep spiritual interests. As the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA reports: “Newton found time now to explore other interests, such as religion and theology. In the early 1690s he had sent Locke a copy of a manuscript attempting to prove that Trinitarian passages in the Bible were latter-day corruptions of the original text. When Locke made moves to publish it, Newton withdrew in fear that his anti-Trinitarian views would become known. In his later years, he devoted much time to the interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel and St. John, and to a closely related study of ancient chronology. “ [2] Newton did not tear nature asunder — he probed nature and learned some of the basic laws of physics, which he set forth — while also concerning himself with metaphysics.

God is not necessarily absent from the universe described by Newton. Rather, the laws of nature Newton discovered may simply be the procedures God chose for the operations of the physical universe. Steiner himself understood (or misunderstood) this, although he did not moderate his criticism as a result. “Newton becomes ill at ease, as it were, when he contemplates his own view of space. He is not quite comfortable with this space, torn as it is out of man and estranged completely from the spirit. So he defines it after all, saying that space is the sensorium of God.” [3] Steiner argued that Newton tried to banish God from the universe, then found that he was uncomfortable with the result, so he reintroduced God into it. This is a nice rhetorical point, but it misstates the situation. Newton said that an apple falls due to the force of gravity; Steiner denied the existence of universal gravitation, teaching that all things — including falling apples — work as they do because of the activities of spiritual beings. [4] Perhaps, ultimately, Steiner is right. Perhaps God or the gods do ultimately control everything in the universe. But Newton’s laws do not necessarily conflict with this possibility. The conflict exists only in Steiner’s determination to reject modern science.

Steiner’s thinking is circular — it does not lead anywhere. He started with what should be a conclusion, reached only after long, diligent investigation. He postulated the notion that multiple gods exist and control everything. Over the years, he elaborated this view, creating a body of doctrines that fill many volumes of convoluted prose. But he never proved any of it. Rather, after expending all those untold words, he arrived at a conclusion that is indistinguishable from his premise: Multiple gods exist and control everything. Steiner did not advance our pursuit of knowledge by an inch. If the gods exist, he did not demonstrate their existence, he merely asserted it. Thus, he left us no farther along than we were before, whereas Newton advanced out knowledge of the universe greatly.

Steiner may have meant well, but he did not do well. He asked us to remain forever in a benighted, ancient, dark frame of mind, knowing little about reality, but imagining a lot. Whether or not he realized it, he told us lies. Isaac Newton told us demonstrable truths.

III.

Many people are drawn to mysticism because they find the real, material world inadequate. This is especially understandable for people who are downtrodden, impoverished, perhaps even enslaved. Yet even for them it is a sad error. We live in what is — as far as anyone truly knows — the only world we will ever inhabit. And we currently are experiencing — as far as anyone truly knows — the only lives we will ever have. If we can’t find fulfillment here, we will find it nowhere.

Perhaps we can find it, here and now, in reality. The world we occupy is a wondrous place — not because of any real or imagined spiritual presences, but because of the nature of physical reality itself, and because of the true capacities of our own minds. We live in a world of amazing, intricate phenomena at the quantum level, and at the cosmic level, and also at our daily, experienced level. It is a world of charmed quarks and pinwheeling galaxies, a world of birds that migrate impossible distances, and crawling creatures that revise themselves as butterflies, and cloud-coloring sunsets, undulating hillsides of wildflowers, swarms of fireflies, the melancholy glory of autumn, the quickening excitement of spring... And it is a world of music and painting and literature and science — a world graced by the genius of humanity.

In truth, the real world is far more beautiful and multilayered than the dreams Steiner ginned up. Of course, there is much suffering in our world. But so is there in Steiner’s fantasized worlds — he taught of evil gods, black magicians, disease, cosmic error, souls filled with ugliness, the abyss... [5] Reality stands up well in comparison with such dark conceptions. And reality has the inestimable advantage of being reality.

But what about the dreariness that infects so much of our real lives? We are so often dissatisfied, bored, weary. Even when the circumstances are not oppressive, we often find oppression within out own minds and hearts. Steiner taught that the cure will be our evolution to higher, better forms of consciousness. That would be nice, of course. But if the universe and our lives are not as he described them, which is extremely probable, then his solutions have no bearing, they are worthless.

I don't pretend to have a cure for everything that ails us, I only know that we worsen our woes if we project dreariness onto a reality that provides ample opportunity for wonder and fulfillment. Here’s a meditative exercise. Sit and gaze at a tree for a few minutes — any tree, or, indeed, any natural object. Try to drink it all in; try to observe everything about it. Pretty soon, you’ll realize that you can’t. You can’t know every twist and turn of one tree's trunk, every limb and twig and leaf of that single organism. You can get a general impression of any natural object you study, but grasping all the details of its form and function is far beyond our powers of observation and memory. If you stared at one tree every day for the rest of your life, you still could not know it completely. And that’s one physical object, one out of a virtual infinitude of phenomena that present themselves for our contemplation. The real world is a place of unbounded variety, constant surprise, rewarding challenges and wonders, if we only look at it with clear eyes.

The tragedy of mysticism (and I use the word “tragedy” quite intentionally) is that it gazes upon the universe with clouded eyes. It replaces a wondrous reality with a far less superb fantasy. Even an imagined universe as densely detailed as Steiner’s palls in comparison with the reality Steiner disparaged.

And here’s a related point. If a spirit realm exists apart from the material realm I've been calling reality, it certainly deserves our most careful and concentrated attention. But any true description of the spirit realm must be consistent with true knowledge. If a religion falls apart in the face of scientific fact, it is an unsound faith, one that does not deserve to survive. Put it this way: There is no necessary opposition between true scientific knowledge and true religious faith. Truth at any level must admit the truths of all other levels. This is why, for instance, the Vatican has an observatory. Catholicism, seeking to profess universal truth, is committed to having a scientifically correct understanding of the physical universe. Such knowledge would not weaken true faith — it would inestimably strengthen true faith. “Life emerged on earth thanks to a 12 billion-year-old process of stars caught in a cycle of collapsing, re-forming and collapsing again, said the former director of the Vatican Observatory. Over time ‘there has been a continuous transformation of energy (in the universe) into ever-more-complex forms of material,’ said U.S. Jesuit Father George Coyne ... The sun in earth’s solar system is a third-generational star, he said, which means it has gone through a process of birth, death, rebirth, death and rebirth. ‘If this process hadn’t happened in the universe, we wouldn’t be here,’ he said.” [6] Such scientific information presents challenges for Catholic theologians, but they don’t shy from the task.

Tibetan Buddhists take a similar approach to science, accepting scientific truths and wrestling to accommodate them. “Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science. Instead of delving into Buddhist texts on karma and emptiness, they learned about Galileo’s law of accelerated motion, chromosomes, neurons and the Big Bang, among other far-ranging topics ... [S]cience has been given a special boost by the Dalai Lama, who has long advocated modern education in Tibetan monasteries and schools in exile, alongside Tibet’s traditions.” [7]

Catholic theologians and Buddhist monks and nuns embrace the realities revealed by science. Steiner generally did the opposite. He claimed to operate scientifically; he claimed, sometimes, to respect scientific findings. But for the most part, instead of acknowledging scientific truths, he denied them. He preferred astrology to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry. He derided astrophysicists for their clever but erroneous descriptions of the stars. He overturned medical knowledge, agricultural knowledge, Einstein's theories of relativity, Newton's theories of gravity, optics, orbital mechanics... [8] For Steiner, most science was trash. [9] When he heard scientists at all, he found their statements stupid. “I once had the opportunity of telling an excellent chemist about our efforts to produce radiant, shining colors for the paintings in the Goetheanum [his headquarters] and how we were experimenting with colors made from plants. He replied, ‘But we can already do much better than that; today we have the means to produce colors that are iridescent and begin to shimmer when it is dark.’ That chemist did not understand anything I was saying; he immediately thought in terms of chemistry.” [10] Steiner wanted colors that shine spiritually, as perceived by clairvoyance (which does not exist). He wanted a fantasy, not reality.

Steiner did not consistently argue, as the Pope or the Dalai Lama might, that scientific explanations are incomplete because they do not take spiritual realities into account. Sometimes Steiner as much, but often he said that scientific findings are totally wrong, even at the level of the material universe. He threw science away. And in doing so, he threw reality away.

The universe of Newton, Einstein, and other great scientists exists; we can be sure of this. The universe described by Steiner does not exist, or at least we cannot know that it exists, which in practical terms is the same thing. Steiner’s visions have no practical application in the real world — a point his followers strongly deny, of course. They turn to such compilations of Steiner’s works as INVESTIGATIONS INTO OCCULTISM SHOWING ITS PRACTICAL VALUE IN DAILY LIFE. [11] Think about that title. I suggest that it is preposterous, laughable — and dangerous. Humans have impulses that lead them to believe in the occult; but these are the impulses we must overcome to live full, sane lives. Indeed, they may the among impulses we need to overcome in order to be truly faithful and reverent. If we are to find God, we will not do it in the teachings of fantasists such as Rudolf Steiner.

- Roger Rawlings

ADDENDUM

Newcomers to Waldorf schools often have no inkling of the occult beliefs held by many Waldorf teachers. Yesterday I laid out some of these at some length. Today I'll be a bit briefer, if I can.

Trying to figure out what is going on at a Waldorf school can be very difficult. Intentional deception is part of the problem —Waldorf representatives often conceal more than they reveal. Another part of the problem, though, is the complexity and downright weirdness of Rudolf Steiner's occult teachings. Yet a third part is the difficulty Steiner himself experienced in trying to give a clear, consistent account of his teachings.

Here's a stab at a thumbnail summary. Whenever you hear Waldorf teachers use such terms as "cultural epochs," "recapitulation," "spiritual evolution," and so forth, they are probably thinking along the following lines:

According to Steiner, human beings are evolving toward becoming God the Father. We will get there through seven major stages of evolution, sometimes called Planetary Stages. These are Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. [If you want to follow along, there's a neat chart on p. 357 of THE TEMPLE LEGEND (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1997).]

So far, we have been through three Planetary Stages (Saturn to Moon), and we are now on the fourth, Earth.

Here on Earth, we must evolve through seven "Life Conditions." So far, we've been through three Life Conditions, called the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Elementary Kingdoms. Those three conditions recapitulated or repeated what had happened on Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon. (A basic theme in Steiner's teachings is that everything gets repeated over and over, in slightly altered form. Thus, our evolution is not a simple upward-pointing line but a spiraling series of spirals within spirals.)

We are now in the fourth Life Condition, the so-called "Mineral Kingdom." This is why everything we see around us today seems to consist of minerals, that is, physical stuff: hard, dense, and not at all like the cloudy esoteric stuff that Steiner says is the real reality. We cannot see the cloudy stuff unless we become clairvoyant like you-know-who. (You-know-who has handy guidelines for becoming clairvoyant like you-know-who.)

Within our current Life Condition, we have passed through three "Conditions of Form." These are spiritual stages that progressively focus and perfect the gods' intentions for us. (There are many, many gods; most are good, but some are evil.) We are now in the fourth Condition of Form, "Physical Reality." Nothing "physical" before now has been physical in our current sense.

(Feel free to take a breather at any time. This is a lot to take in, I know: It's just the entire history of everything.)

Up to now, within our present Condition of Form, we have passed through four "Great Epochs." These are historical periods in which mankind becomes more and more elevated in an etherical/physical sort of way. The epochs we've been through so far include two when we were not physical in our normal sense: During the Polarian Epoch we were fuzzy, and that's when Saturn separated from the Earth. Then, during the Hyperborean Epoch, we were slightly less fuzzy, and that's when the Sun separated from the Earth. (You may not find 100% consistency in Steiner on such matters. Certainly you won't find clarity. I'm trying to say things more clearly than Steiner did without actually making them seem sensible, since they aren't.)

Following the Hyperborean Epoch, we passed through two other Great Epochs during which we were far less fuzzy or, indeed, not fuzzy at all. I don't want to say too much today since I'll describe these stages in future installments. But, leaving Hyperborea, we lived on a continent called Lemuria, which is where we got down to real physical incarnation, and the Moon separated from the Earth. Sadly, Lemuria sank, so we moved along to Atlantis — which, as has been widely rumored, also sank. (Sometimes maps at Waldorf schools show Atlantis; fewer show Lemuria.)

Anyhoo, we are now in the Post-Atlantean Epoch. To date during this Great Epoch we have passed through four "Cultural Epochs" (not to be confused with "Great Epochs" — the Post-Atlantean Great Epoch consists of seven Cultural Epochs, four of which are already behind us).

Cultural Epochs are stages of increasing human perception and sophistication. Some Cultural Epochs are almost comprehensible as real historical periods. We've been through the Ancient Indian epoch, the Ancient Persian, the Assyrian-Babylonian, and the Greco-Roman. The people who lived in those earlier times (they were us in some of our former incarnations) were not just less well-informed than we are today; they (i.e., we) were less evolved in all ways. This is tied to Steiner's racial teachings, which say, in brief, that we evolve upward from lower races to higher races.

We are currently in the fifth Cultural Epoch of the fifth Great Epoch. Ahead of us lie two more Cultural Epochs, after which there will be the "War of All Against All," when good, highly evolved humans (members of the highest race — can you guess which one?) will fight and beat the lower humans (members of the "lower" races).

OK? Who can argue with any of that? It's a happy story, with us as the stars. Overall, there will be seven of each phase or condition: seven Cultural Epochs within seven Great Epochs within seven Conditions of Form within... You get the idea. Spirals within spirals, seven within seven within seven within... Seven is a very lucky number.

And that is what Waldorf teachers think, if they have studied their Steiner as they should.

Reality.

[Celestial images, in whatever spectra: NASA.]

Waldorf-style art courtesy of PLANS [http://waldorfcritics.org/]

Steiner noticed that most people noticed that the universe we see around us

is nothing like the universe he described. His explanation was that we just happen

to live in a time when we and our surroundings are made of dense material

(physical stuff, made of atoms or what-have-you),

and we just happen to live in a local region where the laws of science hold true.

But at other times, or at other distances, things are the way Steiner described.

He could not know this, but why quibble? It's what he claimed.

"What people discover on the earth by way of natural laws loses its validity

more and more as they distance themselves from earth."

[Rudolf Steiner, BLACKBOARD DRAWINGS 1919-1924 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2003), p. 98.

My sketch of a portion of Steiner's sketch, 2009.

The connection between Steiner's words and his sketches is often obscure.]

We can seek knowledge through occultism

or through science, as by using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Which path works should be clear.

Reality is mind-blowing enough.

Why look elsewhere?

(Especially if the alternative is only a pipe dream?)

The ultimate test of the truth of Steiner's doctrines

lies with you. Read his words and reach your own conclusion.

Here's one of innumerable examples.

Steiner thought this point was important enough

that he made an illustration to accompany his words.

"[T]he human embryo merely rests in the mother's body; it is given form by the sun's forces ... The moon forces become evident, above all, as the inner influence of the lower, metabolic nature of man ... With their whole being human beings are placed into the polarity of the sun forces and moon forces."

[Rudolf Steiner, MATERIALISM AND THE TASK OF ANTHROPOSOPHY (Anthroposophic Press, 1987), pp.240-241;

R.R. sketch, 2009, based on illustration on p. 241.]

Here's another sample, from the same book:

"[F]rom the eighth pre-Christian century to the fifteenth century A.D. ... [H]uman beings predominantly employed their etheric body when they engaged in thinking ... [I]n the fifteenth century people began to think with their physical bodies. When we think, we do so with the forces the etheric body sends into the physical body."

[MATERIALISM AND THE TASK OF ANTHROPOSOPHY, pp. 178-179;

R.R. sketch, 2009, based on illustration on p. 179.]

ENDNOTES

[1] Rudolf Steiner, THE ORIGINS OF NATURAL SCIENCE (Anthroposophist Press, 1985), p. 51.

[2] "Sir Isaac Newton." ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. 2009. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 03 Jul. 2009.

[3] THE ORIGINS OF NATURAL SCIENCE, p. 51.

[4] For Steiner’s conception of gravity, see “Secrets” on this Web site.

[5] See “Everything” on this Web site.

[6] Carol Glatz, “Recycled stars make right materials for life, says Vatican astronomer”, CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, June 26, 2009.

[7] Amy Yee, “Tibetan Monks and Nuns Turn Their Minds Toward Science, NEW YORK TIMES, June 30, 2009, p. D3.

[8] See "Steiner's Blunders" and "Steiner's 'Science'" on this Web site.

[9] Dismissing a rationalist, Steiner once said “He did not want any fairy tales told to children, or to teach children anything other than scientific trash....” [Rudolf Steiner, THE RENEWAL OF EDUCATION (Anthroposophic Press, 2001), p. 94.] Steiner always preferred fantasies such as fairy tales as opposed to the truths of science.

[10] HUMAN VALUES IN EDUCATION (Anthroposophic Press, 2004), p. 122.

[11] Rudolf Steiner, INVESTIGATIONS INTO OCCULTISM SHOWING ITS PRACTICAL VALUE IN DAILY LIFE (Kessinger, facsimile of 1920 edition).