Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00132)

Alan <Having read K.  Paul Johnson's posting, I must agree that a
withdrawal of the allegations mentioned is surely in order.  None
of us who writes can ever be certain that we have been able to
ferret out all the source material we _might_ have used.  In
fact, it is probably certain that we will _not_ find it all.>

Being a writer myself, all I can say here is AMEN.

Alan <I have not read Paul's book, so have no doctrinal axe to
grind.>

I have, but I don't either.

Arthur.  The saga of Rudolf Steiner continues: <I looked up what
the Mystery of Golgatha was about.  It is nebulous to be sure but
in an acknowledged Anthroposophical primer by Stewart Easton it
remarks, " The incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and
ascension of Christ Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost are are all part of the same mystery that we call the
Mystery of Golgatha." So in my reading it is the basic Christian
story that is the mystery.>

Wrong reading, I think.  The basic Christian story is the
formulative myth by which we come to know the occult theory.  The
Mystery of Golgatha is that there is a way to remain conscious
throughout the afterdeath state and to remember our past life
when we are reborn.  Steiner has taken this simple idea (which
comes to us from ancient Egypt as well as the East) and
Christianized it into a mysterious occult technique based on the
Biblical myth (and I am using 'myth' in the Jungian sense) that
only he seems to intimately know.  I can't for the life of me
understand what all the mystery is about.  This idea has been
around for a long time, and its best representation today is
probably in the Bardo Thodol or Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Today
we know that we can sleep with full consciousness as well -
called lucid dreaming.

Arthur <Yes, I have even read where he think HPB was basically
correct but had a distorted soul.  What was going on there?>

Actually, her soul was a bit distorted.  She admits this, and
gives it as the reason how she remained in telepathic
communication with the Masters.  But her "distortion" is called
tulku, which I commented on the other day.  This is explained in
the ML, in Letter XXVI, where K.H.  says that she is missing one
of her 7 principles.

I really don't like to pick on anyone, especially someone who is
long gone and can no longer defend themself.  So, I don't want to
throw any stones at Steiner or anyone else.  But, to help Arthur,
who seems to need some advise, let me give just one 'pick.' I
selected a thought of Steiner's, purely at random, which follows:

"Recently I have been able to examine the state after death of
people with moral sentiments and also the state of those with an
immoral disposition of soul, and in every case it could be
established that a person with a moral disposition of soul was
able to preserve clear, radiant consciousness after death,
whereas those with an immoral soul constitution sink into a kind
of dim twilight consciousness." (LIFE BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH,
p 8)

This statement alone tells me that Steiner was a victim of his
own psychic meanderings.  The teaching here, findings from his
own personal psychic experiences, is pure nonsense (I would use a
stronger term, but ladies may be reading this).  Steiner, in
several of his books, rightly equates death with sleep.  How,
then can he possibly arrive at such a hairbrained notion that
'good' people are rewarded after death while 'bad' people suffer
for their sins? First of all, he sets himself up as one who can
tell the difference between the moral folks and the immoral ones
(this is a good example of exactly why I have been saying that
ethics are dangerous).  If this 'teaching' is true, then moral
people would have only beautiful dreams, while immoral people
would have only nightmares.  My own observations are contrary to
these findings.  I observe that we all partake of good and bad
features, and we all have good and bad dreams at night, and we
all will experience both good and bad in the afterdeath state, as
well as in the next life.  In short, Steiner suffers from the
same problem that CWL and probably all psychics suffer - a
(false) sense of their own infallibility where their psychic
senses are concerned.  I have nothing against psychic
investigation.  But it should not conflict with occult teachings
(especially your own) else they need verification before writing
such silly things in a book.

My objections to Steiner's psychology are many and too numerous
to go into here.  In his THEOSOPHY, he gives us 9 "members of the
whole man" which he then condenses to the traditional 7.  But he
gives us new names for them (his anthroposophy has its own unique
vocabulary).  The 7th, which equates to atman, he gives as
"Spirit-man" and again later as "Spirit-man as transmuted
physical body." He puts the "I" which he calls a "soul-kernal" in
the center of the 7 parts.  The relationship between his "I" and
what he calls ego is very unclear.  Anyway, his 7-fold system is
then compressed into a trinity of body, soul, and spirit, all of
which are very unclear to me.  He seems to enjoy making obscure
things even more obscure.  My biggest objection is that I don't
care for his writing style, which meanders around Robin Hood's
barn a lot with a few nuggets of value conservatively sprinkled
throughout the chaff.

All of this does not mean that I don't like Steiner or respect
his anthroposophy, which I do.  I simply don't agree with
everything that he wrote.  I read a lot of his material just as I
was coming into theosophy in the late 60s.  At first I really
liked him (which explains why I bought so many of his books) but
it just so happened that I was also reading HPB and G de P at
this same time.  It wasn't long before I gave up on Steiner's
obscurity and went for theosophy instead, G de P being a much
easier read.  Since G de P made a lot more sense to me, I put
Steiner's books on the shelf where they have remained until now.

             Jerry S.