individualizing anthroposophy

“Anthroposophy” we call, what Rudolf Steiner laid out in his comprehensive and supposedly epoch-making work. When I use this term, I always think that it is about this Austrian Steiner, who developed his aspects of life issues and arts as well as natural science and transcendental research that has had a social and practical significance for a number of areas of life such as education, agriculture, medicine and architecture. Since his death nearly 86 years ago, however, the word anthroposophy in public is not only used about Steiner’s own work, but also about anything related to the so-called anthroposophical movement that arose around his person and activities. Everything of later date, which is equivalent to it and that later so-called anthroposophists have achieved, is also called anthroposophy. Steiner himself once said that it would be good to find new names for Anthroposophy every week. Maybe he meant that one could use any name that eventually like this would occur, precisely to distinguish between the different qualities that different people would then represent out of their individual relation to “anthroposophy”.

So the question is, if we should continue to think so and let Anthroposophy keep on as “anthroposophy” or should I grab up Steiner’s advice and call what lived on by anthroposophists with one or more new concepts? The following terms might be relevant, if I link them up to his name, the place, Dornach, where he worked in Switzerland or to the central motifs in his workings: Steinersophy, Steinerianism, Steinerianity, Rudolfianism, Rudolfethics, Dornachianism, Goetheanumsophy, Goetheanumlogics, Karmasophy, Karmanianism, Egosophy, Christsophy, Christianism, Dynamism and Dynamosophy. Only when someone comes and declares to be able to confirm Steiner’s statements and results, we could really talk about anthroposophy in the original sense of the word, although this also couldn’t prove – otherwise than by fact that more and more acknowledge and confirm the same issue. Everything else should be considered as individual and group-related interpretations and life philosophies in the style of the proposed terms, which, however, is completely useless.

I put the initial concept of Anthroposophy in quotes, because it is hardly possible to discuss anthroposophy without getting into trouble with each other, since each has a different opinion about it, depending on what you have studied, or what experience you have in relation to realization of the content of anthroposophy. And if you’re in a conversation without first defining precisely or refine your understanding of how you look at the contents of what Steiner presented, it becomes difficult to discuss the details. So let me therefore mention two things that for me characterizes the core of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, as I perceive it and what for me has been crucial in relation to individualize and putting into practice Steiner’s advices and instructions.

Steiner’s project went out for two things that were related to each other as “hand in glove”, as synthesis and antithesis or as yin and yang: First, he required pursuing a European-based philosophy of reincarnation and karma. Secondly, it was about associating this with Christianity’s esoteric core or reverse to open it or to access the source of Christianity, thus bringing it into equivalence with the reincarnation idea. Everything else of what Steiner wrote, said or practiced was related to these two areas of responsibilities. Steiner himself thus characterized by the term anthroposophist just a man who exercised or developed a genuine, honest and practical plus meditative relation to these tasks.

Look at the beginning of his activities in the Theosophical Society in 1902: Immediate he announced that he would convey “practical karma exercises”! Look at his basic books and lectures ranking until World War I: They are about Christology, reincarnation and karma! View his mystery dramas: The present is set in relation to previous lives and set on the stage! Look at the first Goetheanum building and the lectures during the First World War: Almost everything is about past cultures, spiritual and karmic current backgrounds to the contemporary crises! Look at the esoteric teaching for members of the Anthroposophical Society, for the members of the School of Spiritual Science (including the former ES) and on his methodology and didactics for professionals within the subsidiary motions: much about self-awareness, training in relation to the issues of fate, karmic laws in education, medicine, etc. Even descriptions of how to develop a relationship with nature beings in agricultural shows going on one’s own karmic point of view – and he quoted to the young generation who had met up in Koberwitz that it is about looking back at least on seven previous lives.

Why did he use so much time and energy on wanting to associate Christianity with the idea of reincarnation and vice versa? Probably it wasn’t about feeding the egoism of the readers and listeners, but to give perspectives on the individual point of view in relation to the fact of working with a specific project. Steiner was in fact based on his personal experience and thus convinced that the individual through the cognition of karma can access his latent resources and skills and can start to sort out the karmic relationship to his fellows and that this is best completed, if this course is done in open and honest cooperation in the esoteric area. Therefore, he founded the internal exercise circles, groups, and colleges and finally an alternative to a social model and a new spiritual foundation for professional education at university level.

Was all this just ideals and recipes? Yes, ideals and recipes for art of living, but somebody who sits down and try out in concrete, for example, some of his meditations or karma exercises, will soon find that the spiritual world is responding. In such terms Steiner and all his works remain and subsist as a “chips” (SIM card) to direct contact with the deceased, with angels and Christ. These facts I know from own sublime, painful and happy experiences. Thus and only then, Steiner’s anthroposophy can find independent and comprehensive trade off today and tomorrow. People who so believe they have experienced the spiritual or karmic things authentic, however, will soon be facing a problem: How to translate their inner experiences that were possibly made in a meditative state, to communicate in a useful language? How and to whom can one talk about and communicate such experiences and realizations? Where are the forums that have a high enough ceiling for my ethical individualism?

I myself have struggled, worked, suffered and rejoiced during 14 years with this translation and communication projects and interestingly found very little aural among so-called “principal anthroposophists”. Similarly, it has gone for a dozen and hundreds of friends and colleagues to me in several European countries, who believe they have much to contribute in relation to a continuation of Anthroposophy. Yes, interestingly enough, it is now actually possible not only to confirm Steiner in many areas of his transcendent research, but also to expand his views, yes, even to correct him on some important points, as the earth, mankind and the spiritual world situation today has become a completely different than it was before Nazism.

When, for example, applying some of Steiner’s statements about a prehistoric Atlantis civilization, I have confirmed some of them in books and other publications. Who is interested in this? Who is at all interested that the content, aspects and results in Rudolf Steiner’s works can be confirmed? Who wants his anthroposophy just now and in the next time after 2012 to be detected as a possible source of genuine insight into the spiritual realities that can bear a lot of individual anthroposophy? Who will support such individuals and researchers, both morally and possibly financially (if they ever need it), which apparently has managed to realize some of Steiner’s recipes – which can serve other than such “anthroposophical boil” as the Archangel Michael may only see as a Swedish sorts “puddle in the pan” (Swedish: pytt i panna) – that is stew?

To celebrate the Rudolf Steiner 150th birthday doesn’t work for me so much by examining Steiner or to travel to the places where he lived and worked, nor does it ask for placing his “left cabinet” up to public spectacle. Such has been done enough and more than enough during the time after his death. I am thinking only on the incredibly aesthetically beautiful and famous peripatetic exhibitions that my teacher and colleague Arne Klingborg initiated and conducted in several countries around the theme of Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, architecture and landscape art from 1961 and forward to the mid 80’s. What the individuality behind the name “Rudolf Steiner” today certainly would prefer – while he in his supposedly existing incarnation in good health is ”sitting on the fence” watching the anthroposophists’ feverish selfishness and bad conscience on his behalf, as they try to hide by covering themselves with his former works – is that they show for themselves, for each other and for the outside world, how they live and work with the task of associating Christianity with karma understanding – a spiritual “Michael Mandate”, which he simply called: ethical individualism. Rudolf Steiner went miles forward on his way; who wants to follow in his footsteps, in order to refresh himself without resorting into dependence to him?

Author: Jostein Sæther

Image: Detail of a portrait of Rudolf Steiner (Weimar 1892), painted by Otto Froehlich.

Memory. Tempera on canvas. J. Sæther

Why should we at all search for the karmic connections in the sense that we are following individualities from one incarnation to another, from life to life? It’s a fact that Rudolf Steiner in his karma lectures in 1924 processed over 60 people in some of their different, perhaps most major incarnations, to illustrate the specific and individual variations in relation to the general karmic laws he elaborated very carefully elsewhere in the context. It was for some of the audience also revealed that he spoke of those present anthroposophists including him in the description of such karmic connections to some historical figures, without thereby directly pointing out or saying the names of living persons.

We can note that in the speeches, he mentioned specific names from the present only in relation to deceased persons. Interestingly, he talked about the previous U.S. president Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) already yet within the same year of his death, so it must be assumed, that there is no spiritual law that says you have to wait so and so long to reveal karmic truths about a particular person. Only when it was about an initiate like Christian Rosenkreuz, Steiner declared that there must be a time interval of 100 years to reveal his latest incarnation to prevent unnecessary glorification. Otherwise, he only suggested karmic connections to anyone in relation to the history in intimate, personal conversations that in retrospect has often been difficult to document, since many rumours of this was abound throughout the years.

When in 1999 I let publish a so-called karmic autobiography and told about 12 former lives in relation to myself and to some of my deceased family members, teachers and friends, there were many readers, who enjoyed this personal and intimate way to gain insight into karma effects in relation to past cultures and until our own time. Other readers and critics, however, had great difficulty by taking this initiative seriously, since they didn’t believe that it at all could be possible to achieve such specific insights about past lives. Even some anthroposophists laughed at this unusual undertaking. I didn’t let me mitigate by such afflictions and instead used the positive contacts and opportunities that arose in the wake of criticism, to elaborate on the methodological aspects of karma research.

Do I have to know specific things about past lives in the direction of specific individuals, which I have been, to gain insight into the effects of karma? Isn’t it enough to have some idea what karma we brought with us from earlier, to understand life at the moment? I believe that every individual must decide to what extent a karmic insight should be extended to access to specific living conditions in the former lives. Practical and meditative karma work, regression and reincarnation research of our time, however, show that who one have been in the past, appears in consciousness in a form of reciprocal recognition corresponding to “forgotten” memories. This phenomenon is completely consistent with Rudolf Steiner’s statements. 

In the meditation a more intense participation often occurs in the course of human drama and events, than is common and possible in normal life. In everyday life, our ability to consciousness about our own pain and compassion towards others sometimes is dampened down, because of the wide range of circumstances. Often the strong feelings come later, when the event is over and you have gained an overview. Fear and habit of thinking, for example, curb and hold back such strong emotions in the moment, so they perhaps aren’t being felt at all.

Experience shows that a spiritually developed person is experiencing future problems – such as hostile conditions – emotionally in advance. When we meditate and within sequences of karmic view, we must assume that past emotions can be felt so strongly that they would have overwhelmed us, if we had felt them correspondingly strong in normal consciousness. You are in a meditation just not negative shaken, because everything in the spiritual is steeped in eternal divine “cosmic sensations”. You are then almost embedded in the middle of compassion to the higher hierarchy of angels, so that the experiences that belong to you now can be lived through again in sufficient potency.

Therefore, we can still leave us amazed at the strong emotions that arise during a regression. Although people under a session have seen places that they have been linked to in past lives, there is again such a magnification of the emotional life when they later find them and visit them for the first time in this life. In recent years, TV programs have shown these relationships in a lucid manner. Before we have had a spiritual experience, usually the spiritual occur us as something very abstract. By approaching the nature of karma, which is nothing more than pure spirit, the abstract is overcome and the spirit can be powerful and start to work intense in the soul, so you can even can have “parallel” feelings that can sometimes be positive or negative charged, im the moment of experiencing past lives.

Even at the stage of imagination, you can note that the nature of emotion is refining, but especially with the inspiration the will transform into an emotional force, because it is no longer “tied” to the body and the muscular system. By esoteric practice the feeling become more and more active and the will gradually more sensitive. It becomes a “share holder” of the internal events, which wants to adapt to wisdom and truth of the spiritual world. Of course, this process to transform the spiritual relationship don’t happen by itself, but you must always be willing to supervise and activate your essential sense of self-confidence and attempt to raise sanity.

This means no appeal for megalomania, but it contains an extraordinary and totally adapted individual inner work that is usually called a meditative or esoteric path with training challenges that I prepared very comprehensive in my second book in German. If you with open mind verge upon past lives and identify with the imaginative content as probably occurs, it means an initiation, a valid conversion back to earlier incarnations of the soul with an intensity that also Rudolf Steiner carefully explained. An important reference by him clearly shows that knowledge of past lives can be quite specific and life-changing:

“People actually feel with the head just a reflection of everyday outer world. But if you go up to the science of initiation, then you come through the imaginative recognition of its transformation into inspired knowledge and then by the intuitive acknowledgement back to your previous incarnation. In this way you investigate the past lives on earth, but you overlook them in their spiritual form. In the spiritual world is recognizing something very real. And someone who undergoes that he looks into past incarnations with actual initiation knowledge, he appears not as if he was there as today, [...] but he is even at the same time re-experienced in that previous life. He doesn’t just look in from the outside, but he beholds himself back in his whole being. This is not an abstract cognitive perception, it is a kind of recurrent conversion, a unity, you are identical to the person you were. The soul interior is very alive, very moving and excited, when you return to the previous incarnations. If you, however, return in this way, you get the chance to change the views of your world.”[1]

On the one side, such affirmative referrals from Steiner are joyful, when we do own karmic experiences, on the other side, they signifies an appeal to take our own research so seriously that we continually examine how the results affect also on present life.

Author: Jostein Sæther, Blieskastel (DE)

[1] Rudolf Steiner, Esoterische Betrachtungen karmischer Zusammenhänge, Band V, GA 239, Dornach 1963, Seite 259ff. My translation from German.

In this contribution I would like to point on spiritual beings, which are connected to us since ancient times. The more we recognize their spiritual placement and acting in earthly acquaintances; they can more and more through their relation to our karma support the future impulses in the human community building.

The primordial teachers of mankind

Everything we do and experience on earth is observed from these beings of the spiritual sphere of the moon. They register and carry it into the Akasha substance. They once lived with mankind in ancient times on earth. Rudolf Steiner used for them the term “Urlehrer” – primordial teachers. If we deal with the area of karma in all its aspects and impacts, we must take care with these moon beings in our outlook. These teachers didn’t at that time obtain a solid, physical body. Their effort on the people went through their etheric bodies.

They were etheric figures who didn’t show themselves in everyday life, but only in the mystery services. They had already in an earlier phase of earth development reached the “rank” of humanity and could thus be pioneers of human development. In meditation it occurred to me for them the primordial word “Gada”, which means about “circle of the gods council”. The Greek goddess Gaea stands for this spiritual quality. The English word “gather”, what means “meeting” or “uniting”, and the old Norwegian “gander” (compare the male name Gandalf) has as well the same origin; it means to “tell the fortune”.

Already in the times of Atlantis the communities of Gada moved forever back to a spiritual level, which has to do with the moon. In the service of the hierarchies they have here engaged a special position. When we go through the stages between death and rebirth, we meet them on our travel through the lunar region twice. After death, they help us to understand the experiences during the sleeping time of the completed life by penetrating everything essentially. Thus in the world ether the compensation for our own incarnation actions is fixed. If we again approach the earth, and unite with the germ, which the parents give, we go through their “karma register”. While the primordial teachers lived on the earth, they brought us the ancient wisdom, which referred to the past of the universe. In their present cosmic existence, they hold the past of other persons, with whom we are connected. By the “descent” of the present life, the Gada wrote the balancing karma into our astral bodies.

The astral body is filled with entries of the shared experiences with other people from the past life. In meditation, we can uncover the mystery of how all the past gather us. Just because the primordial teachers still consider us almost as a “student” in a group of related karma, we don’t lose our next fellow men out of sight. Wouldn’t they any more provide to us the appropriate balance karma, luciferic and ahrimanic opponents would on the one hand by physical environmental factors, on the other hand by chronic genetic diseases constantly would drive us apart. The increasing disasters and trends in these areas in recent decades can either be an expression of the enhanced evil, or be seen as a result of the unfolding of human freedom. From a “higher” point of view, the two trends, of course, are intertwined.

Meditation as a cultural impulse

Because love is the ultimate supernatural power of all knowledge, the spiritual practitioner, since he maintains spiritual and karmic experience, will conclude, that he starts to be more attentive than before dealing with every life beeing and every human being. Rudolf Steiner stressed out this fact in the lecture series “Freedom of thought and social forces” (GA 333) by emphasizing that the love itself must be seen even as the research method in spiritual field. But for the spiritual regions, which open gradually in meditation, we have to make ourselves even more capable with love, as it has to be in ordinary social life.

A true life style will be needed to bring new ideas and inspiration to life derived out of individualized anthroposophy. Out of what we discover in spiritual research, we don’t need to draw up specific new spiritual laws, but to keep everything so alive, that it always creates a new impetus to joyful practice and serious research. The prospect of a life of art from spiritual knowledge is so comprehensive that it probably needs its own representation. The fact that meditation more and more is becoming an element of everyday life is changing old employment and life guidelines. Not only the working hours but also the architectural environment will be designed differently if meditation is taken seriously as a cultural impulse.

The idea of reincarnation and karma would abolish many habits at all, and drain some of the institutions and establishments of employers and employees total, if this idea and their prospects would be accepted as truths. The military system and all its related industries would have no sense any more if its representatives would embody the idea of karma. This would definitely not crate unemployment, but rather an innovative potential to promote new inventions and projects, which would include the reconstruction of war-torn areas and places that were abandoned by materialism and imperialism – as I experienced myself on first hand in Russia – places, however, which in the future again can be habitable through environmental consciousness.

New life abilities by insights of karma

When people understands, respects and supports each other by true karma knowledge, even if the one and the other in daily life is still estimating false, a truly sustaining social force begin to show itself. In the time when the “Mystery dramas” of Rudolf Steiner, as the karma idea for the first time in history conscious and literally was brought to the stage, in 1911, an attempt of him was situated. For and together with some support persons of the anthroposophical movement a “Foundation of Theosophical Style and Arts” was announced, which was probably intended as an esoteric “enlightening site” to cause that a new way of life could be supported by karma understanding between real people. A basic motive for this foundation was the individual sovereignty between the participants and to the esoteric teacher himself.

Steiner’s idea couldn’t be achieved for reasons that are not supported by documents. We only know which persons were raised and which represent specific areas of work they should embody. It was later claimed that Steiner brought a resumption of this idea when he initiated the “esoteric board of directors” at the Christmas Conference 1923-24. The following devastating history of the General Anthroposophical Society shows that there was too little understanding of karma, to defuse the negative hearsay that were in circulation about karmic information – e.g. to Ita Wegman. In the social problems after Steiner’s death, which during many decades – and with some late foothills still – led to bitter conflicts, legal and painful divisions between individuals and groups in many countries, I see the lack of understanding of karma as a producer of the anthroposophical iniquities.

Coming together is a conscious understanding of karma, where research is done about why we again met, and where removal is being sought of possible tensions specifically to help each other, make peace on the basis of freedom and love. Only such a karmic reconciliation could develop a promising way of social factors. Similar to earlier in the guilds of the Middle Ages and still today in marriage, the partners are committed in appreciation for each other, a foundation everywhere involving karmic peace would be depended on a commonly confirming the will direction based on karma knowledge.

Karma consciousness contributes to a social future through a broader understanding, in which the individual has his soul roots in the cultural life of a community. A comprehensive social understanding and a genuine global thinking are both pursuing empathy towards a complex karma between individuals, religious communities and nations. According to Rudolf Steiner in “Social understanding out of spiritual knowledge” (GA 191) social understanding leads in the next life on earth just to come across the karma. It also only arises when a spiritual interest not only for its own, but also for other kinds of cultural affiliation is present.

The political disasters of the most recent century and in the current time have clearly demonstrated the reverse. Individual karma research has an organizing utility in the social field. Independent of whether other people know that someone has such insight, his own life is changing significantly. When people start together to arrange their karma in principle, ‘color and number orders’ appear in meditation arising from the dialogue with the former primordial teachers, our present karma builders. Somebody will e.g. recognize himself as a ‘blue’ in a circle of kindred spirits, which may represent the virtue of mitigation. The other persons in the same karmic circle may experience themselves as representing ‘red’, ‘yellow’, ‘green’, ‘peach blossom colored’, ‘white’ or ‘black’ in an organism of a spiritual color circle. This allows the larger social context in which he lives to receive new group dynamism. Even the substance of the Akasha record is experiencing a metamorphosis that reaches far into the future, when the state of our solar system especially between earth and moon will get another astronomical relation as present.

Author: Jostein Sæther, Blieskastel (DE)

Illustration: A tempera painting on wood by Jostein Sæther (2005) called Christmas.

Rudolf Steiner gave extensive information for meditative work and he described many ideas and practical exercises in this field. In this text I would like to reproduce such a meditation practice in his wording and then describe how I and others have practiced it. The exercise is simple in its characteristic style. I got experiences with this exercise which contributed to an indispensable foundation of my meditative practice. Steiner said (in my translation):

“For the pupil, for those who wish to develop a higher visualization, clairvoyance, it is of great importance, if he does exercises such as the following: You imagine the room dark, without an external light source affecting you – it be the night darkness or by closing your eyes – and then by own inner strength trying to evoke the idea of light. If you can make this thinking highly enough, it will gradually become lighter, and you will see a light that is not physically but which you create yourself with inner strength. And it is a light that will be trawled throughout of wisdom that emerges as the creative wisdom. This is called astral light. In the meditation human being can create light out of inner supremacy. This light is precursor to what man will one day come to see – not with physical eyes, but with finer sense organs. It will be clothes for real spiritual beings. ” (Rudolf Steiner, Mythen und Zeichen – Okkulte Zeichen und Symbole, GA 101, Dornach 1987, Page 149)

For one of his esoteric students, named Friedrich Krüger, Steiner around 1912 gave a meditation, which I in the following meditation process match together with the above light meditation. (Rudolf Steiner, Mantrische Sprüche. Seelenübungen II, GA 268, Dornach 1999, Page 150) It sounds (in my translation):

Light around me
Light fills me up
Light gives me strength
Light is freeing me
Light places me
Upon myself
I am

If it isn’t enough to mitigate the physical lighting conditions by turning off room lighting or by closing your eyes, you can tie a kerchief without pressing over the eyes. Concentrate then on the inner room and surroundings around you. Try then to seize the darkness and to experience it. How does darkness really appear to you? How would you characterize it? Try to remember nights and to pursue dark experiences in your life. How did you experience it differently? Then act on the immediate moment and the momentary darkness in your mind. Is everything all black or is there some gray too? If it isn’t similar to coal, it still implicates a little light quality being present.

Try then to create or to detect a light source outside of your reach. Try out different ideas as how dusk, dawn, stars in the sky or a distant luminous window seem. Decide for one particular character of light, which shall be located a short distance from you. Let yourself be illuminated by this light. Discover which character you then acquire.

In a manner of speaking you then change standpoint of consciousness. Move to the light spring. Distinguish yourself as the source of light. Look back on your being who was standing at the starting point. If this is successful, it means that you now in a way have “divided” yours, without losing yourself. The inner light that you created unites you, or it allows you to move freely between the two positions. You can see that the light flows back and forth. – The exercise may also be worked out different. Instead of imagining the light outside, you immediately let it flow out of yourself.

The result of this contemplative exercise can be, in my view, that we discover lighting quality of our own astral body, the “Star Body” – corresponding to Steiner’s meditation dictum to Mr. Krüger. This light being is in the continuing contemplative and meditative work going to be not a static light source, but it will be a wandering light piece by piece, layer by layer, it will light up and consciously make the darkness in the supersensible, in the spiritual world, so that we will become ripe for real encounters with spiritual beings.

I quoted that it’s possible and advisable to add both versions together, so you around yourself can create a light formation for instance similar to an egg or an oval. The continued work with this light exercise, which I recommend that you may take up on a regular basis, you will be able to recognize phenomena that have to do with the human aura. Both in relation to yourself and to others you will sometimes be able to have light and color sensations that correspond to aspects of the divine wisdom. How the emergence of wisdom appears, you may find out by regular practice. Wisdom is usually seen as a specific knowledge that can be formulated for example in a simple decree.

Wisdom as power, structure or spiritual nature may in the middle of the meditation experience be perceived as an astral light quality. If the astral light manifests itself as a guiding principle, the wisdom itself will be recognized as imaginative, inspirited and intuitive as a life-giving principle, as a divine being. To be in the midst of this life situation in the spiritual “fields” – which is known in the esoteric tradition to achieve enlightenment or to experience the so-called “kundalini flame” – one can also discover that one’s own self, the ordinary self or ego, just is a reflection of a so-called “higher I being” (compare my book, Living with invisible people. Page 223ff). However, this higher self – the individuality – is just a small “drop” of a larger I out at the cosmic oceans.

All of the exercises and suggestions for contemplative and meditative practice that I give in this blog can be understood as individual works of art created in the astral light. To the extent that we learn to respect the imaginative and spiritual laws and begin to follow them, the objective wisdom will embrace to the individual one. What we may discover as our karma is like road signs on the spiritual path. We need them to become spiritual scientists. They prevent us from “colliding” with others, or they will hold us from excessive speed, so we don’t end up “in the ditch”.

When we add pure and virtuous willing forces to our thought and feeling life – which we really are looking for something true, good and fair in relation to nature and the social field – in the inner exercises and meditations, the time may be ripe to step into the real field of spiritual research. The first area here will be to handle issues and tasks connected to reincarnation and karma.

Author: Jostein Sæther, Blieskastel (DE)

Illustration: Part of a ceiling painting by Jostein Sæther (1996) in Martingården (assisted living), Umeå (SE). Photo: © Kristian Bodell

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Christ is resurrected”, the Russian Orthodox Christians are greeting each other on Easter morning. Yes indeed, Christ has come again. He has combined himself with the etheric world. To see or to envision Him, we must develop our human perspective in mind. How do I get a relationship to him, possibly confirming the Christian faith of longing? In this Easter posting I want to outline how the way of human willpower leads to Christ through stages of alienation and karmic affliction

By the way, increasing this central life theme would fill a whole book.

Applying alienation syndrome
Christology, the doctrine of Christ’s person and behavior – understood anthroposophically and practiced meditatively – can lead to wonderful experiences. Coupled with the retrospective work on the own biography, it sometimes can lead to surprising imaginative encounters with angels. In connection with the new Christ event in our time is in a steadily etheric progress, Rudolf Steiner described, that Christ would actually come appeared to man in its memory like an angel being. He used the term – to be Christianized – for this spiritual “igniting process” (see Steiner’s collected works: “Gesamtausgabe”, GA 152).

I know some people who at least occasionally are unable to cope with everyday life. They visit doctors and therapists, since they assume that they are sick. But no common diseases are discovered. We hear that more and more persons are “strolling” around until they land in psychiatry or even commit suicide. The assistance they are offered there, they often don’t accept, since their condition has been manic-depressive. To concretize such a case: I am close friend to a person who works in an anthroposophical institution, but who are not affected much by anthroposophy. He feels “infected” by something unknown and doesn’t come away from the fear that he “has” an organic defect that doctors should find. It seems to me that we here are dealing with a phenomenon described by Steiner for about 100 years ago (compare GA 131).

According to Steiner certain strengths will be developed in human nature into the future. When we have reached a certain age and have become self-conscious, these new soul powers will arise a feeling in us: There is something in me that I must understand. Something apparently strange will be notified, so that you can feel that it really will be linked to your own self. At the same time you will feel strange until alienated because this “something” doesn’t fit in everything you know about yourself since the birth. The alienation syndrome applying to you only becomes understandable, if reincarnation and karma has become a life content that gives confidence: I feel strange, because I uncover the self identity that has come over from a previous life. Then our I-being is a complex organism that is associated with both the previous as with a future life (com. GA 145).

If the strange feeling wouldn’t be explained by the perceptive of karma, it creates fear, anxiety and concerns which in turn attracts a real disease. Subsequently we need to look backwards to get a perspective on our existence. Additional everything that we observe as a karmic effect must be considered from an unassailable point of view, other we fall into a new self-centeredness.

Christ as a “model”
The central idea of anthroposophical Christology is that Christ is seen as an ideal. The exemplary fate of Jesus Christ during the events in Palestine will eventually live out in all humanity (com. GA 124). Every individuality goes through a specific phase of the life of Christ during his karmic development. Also within modern Esoteric this occult fact is known, for instance the Catholic-inspired author on the theme of angels, Alexa Kriele, treat this topic in an exemplary manner.

The situation in Gethsemane, when Christ go aside to pray, where he asks the next three disciples to watch – but they fall asleep anyway – can occur as an individual life experience, I have even acknowledged. I experienced an important phase of life that my friends were “missing”. I experienced the pain that for some reason more than once they couldn’t support me. By discovering the many previous incarnations that we can access through the karmic memories, such a life situation can be confirmed by an individual spiritual experience, where we learn to accept help from angels.

“Behind” the self
In the recent development of consciousness the human mind has evolved gradually and become stronger than in earlier times. Thus we have achieved more and more civilization from the industrial to the high-tech revolution. In ancient cultures people went out in the morning and greeted the ascending sun as a spiritual and divine being. They looked through their etheric body which still partially was “floated” out of the physical head and viewed a spiritual being in the physical sun. But today the etheric body and the soul in a way are added together and so strengthened in us that we can gaze at an intense way into the self being which is “widespread” in our organism; and so to speak sense behind it to find Christ. I must therefore seek “behind” myself and “behind” the self to another human being, to see what in ancient times was seen in front of the sun (com. GA 220). This wills path lead through the self being and not around it.

How do I add a closer connection with the being that we call Christ? How do I win a relationship with him? For this there are probably no instructions. Certain aspects of anthroposophy can be, however, perceived as “seven mile boots” that leads into the spiritual area where he lives. As the stigmatized author Judith von Halle has portrayed, one could only in Palestine at that time experience him as an individual in historical events. When we want to get close to him today, we must seek Him in the earth’s etheric field. He doesn’t live in the rough or in so-called “fine matter” contexts, so if we seek him, so to speak, within the natural etheric layer, we will probably not find him. We have to “go ahead” to Christ within a social context, because he normally does not come to us (com. GA 176).

In what direction then should we search him? The will steps to Christ lead inwardly and have always again to be carried out. Steiner pointed to the infancy idealism that isn’t lost even in adolescence, because this generosity again and again is wrestled by means of various events – such as fighting against torture. Fighting for human rights encourages us and makes us enthusiastic, so we continue to be spiritual and physically active and develop well-built initiatives (com. GA 193). When I go out into the world Christ himself is organized in my midst. Am I in me, he locates himself around. Steiner foresaw that especially young people would come to meet him in our time.

Someone who awaken is gazing Christ, but fails to recognize the karma idea that Christ certainly is identical to, would possibly not be able to cope with such an experience. Probably he wouldn’t even acknowledge that he met Christ. Of course there are other types of encounters with Christ by grace, which cannot be described in this essay, as fruitful transform the lives of those who are pardoned with such meetings so that they may recognize the karma idea, provided they did not know it from before. The meeting with the “Lord of Karma” – an expression of Steiner – happens mostly unconsciously and will be perceived as a “negative energy” if you have no empathy for karma. A transformation of the soul can thus take place, since the study of Christ’s life awakens the retrospective gaze on your own life.

Author: Jostein Sæther, Blieskastel (DE)

Translated from Norwegian, first published in my German blog on 8 April 2009; and then published on the website anthromedia.

Illustration: Sandro Botticelli, (1445-1510), Agony in the Garden (c. 1500), Tempera on panel, 53 x 35 cm, Capilla Real, Granada. Source:  wga.hu

Both in my own meditative work as well as in guiding others, the importance of an artistic and creative approach of life and spirituality became clear to me. It was again and again interesting to experience that for people who work with arts – such as Eurythmy – or who had an artistic approach to life and to existence at all, it was easier than for others to associate with the transcendent, often moving experiences, and that they easier than others managed their spiritual development. People with no artistic background proved more fear and uncertainty when they were faced with inner pictorial, imaginative experiences. In my task advising people spiritually and karmicly, in addition a requirement came upon, that I only was qualified to support and help someone in the way I myself in an artistic, caprice and inventive way could be circumvented by new interpersonal situations and transcendental motives. My professional background – having been a painter and art teacher for over twenty years – appeared thus as a very fruitful experience in the field to take on a task as a spiritual teacher. 

In dealing with arts our creative middle is continuously prosecuted. Within artistic creation we find ourselves in an instant process that appeals to our whole being, if we indulge us on the possibilities of its means in the medium. In the artistic activity we experience to be fully present as humans. We can see this clearly by children when they play that they somehow are identical to the artistic or when we experience, how they perceive the world in their open-minded manner. The following anecdote my wife told one day at lunch actually right after I had written the statement above. She had heard it from another mother in the neighborhood. So daily life often view onto the truths of life:

In the winter a not yet two years old girl looked out of the window at the moon. She said: “Poor moon!” “Why poor moon?” asked the older sister. “Cold. Put on the sweater!” replied the little one. She took pity on the moon. A possible artistic commentary to the child by an adult would be: “When we look at the moon, our tenderness streams up to him and he will not freeze.” A child experiences the world differently – namely, being convenient – and impetuous adults can find the appropriate visual words for the transcendent reality.

Everything in the world is more than just the visible that appear to our senses as related to the objects and the physical side of life. Goethe’s statement – in his drama Faust: “Everything transient is only a parable” – refers to this experience. When the so-called objective physical world appears to us as a preliminary observation in our cognitive perception, we will at the ongoing maturation of cognition always win new ways to gain our understanding of basic principles. This expansion of the horizon is pursued in every single human life from conception until the mortal moment – whether you experience all the stages through childhood, youth, adulthood and old age or not – just as well as for all human evolution. Not only the exterior has this comparative nature, the ideas and notions that we are developing towards mental and spiritual facts, must submit to a preliminary status.

Only the original, the purely spiritual containing the pure universal order may in its individuality, indivisibility and eternity core introduce itself to human consciousness as something explicit. Since only the same can recognize the same, the spiritual in human beings strive to be united with the cosmic spirit. And before that happens we until further have to beat us satisfied with the parable of the spiritual, until a recognition meeting, a consciousness of unity on a spiritual level – for example in meditation or in a therapeutic situation – one time or another would reward us. The exercises, meditations and the investigations I’m doing and communicating to others is of course still in the world of parables that are available to everybody, provided they would not have its origin in the real spiritual. But since knowledge is always an individual performance, only the individual can consider whether some of what I have achieved and told about in my books, depicts a spiritual objectivity or not.

Author: Jostein Sæther, Blieskastel (DE)

Illustration: Jostein Sæther, Parsifal (2006), Wall Painting in a private home in Soest, Germany.