Imprisoned in the Spiritual Void - Irene Diet

The Riddle of the Relation between World-Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in

Rudolf Steiner's Work

An Important Prefatory Note:

This book has been written for those who seek a path of knowledge in the
Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner. It will not offer a reaffirmation of existing opinions,
and for this reason we would point out the following: If extracts from the works of two
authors are focused upon, our intention is neither to harm these authors nor to give
them a degree of attention that is perhaps unwarranted. No, our aim is rather to show
that the path of knowledge we seek can receive special stimulus from a study of
objects which prove to be untrue.

Only in this sense can the following pages be understood.

"This spiritual stream is to be Anthroposophical because through it one is to recognize

more and more how the human being can come to self-knowledge within himself. The
human being cannot come to self-knowledge, anthropos cannot come to knowledge of
anthropos, man cannot come to the knowledge of man so long as this human being
regards that which he is called upon to do within his own soul as if it were a matter
taking place between him and nature and requiring no effort. That we behold the
world plunged in Maya, this is a situation brought about for us by the Gods, this is a
fact that concerns our souls, a matter that requires higher self-knowledge, this is a
matter that the human being must come to know within his own humanity, this is a
question for Anthroposophy (....)"

Rudolf Steiner on 1st January 1913.

"Anthroposophy has its mighty task through the voice of the human heart itself. It is
nothing other than the longing of the human being of the present day. It will live, of
necessity, because it is the human longing of the present time. This, my dear friends,
is what Anthroposophy wills to be. It corresponds to that which the human most
ardently longs for, for his outer and his inner existence."

Rudolf Steiner on 19th January 1924.

"In the Anthroposophical Society far too little attention is paid to the fact that
Anthroposophy is not meant to be a grey theory, but something that truly lives. What
truly lives - that is its essential being; and if it is
m a d e into a grey theory, then it is often by no means a b e t t er , but a w o r s e
theory than others. But it only becomes a theory if it is m a d e into one, if it is
killed. T h i s is still appreciated far too little - that Anthroposophy is not just a
different world-view from the others, but that it n e e d s t o b e
r e c e i v e d i n a d i f f e r e n t w a y . One recognizes and experiences its
essential being only through this different way of receiving it."

Rudolf Steiner on 10th August 1924.

Foreword

That something must pass through the 'nothing' in order to be born anew, is easier to
understand as an idea than to live through directly. And thus it happens that those
who experience the journey into nothingness - into death - will also, in their feeling,
be able to experience the situation in which Anthroposophy now finds itself, as
hopeless and irreversible. The turning away from Rudolf Steiner, a trend represented
ever more openly in official quarters of the Anthroposophical Society, the rapid decline
in the sale of his books, not to speak of the remarkable staging of the "Christmas
Conference 2002", in which totalitarian rather than Anthroposophical tendencies seem
to be coming to the fore, all this could lead one to to lose either one's courage or the
necessary distance from events. A distance which alone is able to direct the gaze to
the place whence the spirit weaves - and this perhaps more strongly than before.
One can experience how this gaze, instead of turning more clearly and concentratedly
to Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy itself, wanders off - for example to the
constitutional or statutory question which has been left by the Goetheanum, with so
powerful effect, in a state of confusion, leading to the belief that a Society can replace
what can arise only through the development of each individual. For Anthroposophy
is, in the first place, nothing other than a path of knowledge; a path of knowledge,
however, that each individual has to work out quite alone with and within himself.
But now we can observe a dying, a decline, a dissolution of what up till now has been
accepted as the Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, a downhill trend which seems to be
alien to the nature of Anthroposophy. But there is no phenomenon which could be
inimical to Anthroposophy - the individual's path of knowledge - apart from the
rejection of knowledge, as a free act of the individual. Every situation, however
hopeless it may seem, bears within it the possibility of being the starting-point of such
a path. Indeed, the situations experienced as the most dramatic, the most difficult
and the most hopeless bear within themselves the greatest potential for such a new
beginning. But for this to be so, one thing is necessary: knowledge, self-knowledge,
must really be sought. For one's quite personal sense of shock in face of the situation
in which Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy finds itself - does it not also arise through
the fact that I must ask myself: to what extent am I, too, a part of this phenomenon?
An "inward brooding" will, of course, not bring an answer to this question. No, I must
first bring about a cognitive process which creates for me the possibility of observing
my own activity. This cognitive process will need to be set in motion by means of
objects which have, for the present, placed themselves outside me: in the "world"
which I believe myself to confront as an external reality. And here I will discover that,
in cognition, I meet not only "the other", but also myself. In the text that follows we
will try to describe how, when such an attempt is made, the picture, and also the
counter-picture, appears of what Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy might be in its
essential nature.

Berlin, 7th March 2003

1. Between Intellectualism and Spiritual Arbitrariness:

the Dilemma of the Anthroposophist in our Time

An observer of the Anthroposophical scene at the beginning of the 21st century

encounters two main tendencies which seem to contradict one another, and which
also continually - and more or less openly - view one another in terms of rejection and
disapproval. On the one hand, there are the more "traditional" Anthroposophists who
see their principal task in referring to Rudolf Steiner, quoting him a great deal, and in
whom the impulse to remain as close as possible to the "spiritual teacher" is most
apparent. These Anthroposophists make the content of what they believe they have
found in Rudolf Steiner's work into the content of their own thoughts. In contrast to
these there is, increasingly, a group of people who also see themselves as
Anthroposophists and also refer to Rudolf Steiner, but who directly or indirectly
accuse the first group of having failed to grasp what is the most essential thing in
Anthroposophy: namely, the independent striving to attain knowledge, but above all
direct experience, of spiritual realities. This group of people feels in the approach
followed by the first something rigidified and dogmatic which only has intellectual
justification and cannot lead to an experience of the spiritual world. The others
oppose the tendency of those who, proceeding on the basis of Rudolf Steiner's work,
seek ways of their own - generally including in their work forms of meditation and
practice which are borrowed from outside Anthroposophy - with the accusation that,
in so doing, they are leaving behind what is the essential element in Rudolf Steiner's
work: namely, Rudolf Steiner's work.
Though it is easy to see that each of these two directions is justified, it is clear that
neither the one nor the other is able to deal properly with, and do full justice to, the
work of Rudolf Steiner. The way to his work should lie somewhere between these two
positions. A "between" which has so far proved to be - as we see from present-day
developments - very elusive. "Knowledge" and "living experience", "thinking" and
"empirical experience" seem to be mutually exclusive. How is this possible?
In order to explore this question, in the text that follows we will look more closely, with
the help of examples, at each of the two forms in which Anthroposophy shows itself
today. These examples could be substituted by many others, and were chosen only
because in each of them one of the two tendencies comes to expression with particular
clarity.
Biography and Living Experience of the Spirit

In 1999 Jostein Saether, a Norwegian Waldorf school teacher and painter, published
a "Karmic autobiography", in which he describes, in addition to numerous past
incarnations, his life in the present, and above all the path which led him to the
knowledge of his past incarnations. (1) He himself characterizes his book as an
"individual account of karmic and supersensible experiences, whose purpose is to
make known the character of my personal path of cognition". (2) All aspects of this
quest - so Jostein Saether tells us - are influenced in an ongoing way by the
Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner. Indeed, for him the results of this quest have
"arisen out of" and "for" the "Anthroposophical world". And he sees his special
task arising from the fact that the High School for Spiritual Science - whose task is
spiritual research - "has so far had only one spiritual researcher:
namely, Rudolf Steiner himself, who died 74 years ago (....) We Anthroposophists
might try, in view of this fact, to experience what is a sense of shame. I must tell
you that, in face of this situation, I am ashamed. If after Steiner there were to be
no more spiritual researchers, this would certainly not correspond to his intention."
"With this book I would like to see whether it is possible today not only to speak in
an indirect and general way on this theme (karma research - I.D.) with the help of
Steiner quotations, but to speak individually and directly about experiences of my
own",
so Saether continues, who with these words characterizes himself as a classical
representative of one of the above-described groupings within the Anthroposophical
community.
On every page of his "Karmic autobiography" it is evident that Jostein Saether's aim
is not to convey a theory, an idea or an inner picture. No, he wishes to tell about life
itself - his present life, and of the endeavours which were to lead him to a knowledge
of his past incarnations. According to such a view the starting-point can only be the
work one does on the events of one's present biography, which, of course, - and we
would stress this fact explicitly here - are not present in the state of being experienced
here and now. The experience itself is past; what remains is only the memories of
what one experienced. But it is by means of these memories that the cognitive
processes should be awakened, which lead one back into an experience of one's past
life. If we wish to enter into the basic gesture of Saether's activity which consists in
making his own biography into an object of observation and cognition, we must first
recreate this gesture within ourselves - in thought. Again, this can only be done, of
course, with the aid of a text in which Jostein Saether describes his own efforts and
experiences.

Right at the beginning of the chapter concerning his "spiritual breakthrough", Jostein
Saether describes the moment when what he calls "Rudolf Steiner's karma exercise of
1912" led him to the first "experiences of imagination": (3)

"From 1996 onwards I started to carry out this biographical karma-exercise with
more rigour than before. I took two characteristic examples from each seven-year
period and selected them in advance. I followed these memories inwardly in
reverse sequence in mural-like formations. I did not find it necessary to imagine each
event in backward motion, as in the daily review exercise. What was important, so
it seemed to me then, was that the sequence of memories should be meditated one
after the other, each in its real flow in time. When I could no longer reach back to
my first years of infancy with the help of memories of my own, I tried to create, by
means of exact phantasy, inner thoughts and pictures reaching back to the
moment of conception. I tried to experience myself rising above the place of my
birth and hovering over the Sunndal mountains. Then came the moment in
meditation when I knew I must not fall asleep or lose my concentration, but wanted
to bring about a state of complete emptiness, free of thought and picture-content.
My 'I'-consciousness had to be maintained. Here I had had for many years the
most varied experiences of the imperfection of my own soul-forces. (.....)

One afternoon in September 1996 - while I was in Umea, sitting on a simple, green
wooden chair in my white guest-room, with its green and peach-blossom coloured
fabrics and a piece of black furniture (5) - I followed my own biography
backwards in time to the first childhood memory, which I described at the beginning of
this book, and was trying to concentrate the inner force of my 'I' back towards my
birth. On previous occasions I had obviously been too passive. After these efforts I
tried to hover, without thought or feeling, in a mood of "nothingness" . Then there
was a very gentle inner jerking sensation, and I thought I was waking up in my
everyday consciousness. Instead, there followed an awakening into a living and
moving world of pictures, which I wanted to see as an imagination.
I found myself in the midst of processes which I recognized at once as something
belonging to me. I was able to experience my thinking of today as 'I'-presence, and
simultaneously with this I could also follow the events of that time with the
corresponding thoughts, feelings and actions of that time."

In the way thus characterized Jostein Saether came to remember his twelve previous
incarnations, which he describes in his book.
What is actually happening here?

To begin with, we will not refer back to the exercise given by Rudolf Steiner in early
1912, and which Jostein Saether took as the basis for his meditative work. For our
aim is not to compare quotations (those in Jostein Saether's book with those from the
shorthand reports of Rudolf Steiner's lectures), but our intention is to sense what is
the gesture of Saether's activity in its will-direction, in its very dynamic.
Let us first place at the focus of our inquiry the point described and experienced by
Jostein Saether as a "break". Whilst, starting with the events of his recent biography,
he takes hold of memories in reverse sequence and meditates them, this process
becomes impossible at a certain point: namely, where his memory ceases to be of any
use to him. This applies to the events which lie before the third year: to these events
the normal everyday consciousness of the modern human being has no access. But as
Jostein Saether has to take as his starting-point his everyday consciousness - an
"awakening" on a "higher plane" only happens to him at the moment when he crosses
the "threshold of time" and finds himself in "another life" - the first difficulty arises:
How can he replace the missing memories? Jostein Saether mentions the "expedient"
which he dares to use at this point: he meditates pictures which, in his own words,
have sprung from an "exact phantasy". These pictures, which reach back not only to
birth but even to the moment of conception, were of his own making. One of them he
describes in the following words: I tried to experience myself rising above my place of
birth and hovering over the Sunndal mountains."
At this point, if not sooner, the question arises: In what relation do phantasy-pictures
of this kind stand to the pictures which Saether really remembers? What is the
difference between his memories and the phantasy-pictures, and what is their
similarity? Are there not quite definite inner conceptions underlying both picture
forms - inner conceptions which we should examine and get to the root of? But before
we look more closely at these background elements we will turn to the other form in
which that which claims to have sprung from Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy comes
to expression in our time.

Working with Rudolf Steiner's Books and Lectures

Sergei Prokofieff, of Russian birth, and one of the most prominent of today's living
Anthroposophists, appears, in each one of his numerous and compendious books, to
be unusually well-versed in the complete works of Rudolf Steiner: whole pages are
devoted to quotations, either word-for-word or indirect, from Steiner's thoughts.
Prokofieff's main aim is - and all his books bear witness to this - to create a kind of
"synthesis" of Rudolf Steiner's work. The quotations and thoughts which he brings
together on a given subject are always drawn from different writings, and especially
lectures, and are an expression of the attempt to present a summary and an
interpretation of this work in its fundamental elements.
Just as we did with Jostein Saether, we will now listen to Sergei Prokofieff's own
words. The following quote is taken from the book on "The Heavenly Sophia and the
Being of Anthroposophy", in which he attempts to describe the coming into being and
the working of the spiritual being to whom he feels profoundly indebted: namely, the
Being "Anthroposophia". - Extended passages from the chapter on "Sophia and the
Archangel Michael" will be quoted here. (6) The singling out of a passage which, to
make matters worse, is then interrupted in certain places, may of course seem
problematic. But as we are concerned - just as in the case of the questions arising in
relation to the work of Jostein Saether - less about the so-called "correctness of the
content" of what is said (7), than about the way in which Prokofieff approaches the
theme, the presenting of extracts may also seem justified. In contrast to the text of
Saether we are not concerned here with the description of an exercise and the
experiences it has brought. Saether has himself described, in the section quoted
earlier, the soul-gesture with which he works. But in Prokofieff's text the gesture
which underlies his endeavours is less apparent. It has to be found in the reading of
it. Thus one should try to observe the inner experiences which arise in the soul as
one is reading this text. For it is this observation - and this alone - which can provide
us with insight into Prokofieff's approach. To enable this to happen, however, it is
necessary to quote a longer passage.
But work of this kind has as a precondition the laying aside of all sympathy and
antipathy - i.e. of that element of feeling which stands in the way of a deeper
penetration, as it believes it has the answer in advance. If this is attempted one can
observe that, underlying the feelings of sympathy and antipathy, there are quite
special forces which are themselves consumed at the moment when these feelings
arise. If, however, one forestalls this transformation of the forces underlying the
feelings of sympathy and antipathy, then these very forces can be especially helpful for
the process of cognition. Indeed, one can experience how, in the holding back of
sympathy and antipathy, a kind of "soul organ" comes into being. But this organ is in
its essential nature connected with the object which would normally have caused
these feelings to arise. And thus it can be of special help towards an understanding of
these questions. - But now, back to Prokofieff's text:

"As was already described above, we have in the earthly development of philosophy
- seen from an occult standpoint - a revelation of the law of the Sun, that is, an
expression of the combined working of the spirits of Wisdom, the Kyriotetes, with the
Archangeloi, just as was the case on the Old Sun. Therefore Michael, as the mightiest
son of Sophia, had the task of sending the fruits of this combined working - which one
can also describe as a working of the Heavenly Sophia in our cosmos - down to the
Earth. 'He was among the Archangels,' said Rudolf Steiner, 'inasmuch as they inhabit
the Sun, the most outstanding. He was the spirit who not only sent the physical-
etheric solar rays down from the Sun, but who sent, within the physical-etheric solar
rays , the i n s p i r i n g i n t e l l e c t u a l i t y
down to the Earth........And the directly i m p l e m e n t i n g spirit, who sent
intellectuality down in a spiritual way to the Earth, that is Michael' (8) - that is to
say, 'directly implementing' what the Heavenly Sophia creatively accomplishes in our
cosmos, from the heights to the depths out of the sphere of wisdom.
This helps us also to understand why Rudolf Steiner in another connection writes of
Michael as a cosmic spirit who
i n t h e r i g h t w a y carries the past (the law of the Sun) into the present Earth
evolution: 'One will then n o t
only envisage an observing and an experiencing of the present world, but also what
Michael conveys - a p a s t world condition, a world condition which Michael carries
into the present through his being and his deeds.' (9) And 'the way in which
Michael brings the past into effect in human life in the present, is kept in accordance
with right spiritual progress in the world, in that it contains nothing Luciferic.' (.....)
We recall the working together - characterized in almost the same words - of the spirits
of Wisdom with the Archangels on the Old Sun, when the substance of wisdom that
had been poured forth by the former in an e a r l i e r period, was preserved by the
Archai and passed on at a
l a t e r period to the Archangeloi.
Thus Michael is in our cosmos that hierarchical spirit who, from the beginning of
Earth development, sends down to humanity the cosmic intelligence, the creative
world-thoughts of the hierarchies, the substance of the Heavenly Sophia, from out of
the Sun-sphere in the form of the spiritual light of cosmic wisdom, which awakens a
higher consciousness.
As the leading Sun-Archangel, he beholds at the turning-point of time the departure of
the Christ from the Sun and his process of union with the Earth. Thus the highest
Being of our entire cosmos leaves that sphere to which Michael belongs and which he
serves. Whereupon the Mystery of Golgotha is accomplished on the Earth," - which at
first remains unknown to the human being. In order, however, that this event can be
experienced in full consciousness, "Michael on the Sun makes the decision, in
imitation of the Christ, whom he has served from the primal beginnings as the
'Countenance of the Sun-spirit', to sacrifice to earthly humanity, with which the Christ
Being has from now on united himself, the most precious substance, which he had
hitherto administered in the spiritual cosmos at the bidding of the Heavenly Sophia:
the s u b s t a n c e o f t h e c o s m i c I n t e l l i g e n c e .
And thus this thought-substance is poured like a spiritual golden shower on to the
Earth through the course of the first centuries of the Christian era. (.......) Humanity
entered this new phase of development from around the eighth century after Christ.
In the same period the cosmic intelligence of Michael reached the Earth, and the
supersensible being we are considering here (the Being Anthroposophia as the
youngest constituent member of the Heavenly Sophia - I.D.) 'caught humanity up' in
its own development in the intellectual or mind-soul. One can say that the
supersensible Being forms, within this heavenly-earthly process, a kind of chalice for
humanity, and the intelligence of Michael fills this with its substance." (.......)
The "free life of thought in the consciousness-soul of modern times can only be
attained by the human being by virtue of the fact that, since the 15th/16th century,
the cosmic intelligence of Michael has been poured into general human development.
It has now become earthly, and has become man's own possession entirely. This can
only happen, however, through the fact that its earthly bearer - the supersensible
Being (Anthroposophia - I.D.) - guides it into human consciousness by uniting her
own consciousness-soul with the consciousness-soul of the individual human being;
in other words: through the fact that she accomplished what Rudolf Steiner
characterized as a passage of this Being, the youngest constituent member of the
Sophia, t h r o u g h t h e h u m a n b e i n g , through his consciousness-soul. She
'has entered into the human being', entered 'the human soul'; for several centuries she
has been 'so inwardly united ..... with the human soul', she had 'passed through the
human soul, through the essential being of man'; (10) she passed through him in
the period from the 15th/16th century onwards, up to our own time, and poured into
his soul, out of the chalice she bore, the cosmic intelligence that had become earthly.
(....)
All this signifies as it were the completion of the process of the spirtual-historical
communion of the human being, thanks to which self-consciousness fully awakens for
the first time, whereby he is permitted to advance in consciousness and freedom
towards the realization of his true mission on Earth. This c o m m u n i o n i n t h o
u g h t we can picture to ourselves as an imagination of the lofty spiritual Being of
whom we are speaking in this book, who at the behest of the Heavenly Sophia
nourishes the consciousness-soul of earthly man with substance from the
supersensible chalice which is filled with the cosmic intelligence of Michael. With this
communion the seeds are laid in him, of the new faculty of experiencing the spiritual
worlds in full consciousness. And with this is opened up to humanity today the path
of Sophia, who leads us to the true knowledge of the Christ.
This communion in thought, which took place on the deep foundation of mankind's
development, was at first perceived only unconsciously. Further development,
however, requires that it be raised to consciousness. And the first human being who
accomplished this - i.e. who was able to raise this fundamental experience of the
modern age into his fully wakeful consciousness, was Rudolf Steiner. As early as
1887 he summed up the essence of this process in the words: 'Becoming aware of the
idea in reality is the true communion of the human being.' (11)
Thus Rudolf Steiner was the first to receive from the spiritual chalice the communion
of thought of the Michaelic intelligence, which was poured out for him in the higher
worlds by the Heavenly Sophia through the supersensible beings who serve her. In
this historic moment all that had taken place unconsciously in humanity through the
entire modern age, was concentrated in one human being who, in his individual life,
showed mankind as a whole this path in its archetypal form.
The consequence of this was that Rudolf Steiner was the first representative and
messenger of the Heavenly Sophia on Earth, the leader of mankind in the
consciousness-soul epoch on the path of Sophia to a true knowledge of Christ in the
higher worlds."

The text just quoted seems at first difficult to grasp. This is the first experience to
confront the reader; a certain struggle to understand what is written there. What
might account for this? - If I read the text again with this question in mind, I will
notice: it is a certain complexity in the sentence-structure and the descriptions, but
quite especially the wealth of 'information' contained in the text, which makes it so
difficult. In the five-and-a-half pages alone of the chapter "Sophia and the Archangel
Michael" thoughts are presented from eight different writings and lectures of Rudolf
Steiner (12) - quite apart from the connections drawn by Prokofieff from a lecture or
a writing of Rudolf Steiner, but without him referring to it in the text quoted here.
(13)
Before we look more closely at the way Prokofieff brings together elements drawn from
the work of Rudolf Steiner, the first thing we realize is that this text - in contrast to the
texts of Rudolf Steiner - has not arisen as an original impulse. The thoughts and
pictures are built up on what Prokofieff has read in Steiner's work. But within the text
we have quoted one can observe a kind of 'break'; and in fact Prokofieff does not speak
exclusively of what he has found in Rudolf Steiner, for at the end of the text he writes
about Rudolf Steiner himself. Thus, while in the first part he brings together what he
has found in Rudolf Steiner, and stands "beside" Rudolf Steiner, at the end of the text
Rudolf Steiner is included in the picture which Prokofieff - such is the claim he makes
himself - has taken over from Rudolf Steiner and "painted" in his own words. And this
he does in the following way:
The "communion in thought" of the human being, which consists in the process
whereby - so Prokofieff explains in his striving to interpret the work of Rudolf Steiner -
the spiritual Being Anthroposophia "nourishes the consciousness-soul of earthly man
by means of a supersensible chalice that is filled with the cosmic intelligence of
Michael", was at first only "perceived unconsciously". But Rudolf Steiner had - as
the first human being to do so - raised this process: "the nourishing of earthly man
from a supersensible chalice" into his "fully wakeful consciousness". This was the
reason why - so Prokofieff continues - Rudolf Steiner became the "first representative
and messenger of the Heavenly Sophia on Earth".
With this thought, which is to be questioned here, not as to its correctness, but as to
its place within the text, Prokofieff is no longer looking at what may have come to him
from Rudolf Steiner, but at the one from whom he received it: namely, Rudolf Steiner
himself. This means, however, that - proceeding from Rudolf Steiner's texts - he must
have seen more than is at first apparent in this text.
Anyone is free, of course, to write about what he has drawn from Rudolf Steiner, and
is equally free to write about what he himself thinks about Rudolf Steiner. But the
absolute precondition, so it seems to me, is that the person who is doing this should
be fully aware of the distinction. For it is not the same at all, whether I try to convey
what Rudolf Steiner said, or what I conclude from it. This distinction, however, is
not drawn here. And thus the question arises, to what extent the 'break' we have
experienced is actually present in Prokofieff's text, or in other words: could this
'break' not be the element that leads us to the central core of the text?
But this question, which is similar to the one that arose for us in our study of Jostein
Saether's work, must be set to one side at this point: both have arisen out of an
observation which relates to the outer form of the texts. Were we to follow them up
now, something would emerge which, instead of initiating a cognitive process, would
be more like a form of argumentation. But we are not looking for arguments - for as
they are essentially dependent on the standpoint of the person who wishes to argue,
they could very easily be found both in support of, and to challenge, the work of
Saether and Prokofieff. Such an approach would not get us any further.
The observation of a - perhaps only apparent - 'break' in Jostein Saether's and Sergei
Prokofieff's presentation will be set aside for the present, but not forgotten. For should
this phenomenon be encountered again - but this time as the result of a deeper
penetration of the text in thought and feeling - this would indicate that it springs
directly from the background out of which the texts have arisen.

II. Illusion or Reality? Anthroposophy and Everyday Consciousness

The Quest for the Gateway to the 'I'

Now that, for the present, we have postponed the question concerning the real and
the imagined memories meditated by Jostein Saether, we will return to his
meditations, but this time in another way. Let us ask, instead of what: how did
Saether actually meditate?
Jostein Saether describes how he focusses inwardly on the two "characteristic
examples" chosen from each seven-year period of his present life, in "mural-like
formations", and in reverse - not to the extent that each event is meditated backwards
- but the sequence of events itself. That is to say, he begins with the latest and most
immediately relevant, and works back to to the events of his childhood, or those of his
conception. As a result of this backward journey he awakens then, after a moment of
"nothingness", in a "past life".
As Saether mentions, this soul exercise is meant to resemble the one given by Rudolf
Steiner as what is known as the 'Rckschau' or daily review: here a certain
occurrence - the course of events through a whole day - is lived through again
backwards, right down to its single details. This "living through again" requires that
one wrests oneself out of one's everyday mental picturing: the stairs I went up I must
now go down again backwards, with the same dynamic, only imagined in reverse. This
exercise serves to strengthen and liberate soul-forces; and thus quite basic
conceptions such as that of the connection between cause and effect are, as it were,
"turned inside-out". With Jostein Saether, however, this "experiencing backwards",
which is only carried through with respect to the external course of the events, but not
to its inner dynamic, has a different task. His words concerning the "inner thrust of
the 'I'", which he tries to concentrate further back "in the direction of birth" make it
quite clear: his aim is to "unroll" time back into the past. Even if Saether remains
unaware of it - his exercise shows, if we think it through to the end, that in his
endeavour he is working on the basis of a quite definite conception of the nature of
time. "Time" appears to Saether's mind as a continuously flowing, quantitative
phenomenon, as a kind of "incline" which one can "slide down" backwards when - as
before birth - one enters the supersensible world. But where does such a conception
of time originate?
Even in quite normal soul-life one can observe how "time" loses the linear evenness of
its flow, how short can seem long, and long can seem short, moments can be an
eternity and many years can vanish into insignificance. This always happens when
"time" is not measured, but is observed in its relation to the life of soul. Also the way
in which quite ordinary memories arise, shows that it is not a backward-flowing time
which calls up these memories, but rather a quite specific event which carries within it
something of the past and is able to place itself in an essential - i.e. qualitative -
relation to this element of the past. Where, then, does Jostein Saether get his
conception of time as a linear flow, which is able to unveil memories through being
travelled through backwards? What is inherent in such a concept of time, which he
even extends into pre-birth existence with its independence from the physical sense-
perceptible body?
Let us look again at the way he includes in the meditation the moment of his birth and
even that of conception. Here, we decided earlier on, he must surely replace his
memories with something else: with pictures which contain the image of how, still in a
disembodied state, he is hovering over the place where he was about to be born. The
fact that he is attempting to experience this from a bird's eye view shows that behind
this image there is yet another: namely, that of space. Corresponding to the idea of
time experienced as a linear flow (albeit a backward flow), there is the image of his own
being, concentrated in a spatial point and at that time still disembodied and therefore
supersensible in nature. And this as yet discarnate being descended - so Jostein
Saether suggests - at the moment of birth on to the Earth and into its body, just like a
bird that settles into its nest after a long flight. We recognize that Jostein Saether is
meditating pictures which belong to his quite ordinary visual imagination, with its
correspondence to the laws of the physical, sense-perceptible world.
Before we examine more closely the soul-processes which are brought about through
Jostein Saether's endeavours, let us turn back to the work of Sergei Prokofieff - as the
approaches taken by both authors seem to stand in a quite definite relation to one
another. Since, in this case too, we have put to one side the 'break' that is present in
the text, the original and most fundamental question that can be asked again stands
in the focus of our attention. But this question relates to the content and the form of
the thoughts activated by Sergei Prokofieff in connection with what he has read in
Rudolf Steiner. By way of introduction the following should be said:
Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy comes towards the human being in the same way as
all the other objects of the external world. Regardless of how, or what, I am going to
feel or think about what has been written: in the first instance it is a number of
printed letters which, in the process of seeing (perceiving), have to be read and thought
through. And in addition we must recognize that this Anthroposophy has as its
content, above all, "world happenings": a world happening which describes the coming
into being of man. This - and particularly its cosmic aspects - is what Prokofieff now
takes up as his theme.

The Quest for the Gateway to the "World"

While Jostein Saether focusses on his own biography, Sergei Prokofieff's interest is
concerned with the "world", as it becomes accessible to him through work with the
texts of Rudolf Steiner. This is one difference that we can recognize between the two
texts. But there is another: Prokofieff describes in the passage we have selected, not
how he came to spiritual experiences, but his text is itself intended to be a
description of such an experience. What we are seeking must be discernible in the
way Prokofieff describes the connections which he has drawn from Rudolf Steiner's
Anthroposophy. The essential thing is not - as it is with Jostein Saether - his own
relation to the meditation he is engaged in, but it is rather the connection which - via
the medium of the text - arises between him and us, his readers. In this there is
repeated exactly the relation established by Prokofieff to the realities he describes.
If, as I read Prokofieff's lines, I observe the "position" I adopt in the process, or in other
words: the relation which arises between me - the reader - and the text, then I will
notice that this text works upon me like a description. I experience - together with
Prokofieff - how he is looking, as it were, "from outside" at what he is speaking about.
And within all that he is looking at, Beings are at work: Prokofieff calls them -
following Rudolf Steiner - "spirits of Wisdom", "Archangels", "Michael", "Christ",
"Sophia", "Anthroposophia". If the text is now read through again, from the standpoint
of how these Beings are described, then it strikes us that these descriptions are
associated with movement. Thus Michael: his sending down of the fruits of the
combined working of the spirits of Form and the Archangels, on to the Earth; his
carrying over of laws of the past into present Earth evolution; his beholding of the
departure of Christ from the Sun; and, above all, his sacrificing of the cosmic
intelligence, which pours like a shower of golden rain
on to the Earth. Or the deeds of other Beings: Christ's departing from the Sun; the
catching up of humanity in its development in the intellectual and mind-soul by the
Being Anthroposophia; the entering in, passing through and self-outpouring of this
Being through and into the human soul etc. - "Sending down", "carrying in", "looking
on", "departing", "pouring", "catching up", "entering in", "passing through" - such are
the verbs in Prokofieff's text, which lend the text a certain movement, for the simple
reason that they are verbs of movement.
At this point one might imagine that Rudolf Steiner used similar verbs to characterize
the deeds of these higher Beings. So let us look, in its original form, at a passage to
which Prokofieff directly refers. In a lecture held in Arnheim on 19th July 1924 (14),
following on his description of the Michael age of the Greek cultural period, Rudolf
Steiner spoke these words:

Then the age of Michael was followed by that of Oriphiel. The Archangel Oriphiel
became regent. The Mystery of Golgotha took place. Those human souls who had
consciously, under the rulership of Michael in the age of Alexander, participated in
the deeds of which I have spoken; they were, at the beginning of the Christian era,
gathered within the Sun around the archangelic Being Michael, who now with respect
to the Earth had passed on his rulership to Oriphiel, but who in the sphere of the
Sun was now experiencing, together with those who were to serve him as human
souls, the departure of Christ from the Sun.
And this is one of the events which we must bear in mind: that those human souls
who are connected with the Anthroposophical movement behold the following: We
are united with Michael on the Sun; the Christ, who until then had sent his
impulses from the Sun to the Earth, he departs from the Sun in order to unite with
the Earth-development! Yes, just think of this deeply significant, super-earthly,
cosmic event, of this particular sight beheld by those human souls who were then
gathered as Angeloi-servants around Michael, after he had ended his rulership on
the Earth, and who as it were within the region of the Sun were experiencing how the
Christ was departing from the Sun, in order to unite his destiny with the destiny of
earthly humanity. "He is going from us!" - that was the mighty experience.
Human souls receive their various directions not, indeed, from the Earth alone; they
receive them also in the life between death and a new birth. So it was for all those
who had participated in the Alexander age. A great and mighty impulse arose,
from the cosmic, world-historical moment when these souls saw how Christ was
departing from the Sun. And for them there was clarity with regard to the fact:
now the cosmic Intelligence is passing gradually from the cosmos to the Earth.
And Michael and those around him saw, as it were, how gradually all that had
once flowed as intelligence from the cosmos, was descending to the Earth."

What experiences are evoked by these words?

Let us imagine how Rudolf Steiner, on a summer's day in 1924, is standing before a
group of people, and how this group of people comes gradually to the feeling: When
Rudolf Steiner speaks here of Christ and of Michael, when Rudolf Steiner relates to
Christ and to Michael in such a way that he is as it were "gazing down" with them on
to the Earth; yes, indeed, then Rudolf Steiner is not merely speaking about Christ and
Michael, he is speaking about me, about me quite personally, and about us, who are
sitting here together listening to him! The special feelings that must have gripped the
listeners at that time, can still be experienced by us today. The experience of the
departure, of being left behind, and the riddle connected with this - Why is he leaving
us? - becomes so alive through the words of Rudolf Steiner, that the impulse which is
associated with this experience, as it were, awakens in the soul anew. Here one can
sense: neither the 'being forsaken' nor the riddle connected with this is something
that is past. On the contrary: these are experiences which are central to my present
relationship to spiritual science and Rudolf Steiner!
Let us look again at Prokofieff's text:

As the leading Sun-Archangel, he (Michael - I.D.) beholds at the turning-point of

time the departure of the Christ from the Sun and his uniting with the Earth. The
highest Being of our entire cosmos thus leaves that sphere to which Michael
belongs and which he serves. Then the Mystery of Golgotha takes place on the Earth,"

In this text too there are movements: "departing", "uniting", and above all "leaving
behind", in which was contained the fundamental soul-gesture of the words of Rudolf
Steiner which we have just quoted. In Sergei Prokofieff, however, these words stand in
a living relationship neither to the person who is speaking them, nor to those to whom
they are addressed; since they are not experienced in a living way by the author, they
cannot be livingly experienced by the reader, either. For we have here to do neither
with movements that are called forth by my feelings, nor with movements that arise
from my effort in the activity of thinking. In contrast to the words of Rudolf Steiner,
Prokofieff's words arouse no inner experience in the reader; instead, only pictorial
representations of movements are evoked. And, curiously enough, in nearly every case
we have to do with inner representations which point to movements of a spatial
nature.
If I observe myself as I read the text of Prokofieff, I can discover that, neither through
the description of the Beings, nor through the movements ascribed to them, can soul
qualities come to be experienced in a living way; nowhere, as I read, does the feeling
arise that I have to do with anything more than pictures which stir neither my
thinking nor my feeling. Pictures that remain outside my life of soul - just like any
occurrence that remains external because it is not ensouled.

In contrast to Sergei Prokofieff, Jostein Saether's starting-point is his own quite
personal memories, and he places these memories before him in such a way that he
retains the focal point of his 'I'-experience, but looks at the pictures as though from
outside. Underlying his endeavours there are quite definite ideas of space and time, of
laws of reincarnation and incarnation, which correspond to the habits of inner
picturing that belong to life in the physical sense-world. The will-charged condensing
of these images he has built up of himself, and of his relation to a "world" that lies
outside him, leads to an "awakening in a living and moving world of pictures", which
he understands "as an imagination", and in which he rediscovers the twelve
incarnations described by him.
The starting-point for Sergei Prokofieff is a wide-ranging, repeated reading of Rudolf
Steiner's works. He then sets the pictures and thoughts he has found - after they have
been brought into an at least external movement with the help of certain conceptions
drawn from physical, spatial experience - before him in such a way that they can be
looked at, as it were "objectively". While the independence from his personal
experiences, of the pictures meditated by Prokofieff, is a feature distinguishing him
from Saether, the attempt to project the pictures outside oneself and survey them as a
tableau is common to them both. The outcome of Prokofieff's endeavour - similar to
that of Jostein Saether - is a kind of "awakening" in a world of pictures, whereby
Prokofieff has had for many years the impulse to fill hundreds of pages describing
them.
While Saether does not let go of the focal point of his 'I'-experience, there arises under
the pen of Prokofieff a world which contains concepts used by Rudolf Steiner, but in
which the living soul-spiritual experience central to Rudolf Steiner's work is no longer
to be found. But in both cases a world of pictures conjured forth by one's own
biography or by the work of Rudolf Steiner takes on a life of its own. What sort of "life
of its own" is this, and in what relation does it stand to the experiences of Imagination,
of which Rudolf Steiner so often spoke?
In order to pursue this question we must turn again to the endeavours of Jostein
Saether and Sergei Prokofieff, whereby at this point we would stress again that we are
speaking not of the two personalities, but of what they embody. Saether and Prokofieff
are only of interest here insofar as they each bring to expression with special clarity a
particular stream within the Anthroposophical movement. But they could also be
substituted by others.

III. Caught in the Snare of Self-Indulgence:

Inner Thought-Pictures as a Spiritual Prison

The Image of the 'I'

Having established that Jostein Saether meditates inner pictures which are rooted in
the experience of space and time that is bound to the physical sense-world, while
Prokofieff describes Beings from the texts of Rudolf Steiner which are mobile only
externally, because they have lost their soul-spiritual substance, we now turn again to
the texts of both authors. Let us now try to enter more deeply into the quality of the
inner pictures described by Saether and Prokofieff. First we will look at two memories
which Jostein Saether has described and which he must have meditated. (15)

"My first memory reaches back to a time shortly before I was three years old,"
Saether tells us. "I was lifted by my father through a hole in the bedroom ceiling
up into the loft, where a box stood containing his many tools. I was supposed to
fetch a screwdriver. I see myself standing there, with the screwdriver in my hand,
screaming because I did not want to go down again to my parents, who were
waiting for me with outstretched arms. I wanted to stay up there, look further into
the box, and stare at the light that was shining in through a tiny window."

And another memory, from a somewhat later date:

"On one occasion, when we were still living in the carpentry workshop, I was
following my mother to the big house where she had something to do in the
apartment.. Because of the building work under way we had to go out by the
cellar stairs. When she had another job to do in the cellar laundry I played with
something in the semi-darkness. For a while I was playing by myself. Then
suddenly I noticed that I was alone in the dark cellar. I went to the outside door, it
was locked. I started to call out 'Mummy!' But my mother didn't come. Only after I
had cried for an 'extremely long' time and had wet myself, did she appear and ask
what I was doing all alone in the cellar."

Whilst the first memory has characteristics that indicate quite clearly that it must, at
least in part, have been told to Jostein Saether by his parents - the explicitly
mentioned gaze directed to himself, or details in the story such as screwdriver and
tool-box, for which a two-year-old can have no concept - the second memory tells
mainly of the fear that had overcome him.
Here we can see: whether the memory-tableaux meditated by Saether consist of
phantasy pictures, or memories of his own or of other people - they always proceed
from the central point which he experiences himself to be in relation to what he feels
does not belong to him. The basic experience according to which the 'I' is the inner
reality which confronts the 'not-I' or the 'world' as a reality external to it, is always
maintained by Saether. To this basic experience there corresponds the conception of
space which proceeds from a central, point-like experience of self, which is confronted
by every other self - indeed, by the whole world - as periphery. This conception of
space is that of physical sense-experience. Here the human being experiences himself
- incarnated in his body - as occupying a central point (the consciousness of himself)
and working from within outwards. But space too, just like time, has a soul-moral
dimension: if e.g. a person on whom I have inflicted pain responds by inflicting pain
on me, then I will experience how something of myself comes towards me from outside
in an altered form.
Regardless of whether Jostein Saether sees himself hovering over the Sunndal
mountains or whether he is "looking on" at himself as his parents stretched out their
arms expectantly towards him, the moral perspective always remains the same: it is
the perspective of the experiencing 'I' in everyday consciousness. This mode of
experience, which does not confront itself in self-observation, excludes all that streams
from other human beings into one's own being. In other words, the people connected
with me do not penetrate my experience in such a way that I feel: something of what
comes towards me from without as my destiny, has so much to do with me, that I
must regard it as part of myself.
The pictures which Jostein Saether meditates and which form the material for his
"karma research", are derived from his quite ordinary memories. They are memories
which constitute what he sees as his 'I'. But the inner pictures, as they live in our
unreflected everyday consciousness, have the characteristic that they bear the stamp
of the individual qualities, or rather limitations, of our personality. And memories are
therefore nothing more than inner pictures of this kind, brought into being by the
subjective nature of the personality in question. Thus Jostein Saether deepens and
meditates the mental pictures that he makes of himself. Every other person, if he
wanted to build up memory-tableaux of Jostein Saether, would choose different
experiences. If we think, for example, - just by way of a thought-experiment - of
someone who had stood in a painful relation to Jostein Saether. This person would
have a memory of the same experience which would be the direct opposite of Jostein
Saether's. While Saether would perhaps meditate his inability to understand this
person, the central focus for the latter person would be the pain arising from this lack
of understanding.
Jostein Saether meditates - and thereby reinforces - a single aspect of his experience:
namely, the one that directly mirrors his personality. Instead of extending and
overcoming the narrowness of his own point of view, this narrowness becomes the lens
which makes what corresponds to this narrowness appear in an uncommonly enlarged
form.

Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy as a Mental Representation

Sergei Prokofieff describes - as the fruit of his study of Rudolf Steiner's

Anthroposophy - the working together of different spiritual beings, as a result of which
Anthroposophy came on to the Earth. In order really to get to the bottom of his way
of working, each one of his thoughts and each of his pictures would need to be
examined to the point where the source from which he draws could be cited in every
case. One would thus have to retrace the path trodden by Prokofieff, in order to
discover in detail the procedure he has followed. This is impossible, however. No
reader could bear such an undertaking: not simply that one would have to keep
quoting page after page, even this would only be meaningful - if we are to remain true
to the ideal we have set ourselves here - if the quite concrete spiritual 'space' out of
which Rudolf Steiner spoke or wrote in each individual case, is first clarified.
Here we will approach the task differently: We propose to find precisely those
elements in Sergei Prokofieff's work which reveal, as it were, in one point the essence
of what we are seeking. These elements can only become visible through a broad
overview, and by means of a kind of "touching" or "feeling" in thought. First of all, the
thought-flow in Prokofieff's work must be discerned. For many readers it may be a
help if the process which is described by Prokofieff in very complicated terms is here
summarized in a form that is simplified to the extent that the basic qualities of the
pictures he describes are brought into relief in their thought-context. But even if a
reader were to object that Prokofieff expressed more clearly himself what he meant to
say, this would not affect the inquiry that follows.

Michael, the most important of the Archangels and the "mightiest Son of Sophia",
who belongs for her own part to the spirits of Wisdom (Kyriotetes), had the task of
"sending down to the Earth the fruits of the combined working" of the spirits of
Wisdom and the Archangels: namely, the cosmic intelligence. However, he did this "in
the right way", because the "temporal delay" which underlies his working had, already
on the Old Sun, characterized the working together of the spirits of Wisdom and the
Archangels: Already at that time the substance of wisdom that had been "poured out"
by the Kyriotetes "at an e a r l i e r stage, had been preserved by the Archai and
passed on the Archangeloi at a l a t e r time."
After Michael had beheld the departure of Christ from the Sun, he took the "decision,
in imitation of Christ, (....) to sacrifice to earthly humanity the most precious
substance that he had administered hitherto in the spiritual cosmos at the behest of
the Heavenly Sophia: the s u b s t a n c e o f t h e C o s m i c I n t e l l i g e n c e ."
The "youngest constituent member of the Heavenly Sophia", the Being Sophia,
meanwhile entered the individual soul-members, and formed a kind of "chalice for the
whole of mankind" which "the intelligence of Michael (.....) fills with its substance."
Only in this way did the human being come to the "free life of thought in the
consciousness-soul of modern times." This "thought-communion of Man" -
the"culmination" of his "spiritual-historical communion" thus consists in the
process whereby the Being Anthroposophia "at the behest of the Heavenly Sophia
nourishes the consciousness-soul of earthly man from a supersensible chalice which
is filled with the cosmic intelligence of Michael."
However, "this thought-communion (....) is at first only perceived unconsciously."
Only Rudolf Steiner was able "to raise into his fully wakeful consciousness this
fundamental experience of modern times." Thus he was "the first" to receive the
thought-communion of the Michaelic intelligence" which was bestowed upon him by
Anthroposophia. This, therefore, made Rudolf Steiner the "first representative and
messenger of the Heavenly Sophia on the Earth."

If one immerses oneself in the thought-flow of Sergei Prokofieff - without drawing on

any of the knowledge one may have gathered from the work of Rudolf Steiner - there
are two places where an unevenness can be detected: unevenness in the thought-
structure of the text itself. First we are struck by the fact that Prokofieff attaches
great significance to the coincidence of Michael's sending to the Earth the spiritual
substance that arose through the working together with the Heavenly Sophia, with the
same "temporal delay" with which once - so Rudolf Steiner tells us - the "spirits of
Wisdom" had received the sacrifice of the Archai with "temporal delay". However, it is
not clear from the text why this is of any significance; thoughts are standing here next
to one another with no connection. The only reason visible from the text for a
connection between the two facts, is that Sergei Prokofieff had been reminded by the
event described by Rudolf Steiner, of something he had read before in Rudolf Steiner's
works. In this way Rudolf Steiner, or rather: what Prokofieff thinks he has found in
Rudolf Steiner, becomes for Prokofieff the "thought-glue" which would otherwise be
missing. This is also a point in Prokofieff's work which of itself demands that one go
back to Rudolf Steiner.
The second thing to strike an unprejudiced thinking is where Prokofieff speaks of a
"thought communion of Man", which had been "at first perceived unconsciously".
But how can a thought communion, which is said by Prokofieff to have accompanied
the entry of Michael's intelligence into the consciousness-soul, remain unconscious?
Or expressed in other words: What part is played by the Being Anthroposophia who -
as though in a cosmic process - entered the human soul, and is said by Prokofieff to
have brought with her the Michaelic intelligence? And what part is played by the
human being himself, and therewith Rudolf Steiner? - But, for the present, let us
turn to the first thing that caught our attention: the delayed working of Michael.

There are two places in the work of Rudolf Steiner to which Prokofieff refers here.
First, statements made by him in the Berlin lecture-cycle of 1911 on "Evolution from
the Standpoint of the True", (16) which lead Prokofieff to speak repeatedly in his
book, of a "law of the Sun". The process referred to by Prokofieff as the "law of the
Sun" is described by Rudolf Steiner as that whereby in an earlier - i.e. the Sun -
incarnation of the Earth (17) a relationship of a quite definite kind had emerged
between Beings. Rudolf Steiner describes how at that time the spirits of Wisdom
(Kyriotetes), as they beheld a sublime deed of sacrifice, poured out their own soul-
substance (the "great virtue of giving"), which was, however, at first accepted by "no-
one". In other words, the act of "giving" found at first no immediate reponse of
"taking". And so this "giving" of the spirits of Wisdom is, so to speak, "preserved" in
time, since those spirits who bring the "giving" to fulfilment through a "taking" only
come into being in the "giving" of the spirits of Wisdom themselves: namely, the
Archangeloi. (18) Rudolf Steiner describes how the Archangels now

"do not keep for themselves what they receive from the spirits of Wisdom, but
radiate it back, just as a mirror radiates back its image."
(.....) "Everything is irradiated with light. But what do they (the spirits of Wisdom
- I.D.) receive back from those who, as they receive, radiate back (the Archangels -
I.D.)? Their own being became, as they sacrificed it, a gift to the macrocosm,
where it was their inner being. Now it radiates back: their own being comes to meet
them from outside. They see their own being dispersed through the entire world
and radiated back from the outside, as light. as the mirror reflection of their own
being.
Inner and outer are the two opposites which confront us now. The earlier and later
is metamorphosed and becomes such that it changed into inner and outer. 'Space'
is born!" (....)

This process which Prokofieff calls the "law of the Sun", is thus the birth of space,
which arises as a result of the transformation of the contrast between "earlier" and
"later". This means that the "inner" aspect of their own being, which also appears as
the "earlier", now streams towards the spirits of Wisdom from the outside. But the
"later" became this "outer" through the mirroring of the "inner" in the "outer". Their
own "inner" space thus appears to these spirits - delayed in time - as an outer mirror-
reflection!
Here it becomes clear why Rudolf Steiner had prefaced his lectures on "Evolution from
the Standpoint of the True" with the following words as a kind of leitmotif:

"For what happened in the past is still continuing today. What took place in the
Saturn period is not something that only happened then, but it is still going on, only it
is overlaid, made invisible, by what is around the human being externally today on the
physical plane." (19)

Thus Rudolf Steiner is describing happenings connected with the cosmic evolution of
our Earth, in which soul-gestures become visible in their essential, archetypal
character! Did we not meet just now the question about precisely this "cosmic
gesture"? Were we not asking the question about the connection between my inner
being and that which comes to me from "outside" through other people, as my destiny?
For Prokofieff, however, the essential aspect of the process described by him as the
"law of the Sun" lies, not in this mirroring between "within" and "without", but in the
delay which occurs between the act of "giving" of the spirits of Wisdom, and that of
"taking" by the Archangels. And this he connects with what he has read in an essay
which forms part of the "Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts". (20)
From this he quotes the following words:

"One will then envisage n o t only observation and experience of the present world,
but also that which is mediated by Michael, a p a s t world condition, a world
condition which Michael carries over into the present through his Being and deeds."
And "the way in which Michael brings the past to bear in human life in the present,
is in keeping with the right spiritual progress of the world, which contains nothing of a
Luciferic nature."

These two sentences already give us a sense that Rudolf Steiner is speaking here out
of a quite different "spiritual space" - one could also say out of a different spiritual
colouring or tone - than in the lectures considered above. We must therefore try to
develop a mood of soul which is able to come closer to the essays and articles that
have become known under the heading "Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts". The
density and the intensity of these writings, composed in the last months of his life,
and which develop, or rather unfold, in quite distinct rhythms, the relatively short
sentences which seem like a continuous meditation, make the mysterious riddle
underlying Rudolf Steiner's entire work especially palpable. Just in these
"Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts" any reader will be able to find turns of phrase,
sentences or paragraphs in which it becomes clear: if I read the texts in the way I read
those of other authors, I will not understand them. For this reason one can only
indicate from what depths the two sentences quoted above arose at a certain point in
the texts written by Rudolf Steiner on his sick-bed shortly before his death. Any
attempt to say something "about" these words is bound to be inadequate, and to
remain so, in view of the fact that they have arisen out of a spiritual organism, which
can only be a living one if it is thought and experienced in its totality. We will
therefore in no way replace, through what is said here, what can only happen in study
of the works of Rudolf Steiner himself. But if, nevertheless, we enter more deeply into
the question raised for us by Prokofieff: what kind of "past world condition" is it, that
Michael "carries over into the present through his Being and his deeds"? - then we
will realize that with this question the central process is touched upon, which
constitutes the spiritual organism of the "Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts"
created by Rudolf Steiner. And this is a sign that we can pursue further the path on
which we have set out.

The idea of a past world condition which Michael carries over into the present arises
and unfolds within the "Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts" from a certain point
onwards. (21) And it appears - at the various stages of its development - continually
anew. The essay from which Prokofieff quotes begins as follows:

"Whoever, with earnest feeling, takes up into his reflection the inner beholding of
Michael's being and his deeds, will come to a right understanding of how a world that
is not divine being, or revelation, or activity, but which is the finished w o r k of the
Gods must be taken by the human being". (22)

Here we have the unusual standpoint out of which a large part of the essays arose,
that are collected in the "Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts": namely, the
description, not of the human being's experience, but that of the Gods as they behold
the human being. Or, in other words, Rudolf Steiner describes how the world
changes - as a result of the changing relationship of man towards the world. In the
same measure as the human being's experience and immediate sense of oneness with
the divine Being dissolves, the world of divine Being becomes a world of revelation,
and then of effective activity of the divine-spiritual. Today, however, in the age of the
world-views of modern science, the world is nothing more than the finished work of
the Gods. And it is into this 'work'-world, into the world of the present, that Michael
carries over a past world-condition: that of divine-spiritual being.

"In this solar-divine, but not living, divine world lives the human being. But he has,
as a result of the working upon him of Michael, retained as man the connection with
Being of the divine-spiritual. He lives as a God-permeated being in a world not
permeated with the divine." (23)

What is, then, this divine-spiritual which Michael carries over into the present? - For
human beings of earlier times thoughts were not connections which he thought, but
his experience and the experience of the thinking of the Gods was one. He himself was
living thinking of the Gods. What Michael bears into the present is this: the possibility
not only to think, but to live in thinking. But this is nothing other than
Anthroposophy, which is the reason why Rudolf Steiner, in the essay introducing the
descriptions of the Michael-working, says the following:

"In the Anthroposophical Society far too little heed is paid to the fact that
Anthroposophy is meant to be not a grey theory, but true life. True life - that is its
essential nature; and if it is m a d e into a grey theory, then it is often not a b e t
t e r , but a w o r s e theory than the others. But it only becomes a theory when it is
made into one, when it is killed. This is heeded far too little - that
Anthroposophy is not only a different world-view from the others, but that it m u s
t a l s o b e r e c e i v e d d i f f e r e n t l y . One recognizes and experiences its
essential nature only in this other way of receiving it." (24)

Sergei Prokofieff connects - through the stringing together of quotations from the work
of Rudolf Steiner - elements which, in the way in which he does this, do not belong
together. The appearance, mentioned by Rudolf Steiner, of a past world-condition in a
present one, through the deed of Michael, cannot be brought into such a direct
connection with the process in the Old Sun described in the lectures of 1911. In the
lectures of 1911 we are told how over against an "inner" realm - the being of the spirits
of Wisdom - a mirror-image is placed as an "external" element. This too occurs with a
"temporal delay", and appears at least outwardly to resemble the deed of Michael.
Nevertheless, the process involved is precisely the opposite.
In the lectures of 1911 the birth of the separation of inner and outer is described.
But in the essays brought together under the heading "Anthroposophical Leading
Thoughts", to which Prokofieff refers in the second instance, Rudolf Steiner was
developing the idea of the"life in thinking", which has become possible through the
deed of Michael. This, however, does not approach the human being from without in
the manner of a mirror-image, but is rather a process which unfolds in the innermost
being of man himself. It is thus the exact opposite of what has just been described, for
the outer - the "world" - becomes, in the moment when it is thought by the human
being, his "inner" reality. Whereas - by means of mirroring processes such as were
described by Rudolf Steiner in connection with events on the Old Sun - the outer
stands over against the inner, and thus the first step of a separation takes place, the
deed of Michael means the opposite: when Michael "carries over a past world-
condition (....) into the present", the world enters the human being again. The
separation of inner and outer is overcome, cancelled, through the life in thinking
which has now become possible. Thus Prokofieff brings two opposite world-processes
- the separation between inner and outer and the overcoming of this separation - as
though into "a single breath", and in complete unawareness of what he is doing. But
we can go still further: if the human being really thinks what Rudolf Steiner gave in
his "Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts", he creates "a new world", a new "outer"
reality - but in his inner world. As the outer becomes inner, so the inner also becomes
outer. The ideas of Rudolf Steiner wrongly brought together by Prokofieff - the
connection between inner and outer, and the appearance in the present of an element
of the past - are, in the end, connected together again.

However, Prokofieff does not reach this level of thought-formation; he remains at the
stage of mirroring thought-shadows in a completely external fashion. And thus he
does in practice exactly what he describes: Instead of thinking he changes the
thoughts he has found in Rudolf Steiner into (mirror-) image-like representations. He
grasps the ideas which constitute Rudolf Steiner's work, not from their innermost
essence and in thinking, but connects those things together which - according to the
way he reads Rudolf Steiner - resemble each other externally. He brings sentences
and and pictures into a mutual relation, to the extent that they show him a similar
outer surface. This surface, however, corresponds to the inner representations which
he has made of the content of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. Such inner
representations always bear the imprint of the idiosyncracies, or rather limitations, of
the personality who forms them. They are fixed, immobile and lifeless, and can only
be dissolved again in the act of thinking. For only in thinking can one break through
one's own limits; only then do we overcome the separate being which constitutes our
personality. Thus Sergei Prokofieff describes - instead of raising himself above his
personal limitations - inner representations of his own, which he has made, not of
himself like Jostein Saether, but of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. Just as with
Saether this narrow perspective, which is his own quite personal narrowness, becomes
the lens which makes what corresponds to this narrowness appear in an enlarged
form. And interestingly enough this narrowness is to be found exactly at the place
where we "broke open" Prokofieff's sequence of pictures: namely, in the purely formal,
lifeless and externalized stringing together of thought-shadows, in which his own inner
representations are mirrored. As Prokofieff - together with many others - mirrors in a
purely external way the withered thought-husks from Rudolf Steiner's work, these
thought-husks become a kind of "thought-image prison". "Michael", "Christ",
"Heavenly Sophia" and "Anthroposophia": these are words that place themselves in
front of the Beings which Rudolf Steiner wished to point to by means of these words.
Because they are not thought as idea, in the way they appear in Rudolf Steiner, they
resemble the new ceiling paintings in the Great Hall of the Goetheanum: these
pictures too throw the observer back on clichs, which the contents of Anthroposophy
have in the meantime become.
If we now step back from what we have been doing, something becomes visible which
might at first seem paradoxical: Both Jostein Saether and Sergei Prokofieff have in a
certain way become our helpers in the quest for knowledge, since we experienced in
the writings of both authors how, at the moment when we take hold of their
statements with our thinking, the essence of what we are seeking becomes visible.
This, however, is an experience that recurs continually: whenever we penetrate with
our thinking into the counter-picture, what constitutes the true picture is revealed -
as though from the essential core of being of the other side.
Texts such as those of Jostein Saether or Sergei Prokofieff can thus become helpers to
us in our quest for knowledge, if we only begin to take these texts really seriously.

IV. The Mirroring or Overcoming of Self?

Anthroposophists at the Crossroads

How the World Appears in the 'I'

Our investigations so far have shown that Jostein Saether and Sergei Prokofieff
meditate inner thought pictures which they have made either of themselves or of
Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. Saether, instead of experiencing how, as he surveys
his own biography, that which formed his selfhood in the first place, is opened up for
him - namely, the world, the meeting with other human beings - he consolidates still
further the narrow space of his selfhood through the work on his own biography. And
Prokofieff, instead of experiencing how in his thinking of Rudolf Steiner's words they
lose their character of mental representations through becoming living inner
experience, these words are to such a degree hardened into externalized images, that
they risk assuming a clich character which borders on the ludicrous. In both
authors, however, the personal narrowness is increased further, because it is not at all
perceived as narrowness.
If we now look again at Jostein Saether's endeavours, the question arises: What
happens to the mental representations of himself - i.e. with his own mirror-image - at
the moment when he condenses and meditates these pictures with the determination
and resolve we have mentioned above? The increasing "rigour" with which he works,
the "I-consciousness" which had to be upheld, and quite particularly the "inner
thrust of the 'I'" which he concentrated "in the direction of birth" - all this points to a
determined, extremely goal-oriented approach, a style of meditation which aims to
achieve concrete results. But the image in particular, of the "inner thrust of the 'I'",
probably arose from the fact that this will is sustained by the consciousness of a goal,
just as it is directed outwards from the central point of Saether's personality.
There is no question that a strong, concentrated will is always needed for work of a
spirit and soul nature. Only a will of this kind is able to form, for the fine, ephemeral
and subtle experiences, the "vessel"in which these can be "gathered" and "condensed".
But this will is not the one with which we have to do in everyday life. - The will with
which one can approach the supersensible must first of all have rid itself of all traces
of self-will. (25) It is "open", it "waits to see what will develop" and it is above all free
of the desire to impose itself. Jostein Saether, however, carries a certain ambition into
his meditative work; he has not freed himself from the striving for success. (26) As a
result we see the subjective, personality-bound inner representations of Saether both
in what he meditates, and in how he does it. It is not only that his memories retain
the perspective from which they were experienced, thereby excluding from the outset
any "peripheral view", and with it the experiences that another person can have of
him. Corresponding to this standpoint that is oriented from within outwards, there is
the clearly goal-oriented will with which he carries out his exercises, and which
excludes the ability to wait for spiritual experiences, a quality often stressed by
Rudolf Steiner. This will also has its starting-point in the subjective "inner sphere" of
his everyday personality.
And yet Jostein Saether expressly and repeatedly states that he based his meditation
on the indications given by Rudolf Steiner in 1912 in connection with the questions of
reincarnation and karma. It was, he says, these exercises which, when he started to
"carry them out with more rigour than before", helped him to his karmic vision. - But
what is the nature of this exercise, precisely? - As always it is advisable to read Rudolf
Steiner's statements in the original. (27) But in order to bring out with full clarity the
difference between the exercises Rudolf Steiner gave and those carried out by Jostein
Saether, we will at least provide some indication of the direction given by this exercise
to one's inner soul-work.

On January 23rd 1912 Rudolf Steiner begins his description of the soul-exercise with
the following words:

"The first step one can take is to practise the usual form of self-knowledge a little,
where the human being looks back on his own life and asks himself: what sort of
person was I in my life? Was I someone with a strong tendency to reflection, a
person who reflects inwardly, or was I someone who was always more fond of the
sensations of the external world, someone who liked or disliked this or that in life?
Was I a person who liked reading, but not mathematics, who liked hitting other
children, but didn't like being hit himself? Or was I perhaps a child who was
always a 'sitting target' and who was never smart enough to see to it that the others
were hit?"
This inner stepping back and looking at what is already accessible to ordinary self-
knowledge is, in a second stage, intensified as one "places before the soul in full
clarity -

all that one didn't really want to do. For example, whether you were a son who
would have liked to be a poet, but whose father decided you should be a
craftsman, and you had to be a craftsman although you never really wanted this;
you became a craftsman although you would have preferred to be a poet." (28)

Not "two characteristic examples from each seven-year period", as Jostein Saether
would have it, are meant to be chosen, but rather examples connected with the
phenomena and the events which went "against the grain", which were painful, which
contradicted your own wishes and preconceptions, things that tormented you.
"Thus", Rudolf Steiner continued, "there is demanded of a person who wishes to
reach through to the central core of his being, something that people in our time
scarcely ever do. Our present time is not in the least inclined to yearn in any way
for anything resembling what is required here; for in our time human beings actually
strive most of all, when they reflect upon themselves, to find themselves absolutely
right, just as they are."

The exercises given by Rudolf Steiner aim not to reinforce, but to transform, the image
which I have built up of myself. This image, so long as it remains untransformed,
always corresponds to my inner (bearing the stamp of a certain
bodily-soul-spiritual constitution) and outer (the events of one's biography) destiny.
They can therefore - if not worked upon - only reflect what constitutes just this one
particular destiny. Only by means of a thorough transformation of one's world of
inner representations can the way be found to a beholding of that being who embodies
the connection that exists between the different earthly lives of one and the same
individuality. And significantly, the painful, unpleasant events have a much greater
power to raise one above the narrow, personal standpoint, than the joyful and
pleasant ones.
In order to bring about an essential transformation of my image(s) of myself, the
memory of unpleasant events is, of course, not sufficient. For now it is necessary to
enter into the dynamic that lives in such painful memories, through the process of
reversing them. The "will" experienced in the events, which was felt to be an "external
" will that is alien or even hostile towards me, must now be re-experienced as though it
were my own.

" (.....) And one must now try to enter completely, in a living way, into a highly
remarkable thought-picture: All that one did not actually want and will, to actually
want and will this with great intensity! To place intensively before one's soul the
following: How would you actually be if you had heartily, ardently wished for all that
you did not actually wish for, those things that went against the grain in your life?
In so doing one must in a certain way exclude what one has managed to overcome.
For the most important thing is that one wishes for those things, or imagines that
one fervently wishes for those things, one did not wish for, or in relation to which one
was not able to assert one's wishes effectively; so that in one's feelings and one's
thoughts one creates for oneself a being, of whom one can have the idea that one
has never been (like) it until now. And now one should imagine that one has been
this being, with all forcefulness, with all intensity. If one imagines this, if one
succeeds in identifying with this being which one has as it were constructed for
oneself in this way, then one has made an essential step on the path of gaining
knowledge of the core of one's inner soul being. For in just this picture which one can
make of one's own personality in the way described, something will dawn which
one is not in one's present incarnation, but which one has brought into the present
incarnation. Its deeper being will dawn as one contemplates the picture one
constructs in this way."

If one does this exercise again and again, then what one pictures to oneself inwardly
begins to undergo a transformation.

A process occurs similar to the following: someone is trying to recall a name, and
tries and tries and it is 'on the tip of his tongue', and then he says: Nuss -------
baumer -, but he has the feeling that this is not right, and then for reasons which
he cannot fully grasp, the correct name occurs to him directly afterwards : say,
Nussdorfer." (29)

In a way similar to that whereby, after one has begun trying or searching, one finds
the correst name at last, so this constructed "thought-man", as Rudolf Steiner calls
him, will begin to reveal something of what constitutes the true, the essential core of
the human being.

Everything would seem to indicate that the untransformed images of himself which
Jostein Saether meditates, "shoot down" into that part of his being with which he
works and from which he draws: that of his unpurified self-will. And it is this self-will
which mirrors these images back to him in many different facets. Thus arise the
pictures of his supposed past incarnations, which could have to do with phenomena
like those in a hall of distorting mirrors in a fairground: an already mirrored, distorted
mirror-image is mirrored yet again many times by variously positioned, distorted and
blurred mirrors. Anyone who has tried something like this will have discovered:
although - altered beyond belief by the mirrors - one still recognizes oneself in them ("I
found myself in the midst of processes which I immediately recognized as something
belonging to me," says Jostein Saether), one nevertheless loses all orientation in this
labyrinth of mirrored mirror-images. Indeed, one can no longer find the way out..

This phenomenon accounts for the enormous speed with which Jostein Saether found
his supposed past incarnations: "in the course of autumn 1996," so he says, he
had succeeded in "witnessing life-motifs of twelve incarnations altogether, which I
recognized as being my own previous incarnations." (30) But the meditative
breakthrough described in detail above had not begun until autumn 1996. (31) The
many different mirrorings of his own mirror-image arose, therefore - and this lies in
the nature of such phenomena - in the shortest conceivable time.
In the case of the exercises given by Rudolf Steiner, which are meant to lead "to a
direct, real beholding of that being in man which goes through the repeated earth-
lives," (32) we have to do with more than 'just' exercises which can give insight into
past incarnations. The soul-exercises recommended by Rudolf Steiner seem to have
more to do with something that will influence the destiny of human beings
increasingly in the future: namely, the feeling that my true 'I' has less to do with the
part of the world I experience as contained within my body, than with the part that
comes towards me from outside this bodily nature. If I confront myself as an observer
it is easy to see - as though in a first step towards this insight - that every other
human being has at least as much to do with me as "I" have "myself"
This insight into life and destiny connections gives a right basis to the following words
of Rudolf Steiner, spoken in Dornach on 27th December 1918, (33) :

" (.....) The real 'I' comes to a standstill when we are born. What we experience as
our 'I' is only a mirror-image of our 'I'. It is only something that the 'I' from before
birth creates in us as a reflection. It is indeed so, that we experience only a mirror-
reflection of the 'I'; we experience something of the real 'I' only indirectly. What the
psychologists, the so-called soul-researchers, speak of as the 'I' is only a reflection; it
stands in the same relation to the real 'I' as the image you see in a mirror is related
to you. (.....) The human being experiences indirectly something of his 'I', when he
enters into relation with other people and karma takes its course.

When we encounter another human being and something takes place between us
and the other, which is part of our karma, then something of the impulse of the
true 'I' enters into us. What in us we call 'I', what we refer to with this word, this
is only a mirror-reflection. And it just in this way that the human being is brought to
maturity during our 5th post-Atlantean epoch, that through the 5th period this 'I'
is only experienced by him as a reflection. (....) Only, he will experience it
differently than he would wish today! Today the human being would like to
describe his 'I', which he only experiences as a mirror-reflection, altogether differently
from what will present itself to him as such in the coming, sixth period. Those
mystical fancies which people still have: that through inner brooding they will find
their true 'I' - which they even call the divine 'I' ! - human beings will indulge in such
fancies less often in the future. For they will have to get used to seeing their own 'I'
only in the outer world. The strange phenomenon will arise that every other person
who meets us and has something to do with us, has more to do with us, has more
to do with our 'I' than what is enclosed in our skin. Thus the human being is moving
towards the social age, where in the future he will say to himself: my 'self' is
contained in all those who meet me from the world outside; it is least of all inside.
I receive, while I am living as a physical human being between birth and death, my
'self' from all possible sources - only not at all from what is enclosed within my skin.
 This, paradoxical as it may seem, is being prepared for indirectly, through the fact
that human beings are learning in a small way to feel how there is actually
extremely little contained in what they call their 'I', in this mirror-reflection. I
recently spoke of how one can get to the truth by reviewing one's biography
dispassionately and asking oneself what one owes to this or that person from one's
birth onwards. One will thus gradually see one's identity dissolved in the
influences that come from others; one will find extraordinarily little in what one has to
see as one's actual 'I' which, as I said before, is only a mirror-reflection."

And on December 28th 1924:

"The human being of today only has the mirror-image of the true 'I', he has
something of the true 'I' raying in, when he comes into contact with other human
beings; the other person, who is connected with him karmically or in some other way,
gives him something real. If one were to express it radically - it is a characteristic of
human beings in modern times - : we are inwardly hollow with respect to the reality of
our 'I'. We are all inwardly hollow, and we ought actually to admit this to ourselves
(......)"

The experience of the fact that the will that is connected with my true being, the will
which, as it shapes my destiny, "educates" me, is to be sought not "inside me", but
outside me - in the world - opens the gateway which leads out of the picture world that
is mirrored back to itself. But at the threshold of this gateway something can be
divined, of what lies on the other side.

How the 'I' Appears in Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy

Reading the text of Sergei Prokofieff we came upon two passages which - because of
the unclear elements in them - challenged us to look into them more exactly. We first
discovered that Prokofieff brings together the 'husks' of thoughts which he has drawn
from the work of Rudolf Steiner, but which, in the way he attempts this, do not belong
together at all. While he mirrors, as it were, from the outside the connections derived
from that source, the essential core of the sentences quoted from Rudolf Steiner lies in
what Prokofieff omits to do: namely, not just to mirror thoughts, but to think them
and connect with them in a living way.
The second passage that struck us, however, is the one where Prokofieff speaks of a
"thought communion of the human being", which is "at first perceived only
unconsciously". How a thought communion can remain unconscious, and what rle
is played in this cosmic event by its being taken hold of consciously by the human
being - these are the questions that arise at this point. Since, for Prokofieff, the first
human being to think the "thought communion" was Rudolf Steiner, it was he who
thereby became the "first messenger" on Earth - of both the Heavenly Sophia and her
youngest constituent member, Anthroposophia. Thus we can also ask this question in
the following way: Who is the Being Anthroposophia? And: Who is Rudolf Steiner?

Earlier in our discussion the question arose concerning the place of Rudolf Steiner in
the configuration of Prokofieff's thoughts. At the beginning of our inquiry into the
spiritual background of the endeavours of Jostein Saether, a 'break' had become
apparent in the texts of both authors: Saether spoke at first of real memories, but then
of memories that needed to be replaced by inner representations; Prokofieff described
a cosmic process on the basis of what he had read in Rudolf Steiner, but then -
without pointing out the difference - he wrote about the place of Rudolf Steiner himself
in the process. In both cases - Saether as well as Prokofieff - the same question now
returns in a new form.
This phenomenon which we set to one side initially and which appears again in a
deeper connection, indicates that, already on the surface - at the point in the process
that shows itself most clearly - something has become visible of what belongs to its
innermost being.
It is a quite specific lecture of Rudolf Steiner that Sergei Prokofieff mentions more than
18 times in his book "The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia": the
lecture of 3rd February 1913, held by Rudolf Steiner on the occasion of the first
constitution-forming General Meeting of the newly-founded Anthroposophical Society
in Berlin. (34) In the extract quoted above from Prokofieff's book there are parts of
sentences from this lecture, which will now be quoted in the form in which they are
given by Prokofieff:

The "free life of thought in the consciousness-soul of the modern age," says
Prokofieff, "can only be attained by the human being through the process whereby,
since the 15th/16 century, the cosmic intelligence is poured into general human
development, which has now become earthly and has become entirely the possession
of the human being.
This can only happen through the fact that its earthly bearer - the supersensible
Being (Anthroposophia - I.D.) - guides it into human consciousness through
uniting her own consciousness-soul with the consciousness-soul of the individual
human being; in other words: through bringing about what Rudolf Steiner
characterized as a passing of this Being, the youngest constituent member of the
Sophia, t h r o u g h t h e h u m a n b e i n g , through his consciousness-soul.
She has 'entered into the human being', has entered 'the human soul'; for a few
centuries she 'had been united so inwardly ....... with the human soul', she had
'passed through the human soul, through the being of man' ;(35) she passed
through him in the period from the 15th/16th century up to our own time and poured
into his soul, from the chalice she bore, the cosmic intelligence that had become
human."

Let us first see how the thought quoted by Prokofieff appears in Rudolf Steiner's own
words: (36)

"What must be developed?" Rudolf Steiner asks in his lecture of Feb. 3rd 1913.
"What must be developed is, that a 'Sophia' should again be obviously present,
but: the human being must relate this Sophia to his consciousness-soul, he must
bring her into direct connection with the human being. This happens in the period of
the consciousness-soul. Thus this Sophia has become the Being who explains the
human being. After she has entered the human being she must take with her the
being of man, with whom she was so inwardly connected that so wonderful a love-
poem could be composed to her, as was written by Dante. She will be released again,
but she will take with her what the human being is. And she will place herself,
objectively - now not just as 'Sophia', but as 'Anthroposophia' - as that Sophia who,
having passed through the human soul, took hold of this being of man, bears it
within herself henceforth, and places herself before the cognizing human being, just as
once Sophia, the objective Being, lived among the Greeks. (.....)"

These few sentences alone make it clear that we have to do with thoughts which
belong to a quite concrete context: thus Rudolf Steiner mentions a love-poem of Dante
which must somehow be connected to what he then says about the human being,
Sophia and Anthroposophia. And indeed, if one reads in its entirety the original
lecture of Rudolf Steiner which, incidentally, bears the title "The Being
Anthroposophia", one will discover: a large part of this lecture is devoted to a
description of this love-relationship which the poet Dante had entered into with a
being, and to whom he dedicated the following lines:
"When I behold her, the breath of Paradise
Seems to waft about me gently;
Love itself gives to her this smile,
And what her eye conveys, is not a lie." (37)

This verse, quoted by Rudolf Steiner five times in his lecture, is a kind of "garment",
in which his statements about the Being Anthroposophia are clothed: with the same
soul-inwardness as when Dante is describing his relation to his Beloved - the Lady
Philosophy -, Rudolf Steiner's lecture is delivered with the same inwardness of soul.
This quality is maintained almost throughout; only at the end does a change take
place - a transformation which one might feel to be as mysterious as the appearance of
a coloured and unfolding bloom at the end of a plant that has grown steadily and
continuously upwards. But this "bloom" appears in the form of a completely new idea.
Prokofieff's quotation fragments are taken from this "bloom". If one lets first the lecture
of Rudolf Steiner and then the extract from Prokofieff's book work upon one, then the
feeling can arise: the sentence parts quoted by Prokofieff are like single petals, torn out
and tattered: not only that they quickly wither - their origin, too, is hardly discernible.
Neither the form of the plant, nor that of the bloom - not even that of the petals - can
be recognized. But interestingly enough, the very way in which Prokofieff incorporates
into his text the quoted sentences of Rudolf Steiner concerning the Being of
Anthroposophia, leads us directly to this Being herself.
In a lecture on 18th September 1915, Rudolf Steiner characterized the "ordinary
thinking of the physical plane", which is maintained by those who "with a certain
ease and lack of effort" - "want to enter the occult world": (38)

"You see, it is so difficult to battle in this area with human abstractness; for when
you have taken hold of this mobility of thought, you will also grasp that a mobile
thought cannot arise here or there in a haphazard manner. For example, you
cannot find a land creature in the water; you cannot accustom a bird, which is made
for the air, to living deep down in the water. If you are interested in what is living
you have no alternative but to adjust to the thought that you cannot take it out of
its element. This needs to be taken into account. I once tried in a quite rigorous
way in a limited field - I always try to do things in this way, but I only want now to
bring it as an example - with a very important thought, to illustrate by means of an
example how things need to be if one takes seriously the inner life of thinking",

so Rudolf Steiner continues. And then he describes how, in his lectures on "The
Spiritual Guidance of Mankind" (39) "at a certain point" he drew attention to the
mystery of the two Jesus children.

"Now look how this question is dealt with there. We have a lecture-cycle which
begins in a certain way. Attention is drawn to the way the human being can
acquire certain insights if he tries to direct his gaze towards these things. The
whole thing is given a certain shape. Then it goes on. Now the part played by the
hierarchies in human progress is described (.....), then in a certain connection, at a
quite specific point, reference is made to the two Jesus children. This belongs to a
discussion of the two Jesus children, that it happens at a certain place in the
presentation. And anyone who says: Why can't you take this discussion of the two
Jesus children out of its context, and present it exoterically in this isolated form? -
Such a person is asking the same as one who says: Why must the hand be just
here on my arm, on this part of my body? He might even say: Why is the hand not
growing on one's knee? Perhaps it could just as well be there. He does not
understand the whole organism as a living being; he thinks the hand could also be
somewhere else, you see? The hand can be nowhere else but on the arm! Thus in
this connection the thought of the two Jesus children cannot be at a different place
(.....)"

But if one experiences how it belongs integrally "to the discussion of the two Jesus
children, that this happens at a certain place in the presentation", then one's feeling
can come closer to what the word of Rudolf Steiner is in its essential nature. If this
feeling arises, then it can be a sign pointing to the fact that the soul-colouring, the
fundamental soul-gesture, has been found which corresponds to the word. Then one
discovers that the spiritual substance of Rudolf Steiner imprints itself not only on the
content of his lectures and books. On the contrary: when the organ for perception of
the texts of Rudolf Steiner awakens, one can experience how "behind" (or rather: in)
the words of Rudolf Steiner there is really a being whose "flesh and blood" consists not
(only) of content, but of rhythms, gestures. movements, of mathematical-geometrical
forms and musical harmonies.
Anyone who thinks that - without experiencing these connections - he could take out
isolated aspects, shows - so Rudolf Steiner says in the lecture quoted above - that he
has to do not with living beings but with "thought machines".

"Thus a person who does something like that - tearing such a thing out of its
context and putting it in an impossible connection - has demonstrated that he is
not familiar in the least degree with the being whose fire and warmth have
permeated our entire spiritual-scientific stream from its very beginning, because he
tries to treat the spiritual, too, according to the quite normal materialistic formula.
(....) In this way one comes to nothing less than that one dives down into the
element of life with one's thinking, while otherwise one is living in what is dead. One
dives down into the element of life." (40)

If an encounter with the words of Rudolf Steiner (and thereby with Rudolf Steiner
himself) were not at the same time an encounter with a living being, then it would
really be possible to reproduce his statements in simplified and abridged form, without
the loss of anything essential. But, observing oneself as one reads, it is easy to
experience the difference between the thought-processes of Rudolf Steiner in their
weaving and their movement in quite distinct rhythms and forms, and the attempts to
take over these thoughts with no understanding of the force that moves them. In the
first case we dive down into the life-force of the spirit, in the second case we
experience how this life-force is deadened by the intellect. And we are left with the
impression of having to do only with externalized and emptied shells.
One can try to experience in the texts of Rudolf Steiner the harmonies which not only
live in the flow of the thoughts, but also affect the way a thought arises and passes
away again. One can try to listen in to the single sounds, the double sounds and the
rhythmic repetitions, which approach and die out again, appear anew and flow
together as in a symphony, only to be transformed into a new variation on the same
theme. Then one will experience how these elements which resemble musical-
rhythmical motifs and mathematical-geometric forms belong just as much - if not
more strongly still - to the supersensible element of Being concerning which (and out
of which) Rudolf Steiner writes and speaks, as the content of his thoughts expressed
through the words. Then one will be able to feel how, in Rudolf Steiner's work -
through the experience of movement, form and sound - one can encounter the
formative laws of the spiritual world itself.
If, by contrast, one is oblivious to the element that is living and organic, that grows in
itself, becomes and passes away, then the thought-images remain, which the intellect
puts together out of the words of Rudolf Steiner. These thought-images, however,
represent to themselves the essential being inherent in Rudolf Steiner's words, in such
a way that these words themselves are divested of being, become bereft of being.

"Thus a person who does something like that - tearing such a thing out of its
context and putting it in an impossible connection, has demonstrated that he is
not familiar in the least degree with the being whose fire and warmth have
permeated our entire spiritual-scientific stream from the very beginning",

so Rudolf Steiner says in the lecture already quoted. Who is this Being, who in this
way can be smothered over and buried under rubble, and thus extinguished?

With this question we touch upon the central nerve of our relation to the
Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner. It vibrates in every one of his words and is then
experienced all the more clearly as a question, the more distinctly the living and
essential being of these words is perceived. Only when one can feel that the
connections between the words, sentences, pictures and thoughts are life-streams -
life-streams which are central to that being who is the reason why I work at all with
the texts of Rudolf Steiner, only then will these texts occupy the place that accords
with their significance. By this we do not mean to say that it is impossible to make
statements about the content of Anthroposophy. If this were so, Rudolf Steiner would
not have communicated these contents, he could really have limited himself to the
early philosophical works. Instead of this one could assume that his many lectures
are attempts to awaken the faculty in us that is able to perceive the mysterious
relation that exists between the content of his ideas and the way in which they come
to expression. This relation can be experienced in such a way that the contents
themselves come to life in the form of their expression, and are thus able to respond to
the quite concrete questions we have to ask in face of quite concrete situations in the
world today.
Thus the need is to experience the organism of the idea which is integral to the texts
of Rudolf Steiner. Such an organism does not rest upon the laws of formal-logical
thought, but rather on those that are akin to the laws of organic growth. If our
attention is guided to the formative power of the ideas, which is the power of thinking,
a transformation of Rudolf Steiner's texts can be experienced: with the striving really
to think the words contained in them, all content, all memory of a content, and every
picture of it, disappears entirely of itself. Indeed, it is as though the contents, in one's
effort to think them, in one's endeavour to grasp the thoughts, were to consume
themselves, as though they were to burn up in the will that thinks them. And it is in
this combustion process that a gateway seems to open up in the wall that hitherto
separated us from these words.

Sergei Prokofieff describes the "destiny" of the Being Anthroposophia as an event that
he views "from without", rather as he would a tree that stands before his window. At a
certain point in his description he 'weaves in' words of Rudolf Steiner which have been
extracted from a living organism, and thus builds up a phantom structure - out of the
dead components which belonged to a living being. It is a strange process indeed: the
phantom-like, apparent resurrection of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy out of the
semi-decomposed remains of what one has torn from this being.
Sergei Prokofieff can be viewed as a classic representative of those who "with a certain
ease and lack of effort" "wish to enter the occult world", and thus retain the "ordinary
thinking of the physical plane". He practises a form of materialistic occultism, of a
kind, namely, that unfolds not on the level of spiritist sances, card-reading or
astrology, but by way of an externalized - because alienated from thinking itself - work
with Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. To the extent that this materialistic occultism
pretends to work from the very highest standpoint and tries - unrecognized by many
people - to drag this highest element down into its depths, this form of materialistic
occultism must be looked upon as being the most dangerous and having the most
disturbing implications for the future. And significantly, this form of materialistic
occultism launches its attack especially at the place where one can begin to grasp why
Rudolf Steiner, and his Anthroposophy, came into the world at all at the beginning of
the 20th century.
If one opens oneself to the lecture of Rudolf Steiner of February 3rd 1913, and tries to
think the words of the lecture as they occur in the lecture, one can experience: the
sheer incomprehensibility of the ideas contained in it, which I now try with the utmost
effort to think, brings about exactly what Rudolf Steiner goes on to describe at the end
of this lecture: namely, the reversal, the "turning inside-out" of everything. This
reversal, which consists in the process whereby that which once appeared as
something external to me in the form of Anthroposophy, shows itself to be what I
myself am, reaches its climax in Rudolf Steiner's lecture with the following words:

"What we take in through Anthroposophy is our own essential being, which first
came wafting towards man, as Sophia, as Philosophia, to show herself as a
heavenly Goddess, to whom he could enter into a personal relationship that was
really living. This he will project outside himself again, he will recognize in her the
mirror-reflection of his own being, he will place it before himself as the result of
true self-knowledge in Anthroposophy. We can calmly wait until the world will
wish to test how deeply grounded - right down to every detail - is that which we have
to say. For that is the essential nature of Anthroposophy, that its own true being
consists in what is the true being of man. And that is the essential nature of her
activity: that the human being receives what he himself is - in Theosophy or
Anthroposophy - , and must place it before himself, because he must practise self-
knowledge."

If we step back from what has happened in our study so far, we can see the following:
if the inner thought-pictures which I have of myself are strengthened by occult means,
picture-sequences appear which take on a life of their own, and in this life of their own
mirror my selfhood. Instead of overcoming this selfhood, which is connected with my
personal view of my life, it - that is my own being, separated from the world - is
consolidated in its separateness. There arises something that shuts itself off from the
world-whole, since it is as little connected with the world as it is with what constitutes
my true 'I'. - This we had to discover, as it were on the first step of our journey.
The second step led us to an observation of the relationship I can establish to the
"world", as a part of which Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy first appears. If this
relationship does not live within a thinking of a kind that is continually freeing itself
from the mental pictures that constitute my relation to Anthroposophy, if my thinking
does not 'burn up' these pictures, something arises like a mirror-image of this dead,
rigidified thinking, a kind of prison of mental imagery which bars my way to the
foundations out of which the ideas of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy grow. Instead of
entering the spirit-world, a prison of inner pictures arises in which the separated
selfhood mirrors itself in the empty shells which the words and sentences of Rudolf
Steiner have now become. Again, something falls out of the stream of development;
again, rigidified and self-contained decisions separate themselves off, and are no
longer able to be part of the becoming of the world and of man.
The true signature of Rudolf Steiner's coming, however, is entirely different. His work
has to do with a process which is the exact opposite of what we have just described.

V. World-knowledge - Self-knowledge
A Pendulum-swing to Break down the Barrier.
 World-knowledge - Self-knowledge:
From the one to the other
Swings soul-longing in its questioning.
If often solution to the riddles of existence
Seems to be heralded, bringing consolation,
Out of the solution is born
Yet another, a new riddle of existence.

But if, instead of seeking in world-knowledge

For the grounds of world-existence,
And instead of seeking in the grounds of self
For the eternal being of man,
Longing seeks in world-widths - selfhood
And in the self - the universe,
She does not attain the goals of knowledge,
But paths will open up to her
Into the life of knowledge-seeking,
Bearing the soul, raising the spirit,
Pointing the way to the worlds. (41)

According to the pictures of the genesis in the Old Testament, two trees were growing
in Paradise - the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life.

"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou
mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (42)

But it is the fruit of this tree - the apple - which the serpent tempts man to eat. Now
the human being is expelled from Paradise:
"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good
and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and
eat, and live for ever......"

in order to prevent what has been forbidden to man, now that he has eaten of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil, he must depart from Paradise.
The first consequences of the eating of the apple is the "opening of the eye": Adam and
Eve see themselves - in their nakedness. With the awakening of the senses there
begins the process of what we call self-awareness, a self-awareness which is connected
with the fact that a contrast arises between 'I' and 'world': Adam and Eve hide in the
Garden of Eden when they become aware of their nakedness. For from now on the
body is experienced as a sheath within which that lives which encounters the world -
all that exists outside the body. The pictures of the Old Testament give one a sense for
the following: It is our eyes, our "ability to see", which stands at the origin of our self-
consciousness. The consciousness of my own 'I' awakens at the moment when my
oneness with the 'world' breaks apart. Perception and consciousness of self therefore
mean expulsion, exclusion from Paradise, and therewith the impossibility of living in
the eternal. For from now on it is forbidden to the human being to eat of the fruits of
the tree of life: becoming aware of oneself and of one's being 'other' in relation to the
world brings death.

The experience that 'I' am something other than the 'world' is the ever-recurring,
fundamental experience of the human being today, an experience to which the texts of
Rudolf Steiner refer, just as much as they seek to raise one above it. And from this
experience there also arises the experience of a separation between 'inner' and 'outer':
While everyday consciousness experiences the 'I', like a central point, as the the
'inner', the 'world' is viewed as the circumference, the 'outer', the periphery. But not
only do 'I' and the 'world' break apart into a duality, our access to them is given via
two different paths. Indeed, the fact that the difference between 'I' and the 'world' is
experienced at all, is due to our special form of cognition - as Rudolf Steiner has
frequently pointed out: observation and thinking are two activities that are separate
from one another. I first observe something, in order then to activate thoughts about
what I have observed. Again a separation arises between 'inner' and 'outer': whilst the
perception of the tree seems to come to me from the tree itself, i.e. from the outside, I
experience the thinking about the tree as something that occurs within myself. While
the perception of the world is connected with my sense-organs - eyes, nose, ears,
mouth etc. - which are directed outwards, I experience my thinking as bound to my
brain. But this is closed off by the cranium from the outer world. Perception and
thinking thus appear to be two separate and distinct activities, which occur at
different places and different times, and which I connect together through the process
whereby I develop inner thought pictures. For these pictures are my 'bridge', enabling
me to reflect upon what I have observed and, from the standpoint thus achieved, to
observe anew.
A simple reflection shows: If perception and thinking were to take place, instead, in a
single, undivided and unified act, the world-content would stand "before me" like an
open book - every being would arise "in me" so directly and completely, that I would
not only be unable to ask questions about it, but would not experience its 'otherness'
at all. Let us imagine what a being would experience, before whom the world-content
were to reveal itself - not broken up into different steps - but as it were "at a single
glance". This act - which would occur directly and be free of any element of doubt -
would leave no room for the observer to develop further to a self-observer. The
observer would be and would remain a world-observer - without knowledge of this,
however, because no-one and nothing would cause him to shift the observation form
the world to himself. Only in the "opening of the eyes" did Adam and Eve see that they
were naked.
It is our special human constitution that tears apart observation and thinking, and
thereby creates the basis for the experience that 'I' stand over against another - the
"world". But this 'I'-experience, owing to the fact that it is based on a separation
between 'I' and 'world', also carries within it uncertainty, not-knowing and untruth.
Indeed, in a certain way one can even say that it is our questions, our errors and our
doubts which awaken that being in ourselves who is conscious of his "otherness" in
relation to the world. Or, in other words: it is our inability to understand, that brings
us into being.
And thus another riddle is added to that of the distinction between 'I' and 'world': I
experience that the factor that gave rise to the consciousness of my 'I' is also that
which bars my way to this 'I', and equally to the 'world' which stands over against the
'I'. I can direct my attention to them, but I cannot really approach the mystery of the
one or the other. For I experience again and again how I form inner thought-pictures -
but inner thought-pictures which have continually - and every step forward in
knowledge shows me this - to be overturned and created anew.
None of the thought-pictures which I acquire on the paths of knowledge initially
accessible to me, proves to be something that I would not need to overcome. Apart
from the one, perhaps, which I have just formed and which contains within it the
question: Who is this other 'I', who is able to bring that one to expression, and who
not only experiences how 'I' and 'world' are distinct from one another, but also that he
(this 'other I') is not able to penetrate the truth of this 'I', or the truth of the world?
Who is this 'I', who must be wiser and stronger than the one that has not yet become
conscious of its own limits? (44)

Just as 'I' and 'world' appear separately, just as 'observation' and 'thinking' are two
different acts, so 'life' and 'knowledge' are also distinct from one another. Adam and
Eve, who had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, are forbidden to eat of
the tree of life. But this means: no life comes into our knowing, and no knowledge
comes into our living. Or expressed differently: the knower forgets his living
experience (Erleben) in his knowledge of the world; the one who is immersed in living
experience (der Erlebende) forgets knowledge in his experience of himself (Selbst-
Erleben). 'I' and world, observation and thinking, cognition and life, knowledge and
belief - everywhere the same separation divides what is actually One, and creates a
gulf that appears insuperable. But we find a correspondence to this 'gulf' in the two so
prevalent ways of cultivating Anthroposophy, which have been considered in this
book.
As we have seen, neither of these forms really does justice to Anthroposophy. Neither
the more "traditional" approach, whereby Rudolf Steiner is read and quoted, but not
thought in such a way that in the thinking of what is being read, one can also
experience what has been written; nor the form which regards itself as more up-to-
date, in which first and foremost spiritual experiences of one's own are sought,
whereby Rudolf Steiner is viewed as no more than a "stimulus" - neither of these two
ways of entering the so-called "spiritual world" leads out of the habits of mental
picturing that belong to everyday consciousness. Indeed, one could even say: they
reinforce the semblance in which this everyday consciousness is trapped; they add to
it a further semblance, which increases the illusion still further. And if these thought-
pictures - with the one who produces these pictures failing to become aware of their
limitations - are densified still further by means of soul-exercises like meditation and
concentration, and are 'charged' with will, then a mechanism sets in which is virtually
identical with Jesuitism: the inner pictures of the 'I' (such as are prevalent in modern
psychology or reincarnation therapy), and likewise those of the 'world' (such as those
in the sciences today, but which can also be cultivated by people who have drawn
their ideas from Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy) fall back upon themselves, mirrored,
distorted and reinforced in their semblance character. Instead of imaginations arising,
pictures are experienced which stem from the unpurified astral realm which forms
that world-sphere known in occultism as the "eighth sphere". (45)
The inner thought-pictures which have been led by occult means to the threshold of
sub-nature reinforce the barrier which separates us from our own true being and
equally from the being of the world, and which constitutes the (inwardly pictured)
separation between 'I' and 'world'. Thought-pictures of this kind do not penetrate
"behind the mirror", but break against it - i.e. against the untruthful egoity of their
creators. The barrier reinforced in this way is the wall of a soul-prison, which regards
emptiness of spirit as spirit-fullness. It is the "Out" (of the loser in a game - Trans.),
which the life of soul has brought upon itself.
But here we would stress again: it was phenomena on the way to such "dead-ends"
that helped us to become guides on the way. For it lies in the nature of what is
untrue, that - if it is taken hold of by thinking - it can itself become a revelation of the
true. Indeed, it makes steps in cognition possible, which would have remained
impossible without the experience of the untrue. This is the reason why the modern
human being needs the untrue for his cognitive activity; it is like the ground on which
he can stand and on which he can develop the knowledge he must strive to attain.
(46) To this extent the untrue can be like a sacrifice, which those who (must) serve
untruth render for the sake of the truth.

The connection between world-knowledge and self-knowledge extends through the

entire work of Rudolf Steiner. Or in other words: the thought of the connection
between 'I' and 'world' is integral to Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. For the act of
thinking - as we tried to show - is itself the unity of both. The outer (the 'world')
becomes, in thinking, inner (the 'I'); an inner, that can again become a new world.
This happens, however, when one stands over against thinking as an observer, and, in
'thinking observing' and 'observing thinking' one is just as much "in" the things as one
is standing over against them. But the way to this goes via the words of Rudolf
Steiner, which must be seen as the educators of our everyday consciousness:
educators of our self-consciousness and of our world-consciousness, in equal
measure.
Towards the end of his life Rudolf Steiner developed - in the "Anthroposophical
Leading Thoughts" which we have already mentioned - a thought-picture in which
the connection between world-knowledge and self-knowledge is shown in a special
way. (47) Here it becomes clear that it can be, in the first place, elements that have
simply to be thought which can make what has grown rigid, mobile again. Rudolf
Steiner shows: In the mental pictures of the world, of the world outside me, I find
myself again when I become conscious of the fact that 'I', as soon as I think, am
present in my thoughts about the world. This is the one aspect. And if I reflect upon
how I experience myself, I can feel how the "world" shapes this experience of mine: the
meeting with those human beings who have made me into what I have now become.
The everyday consciousness, confronting itself in complete honesty, thus loses first the
'world' in its beholding of the world (through its experience of the 'I' in the act of
thinking about the 'world'), and then the 'I' in its beholding of self (through feeling the
'world' in the will, which as an external process constitutes my biography). But this is
only the first step. For if I feel how, in the will, which comes towards me from the
'world', there lives my own 'destiny-will', I find myself again in the world; and if I
experience how the world arises anew in thinking, I find the 'world' again in my 'I'; a
world, however, that is of the spirit. This world is free of already-formed thought-
pictures; it is pure force and will of thinking, pure spiritual creativity and activity.
And thus I can begin to experience how the inner world which I picture to myself (my
supposed 'I') becomes a true outer world, and the outer world I picture to myself (the
supposed 'world') becomes a true inner world - the inner world of spirit which, in its
deepest inwardness, is the all-encompassing 'outwardness'. If I begin to enter into this
pendulum-swing between 'I' and 'world' the "other I" is resurrected - the one which
first perceived the limits of the 'I', and which then is able to know and to livingly
experience both its own being and the being of the world: the I AM that is world.

This, however, is the true signature of Rudolf Steiner's coming to the world.

Footnotes:

(1) Saether, Jostein, Wandeln unter unsichtbaren Menschen. Eine karmische

Autobiographie, Stuttgart 1999.
For a critical analysis of Saether see also Diet, Irene, Die entgeistigte Wiederverk
rperung. Kommentare zu angeblichen Karma- und Reinkarnationserscheinungen
unserer Zeit, Dbendorf 2002.

(2) Ibid. p. 11 ff. All quotes are taken from the "Introduction".

(3) Ibid. p. 115 f. This is the only, and decisive, place where Saether describes the
so-called "Karma-exercises of Rudolf Steiner" which he practised. The few omitted
sentences contain thoughts not directly related to our theme.

(4) Sunndal mountains and Umea: geographical locations in Norway.

(5) Green, white, peach-blossom and black - these are the colour qualities described
by Rudolf Steiner as "image" colours. One wonders why Saether introduces these
colours here.

(6) In: Prokofieff, Sergei, The Heavenly Sophia and the Being Anthroposophia.

(7) This has been done in detail by others: Herbert Wimbauer in: Der Fall
Prokofieff, Gross Malchau 1995,
and Irina Gordienko, in: Sergei O. Prokofieff - Myth or Reality?, Basel 2001.

(8) Steiner, R., Lecture of 19.7.1924, in: GA 240. All emphasis in the text, also in
Rudolf Steiner's words, is that of S. Prokofieff.
(9) Steiner, R., Essay The Michael-Christ Experience of Man, November 2nd 1924,
in GA 26.

(10) Steiner, R., Lecture of 3.2.1913, in: The Being of Anthroposophy. Two single
lectures, Dornach 1998.

(11) Steiner, R., The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom), GA 1.

(12) Not all are contained in the extract quoted here.

(13) Here Prokofieff is basing his statements on material that he has shown in
previous chapters to be drawn from Rudolf Steiner. We would stress that Prokofieff is
not one of those who omit to give such references.

(14) GA 240.

(15) Saether, J., Wandeln, op.cit., p. 33 and 35.

(16) In: GA 132. Although we cannot look further into these lectures at this point -
the reader can study them himself - we would make the following comment: in these
lectures Rudolf Steiner describes the evolution of the cosmos in such words and
pictures, that every phase of this evolution can be re-created as a living soul-
experience.

(17) As one can read in Rudolf Steiner's An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13), the
Earth was transformed several times before it passed over into its present state.

(18) Cf. Steiner, R., Lecture of 7.11.1911, in: GA 132.

(19) Steiner, R., Lecture of 31.10.1911, in: ibid.

(20) The Michael-Christ Experience of Man, written on 9th November 1924, in: GA
26.

(21) Starting with the Essay The Beginning of the Michael Age, of 17.8.1924, in:
ibid., p. 59ff.

(22) Ibid., p. 101. (23) Ibid., p. 96 (24) Ibid., p. 56f.

(25) The little book of Mabel Collins "Light on the Path", to which Rudolf Steiner
frequently referred, can be regarded as a "manual" for the training of these faculties.
With regard to the first teaching "Kill out Ambition" Collins said the following:
"Ambition is the first curse, the great tempter of the man who is rising above his
fellows. It is the simplest form of looking for reward. (.......) The pure artist who works
for the love of his work is sometimes more firmly planted on the right road than the
occultist who fancies he has removed his interest from self, but who has in reality only
enlarged the limits of experience and desire and transferred his interest to the things
which concern his larger sphere of life."

(26) Saether tells how he meditated for several hours each day. How this came about
he describes as follows: "My expectations for the future in the 70's and 80's when,
filled with hope, I was living my way into the culminating events of the 20th century
foretold by Rudolf Steiner, with a new stage to be reached in the contribution of
Anthroposophy to the cultural situation through the anticipated meeting of Platonists
and Aristotelians - all this was fulfilled in the 1990's quite differently to the way I had
expected. I suddenly recognized myself as being someone who could contribute to
these events. When, between 1994 and 1997, I discovered - first through working in
thought on the stages of cognition and then through higher levels of consciousness -
the karmic background of the twelfth century and my own involvement in it, I realized
that it was possible for me to attempt to place this knowledge into the context of
contemporary life. And this I really wanted to do, so from August 1997 onwards I
devoted all my time to karma research, laying aside most of my previous activity as an
artist and an art teacher, for the sake of this new task." Saether, J., Wandeln, p.
15f.

(27) The lectures in question were given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin and Stuttgart on
23.1., 30.1., 5.3., and 21.2.1912. In: Steiner, R., Reincarnation and Karma and their
Meaning for Present-Day Culture, GA 135.

(28) Steiner, R., Lecture of 23.1.1912, in: ibid. (29) Steiner, R., Lecture of
30.1.1912, op. cit.

(30) Ibid., p.147. (31) Ibid., p.146. (32) Steiner, R., Lecture of 23.1.1912, ibid.

(33) In: Steiner, R., How can Mankind Find the Christ? GA 187.

(34) In: Steiner, R., The Being of Anthroposophy. Two single lectures: a public
lecture in Eberfeld on 24.1.1922, and a lecture at the first General Meeting of the
Anthroposophical Society in Berlin on 3rd Feb. 1913.

(35) Steiner, R., Lecture of 3.2.1913, op. cit.

(36) It will occur to the attentive reader that the sentence fragments which Prokofieff
has supposedly taken from Rudolf Steiner, were not spoken by the latter in this way.

(37) From Dante Alighieri: Il Convito (Il Convivio),

(38) In: GA 164. Emphasis I.D. (39) GA 15. (40) Ibid.

(41) Written by Rudolf Steiner in the "Golden Book" of the Free Students of Berne.
Berne, 20th October 1920.

(42) Genesis 2, verses 16-17. (43) Genesis 3, verse 22.

(44) "It is recognized that this self-conscious 'I' does not experience itself in isolation
and outside the objective world, but that its separation from this world is only a
phenomenon of consciousness that can be overcome, overcome by means of the
insight that at a certain stage in development one has as a human being a provisional
form of the 'I' by virtue of the fact that one ejects from consciousness the forces
connecting the soul with the world. If these forces were to work uninterruptedly in
consciousness, one would not come to a strong consciousness that rests within itself.
One would not have the experience of oneself as a self-conscious 'I'." Steiner, R.,
Riddles of Philosophy, Vol. II. From the section entitled: A Prospective View of an
Anthroposophy, Presented in Outline.

(45) See in this connection the lectures of Rudolf Steiner of 17th and 18th October
1915, in: GA 254. Also: Diet, Irene, Die entgeistigte Wiederverkrperung.
Kommentare zu angeblichen Karma- und Reinkarnationserscheinungen unserer Zeit,
Dbendorf 2002.

(46) "Just as you cannot hold yourself up as a human being if you do not have
beneath you the earth which gives you a firm ground to stand on, so, similarly, there
cannot be a pursuit of the light-filled spiritual life without the resistance that has to be
made possible, and which is essential for the higher spheres of life." Steiner, R.,
Lecture of 1.1.1917, in: GA 174.

(47) See the essay of R. Steiner: The Understanding of Spirit and the Experiencing of
Destiny, in: Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, op.cit.

One of the tasks of this book is to provide an answer to the following questions:
How can a prison of mental representations arise from a study of Rudolf Steiner's
work?
And - how is it possible for this prison to be dissolved again?

As a basis for this inquiry selections were taken from the writings of two authors
(Jostein Saether and Sergei Prokofieff), which could be substituted by others, and thus
only serve as illustrations. At the same time, it became clear in the course of the
inquiry, that errors and untruths are not simply mistakes in the interpretation of
universal connections, but are, potentially, also a ground upon which our thinking can
be developed and strengthened.