Spiritual Awakening under pressure of circumstances, in these times, and its transformative power for Science, for Christianity, and for Spiritual Science, hence Anthroposophy
Botticini’s three great Archangels are a nice safe start, before we open up deep issues … Esoteric folklore suggests that these were the visitors Abraham entertained one day, between the times when God had promised and when God delivered on his promise … Here, Raphael is taking young Tobias by the hand, as he seeks healing for his father Tobit. Michael, who overcomes the Dragon, is mentioned in Daniel and Revelation, books whose publication dates mark the start and end of the most significant Change of Star Ages that covers the Time of Christ (articles soon). Gabriel is the Messenger, the Announcer.
This blog went live, as I discovered only afterwards, at the Feast of Transfiguration 2020, next to Hiroshima Day. That apocalyptic triple date is highly significant to my vision and purpose! (article soon).
40 years ago in 1980 I wrote The Apocalyptic Vision: Ecological Breakdown and Spiritual Breakthrough. Apocalyptic means “revelatory”. It does not mean unsurmountable negativity, end-of-the-world crisis. It signifies visionary awakening – to possibilities for redemption, healing, transfiguration – under duress, under immense pressure.
What I understood then was already running deep and true. Sir George Trevelyan invited me to his Round Table conference as a direct result – an unexpected honour – but at that point I was not ready to go further. However, I met someone there who raised a crucial challenge (article soon).
I now have the understanding and confidence, and the spiritual permission and nudges, to nurture the seeds I am planting with this blog. I am now over 70, catching up Moses fast: what I lack in physical strength I now make up for in experience, imagination, and maturity. Before I die, I need to pass on information and inspiration: the means to build up the missing Spiritual Scientific Research, and to build community to do this, and to reach out and help people. It is the work that humankind needs, work which starts from the spiritual realms but, like the Lord’s Prayer, like Buddha’s Eightfold Path, reaches right down into the practical realms and starts on our own doorsteps.
I invite you to join me.
Rudolf Steiner: big surprises
I was surprised to find that my first article came out explicitly addressing followers of Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophists. But I can understand: Steiner’s Spiritual Science was my first love, and it still essentially supports all I do. Yet my perception is that now Anthroposophy faces a huge albeit generally unrecognized challenge. Humankind really needs Spiritual Science, but it has to be recast in forms that people who today are spiritually and mentally awake, and who are leaders, and sensitives, and scientists, can work with. And sometimes Steiner got it significantly wrong, as this blog will show, as well as showing the way through. For I came not to denigrate but to inspire. And that requires going back to basics, further than I have seen other anthroposophists do. For decades I’ve been a “dumb ox” : now I can speak out, with permission from Great Spirit.
Steiner spent his youth listening and listening to others, until he could put himself in their shoes – into points of view very different from his own, and from each other. His childhood clairvoyance had set him apart, and he was determined to bridge the differences. We see this determination in his relationships to Kant, to Ernst Haeckel and Friedrich Nietzsche – such very different people, and by no means representing what Steiner worked for, yet he was friends with, and respected by, circles linked to all these. Only later, in lectures given to sympathetic audiences, whose reactions Steiner could sense and engage with, did he use more esoteric language and expressions only appropriate for the audience – but sadly, often to convey ideas that would be blankly incomprehensible, when encountered later by a virgin readership, by people who had not known Steiner personally.
Disagreeing with Steiner, while acknowledging deep gratitude, awe and inspiration thanks to him, is a challenge. Yet because my sense of inadequacy made me hold back, I too learned to listen – and eventually to put myself in Steiner’s shoes. In time, I have been given what I regard as many extraordinary insights, which now challenge me to speak out, and are going to be explored in coming posts.
Read my post Hello Anthroposophical Friends!