There was something the Doctor once said about discussions that made a deep impression on me many years ago. The huge body of lectures and books by this man can easily give anyone an overdose and turn the person into an anthro-nut, an anthro-weirdo, or an anthro-fundy, but one picks up along the way certain profound thoughts and principles and ideas that resonate well with one's own soul, then anthroposophy can be a very progressive and healthy resource for an individual, regardless of how another party may decide to judge the inner life of that individual, especially when such judgements are solely based upon statements typed in public forums on a given subject.
What I am getting to here is something Steiner once remarked about the sacraments, and how the misunderstanding of the Transubstantiation in particular contributed to the breakup of offficial church-christendom into a Catholic and a Protestant wing so to speak.
In order to find this quote, I did a search at the RS archive for the word "discussed" and got very many hits. In most cases, what Steiner meant by discussing something, was simply explaining it from different angles and make the content of his lectures fully comprehensible to his audiences. But when two or more individuals are discussing something, whether verbally or in writing, the word gets a different meaning. Now check this out:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19090215p01.html
Before the twelfth century, the depths of mystery contained in the Holy Communion were especially well-understood. It was not widely discussed but was rather accepted in a manner that enabled one to feel all that was contained in the words, "This is My body and this is My blood." Christ here indicated that he would be united with the earth, becoming its planetary Spirit. Because grain is the physical earth's most precious produce, bread became for man the body of Christ; the sap flowing through plants became something from His blood. Through this knowledge the value of the Lord's Supper was not diminished but was, on the contrary, enhanced. Something of these limitless depths was felt in these early centuries and it continued up to the time when the power of judgment awakened in the astral body. It was only then that disputes began about the Lord's Supper. Just consider the discussions as to what the Lord's Supper is intended to be that took place among the Hussites, Lutherans and the dissenting Zwinglians and Calvinists. This could not have been possible earlier when direct knowledge of the Lord's Supper still existed.
Here we see verified a great historical truth that should be of special importance to spiritual scientists. As long as people knew what the Lord's Supper was, they did not discuss it. In general, when people discuss, you can consider it a sign that they really have no knowledge of the subject they are discussing. Where knowledge exists, knowledge is imparted and there is no particular desire for discussion. Where there is desire for discussion, however. there is as a rule no knowledge of the truth. Discussion begins only when there is a lack of knowledge, and it is always and everywhere the sign of a decline regarding the seriousness of a subject when it is discussed. Disintegration of a particular trend is always proclaimed by discussions. It is important that in spiritual science we come increasingly to understand that the wish for discussion may really be taken as a sign of ignorance. On the other hand, the opposite of discussion, the will to learn, the will gradually to comprehend what is in question, should be cultivated.
So much for discussions, debates, up to this point. It may ring a lot of bells, including, of course, those TV debates we have witnessed this fall between presidential candidates. In the next paragraph, however, Steiner takes the topic one step further:
Here we see an important historical fact verified by the development of Christianity itself. But we can also learn to see how, in these centuries of Christendom just described, the power of judgment, this acute intellectual wisdom residing in the astral body, is developed. Indeed, if we fix our attention on realities rather than dogmas, we can learn how much Christianity has accomplished since its inception.
When we consider scholasticism, not as to content, but as a means of cultivating and disciplining our faculties, what has become of it? It has become natural science. Modern natural science is entirely unthinkable without the Christian natural science of the Middle Ages. It is not only that Copernicus was a canon and Giordano Bruno a Dominican, but that the thought forms employed in the natural sciences since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are nothing but what was developed and nurtured by the scholastic science of the Middle Ages. Those people do not live in reality but in abstractions who look up passages in scholastic books, compare them with the statements made in recent natural science, and then say that Haeckel and others maintain something entirely different. Realities are what matter. The work of Haeckel, Darwin, du Bois-Reymond, Huxley and others would all have been impossible if the Christian scholastic science of the Middle Ages had not preceded them. The very fact that these scientists were able to think as they did, they owe to the Christianized science of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. That is the reality, and it is by this means that humanity has learned to think in the true sense of the word.
Furthermore, read David Friedrich Strauss. Try to observe the mode of his thinking; try to analyze his thought pictures and how he insists upon representing the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a myth. Do you know where the keenness of his thinking originates? He gets it from the Christian scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Everything used today to combat Christianity so radically has been learned from the Christian scholastic science of the Middle Ages. Actually, today there cannot be an opponent of Christianity of whom it cannot easily be pointed out that he would be unable to think as he does had he not learned the thought forms of the scholastic science of the Middle Ages. This, indeed, would be to observe world history in its reality.
What, then, has happened since the sixteenth century? The ego has come gradually into prominence, and with it human egotism, and with egotism, materialism. What the ego had previously acquired was unlearned and forgotten and it became necessary for man to limit himself to what the ego can observe, to what the physical sensory system is able to give to ordinary intelligence. That alone could the ego take into the inner sanctuary. The civilization since the sixteenth century is one of egotism.
(-- Rudolf Steiner: Christianity in Human Evolution, Avatar Beings, Berlin, February 15, 1909, GA 109)
And this reminds me strongly of another quote that I have often repeated, because it belongs to that small handful of RS lectures that have been posted on my own website for a decade:
http://uncletaz.com/ahrimdec.html
We must get to know science; we should get an exact knowledge of all that comes from this direction - but with the full consciousness that we are receiving an illusory aspect, an illusion necessary for our education as men. We do not safeguard ourselves against Ahriman by avoiding modern science, but by learning to know its character. For modern science gives us an external illusion of the universe, and we need this illusion. Do not imagine that we do not need it. We must only fill it from quite another side with actual reality gained through spiritual research, we must rise from the illusory character to the true reality. You will find reference in many of my lecture-courses to what I am telling you today, and you will see how everywhere it has been sought to enter fully into the science of our time, but to lift it all to the sphere where one can see its real value. You cannot wish to get rid of the rainbow because you know it to be an illusion of light and color! You will not understand it if you do not realize its illusory character. But it is just the same with all that modern science gives you for your imagination of the universe, it gives only illusions and that must be recognized. It is by educating oneself through these illusions that one arrives at the reality.
This, then, represents one of the means used by Ahriman to make his incarnation as effective as possible - this keeping of man back in scientific superstition.
The second means that he employs is to stir up all the emotions that split men up into small groups - groups that mutually attack one another. You need only look at all the conflicting parties that exist today, and if you are unprejudiced you will recognize that the explanation is not to be found merely in human nature. If men honestly try to explain this so-called World War through human disharmonies, they will realize that with what they find in physical humanity they cannot explain it.. It is precisely here that "supersensible" powers, Ahrimanic powers, have been at work.
These Ahrimanic powers are working, in fact, wherever disharmonies arise between groups of men. Now the question arises: On what foundation is most of what we are considering based?
Let us proceed from a very characteristic example. - The modern proletariat has had its Karl Marx. Observe closely how the doctrines of Karl Marx have been spread among the proletariat, with Marxist literature reaching practically immeasurable proportions. You will find all the methods of our present-day science used in the books; everything is strictly proved, so strictly proved that many people, of whom one would never have supposed it, have fallen victim to Marxism. What was the actual destiny of Marxism? It spread at first, as you know, among the proletariat and was firmly rejected by university science.. Today there are already a number of university scientists who have veered round to acknowledging Marxist logic. They adhere to it because its literature has proved that its conclusions are in excellent accord, that from the standpoint of modern science Marxism can be quite neatly proved. Middle-class circles have unfortunately had no Karl Marx who could have proved the opposite for them; for just as one can prove the ideological character of right, morality, and so forth, the theory of surplus values and materialistic historical research from the Marxist standpoint, so it is possible to prove their exact opposite. A middle-class, bourgeois-Marx would be fully able to prove the exact opposite by the same strict method. There is no sort of swindle or humbug about it; the proof would work out right.
Whence does this come? It comes from the fact that present human thinking, the present intellect, lies in a stratum of being where it does not reach down to realities. One can therefore prove something quite strictly, and also prove its opposite. It is possible today to prove spiritualism on the one hand and materialism on the other. And people may fight against each other from equally good standpoints because present-day intellectualism is in an upper layer of reality and does not go down into the depths of being. And it is the same with party opinions. A man who does not look deeper but simple lets himself be accepted into a certain party-circle - by reason of his education, heredity, circumstances of life and State - quite honestly believes - or so he thinks - in the possibility of proving the tenets of the party into which he has slipped, as he says. And then - then he fights against someone else who has slipped into another party! And the one is just as right as the other. This calls forth chaos and confusion over mankind that will gradually become greater and greater unless men see through it. Ahriman makes use of this confusion in order to prepare the triumph of his incarnation and to drive men with increasing force into what they find so difficult to realize - namely, that by intellectual or modern scientific reasoning today, one can prove anything and equally well prove its opposite. The point is for us to recognize that everything can be proved and for that reason to examine the proofs put forward in science today. It is only in natural science that reality is shown by the facts; in no other field can one consider intellectual proofs valid. The only way to escape the danger that threatens if one accepts the lures of Ahriman and his desire to drive men deeper and deeper into these things, is to realize through anthroposophical spiritual science that human knowledge must be sought for in a stratum deeper than that in which the validity of our proofs arises. And so, in order to create dissensions, Ahriman also makes use of what develops from the old conditions of heredity which man has really outgrown in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. The Ahrimanic powers use all that is derived from old circumstances of heredity in order to set men against each other in conflicting groups. All that comes from old differences of family, race, tribe, peoples, is used by Ahriman to create confusion. "Freedom for every nation, even the smallest..." These were fine-sounding words. But the powers hostile to man always use fine words in order to bring confusion and in order to attain the things that Ahriman wishes to attain for his incarnation.
If we inquire: Who stirs up nations against each other? Who raises the questions that are directing Ahriman today? - the answer is: the ahrimanic deception which plays into human life. And in this field men very easily let themselves be deceived. They are not willing to descend to the lower strata where reality is to be found. For, you see, Ahriman skillfully prepares his goal beforehand; ever since the Reformation and the Renaissance, the economist has been emerging in modern civilization as the representative governing type. That is an actual historical fact. If you go back to ancient times, even to those that I have characterized today as the Luciferic - who were the governing types then? Initiates. The Egyptian Pharaos, the Babylonian rulers, the Asiatic rulers - they were initiates. Then the priest-type emerged as ruler and the priest-type was really the ruler right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance. Since that time the economist has been in command. Rulers are in fact merely the handimen, the understrappers of the economists. One must not imagine that the rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers of the economists. And all that has resulted by way of law and justice - one should only study it carefully - is simply a consequence of what economically oriented men have thought. In the nineteenth century the "economical" man is replaced for the first time by the man thinking in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century there is created for the first time the organization of finance which swamps every other relationship. One must only be able to look into these things and follow them up empirically and practically.
(-- Rudolf Steiner: The Ahrimanic Deception, Zurich, 27th October, 1919, GA 193)
Cheers,
Tarjei
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