There's no point in this.
Throwing mud on personalities can never resolve anything. I guess that whoever reads Schopenhauer is interested in the ideas themselves and not so much in his personality. I'm pretty sure people examine even less strictly (if at all) the personalities of mediums (or more fancily - channelers), who flood the bookstores with their materials.
If we are to elevate this conversation from the murky astral waters of personal sympathies and antipathies, we'll have to focus on the
direction where different ideas lead.
Here I no longer speak of personalities but of evolutionary impulses. For example, classical mechanics began with Newton but one doesn't need to subscribe to Newton's personality in order to understand mechanics and make it useful. It is similar with everything else. We are not speaking of authority worship. My previous posts were not to make Steiner look better in the public eye but because there's something new, a new impulse in evolution that should at least be known of. And when conversations focus on personalities, people simply miss the essentials.
What is the essential in spiritual science? It is actually not the body of lectures that can be considered "teachings" by some. They are not teachings, they are examples of what can be perceived and understood when man develops his higher faculties.
And if we have to have polarized opinions, let it be on this point - the question of higher development and not personalities.
What do we mean by that? Modern science and philosophy are utilizing the abstract intellect to create models of reality which when mapped to the contents of experience, more or less correlate. This is what it is today considered knowledge of reality in the most general sense. To be able to build a framework of thought, which when personally simulated in one's mind, exhibits behavior that can be related to the contents of one's senses, feelings, etc.
What is implicitly assumed in the above approach is that man, in abstract thinking, has attained to the highest tool of knowing reality. It is rarely considered
if this is really the case.
Spiritual science tells us that our intellectual consciousness is just one form of consciousness. And here's the important part - it not only tells us that but tells us exactly how one attains to this knowledge. This is what allows us to call it science. True science requires not only one to state some facts but also disclose
the path through which the facts were attained, so that everyone else can verify them for themselves. In this respect Spiritual Science fulfils the criteria.
Historically, knowledge of the spiritual has been the domain of religious revelation. God spoke to Moses, Krishna spoke to Arjuna, Jesus spoke and so on. Religious knowledge is always connected with belief in authority. It simply can not be otherwise. This belief has become quite fuzzy in the whole esoteric frenzy of today. Authors seem to talk about more or less similar things, so one imagines that if he reads few books and find their point of intersection, he attains to truth. People throw around words and concepts, speaking of energies, portals, vibrations, dimensions, worlds, etc., etc. and rarely one asks
how can these things be known at all. What are the true sources of this knowledge? Most commonly chewing old things, digesting them and spitting them out in new forms. Others are simply product of pure sci-fi fantasy. And this today is considered the gold standard of knowledge about spiritual matters.
Then, something comes along that is only the very delicate, fragile beginnings of a faculty that in the course of evolution should develop in everyone. Today natural history quite objectively assumes that the intellect has appeared only gradually in the course of history. Just think how incomparably different are the experiences in the dreamy instinctive life of the primitive man and the life illuminated by activity which is self aware. Not only that it is different but the former state can not
in principle imagine what it is to experience a state of thinking self consciousness. The higher state contains within it the former but the former can not know the higher.
And here we are, in time of history, where the intellect has worked wonders. And the question that is most avoided is "could it be that in my intellectual life, I'm experiencing only a specific stage of consciousness, which can not comprehend in itself, a potentially higher stage, just as the dreamy, instinctive state can not comprehend the intellectual?" This is the most inconvenient question one can ask. Nothing is more feared and despised that this. It casts unbearable doubt in the thinking ego's superiority, in its feeling of being the crown of creation.
Yet certain things should appear in history at one time or another. And then comes an impulse, a fresh stream that leads in direction which is completely incomprehensible for those who fear or despise the above question. Not only that this question is talked about but the path is disclosed, which allows
anyone to find out things for himself.
Man enters in an age where he is able to find out something about his higher constitution, not simply through belief in authority but by experiencing things for himself. This is a critical point in evolution. It could be compared to entering adulthood or by being weaned by Nature. Man must find his own place in the Cosmos, by investigating his spiritual structure. It is no longer a question of listening to the guru's wisdom or the channeled sci-fi fantasies. Just as one has direct experiences of his sensory environment, so can he gain consciousness of his spiritual surroundings.
Steiner knew that this is the whole point of Spiritual Science. It is no longer about belief but of testable knowledge. In his words:
We must therefore take our stand on the principle of following attentively what is brought forward, but not allowing it to be said that it is accepted among us out of belief in authority. Never should the phrase be heard that truths are accepted simply because I have voiced them! We should sin against the truth were we to say any such thing. One thing or another may be grounded on confidence; but that can never be made into a principle. Someone else may perhaps be better able to tread the path; but the rule to which every individual should adhere is this:
not to accept things on authority, but to put them to the test.
(original emphasis)
Occult Movement: Lecture Five: The Eighth Sphere
So if we are to speak pros and cons, let's focus on the essentials. While quarrelling about which personality got what flaws, we're simply oscillating around the central problem, we're simply avoiding it.
David, what is you opinion on this? Let's leave aside Steiner and Anthroposophy. What is you view,
in principle, on development of higher cognition that can give man direct consciousness of the Spiritual World. Not speaking about visionary trances that need to be interpreted. Neither of automatic writing, speaking in tongues, etc. Speaking about state of consciousness that is as certain as the existence of our thoughts in our ordinary state, and from the perspective of which, our intellectual consciousness can be investigated as spread before us.
Do you think this has any role in human evolution? Do you think people should be consciously striving for it? Do you think that there's an inseparable wall between our world and the Spiritual and only mediumship and interpretation of visions can tell us something about it? If you think that higher cognition is possible where would you go to learn something about it?
These are the essential questions. If one feels deep into his soul the desire for knowledge, for direct experience, and not for just believing, then this someone will be drawn towards that which can give him the answers his soul longs for. The one interested in dream pictures of reality will also find everything he needs in the bookstore.