Wellspring: Anthroposophy: The yoga of faith and wisdom

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Anthroposophy: The yoga of faith and wisdom

Rudolf Steiner:

It does make a difference whether an individual lives in a Christian area or a non-Christian part of the globe. We can learn to understand the difference it makes only if we see the connection between a person's earthly life and the subsequent life between death and rebirth. Hindus or Buddhists die without having absorbed any ideas or feelings about the Christ during life on Earth. What they then take with them into the supersensible world beyond death is limited to what they learned about outer nature here on Earth. The heavens would know nothing about the natural, earthly world if they were not informed by human beings who enter the heavenly kingdoms through death. This is the only way the supersensible worlds learn about earthly minerals, plants, and animals. But those who know about the Christ — and especially those who know that the Christ lives in them, that is, those who have experienced Paul's "not I, but Christ in me" — take with them not only information about the Earth itself but also information about human bengs and their life in earthly bodies. The contributions of Christians complement those of Hindus, Buddhists, and others. Of course, it is becoming increasingly necessary for human beings to carry all of the mysteries that they can experience in and through themselves into the heavens. In other words, it is becoming ever more important for human beings to be completely imbued with Christ. Above all else, however, it is important for the heavenly worlds to receive what human beings can experience only through Christianity and in the company of other human beings on Earth.

No matter how many people non-Christian tyrants behead, they have little impact on the world of the afterlife. Their impacts are limited to their victims' outer impressions of abhorrence and so on, which are carried through the portal of death. But the lack of love that develops as a consequence of miserable social conditions in Christian areas, for example, and false socialism's misjudgments of societal relatioinships are of great significance for the supersensible worlds we enter after death. Peope carry their terrible experiences of socialism's destructive power into the afterlife, along with the loveless human relationships of the age of materialism. Through Christianity, we are meant to carry our experiences of the outcomes of human activity in earthly evolution into supersensible worlds. Our thoughts about the risen Christ, about the being who underwent death, yet still lived, make us capable of carrying what we ourselves cultivate on Earth into spiritual worlds.

People who do not want their social deeds to be carried through death have a horror of acknowledging the risen Christ. The sense-perceptible world, however, is connected to the supersensible world, and it is impossible to understand the one separate from the other. We must again learn to understand what happens on Earth by understanding cosmic spiritual events. Instead of talking in abstract terms about spirit and matter, we must learn to contemplate how human beings once felt themselves connected to the divine spirit and soul of the cosmos through breathing. We must learn to experience cosmic soul and spirit in ways appropriate to our times. There is no other way to restore health to societal circumstances on Earth. Loudly demonstrating for improved social conditions accomplishes nothing. The decline will continue unless we become increasingly and truly imbued with Christ, which is not simply a matter of intoxicating ourselves with words that have no content. In ancient times it was appropriate for people to become intoxicated through breathing, but is not appropriate for modern people to become intoxicated with words. Words must pervade us with wisdom, like sophia.

This is how Anthroposophy relates to modern issues of social importance. The very name "Anthroposophy" — Anthroposophia — is meant to express the fact that Anthroposophy is a new wisdom. In ancient Greece the individual "I" became a matter of common experience, and sophia was human wisdom, because human beings were still full of the wisdom of light. Our modern science is the mere ghost of sophia. Consequently, we must now appeal directly to the human being, the anthropos, through Anthroposophy. We must make people aware that Anthroposophy comes from human beings, shines out of human beings, develops out of human beings' best forces. In this sense Anthroposophy enlivens human existence on Earth. Our experience of Anthroposophy is more spiritual but no less concrete than the ancients' experience of sophia. Anthroposophy, like sophia, is also meant to evoke pistis, the faith that completely pervaded human beings. Thus Anthroposophy is not a belief system but a true body of knowledge that provides individuals with strength of a sort that was formerly accessible only through faith.