Rudolf Steiner: “America is to have a different form of Anthroposophy, and while it is presently woody and asleep, one should look to Emerson and his friends to understand it.”
Listen to Master Teacher Dr. Douglas Gabriel and John Barnwell discuss the nature of human and cosmic intelligence.
Marie Steiner, “The mission of our age is to bring forth not an ancient wisdom, but a new wisdom, one that points not only to the past but that works prophetically into the future.”
We live in the post-truth age manipulated by false-hood politics and media untruthfulness. Without a strong sense of discernment for the truth, all of the lies, misrepresentations, subliminal programming, and propaganda constantly obfuscate, conflate, confabulate, and misguide the person who is not ‘as wise as a serpent.’
Whether its Lucifer, the father of lies, being cast down to the Earth by the Archangel Michael or the serpent whispering lies and falsehoods to Adam and Eve, we can find the battle between good and evil displayed throughout human history.
In today’s world we might say: Find the spiritual truth in your thinking, the beauty of the world in your heart, and add to them good deeds freely accomplished with love. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, according to the Greeks, will grant you wings to fly into the higher realms of the archetypes where truth resides, pure and un-defiled.
An aspirant seeking initiation into the mystery wisdom of the ancients attempts to cross the Threshold consciously through transcendent meditation, spiritual practices, and initiation. Initiation is not for the weak-hearted, scared, or lazy person.
The preparations for initiation can be extremely demanding and complicated, and in the end, the aspirant may faint at the Threshold and not be able to resolve the sins the Guardian displays before the quaking consciousness of the aspirant.
Many try and fail.
Sometimes, the aspirant may “loose their mind” in the process of attempting to cross the Threshold before they are ready. And, even if the aspirant makes it across the Threshold it doesn’t mean they have the moral strength to remember what they experienced in the spiritual world while they were there.
Only the selfless desire to gain wisdom for the sake of all other being’s welfare will keep the aspirant conscious in the spiritual world and help the aspirant remember the communion he had with the beings in that world.
Machines are devices that devolve humans and separate them from nature and their natural being and are a cheap substitute for true transcendence and unity with the wisdom of the world and the cosmos. Human contemplative thinking calls us back to ourselves in an experience that is qualitatively different from when we are engaged in logical analysis or problem-solving. In contemplative thinking, we enter our own interior sacred space, which is characterized by stillness and receptivity towards an inspiration transcendent of the analyzing, problem-solving mind. No machine can do this.
The true mind is in the heart, and it is only when it takes its place there that we regain our connection with the world and the cosmos. When we center ourselves in that deeper intelligence of the heart, we are also centered in our essential freedom. It is, above all, the inner quality of freedom that should guide us as we go towards a future in which it seems we shall be increasingly hemmed in on all sides by an ever more pervasive machine “intelligence” which, while purporting to serve us, ties us into ever-greater bondage.
Transforming sense perception into foods for the gods is the intent of the spiritual world acted out through human evolution. Through enlivened thinking called “Imagination,” higher thinking can be borne by finding eternal truths that are objective, even in the outside world of seeming illusion.
Spiritual development is about integrating the inner with the outer and finding the wisdom in both. To find wisdom, we seek all the places where life springs forth anew. Living-thinking springs from a heart that has “warmed up” thinking. This higher thinking, Imagination, has the power and brilliance to see “into” things, both within the self and in the outer world around us. Burying our head in the sand or withdrawing into our shell doesn’t advance spiritual development; it is interaction between the inner and the outer that quickly develops the soul and spirit.
Every complete system of the spirit has seven parts. As students of anthroposophy know, humans are currently in the fourth large stage of evolution. And because we are only in the fourth stage of evolution, it may be challenging to understand how the fifth through seventh stages may be so incredibly different in dimension and consciousness. The subsequent stages are much more that a reorganization of the elements we experience in the fourth stage of evolution.
Our Spirit 