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The Archive of Stanley MessengerGuidance in Esoteric TrainingStanley MessengerA book review of Guidance in Esoteric Training by Rudolf Steiner |
This collection of Rudolf Steiner’s esoteric writings contains material spanning seventeen years, from 1903 or 4 to 1922. So when the early exercises were published even the First World War was 10 years away.
This was such an utterly different world that we can look upon it as a different civilisation altogether. The early exercises were received by people whose whole lives were lived at so much slower a pace than ours that, not only was their reading of the material unhurried, but their very breathing and heartbeat had a relaxation that made contemplation and meditation a very different experience from what it is for us. On the other hand life for us is stimulated to be very much wider awake to both inner and outer reality. So, though it is harder for us to begin upon a contemplative life, once we start upon it the process tends to go faster.
Steiner never intended the esoteric life to be confined to a specially selected kind of human being. But this doesn’t mean that anyone whatever can start upon it and expect to see concrete results, as he puts it, ‘tomorrow morning’.
The path is arduous at all times and in all historical circumstances, It is the nature of the difficulties which changes. And this means that the style of presentation of initiate material has to change. However, as Steiner says here, even when matter of this kind was presented to a public audience no concessions whatever were made to the prejudices of those unused to esoteric matters. At the same time, people, and so audiences and readers, do change radically over time and we can sense that Rudolf Steiner was a man of his time as well as a high initiate. Anyone presenting such material now would need to take great psychological and spiritual differences into account.
One of the outstanding differences between us and our grandparents and great-grandparents before the First World War is in the experience we have of personal intimacy. In those days there was a much wider gap between a personal intimacy almost wholly confined to the family and a connection with others who were seen as ‘strangers’ until they were introduced to each other. In our times it sometimes seems as if the whole of life has become intimate in this sense, but perhaps not always as profoundly committed as then. But in other ways we also have a greater scope for both intimacy and commitment.
Anthroposophy, and with it the approach to esoteric life and possible membership of an esoteric school, grew up in a world where this sort of universal sharing of personal matters whether superficial or deep was unknown. This is why it is only relatively recently, say in the last 20 years, that deep esoteric matters, even between members of the esoteric school, have been openly shared and discussed outside the class. Nowadays such sharing is more and more acceptable. A book like this one under review raises acutely questions which can only be dealt with on an intimate personal level.
The question is whether one can be come an esoteric pupil at all in a life where the adolescents switch on the telly before breakfast and the baby is never asleep at the moment when one wakes and needs to grasp and hold a sense-free concept for two minutes, never mind ten. The answer is: yes one can. But the way to go about it, and perhaps even the decision as to how much one can do at all at a particular stage of life is difficult. However, we may remember that it was probably no easier in 1903 when Grandmother, and even Father, regarded Rudolf Steiner’s books as works of the devil and insisted that the proper place for prayer and meditation was in church. Perhaps it was then. Now it may be in the loo.
Stanley Messenger
The Archive of Stanley MessengerGuidance in Esoteric TrainingStanley Messenger |
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