Rudolf Steiner Library Newsletter: Reviews
Classics from the Journal for Anthroposophy: Meditation & Spiritual Perception Selected and Introduced by Gertrude Reif Hughes. Series Editor: Robert McDermott. Anthroposophical Society in America, 2011, 140 pages. Review by Frederick J. Dennehy One of the best-kept secrets in anthroposophical publishing is the remarkably rich series, Classics from the Journal for Anthroposophy, ten volumes of essays and reviews selected from the long-running publication. As series editor Robert McDermott notes in the foreword to this volume, each collection focuses on a particular theme, “including Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, imagination, society, science, Waldorf Education, visual arts, Mani, Novalis, and meditation and spiritual perception.” The series will either remind or alert readers to just how valuable a gift we had for so many years. The essays strike one like an unexpected encounter with an old friend. Some are scholarly and some intimate; they all speak to the question of understanding and practicing anthroposophy from the place where most of us find ourselves most of the time—what the Gospel of John calls “this world.” In her introduction to this tenth and final volume, Gertrude Reif Hughes focuses on the “how” and the “who” of meditation. The “how” is the praxis—the way to go about the activity that is or should be the center of anthroposophy. The “who” is the question that continually arises in the course of meditation—who do we become when we meditate? There are fourteen articles in this volume. While none is primarily about the “practice” of meditation, each provides a grounding for practice by helping to turn us away from what Owen Barfield (as Frederick Amrine pointed out in the summer 2012 issue of Being Human), refers to as “the besetting sin of literalism.” That “turning” is a potent achievement. The first six essays endeavor to locate anthroposophy in relation to other traditions and disciplines. Professor Tyson Anderson, in an address to the American Academy of Religion called “Is Science Relevant for Spirituality?” suggests that the answer is “yes,” but that we have to inform our understanding of science to exclude reductionism or else risk dealing with a science of delusion. True spiritual
science views reality as iconic, a higher form of reading; its approach is strongly feminine, and imbued with heart consciousness. He suggests (surprisingly, I suspect, to the Academy) that the exemplar of the new scientific thinking is Mary Magdalene. As Rudolf Steiner recognized, because she was a woman she was naturally—structurally even—better able to understand something exceptional than could a man. Professor Anderson concludes that Mary Magdalene’s scientia—“thinking of the heart”—was the “radiant point around which the scattered Jesus movement began to coalesce into Christianity.” In his “Traditional and Modern Elements in the Occultism of Rudolf Steiner,” Robert Galbreath, writing from outside the anthroposophical stream, provides a summary of spiritual science within the tradition of initiatory transformation—in the words of Mircea Eliade, the ontological mutation of the existential condition. The article is bracing in its clarity. Particularly impressive is Galbreath’s account of Steiner’s defense of reincarnation and karma through application of strictly Darwinian principles. Gary Lachman’s essay, “Rudolf Steiner, Jean Gebser, and the Evolution of Consciousness,” is an acute, detailed comparison of the similarity between Gebser’s “structures” and Steiner’s “epochs” of the evolution of consciousness. Lachman acknowledges that Steiner’s and Gebser’s visions are “very different,” but he is a syncretist. When two separate voyagers discover the same country, he points out, it argues very strongly “for the unknown world’s existence.” “The Christian Path of Edgar Cayce: A Possible Aspect of Michael’s Activity in America,” by Magda Lissau, Kurt Nelson, and Rick Spaulding, is an assessment of the work of Edgar Cayce through the lens of anthroposophy, particularly through Rudolf Steiner’s characterization of second sight, vision, and premonition as unconscious gifts of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. The destiny of individuals with such faculties allows them entrance into the spiritual world, and their karma protects them from most of its dangers, but not from the danger of misunderstanding. The authors also use Sergei Prokofieff’s Occult Significance of Forgiveness as an initiatory model for understanding the affirmations from Cayce’s study group readings of 1932. The authors suggest that “the higher self of Cayce woke up, in his health readings,” and brought “comfort and healing” as a “gift of love.” They conclude that Cayce’s legacy is “of inestimable value to all those in America who have a serious desire to develop their spiritual striving,” and urge that Cayce’s life be studfall issue 2012
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