Light in Perspective

During the course of my work on this essay, in August, 1999 there appeared in the various news media the announcement that scientists studying Australian rocks had just found evidence that primitive forms of life existed 2.7 billion years ago, about a billion years earlier than had been previously thought (cf. I-5 suggesting life as far back, perhaps, as two billion years ago). What we are seeing is another illustration of the typically endless modifications of theory that characterize modern science. Note that the rocks in question were found on a continent, Australia. Science does not seem to have even speculated as yet on what might be shown if previous continents, such as Atlantis lying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, were to belch forth their formations, let alone on what formative conditions might have already disappeared eons before even those buried formations came into being. Like an infant fascinated only by what rattles and dances playfully on a string across its crib, science presumes a knowledge of beginnings when the fragile evidence of those beginnings is not even before it but has disappeared from materiality eons before (beautifully expressed in the second quotation from Teilhard de Chardin's, The Phenomenon of Man, in the "Evolution" essay herein).

We've had a glimpse in this essay of science peering into the smallness of creation, far beyond what can be empirically observed, to what can only be theoretically postulated by a quantum theory, and then with results that are baffling and inexplicable. Any knowledgeable reader will have already pondered what science has theorized in its peering into the largeness of the universe. From our solar system and its Sun, to the Milky Way galaxy, to the Local Group of galaxies, to the Neighboring Groups and Clusters of galaxies, to the Superclusters of galaxies and on and on, they have found bigness beyond the ability of the human brain to even comprehend, and from that they have mounded theory upon theory, and brought together in one glorious union of "enlightened thinking" the most anti-spiritual theory of all, the big bang.

In truth what science has shown us is that its theories have far outdistanced existing human capacities of direct observation, and are of such nature as to require constant modification. One is tempted, thereby, to adopt the Kantian philosophy that there are limits to human knowledge. Steiner stands opposed to this philosophy, but readily recognizes that there are limits to the knowledge available through the five senses and the thinking that remains bound to them.

The Britannica starts its treatment of "The Cosmos" with the statement, "If one looks up on a clear night, one sees that the sky is full of stars" (16 Brit 762). The Psalmist noted this during the days of humanity's "fading splendor" (cf. Ps 6,5) as the basis upon which to cry, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" (Ps 8,3-4a). Within the same general time frame the Seraphim commanded Isaiah to pronounce this loss of seeing, hearing and understanding in the spiritual realm for a period of time such that humanity blocks even the thought of it out, like the amnesic obliteration of memory from the horror of unbearable shock (Is 6,9-13).

The extent to which both science and theology rely upon theory (kinetics) and block out, Kant-like, any reliance upon what Steiner has revealed as Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition (i.e., the spiritual seeing, hearing and understanding [gnosis, or knowing], respectively, that Isaiah spoke about) is but the fascination of an infant humanity jabbing at its string of rattles and fancies.

In The Burning Bush, again and again I tried to bring out Steiner's portrayal of the schematic of human evolution, the journey of the Prodigal Son. We would do well to put aside for the time being the larger universe and try to understand the formation of our own solar system within the larger framework. The outer cosmos is given, just as the inner, to confound the human senses and their related theoretical thinking. With all of its discoveries that somewhat deceptively make life "better than it used to be" in the world as we perceive it, science has done its job in bringing humanity to the brink of the chasm beyond which it cannot go without new vision and understanding. It must "repent," which is to say it must change its way of thinking. More discoveries within the physical world and cosmos will inevitably and regularly appear, and more theories, but they will not bring the seeing, hearing and understanding whose loss Isaiah lamented long ago.

The light ether is what will give humanity its first "seeing" of the Christ in the etheric world, just as the light-etheric body, when freed from the mineral-physical body upon death, gives the soul (the "I AM" or Ego) its brief (approximately three-day) panoramic view of the life just passed (see "Second Coming" in The Burning Bush, p. 233). As indicated there (Ibid., p. 233), the sixth and seventh Cultural Eras of our post-Atlantean Evolutionary Epoch will bring to humanity the respective perceptions and understanding related to the chemical/sound and life ether aspects of the Christ in his second coming. The etheric world, however, will yield to the higher astral and spiritual worlds in the larger picture, not unlike the way the cosmos unfolds in ever greater stages to our more distant observations. What happens in the larger dimension of the Prodigal Son's journey happens also in the cycle of life (or "wheel of birth"; cf. Jas 3,6) portrayed in I-33. The reader should keep the larger cosmos of human evolution presented by I-1 and I-2 constantly in mind, lest perspective be lost.

The light ether is yet far beyond scientific and theological understanding, but the light ether is itself but one early stepping stone on the long journey of humanity in its return to the heavenly fold whence its journey began. Those who would still block out these understandings are like the creationists who insist that our physical universe, and the fully arrayed human being, all came into existence over a period of one hundred and sixty-eight hours (seven twenty-four hour days as we measure them today).

Humanity will walk that long path. Some will fall by the wayside. The symbolical one hundred forty-four thousand (144,000) are those who will have entered the realm of light by the end of the Earth Condition of Consciousness. Their "I Am's," within the mineral-physical body, will have gained complete control over their astral bodies so that they can enter the holy city, the new Jerusalem, the Jupiter Condition of Consciousness. But only one of the three loaves will have been perfected by that stage so that the mineral-physical human body will have been laid aside forever. The two other loaves will still remain to be perfected (Mt 13,33; Lk 11,5-8).⁶⁵

Just as the amnesic mind is not able to cope with the magnitude of its shock, so also has the human soul not been able to deal with the scope of its journey (Jn 16,12). But with the onset of the regency of the Archangel Michael, the divine intelligence must begin to make its way into human awareness. Recognition is the first step of the return journey (Lk 15,17, "when he came to himself"—he remembered).

The very magnitude of this recognition will force many if not most, unable to cope with it, to go on with their merriment (a la Ecclesiastes) for some time yet. But the more contemplative souls, shocked into this new way of thinking (essentially, for our time, a phenomenon analogous to the repentance and baptism of John), will find themselves, in very important little ways, looking out upon the world in an entirely different way. They become a "new person," to use biblical terminology.

And this brings us to our concluding thought. How are we to interpret the "two paths" (i.e., "gates" or "doors") Christ speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7,13-14; cf. Lk 13,23-24)?

13 Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Theology sees it as eschatological and hortatorical (see 8 NIB 215-216) and as something of an iteration of Deut 30,19 and Jer 21,8 (the "way of life" or the "way of death"). There is a certain validity in the latter comparison. But both ways of understanding, without more, are inadequate for our time. The "two paths" more appropriately speak of the higher path of initiation as against the more popular path of religion. The latter literally means "to re-ligate" or to seek to join together again what has been severed. The difference between the two is that the one who chooses the path of initiation and pursues it to fulfillment (a "narrow" and "hard" path to say the least) "sees, hears and understands" in the spiritual world what those who choose the wider and easier path of religion will come to see, hear and understand only in much later ages of human evolution. There are, of course, seven levels of initiation. The reader should review again "Mysteries" in The Burning Bush. The initiate is the one who enters into and through the mysteries, who raises up the serpent in the wilderness (Jn 3,14; 8,28; 12,34-36; see The Burning Bush, p. 332). Christ became the hierophant par excellence by enacting and thus revealing the deepest aspect of the ancient mysteries upon the world stage for all to see. But the world has yet to see its truth revealed in the light ether (Jn1,5). The validity in the "way of life" versus "way of death" versions in the Old Testament is that for those who choose the wider path, though eventually through karmic rectification they have hope, the way of death and gnashing of teeth is amply present in the cycle of life as presented in I-33. The suffering through purification in the astral world is a fractal, for the individual human soul, of the larger journey of the Prodigal Son and the even larger journey of the lower three kingdoms (Rom 8,19-23; Job). This suffering of the individual soul is portrayed, though inaccurately, by the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory; see fn 11 (fn 10 in rev. ed.) in "Karma and Reincarnation" in The Burning Bush, p. 130; see also the discussion of Lk 16,19-31, Ibid., pp. 114, 417 and 472. While much remains to be revised in Roman Catholic theology, the vestiges of many true ancient insights were thrown out by Protestantism in the sense of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

An introduction to the higher path was given by Steiner, both for those who might choose to pursue its strenuous demands and for those who only want to appreciate the path of those who did and of those who taught its ways. See again the "Mysteries" essay.

The important thing for our time is to begin to grasp what is meant when Christ is identified by John, and describes himself in John's Gospel, as "the light" of the world. If that Michaelic dawning can in any way be stimulated in a few by the many words of this essay, it shall have served its purpose.