Steiner Predicts

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• At this site, I hop back and forth between past tense and present tense. This is intentional. Steiner is dead, but his doctrines live on in Waldorf schools. We must not fall into the comforting delusion that Steiner’s harmful effects died with him.

• Please excuse any typos. I will correct them all when I find them.

 

Rudolf Steiner claimed to be clairvoyant. Using his supposed psychic powers, he inadvertently created a million knee-slappers. Here's one: "[T]he moon today is like a fortress in the universe, in which there lives a population that fulfilled its human destiny over 15,000 years ago, after which it withdrew to the moon together with the spiritual guides of humanity ... This is only one of the 'cities' in the universe, one colony, one settlement among many ... As far as what concerns ourselves, as humanity on earth, the other pole, the opposite extreme to the moon is the population of Saturn." [1]
 
Have I caught your attention yet? Rudolf Steiner made scads of detailed predictions about the future. His devotee, Richard Seddon, pulled together these forecasts along with a thumbnail sketch of humanity's distant past,  in his book THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH As Foreseen by Rudolf Steiner. [2] I'd like to share this wisdom with you.
 
Let’s start with a little background. As we all know (not), one of the most important events in mankind's history was the sinking of Atlantis. Yes, Steiner taught that Atlantis actually existed. He also talked a lot about human evolution. He didn't mean the sort of evolution science describes; he meant  a weird kind of racial and "spiritual" progress made by good humans. (Bad humans are something else, as we'll soon see.) He said that humanity made great evolutionary strides both before and after Atlantis went under. He also taught that long before Atlantis was destroyed, another lost land, Lemuria, endured a similar catastrophe. (See Steiner’s books, ATLANTIS: The Fate of a Lost Land and Its Secret Knowledge, and ATLANTIS AND LEMURIA.)
 
But that’s all history. I promised you the future. So here it comes (I’ll skip over the boring 21st and 22nd Centuries). Richard Seddon writes that Steiner taught that "By the start of the twenty-third century, when Michael's Sun-rulership as Time Archangel ends (though he continues as Spirit of the Age for more than a millennium) great changes will obviously have taken place ... [H]uman etheric bodies gradually loosen from the physical, and souls begin to extricate themselves ....” [3]

I know, I know. Not as exciting as you expected? Well, here’s some more background. Michael is a really good guy: In fact, he is an Archangel. (See Steiner’s book THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL: His Mission and Ours.) Michael's tour as Sun ruler will end by the 23rd Century. Our “etheric” bodies are the lowliest of the nonphysical bodies that real human beings eventually incarnate. (Some human beings are not really human, according to Steiner, but we aren't concerned with them just now.) [4] You can find references to the etheric body in many of Steiner’s books. Other creatures besides humans have etheric bodies. Here’s a Steiner quote that is a little surprising: “From spiritual science [i.e., Steiner's new religion, Anthroposophy] you know that the plant [i.e., any living vegetable] owes its existence to the fact that, besides its physical body, it has an etheric body.” [5]
 
(Steiner and Seddon are hard to read. If you immediately grasp that reading them is pointless, great! My mission is complete. But if you want to press on, I'll attempt to clarify the opaque language used by these sages.)
 
Let’s try to pick up the pace. Steiner was big on karma and reincarnation, which connect the past, present, and future. R. Seddon backs up R. Steiner by discussing "our Karmic obligations." [6] He means that Steiner meant that we get what we deserve: If we messed up in former lives, we come back to Earth as lowly sorts of humans or maybe even as subhumans. People who are members of "low" races (sorry: this is Steiner's dogma, not mine) are that way because they messed up previously. (For more about Steiner's racist views, see my essay, "Race," at http://homepage.mac.com/nonlevitating/nine.html.) The future of mankind depends on the karmic benefits that good, real humans will manifest in the future, marching upward in their odd Steinerian evolution.
 
Steiner also taught that the only reason different races exist is that demons interfered with evolution. The chief culprits were Lucifer and Ahriman (a Persian devil, promoted by Steiner to the rank of master of falsehood):
 
“While there should have been basically only one form of human being ... Lucifer and Ahriman preserved [earlier human types] ... [F]orms that should have disappeared remained ... That is how it came about that physically different races inhabited the earth and are still there in our time although evolution should really have proceeded [unimpeded].” [7]
 
I apologize for Steiner's horrid views. I also apologize that we haven’t gotten very far into our future yet. We’ll get there, all the way to the dissolution of the physical universe and mankind's triumphant ... well, I shouldn't  give away the ending, should I? Please keep reading.
 
I mentioned Lemuria. Human beings lived in Lemuria, but our bodies were somewhat different then. (Bear in mind that in the following sentences Steiner was talking about human beings. Not our evolutionary forebears such as apes, fish, amoebas ... Us. Human beings.) "The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.” [8]
 
Don’t look at me. That’s what he said.
 
We can wrap up prehistory and then get a preview of our distant future with two more quotes from Steiner:
 
• Helping us to understand why some people are inferior, Steiner said the following: "[I]t was the normal human beings that were ... the most capable of evolving ... [Some abnormal people] gradually wandered to the West and became ... the Red Indians of America ... [Other abnormal people] migrated to the East, and became the subsequent Negro population of Africa ... The human beings who had developed normally lent themselves best to progress." [9] You see, some people from Atlantis went off track and became red or black (forgive me: I am setting forth Steiner's views, not my own). The ones who stayed on the right evolutionary track carried humanity's hope for future evolutionary progress. You can guess what color their descendants are. [10] 
 
• Real, good humans who evolve up and up will earn their reward, while the bad ones will get something else. Here's a preview of a far-distant event. We'll work our way toward that distant period in the subsequent pages on this site. Someday, after Jupiter "reunifies" with the Sun, a new planet will "break away, containing all beings who have resisted evolution and constituting an 'unredeemable moon' ... The part of humanity that has continued to evolve, however, will move on to .... [oops: I'm giving away the ending again. To learn where the good people are headed, stay tuned.]" [11] 
 
Onward to the future ...   
 

If you want to jump the gun, you can find an outline of our entire evolution — past and future — in the final section of "Matters of Form," on this Web site.

 

 

 

ENDNOTES

 

[1] Rudolf Steiner, RUDOLF STEINER SPEAKS TO THE BRITISH (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1998). p.93. The beings who moved were not humans such as we are now — this all occurred in a misty period in which physical manifestation was still aborning.

At this Web site, I mock and deplore Rudolf Steiner's teachings. But all of my references to Steiner's works are accurate. I am serious about the malignancy of Steiner's doctrines, and I take my obligations as a critic seriously. If you have any doubts, I invite you to look up each citation. You'll find each is accurate. Why would I change Steiner's words? They constitute the most powerful argument against him.
My references to Richard Seddon's work are also accurate. You could look it up. (I return to the question of quotation at the end of this page.)

For a concise summary of Steiner's take on our prehistory, see Gary Lachman, RUDOLF STEINER (Jeremy P.Tauchman / Penguin, 2007), pp. 143-147. To go straight to the horse's mouth, re. both past and future, see Rudolf Steiner, AN OUTLINE OF OCCULT SCIENCE (Anthroposophical Literature Concern, 1922).

[2] Richard Seddon, THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH As Foreseen by Rudolf Steiner (The Temple Lodge, 2002).

[3] Ibid., p. 26.

[4] "Imagine what people would say if they heard that we say there are people who are not human beings. Nevertheless, these are facts." Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 650. Non-human humans may be automatons or demons in disguise; they may have etheric and astral bodies, but they lack the third nonphysical human body, the "I".

[5] Rudolf Steiner, COLOUR (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996), p. 19.

[6] THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY AND THE EARTH, p. 26.

[7] Rudolf Steiner, THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN: The Evolution of Individuality (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), p. 75.

[8] FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER,  p. 26.

[9] Rudolf Steiner, THE BEING OF MAN AND HIS FUTURE EVOLUTION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981), pp. 118-119.

[10] "The white race is the future, the race that is creating spirit." [Rudolf Steiner, VOM LEBEN DES MENSCHEN UND DER ERDE {On the Life of Human Beings and of the Earth} (Verlag Der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, 1961), p. 62.]

[11] Rudolf Steiner, AN OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC SCIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1997), p. 394.

 

 

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When quoting Steiner, I often omit extraneous and repetitive phrases, which I replace with ellipsis marks. I take care, however, not to alter Steiner’s meaning. The best way to check up on me is to consult the texts from which I quote. I always provide citations.

Here is an example. In my long essay, “Unenlightened,” I use the following quotation to show that Steiner differentiated between the soul and the spirit: “The soul must not be impelled, through the body, to lusts and passions ... The spirit, however, must not stand as a slave-driver over the soul, dominating it with laws and commandments ....” [Rudolf Steiner, KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS AND ITS ATTAINMENT (Anthroposophic Press, 1944), p. 96.]

The following a more complete version of the same passage, in which I include all words I previously omitted, and for context I include the sentences that appear immediately before and after the passage:

“The body must be so ennobled and purified that its organs are impelled to nothing that is not in the service of the soul and spirit. The soul must not be impelled, through the body, to lusts and passions which are antagonistic to pure and noble thought. The spirit, however, must not stand as a slave-driver over the soul, dominating it with laws and commandments; the soul must rather learn to follow these laws and duties out of its own free inclination. The student must not feel duty to be an oppressive power to which he unwillingly submits, but rather something which he performs out of love.”

Remember that my purpose was to establish that Steiner differentiates between the soul and the spirit. Including the additional sentences and phrases does not alter that differentiation; it merely makes the quotation longer while raising extraneous issues. That Steiner speaks of love, for instance, may be to his credit, but it does not change the distinction between spirit and soul. Thus, the original form of the quotation is accurate and more to the point.

The issue of context is complex. The passage I’ve quoted comes from within a long paragraph. The only way to absolutely avoid taking such passages out of context would be to reprint entire paragraphs or perhaps entire chapters. But clearly that would be impractical and — in some cases — illegal, due to copyright laws. The test you should apply is whether a quotation would mean something fundamentally different if taken within a larger context. In this instance, neither the omission of some words nor the absence of the larger context alters the point at issue, which is that Steiner distinguished between spirit and soul.

A final note. In omitting phrases and sentences, I may seem to be ducking some issues. You can check me on this, as well. I can’t deal with every issue simultaneously, but I do not intentionally ignore any subjects that are important to an understanding of Waldorf education or Anthroposophy. Thus, I deal with Steinerian “love” in the such essays as “Underpinnings” and “Was He Christian?” Similarly, I deal with Steiner’s conception of thought (a subject introduced by the phrase “pure and noble thought”) in various essays including “Thinking Cap” and “Steiner’s ‘Science.’” For a discussion of Steiner’s doctrines about the human constitution (“the body must be so ennobled and purified that its organs...”), see “Steiner’s Quackery” and “What We’re Made Of.” Most of these essays appear on at http://homepage.mac.com/nonlevitating/36.html.