I would like to talk about Rudolph Steiner, what he has meant to me, and what he has meant to our advancing civilization. A book in which you might want to take an interest is The Essential Steiner by Robert McDermott. He has also written The Essential Aurobindo. These give you a very good picture of the essential writings of these two great minds, both of whom are not really well known. Yet they are fundamentally very important.

Steiner was born in Austria. At the age of 20 or so, he was asked to archive the scientific works of Goethe, who was known as a great poet but who was also a great natural scientist. From that work, he developed a great and original insight: If you look [from the scientific viewpoint], you will see only the surface of things. For example, in botany, there is a great organization of the various plants and flora, but the organization is based upon how they look on the outside. In contrast to that, what Goethe did -- and this is very relevant to Steiner -- was to look and look and look at the plant. In so doing, he identified with it (and this we can also do human being to human being). He became the plant. Then, after getting the picture, he elaborated the idea of the "archplant," which means the plant as it exists in the sky, so to speak, in the subtle formative area.

There are seven levels of descent from Creation (God) to manifestation. The middle level is the area of formation. In that area exists the archplant, not as you see it physically with the five senses, but as it can be seen in a larger sense; in the sense of its potential. When Goethe saw the archplant, he didn't see the still picture or the plant as it grew; he saw the moving picture: the plant from seed to stem to flower to seed. That whole category is the archplant, a very much bigger concept than what is seen as still life. The nice thing about it is that that formula, as it applies to the plant, is ubiquitous. It applies to people. It applies to the Salk's creation of his vaccine, for Jonas Salk discovered how to immunize against the polio virus by imagining himself as a polio virus. That is a very spiritual thing to do. You become the thing. You recognize the fact that God is everywhere. Or you recognize the holographic organization of the universe, which means that we are all connected with each other; we are all connected with everything. Overall, it is a fantastic concept. Carrying it further, we can realize that there is archplan because everything has an archplan.

Going back to the archplant, Goethe noticed that everything in the growing plant was, is, a further elaboration of the leaf. The metamorphosis of the leaf into the petals of the flower, carpels and the stamen and the ovule that holds the seeds, all can be demonstrated. Each is an elaborated leaf. That's pretty interesting! The same formula is shown as the vertebral column grows and elaborates into the plates of the skull -- in a fashion similar to that of the leaf as it changes and elaborates into something more. Similarly, the spinal column grows and elaborates into the hind-brain, and then the mid-brain and the larger brain called the neo-cortex.

Now we might say that this is simply evolution over time, and it is. But it is also a filling in of a stencil in the sky, so to speak. It is a filling in of potential, and that exists everywhere. It exists in us as well, because we can grow -- continually. That's a very, very fundamental concept. But behind that concept is what Steiner called Spiritual Science.

Mystical knowledge is subtle knowledge, deeper knowledge, knowledge which is so directly opposite to our Western scientific logic. Knowledge of the subtle domain had previously been found by removing the mind (so to speak), removing thinking, getting into a blank state of mind -- and waiting for inspiration. In contrast, Steiner said, "No! That's not necessary or even right. One can use thinking in order to understand, and through understanding, climb to higher and higher and higher levels of insight and revelation."

My personal story fits into that very neatly. As I've mentioned before, I used to wonder what was the matter with me, why I couldn't see lights when I meditated or such great visions as other people had. What was the matter with me? That, I learned, was a great mistake -- to try to want to have someone else's experience. That's Inauthentic, and a manner of inhibiting your own spontaneous wisdom, of not being yourself. While I was wondering why I didn't see light, I suddenly realized that I was seeing light. I was seeing it as I spoke a guided meditation to my patient, leading him down a staircase through a hallway to a bright light. I was seeing the bright light! It struck me like lightning that I wasn't seeing it "out there," as I had expected. I was seeing it behind the retina. That is where the spiritual domain lives -- behind the five senses. It is a very, very big realm and one with which we are all very familiar in imagination and in dreams. It is also very real. It is, in its own way, more of a reality than this limited, five-sense, sensory world. That is what Steiner has implied, and that is what Steiner has revealed to me.

Another Steiner teaching is what is called a "percept." I might see and have a percept of Bill sitting across the room. That will disappear in a moment unless I unite it with what is called the "concept." I know that Bill is a man, and I know other things about him. This elaboration of the concept is in the subtle realm, in the thinking realm, in the spiritual realm. As you get into that realm, you become more and more abstract. As you become more and more abstract, you create more and more -- in the subtle realms. So, if, for example, I were an architect, I could create a house by creating a blueprint. It is true that there would have to be others to fulfill that house on the material plane ... although someday even that may not be necessary. Thus, there is a great creative realm in which we elaborate, and in which we have tremendous creative power.

Steiner talks about three levels: Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. These are levels of the mind. When he talks about Imagination, he talks about valuing it. When you imagine, you create things. It is a matter of a certain degree of mental discipline. This doesn¹t mean squashing imagination, but being disciplined enough and realistic enough to know that everything that comes up is not wonderful. In that context, you value imagination, your visualizations, but integrate them with the rest of the mind.

Steiner talks about Inspiration, which is a kind of coordination of visions. For example, when I look at Bill, I get the concept that he is a man, then I can build this up into something more, because I know more and more about him as time goes on and can coordinate that with what I have already gathered about him.

Finally, Steiner talks about the Intuitive mind, which is the highest mind. Using the Intuitive mind you become one with the object, and, in this way, get it to teach you its secrets.

There is a wonderful little story about Goethe. He had a fear of heights, but he wanted to study a particular cathedral. He made himself climb it and live with it, and feel it all over, in all its aspects. He persisted despite the giddiness that the heights evoked in him. One day he received an inspired message, via intuition, and said, "There is a part of this cathedral that is missing." He happened to be speaking to someone who knew about the original architecture. The other man replied, "You're right. Who told you?" Goethe replied, "The Cathedral told me."

That is exactly what he did with the plant. That is also what a good psychologist or psychiatrist, or a good poet or a good artist will do. He/she will become the object. In so doing, he/she rises to a higher mind, because it requires discipline to become unselfish enough to forget one's self in the interest of knowing more about the other thing, the other person. When engaged in this kind of an activity you become better, your product is better. As someone said, "That is meditation in action."

Steiner has taught me that the spiritual realm is easy to discover -- for it is there all the time. It is that whole world behind the retina. He calls it the "Thought Realm," but I think it is bigger than that. Using logic and "Spiritual Science," one can deduce things and see into the subtle world by identifying with the object in the same way that Goethe did with the plants: by using logic in a kind of surrendered, open-minded mental set. I do that in the setting of therapy. I forget myself; I become the other person; I wait. Certain things from my own past are in my mind. They might coordinate. When they do, intuition comes in. It says, "Aha!" I will offer the insight to the patient. If it is off the point, we both know it, because it feels flat. If it is on the point, it says, in the patient, "Aha!" as well. In all of this, I and the patient are in the spiritual realm -- the invisible realm -- the subtle realm. And as I teach the patient to become aware of how she or he prevents the self from looking inside, the patient becomes more and more introspective, thus searching his/her invisible realm, subtle realm, mind realm. Progressively, we go deeper and deeper into understanding.

What I am saying about my process with a patient is parallel to what Goethe did. Thus I and the patient begin to travel in high domains. It is a wonderful thing to understand and be understood by another person deeply. It is love. Deep love. It is a wonderful thing to help another person, to understand him and her deeply. It is an even more wonderful thing to see the consequence of such an adventure into the invisible realm -- which is a growing into the archplan that we are, the stencil in the sky that we fulfill more and more.

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