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Steiner
In his youth Steiner was so educationally advanced that it was said that
he had a good understanding of descriptive geometry, probability calculus,
and Kant's works by the age of seventeen; during his Polytechnic years
he re-wrote Fichte's theory of knowledge, page by page; and at the age
of 21 was editing Goethe's scientific works for publication. However,
this was the smaller part of Steiner's extraordinary inner life; he dwelled
in a spirit world where from an early age 'he could follow the souls of
the departed'. Up to his mid-thirties he found the material and scientific
world in which he moved and studied less real than his spiritual life,
and had to make great efforts even to memorise basic scientific data.
His 'religious' experiences are those of the clairvoyant, in continuous
contact with a world that most of us have no access to, and no reason
to believe in. He seems to belong in the company of men like Swedenborg,
and possibly Jacob Boehme. His stated life's work, to unite the spiritual
and the scientific, is not that dissimilar to that of Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin, but took a profoundly different course.
Steiner was born in 1861 in what was then part of Hungary, moving to an
Austrian town where his father was station master and where Steiner spent
a happy childhood. At the age of eight he moved across the border again,
but went to school in Austria, leaving at the age of eighteen to attend
the Polytechnic in Vienna where he read biology, chemistry, physics and
mathematics. On graduating from the Polytechnic he was invited to help
in the editing of the scientific writings of Goethe at the Goethe and
Schiller archives in Weimar, Germany. This was a philological task, and
one that proved tedious at times, though his conscientiousness soon led
to his reputation as the leading expert in Goethe's scientific writings.
Steiner missed Vienna, however, and felt that the seven years he spent
in Weimar on the Goethe archives to be almost an exile. The period did
lead to the publication of nearly a hundred articles, and also led to
a meeting with Nietzsche which had a great impact on the young Steiner.
The following passage tells us something about the meeting, and also about
Steiner's spiritual outlook:
There on
the lounge lay the one with benighted mind, with his beautiful forehead,
artist's and thinker's forehead in one. It was early afternoon. Those
eyes which, even in their dullness, yet worked with the permeating power
of the soul, now merely mirrored a picture of the surroundings which
could no longer find access to the mind. One stood there and Nietzsche
knew it not at all. And yet it might have been supposed, from that countenance
permeated by the spirit, that this was the expression of a mind which
had all the forenoon long been shaping thoughts within, and which now
would fain rest a while. An inner sense of shock which seized upon my
soul was permitted to feel that it was transformed into understanding
for the genius whose gaze was directed toward me yet failed to rest
upon me. The passivity of this gaze, so long fixed, set free the comprehension
in my own gaze, so that it could cause the soul force of the eye to
work while it was not being met.
And so
there appeared before my soul the soul of Nietzsche, as if hovering
above his head, already boundless in its spiritual light, surrendered
freely to spiritual worlds for which it had yearned before being benighted
but had not found; but still chained to the body, which knew of the
soul only so long as the world of spirit continued to be the object
of yearning. Nietzsche's soul was still there, but only from without
could it hold the body - that body which, so long as the soul remained
within it, had offered resistance to the full unfolding of its light.
I had before
this read the Nietzsche who had written; now I beheld the Nietzsche
who bore within his body ideas drawn from widely extended spiritual
regions - ideas still sparkling in their beauty even though they had
lost on the way their primal illuminating powers. A soul which, from
previous earth lives bore a wealth of the gold of light within it, but
which could not in this life cause all its light to shine [11].
This passage,
while interesting in its views on Nietzsche, is also illuminating of many
of Steiner's concerns. Steiner was about 34 at that time, and shows, firstly,
an extreme sensitivity to the 'absent' personality of Nietzsche. Secondly,
his claims to 'see' Nietzsche's spirit, and also to have access to his
previous incarnations, are typical of Steiner's occult gifts. Thirdly,
the passage, to many, has a mystical overtone. I will return to
this, but want to add in passing that the passage also conveys an impression
of goodness - that Steiner is a good man. Those that argue that
signs of the mystical experience must include a moral elevation, could
point to the many indications of Steiner's high moral sense (which included
for example the free provision of educational workshops to working men's
associations) as possible confirmation of mystical status.
After his Wiemar period, Steiner found that the Theosophical Society,
founded by Madame Blavatsky, and run by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater,
was to become an outlet for his spiritual researches. He moved to Berlin,
where Besant appointed him the secretary general of the German branch
in 1901, but from the start he presented his talks as lecture in anthroposophy.
In 1906 he found himself barred from the Theosophical Society because
of their adoption of Krishnamurti as the second coming of Christ (and/or
the Buddha Maitreia, the Buddha to come), which he rejected totally. He
founded the Anthroposophical Society as an independent entity in order
to promote his own teachings: an etymological move from a God-centred
to a Man-centred organisation. It would not be fair to say that the promotion
of Krishnamurti was Steiner's only reason for branching out on his own:
he objected to much of the 'spiritualism' of the Theosophists (a distinction
that would require more space than we have here to explore). However the
following passage relating to Krishnamurti in his autobiography is significant:
But, from
1906 on, manifestations appeared in the [Theosophical] Society - upon
whose general guidance I had not the least influence - reminiscent of
the aberrations of spiritism, which made it necessary for me to warn
members again and again that the part of the Society which was under
my direction had absolutely nothing to do with these things. The climax
in these manifestations was reached when the assertion was made about
a Hindu boy that he was the person in whom Christ would appear in a
new earthly life. For the propagation of this absurdity, a special society
was formed within the Theosophical Society, that of the "Star of
the East" [12].
Johannes
Hemleben, in his biography of Steiner, explains why the Steiner was against
the adoption of Eastern spiritual practices, while acknowledging the profundity
of the ancient wisdom of the Orient:
However,
he was convinced that there was nothing in the riches of the traditional
wisdom of Asia that could give it the power to overcome the scientific
materialism that sets the intellectual tone for the civilised world
to-day. The power to do this resides in the mind of the West itself.
The nameless 'Master' who had said: "Only he can overcome the dragon
who can slip into the dragon's skin", pointed the way.
Modern
science is not human development on the wrong track, as for instance
the atomic physicist Jordan teaches, but the human intellect's road
to Golgotha, by which through the spiritualization of this thinking
man will achieve his resurrection and celebrate his Easter [13].
This passage
sums up many of the issues that comprise Steiner's project: firstly that
materialism is the greatest threat to mankind, that science itself is
the route to overcome it, through a spiritualisation of science, and that
the mystery of Golgotha is the metaphor and drama for human progress.
In fact Steiner makes the 'mystery of Golgotha' central to his teachings
about the spiritual life, and to the state between death and rebirth,
and to an understanding of the spiritual evolution of the individual,
the solar system, and of the universe. Anthroposophy, despite its title,
is a Christ-centred teaching, and Steiner is passionate that he
must come again:
To speak
fundamentally: we must find our way again to Christ. Christ must come
again. This assumes that during the present century there will be men
able to understand in what way Christ will announce His presence, in
what guise He will appear. Otherwise terrible disturbances may be stirred
up by people who, having in the subconscious depths of their being a
premonition of this coming of Christ in the spirit, will represent it
to others in a shockingly superficial way [14].
Steiner wanted
to initiate his followers into a spiritual research, a form of investigation
into the material universe to uncover the spirits ever-present in rocks,
trees, animals, humans, planets, and stars; and to relate to the disembodied
spirits or angels and the spirits of those between incarnations. He believed
in progress, or evolution, but spiritual as opposed to a material one,
and held that Christ was a central force (or archetype) in this evolution.
From 1905 to 1925 the Anthroposophical Society revolved around his teachings
and the implications of those teachings on art, science, community life,
education, agriculture and industry. His teachings were also embodied
in the extraordinary building called the Goetheanum, started in 1913 in
Dornach, near Basel. The architecture and materials used in the building
were unique, and its destruction by fire in 1922 was a huge loss to the
movement, and to the world. The original structure was built largely of
wood: its replacement (still standing today) was made of concrete. One
of the principles behind Steiner's architecture was the softening of geometrical
rectilinear design principles by the introduction of organic curvatures:
these work on the souls of the inhabitant or onlooker to counter the deadening
materialism of most modern buildings. Although the Goetheanum, the centre
of what was now a world-wide organisation, was rebuilt, Steiner could
not use it long, for he fell ill and died in 1925.
Jung
Jung was born in 1875 by lake Constance in Switzerland, studied medicine
in Basel, and began his psychiatric practice in Zurich. In his autobiography
[15]. Jung describes how his
early inner experiences make him question his father's constricting adherence
to religious dogma, and lead him to the kind of wider reading that we
have seen with Nietzsche and Steiner. Jung was greatly impressed with
Goethe's Faust, and also read Schopenhauer, going on to read Nietzsche,
as well as all the philosophy and science he could lay his hands on. Jung
shared Nietzsche's difficulties over the direction his life should take,
but his eventual decision, as a medical student, to specialise in the
then unrewarding field of psychiatric medicine, proved to be the right
one: he spent his life in this field, and made extraordinary contributions
to it.
Jung's inner life was as intense as Nietzsche's and Steiner's, and led
him to a similar sense of isolation and occasional periods of acute loneliness.
Nietzsche's experience greatly worried Jung as he started to read him,
as he could identify with many of Nietzsche's struggles. Jung was a much
more robust character however, and survived a period of intense trauma
in his early thirties which formed the basis for much of his later theories.
While Jung shared the ambivalences of Nietzsche, both in his early career
difficulties, and in his psychological makeup, one has to say that Steiner
seems to be without them. Steiner's complete and innocent certainty about
his inner and outer worlds, while not making him either arrogant or uncaring,
are wholly at odds with Jung's multifaceted, contradictory, and evolving
personality. It is no coincidence that Memories, Dreams, Reflections
ends with an ambivalent statement, or that Jung took little interest in
Steiner. Jung mentions him in an article entitled Yoga and the West,
as one who, along with Mme. Blavatsky, attempted to develop yoga into
an organised religion. Jung goes on to explain why he is against the introduction
of yoga to the West, blissfully unaware that Steiner was similarly outspoken
against the adoption of Indian practices [16] . In contrast, Jung devotes the theme of his seminars in
the years from 1934 to 1939 to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, only breaking
off because of the war [17]. Steiner was lecturing throughout Europe when Jung was
in his thirties and forties, and built his Goetheanum less than a hundred
miles from Jung's home in Bollingen, Zurich. Strangely, Jung completed
his equivalent (he called it his Tower, and intended it as a structure
that would allow him to meditate on his interiority), shortly after the
first Goetheanum burned down. There is little evidence that Jung read
any of Steiner's voluminous publications, and he seemed to even lump Theosophy
and Anthroposophy together. All this is quite consistent with Jung's world
view however: he instinctively avoided religious teachers in the East,
and so why should he make an exception in the West? Jung travelled to
India in 1938, and makes these comments in Memories, Dreams, Reflections:
By that
time I had read a great deal about Indian philosophy and religious history,
and was deeply convinced of the value of Oriental wisdom. But I had
to travel in order to form my own conclusions, and remained within myself
like a homunculus in a retort. (p. 304)
I had searching
talks with S. Subramanya Iyer, the guru of the Maharajah of Mysore,
whose guest I was for some time; also with many others, ... On the other
hand, I studiously avoided all so-called "holy men." I did
so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others
what I could not attain on my own. (p. 305)
These extracts show an important aspect of Jung's character. In a positive
light his unwillingness to expose himself to "holy men" can
be read as a desire for authenticity, and a desire to be scientific in
the sense of working only with data that he could test for himself. Amongst
the "holy men" themselves one can find as many who avoided other
"holy men" (both in their early and mature stages) as those
who sought them out, so Jung's attitude is not of itself indicative of
much. In a less positive light however, it could be read as a fear
that Jung was not willing to confront. We need to look back to his accounts
of early experience of the 'religious' to make more sense of this. As
a child he developed an early distrust in the Jesus of his father's church,
and an early interest in the Oriental. He had an intense inner life, and
took an interest in nature. Dreams from his childhood presented him with
images that he was absorbed with all his life. An important event in his
inner life was an experience in his twelfth year: he was struck by the
beauty of his local cathedral, but somehow it triggered a train of thought
that he dare not complete. He wrestled against the emerging thought, for
he sensed that it was blasphemous, and became almost ill with the struggle.
He knew that to think it was wrong, because one should avoid evil, but
on the other hand, why should nature or God urge him so strongly to complete
this thought? What was God's will here? He finally decided that it must
be God's will that he think it - that this was a test of his courage.
The thought completes itself: God, enthroned high above his cathedral,
lets drop an enormous turd that shatters it. The young Jung experiences
a state of grace, and not the expected damnation and guilt, a formative
experience for him. Jung learns from this that he is to follow his inner
promptings, that Nature in the broadest sense of the term is to be trusted,
while the authority of men and the Church is not.
Jung later goes on to identify the unconscious, and more precisely, the
collective unconscious, as the source of all religious experience. The
connotation of the term unconscious as being below the conscious mind
is significant: for Jung the profound, religious, and transformative experiences
come from below, and not from above. Thus, his religious and spiritual
interests have their origin in the primitive, the archaic, and the mythological,
and not in the transcendent, the downflow of grace, or the unitive. Jung
prefers to speak about gods rather than God, and finds a parallel between
the gods, and his archetypes, which are the 'messengers' from the collective
unconscious. One can read too much into Jung's cathedral 'vision', but
is the turd really an accident? In the place of grace from above we have
a turd. Yet, it sets Jung free, and on a lifelong exploration that leads
him to mythology, alchemy and Gnosis.
Looking again at his visit to India, Jung makes another revealing comment,
in the context of his preoccupation with good and evil:
I saw that
Indian spirituality contains as much of evil as of good. The Christian
strives for good and succumbs to evil; the Indian feels himself to be
outside good and evil, and seeks to realise this state by meditation
or yoga. My objection is that, given such an attitude, neither good
nor evil takes on any real outline, and this produces a certain statis.
One does not really believe in evil, and one does not really believe
in good. Good or evil are then regarded at most as my good or
my evil, as whatever seems to me good or evil - which leaves
us with the paradoxical statement that Indian spirituality lacks both
evil and good, or is so burdened by contradictions that it needs nirdvandva,
the liberation from opposites and from the ten thousand things.
The Indian's
goal is not moral perfection, but the condition of nirdvandva.
He wishes to free himself from nature; in keeping with this aim, he
seeks in meditation the condition of imagelessness and emptiness. I,
on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation
of nature and of the psychic images. I want to be freed neither from
human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear
to me the greatest of miracles. Nature, the psyche, and life appear
to me like divinity unfolded - and what more could I wish for? To me
the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is,
not that its is not or is no longer.
To me there
is no liberation a tout prix. I cannot be liberated from anything
I do not possess, have not done or experienced. Real liberation becomes
possible for me only when I have done all that I was able to do, when
I have completely devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to
the utmost. If I withdraw from participation, I am virtually amputating
the corresponding part of my psyche. (pp. 305 - 306, MDR).
This extract shows that Jung wishes to draw a line between East and West
as surely as Steiner does. However, the East and West that Jung wishes
to distinguish, has in fact nothing to do with the religion of India:
all of Jung's above comments can only be addressed to Buddhist doctrine,
or Buddhist-like doctrines in India. The comments are typical of anyone,
Occidental or Oriental, who first confronts expressions of the zero-experience
(to use Bharati's term), whether from the East or West, and who fails
to grasp it. The two universal objections are raised: this takes me beyond
good and evil, and it is an amputation. We will return to this
later. In the meantime it is worth noting that Jung saw the Buddha as
India's 'greatest light' [18],
finding little in Hunduism to match it, and commenting that 'in comparison,
Islam seems to be a superior, more spiritual, and more advanced religion.'
[19]
Part of Jung's greatness was his continual reassessment of his position:
right up to the time of his death he was prepared to look at things in
new ways, though only within certain parameters it must be said. In his
memoirs he makes much of a period of crisis in his early thirties, and
the psychic material generated at that time as being the raw data on which
he reflected and developed his theories over a lifetime. In 1916 Jung
finds himself immersed in visions and dreams that threaten his sanity;
he finds himself, ironically, dealing with the 'stuff' of mental illness,
which up to then he had dealt with only in his patients. The crisis went
on for several years, but, comparing himself to Nietzsche, he tells us
that he 'did not succumb', and that his family and career circumstances
were a stabilising factor. It is in his family home, with his family present
in 1916, that he experiences a haunting which he eventually deals with
by writing 'The Seven Sermons to the Dead'. This short tract is reminiscent
of Thus Spoke Zarathustra on several counts: he puts words into
a dead prophet's mouth, the prophet is unsure of his message and is harangued
by his audience, and the ending has an emotional parallel. (See Appendix
A - the annotated Sermons [20].)
Although Jung later regretted the Sermons as a youthful indiscretion
(though he was in his thirties at the time of writing them!) and one could
argue that they are not typical of Jung, the Sermons do in fact
give a clear picture of Jung's religious understandings. The explicit
link to Gnosis is via the use of Basilides as the protagonist, but Jung's
presentation of Gnostic elements such as the pleroma, Abraxas, and the
opposites are his own and in keeping with the extracts I have quoted above.
The most important elements in it are perhaps the attempt to explain nothingness,
an attempt that fails firstly because of a too-logical approach, and secondly
because of no direct experience of it. This is borne out by his
attitude to nirvana, shown above. The other element is the instinct
for polytheism, or the multiplication of religious entities. This
is merely an expression of Jung's instinctive anti-theistic stance.
Commonalities - their Relation to Nature
We have dwelled on some of the commonalities between the three men: early
religious influences, academically highly advanced from an early age,
loners, profoundly influenced by Goethe, set apart from any religious
tradition, deeply engaged in religious questions. One feature of their
lives that we have not dwelled on up to now has been their interest in
and sensitivity to Nature. This is pronounced in all three, though perhaps
less immediately obvious in the case of Nietzsche, whose descriptions
of nature are sketchy at best. The interest in nature relates to our attempts
to determine their possible mystic orientation: it is clear that a panenhenic
orientation may be discernible in each case.
Nietzsche echoes Whitman and Jefferies in praising the body; that they
did this at a similar point in European history is no coincidence, as
the Victorian morality and dread of the body's natural functions laid
a dead hand over the imagination of the great thinkers of that period.
We live in a time where the body is largely restored its natural place,
or perhaps too greatly emphasised even, and may find it odd that these
writers should lay so much stress on it. Let us look at some of Nietzsche's
thoughts on the subject, as expressed through Zarathustra:
Once the
soul looked contemptuously upon the body: and then this contempt was
the supreme good - the soul wanted the body lean, monstrous, famished.
So the soul thought to escape from the body and from the earth.
Oh, this
soul was itself lean, monstrous, and famished: and cruelty was the delight
of this soul!
But tell
me brothers: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not
poverty and dirt and a miserable ease?
('Zarathustra's
Prologue')
Listen
rather, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body, this is a pure
voice and a more honest one.
Purer and
more honest of speech is the healthy body, perfect and square-built:
and it speaks of the meaning of earth.
('Of the
Afterworldsmen')
There is
more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.
('Of the
Despisers of the Body')
Nietzsche
is emphatic about Nature as a whole, not just the body. He took a delight
in nature as his long walks in the woods during the gestation of Zarathustra
show. He would often take friend to the 'Zarathustra stone' a waterwashed
boulder on the shore of Lake Silvaplana and wax lyrical in the beautiful
surroundings on the origins of the book. There are not that many actual
descriptions of nature in Zarathustra, but he spells out his views
in this passage:
The Superman
is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall
be the meaning of the earth!
I entreat
you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe
those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are the poisoners,
whether they know it or not.
They are
despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned men, of whom the earth
is weary: so let them be gone!
Once the
blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and
thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now
the most dreadful offence, and to esteem the bowels of the Inscrutable
more highly than the meaning of the earth. (Prologue)
The modern ecologists could well take his slogan 'To blaspheme the earth
is now the most dreadful offence', as prophetic.
Steiner was sensitive to nature in a conventional way, as this passage
suggests:
The scenes
amidst which I passed my childhood were marvellous. the prospect embraced
the mountains linking Lower Austria with Styria: Schneeberg, Wechsel,
Raxalpe, Semmering. the bald rockface of the Schneeberg caught the sun's
rays, which, when they were projected onto the little station on fine
summer days, were the first intimation of the dawn. The grey ridge of
the 'Wechsel' made a sombre contrast.
The green
prospects which welcomed the observer on every side made it seem as
if the mountains were thrusting upwards of their own volition. The majestic
peaks filled the distance, and the charm of nature lay all around [21].
In addition to this conventional appreciation Steiner had an occult
appreciation of nature. This meant that he saw everything, from minerals
and rocks, through plants and animals to humans, as possessing a spirit.
In the following passage Steiner is explaining how in early times Man
related to nature:
A man
in those days had a feeling of intense sadness when looking at all
that was most lovely in the sense-world. He looked at the flowers,
springing out of the earth in their wonderful beauty, and watched
the blossoms unfold. And he saw also how beneficent the flowers were
for him. He saw the loveliness of the springs bubbling forth in shady
places, and his senses spoke to him of their refreshing powers. But
then, then, he said to himself: "It seems as though all this
has fallen - fallen though sin from the world I bear within me and
which I have brought down into physical existence out of the spiritual
worlds." So the teachers in the Mysteries then had the task of
explaining how in the flowers, in the rippling waters, in the woodland
murmurings and the song of the nightingale - everywhere spirit is
working and weaving, everywhere spiritual beings are to be found.
They had to impart to men the great truth: What is living in you lives
also outside in nature. For a man looked upon the external world with
sorrow, with pain, at the very time when his sense were freshest and
most responsive - a time when least of all the intellect spoke to
him of natural laws, and he looked upon the outer world with primitive
senses. The beauty of its sprouting and budding forced itself upon
his sight, his hearing and other senses but all he felt was sorrow;
for he was unable to reconcile it with the contents of his pre-natal
existence, which still lived on in his soul. Thus it was incumbent
upon the wise men of the Mysteries to point out how the divine-spiritual
dwells in all things, even in those of the senses. It was the spirituality
of nature that these teachers had to make clear [22].
This fragment
of Steiner's teachings contains wonderful descriptions of nature, the
statement of the spiritual in nature, and also the strange (to us) sense
of sorrow that early man had in nature.
Jung was also sensitive to nature, with perhaps a glimpse of the spiritual
that Steiner talks about. The following passage is typical of him:
And
although I admired science in the conventional way, I also saw it
giving rise to alienation and aberration from "God's Word,"
as leading to a degeneration which animals were not capable of.
Animals were dear and faithful, unchanging and trustworthy. People
I now distrusted more than ever.
Insects
I did not regard as proper animals, and I took cold-blooded vertebrates
to be a rather lowly intermediate stage on the way down to the insects.
Creatures in this category were objects for observation and collection,
curiosities merely, alien and extra-human; they were manifestations
of impersonal life and more akin to plants than to human beings.
The
earthly manifestations of "God's world" began with the
realm of plants, as a kind of direct communication from it. It was
as though one were peering over the shoulder of the Creator, who,
thinking himself unobserved, was making toys and decorations. Man
and the proper animals, on the other hand, were bits of God that
had become independent. That was why they could move about on their
own and choose their abodes. Plants were bound for good or ill to
their places. They expressed not only the beauty but also the thoughts
of God's world, with no intent of their own and without deviation.
Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments
of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods
were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to
its awe-inspiring workings.
This
impression was reinforced when I became acquainted with Gothic cathedrals.
But there the infinity of the cosmos, the chaos of meaning and meaninglessness,
of impersonal purpose and mechanical law, were wrapped in stone.
This contained and at the same time was the bottomless mystery of
being, the embodiment of spirit. What I dimly felt to be my kinship
with stone was the divine nature in both, in the dead and the living
matter [23].
This passage
is interesting from many points of view. His descriptions of nature, and
his attitudes to nature are sensitive, and also couched in the God-as-Creator
terminology of his culture. He goes further than this where he sees animals
and humans as 'bits of God'. While not exactly pantheistic, this outlook
is consistent with the panenhenic. Despite his frequent use of the term
'God', Jung is more comfortable with gods, and in particular, with the
archetypes, which can be seen as his reinvention of the gods. In
fact, despite his professed belief in God (which he often equated with
the unknowable aspect of the collective unconscious), it does not have
anything of the flavour of the theistic mystic, as the following quote
indicates:
The
question then arises: What will become of Thee [God] and Me [Jung]?
of the transcendental Thou and the Immanent I? The way of the
unexpected opens, fearful and unavoidable, with hope of a propitious
turn or a defiant 'I will not perish under the will of God unless
I myself will it too.' Then only, I feel, is God's will made perfect.
Without me it is only his almighty will, a frightful fatality
even in its grace, void of sight and hearing, void of knowledge
for precisely that reason.
Note that this passage (from a letter written by Jung in 1943) is quoted
by Aniela Jaffe, in support of her contention that Jung is a mystic [24]. Note also the equal capitalisation
with Thee and Me: this is a clue to the tone of the passage, a tone that
is a million miles from that of the theistic mystic. God's will alone
is anathema to Jung.
The Project of the Mystics
Before attempting to characterise in more depth the projects of Nietzsche,
Steiner and Jung, let us look briefly at the project of the mystics. At
its simplest their project lies in two halves: first the attainment of
the One (however we define this), and secondly the teaching of this attainment.
For some, the two halves go hand in hand (that is they teach along the
way), for others the first phase is noticeably absent (e.g. Krishna and
Lao Tzu), and we can only assume that some mystics who attained the One
remained silent, and therefore remained unknown to us.
We have indicated earlier that the orientations of the mystics can fruitfully
be distinguished as monistic and theistic, and that a panenhenic orientation
can also be observed, though possibly reducing eventually to either monistic
or theistic. We have observed no obvious monistic or theistic mysticism
in Nietzsche, Steiner, or Jung, but a possible panenhenic orientation.
Attempting to go further, one can ask the question: is this a heart- or
head-oriented? In each case we note little serious engagement with a God,
or at least not a devotional engagement. In fact we are more likely to
encounter gods than a God in each case (arguably a panenhenic symptom).
In each case, therefore, we are left with a monistic panenhenic orientation,
that is to say a type of head-oriented nature mysticism, if they are
on the mystic path at all. According to my earlier discussion then,
we would expect similarities with a man of the Richard Jefferies type.
One might object that Nietzsche and Steiner are more clearly head-oriented
than Jung, who seems to project a warmer image. I would simply offer this
quote to dispel the idea that Jung is heart-oriented (and remember that
I do not intend the term head-orientation to mean lacking in warmth, love,
and compassion):
I
asked him [a Pueblo Indian] why he thought the whites were all
mad.
"They
say that they think with their heads," he replied.
"Why
of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise.
"We
think here," he said, indicating his heart.
I
fell into a long meditation. For the first time in my life, so
it seemed to me, someone had drawn for me a picture of the real
white man [25].
A heart-oriented
person (white or otherwise) would not have asked the question that Jung
asked in this passage, would not have been surprised at the answer, would
not have needed to meditate on it, and would already have a picture of
the white (head-oriented) man. (The whole subject of how educated
Westerners have their heart-orientation stifled is fascinating but too
big a subject to tackle here.)
Returning for now to the project of the mystics: if we leave out the teaching
aspect, how can we further characterise it? Agehananda Bharati's views
may be useful here. His definitions can be legitimately attacked for being
framed in such a way as to make him, by his definitions, a mystic; on
the other hand his definitions are useful because of his mystical experiences,
and his encounters with mystics. The first part of his definition - a
mystic is a person who says "I am a mystic", or words to that
effect, consistently [26] - is not that useful, and would rule out Whitman and Jefferies
for a start. However, it could be usefully re-framed to indicate that
a mystic will not usually make an attempt to deny that he is a mystic.
We note that Jung consistently denied it. The second part of his definition
is more useful: (the mystical experience) is the person's intuition
of numerical oneness with the cosmic absolute, with the universal matrix,
or with any essence stipulated by the various theological and speculative
systems of the world. He goes on to say that this alone is the mystical
effort and that the mystic pursues it as his overwhelmingly central avocation.
Elsewhere in the book he reinforces this idea by quoting mystic's behaviour
as obsessively focused on this goal, to the extent of having little small-talk,
and even of discouraging the curious with rudeness and stone-throwing.
The Projects of Nietzsche, Steiner and Jung
Nietzsche
We have seen that in the course of Nietzsche's life he struggled with
his direction: firstly as pastor, secondly as philologist, and lastly
as philosopher. Bertrand Russell classes Nietzsche as a literary philosopher:
I would go farther and say that in fact his project in the end was artistic
(though expressed in a literary way) and not philosophical at all. Nietzsche's
contributions to philosophy are not that interesting or influential (in
an academic sense), but his greatest work, Zarathustra, is a work
of art, and one that derives from a fevered and doomed imagination at
that, and highly influential on mid-European artists and intellectuals.
If we take the thrust of his earliest work The Birth of Tragedy
seriously, then we can see the persona of Zarathustra as the music-making
Socrates, and to even see Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as having a common
ground with music making. We cannot ignore the aphoristic nature of Nietzsche's
project, or its prophetic pretensions, but where the work succeeds is
as art.
Given this interpretation of Nietzsche's project, how close does it come
(if at all) to the mystical project? Are there elements in his pastoral,
philological, philosophical, and, finally, literary (musical) works that
can be described as mystical? Is the poetry and wide sweep of inspired
language, symbol, and metaphor in Zarathustra arising from a mystical
impulse? The gestation of the work, on the shores of Lake Silvaplana,
suggest that he had some kind of mystical experience there, and indeed
that the music of the work may have its roots in the mystical.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh chose to interprets Zarathustra in a mystical
way, making it the subject of a lecture series [27], and ignoring the negative aspects. This is in keeping
with robust style of Rajneesh (modelled in part on Gurdjieff), but he
does not look at the whole picture. Nietzsche's project is undeniably
ecstatic, but it tips far too often into the frenzied and the rabid. You
could not catch the 'Buddha disease' from him; his bite will sooner send
you to the insane asylum.
Steiner
Steiner's project, from beginning to end, can be described as occult.
This term is open to many interpretations, but in Steiner's case it could
be characterised as a social form of occultism: the occult nature
of his spiritual development and teachings was to be harnessed for the
good of society, starting with the elementaries of life, from the growing
of food, to housing, to education, and on to some kind of spiritual development
of the race. Steiner's project is forward-looking, speaking of the spiritual
evolution of man (we saw in an earlier quote how he could relate this
to the earlier spiritual states of man). It is also scientific, though
his attitude to technology is sometimes hostile (he cites the phonograph
as the most pernicious invention of the twentieth century).
Steiner as an individual the most mysterious and enigmatic of the three
men discussed here. Nietzsche's mystique arises out of the depth of his
artistry, but once this is realised, he takes his place with many other
creative geniuses: as a society we are relatively comfortable with them.
They are beyond the pale of course, but enrich us, and our trade with
them is economically sound: they are tolerated, even venerated, in return
for the products of their minds. If they go mad, so much the better, it
adds piquancy to the product. Jung by comparison is downright homely -
all his photographs suggest an avuncular fellow - terribly erudite of
course, but not unlike many a college professor. Steiner seem to come
from another planet. Perhaps he does.
Steiner's project seems to be mysterious, not mystical.
Jung
Jung's project is psychological and scientific. It is psychological in
a clinical sense, where his discoveries of the archetypes, the collective
unconscious and the process of individuation are used to help recovery
in mental patients. Perhaps the most telling remark about his clinical
work is his comment that his breakthrough was in getting at the patient's
'story' [28]. In the treatment
of physical ailments there are only fractures, lesions, bacilli, viruses
etc.: the 'story' is mostly irrelevant. Jung's deep insight was that the
'story' for mental patients was everything, and the tools he employed
can be seen as a way of entering the story, for both analyst and analysand.
Jung's project was also scientific, and, I think, less successful than
the clinical side. His discoveries, or perhaps inventions, were effective
in treatment, but as a body of scientific 'knowledge' rather problematic.
Where Steiner was forward looking, I would suggest that Jung's project
is backward looking in nature.
In his memoirs Jung is preoccupied with the past: his personal past, the
feelings of 'deja vu' he has in connection with places and people, mythological
past, and racial past. He is comfortable with the occult, but only to
a certain degree (more than Freud, less than Steiner). The goal of his
project is individuation, the freedom from complexes that comes through
identification with the archetypes. The emphasis is always on the past,
and Jung has little suggestion as to what the fully individuated person
engages with.
Conclusions
If we ask the straight question: were Nietzsche, Steiner, or Jung mystics?
the straight answer would be no in each case. While it is possible to
relate their orientations to that of a certain type of mystic (a panenhenic
monist) there simply exists in none of them the obsession with
the unitive. By applying a form of Occam's Razor: do not needlessly
multiply religious entities, we cut them out of the category of straight
mystic. Each of them may have had mystical experiences, but mystical experiences
do not, alone, make a mystic: we must also examine their orientation and
project, in short their relation to the One. By examining their orientations
and projects in more depth we can learn more, both about these men, and
about what exactly the territory of mysticism is.
In the case of Nietzsche his orientation as a head-oriented panenhenic
can be analysed further. He was a recluse, a characteristic shared by
many mystics, and showed his bile mainly in his writings, which are of
course terminally the worse for it. The mystic impulse that is at the
root of Zarathustra, expressed itself, not as a unitive urge in
the silent or devotional sense, but in an artistic, conquering
sense. Whether he was finally overwhelmed by a disease that was completely
organic in origin, or whether it was a spiritual breakdown, will always
be a matter of debate, but there are signs in Zarathustra that
as a vessel Nietzsche was simply not strong enough to deal with his insights
and creativity, both of which may well have arisen from mystical experience.
This is an important lesson in mysticism: a channelling of the mystic
urge into the artistic can lead to madness. As an expression of
his age - the need to conquer - may also have contributed to his breakdown,
for the drop cannot conquer the ocean, even if it expands into a mighty
torrent. However, Nietzsche's project is important to the mystics:
if he had succeeded in realising the 'numerical oneness' his insights
and artistry would have left us the most extraordinary testament. Returning
to the question of humility or sensitivity, we have a deeply sensitive
man, but not a humble man, at least in some important respects. This single
quote may sum up his attitude to the divine:
But
to reveal my heart entirely to you, friends: if there were
gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Therefore there
are no gods.
('On
the Blissful Islands')
Jung, as
a head-oriented panenhenic, has made the clearest statements about the
One: he considered nirvana as a form of amputation. However, he
describes all kinds of mystical experiences in his memoirs, though there
is no evidence that it changed his project. The fact that his project
is backward looking is as irrelevant to mysticism as Steiner's forward
looking. His focus on individuation, with its resonance (for me at least)
with Gurdjieff's concept of crystallisation, suggest an impulse to the
unitive, but sought in the realm of the psychological - the realm of the
manifold, the realm of the ten thousand things. The multiplication of
entities is necessary in this realm, but I would suggest that in Jung
it was habit forming, and that his whole edifice of symbol and myth are
far removed from the mystical project because of it. Like with Steiner,
we could however view Jung's project as a preparatory phase in the mystic
life.
Like Nietzsche, Jung is mixture of sensitivity and lack of humbleness
in respect to the divine at least. This quote sums the point up (for me):
This is quoted
by Jaffe (from a letter by Jung in 1952), again as evidence of Jung's
mystic status! [29]
Steiner is,
for me, the most problematic of the three. As a head-oriented panenhenic
he is social, and forward looking. Although I have characterised his project
as occult, the fact is that, in relation to the mystic project, his project
may not be comprehensible. A botanist responds to nature by multiplying
entities (i.e. naming and taxonomising), whereas a panenhenic mystic responds
to nature through silence and a sense of union. Steiner is responding
to a spiritual world (that few of us have access to) by multiplying entities,
instead of silence. But what is his project exactly? There is nothing
in the zero experience, or the mystic state as described down the ages,
to suggest that mankind evolves as a whole, or that if he does that it
is relevant. If Steiner's project is some kind of spiritual evolution
for the race as a whole, then this is irrelevant to the mystical. If,
however, he is, like Gurdjieff, seeking to prepare the ground for individuals
to enter the unitive state, then his project may be wholly relevant to
the mystical. It is also worth noting that the arrogances of Nietzsche
and (to a lesser extent) Jung are not so easily detectable in Steiner.
While Nietzsche and Jung help us in the study of mysticism, by helping
to delineate what is not mysticism, Steiner probably deserves deeper
study. This could be done in terms of the relevance of Steiner's project
in the training of the mystic, if such a thing is possible. Jung's project
may only be relevant to the degree that it allows sensitive individuals
a degree of accommodation with their pathologies: sufficient to allow
them to turn their energies to the unitive.
References and Notes for Part 2
[11] Steiner. R. The
Course of My Life, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1969 , pp. 189-190
[12] Steiner. R. The Course
of My Life, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1969, p. 314
[13] Hemleben, J. Rudolf
Steiner - A Documentary Biography, Henry Goulden, 1975 pp. 80-81
[14] Steiner. R. The Evolution
of Consciousness, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966, p. 193
[15] Jung, C.G., Memories,
Dreams, Reflections, London: Fontana 1993
[16] Jung, C.G., Psychology
and the East, Ark Paperbacks, London and New York, 1991, p.77
[17] Jung, C.G. Nietzsche's
Zarathustra, Princeton University Press, 1988, three volumes.
[18] Jung, C.G., Psychology
and the East, Ark Paperbacks, London and New York, 1991, p. 97
[19] Jung, C.G., Psychology
and the East, Ark Paperbacks, London and New York, 1991, p. 91
[20] The translation of the
Sermons in the Appendix is taken from: Segal, Robert A. The
Gnostic Jung, including "Seven Sermons to the Dead", London:
Routledge (Princeton University Press)1992
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[21] Hemleben, J. Rudolf
Steiner - A Documentary Biography, Henry Goulden, 1975,p. 10
[22] Steiner. R. The Evolution
of Consciousness, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966, pp. 49-50
[23] Jung, C.G., Memories,
Dreams, Reflections, London: Fontana 1993, p. 86
[24] Jaffe, Aniela, Was C.G.Jung
a Mystic? and other essays, Ensiedeln (Switzerland): 1989, p.21
[25] Jung, C.G., Memories,
Dreams, Reflections, London: Fontana 1993, p. 276
[26] Bharati, Agehananda, The
Light at the Centre - Context and Pretext of Modern Mysticism, Ross-Erikson
/ Santa Barbara 1976, p.25
[27] Rajneesh, B.S. Zarathustra
- a god that can dance, Cologne, Stuttgart, Hanover: Rebel Publishing
House GmbH, 1987
[28] Jung, C.G., Memories,
Dreams, Reflections, London: Fontana 1993, pp. 135 - 138.
[29] Jaffe, Aniela, Was C.G.Jung
a Mystic? and other essays, Ensiedeln (Switzerland): 1989, p. 20
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