עברית I have encountered this objection repeatedly since I published my first book in the middle of the 1990s: that because I have grounded my spiritual research in my own supersensible experience, I cannot be considered a loyal follower of Rudolf Steiner. On the other hand, no one will deny that many spiritual experiences are misused to justify egotistic desires. Finding a narrow path between the dogma of tradition and the dogma of experience, is certainly difficult and must be repeatedly discovered.
The Preface to Cognitive Yoga: Making Yourself a New Etheric Body and Individuality
(Temple Lodge, 2016)
If anyone in our time publishes the results of spiritual scientific research based on his own experience, he naturally expects to encounter many objections. Let me mention only one that comes in two complementary forms. The first kind of objection is prevalent among those followers of anthroposophy who believe that- Rudolf Steiner's individual example notwithstanding- individual supersensible experience should not be the source of spiritual science. On the other side stand those who are satisfied with having spiritual experiences, revelations and visions, and regard spiritual science, well, as demanding too much science, because it requires a serious long-term commitment to develop clear, exact and thoughtful forces of spiritual cognition. Now people that raise the first type of objection sincerely believe that only the loyal interpretation of the master's texts and the preservation of the cultural and practical forms he created are the real tasks of spiritual science. It is not difficult to find the contradiction in this belief: since, if spiritual science is supposed to be an authentic science, it must be founded on fresh empirical research of the real world, given in human experience and not merely on the interpretations of texts. (We could be reminded in this context of Rudolf Steiner's characterization of the disciples of Aristotle as ‘a plague of knowledge,’ since they became fierce enemies of the new natural science because they tried to dismiss Galileo's individual and original observations of the real physical word by quoting texts from Aristotle written some 2000 years before).
Nevertheless, I have encountered this objection repeatedly since I published my first book in the middle of the 1990s. It is said that because I have grounded my spiritual research in my own supersensible experience, I cannot be considered a loyal follower of Rudolf Steiner and therefore my research should not be taken as a serious contribution to the development of spiritual science. On the other hand, no one will deny that many spiritual experiences are misused to justify egotistic desires and to foster a similar belief in external authority. Finding a middle path between these two dogmas, the dogma of tradition and the dogma of experience, is certainly difficult and must be repeatedly discovered.
Now, we shouldn't simply dismiss the first objection out of hand, because its error is based on an important truth which must be fully understood. The loyalty to the authority of traditions, institutions and texts that many people demand is a misrepresentation of the real essence of spiritual loyalty, which should be directed to the spiritual forces that bring about the original, creative impulses themselves and not to the external forms in which they are incarnated and preserved. This loyalty is, as a matter of fact, absolutely necessary. It is a precondition for advancement in all branches of human knowledge and creation. Progress in human life and knowledge must be grounded in the rich soil cultivated by the founders and developers of each branch of our cultural and social life. If someone wants to present individual research in physics, he must study and assimilate the fundamentals of physics, and indeed much more. He will then demonstrate this knowledge in his whole approach to doing and presenting his individual research. Moreover, when we study the life of scientists and artists who are truly creative and independent, we find that loyalty to their predecessors was the source of their original creations, even when they had to struggle to overcome the outmoded, external forms of the past. What the believers in the dogma of experience maintain, namely, that being free and creative means to receive visions and inspirations out of thin air, is amply contradicted by the fact that the most creative and free people are precisely those rooted in the deepest sources of their fields. The truly great revolutionary gladly acknowledges his indubitable debt to his predecessors, while the creative pioneer and the adventurous discoverer is also the most devoted pupil. For the real pioneers it is a matter of fact that to be `original' implies the literal meaning of the term: only to the extent that you derive your creative forces from the spiritual origins of your craft, can you aspire to become truly original.
Rudolf Steiner is the greatest example of this, because he founded spiritual science on the best achievements of natural science. Was he loyal to the truth discovered by the founders of natural science? Most certainly. Was he a free and creative person, who established a wholly new discipline of science? Yes, indeed. Eventually, the freely developed loyalty to the creative founding impulse of your discipline is the same loyalty that you owe to your own true self, since in the spiritual world they both have the same source. However, while in the case of other sciences and arts, the loyalty to the spiritual origins may be conscious in varying degrees, in spiritual science it must become fully conscious. If you want to transform spiritual experience into fully conscious and cognitive supersensible research, you can only find your bearings if you most scrupulously follow the real spiritual steps of your teacher. One can, as a matter of fact, establish, corroborate, and confirm one's individual experiences and insights, only if one grounds each single step in the previously accomplished spiritual work of the masters in this field. (It is important to emphasize that this is not done for external reasons, such as to take pride in one's learning or to gain acceptance in this or that quarter, but purely because of these internal reasons.) One is only honest and conscientious, spiritually speaking, to the extent that one fulfils this requirement. These are the objective laws and conditions in this field of knowledge. And I know full well that it is wholly superfluous to try to convince someone in these matters, as long as that person does not want to experience it for himself. To argue about what spiritual science really is with the believers in the dogmas of tradition and experience is never a productive under- taking. One can only proceed by repeatedly checking one's own inner loyalty and truthfulness in fulfilling the immanent, inherent laws and conditions of spiritual research and then leave it peace- fully for the reader to create his or her own individual judgement.
Let me mention briefly in this regard some moments from the formative years of my spiritual work. (I have described some aspects of my spiritual biography in an interview with Thomas Stöckli, published in Das Goetheanum, January 2001, an enlarged version of which is included in 2ndedition of my book, The New Experience of the Supersensible, Temple Lodge, 2007).
My adult spiritual life began in a supersensible experience of the etheric Christ. I immediately started to search for answers and solutions to the innumerable questions and riddles that this experience brought about. This search led me directly to anthroposophy. I first studied Rudolf Steiner's researches concerning the Christ impulse. Next, I moved on to general anthroposophy, and then a year later, I read Rudolf's own starting point for spiritual science The Philosophy of Freedom. This happened precisely 40 years ago, in 1976. Alongside a continual and intensive study of anthroposophy, I began to study with the greatest enthusiasm everything he ever wrote and said about cognition, philosophy, Goetheanism, natural science and their transformation into spiritual science. I still remember with the innermost warmth of soul those short years in my early 20s that I could devote to assimilating the basics of modern natural science and biology in Oranim college (a branch of Haifa university where some 20 years later I received my doctorate in philosophy with my dissertation on The Cognition of the `I' in Husserl's Phenomenology, finely supervised by Prof. Michael Strauss). I spent mornings and afternoons in the classes and labs where one could experience firsthand the great achievements of present-day physics, chemistry, biology, physiology and anatomy with all the devotion and enthusiasm of the youthful student forces. Then I worked long evenings and nights in my little apartment to combine every line of the natural scientific knowledge with the natural and spiritual scientific works of Goethe and Steiner. I found out that Rudolf Steiner demonstrated, in the most concrete, repeatable and testable details, the practical cognitive art of the creation of a continuous cognitive bridge, made from the most pure and exact thoughts, that lead from contemporary natural science and thinking to spiritual science. I felt that, through the Christ experience I found my earthly home in the spiritual world closest to the earth, and through Rudolf Steiner's spiritualized science, thinking and cognition, I could find my spiritual home on the earth. And the building of a fully conscious spiritual bridge between the two worlds soon became my daily spiritual breathing. It became a vital element in my inner life and my spiritual research that I have been developing and transforming through the last decades. This became the source of my published books, lectures and my contributions to the school of spiritual science, and its application in social life became the source for the foundation of the community of Harduf. I have published the results of this research in my books, The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, (1993) The New Experience of the Supersensible, (1995), America's Global Responsibility (2002), The Event in Science, History, Philosophy & Art (2011), and Spiritual Science in the 21st Century (2013). I consider the present book to be an organic continuation and development of the essential thread that unites my spiritual research throughout the years, based on my main book, The New Experience of the Supersensible. (Due to recent demands on my time, I had to refrain from referring to Rudolf Steiner's books at every step and turn of the present text. With few exceptions, the grounding of my present research in Rudolf Steiner's corpus will be left to the reader. However, the good news is that the detailed and extensive notes, the references and the bibliography in my fundamental book, The New Experience of the Supersensible, can serve you as a useful resource for the present book a well).