It is not necessary to postulate one such unique incarnation
to form the turning point of evolution and start its upward arc. It
happens anyway through the great rhythms in which we are embedded.
So we
come to the great question: if it did not happen, why then did Rudolf
Steiner say it did, continue to insist on it to the end of his life, and
speak in countless lectures of the various effects of it?
First, we can give the charitable explanation. Raised and
living in Catholic Austria, he could not believe that Europeans were
ready for the straight truth of theosophy, so he did what initiates have
done for millennia, as mentioned above, and adapted his teaching to what
he felt they could take. Once having stated his position early on, in
Christianity as Mystical Fact, he had painted himself into a
corner and had to stick to his story.
Even if there is some truth to the above, we come to another
level in the affair, when we consider that the Third Initiation requires
that one give up any attachment to any one particular religion or
spiritual stream and become equally impartial to all. It has been said
that Rudolf Steiner was not able to do that, hence was turned back at
this stage. Turned in upon his own resources, he began to elaborate
what he knew and what he could still discover with the faculties he had
developed thus far.
One can see the change in his writings and lectures,
somewhere between 1905 and 1909. In early lectures such as
Foundations of Esotericism or The
Temple
Legend—even
when filtered through second-hand notes--revelations are pouring forth
in abundance, he is full of reverence for the Masters, and there is a
mood of infectious joy to the writing.
Then something happens, perhaps as early as 1906. It is
then that he joins the O.T.O, or Ordo Templis Orientalis for a time, and
was even asked to form a
Berlin
Lodge of it. Although he downplays its influence on him in his
autobiography, one can have reason to suspect it had more influence than
he wishes to admit. It was an occult order rather notorious for its
practices of sexual magic, through Aleister Crowley and others who
belonged to it. It is not the sexual that concerns us so much as the
fact that it dealt with ceremonial magic that was not all of the pure
white variety.
It is not that we want to indulge in occult gossip, but it
is also around then that his perhaps well-meaning attempt to adapt
theosophy to Christian Europe takes on an ominous note. He begins to
make statements about other people and movements that are simply
untrue. What is more, they are slanderous. Once embarked on this
course, he had to make more and more such statements to bolster his
case.
For instance, he becomes increasingly disparaging of H.P.
Blavatsky (HPB) saying her faculties were mediumistic and little more.
It is true she used the spiritualism movement at first to wake people up
to something beyond the physical, but she was no pawn of
spirits. She would occasionally for instance call up certain spirits
with her conscious power at a séance and make them manifest, to the
consternation of the sometimes fake medium holding the séance.
He said she only discovered reincarnation late in her life,
and hence never mentioned it in her book Isis Unveiled—something
demonstrably false, as there are entire pages on it, even though she
used the word “metempsychosis” for it there.
He
claims that she was put in “occult prison” by Western occult
brotherhoods so that her clairvoyance would be thrown in on itself and
hence illusory. Further, that in her later years she was abandoned by
the Masters who had guided her, and instead guided by impersonators.
There is not the slightest evidence of these claims, which can easily be
disproven, and were anyway stolen from one G.B. Harrison who made them
in a book Steiner is known to have owned, but never acknowledged as a
source, trying to give the impression they were the result of his own
research.[xxv]
He
says, “..the necessity of understanding the Christ-impulse was hidden
from H.P. Blavatsky.” Of course she did not mention it in the sense
Steiner used the term because it is entirely his invention. Further, in
1910 when she could no longer defend herself, he has the shameless
effrontery to claim that he is in contact with H.P.B. in the spiritual
world, that she now regrets the omissions in her teaching, and is
grateful that he is putting them right.[xxvi]
He cannot of course be proven wrong by the ordinary methods, but this
scandalous statement would contradict all the beliefs and work of
someone who was totally conscious of what she was doing.
Her
brilliance and the depth of her occult knowledge and insight are amply
documented and confirmed by her contemporaries. All these and other
slanders cast at her can be cleared up by reading the biography of her
by Sylvia Cranston.[xxvii]
Once these easily disproven accusations are revealed, it is
easier to believe that he was capable of misleading his followers on
other subjects.
