Off in the Reeds- Episode 6: Anthroposophy with Jeremy Smith

This week on Off in the Reeds, guest host Jeremy Smith joins the conversation for a thought-provoking exploration of the esoteric philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. Together, we examine Steiner's unique vision of human evolution, consciousness, and the spiritual forces that shape history and culture.

The discussion centers on Steiner's concepts of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences—two opposing spiritual tendencies that, in his framework, challenge humanity to find balance and cultivate freedom. We unpack what these ideas meant within Steiner's broader philosophy, how they relate to the development of human consciousness, and why they continue to spark curiosity, debate, and reflection today.

This episode serves as an accessible introduction to the foundations of anthroposophy, offering listeners a primer on its core ideas while also providing a brief look at Rudolf Steiner's life, intellectual journey, and the lasting influence of his work. Whether you're encountering these concepts for the first time or looking for a concise refresher, this conversation lays the groundwork for exploring Steiner's thought in greater depth.

Please be sure to check out Jeremy's amazing art https://www.jeremytylersmith.com/collages

If you are an experiencer or seeker wishing to share your story, or if you'd like to come on the show and get "Off in the Reeds," please email us at Podcast@MostMillennial.Media 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Anthroposophy itself is is sort of the the wisdom of man. And conceptually what Steiner believed was that man is the is an evolution of the cosmos. In his mind, there are two primary forces that act on uh humanity today. It's the Luciferic and the harmonic. Believe it or not, he actually prophesies that a hundred years from now, like in our current present era, that there would be magnetic forces surrounding the world that would try to control and force us and densify us into just the mineral.

unknown 0:49

I know that the paranormal is real.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Alright, welcome back to another exciting episode of Off in the Reeds. My name is Reed, and I'm joined by a uh wonderful co-host, Jeremy, who I've known for a couple years now. And um I don't know, just had a lot of like overlap in life experiences and uh ended up meeting through our previous most millennial podcast uh project. And so thanks for coming on the show. This is this is gonna be a really exciting episode. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm stoked. It's definitely, I think you described this. We were just chatting off air a little bit. This episode is on Rudolf Steiner, who is like a very influential person in Central Europe and the world, but barely anybody's heard about him. Yeah. Um do you mind giving a little bit of background as far as like how you became introduced to Rudolf Steiner and and like his esoteric works and everything?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah, absolutely. So first thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. I should start off by saying that I'm actually somewhat nervous about this one because I probably won't do it justice, and it deserves to be done justice. Um, and I feel like I owe it to some people who I'll go into here.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Well, there's a quickest side like it's hard to do this justice because, like you said, he's been doing this. Uh Rudolf Steiner in up until 1925 was giving lectures almost consistently like constantly. And then he's a prolific writer. So how do you distill all of that into like an hour of conversation?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yeah, and it was written in German and spoken in German originally, so it's already been translated, and you know, we're generations removed from the source material here. So yeah, you know, the concept of of a great many things has changed in the past hundred years. Um so it's kind of interesting, actually, that we're now on nearly a hundred years later. Yeah. Um but anyway, yeah. I uh I came to find out about this through family. Um, so I should say that this is a an esoteric Christian framework and viewpoint and philosophy. Um but I did not come from a traditional Christian background, so I come to it from kind of more of a blank slate. Okay. Uh so long story short, my grandfather was a uh lawyer, a uh business owner, blah, blah, blah. But in the later stages of his life, he came to anthroposophy, which is Rudolf Steiner's philosophy, um, and it really resonated with him. He had been heavily involved in the church. Uh, he was a Protestant uh his whole life. He taught Bible school. Um, he was a legitimate biblical scholar. And when he came to anthroposophy, he was able to make all these connections that no one else really had. So his name is Edward Ray Smith, R-E-A-U-G-H, in the middle. Um, and he's written seven or eight books um relating anthroposophy to the Bible and Christianity, um, and sort of making it digestible for uh people who come from that background. Um if you were to explore his works, I would recommend The Burning Bush. I said he was a lawyer, it is brutal and difficult to read, and it is mostly footnotes, but if that's your bag, then help yourself. Um but anyway, so he put me in touch with uh what what he would consider the sh uh most knowledgeable anthroposophist that he ever encountered, whose name was Paul O'Leary. And Paul passed along with my grandfather in 2020 during COVID. Um actually translated several of Steiner's works uh from German to English, and he wrote some of his own, one of which I've shared with you, Reed.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, that was a great primer, by the way. Thank you for sending that.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah, you're very welcome. And if if anyone is curious to get that, feel free to share. Um it's a PDF. I I have a few of his books, they're all unpublished. Um the only ones that were published were his translations. Um but anyway, so he he published those through uh Steiner books, and he sort of became a mentor to me. So my understanding of Steiner's philosophy uh predominantly actually came from Paul and not my grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Which is a very it's it's almost like a direct lineage because if he's translating directly Steiner's words, that definitely has a better understanding than trying to get it how I'm getting it through a translator 100 years down the line. So that that's that's very cool that Paul was doing that.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

It is, and he he internalized and understood it in a way that I've never heard anyone else relate it. So that's where I say I'm nervous because I will in no way hold a candle to what he was able to do.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Very fair. It's like standing on the shoulder of giants, so I'm sure he'll take a great job. Um, I've heard uh in and my understanding a little bit, like there's definitely a lot of esotericism to Steiner's work. It my background is as that like Protestant Bible scholar as well. And um, I guess my gateway drug to this was a little bit of Gnosticism, and then seeing some of the Gnostic overlaps with Steiner really got me interested. Um, can you make any comment as far like what are your thoughts as far as like the Gnostic comparison?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, I I don't even think it's a comparison. I think this is the evolution of it. Um he would have considered himself a Gnostic um disciple. Yeah. So it's it's it's all one thread sort of going through time.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

I think there's also like the the heritage, like the Rosicrucian heritage there as well. And so um it's uh those have been some uh frameworks that I have resonated with, certainly. And so you keep using the word evolution. I think yeah, maybe should we start with that and talk about like the how evolution of the universe and consciousness and all of that is like a core idea to this?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, for sure. So the the general anthroposophy itself is is sort of the the wisdom of man, and conceptually what Steiner believed was that man is the is an evolution of the cosmos. So we could touch on hierarchies, but uh long story short, there are there's sort of the godhead, and then there are nine hierarchies which facilitate um various uh foundational aspects of the cosmos, but they are not free beings. And that the tenth hierarchy, which is man, is an evolutionary process of bringing about something new, and that is freedom. So the nine hierarchies do not have individual freedom, whereas man does. Um so what Steiner believed was that man is a part of the evolution of consciousness, namely freedom and therefore love, because you can't have love without freedom.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

And that was part of what I picked up uh in preparation for this episode, actually, was the philosophy of freedom. And so that's a book that Steiner wrote that kind of outlines you know, do we have free will? Uh, what does what are the ethics of freedom? And this goes into a lot of like consent and informed consent, if you would take it to like a medical term, as far as you need to know what you're getting into to freely give. Um and I really appreciate how he kind of lays that out with almost like a Descartes premise to it. Like you I'm getting off on idealism now instead of the evolution of it, but like you never experience the truth thing, you just understand the uh the sensorium of the thing, which I thought was really you know foundational, and then he builds from there. Um getting back to the evolution of consciousness. Uh there's definitely some different forces involved in that evolution. Do you mind going into some of those?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yeah, can I give just a little bit of a let me give a little bit of a background on the understanding of the descent of consciousness, and then we'll talk about the forces that are shaping it today. Please, yeah. Um so and these are actually charts in my grandfather's book, The Burning Bush, if you ever want to check them out. But Steiner believed that there are different um epochs of evolution of man. So in our particular age, um it it evolved, it began with the ancient Indian, then the Persian, then the Egyptian-Caldean, then the Greco-Roman, now we have our present age, which is the Germanic-Anglo age, and then and then eventually uh the next one will be the Slavic. Um but the idea is that the sort of the tip of the spear of consciousness evolution happens in specific places during specific ages. Um and the idea was that that if if you see man as consciousness, that consciousness did not exist in a physical body in the same way throughout history. Um that man's consciousness descended from a more luciferic, spiritual, um, abstract concept to a more mineral physical body. And that that happened through those ages that I just listed, um, specifically culminating with the descent of the concept of an I, an individuated I am around the time of Christ, which was the mystery of Golgotha. Right. Um so so the idea is that part of this evolution has been the descent of man, the descent of consciousness into physical matter. Um part and again, this is part of something that was necessary for the development and the evolution of man. So if you think about it in the way of like even in the Greek times, you might not have, I guess the belief is that they did not identify as an individual in the same way that we do today. It was more of a collective. Um, and that that true identification with a physical body and a cutting off of a connection to a spiritual world of gods and um the clairvoyance, that that that happened over time and that that it really descended, and that the reason that uh the Christ's descension was so important is because it was when the true I am descended into physical matter.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Well, and a good example of what you're describing with kind of like the group collective uh interaction with spiritual, like the Odyssey, it's in theaters right now. Um, Odysseus in the original work is like actively seeing and talking to gods and interacting with the spirit regularly. Yep. Um, and then we see kind of like this condensing of humanity into like a more physical state and this development of consciousness into the uh like self-identity. Um yeah, I I I think that going back to the what was it, the Greco-Roman age. Yeah, yeah, we start to see things kind of identity and and personhood and all of that, those concepts really develop and change as we go on.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

So yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and and and importantly, like with what you just mentioned, it's that's not like an abstract thing in Steiner's view. Like that that was real, like they were truly communing with gods and and they lived in a more spiritual way. And when they saw a tree, they didn't see the just the physical form of the tree, they saw the spirit essence of the tree, right? The etheric body of the tree.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Right, right. Whereas now um like like this is getting off into some of the esoteric weirdness, like the pineal gland as the third eye, and now it's pretty much encased in in bone, and now it's shielded from the spirit world. That's one of the concepts that, as we kind of have developed as humanity, perhaps we have shielded ourselves a little bit from the spiritual world in that process in that evolution.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

A hundred percent. And just a point of uh clarification there. It's not um, I don't want that to be seen as a bad thing. That's part of what is necessary to evolve what Steiner believed we were evolving, right? Which is freedom, right? So to be free, you have to first be completely individuated, which means you have to be completely cut off from the spiritual world. You have to have free will. Right. And like like we said, the hierarchies are not free, whereas man is evolving to be free, the the freedom of thought and to manifest thought into action.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Um with that too, I want to clarify Steiner wasn't like a proponent of cutting off the spiritual, he was talking about new ways of interacting with it.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yes, it's it's that to develop what needs to be developed, you must be cut off, and then you must find your way back to it, right? Yeah. So it's it's it's a necessary point. And I think the interesting part is he he breaks things apart. Now we can get into the forces a little bit. So in his mind, there are two primary forces that act on uh humanity today. It's the luciferic and the arimonic. Are you familiar at all with those?

SPEAKER_01 14:22

The light and the spiritual is the luciferic, and then the arimonic is a little bit more like the um material scientific calculating. Am I getting that right?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Spot on. Yes. So the luciferic is sort of the illusion, the uh pride, the abstract, it's it's where humanity was before the descent. Um and it's neither of these are bad. I think that's a really important distinction, is that Steiner didn't see these forces as they're they're they're not the devil, they're not, it's not a bad thing. It's that these are very strong forces where if you were to go one way too far in either direction, that would be bad. Right. It's the tension between them that allows things to be created, and that's what allows us some resistance to push against to build muscles and to evolve. So uh the Luciferic, like you said, is sort of the the false spiritual, the illusion, the light, the fluffy woo-woo, you know, and and that's like it if you were to put a face to it, I would say that would be your RAM DAS, right? Okay. And and and the the Romonic, right, is the cold. Somebody selling the book. Yeah, right, right. And the aramonic is the cold, the rigid, the algorithmic, the purely mechanical, the the people who think there's nothing else, this is all there is, that is Sam Harris. Right. Right? So those are your bookends. And again, I'm not claiming those are bad people or that their beliefs are brought great things and helped a lot of people in their own respect. Yes. It's just that's how I envision, like if you were to put a face to one of them that would kind of embody the spirit of it. So those those two forces are are constantly acting on man, and that the tension between them, in the same way that like a positive and a negative charge are one thing broken apart, and that together the energy between them is what creates electricity. Right. Right. Or if you want to go quantum, it's the you know, the two qubits that are actually one thing, and that them being separated is what allows things to exist. So so man's job is to to sort of hold that golden center uh between the two. And if we were in Luciferic Lala land before, again, I say lala land, I don't mean that in a bad way. Right. Um that the descent into matter, we are now firmly, firmly under the grasp of the armonic force. Right? We we identify as an individual, we see nothing in a spiritual sense. Yeah. Um, we have our pineal gland is closed off, we are alone and isolated and cold, and now we are at risk of you know uh outsourcing uh cognition, you're right and in a sense, free will to AI. Yeah. I think that's the ultimate irony. That's the battle. Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

No, no, I'm sorry for talking over. Um I think that's the ultimate irony there is that we have become so like the the problem of consciousness, we just kind of like say, oh, it's emergent. Like the system is complex enough, there is enough interactions between it, somehow consciousness came out of that. But even in our most scientific, like data center driven world, we can't we can't reproduce it with uh AGI.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

That's right. And and the illusion of consciousness is not consciousness, right? Like you you can things can form patterns and you know linguistically represent thoughts. That that doesn't equate to consciousness, in my opinion, and never will. Right. Um, it's it's a different thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Um I I don't know this answer. Uh why do you think he chose Luciferic and Arimonic? Because in Christian tradition, Lucifer is is you know the fallen angel who becomes Satan, and then Arimon is the uh demonic force from from Persians or Astraism. Um why do you think he chose those as the particular names for for these forces?

SPEAKER_00 18:35

I I don't know the answer to that. I think I think in his mind it would it would be that he didn't choose them, that that he's describing the same thing as you are, just in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Right. I guess like Lucifer is the light bringer, and so that fits like that.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Um to be clear, he he came from a background, he was a theosophist under uh Madame Bob Vlovsky, I think is her name. Um and he he split from them uh to found anthroposophy. I don't recall the exact reasons as to why that split occurred, but it was contentious. Um I'm reminded of you you've ever seen The Life of Brian. Yeah. Exactly. What is it? The people's Judean front or whatever, and they they yell at a guy, they call him a splitter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um but anyway, so he he came like Zoroastrianism, it like that was a foundational element to his beliefs. This isn't something he created exterior to that. I think he in his mind translated, updated, added to what existed before.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Which is interesting because it's one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world, and it fits one of his ages as far as the the Persian age. Um this age, too, is also called the like the age of Michael, and it's supposed to usher, you know, Michael's supposed to usher in the age of Aquarius. Can you connect some of those ideas for me, or do you know much about that?

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah, some, uh not as much as I should. And again, I don't come from a traditional Christian background, so uh yeah, maybe you should correct me where I'm wrong. Um but the concept is that we're in the age of Michael. I think it began in his mind around 1895 and will end somewhere in the 23rd century.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah, 22 something.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah, so we're kind of firmly in the middle of it. But uh the the general idea is that our job in this age is to resist the um magnetic force. So believe it or not, he actually prophesies that a hundred years from now, like in our current present era, that there would be magnetic forces surrounding the world that would try to control and force us and densify us into just the mineral realm. Um, sounds like flood camera to me. Yeah, right. I mean it's you know it's i it's kind of wild when you just think about what is being built right now, both terrestrially and in space, and how it's changing the way that we think. But um anyway, so uh if if you think about the classic image of Michael pinning down the dragon, yeah, uh the dragon represent and Ariman are the same thing. Um so I find it interesting that that image directly translates to what we were talking about in overcoming Araman during this uh present era. Um it's also interesting because if you think about AI as like the true representation of Arimon today, Michael doesn't kill the dragon, he controls it. Right. So the idea that you can use the tools, but you just can't allow the tools to overtake what may. Makes you human, which is your free will and thought.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Right. Yeah, I I like that. I like the the the symbology there. Um I thought it was interesting too that uh some anthroposophical groups celebrate Michael Miss in in September, and so that's coming up. Yeah. Have you ever celebrated uh any sort of like anthroposophical holidays or or anything like that growing up?

SPEAKER_00 22:27

I have not, but Paul always I don't even remember what the exact terms were. I'm gonna screw it up. But there's there's a stretch at the end of December that he would always email or call every single day and discuss.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Do you know how he became interested in Rudolf Steiner?

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Um not I I don't know that he ever really told me. He he wrote an autobiography called Intoxicated by Life, which I think you can actually get on Amazon. Okay. Um has nothing to do with anthroposophy, it's about his background, but he grew up in Boston to a kind of well-to-do banker family of raging alcoholics. I mean, just nightmarish people. Um and so he he just sort of fled the nest and uh wound up in Germany. Um so I'm sure it has to do with that.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Yeah. Yeah, and I I that makes sense now that he's translated all these works from German. That's really cool that he learned it on the ground.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

But did it did it on his own. Like he I you know, I don't think he was pulled in by anyone. Um I don't want to go too much into his spiritual experiences, but he he absolutely has told me of experiences he had which drew him straight there, and like in a in a concrete way, not in a dream-like way.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

So that's maybe a good segue to um a little bit more about Steiner as well, how he kind of talks about like tuning into the spiritual vibration of the universe, and that that can be a scientific experience where you can make it a repeatable, testable thing to understand a little bit more about the universe and ourselves. Um have have you ever tried any of his techniques or anything?

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, I was actually given a copy of How to Know Higher Worlds when I was too young for it. Okay. Well, how young is too young, like not about it. Gosh, I was probably, I don't know, 10 to 14, somewhere in there. Okay, kind of hard to read that at that age. Yeah, I I didn't have a clue what it was about, really. I just thought it was neat. Um, but I didn't I didn't really understand very much of it. Um But yeah, like I think the general idea is that anthroposophy is spiritual science. That that's what he tried to create. He understood that we were in a scientific age and he was trying to create structure where people could experience spirit in a scientific way, in a testable, in a real way, not in a oh well, you know, some guy told me that he meditated and whatever. Like this is it's a direct personal experience that you have to develop and try and work at. Um, no easy. Yeah. Yeah. And so there there are techniques, but the the idea is that the first thing you need to do is become self-aware. And believe it or not, many people are basically running on autopilot. That their their thoughts are not true thoughts um because they are just reacting to stimuli. And did you say you read the philosophy of freedom?

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Uh I'm I'm about halfway through with it. Um, but I have it's funny. I've used AI to help condense some of it and make spark notes for me as I'm reading it so that I can kind of catch it a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

It it is a brutal read. I I read it, it is very difficult and frustrating, so I empathize. Um Thank you, RMN AI, for hey, it's a tool. Yeah. If you use the tool. Um But yeah, so I don't know if you're aware of this, but um Steiner actually said that even if all of his lectures were destroyed, the philosophy of freedom, if that survived, that was the only thing that was necessary. So that that book he really believed was his most core important thing that he ever produced.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

And I understand why, because it's almost like taking the training wheels off. And like I said, it it starts with like the Descartes, you know, day daimones are deceiving us and like our senses are deceptive. And then what do we do with that? Like the thought of a tree is important to what a tree's identity is, it's not just shape, color, and whatever, it's everything around it.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Yes. So you're you're training yourself there to see the etheric body of a tree, right? Right. And that's exactly right. And the philosophy of freedom, the book, and if you can really internalize what that book means, you'll sort of wake up to a degree. I mean, you know, we all are trying to do that all the time. It's we get caught in these loops, and you ever have that feeling where you're just on autopilot for a week, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh God, yeah. You kind of snap out of it. It's like I can actually think and sit and be. Um, but anyway, so yeah, the the idea is like, you know, that is really the purpose of meditation is self-knowledge, then to overcome the self, and then to have true free thoughts that are not driven by external stimulus things happening to you around you, that they come from you. Right. And that that is the philosophy of freedom, that there are sort of lesser thoughts that are just auto-generated, and then there are real thoughts. Um, so that is the core exercise.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

I thought it was interesting too that fear was one of the things that puts you on autopilot as well. And and I don't know, I there's so much fear uh right now, as far as like fear of what's happening overseas or politically, or fear of economy, whatever, or fear of you know, there's so many things that kind of just put you into that animal mindset of react instead of like experience and know. Um what what I don't know, is this something that you have worked through as far as like trying to find those particular things? Do you have like any what you have identified as like the biggest stumbling blocks for people as far as like certain autopilot settings for people?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Yeah, I don't I don't ever want to speak for anybody else on this. I don't think I'm qualified. That's fair. But in in my own personal experience, so I if you want to call it a spiritual experience, I had my first one at 30, okay. Almost exactly to the day. Um I was walking my dog and I was going back in the house and I checked the mailbox, and it was like, I don't know, 10 o'clock at night, it was pitch black. And I was like, Why did I just check the mailbox? I already got the mail. Like the mail didn't why did I just check the mailbox? And it sort of just crumbled everything. It's such an innocuous miniature thing, but all of a sudden all the walls fell. And I was like, I think I've been asleep since the beginning. Okay, like it it really sent me down this whole rabbit hole. Um, so like, you know, what a dumb thing to call a spiritual experience, but if that's what sort of snaps you out of it and puts you on a pathway, then I think you kind of have to recognize it as that.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Well, and as you're sharing that story, that kind of reminds me of like Paul on the road to Damascus and being struck blind, and then later having the scales fall from his eyes. Like maybe that was your personal scales falling from your eyes was that recognition of like, man, that was autopilot.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Yeah, it it was. I had never thought of my own thoughts as autopilot before that moment, and everything changed completely.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Um I guess if you want to get into it a little bit, or or if you don't mind sharing, like how did that affect change for you personally as far as like engaging with with things that were not autopilot?

SPEAKER_00 30:37

It it forced me to confront myself. And that's like this is what Paul used to tell me all the time is that any sort of spiritual pursuit is self-knowledge. That's all it is. Um it forces you to confront who you are, how you impact people, things around you, that your thoughts have meaning. Um it just it changes how you think about what other people are experiencing. I think once you've had that thought, you you begin to look into everyone's eyes when you meet them, and you're like, are you here or are you not really here? And I don't know if you've ever tried that or had that experience, but it's it's extremely isolating.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Yeah, actually, I've had a very similar experience. And then uh after that, like going and standing in line and ordering a coffee and looking in somebody's eyes and being like, Oh, I can tell you're just waiting to be done with this so that you can go do whatever you need to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Um no part of you is present.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah, yeah. It's almost like the fast travel in a video game kind of thing. Like your character is present, but you're kind of in rest mode or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Spot on.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

I think that kind of lines up a little bit going back to Steiner a little bit, how he really encouraged every aspect of your life to be a spiritual endeavor through that awareness, um, to make even the mundane spiritual. Uh what for you and and maybe your life, if any, if anything, if you want to share, is is something that has been mundane historically, and now it's like, oh, when I stir my coffee, I this is something for me. When I stir my coffee in the morning, it's so silly, but I'm so grateful for that coffee because I'm just like, this is something that brings me joy and being able to be aware of something like that instead of just like gotta get through and make this and then get on my work calls and whatever. Um, do you have experiences like that?

SPEAKER_00 32:48

I I do. I don't know that there are any that are abnormally profound. I think that's yeah, well, mine's coffee, man. Fair, fair. Hey, coffee's important. Yeah. No, I think I think if anything, it's it's sitting and listening to birds, it's looking at an acorn and realizing the potential that exists within it. Yeah. That that it's already an alive oak tree, in a sense. Um but I I think more than anything, it's it's really just in human interaction. So right on the back of that experience, I had around 30, um, my wife and I went to Charleston, and I was in a cloud for days. Like I I thought I was seeing meaning in weird things and like w I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Young synchronicity sort of stuff?

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Yeah, but but almost delusionally willful. Like if you like think of it as like a luciferic pull. Like I was I was deluding myself into what was happening and um you know how developed I was, you know what I mean? Like it, I I got a little out there and spacey on it. Um so I think I think there's some risk in that too. I think you do have to stay grounded. And Steiner always said, like, look, spiritual development happens everywhere all the time. It happens through life experiences, like it's something you can't rush. It evolves, you know, it unfolds. Um, he was a big proponent of like, look, go go do your day job and try and be fully engaged in your day job. Don't make it whimsical, you know. It's you know, you got go do your responsibilities, go be in the world. Um, the world's gonna teach you the lessons that you need, and your karmic uh deficits will be uh sufficed.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Um that's a good segue. Uh can you touch more on uh Steiner's belief with the karmic system?

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Yeah, absolutely. So karma as it's commonly used on sitcoms today is bullshit and wrong.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Big bang theory doesn't understand karma.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Yeah. No. Uh so karma deals with uh it's it's almost sort of the law of polarity in itself. Um if if you freely manifest something and put it out into the world, there is an offset to that. Um that has to be experienced, right? And in Steiner's view, karma is a law that it's a it's a ledger in a sense, not in like, oh, I kicked your dog, now my dog gets kicked, kind of a thing. It's it's much larger than that. It takes place over the span of lifetimes. So the karma that you experience in this lifetime is what you created in a previous lifetime.

unknown 35:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

So if you, through your own free will, manifested harm, if you betrayed someone in a previous lifetime, you will experience an equivalent offset of betrayal or some similar comparison in this lifetime or next. Like it it has to be offset. Does that give you a little bit of frame? I can keep in mind.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

No, no, thank you. Um, I think that that makes a lot of sense, and it's more almost like a bank account balance, and then it kind of sets what you're going to experience in the next next life sort of thing. Yes, but not in a punishment way. No, more like did you invest wisely or did you rack up a ton of debt?

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Yes. Very he was very explicit that karma is not a punishment, it is a tool of evolution and development. Right. That like if you unconsciously manifest things that's less bad than if you consciously manifest them, but that we all manifest things that are not great, right? And we manifest things that are great, and we receive both of those in equal measure to what we created in future lifetimes. Um, that is all in his view. The conditions of your life are determined and put into motion by the hierarchies in between your life, in between your lives.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

And I think that's another presupposition maybe we should talk about too is um reincarnation as like a central idea to anthroposophy. Um yeah. Do you mind speaking a little bit on that?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah, sure. So he believed that we genuinely have individuated souls, right? And that our souls evolve together and also independently. That there are some souls that are more developed and they sort of lift humanity during certain times, um, but that that ultimately you not everyone's gonna make it, sort of a thing. Um, you know, and that you through anthroposophy and through waking up, and that you take on the burden of your own soul development. And that again, this happens over the span of lifetimes. Like Paul used to tell me this all the time. He was like, Don't don't kid yourself into thinking you're out of the woods, man. Like you you got a long way to go. Right. A long, long way to go, an inconceivably long way to go. Um, but that it's important that things are reset and restarted through these lives because that's where the development, the adjustments occur. That's where we confront what we've done in a prior life in between lives. So here's an exercise. Um Steiner recommended that every night before you go to bed, you lay in bed and you think through your day everything that happened, everything you thought, you just work through your day, but you go backwards. And the reason he said that is because what you're trying to do is train yourself for what happens when you die. So when you die, your mineral and your etheric body stay in the physical world and die, right? And that your astral and your conscious body, your I am, transcend and leave, and then they process your life backwards. And that that is the sort of, I hesitate to use the term download, but that's the downloading of all of the things that you manifested and created in life being assessed by the hierarchies and helping set the structure for what you will experience in the future. And one more point on that, and then I'll stop. But the other thing that's really important is that the karma that you experience in your current life does not mean that your life is totally predetermined. It's just that there are certain things that you will confront that are out of your control and that you created before, but you still have free will, you still have the freedom of thought, provided you take it. Um it's not that your whole life is just now an autopilot of some something that you did before.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

For me, it was almost like an understanding that it was like a faded natural consequence. Like natural consequences with my kids is like if they're not ready and they're not putting on their shoes and they're not go getting out the door, we're probably going to be late to seeing their friends. Yep. And so my understanding of the karmic consequences, so to speak, is that it sets up circumstances so that we have an opportunity to be tested in that situation that warrants whatever the natural consequence was.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Yes. And again, it's he framed it as a law. It's like the law of conservation of energy. Like there is there must be an offsetting something to it, to you as an individual, right? And to your point, like the consequence is it's it's meant to help you evolve the empathy that you didn't have before, which is why you manifested the damn thing in the first place. Do you know what I mean? Like if you don't have the empathy to understand that what you're doing is wrong and harming something or someone, then there's a lesson there that you need to learn. And the way that you learn that is in your next life, you you receive something that forces you to understand what that was.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

Right. It's kind of like, you know, the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, sort of thing. You are having it done unto you so that you understand it. Exactly. Exactly. And that that is part of the evolutionary development. It's really interesting. Um I think we have touched uh briefly on like some of the hierarchies and some of the minutiae. I kind of describe, so I work in medicine and people will ask me about like, should I take this particular peptide or should I do this particular, you know, trend diet or whatever? It's like if you're not sleeping, eating, and exercising, no amount of tweaking the fine-tuning little knobs is gonna make you a quote unquote healthy person.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Um, I think that there's a lot of like fine-tuning stuff with anthroposopy as far as like some of the specific understandings. Uh, but I really appreciate you kind of giving that as like a broad spectrum, like, no, you need to eat your vegetables kind of thing. So thank you for explaining it so well.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Yeah, for sure. I I in our email correspondence, like I made reference to what Paul used to tell me all the time, which is like anthroposophys, and he these are his words, he said they used to piss him off because they were constantly focusing on the minutiae and the things that like like you need to confront yourself and develop. Like you do not need to be worried about how the inner ear canal was developed, you know. It's that's not the thing, right? And like you just mentioned with the hierarchies, like it's kind of fun to think about the evolution of the hierarchies and like what each one supposedly does, and you know, oh, angels and archangels and archai and thrones and all this stuff, but like that's not really what you should be working on, you know. That's not what moves the needle in you as a person. Yeah, like that stuff may be interesting to you, but knowing that is not gonna help, right? Like that'll be revealed to you when it needs to be.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Yeah. No, I I think it's really interesting, and uh going back to like Steiner having you work your day job, he developed some really interesting concepts that were just like like farming, the biodynamic farming, I think he called it was organic farming that used uh animals on the farm, and like it it makes a farm a living organism almost, which makes a lot of sense to me. And then the Waldorf schools is another thing that I wanted to bring up is like a completely different approach to education where it encourages. Is people to be curious and to learn in a completely different way. Do you are are you familiar with Waldorf schools or or the I know we talked a little bit, the farming is maybe not something either of us know a whole lot about.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Yeah, the the farming I really don't, but it is a legitimate movement. I mean, the the principles of that are still in practice and probably will become more in practice over time as people realize how correct they are. Um but Waldorf schools, yeah, there's there's actually I think one of the largest ones in the country is really close to me, in Kensington PA. I think it's I actually when my grandfather passed, I dropped his whole library off there. Um he in his wisdom shipped me. Like I don't know. He must have spent thousands of dollars shipping all these books to me. Um and I wound up donating them to the the Waldorf school there. Yeah. Um but yeah, the the idea is that rather than teaching kids to be financial analysts, we teach them to be developed, uh balanced human beings.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

No, it was really cool. There was one in Boulder, Colorado, and uh one of my buddies growing up actually went to the Waldorf School, and um it was stuff like they were learning how to dance or how to play music, and it was more like teaching to aptitudes and curiosity. And so it wasn't like you said, it's not like okay, well, you need to figure out how to use this spreadsheet six-year-old. It's it's like actually applicable stuff to what it means to be a seven-year-old.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Yeah. Yeah, and I know Steiner believed that children were not as cut off from uh spiritual perception as adolescents and adults. So he believed that they should be instructed differently.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Do you think that's because kids are a little bit more intuition-based versus knowledge-based?

SPEAKER_00 45:51

I'm glad you said intuition. Um that was a huge that that comes up in his writing and speaking all the time. Yeah. And I think you're you're spot on. It's that I think a lot of times the will overpowers the reality. And that intuition comes from really understanding the people and the forces and the circumstances. Um that it comes from a higher level of perception, basically.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Well, and we're all also like trained through throughout our entire education and working lives to ignore our intuition. Like, intuitively, it is not good for me to be sitting at a desk reading on a computer screen, doing my emails and all this stuff. Like, intuitively, there's so much more to life than that, but we're gaslit into like, no, that's that's your job, that's what you do. This yeah, totally. You know. Um, I think that there's a lot of that that training that shuts off intuition and trying to relearn how to trust intuition is a very, very difficult thing, at least it has been for me.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

Yeah. Yeah, and that's spiritual intuition is what we are supposed to be working back towards.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Right. Yeah, with that pendulum swing between Luciferic and Armonic forces. Man, this is I feel like I've gotten a primer on this. This is amazing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

It's I like I said, I'm I'm just another idiot, but you know, I try. I've spent considerable uh portion of my life trying to understand, and you know, obviously I'm doing this for some selfish reasons, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Um I want to go back to a word that you used earlier, archai, and do exactly what I said we shouldn't do and get into the nitty-gritty details and stuff. But I thought that was a really interesting concept because that's like the spirit of the particular age, or the zeitgeist, the time ghost. Um what sort of things in this era do you kind of see as manifestations or guidances from our current zeitgeist?

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Can I put that right back on you?

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, we talked a little bit about AI. I think that that's definitely part of our current zeitgeist is the idea to rationalize everything. And then as we're trying to rationalize everything, like we're peering out to the very beginnings of the universe as far as light is concerned, and it's not making sense. None of the constants for the expansion of the universe match up depending on how we measure it. So it's not necessarily as rational and mechanical as we thought it initially was. And I think that's maybe a little guidance from our zeitgeist that maybe the science, the pure rationalism, isn't quite the right way to go.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Yeah, I think that's the resistance to the armonic impulse, right? That everything is mechanical and that everything has a there's no, there's no why, right? Yeah. I always thought it was interesting, like the the question, like what is man, what is conscious, it's not what, it's why.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Like, why is man? Like what what why? Why is this necessary? Why is this hap- why, you know?

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Um I think that's a different distinction. Like, none of the government grants for science answers the why, it answers the what.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

It doesn't even try, right? Yeah. It it it it pretends that the why is irrelevant and that anyone who tries to tackle the why is delusionally silly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Yeah. And like a perfect example of this is like a lot of the studies on, you know, what specific protein is the cause for this specific thing? It's not why is there yeah, it's that's a really good point. And I uh love thinking about the whys of things. Yeah. Um, how how would you obviously anthroposophy has been a very crucial part in your development as a person? What would you recommend to somebody who's maybe curious about these ideas as far as places to start or people to talk to or um places to go? Because I know that initially Steiner actually did kind of set up like mystery schools, which I thought was a cool thing. Yeah. Um what recommendations do you have for people that might be dipping their toe into the esoteric?

SPEAKER_00 50:28

I think How to Know Higher Worlds is actually like when you're ready for it, it's a pretty good book. It's very short. It's it's got several practices that you can work on. And it's it's abstract enough, like you don't have to worry about the actual ins and the outs of anthroposophy. It's more of like a hey, if you're interested in development, you should start here.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

Um, so I I think that's probably what I would recommend as a starting point. Um, philosophy of freedom is great, but as said before, it's kind of hard to digest. It's dense. Um it's dense, and like candidly, we've kind of covered here like the the pretty big takeaway from it. Um it's about thinking and what is free thinking and what is not free thinking. Um but I I think those two are really good. But it it's really it's all around us, right? And it's it's made its way like uh the never-ending story was written by a guy who was deeply impacted by anthroposophy. And like like The Lord of the Rings, like Gollum is Bilbo's lesser guardian. Right. So so we're we're constantly living these things. I I'm almost resistant to say like you should go study it. Because you know, like do you need to study it? Is that how you should spend your time, or should you spend your time trying to understand yourself more?

SPEAKER_01 51:52

That was my second question. Is like, what do you think the role of personal therapy could be in the understanding of anthroposophy? Therapy? Yeah, I I always have to take things kind of to the medical side of things, and so I'll give you like my take on it. Okay, please. Cognitive behavioral therapy kind of looks at how you think and why you think what you think, and then dialectical behavioral therapy helps change your self-story about how you're like if you're always thinking you're a bad person because you do this one particular thing, maybe you can change the dialect around it to also affect the outcome and behaviors. Um, so I almost see like therapy as the medical science, maybe the aromatic side of things based on our conversation of trying to approach uh anthroposophy, and it might be a gateway drug to somebody who just doesn't have that insight.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

That's interesting. I I thought you were gonna take it a different way right at the end, and then you said a gateway drug in.

SPEAKER_01 52:53

Yeah, what did you where did you think I was gonna take it?

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Uh more on the negative side of I don't know, the idea that everything can be prescribed by someone else, and that someone else can instruct you where you're wrong, and that there's a right and a wrong way to approach things. Right. Um I think to me it's more playful than exploratory.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

Yeah, maybe that is just maybe my personal take with therapy, too, is that when you find a good therapist that works well with you, it is about your self-discovery versus like what I imagine Sigmund Freud being like, like, oh, you must hate your father. Whatever it is, you know.

SPEAKER_00 53:31

No, it's true, and that's that's the risk with all that stuff, right? Is like how much of it is coming from the right place, from the right person, and how is it being received? Um I think it's fraught with peril candidly. I prefer art.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

That was a good segue. Um, I I definitely I I love this conversation and I want to be cognizant of your time. But do you want to talk a little bit about your art before we close out? Yeah, it's my therapy.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

It's a lot cheaper, too. Well, maybe not cheaper. I've gotten into some stuff recently that's uh I spend way too much money on.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

Dude, I love the uh multimedia stuff that you've been putting out. Yeah, describe that a little bit for our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Oh, it's it's awesome. So I I will be blunt. I always thought collage was like the lowest form of art. Um to me, it was something that children do, you know, during lazy summer days when it's raining. Um dude, that's what macaroni's for. Yeah. I thought that was necklaces. God damn it. Um, but I I recently saw like I've I've tried every type of art. I like I said, it really is my therapy. I use it a lot for nostalgia. Like I'm staring at a golden eye painting that I made recently that I love. It's got an odd job on it, it's sick. Um, but uh I started getting into collage, and I think it's really cool because I I think it started when um my other grandfather died, and I got some old stuff of his and just reading through it. Like, if you go back and read through a life magazine from 1942, it is insane. Yeah. Like speaking of evolution of consciousness. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, like you just you have a much different frame on how much things have changed and of how people think at different times, and you know, it sort of instructs you maybe a little bit just to tie it all in with how much of stuff is on autopilot and determined by the time, not necessarily the truth. Um but anyway, I got I got really into looking at at uh vintage ephemera, I think is what what people call it. So it's like old publications and stuff. Yeah. I don't know, I've I've gotten to where I I really respect collage. Um I think when done at high levels.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

I don't know, it it's super pleasing. Like I I love how you do it.

SPEAKER_00 55:57

It's uh it's funny. So I'll I'll give you my tip on art, and I'm a very mediocre artist, but through the years I've kind of learned like you can't approach it with more than a general idea, because as you create something, it will ask you for something. Like something will fit naturally, and if you if you have preconceived notions of what the end is gonna look like, you won't be open enough to figuring out what it's asking you for, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Does that make sense? That's why I never was able to learn music, is because I can never understand where notes were supposed to be instead of just like memorizing how the song gets played. Yes, you're too heady about it, right?

SPEAKER_00 56:40

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's why it's a therapy form because it allows you to kind of get out of your own headspace a little bit and just flow.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Yeah. I like to do kind of like comic book style art and have been doing that for a long, long time. And for me, it's almost like like, yeah, this guy looks really cool, but what if we added more daggers on his belt? Or something like you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, I I don't know if I've mentioned this in our podcast already, but like our house is a gallery for all of your stuff, and um, we've got some really cool paintings of like, hey Arnold is in our living room, and it's this really cool, like abstracted version of him. Uh, and then we've got really cool desert scenes uh that are are very, very I don't know. I I love the color selection that you have with the vibrant blue on like the brown backgrounds, and um I'm definitely a desert person, and so though that series had to snap up from your website. Where can people find your art and where can people like purchase from you?

SPEAKER_00 57:48

Oh god, I don't want to say that, man. I can't say that on the end of an anthroposophy podcast.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Well it feels wrong. Should I should I sneak it into the description or something?

SPEAKER_00 57:57

But because I want your art to be there. Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah, please do. Yeah, um yeah. I uh I have something coming your way too. It's sitting here, it's boxed up, but I haven't been to the UPS. So it's like a month overdue.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

Um no, no. Uh yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

I always love getting art from you. Yeah, I uh I'm glad to hear you like the desert style stuff. That's my style too. And you'll be happy to know that I just bought 60 issues vintage of Arizona Highways magazine.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 58:31

And it has the most beautiful double-page landscape, so I will have to make you something with that.

SPEAKER_01 58:37

Dude, that is absolutely our style. Um, kind of taking things, I don't know, out of anthroposophy a little bit. Uh, we just kind of made a pilgrimage to Roswell, New Mexico, and uh we were able to stay out in like this person's ranch uh off of a like private camping website, and uh there was all kinds of cool animals, like we saw jackrabbits and tarantula and all kinds of cool like hawks, and the desert is definitely like where my soul can just kind of breathe.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

It's the vibe. I totally agree with you. I I lived in Austin briefly and I loved it. That's not even the desert desert. My dream is to retire to Santa Fe. That would be cool in the high desert, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:23

Yeah, Utah is definitely one of the places where I try to make it out to like like Canyon lands or try to get to the slot canyons and all that stuff every once in a while, too. Nice, yeah. Well, dude, thank you so much for talking to me about this and for giving me, you know, your take on things and and helping grow my understanding about anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner. Any parting thoughts before we kind of close out the episode?

SPEAKER_00 59:51

Yeah, we are in the age of Michael, we are in the age of spiritualizing the intellect. All right, so everybody remember the dangers and the pitfalls. Arman is uh trying to bring it down into the material world and lock you in. So um make sure you create time and nature and silence and space and try to understand yourself more. I love that. Great place to leave it. Thank you so much, but this has been great. You gotta read thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

The paranoia is real. It is real, it is real, it is real, the paranoia is real.