The idea that human consciousness has not merely increased quantitatively but has evolved qualitatively over thousands of years is central to the life’s work of the Austrian seer/scientist Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy, and also of the English philologist Owen Barfield (1899-1998), who was a dedicated student of Steiner’s work. Their work maintains that evolution of any kind is always spiritual and not physical in origin, and that thinking itself is primarily a spiritual activity and only secondarily a physical one, a proposition that cannot fail to offer a profound challenge to much of contemporary thought, especially as it concerns the Darwinian theory and epistemology (the theory of knowledge).  I would like here, therefore, to briefly examine the course they tell us that this evolution of consciousness has taken in the past, and how this relates to the historic development of religion and of science, and from there into the future, where I will try to throw light on the role that Steiner’s anthroposophy must play, first in reconciling religion and science and then in the fuller development of human understanding.

Steiner tells us that if we go back in disciplined imaginative thought to a stage in mankind’s pre-earthly existence, it is possible to experience a time before the segregation into sexes (discussed briefly in Plato’s dialogues), at which the already highly-developed archetype of the human body was not yet incarnated into the physical world; although the plant and animal kingdoms were incarnated, and that they in complex ways bore the imprint of the still un-descended human archetype. This is to assert, as the evidence suggests and as several recent thinkers have argued to be the case, that nature’s lower kingdoms have actually descended from us, and not we from them.

We are speaking, of course, about knowledge of a period that was prior to the Genesis account of the creation, one in which the human archetype was being held back while other essential aspects of the physical, plant and animal worlds were being created by the spiritual hierarchies, the forces of the biblical ‘logos’ (see Rudolf Steiner’s work Occult Science in Outline). He tells us that by making the required cognitive effort, we too could experience directly periods in human pre-history, such as the time that marks our early infancy as physical beings, during which human speech was being brought into existence by the intense inner workings in us of the creative spiritual beings and forces that had worked on the inside of nature; a period in which we ourselves were being ‘spoken into physical existence.’

This account offers a radical alternative to the now familiar Darwinian view that we are, in some unknown manner, are the accidental products of reproductive activity going on in the species below us, and that language was just another accident, one that physically evolved upwards out of monosyllabic animal grunts, although no one knows how.

What evidence is there then, that Steiner’s account might be the true one? And if so, why is it that this possibility has long been ignored, both in science and by religion? I will try here to give brief answers to these questions, but first I shall need to describe Steiner’s account in somewhat greater detail.

At the time in pre-history in which language was first being developed, Steiner tells us that human beings possessed little or no sense of selfhood or individuality, but rather a feeling of intense belonging to blood line, family, tribe and race; and beyond that a deep but unselfconscious connection to nature herself, a connection that was far more intense, indeed overwhelmingly so, than anything we can experience today. He tells us that human consciousness was then a totally non-intellectual ‘picture’ consciousness, the earliest stages of which were so overpowering that it precluded the development of any sense of individuality, because no space was left in human awareness for any sense of self. It was, he tells us, as if we lived with our heads encased in a hive of bees, although the bees were not physical entities but rather the multitudinous activities of spiritual beings who were constantly at work on the building of the external world from within—a task which to a lesser degree they still perform today—and that these beings were at the same time the creators of human consciousness itself and responsible for giving birth to human speech. In the Biblical narrative they are described as forces of the ‘logos,’ divine beings and forces, which Steiner tells us, were and to a lesser degree still are present everywhere in our environment, beingd that even today are especially active in the first four years of a child’s life, when language is being learned, because this evolution of consciousness is always recapitulated in the life of every child.

Original Participation

The only written record we have of this early period in pre-history, is to be found in the myths and legends of antiquity, which can be thought of as loosely corresponding to the first seven years in the life of a modern child, and so mark the earliest stages in the development of human awareness, one to which Owen Barfield gave the name ‘original participation.’ This was a largely non-self-aware participatory form of picture consciousness which at that time extended right on into adulthood, Under its influence we felt ourselves to be an integral part of our natural surroundings, somewhat like animals still do, but with the major difference that we also possessed, and were possessed by, the developing faculty of speech—a faculty which first bore the character of song or chant, as with the ‘Ents’ in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. As is well known, Tolkien and Barfield were good friends, both being founding members of the ‘Inklings,’ the literary group that met in the early twenties in the university chambers of C.S. Lewis.

Steiner tells us that humanity’s first use of speech was an almost magical thing; in that when we ‘named’ something we connected our own consciousness with the beings and forces that had brought that thing into existence in the first place. Speech was then a holy act, and the power of this language was, therefore, very great. This is dimly remembered even today in works of modern fiction, like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for example, or the use of magical language in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and more recently still in the delightful book Eragon by the American teenage author Christopher Paolini. This may be part of the reason why these stories find so avid a readership today, especially among the young — because they hark back to a distant memory in all us to a very profound truth, namely:  that human language did not evolve upwards out of animal grunts, but downwards out of the activities of creative spiritual beings, and of the forces that worked, and that still do work, creatively on the ‘inside’ of nature. Barfield tells us that this reality also stands behind our experience of poetry, as he explains so American beautifully in his work Poetic Diction— which he dedicated to his lifelong friend and protagonist C.S. Lewis, with the words “opposition is true friendship”.

In the biblical story of the Tower of Babel we are told how this original ancient language, then common to all of humanity, was first confounded and then gradually transformed into a multiplicity of tongues. This tale, Steiner tells us, is imaginatively true, and it marks the stage at which early humanity first began to feel the force of individuality, the source and archetype of which, he tells us, is the Christ being, the ‘I am,” a force which when the time was right was destined to counteract our rapid descent into matter. This painful downward journey into matter was spiritually ordained, because it was and still is necessary for the development of human freedom.

The Tower of Babel refers us to a time long before the emergence of what we now think of as organized religion, because the ‘pagan’ gods of nature, so called, were then still very much the dominant element in human experience. Our pre-historic conscious connection with the inside of nature began to be weakened only very gradually over a long period although weakening the ‘old gnosis’ was a long time deliberately maintained and fostered through the influence of the ancient mystery schools, whose task it was to prevent it from being lost too soon, because it was still an essential source, while in an evolutionary sense we were still children, of the spiritual guidance that was needed American in the conduct of human affairs. The primary force that finally led to the extinction of this old clairvoyance (which is what it was) was ‘monotheism,’ and especially the iconoclastic monotheism of the Jewish people, which was brought about by focussing their racial awareness upon one member only of the spiritual hierarchies, who was of the exalted ranks of the ‘Elohim’ and who bore the biblical name ‘Jehovah’. This had the effect of suppressing our ancient pictorial consciousness, thereby making space in us for the growth of intellectual thought. During the peak period of their influence, the mystery initiates, those who had actually studied to maintain the ‘old gnosis,’ referred to the ancient mystery schools, who operated mainly within the temples and whose operations were both sacred secret, collectively as the ‘fig tree.’ That is why the Christ figure, the spiritual archetype of human individuality, so often curses the fig tree in the gospels; saying: “henceforth and forever you shall bear no more fruit.” Because with the crucifiction of the Christ “the veil of the temple was rent.” Mystery initiations had always been conducted in the ‘inner sanctum’ of temples, and the time of the mysteries was now at an end—at least for a while, as we shall shortly see.

One might usefully think of monotheism as having appeared at a time in the development of humanity as a whole that was not unlike that of modern day adolescence. The idea of one God instead of many, served to heighten our growing sense of individuality by seeming to offer a one-on-one relationship with the deity, and by so simplifying human awareness that an ever greater space was left in our consciousness in which a sense of selfhood could grow. The ‘bees’ were still there, but we were no longer as keenly aware of them as we once been.

Our growing sense of individuality, Steiner tells us, only became an historic reality with the actual appearance, at the Baptism in Jordan, of the Christ being upon earth — with the physical incarnation of the “I am”. What had begun with the development of monotheistic religion, and its strenuous and necessary opposition to the old participatory consciousness, was then developed further into Christianity, initially as an organized religion in which the strong authoritarian element common in monotheistic religion still remained, because once the mysteries had been suppressed the old participatory consciousness with its direct connection to the spiritual world, needed to be replaced. This meant that as immature beings we now needed to be told what to believe and how to behave, which then became the function of the church, and later of the gospels themselves. We may, therefore, usefully think of the Christian period as being somewhat like the early teenage years for humanity as a whole, in that they marked the often-rebellious beginnings of true individualism, which in time led us to the renaissance, and to the reformation in Europe. It was then that religion gave birth in earnest to critical thought, first to liberalism and then to the age of science.

Science

Prior to the development of science human thought had been ‘monist’ in a spiritual sense, i.e. in the belief that all of the primary causes in nature were spiritual in their origin, whether they came from the nature gods of antiquity, or from a monotheistic God or Allah, did not matter—it was the fact that their source was spiritual that was here important.  Science, however, changed this, in that it quickly moved to embrace what became known as scientific materialism, a philosophic world view in which the opposite monism was maintained, namely: the belief that all of the causes in nature were physical not spiritual in origin, so that science, which became properly defined as ‘causal enquiry,’ could concerned itself only with the physical world, i.e. with physical causes. This then led us to Charles Darwin, and to his assertion that “God is an unnecessary hypothesis,” and thence to the poet Nietzsche who claimed that “God is dead.” These claims were made possible by the fact that the divine world was no longer directly experienced, and by the fact that the divine world had been reduced in monotheism to a single digit. In this way we created for ourselves the beginnings of a second but non-spiritual ‘monism,’ to a ‘monism of matter,’ which for the first time, were knowledge was concerned, was claimed to have critical status—and which then set out to replace the earlier non-critical ‘monism of spirit’ that was now was no longer based on direct experience but only on a belief in religious traditions, combined with a sense for the miraculous, the roots of which go right back into the time of ‘original participation’.

This was the point at which we became individuals, and in consciousness at least though still very immature, we abandoned our spiritual home and set out in search of knowledge and adventure. We had in fact been freed by science, by the necessary but false assumption of a ‘monism of matter,’ from the hitherto over-confining influence of religion. Science has since immeasurably increased our knowledge of the physical world, and it is in relation to that world, so Steiner tells us, that human freedom first really comes into its own. A freedom that will be creatively expanded in the more distant future, as we develop and mature our conscious relationship with both the plant and animal realms.

At this stage something very important happened that tends to be easily overlooked, mainly because it involves us with the language of philosophy. The preparation for this event is to be found in the philosophical dualism that we attribute to the work of Rene Descartes, who, when confronted with claimed existence of both spiritual and physical causes in nature, decided to separate them into two totally incompatible realms, res… and res…., with no possibility of contact between them This dualism dualism appeared at first to allow religion to co-exist with scientific materialism, by assigning religion to the upper realm (top-down causality) and science to the lower.(bottom-up causality) and for a while this appeared to work.  However, as a critical ‘monism of matter’ continued to develop it did its best to swallow the upper realm, i.e. to eliminate dualism and be left only with a monism, because science must be monist, because it simply cannot accommodate causal contradictions.

This means that any who sought to maintain a connection with religion, or with other aspects of the spiritual life, could no longer do so and still remain monists (the old spiritual sense of the word being now forgotten). Instead we had the option of either being materialists or Cartesian dualists, in which we accept a monism of matter but try to add a spirit component to it, usually in the irrational form of miracles.  What was not, and still has not been considered, is the possibility a second critical monism, i.e. one which would totally preclude a monism of matter and replace it with one of spirit. Here we need to remind ourselves that monist world view is completely uncompromising. Monism states that ALL causes in nature are either spiritual or physical, because this gives rise not only to causal contradiction (Darwinism vs Creationism), but also to a kind of intellectual thinking that divorces itself from experience. This indeed is the meaning of the word ‘metaphysics,’ wherein is developed a realm of pure speculation largely unconstrained by either spiritual or physical reality.

This can be avoided only if we confine ourselves to monist thinking, but then we all of us have a very crucial choice to make between the two available monisms, because there are only two and they contradict each other entirely so we just cannot just have them both. On the one hand we may postulate that our brains are made of matter and are the creators of thought—so that ultimately thought is just another form of matter. While on the other we may contemplate the significant fact that thought cannot be explained by anything other than itself, and as such it is self-affirming—the only thing in our experience that is—and that without thought we would have no knowledge at all of a physical world.

Rudolf Steiner tells us that matter is just another form of thought, and that once this fact is given its true weight, as it is in his Philosophy of Freedom  (of Spiritual Activity), a second critical monism will arise, this time one in which thought is primary and matter secondary This, used properly, will have the task of carrying us gradual back, as independent critical beings to our now long-forgotten home in the spirit, now completely transformed into free and creative individuals. This will happen, however, only if we decide to make it happen, because that is what freedom means. We need entertain no messianic expectations, wherein some God will come and put everything right, and then reign over us for a thousand years. This, as Steiner describes it, is a tragic and childish misunderstanding of the true meaning of the Christ’s role of in human history. Dualist belief systems and metaphysical speculation will lead us only further into a quagmire, and if they are made a part of science then into a scientific limbo. Only a true monism, a monism of thought, can aid us as knowers out of our present confusion, by enabling the search, which will only now begin in earnest, for a critical knowledge of the spirit, for ‘final participation’.

As described above, our descending path out of human pre-history has led from ‘original participation’ with its misty apprehension of multiple gods, down gradually through the wise tutelage of the ancient mysteries to the historic development of monotheism to the Christ event, all of which, causally speaking, was encompassed within a monism of spirit. Then when centuries later we had progressed to science, and then to atheism, the old and non-critical monism of spirit was finally set aside in favour of a critical monism of matter—materialism. Those who sought to retain religion were then faced with a dilemma, they must either ignore science entirely in their effort to maintain the old monism of spirit, or accept science and try to find a place for religion so to speak alongside materialism. However, this would inevitably be an inferior place, because science now claimed the status of empirical knowledge, whereas religion had only ‘belief in authority to offer. This inferior status of religion is made clear in the many claims made today on behalf of science, like one made recently concerning the “limitless power of science” in a book by Peter Atkins, published recently by the Oxford University Press, in which a passage appears that cuts a wide swath through the spiritual life in general:

"Although poets may aspire to understanding, their talents are more akin to entertaining self deception. They may be able to emphasize delights in the world but they are deluded if they and their admirers believe that their identification of the delights and their use of poignant language are enough for comprehension of the universe.  Philosophers too I'm afraid, have contributed to the understanding of the universe little more than poets. They have not contributed much that is novel until after the novelty has been discovered by scientists. While poetry titilates and theology obfuscates, science liberates".

Yes, as I have already said, science does indeed liberate, but at some considerable cost, and materialism is likely to retain its dominance for quite a while yet, not because it is true, but because for the first time since the old gnosis it offers knowledge instead of mere belief, in written authority, be it biblical, koranic or any of a thousand sources. This is why the sense for the ‘holy’ that once permeated all of life is now in decline, and why monotheism itself appears headed for a natural death, in some cases giving rise to an extreme reaction, like al-Qaeda’s attempt to strengthen religion through the use of violence. These violent extremes appeal to that which is still immature in us.

It was materialism, along with Darwinism, that has brought about this decline, just as it was meant to do, It was Darwinism also that helped to discredit Cartesian and Kantian religious dualism, which, strangely enough, was a part of Steiner’s task also, which is why in his early works he so strongly supported the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, when his work was being attacked by Vienese theologians. So we may reasonably ask, If Christianity is so important, as Steiner insists was the case, how could he defend Darwinism against contemporary Christian theology? The answer is that was defending monism, and that in his view even the wrong monism is better than maintaining a dualism.

In his account then, the materialistic mistakes of science are better than no science at all, and it is not through belief but only through a disciplined ‘monism of thought’ that they will in time be rectified—which is why we now need ‘a science of the spirit’. Owen Barfield knew this, which is why he succinctly wrote: “There will be a revival of Christianity when it becomes impossible to write a popular manual of science without mentioning the incarnation of the Word.” Modern theology, however, still prefers to exist as the inferior partner in a contradictory dualism, than to take up the challenge that Steiner has offered, perhaps because it still sees Steiner as somehow representing a past heresy .

In an interesting example of this, Barfield’s great friend C.S. Lewis, who like so many modern theologians, was deeply distrustful of the Steiner’s works, very reluctantly and at Barfield’s suggestion, undertook to read The Philosophy of Freedom., after which he humorously described the experience as having been “comfortingly dull.” One may sense from this that he could have expected magical spells, or worse, although what the book actually contains is a very sober philosophical argument in which the path to a critical monism of Mind or spirit is set forth in clear and careful argument, an argument to which he gave the name “monism of thought”.

Final Participation

Monotheistic religion had played a vital and necessary role in suppressing the old gnosis, although even today remnants of that atavistic awareness still appear, in those who, like Steiner, are born with a natural clairvoyance. This was why Steiner often gave people mental exercises to perform, in order to suppress this faculty—just as he had done for himself at the age of nineteen—so that it might later be redeveloped as a genuinely critical faculty (see The Story of My Life).

If we recall Tennyson’s words: “The old order changeth, giving place to new, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.” We can sense that the gradual decline of monotheism is not in itself a bad thing, because it opens the way for the continued evolution of human awareness. The really interesting question is where will this then lead us? Steiner’s answer is that now, after two thousand years of hibernation, the ancient mysteries must now return, but no longer in a cloak of secrecy, and that from them a new ‘initiation science’ will emerge leading eventually to a ‘science of the spirit’ which will be as open public a matter as materialistic science now is, free of all the trappings of ‘mysterious pretence’ and of the need for anything being seen as ‘tabu, but full of a new earnestness towards spiritual experiences.

Humanity, therefore, is now at the start of its long journey back, as knowers, to the realm of the spirit, and Rudolf Steiner’s critical “monism of thought” is the path that will eventually take us there. However, it is a journey that will take at least many many thousands of years, at least as long as the one that brought us here.  Final Participation, is the phrase Owen Barfield used to demote the later stages of the journey back to our home in the spirit, now as a fully developed free and creative beings. However, to reach this goal, Steiner tells us, one in which the spiritual; and the physical will no longer separate in our minds.

A sense for just how long this journey will be, can be obtained from the book The Human Life, by George and Gisella O’Neil, in which the developmental challenges that must confront each individual in later life are carefully reviewed from an anthroposophical perspective. These same challenges, but on a much larger scale, are destined to confront humanity as whole during the time that still lies ahead of human civilization. As matters stand we have only just reached adulthood, and so need to reach a far greater maturity as individuals than that which we now posses.

The New Gnosis will embraces not just one incarnation but many, because we must all of us take part in each and every stage of humanity’s evolutionary development towards freedom. The we shall again experience the holy everywhere in our environment, and espcially the holiness of speech.

Owen Barfield from his study of the works of Rudolf Steiner understood this, C.S. Lewis, for all his great insight and nobility of spirit, did not, but they remained the closest of friends and in later life while discussing his  ‘Great War,’ with Barfield, Lewis  stated “He changed me, I think, more than I changed him”. Let there be no more tabu’s therefore, either in science or in religion, and where Rudolf Steiner is concerned, let us all give credit where it is due.

Don Cruse