The Secret Path... shhhhhhh....
What those experiences are I can't describe. The experience starts out as a meditation, and predominantly mental. Soon though it's full blown visual and filled with the warmth of feeling. Then it's over.
I can re-experience them - that is, I can remember them - only by walking again those mental and emotional and willful steps that blew my mind the first time. It isn't a matter, either, of some mass-like, formulaic repetition. It's simply the only way to get to that particular place in reality. Just because I have to take the same flight of steps up to my client's office every time I go to their office, if I want to see my client, then I walk up those steps. If I want a good view of Phoenix, then I drive up the South Mountain Park road, either to the main parking lot up there, or even further up near the tv towers.
Steiner sometimes called his practices 'esoteric science'. How to Know Higher Worlds hits me especially as something secret, a deep initiation. The even more astounding thing about this initiation, is that it's done right out in the open. Anyone can buy and read this book. In fact, the Steiner Archives have free copies of many of Steiner's fundamental teachings: Outline of Occult Science, Truth and Knowledge, The Philosophy of Freedom. I would recommend finding the newest translations, though, if you can afford it.
Comments
I just wanted to let you what I've been up to, and see if you have any comments on this.
Reincarnation is certainly a stumbling block for Christians. Here's one way I look at the difference between Christianity's view of the complete human life, and the view of reincarnation.
Hollywood movies are multi-act sketches or outlines of possibly real stories. Prologue, Beginning, various Middle, and finally an End act. God created the world, then created human beings, they took off on their own, and were punished by living a life on earth, and when you die you are reunited with your Creator.
One birth, one life, one death, one rebirth.
If this is a real story - a believable story - then you have to assume that it sketches out what really happens in detail in real life. But to give all the detail would take hours on film.
Well, just imagine the detail you could add in there. Imagine going through the entire chronology of the story, recounting every single detail, all the stuff that happens in between Acts. That is a very, very long story.
The first view is the Christian view, and the second is the view of reincarnation.
So, the first point is that the Christian view simply doesn't rule out the view of reincarnation. They aren't incompatible.
The second point is that even the Christian formula - one birth, one life, one death, one rebirth - has in it already the very foundation of the view of reincarnation, which is rebirth.
Experientially, the view of reincarnation makes sense of so much of the world as we live it. In that sense, this view is inherently phenomenological, and has the same strengths and weaknesses as phenomenology does as a rational system of thought.
I posted this previously - the question isn't, 'why don't we remember our previous lives?', but 'how can we learn to remember our previous lives?' We can't remember our own birth, either, but it clearly happened - we went through that experience. And we were aware in the womb, too, but we don't remember that either.
It's obvious from Barfield's writings that he believed reincarnation was a fact. Even in his most popular rendition of the evolution of consciousness, Saving the Appearances, he says that the understanding of reincarnation is necessary for the evolution of consciousness.
So, as to whether he believed reincarnation was necessary for an evolution of consciousness: the understanding of reincarnation - the grasping of the fact of reincarnation - is necessary for the evolution of consciousness.
What do you think?
It is open to empirical verification, though mental and spiritual activity is what forms the organs that make the experience possible.
Not surprisingly, btw, Barfield mentions the fact of reincarnation in... the last chapter.
Cheers.
D