Psychology & The Cross

 The first time I heard your voice and about your research was on the Hermetics podcast and the conversations you had with James and I thought that was really inspiring. I'm really happy to bring you into my space to Psychology on the Cross and explore specifically Steiner and Jung, two giants who, from what I know, had very little contact, if any.

But today we're going to explore it in parallel to see if there are something we can learn by putting them both in the same room. But before doing so, I was curious about your connection to Steiner and how it all first started for you. Sure. I mean, first of all, that's thank you for the invitation and it's great to hear that.

The podcasts with James are being well received, and I heard your interview with James as well about Jung that I think you did also on his, a couple on his, on his podcast. I was interested because I noticed that you were tackling the Jung and Christianity question on there. Hmm. Which is something I, I, is interesting because I, I know a little bit about it, and I know that it's, well, at least for me, it's somewhat unclear, but it nevertheless interesting, his, what he thought about that, especially because I'm thinking about Steiner and, like, I don't know, Christian esotericism in German speaking lands a lot, and that's where Jung is.

So, I sometimes wonder, have wondered about that, what exactly. He thought about that. So it was nice to hear someone else thinking about it. Yeah. So as I, I was mentioning to you before we started recording that I also appreciate the opportunity to think about these two individuals together because I'm doing my own research on Steiner.

I have colleagues and even students of mine working on Jung. Jung seems to be quite popular, especially the red book I'm seeing in a lot of but it's always kept like on another side of, of, Another side of my consciousness, or on another screen, so to speak. So I have Jung over here, and thinking about Jung, and definitely interested in his ideas.

Also, I'm working on the UFO subject, so Jung also is popping up here. And then I have all of this Steiner stuff, more connected, in my mind at least, to esotericism, theosophy. This history so there's somehow separate and yet I feel most intuitively that there's like an interesting connection there that I have never really sat down and tried to make sense of so in preparation for this, I started to do a little bit of that.

So it was helpful for me to start. Find out I just do in a very general way Steiner criticized Jung and Jung criticized Steiner But the exact details of that other than normal German academic bickering or something I wasn't quite clear on you know So that's just I guess a lead in to your to your question Which is a more personal one about me individually and and I would say that I am a spiritual person like I I'm not a religious person, this is a very American answer.

By the way, I'm coming from America, so I have a spiritual part of my life. I wouldn't say I have a religious part, although I'm very interested in religions and participate in religious rituals. But I don't identify with a religion, so I guess that's why I'm saying more. But talking more about spirituality and esotericism works well for me because it, it, it, it operates in the margins here in the cracks of all of these so called world religions and different religious traditions.

So that helped me find my way in my own development in my own seeking about like higher meaning or just deeper meanings and so on. But psychology also played a role in this. For me. So, so I'm interested in, in Steiner in that way, as like a, as like a, when I first started reading him, it was a helpful, not just reading him, but reading him and other esotericists and theosophists, reading what they were doing helped me make sense of some of my own experiences.

Also my own psychological process, I suppose. And yeah, helped is a kind of guide guiding, you know, a way to guide me. So it still functions this way, but because I got so interested in it, I then wanted to do it. I wanted to learn deeper ways of studying it. And so that's why I went into the academy, especially into religious studies to start.

Working on just esotericism in general, using the methods and training of the academy. I was, perhaps wasn't, when I first went into this career, perhaps I wasn't fully aware of what all of that entailed, you know, and I learned over time. But I'm nevertheless happy that I did it, and so I have now a kind of hybrid position, I suppose, where I'm not like, not some kind of atheist debunking scholar or something.

But I am interested in critical methods. And on the other side, I am personally a spiritual person who has had my own experiences that inform what it is I do and the kinds of questions I ask. So I guess that's how I would put it to start. I think it's a few years back when I started to think about Steiner and Jung and sort of putting them in the same room, in my own mind, trying to see, especially to find out if there are people who sort of research this non existent collaboration, but there's these two giants living at the same time.

So I had a conversation last year, I think you might have listened to it, with Jonah Evans. And it's interesting because he's a priest in the Christian commander, while your position different from what I understand, like you have this interesting, not just an outside perspective, but you also have that perspective as a scholar looking at this.

I had this question to you, in Steiner circles, what, what are the, what's the view of Sige Jung? I think in some anthroposophical circles, Something like psychotherapy in general, which you would be roped into is looked at negatively. I wouldn't say in all of them. And that's mostly based on what Steiner said about it.

You know, Steiner had a lot of critical remarks to say about psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and also Jung at the time. But of course, this is 1917 to 1921, Steiner's making these remarks. So Jung is also, I think, I don't know as much about Jung. This is where you can help. I think he's still quite fresh in his own way, going his own way.

You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. No, that's just after the break with Freud and him starting to develop his own school. So that's just right about that time. Right. So Steiner makes credit. I was just reading through some of these in preparation. He makes criticisms of Jung. That are just roped in with psychoanalysis in general and with assumptions that Freud make that at least I know much more later Jung, because that's what he became known for.

And so those things don't hold as far as I, in the same way, as far as I know about, as far as what I know about Jung, or they don't hold in quite the same way. But again, Steiner is only seeing this beginnings. In fact, he's quite perceptive because he says. He makes his criticisms of psychoanalysis. He talks about some other psychoanalysis, psychoanalysts.

This is the very beginnings, also, anyway, of this discipline. So he's just talking about some of them. And Jung gets roped in there, and he's criticizing it, but then he does say that Jung is the only one who has enough courage, who has the courage. He calls him the most courageous one by recognizing these more deeper truths about spiritual reality and so on, and having the courage to go in that direction.

So he does like, and this is the very beginning, so God knows what he would have said later, you know, 20 years later or something. So he does, he does actually acknowledge that Jung somehow has the most courage to try to break out of the silence. What he sees as the limitations of the psychoanalysis, but yet he then criticizes him for the same, for like, the same kind of things, like, for not going far enough, basically.

The limitations meaning it's sort of a materialistic view of Yeah, yeah, yeah, materialistic, reductive Let's move on. Okay, and like, just to touch back to your question, that I think Anthroposophists, well, students of Anthroposophy who attend Anthroposophical workshops and go to Anthroposophical, join the society, go to lectures, their, their whole goal is to study Rudolf Steiner, his ideas and his lectures, which is a vast, it's just like the Jungians, it's just a huge corpus of stuff.

So you basically decide to become a student and then it's a lifelong path, you know, so because that that's what they're doing, they would come across Steiner's criticisms of psychoanalysis. And I think that that would just inform the way they saw it in terms of from an anthroposophical perspective, but I also think so that happens, but I also would see that people young did a lot more than what Steiner saw and people recognize that.

So I, I can't think of any examples to try to bring Freudian psychoanalysis. And anthroposophy together, for example, maybe there are in German speaking lands, which would also be interesting, actually, because you could find some parallels there too, but I think people recognize that somehow young is more lends itself more to what Steiner was talking about because of the, the alchemy, the spiritual part, the shadow, these concepts are similar somehow.

So I do think that you find more people trying to somehow bridge the gap between. Anthroposophists and Jungians. Having said that, I would also say on both sides, I think you still come across people who have criticisms of the other one, you know, and hold a strong boundary, a strong border between them, for a lot of the same reasons that these two were criticizing each other back when they were alive.

And so to now head to these criticisms as far as I know, they didn't meet each other in person and I haven't delved deeply into this. So just to let people know, this is also an exploration for me. And so I'm not any kind of expert in this subject, but. Steiner does talk about young in some lectures. He by name and his books, and this is the period 1917, 1918, 1923.

I think there's some references, but he gives like some major lectures around 1917 about problems with psychoanalysis. And there's a whole background to that, which we will come to, which is not immediately apparent on the surface. But, so, but Jung never talks about Steiner in print, in published print.

However, he does say things, some things in some letters. For example, when Steiner dies, so, and what, what Steiner says about him, which is him being roped into psychoanalysis in general, and the problems he sees with it has to do with the materialistic part, as you said, it's for them, I mean, the Anthroposophists are not trying to be Accepted as a, in the academic world on, on paper, you know, in fact, they weren't and aren't and according to them, they, they, they weren't according to Steiner.

This wasn't necessarily. Like the goal. I mean, he, he broke and made his own science rather than trying to somehow fit whatever his, he was doing in with established, recognized science. No one could argue about if he always had intended that or that is what he did when he couldn't make it work. You know what I mean?

Like, but that's more so the way they, it went down and it became, it's much more heavily esoteric. Quasit slash religious, what is scientific about it? We could also have a discussion about that. I mean, it's, it's definitely not scientific. If you would ask some scientists in the chemistry department somewhere, you know, they would don't see it, the science in it.

But just to say that, although it has this label spiritual science, it is an occult. Training, you know, and they've over time, they have made it more, I don't know, digestible and even Steiner was trying to do this, like, make the system more digestible through different sorts of concepts. Later in his life, he was doing this, but at the bottom of it, it's a, it's the, it's an occult training to have intercourse with actual spiritual beings that exist out there in the cosmos in nature and you and other people.

So, And the point is to become a seer, really, so that you can see these other beings interact with them and become a kind of expression, part of your own expression of your own being is the expression of them, through your, your recognition of them, through your your, yeah, your, your dialogue with them.

So these beings have they're, it's complicated because they are, there is an interconnected web of everything, and a microcosm, macrocosm, this is very strong in Steiner, but these beings are also autonomous. And have actual existence, so I think this is one area where there's a problem, because what Steiner says is, let's just talk about Jung, we can go to what he says about, I mean, I think just psychoanalysis in general is critical of the idea that everything can be reduced to sexual drives.

And sexual disturbances or whatever in the in child, in the young, in the young, the younger age, younger years, he's critical that the problems and issues now can be reduced to that. He talks a lot about this because he says it's materialistic. It's reductive. And if we just shift screens over into what is he thinking about in this occult training.

It removes it removes the. Angels, demons and other beings from playing a, a role in their own agency. It removes ideas about karma and destiny and, and reincarnation past lives and so on. So he wants to use all of that as a, as a reality to explain things that's happening to you. Now, to explain why he gave, he gives he talk, he gives accounts too, that he is also used with like Freud and Young about, about what hap something that happened to a person and, and why it happened.

Like maybe they had some experience. On a bridge of fear and when a, when a boat went by and one person could say, because there was some traumatic thing that happened when she was on a boat with her father when she was five, or you could say three lifetimes ago, she had this and this happened. And now this is like.

Bringing the karma back to her. So it's like, in Steiner's case, that's where he wants to go with it. Right. More so than this, just looking at this particular life, or, and so on. So, and he does recognize, like, then to move to Jung, he does say that Jung seems, though, to go further than that, or want to go further than that.

But he claims that I don't know when young came up with this idea of the different archetypes, but he seems to this is like 1921. Again. He seems to know something about what young is is doing at this point in relation to that. And so he claims, like. Okay. Like there is like this attempt to trace it back different, like some kind of trauma or experience or something back different generations, you know, but for him, this is still like too materialistically done through even the races or something he talks about.

I'm just giving you a sampling of some of these critiques that Siner lays out there, but more, more concretely, what I could understand from it is he says something like, so Jung wants to say that there is. The first of all, the Christian thing is like the kernel of one of the core of Western identity somehow because of the history of its development of its own sense of identity in the West.

Jung says that we have to act as though the relationship between human being and the divine is the framework in which we have to operate. In order to make this this healings and make this individual process to become to know the self and to be individual because of this Christian identity that we have.

And yet, he says, according to Steiner, young then in the next breath says, However, the existence of God is not, is an irrational, is either an irrational thing to posit, or we don't actually believe that there is a God or in the Christ. However, we have to use this framework in order to, we have to operate within this framework almost as the, almost as an as if, I don't even know if this is correct, you can tell me, but he, he makes it sound like Jung is saying, we will act as if.

God exists, but we know somehow that it doesn't, or it can't be proven that it is, that it does exist, and so instead we operate within this framework instead. I think that Jung was, you could say, limited, or he was also, you could say, driven by his persona as well, so meaning he had a professional position.

He was a psychiatrist, he was a medical doctor, and he had patients. Even before he met Freud, he was very established as a psychiatrist. He was more famous than Freud, probably, like in certain fields. So I think when one reads Jung, it's always, not in the letters, but in the published writings, it's always this, but I'm just a medical doctor, trying to sort of step back.

I'm not talking about God, I'm talking about the guardian, but just let me start to speak about God. I guess a Steiner, from what I hear you say, was more free to move. So Jung was always, until the end of his life, he wanted to be a scientist, and he wanted to bridge science and spirituality, and at times it can be an ambivalent sort of procedure to read Jung even, because he goes between these different and positions and somehow that visions or and then it goes back to, you know, I'm used to psychiatrists.

So this is maybe just one reason why Stein is picking up on this. And also, I think what you also imply, like, this is early stage. I mean, Jung, he lived on to 1961, he became a pretty old man. So 1920, 1930, 17, around there. That's when he had was just gone through, he was right in the middle of maybe his own Red Book period.

He had started to work on the Red Book. He had had his own visions, his own experiences, and really started to formulate his theory of archetypes or of, yeah, his own psychological theory, different from, from psychoanalysis. So the critique comes in a work of Jung that is not finished for sure. Yeah. But it's.

And just to, to maybe add one thing to that, that. In these lectures, Steiner also, Steiner also mentions this, that, that Jung has the courage and somehow is the only one, really, I think he even puts it this way, the only one within this, what he sees at the time is like, you know, movement or this field, who has the courage to go further, but he says that it.

He's all, Jung is always trying to, or he, no, he doesn't say try to, he says Jung has to conform or operate within the assumptions of the present. And by that he means what you just said, that he has to take a kind of position as an atheist in order to operate within what Steiner says, the assumptions of the present.

And he mentions that The university environment as well. So in modern science, so he means the academy at that time. I mean, still, basically that it's a little bit different now, but in order to function within the academy, the assumption academy, the assumption in the scientific way, the assumption is a kind of materialistic atheist discussion.

atheistic assumption. Like, we could argue about that, but to some degree that's what it is, in order to, to build, to move forward in that. And so he does say that Jung has this courage to go further, but he's always, like, doing it within, you know, within these assumptions, sticking within these assumptions.

So therefore, yeah, being a materialist, in other words, or to being too reductive about these things. Right. Well, I often think about Jung as kind of a smuggler. He's sort of smuggling in concepts and esoteric ideas and Christian ideas. And then he uses science of the time and finds a language to speak in that sense.

He was really a, yeah, a bridge maker in that sense, while Yeah, it seems like it was maybe easier from the position from Steiner to, yeah, to be free, freely, fully expressing his viewpoint. I wonder what Steiner would have thought about the Red Book. I think if Steiner had seen the Red Book, he would have definitely had a new, different lecture series saying new things about it.

Like, because what he's reading is not any, at the time, from Jung, is not anything like the Red Book. And something short, maybe, yeah, or what, just what you found when you looked at Jung's view of Stein? Yeah, and I only have, I only saw two things, maybe there's more, and these are in his collected works somewhere.

I think they're from letters. The most critical is came when Steiner died. Well the two that I found, I don't know when they, they're, one of them's from when Steiner died. I'm not exactly sure when the other one is from, but in one of them he just says, he basically says that Steiner is like a, a guru of some kind.

He just, you know, wanted followers and that he had his own wacky ideas. that were not provable. And this is his second, the second thing where he mentions the anthroposophists, at least he says the same thing that, you know, and he says something in this one, he says something like everything that Steiner says you can find in the Vedic texts.

Or, you know, at the time, in Hinduism, in quotes. So he didn't bring anything new, he just, he didn't, he didn't do it in a scientific way, you know, he just put forward these, these things that he claimed to have seen and got followers. So he said that that, that didn't interest him, basically, or something like that.

And in the end, there was like nothing there, really. And in the other one, he said something like, his problem with the, he knows lots of theosophists and anthroposophists, and his problem with them, it comes down to The idea of proof, like you could tell me all of these things, but if you can't show me any proof for it, what am I supposed to do with that?

What am I supposed to make of it? And I suppose he means things like, yeah, like ascended masters, these other spirits, who knows what he means, but there's all kinds of interesting stuff, both in Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Maybe he means, even means things like Atlantis, because that, the concept of Atlantis is important in both of those things.

Future stuff is, is big in Theosophy and Anthroposophy. So in those two remarks, he's, and again, the second one, I don't know where it's from. It might be useful to look, but in those remarks, he's saying that he's basically saying it's not scientific, that they're just making assertions about some spiritual experiences they have.

It's kind of like a critique we get of New Age today. Like, you're just. But you had some experience, and you're just asserting what you say this experience it is, but you're not like providing me with any evidence. In this case, evidence could even be, I don't know, like a rational framework within to think, within to think about it, or how to think about it, or, because Jung is now criticized for many of the same things, actually.

And so, when you read that, is there something to his critique, or you feel like it's just that he hasn't read it? No, I think there is some, well, I think both, I think there is something to it, but I think that also it's a bit of an outside, it's a bit uninformed at the same time. But if I think about Jung, and if Jung is receiving patients who are theosophists and anthroposophists, He might only be getting, he might be basing a lot of it off what he sees them saying and going through and what, you know, that was one thought that I have that if there's, if there's telling him all kinds of all kinds of experiences they've had and, you know, and he's listening to this, he could be forming his impression partly on what he hears from them, which would be different than, you know, going to a Steiner lecture or reading intensely several Steiner books, which I don't think he did something like that.

I think it was more like people would say, Hey, would recommend Steiner to him, and he would look at it a little bit, but be repelled somehow. This is the impression that I got. And, yeah, but he, like, in this one, he just says, I know a lot of, I have, I know a lot of Anthroposophists, or I'm in connection with a lot of Anthroposophists and Theosophists.

That's why I wonder if some of these were also It's patience because the two scenes overlapped heavily, right? It's also used to say that Jung is very critically remarking also on Kierkegaard, which I don't think you read, but he's very critical of, you know, and quickly sort of judging and putting to the side.

And this sort of leads me into To what I think could be sort of a main theme for our discussion, and that is this concept of the doppelganger or the shadow. Because in a way, these two characters, Steiner Jung, they're so close, they're not doppelgangers, but there's something in, in their lives, in their psyche, they're living at around the same time.

And that makes me think that this would be interesting to explore these two as sort of, yeah, shadows of each other in a sense. But first of all, since most people here don't know much about the Steiner and the Doppel Ganga. Maybe you can share something around, yeah, this concept and we could explore that a little bit together.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think that it is quite interesting to think about those two. And I don't know if, if Jung had his idea of the shadow already, if he was writing about it around 1921, 1917. I, I might say the wrong thing now, but I think so, but I'm not exactly sure if it was actually put in print as the shadow.

Yeah, and it does get to the heart of, I think, even if we remove all of these other, what you mentioned, I suppose, is what I mentioned about German bickering of each one calling the other one, having some problem with what it is they do, you know, but even if we remove all of that, I think there is nevertheless, while there are many overlaps, there is it.

Crucial potential difference. Just at least think about it because perhaps we could figure out ways to, to, to bridge the gap. And it does come down to the, as far as I can tell, especially the, what Steiner says in these lectures, that it comes down to the like objective. Existence given existence of these things.

Or versus their symbolic or purely projection or purely like mental reality. I think that this is part of where the issue is lying between the two of them. And something like the doppelganger or the shadow is a way to think about it. Or the way to approach this, and one of Steiner's friends and closest to collaborators was a woman named Ida Vageman, and she was a, she did the anthroposophical medicine, she was a doctor, and she opened her, after Steiner passed away, she, at a certain point, was also expelled from the society, but She opened up her second Anthroposophical Clinic in Ascona, and also in Ascona at the time was something called the Uranos Conferences that Jung actually attended, and also Alice Sprengel, who I just mentioned, she was also there.

He was very involved with Olga. Exactly. He was quite involved in setting this up, yeah. Right, so even though this is a bit later, early 1930s or whatever, Jung is there and Olga is there. And this other person I mentioned, Ida Vegeman, has her second clinic there in Brazago, so nearby, and she writes in one of her letters about the Jungians having conferences, about this conference there, and she makes the same kind of argument that it's sort of tongue in cheek the way she says it to who she's writing to back in Dornach, but, you know, there, I looked at the program, and here's lectures on the On the Catholic Mass, or some kind of ritual as a symbol, you know, the symbolic nature of the Catholic Mass, or something like that she had hit on when she looked at the, what was going on over there.

But it's the same, and what was she, and she said that that, they were doing black magic through these kinds of conferences and lectures, and the way they talked about spiritual topics was her point. And it's, but it's the same thing. And it's not that it's, she could be misunderstanding it also, you know, not saying that she got a proper impression of what they were actually, what was actually going on there.

But from what, what she, what her feeling about it was that it was reductive, that it was reducing spiritual realities to symbols, you know, just talking about symbols. And that's the same, and you can see from her, what she writes in this letter, it's, that's coming, that's the same thing Steiner was saying, you know, so there, that was kind of the sent, that was the sentiment within philosophical circle in, in, in Anthroposophy at the time.

I mean, it still was even a bit later. when Jung was still doing some later stuff, at least according to one of these, one of his partners who, you know, went on to do more anthroposophical work. Jakob Lusensky Yeah, I think looking at the differences, I think that's really important. They are, you know, different and there are differences.

But I think in this question of Jung's understanding of symbols, that's the way he expresses himself as his persona in his professional texts. If one reads the personal Jung, it's clearly not a symbol. He believed this stuff is real, psyche is real, ghosts are real, he had experiences of them. So I think on a private, personal level, or if you look at the Red Book, the dead are real.

It's not a concept, but he was again a smuggler, or he was, he was working very hard on trying to make science, It's the psychology of things that were outside of that realm. So and having said that, I do think at times it sounds really like he's just reducing. For example, you know, we can take something that we've been talking a lot about in the podcast is his interpretation of Christ, speaking about the Christ image or Christ as an archetype or, yeah, sometimes it becomes a little bit.

But I think if one look at Jung's own life and where his theory came from, it was really based on experience. You know, his dissertation was on the occult phenomena, and it was a medium, his costume, that he followed sciences off. He was always trying to translate it to a general audience, but in my understanding, he believed these forces are real.

Right. They're not just projections. But he would also say there are many of them that are projections. Yeah. And then part of the work of individuation or psychological development is differentiating what are the real ghosts and what are the ghosts of your parents, your father, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And that that's the sad part about it is I think that in a lot of.

That's also, in a lot of ways, what Steiner claimed to be wanting to do, you know, make a science in order to be able to study and reveal and, yeah, and to replicate, like, spiritual experiences. And as a way of understanding them, so he's also has a similar project about sign, you know, scientific validity, bringing scientific validity to, to this, the reality of the spiritual world.

So, in a, in a funny way, that's something is missed there because they are, they're both having a similar goal, you know, they both want to bring, bring science and spirituality together somehow, like they're both working on this project. And so part of it could just be that they're both only seeing the outside of the other, you know, and neither is neither was able, especially if Jung is doing what he had to do, and that they there wasn't able there, there wasn't able to for an there to be an encounter in which they got to see the private Jung or talk to the private, the more private Jung, you know, the Red Book is the private Jung, in my opinion.

So that was, and he even, that was all secret and he didn't. Didn't come out until recently, even, you know, so, so something about that is, is unfortunate part of the, of the, this like kind of missed opportunity, I think, because I agree. Yeah. Well, because I agree that they have more similar, they have more in common and more similarities than either side realized.

But if we come back to this idea of the doppelganger, maybe we could explore it through this as well. Here's the, here's the unfortunate part that both Both sides of this are working on a framework in which to talk about an experience, a phenomenon that is spiritual in some capacity. So, through analytic psychology, you come to the encounter with the shadow that must be integrated.

And the shadow is Is somehow part of you yeah, like those unwished part of your own personality, maybe the more shameful parts or parts of yourself that that doesn't fit into your, your own self view. So they are really in your unconscious, they're really in your shadow. Often you might rather experience them through projection.

Like seeing others what you don't like. That might be to do something with your own. But in Jung's concept of shadow it's not only like, you know, dark counterpole, it's also like, yeah there's a lot of energy there, but the concept is not that we're whole, we're not just one piece, we are many different parts and we can become more whole by by, by, by, by.

honestly looking at ourselves. That's when I spoke about sin and the Christian concept of sin, which is not very popular these days. But I think that to me, this is Jung's way of being able to talk about that, that we're all sinful in our aspirations, in our vanities. And we need to, rather than excluding that, we need to look at that.

And that can actually make us Yeah, better people. Right. We're not projecting it outside. Right, and so now that I'm, now that I'm bringing this up, I'm also not clear 100 percent how Steiner parses what I'm, these different things that I'm about to say, so he, he has a similar concept. There's the doppelganger, which is usually translated into English as the double.

That's one concept he works with, and we come back to that one, but then he also has this notion of the dweller on the threshold or the guardian of the threshold, which also is in theosophy and some other esoteric movements. And when he describes, like, for example, in knowledge of higher worlds, but also in some of his.

Private esoteric lessons for his esoteric school. There are two things he talks about there. One is this guardian of the threshold, which, when you meet it, is all of the aspects of you that you have, like, not faced yet, in other words. So, It sounds a lot similar to this concept of the shadow. And in order to move along on the path, you have to face this guardian.

Yeah, so, and there is a lesser guardian, which he says is your own personal, yeah, like, undigested and unconscious parts. Then there is this greater guardian of the threshold, which has to do with your nationality, your family, like, almost like super ego, or something like this. This is another thing you have to release yourself from, after, and that's harder.

In his esoteric lessons, he talks about what he, the three beasts in the soul, and these, he, this is like another thing that the person has to face on the path. But this is talked about in a similar way that one is like the beast of fear of the spirit The other one is you know lying about the spirit So it's still like stuff about you in other words like some of your own fears and and failings and so on Yeah, and I so it's it's a similar even, you know process that they're laying out for for for psychological I mean, see, this is where it's different, like, it's just really different terminology, but it does seem to maybe imply different things, like individuation or psychological integration on the one hand.

What is on the other hand, like, yes, seeing in the, entering into and seeing in the, an actually existing objective spiritual world. Out there, and in that world you meet, yeah, ghosts, angels, demons, astral beings that you formed, other people formed, all kinds of things, you know, so it, and this could come down to what you said that one has much more freedom to go that far, you know, but, but if we look at some of the criticisms of, of Jung, it could, when Jung looks at the next step, I mean, perhaps he does have a more reserved attitude about like, well, how can you prove those, the existence of those things, you know, that you, that you, That you were talking about the being there.

I mean, even when you get to this phase, you can then see future and past in time, you know, and so it's like all of all of the cold abilities open up. That's like the point on the Steiner side, whereas on the inside. I don't know if it's, you could tell me like if it's the same or how would you compare to what I just said about basically that kind of the goal of overcoming this what you could call shadow or guardian and these beasts and so on.

Well I think it sounds similar in a certain way but in a very very different language and you would probably say that you cannot face the shadow with yourself because it's your own shadow. So his psychotherapeutic system was where, you know, the analyst or the therapist plays a role. And, and the way that you confront the shadow and the way you see it most clearly usually is through your dreams or maybe lack of imagination, but I would say for most people in the dreams.

Yeah. The dream about another male character as a man or another female character as a woman. That's very different from you. Why is she or he coming into my dream? Right. Often some sort of representative of this side, but I was just wanting to understand still when he uses the word doppelganger. That's Is there something more to say about that?

That's a word he used sometimes. Yeah, well, and this is, I'm exactly not sure if you had someone more immersed in the philosophy of Anthroposophy, they could explain this better, but what I, I think they are separate. I think, I think all of these are separate, that there are these lesser and, and again, he's talking about them at different times of his life.

So those lesser and greater guardian, that's one thing. These three beasts of the soul that he talks about, that's another thing. But then there is the doppelganger and this is a being, you do find concepts like this in other religions, actually. This is a more religious idea. You find this in Gnostic, some origins of Gnosticism.

I'm not saying he's getting it from there, but you just also find it in some even in some Shia and Islamic and Sufi groups. And this is another being that you are born with. When at birth, it attaches itself to you. And he calls this the double It's a kind of alien, you know, it's that way, the UFO thing.

It's a kind of alien being that attaches itself to you. And he calls this the double. Sometimes, more specifically, they call it the Ahrimanic double, which means it's related. In Steiner's system, he has two demons, and one of them is called Ahriman, and there's like minions of these demons, or other beings that are, have this, that are part of it, or have the same quality.

And so sometimes this is called the Armonic Double, the other being in Steiner's system, the other demon, quasi demon is Lucifer. So he separates Satan and Lucifer. In other words, he just calls Satan Armon. And in some places I've seen these students of Anthroposophy writing about a Luciferic Double. And I don't know if Steiner himself said that, or maybe he did, but there could even be like more than one somehow of these doubles.

But I'm more familiar with this idea that there's like an Armonic Double of it. Attaches to you when you're born, and it stays with you your entire life, and that death is when it leaves you. Okay, and how did Steine come to these ideas? I mean, obviously he read, and he was, you know, steeped in theosophy, but I'm also thinking from his own experience, you know, how did he, yeah, what, yeah, can you say something about how, sort of, his, he collected these insights?

Right. Well, I think here again, we're coming up against a similar, similar place where why there's even this tension at all that we're talking about. And so, and here, probably I'm hearing young talk about proof again, what he means when he says proof in this 1 particular letter. So Steiner is reading lots of books, for sure, and he was trained as a philosopher.

He had mystical types of experiences that he talks about. He talked with lots of people and was involved in esoteric and occult groups where you also get knowledge, you know. But according to him, it's, this is the more theosophical Idea the more theosophical path that you develop yourself in this occult way and once you do you create new organs of perception in years, these like subtle bodies, and with these organs of perception, you can see, you can see things, the truth of things in a.

Yeah, and the spirit, let's just say the spiritual world is in the spiritual realm. You can become awake And he does talk a lot about dreams and as well as part of this like lucid dreaming is part of this path You know how to do this when you wake up with your consciousness in this spiritual world, then you can get Knowledge that's not available here in books and whatever they're so he claims to have done that It is it but it's up to you.

I suppose whether or not you believe it You know this the same was true of Blavatsky who was the founder of theosophy. She she at least more talked about Initiates hidden initiate teachers who she learned things from but she also had the ability to To, to meet with higher beings and learn from them in the spiritual world, not like in a normal way of, of, of learning.

And Steiner also is speaking this way, and this is where he, this is where he would claim he got his ideas from. And did he have those experiences already as a child? He did. He did start to have, according to him, and he wrote an autobiography at the end of his life, he started to have experiences of seeing, well, there's two interesting experiences.

He saw a ghost, basically, and this is also like, I'm currently writing about some of this, so these details still need to be, they're still being hashed out in academic research, let's say, but it's, it's something like, I think it was the sister, it was, it was an aunt of his or something had, Passed away recently, perhaps even committed suicide.

I don't know the exact details. And according to this story, he saw her a vision. He saw her, he was probably, I don't know, like six, seven, you know, young like this, and he saw her appear in front of him and make some gestures at him with their hands and say something. He was in the train station at the time.

His father worked at the train station. He went with them as a boy and stayed at the train station. This figure appeared and then like vanished. And then it was determined later that this was the, the, the person or the family member who had just passed away. This is one example, but he gives some other examples too, where he has, he sees things like this.

I would say they're more kind of like spiritualism sounding experiences, like encountering spirits of the dead. Right, but he does talk about also as a child coming into contact with the spirits of nature. So it's it's these 2 things, but then just a very brief summary of his biography. Then he becomes a philosopher, basically an independent philosopher, although he does do his doctorate and a literary person.

He then has some more down and out times in Berlin, I would say, and then he claims to have a, like, a Christian mystical experience at this point, and then after that, he joins Theosophy, and then after Theosophy, he founds Anthroposophy, and so that's, like, the arc of his, his life. And yeah, after the, in the Theosophy, Anthroposophy phase is where, after he claims to have this Christian esoteric experience, where he now is, yeah, and he basically does say he's able to see in these realms.

He doesn't put it like that, but I mean, if, like, if you look in his, his, he has private lectures, and then he has students. When he's, like, talking with his students, He's trying to show them how to also do it. And the Christian experience, Sheriff, what do we know about that vision or that experience that he had?

Yeah, we don't know too much. It's really just a paragraph in his autobiography where he says that he, he was in, he was having difficult times in his life, so I think he's also making this point that it came when he was Struggling, you know, I don't know if struggling is the right word, but there was he was trying to find his way, you know, and it was a bit, it was a bit of a transition point in his life here from what he was doing before and what he ends up doing after.

And he says that he had a vision of what he calls the mystery of Golgotha, and that he, it makes it sound like he was just suddenly there, like, and he could see its full reality, like he witnessed it, you know, firsthand, or he was there to experience it. And through that experience, it, like, just revealed to him the importance of this event and, like, its fullness.

And he did then start having lecture series right at around this point of talking about Christian mystics. So he was having an interest in it as well. He had a Christian upbringing? This is another Kind of thorn, I'm avoiding many these, there's a lot of interesting elements about stuff and things, especially about science biography.

So I'm avoiding it because it would just take us into many needs. I'm trying to give easy answers here. His his parents were not religious, according to the autobiography and other places. They were good Catholics, but his father was A like free thinker type person, German, so he, he didn't have any strong religious upbringing really at all.

But he does talk about going to the churches and even having some interactions with some priests. That were, that informed him a little bit as a child that he got some stuff from and he remembers he talks about also seeing the mass for the first time and having a big reaction to this, but he was his, there was some problem.

He was going to be, I didn't even know the specifics about the Catholic Church for the process. I'm sorry for this, but he was an altar boy and was going to be. Go through this process, but there was some issues and his father pulled him out of this. So he was never confirmed or anything like that. Before you said, when you described Steiner's project and what he, he really wanted us to open up to this world, like the spiritual world.

And if Jung was on a similar path, I mean, I think in certain ways, yes, like Jungian psychology or Jung psychology also had to sort of be about expanding the horizon from a materialistic worldview to a more, he would say, psychological or symbolical, but it's really spiritual. But then we're all spiritual in different ways.

And I mean, in psychology, the, the, the archetype of the symbol or the belief in the self is very central. And that there is a guiding principle in all of this that you shouldn't Yeah, that wants to integrate like that there is a possibility to go into the occult darkness and get off your path Versus you know, yeah, you know the light or the way of the light or wholeness or the cross Although it maybe he doesn't use the word across being that yeah, there is a There is, there is a path written for us, and depending on which religiosity we grew up with, and our ancestors and such, we will also be pulled to different ways.

So if you're a Muslim, you become a Muslim, or at least you can become a Christian. But again, I'm not saying this to say that Jung was a Christian. Christian even, because most Christians wouldn't say he was, because he was a very particular type of Christian and he really wanted to bring in a lot of what has been labeled occult, or the esoteric.

Yeah, and the same is true of Steiner, that he, he's critiqued by Lutheran theologians and Catholic theologians was and is for the same reason. And the thing with Steiner, which I also would probably say it's similar to Jung, that It isn't a solo project. There is a solo thinker there, coming up with lots of ideas and doing lots of things.

But there are many, many other people involved in the process. And I think this is also true of Jung in terms of like the institute and just how it developed after him. So, so Steiner was, was very much cooperative type of work. So he, he definitely had ideas, but his ideas were then translated to other people.

And there was a lot of times. Like a co creative process that emerged from that. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, you who started the minutes from some of the meetings and such, like, how, how did he engage with people? Obviously, he spoke very passionately or people were inspired by his words, but I'm interested in that, like, how did he sort of consult people about what they should do then, because there's so many stories about people coming to him and he seems to, oh, now I develop, you know, pedagogy, or now I develop, you know, liturgy for, for the christian mind.

Yeah. Do you have a sense for his, how hands on was he, or? I think he was quite, I think he was quite hands on in some cases, maybe not in all cases. I definitely think there, he talks to a lot, People, I mean, people just came to him, like, you know, after lectures or even where he lived. There's lines of people showing up to talk to him.

There's even some funny accounts of this. So for example, when, in Prague, when Franz Kafka came to meet him, there's a funny exchange that Kafka reports that you could read about How that went down. So I think this was always going on. And in my opinion, part of what's happening is he is talking with all these people and the conversations he has with them then come out in his lectures, because his lectures aren't have there's notes for his lectures, but he's not sitting down writing a lecture.

And then going and giving it. He's not doing that. He does write some books, but he, he goes with all of these ideas and some, and then gives the lecture. But my sense of it is that the lecture is somehow allowed to develop in relation to what's happening, and who's there, and where he is, and what's happening currently.

It's kind of like, that's the feeling I get. I mean, this type of life, it must have exhausted him as well. I mean, how do you think he dealt with his own energies? Yeah, I think that's a good point. Because in my opinion, he died young, he died young to a certain extent, younger than it seems like a younger death to me.

And there are some other fields of weeds about how and why, but one thing that definitely did happen was you can kind of see it that he did exhaust. He did get exhausted from this. I mean, he dealt with, he did so many things, lectured all the time, dealt with so many people that I think he did get exhausted from this at a certain point, especially when he was older.

Yeah, so there's, I think it's really interesting to try to explore them together. I mean, part of it seems to boil down to like terminology, even, you know, like they're, they're doing similar things. But they, it's like two, two systems that were developed, so it's a bit hard to, how do you bridge the systems, because they're, they use different terminologies, they have similar ideas and even similar goals, I would say, but their work, they have, they're very established, even at this point, systems, to some extent, I mean, there's whole groups on either side, so they have, it's, you know, almost like a different school of thought, but the same, same philosophy, philosophical discussion, you know, something like that.

Maybe it's the last question. I was curious about what's the process like then for someone following Steiner to to do the work because again in Jung it's dream work. It's analysis. Yeah, you know, there's like the imagination. There's some techniques he developed institutionalized that are still present.

How do you connect with the spirits and demons and how do you learn how to navigate? Right, again, it's similar, which is another, if we have another conversation, we could talk about it. It's like similar things with different names. For example, they do something called biography work, which is looking at your life, looking, but you know, they're looking at also karma.

They're looking at their own rhythms of development and indications, things like that. But it is, again, about, about telling your life story and. I don't know if they see they would also, I think, avoid this word analysis, which is another funny thing. So I wouldn't say they were analyzing it, but they're, you know, they want to keep everything alive, even pictures, because pictures for them, memories are living beings in this so called astral world.

So there is something about this insistence on the living nature of everything, and that certain forms of thought. Reduce it and then, you know, we'll kill it basically. I mean, Steiner even said writing itself kills living. He's almost like into oral culture that, the, the writing process itself kills these, not ideas, but you know, beings.

These are, for him, these are living beings, but they have the biography work. They have art, artistic, kind of art therapy things. But it, for Steiner himself, it really is like an occult philosophical path. That has to do with breathing exercises, meditation, lucid dreaming. As I mentioned, these kinds of things, visualizations.

And at the very top, we don't know what's at the very top, but there, there could also be ritual. Like there was at a certain point, ritual activity at the very top of this process. And this is like the communal work, but as it currently, because he had this idea to make three different levels of his esoteric school.

And the supposedly only the first. level of the class, they call it the first class, was created and then he passed away. So at the top of the first class lessons is mantra, breathing and mantra work. And of course, just like in a tantric system or something, as you go through this process, you get your own mantra that the, you know, the master would give you.

And so in this sense, it's still really related to, you know, quasi religious or esoteric. religious traditions in some way. One thing I find so inspiring with the Waldorf school, and I don't know how much that is because of Steinem, it is all these rituals that they're doing and, you know, and the myths and the legends that they bring into the work.

Right. And so, and also this cultural canon that they have. They keep alive through their practice. It seemed very ritualized and very communal in a, in a way that, you know, you've never developed any schools or educational system. You have to go and pay, you know, a hundred euro an hour for analysis. That's true.

It's also has another shadow side to it, but. But the other thing I want to say with, with analysis, I mean, I think that word analysis and psychoanalysis is, people often take that to analysis means like, let's understand something, or he's going to, you know, read my mind, that it's analytical work. And Jung was often emphasizing when he uses the words analysis, he goes back to the etymology of the word analysis, analysis, which means to dissolve.

It has to do with alchemy or with chemistry, unless something is dissolved into its pieces. So analysis is not necessarily a process, for example, of understanding everything. It's more processes of opening up to other realms and loosening up. Just as in chemistry or in Dissolving barriers and things.

Yeah, it's a loosening up of defenses and of ego structures in order to open up to a more Yeah, it's a more, maybe, loving, you know, approach to life and with less fear. So again, I think it's semantics or language. And yeah, probably they would have understood each other much, much better if they would have spent an afternoon together.

Yeah, I think you're right. And I think both of them were, and for good reason, focused on developing new vocabularies and new concepts. I mean, they had to do that. So I just think a result of that was the This inability to then, once you develop your vocabulary and your concepts, it then can become difficult to, to think outside of that into the other one, into another person who did the same thing in a lot of ways as you.

So, again, yeah, the semantics and the words and the way the concepts, just the different, yeah, even names given to them is part of why it seems difficult to bridge the gap sometimes. Right. Well, it's also interesting to think of the kind of quite esoteric words that, you know, Steiner is using. When we speak about persona or shadow, maybe anima is a little bit esoteric.

Steiner didn't need to place himself into something. He just did his thing, yeah? Yeah. So he could use the language he wanted, but Jung was more going between two different worlds. It's nevertheless admirable that he did that, because it's even what I'm interested in, in a certain extent, of like, how can you bring spiritual experiences, more the spiritual, yeah, like aspects of the psyche and the scientific methods of the academy.

How can these things be harmonized somehow and resolved? How can they work together? Because it's a big problem to keep them separate. You know, even now, I think we're realizing it more and more. And that's partly why someone like Jung is even coming back, because people are trying to figure out this.

think their way through this problem again. I agree. And also, like, I think that's why it's so important also and fascinating that we now can also see the raw and naked Jung in the Red Book. Right. Just before there's any concepts, but it's when he says these are the streams of the unconscious that, yeah, he doesn't try to put, you know, words to it.

Again, not too limited to that, because Jung, just as Stein was very inspired by what he read and what he had studied around him. So he was a man of the times. And I guess this discussion is a proof of that. So they were also living through a time and they were, yeah, for sure. And we didn't even get to the alchemy part, but it's true.

Maybe another conversation, but thank you so much for letting us into his world. And I'm just exploring this links. It's been, it's been very fruitful. Yeah, it's been great. Thank you.