Quest Magazine

The Wizard of Oz: The Perilous Journey
By John Algeo

Reprint from Quest 6.2 (1993 Summer): 48-55 and American Theosophist 74 (1986): 291-7.

Undoubtedly the best known and most loved of all modern fairy tales is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Although it was first published in 1900, the story is most widely known today through the Judy Garland movie of 1939. There are few Americans who have not seen the movie at least once, and there are many who have seen it repeatedly. Through that film,the story has entered so deeply into our national popular lore that almost every week there are allusions to it in newspapers and magazines. Moreover, the film has spread knowledge of Baum's fairy tale over much of the world.

The Wizard of Oz is the archetypical American fairy tale, but like all fairy tales, it appeals to a wide audience--people of all ages and from many cultural backgrounds. It has an optimism and a fascination with gimmicks that are American, but it also deals with the truths of the human heart that are eternal and have no boundaries. An American fairy tale is exactly what Frank Baum set out to write--a story that would be a modern fairytale for American children--but he was more successful than he could have imagined.

Although The Wizard is an extraordinarily popular story, both in America and abroad, few people know that its author, L.Frank Baum, was a member of the Theosophical Society and wrote about Theosophy in a newspaper he edited for some sixteen months in Aberdeen, South Dakota. And fewer yet have recognized that his great American fairy tale is also aTheosophical allegory.

The plot of The Wizard, for anyone who has not seen it recently, is briefly this: Dorothy lives with her Aunt Em and her UncleHenry on a farm in Kansas. One day a cyclone comes; while her aunt hurries to the cyclone cellar for protection, Dorothy looks for her little dog, Toto, who has hidden under a bed. Consequently, Dorothy and Toto are picked up in the house by the cyclone and carried into another world--the Land of Oz.

In Oz, Dorothy's house is plopped down in the easternmost part of the land, right on top of the wicked Witch of the East,thus killing her and freeing the Munchkin inhabitants of that land, whom she had enslaved. Dorothy, understandably upset by all these strange events, wants only to get home to Kansas. She is advised to consult the Wizard who lives in the Emerald City in the center of the Land of Oz. She is also advised to wear the silver shoes (which the movie transformed into ruby slippers) that belonged to the wicked Witch, because everybody knows they are magic, though nobody knows just what they do.

Dorothy and Toto set out on a Yellow Brick Road for the Emerald City. On the way she meets three companions, each of whom joins herin the hope that the Wizard of Oz will be able to give him what he lacks. The first is a Scarecrow, whose head is stuffed with straw and who wants some brains so he can think. The second is a Tin Woodman, who was once an ordinary being of flesh in love with a beautiful Munchkin maiden. Unfortunately,however, he was under a spell cast by the wicked Witch, so he kept chopping off parts of himself and being repaired by a tinsmith until he became the first fully bionic man, with a completely mechanical body. In the process, he lost his heart and thus is no longer able to love the Munchkin maiden; now he wants a heart so he can love again. The third companion is a Cowardly Lion, who ought to be King of the Forest but who is afraid of everything; he wants courage and the will to act.

After many adventures, Dorothy and her three companions reach the Emerald City, where they each gain an audience with theWizard. The Wizard says that he will grant their requests, provided they first do something to prove themselves worthy. They must go to the westernmost part of Oz and there kill the wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy and her companions are not very keen on doing that, but since there seems to be no alternative,they set out for the western land. After many adventures, they succeed in their quest when Dorothy throws a bucket of water on the witch, which dissolves her.Wicked witches, like naughty children, cannot stand water.

When the four companions return to the Emerald City to claim their rewards from the Wizard, he puts them off for a long while. Finally,the Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz confesses that he is really a humbug. He was a balloonist in Nebraska who worked for a circus, going up in his balloon to attract a crowd for the performance. One day a strong wind blew him all the way to Oz and dropped him in the middle of the land. When he fell from the sky,the inhabitants thought he must be a very great wizard indeed, so they accepted him as their ruler, and he led them in building the Emerald City, where he could hide without his humbuggery being discovered by the Witches of the land,of whom he was very much afraid.

Although he is a humbug, the Wizard says he will do what he can to keep his promises to the four companions. He fills theScarecrow's head with a mixture of bran and pins and needles, so that he willhave brand-new brains that are sharp as a pin. He puts inside the Tin Woodman'schest a heart made of stuffed silk, guaranteed not to break. And he gives theCowardly Lion a little green bottle filled with courage (Dutch courage,presumably), from which the Lion is to drink whenever he feels the need.

To help Dorothy get home, the Wizard builds a hot-air balloon to try to sail with her back the way he came. But just as he andDorothy are ready to cast off, Toto runs into the crowd and gets lost. AsDorothy hurries to find her dog, the ropes holding the balloon break, and away it sails with the Wizard, who cannot control it. Thus Dorothy is still strandedin Oz.

The inhabitants of the Emerald City suggest thatDorothy should seek the aid of Glinda, the good Witch of the South. So Dorothy and her companions set out on a third journey. After many more adventures, they reach the court of Glinda the Good, who tells Dorothy that she has all along had the power to go back to Kansas whenever she wants to. The magic silver shoes she is wearing will carry her to any place in the world with three short steps. Dorothy need only say where she wants to go, click her heels thrice, and she will be there. Dorothy now bids good-bye to her friends, says she wants togo home to Kansas, and in three steps, she is there. And so the story ends.

The Wizard of Oz has all the essentials of a true fairy tale. It is set in a perilous, enchanted land, where the humanprotagonist is engaged in a quest. The protagonist, an ordinary person like you or me, faces great dangers, trials, and difficulties, but is helped by some extraordinary and magical friends. After many perilous adventures, the protagonist returns home, having fulfilled the quest. The Wizard of Oz is also a remarkably Theosophical fairy tale. It is indeed a Theosophical allegory.

Consider first the two lands of Oz and Kansas. They are the setting of the story and provide its chief theme: Dorothy is questing in Oz, with the aim of returning to Kansas. The two countries are obviously of cardinal importance to the story and its meaning. Kansas is depicted as a gray, colorless, flat, featureless landscape, and so it is sometimes thought to represent the ordinary, dull world of reality. Oz, on the other hand, is vibrant with color and adventure and interesting people and things, so it is thought to represent the world of the imagination and of fantasy.

Such an interpretation, however, does not comfortably fit the overall plot of the story. Although Dorothy enjoys Oz, while sometimes being a little frightened by it, all she wants to do from the time she first arrives there until the silver shoes carry her away is to get back home to Kansas. Oz is a nice place to visit, but Dorothy wants to live in Kansas. In the story, Kansas, not Oz, is the desirable place to be.

We can see two important things about the Land of Oz if we look at a map of the country, such as one of those published by the International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc. (an organization of people who like the Oz books and who share their enthusiasm with one another). One of the things to note is that Oz has a central green area, the Emerald City, surrounded by four regions, each with a different symbolic color (blue, yellow, red, and purple), within the overall shape of a four-sided figure. The land is bounded on all four sides by an impassable desert, a "ring-pass-not," that isolates Oz from all other lands. These ingredients of the topography of Oz--the impassable barrier, the four-sidedness, the symbolic colors, the circle, and the center--are also the ingredients of a mandala.

Oz is a mandala. Mandalas represent the human psyche and the world of samsara--the manifold, beautiful, enticing, but also frightening world of differentiation and becoming. And that is what Oz is. Oz is samsara, the seductive world of earthly beauty, which draws the soul to it. You and I live in Oz. It is this world, this various, dappled world, this magical world of divided beauty.

Kansas, on the other hand, is that world from which we have come before we find ourselves in the perilous land of the separate self. Kansas is that world where there is no differentiation--but only Oneness: no color, which is diversity, not even any black and white, which are opposites, but only the unity of gray; no various hills and valleys, but only the uniform smoothness of the Great Plains; no water, which is the cause and symbol of life and growth, but only the dryness of a world of unchanging reality. Kansas is the permanent world of Oneness from which we have all come and to which we are destined to return. It is our source and our goal. Kansas is devachan or nirvana. Like Dorothy, we have but one purpose in this world of Oz, this samsara of changing appearance, and that is to get home to Kansas, the nirvana of permanent Truth.

In using Kansas to stand for perfection, Baum was undoubtedly having a little fun. The reputation of Kansas, in Baum's day or ours, does not live up to what we expect of devachan or nirvana. Baum himself undoubtedly was ambivalent about the Great Plains, including the Dakotas, where he lived for a while, and Kansas, the archetypically American state, the true heartland of America. Baum makes much of the flat, gray, dry appearance of Kansas in the first chapter of The Wizard. It is not an attractive place. However, each of those negative features can also be thought of in a positive way--especially as characteristics of nirvana.

Part of Baum's joke is that things are never what they seem. Dorothy seems to be a simple and harmless little girl, but it is she who kills the wicked witches of both East and West. The Scarecrow seems to lack brains, but he has all the ideas in the company. The Tin Woodman seems to lack a heart, but he is so full of sentiment that he is always weeping. The Cowardly Lion seems to be a coward, but he takes brave action whenever it is called for. The Wizard seems to be great and powerful, but he is actually a humbug. Oz seems to be a glorious and delightful land and Kansas to be dry, gray, and dull--but Oz is a world of illusion and Kansas is really home. Things are not what they seem, in Oz or Kansas.

If we look at the map of Oz again, we can discover a second important thing about it. The outline of the Land of Oz is that of a rectangle. The Land of Oz is the same shape as the State of Kansas. Oz is Kansas. The two places in the fairy tale are finally the same, just as nirvana and samsara are the same reality, only viewed differently. Dorothy can go home so easily, with just three short steps, because in reality she has nowhere to go. She is already home, and needs only to realize that fact in order to make the homecoming real.

Other aspects of the story are also symbolic. Dorothy's name (a variant of Dorothea, a reversal of Theodora) means "gift of God." As that name suggests, Dorothy is the soul sent from God, out of the nirvana of Kansas into the samsara of Oz, here to find her way back again to the undifferentiated unity from which she comes.

Waiting in Kansas are Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, who represent the primordial feminine and masculine forces, which H. P. Blavatsky called Mulaprakriti and the Unmanifested Logos. Baum's wife was named Maud, and his mother-in-law (a strong woman and powerful influence in his life) was named Matilda; the initial of their names is also the first letter of mother. Thus M, the initial and Auntie Em's name, suggests the archetypal feminine. By similar associations, Henry (which means "ruler of the home") suggests the archetypal masculine.

Dorothy is brought from Kansas to Oz by a cyclone. A cyclone is a great circular wind, a gyre. The Greek word from which cyclone comes means a circle or the coil of a serpent. The cyclone is the cycle of necessity, the round of birth and death, which catches us up and brings us into life, that is, to Oz.

Dorothy is caught in the cyclone because she is distracted by her little dog, Toto. Toto expresses the archetype of the mischievous beast. That archetype represents the animal nature in all of us; and when we are led astray by it, when we follow it heedlessly, we are caught up by the passionate winds of the cycle of necessity and blown away to the world of samsara. Toto is the little beast in each of us, our special pet from whom we are loath to part; and attachment to our mischievous animal nature brings us into birth.

In Oz, Dorothy acquires three companions, in order(and the order is important): the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the CowardlyLion. These companions think they lack and thus have the need to develop(respectively) intelligence, love, and courage or the will to act. Dorothy's three companions are clearly thinking, feeling, and doing; manas, kama, and sthula sharira; the mental, emotional, and physical bodies. And she acquired them in that order, from "highest" to "lowest," just as we do when we come into incarnation.

A statement published by Annie Besant, but perhaps written by H. P. Blavatsky, describes the three aspects of our personality as they must be developed to respond to the perils of life: "There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer; there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through; there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount." Dauntless courage is what the Lion must develop. Spotless purity is what the Tin Woodman must achieve (he is constantly being polished in the story, to clean away the rust that he is subject to). Strong intellect is what the Scarecrow wants above all.

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman also debate which is more important to have: brains or a heart. And their debate is reminiscent of that section in H. P. Blavatsky's Voice of the Silence called "The Two Paths," in which the intellectual Doctrine of the Eye is compared with the compassionate Doctrine of the Heart. The Scarecrow and Tin Woodman's debate is left unresolved, with the implication that both are good but that, as Dorothy decided, it doesn't matter so much which is more important if only one gets back to Kansas-nirvana. Attaining the goal is all-important. The means for doing so is not.

Dorothy's quest in Oz is to find her way home, back to Kansas, back to nirvana. But it has three phases. First, the journey from the East, where she lands in Oz, to the Emerald City in the center of the land; second, from the center to the West to slay the wicked Witch, with a return again to the center; and third, from the center to the South to consult Glinda the Good, from whom Dorothy learns the way home. The route that Dorothy follows has the shape of a big T, its three points defining an inverted triangle, the triangle of matter. What do its three phases suggest?

In the first phase, Dorothy follows the Yellow Brick Road to find the Wonderful Wizard at the center of Oz. The Yellow Brick Road strongly suggests the Path, the mystic way, that leads to enlightenment. Its yellow is the yellow of gold--the metal that does not corrode or rust, the perfect metal. As Dorothy and her companions follow the Road, they are faced with many perilous adventures (most of which were omitted from the movie). The Besant-Blavatsky statement mentioned earlier begins:

"There is a Road, steep and thorny, beset with perils of every kind, but yet a Road, and it leads to the very heart of the universe." The Yellow Brick Road is that Road, and the Emerald City, to which it leads, is the heart of the universe of Oz.

At the end of the Road are the Emerald City and the Wizard. Emerald or green is the color of harmony, of balance; it is midway in the color spectrum; it is the color of the fourth or harmonizing ray. The aim of following the Path is to establish that harmony. The aim is also to find the Teacher, the Guru, who can show us the way home. The Wizard represents, among other things, that Teacher.

In the second phase of the quest, Dorothy is sent to the West, to slay consciously the wicked Witch who rules there, just as she unconsciously slew the wicked Witch of the East when she landed in Oz. East and west are points of the compass with well-established symbolic meanings. East is the place of sunrise; it betokens the beginnings of things; it is birth. West is the place of sunset; it betokens the ending of things; it is death. In Irish myth and other mythologies from all over the world, the land of the West is the country of the dead. The wicked Witches of East and West represent, respectively, the desire for birth and the fear of death that accompany our coming into and passing out of this life.

Dorothy's quest is for salvation, liberation, enlightenment, freedom from birth and death. And during this mythic fairy tale, she achieves it. The story is, as it were, of her last incarnation; she is one of those who return no more. When she lands in Oz, she crushes the wicked Witch of the East, thus overcoming the desire for further birth. That is an unconscious feat because it is not the result of her actions in this life, which is just beginning, but rather is the fruit of past accomplishments. That this is her last life is due to her karma from earlier, unremembered lives. The crushing of the wicked Witch of the East is therefore unconscious on Dorothy's part.

During the second phase of her quest, however, she must consciously meet and slay the other wicked Witch, that of the West, who represents the fear of death. The gaining of nirvana and the transcendence of the personal self is a kind of death, the death of separateness. To achieve our quest, we must destroy the fear of death, we must slay the wicked Witch of the West. And so Dorothy does. She liquidates the Witch; she dissolves the fear of dissolution; she washes away the last stains of separateness.

We can overcome death and illusion only in the world of death and illusion. We must pass through the valley of the shadow of death to come to the land of eternal light. So Dorothy must go to the uttermost West, encounter the wicked Witch of death, and overcome her with water, the symbol of life.

What shall we make, however, of Dorothy's return to the Emerald City after she has conquered her fear of death, when she discovers that the Wizard, the Teacher, the Guru, is after all a humbug? This is perhaps the most Theosophical of all details in the fairy story. The Wizard is a humbug because all teachers we find outside ourselves are humbugs. One of the cardinal messages of Theosophy is that we can rely on no one to save us but ourselves. As The Voice of the Silence says, "Prepare thyself, for thou wilt have to travel on alone. The Teacher can but point the way." Each student must walk the way alone. Reliance on a teacher, on a guru, must inevitably end in disappointment. All teachers are humbugs, save one--the Teacher Within.

In a sense, the picture of the Wizard, ensconced in his throne room in the Emerald City, where he tries desperately to disguise his humbuggery, is a satire on all authority and particularly on religious authority. When visitors come to the Emerald City, they are required to put on a pair of green glasses, so everything appears green to them. The green glasses are like the dogmas that religious wizards insist their followers adopt so their ecclesiastical cities will look green and vital.

The joke is that the Emerald City really is made of emeralds; it really is green, quite naturally. Religion really is what it says it is--a place of treasures and marvels--but the humbug wizards who have got themselves put in charge of it--the priests and ministers--have no faith in the natural value of their city, so they require the unnecessary and artificial spectacles. They think that emeralds need the assistance of green glasses. In another sense, the guru is a humbug only because we make one of him. We insist that he tell us what to do. We want him to save us. When we ask the teacher to do for us that which only we can do for ourselves, we have made a humbug out of him. Finally, the teacher-wizard must sail off in his balloon, powered by all the hot air he and we have forced into it. And then we are left by ourselves to find our own way.

So Dorothy sets out on the third phase of her quest.This time she travels to the land of the South to seek the counsel of Glinda, the good Witch. To travel south is to travel deep within ourselves. The Mississippi River, that Father of Waters, like most rivers in the United States, flows southward. To travel south is to travel in the natural direction towards the ocean of unity. Glinda represents the intuition within each of us--the glint of the light of Truth, the only true source of guidance. What Glinda tells Dorothy is that she has always had the power to go back to Kansas; Dorothy needs no guru, for she is her own guide. She need only rely upon herself, upon her own feet, clad in the silver shoes that are her contact with the earth of Oz, which is also the earth of Kansas. For Oz is Kansas; samsara is nirvana.

If there is a "moral" to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, this is it: we must rely on ourselves, for we alone have the power to save ourselves. That moral is made throughout the book also with regard to Dorothy's three companions. The Scarecrow thinks he needs brains; but whenever the four companions find themselves at an impasse, it is the Scarecrow who comes up with the clever plan to help them. The Tin Woodman thinks he needs a heart; but he is the one who is constantly worried that he may step upon a bug and harm it and who is ever in danger of rusting from his own tears because he feels such compassion for others that he freely weeps. The Cowardly Lion thinks he needs courage; but he is the one who acts bravely to save the company whenever they are threatened by danger. Dorothy's companions, like Dorothy herself, have within themselves the qualities they are seeking. We each have everything we need; we lack only the intuition of Glinda the Good to tell us so.

The Wizard of Oz came to Baum as a kind of inspiration. Baum was a remarkably motherly man. He looked after his children--all boys--in their sicknesses and accidents; he comforted them in their sorrows. He told them bedtime stories. Baum's stories became so famous that neighboring children would come to the Baum house every day to hear the evening tale. One evening a story came to Baum that he recognized as having great potential; so after the children were put to bed, he jotted down the essentials of the story on such scrap paper as he had at hand. The result was the outline of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In later years, when asked how he had written the book, Baum said:

It was pure inspiration.... It came to me right out of the blue. I think that sometimes the Great Author has a message to get across and He has to use the instrument at hand. I happened to be that medium, and I believe the magic key was given me to open the doors to sympathy and understanding, joy, peace and happiness.¹

Baum certainly did not set out to write an allegory, but he was inspired to write a story that, like all good fairy tales, has depths of meaning of which the writer himself would have been only dimly aware. Baum's membership in the Theosophical Society and his background and beliefs were such as to fit him for the writing of a fairy tale filled with the Ancient Wisdom, as is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

H. P. Blavatsky once wrote that the ancient Theosophists were called analogists because of their custom of interpreting all scriptures and sacred symbols as metaphors for an inner reality. It is precisely in this way that fairy tales, traditional ones and modern ones alike, are of value. Fairy tales are analogs of Truth. When we have "comprehended their hidden meaning" (as HPB said), we have seen into ourselves and recognized our own powers and potentials. We have learned that upon our feet are silver shoes that can carry us home whenever we will use them. For home is here, Kansas is Oz, heaven is all about us, waiting only for us to recognize it. That is the Ancient Wisdom in all fairy tales.

Note

1. Cited by Michael Patrick Hearn, ed., The Annotated Wizard of Oz (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1973), 73.

By Derek Cameron

In the mid-1890's Rudolf Steiner (1861--1925) was repeatedly hurt by personal remarks made by his close friend Moritz Zitter (d. 1921). Even when recounting the incident a quarter century later, Steiner would still not admit his friend's observations contained some truth. Yet Zitter's stinging criticism forms a plausible trigger for the revolutionary psychological and spiritual changes Steiner underwent during 1896 to 1897--the period he himself described as that of his "profound transformation."

Steiner was thirty-five years old and a respected scholar with a Ph.D. in epistemology. He had edited the scientific writings of Goethe (1749-1832) for both the Kuerschner and the Weimar editions. He enjoyed discussing esoteric subjects with his more thoughtful friends and considered himself an expert on these topics who was already in possession of cutting-edge knowledge denied to lesser beings.

And then came the insults. Zitter wrote Steiner several times to the effect that he was merely intellectualizing his feelings. In fact, Zitter said to Steiner, you are so absorbed in your thoughts that you often appear to be scarcely human.

This Steiner hotly denied. The problem, he retorted, was Zitter's lack of comprehension. When Steiner appeared to be speaking intellectually, it was not that he had lost contact with the physical world. Rather, he was speaking about a world few had ever experienced--the world of spirit. And this error, Steiner explained, was the "greatest misunderstanding of my spiritual path."

To some extent Steiner was right. It was true he had already realized there was more to human experience than the world of the senses and the world of the intellect. The groundwork for this realization dated back to Steiner's childhood, when he received what he called "mental pictures"--images that conveyed nonphysical truths. When a school friend died, Rudolf unselfconsciously accompanied him into the world beyond. This spirit world was to Steiner every bit as real as the physical world.

Rudolf Steiner was also a curious child. He wanted to learn not only about the physical world but also about its inner essence. Near his childhood home was a factory. The boy Rudolf observed raw materials entering the factory at one end. He also observed finished goods emerging at the other. What frustrated him was that he could not see the processes taking place in between. What was it, behind those factory walls, that lay hidden from his gaze?

By the same token, he was also vexed by his inability to understand the source of his mental pictures. What faculty, he wanted to know, brought him these images? How did he know what he knew?

His problems were compounded by the fact that the adults around him did not share his perceptive abilities. When Steiner confided to a trusted schoolteacher the episode of having ventured into the world beyond death, he was met with stony silence. Steiner would have to construct for himself a framework for understanding his experiences. He did not find the beginnings of his explanation until he was a young man.

Around 1880 Steiner was reading Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). In the "Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man," Steiner found a passage in which Schiller began by acknowledging that we can know things through our sense perceptions and we can know things through our thinking. But Schiller then went on to assert that we also have a third way of knowing things.

Most people fail to notice this third form of consciousness because it flits by so quickly. But by resisting the pull of both the senses and the intellect, said Schiller, we can cultivate this third form of knowing. It was, he asserted, a faculty that allows us to transcend the purely personal. "That which first connects man with the surrounding universe," he wrote, "is the power of reflective contemplation."

For Schiller this third state of consciousness was the aesthetic sensibility. But for Steiner, here was evidence that another human being shared his knowledge that we have more faculties than are generally acknowledged. Steiner had found a kindred spirit from whom he gathered the support and confidence he needed to continue his explorations.

Steiner found a second ally in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). From Goethe's writings on geological processes, Steiner learned that Goethe too had had the ability to receive mental pictures. For Goethe also these intuitive perceptions could point to otherwise hidden truths.

In his essay "On Granite," Goethe described an experiential way of investigating natural history. Alone on a mountain peak, the researcher surrenders to the silence and solitude of the place and immerses himself in this experience. Images begin to form--vivid impressions of mountains rising and falling, of new mountains taking their place, of ancient seas receding and allowing life to grow in their wake.

Further encouraged, Steiner tried to write about Goethe, using the same intuitive capacities Goethe himself had used. This was the start of his conscious cultivation and development of his spiritual talents.

Moritz Zitter, however, had also been partially correct. Steiner's life before his mid-thirties had been a life of the intellect. This was the boy who had surreptitiously read Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) during high school history lessons. Large sections of Steiner's autobiography consist of detailed accounts of his subsequent philosophical reading and thinking. It was surely more than coincidence that, following his receipt of Zitter's letters, Steiner began a new practice.

In 1896 Rudolf Steiner turned his attention to the physical world. He would intentionally focus on his direct perceptions of the present moment. Likewise, he began trying to observe other people exactly as they actually were--in other words, observing without judging.

Over the course of that year, these practices transformed Steiner's way of being with people. He had previously been aloof, intellectually combative, and unable to listen to someone without wanting to argue with them. But now he found it easy, even natural, to be with people just as they were, observing, noting, and learning.

The observational skills thus developed proved useful in his own inner development. He would take quiet moments to observe and reflect on himself with this same objectivity.

Yet disinterested observation proved to be only a first step. In an unexpected turn, Steiner discovered that he now wanted to become more involved in the world. For the first time, he became one passionately engaged in life. His method of tranquil self-observation and contemplation he called his "meditation." Steiner learned clearly to distinguish between his intellectual activity and the underlying perceptions and feelings. He was now making practical use of the distinctions he had first gleaned from Schiller. While this "meditation" began as an activity he valued on purely intellectual grounds, he soon noted that "meditation became an absolute necessity for my inner life."

But Steiner's "profound transformation" went beyond the psychological sphere. He also began discovering spiritual truths. As one example, he noticed that problems in life are not solved by thinking about them. Problems, he observed, arise from the unfolding of events. Equally, problems are solved by a further unfolding of events. Solutions emerge. The same mysterious forces that create problems also create their solutions.

In 1898, the most rapid phase of his growth now over, Steiner went still deeper. His practices had not only reconnected him with the full richness of the world, but had also activated his higher perceptive faculties. These Steiner viewed as inner spiritual organs. He then turned these expanded faculties to the contemplation of the Christian tradition.

What he discovered was that, within the publicly available materials of the Christian narrative, there lay hidden, inner meanings. One detail will give the flavor of Steiner's exegesis. In St. John's Gospel there is a well-known pericope in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. For Steiner, debate over whether or not this "miracle" could really have taken place misses the point.

The real point, said Steiner, is that the raising of Lazarus from the dead is an allegory for spiritual initiation. Lazarus's death-like state is the preparation. Jesus, the initiator, then awakens him out of his spiritual slumber. Henceforth, Lazarus is an initiate. Jesus has catalyzed his evolution into a higher form of consciousness, and Lazarus is the first in a new lineage that builds upon (and is superior to) those of the ancient Mystery Schools. The insights gathered during 1898 formed the basis for Steiner's 1901--1902 lecture series, "Christianity as Mystical Fact."

The one thing Steiner had been unable to do as a boy was share his way of seeing things with those around him. As a child he felt lonely; as an adult, isolated and misunderstood. Steiner had come to believe it was safest to keep his deepest perceptions to himself--even among the relatively open-minded artists and intellectuals who were his adult friends. The decision to go public with his research would be the resolution of this issue.

In the autumn of 1900, Rudolf Steiner was invited to speak to a gathering in Berlin organized by the Count and Countess of Brockdorff. The first evening Steiner delivered a conventional lecture. Yet he sensed that this audience in particular might prove sympathetic to a deeper approach. So on a return visit he took the risk he had mulled over for several years. Steiner spoke in public, for the first time, from his personal perspective.

He had correctly gauged his audience. The Brockdorffs and their friends were Theosophists and were deeply impressed by Steiner's new manner of speaking. A whole series of speaking engagements followed. When Annie Besant (1847-1933) inaugurated the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Steiner was elected its first General Secretary. And thus began the pattern of traveling, writing, and lecturing that would occupy the remainder of his life.

People who listened with interest to Steiner naturally wanted to know the source of his material. Often he was accused of merely rehashing ancient Gnostic literature. Thus, when Steiner titled his 1901-1902 lectures "Christianity as Mystical Fact," the word he wanted to emphasize was "fact." His knowledge, he asserted, derived neither from Gnosticism nor from his imagination. He had developed methods for original spiritual research that he saw as being every bit as accurate as those of science. To prove his point, he published a series of magazine articles (later collected into Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment), revealing his techniques.

The foundation practice, Steiner taught, is to spend a few moments of each day in silent reflection. Normally the mind is a jumble of concerns about the details of our lives. But this, says Steiner, is precisely what keeps us from becoming aware of a higher perspective.

To remedy this confusion and ignorance, we should devote a few moments out of every day to reviewing our thoughts and actions as though they were those of another person. It is not that we use this time to continue pondering things, albeit at a more leisurely pace. Rather, it is our own reactions and thought processes that must become the objects of contemplation. This was the practice Steiner referred to as "meditation."

Serene contemplation of the lower self creates the opening in which the higher self can blossom. This new self, the spiritual self, can then begin to grow.

When the contemplation is over, the student returns to everyday life. Steiner emphasized that his form of meditation was aimed at those involved in the world, not those who wished permanently to withdraw from it. If a student's life was very busy, even as little as five minutes a day would have beneficial effects. Tranquil self-observation clears away the mental busyness that encrusts the higher perceptive faculties.

But we then encounter a second obstacle. Socialization has blunted our ability to feel. We no longer use the full depth and sensitivity of our capacities as human beings. Here Steiner gave a series of exercises to restore this ability to feel.

To begin with, we focus intently on something growing--a plant or a tree, for example. (This won't work as a thought experiment. Some real, physical organism is required.) While observing, we are to surrender neither to the lure of the sense impressions (color, smell, and so on) nor to any conceptual conclusions about growth and decay. We focus only on the felt sense of flourishing and growth. How is that? What is it like?

This is the sort of subtle impression we usually ignore. But during the exercise, we permit ourselves to reconnect with the richness of our feelings. Cultivating both concentration and a deep and refined sensitivity, we learn to become aware (or re-aware) of the impression of something growing and blossoming. To provide the necessary contrast, we alternately focus on something decaying, such as a dying tree.

In a similar vein, when we hear an animal, we focus on the felt sense of the sound--not our reaction to that sound, but the inner condition of the being who produced it. When the technique has been mastered with simple animate and inanimate objects, we can extend it to human beings. We observe someone in a state of desire. Focus on the felt sense of one who desires something. What impression do we then receive? How is a person who is in a state of desire? And how is a person who has acquired the object of his or her desires? Similarly, when someone speaks, instead of reacting either in agreement or disagreement to what is being said, can we just listen to that person, exactly as he or she is?

The next step of Steiner's program he termed "enlightenment," by which he meant the ability to receive mental images akin to the perception of physical colors. This again, Steiner asserted, is a capacity we all possess, but few ever learn to use.

Steiner does not mean that we actually see, or even imagine seeing, a color. Rather, we feel a sensation similar to that induced by the visual perception of a physical color. A plant, says Steiner, should produce an impression akin to that of green tinged with pink. A human being in a state of desire should be comparable to seeing something "flame-like, yellowish-red in the center, and reddish-blue or lilac at the edges."

Steiner's teachings on the spiritual significance of color draw on his reading of Goethe. In the "Theory of Color" Goethe remarks that colors leave an impression on human beings, and that these impressions can be correlated with human experiencing. Yellow, for example, equates to cheerfulness.

And yet these further exercises are still only preliminaries for the real goal of Steiner's program. Calmness, self-observation, sensitivity, and "enlightenment" are preparations for the work of opening the chakras.

For Steiner the chakras are active, perceptual organs, "the sense organs of the soul." By using these higher organs we discover deep truths about the universe in general and human beings in particular. The belly chakra, for example, is the means by which we perceive the strengths and gifts of other people.

The untrained person pays no attention to mental activity that follows sense impressions. A traveler in a train, for example, reminisces on a past event, but fails to observe how this memory, and the associated daydreaming that follows it, have been triggered by some visual stimulus seen through the windows of the train.

To develop the faculties of the belly chakra, says Steiner, we must first notice, and second take control of, the process by which sense perceptions give rise to a chain of linked thoughts. We must make a practice of consciously choosing which perceptions will be allowed to enter the psyche. This formidable undertaking will eventually lead to the activation of the third or belly chakra, and the consequent flourishing of our ability to understand other people. This kind of knowledge does not arrive in the same way as intellectual knowledge produced by discursive thought. Rather it emerges, intuitively, from the depths of our being, a whispering from the soul.

It is sometimes maintained, for example by Carl Jung (1875-1961), that except for limited instances such as the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), there has been no Western tradition of meditation. A culture that condemns introspection, says Jung, is incapable of producing a meditative tradition. And in any case, he adds, Westerners have too much unconscious material, which has been too ferociously repressed. The treatment of choice for Westerners, he concludes--without a trace of irony--is Jungian therapy.

Yet Steiner's experience refutes Jung's position. There is a Western meditation tradition, and that tradition is the tradition explored by Steiner, the tradition of contemplation. Contemplation is Western meditation and is a powerful technique because it liberates. Once you can contemplate something, Schiller wrote, it no longer has the power to control you.

Steiner was no isolated instance. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a pure contemplative. Like Steiner, Merton saw contemplation as "a kind of spiritual vision," "the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life." Merton described contemplation as "a sudden gift of awareness." And he saw himself not as an innovator, but as the inheritor of a tradition of contemplation that ranged from St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) to the Pensées of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Yet unlike Steiner, Merton held that the ability to contemplate could not, and should not, be taught. "There is no point whatever," Merton wrote, "in trying to make people get excited about the kind of interior life that means so much to you."

The Western contemplative tradition even predates Christianity. Marcus Aurelius (ad 121-180) is more widely remembered today for his Meditations than for the political reforms he instituted as Emperor of Rome. The aphorisms in the Meditations were evidently jotted down in response to contemplation. "Nowhere," wrote Marcus Aurelius, "can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul."

That is a sentiment with which Rudolf Steiner would surely have wholeheartedly agreed.

References

• Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. London: Penguin Books, 1964.

• Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Collected Works. Vol. 12. New York: Suhrkamp, 1988.

• Jung, Carl Gustav. "Yoga and the West," in Collected Works. Vol. 11. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

• Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions, 1972.

• Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von. "Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man." In Harvard Classics. Vol. 32. New York: Collier, 1938.

• Steiner, Rudolf. An Autobiography. Blauvelt, New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1977.

• ——.

  Christianity as Mystical Fact. New York: Anthroposophical Press, 1947.

• ——.

  Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. New York: Anthroposophical Press, 1975.

• Wachsmuth, Guenther. The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner. New York: Whittier Books, 1955.

Derek Cameron studied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh and Sanskrit at the University of British Columbia. He now works as a corporate consultant in Vancouver, British Columbia. His previous article for the Quest, "Suffering on the Path," appeared in the Autumn.

By Eldon Tucker

With each new generation of members in the Theosophical Society, we find the same questions being asked. New members wonder just what this Theosophy is that they're being told about. Is it true? Was it made up by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her followers? What does it really say? With conflicting texts and a diversity of dissenting views among members, newcomers can be left bewildered, perhaps giving up and moving on to other groups without finding spiritual satisfaction. How did we let them down?

The spiritual effort initiated by Blavatsky and her teachers includes much more that just the Theosophical Society. There are numerous theosophical and related groups that have branched off from the initial Society. Countless individuals and organizations have been affected for the better and may still feel an influence. Looking into the future, perhaps a century or two, we may find still other specializations of theosophical work. Those specializations result from the many possible uses for the theosophical treasury of ideas by groups with differing approaches.

One specialization is the formalization of Theosophy as a well-defined system of thought, a philosophy, with distinctive terminology. This Theosophy has become an intellectual tradition that can be taught and understood by people regardless of their backgrounds. It might be called tip-of-the-iceberg Theosophy, since only the surface meanings can be studied and passed on. The heart of Theosophy requires a spiritual awakening in an individual in order to be understood, and so in this intellectual Theosophy, it may be lost. There are several variations or flavors of this formalized philosophy: (a) Blavatsky-Judge Theosophy, (b) Purucker Theosophy, and (c) Besant-Leadbeater Theosophy. The materials for any of those variations can be carefully compiled and organized, as was done by A. E. Powell for Besant and Leadbeater's materials.

The second specialization is the combination of theosophical ideas with popular thought in various ways. Huston Smith in his books on world religions shows how various systems of thought have arisen to meet the spiritual needs of their times, to revive the heart-life and compassion and the quest for wisdom of a complacent or even decadent people. When we take theosophical ideas and combine them with other ideas, relating them to the way of thinking of various peoples, we are making progress in this direction.

It doesn't take a Krishna to appear and dramatically do all the work for us. We can participate in this effort too, altering the thought and life of those around us. New religions and philosophies can arise either from an evolution of existing systems of thought or from the creation of something completely new. We can help with either of those developments. For such use of the theosophical philosophy, "purity" of the ideas is not important. The important thing is to make something new and useful. The final product--a belief system with a code of life--may not be "perfect" from our point of view, and may even be inaccurate or wrong when considered in terms of the Mystery Teachings, but it may still be a great boon to society. If the effect of a new movement is to better the life of people, leading them back to the path of compassion and the great spiritual quest, then this second specialization of Theosophy has done well.

The third specialization of Theosophy is along the line of a junior school to the Mysteries. It would be somewhat akin to the various Esoteric Schools associated with the existing theosophical groups. These future groups may evolve from the existing ones or be newly founded at some point. With these groups, the emphasis is on keeping the philosophy pure, on depth of understanding, on a living oral tradition of learning and study, by which advanced students train and pass on their knowledge to each succeeding generation. Some groups may be akin to spiritual colleges, training chelas, but not involved in public work, like Theravada Buddhism, the Buddhism of the Elders. Others may take on the trappings of exoteric religions, stress public works, and be like Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism that stresses extroverted compassion.

It may take a few generations for the theosophical movement to differentiate or specialize into these different efforts to improve the lot of humanity. Meanwhile, there may be growing tension in theosophical groups over the future direction of the groups. The existing groups appear already to have started on these specializations. The United Lodge of Theosophists seems to have made a good start at promoting a formalized intellectual theosophical philosophy. The Adyar Theosophical Society (ours) seems to have made a good start at melding theosophical ideas with popular thought and thereby planting the seeds for future religious directions. The Pasadena Theosophical Society seems to have made a good start at being a spiritual-training group. All of those groups are, to be sure, more complex and diverse than this generalization.

A key idea with theosophical groups is the freedom of belief that members enjoy. Because of that freedom, it is possible for the membership to entertain many different ideas about the nature of Theosophy and what should be done with it. This freedom is fine for one's personal study, but it can create problems at the organizational level. The way any organization operates and its resources are used depends on the ideas one has about its nature and goal.

Can theosophical groups be democratic? Democratic procedures in arriving at decisions can be healthy and good, just as freedom of belief and expression is also desirable. But for both there must be limits, as expressed in a mission statement, a purpose for the Society. Some members may want to carry forward that purpose and so become workers; other members not in accord with that purpose can find other avenues of expression. As the theosophical movement continues to develop specializations, the selection of groups to belong to and the materials to study will multiply. There will be places where we feel strongly "at home," and other places where we may feel like aliens or outsiders.

A theosophical group is not true to its mission if a surge of new members can vote to throw overboard the old purpose and to do something entirely different. There is plenty of opportunity to found other groups and efforts, and to work side-by-side with other groups, so redirecting existing groups is unnecessary and counterproductive to the work.

This is not to say that existing groups are doing everything they could or are doing things in the best way. There is room for improvement, but that improvement should be evolutionary, not revolutionary.

What is it that is the purpose of our Theosophical Society? The three objects--brotherhood, study of comparative religions, and investigation of the unexplained and latent--fall somewhere between the extremes of a pro-Krishnamurti anarchism where all spiritual authorities (except himself) are rejected and a dead-letter worship of the writings of Blavatsky that would make fundamentalist Christians seem liberal by comparison.

If I could define Theosophy for the Theosophical Society, I'd say that it is a distinct body of esoteric doctrines derived from the Mahatmas, given to us by Blavatsky and perhaps a few other initiates. These doctrines are subject to human error in expression, but are more accurate than the ideas of the homegrown philosophies of those who are uninitiated in the Mysteries. We should teach, promote, and have as a significant goal the keeping of these original fragments of Mystery teachings in their pristine, untainted form. I'd want any theosophical group I join and support to affirm this viewpoint.

The Theosophical Society in America has a large turnover in membership. Is that because people are sampling it and deciding it's not right for them, or because we're doing something wrong, and need to change our approach? From the standpoint of the specialization of the theosophical movement, I'd say that we just need to find something good to do for the world, as a Society, and do it the best we can, and leave it to others to serve the many other needs that the world has.

The Internet is something new. People working with computers, or in college, have had the opportunity to learn about and use it. Others are left wondering what it's all about. It will be helpful in the future to have show-and-tell presentations of what's out there and how people can benefit from it. Even without a computer of one's own, it's still possible to get free e-mail and use a computer at many public libraries, if one is aware of what's available.

There are a number of uses of the Internet that could be looked into. There could be more online publications. There could be an online news-only mailing list, perhaps moderated, with timely information without the high volume of chat and less-nice traffic of typical mailing lists that leads people to unsubscribe. There could be online audio theosophical lectures (using the Real audio encoder program). It's even possible to make online slide-show presentations of Theosophy with associated sound tracks.

Any changes that are made in our Society, I think, should be gradual, evolutionary, arising out of cooperative projects where we all get together to promote Theosophy or better the world. Increased communication among members would arise through a day-to-day interaction, through doing things together, through working for a common purpose. No grand plan, petition, document, constitution, or finished product of thought will evolve the organization. The coming together of members in mind and heart would arise because everyone would be helping formulate, organize, and carry out the work of the Society, rather than in imposing their approach on others, requiring others to do work someone else's way.

Do we want to change the Society? Do we want to work for the philosophy in and through the Society? Then we need to start doing our work, building bridges of cooperation between ourselves and others in the Theosophical Society. There's bountiful work to be done, both in and outside of the Society. Let's simply find something good to do and get going!