This Great Escape by Andrew Steinmetz

Author:Andrew Steinmetz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2013-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

Steiner is quite precise about scheduling any communication with the so-called dead at dusk or at twilight. It appears that in these hours, in a drowsy and liminal state, both the living and the dead are at their most gullible. I’m inclined to ponder this in relation to prose fiction, and in particular in relation to the social contract between so-called writers and so-called readers, in which the latter group conveniently agrees to play dead and suspend disbelief at the title page. Curiously this arrangement does not motivate in the writer ambivalence toward truth, nor does it render the reader more easy to fool, which is surprising. And counter-intuitive. Which leads me back to the early days of the War on Michael. Sometime ago it occurred to me that what pushes people to falsify and invent lies is precisely the pressure to tell the truth.

In addition to being read to, the dead have work to do. It’s not all Facebook and Tumblr.2 According to Rudolf Steiner ‘after the death of the physical body, the human spirit recapitulates the past life, perceiving events as they were experienced by the objects of its actions.’ I personally like this idea of a formal and systematic review of each our actions from the point of view of the other, as part of the prerequisite to receiving your karmic benefit package for the next life. It is something the so-called living should practise as well: treating others as we ourselves expect to be treated. This part of spiritual rehabilitation makes good sense and forms a major part of The FSW.

Michael attended a Rudolf Steiner school in Zurich during the war, but now I’m thinking it’s possible he was sent from Berlin to boarding school in Habkern, through the years 1946-48. His letter to ‘Georg’ implies something of the kind. Whichever years it was, going to a Steiner school does seem to have made a lasting impression on him. And why not? Steiner’s way regards thinking as an organ of perception through which the direct experience of a spiritual world can be reached. Anthroposophy privileges the faculties of perceptive imagination, inspiration, and intuition—in combination, these faculties cultivate a form of thinking independent of our senses. Steiner’s spiritual philosophy potentially has a lot to offer someone with an artistic temperament.

Steiner’s writings are bewitching. Even if the mystic is a quack, I can tolerate bonkers better than Das Boring. Anthroposophy gives me something to ponder on the train, and I wonder now if Steiner’s brand of mysticism had any influence on Michael’s ‘development’. And yet, what can you say about these things? Hindsight is a trap. There is the tendency to read too much into the so-called lives of the dead. In any case, the WoM is something that started long ago and long before I had even heard about Rudolf Steiner and his impossible anthroposophy. In other words, I started talking to the so-called dead Michael before I knew it ever might be fashionable to do so.

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