What's to Be Done? @ 195One of the tasks of anthroposophy is to make the reality of heav-
enly beings and the meditative practices leading to actual experience
cf cit[-n~ available to anyone wishing to tread this path in full con-
sciousness.
Only now, says Steiner, can and should the truth be fully revealed.
Easton explains why man had to lose his atavistic clairvoyance and
cease to be able to see into the spiritual world. "As long as he could
perceive spiritual beings, he was unable to disbelieve in them, and the
possibility of such disbelief was an essential part of man's freedom."
We would never have known we were human beings, says Steiner,
unless we had lost awareness of the spiritual world in exchange for I-
consciousness.The purpose of the physical world is to provide a con-
text in which the free activity of the human self-consciousness can
occur. Otherwise, we would have been "perpetually tied to the apron
strings of the celestial hierarchy, perceiving the supersensible in only a
diffused, entranced, dream-like state." To attain ego-consciousness,
human beings had to be able to distinguish themselves from their sur-
roundings.That's what makes for an "I" and an "I am." Now we must
acquire consciousness of spiritual worlds by our own efforts, retaining
earthly consciousness. We must learn to see the world through other
beings, and in full consciousness view both the physical and the super-
sensible world, awake and discriminatory, as clairvoyant scientists. Our
eventual goal is to spiritualize our astral, etheric, and physical bodies
until they are controlled by our immortal spiritual ego, making of each
of us an adept or master. Nowadays, says Steiner, thinking itself, when
properly developed, is capable of grasping equally well both the sensi-
ble and supersensible worlds. "Thus there are no necessary limits to
knowledge, and we do not, in order to increase our knowledge, have to
await a revelation given to us by God." To Steiner, every step that leads
into our inner being leads ipso facto into the spiritual world, the
deeper the penetration, the higher the ascent into the world of spiri-
tual beings.
Ideally, the clairvoyant consciousness of a human being on earth
must be able to go back and forth continually between the physical and