We know that Rudolf Steiner didn’t regard spiritualism with much favour, although he certainly had a powerful gift himself. Here’s what Colin Wilson writes about his attitude in his book, Afterlife.

“… what Steiner disliked so much about Spiritualism was its literal-mindedness ~ the trumpets and accordions floating through the air, the tables dancing around the room, the spirits made of ectoplasm. His attitude could be compared to a Christian mystic who wishes to explain that heaven is not full of angels sitting around on clouds and playing harps.

“At the same time there is bound to be an element of unfairness in such an attitude. Many mediums who started off by producing automatic writing later became “voice mediums”, and some even “materialisation mediums”. It is impossible to draw a sharp line between them. Steiner is not really criticising Spiritualism; he is criticising spiritualists.”

Dr. Rudolf Steiner’s* views on time are best illustrated with a passage from a 1918 lecture titled, “The Dead Are With Us” :

“In the spiritual sense, what is ‘past’ has not really vanished, but is still there. In physical life men have this conception in regard to space only. If you stand in front of a tree, then go away and look back … the tree has not disappeared … In the spiritual world the same is true in regard to time. If you experience something at one moment, it has passed away the next as far as physical consciousness is concerned; spiritually conceived, it has not passed away. You can look back on it just as you can look back on the tree. Richard Wagner showed that he possessed knowledge of this with the remarkable words : ‘Time here has become space.’ ”

These views of Steiner’s have something in common with the idea of “stepped” levels of being. On our level, we have three-dimensional bodies and a fourth dimension is experience as duration, or time. In the level above us, there are four dimensions of space and the fifth is experienced as time. And so on up to dizzying numbers of dimensions.

It can be seen that beings in the level above us would see our time as space, thus they would see our lives as a solid object stretching from our birth to our death. To imagine what this might be like think of standing by a river and watching the flow of a small segment of the whole stream. Next, you are standing on a mountain where you can see the whole river from its “birth” as a spring, to its “death” flowing into the sea. The first is our view, the second is the view from the next level up.

For more information on Rudolf Steiner, see my earlier post.

In a lecture of that name, Rudolph Steiner said this about contacting the “dead” :

We encounter the Dead at the moment of going to sleep, and again at the moment of waking …

These moments of waking and going to sleep are of the utmost significance for intercourse with the so-called Dead ~ and with other spiritual beings of the higher worlds.

The moment of going to sleep is especially favourable for us to turn to the Dead. Suppose we want to ask the Dead something. We can carry it in our soul, holding it until the moment of going to sleep, for that is the time for bringing our questions to the Dead … On the other hand, the moment of waking is the most favourable for the Dead to communicate with us.

We will be dealing a lot with what Wordsworth called, “unknown modes of being”. One observer who found this field compelling was Rudolph Steiner*, founder of Anthroposophy. From a lecture, here he tells of his awareness of such modes :

“From that time onwards a soul life began to develop in [me] which made [me] conscious of worlds from which not only external trees or external mountains speak to the human soul, but also the Beings that live behind them. From that time onward, [I] lived together with the Spirits of Nature that can be personally observed in such a region; [I] lived with the creative beings that are behind the objects …”

* Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was born in Austria. He found his life’s work in the realms of consciousness and cognition. His techniques for the development of awareness to nature’s cycles, daily meditation and concentration practices, and clear critical thinking can lead individuals to reach spiritual levels of consciousness safely. He believed working along with the spiritual worlds enriches the life of the individual and the world.