Land of Three Oceans
Extracts from a lecture given at Rudolf Steiner House, Sydney, May 8, 2001
Even though Saint Francis of Assisi had created communities of caring for the sick and afflicted, his impoverished patients, more often than not, languished. The Medieval medical skills available to him, based often on superstition and spurious invention, mostly either failed to heal, or led even to death.
Being prescient as he was, the Enlightened One probably knew of John Lennon’s sweeping postulation, “All you need is love.”. But love, which the good saint had in abundance for both animals and man, was not enough. He realized, as we Spiritual Scientists do today, that for love to be power in the world – in his case a healing power – it has to be informed with knowledge. And state-of-the-science knowledge in the 12thCentury, as any occult historian know, resides in the great centers of learning of Islam.
So to the least the worthy saint repaired. His mission for medical knowledge led him through many scholarly sanitaria, until he eventually gained access to the fount of wisdom itself, Saladin. These two most advanced souls of their age discoursed at length, with Francis proclaiming the Gospel of Love, which he so manifestly epitomized, and the mighty Moslem warrior making available the bounty of the healing arts bequeathed to humanity over the ages.
Francis returned to Europe with his new knowledge, where his charitable institutions subsequently flourished, to become the global power they are today.
Meanwhile, Saladin renewed his struggle with Richard the Lionheart! Alas, the hitherto invincible English king was struck down with a mysterious illness. Again the standard bat’s wing European pharmacopoeia was ineffective. A barely conscious Richard was roused by a disturbance at the edge of the compound.
“Merely a ragged Arab mendicant claiming to be able to cure you Sire.” Murmured an aide.
“Then bid him enter; my blockhead doctors have achieved nothing!” croaked the king. Hooded but shrewd black eyes observed their patient, skilled hands applied mysterious balms. A short time after the itinerant ‘healer’ deferentially retreated, Richard was cured. “Who was that cowled man?!” he demanded of his minions.
“Rumor has it that it was Saladin himself.” And a persistent apocrypha agree; Saladin may indeed have taken to heart the “Love thine enemy.” Tenets taught by Francis. His victory over the Crusaders in Jerusalem resonates, as does the Assassin’s impulse, with Rudolf Steiner’s dictum: “When knowledge is cultivated in an atmosphere of love, power will rain down upon the earth.”
The antonym of this knowledge-love-power trilogy is evident in another of Steiner’s remarkable utterance: “Mechanizing of the spirit, vegetizing of the soul, animalizing of the body – this we have to face.” The threat to the spirit-soul-body of 20th Century humanity was detailed by the Doctor as having its roots in the knowledge-West (Britain-America), love-Central Europe, and power-Orient (broadly speaking, from Russia eastward).
The computer, from its Silicon Valley heartland, today lays siege to the human spirit. Though the world has embraced this and other electronic technology, its influence is America-generated, as was the equivalent automobile industry in Steiner’s time. To paraphrase The Master, we can’t simply reject Ahriman’s blandishments, rather keep them in their cages, being always subordinate to the human being, or indeed the living world in general. Even though the computer may have similarities to the human brain, the brain in nota computer!
If humankind is awake in its love of machines, it is, according to Steiner, in a dream state in the matter of culture; the equivalent of computers in ‘vegetizing” Europe. Here the soul can passively indulge itself in the greatness of the past.
European culture has, like technology, a global reach; many Japanese are symphonic aficionados, yet few Europeans, or anyone else for that matter, can play the koto. Culture is bequeathed to us as a platform from which to launch even more – hopefully richer – culture. Rudolf Steiner was the single most creative and original cultural exponent of the 20th Century; but at the same time very well-informed in the whole spectrum of the classics – an apparent paradox.
One enemy of cultural progress is nationalism, so insidious in parts of Europe. If the light of thinking is the basis for mastering the knowledge stream, then the warmth of feeling, enthused with love, does likewise for culture Steiner’s maxim might therefore be reversed: “If love is cultivated in an atmosphere of knowledge, power will rain down upon the earth.”.
And the power? Rudolf Steiner feared that the “animalizing of the body” was already taking place, under the mindless, heartless regime of the Bolsheviks. The next 80 years of totalitarian communism has often seen human beings reduced to the state of cattle, from the Stalinist pogroms, to Pol Pot, to Mao’s ‘Cultural’ Revolution. The system subjugates the will of the individual to the collective; or as The Great Helmsman put it. “Power comes out of the barrel of a gun.”
Under these despotisms, human beings fall into a cognitive and cultural deep sleep, as Steiner predicted. He also characterized West, Central and East as the eagle, lion and bull, the thought, feeling and will of human expression. But what of the north? Or the South? There is effectively no north in this global perspective; but there is a South, and Australia is central to these deliberations.
This continent was inhabited, in one form or another, since the Lemurian cataclysm, by the Sons of Cain, the Aborigines. Their timeless abode was rudely ‘awakened’ by the 1788 colonizers, the British, with their incipient mechanizing of the spirit. If life were simple, this inherently materialistic, capitalist invasion would merely usurp the indigenes, leaving Australia an appendage of Britain-America. The main virtue of the British was the advent of a new intellectual life in Australia.
In the frenzy of “populate or perish” policies, Australia opened its doors to a second wave of migration, the European of the 1940s and ‘50s. We resident Anglo-Celts grudgingly convinced ourselves that “As long as the new arrivals are white, they’re probably okay.” (Erwin Berney told me that he and Anne had to show the port authorities their hands – to prove they had no colored blood!)
With this European heart-feeling influx, a culturally sterile Terra Australis was immeasurably enriched. Indeed, most of the aesthetic influences of my life have been provided by people of this post-war wave (including Erwin and Anne). The Steiner community has been particularly well-endowed with European artists and artisans of a high order.
So we have the knowledge and the love migrations; but what of the power? The 1960s and ‘70s enmeshed us in Asian affairs by virtue of the Vietnam War. Due to a combination of national shame and new-age enlightenment, we again became a destination for the hapless and hopeless, primarily from Asia, and the East in general. This bull-will nature can be seen in the latest wave of migrants’ capacity to work hard – very, very hard. Count the Asian faces in the ‘top exam results’ photos each year. No, they’re not smarter, they just work harder. They know how to harness the will.
The cooperation of the three streams of West-Spirit, Europe-Soul; and East-Body forces – a most beneficent multiculturalism – can be a window to the world to counter the Spirit of Retardations’ mechanizing, vegetizing and animalizing. As such, we are indeed a country where “When power is cultivated in an atmosphere of love, knowledge will rain down upon the earth.” – whatever!
Unlikely as it might sound, the divine trinity applies to Australian occult geography as well. Steiner enjoined us to be spiritual scientist, of which rigorous independent research is obviously a part. A second element is direct observation and experience. The third, and most important, is the study of his own voluminous indications of specific and associated subjects. Such as the seven oceans and seven continents. He described the land masses as the 7-fold body of the world, and the oceans as the 7-fold world soul. Psychic forces emanate from the seven astrological planets; the task (Steiner never made things easy!) is to determine which planet expresses through which ocean.
As we know, Australia is ‘girt by sea’, well, three seas, or oceans, actually. The east coast is bathed by the beautiful South Pacific (meaning ‘peace’); and beauty is the operative description of this paradise of colored coral, butterflies, fish, and flowers. Venus is the Goddess of Beauty and Peace – and Love.
This highest of virtues fortuitously streams unremittingly onto the shores of Australia’s first European colonization – and largest population region. (Due to the brevity of this article, I can only give indications of a subject of deep spiritual complexity. A fuller description of the 7 Oceans and 7 Continents can be found in my books Out of Chaos and Gaze Both Ways.)
As one southward rounds the bottom corners of our continent, one enters the turbulence of the Southern Ocean, with its unceasing westerly currents, swells and winds, like the Roaring Forties. This archetypal movement ocean expresses the being of Mercury, God of Knowledge. He is also the god of thieves, and associated dominions, like trade, finance, politics and administration. As mentioned in the previous article, all the ‘merc’ words derive from this quicksilver god – mercantile, commerce…! It should therefore come as no surprise that these areas of human enterprise have their headquarters in a southerly arc centered on Melbourne. Here organizations ranging from trade unions to political parties to medical research to finance houses – churches even – established their administrative centers. This was the second region of colonization – first love, then knowledge.
Power, the third in the holy triune, is of the Sun; and the Sun ocean is the spangled Indian, that which washes our western shores. The full power implications of the Second coming, that of the Etheric Christ, will however be eons hence. The west was the third region of colonization. Actually the Indian Ocean has been wielding spiritual power for millennia, though not in Australia.
The Indian is the planetary soul influence which established the major world religions that exist today; almost all of which were born around the golden ocean’s crown-like perimeters – Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
In fact the “mother Lodge of the World” (to use Steiner’s appellation), Tibet, is the jewel in the crown; a spiritual treasury, he added, to which all esoteric seekers needs have recourse.
So to round off Australia’s soul picture; we have a physical-body continent surrounded by astral-Venus, etheric-Mercury, ego-Sun oceans. The whole man can be truly realized in this generous geography!
On the 100th anniversary of Federation, we reflect on the founding fathers who helped forge Australia into an independent nation. In this same spirit of love, knowledge and power, there were three who towered above the rest. In the same order; Henry Parkes, Alfred Deakin and Edmund Barton.
Parkes was a feeling-heart man, his great love being education and hospital reform. He arranged with Florence Nightingale to provide the first trained nurses for New South Wales. He also published six volumes of poetry! It was as early as 1867 that Parkes, a lion of a man, flagged the idea of a federation of states, a cause he pursued till this death just five years short of the splendiferous event.
The main knowledge base for federation however was provided by Alfred Deakin. This “Brilliant mind” created the conceptual framework for our world-envied Constitution – with Rudolf Steiner’s help of course.
Steiner helped create the Australian Constitution?!
Derkin was not only an historical contemporary of Steiner, but a spiritual one as well. He was a leading Theosophist; one who was not only familiar with Steiner, a high-ranking member of the inner sanctum of the Theosophical Society at the time, but had access to his writings. The conceptual clarity and galactic visions must have made a deep impact on Derkin; whose Constitution is a legacy of power, love and knowledge we lucky Australians are liberated by today.
Indeed, the Constitution, accepted as it was in 1899, was a manifestation of the end of the 3000-year Kali Yuga; the bright dawn of an Age of Light. Its 100th anniversary is the threshold of, as Steiner assures us, the New Age of Abraham! What remarkable days we live in!
Edmund Barton, as the first prime minister, was the quintessential power figure. If Parkes had the passion, and Deakin the concepts, then Barton provided the will for the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia.
He even incarcerated his into the physical world by being instrumental in commissioning Anthroposophy’s own Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony to design the federal capital. So the Steiner impulse deeply influenced both the spiritual and physical births of the Commonwealth!
Barton was tireless in traveling the country, addressing legion meetings, from a mere quorum of sleepy farmers, to cavernous halls brimming with businessmen (women had almost no role in politics in those days). In NSW alone, he addressed over 300 meetings in a single year.
One commentator asserted that Alfred Derkin was “The man who molded the mind of Australia; and Henry Parkes enlightened the heart of Australia. The respective physiognomies of these eagle, lion, and bull men confirm this thinking-feeling-will reality. All three were Michaelian in spirit; 1879 was the dawn of the new Zeitgeist ministry; that of the heavenly reformer, Michael. Rudolf Steiner turned 18 in 1879; his mission, to help manifest the great Sun Archangels’ divine plan.
In fact all three founding fathers essentially began their careers at this time, indelibly etching their influence onto the tablet of Australian social, political and economic life – as Steiner did for the world.
With the spiritual integrity of the geographic and human foundations above, the divinely ordained Tripolis that is Australia may indeed realize its knowledge-love-power promise.
St. Francis and Saladin would be pleased.
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