To Steiner Studies

Study of the relation Steiner-Akhnaton-Freud

- this long article may be downloaded and printed
- quotations are in green

Reason for the study - FORESAID:

Conception of Time and notion of History are closely linked (as they are with Ecology, 'memory of our deeds as idea of our future'). When we look at the interest that mankind expresses for Space, we can measure how little interest he shows for Time. While Space is accessible, Time is not. Time is an illusive dimension, and discussion of it is usually tedious for it causes horror to some part within the Psyche. Therefore, it is not a simple matter to share with the reader.

PREHISTORY OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY :

I have chosen to refer to Rudolph Steiner's work, Occult History, Lect. 27th December 1910, because of the comment he made about prehistorical time.

In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner talks about a "loveable.. wonderful personality... who was initiated in the Orphic Mysteries-secret ... whose earthly name has not come down to posterity ... closely connected with all the Greek Orphics during the period preceding that of Greek philosophy - a period of which no account is given in books on history of philosophy".

Rudolf Steiner also defines Thales, Heraclitos and, at the foundation of Alexandria, Pherecydes of Syros, as echos, or pupils of this ancient initiate. He identifies also Hypatia, at the end of the Alexandrian epoch, as reincarnation within this occult lineage.

Again in the same lecture, Rudolf Steiner referes the archetype of this occult thread to the meaning of Gilgamish representing "a being who was ready for initiation, but was not able to attain it, ... an initiation [aka Western Heroic Initiation] that was not carried through to the end" - and manifested by the individulality of Alexander.

In all, the un-named being of whom he is speaking appears to be connected with Greece and Egypt and Babylon.

This is a sufficent set of indications to authorize us, some eighty years after Rudolf Steiner's conference, to suggest vigorously an hypothesis regarding the name of the Orphic pupil.

As a matter of fact, the 20th century presents an explosion of Science, of discoveries, technologies and industries, and places Rudolf Steiner's discourse - especially those concerned with Science - in a certain perspective. For instance, if a certain set of disclosures (certain data of initiations, or even just certain names) appears too clearly, at a certain point, keeping silence can cause insane reaction and violence. It may be the case in regard to the naming of a certain ancient being, about whom the situation at the end of the century is very different from the one at its beginning.

On the other hand, before explaining how we can declare the identity of an un-named secret figure of our civilization, we must nevertheless remain cautious, especially in light of Rudolf Steiner's wise prudence. Therefore, we shall look carefully into the reasons which warrant its re-opening. We shall not open the closed-knowledge if we don't first know, and understand, why it has been so shrouded.

Therefore, in presenting the loveable, un-named, most influential representative of the Orphic Mysteries, I'll be at task to analyse the circumstances and the conditions of his historical identification.

Let's begin with some of the most pressing evidence:

During the entire Christian Era, before the Modern Ages, there was a memory and a legend regarding a most influential Orphic Mysteries representative. His name was Hermes Trismegistus ; 'Hermes', for he was a traveller according to the Gilgamish archetype, and 'Trismegistus', for he was 'triple master' (magister). His Orphic mastery (greek) was one of his three magistracy, for he was also said to have been a King of Egypt, a Monotheist, and an individual who was closely connected to Moses.

It is when this connection; King-of-Egypt-Moses, turned out to be too closely linked to an identity, at the Renaissance, that Judeo-Christianity preferred to forget all about him, and repressed his memory, name and legend, with all the Inquisition's skill and persuasion.

In 1910, when Rudolf Steiner was giving the above mentioned lecture, Egyptology was just discovering the exceptional figure of Pharoah Akhnaton. This significant individual was also Nefertiti's husband as well as well as Thutankhamon's father, (which clearly shows how central his figure is in our knowledge of Egypt).

At the peak of a 'Renaissance' in Egypt, Akhnaton established Monotheism (for the first time in human history), built a solar city (as Trismegistus, Re: Adocentyn), and left his throne in an unrecorded way. His name was then banished, while his body has never been found buried in Egypt. A short time later, Israel and Athens appeared concommitantly on the historical stage.

I am talking about evidence and obviousness - that is, of something most difficult to prove ! But also something easily detected by looking at its absence (logic of Truth). Today, Akhnaton appears again out from shrouded history of one of the biggest episodes at the dawn of civilization, and, in the most compelling manner, enters the present time. Crowds flock to museums to catch any new glimpse of him or his queen, and the masses buy up any number of books which deal with Akhnaton and this period in history. How could this interest be so alive if there wasn't some kind of memory, or legend, which remains to be addressed ?

It is similar to a situation where we have a crater 'A', and we discover that a meteorite 'B' has hit the earth at the same time as crater 'A' was formed. And, there is no other 'crater'. In other words, there is no other legend than 'Trismegistus' (A)... whose story moreover, matches perfectly the one of the uncovered Akhnaton (B).

Well, this 'obviousness', I have cautiously reported (see bibliography related to the Ptolemean, Christian, Middle and Modern Ages) to state in a few words the most simple, and the most enlightening hypothesis, we can hold regarding the wonderful personality of whom Rudolf Steiner spoke:

Evidently, Akhnaton is the earhtly name of the 'pupil' of the Orphic Mysteries who has been well prepared by a certain Celtic occult training, and well prepared too by certain Babylonian and Egyptian Master Training. He is the one who reappears at the beginning and at the end of Alexandria, according to Rudolf Steiner.

He is the one that Rudolf Steiner could name today.

REASON AND OCCLUDED HISTORY :

Let me set the picture again:

Akhnaton disappeared from Egypt when Moses appeared on the Sinai. Yet Greece also, at the same time, was to appear. (David's Kingdom: 1000 B.C. ; First Delos League: 1000 B.C.)

Several centuries later, on the very location of the solar city built by Akhnaton, the Greek Ptolemans, successors of Alexander the Great built the Great City of Hermes - Hermoplis Magna. And centuries later, the Christian world recalled a monotheist pharaoh called Triple Great Hermes (Hermes Trismegistus).

With even more abundance of evidence, today, Hermes Trismegistus can be easily recognized as Akhnaton. So why didn't Rudolf Steiner reveal his name in his lecture ?

A first clue lies in the fact that the Egyptological discovery of Akhnaton was still at its beginning, and many scholars depicted him with ignominous features that his long-repressed figure had been charged with during milleniums. Why would Rudolf Steiner have identified the Orphic pupil with the dim-witted sluggish depraved person who they described at that time?

Another clue widens our understanding: it has only been since 1950 that Egyplogical data became sufficient enough to allow Immanuel Velikovsky to reveal that the story of Oedipus was without a doubt Akhnaton's. And among the so-called initiates, the Master of the Prieure de Sion (Jean Cocteau) indicated that the 20th century was presenting the Orpheus' figure by the means of Oedipus' features and characteristics (see his Orpheus and his Orpheus' legacy).

The fact that such an abundant and massive information was to come after Rudolf Steiner's teaching, naturally indicates that Rudolf Steiner's times were still too early to announce Akhnaton's integral identification.

But I must be even more precise in addressing this phenomenon, for I have made the committment to honor in the deepest way, Rudolf Steiner's reserve and prudence in revealing this secret knowledge.

It will be indicative to look at another lecture, given by Rudolf Steiner on December 30 & 31, 1910. There, he praises the Great, second Astronomer after Copernicus, e.g. Tycho Brahe.

Tycho Brahe - says Rudolf Steiner (Dec. 31, 1910) - "is one of the last of those who still grasped the reality of the Spiritual behind the data constituting the sciences of external Nature." Here is the interesting reason why Tycho is especially praised by Rudolf Steiner, who says: "here indeed was a personality who again bore the stamp, in a grand style, of what has been great and significant wisdom before his time; one who could not reconcile himself to the kind of knowledge that became popular immediatly afterwards in the shape of the materialistic view of the world". (Dec. 30, 1910)

Clearly, this is Rudolf Steiner's own attitude regarding the identification of the Orphic-Mysteries Initiate whom he spoke of in the first lecture that I referred to above.

So there again I must search further in what Rudolf Steiner called the significant wisdom, or, in other words, what is the reality of the Spiritual behind the data... Also must I look how is this related to a... knowledge that became popular.

In order to envision the situation, the study of Sigmund Freud is most useful; for precisely, at this time (1910) Sigmund Freud was beginning to identify Akhnaton. Moreover, he displayed quite remarkably what Rudolf Steiner dreaded as a matter of misuse of data constituting Science(s). Yet I must be twice as cautious. For if Sigmund Freud shows what is risky in Akhnaton's identification, he truly, and in his own way, applied all the necessary prudence and reserve exhibited elsewhere by R. Steiner. It is only 30 years after he had began to write his study about Moses, ashamed and when he was dying, that Freud launched the publication of his The Man Moses and Monotheism. Eventually, Freud showed, but did not put at risk, the understanding of civilization - as later some other scholars have unfortunately done(£).

So Sigmund Freud has been protective too - he just displayed a danger (that one may further analyze). He took great care in writing about his findings, since he knew this could cause an obscure excitation among his followers. This was demonstrated in the fact that he only allowed these findings to be shown just before his death.

In order to clarify this situation, I shall intensify my explanation with other data, which links Tycho and Freud. Namely, I am speaking about the Great, second Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. There are many reasons for bringing forward this relationship which I detail in my work, Structure de la Decouverte(£) in Fleuve. For in a similar comparison, as the one Rudolf Steiner does between Pherecides of Syros and Hypatia, or Julian the Apostate and Tycho, must be made between Tycho and Lacan. So this is what may be indicative at this point:

Lacan was obviously nervous when he asked about the link between Moses and Oedipus while giving his lectures after Velikovsky (who had already written his Akhnaton-Oedipus, 1950 - Re: above). At Lacan's time (1970) it was intellectually and even morally justified to identify the Great Master, that is the Orphic-Mysteries Initiate whom Rudolf Steiner was speaking. The information was there to show that the one who had been ostracized, and whose naming was forbidden in Egypt and in the neighbourghood, Akhnaton known today, had been remembered as Moses by Israel and as Oedipus in Greece. Yet Lacan stamped his feet, asking what is the link between Moses and Oedipus.

In a major Seminar Lacan exclaimed: "mais qu'est-ce que foutre de nom de dieu Moise peut bien avoir à faire avec Oedipe !" Fortunately it is said in French ! I cannot translate it into English... (it is crude!) for Lacan's family still keeps the copyright of Lacan's words - as Tycho's family did after Tycho's death when his children were suing Kepler, by the way, for using his scientifical observations. But, believe me [See translation in Lacan's page], the rude language that Lacan used there looks very much the way Tycho spoke when he was nervous... (see with Giordano Bruno what kind of temper inhabited the scientist of that time).

If Rudolf Steiner attended Lacan's lecture, he might have said that Lacan grasped the reality of the Spiritual behind the data constituting Akhanton's identity, as he said about Tycho, who spoke reluctantly about the center of our planetory system. Rudolf Steiner would have felt more at ease to speak (to say the name of the Orphic Pupil), for indeed this is what now one can see with the complete Egyptlogical data:

Insofar as Akhnaton's identity with Moses can be shown, the reality of the Spiritual behind this identification lodges in its extension behind and beyond Moses (e.g. the Greek initiation following the Hebrew's).

I have said above that Freud was close to identifying Akhnaton. And, also, that he applied all the necessary cautiousness and reserve in his own ways. I said this in the sense that Freud only brought Moses as close, a relative or a disciple, to Akhnaton - and that beyond Moses, speaking of Oedipus - whose complex he put at the center of our civilization's system. He had the courtesy to collapse in Carl Gustav Jung's arms (who was furthermore considered for some to be Thutankhamon's reincarnation, as you may know) when one of his students brought him to face the fact that Akhnaton was Oedipus.

This is why I say that in his psychopathological heroism (must I also recall that the poor guy spent his lifetime of Psychoanalysis practice under the huge poster of Ramses' colloses at Abdu-Simbel - who was, as we know, the enemy successor of Akhnaton, the censor who made his name banished all over the Mediteranean), Sigmund Freud resisted to disclose the identification that he was intuitively suspecting (Sigmund Freud published his study about the Man Moses and Monotheism, still haunted by Ramses, in his exile house in London where he was dying).

Such reserve did not exist with more recent scholars as Ahmed Osman, who, claiming that he follows Freud's thinking, dared to state with the clearest light of Science, Egyptology, the identity between Akhnaton and Moses. And this is where Rudolf Steiner's apprehension appears to be justified: as soon as he disclosed a piece of the mystery - Moses-Akhnaton - Osman said that it was the whole story - and without acknowledging the third part - Oedipus and/or Orpheus - he said, 'as Freud said' (sic(£)) his Murder on the Sinai is the end of the story.

This is obstructing all the reality which still lay behind... Akhnaton's initiation. His story may have not been interrupted at the border of Egypt, at the treshold of the Sinai.

We see in the sketch of Gilgamish: an initiation that was not carried through to the end. This is what gives Rudolf Steiner's prudence all credit ; for Gilgamish's story may not have been repeated once it was known (as Akhnaton must have known, for he himself was an initiate of all the symbols of earlier civilizations).

Osman's conclusion shows the appalling results of an uncomplete disclosure. In an emotional state, he claimed that the Great Initiate had been killed. Esoterically, he declared that the initiation ended under the assassination, and he referred to Freud's Social Order Murder theory (Murder-of-the Father ideology - see Osman report in Book.20(£)). Yet Freud did not say that the victim was Akhnaton precisely; as I explained above. Freud left a door open for a Spiritual subsistance.

His follower Osman shows the precipitation and its achievement for the worst consequences, in a future holocost or mass-murder. I shall not go into details - it is not the matter at hand. What I point out is the fact that Rudolf Steiner's logic of prudence is shown largely justified when one looks at the way premature disclosure affects a spiritual development.

As Gilgamesh's, Akhnaton's story shows the issue of an interrupted initiation. Interesting and essential for our time of rediscovery, in Akhnaton's case, the interruption of the initiation is put under question - it is only suspected and contradicted. As the initiation may have been complete, with all its benefits at hand, if we assume awareness of it, our collective Psychology must be enlightened as much as possible.

In the proces revelation of an important step in the initiation of civilization, the 20th century shows Akhnaton's identification attempting to ignore what he completed beyond or behind Moses. However a complete exposure reveals Orpheus - animated by the later-named Triple as Hermes - as Oedipus at Colonus escaping further a border (Sinai) station, and giving initiation to Theseus, founder of Athens. This is unfolding the integral figure of the Alchemist Hermes Trismegistus.

It seems reasonable that Rudolf Steiner, kept the Orphic pupil un-named as long as there was not enough certainty to finally figure the entire panorama of his initiation.

The Renaissance shows us what happened when data was insufficient to show that the Monotheist Egyptian King, Hermes Trismegistus, was not limited to Moses, but included also the Greek initiation (Orpheus was the only figure at the Renaissance; we know now that Oedipus and also Phaeton realised the tripartitin within the Greek stage) : the Inquisition repressed the whole story once again. At the beginning of the 20th century, Rudolf Steiner was in this situation. Only by the end of this same century, this data is secure enough to disclose the entire revelation.

At this point, I admit that I am myself speaking while it is possible that Akhnaton's mystery conceals much more behind, or beyond. Yet, I do so since I give Osman the anteriority of the official edition. Once he exposed a first step of the recognition with his foreseeable precipitation, the oedipian addition that I present is required.

This leads back again to Freud, whose work has been so important in the 20th century. He began to center our Oedipian Complex civilization with Akhnaton, in the ambiguous way that I have described. Although he published it only in 1939, he began to write the first articles of this books more than 20 years before. It is thus evidently interesting to look at what Rudolf Steiner said of him. I found the following in a lecture given on November 18th, 1911. In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner praises the Occult Science, that he opposed to ready-made dogmas which were fooling his time.

Freud was not as well known as he was later on. Steiner may not have known that he was at that time begining to work on Moses and Akhnaton - nor did he know that Freud was at the crucial turn on his researches. Actually Freud's analysis was begining to point out that the key issue of human knowledge was to get beyond the ready-made dogmas of the times. This holds the comic sense of quiproquo which never lacks in Spiritual studies.

So shall we notice that Freud, around 1910, was emphasizing the primoridal importance of Collective Psychology, and that Transference was closely related to Masses Ideologies. Meanwhile we have the data of what Steiner said in 1911: the only thing that Spiritual Science can say about the Freudian school is that it has to reject its research on the grounds that it is dilettante.

What did he mean by 'dilettante' ? Rudolf Steiner explained that Freud's method gave interpretation of the soul's life without solid foundation, without backup. He said that it was a procedure of which one could say that it arose out of the personal inclination of the scientists themselves, only they are not conscious of it, and it is dilettante into the bargain.

With the passing of time, we know that this 'personal inclination of the scientist' was indeed Freud's main concern, and that all his fundamental study of Transference was that foundation that was still not clear in 1911. But when, at the end of his life, Freud wrote that as long as the bridging between individual and collective psychology is not realized, it would be preferable to renounce entirely his Psychoanalysis method. There we see exactly what Rudolf Steiner's opinion when he said that one soon become aware that ... despite its quarter of truth ... the direction of Psychoanalysis leads to the wildest errors and that it would be preferable to keep to purely materialistic interpretation.

We see that between Sigmund Freud and Rudolf Steiner, there is no contradiction but there is misunderstanding.

I have indicated that present human consciousness holds Time in horror. So, before going a little further in addressing the concept of Transference (which answers the question of Time with the notion of Repetition rather than re-incarnation), and perhaps showing how it can be grasped or included through Spiritual Science, I wish to dust away some of those particles that Time usually lays on the shelves of the schools - and then blur the quite respectable mirroring quality of their function.

If 'dilettantism' is the only thing that Rudolf Steiner could 'scientifically' object to regarding Psychoanalysis, there was another criticism which he pointed out 'ethically' as 'half and quarter truth' - that was the sexual question, called libido in the Freudian theory.

It is worth noticing that by the end of the 20th century, as we face the first ecological wave of catastrophy in the overpopulation to come, that this reproduction issue is indeed a matter of sexuality. Since we are homo sapiens, we are supposed to know that the sexual drive is related to procreation - I am sure that we still know this ! So it is easy and enlightening to consider a simple statement that can be done at the dawn of the 21st century:

After hundred years of practice, Psychoanalysis reveals itself in a clearer light than at its beginning. It seems clear that the Freudian notion of Unconscious was the intuition of something that we approach nowadays as Environment, or Ecosystem (which was very dimly perceived in 1900). It is blatant today that in this Ecosystem a sexual drive is the major issue. It is a matter of fact. It is even more interesting to consider that the Freudian 'libido' concept was deeply, closely, and by principle; connected to biology, e.g. hormones. And it is a matter of courage, to see that this sexual issue of mankind is synchronic with a biological-hormonal issue that pollution, genetics, and other disbalancing industries activate in the population.

The Freudian interest in sexuality was not indecent. Yet, all this can be seen today. In Rudolf Steiner's time, his reserve and prudence was legitimized. Now we must face the high probability that the overpopulation issue will be solved by massive destruction - unless something in the biology changes. For the social policies and awareness of mankind has shown itself to be unable to handle the situation. Bloodshed and/or epidemia being the most foreseeable, one cannot blame Psychoanalysis for having focused on sexuality as a biological materialistic matter - for a hormonal and/or drug policy remains still an alternative in mankind's first Ecological battle.

Some may think the drug industry - modern Alchemy applied to the brain and hormonal systems - to be preferable to the passive acceptance of violence. This could correlate with the traditional and Gilgamish prophecy. For, one may not be repressing the seven mystic loaves - given by Xisuthros' wife, as related by Rudolf Steiner on Dec.27,1910 - signifying the drug-life-elixir which becomes the substitute for the resolution to let perish that part of humanity which was to live no longer. Gilgamish myth is very expressive regarding that point, and we can therefore feel sympathy for the research of the renown drug-addicted - first with cocaine for his neurosis, then morphine for his cancer - who has set Psychoanalysis.

I have related that Rudolf Steiner saw in Tycho someone who remained faithful to the wisdom which was significant before him - but I have not yet said exactly what that point was for Tycho. I find Rudolf Steiner telling it in two lectures - the first on December 30th 1910:

... in presenting the system in detail, out of his own deep knowledge, Tycho Brahe saw difficulties that Copernicus did not see. If such a thing dare be said - for it does indeed seems paradoxical - even with the Copernician system the last word has not yet been uttered. And the conflict between the two systems will still occupy the mind of a later humanity. -That, however, only by the way; it is too paradoxical for the present age.

I have quoted the paragraph including the last sentence, for the second excerpt, from September 1923, which shows how history was beginning to unwind fast even before Rudolf Steiner's end of life; he was saying then:

If one takes the whole physical world, Einstein is quite right in saying that within the world there is nothing absolute, everything is relative. Unfortunately, he stops at relativity, and it is just this relativity that ought to lead us on to look for something absolute, not in the physical world but in the spiritual. Everywhere nowadays, science - were it only rightly understood - offers us entry into the spiritual world.

I have quoted the last sentence which asserted how the present science (in 1924) no longer carried anything too paradoxical. Yet the essential meaning that I read in this paragraph is in this something absolute - which is what Tycho could not renounce or betray. For Tycho was not agreeing with Copernicus, that the planet earth would not be somehow absolutely immobile (see J.Kepler, see G.Bruno).

This absolute reference, quite classical, is indeed that which Freud seemed to ignore when he began to apply a principle of displacement to qualify, for the Modern Age, the Decartian ego. However, when Lacan was to renew Tycho's discourse, he did not have to struggle so much, for he could identify - within his Science, rightly understood - the Object for this absolute, along the path of the travelling messenger that the Freudian subject figures.

I trust that my reader will see that I have not lost my track in commenting hereby - for beside bloodshed, epidemia or anesthesia - the fourth solution, which appears on the human stage at the dawn of his 21st Century, is Ecology (that is something which involves Nature, and therefore evolution, alias transformation).

Lacan showed where the absolute of the Spiritual was 'umbilicaling', connecting, mooring the physical world. In doing so, Jacques Lacan (Psychoanaysis, Time dimension, actual resistance), reconciled Tycho's character (Astronomy, Space dimension, admitted perception) with the Science of his brotherhood.

The formula that Lacan brought to the science of the human mind were inspired by Cybernetics - which was at its beginning at his time. For indeed, when the mediocre and coarse scientists made a halt in Cybernetics, soon after it began, in realizing its complexity - the Psychoanalyst J.Lacan applied what was too paradoxical for them, in the Psychoanalytical field. And there he stated the first algebra where the former, so called 'absolute', is soaked into the weird entity on which Earth's future begins to depend (if we are not frightened with it)- that is Artificial Intelligence, alias Cybernetics. And, thanks to Lacan's psychoanalysis, we can realize that ecology and cybernetics actually follow the same laws.

There, my dear reader, you may acknowledge the urgent help that our society needs, as it currently approaches an issue that otherwise it clearly cannot handle in another way than by violent and destructive means.

I have said, and perhaps shown, that Psychoanalysis is the hand which can hold Spiritual Science in this passage. I have also shown that Akhnaton was the human reference, who was figuring the human mind, in this saturnine experience, following Gilgamish reference.

© CYBEK of New York, 1999.